Faux Realm Ch 02

She was directing men and women on board her bridge as they received warnings that someone was hacking their systems. Their collective fears were confirmed as they were dropped from warp speed and directed to a nearby asteroid belt. She could not believe what was happening as they were trying to figure out who or what was doing this, as their current ship did not have the best computer in the Star Republic but still it was impossible to hack through their internal defense layers.

But everything they assumed was dashed as layer by layer of defense was annulled by this mysterious attacker. Their silent attack was only evident by hers and her peoples' frantic movements.

"Captain I've narrowed down the point of attack. It seems it's coming from onboard this ship." A man behind a console yelled over the noise.

"Their protocol is insane. I've never seen anyone breaking 4 layers of MI defense this fast. I'm having trouble keeping up with them." Woman behind the captain's chair informed her as she worked on her own Pad.

As Captain Ericha Rrang focused on her own search, her head filled with thousand scenarios. Was there a spy on board this ship disguised as a slave? As questions rushed inside her head she noticed that intruder was roaming dangerously near cargo holds and realized in horror.

"Oh Gods, they are thinking of purging cargo hold where we have all those people in, STOP THEM." Her voice trailed off as she helplessly watched the ship stop and start its tractor beams.

"Captain. We can't. I'm afraid they've just locked us out." Woman's voice behind her said, her voice matching her own face filled with uneasiness.

Several tense minutes passed as they watched helplessly the filling of their cargo bay. Rescued slaves were still intact blissfully unaware how close to death they came.

"We figured out where the attacks came from. Medbay on deck 10."

"Captain Ericha Rrang to every security member; move to Medbay on deck 10. NOW. Full tactical readiness." She screamed over her own people that were trying to figure out who was trying to break in their ships computers.

"First officer you have the bridge, I'm going to Medbay." She told her Second in command while draping herself with a black and yellow jacket.

She almost wanted to run few feet where the lift was, but managed to contain herself, unwilling to show any emotion that could make her crew doubt in her mental fortitude. Rounded pad inside white lift was unusually slow as it seemed to take twice as long to reach deck 10; after just few seconds she finally made a quick exit through sliding doors. She ran rest of the way towards where Medbay was located and found that it was almost packed full with military personnel ready to murder whoever it was inside that caused this event.

Medbay was with all of its bright glory accommodating to their silent push as they tactically dispersed; every person taking a specific place and position, at what it seemed record time. Trained movements concealed the urgency that they were on and as if making a statement managed to throw the poor partition and point their trained guns at one lonely target that was still pinned to the bed.

She noticed Lucian staring at them with look of shock and awe and raise his arms as far as his aching joints would let him, the Pad that was in his hands just seconds prior gently landed on top of the covers and remained there while he looked terrified.

"What the fuck?!" She heard a member of security team gasp in shock.

She was not sure who it was since they still had their guns pointed in the same direction. She saw Lucian's reaction, he looked terrified and unsure. But that could be a trap.

As if on command a large woman came forward and took the Pad of the bed, "Captain you need to take a look at this."

While she said that, Ericha moved towards her outstretched hand and took the presented Pad. While she did that the woman in one fluid motion smacked Lucian across his face without holding back her strength which made him lunge over the railings and drop to the floor in an audible 'THUD' his bones were expected to brake from the fall, as most of the security detail held their breaths. Whatever silence was in the room was broken with snickers all around while she watched the screen in shocked disbelief.

*

Again he woke up from a dream. He could not remember what it was but judging by the beating of his heart it was intense.

Looking around he found that he was no longer inside medical facility, but somewhere much darker and by his aching back a lot harder to sleep on. His arms and legs were sore, his face stung from the blow of the large thug whom he could not identify, but what ached the most was his pride after getting unexpectedly smacked.

Lucian's eyes focused enough for him to realize that he was not alone. Surrounding him there were silhouettes of men and women slowly moving across the floor towards where he stood.

"Take him outside, Captain wants to speak to him." Voice called out from the dark while others dexterous hands picked him up and carried him out in the light.

His eyes hurt from the sudden bright light. He tried to rub his eyes with his hands. But as soon as he did that a man with a weapon smacked him across his ribs. Few moments later he was sitting in a dimly lit room alone, waiting for someone, presumably captain Ericha.

As soon as he thought that doors opened loudly and in walked 2 men and Ericha. He was glad to see her, offering a bright smile, but one of the men smacked Lucian across the face. Again his pride ached more than the slap, but he was not about to tell or show them that.

"WhereAmI?" he asked in gritty voice earning him another smack from dark clothed man.

"Speak when spoken to!" The other that held back in the dark told him in a loud voice.

"Lucian why did you do it?!" Captain Ericha asked.

While she asked that, from her jacket she presented a white Pad. By now his arms were firmly placed on top of the table where suddenly black circles appeared. Lucian winced, but managed to remain calm and look straight ahead. Ericha placed the Pad between his two hands. Looking him in the eye she nodded to the man that stood behind him, on que he pinned his left hand to the circle. With his right shaking hand he took the provided Pad.

"I do not know what you are talking about." He wrote on the provided Pad.

When he finished all of the parties watched what he wrote, "Bullshit!" The man that was in the dark finally exploded and obscenely yelled.

Ericha raised her hand and the man stopped. Visibly shaken Lucian started to notice their demeanor.

"You managed to hack our transport and put us in normal space, flew Pretoria to a nearby asteroid field and mined it, now tell me; what was in that asteroid field?" She quietly asked.

"What are you ON about now? I did not hack anything I just played a game on that Pad." He wrote as fast as his one hand would allow it, other hand was still held down by the second man.

"STOP LYING!" The man in the dark yelled and started to walk towards Lucian.

Ericha raised her hand and the man stopped in his tracks; the crazed anger in his eyes visibly toned down.

"There are no games on this device. This is used to help us with our research when we use it." She explained.

Lucian smiled, the skin on his face started hurting. He realized that it would be easier to show her so with few flicks of his aching wrist he managed to follow his trail on the Pad and found his way to the same directory, turning over the pad and showed it to her. Look on her face was indecipherable and moments passed as Lucian managed not to look nervous.

After few moments of looking awestruck at the screen and the obvious data port to her ship she pressed it with her finger and managed to open all of the ships available and hidden onboard systems. Motioning to two men that were now standing beside her, gazing stupidly at the screen.

"But how?!" One of them asked.

"I do not know but he's somehow able to integrate this device to the ship itself." Ericha explained.

"Captain look at this." The man that held his hand now pointed at the screen, getting the attention of his superior.

"It's the main cargo area of the ship, and this here is our Drive." He managed to point without pressing on the screen.

"Did you press anything on here?" Ericha politely asked.

He nodded. Pointed his finger and pressed on what it appeared as "warp drive". They spent few seconds of silence when a sound caught their attention.

"Yes. This is Captain speaking." Ericha simply answered.

"Captain! It happened again we dropped to normal space." Voice thundered over them.

"Are we moving?" She asked.

"No. We were locked out of all systems again captain. We appear to have stopped and are now in System Mo'R." Voice explained.

Lucian took the opportunity and slowly moved towards the Pad. Two men beside Ericha started to react but managed to contain their violent nature when they saw his gestures. He was silently gesturing them using hand signals to watch and listen. Both men and Ericha were now standing near Lucian while he was silently working on the Pad in his hands.

"Captain. We are moving!" The voice screamed.

Woman's' voice was now on edge and panicking as she described what they were doing, "The trajectory is extremely erratic"

Lucian's dexterous fingers were now on point and started to engage tractor beams on a nearby mammoth asteroid. On his screen the asteroid represented few hundred pixels while in reality was towering over Pretoria itself. Due to its mass he was unable to move it reliably so he managed to drag a smaller one to its position and like playing space pool nudge the mass of rock and dust into the system's sun.

While all of this was happening, people on bridge were looking at their screen in awe. The silent dance of massive asteroid was enough to get everyone's attention until it was caught by the sun's gravitational pull from which it had no escape.

Ericha Rrang was looking how Lucian was flying her ship using a simple Pad. Hacking through many layers of this ships' defense. Sure, this ship was no state of the art, new model that just rolled out the production line. But still it had amazing capabilities and its onboard computer was something not to be trifled with, and yet here was this man that new nothing of how her world worked, new nothing of how universe worked, was sitting and showing off his skills. As if opening an archaic book.

Ericha thought about how they treated him. Men and women wanted a piece of this supposed traitor that endangered their ship. Even she jumped on that bandwagon and did not even manage to offer a different point of view. Something that Academy thought her to do, occasionally professors told her the command would bring various difficulties. She thought it was funny how many captains broke down when offered hard choices when in command.

"Gentlemen. I want you to take Lucian here, gently, and take him to Medbay to get examined. We treated him utterly inhumane here even though we swore an oath of duty and protection. I'll be in my ready room." She gave the two stunned men their orders.

"Lucian. I want you to hold on until we get to our capital world VenuuX until you start using that Pad. Somehow you are able to breach our security and control our ship."

Lucian was staring at her wide eyes trying to figure out the depth of her sincerity. He knew what just happened deep down, he accepted her directions and commands, even though he was not a member of this crew he was still using its services. They could still dump him out in space.

"We will talk when you get better, for now I have to focus on my duties." With that she turned and left through the doors.

Lucian was gently led away through corridors and into Medbay. Gently placed on the bed and as soon as his head touched the pillow he was out.

*

He was inside a tunnel pushing a mine cart with his skinny arms. Sounds of electric whips and laughter spread through the caverns making everyone work even harder. No one wanted to be on the receiving end of one of those weapons. Animals that snarled at him made his skin crawl. Their snarls reminded him of hyenas on steroids. Wicked teeth in front of their gaping maws as they snarled towards anyone that would come near them; which in this case was every time anyone with a mine cart would exit a tunnel.

As he slowly approached one of the beasts lunged at him with his gaping maw opened wide, sharp teeth ready to rend flesh and crunch bones.

*

Lucian's eyes opened wide as he was gasping for air. Every breath he took was loaded with as much air as his lungs could take, shivers ran up and down his spine as he could not believe the dream that he just had, vivid imagery was still inside his brain whenever he would close his eyelids.

"Bad dream?" A nurse that entered his immediate resting area greeted him.

He nodded; still, after several days, his voice has not returned, his throat still in bad shape. But reality was not as bleak as he noticed, he was not hurting as much and would feel better occasionally.

"Well I'm here to check your progress. And see if it's possible to remove muscle bandages." She said and began working.

Two women constantly worked around him, one in the morning and one during the night; but he saw the male doctor only once since that time he managed to take him hostage. He was wondering if he was resentful for the bad way Lucian treated him.

As nurse worked she noticed his eyes glancing over her delicious curves. She smiled inwardly moving her hands deftly across his body and slowly caressing his body with her hands. Under the disguise of massaging him she inspected his body, noting that while he had almost no muscles they were coming back under careful medical treatment that their medical officers were providing. Soon he would be jumping and running on his own.

"Everything is ok. I need to give you some supplements and I'll be on my way. A lot of patients today." She smiled.

A small prick in his arm and she left the same way she came in. Often these medications would make him drowsy. Unable to resist drugs effects he was out in matter of seconds.

*

Ericha Rrang was up and drinking a cup of coffee as she was writing a detailed report of what happened previous day to Star Command. She spent hours ironing and polishing out the report. She and her crew, especially members of security force, overstepped their authority and harmed a person that needed their protection. Inside, she knew it was not all black and white. Mostly it was her crew that needed protection. Lucian was in the wrong place at the right time. If that was something that could happen. So her security did their job. Everything ended fairly well but she still felt the bitter taste of how they addressed the individual that supposedly did the deed.

The only damages she sustained in all of this was to her Drive, nocking several days from her travel time back to their home world.

"Send to Star Republic Command. Encrypt it with level Five encryption." She said to computer knowing that on the other end they would have the correct key to open her report.

It was common practice for ship personnel, especially captains, to encrypt their data, messages or anything they would send over back to Star High Command was coded, several hundred years back it was not implemented as required practice among officers, so during one of the wars they unwillingly gave crucial data to their enemies. Especially Lizards, that managed to hack most of their data and began trading it with their allies, making it impossible to fight in normal terms anymore. They knew every tactic or secret weapon they might have thrown at them during that war and by the grace of one clever captain they managed to avoid tragedy. Captain HyduN managed to find their own way of sending crucial attack plans and strategic fleet placements by having one party with the key; while the other just needed to lock it, no breeches were done after that was put into practice. Soon after, it was capital offense to send anything from ships back to High Command, just to instill their new practice as quickly as possible. Nowadays it's no longer an offense worth killing for, but members that send their messages normally get stripped of rank and in some severe cases sent to jail.

Walking off her sore legs and curvaceous bottom she strolled onto her bridge, "Status Report."

"Captain, we've entered the borders of Star Republic and we will start broadcasting the message that you gave us." Navigator said while pushing the engines to full throttle on his console.

Silently their transport started to stampede through space; unknown to any of its occupants at what dizzying speeds they were going.

"Time until we get to VenuuX. 3 days 4hours and 45 minutes. Give or take few seconds." Navigator gave precise directions and time of arrival as seen on his console.

Ericha nodded her head and smiled at her crew, "You did a good job. We saved a lot of people and made few good deeds."

Shortly after that speech she went to deck 10. Butterflies in her tummy, while walking she was amazed how fast she made friends with this unknown man. Many times she caught herself from leaning in and caressing the head of ailing man, but soon managed to contain herself just to her silent comforts. Just few moments in his vicinity was all it took to make her day brighter. She knew of love but not this fast. Every one of her former lovers were more or less week or month old romances that ended quickly after she sated her lust.

*

Lucian spent next three days in blissful daze. Spending his time recuperating his body from injuries, while the same could be said for his heart as it recuperated from the visits that Captain Ericha would often grace him with, unknown to the man why or how his heart was feeling that way; he guessed it to be love. Affection or passing crush were his first thoughts; that was dashed as soon as he craved for her presence. He was not sure though. He was a loner that did not know how to deal with people, yet he was feeling butterflies in his stomach for the first time. It was not his first time being with a woman, but those were just fleeting fancies that both parties wanted, this was something that he could not stop if he wanted to.

He did not even know when they docked at their final destination when 4 men wearing full black clothes entered Medbay and stood by his bed while another figure came behind them. Dressed in elaborate white robes; the man walked with grace and poise of a king. He locked something out of Sci-Fi movies, all hair on his head was shaven off; or it did not grow, except for his elaborate beard. It was something that fit on a king and he presented himself like one.

Man looked like an alien. Without his eyebrows and pointed ears. But seeing few of the alien races on board of this ship Lucian was not surprised.

"I am Medical Examiner Luca Prom. I'm in charge of HyduN division, I came here to see the degree of your injuries. After reading the reports I was unsure if people were exaggerating their experiences." Man's voice was deep and unbefitting to the soft image that he presented to Lucian.

By now Lucians' voice was back but still lacking his usual tone and vigor, "Nice...To...Meet...You."

Managing slowly to speak he smiled at the tall man that was by now looking him dead in the eyes. Four men in black clothes just stood beside his bed waiting for whatever was about to happen. Few minutes were spent in tense silence. Tension was felt by Lucian only as other parties were simply staring.

Finally Luca spoke in his even deep tone, "We will now bring you to our medical facilities and manage you to your full health. While you are there I appreciate it if you would follow my every order as it's crucial to your overall health. Let's begin."