And here we are again. Quick, there is something behind you! I think it's that chapter you wanted! It's coming right for you!

*screams and runs away*

Copyright Nagrij 2014.

Of course as I was pulling myself along the various vent junctions with my ill gotten gains, I felt something tear. Almost immediately I felt a bit of wetness between my legs; I wasn't sure whether to hope it was blood or not. I'd already been crawling around for what seemed like forever; I'd had to sabatoge a few systems that could be used to track me before I could properly go to ground.

The first was the tracking system designed to find and pinpoint any foreign life - foreign being any life that was growing or inhabiting regions it was not meant to. Like algae in our seage treatment tanks, rather than just mixed into our water supply. Mice were a huge problem for the first generation, I was told... another good example. Either one can spell a nice creeping doom, as the pernicious life could clog valves or chew wiring. It worked by tracking and catalogueing the gaseous and other secretions all life left behind, and comparing such things against what should be coming from a given location.

With just a modification or two, it could be used to pinpoint the location of any human outside the habitation deck with ease. The first solution of course would be to stay in the habitation deck... but they would think of that and run down any activity in unassigned apartments. When I was a child however, I was told something by my father - "Be prepared." I think it was a motto of some group or other. So when my crew decided to betray me, an occurence whose chances I put right behind main drive failure and us meeting a free roaming blackhole with no warning, I was still ready.

A little virus worked into the definition software of the first system, and anything with my nanite marker profile was now no longer considered a life form, and any data on my emissions (carbon dioxide, dead skin cells, etcetera) was promptly ignored and deleted from the system before it could be catalogued. I'd originally designed this little beauty of code after watching an all night movie marathon - thought it would come in handy in case of alien attack.

The second system was the nanite marker system itself; designed specifically to track us humans, it needed no modifications to do it's job. I could not mask the nanites from the scanners designed to pick them up, and destroying them meant fatally heavy doses of radiation. But there was more than one way to handle things like this.

Mine was to set up another virus to spoof the scanners; quite simply, if queried, all the scanners on the ship would report positives. Oddball was my worry. Even our best computer techs (aside from myself of course) couldn't handle my work. I was confident of that. The issue was Oddball, who could crush any and all types of software attacks with ease. So... I set both programs up to be self replicating, and then set up a standard pad I'd yanked with me from medical to also self replicate the programs. Simple work then to patch the pad into one of the hard lines that composed our network, using my standard emergency engineer tools.

With the pad taped into place so it wouldn't dislodge itself, and my own pad reporting to me that the programs were working, I was finally able to see to myself. The was less blood than I expected. The syringe of emergency surgical nanites should be enough to fix whatever problem I exacerbaited with all the moving around. With a little food and rest, I'd be fine.

Relatively speaking.

********

I sighed. Of course we can't find her; she's smarter than all of us.

"This damn thing is useless!"

I wearily stepped up and grabbed Siegfried's hand before he could throw the handheld scanner into the wall. We'd been searching for hours in co-ordination with the bridge, but whatever was making all the false positives on the ship wide sensors was doing it to the handhelds too.

"We're going to have to keep going Seig, she's a danger if we leave her alone."

He blew a wooshing breath.

"But Rog, man, you know how Mouse can hide. If neither systems are going to be of any use in tracking her...."

"Then we'll just have to come up with a new way."

I did not want to be here, referring to my best friend as a she and trying to track her down and medicate her so she didn't kill us all. I did not want to be anywhere near this situation. I really just wanted to go home, get drunk, and wait for the ship to explode.

What was funny is, for the most part, it was business as usual among everyone else. Only a few other people even seemed concerned that we had a possibly homicidal or suicidal engineer smarter than all of us put together, loose to wreak havoc. The notable exceptions still acted the same, but you could see it lurking in the back of their eyes, their tight expressions.

Fear.

All of them of course, being friends of Mouse, who knew how vindictive she could be. The one notable exception of course was currently headed our way, teamed up with her best friend Marion, as regulations dictated when dealing with security breaches.

"Find anything Claire?"

"No, nothing at her old haunts. At least the ones I know about. Mary knew a few more, and those were empty too."

Of course it wouldn't be that easy. Even drugged out of her mind she wouldn't make that simple a mistake. I wonder how she can hack the system as well as she has while drugged, for that matter. Niether Seig nor I could even tell where the programs were coming from, let alone unravel them. And Oddball was oddly silent - the only answer I could get from it in regards to the network attacks were that they were 'being investigated.'

Call me suspicious, but I had the feeling that Oddball was not doing everything it could to track down our wayward crew member. I also had the feeling that the headaches of the last two weeks were just the start.

"Well, no help for it. We're going to have to check every place connected to the vents that she could hide... visually."

Seig, Claire and Mary all stared at me, slack jawed. Hey. I knew it was hopeless too! But better to try and get lucky than just let her run around loose. Or possibly die alone and forgotten from aggravating her wounds. She wasn't even supposed to be moving at all until tomorrow.

"Rog, that has to be thousands of spots."

My money was on high tens of thousands, actually.

"I know Seig, if you have a better way, I'm all ears."

His sigh was a long suffering one. He looked at me, the question obvious in his eyes.

Is she really worth doing all this for? Won't this blow over on it's own?

I shook my head at him minutely. No this won't blow over. Yes she's dangerous. He sighed again, a bit more softly this time.

"We're going to need more people. And schematics. Plenty of ship schematics."

"You get as many as you can from the cafeteria, and I'll round up the people that aren't busy but aren't there. We can organize by pad. Remember, teams of two... I don't expect Mouse to get violent, but let's not take the chance."

I really didn't expect Mouse to get violent... at least not yet. Give her about two days.

******

I woke up fairly refreshed but famished; the nanite IV was doing it's job. I felt no pain, and no lingering drug effects. The portable scanner I'd swiped from the infirmary earlier found nothing in my bloodwork and no anomalies... well aside from the obvious again. my pad indicated that just over nine hours had passed, Which meant that it was time to move. I had great faith in my hiding spot, but no sense getting too comfortable then getting found.

My pad could scan for other people in the same way they could have scanned for me if I hadn't taken steps. They obviously had not thought of taking steps of their own, because I could find everyone in minutes. Many of them were in twos, wandering the corridors, stopping at vent and engineer tube accesses periodically. Kind of touching in a way, if I didn't know they were doing it to cover and protect their own traitorous asses.

None of them were even close to me yet. They hadn't even started checking the zero G areas yet. Perhaps they assumed I couldn't or wouldn't crawl that far? Recovering in zero G was actually very relaxing for the body, as long as you didn't bounce yourself off anything hard. Gravity added to stress on the body after all. whether humanity was adapted for it or not.

No real concern of mine either way. They weren't close to my current bolthole, and they weren't between me and hydroponics, another rather large mistake in my opinion. While the kitchen and rather large pantry had two people there along with a security bot, and the quartermaster's warehouses and storage had the same, hydroponics only had a lone security bot and one patrolling worker, probably the night shift botonist. I didn't even care who it was, it was one person covering a farm full of fresh produce built for 60. No way could they catch me, unless I fell asleep mid hiest.

Maybe they thought I wouldn't dare; after all it is the source of all we eat. It's sacred in a way. But that's just silly; a terrible blind spot in their thinking. Think I'll educate them to it. Some cord, a simple pulley, a pocketknife (always useful) and a few other supplies that fit in my pockets and I was on my way.

Liberating some tomatos, radishes, spinach and lettuce made for a good salad. I made sure I had enough of that and the rice for days, because I want the theft to be found. Between this and the standard vitamins, I'd be fine. They would notice the food missing right away, but it was doubtful they would notice the seeds. And through it all of course, not a single soul was seen. The glorified toaster (wonder what a toaster was? Some esoteric techie device I was told from the source when I picked that phrase up) never left the hatchway.

Of course, since it didn't see me, and was patched in to the same network Oddone was in, it believed I was everywhere already, or nowhere. So unless I gave it cause to look around, like vast amounts of noise or an alarm, it was effectively paralyzed. Eating my catch I headed back into the vents with the seeds, passing over a silent, haunted looking patrol consisting of a rather haunted looking Mary, and pinched looking but somehow still nonchalant looking Claire. They both looked tired.

Of course, it was near their bedtime. I had to wait as they passed of course, to be quiet as my namesake. They could summon help and have this section of hidden highway taken apart at both ends before I could get away, should they have reason to believe I was there. That was something to fear - if my opposition had been handling this like they could have. They should already know where I was going, at least for now. The one oath I took above all others; if Roger was thinking, he'd have the ambush set up.

According to my pad, which still clearly showed Mary and Claire walking down the corridor far behind me, and several other crew at their various stations in range, he didn't. My brains told me that if he was thinking at all, this would be where he'd blank out all evidence of a few burly crew and wait. My recently reworked gut was telling me that I could walk right in without fear of reprisal.

There was no reason to ignore one over the other; no cause. So I stayed in the vents, squeezed through the vent just beside the hatch, and found myself above the sleepers.

There were plenty of places to hide here; a bit morbid, but this was one of the best rooms for hide and seek. Almost every cryo tube had a nook behind it even the largest adult could cram into without affecting the works. Most wouldn't dare, but kids are a different breed - young and fearless. Nowadays I understood why the adults would drag us out of here after we played and dispense some rather iron handed discipline. We never had caused the accident the second gen had so dreaded however. In later years it was one of the best places to be alone.

Now, my gut was insisting, through the experience of long hours spent here for just that purpose, that the place was empty. A half hour later the place still appeared clear, so it was time to listen. My drop down was silent but not exactly painless, and done right in front of my parents.

I sat in front of them, staring into each in turn. Had they known? They almost had to have known. If they had, why? Why not say something, why not warn me, let me help fix the problem?

Did they really think there was no solution?

It was obvious that Roger had at least hinted at the issue and sought my help, but why not just tell me outright what the outcome would be? I'd had no idea, and would have worked on it a bit (ok, much much) harder had I been told. I turned a few tubes down to my former boss. Had he known? I bet he'd had at least some suspicions, but all my memories indicated he knew nothing.

Going from one tube to the next, I pondered.

The alarm I'd set on my pad was entirely too loud. I hushed it quickly and was into the vents before anyone (or the toaster)could come and investigate. Even with the grate replaced I knew Roger would know I was here. Even if it wasn't possible to leave
prints in the collected ice in the tomb, he'd remember as soon as the alarm was raised how much the place meant to me. Luckily the way I was heading out was much faster than the way I took going in - allowing the gravity to let me 'fall' towards the outside of the ship. Not without it's dangers, but what did I care about getting hurt at the moment?

I had my answer. It had taken hours of staring in the dark, but I now knew. I couldn't do what I really wanted and destroy a ship full of traitors, anger or no. Many of the frozen, at the very least, were innocent of this crime and I had taken an oath to protect them and the ship. That same oath compelled me against murder, as leaving the ship drastically shorthanded would lead to it's demise. Also what if I killed one of them and got someone else condemned to my situation? Besides, I was better than that - better than they were.

I could feel the grin stretch my lips ear to ear, and even my back teeth caught some of the breeze. I felt downright feral; unstoppable. Everything else was on the table; I was only human after all.

(tbc)