Chapter Text
[FILE START: TIMESTAMP XXXX.XX.XX // SECTOR: UNKNOWN]
ENCRYPTION: 256-BIT SOMA HASH
ACCESS: PACK-AUTHORIZED [USER: THAME]
SUBJECT: ASSET EXTRACTION
“P’Dylan, anything?”
“I’m still tracing,” Dylan replied into the intercom piece in Thame’s ear.
Jun grunted, rolling his eyes. He rested his gun against his shoulder, “That’s not helpful. What if there are bugs?”
Nano was kneeling next to a body, his fingers pressed against the pulse spot. Nothing. He rested his arm against his thigh, frowning, “Bugs?”
“I hate bugs. Remember the space junk a few months back? The big face-hugging looking things,” Jun gestured vaguely with his hand, shuddering at the memory, “I still have nightmares. Not even Dr. P’s hugs are enough.”
A soft chuckle was heard over the piece in their ears. Pepper sighed, “Please, Jun. Let’s focus on the mission.”
The engineer pouted, muttering something about ‘no more hugs for Pepper’ as he went back on his search through the hull.
The MARS-ALPHA was docked to a high-security transport vessel. They got an SOS echo on their comms, hidden under heavy encryption. Of course, Dylan hacked it quickly, but the message was clear.
HELP ME. PLEASE.
Thame felt uneasy about the mission as a whole. Pepper and Nano were adamant they had to help. Jun was indifferent, focusing more on scavenging the ship for all its resources. Dylan was the one against even going near the transport vessel. It reeked of ONER Corp, and that was a big no-no for the crew of MARS-ALPHA. They all had rap sheets and avoided the mega-corp like it was the plague of the universe. Despite his own gut feeling that trouble was on the ship, Thame agreed.
“I can only find one heat signature,” Dylan’s voice rang through their ears.
The three on the ghost ship all looked at each other. They hadn’t made it very far. The few dead bodies they found were already in the hull, which was a significant indicator that something was very wrong with this ship, and whatever the heat signature that Dylan found was probably the reason why this was less of a transport vessel and more like a floating graveyard.
Thame swallowed a lump in his throat, “Human or not?”
Dylan was quiet for a moment, “Human.”
The three shared another look before they looked at the body closest to them. They were definitely shot with laser pistols, just like the ones they held. Did one person take out all the guards on the ship?
Nano picked up a badge on one of the bodies. He flipped it over in his hand, frowning, “Hey, P’Thame. Since when does ONER Corp have scientists on board?”
“Huh?” Thame frowned, shaking his head, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any unless it was a transport barge for some extraterrestrial junk.”
Thame and Jun closed the distance between where they were and Nano. They glanced down at the card he had and read it, their brows furrowing. Thame really didn’t like where this was going. He glanced towards the exit where they had entered the ship, contemplating leaving the ship.
“Be careful,” Pepper’s soft, sweet voice came through, though the worry was there, “Jun is still recovering from the last mission.”
Jun groaned, “I said I was fine. The bullet wound is gone.”
Dylan scoffed, “And yet you whined about it and used it to get my clothes off last night.”
“A win is a win,” Jun hummed, smiling now.
The two in the room rolled their eyes. Tham decided it was time to stop goofing off, “Alright, P’Dylan. Where is this person on the ship?”
Dylan was quiet for a long moment, but Thame could hear the clicking and clacking of his machines, which he used to track from the helm. Pepper’s voice was soft, offering Dylan encouragement. Dylan must be frustrated by not knowing exactly what was waiting for them on the ship. He would never voice his worries outloud, but he showed it in the ways that counted.
“This ship designation has a high-security vault in the ventral of the ship. You pass two cargo areas, and you’ll find a vault. Based on the system I’m hacked into, the vault is wide open, and the cargo is there,” Dylan stated, his voice even.
Nano pouted, “It’s a person. Not cargo.”
“We don’t know what it is,” Dylan threw back, “Based on the flight logs, which ONER Corp heavily encrypted, the asset is volatile and deemed important to galactic supremacy. It’s not a fucking puppy, Nano.”
“Babe,” Jun spoke up, frowning now, “Stop taking your frustrations out on Nano.”
Nano was frowning, looking precisely like a kicked puppy. Even though they couldn’t see Dylan’s face, they knew he felt guilty. Dylan sighed through the microphone, “I’m sorry, Nano.”
“It’s okay, P’Dylan. Save me cuddles and kisses later, okay?” Nano ordered, his voice stern, but he still had a smile on his face, “It’s not fair that P’Jun and P’Thame hog you all the time.”
“Am I not enough, Nano?” Pepper questioned.
Nano kicked his foot, puffing out his cheeks with a cheeky smile, “You’re always enough, P’Per.”
Thame took the badge from Nano, “Okay, enough flirting. ONER is probably on their way to get whatever this hunk of junk is hauling, so let’s get it before they get us. Nano. You take portside—Jun, starboard. Look for anything worth even a bit of credits. I’ll head for the vault.”
Jun stepped forward, “Thame. Alone?”
“It’s one person,” Thame offered.
“Who seems to have killed everyone on board?” Nano pointed out, shaking his head, “You’re not going in alone.”
Thame reached out and pulled Nano to him, kissing his forehead lightly. His hand rested on the back of Nano’s neck as he held the younger one to him. He looked at Jun behind him and saw the disapproving look on his face. He didn’t want Thame going in either.
He released Nano and offered a small smile, “I’ll be fine. This person asked for help. We’re all they have at this point to get away from ONER.”
“You think they are who is being transported?” Pepper asked, his voice serious, “This could be a trap to bring us in finally.”
“No,” Thame disagreed, “We don’t do organic cargo. We never have, even if those pay better. This is a rescue mission, and we’ll treat it like that, but we’ll get our credits where we can. So pick this ship apart.”
Dylan’s voice cut in, “I’m giving you thirty minutes to get this done with and back on board before ONER’s retrieval fleet is up our ass. I’ve managed to put us and the ghost ship incognito, but not for long. I can’t cloak forever. Get this over with. In one piece.”
“Copy,” Thame said. Nano hugged Thame tightly before releasing him and stepping back.
Jun stepped forward and threw his arm around Thame’s neck, tugging the young captain to him. He felt Thame press his cheek against his, a silent form of affection Thame always had for the engineer. He pulled away and looked Thame in the eyes, “I shouldn’t have to tell you this, Captain. You above anyone else, got it?”
Thame smiled, nodding, “Copy.”
A soft kiss was placed at the corner of Thame’s lips before Jun backed away. The three shared one last look before turning and leaving. He heard Pepper on the intercom say he’d cover Nano and Jun’s back since they were not going near the target. Dylan would keep his focus solely on Thame and making sure he was safe.
While Thame ventured further into the hull, Dylan was still combing through data he was extracting from the ship. Dozens of encrypted data, some useless, basically filler to keep those like Dylan from finding the good stuff, but he was a genius, and it wasn’t long until he broke past all the firewalls and took complete control of the ship.
His brows knitted together as he read one of the files he found. It was about what the ship was transporting. It wasn’t just any document; it was a SOMA (Space Omics and Medical Atlas) file, a standard for tracking complex biological data in deep space.
[PBNN-01_MAINTENANCE_LOG.soma]
Asset Classification: Singularity Class Navigational Hardware
Hereditary Origin: Grav-Lattice Synchronization
Tactical Value: Subject PBNN-01’s market value is equivalent to a small star system’s entire GDP due to the ability to process tactical star maps faster and more accurately than any current developing AI or navigation system using only his eyesight.
“Thame.”
“Yeah?”
“I think we have a big problem,” Dylan stared at the file, his eyes skimming every word, “The person you are looking for is considered a priceless commodity to ONER.”
Thame’s breathing became ragged through the microphone as he pushed open some doors that hadn’t fully closed. There was no power on the ship, and even if Dylan tried to control it, it was out of fuel. There was barely any oxygen left, but Pepper was helping cycle it in from MARS-ALPHA through the connection between the two ships.
The captain grunted when he finally got the doors open, “What am I walking into, Dylan?”
“The asset has some kind of power. He can process tactical star maps,” Dylan explained, reading through the dossier, “He basically does what I can do but just with his eyes.”
Thame was quiet for a moment, “So he’s a walking, breathing navigation system?”
Dylan sighed, running a hand through his hair, “In layman’s terms, yeah, that’s exactly it. ONER has a critical warning on his profile. He is ‘overclocking’ his systems. Without ONER’s neuro-stabilizers, his system will eventually reject his own brain, causing cognitive collapse. Not only that, his eyes are slowly degrading as well. Possibility of permanent blindness.”
He toggled the frequency to patch Pepper back into their private comm channel, “Per. The file mentions ‘proteomic degradation’. What does that mean?”
Pepper’s cracked through to the comms, sounding sharp and clinical, “It’s the breakdown of damaged or unneeded proteins into amino acids to maintain homeostasis. It’s a natural biological process. Why?”
“Speak to me like I’m five years old,” Thame grunted, pushing aside a jagged piece of fallen bulkhead debris.
Pepper sighed, “It means the body is efficiently taking out the trash. When it finds a bad cell, it breaks it down so the rest of the body stays healthy and stable.”
“But what does it mean if the person’s brain is creating the damage faster than the body can ‘take out the trash’?” Dylan asked, his voice tight.
The doctor was silent for a beat, a faint hum of thought in the background, “Depending on the rate of damage… it could mean the patient is slowly killing themselves.”
There was silence over the comms for several moments. Dylan’s eyes turned from the file to the little blinking light on the map. Thame was standing still, staring straight ahead at what was meant to be the vault. Dylan wished he could hijack the ship and get control of the cameras so he could see what Thame was seeing.
Thame had shoved past the final heap of wreckage, his heavy boots clanging against the deck of the high-security vault. There was a sterile smell in the air, almost like a med-bay on one of the richer colony ships.
In the center of the dark, airless room sat a single containment pod.
Sitting, cross-legged in the pod, was a man, probably no older than Jun or Dylan. He was wearing tattered silk robes that belonged in some mansion on the richest of planets, not in what Thame would consider a tomb, with dead bodies and a lack of warmth, like on the MARS-ALPHA. His eyes snapped up to deep brown eyes, and Thame felt the way the dust in the air clung to the sweat on his neck as he stopped dead.
He was beautiful. He looked like a galactic model and not some science experiment or whatever Dylan was trying to tell him. He had the look of a noble, razor-sharp cheekbones and a narrow, straight nose. His jawline was delicate, though tight from tension. His complexion was unnaturally pale, years of research and testing on his body, if Thame were a betting man. His eyes were a deep brown, but there was almost a purple hue around the pupils, and Thame had to stop himself from stepping closer to get a closer look.
“Are you with ONER?” The male asked. His voice didn’t just sound quiet; it sounded like a voice that hadn’t spoken in months.
Thame didn’t answer immediately. He was too busy watching the way the light attached to his rifle caught the violet static in the male’s eyes. Dylan was screaming in his ear about ‘asset recovery’ and ‘kill-on-sight orders’, but all Thame could see was a man who looked like he had been carved out of space and left to rot in a tin can.
“I’m not,” Thame finally grunted, his voice sounding almost too loud in the sterile room, “I’m Thame.”
For a split second, Thame thought he saw the other smile, “Po.”
Po slowly pushed himself out of the pod; his feet hit the deck with a dull thud, but he didn’t shiver as his bare feet hit the cold metal. Almost as if he was used to the cold texture. His steps were clumsy, and as he seemed to miss his footing, the world tilted too fast for his tired mind as Thame’s hand shot out, gripping Po’s wrists and holding him upright.
When Thame’s gloved hands caught his wrists, the contrast was jarring: the scarred, grease-stained leather of a soldier meeting skin that looked like it never touched unfiltered sunlight.
This close, Thame was able to stare into Po’s eyes, and he had been correct, Po’s eyes did have purple in them, but it wasn’t just any purple. The violet in his eyes wasn’t a pigment; it was a flow, like the deep-spectrum radiation of a dying nebula. It flickered in time with erratic pulse, a visual reminder of what Dylan had said earlier.
And when Po stared back at Thame, into his own deep brown eyes, he saw his freedom—no more labs. No more being forced to see beyond what normal eyes could see. He was putting a lot of faith into a man he didn’t know, and for all he knew, Thame would deliver right to ONER, but for some reason, he felt as if he shouldn’t worry.
Dylan’s voice buzzed in Thame’s ear–something about ‘immediate extraction’, but Thame didn’t hear a word of it. He was too busy watching Po’s eyes searching his face.
Thame’s hands were gentle around his wrists. It was then Thame noticed that Po was shaking, but it wasn’t from fear–it was the sheer effort of holding himself together.
Instinctively, Thame’s arms went around Po’s shoulders and the back of his knees, lifting him in his arms. Po’s arms wrapped around his neck. He didn’t fight it, having finally given up all the tension. Po closed his eyes, leaning into the warmth of Thame’s tactical vest, a sense of safety spreading through Po’s entire being.
Thame felt the fragile weight shift as Po slumped against him. He was essentially carrying a live grenade back to the MARS-ALPHA, one that would eventually blow his life to pieces. But the way Po’s fingers curled into the collar of the vest…, Thame knew the crew wouldn’t just understand. They would fight for him.
He would protect Po, and he knew his crew would come to understand his reasoning.
“I’ve got you,” Thame muttered, the words sounding like a vow in the sterile silence. He adjusted Po’s weight, the fragile silk of his robes snagging on Thame’s tactical gear. “Let’s go home.”
—--
“You have to be joking, Thame? You brought him back on the ship?”
Thame sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose as Dylan yelled at him. Jun, Nano, and he, along with the sleeping male in one of the cabins, quickly exited the ship, and the MARS-ALPHA shot into hyperspace with only minutes to spare before ONER’s retrieval fleet arrived.
Now, sleeping peacefully, Po was safe on their ship. The crew was sitting in the lounge, Thame not even getting a chance to wipe the sweat from his skin, before Dylan came storming in, Pepper on his tail, trying to calm him down.
Thame made sure that Po was safely on the bed before he came back out and collapsed on the couch. Jun and Nano stood off to the side, still unsure about what they had just done. Their faces when they saw Thame come with a person in his arms would have been comical if not for Dylan screaming in their ears to get on the ‘fucking ship or I will lock you three in the airlock and watch your eyes pop out of their sockets’.
“He needed help,” Thame glanced over at Dylan, “You said so yourself. ONER is using him.”
“Yes,” Dylan groaned, “But I also said his value to ONER is priceless. We are already a target, and you just made it worse.”
He knew that. He glanced back down the hallway that led to the cabins where Po was sleeping again. This was bigger than their crimes against ONER. It didn’t matter their past crimes; this was basically grand larceny of intellectual property, and the sentence for something like this? It wouldn’t be time in a prison colony.
It would be death.
Pepper came walking back into the room, having checked on Po. He had requested the med-bay, but Thame made the call that it was probably too sterile for someone used to being pricked and prodded. Pepper agreed and spent the last thirty minutes running simple tests that weren’t invasive. He’d request Po’s cooperation when he was awake and comfortable.
Thame sat up straighter, “How is he?”
“Overall, fine,” Pepper moved to settle on the couch next to Nano. Immediately, the youngest curled up against him while Jun stood to go to Dylan’s side. Dylan attempted to push away, but Jun grabbed his wrist and tugged him to the side. They whispered to each other, Dylan angry while Jun was trying to comfort. Thame did his best to ignore them.
“But?”
Pepper sighed, pulling off his glasses and cleaning the lenses, "Without a full bioscan, I can only make educated guesses.”
“Which you are usually right about,” Nano leaned his head back to look at Pepper, “Is he going to be okay? He’s beautiful.”
The doctor chuckled, “That he is. And he should be fine. Again, I haven’t done a full scan of his biometrics yet, but other than malnutrition and anemia, he seems as healthy as expected from the situation we found him.”
“Anemia?”
Pepper nodded as he looked up at Thame, “Expected. I wouldn’t put it past ONER to try to take his DNA and create the mutation that gave Po the abilities Dylan found in their files. It’s not just rare, Thame. Po is the only one in the galaxy with this ability. I know the science and anatomy of all known species in this quadrant, but I don’t understand the stars. I’m a planet-side dweller. I can’t begin to know what this means, but I can infer enough.”
Thame nodded, “And? What do you infer?”
“You just signed our death warrant,” Pepper replied grimly.
Dylan and Jun returned to the group, Dylan obviously upset, not that Jun was smiling. Nano shivered in Pepper’s arms, and Pepper’s arms instinctively wrapped around the younger male.
“Captain,” Jun called, his voice serious. He was rarely the serious one, but he had his moments. “We call for a vote.”
Thame expected this. He stood up, glancing at each member of his crew, “All those against Po remaining in the ship?”
Dylan raised his hand immediately. Jun’s hand rose as well. Thame was only slightly surprised. Jun liked helping others, but not at the expense of the crew or the ship.
Thame glanced at the two on the couch, but they kept their hands down. “All those in favor of Po remaining on the ship?”
In unison, Pepper and Nano raised their hands while Jun and Dylan kept theirs down now. Dylan made a strangled noise, “Per. You just said he was a death warrant.”
“I did,” Pepper agreed, “But I also saw the needle marks and scars on his arms and legs. He’s a victim in this. He needs us.”
Us.
Thame liked the sound of that. He had no reason to. He barely said a few words to Po before he passed out. Maybe it was attraction at first sight, he didn’t know. Even though he had the other four in his life, was it wrong to wish for another?
Dylan threw a pointed look at Thame. He didn’t look away or buckle under the stare. It wouldn’t be the first time or the last time Dylan would be angry with him.
“You’re the final vote, Captain,” Jun said, though from the look on his face, he already knew the answer. It’s why when he voted against Po staying on the ship, he didn’t seem as frustrated. He already knew Po’s fate.
“He asked for help. We help him,” Thame decided.
Dylan immediately turned away from them, pushing Jun away from his side and storming out of the lounge. Jun glanced back at Dylan’s retreating figure before looking over at Nano, “Moral Officer. You’re on duty.”
“Time to rummage through the stash for P’Dyl’s favorites,” Nano sighed as he rose to his feet and headed out of the room. He stopped at the automatic doors, resting his hands on the metal. He turned to Thame, “You made the right choice, P’Thame. P’Per is right. He needs us.”
With that, Nano left the room. Jun, Pepper, and Thame remained. Thame and Jun settled back on the couches, all now around the table in the center. They were all quiet, but Jun hated silence.
“We’ve barely managed to escape ONER with the bounties they already have on us. Dylan is scared, Thame. GMM wants him back under control,” Jun explained, his voice oddly serious for someone who preferred joking around, “Even Pepper is wanted alive. You? Me? Nano? We’re dead men walking.”
Thame knew that. With the crimes they all committed in the eyes of ONER and the sector, it added another target to their backs. If they were captured, Dylan and Pepper would survive. Their intelligence was a necessity. The other three? Expendable.
Now they added Po to the mix. They didn’t even know him.
The captain glanced up, “He asked us for help.”
Pepper smiled softly, “You have a soft spot for people in need.”
“Dyl would call it a hero complex,” Jun pointed out, chuckling breathlessly, “We’ll all follow your lead, Thame. Even Dyl, but I just hope you realize what you’ve done.”
He did. He knew the stakes now. Maybe not in full detail, but this was going to be a problem. They were already being sought through the galaxy by ONER and other mega corporations. With Po now in their hands, it was only going to get worse here on out.
“We’ll figure this out. Together. All of us, including Po,” Thame nodded, confident. Pepper and Jun shared an amused look, knowing full well that Thame was already gone for.
[FILE STATUS: UPLOAD COMPLETE]
[WARNING: TRACER SCAN IN PROGRESS... DISCONNECTING]
[CONNECTION TERMINATED]