The neural chamber hums the chorus of technical and biological union. Aurigen's pilot suit tracks and compensates for the micro-tremors in his hands as he guides the ship toward the Argonaut—servo-assisted corrections that shouldn't have been needed for such a simple approach vector. Yet this is an atypical situation.
Theseus materializes without warning. No shimmer. No fade-in. One moment empty space, the next moment presence -like a thought becoming solid. The ambient lighting dimmed by exactly twelve percent. Equal to the reactive tremor in Aurigen’s left hand.
"Auri."
The servos in Aurigen's suit locked. His breathing catches for several milliseconds before training kicks in. "Theo?"
"The mission parameters have evolved." The AI is blunt. Inflectionless.
Aurigen's jaw tightened. The suit registers the tension, making micro-adjustments to his posture. "Evolved how?"
Data cascades across the chamber walls -biometric overlays, resonance patterns, genetic markers. Theseus doesn’t gesture. Nor does it command. The information simply appears, responding to the inquiry.
"The initial assets are not alone. Biometric resonance mapping has isolated a third iteration."
Aurigen's anti-gravity field flicker. For a moment, he drifts sideways before the suit compensates. "Iteration? You mean a third person?"
"Selene Krynn. Genetically identical to Sienna." A third face materializes amongst the swell of data Aurigen is ignoring -not projected, but somehow there, suspended in the chamber's center like a holographic constellation. "The extraction requires three targets."
Aurigen reaches for his ration dispenser. His fingers fumble the pack -once, twice- before he catches it. He stares at the protein bar, his reflection distorted in its pho-metallic wrapper. Then he simply lets it go; watching the rectangle tumble slowly in the low gravity spinning end over end on the odd unpredictable trajectory his release initiated.
"Perfect." The word comes out flat. Dead.
Theseus tilts his head by exactly fifteen degrees. "Complications are data sets awaiting integration."
The quantum core's hum deepens. Not louder. Deeper. As if the ship itself was thinking harder.
Chime.
Capella's face blooms across a side screen, bouncing on her toes behind an anti-grav sled. Her face is ever radiant. "Dad! Papa Theo says we have new friends!" She held up a supply bag decorated with a hand-drawn heart. "I'm packing three mission-packs now! Just in case!"
Reflexively, Aurigen's face softens. His shoulders drop as if struck in the spine by a muscle relaxer. The suit's stress indicators shift from amber to green. "Smart thinking, starlight. Always prepared."
He gestures to end the feed. The mask fell away instantly. Whether her timing was perfect or simply an excellently timed intervention by Thesus to counteract the news, the effect is short-lived. His breathing becomes shallow. Irregular. The suit responds with subtle stabilization adjustments, releasing microscopic amounts of sedative into his air supply.
"This isn't a logistics run." Aurigen's voice remains level, but his left hand had expresses his distress. "One person triggers audits. Two is a diplomatic incident. Three sets off alarms. You can't move registered biosignatures through transit points and pretend they were never there."
He doesn't turn to face Theseus. Doesn't need to. "Let alone sisters. Families are going to start asking questions in no time. There are so many factors here that raise my risk. Capella’s risk.”
"I don't intend for them to remain registered. A fourth asset." Theseus says matter-of-factly. More screens ignited around the chamber. "An engineer in StarShade command has attempted to contact the Regenesis building eighty-one times. Encrypted channels."
A fourth profile materializes. Sophia Valtor.
Aurigen's suit initiates its pacing protocol -a slow rotation that his biometrics had learned to recognize as barely-controlled panic. His words come with equal disdain and disbelief. "Four."
"Genetic sibling status confirmed. Sophia Valtor's personnel file shows resource transfers to two additional individuals."
And to the detriment to Aurigen’s blood pressure, two more faces joined the constellation of information on display in the middle of the command deck.
Aurigen is not looking at the profiles. His suit's gyros whine softly as they compensate for the sudden stillness.
"Six?" His tongue felt thick, uncooperative.
"Six people. Prominent roles with high visibility. Across the station." Theseus says as if repeating back to the AI.
Chime.
Cappy hums to herself, organizing supplies into neat piles. Six bags now, each labeled with careful handwriting and tiny decorative stars. "I'm almost ready, Dad! I packed extra blankets because Papa Theo says humanoids like to huddle when they're scared!"
Aurigen's jaw tightens, causing pain in his molars. The suit locked his position, preventing the tremor that had started in his hands from spreading. This time his daughters sudden appearance did little to quell the anxiety. "Good thinking, Cappy."
The feed ends. He rotates in the pilot chair to face Theseus directly. “One person is a blip." Aurigen recites. “Two is a risk. Three sets off alerts. Four… For four encryption keys get rescanned. Traffic Control starts triple-checking overrides. The damned window washers on the exterior are on high alert."
Aurigen needs a moment. Theseus doesn’t interrupt. "Messy. Favors. Lies. Six?" His finger jabbed toward the datafiles of the assets to be obtained. The gesture activated nothing, a purely human and futile action. "Six means lockdowns. The system waking up. An end to the normal running routines. It starts asking questions it was designed not to. And it requires of us logistical coordination I don’t think we have the capacity to achieve."
Aurigen's voice dropped to barely a whisper, "Containment. Intervention. Worse." He straightens his posture. Slowly. Deliberately. Staring at the manifestation of Theseus. "And you’ve known that since face number three."
Theseus says nothing. The bridge hums louder.
"How long have you been waiting to light this match?"
Theseus's gaze doesn't shift from the data streams. "The data does not recognize limits."
More screens bloom. Biometric overlays. Encrypted logs. Off-books registries. The core's hum crescendoes to an almost-audible tremor.
"It recognizes only truth. Whether we're prepared is... secondary." The manifestation doesn’t gesture nor blink. The seventh profile simply comes to be -Sydney Cidran, materializing like inevitability made visible.
Aurigen wished to dwell on the existential difference between Theseus’ perspective and his own. Logic. Sanity. Capabilities. He thought for a moment about bringing up his own limitations and capacities. But seeing lucky number seven, there was an almost calm resignation. A tranquility centered in absurdity. "Seven. Why not?"
His hands had curl into fists, the servo-assistance whining to fight his grip.
"Forget masking our signature. Let's just update the ship's public registry: 'The Abduction Express.' Get it over with."
"Security logs from Epsilon Bay reveal one final match." An eighth face joined the constellation. "Sylvia Ryuzen. Family-network data transfers connect her to the others."
"Eight."
No voice at all now. Just the shape of the word, formed by lips that had forgotten how to speak.
Aurigen stands frozen. Eight faces orbit him like planets around a hostile star. "An entire pod generation," he realizes.
"Scattered across the station," Theseus confirms.
A new display materializes -not holographic, but solid. Crystalline. An audio file that seemed to carry its own light.
Rigel's voice fills the deck: "Log entry supplemental: placement for the Krynn twins secured. The Drayven girl... Photheus' placement is ideal. She'll be safe there. For now."
The words hang in the air like smoke.
Aurigen blinks. Once.
"Alba?"
His suit stutters. Motion cancelling mid-stride, gyros screaming as they fight to maintain orientation.
"These are the Legion's daughters? His blood"
Theseus's projection refuses to flicker, dim, or shift. "Correct."
Silence. Not the absence of sound, but the presence of something heavier.
"The Unmooring. Again."
"Rigel is a midwife," Theseus pronounces, "smuggling seeds from a collapsing Eden."
Behind him, Capella begins to sing. No words, just a melody she'd invented for sorting supplies. The same tune she hums when Aurigen baked. When they were together. When they were safe.
The song fills the chamber, replacing Rigel’s words, rushing in like oxygen returning to a vacuum.
Aurigen turns his head. Slowly. Deliberately.
Theseus finally meets his gaze. The ghost in the machine. The architect of inevitability. For a long moment, they simply look at each other. No calculations. No protocols. Just understanding. Aurigen's exhale shivers inside his helmet like something dying.
"How," he whispers, "do we move eight pieces across a board that's on fire?"
"We don't." Theseus's projection solidifies. "We persuade the board to move them for us. We even alter the shape of the board."
Aurigen turns to the ship's central wall. His hands move without conscious thought. "Vulpie, pull all Shark transit paths. StarShade, HelianFlare, IrisVeil. Eight to twelve-hour ytter windows."
The ship's voice -feminine, warm, nothing like Theseus- responds immediately: "Acknowledged."
Theseus divides. A secondary projection materializes beside Capella as she organizes her supplies. The primary form remained focused on Aurigen, but something in his posture is different. Not softer. Not warmer. More... present in a way that suggests choice rather than necessity of programming.
"The sisters will move like tides," Theseus says. "Gently. Unavoidably."
"Gently?" Aurigen's fingers skim across hauler schedules. Eight smaller screens materialize with live feeds. Eight faces look blankly back at them. Blank personnel photos. Their employment histories. The psych profiles. No. Not profiles. Not data. People. Living their lives. Making choices they believed were their own. Unaware that somewhere in the dark between stars, their fates were being calculated by a ghost and a man who had forgotten how to stop his hands from shaking.
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