Corpo Age

Chapter 231: Perpetrator

I leaned against the entrance as I watched Thorne stand imposingly over one of our latest captives. They were tied to a chair inside one of our empty rooms. Since we were only operating the ship with the two of us, we had several unoccupied rooms to use.

Hmm, maybe I should add a brig to the next iteration of the design. It’ll be useful even for the smaller ships.

“You know, you’re going to have a much better time if you talk.” Thorne’s words drew my attention back to the scene.

In response, our prisoner spitted at him. It only stained the visor of the power armor, but it prompted Thorne to turn his back as he readied a needle.

“If that’s how you want to play it, don’t blame me for the pain you’ll be suffering after this.”

Seeing Thorne proceed, I too retreated out of the room to bring out additional equipment. It was the perfect opportunity to test out our new interrogation device.

It only took me a moment to retrieve a large helmet that resembled the ones worn by motorcyclists.

I returned to the room in time to see Thorne pulling the needle out of the man’s arm. He nodded at me and I proceeded to place the helmet on the man.

What the man would soon experience was almost going to be identical to what virtual reality gamers experience. Their consciousness would drift away to another world, but with one key difference. With the addition of the hypnopedia function. It was what we used to train our employees, but we’ve also begun using it for other purposes.

It didn’t work one hundred percent of the time or for long, but it was worth trying. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the various truthserums other companies employed or downright torture. At worst, they’d just have a headache for the next day.

We replicated our methods with the other three men we captured, determined to find out about this group who had ambushed us. It wasn’t long before our first captive was ready to speak.

When we had our terminal log into the same virtual reality server, where we found him dazed, but Thorne didn’t give him any time to rest.

“We’re here to help you. Please tell us your name.”

Despite the obvious insincerity in his voice, the man before him seem to instantly believe his words. That was because he was in a dream-like state. Our avatars had built trust with him by going through a life and death scenario with him before we arrived.

“I—I’m Collins.”

“Collins, who sent you to set up an ambush for us?”

“Ambush?”

I quickly sent a message to Thorne, telling him to be more mindful of how he worded his questions. We had to ensure he didn’t realize this was all a dream. Asking him such direct questions would get him thinking, and we didn’t want him to remember how he got here.

Thorne cleared his throat before rephrasing.

“Let me ask again. Do you remember the time you went to Soluna?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me what you went there for?”

“Um—we were sent to find out what happened to our men.”

“On whose orders?”

“By Strand, of course.”

Thorne gave me a look, having found something usable. I urged him with my eyes to focus as we were just scratching the surface.

“Strand is the leader of your organization?”

Our boy, Collins, nodded.

“And what is the name of this organization? What do you guys do?”

“We never gave ourselves any names. We simply banded together—for our loved ones.”

His words began to slur, as he tried seem to struggle to stay coherent.

“What do you mean by that? Are you guys stealing for the sake of your families’ livelihood or something?”

“To—save them,” he muttered before closing his eyes.

“Hey! Elaborate. Save them from what?”

No response came, despite Thorne’s shouting. Very soon, we were notified his vitals went over the parameters I set, kicking him out.

We then questioned the other men, but they all said something similar. They didn’t give us a lot of details.

It left us scratching our heads.

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“What do you think, Rollo? These guys are just a bunch of people fallen on hard times and resorted to piracy?”

“Could be. Or they have their families held hostage to do Aurora’s dirty work.”

“Why would they need to do that, though? Almost half of those they captured were from Aurora themselves.”

“No idea, but how else they did obtain a list of employees with all their details? That isn’t something a bunch of pirates should be able to get their hands on—unless they hired help from an expert. But then that would cost them too much to make the kidnapping worth it.”

Ideally, we would interrogate them again, but the effect of our hypnopedia device couldn’t be repeated without consequences. The interrogation method had its limit. It was the same limit that made it easily fatal to transfer information to their brains haphazardly, like with the early cassettes. Doing so again in such a short time could overlord the traffic in their neurological pathways, killing them.

“Either way,” I muttered. “They don’t seem to be bad people. How about we go get answers from their group?”

“You don’t think them trying to ambush us, fully armed, equates to being bad people?” Thorne questioned.

“There’s no use standing around and theorizing. Might as well confront them. If they won’t relent on pursuing us, then we can take additional action.”

“You’re the boss. Just know that it probably isn’t possible to hide our cards while taking on a large group. Gear that mercenaries believably had access to won’t be able to handle the heat. If words get out, our alias would mean nothing, as every corporation would know something is off about us.”

“That can all be planned around.”

With the matter decided, I proceeded to hack into their terminals and SAIDs without fear of tripping off any safeguards. From there, I would find any useful contact information.

As I suspected, not even these so-called pirates were dumb enough to just have their contacts openly displayed in their systems. They were either hidden in them somewhere, encrypted, or employed by some roundabout method of contact.

Thankfully, I had Lanus around to comb through every bit of information.

Even then, we weren’t entirely sure, so we waited until our captives themselves woke up. This time, their minds were clear. Our first captive, Collins, simply stared at us as we entered into the living quarter.

“So Collins,” I called out. It caused his eyes to widen for a moment. “Can you tell us about your group?”

“You—How do you know—wait. What did you do to me?”

It seemed the facade he put out began to crumble, as pain was evident on his face. He closed his eyes tightly as he leaned forward, desperate to remember what had happened.

“Here, take this.” I unrestrained one of his hands and handed over a painkiller and some water. “It’ll stop the headache.”

He tried to glare at me, but couldn’t hold it for long. Instead, he swiftly grabbed the pill and washed it down with an entire cup of water.

“Not afraid I poisoned you or something? I asked.

“I don’t care. If you want to kill me, then kill me. Not worth bothering with your mind games.”n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

“Ha, good choice. I hope you’ll be as sensible in regard to revealing your identity. We just want to know who suddenly attacked us. We don’t want to hurt you.”

He didn’t speak and just glanced off to the side, so I continued.

“If you don’t want to talk, then fine. Can you at least give us the contact information of your allies? We’re willing to negotiate your return with them.”

“As if I’ll give you the chance to hurt more of my people.”

“Come on. We’re not the aggressors here. How about you leave it to your leader, Strand, to decide if they will engage with us or not?”

The man snapped toward me at the mention of his leader. He quickly calmed down after a second, having recalled he had let slip a few things while he was under the influence. He then resignedly nodded.

Before long, we were able to send out a message to our captives’ boss.

We were traveling in space, and we didn’t have the tech to establish a live call. We used their method of sending messages to certain addresses with codes that would reroute them to the correct receiver.

We eventually established contact and agreed to discuss things. We settled to return to Aegis so we could hold the call.

Like that, our return trip to Earth was decided. It took us half a day to arrive.

We didn’t waste any time and called the contact we were given the moment we got a signal.

“Hello?” I called out as soon as we connected.

A stern woman’s voice replied without hesitation.

“I presume you are the mercenaries that have captured our allies. Twice.”

“And I presume you are Strand?”

An awkward silence ensued for a few moments before I continued.

“Listen. We’re just doing our jobs. We don’t want to hurt your people if we don’t have to. Why don’t I release the four men you had sent to ambush us in exchange for putting this incident behind us?”

“What about the other fifty-seven you took? You think we’d just give up on them?”

“That was a gig. Nothing we can do about that. What we can do is free the four we have in our possession. Hear, have a talk with them.”

I shoved the handheld terminal to Collins.

“Strand. I’m sorry, we failed. You don’t have to worry about us. Don’t let this asshole threaten you.”

“Okay, a little too talkative for my liking,” I said, while taking the terminal back. “So what do you say?”

The other party decisively answered.

“What do you want?”

“Like I said. Just leave us alone. Oh, and an introduction would be nice. I still don’t know who you guys are.”

“We’re no one special.”

“You think no one special just kidnaps dozens of corpos and has access to a starship? Sounds more like a bunch of pirates to me.”

“We’re not criminals! They kidnapped our family first! We’re only doing what we need to get our people back, and now you people keep taking from us!”

Oh. Now this is sounding like it’s a little more complicated than it appears.

“Hm, do elaborate. Last I checked, we were rescuing corporate workers from pirates. If what you’re saying is true, we don’t mind helping. We’ll need more information, though.”

“There isn’t anything for us to say over lines that corporations control. Come send our people back and we’ll talk. Tell them you are to bring them to Zone B40.”

The call then ended, and I quickly commanded Lanus to search for a Zone B40. Nothing concrete turned up from the search. It was likely some place only people from their organization knew, so I turned to Collins.

“Do you know where Zone B40 is?”

“Strand tell you about that?”

I nodded.

He made some grumpy noises and sighed.

“It’s on Aegis. That’s all I can say. Take off the rest of these restraints and I’ll guide you.”

“Sure.”

He abruptly turned his head to me, surprised at me so readily agreeing.

“What? You expect me to say no? Or have you guide me through a city while bound?”

He cutely scoffed in response.

“Just give me a second,” I continued. “Let us dock the ship first.”