THE STATION

Seth peered into the terminal mounted on the chest of his R-Grade "RIG", it was commonly called a "Hammerhead" due to its onboard hard light tool which resembled the shark. Seth had put it on after leaving food and water for Theodore.

He had spent the voyage training the cat how to use the toilet. And with the automated water dispenser and quality of the protein tabs he had broken apart, he was confident the feline would be fine for a couple days. He had learned much about the care for felines in the few months since he had escaped.

"How peculiar." Seth wondered aloud mostly for his colleauges to hear. Some subroutine recognizing that he stood out and defenses in his personality matrix attempting to assuage suspicion by remarking on something that could be misconstrued as emotion. "Sympathy." He realized how different, for the first time, he had become since joining the crew.

These thoughts as he began a brute force hack into the stations subnet. He almost felt a pang of remorse as his bleeding edge corporate tech attacked the comparatively ancient technology it found itself in. It brought a curious grin to his face, luckily that was obscured behind the RIG's helmet. He never went anywhere without his RIG. It was the hardest proof he could present that he was indeed a Kappa Class Aneutronic Fusion Specialist. He had to keep that lie straight. His continued survival depended on it.

It was a pleasure to wear, the suit hugged the body, using gallium and magnets to give the wearer haptic feedback, it even could project heat and cold within limits. But the best part was the safety it afforded. It was worthless against ballistics, but directed energy weapons would find little use against it. It was almost completely invulnerable to fire, and cold. Corrosive elements would find little reactive materials on the "skin" as well.

But apart from that, it boasted an industrial grade thermite lancet projector. The "Hammer Head" that gave the R-Grade rig its monicker. It was designed to rivet composite or ferric plates into a vessels superstructure. They say you could know a professional by his tools. It had other diagnostic functions, but the R-Grade techs who designed the Hammer Head reasoned that any other tool could be obtained on site.

The terminal bleeped and Seth saw a notification from his Credit Union that funds had been transferred. He looked over to see two others, Bob he recognized, the other guy he did not. "Good to see you Bob." He called out and made a beeline for the new arrival. "Greetings. I am Seth, Kappa Class Aneutronic Fusion Specialist." Seth had a particular way he moved, even in the Powersuit it was graceful, almost too precise for the 50kg of mass it added. And the way he spoke. It wasn't cold but flat, nothing excited Seth. As he approached the radium blue glow of the lighting in his powersuit lit up the air around him. The peculiar stride that he moved with making almost no sound as he approached.

Bob gets up from the chair he has been reading from his tablet about the mining operation on Persei 19. He did not fail to notice the fact that barely anyone expected the station to still be functioning. After getting the message from Adam, he quickly applied for a job at the station. His knowledge of geology and xeno-habitats was an easy sell. For what job it's a bit less clear. At least they are in.

Business has been slow, and they really needed this money, or they'd lose their ship and be stranded on some forsaken backwater station in the middle of the system. The bills were already far into the grace period...

Bob gets his oxygen suit. The atmosphere should be tolerable, but given how out of date everything seems to be, things can get really dangerous, really quickly. And maybe he should take his pocket gun. Miners are a rough type.

"Hey Seth, not taking little furball here with you?" Bob replies to Seth's greetings. The man doesn't talk much, but they have been together since Bob escaped the corporation, and he is good with the ship's systems. A reminder pops up on the screen. The list of chemical tests that might be useful for whatever job they will find. Though their real job will probably depend more on the new crew member. Decapitated corpses next to the processing machine sounds more like engineering to Bob.

He turns to "The Mechanic" and tries to make a joke, though it comes out in his most monotonic tone."Ready to experience some horror? For all we know, those machines have never seen a drop of oil"

"Oh you must mean Theodore." That flat informative tone that Seth had made it the most boring sounding statement ever uttured. "I surmise that a murder investigation is unsuitable for a feline companion. Therefore, I have trained Theodore to use my toilet. She likes to eat the spiders in my vessel there are, several thousand of them, and so she will not starve. She knows how to use the sink as well. Sometimes she luxuriates by turning the water on hot. I find this behavior, suitable. She is quite a talented feline." It was just like Seth to carry on about his cat. He may have been a brilliantly talented general physicist, but he was hardly human.

Seth quickly sought root user access following his initial hack. He injected some custom software, a rudimentary self learning program. Something to make his stay more pleasant. Like Seth, it sought out credibility. It lied perfectly, concealing itself between the runtimes. A cluster of related programs, analyzing, and then constructing. It was like a spore, slowly spreading, becoming alike, glomus.

Like the fungus it was named after its moves were patient. Insidious. He was in and in minutes he would be very difficult to remove, let alone detect. Seth had no reason to enslave the station, it wasn't done out of malice either. It was just something to utilize, his instincts told him to conquer it. So he did. Building the platform of his power. He had based the infestation on his observation of mycellium. The Glomus forming inside this ancient space station - in Seth's eyes a necessary upgrade.

"You're probably right" Bob assents, not paying much attention to the subject, as he moves past the other crew members to search for his lab equipment. Once he finds some useful chemicals and starts packing them in a safe suitcase, he shouts back "Have you considered a more diverse diet for her? Not sure spiders are the most nutritious."

Heron woke up and crawled out of his cot, he had set up close to the reactor of the ship. Not the safest of places nor the spacious one, but he liked feeling the vibrations of the ship's machines and he always felt more protected while in cramped spaces. He wore his clothes and his RIG on top of them.

The mechanics' RIG was more like a light exoskeleton rather than a full enclosed RIG, designed to go over any type of clothing or even an EVA suit. Overlapping brass coloured alloy plates that slide into each other, provide basic protection against radiation and physical hazards in an engineering bay. It mostly covers his chest, abdomen, arms and legs, like a knight's armour from stories of old Earth. The RIG comes with a helmet that is a mix between a welder's helmet and a pilot's helmet, providing a HUD with usefull data about the machine that you are working on it. Or it is suppossed to work like this, since Heron bought the thing second hand and has upgraded so much till then.

He grabs his bag that has some basic tools, a multitool and before exiting his cabin he stops and grabs a small pistol from deep inside his locker. "You never know..." he tells to himself as he holds the old pistol in his hand. He arrives to the ship's exit bay and greets the other crewmembers. Heron is a softspoken and spartan with words, he prefers machines from people. "Are we ready?"

"Two doctors and a chief engineer walk into a space station..."

Seth didn't know the rest of the joke.

"I bet 500cr that there's something badly wrong with the reactor here." Seth pointed to the rusted conduits. The background radiation read out 40msv, not a concern, but a significant increase. He shared the datapoint on the mission log, requesting sign off by his partners.

Bob signs off the request. He signs off most of Seth's requests. Mostly because he knows no one will care to read them and, anyway, maybe this sort of information could be useful later. "As ready as I'll ever be, I guess." Having seen how Seth likes to infiltrate all systems, Bob abstains from the bet as he already lost enough to the other crew-member. He looks at the map in front of them and traces it mindlessly with his finger. "I guess the admin office is just next door. We can't really miss it now, can we?"

"Ooofff..." scoffs Heron. Checkpoints are his least favourite thing. After cold coffee.

Seth steps up to the scanner and retrieves his badge, Aneutronic Fusion Specialist Kappa Class, it also had a bar passively monitoring his rad count. It was cyan indicating conditions were optimal. He hands it to the guard and steps through the scanner.

If the guard is not going to guard, then Bob is not going to bobther. Since guns are usually not allowed in these places, Bob tries to sneak them in while the others scan their equipment.

---

Bob looks as surprised by how quickly the guard grabs his gun as he would if he saw a positive balance on his account!

Did he say workers don't have these? Damn it!

"Oh right. We are here to... We were hired to check the facilities. Related to that incident with the food processing machine. You heard about that, right?"
Bob turns to show the others. "Here's Heron. Specialist in machinery. And Seth. Computer expert. " He points at the gun and adds, trying to sound as professional as he can, "Self defense. These investigations tend to get heated"

"You can check with the Teamsters' Union. They sent the message" After a moment of pause, Bob remembers to mention the union, though hopefully, he doesn't check.

"Well, the incident with the food processing machine. You know, headless body and all that." Bob mentions the incident again, a bit annoyed that he has to put up with the guard. "A dutiful and vigilant security officer like yourself must have heard something about it, no?"

Bob hopes that praising the guard would get them some information or, if nothing else, diffuse a bit the tension. "Not sure where the investigation will take us. The Union just wants to be sure this was the miner's negligence. So we'll need to visit them. And the food processing facilities, of course. I would like to check the medical records and maybe have a little chat with some of the workers around here? Ah! Do you have some sort of conscience backup system? That could be useful as well, in case we need to check with other similar victims"

As Bob puts away his gun he turns to the others. "Anything else I forgot?"

Heron leaves a sigh of relief. He has his pistol on him after all. He nods to Bob that he said everything.

Bob waits for the chief security to show him the seats. He reads quickly through the agenda and looks at the three persons in front of him. "Well, I guess we will discuss each point in more detail individually" he clears his throat "it looks good to me. Only thing else that would like to know if you have conscience backups that could be considered evidence and how secured has the crime scene been kept?"

"which areas are off-limits to the marshal? Probably better to review those before moving"


Bob says a bit annoyed with all the paperwork he has to go through these day just to survive through another (broke) day

"Motion Five is the logical course. Eliminating the stress of time constraints will make our other approaches more likely to succeed, no?"

"Sounds reasonable to me" Bob agrees, now wondering how often things do get stolen in this place. With so many people locking inside a rock, emotions run high, so probably not often or at least, not often without someone's life being on the line...

"'I consent.' I would like to be paid now." Seth emphasized not picking up on the subtle body language, instead of being silent he just continued in his monotonous way. "The terms of my employment promised five thousand credits, now." He stated as a matter of fact. Tersely, unphased and uncaring by the ruthless stare being levelled at him. This was an authority figure, but she was not his. His empathy subroutines did search for a response, but he just couldn't bring himself to care for the reason she acted.

He did file the facial expression within his prefrontal cortex, it would be useful. It said that she was no person to trifle with, immediately finding it suitable to represent his own selfesteem.

He returned the expression, perfectly mimicking the Security Chief's expression. Just to try it out. Leaning forward in his chair. The light hitting the shroud of his Gear perfectly, it stopped reflecting light and instead allowed everyone to see Seth's face clearly. Only a blue filter tinted him an almost silvery blue hue. Like a vampire from the Old Earth horror culture.

Bob grabs the HealthPal nutrition bar "Raspberry hm? he says mindlessly inspecting the brain slice. "You say this was the one one returned? Do they..." Bob pauses to look at the bar again. "Have a particular trade value around here? I doubt they kept it for the extra flavor"

"The last thing this place needs is Creutzfeld-Jakobs disease." Seth commented bluntly, the ramshackle space hulk was dangerous enough without people literally losing their minds.

"Good to know. So we'll be looking for vending machines as well I guess." Bob replies as if they would ever be able to recover all the memories. "I guess there's a way to open the machine to inspect whats inside?" he sort of ads not expecting much of an answer. "And maybe a map of the facilities so we know where we're going"

"Right, allotted time. I guess these miners are not going to run themselves. Must be a busy job" Bob replies as he stands up and extends a hand as to informally close the deal.

"Less than four hours to review any video evidence. And every second that passes the crime scene deteriorates. Those seem the practical choices." Seth reiterated still as monotone as ever. "Afterwards, getting our quarters situated is a pressing concern." He said more for his cat's sake than his own.

Bob lets Seth work out the computer stuff and simply wanders around checking nothing in particular "Looks like an healthy working environment they have going around here" Bob comments as he picks the hand-written note.

As he walks up to Seth to show him the notes he notices the images on the screen. "Who are these guys? Can we get their faces? Looks like we have some eye witnesses"

He remembers his gun as he sees the brute with the pipe. Looks like his instincts were right on this one... maybe he should go back to get it... just in case...

Seth attacks the repository of biometrics on the Station's main computer with precision eliminating from the offset anythinf that does not have 99% similarity to the input. As he scans through the return value, with great care he isolates distinct markings of note upon the three suspects, eliminating from the pool anything that didn't match. Artfully he compared gait, profile, silohuettes, and body composition from the remaining return values.

When the final return values manifested he immediately uploaded the information to the group sharepoint. Requesting his partners sign off upon opening the document. Had he done this before?

Bob has no clue what the android is doing, but it's probably for the best. He focus on the faces of the suspects and tries to memories them in the old fashion human way as, knowing Seth, the android likely takes over the entire facility's system.

At some point, he just turns away and looks for any clue about how frequent these "low power modes" are...

Bob sneaks up behind Seth. "Anything interesting in there?"

"What's the probability of the equipment killing Adam during that hour of low power mode?" Bob asks Seth, curious about what the android will come up with when he runs the numbers.

"Well that doesn't help much does it?" Bob looks back at the screen. About twice Seth thinks? "Anyway. I guess if there's nothing else we can check here we probably should have a look at the crime scene, before visiting this Starfire Lounge. I could actually use a drink."

"Well, it is well within scope. Though I am examining the wounds on the cadaver..."

Seth trailed off as he attempted to ascertain the direction that force was applied to Adam's cranium. He was not the best field medic, but reasoned that he could easily identify the source of the fatal blow when choosing between a heavy blunt object in a man's hand versus the shearing force of a machine. He sought discretion between the two modes, using his insight to form a mental image that could sincerely represent the fatal blow judging the position and damage to the corpse.

"Well, the incident report looks ok." Bob mentions as he reviews the new evidence. "Beaten up in the back and decapitated by machine. We just need to figure out what happened in the middle. I wonder if Adam would need to be standing inside the food processor to loose his head... "

As they approach the Protein Production Line, Bob briefly stops annoying Seth with his obvious observations. But then, not for long "Looks like we got company. This is why I need the gun. Remind me to go and get it after this."

Ignoring the gentlemen's personal space, Bob happily wave the marshal badge "Good day good gentlemen. Karen sends her regards. We're here to investigate the incident if that area happens to be available now. "

Seth saw that Bob was feeling conversational, so he raised the reflective radiation shield from his mask. The deep garish scar on his left eye had not yet fully healed. His gaze retaining that criticality of a wild animal, one that was far too intelligent. "Move." Seth, being completely oblivious to social queues simply approaches the muscled hulks. And when they resisted Bob with their body language he secured the threat. He gives them a cursory inspection before his posture changes and he rises to the balls of his feet. The empty eyed stare of a synthetic, cold, calculating, detatched. Seth, being convinced he was also human, had no means of knowing what kind of threat he posed. Only, cold certainty that their aggressive posture was just that, posturing.

Seth's proficiency rating included his security chit on the readout. It rated him as S+ when it came to close quarters combat and S on his firearms proficiency. How a reactor technician had come by that skillset was anyone's guess. Seth was not posturing, he was not pretending to be tough. Most special forces only ever achieved a AA rating in CQC, that was common knowledge. With those empty shark's eyes he stared through the threat having assessed their weaknesses almost as soon as he spotted them.

"Now."

Seth knew he was the most dangerous thing in the room, he wanted the goons to know this as well.

Bob looks around, noticing the vending machine. "Hey you think we have some good brains inside this one?". He barely notices the food processor where the actual murder might have happened.

Bob looks inside, trying to figure out if there is anything suspicious about the bars inside, then around to find how to open the machine. Even if there is nothing to see there, it might be good to know who these things work. After all, they do have permission to open them and find whatever is left of Adam's brain.

Bob quickly catches up with the music, humming the annoying jingle endlessly. He casually inspects the bar wrapping for anything particularly unusual, but doesn't actually take any for now. "Do you think the bars are distributed randomly, or this one would be the first one to get stocked? Maybe we can try to get their distribution routes? We need to locate those pieces of brain, I guess."

"I guess these miners are not the most epicurian types in the galaxy, if they think decayed brain tastes like..." he grabs one of the bars to check the flavour again "Raspberry"