Across the system from LM-25, Gjosta sat at the helm console of Traveller. The unhelpful station administrator talking on his primary view screen was attempting to keep Gjosta from the information he had travelled to this feckless planet to find.

  “I’m here for the archive on LM-25.” Gjosta said. “Fueling is just a side benefit.”

  The dark-haired man on the screen flinched slightly, and the glowing liminal rings around the irises in his cybernetic eyes glowed a bit brighter. Gjosta had the feeling he’d said something taboo.

  “Thor & Co., LLC archives are not for public review. You need to send a request to the head office, and then corporate can review it and negotiate an access fee.” The man had that customer service demeanor that Gjosta associated with the underpaid and under-qualified.

  “I am corporate.”

  “You are?”

  The bureaucrat took in Gjosta’s short green glowing hair, trim white beard, and dark blue synthetic eyes. Despite his smooth skin, Gjosta looked more like a man with a midlife crisis than a corporate agent. He wore an adaptive all-black air-sealed deep space protective suit with the helmet off. He kept himself fit, which in a different human man might have been vanity. And, his ship was an all-black antique with an exotic suite of sensor and engine upgrades. Even its dimly lit interior with red trim and manual buttons and controls wouldn’t really change that impression.

  “I need to see your credential.” The kid finally said.

  Gjosta connected his wrist cabling to the helm console and transmitted an encrypted passkey and ident code. He was temped to piggyback the connection at the same time, ride the signal virtually, and just take the data he wanted. He didn’t, but he wanted to. Just to not have to keep talking to this idiot.m

  The plan required the information on LM-25’s latest orientation and the orbits of any debris around the asteroid. If they were going to slip into the asteroid station, they needed to have a clear way in. Collisions with debris would spell disaster.

  Everyone who had attempted to recover the station was dead and floating around LM-25. But, those people used force. Gjosta was The Wizard. He had other ways. But, he still needed that archive.

  “This … okay. I guess you can visit archive.” The black-haired man shrugged. “Once you clear quarantine, schedule an appointment with the archivist.”

  “I have my quarantine certificates. I transmitted them when I arrived. I can disembark now.”

  “That’s not my department. Let me cross check.” The man paused, his eyes drifting across information Gjosta couldn’t see. “You’re not clear yet. You need to get the station master to give you a pass.”

  “A station pass? Nonsense. If I can’t get off the ship, connect my ship’s data port to the archive. The cabling to refuel and use station facilities is already connected. It’s a high-speed multithreaded optical system. I’ll load the data and be on my way.”

  “We don’t allow that.”

  “What? My credential is good. I can’t have a download of the records? Why not?”

  “The Dragon.” The man said, as if that explained anything at all.

  “I’ve checked your station’s reports to the regional office. The alien or whatever that lives in LM-25 hasn’t been seen in forty years. This station hasn’t even detected so much as an light go on at LM-25 in a decade. Are you afraid of this thing still? It must be dead.”

  “I don’t know about that. It’s not my department.”

  “Well, whose department is it? I want to collect this data and be on my way.”

  Gjosta had approached the planet from the wormhole, which should have masked his jump into the system. But that didn’t mean he wanted to stick around.

  The LM-25 schematic still showed directional radio, x-ray , and optical scopes as a part of its defense systems. However unlikely, it was possible someone—or some thing—at the could have seen Traveller reach the planet’s space station. It was better to be unnoticed.

  The Dragon wasn’t entirely a myth. Something destroyed those battle cruisers drifting around LM-25. Gjosta had the older records, but nothing from the past decade. He just needed the recent data for the mission to go forward.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “The planetary government made the rules over eighty years ago. The Dragon hacked us.”

  “It’s an alien. It can’t have hacked your computers. That’s absurd.”

  “It’s not my department.”

  “I need the archive. I’ve got full corporate authority on this.”

  “Then clear quarantine and schedule an appointment.” The man said slowly, as if Gjosta has forgotten how to speak universal. Then, the clerk switched off his screen.

  “Call disconnected. Did he hang up on you?” Traveller asked. Gjosta had bought the ship, Traveller, from an old system taxi service. It had a three person bridge pit, with a station for primary operation, one for communication, and one to operate the sensor suite. It was originally a deep space survey ship, and Gjosta had done a masterful upgrade and renovation.

  But, all those controls were window dressing.

  In reality, the ship flew itself. Traveller—actually a centuries-old AI—controlled everything. Gjosta had found the ancient survey ship with its built-in and very illegal sentient AI by accident. She resisted at first, but eventually the Traveller and Gjosta made a deal. Gjosta would keep the her secret from the central government’s inquisitors, and the ancient survey ship got proper maintenance and upgrades. They had been partners for twenty years, most of which had been taken up with Gjosta’s responsibilities for Thor & Co.

  “No one has called communications ‘a call’ or ‘hung up’ for over three hundred years,” Gjosta said. “It’s ‘terminated the transmit’ now.”

  “I am sorry. I learned universal longer ago than that.”

  “You aren’t sorry.”

  “I’m not. But, I try.” Traveller said. Her voice sounded soft and sultry. Traveller tended to sound like a flirt. One could never tell if a sentient AI knew what they were doing, or just pretending. Gjosta never trusted an AI’s banter. But, so far, Traveller seemed harmless. She’d lived a long time with those quirks. She might even outlive Gjosta—who as far as he knew—stopped aging over a century ago himself. At least there was some advantage of being bioengineered.

  “We need that archive,” Gjosta said. “You need to infiltrate their system.”

  “I don’t know, Gjosta. I’m pretty good, and these systems can’t be very secure. But, what if we get caught?”

  “You mean, I get caught? I’m a company agent. This is a company station. What are they going to do, call the company?”

  “Subsidiary.” Traveller said. “This is a subsidiary.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll use my link, and you can ride along.”

  “Piggyback. You mean piggyback your connection.”

  “You know that no one says ‘piggyback’ anymore either.”

  “That’s a shame. ‘Piggyback’ sound like more fun.”

  Gjosta stifled a sigh.

  “Come on.” Gjosta said. “We stole the contract bids off the Beta-3 government’s intelligence database in five minutes, and that was a military-grade digital vault. This station’s security is barely more than a padlocked wooden door. We’ll steal the keys, grab the data, and be out in a few minutes. I’m already connected. Let’s go.” Gjosta closed his eyes and dropped into his virtual interface.

  Gjosta’s mind drifted free of his body, and he entered the station’s computer. He felt Traveller with him. Cyber connection always felt to him that brain could touch the station’s computer system as if he’d extended third hand. He opened virtual eyes to process the systems he would be cracking with Traveller. A bright stream of data filled his mind.

  The first few firewalls posed no problem at all. Traveller stole the keys off other computers connected to the system and they slipped in looking for the port that would connect them to the archive. Between them, they had hacked systems run by governments, rival corporations, and security agencies. This was a well practiced entry. Gjosta wrote analysis programs and backdoors and tucked the malware away in the station’s systems, while Traveller analyzed data and looked around for the I/O to the archive.

  Gjosta and Traveller didn’t talk for twenty minutes. Finally, Traveller spoke up.

  “There’s no connection to the archive.” Traveller wrote to Gjosta in the virtual connection.

  “That can’t be. Did they destroy it?” Gjosta responded.

  “No. They collect the data, and then they move it to physical media. They don’t keep anything on network. Here.” Traveller sent Gjosta a short file.

  Gjosta opened it and read the contents. The little manual of operations detailed the protocol for monitoring LM-25. The station’s engineers obsessively watched for the dragon. Every day the station would passively collect data. Once every twenty-four hour cycle, the observational data transferred to a physical drive, and all the data from the day erased. Even the manual wasn’t supposed to be on the system, but some careless trainee had kept a digital copy in a personal file.

  “Look here.” Traveller pointed Gjosta to the correct port address. Gjosta read the coding and timestamps on the system Traveller showed him. “They don’t just erase the data.” Traveller explained. “The station’s personnel virtually shred and overwrite the system that records it. They overwrite the prior day’s recordings and the program that runs the surveillance with a fresh copy. They don’t even leave a shadow of it behind.”

  “That’s paranoid,” Gjosta communicated.

  “Maybe they have reason to be.” Traveller whispered in Gjosta’s virtual ear. “Let’s disconnect.”

  Gjosta agreed. They cleaned up their breaking and entering, hid their backdoors and wiped the station logs. In a few moments, Gjsota’s eyes were open and staring at the vliewscreens at Traveller’s helm console.

  “Huh. I guess I’ll have to use a pass, and schedule an appointment,” Gjosta said.

  “Did you want me the query the station manager?”

  “No. I stole a pass and put an appointment in the archivists calendar for an hour from now.”

  BTW - You know what I dislike as a reader? Too many POV characters.