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Project Valkyrie
Chapter 5 - The Devil is in the Details
Thyra made a stop at the robotics laboratory to grab a bag she'd seen in one of the drawers and headed back to the office. The bag would be big enough for all of the loose material scattered around the old man's office. She wasn't going to risk having one of the robots come back to life and eliminate all the clues that she might be able to pull from this area.
Now that she had more time to spend in the office, she downgraded it from messy to slovenly. The man had been a packrat, and there was no order whatsoever. That would be good in some ways and bad in others. It meant that she would have a lot of material to work with but very little frame of reference to make sense of it all.
As she picked up each piece of paper or sticky note, she consigned an image of it to a file in her memory. She started to process them in the background, going through everything to sort them into categories that made sense. If anything popped out as being of import to her current situation, she'd stop and consider it more deeply. Right now, she was on the clock.
It took roughly fifty minutes to grab every single piece of paper, scan it, and put it away for later perusal if needed. In that time, she sorted it all in her memory and was ready to say half of it was meaningless junk or notes that made no sense whatsoever. Of the remainder, perhaps thirty percent was minutia. The remaining twenty percent had useful information that was split between tantalizing clues about the old man himself and business data.
One of the things that popped up during the search was the cargo manifest for the freight they were bringing in. That was useful, considering that she needed to know who was supposed to take delivery of it in order to get paid. There were three different recipients waiting for their cargoes, and now she had the official paperwork to clear customs with their cargo.
The second thing she found was a bit more tantalizing and mysterious. It was a note that "the special delivery" was partially stored in the runabout--the small craft in the cargo bay, she assumed--and the remainder was in the smuggler's hold. It said so right there on the piece of paper.
So, this vessel had a concealed area for smuggling cargo. That was interesting. It was also problematic because it meant that the cargo was likely illegal.
Thyra considered that for a long moment because that kind of thing could be disastrous in the short run, since she didn't know who it was supposed to go to or what would happen to her and the ship if it was discovered. There was no other information about it in the office, so she had to hope that there was something in the smuggler's hold or this was going to get dicey.
The few things she didn't manage to find going to the office the first time were the old man's identification, his will, or even her own identification. That caused her to go back through everything again and double-check to make certain that there wasn't a concealed area that she hadn't found.
Thankfully, with the uploading of the skills that she'd gotten, something written into the streetwise program gave her a better grasp of exactly where to look for those hidden compartments, and it only took her another fifteen minutes to find something underneath the bottom drawer on the left side of the desk. It was a false front beneath the drawer that she was able to work off and find a folder with what she was looking for.
Why she would have consented to let the old man have her identification, she didn't know, but there it was. That was definitely her picture, so her previous incarnation had used this body as she'd suspected. The name matched what she'd been told, and it listed her as a dual citizen of both the Imperium and the Solomani Confederation. In fact, there were IDs for each, and they cross-referenced one another by ID number.
Interesting. A quick scan of the history between those two polities indicated that they had recently been at war--a hundred years ago--and were still in a state of armed tenseness. Terra had been seized by the Imperium during that last conflict, and it was expected that at some point, the Confederation would attempt to take it back. No love lost there, it seemed.
What were the implications of having citizenship in both? Exactly how had the old man managed it? Probably the same way he had managed to get her identification at all. He'd broken into some computer systems and planted the information that he needed in order to get what he wanted.
He must've been pretty good at it because these look like official documents rather than forgeries. Her streetwise confirmed that.
The papers were useful in another way because they gave her background information on her "parents." They had to be either fake individuals or people who were safely dead. It might be something to try looking into later, though she wasn't inclined to dig too deeply because she might inadvertently discover relatives that might want to have a few words with her if they heard about her digging around.
Her supposed father, Aksel Thorsson, was an immigrant from the Sword Worlds to the Imperium. The Sword Worlds were made up of refugees from Terra who had travelled a very long way after losing a conflict millennia ago. Not primitive, but more...pagan? Bloodthirsty, for sure. A people that gloried in all things martial and who were deeply connected to their past.
Aksel had achieved citizenship in the Imperium some years after his arrival and made his way slowly from the Spinward Marches down to the Solomani Confederation. That journey would've taken a number of years to make, even if he was going quickly.
Inside the Confederation, he had met and married Annette Jacobs of Home, the relocated capital of the Confederation. They apparently only had one child--Thyra--and their history beyond the time that she would've left home was unknown to her. Thyra would undoubtedly have to do some research to try to get that information because it was important. It was almost certain that they were no longer living, but she needed to confirm that.
It was an interesting set of circumstances. The Confederation recognized her as one of its citizens because her mother had been a full citizen. The Imperium recognized her as a citizen because her father had been a citizen. She imagined there were a number of people with dual citizenship, but as she was a merchant that might end up crossing the border back and forth, that could be critical and would need to be verified in whatever way she could manage safely.
One other thing included with her identification was a black card made of metal. A close examination of the surface with her enhanced vision revealed that there was circuitry embedded within it. This was either some form of identification or perhaps a bank card.
When she flipped it over, she saw the logo of the Traveller's Aid Society and her name. The Traveller's Aid Society was an organization that assisted people inside and outside the Imperium in various ways, though she would need to do more research to make certain that she had nailed down the methods that might prove helpful. She had no idea if this was a membership card or something else because there was no writing on it other than the logo and her name.
She also had certifications--both Imperial and Confederation--as a pilot, astrogator, and engineer. She slid all of that into her pocket. She'd keep them with her from now on.
The old man's identification looked very much like her own, though he only had Imperial citizenship. It listed his name as the same one that he'd given her in the recording: Cyrus Dubois. His image was a little younger looking than he looked now, but death probably did that to a person. He also had a card exactly like the one that she had, though it had his name on it.
Beneath the identification was a bundle of papers that included the title to the ship, the paperwork indicating that it was fully paid off, and his last will and testament. In it, the text was short and sweet. He left everything to his wife, Thyra.
If she'd had the ability to do so, she probably would have vomited. Either the man had only claimed that they were married, or perhaps they even had been. She didn't consider it valid because there had been a mental compulsion that made resisting his instructions impossible for her. She had been a slave.
Thankfully, she had no memory of the events in question and would just file that away as something that was in the past and would never be relevant to her again.
There was also an identification card listing them both as members of the Trader's Guild. The information in her systems was a little sparse when it came to them, but they seemed to be something like a combination of a fraternity, a professional organization, and a union. Their stated goal was to advance their common interests and to protect themselves from larger corporate competition and the various bureaucracies.
The will, the old man's identification, the ship's papers, and the Guild card went into a small bag that she would keep close at hand for now. According to a data search, there was no tax inside the Imperium on inheritances. Apparently, they made their money through other means, and anything that touched on trade was pretty much left alone as much as possible. For her, that was a good thing because she had no way to pay any inheritance taxes.
The final thing that had been present was a money clip with paper credits. She supposed it was always useful to have some money in physical form rather than electronic currency. A quick count showed that she had just a bit more than twenty-two thousand credits. That went into her pocket as well.
The next thing that she needed to deal with was the computer. She put the cover back over the secret compartment, went to the robotics lab, grabbed the handheld, and returned to the office with a selection of cables that looked like they might be useful in connecting the two together.
Thyra consulted the skills buried inside her and verified that she was proficient at computer intrusion. She had no idea how good she was because she had the skill at level 2, but supposedly her intelligence would help in that, and she guessed that she would find out.
The first thing she did was link herself to the tablet via her internal wireless network. It accepted her connection, and once she was in, she would be able to access the computer through the cable directly without having to type anything into the handheld or use it as anything other than a node to connect herself to the end machine.
Then she began perusing the programs that came along with the intrusion skill and found a number of them that looked like they would be very useful in breaking the encryption and getting past any credentials.
And then she stopped. Was she making this more difficult than it needed to be? The computer had the same type of protection as the vault on the lower deck: a retinal scanner and a DNA reader connected to the desk, and she had the old man's body.
She disconnected the handheld and set it on the desk before heading to the medical bay. The old man was frozen in cryogenic storage, but that could be undone if needed. Rather than risk doing that herself, even though she had the skills to make it happen, she activated the medical droid and watched as it came to life.
"What is your status?" she asked as soon as it stepped away from the induction plate mounted to the wall.
"This unit is functioning within normal parameters." It had a female voice that was pleasant, though definitely artificial.
"How long does your memory of events go back?"
"Less than thirty seconds."
So he had wiped the memory of the droids just like she'd expected he would have. Not surprising.
"I want you to look through the medical records for the patient inside the AutoDoc. Even though he is deceased, I need to have his retinal pattern and DNA. Can you do that?"
The droid walked over to the AutoDoc. It connected itself wirelessly because she could feel that connection happening even though she could see nothing.
"A full identification package for the patient is stored in his medical records, which are on this unit. Would you like a copy?"
"Yes."
"Understood. Done."
It popped up as available, and she accepted it into her systems once her security protocols had scanned it.
"Step back against your induction plate, please," she said.
Once the robot had done so, she manually shut it off. Once again, she wouldn't take any chances until she had everything nailed down.
Thyra briefly went through the medical records in a process that took less than two seconds and had the man's full medical history for the five years that he'd been using the services aboard the ship. Apparently, he'd been mostly healthy. His DNA and retinal pattern were inside the records. A full scan via the AutoDoc gathered that information as a matter of course.
She wondered what exactly would show up on a scan of herself. As a robot, she might look alive on the outside, but her internals would be radically different. She was only visibly human rather than actually so.
And then she decided that she didn't have to guess. She could simply get into one of the AutoDocs and have it do a scan of her.
Thyra opened up the AutoDoc next to the dead man's and slid inside. It was barely large enough to hold her. The top of her head touched the top of the enclosure while her feet pressed against the base. Her knees were slightly bent, so she was actually just a little too large for it, but it would do. It wasn't as if she needed medical services after all.
She wirelessly linked with the AutoDoc and instructed it to do a full workup of her using the most intrusive settings possible. It was best to know exactly what someone would find if they scanned her. She could always do a second scan at a more permissive level to get a general idea of what would likely be seen.
The process took five minutes, which was a seeming eternity, but when the AutoDoc chimed and the enclosure slid open, she climbed out and accessed the device to see what it had found out about her.
Amazingly, it said that she was completely human.
Frowning, she went over the scans closely. The device had definitely utilized levels of scanning that were above what might normally be used even during a thorough customs inspection, she suspected. This was meant to probe the very depths of someone needing medical care.
And even though it was looking closely, it hadn't found anything artificial. To it, she appeared to be exactly what she looked like on the outside. She even had DNA. Part of her wondered if she could be traced back to her supposed parents via her genetic makeup.
She wasn't going to rule it out.
Well, that was certainly interesting, but it didn't change what she needed to do. She instructed the machine to create a sample of DNA from the old man using the built-in bioreaction chamber. It told her that there was no such device installed.
Frowning, she looked back inside the machine and saw that there was one, though when she looked at it more closely, she realized that it wasn't a bioreaction chamber. Instead, it was a small fabrication chamber like the ones in the robotics laboratory.
Once again, it didn't have any construction arms to build anything, and she couldn't see what purpose it would serve in an AutoDoc that had to make things like organs for patients.
Deciding that she would see what this could do once and for all, she sent instructions to make a sample of DNA from the old man. Instead of failing spectacularly, she could see a swirl of what looked like mist inside the fabrication chamber, and then a small dollop of liquid began appearing on the bottom of the fabrication chamber.
It wasn't instantaneous. The process took three minutes to work, and she watched, fascinated, the entire time.
When the device chimed, she opened the chamber and took a piece of gauze to soak up the material. Then she walked over to one of the medical devices lining the walls of the medical bay and scanned it. It was DNA, and it matched the old man's.
What had just happened? That type of fabrication was science fiction rather than reality.
Consulting the general science files in the main computer, she discovered that it wasn't science fiction at all: it was simply very futuristic and only hypothetical to Imperial science, but it accomplished the same sorts of things as a regular fabricator using nanorobots. Where the Imperium had basic, improved, and enhanced fabrication units, advanced models that used these nanorobots had been a goal for a while, and some expensive prototypes had even achieved some limited success in making it work, though still taking hours to do the work. This was somehow even more advanced. A superior kind of fabrication, following the way the nomenclature advanced. One that worked in minutes rather than hours.
She found a disposable glove in one of the drawers, slid it over her hand, and covered it in the old man's DNA. Then she took the retinal pattern she'd gotten from the medical records and instructed her eyes to display that in place of the ones they normally did, though making certain that what was originally there was retained to be put back in place as soon as she was finished.
With that accomplished, she returned to the office and tried to access the computer again. This time it opened right up.
Good. It was time to get to the bottom of the mystery that was the old man.