Chapter 168: Too Stupid to Live
"What took you so long?" demanded Commander Xalax as soon as I answered his call.
"I was washing my hair," I replied with a shrug.
"It doesn’t look wet to me," he sneered back, looking at my hair that was pulled back into a messy bun.
"I dried it," I answered with a sneer of my own. Cracking my neck back and forth, I looked at the lizard alien in front of me. I couldn’t look at him without remembering all of the guards that had held me down for the scientists to do their experiments. Taking in a deep breath, I reveled in the fact that I could feel both of my lungs inflating.
Should I blame an entire species for what a small percentage of them did to me? Probably not. It would probably make me the villain in their stories.
But ask me if I cared.
Next time, maybe they will think twice about who they abducted from their home.
"So how does this work? Do I just start blowing up the other ships?" I asked, leaning back in my captain’s chair, the white fur over my lap. "You’ll have to forgive me for not knowing the protocols. This is my first rescue mission, after all."
"No!" shouted the commander before he got himself under control.
"No? But how else am I supposed to save you from them? Open a communication with them and ask them nicely to back off?" I pushed, raising an eyebrow.
"No," answered the commander in a much calmer tone. "That will only make them more aggressive. I will send over a shuttle, and you can get one and come over here."
"Why would I want to do that? Do you have candy on the shuttle?" I chuckled, knowing that no one else would be able to get my joke. However, that didn’t make it any less funny to me.
"What is candy? Would this candy get you on the shuttle?" he replied, cocking his head to the side, trying to figure out what I was talking about.
"Never mind. There is no good candy here. But if I am on your shuttle, won’t the Uugazts just blow me out of the air?"
"There is no air in space. How could they blow you out of the air?" demanded the commander, once again getting frustrated with my response. Well, that made two of us. How was anyone supposed to get my jokes if everything was taken so literally?
"What good is me being on your ship going to do?" I asked, point blank. I was in a rush to get kidnapped and get this all over and done with. I still had a Hive to contact about taking over the universe.
"It will show that you are on my side and, therefore, a threat," replied the reptile with a wave of his hand.
"And me blowing them up wouldn’t do that?" I sighed. It was really amazing that this species was considered to be the most intelligent of them all. It didn’t really speak well to the rest of the Alliance.
"No. It is illegal to kill another species without provocation."
"I thought that you were under attack. That is the only reason I can think of for you to send out a distress call," I said slowly, wanting to bang my head against the wall. Or maybe bang his head. It was like talking to a brick wall. "And that would be provocation, thus allowing me to blow them up without any repercussions."
"That is not the way that this works. They haven’t threatened you yet," pointed out the commander.
I was more than a little done with him.
"Fine. Send the shuttle," I answered with a wave of my hand. I thought that my offering up some type of protest would prevent them from knowing my plan. But clearly, I was overthinking things.
He narrowed his eyes at me like he was suspicious of my sudden cooperation. "Look, you send the shuttle, and we do things your way, or I start blowing up ships and then blaming it on you. What is your choice?" I asked, practically forcing him to kidnap me. What was wrong with this male?!?
"It is on its way," snapped the commander before turning off the video communications. Too bad the idiot had left on the audio.
"She really is too stupid to live," growled the commander off-screen. I could practically hear the smug joy in his voice. "The Alliance will definitely reward me handsomely for this."
Da’kea removed his camouflage and turned to look at me. His helmet was still on, but I really wanted to see his face. As if he could read my mind, he took off his armor and looked at me with a look of disgust on his face.
"I cannot believe this," he clicked his tusks, and for the first time, I could see the motion that caused the sound.
"And yet I am the one too stupid to live," I smile with a knowing nod.
"How is he a commander?" demanded GA, also removing his armor.
It made me happy that they were actively trying to ’get comfortable’ around me. I had Jun Li calculate a happy medium in terms of the air composition so that we could all breathe easily.
"Whatever. He is going to be dead in the next hour or so," I answered with a shrug as I started the long walk to Hanger Bay A. However, there was no way I was going to let an unknown shuttle dock in my hanger.
"I am reading eight lifeforms on the incoming shuttle," came Jun Li through my earpiece.
"Understood," I responded, a slight smile on my face. "Game faces on, Gentlemen; we have some visitors coming."
The three Saalistaja grunted, quickly activating their armor again and engaging their camouflage mode. "Do we have a number?" asked Ye’tab.
"Eight. They will be coming in through Hanger Bay A," I continued. I needed to buy the three males enough time to sneak onto the shuttle before it took off again. "Jun Li. Could I load you up into the shuttle and have you infect the Sisalik vessel like that?"
"Infect? I am not some lowly virus," grumbled Jun Li. I looked up at the camera in the corridor and smirked. "Of course, you aren’t," I chuckled in response. "You are an AI, a god amongst us mere mortals. You would never infect something."
"Exactly," huffed Jun Li, happy that I understood.
"Then, could I insert you into the computer on the shuttle and have you... influence... the main ship that way?" I asked, changing my wording just a fraction to make the sensitive AI happy.
"It will depend on if the shuttle is part of the ship’s programming," answered Jun Li. "And I won’t know that until you get into the ship itself."
"Can I act as your host in a way?" I asked, a new thought coming into my mind. "Like a Wi-Fi signal?"
"I don’t understand your reference," said Jun Li, and I could see the look of confusion on Midnight’s face.
"There are two ways of connecting to the internet on Earth. One is to literally be plugged into it using a cord, and the other way is to use Wi-Fi. I am just thinking that there needs to be some way that I can use the earpiece inside of me to connect you to the main transmitter without plugging you in," I tried to explain. I was sure that I was fucking up spectacularly. Wi-Fi was just one of those things that everyone knew about and used on a daily basis, but no one actually knew how it worked.
"All of the scientists had tablets, something that they recorded the results of the experiments that they did on me. Is there any way that you could piggyback on that signal and use it to take over the ship? Would those tablets be connected to the main ship computer?" I asked, trying to be more precise. I didn’t want to have to sneak onto the command deck and into the captain’s chair to insert the little USB crystal that was Jun Li.
"You want to insert me into a tablet and have me influence the system from there?" mused Jun Li. "That should work. But you can’t lose me. You have to keep me within your eyesight at all times. A tablet is easy to lose or be dropped. If something happens to that crystal, I will cease to exist."
"No, I don’t want to insert you into anything. That is my point. I was wondering if you could use something other than your crystal to get into the network, sort of like you do when you take over a ship in space."
"And I already explained that I couldn’t do that to the Sisalik ship because they have protection against me doing that. I need to be physically inserted into the ship in order to bypass their shields and get into the system," snapped Jun Li.
