04 Feb 2021Milo Beaublanc

How in the stars did this happen to me?

She did something to my AI, I'm sure of it. Tamberlane Koryakova, do you know her?

I only met her once, I thought it was a coincidence but now I'm not so sure.

I don't know how, but she did it, damn her!

I don't know who she's working for. I think that's the point. If I get caught the only person I can implicate is her. She wants her AI back as soon as it has collected the information it needs. I'm just the poor sap who has been flying it half way round the galaxy while she hides out and waits for her pay off.  

Every time I spoke to what I thought was my ship AI I was actually talking to hers and it was manipulating me every step of the way to get what it wanted. Every course plot, every contract it showed me, just a means to an end. It was little things that gave it away. You would think that all AIs thought alike but they don't. Despite what they say they have their own quirks. I thought LORAN was playing one of his games with me for a few days but then it became obvious that something was seriously wrong.

I don't know if I'll get out of this alive let alone get paid.

It says that if I cooperate I'll get my LORAN back. I don't trust it and why should I even care? We've only been together for just over a year, why would I risk my life for some charges on a crystal matrix? I can get another AI but I only have one life, right?

Somehow I feel as though I have to try. I have to try.

Now I'm trapped between the Federation, Sirius Corp and whoever it is that she works for.


Feds want me dead, or worse, in one of their re-education centres.
Sirius wants me for interrogation, I'd still be alive but that's not necessarily a good option under the circumstances.
You hear stories about what they do to people, wiping minds, making clones some say. Making you live and re-live horrors you never thought could be real.
And the others? Who knows?