Bounty on Jeraxi-9 (Reserved)

"I gain nothing by being impolite. And you would be less likely to help me if I was. But I imagine that I'll get out of here soon enough. Beside the kidnapping thing you have been nothing but polite to me." Ast picked at his food, neatly picking apart the meal and separating it out into matching food items in his bowl.

Bendesha tilted her head. “What do you mean you will be getting out of here soon? You are aware that we are weeks away from the drop point?” She looked at him sideways.

Astarian only smiled and took a bite from his meal. "So tell me about your family? I'm curious what brought you into this business. It's not for the faint of heart and I'm sure it must be a wonderful tale!"

Her face was still turned to the side as she observed him. “My family is not in my life, nothing interesting there. My race is a dying breed due to our home planet inhospitable climate now. I acquired a ship and Par joined me. We stumbled upon bounty hunting almost on accident. It suits our skills.” She told him, giving what she thought was little information. She neglected to mention her particular abilities as a body snatcher. When she saw him, she noted that he had some mechanically enhanced parts, something that made her ability ten times harder to use on a living person. That was why she had not tried it on him.

"Ah...I tried to warn them long ago about the danger of what was happening to the planet. I wasn't heeded...perhaps if I had pushed harder things would have turned out for the better? But that was many, many, many years ago. No use dwelling on what was, one must simply learn from it and push forward with progress." Ast nodded and offered a consoling smile.

Even as he spoke to her, Tari was still at work. The computer system of the ship might have been hard wired and off limits. But parts were still accessible to her probing. And it was through these things that she explored.

Bendi frowned on his words but made no further comments. “What about you? Why are you in this situation? Seems like if you just stayed where you were you could have enough power now to control your own life.” She said, though she understood the drive to be off on one's own.

"Because I'm smart. Because for the last few centuries most of the greatest breakthroughs in history have come from me. Exceptional skills breeds jealousy and the desire to have such. During my first break through I was offered to join the Government as one of their scientists. They offered quite a lot actually. Still one of the best offers I've ever been given. But they wanted to control everything. What I researched, what I produced, who would get my inventions and at what cost. For me...science has always been for science and for fun. I don't want the prestige or the money. I simply want to continue to create, to learn, to teach. But it has cost me by making the government wish to capture me and pick apart my head. And science is a thing of freedom within rules. But they would remove that freedom." Ast spoke with out modesty but also without pride. It was simple fact, delivered in his gentle voice.

“I can understand that.” Bendi said, leaning forward slightly. “What will you do then, after I have dropped you off?” She asked. She didn't feel bad for what she was doing. Clearly he had been in this situation more than once, and he had ways to return to the life that he wanted. She was simply setting him back a few years. That was nothing.

"I will be taken. Possibly tortured, beaten, contained. The methods vary. Depends on who is there to receive me really." He shrugged once more with an amicable smile. "But I'll get out, escape, and be off once more."

Bendesha leaned to the side and propped herself up with her arm. “The orders were not to hurt you. That's not always the case. So I would assume it wont be too dangerous for you, if that is any consolation.” She told him with a little shrug. She had received the 'dead or alive' orders before and once or twice she had to follow through with the 'dead' part.

"They would rather keep what's in my head intact. I can still do a thing or two with space travel that they haven't figured out. But I got bored of that kind of study...so I moved on." He shifted to adopt her same posture though it was a bit uncomfortable for him. "They will wait until I'm sealed in some bunker to bring the pain."

She tilted her head to the side as she observed him, wondering what his play was. Did he think he could with her sympathy? Did he think that he could disturb her with images of torture? She couldn't figure it out. He was incredibly intelligent, she knew that. In someway or another he must be trying to get in her head. Well, that was not something she wanted.

“Goodnight.” She said abruptly, ending the conversation right in the middle as she stood. Her tail swished over her rear cleavage as she left through the hallway.

"Hm. What an interesting and lovely girl." Ast settled his chin on his palm, lips curving behind the cage his fingers made over them. Slowly he turned his eyes to the beast to whom he winked. "She seems so tense, I'm sure if you gave her some attention and love she would feel all better."

Later that night Bendi was curled up in bed with Par nestled against her. Her capture was unlike any she had before. It made her feel even more like he was somehow trying to trick her.

She stroked Par's face gently while she pondered. Without warning the ship gave off an alarm. She was startled out of her bead by the blaring noise. In a few short moments the alarm was cut off, along with the rest of the ship. The crisp silence was only broken by Bendesha's horrified cursing.
____________________________________________________________________________________

Moments before, the security system that protected the ship had detected the work of the AI. In an effort to prevent the hacking, it had begun a complicated process which ultimately failed and crashed the entire system, killing all functions. The whole ship was run by the system.

"My my...Tari you are going to get me in trouble with all your tampering.  Any way you can restore it?"  Ast sat up slowly, leaning back against the bars as everything grew quiet.

It is a closed system.  I would have to be plugged in directly for any amount of work to be done.  If your captor can plug in the tablet in your bag it would be fine and I could take over the systems to bring everything online while the security system reboots itself.

Slowly he nodded.  "Right.  Well.  We will have to wait and hope that she comes for us then.  We could die you know."

Calculated risk.

"Oh?"  He laughed and shook his head, settling in to wait.

Bendesha found a portable light on battery power that she lit up and used it to find her way to the engine room. She manually turned on the generator. For a minute the ship jumped back to life, before she saw the power level of the generator. It was not even fully charged. This was one of the reasons that she was in the market for a new ship.

She turned off power to all but vital functions. They were too far away to fly to any kind of civilization to get the ship fixed, it would run out of juice long before then. The best she could hope for was to turn on the distress signal and hope for another friendly ship to come within close enough distance to receive it. The rest of the power was directed to air circulation and maintaining the oxygen level.

Finally she made her way to the prison cell. She approached the bars, her way lit by the flash light, with a pair of glowing eyes behind her.

“We have three hours worth of air left before we suffocate or freeze to death.” She informed the scientist. “Unless you can fix this.”

"The air isn't moving...life support is out." Ast remarked with a frown. He waved his hand through the air then hunkered down more to wait.

Calculating...depending upon reserves life can be sustained from one hour up to twelve. Warmth, oxygen, and hydratation playing the roles of death.

Ast smiled and nodded, "Right. So we shoul-" He cut himself at the approaching light smiling at Bendi. "Three hours....right. I can fix this."

Bendesha held back her sigh of relief. “Okay, what do you need?” She asked him, hesitant of what he might say. He had time to think about how he would escape, and this gave him the opportunity. She was on her guard with Par at her side.

"My backpack has a tablet inside. I need you to turn it on and plug it into your ship. Anywhere will do. Just need the opening into the closed system and it doesn't matter if the power is off for the ship." Rocking forward onto his knees, Ast drummed his fingers on his leg. "I need a ships inventory. I doubt you have been logging it into your ship so you'll have to write it up for me."

Bendesha was skeptical even though she knew she didn't have a choice. “Why? What will that do?” She asked him, unmoving.

"It will let my friend into the system. And by friend I mean the A.I. I brought with me and have been talking too for company for this entire trip so far. Her name is Tari." Ast nodded cheerfully, utterly happy to share his friend.

She stood there, staring at him in the dim light. That would give him access to her entire system. He would have control of her ship from his cell. “Is there another way you could do it?” She asked weakly.

"Unless you can find the power to get me out of this cell so I can do work manually no. Tari can restore power and work on getting everything rebooted. I can keep us from crashing into anything and work on getting life support working again." Ast shrugged with a look of sympathetic apology. He did feel bad knowing that she was backed into a corner.

“You can get it to work manually?” She questioned. There wasn't much difference between letting him out of the cell and plugging in his computer. Either way he was likely to escape. Par nussled her hand, sensing the anxiety.

"I can. Tari can talk me through the steps that I don't know. And this ships layout shouldn't be too hard to work with. First step would be oxygen increase. Warmth can be facilitated longer by dressing up or physical activities so long as one doesn't use up too much air in the process until oxygen can be normalized. After that power to the other various life support systems can be administered as necessary. Such as water, food, and lighting." Calculations danced in his vision, plans, steps, work. "If I am any judge we are a light year from hospitable planets, and have an unknown chance at having people come by this route where they could hear a distress beacon. Which would need to be turned on."