A couple days later Effy had finally managed to crack the anomalously difficult to encrypt black box and collected all relevant data, she had requested the presence of everyone in one of the conference rooms to present the data.
Effy stood in front of a large screen displaying some sort of half assed powerpoint, Effy herself looked kind of out of place as well. She wasn't wearing her mechanic jumpsuit but rather a well fitting suit, on top of that she was wearing glasses and had made her hair in a bun completing the look.
Zen, Robert and Amelia all sat in front of her in their own chairs, overall the entire experience reminded Zen painfully of his old school days, being forced to sit through a fellow student's presentation.
'Still it's Effy so she probably has something good, she always wanted to play detective.'
Effy saw to it that everyone was ready and started the presentation.
"Good day, fellow colleagues. And Zen. As you might've guessed I finally succeeded in cracking the black box, which might I add was encrypted. So it took significantly longer than expected."
Robert was already half asleep and Amelia was looking in Effy's direction but that was about it, Zen was the only one with some semblance of interest.
'Well, if this info was important to Robert and Amelia she should've waited until it was at least noon.' Zen thought to himself 'But I doubt they really care either way.'
The look of the room was truly sad as it was obvious that two third of her audience were only present in body and not in mind, but in truth it was only Zen who needed the info. And he needed to let time pass before he made his move so this little event didn't bother him in the slightest.
Effy continued, pressing a button that made the powerpoint slide painfully slow towards the next slide, on it were some technical details of the encryption which after some research proved to be non standard to the regular protocol enforced by today's government.
"The first suspicious thing I encountered was this. A non standard encryption enforced on the entire black box. It had no backdoor, subprogram or physical way of bypassing it. Which leads me to conclude that either the now deceased spacefarers changed it themselves or the suspects did, but I found no substantial evidence for either." Serious business Effy was pretty amusing, it seemed so out of character for her but she fit the detective type pretty well.
"After breaking its encryption the info was pretty straight forward, the black box design prevents it from deleting or overwriting info. But it doesn't prevent false data from being uploaded, which after careful search I pinpointed the exact time the encryption was applied." Effy paused for obvious dramatic effect.
"All data received an anomalous trend just before time we boarded. Which means it wasn't done by the space farers themselves nor the suspects. As of now I have no idea who, or even how it was done, I'll need to look into it further."
Zen was perplexed. "Wait, so you're saying the black box was encrypted remotely? How's that even possible?" Effy looked at Zen from behind her glasses.
"save your questions until I'm finished please." Effy wholeheartedly continued while suppressing a smile. She quite liked being bossy.
"Next is the video of the cockpit just two hours before the emergency signal was activated." Effy pressed a button and a video played.
Two men sat in their control chairs talking about nothing important when suddenly one of them tried to undo his fastening belts, which instead of loosening tightened further and pressed the man firmly in his chair. His companion tried to help him but before he could reach him his fastening belts did the same, Zen could see in the video that the force with which the belts tightened was also extremely strong.
Effy stopped the video. And continued her presentation.
"The time their airfiltering failed coincided with the time this video was recorded, leading me to conclude that a system failure caused the accident. I can't confirm anything until the governor's forces manage to bring the ship back to the planetside and let me review the code."
"Then the case of the suspects." Effy continued to the next video. It showed a boarding party arriving five men strong all wearing an independent air supply, detaching and taking cargo from the ship. "Just five minutes after the emergency signal was broadcasted, they arrived. Records show they hadn't run an air test before entering, showing they knew that the air would be unbreathable."
Effy sighed and added. "But that's about all of the info I could extract for now, I'll need the ship itself to know more. But earliest estimates say it will reach the planet side after two weeks, it seems our friends scuttled the vessel before leaving."
With a final push of the button Effy made the powerpoint progress to its last slide, where it read in big bold letters: Questions?
Zen had to contain his smile, the entire thing looked like it was made by a grade schooler and presented by the teacher. But still, for Effy to have encrypted the info with nothing to go off was beyond impressive, if he had done it himself he would've been busy for at least a month.
"Not really a question, but could it be that our suspects and the ones who encrypted the black box were two separate entities all together?" Zen was thinking it was suspicious, if the encryption was as tricky and thorough as Effy had described this couldn't simply be the work of the suspects. It was just way too advanced.
"That could be." Effy frowned "To be honest I've been so busy with encrypting and setting up the presentation I hadn't given it much thought."
Zen thought it through, it was important, but it could wait. In any case he had all he needed to set his plan in motion, with the confirmation of how many suspects he had to prepare for and that they might not have been responsible for the death of the crew they could at least offer a clue to the true culprits.
"Alright! Thanks Effy, I got all I need."
Two weeks later, Oreallis orbit just outside of an established hyperlane.
An old transport was drifting out in space with no particular direction, it spun mildly along its axis as it drifted further and further out into deep space. An emergency beacon had been activated and received, help was on the way but it would take at least five hours.
However a passing ship had picked up on the anomaly and was already moving to intercept, the only thing was. It came from deep space, where there should be little to no traffic at all.
It floated near the vessel and after five to ten minutes of studying the wreck, started docking with the transport. Inside the vessel a small crew was preparing for boarding.
"Docking's successful boss!" The engineer crouched in front of the hatch said. "Transport's gravity generator is still online we'll need to disable it once onboard. Besides that ready to start boarding." Seven people wearing independent air supply walked up to the hatch, among them a woman walking upfront approached the engineer who had just installed a mask to filter his own air.
"Open up. We're going in." She spoke with authority and purpose, she might not have a deep voice but her tone commanded respect.
"Opening up!" The engineer replied, as he slowly opened the hatch. Air flowed into the ship's interior for a moment but eventually subsided.
One of the people beside the supposed leader spoke. "Boss, it's to risky. We've heard nothing from the contact, whatever made this ship go and send an emergency message was not it. For all we know we might be walking into a ship with a couple of pissed space farers totally fine!"
"Enough!" The leader snarled. "We've been ordered to stand bye and act if need be, and look." She gestured to the transport glaring on every monitor on the ship. "Need be. Now hurry up and get your asses down there!"
The seven men and women of the boarding party started descending one by one, the interior of the transport was wide and had plenty of space for moving around.
The cockpit was open and could be easily accessed, and the cargo bay at the backside of the craft was unlocked, allowing for easy entry.
The first thing the boarders saw was the bodies strewn across the ship, three bodies could be seen laying across the ground. The supposed leader stepped forward.
"Why are they not confined to their chairs?" She asked the question to one person specifically.
The person responding seemed to be in charge of communications and responded readily "It could be it made a mistake, or it didn't need them constrained in the first place. It's hard to tell, I don't control the thing. It decides its own course of action."
The leader clicked her tongue. "Lazy bastard, we had a deal and this." she gestured towards the bodies. "This isn't a perfect picture on its part. You, you and you move the bodies out of the way." She pointed at three men who moved to pick up the deceased.
Before the men could touch the bodies they suddenly jumped to life, swiftly incapacitating the three men. Zen, Robert and Ard had been posing as the bodies and ambushed the suspects. There was just one problem. They were still outnumbered three to seven, also Zen had hoped they could ambush them at a later time when he was sure of their numbers.
Alas beggars couldn't be choosers.
With the men moving to the bodies, there was significant chance one of them would notice the bodies were still warm, and therefore alive. A risk Zen couldn't affored to take. All three quickly pulled their sidearms, to which the suspects responded in kind, creating a Mexican standoff.
"Protection force! you're under arrest, lay down your arms!" Zen screamed at the suspects. The opposition remained quiet, the leader finally spoke. "We've got you outnumbered, why would we surrender?" she smiled as she prepared an unspoken signal at which they would all shoot simultaneously.
Before she could signal however Robert Started shooting. Four shots rang out in such a quick succession that the suspects couldn't even react. Two of the four dropped to the ground groaning, and the remaining two had to witness their own firearm explode in their hands.
Robert had shot the first two in the gut incapacitating them and hit the firearms of the remaining two with such precision he also took their index fingers.
'Mental note, do not piss off Robert… again.' Zen had to admit he was impressed. He and Ard wasted no time and apprehended all the suspects that weren't groaning on the ground already.
Zen had prepared for such an escalation so he had asked Doc to be present on the X3 that was standing by. He also leveraged a couple of the governor's security ships to escort the criminals ship planet side once captured.
"Boss! What happened?" Zen could hear someone scream from the top of the hatch.
"Run! it's a trap!" The leader managed to bark just before she was gagged by Ard.
All within expectations of course. "Say, you guys up there. Are you guys confident in outrunning or gunning a X3 spacecraft? Because you might find yourself in a tricky situation if you run. We got it on standby no less than one kilometer out!" Zen wasn't bluffing, the craft was hiding behind an asteroid and engaged in signal silence effectively turning invisible for regular sensors.
"Now. In the next few minutes you're going to be hailed by security forces, follow their instructions to a t. Unless you like the vacuum of space of course, your choice."
Zen could hear some cursing and then finally a response.
"Fine, fine!" The voice sounded thoroughly annoyed. "we're complying."
"Alright, close the hatch and undock. Unless you want your buddies to bleed to death that is." Zen was acting rather hartless. The men Robert shot were both in critical condition. But if there were limited options to de-escalate and even more limited time, Zen didn't doubt Robert's decision making so he just accepted reality as is.
After a while the vessel de-docked and was escorted towards Oreallis while the X3 quickly docked. Doc made his way on board without saying a word and moved towards the wounded, all non wounded had already been apprehended and constrained.
While Robert and Ard escorted the suspects on board of the X3 Zen stayed behind to safeguard the remaining two.
Lord knows when they could suddenly jump to life full of vigor and ready to wreak havoc.
Doc grabbed a syringe from his bag and injected it into the gunshot wounds, it quickly filled them with foam like material as it pushed the bullet back to surface level. Zen had never experienced it himself, but he heard it hurts like hell.
'Guess the guys are in luck. They fell unconscious a couple minutes after they were shot.'
Zen observed Doc with vested interest, he always appreciated medical personnel they were genuinely diligent and hardworking like him. Well if you weren't, people would die, and if you'd be responsible for someone's death because you were lazy you'd be stricken with regret and doubt.
At least normal people would.
Doc backed up from the injured, he looked like he was reminiscing about something.
"That damned fossil." Doc spoke with a hint of nostalgia. "He shot the fools in the liver, hurts like hell. Well. A bullet in your body hurts regardless, but your liver? Can't say I recommend it." Zen looked at the old man curiously.
"You say it as if it's something he does regularly." Zen remarked.
"Well, Robert himself was once shot in his liver. He said it hurt like nothing he had ever felt before. I think he's just being petty towards the criminals that shot him. Taking revenge so to say."
Zen sighed. "That's kind of fucked up actually."
Doc just shrugged. "Well he has a nose for people who really deserves it. I personally never felt sorry for the bastards. And I am sure as hell not going to start now." With that he packed his stuf and moved towards the hatch, returning to the X3.
Zen moved to the controls and disabled the artificial gravity to better transport the unconscious bodies of the ship. After which he took it upon himself to take the fake defect transport back to Oreallis himself.
After a quick setup check he regained control of the ship, stabilized it and set it on a course back to the planet. He was no master pilot, but just flying and landing was 90% automatic. All Zen had to do was kick back and relax.
"Let's see what those bastards have to say for themselves."