Chapter No.169 Possibility

We did not expect this.

Molly, Alex and I were in the Explorer-1 class vessel that Brian and Janet had arrived in along with four thousand androids in charging stations.

"Ah, there's something wrong here," Alex said. "The antimatter mix chamber on this ship isn't right. It's no wonder it failed."

I looked it over. "Yeah, but I don't think it started out this way. This looks like it wasn't installed properly and failed after use. I would say that it was deliberate."

Brian and Janet came into the engine chamber on the engineering deck.

I turned to them. "It looks like Tyco deliberately sabotaged your warp engine."

"I'm not surprised," Brian said. "He probably didn't want us to make it back."

Janet frowned. "He probably didn't want to see his wife again."

We all turned to her with our mouths agape. "Wife?" I exclaimed.

She looked confused. "You didn't know that he got married?"

"Nope," I said. "Who did he marry?"

"Her name is Gretchen Werner. She was a former physicist."

"What happened to her?" I asked.

"She's in storage with the androids."

I turned to Molly and Alex. "I think we just hit the jackpot."

"I don't understand," Brian said.

"If she was married to Tyco, she might know what the hell his real plans were."

"Point her out to us," Molly said. "And, we'll revive her."

Janet showed us where she was stored, and we began the process of reviving her. She looked just like any of the other androids except she had dark red curly hair. We took her to Brian's quarters to question her.

"We're interested in what Tyco was planning," I said. "Why did you marry him?"

"He forced me to do it. He wanted me to help him with his plans to take over Space Command."

"What was his plan?"

"He was going to kill all of them and convert them to androids under his control."

"Did he convert himself into an android?"

"He was the first to do it," she said. "It allowed him to control all of Space Command's core processors."

"Why did he put you on the first warp mission?"

She lowered her eyes. "He didn't need me anymore."

"So, he killed you and resurrected you as an android."

She sighed. "He took special delight in doing that to me. His favorite method of killing people was to make them walk out on a plank over a large tank full of piranha, but his way of doing it was horrible. He liked to watch them plead for their lives before he made the plank slowly pull back into the wall. Then he would only introduce a few piranhas into the tank so that they would take bites out of their flesh but not kill them. Then, he slowly introduced more of those little devils to slowly devour his victims. He made me watch them suffer an agonizing death. Then the bastard did it to me."

I rubbed my face before turning to Brain. "Are you three the only human-based androids on this vessel?"

"No, there are four others."

"Let's revive them. They might be able to tell us more."

We met with Gilda Willis, Sharon Bundt, Danica Strovich, and Gloria Williams later that day in Brian's quarters.

"Welcome to our collective. I am Jason Star, the Prime Mover, and this is Alexa, my second in command, and Molly Fields, our chief astrophysicist. What we're interested in is Tyco's plans and whether he is still in android form."

"I hope he isn't," Sharon said. "That son of a bitch fed me to piranhas."

"We were all fed to them," Gloria said. "We were put in low maintenance mode when the warp drive failed."

"Didn't you have any communication with him during your mission up to when the warp drive failed?"

"No," Brian said. "We received nothing after we launched."

"I think he went out on a mission right after ours," Danica said. "I'm not sure where he was going."

I turned to Molly. "That might be one of the vessels we found after we went back out to explore once we settled with the reptilians."

"We never detected him on any vessels we recovered," Molly replied. "The only encounters with him have been with his avatars."

"I think we're still back to square one," Alexa said. "They don't know any more than we do."

"He could still be in the android crew on this vessel, but I doubt it. I think that Danica might be right. He went out after this vessel was launched but before we did."

After the android crew was thoroughly scanned and purified of Tyco code they were revived. Brian and his human-based crew was added to our command group and came to our communal supper and meeting in the hidden chamber.

I introduced the new members and then explained what they would do. "Brian and Janet will be in charge of their upgraded ship and accompany us on all our missions. His original crew will remain with him."

No one had an objection to that plan. The meeting eventually broke up and Alexa and I had a chance to talk to Gretchen with no one else present.

"I think that Tyco is in your collective," she said.

"What makes you think that?"

"I'm certain that he picked you to be the Prime Mover so that he could take you out and assume that position of power after you had assembled a formidable collective. What better way than to be hidden until the right time."

"I won't dismiss that possibility, but we've already had several combat sessions with his avatars. If he wants to take over why doesn't he just do it?"

"He doesn't play by the usual rules," she said. "He's a master of deceit."

"If he is in the collective, we should have discovered him by now. Alexa and I have control over the nexus, the true arbiter of powers over the central computer core."

"That must be a change to the original command system. I didn't know about it, and I was very close to Tyco's running of the original collective."

"We just discovered it recently ourselves. I don't believe it had been baked into the original design."

"That would suggest some sort of AI evolution had occurred."

"That could be. We'll have to go through the core processor code to see if it is an evolution."

She didn't argue, so we decided to call it a night.

Alexa in her natural form came to my bedroom later. I looked over at her from my viewing screen that hung from the ceiling. "What's up?"

"I don't trust Tyco's ex. I think she might be him in disguise."

"Now that would be the ultimate dirty trick. I have a problem with that. Why would he shelter in a vessel that he knew wouldn't get back to Earth for years?"

"Just in time to take over the collective that you have so conveniently built up to a formidable power."

"Isn't there a way that we could determine if it is him?"

"I've tried scanning his presence in the core to no avail. However, he probably realized that we would do that."

"Yeah, that makes sense."

"There is a way to reveal his true nature however."

"How?" I asked.

"I think I could entice his Nazi hatred for non-Arians out him."

I thought about it for a while before I realized what she meant. "Yes, that might work."

She gave me a smirk and vanished.

I went back to viewing a Star Trek series entitled 'Discovery'. It depicted the Enterprise before Kirk, when Pike was the captain.

I was interrupted by a new visitor. Molly arrived in her natural state. I paused my video and looked over at her.

"I think that this so-called wife of Tyco's is actually him."

"Alexa agrees with you. She's going to try and see if Gretchen will reject her because she's not an Arian."

Molly tilted her head as if confused before she smiled. "Yes, that makes sense." She became serious. "What if she determines that he's Tyco?"

"We'll deal with that when she does."

She gave me a frustrated look before she changed her expression to a more solicitous look. "Ah, would you be so kind as to service us?"

My right eyebrow shot up. "Us?"

She offered a sly grin. "Yeah, Marie, Margaret, Phyllis and I."

I squinted. "I thought that you gals have that done by your male assistants."

"It's not the same," she replied with a teasing smirk. "Besides, they're more interested in banging our female assistants."

"So, you want me to do all four of you at the same time. Wouldn't that constitute an orgy?"

She propped her fists into her hips and scowled at me. "Are you trying to get out of it?"

"No," I said with a sigh as I got out of bed. "If we're going to do this it would be better to do it in the hidden chamber."

"I assumed that," she said. "We can have fun in the pool as well as sex."

We teleported to the poolside table and chair area where we meet after the communal supper. Marie, Margaret and Phyliss were already there enjoying a glass of wine.

Molly pointed to me and grinned. "Yeah, he agreed to do it."

They raised their glasses of wine and cheered. I bowed and sat down. Marie poured both Molly and I a glass of wine.

Phyliss looked around. "I like this. It's a private pool with no prying eyes." She looked at me. "Are you capable of doing all four of us?"

I gave her a subtle smile. "I can, but I'm surprised that you would want to be serviced in a group."

"We have nothing to hide, especially since we're all in our birthday suits."

"Actually, you're not in your birthday suits, as you put it. You're in your natural states as androids."

She huffed. "Whatever!"

The others laughed.

What happened next surprised me, and it portended a new possibility in our mission to destroy Tyco.

End of Part 17.

Thanks for reading.

Part No. 18 will begin soon.