2946-11-27 - Tales from the Inbox: The Prisoner of Vincennes

The armored door simply refused to submit to the will of its new master. Even industrial cutting torches, of the same kind used by shipbreaking crews to slice through the armored hulls of scrapped warships, failed to do more than etch its surface. For the two weeks it had taken to navigate Lyla Vincennes from the auctioneer’s yard at Nova Paris to her center of operations at Herakles, Petia had on more than one occasion wandered down to the sealed portal to wonder at its mystery contents.

Now, of course, Petia had the upper hand over the vexing barrier. Under her supervision, two technicians prepared a nano-demolition charge, configuring the payload carefully with a sample of the durable door’s alloy. She tapped her foot impatiently, but it didn’t seem to hurry them; that was probably for the best. Petia knew well enough what happened when nano-demolition went wrong.

At last, the two techs pressed the charge against the door and stepped back. “Boss?” One of them asked.

“Whenever you’re ready, Zenais.” Petia tried not to hate him for making her tell him once again to remove the obstacle, and didn’t entirely succeed. She’d made quite clear that she wanted the door gone, so she could see what was behind it.

The tech jabbed a control on his wrist unit, and the lumpen charge flattened out and seemed to vanish. Petia hadn’t expected a climactic explosion, but she couldn’t help but pace back and forth as the nanomachines worked their way into the armored alloy of the door and undid its durable structure. The techs fidgeted nervously, glancing at their status monitors to view the progress of the demolition.

All at once, the heavy, impossibly strong barrier crumbled in on itself, as if transmuted instantly into a pile of loose gravel. Petia stepped backwards as loose pieces of crumbled armor bounced down the corridor toward her boots, and let the technicians go first, sending the deactivation signal to the nanomachines and setting out collectors to retrieve the expensive demolition swarm.

Petia couldn’t wait for them to finish; she strode past them and peered into the darkness beyond. “Lights.” She instructed, but venerable Lyla Vincennes’s computer did not respond, and no lights came on. With a long-suffering sigh, she activated the emergency light function of her wrist unit and swept its wan beam through the compartment that the ship’s former owners had gone through so much effort to seal.

The only thing in the room was a single metal crate two meters across, bolted securely to the deck. Based on the thick layer of dust covering everything, Petia guessed it hadn’t been touched for years – perhaps for most of Vincennes’s career. Visions of long-hidden treasures dancing in her mind, she wasted no time undoing the three latches holding the hinged front of the container closed. Visions of the lost Ladeon Hoard danced in her mind as she yanked the crate open, its aged hinges shrieking in protest.

Inside, she found no treasure. Huddled in the corner of the two-meter-long cargo crate, there was only the hunched and pitiable figure of a man, cuffed and shackled with chains of the same durable alloy as the door. His face was gaunt and unshaven, his skin pale, and his dark eyes stared into Petia’s faint flashlight beam with a level and unperturbed expression, as if he had expected her at exactly that moment.

It took Petia a few moments to realize what was so wrong about the prisoner’s situation. Though it was obvious he’d been there a long time, there was no trace of food or water in his makeshift cell. How long had he gone without food or water? It was, she realized, a month at minimum. He should have been only a dessicated corpse.

“Who are you?” She managed to ask weakly. Perhaps, she thought, “what” was a more appropriate question. No human should have been still alive after so long. Under the light of her flashlight beam, his face seemed vaguely familiar.

After staring blankly back at her for two full seconds, the prisoner dropped his eyes to the floor, saying nothing. Whether that was because he did not wish to give his identity, or because he no longer remembered, Petia couldn’t be sure – he didn’t seem insane, and he didn’t have the subtly uncanny stillness associated with the horror of an automaton designed to appear human.

“Who are you?” She repeated, more forcefully.

Still, the prisoner offered no answer. He merely raised his head once more, looking her straight in the eyes, as if demanding that she either free him of his bonds, or depart and seal the door once more. Though he still didn’t speak, she sensed that he was merely holding his voice until she decided whether to free him.

Though surprised at how tempting it was to seal him in until he talked, Petia hurried back to her demolition team for tools and assistance. Though taken aback at the sight, they hurried to help, and soon the man was freed of the durable shackles. Despite his drawn and weak appearance, he was too heavy for Petia to move alone – with Zenais, she managed to haul him upright, and carry him out of the sealed compartment into the well-lit corridor.

“Thank you.” The man whispered, shutting his eyes against the light.

“Don’t mention it.” Petia, straining to hold him up. As she had suspected, he could speak without trouble. “How did you get in there?”

The man took his time answering, raising his head to look around as his eyes adjusted. “Treachery, as usual.” He eventually offered, just as quietly as before.

“As-” Petia was interrupted from asking what he meant by “as usual” when, with a sudden surge of unexpected strength, the man swept both Zenais and her aside, knocking them to the deck. “Thank you, Petia.” Just as she realized that she hadn’t given the prisoner her name, he was gone, moving so fast that he almost seemed to disappear.

By the time Petia was getting to her feet and helping demolitions tech Zenais up, an alarm had begun to sound. She knew before reports started flooding into her comm that the prisoner was gone without a trace; she just hoped he hadn’t done any major damage on his way out.

The account submitted by Petia S. is engaging and mysterious, but unfortunately, we only have her word that things took place as she described. Assuming she is telling the truth of things as best as she is able, I can only assume that she found the place where a past crew of her ship hid some sort of human-mimicking automaton. By its behavior and state in which she found it, it seems that whatever purpose they bought the illicit machine for, it had gone rogue and they had decided to deal with it by locking it away, perhaps hoping someday to find some means to repair their expensive and horrific purchase.

The line the entity is reported to have delivered just before tossing its rescuers to the ground and escaping is far too convenient and clever to be accurate; I suspect Petia misheard "treachery, the fools" or something similar, as she describes it, or him, as having a very soft voice.

Unfortunately, as this account lacked any surveillance recordings to back it up, I can't verify any of it, except that a Petia S. is actually the owner of the ship mentioned in the account, and that it was indeed recently purchased at a public auction.