Ghosted

‘Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.’

A pin could have broken the silence. I stared into the black void in front of me while I scanned the metatags on my feed.

‘No,’ I flashed back. ‘Please don’t make me say that!’ The price tripled in the blink of a cursor and kept going up. ‘You bastards,’ I flashed, adding an smh emoji.

‘But I hear you all screaming with laughter.’ Deep inside, hidden under layers of protective neurosis, my last shred of dignity sighed, lay down, and died.

‘You suck,’ came a voice from the inky darkness.

‘Mom?’ I asked. This at least roused a titter from the audience.

‘She’s out back hubbing with the bouncers.’

Genuine laughter. This heckler was funnier than I was. I could feel the sweat breaking out on my forehead. Why did I think I could do this? I had put it as one of the options for my followers to vote on without actually thinking they'd choose it, the bunch of saddists. Standing here under the lights, the knot in my chest tightening, nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide... I had been sure they would choose Binman on Rygel-5 and now, desperately trying to think of a riposte, I totally wish they had. I wasn't a comedian; I was a fraud, a charlatan, a failure, and all of my Immertok followers would see this and abandon me in droves.

Think Lyndsay, think! What would that sassy sixteen-year old have said in her final year of school?

‘Well apparently yours couldn’t juggle and guzzle at the same time.’

Oh God, I didn't just say that. ‘Sorry Mom,’ I flashed, hoping she wasn’t on my feed. A single frowny face floated through the sea of rofls and I knew that she was.

It did the trick though – the crowd laughed and the heckler was shut down. I finished my set and checked the balance in my bitwallet – enough to fuel the Asp for seven, maybe eight jumps! Maybe I was back in The Game…

---

The Game. An interstellar treasure hunt where you are also hunted. Each season is the same – you have to solve the puzzle to get the co-ords for the next puzzle. You pick up lootcrates and fandrops on the way until you get to The Vault. If you’re the first to get in The Vault you get the riches contained within. Officially there are no rules. Unofficially there are two;

Rule Number One: Don’t Get Killed.

Rule Number Two: Trust No-one.

Lyndsay was hunched over her navcom trying to plot her way round a problem while the bots busied themselves prepping her ship. The problem was she had enough fuel to get to her destination – a starsystem 32 light years away – but she had to pass through a very congested section of space, a pinch point really, where lots of other Seekers had blipped out of existence. It could just be a hot bit of space, lots of pirate activity or warp anomalies, but it was more likely an ambush point where the Hunters could take some easy pickings.

Hunters. They had sprung up in the second or third season of The Game, hunting down and eradicating Seekers who at first proved easy pickings. Nowadays in order to play The Game you had to Tank Up, OutGun or OutRun the opposition. Lyndsay didn’t have the cash to enter an arms race or, truthfully, the skill to outshoot anyone so she relied on a fourth option, one which you didn't really hear much about: stealth, which brought her back to her main problem.

She chewed the rubbery tip of her pointer while tapping the screen, moving the universe this way and that, changing engine settings to try to stretch the jump between impossible distances when a message came through on the priority queue. That meant family, friends, or high-profile donors. Bringing the board up she saw the message was from someone who called themselves Joker69121hehim. Not someone she knew so potential donor it was then.

She thought for a moment before tapping her lips, eyebrows, and cheekbones, which grew, shrunk, and coloured up respectively. Next, she tapped her right ear, cycling through a variety of hairstyles before settling on one she liked. Only then did she accept the DM.

An avatar appeared of someone wearing a spideyman costume, one hand in the air, fingers waggling. Lyndsay frowned. Late twentieth-century culture wasn’t her strong point but she was pretty sure the image didn’t match the moniker. ‘Heyyy…’ the person said, it’s lips synching with the words with no delay which meant he was probably within a few systems of hers. ‘Sorry to bounce in like this, I just wanted to apologise.’

‘For what?’ Lyndsay asked.

‘I was the Heckler.’

‘No way, you asshole!’ Lyndsay made sure a winky emoji flashed up on the screen.

‘Haha, yeah, I didn’t mean to ruin your show. I’ve been a follower forever and knew it would spark you.’

‘Okay, it did, you’re forgiven, I guess,’ Lyndsay said before adding, ‘I didn’t mean to imply your mom couldn’t juggle and guzzle at the same time.’

‘Haha, that genuinely had me on the floor!’ Her screen filled with rofl emojis. Custom ones, she noted - he must have some creds.

Lyndsay waited for them to clear before she asked, ‘Did you enjoy the show?’

‘I did, you were great,’ came the reply. ‘I made a bootleg, do you want to see it?’

A bootleg? That shouldn’t have been possible. ‘How did you debur the static?’ she asked.

‘That would be telling,’ he laughed, filling her screen with D-faces. ‘I’ll send it over now, decryption in the ethcreds.’

There was the bing of an incoming file and the cha-chink of money hitting her wallet. She checked and a file called LindsayLiu328LiveAtTheEmpire landed in her box and –

‘Holy Shitballs! 5000CR?! THANK YOU!!!’ She validated the transfer with a retinal print, and flooded his screen with Heart emojis.

‘No problem, I didn’t want to mess with you. As I said I’ve followed you for a long time. You watch the vid yet?’

‘Doing so now…’ She could feel her heart rate climbing. 5000CRs wasn’t much in the long run but it might just be enough to get her round her current dilemma… literally.

She played the holovid on one screen, absently noting how the TrueD showed every pixel of her outfit, while she pulled the map back up on the other screen. On the vid she heard the heckler say, ‘You suck!’ followed by their brief exchange but she wasn’t really paying it any attention, busying herself with navigation calculations. A smile spread across Lyndsay’s face as she realised that with this new influx of cash she could indeed take a longer route right around the tricky bit of space. She would have to sacrifice some cargo space, and swap out her fuel scoop, but yeah, with the upgraded fuel cells she could definitely come at her destination from a much quieter angle.

Hmm, that was odd. She furrowed her brow and bit the tip of the pointer again - she wasn't quite getting the distance she was hoping for... might have to sacrifice all of her cargo space for the extra range fuel cells. A few more calcualtions and... yep, that would do it.

Still smiling, Lyndsay turned her attention back to the other screen. The video had ended and the Jokers feed had greyed out meaning he was offline. She sent him a quick thank you message, adding her pin if he ever wanted to get in touch again. The message was delivered but sat at unread… dude was gone but she had other business now. Closing those screens she brought up the maintbot interface, issuing her updated list of commands. Small clunks and vibrations in her ship meant her new orders were being carried out. Lynsday smiled and eased herself back in her chair.

In one hour and 37 mins she would be back in The Game, with a real chance of cracking the next code. Closing her eyes she activated the sleepstims. Her last thought as she drifted off was how many new followers she’d get when she leaped into the lead, and how much money that would make her.

---

The universe can be a lonely place. You're unlikely to be the only ship in the area but the 'areas' are just so mind-bogglingly big that you're unlikely to see the other person - it is like throwing a grain of sand on the beach then trying to find it again.

Lyndsay hadn't seen a soul in her jumps so far, but she hadn't really hung about either, jumping in, pointing the ship at the next star and jumping back out again. This leg needed a little transit time so Lyndsay set the throttle to the eco-zone, keeping one eye on the scanner for signs of trouble.

She hadn't always been such a hermit. When she finished school she wanted the same as most kids - the chance to get out, see the Universe, have a little fun and live a little. Well, have a lot of fun and live a lot!

But the Universe wasn't quite what it was cracked up to be. She soon burnt through her savings and found herself stranded on a remote station in some backwater spiral galaxy with nothing but miners, haulers, and repair technicians to keep her company- and they only wanted one thing out of a spry young galaxy hopper like herself. For her own protection she found herself hooking up with the biggest, baddest members on the station, whose anger, jealousy, and fists were often preferable to the darker side of life off-world. Yes, it was dangerous to stay and, in her situation, impossible to leave. In the end two wives on a ship hauling cobalt took one look at the bruises on her face and offered her a lift out. Karen and Georgia were like her angels, in a way, teaching her what they knew about keeping the old Hauler flying and helping her land her first proper job repairing ships at a depot when she showed her aptitude for it. Now, almost ten years later, she had her own ship and was grinding out a career on Immertok.

Smiling, she ran her hand along the curved edge of the instrument panel, wondering where they might be now, shuddering at where she might be if they hadn't helped her.

A muted bong announced an incoming DM, on her private channel. Frowning she checked and was surprised to see the Joker was requesting a connection. It was voice-only though so she didn't bother making herself up.

'Why hello,' she said, trying to sound like a normal member of her species.

'Hello Miss Liu, how are you?' Once again there was virtully no lag - this guy must have a mega connection.

'Oh, I'm just peachy.' Lyndsay adjusted her pitch and switched her 'tok output channel to subscribers only - a little perk for those that pay. 'Not showing off your spideyman costume today?'

He laughed at this. 'You know that's not my only skin...'

'But no vidfeed, Mr Joker, who are you hiding yourself from?' Messages from her followers were flooding in, mainly speculating on how hot, or how not hot he might be. She flashed a quick message back to them, 'I don't care anyone who gives me that much money deserves a little of my time. Besides, I reckon he must be H O T !!' That got lots of likes, even some micro-donations. It all helps pay the rent.

There was a clear hesitation before he continued, 'No, no, not hiding. I just wanted to, um, say hi, to chat to you some more.'

'Awww, that's nice! I kind of missed you too, I wanted to say thank you once again for such a generous donation.'

'Oh, ah, no problem. Look, um...' His voice was drawn out, he sounded nervous. 'I was wondering if we could catch a little time together, you know, sans-followers.'

Lyndsay switched to her top-tier feed, flashing a message to everyone else, 'Upgrade to Premium now Ladies and Gentlemen to see where this goes...' before replying, 'What, like a date Mr Joker?'

'Yeah, like a date.' he replied. 'We could synch our replicators and our cabin temps, maybe swap hapsuit keys.'

She could hear the smile in his voice but wasn't sure if he was joking. 'Take some stims, turn our feeds off...'

'Even the premium ones,' he added.

Gaddamit! Of course Mr Moneybags would be a premium subscriber! 'I've been a long time follower' he had said, or something like that. Once again she died a little inside, but she laughed, saying, 'Okay Mister, you've got yourself a date, but on one condition...'

'What's that?'

'No Marvel costumes, and I control the suit settings...' Which meant she could kick him if things got too uncomfortable.

Some guys wouldn't accept that - they had to be the alpha, it was a trust thing etc etc, but The Joker simply said, 'Great, when did you want-' before his voice was drowned out by a warning claxon.

---

The ships dropped out of Hyperdive dangerously close to her, their ionic wake disrupting many of her sensors and causing Lyndsay to leap from her chair in kneejerk panic. 'Shit!' she swore, berating herself for taking her eyes off the scanners. One of the ships was tumbling through the air but the other had already orientated itself and was describing a wide arc across the sky, wheeling around to face her.

A message appeared on her short-range feed demanding she power down and submit to a scan but Lyndsay did exactly the opposite of this, slamming both throttles to 100% and turning her ship to counter her attackers projected path.

Both ships changed from white to red on her radar, indicating they had deployed weapons and were likely hostile. Lyndsay had no weapons to deploy, she barely had any shields and she had sloughed all her armour to get the longest range possible. Damn. At the time she was so proud of the extra lightyears it bought her but now she had to seriously re-assess that feeling.

Lyndsay did the only thing she could do - she hit Jump, throwing her ship in what she hoped were unpredictable patterns while the JumpDrive charged.

Solid pulses of energy overtook her. From their angle she could tell at least one ship was manoeuvring in behind her. She could probably take a couple of hits from these and maybe only lose some auxiliary systems, but if just one edge of the hot white beam that was cutting in front of her manage to connect, her ship would be cut in two.

'Come on,' she growled at the jumpdrive.

5, 4, 3, 2...

Her ship juddered as the lighter ordnance connected with her.

...1

The sky streaked and she was swallowed up by the banshee howl of FoldSpace.

---

Space ravelled back into normality around her as her ship juddered to a relative halt. She had done three jumps - two of them blind, just to get away, the third to a more populated System where she wouldn't be so damn vulnerable.

A quick scan of the system revealed a hauler and a pair of local feds, all going about their business and paying her no attention at all.

Lyndsay squinted at the radar, then pulled up the System Info screen. What? That's not right. She double-checked her notes, and her navcom. There was no other explanation for it: in her panic on the last two jumps she must have accidentally aligned herself with her original target destination and jumped there, because that's exactly where she was!

A quick check over the ship revealed she had been doubly lucky and only lost some heat shielding from the engine... not the cheapest component to replace but a repair she could do herself - she might even be able to source some salvaged parts. In the meantime the ship would fly okay, even if she'd have to take it slow until the she got to a port.

Lyndsay's hands were trembling from the overdose of adrenaline but she took a deep breath and throttled the Asp up to cruising speed, starting a longer field scan as she did so. She knew what she was looking for without knowing exactly what she was looking for, if that made sense. She let the scan run and checked her feed count.

Damn it - she survived an actual for real pirate attack but had left her feed on the Premium channel so no-one would be able to share it, not even her! Lyndsay grit her teeth, then took a 5 second clip - the largest she could share and not break the Preemie contract - editing it into a quick piece to show exactly why her followers need to upgrade to the Premium-only channel. She then went on to explain what she was looking for on the scanner and ask for any micro-donations, smiling and thanking them with a V-sign and a wink emoji when they came through. Gotta make the most of a bad situation, right?

Ding ding! A double report from her scanner showing two unidentified signal sources in the sector.

‘Here we go,’ she said to no-one and everyone, pointing her ship at the nearest one and watching the lightyears tick down as she got nearer and nearer to it.

---

Bingo. This was it. She couldn’t believe it.

The cube floated in front of her, light bouncing off of it even as she could kind of semi see through to the other side. That wasn't right- Lyndsay had seen lots of puzzles before and none of them had been this... ethereal. Still, maybe this is what they looked like if you were the first to discover it! She squealed in excitement, broadcasting it to her feed, which was on fire. 'Okay guys, now I just have to deploy my scoop and hook it into my…'

Her voice trailed off.

Cargo hold.

Which she didn’t have.

Her feed count was higher than it had ever been, ticking up by the second, and they all heard her swear in whatever their native language was, or a long and pronounced bleep if they had filtered for bad language. This was followed by lots of other bleeps as Lyndsay pummelled her instrument panel.

She had ditched her cargo hold in order to sneak in through this back route.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘It’s not a problem.’ ‘No cargo hold,’ she flashed. ‘I’ll have to try and solve it in situ.’

It was a problem though - even though her geodata was masked people could still piece together her rough location with her jump history and track her to where was now, foolishly floating in front of the one thing that everybody was after. What a gaddam newb. Did she have time to figure this out? Yes, but not much.

From below her, somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship, there was an odd mechanical clunk. Then something streaked away from her, towards the clue. She had time enough to see that it was an Elba, but that didn't make sense - they were short range vessels, normally used as high-end escape pods, with just enough oomph to get them out of trouble before using a single jumpcharge to get them to a pre-programmed destination. It darted into the puzzle which, along with the escape pod, disappeared.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘What just happened?’ she flashed.

Her feed was going wild. She checked her general board and was nearly blinded by the range of emojis. Then two things happened - her feed count plummeted and a new name appeared at the head of the leaderboard. Joker69121hehim.

‘No -bleeping- way.’ Lyndsay said.

---

Lyndsay stared into the Great Black. Her main thoughts were generally, ‘Who?’ and, ‘How?’

And then it hit her. The video. And the EthCreds. I mean, who uses EthCreds nowadays? Lyndsay shook her head. It was so sneaky. So gaddamed clever. A little bit of flattery, a little bit of bribery - tell her what she wants to hear, give her what she thinks she needs. He had sent her his code in the holovid, and she had validated it with the code in the EthCreds. The bloody Joker.

Lyndsay screamed, and her 4.2m followers around the galaxy heard her.

Thank you for taking the time to read this story. Writing is my passion and I feel I improve with every story. In use groups such as Vocal+ Assist and Great Incantations to get feedback so would like give the good people therein a shout-out and encourage you to join them so we can all become better together.