TO reran the calculations in their head, the max speed of a synth distance transport ship such as theirs, the rate at which the ship was watching up, and the potential weight that Kei’s ship might be carrying. There was no situation in which TO could imagine that Kei’s ship would have more supplies or people on board than it could comfortably handle without affecting its max speed dramatically.

Kei would catch up to them, and TO had no idea what the other synth would do once they did? Flit said that the easiest thing to do would be to open fire on the ship itself and destroy it. Would Kei do that, or would they try to board the ship?

“Are we sure it’s Kei’s ship?” TO said quietly as they considered the situation. “And not some other synth ship?”

“Positive.” Vik said. “I picked it up on our radar and pinged it to see what it was. I recognized it as one of your ships and DH identified it as Kei’s specific ship.”

“That’s entirely impossible.” Pholi said, frowning as he looked between the two. “We took their chip.” He looked to Flit, “You said without the chips, they can’t contact other synths, and they can’t control their ship.”

“They do have a chip.” TO said as they rubbed the new which Vik had only recently created for them. “Mine.”

“As far as I was informed, each chip is linked to a certain ship.” Pholi looked at Flit again. “You said that a ship can only be controlled by a linked chip. Kei would have TO’s chip, which is linked to this ship, not their own.” He looked back to Vik, his tail lashing and his little eyes narrowing as the large scales on his back seemed to rise up slightly. “And you said you wiped TO’s old chip, regardless! Even if Kei had a chip, how did they find us? You said that with the cloaking on this, it would be impossible to track this ship outside a relatively close distance!”

“They are relatively close now.” Vik grumbled. “As for how they got this close… unless they were very, very lucky-“

Noss had fallen silent for a while, listening to them all talk while he dabbed at his face with a fresh handkerchief. Finally, he spoke. “When did you wipe the chip?” He asked.

Vik frowned and pulled up some logs on his computer. “I did it as soon as I could.” He said, flicking through the files.

“‘As soon as you could’ isn’t ‘immediately’.” Noss said. He stood up from the low, squat seat where he sat. “How much time passed between the moment Kei got the chip in the first place, and when you sent the signal to wipe it?”

Vik pulled up further files, checking a chaotic stream of logs written in a programming script that TO was not comfortable enough with to read quickly. “Hard to tell, exactly.” They said. “Ideally, I’d track it from the moment the chip stopped recording TO’s vitals, but they had the chips on those elastic bands.”

TO’s ears dipped as they looked down at their hand. The new chip was now connected to a much more sturdy half-glove, which Vik said would be easy for them to remove, but impossible to be torn off. They didn’t feel guilty for their actions in removing the chip from their permanent location on the back of their hand… But having done so seemed to have caused a lot of problems.

“I’d say ten hours from the time Kei used the chip to contact DH.” Vik said after a while .”Give or take.”

“Ten hours.” Noss said. He looked to TO. “And I’m assuming you had information about our plans on your chip? Departure times? Course tracking? Perhaps calculations about fuel and supplies?”

TO felt the blood drain from their face, and their ears fall down. “Yes.” They whispered.

“And.. what security did you have on your chip?” Noss asked.

They didn’t have a chance to answer Noss as DH let a curse slip from their own lips first. “There is no such security on the chips.” DH said.

“Not even a password?” Noss asked. “No biometric confirmations? Not even two-factor authentication?”

“To be entirely fair, they shouldn’t be necessary.” Flit said. “They need to touch the body in order to work-“

“And they’re specialized to our skin: Synth skin.” Snout said. “And even if that weren’t the case, someone would need the connection we have in our brainstems to read the chip. In a sense… we provide all the security needed.”

“Except when a rogue synth decides to take your chip and run off with it.” Noss said, huffing now with irritation. The constant wetness on his skin seemed to dry up and his pupils narrowed.

“We’re actually the rogue synths.” GiDi said from where they stood behind Vik. “So they’re technically working as intended.”

“The new chip does have biometric confirmation requirements.” Vik said “Thankfully, it gets that just from touching your skin.”

“Well, yes, now you have security on that thing,” Noss said, “But it’s nearly unfathomable that King Decon would have allowed such a glaring security flaw! and now, because of that, we have to assume that Kei knows where we’re going, what supplies we have, how many people on on board the ship...” He huffed, “As for how he got access, I assume it’s not an issue to provide access to a different ship with the right authentication.” He huffed again and crossed his arms. In the silence that fell, he looked about at everyone staring at him. “What?”

“…you actually know what you’re talking about,” Tham said.

“Of course I do.” Noss said, “I held the damned position for years. I learned how to do the job on a basic level at least.” He looked back to DH. “Well, you seem like you know the technical stuff. Can a clean chip be synced to a ship remotely?”

“Yes. Easily.” DH said, “We have to change course. We need to find somewhere else to go.” They brought up a series of maps. “Is there any other location we can-“

“We don’t have the supplies.” GiDi said. “We have enough supplies to get to Scraprock-“

“Ok, but what does it matter if we get to Scraprock and they just show up later and murder us all?” Tham says, “We need to change our course!”

“...Maybe.” TO said, “But right now, all we need to do is worry about escaping that ship.” They looked to DH, who was still loading up information from star charts. “We can make a plan with our remaining supplies after we lose their ship.”

DH nodded. “Right.” They said, “No.. you’re right.” They looked back at the screen and bought up the local map once more. It showed their ship and Kei’s on screen. With a quick gesture of their hand, DH zoomed in until they could clearly see how the distance between the two ships was shrinking.

“Now that they’ve found us, they could be tracking us,” DH said. “If we want to get away, we need to stop that.”

“Well, get me close enough to actually establish a healthy signal and it’s done.” Vik said, “I’ll just need about five minutes to get in.”

“Will you?” DH asked, “It’s the same system as our ship, and if you still have the codes for TO’s old chip, and if Kei is accessing that ship with TO’s old chip, you can just access the system, right?”

Vik’s eyes went wide as his little tail flicked excitedly from side to side. “Yes! Yes, that would work!”

“At least this setup is going to work in our favor for now.” Noss grumbled, now sitting down in his chair again, “Still, getting close to them is the opposite of what we want to do, isn’t it?”

TO was already formulating a plan. They could power up their weapons systems and fight if they really had to, but they both had the same firepower and defensive systems. TO could perhaps outsmart Kei, but they’d still be at a disadvantage since their own ship’s weapon systems had been shut down to divert power and while it wouldn’t take too long to power it up again their weapons would take longer to fire as they had been allowed to idle too long. The other issue with this plan was that they had civilians on the ship, so they couldn’t risk taking on as much damage as Kei could.

Could TO outsmart Kei in combat? Probably. Was it a good idea to try? No.

“... Let’s do what we did in training.” TO said. “Back when we did that simulation with Kei and Q10 and the others.” TO looked at GiDi, “Remember? We made it seem like I was getting the flag, but I dropped it, and you got it while the others chased me."

“... We don’t really have an extra ship to use.” GiDi said as their ears flattened out.

“I know that!” TO said, “I don’t mean literally. We make them think that we’re going to rush into combat with them and get into combat position.” They pulled the ship’s information up on their chip. “We can divert power to the shields, and that should hold until Vik has their tracking system dealt with.”

“And then what? they’ve caught us at that point.” Tham said. “They won’t need to chase us. We’ll be right there.”

“If they open fire on us, Kei’s ship is going to divert its power from the engines to the weapons system. It’s more effective, and they’ll be trying to break down the shield. We won’t fire up our weapons system though, we’ll keep our engines hot so we can take off as soon as Vik is done!” they beamed with pride, their ears flicking up, “We’ll be out of sight by the time they redirect power and get up to speed.”

“...Do you think that Kei will fall for that, though?” Flit asked, “I actually watched that simulation you’re talking about, and it was a good trick, but it was just a trick. I doubt it would work on the same opponent a second time.” He glanced at TO, “And they seem to know your mind fairly well, so I assume they’re prepared for that kind of deception.”

“They do not!” TO hissed as their ears suddenly flicked back, pinning against their head, “They don’t know me at all!”

“...They got you to the storage room.” DH said softly. “And they convinced you to remove your armor.”

“That was different!” TO said, but even as they spoke, they had this awful feeling that maybe Flit was right. Kei had outsmarted them then. No, Kei had outsmarted them twice: The first time was when they were out scavenging for supplies, and the second time was in the storage room. They had also, somehow, gotten Avery to release them, which started the whole issue in the first place.

Kei had gotten smarter since they had that procedure done... Were they smarter than TO now? Were they better? For some reason, the thought shot through them like fire through their veins, and pooled in the pit of their stomach.

“...Hey.” GiDi said after a long moment of silence. TO looked up, almost expecting GiDi to give some reason they thought that TO’s plan would work, or to offer some reassurance that Kei wouldn’t predict TO’s thoughts that easily, but GiDi wasn’t looking at TO; they were looking at Flit.

“I might have an idea: tell me if this might work.”