My very earnest doctor’s name was Marion Trafalgar. As we strolled through the ops section of the bridge, and later over a leisurely dinner, he told me about his education as a physician on Syrenacia in the Yeltsin Mining Consortium. Yeltsin does not have a royal family, but his family is one of the more prominent ones within the governance, and L’Marchonase is his first cousin.
We were seated in one of the smaller lounges, watching the movement of multiple ships in and around the Silver Siren on giant screens. “So, what made you give up a lucrative career in the consortium? Why become a pirate?” I stirred my drink with my finger, tilted my head, and gave him (what I hoped was) my most fetching smile.
He laughed, took a sip of his whiskey, and swallowed. “I have a legacy. Enri and I grew up hearing about our ancestor, who was instrumental in unionizing the miners into the consortium it is today. In those days, the human population dominated the Kaprosian miners. The Kaprosian treatment was not equitable, and they were little more than slaves. Our ancestor found out the hard way as he was accused of a crime he did not commit and was sentenced to work in the mines. He eventually escaped and was determined to avenge himself against the mining outfit he thought had set him up. He and his gang stole equipment mining payrolls and was known for spreading his ill-gotten gains around, enough to help miners with smaller claims out and struggling locals. He helped to organize the Kaprosians, so when they finally rebelled, they succeeded. Our ancestor was killed in the final battle, but we grew up hearing about his exploits.”
“Ah, storytime. A bit hard to live up to, don’t you think?” He became more attractive as I drank, so I resolved to slow down a bit on the Kaprosian shandies or whatever it was their bartender tossed at me.
“Enri could have done anything he wanted. But I can’t see him ever wanting to oversee mining operations or run a corporation. It suits him to persuade others to want to join him in some of his more hair-brained enterprises. He’s one of the luckiest individuals I’ve ever met because the crazier the enterprise is, it has a better chance of success. He’s made us rich men. Yeah, we’re outlaws on Altamira, Ualune, The Realm worlds, and a few others, but he has an uncanny knack for taking advantage of unethical situations and unscrupulous individuals.” He sipped his drink and his eyes crinkled at the corners. I decided I liked him.
“You like championing causes then?”
He laughed. “It would be simplistic to say we see ourselves robbing the rich to give to the poor because we don’t. Not always. There’s a strong element of enlightened self-interest going on, which would negate the altruistic tendencies. Yet, we don’t forget our friends either.”
My turn to laugh. “How very noble of you.”
My perusal of the Silver Siren ended with a visit to his quarters. Like the conference room, his suite of rooms had a long redwood table, although he had an adjacent kitchen and a food synth with an on-demand menu. He also had floor-to-ceiling programmable plasma screens that could show the exterior of the ship, various planetscapes, or my favorite, Idorica, the capital city of Altamira, at dusk.
His sheets were also Parchense museli fiber, the softest you can imagine. His suite reminded me of holos I have seen of the twelve thousand auran a night hotel suite on Kell station.
I am a habitually early riser, so the ship’s clock had not reached 0500 when I stumbled into his ‘fresher and discovered the water shower. I indulged myself and lazed under the warmest setting for a good five chronos before my com chimed. I found a towel (heated no less!) and wrapped it around me. I found my fingercase with my tooth kit and stuck the brush end in my mouth while I read the system message from Fred.
Winter had also not returned to the ship. While not an immediate cause for alarm, it made me uneasy. Fred is used to her idiosyncrasies and knows how to handle them or when to lock her in her cabin when it is not safe for her or anyone else. Fred informed me that he was unaware of her whereabouts and that she had missed her scheduled communication time.
I yanked on my shipsuit as fast as I could when Marion stumbled out of bed and offered to make me breakfast and cafcoca, which I admit was tempting. The shipwide alert suddenly blaring out of every com system in the room made me wake up a lot faster than the cafcoca would, though.
“Fred crewmember Grace, report to the battle bridge conference room immediately!” The ship’s mainframe had a pleasant voice but sounded disquieted.
Fred chimed in less than a few seconds later. “Ellora, follow your tweeter to the battle bridge. You are needed there. It sounds bad.”
I waved Marion off and grabbed my boots from the vestibule by the door. I was tugging them on and waiting for the lift when he pressed a meatroll into my hand and a small thermacup of cafcoca. “You may need it.” He said and waved as the lift doors closed.
I jogged down the main passage, which seemed familiar after last night’s grand tour. I had to dodge early morning on-shift personnel, but the ship had not yet moved into mainday. I wolfed down the roll and followed it with a slug from the thermacup. I was still brushing crumbs off my wrinkled shipsuit when the second lift deposited me onto the battle bridge conference room.
L’Marchonase was standing at the back of the room, his arms folded across his chest. The rest of the room was clear, except for Winter, who was standing in the middle of a floor-sized battle holotank. I could smell the alcohol the second I walked in.
“Oh, chuksa! What have you done!” I snapped at him and skidded to a stop a healthy distance away from Winter.
He shot me an incredulous glance. “What did I do? Nothing. I found her like this.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get too close if you value your life…and keep everyone out of here. She can be volatile when she’s been drinking.”
He nodded and muttered something into his com. I stopped paying attention to him and watched her instead.
She walked in and out of the floor-to-ceiling holo projection of the Pertumit Garundi system and muttered to herself, but it wasn’t in a language I recognized. She waved a glass at something and gestured with it to various points on the map. She held the whiskey bulb loosely in the other hand, and it dripped out of the broken tip of the bulb and onto the floor. She raised her head and seemed to see me, but her eyes held the haunted glassy-eyed stare that she got during her episodes.
I heard from Darryl that Winter had spent two prolonged periods of time in hibernation sleep. The first lasted at least three hundred cerens and the second a little longer than fifty. Hybersleep capsules, modern ones, are not designed for prolonged hibernation unless there is a reason to need sleeper beds for long-range exploration and the like. Three hundred cerens is bound to scramble your mind for a while, and if someone were willing to undergo that process a second time, well, they must have some pretty big problems if they are trying to avoid them by hibernating.
The manufacturers do not recommend using hibernation capsules for prolonged periods for a reason, and never more than once. Darryl thought her episodes were caused by hybersleep, but the longer I’ve been around her, the less convinced of that I am.
I kept my distance even though I thought I could dodge her if I had to. She has reflexes as I do. If she were human, the speed of her movement would seem unnatural and much like the legends about my people. Keep in mind I’ve seen Narellian in a fight. He’s fast but not nearly as fast as Winter, and I know Winter isn’t a Violeteer like me. My gut tells me she’s something else and perhaps not all Hashtaaleen. So, I feel my wariness is justified.
“Winter!” She flinched at the sound of her name but was otherwise unresponsive. She turned her back to me and muttered something that sounded vaguely like Hashtaali, but to my ears, it didn’t sound right.
“Winter! Speak Standard so we can understand you.” I moved back into her line of sight. Her eyes felt like they were burning right through me; such was the intensity of her gaze. She moved to turn away from me again, and I darted in front of her.
“Speak Standard! I know you are trying to tell us something about this map, aren’t you?” I guessed wildly, trying to keep her in front and facing me.
Her ship suit was torn and grimy. She’d undone the front and tied the arms of the suit around her waist, exposing the thin gray short-sleeved tunic beneath it. The shirt was also grimy, like she’d rolled around in the garbage chute for a day or so. Her knuckles on both hands were bloody. She had a cut on her cheek that was oozing blood and dripping down her chin. She wore her extendstav on a clip at her waist, and the edge of it was bloody. She, or someone, had hacked off her hair. It fell unevenly to just under her chin.
“She’s been in a fight,” I commented to L’Marchonase over my shoulder. “Check to see who’s in your morgue or infirmary.” I moved again to keep in Winter’s line of sight as she made to turn away from me again. I could see other wounds, one across her abdomen, which looked superficial but bleeding slowly. She also had parallel marks on her shoulder. They looked like claw marks to me.
“You’d better check the location of the Ni’chine delegation, just in case.” I had a hunch from Winter’s injuries she might have crossed one of them while drinking.
L’Marchonase spoke up from behind me. “One Ni’chine is dead. The other is in a hibernation pod until my cousin can figure out how to stabilize her injuries. How did you know?”
I darted in front of Winter again as she turned and gestured at something. “Winter! Focus on my voice. Listen to me. What is important about this map? Speak Standard so we can understand you.”
Winter flung her arm out, and the bulb of alcohol went flying. It smashed into the bulkhead and shattered. She slowly sagged to her knees and cradled her right arm with the other.
“Winter! You are injured. Let me check on you. I won’t harm you; you know that. You know me.” I know I was pleading with her a little bit, but the last time I saw Darryl talk her down, she would only let Darryl touch her, but that was not without a lot of hissing and growling. Darryl would repeatedly use her name, and while I wasn’t sure it would help, it wouldn’t hurt either.
“Get me a medipak.” I held my hand out as L’Marchonase rummaged through one of the emergency cases along the walls. “Winter, let me help.”
The medipak slid along the floor and stopped at my feet. I reached down and picked it up. Along with an antibiotic spray, he’d found an anti-inebriate solution.
I kept eye contact with Winter as I slowly approached her. I had no idea if her physiology would respond to the anti-inebriate medication and, moreover, how I would deploy it. Typically, it was a hypospray used in the eyes. I would have to get close to her and force her to look at me long enough to spray it in her face.
There were a few hundred problems with this idea, the least of which would be her trying to kill me. I was racking my brain for anything I could remember about what Darryl did when Fred overrode the shipwide channel on the Silver Siren and began to sing.
Fred does not have the greatest “voice” in the universe, but he does have a respectable baritone and great range. I did not recognize the song or the language he sang in, but the effect on Winter was instantaneous. She cried out and tumbled to the floor in a sobbing heap. I ran to her side and tugged her onto her back. She made no move to resist as she took in great gasping breaths. The hypospray left her blinking, and I could see the second membrane in her eyes close and reopen. It must have penetrated because she began vomiting up the remaining alcohol in her system almost immediately. I had to drag her to a sitting position to prevent her from accidentally inhaling the spent spirits. L’Marchonase, or someone, found her a receptacle, and we let her clear the alcohol from her stomach. I looked up, and Dr. Trafalgar was there with a medical crew. He handed me a blanket, and I tucked it around Winter, partially because she had the shakes and to keep her arms and hands hindered at her sides. L’Marchonase found a chair, and rather than sit in it, and she leaned against its leg. She had her eyes closed, so it was difficult to ascertain if the strange glassy look had subsided.
“Your ship has some interesting talents. But I think he can cease humming now.” L’Marchonase stood back and then began slowly pacing the room.
“Fred, you can stop. I think she’ll be alright.” I muttered into my com.
“When this incident is over, I think you should explain how your ship overrode my ship’s com system.” L’Marchonase did not sound angry. In fact, he sounded curious and slightly alarmed.
I nodded my head because I wasn’t sure myself. My best guess is something Winter programmed into him in case of emergencies.
“Winter, can you open your eyes and look at me? The doctor would like to….”
“No exams. I’m fine.” She croaked and made to get up. Instead, she struggled with the blanket.
“Winter, it is just to make sure the alcohol is completely out of your system.” I scooted closer.
“Water.” She mumbled to the floor. Trafalgar apparently heard her and handed me a careen of water. I handed it to her by the strap, and she took a small sip. She coughed. “No exam.”
“Winter…” I began.
“I said, no exam.” She moved so quickly that my eyes even had trouble catching the movement. She set the careen down, tossed off the blanket, and stood in one fluid movement, leaving me to scuttle back away from her. She opened her eyes, and the strangeness was gone.
L’Marchonase studied her for a moment. “What happened?”
“A couple of the feistier recruits wanted to collect the bounty on me. I dissuaded them.”
“Ah, that explains the injuries. We will review the internal security eyes to verify your story. In the meantime, you gained access to this room and were reviewing the star charts. Would you care to explain why, grandmere”? L’Marchonase stopped pacing and stood over by the control console.
“Don’t call me that. I’m not related to you.” Winter snapped at him.
L’Marchonase bowed, “As you wish. But you are related to me, perhaps not physically, but spiritually. You knew my great, great, great, grandfather, Emerson Boudreaux or rather, John Trafalgar, did you not?”
Winter sighed. “As much as I try to forget, yes, yes, I did.”
“And you were the one to suggest that he unite the Kaprosians to form the mining consortium it is today.”
Winter cocked her head and glared at him. “It got him killed.”
L’Marchonase nodded. “It did, but he accomplished what no one else had thought to do about an unfair and exploitative situation. The consortium thrives because of what he did.”
Winter snorted. “Posthumously. He would never have liked to have seen himself venerated the way he is today.”
L’Marchonase’s expression softened. “You cared for him, didn’t you?”
Winter coughed, gestured at the careen, and I handed it to her. She took a long sip from it. “I did. What of it? It was a long time ago.”
L’Marchonase stroked his beard and sat down in one of the club chairs ringing the room. “When I sent word to Narellian to ask for you specifically to come to hear me out, truthfully, I did not expect you to show up. I gathered from the aftermath of events that you probably wanted nothing more to do with the Boudreaux family. Except I’d heard your captain left you with serious debt.”
“I’m solvent.” Winter shrugged.
I frowned. We were solvent on Ualune and now Fairelawn, but not anywhere else, at least not that I knew anyway. I thought hard about what I’d heard about the Boudreauxs of Yeltsin. I’d always heard one of their disinherited sons was instrumental in the forming of the consortium. The doctor’s story began to make sense to me.
“I don’t pretend I understand humans. To me, you are all nomads in the night sky, and your logic baffles me. So, no, I have no idea why your many generations’ great father did the things he did, only that they seemed to him to be the right thing to do. In my opinion, it would have been correct to stay with your loved ones, but he did not feel the same way, so there is that.” Winter took another sip from the careen, swished it around in her mouth, and spat it out on the floor. A flurry of cleaning bots scuttled out and moped it up before she sat the careen down again.
L’Marchonase cocked his head. “You think he should have stayed with you?”
Winter made a harsh sound with her mouth. “No. Your many generations mother, that’s who. A sad mess and I am not surprised he became a pirate. He was happier, and I could say more, but as I said, he’s dead, and the truth is less romantic than you think.”
L’Marchonase was quiet for a few chronos. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. “I would like to know the truth someday, though. Will you tell me or at least write it down, so the record is clear?”
Winter sighed and nodded slowly. Her expression changed to one of sorrow, and I thought, for once, she looked her age. But then she straightened her shoulders, and the stoic expression she always wears was back.
“You seem concerned about the star map. Can you tell me why?” L’Marchonase turned on the projection so that the holo generated floor to ceiling. He stood and walked over to the furthest edge showing Pertumit Garundi.
Winter pinched the bridge of her nose and rubbed the tip. I may have been the only one that saw her fingertips come away bloody. She wiped her hand on her shirt, and the blood faded in with the other stains.
“I…” She frowned, shook her head, and walked into the projection. “Would you expand outward and give me a three-dimensional view?” She glanced over at me. “Is there an analgesic in that medpack?”
I rummaged through it and found another hypospray. I handed it to her, and she used it and sprayed a bit into her mouth.
She studied the map. The star of Garundi hung in the air, as did the star of the Kerlian system. “Did you notice this?” She pointed at an area seemingly devoid of stars just below the Garundi system.
L’Marchonase nodded. “The mapmakers did not extend it out far enough. I guess they thought both systems were rather remote.”
“It is not the remoteness, although that is a factor. This broad area here,” She swept her hand along the section of darkness. “Is mined. This is the forward edge of Bildarthian space.”
“Mines? The Kerlians only mentioned they had only two solid trade routes in and out of the area.” L’Marchonase frowned.
Winter swept her hand along the broadsides of both planets in question. “Your primary and secondary routes have to be here because the rest would be too dangerous. Anything else would cross over into their space. Unfortunately, it will be difficult to tell if you have crossed into Bildarthian territory until it is too late.”
“What do you mean?” I had to ask.
Winter directed her attention to me. Her eyes didn’t have a glassy look, but she sounded as she was reciting something. I doubt L’Marchonase noticed, but I’ve known her longer. She pretended to be alright, but she wasn’t.
“They use borath-barillian mines. They attach to your hull, usually in large limpets or smaller microdust clouds. They eat through your ship’s superstructure and destabilize it. The second you charge your vanes to jump, you get peeled like a pelion egg. Or you accidentally trawl through a chain of them. They can mimic your hull signature and fool your repair sensors, so you don’t notice the damage until it is too late. Ask your liaisons from both sides how many ships they’ve lost and where. Hopefully, they’ve kept records. Ambushing their shipments coming or going from either system could be a challenge simply because of the proximity to Bildarthian space. The mines could also have drifted. It depends on how often this section of the border is maintained.”
“Chucksa venerati!” L’Marchonase swore and pulled up other star maps. I watched as Winter slowly began to sag downward. I grabbed her arm and propelled her out of the room, leaving him still cursing savagely behind us.
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