Pertumit Garundi 12

They weren’t just bounty hunters…they were headhunters.  Inside the hold were scores of heads of various alien species.  There were four unfortunate Hashtaaleen at the front, hung by their gill rakers.  There were two Metanids and a Wandro bound by its tusks.  Each of the heads had been sliced off and none too cleanly by the looks of it.  To my horror, there was also a Violeteer, her heliotrope-colored irises blown wide open, and her expression caught in her last scream.

She was no one I knew.  But the fact they had hunted Violeteer left me disquieted.  I got the seven hells out of there and made for the bridge.  I wear prosthetic lenses and old-fashioned frames sometimes to cover up my distinctive eye color.  I pulled up the manifest again to see if they’d recorded where they took their trophies.  The Hashtaaleen had all come from a slave hunt on Darbulatan.  I scanned down, skipping over the Metanid and Wandro entries, and finally, I found the entry for the Violeteer woman.  She’d been pulled from an Altamiran freighter during a raid.  They found her hiding in a shipping crate.  My bet was they only found her because she wanted them to find her and protected the rest of her family by doing so.  I felt sick.

There was a buyer’s name listed on the manifest although I expected it to be an alias.  The ladies would be paid forty thousand auran, the amount of Lady Hrissah’s bounty, for the Violeteer alone.  I made a note of the name. As I flipped through the manifest my neck started to tingle.  I’ve learned to trust the feeling, so I dove for the deck.  An energy bolt fried the rest of the manifest panel I’d been reading.  I threw one of my knives in the direction of the blast and was rewarded with a grunt.  I rolled from behind the acceleration couch and threw another. 

The human was one of the slaves the Ni’chine had ridden.  He calmly pulled the knife out of his shoulder, tossed it on the floor, and shook his finger at me.  “You shouldn’t be trespassing, little girl.”

“You should be in the brig!” I snapped and dove back around the couch as another energy bolt came my way.

“I guess I’m not the only one good at picking locks around here.  Although, I am curious to know how you did it, little one.”

I used my talent to throw my voice. “Who are you calling little, chucksa?”

To his credit, he didn’t follow the voice, but he did hesitate, which gave me a second to draw my sidearm and fire.

The bolt to the face should have taken a human down.  When I peered over the couch, it was clear I was not dealing with a human.  He’d dropped all glamour and I’d dealt him a nasty burn.  He was easily as tall as Winter but instead of a face, he had a ghastly visage of muscle and bone.  I caught a glimpse of pointed ears and sharp teeth before he whirled and dove down the hatch toward the escape pods.  I ran after him and fired again shattering part of a panel over his head.  Sparks rained down on his long black hair and he twisted to fire at me. I dove to the floor and the bolt sizzled overhead.  He made it to the escape pod and slammed the latch with a fist and threw himself inside.  I scrambled to my feet and tried to aim at the pod controls.  The being laughed at me, and I could hear him in my head.  “Nice try, little brownie.  You’ll hear from us soon enough.”

The controls explosively ejected the pod into space and slammed the airlock doors shut.  I ran back to the bridge and tried to get the ship’s gun batteries online. “Fred! Target that escape pod! Disable it!”

I could only watch as Fred took aim and winged the pod with a volley of fire.  It wobbled precariously and I waited to see if the Siren would put a tractor beam on it.  Instead, the pod seemed to melt in front of my eyes. Parts of it were breaking off and dissolving.

“I didn’t think I hit it that hard” Fred commented in my ear.  It took me a moment to process what I saw.  I found the magnify on their ship’s cameras and swore.

“Fred, send a ship-wide warning to the Siren and break off.  That’s a swarm of those micro mines and they appear to be headed right at us.”

“Ellora, where should I go? They could be everywhere.”

Fred had a point although he was a sitting pelion attached to the Siren.  I thought hard for a sec. “The only reason why I saw them was I got the magnify on in time.  Otherwise, they are nearly invisible.  They flare slightly when they are dissolving hull plating.  If we could somehow focus on what caused the flare…”

“We might be able to send out something on that mimics the plates and catch the phenomenon on record to analyze.” Fred finished for me.  I am always amazed at how intuitive he is for an artificial lifeform. 

“Hang on. I’ve got an idea.”  The Siren started to move away from the last known position of the mines. 

“Whatever you’ve got in mind, you’d better hurry.  The navigators on the Siren want to jump to Garundi space.”

I could hear Winter in the background yelling at someone, probably the Siren’s bridge crew.  “Don’t deploy your vanes, you karking bunch of sojoni chuksa! Does no one listen to me or your Captain?”  I winced at the sudden increase in volume.

I could see Fred break free of the umbilical and dive down beneath the main ship. “Grace, where the…” There was a burst of static as one of the smaller ancillary ships suddenly seemed to lose attitude control and plowed into the side of the nearest larger numbered ship.  I hoped, selfishly, it was Valoise’s ship, but I didn’t think we’d get that lucky.

“I’m on the Ni’chine ship.  I’m going to take it out.” Fortunately, the main engineering section appeared to operate independently of the battery system.  I fired up the Hrissok’s engines with the help of the translation matrix provided by Fred on my reader.  “Fred, I want you to lock onto my tweeter.  I’m going for a space jaunt, and I want you to pick me up when you can.”

I set the ship on course for where I thought the cloud of micro mines had drifted.  I ran through the filthy corridors to the airlock and spent a frantic moment hunting for one of their safety ship suits.  I finally found one, fortunately, it must have been Lady Mdeeph’s as she was the taller of the two Ni’chine.  The suit had a plexisteel ring around the helmet seal.  I prayed the suit would not attract the trigger mechanism on the mines.  I crammed myself into the suit and believe me, it was a tight fit.  The smell wasn’t much better, but at least I could scrub the oxygen.  I cycled the airlock and used a tether gun to attach myself to one of the vane struts. 

I’m not one for zero-gee which is why Winter always does the spacewalks.  It messes with my balance and the vertigo isn’t a pleasant sensation.  I gritted my teeth and watched the other ships try to figure out where they should go to avoid the mines.  One of the larger numbered ships deployed its vanes and clearly tried to generate a singularity. Instead, its kieren drive exploded propelling it into four other ships and causing them to either explode or hit other ships in the vicinity. My suit helmet blacked out the brightest of explosions and fortunately for me, I turned away to untangle my tether, so I wasn’t blinded.

 I spotted an odd little dot on the port vane generator and on investigation discovered one of the mines steadily dissolving the hull plating around the inertial system’s manifold.  The mine wasn’t much larger than my hand and detached with a hard tug.  Once I pulled it off the ship, it seemed to become inert.  I studied it and if I didn’t know better, I would have thought it was a lifeform.  It had a u-shaped black body with a prehensile segmented tail.  The tail retracted into the body but not before I saw a wicked set of pincers on the tip of the tail.  The carapace of the thing appeared to have an upper section and a lower one where a set of ten jointed legs dangled.  After a chrono or two, the legs also retracted inside the body.  It had no eyes that I could discern.  It had two short stubby antennae on the upper protrusion, so I thought the sensor array was housed there.

  The Ni’chine ship powered down and started to drift.  I watched as the mines ate through the thinner parts of the hull.  I knew when they’d hit the oxygen generators as the ship vented vapor into space.  I had to move out of the way as a bubble of engine coolant fizzed up out of a seal and pushed the ship further away from the Siren.  I could not see the Fred.  I checked the gauge on my oxygen tank.  It was still full, and if it was correct, I had six soliss to pray this little stunt was worth the effort.  I was cold, and I checked the internal heat which registered as on at least.  The Ni’chine have fur so it made sense they would not need to heat their suits as much.  My teeth were starting to chatter, and my breath frosted against my helmet making it difficult to see.  At least the explosions stopped.  The Siren and the pirate fleet managed to dodge the rest of the mine swarm.

“Ellora Grace, report.” Winter sounded calm but by the way she spat out my name let me know she was anything but. The antennae on the Fred was powerful but I had no idea if it was powerful enough to discern a suit com out of all the background noise, but I spoke into my com anyway.

“Winter, I got one.  I’m tethered to the Ni’chine ship although the mines are eating through it faster than I thought possible.  I think the starboard vanes are all compromised, and I’m too far away now but I think the Ni’chine had a Descubirre Kieren engine.  I know the mines disabled the manifold because the engine coolant is creating a colored glow over the aft section.  I auto-powered the ship down so no kieren reaction is happening but the ship will ignite eventually. I’d like to not be here when it happens.  Have you a lock on me yet?”

There was a long pause.

I thought maybe they hadn’t heard me.  I checked my suit oxygen and tried to slow my breathing.  Realistically, I could freeze to death long before I ran out of air.  I studied the inert mine and wondered how it sensed hull plating.  I also wondered how in the seven hells we were going to get it aboard the Fred for study.

I dodged flotsam and jetsam from the Ni’chine ship.  One or more of the mines breached an airlock, as tools, a torn ship suit, and containers of luxury foods floated past me.  Idly, I wondered if they had an account with the Paloma Group or stole from someone who had.  The box of Realmese butterbee jelly infused with auran flakes made me think about the Violeteer woman.  I decided when this adventure was over, should I survive it, I was going to track down the name of the buyer and pay them a visit.

I watched a small cloud of mines float past me, past the crates of organic materials, and latch themselves onto a piece of metal from what I thought was left of the airlock. These mines were smaller than the one I held and would be nearly impossible to see even with magnification.  They looked like bits of carbon moving in a murmuration over the metal. Strangely, they moved together, away from the chunk, and floated on to the main body of the ship.

I wondered what it was about the piece they didn’t like, so I used my suit thrusters to nudge myself toward it. My sample mine twisted toward the metal and extended its feet.  I allowed it to touch the metal chunk and it appeared to tap it a few times before retracting into itself again.

Huh. Well, that was interesting. It made no sign it intended to go to the ship, like the others.  I studied the metal hunk and wondered what was different about it.  I couldn’t tell anything visually, but perhaps it had a different composition than the rest of the ship.  Fred could tell but he and Winter had troubles of their own.  If they ran into a swarm of those micro mines, they might not even know they had a serious problem. 

I wondered if my suit had any diagnostic equipment.  Unfortunately, I left my Ni’chine language translation matrix on the ship along with my reader.  Fortunately, most ship suits, especially the airlock variety, have either universal point me symbols or translations in Standard.  I studied the controls on the sleeve of the suit.  I’d already figured out the thrusters as they were in point me directions. I thought the suit might be used for spacewalks to make minor repairs or help with cargo.  If so, I might be able to run a rough scan of the metal piece to determine if there was anything different about it.  Meteoroids, small cometary debris, and certain types of gasses are problematic for space travel.  If the debris is fine enough, it can get past your shields, which is why most systems outlawed particle mines.  I doubt the Bildarthians knew or cared about the Navarran Accords. 

Anyway, I didn’t have anything better to do so I kept up a running monologue with Fred, assuming he could hear me and decided to figure out what each button on the sleeve did for the suit.

“Fred, Winter…I have a fascinating view of this system, wherever it is.  Amazingly, there is nothing here, which is like the rest of deep space real estate.  I have little better to do but hang on to my little mine, wait to be rescued, or run out of air, whichever happens first.  Normally, I would not waste the oxygen talking, but I think the audio transmission will help you find me.  So, I am recording this and sending in microbursts in hopes you can triangulate my location.  I am still attached to the Ni’chine ship, but I am at maximum tether to avoid debris from the ship as best I can.  Of course, a large lump of space rock could easily sever the connection too, and I am not where I can grab on to anything.  I’ve found a section of the ship which does not seem to be on the mines list of things to destroy.  If I can find the beacons on this suit, provided it has any, I am going to attach one to the hunk of metal.  I am certain we should analyze this piece as there is something about it the mines don’t like.  My little mine, the one I captured from the ship, will only tap on it, and I watched an entire small swarm land on it and leave again.  Grace out.”

My first decision was to find a beacon.  Beacons tend to be small, and their main use is to tag cargo.  You’d be surprised at how many times cargo crates, boxes, and bags do not have good containment fields.  So, as freight haulers, we’ve had our share of crates come in half empty.  One of my first jobs on the Fred was to check containment fields on crates, and physically check cargo manifests.  The bills of lading might say the entire cargo was there but sometimes we’d find boxes of goods floating around the docks because their crate containment was faulty.  Or as salvagers, we’d find a ship heavily damaged by well, whatever damaged it, and we’d spacewalk to rope in drifting cargo.  Beacons made it easy to put a tractor on any crates and haul them in. 

I found what I thought was the attachment projector, but it occurred to me, any lateral movement by me would cause me to drift on a trajectory close to the Ni’chine ship.  I also didn’t want to bounce into the chunk since some of the edges of the metal looked sharp, and I didn’t want to cut a hole in my suit. I didn’t want to be near the ship when it blew. The piece of metal was static, meaning it wasn’t tumbling or rotating.  I didn’t want to cause it to start either.  Then it occurred to me to use my mine to get me close enough without hitting it at the wrong angle. 

It took some doing.  I’d already drifted a good distance away since the last experiment with the mine.  I tapped the thrusters just enough to start forward momentum and let the mine drag me the rest of the distance to the metal.  As before, the mine extended its feet and tapped the piece. While it was evaluating the piece as a source for dinner, I manually attached the beacon and activated it. 

The mine acted as before and I almost lost my grip on it because it moved with more force this time, as if it wanted to get away from the piece as fast as possible.  We drifted away and the tether to the ship tightened.  I dodged another bubble of engine coolant and a glob of chuksa from the waste containment system.  I stuck a beacon on my little mine in case I lost my grip on it.  Then, I recorded another message for Fred and Winter and sent it as a microburst.

I spent the next three or four soliss in moments of sheer terror and vertigo, trying not to get covered in whatever substances were leaking from the ship, and wiggling every part of my body I could so as not to freeze to death. Even with the suit heat on high, hypothermia was a serious concern.  I was concerned, believe me.

My suit com activated but all I got was a broken-up message from Fred.  “Getting the fleet to safety…sweeping for mines…come find you…activate beacon…”  Well, I’d done that already so all I could do was admire the lights from distant stars and the phosphorescent glow from the tail end of the Ni’chine ship.  It reminded me of a tale I’d read when I was a teenager about the phenomenon on water planets of golden tides and the glowing ionic discharge caused by strong atmospheric storms aboard sailing ships. 

I’m not a religious person, unlike my father who insisted I follow the old ways when I lived in his palace on Altamira.  I keep it confined to an oath now and again.  But, out there in the black, all by myself, I decided to have a mental conversation with Oberonae and Dantiana.  I explained I’d been a little bit lax in keeping traditions and I would rectify the oversight if they would just see fit to send someone to fetch me before my oxygen ran out.  I remember promising to build an altar for my ancestors and to them aboard the Fred.  I also promised to keep it maintained so this was not a one-and-done promise.  I remember my oxygen tank registering as low, but I don’t remember losing consciousness.

I was either dreaming or hallucinating from hypoxia.  But I remember a craft and it was small, about the same size as an Altamiran fighter.  It was like a solid oval, and I remember thinking it looked like a seedpod from a Banyaran tree.  It had no propulsion I could discern, no windows or canopies to open.  It glided up to me and I remember being amazed at the lovely swirling patterns of pink and iridescence on the ship’s exterior.  I don’t remember an airlock.  One moment I was drifting in space and the next I was aboard the craft.  A pinkish-colored tendril pulled my helmet off, and I remember taking a deep breath of soft, fragrant air.  I could not tell you what the fragrance was, only it was like the small white stephanicus blossoms from the alpine regions of my home planet.  I still had the mine and it remained inert the entire time I was aboard the ship.  I got the impression I wasn’t inside long.  I had no sensation of movement or vibration from the engines.  The ship had no navigation panels or piloting chairs.  It appeared hollow inside with only depressions on the floor of the craft.  I tested the area where I lay with my gloved hand, and it seemed spongy and soft.  The next thing I knew, my helmet snapped back on, and I found myself once again drifting in space.  The strange craft departed the same way it came, and it vanished into the blackness with considerable speed.

My oxygen tanks were refilled.  The craft left me, my mine, and the chunk of metal where I could see the fleet amassing closer to (what I guessed to be) the heliopause of Pertumit Garundi.  I could hear ship traffic chatter on my com loud and clear.  My tweeter started beeping, which meant the Fred was within strong transmission range, so I started yelling into my suit’s transmitter.  I looked down and the mine was no longer in my hand but in a gelatinous casing.  Whatever or whoever took me aboard the ship took great pains to wrap the mine up.  Not only did it have the clear gel housing, but it was also wrapped in sheeting that held it like a pouch.  I discovered my glove was tied to the pouch so the mine wouldn’t get away easily.

To say I had a religious epiphany would be an understatement.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Pertumit Garundi 11

L’Marchonase called a meeting of his senior captains and included Winter in the group. I went along with her, mainly because I wasn’t entirely sure she was over her episode. I knew she’d been asleep for most of our downtime because Fred was monitoring her, and he told me she’d only woken up for the system message from L’Marchonase.

She looked marginally better after a shower and in a clean ship suit. She’d done nothing about the state of her hair, though. L’Marchonase saw her and frowned. The other captains from L’Marchonase’s interior fleet wisely said nothing about her or her appearance. We met in one of the stately board rooms near the bridge of the Silver Siren. Rather than name his ancillary ships, L’Marchonase’s fleet all had numbers, so the captains gave their names and the number of their ship. Fortunately, not all the captains were present, or we’d probably still be sitting there. Only the largest, the ones close to the size of the Siren herself, were included. I lost interest after the first five ships, but there was at least fifteen larger craft. L’Marchonase dove into the subject without preamble.

“We have an additional complication. I’ve asked the Sambrosians to gather information from their contacts about ships that went missing from Pertumit Garundi space and sent a direct query to the transit control of Kerlian about their absent craft. We have solid information which indicates the broad swaths of open space on our star charts are mined by Bildarthian BB mines.

One of the captains, the one in the blue cap with a red and purple tattoo covering half of his face, spoke up, “You mean, stories about the Bildarthians are true? Are we expecting a Hashtaaleen ghost to walk in here any second and make us run for our mothers?” He guffawed, and the others shifted in their chairs.

Winter said nothing. She studied him for a few seconds before she spoke up. “Bildarthia was the name my people gave to them after we’d traded with them for a while. I think the word might translate into “angry crabs” in Standard. Before that, they were only known as “more foreigners from somewhere else.” She shrugged.

One of the other captains spoke up. She was humanoid with deep purple skin and long silver braids tied with silver clasps. “Hashtaal was in the Ebrak Seran section of space. Nowhere near here. How did the mines get here?”

Winter spoke up again. “Bildarthian space is vast. I have never heard of a ship that returned from a reconnaissance mission to determine how much space they hold. I know their only foray into Ebrak Seran was to trade with my people and a few other races in the vicinity.”

Blue cap spoke up again, “You expect me to believe you are Hashtaaleen? Pardon my skepticism, but they’ve been dead or enslaved for centuries, Ebrak Seran is home to more than a few lifeless rocks, and no one has seen a Bildarthian in recent memory. How do we know these mines still exist?”

Winter gave him a faint, closed-lipped smile. “Furian’s Maze exists, and no one doubts it does even though the navigational hazards are largely invisible. BB mines are nearly impossible to detect. Understand the Bildarthians the Hashtaali knew were paranoid, secretive, and strange. They had an unreasonable fear of the Hashtaaleen, which is why the mines protect their section of space. My people figured out where they were but were never interested in tracking down their homeworld. We found the forward edge and traced it. We found out about BB mines the hard way when they used them in our shipping lanes, creating an embargo on our trade.

The woman spoke up again. “Everything I’ve read about the Hashtaal/Bildarthian conflict doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. They attacked Hashtaal for seemingly no reason, destroyed the planet, and promptly retreated into their section of space, never to be heard from again. I realize this discussion is off track, and our meeting is what to do about these mines. But, what if knowing more about the conflict could lead us to a way to deactivate the mines?”

L’Marchonase started to speak, but Winter held up her hand. “You are Ebroni, aren’t you? Your people came from T’altachuri in Ebrak Seran before leaving your planet and resettling on Ebron, correct?”

The woman straightened and raised her chin. “We did. How is the information relevant?”

Winter shrugged. “Hashtaal appealed to T’altachuri for help when the Bildarthians attacked. Your ancestors refused. Perhaps you should start there if you want to know what happened.”

“Winter…” I leaned over to her and shook my head. She shrugged her shoulders again and looked at her hands clasped in her lap.

L’Marchonase cleared his throat. “As insane as this sounds, I think the only way to defeat such a weapon is to acquire one and reverse engineer it. We can work out where the mines might be from reports of missing ships, but someone will have to go out there, risk their ship, and actually bring one back.”

“Or we can just attack them in their shipping lanes. Let that cannon fodder of recruits deal with the BB mines. My crew discussed what we think is an issue…too many people mean less profit in shares.” 

Blue cap struck me as a greedy piece of chucksa.

“Keep in mind, Valoise, one-half of nothing is still nothing.” L’Marchonase’s tone was deceptively mild.

I spoke up. “Have you drone ships? How about using a drone or something unmanned to go out there into the minefield and collect one? It might eat through the drone proxy, but at least no one dies in the process. Maybe something shielded from the borath? So, it doesn’t trigger?”

Winter glanced up at me and gave a slight nod of her head. The conversation moved off the Hashtaaleen and Bildarthian conflict and onto practical ideas on how to deal with the mines. I listened for a while as the ship captains discussed what they should do. My attention was pulled away from the conversation by Winter, who was covertly studying Valoise, and the purple-skinned captain, whose name I didn’t catch. Valoise and the other captain were having a silent exchange, and I wondered if we’d have to fight our way off the Silver Siren or wait to be accosted later.

Not long after, L’Marchonase dismissed the room. Winter and I made to leave. “No, I’d like the two of you to stay.” L’Marchonase smiled, but I didn’t think it was a request, so I sat back down.

Winter waited until the other captains left. “Valoise is a liability. He and the other one are going to move against you. Not today, not tomorrow, but someday soon. They’ll try to make it look like an accident first.”

L’Marchonase sighed and sat down. “I know. It’s been brewing for a while. They’ve not moved because they’ve not had support from their crews, but the longer we sit without turning profits, the antsier they become. I’ve been trying to spin this as the score of a lifetime, but the news about the mines will travel fast. We’re going to have to develop a plan sooner than later. I’m hoping the Sambrosians will get the data for me within the next mainday. The Kerlian transit authority is a typical bureaucracy. I may have to encourage them with judicious bribery.” He sighed again.

“Who among that lot do you trust?” Winter poured herself a cup of water and sat back down.

L’Marchonase made a noise with his mouth. “None of them. Not really. I suppose the ones with a better sense of enlightened self-interest are Diargento and Skelly.” He dialed up their faces onto the table screens in front of us. Diargento was a handsome man but for the scar running from his scalp to his chin on the right side of his face. His eye was clearly a prosthetic. His shoulder-length dark hair fell in waves down to his shoulders, and his chin had a gentle cleft. He would not have been out of place at the Regent’s Palace in The Realm. Skelly, in contrast, was long-faced with shorn blond hair and big ears. He had no chin to speak of and a large nose. I didn’t recall seeing Diargento, but I remembered Skelly. He’d hovered near the back of the room and said nothing at all other than his name and ship designation at the beginning of the meeting.

“Diargento’s a public relations genius, which is why he wasn’t at the meeting.” L’Marchonase turned off the pictures. “He’s very good with his crew simply because he knows what to say to them. He’s worked his way up from overseeing the culinary transcription systems. He’s also good at espionage. He’s one of the spies I sent to listen in on Kerlian’s parliament. I am expecting his report soon. Skelly originally was the first mate on the Siren before taking his own ship. He could have gone off on his own, but he sees the advantage of a large fleet versus small hit-and-run jobs. Unlike a lot of our captains and crews, he’s like John in that he has a first-rate education from the Academia Altamira.”

Another Altamiran. I hoped he hadn’t recognized me, although fifteen cerens is a long time for a human. Since my people age slower, though, not much has changed about me, except my hair is longer and maybe a darker shade of brown. Skelly was easily about the age of the Crown Prince and his twin brother. I felt a deep pang of sadness. The Crown Prince was a dour child who’d had royal duty pounded into him since birth. However, his identical twin had been a smart, free-spirited kid who was my only friend within the palace who liked me for me. He didn’t call me a brownie behind my back like many palace retainers. He was younger, by ten years, but a lot wiser in many ways. Until his accident, that is. Something happened to him, and he became a drooling idiot within just a few soliss. His mother, the Empress of Altamira, was beside herself. I got the impression she somehow blamed my father because relations between our palace and hers became very frosty. 

‘Ric was instrumental in all our capers. He’d been the bright spot in my days of drudgery. He even figured out how to circumvent the palace security to build a treehouse in the woods down by the lake. I could do what I liked if I took someone with me, so my father’s retainer and friendly palace guard Nyx, ‘Ric, and I would pretend to be pirates. I often wondered what ‘Ric would say if he found out I’d become a real pirate. He’d probably laugh and want to join in, knowing him. What happened was tragic and one of the reasons I left. Like the Empress, I also suspected my father had a hand in ‘Ric’s accident, although I didn’t have the means to prove it. I can feel malignant magics, and there was something “off” about his accident.

I was brought out of my musings by L’Marchonase gently guiding Winter by the elbow out of the room. I was amazed she let him touch her, but he’d also kept up a steady stream of information directed at her, and I don’t think she realized it. He guided her down a few corridors to the ship’s barber. He planted her in a chair with a reader and stepped back. The barber quickly went to work on Winter’s uneven hair crafting it into a bob with longer strands in the front. She was distracted enough by the reader and L’Marchonase’s continued discussion. She only looked at herself in the mirror once, nodded her head, and then went back to discussing stinger ships versus dart skiffs to deploy to harass the Garundi gunships and traders.

We spent the next three maindays in discussions and conferences. I found out that Skelly was not the life of the party. He was rather humorless, and I only spent fifteen chronos around him before making myself scarce. I did spend much of my time with Marion Trafalgar when he was off duty. He invited me to the med bay while it wasn’t busy to see their vitae tank, which was an absolute wonder.

Marion stepped away to assist a staff member with a patient when I wandered into the cryogenics section of the medical center. I easily found the cryochamber holding the Ni’chine woman who’d attacked Winter. Understand at this point, the fight was still under security review, but I believed Winter. Winter might have been blind drunk, but I’ve seen her fight before. She never attacks, but she will defend herself. I wondered what happened to the human slaves. The last I saw of them, they were being beaten by their diminutive owners. I studied the face of the woman. Ni’chine is shorter than me by at least a faren. By comparison, an average human woman stands about five and a half farens tall. I’m only five farens. Winter is at least six farens may be slightly taller. The Ni’chine was roughly four farens of pure viciousness. One of her green-furred ears hung in her face. She missed an eye, and I could see exposed brain tissue above her matted hairline.

“I see you found Lady Mdeeph.” Trafalgar has an uncanny ability to walk softly. I controlled the impulse to jump. Instead, I turned and looked at him.

“I see why you stuck her in cryo. That head wound is nasty.” I decided to act casual.

“You shouldn’t be in here. Security is still looking into what happened and should finish today, I think.” Trafalgar moved to escort me away, but I dodged him easily.

“What happened to their human slaves? Were they also killed?” I cocked my head and gave him a winning smile.

He sighed. “I shouldn’t tell you, but they are in the brig. Before you ask, they are receiving medical care. We don’t treat slaves of any race poorly around here, as you can imagine.”

I frowned, “Why are they in the brig?” I allowed myself to be steered away from the cryounit.

“Standard procedure for anyone in a fight who is injured. We would have put Winter there, but you took care of it for us.” Trafalgar shrugged.

“So, they are not up on charges, just Winter?” I gave him a hard stare.

“Actually, no charges of any kind have been filed against anyone. The Ni’chine cruiser is still docked to the ship. I think they had a minimal crew.”

“Oh.” I gave him a bright smile. “You know, Marion, I could go for some of the ship’s culinary technology right now. How about we find some of those Ramishi spicy noodles?”

I like Marion Trafalgar because he’s always up for new dishes to eat. He essentially dropped everything he was doing to escort me to the captain’s lounge, where we ate and played chessk and eranminton for the rest of the ship’s day.

In the ship’s alterday, after Winter drifted off to her cabin, I left the Fred to do some reconnaissance. The first thing I did, though, was check to make sure all my knives were hidden well on my person. I quietly cycled the airlock and whispered into my com, “Fred, give me a rough idea where the Ni’chine cruiser is docked.”

Fred hummed in my ear for a chrono before commenting. “Siren’s mainframe indicates the ship you are looking for is docked on the portside aft section. I can send directions to your tweeter.”

I muttered my thanks at Fred and followed the moving map of the Siren. Fred anticipated my desire for stealth, so he routed me through less-traveled sections of the ship. I finally arrived at their docking portal in roughly eighty chronos.

The ship was painted the same color green as their fur. Their docking ring held a complicated-looking lock. From the looks of it, someone had already tried to blow the door to no avail. Fortunately, the seals held, or we’d all be frozen dots in space. Honestly, I did not care about security eyes. They can watch me if they want to, although chances are there was no one manning the eyes for this section of the ship. I reached into the thigh pocket of my black shipsuit and pulled out my tools.

I’d learned lock picking early in life. When ‘Ric, Nyx, and I would escape the palace, my knowledge of locks combined with ‘Ric’s ability to reconstruct computer call codes ensured we could go anywhere in either palace unhindered. I examined the lock on the Ni’chine ship and decided whoever tried to blow the lock was a rank amateur.

The lock was of Rangolin make, so it was added aftermarket on the ship. Rangolin shipyards provide posh extras like auran lidded toilets and yuzuni scented oxygen scrubbers. Rangolese locks also have a failsafe, which you have to override before you can get the lock to open. Usually, it is a keycode or a password known only to the owners. In this case, I was betting that Ladies Hrissah and Mdeeph were too impatient to encode anything but the simplest passcodes.

“Fred, do you have a lead on the name of the Ni’chine ship? Or a registry?” I fiddled with the lock and watched it turn, so I had the right tool. I hoped it wasn’t a series of numbers, or I’d be there all night. Fred hummed in my ear as he patched himself into the Siren’s mainframe. I gave the lock the lightest of taps and felt the physical part of the lock slide into place.

“Ellora, the registry is for the Ni’chine homeworld of Tavasu. This ship has been berthed repeatedly at their transfer station of Baphel. The name of the cruiser is the Hrissok. I’m afraid I can’t access anymore without setting off alarms in the core mainframe.”

“Yeah, we’re already in trouble for your vocal performance for Winter and the entire crew of the Siren the other night.” I sighed. I hoped my passcode errors would not lock me out or cause the ship to blow up. “Well, here goes nothing.” I took out my pocket reader, and Fred sent me the Ni’chine translations for all three words of interest. I placed my hand on the lock tried to ‘see’ what the last set of fingers had done. I shut out all the sounds of machinery and various pings from small particles hitting the outer hull of the Siren. The Ni’chine had three claws on each triangular appendage. My thumb became one clawset, my index, and middle the second; my last two became the third. In my mind’s eye, I saw someone make three keystrokes Ta Va Su.

The lock cycled open, and unrecycled ship air escaped all around me. I held my nose. The fetid odor made my eyes water. Instead of immediately boarding the ship, I went to the emergency locker and found a mask and rebreather. There was no way I was going in a ship that smelled that bad without a mask. I pulled the gangway up but didn’t lock it in case I needed to leave in a hurry. I found the airlock override, and the ship had enough power to turn on the lights. I found the bridge first, and it was a disgusting mess. Rotten, half-eaten food was strewn everywhere. There were drink bulbs of expensive alcohol broken all over the floor. The acceleration couches looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in a hundred cerens. No one had bothered to activate the cleaning bots, so the offal accrued everywhere. They must not have been afraid of losing their artificial gravity, if they had, the chip wraps might have strangled them before they were cut to ribbons by flying cutlery. There were drink bulbs on the navicomputer panels, and apparently, no one had thought to connect to the Siren’s power supply. Their internal batteries were nearly dead. My reader identified which buttons to push, and I got the main power back on.

The rest of the ship wasn’t much better. The two Ni’chine clearly didn’t use their slaves as cleaning crew. I saw bloodstains, and then there were other stains I didn’t want to think about. The lounge was strewn with clothing, trinkets, and various souvenirs and holos. The manifest read a full cargo, so I headed down an old-fashioned plexisteel ladder to find out what they were carrying. Their hold was set for sub temperatures, so I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stay long. I finally got the door open and glanced inside.

What I saw made me gag.