I almost felt the sensation of Winter’s seething anger as she stalked across the landing bay. I practically had to run to keep up with her. The Fred made use of the interior of the Siren alongside the fighters, stingerships, and drones. While it was certainly convenient to be inside the larger ship, I always worry about attacks that disable the launch capability of any ship. I don’t like being stuck inside, I guess. If we were still on the umbilical, it would be nothing for us to detach, fly over, attach ourselves to Sausenty-Une, and beat the chucksa out of her captain. I assume we’d go through ship protocol to launch from inside and then there would be questions.
I thought perhaps we’d use a more subtle approach. Darryl wasn’t one for subtlety and frankly, although I’d been a crewmember with Winter for a while, I wasn’t sure what she’d do. She stomped up the ramp to the Fred and headed for the bridge. She flung herself into her seat in front of the navigation array and sat there staring off into space. I sat down at my station and waited.
“Do you know why the Ebroni moved from Ebrak Seran and into the Ebrak Tlelat section of space?” Winter’s question caught me by surprise. I shook my head.
“I have no idea.” I thought her question odd, but I tried not to show it.
“When they were known as T’altachurians they refused to come to the aid of Hashtaal. We had been trading with them far longer than the Bildarthians so their reluctance was bewildering to the leaders of my world. They’d been fed lies about my people and believed them without ever checking to see if the stories they’d been told were true.” She tapped her fingers on the wrist guards on the sides of her couch. I wondered what this had to do with our current situation.
I waited for her to continue. She stared at the wall panel so long I thought she’d gone to sleep with her eyes open.
Finally, she spoke again. “The irony is the T’altachuri left their section of space and rebranded themselves as Ebroni because trade fell off dramatically after the war. There aren’t many races capable of spaceflight in Ebrak Seran. It’s an old sector of space and civilizations born thousands of cerens before the Hashtaal collapsed long before the Hashtaaleen war. When the Bildarthians defeated us, they also packed up and left Ebrak Seran, leaving T’altachuri to fend for itself.” She turned her couch to face mine. “A corpient can hide its barb, but the barb is still there, and it will use the barb because it has to eat. A T’altachuri is still susceptible to suggestion and gossip even if they call themselves something else. The fundamental nature of the people has not changed even though they moved. They can make noise about paying reparations to the governments of Finral’s and Darbulatan all they want. But” Winter’s intent expression became fierce, “They still believed and spread stories about Hashtaaleen monsters who will eat children. They do so, to this day.”
I sat there in thought. “So, we make the Ebroni woman believe something heinous about her friend Valoise, is that what you think?”
Winter pursed her lips and shook her head. “Not something awful. Killing innocents and blowing up the houses of parliament create a positive reputation among this crew. No, we need her to believe he’s done something nice.” Winter’s smile was unpleasant to behold.
“Anno…how do we do that, exactly?” I idly pushed the button activating the front screen showing the port cameras. The bay darkened with the beginning of the alterday shift.
“Well, one of the advantages of being in one of the bays…we are closer to the Siren’s mainframe.” Winter’s smile chilled me to the bone.
“There’s something I should tell you.” I blurted. I hadn’t intended to tell her about the Ni’chine but… “They were headhunters…the Ni’chine I mean. They had three Hashtaal and one of my people.”
She studied me for a nano. “They were stupid chuksa.” She said, flatly.
Yes, I thought, yes, they were.
~~~
If L’Marchonase thought Fred circumnavigating his central computer’s mainframe security just to serenade Winter was extraordinary and troublesome, he was about to discover a whole new level of security breaches. Winter and I took off the panels in the floor of the bridge of the Fred, where his main “brain” was located. From there, Winter set about conversing with Fred and (I presume) changing subroutines so he could sneak his way into the personnel files of the Siren.
“Since this is a pirate ship, would they have files on their crews?” I held a simbronex spanner in one hand, and a brace conduit in the other. Winter and I crammed ourselves into the small space made for maintenance on the ship’s computer systems.
“Enri strikes me as someone who keeps meticulous notes. I would not be surprised if he’s kept a record of all the ship captains in his fleet along with their strengths and weaknesses. He didn’t become Grand Captain of this lot without having information on them and how to blackmail them if it came to that. Enri may come off as affable and effusive, but he’s definitely related to Emerson Boudreaux. He also has Emerson’s sense of humor.” Winter twisted her mouth into an almost smile.
She waved her hand at me and I handed her the spanner. “So, we’re essentially breaking into his files. He may not like you much after this.”
She made a rude noise with her mouth. “I’m doing him a favor. He can like me or dislike me all he wants.”
I shrugged. “Alright then, but I’m sure breaking into someone’s private diary is a sure-fire way to anger them.”
“I also want to know if Diargento writes information down. Probably not, but it is worth a look.” Winter pulled another interior panel off and tinkered with the inside.”
“Why do you think he doesn’t?” She handed the spanner back to me and took the conduit.
“He doesn’t need to. He remembers every bit of information he’s learned about the people he’s met, including you and I.”
I chewed on my lip and contemplated the unsettling thought of Diargento knowing anything about me at all.
“Eh, chances are he knows me by reputation, but not much about you. I doubt he knows you aren’t human.” Winter finished and screwed the panel back on.
“You figured it out.” I followed her up the ladder out of the maintenance bay
“I worked it out a long time ago. Your reflexes are too fast for a human, and you have far better accuracy with those knives than a human would. You use glamor to cover up the parts of you which you don’t physically disguise like your eye color or the tips of your ears.” She shrugged, walked over to her acceleration couch, and sat down. “Your eyesight is excellent without the circular frames you wear. At first, I thought it was an affectation, but it is part of your disguise, isn’t it?”
I hauled myself out of the shaft and stood. “Did Darryl know?”
Winter shook her head. “If she did, she didn’t care. I didn’t tell her. I will say, Your Highness, the bounty wrapper on you has decreased considerably in recent cerens. Did your Father finally get the message?”
Inwardly I winced. Winter could be wicked with her verbal barbs when she wanted to be. So, I brushed it off and pretended I didn’t care. “Thanks for not turning me in or letting Darryl know. She would have turned me in, and yes, I think he finally got the idea.”
Winter shrugged. “She might have, she might not. Like me, she appreciates honesty.”
I sighed. “For a moment, imagine you are me. You run away from the royal house on Altamira because you believe your father has made a terrible mistake, one you want no part of. You spend the next three cerens running from his agents who are trying to track you down. You end up with a bounty on your head from your beloved father, who apparently hasn’t realized the bounty he set can mean alive or dead. Do you think at some point in all of this, you might develop problems trusting people?” I walked over and sat on my acceleration couch.
“Fair point, but you’ve been on this ship for ten cerens now. At what point were you going to tell me?” Winter wasn’t looking at me. She was doing something with Fred’s matrix and lines of code filled the screens in front of her.
“If I thought Darryl would hand me off for the bounty, Merriloo would have dissected me for her own amusement.” I pulled up the com display to the Siren on my screens just to have something to do.
Winter nodded her head. “Merriloo is the reason I don’t let anyone examine me. I don’t need some half-chuksa xenobiologists deciding they need a Hashtaaleen sample for their collection. So, what you say makes sense. We’re going to need one of their com cables and run it through Fred’s mainframe.”
I nodded. “How are we going to do that and make it look inconspicuous? We’re on the other side of the hanger from the com array.”
She tapped her fingers on the armrest of her couch. “I have an idea, but I don’t think you’re going to like it. I’m going to remove the exhaust plates on the underside of the ship and connect them to the vents on the floor of the bay. While I am doing that, I am also going to remove the maintenance hatch located directly under the right aileron. I need you to climb down into the hatch, go around the vents, and crawl all the way across to the com panels on the opposite wall near the array. From there, I need you to either patch us in or snake a line all the way back to the ship so we can connect up. I would do it, but I am too tall and distinctive-looking. You, however, can use your glamor to hide if necessary.”
I sighed. I always got the job of crawling through the body of a ship. My height was a distinct advantage in wiggling into small places. I just hated doing it. To disguise my discomfort I said, “Out of curiosity, how do you know there is a hatch under the wing?
Winter shook her head. “Enri has modified the Siren to his liking, but this ship is Emerson’s old flagship. I thought I recognized it when we came aboard the first time. He’s gutted most of it, but this landing bay is essentially the same as it was three hundred cerens ago.” Her expression became wistful then resolute. “We’d best get to it.”
I was halfway down the gangplank before I remembered to ask. “Winter, how did you keep Merriloo from vivisecting you?”
Winter, who was ahead, turned around to face me. “She got an up-close and personal display of what of these do.” She opened her mouth and pointed to her canine teeth. “It made her think twice.” Winter smiled, then turned around and marched down the gangway to the floor of the landing bay.
~~~
It never ceases to amaze me how a ship can prepare for every kind of technological attack possible but forget about simple string and sealant putty approaches. I put in a cable patch to their com network by snaking a line through the electrical maintenance conduit. I disguised the line by pushing it into the gaps between the interlock of deck plates. The com panel itself was placed in an oddly shaped alcove which clearly hadn’t seen much use. Winter explained to me that back when Emerson owned this ship, each fighter was connected to an external com panel until needed for action. It was set up so the mainframe of the Siren could talk to each fighter’s onboard computers individually. The alcove was constructed for a prototype fighter who never saw action.
I asked her if she knew where the prototype was and she shrugged her shoulders. “This ship has seen a lot of owners since Emerson stole her. It’s probably space dust by now.”
I poured myself a cafco and watched her as she directed Fred into the mainframe of the Siren. I asked her where she’d learned to break into computers, and she shook her head.
“I didn’t. Darryl was an oldtimer codehexer and she programmed Fred with the basics. Fred’s sentience allows him to make real-time patches, covers, and splices. I only give him general directives such as desired outcomes. He does the rest.”
“I enjoy a challenge, Ellora” Fred chimed in.
“See if you can find Enri’s notes on his personnel. He might have a personal encryption on it.” Winter cracked open a stericase of rations and tore the wrapper off a protein bar with her teeth. To me, she said, “You might want to read a book or something. This might take a while.”
I watched for a while but eventually took my book tab and reader to my quarters. I checked the bridge with the remote interior camera before I went to bed and Fred was still working. Winter appeared to be in one of her trances. She was staring at the bulkhead wall, and I could see her lips moving slightly. She had a glassy-eyed stare, and her hands and arms were moving like she was directing something I couldn’t see. We were still anchored to our landing pad and Fred couldn’t take off without alarms sounding so I left her to her silent ballet and went to sleep.
At the beginning of alterday the next day we finally had a breakthrough. Fred found the pages on Valoise and the Ebroni woman whose name was Eteria. Winter studied each of them intently. “Find anything?” I sat my cup of cafco down on the table across from the central information terminal and regarded her.
“They both have gambling addictions and like to spend their off-duty time either drinking on Taverna or on Kell Station. He’s had an affinity for Morpheus, one of those designer drugs the Hidese market as a sleep aid, but it’s used to combat stim use and too much can cause an addiction unto itself. She likes her designer clothing and has spent most of her credits with the Paloma Group.”
I sipped my drink and thought. “I suppose we could start a rumor that he’s giving money to the poor while he’s asleep so he doesn’t remember it…and she’s giving her old clothing to charity houses for them to resell for needy orphans.”
Winter shrugged. “Or we find a way to interrogate Diargento who probably knows everything about anyone in this fleet.”
“What do Enri’s notes have to say about Diargento?” I took another sip from my cup.
“His entry has been scrubbed. So, someone’s been here before us.” Winter ran a hand through her hair and sighed.
“I have an idea.” I grinned at her and she raised her eyebrows at me.
~~~~
Marion slept like wood in the forest. He snored too which is why I was awake in the middle of ship’s night. Fred created a miniature com port for my reader so I could tap into the medical files of the ship crews. Every ship had its own doctor, but I figured with Marion as the primary physician for the fleet, he’d have copies from the other ships. I felt a trifle…uncomfortable taking advantage of him like this, as he had been nothing but kind to me. However, I also knew if Winter and I didn’t find a weakness in Diargento, Valoise, and Eteria we could be in worse trouble. The process was slow as the files had an encryption on them, which I’d never seen before.
“Mmmpfh…’Lora?” Marion rolled over and I scuttled to the side of the bed and scooted in. I glamoured the reader and let the port do its work on the bedside stand next to my clothes. “You ‘wake?” He had a charming bedhead and a befuddled expression.
“Yes, I’m awake, tshiri, now, go back to sleep.” I stroked his wild tumble of ebony curls and felt him relax against my shoulder. He mumbled something into my armpit. “Hmm?” I hummed at him.
“You too nice ta be a pirate.” He muttered then snored.
I stared at the ceiling. Yeah, I’m nice. Chuksa.
I sighed and let him sleep even though my arm felt numb and prickly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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