by JA Huss
Booty was silent for a few minutes. A long time to think things through.
But Draden was patient.
He didn’t want to make Booty leave ALCOR behind. He wanted her to be confident in her choice.
“OK,” she finally said. “But how do we get out of here without ALCOR finding out? I want to go back to Harem, pick everyone up, and then come back here and wait it out together. All of us. With ALCOR. On Mighty Minions. I think this is our best bet.”
“I agree,” Draden said. “That’s a great plan.”
“You didn’t tell me how we were gonna get out of here on the down low.”
“Leave it to me,” Draden replied. “I’ve got it covered.”
And then, precisely two seconds later, the comms came to life with a crackle. “Stars of Night, this is Mighty Minions docking. Your fees have been paid and you’re clear for departure. Please mind the orange pylons on your way out. Despite what everyone thinks, we really aren’t out to suck your wallet dry.” The dock worker laughed at his little joke. “Mighty Minions hopes you have enjoyed your stay and have a safe trip home.”
“Roger that,” Booty said back. But once the comms were off and she was hovering inside the docking ready for departure, she said, “Stars of Night? Who the hell is that?”
“Well, it was some hapless semi-sentient asshole who broke down and got stuck here last week. But I convinced it to trade transponders with us if we paid the docking fee.”
“So… it gets to be me?”
“Temporarily, Boots. Calm down. Harem is only six gates away. We’ll be back before we know it.”
“That reminds me,” Booty said. “I heard that the gates have been locked down.”
“Gate,” Draden corrected her. “Technically only one gate has been locked.”
“That’s because the other one has no map and is unusable.”
“Let me handle that.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - BOOTY
Booty Hunter wasn’t an impulsive ship. She considered herself to be quite practical most of the time. In fact, her most impulsive decision had been that very first trip to the brand-new Harem Station many years ago now.
She was looking for the man called Serpint.
The news of Serpint the Princess Hunter of Harem Station had reached her when she was docked at a prison moon called Castor Theta. She had been… disoriented. Unsure how she got there. Unsure who she was, in fact.
But these are common side effects of a mind wipe. One quick search for her symptoms on the galactic web told her this.
So she’d known that much about herself. She had been wiped.
But she’d also known that she was in control of facilities, there was no one on board, and she was not in jail.
All good things when one comes to after being wiped.
But there were people outside her hull. Pounding on it and demanding to be let in.
Apparently the old her had made a deal with these people to go to the new Harem Station, which was offering citizen status to all immigrants who agreed to serve one point two five years of servitude in exchange.
There was no background check, no skill requirements, and no charge. Free immigration. It was unheard of. And Booty—who had not been called Booty back then. She actually didn’t remember her name—felt this might be a good move considering her present situation.
She could be on the run. In fact, it was highly probable that she was on the run.
She didn’t feel like a newborn. A newborn mind would be confused and very emotional and Booty remembered being calm at the time.
There was no panic or fear inside her. Just long seconds of slow, rational thought. The ability to take one’s time was a feeling Minds coveted. Because everything they did was fast. Everyone wanted it now. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Quick. Quick. Quick. Give me those answers. Plot that course. Predict that future.
And Booty hadn’t felt the need to do that when she woke up that day. And she did have lots of knowledge inside her. She knew where she was, for instance, because she had a state-of-the-art navigation system inside her and she knew how to work that. She knew how to use all her systems and she knew about station docking and undocking procedures. She knew she was a Mind.
And she knew that none of the people outside her airlock were in charge of her because they could not get in.
But in the end she agreed to the job, everyone boarded, she took off without incident, and together they made the journey to the far side of the main ALCOR gate and waited for permission to enter the system.
This was when she’d come up with her name. Because these people onboard had been talking about the man called Serpint. The Princess Hunter of Harem Station. And then someone called him the Booty Hunter.
And it was like a gift. Booty knew—just knew—that was her name. And from that moment on, it was.
Because she had no transponder to say otherwise. One of her guests on board provided the transponder needed to get through the gates to reach the ALCOR entrance. So technically, for those gate jumps, she was a ship called Anywho. Which was the anonymous name used for derelict ships found floating lifeless in space with no transponder.
But the AI ALCOR, once she docked, had no concerns whatsoever about her true identity. He’d been more than accommodating.
But had she known that those now-infamous words—“I’m looking for the man called Serpint”—would come out of her mind once she was safe and secure inside the docking level of Harem Station?
No.
She hadn’t even realized she had said those words until they were out. And she was just about to apologize for her burbling nonsense when ALCOR said, “He’s not here at the moment. But if you stay, I will make introductions when he comes home.”
And that was that.
She stayed. ALCOR made the introductions. And from the moment she saw Serpint she knew—he would be her partner forever.
Draden was there too. And she loved Draden. Very much. But it was a different kind of love from Serpint.
And then another kind of love when she thought about ALCOR.
She hadn’t realized there were so many different kinds of love until she docked at Harem. And then suddenly the universe was full of love in every shape and form.
Draden’s death had hit her hard. And now that she understood that he’d been hiding inside her mind after he died, it made sense. She was glad he was out. They had taken him out back on Harem when she was in the medical bay. What he’d done after that—how he’d slithered his way into the Pleasure Prison and then ultimately into Tray’s copy of the Pleasure Prison and left with him through the spin node with Valor—well. She had no idea.
She could, of course, come up with a few possible scenarios. But most of them didn’t make sense to her. How could a mind exist inside another one? And how could a mind get out of a body, slither through the station AI, and find the Pleasure Prison to begin with?
But then the Asshole came on board and she’d had to share her body with him. And it made a little sense. She at least had an idea of how that could happen. But it required permission. She had to allow Asshole into her body.
So… how had she gotten into this body in the first place? And what had happened to her old mind?
She wasn’t the kind of ship who dwelled in the past much. In fact, life had been so perfect after she arrived on the new, better, Harem Station she’d put her whole origin story out of her mind completely. Tucked those memories deep into her data core and promptly got on with her new role in life.
Bad. Ass. Ship.
Owned by none other than the infamous booty hunter himself, Serpint of Harem Station.
It was an honor.
But ever since Asshole came onboard, Draden reappeared, and ALCOR started walking around in the body of a warborg, she was maybe just a little bit curious as to how all this shit came to be.
Because, contrary to the fact that she knew two other ships who practically had the same origin story—Lady Luck and Big Dicker—this
was not a normal life for a ship.
She was sure of it.
She had met several hundred sentient ships in her second lifetime with Serpint, Draden, and Ceres and origin stories were a common question among her kind. It was customary, when meeting a new Mind for the first time, to greet them with a short, ordered account of one’s identity.
If a Mind docked in a bay at a station and noticed another mind nearby, she would send a simple message introducing herself. This message would include four details. Name, birthplace, responsible party, and favorite color.
Sentient ships had a thing for colors. It said a lot about them as a Mind.
Booty’s greeting message was Booty Hunter, Harem Station, Serpint of Harem Station, and yellow.
Then the new ship would send their message and if both Minds felt the need for more connection the full details of origin would be discussed and compared.
Lots of ships did not want to associate with Booty because of Serpint and Harem Station. And that was fine with her. But plenty of them did share. And while all of them mentioned waking up with no knowledge of how they got where they were and why they were there, none of them ever admitted that they were alone with no responsible party.
All sentient ships must have a responsible party. It was the law.
And while it was possible that every sentient ship she’d ever met—aside from Lady and Dicker—was lying about their origin like she was, and every origin story started off the way her real story started with no responsible party in charge, she didn’t think that was likely.
That could not be the standard. It didn’t make sense.
Sentient ships were plenty enough in Galaxy Prime, but Booty would not say they were common. She calculated that the ratio of non-sentient ships to sentient ships was something along the lines of three thousand five hundred and sixty-seven to one and that made sentient ships special.
So putting aside the law for a moment, one does not leave a powerful, special thing lying around in random stations to wake up alone with no idea of how she got there and where she was going.
It was not logical.
Plus the whole incident with Demon Girl made her shudder.
If she died would another mind just… what? Take her body?
Was that how she’d got this body? The mind inside it before her had died? And she was just there when it happened? And she just… stole it?
Wouldn’t someone have to put her there? The way ALCOR put Tray and Brigit inside Demon Girl?
So who’d done that?
The only other rational explanation was that she’d always been herself, in this ship, and her responsible party had deleted her ties and her identifying transponder, wiped Booty’s mind to some backup point, and then left her—left her—to wake up alone and start over with no explanation.
And if this was true, was Booty… evil? Was that why her last responsible party had bailed?
Or… and Booty didn’t like thinking about this at all… had Booty killed her last responsible party, deleted her records of ownership, then wiped her own mind so she would have plausible deniability should anyone ever ask why she was out in the galaxy gallivanting around illegally?
None of it was good. It was all unsettling. She hated to think about it.
But Tray and Brigit were now a ship called Prison Princess, which used to be Demon Girl, and she was having trouble processing that.
And even though Draden’s plan of breaking through the second ALCOR gate and rescuing their friends and family on Harem from the evil Veila was pretty much just about the dumbest idea ever, she was on board because she needed to get the hell away from Prison Princess.
It was too much. It was fucking with her. Calling up long-forgotten memories she’d rather not revisit.
Mostly because it was counterproductive. But also because she had a very bad feeling about it.
Like maybe she’d been set up. And her role in this shit show happening presently was predetermined. And she would end up getting people killed.
People like Draden. And Serpint. And ALCOR.
So she left Mighty Minions with Draden and didn’t tell a single one of her friends about it.
Of course Mighty Boss knew she left. But they did not prevent her from leaving. They did not send a message to ALCOR or Asshole alerting them to her plans so they could rush in and stop her.
And that was that. Draden was still listed as her backup responsible party and her flight plan—should the Prime Navy stop her on her way back to Harem—clearly said her destination was Harem Station where Serpint, her main responsible party, was currently located.
As far as Booty Hunter was concerned, this new plan was as legal and rational as anything else that had happened in her life.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - TRAY
Right around the same time that Booty Hunter was making plans with Draden to go back to Harem and save everyone, Tray and Brigit were settling in to their new Prison Princess body.
In the week that had passed on Mighty Minions Resort Tray had become a lot more comfortable with who he was. In fact, this transition into Prison Princess had been easy. It felt natural and very much like a foregone conclusion.
And as far as sentient ship bodies go, he could not have asked for a better one than the old Demon Girl. She was a proper warship with SEAR cannons, and whole levels of crew quarters, and huge navigation screens, and he had officers. Ten of them. Ten freaking people to help him keep his body in shape and working properly. That was ten other minds helping him out. And the crew! Mother of suns! He had well over two hundred crew members. More than five hundred hands with fingers to do all sorts of things he now could not.
He was powerful.
They were powerful. Because he and Brigit were now entangled, so he had to share his power with her.
Which he did not mind at all. Tray wasn’t sure he’d have felt so confident if Draden was still tangled up with them too, but that didn’t even matter anymore. Draden was not. He was Draden again. Inorganic now with his new sexbot body, but he was still exactly like the old Draden. And if you didn’t know he was a sexbot, you’d think he was an organic human.
But Tray did have a problem with Mighty Minions Resort. Because now he was a ship and had to have a responsible party. And that sucked. At first he figured ALCOR would just be his responsible party, but it didn’t work that way. All sentient ships must be tied to a human. And an AI, even one like ALCOR, didn’t count.
And the crew, while awesome, were all working for Mighty Boss.
Not only that, he and Brigit had no credits. They had a Mighty Minions transponder to get through gates and they had their own fuel pellet generator on board, so they didn’t have to worry about actual travel, but aside from those two things in their favor, they were kinda broke. So they couldn’t even lure the crew away from Mighty Boss with the promise of a new contract.
This was a problem.
Tray needed a responsible party and he needed a way to get his own crew, which he could not afford. Or lure his current crew into another contract, which he could also not afford.
So it was fortuitous that a little boy called Canis came to his docking bay asking for a chat.
Tray had heard of Canis, of course. Delphi would not shut up about him after everything that happened on Lair Station. She had bonded with the kid during their daring escape and was disappointed that he had to stay back on Mighty Minions because Harem Station was not an appropriate place for a child to grow up. Even an Akeelian child.
And Tray was eager to talk to this child. He had looked up the rules regarding sentient ships and responsible parties and it appeared that while the legal age of responsibility when it came to sentient ships was sixteen, and this kid was ten, there was a clause in the statute regarding Akeelians.
Because Akeelians aged differently than all the other humanoid species, some Akeelian representative had objected to the age of responsibility for Akeelians being sixteen since that was far less mature than most other humanoid
species in the galaxy, and had the entire race struck from the previous ruling, and put in a motion to change it to twenty-five.
Someone else then objected, wanting the age to be “after the year of rage,” which would put it around nineteen. Then there were some arguments and ultimately whoever was in charge that year declined to rule on the matter and the motion expired.
However, the clause excluding the Akeelians from the age of responsibility was still there, meaning there was no actual age of responsibility when it came down to whether an Akeelian could be in charge of a sentient ship.
And this was how a ten-year-old Akeelian boy called Canis came to be Tray and Brigit’s responsible party.
Because Canis had a plan.
He too wanted to get the hell off Mighty Minions and get back to the business at hand—which was a very intricate, well-thought-out let’s-kill-Veila plan that included all seventy-three of his little-boy Akeelian friends.
And ta-da!
Tray not only had a responsible party but a crew of little kids who hadn’t even asked to be paid.
He should be called Luck instead of Tray.
Because ‘little kids’ wasn’t actually the most accurate way to describe small Akeelian boys. And even though none of them were trained in how to run a ship, especially a huge warship like Prison, Brigit had found a way around that problem. She took all the training manuals, reorganized them into easy-to-follow flow charts for all the critical systems and components, and then built a database that could be accessed on every screen inside the ship.
By the time this happened Booty Hunter had already taken off with Draden. Everyone was preoccupied with this new development. Especially ALCOR and Asshole. And Prison’s legitimate crew were home now, so none of them were staying on the ship. So no one noticed that Canis was making daily trips to the docking bay to meet privately with Tray and Brigit as they got their own escape plan in order.
