1
“What is it now Whisper?" Kat says annoyed. It was just always something with Whisper over the last few days.
"The registration fees just came out of the account. We're broke."
Kat had just paid those, and it didn't make any sense. The Felicity’s registration was just paid in full three months ago with the Earth Empire. Governments, never work they way you want and always take your money upfront. It will take weeks just to get someone she can argue to about getting a refund. A month after that, if she’s lucky, she’ll get the money back.
Kat says, "I guess I’ll have to call the Earth Empire and deal with it."
"This was for the Guild and Conglomerate space."
She forgot about those. There are three powers that be and each controls a few solar systems of civilized space. Each also want their cut, and don't care for working together, unless there is an outcry for it. Even then it's hard to get them to budge on an issue together. Since they were working as a freighter, they needed to register everywhere to make sure they could make deliveries without having to smuggle things around.
Kat had been careful with her money recently because her and Gravan were going to be settling down on a new planet soon. Having their savings flushed down the drain of taxes didn’t sit too well with her. The planet they were headed to is called Raspiel. Its on the border of Guild and Frontier space. With it still under development, it was easy enough to sneak onto the planet and setup a little town you can call your own. Interspace law is still in a grey area around squatters rights. If you didn’t make sure someone wasn’t on your land, you lost your land. There had been more than one fight started over things like that, but it was a part of the risk. Gravan's friends Jack and Hanna are waiting for them there already. Jack and Hanna had run away to hide from the Guild and Empire. Hanna was wanted by both sides, which Kat couldn’t find why, and Jack was her husband. She asked Gravan a few times but never told her the reason. She had always thought it was because of the Black Raid, but didn’t know for sure.
Jack had recently sent a message through a secure channel he setup with Gravan before he left to hide. There was a message telling Gravan everything was set and ready for them to get there. They were still about a week out and in need of supplies for the stay. Supplies which they weren't getting now without the credits to do it.
Kat grumbles, "Great. We need to make some quick money, which usually means talking to Bob. Whisper is Gravan in the Armory?"
"He is. How did you know that?"
"He's my husband, and I'm getting to know him better each day. He's probably tinkering with his knives."
Fury says, "He is, and I'm helping him."
Kat had figured. Fury had someone to talk to about weapons and ammunition that actually cared to talk about it.
Artificial intelligences are just like any other intelligence, they want to communicate with something or someone about their interests. Fury was into weapons, which made since to her. He was housed inside an oversized pistol. Whisper is into romance stories. Kat had heard more than her fair share of them since Whisper reads through them so quickly. It wouldn’t be so bad, but Whisper likes to go into detail. The kind of detail that can make an old sailor blush.
Kat grabs the sides of the fighter style cockpit seating she has on the bridge and heads to the Armory to talk to Gravan. Her chair reminds her of her days in the Earth Empire Military. She had always just wanted to be in communications and intelligence, but one successfully decoded message later she was getting trained in everything. Tossed into a black ops program that she was never really ready for. Piloting was the one thing she was good at through all of the training. She spent a lot of time in a cockpit, and it was always a comforting place for her.
The talk with Gravan she was about to have wasn’t something she was looking forward to. They both didn’t want to do anything illegal anymore, because it drew too much attention to them. They had a stolen ship, two stolen AI’s, and had bounties on their heads. Most of the legal freight they took was just pick this up here, drop it there. Sign this. The illegal stuff was always more work. Hide this, can I trust you not to screw me, oh wait you have a bounty worth more than I’m getting on this deal. Then the guns and blasters come out.
Kat reaches the Armory and opens the door. It is a thirty foot by thirty foot room filled with shelves and storage. Over the last year and a half that Gravan and her had been together they added a little at a time to it. He was mostly into knives, blades, or anything sharp, but carried around a sawed off shotgun blaster. It was like a security blanket for him. Kat on the other hand didn’t really need much. Whisper is housed in a great short ranged weapon that she can change at will, her favorite being a row of miniature rail-guns across the back of her hand. Then Fury is in an oversized pistol with a nanite chamber. Both make their own ammunition too. So there were a lot of sharp objects inside on the walls. A couple of automatic blasters were in drawers toward the back, with a few spare energy clips, for emergencies.
Gravan is at the workbench fastening a new grip to his favorite seven inch blade. That man has more accessories for that blade than a girl has shoes in her closet.
Kat says with sad tone, “Hey babe, we’re broke.”
He doesn’t turn around but answers, “How did that happen?”
“The registration fees for the Guild and Conglomerate came out. I thought we turned that off?”
“I did, but you know how governments can be. I must have contacted the wrong department or caught the person answering the call in a bad mood. Who knows.”
“So about that, I don’t want to wait for a regular job. I want to get all this over with so we can live the quite life with your friends.”
“I know all about your dream, us on the porch watching the sunset. I really don’t want to call Bob though. The last couple of jobs from him were way more work than what he paid.”
Kat says sweetly, “Please.”
Gravan turns around knife and screwdriver in hand, still turning the screw. She can see the look on his face, and she doesn’t like it but bats her eyelashes at him anyways. Bob isn’t that bad of a guy, he just works outside of the law. Sure he was a womanizer, but that just made him a pig. She wasn’t even sure if Bob was his real name, but that is what he has gone by since she’s known him. He always gave them jobs that were not legal, but no one would fault them for doing it. Like delivering water to a frontier planet that the Conglomerate is controlling the water pricing or delivering medicine to a quarantined planet because the Earth Government called it a loss cause and wanted the disease to work itself out.
She smiles and keeps fluttering her eyelashes. Stretching out the word, please, one last time.
He lets out a huff and shakes his head. “Fine, I’ll call him. I would like to say out loud that I am against us doing this. We need to look for work through someone else other than Bob to get us a legal job. It may take longer but less stress.”
Kat does a little happy dance before she says, “I know, but this is the last time we have to call him. Then we are on a tropical planet looking out over somebody of water we’ve built a house in front of.”
“I just hope he doesn’t throw us into the middle of another war zone, like last time.”
“Lucky for us there isn’t a war going on right now.”
Kat leaves Gravan to mess around with his knives and to call Bob. There is something about him that creeps her out when Bob looks at her. She isn’t quite sure if it's the way he looks at everyone or just her. Sure she th
inks he isn’t a bad guy, but he does give off a heavy creeper vibe and would not want to be stuck in a room alone with him. It would take Gravan about an hour to contact Bob and find a suitable job, which left her with some free time. Free time means game time.
Walking back into her quarters and into the corner where she keeps a pile of pillows. She grabs them, throwing them on the king sized bed and lays down. The room was thirteen feet by thirteen feet and was originally set up for bunkbeds, like all of the rooms on the Felicity. Before she took the ship, it was planned to be an armored personnel carrier, or APC for short. There were six rooms set up with an armory, storage, and common area in addition to the normal engine room and bridge. Felicity’s original purpose was to be filled with soldiers and have them be a stealth strike squad. All of which came in handy when trying to escape or infiltrate places to make deliveries that she shouldn’t be in.
Her and Gravan took out the bunkbeds, added a couple of storage cabinets to either side, and tried to decorate lightly. Kat stares at the Star Wars poster on the wall that Gravan had insisted on getting. He said it was a classic, from a golden age of movies when you had to watch them on a flat screen. She argued that it shouldn’t go in the bedroom, and to just put it in the Armory, since that was his space. In the end, Kat just gave in. He was overly persistent about it.
She sits up to make a nest of pillows and blankets, she wanted to be comfortable for when she played her game. Whisper had been downloading things across the interstellar-net and had found a few virtual reality games that were meant for large rooms and full VR gear. Whisper was able to let Kat play them just using her interface. Gaming was something Kat had been getting more and more into. There was a lot of free time between ports. Gravan was spending more and more time in the armory, so there wasn’t much else for her to do. She could read all those romance novels that Whisper downloads, but she already knows them all.
Kat says laying down in her pile of fluffiness, “Hey Whisper, can you load up that game we were playing yesterday.”
“Yes, I can load that for you, but don’t you think there are better things to spend your time on. Like expanding your meat brain through reading, or cleaning your cybernetics that you have been failing to do.”
“Just load the game I don’t need a lecture.”
“What if I forced you to get up and clean yourself?”
“Whisper I clean myself everyday with a shower, so what are you talking about?”
“Your cybernetics need a tuneup. Not that I would expect an ape to understand, but your body is part machine. Which means maintenance. This is something I can do, but we have to go to the medical bay.”
Kat had been avoiding anything dealing with her cybernetics. It was around the same time Gravan came into her life. She had almost died in an explosion her psycho ex-lover had setup. He then saved her life by rebuilding her with cybernetics in an attempt to keep controlling her. She hated being part machine and he knew she would.
Kat is annoyed, but tries to hold it back when she says, “Look Whisper, just load up the new Blizzard game already. I’m itching to play it.”
Whisper laughs, “Itching huh. Sounds like you need that tuneup more than I thought.”
“Ugh, Whisper. Your my friend, not my mother. So stop acting like it.”
“Katrice, you need to take better care of yourself. It doesn’t matter if you like your cybernetics or not, you have them and need to take care of them.”
Kat sighs, because she knew Whisper was right. There wasn’t any way for her to go back now. She had to treat it like a medical check up, and start doing them.
She says, “Fine, I’ll go. So I guess that means no gaming right now?”
“Nope, get your flesh-bag moving to the med-bay so I can give you a tuneup.”
Kat crawls out of the comfortable pile and lets out a groan. She didn’t want to get a tuneup, nor did she believe that humans should have to get tuneups. If Ryker was alive, she would kill him all over again for putting her through this. It was turning out to be one of those days for her where everything seemed against her. She could always go back to bed and just forget this day ever happened, but ignores the urge. As she walks to the med-bay thoughts of Gravan bubble to the surface. The months she spent with him in the med-bay just laying there asleep. There were still so many things about the man she didn’t know. Then there was the recent pull away. Right after they left Bexar Omega he started to get distant. The first few jobs they took were medicine supply runs to banned planets. The diseases were so bad on the surface they had to use orbital drops to deliver the goods. After that was Planet Nix. Something they never really talk about. It even left her with a bad taste in her mouth after that one.
She could always try lingerie, but doesn’t think she needs to resort to that just yet. Talking would be the first step, which she just hasn’t done. Mainly because she doesn’t think she has too. He’s the one missing out on all that is her, and she knows he loves her. The look in his eyes haven’t changed, and when they do kiss the spark is still there. He’s just distant everywhere else. He might be going through something and Kat doesn’t want to butt in. Yet. If he wants to he can come to her. She just can’t help but feel that he doesn’t find her as attractive anymore. They were all over each other for months and now its been months. He should apologize or do something romantic. She nods her head in agreement to her thoughts as she walks into the med-bay.
Whisper asks her to take off her clothes. She rolls her eyes and does it. Looking down at her leg, still exposed from when Gravan and her met. A shotgun blaster to her cybernetic leg. It was something that was like a memento and reminder all in one. She runs her finger across the metal, and it has a slight warmth to it thanks to the composite flesh surrounding it.
Resealing the composite flesh that is covering her cybernetics would have been simple to do, but she just hasn’t been able to make herself go do it. There has been a lot that has happened, but maybe its time to get it done. The medical bay on Felicity’s is one of the best in the solar systems, so she hopes it can.
Kat gathers up the courage to ask Whisper about covering the exposed parts. Not really sure if that is something she really wants.
“Hey Whisper, can you fix the hole in my leg?”
“The equipment is here if that’s what you’re asking. If you’re asking if I can do it, then no. I don’t have the programing. Plus I think you look better that way. It makes me feel like you are more like me, and I like that.”
“More like you, as in the human hating AI that reads trashy novels all day long.”
“They are not trashy. They are every bit as good as regular fiction just with some added spice.”
“So is that what you call it? Ouch, watch that.”
Whisper laughs, “Oh did I do that. I’ll have to watch myself better next time because you're distracting me.”
“How am I looking?” Kat says hopefully.
“Not good.”
“Ok, and that means what?”
“That you might have had another week tops before you killed yourself.”
“What!?”
Whisper lets out a sigh, which was always impressive to Kat because she didn’t have the lungs. “Your cybernetics need cleaning. In about a week from my guess, your heart would have stopped working. Its half cybernetic if you didn’t know. Plus the vision in your right eye is down. Didn’t you notice it was getting harder to see?”
Kat didn’t know that. She’s going to have to be more careful from now on. Her dream is almost in her grasp and to die early for such a silly reason as not keeping her parts clean won’t do.
“No, I didn’t notice. So how would I clean everything?” Kat asks confused.
“Just a cleaning like this once every three to four months is fine. I have to run a solution through you're moving parts to take away the gunk buildup. You’ve been a whole year and a half without one. I’m actually surprised nothing happen sooner, now that I think about it.”
; Gravan’s voice fills the room from the speakers, “Hey Kitty Kat, got two choices on a job.”
Kat cringes. She thought he was going to pick, so there is either nothing out there but these two, or they are both really bad. She takes in a deep breath and says, “What are they?”
“One is on planet Starz for a delivery, but I can’t seem to contact the recipient for confirmation. The other is with a Stewardess named B, and I was able to get in contact with her rep.”
“I am not transporting around a whore, so how much for the Starz delivery?”
“Enough to cover our expenses, but something just doesn’t seem right.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because we are only hauling medical supplies. Normal ones, nothing special. Which makes me worried because there is nothing restricted about the planet. Which would mean it’s a normal looking drop, and Bob doesn’t give us normal. Ever.”
“Good thing we have a stolen high tech personnel carrier with stealth flight. What does it matter, if it makes what we need then all the better. Plus not having to cater to those Stewardess whores makes it all the better.”
“The job with B would be easier and quicker, but ok. I still don’t trust this one, because it’s too normal. Also the stealth systems only work if someone doesn’t just look out a window.”
“How often are you looking out windows?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Honey, we’re taking the job.”
Gravan signs. “I thought you would say that. I told Bob we were the ship for the job, and the cargo is on the way.”
2
Kat leans back in her seat, crossing her arms, and turns to Gravan from the cockpit saying, “Bob didn’t tell you about this did he?”
Roughly two hundred Guild warships were positioned near Planet Starz on one side. On the other, two hundred Glutton ships. Each side in what appeared to be a standoff, neither side firing a weapon or moving.
Gravan folds his arms, mumbling something to himself before he says aloud, “Remind me to have a talk with Bob about what he considers an easy job.”
Nightmares & Dreams: A Science Fantasy Space Western: Eydulan Series Book 2 Page 1
