Sisterhood of Suns: Pallas Athena

by Martin Schiller

  “And that would be our third count,” Lilith remarked with a pleased expression, “blatant possession of contraband cargo.”

  In the meantime, the Spacewitch was still moving at top speed towards open space. Lilith was betting that they still had other contraband aboard

  “It also doesn’t look as if we’ll be able to avoid damaging her if we want her to stop,” she added.

  “If we must,” the Advocate agreed reluctantly. “The AG won’t like it, but I think that we can justify it if it doesn’t cause any perminant property damage.”

  Lilith nodded in agreement. “Kat, instruct the pilot to limit her damage to their sensor electronics. They can get those fixed whenever they get out of jail.”

  Her Second smiled and relayed this out to the fighters.

  “Understood, Athena. Target acquired,” the Valkyrie pilot said. “Firing.” Another missile arrowed towards the freighter and the screen registered an explosion almost directly on top of the vessel. It was at this point that the Spacewitch finally decided to answer their hails.

  “Deas dam va! This is the Harmony!” a voice crackled,” Stop firing! You bitas just fried all my sensors! We’re running blind!”

  “Then power down your engines, and slow down to boarding speed,” the pilot responded. “Now.”

  The civilian Captain replied with an expletive, but the ship’s in-system drive went offline. Braking thrusters engaged next, and the vessel’s speed reduced to no more than a slow crawl.

  Immediately, a Nixie SR-113 rescue ship carrying a squad of Marines and rescue-paramedics left the hangar of the Artemis. As it began to work its way towards the crippled ship, Lilith rose from her chair. “I’ll be in my Office, Kat. Please bring the Athena into range and see to it that the captain of the Spacewitch is brought to see me at at once.”

  The Commander’s Office was immediately adjacent to the bridge. Lilith entered it and came around her desk. The holofile for the Spacewitch and her captain was already on display and she quickly read through the material in an attempt to glean anything from it that she didn’t already know. There was nothing surprising contained in the file, however. The ship had a long and checquered past, and so did Captain d’Orsi.

  A career criminal, she thought with disgust. The Sisterhood was nowhere near as wild and anarchistic as the Gaian Star Federation had been, but there were still those who chose to break the law. It would be a pleasure to send Captain d’Orsi off to a correctional colony.

  She paged over to the case history section and added in her own summary of the day’s actions. On a small side screen, information was already pouring in from the search team aboard the Spacewitch. From what they’d found so far, it was going to be an open-and shut affair.

  Katrinn called as she completed her entry. “Commander? You have a message from Dessica.” Dessica was the largest city on Aridia, and the local capitol of the Miranda system.

  “Fine, Kat,” Lilith replied. “Put it through.” As part of their standard operational protocol, the Athena had immediately sent out an after-action report to the nearest Star Service Headquarters, and something about the event had triggered a flag of some sort. She was fairly certain that it had everything to do with the orders that N’Dira had received from the AG’s office.

  The transmission that came to her was in real-time, sent from the planet, through Nullspace via relay satellites, and then out again to the Athena in normal space in encrypted form. A holo of two women, one dressed in a Star Service uniform, and the other in a civilian comerci, manifested before her desk. By her insignia, Lilith knew immediately that the Navy woman was part of the DNI, the Divis da Naval Intelle, the Naval Intelligence Division, and the small black rose on the other woman’s business suit meant that she was affiliated with the OAE, the Orgón par Avaní Extér or the Agency for External Affairs.

  To most women of the Sisterhood, the OAE was a little non-descript sub-department of the Supreme Circle, a humble diplomatic corps that acted as a liaison with other sentient races. Which was exactly what the OAE wanted everyone to think.

  In reality, it was a gigantic spy agency, with tentacles reaching out everywhere. And the OAE and the DNI were old bedmates.

  She addressed the pair. “Ladies? What can I do for you today?”

  “Commander, I am Captain Hari n’Kyla” the DNI officer began, “and this is my associate Willa bel Jeanna. She is a representative of the OAE. We’d like to talk to you about Captain d’Orsi and her ship.”

  Lilith had other business that she wanted to address first though. “Before we go into that, let’s talk about my daughter,” she said. “Have you any news?”

  “No,” Bel Jeanna replied. “I was advised that you might ask after her, but we have nothing to tell you aside from the fact that she is still unaccounted for. Believe me, if we knew anything more—“

  “Then you might or might not tell me,” Lilith retorted. “Depending upon how the information fit in with your objectives.”

  “Commander, —”

  “Let’s get on with your business,” she said with a curt wave. “What do you want with the Spacewitch?”

  The two intelligence officers proceeded to explain their mission. Despite her dislike of the pair and what they represented, Lilith listened carefully, and when they had finished, she sent a message for Ellyn n’Dira to join them. The Advocate’s presence, and her powers of persuasion, would be useful when the Captain of the Spacewitch was brought to her office.

  Several minutes passed, and then the door hissed open revealing the smuggler captain herself, accompanied by two large Marines.

  “This whole thing is outrageous!” Captain d’Orsi bellowed. “I demand to see an Advocate! I’ll press charges against all of you for the damage that you did to my ship! I want to file a complaint immediately!” The woman pushed her guard’s arms away and stepped towards Lilith’s desk, chin held high.

  “I am the Senior Ship’s Advocate,” N’Dira, said, rising from her seat. “And you can file your complaint with my department after the Commander speaks with you. For now, I strongly advise you to keep silent.”

  “No! I want you to hear my complaint first,” D’Orsi insisted. “I have rights!”

  “The only right you have is to shut your mouth and sit down,” Lilith snapped. There was a deadly, no-nonsense tone to her words and D’Orsi’s face registered a mixture of surprise and outrage. She began to mouth an objection, but one glance at the Zommerlaandar troopers standing to either side of her made her reconsider. Instead, D’Orsi took her seat.

  “Now, Captain,” Lilith said calmly, “Let’s talk about your situation, shall we? From what my search teams have reported, your ship was carrying some very interesting cargo.”

  D’Orsi started to protest again, but Lilith gestured her to silence. “First, there is the matter of all that glass you had on board,” she began. “I’m sure that you’re well aware that this substance is illegal in the Sisterhood.”

  “I can explain that—”

  “I’m sure you can, but I’d rather not hear your lies. Instead, I would prefer to continue with what I have to say.”

  Lilith took a platinum case from her desk and withdrew a Zommerlaandar czigavar. The smokeless cigarette contained a low intensity hybrid of Old Gaian cannabis.

  As she touched it to her lips, it ignited, and she took a long, deep drag off it. She didn’t smoke often, but in her opinion, this was one event where the indulgence definitely heightened the pleasure of the moment.

  “A second item worth mentioning are the 12 cases of military grade long-arms,” Lilith went on, referring to her data screen, “and battery packs for the same. We also found some pirated realie orbs tucked in along with everything else.”

  D’Orsi shifted nervously in her chair, and Lilith arched an eyebrow at her guest. “I gather that the realies were for personal use and the weapons for self defense?”

  The smuggler suddenly looked as if she had just eaten something disagreeable, and
Lilith grinned, enjoying every nanosecond of her discomfiture.

  “And, if all this weren’t enough,” she added, “there’s the business of using a false transponder code, and your failure to follow a lawful order for inspection.”

  N’Dira chimed in. “Commander, I believe that we are looking at something in the neighborhood of 20 to 35 years of incarceration if the Captain is convicted on all counts. With time off for good behavior after 15 of those years, of course.”

  “I have to defer to your expertise on sentencing, Advocate,” Lilith returned. “One thing that I do know is that the Captain here is facing some serious legal issues that will earn her substantial prison time when, and not if, she is convicted.”

  D’Orsi slumped in her chair. “What do you want from me?” she asked quietly. She knew the game.

  Lilith leaned forwards abruptly, her ice-blue eyes flashing with anger. “What do I want?! I want to see you sent away to a correctional colony to break rocks for the rest of your goddess-cursed days. I want to see that ship of yours blown into atoms, right along with your filthy cargo.”

  Then she frowned, and leaned back in her chair, her cold gaze steady on the pirate captain. “It seems that we can’t always get what we want,” Lilith said. “However, the Lady does tend to make sure that we get what we truly deserve.”

  The holo of the two intelligence officers, who had been monitoring the entire conversation, winked into view at this point. The OAE woman rewarded D’Orsi with a hungry, wolfish grin.

  “They have an offer that I think you should accept, given your present legal situation,” N’Dira suggested.

  Lilith extinguished her czigavar, and gestured to the two guards behind D’Orsi to leave, and wait outside the office. “I won’t wish you any luck in your new career, Captain d’Orsi,” she said.

  ***

  Lilith and N’Dira came out of Lilith’s office, followed by a thoroughly dejected Captain d’Orsi. As the Marines marched the smuggler off the bridge, Katrinn joined the two officers. “Well, what happened?”

  “It seems that the OAE decided to take advantage of Captain d’Orsi’s predicament,” Lilith informed her. “So, instead of having the pleasure of transporting her to a correctional colony, it looks like we’re going to have to cut her loose in the name of national security.”

  “That’s a damned shame,” Katrinn replied with genuine regret. “We had her pegged in our gun-sights on some solid violations.”

  “Oh we still do,” Lilith assured her. “She’s ‘volunteered’ to spy on the Hriss for the OAE—that, or go to prison. It seems that the government has a new program to recruit smuggler trash like her to help them gather intel. D’Orsi and her ship have just joined their brave ranks.”

  “A correctional colony would have been kinder,” Katrinn smirked. The Hriss, a warlike race that neighbored the Sisterhood, was sometimes known to kill traders after a deal was done. In their warped way of thinking, this was considered a normal part of doing business: if a trader was smart enough, and resourceful enough, to escape with their profit, they earned respect, and the chance for more lucrative deals. If they weren’t, then the Hriss didn’t believe that they deserved to keep their profits, or their lives.

  It was an odd way of ensuring that only the most cunning of merchants dominated the illicit trade between their two races. For this very reason, few smugglers attempted to deal with the Hriss, but those that did became very wealthy for their troubles. In Lilith’s private estimation, D’Orsi wouldn’t see much in the way of a profit, or enjoy a lasting business relationship.

  “Let’s hope the Hriss test her business acumen to its limits,” Lilith remarked irreverently. “In the meantime, please make sure that Security dumps all of her cargo out of the nearest airlock and vaporizes it. Since she’s going to be working on the right side of the law now, she won’t need all that nasty contraband aboard her ship, now will she?”

  “Certainly not,” Katrinn chuckled, “It will be my pleasure, ma’am.”

  Lilith mirrored her smile, and then accessed her psiever. The time of day, down to the nanosecond, appeared in the corner of her vision. She saw that she still had plenty of her freeday left.

  “Well, Kat,” she said, “If there’s nothing else, I think I’ll go and enjoy the rest of my freeday.”

  Her Second sketched a salute. “Have fun Lily, and don’t forget we have a lunch date.”

  Promising to keep their appointment, Lilith left her and took the Lifts down from the bridge to deck 6, going straight to the Ship’s Library. There, she took her place in the small cubicle that had been set aside for her exclusive use, and activated the holoviewer.

  For the last two years, she had been pursuing a Doctorate in Military History, and her thesis, “Lilya Litvak and Her Influence on the Military Campaigns of the Eastern Front,” sat on the virtual desktop.

  She had completed it three weeks earlier, and a copy was being reviewed by her Third, Mearinn d’Rann. In addition to her duties as an officer, Mearinn was also her Doctoral Supervisor, and the Program Coordinator for the University of Thermadon’s Military Extension Courses aboard the Athena.

  Until the Tethyian was done with it, Lilith had some time on her hands, and it was her policy to spend this rare commodity as wisely as possible. Today, she intended to accomplish this by catching up on her reading and broadening her general understanding of history.

  A file folder next to the thesis contained several virtual books, and she considered each one carefully. Two of them were about the Soviet Military in the second of Old Gaia’s five world wars.

  Originally, these had been intended as reference material for her thesis, but she had managed to complete the project without having to consult them. And although they represented her favorite period in pre-Sisterhood history, “Lilya Litvak” had oversaturated her on the subject. She wanted something else.

  Another title in the file was a recent edition of Lena Calydraith’s “Where the Blue Flowers Grow”. Historians considered “Blue Flowers” to be one of the most definitive accounts of the Plague from the standpoint of an average woman, and over the years, Lilith had read many versions of it. This particular edition promised a more in-depth examination of the pre-Sisterhood era and Calydraith’s personal life, but it failed to entice her.

  This left her with only one choice;“The MARS Plague and Its Origins” by Dr. Maria ben Rilla. The book had been recommended to her by Mearinn herself, and according to her Third, it was quickly gaining popularity in the academic community, and would undoubtedly become a classic.

  I suppose this is it then, she decided, opening the book with a thought, and ordering herself a cup of tea with another.

  The introduction appeared before her. Most readers would have paged past this to get the meat of the text, but Lilith felt that it was essential to read everything that an author wrote—including and especially the introduction. It was the only way to gain a true grasp of the writer’s intent and the overall spirit of the book itself.

  As she began, an optical tracking program embedded in the book automatically spawned a hologram. This was a common feature of many virtual books, and although she could have easily deactivated it with another thought, Lilith allowed it. Like the introduction, the images that an author chose to accompany their work were often just as revealing as their words. They tended to add another layer of meaning to the message that the writer was trying to convey.

  This particular image was of the MARS virus itself, in all of its terrible glory, and a reflexive shudder went up her spine as she read the caption.

  Magnified image of the MARS virus. Courtesy of the University of Thermadon, Department of Epidemiology.

  As soon as the book sensed that she was done with it, the holo disappeared, and the introduction began.

  “MARS was the perfect killer,” Ben Rilla stated, “and a virologist’s worst nightmare. It was airborne, dormant for up to twelve years, constantly mutating, and 100 percent fatal at the onset of symp
toms. It was also extremely unique in the annals of pandemics. Male Acute Respiratory Syndrome was gender-specific. Women were completely immune to its ravages.’

  “Because of this, early researchers quickly realized that MARS was not a naturally occurring pathogen, but the deliberate creation of some unknown laboratory. The issue that remained, and continues to spark heated debate to this very day, is who was responsible for it, and why it was ever created in the first place.’

  “What no one can argue with were its effects. In less than a decade, every human male in existence had perished, no matter his age, or station in in life.’

  At the end of this sentence, another hologram manifested. This time, it displayed a huge pile of male bodies being burned, and the caption underneath indicated that it had been taken on Essylt, the very world that Lena Calydraith had called her home. Calydraith herself was in the image, standing off to one side with several other women, and watching as the flames took hold.

  Lilith paused, and took a moment to zoom in on the woman and her companions. Each of them wore a mask to filter out the stench of the burning flesh, and they carried portable flamers. It was one of the images that had found a place for itself as an essential part of the Sisterhood’s Secondary school curriculum. And, as always, she was struck by the profound weariness in Calydraith’s eyes. Eyes that had cried themselves dry, and were gazing towards an uncertain future.

  An old nursery rhyme that Lilith had learned as a child came back to her. It went, ‘See-Saw, mother and dau! Burned their da to obey the law!’ On many worlds, including Esyllt, the authorities had mandated the immediate immolation of plague victims. But this tactic, like so many others, had failed to halt the disease’s advance.

  After a moment more, she closed the holo and resumed her reading.