by Blaze Ward
4
Valentinian
“Stand by to come out of warpbubble,” Valentinian glanced over at Dave and made sure the Big Guy was paying attention.
They had tried the Southern Chain thing with Outermost, just to prove it worked, but that had only been for a few minutes the first time. Technological compatibility. Reshaping the overall warpbubble itself to be less round and more arrow shaped.
Longshot Hypothesis had taken to that like a duck to water. Or a shark to fresh chum.
Valentinian decided he was going to have to start lying to people about departure dates, or run his Overdrive engines at maybe half-power, if Glaxu stayed with them for long. They were already thirty-three hours ahead of the estimated normal transit time listed in the Gazetteer for a path between Kryuome and Chatosig.
Great if you needed to get priority cargo or fresh fruit between two points. Lousy if the pirates of this galaxy discovered just how fast he was and decided they needed to try to take the ship away from him.
Of course, his oversized armory might come in handy at that point. Most ships in the trade carried only a handful of weapons. Flamers, pain pistols, maybe a plasma rifle.
Valentinian was up to two hundred and forty-three weapons of one sort or another in there. Probably time to start selling some off again, or trade the crap he kept getting after winning bar fights for a couple of really expensive pieces. This was Wildspace. What sorts of silliness could he buy, with money burning a hole in his pocket?
Dave nodded to him as the clock on the central control board counted down. Hopefully, Glaxu was paying attention and would be able to shut down his own systems on time, so they didn’t end up too far separated when they came out at the outer buoys of the Chatosig system. They could get organized and sail down to one of the stations in tandem, just in case anybody got frisky.
Longshot Hypothesis was unarmed and unarmored. At present. Valentinian had plans to add a bubble turret on top of the ship, but hadn’t ever had the cash. Or the need. Or the time.
That might be changing.
For now, he had Outermost, a Mondi variable-geometry slayership with one small cannon on the centerline and two bigger ones on the wings, moving around as the ship changed shape and assault profile. Not a bad thing to have flying as a consort.
“Dropping to zero in four, three, two, one, mark,” Dave called the cadence.
Longshot Hypothesis brought itself out of the warpbubble a little shy of the outer markers, but that was by design. Valentinian wanted time to get organized.
Chatosig, down below them in the gravity fields, was a pleasant-enough planet, according to the Gazette. Exported foodstuffs and raw minerals up to a ring of orbital facilities, about a third of which were pure zero-g factories, where you could do strange things in the manufacturing process.
The other two-thirds were standard stations. Factories making things. A couple of shipyards building and repairing things, although the notes said the city of Soko, down on the surface, was home to a half-dozen shipyards capable of building things clear up to the medium freighter scale. Or perhaps a Dominion Assault Courier, like the one that had already chased them clear across space to Kryuome.
At least Bayjy had been here before, so she knew the lay of the land, hopefully. Valentinian wouldn’t know anyone, so scoring a cargo to haul around would be difficult, and probably end up not making him anything, with the thin margins he would have to charge to get someone to take a chance on the newcomer.
But he really wasn’t here for merchant stuff. Bayjy had been a salvager in her previous life before coming aboard. And he had a treasure map that had led him to a spot on the surface of Kryuome, right before Dominion-427 had showed up and chased them off.
Hopefully, there was something down on Kryuome that they could open, loot, and sell on the open market for a lot of money.
Because right before all hell had broken loose, he and Kyriaki had been talking about the future. Once upon a time, Valentinian had figured that in another ten years, if he was careful, he’d have enough money salted away to retire to a careful life of leisure. That or buy more ships and turn himself into a corporate power. Ick, but better than starving, that was for sure.
A life of legitimate business was out of the question now, at least back in the Dominion or Laurentia. He’d need to keep most of Wildspace between him and everyone’s past, at least for several more years. Maybe forever, depending.
But he’d get there. Falling into shit and coming out smelling like a rose was his superpower, it seemed.
“Outermost, this is Longshot Hypothesis,” Valentinian said into the microphone as the scanners got organized and started to feed them information about this new system.
“Ready for engagement, Leader,” Glaxu’s cheerful voice came back.
The compact birdman always seemed ready to kill things, especially when he was in that tiny warship. And Valentinian would also have Dave and Kyriaki, armed to the teeth and backing him up. Or maybe the three of them were the goons, four with Glaxu, and Bayjy was the merchant on this run.
The galaxy had gotten weird again, but he could still out-think, out-gun, or out-run whoever he encountered. He had come too far to give up now.
5
Bayjy
She wasn’t going to jinx it as she walked around the concourse of the station and say it was good to be home, but Chatosig was at least someplace she had passed through a few times, and it felt closer to that mythological home that the Pranai didn’t have. Her kind were from space, no two ways about it.
The Urlan had cut loose with their megalomania and god-complex shit and created all manner of servant species. Humans apparently bred the best, and were the most successful, so now there were all sorts of Variants out there who didn’t have a homeworld, just a station or ship that they had been born on.
She felt at home here anyway, even if she wouldn’t go so far as to tell Captain or Big Guy that. Kyrie was safe enough, maybe.
Station hadn’t changed. That was one of the most reliable things in space. Planets had seasons and stuff. Stations were cast in steel and patience, kinda like her. People might come and go. Shops would change owners and theme, but the bones were always there.
They were here today.
This space had been a chandlery, last time she was here, maybe a year and a half ago. The restaurant on the right side had expanded and taken it over, so hopefully they were doing well. She had walked this way because the old shop had always been a great place to pick up semi-junk that a Senior Cutter salvager chick like her could frequently repair.
Old woman who ran the joint must not have been making enough money. Or maybe had just moved on.
We all move on.
Table for four, plus a booster pillar for Glaxu, so he could squat at table level with everyone and belong. Place had to serve a lot of aliens if they had that many options available.
Waitress took drink orders and left menus. Not much in the way of fresh greens. Lots of things that came out of a freezer and got quick-warmed by an autochef. Reliable, however mundane. You’d get the same food the galaxy over.
Idly, Bayjy wondered if anyone had created a silent chain of such restaurants. We’ll provide the food from this list of stuff. You buy it in bulk and the boxes include the recipe programs for your autochefs to cook it.
She could see that turning into a form of comfort food. Any station you went to, you could get that one thing you grew up on.
She needed a little comfort food right now. They had been so close, back on Kryuome. Big Guy had just started to build a hunk of metal he called a key, and then Captain said bug out and run.
Stupid Widow. Man don’t want you, why are you chasing his ass all the way across the galaxy? Get on with your life.
’Course, based on Kyrie’s stories, the woman would do exactly that, once she had Big Guy’s head on a stake. And Captain’s. And Kyrie’s.
Probably need to add hers and Glaxu’s, just ’cause at that point. Tha
t made it kinda personal.
Bayjy sighed quietly and studied the menu. It hadn’t changed in decades, near as she could tell. Chain restaurant kind of food, they just didn’t tell anybody that.
“What’s good?” Kyrie asked.
“It’s station food,” Bayjy looked up at her.
And sighed again. You people really have never been out in the galaxy and poor, have you?
“Buy it by the ton,” Bayjy continued. “Run it through the autochef onto a plate. Carbs, protein, maybe some nutrition if you’re lucky. Should even feed Glaxu, although we’ll have to find someplace else if he wants fresh snake more than once in a blue moon.”
It struck her then what relative poverty tasted like. The Dominion was a rich place. And Big Guy had been at the top of the pyramid. Kyrie had been a cop on the capital station, so she had eaten well her whole life. Only Captain probably understood, and he was still a way-outsider here, feeling his way along by luck.
Bayjy set her menu down and pointed at a couple of things for Kyrie.
“You’ll probably like these well enough,” Bayjy said simply. “I’m getting this one. Glaxu, you should stay with one of these.”
After a moment, everyone nodded and it hit her that they were going to take her suggestions at face value. No arguing. No whining. Assume she was right and that was that.
Damn it, she’d been with Butler and his crew of lunkheads for too long.
Waitress seemed to sense that the moment had come and returned. Orders got placed. An appetizer was thrown in, mostly on the off-chance that the greens in it had been flash-frozen at some point and still had some nutritional value.
Bayjy sighed again.
“Not giving up my armory,” Captain said quietly.
“I know,” Bayjy surrendered quietly. “But fresh veggies would be a nice treat.”
“Not giving up my cabins, either,” Valentinian went on. “Might actually have paying customers at some point.”
“If we had the time, we could maybe stretch the wings and add a room or two,” Big Guy chimed in.
Like they hadn’t discussed this to death already.
Kyrie suddenly got a wicked gleam in her eyes. The dangerous kind. Ex-cop-gone-totally-rogue-killer-babe kind.
“So we need to add a winch to the truck,” she said, completely off-topic in all the best ways. “And a crane arm or something, so we can lift heavy stuff, right?”
Heads nodded. Another discussion for late nights with mildly alcoholic stimulation.
“And we need to get an overhead crane for the cargo bay as well, right?” the blond chick went on.
Captain suddenly sat up a little straighter. Bayjy did, too. Big Guy was too busy being tough.
“We ever going to haul Anuradhan cargo boxes again?” Kyrie turned to Valentinian with the most innocent face Bayjy could remember from her. “Ten meters wide. Ten tall. Thirty long?”
“I would be utterly surprised if they even existed out here in those dimensions,” Captain breathed a little heavy, rather than actually spoke. Like maybe he could see where she was going.
“Still, we might have enough clearance anyway,” Kyrie supplied with a guileless smile. “Build out a frame overhead on I-beams. Either put the winch on it, or just run a pulley out like a tongue. That ought to give you a little more than two and a half meters of clearance you could enclose on the top side of those beams, depending on how thick you wanted your decks. More storage, maybe, if you ran an extension from the top of the staircase, like an attic. Or maybe a greenhouse. Whole other deck, if you wanted to move crew back there and free up your two cabins forward for paying customers.”
Bayjy had forgotten to breathe. Her lungs started bitching at her, so she came back to the present and listened to the others start breathing as well. Kinda catching, ya know?
Doing something like that would mean a commitment from Captain that the two of them were more than just temporary contractors. More than seasonal crew.
Family, maybe, weird as they all looked together.
Appetizer arrived like a meteor striking the surface of a planet. Everything went squish emotionally and kinda splattered everywhere. Bayjy wasn’t sure that the mud was ever getting washed out. Captain’s face was as unreadable as she’d ever seen it at a poker table, but that was probably a good thing.
Meant he was calculating all the odds, which took a while when playing Arcades.
Bayjy snatched a pastry puff before anyone else recovered enough to deny her. There were eleven, so somebody was getting three. Might as well be her.
Psychological warfare on the Captain sure worked up a pretty good appetite in a girl.
6
Athanasia
Walking onto the bridge of Dominion-427 almost felt like returning to the scene of a crime at this point. Athanasia had already moved past this ship and this crew, just in the five days that they had been sitting in a high orbit.
Eleven ships had arrived or departed in that time. With so little orbital traffic, her ship had inspected each and every one of them at least from a polite distance. About half had appeared to have been armed.
Hard Bargain had finally shown up two days ago. Captain Butler Vidy-Wooders claimed that to be the best speed he could make across the intervening distance. If so, Athanasia was even less impressed with the M’Rai.
She suspected he had been too drunk to make the original departure time, and lied to cover it up later. Word had gotten out about the captain, at least at the stations Valentinian Tarasicodissa had hit so far. From there it would ripple outward in waves as other captains told their friends the latest gossip. How the captain of the salvager Hard Bargain had dumped his crew rather than pay them their share of a major haul. How one of them had gotten back at the man in the most embarrassing way possible.
No credible professionals would ever hire on with him again. He might as well just sell his ship and take a job planetside, once enough people knew the truth.
Or he could hire on to pilot the pirate warship Athanasia had purchased. She would just need to make sure that the crew remained loyal to her, and not to him. With his reputation, that wouldn’t be nearly as difficult as it might have been before.
The Captain of Dominion-427 rose from his seat as she entered. He had changed from the bland bureaucrat who had been ordered to transport her to wherever would get the Widow away from the halls of power. Something had come alive in the man. Or perhaps he had finally decided to allow Athanasia to see the inner man.
She had spent twenty-five years in the Dominion Household. Every meal had been taken while wearing a half-mask to hide their faces. All of the Household had been like that. Much of the top of the Solar Party that actually ruled the Dominion as well.
Even there the Dominator, her former husband, only gave orders. Set policy. But the bureaucrats did the work. Men and women who worked extremely diligently to be masks themselves.
What did it mean that Captain Iulianus Palaiologos was suddenly turning into a person around her? Was he planning to remain behind when his ship went home? Or had he concluded that she no longer mattered as a power to be assuaged, and could stop playing such games?
Briefly, as she approached, Athanasia wondered if he might be worth taking to bed once, just to find out. Stephaneria was lovely, unfurling like a morning flower under Athanasia’s touch and guidance. But occasionally Athanasia would have liked a male.
Butler Vidy-Wooders had been on that list of possible…yes, she should call them victims if she was being honest with herself. The Variant Humanity known as M’Rai, two and a half to three meters tall, were apparently still designed to mate with humans of a normal scale. In a way, that was perhaps the greatest shame, but Athanasia would have made something work.
But perhaps Captain Palaiologos should be on her list as well?
“What news?” she asked as she came to rest the slightest shade closer to the man than she had before.
He noticed. The man was highly observant of these things.
It had just never appeared in his eyes before now.
“It is my opinion that Longshot Hypothesis was here,” the captain replied, even including a touch of color to his voice. “Their claims to be excavating the southern polar region were likely a ruse to mislead the locals, while they went elsewhere.”
“How did they escape us?” Athanasia inquired.
“I think they spotted us on arrival,” Palaiologos said. “We pinged the planet before we realized that there was no central authority to contact. They heard, waited for us to land, and then likely fled when we first touched, or perhaps while we made our way to the city known as Meeredge. Two days elapsed there. If they were careful, and remained below our scanner horizon during that time, it would have worked. That is how I would have done it, in their shoes.”
Athanasia barely controlled the blink that wanted to shutter her eyes. She had only once heard the man offer a personal opinion without being ordered to first before this.
“Will they return?” Athanasia asked.
She nearly fainted with shock when the man simply shrugged and made a tilted-head frogface at her. It was like he was actually human underneath that mask he had probably worn his entire life.
But then, who was she to argue? Where was the utterly-self-contained woman who had once been married to the Dominator? She had taken off that entire identity like a suit of old clothes when she remade herself into the Widow. Had taken Stephaneria as a consort and apprentice and lover.
Had become a destroyer intent on carving out her own empire from the worlds of Wildspace.
For a moment, Athanasia considered if she should simply let Dave Hall go. He would never return to her, just as he would never again be the Dominator. Was her time better spent building her power now? She could always hire assassins to go after the man from there. If she owned a chunk of Wildspace, he would either have to cross out of the human zones entirely, or flee back towards places like Asherah or Qetesh. Neither him nor his captain would ever be able to hide in Lei-Ze, so that wasn’t an option.
