Chir was sitting alone in his office, enjoying the first break from work he’d had in three days. His office was sparse of everything but rustic charm, and while it had belonged to and been commissioned by King Carl it seemed that it had barely been used. That was not surprising to Chir, because as far as he could tell the foul excuse for a human had busied himself with pleasures of the flesh and little else. Zripob’s description of the man as he had sat and gorged himself on liquid meat had been graphic enough to turn Chir’s stomach, and he was quite glad to have never needed to endure him personally.
Despite its shortcomings the office was adequate. Chir could have returned to his room, where there were greater comforts and quiet, and where he could find certainty of being left alone, but he knew from experience that the journey – brief though it was – had a tendency to invite people to bother him with their concerns.
So he had remained in his office where people could find him if they needed him, or be diplomatically told – in no uncertain terms – to piss off if they actually didn’t.
That was one of the reasons he’d selected Layla as his personal assistant. Besides being a young, intelligent and forthright Gaoian female, she was also willing and capable of running interference between Chir and whomever he didn’t want to see. She was also attractive, and while nothing had happened between them so far, Chir remained hopeful that one day – hopefully soon – he would not be retiring to his room alone.
At least he had the reassurance of knowing that she had not yet selected any other male as a mate. Gaoians did not place the importance on monogamy that some races did but Chir felt it was always promising when a female didn’t choose to mate with someone else.
The only problem was that given the nature of their working relationship, almost everything she had to talk to him about was bad news. That was why when she entered his office with ‘I’ve got news’ written all over her face, he sighed and sat up straight before asking her what the problem was.
“I’m not sure why you always expect bad news, Commander Chir,” she said, entering the room in full and taking her usual place before his wide desk. She rarely sat, despite his offers for her to do so, and he had ceased asking. It had become apparent that if she wanted to sit she would sit, and Chir’s suggestions one way or the other, while noted, were typically ignored.
Chir frowned contemplatively. He might not be an optimist, but to his mind he wasn’t a pessimist either. He received bad news and dealt with it to the best of his ability, and it was just the nature of good news that meant it never demanded his time. “I think myself a realist, Layla. You are the person whose job it is to convey bad news, and I am the person whose job it is to receive it. Sometimes this may also involve me doing something about it.”
He smiled to show he was joking, but it didn’t feel like much of one. At least Layla smiled in return.
Then she frowned, very uncomfortably, because of course she did have bad news and it was never fun to convey it; that was especially the case when your employer has just made a stupid joke about it.
He waved an exasperated hand at her, more displeased with himself than by her. “Go on then! Who did what this time?”
“A third salvage runner has disappeared from the usual routes,” she reported. “No messages besides last known location.”
Chir’s frown deepened. “That’s the third in five days. I heard Keffa came back at least?”
“Just arrived with an additional human and Corti,” she replied, having the information at hand as usual. That was a convenient tendency even if he often felt it highlighted his own ignorance, and it often served to speed their meetings along. That could be a good or a bad thing depending on how much Chir felt like having some damned peace and quiet at the time.
“An uncommon pairing,” Chir remarked. “Especially the Corti. Anyone we might know?”
“Nadria and Taski, or at least that’s what Keffa told Control,” she replied. “I’m advised that they were injured and have proceeded to see the doctor.”
And that was when Layla’s expression darkened and Chir realised he hadn’t quite gotten to the bad news yet. “What went wrong?”
“Screaming was heard from within,” she said, putting it bluntly. “The doors were closed and locked, but a crowd has gathered outside.”
“What!?” Chir half-shouted as he sprang from his seat. A human on a rampage could be a dangerous thing, all you had to look at was everyone who’d gotten on the wrong side of Adrian. “Get Zripob to send in the Human Suppression Squad! Immediately!”
Following an incident involving an unknown human on a freighter ship, Zripob had designed tactics and training for a group of his soldiers to employ when facing a human. They had been deployed three times – although never on base – and the most recent time they had all managed to survive. The group was revered as the bravest of men and women, and it was led by the Gaoian male named Graf. Chir didn’t like Graf much, he was bold, stupid and a threat to his power, but he couldn’t deny he was an effective leader. He just hoped a human would kill him soon.
“Commander Zripob wished me to inform you that he was going to investigate the missing salvage ships,” Layla advised him, sounding about as unhappy about it as Chir was rapidly coming to achieve. “He took the Human Suppression Squad and the Hodgepodge.”
Of course he had. Zripob certainly had an aptitude for picking the worst time to do these things. .
“How many soldiers on base?” he asked, taking out a key from his pockets and turning in the desk drawer. It was time to do something stupid but at least if he died he wouldn’t need to do any more office work. If he lived however… well maybe he wouldn’t be sleeping alone for a while.
“Maybe thirty, commander,” she replied. “Frex is the senior officer. I believe she’s already on her way.”
He drew out the boltgun, the weapon that Jen had left behind and that he’d kept safe in case she ever managed to return. Her eyes went wide with surprise, and he realised that she’d only arrived recently and had never seen the fierce warrior beneath the clerk.
He smiled as he toted the ridiculous gun. “That’s thirty-one,” he said. “And I think you’ll find that Frex is not as senior as you believe.”
+++++
They were all gathered in the operating theatre to watch Adrian stare at his hand, and that was the least strange thing that was currently going on. After the tests and the worst pain Adrian had ever experienced – not quiet enough for his mind to mercifully black out – the doctor had removed the membranes and together they had discovered that not only could he see, but that he could see better than he could before.
He could see further than before, in more detail than before, and in more colours than before. Thus far he didn’t like it very much.
Adrian could see in infra-red – he could see heat – and right now he was staring at the intricate lines of his hand that marked where his veins ran. He waggled his fingers, watching the lines brighten as the blood quickened through them. He closed and re-opened his fist, pumping warmer blood through cooler veins and slowly spreading to suffuse his whole hand with a deeper warmth.
“That is so fucking weird,” he said, gawking at it and knowing it was the smallest part of things. The world had changed for him now, another layer of it had revealed itself and he was going to have to adjust, he was going to have to look up and take it all in and absolutely stop shitting himself with terror. Maybe he could just keep looking at his hand for a while longer…
“How the fuck…?” Keffa voiced, dumbstruck by the revelation that Adrian had just taken another little step away from being completely human. Adrian had not particularly wanted her to discover that – the knowledge alone put her at an elevated level of risk – but there had not been any good way to mask his complete shock. “Just… how?”
“There’s a medicine he was given,” Doctor Grznk supplied, simplifying it to the most essential facts. “It altered his body, and now it does things like this.”
A sharp pain spiked behind Adrian’s eyes, and he closed his eyes with a hiss of pain. “Fuck… fuck! They’re starting to hurt, Gri… Doc.”
“Your visual acuity has elevated by three hundred percent,” said Grznk. “Your brain probably hasn’t had time to adapt yet. Does closing your eyes help?”
“It helps with the pain, but I can still see through them,” Adrian replied with a bitter laugh. There wasn’t the same kind of definition to everything with them closed, but he could still make out the general shapes of his hand and the forms of those standing around him. That was pretty fucking creepy.
He opened his eyes again after the pain had subsided, and looked up to really take in the others for the first time. Then he looked back down to his hand.
“Fuck.”
“Whad?” Darragh asked, holding his nose with both hands in an apparently vain effort to staunch the bleeding. He was still bending slightly from the pain downstairs, but even he was staring at Adrian like he was some kind of freak. That he was probably right just annoyed Adrian off even more than he already was.
“Everything looks really fucked up,” Adrian replied, too exhausted by everything to do anything but tell it like it was. He flexed his hand again; it all looked really fucked up.
“Adrian,” Askit began, drawing his attention in spite of himself. The little Corti was lightly covered in lines of warmth, but his skull was heavy with it. It was almost as if the grey-skinned alien had fallen head-first into a vat of blush. “Adrian, don’t freak out.”
“How can he not freak out?” Keffa asked, completely unhelpfully. She was a fair-skinned young woman of maybe twenty, average height, average build, and long greasy blonde hair worn loosely down her back. She was pretty, or at least she would be if the splodges of warmth hadn’t made her look as though she’d smeared a pot of dye over half her face.
“I don’t understand,” said Grznk, studiously watching Adrian’s every movement. “Your condition should not be capable of generating anything beyond your species’ natural ability. Is this unheard of amongst humans?”
“Yes,” Keffa and Adrian said together.
Darragh dissented. “Nog Gombleatly.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Adrian demanded, turning away as Darragh ejected a warm-coloured handful of bloody mucus. As if he needed another reason to hate these fucking ‘enhancements’. “Jesus fuck that’s disgusting!”
Darragh turned to him with a fierce look in his eyes. “Well, I’m thorry for gedding in da way of your fitht! Twithe!”
“Yeah, well… if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have been on that fucking table, getting fucking needles shoved into my fucking eyes!” Adrian returned, his voice rising of its own accord. “So you know what, mate? Swings and fucking roundabouts! Fuck!!”
“I definitely recall someone giving excellent advice about not freaking out,” Askit interjected, trying to calm everyone else down. “Now what are you talking about, Darragh?”
Darragh glared at Adrian, then shook the goop from his hand. “I thaw a ding… agout thome beoble who coug thee in thome inthpra… intha… heat.”
“Then that explains it,” said Grznk, apparently finding this a satisfying amount of information to explain everything. Adrian disagreed, but he wasn’t a doctor. “Your condition has a dangerous potential for recalling latent genetic abilities. I’m theorising here, but I believe it’s likely that somebody in your genetic line had the capability that Darragh just described.”
“How many more of these ‘latent genetic abilities’ am I likely to fucking develop?” Adrian asked, rubbing his aching head; getting headaches from his ultra-high definition eyesight was going to get old really fast.
“I would need to run a full genetic scan,” Grznk replied. “You really don’t want me to do that.”
“Why not just take a blood sample?” Adrian asked. “I’ve got plenty of blood… I’ve got urine too.”
“Your urine!?” Grznk looked at him in absolute disgust. “What in the void am I supposed to do with your urine?”
“That’s probably the most disgusting thing you’ve ever said,” Askit agreed, staring in disapproval. “And I’ve spent a lot of time with you.”
Even Keffa showed undue disgust.
“It’s a thing on Earth,” Adrian protested. “Doctors are always asking for your urine. Darragh, you tell them!”
Darragh shook his head. “Nobogy ever athked me for my pee.”
Adrian glared at him, but had to give the boy points for a good play. “Thanks.”
Askit cleared his throat. “Right, so now that we’ve established that Earth doctors are running some sort of conspiracy or scam regarding Adrian’s urine, perhaps we should turn our attention to the rather large crowd outside?”
Adrian shook his head helplessly and looked towards the door. “Why’s there a crowd outside?”
Keffa raised an eyebrow. “You’re joking, right?”
+++++
Keffa was peeking through the small windows near the entrance to the medical facility, all too aware of Adrian’s proximity a he tried to do the same. Sure, it had been a little surprising that he was some sort of super-human thanks to some strange medicine interaction, but perhaps you couldn’t just be a regular person and turn the whole galaxy on its head.
“That’s a big crowd,” he observed quietly. He was speaking to himself, but Keffa felt her heart skip a beat as though he’d been whispering sweet nothings into her ear. The blush hit her like a rising storm, and she very intently stared in the exact other direction so that he couldn’t see. The fact that he be able to see the flush in her cheeks with his goddamned heat vision was not lost on her, and that made her even more desperate to stop him from seeing.
She pressed her face towards the glass where he couldn’t see.
“Shit, Chir’s out there!” she said, spotting the Gaoian arriving with an unknown weapon. “He’s brought some sort of weird gun.”
Grznk joined them near the entrance. “It’s because you’re humans, and because you-” he directed an acidic glare at Adrian, “- screamed louder than a coil-bolt blast. They’ve come ready to take down whichever human is causing problems.”
“Take down a human?” Adrian asked. “Have they ever managed to do that? Aside with that Carl fuckface, that is.”
Keffa almost turned to look at him before she caught herself. Her cheeks were still hot, and the near-mistake only made her blush harder. “They… umh, they managed to take one other down.”
Adrian leaned in closer to get a better look, so close that Keffa could feel his body heat against her. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
Keffa wasn’t sure what there was to feel about it. As far as she was concerned, humans were just another race out amongst the stars, and the fact that the other races needed to go to such lengths to put them down was at best helpful, and at worst a little embarrassing. “Yeah… erm…” she replied, having lost all of the rest of her words somewhere between her brain and her mouth.
He pulled away from her to speak with the others, and his sudden absence made her all too aware of the empty space behind her. That empty space felt kind of cold.
“Askit,” he said, “do you have any ideas?”
“Adrian,” the little Corti replied in similar tones, “I have no ideas. This would be your area.”
“We’ll I’d really rather not get into a fucking gunfight with my old mate, especially when I have no fucking gun and I built him his,” Adrian continued. “Well… Trix and I made that gun for Jen, looks like Chir hung onto the fucking thing. It shoots metal bolts.”
“You’re going to be killed by your own gun,” Askit observed. “Poetic.”
The mention of Jen’s name brought a scowl to Keffa’s face. The relationship – or whatever it had been – she had had with Adrian was well known, but although she had clearly abandoned him it seemed like he was still hung up on her. Keffa wished she knew how to make a man forget about another woman; sex alone wouldn’t do it, she’d been down that road before and it had not ended well…
Men weren’t as simple as her mother had always led her to believe, but then since Keffa was the result of a rushed liaison between her mother and somebody who impersonated the singing, gyrating entertainer of her obsession, it didn’t seem to Keffa that her mother had much wisdom to give in the matter. The crazy old bat had been far more like ‘ain’t nothin’ but a horn dog’ than ‘hound dog’.
“Somebody has to contact them,” she said, thinking maybe she could use the opportunity to prove herself to Adrian. She could do anything Jennifer Delaney could have done – more, probably – and all she needed was a chance to show him. “I can get out there, let him know that everyone is fine-“
“I’m nog fine,” interrupted Darragh in a fine spray of blood. “He bwoge my nothe!”
“That everyone is fine except for Darragh,” she revised. “Then when he stands down you can get away. It’s my ship, Adrian, so we can go anywhere you want.”
Hopefully that wouldn’t be anywhere near Jennifer Delaney; at least not until Keffa had broken that Earth-born witch’s spell on him.
“Alright, Keffa,” he said, turning back to her. “What’s your plan?”
It would have been very good if she’d had anything really resembling a plan, but right now she was drawing a blank. “I’ve got a few ideas,” she ventured, but right away she could tell it wasn’t going to fly.
At least her blush was gone.
“Nice try,” he said, breaking into a grin. At least he didn’t seem mad, he even seemed a little like he appreciated the attempt. “Doc, does this place have a back door?”
Grznk looked confused. “No, why would it?”
“Let me guess,” Askit inferred, “we’re making a back door?”
+++++
Orseid, Celzi Alliance Long Range Frigate, Far Reaches
If there was one thing that Roman Kaminski enjoyed about travelling the depths of space, it was the fact that they’d brought enough vodka along to pass the time. There wasn’t much aboard the Orseid that the Celzi – some sort of ape-like beast-men as far as Roman was concerned – would let them do.
That was fine, neither Roman nor any member of his squad wanted to have much of anything to do with the Celzi themselves, and so long as they were left to themselves and had plenty of supplies, they weren’t in any danger of going stir crazy.
No matter that it had already been two months with only three small contacts. Salvage hunters who’d had nothing much of interest besides some old scrap they’d recovered before the Celzi had found them. From what Roman had been told there hadn’t been anything of interest on their navigation computers, but it seemed to him that the Celzi weren’t asking the right questions.
There was nothing of interest on the salvage hunter’s navigation computers, and that in itself was interesting. Where were they coming from? Where were they going? These weren’t questions that the Celzi had answers for, and if Roman hadn’t had his squad, his vodka, and his playing cards, he doubted he would have continued to play nice.
As it stood, he was only here to do what the Celzi asked of him, and if that meant sitting around playing cards and getting pissed as a newt, so be it.
Valery stopped thumbing his cards and threw a chip into his betting pool. “I call.”
“Call,” Prokopy echoed, tossing his own chip in.
They looked expectantly at Roman, the three of them being the last of the five players in the game. Roman looked down at his cards; Three Queens and a pair of Twos, not a bad full house.
He looked at the pool, and he looked at his own blue and green chips, a neat little stack of his existing winnings. “What the hell, all in.”
The other two laughed, pushing their own little piles in, then leaned forward to start showing their cards.
Prokopy looked over to Valery, grinning as he laid his cards out, two Kings, two Aces. “The Captain feels his luck is good today. Perhaps he is mistaken?”
“Not as mistaken as you might imagine, Prokopy,” answered Roman, displaying his own cards. “I believe this is adequate?”
“Oh dear,” Valery said, putting down his straight. “It seems that once again I have the luck of the devil.”
“The devil is right!” Roman replied with disgust, but that only made Valery break into laughter.
“Za zdorovje!” Valery said, raising a shot of vodka between chuckles. “For health!”
“Your health maybe!” Prokopy told him. “I’ve never seen someone so-“
The warning siren rang, and the alert lights bathed the room in a deep oscillating green. It looked like there was work afoot, and that meant there was no more time for fun or games. Ship combat was serious business, and on a personal level Roman had never much cared for ships either at sea or in space; either seemed like a damned good way to get yourself killed without being able to do a thing about it.
“Everybody get ready,” Roman ordered, standing from their playing area and addressing the seven other members of his squad. “I will talk with the Ship Master about this. Hardsuits on, AK-9s in case of Hunters, but we’ll probably be able to rely on sidearms. Keep it in your heads to avoid shooting holes in the hull this time.”
He left them to prepare, knowing they were professionals when duty called, and proceeded towards the command deck where the Ship Master would be waiting.
Roman wasn’t wrong, Ithris turned to greet him as soon as he entered the command deck, and gestured towards a seat next to him. “Please, Captain Kaminski, take a seat.”
Roman did so without hesitation, wanting to be sitting once the shooting started – if the shooting started – so that a sudden impact wouldn’t knock him from his feet. “What have we got?”
“We’ve been dropped into a warp interdiction zone,” Ithris explained, and Roman guessed that that was bad. “There’s a pirate vessel – a cruiser stolen from one of our factories, in fact – in the area, and we are on an intercept course.”
“We won’t be able to resume FTL until they are dealt with?” Roman guessed. It certainly sounded like an area denial technology, which until recently the aliens had not employed. The recent adoption of missiles and mines into the main fleets of both sides had rapidly created no-go zones for anyone lacking the correct transponder codes. He’d heard on the grapevine that it’d been a human who’d taught them those tricks, and if Roman ever met the man responsible he was resolved to punch him in the nose.
“You are correct, they use an irregular gravitational pulse disrupts warp fields in the area,” Ithris affirmed, tapping away at his datapad to get the full information on the targeted vessel. “There seems to have been modifications made to the enemy ship, I want them scanned in detail.”
The sensor technician responded within a few moments. “Launch tubes detected, probable ‘missiles’.”
That was probably the least reassuring thing Roman could have imagined at that point. Space wasn’t like the ocean, if your ship was hit by a missile it left a big hole that emptied out rather than filled up. “Should I get into a vacuum suit?”
Ithris looked sidelong at Roman; he seemed amused. “This ship is fitted with defenses against missiles. We have twenty smaller coilbolt guns distributed across the hull to shoot them down at a safe range.”
“Point defense,” Roman said with a nod. That made him feel a little better, because as far as he’d been able to tell during the course of this insane deployment, aliens didn’t make very sound combat decisions. Just as with the missiles, he wondered if it had been a human who’d given them the answer to missile barrages.
That would mean the next step would be swarms of smaller missiles, or possibly missiles using evasive maneuvers. He couldn’t wait.
“Missiles confirmed,” alerted the sensor technician. “Thirty separate objects inbound.”
Ithris turned to Roman and smiled smugly. “Target and destroy.”
“Targeting,” the weapons technician responded. “Tracking into firing range… firing.”
A tense moment followed, ended by the sensor tech. “Object count reduced to twelve.”
“Second firing,” the weapons tech replied.
“Why do you not just keep firing until all are destroyed?” Roman asked, and received a surprised look from all on the command deck.
“Do what he said,” Ithris instructed his weapons technician, and moments later the sensor technician gave the all clear. A second wave of missiles met with the same fate as they closed the distance with the pirate vessel.
“Do you have this ‘warp interdiction’ set against them as well?” Roman asked.
“Of course,” Ithris replied. “I’m not going to let them escape! Not when they’re finally caught!”
“Good.” Roman smiled, and rose from his seat to go and join with the rest of his men. “I’ll be waiting for the connection.”
It was almost time for his work to begin.
+++++
Hodgepodge, Pirate Cruiser, Far Reaches
The Celzi Alliance Frigate had seemed to be the most likely candidate for what was happening to the salvage runners, and the difference in size and power had been so significant that Zripob hadn’t thought twice about engaging with the military vessel. The Hodgepodge was fitted with missile launchers, and that had previously proved enough of an edge to stop just about anything.
That no longer seemed to be the case. The Celzi ship had destroyed every missile sent against it by firing small coil-bolts until they were safe, and had kept closing distance the whole time.
“Ready the ship for boarding,” he ordered his crew. That was the first time he’d ever had to give that order, and he hoped it would be the last. Fortunately, Jen had been part of the planning committee when it had come to repurposing the ship, and as a result it was almost psychotically well-defended against being boarded.
Zripob checked his own weapons; there was no point in being sloppy even with this kind of space between him and the boarders. He prepped his fusion blade and set his anti-tank gun to charge; the thing was an oh-four-five original with an extra cycling chamber that allowed a slow rate of automatic fire or just a single pull with twice the kick. That had been a limited run, and mostly they occupied the collections of rich people with too much time. Zripob had recently taken his from the collection of a man who wasn’t going to need it anymore.
Getting expensive stuff for free was one of the best parts of being a pirate.
“Don’t fire any more missiles,” he directed as the fourth wave was lost. “Ready to deliver a full broadside when they hit boarding range. Full kinetic deflectors at that time! I’m not in the mood to ruin the paintwork on our hull if they can’t keep theirs in one piece!”
The Celzi frigate was coming up fast along starboard, readying to extend the kinetic platforms that would allow boarders to cross the space between. There wouldn’t be enough time for them to cross, not if he could destroy enough kinetic emitters, and then the whole boarding party would be adrift in space.
He croaked out a long laugh. Poor bastards.
Then the Frigate hit boarding range, and both ships shuddered under plasma and coilgun fire.
Zripob rose from his chair, pointed at the main screen, and roared. “Fire!”
The Frigate’s hull exploded in a storm of debris as the missiles impacted and his kinetics repulsed, proving Zripob’s theory that the coilbolt defenses needed a few moments to lock on.
“Reload and fire again,” he ordered, returning to his chair. He was going to destroy these Celzi bastards to the last man.
“Commander,” his sensor technician called out. “I’m detecting a mid-ship breach. We may have been hit by a piece of debris.”
Zripob grunted; it had all been going to plan, but he’d been in the business too long to expect any plan to hold together for long. “Seems more likely that we’ve got uninvited guests. Tell the Human Suppression Squad to get down there and send some hover cams to sweep the area.”
+++++
Carltopia, the Outer Cluster
The entrance to the medical facility was closed, and the screaming had come to an end, but apart from that nothing had happened. There had been suggestions of Keffa’s face being displayed in one of the small windows, and since Chir hadn’t received any attempts to open a dialogue he supposed that indicated the worst.
He growled in dismay; he had privately hoped that the girl would take up Jen’s role in the event the red-haired human female did not return, but now he didn’t know if he could trust her.
“Alright,” he called out to his soldiers, grimly resigned to enduring the inevitable shit storm should he survive. “There are three humans in there and two Corti. Disable them all if you can, but otherwise you are cleared for deadly force.”
He turned to the crowd. “Back up to twice your current distance citizens! We’re going to be deploying the kinetic ram.”
The bulky cannon was the sort used on ships for launching small coil-bolts, but here it served to blow in doors or even to knock down buildings if necessary. Today Chir would start with the door.
“Fire!” he ordered, clear and loud enough for everyone to hear. Clear enough for Lorla to hear.
The door exploded from its hinges in a ring of metal and crack of polymer, snapping into three pieces that flipped and bounced their way into the room beyond.
He was inclined to play it cautious as usual and to wait it out, learning more about what was awaiting them inside. But Lorla was watching, and Chir was tired of sleeping alone.
He drew his fusion blade and levelled it at the open door. Then he shouted the order. “Chaaaarge!!”
When they discovered the place was empty, he felt a little silly. When they discovered that someone had cut a hole through the back wall while he’d been waiting for the kinetic ram he felt even sillier.
When he found two Corti and two humans waiting for them in various states of injury and unconsciousness in the tunnels beyond, he wasn’t sure what he felt, other than considerable confusion. Doctor Grznk busily tended to a blacked out Keffa while Darragh held a bloody cloth to his face. Only the Corti with an injured arm seemed to be paying the soldiers much attention.
That Corti seemed to be dressed in a black sheet with a hole cut out for his head.
“Welcome to the tunnel of human misery,” the Corti said with far more jocularity than Chir had come to expect of the species. “I would say to take me to your leader but it seems you’ve already come to me.”
“Who in the void are you?” Chir demanded, finding himself quite unsettled by the completely unexpected turn of events.
The Corti smiled. “I am the Corti formerly known as Taski, and I have come to make all of your wildest dreams come true.”
Chir glared at him. He’d never associated Corti with anything related to accomplishing his goals and he wasn’t about to start.
“Just kidding,” the Corti continued, grinning in a way Chir had always associated with psychotic humans rather than the logical Corti race. “I’m here to seriously complicate your day. Let’s go somewhere private where we can talk.”
+++++
The Five-Fingers, Pirate Salvage Vessel
Adrian was feeling a little bad about the fact that it seemed the easiest way – for him at least – to convince women to stay somewhere safe was to strangle them half to death. Keffa had wanted to come along on what could be a very dangerous, and very mad enterprise, and had not been willing to take no for an answer. He, on the other hand, had not been willing to say yes, and so it had come to that.
He hoped strangling attractive women in order to keep them safe wasn’t becoming some sort of ridiculous trend in his life, because he figured he could do without that particular pattern becoming an ongoing thing. Twice was already two times too many.
Another thing Keffa probably wouldn’t be happy about was the fact that he had also stolen her ship. He’d have to figure out some way to make it all up to her, if such a thing was even possible. Perhaps she’d like a bigger, better ship than the one he was currently pushing out of the docks for all it was worth. After all, in his admittedly limited experience women responded well to being given things.
He didn’t know how much ships actually cost, and he didn’t really have any money, so he figured he’d just have to steal another one just for her. The recent conversation with Askit about his casual theft of starships and everything not bolted down returned to him in that moment, precisely on time to make him feel most uncomfortable.
The Five-Fingers had just left the base when the communications system crackled into life. “This is Cimbrean Control. You are currently being targeted by defensive systems, stand down!”
“Fuck,” he swore, and picked up the link. “This is the Five-Fingers… how are you today?”
There was hesitation on the other end, they were probably confused as to why someone stealing a ship would ask them how they were. “We’re fine… you have stolen that ship! Halt your movement and await collection by base personnel.”
“I just bought it,” Adrian lied, but did as he was told for the moment. “The paperwork probably hasn’t been processed yet, but I just thought I’d take her for a little spin around the asteroids and back. I’m sure the paperwork will process through the system any moment now…”
“Sir, this is a pirate base,” replied the controller wearily. “We don’t need any paperwork.”
“Then why do you reckon I stole this ship?” Adrian asked. “Technically there’s no way to prove it one way or another.”
“Because we know that Keffa wouldn’t sell that ship for any price,” snapped the controller. “She will undoubtedly be furious when she catches up with you.”
“She’d probably be furious at whoever blew it up as well,” Adrian argued. “I mean she might be really pissed off with me for borrowing it without asking, but the guy who destroyed it? Mate, I would not want to be that guy, would you?”
There was an extended silence on the other end of the line, and Adrian grinned like an idiot. He knew that Keffa wasn’t quite as innocent as she tried to seem. She had a no-shits-given kind of attitude found in most teenagers as well as just about anyone who has gone through their own kind of hell and come out kicking. Keffa was both, and for whatever reason she’d done her level best to hide it from him; it was just bad luck for her that he knew what to look for.
“You’re just borrowing it?” the controller finally asked. There were notes of concern and hope in his voice, like someone who knew they were being conned but really wanted to believe. His only other option was to blow up the ship, and it sounded like he could imagine how that was going to end.
“Yeah, I’m just borrowing it,” Adrian reassured him. “I’ll smooth everything over with Kef when I get back, you don’t have to worry about a thing.”
“How long will you be?” the controller pushed, but Adrian could tell he was already willing.
“Just around the asteroids and back,” he lied again, forcing enough calmness into his voice that the controller would keep wanting to trust him. “Not long.”
“Be quick then,” the controller hissed. He was going to let this happen, but he wasn’t happy about it. If he was smart he’d use this opportunity to claim he’d been duped.
“It’ll be like I never left,” Adrian promised, already restarting the acceleration sequence. He terminated the communication link and let the navigation software work its magic. “Adios, fuckhead. Come on Cimbrean!”
+++++
Hodgepodge, Pirate Cruiser, Far Reaches
Things were severely fucked and you didn’t need to be psychic to see it. There was only half of a Celzi ship left, and Roman and his men had barely been able to make it across the kinetic bridge before the missiles blew the shit out of it.
There was every reason to believe that the whole Celzi crew was gone, and with it Roman’s ticket out of there.
“Captain,” said Valery while the others prepared to breach the next hull section. “The Celzi ship… she does not look good.”
The other men glanced over for half a second; they were all interested in where this conversation was going. Roman was pretty interested too because he had more of a prayer than a plan for this situation. He didn’t have any idea what to do, but being a leader didn’t mean he needed all of the answers; he just needed to help everyone figure it out together.
“We must assume the Celzi are lost,” Roman told his men. “But we are alive. We are on the enemy ship, and we still have our mission. Sergeant Markovic, what do you believe is the best course of action?”
Valery seemed a little surprised that he was the one being asked, but since he was the one not doing any work who else was Roman going to pick?
“We should take control of the enemy ship, Captain,” Valery answered promptly. “If we seize the command deck we may be able to get the vessel under our full control.”
“I agree, Sergeant,” Roman replied. “We will move in two groups towards the command deck. “Markovic, you take Bogomolov, Sokoloff and Yakovlev, and take the port side of the vessel. Stay in constant radio contact. If one group is pinned down, the other can flank the enemy forces.”
That was about as much as he could come up with that would get them out of this situation. The truth was even one of them could probably get to the command deck, but just because he knew that wasn’t a reason to get sloppy. Careless men died, or got other men killed, and Roman wasn’t going to live with that.
“Breach closed,” Yakovlev reported. Their breaching method did not include going in by the airlock, but rather by making their own. They had a polymeric sheet that would fuse to the outer hull breach to prevent all of the air rushing out when they didn’t want it to. Ship kinetics would normally contain atmosphere, but as far as Roman was concerned all that alien tech didn’t have shit on a dependable wall.
“Open the inner hull,” he instructed, and Lagunov obeyed. The line of thermite paste flared and cut cleanly through the hull within seconds. Then Lagunov kicked the cut part of the wall into the room beyond, and they all braced themselves against the sudden rush of air to fill the empty space.
Lagunov looked over with a grin. “We’re in.”
“Then let’s go bag ourselves a ship,” Roman said, checking his gun over for one last time as an unsubtle hint that his men should do the same. “Shall we race to the command deck, Sergeant? For a bottle of vodka?”
“You’re a sucker for losing, Captain,” Valery replied with a laugh. “But you’re on! Victory vodka is the most delicious vodka!”
Roman laughed as well. “Then I shall enjoy drinking it! Everybody, move!”