THE EXPANSE: Whispers From Above (Expanse/Flying Circus AU quest)

[DragonCobolt]

ISA



The night you left Eir, you packed a bag of vital items.

Didn't pack much. Not a lot of kilograms could go up, even with a fusion drive. If your village had access to an Epstien capable ship - a real torchship like the old books said - then…

Well, that would have been different.

As it was, you put in a few protein bars, specially made for Fischers. Welding goggles. Gill-seal, just in case you had to get a new suit, most Belter suits didn't make anything good for Fishers. The tiny brass rune of your faith. Your…

"Shit," you whisper.

Your hand terminal isn't there.

It was beautiful out, even fifty six meters under the ice. Even with Geirskögul blocked from sight, the reefs and the fish are out over the dome and light up the 'sky' like glittering stars. You can see a few of the subs out, examining the anaerobic lifeforms that had never seen space, or Jupiter, or hard radiation, or DNA from Erde and Himmilgard.

You walked with your shoulders hunched, moving through the narrow, dingy alleyways of the buildings built under the dome. It had been thrown up a hundred and fifty years ago, by an inner system corporation called Protogen, and they had been extracting biological research from it ever since. They had modified your great great grandparents genetic codes, using proprietary sequence editors that had made them a mega-corporation overnight, to live and work better underneath ice, in water warmed by geothermal vents and filled with truly alien wildlife.

They hadn't really cared much after they had pulled up stakes and moved off to a new corporate holding.

They hadn't come back after the War.

You came to the old corporate offices, which were now covered in the iconography of the Faith. You felt a nervous frisson run along your spine, and a flutter in your gills.

What if…

You had to have your terminal.

And He had your terminal.

There was only one Him in the colony. After Protogen left, people could only sell what they made. And while the fish in Eir were interesting, no one could eat them.

No one but you.

You weren't sure what had driven your grandparents to the Faith. But you knew, deep in your bones, it had been right.

Even if He claimed to speak for them.

You pause at the plastic and metal door of the temple. Looking in, you could see the faint shape of femininity underneath the blankets, heaped up at the altar that served as a bed. Space, even in a dome city, was scarce beyond Erde. Without free air, just waiting for anyone to breathe it. You moved like a shadow, letting your bare feet pad along the ground. There was your terminal, and the terminal of…you think her name is…Lotte?

There's the small knife, too. The knife for the bloodletting. It's ornate and gilded and came from Erde. Smelted under one gravity, and carried by someone off the well and into the blackness, the expanse between planets.

You took it.

Your eyes flick to the sleeping High Priest to your terminal. The glow of the screen and the hazy surrounding volumetric displays makes your night adapted eyes smart, but you ignore it. You tap in a few passwords - and when you get the one that he hasn't changed, you tap a few more times. You flick your finger to download files. Lots of files. Lots of video and audio files - some of them named things like ISA_BLIND_009.GLL and TERRI_FIRST_001.GLL.

You were nineteen.

Terri was…not nineteen.

You flick your finger. The red delete indicator flashes up again and again and again. Then you change every password you can and delete the contents of the root directory.

You steal out.

—​

The spaceport is located at the top of the colony - a cone-like protrusion out of the dome that reaches to the icy surface of Eir. The colony has three space capable vehicles. The first two are huge robotic ships, with cheap chemical rockets that get them into orbit, then ion drives that can send them into a gentle Hohmann transfer to the trading posts on the other moons of Geirskögul, where what little your people can sell can be shipped out to the colonies of the Belt and Herja and Erde.

The second is the gunship.

Gunship is…pushing it a little.

Okay gunship is pushing it a lot.

Theoretically, it's for defending the station, if anyone tried to steal from it. Given there was nothing here worth stealing, it hadn't flown in years. It's basically a cheap tokamak sitting on a tank of hydrogen that it uses for reaction mass, with a few life support scrubbers that will last a few weeks, and a boxy 'living space' on the top. The only guns are a pair of sandblasters and, the prize and joy of the town, a single HCRN torpedo rack.

It doesn't have any torpedoes.

That doesn't stop Arren from fiddling with it, checking it over - you stifle a smile at the sight of him, elbow deep in grease. You know that he's had to have checked the fusion drive and the life support a dozen times over, checked the sandcasters half a dozen times each, and was now busying himself with the only part of the ship he could. His shoulders were broad and muscular, visible even through the vac-suit he was wearing.

Arren worked at the docks, servicing subs. I'm just a technician, he kept saying. But you'd been friends with him since you were kids. He could have gone to any of the big institutes on Geirdriful or Elbe. He was smart enough. Good enough with machines.

He heard the clunk of the hatch behind you and turned. His smile was bright enough to outshine the sun.

Easy, out here.

"Isa, you made it," he says.

"Yeah, sorry, just had to get some things," you say. You hold up your hand terminal.

"Good," he says. Then he frowns. "Are…you sure about this?"

You think of Lotte.

You think of the video files. And the metadata that said that half of them had already been sold, repeatedly.

You think of the UN dollars you'd siphoned into your temporary account, which you'd set up in furtive hours between your day job.

"Yeah," you say.

Arren nods.

He helps you into your vac-suit.

His hands shake. His fingers caress your shoulders and he grips you and says: "It'll be okay."

You give him a smile back - shy, quiet.

Nervous.

—​

"Lift off on three," Arren says as you and he lay on your backs, looking at the cheap screens and fold out controls of the rocket. He pauses, then grins at you. "I always wanted to say that, you know?"

You give him a nervous smile back. "You checked the tokamak, right?"

"Yup," he says. "We've got enough delta-V to get us into orbit and basically anywhere in the Geirskögul system. Um. We can maybe get to Sigdrifa, if you don't mind taking a few weeks." He shook his head. "I'd kill for an Epstein drive. We could get all the way to Erde in a few days with this tank of hydrogen using an Epstein drive-" His voice is getting increasingly nervous - as if he was beginning to realize that you were sitting on a massive fusion reaction that was about to go off.

"Arren," you say. "I'm getting a call. They found out we're missing.'

"Three!" Arren said, then pressed the launch button.

The gods stand on you. The whole buzzes and your teeth clench as you glare at the screens. Wireframes indicate your launch trajectory.

It's over shockingly quickly. Eir only has 1.3mps2 ​of gravity - while your fusion drive was rather piddling compared to a modern ship's…it was still fusion.

Weightlessness suffused you. You felt no stomach issues - Fishers don't vomit, it's just a thing they don't do. Thank Protogen, you have to guess. Instead, you feel the infinite lightness of freedom - even as your thumb casually swipes the BLOCK ALL CONNECTION REQUESTS along your terminal's main screen.

Arren laughs, giddy.

"We're in orbit!"

"Put on a camera!" you say.

The camera flicks on after a few moments of typing.

Geirskögul looms in the camera - immense and imposing, banded with red and gold and pale white lines. The shimmering circular storm that could fit a hundred Erde's inside fills the center of the view, crackling with distant lightning. The gleaming terminator shimmers, bisecting the planet into a gentle arc of visible and invisible. And beyond it…are the stars. Endless, glittering stars.

For your whole life, you had heard those stars whisper to you.

"Okay…" Arren whispers. Then he looks at you. "Where to now?"

You laugh raggedly.

The SOL system was a big place. And ever since the War had shattered the United Nations of Erde and the Herja Congressional Republic, ever since the chaos afterwards had fragmented the already fragmentary Outer Planets Alliance…there were a million tiny points of light out there.

All of them could use a gunship, you were sure.

Arren looks at you, waiting for the order.

…shit, you were captain now. Weren't you?

Captain Isabelle Morgenthau. Had a ring to it.

—
Where too?
[ ] Geirdriful - covered with oceans of liquid water and volcanic activity, the only moon with a magnetosphere
[ ] Hlökk - a moon covered with volcanos and thick mineral deposits. Sulfuric atmosphere.
[ ] Sanngriðr - a small, rocky moon that is located fairly far in the orbits - a usual trade station.
[ ] Sigdrifa - the biggest port in the Belt. It'll take the time but…hey, spending time with Arren is part of the reason you stole the ship in the first place.

 

[DragonCobolt]

"Uh…" you rub your palm against your cheek. "...Sanngriðr." You flick your finger just above the controls, the system detecting the movement and bringing up the simplified two dimensional plotting system - babies first orbital chart. You make a tugging motion and it goes from 2D to volumetric, filling the air before you in the cabin with shimmering lines and glittering dots. If they had been to scale, then your ship and every moon would have been nearly invisible dots, lost in the vastness of space, with only the massive gas giant Geirskögul being even remotely visible.

They weren't though.

Humans of every type could squish space down until it made sense.

Arren nods.

"It's the closest trading port," you say, quickly, as if you had to explain yourself - nervousness burning in your stomach like spiced fish. "We can burn at point one…point two Gs for a few hours. We've got, uh, about two hundred and ninety KPS, so, we can spend…" You do some math, nervously, tapping at the touchpad to make sure you're not messing it up. Only after the computer and you agree do you nod. "Okay, eighteen hours at point one G…uh…" You blink. "Oh. We'll be there."

Arren nods. "It's just Sanngriðr, it's not even that far." He smiles at you, gently. "We'll get there. Just a few hours."

"Right," you say. Your hands are shaking. "This is my first time I've ever been in space, you know?"

"Yeah, mine too," he says, and your cheeks darken.

"Then why are you so calm?"

"I'm not," he says, then blushes. "Just. Trying to be cool for the prettiest girl in the village."

Your fingers, which are trying to input the drive commands, flash up the coordinates of fhuvbgdaskd,l;bijh. Your hand goes to your scar as you hastily delete with the other. Arren takes your hand, leans over, and kisses you.

Right on your scar.

Uhh…

Radiators are deployed, right? Right. Yes. Radiators are deployed.

Cabin hot.

Uh.

"S-starting burn!" you squeak. The acceleration pushes you back. Just like home. You breathe in, then out. "Okay." You look at Arren. "Now, we check the rest of the ship!"

Arren unstraps and you and he walk to the ladder that leads from the cockpit to the living quarters. They're…pretty tiny. Even by your standards. There's a single sleeping bunk for the three person crew - they hot bunk, apparently, with two on shift and one sleeping, alternating as needed. There is a small kitchen nook that has a heater system for turning prepackaged meals from inedible to hot but inedible. There is a bathroom that doesn't even have a door - a zero-G toilet and a curtain is all you really get. Then there's the bulkhead leading down to the reactor and engineering and machine shop level, and the two doors to the 'left and right' that let you access and maintain the sandcasters.

This means that a worrying portion of your living space is dominated by the internal machines of guns - heavy loading racks, full of the thick, dull brown containers that hold the ammo for the sandcasters, curled up on the walls like big coiled snakes, ready to be fed into the weapons. A sandcaster might not…seem like a dangerous weapon compared to heavy coilguns and guass cannons and missiles and nuclear bombs but you knew the basic math - at the velocities space combat tended to be fought at, even ferric sand could ablate armor off, rip hull plating to shreds, blow off antennas, smash drive cones…

Their main issue was they were short range.

"Look at our very own James Holden," Arren says, teasing. "Already steely eyed, evaluating our weapons."

"Shuuuuut uppppp!" you say, elbowing him. He laughs, catches your elbow. He's strong and remembering that strength makes your cheeks flush. "I am not."

You kind of are. You'd read the James Holden Adventures like…fifty billion times.

"Still, it's…not bad," Arren says. His family was richer than yours, by a bit, so you can tell he's trying to be optimistic. "And we can expand it when we make it big. Maybe get an Epstein drive, then attach more compartments…"

"Get a real bed," you say, softly, looking at the bunk. It's just a sleeping bag with a bunch of velcro straps.

"Nah," Arren says. "That one's good."

"Really?" you ask, laughing and turning to face him. You flash a toothy smile. Your belly feels warm. But it's not a sick warm. It's…tingly. Your cheeks heat as the thought begins to drum into your head.

Alone on a ship with Arren. Alone on a ship with Arren.

Your skin tingles.

"Yeah," Arren says. He takes a step closer to you. He's taller than you. Stronger than you.

Like him.

No. Shut up. Shut the FUCK up, brain, you will not do that. You try and force down the tiny spurt of panic, but somehow, strangling it just makes it wriggle harder. You breathe faster - and Arren reaches up to caress your cheek. You flinch. He draws his hand back, then smiles, gently.

"It's okay, Isa." You blush, looking away, then force yourself to press your cheek against his palm. Arren leans down and he kisses the top of your head. Gentle. His kiss then moves from your hair to your forehead, tracing a line of soft, warm pressure against you. You close your eyes.

Murmur something unintelligible.

His mouth and yours meet.

His tongue dips in.

Your toes curl and your head spins.

Arren draws back. He's quiet. "I know…I don't know exactly what Father Richter…did. But I know it was bad. And…I can, you know. Wait as long as i need." His cheeks are flushed and it's…it's funny, Arren is doing his best to be the sweetest, best boy in the solar system.

But he's still a nineteen year old virgin and you can fucking tell.

You giggle. Then murmur, softly. "I, uh…I know one way…um…" You bite your lip.

"Oh?"

You grab him and spin him around. Arren, more surprised than anything, stumbles, and falls against the velcro wall. Your grin can best be described as…gremlinish as you lock down the straps, pinning his arms above his head. You lick your lips as Arren struggles weakly.

"There," you say as you drop to your knees. "...safe."

"...oh…" Arren says, his eyes wide.

The sound of a zipper is shockingly loud over the hum of air recyclers.

"Oh."

You grin, then pause.

"Uuh, okay… so, what do I do now?"

—​

HEINRICH



You're spooning noodles into your mouth before they get cold, your eyes skimming your newsfeed, when Shaddid enters your office with a look like she was smelling something bad. You sigh, quietly, then look up at her, slurping the last noodle into your mouth. You hold up your finger before Shaddid says anything, chewing. Swallow.

Shaddid's got a face built for frowning. It's all angles and edges, with lips that come to thin little lines. In an earlier era, you might have measured her skull and decided she had the brainpan of a police chief. Now, you just had to look at her haircut - which was cop as they came.

She flicks her finger on her hand terminal. "We have a job for you."

Your terminal flashes the file up - it's a case file. You don't even open it as you slide your half eaten noodles away from you and point the recyclable bioplastic spoon at Shaddid like it's a weapon.

"You are not my boss, setara mali. I-" you flip your wrist to your chest, palm flat against your heart. "I am engaged in my own private investigation firm, as you well know."

You've tried this excuse out a few times.

It gets the same result.

Those thin lips get thinner and she tilted her head. "No. Your company was bought out by my boss' company when they moved into Sigdrifa and now, you are also Star Helix, no matter how much you whine about it, Heinrich, you asshole. So do your damn job if you want to eat this week."

You've already tapped open the case and are starting to read it. Your brow furrows. "Julia Sigaurd Thele-Mao, runaway daughter…" You keep reading. A very, very, very wealthy member of a very large corporation based on the shambled wreck that was Himmilguard, back on Erde, wanted his daughter to come back home. You read the age. She was twenty two. You sigh, slowly. "...you want me to abscond with her, to return her home in bondage?"

"It's a kidnap job," Shaddid says, with her normal complete lack of anything approaching diplomatic tact or empathy.

…really, what were you expecting, she's a cop.

You lean slowly back in your seat. "I could find new employment at any time if I so wished, setara mali," you say.

That was a threat you hadn't brought out before. Star Helix was running ragged on the station. Nearly three million people lived here, even after the War, and Star Helix had the dubious privilege of providing the dubious idea of 'security' to all of them under the auspices of the Sigdrifa Colonial Administration. The fact no one really knew who the SCA even was the colony of anymore just meant this station was like thousands of others spread across the solar system - everyone trying to keep the names and props of the old world order going, purely because the alternative was to let everything fall to pieces.

You were all on very tiny, very thin, very sharp knife edges, and everyone had gotten far, far, far too close to slipping off during the Starving Years after the War.

…god, you were such a pretentious little prick, weren't you? You had been two at the time, what the fuck did you know about it?

Shaddid doesn't even flinch.

"Then I give the case to Müller," she says.

Silence.

You sigh, then rub your thumbs against your eyes. "Well. If you are going to stoop to such low forms of extortion and-"

The door shuts behind her. She's already gone.

You mutter under your breath. "Xélixup, unte gonya mi ge da stars tu? wupo fo wa thousand mothers. Welwala piece of…" You finish it off with a double bird at the door, before punching the air, just to get all the mad out of your system.

That done, you settle back and start actually reading the casefile.

Julia Sigaurd Thele-Mao, daughter of Julius Von Thele-Mao. He'd been born on Erde with more money than any particular God you wanted to reference, and had run a shipping empire so vast and powerful that even the bones of it were bigger than you. Julia was the middle daughter - she had two brothers named Peter and Michel, and an older sister named Clarissa and younger sister named Herja. Okay, so, middle daughter, surrounded by siblings all clamoring for the parents attention, tons of money. You already had half an idea of what she'd be like just from this.

You keep reading.

She'd been spotted on freighters throughout the Belt after dropping out of a college course being run on one of the institutes that was still operational on Elbe, some of them more closely affiliated with the OPA than others. You started by immediately cross referencing to see which part of the OPA the freighters had been in - because there was OPA, there was OPA, and there was OPA. Were they the kind of genocidal lunatics from the Free Navy who thought throwing rocks at planets with billions of people on them were a great way to something something secure independence of the outer planets, or were they just barely reformed pirates like Golden Bough or lovable mercs like Checkmate.

Hmm…

Looked like closer to Checkmate than Free Navy.

Good.

Well, not good, it meant that Julia was doing something she actually believed in and you were being compelled by the merciless gears of capitalism to go and drag her home. You put your hands against your face, rubbing them. The spin-gravity of Sigdrifa feels weirdly heavy - as if rather than just a standard third of a G pushing you down, it's the entire weight of a dwarf planet on your shoulders.

"I hate my job," you whisper.

Worse, your noodles are cold now.

—
Where to begin investigating first?
[ ] Stick to the computer investigations. Try and narrow down the most recent freighter she's been on.
[ ] Hit the streets. At least two of these freighters have been to Sigdrifa within the past month, they have to have talked to people.
[ ] Write in

 

[DragonCobolt]

You pick up the noodles and dump them into the recycler, then chuck in the bowl, then chuck in the spoon after it too.

"I needed to lose weight anyway," you say, then adjust your collar.

You pause, then, looking at your hat.

You scowl at the hat.

"I'm not wearing that hat," you say.

In your memory, your ex boyfriend looks at you like a kicked puppy.

"I'm not," you say again, to no one.

Stepping out of your office with the hat firmly perched on your head, out into the vastness of Sigdrifa, you find yourself surrounded by the press of humanity. What had started on Erde as a mildly successful breed of featherless bipeds had spread outwards - first with crude flying machines that allowed mankind to avoid the wilderness and mountains of Himmilguard, then with more and more sophisticated flying machines. Rocket machines. Under the guidance of the League of Nations, the easiest (not nearest, easiest, space is complicated) planet that could be colonized was colonized: Herja.

If it hadn't been for a Rishonim inventor who had been born with dust in his veins, then it was possible that humanity would have been stuck there - with months of travel between even the closest bodies, with everyone restricted by the tyranny of orbital calculus. Instead, Solomon Epstein had fiddled with his own private yacht's fusion drive and changed…everything.

They said, with the right telescopes, you could still see that yacht. It wasn't burning anymore. Even an Epstein drive couldn't keep accelerating forever without more reaction mass and fuel pellets.

Still.

A few months at ten Gs got it really worryingly close to C. It was definitely on its way off to the depths of space - and the only reason the rest of humanity had a hope in hell of following was because his wife had had backups of all his work documents on their computers. She had gotten richer than the most wealthy people in the solar system, and given humanity the stars.

"Yeah, well, maybe the stars are better off without us," you mutter to yourself as you came to one of the tunnel-trams that weeded their way through Sigdrifa's many levels. The whole asteroid had been spun up by the League of Nations, back before the War, using immense Epstein drives to slowly give the whole dwarf planet enough spin, and now those very drives had been cannibalized for parts and turned into more slums. You shook yourself and tried to focus on the job.

The OPA had to know something about this.

So you had to talk to the right kind of OPA.

So you had to get to the old docks.

The really old docks.

—​

Engine Town had been named by some really unimaginative people. It had been the first docks built after the station had spun up, because there was a lot of open space looking out towards space. The docks themselves were pretty simple: Trusses and scaffolds that ships could fly up into then latch onto. Then when it came time to launch, they just got 'dropped' out of Sigdrifa, off to their own fates.

Now, with bigger, better docks built along the equator, Engine Town was where everyone who didn't want to pay the higher fees and dues docked. Rockhoppers and ice haulers, mostly. As you stepped onto one of the narrow scaffolds that led along the highest ring of the docks, you whistled softly. There were huge panel windows that looked out at the vacuum portions of the docks, and you could see the titanic bulk of an ice hauler parked there. Before the War, ice haulers were old colony ships, bringing people to the Outer Belt and the outer planets.

During the war, they had been target practice.

Now?

After?

They carried ice. Out towards Geirskögul and her infinite bountiful rings, then in towards the inner belt, then back out to Geirskögul again.

The smaller ships were almost gnatlike next to the bulk of the Maus - private and family owned ships that brought in the metals and ores and radioactives that everywhere needed all the time. Sigdrifa did more than its fair share of smelting and processing.

You started down the catwalk.

—​

"Pretty girl, ya?" the skinny, bunny eared Wildleute you showed the picture too whistles.

You smile. "Not really my type, setara mali." You swipe your hand terminal to get the picture to go away. "Now, have you seen her? I know your ship has been parked here for a few weeks for repairs…"

"Ja, ja," he said, then started to slip right into a Belter patois that was from…you were pretty sure it was from Hingabe. Which means you had a better chance of understanding Rishonim. You pull up a translator program, saying.

"Slower, slower."

"Yes, I saw her/she, they [pretty girl] good girl, yes, talking to Dawes."

You frown. "Dawes?" you ask. "...not Anderson Dawes?"

"Ja." Bunny ears flop around.

You put your hand against your face, then nod. "Taki Taki, beratna."

He makes the hand gesture for a shrug, then the crossed arms for danger. "Dawes a felota."

You tap the brim of your hat, like it was a vac suit helmet. I understand.

Felota. Generic term for bad thing - kind of like how an Inner might call something a piece of shit. Except it also had a specific meaning too: Felota. Floating object. Unsecured objects in a burn were dangerous as hell.

Anderson Dawes floated, serene and calm - until he wasn't. Then you were very…very dead.

"I'm not getting paid enough for this," you mutter under your breath.

Anderson Dawes wasn't hard to find. That was the whole problem - he was an OPA bigwig and didn't like cops. If he was talking with Julia…then Julia was either already dead…or she was in very…very deep with the OPA.

You clicked your teeth, came around a bend in the docks, and found yourself facing a pair of people - a man and a woman - both of them with the split circle of the OPA tattooed on their shoulders. They were holding guns.

"You should come with us, Mr. Engles," the woman said, her accent pure Inner Planets.

You raise your hands. "And where is this going to be exactly? Recycling vats? Airlock? I was always partial to the smelting furnaces - less evidence to-"

"Very funny, wellwala," the man grumbled, shutting you up. "Walk."

He steps behind you, jams his gun into your back, and gets you walking. So, perforce, you walk.

Really not getting paid enough for this.

—​

ISA


"This isn't fair."

The words spring out of your mouth before you even think them through - and fortunately, the bustle of Sanngriðr is loud enough that no one can hear you. You lean your head back against the cool metal wall, close your eyes and try to not cry.

You had just walked out of the…worst meeting of your life.

The woman in question hadn't even been cruel! That was the worst part. She had smiled, chipperly, and then processed your docking order, your refueling, the dues and fees, everything. Once she had done so, she had rung up a number. You had watched…and tried to not show the horror on your face as the number of digits went from two to three to four to…you didn't even want to think.

But…

You pulled out your handheld.

ARREN: Think I found a berth. Pretty expensive, but better than sleeping on the ship.

It came with a hyperlink, which when you tapped, showed a hole in the wall sleeping nook. The cost was in League of Nations thalers. Your fingers shook as you punched in conversions for Herja credits, Water Bills, and finally, C-Notes, and all of them came out to roughly the same amount. You typed some more at the calculator app.

That massive pile of money you'd stolen?

It was going to last your gunship, uh…

One more trip. Maybe. If you didn't mind launching without a full tank of monohydrogen reaction mass.

Your hands shook as you put them against your face. You could practically hear the High Priest at the back of your head: Ah, the waywardness of youth.

"Fuck," you hiss. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

The handheld buzzes. It's Arren, texting you again. You tap it open and it's a picture of him recreating the 'shocked baby' meme at the window looking out on the surface of the moon, with the rings of Geirskögul visible as a vast streak across the heavens. At your previous orbital inclination, those rings had been a narrow, nearly invisible band. Now they dominated the heavens.

You want to cry even harder now.

You close your eyes. "Okay Isa. It's okay. You have a gunship." You pause. "You have…a gunship!" You look down at your handheld, then hurry to a nearby bench that is parked near one of the hydroponic nooks. Other people are sitting there, taking in the green. A lot of them give you funny looks - but you barely notice them as you tap through the station's internet. Shockingly quickly, you bring up a job's posting. There's…

There's a lot. Actually. Requests for quick delivery of tons of cargo, with pays in the hundreds of thousands of LOND, and passenger missions, and…and then you spot the one that stops you. It's underlined in red.

PIRATE BOUNTY: SCOPULI.

You read quickly, muttering. "Transport ship Scopuli, reported missing two months ago…Epstein drive capable, spotted in the Geirskögul system. Intercept and force a surrender. Ship…unarmed." You bite your lip. Unarmed. Unarmed. It was an unarmed transport someone had jacked, and the owners wanted it back.

You could do that.

And the bounty.

"Gods," you whisper.

That bounty could keep you flying for…years. Fuck flying, it could buy you some of those upgrades you had been thinking about. Maybe gravity drugs.

The cargo missions were a no go. You didn't have cargo space. The passenger missions? Oh, hey, you and your family of five don't mind cramming into less space than a cargo container? Also, you're gonna have to share it with me and my boyfriend? Just as a warning, he ties me up AND rails me silly every night and sometimes, I blindfold him and-

Your hysterical line of thought cuts off as you tap the bounty mission.

It's flagged as having one other call on it - but it's an open mission. The other ship is logged as…the…Dryad, under Captain Inaros.

"Never heard of him at least," you say, quietly. If he was famous or something, then you'd have been in trouble. The Dryad's transponder isn't on any ship tracking system, so you'd have to work fast. You stood up - and then realized you had just gotten a job that would involve shooting at people…

Without asking Arren.

You bite your lip.

"...great," you whisper.

—
How does Arren React
[ ] Loud argument that might get you in trouble
[ ] Quiet brooding that puts strain on the relationship
[ ] Write In

 

[samdamandias]

Hey @DragonCobolt here's the primer on the Sol system so that everyone else can have some idea of what is going on.

Sol
System primary, a lovely G2V star. It is roughly the same mass as our own sun, but ~25% more luminous.

Sigvird, also called Kokhav
Average orbital radius 0.11 AU. Orbital period 14 days.
A very large gas giant, orbiting damn close the the Roche limit. It has neither moons, moonlets, nor rings. Also, it's really hot.

Hjorthrimul
Average orbital radius 0.26 AU. Orbital period ~48 days
Approx 7263 km in diameter, surface gravity of 5.88m/s^2.
A small, toasty (576K!) and airless rockball, very rich in minerals.

Brynhildr
Average orbital distance 0.42 AU. Orbital period 99.42 days
A super-earth that thinks IRL Venus is a quitter. Seriously, don't go here, half your spaceship will melt, and what hasn't melted will be on fire. And even if you were dumb enough to do so, there's nothing on the surface that's worth it.

Herja, also called Ma'adim or the Red Planet
Average orbital distance 0.71 AU. Orbital period ~218.5 days.
About 6626 km in diameter, surface gravity ~4.126 m/s^2.
Likewise small, toasty, and airless, but notably less toasty, with an average surface temp of 349 Kelvins. It possesses neither mineral wealth nor surface water, and what small subsurface deposits of ice there are are extremely hard to reach. Does hold the honor of being the easiest planet to reach from Erde, even after Herr Epstein made his marvelous drive.

Erde
Average orbital distance 1AU. Orbital period 365 days exactly. No mucking about with leap years!
Surface gravity of 9.8m/s^2, about E̡͘R̴͝R҉͜O͏҉R̸͏ km in diameter.
Home to the Old World and the continent of Himmilgard. Neither especially rich nor poor in resources, it has the best climate in the Sol system, in that it actually has a climate. You can just go outside and breathe the air! And not die to heat or cold! And there's liquid water! So much liquid water!

Has three moons, Doana, Rhona, and Elba.

Alruna, also called Levanah, the White Planet, or Der Schneeball
Average orbital distance 1.6 AU. Orbital period, ~739 days.
Approx 12334km diameter, surface gravity 9.02m/s^2
An ice world, although there are liquid oceans and seas near the equator. Average temperature is a brisk 234 Kelvin. Alruna has a substantial atmosphere and magnetosphere, although the oxygen content is pretty much zero. At sea level, the atmospheric pressure is about the same as 2000m on Erde. In addition to water and ice, Alruna has abundant mineral resources.

Alruna has four small moonlets, likely captured asteroids.

Thogn
Average orbital distance 2.72 AU. Orbital period ~4.48 years
Approximately 5606km diameter. Surface gravity ~3m/s^2
A cool airless rockball, Thogn has abundant mineral resources and some deposits of ice.

Inner Belt
Home to Sigdrifa and countless other minor planets and asteroids, with lots of mineral wealth, natch. Sigdrifa's average distance from Sol is about 4.9 AU

Geirskögul also sometimes called Tzedeq
Average orbital distance 8.83 AU. Orbital period ~24 years.
Heckin big. If you think Jupiter is a chonker, Geirskögul is M E G A C H O N K
Has oodles and scoodles of moons and moonlets, and a downright amazing system of rings. You can see them from Herja with a decent set of binoculars.

​

Sanngriðr: Home to the major trade port of the Geirskögul system, and outermost of the four big moons. Has no significant atmosphere. Surface gravity 2.55 m/s^2, 3897km dia.​

Eir: A small icy world, with a subsurface ocean. Isa and Arren's home. Surface gravity ~1.75m/s^2, 5543km diameter.​

Hlökk: Tiny, very smol, ALL VOLCANOES ALL THE TIME. A goldmine of mineral wealth for those brave enough to chance it. Surface gravity ~0.30 m/s^2, ~708km diameter.​

Geirdriful: Largest of the four, and one of three bodies in the Sol system with liquid water on the surface. (Also coincidentally one of the three where planes can actually fly) Most of the surface is water, and what little bits aren't are volcanic islands. Actually above freezing most places, but unlike Alruna the air is not merely unbreathable, but actively trying to kill you. The second-most tectonically active body in the Sol system after Hlökk. Has decent mineral wealth. Surface gravity of 8.13 m/s^2, surface pressure equal to that on Erde at about 1100 meters, and a diameter of 11086km.​

Outer Belt
The jackpot as far as mineral wealth goes. However, at an "average" distance of more than 14 AU from Sol, only the most dedicated rockhoppers are going to be prospecting here. Still a safer bet than Hlökk.

Gondul
Average orbital distance 25.49 AU. Orbital period ~129 years.
Small, airless, almost twice as far as the outer belt, and REALLY FUCKIN' COLD. Why would you go here? Why would anyone go here? Also has one moon and then a tiny captured asteroid dancing between them

 

[Eater]

I did a quick mock up of the solar system. Vertically, 1AU = 100px measured from the center of each body. Body size is 1,000km per px for the first 10 pixels, then 10,000km thereafter. For the planets without a diameter specified in @samdamandias's post I gave a best estimate. Sigvird is roughly the size of Jupiter, Brynhildr is twice the diameter of earth, and Geirskogul is three times the diameter of Jupiter.

Spoiler: To scale

Spoiler: Larger, with labels

Edit: It's in greyscale because I wasn't sure on what colors would be appropriate.

 

[DragonCobolt]

Arren…

Didn't take it well.

"A mercenary contract?" he asks, his eyes wide as he looks down at you, his mouth opening, then closing. His arms are crossed over his chest and you feel a hackle rising along your neck. You don't have body hair. Still got hackles. Your cheeks darken as Arren leans down close, his voice soft. "Isa. We have two shots per sandcaster and no torpedoes. We've never even gotten into a fistfight before-"

"I've done sims," you say.

The two of you are talking outside of a noodle shop that you had asked him to meet you at. You'd broken the news after the bowls. That was a mistake. The noodles felt heavy in the pit of your stomach.

"Sims?" Arren shakes his head. "Isa, playing those old flight sim games aren't the same thing as going to actual battle! And…and look!" He held up his handheld and dragged the specs on the ship you were going after into the air. The volumetric display caused it to rotate as he held his handheld out into the air. "It's got an Epstein drive. It can go fifty times faster than us!"

"That's why we take out the drive cone at long range!" you say, getting angry. You'd actually thought this through. "If we launch in two hours, we can get into a perfect ambush spot!"

A few people are glancing your way.

Arren grabs your arm and drags you over to a nook. A momentary flare of dizziness hits you at how strong he is - and then he's back to poking holes in your plan. "And that burn to get us into position? That's insane, we don't even know if the Juice on that ship is still good."

"Juice lasts a long time-"

"Do you want to risk your blood vessels on that?"

"It's not that bad!" you say, getting angry. "We've had our hormone shots."

He puts his hands on your shoulders. "Okay, say we do the burn, say we get into position, say we ambush them. Then what, Isa? We board them? With what, our vac suits?" He shakes his head. "What if they fight? What if they have guns, Isa."

Your shoulders tighten, then you grab his wrists, trying to push him back. Arren pushes back - and your hands get pinned above your head and you flush even harder.

"Okay," you say, softly. "We have guns. We have cutting torches on the ship. We can pump nitrogen into their ship. We have options!" You're panting with emotions now as Arren…looks like he's just realized how close and physical things had gotten.

…weirdly, you're not scared.

Maybe if it was…some other guy.

But it's not. It's Arren.

You try and hold onto your anger, to use it to bull you through this argument - but it's shifting, twisting in your stomach. Becoming a different kind of heat. Your voice sounds less mad, more…

Inviting.

"Arren. We can't make money any other way."

He sighs.

"You know how the math works out." You bite your lip, then wriggle. "...gonna let me go?"

He notices the wriggle, and he smiles. "What if I said no?"

You grin. "I'd have to call for security. It's Pinkwater here, I think."

"I think I could take them…" He says, then leans down and kisses your mouth, with a fierce, eager, hard kiss. The kind that rasps his sharp edged teeth against your lips and make you aware of how he could make you bleed - the knife awareness that makes your head spin and your nipples ache. Your eyes slowly close as Arren conquers you against the wall, his hands holding you there. The little niche you'd taken up is shadowed and quiet - and people walk by, so close you swear you could reach out and touch them.

Arren breaks the kiss. You're panting, eyes half closed.

"Still mad at you," Arren rumbles.

"Not sorry."

He bites your throat. Hard. Sudden. The pressure against your gills sends jolts along your spine and you choke out a moan so wanting, so needing that you're shocked no one notices. Then Arren grabs you and drags you close and you can feel his heat, his need, oh gods, oh gods, right now? Right now? But the idea of asking him to stop feels impossible. He bites again and growls against you and your pants slip just down enough to expose your-

"AHEM."

Both of you spring apart so hard that if you had been outside, you'd have gotten into orbit.

The Pinkwater security goon is glaring at the two of you. She has her handheld out and is shining the flashlight at you - but you can practically feel the face-scan app clicking onto you two.

"S-Sir, uh," Arren stammers.

"Spacers," the guard says, in the same tone someone in those old fictional adventures would have used the word 'pilot.' Your cheeks are burning and you try and tug your pants up without making it clear your pants were ever coming off. "We have rules here!"

"We were just leaving," Arren stammers as the Pinkwater guard taps at her handheld.

Your and Arren's handhelds chime.

You look down at the red flag.

"Five month probation!?" you ask, shocked to your core. Five months? Without even a-

"Want me to make it ten?" the guard snaps. "You're not citizens of this station, you don't have any fucking right to trial unless we move into civil crimes and felonies. Now, get the fuck back to your rockhopper!"

You and Arren beat a…hasty retreat.

Arren's walk is a bit uncomfortable.

***​

"We…have to launch…in ten minutes…"

Arren's voice is lazy and languid. The happy glow that you're still so glad you can give him - and you giggle as you writhe against the straps.

"What's this we?"

He reaches over and grips your chin, forcing your head back against the wall. You can feel his eyes on your neck and tingle as he murmurs. "One, two…three…" He laughs. "There's four hickies here that say what happens when you don't do what I say."

"You know that's a real perverse-"

His hand grips your throat. Strong enough to be felt. Not too strong to really hurt. Your brain buzzes and jangles like Arren had just whacked a gong in your head.

"You were saying?"

"Hnnnfuckme," you mumble around the pressure of his hand.

"Now we have eight minutes," He says.

"Sstiltime."

Arren unstraps your wrists. You make the saddest, most whimpery noise you could.

Eight minutes later, you're cleaned, dressed and strapped into your chair. You weren't complete idiots, so you had checked the juice before Arren had uhhh you know…done the thing. But the only problem was Arren was good with tech and you were the big piloting nerd. Neither of you were actually medtechs. So all you could do was take pictures of the tanks of drugs and chemicals, then send them onto the local internet with the query of 'hey, does this look like it will kill us?'

Fortunately, none of the obvious 'hey, your Juice is going to kill you' indicators were visible in the tanks…which wasn't saying much. The Juice was a cocktail of chems and drugs that strengthened blood vessels and kept consciousness from fading away under high-G burns. It kept you not only operational but it kept you from stroking out when blood tried to leave your brain.

That…well, that meant that you could still die if the Juice was just not as good as it could have been. Or if you had a weak blood vessel. Or if you got unlucky. Or…

"T minus five," Arren said. "We're going on the juice."

You nod, gripping the joysticks that are attached to your armrests.

"Three. Two. One."

You thumb down the controls and the fusion drive on your ship kicks on to nearly its full power. A mountain sits down on you. The entire weight of every ocean on your homeworld enfolds you. Your vision narrows to a thin little slit and your brain aches as you feel like you're stuck in a crushing ice cube, your veins and nerves burning with the hideous cold that is the Juice drip flowing through you. Your jaw clenches as you watch the trajectories shift - and the velocity indicator whipping up and up and up.

Faster and faster.

By a full 9.806 meter per second squared.

You were doing it.

You were doing a full-G.

—​

In James Holden's Adventures, space combat was always at immense ranges. The best passages were the long, chilling build ups to torpedo fleets arriving, their drive plumes kicking out behind them like streaks of falling comets, the point defense cannons of the heroic League ships opening up as Captain Holden gave his steely eyed orders to his crew - which was made up of a Sopwith gunner, a Gothic engineer, two Macchi pilots, and their Skyborn ECM officer. When the torpedoes were dry, ships would then move to railgun rounds…the battle shifting from hundreds of thousands to merely tens of thousands of kilometers, where railgun slugs could just barely be evaded before they impacted.

There, ships would dart in and out of 'hammerlock' range - the point where even the fastest computer and best drive couldn't move a ship away from a killing shot…and they would whittle one another done.

You could still remember the vivid scene in book ten, Voisin Burning, when a through and through railgun shot took off Siggy's left arm…

Well.

Real life had a few differences.

For one thing, you weren't on an aging but dependable League of Nations Navy heavy frigate with a custom mounted keel railgun. You were in an old gunship that didn't even have an Epstein drive, who's main weapon was chucking big handfuls of gravel at the enemy. For another thing, you weren't in the huge spaces of the Inner Belt, fighting against rogue elements of the League or the HCRN or anything like that. You were in the Geirskögul system, where moons were maybe a hundred thousand kilometers away from one another at most.

In the time it would have taken one of the fictional ships to even realize what an enemy was doing - light minutes away - you had already crossed the space between your launch point and gotten into your ambush site for the Scopuli.

Now you and Arren were floating and waiting, your throats dry, your hearts hammering. Or at least, your throat was dry and your heart was hammering. You glanced down at the timer. In about two minutes, the Scopuli was going to come into line of sight as it completed its slow, gentle drift towards Geirdriful. Then you just needed to burn towards it, match velocity, force a surrender, board…

Okay.

Arren checks his panel. "You know, we're still getting com requests from home."

You smile, shyly. "Think they'll pay anyone to go after us?"

Arren shakes his head. "I doubt it."

Silence.

"...I'm sorry, you know," you say, softly. "I should…have asked you first. I…" You look away, then back at your controls. "We just didn't have any choices."

"I know," Arren says.

You look at him.

"The math was pretty clear," his eyes were soft and sad. "I…I don't think I was even mad at you, Isa. I just-" he stops. "There's the Scopulai."

There she was indeed. She was a narrow ship, long and built atop her drive, her name written across her side. Not that you could read it with the naked eye, but your forward cameras picked her up clearly enough. You tapped in the controls. Felt the cold rush of the Juice. And then…you were burning hard again. Your ship shot forward at preposterous, insane speeds - and you knew that the crew aboard the Scopuli had to be panicking.

…except they weren't.

Instead of running, or even warming up their drives - which were Arren's cue to fire the sandcasters - the ship instead just keeps right on drifting. You grunt as your entire ship wheels around and then the engine burns again, matching velocity perfectly. The other ship seems to be nearly still. You glance at Arren and he blinks at you, mouth opened, confused. Then he looks back at his screen. "...they're extending their lock."

You frown. "I don't like this. This is a trap, isn't it?"

Arren gulps.

The two airlocks thump together and you feel a faint shudder through your ship. You open up the repair locker, pulling out the cutting torches. They were, if modulated properly, very effective short ranged weapons. Kinda. Okay. Mostly, you were carrying them cause they looked a bit like guns. You and Arren push to the airlock - and it cycles. Then you come to the inner airlock. Arren starts to get ready to hack into their airlock systems, but before he can even start, the inner doors open and you find yourself face to boots with an Inner.

Three things hit you at once.

The first being that she was oriented all wrong. Like…yeah, her inner airlock didn't have a window, but she had known which direction she had parked her ship relative to yours. But instead of facing you dead on, you were looking at her boots.

The second was that she was short. You had always thought you were the short one, but you towered almost a head taller than this girl - that's what growing up at the bottom of a gravity well got you, you supposed.

The third was…

"Greetings and welcome to my ship, the…um, Dreki," the girl said, looking down at you.

Brain…un…work…girl…

Pretty.

Uh…hmm…

Arren grabbed your feet and swung you around, gently, so you were face to face with the girl. She had a furrowed scar along her cheek and dark skin. Her eyes were incredibly serious, but she didn't meet yours. She somehow manages to stand at attention while in microgravity. If you had been thrusting, you were pretty sure that she'd have clicked her heels. "I am Captain Minna Hammerl, this is my ship, the Dreki, I purchased her from a merchant named Hans Schmidt on Hingabe Station for the price of-"

"Hold up," you say. "This is the Scopuli?"

"The vessel was named the Scopuli when I purchased her, yes, legally, I purchased her legally," the girl said, nodding hurriedly.

You and Arren exchange a glance.

You should handle this diplomatically.

"...we have a bounty on your head," you say.

"What!?" The girl - Minna, you suppose - exclaims.

"Yeah, that's…we were…did you not wonder why…did you not ask why we were intercepting you?"

"You what?" Minna's brow furrowed. "You approached me at a standard 1 gravity, Erde. I would have been traveling at such speeds, had I the reaction mass, however the prior captain of the Dreki did not take any kind of care of this vehicle - he would be drummed immediately out of the Aca…the…the place! That I…am…from." She flushes. "This ship was legally purchased."

Arren frowns. "Are you alone on this ship?"

"I have not yet acquired a crew. Or cargo. B-But I have plans to!" Minna says, nodding.

The sudden, unmistakable sound of a proximity alert screamed out - not just from your computer, but from the bridge of the Sco…of the Dreki as well. Minna spun around and kicked off the floor - and then slammed into the roof of the airlock. She clutched at her head, gritting her teeth, as you swung around and saw that there was another ship - about the same size as yours, meaning it was a quarter of the size of the Dreki - and it had come up and was currently latching onto the Dreki.

"Shit!" you whisper. "Shit shit shit shit!"

The side of the ship had a name scrawled on it, visible through your camera.

It was the Dryad.

—​

HENRICH



Anderson Dawes, for the man they sometimes called governor of Sigdrifa, didn't exactly go in for anything close to what you'd call fancy. Instead of meeting you in an office, he met you in one of the millions of unused holes left after Sigdrifa got a bit depopulated during the War. The air is stale and the lights come from some barely shielded bulbs sunk into the walls. The accoutrement that would normally make this hole into a place worth living had been stripped away, leaving the bare stone that humanity had found when they had first sailed into the black…and the bare stone that would remain when the last of you had breathed out your last and final breaths.

Dawes himself is a thin, tall, big headed man, whose face is covered with pock marked scars from a life spent in nasty conditions with worse medication. He somehow manages to feel rangy and long limbed, yet, also, compact and reserved - its all how he sits, you suppose.

He spreads his arms as you're marched into the room.

"Henrich Engles! The Private Eye with the Heart of Gold…" he rasps, his voice jovial and thick with his Sigfrida accent. You feel the gun pressed at your back. "Did you search him?" That question shoots over your shoulder to the woman behind you.

She nods and tosses, underhanded, the gun she had pulled from your waist pocket. The tiny, reactionless derringer, loaded with a grand total of four plastic bullets, lands right in Dawes palm. He holds it up, then laughs, looking at you.

"Really, Engles?"

You shrug and spread your hands. "I don't have anything that I particularly feel in need of compensating for, setara mali."

"Even after your boyfriend dumped you?" Dawes asks, his voice dry.

"It was mutual," you say, feeling a flush crawling up your cheeks. "Josephus and I merely had different…life goals."

"You both work for the same corporation," Dawes says, laughing.

"Did you really kidnap me to ask me about my romantic entanglements or the lack thereof?" you ask, frowning. You know that Dawes is just trying to rattle you - but the fact it's working means that knowing that really isn't helping at all.

Dawes shakes his head. "I'm just trying to put together what a good Belter like yourself, a noble, upstanding member of our fine community, who has done such service for us before your…unfortunate conscription…would be taking the kind of job that is normally handed off to a wellwala like Josephus Muller."

Hm.

Academically speaking, from…a psychological perspective, it's actually genuinely surprising how furious you are at hearing your ex being called a wellwala. The name had been brandished at you repeatedly, even before you had been forced into Star Helix, and afterwards, it slid off your back like suit sealant in the shower. But hearing Dawes call your ex that just…makes you see red. You force the sudden, unexpected emotion down and smile, cheerfully.

"When they threaten your food supply, compliance is always easier than death, as I'm sure you are aware, capitalism as of yet continues to enforce its terrible hold upon our poor, benighted solar system," you say.

Dawes inclines his head. "Just so. Just so, I ask…what if…I were to pay you." He waves his hand and the male of the duo that captured you laid out an honestly quite impressive pile of plastic Sigfrida script - the kind that you could actually trade in for League dollars. "To…drop this investigation of yours."

Your eyes widen.

"...so…Julia is up to her neck in the OPA, huh?"

Dawes' smile is jovial. "If you prefer, I could have my people here take you to a recycler."

You purse your lips, looking down to the pile of money.

—
What do?
[ ] Try and question him more - at least…get a sense for why this is so urgent
[ ] Take the money. Then, quietly, start investigating even harder.
[ ] Call his bluff. You're Star Helix and Sigfrida just got a lot smaller than it used to be - if you go missing, the rest of the cops will come down on Dawes like a ton of bricks.
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

"I'm afraid-"

"Oh, come now, Engels!"

"I'm AFRAID," you say, louder. "That I'm not independent anymore - I can't just drop things, Dawes. What do you think that my boss, my manager, the light of my life, Shaddid is going to do when I tell her 'oh, sorry, no leads, too bad, so sad, please, ignore the pile of thalers I just got? No. No, not going to happen." You shake your head. "...however."

Dawes really has the most expressive eyebrows. "...however, yes?" he asks, his hand gesture making the 'come on' motion shared by Belters throughout the system.

You tap your wrist twice in the 'tether' gesture and say: "You could, if you were so inclined, offer me some interesting leads that might lead away from any skeletons in the OPA closet. I can merrily chase those down, Shaddid is happy, you are happy, I'm happy, everyone is happy, setara mali!" You spread your arms wide, then lean back against the woman with the gun before remembering she's behind you.

Dawes purses his lips, then smacks them. His eyebrows draw together. "You have an interesting perspective on this world, Engels, you really do." He stands up, slowly, then drums his fingers against his thighs. "I'd be looking into the Goths."

You blink.

Your mouth opens.

But Dawes is already gesturing. You start getting dragged out.

"I wish you…the best of luck," he says, flashing you a smile.

—​

You sit in your apartment, three days later, and think to yourself.

You're right at the edge of your options. You've done every search you could - but the problem with paramilitaries that primarily lived in holdfasts and stealth ships was that they were remarkably hard to find when they didn't want to be found. On Sigfrida, though, the Goths were quite happy to be found, if only because they had been living in the former Herja Congressional Republic embassy. Oh, they claimed to be representatives of the Republic - but everyone knew where their money and marching orders came from.

They had also liberally interpreted the last orders from Herja - declaring a martial law in their final doomed attempt to get everyone from leaving their planet as quickly as humanly possible the instant the Epstine drive had been invented - as an excuse to shoot just about anyone.

In retrospect, the fate of the Republic, and how it would doom the entire solar system should have been obvious in hindsight. But according to all the news files you had read and seen, it caught people right out of the fucking blue. Which was funny, considering their planet's color.

The Republic had been dead the instant Herr Epstine took a cruise on his drive. And in its long, slow death it had primed the solar system for destruction by building the best navy anyone had ever seen, and then set it off by trying to keep the last of its best and brightest from the clement, more viable worlds beyond the Inner Belt.

Now, the only people who still wore their colors in earnest were the Goths.

They called upon ancient myths, myths of war and valor, straight from Erde, reskinned to suit their temperament. They hated a lot of people vehemently. They hated gay people for not making kids. They hated Wildleute for daring to be phenotypically interesting. They hated all the various peoples of Aichi and their Skyborn relatives for not being from Himmilgard. They especially hated Rishonim for ancient reasons relating to a string of increasingly bizarre and idiot conspiracy theories that had been then quote proved end quote (and really, you could not roll your eyes hard enough at this idea, it wasn't physically possible to do so without detaching your retina) by the invention of the Epstein drive.

The drive ruined the dream of a green Herja! The scheming Rishonim gave us a poison chalice!

"Dipshits," you whisper to yourself.

Except that's just the issue. Dipshits with guns who were your only lead.

"Dawes is an asshole," you say, quietly, looking at the hat on your hat rack.

In your mind, your ex shrugs and says: What? You think he's just trying to get you killed without getting his own hands dirty?

"Obviously," you say, leaning back further in your seat, holding your empty bowl of noodles by the rim, rapping your knuckle against the inner edge. "I'm still at least moderately respected."

Your ex looks at you with hang dog pity.

"...I mean, if I wasn't, he'd just have me shot," you mutter, darkly, into the bowl as you bring it against your lips. An irrational temptation to eat it hits you. Bioplastic can be…digested. Kind of. But not as efficiently as a recycler could - it was like cutting off your arm to eat it from a caloric intake perspective. "I'd be floating off into…space…"

You tap the bowl.

"...Goths. Look at the Goths, there are more Goths than just on Sigfrida!" You spring to your feet, turn to your wall terminal. "Computer, be a dear and project all ships with transponders on, current courses as best known by local computer systems." You say - and then watch as the volumetric display sweeps out the curving arcs of orbits, the glowing dots of planets. Then your entire apartment fills with lines and arcs of ships. Even after the War, there are literally thousands of them. You shake your head. "Edit, uh, remove all ships…that have…not launched from Sigfrida within the past two months."

Hundreds of lines vanish, leaving you with merely…

Hundreds.

"Damn you, busiest port in the solar system!" you snap. "Okay…wait, no, you can still narrow this down. Remove all ships bound for Erde, Herja, any inner system planet." You pause as the terminal processed the request.

A hundred odd ships were left.

"...okay setara mali…" You tap your palm against your knuckles. "Display all known Goth attacks from a year ago to two months ago as red blip marks with hyperlink connections, utilizing my Gothwatch Newsfeed as the primary source. Nothing more recent than two months." You wait and then red blips started to flare up - he could reach out and expand the sites that reported on them.

The blips clustered at several orbital transfer points - regularly used shipping lanes.

However, of the ships heading out that he had selected…

Only one went through the hotspot.

Because of course, most people, when they realized a lot of Goth activity was going on in an area, they'd avoid it!

You point at that ship. "Identify this ship."

"Ship registered as Scopuli under Captain Polanski."

You smack your palms together. "We have something here. Right?"

You look over at the hat.

Your ex looks mildly hopeful.

"...I need a new boyfriend," you say, then grab the hat. As you cram it onto your head, you start to get ready to leave - when your hand terminal chirrups. You pull it out and frown as you see a red banded alert from…huh…a chill runs along your spine.

You log into several newsfeeds, all of which have their own red boarder announcements from time to time. They're when they release information that they think is important enough to interrupt their subscribers day.

It's just…

This wasn't from EcoEye or Queer Celebrity Gossip (quiet, shut up, you think to no one in particularly, do not dare judge me) or even General Media.

It was from GothWatch.

You throw it up on your terminal.

And your eyes go wide at the grainy, blurry footage that plays on the screen.

"Well," you say, quietly. "Who knew they had that in them."

—​

ISA

The buzzing crackle of the plasma cutter slicing through the hold is almost louder than your hammering heart. Almost. You, Arren and Minna had all started searching for some weapon that was a little better than a plasma torch, and that search had brought you to the machine shop amidships of the Dreki. The only problem was that the machine shop's best weapon was, so far, a rivet gun that might have done well in a Neo-Noir Dustie but in real life would have lost all of its killing velocity once it had crossed maybe a meter and a half of pressurized cabin.

"We could-" Arren had started…and then the bright spark exploded on the wall.

The other problem with the machine shop, aside from its distressing lack of weapons, was that the bad guys had chosen that part of the hull to cut in on.

"Shit," you say, while Minna gulped.

"Maybe I should get my…" She stopped.

"Your what?" you ask. "Do you have a weapon?"

"I…after a fashion," she says. "However, I was not able to acquire ammo for it before I left. It is only now that I am recalling the instructions-"

The wall is half cut open now, the glowing rectangle of a door forming centimeter by centimeter.

"-in the panic, that I had forgotten!" Minna is looking from the rectangle to you to the rectangle again.

"Well, if the gun has no ammo, it…might still be good for threatening people, right?" you ask. "Go grab it!"

"Oh, it's not a gun," Minna said, pushing off the floor towards the door - missing and hitting the ceiling instead. She rebounded, flailed, trying to get out towards a wall or hand strap, but instead only managed to smack Arren as he stepped over to help her.

You had enough time to think are all inners like this before the door that the Dryad's crew had been cutting into the wall burst inwards with a roar. The rectangle of hull plating shoved through the air - slowly enough to not really cause any damage - and then the space was filled with pirates in vacuum suits, holding pistols, aiming them at the lot of you.

"Hands up! Hands up!"

"On your head! Now! Now!"

You slap your hands onto your head. Minna and Arren do likewise, even if she hasn't stopped her tumble yet and is slowly spinning in the room - looking faintly queasy.

You float in the air.

"It's clear, boss," one of the helmeted figures calls out - their voice muffled by the helmet, but quite audible. The other crew start to swarm past you, heading deeper into the ship to…well, search it you think.

One of the figures that remain lowers their pistol, then chuckles. "Yeah, I know." It's a girl. Girl Boss.

"Boss!" Mr. Clear says, sounding shocked. "We told you, stay back this time."

"A good pirate never lets her crew go in alone," the girl says. Her helmet, now that you're taking it in, has a snarling wolf face painted onto the visor, with one bright red eye. She takes hold of the helmet, twists it, then yanks it aside with a sigh, revealing…uh…

Oh.

Uh…

Girl…

"Really, Isa?" Arren whispers, softly.

Your cheeks heat as the girl beams at you, showing she has very sharp canines. And wolf ears. And a missing eye. And…

It's a lot.

First, the ears. They're not an affectation - no plastic headband or anything, they're clearly alive and furred. Which meant she was Wildleute. They were pretty rare in the outer system, or at least that's what you had heard. Next, the canines. They're sharp and add a fierce edge to her cheerful smile. Next, the missing eye…that is strange. You thought people who had access to money and spaceships could get regrowth canisters and stuff. Instead, though, she has a metal plate bolted to her head, like an eyepatch from the olden days. Just. You know. Metal.

Lastly…

Ah why is she so cute? Your brain is gibbering as the girl hooks her helmet on her belt.

"Gutentag, I am Captain Wulfe," the girl says. "And we're here to claim the bounty on…" She paused, then started to track her finger back and forth.
"I am the captain of this ship, which I purchased legitimately," Minna says, managing to stop her spinning by reaching out with an arm and snagging her finger on the bottom of the floor. "This ship is the Dreki, and there-"

"Weird!" Wulfe says. "Because it looks like the Scopuli, a ship that's been reported stolen. And now, normally, I prefer to be the one stealing, I don't turn down easy money. And, heh, you guys?" She points at all three of you. "Are all really easy."

"Hey, wait, you can't take us captive," Arren said. "We're also trying to get the bounty!"

Wulfe stuck her tongue into the side of her mouth, then turned to Mr. Clear. "Herr Bowers…am I the Captain?"

"Yeah, Bossmang," he said, having slid his visor back to reveal his wide grin.

"What kinda captain am I again?"

"Pirata, Bossmang!"

Wulfe beamed at you and Arren. "That's right! I'm a pirate! It's great, really. Now, promise, we are going to be nice - just gonna sell your little rust bucket, drop you off somewhere nice. How about Sigfrida? Or? Oooor! You could sign up!" She spread her arms. "Signing up is good!"

"I don't believe you!" you say, anger winning out over how fluffy her ears were. "You can't take our ship!"

"I mean, calling it a ship is a bit much," Wulfe said, dryly.

"I…I mean…it's…it's homey!" you say.

Wulfe gives you a look. You blush, glancing aside, to see Arren looking a bit like he was trying to avoid admitting the same thing.

"...did you…give it a name?" Wulfe asked.

You blink. "You name ships?"

It is the stupidest thing you've ever said.

"Where are you even from?" Wulfe asks, laughing.

Then the door clatters and one of the pirates clangs back into the room. "Bossmang, found something real bad!"

"What is it?" Wulfe asks - and then snatches what the pirate tosses out of the air.

"Hey, that's my transponder!" Minna said. "You're not supposed to take those away from the bridge!"

Everyone…and you do mean everyone looks at Minna.

"This was your transponder?" Wulfe asks.

"It was strapped to the ceiling," the pirate that found it said.

"I-Is that not where transponders are supposed to be?" Minna asked, sounding genuinely confused.

"Honey, no," Arren says, shaking his head. "They're in the main computer housing-"

"This is an HCRN stealth transmitter," Wulfe says, waving it at the three of you. "It…Alex!" She puts her finger to her ear. "Sweep everything, right now."

You don't hear the response - but you do literally see Wulfe's ears droop.

"Oh shit," you say, then turns and kicks off the floor, sailing back into the hole. You kick off the floor, following after her - and in the heat of the moment, no one even bothers to stop you. You hear Arren moving after you, and Minna after him. The interior of the pirate ship is grungy and old in a way that makes you feel…oddly at home. There's so much evidence of much loved patchwork - carefully laid over everything, again and again, over the years, over the decades, to make the interior more of a home than a spartan starship.

Wulfe moves through it as naturally as if she had been born here - the only thing that makes you think she hasn't is that…well, she's…she's short as hell. Erder short.

You follow after and both of you arrive in the cockpit at nearly the same time. A dark skinned Skyborn man is sitting at the console, frowning as he taps away at the controls, shaking his head. "Shit shit shit shit," he's saying - his voice thick and twangy, with a Herja drawl, just like in the vids.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," Wulfe whispers.

You crane your head over the pilot's shoulder.

The view through the scopes looks like a space station had decided to appear within telescope range. One of the big cylinder habitats. Except it's not rounded. It's rectangular and blocky. It doesn't spin. And it has…

Those can't be…drives. They're each four times bigger than your whole ship.

If…

If those scale readings were right, that thing was two kilometers long. And it was coming right towards you - already beginning to flip around to aim those titanic drives off at an angle so it can decelerate without incinerating everything in this area of space.

But what draws your attention is the hull. It has been painted a bright white, despite how black space is, and there is a titanic name painted on the side, visible as it completes its slow rotation on the scopes.

DONNAGER.

The skyborn man leans back in his seat. "Well, that ain't exactly what I'd call comforting, hoss."

"Can we run?" Wulfe asks.

"Run?" The skyborn man asks, laughing. "We turn the engine on, that five million ton skyscraper o' doom is gonna just shoot one of them big old railguns through our itty bitty drive done and that'll be that, we'll be cooked better than my mom's brisket."

"I don't know what a brisket is, Alex," Wulfe says, her voice tight.

"It was a trap," you say.

"Yeah, no shit," Wulfe says. Then she looks at you. "...what's your name, anyway?"

"Isa," you say. "Isabelle Morgenthau."

"Cool," Wulfe says. "Nice to meet you. FYI, If I can get out by selling you out-"

"Hoss!" Alex says, sounding offended.

"It was a joke, jeeze!"

"Should I get my power armor?"

The words all…are Gothic. But arranged in that order, they make absolutely no sense what so ever. You and Wulfe share a confused expression, then turn back to look at Minna, who is nursing a bruise on her forehead.

"Excuse me?" Wulfe asks.

"My power armor," she asks. "I…acquired…a…suit…" she says, choosing each word as carefully as possible - as if she hoped it might make her sound less suspicious. "...legally." She added, with the air of someone who had realized a perfect way to clear up any worries.

"You have power armor?" Wulfe asks.

"...that's the gun!?" you ask.

"Yes," Minna said, her cheeks darkening even more.

"You're Force Recon?" Alex asks, sounding skeptical.

"C-Cadet Force Recon," Minna says. Then, softly. "...top of my class."

"Okay, we can work with this!" Wulfe says.

"Hoss, Donnie class ships carry a whole squad of Force Recon," Alex says, before catching himself. "Er. I mean. They did. For all we know those Goth bastards crammed two platoons worth of Goliath power armor in there."

"Or none," Wulfe points out.

"Even if we just face two!" Alex says.

That's what you had…the best idea you'd ever had in your life.

Or the worst.

It could be either one.

—
What is Isa's genius plan
[ ] We get captured, peaceful like. Minna takes the suit, though, and emerges through the drive cone while the Donnie is locked onto the Dreki, then she climbs onto the Donnie and infiltrates the ship, then rescues us!
[ ] We use the power armor as a beacon, then throw it out the airlock and have it fly away on its RCS thrusters. We program it to ping local space fleets about the Donnie - no one likes Goths, so they'll hire up a bunch of Flying Circuses to take it down. We escape in the confusion!
[ ] Fuck it, we're doing it live! We counter-board the Donnie with Minna in the front, and we fight our way to…Alex, do they have any, uh, subline ships? Escort craft? …they do? Okay! We fight to the hanger bay and we steal the fuck out of that…what did you say it was called? That frigate? Okay! We do that!
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

"...fuck it," you say. "We're doing it live!"

You slam your finger down on the screen, hooking your feet through the floor straps to keep yourself from drifting away. "They think we're totally outnumbered and outgunned. But those big ships? They have to take a ton of resources to keep going - and those Goths have been out here for, what, years? Without resupply beyond what they can steal?" you shake your head. "There's no way they have any power armor on that thing that's even half as good as Minna's brand new armor, right?"

"It is highly maintained, yes," Minna said, with no small amount of pride.

"Alex! …you're Alex, right?" you ask the shocked looking pilot - he's somewhere between your dad's age and ancient. He blinks at you, then nods.

"Yeah, kiddo, the handle's Alex. Alex Kamal."

"Isa," you say, shaking his hand and he mimes…lowering a visor at you, which…okay, weird gestured, but moving on. "Does a Donnager class battleship have, uh…shuttles?"

"Shuttles?" Alex laughs. "Donnies carry…er…carried four Korvette class light frigates, last time I done took a gander at their specifications."

"What the hell is a gander?" Arren mutters.

"He gets like this when he's stressed," Wulfe mutters back, her ears twitching up.

Alex ignores them. "They're held in the main launch bay, right amidships."

"Okay. We get guns. They board us - and we counter-board them, with Minna at the front," you say. "Your pirates can use her as cover!"

"Well! They…could be doing this, yes," Minna said, her dark cheeks darkening even more. "That is ah, how Force Recon is meant to be used, in such circumstances." She coughed, then muttered under her breath. "Never thought it would be under these circumstances."

"I kinda love this insane plan," Wulf said, grinning fiercely at you. "You've got more guts than I expected, Miss Morganthau."

Heee he…ha…huh…uh…

Brain.

Words.

Say something cool to the space pirate. Say something cool to the space pirate! Come on, Isa, you could do this! screams through your brain

"You too," you say, then give her a single finger gun. "Fluffy…ea…r…sssss…"

Silence, save for the faint ping of the Dryad's computers registering a targeting lock on a laser powerful enough to blister the hull's paintjob.

"Do ya'll have guns?" Alex asks, casually, breaking the silence.

"No," Arren says. "We haven't even fired any."

"Well," Wulfe says - and is she blushing? - she rubs her chin and nods. "I know who you gotta stay behind." She pulls out her handheld. "Burton!"

"Yeah, Cap?" a gruff voice comes from the handheld.

"I got some people for you to babysit," she says.

"Got it, Cap."

"Don't worry," Wulfe says, cheerfully. "He'll keep you safe. Mostly by making everyone else around him dead."

—​

Burton, as it transpires, is exactly as scary as Wulfe's introductions made him sound. He's small, because he's clearly from Erde, but he's also built like two Arrens compacted into the same amount of muscle. He's Gothic - brown haired, dark eyed, pale skinned - and he grows what a Fischer never could…a big bushy beard that he has trimmed enough to keep it inside of a vac-suit's helmet. He's dressed, by the time you meet him, in an armored vac-suit and carrying what looks like a freaking fully automatic shotgun, loaded with shells and ready to…well, make everyone else around him dead.

Too afraid to look into his eyes, you instead look right at the religious totem he has pinned to his breast - a little fae trickster mask, with a huge smile and malevolent eyes and little pokey horns, all made out of cheap metal.

He looks you up and down, then he looks Arren up and down and nods. "So, you're the new crew?"

"Uh, prisoners, actually," Arren said, chuckling nervously.

Burton shakes his head. "Nah," he says.

"...isn't that something your Captain decides?" you ask, still not meeting his eyes.

Burton shifts the shotgun in his hand as thrust gravity returns - part of the deception does involve at least pretending to run, at least a tiny bit. He rests it on his shoulder as your feet thump to the deck. "Oh, it is, don't get me wrong. But I've been flying with Patches-"

"I thought her name was Wulfe," Arren mutters in your ear.

"-for, eh, a few years now. And her, uh…heh, her bark's worse than her bite. We keep recruiting people instead of airlocking any of them, that's just how she does things." He nods. "So, you're crew until she kicks you off at a station. Usually with, like, a fistfull of League dollars to go with it." He scratches at his beard. 'So, you two ever been in a fight before?"

Both of you shake your heads.

"Aight. Stick by me, keep your heads down, and if I tell you to do something, you do it without asking me any questions." He pats Arren's shoulder, then starts to walk past you.

When you come to the airlock where everyone is gathered, Wulfe is there with her armored vac-suit on and a pistol in one hand and a freaking sword in the other hand. Your eyes boggle, just a tiny bit, but before you can remark on it, the acceleration cuts off and Wulfe, an earbud in one of her ears, nods. "Okay! We've officially surrendered to the Goths." She flashed a wicked grin. "And they have made a serious fucking mistake. They're going to be taking us directly into their port shuttle bay. From there, it's a straight line between one shuttle bay and the next. Along the way, I want Bowders, Tye and Daniel to be focused on making as much damage as possible. We've been stockpiling grenades for, what, two years now? Well, now we get to use them!"

Grunts and nods fill the room.

"The core of the group will be racked up behind the Goliath," she says, and times it perfectly…because that's when Minna glides into the room. With the return of microgravity, she literally flies in, tiny puffs of hydrazine gas spraying from the shoulders and shins of the sculpted slab of metal that Minna has vanished into. It's a remarkable thing, power armor…somehow, it looks at once like a machine made utterly for murder and mayhem, like a human body, like something fast and sleek and nimble, like something so heavy and bulky that it can barely be seen as a person. The armored face plate is swept back and the terrified look in Minna's eyes, visible through the glass, is enough to make you want to hug her, power armor or no.

"Stick behind me," she said. "I can disable and disarm anyone not in power armor. If they don't have heavy weapons, then I am not at any risk throughout the ship."

"The 'stick behind me' rule is most especially true for Shed," Wulfe says, pointing at a nervous looking rabbity fellow with…well, actual literal rabbit ears. "And Alex. We lose our pilot, we lose our medtech, then we're totally hosed."

Everyone nods.

The loud CLUNK that fills the room makes you jolt. Your heart tries to crawl out of your chest. The airlock door opens immediately - that is part of the plan - and Wulfe acts by throwing four grenades into the next room.

"FLASH!" she shouts and you duck down low as a brilliant blaze of white light explodes from the next room - followed by a concussive slap of air against your eardrums that leaves them ringing. Roaring sounds fill the corridor and you put your hands against your head, wishing you had something in the way of hearing protection. But either they didn't have any, or no one had thought to give them to you - because, as of right now, you were deaf and the world was made of pain.

A hand grabbed onto your shirt, bunching it up in a meaty palm, and shoved you forward into a meat packing plant. Flesh and blood flowed in globular chunks, wobbling in the air. The Goths had been wearing body armor, but they had clearly not been expecting anything like this. You had no idea if any of the pirates had been hurt. All you can see is blood - and then you're in the next corridor. The ship's built like a grid, and so when Minna enters into the intersection, she's immediately hit by what looks like a million bullets. One of the pirates, you think his name is Tye, starts throwing grenades around the corner.

Burton is the one who is dragging you. He pauses at the corridor - then smoke and fire pour around both edges.

The noise is so powerful you can't even hear Wulfe - and she's screaming something while waving her sword around over her head. Minna darts forward into what looks like a knot of Goths and you close your eyes and push yourself forward. Next to you, Alex and the medtech, Shed, are pushing along the floor, trying to keep pace with the RCS equipped power armored suit. You open your eyes to cracks - and then see Minna as she is trying to push three Goths off her.

Their armor is patchy and white and looks half scrounged together.

A single face flashes out, visible clearly in the chaos and confusion.

Patchy beard. Wild eyes.

Sunken cheeks. A missing tooth.

Then the man goes flying away, shoved by one of Minna's strength augmented arms. The other two explode into sprays of blood, globs of it flung in every direction by Burton's shotgun.

Shed's head jerks and he slams into your shoulder. You both tumble, rebound off the wall, then hit an airlock door. His arms are flailing and you can't hear anything but ringing - and so you swing him around and see that there's a huge furrow, running along the top of his helmet. That bullet…had almost hit you. The angles were fucking clear.

Shed's eyes are wild, panicky.

His lips form words: I'm okay?

You can read the question mark on that expression.

You shout, but you don't think he hears you saying the answer was yes.

The doors before you open in a screaming of metal so high pitched even your hammered eardrums can hear it. You look up and see Minna, her palms locked on, the magnetic clamp indicator lights flaring red, pulling the door open, her face twisted, her teeth clenched. You look back…just in time to see one of the pirates turning into a cloud of red blood and exploding vac-suit by what has to be a million bullets.

The door opens.

Burton shoves you through and you go tumbling into a vast, nearly empty chamber.

In the corridor, a single suit of white painted power armor comes around the corner - their arm smoking.

A gun.

There's a gun in their arm.

In the ringing pain of silence, you tumble head over heels towards what looks like the sleekest, sexiest ship you've ever seen in your life. Like a chisel given deadly animate life, the ship has a name stenciled on the side: GRN Dolch.

You are, thanks to Burton, the first of the pirates to get there.

Your palms slap against the door and you realize the big tiny huge stupidly obvious hole in your plan.

The ship's entirely locked down. Of course it was. The computer system would be programmed from the tip of its nose to the base of the engine to reject this exact thing you were trying right now. Your heart sank. Fear made you want to throw up, even if Fishers never did. You tried to think of something, of anything.

And then, over the screaming, an insane idea hits you.

…you lose nothing by trying, right?

So, finger trembling, you tap at the touchpad, bring up the password interface, punch in the first random digits and symbols you think of, letting faith guide you…

Hit enter.

Burton and Alex arrive, with Wulfe right behind them, and all of them gape at the door that is open, waiting for them.

Wulfe slaps your shoulder, says something that might have been 'good job.'

Then they shove you and Arren inside, while Minna pulls up the rear, her arms wrapped around Shed, her back sparkling with gunfire. She comes inside and the airlock door shuts as you look around yourself.
Arren, bleeding from a large gouge on his left arm.

Wulfe, looking stunned and shaking.

Alex, trembling just as hard.

Burton, who looks as if he had just taken a casual stroll downtown.

Shed, his ears quivering as he tugs off his helmet and looks at the huge bullet scar left on his helmet, his eyes bugging out of his head.

Minna, who was locking the door down with quick, efficient button pushes.

That's it.

That's everyone who made it.

You gulp, then shout: "What now?"

Wulfe says something that you can barely hear.

"What?" you shout.

Wulfe shouts something at Shed. He shakes himself, then fishes around in his pack. Soon, something cool is pressing to your ear. You shudder and gasp as the coolness sharpens, then the ringing cracks away as if it had never been, and you can clearly hear Wulfe saying: "We need to get ready to launch! Those fucking Goth assholes are going to try and keep us in here. Do whatever hacking magic you did to get this ship ready to fly."

She's looking at you.

"Uh…" you say, not sure how to explain to her what had even happened - not sure, yourself, what exactly had happened. But before you can say anything more, Wulfe is giving more orders.

"Amos, get down to the machine shop, make sure the engine's ready to fire up. Shed, find a medbay, if you can. Hey up there," she says, pointing at Arren. "Uuuh, strap yourself down, Alex, go with Isa and get the-"

You slam into the deck so suddenly and so painfully that you swear you break things. Your entire body is agony. Next to you, Arren crashes down as well. Even Burton was looking staggered by it. The agony is short lived - it goes away and you drift up…but by then, Wulfe is shouting.

"BRACE! Everyone BRACE!"

The agony comes back - goes away, comes back, goes away, comes back and stays for what feel slike forever. As you are compacted into the deck, you hiss out. "What…is…happening?"

"They're shaking us…like…a damn…bucking bronco!" Alex growls out through clenched teeth - and you watch him as he literally crawls on his hands and knees, bit by painful bit, towards the nearest terminal.

"Alex!" Wulfe snarls out. "Get us…out of here!"

"I gotta plan, Cap," he groans back. "Ships'...systems are…ah!"

He laughs, as the entire ship goes light again. He floats up and his grin is wicked as he starts tapping buttons. "This ain't regulation, but-"

You are flung up towards the ceiling for a moment.

Sirens fill the ship.

Then the entire room flips, end over end. You are pulled towards the ceiling, but get your fingers around something, anything, and cling to it - and then WHAM! You are brought smashing back down again at a third of a G, your knees balking against the deck plating.

"We're free!" Alex shouts. "But in about fifty seconds, we're gonna be outta the big hole I blew in their PDC grid!"

"Strap in!" Wulfe shouts.

You stand.

Then fall.

And then arms wrap around you, tugging you up, holding you. You are pressed against Wulfe, feeling the compact strength of her. Your head is dizzy, spinning from the acceleration changes, the gravitational changes, everything. She is halo'd by the blue-white lights of the bridge, even as she lays you down in a crash couch. You kiss her cheek.

She blinks at you.

"...do I gotta kiss you too?" Arren asks, woozy, as Burton straps him in in the couch next to yours.

"You're way too young for me, Sharky," he says, then hurries to his seat.

The juice hits.

It's really good juice.

That doesn't help at all when the ship hits ten Gs.

—​

You come too in bits and pieces. Aching. Pain. Your eyes open and you see a smiling Shed looking down at you. His scratchy beard has been shaved away, and his ears are looking more settled. "You are not made for high G burns, Isa," he says, companionability. "Don't worry, this ship has enough drug cocktails to make me a very rich man on any station in the system." He pats your shoulder. "You'll be a lot better at this any time now."

You mumble something, but your mouth is too mushy for anything sensible to come out of it. You look left and see Arren, looking just as wrecked as you are.

You close your eyes, smack your lips, then croak out.

"Did we get away?"

"Uh, heh, uh…" Shed says, nervously. "We did a bit better than that. Um…turns out, an Epstein drive at full power inside of a spaceship is the next best thing to a nuclear bomb going off."

Oh.

Oh.

"Oh," you say, aloud.

The door to the room opens - the medbay, you realize, since there's a spiderlike autodoc strapped to your arm - and Wulfe walks in, glaring at you. "What the fuck did you turn on, Isa!?" she asks.

"Huh?" you blink.

"Captain-" Shed stays, holding up his hand.

"I'm not going to make her do anything - just talk!" Wulf says, then turns to you. "What. The. Fuck. Did. You. Turn. On?"

You groan, and ARren sits up, rubbing his free arm against his face. "I don't know," you say, confused. "What's happening?"

"What's happening is my brand new spaceship is saying you're the captain!"

You blink slowly at her.

"...what?"

—​

Wulfe is remarkably calm for someone who just lost a bunch of her friends. Well. She's clearly furious with you, but she's not crying or anything. Okay, maybe she's glaring murderously at you. The rest of the crew are more in shock. Shed, without you and Arren to take care of anymore, is trying to hide his shaking hands by putting them into his pockets. Alex has openly been crying. His eyes are rimmed with red and he sniffles from time to time. Burton…

Okay, Burton is still mostly the same, though he does have a bottle of something strapped to his hip now.

You, though, are seated at one of the consoles in the bridge. You're looking down at the strangest text message you've ever seen.

It's plain text, spreading on the interface, and it says.

GREETINGS CAPTAIN, HOW MAY I SERVE YOU TODAY?

You blink a bit, then say: "Who are you?

CLASS-2 CI SUBALTERN, ASSIGNED TO THE HCRN DOLCH.

You rub your palm against your face. "What the fuck is a CI?"

"I've never heard of one," Arren says.

"It…can't be," Shed whispers.

CI - SHORT FOR CLOCKWERK INTELLIGENCE.

Everyone looks at Alex and Minna, being that they're both from Herja. Minna blushed. "I've read historical records that, to make up for manpower shortages, Herja Naval Command instituted research in creating true artificial intelligences, named for the ancient legends of Himmilgard's mythology about clockwork servants. They were installed on the last line of ships before the War, but the navy hadn't grown to the point where they had been required to be activated."

Alex nodded. "What the lil' miss said. They're supposed to be smart as a person."

"I turned you on?" you ask.

YOU INPUTTED MY ACTIVATION EMERGENCY CODE.

"And how did you do that exactly?" Wulfe asks, narrowing her eyes, clearly suspicious.

—
Uhhhh….
[ ] Lie! You…have…old…HCRN military files were stored on the computer systems of your home colony, before the war. You accessed it and…never knew it'd come in handy until now!
[ ] Tell the truth. You just punched in random fucking keys.
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

You look at Wulfe, then Alex, then Amos, then Arren, then Shed. At the people that you'd need to depend on to survive the next few hours, let alone the next few days.

You can't lie to them.

No matter how insane it sounded.

"The gods guided my finger," you say, quietly. Then, grinning shyly. "...I pushed random buttons." You chuckle, seeing their expressions. "B-But, uh, statistically, prayer plus unlikely event equals miracle. Right?"

Everyone was silent.

Amos laughs, quietly. "I like her, Cap," he says to Wulfe. "Can we keep her?"

—-​

HENRICH


You're halfway to work, excitement buzzing in your belly, when the four goons emerge from around a corner and start to walk briskly towards you. "Ah hell," you whisper, and step backwards, before the first of them hefts up his pipe and reveals that he has the small spade tattoo of a hardcore Goth fanatic.

Well.

Today was going so very well.

Yesterday, after the news about the Goth battleship had broken, the entire solar system had gone from buzzing to swarming like a hive of hornets. The first chunk of news would have been big enough all on its own. Everyone knew that the old battleships - the Donnagers and the Spitfires - were still around. Most had been destroyed in the war, but most wasn't all. Old government factions held onto them, shepherded them until they could be used again - no one could build them anymore…well, no one except for Hugo Station, maybe, and they were too busy trying to figure out how to turn a colony ship once meant for a pre-war religious cult into something worth having in the current system.

But no one had thought Goths had had a Donnager.

No one had even imagined it - because, like, if they had had a Donnager, why hadn't they used it? They weren't above raiding colonies, attacking shipping lanes, and generally being assholes. And if they were able to kill entire planets, how had they resisted the urge to go into orbit around Erde and finish what Marco Inaros and his buddies had started? Which meant…that…there was a piece of the puzzle that was missing.

There was something about the Scopuli.

About Julia Sigaurd Thele-Mao.

Something that had caught the OPA, the Goths, maybe even what was left of the League of Nations, all of it caught up in something big enough and bad enough to pull one of the last battleships in the solar system out of mothballs, crew it up, and send it out.

Something…

That had then led to someone killing the Donnager.

That was what had made the news go from fission to fusion. No one knew how. No one knew who. But someone, somehow, hadn't just damaged the Donnager. They had destroyed it. Current speculations were someone had set a goddamn nuke off in her hold, or hit her with a stealth torpedo. There were rumors about stealth ships that had swarmed her, invisible in the magnetosphere and moons and rings, and they had gotten a lucky shot and pierced her drive core. There were rumors that magic witches had done it, riding on brooms with spacesuits, like a modern update of Himmilgaurd legend.

Honestly, you were shocked no one had claimed a goddamn dragon had done it!

But the instant you had seen that grainy footage, you had known that you needed to know. Fortunately, you had the Scopulai. And you had the name Polanski. Checking that had given you the full name Marek Polanski. Now, you just needed to find out more about him - which was why you had been off to work, to report all of this to Shaddid, to get your money for your hard work, and to maybe get to access Blue Helix's big computers and their big, juicy memory banks.

Which was why seeing the Goths between you and the tunnel that led from your shitty niche to the main thoroughfares was so…disconcerting.

You stepped backwards. Your instinct, even now, was always to talk. "Gentlemen, what seems-"

The Goth swung at you. He had an Inner's build, not quite as short and stocky as an Erde born man, but still shorter than you. He took advantage of that strength, ignoring the spoiling punch you threw at his jaw to drive the pipe into your stomach. Air rushed from you and you stumbled backwards, clutching at yourself. You reached for your pistol, by the other Goth grabbed your arm and casually bent it back behind you. The third Goth slapped some duct tape over your mouth, while the one who had hit you with the pipe pulled a knife.

Your eyes widened.

They weren't here to rough you up.

They were here to kill you.

Time seemed to slow as the knife drew back and you struggled with all your might. The Goth holding your arms against the wall had fingers like strength, and his eyes were utterly pitiless.

The Goth with the knife began to thrust.

His head snapped to the side. The blood that flecks your face isn't his. A bit of brain gets into your eye. Your muffled cry of alarm and disgust comes at the same time as the gunshot. The two Goths grabbing your arms whirl, the fourth is pulling at the hem of his pants.

Bullet holes bloom on his chest. He drops to the ground bonelessly as you fall backwards, hitting the ground yourself - it seems to be the safest place.

The second Goth screams a war cry, a literal bellow, as he rushes at the corner - but then his head snaps backwards, his skull turned into a crater of gore. The last Goth jumps over his body, lands, and then a barrel presses against his jaw and the top of his head comes off. The Goth slumps - it all had taken, what, three seconds? And in that time, six shots and four lives had been used up. Spent. Expended.

You wriggle onto your side, sitting up, your arms aching too much to lift them currently - they had practically ripped them out of your sockets.

A tall, rangy figure steps from the shadows and plucks your hat from the ground, then sets it on your head - while his revolver pops and shell casings start clattering to the ground, cast about by the faint coriolis effect on this level.

"...you okay, Henrich?" Josephus Müller asks, reaching down and yanking the tape off your mouth. You hiss.

"I'm…fine," you say, primly.

Then you turn your head and vomit into the side of the corridor, heaving up your rice and mushrooms. You cough, wheeze, then start to stand up, wobbling slightly. Your hand wipes at your mouth, and you wish you could taste anything but the acid bile of your own stomach as you glare at Müller. At…Jos…

At your ex.

He looks exactly like how you'd expect him to look, having gunned down four people.

Like nothing had happened at all.

The bullets clack into his chamber as he reloads his revolver - plastic rounds against ceramic. "Ya know, usually, people say thank you when you save their lives." He says, giving you that hang dog look he uses so effectively.

You look down at the four corpses. "...you couldn't have…at least tried to arrest them, Müller?" It comes out harsh and ragged and you can't tell if it's because it's Jos or if it's because you had almost died or if it's because you had just seen four people - yes, Goths, but still people - shot dead in front of you or…or…

Jos shakes his head. "They were two centimeters away from putting your guts on the floor, Heinie."

"Heinrich," you say. "Or, alternatively, Engles."

Jos' eyes get all sad.

"So, Engles, why you got some…" He pushes at an arm, revealing the tattoo as he looks down at it. "...fuck. These are Goths."
"You didn't know?" you ask. "You just shot them without knowing who they even were?"

Jos shrugs. "I figure, I come in to check on my partner-"

You purse your lips.

"On…my…co-worker," he says, shaking his head. "And I see him getting jumped, I figure it'd be by OPA dickheads who don't know how much theory you've read. Or Grigas who think they can kill a cop without retribution cause you're so loud about how you're just a…private investigator."
"Fuck you, Müller," you say.

Jos shakes his head and mutters. "Thought that was the problem…"

You feel the…the…jaggedy…spikey ball that was your relationship over the last disastrous months before you had finally broken it off. You had known, at least a month before you finally told Jos that either he had to change or you were leaving…that…he wasn't going to change, that you should have just left. But you had spent a month hemming and hawing, then a month waiting to see if Jos could magically turn into…not Jos.

Instead, the last dregs of what had made you two happy together had just become all…

Knives.

Knives and hard corners and walls. And you two had been in a grapple - with plenty of chances to bounce heads off walls and slam body parts against those corners.

Jos frowns. "Shaddid says you had a simple ass kidnap job. What the hell gets Goths out to come after you?"

—
What do you say?
[ ] They're related to the case - they must want me to stay back too.
[ ] Whoever said you got a chance to know? You're not assigned to this case.
[ ] Tell him you still love him
[ ] Write in

 

[DragonCobolt]

You rub at your cheek. You try and…not look at the bodies. You don't want to think about how your ex boyfriend has just…killed four people. Like it's nothing. That…that really was the beginning where everything went wrong, wasn't it? The unlicensed brothel you had busted together, a year into Star Helix coming here…

You force it out of your head and turn back to Jos. "They're…related to a case."

"You're investigating Goths now. Kind of a bad idea for someone who hasn't shot anyone," Jos says.

"Fuck you, Müller," you say, voice tight, eyes flashing. "I didn't know the case involved Goths until…a few days ago."

Jos shakes his head. Gives you that hang dog look. "And you kept it to yourself instead of bringing it up around the station…"

"Yeah, cause I'm not a cop, setara mali," you say.

Jos points his finger at you. "Don't call me that," he says, pulling out his handheld.

"Oh, would darling be better?" you ask, voice acid.

He looks up, his thumb still tapping at his handheld. His dark, brown eyes are unreadable. "How about we stick to Müller," he says, his voice tight. "And you can stick to merely unbearable levels of asshole and not excruciating."

"Oh excuse me, darling," you say. "I didn't ask for you to come poking around my business. Funny, I always thought that that was what you got on my case about. Henie, honey, I love you, but could be a bit less of a nosy tightass, I think was the sentence you used."

"Yeah, well, maybe you could have been less of a nosy tightass," Jos snaps, reaching up to brush his flop of hair back with his free hand and stabbing down with his thumb using his other hand. His handheld chimed.

"What's that?" you ask.

"Oh, you know, reporting the four bodies on the deck," he says, dryly.

"Oh we're reporting dead bodies now?"

"Don't start with this again-"

"Oh I'm sooo sorry that I expect police officers to be accountable for being roving gangs of executioners for the state and capital," you snap.

"So, you're saying I shouldn't have shot a guy pimping six year olds?"

"I'm saying you shouldn't cover it up so you don't have to explain the fact your first, last, and final option in any goddamn case is to pull out that six shooter of yours and start playing old world Flying Circus pilot!" you say, stepping away from the wall.

"I can't believe this," Jos says. "We meet, five seconds after I save your life, and we're back on the merry go round of bullshit."

"We live on Sigdrifa, Müller! It never stops spinning!" you say.

Silence.

Jos chuckles.

You laugh. Adrenaline and tension buzz and bubble in your belly, and you laugh, and laugh, then lean forward and see the corpse of the Goth that almost stabbed you. In the distance, you can hear the sirens of the police carts, trundling through Sigdrifa's corridors. You feel your stomach clenching. Wanting to release, but…

You close your eyes, then stand up as Jos sighs.

"What's the case about?" you ask.

You're quiet until the rest of the cops arrive.

—​

Shaddid's office is sparse and has a little steam-pump thing. It kind of looks like an orb, and all it does is spit out a constant low level of scented steam into the air. You're not sure what the scent is and you never asked. Shaddid read your report on her desk terminal, her lips pursing slowly. "Well," she said, quietly. "It looks like I'm going to be asking the Governor Council for permission to bust out the riot gear."

"Ah, a proportional response…"

"Considering these individuals, who are not representing any actual government, came after one of my people - as little as I personally like you…this is pretty measured," Shaddid said. "The Governor's Council has been rumbling about wanting to kick them off Sigdrifa for years. I should thank you for giving them the excuse."

You purse your lips.

"And the Thele-Mao case?" you ask.

Shadidd frowns. "As of right now, it's off your docket."

You feel a cold weight drip onto your shoulders.

"I'd have thought, and forgive me if this is presumptuous…with the Goths coming after me and the fact that an actual, factual, two kilometer long battleship got destroyed by what seems to be an atomic attack, I'd have thought that looking after this case would be a top priority. It's obviously linked."

Shaddid frowns, harder now. "Obviously? Debatable." She says. "But I'll be blunt, Engles, because you have an annoying habit of not noticing innuendo: We have received new walking orders from our shareholders. They wanted this case picked up. Now they want it dropped. I'm not paid enough, and you're not paid enough, to ask why. Now, you're no good in the riot squad, so we'll have to find something else for you to do - there should be plenty of softball cases on the board."

"But-"

"You're not going to be this dense, are you?" Shaddid asks, sounding more…tired than anything else.

You sit there for a while, then start to stand up, then turn and walk out of the room.

Well, you thought. I quit. I quit? I…quit.

It didn't sound as unthinkable as it used to. People were willing to kill. People had killed. And it was something big enough to drag a battleship out of mothballs. You glanced around the Star Helix offices.

Jos was at his desk, watching you through the thin fringe of his hair. He had it cut short at the edges, with a middle flop that he could slick back or hang forward, depending on how much he wanted to annoy you, specifically. The tactile memory of burying your hands in his scalp, gripping him, tugging his head back, kissing his throat, is so intense that you almost shudder.

Your hand goes to your hat, tugging it. Not quite tipping it at him.

You start towards the door.

Then…

Hesitate.

—
…hm…
[ ] That's a bad idea. Go, withdraw your accounts, and find where the Scopulai had been going. Pick up the trail there.
[ ] Text Müller to meet you at…you know…the old noodle shop.
[ ] Put this case out of your head, kid. It's not worth dying for!
[ ] Write in