What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us – Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have been caught in some compromising situations before, let me be honest. I’ve been discovered mid-burgle, the authorities have stumbled upon me carrying a dead body and I’ve even had the misfortune to be found out sneaking around because someone farted. But I can honestly say that this is the first time I’ve ever been caught with my literal pants down. Hell, they were down AND across the damn room.
“Ah….Captain, if you have a moment.” Persephone looks more bothered by the scene than I even feeling being the one caught post coitus. I mean, I know what I look like with sex hair and there is no way she isn’t mistaking this little tableau for anything but what had actually just happened.
I probably find her discomfort more amusing than I should but it makes me happy, so why fight it? I grin at Rorick as he walked over to the discarded clothes to toss his shirt at me and pull on his own trousers. Though part of me is tempted to continue to lounge around naked for a while longer, I’m actually far too paranoid for that so I pull the huge tunic on and simply belt my gun around the wait, turning the damn tent into a make due outfit. I don’t mind being naked, but I do everything I can to not go around unarmed.
“Did you miss me already sweetheart? I’ve made it into space but we’re still sucking dirt fumes up here.” I sound casual, which is good because I have a suspicion that I know what this little call is all about.
“It seems that Wanda and Maurice never returned to their respective Houses after you departed. In fact, it seems that according to reliable sources, they may have departed Auralis with you.” Persephone didn’t even hesitate to admit she has such persons of interest under surveillance, and yet she was still trying to be discreet. Probably feeling out just what exactly I was doing with these two.
Well, there’s no reason for me to play at subtle, I’m not very good at it anyways. “Oh you mean the newlyweds? Yeah, Wanda’s signed on to be my ship’s Doctor and her husband is travelling with her.” I swear to Goddess I try to keep the smugness out of my voice and off my face but it’s a doomed venture. I beam at Persephone’s shocked face while Rorick gives me that look which tells me I’m being an asshat again.
“You…Oh Goddess you…” Persephone floundered and it shows on her face that she’s mentally reviewing the rights and powers I now had from the Auctoritas that she had given me. Then there’s the sweet eye widening moment when she realizes that not only what I’d done was perfectly legal but that there’s nothing she or anyone else can do about it. “Well played Captain, well played.” Her tone sounded almost relieved that I was actually smarter than I looked. For once.
“She’s safe and sound on my ship. Less safe than if she’d stayed dirt bound, but I’m guessing far happier to be star swimming.” I admit with a shrug. One of my plans had actually worked for a change, I’m not about to let that fact get to my head.
The fact is a Doctor is not something a ship like mine normally ever has the luxury to obtain. Runners can’t really attract and keep, or even afford, the highly trained Women, and it was awfully hard to even fly with an apprentice before the Hounds or the Sisters found a way to bring you down. It was a hell of a way to control free spirits like us, force us to land and register to receive full, complete care. Except that now I have Wanda, with Auctoritas and the very write of protection Persephone had given me, I was free to the extent no other Captain could currently claim.
“If there’s nothing else Persephone, I have a rukus to get up to and amoks to be run.” I don’t sound satisfied, mainly because there’s no point to be. I’d gotten one over on Persephone but she’s supposedly on my freaking side to begin with. There are only so many tricks I can pull once the Sisters and the other jurisdiction of Hounds start chasing my sweet tin can of a space ship.
This quadrant’s Head of the Hounds has nothing pithy to say to me at this moment, apparently I’ve gone and broken the box she’s mentally stored me in, and now she has to try and rethink everything she’s assumed about me because of it. It’ll take her awhile and I’m not patient, so I just switch the call off, screen going dark as I look across the flight deck to my Rorick. He seemed to once again read my mind, or at least anticipate my needs, because he’s already gathered my scattered clothes together. A hop, skip and shimmy later and I’m back in my own clothes. Sadly, this means Roar is too. It’s hard to focus when he’s stalking around naked though, so I let it lie.
“That was more than just a courtesy call, she was trying to triangulate our location. There’s no other reason for her to stall out as long as she had. Think she’s got a skiff pacing us or something more sinister that’ll intercept us later?” I ask my blood slave even as my fingers start to tweak the control board. Thanks to the old Earth like gravity of my ship, the alteration in our course is only a little noticeable, but if they’re paying attention it might be a little alarming and Van has probably noticed the change in course. “Can you got let the rest of the crew know that I’ve altered the flight plan? If Perse and her Hounds are already acting shaky this close after we ship out, that means someone’s close on our exhaust trail. I’m going to play hide and go kiss my ass.”
“That leaves us two viable and completely stupid options a fool like you would consider.” Rorick counters and I can hear the growl in his voice that creeps in when I have a bad plan.
“Three actually.” As if that’ll help. “Fly us cargo lane close to every rock, ship and satellite station out there and hide us in plain sight; slingshot us way out there into empty space and come at the job rendezvous from an unanticipated direction…” I state the two options that seem likely for a scad like me. “Or I can fly us through junk space.” I state the last option. Last because it really is a likely suicide run, my specialty.
When things die in space, be they organic or metal or hell, anything that’s not recyclable, we humans love to just send it off our rocks and pretend it’s not our problem anymore. Derelict ships that have been picked over, failed satellites, broken off pieces of shuttles, a fair herd of corpsicles and even some old terra forming machinery; all drifted into space and somehow came together. Now there is a massive hoard of accumulated space junk, the flotsam and jetsam of the stars. Glamorous. There’s a lot of it out there and it likes to move around as different things act on it from gravitational pulls, scavenger parties like the Mods who cruise for new parts to solar winds. I wouldn’t just be skirting the debris in the junk space either, but also those entrepreneurial scavengers who liked to pick at the newest debris making out the outer layer. To them we’d be a cute little morsel walking up and jumping in their veritable mouths. Of course, that was assuming we weren’t going in there armed for nuclear war.
“Jy gaan na die dood van my wees.” Rorick uses that male language that I’m supposed to believe doesn’t actually exist. Mostly I only ever hear him swear at things or mutter under his breath in it, but every now and again he does something like this that really stretches my plausible deniability. Now if only I had even a half assed clue what the hell he was saying, then I’d be cooking with oil. But as it is, I’m as clueless as I ever am.
“Whatever it is you’re babbling at me about, it better be love and praises.” I warn him, making my face look dangerously serious. “Now be a good slave and go give the crew a heads up, ok cockie?” Despite the insulting words, my tone lacks the bite necessary to really rile Rorick up, though he gives me that flat stare that warns of all kinds of dangers ahead. It makes me kind of dewy.
I don’t relax into my slump until after Rorick heads off to the others, I don’t want anyone to know (especially not Rorick) but the truth is that I have no idea how I’m going to get us all through this. My plan had gotten us as far as marrying Wanda and Dandy together, to ensure I have a ship’s Doctor on hand. The Sisters are out to get me, which is actually a daunting reality. Anonymity had been the best defense I could ever hope for. They weren’t everywhere, but they could be anywhere. Not all of the Sisters went around openly classified as such. And then there were the supporters! On some worlds, there’s in collusion with a Prime Family and on the majority of worlds, they’re a conservative traditional force that works with the authorities (Cops, Hospitals and Schools) to ensure that all citizens know just exactly where their places are. So a LOT of people will turn to the Sisterhood just because they still believe that the Sisters are there to help. But a padded collar is still a collar, and I don’t have the wrists to pull of cuffs.
If it wasn’t bad enough that I have to dodge the Sisterhood, I suspect that the Hounds aren’t going to be as friendly as Persephone would like me to believe. I’m too used to seeing the Hounds and the Sisters as bosom buddies to accept that they’re separate entities just like that. Do I believe that Persephone is an ambitious, power thirsty pain in my ass who genuinely wants to do away with the irritation that is the traditional Sisterhood? Oh hell yeah. But do I think that means she won’t turn around and sell me out the moment I become inconvenient to her? Not even a little. Actually, if I were here I’d call a patsy like me in, get them on my side to help be a distraction and the moment they can’t strike back, I’d alert the other side to my patsy’s whereabouts just to ensure that pawn A and pawn B are too busy with each other to pay attention to what I was doing. Sweet merciful Murphy, I’ve actually used this plan a time or two myself. Divide and conquer anyone?
But Persephone’s gotta realize that I’m going to be paranoid. I mean, I even med scanned Wanda and Dandy as they boarded just to make sure there were no imbedding tracking chips anywhere. So her calling me up to try and triangulate was either a really obvious ploy, or maybe she’d managed to sneak an inactive beacon onboard and the convo had a keyword in it somewhere. I ran the brief conversation through my head but nothing she said stuck out. Again no surprise there. In fact, if it was me being a devious little twat lolly, I’d have used something sub aural. Too high pitched or low frequency for the human ear to hear. Even as the thought occurred to me, I ran commands into my ships computer. All of the incoming and outgoing communications are recorded, even the ones that no one thinks can be. Oh come on, I’m the QUEEN of paranoialand, give me some credit. It should say something about the friends I keep when I can just accept that they’ll sell me out if required, but that’s the world I live in. My own Mother was going to have me kidnapped and then killed just to promote my little sister to Heir, betrayal is par for the course. But none of the recordings show any signs of secret frequencies and none of my usual devices detect any kinds of beacon being transmitted from my ship. It seems like my paranoid worse owes Persephone’s acting in good faith an apology. It’s almost a nice change when I can not get reamed in the rear by an ally.
I even revel in the good feelings for a whole second before I put my fragile optimism back in a box to hide it safely away. There are still ways to keep tabs on my whereabouts. Other options for the spy-tastic type are infiltration, in this case have Dandy or Wanda report our coordinates in, or subterfuge; say… plant the seeds of an idea in my head and know where I plan to go before I even get there. The job. The oh so convenient, not too hard and in the right general direction to cause mischief, job. Persephone could easily have been the one to set it up, or just buy the info on what it is and where it’ll go down. That way when my attention is focused on making a shiny penny she can slip a beacon on my ship and I won’t think to look for it. Tricky. It’s just the sort of subtle thing Persephone would prefer to do. Hell, if I’d hired someone like me to do a job, I’d want to know where I was too; keep track of the minions as it were.
So I can fly through junk space and either do the job, collect money and watch my back, or I can fly through junk space, skip the job (and then sob over the loss of pretty shiny coin), to go focus on the coordinates of where my so called father may or may not be located. If he’s even still alive. I have no reason to trust Jaxom’s information, in fact I’d spent the entirety of his ship time absolutely wigged out about him, and yet I don’t think he’s lying to me. Coordinates are one thing, but it’s the fact that he had a picture of a really young me and my father, the mystery man named Wayne.
Staring down at the flight panel gives me no clear, this is not a screw up, sign. The job or the hunt for a mystery. Money and reputation, or curiosity. Either way I have to get us through to the other side of junk space first. Past a sea of sharp edged debris and sharper edges of scavengers and the sharpest edge of my opponents intelligence. No, wrong way to go about it, just focus on getting us into ‘safer’ space and then I can try to determine what my next step is going to be. Because I suspect that either option is going to hold an unfair weight of bad luck and oh shit moments. For once it’s not my gut telling me this, but instead simple experience. A crew of five against an untold army of bad things coming at us.
“I think I need to call in some markers. Time for old debts to be paid.” Talking to myself is a bad habit but it actually helps be feel more confident. If we survived whatever it was coming at us, I can always cultivate more owes, people are always needing help in one way or another. Though some of these were true once in a lifetime debts I could cash out. Do I really want to go there, and will my self-appointed family forgive me if I do? I guess it’s time that they learned that Felix Katt hasn’t always been a Captain or even a Runner. At one point in time, I worked as a Merc. We all have phases we’re not proud of, this was my awkward phase, no braces necessary.