<You’re not really that naïve, are you?>
<Not really, no. But it is possible.>
Malorie snorted. <Even if he was low on fuel, you know he picked his gas station carefully. It wasn’t a random selection.>
<Fine, Malorie, you’re coming with me.>
<Good.>
Katrina strode out of her quarters and nodded to Norm and Uma, who both fell in behind her.
“Where are we going, Lady Katrina?” Norm asked.
“To the Castigation, then to Nesella Station, where the Verisimilitude has docked.”
“Cocky fuckers.” Uma’s low voice was laced with malice. “Always thought they were such hot shit.”
“That’s cause they are,” Norm replied. “Lady Katrina, should I reach out to Korin for your full guard?”
“Not everyone. We need to maintain a presence here on Farsa. But at least a hundred.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Katrina considered that she would do well to win over more of the MDF forces on Farsa. They had proven harder to work with than the Adders—the pirates just wanted to be on the winning side and get paid. Many of the MDF personnel believed in law, order. They liked the respect that Lara had garnered for their forces.
Many viewed Katrina as a blight, though currently one that they would have to stomach. So long as the Adders and the MDF were balanced, at least.
Her request for more ships from the other cantons to bolster the MDF would throw off that balance, the implications of which had been weighing on her mind.
It was one of the reasons that she was so eager to get her hands on the Verisimilitude. It also meant that she needed to involve the MDF in its capture.
And find something to offer Kruger. Gaining him as an ally in the midst of this would be an important step. One that would be necessary if she did indeed need to move on Lady Marion of Canton Kurgise.
Maybe she could offer Kruger the woman’s canton…
First she had to make Malorie less of a burden. <Demy, the Castigation is shipping out.>
<I know, Captain Jordan has requested that I remain aboard. The new engineering crew is still learning the ropes.>
<Good, I’m bringing Malorie, can you get one of those harvester bots up from Revenence Castle before we go?>
Demy snorted. <Sorry, Lady Katrina, there’s not a snowball’s chance in a fusion reactor. I just got wind that they’re buried in the back of some storage shed with half a century of other farming equipment. Even if they haven’t been crushed under a pile of cultivator spades, it’ll take a day or more to get them out.>
<Dammit, OK, I guess I’ll make do, lugging her braincase around.>
<Well…> Demy began, sounding uncertain about whatever other option she had.
<Spit it out, Demy.>
<On Rockhall, we used these netcrawlers to get parts out of the back ends of the station. We ran them centrally, but they actually supported a local NSAI hookup. I think I could hook up Malorie’s braincase to one.>
<Why the hesitation?> Katrina asked.
<Well…we got them from a ship that had raided Crossbar awhile back.>
Katrina bit back a harsh response. Not knowing the details of the thousands of surrounding systems was a never-ending pain in the ass, but it wasn’t Demy’s fault that she had no idea what significance Crossbar held.
Luckily, her silence prompted Demy to fill in the details.
<Right, uh, they’re a weird group who got into the whole vampire thing on a planetary scale. We call ‘em suckers. Anyway, their general aesthetic is…creepy.>
Katrina glanced down at the case she was carrying, Malorie’s brain and life-support systems nestled inside.
<I think creepy suits Malorie. Get one sent over from Rockhall before we depart.>
<I can do you one better, ma’am. There are two in one of the Castigation’s bays. Got dumped there when we were pulling the ship out of storage. If memory serves, one has a bad central processor, and the other has some broken legs. Together, I can make something functional.>
Katrina wondered about ‘some’ broken legs. That, combined with Demy’s description of the things as being creepy, piqued her interest.
<Sounds good. I’ll pass Malorie off to you once we get aboard.>
<I’ll be waiting.>
Katrina closed the connection and considered her next call. This one would be trickier, but it had to happen.
<Colonel Odis, may I have a word?>
<Do I have a choice, Warlord?>
While most of the Adders referred to her as ‘Lady Katrina’, given her position as the head of the Blackadder canton, the MDF officers preferred to call her ‘warlord’. She was certain they meant it as an insult, but she acted as though it were not.
Even if they spoke the word in derision, given the two options, she preferred it. She held no military rank, and appropriating one would not earn her any love from the MDF. Warlord was about as close to a military rank as she would get.
<I was being polite, Colonel,> Katrina replied. <I know things have been tense this past week, but we need to put that behind us as much as we can. While I may have been a catalyst for what happened, I did not instigate this conflict. I did end it, though, and I saved a lot of lives in the process.>
Katrina spoke the lie with such conviction that she almost believed it herself. Granted. It was not entirely untrue. She didn’t start this; Admiral Lara was actively working to take whatever the Blackadders had found—namely Katrina herself—by force, if necessary. That precipitated their small conflict on Farsa, which Jace escalated greatly in his bid to take over everything.
<Very well. What do you want…ma’am?>
<We’re paying a visit to the Nesella Station to secure the Verisimilitude. I want four of your destroyers to accompany us, with enough troops to assault the station if needs be. I’m going to reach out to Admiral Gunter for additional support when we get out there.>
Colonel Odis laughed. <You may want to pull in Admiral Leena’s ships instead. Gunter is in bed with Kruger. Literally.>
Katrina’s eyes widened at that. <Good to know, Odis. I may still use Gunter…that is his sector. It would be suspicious if I called in someone else.>
<Understood, I think it may be worth devising a way to use Leena, though. Or at least make sure Gunter himself is nowhere near Nesella Station.>
<Thanks, Colonel Odis,> Katrina replied. <That’s very helpful.>
<I just don’t want to get killed on the mission—looking out for my people, here.>
That’s why I picked you, Odis, Katrina thought. You’re predictable that way.
<Excellent. Get your Flight in order and coordinate with Captain Jordan. We’re shipping out in thirty minutes.>
<We’ll be ready,> Odis replied.
Katrina closed the connection, and then considered the various ways in which taking the Verisimilitude could play out.
<Korin?> she pinged her head of security. <You talking with Norm?>
<Yeah, we’re sorting out who we’ll send along with you.>
A malicious smile crept across Katrina’s face. <Change of plans, keep it to the minimum possible. I want you to do something else while we’re away.>
THE JUMP
STELLAR DATE: 02.03.8512 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Voyager, Monta Station
REGION: Orbiting Takan, Kashmere System
Troy reviewed the new jump-navigation systems, recalculating their trajectory, triangulating off nearby stars, and confirming with more distant objects.
The dark layer made him nervous. No, not nervous, uncomfortable. It was just so much nothing, barring the clumps of dark matter that clustered around stars. Barely detectable, but spelling instant death for any ship that collided with them.
How did they ever manage to map all these jump points out? The time and expenditure must have been significant.
He considered that it probably still was. Dark matter orbited stars just like regular matter. Clear routes between the s
tars were often in flux, shifting as matter moved about, both in newtonian space, and in the dark layer.
That was part of what made him nervous. The Kashmere System advertised the clear routes to nearby stars, but the safe exit locations were provided by whatever ships had most recently come from those systems. One had to trust that everyone else was operating in good faith.
It was strange to think that—unless one was inside of a federation of some sort—the speed of information between the stars was determined by the routes of freighters, commercial passenger transports, and light courier ships.
All interstellar data flowed through such ships, and some amount of skepticism had to be given to the quality of said data. It could be out of date, wrong, or maliciously altered.
Yet somehow the whole fabric of human commerce and communication seemed to hold together.
Troy wondered if it was just held in place by sheer willpower. After the many interstellar wars of the last five thousand years—the most recent major conflagration only four hundred years in the past—humans and AIs may just want peace badly enough to make it work.
Yeah. Right, Troy laughed to himself. AIs maybe, humans no.
Rama leant back in her chair and nodded while reviewing the jump trajectory. “Looks good to me, Troy. You sure you want to dump out of the DL eighty AU out at Midditerra? Gonna be a long flight insystem.”
<We want to avoid notice,> Troy replied. <If there is one system in the galaxy that we can’t just wander into, this is it.>
“Well, this and Bollam’s World.”
<Sorry, I thought that went without saying.>
“Look at you, Troy, being all imprecise and making assumptions! I like it.” Rama grinned up at her little ‘Troy’ figurine she’d made. The optics on the Voyager were too small to see, and Rama said she hated talking to nothing.
Hence the Troy doll that stood atop the center console.
At first it annoyed Troy—granted, most human particularities did—but he’d grown accustomed to it. He’d also placed a small nano drone on the figurine, so that when Rama talked to it, he could watch as though she were talking to him.
<And look at you, doing the math right on the first try,> Troy replied to Rama. <Keep that up, and I’ll wonder if you’ve got an NSAI tucked in your head.>
Rama laughed. She always did whenever he needled her. “Could be, Troy, could be. I got a prybar and squeezed one in.”
<Would explain why your head is so misshapen,> Troy shot back.
“Ohhh, look who’s talking, Mr. Lumpy Hull.”
“Do I have to separate you two?” Carl asked as he climbed up to the cockpit. “Not that I’m sure how we’d do that.”
<You could put her in a stasis pod,> Troy suggested.
“Or pull Troy’s core,” Rama said, grinning widely.
“Fight nice, kids,” Carl grunted. “We ready for the jump?”
<Triple-checked,> Troy replied. <We’re in the pocket.>
Carl chewed on his lip as he looked over the jump calculations. “Stars, this makes me nervous,” he muttered.
“Why’s that, boss?” Rama asked.
Carl shot her an appraising look. “Because we still haven’t worked out the issues with the relays. We just can’t get the specs right on the fabbed ones. We need to buy some, but we don’t have the right credits.”
“I know, Carl, I was messing with you,” Rama rolled her eyes. “You and I have only worked together for a bajillion years. You think you’d know how I roll by now.”
<It’s true, Carl. I understand her humor better than you.>
“Sorry,” Carl muttered. “Stress response. Let’s just do this, already.”
<Approval noted. Initiating jump.>
Troy activated the grav field generators, and an alternating field of positive and negative gravitons flowed out from the Voyager, dropping it from normal space into the dark layer.
They were on their way to the Midditerra System.
A NEW OUTLOOK
STELLAR DATE: 02.04.8512 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Katrina’s quarters
REGION: Farsa Station, Persia, Midditerra System
Nesella Station lay in orbit of Regula, a smallish ice giant forty-seven AU from Midditerra’s star. It was on the same side of the system primary as Persia, making for a somewhat shorter trip, but not much.
Katrina had spent most of the four days researching everything she could about the stations on the outer rim of the Midditerra system. There were thousands of smaller outposts, but only a few dozen major habitats.
Nesella was one of those.
A collection of toroids, it housed over three-hundred-million humans, making it one of the largest population centers in the Midditerra system.
Kruger ruled it in a semi-democratic fashion: democratic in that he held many plebiscites, ‘semi’ in that he either manipulated the results, or just ignored them.
The man was wily and would make a formidable adversary—which meant Katrina had to ensure he didn’t become one.
The single advantage she had over him was that Admiral Lara had ensured that the station masters in the outer system kept limited fleets. She had taxed them heavily and used that money to bolster the MDF.
The end result were stations that needed the MDF for protection and didn’t have the resources to extricate themselves from that dependency.
Katrina rose from the desk in the stateroom Jordan had granted her, and stared out at the dark blue orb of Regula. They were four hours from docking at Nesella Station, and she had just exchanged brief pleasantries with Kruger.
Officially, she was visiting him as a matter of state, getting to know the man, and discussing how he would fit into the new government she was organizing.
She suspected he knew the other reason she was coming, though it was hard to know for certain. The Verisimilitude was not on record as being docked on the station, and no official logs showed it as having arrived.
It was only through some of Jordan’s own contacts that they knew it was there, tucked on the inside of one of the inner rings, out of sight unless you were deep within the station.
The ship’s docking location alone spoke volumes.
<Katrina,> Demy’s voice came into her mind. <I believe that I’m ready.>
<Is she?> Katrina asked, suppressing a laugh.
She didn’t know what form the net crawlers took, she’d not asked for further clarification after Demy’s comment referring to them as creepy, but she rather hoped it wasn’t too pleasant.
While Katrina wanted Malorie as an ally, she didn’t want the woman to think she was absolved of past crimes. Just like she had turned Lord Troan into her creature, she would do the same to Malorie.
<She’s complained a lot, but I can tell she likes her new body more than she’s willing to admit.>
<How can you tell?>
Demy chuckled. <Her endorphin levels are through the roof.>
<I can’t imagine she has the glands to produce many peptides. Unless you added some to control her?>
<I maaaay have done that. But she’s triggering their release herself. I’m not doing it to her. She’s a masterpiece, though.>
<OK, OK, I get it, you want to show her off, I’m coming.>
<Great, I’ll let her know.>
Katrina turned from the window and surveyed her stateroom, ensuring that everything was in order before striding from the room and out into the passageway.
The Castigation had started life as a military cruiser, and as such, her stateroom was in officer country. The engineering bays were twenty-two decks down, four-hundred meters aft, and she set off at a brisk pace, moving as quickly as she could while still exhibiting decorum.
She passed a few Adders in the passageways, the pirates moving aside, but none saluting—that was not their way. She did get respectful nods and looks of respect, though.
A few of fear, as well.
That suited Katri
na. Loyalty was earned. She’d get there. For now, respect and fear would have to do.
She stopped in the galley to grab an apple, and was still eating it when she arrived in the bay Demy had appropriated for what she joked about as her ‘mad scientist experiment’.
“Holy shit,” Katrina almost choked on the bite she had just taken of her apple as she saw the thing in the middle of the room.
The first observation she made—other than ‘that is one bright red bot’—was that there were a lot of legs.
“Well,” Demy said, standing beside what Katrina would now have to think of as Malorie. “What do you think?”
The netcrawler’s body was a long, flattened oval that was covered in chitinous scales. It twisted side to side, almost seeming to flow as much as move as it turned to face her.
Attached to the oval were eight long, articulated legs, each with a hook and hasp on the end. They were long, thick, and strong in appearance.
One end of the oval tapered to a point, with several nozzle-like protuberances coming from it. The other end narrowed and angled upward, almost like a long neck, though it had two more appendages on each side.
Arms, Katrina supposed.
Atop the ‘neck’ was a flattened orb with a red light running its circumference, though there was also a stylized V on one side that Katrina supposed must be the front of the head.
It bobbed up and down, then Malorie’s voice emitted from the thing.
“How hideous am I?” she asked, sounding far less certain of herself than Katrina had ever heard before.
Katrina didn’t reply as she walked toward Malorie, examining her new body more closely. The main, eight-legged section was nearly two meters long, with the legs stretching out a meter in all directions.
She imagined Malorie’s full reach would be over three meters in any direction if she stretched her limbs out. With her limbs mostly folded in—as they were right now—her ‘body’ was only fifty centimeters or so off the ground. Her neck stretched up nearly a meter, the arm-like appendages on it half a meter long—which put her ‘head’ at chest height.