The Complicated Love Life of Ivil Antagonist, Empress of Mars

RavensDagger

Mango Media LLC

Copyright © Edgar Malboeuf 2026 produced by Mango Media LLC

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact the publisher at admin@mangomediapublishing.com.

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Book cover by Slothbeing. Typesetting by Miblart.

Dedication

To Waterfowl, for making the world a cuter place

Chapter one

Ivil Antagonist

The Imperial Navy’s officer uniform was meant to remind people that the Imperial Navy was not something you should fuck with.

The Imperial Navy’s uniform was grey. No fun. Gunmetal. The kind of grey that reminded people of freshly poured concrete. It had that kind of texture too. Callous, abrasive, utilitarian.

The Imperial Navy’s uniform was made of a synthetic fibre weave. A square metre of it cost as much as a conscript made in a year. It could stop an explosive rifle round like a fly off a windshield. The kid wearing the suit would be pulped. Bones smashed, organs ruptured. But the uniform? Crisp as the day it was vat-printed.

The Imperial Navy liked its officers. Gave them medals for passing basic. A second lieutenant had a strip of them across his breast. An admiral had more tinsel than an old-Earth Christmas tree.

Wipe your ass well? That’s a medal.

The Imperial Navy uniform Ivil Antagonist wore was custom. That was against regulations. Regulations were sacrosanct in the Imperial Navy. No one had the balls to tell her that she couldn’t, because sacrosanct only protected that which was holy. Ivil Antagonist made doing the unholy her life’s mission.

Her uniform was black.

Grey was the colour of bureaucrats.

Ivil Antagonist had once dropped a tungsten rod from low-Earth orbit through a bureaucrat and the seventy-six floors of skyscraper beneath him. She didn’t do paperwork; she left trails of it in her wake.

Her uniform was the pitch darkness of empty space. It was the colour of places where stars went to die. No one knew what it was made of. No one asked.

There was a single pin on her chest. It wasn’t a medal. She had medals. They were in a case in her room that required four marines in exo-armour to lift. The pin was a small circle with two wings coming off of it. They’d been silver once, but time had rubbed the shine off, revealed the tin under the shiny paint.

It was the pin given to new Valkyries, back when they were all ritz and glamour. Most of them didn’t live to be old enough to buy a drink. Ivil Antagonist was thirty-six years old and felt like she was seventy.

She waited for just a split-second before an armoured bulkhead. The systems connected to the door noticed her, then the powerful AI controlling the door weighed its options. It wasn’t meant to open the bulkhead door. There were several dozen protocols it was designed to follow that said, in black and white, that the door must remain closed.

It weighed this against the very real possibility that the door wouldn’t survive contact with Ivil Antagonist’s frustration.

The door hissed open.

Ivil stepped onto the bridge of the Imperial Star Dreadnought Purgatorial Oblivion.

Only ten Imperial Star Dreadnoughts were ever commissioned, and of those, only three were actually built. Three was all the Imperial Navy needed to remind everyone in the system that they shouldn’t be messed with.

The average Earth-made warship was a workhorse. It was a 20th century pickup with the fat tires and an up-tuned engine. Next to them, an Imperial Dreadnought was a 20th century supertanker.

The bridge was laid out like a giant ring, console and command areas pressed up against the edges with a raised platform in the centre for the officer in command of the ship to watch over their crew. It was a panopticon of control where one person could keep an eye on the entire command infrastructure of a ship able to go toe-to-toe with entire navies on its own.

Ivil walked up the steps to the centre of the command plinth. At the moment, the bridge was quiet except for the occasional groan or gasping breath. The officers were pressed into their seats, sinking into gel pads while machines pumped their blood for them.

A large navigation screen showed that at the moment the Purgatorial Oblivion’s crew was experiencing a balmy seven g’s and would be experiencing those for another twenty minutes as they slowed down on their way to Haumea.

“How are things going, Admiral Vestri?” Ivil asked as she came to stand next to the admiral’s crash throne.

“Hrrr,” the admiral replied.

Ivil raised an eyebrow and looked down at the man who was struggling to keep his eyes open against the weight of his eyelids. A spurt of liquid shot through the plastic artery connected to the admiral’s neck. Enough painkillers to give a horse a high that would last a week and the kind of drug cocktail that would make the average tweaker shit themselves with envy. The crash after the dose was spent would make the average person’s life a living hell for a few days, but there were even more drugs to deal with that.

The admiral cleared their throat. “All is well, Your Majesty,” he said. “Haumea is within scanning range.”

Ivil nodded sharply, then wandered over to one of the consoles to look over the shoulder of the lieutenant in charge of navigation. She moved some hair out of her face with a casual swipe while the brave lieutenant fought to keep conscious next to her.

Haumea was a pitiful excuse for a dwarf planet. It was way out in the fringes of the Sol system, well into the Kuiper Belt. It had no strategic value. It had no natural resources that weren’t better found elsewhere. Its moons were little better than some captured asteroids, and it was weeks distant from anyone or anything of interest.

That made it the perfect home for the Lunatics.

There were three large habitat bubbles poking out of the planetoid’s surface within a kilometre of each other. They were partially protected by a large crater wall.

The Purgatorial Oblivion’s sensor suite was painting targets as quickly as it could spot them, and that meant that the screen Ivil was looking at was filled with several hundred contacts. Large freighters, pleasure barges, transportation ships, warships. The Lunatics had a thriving little community out here, and all of it was moving away from them like fish spooked by a shark.

The crowning jewel of the Lunatic fleet hovered above the largest of the habitation domes. The Paradoxical. It was as long as a full-on Earth Alliance cruiser, and twice as fat. Even that bulk only made it half the size of the Purgatorial Oblivion.

“Have we been cleared for docking?” she asked as she straightened up.

No one answered her for a moment, then one of the officers strained to sit up straighter. “N-not yet, ma’am,” she said. “There might not be enough room.”

Ivil frowned. That was… unfortunately possible. The Purgatorial Oblivion had its own personal berth in Mars’s orbit. In a pinch, it could use a super-tanker’s space to load and unload materials, but that was a chore. The Lunatics wouldn’t have anything to handle her.

“I’ll be heading out in one of our smaller ships, then,” Ivil decided before she spun on a heel and walked out.

With the ship undergoing enough stress to pulp an orange under its own mass, the onboard elevators and trolleys weren’t active. The grand halls of the imperial warship were devoid of crew, passenger, or soldier. Anyone that hadn’t made it to their crash seat—and there was always one—would either be dead or wishing they were.

Ivil walked through the lonely corridors with her head held high. She considered stopping in her suite onboard the dreadnought to freshen up, but dismissed the idea. It would eat up too much time. Ivil Antagonist did not rush. Instead, she walked through the ship at a calm, reasonable pace until she made it to one of the hangars.

Fourteen fully armed and operational Imperial Angel class frigates were sitting in locked berths within the Purgatorial Oblivion’s belly. Enough ships to form a complete naval battle line, or to blockade a small planetoid.

She walked past the first two, then paused at the third. The Lucky Despot. She’d never seen, nor heard, of this particular ship before, but the name amused her. The captain might have had a sense of humour, which was a unique thing indeed within the Imperial Navy.

The entire ship groaned in relief as the pressure it was under subsided bit by bit. They were no longer burning hard to slow down, which meant that they were only hours from their destination. Soon, soldiers would be stumbling out of their couches, engineers would be running around looking for damage, and the Purgatorial Oblivion would be brought to full battle readiness.

Ivil suspected that bringing an Imperial Dreadnought to visit some space clowns might have been a little much as far as shows of force went. It was bringing a nuke to a knife fight. But it might just get her the respect that her name lacked, and she would need all the clout she could manage.

In a few hours, if everything went well, Ivil Antagonist would be face-to-face with one of the solar system’s most dreaded adversaries. Claire, the Cosmic Clown of Clairvoyance and C-classed Valkyrie of the Lunatics.

Chapter two

The Lunatics

Everyone knew that the Lunatics had esprit up to their eyeballs, and nuts of pure titanium.

They lived one mistake away from certain death, far from anyone and anything important, and were the last bastion of the disenfranchised, the lonely, and the functionally unhinged.

The Lunatics’ standard operating procedures were a mystery to every war-capable nation in the solar system, most of all to themselves, and it meant that no one, not the Earth Alliance fleets, not the Empire of Mars, not even the space pirates of Ceres, wanted to fuck with them.

There was everything to lose, and only hundred-year-old clown paraphernalia to win.

Every culture across the solar system gained a quirk or two over time. The Lunatics went to the quirk dispensary with a five-gallon drum and loaded up on them until it was full to the brim. They revelled in being a few pennies short of a dollar, and it showed in everything they did.

Their ships weren’t just ancient scrap heaps, abandoned and stolen from other nations. They were ancient scrap heaps painted in garish colours, covered in dazzle camouflage, then modded until the base ship was unrecognisable.

No one needed a glowing red nose on the end of a destroyer. The Lunatics did it anyway. Then they slapped on seven different turret hardpoints in places they didn’t belong, one short-circuit away from blowing chunks out of their neighbouring ships, and they called it art.

It hadn’t always been that way. In fact, the Lunatics could trace their origins back to one of the first off-Earth colonies: a joint France-Canada-Britain lunar colony on the sunny side of Earth’s girthiest satellite.

The Lunar High Module Colony was built like a sea of large bubbly capsules on the lunar surface. They looked like a swarm of ticks stuck to the moon’s surface, which earned them the name they wore to this day.

When shit went haywire and the First Solar War started, the Lunatics left the moon and fucked off to Haumea.

The clown stuff didn’t start until a few years later.

As it turned out, scrubbing and rescrubbing oxygen was a thankless job. It was a lot easier to do if everyone would just wear some damned respirators so that their mouth bacteria would stay in one place.

Hence, an entire cargo-container full of cheap, Made in China, low-danger environmental protection masks.

They even worked.

Problem was, the masks were a large white oval with two glass circles for the eyes and nothing else. It turned the entire fledgling colony into blank-faced freaks living out in the ass-end of the solar system during a full-scale intra-system war.

Culture has a way to spring up from that kind of thing. Soon, people were painting their masks, and the Lunatics had new faces to show the world.

Ivil Antagonist was aware of all of this, most of it through cultural osmosis. She wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but she had a secret fascination with Earth-made soap operas, which frequently romanticised the Lunatics as handsome devils with hearts of gold and a few roguishly rough edges that could be won over by a kind-hearted and beautiful B-movie starlet.

She had met a few Lunatics away from their dwarf planet home, and they’d all failed to be handsome roguish people with a few rough edges, and were a lot more likely to be insane, angry nutjob anarchists with a chip on their shoulder and too much makeup.

The frigate, the Lucky Despot, shook as it was freed from its mooring links.

So far, the officers on the ship’s bridge were quiet and professional. Ivil could tell that the captain was sweating under her finely tailored uniform, but at least she was taking things seriously. She checked and double-checked every security measure and had her crew on alertness level Orange as if she was about to navigate through an active minefield next to a raging space battle instead of just a simple A-to-B transition from the Purgatorial Oblivion to the waiting Paradoxical.

Ivil felt the weightlessness trying to pull her off the deck. She frowned and put a stop to that, the heels of her boots clunking down. “Do we have an ETA, captain?” she asked.

The captain glanced up, then shook her head. “Not yet, ma’am. Forgive me, but we haven’t received confirmation from the Paradoxical.”

“In their defence, we didn’t tell them that we’d be coming,” Ivil said.

The captain blinked. “We didn’t, ma’am?”

“I imagine they saw us coming. Just fly towards their capital ship, keep your guns pointed away from anything important, and they’ll eventually acquiesce.”

The captain nodded slowly, then returned to her duties. Operating any warship, even an advanced imperial warship, was a thankless, complicated job. The Lucky Despot fired its manoeuvring thrusters, sliding away from the massive bulk of the Purgatorial Oblivion and deeper into empty space.

The frigate rotated on its central axis while the crew clung on, then it aimed towards Haumea and the Lunatic fleet. A burst of thrust later and they were gliding at just shy of two g’s of constant acceleration towards the fleet.

Ivil glanced at the ETA on the navigator’s screen. They had an hour until they flipped and started a slow-down burn, then another two hours before they were close enough to start any sort of docking manoeuvres. The captain was playing it safe, moving slower than she needed to, and more cautiously.

That was fine. The caution would be noted. The fact that the Imperial Navy hadn’t blasted the Lunatic’s entire fleet into a cloud of debris was a good enough sign that they weren’t here to fight.

Ivil was considering finding a seat for herself when she felt a faint buzz at her waist. Sighing, she tugged her pager from her belt and glanced at its screen. MEETING W/ BOARDING PARTY, scrolled across.

Ivil spun on a heel and walked out of the frigate’s command centre. She slipped into an elevator and rode it up a few floors. Then she stepped out onto one of the topmost floors of the ship. Imperial ships were all long and narrow, but unlike Earth Alliance vessels, they were built vertically: The “top” of an imperial ship was the “fore” of most other navies’ vessels.

That was just a normal evolutionary change that happened when one’s entire navy was built in zero-g by people who’d been born and raised in low gravity. Earth-built ships were still designed by people that were born with dirt underfoot.

This being the topmost floor meant that the foot-thick windows built into the ceiling gave her a fantastic view of Haumea and the Lunatic fleet. Her attention only lingered on the ceiling for a moment before she took in the rest of the room.

This was the space that would be hit first in any attack that broke through the ship’s shields, so the room was little more than a luxurious lounge, a space for the crew to relax. At the moment there was no one relaxing at all.

The couches and seats, entertainment systems, and small cafeteria were all unused. The people in this room, ten in all, were standing at attention to one side, hands closed as fists over their hearts and eyes staring out into the distance.

Ivil looked them over. There were seven women, three men, all on the younger side, though they were all adults. They wore tightly fit spacesuits with armoured panels worked over them.

They were all Valkyries, which meant, of course, that they weren’t entirely human, not anymore. She saw arms made of interlocking metal, eyes that were pitch-black orbs. Some had metallic hair, and one of them had a set of skeletal wings folded close against her back.

At a glance, Ivil judged most of them to be C-classers. The kind of people that could probably wipe out a platoon of the empire’s best and who would be the front line in any grand conflict. One of them stood out from the rest.

She was a shorter woman, or was trying very hard to remain that way. Her armour writhed, and on occasion she would appear several centimetres to the side of where she was, then flick back. She was utterly silent. No breathing noises. No heartbeat. No grinding of metal on metal or squelching of organic parts.

Her face was a doll’s, a perfectly beautiful piece of metal, carved to appear feminine and pretty, with very real and organic eyes filling the sockets.

“Are you in charge?” Ivil asked her.

The shorter woman nodded. “Yes, ma’am, B Class Imperial Valkyrie, Sonic Spectre, ma’am.”

Ivil narrowed her eyes. “Oh… I think I’ve heard of you,” she said. “You were the lead of a strike force in Ceres a few years ago.”

“Yes ma’am,” the Valkyrie said. “That’s when I earned my hundredth core, ma’am.”

Ivil nodded. The empire might have had some of the best tech in the solar system, but they didn’t have quite as many Valkyries as some of the other nations out there. The various nations around Jupiter were rich in Valkyries, and Earth had claimed a fair number of them over the first century of space travel. Mars was behind, but they made up for it with quality.

No one had more A-classers than they did, and it showed whenever push came to shove.

“I presume that your team will be my escort?” Ivil asked.

“If you’ll have us, ma’am,” Sonic Spectre said.

Ivil shrugged languidly. “I suppose there’s no harm. It’ll reassure the brass, at least. Do we have any idea how many cores the Lunatics have?”

“Enough to cause trouble, ma’am,” Sonic replied.

Ivil grinned. “Good answer.”

Chapter three

Warclowns

The Lunatic Warclown belonged to an elite order of space warriors. They weren’t the best equipped, they weren’t the best trained, they weren’t the most decorated of combat troops, they weren’t the most fearsome.

Instead, the Warclown was the least predictable of all warriors.

They prided themselves on having no real chain of command, except the chain that whipped new recruits into line when things didn’t go according to their lack of plans.

Fighting them was begging for chaos. There was no tactic that went unexplored, no harebrained scheme that wasn’t schemed, and no way to predict what they would do next.

To the regimented and stalwart Imperial Valkyrie, the worst opponent they could face was one too stupid to follow their carefully prepared combat plans, and the average Lunatic Warclown definitely fit.

When a Warclown gets their nose, they’re also given a core.

The Lunatic fleet has, as far as the Imperial Navy can tell, seven-thousand, three hundred and twenty-two cores.

The Imperial Navy has a few individuals who, alone, hold more cores within themselves. But the Imperial Navy does not hand out cores to every soldier. Instead, each one of their Imperial Valkyries is a trained, disciplined, and proven soldier. They earn the core and the power that comes with it.

Each core holds both potential and power. The first ever used by humanity turned astronaut Linda Alvarez’s left lung into a machine while she was still on the moon’s surface. Humanity later learned that that was a rather tame result, all things considered.

A core always changed something about the person that used it; it always made them different.

Giving one to each Warclown turned them into an army of fierce, dedicated warriors with an array of unpredictable, dangerous abilities.

An army of insane freaks, the average Imperial Navy grunt could deal with. An army of insane freaks who might have laser eyes, or breathe fire, or shrug off bullets? That was another thing entirely.

There was a certain quality to insanity, and the Lunatics leaned into it hard.

So, when Ivil’s escort frigate linked up with the Paradoxical high above the surface of Haumea and past the entirety of the Lunatic fleet, she was expecting to meet the sort of problems that she wouldn’t expect.

She noted that Sonic Spectre was looking rather tense. In fact, her entire squadron of Valkyries were looking tense. This was, in essence, a push into enemy territory. The squad had no workable intel. They were escorting a VIP. A VIP known to have very little concern about collateral damage. Worst of all, they were about to meet with some Lunatics. Nervous ones.

Airlocks opened with a hiss, and Ivil Antagonist started forward without a care. The Imperial Valkyries jumped, but started after her a moment later. They kept in formation, guns trained on the ground, eyes scanning ahead.

The last of the Lucky Despot’s airlock doors opened a moment after the first shut behind them. It opened to the exterior airlock of the Paradoxical. There was a large, upside-down smiley face crudely painted across the entire door.

It hissed aside, revealing a second door. It, too, was painted, this time as a large face with a flattened mouth. Ivil and her escort started forwards again. The air took on a new quality, the particular stink of oft-recycled oxygen.

The first door shut, the middle one opened. The last had a giant frowny face painted on it, with eyes drawn into a glare.

“How inviting,” Ivil commented.

“Eyes forward,” Sonic Spectre told her squad. It was an unneeded order.

The door opened, allowing Ivil to step out and take five long steps into a large room before anyone could register her movement. The approach caused the people waiting for her to back up a few paces, breaking their neat little welcoming formation.

Warclowns. Ivil Antagonist swept her eyes across the room. It was a lounge area, with barricades welded to the floors and ceilings.

The Paradoxical had once been an Earth Alliance ship, and it showed in its stylings. It was built like a seagoing vessel, then only retroactively redesigned to accommodate life in zero-g. It had been re-redesigned by the Lunatics. More armoured half walls, more automated turrets, more couches, large screen televisions, and entertainment suites.

She noted two large anti-tank guns set to either side with overlapping fields of fire, and twenty-six Warclowns. Some were C-class. Likely the best of the best they could muster on such short notice.

They were men and women in neon clothes. Poofy skirts, large puffed out sleeves, face masks with chequered and diamond and swirling patterns. They had guns. Plasma rifles, railguns, traditional kinetic weapons. Some were imperial.

“Well?” Ivil Antagonist asked. “Do you have any questions? Comments? Please, I’m nothing if not open to discussion.”

“Who the fuck do you think ya are?” one of the Warclowns asked. He was large. A C-classer, so one of their best. He was hanging in the air, with large metallic tentacles, painted in blue and red, reaching out from his back towards the ceiling and floor to keep him pinned in place. “Some imperial’s whore, here to donate her cores to—”

His head disappeared. It was empty to begin with.

“Enough from you,” Ivil said. She turned her attention to the next C-classer. “What about you? Are you any more polite?”

This C-classer was a thin, reedy woman. She had four eyes. All organic. Two were growing from stalks on the sides of a head that was a little elongated. Her mask was obviously customised to fit. “I’m Snickers. Warclown of the Paradoxical. Can you identify yourself…” Snickers glanced over at the headless body currently emptying itself out in the ship’s zero-g environment. The blood was slowly pooling up towards a vent in the ceiling. “Please?”

Ivil nodded. “I’m Ivil Antagonist,” she said. “This squadron is here to keep the brass informed of my movements and fetch things for me.” She gestured vaguely to the squad behind her.

There was recognition at the name. A frisson of terror that circulated around the room. Snickers shifted, lowering her gun as if she knew it wouldn’t be of any use.

The Warclown nodded, then she looked at the corpse. The long tentacle arms were slowly breaking apart, metal folding into metal, a decreasing Fibonacci pattern that was entirely impossible to follow. Soon, two dozen small spheres were floating away from the dead Warclown.

“Did you want his cores? It’s your kill,” Snickers asked.

Ivil could sense the displeasure at the question from the other Warclowns. It was giving away their limited cores. If she was here to fight and kill, then she’d take them. And all the rest of the cores in their little fleet besides.

But she wasn’t.

“Keep them,” Ivil said dismissively. “What’s a dozen more cores, at this point? Just bring me to your ringleaders.”

The Warclowns looked to one another for a moment, then it seemed like a consensus was reached.

Ivil usually got her way. It didn’t surprise her that the methods she used in the empire—the overwhelming capacity for violence—worked just as well with the Lunatics.

“I’ll bring you to Circus,” Snickers said.

“Circus… not the Oracle?” Ivil asked as she started to walk after the young clown.

Snickers spun around, twisting her body at the middle so that she could kick off one of the half walls to send herself flying towards a corridor. The other Warclowns cleared out, but they hadn’t received any orders not to follow. Not that they did “orders” in any case.

Ivil’s squadron followed after her. They had magnetic boots that secured them to the floor and gave them a strange, halting gait, all except Sonic Spectre, who vanished and reappeared ahead a few feet in a constant stop-go motion.

Ivil walked as if she was on Earth. Her uniform acted the same way, because it would have embarrassed her if it did not, and it knew better than to act up.

“Captain Circus is the Paradoxical’s captain,” Snickers said over her shoulder. “She’ll know what to do. The Clairvoyant is… she does her own thing. She’s a little more independent than most people like.”

The fact that a Lunatic seemed to think that someone was too independent wasn’t lost on Ivil.

“Oh well. I have all day,” Ivil said. She continued to follow an increasingly nervous Snickers through the halls of the ship and through multiple bulkhead doors.

The Paradoxical opened up a few passages in, and Ivil craned her head back to take it in. The ship might have been much smaller than an Imperial Star Dreadnought, but it was still one of the largest vessels created in the last century, and while the Lunatics had turned it into their home, it still had some of its old luxury under the garish paint, banners, and posters.

“I’m looking forward to meeting this Captain Circus of yours,” Ivil said.

Chapter four

The Paradoxical

The Paradoxical had enough room to house ten thousand people. Not well. They’d be crammed into boxes like wage slaves in a corpo home on Earth, only without the comfort of gravity.

The ship had started its life as the Paradise. A cruise ship the likes of which the solar system had never seen. It was meant to have a crew of two thousand, and room enough for five thousand passengers.

That was before it was stolen.

The ship had been taken near the start of the Third Solar War. It was being used as a non-combatant hospital ship. At least, that’s what it claimed. In reality it had become a hidey-hole for some of the system’s ultra-rich, a place where they could sit back and watch the explosions from afar.

The same ultra-rich who failed to pay the Lunatics for some of their mercenary work.

Most of said ultra-rich were tossed out of an airlock before the cruise ship was flown out to the edge of the system.

The luxurious, elegant pleasure barge became the home of the angriest, garish clowns in the solar system, newly renamed the Paradoxical. The name fit.

The suspended infinity pools had been retrofitted into water purification systems. The multiple decks had been modified to hold dozens of turrets ripped out of derelict warships. Some of the larger ballrooms had been converted into missile silos, and the exterior was now covered in ablative armour and several hundred tons of garish paint.

The Paradoxical had enough guns on it to take on a full Mars patrol fleet, and enough Warclowns to give a platoon of marines pause. Unlike a proper warship, the Paradoxical unloaded its power though stolen, misunderstood, and poorly installed tech. There was no predicting what it would fling at you next.

Fortunately, so far the Paradoxical had only fought against pirates and thugs that bit off more than they could chew.

It had still gained a rep.

Across the system, there were little people with poor posture and poor eyesight who spent too much time on the extranet arguing about which ships would win in a fight. Massive warships like the Imperial Star Dreadnoughts were usually banned from those discussions. They weren’t fair. The Paradoxical was a fan favourite of people who would be lucky to never see the warship.

Ivil found herself growing somewhat tense as she followed Snickers though increasingly mundane passages, discounting the locals’ poor attempts to spruce them up with colour. They’d left the more open spaces some time ago and were now navigating through a maze of corridors deep within the belly of the ship.

She wasn’t worried about being double-crossed. The Lunatics would have to do some truly monstrous things for her to start worrying about them.

She was, on the other hand, worried about being refused.

It wasn’t something that happened often. But this was one of those rare moments where it was entirely possible.

“It’s here,” Snickers said as she grabbed on to a padded handlebar on a corner and used it to flip around the intersection.

Ivil walked after her, the squad the brass had sent floating a few paces behind. As she turned the corner, she took in what was very clearly some sort of defensive station. Two Warclowns stood on either side of a heavily armoured bulkhead door. C-classers, both.

Snickers talked to them with great big gestures, then pointed towards Ivil, who was coming up behind her. “Yes, and she’s literally right there. Have you been huffing pigment?”

“The captain said she didn’t want to be bothered,” one of them said.

“The captain can lick my ass for all I care,” Snickers snapped. “She blew off Laughcroft’s head! I think she could take the two of you without blinking, and I won’t be standing in her way when that happens.”

“Is there a problem?” Ivil asked.

The bulkhead door behind the guard slammed open, and both Warclowns jumped. A woman stood in the entranceway, looking entirely unamused. Her eyes locked onto Ivil’s. “So, you’re the reason I had to call general quarters. Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused for me?”

“I can imagine,” Ivil said. “Are you the captain?”

“I am. Come in. Leave your dogs behind.”

Ivil half-turned towards Sonic Spectre and the other Imperial Valkyries. “Stay,” she ordered simply before following the captain into what was clearly some sort of stateroom. There was a table up on the ceiling with chairs all around, but the lower part of the room was more of an office and bar.

The captain walked up to her desk and pressed a button. The door shut. She turned, arms crossing as she floated slightly above the ground, anchored by something invisible.

Another C-classer, Ivil sensed. Probably one of the last onboard the ship, actually. She couldn’t feel any B-classers nearby. It made some sense. The Lunatics were insistent on sharing the cores they had, rather than concentrating them into a few powerful people.

“So, you’re here to see our oracle,” the captain said.

“I am,” Ivil replied. She walked over to the bar, then started looking through the bottles. She picked one off of a rack. Titanian bourbon, aged in imported French oak. She glanced over the cups and tumblers available. They were all soft plastic, designed to be squeezed and with tight openings. The sorts meant to be pressed against the neck of a bottle, filled with a lurch, then squeezed out into the drinker’s mouth.

Ivil pushed them aside, then smiled as she found an old crystal tumbler in the back.

She popped the top off the bottle, then tipped it over the tumbler. The bourbon started to float away before she gave it a look and the alcohol experienced gravity for the first time as it splashed into her cup.

“Want a cup?” she asked.

“I’m good,” the captain said. “That bottle is worth more than what I make in a year.”

“You’re paid?” Ivil asked.

“Not nearly enough. Why do you want to see the oracle?”

“That’s between me and the oracle,” Ivil said.

“She’s a gossip.”

Ivil considered it. “She won’t be. Not about this.”

The captain hummed. “Are you going to kill her?” she asked.

“If that’s what I wanted to do, there would be easier ways to go about it,” Ivil said. She swirled her glass, then took a sip. It was decent.

“Alright. I’ll have Claire come here. She’s probably on her way already. Or hiding in an escape pod. Or she managed to sneak away a week ago, and no one found out about it until now.”

Ivil shrugged. That would tell her a lot, if it was the case. And it was just one of the risks when dealing with people able to see into the future. “That’s fine,” she said.

There was a knock at the door.

The captain sighed. “Of course,” she said before she reached back and pressed on the same button to open the door.

A woman floated into the room, flipped around on herself, then crashed into the drinks cabinet with a rattle of glass on glass. She reached out and grabbed on to something to steady herself, but that something was the bottle Ivil had put down.

The bottle, unable to stop her from flying away, was instead flung against the far wall where it shattered explosively, creating a cloud of bourbon and glass.

“Claire. I swear on all that honks, I will tan your ass,” the captain snapped.

“I’m sorry!” Claire said. She managed to flip herself around enough so that one orange booted foot was able to touch the deck. Something clunked, and the young woman found herself rooted on the spot enough that she was able to right herself.

Claire the Clairvoyant was younger than Ivil had expected. She had a mess of curly brown hair, far longer than was fashionable, and her full-face mask was a transparent oval, with only a few tabs on the side. It was Martian tech, Ivil noted. Underneath was a face caked in too much white powder; large, red painted lips; and mascaraed, dark-blue eyes.

“I’ve been waiting for you to show up forever!” Claire said as she pointed straight at Ivil. “And now you’re here! Did you bring it?”

“Bring what?” the captain asked.

“I did,” Ivil said. She reached up and undid the front of her uniform, then fished out something small from an inner pocket. A core. It was no bigger than a marble, and yet in Ivil’s vision it practically thrummed with power.

“Gimme!” Claire demanded. Her hands made grabbing gestures, though she didn’t actually come closer.

“You know what I want already,” Ivil said.

The clairvoyant sighed, then looked to the captain. “You should give us a minute,” she said. “Or five, actually. And turn off the cameras and mics. Yes, even the ones no one knows about. Ivil will find them otherwise, and then you’ll need to replace them and a wall.”

The captain crossed her arms. “I’m not sure I want to just leave,” she said.

Claire rolled her eyes. “Come on! Trust me! This’ll be great. I promise.”

Chapter five

Clair Voyant

The human mind is not suited to precognition.

Joy, more often than not, comes from the anticipation of a good thing happening.

No one is happy because they’re eating a real-meat burger. They’re happy before they eat it, they’re happy about the concept of having one, they’re happy that they’d be well-fed later, they’re happy that they’d be able to brag about it.

Human brains feed happiness to anticipation. Anticipation doesn’t work out so well when you know exactly what will happen from the moment you get a precognition core until the moment you die.

More often than not, a precog will end it on their own terms, and usually soon after getting their precognitive abilities.

Some are smart enough to just get rid of the core outright. Some gain very weak precognition, more of a sense of the near future, or very keen reflexes. Ivil had some of these, and she had very meticulously avoided upgrading those powers.

Those who weren’t smart about precognition tended to die by their own hand… or they avoided that by simply going absolutely insane.

Claire was a fantastic example of the latter.

“Oh, oh, oh!” Claire said as she spun herself around. Her hair flew out into a tangled mess, and her dress, another oddity onboard a ship, spun out with the centrifugal force of her spin. “I’ve been looking forward to this since forever!”

“I’m glad to see that you’re excited,” Ivil said. She tossed the little core she held up and caught it when it came back down. “Do you know what I’m here to ask about already?”

Claire reached out and caught one of the chairs mounted to the ceiling, bringing her spin to an abrupt halt. She panted, then locked her attention onto the little core Ivil was holding. “I need to hear you say it,” she said.

“You do?”

“Yup.”

“As a function of your power?” Ivil asked.

Claire grinned. “No. I just want to hear you say it. Maybe with a ‘please’ slipped in there somewhere.”

“Please don’t make me paint the walls with your innards. I’ll have to give your cores to someone else to get what I want then,” Ivil said.

Claire laughed, clearly unbothered by the threat. That was another problem with precogs that were strong enough. They sapped the fun out of life. She pushed herself down until her boots clunked onto the floor and locked in place.

“Alright,” Claire said. “I do need to hear you ask, though, threats and pleases aside. And the usual warnings come into play.”

“The usual warnings?” Ivil asked.

Claire nodded. “Right, right, you might not know. Everyone that works with me has heard the spiel before… it’s been a while… okay.” She cleared her throat. “I, Claire Voyant, seer and see-er of the future, do warn thee who wishes to know what has not passed; the future is ever-changing and in flux, but in the passing of souls and the thread of mankind is a pattern unseen by most. The weave is known to me, and by following the path of your future’s thread, I can discern your place within its pattern.”

Claire’s voice had deepened, and Ivil felt a power’s touch skimming past and around her. To most it would be little more than a shiver down their spine. To her, it was a siren going off in the night.

“Interesting,” Ivil said. “So, this warning?”

Claire sighed. “Look, the long and short of it is that my predictions are the best, but they’re not infallible. Also, I might not tell you what you want to hear. I’ve had some people get really pissed off with me when reality doesn’t line up with their expectations.”

“I imagine there’s a story there?” Ivil asked.

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe it!” Claire said, she swung her arms wide, then had to spin them around to return to standing straight. “I had one mom blow up on me because she wanted to know when she’d reunite with her lost kid, and the answer was never. Which, yeah, that sucked. I also avoid doing predictions for religious people. They wanna know when they’ll meet God, or when the end will come, or whatever, and they’re never happy with what I have to say.”

“You could lie.”

“Pfft, no.” Claire waved dismissively. “I know what’ll happen to me if I get a reputation for lying, and it ain’t pretty.”

Ivil nodded along. “Very well. I imagine you know what the deal between us is already?”

“You gimme that tasty, tasty ultra-rare core right there, and I don’t whisper a word of what you ask me to anyone.”

“And you know what will happen if you do tell people?”

Claire snorted. “One of the two dozen or so spies in the Lunatics will report it up the chain, word will get out, you’ll find out, then the next thing I know I’m waking up on the void of space, choking on nothing while my eyes pop out of my skull from the pressure change. The last thing I’ll see is this ship floating in two big parts. Yeah, I know.”

“I don’t play with my victims,” Ivil said. “That’s the only comfort you’d get.”

“Uh-huh,” Claire agreed. She leaned forwards, feet still planted on the ground and hands grasping for Ivil. She grabbed on to one of Ivil’s hands. “Now… shall we do this?”

Her hands were cold. “Yes,” Ivil said.

Claire grinned wide, and any vestige of sanity slipped out of her gaze. “Now, ask.”

Ivil didn’t clear her throat. She didn’t allow herself the luxury of being nervous. Instead, she asked. “I… I want to find true love.”

Claire snorted. “There’s a couple on deck seven. Older people, like, sixties or so, been married for forty years and still adore the sight of each other. It’s almost sickeningly sweet.”

Ivil glared. “That’s not what I meant,” she said.

“Then be specific,” Claire said.

“Fine then. I want to find someone who will love me, and who deserves my loyalty. Someone that I can live a happy life with. I’ve been at the top for too long. I want, need, someone to kill my loneliness.”

Claire blinked. “Well, that’s something. But okay, I think I can manage.”

There was a wash of unfelt warmth through the room. Ivil fixed herself against it, resisting.

She noticed the sweat pooling on Claire’s forehead. “You’re not making this easy, you know,” Claire muttered.

Ivil let go, and the warmth washed through and past her, then back. It stopped as easily as it came, and Claire let go of Ivil’s hand and fell back. “So?” Ivil asked.

“Gimme a minute,” Claire said. She brushed a hand through her hair, which had started to mat against her scalp. “Oh, this headache had better be worth it.”

“Any results?” Ivil asked.

“Yup,” Claire siad. “I… hmm.”

“Yes?” Ivil asked.

Claire brushed the sweat off of her hands along the front of her dress. “Go to Ceres. You’ll find what you’re looking for on this piece-of-junk ship called the… uh… Held Together. You’re going to need to take that ship to wherever it’s going next.”

“That’s it?” Ivil asked. “That’s hardly precise.”

“Hey, you’re getting good service here, woman,” Claire protested. “I’m leading the horse to water.”

“Am I the horse?” Ivil asked. “Because I might find that insulting, and your usefulness to me is certainly coming to a middle.”

“Chill,” Claire said. “If I tell you everything, it doesn’t work out the way you want it to. This way it does. Figure the rest out yourself. I’ve already pointed you in the right direction. Claire Voyant’s work here is done… now gimme the core.”

Ivil sighed and tossed the core over. Claire fumbled it out of the air, then grinned at the little marble-sized item. “Is your name really Claire Voyant?” Ivil asked.

“Is yours really Ivil Antagonist?”

“Fair enough.”

“Right, you’d best get going. You have like, six days to make it to Ceres or you’ll miss your chance and never find love. Then you’ll die old and bitter and angry and lonely.”

Ivil quirked an eyebrow at that pronouncement. “I see. I won’t linger then. Thank you for your service, Claire. And do recall what’ll happen if you speak of this.”

“Oh, piffle, you think you’re the only person that asks me about love? You wouldn’t believe how many divorces and marriages I’ve caused. There’s seven little baby Claires on Haumea, and it’s all my fault!”

“I see. Well, try to keep your mouth shut and your head on your shoulders.” Ivil nodded to the seer, then walked to the door. It opened on her approach, and she slipped out into the corridor where Captain Circus was in the middle of a stare-down with Sonic Spectre. There were several more Warclowns out now. “We’re going,” Ivil said as she moved past it all. “Come on, I don’t have time to waste on inconsequential things. Good day, Captain.”

If time was pressing, then she’d do what she could to slip across the system. Ceres wasn’t close, but she’d make it.

Chapter six

None-Way Communication

Nothing was faster than light. Nothing ordinary, in any case. The exception, therefore, was the unordinary, and that was something that core users had a monopoly on.

Therefore, when Martian Naval Command wanted to know what was going on with the fleet they’d lent out to Ivil Antagonist, they relied upon unordinary communication methods.

They were called the Partridge brothers. Both of them had gained copies of similar cores, and while neither of them were anything more than D-classers, their worth to the nation of Mars ensured that they wouldn’t ever lack for anything, unless that thing was free time.

One of the Partridge brothers was lying within a vat filled with a non-Newtonian fluid. A breathing apparatus was affixed to his face. His eyes were closed. Wires ran from his neck into a large server bank, whose flickering lights were the only source of illumination in the room.

This room was deep within the Star Dreadnought. There were guards stationed by the door. Automated defences tucked away and ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. The space wasn’t on any of the ship’s official blueprints. It was almost as safe as could be.

The only way it could be safer was if its position could be hidden by obscurity, but there was only so much they could do to hide a ship of this size.

Across from him, Ivil stood with her hands casually folded at the small of her back. A semicircle of plate-sized holographic displays hovered before her.

They flickered, and soon the room was lit by a soft blue glow as seven figures appeared in miniature before her. She recognized three. The others didn’t matter. “Admiral, Admiral, Chancellor,” she greeted.

The two admirals, the Admiral of the Martian Defence Fleet and the Grand Admiral of the Navy, both nodded in greetings, but it was the chancellor who spoke first. “Hello, Ivil,” he said. The man had a smooth baritone voice that carried well, and he stood tall and proud, seeming rather regal despite the small stature of his hologram.

“Hello,” Ivil replied. “I imagine that you wanted to talk to me for a reason?”

The Grand Admiral of the Navy scoffed. “I’d like to know what’s going on with one of my best fleets,” he said.

“Our mission on Haumea was accomplished,” Ivil said simply. “We will be heading inwards next.”

“Back to Mars?” the chancellor asked.

“No. Ceres first. You can have your fleet once I’m there. Admiral Vestri will likely be pleased to be back home,” Ivil said.

“I can imagine,” the Admiral of the Defence said. “Though that begs the question, where will you be in that time? Are you going to be staying on Ceres?”

Ivil hesitated for a moment, then gestured to the screens. “Can we have some level of privacy?” she asked.

Four of the seven holograms winked out. The Partridge brothers would still hear, of course, but they had heard plenty of classified things already. All that remained were the admirals and the chancellor, who walked within the hologram, likely to a more private location. “Go ahead,” he said.

“Once on Ceres I’ll be departing for an unknown amount of time aboard a ship called the Held Together,” Ivil said. “I don’t know for how long, and I’m uncertain of my destination.”

The Grand Admiral leaned to the side, inputting some information into a tablet. “The Held Together… a small cargo ship currently en route to Ceres. Due to arrive today, in fact. Overdue payments all over. It’s practically a relic.”

“What is its next destination?” the Chancellor asked.

“Callisto, Jupiter,” the admiral said. “According to its flight plans. Though with Ceres, you never know.”

“Then I supposed I’ll be heading to Jupiter,” Ivil said with a shrug. “Is that an issue? I won’t require any escorts, nor will I suffer any impediments.”

“You seem quite serious about this,” the chancellor said. “You met with the oracle on Haumea, correct? Is this because of her prompting?”

“Obviously,” she replied.

He nodded. “I always trusted that you have Mars’s best interest at heart, Ivil. Whatever this mission of yours is, rest assured that Mars is ready to support you.”

Ivil didn’t fail to notice the two admirals holding back some less than flattering expressions at that. The chancellor’s role was important, certainly, and he was, nominally, the leader of Mars, at least on paper.

In reality, the real power of Mars was in its military. They, of course, paid lip service to the chancellor, and there were several political realities in play that would require either a lifetime on Mars to understand, or some deep study to uncover.

“I appreciate it,” Ivil said. “I might require some assistance, as it happens. I need a cover identity. I’ve prepared a small brief for MINT with some suggestions for what I need. I’ll leave the details to the professionals.”

The Admiral of Defence nodded. That would, technically, fall under his purview. “I’ll have the boys in black do what they do best,” he said.

“Thank you,” Ivil said.

These kinds of meetings were always so very tense. The levers of power on and around Mars were a Rube Goldberg machine that built itself as it went. They shifted constantly, grew, and expanded and changed.

Ivil was a wrecking ball poised over the machine. Able to destroy it, but nonetheless supported by it all the same.

“You asked for privacy,” the Grand Admiral said. It wasn’t a question, because his position didn’t allow him to bow to Ivil. Instead, he brought it up and let her fill in the rest.

“I don’t know how Mars will react to my temporary… vacation,” Ivil said. “I think I’m more than due some time off, and I don’t plan on making much of a fuss. Nonetheless, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ensure that the timing wasn’t… critical, in some way.”

“There’s always something,” the chancellor said with a sad smile. “Let’s see… there’s a refugee crises around the Mercury-Venus circle. I don’t think that’ll impact us, but it might draw some attention from the Earth Alliance. The Alliance of Moons is acting strangely. I think there might be something new going on with them, though they’re keeping mum about it. Deimos is trying to get feelers out, and Phobos is doing its own thing. I don’t think either situation calls for your brand of attention.”

“No noteworthy military manoeuvres,” the Grand Admiral said. One of his eyes, a mechanical implant was glowing as he reviewed something. “Some training exercises around Jupiter from the Earth Alliance. Some movement from Saturn to Jupiter as well as from Titan and the others, but that’s likely a show of force, since Jupiter isn’t keen on being bullied. Ceres is a mess, as usual.”

“We ought to do something about Ceres,” the Defence Admiral said. “Especially if we’re going to park a Star Dreadnought on their front step.”

“There are some pirates that we could wipe out. They’ve been a thorn,” the other admiral agreed.

Ivil shook her head. “Do as you will. I don’t see any of that concerning me. If the system is at peace, then I’ll be able to act as I please without any concerns of some cataclysm pulling me back.”

The chancellor and the admirals exchanged a glance, then the chancellor shrugged. “I suppose we can live without your direct assistance for some time. What’s that old expression, about having a hammer and seeing nails all over?”

Ivil didn’t quite laugh, but she did breathe out from her nose. “I have a rough idea of what you mean, yes,” she said. “I won’t be entirely outside of anyone’s ability to communicate. If you’re so worried about me, then keep a ship or two on standby.”

“We’ll do just that,” the Grand Admiral said. “Be careful around Ceres, Ivil. That place is a hive of scum and villainy.”

“I don’t intend to stay there long,” she replied.

Ivil said her farewells and ended the communication. When all the holograms finally dimmed, she found herself in the same poorly lit room, eyeing the Partridge brother still lying within his vat.

She wondered what life was like for him and his brother. Eternal subservience to the nation of Mars. Power, but power chained. Something that might have been her lot in life had she not gained power fast and hard enough.

Ivil sighed, noted the time, then rubbed at the back of her neck. If she was going to be away from the Martian fleet for any amount of time, then this might be one of her last opportunities to attend to one of the few things that kept her solidly grounded.

It was about time for her to visit her therapist.

She wondered what he would have to say about her current progress.

Chapter seven

Ceres

There were twenty-seven pillars keeping the two halves of the Ceres apart, and all twenty-seven of them were rigged to blow.

At the moment, there were nineteen pirate crews, gangs, syndicates, and corporations that owned those twenty-seven pillars between them. At any moment, when hostilities got too warm, they could threaten to literally press the big red button and doom them all to be crushed.

The space between the two chunks of Ceres was called the Crevice, and it was the asshole of the solar system.

The Crevice, when classified, falls into a neat little space usually reserved for slums, favelas, and shantytowns. This sub-category exists for places where the rule of law is weakest, where poverty and violence is the norm, and where someone with muscles and guns can become a king, at least until someone with more of either sweeps through.

No one wanted to live in the Crevice. Twenty million did anyway.

The dwarf planet had been cracked in two during the opening months of the Second Solar War, but due to the size of the two halves, they had eventually gravitated back towards each other.

That was when the inhabitants of Ceres had decided to create a better, more secure home for themselves.

The planetoid wasn’t sheared through at the middle. It was more of a two-thirds split. That split remained open to this day, held in place by massive pillars created from derelict warships.

The Crevice was one of the biggest cities in the solar system. It encompassed the entire space between the two parts of Ceres, a space entirely walled off from the outside.

On approaching Ceres, a keen-eyed traveller would be able to make out a ring of light banded around the dwarf planet where the city pushed out of its rocky confines. The Crevice, the shining jewel of free Ceres, was a city held hostage by its own inhabitants.

Right now, Ivil was staring at Ceres from one of the forward CICs of the Purgatorial Oblivion. There was no question, when she said that she needed to be on Ceres within six days, as to which ship she would be riding to the smugglers’ moon.

There were consequences to the choice, of course.

Ceres was run by pirates and killers and worse. Those sorts of people tended to have a powerful dislike of the rigid way that the Empire of Mars, or even the Earth Alliance, did things. Laws didn’t agree with them.

When they ran into patrols, they were as likely to open fire as they were to burn hard and run.

It made the entire space around Ceres a deeply uncomfortable place to police and patrol, and one which was simply not economically viable to control. It didn’t help that Mars hired pirates to attack Earth Alliance stations and ships, and the Earth Alliance returned the favour.

The best way to avoid problems when flying past Ceres was to be too big of a threat for the pirates to bother.

The Imperial Star Dreadnought Purgatorial Oblivion, currently flying with a small escort fleet of several cruisers, destroyers, and frigates, was too big of a threat for anything on Ceres to try anything.

At the moment, there was something of an exodus going on. Ivil’s attention wandered from one ship to another, noting how quick they were to run. There had been several hundred rapid evacuations around Ceres as pirates and smugglers burned hard to get away from their safe haven.

The empire had just done the equivalent of setting a rabid grizzly loose in the middle of a busy daycare, and the children were running for their lives.

“We’ll be arriving in three hours, ma’am,” a voice said from over Ivil’s shoulder.

She glanced back at Sonic Spectre. The B-classer was hovering in the air, still occasionally winking out of existence for a brief second.

“Good,” Ivil said simply. “I can’t imagine that the Purgatorial will fit in the Crevice?”

“Permission to be… blunt, ma’am?”

“Go ahead,” Ivil replied.

“I don’t think the admiral would want to risk it,” Sonic Spectre said.

Ivil nodded. That was fair. The ship was large. And the manoeuvres to squeeze it into the Crevice would be exceptionally complex. It was possible, she was certain, but then all it would take were a few suicidal fools to cause immense damage.

“We’ll take the Lucky Despot down,” Ivil decided. “Do you think the Lucky’s captain would appreciate the attention?”

“I think they would be rather honoured,” Sonic said. “Ma’am, if I may… what are we going to do on Ceres?”

“I will be going on a mission there,” Ivil said. “It’s somewhat self-serving, but I suspect it will be quite good for the empire overall.”

“I see,” Sonic replied. “May I know what kind of mission? To better prepare my squad.”

“I’ll be going solo,” Ivil said.

She felt Sonic’s surprise. It was hard to read expressions on Sonic’s doll face. “Is the threat so great?”

“No. Rather, I’ll be going undercover.”

“You… will be going undercover?” Sonic asked.

“Yes. Is that so surprising?”

Sonic shook her head, then paused. “Permission to be honest?”

“Denied.”

“You’ll do fine, ma’am.”

Ivil made her way to the Lucky Despot, boarded the ship, then waited within the frigate’s bridge for the warship to be undocked. It was another couple of hours before they were let loose. The captain, at least, seemed far less nervous now than she had been on their first trip out.

Instead of the captain being nervous, it was Ceres as a whole that was currently stressed.

The traffic control agent—Ivil refused to call them Crevice Control—they connected to was a stuttering mess, though he did properly direct the Lucky Despot towards an open section of the Crevice.

Ivil installed herself behind the ship’s navigator and watched through the screens as they approached the Crevice.

The inside of the slice cut off from the side of the planet was unsurprisingly dark. Sunlight only streamed in when the planet was aligned just right, and this wasn’t one of those moments. Instead, the interior was illuminated by several thousand strong lights pointing every which way.

More light came from huge banner ads, some of which streamed off the side of the pillars holding up the topmost half of the slice. Smaller ships, tugs and personal craft, flew across the cityscape, avoiding the taller buildings and the glowing tram-lines that zig-zagged through the space.

The centre of the crevice was the residential area. There was less light there, only distant shadows hinting at massive residential blocks. The outer sections of the crevice were one massive shipyard and dock. Room enough for entire fleets to park themselves above and below.

The Lucky Despot was guided into a free berth, and the captain and navigator glided the ship into place with all of the gentleness of a feather in low gravity.

“We’re here, ma’am,” the captain said. “It may take a while for us to be connected to Ceres’s airlock system. They are notoriously unreliable.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, captain. Thank you,” Ivil said.

“Shall we wait here for your return?” the captain asked.

Ivil considered it. “If I’m not back within two days, then you should consider leaving,” she said. “Also, as you may know better than I do… where might I find a registry of ships currently on Ceres?”

The captain frowned. “Imperial intelligence probably has something like that, ma’am. But if you want the official listing, then Crevice Control, the local traffic control group, probably has an up-to-date listing available. I wouldn’t trust it, but it definitely exists.”

“I see, thank you, captain. You’ve done a great job so far.” Ivil nodded to the captain, then casually walked off the bridge.

Ceres had some amount of gravity to it. A minuscule amount, but enough to pull dust and people down. Ivil enjoyed it. There was something comforting about the pull of a planetary body, the feeling of her own mass mattering.

She made her way over to the ship’s airlocks, stepped into it, then waited for the airlock to cycle.

It did, eventually, and she walked into the far crustier, rust and graffiti-covered airlock on the other side. It was leaking.

Ivil crossed her arms, then realised after a minute-long wait that the airlock wasn’t going to finish cycling at all, not while it was pissing air out so quickly.

With a sigh, Ivil made the door into the station disappear, then she stepped through to the other side. Now it was someone else’s problem. She had her own problems to look forward to, like discovering where the Held Together was berthed, and exactly what kind of ship it was to begin with.

Fortunately, it didn’t take more than a dozen steps through the dingy, poorly lit corridors of the Crevice that someone approached her, a small vibrating knife held casually in one hand.

She blinked. Was this a mugging? Already?

“Ah yes, a hive of scum and villainy. I’d almost forgotten.”

Chapter eight

Perfect Disguise

Ivil Antagonist was hardly a fool.

She knew this about herself, while recognizing that she wasn’t all-knowing. The combination of not being moronic and also being aware of her own deficiencies was actually quite potent.

There had been others, leaders, people who thought that they’d gained enough cores to make it past the lower barriers of humanity, people who thought they knew better. Ivil had seen plenty of that sort think that power translated to capability.

Instead of making a fool of herself, Ivil stayed in her lane. She was the all-powerful hammer of Mars. Fleets would fly out to challenge her and be rent into so much scrap. Flights of enemy Valkyries would donate their cores to her through no choice of their own. She was good at murder and death.

She left the bureaucratic matters of running Mars in the hands of the bureaucrats. The medical matters were in the hands of doctors, and matters of war pertained to the admiralty. When someone stepped out of line, Ivil would put them, or their remains, back in place.

It was a simple way to run things, and it worked for Mars.

Right now, Ivil was going to infiltrate a ship she knew nothing about, with a crew of unknown origins.

The issue was that… Ivil had passing knowledge of how romance worked. Mostly from rom-coms and soap operas. A romance begun on a foundation of lies would inevitably lead to drama.

She didn’t want to find her lover dropped into a multi-year coma only for her identical twin to show up out of the blue. Such things were beneath her.

So, in essence, she needed a disguise.

Ivil Antagonist had been agonising about this for some time. She had met with some of Mars’s best spymasters, but their ideas had been… profoundly unhelpful. She was not going to walk around trying to look like some unassuming, lost paper-pusher that needed transit to some backwater.

She needed a disguise, yes, but she needed it to at least try to capture the magnitude of power that Ivil held.

At the same time, she needed that disguise to make sense. Moving about as a powerful businesswoman, for example, didn’t make sense when such a person would likely have a ship of their own.

It had taken some time for her to pick out a suitable disguise, one that would be common enough, without being so lowly that she would have to debase herself.

Ivil was pleased with her choice as she walked through the many corridors of the Crevice. This first leg of her trip was arranged already.

She went down four levels from the area where the Lucky Despot had connected and to a section of the port facility that had several restaurants. Most of these were unmanned stations, though not all of them. She was actually surprised to notice a few food places from Mars. The Red Rock Cafe she passed could have been on one of the stations in Mars’s orbit.

Past all of these was an unassuming, family-owned prepackaged food place. The sort of business lined with freezers of quick-heat packs that were all uniformly shaped and easy to slurp a warm meal from.

These were the kinds of meals a cheap crew would eat on a long voyage. They required no kitchens, cost little per meal, and could be comfortably eaten in a multi-g or zero-g environment.

Ivil slipped into the shop and went to the counter where an older woman was standing. “I’m here for the…” Ivil sighed. “Lost Star special.”

“Of course, ma’am, follow me,” the old woman replied.

This level of subterfuge was beneath her. Ivil followed the woman anyway into a surprisingly spacious back room. There were more freezers here, a small office space, and an entire rack of clothing.

“Thank you,” Ivil said, dismissing the woman.

The woman bowed, then picked up a small briefcase and placed it closer so that Ivil wouldn’t miss it. She darted out of the room.

Ivil turned to the racks of clothing, then sighed. She swept the room, searching for any cameras or anything intrusive, but predictably found nothing.

This entire deception had been arranged by MINT, the Martian Intelligence and Naval Tactics division. They didn’t mess around when it came to spycraft.

Ivil squeezed out of her uniform, then into one of the outfits MINT had bought for her. It was a nice enough outfit, if rather utilitarian.

A custom-fit brown jumpsuit of the airtight variety. Not pretty, exactly, but still well-fitted and it cooperated with Martian boots. The upper half of the outfit was a white synth-weave coat, the same rather expensive material used by naval officers, with a high collar and some additional pockets and pouches. Atop that, a breastplate with a few dings and scratches in its white paint. It had a rebreather module, and a forward and rear-mounted six-direction compressed-air jet system, for movement in zero-g’s.

All in all, it was a functional outfit that would give her the appearance of someone well-used to work in the field, without seeming as though she were impoverished. The little logo for the University of Hellas on the breastplate brought it together.

She folded her pitch-black uniform and placed it carefully within an available suitcase already filled with a few changes of clothes and some necessities. The last item she placed within was her Valkyrie pin.

Then, with a twist, Ivil vanished the suitcase and its contents.

Ivil decided that she liked her new outfit, and she liked the look of herself wearing it.

It had been a very long time since she’d worn anything but her uniform. This made her look less like a warlord and more like… an adventuring scholar.

She picked up the briefcase and opened it. There were several tablets and devices within, outfitted with an assortment of concealed functions, all with the University of Hellas logo, and a small wallet that she flicked open. The papers and ID within painted her as “Evelyn Ville,” tenured professor of astro-archaeology.

She packed her things up, then slipped out of the room. The lady by the counter didn’t even acknowledge her.

Now, onto the Held Together. One of the tablets in her briefcase had an up-to-date map of the Crevice and every ship docked on Ceres. It was everything that MINT could get and hand over to her, probably enough classified information to start a small-scale war. She navigated through the map until she discovered the Held Together.

It was a quarter-way around the ring of the Crevice, but, fortunately, the city had public transportation in the form of high-speed rail.

Ivil didn’t want to board the cramped, odorous train car, but she made her way into it anyway. A small use of power pushed the plebs away from her and her suitcase so that none of their germs would get onto her. When one of them tried to reach towards her rear—either for a pinch or for her wallet—Ivil broke every bone in his hand.

They were clean breaks. They’d heal eventually. His screams did wonders to earn her a little more space.

It took twenty minutes to reach the right exit, then she walked out of the car and onto a grungy, poorly lit street in one of the poorer docks.

Fortunately, Ivil wouldn’t be spending enough time in the Crevice to really scope out how its society worked, but there was clearly some form of stratification between the destitute and the few who had fought enough to earn a little something.

The Held Together was docked in one of the worst of these sections. That didn’t bode well. Ivil kept moving anyway.

Soon, after a ride up a rickety elevator and through a station airlock, she arrived in the docks proper. One wall was made of foot-thick glass, giving anyone walking by a fantastic view of the ships parked above.

There was an ancient Earth Systems Apoca Class cargo hauler parked above, next to a still-shiny Thanthela Europan Star Runner. They were beautiful ships. A little worse for wear, and aged, but Ivil could appreciate them all the same.

It wasn’t something she made a big fuss over, but she did enjoy spacecraft with all of the enthusiasm of a middle-aged car geek. There was a reason so many Martian warships had sweeping lines and aggressive forms, even if these weren’t necessary for their function.

She continued to walk, eyes constantly flicking back out of the windows to take in the ships above. There was a Nar-class tug, and a centuries-old Duskland-class Martian warship called the Emergency Complaints docked next to a Moment-class ship, the Hawke, from Io.

It took her some time before she reached the end of the docks, and as she went, she discovered that the quality of ships docked further out seemed to degrade the more she went.

Ivil was feeling something like nerves building within her. She quenched these. The mission would carry on.

Then she laid eyes upon her destination: the Held Together.

“That Claire Voyant had better be right,” she decided. Because otherwise, she would be having words with her.

Chapter nine

The Held Together

The Held Together was a relic. It belonged in a museum. The average centenarian would look at it and think, “ Damn, that’s one old ship.”

In essence, it wasn’t a plucky new thing, and every sign suggested that it moved with all of the grace of a one-legged geriatric.

The ship had six cargo containers to a side. Nice and simple. Twelve standard containers was a good load. Someone could make a living hauling knick-knacks from Luna to Mars with that kind of space.

Two of the pods had clearly been modified, however, and Ivil wasn’t sure if the rest were even functional.

The Held Together’s cockpit was a wide, flat thing at the front. Real windows. Space for three. Below that, a bristle of manoeuvring thrusters and the ship’s reverse thruster, jutting out of the bottom like a cleft chin.

The ship’s spine was a thin, narrow space that ran all the way down to its fat ass.

Back in the day, engines weren’t so good. At some point, someone had sold off the Held Together’s massive set of original thrusters. They were replaced by something newer. Newer being relative. Ivil would bet on the current set being pre-Third Solar War. Still, newer meant smaller, and now the Held Together had three engines sitting inside cowling meant for much larger thrusters.

It didn’t give her the impression that the Held Together could move any faster than the average tug.

The ship was covered in a slathering of yellow paint. Ivil recognized it. It was the cheapest paint available in Earth orbit. The kind of almost fluorescent stuff they sprayed onto tugs and barges and deep-space mining rigs. It caught the eye, in a bad way.

A few panels along the ship’s side weren’t the same colour; others had had their paint scoured off by thruster burns or micro-meteorite impacts.

Ivil could survive in empty space without a ship. She could probably “swim” her way back to the nearest outpost or planet, if need be. It was the only thing that kept her walking towards the Held Together, the reassurance that even when the rusty old thing failed, she at least, wouldn’t die.

The Held Together was docked from the rear by a large cargo-airlock, the sort big enough for someone to drive a forklift right through it. That meant that the hold was open to anyone. Ivil paused not too far from it and scooped out one of the tablets from her bags. She scanned through it. There was enough information there, at a glance, for her to build a convincing cover story. She memorised it with a sweep, then nodded to herself before walking around the final corner and towards the ship.

Surprisingly, the crew hadn’t abandoned the ship while they could. Or at least, one of them didn’t.

There was a young woman sitting on a high stool next to a workbench. A small device was taken apart in front of her. She had tools, all connected by small wires to the workbench, splayed out around her.

She jumped when Ivil took a step onto the airlock between the ship and hold.

Turning, the girl blinked rapidly at Ivil, then looked past her then back. She raised a grease-covered hand. “Hi?”

“Hello,” Ivil said. “Is this the Held Together?” A small part of her wished that it wasn’t.

The girl smiled. No, not a girl. She was maybe ten years Ivil’s junior. Her dimpled cheeks and tiny stature made her seem younger, but she was an adult by anyone’s standards. “This is, and she is!”

“Pardon?”

“Uh… I mean… this is the Held Together. And she is. As in… as in she’s held together, you know? Because she’s not… broken? Mostly?”

Ivil nodded slowly. “I heard you were going to Callisto.” That’s what their flightplan said, in any case. “Are you taking on passengers?”

“Oh!” The girl jumped off her seat, almost bouncing too high so that her head nearly bashed against some loose cargo held by a net in the ceiling. “We love passengers! I mean, I love passengers. Did you arrange things with the captain yet?”

“I haven’t,” Ivil said. “I just need passage to Callisto, for cheap.”

That would have to do for a cover story. Someone travelling cheaply. Anyone with any amount of money and a lick of sense would take any other ship to get to Jupiter.

“Cheap we can do!” the girl said. “Is that all of your stuff?”

“I packed light,” Ivil said.

“Nice! Alright! Come with me! I can give you a bit of a tour while we’re at it… Oh, wait, no, I can’t.” the girl froze up as realisation dawned.

“You can’t?” Ivil asked.

“We have another passenger coming. I’m supposed to help her.” The girl shook her head. “The captain will be real cross with me if I don’t stay here. Wait, wait, I’ll call Missy over. She can give you the big tour. But you’ll have to ask me to give you one later too. She doesn’t appreciate this old gal the way I do.”

“That seems fine,” Ivil said. “By the way, what’s your name?”

“Oh? I’m Twenty-Six.”

“I was asking for your name, not your age.”

The girl blinked, then laughed with a snort. “No! No, no, my name’s Twenty-Six. I’m a Ringer! That’s not my age. Well, not yet. Gimme a year!”

“Oh, I see,” Ivil said.

“What’s your name, miss?” Twenty-Six asked as she bounced her way to the back of the hold towards an intercom mounted to the wall. “I forgot to ask, sorry. Are you from Hellas?”

“I’m a professor from there, yes,” Ivil said. “My name is Evelyn Ville.”

“Cool! I’ll go ahead and get Missy, she’ll help.”

“Missy?”

“The first mate,” Twenty-Six explained. She thumbed the intercom and there was a crackle as it came on. “Missy, can you come to the hangar please? We have a new passenger! Thank you!”

The intercom squealed a moment later, and someone spoke through it with a complete lack of passion. “On my way.”

“Thank you,” Ivil said to Twenty-Six.

The young woman gave Ivil a thumbs-up. “No problem! It’ll be nice having more people onboard. The Held Together can be a little quiet sometimes. Just, uh, the captain means well. Set boundaries, and she’ll be fine. Oh, and… if there’s a problem with your room, let me know. I’m the ship’s mechanic. It’s a full time job, but I try to do what I can to help.”

“That’s kind of you,” Ivil said.

Twenty-Six nodded along. “Sure thing. So, University of Hellas? That’s so cool. I wish I went to a school like that.”

“Where did you go to school for your education as a mechanic?” Ivil asked.

“Huh? Uh, I just picked things up here and there,” Twenty-Six said.

“Are you certified?”

The girl froze up, eyes going wide for a moment and her smile turning plastic. “W-what? Yeah, of course I am! Hah!”

She was not.

“Of course,” Ivil agreed. She wondered if it would be possible to have a team of Martian mechanics sneakily look over the ship before they left the dock. Just in case.

She’d take a look at things herself. She wasn’t a mechanic, but she could tell when something was on its last legs.

The door at the back of the hangar groaned open and a woman walked into the room. She was of a height with Ivil herself, dark hair and an all-black spacesuit. Ivil stood a little taller as she took the woman in.

This was a core-holder. No more than a D-Classer, but her cores felt well and properly integrated. More interesting still, the woman immediately reminded Ivil of a Lunatic Warclown. She didn’t have the faceless mask, or the red nose. In fact, she lacked any colour. Her skin was an almost sickly pale only accentuated by dark eyeliner and lipstick. Not a clown, then. A Warmime?

That was an uncommon sight.

The woman locked eyes with Ivil, then sighed. “You’re the passenger?” she asked.

“Missy! Be nice,” Twenty-Six said. “Miss, ah, Ville, this is Missy, the first mate.”

“Hello,” Ivil said. “A pleasure.”

“Mhm,” Missy said. “You got cash?”

Ivil chuckled. “I have enough,” she said. “Assuming you accept transfers from the First Bank of Mars?”

Missy seemed to consider that for a moment before she nodded. “Yeah. We can do that. They charge fees out the ass.”

“Missy,” Twenty-Six hissed.

“It’s fine Two-Six,” Missy said. “So, you need a ride to Jupiter?”

“Callisto,” Ivil said. “I think you’re headed that way?”

“That’s where we’re chartered to go,” Missy said. “But there ain’t much that way. What’s a fancy sort like you want with Callisto?”

“I’m an astro-archaeologist,” Ivil said. “I’m going there for some scholarly pursuits.”

“Huh,” Missy said. She didn’t seem to trust that entirely, but she shrugged a shoulder languidly and turned back into the ship. “Follow me, fancy. Let me show you to your bunk.”

“Don’t give her one of the leaky rooms!” Twenty-Six called back as Ivil followed Missy.

This is an auspicious start, Ivil thought.

Chapter ten

Warmime

If the average Lunatic warrior was the Warclown—someone on the edge of sanity, equipped with one or more cores, and enough training to keep themselves alive in a hairy situation—then the Warmimes were the equivalent of the Lunatic’s special ops.

Where a Warclown had esprit and revelled in chaos, the Warmime danced a different tune.

Their flavour of chaos was less about revelling in big, bombastic actions, and more about the subtle, the quiet. It was the faint stink that came with a ship’s life support failing at a critical moment, the strange rattle an engine made before it failed catastrophically. Stealth, deception, lies, and misinformation.

Nothing that anyone would associate with the Lunatics, which is what made them almost perfect for the job.

Almost.

As subtle and silent as a Warmime might be, they were still Lunatics at their core. It was easy to pick them out of the crowd. It was only obscurity that kept the idea of them out of the public’s attention.

Ivil wasn’t a member of the public. When Missy the Warmime led her into a small but comfortably appointed room just past the opening hangar of the ship and turned, she found herself meeting the slightly shorter woman’s eyes and wondering if the mime planned on trying to kill her.

“So,” Missy said as she settled into a relaxed posture, all of her weight on one side, hip cocked, arms crossed. “You planning on paying?”

“I never planned not to,” Ivil said. “Though we did skip past the bargaining phase. The young miss out there, Twenty-Six? She doesn’t seem entirely… financially conscious.”

Missy sighed, pinched her brows, then nodded. “Yeah, that sounds like her. She’d probably just be happy to have one more person on this rust bucket. Fortunately, she’s not first mate. Look, we’ve got four passenger rooms on here. Two are kinda shit. One of the good ones is booked. The last isn’t cheap.”

Ivil nodded along. “The university is footing the bill for me. Well, within reason. This isn’t the only ship from Ceres heading out towards Jupiter.”

Missy shrugged. “It’s the one you picked, fancy. Besides, there was an exodus around the Crevice, if you didn’t notice.”

“With the arrival of that Martian warship?” Ivil asked. “I noticed.”

“That’s good. So you’ll understand that, as one of your last remaining options to get to Jupiter, let alone Callisto, what we charge for a room is entirely reasonable.”

Ivil held back a smile. It looked like Missy was trying to fleece her, but she was being entirely too honest about it. Maybe that’s why the Warmime wasn’t on Haumea? Was she too poor at acting for her own good? “Just give me a price,” Ivil said.

“Five thousand dollars for a trip from here to Callisto.”

“That seems high,” Ivil said. She had only the vaguest notion of what things were worth anymore, but that did seem like it was on the higher end.

Missy raised her hands in a “what can you do” sort of gesture. “It’s room and board, and covers the cost of carrying your weight and freight.”

“My freight is one small bag, a briefcase, and my weight is hardly worth mentioning,” Ivil countered. This was amusing. Usually when she wanted something, people gave it to her. Sometimes while screaming for mercy.

Missy sniffed. “You’re not that thin, fancy.”

“Evelyn,” Ivil said. “And I’ll give you two thousand five.”

“Two… Fancy, for two-five you’ll be eating nothing but slop,” Missy said. “Now, we’re not the best when it comes to food, but I’d expect you to want something more than vat-grown veggie-substitutes from here to Jupiter.”

“Three thousand,” Ivil said. “And I expect a fine-dining experience like none other.”

Missy grinned. “Four.”

“Only if you’re serving me yourself,” Ivil said.

“You’d like that,” Missy shot back. “Fine. Three-five.”

Ivil paused, then nodded. “Three thousand five hundred. And I do expect to get the nicest room on this rust bucket.”

“Eh, you can’t have that one, booked already. But the second best isn’t all that bad.” Missy crossed the room and pushed aside a sliding door, revealing that the room continued. It was oddly misshapen—part of it was thin and narrow, then it opened up into a larger space, with ladders leading up to a sitting area above.

At a guess, Ivil imagined that this space was what was left after room had been allocated to other necessities in the rear. There was a large entertainment suite to one side, and a pair of couches squeezed into another. A small locker room was off to the left, where someone could get suited up before ducking out of the airlock.

Missy went to one wall and opened up a small cubby, then another, then another. “Gimme a minute,” Missy said as she continued to root around. There were several small nooks and spaces here. It looked… lived-in.

“Is this the main living room?” Ivil asked.

“It’s the rear one,” Missy replied as she continued to search for something. “Main living space is way out front, behind the cockpit. Back here’s the med bay, engineering, crew quarters. You’ll be staying in the spine. Ah, found you.” She shut a thin closet door with a bump of her hip, then sauntered back to Ivil with a small payment machine in hand. “First Bank of Mars, right?”

“That’s right,” Ivil said.

Missy turned the machine towards her, and there was a charge pending on it. She read the dusty screen. “That’s three seven.”

“Service charge,” Missy said.

Ivil rolled her eyes, then tugged out the wallet she’d gotten from MINT. There was a card there that she tapped onto the machine. It took a moment, but eventually beeped.

“Nice. Welcome aboard the Held Together. Let me show you to your bunk.”

Missy tossed the reader onto one of the couches, then gestured Ivil after her.

They moved through a bulkhead door, then up a steep ramp in a narrow corridor with padded walls. There were handholds all over, for easier motion in zero-g’s. “This is the spine,” Missy said as they reached the top. “It cuts across from the rear to the fore. Bit narrow, so if you see someone moving by, just squeeze to the side.”

“I see,” Ivil said. “How big is the crew on here?”

“It’s just five of us,” Missy said. “Me, Two-Six, the captain, the navigator, and the muscle.”

Ivil wondered what she meant by “the muscle,” but before she could ask, Missy was stopping by a doorway. There were two of them facing each other in the middle of the corridor. The one Missy stopped at had what at one point had probably been a large B stencilled over it.

“This is yours,” Missy said. She tapped a keypad, and the door hissed open. “You’ve got your own head and all. Kitchen’s at the front, so’s the dining room. Not hard to find or anything.”

“Thank you,” Ivil said. She ducked into the room, then paused by the entrance. Not that there was much beyond an entrance.

The space was cramped, and Ivil could tell that this was very obviously one of the cargo containers held onto the side of the ship, converted into a living space. There was a bed, just barely large enough for two and folded up against the wall, a small kitchen next to a washroom that was basically just big enough for someone to stand in. There wasn’t much else, actually. An ancient screen was placed against one wall, and there was a small desk squeezed into the last corner.

“Well, it’s certainly comfortable,” Ivil said.

“Heh, spoken like a ground-pounder,” Missy said. “This is a luxury suite for anyone used to ship life. And it’s all yours. Enjoy.” She gave Ivil a little salute, then ducked out of the room. The door hissed shut behind her.

Ivil tilted her head to one side, stretching her senses to listen to what was going on beyond the room. She could clearly hear Missy heading up to the front of the ship while muttering to herself.

“Weird one. Captain’s gonna be happy, that’s a hell of a payday.”

Ivil rolled her eyes. She tossed her bag to one side, then placed her briefcase on the little desk and popped it open to retrieve one of the tablets within.

She probably had a few hours alone, which would be a fantastic time to study up on her new identity.

It didn’t take her long to discover that someone at MINT was thinking ahead and had outlined the cost of a berth on a ship like the Held Together. “Hmm, I might have overpaid a little,” she muttered.

Not by too much, but Missy had certainly gotten more than this room deserved. Ivil wasn’t sure if the room was even safe. It had that faint smell that came with a space that wasn’t well shielded.

If she were someone who had to worry about radiation, then it might even be a problem in the long term.

Ivil checked through the information packet until she discovered a file with all of the information Martian Intelligence was able to gather on the crew of the Held Together.

Ivil stared at the file, then hesitated.

Did she want to know this, or did she want to form her own opinions?

The question worried her for a while.

Chapter eleven

Ancient History

MINT was good at what they did.

In the private, subtle world of intelligence agencies, spy corps, and national and interplanetary security apparati, MINT was far from the biggest player. They recruited fewer members, had a large suite of automated spyworkers, and did very little by means of traditional, person-based spy work.

Instead, MINT operated as the high-tech counter to the Earth Alliance’s own spycraft agencies, of which there were many, and other solar nations’. Instead of employing bribes, honey pots, and listening devices, MINT was on the cutting edge of data interception, and on Mars, there were no laws to protect anyone from MINT’s reach.

If someone was bribed, MINT knew. Then they dealt with it in a loud, obvious way.

There was no allowing spies to linger to deliver false news, there was no accepting corrupt politicians, there was no hiring people who could disguise themselves as passersby to snoop in on someone’s trash.

If you acted against the interest of the Empire of Mars, then someone dressed in black would knock at your door and you’d be disposed of. It was all very nice and neat, and MINT made sure never to remove anyone that they couldn’t confirm was a threat.

The average person didn’t actually fear MINT at all. Mostly because MINT’s public image was backed by Martian propaganda. Don’t try to sell critical information to the enemy, and you’ll live a long, happy life of moderate taxes, free healthcare, and cutting-edge toys.

MINT had a relationship with Ivil. They didn’t like working with her. She liked working with them. They were professional and quick and most importantly reliable.

The Imperial Navy tried to be all of that, but it had conflicting allegiances at times, and with so many members picked from obligatory military participation, there was a frequent issue with incompetence.

MINT selected its operatives from people who excelled. The highest ranked students of Martian universities, the best officers in the navy who wanted a slower-paced job with fewer risks of disintegration.

In any case, Ivil wanted to explore the Held Together, but before she started to wander around the ship, she decided to explore its history.

One of the tablets MINT had given her contained heaps of historical data, information on battlefields, and hundreds of academic texts. At least until the tablet recognized Ivil, then it gave her access to encased information. Everything MINT had gathered on the Held Together in the last five days or so.

That included the ship and personnel’s’ entire public, and some private, history.

The history was… mundane. The Held Together had been through some interesting times, but overall, there wasn’t anything too special about it. It was an old ship that had changed hands and had survived. That was all. There were probably a thousand just like it in the system.

Except this was the one where she’d find love.

There was a knock at the door, and Ivil glanced up. She sensed someone on the other side, shifting their weight from side to side nervously. There had been a few people moving by, and Ivil imagined that it was mostly the crew just going through the paces.

Closing and placing the tablet on the table, she stood and wandered over to the door. “Yes?” Ivil asked.

“Hi!” came Twenty-Six from the other side.

Ivil opened the door, then looked down to meet the young woman’s eyes. Twenty-Six jumped, automatically reaching out to grab on to one of the handholds on the wall. “Hello, Twenty-Six,” Ivil said. “Can I help you?”

Twenty-Six nodded. “Yes! I mean, you can, if you want. But I’m not here for help, I’m… uh, I’m bungling this up. Can I start over?” Ivil gestured for Twenty-Six to do so, and the mechanic took a quick breath in, then smiled. “Hey! Did you want to come and check out the kitchen? Hawk’s cooked something up nice.”

“Sure,” Ivil said. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the hangar?”

“Nope!” Twenty-Six said. She leaned forwards a little, conspiratoria. “The last passenger arrived! So I don’t need to sit around anymore. Once I’m done eating up, it’ll be time to get back to work. This old lady has enough work to keep me busy for ten lifetimes, you know?”

“I can see that,” Ivil said. “Give me just a moment to sort through my things.”

“Oh, right, right, I’ll wait… right here!” Twenty-Six said before pushing back and away from the doorway.

Ivil closed it carefully, then turned. She glanced at her reflection in the little washroom’s mirror. She looked just fine, but she brushed off some dust from her outfit anyway. A quick sort through her things had all of the more sensitive tablets tucked away again, just in case. Then she was opening the door and found Twenty-Six poking at a small vent above and muttering to herself.

“Is everything okay?” Ivil asked.

The mechanic jumped, then turned, looking a little guilty. “Yup, just fine!” she said.

“Are you sure?” Ivil stared her down, and Twenty-Six folded almost right away.

“The filters on here might not be quite as new as they should be,” she admitted. “I changed them, I remember, but uh, it’s been a minute. That might explain the smell in the spine, actually.”

“You know, I do think Missy fleeced me for more than this trip is worth,” Ivil said. “I’m sure some of that can go into the ship’s maintenance budget.”

“That would be nice!” Twenty-Six said. “I’ll float it by the captain. Come! Have you seen the galley yet?”

“I haven’t,” Ivil said.

“It’s really neat! Come on!” Twenty-Six bounced ahead of Ivil, the lower gravity of Ceres basically letting her every step carry her almost all the way to the ceiling. There were ways to walk in lower gravity that prevented that kind of bounce, but Twenty-Six didn’t seem to care for them.

Ivil followed behind at a more sedate pace. “So, the last passenger arrived?”

“Yeah! She’s a princess!”

“Pardon?” Ivil asked.

“I know!” Twenty-Six gushed. “An actual princess! On our very own Held Together! Wait…I think she’s trying to go undercover. Um, maybe don’t repeat the fact?”

“I’ll keep it to myself,” Ivil promised. She couldn’t help but wonder what that meant, however. There were a few small nations that were monarchic, so there were a few princes and princesses around, if one cared to look hard enough.

“Thanks!” Twenty-Six said. “The captain can be a bit of a grump sometimes. She’s a nice woman though. So! You’re an archeologist? What’s that like?”

“Astro-archaeologist,” Ivil corrected. “Though that’s mostly just semantics. We study archeology the same way it was studied on Earth, only the ruins we look for tend to be old stations, ancient colony domes, or spaceship wrecks.”

“That’s so cool!” she gushed. “Have you been to a lot of old wrecks? We’ve towed a few. Salvage pays really well sometimes, even if the Held Together isn’t really made for it.”

“Interesting,” Ivil said. “Astro-archaeology is often about discovering what actually happened and recording it for posterity. A lot of what happened during the First Solar War is actually lost to history. Too many EMPs, too many ships that wiped their own memory banks and servers in case of capture. All we have are first- and second-hand accounts of some of the bigger, more important battles of the war. Especially those past the belt.”

“That makes sense,” Twenty-Six said. “That’s a cool job.”

“Thank you,” Ivil said. “How long have you been a mechanic for?”

“Ever, basically. Have you ever been on Saturn?”

“I’ve flown by,” Ivil said.

“It can be rough out there. Titan’s nice though! My family’s all made up of Ringers.”

Which meant that they lived within Saturn’s rings. There were some three dozen small moons within the ring that were all large enough to build colonies. Not to mention the space stations scattered around the gassy giant. “Hydrogen miners?” Ivil asked.

“And rare metals,” Twenty-Six confirmed. “I’m a fifth-generation Ringer, you know? Ah, not that I’ve been home in… a while. Anyway! This is the galley!”

The end of the spine opened into a small airlock room with several doors. It quickly repressurized before Twenty-Six opened one of the doors and led Ivil into a cozy little dining room. The ceiling was low, and padded, and there was a decently large round table in the centre of the room. At the back was a counter, behind which the ship’s kitchen and pantry were tucked away.

Interestingly, the floor around the table was made of glass panels laid out in a circle. Ivil glanced through the floor at the Crevice below. The view wasn’t all that nice, mostly gantries and the robotic arms designed to capture and move ships around, but the very idea of looking through the floor was interesting.

“That’s original,” Twenty-Six said. “One of the few fully-original bits left on this old gal. It’s really nice sometimes, when we’re in deep space. The only other view out of here is in the cockpit, and you can’t really just sit around there to watch, you know?”

The dining room table was glass as well, which Ivil supposed only made sense. “It’s an interesting design feature,” she said.

“It’s one of my top twenty-six favourite spots!” Twenty-Six said with a laugh. “Come on, you’ve got to try Hawk’s cooking. He does miracles!”

Chapter twelve

Dinner Time

Humans needed to eat. It was right up there with the need to drink, sleep, defecate, and fuck. So it came to be that in space, where space itself is ironically at a premium, and where people are packed in tighter than sardines in a can, things like food need to be made in such a way as to take up as little room as possible.

The solution to this existed already.

MREs contained everything that a soldier needed to keep going. They were small, easy to carry, relatively lightweight, and would block up a solider’s guts like nothing else, eliminating the need to defecate and doing a number on their willingness to fuck.

They were perfect for space travel.

Plus, at the tail end of the First Solar War, there were enough cargo containers full of them to smother out a small colony.

So, the average spacefarer grew used to eating out of a bag. The better flavours were traded like currency, and corporations everywhere rejoiced in the simple arithmetic and logistics of feeding crews with pre-packaged meals.

Two meals per person, per twelve-hour shift. Easy maths.

Then some perverse captain had an idea. What if he fed his crew with food that didn’t taste like a bad mixture of rubber and cardboard, spiced with microplastics? Cooking in space existed already, but so far it had remained the prerogative of luxury yachts and cruise ships.

The captain discovered that warm meals, while more expensive for logistics and space, increased crew happiness by a significant amount. A happy crew was a crew that would accept slightly lower pay, which at the end of the day, meant a slightly lower overhead.

Lauded as a financial genius, this captain went on to launch a new career selling kitchen modules designed to be fit into pre-existing spacecraft hulls. It even came with a free recipe book!

Gunships, tugs, fightercraft, and any really small ship couldn’t really afford to have a galley, but those were now the exceptions rather than the rule.

The Held Together had one of these pre-made galleys installed. The ship was barely large enough to serve as a passenger ship as well as a cargo freighter.

At the moment, a big, rather burly man was behind the counter, sleeves rolled all the way up to his shoulders, and his left arm, all chrome and exposed wires, was on full brazen display.

The arm ended in a rough cylinder from which several tools were poking out. Scissors, a whisk, little articulated arms with pinchers and clamps, and several knives. Enough implements to give a professional torturer some wild ideas.

“Hawk!” Twenty-Six cheered. “What’s for supper?”

The man, Hawk, looked up and grinned. He had probably been handsome once, Ivil admitted, but age, did as it usually did and had turned him into more of a grizzled old man than anything else. “Nothing too special. Got some fish-sub at port and some authentic Korean sauce imported from Earth. Get ready for something spicy!”

Twenty-Six’s eyes went wide, and she even clapped her hands excitedly.

Ivil took a deep breath through her nose, and had to admit that whatever Hawk was cooking, it smelled nice. Spicy and sweet in equal measure.

“You’re one of our passengers?” Hawk asked, gesturing at Ivil with a whisk, then a knife, then a rotating spoon.

“I am,” Ivil said. “I’m Evelyn Ville. I take it you’re the ship’s cook?”

“Cook, cleaner, sometimes comms officer.” Hawk said. “On a ship this small, you can’t just do the one thing. Everyone needs to pitch in a hand to help.” He waved his missing limb. “I sure did. Hah!”

Ivil smiled a little, allowing herself to be amused by the man’s simple humour. Then she felt someone trying to pull her and glanced down at Twenty-Six. “Come on, there’s no assigned seating here. Just plop yourself down wherever. Hawk always serves us after we’re sat.”

“Thank you,” Ivil said as she allowed herself to be pulled over to the table.

Twenty-Six sat across from her and blinked while looking Ivil right in the eyes. “So! Did you go to any interesting places, being an astro-archaeologist?” Twenty-Six asked.

“A few,” Ivil said. “Mostly those who think they’re my higher-ups want me to stay on or around Mars, but I’ve never been fond of sitting in one place and letting things happen. I’ve been to almost every planet in the system.”

“Almost?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I’ve never flown to Mercury,” Ivil said. “I should visit one day, just to say that I have. What about you? You’re from Saturn, right?”

“Yep! And I’ve been to… Ceres, Jupiter, some of its moons of course, and then back home to Titan and such. We did a mission down by Mars once, but it was a quick hop and drop, and that was it. I really haven’t seen that much of the system for someone who practically lives on a spaceship.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Ivil said. She wondered if she was handling this whole small talk thing well. She was never the most sociable person. Once, she’d made an effort to be polite and ingratiate herself, but the time when she was so weak that she needed to rely on the opinions of others was long past. This, at least, was good practice. “I’m sure you have plenty of time to visit other worlds. You’re still young. At worst, you could pick a job on a ship heading to the places you want to see.”

“Ah, I could, but that would mean leaving this old beauty behind,” Twenty-Six said. She patted the table. “I’ve put in a lot of sweat to make sure she lives up to her name.”

Ivil nodded along, but was distracted as the door into the room opened. A trio of unfamiliar people walked in.

The first was an older woman, maybe twenty years Ivil’s senior. She was wearing a jumpsuit with a well-worn leather jacket over top of it. There were a few patches on its shoulders and front. Ivil recognized some of them as the insignia of Jovian fleets from the Third Intra-System War.

The woman was blonde, though now her hair had lightened with a few streaks of white. She had the look of someone who had aged prematurely, stress pushing her hard.

Behind her was another, much younger woman. She walked with a straight back, eyes fixed ahead and face locked in the neutral mask of a politician. She was pretty. Ivil couldn’t help but notice it. High cheekbones, a noble bearing, and clothes that might very well cost more than what the ship made in a year.

It wasn’t just nice clothing; it was the sharply angled and pristinely cut outfit of the nobility of Phobos. Tight pants with a wider cut at the bottom, corset beneath a leather jacket. All entirely impractical for life onboard a ship. A monocle sat over one eye, the glass on it flickering through a few readouts.

And she had cores. A few of them. She wasn’t quite a C-classer, but it felt like she might only be a couple of cores short.

Behind them, taking up the rear and making the others look better in comparison, was a gangly man in a patched-up jumpsuit. He was carrying a small crate before him, and smiling dopily at the woman in the fine dress.

“Is that the captain?” Ivil muttered to Twenty-Six.

“Yeah! And that’s the princess,” Twenty-Six said. She raised a hand to wave. “Captain! This is our other passenger! Her name’s Evelyn.”

The captain frowned for a moment, then nodded to Ivil. “A pleasure,” she said. “Missy mentioned you were on board already. I hope you don’t mind matching our itinerary?”

“I’m ready to leave whenever,” Ivil said. “Do you have a departure time?”

“Soon,” the captain said. “Tomorrow, in fact. Twenty-Six, can we have last checks after dinner?”

“Sure thing, boss,” Twenty-Six replied with a casual salute.

The man following the captain brought his crate over to the kitchen, and then returned. “Wow! Two beauties,” he said as he extended a hand to Ivil. “You just let me know if you need anything, love.”

Ivil stared at the hand, then she met the gaze of the so-called princess.

There was an instant and unmistakable flash of womanly understanding between them. This guy was a moron.

“Donny, don’t be a creep,” Twenty-Six said.

The princess sat down on Ivil’s left. “Aurora Sterlingworth,” she said.

“Evelyn Ville,” Ivil replied. “You’re from Phobos?”

“And you’re Martian,” Aurora said. “You look… familiar.”

“I get that a lot,” Ivil replied casually. “But unless you’re well-versed in the history of the last few solar wars, then I’m sure we’ve never met. I’m a professor of astro-archaeology at U Hellas.”

“Ah, not a subject I’m intimate with.”

The awkward moment was salvaged as Hawk swept into the room, a large tray ahead of him. “Everyone’s here! Well, not Missy, but that’s expected. I’ve made something special. You’ll love it!”

Chapter thirteen

Princess of Phobos

Mars had two moons, and the planet’s history with those moons and their inhabitants hadn’t always been ideal.

A couple of hundred years ago, during the earliest phases of the terraforming of Mars, plans were drawn up to drop Phobos into the Martian atmosphere.

The inhabitants of Phobos protested. Violently.

The first and only Martian war lasted nineteen hours and cost four thousand lives and billions of dollars before cooler heads prevailed and a bigger catastrophe was averted. At the time, Mars and its two moons were more or less on equal footing.

Now that was no longer the case. Mars was the second most populous planet in the solar system. Billions lived within its domes, and every year they came a little closer to being able to live without.

The moons hadn’t lingered too far behind, of course. Being natural satellites of the richest planet in the solar system afforded both a great deal of access to Martian luxuries and prestige. Deimos was widely considered one of the nicest, richest places to live in the solar system. Better even than Mars, at least for the common person.

Phobos… was a different story.

The moon was never thrust through Mars’s orbit on purpose, but its decline was noted and very obvious. It was going to crash into Mars eventually. There was little that could be done about it.

The moon had been mostly evacuated. Only the poor and destitute still lived upon it, and no government wanted anything to do with such a failure of a moon. So Phobos made its own government, run by the Goldworth family, who’d instituted themselves as the planet’s nobles and done what they could to keep things running on a failing moon.

Then, near the end of the Third Solar War, Ivil was informed that the Earth Alliance wanted to give Phobos that final shove. It would have been a disaster. Either the moon would crash wholesale into Mars, reenacting the whole dinosaur extinction scenario, or it would break apart, tuning into a ring, but not before covering Mars with enough debris to make entering or escaping the planet impossible.

So Ivil moved Phobos.

The move may have splattered a few locals.

Mars was less than pleased about it, but it was better than the alternative.

And since no one really cared about Phobos or its failing government before, they had a few fleeting moments to expand and grow, knowing that their moon was no longer doomed.

Phobos was now home to seven of the top ten greatest casinos in the solar system. It was the place for Martian vice, red light districts, and nefarious intentions.

Mars didn’t like it. Deimos didn’t like it, and with everyone displeased, Phobos continued to grow as a den of iniquity right on Mars’s doorstep.

“So, what’s a princess of Phobos doing here, of all places?” Ivil asked.

Aurora chuckled. “I’m hardly a princess,” she said.

Twenty-Six, who was receiving a plate from Hawk, turned to stare. “But you look so pretty!” she said. The motion almost sent the contents of her plate spilling, but Hawk was quick enough to save her.

Aurora smiled slightly. “Why thank you. Unfortunately, being pretty isn’t one of the primary requirements to princessdom, or to greater nobility. I am a noble, yes, but only of a branch family, and I’m so low on the totem pole that it’s barely worth mentioning. As for why I’m here, the Held Together is the only ship departing to where I want to go in a timely manner.”

The captain nodded as she passed Hawk her plate. “You were lucky. I was very much tempted to slip away like all of the others when news about that Martian fleet broke out. But we were in the midst of refuelling, and half the fuellers decided to run for it.”

“We’re stuck, then?” Ivil asked.

“No. The bosses whipped the idiots back in line. We’re topped up, and at a discount,” the captain said. “And it doesn’t look like the Martians want to blow Ceres apart. Not that I’d entirely blame them if that’s what they were here for.”

“Hey now,” Hawk said. “I have family on this rock. And only half the locals are pirates, thieves, or scoundrels.”

Ivil raised her plate as Hawk came around, and the chef plucked it from her, filling it with… what looked like some sort of pasta with a meaty sauce. It smelled strongly of spices, in a rather pleasant way.

“Did you see those ships, though?” Twenty-Six said as she leaned forwards. “They’re so pretty.”

“I always thought they were weird,” Donny said. His attention was fixed on Hawk as the chef came around to Aurora.

“I think they’re quite nice,” Ivil said as she started to pick through her meal. None of it was exactly high class stuff. Everything had come out of a can or a box, but it was put together nicely, and she imagined it was fairly calorie and vitamin dense while being very palatable.

“Martian ships are almost all designed with aesthetics in mind nowadays,” Aurora said. “Which is something I can appreciate. The older ships were… utilitarian, but hardly nice to look at. ‘Black flying bricks,’ my father calls them. The newer vessels are much sleeker.”

“Did you see that super dreadnought though?!” Twenty-Six asked.

“Hard not to,” Donny said through a mouthful of grub. “Damn thing is huge.”

“Huge but beautiful,” Twenty-Six said. “I wonder how many people are on it.”

“The complement numbers should be publicly available, I would think,” Ivil said. “Or at least rough estimates of them. I can’t imagine a ship with such a large crew won’t have a few leaks.”

“The Martians are good about plugging those,” Aurora said. She poked at her food with the end of her fork, then shrugged and chopped a piece off to eat it. “Mm, this is quite good, Mister Hawk.”

“Pleasure to hear it,” Hawk said with a little bow. He reached the end of the people that needed serving, then made two plates before plating the tray with the leftovers in the centre of the table. “Feel free to serve yourselves seconds. I’m going to bring Missy hers. Donny, touch my plate and you’re on dish duty for a month.”

“You’re not the captain,” Donny said with a grin.

“Donny, touch his plate, and you’re on dish duty for a month,” the captain said. She wasn’t even looking, her attention focused on a small tablet scrolling through lines of text.

“Are you securing our departure window?” Ivil asked. The text had dates and times on it, from what she could tell.

“I am. The exodus has mostly calmed down now. I’m hoping Crevice Control won’t give us trouble as we leave. It would be very much like them to slow everyone down just to be able to charge for a few more hours in-berth.”

“It’s going to be really chaotic here once that big Martian fleet leaves,” Twenty-Six said. “Lots of ships rushing back all at once.”

“I’m counting on it,” the captain said. “No one’s going to be trying anything… piratical while that fleet’s sitting so close to Ceres.”

“The Martians won’t respond to non-Martian distress calls,” Aurora said.

“They might,” Ivil said. Not out of a sense of national pride, but because of sheer practicality. “There are a lot of captains itching to do something in that fleet, I bet. Escorting a super dreadnought is probably boring work. Some of them would jump at the opportunity to hunt down some pirates, I’m sure.”

“That would be nice,” Twenty-Six said. “I don’t like pirates. They’re so… urgh. They never pay well.”

“We’ve been able to avoid them so far,” the captain said. “It helps that the Held Together isn’t a desirable target.”

“Why’s that?” Aurora asked.

The captain gestured around herself. “She’s home, but she’s old. Pirates make their money grabbing cargo and stealing ships, sometimes by grabbing hostages. A ship like this? It won’t come out of a fight in any condition to be resold, and our cargo capacity’s nothing special. None of the crew are worth taking as hostages.”

Ivil didn’t miss that the passengers might be worth the trouble.

Then again, if a pirate knew that she was on board, would that increase or decrease the odds that they’d try something? She’d made her share of enemies.

In any case, Ivil decided that she didn’t care too much. If pirates came around, they’d be taken care of.

What interested her more were the people in the ship with her now. Who was she supposed to love here? Was her soulmate even here, or was it someone she would meet once they arrived near Callisto?

She eyed the people around the table. The captain was… mysterious. She hadn’t even gotten a name from her yet. But Ivil felt like maybe the woman was a little too old.

Donny was immediately dismissed.

If he was her soulmate, then Ivil needed to find a new soul.

Which left… the cook, the mechanic, the princess, and the Warmime.

Interesting.

Chapter fourteen

Quiet Reading

The Held Together was seventy-two years old, placing its construction date as twenty-odd years after the First Solar War and long before the second. It was originally commissioned as a bulk freighter for a company called EM-Works Transportation Ltd, an Earth-based hauling company.

The company folded six years later, and the Held Together changed hands, first being bought by a ship reseller on Mars, then by a small company in the Jovian system that did cargo transportation between the planet’s moons and stations.

At that time, it was refitted and very slightly modernised. The ship’s computer systems were replaced to allow for more automation and to cut down on crew numbers. The Held Together, which at the time still had a name that was little more than an alphanumeric string, kept working around Jupiter for two decades.

It was eventually purchased by an employee of the same company, and the ship took on the far riskier job of transporting goods from Jupiter to Saturn.

Six years in, it was stolen by pirates.

Two years after that, it was recovered, with several critical components missing. The owner let it languish for a few more years, but eventually his son repaired it, just in time for the Second Solar War.

The newly named Held Together was then used as a transport around Jupiter again. It narrowly avoided being taken out by a missile strike near the end of the war. Two years later, it was repaired and flying once more. The repairs came with an elongated spine, to allow for more cargo pods to be attached, and an upgraded engine suite taken from a warship.

There were plenty of destroyed vessels to salvage from at that time.

The Held Together went on to have a simple, unassuming career for several years until the daughter of its then-captain took the helm. Since then, rising fuel costs, the ship’s poor maintenance record, some minor accidents, and a dozen fines meant that the current holder of the ship’s deeds, Held Together Transportation Limited, was hanging on about as well as the ship was.

There were some notes in the files suggesting that the captain ended some jobs being paid far better than she should have been. MINT suspected smuggling activities, though all well outside of Martian jurisdiction.

Ivil lowered the tablet. She’d tried to make herself comfortable while she read, but the small couch was stiff, and the room was far too warm, something that she imagined was only going to worsen once the ship was underway.

The reading was interesting, and in-depth. MINT had not skimped on information, likely because there was so little that mattered here. “Interesting” didn’t mean “important.”

Ivil imagined that some poor overworked MINT operative onboard the Purgatorial Oblivion had received her demand at some ungodly hour and then scrambled to get everything together in time.

Of course, the intelligence agency had a bureau on board the Star Dreadnought, because doing otherwise would be foolish, but that didn’t mean that they were fully equipped. She was happy with the work they’d done, considering their limited capacity.

Her cover was actually improving as she read more about astro-archaeology. It was an interesting subject: the study of battlefields and conflicts long past, some of which she’d caused, had participated in, or had been able to put an end to. The tablet she had was connected to a subtle network on Ceres, and her cover was being updated by the hour as MINT solidified it.

It was more than enough. Anyone that looked into Evelyn Ville’s history would discover more and more about her. Testimony from past students, photographs, public records and citations. Even some slight youthful indiscretions, to better sell the story.

It would do for now.

Ivil knew from her extensive research on matters of romance—mostly via soap operas—that communication was of paramount importance in matters of love. It was to love what logistics were to war.

The night passed relatively quickly as she read up on the history of the ship and of her cover story. Then she indulged herself in catching up on her favourite soaps with a small tub of ice cream she had acquired from the mess.

The Held Together was surprisingly eerie at this time, when everyone was asleep. Of course, Ivil only made passing note of that eeriness. She did not give in to fear. She gave fear to others. And also, on occasion, stole their ice cream.

The ship came alive around seven in the morning, ship-time. Ivil felt someone moving through the ship. Not Aurora. That woman’s cores would make her movement far too easy to read. Someone else.

She changed from her jumpsuit into another, similar one, donned the same jacket, then adjusted her hair to give the illusion that she’d showered and redressed. She also made a mental note to waste a small amount of water, otherwise her lack of use of the plumbing might raise suspicions.

Slipping out of her room, Ivil turned towards the only person awake on the ship besides herself and discovered Missy walking along the spine.

The woman paused, staring right at Ivil for a moment. Her makeup was freshened up, and she looked exactly as unamused as Ivil remembered.

“Good morning,” Ivil said.

“Hey,” Missy replied. “You’re up early.”

“I sleep little,” Ivil said. “And I think I’m travel-lagged still.”

Missy nodded along, then slipped past Ivil. “There’s coffee,” she said.

“Actual coffee?” Ivil asked.

“No. But it’s brown and warm and has caffeine,” Missy said.

Coffee, real coffee, was one of the system’s greatest luxury items. There were some that were very adamant that coffee was the cause of the First Solar War. Though Ivil wasn’t so sure if that was entirely true.

“Are you an early riser as well?” Ivil asked.

Missy made a dismissive gesture. “I get first shift,” she said.

Ivil supposed that made as much sense as anything. Someone needed to man the ship around the clock, and the captain couldn’t be awake at all hours. As first mate that naturally fell upon Missy’s shoulders. “So, anything exciting planned for today? Other than our launch?”

“Not too much,” Missy said. “I’m hoping this’ll be a regular run, though it already feels… off.”

Ivil followed the former Warmime into the mess. Missy beelined for the kitchen where a coffee dispenser sat. She started to fill a zero-gravity “sippy” cup with something which was, in fact, brown and warm, and smelled like caffeine.

“Off how?” Ivil asked.

“Two clients outside of our usual… budget for that kind of thing. Plus a third this morning. We do passenger stuff sometimes, but it’s usually a dozen clients at a time. Workers or civilians moving from one place to another. Rarely some middle-classer that doesn’t want to pay for an expensive trip. Now?” Missy looked at Ivil. “You and the princess.”

Ivil leaned back a little, then nodded. “I suppose that it is unusual. Though I am flying with something of a budget. It’s just not my money to burn. If it helps, I don’t have any ill-will towards the Held Together or anyone on its crew… well, perhaps Donny.”

Missy cracked a smile. “He’s a bit of a dick. Spent—and I kid you not—six months trying to flirt with me before he caught on.”

“Is he like that with everyone?” Ivil asked.

“Only women,” she said.

“Ah.”

Ivil wondered if an accident could be arranged.

“Not with Twenty-Six, though,” Missy said thoughtfully. “I think he has a sister about her age. So he teases her a lot instead, but no flirting. Which is good, because Hawk would beat his ass if he did, then I’d space him.”

Ivil nodded along. That was entirely reasonable. “So, you think I’m strange? Strange in a good way?”

Missy chuckled. “I guess it can’t hurt. You know, where I was raised, being strange was considered attractive.”

Ivil perked up at that. “Really?”

“Yeah. One of the reasons I moved out.”

“You wound me,” Ivil said.

Missy grinned. “Come on. You can’t be all that strange, Miss Professor from Hellas.” Missy pushed a warm sippy cup into Ivil’s hands as she moved past. “Gonna go to the hangar. The next guest should be arriving any minute now.”

“Are they strange as well?” Ivil asked as she looked at the cup.

“Can’t get stranger,” Missy said. “They’re an Adeptus Ancillia.”

Ivil watched Missy go, then took a small sip from the cup. It was vile. She grimaced and set it aside, then started after Missy. She had nothing better to do, and besides, maybe this next passenger would be the one?

She wasn’t so sure about that. An Adeptus Ancillia would be… trouble. Actually, it might be enough to blow her cover, so being there to greet them would be even better. She might be able to plug a gap right away.

There were few people, after all, as annoying as fanatics. And there were few fanatics as fanatical as the Tech Maids of Mars.

Chapter fifteen

Adeptus Ancillia

The Tech Maids of Mars, or as they called themselves, the Adeptus Ancillia, were members of a religious organisation that sprung up on Mars before the First Solar War.

Though calling them specifically the Tech Maids of Mars was incorrect.

The organisation existed on Earth, and anywhere else where enough people gathered. The split had happened relatively early in the religious order’s life. Some claimed that it was similar to the split between Catholicism and Protestantism. Those people had no appreciation of history, or of how both stupid and accurate that comparison was.

Because it was accurate in many ways, but being correct didn’t stop people from being stupid.

Part of it was the national identity of the members of the different groups. Martian society was exceptionally proud of itself, and that showed in the identity of even the religions that grew upon the red world.

That was, again, simplifying decades of religious growth. All Ivil had to concern herself with at the moment, was whether this Tech Maid was going to blow her cover or not.

Ivil followed Missy into the Held Together’s hangar and sat herself down to one side. She watched as the Warmime started checking things out, tugging on cargo straps, kicking a few braces that held crates in place, and then tsking to herself as she found the workstation at the back full of loose tools. “I swear,” she said.

“Is that Twenty-Six’s stuff?” Ivil asked.

“It is,” Missy said with a sigh. “That girl does not pick up after herself.”

“Isn’t she the one that needs to fix any holes made by her stuff punching through the walls?” Ivil asked.

“Yes. Yes she is,” Missy said. “Trust me, this ship doesn’t need any more work added to it.”

“Have you tried reprimanding her?”

Missy waved a hand dismissively without looking Ivil’s way. “Sure, but she forgets. Look, if she wasn’t as good as she is, I’d make a much bigger fuss. If Donny or Hawk left stuff lying around I’d kick their asses for it, but it’s Twenty-Six. That girl is… shit, we don’t deserve someone as good on this ship.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked.

“Yeah,” Missy said. “She’s the best mechanic you’ve ever seen.”

“I’ve met some very good mechanics,” Ivil said. She was responsible for the ulcers of entire engineering departments, and Mars had the best engineers in the system.

Missy shook her head. “You’ve never met someone like Twenty-Six. The girl’s a natural. She gets shit that no one else gets.”

“She doesn’t have a core,” Ivil said. It was a statement, not a question.

Missy paused and looked back at Ivil. “No. She doesn’t. No one on the crew does.”

That was a flat lie. Ivil could tell that Missy had at least two, maybe more, cores.

Missy continued while sorting through the tools. “Two-Six was raised where one mechanical failure meant that everyone around her would die, and not in a pretty way. I don’t know what kind of fancy school you went to to end up a professor of whatever, but she didn’t get that. Her education was day-in, day-out patching things up and keeping herself alive. She’s good. Makes fixing things look like an art. I wish she did have a few cores. It’d make people respect her more.”

“What did you mean, about respect?” Ivil asked.

Missy shrugged. “Used to be that if you were good, if you were talented, people would respect you for it. Now? It doesn’t matter how good you are. It’s all about the cores. Not the people under them.”

Ivil had the impression that there was a lot more going on there than Twenty-Six just missing some opportunities. “I imagine you’ve met plenty of both,” Ivil said.

Missy turned to stare at Ivil for a moment. “You know what I am, right?” She gestured at her own face. It was pale, especially in the strong artificial light of the cargo hangar. The paleness was especially prevalent on her face, starting along the jawline and circling around. That wasn’t makeup, it was a skin-lightening procedure taken to the extreme.

“A Warmime?” Ivil asked. “Or an ex-Warmime, in any case.”

“Yeah,” Missy said. “I left that world behind a while ago. There’s a lot of good people out there that’ll never get the chance they deserve. I don’t like it. I thought it would be better away from home. It’s not. And, no offence, but you look like exactly the sort of person that didn’t lack in chances.”

Ivil’s eyebrows rose. That was close to an insult, but perhaps only because there was a kernel of truth to it. “I suppose so,” she admitted. “Though I have fought for a lot of what I have. Still, I… appreciate that you care for Twenty-Six. It’s kind of you.”

“Yeah, sure,” Missy said dismissively.

Missy didn’t seem impressed, but she glanced off to the side and the ship’s entrance before saying anything. Ivil glanced that way too. There was someone coming. Another person with cores, only they had quite a number of them. A solid C-classer, maybe edging into B.

There was a heavy knock on the smaller door inset within the cargo bay door.

Missy walked over to it, then checked at a small monitor built into the entranceway. Ivil only saw a fuzzy blur on the low-resolution screen, but it was enough to tell that there was only one person on the other side. Missy opened the door with a squeal of metal on metal. “Hey,” she said. “You’re Sana?”

A woman stepped into the Held Together. She was relatively short, a little shorter than Missy, though it was hard to tell anything else about her physicality.

She wore the formal outfit of a Tech Maid of Mars. A white cowl and doublet with a deep hood over a blood-red corset and skirts. Her coat swept down and out, puffing away from her like a frill-edged skirt. Beneath, it was clear that she was wearing a flexible hardsuit. The coat and her corset only gave the impression of a maid’s outfit without any of the actual issues that might come from wearing such a thing in a dangerous environment.

Ivil narrowed her eyes.

She had a history with the Tech Maids. Not this one in particular, but she couldn’t help but feel like seeing one here was a bad omen of sorts.

The Tech Maid paused at the entrance and tilted her head back to scan the room. Her face was covered by a mask. White, with golden filigree along the edges, and dark lenses over the eyes that said nothing. It was carved into the face of a pretty woman.

Ivil felt at the Tech Maid and found herself even more cautious at what she felt. This was a B-classer, but one that was… weakened?

The difference was subtle. This was asking someone to guess if the glass was half-full or half-empty. There was always a correct answer, but it was more often than not contextual. Few people would be able to tell, but Ivil wasn’t just anyone. This Tech Maid was a B-classer that had just split her own cores. It was recent. There were still some lingering after-effects of the split.

Ivil jumped off the crate she was sitting on and smiled as she walked over. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Evelyn, one of the other passengers.”

“Greetings,” the Tech Maid said. She glanced back. Her only luggage was a small bag on wheels trailing after her. It had a few symbols of the Adeptus Ancillia, and some pouches on the side that contained some of the tools of their religion. A small brush, a folding duster, a can of compressed air.

“Missy, let me take her to the mess. You can keep working,” Ivil said.

Missy raised an eyebrow at that, then shrugged. “Sure. I’ll have Hawk show you your room later. You’re lucky. The passenger compartment’s all yours unless we get any more last-minutes.”

“Thank you,” the Tech Maid said. Her voice was faintly electronic, a small buzz that made it less-than-natural.

Ivil smiled some more, then gestured the Tech Maid after her. She followed, and Ivil led her towards the spine of the ship. “This is the spine. Most of the accommodations are at the front,” she explained casually.

“Interesting,” the Tech Maid said. She didn’t sound as if she was feeling all that talkative. That was too bad for her.

“I didn’t catch your name, actually,” Ivil said.

“Ah, of course, my apologies. I’m Savant Sana Pendergast, Keeper of Pristine Networks, Sister of the Order of the Wet Mop.” She bowed her head a little.

Ivil nodded along until the very moment they were passing in front of her room. The door slammed open on its own accord, though without making any noise. In a blink, “Sana” was ripped off her feet and tossed into her room.

Ivil followed, appearing next to the Tech Maid and grabbing her by the scruff faster than most people could process. The door closed a moment before Sana was shoved into it and locked in place by Ivil’s will and her forearm across the neck.

The Tech Maid struggled faintly for a second, then stopped, her entire body going unnaturally limp.

This wasn’t how Ivil had been planning on pinning someone to her wall for the first time.

“Hello, B-class Imperial Valkyrie, Sonic Spectre,” Ivil said calmly. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Chapter sixteen

Spectre

People who had cores could call themselves whatever they damned well pleased. Still, there were certain conventions. The Warclowns and Warmimes of the Lunatics were a good example. They had a cultural identity freely given to their own core-wielders.

Outside of that context, civilians with cores often tried to avoid any specific labels, while soldiers with cores tended to have their own categorization.

On Mars, they called the core-wielders of the military Valkyries.

A Valkyrie was the reaping angel of Mars. Not just a soldier with superhuman abilities. They were the best. They kicked ass, took names, chewed bubble gum, and they never, ever, lost.

At least, that’s how the propaganda went.

The truth was that each Valkyrie was hand-picked from the most talented individuals in the Martian military apparatus, then given training that would make an Olympic athlete look like a lazy underachiever.

This produced the best possible candidates to receive a core and become part of the army’s backbone of hyper-elite combatants. They were few in number, but that didn’t matter when they were just better.

Sonic Spectre must, therefore, have been pretty damned good. B-classers were uncommon enough already. There were probably only a few dozen in the Martian navy.

Ivil was keeping that in mind as she pinned the helpless Valkyrie to her room’s door. Sonic Spectre was utterly outclassed, sure, but she was also not even trying to fight back. Her powers, those shifts in reality that had made her look so jittery, would have been perfect to escape this situation… for about a fraction of a second before Ivil caught her again. But Sonic wasn’t trying anything of the sort.

The emotionless doll mask shifted slightly to meet Ivil’s gaze. “I’m following orders from High Command,” she said.

“The brass sent you?” Ivil asked.

There was a slight shift, a nod. “They’re concerned about your actions. Though… to be perfectly honest, I volunteered for the position. It was me or a deep-cover MINT operative, and I thought that I would be a better option.”

Ivil loosened the hold, very slightly. She didn’t quite let go, however. “You might compromise my mission.”

“I aim to do the opposite,” Sonic replied. “I’m here to assist you. This mission came with two parameters. To ensure your safety, and to assist you in your task.”

“High Command has no idea what the task is, do they?” Ivil asked.

Sonic shrugged faintly. “They don’t. But it’s… you?”

Ivil supposed that that much did make sense. She had a… well-cultivated reputation for doing what she thought was best, and often she was right about it. Certainly, her idea of what was the best action to take was sometimes politically unpopular, or caused a significant increase in casualties, but it also often led to success.

With a sigh, Ivil pulled back. “You might as well leave,” she said. “This mission won’t be helped by your presence.”

“Ma’am?” Sonic asked. “I’m aware. You are without a doubt the most powerful person in the system. But if you would be so kind as to tolerate me, I’ll be certain to not stand in your way as you… do whatever your mission is.”

“Are you so certain? You still don’t know what that mission is.”

Sonic shrugged. “Theories range from you preventing a fourth solar war, to you causing the next, to you wanting a vacation.”

“Hmm, all wrong,” Ivil dismissed. “Besides, you might give me away with that disguise of yours.”

“I’m actually a practising member of the Adeptus Ancillia,” Sonic replied. “Though I have placed my military service ahead of my religious beliefs, as befits a Martian Valkyrie. I know enough of the rites and beliefs of the Tech Maids that I can certainly pass myself for one.”

Ivil hummed. The options here were simple enough. Kick the woman off the ship, or keep her here. “If you will stay, then you’ll be changing command chains,” Ivil said.

“Pardon?” Sonic asked.

“Yes, I think that’s a fantastic idea,” Ivil said with a nod to herself. “If you want to stay, then you’ll be working for me.”

“I… can do that, yes. If it would assist you.”

“Good. Your first task is to write a letter of resignation to the admiralty. I won’t have you splitting loyalties, and if you resign, then none of their orders will be able to supersede my own.”

It was a hard ultimatum. Valkyries might have been powerful and even well-loved members of the Martian elite, but their service and training didn’t come freely. One of the larger costs was a lifetime of indoctrination and a hard loyalty to the brass. They were not-so-secretly terrified of another Ivil rising through the ranks. Of course, that sometimes meant that loyalty was prized more than competence.

It was a fault Ivil was aware of, but it didn’t make the military suffer so much that she cared to fix it.

Sonic took a long, long moment to think things through, then she nodded. “I will,” she said. “If that’s what’s required of me, then I will.”

Ivil was, reluctantly, impressed.

Obviously the brass would overlook such a thing. It would be a black mark on Sonic’s record, but there was probably a fresh medal or commendation that would come with it as soon as she “rejoined” the military after this incident. It was still a hard move for Sonic to take, and spoke well of her character.

Loyal to the point of being disloyal if that was the best option. It wasn’t entirely contradictory, but it did take some thinking to see it.

“Fine then,” Ivil said, finally letting Sonic free as she stepped back.

Sonic adjusted her dress, then bowed her head a little to Ivil. “I’m at your service, ma’am. What would you have me do?”

“Are you gay?”

Sonic froze. “Um. No?”

“Are you certain?” Ivil asked. “Bisexual, maybe?”

“I’m… not that either, ma’am,” Sonic replied. “I, uh, am not currently in a relationship, but I’m mostly attracted to men.”

“Are you certain?” Ivil asked. That mostly might have been carrying a lot of weight.

“I’m entirely certain. May I ask how this is relevant?”

“No.”

“Very well,” Sonic said.

Ivil eyed Sonic up and down, then shrugged mostly to herself. “This mission is classified,” she said.

“I understand, ma’am. My clearance rating is blue,” Sonic replied.

“This is classified Ultra Cosmic,” Ivil said.

Sonic stared. “I… wasn’t aware that the classification system extended beyond a colour range, ma’am.”

“Obviously because you don’t have a clearance level high enough,” Ivil said. “If you violate this level of secrecy you will cease to exist. Mars will put all of its efforts into removing every trace that you ever existed. Your parents won’t remember you. Every friend, lover, colleague, business partner, the person at your favourite restaurant that remembers your order. Everyone will completely fail to remember you. Any impact you had on society, positive or otherwise, will be reversed. You will cease to matter on a level that most cannot comprehend.”

Sonic likely lacked the biology to swallow, but Ivil still had the impression that the Valkyrie had done just that.

“And then, while your existence is being erased, you will be made to suffer unimaginably. Obviously, the goal of the torture will be purely academic at that point, but it’s a principle that matters.”

“Of course, ma’am,” Sonic replied. She was doing a good job of not sounding like she was about to faint.

Ivil crossed her arms. “Good. The goal of this mission is for me to find love.”

Sonic stared. “As in… sexual gratification?”

“If I wanted to fuck I’d hire a sex worker,” Ivil dismissed. “Or accept one of the many offers I’ve received for an ‘interesting night.’ I’m not so unattractive that no one flirts with me. I mean love-love. Romantic love. I’m here to find my soulmate.”

“Is that what the oracle was for?”

“Yes. I asked her where I could start. This ship was her answer,” Ivil said.

“You… commandeered an Imperial fleet, to fly to the far end of the system, to ask an oracle… about your love life?”

“Is that judgement I hear?” Ivil asked.

“Permission to be honest?”

“No.”

“No judgement, ma’am.”

Ivil raised an eyebrow. “I would hope not, especially not with your new duties.”

Sonic straightened. “Ma’am? You have orders for me?”

“Yes. Congratulations, you’ve been promoted from… what was your rank?”

“Captain.”

“From captain to wing-woman,” Ivil said. “I hope you can serve me well in that position, Wing-Woman Sonic Spectre.”

Sonic almost saluted. Her arm started to raise before it stuttered to a stop as years of navy training ran into the realities of her current situation. “I hope I fulfil the role well, ma’am.” Sonic said. “On that note, are you aware of who the, ah, target is?”

“No, actually. I have a short-list of suspects onboard the Held Together. I suspect the first part of this operation will mostly involve discovering who the primary target is. Hopefully you will be able to assist me with that as well.”

“I’ll do my best,” Sonic said. She did salute this time.

Chapter seventeen

Poster Girl

The process of undocking a ship to a station or small planetoid was similar, in many ways, to the process of an aircraft taking off on Earth.

That is to say, it was exceptionally complicated, and the average idiot still thought that if they were put behind the pilot’s yoke, they’d manage to figure it out.

There was a knock at Ivil’s door, and she glanced up from her casual reading to stare. The weight and feel of the person on the other side meant that there was really only one person it could be. Twenty-Six.

Standing, Ivil discarded the tablet she’d been picking through and moved to the door to open it. “Yes?” she asked.

Twenty-Six glanced up and met her eyes, then grinned. “Hey! Just wanted to let you know, we have permission to take off in ten.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked. “Thank you for letting me know. Is there anything I should do?”

Twenty-Six nodded. “Stow away anything loose. And I do mean anything. If you need to use the washroom, now’s the time. There are plenty of horror stories of someone using the head when their ship needed to go through manoeuvres. Uh, we’ll also be out of Ceres’s gravity well pretty soon after we leave. With our initial acceleration, you might feel like you’re being pulled in two directions, so that might be a little confusing. Neither of those directions will be towards the floor, which makes it worse.”

“Thank you,” Ivil said. “I think I’ll manage.”

Twenty-Six smiled, showing off two rows of very slightly crooked teeth. “No problem. We’ll be slipping out of Ceres’s gravity well, then accelerating. I think the captain wants to go for a hard burn, so everyone will have to meet up in the cockpit.”

Ivil nodded. A ship of this size couldn’t afford multiple crash seats for everyone. In that case, it only made sense to concentrate them all in one place.

Twenty-Six squirmed a little, and Ivil paused. “Is something wrong?”

“Oh? No, I was just counting. I’m going to have to be the odd one out.”

“What do you mean?” Ivil asked.

“There are only so many seats in the cockpit, so I’ll be in the engineering bay’s crash seat. It’s silly, but I don’t like being alone for so long.”

Ivil considered it. “Is it the only seat in engineering?” she asked.

“Ah, no?”

“Well then, I don’t see why I can’t accompany you.”

This, of course, served two purposes. The first was simplest. She… wasn’t enamoured with Twenty-Six, but the young woman was attractive, energetic, and definitely cute. Ivil wouldn’t mind getting to know her better. The second purpose had more to do with Ivil’s reaction to high-g manoeuvres. Which was to say, she didn’t have one.

The kind of sudden change in movement that a ship, even the fastest of space fighters, could do was so little that it didn’t really affect Ivil. She would have to make a conscious effort to pretend to be impacted.

Fewer people around would mean fewer chances that anyone would notice her if she slipped.

“I’m a little curious about this ship as well. Most of the time in astro-archaeology, we work with ancient wrecks. This ship is older than some case-study vessels, and yet it’s still flying.”

Twenty-Six’s eyes lit up. “I’d love to show you around. If it’s old-old stuff you want, there’s a lot to show you.”

Ivil smiled right back. “Let me put things away. It’ll just take a moment.”

It really didn’t take long. She hadn’t unpacked much, so all she needed to do was secure her few belongings in one of the cubbies, and then she was done. “I’m all yours,” she said.

Twenty-Six blinked, then laughed. “Alright. Come on! I don’t think you’ve seen engineering yet.”

They slipped out of Ivil’s room, and almost immediately ran into Aurora exiting her own room. “Hello, Lady Aurora,” Ivil said.

“Miss Ville,” Aurora returned. She glanced over at Twenty-Six. “Miss… Six?”

“Hah! Actually, Twenty-Six is my full name. I don’t really have a first or family one? Uh, but Miss Six is fine?”

“Forgive me, then,” Aurora said. “I’m heading to the bridge to prep for manoeuvres. Are you doing the same?”

“We’re going to crash in engineering,” Twenty-Six said. “I wanted to show Evelyn some of the Held Together that no one gets to see!”

“I… see,” Aurora said. She gave Ivil a look that Ivil had no hopes of deciphering. “Well, you two enjoy yourselves.”

“We will!” Twenty-Six said.

Ivil slid to the side to let Aurora pass. She had the impression that there was some degree of miscommunication there that she hadn’t caught on to. Ivil supposed that was the price to pay for not being as direct and concise with her wants as she usually was.

Twenty-Six reached back and grabbed Ivil’s hand before pulling her forwards. “It’s this way,” she said.

At the end of the corridor, towards the rearmost section of the ship, was a small ladder leading upwards with padded rungs. Twenty-Six scampered up and into a small dark passageway, with Ivil following at a more sedate pace.

“We have interior access to all three primary drive engines here, and two of the fuel bunkers,” Twenty-Six said. “And I have a small engineering room, of course. It’s basically where I spend most of the day.”

“It’s a little tight,” Ivil said as she squeezed past some pipework.

“Oh, yeah. That’s from the retrofit. The engines aren’t designed for this kind of ship, so their access and exterior connections run right through some of the bulkheads. They’re smaller than the old engines, but a lot more complicated. It means I’m never out of work to do.”

“Job security by means of glaring inefficiency? I think I can sympathise.”

Twenty-Six half-turned and blinked at Ivil. “Your job has that kind of problem too?”

“You’d be surprised,” Ivil said.

She followed Twenty-Six up to a door. The mechanic shoved it open then froze at the threshold.

There was a room here, and it did indeed have two crash couches. One of them had its belts wrapped around a few packages. The chair was a flat surface and had therefore been turned into temporary storage, as chairs often were. The rest of the room was… a bit of a mess. Everything was shoved into grated cubbies or locked up in toolboxes, but there were still plenty of things that needed sorting. A rack at the back had weights, and there were a few tools lying on the ground.

What caught Ivil’s eye the most, however, were the very many scantily clad, nearly naked, and in some cases fully naked, women on the posters covering the rusty walls, in a variety of poses or stretched out across vehicles, machinery, or workbenches.

“One sec!” Twenty-Six said as she slipped in, then slammed the door in Ivil’s face.

Ivil waited. It took considerably more than one second, along with some banging and mild cursing, but after a relatively short pause, Twenty-Six reopened the door. She was holding a small plastic bin to her side, with rolls of paper sticking out. Her face was notably red, and she was panting a little.

“What was that?”

“Nothing!”

“And the things you ripped from the walls?”

“You saw that?! Uh, I mean. They were… diagrams! Top secret ship diagrams. For maintenance,” Twenty-Six lied.

“Diagrams of female anatomy?”

Twenty-Six’s face burned hotter.

“For maintenance?” Ivil continued.

Twenty-Six’s face burned so hot that it made the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose stand out noticeably.

“Was one of them wearing a dog collar and nothing else?” Ivil asked.

“Can… can we pretend that you didn’t see?” she asked in a small voice.

“I think I can do that,” Ivil said. “Though I might ask that you return the favour one day.”

“With… your own posters?”

Ivil stared. “No. Not with posters of what looked like bootleg Miss Mars merchandise.” Ivil didn’t do posters of half-naked women. Or pornography in general. She much preferred literature of the erotic sort. That wasn’t pornography.

It was art.

“A-anyway, let me clear out the second couch. It works, I promise,” Twenty-Six said.

There was a two-toned noise over the ship intercoms.

“Ah, two minute warning,” Twenty-Six said. “We’ll probably be fine to still be standing for a while. The captain is a really good pilot. And Missy’s better. She can make this old lady soar.”

“Have you known the captain and Missy long?” Ivil asked as she watched Twenty-Six sort through her things.

“Yup! My dad knew the captain’s dad, way, way back in the day. This is the first ship I’ve worked on, though. Uh, it’s better than the stations back home. The Held Together has more charm.”

“I can see that,” Ivil said. This tiny engineering room, which was far too close to the engines, far too warm, and far too small, did have a lot of character, even stripped of its… more interesting artistic elements. “Was Missy with the captain already? Hawk and Donny as well?”

“Hmm? No, Donny’s the newest, though he’s been with us for a year or so now. Hawk was here already. And Missy… eh, she came maybe five years ago? She was…” Twenty-Six paused. “She took some time to get used to.”

“I see. That’s an interesting crew dynamic. Thank you.”

“Is it that interesting?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Of course. All too often, in my field, all I know about a ship is what we could get from its black box. And that’s often sanitised to the point of uselessness. It’s interesting to see what some of those lost crews might have been like.”

Chapter eighteen

Pain Engine

Space travel didn’t open up until some crackhead, two-cored mad man decided that year-long trips to even the nearest planet were too damned long.

His name was Robert Pain, and he died in agony.

Robert was a Navy Seal of the former United States, turned NASA astronaut, then ISA astronaut. He had four moon missions under his belt, and one Earth-Mars mission delivering supplies to the first Martian colony. He was, by all accounts, a genius engineer.

Smart as a tack. Not someone you’d want to step on.

Robert got his first core because he earned it.

He got his second by ripping it out of the body of a crewmate in the early months of his second trip to Mars.

Some say the radiation got to him. Some say it was his core fucking with his head. Others suspect that it was the other guy’s love of country music.

In any case, being stuck in a small late-2000s shuttle with a corpse didn’t do Robert any favours. He went a little batshit.

And then he made it to Mars six months early, his body wired into the ion-thrust mechanism of his ship. He was a gibbering madman by then.

But hey, the engine he tinkered up worked, and that’s all that mattered.

He’d used up the colony’s entire spare part supply, so a few sacrifices had to be made, but those few people who starved, or who ran out of oxygen were swept out of the history books along with Mister Pain’s more eccentric ideas and actions. The system remembered him as the guy who invented the Pain drive.

The modern thing was nothing like what Robert had dreamed up, but some of the early principles still applied.

“Alright, so, you’ve gone hard g before, right?” Twenty-Six asked. She was quickly passing a washcloth over one of the two crash seats, supposedly the one that Ivil would be using. The seat looked older than Twenty-Six, with cracked faux-leather and mismatched straps. Not that it really mattered to her, but she was used to people generally pushing a certain level of luxury towards her.

The crash seat she was assigned on the Star Dreadnought had heating, cooling, massage therapy, its own AI sub-system, and a full entertainment suite. It would be able to keep an egg intact in full ten-g emergency combat manoeuvres without shaking up the yolk.

Ivil didn’t use it, because she didn’t particularly care about momentum and inertia, but she’d nonetheless grown used to the luxury.

“I’ve been through some, yes,” Ivil said.

“Ah, but not on a beaut like the Held Together,” Twenty-Six said with a grin. “The average transport will use a slow one-g burn over a longer period so that no one’s uncomfortable. I hear that cruise ships will only go up to .9 g’s, even. This old thing will be hitting four and a half! The captain likes quick, short burns like that.”

“Any reason why?” Ivil asked.

“It’s a bit cheaper with these engines. You don’t want to have them working for too long, or they overheat, so it’s a balancing act. And it helps with pirates.”

“Pirates?” Ivil repeated. “They’re an issue?”

“Not if you’re big, heavy, look like you’re not worth the trouble, and are burning fast and hard,” Twenty-Six said with a grin. “Don’t worry about them. We hardly ever get any issues with pirates. Besides, big Martian fleet, right? They won’t try anything so close to that.”

Ivil nodded. She wasn’t as confident in the intelligence of the average pirate as Twenty-Six was. Opportunists would often see things that others missed. And often see things that others knew were dumb fucking ideas, then they’d do that anyway.

The reason so few people were opportunists was because most of them silently removed themselves from the gene pool.

“I see. I think I can manage two and a half g’s.”

“It’ll only be for two hours or so,” Twenty-Six said. “We’re lucky, Ceres is in a good spot for travelling to Jupiter. We’re not as close as they get, but we’re not far either, and we can slingshot around Ceres for a final little boost.”

“Do you do astro navigation?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six shook her head with a blush. “No. Ah, I was just listening to Missy earlier. She’s really good with that kind of thing.”

“Sounds like you look up to her,” Ivil said.

“Yeah! She’s like a hot older sister.”

“Hot?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six’s blush deepened. “Uh. You… misheard.”

“I see,” Ivil said. She held back a bit of a smile. Twenty-Six’s lack of self-control wasn’t something Ivil would ever accept in herself, or in a subordinate, but it was still… strangely endearing.

“All clean!” Twenty-Six said as she stepped back.

Ivil wasn’t sure if she’d claim the same. The seat was still cracked and covered with old stains, but it would do.

A tone sounded across the ship, and Twenty-Six jumped. “Gotta stow the last of my stuff, one sec! Get yourself sat down in the meantime. I’ll help with the straps.”

“That’s fine, I can figure it out,” Ivil said as she took the seat. It was mounted on a rotating pillar jammed into the floor, with two axes of motion and a pair of adjustable supports for her legs. The limited degrees of motion would mean that at certain angles, the seats wouldn’t be able to be in the optimal position to negate g’s, but beggars and choosers.

Another tone came over the ship’s PA, then the captain’s voice. “Everyone better be in a seat. Twenty-Six, are you good?”

Twenty-Six ran over to a wall-mounted PA and pressed her thumb against it. “Will be in a minute, Captain!” she said.

“Can you check on our passenger? We’ve got an empty seat up here,” the captain said. “Miss Ville is delaying us.”

“Ah, no, Captain, she’s here, in my extra seat. We’re all good! Gimme two to check on her and get into my crash couch, and we’ll be ready!”

“Received,” the captain said. “We’re unhooking in five.”

Twenty-Six raced around the room, tossing the last few loose items into crates, then locking those up. Finally, she tugged down a pair of screens from the ceiling and fixed them into place above her seat.

“Alright,” Twenty-Six said as she buckled herself with one hand. The other was reaching out towards the screen which was at arm’s length for her, and tapped a few prompts. One of them lit up with a camera feed of the ship’s exterior, with more feeds along the bottom. The other opened to a diagnostics page, several small boxes with scrolling information that Twenty-Six scanned with ease.

She slipped on a microphone, one with a thin tiara that locked it in place around her head so that it wouldn’t fly off the moment they moved. “Captain, engine three’s being itself again, don’t let Missy throttle her too much.”

If there was a reply, Ivil didn’t pick it up as the Held Together shifted.

Being stuck in an inclined seat like this reminded Ivil of being at a dentist in all the worst ways. She tilted her head to the side and watched as the Held Together was slowly pushed out of its berth by a long telescoping arm.

Once the ship was out of the inner section of the hangar, the large clamps holding it in place came loose. At the same time, the Held Together’s manoeuvring thrusters kicked in with a rumble that Ivil felt through the seat.

She watched as the ship slowly turned to face away from the Crevice. There wouldn’t be a big boost, not just yet. They were both too close to the station and too close to the traffic around Ceres, which was still busy, even with the Martian fleet hanging out nearby.

The fleet was a large, obvious blip on the Held Together’s IFF scans, but then, so were some hundred odd-other ships all within a few thousand kilometres.

“Here we go,” Twenty-Six said.

The Held Together’s engine came online fully, and the ship lurched forwards. Not too quickly, but definitely in a jarring, uncomfortable way.

Ivil kept an eye on their relative speed. They were accelerating at a balmy 3.2 m/s². Barely enough to inconvenience.

“Huh, that’s new,” Twenty-Six said.

Something crunched, then clanged. The sound travelled down the ship like something poking a stick into a metal fence while running by.

“I’m assuming that’s not supposed to happen?” Ivil asked.

“Uh,” Twenty-Six said. “Well… I can’t tell what broke, so I’m sure it’s fine?”

“Thank you. I appreciate the reassurance. Are there spacesuits on this ship? Emergency ones?”

Twenty-Six looked a little squeamish. “Not in here?”

“Fantastic.”

“Don’t worry! She’s going to live up to her name. Trust me!”

Ivil looked at the young mechanic, then nodded. “I think I will.”

It wasn’t like she’d suffer much if things went catastrophically wrong. Probably. Though she wondered if she should go through all the trouble of saving the entire crew if a disaster did happen. One of them was her soulmate, after all.

“Almost far enough to light up the thrusters, and I’m reading… greenish-orange across the board. Fire her up, Captain!” Twenty-Six said. “And Miss Ville, hang on!”

Chapter nineteen

Accel

Something like twenty percent of all deaths aboard a spacecraft happen during acceleration burns.

The stress was, for the average person, horribly dangerous. It was why larger passenger craft tended to have much longer, slower acceleration burns.

The human body was evolved to endure all of one gravity. Anything above that, if sustained, meant that every bit of blood weighed twice as much. Cells were torn apart. Skin was stretched. Blood pooled in fatty tissues and in extremities. The entire digestive system took a nasty hit.

There was nothing good about a hard burn. Worse, a hard burn that lasted several hours would compound the issues. Then the burn would stop, and the body would go from being stressed by hard g’s to being stressed by no gravity at all.

The Held Together did its hard burn for just over two hours. Then the burn stopped, and Ivil felt herself starting to float out of her seat’s restraints.

“Oh, thank god,” Twenty-Six muttered.

The ship turned. Ivil felt the entire vessel rotating around its centre of mass so that the “top” was now in the direction they’d been travelling in.

Twenty-Six reached up, tapping a few buttons now that she could raise her arms without fighting gravity. “Hey, Captain, we doing a gravity burn?”

“Confirmed,” the Captain said. “Point-one g, from the ventral ions.”

“Got it,” Twenty-Six said.

It only took a moment for Ivil to see what was happening. The Held Together was facing its top in their direction of travel. The ion thrusters on its belly lit up, pushing them along faster. The amount of thrust they generated was a pittance, barely enough to accelerate the ship at all, but they were energy efficient, and most could run for days on end.

The additional thrust pushing them “up” had the effect of making everything in the ship drop “down.” Every loose object that had started to float up came back down, but rather gently. “This is… about a tenth of a gravity?” Ivil asked.

“Yup,” Twenty-Six said. She unbuckled herself, then sat on the edge of her seat. “It’ll be enough to keep us accelerating, so we’ll get there just a smidge sooner, at the cost of some noble gas. But that’s cheap around Jupiter. And, we get acceleration-gravity!” She jumped off her seat. It took all of three seconds for her boots to touch the ground.

“I suppose that’s a decent luxury,” Ivil said. “Too bad the ship’s not designed to use the main thrusters for this.”

“Urgh, I know,” Twenty-Six said. “I’m real envious of Martian ships. With all the thrust being ‘down,’ it must be nice flying at the entire time.”

“They don’t,” Ivil said. “The ships change acceleration all the time, to be as efficient as possible. It’s actually kind of annoying.”

“Huh,” Twenty-Six said. She reached up to her chest, face contorting into something uncomfortable. “Hey, does hard burn make your breasts hurt too?”

Ivil blinked. “What?”

“Urgh, nevermind.” Twenty-Six said as she shifted her shoulders and adjusted her stance. She eyed Ivil’s chest for a moment, then shook her head.

Ivil glanced down at herself. She… had not considered that kind of issue in a while. “Just wear good support?” she tried.

“Urgh, you say that, but do you have any idea how shit the underwear you can buy on space stations are?” Twenty-Six said. She shook her head, then she walked over to one of the cubbies and started searching for something. She found an elastic band, and soon her hair was tied up in a ginger ponytail, away from her face.

“I suppose I haven’t been so unfortunate as to have to deal with that,” Ivil said.

“You’re lucky,” Twenty-Six said. “Small boobs are an evolutionary advantage in this day and age, I swear.”

“Thank you,” Ivil said flatly. Her uniform was designed to suggest… more than what she had. It was a public relations thing. Though really, she never much cared for that and just wore whatever. Her current outfit was a lot less flatteringly padded. “Well, whatever,” she said. Ivil didn’t do self-image issues.

“Yeah, it’s not a big deal,” Twenty-Six said. “Just annoying at the end of every burn, you know? Anyway… let’s see what broke!”

Twenty-Six grabbed one of the screens and adjusted it so that she could read it properly from her standing position. She frowned, then sighed.

“One fuel line to engine three’s acting weird. I think I heard a knock last time, but I was hoping it was my imagination.” She tapped a few buttons, and a fuel consumption readout appeared. There was a small but consistent bumping in the line on the graph. “Yeah, that’s not supposed to be there.”

“Is that an easy fix?” Ivil asked.

“Nope. Well… maybe. If it’s just a seal then it’s not that bad. Drain the line, open it up, replace the seal. Five, maybe six hours of work. If it’s something less fun, then that’ll be… more work. I think I have everything I need to check the seal. If it’s not that, then we’ll have to see once we’re fully stopped.”

“I’m impressed that you can do that much while we’re underway.”

“Oh, I’m really not supposed to. But we don’t spend a lot of time in docks, so a lot of repairs need to be done on the road,” she said with a shrug. Twenty-Six paused, then looked over to Ivil. She met her eyes for just a moment before glancing away. “Thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

“For listening. And staying here. I know you didn’t have to. This kind of stuff isn’t interesting for everyone.”

“It’s fine,” Ivil said. “Like I said. It’s interesting to me.”

Twenty-Six smiled. It wasn’t the smile Ivil had seen so much on her, the big almost goofy one. This was smaller, more private, somehow more genuine. “Well, thanks anyway. Maybe once we’re around Callisto, you can show me what your work’s like? I’m not big on history, but I promise I’ll listen!”

“I think I might like that,” Ivil said. “But… I think I should head out, for now?” She had received a small ping. A message from Sonic Spectre, asking if Ivil had time to meet.

“Is… is that a pager?!” Twenty-Six asked. Her previously rather cute expression had twisted into something like horror.

Ivil looked up from her pager. “Yes?”

“Why?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Because a normal communications device would let people call me. This is better.”

Twenty-Six shook her head. “I mean… I guess.”

Ivil got up from her seat. The light gravity made it easier to move around. It also made everything seem lighter. She felt strangely refreshed.

She gave Twenty-Six a wave, which she returned. Then Ivil left the engineering room. She had a meeting to get to. Sonic had spent the burn with the others. It might have been enough time for Ivil’s involuntary wing woman to gather some news about the other… potentials.

Sonic Spectre was already waiting in Ivil’s room when she arrived. Her door slid shut, and the room’s sound-proofing activated.

“Hello, ma’am,” Sonic said with a nod of her head. “I think I might have gotten something.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked.

“I met with the… people you were interested in. I managed to strike up conversations, get a bit of small talk going. Nothing too obvious. I think I can tell what each of them is like. I’m not sure how well it’ll help you, but if nothing else, maybe you can use this to decide between the three of them?”

“Four,” Ivil said. “I spent the burn with Miss Twenty-Six. She’s… kind. Cute, even.”

Sonic nodded, and shifted within the confines of her deep-red maid’s dress. There was a faint mechanical clinking sound at the motion. “Miss Aurora is openly suspicious of me. Miss… Missy is also suspicious, but she’s better at hiding it. Mister Hawk was not. He was rather friendly.”

“Interesting,” Ivil said. She settled herself onto the edge of her bed and leaned forward. “Please, go on.”

Sonic cleared her throat. “Miss Aurora was very… focused on her own business. I tried to talk to her, and she didn’t really respond. It may be difficult to engage with her in a romantic way. On the other hand, Missy was friendly enough, but she’s rather….”

“What?”

“She’s rather reserved. I didn’t learn anything about her that I wouldn’t have known from talking to her for the first time. Mister Hawk was just kind. He’s a good conversationalist.”

Ivil nodded along, then narrowed her eyes. “So, how will I determine which one is the right one?”

“What do you plan on doing once you’ve discovered that?” Sonic asked.

“Romance them to the best of my abilities, of course,” Ivil said. “Their enemies will burn, their ambitions will flourish, and I will sweep them off their feet with passion the likes of which the solar system is not ready to see.”

Sonic stared without speaking for some time. “Yes, I’m certain that will work. Now… on the matter of discovery. I think perhaps it would be best to arrange it so that a maximum amount of time passes with you interacting with each candidate. As much time as possible. Even beyond the initial proposed length of this mission.”

“Do you think that would be best?” Ivil asked.

“Yes ma’am, I think that would be best for everyone.”

Chapter twenty

Ancillia Traditions

People don’t do things like they used to.

And this wasn’t just the complaints of the older generation, because even they were touched by the changes.

Marriage was a strange thing in an age where space travel was more common. So was friendship and community. It was hard to build a sense of closeness with a group when that group might be literal worlds apart.

Some managed it well enough. Religions with soft, easily sellable tenets and a constant sense that you’d find like minds wherever you go. Others failed and flopped, or became insular little societies, with all of the petty infighting, arguing, fucking, and drama that one might expect.

Dating in the current century was complicated.

Ivil was aware of this, aware of the challenge, and generally didn’t care. She’d done the impossible a few times throughout her career, usually at the behest of others. This wasn’t impossible, merely improbable, and so she figured it would be significantly easier.

Or so she was telling herself while pacing the interior of her cabin.

The door slid open, and Sonic re-entered.

“So?” Ivil asked.

The Tech Maid adjusted her outfit slightly, then nodded to Ivil. “I have spoken to Miss Sterlingworth and secured a time and place for a meeting.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked. She was impressed. After the initial planning phase (which really just boiled down to the two of them determining that Ivil would need time above all else to arrange things), they had gone on to try to think of ways in which Ivil could interact with the others.

Twenty-Six and Missy were the simplest. The first because she was always working on the ship, and the latter because her duties as first mate would ensure that there were opportunities to talk. Daily meetings would no doubt occur during meal time as well.

That left the final, and trickiest, potential. Aurora Sterlingworth. The Phobian was well within her rights to lock herself up in her cabin and remain there for the entire trip, which would, of course, make conversation with her entirely impossible.

So Ivil had sent Sonic out to rectify that.

“What did you come up with?” Ivil asked.

“Tea, ma’am.”

“Tea?” Ivil repeated.

Sonic nodded seriously. “A small course, to be served in approximately two hours. Including some small finger food from the kitchen. Sterlingworth claims to have a few things from Phobos to serve, and I have Martian tea.”

“You brought tea?” Ivil asked.

Sonic shrugged. “I enjoy it? Tea-making is an important part of the rites and rituals of a Tech Maid.”

“I suppose so,” Ivil said. “Just the three of us then?”

“Yes ma’am,” Sonic said. “Seeing as how your cover story is that of a Martian professor, it will be entirely acceptable for you not to be aware of all of the customs that come with this kind of minor event.”

“Customs?” Ivil asked.

Sonic paused, then nodded. “Yes? The rituals?”

“Ah.”

Ivil didn’t care much for that kind of thing. She barely acknowledged even the military’s customs and formalities, and she spent most of her time on board navy vessels and on military bases. Things like saluting and addressing people in the correct way, filling out the appropriate forms and so on. Those were for others to worry about.

And now that was coming around to bite her. She didn’t want to look incompetent. “Can you teach me the basics?” Ivil asked.

“Certainly,” Sonic said. Her flanging electronic voice was pitched up, faster.

“You sound genuinely excited about teaching me.”

Sonic simply nodded. “I did mention that I put a lot of weight in my faith. My disguise might suggest that I’m pretending to be a Tech Maid, but I have studied this, and I do care about my religion’s traditions. It’ll be a pleasure to teach you about them. Especially since… well, no offence, ma’am, but you are something of a religious icon. While I… respect you more as a person, it’ll still be nice to have you be more aware of the Adeptus Ancillia’s traditions.”

Ivil kept her expression neutral. She didn’t need Sonic seeing her cringe. She was aware that the Tech Maids of Mars held her in a certain regard. She’d always found it somewhat disturbing to be idolised by the order. “Very well. We don’t have much time, so let’s just cover the basics?”

Sonic moved deeper into the room, then gestured to the wall where a fold-down set of chairs and a small table were still pressed up and out of the way. “May I?” she asked, and at Ivil’s nod, she lowered the seats and table, then sat. “Our rituals may seem somewhat arcane and bizarre from an outsider’s perspective.”

“Yes,” Ivil agreed.

“But there are reasons for every one. Some are shrouded in a small amount of mystery, and some are traditions which have evolved over time and whose true utility is questionable at best, but for the most part, all of the traditions of the Ancillia have a reason to exist.”

Ivil sat across from Sonic, gesturing for her to go on.

“There are many tenets and traditions which I won’t explain now, owing to how little time we have.”

“Do I need this background?” Ivil asked.

“That is a fair question. I think that given the option between teaching you the mechanical part of the tea-making ritual, and teaching you the why behind it, I’d rather have you know and understand the underlying reasons for the ritual.”

“Ah, I see. I might not carry them out correctly, but at least I’ll be acting in good faith. And it won’t imply that I’m entirely aware of the Adeptus Ancillia’s entire… thing.”

“Exactly. It’s better to have to act as someone unfamiliar but respectable, than someone who knows the ins and outs of a tradition. If quizzed, then you can honestly say that you’re only acting out of respect, rather than admitting that your entire knowledge is limited on how to act during a single, peculiar ritual.”

“I understand. Go on,” Ivil said.

Sonic nodded. “The Ancillia exists to support people with cores, such as ourselves, and Miss Sterlingworth, and… maybe Missy?”

Ivil nodded. “She has a couple,” she confirmed. “I don’t know what they are, but they’re smaller, subtle.”

“Good to know. In any case, the Ancillia supports core users in several ways. Originally by cleaning and picking up after the users, taking care of their technical needs, and providing information and technological resources. Hence, Tech Maids. As the order grew into something closer to what it is now, those areas of support grew as well. Every ordained member of the order is taught the basics of psychology, especially with regards to the issues that a core user might have.”

“Ah,” Ivil said. “So things like body dysphoria and the like?”

“Dysphoria is common, especially as someone grows in power.” Sonic gestured to herself, to her doll mask. Ivil doubted there was anything approaching a real face under that mask, and the way Sonic moved something hinted at how she might not even have a human form anymore. “There are other issues. Narcissism is common, mood swings, difficulty connecting with peers and normal people. The tea-making ritual is designed to notice these issues before they fully form.”

“So it’s a psychological test?” Ivil asked.

“Without the long chair and sterile environment of a psychologist’s office,” Sonic confirmed. “It’s also just a way to keep in touch and probe at difficult questions without seeming crass or rude about it. And it helps form connections between the members. The ritual itself gives everyone something to do, even if it’s just observing the ritual itself and partaking, which keeps you busy and prevents some of the awkwardness that might be present otherwise. Within the order it’s actually considered one of the best ways to meet someone.”

“Romantically?”

“Yes,” Sonic confirmed. “Or just casually, or professionally. The goal is to assess another’s mental state, which as you can imagine, is important throughout most facets of life.”

Ivil nodded along. She was still uncertain of what this ritual looked like, but she supposed that Sonic wasn’t entirely wrong when she said that knowing the purpose of it would help more than knowing the motions. Anything designed to help her learn more about one of her potentials, while interacting with them face-to-face, would be quite valuable.

“Dress code?” Ivil asked.

“Business casual,” Sonic replied. “There’s a certain standard of dress expected of a Tech Maid, but that requirement isn’t extended to guests and others. Though I imagine that you wouldn’t want to appear sloppy.”

“No, of course not,” Ivil said. She stood, then walked over to her luggage. “Right. In that case, I think I have some business attire in here.”

“That should do,” Sonic said. “I should head out and prepare the venue. We’ll be having tea in the upper observatory room. I think it’s technically the ship’s server bank as well, but this is hardly a luxury ship with dedicated rooms for this sort of thing.”

“We’ll make do,” Ivil replied. She was actually looking forward to this.

Chapter twenty-one

Daughter of Phobos

Phobos had always been in a precarious position. The unwanted moon of Mars. The now-rich child, reaping the rewards of long years as an outcast. It was a strange place in a no-doubt unique position, able to leverage its newly found advantages, but wary of doing too much and earning the attention of the true big players in the solar system.

Ivil couldn’t help but wonder if that kind of thing was what encouraged Aurora to move away from her homeworld. Was she chasing opportunities, or running away from trouble?

In any case, she imagined she might find out before the end of the day.

Sonic led the way to the room where the tea ritual was to be had. She walked with a slight bounce to her step. It was hard not to in the extremely low gravity in the ship. Sonic reached the last bulkhead, then paused before it. “Are you ready, ma’am?” she asked.

Sonic had already gathered a few things for the ritual. A large plastic container filled with water, and a box made of lacquered wood with a few inlays upon it. No doubt the box was worth its weight in precious metals, seeing as how wood was often more precious than gold.

“I’m ready,” Ivil said with a nod.

The door was pushed open, and Ivil scanned the room as she entered it. Aurora was there already, which she’d known for some time. It was hard not to notice the woman, especially as she had a few cores that Ivil could sense.

The room itself was… nothing too special. It was alongside the cockpit, with another bulkhead door leading into the ship’s command room. The front had a narrow but tall window looking out into empty space, and the centre of the room had a small, fixed table, surrounded by magnetised stools.

“Hello, Miss Sterlingworth,” Sonic said as she moved closer to the table.

Aurora smiled in greetings. “Hello, Savant Pendergast,” she said, addressing Sonic by her title. “And Miss Ville as well.”

“Just Evelyn, please,” Ivil replied as she took the stool next to Aurora, a hand swiping beneath her legs to adjust her skirt. She was… not fond of skirts, especially in a low-gravity environment, but she could admit that a pencil skirt did suit her figure.

Aurora looked at her, then nodded. “Evelyn, then. And of course you’ll call me Aurora?”

“Certainly,” Ivil replied. This was going better than she’d feared. At least, so far.

“I shall now begin the ritual,” Sonic said. “Please, feel free to talk and enjoy each other’s company during these early phases.”

“Thank you,” Aurora said.

Ivil nodded along, then watched as Sonic started to withdraw tools and equipment from within her outfit. It rapidly became obvious that she wasn’t hiding the fact that she had a number of cores suitable to the task of either miniaturising items or storing them in pocket space. She stared, then nodded to herself. Pocket space, definitely.

The table soon had a cloth draped over it in the deep red of the Adeptus Ancillia, then Sonic placed several small sets of cutlery before each sitting area, followed by a metal plate in the centre of the table onto which more items were placed.

Everything clicked together, and it was clear that every item was magnetised.

“What sort of tea will we be enjoying?” Aurora asked.

“Martian oolong,” Sonic said. “Cultivated in the Walking Cathedral of Saint George the Dust-Slayer.”

“Impressive,” Aurora said with the same tone Ivil might expect from a tourist entirely unaware of why something was impressive to begin with. Ivil didn’t blame her.

Sonic placed the last of her things onto the table, then without much pomp, began the ritual. It started when she opened that little box and removed a small glass jar filled with loose tea leaves. She extracted three small tablespoons from the jar and placed them within a small stainless container. Then she poured some water into an electric kettle and hummed while it started to boil.

Before placing the tea leaves within a second kettle, this one glass, Sonic poured some of the almost-boiling water within it and swirled it about. She then poured the water out.

“What is that for?” Ivil wondered.

“I think it’s to avoid the coolness of the kettle from impacting the tea. Essentially pre-heating the kettle,” Aurora said. “Or something like that. I’ll admit that while I’ve spoken to several Ancillia, they aren’t as common a sight on Phobos as they might be on Mars.”

“Really? I would have suspected otherwise. The Ancillia seem a lot more capable when it comes to handling the difficult living conditions of Phobos. Or… pardon me, the previously difficult conditions.”

Aurora shook her head. “No, you don’t need to worry so much about that, Miss V—Evelyn. I’m well aware that Phobos was not always paradise. We still have unfortunate amounts radiation, and the moon’s surface is still dangerous. But yes, the Ancillia has always been a boon. They can, and do, go everywhere on the moon, and their presence is very welcome.”

“But not enough for you to seek out one for a… partner?” Ivil asked.

Aurora blinked, then she blushed quite prettily. “Ah, no, not really. I’m a very busy woman, and while the Ancillia is a wonderful group, I can’t help but think that they would not be a good fit for me.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked. She glanced over to Sonic, and was pleased to note that the maid seemed entirely focused on her task. “Why not?”

Aurora’s blush deepened. “They are just so…” She struggled for words. “Different? From most other people. Their minds are different. Not bad, but not the same.”

Ivil had a few choice words about how different someone could be and still be compatible, but she held back. “Forgive me if this is intrusive, but are you married, Aurora?”

“Not yet,” Aurora said. “But there are several suitors interested in me. It’s one of the reasons I’m travelling to Callisto right now. My father and mother have arranged a few meetings.”

“Ah, I see,” Ivil said. She wasn’t particularly surprised, nor did she know why she was disappointed. She was aware that the young woman was wealthy and that her family was influential. The thought of an arranged marriage was… She could hardly claim that it was unheard of, but it didn’t appeal to her. Ivil reached over and gently touched Aurora’s shoulder. “You’re a very attractive woman, I’m certain the suitors must be clamouring after you.”

Aurora’s blush, which had just been receding, reemerged with a vengeance. Ivil held back a smile. She’d rarely met someone so quick to become flushed. Most of the people she dealt with were more military minded, where shows of emotion were a weakness. Aurora had all of the control of a flustered teenager, but Ivil found it rather cute, instead of the annoyance it usually was.

The tea was made, and the scent of oolong wafted through the air. The ritual continued, with the kettle and its contents placed on a heatproof pad in the centre of the table, and then a plate was added with some food. Small sandwiches and some tiny pastries, which were all carefully crafted.

“Thank you,” Ivil said as Sonic poured into the cup before her, then went on to fill Aurora’s and her own. “I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed this type of tea before. It smells wonderful.”

“The tea can be moderated with honey or cream. The honey is imported from Earth, the cream from Luna,” Sonic said.

“No Martian honey or cream?” Ivil asked.

“They’re both inferior,” Aurora said. “For all that Mars is a behemoth, there are several things that the world lacks. Luxury agriculture is one of those. It’s one of the other reasons for my trip to Jupiter’s moons.”

“Do they do things better?” Ivil asked.

“Some things, yes,” Aurora said. “A lot of the moons in the solar system find themselves needing to focus on a specific niche. Making, creating, or processing something unique to them that they can sell to the rest of the system. Moons cannot stand alone, unlike the inner planets.”

Ivil nodded along. It wasn’t as if Aurora was sharing some amazing new discovery. The truth was obvious enough. The planets had it good, the rest could muddle along. She did appreciate Aurora’s willingness to share her thoughts.

Across from her, Sonic was sitting, steaming cup placed before her, a small pastry next to it. Her hands were on her lap while she stared. She was very pointedly not moving the doll mask she wore to taste her own tea.

Ivil took a sip. It was hot enough that it might have burned someone less resilient. “This tastes quite nice,” she admitted. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome,” Sonic said with a small bow. “I live to serve.”

Chapter twenty-two

Chemistry

There was some actual evidence that tea, herbal or otherwise, could have an effect on a human body which would lead to an effect on the human mind.

Ivil was quite certain that her brain lacked any chemistry that could be impacted by any amount of tea, and yet she still found herself relaxing as the ritual carried on. Sonic had poured them all a second cup, this time with less fanfare, and the discussion had turned towards a somewhat contentious topic: personal political beliefs.

“I never understood it,” Ivil said. “It’s a waste of time, and you know that the votes don’t matter.”

“The votes don’t…” Aurora sat up in her seat and pointed right at Ivil. “Yours, alone, might not, but it’s the weight of votes that matter. The political apparatus only exists because of the will of the people. And the will of the people needs to be aimed. It’s not just about voting on an issue, it’s about making yourself heard in a calm, rational way, and also seeing what your co-citizens think as well.”

“Yes, sure, but do you know how few people actually vote at all?” Ivil asked.

Some time ago, when Mars was still young as a nation, it had tried to adopt a “true democracy” system. Every citizen of age and of sound mind had a vote. Votes came up almost on a weekly basis, covering a wide range of subjects and issues. Essentially, every action and piece of legislation passed by the civilian government was only passed by vote.

With a few trusted intelligences observing the voting procedure, there had only been a few historical moments of fraud or duplicity.

Which didn’t matter, in Ivil’s opinion, because of two large reasons. “And besides the fact that only one in a few hundred thousand people actually vote on anything, the real reins of power aren’t in the hands of the civilians. It’s all in the military.”

Aurora crossed her arms with a humph. “That’s a Mars problem. You’ve let too much power fall into the hands of the army, and not enough is retained with the people. But even setting that aside, I think that the full right to vote is still important. It adds legitimacy to the government and its actions.”

“Actions which only matter as long as no one truly powerful steps in,” Ivil added.

Aurora raised her head, displaying her nostrils at Ivil. “Do you truly think that anyone is powerful enough to really stand against the bulk of what humanity has to offer? Individually, a person alone might be weak, but by participating in the growth of their nation they create something more powerful than themselves!”

“That wouldn’t matter to any one of the emperors,” Ivil said.

Aurora rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “Arguments like these always devolve when those three are mentioned.”

“I don’t know,” Ivil said. “I think it’s telling that the three greatest powers all have an emperor. And that those same emperors aren’t tied to the political powers of the nations they represent. That’s probably for the best.”

“At least you can recognize that stripping the people’s power and giving it to one sole person would be tyrannical,” Aurora said.

“Hmm? Oh, no, I think it’s best because I firmly believe that at least two out of the three emperors are massive pieces of… well, best not to say in polite company.”

Aurora blinked, then broke out into giggles. She relaxed some, her shoulders dropping and some of the tension leaving her. Ivil enjoyed the sound of her laughter, though, if she were being honest with herself, she’d enjoyed Aurora’s passion too.

“So, only two out of three?” Aurora asked. “Does that mean you don’t have an issue with one of them?”

“I have a soft-spot for the Empress of Mars,” Ivil admitted. She didn’t dislike herself, most of the time.

Aurora shook her head. “You would. You shouldn’t believe all of that Martian propaganda about her. She’s as rotten as the rest.”

Sonic chose that moment to cough, causing both Ivil and Aurora to jump and turn her way. Ivil had almost forgotten that the Tech Maid was even in the room with them, and it seemed the same for Aurora.

“Are you well?” Aurora asked. “Did you choke on…” She glanced at Sonic’s untouched food and tea. “Did you choke?”

“I’m well. Forgive me,” Sonic said. “Though, we might want to consider starting the end-rituals for this session. I believe I hear Missy and the captain coming this way.”

No sooner had she finished than Missy stepped into the room. She paused by the entrance, taking the three of them in for a moment before dismissing them and moving to the head of the room where a small navigation console sat.

“Is something the matter?” Ivil asked.

Missy was moving with alacrity. On a ship that was already underway, there were few things that should cause the crew to want to move quickly. One of those was the turn and burn that they’d eventually have to execute, but they were well over a week shy of that manoeuvre. Every other scenario that popped into Ivil’s mind was more dire than the last.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Missy said. She sounded distracted even as she said it. The woman locked eyes on the navigation computer’s screen, then tugged the seat out, sat, and pulled a cord from the computer. A moment later it was wired into the base of her skull, and she was glaring at the machine.

Ivil frowned, then schooled her features. Aurora and Missy were here and accounted for. They were as safe as could be. Twenty-Six might not be.

With a twist of her will, her senses expanded, encompassing all of the Held Together and several kilometres of empty space beyond in an instant.

Sonic glanced her way, but kept mum as Ivil took in the ship and all of its occupants. There was… more rust than she’d imagined, and several parts on the ship that were rattling in disconcerting ways, but not serious damage. Twenty-Six was in her room, fiddling with some small part on her workbench. The rest of the crew was spread around, working or cooking.

She pulled her attention back to herself and let out a small breath. Everything was fine. Everything that she could perceive without giving anything away, in any case. “What’s the matter?” she asked, this time with less give.

“Fuck,” Missy said plainly as she unhooked herself and stood. “Stay here.” She left, heading back into the cockpit and tugging the door shut behind her.

“That’s concerning,” Aurora said.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Ivil said.

She wanted to do something, of course. These last couple of days had been strangely passive. She was used to either taking direct action, or being on the path to do so, but right now she’d been forced to sit back and wait. It was a bizarre change of pace.

There was motion in the cockpit, Missy and the captain arguing over something in hushed tones.

Ivil was preparing to listen in when Aurora stood and moved over to the navigation computer. She fished out the same wire Missy had used, then squinted at it. “This thing is ancient,” she said.

“Were you going to plug yourself into the ship’s systems without permission?” Ivil asked.

“I have good ICE,” Aurora said. “I’d be fine. I can’t imagine the Held Together has great security. Then again… I suppose it’s protected by obsolescence.”

“May I?” Sonic asked as she stood, brushed down the front of her outfit, then swept over to the console. Her mask tilted to the side, and she plucked the wire away, slipping it under the mask.

Ivil and Aurora both watched as the Tech Maid stood very still for some long moments. “Ah. we are being chased,” Sonic replied. “Three ships. All of larger tonnage, on vectors that will have them catching up to us within six hours.”

“What kinds of ships?” Ivil asked. Could it be Mars? Though she’d imagine that they’d be more subtle about their pursuit if they tried.

“The Held Together’s sensor suite is… about as old as everything else, I’m afraid,” Sonic said.

“Well, give us what you have, at least,” Ivil suggested.

“No IFFs on any of the three ships… no, wait, one of them is a cargo freighter registered in Ceres, but its ID’s mass and the suggested mass reading from the sensors don’t add up. Two of them are going to arrive earlier than the third. No weapons readouts, but I don’t think this system could do that.”

“Pirates,” Aurora said. She leaned back, hands falling to her sides. “They’re pirates. From Ceres.”

“Well, that’ll spice up the trip, won’t it?” Ivil asked.

Chapter twenty-three

Pirates

The average space pirate belonged to a specific category of the insane.

They were not the average sort of mad. No, their sickness was one of the wallet as much as it was one of the mind. They were business people with a specific job: Take shit, sell it. The shit wasn’t theirs, but that wasn’t their problem. They didn’t even need to pay taxes!

A spaceship, even an old junker like the Held Together, was worth a few million on the market. Cargo ships tended to leave one or two containers a little loose when flying through the belt, just in case. These could be jettisoned as a sort of tax to lure away pirates.

That was, if the pirates weren’t after the money that could be made in the human trade. Hostages could be worth a fortune.

The three ships after them were pirate ships from beam to bow. These weren’t your grandpa’s pirate ships, old things cobbled together from modified freighters. These were built for trouble.

Where the average ship had armour designed to take a micrometeorite, these had foot-thick steel plates. They bristled with armaments like a gun salesman at a convention.

Wanna talk thrust? Ships like the Held Together had engines tacked on to their asses like a last-minute addition. These three were nothing but engine. They had gams like a runway model. Between the guns and the engines and the armour, there wasn’t much room for anything else.

That was fine. They weren’t meant to be lived in, they were meant to take lives.

Ivil was splitting her attention between the goings-on in the cockpit and the three approaching ships. The Held Together’s computer might have been ancient, but it could calculate vectors well enough, and it was spot on when it predicted their demise.

In just over three hours, the pirates would be on them like back-alley muggers.

“This isn’t so bad,” she said.

That had the crew and passengers shutting up and turning her way. Ivil found herself the centre of everyone’s attention. And it was everyone, because there wasn’t a single person on the Held Together who wasn’t crammed into the cockpit.

“What do you mean?” Twenty-Six asked timidly.

Ivil found herself more comfortable now than she’d been over the past couple of days. There was violence coming her way, and being in the path of violence was her spot. “They’re going to catch up to us soon, which means that they’re doing slow-down burns already. If their plan was to kill us, then the first we’d learn about them, especially with this ship’s lacking ability to see anything, would be when we got struck by a missile.”

Ivil had seen it often enough, an unaware convoy getting struck from the black by a missile on a ballistic course. It was space warfare 101.

“So, we’re only alive because they… what, wanna buzz by us?” Donny asked.

“No,” Aurora said. “They’re here for hostages.”

Now everyone was looking at her, especially the captain. “I’m assuming you expect to be one of those?” she asked.

Aurora nodded slowly. “Yes. Truthfully, I expect that I’m the only politically worthwhile person here. No offence meant, of course. Perhaps Miss Ville as well, and the Tech Maid would be… valuable.”

“Only because she has a few cores,” Missy said.

“She has cores?!” Twenty-Six gasped. Her eyes, as round as saucers, turned to Sonic and locked on. “That’s so cool! I’ve never met a core user. What do yours do?”

“Two-Six,” Missy said. “Not the time.”

“Oh, right, impending death, sorry,” Twenty-Six said with a wince.

Sonic shrugged. “It’s fine. Curiosity doesn’t hurt. Miss Sterlingworth, are you certain the pirates are after us because they’re aware of your presence?”

“It could be random chance,” Aurora said. “Captain, is this ship carrying anything valuable?”

“No,” the captain said. “Freeze-dried goods, some hydroponics parts. A single crate of postage. Nothing that’ll make pirates turn their attention our way. It’s a pretty light run, all things considered. The Held Together’s been targeted a few times. Usually when they ask us to drop our cargo we jettison whatever’s cheapest, then burn hard.”

“But no demands this time,” Ivil said.

“Not a squeak,” Hawk muttered. He was sitting by the comms, as if waiting for it to ring with a call from the pirates.

“In that case, what are our options?” Ivil asked.

“We try to run, we keep on course and let them reach us, or we fight back,” the captain said.

“Flight, surrender, or fight,” Missy grumbled. “I don’t like any of those options, but realistically, there’s little we can do.”

“If we surrender, what’re the odds they’ll blow us up once they’ve got the lady?” Donny asked.

Aurora shot him a look that might very well be able to kill, but the man didn’t have any brains to broil, so he missed it entirely.

“We’re not surrendering Miss Sterlingworth,” Ivil said. At the moment, she ranked Aurora at the top of her list of potential romantic interests. Though if Twenty-Six continued to be so cute she might make up the difference. Missy was in a cold third, and Hawk was quickly falling behind.

In any case, as much as Ivil appreciated her current cover and the vague anonymity it provided, she was more than willing to discard it to ruin the day of some pirates.

She wasn’t going to break her cover on purpose, not if she could avoid it, but if the time came to make a choice, there would suddenly be fewer pirates haunting the solar system.

“What will happen if they do reach us?” Twenty-Six asked. She sounded much smaller than usual. Ivil wanted to hug her.

“They’ll either send demands over short-range coms, or shoot out the engines,” the captain said. “Then it’s either a boarding, in which case we might get gunned down, or they’ll pin the ship to one of theirs and drag us back to their base.”

“Do we know where that is?” Ivil asked.

“No,” the captain said.

“Yes,” Missy and Sonic said at the same time.

The cockpit filled with more awkward silence. Missy, who was sitting on one of the consoles, folded a leg up and crossed her arms onto her knee. “Go on,” she said.

Sonic nodded. “I studied what the Ordo had about the route between Ceres and Jupiter before boarding the Held Together,” she began, her slightly tinny voice echoing through the bridge. “That included known pirates, their area of influence, and the location of their bases of operation. At least, those that are known.”

“You ID’d them too, huh?” Missy asked.

Sonic gestured to the next room over, where they’d looked at the distant, fuzzy image of the pirate ships. “The vessels are Dominator-class fast-attack frigates. A Ceres-pattern design, evolved from an Earth Alliance design. They are, at most, thirty-six years old, though the model is still being produced to this day. It’s a popular design.”

“Speedy pirate ships, yeah,” Donny said.

“If it’s common, how did you guess where they’re from?” Hawk asked.

“I’d like to know the same,” the captain said.

The Tech Maid gestured in the vague direction of the ships. “All three of them are painted in blue and red. There is only one pirate group that operates within this area, uses those colours, and uses that kind of ship.”

“The Convent Valkyries,” Missy said.

“Ah… well, that’s not so bad,” Donny said. He bumped his elbow against Hawk. “All-ladies pirates. Kinda hot, no?”

“They castrate any man they capture,” Missy continued.

Donny’s smile fell, and so did his blood pressure, judging by how white he went.

“They’re an elite force. Or as elite as pirates can be,” Sonic said. “Usually they track down big targets for big pay. Large cargo haulers, even those with escorts. Some military vessels, some diplomatic. They’ve hunted bounty hunters and cruise ships. They only take a few targets down every year, but they’re always big.”

“The Held Together is not exactly a big target,” Ivil said.

Aurora took a deep breath, then let it out. “It’s me. It’s definitely me.”

“Why?” Twenty-Six asked innocently.

Aurora looked around, then shook her head. “The event I’m going to has… very important political ramifications. There are billions of dollars on the line. More than enough to attract someone who’d be willing to pay some pirates to stop me.”

“They’re trying to capture, not kill. At least as far as we can tell,” Ivil said.

“The Convent Valkyries are known to double-cross clients, usually after their work was successfully accomplished,” Sonic said. “I don’t know whether that’ll be a factor or not.”

“So… what, we just get grabbed, then die?” Donny asked.

“We don’t know,” the captain said. “It’ll depend a lot on how they decide to act. What we won’t do is surrender so easily. The Held Together has some options. Their base is close?”

“It’s not too distant from this part of the belt,” Sonic confirmed.

“Then it’s likely they’ll drag us back. We might find an option along the way,” the captain said.

She didn’t sound so certain, and Ivil saw the way she eyed Aurora. She suspected that if the captain had to choose between her ship and crew and Miss Sterlingworth, then Aurora might soon find herself tossed to the pirates.

Chapter twenty-four

Meet the Freebootas

They started as pacifists.

An entire colony, abandoning Earth to look for their fortunes in the stars, or at least, in the asteroid belt, because that was as far as they made it.

The Convent, like all the religious fanatics to make it out into space, were particularly practical. They believed in technology, they didn’t have any major superstitions that would keep them down, and they were relatively open to trade and discussion with others.

Their faith was, for the most part, based on the druidaic. A love for nature which turned into a desperate need to escape Earth.

The irony wasn’t lost on them.

And so they settled in the belt. Devout pacifists, working together to form a peaceful little community that wanted to mind its own business, convert the occasional person tired of the grind, and whose primary faith revolved around a set of simple tenets.

The first was the simplest and most potent: No man shall bear arms against another man.

That didn’t work out so well for them, not when their new home was close to the burgeoning centre for piracy that was Ceres. A whole colony of people that were unable or unwilling to fight back? That was like putting a hobbled rabbit in a pen with starving wolves.

And so the Convent almost died.

Almost.

The rule was “No man shall bear arms.”

That said nothing about an angry self-proclaimed witch with a stolen assault rifle and her twenty pissed off girlfriends.

The Convent’s home had turned into a safe space for pirates to come and rest. They’d steal what they wanted, bully the locals, and generally treat them all like shit. They got used to treating the station like a second home. They let their guard down.

In the space of a week, the Convent turned into a space no pirate wanted to visit. Not when every previous pirate had their flensed corpses draped across the station like garlands on a tree.

From there, the Convent grew to be some of the most fearsome bounty hunters, pirates, and freebootas in the system.

That was what the Held Together was dealing with. The third generation of people who’d become the most vicious sort of pirate, not because they wanted to, not because of greed, but out of plain necessity.

The crew and passengers argued in circles for the full three hours before the pirate ships were right on top of them.

Ivil kept to herself in that time, just watching the tensions rise while contributing nothing to prevent it or push that rise. Instead, she enjoyed watching the reactions of everyone. Aurora had gone on the defensive, and seemed increasingly waspish. Twenty-Six grew more and more despondent, and Missy was growing more casual to the idea of tossing Aurora to the wolves.

That high tension might have been why everyone jumped as the comms panel beeped to tell them of an incoming message.

The captain walked over and stared. “It’s a tight-beam, from the lead ship. IFF displays as the Amelia Earhart.”

“Are you going to answer?” Missy asked.

The captain hesitated. “Clear the room,” she said

“I’d rather not,” Ivil replied.

It had the captain’s hackles rising, but it also put her in the unenviable situation of having to negotiate with a crowd. Ivil suspected that if it came to it, the captain would sell Aurora to keep her ship and crew in one piece. It was a lot harder to sell someone to pirates when they were in the room.

The captain adjusted the little camera linked to the com’s panel, sat down, then accepted the call. The screen filled with fuzz for just a moment before the call connected properly.

The person on the other end immediately gave Ivil pause.

She was a woman, maybe a few years older than Ivil herself. Long blonde hair tied neatly so as to be out of her face, and wearing a white-and-gold jumpsuit with armoured shoulders. The front of it was slipped down, revealing… a lot more than was strictly necessary to reveal. Not that Ivil minded, in the moment.

“Oh good, you answered,” she said. Her voice was husky, a faint purr at once alluring and menacing. She’d spoken four words and already Ivil had the impression of a cat that liked to play with its meal.

The captain swallowed. “I’m the captain of the Held Together,” she replied. “I don’t imagine this is all a misunderstanding and you’re just saying hello as you slip by?”

The pirate chuckled. “I’m afraid not, captain. I’m Convent Captain Rouge Herring, and you’re my delicious little prey. This is a courtesy call. Don’t try to run. It’ll just mean that we have to blow your engines, and that’ll make everyone’s life more complicated. So here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to fully shut down your engines, and you’re going to slave your manoeuvring thrusters to my ship.”

“What are you planning on doing?” the captain asked.

“Sweetie, I’m going to do whatever I want. And so are you. What I want, that is.” She leaned forwards, almost spilling out of her jumpsuit, but soon enough Ivil was focused on her smile. “You do what I say, and you might come out of this in one piece, okay?”

The line went dead.

The captain leaned back into her seat. She didn’t move.

Missy did in her stead. “Fuck!” she shouted before punching the side of a console on the other side of the bridge. The bridge was otherwise quiet while the screen crackled and popped.

Missy looked around, then stomped out of the bridge.

“Should we…” Donny started.

“You have that old gun of yours, still?” the captain asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Might be a good time to find it.”

He nodded, then left as well.

Twenty-Six hesitated, then with a sigh, she moved over to the console that Missy had punched, opened the panel on its side up with a twist, and started to look at the wires within. Ivil wasn’t sure what the value of fixing that now would be, but she didn’t tell Twenty-Six not to bother. If it kept her busy, then it was for the best.

“We’re going to fight,” the captain said.

“I didn’t bring any weapons,” Ivil replied. “But I’ll help where I can.”

“As will I,” Sonic added.

The captain nodded, and soon Hawk was sent to scrounge up what weapons he could. Twenty-Six continued to tinker quietly in the corner. She was breathing hard, on the verge of tears.

Ivil started to approach her, but was stopped by Sonic. “Ma’am,” Sonic muttered. She was keeping the conversation between them, manipulating the sound so that only the two of them would be able to hear.

“Yes?” Ivil muttered.

“What do you plan on doing?”

Ivil considered it for a moment. “I was planning on waiting to see. That pirate was… attractive.” Sonic made a sound that might very well have been a sigh. “But she’s also a pirate. I’m not too keen on their ilk. On the other hand, this ship is… not ideal. I wouldn’t mind seeing where all of this leads, but if the time comes where the potentials are actually threatened, then I’ll step in.”

“You could take them out now,” Sonic pointed out.

“Easily. But I don’t want to. Not yet,” Ivil said. Sonic nodded slowly, then stepped back, allowing Ivil to move past. “If it comes to it, though, could you keep an eye on everyone? It would be a shame for them to die.”

“Of course,” Sonic replied.

Ivil walked over to Twenty-Six, then she gingerly reached out and touched the younger woman on the shoulder. Twenty-Six jumped, then blinked up at Ivil. Her eyes were a little watery, and definitely worried. “Are you alright?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six nodded. “Yeah. Just… Missy broke something. Usually it’s Donny that breaks things. I… I don’t know if I can fix it.”

Ivil glanced at the console. The wires within looked burned, and she caught a faint odour of melted plastic in the air. A short circuit? That seemed unlikely, but then the Held Together was a junker, so perhaps it wasn’t all that surprising. “Do you need help?”

“I need to rewire it,” Twenty-Six said. “It’s easy enough.”

Ivil had the impression that Twenty-Six wasn’t actually worried about the console. It would have been foolish of her, and everything she saw pointed towards Twenty-Six being clever. “Would you like some help?”

“I’ll manage,” Twenty-Six said. She just stared at the mess of wires, not moving. Finally, she reached towards it, but her hands were trembling, and she dropped them. “I don’t like it,” she said.

“I see,” Ivil replied. “What if I promised that you’d be safe?”

Twenty-six chuckled darkly. “Thanks. I don’t know… I don’t know if that would actually help any. But thanks.”

“Just stick close. No one will hurt you while I’m around. And maybe if everything goes right, we’ll come out of this in better shape than we started? That’s certainly happened to me a couple of times.”

“Thanks,” Twenty-Six said again. “Really, I… I’m just worried.”

“And that’s natural. There’s a lot to be worried about. I don’t know about this old ship, but you, at least, I can keep safe. I promise. And that’s a promise that’s worth more than you might imagine.”

Chapter twenty-five

Velocity

The three emperors might have been the de facto rulers of the solar system, but the true king of the universe? That was velocity.

To a layperson, something moving at a relative speed of a metre a second might seem like a joke.

To a spacer, it was a nightmare.

In the vast emptiness of space, speed was as good as mass when it came to ruining your day. There was a reason that even with near-magical technological advancements, the humble bullet was still prized by everyone who wanted their neighbour dead.

That’s why Ivil was moderately impressed as the pirates came in close and one of the ships swooped in and captured the Held Together. It was a beautiful manoeuvre, the ship slowing down just a few kilometres away, matching their velocity and almost matching their heading so that the two ships came in closer in the span of a dozen minutes.

The pirate ship adjusted its flight with manoeuvring thrusters, then collided with the Held Together like a bowling ball landing in a pit full of feathers. There was a loud crash, then an uncomfortable crunch as the Held Together was grabbed.

Twenty-Six whimpered at the noise, and Ivil could imagine why. That sounded like an expensive amount of damage.

Then the pirates called again. This time there was no video, and the speaker was some uninteresting nobody that Ivil tuned out.

They were to get into crash seats now, or forever be turned into pieces.

The Held Together had enough seats in the bridge for most of the crew and all of the guests, even if it meant that Aurora had to sit in front of the communications console. They were strangely, oppressively, quiet as they all sat in the unfolding crash seats and buckled themselves in.

The pirate ship took control over the Held Together’s systems, slaving them to their own, then they were turned around.

There was little warning as, a minute later, the pirate ship did a hard slow-down burn that had the entire crew pressed into their seats.

It wasn’t as intense of a burn as what they’d used to accelerate. Probably because the pirates were aware of how foolish such a hard burn would be when only connected to a ship via some flimsy supports. That meant to change their path, they’d need to burn for a lot longer.

Ivil shifted in her seat, making herself comfortable. She was aware that the others weren’t enjoying it nearly as much. A hard burn that only lasted an hour or two was one thing to experience. A softer burn that still pressed them into their seats for several hours? That was a whole other ordeal, and it seemed as if the crew, passengers, and ship weren’t appreciating it all that much.

She heard things snapping and breaking deeper in the ship. The Held Together wasn’t living up to its name at the moment.

The burn ended as suddenly as it had begun, but before anyone could unstrap from their seats they were spun around, and then the burn resumed, this time pushing from the other direction.

An immediate speed up and slow down, which could only mean that the pirates were rushing to get them back, and probably didn’t care much about their own fuel consumption. The turn took a toll on the ship. More parts snapped and crunched.

Ivil expanded her attention and felt an uncharacteristic pang of pity, specifically for Twenty-Six. The ship wasn’t enjoying the pirates’ treatment of it.

Ivil sat back and relaxed.

It might have seemed uncharacteristic for her to be so calm while doing so little, but the reality was that she’d long grown used to inaction. Even when she wanted to move at her own pace, the realities of grand distances meant that at best, she could rush ahead and start trouble a day or two before reinforcements arrived.

Being so fast all on her own was an advantage, but so was showing up with an entire fleet as backup.

For a long part of her career, she’d been a threat that was easily dismissed. One person, no matter how powerful, was still just one person. Some people couldn’t appreciate the level of threat she posed. They were far more respectful with the might of Mars at their doorstep.

That had changed as she became one of the three emperors, but it had taken a while to reach that level.

The slow-down didn’t last as long as their ramp up, though there was a moment at the end where they boosted much harder, and Ivil heard almost everyone in the bridge grunt as they were crushed into their seats with no warning.

Finally, they slowed to something more reasonable. The deceleration was still noticeable enough that they were being pushed back, but it wasn’t nearly that bad.

Missy reached to the console before her and tapped a few things. The screen at the front of the bridge turned on, showing them an image of empty space. Or nearly empty. Missy zoomed in on something in the centre, a small, distant white speck that might have been one of the stains on the screen. As she zoomed in, the form became more obvious.

A station, embedded into the side of an asteroid, with several dozen long sections reaching out of it, and two large rings in its centre. There were some two dozen ships docked at the station already, and a small patrol of them hovering nearby.

“Is that our pirates’ hideout?” Ivil asked.

“Looks like it,” Missy replied. The colours were right. Lots of reds and blues. “We need to decide what to do.”

“We negotiate, and we hope,” the captain said. “We’ve slipped out of tougher situations before, I’m sure we can make it out of this.”

Ivil glanced at the captain, noting how she was gripping the arms of her seat with white knuckles. It was unfortunate, but Ivil didn’t expect that the captain would have a ship by the day’s end. It had to sting. The Held Together was a generationally owned ship.

“We could steal one of their ships,” Ivil said. “They certainly have plenty.”

Some of the pirate ships looked decent enough. There was even a berth on the far side of the station that looked more like a shipyard than anything else. Large mechanical arms were reaching out towards a half-built vessel, assembling it piece by piece.

“Where are our escorts?” Sonic asked.

“Behind,” Missy replied. “Two ships, keeping about five kilometres between us and them. We’ve been getting lock-on signals this entire time. Not that it really matters at this point.”

Missy looked ready to fight, and Ivil suspected that she wouldn’t be taken so easily. But if Missy fought, then it might not end so well for her.

Ivil sighed.

It was time to make a choice, and she was tired of being held back. So she unbuckled herself from the crash seat, sat up, then stood.

The first to notice was Twenty-Six, in the seat just next to hers. The girl reached out, as if to catch Ivil, then looked confused as Ivil stood straight, in complete defiance of the pull towards the back of the ship.

She tidied up her dress, gave Twenty-Six a soft, hopefully comforting smile, then walked up to the front of the bridge and stood before the crew.

“Hey, uh, how’re you doing that?” Donny asked.

“That’s between me and gravity,” Ivil replied. She scanned the bridge, then nodded. “I’m afraid that this situation has deteriorated too much. My cover will not be safe from this point onwards.”

“Your cover?” Missy asked. Her eyes were narrowed. As a Warmime, she must have once known all there was to know about cover.

“Yes,” Ivil replied. “I am, as you may have surmised, not… just an astro-archaeologist.”

“Are you a soldier?” Twenty-Six asked. “From Mars?”

Ivil blinked. “No. In any case, seeing as how I don’t want any—most of you to die in the coming conflict, I’ve decided that I’m going to take charge of things from here on out. I expect everyone to do what they can to follow my lead. I understand that most of you don’t have military training, or experience with this kind of thing, but I assure you that if you listen I can keep you safe.”

Aurora was glaring at her, Missy was trying to make her face neutral, but her suspicion was leaking through, and Twenty-Six… actually looked hopeful.

Maybe this was the right move after all, Ivil thought even as she ignored Sonic’s sigh.

“We’ll begin by allowing the pirates to link the ship up to their base. It’s the easiest way to ensure that most of the fighting will occur in a tight, controlled environment. Once we’ve established that we are a threat, I will attempt to negotiate with the leader of these pirates. If all goes well we’ll be back on our way to Callisto with no one harmed. Understood?”

Chapter twenty-six

Easy Living

Living in space was easy. Keep air in, keep space out, put something between you and the biggest ball of radiation around.

Nice and simple. Expensive, but easy to grasp. A kid could figure it out, and they did.

Something like four percent of humanity now lived off-world. A small percentage overall, but in actuality, it was a massive number. Most of them lived on stations orbiting planets and moons across the solar system.

You wanted a station? Pick a large, predictable rock, and get building.

People raised on stations would often give newcomers a quick crash coarse on how not to fuck everyone’s day up. It was simple too: Don’t open airlocks if you don’t know what’s on the other side. Listen to the station AI if it had one, because it was smarter than you. And if things got heated, fighting happened with fists, knives, and blunt objects. No guns or fancy core powers, because the vacuum of space was a thin wall away, and it didn’t care for excuses.

Ivil was planning on breaking all of those rules.

But first, she needed to convince the crew and passengers of the Held Together to listen to her, which was proving harder than she’d initially assumed.

For one thing, they didn’t seem to know who she was. The assumption was that she was some Martian agent of one sort or another. They didn’t have the level of respect she was now used to operating with.

When Ivil told a ship-full of Martians to push their ship into ramming speed and head straight for an enemy force that outnumbered and outgunned them a hundred to one, the response was always a firm “Yes ma’am, who do you want us to ram first, ma’am?” not this pointless bickering.

“I don’t like it, but surrendering is still an option,” the captain was saying.

“Yeah, well, it’s not an option if they’re gonna take my boys,” Donny replied with a rather crude grab for his crotch.

“We can hardly fight,” Hawk said with a shake of his head. “But I think, given the option, I’d rather go out in a blaze than just plain go out.”

Ivil glanced at the more important half of the assembly. Aurora was back from her rooms. She’d switched out of her rather nice dress into a rather nice outfit that was a lot more practical. An off-white jumpsuit, with a jade breastplate covered by a few small panels in a dull brassy colour. It was tight around the neck, with a ring for a helmet which she was lacking, and a small mask which was hooked by her belt.

She had a compact deployable baton at the small of her back as well, and a breathing system in the middle of her back. It was the upsold version of the typical uniform worn by a pilot. The kind of thing meant to help with compression issues and designed to survive exposure to the vacuum, but unlike the average pilot’s uniform, which was made en masse to fit as many sizes as possible, this one was tailored.

The way it clung to her rear was slightly distracting, actually.

Next to her, Twenty-Six was looking particularly nervous while clutching on to a large wrench. She seemed on the verge of trembling, like a puppy scared of thunder.

Ivil cleared her throat. Then she coughed louder and clearer, shutting the discussions up.

“Where’s the airlock they’ll use to break in?” Ivil asked.

“At the rear,” Missy said. “By engineering.” Missy had added a flak jacket over her outfit, as well as a small sidearm. She wasn’t exactly in her warpaints, but she seemed a lot more ready for trouble than almost anyone else.

“Good,” Ivil said. “Captain, I’m going to free your ship. When I contact you again, use the opportunity to run. Donny and Hawk will stay with you.” She glanced at Sonic. “Pendergast will stay on the ship to keep you safe.”

Sonic nodded. “I can do as much,” she replied.

“I’m starting to wonder who died and made you the boss,” Missy said.

“No one died yet, which is why I’m the boss,” Ivil said. “In times like these the person most capable of keeping people alive should be given the authority they need. No?”

Missy eyed her for a good long while, then shrugged. “Well, you’re doing something more than quitting.”

Ivil nodded. She’d never done that before and didn’t think she was about to start now. “Twenty-Six, Aurora, Missy, you’re with me.”

“Why?” both Twenty-Six and Aurora asked at the same time.

Twenty-Six looked at Aurora, blushed, then made a small gesture for her to go on. “Why do you want me to come along?” Aurora asked.

“Because it’ll be that much easier to keep you safe.”

Aurora frowned. “Is that your mission here?”

“I don’t have a mission,” Ivil said. “I really do just want to keep you safe, and it would be easier to do that if you’re near. And Twenty-Six, you’re too good of a mechanic to leave behind. I know we haven’t spent much time together, but I hope you can trust me to keep you safe as well.”

Twenty-Six gulped, but she nodded all the same. “Okay. You’ve been… nice. But these are pirates.”

“Let me worry about them,” Ivil said.

The Held Together shivered as something struck it from the side. It wasn’t so hard that anyone lost their footing, just some clamps grabbing on to the hull. The pirates were here, and they were starting to make their way on board.

Ivil adjusted her clothes, then started for the back. It took a moment, but soon she was being followed. Missy was behind her, and the other two lingered behind.

It didn’t take too long for her to find the airlock.

It was recessed into the side of the cargo bay, past a small engineering room with cramped access to the underside of an engine and some of the ship’s life support systems. The passage to the airlock was just wide enough for two people to walk through shoulder-to-shoulder.

A panel next to the door was flashing, warning that the other side of the airlock was having its air cycled already.

“Shit,” Missy said. She pulled her gun out, which had Twenty-Six and Aurora pausing. “You really intend to fight?” Missy asked.

“Yes,” Ivil said.

“You’re not armed.”

“I’m always armed,” Ivil replied.

Missy eyed her, then nodded. “Care to share?”

“You’ll see presently,” Ivil said. “Twenty-Six, Aurora, please stay around the corner. Just in case. Missy, don’t fire just yet.”

“Gotcha,” Missy said. She moved back and around a bulkhead, then she kicked up and towards the ceiling. So far, they’d all been moving through the gravity-less Held Together while orienting themselves “floor-down.” That was just how most people thought. But Missy climbed to the ceiling and clung to it, only shoulders and head poking out. If someone shot at her, they’d need to be a crackshot or lucky to hit.

The airlock finished cycling, then the panel next to it flashed a query. It wanted to know if they wanted to open the door from their end. A simple precaution, and one Ivil didn’t doubt the pirates could work around.

She gestured to the panel. The door started to open with a hiss. Air rushed into the Held Together from the over-pressurized airlock.

There were three women within. Ivil could feel that one of them had a core. Just one, and it seemed to be in use at the moment. She blinked. It was a weak ferrokinetic power. A spoon-bender, basically.

The door continued to open, and Ivil straightened, holding herself tall and proud in the entranceway.

The three pirates were wearing spacesuits. Thin ones, with armoured plates over their shoulders and chest and legs, and with narrow helmets. Purely military gear, not repurposed equipment like what she expected to see.

“Get down!” one of them shouted as she raised a small, stubby gun at her. A shotgun, likely loaded with non-penetrative shells.

“No,” Ivil said.

She flicked her hand to the side, and their guns were ripped away. The spoon-bender tried to use her power at that moment. It failed.

Then the pirates were concerned with something else. Notably, the fact that she was pinching their necks and cutting off the blood going to their heads.

All three scratched at their necks. It took a long ten seconds for them to stop fighting and for them to go unconscious. One of them had unhooked their magnetic boots from the ground and started to float upwards.

“It’s safe,” Ivil said. The women weren’t dead, and they’d likely reawaken in a minute or so, but she was keeping an eye on all three. If they started to come back awake, she’d cut their circulation again. “Twenty-Six, did you want a core?”

Chapter twenty-seven

Unprepared Lions

Piracy didn’t exactly go unpunished within the belt, but the issue with actually punishing piracy was twofold.

First, it was expensive. The pirates were rich off the booty they collected, and unlike any government, they only had themselves to invest in. Sure, the overall growth and profits might be small compared to that of a proper planetary nation, but they didn’t have the worries and bloat of governance to worry about. In that way, they were closer to a conglomerate of disparate companies than a proper political entity.

Second was the matter of jurisdiction.

Did Mars want Earth moving a fleet around the belt? Fuck no. Would Earth accept Mars wiping out a pirate fleet with their superior navy? Not without whining about it.

If no one had rights in the belt, then no one had the right to fight off the pirates either.

It was a twisted bit of logic despised by cargo captains everywhere, and easily understood by any career bureaucrat.

In the end, it meant that the pirates of the belt were used to things going one way. Their way.

They’d prey on those that traversed their corner of space. If you were weak, you were on the menu. Better hope you looked poor or the pirates around you were fat already. They were lions lazing in the migratory path of limp gazelle. Sometimes an elephant would rumble by, and unless the pirates had a big plan in mind or a sponsor in the shadows, they wouldn’t go after well-armed convoys.

The lions never expected to have their airlock door literally kicked in and for the savannah’s equivalent of a safari hunter with an attack helicopter to barge into their home turf.

Ivil, the current safari-hunter of choice, stretched her back as she walked past the three slumped pirates. “You didn’t answer,” she said over her shoulder.

Twenty-Six peeked out around the corner, attention going from the men on the ground to Ivil. “Huh?”

Ivil pointed to the core user in the bunch. “She has a core. It’s nothing special. Some minor ferrokinesis of some sort or another. It’s the kind of power that would be useful to a mechanic.” And if Ivil knew anything about cores, and she knew everything, then it wasn’t the kind of core that would give Twenty-Six any noticeable physical changes.

“You’re just going to give her a core?” Missy asked.

“It’s a weak one, good to cut your teeth. And Twenty-Six seems smart. She might find creative uses for it,” Ivil said. “Besides, there’s a number of core users here. We’ll have plenty to go around.”

Missy eyed her, then shrugged. “If you want it, Two-Six,” she said.

“I-I-I can’t have a core!” Twenty-Six stuttered. “That’s for important people.”

“You’re important to me,” Ivil replied simply. “You’ve been friendly and kind so far. And I certainly don’t want or need the core.”

Twenty-Six gulped, but she nodded.

“That’s a big responsibility,” Aurora said.

It froze Twenty-Six on the spot, which didn’t stop her from floating forwards a little more under her momentum. “W-what do you mean?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Having a core puts you ahead of others, whether you want to think that way or not. It can leave you feeling… detached from the rest of humanity, in a way. That can be hard to overcome. Worse, some people gain a core and its power and fail to understand that with that power comes a responsibility to use it wisely.” Aurora locked eyes with Ivil. “And giving that kind of power to another is also not something so easily done.”

Ivil nodded, acknowledging the point. “That’s a valid argument. But I’m not giving a gun to a child. I’m giving a knife to an adult. It’ll be a tool, or a weapon, as she sees fit, but it isn’t something she’ll fail to use wisely, I don’t think. Better to give it to her than to hoard it.”

Aurora considered that for a moment before shrugging a shoulder. “Very well.”

“So… should I take it?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Go ahead,” Aurora replied. “In the worst case, if you find it unsuitable, then give it back. Miss Ville could sell it for a pretty penny.”

A core, even a weaker one, was worth its weight in precious metal. More, even. There were only so many of them to go around, and more people who wanted one than there were to share. Not to mention those few like Ivil who hoarded them.

She reached down, casually ending the life of the pirate and watching as her core reassembled over her body. It was a tiny thing, no bigger than the joint at the end of her pinky. She plucked it out of the air and inspected it. “It’s a third-generation core,” she observed.

“What’s that mean?” Twenty-Six asked.

“When you have a core, you can ‘split’ it. Break it within yourself and extrude a broken replica. That replica will repair itself over time. Sometimes it’s months, usually it’s years. The copy within the core-wielder will heal as well, often over the same timescale. In the end, however, you’re left with two copies of the same, or extremely similar, core. This one was the split of a split. That makes it somewhat uncommon.” Ivil handed it to Twenty-Six, who took the small item with reverence.

“Wow. Wait, doesn’t that mean that people could double the number of cores? Exponentially?”

“Yes,” Ivil said. “At the cost of severely weakening themselves for months or years. It’s still a valid if slow way of earning money, as long as you have a core valuable enough to sustain you for the year or more in which it’s broken.”

Twenty-Six took a moment to parse that, then nodded. “Okay. How do I?”

“Just swallow it,” Ivil said.

There were better ways. Opening a hole within one’s body and shoving it in was preferred, and more accurate at times. But for such a weak core, and one given to someone she didn’t want to traumatise, consumption was best.

Twenty-Six eyed the core. “Really?”

“It’ll work,” Missy said. “But I—”

Twenty-Six tossed the core back and gulped audibly. “Uh… sorry, what?”

“I was gonna say that I’d clean it first,” Missy said.

“They’re usually somewhat sterile,” Ivil said.

“Somewhat, sure,” Missy muttered with a shake of her head.

Twenty-Six glanced between the two, then touched a hand to her chest. “Am I supposed to feel something? Weird new senses or whatever?”

“You’ll notice in a moment,” Ivil replied. She reached down and started to search the women, looking not for a gun or a weapon but for… she found it, and ripped it from the belt of the corpse. A small pouch, for shotgun shells. She emptied it, then handed it over to Twenty-Six.

The young woman had just enough time to look at the bag in confusion before her face went green and she vomited into the bag.

“First time’s always the worst,” Ivil replied.

There was a reason ingestion wasn’t popular for more experienced core-wielders.

Missy stepped up and started rubbing circles in Twenty-Six’s back. “There, there,” she muttered.

“We can give you a couple of minutes,” Ivil said. “These three will probably have to report back sooner than later, but I doubt the pirates will act out so soon.”

“I don’t know about that,” Missy said. “Their MO is to have a group come in, secure the entrance, then open it up for more troops. Then once they have a squad or two in the ship, one secures the main objective, another secures the ship.”

“Ah, so they’ll be expecting these three to report right away, then,” Ivil said. “You have some experience with this kind of thing?”

Missy eyed her, then nodded. “Some,” she admitted.

Ivil considered her next move while Twenty-Six continued to cough and sputter. The girl would be fine. Ivil could feel the core settling already. Soon it would break apart and reconfigure itself in her head as that kind of core was apt to do. It would probably be a few hours before Twenty-Six could even start to use it. More likely it would take a day or two.

She refocused on the issue at hand: the pirates. “Alright,” she said. “Aurora, Missy, Twenty-Six, please stand on this side of the airlock. I’m going to cycle it. In the meantime, strip these three of whatever you might want. Once I’m done on the other side, I’ll cycle the airlock again. If it opens up empty, that’s your all-clear. Understood?”

“You’re just going to dive into the lion’s den?” Missy asked.

“Lions aren’t prepared for the likes of me,” Ivil replied.

“Hmm. We’re going to have to have a talk,” Missy shot back.

“I think I’d like to be part of that,” Aurora added.

Twenty-Six swallowed, and looked between the two. “H-hey, Evelyn’s not a bad guy,” she said.

Well, that was one of the most heartwarming things Ivil had ever heard just before she walked out to commit some extreme violence.

Chapter twenty-eight

Easy Meal

The kindly pirates of the Convent were expecting an easy meal.

The Held Together wasn’t a great catch. It was like bagging a rabbit when you wanted a deer. To the pirates, this rabbit in particular looked like it had a limp, a missing ear, and was maybe sickly before they even caught it.

The usual process was simple. Get in the ship, clear out the crew, toss those that survived in cages. The VIPs got their own little boxes, or the airlock, depending. Sometimes a client wanted a VIP dead, and there was no dead quite like “ejected from an airlock then fired at with an anti-ship gun.”

Once cleared of crew and passengers, the captured ship was scoured clean.

That involved a team of expert mechanics and engineers and deconstruction-specialists. They even had an explosive ordnance specialist, in case the ship was booby trapped. They could strip a ship of cargo and anything worth removing in a matter of hours. Then, if the ship was still in a condition to fly around, the next step was moving it to a berth in orbit around the station.

There was a market for ships obtained via less-than-legal means.

If the ship wasn’t flight-capable, or not worth the trouble to repair, it would be up to the crew of the Convent to decide what to do with it. Some were turned into weapons platforms to protect the station. Others were rendered down for scrap.

Ivil imagined that the fate of the Held Together was supposed to be something along those lines. The vessel was far too old to be worth repairing.

The choice wouldn’t matter, in the end, because the people who were supposed to make that choice would soon be… otherwise occupied.

The outer airlock slid open on well-oiled mechanisms, and Ivil found herself walking into a relatively large room. The far wall had tool chests and cubbies for equipment on the floor and ceiling, the centre had a large window looking into a control room. There were a few doors leading deeper into the station, and a few bays where some smaller industrial craft were parked.

A set of barricades were placed just outside of the airlock, giving the waiting team of pirates a place to find cover if things went sideways for them.

The crews deeper in the room, hanging out with coffees in hand, didn’t look like the usual piratical sort. Just normal shift-workers that could have been on any old dock.

“Oh, shit!” one of the pirates behind the barricade said as she brought her gun up.

Another, with a flashier, better decorated spacesuit, gestured towards Ivil. “Hands in the air!” she barked.

“No,” Ivil said. Without an audience (that she cared about) she didn’t mind cutting loose a little.

A gun went off, but its rounds stopped long before striking her. Then the gun, and the others in the hands of her assailants, were crushed into small bundles of scrap metal. The pirates screamed, some of them because they still had fingers in the trigger guards of those guns when they were crushed.

She didn’t have much sympathy for them. Still… just in case that the pirate woman she’d overheard earlier was important, she decided to spare their lives and merely cut off their ability to pump blood into their brains for a few moments.

Minor brain damage and some broken fingers was hardly worth making a fuss over.

Ivil stepped past the barricades, then glanced to the far end of the room where the waiting mechanics were now scrambling to escape.

She let them. Her interest was fixed on the command room above where someone was calling for help over what was probably an intercom system linked through the station. That was where she’d need to be, then.

Ivil hopped forwards, allowing the lack of gravity to finally let her float off the floor. She knew that there had to be a way around and into the command room. Her way—through the inch-thick glass—was much faster.

A few more pirates shot at her with small arms. Ivil rendered the bullets safe by draining them of kinetic energy long before they struck her. When they did, it was with the force of a particularly lazy mosquito. Not even enough to crease her blouse.

The pirates in the command room were soon clutching at their throats and floating out of their seats as she bid them good night. Most of them were in jumpsuits, but a couple had button-up shirts and were dressed well enough that they could have fit in the average office.

She supposed that even pirates needed comptrollers and accountants and people working the kind of systems that didn’t involve shooting up innocents.

Ivil found the communication system off to one side. It was a computer linked into the entire station’s network. The touch-screen had labels across dozens of stations across the ship. At the moment, it was linked to a central location in the main block of the station, right in the centre of it all.

“Vagrant? Vagrant, come in?”

Ivil’s eyebrows perked. She intended to reply, but not just yet. First she walked over to another station, this one the navigation-assistance station where one of the now-unconscious workers had been sitting. The computer there had the beacons and controls designed to guide ships into the berth the Held Together was not occupying. It also had systems for two more berths further out.

It seems as if the entire arm of the station was controlled from here. She imagined that the same layout could be found elsewhere, then, with each one of the arms of the station having its own small control centre linked to the station’s central hub.

It was a design philosophy that she’d seen before, and it made a certain amount of sense.

More, even, if she considered that the various pirate crews using the station might not all agree with each other. If they all had strong independent streaks, then it only made sense to keep them a little apart.

She tapped on the navigation console, backing out of the current menu, then frowned at the software’s layout. It was not what she was used to, which was the rather cluttered but intuitive layout used on Martian ships. This was some bespoke software, and it took her a moment to find a local map with IFF locators and a list of nearby ships.

The two vessels that had followed the Held Together to the station were docked already, both of them linked to one of the arms connected directly with the centre of the station.

The one she was at now was on the fringes. She’d have to walk some ways to get to the main part of the station.

Still, it made it far more likely that the attractive pirate captain she’d spoken to earlier was important, if she was able to dock her ship right to the centre. That was usually how this kind of place’s hierarchy worked out.

A pirate started to cough as she regained consciousness, and Ivil idly forced the air out of her lungs as she returned to the station-wide communication system.

She picked up a headset from one of the pirates and placed it on her head distastefully. She didn’t like having a microphone that had been so close to someone else’s mouth near hers, but needs must.

“Hang on, Vagrant, we have a team coming in from Angel squadron,” someone said over the line.

“Don’t bother,” Ivil replied. “Instead, I would much rather have you link me to the captain of the… hmm, I believe it was the Amelia Earhart?”

“Who is this?”

“Never you mind,” Ivil said. “Link me to the nice captain, if you would please. I think her name was Rouge Herring? I think. I’m operating in the dark here, so to speak.”

Ivil paused, then sighed as she felt the pressure in the room changing. Someone was venting this entire section of the station.

It was actually a valid tactic. There was a reason that most people couldn’t use traditional guns on a station or ship in the vacuum of space, or use core-given powers that were too destructive.

“That won’t work on me,” Ivil said into the microphone. She didn’t care that the quickly dissipating air meant that her voice couldn’t carry. It did so anyway because she told it to.

The pirates and support crew left in the room slowly started to die out. She noted that none of them had any cores to collect, which was really too bad, but not unexpected.

Then the screen lit up before her, and Ivil found herself staring into the burning, angry eyes of that rather attractive pirate captain she was intending to meet very soon.

“Why hello,” Ivil said with as kind a smile as she could manage. “I’ve been looking forward to talking to you.”

Chapter twenty-nine

Absolutely Not

Ivil considered herself a… picky person.

It wasn’t out of control. She merely liked some things, disliked others, and was vocal and violent about her choices.

She wouldn’t suffer incompetence for long, but she didn’t kill incompetents either. She merely suggested, politely, that they leave her presence. When she still needed to eat, she would gravitate towards the foods she enjoyed.

It was all perfectly reasonable. Yes, she was impossibly powerful, but that didn’t mean that her desires and limits were impossible as well. Merely… more difficult to work with.

So far, three of the candidates she’d met all fell within the broad-enough range of acceptable for Ivil. They were attractive enough, in their own ways, smart, acted in a reasonable fashion, and she found herself enjoying her time with them thus far.

She was well-prepared to judge this candidate.

The pirate captain stared at Ivil through what looked like a small drone camera floating ahead of her. She was glaring rather fiercely. It suited her, made her seem more ferocious and dangerous.

“You’re not Sterlingworth,” she said. “Did the little princess bring a bodyguard?”

“No,” Ivil said. “My name is… Evelyn Ville. I was onboard the Held Together. Now I’m enjoying some time in your station. I’m afraid that with the air being vented all the effort I took to avoid killing your friends here was for nought.”

“So, some punk bitch with a few cores and some attitude, huh?”

Ivil smiled. “Something like that. I’m curious, what’s your—”

The pirate woman paused. She pressed the pad of a thumb against one nostril, then blew hard. A long stream of snot jetted out of her other nostril and shot off in the low-gravity passage she was in. She rubbed the underside of her nose with her sleeve, then resumed glaring at the screen. “I’m pirate Rouge—”

“No,” Ivil interrupted. “I don’t care. Please disregard all of my previous good humour. I… I can’t believe I wasted all of this time.”

“What?”

Ivil was disappointed. In herself, of course, and most of all in this piratical barbarian. What kind of ill-mannered simpleton just… did that? She was utterly disgusted, and didn’t plan on wasting any more time with these pirates.

A stray thought crushed the console before her, and with a sigh, Ivil exited the command room by jumping out of the window and floating herself down to the ground. She glanced up, searching out the cameras dotted across the room, and ripping them apart with force of will.

On arriving back at the airlock, she tapped on the communication device on its side, connecting to the Held Together. “Missy, Aurora, Twenty-Six?” she asked.

“Ah, hello?” came Twenty-Six’s reply.

“It’s clear on this side. I’m going to cycle the airlock. The only problem is that they vented the air out from this side,” Ivil said.

There was a pause before Twenty-Six clicked the coms on again. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Ivil replied.

“We have the, uh, suits from these guys, and we have our own equipment too, but it’ll take a while to get suited up,” Twenty-Six said.

“Take your time,” Ivil said. “I’ll keep things clear on this end.”

“Are you sure? You could come back in. It’ll be safer.”

Ivil smiled. “Safer for me, maybe. But not safer for you. Get geared up, I’ll be here when you come back.”

She felt three figures just past the bulkhead of the Held Together moving about. They took a while before they split up. One moved towards engineering, another towards the crew quarters, and the last towards the passenger area. It didn’t take a genius to figure out which was which.

Surprisingly, however, Missy was the first to return.

Ivil felt her hesitating by the comms unit, so in that moment of hesitation, Ivil turned and reached her senses out deeper into the station. There was a team of pirates by one of the bulkheads leading into the room she was in. They were preparing to breach, which would, of course, interrupt things.

The corridor they were in gained a sudden hole the size of a minivan, and the team was sucked out into the vacuum.

That would, she figured, gain her a few minutes.

She couldn’t go too hard. Otherwise the pirates might decide to cut their losses by simply destroying the entire arm, Held Together and all.

The comm unit hissed for a moment as Missy tapped it on. “Evelyn?” she asked.

Ivil reached back and pressed a thumb against the unit on her side. “I’m here,” she said. “We’re still in the clear so far.”

“Good,” Missy said. She continued to press the comms button, even as she said nothing for a few long seconds. Ivil let her cook, until Missy leaned in closer. “What are you?” she asked.

“Just another woman, out here, looking for love and some peace and quiet,” Ivil said.

Missy chuckled. “Cute answer. But really. Martian special ops? A retired Valkyrie?”

“I’m a little young for retirement,” Ivil said. “Then again, so are you… How about a trade?”

“A question for a question?” Missy asked.

“Exactly. You can go first,” Ivil said. She grinned. This was an interesting little game.

Missy seemed to think about it for a while before her question came through. “Are you Martian special ops?”

“No,” Ivil said. “I’m not technically part of the Martian military at all.”

“Technically?” Missy asked.

“That’s two questions,” Ivil teased. Missy huffed, but didn’t press, so Ivil took her turn. “You left the Lunatics to work on… what’s probably one of the least luxurious ships in the system, why?”

Missy grunted something. “You really go for the jugular, huh?” she said.

“It’s what’s most effective, most of the time,” Ivil said. “If you’re not comfortable…” It was a little strange, talking to a woman through a door, and not how she imagined this kind of thing going down.

“No, it’s fine,” Missy said. “I left because I was being fit into a little box. I was good at what I did, but it wasn’t all I wanted to do. I knew the captain. Not friends or anything, just met a few times. Took the job here, and it’s… a dead end of my choosing.”

Ivil noted how little Missy had actually said about her past, but that was fine. They could continue the game. It was a productive way to learn what she wanted to. “Your turn to ask a question,” Ivil said.

“Hmm, so, not technically Martian spec-ops or military. What’s that mean?”

“It means that I do what I want, and the kind people of the Martian military complex make sure they’re not standing in my way,” Ivil said. “Sometimes they’ll ask for favours, and I’ll help if I feel like it at the time.”

“Heh,” Missy said. “So, you’re that sort, huh? You look surprisingly human.”

Ivil knew that Missy had gotten the wrong impression. There were, scattered across the system, some few hundred people who edged into B-class and who weren’t directly tied to any government. Free agents. They often had strong bonds to one world or another anyway, because a B-classer was powerful, but it wasn’t a monolith.

“Something like that,” Ivil replied. It was enough, for the moment. Better, even, than Missy knowing who she really was. That would only inspire fear the likes of which she didn’t want to deal with.

“Your turn,” Missy said. “Wait.” She cut off the coms. The reason was obvious to Ivil. Twenty-Six, who was now much brighter in Ivil’s senses, had finished suiting up and run over. Aurora was on her way back as well. “We’re coming out in a few. You’ll have to pocket that question for later.”

“Gladly,” Ivil replied.

Aurora arrived, and soon enough Ivil backed off and waited for the airlock to cycle.

When it finished and opened, Ivil found herself looking over the team stepping out. Missy was in a fairly sleek suit. Old, certainly, and worn at the knees and joints, but well made. She’d grabbed one of the coats from the pirates that had broken into the Held Together, the pockets filled with loose shells for the shotgun hanging behind her by a strap.

Twenty-Six’s suit was a mess of patches and spare parts, and it was clearly a size too large, but she had some straps and belts to keep it in snug, as well as a suite of tools strapped to her chest and in a large duffle she tugged after her.

Aurora came up behind the two, in a perfectly serviceable light suit, her head covered in a transparent dome over a dark jade suit with a few bronze highlights. The small bean-shaped emblem of Phobos was emblazoned on her chest.

“You all look ready,” Ivil said.

“And you look like someone who should be choking on the lack of air in here,” Missy said.

“I’ve got a trick or two for that,” Ivil said with a shrug. “So, I had time to think, and I’ve come up with a simple plan.”

Chapter thirty

Complex

Complex plans are a complex risk.

So keep your plans simple.

That was the essential way that most successful armed forces conducted warfare for millenia. Then humanity reached the stars, and suddenly old ideas didn’t work out so well.

This was especially obvious during the First Solar War.

Mars and Earth fought and clawed at each other. Earth trying to reclaim what they thought of as rightfully theirs. Mars fighting for an independence that they thought they had earned.

Both sides approached war as a matter of putting simple plans into action.

Space, however, was infinitely complex. Soldiers on both sides ran out of fuel and were flung into the void. Both sides had ships run out of food, and soldiers starve in their billion-dollar warships. They discovered, to their mutual horror, that rocks going very fast were very dangerous.

So keeping things simple, as a concept, died an inglorious death.

Still, there were times where Ivil thought that it was still applicable.

“So, what’s the plan?” Missy asked.

“These pirates are relatively well established,” Ivil said with a gesture around herself at the station. This station wasn’t top-of-the-line, but it was more impressive than most frontier stations. The pirates were doing well for themselves. “So, I imagine that with all of this wealth, they must have a few private vessels that are worth taking. I think it’s only fair that we take from those who would take from us.”

“You… you want to steal a ship?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I can see many ways that could go wrong,” Aurora said. “First of all, how do you intend to steal a ship?”

“Twenty-Six can likely break any security measures on board their ships,” Ivil replied easily. “Besides, will they really have that many locks in place? Missy seemed able to pilot the Held Together just fine, and whatever we take will likely be generations younger and more responsive.”

“It’s not that easy to go from one ship to another,” Missy said.

“You can’t do it?” Ivil asked.

Missy’s spine straightened. “I didn’t say that.”

“Well, there you go then. We find the nicest ship here, clear it out of piratical scum, then leave. Nice and simple.”

Aurora shook her head. “No, not so nice or simple,” she countered. “The station has defences. There are ships around it, and lots of pirates on this station. We’ll be gunned down.”

“We’ll take a ship with good point defence. In any case, I didn’t intend to leave the station in any shape to retaliate,” Ivil replied. “I’m willing to bet that the pirates here are already in a rough state. Punch a few more holes into the station, and they’ll be too panicked to care about one ship pulling out, and once we’re out and in weapon’s range… we can assist the Held Together by making some noise.”

“That seems kind of dangerous,” Twenty-Six said.

Ivil looked at her. “Twenty-Six… we’re invading a pirate outpost. This place is filled to the brim with people who want us all dead or worse. The only safety here is for the few people whom I have decided to protect.”

Twenty-Six smiled slightly. “Thank you,” she said. “Um, you’re probably right. I wouldn’t mind looking at the engineering on some of these pirate ships.”

“I’ll let you pick the ship,” Ivil promised.

“And what happens if we do survive and somehow make it out of here?” Aurora asked.

“Then onwards to Callisto? You had a reason to head that way, no?”

Aurora paused, then nodded slowly. “Yes. I didn’t expect you to still want to move that way, but I wouldn’t say no to it. On the other hand, we have other options. Less insane ones.”

“Oh?”

“We’re now in a position to negotiate. We could ask the pirates to allow us to contact someone from outside. A Martian patrol, maybe? Phobos has its own small fleet as well. It’s nothing compared to Mars or Earth, but I’m certain it would measure up to some pirates. Or mercenaries… In any case, we could negotiate for our own release.”

“That’ll never work,” Missy said. “That would mean holding off the pirates for however long it takes for your rescuers to show up.”

“Can’t we?” Aurora asked.

“Certainly,” Ivil said. “But they’ll try to sabotage us the entire time. They were willing to vent the air out of this section while living crewmates were in it. They’ll be trying a lot worse against us if we sit around and wait.”

Missy sighed. “She’s right. If we’re going to do something, I’d rather it be proactive and destructive. If you want to call for help, then we might find a place to do that along the way.”

Ivil reached over and carefully placed a hand on Aurora’s shoulder. “We’ll figure this out. I’m certain that we might find a time or place to put your diplomatic skills to good use.” Aurora didn’t seem too impressed, but she didn’t press the issue. “Alright. Let’s head towards the centre of the station. Stay behind me. I’ll keep you safe.”

None of the three looked entirely certain about that, but Ivil didn’t mind. She had hardly flexed in front of them yet. If everything went well, she wouldn’t need to.

Taking the lead, Ivil headed towards one of the bulkheads near the back of the room, the same one the mechanics had fled down a few long minutes ago. “Do you think you can cycle the air in the corridor?” she asked. “We won’t want to be in a low-oxygen environment forever.”

The suits her companions were wearing hardly seemed fit for combat. One puncture and they’d be choking on nothing. That, and while the suits had modern air recyclers and scrubbers, she doubted the efficiency on some of them, and the air tanks they did have—the sort that automatically refilled and repressurised in a pressure-neutral environment—were all small capacity tanks. They had, at best, twenty to thirty minutes of breathable air.

On arriving at the door, Ivil walked over to the command system next to it, then frowned. It was more unfamiliar hardware. “C-can I?” came Twenty-Six from behind her.

Ivil stepped aside. “Go ahead.”

“I recognize it,” Twenty-Six said. “It’s Jupiter-made. See the rounded handle? All of the stations around Jupiter have passages that can act as temporary airlocks.”

“Strange,” Aurora said.

“No, not really. It’s additional redundancy. Because a single point of failure means… a lot more pain. Remember the Titan earthquake.”

That had been a fairly major event, Ivil remembered, a large tectonic motion sometime between the First and Second Solar War. Titan had been well on its way to becoming a third system-wide power at the time, but the quake had ripped open several stations. Thousands had died, and the disaster relief was slow in coming.

Even now, decades later, the moon hadn’t regained its early momentum.

Rumour had it that the quake had been triggered by a core-wielder. A powerful one. One who wanted nothing more than to slow Titan’s growth and prevent a third system-power from appearing. At least, that was the common conspiracy theory.

“Yeah, I can cycle it from here,” Twenty-Six said. “The other side is still pressurised.”

“Do so, then,” Ivil said. “If we fight in rooms that are at one atmo, then they’ll likely be a lot more careful with their fire.”

Twenty-Six tapped two buttons and flicked a small lever. It all seemed very simple when she did it like that. The room hummed, and there was a faint hiss from the other side of the bulkhead.

“If they know we’re coming, then we’ll be meeting some resistance,” Missy said. “Would this be a good time to come clean with what we can do? Because as much as I like holding my cards close to my chest, I also like not having my chest punched full of holes.”

Ivil raised her eyebrows. “Go on,” she said.

Missy gave her a look, then shook her head. “Sound dampening, and better joints.”

Those were relatively weak cores, but not entirely useless. They were the kind of cores that the Martian navy might hand out to a would-be-Valkyrie to get them started without them having any real power.

Missy and Ivil both turned towards Aurora, who stared between the two. “What?” she asked.

“If you don’t want to reciprocate, that’s fine,” Ivil said.

Aurora’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know?” she asked.

“I can sense it,” Ivil said.

“You’re rich,” Missy replied. “You seem the sort.”

“Wait,” Twenty-Six said. “Miss Sterlingworth has a core?”

Aurora groaned. “I don’t have anything that would be useful here.”

“Nothing?” Ivil asked. She sensed at least half a dozen cores in Aurora, maybe closer to ten.

“I can regulate my body temperature, suppress involuntary reflexes, and see well in the dark. Not night vision, just… better vision in the dark. My nails are tougher too.” She crossed her arms. “Happy?”

“That’s all?” Ivil asked.

“We’ve been purchasing random, cheap, cores for a while. Just that much cost me a fair bit. What about you, Miss Ville? Care to share?”

“Hmm… no, we don’t have time for that,” Ivil said.

Chapter thirty-one

Trust

Trust was a two-way street.

There weren’t streets in space.

Ivil was a little worried that her easy dismissal of Aurora’s question about her own personal power would create something of a rift between them. It wasn’t a well-played move, and she was silently chastising herself for it.

Most of the time, on the rare occasion where she made a mistake, she had the option to cover it up by violently separating anyone who noticed it into their constituent atoms. That wasn’t an option she wanted to take here, so she had to live with the consequences of her own failure.

It was frustrating.

Ivil pushed ahead, leading the other three through the corridor and to its end where Twenty-Six checked on the console for the next bulkhead. “It’s good,” she said.

They had slowly repressurized the corridor they were in to the same level as the rest of the station. From here on, as long as they didn’t poke holes through the walls, they’d be just fine. Ivil pressed a hand against the bulkhead. It was entirely for show. “There’s going to be resistance on the other side,” she said.

Missy tucked her purloined shotgun against her shoulder. “How many?”

“I’ll take them,” Ivil said. “Just stay out of the line of sight. Twenty-Six, open the door whenever you’re ready.”

The others moved to the side, though Ivil noticed Missy switching the gun from one shoulder to another and aiming it down into the doorway despite her warning.

The bulkhead klaxon blared, then the door rumbled open.

Ivil raised a hand, stopping a few slugs in midair as they raced towards them.

The next room over was a small space on two levels, with several corridors connecting into it and a few doors leading out. The middle of the space had a terminal, and a table had been flipped onto its side to provide visual cover for a team of pirates in very light armour.

A police force? They weren’t armed or equipped for boarding actions, and as Ivil batted aside the trailing wires of a taser, she found that they weren’t armed for anything serious either. Even the shotgun shells were gelatin packs, designed to deform on impact to spread their kinetic energy on a wide area without penetrating. Exactly the kind of weapons used on belligerents in a place like this.

After taking her time scanning things, and allowing Missy to rather foolishly peek her head out and take a shot at the temporary barricade the pirates had put up, Ivil reached out and snapped some necks.

There was a great and sudden crunch noise as a half dozen women were killed in the same second.

The room went silent, at least until Twenty-Six started to lean in to look. “Is it safe?”

“A moment,” Ivil replied. She frowned, then tugged a body closer. It floated up and over the barricade, then towards them. Her senses told her that there was something not right about…

An explosion rocked the entranceway, quickly blocked by a shield of Ivil’s making.

Small rounded pellets bounced across the entrance, thumping hard against the grated floor with enough force to snap some of the metal fittings, but not nearly enough to penetrate through.

“What was that?” Aurora asked.

“A trap,” Ivil said. The body she’d pulled forwards was covered in small holes across their suit, the skin beneath flayed and cut. “You’ll see that sort of thing in some ships. They’re anti-boarding weapons.”

“Some high-sec ships will have that kind of thing,” Missy said. “If you don’t have the right IFF on, they go off.”

Ivil glanced at her, but didn’t comment. That was true, but most of the ships that took such a high degree of precaution were exactly the kind of vessels that civilians had no business being in, or sometimes knowing about.

Martian warships had a few anti-boarding devices. They only cost twice as much as a grenade to manufacture, and in the few cases where a Martian ship was boarded during the last solar war, they had proved their worth.

“Should be clear,” Ivil said as she stepped in. She glanced up, then around, searching for cameras. When she noticed one, she crushed its interior. “Let’s move quick.”

“Where are we moving to, exactly?” Aurora asked.

“I think the centre of the station,” Twenty-Six said. She very gingerly kicked off the ground and floated towards one of the corpses, then with one foot hooked on a rail, she came to a gentle stop next to a body. Twenty-Six pried a gun free and looked it over before looping the sling over her shoulder.

“Do you know how to use that?” Ivil asked.

“Can’t be harder than some power tools,” Twenty-Six said. She grabbed a pair of magazines from the pirate’s body and slipped them into her toolbelt.

“Keep your finger off the trigger,” Missy warned. “This isn’t the place to be learning how to use a gun. How about you?” The last was aimed at Aurora, who blinked.

“Oh. No thank you,” she said. “Actually, one of the few advantages of being from Phobos is the lack of obligatory service time. I do know how to use a firearm, but nothing quite so big.”

Missy slipped over to the pirates, then tugged a small handgun free from a belt holster. She pushed it towards Aurora, who caught it out of the air. “Take one anyway. Miss-C-classer here is tough, but she might not be there the entire time. You might want it.”

Ivil blinked. C-classer? She was almost insulted by the insinuation. Though she supposed that with how hard she was pulling her punches, she was displaying about the level of power that could be expected from someone between the ten and one-hundred core level.

“Is everyone ready to move on?” she asked.

When she got enough nods, Ivil took off towards one of the upper corridors. It actually forced her to kick off the ground and allow the lack of gravity to carry her upwards. This junction split off in multiple directions, and if she had done enough breaking the cameras, then from this point on, the pirates would have a hard time tracking them.

Which, she imagined, wouldn’t be ideal for the pirate’s peace of mind.

“Is that an alarm?” Twenty-Six asked.

There was a faint wailing in the distance. A blaring alarm whose sound was carried through the metallic superstructure of the station. “Sounds like it,” Missy said.

“Is that because of us?” Aurora asked as she pulled herself along with some handrails. She was holding the pistol in her free hand, rather awkwardly, but not pointed towards anyone.

“If I had to guess, yeah,” Missy replied. “Pirates like this won’t be used to frontal attacks, but they will be ready for it. At least a little. They live by the sword, they think violently, which means that they’ll want their home secured as well.”

“You know a fair bit about pirates,” Ivil commented.

“Just enough to piss them off,” Missy muttered. “Look, they’ll be mounting some resistance, strong resistance. A lot more than you’d expect from any civilians, but the moment they break, it’ll get ugly.”

“Ugly how?” Aurora asked.

“Ugly in the sense that they’re not soldiers. They don’t have allegiances to a country or people. They’re in this for themselves. These pirates might have started off with a bit more of an ideological bent, but you can bet your last dollar that they’ve gone fully piratical. They probably only pay lip service to their traditions at this point because it gives them an edge when dealing with others. A rep.”

“It’ll be every pirate for themselves,” Twenty-Six said.

“Something like that,” Missy replied. “Might have bosses that can rally people. That’ll be dangerous, because they’ll have people with more than just one spoon-bending core at their disposal. And bigger guns. And ships. If they decide that’s enough, they could start shooting up the station.”

“We won’t let it come to that,” Ivil said. They reached the next intersection, and Ivil crushed the cameras she noticed before pointing to a console against one wall. “Twenty-Six, can you break into that? We need a map.”

“Let me see,” Twenty-Six replied. She floated over to the wall-mounted computer and tapped on its screen. It didn’t take long before she had a basic map up. “Here you go!”

“Good job,” Ivil said as she walked over. The map was simple, with a few sections coloured in, and a few shops marked out. She wasn’t entirely surprised to discover that there was a shopping arm to the station next to the habitation section. That wasn’t a concern for the moment. “Here,” she said, stabbing a finger at a spot on the map.

“That’s the central station,” Missy said. “The biggest damned part of this place.”

“And it’s where we’ll likely find what we’re looking for. The meanest, biggest ship we can steal.”

Chapter thirty-two

Don’t Be Where They Think You Are

Go fast.

Burst through the door, spew some hot lead at the first thing that moves, run.

The tactical genius of the street thug that had nothing to lose. The strategy of the assassin with no cover. The number one trick of the urban combatant.

Don’t be where the enemy thinks you are.

Instead, be right up in their grill. So close to their face with iron against their neck that you can taste what they had for lunch before the trigger’s pulled and brain matter goes ballistic.

Explosives were good for this kind of fighting. A big boom, a bright flash. It left people confused. Scared the rest. Explosions tapped into a primal fear. Cromagnon seeing God’s wrath coming down from the heavens in all of its electric glory. The memory was seared into the monkey brain.

If explosives weren’t available, then guns. Loud ones. Fast ones. Keep moving. Stopping is death. Confusion and chaos is life.

There was value in speed and ferocity.

Once, when Ivil was a much weaker woman, when her skills in the art of turning people’s insides into outsides were not yet as honed, and when she barely had an armful of cores to her name, she’d discovered this truth.

Any enemy that could defeat you in open battle was not necessarily an enemy that you could not defeat.

Being quick to strike and striking when others would hesitate could turn the tables in an uneven fight. Entering a fight with every advantage you had pushed to the max would set the enemy on the back foot. An enemy on the back foot was a dead enemy.

Dead enemies were more cores, more fear, more chaos.

As time went on, she kind of lost that savage edge.

There’s a certain point in the scaling of power where someone can step back and rely on more traditional, calculated ways of gaining a violent victory.

Today, Ivil was exploring her old way of doing things.

“Two left!” Missy shouted.

Ivil knew already, but she nodded and gestured to her left. Two women were ripped out from behind an intersection and sent slamming into the wall opposite. There were more women there too, hiding behind some cargo bolted to the floor of the passageway. One of them screamed. It wasn’t a warrior’s scream.

Ivil put an end to it a moment later with a cracked neck that only she heard. She was acutely aware of how all of this fighting was disturbing her companions. Twenty-Six was shaking a little. Aurora was keeping a brave face, but she wasn’t pleased.

Missy, at least, was having a blast.

The ex-Warmime launched herself across the room, then twisted at the waist like a cat so that she hit the ceiling feet first. She levelled her gun and fired, her new angle giving her a clear shot around some cover the pirates were using deeper in the corridor.

“Got them,” Missy said. She scanned the passage, then pushed herself down. “Looks clear too.”

“I can’t sense anything,” Ivil said as she walked in. “They weren’t as prepared for us this time.”

Missy gave a sharp nod. The two of them had been… getting along. Missy acted as a very capable spotter and scout. As soon as she understood Ivil’s intentions she’d slipped into a role that seemed very easy for her. Ivil suspected that this was exactly the kind of thing that Missy had once trained to do.

Instead of heading straight for the central hub of the station, they passed underneath it. Twenty-Six had discovered a small maintenance passage, then disabled the cameras there with a bit of… percussive persuasion.

From there, they ended up on almost the opposite side of the station.

It didn’t take long for the pirates to react, but when they did, it was to defend the wrong direction. Ivil and her companions doubled back, came out of another maintenance passage, and were now pushing straight to the main command level of the central station.

“That’s the bulkhead into the command level,” Missy said as she pointed to the door. She casually slid a shell into the underside of her shotgun. “There’s going to be resistance there. Automated defences. Guards. It’s the kind of space that you don’t want to leave undefended, even in good times.”

“We don’t need to linger,” Ivil said. “Or even hold the room. Just clear it, then go. We can poke a hole in a wall before leaving, let the space vent itself out.”

“That would be… catastrophic,” Twenty-Six said. “The room’s huge. That’s a lot of air. Probably like, a full two or three percent of the station’s volume.

“Is that… bad?” Aurora asked.

Twenty-Six looked at the older woman, then shrugged. “It’s not good. You’re kinda showing your, uh… sorry.”

“My upbringing?” Aurora asked.

“A little,” Twenty-Six admitted. “If you live in space, on a station or on a ship, you remember the five causes. The five things that’ll probably kill you. There’s an order to them. Air, water, food, space, and radiation.”

Ivil noticed a lack of “catastrophic explosions” on that list.

“I’m familiar with all five,” Aurora said.

Twenty-Six nodded. “Right. Air’s the big one. On a ship it’s less about having enough air as it is about the quality and making sure it stays in the ship. VOCs are a problem, and so is stale air. But mostly it’s not so bad. A ship like the Held Together only needs a few big tanks to hold more than enough air to refill its interior volume a few times. A station’s different.”

“The air is circulated and controlled a lot more,” Aurora said.

“And it has more volume to be in. Which is a problem. You don’t usually notice on small ships, because compartments leak into each other, but pressurisation is a huge danger. If there’s a sudden loss of a lot of air, and it’s not accounted for and controlled, it’ll lead to a lot of trouble elsewhere.” Twenty-Six took a deep breath, then let it out. “I’m not saying poking a few holes in the command room will doom the station or anything. It’ll just make a few engineers and mechanics earn their keep in a big way.”

Ivil smiled. It was always nice seeing Twenty-Six get absurdly passionate about something. She even stopped trembling and being mildly afraid of the corpses they were moving past. “We’ll poke the holes once we’re out, then,” Ivil said.

Twenty-Six blinked, then nodded. “Right. For a moment I kind of forgot, but we are trying to fight these people off.”

“Can you see about opening that door?” Ivil pointed to the entrance into the command centre.

If she’d read the map correctly, this door would lead into the lower floor of the command centre. It was a two-tiered space, with the larger lower floor containing lower priority systems, and the upper balcony housing all of the more important consoles for running the station.

It was likely a design copied from old terrestrial ship bridges and traffic control towers, giving those within an unobstructed view of the various arms of the station and the docking spaces within.

Visual confirmation was far from necessary, but it was, on occasion, helpful. An IFF could be spoofed, and damage might go unregistered, so traffic control stations still had windows to the outside.

“What’s the plan, before we get gunned down breaking in there?” Missy asked.

“Twenty-Six opens the door, and I let loose for… about a hundredth of a second,” Ivil said. “Then we mop up the rest. After that, we find a ship we like, set it up so that the station will let it go, and we head out to grab our new transportation.”

“You make it sound easy,” Missy said.

“Oh, forgive me. It’ll be far from easy or simple. But I will strive to make it look as though it takes only minimal effort on my part.”

Missy chuckled darkly, then she moved to the side of the door. Twenty-Six and Aurora moved to the other side, both squeezing themselves tight against the wall so that they wouldn’t be seen and caught in the crossfire.

Twenty-Six nodded to Ivil, then tapped a button.

The door opened.

Ivil sped up her personal perception, pushing herself to the limit for a fraction of a second as she took in the command room with her eyes and her many extended senses. There were, at a quick count, thirty-two men and women on the deck. Only the women were armed, and they were all either pointing guns her way, or turning to do so.

Three turrets. Two mounted on the ceiling, another near the front of the room. Only one was locked on already, the others were still scanning the room.

She noted people frozen in the act of shouting orders, several screens lit up in red. Alerts were paused mid-flash on several screens, and the room had the thick, cloying scent of a place filled with too many stressed people.

Ivil smiled. This would be easy, then.

Chapter thirty-three

Fundamental

The fundamental forces of the universe are only inviolable to a point.

To the layman, they were absolutes.

To Ivil, they were a suggestion.

So she suggested to time that it take a moment to slow down a little, and the world, with a great groan from creation itself, ground itself to a temporary halt.

Bullets slowed until they were crawling forwards, screams were caught in the air and she could make out minute twitches as the pirates in the command centre tried to lock eyes on her.

The first step was reducing the threats pointed her way, which meant targeting those pirates who had guns, as well as those three turrets.

The easiest way to do both at once was to simply rip the turrets from the ground and fling them telekinetically across the room.

Pirates started to scream as they were bowled over by flying machinery. Ivil split her attention for a fraction of a millisecond, ensuring that those who were struck received a disproportionate amount of damage from the blow.

Next was identifying smaller threats. Those that had the potential to be dangerous but weren’t yet pointed her way.

She stretched her senses out, and when she found guns, they were shredded apart. She wasn’t gentle about it. Pirates with holstered handguns suddenly had their sides ripped into as the weapons tucked away in their sheaths twisted apart. Guns exploded off of counters and from wall mounts, little parts flung across the room with violent force.

Ivil stepped forwards, the world still moving at a crawl around her. The motion was quick enough, in real-time, that it created a small shockwave that she had to work to negate.

The command room and the pirates within had well and truly been caught with their pants down. Ivil decided that all she needed to do now was add to the chaos a little. A hard wave of her arm sent a burst of wind pushing ahead, strong enough to toss people and loose objects across the room.

Ivil snapped a few more necks, for good measure, then she loosened her grip over time.

To her perception, the world suddenly leapt forwards, time restoring itself like a rubber band snapping. One moment things were caught in blossoming explosions, bodies were only starting to be launched across the room, and the pirates were on the cusp of great aggression.

In the next moment, chaos reigned and bodies were flung across the gravity-less space, crashing against walls even as several explosions sent rains of shrapnel across the room, embedding bits of metal into consoles and computers.

“Well, shit,” Missy said as she took in the room from the partial cover provided by the door.

The only living pirates were in a shape where they were probably wishing they weren’t. Though, there were a few that had hidden behind consoles and machines and who were still cowering. Ivil took note of them, but as long as they weren’t reaching for weapons, they weren’t worth much of her attention.

“It’s safe,” Ivil said.

“I bet,” Missy muttered. She kicked into the room, floating across towards the upper tier. She seemed to be relaxing, until she snapped around and fired at someone hiding behind a console. “You missed one,” she said.

“My bad,” Ivil replied. She hadn’t. That person was harmless. But she wasn’t going to devolve into an argument about her skills here and now. “Aurora, Twenty-Six, do you want to come in?”

“It’s likely safer within,” Aurora agreed. She stumbled into the room, magnetic boots awkwardly clinging to the floor. Twenty-Six followed, looking around as though she was expecting to be jumped at any moment.

Ivil escorted them up a set of stairs in the centre of the room and to the main command terminals. These were large machines, with seats that had harnesses for cybernetically enhanced people to control the entire station with their mind-interfaces. Still, the station had plenty of controls that could be inputted manually, and Twenty-Six gravitated towards those.

“There’s a list of ships here,” Twenty-Six said as she tapped a few screens. “Uh, I’m not getting much more than names and berths.”

“No cameras?” Aurora asked.

Missy glanced back, but then refocused on the entrances into the command room. Ivil, in the meantime, was slowly choking out any of the crew that threatened to distract anyone with their incessant living.

“Lemme… okay, here,” Twenty-Six said. She tapped something, and the screens at the front of the room, above the windows overlooking the arms of the station, switched from diagnostics and timetables to a grid of cameras overlooking the individual berths. There were twenty-six in all, and over half were occupied.

“I suppose we have to make a choice,” Ivil said as she scanned through the options. The moment reminded her of ordering food at a cheap chain restaurant, almost. She pointed to one of the ships. “What about that one?”

Twenty-Six followed her pointing finger to the screen, then she glanced down. “Uh, that’s the Sappho. It’s a guided missile destroyer.” She tried to pull up more, but there was very little. That was not unexpected. The station hardly needed that much information about a ship parked in one of its berths, even if it was wearing their faction’s colours.

“I like it,” Ivil said. “Shall we take it out for a spin?”

“It’s a destroyer,” Twenty-Six said. “It probably needs a full crew. Or at least… more than four people.”

“It looks relatively modern,” Aurora said. “It might actually only need a couple of people to operate. The problem will be getting the clearance to be accepted by the ship’s AI. If it has one.”

Pirates didn’t often use full artificial intelligence in their ships. Nor did most sane navies. Martian ships had some virtual intelligences operating secondary systems, but they never had much access beyond that.

“We can at least take a tour of her,” Ivil said. “If needs must, we can conscript a crew.”

“How will we disconnect from the station?” Twenty-Six asked. “I can release some of the main clamps from here. But some of them need to be released after the airlocks to the ships are retracted.”

“It’s a warship. It must have some turreted weapons,” Ivil said. “If those aren’t enough, then I’ll put a bit of effort into freeing her myself. Release her as much as you can, Twenty-Six.”

The mechanic hesitated, but just for a moment. She tapped a few commands, and Ivil saw the larger clamps holding the ship letting go and retracting back into the station. So did the fueling hoses and a few other links.

Then Twenty-Six switched to the commands for other ships and started to enter more commands. Ivil found her eyebrows rising as warnings popped up on the screen and Twenty-Six overrode them with casual disregard. “What are you doing?”

“The controls for the air and fuel refilling are all here. I’m locking some clamps, pumping the ships with fuel past their limits, and I’m emptying the station’s air tanks into the ships past their capacity.”

“Will we have a dozen exploding ships to deal with?” Missy asked.

“No. The system’s not that poorly built. Just a lot of ships with a lot of fuel and air, locked into place. I can’t really do more to sabotage them than that. This might pop a few safety valves, and if they didn’t do regular maintenance, it might cause a leak, but that’s it.”

Twenty-Six finished inputting the same commands for every ship currently berthed, then she moved on to another screen.

“This, on the other hand, this is just mean,” she said as she pulled out a small keyboard from below the console and started to tap something into it.

“What are you doing now?” Aurora asked. “Is that… the IFF registration?”

“It’s how the station reads the ship’s IFF. It can be changed. You’re not supposed to be able to change it so easily. Otherwise you could trick others out in space. But these are pirates, and that’s exactly the kind of stuff they’d do.”

Ivil grinned. The change was small, but it would mean that the pirate’s automated gunnery systems wouldn’t know who was a friend and who was a foe. The default in those cases would be to hold fire until a human operator confirmed things.

The fact that their new IFF tags were all insults ranging from The Dirty Pirate to the Gormless Asshole was only more amusing. It was petty, but it was what Twenty-Six could do, so she was doing it as well as she could.

“We can’t stick around here forever,” Missy said. “They’ll want their command room back.”

“You’re right,” Ivil said. She snapped her fingers, and then noticed all of her companions wince at once. There was now a fist-sized hole blown into one of the walls. The suction of air being pulled into the void was enough to drag some loose materials towards the hole and make ears pop. Some free-flowing blood started to pool on its way towards the hole. “Let’s head out.”

Chapter thirty-four

Gatling Gun Blues

A modern spacecraft was a piece of moving art. A machine that allowed mortal man to master the most inhospitable of environments. It unlocked the solar system, and maybe one day the stars.

Some were venerable ancients, mistreated and uncared for, but still valuable. They were a stepping stone on the path of progress. Or so an overzealous museum curator might say.

The Convent Valkyries treated their ships with due respect and were diligent about maintenance and keeping them in working order. These weren’t cargo vessels, sent across space to deliver planet-made crap. These were pirate ships. Warriors of the void. A single fault could cascade into a disastrous failure leading to a lost ship, and a loss of piratical profits.

So Ivil expected that the Sappho would be in pretty decent condition when they got to it. Whether or not they’d be able to take control of the ship with just four people, only two of whom had proper experience at the helm, was something else entirely.

The Sappho was berthed relatively close to the centre of the station, only a few corridors away. Ivil and her companions took their time getting there, however. She wanted to give the others time to catch their breath, and recuperate otherwise.

“Is that it?” Twenty-Six asked as they walked through a corridor. One wall was lined with glass, and a ship was visible through it.

Ivil scanned the ship at a glance.

The Sappho was an Earth-pattern ship at its core. That was to say, its decks were laid out “long” as opposed to “tall.” The bridge sat at the middle-rear, covering a trio of large engines. Before it was a flat deck on which a large turreted cannon sat.

Ivil figured she would have time to inspect it better later, but at a cursory glance, the Sappho was a decently armed light warship. Its designation as a destroyer was probably deserved. It was too light to be a pocket cruiser, and too bulky for a frigate or blockade runner.

Then again… she was thinking in Martian ship classifications. No two nations in the solar system could agree on a proper classification system for warships, and some systems contradicted themselves.

After the First Solar War, Mars and Earth both signed treaties outlawing the construction of cruiser-and-larger ships.

Then they both immediately started building massive carriers that fit one loophole or another in the treaty, then turned around and called them everything from “light auxiliary battleships” to “war-capable utility ships.”

In any case, the Sappho was a tidy-looking little warship. Bigger than the patrol ships and corvettes that swam around the void near Mars, but not by too much. It was a respectably sized vessel for pirates and ne’er-do-wells who likely couldn’t afford the infrastructure to operate larger, capital-class warships.

“She’s gorgeous,” Twenty-Six said.

“She’ll do,” Aurora replied. “Assuming we can pilot her at all. And that we eventually give her a fresh coat of paint. Maybe black and bronze?”

“Aren’t those the Phobos colours?” Missy asked.

“Yes,” Aurora replied. “If, hypothetically, we manage to keep the ship, then we’ll need to register it somewhere.”

“And you’re the only one with the clout to do that. I get it,” Missy replied. “I could probably get a Haumea registry, if I called in a lot of favours.”

Twenty-Six turned, blinking innocently at Missy. “I… don’t think she’d look good with a clown nose.”

Missy sighed. “Not every… urgh, nevermind.”

Ivil smiled. With the tension of assaulting the command centre leaving the others, and the impression that they were almost out of here rising, the others had started to relax a little. They were bantering, talking about inconsequential things.

Ivil… wasn’t entirely sure how to insert herself into all of that, but for now she was content to stand aside and enjoy it.

They came around a corner, and Ivil reached an arm out, stopping them.

The corridor was empty. This was the loading passage that ran parallel with the Sappho. It was similar to the room they’d stepped into when they left the Held Together. A large space, with racks and storage for tools at one end, and loading vehicles sitting idle in the centre.

Crates of supplies waiting to be loaded onto the ship sat there, hooked to the floor, and Ivil noted a screen with a list of maintenance times and a schedule on the far wall.

Anyone leaving the ship would pass through here, but since they were all ostensibly pirates as well, there was no real security in place.

“What is it?” Missy asked. Her borrowed gun came up, and she went on the defensive. There was a very faint shift as the sound around her changed, just a little.

“I don’t think we’re as alone as we’d want to be,” Ivil said.

“Heh.”

The noise echoed out across the corridor. Ivil narrowed her eyes, feeling out ahead. It took her a moment to realise that there was a spot in the room that her senses weren’t penetrating.

It was a strange effect, but not one altogether unfamiliar to her. It was something akin to a non-smell. An odour that distinctly had no odour, and which therefore could only be noticed by the absence it left.

She hadn’t been on the lookout for something quite so potent against her own particular senses.

In a battle against A- and even B-classers, it was only prudent to expect that the enemy would have a blank-like ability to disguise themselves. This wasn’t that kind of situation. Or so she thought.

“Step out,” Ivil said. “You’ve got me curious.”

A shield appeared, faint and shimmering, a half-sphere that popped into being behind a crate, then a familiar woman stepped out from behind it.

It was the pirate that had accosted the Held Together, Rouge Herring. “You know, when I caught you, I didn’t expect any fight at all. Just another group of poor souls, with too good of a price on their heads to pass up. A few dollars of profit for me, for a dishonest day’s work,” she said. Her voice was still warm honey, even slightly warped by the shield and echoing across the room. “Then you had to be a problem.”

“I’ve always strived to be an issue,” Ivil said. “I’m glad I was one for you as well.”

The pirate reached down, then raised up a weapon. It was a large gun, the sort designed to be mounted on a turret, or in a fixed position, not the kind of weapon meant to be used by one person, or used within a station at all.

“You really were. Now, what sort of trouble are you planning next? About to steal a ride out of here?”

“Yes, actually,” Ivil said.

“Figured as much, as soon as I saw the clamps come off on this one,” she replied. “But I’m afraid you can’t have her.”

“I’m afraid you can’t stop us,” Ivil said.

The pirate grinned. “Too bad about Aurora. The bounty was spectacular.” Then she swung her gun around while squeezing the trigger.

Twenty-Six and Aurora both screamed while Missy hit the deck. Bullets the size of small soft drink cans thumped across the room, slammed into the walls, and then continued onwards without a care.

Ivil caught those headed their way, and the shells shivered in the air for a moment before detonating under her control. The explosions created swirling balls of dust and smoke that raced out across the room, then started to rush towards the holes the pirate had pumped into the walls behind Ivil.

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Ivil said.

“You can’t hurt me!” Rouge Herring screamed.

Ivil detonated all of the explosive ammunition in her gun at once, proving that she could, in fact, hurt her.

The shield winked out, and Ivil traced the course of the woman’s corpse as it was flung across the room. She plucked it out of the air and then tossed it towards the ship’s entrance airlock with a thought.

The others might find it distasteful to carry a corpse with them, but Ivil didn’t think they had the luxury of time to wait and have all of the pirate’s cores seep out of her body.

“Well, that was certainly something,” she said as she brushed some dust off her pants. “Let’s get going, shall we? Before we have to deal with even more diversions?”

Twenty-Six raised her head. She was cowering near the ground, her instinctual foetal position not quite working in zero-g. “Wha?” she asked smartly.

Ivil suspected that she might have made a mistake, not killing the pirate right away. Twenty-Six and the others clearly had a bit of tinnitus after all of that.

She reached down and scooped Twenty-Six up. “Let’s get going, I said,” Ivil repeated. The sooner they were off, the better. The Sappho would have to prove its worth as a warship, one way or the other.

Interlude - The Twenty and Six

She was born in a desolate little station, stuck in the rings of Saturn.

Stuck and desolate were not pulling nearly enough weight in that statement. She’d been born on a station whose name was a string of letters and numbers, and whose owners lived way back on Earth. Or maybe Mars? It was hard to tell.

It wasn’t like they really mattered. Twenty-Six was born to a cozy little family, and that was, maybe, enough.

Her name was given to her in the station’s hospital. She was the twenty-sixth baby born there, and was, technically, company property from the moment of her birth.

That, like many other things, was a polite fiction.

If she was company property, then she was also the company’s responsibility. It meant that the number’s corporation that owned her had to write off her “maintenance” as a normal expense. Diapers and her first shots, the medication that all babies born in zero-g needed, the special little pace-maker for her infantile heart to be able to beat. Her first clothes, then her education.

It was all a calculated game of putting the responsibility on someone’s shoulder.

That was a good analogy for life around Saturn, actually. Everything was teetering on the edge of being a disaster, and it all had to be someone’s fault.

It wasn’t all bad. She was one of some eighty thousand people living in and around the rings of Saturn. That was a small city’s worth of people, so many that it was impossible to know everyone. But it was possible to know each other’s families.

They formed a strange sort of society that had felt completely natural to her at the time. Clans and sects and tightly knit family groups, each one with their own speciality. Her family were mechanics. Her grandparents, all four of them, were engineers, and her parents both mechanics. They devoted themselves to keeping the stations running.

Others had clans of security officers, or clans of mining operators, drone controllers, life support specialists, dock workers, officers… there was a sense of… place, in the rings.

You were born into your slot. You’d live and work in it, responsible for keeping that cog turning until you inevitably died at the median age of twenty-nine.

When her parents passed—the blame had fallen on a young man called Forty-Seven, from the Life Support Subsystems Clan—she had decided that maybe… maybe life around Saturn wasn’t the best.

There was nothing actually keeping her back. She was company property, but that was a polite fiction and everyone knew it. So she made some calls, took the small amount of time allotted to her to grieve, and got herself a berth on the Held Together.

She was happy to admit that she fell in love with the ship.

There was so much room, so much life, so much motion. Sure, it was even older than some of the stations she’d lived on and repaired, but old wasn’t always bad. It had a weight of history to it, and the captain treated her right.

Missy was there too. Stern and gruff and… kind of hot. Twenty-Six had developed a crush on the older woman almost as grand as her love for the ship.

Both loves had lasted for a while, and both seemed to be going nowhere fast.

Missy didn’t return the feelings. Twenty-Six wasn’t sure she was able to. The woman had history of her own, and she’d leave at many of the ports they found themselves in and find a man, or a woman, to spend the night with.

The Held Together… didn’t always live up to her name. She was a ship in rough shape, and it often showed.

The romance faded a little. There were other ships out there, some that weren’t death-traps. She’d seen stations, even moons, that she never expected to see before, and discovered first-hand that her experiences in the rings weren’t… normal.

Sure, life was shit all across the solar system, but there were big pockets where things maybe weren’t so bad.

She’d never live on a planet, or on one of the moons with a heavier gravity well. Her bones and heart couldn’t take it. But one of the smaller moons? One of the newer, nicer stations? Maybe… maybe one day.

Twenty-Six could say a lot about Saturn, but she couldn’t say that the place had stomped out her ability to dream.

None of those dreams had ever included someone like Evelyn Ville.

The woman had come aboard the Held Together and acted in a way that didn’t fit the little boxes that Twenty-Six usually put people in. They’d had guests and passengers before, but never any who were that interested in their homely rust bucket.

She’d never had someone interested in her before.

Twenty-Six might have been… a little innocent, but she wasn’t stupid.

Evelyn was hiding a whole heap of stuff. She was powerful, way stronger than was normal, she was probably rich, she was well-educated, and she was… kinda hot, but in a very domineering, overpowering kind of way. Even if she acted very maternally towards Twenty-Six herself.

She was uncertain about her emotions regarding everything that had happened, and the act of storming a pirate station, eliminating hundreds, and then presenting Twenty-Six with a core did nothing to clarify her feelings on the matter.

Cores were expensive. Cores were worth a fortune. The one she had was probably even useful, which meant that if she figured out how to split it and sell that split, she might be set for life. Well, life as long as she lived humbly.

In under a standard week, Evelyn had swept into her life, flirted with her (she was pretty sure), flirted with all the other pretty girls on the ship (she was more certain of that), then murdered a heap of pirates, gave Twenty-Six an entire core for no reason, and now they were waltzing into a ship that looked like it couldn’t be any more than two years old.

Twenty-Six knew that if it wasn’t for the adrenaline pumping through her right now, she’d be a hyperventilating mess in a corner.

“Can you open the door, Twenty Six?”

She jumped, then looked over to Evelyn. The woman was standing, as if there was gravity, next to the final airlock door leading into the Sappho. “Oh, uh, yeah,” she said while cursing herself for not being more articulate.

The door was new, sure, but it wasn’t operating on anything too sophisticated. The hardware was nice, but the software was dated, and whoever had put it together had never patched out the exploits that could get the door open.

She tapped into the commands, checked in the maintenance log, took note of the last name on the registry, then tapped out. Then it was as easy as opening the maintenance menu again, typing in that name as a pass, and running a physical diagnostics test. That same test included the door opening and closing, which… made it all terribly easy.

“Well done,” Evelyn said.

Twenty-Six tried to suppress the happy thrill that those words sent down her spine. She wasn’t a dog to go all happy just because she got a little praise!

She… she’d need a lot of praise for that.

Pouting to herself, Twenty-Six allowed the others to get past her into the ship before she followed them. Evelyn was still floating the corpse of that pirate captain with her, for whatever reason, though she did open up a locker just on the inside and tossed it in without a care.

She floated around it as she followed the others deeper in. The airlock shut behind them, and they were all inside what might have been their brand-new ship.

It was gorgeous.

Sleek panels with evenly placed handholds. Brushed aluminium grating over maintenance access points. The air exchange quickly syphoned the air from the lock out of the room, with barely a rattle and no signs that there was an active fan.

The ship was only partially active at the moment. Life support was on, but everything else seemed to be on standby. Still, it was quiet, far more so than the Held Together ever was.

“I’m not sensing any life on board,” Evelyn said.

“You can do that?” Twenty-Six asked.

Evelyn looked back to her, amber eyes, almost the same colour as a warning light, meeting her own. She gulped.

“I can,” Evelyn said simply. “I suspect the bridge is above. That’s usually where those things are. Will you be able to give us control?”

“I’ll try,” Twenty-Six said.

She didn’t want to complain. Right now, there was an opportunity the likes of which she never had before, one to turn her life around, to make it so much better… but why did it have to come from the scary hot lady?

Interlude - Aurora

Aurora didn’t have much to do as they essentially took over an entire pirate ship. She stood off to the side, more than a little awkward as the others got to work.

Twenty-Six, the eager little mechanic, rushed ahead once they were on the ship’s bridge. It only took her a moment to break though the locking mechanisms on the ship, then she positioned herself behind the engineering station and started to run diagnostics and push through the engine start-up sequence.

It was… a lot, but Twenty-Six was figuring it out. She’d pulled a physical manual from a locker at the back and had it floating next to her as she actively figured out how an entire warship functioned with casual… optimistic ease.

Aurora had been raised in a noble family, of sorts. She’d been taught the value of competence at a young age. It had been drilled into her that if she found someone exceptional and capable, then it was her duty for herself and her family, to make that person part of her retinue, or at least tie them to her family.

Those instincts were telling her that Twenty-Six was quite the catch. Aurora wouldn’t mind hiring her, after this was all done.

Then there were the others. Missy was clearly some sort of spy.

There wasn’t exactly a set of mannerisms that gave that away, but… Aurora felt she was right on that mark. Her history pointed towards it, in any case, and the fact that she had a few cores and kept it hidden.

Still, Missy didn’t feel like a threat. She might have, under ordinary circumstances, but these weren’t ordinary.

Aurora looked to the other woman in the room, the one who’d stationed herself in the captain’s seat as if she belonged in the position of greatest power in this space. It suited her, which was a little galling.

When Aurora had set out, her mind was occupied on a lot of matters. This little trip, in an unassuming junker of a ship, was going to be her last break before things became increasingly serious and possibly even dire.

She expected to take the time to study, to learn a little, to practice some skills, then she’d arrive in the Jupiter system, and things would take off.

The Held Together was meant to be a secretive little ship, one that no one would give a second glance at. One that someone like herself wouldn’t have been caught dead on.

Aurora had a few ideas of who had betrayed her plans—changed at the last minute as they were, the arrival of that Martian fleet around Ceres had shifted things around—and she was looking forward to being able to send some communications back to Phobos. Certain people were going to find themselves short a head.

She shook her head. It wasn’t the time for daydreams of revenge.

She refocused on Evelyn, then averted her eyes when she caught the woman looking her way.

Miss Ville was… a mystery. No one interesting should have been on the Held Together. Aurora was… tentatively happy to meet Missy, who seemed like exactly the kind of bad idea of a woman to help Aurora relax for a night or two, but otherwise, the trip should have been quiet.

Then there was the Tech Maid, and her strange friend.

Their alliance was as obvious as their attempts to hide it. More importantly, the Adeptus Ancillia was subservient to Evelyn.

That wasn’t entirely uncommon. There were plenty of Tech Maids around Phobos, the moon being so close to Mars. They’d treated Aurora herself with kindness and reverence once she made the fact that she had a few cores public knowledge. That was their entire religious credo.

The way that the Ancillia, Savant Sana Pendergast, Keeper of Pristine Networks, Sister of the Order of the Wet Mop, had treated Evelyn should have been the first red flag that Aurora noticed.

She’d been trained to notice social cues like that.

But no. She saw an attractive and powerful member of the Tech Maids (likely a C-classer, which was exceptional) treating a handsome, equally attractive woman well, and her stupid brain had jumped to the wrong conclusion.

She was kicking herself—mentally—for her prior idiocy.

Yes, Miss Ville was attractive. She was relatively well-spoken for someone who wasn’t a noble, and she carried herself with a charming amount of confidence, as if she expected the world to bend to her will.

Aurora might have been… interested, at least, before they’d been chased by pirates and Miss Ville had proven that her confidence in herself was more than earned.

No wonder the Adeptus Ancillia was respectful to her. The woman had to be a B-classer, at least. But… no, Cs and Bs were usually mutated in some way. Aurora’s own cores had changed her in small ways, even if none of them were impressive or all that useful.

Miss Ville was capable of walking into a hostile pirate station, ruining it, and stealing a ship from under their noses all the while keeping three others relatively safe.

Aurora didn’t have a good feel for people’s actual strength. Her education and experiences were tailored to judging others based on the strength of their knowledge, connections, and usefulness. Outright power of this sort was outside of her remit.

Was Miss Ville an A-classer? That would allow her to look however she damned well pleased. But A-classers were few and far between. Phobos had two A-classers amongst its noble families. Mars had perhaps half a hundred in its ranks, at least according to rumours.

There were, overall, perhaps a couple of thousand B-classers in the entire solar system. There were a hundred times as many C-classers, and someone could go their entire life without meeting even an A-classer, or someone close to achieving it..

“Aurora?”

Aurora jumped, then stilled her beating heart with an effort of will and made sure her noble’s mask was in place. “Yes?” she asked.

Miss Ville smiled, it was surprisingly docile. There was a smear of blood across the white of her chestpiece. “I know I can hardly impose on you, but do you think you could handle the communication system?”

“Oh, that one shouldn’t be too complicated!” Twenty-Six chirped. “Half of this ship was designed to be used by people with very little training.”

“Pirates,” Missy said. She’d taken a spot behind the ship’s helm, which was more of a set of consoles with navigational information on them and controls for the ship’s manoeuvring thrusters.

“I can try,” Aurora said. “You think it’s simple?”

“Needs to be,” Missy continued. “Pirates don’t have a dedicated training system. They’re not an army, or a company, or a nation. They grab who they can and shove them in place. You pick it up as you go. These are fancy pirates, which means that they can afford to have most systems automated.”

Aurora found the communications station just a little ways from the others. It was surprisingly close to the captain’s seat on which Miss Ville was still lounging. Aurora sat herself down, then buckled into the seat. It was… not comfortable, but better than the seats on the Held Together had been. This was a long way from the luxury vessels she’d travelled in, but it wasn’t awful. It was at least, surprisingly, clean.

“Twenty-Six, give Aurora the channel for the Held Together,” Miss Ville said. “Aurora, would you please inform the captain that we’re about to depart? Then switch over to listening to all channels. I’d like to hear the reaction when we leave.”

“The… reaction?” Aurora asked. “Yes, I supposed that’s going to be a thing.”

She hadn’t had time, with the running around, being terrified for her life, and the whole discovery that Evelyn was a madwoman, to really consider the consequences of their actions today.

They’d effectively destroyed one of the more successful and stable pirate organisations in the belt.

That would have repercussions.

Probably good ones, overall, since pirates were scum, but repercussions were going to happen no matter what, and she had no idea what they’d be.

“Are we still… going to Jupiter?”

If Miss Ville decided that Aurora was now her captive, then there was little to nothing Aurora could do.

She wasn’t sure she enjoyed this level of powerlessness, this amount of submissiveness to someone else. Even someone as handsome and strong as Miss Ville.

“Isn’t that where you wanted to go?” Evelyn asked. “I don’t see why we can’t continue. Though… I might want to talk to you about what’s really going on around Jupiter, because I feel like I’m missing a key piece of the puzzle, and I do hate puzzles.”

“Yes, of course,” Aurora said. “You can interrogate me at your leisure.”

Wait, no, that’s not what she meant to say.

This whole situation was putting all of her training and efforts to waste, it was utterly ridiculous.

Interlude - Missy

Missy had worked with some pretty shady people doing some pretty shady shit, so she wasn’t exactly unused to being thrown out into situations that the more normal sort of person might have been desperate to escape from.

Still… she’d left Haumea for a reason a long time ago.

That life wasn’t for her, not anymore.

Yes, there had been some fun, but…

Her old home, the place she’d grown up in, the community she’d been part of since she was little, it took being apart from it to realize just how incredibly fucked it was.

The Lunatics weren’t fun-loving deep-space anarchists. That’s how they liked to appear, that’s what they painted on their masks, that’s what they wanted to be. Reality had a way of inserting itself into that kind of fantasy.

She had gladly worked for the greater good of their society for years. Putting down dissidents who were on the wrong side of anarchic, hunting down spies, chasing after traitors that ran away… she was a Warmime, and dirty work was her day job.

Until… until she met someone. Until she started to look back and see how things actually were. Until she was ordered to put down that someone because they were trouble.

She retired soon after.

She always suspected her past would catch up to her, one day, but her retirement had been as cut and dry as it could be. Sure, she knew a few dirty secrets, but they were the sort of thing that was rumoured-at anyway. Sure, she left with a couple of cores, but they weren’t overly precious, and the day she left she split all of her cores and abandoned the splits.

It had left her weak, comparatively, but it also meant that the Lunatics weren’t any weaker for losing her.

She’d probably left a small gap in their ranks. After all, she was pretty damned competent, if she said so herself. She wasn’t going to be all that easy to replace, but they’d manage.

So she settled into the life of a first mate on an old junker of a ship, travelling the system and minding its own damned business. At first the rigidity had chafed a little, but she got used to it. Plus, it wasn’t all bad. There were perks to spending time at every port in the solar system. Missy might have quit the business on Haumea, but she still had her paints, and there were men, and women, across the system that found her… exotic.

She rarely had to spend a night in port alone, which was nice.

It was a piss-poor band-aid on the wound in her heart, but it was something.

She figured she’d go on like this for some time, until the Held Together gave out, was caught by pirates, failed to deliver something, or… maybe she’d even move on to another ship, or pick up a little craft of her own one day.

She never expected to be thrust back into exactly the kind of work she’d been doing before.

She never expected to find it so damned thrilling.

Missy pushed the thoughts away and tried to focus on the task in front of her. There was a console from that pirate ship they were actively pirating, the Sappho. It was the ship’s navigation computer, but also the system controlling the ship’s torpedo and missile launch system.

Usually, she’d think that anyone that had both on the same mechanism was a fool, but this was a pirate ship, so that was a forgone conclusion.

“Missy?” Evelyn asked.

Missy knew that the name was fake. Evelyn Ville. E. Ville. No one sane would actually call themselves that, not when it was very close to encroaching on the name of one of the three emperors. “Yes?” she replied.

“Are we ready to launch?” Evelyn asked.

“At the press of a button. But once we’re going, everyone will know.”

“Hmm, that’s a fair point. Miss Aurora, if you would be so kind as to get on the comms and swear a little? Perhaps insinuate that we’re disconnecting from the docks for our own safety?”

Aurora looked up. The noblelady—the one very likely responsible for them being chased down by pirates in the first place—seemed a little frazzled. Her hair was a mess, curls having freed themselves from her coif, and there was an appreciable flush on her darker skin. “You want me to act like we’re pirates leaving the station?”

“Exactly,” Evelyn said. “I doubt that other pirates would follow any sort of procedure in this situation, so let’s play up the fact that we’re doing the same.”

“I’ll… try,” Aurora said.

Missy reached down and tapped the final release on the clamps holding them in place. The entire ship shivered, then swayed around them. “Ready to move,” Missy said as she took full control of the helm and activated all of the ship’s manoeuvring thruster suite.

It was strange to be piloting a ship that wasn’t a rustbucket like the Held Together. This thing had some real power behind it, and it wouldn’t take seconds for a pressed command to be acted out.

“Take us out, slow and steady,” Evelyn said. “Then we’ll see about aiming those torpedoes and missiles. There are a lot of sitting ducks around here.”

“A duck’s one of those Earth chickens, right?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Just so,” Evelyn agreed.

Missy shook her head, and not for the first time, activated one of her cores.

Of all the cores and powers she had taken with her when she left Haumea, this was the one that was most likely to have them chase after her. It wasn’t directly powerful, but it was… useful. A full tenth of the Warmimes had copies of it.

The core was called the Eye of Marceau. It allowed her to “ping” other cores nearby and gauge their relative strength. It was far from perfect, and it took some time to get used to telling how strong a core was, but it did mean that when out on the streets, Missy could point to each core-wielder in sight, regardless of how subtle their core and its powers were.

Aurora came back as a tiny constellation of weak lights. Like faint, distant stars twinkling together. All of her cores save a couple were copies of copies of copies. Weak, but slowly repairing themselves.

Twenty-Six came back as a single point, a weaker star, but not entirely faded. Her core was likely a second-generation copy of its original, and it had matured successfully.

Missy’s own cores glowed bright within her. Two fully regrown cores. One was even an original, healed from its split years ago.

She could even feel a few distinct cores dumped in a locker by the ship’s airlock, tossed in there by Evelyn when they boarded. That would bear investigating later, though she doubted that Evelyn had entirely forgotten.

And Evelyn Ville… was nothing. A blank spot, with no more cores shining from within than Missy could see in the average person.

That was, of course, entirely impossible.

“Missy, can you spin up targeting and send it to my seat?” Evelyn asked.

“Alright,” Missy replied as she did just that. Her hand rested on the ship’s yoke, and she gently pulled them up and away from the station. She felt a slight, momentary bit of acceleration, then nothing again as she let the ship drift.

She had an idea of what Evelyn was aiming for. They’d play the part of pirates on the run from some trouble in their own station until they were poised to strike. And then they’d let loose with everything the Sappho had to offer.

That was actually a fair bit. Missy had an eye on the ship’s weaponry, and every tube was filled with anti-ship torpedoes, EMP bombs, and MIRVs designed to disable entire small convoys of cargo haulers. There were even more torpedoes and missiles stored away and ready to reload automatically.

“Hmm, so many targets, so few projectiles,” Evelyn said as she idly tapped the targeting screen next to the captain’s seat.

“Want a list of priorities?” Missy asked. “Or just go for the biggest, meanest ships around the station.”

“Yes, that was always my favourite tactic. Find the biggest, meanest, strongest person in the room and kick their teeth in. It puts everything in perspective for the rest.”

“Yeah,” Missy said. She eyed the back of Evelyn’s head. Who the hell was this woman?

“We’ll just shoot a bit of everything. I want to keep some ammo for our trip as well. Something tells me having empty tubes wouldn’t be the best option at the moment. Do you agree?” Evelyn half-turned and met Missy’s eyes.

She didn’t know what to think. There was no anger, or fear, or condemnation, just a steady, curious gaze.

“Yeah, I guess that’s not the worst idea,” Missy said. “Should I get ready to launch us out of here as soon as you’ve fired?”

“No, we need to stick around to keep the Held Together safe. I plan on that ship making it to Callisto no matter what.”

Yeah, this woman was weird.

Missy had to get to know her more, before she pulled out another weird trick.

Chapter thirty-five

Initiative

Initiative was everything in space combat.

Some would say it was everything in all forms of combat, but it was especially true when people were fighting in the harsh vacuum of space.

The Sappho had initiative.

The eight torpedo tubes atop the ship opened with a staccato of thumps, heavy metal plates shifting aside to reveal the dark pits within where six-metre-long rods of explosive death were waiting.

Ivil, in her brand-new captain’s chair, punched in the target coordinates for all eight torpedoes. They’d each have their own unique target and come in from a very specific vector. Missy had primed things already, and now all she needed was to press the button to launch.

“Missy, are the point-defence guns up?”

“Looks like it,” Missy replied.

Twenty-Six’s head rose up from behind her console. “We’re going to be shot at?” she asked.

Ivil blinked. She would have thought that it was a foregone conclusion. Shooting at people usually opened yourself up to being shot at. Retaliation was a religion, and Ivil was its head priestess. It felt strange to be working with people that didn’t understand that on a fundamental level.

“Once they see us shooting at them, they’ll obviously want to shoot back,” Aurora said. “Uh, Miss Ville, can you give me the names of the targets?”

“The station, near the end of Arm Gamma and in the centre of Arm Helios,” Ivil said. “Then a strike against the corvette parked next to the Held Together. Another against the destroyer above us, and the remaining four torpedoes are aimed at the defence emplacements around the station.”

“I see. Give me a moment?”

“Certainly,” Ivil replied. Her hand hovered over the launch button as she turned her attention towards Aurora.

The noble took in a deep breath, cleared her throat, then gingerly pressed a button on the communication’s system. Ivil squinted. That had established a direct connection with the station. “They’re in Arm Gamma! I repeat! Arm Gamma! The Arm is sealed! Hit it now!” Aurora shouted.

It was… very theatric, and incredibly, impossibly, fake. It reminded Ivil of her soaps, actually, the drama turned up to a point where it erred away from believability.

Aurora cleared her throat again. “Arm Helios! Strike at Arm Helios! Oh god, oh lord!”

“Wow,” Missy said. “Are you aiming for an award?”

Aurora turned a glare at the Warmime. “I’m aiming to sow confusion,” she replied before tapping the comms again. This time she broadcast across all frequencies. “Warning to all ships, the defence turrets have been compromised! The corvette… Marie Antoinette and the destroyer Joan of Arc are relaying codes to the turrets! They’re betraying us! They’re with the enemy!”

Ivil waited for Aurora to close the comms before she started to clap politely. “You really put your heart into that,” she said.

“Why thank you,” Aurora replied. She was slightly flushed, but nonetheless tilted her head back a little to display her noble nostrils.

“Will that… work?” Twenty-Six asked.

The comms panel lit up with incoming chatter, and even though she wasn’t close to it, Ivil picked up snippets of panic and questions being tossed over some rather deadly accusations. “It’ll muddy things a little,” Ivil replied.

Then she pressed the button.

The Sappho’s manoeuvring thrusters immediately fired up to counteract the downwards push caused by eight torpedoes leaping out of the ship.

Ivil closed her eyes, slowed down her perception of time, and followed their trajectory.

Without any fragile organics to worry about, the torpedoes had nothing to stop them from accelerating as hard and fast as they could, which meant that they rammed out of their hatches and immediately burned nearly all of their fuel as soon as they were lined up. Two of them were the exception, their courses requiring a number of small deviations and changes.

The pirate fleet was in a state of readiness already, but they were not at full battle readiness. Shields weren’t up, and point defence guns were still offline. A few tracked the torpedoes, but they registered as allied for the moment.

At least until the first few struck, and the primitive AI in the ships around the station clued into the fact that something was terribly wrong.

The corvette and destroyer exploded spectacularly as the torpedoes rammed into them while still burning hot, then detonated just within their hulls. The explosions set off a chain reaction, catching the air within the ships on fire and lighting up munitions and fuel.

The strikes against the station were far less spectacular. The projectiles slipped through the thin walls, then detonated themselves. There was a rush of fire as the air burned up, but bulkheads slammed shut in an instant. The conflagration was mostly debris thrown out and away from the station.

The defence platforms stationed around were both interesting and not. Ivil had a good sense for vectors and angles. It came with a number of her lesser cores. So, with that, it was simplicity itself to have the torpedoes strike the platforms at angles where the majority of the debris from their strikes would be propelled in a… useful direction.

Notably, right into other nearby platforms.

Space filled with point-defence fire about three seconds after Ivil pressed fire. Mostly, these were aimed at the largest chunks of debris now floating freely, and quickly, away from the targets she’d struck.

A few of those attacks were sensibly aimed at the Sappho.

Ivil batted them aside. Powers that allowed a person to have a shield of sorts were quite common. Powers that allowed them to place immovable, unbreakable shields wherever they damned well pleased were less common, but Ivil didn’t want the paint on her brand new ship scuffed.

“Goddamn shit UI,” Missy muttered as she tried to grapple with the controls for the Sappho’s main batteries.

“I’ve got it,” Ivil replied as she slipped command to her captain’s chair then assigned priority targets. There were a number of defence installations left, and a few ships that were both threats, and also within the firing arc of their guns.

Their shields were up, of course, and now faint glimmers of light were appearing around other ships as well. The entire pirate fleet was rushing into a state of readiness.

It would have been so easy to ruin it all, to sweep all of the ships aside, crush them, then casually extract what few cores she could sense. But… no, her cover was holding on with barely nothing at all, but she knew that there was a difference between people suspecting that she was powerful, and people knowing who she was.

“Aurora! Get the Held Together on the line. Tell the good captain to burn out of their berth. Missy, take over one of the dorsal point-defence guns, snipe out the clamps holding them in place. Twenty-Six, are the engines hot?”

“Super!” Twenty-Six said.

“Alright. Everyone, hang on, we’re going to start a light acceleration burn. Two g’s. We’re leaving, and we want to make it clear that we won’t be around for long. Let the pirates blow each other up if that’s what they want. We’re leaving.”

“We’re running away? Can’t we blow them all up?” Twenty-Six asked.

Ivil blinked. “That’s bloodthirsty of you,” she said.

“Well, they’re pirates,” Twenty-Six replied with a small, rather innocent little shrug.

“Don’t get too excited,” Missy said. “We’re still outnumbered too-many-to-one. Get in your station’s crash seat.”

Twenty-Six did just that, strapping herself in quickly. The others did the same, though Aurora needed a moment to puzzle out the straps on her seat. Ivil did up her own, mostly for show, then gestured to Missy. “You’ve got the helm,” she said.

“Aye,” Missy replied. There was a lot of sarcasm in that one syllable, but she nonetheless took command of the ship, pushed up the throttle a little, then aimed it forwards and away from the station. Almost as soon as they had a heading, Missy was back to controlling the dorsal guns.

Ivil closed her eyes and felt things out. The Held Together was still in its berth, but it wouldn’t be that way for long. Most of the clamps had let go already, and the ship’s engines were on and lighting the station on fire with their thrust as the ship tried to pull free.

A quick burst of surprisingly accurate fire from Missy ripped apart the connection between a clamp and the station, and the ship was able to pull itself free with a wrench.

Ivil almost felt bad for it. The Held Together was only barely living up to its name before, and now it had to deal with a rather forceful extraction on top of the rest.

Still, it was free. “Ah, the captain’s asking for a location to meet up in,” Aurora said.

Ivil did a little mental maths, then sent some coordinates over. They were a few hours away assuming that they only moved at a very slow, steady pace. Still, it would be outside of the average gun’s calculable range.

They were, for the moment, free, leaving chaos and destruction in their wake.

Chapter thirty-six

Somewhat Fragile

Spaceships were always exceptionally fragile things. It was hard for the layperson to understand that, sometimes.

They’d look up and see a kilometre-long warship, all swooping angles and bristling guns, and think that it would take an act of God to rip that apart.

The engineers and spacers, however, knew the truth of it.

Slap a metre-thick brick of pure depleted uranium on the end of your ship? Watch it become one of the marbles in a Newton’s cradle as the block is rammed by a tungsten rod going a full percent of C. You’ll see the brick on the other side of the ship leap out into empty space, because conservation of energy was a right pain in the ass sometimes.

Kinetic energy and momentum; they’re the swinging pendulums of space warfare. Big, juicy vulnerabilities, right out there in front where everyone could see.

So what does one do when Newton wants to do nothing more than squeeze your ship’s metaphorical weaknesses in a vice?

You cover up, that’s what.

At the onset of the First Solar War, shielding technology was still at its infancy. Evasion was the order of the day. That, or carry a large rock with you to suck up some of the damage.

By the end of the war, three new forms of shielding had been invented and were racing to prominence.

Depending on the budget, a modern ship might have one, two, or all three installed onboard, and that wasn’t including point-defence and anti-debris systems.

Energy shielding was the most common and least trustworthy of these systems. The layperson’s explanation for how they worked was simple. A generator, usually on the exterior of the ship, would create a flat plane of carefully controlled electrons in a lattice. These would be “hardened” by pushing more energy into them. They’d essentially create a quasi-physical barrier on the exterior of the ship, and by overlapping these an entire vessel could be covered.

They’d bounce micro meteors and melt at the first graze from a laser.

Deflector shields were a more expensive option that required a fair amount of “empty” space around a ship. The deflectors were small gravitational engines. Stupidly powerful and utterly useless at moving a ship.

The shields were supposed to be a new form of engine when they were first invented. A way to “grab” on to space itself and pull a ship through it with invisible oars.

That had failed miserably, but the failures were interesting and reproducible.

A well-tuned deflector shield created a metres-thick zone where anything weighing more than an atom was sheared in a specific direction, usually away from the ship hiding behind the shield.

Perfect for no-selling lighter kinetic weaponry, but impossible to use in tight formations and you could forget having a deflector on while approaching a station or another ship to dock.

Again, outright useless against pure energy weapons.

Which was where the third and fanciest shield systems came in. Everyone called them bubble shields, because that’s what they looked like. Thin, mostly translucent bubbles where light was warped ever so slightly into an oil-slick sheen. They made a ship glow. They bounced energy weapons like tossing a pebble at a tank. A complete no-sell of one of the most effective weapons systems in the system and a major upset near the end of the First Solar War.

Some historians claimed that they were responsible for Mars not being completely wiped away by the end of the war. A miracle of science and a secret still carefully guarded to this day by blackboxed systems and a full scientific blackout

All the rich kids with the fancy billion-dollar racing yachts had them. Everyone else crossed their fingers and hoped that the enemy wasn’t packing too many energy weapons.

The Held Together did not have a bubble shield generator. It could never even afford deflector shields. What it did have were a set of energy shields from the inter-war period that covered its flanks, bottom, and top with four bluish squares that were even now distorting and rippling as debris and stray point-defence fire lanced out from the pirate station and the ships around them.

The situation had turned into what Ivil might charitably describe as a mild clusterfuck.

She had expected that things would be… complicated for the pirates. She hadn’t expected for some of them to see this as an opportunity.

Soon after the Sappho launched its first volley of torpedoes, a corvette had turned around and unleashed a full broadside into an entirely unrelated destroyer. The destroyer’s shields had eaten most of the shots, but it still took some damage from the attack. So it retaliated by obliterating the smaller ship in a deluge of close-range fire that left the corvette as nothing more than a shapely hulk that promptly ran into another ship.

There were, she suspected, about a generation’s worth of grudges being called out and paid for at the moment in a most violent way.

It was a good thing, in one respect. Pirates busy shooting each other were too busy to go after them.

In another respect, it was somewhat problematic, because she intended for the Held Together to not die an inglorious death, and she had expected to be the centre of the pirates’ attention for a while. This chaos was so unfocused that there was a very real chance that the vulnerable old heap of junk would be batted aside like an annoying fly by some debris of stray fire.

Ivil focused hard, her many powers reaching out across the void to flick chunks of ship aside and turn away turrets before they could get a bead on the Held Together’s inviting rear.

“Is she still okay?” Twenty-Six asked. There was no missing the naked worry in her voice.

“She’s holding on,” Missy said, her eyes glued onto her readouts. “Don’t worry about her; she’ll be fine. Hell, she’ll have a whole host of new problems for you to look at, even.”

Twenty-Six chuckled, but it sounded a little wet, close to tears.

“I’m certain the ship and her crew will be fine,” Aurora said. “My father—a somewhat wise man—always told me that one ought to only cry once the worst has happened, not when it is merely at the doorstep. Until then, there is only hope, and hope is a dirty fighter.”

Ivil glanced at Aurora and resisted the urge to smile. That had come out as… “Your father sounds a little more crude than I expected to hear,” Ivil said.

Aurora sniffed, her nostrils rising to the defense. “My father is a noble, but he’s from a generation that grew up when Phobos was at its lowest. He has seen hardships enough to make other men break. If he is sometimes uncouth, then that is merely an artefact of the hardships he has faced and not a demerit on his nobility.”

Ivil made a mental note to pursue that line of reasoning later. It seemed like Aurora had some history with her family and it might be interesting to see where that all led. In the meantime, however, there were other matters of greater import. “Missy, can we see who is targeting whom?”

“I… yeah, I think so. This ship’s targeting software’s leagues ahead of anything I’ve ever worked with. Looks like… a lot of people are targeting a lot of others, ourselves included. Not too many focusing on the Held Together though. I think a lot of targeting profiles might be retaliatory? The ship’s computing targets for everyone that aims at us.”

“And the Held Together doesn’t have anything to target,” Twenty-Six said.

“Not even point defence guns? Anti-meteor weapons?” Ivil asked. On ships with less performant shields, those were the old norm for knocking small threats away. They were usually too weak to be considered a true weapon, and modern munitions could outmanoeuvre and had built-in ECM to confuse anything but top-grade military point defence. She had heard stories of intrepid crews using their anti-meteor lasers as weapons to take out greedy and incautious pirates.

Twenty-Six winced. “Ah, well, we have one? But it’s… kinda been broken… for about a year or two.”

“Fantastic,” Aurora said flatly.

Ivil checked the distance counter. They had accelerated for a few minutes to a speed that she found rather reasonable. At the moment they were cruising along, no longer accelerating. Every minute that passed increased the distance between the Sappho and the station by a little more.

“We’re going to be outside of kinetic gun range in a minute,” Ivil said. “And the Held Together is just a dozen kilometres behind. I think we can calm down a little.”

Twenty-Six let out a sigh of relief, though Ivil could tell that there was still some tension there. She’d likely only calm down when they were truly safe.

“Aurora, Missy, do you think you can establish somewhat private comms with the Held Together?” Ivil asked.

“Reasonable enough,” Missy said. “But before that, we need to figure something out.”

“And what’s that?” Ivil asked, genuinely curious. She noticed Missy and Aurora giving each other a look, then Missy refocused on her.

“We need to decide who’s in charge of this ship, and of our little two-ship operation.”

Chapter thirty-seven

Captain

Every ship needed a captain. Someone had to choose where the damned thing was going and what to do once it got there. There was no such thing as a democratic bridge.

“Two-Six,” Missy said. The younger girl’s head rose up from the station she was working at. “Can you do me a favour and go check on this ship’s engineering section? We did put her through some of her paces, and we don’t know much about her. Just give her a look, maybe poke at the shields too.”

“I can do that,” Twenty-Six chirped.

“Make sure to check for booby traps too,” Missy warned.

That was actually a good point. Ivil endeavoured to keep a metaphorical eye on Twenty-Six. If she somehow managed to trigger a mine or something, Ivil would yank her away from whatever trouble she’d found.

“Oh, alright,” Twenty-Six said. She stood, then yawned hugely. Ivil might have been somewhat insulted at the impolite gesture if Twenty-Six didn’t have a cute little snaggletooth and didn’t wrinkle her nose at the end of her yawn. “I’ll be careful,” she promised before pulling herself away from the station and floating to the back of the bridge.

They were operating without any acceleration gees at the moment, so everything was free floating.

“Did you want to have this discussion here?” Ivil asked.

“Yes, here work’s nicely,” Missy said, standing and disconnecting from her station.

“I think,” Aurora cut in, “that it might be best to have it in a more neutral location. This ship must have a mess, or a dining area, yes?”

Missy glared, but then she nodded. “Fine,” she replied. “Probably a deck down or something.”

With everything in the bridge left on stand-by mode or left to automatic systems, they filed out of the bridge and into the main corridors of the ship. The top level was the bridge, with a staircase leading down into a set of corridors laid out more or less like a capital E. The two branches on either side led to the airlocks and some small storage rooms at the rear. The middle branch led down a narrow corridor that ended at the ladderwell.

There were rooms in between the branches, both helpfully labelled. “Captain,” and next to it “First Mate.” There was also a washroom under the bridge. Ivil extended her senses within and was surprised to find a relatively large room, with a full shower and lockers. It was actually quite luxurious.

The three of them moved down that narrow central corridor to the end, where Missy tugged herself down the ladder and to the level below.

This one was split down the middle. On her right, while facing the front, was a large storage and stowage room, with shelves of bolted down equipment and some access to the internal machinery of the ship. On the left, opposite, were the crew bunks. Smaller rooms with little more than a bed and a small entertainment suite. There was a mess by the front, and another, much more humble, washroom.

The mess had a table with seating for eight around it.

Counting the beds, Ivil made out room enough for seven souls onboard the ship. The Sappho could probably take on a few more, if they were willing to sleep in shifts, but then those same people would be stepping on each other’s toes. The ship had a few spacious areas, and a few luxuries, but it wasn’t that large of a ship.

Aurora floated over to a wall, then tapped a panel, opening a few more lights so that the room wasn’t only lit by its standby lighting. It made it much brighter. “Let’s sit,” she said before gently kicking off the wall and heading towards the small kitchenette at the back. It was just a few stovetops, a microwave, and a bit of storage. She moved right past that and to the vending machine next to it.

A minute later, as Ivil was sitting herself down, Aurora returned to the table and sat across from her. She placed a can in front of Ivil, then another before Missy. Ivil stared for a moment before taking the can and popping the tab. There was a plastic “sippy cup” top. It funnelled the soda out of a little beak with a cheap “suck valve” that would stop it from spraying all over.

“Thank you,” Ivil said as she took a sip. “So, how do we want to do this?”

Missy glared, then softened her features. “Alright. A lot has gone down. This time yesterday we weren’t even aware that we were being chased by pirates. Now we have one of their nicer ships, their station looked like it was on fire when we left, a dozen ships are in bad need of repair, a few more are unusable, and something like a hundred-odd pirates are confirmed dead.”

“That sounds about right,” Ivil said.

Missy smacked the table, then pointed at Ivil. “No. That’s not about right. What we, you, did isn’t impossible. But I wouldn’t believe that anyone but a full infiltration force could pull it off.”

“And we need to talk about our current situation as well,” Aurora said.

Ivil looked between the two. “So, is the issue that we’re in a better position now than when we started, or is it that I was able to get us here in the first place?”

Missy licked her lips, then took another sip of her soda. “Can it be both?” she asked.

“I suppose,” Ivil said with a shrug. She considered the situation for a second, then slowed down the next second because she needed more than the one to think this through.

Missy was, probably, right to be worried. From her perspective Ivil was skilled in and had done things that would be impossible for all but an A-classer. There were a few B-classers that Ivil trusted could manage to do the same. Sonic Spectre could certainly have made a mess of the station herself, if she was given the opportunity, and she even looked mostly human.

But no, that wasn’t the point. Missy was on edge because Ivil was both powerful, and an unknown. Her situation had been uprooted and changed in a violent way, and while she suspected that the former Warmime was better at rolling with the punches than the average person, this was still asking for a lot.

Aurora, likewise, had some issues, but they were perhaps simpler to address than Missy’s. Aurora wasn’t as well-versed in what they had done might mean. Someone powerful rocking by and doing something big was… politically not entirely unusual. Aurora wasn’t used to being so close to the action, but otherwise, she was probably fine. Ivil imagined that she was more worried about Ivil’s intentions than her actions.

“Alright,” Ivil said. “Let me speak a bit before anything else.”

Missy nodded reluctantly. Aurora did the same, though without hesitation. “Go ahead, Miss Ville.”

“Just Evelyn, please. We’ve been through enough that I think we can do away with some formality,” Ivil replied. She smiled at Aurora and received a small smile in return. “Alright. So, as you both may suspect, I’m somewhat… powerful? I have a number of cores, yes. What you’re no doubt worried about beyond that are my allegiances.”

“I have to admit that I am curious,” Aurora said.

“That’s fair. I’ll admit straight away, my story about being a professor from Hellas is… a lie. A convenient cover. But, I swear that I’m not working for Mars or MINT, nor am I really associated with any other government in the solar system.”

Missy frowned. “So, what, you’re just a free agent? You just happened to be on the Held Together?”

“Oh, no, that kind of coincidence is way too unlikely to be true,” Ivil replied. “I’m a free agent, yes, but my being on the Held Together wasn’t coincidental.”

Aurora gasped. “Are… are you here for me?”

Ivil quickly shook her head, then, on a whim, she reached across the table and carefully squeezed Aurora’s hand. It was very warm, and Ivil almost forgot what she was planning on saying next. “Ah, yes, I mean, no. Hmm… how do I salvage this. Missy, are you familiar with someone named Claire Voyant?”

Might as well just fling the seer under the metaphorical bus.

“The Lunatic prophet?” Missy asked as she sat up. “I… yeah, I know her. We met, once. It was a bit before she got her rep.”

“I’m unfamiliar,” Aurora admitted.

“The Lunatics had a number of cores that let you predict things,” Missy said. “They were… troublesome to use. They, or splits of them, somehow all ended up in the hands of this one girl called Claire. She became a prophetess. She’s good. At least, that’s what the rumours say. Could just be a psy-ops to keep people away from Haumea.”

“I see,” Aurora replied. “And Miss… Evelyn, you visited this seer?”

“Recently, yes,” Ivil said. “And that’s what led me to being here, today. I asked the seer something… personal. Perhaps one day I’ll tell you what that is, but for now, that’s why I’m here. As for what I intend to do, I can assure you, truthfully, that I don’t mean to hurt any of you.”

Chapter thirty-eight

Respectful Suggestions

Missy glared across the table at Ivil, her fingers tapping a quick one-two-three-four beat. She kept it up for a surprisingly long time before stopping suddenly and crossing her arms. “I don’t trust you,” she said.

“That’s… understandable, I suppose,” Ivil said. “But I respectfully suggest that you do trust me.”

“You… respectfully want me to trust you?” Missy asked.

Ivil focused on her fully. It was painful to exclude Aurora from this discussion, but she felt like she was losing Missy at the moment. “Yes. Think of me in the abstract, if you would. I’m someone who is, to put it modestly, somewhat powerful. I can use that power to my own ends. I can use it to get what I want, and in this particular situation we find ourselves in, I could use it to get what I want out of you. But I don’t, and I won’t.”

Missy tilted her head to the side a little, eyes still narrowed. “I’m not used to discussing this kind of thing so plainly,” she said.

“Why not? We could dance around the subject, if that’s what you prefer, but I’ve always been a very straightforward kind of woman.”

Missy chuckled mirthlessly. “Alright. I… I guess I can’t say you didn’t help. That’s respectable, at least. What do you want for it?”

“For the help I rendered?” Ivil asked.

The Warmime shrugged a shoulder, then leaned against the table. “Nothing’s free,” she said.

“That’s true,” Ivil said. “What if I said I have ulterior, personal motives?”

“I’d believe that.”

“And if I said that I just saved you because I didn’t want to see you or the others hurt?” Ivil asked.

Missy grinned. “That, I’m afraid, I wouldn’t entirely believe.”

Ivil shook her head, but smiled a little herself. “You didn’t strike me as the sort that waits for a gallant knight to swoop in and save her, in any case.”

“My life’s been devoid of gallant knights,” Missy agreed. “But maybe I wouldn’t mind playing the part of the desperate… nah, nevermind.” Missy stood up, casually tugging the edge of the table to stop herself from being thrown towards the ceiling. “I’m gonna check on Twenty-Six. Then the rest of this ship. I refuse to believe it isn’t trapped in some way.”

Ivil nodded and watched her go. Missy floated with a powerful confidence. Ivil wasn’t sure if she deserved it, exactly, but it was alluring all the same. And now she was alone with Aurora.

The noblewoman was sitting her hands on her lap, but on seeing Ivil noticing her again, she sat up straighter. “I don’t have the same sort of suspicions as miss… Missy,” Aurora replied.

“That’s… good,” Ivil said.

Aurora was both harder and easier to understand than Missy. Her motivations were more political, and more abstract. “I want to hire you.”

“Pardon?”

“I won’t presume to know your history, or why you were on the Held Together. Instead I’ll judge you based on what I saw. A competent woman, able to keep myself and others safe in a situation where most would have folded. You’re very good. As I said, I won’t presume to know why you’re on the move from Ceres, but I can guess. I think someone in your position might appreciate a job. Something legitimate, which would offer you some protection in turn.”

Ivil blinked, then allowed herself a small smile. “Go on, what kind of job?”

“Bodyguarding duty,” Aurora asked. “It’s not very glamorous work, but—”

“No thank you,” Ivil said.

Aurora froze for just a moment. “I see. The work doesn’t interest you?”

“Oh, it does,” Ivil said. “But I don’t like the position it would put me in. Bodyguards sit back and watch for threats. They protect their charge. Most of all, they’re passive. If you want me to keep you safe, Miss Sterlingworth, then you only need to ask. If you want me to make it my business to keep you safe, then we’re going to need to enter into something more than just a client-employee relationship.”

Aurora blinked, then nodded slowly. “You want to become business partners, then.”

Well, Ivil supposed that it wasn’t the worst first step. “Sure. You entice me with whatever plans you have for the future, and I help you make them come true.”

Aurora nodded while sitting a little straighter. “Okay. Do you have any abilities that might make the next part of this discussion more… private?”

“Yes, sure,” Ivil replied. She muffled some of the noise of the ship around them and created a small bubble where vibrations were dampened down into illegibility. “Go on?”

“I’m trusting you with a lot here,” Aurora said. “But… I trust you.” She laughed.

“Trusting me is funny?”

“A little, yes. Forgive me. I don’t come from a background where trust is gained easily. In any case, I’ll extend the olive branch, because you deserve that much. If you run off with this information, then I’ll be in quite a bit of trouble, but knowing who I’m dealing with, I’ve no doubt that things have leaked already.”

“Go on,” Ivil said.

Aurora took a deep breath. “Are you familiar with the League of Free Moons?”

“It’s a political organisation, almost more of a joke in system-wide politics. They formed after the… Second Solar War and basically formed a fourth bloc, of sorts.”

Aurora nodded. “I figured that your history as an astro-archaeologist wasn’t entirely made up.”

“I know my history. The more recent stuff, at least,” Ivil replied. She was in the history books, after all.

“In any case, the League is, in fact, something of a joke. You’re right. The League ostensibly coordinates and runs something like forty moons, spread out across the solar system, but the actual control it has over these moons is… somewhat comparable to the twenty-first century United Nations. It’s all on paper, and very little of its power is tangible. But that’s about to change in a big way.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked.

Aurora ran her tongue across her lips. “Yes.” She took a deep breath. “A minor tangent, but are you aware of the origin of cores?”

“More so than most,” Ivil said. “They’re extra-system devices. Alien.”

“Yes. I think Mars once found a probe-like object captured by Sol’s gravity well which had a few cores built into it.”

Ivil was reluctantly impressed. That was more than a little classified. “Interesting.”

“It’s happened again,” Aurora said. “But this time it’s bigger. A Jovian-Saturnian exploration ship, crewed by a crew of scientists working for the League, discovered a new asteroid. One which has been slipping in and out of our solar system for… ever. It’s ancient, on a looping trajectory opposite the solar plane. It was an oddity, so they went out to explore it.”

“And they found something?” Ivil asked.

“A cache of cores,” Aurora said. “Larger than the one found on Deimos, comparable to the Martian one.”

Ivil might have found her breath catching if she still needed to breathe. “How many?”

“Several hundred cores. Maybe a thousand? You have to understand, these are new cores. We don’t know their power or potential. They’ve never been split. They’re whole cores. So if the League wants, they could split all of them right away and double the amount.”

“A thousand cores is enough to start a war,” Ivil said. “Given to a single person, you’d end up with a new A-classer. How many A-classers does the League have?”

“Now? None. A few dozen B-classers,” Aurora replied. “This single find is huge, and the League is trying to leverage it into… legitimacy.”

“How so?” Ivil asked.

“The current head of the League is a political genius. She’s… dangerous, but smart. She climbed the ranks at an absurd rate and isn’t to be underestimated. A lot of people ignored her climb because the League itself is… well, unimportant in the grand scheme of things. But now, with a thousand cores to share between all of the participating moons in the system? Every moon is sending representatives to the Jovian system.”

“I didn’t hear anything about this,” Ivil said.

Aurora nodded. “That’s normal. There’s a full media blackout. The League’s spy agency, as rather pathetic as it is, is running interference. Every moon knows that if news gets out, their chances are screwed. So there’s lots of infighting, trying to discredit each other and slip a knife into the competition before they can attend.”

“Ah,” Ivil said.

“Of course, the Empress of Mars helped.”

Ivil blinked. “She did? She’s aware of this?”

“Oh, god no, it would be a nightmare if she were. If any of the other emperors found out it would be a disaster. Can you imagine any more of those greedy idiots finding out? There would be a war, instantly. But, in any case, the Empress of Mars moved an entire battlefleet across the system for no apparent reason, and it sent every intelligence agency in the system into a tizzy.”

“Well, that’s fortunate,” Ivil said. “It must be a coincidence, I’m sure.”

Chapter thirty-nine

Profitable Arrangement

Before cores, a person’s power was measured by their wealth, their connections, their political position, their fame, and in a distant last, the strength of their arms.

Cores, obviously, changed this. Wealth and fame and political position alone was no longer enough to judge a person’s worth or power.

Instead, everyone had to do a careful dance of rumours and observation—at least, that’s how it was around the table dedicated to the bigger players.

“You’ve told me a lot,” Ivil said. “But I’m not sure how you intend to turn this into a profitable arrangement for me.”

“Are you certain that you wouldn’t be pleased acting as my bodyguard?” Aurora asked. “You seem suited to it.”

Ivil sniffed. “Don’t presume so much, Miss Sterlingworth. Can I keep you safe? Undoubtedly. But I have no intention of being your babysitter. Nor am I interested in money, and while the goings on around the League are interesting, I don’t know if that’s enough to convince me to suborn myself to you.”

Aurora nodded slowly. “Very well. Then how about… a share?”

“A share?”

“Of Phobos. Not a large one, but a share nonetheless.”

Ivil’s eyebrows rose. Phobos’s ownership was one of the more interesting cases in the solar system. The moon was “owned” in whole, by its government, which initially acted as a corporation before turning into a fully-fledged monarchy of sorts.

Now, the noble families of Phobos were composed of people who owned “shares” of the moon. It was a strange cross between a company and a proper monarchic government, but on a moon where nobility could only be determined by the ownership of land, it made some sense.

Plenty of citizens of the moon owned a share or two. It’s what gave them the right to vote, but the vast majority of shares were held in the iron grip of the nobility.

“Interesting, but no thank you.” Ivil leaned forwards, elbows landing on the table. She stared across, at Aurora, and really looked at the woman.

She was pleasant enough to look at. Aurora looked like someone who was pretty now, and who would age in a spectacular fashion. She had that severe, serious look about her that really did it for Ivil.

“A date,” Ivil said with a nod.

“Pardon?” Aurora asked.

“I’ll help you around Jupiter for a date.”

Aurora blinked a few times, flushed, then regained her composure, all in the time it would take someone else to process a thought. “You mean a romantic one?”

“Yes! Usually I’d say that I’d pay for the meal, but seeing as how this is literally a payment already, I think that would be silly. In fact… why don’t you arrange it?”

“You… you want me to arrange it? A date? Uh. I don’t…” Aurora shook her head, but it wasn’t a denial, just the woman recentring herself. “You’ll act as a body—business partner to assist me in exchange for me arranging a date.”

“Yes,” Ivil replied. “And to be clear, there shouldn’t be anything sexual about it. Well, I suppose we’re both consenting adults, so if it comes to it, fine, but I’m not aiming for that. Certainly not on the first date.”

Aurora shifted in her seat. “Are you so attracted to me?”

“Should I not be?”

“Y-you, you, uh. Ahem!” Aurora cleared her throat and put her noble’s impassive mask back on, acting as if nothing was amiss. “Yes, I suppose I could agree to a date. But nothing more! I’m not some… some woman who just sleeps with anyone. No matter the reputation Phobos has, I’m not that kind of person.”

“I would never imply it,” Ivil said truthfully. She was having a hard time keeping a grin off her face. The way Aurora acted was… cute.

She had seen plenty of soaps with exactly this kind of behaviour.

Ivil restrained a laugh. It was a rather silly thought to have, but it seemed to fit, more or less. She’d enjoyed her share of shows that relied on the archetype, though she knew better than to expect reality to be quite so dramatic.

Ivil stood up then. “It’ll still be some time before we make it to Jupiter,” she said. “I’m sure we can get to know each other some more in that time, and plan for our arrival as well. Ah, and there’s our connection with the Held Together to look forward to as well.”

“Yes, of course,” Aurora said.

“Brilliant. I’m going to go check on the others. Twenty-Six seems to be in the engineering section. She might know more about the condition of this ship. It’d be best to know about any potential problems early. We can figure out which room belongs to whom later, I think.”

Aurora nodded. “I’ll see if there’s food stocked here as well. I’m no professional, but I think I can manage heating something up.”

“I think we’d all appreciate that,” Ivil said. She gave Aurora a final nod, then stepped back. She needed a little distance. Sure, she had perfect control over her own heart, but it still wanted to beat far faster than usual.

Finding Twenty-Six wasn’t difficult. Now that the mechanic had a core of her own it gave her a certain weight in Ivil’s sight. Not that she wasn’t worthy of notice before, but her core’s presence made her stand out, a tiny matchstick of light in a sea of darkness, weak, but noticeable all the same.

She discovered Twenty-Six in the ship’s engineering bay, a small room on the lower deck at the very rear. The entire ceiling was taken up by access panels covering the inner mechanism of the ship’s primary drive and in front of that, the ship’s main fuel bunker. The walls were split across a few machines. She didn’t immediately recognize them, but she supposed that Twenty-Six would know better.

Especially seeing as how the mechanic was currently rubbing her cheek against one of them.

Ivil decided not to be envious of the machine. For now.

“I’m curious, what are you doing?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six’s eyes flew open, and she froze on the spot for a moment. “Uh,” she said.

“Yes?”

Twenty-Six pulled back. “I was practising with my core,” she said with a nod that was hard to take seriously when her face was so red.

“Were you, now?” Ivil asked.

“I can feel the metal!” she said. “Uh, I mean, in my head. Look, this is very strange, and I understand that what you walked in on looked like me having a moment with this Crytotech 2649 Automated self-adjusting networked part-printing machine, but I can assure that that’s not what’s happening.”

Ivil held back a smile. “If you say so. So I take it that you like the engineering bay?”

“It’s… well, it’s a whole league better than the Held Together. Almost too good.”

“Too good?” Ivil asked.

“There are machines here that print new parts. You can render things down into base materials. There’s… look at that, in the corner? That’s a nuclear power plant. It’s pumping out a constant 320 megawatts. The Held Together has nothing like that. We run off of batteries and a hydrogen engine. I know that this isn’t the most modern ship out there, but it’s… well, it’s forty years ahead of the Held Together.”

Ivil nodded along. “You’re a little overwhelmed?”

“Under,” Twenty-Six said. She looked around the room, which was so clean that it made for a stark difference from what Ivil had seen on the Held Together. “There’s nothing for me to do here. This baby, she’s fit. Not a hiccup on her.”

“I see,” Ivil said. “I… don’t think that you should put that much value in the state of the ship right now. Trust me, we’re definitely going to see some trouble. She’s going to pick up some issues. And when those come, it’ll be nice to have the best mechanic in the solar system waiting to jump on them.”

Twenty-Six smiled shyly. “I’m not that good,” she said. “But… yeah. I guess I wouldn’t mind that. It’ll be a bit of a break. Maybe I’ll have to pick up a hobby.”

“I’m sure we can think of something,” Ivil replied. “Say, do you want help practising with your new core? I’m sure you’d figure out how to use it given some time, but having someone who can teach you all the tricks will make it faster.”

Twenty-Six smiled, big and eager. “I think I’d like that! I can even print some things to help! I was thinking maybe some puzzles made of metal?”

“Clever,” Ivil said. “You know, a lot of people think that power, when it comes to having cores, comes from having a lot of them.”

“That’s not true?” Twenty-Six said.

“Hmm, well, it’s not wrong. But I’d be a lot more afraid of someone who has mastered the use of a hundred cores than someone who had a thousand and no clue how to use them,” Ivil said.

Twenty-Six laughed. “A thousand’s a bit much, no?”

“Hmm, I suppose.”

Chapter forty

Giving it a Twirl

Twenty-Six leaned onto the console and spoke up. “Give her a twirl, captain. Nice and slow.”

There was a static click from the computer she was standing next to, and that was all the reply the captain of the Held Together gave.

The Sappho’s sensor-suite and onboard cameras were aimed at the Held Together. The two ships had finally matched velocities and headings an hour ago, and then they’d discovered the ugly truth. There was no way to get from one ship to the other. Not safely, and not through any conventional means.

Twenty-Six’s eyes were glued on the main screen in the bridge as it displayed her home ship. Two bursts of steam exited out of the Held Together on opposite ends of the ship and going in opposite directions. It was enough to get the ship rotating on its axis, though only slowly.

“Oh, that’s not ideal,” Twenty-Six said.

The Held Together’s quick departure from the pirate station hadn’t come without a few new dings and scrapes. Some of the spalling from their attack on the station to destroy the clamps had peppered the side of the ship with a multitude of new cuts. The rearward airlock, the same one they’d used to board the station, was a mangled mess.

There was more damage. The large antenna array under the cockpit had bent itself out of shape, and one of the three main thrusters was simply not attached anymore.

“Look at those burn marks,” Twenty-Six said as she pointed to a part of the hull over the extinguished engine. “Those are arc burns. I’ll bet my favourite auto-wrench that the engine’s capacitors blew and the discharge arced back down.”

“Is there a risk if we touch the hull?” Ivil asked.

By “we” she meant the average human, of course.

“There might be,” Twenty-Six said. “I think the capacitors will have discharged… but there’s always a chance that there’s some left. I wouldn’t touch the entire engine assembly without a proper ground and some non-conducting gloves. We could still make it to the Held Together though. It’ll just be, uh, dangerous.”

“A space walk, without any safety nets. And I don’t recall any equipment for the purpose on board either ship,” Ivil said.

“We have some EVA gear on the Held Together,” Twenty-Six said. “It’s, ah, not fitted for anyone left on the ship, though. I think everyone has sealable suits though. We just don’t have equipment for moving in space. Or surviving hard radiation.”

Ivil nodded along. She could do a few things to help, but this was a surprisingly delicate task and one which might not actually require the assistance. Ivil tapped the communication panel on the captain’s seat. “Miss Pendergast?” she asked.

There was the slightest bit of fuzz over the line, but Sonic Spectre answered nonetheless. “Yes, ma’am?”

“How are things onboard the ship?” Ivil asked.

“A little smoky. The air filtration system went offline for an hour or so. I’ve repaired it to the best of my ability,” the Tech Maid said.

Twenty-Six leaned over. “You just got to pull the filter halfway out, then shove it back in. That’ll reset the whole thing. Also make sure to switch the heater settings right after so that it auto-shuts after three hours. When you switch the filter out, it resets the timers, and if you leave them on they’ll melt some of the housings, and that’s a mess. You’ll know you did it wrong if it smells like burnt plastic. If it smells like an electrical fire for the first twenty minutes, then it’s working right. You usually only need to do that, like, once every couple of days.”

“… Noted,” Sonic replied. “In any case, the ship is… functional, though it has taken a great deal of damage. I think it’s in dire need of repairs, retrofits, or retirement.”

“I’ll stay on the line with you,” Twenty-Six said. “Let me know if anything else breaks. Actually, you might want to go to the engineering room, take a few pictures of the panels there, and send them back. I’ll be able to tell you what’s seriously broken with that.”

“Understood,” Sonic replied. “How are things onboard the Sappho?”

“Things are well enough,” Ivil said. “This ship isn’t the most luxurious, but it’s relatively modern, and well-maintained. We didn’t take any real damage on leaving the station. Our ammo is half depleted, however.”

“Noted,” Sonic said. “What’s our destination?”

She could appreciate the Tech Maid’s sense of duty, at least. “We’re still heading to Callisto. There should be some stations around the moon that’ll be able to accommodate the Held Together.”

“Miss Ville, I’m aware that you did most of the work, but would you be willing to share some of your earnings in order to restore the Held Together?” Sonic asked.

Ivil blinked. “What earnings?”

“For the bounties.”

Ivil paused, then it clicked. She hadn’t been thinking about it, because financial issues were for people that cared about things like money, but yes, the pirates that she’d very recently murdered likely had bounties. They, in fact, had some very high-definition scans and images of several pirate ships being obliterated, as well as their station going up in literal flames.

“Miss Ville?” Twenty-Six asked.

“We’ll split it evenly,” Ivil decided. “Five ways. One portion for the Held Together, then a portion for each member of the crew that infiltrated the station. Do you think we’ll be able to compile the information for the bounties?”

“I can work on it,” Sonic said. “I might need access to some of the data stored on the Sappho, to use as proof, but otherwise, it shouldn’t be overly difficult to make the case.”

“Don’t you need to be affiliated with a bounty guild in order to receive a bounty at all?” Ivil asked.

“I’m certain we can work around that,” Sonic said. “We could make the application, then hand in one bounty as proof of capability. Then the remaining bounties should be enough to catapult the person we chose as applicant past the Journeyman stage. Though, it would be significantly cheaper and easier to suborn someone who already has the bounty hunter classification.”

Ivil hummed. “We’ll see once we reach Callisto.”

“I might know someone.”

Ivil turned towards the entrance of the bridge. Missy was on the last step into the room, and as Ivil looked, she climbed up and in. She was wearing something different, a loose jumpsuit, the upper half bunched around her hips, the arms tied together as a loose belt. Her upper body was covered in nothing but a too-tight tanktop.

Ivil was very temporarily mesmerised by the application of motion on semi-fixed objects in a zero-g environment.

“Missy,” she said as she snapped out of it. “You know someone?”

“Yeah. A bounty hunter that mostly works around Jupiter. She’s… a little strange, but she’s not a bad sort. She has her bounty-hunting licence, and owes me a drink. Once we get within coms range of the moon I’ll send a ping out.”

“Would she be willing to take credit for our work?” Ivil asked.

“Eh, she might not, but she’ll cash it in for us, assuming we cut her in a little.” Missy frowned. “I didn’t think about it until now, but the number of pirates we took out, the ships… that’ll be one hell of a bounty. We’re talking several five-figure bounties all being cashed in at once. Even split, that’s a fair chunk of cash.”

“Enough to fix the Held Together?” Twenty-Six asked hopefully.

Missy chuckled. “I don’t know if there’s enough money in the system for that. But it’ll be enough to get her moving and looked at by some professionals.”

“I don’t know if I’d trust the repair fields around Jupiter,” Twenty-Six said. “Saturn’s are way better.”

“That’s just your pride talking,” Missy said. “They’re good enough.”

Ivil shrugged. She didn’t care overly much. “As soon as we’re in range, get a call out to that contact of yours.”

“Will do,” Missy replied. “So, I came to ask you something.”

“Yes?” Ivil asked, perking up a little.

“What do you wanna do about that corpse in the airlock? Because it’s gonna start to stink the place up soon. This ship has good-enough scrubbers, but I don’t wanna put them to the test that much.”

“Corpse?” Twenty-Six asked. “Oh! That pirate lady! Wait, didn’t she have a heap of cores?”

“She did,” Ivil said. “I suppose now’s a good time as any. Twenty-Six, would you mind staying in contact with Miss Pendergast? I’m sure she’d love to have you talk her through everything that needs to be done to keep the Held Together in shape.”

“Will do!” Twenty-Six said.

“Keep an eye on the radar too,” Missy said with a vague gesture towards the ship’s scanner suite. Ivil wasn’t sure if it actually had radar, but the terminology had stuck for a few centuries, and she wasn’t about to correct it. “Now, let’s find some gloves and masks before we do this. I literally just showered, and I don’t know if this ship has that much clothing in it that fits me.”

Chapter forty-one

Karma

“Do you believe in karma?”

Ivil glanced to the side. Next to her, Missy was squatting down, boots clamped on to the metal railing of the floor. She had her arms crossed over her knees and was looking straight ahead, into the locker that Ivil had stuffed that dead pirate in.

“I don’t think I do,” Ivil said. “If it does exist, then I imagine that my own karma isn’t so great. I’ll have a great deal of comeuppance to deal with, won’t I?”

Missy let out a breath. “I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing, then.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked.

The pirate’s corpse had been lying here for half a day now, so the cores held within had had plenty of time to slip out of the body. Cores that were taken in and properly integrated usually took between a few hours and a few days to become part of their host’s body. The reverse was also true. The longer it took to assimilate a core the longer it took for it to notice that its host was dead and for the core to leave.

The more complex the core, the longer the process in either direction took. Cores that were spread across the body were also the cores most likely to be utterly destroyed.

On occasion, as the result of a violent death, two smaller, weaker versions of the same core would come from one dead body. It was a process not too dissimilar to splitting a core, though it was far less practical.

A body destroyed sufficiently could result in no cores at all, which was always such a waste.

At the moment, six cores floated loosely within the locker.

“There are different explanations for karma. Not just what it does but what it is,” Missy said. She sniffed at the air, then grimaced. “This one’s starting to rot.”

“I’ll clean it up,” Ivil said. “Or… we can jettison the entire locker. It’s not the most glorious casket, but it’ll do, I think.”

Missy nodded.

“So, what are these karmas?”

Missy sighed and stood up fully. “In Haumea we use karma to describe a couple of things. It’s… your past feeding into your future. It’s not mysticism. Well, it’s mostly not that. Karma is… genetics and how you were raised and psychology all wrapped into one. Your past, meaning the circumstances of your birth, the genes passed on to you from your parents, and even the choices you made as you were young, all feeding into your present to make you who you are now. I think the idea is that it’s a lesson.”

“A lesson?” Ivil asked.

“Do good now, and maybe you’ll reap the rewards of it later,” Missy said. She looked to Ivil, meeting her eyes without fear or reproach. “Thanks. For what you did on that station, for keeping Two-Six safe. I can’t imagine that you didn’t have ulterior motives, but I appreciate it all the same.”

Ivil allowed herself to smile. “You’re very welcome. Though, you’re right, I did have some ulterior motives. I’m not sure how wise it would be to admit to them. They’re… rather petty, I think, in the greater scheme of things.”

“Petty, huh?” Missy asked. She narrowed her eyes, scanning Ivil up and down. “Yeah, you seem the sort.”

“Now, what does that mean?”

Missy just grinned in reply. “So, six more cores, huh?”

Ivil glanced over to the cores, then made a quick slashing gesture towards them, more for Missy’s benefit than anything. “This one,” she said as she arranged them in a line and pointed to the left-most. “Is the most powerful in the lot. A blank-type core. They’re rare.”

“A blank-type?” Missy asked. “A stealth core?”

Ivil nodded. “Meant to counteract core-sensing abilities. It’s an interesting core to have. As per Martian classifications it would be considered a meta-type core.”

“Because it interferes with cores directly?” Missy asked. “We call those trumps on Haumea.”

“That’s the gist of it, yes,” Ivil agreed. “This next one is a self-regulation core, for temperature. Very common. Useful, once you’re around C or B ranked. A lot of cores generate waste heat, or use the body’s heat to function, so you always run the risk of having hypo or hyperthermia.”

“Seems useless otherwise,” Missy said.

Ivil shook her head. “Don’t underestimate even the simplest and most common of cores. There’s a time and a place where they can be exceptionally useful. For example, with this one, you wouldn’t have to buy nearly as many clothes since you can self-regulate your temperature, and you could wear nice outfits all the time.”

Missy’s expression flattened. “Are you saying someone assimilated a core just so that they can wear skimpy clothes all the time?”

“Nonsense,” Ivil disagreed. “Women are beautiful not just when wearing skimpy clothes, but no matter what they wear. You’re very attractive in your jumpsuits and casual spacer wear, and Miss Sterlingworth is very attractive in her more formal outfits, but neither of those are the kinds of things you might want to wear in any location, not when some places would be too warm or too cold for it.”

Missy stared at Ivil for a moment more before shaking her head. “Weirdo,” she muttered. “What about the other four?”

Ivil pointed to the third. “Common glowing core. Affects the user’s skin. Gives it a faint bioluminescence.” She pointed to the fourth. “Weaker musculature improving core. It doesn’t strengthen your muscles. This one acts more like a nutrient-efficiency system in your stomach. It modifies eaten materials so as to promote muscle growth. This fifth core is an electrical discharge core. It acts as a capacitor and lets you discharge it. And this last one is the only other non-common core.”

“Oh?” Missy asked.

Ivil made the sixth spin about. It was round, as most were, but it also had two small protruding chevrons. “A shield core. A kinetic shield. It’s likely very weak, a split core as well.”

“I guess a weak shield’s better than nothing,” Missy said.

Ivil hummed. “With the capacitor core, it can be overcharged, but that would create a lot of heat in the user’s body, which the temperature regulation core can handle. The three working in tandem actually make for a good combination. Two of those, the shield and regulation cores, are splits, so I suspect that Miss Herring here was planning her build, so to speak.”

“Smart,” Missy said. “So, can we expect you to start zapping people, maybe spring up a shield now and then?”

Ivil shook her head. “I don’t need any of these.” She plucked three of them from the line. “Here,” she said.

Missy stared at Ivil’s open hand, and more specifically at the three cores sitting on her palm. “Is this a joke?” she asked.

“No,” Ivil said. “Consider it a gift.”

“I don’t do gifts. Life doesn’t give gifts to me. You remember what I said about karma, right? Well, mine’s not so good. It’s not this good, at least.”

“It’s not life that’s giving you a gift, it’s me,” Ivil said. “Your karma, as you call it, it’s not something that I believe should dictate your entire future. I have very rarely allowed fate to sway my actions, only when it aligns with what I want. And what I want now, is to give you these.”

Missy hesitated, her gaze flitting between Ivil and the cores she still held. “Okay, enough of this,” she said as she crossed her arms. “Saving us all earlier, that tracked, you were saving yourself too. Aurora’s important, and I’ve worked out that you have a deal with her. That much I get. Giving Twenty-Six that little core? Fine, you’re generous, and it probably doesn’t suit your build or whatever. But you don’t have any reason to be this way with me. What gives?”

Ivil hesitated, then paused time. She needed a moment to think this one through.

Her motivations here were… transparently self-centred. She wanted Missy to like her, and giving Missy expensive gifts seemed like a good way to go about it.

On the other hand, it was also… shallow?

She’d done plenty of research (watching soaps) where such shallowness led to relationships that were equally shallow.

Missy was caught, frozen in time like a dragonfly in amber, glaring up at Ivil. It wasn’t just suspicion, it was something else too.

Time snapped back into its normal flow. “I’m sorry,” Ivil said. She lowered her hand, then gently tucked the cores away in a pocket. “Maybe I am being a little too forward with you.”

“You’re not being too forward, you’re being too… sleazy,” Missy said. “I’ve lived too long to dance around what I mean to say. What, do, you, want?” Missy punctuated that last by poking Ivil in the chest.

Ivil took a deep breath. She couldn’t remember the last time someone tried to back her up against a wall and demand something from her. “F-fine then,” she said. “If you want to know so much, Missy, then I’ll tell you.”

“Oh yeah?” Missy asked.

“Yes! Missy, would you go on a date with me?”

“… What the fuck?”

Chapter forty-two

Maximum Drama

The captain of a ship doesn’t need a bigger space. In fact, the captain, being human, only needs as much space as any other crew member on any given ship.

To save on space, the Martian navy originally built its first series of warships to have what the crew affectionately called “fuck holes.”

These were cylinders about two and a half metres deep that contained an inflatable sleeping bag, heaters, a small entertainment suite, and a small cubby for personal effects. They saved on space and could serve as the sleeping quarters of a crew member.

Every officer and captain had the same allotted space as every other member of the crew, from the cook to the guy whose job was to clean out the suction-toilette.

This had an adverse effect on morale.

The crew didn’t respect the captain if the captain lived in the same squalor as them. Human monkey psychology, rearing its ugly head once more.

And so captains were slowly given larger, more personal spaces, with more amenities and comforts.

Ivil didn’t know at which point in that sequence of logical decisions the idea of a fish tank originated. But here it was. A large-ish tank, a metre long and half as tall and deep, with… seventeen fish in it across three species, and a few snails as well.

She gently tapped the reinforced glass as she looked into the tank. The fish were managing well enough. She wondered how they managed to survive hard burns. Did the previous captain of the Sappho replace the fish after every mission? There was an automatic feeder and scrubber, at least.

The rest of the room was respectable, if small. A bed almost large enough for two, a small bookcase with actual hard-copy books likely imported from Earth to show off wealth, a coffee machine designed for in-ship use, and a rather small closet.

She made a note to toss the clothes out later. Maybe the others could find something for themselves in it.

It was, all in all, not the worst place she’d have to spend some time in. There was even a cramped little washroom to one side. A luxury on board any ship, really.

Ivil was just thinking of how to decorate the room a little more—perhaps some ambient lighting?—when there was a knock at her door.

Twenty-Six, and the young woman did not seem happy. Or, at least, she seemed unhappy, then nervous, then unhappy, then she looked like she wanted to run. It was quite clear that she didn’t want to be there.

Ivil moved over to the door, then grabbed the manual handle and made a show of opening it slowly, giving Twenty-Six on the other side time to take a deep breath while Ivil opened the door. “Yes?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six stared for a moment, swallowed, then frowned. “Missy told me you asked her out on a date,” she said.

“Yes, I did,” Ivil admitted.

“Aurora said the same thing,” Twenty-Six added.

“Yes, that’s also accurate,” Ivil said. Did… did Twenty-Six also want to be asked out?

Twenty-Six flushed. “I’m calling for a shipwide meeting,” she said.

Ivil found herself taken by surprise. “A what?” she asked. “No, don’t answer that, it was rhetorical, merely surprise. Why do you want to call for a shipwide meeting, exactly?”

“Because, on the Held Together when things get weird in the crew, that’s what the captain does,” Twenty-Six said. “And I think we need one. Um… please?” The mechanic fidgeted a little, her feet rubbing against each other as she floated there.

“Okay,” Ivil said. “Let’s call a shipwide meeting. As long as the others aren’t overly busy?” She was aware that they weren’t. Aurora was in the cabin that should have been the first mate’s, arranging the few things she had. Missy was below, in the ship’s kitchen listening to something in one earbud while she cooked, head bobbing.

It looked like she was almost done, in any case. So the crew was likely to be called down to dinner soon.

“Alright, okay,” Twenty-Six said with a nod. She smiled awkwardly, then pulled herself down the corridor. “I’ll go tell Miss Aurora!” she said.

Ivil watched her go, then tapped on the button to close the door. This was… an unexpected turn. Was Twenty-Six this upset about what Ivil was doing?

Then again, discovering that someone was dating multiple people at the same time was a pretty common source of drama. Ivil was pretty sure that she wouldn’t have to deal with clones, or fake deaths, or long-lost twins. Real life drama was a lot more grounded. Like having one girl she was interested in be annoyed that she was interested in two other women.

When Aurora and Twenty-Six headed down, Ivil followed at a distance, letting them get to the dining room below first.

“Good timing,” Missy said from the kitchen. “I warmed up some sludge. Get ready for the most mildly edible meal of your lives.”

“I miss Mister Hawk already,” Twenty-Six said, but she sat herself down anyway. “Um, before we start… I’d like to have a team meeting. Please?”

“Certainly,” Aurora said. “Is there anything wrong with the vessel?”

“Found something broken?” Missy asked.

Twenty-Six shook her head, then frowned rather cutely. She squished her nose when she frowned, which drew attention to the smattering of freckles across her cheeks. “This is about, uh, personal matters. I’m probably the last person that should bring it up, but, uh, it feels wrong.”

“What’s wrong?” Missy asked. She came over with four fully covered bowls filled with spacer’s slop. The bowls had small tubes on them, to suck the meals out of when in zero-g.

Twenty-Six looked between Missy and Ivil, then Ivil and Aurora. “Miss Evelyn is dating both of you,” she said.

Aurora blinked, then looked over to Ivil. “Is this true?” she asked.

“Wow,” Missy said.

Ivil considered what to say for a moment and chose to rely on honesty. “Yes, it’s true,” she said.

“You know, that’s rather insulting,” Aurora said as she sat straighter.

“Never been on this end of things,” Missy muttered. “Gotta agree with the princess though, that’s messed up.”

Ivil sighed. “I’m aware. Trust me, this wasn’t my intention.”

“What was, then?” Twenty-Six asked.

Ivil glanced between the three women she was currently interested in. “Very well, the truth, then. I recently visited a seer on Haumea.”

“You mentioned that, yes,” Aurora said.

“Well, what I asked her for was assistance in finding true love. That led me to the Held Together. Unfortunately, the instructions beyond that were unclear.” Ivil nodded once. That ought to clear things up.

“Wait,” Twenty-Six said. “Wait, wait, I thought you were just… two-timing, but this is all some prophecy thing?”

“It’s not a prophecy, I don’t think,” Ivil said. “It’s merely clairvoyance. A prediction. I came here looking for love. I found more… potential interests than I was expecting.”

“Are Missy and Aurora the only two?” Twenty-Six asked, a note of suspicion in her voice.

“No,” Ivil said.

Twenty-Six gasped. “Who, then? The captain?”

“Too old, I’m afraid.”

“Hawk?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I considered it, but I don’t think it would work out.”

“Miss Pendergast?”

“Not gay enough,” Ivil said with a sigh.

“D-Donny?” Twenty-Six asked. The incredulity was clear.

“I’d rather die lonely.”

“Uh,” Twenty-Six said.

Missy groaned. “Two-Six, she’s talking about you.”

Twenty-Six opened her mouth, then shut up while her face flushed. “Me?!” she squeaked.

“Is that so hard to believe?” Ivil asked.

“Yes!” Twenty-Six said. “I mean… yes?”

Ivil glanced around the room. The back and forth with Twenty-Six had served as a small distraction, but she still wanted to know how the others were reacting to the news. It was, in her estimation, a tactically sound idea to drop the news about Claire Voyant’s prediction.

Aurora was eyeing her curiously, and Ivil noted that the slight note of anger she’d had earlier was gone. Missy, on the other hand, was staring at her with naked suspicion, which Ivil supposed was only fair.

“You’re a very attractive young woman, Twenty-Six,” Ivil said honestly.

“Ah! No, no, you’re the one being accused of weirdness here! Don’t try to deflect it with compliments!” Twenty-Six said.

“I wasn’t deflecting, and that wasn’t a compliment, merely a statement of the obvious,” Ivil replied.

Twenty-Six pouted, completely missing the way Aurora covered her mouth to hide a smile. “I think,” Aurora said. “That that was… perhaps the most unique explanation for why someone might two-time someone that I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, it’s the truth,” Ivil said. “I believe that keeping that secret wouldn’t help at this point.”

“Is it the only secret you’re keeping?” Missy asked.

“Oh, goodness no, but the rest I’ll be keeping to myself for now.” She wouldn’t want to ruin every chance she had before even the first dates.

Chapter forty-three

Spacekward

Spacekward.

It was a term that had appeared during the early cultural zeitgeist of space exploration and travel, and while it had never penetrated the more serious academic discussion and was generally side-stepped in favour of more officious terminology by more serious people, the expression existed anyway.

It existed to represent the awkward feeling unique to spacefarers stuck in a tin can, hurtling through space while completely unable to escape the presence of someone they had just committed some social faux pas with.

It was the whispered expression that two crewmates would shoot at each other when the married first mate was caught sleeping with the navigator. It was accidentally admitting to a co-worker that yes, their body odour was noticeable, and yet having to work next to them for the next nine months.

That’s what the Sappho was experiencing at the moment, and Ivil wasn’t enjoying it.

She was used to a certain level of… perhaps ostracization wasn’t the right word for it, but it felt close to that. People frequently avoided her, perhaps because she had a well-earned reputation for disassembling annoying people into their constituent atoms and spreading their remains across a body of space whose area was best calculated in astronomical units.

The day after her confession, the Sappho was supposed to meet up with the Held Together. The freighter was in dire need of her mechanic back, but the exchange wouldn’t be possible. More importantly, the ship was running out of fuel.

The captain had filled up on enough fuel to make it from Ceres to Callisto and for additional manoeuvres. That didn’t include a detour to a pirate station and the subsequent hard-burn escape from there.

Bringing more fuel to begin with would have been smarter, but it wasn’t an entirely uncommon move. For a spaceship, mass was everything, and fuel was both dense and heavy. It made sense to bring just what was needed for a trip. Every added litre of fuel meant that more fuel would have to be spent to move that extra litre.

The Sappho had full bunkers when they left, and now she still had nearly eighty percent of her fuel left. Transferring that from the Sappho to the Held Together took half of a day. It required that Twenty-Six extend the ship’s fuel line out, then override its safeties so that it would vent the liquid fuel out into space.

On the other end, after manoeuvring so that both ships were almost touching, Sonic Spectre brought out the Held Together’s fuel line and with a combination of cores from both the Tech Maid and Ivil, they managed to syphon fuel out of empty space and into the Held Together’s tanks.

It was a stupidly dangerous and risky move, but not one that was entirely unheard of.

Ships ran out of fuel sometimes, and unlike a terrestrial car, a ship in motion and out of fuel wouldn’t just stop and sit there, it would keep on moving forever, or until it rammed into something.

There were ships across the solar system designed to fly fast and hard and carry enough fuel to refill the tanks of wayward vessels. Then the pilots of these refiller ships would send in an invoice with so many zeroes on it that some captains had aneurysms on the spot.

All that to say that while it was a difficult trick to pull off, it wasn’t entirely unconventional. There were overrides and systems in place to accommodate for an in-motion refuelling, even for a ship as old as the Held Together.

Once that was done, they adjusted their flight. The hard and quick burn away from their piratical friends hadn’t been aimed all that accurately, and so they needed to make adjustments on the fly.

By the end of the day, a mentally exhausted Ivil returned to the captain’s cabin and lay down on its bed, fully clothed. She didn’t need sleep, of course. She had some three dozen cores that all worked in different ways to prevent her from needing to sleep, and the exhaustion she felt at the moment was more… emotional than purely mental.

She had cores that kept her mind sharp as well. They were necessary, actually. It was all well and good to have reflex enhancers, time dilators, and a dozen abilities that let one think faster, but if a core user couldn’t keep focused, then all of the thinking speed in the world wouldn’t matter for much.

Right now, however, she was feeling the kind of tired that no core could fix.

Actually, that wasn’t true. She was aware of and had once had access to some cores that could fix emotions. Some of them played on the user’s mental state, allowing them to regulate their own feelings, and others were empowered by certain emotional cues. She’d once discovered a core that made a person’s eyes light up when they were happy, another that allowed the projection of heat when angered.

She didn’t want anything to do with those. They were only a step away from the kinds of cores that turned someone into a sociopath, into someone who was more machine than man, and while that might be the end-goal for some, she didn’t desire power to the detriment of sanity.

It was why she was on her current quest.

After a decade of relaxing herself by watching her favourite soaps and reading raunchy romance novels, Ivil realised that she wanted what she was reading. It wasn’t a desire borne of lust—not entirely, nor was it just some whim.

Ivil had spoken to her therapist about this at length. She wanted to experience companionship and before that, romance. But failing at that would be utterly unacceptable. Not only would it be somewhat frustrating, it would also lose her precious time, and perhaps jeopardise her reputation.

Her therapist had proposed that she buy a dog.

She had proposed a long walk out of a short airlock.

Her therapist had, at that moment, crossed out the next suggestion—get a cat—without bringing it up.

The therapist was a professional, however, and had easily shifted tack. First, they tried dating apps. Ivil found these entirely insufficient. She had seen a few interesting prospects, of course, but after sending MINT in to inspect these under the guise of national security threats, she found all of them to be liars or entirely unsuitable, no matter how suggestive their profile pictures.

She couldn’t believe how many people simply lied on their profiles. How could these people expect to start a relationship if they were outright lying from the start?

So, she had started looking elsewhere. The thought of visiting a pleasure world like Phobos had crossed her mind, but she wasn’t looking for sex, she was looking for love. There were plenty of people in the Martian navy who were somewhat interesting as well. Many of the women and some of the men were rather attractive. The navy had strict standards for physical fitness, after all, and it was filled with bright-eyed young hopefuls but… well, that would be dating a coworker, and a subordinate at that.

Not to mention, over a decade of heavy propaganda led most of them to be rightly terrified of her.

There were a few that were brave enough to flirt with her. She’d been asked to dance once or twice on the rare occasions where she attended that sort of political event. But more often than not the flirter was just trying to climb the ranks. It wasn’t love, it was sex with power plays.

Ivil didn’t want sex… well, okay, she did, but that was easy to procure. She wanted a life partner, someone to grow old with, someone who would be tender and kind to her, that she could bicker with, that she could dote on.

Ivil kicked her legs up and down on her bed, safe in the knowledge that no one would ever know that she, a perfectly grown woman, was throwing the equivalent of a tantrum.

The seer had tricked her!

Why did she have to find so many potential lovers here? Why not just the one?

But then, the choices were good! Twenty-Six was the cutest little genius. Ivil wanted to pinch her freckled cheeks and give her an entire shipyard.

Missy was dark and daring, with a dangerous, sexy past, and the way she wore that jumpsuit had Ivil thinking unwise things. She was the kind of woman that would encourage Ivil to do some truly dangerous things, but they’d be fun!

Aurora was a calm, cool beauty, the sort of princess-like woman that could be the star of any soap, only she was real. Shrewd, too, with a whip-fast mind and the sort of ambition that would lead her to taking over the entire solar system if given the chance.

Ivil grumped into her pillow.

At least, on the bright side, she only had to pick between three cuties.

Interlude - The Nightshade

Of all the bounty hunters around the Jupiter circuit, there was none more respected and feared than The Nightshade.

When The Nightshade showed up, bowels were emptied, prayers were made, and pirates across the Jupiter circuit disappeared in explosive conflagrations.

People assumed that The Nightshade was a beautiful woman. They had a mental image of what she looked like, and there was plenty of salacious art. A bombshell babe, a femme fatale, ready to step on some lucky pirate’s junk before putting a hole in his head.

She flew a heavily modified Corvus 501b Nightstalker. It was the principal fighter-interceptor of the Earth Alliance at the start of the Third Solar War. The fighter was phased out by the end, but it had a good reputation.

The Nightstalker wasn’t just a reliable fighter, it was a sexy one. History buffs placed it next to the Spitfire and the Mustang, competing for the hottest fighter craft. It was twenty-three metres of hex-grid framing around a single powerful engine.

You wanna talk manoeuvrability? The Nightstalker could drift through a barrage of heavy point-defence like a sparrow darting through a forest canopy. Forty-two manoeuvring jets and a cockpit designed to let its pilot control each and every one independently.

It was the fighter-interceptor with the highest number of aces during the war. And one of the highest number of pilot fatalities too. It was a right bitch to fly. Temperamental, rude, impolite. The Nightstalker treated its pilot like shit, but it got results.

That was why The Nightshade was the best.

At the moment, she sat on the leaderboard. Four from the top in highest pirate kill counts, but only because she exclusively took on seek-and-destroy work. If push came to shove and the others had to fight The Nightshade, they’d turn around and slink back home.

Which was why Pixie was pissed off at the moment.

She had a rep. She had respect.

But only when she was in the cockpit, her double 30mm railguns hot and her full rack of seeker missiles primed.

Out of the cockpit she wasn’t The Nightshade. She was Pixie Starling, general mechanic for Flower-Power Ltd. The Nightshade’s favourite mechanic and only known associate outside of the Jupiter Bounty Board.

Pixie climbed up onto the tips of her toes, reached an arm up as high as it would go, then tapped the ringer another time.

“For fuck’s sake,” someone said above her.

She quickly stepped back, crossing her arms and trying to make the fact that she had just been straining less obvious. Finally, she was noticed.

Pixie had been waiting for these parts for six months already. Her baby needed a fresh set of filters and an oil change. Nothing big, but it was still important. She treated her ship right, and it did her good in turn.

“Oh, didn’t see you there,” the big lug behind the counter said. He wasn’t all that big, really, more like an average-sized grunt, but the counter was tall, blocking his sight of her when she was too close to it. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“I have an order that came in,” Pixie said as she tamped down on her frustration. “Under the name Starling. Pixie Starling.”

The man hummed, then pulled up a tablet that he pawed through. Pixie watched, her patience already a little short. “Ah, yeah, I got ya. Do you have any ID?”

She nodded, then fished through her purse for her ID. After he checked it—and she noticed that he eyed her age for a moment longer than he needed to—the man nodded. “Did you want to bring things yourself or… uh… nevermind, I’ll schedule a delivery.”

She glared, but… yes, the filters were rather large, and carrying them all herself would be somewhat complicated. Once everything was set, she turned on a heel and stomped off.

This was life on Io. At least, for her. No matter where she went in person she was consistently and constantly underestimated, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Well, no, that wasn’t true. There was one thing she could do, but she wasn’t sure if it would be wise.

With a shake of her head, she pushed the thought aside, even if it had been nagging at her for a while now.

She crossed from one side of the station to another, taking a slight, unnecessary detour as she did. There was a window here that she enjoyed. It was built from floor to ceiling, inch-thick glass with a permanent kinetic shield on the other side. From here, she could loo past the walls surrounding the station and out onto the vast plains of Io.

Io was one of the solar system’s largest moons, with a slight gravity and no end of trouble waiting for people who wanted to settle it.

The moon was volcanically active, constantly spewing steaming liquids out from its porous surface with pools of sulphur all over. The surface housed some two thousand-odd mining stations, drilling into the moon for its precious metals. With those came hovering factories. Massive structures held off the moon’s surface and tethered in place by chains with links taller than Pixie.

Io was the industrial hub of the Jupiter circuit. There were more machines here than people by a factor of a million.

It was an impossibly hostile world whose hostility was due to the very thing that made it so valuable. The skies from the surface were constantly tinted in a pale yellow as dust from a dozen active volcanoes coated the moon’s barely existent atmosphere.

It was beautiful, from within the safe confines of a station.

Pixie stared for a moment more. In the distance, a hauler was shuffling along at a snail’s pace. It was a cargo ship that could probably fit ten of old Earth’s super tankers in its hull with room to spare.

Kilo-per-kilo, the sulphur and iron and silicates mined on Io weren’t worth all that much, but when they could easily extract them by the millions of tons? There was value in that. And the ships that carried those resources were slow-moving whales. They needed protecting, which was why, when she wasn’t out and about, she was The Nightshade, keeping miners and investments safe from pirates and thieves and the less scrupulous corporations of Jupiter.

With a hum, Pixie turned and started the walk back to her ship. The filters would be arriving soon enough, and she had to keep an eye on the repair drones. She’d had more than one attempt on her life already. Lowering her guard would only make it worse.

She took an auto-tram out of the station and across some floating rails to another station only half a kilometre away. This one was a spaceport. Some fifty or so square openings lined the surface of the station, each one currently closed to keep out the sulphur dust from the ships tucked away within.

Her ship was sitting in one of these, costing her a pretty penny for every hour it sat there, but needs must. Besides, being one of the best bounty hunters in the system meant that she could set her price, and she didn’t set it low.

More and more, she was considering retirement. Or maybe… maybe she could let the title of The Nightshade live on?

It was an idea for another time, maybe.

On arriving at her hangar, she took a moment to take in her baby. The Nightstalker was sitting pretty in the middle of the space. Usually, teams would share a hangar. There was room for a dozen smaller fighters, and even a larger interceptor like her Nightstalker only took up a fraction of the space in here, but… well, she had money to burn, and having a whole space to herself meant that someone coming to mess with her shit would be all the more obvious.

Pixie walked towards her ship, pausing near the nose to reach up and pat it.

She couldn’t reach.

Grumbling to herself as the moment was ruined, Pixie continued on around the ship and sent a signal to open the ramp. It lowered, and she climbed aboard.

Within was a small living space. A tiny cooking spot, a fold-out table, a few drawers and cabinets for gear and such. It was a tight space to live in, but she didn’t mind. Space was a premium on any ship, and on a fighter that was doubly true.

Closing the hatch, she slipped out of her boots and put them in a box that she clamped shut, then she changed into something a little more comfortable, her custom flight suit.

As she started to warm up a meal, she connected to the station’s internet systems. It didn’t take long to notice that she had a message waiting for her. Well, no, she had a few dozens. Work offers, interview offers, one threat—fewer than usual—and some administrative crap, but only one message jumped out to her.

To: PixieGirl45864339843435@Spacemail.com

From: MissMissyMarceau25485248@Spacemail.com

Subj: I need a favour

Pixie’s heart skipped a beat. Then she stilled it with a frown.

Yes, it had been a while since she’d last talked to Missy, but she was over the Warmime. It was done with. Missy went on and did her own thing.

Pixie wasn’t going to fall in love so easily with the next tall, dark, and dangerous woman she met. She promised herself!

Interlude - Minty Fresh

The situation around Jupiter was warming up, though to the average person it was probably business as usual.

That was mostly because the powers that be were trying very hard to keep it that way. On the surface, things were calm. Shipments were coming and going, the economy had hit a slight recession some four years ago, but it was recovering steadily now and the unemployment rate on most of Jupiter’s moons was almost at a historic low.

Immigration was relatively strong, and the buying power of the average Jovian was pretty high at the moment. Not as high as people living in the best parts of Earth, and not quite as high as a Martian citizen’s, but still, impressive.

Jupiter was well on its way to becoming the third superpower of the system, and so MINT, Martian Intelligence, was keeping a steady eye on the planet’s many moons.

Which was why they were quick to notice that something was going on.

MINT agent 2514, current name Ava Knightley, was one such agent. Her day job was as a clerk for a small accounting agency on Ganymede, one that specialised in small business accounting, especially for shipping companies.

The job was alright, actually. Surprisingly quiet, and her tasks for MINT were relatively straightforward. No assassinations, no real subterfuge beyond copying some files and relocating them into Martian hands.

Once she was tasked with fudging a few numbers for some unknown, unspecified reason. She did so, and never heard anything about it again. That was actually pretty normal for her job.

A good MINT agent did as they were told, kept their head down, collected data, and was generally an unobtrusive cog in the machine until they needed to act. This task was a little boring, sure, but it would look good on her record.

One day, she wanted to move up to Operations, where she would be directing other MINT hopefuls through their own missions and calling the shots. She didn’t imagine herself being a bigwig.

Ava was born and raised on Mars. She had a mother with whom she argued frequently and a father that doted on her. She had done her mandatory time in the navy, though she transferred to MINT early on in her career after acing a few officer candidate tests.

Her life was so perfectly bland and ordinary.

She wanted more out of it. She wanted excitement, so when the offer came to become a field operative, she jumped on it.

If only it wasn’t so dull.

Then, one fine morning, as she was scrolling through the news and trying to memorize as much as she could about the movements of the various moon-based governments around Jupiter, she received a small text.

It was from her friend, Nadia, a person who didn’t exist.

Nadia: Hey!

Ava: Hi! Been a while.

Nadia: Forever and ever! We should catch up sometime!

Ava felt her heart flutter, and she sat up straighter in the cushioned office chair her rear was parked in for six hours a day.

Ava: Sure, whenever you want.

Nadia: Hey, did you ever eat at the Bonjour in Dome 44? :) It’s super-duper good!

Ava: I haven’t, it’s a bit pricey for me

Nadia: Nah, nah, don’t worry! ;p I’ve got you covered, how’s 1430 sound?

Ava blinked, then looked at the digital display in the corner of her vision. It was 1320 now. Leaving right away would mean leaving work. But there were a few simple codes spread into those texts… super-duper was common shorthand for high-priority.

The fact that “Nadia”’ was using common codes, instead of a specific set of codes that only Ava would know was telling.

In a serious mission, Ava would be made to memorise a whole set of unique markers and identifications. This mission was the opposite of serious. It was a job that needed doing, but that was all.

Ava sat up straighter and then pressed a hand against her stomach. She focused for a moment and activated one of her cores. It was a must-have for all agents.

It immediately made her feverish, turned her skin a little pale, and made her incredibly nauseous. Ava stood up and quick-marched through the office to the staff-bathroom nearest her boss’s office and proceeded to lose her lunch in the sink.

She was sent home within five minutes and told to only return when she felt better. She thanked her coworkers, a bit groggy and dizzy, then assured them that she didn’t need to go to the hospital, it was just something she ate.

Ten minutes later, she was riding an autocar to Dome 44.

Ava wished she had time to stop by her apartment, to change into something more appropriate, to pick up some basic gear beyond what she had in her purse.

Bonjour, near the top of Dome 44, had a spectacular view of the exterior of the dome. The top half of the semicircle was lined with transparent panels that afforded those high enough a view of the moon outside, and at the moment, Jupiter hovering above, impossibly huge.

She stepped in and discovered that Nadia was waiting for her. Nadia being an agent that Ava didn’t recognize at all, but she was wearing a bangle on her wrist with a specific bit of knotwork and three coloured beads.

She hugged and greeted her friend with a smile. They were chatting, excited and happy, about nothing at all. Then Nadia led her right past the back of the restaurant and through a door at the rear.

For a moment, she worried that it was a trap, that she was made. Then they encountered four men in Martian special-ops armour, something she never expected to see anywhere but on Mars.

“Right this way, Agent 2514,” a new person said while “Nadia” was dismissed. She was led into a small room with a pair of chairs on either side of a white table. The agent speaking to her, a middle-aged man that was incredibly nondistinct, placed a small tablet on the table once she had sat down. “Your name is now Pepper Mint.”

“Pepper… Mint,” Ava— Pepper, repeated. “Yes sir.”

“The name was carefully chosen for this mission,” the agent said as he sat down across from her. Without touching anything, he cleared his throat then spoke up. “Interview with Agent 2514 for Operation: Happy Goddess, begin.”

Pepper sat straight and ready.

“Agent 2514, Pepper, a year prior to joining the Martian navy, you had a relationship with someone, correct?”

“Correct,” Pepper said. Was this a test to see if she was really Agent 2514? There were shapeshifting cores out there, such a precaution wasn’t too unusual. They’d probably ask for a blood sample soon, if they hadn’t taken one while she didn’t notice already.

“This relationship was with a young woman?” the agent asked.

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“Good, good. Observing your record of… personal entertainment choices, we note that you have viewed several works tagged with ‘Dommy Mommy,’ is this true?”

Pepper blinked, her mouth opening a little before she closed it. The only reason her face wasn’t aflame was because she had better control over herself than to allow that. Not that she could be too embarrassed. She was aware that this job might require that she get close to a mark one day. “Yes, sir,” she said.

“In these situations, did you imagine yourself as the… mommy, or the one being dominated?” he asked with no more inflections than someone asking about the weather.

Pepper cleared her throat. “Permission to ask a question, sir?” she asked.

“Denied. Answer the question.”

“I imagine myself as the one with the Dommy Mommy, sir,” she replied.

“Fantastic. Yes, you’ll do just fine, I think.” He gestured at the tablet. “Enclosed you’ll find the details of your current identity. Due to time constraints, the identity is very similar to your non-MINT, public identity. You’ll find it easier to lie if your lies are truthful. Pepper’s year of birth is one year and a month after your own. The rest of the information should be memorised.”

“Yes sir,” she said as she tapped on the tablet and started doing just that. This was the sparsest identity she’d ever seen. Well, no, that wasn’t true. It was very detailed, but everything was just… her. Her real-life identity, with a veneer atop it. “What is the mission?” she asked.

“You will be attempting to enter the good graces of one Miss Evelyn Ville. A Martian astro-archaeologist on her way to Callisto, likely onboard a pirate vessel that she commandeered quite recently named the Sappho.”

Pepper blinked, taking that in. “Understood. What do I do once I approach Miss Ville?”

“Romance her.”

“Pardon?”

“Or, alternatively, allow her to romance you. This operation’s goal is to have you, or Miss Ville, or both, fall in love with each other.”

Pepper was starting to doubt that this was a real MINT operation again.

Interlude - Herrings

This was… illogical.

Bleue sat in her office and stared at a blank monitor. Upon it was a faded reflection of her own visage. Recently, that same monitor had been playing a video, not for the first time.

That too, was illogical.

Bleue was cursed with a perfect memory, a logical mind. She was capable in a way that few people were. Her skills, what others might call her intelligence, had propelled her forwards in life. She was the Governor General of Thede, one of Jupiter’s many moons. Not the greatest or the most influential, but an important moon nonetheless.

The position was one part political and three parts commercial.

Thebe belonged to the Thebe Corporation. The Thebe Corporation produced a significant amount of the water, hydrogen, and oxygen used by the other moons of Jupiter and the many stations in orbit around the planet and its many moons.

That had been their claim to relative riches early on. Now the corporation had diversified. Mining was still its mainstay, though recently they had taken to capturing comets and other sources of ice through the system and bringing them back to Thebe itself for processing.

The moon was a small one, with a limited amount of resources. More importantly, it was close enough to Jupiter to make certain manoeuvres more costly. Thebe would never be a large or powerful moon. It lacked the geographical advantage for that.

What it could be was an economic powerhouse far larger than its size would suggest.

At the moment, Thebe was the sixth richest of Jupiter’s moons, despite being on the smaller side. Soon, they’d be the fifth.

This growth was logical.

With Bleue at the helm, the Thebe Corporation had poured billions into development, buying ships, hiring talented individuals, buying land on other more hospitable moons, and growing their influence. This had quickly paid off.

Raw resources like water and air had to be kept relatively cheap. The price was artificially lowered for the sake of the citizens of Jupiter. That meant that the Thebe Corporation, major provider of these resources, was often paid in favours and with resources that weren’t exactly monetary.

This too, was logical.

Bleue had leveraged things to the hilt, pushing as hard as she could. She had gained a certain reputation in the Jovian community. Someone that was dangerous. Someone who was without scruples and fears.

Adversaries would sometimes disappear. Competition would sometimes have their cargo attacked. Someone with the willingness to trace deep into the Thebe Corporation’s accounts might notice certain amounts of money being used for projects that never amounted to anything.

Bleue had family, and while she and her family had had… differences over their own illogical demeanour and actions, she still found herself relying on that family to give her an edge.

In return, she made sure that her family found itself flourishing in her shadow.

This was logical.

It was also dangerous. It required a level of planning and sophistication that was well within Bleue’s ability, but which had grown significantly as of late.

The Alliance of Moons was coming together soon, an event promising riches untold, and opportunities of incredible value.

The Thebe Corporation had not paid it too much mind. Yes, there was opportunity for growth, but also there was competition. Too many moons, too many eyes.

Instead, she would take the logical path and would ignore this opportunity, because in the shadow of one there was always another. While the moons of the Alliance of Moons fought over alien cores and spent their wealth trying to impress each other, the Thebe Corporation would scheme in the background.

They would grow their influence by not participating. Instead, they’d sabotage the efforts of others. Remove some competition, make fools of smaller moons, and then when all was said and done, Thebe would appear like a strong, noble contender. A moon untouched by the drama and infighting the others were openly participating in.

It was a sound and logical plan.

And as always, Bleue found that she could rely on her family to help.

Until now.

She felt her arm lash out, then pain racing up her arm. Her closed fist was buried in her monitor.

“Miss Herring!” a secretary said as she bustled into the room and skimmed over the floor to Bleue’s side. Blood was pouring out of the cuts across her knuckles, slowly pooling down in Thebe’s negligible gravity. “Oh no, what happened?” the secretary said as she pulled some tissues out and wrapped Bleue’s hand in them.

Bleue leaned back into her seat, not reacting to the pain. That had been… illogical. Lashing out was a display of emotion she didn’t need.

Her sister was dead.

That too, was illogical.

Rouge had been a powerful person. She had a few decent cores, afforded to her through Bleue’s power and influence. They had been a costly investment.

Moreover, Rouge had been a powerful leader in a group of powerful pirates. They were certainly at odds with several groups, but they were the sorts of groups that took time to move. When the Earth Alliance decided to sweep through pirates, the news got out weeks before they started to move. Their organisation was a sieve when it came to information.

The Martians were better, but their attacks tended to be small and precise and devastating, but only ever to one group and only ever in direct retaliation. The Martians were too conservative and careful. Their intelligence agency was stronger, often letting false rumours of motion spread, which always caused some degree of panic, but…

Bleue dismissed all of that. It was illogical to dwell on what hadn’t happened.

What had happened was that someone killed her sister. It had happened within hours of Rouge finding and capturing the ship that Aurora Sterlingworth had been using to escape Ceres.

The noble of Phobos might have thought herself clever, sneaking across the system on some ordinary cargo ship instead of moving to the Jovian system onboard a properly luxurious ship as other participants did. That had been her downfall.

It was supposed to be her downfall.

The Phobian noble was moving on her own, without escort or defenders, but with some degree of subtlety. Most others wouldn’t have the resources to notice her moving, but the Thebe Corporation had eyes on Ceres.

The logical thing, now, was to have Aurora removed to cause some additional consternation at the summit. One less player at the Alliance of Moons, and one of the only nobles representing Phobos, a moon intrinsically linked to Mars.

Bleue didn’t want Mars or Earth involved with the Alliance of Moons. Superpowers complicated things. Jupiter’s emperor kept them somewhat safe from that influence, but cutting away Phobos helped.

Logical moves across a logical board.

Until Rouge was killed.

“Ma’am?” the secretary asked. “Ma’am, are you crying?”

Bleue blinked, discovering tears in her eyes. That wasn’t right. If her sister was dead, then so be it, there was nothing gained from crying over it.

She reached into a drawer, removed a small, silent handgun, and fired thrice into the chest of the secretary. Then she touched a button on her desk. “Security, come remove a body from my office,” she said.

The head of security would know what to do.

Bleue plucked a tissue from the still-falling corpse of the secretary and used it to dab at her eyes. No, there was nothing to be gained from crying. Instead, she would simply have to find the ones who had dared murder her sister and remove them.

Aurora had to have some sort of bodyguard, someone that her contacts on Ceres had missed.

Bleue looked at her monitors, then squinted and touched the button on her desk again. “Send IT up to my office. One of my monitors needs replacing.”

Using the other monitor, she brought up everything she knew about the ship that Aurora Sterlingworth had taken, and the people onboard.

The crew manifest wasn’t difficult to find. A captain, whom Bleue dismissed. A man called Donny, with a small unimportant record, a cook called Hawke, or Hawk? His record was smudged and inconsistent. Interesting.

Then a member called Missy, a former Warmime of Haumea. Could she be the one? There was a mechanic as well, a Saturnian girl with a number for a name. Neither seemed like the ones to kill her sister.

Which left the other passengers. Someone had noticed a woman called Evelyn Ville embarking on the ship, an astro-archaeologist. Bleue had someone start digging into her while she looked at the last passenger. A Tech Maid of Mars. One who didn’t exist.

Bleue nodded. This was, logically, her target.

But she couldn’t be certain.

So, of course, she would do the logical thing and kill them all.

So simple. So very logical.

Chapter forty-four

Callisto Incoming

Callisto was definitely one of the easiest moons in the Jovian sector to grab on to. The moon was quite large, slightly larger than Earth’s own moon, and it had a wide orbit that flung it out far from the planet it was attached to.

This didn’t mean that it was the farthest moon from Jupiter. There were some two dozen other piss-poor little rocks that clung to that title, but none of those were really worthy of notice.

The ugly truth was that Callisto, despite its size and favourable orbit, had suffered from success.

The moon’s wide orbit kept it relatively far from Jupiter itself, though the massive gas giant still dominated the sky from the moon’s surface. But that just meant that the moon was easy to grab on to, that it was one of the easiest destinations to get to in the Jovian system, and that the number of transients there was at an all-time high.

Callisto’s government liked to paint it as the port moon of Jupiter, where cargo and passengers and tourists from all across the solar system would first see the glories and beauty of the Jovian system up close.

The other moons of Jupiter called it by similar but far more derogatory names. The Hobo Hub, the Drifter’s Drop-Off, the Leechport, the Begger’s Dock.

Through no fault of the moon’s own, no one from Jupiter wanted to live on Callisto. Its reputation had had three generations to grow and solidify into what it was now, and it was sticking firm. Those who did move there were attracted by the simple manual labour jobs, the low cost of living, and the constant movement of souls through the moon, giving them an incredible edge when it came to remaining anonymous.

A certain subset of the population valued that.

The Sappho and the Held Together approached at a decent clip, both of them flying towards the moon rear-first, with the occasional burst of thrust slowing them down as they went.

They were close enough now that they had to start seriously thinking about landing manoeuvres, that was, if they planned on landing on the moon’s surface.

“I’m telling you, it’s better to make it to one of the stations,” Missy said. “This ship here can land on the moon no problem. I’m sure it’s got the thrust to take off again, and it’s got decent ventral thrust, but the Held Together? Yeah, no, there’s no way she can handle that kind of manoeuvring, not in the state she’s in.”

“I’m not disagreeing about that,” Aurora said. “I’m just saying that if we are going to pick a station, then can we please pick one that’s not so… questionable? Truly, the Driftwood Depot?”

“The Driftwood’s good,” Missy said with a nod.

“It’s ancient,” Aurora said. “And everything I can pick up about it on the network suggests that it had a reputation that’s far from stellar.”

“Why do you want to go there, Missy?” Ivil asked. As soon as she spoke, the bridge went silent. Not that it was overly loud before, but both Missy and Aurora had gifts when it came to filling space, at least, when they were in that kind of mood. Ivil shifted on her captain’s seat, then ceased. She didn’t need anyone to know how awkward she felt.

There was a lot of awkwardness going around at the moment. All of the women on the ship were now aware of her goals, and they each took the news differently. Missy was eyeing Ivil whenever she thought she wouldn’t be noticed, Aurora was trying to strike up conversations about increasingly esoteric subjects, and Twenty-Six… just blushed a lot and made herself scarce whenever they were alone in a room; otherwise she was pretty normal.

Missy hummed. “Driftwood’s kind of a lawless shithole of a station, but it’s big. Lots of shady sorts prefer it, which I think makes it perfect for us. It’s not the cheapest station either, but for a small tip or two you can have people just not ask questions when you come in.”

“That sounds like exactly the kind of place that would be watched the most,” Aurora said.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Missy said. “But Driftwood knows that, so they’re pretty good about misinformation and shit. Government types always think that they’re slick, but most of the time it’s pretty damned clear when someone’s in their pocket, and that makes it easy to feed them all sorts of bullshit.”

Aurora frowned, but didn’t deny it. “That might actually explain a few things. There are a few… locations of ill-repute on Phobos that we were never able to penetrate with our intelligence apparatus. We always have to rely on locals, and the information we gain is always of questionable veracity.”

“I see,” Ivil said. “Well, I suppose that it’s not the worst choice. I imagine there will be facilities for both the Sappho and the Held Together?”

“There should be,” Missy said.

“Space for what?” came from the entrance into the bridge. Ivil glanced back at where Twenty-Six was slipping into the room. She smiled slightly and gave Ivil a little wave. “What are we talking about?”

“We’re stopping at Driftwood,” Missy said.

“Oh! I love Driftwood,” Twenty-Six said. “You can see so many cool ships there! I mean, you’ll see a new one, here and there, but there are so many old ships too. I don’t think there are too many other stations around Jupiter where you’ll see such a big range! It’s fantastic for shipwatching.”

“You’re a shipwatcher?” Aurora asked.

“Uh-huh!” Twenty-Six said. “My dream is to see each and every ship ever made! Well, no, I guess that’s a bit of a silly dream, isn’t it?”

Ivil felt her chest constricting. She determined that she would soon buy one of every ship, then gift them to Twenty-Six. And if the Earth Alliance was unhappy about her purchasing one of every warship they made, then she’d just take them.

She was getting ahead of herself. They hadn’t even arrived yet, not that she was in any hurry. There was a looming sense that arriving on Callisto would be the end of something. It would likely be the start of something as well, but she wasn’t sure of what. The uncertainty displeased her, and yet she found herself comfortable in the current status quo.

Missy and Twenty-Six turned the discussion towards which docking facility to use. Twenty-Six had opinions about the quality of repairs they could find, and was surprisingly more vocal than usual when it came to picking a good team for that kind of work.

Ivil stood from the captain’s seat and gently walked to Aurora’s side. The young woman was looking at some information on the communication’s computer, specifically about Driftwood. “Find anything interesting?” she asked.

Aurora started, then glanced back with a nod. “Yes. Well, somewhat interesting. Driftwood really does have the kind of reputation that Missy alluded to, but I wanted to know more anyway. Have you ever heard of it?”

“I can’t say that I have,” Ivil said. “I’ve flown past Jupiter a few times, and I’ve stayed near it as well, but never in any of the less… reputable stations.”

“Right. I’ve been here too, but always on Ganymede, or one of its stations. That’s where most of the local moons have embassies.”

“And it’s where this big meeting will be taking place?” Ivil asked.

Aurora nodded. “That’s right. We still have some time. I expected to arrive early, before most of the other representatives.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked.

“To have time to meet with as many of them as possible, and because I imagined that most of the infighting and assassination attempts would happen later on, once the various intelligence agencies start moving. If I came before they had time to prepare, then I could be here, hiring the best guards and preparing myself long before they have time to start plotting anything.”

“You truly don’t trust the other moons,” Ivil said.

“Have I been wrong so far?” Aurora asked, sounding a little haughty. She dropped the act with a slight smile a moment later. “I know politics, Miss Ville. Just as much as I know that this station here is a deathtrap.”

Ivil glanced at the screen. It had a history of Driftwood on it. A look was enough to read the entire screen and understand it. Driftwood wasn’t one station; it was thirty-four stations, all gathered together in one spot and interlinked together. The name was somewhat poetic for a place that only existed because two stations drifted so close together that their owners decided to merge them.

“It’s going to be an interesting place, at the very least,” Ivil said. “I don’t know if it’s the kind of place where I ever dreamed of going on a date, though.”

“Well, if you want that date to end with a bit of backstabbing, maybe,” Aurora muttered.

Chapter forty-five

Driftwood

Owing to its origins as seventeen stations tucked under a single trench coat, Driftwood Station had a very loose set of laws, rules, and regulations.

Initially, the two stations that met and started Driftwood, Drifter Station Seven and a small geostationary docking port whose name was an alphanumeric string, had their leadership sit down and compare notes.

The result was a Driftwood Station with a set of rules pulled from both stations. Some had been cut out, others adjusted, and everyone was as displeased as they should be after a good negotiation.

Then a third station joined, and they sat down once more, compared notes, made changes, adjusted the regulations. Before they were done a fourth station joined, then a fifth.

At some point the matter went to committee, which was a polite way of saying that the problem was given to a team of unpaid, overworked interns who didn’t have any real incentive to figure it out.

Now, Driftwood’s charter was simple: Don’t fuck around and you won’t find out.

With as many contradictory rules as they had, everything was a crime, and so nothing was, as long as the right people were in the know.

It was anarchy, but they made it work. The locals actually lived fairly decent lives for people stuck on a drifting space station. The number of itinerants was high, but every so often Driftwood Security would scoop them up and toss them onto a ferry heading out to wherever. Plenty of money exchanged hands here. Ships docked and didn’t want any attention, and not getting attention cost extra.

A ship refuelling engineer on Driftwood Station could expect to make a healthy $16 an hour, which was about two bucks shy of what they’d make around Mars. But the fee for keeping their damned mouth shut was an easy hundred, and that made one hell of a difference. It was more than a lot of corporate ass-kissers made around Jupiter.

As the Sappho and the Held Together came in and docked in two side-to-side berths, Aurora found herself loosening her purse strings and pouring out a few thousand into the local economy to keep things on the down-low. She barely even blinked at the expense.

“Alright,” Missy said as she stretched. The last bit of flying was done by computer, and the Sappho’s navigation and manoeuvring software was pretty decent, but she still had to sit at the console and keep an eye on things for a few solid hours. “So, what now?”

“I suspect that we’re going to want to meet the crew of the Held Together,” Ivil said. She currently had a small worry. That Missy and Twenty-Six would scamper off right away now that their home ship was so close. Still, there would be some delay. “It’s going to need a fair amount of repair, I imagine.”

“Urgh, yeah. More than Two-Six can handle on her own. We’re gonna need to hire outside help on this one,” Missy said. She stood, stretching her back out as she went.

Surprisingly, Driftwood had artificial gravity. It was something that very, very few stations could afford. It either meant that there was someone using a core to create an artificial downwards pull, or the station had a machine built by someone with the right set of cores.

That kind of thing didn’t come cheap.

Ivil stood herself. It was just the two of them on the bridge at the moment. “Will you be heading out right now?” she asked.

“Think so,” Missy said. “Aurora mentioned that she needs to research something, and I think Twenty-Six will be working on the Sappho first. It’s pretty spotless, but there’s some regular maintenance to do anyway, and it’ll ease her into things. Plus, between you and me, I think she’s afraid of starting on the Held Together.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked.

“It’s a lot.”

That was fair, she supposed. The old ship had been through a lot, it would take a lot to keep it going. “Where are you going, exactly?” Ivil asked.

Missy frowned. “Why? You planning on making me stay here?”

“Not at all,” Ivil said. “The last thing you need to worry about is me interfering with how you want to live, or me stifling your growth. I’m merely curious. And, to be honest, a little bored.”

Missy sniffed. Her lips were drawn into a thin line, and she had a hand on her hip as she looked at Ivil, then she rolled her eyes and turned towards the exit. “You can come,” she said.

Ivil didn’t hasten to follow, but she did stand from her seat and walk after Missy, catching up with the woman as she opened one of the lockers set into the walls and pulling out some gear. First a handgun fit into a holster that she strapped on, then a simple coat to hide the gun pressed against her side.

“Are we expecting trouble?” Ivil asked.

“Not all of us are impervious to gunshots,” Missy said.

“That’s fair. There’s a lot of power in just being able to kill someone, even if you never plan on doing it. It makes negotiating so much easier,” Ivil said.

“Speaking from experience?”

Ivil nodded. “Of course. So, are we going anywhere in particular?”

Missy looked at her for a long while. “There’s a bar that I’ve been to on this station once. It was pretty alright. How about you buy me a drink while we’re there. And there’s someone I have to meet later. An old… friend.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to ask me to go bar hopping with you,” Ivil said.

“I’ve been giving what you said some thought is all,” Missy replied as she started towards the airlock. Ivil followed after her, and soon they were both waiting for the lock to go through its decompression cycle. “I’m pretty damned sure I’m not the one for you. Or for anyone else. But I get what you’re looking for.”

Ivil blinked. She hadn’t expected Missy to start talking about emotions and the like in such a casual way. “You understand me?”

Missy laughed. “Fuck no. But I get you. No one wants to be alone, Evelyn. There’s a lot of power in that. Back home, it was one of the only things keeping the anarchy at bay, because we all knew that as free as we were, we still needed to act a certain way or we’d be free to be alone.”

Ivil nodded slowly, uncertain of where this conversation was going.

The airlock opened, and they stepped out into a small hangar space. There were a few discarded old pallets to one side, and more free space than the Sappho had room in its hold. Likely this was where items being loaded and unloaded from a ship would go, but they weren’t here for that.

“So, where’s this bar of yours?” Ivil asked.

“It’s called the Bar Station,” Missy said. “One of the stations that got folded into Driftwood back in the day was this failed entertainment thing. Think part casino, part restaurant-thing. Lots of crap like that. Anyway, Bar Station is… I have no idea.”

“Helpful,” Ivil said with a small grin.

“Hey, I’ve only been on Driftwood a couple of times. It’s a maze. And sometimes they move things around too, which doesn’t help. There’s always a map though, and shuttles.”

“We’ll find our way over,” Ivil assured her.

She was slightly worried about leaving the ship, but Sonic Spectre was nearby now, and she ought to be able to handle any moderate threats on her own.

She was more interested in Missy’s intentions. “So, is this a date or not?” Ivil asked.

“If you keep asking it won’t be one,” Missy said. “Look, I’m good with hookups, alright? My entire life I’ve never had trouble with that kind of thing.”

“I see,” Ivil said. She could understand why. Missy had an attractive visage and was lean and dangerous. While Ivil had a broad range of what she could consider attractive, Missy certainly fell into the upper part of that range. “What about longer-term relationships?”

“My job didn’t allow for that,” Missy said. “Closest I’ve ever come was stringing a mark along for a while. If I ever wanted to get… close to someone, I’d take a day or so off the Held Together and find someone to have some fun with.”

Ivil wasn’t sure what to think about that. She tamped down on the jealousy she was feeling. It wouldn’t do to be envious of strangers. At the same time… well, she was never looking for someone puritanical as a companion, but she also didn’t expect someone who was so… open about her needs.

“You got a problem with that?” Missy asked.

“No, I don’t think I do,” Ivil said honestly. If that’s what shaped who Missy was today, then so be it. Of course, if they were to go beyond merely dating, then Ivil expected a little more faithfulness in that regard. She wasn’t sure if that was too much to ask for or not. She supposed that this was what the dating process was made for, in any case.

Chapter forty-six

A Certain Type of Person

There were certain types of people that spent time in bars on dingy old space stations, and these could broadly be divided into three categories.

The first were locals. People who genuinely went to these dives to spend a few hours with friends, inject some alcohol into their system, maybe watch their favourite sports and argue over shit that didn’t matter. For these, the bar was a home away from home. Some were there to forget, because the dim lights, the unfiltered air, and the easy access to inebriants made that so much easier.

The second were there to prey on the first. They were people looking to meet others, to make connections in a place where others were willing and ready to accept them. It wasn’t all nefarious. Some people just needed attention, and they found it there. Some were, because they needed more than just attention.

And finally, there was the third sort, the kind of person that saw a shitty bar, with its thirty-year-old decor, crappy audio, and rowdy patrons as an aesthetic. They revelled not in the people but in the location.

Missy was that last kind of person, Ivil realized.

She walked into the bar, a place called the Top Floor, and instantly relaxed while striding over to the darkest, dingiest corner of the place, a booth that Ivil glared at before sitting down. The plastic-covered cushions looked like they would stick, and she refused to sit before sweeping the surface clean with a small effort of will.

“Nice place,” Ivil said as she looked around. There was some classic pop in the air, one speaker was hissing faintly, ruining the already poor acoustics, and of course, it stank of vomit, sweat, alcohol, and barbeque sauce.

“It is what it is,” Missy said as she tapped a screen inlaid into the centre of the table. “Oh, it’s gonna be nice to eat with gravity again.”

“I can’t imagine that being a common occurrence for you,” Ivil said. “You were raised on Haumea, right?”

“Born and raised, yeah,” Missy said. “We do have some gravity. Barely. Mostly it’s centrifugal ring gravity in most of our stations. It’s kind of a bitch, being raised away from a planet, you know?”

Ivil nodded. She was aware, though that hadn’t been the case for herself. She was Martian from birth and didn’t leave the planet until she was a teenager. “Growth hormones, I imagine?”

“Urgh, yeah,” Missy said. She tugged at the collar of her coat and jumpsuit, exposing the side of her neck. There were several small scars there. “We don’t get the good shit way out there. Stuff’s twenty years behind, even for the kids. Strange to think that in a lot of ways people born in the shittier parts of the system are still better off than we are, but that’s the price the Lunatics pay for being so isolated.”

“I’ve noticed that you sometimes talk about it as if you’re part of the group, but then sometimes you don’t,” Ivil pointed out.

“Hmm,” Missy said. She gestured to the menu, and she glanced over her options for drinks and the like. Ivil leaned forwards a little and scrolled through.

Missy herself had ordered a Driftwood martini, which was really just a sour apple martini with a splash of bourbon and a sugar cube. She… didn’t think that would taste good, so she scrolled until she found the simpler, better drinks. No Titanian bourbon, but they did have a “Scotch” that came from one of the moons of Jupiter named “Scotch.” “Food?” Ivil asked.

“Yeah, some finger food couldn’t hurt if you want it. You’re paying after all.”

Ivil smiled slightly. She didn’t mind. Actually, she was more or less aware of Missy’s financial situation at the moment, and the prices for things on this menu were bordering on the criminal. She picked out a few things that would be hard to mess up, even for a place like this.

“I… am Haumean,” Missy said with some confidence. “I don’t know if I’m a Lunatic anymore. Can we leave it at that?”

“We can., I’m sorry if I stepped on your toes there,” Ivil said. “If you want, we can talk about something other than our sordid pasts?”

“Hah! Alright, do you follow goalball? Haumea got its ass kicked by Mars last circuit, but we kicked Earth in the balls.”

Ivil grinned. “I don’t follow zero-g soccer much,” she admitted. She did root for Mars, of course, but only tangentially. She wasn’t one to sit down and purposefully follow the sport. “I do enjoy following MMA, though.”

“Mixed martial arts? Really?” Missy asked. “I kinda threw sports out there as a topic expecting it to get shot down. You don’t seem the type. Especially not MMA.”

“Why not? I enjoy fighting well enough, and they do allow some degree of core-battling,” Ivil said.

“I’ve seen you ‘fight,’” Missy said with little air quotes. “You just stood there like a statue of… some sexy ancient death goddess or something. You never got in close.”

Ivil shrugged. This was a far more comfortable conversation than earlier, and she didn’t mind being called a sexy death goddess at all, not that she found her ego wanting. “Before I had as many cores as I have now, I did have to get in close. I appreciate the art in martial arts. There’s something very beautiful about hearing the snap of someone’s bones. And core-wielders often underestimate how dangerous CQC can be.”

Missy nodded. “Yeah, that’s fair. There…” she hesitated for a moment, then went on. “There were lessons for any Warmime that basically relied on that. People that have a few cores tend to feel like they’re immortal, like they’re the most special thing in the world.”

“It only gets worse the more cores someone has, trust me,” Ivil said.

Missy laughed, a raspy chuckle that Ivil loved to hear. “Yeah, I guess so. But yeah, we had lessons on taking them out. The easiest way was almost always to just shoot them, and if that didn’t work, then sometimes getting in close with a knife would. A lot of core-wielders are tough, but there’s almost always something that’ll kill ’em.”

“It’s their humanity,” Ivil said. “Being human means having more weaknesses than you can account for. As a species, we are terribly frail.”

“Mhm,” Missy agreed. She perked up as their drinks were delivered by an actual flesh-and-blood waiter, a young man that looked bored with a job that most places had replaced with a machine. “Thanks,” she said before grinning. “Did you tip him?”

Ivil glared across to Missy, who only smiled wider. She sighed, then added a gratuity to the payment before sending it off. “Happy?” she asked.

“A little,” Missy said. “That’ll help him forget that we were ever here, which might be handy once my friend arrives.”

“Your friend… who is this, anyway?” Ivil asked.

“Someone that can help us with our bounty and pirate problem,” Missy said. “They’re technically a mercenary, but they’re in tight with the bounty hunting guild around Jupiter. They get paid for taking out pirates.”

“I see,” Ivil said.

“So, I spent a few hours going over the telemetry and footage of our little fight. We have pretty concrete proof that we took out six ships. And they weren’t little fighters and boarding craft either. That’ll bring in a nice chunk of cash, and some rep. The rep’s the problem.”

“Because we don’t want people to know that we’re that dangerous?” Ivil asked.

“Because only one of us actually deserves that rep,” Missy said. “Pixie will take care of it for us. At least, I hope. She can be pretty cutthroat for someone so unassuming, she’s gonna want a slice. So best behaviour, alright?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Ivil said without promising anything.

She sensed someone coming into the bar, someone with a few cores. They’d crossed perhaps two others in the station so far, and she could sense some two dozen more sprinkled across Driftwood, but core-wielders only made up a tiny fraction of the population here.

A young woman was standing rather awkwardly within the bar. She was wringing her hands together nervously, then when she noticed, her arms dropped, and she adjusted her dress. It was a pretty little sundress, very colourful, with flowers splashed all over it. It made her look younger than Ivil guessed she was, though her height wasn’t affording her any favours there.

“Is that Pixie?” Ivil asked.

Missy leaned forwards and out of the booth, neck craning to see. “It is,” she said. “Pixie!” Missy stood and walked over, hands going to her hips as she sauntered over. “Been a while.”

Pixie perked up, then smiled past a blush. “Missy. Hi.”

“Nice to see you again,” Missy said. “Hey, before we sit down, I should introduce you to someone. This is Evelyn Ville. She’s… kind of part of the crew. Don’t fuck with her, she’s dangerous.”

Ivil stood and walked over, then she extended a hand towards Pixie. The woman was… tiny, barely reaching Ivil’s upper chest. She followed Ivil’s arm up with her eyes, then stared at her. “Ah-ah, hi,” Pixie squeaked.

… This was the bounty hunter Missy was so impressed with? That didn’t seem possible. How could a mercenary that was supposed to be talented be this cute?

Chapter forty-seven

Wine and Dine

Reputation, to some, is everything.

Ivil and Missy returned to their booth, escorting Pixie back as they went. The tiny woman hesitated as Ivil sat on one side and Missy on the other. She glanced between the two sides, then swallowed hard and sat next to Missy. “S-so, Missy, been a while,” she said.

“Isn’t that what I said?” Missy asked.

“Is it?” Pixie asked. “I mean, yes, sorry. But it has been a while. Are you still with that old junker? Uh… the Held Together?”

“You remember?” Missy asked as she leaned to the side. She wedged herself in the corner of the booth, one leg folded up onto the seat and an elbow on the table. She grabbed her drink and swirled it around. “Yeah, still with the Held Together. Maybe. Sorta? It’s gotten… complicated.”

“Complicated?” Pixie asked. It looked like she wanted to avoid any sort of actual conversation on her own end.

Missy shrugged. “It’s a long story.”

“I have time,” Pixie said.

“You have time?” Missy asked. “Aren’t you the one who’s constantly busy with something?”

Pixie made a vague gesture that could have meant anything. “I can make time. It’s no big deal. Tell me the story?”

Missy chuckled. “Alright. Might be a few bits that I’ll have to keep to myself. You understand? Figured as much. Anyway, started around Ceres. You heard of that Mars fleet flying around? They stopped by the Crevice, usual thing, the fleet came around, and it was like letting a cat loose in a hold filled with space mice.”

Ivil smiled. She was rather fond of the mental image. Cats were still carried on several ships. In fact, most Martian warships had a ship’s cat with its own cat-specific crash crate. And mice… well, there was no getting rid of such small, stealthy pests. Space mice, smice to some, were well-adapted to living in low-gravity environments.

“I heard about that,” Pixie said. She looked at the menu on the table and tapped out a quick order for a can of some sort of soda. “Did you run too?”

“We weren’t carrying any contraband, or anything suspicious. We chose to stay. Picked up a few passengers. Miss tall, dark, and mysterious here included.”

“The Held Together wouldn’t normally have been my first choice,” Ivil replied.

“Anyway, we got her, another woman, and a Martian Tech Maid of all things. Then we scampered while the scampering was good.”

Pixie nodded along, paying rapt attention… mostly. She was still tossing looks Ivil’s way. Had the little bounty hunter recognized Ivil through her disguise? There were only a few images of Ivil out there; the Ivil in all of the propaganda posters was a body double who specifically didn’t look exactly like her, despite having some cores that would allow him—the fact that her body double was a man always secretly amused her—to take on anyone’s appearance.

“You ran all the way here?” Pixie asked.

“Callisto was our original destination, yeah, but we got waylaid on the way. Pirates.”

Pixie sat up straighter. “You had to run from pirates?”

“Run? We got captured. The Held Together couldn’t defend itself from a weather satellite, never mind any kind of actual resistance. Forget about fighting off any sort of pirates. They captured the ship and dragged us back to their station.”

“Which pirates?” Pixie asked.

“Coven, led by some bitch called… Red Herring, was it?”

Ivil was aware of Pixie’s hand dipping under the table. She reached into one of the baggy pockets of her cargo pants and gripped a small handgun. “Missy… is this a trap?” Pixie asked. She sounded disappointed, sad, maybe a little surprised, but that was drowned out by the rest.

“What?” Missy asked.

“She wants to know if we brought her here as part of a trap. You said she was a bounty hunter? I imagine she’s fought and killed her share of pirates,” Ivil said.

Pixie glanced between the two, then nodded. “That’s right. They want me dead, and probably for good reason.”

“Damn,” Missy said. “No, I can see your angle. Don’t worry. This isn’t some elaborate trap. We got away from the pirates. Blew up a chunk of their station, some of their ships. That’s why I needed you, shortstack.”

“Don’t call me that,” Pixie snapped, but she did let go of the gun and relaxed a little. “How did you get away from a pirate station?”

“Stole one of their ships. Sweet little… hmm, I guess it’s a destroyer? Small torpedo ship, real sleek, called the Sappho. Ours now, I suppose. And we got the Held Together out too.”

Pixie frowned. “How? Did a Martian patrol happen by?”

“Nah. See tall, sexy, and mysterious here,” Missy said with a gesture across the booth.

“I’ve been upgraded to sexy?” Ivil asked.

“Just stating facts, don’t get too excited,” Missy replied, but a cocky grin stretched on one side of her face.

Ivil did, in fact, get a little excited.

“Anyway, she turned out to be a lean, mean, pirate fucking machine. We killed our way out of the station; left a mess in our wake.”

Pixie eyed Ivil for a moment, then her eyes darted away. “I see. Wait, you need me for the bounty!”

“Bingo!”

Pixie sat up straighter. She seemed a lot more comfortable now that she knew why they wanted her. Ivil supposed she understood. Everyone always wanted something out of her, be that her power, or for her to leave them alone. It was hard to please people when she didn’t know what their wants were. Not that she often cared to please.

“Do you have all the details we’d need for that?” Pixie asked. “Actually, how do you want to work that out?”

Missy worked her jaw. “To be honest, I figured I’d pass that on to you. What would work best? And yeah, we’ve got sensor reading for days. Both from the Sappho and the Held Together. Not that the old junker’s sensors are worth anything.”

“No, that’s good, that’s good,” Pixie said. “I’ll have to look over it all, of course, but I’m sure it’ll be enough. You did shoot some of the ships?”

“Torps and missiles, yeah,” Missy said. “A few direct hits, and then big explosions. Lots of friendly fire, but I hope that that won’t count against us.”

“Pirates accidentally taking out an ally after you damaged them is somewhat contentious. The bounty office can be assholes, but they’ll at least consider it, and I have some good pull with them,” Pixie said.

“Cool, cool,” Missy replied. “So, what’s the best way of doing this?”

Pixie swallowed again. A nervous tick? This woman seemed full of those. “W-well, there’s two options. You register as a bounty hunter yourself, use the first couple of bounties to fly past Journeyman, and then get your Master accreditation. That means a bigger percentage for a few of the kills, but a much worse one for the others. They’ll be looking over everything with a fine-tooth comb, too.”

“Alright,” Missy said. “We kinda want the money fast.”

“Then there’s another option,” Pixie said. “You let me take the credit, at least with the board. I can let people know that I’m just calling it in. It’s happened before with other hunters. Sometimes a cargo ship with a pea-shooter gets lucky, and the captain has some contacts in the guild. A bounty should be collected if it can be, you know? Anyway, I’d submit the bounties, and then I take a cut. Say, twenty percent.”

“Twenty percent?” Missy repeated. “You haven’t even wined, dined, and given me a good time before fucking me, huh?”

Pixie’s face turned very red. “Maybe, maybe not twenty percent. Ten?”

“Ten is still high,” Ivil said. “Especially for so little work.”

“F-for you, five,” Pixie said. “But no lower! I’m staking my rep on this, you know? If this turns out to be a hoax, then I’m royally fucked.”

“It’s not a hoax,” Missy dismissed. “We have the scans and the ship to prove it. So, how soon do you think you can get this done?”

“You know, telling me it’s not a hoax and then asking me to hurry along isn’t as reassuring as you might think,” Pixie said.

Ivil leaned forwards, catching Pixie’s eyes as she did so. “What Missy said was true. We did destroy a number of pirate ships, and killed quite a few pirates while we were at it. You can trust us.”

Pixie shifted in her seat. “W-well, if you say so,” she said as she broke eye contact. “Anyway, uh, business aside, it’s nice to see you again, Missy.”

“Heh, yeah, you too. Sorry for, uh, last time. You know how it is.”

“Last time?” Ivil asked.

“I kinda did a hit and run,” Missy said. “But hey, I’m always on the move, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Pixie said. She was trying to sound casual, but there was some hurt there, Ivil noticed.

Chapter forty-eight

Reputation

In an age where humanity is spread across distances best measured in astronomical units, it only makes sense that certain societal systems would fall apart. Long-distance relationships take on a whole new meaning when long-distance can mean across the solar system.

One thing never changed, however. If anything, it grew more important.

Reputation.

This wasn’t just a natural evolution, though there are certainly natural reasons why in the current environment that humanity inhabits, reputations gained a significant level of importance. But the importance of reputations were also pressed hard by corporate and planetary interests.

Want a decent, inexpensive warship that won’t kill you with maintenance costs? There were several shipwrights around Earth that could provide, with decent reputations that stretched back decades.

Spacers trust them, because if they fuck up, a lot of people will be dead.

In a time where a single malfunctioning device could lead to the death of an entire crew, and therefore the loss of a ship and all it carries, reputations are something that everyone has to rely on.

Losing rep was the quickest way to dismantle a corporation.

Unsurprisingly, reputations extend to people as well as organisations. It’s the reason why Ivil stepped back from the table where Pixie and Missy were drinking to use the ladies room. She hadn’t had to step into a washroom in over a decade, and she didn’t plan on changing that now. Instead she snuck to the back of the store and pulled out her pager. Three button presses later, and she had sent a wordless ping to MINT.

She waited for a moment, timing her return with the return of another patron of the bar who’d stepped into the washroom nearby at about the same time as Ivil slipped by. She summoned a faint dampness over the skin of her hands—it wouldn’t do for anyone to think that she was unsanitary—then she started to walk back to the others.

Her hearing picked up the two talking before she turned the corner and walked into either of their line of sight. It helped that they were sitting on the same seat, backs to Ivil.

“S-so,” Pixie said.

“Hey, uh, I wanted to talk while Evelyn wasn’t around, since, you know, it’d be dickish not to,” Missy said.

“About what?” Pixie said.

“About last time. We, I had fun. But then I kind of just ran off. Look, I do that a lot. There’s a string of guys and gals across the system that I’ve spent some time with, but, uh, you kept texting, and I got the impression that—”

“It’s fine,” Pixie cut in.

Ivil slunk to the side, a SEP field springing up around her to keep onlookers away as she snooped in. This was utterly impolite of her, but it was also grade-A gossip and drama.

“I don’t think it is,” Missy said. “Usually, when I meet someone and we have a good time, there’s an… understanding. It’s fun now, but it’s not meant to last. I stayed around Jupiter for… what was it, three weeks?”

“And four days,” Pixie said.

“Yeah. Longer than we usually stick around somewhere,” Missy said. She tsked, as if to herself. “The Held Together was fucky. Anyway, I didn’t make things clear from the start, and I kind of strung you along, and it was fun, or it was fun for me at least, but… yeah, look, I was a bit of a cunt.”

“No, no, you were…” Pixie hesitated. “Maybe a little? I thought we had something. I’d never really, you know.”

“Oh,” Missy said. “Uh, yeah.”

There was a very long, very awkward silence, and Ivil almost dropped her stealth to go and join them, then Pixie spoke up again. “I think it was just a crush. I’m not good at the whole romance thing. I’ve always been on my own, doing my own thing. It was a good lesson.”

“A lesson?” Missy said.

“That I shouldn’t let myself be vulnerable like that,” Pixie said with obvious determination.

“Ah, fuck,” Missy said. “Shit, that’s… wow, okay, I’m just a massive bitch then. Look, Pix, I did you really dirty, yeah, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t, or won’t find someone better. There’s probably hundreds of people around Jupiter alone that are better than me. Dozens… at least a couple.”

Pixie snorted. “God, how can anyone be so confident in themselves? It would be almost insulting to see if you weren’t so hot at the same time.”

Missy chuckled. “Ah, you still think I’m hot? See, we have common ground.”

Pixie sighed. It was the kind of sigh that came from the heart. “You really are. It’s not fair. Stupid clown genes.”

Missy barked a laugh at that. “You say that, but you have no idea how rough these clown genes of mine get.”

“Missy, I’m four foot five. Six with good shoes on,” Pixie said. “I have every right to be envious of anyone tall and mysterious and hot. Speaking of which…”

“Are you about to ask after Evelyn?” Missy asked. Ivil perked up at that. “Because wow, you’d be jumping into a heap of complicated right there.”

“Complicated how?” Pixie asked. She twirled a straw around in her glass, making a faint metallic clink that Ivil could only just pick up.

“Complicated in the relationship department,” Missy said.

Pixie groaned. “She’s taken too? Wait… is she dating you?”

“Me, and two others.”

Pixie sat up straighter. “You’re poly?”

“What? No… I mean, I’ve had my fun in a group before, because the more the merrier, but I’ve never really been in anything long term with one person, forget it with more than one. Evelyn is on this mad quest to find love. Some two-bit seer told her she’d find it if she looked around here, and she’s basically lusting after every woman she runs into.”

“Huh,” Pixie said. “That’s strange.”

“Tell me about it,” Missy said.

“And you’re one of those women she’s lusting after?”

Ivil glowered. She wasn’t lusting after anyone. Yes, she might have had some thoughts about Missy, and Twenty-Six, and Aurora, and all three together, that were less-than-pure, and yes she would thoroughly enjoy ravaging all three. And yes, she did occasionally stare at them when they weren’t looking, often focusing on… she frowned. What was she on about? Oh yes. Ivil wasn’t lusting after anyone, and saying so was a gross exaggeration.

Ivil started towards the booth, but she walked slowly. There was only so long she could pretend to be in the washroom before it would grow suspicious, after all.

“I guess so,” Missy said. “Honestly, yeah, she’s attractive, strong as hell. Those pirates we took out? That was mostly her. She’s not all that smooth though, but she does have a sort of charisma. Like a bulldozer.”

“What’s like a bulldozer?” Ivil asked as she came to sit across from Missy.

Missy grinned. “You are,” she said unabashedly. “I was just telling Pixie here about the pirates.” Pixie nodded, easily joining in on the lie.

Ivil hummed, then took her drink and had a sip. “They weren’t that impressive,” she said. “But I suppose it’s for the best that they’re gone.”

“Pirates are scum,” Pixie said. “And I say that as someone whose job relies on them existing. If they disappeared tomorrow and I had to find new work, or retire, then I wouldn’t be sad about it.”

Ivil smiled. Pixie wasn’t as stuttery and shy as she had been earlier, it seemed. Maybe that talk with Missy had done her some good? “So, Pixie, you caught Missy and me in an interesting situation,” Ivil said.

Pixie’s eyes widened. “Oh? Oh, you mean, uh, a date? I can go!”

“Nonsense,” Ivil cut in. “Obviously you’re a friend of Missy’s. I’d love to get to know you!”

Missy gave Ivil a look that was complicated, with one eyebrow raised and a corner of her lips quirked in a smile. “Digging for secrets?” Missy asked.

“Oh no, more like cute quirks,” Ivil said, and she was being entirely honest.

“R-really?” Pixie asked. She smiled, then glanced at Missy out of the corner of her eye. “I can probably think of a few things. Um… Missy really likes pyjamas, did you know?”

“She does?” Ivil asked, surprised. “I wouldn’t have taken her for the sort.”

“What sort do I look like to you?” Missy asked. “The sleep naked kind?”

“Yes.”

Missy huffed. “Pyjamas are warm and soft. Look, I only wear one thing, and that’s jumpsuits, because humanity’s fashion needs peaked in 1919 when the jumpsuit was invented. Pyjamas are an obvious extension of that.”

“That was far more passionate than I expect,” Ivil admitted.

“I don’t have any pyjamas on the Held Together,” Missy said. “I basically just switch suits as I go because I always end up having to get up and run after some problem or another.”

“So, how do you know that, then?” Ivil asked Pixie.

The young woman’s face reddened. “I just do,” she said. “B-by the way, I have a few things of yours to give you back, Missy.”

Chapter forty-nine

Slow Fashion

Choosing attire had transformed into a deceptively straightforward task as humanity spread through the system.

One’s ensemble was dictated by the corporate entity to which you were indentured. Fashion mutated from a way to express yourself into a tool to symbolize allegiance.

The paradigm shift didn’t ruin the urge to show off, to differentiate yourself from the masses, to rebel, but it did cut into the opportunities to do so. When a rebel had all of one option to pick from, they’d find their self-expression somewhere else.

Fast fashion was fast to die.

Exceptions still peppered the system. A smattering of professions needed some creativity in the way they dressed, and the ultra-rich, the influential, didn’t constrict themselves to corporate jumpsuits and uniforms.

Ivil considered this as she looked at the woman sitting across from her. Pixie’s bright sundress, with its little flowers on the hem and her black spats beneath stood out in contrast to Missy’s oil-stained and rather tight jumpsuit.

“That was… well, I suppose it was somewhat refreshing,” Ivil said as she dabbed her lips with a cheap napkin. The platter with finger foods sitting in the middle of the table was looking rather pitiful at the moment, with only a few vat-grown celery sticks.

“Eh, it was alright,” Missy said. “Honestly, as far as food on stations go, this is on the upper end of quality.”

Ivil nodded along. She supposed that she couldn’t disagree with that. There were some luxurious stations in Mars’s orbit that had fine dining establishments, and of course places like Phobos prided themselves on being able to serve the well off and those with a distinguished palate, but the average station was a place designed for function over form, and comfort was a distant issue.

“I suppose I should head out,” Pixie said.

“Got work to do?” Missy asked.

Pixie waved a hand in a so-so gesture. “I need to get to those files, go over them, make sure it’s all above-board for the guild. Maybe get into contact with some of the people I know there. It’s mostly getting a few emails sent and such, but it can be time consuming. Otherwise I’m between jobs right now.”

“Are you?” Ivil asked. “You know, I considered becoming a mercenary once.”

“Mercenary work isn’t the same as bounty hunting,” Pixie said. “There’s some overlap, in gear and attitudes, but we’re not the same. Bounty hunters chase down troublemakers and criminals. We’re justice with a price tag. Mercenaries are just soldiers without the allegiance,” Pixie said.

Ivil hummed. “Maybe I missed my calling, then. Bounty hunting seems like an interesting job, though my past interactions with bounty hunters have never been comfortable.”

“Why’s that?” Pixie asked.

“Before we continue,” Ivil asked, “should we head out?”

“Oh, you’re leaving?” Pixie asked, her disappointment undisguised.

“We are,” Ivil said. “I was thinking we could go clothes shopping.” That seemed like the kind of activity that women often did when hanging out or dating, and she was keen on experiencing that herself. The station definitely had some places to shop at. For all that it was a hodgepodge of smaller stations, it had a wide range of places to shop at.

“I… can come?” Pixie asked. “I mean, uh, yeah, sure, that sounds nice.”

“Yeah, alright,” Missy said. “There’s a surplus store near the docks. They’ve got the kind of stuff I usually get.”

Ivil met Pixie’s eyes, and they came to a sudden and silent agreement. Missy would not be buying overalls today. “There must be places that sell a higher-tier of clothing here,” Ivil said leadingly.

“I mean, probably,” Missy said with a frown. “Never saw much need for that kind of stuff. Overalls and jumpsuits just work, you know?”

“Yes, of course,” Ivil lied and pretended to agree.

They stood from the booth and started for the exit. “So, what were you saying about bounty hunters?” Pixie asked.

“Ah, I’ve had my share of meetings with them,” Ivil said. “But they were always rather antagonistic.” She smiled smugly.

“You had a bounty placed on you?” Missy asked.

“I did, for a few years,” Ivil said. “But don’t worry, the bounty was rescinded across the system.”

That had been a whole thing. It had started long before she earned the title of empress, and initially MINT was rather slow about helping her get rid of the bounty. That was, until the bounty kept growing. At one point it was the single largest bounty ever given in human history.

Of course, that only meant that she had her pick from the most talented bounty hunters who all wanted her dead. It had been an excellent source of cores and additional resources at the start and middle of her career.

At some point, pressure from MINT and a distinct lack of stupid bounty hunters had finally convinced the various guilds across the system to finally pull her name.

She narrowed her eyes. Had that been before or after she walked into the Saturnian bounty hunter’s guild and took all of their cores? “I think that the modern bounty hunting guilds have started to respect certain kinds of people a lot more than they once did.”

“I guess,” Pixie said with a confused frown. “Well, I can look into it, if you want? I, uh, wouldn’t try to cash in a bounty on a friend, of course. That’s just rude. I mean, assuming that you don’t have a bounty for burning down orphanages or anything!”

Ivil chuckled. “That only happened once!”

They laughed, and Ivil was happy to see her companions happy as they wandered over to a station map on a wall. Pixie pointed to a mid-tier store, but Ivil shook her head and tapped a smaller boutique in one of the nicer sections of Driftwood.

It took a while to get there, but that while was spent chatting about things that truly didn’t matter very much. Pixie complimented Ivil’s astro-archaeologist outfit, and Ivil smiled and said that she was envious of Pixie’s small size. “You must have it easy, finding clothes to fit you,” Ivil said.

“Are you kidding? I shop in the kids section,” Pixie grumbled. “Only I have these, and that makes everything complicated.” She gestured to her chest, which was rather womanly. Ivil supposed that that did pose a challenge.

“I don’t know, my legs are long enough that I suspect I would need to shop in the men’s section,” Ivil said. Truth be told, she mostly wore her uniform, so such issues rarely came up.

“Or you could get jumpsuits,” Missy said. “One size fits all. Roll up your pant legs if they’re too long, and get a belt if it’s too puffed out.”

“No, Missy, no one should have to wear jumpsuits all the time,” Pixie said.

“Don’t you wear one? When at work?” Missy asked.

Pixie pursed her lips. “Yes. And it’s custom-ordered. But that’s not just a jumpsuit.”

“It’s one-hundred percent a jumpsuit,” Missy said.

“It’s flame-retardant, can serve as an EVA suit, has heart rate, temperature, and humidity monitors,” Pixie listed off while counting on her fingers. “The suit costs more than you make in a year, Missy.”

“Ouch, but that doesn’t change that it’s a jumpsuit.”

“It’s the supercar of jumpsuits,” Pixie said. “It even has inflation modules, to keep blood flowing into your extremities during high-g manoeuvres.”

“And a built-in diaper,” Missy added with a smirk.

Pixie smacked her, but her cheeks reddened all the same. “That’s beside the point.”

They made it to the clothing store, and Missy hesitated at the doors. Inside were mannequins in some rather conservative outfits, the kind of modern techwear that a high-earning office worker might wear. There were even some pencil skirts, despite those being a risky fashion choice off-planet.

“Uh, this doesn’t look like a place for me,” Missy said.

Pixie grabbed one of Missy’s arms. Ivil grabbed the other, suddenly aware of how warm Missy was, even though the coarse material of her jumpsuit. “You owe me,” Pixie said with no surrender.

“It’ll be amusing,” Ivil added with a grin.

They dragged Missy inside. She made a show of protesting, but there was no real strength in it. The interior was brightly lit, smelled fresher than the rest of the station had, and contained a clerk who immediately stood at attention on seeing them but who didn’t come over to bother any of them.

Ivil noticed the clerk touching a console, and she was vaguely aware that they’d just run a credit check on her. The happy, obsequious smile they returned was likely a good sign.

“Let’s start with the lingerie,” Ivil suggested.

“Th-the, oh, oh, uh, yeah, let’s start with that,” Pixie agreed before tugging Missy along faster.

“What? Why would anyone need fancy underwear?” Missy grumbled as she was dragged along.

The poor soul. Ivil almost felt bad for her. Almost.

Chapter fifty

Temporary Goodbyes

“Thank you,” Ivil said. “That was an amusing way to spend the day.”

Across from her, Pixie smiled wide and gave Ivil a little bow. She bounced back straight, the bags she held swishing with the motion. “No, thank you. That was… more fun than I’ve had in a long while. I guess it’s a little bit of an old-Earth cliche to spend girltime shopping, but it was a lot of fun.”

“I hated every minute of it,” Missy said.

Ivil and Pixie both ignored her, as they’d been ignoring most of her complaints for the last few hours.

Missy was standing slightly to the side, weighted down by several bags. The contents of these ranged from the softest, most silky pyjamas available on the station, to lingerie the cost of which could very easily be calculated on a dollar-per-thread basis. There was some more normal stuff as well, though Missy had very much insisted on keeping to her style. That mostly meant that she’d picked up more jumpsuits, but they were at least of higher quality with fewer company logos on them.

“I hope we see each other again soon,” Ivil said honestly. The date with Missy and Pixie had been both educational and amusing. It had, in many ways, matched up to what she’d imagined from seeing soap operas and romantic comedies. Not every detail, of course—most of those didn’t take place on a rickety space station—but there had been enough similarities that she had found herself able to rely on her romantic education to figure out what to do next.

“Y-yeah,” Pixie said as she kicked at the ground, scuffing her shoe on a grating. “Well, uh, it was nice seeing you, and Missy too, and I hope that I’ll see both of you again soon. Oh! I might need to meet you again once I have news from the Bounty Hunter’s Guild.”

Ivil nodded. She couldn’t see why any such news couldn’t be transmitted via electronic mail of one sort or another, but another excuse to meet Pixie wouldn’t go amiss.

Ivil had very few friends, and her therapist was always egging her on to meet more people and become closer to them. It was supposed to “humanize” her.

She wasn’t so sure if that would truly work, but today had been fun, so maybe they were onto something. “Well… goodbye.” Ivil nodded, then turned to start walking off. Her bags hurried after her, knowing better than to slump on the ground and not follow. She hadn’t purchased much, really, a few changes of clothes and one or two items that Missy had suggested.

For someone who only wore one thing, Missy had an impressive eye for fashion.

Though she had insisted that Ivil buy a nice luxury jumpsuit.

Ivil waited until Pixie was far out of hearing range before she spoke up again. “Did you enjoy yourself?” she asked in a more subdued tone.

Missy shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. Never was one for shopping. Usually just order what I need and get it over with, but this was nice. We burned through a lot of money though.”

“It’s my money to burn,” Ivil said. “And besides, we’re expecting a decently large payday, aren’t we?”

“I suppose. One of the first things that I learned when I became first mate on the Held Together was how much maintaining a ship cost, and then I quickly learned that company money isn’t the same as people money.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Ivil said. They were both navigating out of the nicer, centremost stations of Driftwood and towards the less-reputable ones on the edge, specifically towards the one that had the docking facilities they were using now.

Missy hummed. “It’s just a matter of scale, I guess. Never mind.”

“No, I want to understand. Do you mean to say that the amount of money one person can move is nothing compared to a company?”

“More or less, yeah. The Held Together ain’t the richest ship around, but just keeping her going costs more than a station-living person makes in a decade. But it also makes as much every trip. In the end, we’re still just scraping by, but the numbers have more zeroes tacked on.”

“I see,” Ivil said. She nodded along. “I think I understand. I had a similar shock when I started to question the amount of money the government could spend on things around Mars. Even the simplest of budgetary shifts start in the low billions.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s all scale,” Missy said. “Anyway, I never was much for bigger-scaled things. I’m a simple kind of woman, you know?”

“Hmm,” Ivil said noncommittally. “I do hope you had a simple kind of fun. I enjoyed myself.”

She felt rather than saw Missy eyeing her from the corner of her eyes. Her hair was pulled up a little before her face, masking the look to those without Ivil’s senses. “Yeah, I guess I did. Has anyone ever told you that you’re weird?”

“And survived?” Ivil asked. She hummed. “You’d be the first.”

Missy chuckled. “You know, I feel like your big scary-woman act loses a lot of its bite after spending half a day with you acting like you’re sixteen and shopping with daddy’s credit card.”

“I have to admit, that never actually happened. I was never much of a… family person.”

“Oh?” Missy asked.

“Orphaned, raised by the big scary government,” Ivil said.

“Ah,” Missy replied. “Sorry for digging.”

“It’s nothing,” Ivil said. She was aware that sharing about her past was a required part of building a healthy relationship, so she was ready and willing to speak about it. Not that her young life had been overly traumatic or was all that interesting. “So… you and Pixie?”

Missy grumbled. “Yeah. But hey, I apologised to her. We’re good, I think. She’s a good woman. I kinda… fucked her up a little. It was dickish of me. Sorry for bringing you into that, even if it was just in the periphery. You don’t deserve to get caught in my drama.”

“It’s fine,” Ivil said. “I appreciate that you’re so… mature about it.”

“If I was more mature, I wouldn’t have dug myself into that hole in the first place,” Missy said. “Maybe I’m growing too old for the whole lady at every port thing. You might have the right to it, Evelyn. I should think about settling down one day.” She snorted. “If you told me that I’d be thinking that even just two years ago, I’d think you were delusional.”

“Why? I think it’s a very normal way of thinking as we grow older. I wasn’t too keen on romance until a few years ago. Before that I mostly focused on becoming stronger, gaining a reputation, making sure that people knew their place.”

Missy grinned. “Sounds like you might have been good at that.”

“I’m the best at it,” Ivil said. She was. “What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t be nervous about changing your approach to things in life. Maybe the next step really will be to find a place to settle down in.”

“I don’t know what kind of place would want me,” Missy said.

Ivil grinned smugly. “You can live in my palace, of course. You have experience as a first mate, I’m sure that would translate well into a more managerial role.”

Missy laughed. “Sure! Does your butler uniform include jumpsuits?”

“Only if you’re wearing nothing but the contents of that bag underneath,” Ivil said with a gesture to a tiny pink bag that Missy had stuffed shamefully into a larger one.

Missy’s laugh changed in pitch, turning a little more nervous. “Yeah, that’s not a kink I’m familiar with… might be kind of hot, though.”

“The classic butler outfit would suit you well too, I think. You’ve got the figure to pull off wearing a three-piece,” Ivil said. “Ask Aurora, I’m certain she’d agree.”

“I think I’ve had enough people poking at my way of dressing for one day,” Missy dismissed.

Ivil smiled, then paused as she noticed someone approaching them with a knife in hand. “Hey, ladies, looks like you had some cash to spend, how about yo—”

Ivil continued to walk on. There was a slight hitch as Missy went around the mugger’s lower half after it fell to the floor, but she soon caught up, looking somewhat paler. “What the fuck was that?”

“Hmm? Oh, a mugger, I think,” Ivil said.

“Fuck. Uh, okay, we should probably hurry up, then,” Missy said.

“Yes, I suppose if there’s one, there might be more about. They’re like roaches, I swear. I suspect that I’m somehow cursed to always run into some unimportant mugger or mook every time I enter a location of ill-repute,” she said with a shake of her head.

Chapter fifty-one

Attracted to Success

The human propensity to be attracted to success is well known, well documented, and generally regarded as something no one can do anything about.

Are you annoyed that people are approaching you because you’re richer, prettier, better off, or more powerful than them? Suck it up.

Ivil dealt with that kind of negative attention by punishing it in as public a way as possible. This earned her a reputation that some thought was awful, but it also kept gold-diggers and lesser trouble-seekers at bay.

With a sufficient application of vengeful violence, the same technique could be applied to politicians and bureaucrats as well.

Ivil wondered if, perhaps, she ought to teach this trick to Aurora. The Phobian noblewoman was in her room on board the Sappho, a room which she had transformed into a small office space. A few boxes were left just outside of the door, ripped open and abandoned as trash.

She knocked on the doorframe while eyeing the boxes. “Aurora?”

“Oh, Evelyn,” Aurora said as she stood from a small seat. It still had plastic wrapped around its cushions, and a few packing peanuts stuck to the legs. “I’m glad to see you. What do you think of my… let’s call them renovations?”

Aurora spread her arms wide, encompassing the entire room.

Unlike the captain’s cabin, this space was small, tight. Still, it was much larger than the tube-rooms one might expect onboard a warship. The pirates that designed the Sappho built the ship for a small crew, and then filled it with unnecessary luxuries, such as elbow-room.

“It’s nice,” Ivil said.

Aurora had fitted a small unfolding desk on one side of the room, with a light bar fixed to the wall above it for additional clarity. There was a new computer sitting on the desk, an unfolding laptop with a brick of a base to it, and of course, the chair, which seemed to have magnetic feet.

A small shelf was fixed to the wall, with an elastic holding bar to keep the two books on it in place. Actual paper books. Something of a strange luxury.

“Why the office set-up?” Ivil asked.

Aurora frowned. “I would have thought that obvious. If I’m going to have to sift through paperwork then I want to do it with some level of comfort. It’s enough of a pain to do already. Having good tools can only help.”

“I suppose,” Ivil said. She didn’t do paperwork. The last time the MRS had demanded that she file her taxes she’d found the director in charge of the organisation and teleported him into their complaints department. Piece by piece. “Did you need help?”

“Not really. Though, I’d appreciate it if you brought the boxes out? I can’t fit them in our trash receptacles and I… honestly don’t know what to do with them.”

“Sure,” Ivil said. She’d disintegrate it later. “Where did you buy all of this?”

“Online,” Aurora said simply. “Driftwood has its own local net. It’s… fairly reliable. I wouldn’t consider it safe by any means, but I have a decently secure device to connect with, and a false identification to make purchases through.”

Ivil raised an eyebrow, then glanced at the boxes. They were addressed to a Miss Aya Roara. “Aya Roara?” Ivil read.

Aurora blushed prettily. “It’s easy to remember.”

“Fair enough,” Ivil said. Her glass house might have been impervious to stones, but there was no reason to test that today. “I’m happy to see you settling in. Looks like you’re making the Sappho your home.”

“I suppose so,” Aurora said delicately. “It’s a nice ship, all told. I think it’s nicer than most of what we have available around Phobos.”

“Phobos has a navy, doesn’t it?”

Aurora snorted indelicately. “Yes, a navy. Some thirty-odd ships, each one three decades old at the youngest. They’re old Martian surplus that Mars deemed unfit for their mothball fleet. Our personnel is decent, however. Lots of former Martian citizens who purchased citizenship on Phobos for one reason or another and who wanted a continued job in a naval force.”

“Ah, so Mars builds your ships and trains your crews,” Ivil said.

“Essentially. There has been a push to change that, but it has run into budgetary issues.”

“How so?” Ivil asked.

“Well, the current way of doing things is exceptionally inexpensive. We’re buying old ships and getting decent personnel with training better than we could ever afford to give. New recruits are usually tied to a more experienced sailor, and they just pick things up as they go. It’s cheap. Building our own flotilla, never mind a full armada, would be expensive. We have shipyards, but they build luxury yachts. Not warships.”

Ivil nodded. There was a pretty severe difference between the two in terms of build quality and such. Mostly owing to their purpose. She’d been on board some older Martian warships whose interiors made nineteenth century submarines look like palaces.

“I’d be curious to see the design philosophy that Phobos would bring to the table,” Ivil said.

Aurora hummed. “It wouldn’t be pretty. Don’t get me wrong, I love my homemoon, and I wish to see it prosper in the future, but Phobos has too much money and not enough tradition. Corruption is a way of life there. We’re used to it now, but it’s still harmful. If we did make our own warships, they’d either come with casinos and gambling dens built in, or the graft and theft before production would mean a ship made of cardboard and propaganda.”

Ivil leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms casually. “You know, that was a thing.”

“Ships made of propaganda?” Aurora asked.

“Cardboard,” Ivil said.

Aurora blinked. “No,” she said. “That’s not possible.”

“Oh, it is! Cardboard is… probably too simple a term for what was actually used. But it was definitely some sort of pressed material. It’s very lightweight, after all, and can be shaped and cut and glued with ease. With the right treatment it can be airtight.”

“But radiation would cut right through,” Aurora said.

“Mhm,” Ivil agreed. “It was an Earth fleet, from the tail end of the Third Solar War. It was actually more clever than you’d think. They had a surplus of cardboard and such, and they needed their ships armoured and covered. So they used what they had. They specifically left the sections that are critical armoured properly, but something like a third of the hull was cardboard. The ship’s frame was untouched, of course.”

“That must not have inspired much confidence with the crews.”

“They were unpopular choices,” Ivil agreed. “But it was the end of the war, and Earth needed ships fast. Shaping cardboard is faster than processing steel, cheaper, lighter. It made for surprisingly mobile craft, I think. Not that it mattered.”

Aurora hummed. “Mars must have loved it.”

“Oh yes, simple point-defence would scythe right through, and as you can imagine, if they’re cutting back on hull plating, they were doing the same with shielding and the like.”

She’d enjoyed them, in any case. The ships used to crumple in interesting ways. It was like high-velocity origami.

“Ah, did you come here to talk about cardboard ships?” Aurora asked. “Not that it isn’t an interesting historical tidbit. I imagine you’re full of those?”

Ivil smiled. She was thankful for her cover as an astro-archaeologist. It meant that any moment where she fell into reminiscence could just be played off as her thinking of her job. “I wanted to see how you were doing. We’re at your destination, after all. And yet you seem to be settling in. I was worried that I’d find you packing up and ready to run.”

Aurora pursed her lips. “Afraid that I’d run off?”

“A little.”

She sniffed. “No, you don’t have to worry about that. Though if I did want to leave, I’d leave. I considered it, even, but… the situation around Jupiter will be… very complex soon. So many fresh cores, so many competing interests. Already, just looking over the Jovian internet, I can see rumours slipping around. This ship might be one of the safest places I can be.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Ivil said. “And I agree. You have both a degree of anonymity to protect you, and of course myself.”

Aurora rolled her eyes, but she smiled nonetheless. “I have been thinking about that date as well. It would be hard to fulfil my end of that agreement if I gallivanted off, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, I suppose it would,” Ivil said. “Have you thought about it more than that?”

“I don’t yet have a plan,” she admitted. “But give me a few days. And maybe access to somewhere that isn’t as skeevy as this station. I don’t have great confidence in the safety that can be found on Driftwood.”

Ivil nodded. That was understandable enough. She’d make sure that Aurora felt safe, then.

Which might, perhaps, prove a little tricky.

Chapter fifty-two

The Mechanic

Oft underappreciated, always underpaid. Ship mechanics are the backbone of human civilization, and according to themselves, if it wasn’t for their tireless work, all of humanity would find itself sucking vacuum.

A few rare mechanics had a more humble approach to the craft, treating it as art rather than glorified maintenance work.

A more common bunch knew that they had the power to turn off the scrubbers, redirect the air, and turn a ship into a mobile sarcophagus. These mechanics were unappreciated by their corporate owners, but they earned a solid pay before being replaced.

Ivil knew that the options for that kind of work ranged from awful to only barely tolerable, with a few sparkling exceptions.

Today, she was going to question one of those exceptions.

Not for herself, of course. She did not care for such things. Rather, she was questioning things on Twenty-Six’s behalf.

The truth was that Ivil was concerned that the young woman wasn’t reaching her full potential. Twenty-Six had a brilliant mind and an incredible amount of talent. She was passionate about ships and genuinely seemed to love what she did.

Ivil had listened to her rant about the Sappho’s air filtration system for an hour the previous night and had been amused the entire time. The only sour note was the knowledge that Twenty-Six might very well never amount to anything but a simple ship’s mechanic on some old rust bucket.

That was, in Ivil’s opinion, unforgivable.

If she and Twenty-Six ended up together… well, then that would be one thing. Twenty-Six could pursue her passion with the entire Martian fleet if she so chose. But if they didn’t work out, then Ivil still wanted Twenty-Six to come out on top. She had stumbled across Ivil’s attention, and now she’d reap the rewards.

Ivil had pondered what to do for Twenty-Six overnight and decided that the best course of action would be to seek advice, and that meant questioning the only person nearby whom she would trust with such matters.

Leaving the Sappho, Ivil made her way over to the next berth over where the Held Together was moored. A few automated repair drones were very slowly fitting some new plating in place over some of the scars left on the ship’s hull. That level of repair work could easily be automated, though the cost was likely not so easy to swallow for the captain.

On entering the ship, she found herself assaulted by the Held Together’s familiar odour. It wasn’t exactly pleasant. Stale oil and sweat. The smell of a space that had held a number of people for too long without proper ventilation.

Maybe Twenty-Six was onto something when she exposed the glories of an above-par filtration system. It would certainly work to keep the stink at a lower level.

“Evelyn?” Ivil turned to find Sonic Spectre standing in the ship’s hold. The Tech Maid straightened her back, hands clasping together over her stomach in a dignified, submissive pose. “I was not expecting you here. Forgive me, I didn’t prepare any hospitalities.”

Ivil waved it off. “It’s fine,” she said dismissively. “I was actually here looking for you.”

“Oh?” Sonic asked. “How may I be of assistance?”

Ivil glanced around, even though she was well aware that they were alone. “Are we private?” she asked anyway out of courtesy.

“We are,” Sonic replied easily. “Is something the matter? Is it urgent?”

“No, it’s nothing urgent, I merely don’t feel like playing to any charades at the moment,” Ivil said. “It’s about Twenty-Six.”

“Oh! Have you decided that she’s the one? I’m surprised but not disappointed. She’s a kind young woman, and I think her unique perspective on life could improve your own point of view. It may even have a positive impact on the greater Martian society.”

Ivil wasn’t here for this, but she gestured for the Tech Maid to go on. “Continue.”

Sonic blinked behind her one-expression mask. “I feel like I may have miscomprehended something.”

“Go on anyway,” Ivil said. “You have my permission to be honest.”

She paused for a long moment before she nodded. “Very well. Twenty-Six is young, attractive enough, if in an unconventional way, and kindhearted. I suspect that her mechanical inclinations would make her a favourite amongst the Tech Maids of Mars, and while her origins as a Saturnian might frustrate some of the more… pure-minded Martians, that same origin might also draw in others who view diversity and immigration favourably. She has no family to speak of, no close political or corporate ties. She’d make for a very neutral spouse in the eyes of the politically inclined, in short.”

Ivil hummed. “I think she’s cute and greatly desire to pinch her freckled cheeks.”

“They do seem very pinchable, ma’am.”

“In any case, I’m not certain that she’s the one. In fact, I’m having some difficulty deciding how to approach her. Nonetheless, I suspect that you’re correct about her demeanour. She’s kind and positive. I want her to come out of this situation ahead of where we found her, regardless of the outcome.”

“I see. And what would that entail?” Sonic asked with a slight tilt of her head.

“I was thinking that we could either find work for her in a more prestigious position, or perhaps fund her further education?”

Sonic nodded. “That would be acceptable. Have you considered giving her a scholarship to one of the primary Martian universities? Some of them have links with the Tech Maids, as technical professionals and peers. They would accept her with open arms, especially with her new core giving her a slight edge, and your endorsement giving her… an incomparably valuable edge.”

“Do you think she’d like that?” Ivil asked.

The Tech Maid considered it. “I think she’d like the results of the education. I don’t know if the school environment is one she’d necessarily enjoy, but the subject matter itself is one we know she likes.”

Ivil was about to acquiesce when she noticed that someone was approaching. The very same someone they were talking about.

Twenty-Six was now in the ship’s airlock, waiting as the Held Together’s ancient pressurisation system did its work.

“She’s coming,” Ivil said. “Do you have any idea what she’s been doing over here?”

“Twenty-Six has been coming and going for the last day or so. She’s been completing minor repairs. I believe she’s making full use of the part-assembler and printer on the Sappho,” Sonic said.

“Ah, that makes sense,” Ivil replied as the interior airlock opened and Twenty-Six slipped into the room.

The young woman walked right past Ivil and Sonic, humming a happy little tune as she went.

She froze by the door, her humming stopping mid-note. Then she turned and blinked at the two. “Uh, oh, hi?”

“Hello,” Ivil said.

“Greetings,” Sonic replied.

“Oh, shoot, uh, what are you two doing here? I mean, no, you’re allowed, so… anyway! Hi!” Twenty-Six’s face turned as red as her hair and her eyes flicked to everywhere but the two across from her.

Ivil resisted the urge to squeeze Twenty-Six. It was becoming increasingly difficult to do so. “Are you here to fix the ship up?” Ivil asked.

“As well as I can,” Twenty-Six replied. “I’ve been printing things nonstop over on the Sappho… wait, that’s okay, right? Using the Sappho’s printer like that?”

“It’s perfectly alright,” Ivil replied.

“Cool! So I’ve been making replacements for… well, nearly everything. There’s a lot of stuff you just can’t print, but there are so many parts that you can remake whole, and then it’s just plug and go. So much easier than patching things with foam and duct tape and chewing gum.”

“Are you here looking for more things to repair, then?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six snorted an indelicate laugh. “I could spin around and point to something random and it would need some fixing in here. Nah, I’m getting my dolly.”

“Pardon?” Ivil asked.

In lieu of explaining, Twenty-Six went to the far end of the hold and undid a pair of latches holding a small wheeled platform against the wall. She bent down and unfolded a handle on it and tugged the platform after her. “This is my dolly,” she said. “It’s for carrying parts around in low-g. I was gonna go to a local scrapper and pick up a few things. They have a catalogue of parts on the station-net, and half of them are mislabelled. They don’t know what they have!” There was a gleam in her eyes. “And that’s a mistake I’m going to capitalise on. I want, like, a million different replacement parts that we can get for cheap.”

“Things you cannot print, I imagine?” Sonic asked.

“Exactly! Well, some you can, but you need the files for them, and I can’t find some. The Held Together has some parts that predate shipboard printers. No one’s made the parts in any sort of CAD, or if they did, I can’t find or afford them. So I’ll have to fix things the old fashioned way. Some bits are just not printable. Filters and some electronics.”

“Hmm, well, I can hardly let you go on your own,” Ivil replied. “It would be unbecoming of me to let you get hurt out there. Did you want to come as well, Pendergast?” Ivil asked while projecting that the answer would be no.

“I’ll leave you two to it,” Sonic replied sagely. “Enjoy yourselves!”

Chapter fifty-three

Ship Scrapper

Ship scrapping was a multi-billion dollar industry, one that was still, somehow, mostly run by smaller family-owned businesses in most planetary systems.

That did mean that the service one could expect varied wildly between good enough and god-awful.

Ivil walked next to Twenty-Six. The younger woman was humming a little tune to herself while pushing her dolly along. There was a loud squeak every three-quarters rotation of its front wheels that Ivil wanted to do something about.

“Thanks for coming with me,” Twenty-Six said.

“It’s nothing,” Ivil said. “I had an empty afternoon, and I’d much rather spend it helping you than loitering around the ship doing nothing.”

Twenty-Six grinned up at Ivil. “Well, thanks anyway! I usually do this kind of thing all on my own. It’s nice to have company.”

“Do you not usually have anyone with you?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six shook her head. “Sometimes Hawk comes with me if I need something heavy picked up, and sometimes Missy will leave the ship with me, but most of the time it’s just me on my own.”

“That’s… quite unfortunate,” Ivil said. “And dangerous, no? Leaving the ship without anyone to watch your back feels like a recipe for sorrow.”

“It’s not so bad,” Twenty-Six said. “The trick is to look so poor that it’s just not worth trying anything.” She gestured down at herself. She was currently dressed in very Missy-like fashion. Overalls over a loose t-shirt with a few old oil stains on it.

“I suppose. Though aren’t you bothered by that? Passing yourself off as weak?”

Twenty-Six shook her head, then laughed. “Evelyn, I am weak.”

“Ah,” Ivil said. She glanced at Twenty-Six again. The younger woman seemed happy to put her weight into pushing her dolly along and humming her little song. Twenty-Six was… well, Ivil supposed that she was many things. Cute as a button, smart, and exceptionally talented when it came to her field of interest. She was lively and upbeat as well. Ivil liked her.

But it was also true that in other circumstances, had Ivil just run into Twenty-Six out of the blue, she would have dismissed her without a second glance. Yes, she was cute, but she wasn’t the sort of attractive that caught Ivil’s attention. Even with the little grease smudge on the end of her little nose.

Sure, she was smart and talented, but Ivil spent her days on warships crewed by the best of the best. She was surrounded by the smart and the talented throughout the day. That didn’t make someone stand out.

And Twenty-Six was weak. Her single core might help her a little now, but weak ferrokinesis wouldn’t a warlord make.

It was sad, in a way, but Twenty-Six wasn’t wrong about herself. She was, undeniably, weak. But she’d only remain that way if she wanted to. “You know, you don’t have to stay weak,” Ivil said.

“Hmm?” Twenty-Six asked as she cut off her humming. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you have one core already. It’s possible to leverage that into more. Even assuming you weren’t surrounded by friends who want the best for you, all on your own, you could leverage your skills and core and capabilities into more power.”

“How would I do that?” Twenty-Six asked.

Ivil tapped her chin. “You’d need solid work, which I’m certain you could find. Split your core and set the earnings aside for some time. Work to grow a nest egg until you can afford a second, compatible core. Once you have two, you can constantly split one to earn enough to help yourself grow. Eventually earning more. It wouldn’t be exponential, of course. The more you grow, the more paranoid and careful you’ll have to be, but by then if you have a handful of cores, your skills will be in much higher demand.”

Twenty-Six stared for a moment. “That would take years, no?”

“It would. Or you could pass those years without making any real progress. One way or another, time will get a march on you.”

“Oh,” Twenty-Six said. She frowned a little. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do all of that on my own.”

“Well, in that case you’re quite fortunate,” Ivil said.

“I am?”

Ivil nodded. “Of course, because you’re not on your own. I happen to think that Missy cares enough about you that she’d help you find work. Aurora might likewise assist you, and I’m not without my own resources. Even Pendergast seems to think highly of you, and she’s a well-placed member of the Tech Maids.”

Twenty-Six blushed a little, then shook her head. “I don’t think anyone thinks that much about me,” she said.

Ivil sniffed and shook her head. If only she knew. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re a talented young woman, and I’m certain you’ll go far if that’s what you want.”

Twenty-Six was saved from further embarrassment as they made it into another station attached to Driftwood. This one, from what Ivil could tell, was only a temporary attachment to the station.

It was called the Callisto Junker, and it was a station that was mostly composed of large warehousing units and the hulks of some two dozen semi-disassembled ships in various states of disrepair.

The Callisto Junker was linked to the rest of Driftwood via a single long station arm with a few remote-operated tugs tied up alongside it. They paused at the entrance to that arm where a man in dirty clothes and whose odour was an affront to all that was good greeted them. “Here for something?” he asked.

“Parts,” Twenty-Six said. “I’ve got a list.”

“Hmph,” the man said. He rubbed at his nose with the back of a hand, then nodded them in. “Go on. Don’t bump the walls too hard, and watch for the gravity.”

Ivil wondered what he meant for a moment before she cast her senses forwards. The long passageway to the Junker had gravity until somewhere along its middle, where the station’s artificial gravity gave out suddenly.

“That might make it easier to carry things,” Twenty-Six said as they started along. “I was a little worried about grabbing some things because they were too heavy.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Ivil said. “I can lift heavy things for you.”

She wouldn’t admit it aloud, but Ivil secretly wanted to be seen lifting heavy things by Twenty-Six.

They made it to the end of the tunnel where Ivil carefully took over pushing the dolly for Twenty-Six. The moment they were out of the main station’s artificial gravity the lift became something of a danger. It was better if Ivil took care of it since she could easily insist that gravity do as she wanted.

Twenty-Six floated along happily next to her, at least until they slipped into the main lobby of the Callisto Junker. There she schooled her features and tried to look serious as she walked up to the counter. “Hi, I have a list of things I’m looking for. Do you think you can help me?”

The next few minutes were a test of Ivil’s patience as Twenty-Six had to deal with something that was somehow worse than the usual obstructive bureaucracy. Willful incompetence. The people who ran the Callisto Junker were, in a word, idiotic.

Their record keeping left much to be desired, their pricing scheme was based entirely on how much they thought they could rip someone off, and they didn’t seem willing or capable of lifting a single finger to help anyone with anything.

She was tempted to rip the side of the station open to vent the lot of them, but Twenty-Six had the patience of a saint and managed to smile her way through all of the obstinacy before her. It wasn’t long before she had the man behind the counter wrapped around her pinkie with a long-winded discussion about some particular kind of engine and its frequent need for repairs.

Soon enough, they’d gone over the list of parts that they were looking for, and Twenty-Six was bargaining over their price.

A worker brought them all over to a space to the side where Twenty-Six checked over the parts one by one. “This is no good,” she said placing a small device to the side. “The contacts are dirty.”

“Dirt can be cleaned off,” the worker said.

“That looks like verdigris,” Twenty-Six said. “And that’ll only happen if the plating over the copper’s worn out. I won’t get more than a day or two out of that. But this filter’s alright. It’s been used, but not worn out.”

“That’s from a little freighter that we picked up a month back. It was in an accident.”

“What sort?” Twenty-Six asked, immediately suspicious.

“Crashed into a gantry crane,” the dealer said with a grin.

“Ah, okay.”

“Does the kind of accident matter?” Ivil asked.

Both Twenty-Six and the dealer snorted, as if that was the most self-evident thing in the world.

Once the dolly was loaded up to capacity and the dealer was paid, they started to head out. “So, straight back to the ships, or can I tempt you into lunch first?” Ivil asked. “My treat.”

Twenty-Six looked reluctant, but the gurgle of her stomach was anything but.

Chapter fifty-four

Fancy Foods

“I never asked, but what sort of food do you like?” Ivil asked as she walked next to Twenty-Six.

The younger woman was pushing her dolly along with a look of concentration on her face. It was currently loaded up with her haul of goodies. Or at least, scrap that Twenty-Six seemed to think were goodies. “That seems like a pretty broad question,” Twenty-Six said. “Um… I don’t really know. I guess I’m a little picky?”

“Picky?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six nodded. “On Saturn, in the rings, we had six flavours of dehydrated food to pick from. My favourite was red. Purple was gross, and I didn’t like blue very much.”

“I… see, and what about after you left the rings?” Ivil asked.

“Well, then I ate whatever Hawk makes on the Held Together. We actually got into an argument once! That was back when I was newer on the ship. Hawk noticed that I wasn’t eating enough, and so he sat me down and ran through all of the ingredients I liked and those I didn’t. From then on he made sure to include enough stuff that I’d like so I’d always get my fill.”

“That’s actually quite kind of him,” Ivil replied. “So what sorts of foods do you dislike?”

“Hmm, well, anything green, spicy, crunchy, or too sweet,” Twenty-Six said.

Ivil ran through a list of every food she could think of that fit those criteria. It was a long list. “Wouldn’t that account for a great number of meals?”

“Huh? No, there’s plenty of ship food that passes! Red, pink, green ironically, yellow, all three of the metallics. That’s if you buy from Shipfarors United Food. If you buy Mars Agricrop food packs, they use numbers. I like meals two, three, seven, and nine from them. Can’t stand four. Jupiter has, like, four different food brands, and their naming stuff is all over, so it’s a bit trickier to tell what’s good or not.”

Ivil blinked a few times, then shook her head. “What about real food?”

“How are the things I’m talking about not real food?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I sincerely doubt that a human interacted with them in any meaningful way from the growth of whatever plant started it all to the moment they’re packaged.”

“That doesn’t make them not food,” Twenty-Six said. “They have calories.”

“I don’t think having calories is enough,” Ivil replied.

She wasn’t a connoisseur of fine dining and excellent food. Not to say that Mars mistreated her when it came to diets. She always had excellent meals waiting for her on whichever ship or station she occupied. It was just that she didn’t require sustenance. In fact, eating was often a chore. Anything she ate needed to be digested, and that led to waste, and she really wasn’t fond of that entire process. More often than not she just burned any food she ate within herself until nothing but subatomic particulates remained. It was much cleaner that way.

Still, she enjoyed a nice meal for the sake of companionship and for her tastebuds. “We’re going to a nice food place,” Ivil replied.

“There’s stands in some of the corridors we passed,” Twenty-Six said.

“No, I said nice. And I don’t mean some dingy bar, either,” Ivil decided. She stopped by a map-screen at a nearby intersection and scanned through it until she found an appropriate enough dining establishment.

It was two stations away, but that wasn’t all that far. “I can’t bring my dolly all the way there,” Twenty-Six said. “That’s one of the nicer stations.”

“They won’t complain,” Ivil said. She’d make sure of it. “Trust me?”

Twenty-Six eyed her, then nodded. “Okay,” she said.

Ivil grinned, then walked by Twenty-Six’s side. While she did so, she tugged out her pager and tapped into it with one of her powers. It sent a small encrypted message to one of the first contacts on her list. It wasn’t a very complex message. I need a reservation at the Beau Manoir on Driftwood Station.

There, nice and simple.

It took them twenty minutes to arrive at the restaurant, a trip made somewhat more complicated by having to push the dolly around and stuff it into some elevators meant for pedestrian traffic as opposed to more industrial work. Still, no one complained. Ivil did overhear some muttering about maintenance, which she supposed was a logical conclusion to jump to.

“A-are you sure about this?” Twenty-Six asked as they came up to the front of the Beau Manoir.

The restaurant was designed to fit that particular aesthetic that the rich and somewhat influential enjoyed. Private eating spaces, small rooms with singular tables. A human waiter and staff dressed in formal attire. They even had old-Earth classical music from before the First Solar War playing softly throughout the room.

“I’m positive,” Ivil said. She held the door open for Twenty-Six and her dolly, which only barely fit into the small lobby area at the front.

A man stepped up to them, looking rather frazzled despite his elegant suit. “You cannot bring that in here,” he said.

“We did already,” Ivil replied. “Reservation for two, under the name Evelyn Ville.”

The man made a passable impression of a fish while Twenty-Six abandoned her dolly and slid in behind Ivil, using the taller woman as a shield. “Is this okay?” Twenty-Six asked.

“It’s fine,” Ivil replied. “This is merely an application of power.”

The man stiffened, then bowed. “We, we have the VIP suite ready for you and your companion, ma’am,” he replied. “Compliments of the owner? You know Jean-Paul?”

“Never heard of him,” Ivil admitted. Had MINT twisted the poor owner’s arm for this? She supposed it was plausible enough.

Unfortunately, it was currently evening, station-time, and the restaurant was quite full. As she walked across it with Twenty-Six shuffling next to her, she discovered several eyes on her, and when they arrived at the VIP suite, it was to find it being emptied of its previous occupants.

They were not pleased about this. “Do you have any idea who I am?” a rotund man was saying. His jowls wobbled dangerously in the direction of a young serving woman who was trying her hardest to placate him. “I’m the goddamn mayor of Driftwood! You can’t kick me out!”

“Twenty-Six, go take a seat, I’ll just be a moment,” Ivil replied. She reached out and grabbed the large man blocking their path by the upper arm and moved him aside.

Twenty-Six squeaked and slipped by and into the safety of the VIP suite.

“Who are you?” the mayor snapped. “Unhand me at once!”

“You’re making a scene,” Ivil said calmly. She met his eyes. “The scene will be far worse if you don’t settle down. I’m certain the Beau Manoir is being reasonable about all of this. Unfortunately, I have a propensity not to be overly reasonable. So don’t ruin my date, or I’ll ruin this fine establishment by spreading your remains across it. That might upset the serving staff who won’t do their job as easily, which would in turn upset me. I might have to reconstitute you, claw your soul out of hell, then show you a world of torment the likes of which your fat-addled mind cannot comprehend.”

The mayor stared slack-jawed for a moment before glaring. “Who in the fuck do you think you are?” he asked.

She sighed. Would Twenty-Six be upset if she caused a small political disturbance and interrupted their meal? MINT certainly would be, but she didn’t make much of a fuss about what they wanted.

The mayor started to fuss and whine, so she removed his ability to make noise. He had bodyguards, she noticed. One of them had been trying to reach her from the moment she had approached him, but his attempts were so laughably weak that she didn’t really care. He was currently pushing against a constant and unstoppable pressure that was preventing him from reaching her. “Major-domo?” she asked.

“Y-yes ma’am?” the man who’d greeted her at the door asked.

“Please relocate the mayor to your second-best rooms. His meal and drink can be put on my tab.”

“Yes ma’am, thank you, ma’am,” the major-domo said.

Ivil let go of the mayor and eyed him. “Do not seek revenge. This wasn’t a slight. This was a mercy. Now, I have a young lady to woo, so shoo.”

Ivil slipped into the VIP suite where Twenty-Six was sitting. The young woman was shifting from side to side nervously, and seemed afraid to touch anything. Possibly because any one of the utensils on the table before her were worth more than Twenty-Six made in a year.

Still, Twenty-Six screwed together her courage and met Ivil’s eyes. “Can… can we talk?” she asked. “I think that maybe we’re, uh, not on the same wavelength about some things.”

Chapter fifty-five

Endearingly Complex

Ivil pulled out the seat across from Twenty-Six and sat herself down. This felt like it was important, at least to the younger woman. “Did you want to order first, or talk first?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six blinked at the question. “Um… this isn’t a fast food place, so I imagine it’ll take a while for things to arrive, right? Like I said, I’ve never really been to a place like this.”

“It’s not too long, but yes, someone has to cook the food,” Ivil said.

“Okay, in that case, um….” Twenty-Six squirmed on the spot. Making choices like this wasn’t her forte, Ivil could tell, but Ivil still wanted to see Twenty-Six put her foot down… or tap her foot down gently, as the case may be. “Let’s order first, then?”

“That sounds good,” Ivil said. There was a single menu on the table already, as well as a cup of wine and some glasses of water. Fortunately the maitre d’ came in and cleaned the space up before she had time to complain. He left a pair of fresh menus out before bowing and leaving the room.

Ivil perused the menu for a while, picking something relatively simple to eat. When she was done, she noticed Twenty-Six sweating a little as she stared at her own.

“Is something the matter?” Ivil asked.

“I… I was going to order red,” Twenty-Six said. “What’s an aperitif?” She did not pronounce that correctly.

“That’s alcohol that you take before you start your meal. Think of it as a liquid entrée.”

“What’s an entrée?” Twenty-Six asked while trying to disguise a cringe.

Ivil smiled, then stood up, carried her chair around, and sat on the other end of the table, right next to Twenty-Six. “Here, let’s go over the menu together,” she said as she leaned to the side. She was aware of her chest pressing into Twenty-Six’s shoulder and of Twenty-Six stiffening right up at the contact.

“I-I can figure it out, I’m sure,” Twenty-Six said. “It’s just a menu. It can’t be more complicated than a tech manual!”

“Oh, it’s not, but a lot of old traditions were kept alive through culinary practices,” Ivil explained. “You’re not unintelligent for not being aware of some cultural cues, you’re just uninformed. Here, these are the starters. They’re small, easy to eat… snacks of a sort.”

“Okay,” Twenty-Six said with a nod.

“These are the mains, and these are the desserts for after. Three courses should be plenty, I think. Is there anything that jumps out to you? We could ask for something else.”

“Something not on the menu?” Twenty-Six asked. “Like a secret menu item?”

“I don’t know what that is,” Ivil said as she leaned a little away from Twenty-Six to better see her eyes.

“Oh… my favourite fast food place has a secret item that’s not on the menu. It’s called Red Three. It’s just three red meals together, but the dessert portion’s taken from cyan… it’s better?”

“I see,” Ivil said. “Well, in a place like this, we can bully the chef into doing whatever we want, and seeing as how they’re likely professionals, they’ll jump to it. But for now, how about you pick what sounds good?”

Twenty-Six nodded. “Titanian Wagyu over Saturn Rings? What’s a wagyu?”

“It’s a kind of beef. Wagyu is just the term for the quality. Considering the price, it might come from a real cow as well.”

“But there are no prices written on here,” Twenty-Six said.

Ivil smiled. “Don’t worry about that,” she said. Twenty-Six had a few more questions, but she settled on Venusian mushroom tartare, then the Titanian Wagyu, and they both decided to see if they’d have room for dessert before ordering any. Ivil reluctantly stood back up and returned to her side of the table. Twenty-Six seemed serious about what she had to say, and that meant giving it some level of decorum. “So, what did you want to talk about?” Ivil asked as soon as the waiter was gone with their orders.

“Um,” Twenty-Six said. She shifted in her seat, then visibly stopped herself from fidgeting. “Evelyn… do you… love me?”

Ivil blinked. “That’s a hard question. I don’t think I love you, not that way.”

“Oh, okay,” Twenty-Six said as she exhaled hard.

“I would like to, however,” Ivil continued.

That had Twenty-Six tensing up a little more. “What do you mean?”

“Hmm, what do you think I meant when I said I was searching for love?” Ivil asked.

“I don’t know?” Twenty-Six said uncertainly. “I guess you’re looking for a, ah, significant other?”

Ivil smiled a little. “Yes, that’s accurate, but I have the feeling you don’t know what that means, exactly. Twenty-Six, I have only known you for a week and a few days. That’s enough to know that I like you. I think that love takes a little longer than that to develop, and ideally it requires that both parties want it to happen. One-sided love is not something I will engage in.”

Twenty-Six’s mouth formed a little “oh” of understanding, then she flushed. “So-so where does that leave us?”

“At the dating stage, I think,” Ivil replied. “Which mostly involves spending time together, getting to know each other, meeting each other’s friends and such. If there’s a spark, then there’s a spark.” And if there was a spark, Ivil would turn it into a blaze that would blind the entire galaxy in its fervour, but Twenty-Six was maybe not ready for that.

“Okay,” Twenty-Six said. “I talked to the captain about it. She’s… well, old enough to be my mom you know, and she’s been divorced three times.”

“I… see.”

“Anyway, she said that it’s complicated and wasn’t very helpful,” Twenty-Six admitted. “But! Uh, I think that… you’re very pretty.”

Ivil blinked, then giggled into her hand. That set Twenty-Six’s face aflame. “No, no, I’m not laughing at you,” Ivil said to calm the young woman down. Her fidgeting had returned with a vengeance. “I wasn’t expecting it, is all. You’re very pretty too.”

“I’m not,” Twenty-Six said with confidence.

“You are,” Ivil replied with the certainty of god overlooking all that was made and declaring it good. “I like it when you gush about mechanics and the things you’re passionate about, even if I know nothing about them, and I like how quick you are to learn.”

“Those aren’t physical things,” Twenty-Six pointed out.

Ivil shrugged. “You have very cute freckles. I like how tall and sort of… awkwardly gangly you are, like a baby horse, and your breasts look very squeezable.”

Twenty-Six choked, and Ivil decided to stop there because she was worried that the younger woman might run out of blood, so much of hers had relocated to her face.

“I, I meant! I meant that you like non-appearance stuff about me,” Twenty-Six said. “But all I know about you is that you’re strong, and nice, and know stuff that I don’t. I mean, I know a little about you but it’s like…”

She waved her hands around ineffectually.

“It’s like walking into a ship you’ve never seen before to service it, but you don’t know where anything is. All you’ve gotten is a look at the outside, and sure you might recognize the make and model, but that doesn’t mean you know where to pump the oil and how to check the filters!”

Ivil had never been compared to a ship before. She had been propositioned before, but the offers had never sounded like an oil change. She wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“I think I see what you mean. You like the look of me, and my power I suppose, but you don’t know if you’d like the real me beyond just my appearance and strength?”

“Yeah,” Twenty-Six agreed with a firm nod. She was still blushing a little, but it was under… some amount of control now. “You can read the spec sheets all you want, but you don’t know until you know.”

“I like that,” Ivil said. “Would it help if I told you more about myself?”

Twenty-Six eyed her for a good long time. “No?”

“No?” Ivil asked, surprised by the answer.

“I mean, yes, I guess, but you can’t just trust a ship’s diagnostics system. You need to observe the ship, test it, see how it handles stress.”

“You are aware that I’m not a ship. And if I were a ship, I’d be a warship the likes of which no single mechanic could ever hope to understand all on her own.”

Twenty-Six sat up straighter at that, and her eyes narrowed. “Was that a challenge, Evelyn? Because it sounded like one! Just you watch, I’ll know so much about you that there won’t be a rattle or clang that I couldn’t identify in my sleep.”

Ivil stared while working hard not to smile.

“Was… was that embarrassing?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I’d rather choose to think it was endearing,” she replied.

Chapter fifty-six

Tease

Humanity has always had dragons.

From the most ancient of times, in the most ancient of civilisations, when banging two rocks together to make a spark was humanity’s greatest technology, humanity has had its monsters. Great serpents, powerful lizards, fire-breathing creatures of myth and legend.

These were spoken of in hushed whispers, painted in glorious details, stories were traded, exaggerated, and expanded upon. These beasts and monsters became the symbols of power and the slur for those too rich and powerful for their own good.

Humanity needs its dragons, because we need something in the dark to keep us moving.

In the past, the dragons were myths. Now, the dragons are people.

In some places the Three Emperors go by another name. The Three Great Dragons.

Ivil considered this as she ate some dragon-egg cake. It was a small, oval-shaped macaroon with striations and blotches over its surface; the paste within was a sweet fudge-like confection, warmed a little over room temperature, and the entire “egg” was nested in a base of vanilla ice cream, with real dairy.

She smiled across at Twenty-Six. “Want to crack it?” she asked.

Twenty-Six, after having her tastebuds forced through an orgy of new and interesting flavours for the past hour, simply nodded. Her own dessert was the simplest thing on the menu. A chocolate brownie with a dab of cream and warm chocolate syrup. She had never had a brownie that didn’t come from a vacuum-sealed package with easy-tear tabs.

“How do I do it?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Just give the egg a good smack with the back of your spoon,” Ivil instructed.

Twenty-Six leaned forwards and pinched the end of her tongue between her lips. Ivil was unreasonably tempted to reach out and grab the little pink thing, but she restrained herself.

“Oh! It broke,” Twenty-Six said. She leaned up and stared into the broken shell, where the warm insides were already melting the “egg shell” exterior. Ivil helped her cut out a gooey slice to put onto Twenty-Six’s own plate, then she dug into her dessert.

This was nice. The food was of acceptable if middling quality for a fine dining establishment, but Ivil couldn’t expect too much from someplace around Jupiter. The company made up for any deficiency.

“Ohhh, it’s so sweet!” Twenty-Six said. She had a habit of kicking her feet up and down when excited and when eating sweet things. She even closed her hands into little fists and wiggled them.

“It is a little sweet, yes,” Ivil replied. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it so much.”

Twenty-Six nodded, then she stared across the table at Ivil, blushed some more, then sat up straighter. “Sorry,” she said.

“Sorry? What are you apologising for?” Ivil asked.

“I mean, that was a little… childish of me? You’re all mature and adult, and, well, I’m obviously an adult too, but I don’t always act my age.”

“I wouldn’t want you to act in any other way,” Ivil replied. “Please, just be yourself. I like you the way you are, trust me. I just hope that you don’t mind if I’m not as obviously emotional as you.”

“Obviously emotional?” Twenty-Six asked. “Does that mean that you’re un-obviously emotional?”

“I suppose that it might mean something like that,” Ivil replied.

Twenty-Six leaned her elbows on the table and squinted as she stared at Ivil. Really stared, with the sort of intensity Ivil imagined was usually reserved for schematics viewed in poor lighting. “Oh! I see it,” Twenty-Six said with a grin.

“And what do you see?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six pointed at her, specifically her brows. “It’s all in the eyebrows. Yours go… wait, how do you only move one? Yours tilt just a little. It’s like instead of smiling with your whole mouth, or frowning, your eyebrows give it away.” Twenty-Six frowned, then glared, then opened her eyes wide, all seemingly in an attempt to gain some control over her own brows. It wasn’t very successful, except in making Ivil want to laugh.

“You’ve caught on to my secret, then?” Ivil asked. She purposefully raised one eyebrow with the question, which set Twenty-Six to giggling.

Soon enough, however, it was approaching time to go. “I think you might have to roll me back,” Twenty-Six said as she tapped her belly. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so full.”

“It was my pleasure,” Ivil said. “Let me take care of the bill, and I’ll be right with you.”

Twenty-Six hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

Ivil stepped out of the room, then slowed time down to a crawl. She needed a moment. Both to control herself—because resisting the urge to hug and cuddle and pinch Twenty-Six for over an hour was taxing—and because she needed a moment to think.

This had… gone about as well as she could expect. She’d learned a little about Twenty-Six, and they had a nice time. Did she feel a spark? She was pretty sure she did, but Twenty-Six just wasn’t great at the more traditional sort of flirting that was charged with tension and sexual energy. This was a lot more friendly and sweet.

Ivil took a deep breath, then let time snap back to its normal rhythm. Yes, this had gone about as well as she could expect.

She settled the bill with the maitre d’, who had already received payment from an unknown source, tip included, then returned to find Twenty-Six waiting for her in their private room. They left for the exit, where Twenty-Six’s dolly was still waiting.

“Hup!” Twenty-Six said as she put her weight into pulling the dolly back. “Back to the ships?” she asked.

“I think that would be best,” Ivil replied. She held the door open for Twenty-Six, who quickly started to push her things along. Ivil kept pace next to her. “Did… did you enjoy yourself?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six nodded. “It was nice. You know, that’s the first date I’ve ever been on, and, uh… Evelyn, do we have to end it with a kiss?”

Ivil perked her brow, then stilled it when she realized what she was doing. “Do you want it to?”

Twenty-Six’s cheeks reddened, but she nodded, then shook her head. “I… yes? A little?”

“Then maybe we’ll just end it with a little kiss, if that’s what you want,” Ivil replied.

Twenty-Six swallowed, but nodded all the same. “Okay then! By the way, can you help me with something? It’s related. T-to the dating, I mean.”

“Oh?”

“I need help arranging a date with someone I like. Two dates, actually.”

“Go on,” Ivil said.

Twenty-Six stared ahead for a moment, then nodded to herself before looking back up to Ivil. “I need help arranging a date with Aurora.”

Ivil didn’t miss a step, because that would be clumsy, but she might have, had she had any less control over herself. “You want me to help you arrange a date with Aurora?”

“Yes?” Twenty-Six squeaked. “And maybe one with Missy? Do you think that would work? Between me and Missy, I mean. Have I blown it already?” She slumped against the handles of her dolly, which actually pushed it along faster.

“I’ll admit, I’m a little confused,” Ivil replied.

“Well, it’s simple, isn’t it? Everyone is like a ship, going through the world, doing their jobs, taking care of what they need. We all need maintenance, and love, and a good crew… wait, I’m losing the analogy. Anyway, we’re all like ships. You’re a big sexy Superdreadnaught, Aurora’s one of those sleek Martian diplomatic vessels. Missy’s more like one of those old Earth Alliance destroyers. And I don’t see why you only need to pair two ships up together? Why can’t we all be together, like a fleet? And if that happens, then it only makes sense that every ship had good coms with the others, right?”

“What are you in this analogy?” Ivil asked while she processed the whole rest of that.

“Huh? Oh, I dunno, some old tug or something.”

Ivil was quiet for a while, such a long while that they were almost at the Held Together. “I think… that you might not be entirely wrong, though I do question your analogy a little. Also, I don’t think you’re just an old tug. You deserve better than that.”

Twenty-Six smiled and shook her head. “Maybe, maybe not. But you know what’s nice about old tugs? They’re reliable, and no one minds them too much, and maybe they’re good at pushing ships together?”

Ivil reached over and patted Twenty-Six on the head. “Thank you, then. I’d be honoured to help you with your… ship-pushing plans.”

Twenty-Six’s grin was spectacular.

Then they were at the Held Together’s airlock, and Twenty-Six’s grin changed for an uncertain blush. “S-so, we’re here. I have a lot of work to catch up with, inside, in there, uh, alone?”

“I see, I think that means it’s time for that kiss? If you still want it?”

“Y-yeah.”

Ivil leaned down, carefully used a hand to touch Twenty-Six’s jaw. The younger woman’s breath caught, and her eyes squeezed shut. Then Ivil gave her cheek a peck.

Chapter fifty-seven

All Which Matters

Things came, things went, and humanity with all of its idiosyncrasies and strangeness kept on.

Ivil felt like she was floating that evening. Yes, the little kiss with Twenty-Six had been about as chaste as a kiss could be, but it had been a kiss, and that’s all that mattered.

She felt a comfortable warmth in her stomach, like a million stars going supernova all at once. Enough heat to usher in the death of a world and bubbling and popping and making her want to skip.

Not that she did such a thing, because it would be immature and would ruin her image. She contented herself to keep a small, demure smile on and perhaps the faintest of flushes.

That good mood was made all the stronger as she returned to the Sappho to find Aurora waiting for her. The noblewoman’s hair was wet, and her skin was still damp. She’d clearly just exited the shower, and yet she was dressed cleanly and appropriately, as if she was just moments away from stepping into a board meeting of some sort.

“Evelyn,” she said with a polite smile. “Just the woman I wanted to see.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked. Ever since Twenty-Six had pointed it out, she was acutely aware of her eyebrows doing things of their own volition to communicate how she felt. “Did you need me for something?”

They were in that small space just within the Sappho a ladder away from the bridge and right in front of the corridor leading past the First Mate’ and Captain’s rooms and to the ladder leading down into the belly of the ship below. The bigger washrooms, with the nicer showers, were technically just below the bridge. Ivil figured that that was where Aurora was coming from.

Aurora nodded. “I did need you for something,” she said before she adjusted her glasses. “It’s… not a romantic matter, to make that clear from the start.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Ivil replied with an easy smile.

Aurora cleared her throat. “Yes, well, as the case may be, it’s not. I wanted to talk about our next moves now that we’re in the Jovian system.”

“Ah yes, the meeting of the moons,” Ivil replied.

“Indeed. I’ve had a couple of days now to look into things. I don’t exactly have a sterling spy network here, but there are enough rumours on the Jovian internet to hint at what’s coming up. Before the conference of moons, there will be several smaller events.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked.

“One of these is after tomorrow, around Callisto. I was wondering if you’d want to attend with me?”

“Of course,” Ivil replied. “What sort of event is this, however?”

“It’s a meeting between some of the minor moons,” Aurora said. “Honestly, as things are progressing, I think the League of Free Moons is facing its first schism.”

“Didn’t you say that the leader of the organisation was a genius?” Ivil asked. She could very well recall that conversation.

Aurora nodded, then gestured down the corridor. “Should we talk over something to drink? I don’t mind standing here, but it does become a little awkward.”

Ivil agreed, so she gestured Aurora forwards, and the noblewoman bowed slightly before moving along. “The League of Free Moons is, of course, young as far as such things go. Tradition might be a shackle to some, but it’s also important to build legitimacy, and the League has no traditions. It was mostly an excuse to build ties between weaker moons, coordinate relief, and to have a third party involved in any conflicts that was more or less neutral.”

“I vaguely recall that not working at all,” Ivil replied.

Aurora tsked. “It really doesn’t. There was a short-lived conflict some three years ago, I don’t know if you recall?”

“I don’t, sorry,” Ivil replied.

“It was between Ariel and Umbriel, two of Uranus’s moons. They both have minor orbital colonies, and honestly they don’t matter overly much. I think the conflict was semi-religious in nature? It was a mess that no one wanted to get involved with. But the League of Free Moons stepped into it anyway.”

“And the results?” Ivil asked. She waited as Aurora navigated the ladder down to the level below, then followed. She was keenly aware that as she walked down the steps, Aurora’s attention was on her rear. It was nice.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, well, the League has something like twelve medical ships. We had fifteen. Three of them were shot down over the two moons. It’s actually what ushered in the new director. She took the incident as a stepping stone to take over the League. Since then the League’s stance in conflicts is a lot… harder.”

“Can the League even sustain such things?” Ivil asked.

Aurora made a so-so gesture. “The League has some amount of discretionary funds. A lot of these are being poured into the League’s Defence Force. It’s a small army, very small. I think some of the greater moons have militias with more ships and more men in them, but the League Defence Force is pulling resources from all over. I think the plan is to build an actual elite fighting force.”

“Interesting. They’re taking the Martian approach to warfare?”

“The Mars of fifty years ago, maybe,” Aurora said. On seeing Ivil’s questioning look, she elaborated. “Current Martian doctrine basically hinges entirely on Mars having the biggest stick in the system. Don’t get me wrong, a Star Dreadnought like the Purgatorial Oblivion moving in too close is a nightmare for any naval force in the system except maybe the Earth Alliance, but it’s still just one big brick of a ship. I’m no strategic expert, but I’ve listened to the experts, and Martian force projection has switched from being about them being an elite force and moved towards Mars just having the biggest guns.”

Ivil nodded along. That actually made some sense. Mars was used to being the strongest military force for some time, and while she didn’t doubt that the Martian elite was still the best… time moved on. Others would eventually catch up.

Maybe the admiralty had figured that out already and were planning for just such an eventuality by pushing the navy towards a more comprehensive approach to things.

Aurora and Ivil sat at the dining table after Aurora fetched a pair of mugs with some steaming hot cocoa in them for them to share. “We’ve gone off-topic,” she said. “The meeting. It’s between eight of the League’s moons. Callisto itself, Styx, Galatea, Umbriel, Titania, Hyperion, Tethys, and with us present, Phobos.”

“That’s a decent number of moons, isn’t it?” Ivil asked.

“Decent in number, small in stature,” Aurora said. “You’ll note that there’s no Triton, no Miranda, no Titan or Io or Europa on that list.”

“Ah,” Ivil said. “It’s a group of… those aren’t the smallest moons of any planetary system, with the exception of Phobos.”

“We’re one of two moons around Mars, so we’re the exception,” Aurora said. “But yes, they’re all the third and smaller moons of their respective planetary systems. Not just in size. There’s a very real correlation between the size of a moon and its political power, but that’s the subject of another dissertation.”

Ivil smiled faintly. Aurora was usually a very reserved and polite young woman. She sat straight and seemed very composed at almost all times. That was, until she started to talk about something she cared about. In a way, she was similar to Twenty-Six, but with years and years of taught behaviour keeping her from expressing too much when she landed on a topic she cared about.

Right now, she was fondling her mug and rocking very faintly from side to side as she talked, as if she was listening to a song that only she could hear.

It was very cute, Ivil decided. And the sheer amount of abstract knowledge Aurora had about inter-system politics… well, that was just hot.

“So, this meeting, where is it?” Ivil asked. “And when is it as well?”

“Technically, tomorrow. It’s on Oppresorax Station, one of the newer Callistoian stations. It’s actually relatively close at the moment, so transitioning over shouldn’t be too complex.”

“Did you intend to take the Sappho over?” Ivil asked.

Aurora shook her head. “Just us. There are transports. To that end, however, I did hire some additional help. A local guide who has some knowledge of Jovian politics. She came well recommended and seemed pretty discreet. I was hoping you’d accompany me?”

Ivil perked up. “Of course. How long will this take, however?”

“A day to travel to the station, then one day for the meeting, a day’s trip back,” Aurora said. “It should give us a lot of information about the conference in a relatively discreet way.”

“You mentioned a schism earlier. Is this part of it?”

“Somewhat. The League has almost two hundred members. Eighty full members, then the rest are applicants or minor members. You can’t have that many separate groups without coalitions and infighting. Not to mention planetary alliances. It’s not conspiracy when interests naturally align, after all.”

Chapter fifty-eight

Confidence

Sometimes one has to respect confidence, even if that confidence is entirely misplaced.

“I want to come,” Twenty-Six said with the surety of someone unaware they were jogging through a minefield.

She was standing on the end of the dining room table where Ivil and Aurora were preparing themselves for their little sideadventure.

Mostly it was Aurora who was doing the preparations. She needed clothing to travel, clothing for the presentation, and something nice to wear afterwards. That didn’t take into account the various computers, hygiene products, and other miscellany she needed to bring with her.

Fortunately, Aurora was a tidy packer. Unfortunately, packing all of her things into a single medium-sized suitcase took time and effort. Ivil was helping, but was also sorely tempted to shove everything in and tell it to stay. Her own things were in a much smaller suitcase.

“Just to be clear,” Ivil said. “When you say you want to come, you mean with us, yes?”

Twenty-Six’s mouth worked, then she stomped a foot down. “Yes, of course!”

Ivil nodded. She knew.

She knew because Twenty-Six had spent the better part of half an hour pacing back and forth in the engineering bay psyching herself up, and Ivil was aware of her the entire time. But she couldn’t let such an easy double-entendre slip by, not when Twenty-Six and Aurora both blushed so prettily.

“That would actually be up to Aurora,” Ivil said. “This is her mission.”

Aurora looked up, inspecting Twenty-Six for a minute. “I suppose having a talented mechanic along with us couldn’t hurt,” she began, which had Twenty-Six’s eyes lighting up. “However, I don’t know if those skills will actually come in handy. Frankly, you’d be a little wasted on this trip, Twenty-Six.”

“Oh,” was the girl’s reply. Then that confidence returned. “No! I want to come because… I want to come. I mean, I want to be with you. It’s alright to follow just because, right?”

“I suppose,” Aurora said. “Evelyn is coming in her… Evelyn is following along with me in the role of—no offence—powerhouse. To scare off any problems we might encounter along the way. I did hire one more person, but she’s a consultant and guide. We’re otherwise travelling light.”

“Oh. Does that mean you don’t want me to com—to travel with you?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I wouldn’t mind having Twenty-Six’s company,” Ivil said. “Nor do we necessarily need her to be useful to be good company. But I think it would be nice if we all came together.”

Aurora and Twenty-Six gave her a look, as if wondering if she was in on the joke. Ivil, however, had the poker face of a god.

Aurora shook her head. “Fine. We can go together. One more person with us couldn’t hurt. Actually, there might be yet another person with us. Missy mentioned that you’d met her? She’s a local bounty hunter, good reputation, fantastic credentials. Honestly, I would be stretching my budget to afford her services, but Missy managed to negotiate things down somehow.”

“You mean Pixie?” Ivil asked.

“Pixie?” Aurora repeated. “No, or… perhaps? Her file says that her name is The Nightshade? She’ll be escorting our transport out.”

“As in, with her own ship?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Yes. She has a fighter craft,” Aurora said.

“That’s awesome,” Twenty-Six said. “But isn’t it also kind of…excessive? Like, a whole fighter to guard a transport around the orbit of one moon?”

Aurora waved dismissively. “Not just that. She’ll be hovering around Callisto as well, taking shifts with the other hired help. Not every faction representative will have a cadre of bodyguards, but some will, and that includes light fighter escorts. If we were dealing with one of the major moons, then there would probably be one or two escort frigates keeping their diplomatic vessel safe. We’re coming in a little… under-armed, actually.”

“Hmm, yes,” Ivil said. They were definitely approaching the table with the appearance of being under-armed. “I wouldn’t mind seeing Pixie… that is, The Nightshade, again. She was… fun. Twenty-Six, I think you might like her, she has a very keen appreciation for spaceships, though mostly focused on fighter craft.”

“I’ve never serviced a fighter before,” Twenty-Six said. “That must be so cool. And so expensive. They have a ton of bespoke parts. Most warships do, but it’s worse for smaller craft since they need to cram so much more into a smaller space. Do you know what model her ship is? Wait, no, I’m rambling.”

“It’s fine,” Aurora said. “Your rambles are at least entertaining, which is why… yes, you can come.”

“Yes!” Twenty-Six cheered. “Wait! I need to get my things ready. Should I bring tools? Would that be weird?”

“A little.”

“I’ll just bring the small set then!” Twenty-Six said before running off.

Ivil turned to Aurora. “Thank you for that. Twenty-Six is a charming young woman, I’m certain we’ll have fun together. And I think it would be good for her to see more of the world than engineering bays.”

“Mhm,” Aurora agreed. “I heard that you took her out on a date?”

“Just to dinner,” Ivil demurred.

Aurora smiled. “Still on your romantic quest, then?”

“I’m not happily married yet, am I?” Ivil asked.

Aurora’s smile turned a little more smug. “You know, the station we’re going to, Oppresorax, certainly has a few entertainment venues. Those could be interesting to visit.”

“I think I’d like that,” Ivil replied with a smug smile of her own. “What kind of entertainment are you into?”

Aurora hummed. “I enjoy dancing, listening to music. I can play some as well, if you want, though I was never good enough at it to really stand out.”

“You’re a musician!” Ivil delighted. “That’s incredible, what do you play?”

“The Phobian harp, and… yes, that’s it.”

Ivil perked an eyebrow. “And that’s it?”

Aurora flushed slightly. “Fine. It’s mildly embarrassing, but I played the triangle for three years in school.”

“The triangle. Well, I suppose that’s… something that requires… skill?”

Aurora pursed her lips. “I learned the harp to get away from that reputation. No one wants to be triangle girl. What about you?”

“No triangles for me, I’m afraid,” Ivil replied. She glanced down. Somehow, while moving things around, she and Aurora had ended up being rather close. “So, Aurora, when it comes to… instruments. Do you like being the one playing the instrument, or… do you like it otherwise?”

Aurora looked up slightly to meet Ivil’s eyes and then seemed to realise how close they were. She licked her lips, and Ivil could sense her heart skipping and beating a little faster. “You’re being very flirtatious, Miss Ville,” she said before reaching up to adjust her glasses.

“I think you’re worth being flirtatious with,” Ivil said. “But if I’m making you uncomfortable….” she pulled back a little, then stopped when Aurora made an aborted gesture to grab her.

“No, I don’t mind. Though, perhaps this would be unprofessional.”

“Hardly. Unprofessional would be flirting in secret, or pushing when someone thinks it has gone too far. I’m not your subordinate, Aurora. Nor are you mine.”

“I see, yes.” Aurora swallowed and seemed a little flustered. She swallowed, then shook her head. Her hand rose and very lightly touched Ivil on the stomach. “You’re right,” she said.

“I sense a but,” Ivil said.

“I’m more of a ‘however’ woman,” Aurora said. “However… excuse me, but you have me a little worked up, and I’m having a hard time keeping my thoughts straight.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“A little,” she admitted. “You are very attractive, however, I am here to save my world. I can’t afford attractive distractions at this time. As much as I would love it if you did… things to me, it wouldn’t be right. People are depending on me, Evelyn. And if we do something, I’d want it to be honest, not a fling.”

Ivil nodded. She could respect that. “So put a pin on the flirting?”

“A little,” Aurora said.

“Only a little?”

“Well, it is fun,” Aurora replied. “After the meeting tomorrow wouldn’t be a bad time for this kind of… thing.

“Oh… wow.”

They both turned to see a blushing Twenty-Six by the entrance. Aurora still had a hand touching Ivil, but she pulled it back as if Ivil were a lit stove.

“I’m so sorry, uh, were you two about to… kiss and stuff?”

“No,” Ivil said. “We were talking about it, however.”

“Oh, wow, I should go add oil to the filters and check the blinker fluid,” Twenty-Six said.

“No, wait,” Aurora called out. It was enough to keep Twenty-Six from fleeing, at least. “Stay for a moment. We should… clear the air. Especially after that note you left me.”

“Note?” Ivil asked.

“I may have made a terrible mistake,” Twenty-Six said. “I’m so, so sorry, Miss Aurora. It’s just that I don’t know how to flirt is all!”

Ivil glanced between the two and discovered that she was mildly confused. She wasn’t sure she liked it.

Chapter fifty-nine

Notes Under the Door

Communication through text was still the cheapest, most effective way to communicate over long distances.

Relatively easy to encrypt, low package size, wide bandwidth for long-distance communications, and very easy to transmit at near light-speed.

So, the art of texting never really disappeared. But just because an artform never faded did not mean that the average practitioner was… good.

Ivil held the note reverently pinched between forefinger and thumb. It was written in a chicken-scratch scrawl, as if the writer was in a great rush to put everything down on paper. Ivil was actually somewhat impressed that it was written on paper at all, but the scratchiness of said paper suggested that it might have been freshly printed, perhaps in exactly the kind of matter-printing machine that the Sappho had in its engineering bay.

Dear Aurora,

I think you’re very cute. Please go on a date with me!

-26

Ivil reread the note for the seventh time, then carefully looked up. Twenty-Six was standing in the end of the room. No, standing implied… well, it implied something more dignified. Twenty-Six was squirming at the end of the room, as if her pants were filled with biting ants.

“This is…” Ivil started before hesitating for a moment. “Incredibly endearing. Aurora, if I had received this letter I would be contemplating marriage.”

Twenty-Six choked on nothing—Ivil instantly checked her airways for obstructions—and Aurora tittered prettily into her hand. “It is rather endearing, isn’t it?” Aurora said. “Twenty-Six slipped it in under my door, which I thought was supposed to be airtight.”

“It is,” Twenty-Six said. “But the rubber seals on the bottom are meant to move a little to accommodate the door’s sliding, so if you just push something against them with like, a screwdriver, you can create a gap, and I’m talking too much, aren’t I?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Aurora said. She sat, hands on her lap and lips turned up in the corners in a faint smile. “It is genuinely very endearing. I have received… a lot of propositions over the years. Offers for dates and even marriage. This is by far the sweetest.”

“I sense a but?” Twenty-Six said.

Aurora blinked, glanced at Ivil from the corner of her eye, then returned her focus on Twenty-Six. “No buts. I’d love to go on a date with you,” she said.

“Huh?” Twenty-Six said, then she gasped. “Really? Evelyn, did you tell her?”

“Tell me what?” Aurora asked.

“I did not,” Ivil replied.

Aurora looked between the two of them and seemed unimpressed. “Can I be informed about whatever this is that’s going on between the two of you?”

“No?” Twenty-Six tried.

It was a little late to backtrack, in Ivil’s opinion. “Twenty-Six here had an interesting analogy about ships to tell me just the other day. Something about how each of us is a different sort of ship, with a different appearance and different capabilities.”

“Don’t start with that!” Twenty-Six squeaked.

“I believe she compared me to a Martian Superdreadnought and yourself to a sleek diplomatic vessel,” Ivil continued.

Aurora blinked slowly. “I’ll admit that I’m not sure I fully understand the analogy, though I’ll take that as a compliment. Some diplomatic vessels are quite beautiful.”

“Oh, the analogy was more about how Twenty-Six would rather see us all as a fleet rather than just two ships floating along in the void of space. Is that right?”

Twenty-Six very much looked like she wanted to die. “I just want us all to get along?”

“I believe you also wanted to ‘service’ the ships and ‘get to know them so well you could identify them in your sleep,’ or am I misremembering?”

“I see now,” Aurora said. “So Twenty-Six is into polyamory, then?”

“It’s not that!” Twenty-Six said. “I’m the tugboat in that analogy is all! I just want to… wait, no, can we ditch the analogy completely?”

“No,” Ivil said.

It was too cute to ditch.

“We’re late!” Twenty-Six said suddenly. “I’ve packed up all of my things, so I’m ready to go, but if we don’t start moving soon, we’re going to be late.”

Aurora glanced at her wrist. “She’s right. We have three hours to get to a terminal on another part of the station.”

“Three hours seems like a relatively long time,” Ivil said. Driftwood Station wasn’t all that large, was it? She’d crossed a decent amount of it with Twenty-Six and Missy already, and it never took more than an hour to cross it. For all of its unusual shape, the station had decent public transportation avenues.

“I want to be there early,” Aurora said.

“Ah,” Ivil replied. Aurora was that kind of woman. She saw tardiness as a great sin. She wasn’t keen on arriving somewhere several hours in advance only to be made to wait. Waiting was something lesser people did. “I suppose there’s no harm in heading out early. Let me fetch my things. Did you really pack everything you needed, Twenty-Six?”

“I did,” Twenty-Six said with a nod.

Ivil smiled as she walked past the young woman on the way to the ladder at the back of the ship. “Then I’ll see you in a moment, my little tugboat.”

Twenty-Six made a high-pitched keening noise as Ivil started up to the upper floor of the Sappho.

Ivil didn’t have much to pack. A few changes of clothes, some essentials, and then items that completed her disguise. She had no use for hygiene items. She hadn’t brushed her teeth in several years or needed soaps or pads or anything of the sort, but it might look suspicious if she didn’t have that sort of thing in her bags anyway.

She made sure to leave some things behind. It wouldn’t do for anyone remaining to think that she hadn’t marked her space.

And then she was done and exiting the room with her things. Twenty-Six and Aurora were cycling through the airlock already, so Ivil had to wait a little before joining them. When she did, she discovered Twenty-Six standing at what felt like an awkward distance from Aurora, her cheeks matching the tone of her hair.

“Is everyone ready?” Ivil asked. Twenty-Six had a ratty old backpack slung on. It jangled with every motion, and Ivil had a sinking suspicion that Twenty-Six had more tools than spare clothes on her.

Aurora, in the meantime, had three bags. More than she’d started the trip on the Held Together with. “I’m ready to go,” Aurora said. “Twenty-Six?”

“Hmm? Oh, yup!”

“Fantastic, let’s head out, then. Aurora, I imagine you’ve charted the route over already?”

“Of course I have,” Aurora said. “It would be irresponsible of me not to. We’re taking a tram one deck above to the station with the terminal, crossing it on foot, then waiting until… 1800 local time. Follow me, if you would.”

Ivil scooped up the heaviest of Aurora’s bags the moment she realized that Aurora wasn’t sure how to handle all of them on her own. She appreciated the way Aurora’s eyes widened when she lifted the entire bag with ease. The bag weighed as much as Aurora, and she enjoyed the implication that she could handle Aurora with just as much ease.

As they walked, Ivil considered the two women she was with, and the very different ways they needed to be handled.

Aurora was… smart, poised, and very dignified. She came from a background where things were done just so, and she seemed to enjoy that kind of attitude without being unable to adapt to reality.

Ivil was quite certain that if she wanted to seduce Aurora, all she would need to do was pin the woman to a bulkhead and have her way with her.

But that was merely… sexual in nature. To seduce Aurora’s mind and heart would require a more delicate touch than merely ravishing her until she saw stars. It would require that Ivil prove that she was a capable consort, somewhat politically savvy, intelligent, and maybe opinionated and capable of defending those opinions in more ways than with mere violence.

Twenty-Six… Ivil’s little tugboat, was a whole other woman. She was incredibly brave, even if that bravery sometimes came out as fumbling. Ivil was afraid that if she pinned her to a bulkhead, Twenty-Six would hate every moment of it.

A much softer, slower, delicate touch would be required there. Ivil was actually tempted to just let Twenty-Six do most of the work in approaching her there, because that would mean that Twenty-Six was moving at her own pace, growing as a person even as she grew closer to Ivil.

She was also impossibly cute and Ivil was entirely uncertain that she’d be able to resist the temptation to just gobble her up.

She’d manage, as painful as it would be.

Ivil snapped back to paying attention to more than just the idle chit-chat they’d been having as they moved when they finally arrived at the terminal. There was a woman waiting for them there, dressed in a suit and tight pants, hands folded demurely before her. The demureness didn’t suit the large handgun strapped to her hip, or the sense that she had several stealth cores on her.

“Ah, there you are,” Aurora said as she greeted the woman. “Twenty-Six, Evelyn, this is Pepper Mint, our guide for the next few days.”

Chapter sixty

It’s Art

Spycraft was an art.

At the moment, Ivil was staring at the artistic equivalent of a macaroni painting done by a particularly unskilled child.

“Hello, Pepper Mint,” Ivil said. She smiled and extended a hand to shake. The young woman smiled guilelessly and shook.

Which was when Ivil spread her awareness into Pepper Mint’s body. Not so strongly that the woman would feel it as anything but an… impression of Ivil being somewhat intimidating, but enough for Ivil to suss out all of Pepper’s potential, and also all of the cores she had within herself.

It was a decent number. Six active cores wasn’t anything to sneeze at, and these seemed to all be working in concert, reinforcing each other in one way or another, or they were at least related.

One core to mask core signatures—probably her most valuable—two cores interwoven with Pepper’s nervous system, one to allow her greater control over bodily functions and micro-movements, the other…

Ivil frowned as she read the core, but no, she wasn’t incorrect. It was specifically designed to make someone sickly. It would be temporary once activated, and likely not have any real side-effects.

Interesting, that. It didn’t seem like a completely natural core. A split of a hybrid? None of Pepper Mint’s cores were originals. They all had the mark of being splits of splits.

The other three were simple ones. One in her brain to assist with neural interfaces, one core spread through her spine, and a last lodged deep in her brain. These three were control cores, usually somewhat useless, but in this case they enabled Pepper better control of her sickness-inducing core.

This wasn’t the work of coincidence. Most people who went around picking up cores through fights and wars did so somewhat haphazardly. One didn’t often have a choice for which core they’d have access to.

These worked together too well for that level of chaos and randomness. So they were a tailored choice.

“Pepper Mint comes with a decent referral and a good amount of experience,” Aurora said with a kind smile. “You have worked as a guide before, for this kind of event?”

“Yes!” Pepper said as she jumped. Was the woman startled? She tore her eyes away from Ivil, and her expression was schooled into professional detachment. “I’ve worked for several companies around Jupiter. I know the system and its moons well. I’ve made an extensive study of the culture of the many moons in this area as well.”

“You can study that?” Twenty-Six asked.

“It’s anthropology,” Pepper Mint said. “A subject I was always fond of.”

“But you’re not Jovian,” Ivil Antagonist pointed out.

The young woman blinked. “You’re… right, yes. I’m not Jovian.”

It was hard to guess at a person’s origins. Well, it was sometimes hard to guess at a person’s origins. Not to say that there was some cultural homogeneity across the stars, but it was frequently difficult to point to someone and guess at their origins with any accuracy.

The exceptions were usually glaring, like the space clowns of Haumea. Or people born in the poorer colonies who couldn’t afford the medical care to ensure that their children weren’t deformed by a complete lack of gravity.

Pepper Mint was Martian, however, and Ivil knew this because there was every sign that the woman was a MINT operative.

It was so unsubtle that it was almost comical, which in a way was its own sort of genius. Ivil couldn’t berate MINT for putting this operative here… well, she could, but it was so obvious that it wasn’t possible to consider this any form of treachery.

“Oh! You’re Martian too?” Twenty-Six asked. “How did you know, Evelyn? Wait! Don’t tell me. Is it because of the posture?”

“The posture?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six nodded, then stood taller. She was a bit of a natural slumper, and Ivil was surprised to realise that Twenty-Six was almost as tall as she was. If she put any effort into standing properly Twenty-Six’s gangliness might actually turn into some imposing height.

Well, maybe just height. Twenty-Six was as imposing as an excited puppy.

“All of you Martians stand like this,” Twenty-Six said.

“You mean, properly?” Aurora asked.

“I guess? You’re one of them, so you’d know!”

“I’ll have you know that I’m Phobian. Not Martian,” Aurora said.

“Oh, sorry.” Twenty-Six cringed back a little, and Ivil couldn’t resist reaching out to pat her on the head. “You’ll have to tell me more about Phobos! I know basically nothing about the place. You don’t exactly make a lot of ships, you know?”

“We do make some,” Aurora defended. “Mostly pleasure barges and yachts, but they’re quite stunning to look at. In any case! Miss Mint, I was hoping you could guide us?”

Pepper bowed slightly. “Please, Miss Sterlingworth, call me Pepper. And yes, it would be my pleasure to guide you today.”

They had come out to meet Pepper in a public plaza right next to a shuttle terminal. It wasn’t so different to a spaceport, though the security here was far more relaxed. After all, the people taking a shuttle from here were, at best, heading to another station in Callisto’s orbit. There were a few likely on route to rendezvous with some nearby spaceships, but that wasn’t the problem of the Driftwood port authority.

Caring about immigration was only important on the receiving end for a place like Driftwood. People leaving? The station couldn’t care any less. So outgoing security was nothing to be concerned about.

“Our shuttle is waiting for us in docking bay Four C,” Pepper said. “You’ll note that it’s not the same shuttle that you originally chartered. I took the liberty of booking another craft on its way to a different station with a layover at the station you were aiming to reach.”

“Smart,” Aurora said.

“You trust this change?” Ivil asked.

“It’s not so unusual as far as security measures go. In fact, it’s how I ended up on the Held Together in the first place. As long as Miss Mint was discreet about the change….”

“I was, ma’am,” Pepper said. “I understand that it’s difficult to trust me so soon in our relationship, but please have confidence in me. It won’t go amiss.”

“Very well,” Aurora said. “The ship we were meant to board is in bay Four F, right?”

“Indeed. Unless anyone targeting you has observers very close by, we should be safe during transit. But the ship will be departing in…” Pepper glanced at a watch on her wrist. “Twenty-eight minutes.”

“That’s barely any time at all,” Twenty-Six said.

“The fourth bay is just there,” Aurora said as she gestured to a passenger loading bay. There were indeed large numbers printed over the doors.

“Yeah, but I wanted to check the ship out first, just in case. These little shuttles always have the worst maintenance. Even the cheapest space-faring ship had better upkeep.”

They slipped into the bay, then had to wait their turn in a relatively short line where a bored young man looked over their electronic tickets before letting them through. There was an automated baggage check as well, but it all went by relatively quickly.

Then they headed towards their ship. Being a more civilian dock, there were several large windows overlooking the actual docking locations where the shuttles were being ferried in.

“Oh, that’s a converted Super-Econ!” Twenty-Six said as she pointed to their shuttle. It was a long, tubular kind of ship, with a stubby control room at the bottom front and the loading airlock right above that. The ship was covered in several manoeuvring thrusters. The rear bulged out a little around a large engine, and a second, less impressively large thruster, sat at the very front for slowing the ship down.

A ship’s airlock opened, a service drone pushed a cart with all of their baggage in, and then the passengers were finally allowed into the ship.

Ivil was… not impressed. The centre of the ship was a long corridor with small booths on the sides. Within these were the cheapest acceleration chairs imaginable, all designed to unfold into incredibly uncomfortable seating spots for the remainder of their trip.

There was an automated drinks and food service, as well as washrooms so small that Ivil doubted her ability to fit into any one of them.

“Wow, this is incredible!” Twenty-Six said.

“It’s… passable,” Aurora replied. “That you think it’s incredible is incredible.”

“Really? Why? I’ve never been a passenger on the shuttle like this before. Back around Saturn, if you wanted to get from one station to another, you hitched a ride on a service ship. There were even some people that would grab on with their EVA suits and hope that the accel wouldn’t knock them loose!”

“Every time I talk to you I feel like we had very different upbringings,” Aurora said.

Twenty-Six smiled. “Yeah, of course! Like I said, you’re like a pretty yacht, all beautiful and sleek and pretty. I’m just an old beaten up tug.”

“Does that analogy imply that you still want to shove her around and put her in her place?” Ivil asked.

At least she’d have Twenty-Six’s stuttering denials for entertainment, so things weren’t looking too boring.

Chapter sixty-one

Fascinated

There was something beautiful about listening to a professional talking about their passion. It was uncommon enough to find someone with enough expert knowledge on a subject that they were actually worth listening to, and it was rarer still that that person was willing to share their hard-earned knowledge.

It especially helped when said expert was cute as a button and made big sweeping gestures through the tiny cabin they were stuffed in as she explained the subject of her obsession.

“So, then the Earth Alliance needed a new standardised shuttle. The loss of that orbital factory meant that they couldn’t produce the YT-series anymore, obviously. So they came up with the Amarillo shuttle system. It’s such a mess. The design was meant to be highly reconfigurable, but only like, three configurations were properly tested, and none of those were the most popular models to be ordered.”

Twenty-Six bounced forwards onto the edge of her seat, then gestured widely towards the rear of the shuttle they were still in. “It’s the engines that are the problem! See, they came up with a whole new engine cooling system that’s meant to be integrated with the rest of the ship’s hull, no matter the configuration. There’s actually supposed to be water pockets in the hull plating that are pumped through the ship, transferring heat.”

She reached over and thumped the wall. “But hear that? Hollow! Because that system sucked. It was impossible to maintain without taking the entire ship apart. And remember how the ship’s original design was meant to be customizable? That only worked if you have specific modules, and some of those weren’t popular at all. So the end result was a thousand or so shuttles built with this cool idea that were terribly designed. The engines need that cooling because they just don’t have normal cooling systems.”

“So, I imagine that means that they’re not nearly as efficient as they should be?” Aurora asked. “Or was a fix found?”

Twenty-Six grinned. “The fix was to replace the entire thruster pack. Honestly, it was kind of bad in a few other ways. A lot of them ended up around Saturn! That’s why I know them well, we had to fix them all the time, and they’d melt if you tried to push them even a little.”

“Fascinating,” Ivil said.

Across from her, sitting on the rather uncomfortable crash seats reconfigured into normal benches for the majority of the trip, Pepper turned her attention onto Ivil. “You must know a lot of anecdotes like this. I think you mentioned that you were an astro-archaeologist?”

She hadn’t, but it wasn’t unreasonable to expect that it had come up at some point, so neither Aurora nor Twenty-Six seemed to notice the discrepancy. “Yes. I suppose I have a few. My main area of study is the Third Solar War.”

Aurora glanced up and hummed. “That’s relatively recent, isn’t it? For archaeology?”

“It is, I suppose,” Ivil said. “But it’s a good time for us to record what did happen. I actually made a study of the First and Second Solar Wars. You truly have no idea how much information is simply missing.”

“How’s that?” Twenty-Six asked.

“People die. And generally, when someone dies, they take their memories and knowledge with them,” Ivil said. “The First Solar War is obscured by age and failing technology. Several of the most important battles of the war were… comparatively small.”

“They were?” Twenty-Six asked.

“She’s right,” Aurora said. “There’s a fantastic museum near Hellas. They have two of the ships from that war on display. An Earth warship and a Martian one.”

“What models?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Most of the ships of the time were bespoke,” Ivil said. “It was an era when mass manufacturing of warships wasn’t yet perfected.” She considered what Twenty-Six knew, which was probably a lot when it came to more or less modern mechanics and ships, but the First Solar War was in no way a modern event. “The average ship of the time was either running on a purely ballistic thruster, without the modern engines that we have now, or they only had the first experimental generations of the engines we take for granted. Mars to Earth was a nine-month trip, assuming both planets were optimally placed.”

“Okay,” Twenty-Six said. “So old-old tech. And that makes archaeology hard?”

“It does. Sensors were primitive, ships were lost to the void, radiation wasn’t solved. Shields didn’t exist yet. It was barely a war, truly. Earth and Mars could barely reach each other without huge risk to their astronauts. I think, if I recall, that the entire war only included thirty-six ships, twenty from the Earth Alliance, sixteen from Mars.”

“That’s it?” Twenty-Six asked.

Aurora made an amused noise. “And they were no bigger than this rustbucket of a shuttle either. Just enough to carry the fuel they’d need to make the trip and maybe a few nuclear weapons to fling at their enemy.”

Ivil nodded. This was a nice distraction from the monotony of flight. She was actually enjoying herself having normal womanly discussions about military history and spaceship engineering.

Aurora patted her dress down, then stood. “I’m going to use the ladies room,” she said.

“I’ll go with you,” Twenty-Six said. She unbuckled herself and stood, a hand reaching up with casual ease to grab on to one of the ceiling’s handrails before she flipped over. She was clearly quite used to a no-g environment. “There’s all sorts of creeps on flights like this, better not be alone.”

Ivil withheld a smile. As if any creep could harm one of her companions on this trip without finding themselves tripping over their own feet and out into the void of space.

“You’ll keep me safe?” Aurora asked with a teasing lilt to her voice.

Twenty-Six snorted. “Two’s better than one, and I’m not weak, you know.” She patted her bicep, which her jumpsuit didn’t exactly flatter.

“Ah, a well-armed tugboat, I see,” Aurora stated.

“No! You can’t join in on that too!” Twenty-Six whined. She went on a small rant, interspersed with plenty of begging as she and Aurora slipped out of the cabin.

Which left Ivil alone with Pepper Mint.

Ivil ensured that they wouldn’t be overheard before turning her attention onto the young woman. “So, what did MINT say about me?” she asked.

There wasn’t even a flash of fear or confusion on Pepper’s face. Her expression was as neutral as it had been before Ivil spoke. “Pardon me?”

“Martian Intelligence, what did they tell you before sending you on this mission?” Ivil asked. “Please, for both our sakes—but mostly yours—be truthful.”

Pepper sat up a little straighter, but it was a faint thing, easily dismissed especially considering the lack of comfort in their cabin. “I don’t know—”

“Don’t,” Ivil said. “Lying is uncouth, and I dislike it when it’s done to me. Though… it does answer one question.”

“And what question is that?” Pepper asked. Now she was deflecting, asking questions of her own, pressing the conversation on, encouraging Ivil to speak so that she wouldn’t have to speak herself. Ivil acknowledged that she was well-trained, at least.

“About whether or not you know who I am,” Ivil said. “If you did, you wouldn’t be prevaricating.”

“Very well,” she said as she dropped the act. “Though what I was told was sparse. You’re someone of some import who isn’t an astro-archeologist but who knows enough to pass as one. You’re important to Mars. You’re an ally. You’re currently attempting to… woo someone. I suspect it’s Miss Sterlingworth as she is politically important. Though you also seem to have a strange… three-way relationship with the mechanic girl.”

“She is kind of cute, no?” Ivil asked.

Pepper blinked. “I suppose? She has nice hair and seems… fit?”

That was a good enough answer, Ivil supposed. “Interesting that MINT would send someone here who doesn’t know some of the most crucial information about their own mission. You’d think informing you would be important.”

“You’re not an agent of MINT, but are you one of ours?” Pepper asked.

“Hmm, what a loaded question. I don’t work for MINT. MINT has worked for me, however,” Ivil replied.

Pepper nodded. “You’re definitely a Martian Valkyrie.”

“Oh? What makes you think that?”

“You have several cores, a Martian accent, and you sit and move with the sort of precision that comes from long military service,” Pepper said. “I’m making an assumption, however.”

“It’s a correct one, I suppose. I was one of Mars’s very first Valkyries, you know? Around the time of the Second Solar War, when that whole project really took off.”

Pepper stared at Ivil. Then she really stared.

Ivil rarely felt herself being inspected so strongly by someone before, but in that moment she was definitely the centre of Pepper’s attention. “Evelyn Ville. E… Ville. Oh…”

“Oh?” Ivil asked with a smile.

“Oh fuck.”

Ivil smiled. “You’re certainly cute enough for that, but I don’t think we’re quite ready to take things there.”

Chapter sixty-two

Long Distance Communication

“It could have been an email” was a sentiment that only grew more pronounced as humanity grew further apart.

The distances two people had to cross in order to meet literally turned astronomical, and yet certain individuals nonetheless insisted that important discussions happen face-to-face and in person.

There were several reasons for this. To judge a person’s sincerity—because scammers felt safest when they were a planet apart—to gauge interest, to see if the other was of means enough to afford the travel and time lost.

Most of all, forcing a meeting to take place in person is a show of force.

You will come here, and you will bow to your superiors.

The Martian navy had been fond of forcing young Valkyries and wayward officers to meet the brass in person to be judged and reprimanded.

Ivil now received such things as politely worded suggestions gently deposited into her email inbox. It had been several years since she had to attend a formal meeting of any sort, and if it wasn’t for present company she would be avoiding it at all costs.

The shuttle executed a turn and burn, then several hours later, after time spent being squeezed into a terribly uncomfortable seat, they finally coasted to a stop. The shuttle was gripped by a standard docking arm and carefully swung around until its airlock lined up with a retractable one on the station they’d reached.

This wasn’t their final destination, merely a layover halfway there. They were at least closer to Callisto here, in the same orbital band as the station where the meeting would take place, which meant that getting to their final destination would be relatively simple.

The shuttle shook, and then they were free to stand, at least according to a green light above the doorway. A hostess forced the door open, and they were guided in a gentle but hurried fashion out of the shuttle and into the station.

Ivil glanced at Pepper, who was very studiously not looking in her direction and who was walking with a level of stiffness that would make even the strictest of Martian generals proud.

“Miss Mint?” Aurora asked. “Do you have the name and docking station for the next ship we’re taking?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes of course, Miss Sterlingworth,” Pepper said. She cleared her throat and fetched the appropriate papers from her pockets. “The next shuttle will be departing in two hours. There’s a lounge. I informed the fighter pilot serving as our escort about our deception, they should be arriving here soon. She was instructed to follow the decoy, then detach from it when possible in as stealthy a way as possible.”

“Impressive work, Miss Mint,” Aurora said.

“Thank you. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to verify the status of our luggage.” She bowed, then carried herself away.

The station had no gravity, being much smaller and far more ordinary than Driftwood, so they pushed themselves off and floated on towards the padded entrance to a waiting lounge. It was one of those commercial spaces that were trying very hard to appear luxurious at the lowest cost possible.

They had a bar though, and soon Ivil had placed herself next to Aurora with Twenty-Six on the far side. “That was something,” Twenty-Six said. “Gotta say, flying fancy is a whole lot more comfortable than hitching a ride around Saturn.”

“That was economy,” Aurora said. “It was cramped, the seats were uncomfortable, and we were squeezed in and out in a hurry. I doubt the cabins are even sanitised between trips.”

“Really?” Twenty-Six asked. “Sometimes I feel like we live in different systems.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Aurora said, but Twenty-Six was shaking her head already.

“It’s okay! I’m probably the odd one out, I think. I guess I’ve been kind of sheltered in my own way.”

“No, I think I can say the same. Phobos hasn’t always been wealthy, but recently it has, and it feels like my parents’ generation is doing all it can to ensure that mine is raised in the luxury that they lacked. It makes it somewhat harder to appreciate the… real world when you are surrounded by new riches.”

Ivil smiled. She was just happy at the moment to be near the two as they were getting along so well. She’d join in the conversation when there was a good moment for it, but she knew that there was great value in silence and presence combined.

For example, Pepper Mint was unaware that Ivil was listening to her even from across the docking station while also masking her presence.

The MINT agent was currently stuffed in a janitorial closet. It was the first small, private space she’d likely found, and no one was to go looking for her there. Better yet, the room was sealed enough that she could talk without anyone hearing her.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t talking, she was screaming.

First, she swung her arms around wildly and almost sent herself spinning in the room’s zero-g, then she bit her forefinger and screeched.

Ivil wondered what that was about. Was it the tension of being stuck in a small cabin with the Empress of Mars for a few hours, was it frustration at her work, or was it an entirely different sort of frustration?

Ivil was good at reading people’s bodies. She knew.

Pepper Mint calmed herself, but her calm didn’t remove all of the pent-up emotions, instead, the calm ushered in a moment where all that anxiety turned into another, more potent feeling. Anger. Anger which she immediately set to deploying.

Pepper pulled out a small smart device from her pocket and dialled in a number. It rang twice before someone answered. “Wasserbasis Paint Co, how can I help you?”

“This is Agent 2514, codename Pepper Mint,” she snapped. “Toss me up the line.”

“Ma’am? I’m not sure what you mean, this is Jupiter’s finest water-based paint manu—”

The line went dead. It was picked up a moment later by someone else, a suave, self-assured sounding man. “Agent 2514, report,” he said.

“Oh, I’ll report all right,” she seethed. “What the fuck was that intel?”

“You’re not being very professional, agent,” he said.

Pepper Mint squirmed for a moment, and Ivil could almost imagine the very many expletives on the tip of her tongue. Still, she composed herself. “You sent me to honeypot the fucking empress?!”

“Ah, you found out.”

“Of fucking course I found out, it’s… It’s the goddamn empress! She’s the spitting image of her body double! Only, like, hotter!”

Ivil shifted in her seat, then smiled as Twenty-Six glanced her way, but at the moment she was enthralled by Aurora, who was describing the small flotilla of some dozen ships her family owned.

“Sending you was a calculated risk,” the agent on the line said.

“You are bad at math,” Pepper hissed into her device. “She found out, instantly. I thought Mint as a family name was a little on the nose, but seriously? She probably knew I had cores!”

“Oh, definitely. That is well within her capabilities.”

“Then why?!”

“The risk wasn’t about the empress discovering. It was more about you discovering that she is the empress,” the agent said.

Pepper took a moment to pull the device away from her ear to stare at it in incredulity. “What do you mean? You wanted the mark to know that I was an agent but not for your agent to know that the mark knew? That’s backwards.”

“The mission’s primary objective would be easier to accomplish were you unaware,” he replied simply.

“You still want me to romance her? She’s… she’s a god amongst men. She’s killed more people than are alive around some planets. She made an Earth fleet admiral piss himself when he thought she’d show up, and she wasn’t even in the same sector.”

“That last one is actually a rumour we created to demoralise the Earth Alliance. His suit merely had a malfunction in a public place, but we ran with it,” he said with a chuckle.

Ivil blinked. That was a strange revelation. She’d really thought that she had made that admiral wet himself. To think that she’d made light of him about it a year or so later before killing him. No wonder he had been so upset.

“I can’t… I can’t believe this,” Pepper said.

“You were ready to seduce the mark previously,” the agent pointed out. “And you were aware from the briefings that she was the way she is. We never lied except by omission.”

“All lies are lies by omission because you’re omitting the truth!” Pepper snapped. She ground her teeth, then tugged on a shelf so that her feet touched the ground. There was a click as her sensible shoes magnetised. “Fine. I imagine if I leave you’ll just send the next agent in?”

“Or someone close. We need eyes on this situation, you understand? Seeing as how your circumstances are… extenuating, we will not be taking your current comportment as a black mark against you. Good luck, Agent 2514.”

Pepper hung up, slipped the phone away, then swore.

Ivil was distracted by what she did next when Twenty-Six stood up with a gasp. “Can we, Evelyn?” she asked.

“Hmm?” She replayed the last bit of the conversation with Twenty-Six in her head. “Ah yes, I don’t see why not. I’m sure Pixie wouldn’t mind you taking a look at her ship once she’s properly docked.”

Chapter sixty-three

Passion

There were few things as hot as a passionate person seeing the very epitome of the thing they’re passionate about. An art connoisseur finally allowed in a room with an original Picasso, a musician with the perfect seats to a full orchestra of professionals, a mechanic starship fanatic seeing what might very well be one of the hottest spacecraft ever designed pulling into a shield-gapped dock.

“Oh my god,” Twenty-Six said. It came out as a gasp, the kind of susurrated word that sent shivers of delight down Ivil’s back. When Twenty-Six said those three little words, they’d come from deep inside of her.

“Oh, oh my god,” she repeated.

Next to Ivil, Aurora adjusted the neck of her blouse. “Are you… well, Twenty-Six?”

Twenty-Six looked like she might be a little weak in the knees.

Ahead of them, in the closed-off environment of the dock, was Pixie’s fighter craft. It was long and sleek, a flying dart with multiple wings concealing heavy guns and missile pods. It had an underslung cockpit, inch-thick sapphire plates made entirely non-reflective by a high-tech coating. It matched the rest of the ship’s darker than black paint.

“Look at her,” Twenty-Six said. “I mean, look at her. Look at that engine.” Twenty-Six fanned her face, and Ivil took a moment to really eye the young woman.

“Are you crying?”

“Can I touch her?” she asked Ivil.

“Yes,” Ivil said. What she saw in Twenty-Six’s eyes was love. Ivil just wasn’t sure if it was aimed at her in that moment.

They followed Twenty-Six who left the observation room in a hurry and pulled herself down along the side of a tunnel to the lower floor where the dock was located. There was a security checkpoint, but it was entirely unmanned. Ivil made short work of the automated security system, shorting it out even before Twenty-Six had reached it.

And so they were allowed into the dock itself where the bottom rear of the ship was opening up and where a familiar figure was pulling herself out of the ship.

Pixie had been cute as a button in her little summer dress the last time Ivil had seen her. Now she was something entirely different in a form-fitting spacefighter’s suit. It hugged her tiny form close, from her feet all the way to her neck. Her head was covered in a small, tight helmet with several ports on the side.

She paused as she saw them all slipping into the room. The far wall was open to space, except for the thin film of an active shield. The room had repressurized after her ship moved in, but Ivil could tell that the air was thin.

There were several layers of such shields, and as the ship passed through them, it created a gap in their coverage. Some air had slipped out into the space between shields, and it would need to be re-equalized. Ivil decided to fix that, subtly pulling some air from a slight pocket dimension she’d long ago stuffed full of decently filtered air. Just in case.

It wouldn’t do for anyone to suffer some mild hypoxia.

“Hi!” Twenty-Six said as she came to a stop a few steps from Pixie. Her boots—far too large for her—clunked against the decking, and their magnets held her tight to the ground. “You are sexy.”

“Uh,” Pixie said.

“Please give Twenty-Six a chance,” Ivil said as she came up behind Twenty-Six and placed a hand on her shoulder. “She’s overwhelmed right now.”

Twenty-Six turned a dangerous pout towards Ivil. “I’m not… okay, maybe a little. Sorry, I’ll stop being weird.”

“Please don’t,” Ivil said. In fact, if anything, she wished to enable her weird little tugboat.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Twenty-Six said. “Hi, you’re Miss Pixie?” She held a hand out towards Pixie.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Pixie said. She extended a hand and grabbed Twenty-Six’s. “It’s nice to—whoa!”

Twenty-Six pulled Pixie closer. She towered over the smaller woman. “I will have your babies if you let me look at your ship.”

“No, Twenty-Six, you’re scaring her,” Ivil said as she carefully pulled Twenty-Six back. Her little tugboat could push around all the boats she wanted as long as Ivil approved of them, and Ivil wasn’t sure about Pixie yet.

Twenty-Six swallowed and let go of Pixie’s hand. “Sorry. I’m just joking, but really, your ship is gorgeous. She’s incredible.”

“Ah, yeah, an early model 501 Corvus,” Pixie said.

“No,” Twenty-Six said. “The wings at the front, that’s from the D-series, no? The extra manoeuvring thruster set. I mean, those are one-hundred percent aftermarket, but I think the placement is from the D-series.”

Pixie blinked. “I mean, yeah, but she started as a 501b. She was nearly stock, aside from the usual parts that are consumable, you know, radiators, filters, spark injectors, batteries…”

“Baffles, and landing gear pistons, screens, the entire ejector clutch assembly, all the seals and gaskets,” Twenty-six continued. She started to hover closer to the ship, and Ivil and Pixie followed. “Oh, these are not stock engines.”

“From a Merlin 587,” Pixie said. “Had the original engines fail on me. They were not reliable at all. These babies are.”

“So expensive!” Twenty-Six gasped. “They must have cost a fortune!”

“I know nothing about ship engines,” Aurora admitted as she came closer. “What do you mean?”

“Are they twins?” Twenty-Six asked Pixie, and at a nod, she continued. “Merlins are top-tier Martian-made engines. They’re a league above even their military-issue stuff. It’s the company that makes the engines for their Super Dreadnoughts. They do limited runs of speciality engines. The engineers are insane. Literally insane. They lost their minds to their cores, but they design engines to spec. Each one of these is probably worth more than the entire original ship.”

“Mhm!” Pixie said. “And they were specifically designed to fit in this chassis and have normal market consumables. Complete nightmare to disassemble and replace any seals or any of the more fiddly parts. I need to order replacements in from Mars every nine months or so, but it’s worth it. The Nightstalker is one of the zippiest ships you’ve ever laid eyes on. I’m pretty sure I could give the average system-racer a run for their money.”

“That good?” Ivil asked.

“If we stripped all of her weapons and the non-essentials, yeah, probably,” Pixie said. “That’d be stupid though. No one brings a racing ship to a dogfight. Speed is a luxury in those, but manoeuvrability is king.”

Twenty-Six made a squeeing noise that was several decibels higher than Ivil would have expected from her. “Look at that wing set up. Are those unfolding weapons?”

“Yup!” Pixie said with obvious pride. “Rotating weapons bays. Basically slapped on a pair of weapon bays on the outside where there weren’t any. The normal one is meant to roll out of the chassis, but now it rolls out to replace this fixed one. I had a lot of size constraints to work with on that project, so it’s all weapons that need to be manually reloaded. It’s a pain to deal with, but I have six more single-shot cannons and a pair of seeker launchers. There’s a lot of value in being able to launch thirty-six surprise missiles that you shouldn’t by any right have at some pirate’s face.”

“And the single-shot guns?” Twenty-Six asked. She reached up and gingerly touched one. It was a fixed barrel about twice as long as she was tall.

“One-oh-five millimetre guns with smart ammo. I either need to pick what I’m going with before a mission starts or grab something that’ll be generally useful. I tend to mix it up. Two cluster rounds, two discarding sabot armour penetrating darts, and a pair of low-yield nukes to bring on the heat.”

“You are awesome,” Twenty-Six said.

“Ah, uh, thanks,” Pixie said. She cringed a bit at the attention. “It’s why I get paid the big bucks. Otherwise, she’s mostly got some switched up weapons. Early war models had a decent loadout, so I just kept that and sidegraded a few things. Better cooling on some guns, lots of firmware updates on the autoloaders. A few bits needed replacing over the years, but the stock loadout is easy enough to come by.”

“Why not aim for better?” Aurora asked.

“Ammo costs,” Pixie replied easily. “When you’re firing six thousand rounds a minute, you can’t afford a hundred dollars more a round.”

Twenty-Six spun around and stared right at Ivil. “Can she be part of our fleet? Please?”

“I think you’d have to seduce her first,” Ivil replied easily. Honestly, she mostly wanted to see Twenty-Six try.

“Hmm? What’s this about a fleet?” Pixie asked.

“Never mind that,” Aurora said. “It’s nothing to worry about. I’m happy to have such a talented pilot with us for the next part of our journey. I’m sure your presence will make everything run smoother.”

Chapter sixty-four

Safe Travels

Detaching Twenty-Six from Pixie was easy. Pulling her away from Pixie’s ship was a bit more of a chore.

Still, there were few things Ivil couldn’t do when she put her mind to it, and that included pulling Twenty-Six away from the current object of her desire.

Ivil was not jealous of a spaceship.

She was envious. People frequently confused the two emotions.

Once they had pulled Twenty-Six back, they found Pepper Mint waiting for them in the lobby. She had taken a moment to freshen up and adjust her clothes and hair back into a more professional state. “Our next shuttle is ready to depart,” she said. “I hired a small private vessel for this leg of the journey. It’ll be a little faster than a standard commercial flight and likely more secure as well.”

“Oh, what kind of shuttle is it?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I’m… uncertain of the make and model. It seems to be Martian made?” Pepper said. She pulled out a small tablet, pulled out the ship’s schematics, then handed the pad over to Twenty-Six, who happily looked over it.

“What’s our ETA for Oppresorax Station?” Aurora asked.

“Six hours,” Pepper said. “Enough time that I would suggest getting a few hours of sleep en route. Once we arrive at the station, we’ll have some time to acclimate before the meeting begins, but not quite enough time to rest and relax.”

Ivil nodded along. She was happy to see that Pepper was taking her job seriously, at least. Sure, the spy was maybe glancing at her more frequently than was necessary, and perhaps she was sweating a little in her nice little business suit, but she was otherwise keeping it professional.

Pepper led them into a loading dock where their ship was waiting for them. The shuttle was smaller than the one they’d taken to arrive at this midway station, but it was sleeker, and if they were the only passengers on board, then they’d have a good deal more leg room as well.

Ivil scanned the ship over and found that beneath the shiny exterior was a ship that had had some regular maintenance. There was a leak here, and a few signs of lazy disrepair there, but the ship itself couldn’t be more than ten years old. She decided that it was passable enough as Pepper showed them into the main cabin.

This one was far more spacious than the last, with comfortable, leather-covered crash seats, several screens on the walls and ceilings for a full entertainment suite, and a mini-bar at the rear.

Being a Martian-designed ship, the vessel was built vertically, so the pilots were stationed above them, and the main engines were a floor below. A lone steward climbed down from the tiny crew quarters above, fixed his suit just behind a doorway into the passenger cabin, then stepped in and assisted them into their crash couches.

Once everyone was seated in one of the plush seats, he quickly left for the room above, and they were soon pulling out of the station.

The ship took a moment to reorient itself, and Ivil listened in as the pilots chatted with station control and plugged in their flight plan. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t towards their actual destination station but another that happened to be quite close.

Pepper was decently good at this, it seemed.

“Starting hard burn in T-minus, one minute,” a soothing automated voice said.

Ivil settled into her seat, and the chatter between Twenty-Six and Aurora calmed down. Then they burned hard.

The shuttle was small, but a good third of its mass was in its engines anyway. With so little weight to deal with, and with a lot of its interior being empty space for the sake of luxury, it wasn’t surprising that when it kicked forwards it did so with gusto.

Ivil leaned back into her chair as the shuttle went from a dead stop to full speed in moments. She glanced to her side and saw Aurora struggling to hold on while Twenty-Six seemed perfectly at ease.

She could tell from the sound of the engines and the way the ship shuddered and shook, that the pilot was pushing the engines as hard as they would go. In a larger ship, such a manoeuver would have been dangerous. This one, however, was well maintained, and its pilot was clearly trained for this.

Still, Ivil would have preferred a bit more safety margin.

The hard burn continued for a few minutes, hitting something like nine g’s and staying there for what was probably an uncomfortably long time for a normal person. Then, slowly, the shaking slowed and stopped. The ship continued to accelerate, but only so much so as to give them the illusion of a single Earthly gravity.

“That was a good burn!” Twenty-Six cheered. She unbuckled herself and sat up. “Should we watch a movie or something?”

“I think, if anything, we should plan for the events ahead,” Aurora said. “Once we arrive we won’t have too much time to sit around and chat pleasantly about what will be happening.”

Twenty-Six pouted, but nodded all the same.

Ivil glanced over to Pepper, but the woman seemed to have her hands full as she adjusted her clothing and her hair. Her face was red, but Ivil couldn’t tell if it was from the strain of the acceleration, or from some other problem.

She glanced over to Ivil and smiled weakly, then cleared her throat and sat up straight. She fiddled with her wrist pad and projected an image onto the room’s largest screen.

“This is Oppresorax Station,” Pepper explained. “It’s not the most impressive of the orbital stations, but it has a number of advantages for a clandestine meeting such as this.”

Ivil frowned and looked over the schematic. “That’s… a very small station,” she said.

“Yes,” Pepper agreed. “But its size, and its location, allow for us to keep the security teams at a minimum. You can imagine that many of the larger, busier stations are quite well patrolled and secured, both by the local authorities and the station owners themselves. The fewer people there are around, the better it is for this sort of thing. Fewer prying eyes means that we can get more work done, and without fear of outside interference. The station’s location is also key: close to a number of important shipping lanes, but far enough away from the main trade routes that it’s out of the way. As you might guess, that allows the owners to charge a premium for use of the station.”

That was… a deluge of words from the young lady. “Who are we expecting to meet there?” Ivil asked.

“Ah, that is a question I’ll turn over to Miss Sterlingworth, who is better equipped to answer,” Pepper said.

Aurora nodded at the invitation to speak. “Callisto itself will have a representative. No one important, but they’ll relay things to the moon’s government, I’m sure. Styx, Galatea, and Umbriel will all have representatives. They shouldn’t be trouble. Titania, Hyperion, and Tethys will be there as well.”

“And they’ll be trouble?” Twenty-Six asked. “Two of those are close to home for me. Hyperion was a big industrial sector moon for Saturn, and Tethys is where, like, most of our fresh water came from.”

“Having you around might be a boon then. The Saturnian part of the League of Free Moons has always been a little troublesome. They… to put it bluntly, they lack culture.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Twenty-Six admitted. “We’re mostly nice, but Saturn’s kind of a mess of tiny stations and people living on ships. We do have a culture, but it’s kind of… ship-by-ship based? I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You’re not a monolithic culture, like Mars,” Ivil said. “Where the culture of a nation is shaped and formed by larger movements and entertainment and a push towards a specific idea, but rather a collection of small families and clans and rivalries.”

“Yeah, exactly!” Twenty-Six said. “I bet any government from one of our moons is a hot mess. They can claim to rule over whatever, but I bet it’s not actually true.”

“That… might explain some things,” Aurora said. “They usually need to be treated on a very case-by-case basis, from what I understood. Would you mind being my cultural ambassador, Twenty-Six?”

“Sure!” she said.

Ivil gestured. “What about Titania?”

“They… are a moon that by all rights should be quite powerful, but they haven’t had time to grow into that power. Imagine all of the resources of Mars but none of the time or hardships that made Mars as strong as it is now. Titania will be a powerhouse one day, but for now it’s not, and that breeds a certain level of arrogance.”

“And would any of those moons send fighting craft out to kill you specifically?” Ivil asked.

“That… is a very specific question,” Aurora said. “Why?”

“Oh, merely curious,” Ivil said, curious about the small flight of fighter craft that had made a beeline to intercept them from open space.

Chapter sixty-five

It’s Art

There are certain art forms that appear and disappear with the waxing and waning of technology. These are often held in high esteem by a certain type of person. The same type of person who might be nostalgic for a time before their birth and whose understanding of something is complete, but only in the academic sense.

Knowing the name of every steam engine ever made does not mean that they ought to return.

Dogfighting was one such art. The aficionados of the art would wax poetic about their favourite aces of the second world war as though those young men gave a shit about anything but surviving and putting their enemy into the ground.

Fortunately for these fans of a dying art, it made a resurgence.

There came a development near the middle of the Second Solar War. The advent of the snub-fighter (so called because it was like a snub-rifle, a shortened version of popular military-grade standard rifles, and because the term was stolen from some old science-fiction movies). Snub-fighters were simple. Slap an engine in front of a cockpit, give it a gun. Easy.

Was a snub-fighter better than a drone?

In some ways, surprisingly, yes. A drone could be hacked, fooled, could be suborned and reprogrammed.

Sure, drones didn’t need to eat or drink and could be left out in space for weeks at a time, but fresh-faced eighteen-year-olds were cheap by the middle of the Second Solar War, and the programming needed to keep those drones better than their competition was not.

So the snub-fighter was born. First used by the Martian fleet then quickly adopted and mass-produced by the Earth Alliance. Even the Jovian moons got in on it. The first fighter aces gained mass acclaim. Propagandists on both sides salivated at the image of a strapping young man or woman who’d taken down the enemy in close-quarters space warfare. Boys and girls everywhere wanted to be that ace.

Snub-fighters grew and changed, picking up new weapon systems, growing tougher and faster and more agile, but always keeping to the same initial mentality. They were small, easy to deploy ships that could move with a degree of independence much greater than a drone with a human in the cockpit.

Of course, when two flights of snub-fighters from opposing factions met, they needed to fight.

Dogfighting, a lost and ancient art, made its triumphant return at long last.

Ivil had seen her share of dogfighting. She’d never participated in it herself. Not unless sweeping aside entire squadrons of pesky Earth Alliance ships counted as participating.

This wouldn’t be the first time she was in a ship being attacked, even. Ivil closed her eyes and allowed her senses to spread far beyond the bounds of their shuttle. Soon, everything within a bubble a hundred kilometres wide was within her sight, including the four snub-fighters rushing their way.

She hovered her attention closer. They were professional-looking craft. Three of them were identical, small ships with a flat, triangular body that was lumped out to make room for a pair of small engines. They carried internal magazines filled with smart missiles and a small machine gun set just under the cockpit canopy. It was mounted on a swivel, able to turn and track anything ahead of the fighter.

The fourth ship was quite a bit longer and, frankly, rather ugly. A long tube of a ship with a flat “face” on it. The vessel had a stubby pair of winglets near its front and was very much the kind of design that happened when someone who prized utility above all else was hired.

Stil, its cockpit was large enough for two, which is what it held. The ship had a huge rack of missiles within it, some sixty-four of them pointed “downwards” through a closed hatch, and there were three small turreted guns slapped onto its body.

Less a snub-fighter, and more a pocket gunship, then. It looked like it had all of the manoeuvrability of a drunken racoon stuck in an air vent.

Pixie caught on to their presence almost as soon as Ivil did. Or maybe she was already keeping an eye on the formation and when they twitched towards their shuttle, she was ready.

For now, her fighter stayed its course. She was flying in their shadow, far back, in the wash of their engines. Ivil imagined it was somewhat turbulent back there, and likely dangerous, but with her ship running quiet it would also be a very stealthy place to hide.

Ships always gave off heat, and so detection in space often relied on picking up infrared signatures in the dark. A ship with good enough cooling and with something to mask their warmth was as good as invisible. It could be done up in polka-dot pinks and fluorescent paint, and a modern warship might still miss it.

That had happened in the past. The Lunatics enjoyed modifying their ships to a wild extent, and that often meant letting their larger ships run a lot hotter than necessary while bleeding off heat into the void behind them. A perfect place to hide a smaller, more subtle vessel.

“Evelyn,” Aurora said calmly. “The captain just pinged me. Did you know about them?”

“The four?” Ivil asked. She didn’t want to give all that she knew away just yet.

Aurora nodded tightly. Twenty-Six and Pepper were in a discussion about station etiquette, of all things. Ivil appreciated that Aurora didn’t want to worry them just yet.

“I noticed them, yes,” she said.

Aurora let out a long breath. She glanced over to Pepper, then leaned in close and whispered, almost subvocally. Her lips barely even moved. “They’re going to attack us, aren’t they?”

“Probably,” Ivil admitted.

“Then what are we doing?” Aurora asked.

Ivil shrugged. “Pixie’s taking care of it. Just relax. We’re not going to be involved. This isn’t our fight.”

“And you’re sure Pixie can handle this?”

“Of course.”

The fighters moved closer, and Ivil watched as their engines lit up and they surged ahead, closing the distance towards their shuttle. The formation turned into a V, with the three snub-fighters moving ahead and the gunship trailing after them.

Ivil watched as they aimed to intercept their shuttle at some point a few hundred kilometres ahead. They were probably, technically, within firing distances already. Ballistic trajectories counted for a lot in the void of space, but their shuttle had shields, and if it threw itself into evasive manoeuvres after they got plinked for the first time, then it would become exponentially harder to hit them.

So their best bet was to get in close, launch a few cheap missiles, then splatter a few hundred rounds against their shields until they broke apart enough to let those missiles slip in.

Pixie seemed ready to do something about that. She peeled out of the engine’s wake like a shark coming out of the darkness to chomp on some unsuspecting fish.

She was fast. Faster than the fighters could react to for the moment. Her Nightshade flipped up, rolled around, then opened up with four smart missiles that screeched out into the void.

The shuttle’s klaxon sounded, and the lights in their cabin went red.

“Whoa! What’s going on?” Twenty-Six asked.

“The shuttle’s likely reacting to its sensors seeing a missile,” Ivil said. “Don’t worry. It’s not heading our way.”

Indeed, the four missiles were streaking across space towards the gunship and its escorting snub-fighters There was quite some distance between them still, enough that they had more than half a minute to see their deaths incoming.

The snub-fighters launched chaff, and two of them opened fire in the direction of the missiles with their nose-mounted guns.

The third peeled off, and judging from the ungainly way it did so, the pilot was panicking.

First one, then a second missile burst apart in empty space. Another veered off, caught in the enticing glimmer of the chaff they’d thrown.

The last found a home buried into the belly of that third snub-fighter.

The explosion was probably detectable for quite some ways, Ivil judged. That ship must have been full on fuel.

Pixie rushed towards the fighters, launching a trio of missiles, then another trio two seconds later. And then she was opening fire with her main guns, streaks of light zipping across towards the snub-fighters.

In terms of raw power, her ship had more guns than all three of her remaining adversaries combined.

But they still had numbers.

One ship started to spin, spitting chaff even as it started evasive manoeuvres that still let it take some pot-shots at Pixie. It let some missiles fly as well.

The gunship did likewise, vomiting out a small torrent of missiles that arced down and around. Pixie, if she wanted to survive this, would first need to break through a wall of incoming explosives.

Ivil felt like maybe she was capable of just that.

Chapter sixty-six

Missiles are Hot

The modern missile was a hot, sweet piece of technology. Mass printed in specialised machines, loaded up with only the most disposable of tech, and then launched at some unsuspecting fool with all the precision their tiny mechanical brains could muster.

In the modern era of space combat, the missile was a weak little deterrent, only able to scare off the under-armoured and unshielded.

They were the flip side of the guided projectile coin. On the other sat the torpedo, the larger, smarter, far more deadly cousin of the missile.

A swarm of some dozen missiles, however? That was something to worry about.

Ivil found herself slowing down her perception of time as she watched Pixie fly at a swarm of incoming missiles.

Within her ship, the tiny woman’s eyes twitched, and her Nightstalker launched chaff above and below itself. The twinkling little heat signatures flew up and then spun in dizzying patterns.

Pixie herself fired her manoeuvring thrusters and spun her ship around. Two small pods opened up at the front of the Nightstalker, revealing glassy domes. There were flashes, pulses of energy that were almost light, invisible to most, but nonetheless dangerous. They connected with the centre of the incoming swarm and soon half a dozen missiles had been turned to slag.

Pixie aligned herself, then pulled the trigger. Her ship’s cannons would have roared loud enough to shake every window in a city on Earth, but in the void they were little more than twin bright flashes in the dark.

Their projectiles raced ahead, two 105mm shells packed full of explosives and a proximity detonator.

They went off within spitting distance of one of the snub-fighters. What came out of the explosion was a smoking wreck that quickly spun out of control.

By then, however, the distance between the two groups had been cut down to nothing. The remaining snub-fighter opened up with its belly gun and sprayed in Pixie’s direction. She rolled, ducking under the spray like an expert ball dancer showing off. When she came out of the weave, she opened up with her own faster-firing gun.

The snub-fighter ducked out of the way, but not before earning a few dozen small punctures in one of its wings. It was pissing hydraulics as it and Pixie’s ship blew past each other.

Now she was on the gunship, and the fat little vessel had nothing but its slow-tracking turrets to fight her with.

They still tried, and one shot came close enough that it exploded along the edge of Pixie’s shields. What came out of the blast was an angry warfighter spitting lead followed by a few missiles that had finally spun around to catch up.

She ripped the gunship apart, then shut off her engine and spun around on herself so that her point-defence could better lock on to the incoming missiles.

Which meant that nothing was stopping the snub-fighter from continuing on its merry way.

There was a tendency amongst most to focus on the greater threat at all times. Which was why it was strange that the pilot of this last snub-fighter decided to die in a blaze of glory while taking out their shuttle.

He rushed their way, giving his engine a kick and launching the last of his little ship’s missiles. Then his main gun opened up, spraying bullets out their way.

There was nothing Pixie could reasonably do. She fired from behind, and she was certainly going to hit, but those missiles were launched, and at that range, taking them out was impossible. Not to mention the spray of bullets rushing their way.

Ivil created a wall of impassable force in their path.

The snub-fighter, not being an immovable object, met this wall of force like a soda can in the path of a bullet-train.

“Twenty-Six,” Ivil said as she snapped her perception back into place. “Could you identify a ship based on a description of it?”

“Like, just words?” Twenty-Six asked. “I guess, if it’s a distinct-enough ship?”

“Hmm, no, I don’t have the vernacular to do that,” Ivil admitted. So she raised a hand, plucked some photons out of the air with her will, and weaved the rough design of the snub-fighters in the air between them as a sort of hologram.

“Oh,” Twenty-Six said as she leaned forwards. “That’s… maybe a Jupiter-built snub-fighter? See that gun under the cockpit. They’re nicknamed chinguns. Very popular around here. Uh, the cockpit, how many bands across the top did it have?” She pantomimed the outline of a cockpit.

“Two, if I recall,” Ivil said.

“So, that narrows it down. That’s a Titanian Pyrrole Mark six, or seven.”

“What’s the difference between the two?” Ivil asked.

“Can you show me the interior? I’ll be able to narrow it down more from there.”

“Never mind, I think at that point it’s academic. What about this gunship?”

Twenty-Six only stared for a second. “Oh, easy one. TMCC-600. There’s like, a billion mods for these, but that frame is ugly on all of them. Another? This is fun!”

Ivil turned towards Aurora who was paying close attention. “Three of these Pyrrole six-or-sevens and one of these TMCC-600s just tried to kill us all.”

“Oh, suddenly less fun,” Twenty-Six muttered.

Pepper sat up. “Just now?”

“Yes. Pixie took care of most of them, it’s fine. I can’t see anything else around us that’s a threat for some distance. We should arrive at the station in one piece, so don’t worry.”

“Does anyone here other than myself know of some reason people would want them dead to the point where a squadron of fighters would be sent after them?” Ivil asked.

“Other than yourself?” Aurora asked.

Twenty-Six shook her head. “I don’t think anyone important even knows that I exist,” she said.

Pepper gave Twenty-Six a look before deadpanning. “You’d be surprised.”

Ivil nodded to Aurora. “Other than myself, yes. The one advantage here is that I don’t think any of my… adversaries are aware that I’m even near Jupiter, let alone on this one particular shuttle. Besides, they know that it would take more than a few snub-fighters to take me out.”

“Confident, are we?” Aurora asked. She frowned a little, marring her pretty smile. “But yes, this is definitely about taking me out.”

“Why?” Twenty-Six asked. “You’re so nice, why would anyone try to kill you?”

Aurora huffed. “Because I’m representing Phobos. You’ll notice that in all of the information I’ve given about the League of Free Moons, two moons were conspicuously absent.”

“Luna and Deimos,” Ivil said. “Earth’s and Mars’s moons, respectively.”

She nodded. “Luna isn’t the most developed moon in the system, but it’s damned close. It’s the Earth Alliance’s industrial complex, training grounds, in-space habitation hub, and a lot more. A full eighty percent of the ships they build are built on Luna, and that all means that the moon isn’t, in any real sense, independent.”

“And likewise for Deimos,” Ivil said. “It’s a former staging ground for the Martian navy.”

“Former?” Twenty-Six asked.

Ivil shrugged. This wasn’t exactly a state secret. More like a state privileged information. Pepper was giving her a look, but Ivil decided that it didn’t matter. “Luna is a prime target at the moment. If a fourth solar war breaks out, it’s almost guaranteed to be bombed into oblivion in the starting months. Mars assumes the same of Deimos, so the navy has moved much of its production off the moon and into stations in orbit.”

“Neat,” Twenty-Six said. “And the commercial grade stuff?”

“Has frequently taken over old Martian navy factories,” Ivil said.

“In any case, that’s why neither moon was even invited to any part of the conference,” Aurora said. “No one will be willing to share part of the thousand cores discovered with either moon.”

“Thousand cores?” Pepper asked as she perked up.

Ivil cleared her throat. “Keep that to yourself, please,” she advised. It was more like an order, really.

“Ah, yes, of course.”

“So, what’s Deimos and Luna have to do with people wanting you dead?” Twenty-Six asked sweetly.

“A lot of factions consider Phobos no better than Deimos. We’re just as close to Mars in the grand scheme of things, and our ties to Mars are closer than any other moon’s ties to any other superpower in the system.”

“Oh,” Twenty-Six said. “So it’s like a company allegiance thing?”

“I… suppose, vaguely. That’s one reason why people might consider us a threat at the moment, at least.”

“To the degree where they’d be willing to kill you en route to a meeting?” Ivil asked.

Aurora didn’t reply right away, not before a device on her person rang. She answered, and Pixie’s voice came over the line.

“Heya! Just smoked three bandits and the last one… kind of exploded for no apparent reason? I’m assuming some fuckery on someone’s part. In any case, looks like hiring me was the right call because I’m earning my keep out here!”

Chapter sixty-seven

The Nerve

For some, discovering that someone wanted you, personally, dead, was a shock to the system.

To Ivil Antagonist, it was another Thursday.

Unfortunately, she was discovering that her nonchalance about others wishing her demise was not shared with everyone else in their little group.

Pixie, who was of course still in her starfighter, didn’t seem to mind overly much. At least, that was the impression she communicated with them. Ivil didn’t doubt it was true, however.

She was apparently on the top ten of the bounty hunter leaderboards around Jupiter and had a multi-million dollar bounty on her own head placed there by a few piratical syndicates. It wasn’t the official, legal kind of bounty, so its veracity and whether anyone might actually be able to claim it was very much up for debate.

Still, Pixie wasn’t overly worried about the situation. It was a job.

Likewise for Pepper. The MINT agent was still a little stressed, but Ivil chalked that up to her being in the same room as… well, Ivil. If anything, Pepper must have been intimately aware that she was technically in one of the safest places in the solar system as long as Ivil cared enough to keep her alive.

Twenty-Six was… taking it well enough, Ivil supposed. She was a little more fiddly than usual, but Ivil suspected that the mechanic had spent most of her life one bad seal away from death, and this risk of a more sudden and violent demise wasn’t bothering her all that much.

It was Aurora that really had Ivil worried.

Externally the young woman seemed fine. She was calm and focused on a small tablet on the fold-out desk ahead of her, gently tapping through menus with several reports open. Ivil knew that her eyes weren’t focused on the screen at all, however, and there was the slightest tremble as she reached out her delicate hands to the screen.

She was flexing her cores. It wasn’t something the usual person might notice. Aurora was squeezing her cores like a stress ball.

Ivil carefully stood up and made her way across the room. They were in the process of doing a gentle slow-down burn. The ship’s engines, being designed in a proper Martian fashion, meant that they could still stand and walk while the ship pressed them down at a steady two and a bit g’s of force.

Twenty-Six and Pepper and Ivil had all been near the front of the room while Aurora had calmly moved to the back where the desks were while claiming she needed a little time to work.

Ivil discovered a seat fixed to the floor by heavy magnets, shut off the concept of magnetism around it, and moved the seat to be next to Aurora.

The Phobian looked up as Ivil sat next to her. “I’m sorry, Evelyn, but I’m a little busy.”

“Staring at the same six pages without seeing them?” Ivil asked. She leaned to the side a little to read the report. “Is the average tourist spending on Phobos so important?”

“It’s our main source of income,” Aurora said. “And it would be threatened if we joined the League more fully, which we might well need to do if we want to take part in things, moving forwards.”

“Ah, I see,” Ivil replied. “Yes, I imagine Mars might sanction Phobos if that were to happen. It would be a politically unpopular choice on Mars.”

“We generally try not to care too much about what Mars thinks. But it’s a monolith, and we’re too close not to be concerned. Phobos’s entire agricultural system has turned towards producing luxury foods, did you know that?”

“I didn’t,” Ivil admitted. “Is that an issue?”

She nodded. “Sustenance foods are still produced on Mars. We sell Mars foods that it can’t produce because of various laws, and the profit allows us to buy basic foodstuffs. Coffee beans are a luxury good. Mars passed legislation not to give agricultural zones any subsidies for coffee bean production some eighty years ago. Now Mars barely produces any. It could, easily, but they don’t. So we fill that niche.”

“Sounds good so far,” Ivil said.

“And if Mars decided that our alliance with the League, or our joining fully would be a bad move, they could easily remove those same restrictions on their own subsidies, produce their own coffee, and crash a full two percent of our export economy within a few months.”

Two percent didn’t sound like too much to Ivil, but she imagined that it was actually quite a bit. Being two percent faster was a huge advantage in space warfare. Two percent stronger shields, two percent more survivability… yes, the number was small, but its effect on a large scale could mean a lot.

“I see. That’s important, I suppose. But I don’t think it explains your mood. Do… do you want to talk about it?” Ivil asked. She didn’t sound awkward. She certainly felt it.

Aurora turned and looked up, meeting Ivil’s eyes. “Evelyn… you might suck at this,” she said rather bluntly.

Ivil blinked, then chuckled. “I might,” she admitted. “I’m unfortunately better suited for death and destruction than chatting about feelings. I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t apologise. You’re genuinely trying. It’s kind of you.”

“I’m trying to be kinder, at least to some select people,” Ivil said.

“I’m happy to be amongst those,” Aurora said. “This whole thing with the ambush today and the pirates recently. I… I think I might not be as prepared for all of this as I thought I was. I have been in some high-stress situations on Phobos before. Negotiations, corporate battles. But never anything like this, and never while out on my own.”

“On your own?” Ivil asked. “Don’t say that. I’m here, aren’t I? I’d like to think that I count as a small army for the purposes of keeping someone safe.”

“One woman, no matter how strong, won’t stop people from being unscrupulous… assholes,” Aurora said. Her little Phobian accent and the emphasis she put on that last word almost had Ivil laughing again. It sounded so foreign to Aurora, like she was trying to speak a word in an unfamiliar language.

Ivil smiled and patted Aurora’s hand where it lay on the desk. “I think you’d be quite surprised at how much one headstrong person can or can’t do. But I didn’t come back here to brag about my overwhelming strength. I came back here to make sure you were alright.”

“I think I’m fine,” Aurora said.

“I think you’re not,” Ivil corrected her gently.

Aurora looked at where their hands met, and paused. Her hand carefully, slowly turned so that her palm was up and Ivil’s was resting on it. Neither of them moved past that. It wasn’t handholding, Ivil reasoned, just… hands touching. This was fine.

“I hate to admit it, but I think I need help,” Aurora said. “I came out here thinking I’d sweep in, get what Phobos needs, then run along all victorious. Instead I’ve found knives in the dark and more challenges than I’d expected to find of a level of difficulty greater than I was prepared for.”

“What sort of help do you need?” Ivil asked. “I can wipe the moons of your enemies out of the sky, atomize their bones, and boil their pitiful brains.”

Aurora laughed. “No, I don’t need an assassin of my own, Evelyn. Having you here is good enough, I think. But… you’re strong, aren’t you? I saw you fighting a little with the pirates.”

“I was holding back quite a bit,” Ivil admitted.

“I’m sure. Could you keep us safe?”

“I could do more than that,” Ivil said. “I could knock heads together and convince people at this meeting to bequeath you their entire fortunes before leaping out of an airlock.”

Aurora shook her head. “No, I don’t want help with the negotiation itself. It’s a delicate matter that requires a delicate touch. But… I’m not as prepared for all these physical threats. The showboating and power plays I can live with, it’s the actual attempts on my life that I can’t.”

Ivil nodded. She was very pleased with this entire conversation. “Very well, then. With your permission, I’ll keep you safe from anyone that might try anything. But, as I said before, I’m not your minion. I’ll handle threats in my own way.”

“I suppose I can’t ask for more than that,” Aurora said. Her hand shifted a little, furthering the contact between them. She flushed a little, then pulled her hand back and cleared her throat. “I… need to work. Sorry,” she said.

“Of course,” Ivil replied. Aurora didn’t know it, but in that moment she could have asked for a lot more than that and Ivil would have given it to her willingly.

When she glanced back, she found Twenty-Six blushing and giving her two-thumbs up.

Chapter sixty-eight

Oppresorax Station

Oppresorax Station appeared ahead of them, and Ivil couldn’t help but be unimpressed by it.

Pepper had warned that it was a relatively small station, and she hadn’t been exaggerating. The station had a few small rings around a central pillar, and a small docking array off to one side, and that was about it. It was a small station by modern standards. Pepper assured them that it would have all the luxuries one might expect for a meeting space. It would just lack anything past that.

At the moment, several ships were hovering around the station. A few frigate-sized warships, several yachts, and a dozen or so fighter craft on patrol. Not exactly a fleet, but enough concentrated firepower in one spot to make even a brave pirate think twice.

Not that they should have been worrying about that kind of thing. This was near Callisto, a moon that should have, by all rights, been civilised. It was only in the outer fringes, where the smaller, further moons of Jupiter were, that pirates gathered and made trouble.

Their shuttle slowed down drastically on its approach until it was moving at a crawl. The ship locked in on one of the docking bays, then gently adjusted itself before sliding into place. Clamps moved out of the dock to hook onto the ship and keep it steady on its final approach, and then they were locked into place with a final heavy clunk.

Air was exchanged and verified, and the airlock cycled. Finally, their lone hostess opened the shuttle doors for them. They had a bit of a shake in their hands, and Ivil noticed through the shuttle walls that the captain and co-pilot were slumping in their seats, stress leaving them all at once. She supposed that commercial shuttle pilots didn’t often have to deal with space battles.

A last glance outside of the station revealed Pixie slipping into a far orbit. She was about as distant to all of the other ships as could be.

“A moment, please, before we disembark,” Aurora said.

“Of course,” Ivil replied. She and Pepper were by the exit already, and Twenty-Six wasn’t far behind, lugging her backpack with her.

Aurora smiled slightly in thanks. “We’re going to be meeting with some rather serious people, but that doesn’t mean we can expect… decorum and good manners from them. Worse, I’ll be negotiating from an unfavourable position. Evelyn, I would ask that you refrain from being too violent, please.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ivil said. “But if you’re threatened too much, I might take action.”

Aurora winced, but nodded. “That seems fair. I’ll just ask that you be reasonable.”

“I can be reasonable,” Ivil said. She pretended not to notice the look Pepper was giving her. The MINT operative had probably listened to all the things MINT said about Ivil. They often felt like she was unreasonable, which was ridiculous. She always had a reason to do whatever she wanted.

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Twenty-Six promised.

Ivil bit the inside of her cheek to stop an inappropriate laugh from escaping. “Yes. Twenty-Six will steer me in the right direction,” she said.

“No, stop it with the tug-boat stuff,” Twenty-Six whined.

Ivil might have considered it if Twenty-Six’s cheeks didn’t go so red and puff out so much.

“Alright, enough flirting, let’s get going,” Aurora said.

She stepped out ahead of them and into the station’s small docking corridor. It was little more than a long, narrow passageway with airlocks at every junction. Some effort had been taken to make it seem less industrial. Fake wooden panelling and good lighting helped, but the bones of a pre-made structure were still there.

In lieu of a person waiting for them, there was a balloon of a droid floating at the entrance. It had a set of cameras and several little rotor-blades spinning to keep it hovering in place. “Greetings, and welcome to Oppresorax Station Miss… Aurora Sterlingworth and company. Please, follow me to the main lobby. The other guests are eagerly awaiting your arrival. Today’s meeting is due to start in… four hours. Accommodations have been provided for all guests in Ring B, courtesy of Oppresorax Station!”

“Thank you,” Aurora said.

The balloon twisted around itself then started to hover forwards. “Follow me, please.”

They followed. The balloon drone led them to the end of the airlock tunnel where a sealed door opened up into a lobby area. This was the main column of the station, the pillar onto which the rest was constructed. It was fifty metres across at a guess, and maybe three hundred tall, which really didn’t afford the station all that much room.

The lobby space was nonetheless impressively large. A high-ceilinged space with a bar in the centre and plenty of seating all around. Some three dozen people were hovering in the zero-g environment, most of them with a small drone next to them for them to grab on to when they wanted to move.

A rack of those sat by the entrance, little devices which were essentially smarter quad-rotor drones that could recognize their user.

Aurora grabbed one and linked to it in a moment. Then she helped Twenty-Six do the same, though it did require smacking Twenty-Six’s hand when she reached for a screwdriver. It was, she said, rude to take apart a host’s drones to see how they worked.

Judging by the not-very-chastised look in Twenty-Six’s eyes, Ivil suspected the station would be short at least one by the end of the day.

“No thank you,” she said when Aurora offered her one of her own. “I’m mobile on my own. Give it to Miss Mint here.”

Pepper linked to the drone. By the time they were all ready, however, they’d already gained some attention. There were factions here already, small cliques holding together that could be told apart by their dress and fashion choices and probably based on who they were talking to. Ivil could sense a lot of cores in this room. Some fifty or so, split amongst a dozen attendees.

And one person who had nearly three hundred cores all to themselves. A solid B-classer. Ivil scanned the crowd looking for them. They weren’t hard to find as they were in the group approaching them right now.

The B-classer was to the side, a large man, but not in a good way. Rolls of fat were exposed by an open shirt. He had large, mechanical arms and larger mechanical legs that might have belonged on a walking tank. They ended in huge hydraulic clamps. Sleek metal, stained by grease and grime. Worse was the man’s smile. He had lips like sausages and crooked teeth that he had no shame in displaying for the world to see.

Ivil found her patience being tested before he and his group even arrived. Fortunately, the B-classer wasn’t the leader. That title went to a short man in a well-fitted suit. Two cores, both the sort that were more utilitarian conveniences than the monster behind him, and a pretty-enough smile. “Aurora Sterlingworth,” he said. “Welcome! I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”

“We almost didn’t,” Aurora said with a smile of her own. Ivil was happy to note that she could tell it was all fake. “You’re Mister Aida, right? From the Callisto Trade Union?”

“That’s right, but call me Brandon! Mister Aida was my old man.”

“A pleasure, Brandon,” Aurora said. “These are my companions, Pepper Mint, my secretary, Miss Twenty-Six, of Saturn, and Evelyn Ville.”

“Hello,” Ivil said politely.

She was happy to prove that she could be civil in front of Aurora and the others.

“You girls look like a properly fuckable bunch,” the B-classer said.

Ivil’s polite smile remained in place.

“Ah, this is…the Slob, my bodyguard. Please, forgive me for anything he says,” Mister Aida said. “You know how strong core users can be. There’s nothing you can do if they decide to act.”

His words were contrite and apologetic. His smile was a threat.

“Aurora, Twenty-Six, why don’t you go check out the bar?” Ivil asked as she dismissed the sub-human filth for a moment. “Mister Slob and I are going to have a very short, very civil conversation.”

And with that said, her polite smile still in place, Ivil carried the man out of the room by teleporting him and herself some hundred and fifty kilometres away into empty space. A nice private environment in which they could have words.

Chapter sixty-nine

Fairness Unevenly Applied

You want to see a spectacular fight? Talking balls-to-the-walls, close quarters, face-smashing combat that will have you on the edge of your seat? Then find two core users who are about at the same level and let them loose at each other.

Each core represents a single power. Most, if not all, are small and rather useless, but they can be strange, which makes using them in combat a game of exploiting small advantages and weird quirks.

These fights were, of course, monetized as best they could be, because there was some broken part of the human brain that just loved seeing two people break each other in high definition.

Ivil had never taken part in that sort of cage match. She’d seen a little, but was never truly impressed.

Those kinds of fights always tried to do the one thing that a real fight never had; they tried to be fair.

Pitting D-classers against each other, or two C-classers with an equal number of cores made for an even, more or less technical battle.

Ivil didn’t like fair fights. She had never participated in one if she could avoid it because she liked winning far too much. So far, that had worked out for her pretty well.

It was working out rather terribly for the Slob.

The man clearly had at least one core that could help him survive in a vacuum. Those were rather common, and only good sense for anyone with many cores who expected to fight onboard a ship or in a station where the vacuum was one puncture away.

Still, his face turned an interesting shade of purple as she gripped him in an invisible vice and kept him still.

He fought back. His cybernetic limbs put a lot of pressure against her hold. One arm twisted, opening up into a large chainsaw-like blade that spun in the void and tried to cut at the nothing holding him. His other arm unfolded, and six-inch long metal spikes shot out into space.

Ivil watched him squirm the way an unhinged child might watch a fly whose wings they’d plucked.

Eventually, she suspected he came to realise that he was at her mercy. She snapped her fingers, and the atmosphere exploded around them, creating a bubble of air from nothing that held them both in a large sphere.

The Slob winced at the burst of pressure, his fat rolls wobbling with the motion and his skin bruising at the change. He gasped in a huge breath, then screamed. “You bitch!”

“No,” she said before robbing him of his air. She kept the rest around him, so that he could hear her while he choked. “I find your lack of respect… disturbing. Can you not see that this isn’t the kind of situation where you should run your mouth?”

She let him breathe again, and he sucked in a gasp of air, then shifted, pointing his gun arm at her in a flash. A metal rod fired out, and now that they were no longer in a vacuum, the gun’s bark sounded like a cannon going off.

She plucked the rod out of the air then examined it. It looked like a piece of rebar, almost. No, not almost, this was definitely a piece of cheap rebar. Was he too stingy to buy good ammunition?

The Slob stared at her, then glared. “A-classer,” he spat. “I should have guessed. Too many powers in too pretty a shell. You think you’re better than me?”

“I rather know it,” she said before flicking the bar away. “Tell me about Mister Aida. He must be well off to be able to hire an up-jumped C-classer like you as a bodyguard.”

“I’m not a C-classer,” he rumbled. Ivil was starting to suspect that he had never really invested in the kinds of cores that would improve his intellect. “I’m one of the strongest free mercs in the Jovian system! I don’t come cheap.”

“Oh? And how much do you cost?”

The Slob licked his lips. “Let me have a taste of your meat, and I might let you know,” he said.

She grimaced. “Well, you’ve certainly earned your title, Slob. Is that how he’s paying you, in human flesh?”

“Not flesh, women,” he said with a disgusting grin. “You think you and your little friends taste any good?”

“Are you asking for me to kill you?” she asked.

“You wouldn’t. You might be some fancy A-classer that that Martian bitch hired, but Phobos doesn’t want to start shit with Callisto, not when Callisto’s gaining such a foothold around the Jovian system. You kill me, and there will be consequences.”

“What about unimaginable torture? Are there consequences for that?” she asked idly.

“Fuck off, I’m not scared of—”

She ripped off his limbs. They were core-made, so quite tough as far as that kind of thing went. When a core gave a person a new organ or a new limb it was generally quite a bit better than any organic version. The alloys and metals that cores grew were usually centuries ahead of human material sciences.

The Slob’s crumpled like too-dry cardboard. He gasped, likely feeling quite a bit of feedback at the moment.

“Consequences, yes?” she asked. “How about this, as a consequence? You know, I could tear every last core out of your massive body and there would be no consequences for me. You, however, you would be a pitiful mass of flesh in deep space, choking on nothing in your final moments.”

“The Emperor of Jupiter!” he shouted, and she paused to listen. “The emperor says that there’s to be no user-on-user violence in the Jovian system.”

“Did he say that?” she asked. “I never got the memo.”

“He’ll know. He finds out, and then he’ll add your cores to his. Those are the consequences! And you’ll see them! You’ve hurt me already, you stupid bitch!” He grinned, the kind of rictus that came from someone who thought they’d won one over.

“So?” she asked.

“So? He’s an emperor!”

“So,” she replied coolly. “We have an agreement, you know. The three of us.”

Now the Slob was shaking.

It really frustrated her how people didn’t treat others—mostly herself—with respect and deference until they realized that she could erase them from existence one atom at a time without any repercussions. Having a good reputation… or at least a reputation of some calibre, was useful, but she sometimes wished for respect without having to prove that she could kill people.

“You can’t be,” he said.

“Sure I can,” she replied. “Do I need to take out some photo ID to prove that I am who I say I am? Was teleporting you out into empty space while time is frozen, creating a bubble of atmosphere and ripping off your limbs not enough proof? I can continue ripping pieces off of you until you believe me, if that’s what you want.”

The Slob looked past her, only now noticing that the distant ships and lights from faraway stations weren’t moving. “I’m sorry?”

“Was that a question?”

“I’m sorry!” he shouted.

“Better, but I’m afraid I don’t believe you. Tell me about Mister Aida.”

“He hired me! Put out a contract for the strongest merc he could find. He’s a real piece of shit, but he pays well. No morals and all smiles. You know the sort.”

“And his intentions with this meeting?”

The Slob shook his head. “I don’t know! I think it’s just to wrestle for more power. There’s something everyone is after, but they’re all being quiet about it. Aida’s the same.”

“Hmm, so he’s at least discreet. And the attack on our ship? We were intercepted by a group of snub-fighters on the way here. Was that him?”

A shake of the head. “No. I don’t think so? I was with him most of the time. He isn’t that sort. He wants me to threaten people, scare them, put them in their place, but I’m not supposed to kill anyone.”

“Hmm, well, I suppose that’s acceptable. I… have decided that for the sake of avoiding any drama, I’ll be returning you alive.” She glanced at the limbs floating away, then shrugged and crushed them further. Some had entire cores stuck into them which had come loose. She pocketed those for later. Most of the limbs had come from cores still in his torso, so they’d slowly grow back. “You, of course, won’t speak a word about me being who I am.”

“I won’t?”

“Not unless you want me to make an example out of you,” she said. “I’ve been advised not to kill people, so I’m trying very hard not to. But it’s… so much easier, you understand?”

She didn’t give him time to reply.

They reappeared in the same spots they’d been in before, and time snapped back into motion.

There was a thump as the Slob crashed to the ground. He was crying.

“Evelyn!” Aurora gasped.

“We had a discussion,” she replied. “It was very civil.”

Chapter seventy

Universal Constant

Drama, and the glee gained from it, is a universal constant around humanity, fueled by gossip and speculation and scandal.

Pearl-clutchers were omnipresent and obtrusive, like rats on a sinking ship, gleeful that the kitchen was unattended while the cooks found the nearest escape pod.

Ivil had once been introduced to the concept of obloquiousness. A strange and uncommonly-used word meaning the ability to sling shit and have shit flung. Metaphorically, of course.

Ruining the Slob’s entire year and Mister Aida’s afternoon caused the gossipmongers—which the politically inclined usually were, as a matter of course—to start up their game of whispers and stares.

Mister Aida quickly apologised and bowed out, the Slob floating after him in a daze.

“Evelyn,” Aurora said before she reached back and grabbed Ivil’s hand. “We need to have a small talk somewhere out of the way. Pepper, can you find a space where I, where we, can have words?”

“Of course,” Pepper said with a slight bow. She quickly led them along the outer edge of the room and into another entranceway. This one into a long corridor lined by small private rooms. One of these was theirs for the duration of their stay.

The door had a small plaque with Aurora Sterlingworth - Phobos, embossed upon it. A quick print-job, but done more elegantly than was strictly necessary.

The suite itself was quite spacious, especially considering their location. A large living area adjoined by several smaller rooms. A small kitchenette, a pair of washrooms, one linked to the master bedroom, and a full entertainment suite in a small room by the rear which had chairs and tables enough for a small meeting.

“Is Evelyn in trouble?” Twenty-Six asked. She was slipping her attention between the room and the others with her.

“Twenty-Six, dear, please inspect the fridge for anything to eat,” Aurora suggested. “Evelyn and I need to talk.”

“Um, if it’s okay, can I stay?” Twenty-Six said. “I, uh, don’t know if I can help, but I don’t want to be pushed out of the loop. Unless it’s really important that I not know?”

Aurora seemed ready to deny her, but hesitated and looked to Evelyn. “Do you mind terribly if Twenty-Six witnesses me… pardon my vocabulary, but what I intend to do is best described as ‘tearing you a new one.’”

Ivil blinked, then smiled delicately. “I don’t mind. Though I think you’ll find me rather tear-proof.”

Aurora’s hands quickly migrated to her hips and her lips thinned. “Evelyn Ville, what in the hell was that?”

“I merely—”

“I don’t want to hear your justification, Evelyn,” Aurora snapped. “I want to be very, very angry at you.”

Ivil considered that for a moment, going so far as to slow things down a little to consider things. She could understand wanting to be angry at someone. In fact, she’d felt something similar several times in her life. In her later life, feeling angry at someone usually meant homicide was in the cards, but that wasn’t always the case. It didn’t always have to be the case, even.

Ivil had perhaps acted against what Aurora had wished, but it was in defence of Aurora and also because she really wanted to hurt the man. Also, she hadn’t killed anyone, so Aurora had nothing to truly be upset about.

There was also the fact that Aurora was unreasonably attractive when upset with her, which Ivil found somewhat confusing.

Usually, people who were upset with her were annoying. They made demands, set expectations, and were generally the furthest thing from attractive.

Aurora’s big pouty lips, narrowed eyes, and very noble pose—which had her head tilted back and attack nostrils on full display—somehow read as petulantly adorable to Ivil.

She had to resist the urge to further tease Aurora, who would likely only find umbrage in such, especially when she was already angry as it was.

Ivil decided that if Aurora stomped a foot down in anger, all bets were off. She was going to pinch the noblewoman’s cheek, and nothing short of godly intervention would stop her, and only for so long as it took her to kill God.

“Very well,” she said as time resumed its flow. “Please proceed to be angry.”

Aurora didn’t stomp her foot, but her hands migrated from her hips as she crossed her arms. “Evelyn, you were supposed to act as… protection. Not muscle, as we agreed, but nonetheless security of sorts.”

“Was that not what I did?” Ivil asked. “You are far more secure now that the Slob knows better than to even look at you.”

“He was a little creepy,” Twenty-Six said, taking Ivil’s side.

“You… you ripped his arms off!”

Twenty-Six bit her lip. “That was kind of rude,” she said, flipping sides.

“He didn’t deserve functional limbs if all he was going to do with them was threaten you,” Ivil said. “Besides, Aida was clearly using the Slob as a sort of bludgeon to put people in their place.”

Aurora glared, but not quite in Ivil’s direction. “Yes, he was doing just that. First the snub-fighters and now the Slob.”

“The fighters weren’t Aida,” Ivil said before raising a hand. “I can’t say how I know, but trust me? I don’t think they came from him. I could be wrong. My source is far from concrete, but I suspect that he isn’t to blame.”

“Hmm. If you think so,” Aurora said. “But yes, the Slob was a power-play. A strong B-classer in a place like this is an open threat. With the right cores he could kill every person here, security forces and all. Even if such violence would be… political suicide in the long run, just having the threat so clearly visible is a threat.”

Twenty-Six nodded. “Some merchant ships I’ve seen have modded large anti-ship guns. I’ve talked to some mechanics. Half the time, they don’t work and have been gutted for weight, but the implicit threat that the gun might work is often a good way for an independent merchant to make sure that pirates think twice and for people on smaller stations to really think about it before re… uh, re…”

“Reneging?” Aurora asked.

“That’s the one!” Twenty-Six said with a grin.

“Yes, well, that’s a good summary of what Aida was likely trying. All while representing Callisto, no less. It means that the moon is trying very hard to appear powerful, to cow others, and it might well work.”

“Might have, did we not just defang his lion?” Ivil asked.

Aurora huffed haughty. “I suppose,” she said.

“So, what Evelyn did wasn’t bad, then?” Twenty-Six asked.

“It was… unexpected,” Aurora said. “I don’t like being caught off guard like that, Evelyn. I like a certain amount of predictability.”

“I’ve made a point of being exceptionally predictable my entire life,” Ivil said. Pepper coughed off to the side, but didn’t seem to have anything to say. It was true, however. Ivil rarely departed from her usual standard operating procedures. It was everyone else who constantly expected her to treat them as if they were special and immune to her ability to disappear their heads.

Aurora’s hands returned to her hips. “Yes, well, I wasn’t expecting it. But… yes, the situation isn’t untenable. Miss Mint, how long do we have until the meeting begins?”

Pepper stared off into space for a moment. “An hour and a half, ma’am,” she replied.

“Good. Evelyn, try to keep the defanging to a minimum, please,” Aurora said.

“She did it to protect us, though, right? She’s like… the big gun strapped to our ship,” Twenty-Six said.

“Is this a new ship analogy, or a continuation of the prior?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six muttered something under her breath that Ivil caught. “I need new metaphors.”

Ivil decided to put a hold on teasing Twenty-Six for her metaphors. Otherwise, she might never get new cute metaphors to gush over. Truly, she was sacrificing a lot lately.

“Let’s give ourselves a bit of time before returning. Time to freshen up and… I might want to look over my recordings of the day so far. I was scanning faces the entire time. It’ll be good to match those to names and histories,” Aurora said.

“You have access to something like that?” Ivil asked.

“Every noblewoman worth her salt has a who’s who list,” Aurora said. “It’s an essential tool for navigating uncertain political waters. It’s not just about knowing who is part of which faction and what that means, but also who the individual is.”

Pepper perked up. “If you give me your list, I can link you into a private communications channel during the meeting, if you wish, to bring up relevant facts during the talk.”

That list might well end up in MINT’s hands. Ivil made a mental note to mention that it ought not to Pepper. Still, she figured that the upcoming meeting would be far more interesting if she knew who was who.

Chapter seventy-one

Patience

Ivil wouldn’t admit it so readily, but she was thankful that Aurora had taken some time to go over names and faces before the meeting began. Not that she intended to keep all of those memories. Politicians and their ilk didn’t rate very high in matters of importance to her.

The meeting took place in a smaller room aboard the station. Smaller than the main lobby area, that was. It was still quite spacious. The ceiling wasn’t all that terribly high, but it still rose up in the centre to allow a ring of lights to be perched over a large, circular table.

Around the edge were some benches with handholds for anyone watching the proceedings, as well as a small bar manned by a mechanised bartender with several serving drones parked next to it, each capable of grabbing a drink and silently carrying it across the room to the one who’d ordered it.

Ivil walked in on Aurora’s right flank, with Twenty-Six on the side opposite and Pepper taking up the rear of their little diamond-formation. For the moment, all four of them were walking under the comfortable weight of half an Earth gravity.

It was a power play. A minor one, but still one that would be obvious to the other participants in the meeting who had to move about with the assistance of a zero-g drone.

Each seat around the table had a small plaque before it with the name of the participant and their moon of origin written upon it. The seat immediately to that participant’s right was empty, a space for assistants, aides, or trusted councillors.

“Who did you wish to have sitting by your side?” Pepper asked Aurora.

Aurora hummed to herself. “That’s actually a difficult question. Yourself, Miss Mint, are the one best versed in political matters. Evelyn is the most… intimidating one here, and Twenty-Six would be a lot help in downplaying things and also with the Saturnian contingent.”

“Ah, I’d rather not,” Twenty-Six said. “I’ve never had to stand in front of a crowd before.”

“That’s fair. This wouldn’t be a good place to cut your teeth on such social matters,” Aurora said. “Evelyn?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Ivil replied. “Though… let Pepper take the seat. I’d much rather be at the back where I can better observe things. Trust me, I don’t need to be in the same room or in the same planetary system as someone to intimidate them.”

Aurora giggled, but next to her Pepper swallowed hard.

With that, Aurora and Pepper moved up to their seats at the table. There was no place of pride, not at a round table. They would all be more or less equal here.

The delegate from Styx arrived, parking himself across from Aurora and trading a nod with her. Then Tethys arrived, Hyperion, and Titania. The outer edges were starting to fill a little. While most delegates chose to have one assistant by their side, most also had a few hangers-on who filed out to the outer walls.

Umbriel stumbled into the room and then quickly flew to their place while adjusting their suit, and finally Galatea and Callisto. Callisto, Mister Aida, brought the Slob.

The representative was two people away from Aurora. The Slob nonetheless positioned himself at the far end of the room from Ivil instead of at his man’s back.

Mister Aida scanned the room, then gave them all a politician’s smile. He cleared his throat, the sound loud and clear before he spoke. “Greetings, everyone,” he said. “I’m proud to meet and speak to so many delegates from so many moons across the system. Today, I believe, will be a subtle but momentous day for many. We are gathered here to address our stances on several issues before the more official meeting of the League of Free Moons.”

Ivil tuned out some of his grandstanding drivel. The gist of it was relatively simple. The League of Free Moons and its apparently very shrewd president wanted to turn a disparate group of small nation-states into something larger, something more potent.

In terms of sheer numbers, they might actually have something. The various moons of the system were all far smaller than either of the two major powerhouses—Earth and Mars—but together their GDP matched or exceeded that of either superpower.

Of course, that was, in a word, bullshit. Those numbers included Deimos, Mars’s moon, and Luna, Earth’s massive moon. Removing those two from the equation brought that figure down to something closer to half or maybe two-thirds of either super-power’s annual production.

That was still nothing to sneeze at.

If a fourth solar war broke out, then the League of Free Moons might very well be the one who chose who would win in the end.

It all hinged on a single large factor, however.

The League had their own emperor.

Again, however, that was bullshit.

The Emperor of Jupiter didn’t care about the moon he lived on, and Ivil very much doubted he cared much about any other moon either.

She’d met the man. He wasn’t the sort of person to concern themselves overly much with such things. He was a self-righteous prick who thought he was better than everyone. He even thought so when she was around.

Of course, the man wasn’t… all bad. She was loath to say it, but she respected the Emperor of Jupiter as a sort of… long-distance colleague. They’d never get along, but he did some things in a way that she could approve of.

Notably, he’d been happily married for… she considered the date. About twenty years now? His successful conquest in matters of romance had been one of the original inspirations for her own early dabbles in such matters.

If he could be happy with his loving wife, then why couldn’t she, the better, hotter empress, have the same?

Mister Aida eventually finished yapping on, and a round of introductions began, because of course politicians had to wax on and on about themselves. Aurora, at least, kept things light and quick. Her name, the moon she represented, and the buck was passed. It made the next representative hesitate.

The discussion, once the introductions were completed, turned towards the topic at hand. “What exactly do we know about the interstellar object?” the representative of Styx asked. He was directing his attention towards the two representatives from Uranus.

This was a bit of a delicate situation.

From what Aurora had explained to Ivil the day prior, the interstellar object, the large lump containing several hundred, possibly up to a thousand inactive cores, was found by a ship that ostensibly belonged to several moons of Jupiter. It was crewed by a mixed group from several Jovian moons and a large number of Saturnian scientists who worked for the League of Free Moons.

The object was captured, however, very close to Uranus, and because of its size and the delicate nature of the operation, several Uranian ships had assisted in the operation.

In a way, those volunteered ships had yet to be recompensed for the extremely dangerous work they’d undertaken. The delegates from Uranus would be well within their rights to say that they were owed a favour or two, and they had been in the loop about the interstellar object for longer than most members.

There were rumours that the object had stayed around Uranus, being shuffled around, for several weeks.

“We know a fair bit,” the Titanian representative said. “But it’s not us you should be poking at.” He turned his attention to the representative from Saturn. “Isn’t that right?”

“Just because the crews poking at the thing are ours doesn’t mean we know anything,” the Hyperion rep said. “I mean, we definitely do, but we’re not gonna share so easily.”

“We could have used those ourselves,” the Uranian said. “We know there are enough cores there to take someone right up to A-class. Or we could have funded half a dozen powerful B-classers.”

“And then the League would destroy you,” Styx said. “If only by letting Mars or Earth know. It’s just enough cores that either of them might be tempted to try something, and alone, you wouldn’t stand a chance.”

The Uranian sniffed. “We wouldn’t have. I’m merely pointing out that the Uranian moons have acted honourably when we so easily could have chosen not to.”

Ivil rolled her eyes at the back of the room. That was more thinly veiled political stupidity. She really had very little patience for it. But Aurora seemed to be in her element, and Twenty-Six… was slowly nodding off.

Ivil stiffened slightly as Twenty-Six tipped over to the side and rested her head on Ivil’s arm.

Yes, maybe she could leave the politicians to their bickering for now. She was the image of patience and self-control.

Omake - Ivil Does Fiction

Twenty-Six fluttered her eyes open, then yawned. There was a nasty crick in her neck, and she felt a bit of saliva sticking to her cheek, which was weird. She wasn’t much of a drooler except when she was sleeping really well.

Blinking, she took in… a very large, fancy room, and was struck with the painful realisation that she’d fallen asleep in the middle of a meeting.

Fortunately she was off to the side, sitting on one of those benches along the outer wall, far from the action and arguments.

Unfortunately, she was still leaning to the side, her face pressed up against something warm and rough and… she sat up straight and wiped her face clean while hoping beyond hope that she hadn’t drooled too hard.

“Awake?” Evelyn asked.

Twenty-Six nodded. “‘Mm sorry,” she mumbled.

Evelyn smiled, then casually waved Twenty-Six’s concern away. “It’s fine. Even tugboats need to be moored at times, right?”

Whatever blush had been fading returned, and Twenty-Six found herself glaring at Evelyn for all she was worth. “Stop that,” she said. It sounded whiny and weak, even to her.

The tugboat metaphors had gone too far. Too far! Yes, they were funny, in a sort of embarrassing way, and yes she liked it when Evelyn thought of her that way, but still, it was humiliating. Worse, it was a humiliation of her own making. She should have never told Evelyn that she sometimes thought that way.

“Did you sleep well?” Evelyn asked.

Twenty-Six swallowed. At least the teasing had stopped… for now. It wasn’t the right place for it anyway. “Yeah, I guess,” she said. She did feel really refreshed, though she put a hand up against her neck and twisted her head around a few times. Back on the first station she could remember living in, her bunk had been sized for a normal, Earthly human. She’d quickly grown too big for it, and that led to years of sleeping crooked.

“Want me to fix your neck?” Evelyn asked. “I’ve got deft fingers.”

Twenty-Six felt herself stilling for a moment, then shook her head. “It’s fine,” she said while trying her best not to squeak. She even succeeded for once, but now she needed a distraction.

The politicians were… boring. Someone was talking on and on, and even while trying to catch on to some context clues to know what was happening, Twenty-Six found herself unable and unwilling to actually listen. If it was Aurora talking, then maybe. That woman had a voice on her. All smooth and dulcet with this little upper-class Martian accent that sounded very posh.

It reminded Twenty-Six of the automated warning voice on some of the nicer equipment she’d used.

She’d have to ask Aurora to record a few lines sometimes. “Hull breach detected.” Or maybe a sultry, “Fire suppression system activated.”

“What are you doing?” Twenty-Six asked Evelyn. The taller, older, prettier… frankly mostly just better woman was sitting on the same bench as Twenty-Six, but she somehow managed to make it look like this was a throne. She had a tablet hovering before her. One of those little personal computer sorts that she’d seen Pepper and Evelyn carrying around.

“I’m writing,” Evelyn said with a gentle smile. “I’ve discovered that I’m not very talented at it, and none of my cores assist me, so it’s an interesting puzzle.”

“Oh?” Twenty-Six asked. “What sort of things do you write?” It was interesting, seeing Evelyn have such a normal hobby. It wasn’t as interesting a hobby as, say, CAD sculpting or 3D printing, but it was still kinda neat.

“Did… you want to read?” Evelyn asked. She sounded surprisingly shy in that moment, and Twenty-Six realised that she’d never heard Evelyn shy before now. It was cute, but it also didn’t suit her at all.

Evelyn was made for… like, scaring captains and threatening mean dock workers. Not being a wilting wallflower. Evelyn and being vulnerable fit together like a Martian nut on an Earth-made bolt.

“Here,” Evelyn said after scrolling to the top of a long text document.

Twenty-Six took the tablet and blinked a few more times to clear her vision. Then she started reading.

Chapter One

That was an auspicious start, she supposed. She was never really one for fiction reading. Mostly Twenty-Six read manuals and sometimes articles. She did do a fair bit of reading, it was just not usually… sit down and read, reading. She refocused. This was important to Evelyn. She ought to pay attention.

Hi, my name is Emma Olivia Isabella Brown (that’s how I got my name). I have brown hair with nothing special about it, beige skin, brown eyes that look like pebbles, and I look like an average person (AN: if you don’t know what that looks like, imagine a person). I’m not related to any celebrities, politicians, or empresses or emperors, but I wish I was because I think they’re pretty cool. I am a regular human, and my teeth are regular and white. I have average skin. I am also a student who goes to a normal school called School One in the Martian suburbian domes. I’m in the eleventh grade (I’m sixteen), and I’m normal (In case you couldn’t tell). I wear normal clothes that I buy at Marsmart. For example, today I’m wearing a plain white t-shirt and jeans and white sneakers. I was wearing no makeup. I was walking outside of School One. It was raining time in the dome, so rain was coming down from above. No one stared at me. I waved at them.

“Hey, Emma!” shouted a voice. I looked up. It was… Aurora Sterlingworth!

“What’s up, Aurora?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said shyly.

But then I heard my friends call me and I had to go away.

Twenty-Six blinked, then carefully forced herself to re-read everything on the page. “I-is this the entire chapter?” she asked.

“There are more chapters below,” Evelyn said. “If you scroll.”

“Oh, yeah, would you look at that. There’s more. Uh.”

“So, what do you think?”

“Uh,” Twenty-Six said. She looked at the tablet again, hoping that maybe it would glitch and suddenly some other text would appear. It didn’t. “So, um. The Aurora here, is, uh, our Aurora?”

“It’s a bit of a self-insert,” Evelyn said.

Twenty-Six nodded slowly. “Okay. And what kind of story is this supposed to be?”

“Slice of life romance,” Evelyn said. “You show up in chapter three.”

“Ah,” Twenty-Six said intelligently. “What’s it called?”

“My Mortal.”

“That’s a nice title,” Twenty-Six said. “So… romance?”

“I usually write action, but it grows tiresome. Page after page of details for each actor’s actions and reactions.” She shook her head. “A single small fight can take me weeks.”

“Weeks,” Twenty-Six repeated. She shook her head. “Um, uh….” She didn’t really have anything to say but she needed some time to think. It was like holding a leak closed with her thumb while trying to remember which switch she had to flick to bypass it. She had not been prepared for this situation.

In fact, it was kind of ruining her entire outlook on Evelyn in general, because, well, Evelyn was the tall sexy lady who was strong and knowledgeable and sexy. She really was like one of those Martian Super Dreadnoughts the way she so easily commanded attention and was such a huge threat no matter where she went.

Twenty-Six could probably figure out what to do if the super dreadnought had a heating issue, or if its guns needed reloading, but her mental catalogue was entirely empty of instructions for the super dreadnought writing bad fiction in its spare time.

“It’s very nice,” she settled on. The same words her own mom had used on her when she was a kid drawing her first wiring schematic.

Evelyn’s reaction was the same as a young Twenty-Six’s. She beamed, bright and proud. “Thank you. Do you think I should display my work?”

“Uh, I mean, um. No? I mean. Think about it this way. Art is like….” She swallowed and racked her brain for a metaphor that had nothing to do with ships or engineering. It was surprisingly difficult. “Art, good art, is like those private moments you have with your family between stations. When you’re all huddled together and hoping that your shuttle doesn’t break halfway to its destination. It’s something private, right? And I think it’s much nicer when it’s very private and no one sees it.”

“I suppose. I know little about art,” Evelyn admitted.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Twenty-Six said, then she clamped her mouth shut because that could be easily misinterpreted.

Fortunately, a distraction was at hand! The conference was ending, and some of the political sorts were standing, including Aurora. It looked like she was saved!

Twenty-Six never thought she’d be thankful for political interference, but here she was.

Anything to stop her from having to read chapter two.

Chapter seventy-two

Memorable

Ivil looked up as Aurora crossed the room and came to stand nearby. The woman stretched, hands on her hips and head tilting back as she let her spine crack. It made her blouse slip out of her pants, and Ivil caught a faint glimpse of Aurora’s stomach before her stretch ended. “That was… painful,” she said.

“Was it?” Ivil asked.

The meeting had gone on for a solid six hours, with no real breaks. Some delegates had stood to use the facilities, but for the most part the meeting had been uninterrupted.

“It was,” Aurora said as she relaxed on the spot. It seemed to Ivil as though she was allowing herself to be far less formal than usual. Perhaps it was a natural response to having to sit straight and keep her mind in the game for so long. “I legitimately can’t wait to be back in our rooms. This station had better have showers.”

“I didn’t inspect the washroom, but I’m certain there’s something like that,” Ivil said. She liked this more relaxed, less reverent version of Aurora. The woman was very attractive when she was her normal noble self, but that only made this more casual Aurora all the more interesting.

“Is… she sleeping?” Aurora asked with a small gesture to Ivil’s side.

Ivil looked down and to the side. Twenty-Six’s head was leaning up against her arm. Her mouth was slack, and there was a faint line of glistening drool running from the edge of her lips down to her chin. “She’s been sleeping from almost the start,” Ivil said. “Though she did move a few times. Did you know she talks in her sleep?”

“Does she?” Aurora asked as she raised a hand to hide a smile. “What sort of things does she say?”

“Nothing easy to parse, I’m afraid. I think she was talking about not wanting to read? She cried a little at some point and almost came awake when I started to brush her hair. Something about not wanting to tell Evelyn that she’s bad?” Ivil shrugged.

“Dreams can be a little strange,” Aurora said with a smile. “I suppose we have been through a great deal of stress lately. The sleep is good for her. Do you want to wake her up? I should go over what I’ve learned today with you and Pepper.”

“It’s fine,” Ivil said. “We can let her sleep. I’ll carry her over.”

Ivil gently moved to the side while letting go of her artificial gravity around Twenty-Six. The girl floated slightly, now entirely weightless until Ivil shifted and hooked her arms behind Twenty-Six’s back and under her legs. She rose, carrying Twenty-Six.

“A princess carry?” Aurora asked.

“Would it be more appropriate for me to carry you this way?” Ivil asked. “Princess of Phobos?”

Aurora’s cheeks darkened prettily, and she shook her head. “Ah, let’s just get back to the rooms. I’ve made a mess of my dress, and I don’t want to be seen this way. Those seats were surprisingly comfortable, but I swear my entire back is covered in sweat. It’s quite gross.”

“Will Pepper be accompanying us?” Ivil asked. She glanced across the room where Pepper and a few other aides were gathered next to a few hastily set-up computers and a single printer which seemed to be broken at the moment.

“She’s collecting the minutes,” Aurora said. “As a hard copy, of all things. It might be useful later. I have the digital version in the meantime. We can wait for her, if you want?”

“No, it’s fine. I’m certain she can take care of herself,” Ivil said. She adjusted her hold on Twenty-Six slightly. She was keenly aware of the young woman’s weight in her arms, and her warmth.

Aurora nodded along, and soon started to lead her back towards their rooms. “We’ll be staying at the station for another ten or so hours,” Aurora said. “I need rest, and I imagine Pepper does as well. Then we’ll be heading back to Driftwood with Miss Pixie guarding us. Our shuttle for the departure will be arriving in about ten hours as well.”

“That sounds good to me,” Ivil said. “So, how did the meeting go?”

“You were there, weren’t you?” Aurora asked.

“I was. And I can recite any part of it from memory, but that doesn’t mean that I have full contextual knowledge to let me know if things went well or not.”

“That’s… fair, actually,” Aurora said. “Also, the entire thing from memory?”

“I have a very good memory when I care about something,” Ivil said. For example, the memory of seeing that slip of Aurora’s stomach was going to be seared into her mind until the sun winked out.

“I see,” Aurora said. She didn’t, but Ivil didn’t think it wise to correct her.

They made it to their rooms, and Ivil finally looked down at Twenty-Six.

Twenty-Six was staring back with wide eyes, a hand close to her mouth as she was cradled in Ivil’s arms. “Oh, you’re awake,” Ivil said.

Twenty-Six nodded slowly. “You… you can put me down,” she said.

Ivil considered it. She liked carrying Twenty-Six like this. “No,” she decided. “I don’t want to.”

“Okay,” Twenty-Six said. Though, in reality it was more of a squeak. Twenty-Six seemed wide awake now. “So, um, I’ll just stay here?”

“Did you know that Imperial Star Dreadnoughts carry ships with them? They’re super-carriers. That includes several smaller frigates, but also a complement of tugboats.”

“Oh,” Twenty-Six said. Then she looked away from Ivil, her hair shifting into place to almost hide her blush.

Ivil liked it when she made the women she was interested in blush, it made something inside of her very warm. “Would you rather I put you to bed, if you’re still sleepy?”

Twenty-Six shook her head and didn’t seem ready to comment further.

Aurora was looking at them both with a raised eyebrow. “Today’s… today’s meeting went very well,” she said. “The Uranians were belligerent as expected, and Titan’s delegate is full of himself, but we have something of a tentative agreement.”

“I heard that,” Ivil said. “The member moons of the League are going to split the cores evenly?”

“Yes. At least, all of us here have agreed to that. Some moons don’t want their share of cores.”

“The Saturnian moons,” Ivil said with a nod. She could recall the two delegates being somewhat disinterested in their own share. “They never explained why they have a lack of interest.”

“It’s because of the nature of Saturn,” Aurora said.

“Oh,” Twenty-Six replied. “Um, I think I know this one. Saturn doesn’t have… government? I think we mentioned it already. What we do have is super loose, and we kinda mostly don’t care. It’s all families, clans, and smaller corporations that serve around Saturn and act as middle-men between us and the rest of the big corps in the system.”

“That would explain it,” Aurora said. She walked over to the fridge and tugged it open, pulled out a glass bottle, then drank from it openly. “They won’t be able to share the cores evenly across their… constituents. Whereas most moons have something like a militia, or at least a more central government.”

“What would Phobos do with its share?” Ivil asked.

“From what I can tell, it would be less than a hundred cores in all,” Aurora said. “So they’d be divided across shareholders. Basically, the noble families would get a share each. With the number of noble families we have… it wouldn’t be a number of cores to impress anyone on the wider stage.”

“It might give Phobos a few more C-classers, or a larger number of D-classers. In either case, that would be somewhat impressive, especially to Mars who keeps a tight grip on any core that…” Ivil paused as she watched Aurora place the now-empty water bottle onto a table. She shifted her shoulders and removed her jacket, revealing a sweat-stained blouse beneath that clung to her, the sheer material hinting at a lot. Then Aurora removed her blouse.

Ivil wondered why Aurora wore lingerie today. Was it what she wore all the time? Twenty-Six was craning her neck so hard that there was a real risk that she’d hurt herself.

The door opened, and Pepper walked in before stopping in her tracks. She stared at Ivil and Twenty-Six, then over to Aurora who still had her back turned to the rest of them and who was casually riffling through her luggage. “Should… I return?” she asked.

“No, but you should close the door,” Ivil replied. “Aurora was just filling us in on the results of the conference.”

“I see,” Pepper said. “Yes, I’m sure it was a very interesting meeting.”

“Yes,” Ivil agreed.

She was going to be remembering this too.

Chapter seventy-three

Tucked In

“Sleep well,” Ivil said as she carefully manoeuvred the blanket up to Twenty-Six’s neck. Twenty-Six was blushing still, but she was also very much glaring up at Ivil who was just a little worried that the joke had gone too far.

“This is silly,” Twenty-Six said.

Ivil grinned. “Did you want me to read you a bedtime story? Maybe give you a little kiss before you fall asleep? Or would that make things worse.”

“Urgh,” Twenty-Six said. She rolled her eyes, which really didn’t do much to help her look any more mature. “I’m not a baby.”

“So you don’t want me to treat you this way?” Ivil asked. “No tucking you in, no carrying you around, no more chaste good-night kisses?”

Twenty-Six shifted in the bed, very clearly not meeting Ivil’s eyes. “I don’t mind it. I mean, this doesn’t feel like it’s moving too fast, so it’s mostly okay. But don’t do it because you think I need it.”

“Okay,” Ivil agreed. “I’ll do it because I like it instead.”

She wasn’t sure if that was the right answer or not, but Twenty-Six didn’t protest. “Are you going to bed too?”

“No, I’ll talk to Aurora some more. I don’t actually need sleep, not unless I want it,” Ivil said. “Besides, I didn’t pack any pyjamas.”

“Heh. I bet you have really nice ones. You know, Missy loves those.”

“I heard as much,” Ivil said. “But no, I sleep in the nude. Good night, little tugboat.”

Ivil left the room with a genuine smile on her face. Twenty-Six’s embarrassed groaning was like a balm on her soul. She found Aurora in the living room still. She’d changed into something less formal, which was a shame, Ivil really didn’t mind it when Aurora went around in less. The fact that the noble was comfortable enough to do so was quite nice as well.

“How is it going?” Ivil asked.

Aurora was lying across one of the couches. It was one of those couches with the uncomfortable inserts for a person’s legs, designed to hold one in place in the room’s lacking gravity. Of course, Ivil was giving everyone in the suit the opportunity to feel half a G of gravity. A little more than what they’d experience on Mars and half as much as they’d feel on Earth. It was healthier than experiencing a full gravity when they weren’t used to it.

“It’s going well enough,” Aurora said as she glanced up from a tablet. “We’ll be leaving soon enough. You should get some sleep.”

“I don’t need it,” Ivil replied. “But you do. Care to follow your own advice?”

“I’m a politician, Evelyn. You should know that doing what we tell others to do is not in our nature.” Aurora looked up for a moment. “You truly don’t need sleep?”

“I can, if I want to,” Ivil said. She moved to the far end of the couch, and Aurora tugged her legs back to give her some room to sit. “But I rarely do. Sleep feels like a waste. I’ll take a few hours here and there, especially when in transit, but it’s more for mental recuperation and to pass the time than because I’m tired.”

“I see. Well, I wouldn’t mind a night with this gravity, I suppose,” Aurora said.

“Oh, I can keep that going while sleeping,” Ivil dismissed.

Aurora blinked. “Most people can’t keep an active ability core like that going while sleeping. Not as far as I know.”

“I’m not most people,” Ivil said. “Though really, I just have some cores that assist me with managing my others.”

Aurora stared at her for a long time before speaking up. “Gravity cores. Some sort of teleportation, what I deeply suspect is a time manipulation core of some sort. Shield cores. Now self-management cores. Not to mention at least one weapons system that was able to take out that Slob man.”

“Are we listing out my suspected cores now?” Ivil asked.

“Yes,” Aurora said. “At least, those you’ve shown me. You know, I suspected that you were a D-classer originally. It explained Pendergast’s respect for you, even though she’s clearly at least a C-classer herself.”

Ivil nodded. “She is, yes.”

“But then you pull out more cores and tricks like a magician tugging scarves out of their sleeves. You’re not a C-classer.”

“You sound quite certain,” Ivil said. She looked down as Aurora placed her feet on her lap. A show of trust? Was she even aware?

“It’s common knowledge that cores change a person. That only makes sense. They’re physical objects. They need a place to be. Mine show up on scans as thin strips here and there in my body. As a person accumulates more, the cores take up more space. They add limbs and new organs that allow them to function. Some people die from taking on too many of the wrong kind of core.”

“Or not enough of the right kind,” Ivil said. “You can die from hypovolemia if you take on too many cores that require blood circulation to function.”

“Not anemia?” Aurora asked.

“Anemia is specific to red blood cells. Which does mean that it’s part of hypovolemia, but it’s more complex than that. If you take on a few cores that give you ten more arms without a core that helps replenish blood, or take necessary medical precautions, you might die of blood loss without the loss.”

“Garish,” Aurora said. “But, back to my point. People with ten or more cores are C-classers. Sometimes they’re obvious, more often than not it’s subtle. More than a hundred, and it’s hard to hide. A hundred additions to any body is going to be visible. Mister Slob is a B-classer, is he not?”

“Yes,” Ivil said. She had a sense for where this was going.

“He was quite powerful, but his cores changed him in a very obvious way, did they not? Metal limbs, a… corpulent body. He looks more machine than man, but with all of the worse parts of biology still tacked on.”

“He was rather unattractive.”

“And yet you are very attractive,” Aurora said. She wiggled her toes a little as she said it.

“Why, thank you.”

“It’s a statement of fact,” Aurora said with a casual shrug. “You look like you were carved by a great artist. You feel warm, and fleshy, at least in those few times where we’ve touched.” She shifted a foot a little, the heel digging into Ivil’s thigh. “And yet you have so many abilities, which naturally means that you have a lot of cores to empower them.”

Ivil nodded. “I never claimed otherwise.”

“I noticed. So, common knowledge says that a D-classer can be subtle about their cores. A C-classer less so. A B-classer is a monster of flesh and machine. Which leaves… A.” She spoke the letter with finality. “How many A-classers are there?”

“In the entire system? A thousand or so,” Ivil said. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking they all look like attractive humans. Some decide that they don’t mind being monstrous. Some lean into it, even.”

“I’ve heard that kind of story, yes,” Aurora said. “But there are just as many stories about beautiful A-classers.”

“You can keep calling me beautiful, if you want. I find it rather flattering,” Ivil said.

Aurora chuckled. “I’m sure. So, why are you helping us?”

“Haven’t I made that abundantly clear?” Ivil asked.

“You’ve given me some reasons, finding love and such, but I have… a hard time believing it. An A-classer is the pinnacle of our modern world. You’re the equivalent of a pre-core-era billionaire. I can’t imagine it being hard to find someone attractive to woo in that kind of situation, especially since you’re charismatic enough.”

“Oh, I’m certain I could sleep with all sorts of people,” Ivil replied with a shrug. “But I don’t just want sex, or for someone who loves me because of my power. I want real, true love.”

“True love,” Aurora repeated.

She went quiet. It wasn’t just for a moment. The quiet stretched and stretched as Aurora stared at nothing and sank deeper into her own thoughts.

“I think I might have wanted the same, once,” she said at last. “But I don’t know if it’s real.”

“I’ve decided that it is,” Ivil said easily. “It wouldn’t be the first time that I bend reality to my will.”

Aurora laughed. “Confident, huh? For some reason it’s a lot easier for me to accept that you create gravity from nothing than for me to imagine creating true love from the same.”

“It’s not created from nothing,” Ivil said. “The love, that is. I think it needs a connection. A spark. Or maybe that’s just inexperience and wishful thinking.”

There was a knock at the door, and Ivil turned a glare at it. Someone was there, one of the delegates that she didn’t care to remember the name of.

And she was having so much fun just moments before.

Chapter seventy-four

Who Are You and What Do You Want?

“’Ello!” the man on the other side of the door said.

He was wearing a suit pulled off of a discount rack and a smile that was almost genuine. His hair was combed with his fingers, and he wasn’t standing level to the door, which only made sense. This didn’t seem like someone competent enough to care about being level.

The man next to the speaker was two heads taller, making him one of the few people that Ivil would have to look up to speak to. He had limbs that were longer than they ought to be, but Ivil couldn’t sense any cores in him, hidden or otherwise. This was just a man that grew long.

“Hello,” Ivil said. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“Ah, well, we’re here for the after-party. We noticed that delegate Sterlingworth didn’t pop out of her room, so we thought we’d do the neighbourly thing and come on over!”

“Delegate Green,” Aurora said as she walked up behind Ivil. “A pleasure to meet you again.”

The man—Delegate Green, Ivil supposed—nodded and tried a bow which made him shift in the air a little before he grabbed on to his zero-g travel drone. “Nice to see you as well. I was wondering if you were going to pop over to any of the after-meetings?”

“After-meetings?” Aurora asked.

“You know, big meetings like today’s are good and all, but all of the actual work gets done right after!”

Aurora didn’t look like she knew that. Whatever she was going to say was interrupted as a second delegate flew over. An elderly woman accompanied by a stone-faced guardsman in a suit that was somehow crisper than Delegate Green’s. “Ah, you’ve found her, Green,” she said.

“Delegate Galatea,” Aurora said with a slight bow.

“Mhm. Well, you going to invite us in?” the woman asked.

“Ah…” Aurora glanced at Ivil, then shrugged faintly and stepped back from the doorway. Ivil did likewise, letting the group in. She sighed and extended her gravity generation to the lot of them. It would raise fewer questions than if she kept it limited to Aurora and herself.

“Whoa, that’s properly nice,” Green said as he collected himself then bounced on the spot a couple of times.

“Indeed,” Aurora said while she gave Ivil a slight side-eye. “So, can I assist you with anything?”

“You can get drinks out,” Galatea said. She stomped over to the couch and sat down onto it. Her guard took up position next to the door while scanning the room. He had a gun in that jacket, and at least one core linked to his eye, but Ivil dismissed him as a non-threat.

“Give me just a moment, then,” Aurora said. “I’ll set some water to boil. There are soft drinks in the fridge there, if anyone wants any.”

“Don’t mind if I do!” Green said as he wandered over. “I make a point of grabbin’ every drink in these mini-fridges. Oh, and all of the towels and such too.”

“Which moon do you represent, exactly?” Ivil asked.

“Saturn!” he said. “No one moon in particular, really. But if you have to ask, Hyperion.”

There was a slight shuffle, and Twenty-Six poked her head into the living room. She was wrapped up in a blanket still, as if she didn’t dare un-tuck herself. “Oh! I thought I heard a familiar accent,” she said.

Green blinked, then a wide smile appeared. “Ey! Delegate Sterlingworth, you didn’t mention you had a Saturnian babe in your gang.”

“You mean in my delegation team?” Aurora asked.

“Yee,” he said. “Where’re you from, babe?” he asked.

Ivil might have, under slightly different circumstances, detached Green’s head and his body from each other, but Twenty-Six just smiled prettily, and she sensed that it wasn’t an insult to call her babe. “I’m from layer four section four,” Twenty-Six said. “The ol’ four-four, yee?”

Ivil blinked. Twenty-Six’s accent had changed. Not too much, she usually spoke with a “spacer standard” accent that had just a slight bit of a twang to it, but now it had changed a little more, become more easy-going and informal.

“Yee, that’s fantastic stuff. I’m from ol’ Hyperion myself, but my brother here is from… what’re you from?” he asked the tall man.

“Layer three, section two,” he replied with a surprisingly high-pitched voice.

Aurora returned with some tea just then, or at least a warm kettle. “Forgive my ignorance, but layers? Sections?”

“Oh, uh,” Twenty-Six said. “Layers are the depth in the ring. The lower the layer, the closer to Saturn. Sections are quadrants around the planet. But there are ten of them, so it’s not really quadrants.”

“Ah, so it’s a way to identify where you’re from in relation to Saturn.”

“Yee,” Twenty-Six said with a nod. “There’s a bit of, uh, casual racism that goes with it too, unfortunately. The outermost layers had it best, and the inner layers, one and two, have to deal with a lot more radiation and such, so they tend to be a bit weirder.”

“We’ve been getting better ’bout it,” Green said. “Saturn’s got this weird rep problem. Everyone knows we’re the best engineers in the system, and yet they insist on thinking we’re all backwards hicks.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive,” Galatea said. She nodded her thanks to Aurora, then prepared her tea. “Ah, it’s nice to work with gravity. You’ll have to tell me how you got your hands on a localised generator like that.”

“I… know some people,” Aurora replied without looking Ivil’s way. “You mentioned earlier how after-meetings were common?”

“Oh, of course. No one will air out their private grievances in an official meeting. Nor will actual deals be struck there. It’s too open, too public,” the old lady replied as she clinked a spoon in her cup. “Now’s the real time for deals to be made.”

“I see. And what kind of deals are you trying to make?” Aurora asked.

The old woman huffed. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“If it was, I’m certain Aurora wouldn’t have to ask,” Ivil said.

The woman huffed some more. “We’re here to deal, Lady Sterlingworth. The main thrust of today’s meeting was dispensing each moon’s share of the cores. These two Saturnians already made it clear enough that they don’t care much for their share.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Green said. “It’s valuable. We just can’t make best use of them ourselves.”

“Hmm, exactly. Galatea has little interest as well. Our moon has a sword of Damocles above it. We’re just waiting out the centuries until we slip past the Roche limit and break up. Not so different from the position your Phobos was in before that empress knocked you back into place.”

“I see,” Aurora said. “So you’re not interested in your share of the cores either?”

“Oh! Don’t think that for a moment. We’d make good use of those. Our family, and extended family, has become quite rich acting like the last pit-stop to the ass-end of the solar system, but we’ll never be a major influence. We keep our heads down and are happy with just being rich and apart from all the rest.”

Ivil nodded. She wasn’t too well versed in Neptunian politics, but the Galatea family of Neptune was somewhat known to her. They ran the failing moon as well as a few dozen stations in Neptune’s rings. They collected resources and acted as a waystation for deep-system exploration. They weren’t too dissimilar to Saturn in some ways. Plenty of natural resources, but nothing that others couldn’t grab closer to home, and nothing to do with those resources themselves.

They were relatively rich, all things considered. Not individually, but as a “family.” Their nation was strictly socialist. Almost violently so. All gains were shared equally, and all hardship borne the same way. The average Neptunian was actually far more wealthy, dollar-for-dollar, than just about anyone else in the solar system.

But they were also stuck in their little corner unable to leave without losing everything. It was the living embodiment of a sunk-cost world.

More cores wouldn’t help them. The wealth and favours earned from those cores, however….

“I think we could work something out,” Aurora said. “Phobos is… not the wealthiest, but this kind of investment would mean a lot to us.”

“Money is nice, favours are nicer,” Galatea said.

“Oh? We’d settle for money,” Green replied. “But there are richer fish to drop this bait in front of. Just auctioning off all of the cores one at a time would bring us a small fortune.”

“Not as much of a fortune as we could bring,” Aurora said. “Not unless you intend to sell to Mars or Earth or one of their proxies?”

“That would burn our bridges with the League,” Green said. “But selling to individuals and corps? That’s a little easier to swallow.”

Aurora shook her head. “What kind of favours would you trade for cores, then?”

“Experts, medical facilities and supplies, some help putting pressure on the corps that are preventing us from forming a proper government,” Green listed off casually. He might have been a hick, but the man wasn’t stupid, Ivil realised.

Chapter seventy-five

Safety and Security and Saturn

The talks continued.

Ivil’s interest did not.

Still, she made an effort to remain attentive. Aurora was certainly keen to listen and discuss things with both parties. It was an interesting balancing act to observe.

The Saturnians wanted things that were relatively easy to obtain around Mars. Medical facilities—Mars had the best of these, bar few—supplies and cash. They wanted the things that normal governments had and could provide to their citizens.

Twenty-Six was entirely on board for that. “Do you know how many problems my family and extended family had would have been solved if there were more medical facilities in the Rings?” she asked. “Not even just that, I mean like, the kind of medical place that Mars and Earth has, where you don’t need to pay.”

“You pay for those through taxation,” Aurora said. “But yes, I understand what you mean. It would be… life changing.” Aurora pinched her chin for a moment, then nodded. “How many quarters did you divide your rings into?”

“Sections,” Green corrected. “And there are ten of them.”

“I see. And two of Saturn’s moons are properly colonised, correct?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “Why the geographical questions?”

“I have a proposition, then,” Aurora said. “Phobos has a small fleet, mostly older Martian ships that we purchase for lower rates. Included in this fleet are a number of medical frigates. I don’t remember the exact number, but there may well be a dozen of these. As far as I’m aware, they’re not being used at the moment. Some will require retrofitting and modifications, but they can be brought up to tip-top for relatively little.”

“How old are we talking here?” Green asked.

Ivil perked up. She knew this one. “The Martian fleet had a large renovation about eight years ago. We feared the onset of a fourth solar war that never occurred. Most of the ships of the line were replaced at that time as Martian factories went into full production. A lot of that new fleet replaced the old one, and the old one went into mothballs.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” Twenty-Six said.

“Those older ships were only thirty or forty years old,” Ivil replied. “Definitely dated. Slower drives, worse sensor technology, inferior accommodations, and poorer shields. Replacing them was the right move. However, Mars can’t just sell them. Old they might be by Martian standards, they’re still comparable to the current-gen ships from most nations. In any case, what I mean to point out is that the medical frigates will be forty years old at the oldest.”

“That’s not that bad,” Green said. “I mean, it ain’t ideal, yee? But that’s about the age of some of our facilities too. So, what’s your plan, Lady Sterlingworth?”

“Phobos will undertake the renovation of… twelve of these ships. They’re medical frigates, so they’re not all that large, but I think they can take a decent through-put of patients all the same. We’ll undertake the improving of this medical fleet at our own expense and provide them with an escort. Perhaps… Phobos has a large fleet of corvettes.”

“Oh!” Twenty-Six said as she bounced on the spot. “Phobian corvettes are hot.”

“Hot?” Ivil asked.

“They’re sleek, long, with a thin vertical profile,” Twenty-Six said. “They look a bit like stingrays, the fish… animal things from Earth? Definitely some of the prettiest ships around.”

“They’re designed by a firm that usually produces luxury ships,” Aurora said. “I believe they’re considered to be rather underwhelmingly armed, but that same firm produces racing ships. They’re very manoeuvrable and rapid, with exceptionally comfortable crewing arrangements.”

“Go on, then,” Ivil replied.

Aurora nodded. “I can secure twenty-four corvettes for… call it one year and a month of service. Along with twelve medical frigates. Staffed and operated by Phobos. In exchange for one year of service, Saturn will give us their supply of cores.”

Green leaned back, then shook his head. “Too little,” he replied. “And we can guarantee the safety ourselves, though maybe not in transit.”

Aurora hummed. “Two years?”

“Make it ten,” Green returned, then he raised a hand. “No… how about you service the ships yourselves for a year, then lease the frigates to Saturn at a favourable price for the next nine years? By the end they’ll be at the end of their service life, so maybe we can negotiate buying the ships outright.”

“Ten years of medical services is a lot,” Aurora said.

“We have our own doctors and staff. Not many, but some. What if we use the frigates as a sort of training opportunity?”

“Oh, yes, I can see that working,” Aurora replied. “Phobos has a very robust medical system. We have been the place where Martians come to have… unusual and discreet operations completed for decades now, so we’ve always had a vested interest in having good doctors. I can maybe secure a few teachers as well, to train any Saturnian nurses and general practitioners up to our standard. We might be able to do an exchange of sorts?”

Green let out a breath, his shoulders drooping in relief. “That would be incredible. It would loosen the corporate hold on our people a great deal for them to have the option to take government-provided medical care, and it would do wonders to help encourage the average Saturnian to participate in our own legitimate governance of the rings.”

“Ye-yeah, the rings are all corpo,” Twenty-Six said. “I didn’t even know what the u-word was until I left Saturn.”

“The u-word?” Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six nodded, then flushed a little. When she next spoke, it was in a hushed whisper, as if she was saying something incredibly taboo. “Union,” she said.

“Be that as it may,” Aurora said. “I think it would also seem like a novel opportunity to promote Phobian philanthropy. That is, if you want to obscure the reason for the trade?”

Green hummed, then nodded. “That’s acceptable,” he replied. “Thank you, genuinely. This will save many lives.”

Ivil felt like it was a little short-sighted. Sure, this would save lives, but they were trading away dozens of cores for it. She wasn’t sure if the value proposition even matched. What bothered her more was the loss of eventual power. Those cores given to one talented person could turn into more cores, which could snowball. In the long term, it would mean more dead Saturnians but it might also eventually lead Saturn to having their own notable B- or A-classer.

Still, she remained silent. This was Aurora’s negotiation, and her friend’s heart was in the right place. The Saturnians were desperate, and perhaps this gesture of goodwill would foster alliances that outweighed the raw value of the cores.

“Very well,” Aurora said with a soft smile. “We have a deal. I’ll begin the arrangements immediately.”

Galatea raised her teacup in a mock toast. “To the future then, Lady Sterlingworth. May it be as bright as your intentions.”

“Thank you,” Aurora said. “But you haven’t said what you want for your moon’s cores, Miss Galatea.”

“Money,” was the immediate, clipped response.

Aurora blinked. “We can do money,” she replied. And then they dove into what was essentially a longwinded negotiation that Ivil didn’t care as much about.

As the delegates settled into more relaxed conversation, Ivil found herself drifting towards Twenty-Six, who was still bundled in her blanket and looking positively edible.

“Did you understand all that?” Twenty-Six asked in a hushed whisper, her accent reverting back to its usual twang.

“Most of it,” Ivil replied. “It’s a complex game we’re playing, but I think Aurora knows what she’s doing.”

Twenty-Six nodded thoughtfully. “I hope so. Aurora is so smart. And pretty. You know, this is going to save a lot of lives. People like me. I bet there’s a hundred other Twenty-Sixes out in the rings that could really use that help.”

“I’m certain there’s only one Twenty-Six that I care for,” Ivil replied. “But I see what you mean. I never was one for… philanthropy. But I can see why it might make someone more attractive.”

It was another hour before Aurora and Galatea shook hands, having hammered out a deal that sounded rather poor to Ivil. Aurora was paying more for unknown cores than most would. Ivil supposed that it was a gamble, but Phobos had more money than it had easy access to new cores, so it made some sense.

The delegates finally took their leave, and Twenty-Six returned to bed with a large, jaw-cracking yawn. Even Pepper retired for the night after having been relegated to the edges of the room and the discussion.

“That was… intense,” Aurora admitted.

“You did well,” Ivil said, placing a reassuring hand on Aurora’s shoulder. “Better than I could have.”

Aurora smiled gratefully. “We’ll see if it pays off. For now, we’ve bought ourselves some time and goodwill. I hope it’ll be worth something in the real conference.”

Interlude - At Your Service

Part One

Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates slid into its moorings with the measured grace of a maid slipping into a busy kitchen.

The vessel was once a Martian pocket cruiser. Once. That may have been two generations ago, however. Now the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates was a prideful ship of the Tech Maids of Mars.

She was repainted in the austere blacks and greys and whites of the order. Red heraldry hung over her, like tapestries upon a mediaeval castle’s walls. The ship, like most Martian vessels, was built vertically, a massive pillar that moved under the power of huge engines bulging out of her rear.

There were, Sonic Spectre suspected, few stock parts left on the venerable pocket cruiser. Young Miss Twenty-Six would have adored seeing her.

The Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates had navigated the busy space around Driftwood Station with care. Even now, she was politely speaking with the station, keeping a constant flow of information going while the officers on board continued the rites of stationbound communication. Other, smaller vessels were guided out of her path, and curious onlookers were tagged and addressed by Tech Maids ready and willing to spread the word of the Ordo to any and all willing to listen.

Finally, the vessel came to a stop. Mooring arms moved from one of the larger piers on Driftwood and connected to her sides, and long airlock tubes were unfolded and locked into place. These tubes were lined with windows, allowing Sonic Spectre to see the black-clothed figures of the Adeptus Ancillia swiftly making their way towards the station proper.

She moved away from the viewing window and into the lobby space where she would be able to better greet her siblings in maidcraft. This space wasn’t entirely private. There were onlookers and gawkers, many of them had started by blatantly staring at her, then the ship moored just outside. None of them had approached her.

That might have been her own fault. Sonic didn’t want to be approached at the moment, and so she was making no effort to hide her many cores. Her entire body flicked and flickered, sometimes moving several centimetres to the left or right, and her mechanical grasping appendages were plainly visible beneath the hem of her maidly uniform. Even the least knowledgeable person would know that she had several cores when she was flaunting them so.

The last airlock into the lobby space opened, and the HomeGuard of the Adeptus Ancillia walked into Driftwood in lockstep. Seven men in suits with trailing tailcoats and large lapels. Masks covered their faces, with several hoses reaching out over their shoulders into small packs on their lower backs, and they wore thick leather-like belts that had tabards dangling from them filled with a small panoply of tools. A person from the early twenty-first century might have assumed that they were something like a mechanic cosplaying as a butler, and they wouldn’t have been entirely incorrect.

Six of the seven arrayed themselves in two rows leading into the airlock. The seventh came to stand before her. They all, at the same moment, folded an arm before their waist and another at the small of their back, then they bowed at an exacting thirty degrees. “Greetings, Savant Sana Pendergast,” they spoke in unison. Then the Tech Maid—the tech butler if one wished to use the gender-specific terminology—in the lead spoke on his own. “I am Sentinel Arthur Hesk, Subtle of Ceremonies, Brother of the Order of the Home.”

“Greetings, Sentinel Hesk,” Sonic said. “Are you to escort me?”

“At your leisure, my lady Savant,” he replied smoothly. Or as smoothly as someone whose voice was warped by a mask could be.

Sonic nodded, and accepted the Sentinel’s arm when he extended it to her. Technically, she didn’t need to accept his arm. Accepting it put her above the Sentinel, as per Ancillia protocol. In her role as a Tech Maid, that wasn’t entirely accurate, but in her role as an agent of the Empire of Mars it was entirely appropriate.

She was straddling a strange line at the moment.

Previously her split roles were… simpler to digest. She was Sonic Spectre first. Valkyrie of Mars. She served the Martian navy from dawn to dusk. Her involvement with the Adeptus Ancillia was something she’d adopted when very young but not her calling or creed.

The Adeptus Ancillia had helped her career though. Giving her access to better training and knowledge that would otherwise have been hard to gather. And so she returned the favour here and there. She kept to the customs and rose through the ranks in the few spare moments she had when she was free of Valkyrie work.

Those moments had become rarer and more fleeting with time, but the order also treated her with more… deference.

The order existed to serve those with cores. She had cores. Enough to be a solid B-classer. Enough to have left much of her humanity behind.

If it wasn’t for the Order and its teaching, and even its direct assistance, then the transition from C to B-classer might have been enough for her to lose herself.

People didn’t know it, because there were so few examples around, but losing one’s human form after gaining so many hundreds of cores was also likely to have one lose their human mind.

Too many lost themselves. Not just the memory of their own physicality, but their very minds and perhaps their souls.

The order had helped her keep her mind intact. She owed them much for it. It allowed her to be one of Mars’s few B-class Valkyries, one of a few hundred. She was nervous about approaching the hallowed realms of the A-class. The space where people turned from mechanical, core-welding monsters into… whatever they damned well pleased.

What would she become, when she reached that level of mastery over reality itself?

Having spent some time now in close proximity to the Empress of Mars herself, Sonic was… more conflicted than she would be willing to ever admit.

Ivil Antagonist was a monster. She was very human.

Sonic was likely going to be talking about her soon enough. They reached the outer airlock of the ship. They opened with a hiss, and Sentinel Hesk gestured her in.

As the airlocks cycled she recentred herself. Then they opened, and Sonic found herself at the head of a procession.

A hundred maids stood in two neat rows, stretching out ahead of her to the left and right. They wore the blacks and whites of the order, with a few visual differences in their cut and garb hinting at their stations aboard the ship. They stood in a grand lobby. A space carved out of the cruiser specifically to be ostentatious, to wow any guest coming aboard.

A grand staircase swept upwards at the far end of a hall lined with Martian redstone. The room made no effort to disguise what it was, however. Maintenance panels sat in their places, ducts ran across the ceiling, neatly laid wires hugged the walls, each in their place and colour coded for convenience.

“Greetings,” the maids said as one. They curtsied in time with each other.

One stood at the far end of the group. A Tech Maid in an elaborate red dress, hood pulled low to hide her still-organic face. Six arms were folded before her, neat and poised.

Sonic allowed her senses to travel the room. It hummed. The ship was alive. She did make out chatter and whispers from the rooms adjoining this hall. Younger members of the Ordo doing what they did best: spreading gossip. Well, some traditions were harder to squash than others, she supposed.

Stepping up while still clinging to Sentinel Hesk—though she led at the moment—she made her way down the procession of maids. Each one of them stood at full attention as she crossed through them until, finally, she stood before the Head Maid. “Greetings,” Sonic Spectre said. “I am Savant Sana Pendergast, Keeper of Pristine Networks, Sister of the Order of the Wet Mop. I have come to report. Might I have your permission to come aboard?”

The face beneath the cowl smiled. It was kindly and gentle. “Hello, sister. I am Dedicate Helen Kirkland, Voice of Pristine Homes, Sister of the Order of the Broom Cupboard. I welcome you aboard the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates. Come! Let’s have refreshments and a little chat. I’m certain you have some very juicy gossip to share.”

She didn’t know the half of it, Sonic thought. “Let’s, please,” she replied.

And so she was gently escorted into a room with several lounge chairs, many well-tended plants, a small library, and a warm kettle of tea. Most strikingly, however, the room was decorated by a single painting hung on the far wall.

Six metres by ten, oil on canvas. It was an image of one of the people the Adeptus Ancillia venerated most. A mass of machinery and organic parts, kilometres long. Arms like spiral galaxies and eyes enough to drive the sane mad. The person in the image was in the process of eating a fleet of the Earth Alliance.

Sonic mused, for a moment, on the irony of reporting about the Empress of Mars under a painting of the very same empress back in the time before she’d taken on a more humble appearance.

Interlude - At Your Service

Part Two

Sonic paused by her seat, the lesser of the two placed across from each other on either end of the lone coffee table in the room. Dedicate Kirkland moved to the larger, more plush of the two seats, then carefully gestured for Sonic to sit.

She sat.

The older woman smiled and adjusted her robes while sitting. Then she started a simple tea ceremony. There was a clink as she tapped out an appropriate amount of tea leaves into a glass device. “How do you like yours?” she asked.

“Plain,” Sonic replied. She had long ago lost her stomach. For that matter, she had no oesophagus or even a mouth. All the speaking she did was through a core that allowed her to manipulate sounds. She thought that she might regret the choice, but it was surprisingly easy to grow past the need to eat or drink. In any case, there was no point in wasting more than just one cup of tea.

The Dedicate poured two cups, then carefully moved one of them with her second set of arms so that it rested before Sonic. “There,” she said. “Whenever you’re ready, sister.”

Sonic nodded, then carefully adjusted her sitting position and swept her hands down her lap to press out any unsightly wrinkles in her skirt. “Is there a particular place you want me to begin?” she asked.

The Dedicate shook her head. “We have access to your reports up to the entering of the ship known as the Held Together. Afterwards, nothing except for a letter informing the Martian Admiralty of your prompt and imminent desertion.”

“Ah, I see. How did they take it?” she asked.

“All things considered, rather well,” Dedicate Kirkland said. She took a sip from her cup after blowing across it. “The… circumstances allowed for a great deal of speculation amongst the few members of the brass who are cleared to know them.”

“And the Ordo learned of my circumstances how?” she asked.

That was her one point of contention in all of this. She hadn’t informed the Adeptus Ancillia. They had simply known. Though to be fair, the Dedicate here was a high-ranking member of the organisation, and she had no reason to believe that things had spread beyond that.

“We have… friends, in many organisations around Mars. But a lot of what we do know comes from MINT. Not through spies or people who spilled secrets, but as a direct warning.” She shifted in her seat slightly and gave her teacup to two of her metallic hands. “They warned us not to interfere the moment your desertion came to light. We asked for more, and they provided.”

Sonic nodded slowly. She’d… almost forgotten about all of that. She was, technically, no longer a member of the Martian navy. Ivil had forced her to sign away that belonging. And now her own brothers and sisters of the Adeptus Ancillia didn’t know where they stood. Hence… this very moment.

She thought back to the moment where she’d agreed to serve the empress. Had there been anything about keeping her secrets?

Technically, no. She’d merely told Sonic that she didn’t want someone whose loyalties were split.

And so Sonic now had to choose what to say. The truth wouldn’t be breaking any rules, but it would spit in the spirit of what the empress had asked.

No one survived spitting at the empress.

So Sonic started to dance. “I was ordered to leave the service of the Martian navy,” she said.

“By whom? And why, if I may ask, did you choose to obey such a thing?”

Sonic turned her head away from the Dedicate and instead faced the painting on the far wall. It truly was a masterwork. Had the painter been there? She narrowed her vision down to a plaque beneath the image. It dated it to half a decade after the Third Solar War. So perhaps not an eye-witness’s art.

“I believe that, were I to report this, I may well be ordered to leave the Adeptus Ancillia as well.”

The Dedicate sat a little taller. “You would abandon your oaths and maidly way of life?”

“No, I would not,” Sonic said. “But I would abandon the organisation in order to better conduct myself as is appropriate for a member of the Ordo.”

The Dedicate stared for a long time, her lips drawn into a thin line.

“It’s a beautiful painting,” Sonic said.

“Is it? I’ve studied it for some hours. It’s not… realistic, of course. The real battle happened across hundreds of thousands of kilometres. The image squeezes in the Earth Alliance fleet far too much.”

“Indeed. I’d suspected as much. The empress was quite different back then. Now she seems far more human. Did you know, once you talk to her, you discover that she has… scandalously human desires. No, don’t scowl at me. This is no blasphemy. She is the empress still. As poised and regal and deadly as ever. But she has the wonts of… a person, nonetheless. I suspect that her return to a human form after… the tribulations of the early and late A-class have encouraged her to rekindle her humanity. It’s quite beautiful.”

“Is it?”

“It is,” Sonic said. “Would that she had a member of the Ancillia close to her now, to serve and protect.”

“Ah,” the Dedicate said. She settled her cup into its saucer. The rim clattered slightly. She placed it onto the table and folded all six hands over her lap, fingers intertwined. “How can the Adeptus Ancillia help?”

A sudden change of pace, but one that removed a weight of stress from Sonic’s back. She welcomed it.

“Interference at this time may be… unwise. However, there is opportunity.” Sonic leaned back and considered how to handle this for a moment. Ivil may well be irate if the Adeptus Ancillia broke her cover with her… potential mates. That would be the first hurdle. Could the Ancillia help beyond keeping its distance?

It was very likely. They had little influence here, around Jupiter, but little wasn’t none. The Adeptus Ancillia also had a decently strong military capability. This ship alone was large enough to deter most pirates, and it wasn’t the jewel of the Adeptus Ancillia fleet.

“The empress is being subtle. Moreso than ever before. I am acting as her liaison, but I believe that she doesn’t want the fact of her existence here to be known by any.”

“I understand, and I will endeavour to make the rest of the Ordo understand as well,” Dedicate Kirkland said.

“It may be best if instead of making them understand, the truth was simply kept to as few as possible,” Sonic said. “I am risking much by admitting this already.”

“I see. Your bravery shan’t go unnoticed.”

“I appreciate it, Dedicate.” Sonic clasped her hands together and made a small sign of reconciliation and then shifted into the sign for a change of subjects. This didn’t go unnoticed to the Dedicate, who had likely gone through ten thousand such ceremonies. “There is someone I met that might be of minor interest to the Ordo.”

“Oh?”

“Two people, actually, with potentially a third… or fourth. It’s a complex matter. But the one I wish to highlight is a young woman, a Saturnian by birth and upbringing.”

“We have few members from Saturn, though it isn’t unheard of,” the Dedicate said. “Culturally, they tend to chafe under the strictness of the Ordo.”

“I can see that, yes. The young lady I speak of may also have some difficulties in adapting. But I think she’s worth the Ordo’s time. She has a brilliant mind.”

“And she has interest in becoming a member?”

“I don’t believe so. She does have a single core at the moment.” The mandate of the Adeptus Ancillia was to assist those with cores. But, generally speaking, they tended to assist those with more cores more often than those with few. A single core would barely put someone on the Ordo’s metaphorical radar, though it would earn their attention. “I think it may be wise for the Tech Maids of Mars to assist this young woman with her further education, outside of the bounds of the order itself. Perhaps seeding her into one of the Martian engineering colleges?”

“An interesting request, and certainly something we could accommodate. But why?”

“Because doing so would give you an excuse for being there, and a reason for me to be speaking to you now.”

The Dedicate stared, or so Sonic chose to believe, her eyes were still hidden by her cowl. “Very well, then, consider it done.”

“Thank you. Now… there are a few more minor requests that I believe may be helpful…”

Chapter seventy-six

In the Pocket

Ivil imagined that something was up the moment she noticed the Tech Maid ship hovering next to Driftwood Station. The ship… likely some sort of cruiser, or a large destroyer judging by the size of it, was hard to miss. It was moored in a station next to the one that housed the Sappho and was half as tall as some of the larger stations that made up Driftwood. There were a few cargo vessels that were about as large or larger, but none of those bristled with guns or were as sleek as the modified Martian warship.

There were few reasons for the Tech Maids to be this far from home. Her presence was one of them.

They’d always done their utmost to hound her wherever she went, believing that their religious superstitions about cores and machines gave them the right to stick their nose in her business.

Usually it was relatively harmless. She suspected she could make the entire order weep with joy if she just accepted one invitation for tea with their leadership, but Ivil wasn’t truly tempted to waste her own time like that.

“Whoa!” Twenty-Six said. She had her nose pressed up to the viewport of their shuttle as they hovered past the Tech Maid ship. “That’s a beauty! Did you see her, Evelyn?”

“I did,” she replied. “Some old Martian cruiser, I imagine?”

“A pocket-cruiser,” Twenty-Six corrected. “It’s a post–Second Solar War ship, back when the Earth Alliance and the Empire of Mars had just signed the Luna Accords.”

“The accords limiting the size of warships?” Aurora asked. She was lounging back in one of the shuttle’s comfortable seats, a small pad balanced on a knee where she was reading a report or another.

Their trip back from Oppresorax Station had been as unexciting as their trip there had been exciting. So far, no one had tried to kill or ambush them. It was almost like whoever had tried gave up, at least for the moment.

It made Ivil’s hackles rise, knowing that the first attempt might have been nothing more than blind opportunism. Someone was playing a game out here, and she didn’t know what it was.

“That’s the one!” Twenty-Six said. “That one was great.”

“It was a political farce,” Aurora said. “The ink wasn’t dry before both sides were violating it.”

“Huh? Oh, sure, but it meant that both Mars and Earth created a whole new fleet of warships. Mini ones, to get around the limits of the accord, I guess. It’s always cool to see ships that are designed to squeak past some hard, arbitrary limit. Like that pocket cruiser. It’s only a little longer than a frigate, and tonnage wise it’s barely in the cruiser range, but it’s definitely got a cruiser’s complement of weapons. They had to sacrifice a whole heap of things to fit that much bang in that small a package, which makes it super neat. I bet the engineering under those hull plates is something else.”

“I don’t believe Mars continued making pocket-cruisers, did they?” Ivil asked.

“Huh? Oh no, it’s a stupid idea. There’s a reason ships are the size that they are. Sure you might be able to cram things into such a small package, but just because you can doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. I mean, look at that ship. See the space between the first and second hardpoint? There was definitely another turret emplacement there, but it got removed, and you can see from the way the thruster pack juts out that the hull was modified and made a little fatter. Probably to give better access from the interior.”

“I see,” Ivil said. “Maybe one day I’m going to sit you in on the board of engineers for the Martian navy and have you tell them how to do their jobs.”

Twenty-Six giggled. “Oh, I’d have a few ideas,” she said. “But no, they do a good enough job. It’s the politicians and such, giving them silly limitations that really get in the way.”

“On behalf of my fellow politicians… stab away,” Aurora said.

Twenty-Six shook her head. “If you wanna see what happens when the limits are all off, take a look at one of those Super-Dreadnoughts. A ship that has carrying capacity for an entire squadron of frigates. That’s nuts!”

Ivil patted Twenty-Six on the head.

Soon enough, they were coming in to dock at a shuttle bay, and everything seemed to be in order. That was, until Aurora perked up. “Our escort wants to meet with us,” she said.

“You mean Pixie?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Yes, Miss Starling,” Aurora confirmed. “She sent me a private message asking to meet before we continue. She suggested a… spacer bar that’s quite close to the docking facility.”

“It’s reasonable to expect an escort to want a debrief after a mission where unexpected combat was seen,” Pepper said.

Ivil had almost forgotten that that woman was there. Pepper really had a gift for blending in when she wanted to. “I wouldn’t mind stopping by to see her again,” Ivil said. “And I’m sure she has a professional opinion to give about what happened on our way to Oppresorax.”

Someone had tried to kill Ivil, which was common enough. But trying to kill Twenty-Six and Aurora? Now that was far less forgivable, and unfortunately far easier to accomplish.

Maybe she’d have to do something about that, actually.

The shuttle’s stewards asked them to return to their seats soon after, and they started through docking procedures to link up to the station. Ivil extended her senses past the exterior of the ship, which gave her a good view of Pixie’s Nightshade slipping into a smaller docking bay nearby.

Pepper assured them that their luggage would be taken care of and shipped back to the Sappho, so with nothing to truly worry about, and with no customs to deal with, they left the shuttle and slipped into the larger station without issue.

“What was the name of that bar?” Twenty-Six asked.

“The Dead Swan,” Aurora said. “Which isn’t an auspicious name.”

“Do you believe that she’s sending a message with that choice?” Pepper asked.

“No, probably not. It’s the nearest spacer bar to this part of the docks,” Aurora said. “I wouldn’t read too much into it.”

Pepper nodded slowly. She was probably, Ivil imagined, going to read into it anyway. MINT loved their subtle hints and not so subtle symbolism. They worked those into a lot of their codes and passphrases and their internal memes. It made the organisation that much more obtuse to understand.

Ivil followed after the others, but quickly noticed that while Pepper was preoccupied trying not to grab any attention, and Twenty-Six was idly scanning any ships visible through the viewports to the outside, Aurora was looking at the people.

“You’re intent,” Ivil said as she walked up next to her.

“Hmm? Oh? I’m people watching.”

“Anything interesting to see?” Ivil asked. The people here mostly seemed like normal civilians. Some dock workers, a few business people on the move, even a few small families, groups of friends, and what looked like one larger group of tourists.

Aurora shrugged. “It’s what you don’t see, sometimes, as much as it is what you do. Driftwood is peaceful at the moment. Did you see any security?”

“Now that you mention it, no,” Ivil said. She scanned further, and did find one guard half-asleep in a station two floors up. “Is that a bad sign?”

“It can either mean that the security situation is really poor, lacking funds or the like, or there’s just no need for heightened security. That can be a great sign. It means that people aren’t as nervous or worried, and that violent crime is low.”

“We’ve encountered some strange people here,” Ivil said. “This place isn’t free of crime by any means. Though maybe this part of the station in particular is safe enough? Like a good neighbourhood?”

“Maybe,” Aurora said. “I feel like maybe there should be more security. And it’s not like there’s a visible lack of dock workers at the moment.” They happened to cross a security station at that moment, one that was clearly just empty.

“You believe the security is missing, then?”

“Or relocated,” Aurora said. “Jupiter doesn’t have a formal army. Not really. But it does have a large security and policing apparatus. With the big conference coming up, it’s possible that security was innocently relocated to keep delegates safe or to keep an eye on things.”

“Or there might be a more sinister motive to everything?” Ivil asked.

Aurora hummed. “I think it behoves us to assume the worst, sometimes.”

Ivil grinned. If things went wrong, then maybe she’d have more chances to impress the girls. On the other hand, disasters didn’t make for good dating opportunities, did they?

Chapter seventy-seven

Terribly Normal

The spacer bar wasn’t as bad as Ivil might have feared. Certainly it wasn’t a top-class establishment, and it could use some minor renovations, but it was mostly clean, and its current patronage seemed rather reserved.

Technically it was very, very early on Driftwood Station. There was a twenty-four hour clock to divide most shifts, and they’d arrive at the station sometime in the early a.m. Any rabble-rousers or after-shift partying would be over by the time they arrived.

Ivil spotted Pixie waiting for them already. The petite woman had picked out a larger table in a back corner of the bar and was nursing a drink all on her own. She perked up when she saw Ivil and the girls coming in.

“Hey, good to see you,” she said. “Come on, pick a seat!”

Ivil did just that, sitting across from Pixie in the middle of the table. It was a clever bit of placement. No matter where the others sat, they’d need to be on either side of her, ensuring that she had someone on both sides.

It did leave her back to the entrance, something which she generally disliked as a matter of principle, but it wasn’t like she didn’t have senses that could be extended beyond herself to scan for trouble.

Aurora adjusted her blouse, then carefully sat on Ivil’s right. Twenty-Six spun the chair on her left around and straddled it, arms crossed over its back and a smug grin on full display. Ivil suspected that Twenty-Six thought she looked cool.

“You seem to be in a good mood, Miss Starling,” Aurora said.

Pixie grinned from ear to ear and leaned way forwards. “You bet. Do you know how many of my missions end up seeing any amount of combat?”

“Aren’t you like, a super cool bounty hunter? And your ship is awesome. That kind of thing can’t be cheap, so I bet you see a lot,” Twenty-Six said.

Pixie laughed. “Not nearly as much as you might think. Even the most dangerous escort missions only see combat one time in ten.”

“And that’s enough to make them the most dangerous?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Yeah. You worked on a commercial ship, right?” Pixie asked her. “How often did you get waylaid by pirates or the like?”

“Uh, in the last four years? Maybe three times? And twice we just dumped and ran,” Twenty-Six said.

“Right. No company worth their Oh-Two will try to take dangerous routes. A one-in-ten chance of being attacked is a huge liability, which is why even the most dangerous paths are avoided if at all possible. And when they can’t be, they hire on escorts like me. Usually not just one or two either, but a small flight of fighters and support ships for longer haul missions. In reality, I get maybe one mission in twenty where I see any combat. And that combat is usually short and quick. Pirates are just as risk averse as companies.”

“Which is only logical,” Aurora said. “They’re a business of a sort as well.”

“Exactly. Half the time the moment they see that they’re up against someone with teeth, they cut and run.” Pixie grinned big. “And I have big teeth.”

She probably thought she looked threatening. Ivil thought she looked like someone who needed their cheeks pinched.

“Anyway, I’m mostly happy because nothing gets my blood boiling like a good dogfight. And combat pay too. You do remember the clause in my contract about combat pay, right, Miss Sterlingworth?”

Aurora nodded demurely. “There’s nothing to worry about. You will receive your payment in full,” she said. “Phobos does not renege on deals. Not when you saved us out there.”

“Oh, speaking of saving us,” Twenty-Six said. She tried to lean forwards, but couldn’t, on account of being seated improperly, so she just ended up bouncing on the spot. “What were you fighting out there?”

“Those weren’t pirates, I can tell you that much,” Pixie said.

“You can tell so easily?” Ivil asked.

Pixie nodded. “Pirates come in two flavours most of the time, with very few exceptions. The first are flying around in converted ships. Freighters and tugs and small shuttles converted to be armed and up-armoured. Some are even pretty decent once properly converted. The second flavour are ships made in and around Ceres. Vessels made by some of the larger pirate consortiums. Those tend to be used by the more professional crews. I suppose the third option is old military gear. Dated cast-me-downs from the last solar war or bought off from military surplus, but those are less common than you’d think nowadays.”

Aurora nodded. “Several treaties have arisen, cracking down on the trade of military goods. I can’t imagine them being entirely successful, but it should make it harder to get that kind of equipment with ease.”

“So, if the attackers weren’t mere pirates, who were they?” Ivil asked.

Pixie shrugged. “I’ve been over the recordings. Something… weird went down in that fight. Anyway, I looked at all the footage I had of the ships. I’m not a betting woman, but if I was, I’d put money down on the three being corporate security.”

Twenty-Six blinked. “Oh. There were four ships, right? I remember Evelyn showing me them. Uh, three Titanian Pyrrole Mark sixes, or sevens! And a TMCC-600, right?”

“That’s it,” Pixie said. “The Pyrroles are pretty damned common for corporate security around here. They’re kinda trashy but cheap, and better than what poorer pirates can slap together. You’ll see plenty of them flying patrols around stations.”

“And the TMC is just a modified shuttle-gunship,” Twenty-Six said. “Anyone could have that.”

“Yes, but it was well modified,” Pixie said. “My ship has good cameras. The job was professional.”

Aurora hummed. “So, what you’re saying is that whoever tried to kill us were professionals?”

“Ah, that depends on what you mean by that,” Pixie said. “Professionals in the sense that they’re on a payroll? Then yes. Professional in the sense that they were good? Not so much.”

“Does that help us narrow down who to get retribution from?” Ivil asked.

Actually, now that she thought about it, it might make for a fun date. Perhaps not with Twenty-Six or Aurora, unless the retribution was financial in which case the Phobian princess would certainly enjoy it, but with Pixie… it was an idea.

Pixie shrugged. “You’ll need a Venn diagram of every corp and moon in the region that can afford to hire security like that and who want you dead. All the numbers on the ships were stripped off. No IFF, no markings. Which is only to be expected.”

“We won’t be able to point to a single organisation, then,” Aurora said.

“Except that now a company is missing four security ships,” Pixie said. “For the bigger corps, that’s nothing. For a smaller corp, that’s a pretty hefty loss. A few million, at least.”

“Whoa,” Twenty-Six said.

Ivil shrugged, then glanced over to Pepper, catching the quiet young woman’s eye. “I’m certain someone could do some digging and discover that. They’ve left a trail, after all.”

Pepper nodded subtly.

MINT would be on the case soon enough, then. Which meant… Ivil would have to wait. Once she could pin down those responsible she could go out and stretch her legs a little.

She listened to Pixie and Aurora go on for a little bit, until Twenty-Six took over with questions about the actual dogfight, with much gushing over how cool and awesome the Nightshade was. Pixie seemed proud, though Ivil suspected that she was missing the fact that Twenty-Six was more complimentary about the fightercraft than about the pilot.

They ordered some food, and of course some drinks. Pixie had to be complimented for a job well done, after all, and Ivil soon relaxed.

She had been eager to move on, maybe take another step, maybe invite someone on a date, but this? Sitting around, chatting, trading gossip over warm food with plenty of laughter? That wasn’t too bad.

She imagined that once the dating phase of a relationship was over, there would have to be a much longer stretch where the focus was on spending quality time together, and this seemed like exactly the kind of thing that would happen. So she allowed herself to luxuriate in the atmosphere, prompted a few questions, and traded banter when appropriate.

It was very nice, being so abjectly normal.

Of course, she was also plotting to ruin the lives of the people responsible for that attack. No matter what happened, they had to be made an example of. She found that people, governments and corporations especially, tended to take fewer risks if there were clear and pressing examples of what would happen to them if their risk-taking didn’t pan out.

But that would be an issue for later. For now, drinks and good food and better company.

Chapter seventy-eight

Quiet Times

One must appreciate the quiet times when they can. Ivil had served in the Martian navy for long enough to understand that.

To someone unfamiliar to military life, the “hurry up and wait” mentality could be strange and strenuous. To those raised in it, it was just the way things were. No one wanted to be the one causing others to wait, so the best policy was to hurry at all times. Better to have nothing to do than to have to be the one rushing so that things could move along elsewhere.

She’d grown long used to time off afforded to her simply because no one else could keep up. Once, she’d even flown ahead and wiped out a small fleet before the navy could get into the formations it wanted to. It had taken both her side and the adversary’s by surprise and afforded her several days where she had nothing more important to do than listen to the complaints of tactical officers and catch up to her soaps.

So the current situation wasn’t all bad. She was back on the Sappho, waiting in the captain’s room while idly reading through the brief MINT had given her all of a week ago.

Looking up, Ivil placed the tablet aside and gestured to the door. “Ah, hello, Sonic,” Ivil said as she opened it with a stray thought.

The Tech Maid bowed at the hip before taking a single dainty step into the room. It was somewhat cramped with two people within. Certainly, this was the captain’s cabin, but that didn’t mean it was spacious. “Greetings,” she said. There was the faintest of whispers as she shielded them from anyone trying to listen in. “Empress Antagonist.”

“You weren’t here when we returned,” Ivil said. “Or on the Held Together. I imagine you visited your friends on that cruiser?”

“Indeed. I was on board the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates. I hope that my absence hasn’t caused any issues?”

“No, not as far as I can tell,” Ivil replied. She tilted her head to one side. “Did you return to report?”

“If you would allow me, yes,” Sonic Spectre said.

Ivil gestured again, and the Tech Maid saluted as she subtly shifted her posture from that of a demure maid to that of a soldier reporting to a superior officer. Less bowing, more saluting, and somehow her back got even straighter. “The Tech Maids of Mars are… tangentially aware of your presence in the system and are willing to assist you in any way,” Sonic replied.

Ivil pursed her lips. She’d rather they didn’t know at all, but she couldn’t entirely fault Sonic for it. Had the leak come from the Martian side of things? Did Sonic let them know so that they wouldn’t cause trouble?

“Anything interesting to report?” Ivil asked.

“I have gathered a list of ship sightings in and around Jupiter,” Sonic replied. “Movement from politicians and allies of the Tech Maids of Mars, and more interestingly, a list of cores currently for sale or about to enter auctions in the Jovian system. There are also several Tech Maids in the employ of the Emperor of Jupiter’s larger retinue who have some information that may be of interest, but nothing too crucial.”

“I see,” Ivil replied. “One moment.”

She slipped past the Tech Maid and towards the door, which she opened just as Pepper was raising her hand to knock.

The MINT agent stared.

“Enter,” Ivil said. “And do tell me how you made it on board so easily. I don’t recall you being part of the Sappho’s crew.”

Pepper slid into the captain’s cabin and scanned the room at a glance. “Forgive me for saying this, but Miss Twenty-Six is… perhaps not the most guarded of people. She let me on board without a question.”

“Ah… well, that’s fair, I suppose,” Ivil said. Maybe Twenty-Six was a little bit of a security liability. No soldier would let a stranger on board a ship without proper authorization, but Twenty-Six was no soldier. Ivil couldn’t and wouldn’t, hold her up to that kind of standard.

Pepper and Sonic greeted each other with perfunctory politeness while Ivil watched them both. The Martian Intelligence agent seemed to have all of the suspiciousness that Twenty-Six lacked and more.

“Have you come to report as well?” Ivil asked.

“Ah, yes ma’am,” Pepper said as she straightened. “I was in touch with my superiors and have updated reports on a multitude of subjects. Political movements, the locations of politicians, the sightings of a few fleet elements in and around the Jovian system.”

“I, likewise, have similar information,” Sonic Spectre added.

They stared at each other. There was no glaring there, but Ivil could almost feel the competitive sparks between the two.

“You both realise that none of that information matters to me, yes?” she said. It was like emptying a fifty-five-gallon drum of cold water atop a flickering matchstick.

The two stared at her, then their gazes met. Pepper flushed slightly, and Sonic flickered in and out of existence slightly more than usual. “It doesn’t?” Sonic finally asked.

“Obviously. What do I care about the machinations of politicians or the movement of fleets? Aurora might care about the political manoeuvring, granted, and I’m certain Twenty-Six would be overjoyed to see more ships, but personally? I don’t see why I would care except that they do.” Ivil shrugged languidly. “Now… tell me of the dating scene on this station.”

“The dating scene?” Pepper asked.

“Yes,” Ivil said. “I need to invite Aurora on a pleasant first date. I don’t know what to aim for, however. What would a woman like her truly enjoy? As for Twenty-Six, I fear that our first date was a terrible mistake on my part. A fancy restaurant?” She shook her head. “What a blunder. Why would Twenty-Six care for such things?”

Sonic was quick to recuperate from the shift in subjects. “Perhaps that same restaurant would be more favourable for Miss Sterlingworth? She might appreciate the higher-class dining experience in a way that Miss Twenty-Six isn’t equipped for.”

Pepper nodded. “I’ve spoken a little with Twenty-Six… I do think that a nice restaurant was a miss. Have you considered something more like a museum for her? She likes technology and I’m certain she’d be interested in history.”

“Are there any good museums on Driftwood Station?” Ivil asked.

“Ah… no, I’m afraid not. There is one that tracks the station’s history, but it’s small, underfunded, and not highly rated,” Pepper said. “Maybe something else, then?”

“Would she be interested in a more physical date?” Sonic asked.

Pepper blinked. “Sex?”

“No,” Sonic replied. “I meant a gym outing, or sports.”

“Oh,” Pepper replied. Her cheeks flushed. “Yes, uhm, that could be interesting. Oh! There’s an arcade in one of the stations on the far end of Driftwood. It’s a rather popular dating site for younger couples. It’s not exactly physical, but it’s active, loud, and there’s cheap food and small prizes. I’m afraid that it’s mostly a way to scam tourists out of their money, but it could be an interesting venue for a date?”

“An arcade… yes, I suppose that would be somewhat fitting. Pepper!”

“Yes ma’am!” Pepper said as she jumped to attention.

“Ensure that the gifts at this arcade are up to standard. Nothing exaggerated, of course. And perhaps we can have the venue scouted for any trouble that might show up around it. I won’t have this date interrupted by some idiots with small brains and no common sense.”

“Uh, yes, we can do that,” Pepper said. “It’s… actually kind of sweet of you.”

Ivil refused to react to that. “Now, the date with Aurora… that will be somewhat more difficult. I think Aurora is someone somewhat harder to please.”

“She has all she needs already,” Sonic replied. “Is a nice meal at an upscale dining establishment not enough?”

“Don’t be silly, of course it’s not enough,” Ivil said. She started to pace the room but quickly discovered that it wasn’t nearly large enough to pace. So as she walked, she pushed space out ahead of her, enlarging the room with every step while maintaining the exterior dimensions.

“She will be more difficult to please,” Pepper said. “Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing. Her standards are just… higher than most.”

Ivil hummed and continued pacing.

“MINT has a list of the suitors her parents picked out for her.”

Ivil stopped mid-step. “Pardon me?” she asked.

Pepper blinked, seeming surprised to have Ivil’s full attention. “Did you not read Miss Sterlingworth’s brief?”

“No, no I did not. I didn’t want to sully the mental image I had of her by discovering what MINT could find from her past,” Ivil said.

“Oh. Well, she has a few suitors picked out by her family. Marriage prospects.”

“Why was I not informed about this!” Ivil said.

“Uh, it was in the brief?” Pepper tried.

Ivil glared, but… well, that was a fair point. “Does Aurora know about them?”

“I believe so? Her departure from Phobos was timed to avoid meeting one,” Pepper said. “MINT psychoanalysis suggests that part of the reason she took on this mission of hers was to avoid being, ah, betrothed to certain people that she found unfavourable.”

Ivil stewed. That might prove to be an opportunity.

Chapter seventy-nine

Problem Solving

Sometimes, on rare occasions, problems solve themselves.

There was a knock at Ivil’s door. Three taps, evenly spaced, loud enough to be heard clearly without being so loud as to insult.

There was only one person that knock could belong to.

“Come in,” Ivil said.

The door opened, and Aurora slipped into the captain’s cabin. She was dressed rather plainly, her hair wrapped in a towel with slippers on. “Evelyn,” she said.

Ivil felt her eyebrows rising as she took the woman in. Aurora was rarely not dressed her best, though it was clear the woman had just left the shower. “Aurora. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Aurora frowned slightly and seemed surprisingly unconcerned about her manner of dress. “Evelyn… do you know how to dance?”

“I do,” Ivil replied. “That isn’t the line of questioning I expected to hear just now. Is anything wrong?”

Aurora took a deep breath, then nodded. “I need a… guest to accompany me to a small gathering in one of the nearby ships. There will be food provided, of course, but it’s expected that those who attend be able to dance. Not necessarily well but at least without embarrassing themselves.”

Ivil perked up. Was… was this Aurora asking her out on a date? “What sort of event is this?”

“I wouldn’t call it a ball, but it’s not so dissimilar to one,” Aurora said. “Just a small dance organised by some Jovian elites that will be taking place on a pleasure yacht attached to Driftwood. There are a few people there that I would do well to impress. Going all on my own is an option, of course.”

“Nonsense,” Ivil said. “I’ll accompany you, of course.”

Aurora perked up a little. “Thank you. I would invite Twenty-Six, but… well, I don’t think she knows how to dance, or comport herself in that kind of event. Missy is another option, but I question her allegiances.”

“So I’m the safe option?” Ivil asked.

Aurora flushed faintly. “I wouldn’t exactly put it that way… but yes?”

Ivil smiled. This was perhaps the first time anyone had ever referred to her as the safe anything. It was an interesting feeling. “What’s the dress code?”

“Formal. I suppose you might fit into one of my dresses? If we modify it… a lot. Or we can buy something off of a rack if we hurry.”

“No need,” Ivil said. “I can take care of things myself. When is this event?”

Aurora glanced at her watch, which wasn’t a good sign. “In approximately two hours.”

“Oh my, cutting it very close, aren’t we?”

“It came up unexpectedly,” Aurora admitted.

Ivil shrugged. She could see what this was under the surface. Or at least, she desperately hoped she was understanding the underlying implication that Aurora merely wanted to go out and dance with her. “Go get changed,” she said. “I’ll change myself.”

“Do you have anything appropriate?” Aurora asked.

“Don’t you worry about it.”

Aurora did seem to worry a little, but she nodded, then slipped out of the room. Ivil sensed her heading to the back of the ship towards her own room to get changed. She snapped her attention back, closed the door, then gestured towards her still-unused bed.

A large briefcase appeared upon it, the latches holding it closed snapping open with a stray thought to reveal Ivil’s uniform. It wasn’t merely Ivil’s uniform in the sense that it was hers—though it was—this was also the uniform that people recognized her for.

Darker than blackness itself, cut in the same style as the Martian navy’s top brass, but with a little more flair to it. She’d been inspired by ancient Earth navies when she crafted this uniform. The epaulettes, the high-waisted pants and long flaring jacket.

In a blink, she was divested of her archaeologist’s costume. In another, she was wearing her uniform once more. It was… surprisingly right on her. Familiar after years of being worn. But that had to change.

Stepping out dressed as Ivil Antagonist, Empress of Mars would give her away far, far too easily.

She summoned a large block of silver and held it floating before her. The side warped and then stilled, becoming a near-perfect mirror that stretched from floor to ceiling. Ivil stood before her reflection and nodded.

First, lightening the extremely dark material to something more like a charcoal black. Then a blouse. Pearl-white and buttoned up to her neck. A vest over it, then pants that flared a little at the bottom. She sighed and removed her navy boots before summoning a pair of rather lethal heels.

A tie… no, too formal. She dismissed it. A bowtie?

Goodness no. She wasn’t some frumpy nerd.

So no tie, then. She popped the button on her collar off and freed her neck some. A hint of clavicle wouldn’t hurt.

Half-turning, she tightened the seat of her pants… then did it some more.

Ivil was under the opinion that she had a fine ass, and she suspected that Aurora would appreciate it.

She ran a hand through her hair, making sure it fell properly, then nodded to herself as she adjusted the cuffs of her coat.

Aurora was stepping out of her rooms now, and so Ivil dismissed the mirror, made her briefcase fold itself back to nothing, and walked over to the door. She opened it and stepped out, coming face-to-face with Aurora.

The Phobian princess-turned-diplomat was in a light, beige dress. A long skirt that clung to her legs, a plunging neckline that revealed a lot of dark flesh and a careful application of makeup that drew Ivil’s eyes to her lips and eyes.

“E-Evelyn,” Aurora said as she scanned her up and down. “Ah… you clean up well.”

“Why thank you,” Ivil said. “You look…” She paused. Would saying delectable be inappropriate? She decided that she didn’t care. “Positively delectable.”

“Flattery will get you somewhere, Evelyn,” Aurora said. “But not right now. Where did you even get that?”

“It’s custom-tailored,” Ivil replied. “And I had it with me this entire time. You never know when you’ll have the opportunity to dress to impress.”

“Mhm,” Aurora replied. She was still eyeing Ivil up and down. Ivil didn’t preen under the gaze, because that would be immature, but she did make a point of slowly turning to close her door behind her so that Aurora would get a good view.

“Shall we?” she asked once everything was shut.

Aurora wasn’t meeting her eye as she nodded. “Certainly,” she replied.

Ivil smiled. She hadn’t felt this smug in a while, but she felt like she deserved it. She was getting a good grade in lesbian, something that was both normal to want and possible to achieve.

Aurora led her out of the Sappho, and Ivil noticed that even though the docks were rather sparsely populated, they were still grabbing some attention from the few people around. She supposed that they did stand out from the crowd. The average citizen of Driftwood Station didn’t dress in anything approaching formal wear.

“So, what can you tell me about this ball?” Ivil asked.

“It’s a relatively minor event,” Aurora said. “I only received an invitation because it’s being held by an affiliate of one of the Jovian diplomats that we met at that last conference. I suspect he sent invitations to everyone nearby. I would ordinarily have avoided the entire thing, but it may well be a good opportunity to make better contacts.”

“Are you so concerned about the upcoming conference?” Ivil asked.

“Yes. The fate of Phobos may well rely on it. Though I’m… proud of what I’ve achieved so far. I’ve gained Phobos a solid number of cores, assuming all goes well.”

“And that’s important to you,” Ivil said. It wasn’t quite a question.

Aurora took a moment before nodding. “It is.”

“Why?” Ivil asked simply.

Aurora glanced up at her, then back out ahead. “It’s important for me to establish myself. That’s all. If I come back from this diplomatic mission having succeeded better than anyone expected, then I’m more likely to be chosen for the next. That’s the start of a career, one that might carry a lot of weight.”

“Ah, so you intend to make a career of this?” Ivil asked.

She supposed that was important to know before moving forwards. Twenty-Six obviously wanted a career of sorts in mechanics, something Ivil could easily provide. Breaking things was easy. But a career in politics? Well, Ivil supposed she might have dabbled a little.

“I do,” Aurora said.

“And what does your family think of that?” Ivil asked.

Aurora stiffened. She was quiet for a few long steps. “What do you know?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“Your line of questioning is suspiciously leading, Miss Ville. I don’t believe it to be entirely natural. You know, or suspect something.”

Ivil shrugged. ”You mentioned that you have a number of suitors, some meddling on your family’s part. I feel like that might explain why you’re here, so far from home, bravely placing yourself in harm’s way to make something of yourself.”

Aurora stopped walking so suddenly that Ivil almost took a step before she noticed.

“This… may have been a bad idea,” she said.

Chapter eighty

The Flavour of Failure

“What do you mean?” Ivil asked.

She wasn’t unfamiliar with failure, but it had been some time since it had last flavoured her life.

Aurora glanced around them. They were in one of the wider corridors linking several stations together. There were some docks nearby, and Ivil had been under the impression they were heading that way before Aurora had stopped.

“This… this not-a-date we’re going on,” Aurora said as she gestured between the two of them. “It’s a farce.”

“How is it a farce?” Ivil asked. “I am not pretending to be interested in you.”

Aurora scoffed. “As blunt as always, Miss Ville,” she said. “But no, that’s… that’s not what I meant. It’s not you who is an issue, it’s… it’s me.”

“Is this a rejection?” Ivil asked.

“Yes.”

“No,” Ivil said. “I’m not sure I want to be rejected.”

Aurora crossed her arms. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“Sure it is,” Ivil said. “Why am I being rejected, exactly?”

“I told you, it’s me, not you.” She gestured vaguely in Ivil’s direction with a hand. “You have been very… good. Strange, yes, but frank and honest. I would be lucky to find a partner like yourself. I’m certain that Twenty-Six will be a very happy girl.”

“You still haven’t explained yourself,” Ivil said.

“I don’t want to,” she replied.

Ivil considered that for a moment. On the one hand, she couldn’t force Aurora. Not without harming her and their relationship. On the other hand, “I don’t accept that answer,” Ivil said slowly, each word measured.

“You’re being far less romantic when you’re so pushy,” Aurora warned.

“And yet you’ve decided that romance is over. A choice that I categorically disagree with. Hence, I’d appreciate it if you could explain. What did I do wrong? What can I do to fix things? Please?”

Aurora eyed her for just a moment, but her gaze never met Ivil’s. “I said. It’s not you, Evelyn, it’s me. Or my family, I suppose.”

“Then I’ll get rid of them,” Ivil said.

Aurora shook her head. “Don’t be that way. This isn’t a problem you can solve with violence.”

Ivil was tempted to be glib and say that there were few problems that couldn’t be solved with violence, but she chose not to be so dismissive. Aurora was genuinely concerned, and that deserved a genuine reply. “I’m sorry. You might be right. But truly, communicate with me. Please?”

Aurora might have felt her honesty, or maybe she just wanted to tell Ivil to begin with and just needed a push. In either case, she nodded, then looked around them. They were gathering some attention, more for having stopped in a corridor with no signs that they intended to move.

“Come, let’s… there’s a cafe over there.”

Ivil followed. The cafe was a small space, entirely unworthy of note. Just a rest-stop for commuters with a young man behind the counter looking like he despised his work and a small line of people waiting for their drinks.

They weren’t bothered as they took some seats near the back, next to a row of vending machines. It was cramped and the space smelled like artificial sweeteners and grease, but they sat across from each other anyway.

Aurora was quiet for a while, then she spoke. “I want to be angry at you, you know? But… we had these courses on Phobos, for the young nobility. I think half the kids there slept through them but I loved those classes. They were on psychology.”

Ivil nodded.

“Anyway. They mentioned that when you do something to harm someone, there’s a defence mechanism that can activate in your mind. A trick of the brain. It looks for reasons to make it so that you can blame the other for your own faults. It’s something we were told to watch out for in our subordinates, because that might cause them to report things incorrectly. We were never taught to apply that reasoning to ourselves.”

Aurora locked her lips and finally met Ivil’s eyes.

“I want to blame you for my problems, Evelyn, even if I know it’s not right.”

“I don’t mind, not that much,” Ivil said.

“Hmm, maybe that makes you a better person than me.”

“I very truly doubt that,” Ivil replied. She carefully reached across the table and wrapped a hand over Aurora’s. “What is it?”

Aurora looked at their hands for a moment before replying. “I’m not on this diplomatic mission because… my parents want me to be. In fact, my family is very much opposed to it. The Sterlingworth family is on a decline and has been for some time. My uncle, the heir, is… a fop. He wasted away a lot of the money and prestige that my grandparents earned. My own parents are better, but not by too much. I think I’ve heard this referred to as the three-generation problem?”

“I’m familiar,” Ivil said. It was part of an old proverb. The first generation of a family would make the wealth, the second would spend it, and the third would see none of it. In this case, Aurora was that third generation.

“Well, a solution to that problem is tying the Sterlingworths to another family or two. I have a cousin who did just that. She married into one of the other noble families around Phobos.”

“Happily?” Ivil asked.

“Killed herself a year later.”

“Ah.”

Aurora shrugged. “I don’t want that for myself. So when I saw an opportunity, I took it. If I establish myself as a valuable diplomat for Phobos, then I’m set. That was my thinking.”

“It seems reasonable.”

“It’s not. It’s stupid, wishful thinking. No matter how valuable I am as a diplomat, that value is personal. It’s not tied back to the family except tangentially. It won’t be enough to escape the constant push to be married. Worse, if the family decides that my constant refusal is too much and they cut ties, then I’m… screwed, for lack of a better term.”

“And this prevents us from being a thing… how?”

“Because even if I do find your company quite enjoyable, and your brute charm somewhat endearing, you aren’t a Phobian noble. My family wouldn’t accept this. There’s no political value in being with you, so it would be wasted.”

Ivil blinked.

Well, there was one simple solution to this.

“Aurora. There is not a single person around Mars that has more political strength than I do. So please, let’s go to this dance where you can amaze some fools with your wit, and I’ll amaze them by having you on my arm, and then we can continue and see where this all takes us.”

Aurora smiled slightly. “You’re strong, I’ll grant you that, and maybe that would be enough, but personal strength isn’t everything.”

“It’s a lot though, especially when you reach the top.”

Aurora shifted. “I suppose one dance couldn’t hurt.”

Such a simple sentence shouldn’t have been enough to light a supernova in Ivil’s chest, but it was, and that burning star only grew brighter when Aurora spared her a smile. It was one part sad, but many more parts hopeful.

She stood, then extended a hand to Aurora, who took it.

They both casually ignored the wage slave who reminded them that they couldn’t use the cafe without paying for something as they walked out towards the docking bay across the station.

Aurora seemed determined not to talk about anything important as they found their way to a well-guarded dock leading to a pleasure yacht. A scan by some guards and they were let into the yacht. It was large, even by the standards of Phobian nobility, with elegant curves and wide windows affording a view of Callisto below and the stars beyond.

“No more running,” Ivil said once they were done with the pleasantries of meeting the busybodies that lingered by the entrance. “One dance.”

“One dance,” Aurora agreed.

There were already a few sparse couples occupying the ballroom floor. Ivil placed a hand on Aurora’s waist, gently, but firmly, holding her close. For a moment, they just stood there, but then Aurora placed a hand on Ivil’s shoulder, and took the first step.

Ivil smiled, and with a small push from Aurora, they began to move. Slowly at first, both unsure, but gradually their steps fell into a rhythm, the world outside spun gently, stars slipping by and strangers staring, but none of that mattered.

Aurora rested her head against Ivil’s shoulder, and Ivil’s breath was filled with the scent of her perfume. She found herself… not speechless, but unwilling to speak.

For now, nothing truly needed to be said.

Chapter eighty-one

UnDenial

It wasn’t denial.

Denial implied that she wasn’t acknowledging something, that she wasn’t taking it for face value, that she couldn’t compute and therefore chose to ignore it.

Ivil knew that Aurora was too smart by half to be in denial. So it was something else, but she couldn’t pinpoint what it was. The right move seemed to be leaving things as they were. Aurora would figure it out in due time, and Ivil wasn’t going anywhere.

They had an eternity to figure it out, and she planned on enjoying as much of that eternity as she could.

The dancing came to an end with good-humoured complaints about swollen feet and a few compliments shared with shy smiles.

The thing between them hung there. A guillotine blade in a zero-g environment. The string was cut, but there was no momentum to its mass, so everything stayed where it was.

Ivil played arm candy to Aurora as she went about her work. She greeted dignitaries, spoke to lesser politicians, shook hands, kissed cheeks, smiled, laughed, and spun her web across the room. Ivil had always found Aurora attractive. She was. Now, she found her resplendent as the Phobian noble lady smiled brightly and made quick friends.

She had an impressive memory for names, a quick wit, a way to draw connections between people in a hurry, and plenty of worthwhile gossip that had the Jovians fluttering around her like moths around a flame.

Ivil knew it was fake. The smile, the laughter, the quips, and yet…

An oil painting wasn’t real.

It was pigment on canvas, it was colour and shade and contrast, drawn and dabbled across cloth to make something in an artist’s mind become more real than their mere imaginings, but it was a representation of reality.

It was no less beautiful for being a representation, but Ivil wasn’t going to be fooled so easily. Her lips wouldn’t touch the canvas when she wanted what the painting was showing.

Here and now, Aurora was the image of a clever, well-connected, well-educated politician growing into their power and accumulating more. She was a masterwork canvas of a rising star, and Ivil hung off of her arm as a silent protector.

The party came to a gracious end. The music was set lower, the older guests begged off to head back to bed at a timely hour, and only the young and drunk remained, so Aurora and Ivil made their polite escape after thanking the host who seemed utterly exhausted from an evening of spinning so many plates.

They were quiet as they walked back to the Sappho, but Aurora hung on to Ivil’s arm the entire way nonetheless, until they slipped into the airlock and reached the corridor where their rooms were waiting.

Aurora stopped, and Ivil did the same. “Thank you,” she said. She finally deigned to meet Ivil’s eyes. “But…”

“But?” Ivil repeated.

Aurora seemed to drop what she was going to say. Instead, what she asked felt unrehearsed. “Would you really give me the world?”

Ivil nodded. “I would, but I don’t think I’d need to. You’re clever, smart, knowledgeable, and most of all, you’re ambitious. If I only gave you the right tools, Aurora, I think you would take the world for yourself.”

“Oh,” Aurora said. She tore her gaze away. “That was… one of the nicest compliments I’ve received, I think.”

“It wasn’t a compliment. Saying that you’re beautiful isn’t a compliment, it’s a statement of fact, and saying that you’re ambitious is likewise just speaking the plain truth.”

“You’re a flatterer,” Aurora said. “That’s a statement of fact too, isn’t it?”

Ivil smiled. “I suppose I am, for the right person. I… I think this could work. If you want my help settling things with your family, just let me know. I’ll do what I can.”

Aurora nodded. “I’ll consider it,” she said. “I had a lovely evening. Thank you.”

Ivil nodded, then watched as Aurora moved down the corridor. The woman looked back once before slipping into her room.

Being alone again, so suddenly, left a bit of an ache in her stomach. Though… she wasn’t entirely alone, was she? Ivil turned around and looked at the lockers next to the entryway. “You can come out now.”

“… There’s no one here?”

“Likely story,” Ivil said.

The door opened, and Twenty-Six practically spilled out of it. “Okay, fine,” she said. “But I didn’t mean it!”

“Mean what?” Ivil asked.

“To spy?” Twenty-Six brushed a hand down her overalls. “You didn’t think I was spying on you?”

“I think you were standing here when the airlock started to cycle and for some reason dove into a locker instead of standing here, where you’re allowed and expected to be,” Ivil said.

“Oh. Uh. Yeah, sorry? I wasn’t really thinking?”

Ivil nodded, then reached over and placed a hand atop Twenty-Six’s head, where it felt like it belonged. “It’s okay. What were you doing before I caught you not spying on us?”

“Ah, honestly?” Twenty-Six asked. She stretched out a little, reminding Ivil of an affectionate cat pressing into a rub. “I’m kind of bored? Usually there’s a million things to fix, but this ship is in tip-top. I’m waiting for a few parts to arrive for the Held Together. I had to order them special. I might need help installing a new cowling. It’s way too big to move solo.”

“I might be able to help with that,” Ivil said. Moving a bit of metal around was a non-issue.

“Meh. We can hire some help. There are plenty of services here for that kind of thing. It’s a small job. Once we have the current engine cowl off, I want to take a peek inside. No one’s been in there since the Held Together was retrofitted, and that was ages ago. Anyway! What are you up to?”

“Nothing much,” Ivil said. “Aurora and I had… a nice evening, I think.”

“Oh,” Twenty-Six said. She looked towards the room Aurora had entered. “I wanted to talk to her about the budget, but this isn’t a good time for it, is it?”

“You’re quite good at reading people, aren’t you?” Ivil asked.

“Being observant kept me alive this far,” Twenty-Six said with a dimple-cheeked grin. “And a good mechanic knows when to let things settle. I’ll see if I can help later, but I think maybe she wants a bit of space?”

“What about you, do you want some space?”

Twenty-Six shrugged. “No? I guess not. Why?”

“I was considering asking you out.”

“Wow. Not even five minutes after bringing Aurora back?”

Ivil smiled a small, private smile. “It behoves one to be observant, you said. I observe that you’re a little envious, I think.”

Twenty-Six flushed, then shrugged a little. “Maybe? You two looked super pretty today.”

“I’m certain we can find you a nice dress. Do you know how to dance? I can teach you.”

“I don’t think anyone wants to see me dancing,” Twenty-Six said.

“I do,” Ivil replied earnestly.

She didn’t say that she had seen Twenty-Six dancing before. Though to call it dancing was a stretch. When Twenty-Six was alone in the engineering bay, she’d sometimes do a little side-to-side sway, moving her heels while shaking her rear and shoulders. It wasn’t quite a dance, but it was very cute.

Twenty-Six’s mouth worked for a bit before she huffed. “Nuh-uh. Nope! I wouldn’t mind going out, but not for dancing.”

“I see. How about the arcade? I’ve been told that there’s a nice one somewhere on Driftwood. It’s mostly a scam, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time. And I can show you how to cheat at some games with your core.”

Twenty-Six grinned. “Oh? You think I need to cheat to beat you?”

“Yes.”

“Hah! I’ll show you! You’re on! Uh, but you’re not going dressed like that, are you?” She gestured to the suit Ivil was still wearing.

“Why not?”

“I, well, you look very nice in that, but it’s a bit formal?” Twenty-Six was in overalls, though she had the front opened up all the way to the crotch, exposing the thin muscle shirt she wore beneath. Her equivalent of casual wear.

Ivil shrugged. “I don’t see why not? Shouldn’t I look good on a date?”

“Ah, well, uh,” Twenty-Six stuttered as her cheeks reddened. “I guess. But I don’t really have nice things to wear, so it’s not fair.”

There was a dangerous gleam in Ivil’s eye for a moment. The kind of thing that would make even a planetary ruler nervous. “Oh? Are you saying that I should drag you out to buy some nice clothes?”

“I’m not saying that at all,” Twenty-Six said.

“Are you sure? I think it would be fun to play dress-up with you.”

“Nope! I heard Missy’s horror stories, I’m not falling for it!”

“Ah, fine then. Let me get changed. I’ll allow you to win this one, to make up for all the losses later.”

Ivil would get her chance, later.

Interlude - The Silly Noble Girl

She paced the main room of the Sappho and tried to come to grips with… everything. It wasn’t working very well, but that didn’t stop her from stomping up and down anyway.

Aurora Sterlingworth was a ball of conflicting emotions at the moment, and seeing as how she was all alone for a moment, she didn’t feel that same straining need to keep it all contained.

She wished that she was the violent sort, then maybe she could throw something, kick a wall, maybe fling some tools across the corridor? But no, the thought of Twenty-Six disappointingly having to pick up after her mess left a pit of guilt in her too deep for that to ever be possible.

Instead, she politely stomped back and forth through the corridors of the ship she’d started to call home.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Her little tryst with adventure was… well, realistically, she knew that it would end in some amount of disappointment. Even if she was mildly successful, her family would always keep an eye on her moving forwards. She’d mark herself as a risk.

But dammit, it was that or be chattel, and she wasn’t going to go out without at least having put up the semblance of a fight!

Now she was tangled up.

Not just in the entire ordeal around Jupiter, a dozen factions with their own interests, fledgling alliances, and plenty of backstabbing. It was what she expected. It was what she’d been bred for and yet never expected to actually do. She loved that part of it.

The rest of the tangle…

Aurora had maybe allowed herself to imagine running into a dashing young woman while she was out making a name for herself. She was allowed to imagine such things, no? Someone to have a romantic tryst with, to spend a few passionate nights together before she was wrestled away back to Phobos and all the responsibilities that came with her family name.

It had been supposed to remain a bit of midnight fantasising.

Now she was in some sort of convoluted multidimensional love shape of some sort, and she wasn’t sure which way was up anymore. Missy was out of the running, somehow, and yet Pixie was in by dint of being competent, obviously desperate for affection, and by being cute. Twenty-Six was somehow the front-runner in the whole thing and…

Okay, Aurora could understand that one. Twenty-Six reminded her of the golden retriever one of her uncles had imported from Earth at enormous expense. It was impossible not to like her. And Twenty-Six’s stuttering compliments and subtle affections made Aurora’s heart flutter.

One of Aurora’s necklaces had broken a few days prior, and Twenty-Six nicked it, repaired it, and left it by her door in a little box with a note saying she’d fixed it.

It was such a simple but kind gesture that Aurora felt… something about it.

Honestly though, a relationship would never form between them. She found Twenty-Six cute, but the young woman was… Aurora groaned and rubbed at her face. She found Twenty-Six beneath her, didn’t she? She was entirely aware of how stupid that was, and yet years of instinct kicked in anyway.

Well… she could admit to herself that it wasn’t just that.

Twenty-Six wasn’t the sort to make the first move. Aurora wasn’t either.

Were circumstances different, they’d probably happily circle around each other, flirting in small and subtle ways, until they were both grey.

As the ancient memes went… they were both bottoms.

That would have been fine. She’d go on her way, Twenty-Six would go hers, and Aurora would live to regret never taking any action for the rest of her life. The usual.

The issue was Evelyn.

If that even was her name.

No, she knew it wasn’t her name. Aurora wasn’t stupid. She could put two and two together, but as was often the case when it came to that woman the numbers grew exponentially, so much so that the result of her simple addition was practically nonsensical.

She wanted to ask. To pin Evelyn to a bulkhead and demand to know if her suspicions were right. Because if they were, then… then what the hell was going on?

Was this some sort of joke to her?

But Evelyn was so brutally, simply honest about her intentions. She was, in her own way, kind and attentive and so stupidly powerful.

If anyone was going to be pinned to anything, it was Aurora, and then Evelyn would press those cold lips of hers against her, and Aurora would melt. She wouldn’t be able to put up any resistance, and… and…

“You, uh, good there?”

Aurora screamed.

She found herself clinging to one of the walls, half climbed onto a shelf with… what looked like a spanner in her free hand. She felt like a cat that had just been spooked.

Missy stared at her impassively, hip cocked to the side with one hand on them, her other arm loose. “I’ll take that as a no?” she tried.

“You—you scared me,” Aurora said. “I thought I was alone.”

“Clearly.”

“And what exactly does that mean?” Aurora asked as she straightened her outfit and gently set down the tool.

“Red in the face, eyes closed, chewing on your lip. Your hands were definitely wand—”

“You clearly misread the situation,” Aurora snapped.

Missy blinked slowly, then smiled. “Sure.”

Aurora narrowed her eyes, but she could hardly call the woman out, not when she’d been caught… thinking so hard about something. “I wasn’t expecting you. I thought the Sappho was empty.”

“It was. I went out to get some supplies. Unless you want to do the shopping yourself? Nah? Cool.” She crossed her arms and leaned to the side. “So… what’s got you all hot and bothered?”

“Nothing,” Aurora lied.

“Uh-huh. So, did you sleep with nothing yet? Or… nah. You’re too prim and proper for that. You’re the sort that would wait for an invitation in the mail.”

Aurora took in a deep breath from her nose. “That’s insulting.”

“You didn’t deny it,” Missy pointed out. She smirked knowingly. “Or maybe it’s that you’re waiting for nobody to bend you over and give your polite ass a sma—”

Aurora coughed loud enough to interrupt Missy mid… whatever that was. “Please don’t,” she said.

“Fine, fine. I’ve got to warn you, though, if you’re waiting for Twenty-Six to make the first move, you’re going to be waiting for a long, long time. Unless you’ve got a whole engine in those britches of yours, she’s not gonna go poking around. Too shy by half, that one.”

“It’s… not that,” Aurora said.

“Oh? So it’s definitely that, but it’s also more? Wow.” Missy whistled. “The little tugboat thing is real, huh? So, you and Evelyn and Twenty-Six? Colour me impressed.”

“It’s nothing official.”

“So do you want it to be?” Missy asked.

Aurora shifted. “I don’t see why I have to share details of my love life with anyone.”

That prompted a snort from the former Warmime. “Love life implies that there’s any amount of love making going on. You three are firmly in the ‘making doe-eyes’ stage.”

“And you’d be better?” Aurora asked.

“Yeah,” Missy said with absolute confidence. “I’ve been around. I know what I want, and when I want it I get it.” She tilted her head to one side. “Bet that if either of them pushed you they’d be getting it too, fancy girl. Want some advice?”

“I think all of your advice will be sexual in nature, so no,” Aurora said.

Missy rolled her eyes. “Don’t be like that. I’ve been teasing you because you’re uptight about it. Sex is fun and all, but it’s not everything. Hell, some of my best relationships didn’t hinge on it. Never the best ones, but some of them. Nah, my advice to you, princess, is to get your shit into gear. Because throwing a shitfit in here while you’re all alone isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

“You think I want to,” Aurora said. She wasn’t even sure what she meant by that.

“I think you do,” Missy said. “I bet there’s a lot holding you back. And I’ll bet ten times as much that none of that stuff is actually important. Don’t let your own head get in the way of happiness. Loyalty isn’t real. Family is whatever. Nations don’t care about you. Get happy while you can. And I bought some juice. It’ll be in the fridge.”

Aurora blinked as she tried to parse all of that. By the time she did, Missy had walked past with a backpack slung over her shoulder that jingled and jangled with every step.

That woman was… a menace. And she clearly didn’t know what she was talking about.

Aurora chewed on her lip some more.

Well, maybe she could do something about it, but there were a few hours of time left to worry and pace in, and she wasn’t about to waste those by standing here and not stressing about it. She wasn’t just some silly noble girl.

Interlude - The Silly Mechanic

Twenty-Six was as nervous as someone doing their first core coolant decoupling on a live reactor, but she was working hard not to let it show.

It was… actually not too hard to just keep smiling, mostly because despite the fact that she felt like her insides were a turbine filled with loose washers, she was also happy. The smile wasn’t forced. If anything, she had to keep a tight leash on that smile because there was a very real possibility that she’d start giggling, and that would be mortifying.

Her hand was wrapped around Evelyn’s, and she couldn’t help but worry that the taller, hotter, cooler woman would notice how badly she was sweating.

“H-have you ever been to an arcade before?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I have not,” Evelyn replied. She tilted her head very slightly to one side. “I’ve heard of them, and of course I’ve seen a few in shows and movies, and they’ve come up in books before.”

“Do you read a lot?” Twenty-Six asked. She wasn’t sure if they’d had this exact conversation before or not, but she was grasping at anything she could to make sure that conversation didn’t stall out.

That would be the worst, having nothing to say, the air being filled with a long, awkward silence. But no, Evelyn was way too cool for that, and she kept things engaged and would ask Twenty-Six some smart questions every so often. “I’ve read my fair share. Do you read anything other than technical manuals?”

Erotica. But Twenty-Six would rather stick her head in a turbine than admit that aloud. “N-nope. Just nonfiction and technical stuff for me. I know it’s a little boring…”

“Nonsense,” Evelyn said. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not interesting.”

“Well, I’m really not,” Twenty-Six said.

Evelyn sniffed. “I think you’re very interesting, and I’m the objective judge of these sorts of things. If I say so, then it is so.”

Twenty-Six laughed. She felt her cheeks reddening a little at the compliment, and it certainly didn’t help all of the loose nuts and bolts in her chest from bouncing around, but it had sounded entirely earnest and certain, so much so that she couldn’t find it in her to deny it.

“Thanks,” she said. “How did you end up so confident anyway?”

Evelyn frowned a little in thought. Twenty-Six wasn’t going to tell her, but she liked the way the taller woman’s eyebrows were very expressive. They gave away a lot about what she was thinking at any given time. “I’m afraid that I don’t have a helpful answer for that one. I’ve been very confident from a young age, as far back as I can remember. Time and experience turned what was probably unearned confidence into something sharper and harder to bend.”

“Huh, I guess. So little Evelyn was a hothead?”

“You could say that,” Evelyn said. “I was an orphan, taken in by the army. There were hundreds of us back then.”

“Back then?” Twenty-Six asked.

“This would be some time before the Second Solar War,” Evelyn said. “There were some pretty high tensions at the time. Lots of growing pains for Mars. Anyway, we were trained from a young age to be the next elite of Mars. I took to it like a fish to water.”

“Is that why you’re so strong?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I suppose. It was a good start. Eventually the program fell apart, but being wildly overconfident, and feeling betrayed, I decided to take everything I thought was owed to me. I succeeded, somehow. Part luck, part brazen disregard for any issues I might run into, and a large part… my opponents at the time made the conscious decision to underestimate me. It was one of the last times that happened.” She looked up and at the ceiling, but Twenty-Six had the impression she was looking back into her own past.

“You’re too young to be this nostalgic!” Twenty-Six said as she pulled Evelyn ahead some more. The arcade was just up ahead, and judging by how loud it was, and the number of flashing colours coming from within, it seemed like a good place to allow oneself to be distracted.

She looked back to see Evelyn smiling fondly as she easily kept up with Twenty-Six’s tugging. They entered the arcane arcade and were directed to a booth where tickets were being sold. Twenty-Six reached into one of the pockets of her cargo pants, but Evelyn touched her shoulder. “I’ll pay,” she said.

“No, you won’t,” Twenty-Six said. “I’ll pay.” She smiled at the young guy behind the counter even as she pulled out her wallet.

“Oh, will you now?” Evelyn asked.

“I will. Didn’t you just talk big about confidence? Well, I’m confident that I can pay, so I will.”

“Having confidence is wonderful. It even looks good on you. But being confident that you can beat me at something? Now that’s just presumptuous.”

Twenty-Six laughed. “Too late!” she said as she pulled out her card. She glanced at the prices on the wall and made an effort not to wince. She could afford this! She had mostly been keeping her pay to herself, only buying the… occasional tool. Compared to that, a few tokens at the arcade was nothing.

The food was super-overpriced though. That wasn’t even her unwillingness to splurge talking. That was just common sense.

“So, what do we start with?” Evelyn asked.

“Uh,” Twenty-Six said as she scanned the arcade. It was pretty busy, and almost every machine had someone there, but there were a few unoccupied, and there weren’t really any real lines behind any of them. “What kind of games are you good at?”

“Hmm, I’d rather think I’ll be good at anything requiring good reflexes,” Evelyn said. “Ah… are those the prizes?”

Twenty-Six followed the taller woman’s gaze to a far wall where toys and plush animals and a few small boxes with electronics sat. “I think so. Oh, should we aim for something to get first? That way we know how many tickets to collect?”

“That seems reasonable,” Evelyn said.

They walked over, and Twenty-Six instantly found her attention snapping over to a box in one corner. It had collected a fine sheen of dust over the top edge. No one was trying to get that as a prize. But…

“Something familiar?” Evelyn asked.

“Ah, it’s a snap-together kit,” Twenty-Six said. She smiled fondly. “They’re pretty popular around Saturn.” The box had some exaggeratedly action-y art of a spaceship on the front, shooting away from a large explosion.

The ship was a Black Mixball 106. A fairly uncommon light freighter from Luna, designed at the tail end of the Second Solar War and manufactured all the way until relatively recently. They were frequently converted to tackle other tasks and were all over the rings of Saturn.

“My parents used to have a small collection of those. The kits, I mean. We had a small cabinet in our hab. I think we had about seventy of them? My dad used to assemble them, and my mom loved painting them. They used to argue about realism versus making them look good all the time.”

“That’s cute.”

“Nah, it’s a common hobby,” Twenty-Six dismissed. “I never really kept up with it, but I have fond memories. Ah, what about you, does anything jump out to you?”

Evelyn hummed, then smiled and pointed to a plushie. It was about thirty centimetres tall, of a woman in a dark suit with red eyes and with sharp teeth. The plushie was posed so that the character was munching on a small, soft ship. An Earth Alliance cruiser, if Twenty-Six were to guess, though it was so chibified that really identifying it was impossible.

“Ah, is that the Empress of Mars?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Of course not. See, the tag says ‘Queen of Red Planet’ on it. And it was made on Earth. It’s bootleg.”

“Of course,” Twenty-Six said. “But everyone knows who it is, no? Aren’t you a little insulted?”

“Why would I be?” Evelyn asked.

Twenty-Six froze up for a moment, her heart skipping a beat. “Uh, because… uh, aren’t you Martian?”

“I suppose it is a little rude to depict the Martian Empress that way,” Evelyn said. She glanced at Twenty-Six, and there was nothing but amusement in her eyes.

She knew. She knew that Twenty-Six knew… probably, and she knew that Twenty-Six knew that she knew. Any more than that, and they’d be twisting themselves up in logical knots, so Twenty-Six didn’t push it.

If Evelyn wanted to be Evelyn, then that was okay too. “Look! They have pinball! I bet I can use my core to cheat a little,” Twenty-Six said with a grin.

“Oh? That level of mastery already?” Evelyn asked.

“Well, I’m getting there. If not, it’ll be good practice, right?”

“Yeah, good practice,” Evelyn agreed.

Sometimes she was just a silly mechanic, but that didn’t mean she was stupid or unobservant.

Interlude - The Silly Killer

She often had to remind herself that she was a cold-blooded killer. The people around her? These normies minding their normal business aboard Driftwood? They could probably name fewer people than she had killed.

It was something that kept her up at night. She’d wake up in a cold sweat, reminded of all the lives she’d taken.

It was not something that stopped her from pulling the trigger when her ship’s lock-on buzzed.

That’s what she meant when she imagined herself as cold-blooded. Sure, she felt guilty about what she’d done, and sure she sometimes wished that she could offload all of that, but neither fact prevented her from launching Fox One at some hopped-up pirate in a junker-turned-corsair.

Pixie took a breath, shook her head, then looked around herself. That was right, she was a cold-blooded killer. No reason to be afraid. She could look any one of the people around her in the eye and tell them that she killed motherfuckers for a living.

Sure, she’d have to look up into their eyes, and sure she’d never killed someone in person, but those were just details.

There was no reason for her to be afraid because being afraid after being such a successful mercenary for so long was just kind of silly.

That was the rationale that she was running through pretty much nonstop as she stayed low (something that came naturally to her) and out of sight.

Around her were the loud bangs of gunshots, cries of victory and dismay, the rhythmic thumping of some old bass-boosted electronic music.

The arcade was a surprisingly busy place.

She paused next to a fighter-sim game and scoffed as a pair of kids in a very simplified cockpit tried to chase down generic pirates. Amateurs.

But she wasn’t here to be unimpressed by some old arcade machines and games meant to entertain children and rob them of their cash. She was here on the lookout for her quarry.

She slowly edged her head around a corner and spied the two she was following.

Twenty-Six was standing next to Evelyn, a plastic mallet in hand. Evelyn had one as well, but she was barely holding on to the toy in a limp wrist while her focus was on the board ahead of both of them.

The tops of some Earth Alliance solider’s head popped out of a hole, and Evelyn’s attention turned towards it. In that split-second, the head was rammed back down into the machine with enough force to shake the whole thing.

Then another came out, and another, and they were each knocked back into place with the kind of force that Pixie expected from the recoil on her assault cannon.

One head remained sticking out of the board. It was from one of the holes nearest Twenty-Six. She saw it, gasped, then swung down in a big two-handed swing that had her plastic mallet thumping against the head with a squeak.

Pixie caught the praise Evelyn gave the smaller mechanic girl over the sound of a few more heads being crushed.

After another minute, the machine reluctantly spat out a wad of tickets and the girls moved on to try something else.

Pinball? They each grabbed a machine, though the term “grab” was a slight misnomer since Evelyn didn’t seem willing to touch the one she chose. She was winning anyway, but that was besides the point.

Pixie had been a mercenary and bounty hunter for just over a decade now, and while she was aware that part of that line of work often involved sleuthing and spying on people, it had never been her area. She was more of a hired gun than a private eye, even if she did rub shoulders with that sort on rare occasions.

This was a whole other thing, though.

She wasn’t just… she wasn’t spying on either girl for selfish reasons. She was tailing them because there was something deeply wrong about Evelyn Ville.

Pixie had pulled up the woman’s records, and they were faultless. Oh, a few bits of misbehaviour here and there, some scuffles, a few social media posts that had opinions that were more popular ten years ago than now, but there was nothing in her records that suggested that Evelyn Ville was anything more than a perfectly competent astro-archaeologist.

It had still felt off. The way she moved and talked suggested a military background, and more than just the normal mandatory service every Martian participated in. She wasn’t even trying to hide her cores, her powers.

And then, when Pixie started to dig into her ship’s older records, she noticed a discrepancy.

Evelyn Ville had technically been around for a while, as far as records went, but those records were basically blank slates until a few weeks ago.

Her ship had a few dozen terabytes of data stored on it. Records pulled out of various government databases that were of questionable legality to own, but which could come in handy when chasing a pirate down.

She didn’t always have the luxury of being able to hire an information broker, so she had those records on hand. She didn’t update them very often, however, which was where the discrepancy came in.

Evelyn Ville was not Evelyn Ville.

Pixie was pretty sure that no one was Evelyn Ville, in fact. The name was made up from the get-go, and it was done well enough that only someone very professional and very well connected could have pulled it off. Which suggested MINT was involved.

The woman named Evelyn and Twenty-Six (whose records did all match up and whom Pixie suspected far less) finished playing pinball. Twenty-Six seemed to be gesturing quite a bit, and Evelyn nodded along, then she pulled a small metal sphere from somewhere and had it float up and down.

Twenty-Six listened attentively, then nodded, and when she was handed the ball she frowned at it in her palm for a while before shrugging.

The taller of the two seemed to instruct Twenty-Six on how to do something as they walked on deeper into the arcade.

Pixie followed.

She was pretty sure that this was… not nefarious. In fact, it looked like a pretty bog-standard date. Sure, one of the two was obviously a core user, but that wasn’t… impossibly strange. Just because they weren’t doing anything strange didn’t mean that she’d give up on following them, though!

Pixie had a deep and burning kernel of anger in her chest. Anger and… a lot of other emotions that she wasn’t quite sure about.

It was all Missy’s fault.

That woman had done things to Pixie’s heart that she was only now fully healed from, and just when Pixie was starting to open up to the idea of moving on, Missy returned. She was… nice about it, made the fact that she wasn’t interested in anything pretty clear from the onset, and then pushed Pixie towards Evelyn with hints so loud they might as well be self-guided missiles.

It didn’t help any that Evelyn was Pixie’s type.

Tall, dark, and mysterious? Yes please.

That meeting Evelyn had led her to meeting Twenty-Six was also nice. The Saturnian was a true fan… of Pixie’s ship. But she was cute, enthusiastic, and made Pixie smile and laugh.

If Pixie had interpreted Twenty-Six’s prattling about fleets correctly, then there was also a level of openness there that would mean plenty of space for even a wayward bounty hunter. The last woman in the little fleet, Aurora Sterlingworth, was a little cold, but she was also hot, so Pixie was willing to forgive the aloofness.

She was tempted. Very tempted.

But there were too many stories of good bounty hunters being led astray by a pair of long legs and a pretty smile for her to just jump in feet first.

Did she want in on whatever they had going on?

She poked her head around a corner and found Evelyn smiling while holding on to a large plush of what looked like the Empress of Mars while Twenty-Six was laughing, her giggles carrying even over the constant flood of jingles in the room.

Cute dates with cute girls? Pixie wanted that more than almost anything else in the world.

She looked around the corner again and… no Evelyn?

Twenty-Six was there, smiling as she looked at a small box of a… model kit? No Evelyn though. Had the woman gone to the washroom? Maybe this was Pixie’s chance to coincidentally run into Twenty-Six? She could always pretend to be here for those silly fighter-sims.

A shadow fell over her, which wasn’t too unusual, but this one felt particularly cold and unwelcoming.

Pixie swallowed and glanced up. Evelyn was smiling.

“Would you like to join us?” she asked. “We were just about to go find a bite to eat. A little something to snack on.”

Why did that sound like a lion inviting a mouse onto its plate? Pixie stood taller and worked hard to remind herself that she was a cold-blooded killer. A very silly killer.

Interlude - The Silly Spy

She was pacing in her office, trying very hard to keep the screams within herself, rather than yell out her frustrations aloud.

The office was hers, in a way. Well, it was more accurate to say that it was MINT’s office and she was just borrowing it for the moment, but her name was on the front door. Peppermint’s Party Planning! It was a small office run by MINT before the empress decided to shack up in Driftwood Station. MINT had converted it into an event planning organisation with three whole employees and a decently long made-up history around the Jovian system that no one ought to look too deeply into.

It was tight, and not in the nicest section of the amalgam station, but it wasn’t in the worst either. She had a desk, a small apartment, and a few amenities that were a luxury when living in a station.

All things said and done, MINT was treating her as well as they could. She couldn’t tell if that was because she’d threatened to rip her handler a new asshole or if it was because of her proximity to the empress.

No, no, she could definitely tell which one really mattered to the intelligence agency.

Pepper sighed, but continued her pacing. She didn’t have the time, let alone the mental energy, to waste thinking about stuff that didn’t matter.

Her long-term career was in jeopardy, but she was also poised to launch that same career right up into the stratosphere. Handling the empress was the not-so-secretive end-goal of MINT. She was Mars’s greatest military asset, and yet Mars had no real control over her. That was sometimes for the best, as her interests served as a counter to the political ambitions of some and the military ambitions of others.

If the navy had control over the empress, Earth would be a barren husk, and the entire system would be wearing the uniform by now. If a politician took control of her, then… well, that’d be horrific in strange and unique ways, certainly.

MINT served to curtail those attempts at control while also trying to establish their own methods.

They’d never been truly successful, but every step that ended with the empress happy with MINT was a major accomplishment.

Pepper had studied the agency’s history. The unaltered, real history. MINT had once been on the verge of collapse, but a few lucky strokes had them inadvertently helping the empress, and she casually mentioned the fact in the hearing of the media and some important figures. It had entirely changed the tides that MINT was drowning in.

Right now, Pepper was the closest thing MINT had to a mouth poised next to the empress’s ear. For the first time in the organisation’s history, they were the closest part of the Martian apparatus to the core of Mars’s power.

MINT wasn’t broadcasting the fact, because… well, they weren’t that sort of people, but even Pepper could tell that the higher-ups were shifting anxiously, ready to make a few small, subtle moves with long-term potential tied to them.

It was a lot of pressure on Pepper’s back, and she was quite certain that she wouldn’t succeed at her primary objective.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t tempted by the empress. Pepper licked her lips then shifted her shoulders a little. Ivil was undeniably attractive, both physically and in terms of power. Pepper would readily admit that in her current—single—state, she wouldn’t mind spending more time with the woman.

But the empress had her eyes locked upon others, and Pepper might be a spy and an informant and very, very single, but she wasn’t a homewrecker, orders be damned. If she couldn’t be part of whatever strange harem was going on, then she could at least be her imperial majesty’s wingwoman.

Pepper glanced at her desk. There was a stack of papers lying upon it. Actual paper-paper. Unused these days except for when someone wanted to demonstrate their wealth or anachronistic tendencies, or when information had to be passed along in a very destructible form.

The sheets clearly ordered her to destroy them upon her having read them. They’d even been delivered with a small lighter. Pepper had abstained from that for the moment.

The pages were reports. Detailed to the point of nausea. Reports of movement across the solar system. Fleets of merchant ships that, when traced back to their origins, hinted at discrepancies.

One merchant fleet had nineteen ships within it. It had only had fourteen three months ago when a Martian patrol flew by. At some point, five more ships had joined the small fleet, but all of the previously noted appearances of that same fleet said that there were only fourteen.

So either the long-range sensors of the patrol were wrong, which was possible, or someone had added five new ships to their fleet and disguised the fact.

It wasn’t the only strange happening. There was a small Earth Alliance battlegroup that was going through war trials and war games. Small being the operative term, because it only had half as many vessels as the average war game would have.

Another area had some ships belonging to a small ship-weapons developer doing tests on the edge of the asteroid belt. They were firing rounds at rocks. Nothing too special. Only MINT had dug into that company’s history and discovered deep links to the Earth Alliance.

There were a dozen more reports. Each was small, a drop in the bucket. A discrepancy that could be written off as coincidence, incompetence, or even subtle but not unusual enemy action. The Earth Alliance had their own intelligence apparatus, and it, too, needed to move agents around.

But taken all together?

MINT admitted in the report that it was sheer coincidence that the several agents looking into various cases all happened to notice a pattern and started to compare notes.

The incidents, charted on a map of the system, drew a line.

A line from roughly where Earth sat at the moment, to right past the Jovian system and straight towards Uranus.

MINT was mobilising in a big way. Pepper imagined that if she wasn’t in such a critical position, she might also be one of the lowly agents being tied to an outbound merchant ship with the goal of trying to spot some of the Earth Alliance elements moving further out towards the edge of the system.

At the moment, it seemed like the League of Free Moons was still unaware, or their intelligence apparatus had yet to kick things into gear.

So, MINT had stumbled across an Earth Alliance plot far from their own jurisdiction, and the blame for that could be placed on the empress for moving to the area at a time where she really should have been around Mars.

The Earth Alliance was rarely this subtle, but their goal here was obvious.

The chase of new cores currently held around Uranus. It represented enough cores to catapult a nobody into the higher end of core-user rankings. That would mean one more individual capable of causing mass disruption.

Or, the new cores could be cultivated, reproduced, and disseminated throughout the Earth Alliance. In terms of short-term gains, it would mean little, but in two decades, when the thousand or so cores were suddenly twenty-thousand distributed across the alliance?

Or… or the Earth Alliance could consider giving all of those cores to a single person with a lot of cores already. One of their A-classers, perhaps. It wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to gain a second S-class core user, but it would mean a second large threat.

The most horrific idea, of course, was giving those cores to their own S-classer.

The Empress of Mars was one of three S-classed individuals in the system. At the moment, she held a confirmed and rather important lead on the other two, the Emperor of Jupiter and the Emperor of Earth.

But this many new cores? That could, conceivably, be enough to cut that gap and narrow it down until the empress was only as strong as the Emperor of Earth.

That was, quite simply, unacceptable.

The Emperor of Earth was a pissant, whiny man that liked to lord over others, but who was too stupid and easily distracted to notice that he was well and truly chained by the leadership of the Earth Alliance.

Given the opportunity, he would come to blows with Ivil Antagonist.

Someone had to tell the empress. She was right here. So close to Uranus. She could grab those cores for herself. She could secure them and give them to the League of Free Moons and earn herself, and Mars, a lot of good will.

In any case, the empress had to be informed, and the person so carefully chosen for the task was none other than Pepper Mint.

She had to go up to the empress—currently having a dinner date where she was bullying that poor mercenary pilot—and inform her that her dating time was going to be cut short.

Pepper hoped she wouldn’t take it out on her poor, silly spy.

Chapter eighty-two

An Enjoyable Bit of Torture

Torture was ineffective. That didn’t mean it wasn’t fun.

At the moment, Ivil was enjoying torture quite a bit. She was sitting on a simple seat in a restaurant a floor above the arcade they’d been at. The place was nice enough. It wasn’t a high-end restaurant, exactly, but it wasn’t a franchise either. The sort of place where the cook was also the owner, and where while the decor wasn’t the best, it was still thematic and clean enough.

This place in particular had a large bay window looking out of the side of Driftwood, with a dock in the distance where they could see ships slowing down to come in for their final approach.

The restaurant was cargo-ship themed, which Ivil found to be a strange choice with the sitting areas all taken from actual ship lounges and the walls covered in blueprints and screens showing ads for ships that hadn’t been sold since the end of the Second Solar War.

Twenty-Six loved it, though, so Ivil found herself enjoying the space via osmosis.

The girl was sitting across from Ivil now, bouncing in a booth with her feet tip-tapping on the grated metal floor.

Next to her, Pixie was sitting on her hands, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Her feet didn’t quite reach the floor.

She was the current target of Ivil’s torture. “So,” Ivil said. “How long were you around the arcade?”

“Ah,” Pixie said.

“Do you enjoy arcade games that much? Which are your favourite?” Ivil asked. “Are there any spy-themed games there that you particularly like, or are you there for the dating sims?”

“Ah,” Pixie continued.

“Evelyn is just teasing you,” Twenty-Six said as she placed a hand over Pixie’s. Ivil noted the gesture. Twenty-Six was quick to touch and grab on to people when they were close. It was kind of her, though the touch seemed to make Pixie start a little. The woman stared at Twenty-Six’s hand over her own, and her already flushed face only grew warmer. “If she’s being too mean, let me know, and I’ll tell her to calm down.”

“I can hear you, you know,” Ivil said.

Twenty-Six grinned so hard her cheeks were pinching together. “I know,” she said. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“A little,” Ivil admitted. “I do enjoy playing with my food. And doesn’t Pixie just look like a delicious little morsel?”

Pixie choked, then sat up straighter, almost as if trying to seem more intimidating. She didn’t remove her hand from under Twenty-Six’s which defeated the entire point. “I’m not a little morsel or a snack,” Pixie said. “I kill people.”

“Ah yes,” Ivil said. “I’m certain you have, but your kill count is a little anaemic if you’re trying to use it to scare me.”

Pixie’s eyes narrowed. “Just count yourself lucky that you’re so attractive. Otherwise that kind of talk would just make you sound like an idiot.”

Ivil snorted, but Twenty-Six stepped in before the insults and the flirting could continue to fly too quickly. “Evelyn, Pixie, please don’t fight,” she said.

Ivil relented, for the moment. She had the impression that this kind of “fighting” was exactly the kind of thing that Pixie enjoyed. But Twenty-Six was right, it was a little inappropriate for the middle of a restaurant while in the company of others. “You’re right, forgive me,” she said. The forgiveness was aimed at Twenty-Six, but Pixie nodded all the same.

“And I’m sorry too,” Pixie said. “For accidentally spying on you. It wasn’t what I was aiming to do, but I saw the two of you, and I just followed along.”

“As one does,” Ivil said.

“I’ve done that before too, when I see someone very pretty,” Twenty-Six said. Then she looked up to the two of them as they stared at her, and her cheeks slowly reddened. “Isn’t that normal?”

“No,” Ivil said.

“Oh.”

Ivil wanted to reach over and pat Twenty-Six on the head, but she wasn’t sure if they were quite at that stage of their relationship, yet.

Actually, to be quite honest with herself, Ivil was a little conflicted about where, exactly, she was in this whole relationship thing.

In her soaps, there was usually a period where the lovers made eyes at each other…

She looked to Twenty-Six and their gazes locked. Ivil smiled kindly, and Twenty-Six returned the smile almost on reflex, her dimples were showing and she looked quite pleased.

So yes, that was one thing she could check off her list. Next, the soaps usually had the lovers become more intimate. It was usually quite carnal, though half the time it was off-screen and merely implied. Ivil was quite looking forward to that part.

Her issue came with the bit after that. In her soaps, the characters were either in an established relationship already (in which case the breaking of that relationship, the death of a character, or some steamy B-plot would mess with said relationship, all things she was keeping a keen eye out for), or the characters were in the process of falling in love.

There was nothing about the actual… post-early dating bit.

Ivil was aware that there had to be a step between falling in love and marriage, but none of the media she consumed so avidly covered it in any detail, and as she was slowly approaching that stage she could admit to herself, in the privacy of her own mind, that she was quite nervous.

It was a little early to be so nervous, however. She still hadn’t revealed her true identity to either Twenty-Six, or Aurora, and Pixie was just as clueless. That was her own fault for being so good at restraining herself and keeping things subtle.

For now, back to teasing. An auto-waiter arrived and listened to their orders before zipping away, and within a few minutes a flesh-and-blood waiter came and set down their drinks. Since this was a themed restaurant, they were served in squeezable, no-spill drink sacs, the kind of thing used in a zero-g environment when there were no other options.

Twenty-Six, at least, seemed to enjoy the novelty. “We could never afford these around Saturn. You just need to get good at splashing whatever you’re drinking directly into your mouth. There’s a trick to it though.” And so she went on for a while about how to make liquids roll into small, swallowable balls.

The conversation didn’t become any smarter. Pixie complained at length about the rations she could eat on board her ship and how she desperately wished for enough room to fit a better kitchen space within it, and Ivil added her own mostly forgotten stories about military-grade rations. It had been a long time since she’d had to suffer through those.

The evening was progressing quite well, in her estimation. The girls were laughing, the tension that Pixie had started with faded away, and they traded gossip and banter without any real issue.

Which was why Ivil was instantly irritated when she felt Pepper slipping closer. Not because she didn’t like the MINT operative’s presence, but because the woman was twiddling her hands together and had the kind of tenseness to her that only came from someone under a lot of stress who didn’t think they were being observed and who was walking to deliver some bad news.

Ivil had long ago learned to notice that exact walk. It reminded her of someone walking up to their own gallows.

“Forgive me, a moment,” Ivil said as she carefully stood up.

Pixie patted her lips with a napkin. “Want us to come with?” she asked.

“No, it’s fine. Stay here and enjoy your meal, I’ll be right back,” Ivil said with a dismissive little wave.

Twenty-Six eyed her for a moment, then smiled and nodded. She could be surprisingly perceptive at times, Ivil knew.

Or maybe she’d just realized that Ivil never used the washroom, and so if she was standing up now, it was definitely for something else? In either case, the Saturnian continued to chat with Pixie while Ivil made her way out of the restaurant and towards Pepper.

They met in the middle of a long corridor, the spy stopping in her tracks as she finally noticed Ivil coming to stand before her. “Your Majesty,” she said on reflex.

“Yes,” Ivil replied. “I take it the news isn’t good?”

Pepper at least tried to hide her wince. “I do have some… bad news, yes,” she said.

Ivil let out a breath through her nose. “Well, lay it on me,” she said.

“Is this place… private enough?” Pepper asked.

A faint twist of will and it was. “Go on,” Ivil said.

“Yes ma’am. MINT has noticed some movement across the system, particularly movement heading towards the Uranus system. All the ships have ties in one way or another to the Earth Alliance. Ma’am, we think that the Emperor of Earth might be trying to steal the newly discovered cores.”

Chapter eighty-three

Standing

There were very few people who could stand up to her.

Nominally, the leaders of Mars could tell her no. At least on paper. They knew better than to try, however, because no amount of written rules would stop her mild annoyance from turning their bodies into clouds of disparate atoms.

Then there were the two emperors.

When people charted out powers—as humans were wont to do—the very top of the “people you shouldn’t fuck with”’ pyramid was a small capstone that held three figures. The Empress of Mars, the Emperor of Jupiter, and the Emperor of Earth.

All three titles were mostly nonsensical.

She was the only one whose appointment as empress was actually legally recognized, but Mars, being a single-nation world, didn’t have enough kingdoms to actually make her an empress.

The Emperor of Jupiter didn’t really care about the Jovian system at all, except that he lived there and he had some familial relations in the system.

The Emperor of Earth, in Ivil’s estimation, was a weak-willed, spineless little pissant who was only called that because the Earth Alliance’s PR division was terrified that their citizens would realise how far behind the power curve they were.

The Emperor of Earth was an upjumped A-classer.

According to conventional logic, in order for someone to become a C-classer, they needed more than ten cores. B-class was hidden behind the lofty one hundred core mark, and A-classer was past a thousand.

The three emperors all had ten thousand cores.

But cores weren’t all made equal. A well-practised, well-balanced B-classer could whip an A-classer’s rear, and while there was something to say about having lots of power, that wasn’t the end-all be-all of anything.

The Emperor of Earth only barely deserved the S-classer nomination and Ivil suspected that she could get rid of half of her cores and still—to put it in technical terms—whoop his fool ass.

And now he was sticking his idiot nose in her business, again. She pursed her lips as she considered the situation.

He was definitely around. The idiot knew as well as she did that one couldn’t always trust others to do things appropriately. Recovering that cache of cores around Uranus was a delicate enough matter that he wouldn’t trust the Earth Alliance to do it.

Even if they succeeded, the Earth Alliance’s greatest weakness was their fragmented nature. It was an alliance—barely—of some hundred-odd nations, and each one would want a slice of that pie, and he’d be forced to split out thin slices for each of them in the end.

He’d be left with a quarter of a pie by then, if the analogy held. That wasn’t enough pie to make up much of the difference between himself and even the laid-back Emperor of Jupiter. Let alone the difference between himself and Ivil.

Ivil started to pace. So, in all likelihood he was here himself. Sneaking across the solar system, past Mars and past Jupiter to get his grubby hands on that cache.

Would it be enough to bridge the gap?

If there were a thousand or more cores there, then… maybe? She doubted it, however. After the Third Solar War… well, there was a very good reason why Mars was far beyond Earth in terms of total cores owned. They had been much closer to parity before that massive war. Ivil had thinned out Earth’s core users considerably. She even started to donate cores she didn’t care about back to the Martian navy.

“Empress?” Pepper asked. The question had Ivil raising her head mid-pace. “Have you come to a decision as to what to do?”

“You may call me Ivil, if you wish,” Ivil said.

“As you wish, Empress Ivil,” Pepper said.

Ivil grinned. The woman knew that “may” wasn’t “should.” MINT had really sent someone clever. “What would you do, in my position?”

“Ah,” Pepper said. She didn’t immediately dismiss the idea, however. Her brows drew together, and the young woman thought about the issue for several long seconds. “Hypothetically, I personally would put the safety of Mars ahead of my own… romantic interests.”

“I see,” Ivil said. “I suppose that makes sense, as far as responses go. And then what would you do, once you’ve come to that choice?”

“Given that the Earth Alliance is trying to move with some subtlety… I suppose there are two courses of action?”

“Oh?” Ivil asked.

“The first would be to intercede personally. Hypothetically, with your level of personal power, you could stop this would-be theft, perhaps take the cores for your own. It would severely damage Mars’s reputation in the region, but it would be better than allowing an adversary access to those resources.”

“That’s one course of action,” Ivil said. “And what’s the other option?”

Pepper shifted slightly .”Mars does have an… amicable relationship with the League of Free Moons. Warning them could mean that they’ll protect the core cache themselves. Perhaps they’d even be willing to accept Martian assistance in the matter?”

“Oh, now isn’t that just a delicious idea,” Ivil said. She liked that. She liked it a lot.

It would paint the Emperor of Earth like the little shit he was and make Mars look better for it. Though… it wasn’t terribly subtle.

“I think I have an idea. A third option, of sorts,” Ivil said.

“Ma’am?” Pepper asked.

Ivil nodded. “I’m going to need you to arrange something for me. A meeting with the Emperor of Jupiter.”

“Ah.”

“Thank you, Pepper, you’ve been quite helpful. I’ll be sure to let your superiors know. I imagine being my official contact with MINT would do wonders for your career, yes?”

Pepper swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”

Ivil did like rewarding useful, and cute, subordinates. She patted Pepper on the head. “Let’s go see Twenty-Six and Pixie. I think… I think I have some news for them.”

Pepper seemed worried about that, for whatever reason, but she didn’t protest as Ivil returned to the restaurant. She discovered that her meal had arrived. Twenty-Six was laughing, swaying from side to side and bumping her shoulder against Pixie’s while the shorter woman recounted a story. “—and then I come in, and I lock everything I’ve got on their ship. It’s like, a hundred times bigger than my Nightshade, I’m out of ammo on half my guns, I’ve fired half my chaff, and I’ve got like, one missile left. But I lock everything I’ve got and everything I don’t on to them. They must’ve been shitting themselves.”

“And then?” Twenty-Six asked. She noticed Ivil and her grin grew, but that didn’t interrupt Pixie much, though the mercenary did cut her story a little shorter.

“And then they paid me. Really quick too. I think implying that not paying me would make them pirates really encouraged them to get going with the money transfers. Anyway, long and short of it is that if you’re doing an escort job, it’s always better to be able to talk to the people in the ship you’re escorting, not just the seat-warmers back in their corporate office.”

“Sounds like I missed a good story,” Ivil said as she sat.

Pepper paused, then smiled at the others as she sat next to Ivil. “I’m sorry for interrupting your dinner,” she said casually. “I had some important news for Evelyn.”

“What’s up?” Twenty-Six asked. She grabbed a handful of fries, put them on a smaller plate, and pushed it towards Pepper.

“We have some trouble coming up,” Ivil said. “Nothing too… violent, yet, but I think it might be good that you’re here, Pixie.”

“Yeah?” Pixie asked.

Ivil nodded. “We might be hiring you, before anyone else can slip you a contract, even.”

Pixie leaned forwards onto her elbows. “Sounds like you know something not a lot of others do. What’s going on?”

“The Earth Alliance might be trying to sneak by to steal the cache of cores,” Ivil said. “I believe that soon we might be leaving this station and rushing after them. Seeing as how they’re trying to be subtle, we might be able to shoot past and mount a defence.”

“Against an entire fleet?” Pixie asked. “I’m as confident in my skills as anyone, but I know my limits.”

“Against an entire subtle, cobbled-together fleet, one designed to not seem like a fleet at all,” Ivil said. “Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had a fleet arrayed ahead of me. I’ve survived such things so far, and I’m far more confident in my skills than anyone else is.”

Pixie snorted, then leaned back into her seat. “If this is true, you’re talking about a big political mess.”

“Yes. We ought to let Aurora know. She’d be able to twist this thing to some sort of advantage. I too often tend to fix others’ problems violently, then have to encourage them to reward me for it. It’s much simpler if they agree to the reward beforehand,” Ivil said.

She smiled smugly, then took a knife to her meal to cut it into more bite-sized pieces. It occupied her hands. She was still able to notice the passing look of discomfort on Twenty-Six’s face.

Was something wrong?

It was definitely something she’d have to look into. Twenty-Six’s returning smile and good mood wasn’t quite enough of a disguise for Ivil to just drop it and pretend that she’d seen nothing.

If that rat bastard emperor ruined Twenty-Six’s happiness, she’d rip him apart.

Chapter eighty-four

Patterns

They returned to the Sappho. The ship was sitting, waiting for them, and even before they arrived, Ivil knew that Sonic Spectre was by the entranceway, reading from a datapad, and Aurora was in her room, doing much the same but cuter.

Interestingly, Missy wasn’t there, and it seemed like the corner she’d marked out for herself had been mostly cleaned out.

Interesting. Something to look into later, at least.

As they approached, they crossed through a large windowed corridor that gave them an unobstructed view of the docking station. The Held Together was there, a crew pulling back a gantry crane and some small repair drones from its engine housing. Next to it was the much smaller and sleeker form of the Sappho.

“That’s your ride?” Pixie asked as she approached the glass and leaned forwards.

“Yup!” Twenty-Six said. “That’s the Held Together over there, and that’s the Sappho!”

“Nice names,” Pixie said. “The uh… older ship is the Held Together, I take it?”

“She’s a toughie,” Twenty-Six said without really contradicting the small pilot.

Pixie nodded. “Some old ships are like that. I love my Nightstalker, and I wouldn’t trade it for much, but there are some real old fighter craft out there that still kick ass. You’d need to upgrade them a fair bit, and most are heavy and a little over-armoured, but they’re still around because they’re just that good. Old ain’t always bad, is what I’m trying to say.”

Twenty-Six’s grin could have lit up the room. “I agree!”

“The other ship, that’s… not a normal pattern, is it? Looks like something I’ve seen a few belt pirates use.”

“We stole it,” Ivil said. “From some pirates in the belt. It’s ours now, by right of conquest.”

Pepper blinked, no doubt trying to work out how pirating pirates looped back around to making the theft acceptable. Ivil didn’t particularly care about the legality of it. It felt like a morally acceptable thing to do—stealing from thieves—and she rarely concerned herself over morals to begin with.

“That’ll do it,” Pixie said. “It’s a nice little gunboat. What’s she armed with?”

Twenty-Six perked up at the query and started listing off the Sappho’s armaments. Pixie nodded along, then pointed out that they had some spots that could be turned into hardpoints with a bit of work, either disguised or not. Things that could turn the relatively small ship into a heavy-hitter for its size and weight class.

“You’ll want to upscale that top gun. It’s just not good. Pirates cheap out on the weirdest things sometimes, but I really think that in this case it’s an issue of machining capabilities. They just can’t make bigger, more reliable turreted weapons for whatever reason. They’ll up-armour everything though, but that just makes them tougher to crack.”

Ivil hummed. “We’ll see about replacing the main gun, then.”

“Yeah, and that space under the bridge? That’s a lot of empty room with nothing in it. You could fit a small missile pod module there, no problem. Even if they’re just small hunter-seekers, that’ll give any fightercraft chasing you something to worry about,” Pixie said.

“What about the rest of the hardpoints?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Not all bad, but your point-defence has very limited range. You’re going to need at least one more on your dorsal area for full coverage. If I was attacking you, I’d try to come in quiet from your top. Sure, it’s within range of your main gun, but you have no anti-missile in that direction. It’s kind of a glaring flaw. The side-mounted laser turrets are whatever. Huge power draw for relatively little, but they’re versatile and you probably have a large enough reactor and battery bank to make it work.”

Ivil eyed the vessel. It was nice enough, she supposed. She’d started to think of it rather fondly, more so than just about any ship she’d ridden on previously, but that had less to do with the vessel itself and more with the people on board. She had been just as pleased on the Held Together, and before that she had been empty aboard the Imperial Star Dreadnought Purgatorial Oblivion.

They made their way down a level, then to the airlock bridge leading into the Sappho. The ship sat there, quiet and patient until they shuffled through the airlock. “Bit tight in here,” Pixie said. “Still, nice to have walking room in your ship.”

“It’s cozy,” Twenty-Six said as they waited for the last of the airlocks to cycle.

Pixie tensed up as the bulkhead door opened and she discovered Sonic Spectre, in her full Tech Maid of Mars habit, waiting just beyond.

“Pendergast,” Ivil said. “Could you please gather everyone in the briefing room? We have matters to discuss.”

“Of course,” she said promptly with an accompanying bow. “I’ll notify the others immediately.”

“Thank you,” Ivil said. She could appreciate the efficiency. “Does anyone want anything before we begin? The kitchen space is just below, Pixie, and the bridge is up here.”

“I guess I could use a drink,” Pixie said with a shrug.

“Oh! I’ll go get Aurora,” Twenty-Six said. “And I’ll ask Sana to make tea! She has a whole tea set, and I’ve been meaning to try some for a while now.”

Ivil supposed that turning an important meeting into a tea party wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. She watched Twenty-Six dart off, then gestured ahead, leading the ever-quiet Pepper and the curious Pixie towards the front of the vessel.

The bridge wasn’t designed as a meeting space, but there were plenty of consoles with seating, and the half-moon arrangement of them and their swivel-chairs meant that the room could serve as that kind of space in a pinch.

Pixie checked out the pilot’s seat, then plopped herself down into it. She was far too small for the seat, and Ivil had to restrain herself from mentioning booster seats to allow her to reach the yoke.

Sonic Spectre returned soon enough, carrying a tray with her tea-making apparati, and she was soon followed by Aurora and Twenty-Six.

There was a moment wasted as Aurora greeted Pepper and Pixie, asked about their days, and made some meaningless small-talk as she was wont to do. Ivil remained patient through it all. Aurora would do as she would, her being charming and friendly was part of her nature, and Ivil wasn’t about to deny it.

Soon enough, however, the room filled with the bittersweet aroma of tea as Sonic loitered around her tray with the unfolding legs.

Ivil took the captain’s seat, Pepper sat herself at the rear, out of the limelight, Aurora took over the communications console, Pixie the piloting station, and Twenty-Six sat on the floor, her legs splayed out in a most unladylike fashion.

“May I begin, or would that interrupt the flow of your tea ceremony?” Ivil asked.

Sonic Spectre paused, and she was clearly weighing the merits of speaking truthfully versus inconveniencing Ivil in a small way. “The brewing is complete. All that remains is pouring everyone a cup to enjoy while the tea is still warm. Do you want sugar and milk?”

Ivil smiled. “Both, please.”

Sonic bowed, and soon she was passing out teacups and saucers to everyone, as well as manoeuvring a floating plate about, one covered in small biscuits and thin chocolates.

Ivil waited for a moment more before relaxing into the captain’s seat. “Let’s not make this anything too formal. I’ve received some news that I’ve shared with most of you already, but what we do about it is important, and I wish to discuss that.”

“News?” Aurora asked as she held her cup in delicate fingers.

“Yes,” Ivil said. “The Earth Alliance has hidden, in a manner of speaking, an attack force across this area of the system. They’re consolidating now. Their heading is Uranus.”

“The core cache!” Aurora gasped.

Sonic, the only other member not yet informed, didn’t react so obviously, but her attention was felt.

“That’s what I suspect as well,” Ivil said. “The League of Free Moons might be keeping this somewhat under wraps, at least with the media, but I imagine there are plenty of ways information about the cache leaked to the Earth Alliance. Spies aren’t my thing, but I can’t imagine such news staying out of their grasp.”

Aurora stood and started to pace. She only paused slightly to take a quick sip from her teacup. “This… could be a disaster. If the Earth Alliance captures the cache, that’ll be casus belli for every moon in the system. But it’ll also mean a significant increase in Earth’s power.”

“Not so significant,” Ivil said. “The Alliance could wipe the League out all on their own with relative ease. The Free Moons are still a small faction, all things considered.”

Aurora frowned, but didn’t attempt to correct Ivil on the matter. Likely she was well aware. “Does the League know?”

“Perhaps. I only just found out,” Ivil said. “In any case, I’m tempted to stop them, but I want to know your opinion on the politics of the matter before I go around knocking heads together.”

Chapter eighty-five

Worrywart

Aurora really knew how to worry.

Ivil had to restrain herself from smiling as she watched the woman stand up from the comms console and start to pace the room. She did so while still holding a saucer and teacup, so her every step trailed faint, tea-smelling vapours. “We need to take a step back and look at the wider picture here,” she said.

“Go on,” Ivil replied.

“There are more than just three factions in this game, but I think for the sake of simplicity, we can roll several into a single… player, so to speak. The Earth Alliance is an alliance of several nations. The Emperor of Earth is only popular with some of those, which makes any actions he takes somewhat contentious. In any case, this scenario implies that the entire Alliance isn’t behind it.”

“Do you think the rest of the EA would do anything about it?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Doubtful,” Pixie said. “When accusations start flying, they tend to band up.”

Aurora nodded, and she seemed to agree with the general sentiment there. “The other factions are Mars, who despite having… minimal influence in the grander scheme of this particular incident, there’s a slight possibility that, ah, they’ll get involved.” Aurora glanced at Ivil from the corner of her eye. Ivil’s response was to perk an eyebrow up.

The young noble lady cleared her throat.

“Finally, we have the other big player in this. The League of Free Moons,” Aurora said.

“That’s not really just one faction, is it?” Twenty-Six asked. “It’s like, two dozen moons doing their own thing, trying to all work together a little.”

“It’s a very young faction. For the purposes of arguing, I think we need to assume that the League will at least try to come together over this. Every moon is allowed a slice of the pie, the same proverbial pie that the Earth Alliance is trying to steal off the windowsill.”

“Your analogies are a little dated,” Ivil said.

Aurora shrugged. “As long as we’re all on the same page. So, first, let’s make sure we really are on the same page. Evelyn, you said that you got information that a fleet was moving to Uranus composed of Earth Alliance vessels?”

“I did, yes,” Ivil replied.

“How certain are you of this information, and where did you get it from?”

Ivil considered it for a moment. The truth would be complicated, but obfuscating the truth, even when meaning well, was the cause of several season-long arcs filled with drama and trouble in her soaps. “I got it from a MINT operative. MINT thinks it’s true, at least.”

Aurora’s pacing stopped with a squeak of her shoe on the bridge floor. She stared at Ivil for a moment. “A MINT operative?”

“Yes,” Ivil said. “They have a vested interest in not lying to me.”

A few emotions flit by on Aurora’s face. Confusion, conflict, then determination. “Are we ripping that bandage off, now?” she asked.

Ivil tilted to the side, her weight falling on one elbow as she repositioned herself in the captain’s seat. She imagined she looked a little cocksure at the moment. “If you want to, go ahead.”

“Oh-oh,” Twenty-Six said.

Pixie scanned everyone in the room, from the still-standing Aurora to Sonic Spectre who was still kneeling next to her tea set, and even Pepper in the corner. “What’s going on?” she asked.

Aurora’s tongue darted out to wet her lips. “Evelyn has been… keeping things from us.”

“Not with malicious intent,” Ivil said.

“Keeping things from others can often be pretty malicious,” Pixie said. “What, are you a MINT agent or something?”

“I’m not a MINT agent,” Ivil said. “And if my intent was malicious, you’d be star matter by now. I am quite decisive when it comes to maliciousness. No, this is a whole other thing, a little more complex, but I’ve been nothing but truthful in all matters not having to do with my identity.”

Aurora set her cup down, surprisingly without even a faint rattle as it alighted onto its saucer. She locked eyes with Ivil, the tension in her shoulders softening. “I don’t think it matters who you are, Evelyn Ville. Let’s just focus on the matter at hand? I think it’s less complicated.”

“Less complicated?” Pixie asked. “This might spark a whole new intra-system war.”

“Yes, less complicated,” Aurora said.

Ivil smiled slightly. “A pragmatic approach. I can appreciate that.” She crossed one leg over the other, a lazy action that nonetheless drew Aurora’s eye. “Very well, let’s continue that way, then.”

Aurora nodded sharply, pulled up her cup, and took a quick sip. “There’s no reason to hold back information, then. The League, as soon as they learn, will respond. Will MINT be informing them?”

“No, but they should be sending a message to the Emperor of Jupiter,” Ivil said.

Aurora’s hand went to her face and she pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Is that bad?” Twenty-Six asked.

“No. I have had my issues with that man, but he’s rather level-headed, and I suspect he would back the League if push comes to shove,” Ivil said. “They’ll know soon enough.”

“So, basically,” Pixie said as she leaned forwards. She’d taken one sip of the tea, made a face, and set it aside. It was probably not sweet or caffeinated enough for her. “We know about a huge covert OP being run by one of the three scariest people in the system, and other than us and an intelligence agency, the only other person who knows is one of the other three scariest?”

“All three emperors are well informed, or should be,” Ivil said rather smugly. She ignored the stink-eye Pepper gave her from the corner. “In any case, you’re correct, Pixie. They’re trying to be subtle about this. This isn’t a massive fleet movement, but it’s probably large enough of a force to sweep in, take what they want, and leave before whatever defences Uranus has can act.”

“That won’t be much,” Aurora said. “Uranus might have a small anti-piracy fleet, perhaps a few larger ships for defence, but nothing that could stand up to a modern military. That’s one of the great failings of the League at the moment. We don’t have a centralised force worth anything.”

“The Sappho is pretty fast,” Twenty-Six said. “Could we make it there before they do?”

“Certainly,” Ivil said.

“I could strap my fighter to this ship,” Pixie said. “But while I do think I’m one of the best fighter pilots in the system, and I have the kills to confirm it, I can’t take on a fleet. Even a small one.”

“It might come down to a negotiation,” Aurora said. “One that we can’t exactly do from here. If the Earth Alliance fleet arrives and finds resistance set up already, they might not even try anything. It’s one thing to pull off a massive heist like this and come away with a thousand cores while bloodying the League’s nose. It’s entirely another to suffer heavy losses and come away with nothing.”

“Victory justifies many ills,” Ivil said with a nod.

“And if they find out that Evelyn is there?” Twenty-Six said.

Ivil grinned. “Then even if the Emperor of Earth himself is there, they’ll consider it long and hard before trying anything.”

Aurora eyed Ivil. “You’re having too much fun with this,” she accused.

“I’m having an immense amount of fun with this, yes,” Ivil replied. “But not without reason. This might be exactly what you were looking for. Many of you. Pixie wants a great big battle where she can prove that she’s the very best. You want something grand and impossibility political, where you prove that you’re valuable to the entire League, to the entire system…” Ivil paused and looked over to Twenty-Six. The girl blinked back. “I suppose we can give whatever ships we capture to Twenty-Six? She has to start her collection somewhere?”

“Collection?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Of ships. Like those model kits you like so much… but more one-to-one in scale. With realistic battle damage, even.”

Aurora set her teacup down, staring at Ivil with a mix of exasperation and reluctant amusement. “You’re not even trying to hide how much you’re manipulating all of us, are you?”

Ivil shrugged. “It’s not manipulation if everyone benefits, is it?”

“… Yes it is,” Aurora said. “That’s still well within the definition of manipulation.”

“Oh,” Ivil said. “Well then, let me manipulate all of you into going on a small trip across the solar system to save your precious League and to prevent that upstart Emperor of Earth from padding his ego even more. It’ll be like a… travelling date?”

“Dating is so weird,” Twenty-Six muttered.

Ivil nodded. It could be, sometimes.

Chapter eighty-six

Plans Best Made

Sometimes a discussion ended before it had truly ended. This was one of those moments.

Aurora insisted that regardless of what they did, being near Uranus was the first thing they should do. That meant preparing the Sappho for an immediate launch. That was, of course, easier said than done.

They needed permission from the dock, Pixie needed a special coupler ordered in order to be able to link her fighter to the Sappho while in motion, and they needed some travelling supplies for what would be a several days long trip across a good portion of the solar system.

Uranus wasn’t next door, exactly. It happened to have an orbit that made it relatively close at the moment, but relative wasn’t much. Of course, for a ship as small as the Sappho, Ivil could give it a little… boost, to get it moving along a little faster than it ought to. A ship that weighted far less than it should would find its thrust efficiency raised quite a bit.

Pixie ran off to get what she needed to connect her ship to the Sappho. Aurora started to argue with the docking authority while placing several very rushed calls to political figures, notably the representative for Uranus that they’d spoken to and whose name Ivil couldn’t be bothered to remember. And Twenty-Six wandered the ship, wiping some things clean, checking fluid levels in other places, and generally making sure the ship was in perfect condition. Pepper and Sonic didn’t have as much to do, though Pepper bowed out and slipped away. She said that MINT would want her to inform them that the empress was about to start a category five kerfuffle.

“Are things going according to how you expected them to?” Sonic asked.

Ivil shifted the captain’s seat left and right, the toe of one shoe touching the ground. “I suppose, a little. I am quite pleased with the candidates we have, I’m less pleased with the overall situation.” She continued to shift from side to side. “Sonic, have you ever dated?”

Sonic paused for a moment, then she continued to clean off and store her tea-making equipment with janky, stuttering motions. Her cores were healing, Ivil noted. “I have, in the past. Not for very long. I had to make a choice between my career and love, and what I had, I realized, was little more than infatuation.”

“Hmm,” Ivil said. “What do you do once you’re done with the first part of dating? After you’re certain that you’re going to be with someone? What’s the next step?”

“I believe that depends on the couple.”

“Make some assumptions,” Ivil suggested.

Sonic paused again, then nodded. “From the top, then. For Miss Sterlingworth, officially dating will mean presenting yourself with her in public places and being folded into her schemes. It will involve a lot publicity and politics, but I think you’ll find that life away from the limelight with her will be far more domestic. Simple things.”

“I see,” Ivil said. She liked the sound of that.

“With Miss Twenty-Six… I believe there might be a real trap there.”

“A trap?” Ivil asked.

“Yes. Twenty-Six is inexperienced and might end up overly dependent on you. I don’t think you want a… emotional limpet. She has a backbone now, but she’s also very influenceable and easy to bend.”

Ivil frowned. She kind of saw what Sonic meant, but she didn’t exactly enjoy the implication. “Can you explain further?” she asked.

“She has no expectations about love. If you want nothing more than a simple domestic life, then she’ll give you that, but she will never flourish. Her talents have been honed by difficulty and strife and danger. By coddling her and giving her all she needs, she will never live up to her own talent.”

“Ah,” Ivil said. “So, I have to challenge her?”

“No, you don’t have to do anything of the sort. She needs to want to challenge herself,” Sonic said. “Aurora has no such difficulty. Give her everything you have and she’ll strive for more. Her issue is being pulled back from her ambitions. Twenty-Six has no ambition because ambition comes after you’re done working hard to live.” Sonic tilted her head a little. “At least, that’s what I believe. I don’t have a perfect read of the situation or the women in question.”

“And the others?” Ivil asked.

“Missy seems to be out of the running. She… was not long-term material in any case. Maybe if all Your Eminence wanted was a one-night stand. Miss Pixie is interesting. She straddles the line between Twenty-Six and Aurora well. She has ambitions that you could only tangentially assist with. She has a name and a reputation already, so she wouldn’t be entirely dependent on you.”

“And she’s small and cute,” Ivil pointed out. Two important facts.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Sonic agreed. She glanced up towards the bridge’s entrance as a figure came to stand there. Twenty-Six. The young woman was fidgeting with her hands as she looked across the room to Ivil.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hello?” Ivil replied.

“Do you mind if we talk?” she asked. “Um, privately?”

Sonic stood. “I was finished packing in any case. I need to place this in my room, so I’ll leave you two to it. Good evening.”

Ivil nodded her goodbye to Sonic, then gestured to one of the seats nearby for Twenty-Six. “What did you want to talk to me about? Is something wrong with the Sappho? If you didn’t spot it before now, it’s hardly your fault.”

“Huh? Oh, no I doubt there’s anything wrong with this ship that I didn’t notice,” she said. “What’s wrong is… me.”

“Twenty-Six?” Ivil asked.

She shifted an arm up, grabbing her own elbow as if trying to make herself look smaller. “I know who you are,” she said.

“Okay,” Ivil replied.

“Okay?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I’m known for many things. Being subtle isn’t one of them,” Ivil admitted with a shrug. “That does help when I try to be subtle, because my foes don’t expect it, but it does also mean that I can’t fault you for putting two and two together.”

“Oh, okay,” Twenty-Six said. “Well, uh. I’m me, and you’re you.”

“Entirely accurate, yes.”

“No, I mean. Eva… Ivil. I’m just a girl that can do basic maintenance and can read a manual. You’re… you. I… I deserve to maybe become someone working at a nicer station one day, doing repairs on cargo ships. You’re the empress.” Twenty-Six took a deep, deep breath. “I think I’m going to go back to the Held Together. The captain’s about to head out in a day or two, once we have clearance. There’s some cheap cargo we can grab here and resell around Ceres for a good margin. We might even take on a passenger or two. And the captain has friends around Saturn. I might jump off when we make it there again. I think I have the hours worked and the experience to pull off a job at one of the nicer docks. Maybe I’ll find someone there? Maybe… one day, it’ll—”

Ivil stood and walked over.

Twenty-Six stuttered herself to a stop as Ivil stood very, very close. She could feel the younger woman’s warmth, her escaping breath tickled her lips, and Ivil could look down and lose herself in Twenty-Six’s teary eyes. “I wouldn’t stop you,” Ivil said.

“Oh.”

It was a sound that meant nothing and everything. “I don’t put others in cages, gilded or otherwise, because I wouldn’t accept being placed in one myself,” she said. She didn’t need to speak up. A whisper was more than enough for Twenty-Six to hear every syllable. “But… I’ve decided that I like you quite a bit. I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with heartbreak before, but it wouldn’t end me.”

Ivil reached up. She’d touched Twenty-Six before. The girl was grabby, liked holding hands. But she’d never run her hand over Twenty-Six’s hip before, or traced her fingers up the girl’s side. Her fingertips felt like they were brushing against the surface of the sun.

Her hand rose, breaking the touch for just a moment before her hand reached back and touched Twenty-Six’s neck.

Twenty-Six’s eyes were locked on hers.

She grabbed the younger woman’s chin between forefinger and thumb. “Before you run away, could I maybe tempt you to not?”

“Tempt me?” Twenty-Six whispered. Her voice broke.

Ivil smiled. “Just a little,” she murmured before she leaned in.

As far as kisses went, it wasn’t magical. Lips meeting, Twenty-Six’s quick, surprised gasp—though why was she surprised at this point?—stealing the air from Ivil’s mouth. It was warm, smooth and delicate. It wasn’t chaste, but it wasn’t the desperate, passionate kiss of lovers.

This was a promise of more, a signature at the bottom of a declaration of war, the first roar of artillery that announced the start of something spectacular.

Ivil stepped back, and Twenty-Six almost stumbled forwards as she thumped back down onto her heels. “If you want to go, then I’ll never stop you. But if you want to stay… I think I’d like that, and I’m sure I can find a way to make you enjoy it too.”

Ivil smiled—sad, a little upset, but understanding all the same—as she walked around Twenty-Six and slipped out of the bridge.

Chapter eighty-seven

Tippy-Tap Sanctuary

Ivil was in the sanctuary provided by her captain’s quarters, alone except for Sonic Spectre who stood at attention a step and a half away from the door.

She was carrying herself with all of the poise and dignity afforded to her by being the Empress of Mars.

That is to say… Ivil squealed and did a tippy-tap dance in the middle of her room. “I did it! I did it! We kissed, Sonic Spectre! Lips on lips! We traded saliva!”

“Very well done, ma’am.”

“Oh! The look in her eyes! I bet she wanted more. I want more. Should I go back and give her more? Wait, no, that’s too much too fast. Can’t come on too quickly. I should respect her and give her space. Unless she doesn’t want respect? No, I think she’d appreciate that.”

“I’m sure she would, ma’am.”

Ivil squealed a little more. She felt like what she imagined a school girl would on discovering her first crush. She could dance from here to Mars and back. She could crush a solar system with her glee alone. It was all she could do to contain herself and not light up this part of the Jovian system like fireworks going off at a festival.

She felt lighter. She was lighter. In fact, things were starting to float around the ship in general until she put a stop to that.

“Sonic!” Ivil snapped.

“Yes?”

“I believe I am in love, and I don’t know what to do about it,” Ivil said. “When I wanted things previously, I’d merely burn, kill, and destroy my way to having what I wanted, but this is far more complex than that.”

“I imagine it is,” Sonic replied. “But I think you’re doing… well, so far, in restraining yourself. I imagine that this will reflect well in the eyes of the women interested in you in return.”

Ivil considered it, then nodded. “You’re right, of course. The secret is all but out now. I don’t need to make as much of an effort to disguise myself, and yet if I allow myself to just go wild I’ll destroy what trust I’ve built so far. They believe me to be the sexy, hot, all-powerful Empress of Mars who has a cool head and who is confident and powerful and attractive. All things which I am.”

“Of course.”

“But which will be blemished if I can’t control myself and continue to be… more human around them.” She nodded. She’d known this already, of course, but it was good to put into words. “Thank you, Sonic Spectre. You’ve been exceptionally useful to me. I’ll be certain to reward you for your assistance.”

The Tech Maid of Mars bowed. “It is both my duty and my pleasure, Your Majesty.”

“Of course,” Ivil replied, repeating the maid’s platitude back to her. “Obviously, if you tell anyone about my last outburst in a way that reflects poorly upon me, I will invent a new kind of suffering. Something so wretched and vile that the universe itself will recoil at its creation, then I will subject you to it for literal and metaphorical eternities.”

Sonic bowed a little lower. “I would never.”

Ivil eyed her for a moment, then ambled over to her bed and sat down. She crossed her legs one over the other and leaned against the air. “Now, I’m quite excited, obviously and for good reason, about my current relationship growth, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not cognizant of the greater… let’s call it political issue at hand.”

“You mentioned to Pepper that you wished to get in touch with the Emperor of Jupiter?” Sonic asked.

“Yes, but now I’m wondering if it’s worth the trouble,” Ivil said. “He’s… very annoying to deal with. Perhaps the only person whom I can’t bully into doing as I wish. He’s not more powerful than I in most respects, but a battle between us would last weeks at the least and might well leave the Jovian system as something of a mess.”

“I believe it would be in everyone’s best interest if you didn’t fight him, yes,” Sonic replied.

“Exactly.” Ivil uncrossed her legs then leaned to the side. “What kinds of assets do we have at our disposal for this?”

“There is a Tech Maid cruiser nearby,” Sonic replied. “It would come to the call, if you asked it to.”

“Hmm, I suppose. That could be a small threat. So many core-welders in one small ship. I suppose I could call in the Martian navy as well.”

“All of it, ma’am?” Sonic asked.

“Well, they could leave some ships behind for defence,” Ivil demurred. “Ah, but no. This is a situation that’s in the hands of the League of Free Moons…” Ivil sat up straighter.

“Ma’am?” Sonic asked at the sudden motion.

“Where is the emperor located?” she asked.

“Of Jupiter? Generally, he resides in a station in Ganymede’s orbit,” Sonic said. “It’s a relatively large station, built out of the crust of one of Jupiter’s smallest moons and relocated into Ganymede’s orbit some ten years ago.”

“And where is the League of Free Moons based out of?”

“Ganymede,” Sonic Spectre said. “Did you realize something, ma’am?”

“I think so,” she said. Ivil nodded, then adjusted her outfit before making for the door. “We’re heading to Ganymede.”

“Now, ma’am?”

“Well, within the next few hours. Contact Pepper, let her know. If you happen to encounter Twenty-Six or Pixie, let them know as well. I’ll let Aurora know myself.”

Sonic curtsied, tugging her skirts up from the inside with hidden arms while her more humanoid hands folded themselves over her waist. “As you say, ma’am. I’ll inform the crew of our imminent departure.”

“Thank you,” Ivil said before slipping out of the room. Now she just had to find Aurora. Which was easy, seeing as how she had several cores keeping track of the woman and could pin-point her location to the millimetre.

Ivil navigated her way across the corridor and to the door into Aurora’s room. She knocked.

“Yes?” Aurora asked.

Ivil took that as permission to open the door and step in. “Forgive the intrusion,” she said as she tried to make the fact that she was breathing in the scent of Aurora less obvious.

“Evelyn,” Aurora said. She was dressed down a little, in sweatpants and a loose shirt. She was fully covered, and yet it still somehow seemed deeply intimate when Aurora wasn’t dressed formally. “Is something the matter?”

“Yes,” Ivil said. “We’ll be departing in a few.”

“Departing?” Aurora asked. “I thought we had time.”

“Very little. And perhaps less than I’d thought,” Ivil said.

“So, to Uranus?”

Ivil shook her head. “To Ganymede.”

Aurora was far from stupid. She put two and two together in less time than it would take some to blink stupidly. “The emperor or the League?” she asked.

“The emperor,” Ivil said. “I should say hello while I’m so close to his throne. And in any case, he’ll want to know about the Emperor of Earth’s idiotic plan. He’s at much greater risk. Or would be. The Emperor of Earth could use this power up to finally overtake the Emperor of Jupiter, and a decisive fight between the two could end in the Emperor of Earth tipping the balance all the way to his side.”

“Ah,” Aurora said. She frowned, then reached over for a tablet, only to put it back down. “Would he assist you?”

“The Emperor of Jupiter? Doubtful. He’s fat and lazy,” Ivil said with an unconcerned shrug.

“You would say that,” Aurora said. “Well, if we’re going to Ganymede, I’ll have to insist on stopping at the League headquarters. I would have to go there at some point.”

“I might not be able to escort you,” Ivil said.

“I can handle myself,” Aurora said. “Perhaps not against someone of your calibre, but… I’m not defenceless. I can hire help.”

Ivil perked an eyebrow at that. “There’s a cruiser of the Tech Maids of Mars here. I suspect that if you asked kindly, they’d gladly provide an escort.”

“They’re affiliated with Mars.”

“Barely,” Ivil replied. “And isn’t Phobos the same?”

Aurora pursed her lips cutely, then puffed her cheeks out. “Okay, fine,” she said. “Miss Pendergast has been quite kind and professional, and I hope that the rest of her… religious order is similarly kind and professional.”

“You know, that’s not her actual name, I don’t think,” Ivil said.

Aurora’s expression went flat. “Do we want to start talking about fake names, Miss E. Ville?”

“A discussion for later, perhaps,” Ivil acknowledged.

“That’s what I thought,” Aurora said with a small, self-satisfied nod.

“I really want to kiss you,” Ivil admitted.

Aurora blinked, and suddenly her smugness was replaced by flushing and a fair bit of confusion. Ivil enjoyed the sudden change immensely.

“Y-yes, well, we have a lot of politically sensitive work to do. Now, shoo, I need to get changed.”

“Later, then,” Ivil replied with a grin.

She did another tippy-tap dance in the privacy of the corridor.

Chapter eighty-eight

Ready to Go

“We’re ready to go, captain!” Twenty-Six said. Her face was displayed on a little screen currently capturing the inside of the engineering room at the back of the Sappho. She grinned and gave them a wave before falling back onto a seat and buckling herself in.

The bridge was pretty quiet at the moment. Ivil was in the captain’s seat, legs crossed while she ignored the little flashing light that was reminding her to put on her seat belt—such things were for mortals. She surveyed the room.

Aurora had found her place behind the communications console again, though she had one of her many little tablets with her so that she could do work while they were in-flight. Ivil wanted to be a little exasperated, but Aurora was a very career-minded woman, and she wouldn’t get in the way of that.

Pixie was in the pilot’s seat, being by far the best suited to the task. Her little fighter craft was currently docked onto the Sappho’s side via an ingenious temporary docking station. It would be a nightmare for her ship to retether itself if she disconnected it, but until then, she could get in and out of her ship with ease and didn’t have to live in the fighter.

Sonic Spectre was manning the gunnery station, with the ship’s sensors linked in, while at the back of the bridge, sitting on a seat mounted to the wall and designed to fold into itself to be tucked out of the way, was Pepper the MINT operative whom Ivil suspected wanted to be elsewhere.

“Well then,” Ivil said. “Detach from Driftwood Station. It’s time to head out towards Ganymede.”

“Space Traffic Control wants us to wait another three minutes,” Aurora said. She had a pair of rather large and cumbersome-seeming headphones on, but only over one ear. She was paying more attention to her tablet’s screen than to what the STC was telling her.

Ivil leaned in a little and glimpsed at the screen. A chat log? She noticed that several of the names in it had tags for different moons, and she even recognized a name or two. Ah, so a chat channel for the League of Free Moons, then?

She frowned and typed away a comment until something came in over her headphones and she jumped. “We just got permission. Pixie, enter route… Two-Five-Nine-Nine, planetbound with…” Ivil tuned her out as she repeated some instructions from traffic control.

Pixie just nodded, seeming to understand them all as she turned on some of the ship’s manoeuvring thrusters and gently pulled them away from their berth.

The Held Together was sitting there, in the same place it had come in, looking like the old hunk of junk that it was. There was a good chance that she’d never see that ship again, and it made her feel strangely melancholic. “Pepper,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am?” Pepper asked.

Ivil made sure her voice was pitched low, not to interrupt the others. “Make sure that MINT knows that the Held Together is a ship of interest. Maybe make sure its next few jobs are safe and… lucrative?”

Twenty-Six would be upset if she learned that her home for so many years was lost to some freak accident. Or lost because the ship no longer had such a talented mechanic onboard.

“I can do that, ma’am,” Pepper said. “I’ll have a note added to my next report.”

“Good, good,” Ivil said.

They slid out of the rather busy orbit of Driftwood Station, and Ivil noticed that while the Sappho’s movement away from the station didn’t change much, they weren’t the only ship leaving. The large Tech Maid of Mars cruiser undocking itself at the moment was causing a bit of a stir, forcing flight plans to change because of its sheer bulk alone.

“Alright,” Pixie said. “We’re about a quarter way around from Callisto to Ganymede, which means we’ve got options. Either I cut in with a light, long burn, rely on the ship’s ion thrust and get us to Ganymede tomorrow, ship-time, or I give us a hard, speedy little burn with everything this baby’s got, we see how hot we can run these engines and we do a hard flip and burn halfway to slow down.”

“The former sounds far more reasonable,” Aurora said.

“But the latter sounds more expedient. And speed is of the essence.”

“We’ll be catching a lot of attention if we move so drastically,” Aurora warned.

“Good. They’ll see us coming, then,” Ivil said. She smiled smugly as Aurora gave her a look, but it was a fair statement. If MINT were quick on their feet, then they’d warn the emperor of their arrival. He… or at least his staff, would likely be watching them coming.

At that point, being slow about it wasn’t going to help anyone, least of all themselves.

Besides, Ivil was in a hurry to put the other emperor in his place, and it seemed like Pixie wanted to give the Sappho a proper test. “Hit it, Pixie.”

“With pleasure!” Pixie said. And then she proceeded to… do very little, actually. “What?” she asked, almost as if she could sense Ivil’s eyes on her.

“I was expecting a sudden burst of speed, to be honest.”

“We’re still close to the station, you know? I have an impeccable pilot’s record, and this area is very busy. I’m not going to risk anything just to shave off a few seconds to our flight time. Let me get to a safe distance first.”

It took another fifteen minutes of slow coasting, with only a slight bit of additional thrust from Pixie, before they were out of the immediate surroundings of the station. Once they were free, however, Pixie started to grin, and her hands skimmed over the controls.

“Alright, everyone, welcome aboard the Sappho, I’ll be your pilot tonight. Our goal? Callisto to Ganymede at a speed that will have the average bulk freighter quaking in their boots. Engineering, check in.”

“Uh, yes?” Twenty-Six asked over the comms.

“We’re going to be pushing this baby hard. Is she all warmed up and finished with her stretches?” Pixie asked.

“Oh! Yeah! Engine’s running at 100%, pilot, our fuel’s topped up, oil pressure is reading green, I gave her a proper check-up and everything is shiny and new back here. Ah, we haven’t done a full-calibration test on the engine running as hard as it could go, though.”

“Will that be a problem?” Pixie asked.

“Shouldn’t be! I’ll be nosing in on the stats while we move, I’ll let you know if I think anything looks strange,” Twenty-Six replied.

Pixie’s grin, impossibly, widened. “You’re the best, love,” she said, which had Twenty-Six flustered right up. “Okay, everyone, belts on, seats in the upright position”—An ironic statement from someone who needed Twenty-Six to tie blocks to the pedals to reach them, Ivil thought—“And… we’re off.”

Ivil allowed the sudden momentum shift of the ship to push her back into the captain’s seat. She also distractedly grabbed Aurora’s tablet out of the air as it shot by, heading in the general direction of Pepper’s face at the kind of speed that would definitely result in at least a split lip.

Aurora turned and probably tried to look contrite and upset, but her face was currently being squeezed in a rather unattractive way, and that made it somewhat difficult to read her expression.

“Watch out,” Ivil warned as she stood up and walked over to place the tablet in a small drawer next to Aurora. “I’ll leave this here for you,” she said before returning to the captain’s seat.

Pixie kept them going, pushing into the territory of a hard burn, then a little bit beyond that. Ivil kept an eye on the readouts, noting that they’d crossed the nine g’s mark a bit ago and were still climbing.

Those were dangerous levels if sustained for a long period.

Fortunately, Pixie let off on the throttle and the mood in the room, as well as the pressure, lightened. “Woo!” she cheered.

“Twenty-Six,” Ivil said as she opened the comms to the engineering bay. “How are things back there?”

“Good, good,” Twenty-Six said. Her enthusiasm was somewhat contradicted by the several alarms going off in the background.

“Are you certain?”

“Yeah? Why wouldn’t I be? Nothing is on fire, and the emergency systems kicked in when they were meant to.”

“I am not an expert on spacecraft, but I don’t recall those being meant to go off at all unless there was an emergency,” Ivil said.

“Well, we wanted to test things, right?” Twenty-Six asked. “So I opened a few things back here, to give her some more gas. Probably not great for fuel efficiency, or, uh, the life of our drives, but we got really fast there in no time at all!”

Ivil blinked, then decided not to push it. “Let me know how much the repairs will cost once we reach Ganymede,” she said.

“Nah, I can fix all of this with a few hours and some duct tape, no problem!”

Chapter eighty-nine

The Mushroom

Ganymede Station approached. Or rather, they approached it.

The station was carved into the side and centre of a small moon, and that had led Ivil to imagine a certain… shape to the station.

Stations and habitations stuck to the side of asteroids and lost dwarf planets weren’t entirely unheard of nor uncommon. Stone was a decent radiation shield. It was tough and could serve as a good anchor, and it was heavy and stable. Some bracing and reinforcement, and an asteroid the size of an Earthly continent could make for the perfect home for a decently large station.

Ganymede was a little different. The station wore the moon it was part of like a mushroom wore its hat. The moon was carved into, turning it into a rather fat hemispherical shield around a station that was built like a long stem. The stem was pointing towards Ganymede itself, and was larger at the “top” where it met the rocky top of the station. It narrowed down as it went until it ended in a narrow point.

The station was quite pretty, Ivil decided as she spied upon it from afar. There were several smaller habitation domes on the rocky side, likely connected via tunnels through the surface to the main stem. The stem itself was rather large.

At a glance, she estimated it to be about as large around as an Imperial Star Dreadnought, only with twice the length. The stem housed several dozen smaller docking facilities for ships the size of the Sappho and smaller, and the narrowed tip had skeletal protrusions for larger cargo vessels.

At the moment, two rather ancient looking cruisers were stationed at the tip of the station, and three more were hovering nearby with a small complement of destroyers and frigates and corvettes.

The Jovian fleet, in all of its underwhelming glory.

“Twenty-Six,” Ivil said as she tapped the comms on. “Can you help me identify a few ships?”

“One sec,” came the reply before Twenty-Six appeared on one of the monitors on the captain’s seat. “What sort of ship?” she asked.

“One moment. I’ll figure out how to tie you into the Sappho’s cameras,” Ivil said.

“Ah, never mind, I can do it!” Twenty-Six replied. Ivil saw a number of warnings pop up and disappear on the console stuck to her seat, then the ship’s camera was turned on. It adjusted a little, locking on to the station, then the tiny forms next to it.

The camera zoomed in, and what they saw looked like… a grain of rice on a plate across the room.

“Uh,” Twenty-Six said. “That’s a little far for an ID,” she said.

“Hmm,” Ivil replied.

“How did you even see them?” Twenty-Six asked.

“My eyesight is superior to the ship’s sensors,” Ivil replied. “One moment… I’ll carve out a facsimile of what I see.”

It wasn’t too difficult to create some raw iron in the shape of the vessels she was seeing out in the distance. She made sure that she captured as many small details as she could as faithfully as she was seeing them. Some of her senses, of course, weren’t limited to the visual, but they still gave her an impression of armoured panels and locations with bumps and ridges that made up the surface of the vessels.

Twenty-Six squeaked as a small armada appeared around her head.

She flailed for a bit on camera, then calmed down and blinked up at the floating models. “Oh,” she said before carefully plucking the largest out of the air. “Did you make these?”

“Obviously,” Ivil said with some slight amount of pride.

“They’re almost as detailed as a model kit,” Twenty-Six said.

“Almost?” Ivil muttered.

“Uh, anyway, yeah, let’s see… These four cruisers are the same, I think I’ve seen them mentioned somewhere. They’re Jovian pattern Hurricane light cruisers. Though I don’t think the Jovians call them ‘light,’ but that’s what they are.”

“Can you tell us more?” The question came from Aurora, who was leaning back in the communications station. She had been reading something for a while now, not truly paying attention, but it seemed like her curiosity was piqued.

“Sure! So, they were built near the start of the Third Solar War. I think there were supposed to be like, fifty built, but only thirty made it out of production before the war ended. One was lost in this big fight with some pirates a few years ago. The rest, I guess, are around still,” Twenty-Six said. “They were pretty advanced when they were built, but they’re also some of the first warships built outside of Mars and Earth, at least capital-size ships.”

Ivil nodded. There were several companies that built cargo vessels that were larger, of course, and those were located across the system. Organizations able to build larger warships, however, those were uncommon. It was one thing to slap together a destroyer-sized vessel like the Sappho. It was another to build an entire cruiser or an entire fleet of them.

“Are they noteworthy in any way?” she asked.

Twenty-Six considered it for a moment before shaking her head. “They haven’t had much testing? I mean, I kinda vaguely recall people making fun of them on some forums, and they’re supposed to be very hard to maintain. Jupiter isn’t known for having great engineers, but it does have plenty of resources moving through, and a lot of people moved here during the Third Solar War.”

“That could mean that they had access to some good engineers, but it might also just… not,” Aurora said. “A lot of resources were being used up during the conflict.”

“Yeah,” Twenty-Six said. “They’re relatively lightly armed, but heavily armoured. Not very fast, I don’t think. Um, the rest of these ships… the destroyers are a mix. Some of these are old Earth Alliance ships, some of these corvettes are Martian-made commercial transports with some heavy modifications, it looks like.”

“You know,” Pixie said. “You could just ask the local girl.”

“That’s a fair point,” Ivil said with a grin. “So, Pixie, what’s the story here?”

The tiny pilot shrugged. “It’s a mix of whatever the local moons could grab for cheap. The League of Free Moons barely has any money, but they need a guard fleet to scare pirates off. It’s not all bad, but it’s nothing too special. Your shiny Martian navy would laugh at the sight of the entire Jovian fleet, but there are enough warships here to scare off even the biggest pirates. You’d need the entire Ceres pirate fleets working together to really push hard into the Jovian system, and they all hate each other too much to ever try.”

“So, ships mostly designed for anti-piracy?” Ivil asked.

“Yeah. Those lighter weapons Twenty-Six mentioned? They track faster, shoot more rounds. That’s important when the thing you’re fighting are mostly modified civilian-grade ships,” Pixie said.

So, the kinds of things that Ivil expected the average space pirate to field. It made some sense. “The Jovian fleet is the largest one in the League of Free Moons,” Aurora said. “Most of the other moons have their own defensive fleets, but Jupiter has so many moons that it needed to invest in a larger overall fleet. And it was closer to the inner systems during the last war. Some of the fighting reached this part of space.”

“All good to know,” Ivil said. “Seeing so many ships right next to such an important station isn’t too surprising, then.”

“Obviously now,” Aurora said. “That station is in geosynchronous orbit right above the seat of the League of Free Moons. The unofficial seat, that is.”

“Unofficial?” Ivil asked.

The noblewoman sniffed. “Do you think it is so easy to have so many small governments agree to a single location to call our ‘seat’ of power? It’s like herding zero-g adapted cats. The thing is, Ganymede spent a fortune building a large… palace of sorts on the ground. Supposedly for the Emperor of Jupiter, but he never used it. And it’s now the location of many of the organizations that make up the League.”

“Lots of really pretty, really expensive architecture,” Pixie said. “I’ve flown over a few times. Did some escort work for some political sorts too. The city’s nice, but it’s also kind of empty? Really weird space.”

And it had a large station hovering above it, needle stem pointing down at all times, a station which held one of the three emperors. Ivil imagined that the people below wouldn’t soon forget that.

In a way, it might be a sign of security. Mars often wanted her to have a fixed location like that, but other than a few stations she enjoyed and some quieter palaces on the surface, she never cared for one grandiose place to park herself.

Aurora jumped as the station’s traffic control pinged their ship and started asking for information. Soon they’d be pulling in, and she’d have to… to be polite.

She wasn’t looking forward to it.

Chapter ninety

The Price of Love

The Sappho was directed to the centre of the station, towards a smaller docking bay near the space where the “stem” met the “cap.”

Ivil was interested to note that the insides of the hollowed-out moon was filled with several large buildings, as well as an outer ring near the top of the stem. It looked to her like one of the ancient station rings for one of the earlier artificial-gravity stations, reworked and retooled to decorate the inside of Ganymede Station.

There were several ships in the dock they pulled into. A few corvettes, some large yachts, and a few smaller cargo vessels, sleek and rapid-looking. Twenty-Six oohed and ahhed as she did some shipwatching, but other than the elevated price tag, there wasn’t too much of note in the ships they saw here.

“So,” Aurora asked as she turned away from the communications console to properly face Ivil. “Who are you going to bring with you for this one? Or are you heading out alone?”

“Aren’t we meeting with people from the League of Free Moons?” Pixie asked. She was in the process of doing the final post-docking checks, but even though this was her first time with the Sappho, she barely seemed bothered by the complex procedure.

“I’ll be meeting with the emperor directly,” Ivil said. “Which… may require that I take on a certain… stance, so to speak. Hmm, it may be best if I do this on my own, to avoid any unpleasantness.”

She didn’t mean issues with power interactions. Yes, the number of sensory cores being used in such a meeting would be throwing off enough radiation to make the air sparkle, and that amount of uncontrolled gamma radiation was likely enough to fry anyone and anything close, but she could spare the attention to keep someone she cared about safe.

She, of course, would be minimizing her own snooping out of deference and politeness. One didn’t walk into someone’s home and open their fridge so casually. That would be rude.

No, what she worried about was the potential for embarrassment. The Emperor of Jupiter wasn’t always a… subtle man.

“I’ll be heading out alone, but I believe that you’ll find some value in visiting whatever installation the League has here. I imagine that there will be a few notables residing at this station. People whom you might want to meet, Aurora.”

“I imagine so, yes,” Aurora said. She shivered. “The idea of talking to an emperor… no, never mind. I’ll do what I can to warn the League about the threat the Earth Alliance represents. I don’t know if I can communicate to the whole of it without being indiscreet, but perhaps I can whisper in the right ears.”

Ivil nodded. “Very sensible. Pixie, have we docked?”

“We’re locked in,” Pixie confirmed. “Are you really gonna visit the emperor?”

“I am,” Ivil replied with a smile. “In… oh, a few minutes. See you all soon. Sonic, make sure Aurora is safe. Pepper, don’t spy too hard. We wouldn’t want an incident.”

“As you wish,” Sonic replied.

“Y-yes ma’am,” Pepper shot back with a quick salute.

And so Ivil left.

She relocated herself a few dozen metres closer to the station. Well within the scope of her shorter ranged sensory cores, and in a space unoccupied by anyone. A few nearby dockworkers jumped at her sudden appearance in the middle of a long maintenance corridor, but that wasn’t her problem.

She could tell where the Emperor of Jupiter was. His power was leaking out around him like light off of a star. It wasn’t that bad, however. He was clearly making an effort not to bleed off too much energy, and most of it was contained within the moon he had made his home.

Still, from so close, it was impossible to miss it. He was the sole reason that the Jovian system wasn’t flying either the Martian or Earth Alliance flag. Taking over the area would be far too expensive with such a powerhouse guarding it.

He was a wyvern nesting above a heap of shiny scraps. Not impossible to remove, but certainly not worth the trouble of chasing away.

And she was a dragon coming to visit her lesser draconian cousin.

Yes, she liked her analogy. Ivil kept a smile on as she made her way down the maintenance tunnel, then followed a few old signs out into a more pedestrian space.

The station lacked gravity along the length of the stem, but she could tell that there was something like an artificial gravity field near its centre.

A comfort? She could understand. She’d been keeping up something similar around the Sappho out of the same want. Sure, it was nice to float around on occasion, but it made it so much easier to look down into a cute girl’s eyes when one was under the effects of gravity as opposed to merely floating about.

Ivil made good time pushing towards the centre of the station. She had no reason to linger about, and so she didn’t. The few security checkpoints she saw were skipped past with a blink, and while she was aware that there was perhaps an alarm or two out, and security was looking for her, she didn’t expect them to ever make it close enough to matter.

Eventually, she found that all roads led to the centre of the station, to a single large elevator guarded on every level. Not just by people in uniform—the unofficial uniform of the League of Free Moons, at that—but uniformed people with cores.

The further from the centre they were, the fewer cores they had. The level she was on, deep within the station, had a pair of C-classers by the elevator door. The two alone didn’t represent too much concentrated power, but with more of them on every floor… it added up to quite a bit. Enough for an upper B-classer if they were to consolidate all of those cores.

Or maybe not.

As she tasted the air, she noticed that the two C-classers had similar cores. Almost identical ones, in fact. Cores that were buds of one another, or perhaps that shared a common ancestor. It wasn’t just one or two of their cores either, but most of them were shared.

“Clever, clever,” Ivil muttered.

Someone was producing cores en masse. Splitting them and regrowing them rapidly, only to split them once more. These guards had completed, healed cores, but the ones further out, now that she knew to look, had several incomplete cores within themselves.

Splitting a core took some effort and would deny the splitter a usable core. The split core, once taken by someone, could take months or years to heal itself back to usability. But once healed, both halves could be split again. And again.

In the Martian navy, there were a number of “common” cores that had been split dozens of times. They usually presented with tiny, minor variations across splits, in potency and capability, but never so much that they were unusable.

The emperor was abusing that here, creating a guard force that had uniform tricks up their sleeves. It was also probably guaranteeing their loyalty.

How very clever. And rather wasteful.

Ivil walked up to the guards by the elevator. She wasn’t impressed by the marble flooring or the golden bannisters and carefully carded designs upon the closed doorway. Some of that might have showed, as the guards tensed up on her approach.

“Ma’am,” one of the guards said as she approached. “This is a restricted area.”

“Good, I wouldn’t want to be bothered,” she said. “Call the elevator up, I need to visit the emperor.”

The guard frowned, then shared a quick glance with his companion.

“MINT ought to have informed him of my arrival. Let’s not play silly games,” she said. “Those never end the way you want them to, trust me.”

She could feel the guards tensing up for a fight, but before anything could come of it a call came over their communication devices. Interestingly, it wasn’t in a language she was familiar with, and from the sound of it, the call was filled with incomprehensible jargon.

A way to mislead anyone listening in? She had to give them credit. It was working, albeit only because she didn’t want to put any effort into it.

“I see,” one of the guards finally replied. “Just one moment, ma’am. The elevator is coming for you.”

“How nice,” she said.

It didn’t take all that long before the elevator doors slid open into a rather large lift, one with a single mirrored wall to one side and a seating area on the other. There were even a few Earth-native plants within.

She stepped in, then crossed her arms as the elevator started to rise. As she approached the centre of Ganymede Station, she could feel the curious brush of a powerful aura slipping past her.

The emperor knew she was coming, and he was allowing her into his sanctum.

She sighed. Now she had no choice but to be polite. Oh, the prices she paid for love.

Chapter ninety-one

The Throne

The elevator continued to accelerate the deeper into the station it went until, finally, it stopped with a lurch that might have made the average person crash into the ground. Ivil weathered it without even a dip of her knees, but she still didn’t appreciate the ride.

It was more about the implication than anything else.

If a house guest arrived at your place, you ensured that they were comfortable and welcome. You didn’t let them open the door themselves and rip their shoes off their feet for them.

The elevator door opened into a grand hall, revealing walls carved from the stone of the moon and polished until they gleamed, a floor made of inlaid tiles of some imported rock with a long rug running down the centre of it, and some two dozen guards, all of them C-classers evenly spaced apart on either side of the room with halberds of all things.

Ivil refrained from rolling her eyes.

She was being polite.

A man in a suit walked over and bowed nearly in half at the waist before her. “Madam Empress,” he said. “The Lord Emperor is awaiting you. Would you like to enjoy some refreshments before greeting him, or is it a matter of some urgency?”

“It’s not so urgent, but I wouldn’t mind meeting him directly,” Ivil replied. She tilted her head to one side. “Unless he’s indisposed at the moment. I came with… perhaps less warning than I could have.”

“The Lord Emperor is ready and willing to meet with you now,” the butler said with another bow. “Please, Madam Empress, if you would allow this humble servant to escort you.”

Ivil gestured, and the butler bobbed in another bow before turning and leading her through the room and past all of the watchful guards.

She didn’t comment on how ostentatious this all felt. It was a bit much, especially as they came to the far end of the room and she walked past large, vaguely abstract statues of the emperor himself.

No eye rolling. Politeness.

The butler brought her to a large set of wooden double doors and gently pushed one aside. Then it was through a long, wide corridor lined with small alcoves where pieces of artwork hung.

She noticed that every piece to the left was strangely… bad.

Ivil was no connoisseur of artwork, and perhaps she was less interested in the post First Solar War Art Galactic movement that had taken the art world by storm than others, but even she could tell that the paintings on that side lacked… some degree of skill.

Those on the right, by contrast, seemed positively ancient, but all the same, very well made. Each alcove had a different artist’s work, and each was a masterpiece, with most of them coming from pre-spaceflight Earth.

“Is Madam Empress curious about the artwork?” the butler asked.

“I am,” Ivil said. “The pieces on the left seem… interesting.”

The man nodded. “They are the work of the emperor’s second son. He is an artist by trade. Though, if I may speak plainly, it is somewhat traditional not to mention these pieces to him.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked. She wasn’t sure if she cared, but it was better than stifling silence.

“Indeed. The emperor’s lady wife purchased these early pieces and insisted on displaying them here.”

“Ah,” Ivil said with a nod. A parent embarrassing their child. Yes, her soaps covered such things, she understood. It was… cute, she supposed. Would she do something like that? If Aurora painted something, and it wasn’t a masterwork, would she hang it upon her wall? If Twenty-Six tried something like that? Pixie… for some reason Ivil couldn’t imagine Pixie taking up painting, but the point stood.

If any of them did, she’d buy a museum and redefine art until their work was considered the pinnacle.

“This way,” the butler said as he led her to a second set of doors, this one wood inlaid with dozens of complex shapes designed in different kinds of wood. The butler stepped to the side, and the doors opened all on their own. He bowed as Ivil passed him.

This was a throne room. At least, that’s what a layperson would see.

The room was a great hall, with a vaulted ceiling so tall it faded into the shadows and great pillars that dotted the room at even intervals. Benches like ancient church pews were lined up row after row, all of them angled slightly towards a seat upon a raised dais. The seat’s back rose ten metres into the air, and it was thick and wide enough to serve as the prow of a small cruiser.

The throne.

Upon it was a man. Middle-aged and relatively handsome. A five-o-clock shadow, well-trimmed eyebrows and a crooked smile.

Ivil looked past him and at the walls. Those by the entrance were the natural stone of the moon itself, but the rest were all brass and steel, openings showing complex machinery. Gears the size of houses and chains able to tug a battleship, all very slowly moving.

“So, am I supposed to lock eyes with your facsimile?” Ivil asked as she stepped up to the edge of the space where the room went from stone to machine. Fortunately, there was a bridge of sorts that ran the centre of the room all the way up to the base of the dais. Ivil locked eyes with the thing in the appearance of a man on the throne.

He shrugged. “It’s what most people do,” he said before gesturing at the palatial room. “You wouldn’t imagine how many people think that all of this is just machinery. Or those who think it’s set-dressing!”

Ivil hummed, vaguely amused by it all. She imagined that the truly important parts of his body were hidden away, but all of this, the massive room and its great throne, this was the Emperor of Jupiter in the flesh and bone and naked metal.

“You could have thrown on a bathrobe,” she said.

The puppet on the throne laughed. “I suppose so! But you’re speaking like someone who doesn’t understand the cost of silk, not when you have to order it by the metric ton.”

Ivil shrugged. “Cover yourself in draperies if you wish. I don’t know if it will improve things very much.”

The emperor tutted, shaking his puppet’s head. “How characteristically rude. Now, I must admit, I’m very curious as to why and how you’re here. Last I heard you travelled to Haumea to scare the clowns, then returned to Mars, and yet I found you at my doorstep. Did you come here to kill me?”

“No,” Ivil said truthfully. “I came here for… reasons that are my own. But I did come upon some information that needed to be shared, and I suppose I felt that it was only right that I share it with you directly.”

“That’s kind of you. You could have sent a sacrificial lamb with a note,” he said.

Ivil shrugged. “I’m out of lambs.”

He laughed. “Alright, so what’s this news then, cousin?”

Ivil took a relative eternity to think things through before replying. The Emperor of Jupiter was a strange man, who had once fancied himself a “king” of sorts, but married life had mellowed him out a lot. It was a good thing, overall. He didn’t seek out power as much and mostly minded his own now.

Still, being called cousin was weird.

She supposed she could let him live with a few eccentricities. “The Emperor of Earth is passing by,” she said. “Or has already. You’re aware of the cache the League of Free Moons has found?”

“I am,” he said. “I earmarked a couple of cores from it. Nothing too extreme, mind, just some quality of life things I wouldn’t mind grabbing and copying for a few people.”

She nodded. Sensible enough, she supposed. “Well, that may never happen. Earth is out there, and he wants to grab the lot.”

The puppet frowned, very slowly and deliberately. “Well, that’ll cause some issues. The League will have to respond. And that will push that troublesome cousin of ours past me in terms of raw cores, won’t it?”

“Perhaps,” she said with a shrug. “In any case, I’m going to go feed him his teeth. Thought you ought to know.”

He nodded. “So… any plans for dinner? My wife would love to meet you!”

Ivil resisted the urge to sigh. “None. But I am entertaining… some people on my ship.”

“Oh?” he asked as he leaned forwards. “Are any of these the people my spies say you’re dating? Come on, cousin, give me the details. I’m dying here.”

Ah, yes, the emperor’s other major fault. He was a gossip-starved busybody.

“Bring your friends over! In fact, I’ll invite my daughter too! She’s the leader of the League, you know. She’ll want to hear about this whole thing from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”

Ivil had seen enough soaps to know exactly how awkward this was going to be…

But she was being polite, and polite meant accepting the kind dinner invitation, didn’t it?

Chapter ninety-two

Formal Invite

“I’m afraid that we have a problem,” Ivil said as she watched over her… fleet of companions.

They were gathered once more in the main living space onboard the Sappho. Twenty-Six was sitting on a narrow fold-out couch usually pressed up against the wall between Aurora and Pixie. The little mechanic shifted herself a little, then shrugged. “What kind of problem?”

“I’ve been invited to a dinner… event, and I need to bring some guests along,” Ivil said.

“That hardly sounds too bad,” Aurora said. “What level of formality are we talking about here?”

“I’ve been to a few dinner parties before. It’s not a big deal,” Twenty-Six said. That earned her a few looks, and she shrunk back a little. “What? It’s true. My family and I were invited to a few around Saturn. Sometimes on different stations, but usually pretty close. You show up with something tasty to eat, dress up in your Sunday best, and just… don’t get too drunk.”

“Yeah, gotta say, I agree with the pipsqueak,” Pixie said while pointing a thumb at the much taller Twenty-Six. “It’s not that big of a deal, is it?”

“This dinner party is with the Emperor of Jupiter, his wife, and anyone else he thinks to bring along,” Ivil said. “While I would rather avoid the whole thing, I feel like doing so, after receiving a direct invitation, would be… rude. And I’m trying to be polite.”

“Oh,” Pixie said. She leaned back. “Wait, how did you get an invitation to that? Why… why would we even want to go? Messing with the emperors is dangerous, and we’re already on a straight course to poke at the Emperor of Earth.”

Twenty-Six half-turned in her seat. “Pixie… uh, I never asked, and I guess we never said it outright, but you know that Evelyn is actually the Empress of Mars, right?”

“Huh?”

“Anyway,” Ivil said. Pixie was having a moment, but the dinner invitation was for tonight, and there wasn’t that much time to waste on such things. She was certain the little pilot could make it through. She was too tough and too cute to be stumbled for long. “We need to address how we’re going to handle the event.”

“No… I thought she was like, an A-classer?” Pixie went on.

Twenty-Six was rubbing circles around on Pixie’s back while she answered Ivil’s question. “Do we need to go in dresses? I really don’t have much that looks nice in that way.”

Ivil nodded. “I think dressing up would be the correct thing to do. Of course, I’ll go in uniform, as is only appropriate. Sonic Spectre, Pendergast, would you assist us in preparing?”

Sonic, who had been quietly sitting in a corner, bowed slightly. “I would be honoured.”

“Good, good. Now, Aurora… you’re the most likely to know what to do in this kind of situation,” Ivil said. The woman had a fantastic political pedigree, after all. “What would you suggest?”

Aurora took a moment to glance away from Pixie, who was still having a moment. Pixie had moved on from shock and was now firmly planting herself in the “denial” range. Twenty-Six was trying to convince her, pointing out things that Ivil did recently.

“Yeah, but I thought she was just… you know, weird,” Pixie muttered back.

“I mean, she is, a little,” Twenty-Six confirmed.

Aurora cleared her throat. “I think… the best approach would be to treat this like a non-hostile dinner meeting. That means going in with business-formal attire. Professional and clean, but not gaudy and overbearing. Then we can thank the hosts and participate in whatever they have planned out for us.”

“I think that could work. We’re going to need to either buy something for Twenty-Six and Pixie, or make it ourselves,” Ivil said.

“Must they all come?” Aurora asked. “I mean no disrespect, of course. I… enjoy both of their company. But this feels like a bit of a political minefield.”

“Nonsense,” Ivil dismissed. “The only real danger is that the Emperor of Jupiter will see how cute they both are and will want them for himself. In which case, I will turn his atoms into their base constituents and spread him across the system like someone tossing ashes into a river.”

“I… see,” Aurora said.

“Mostly, I imagine he’ll be enamoured… politely, with Twenty-Six’s creative personality and Pixie’s small yet fierce stature.”

“No, I can’t be that stupid,” Pixie muttered to herself with balled fists and a deep frown. She’d moved on from denial to anger, but it was mostly aimed at herself. “Wait! Why didn’t you tell me!”

Mostly aimed at herself.

“This is funnier,” Ivil replied.

Pixie’s jaw worked while Ivil wondered how she would do with the bargaining stage. Or was she off the mark? This wasn’t grief they were dealing with.

“Anyway… this calls for emergency dress shopping,” Ivil said.

“Oh no,” Twenty-Six said.

“Oh yes,” Ivil said.

“I don’t wanna,” Twenty-Six replied sensibly.

Ivil nodded, equally sensibly. “If you don’t, this might lead to an international incident and the start of the fourth solar war.”

Twenty-Six stopped rubbing Pixie’s back so that she could bury her face in her hands and make a loud uuuuu sound. It was quite pitiful.

“I’ll go with you,” Aurora said. “In the meantime, Ivil can explain to Pixie what’s going on.”

“Pixie also needs a nice dress,” Ivil said. Probably from the children’s section, on account of her smallness. That was okay. She imagined that Pixie would be very cute with bows in her hair and a poofy dress on.

“In that case, you should stay here and let me take care of everything,” Aurora said.

“And why would I stay here?” Ivil asked.

“As punishment for pulling this on me at the last second,” Aurora said. “Did you think normal people are just… ready to head out and meet an emperor at the drop of a hat?”

“I was prepared,” Ivil pointed out.

“Normal people,” Aurora repeated for emphasis.

Ivil rocked back on her heels, but couldn’t help the smile that snuck up on her. “Alright, fine,” she said. Do you want Sonic to accompany you?” She gestured to the Tech Maid.

Aurora eyed her for a moment before nodding. “Might as well. I imagine that a Tech Maid of Mars might stand out, but if I’m there then our group is diplomatic, and she won’t appear to be a guard at first glance.”

“And she can keep you all safe,” Ivil said. An upper B-classer wasn’t an empty threat. Sure, there would be a number of people with cores on a station this important, but most of those she’d crossed wouldn’t stand up to someone like Sonic Spectre.

“I will endeavour to keep everyone safe,” Sonic replied.

“Good, good,” Ivil said.

“So, when is this dinner?” Aurora asked.

Ivil hummed. “In about four hours.”

“Four… four hours?” Aurora leapt to her feet. “That’s barely time to shower and put on makeup!”

“Do you need funds, for transportation, and for dresses and the like?”

Aurora choked, then glared. “No, I do not. I’m not without some resources. Goodness, four hours, we’re going to have to buy off-the-shelf, and you can forget about any sort of tailoring.”

“It’ll be fine,” Ivil said.

“It might be,” Aurora replied. “Come on, girls. Twenty-Six, put those long legs of yours to good use. Pixie, you can have an existential crisis later, once we’re back.”

Twenty-Six nodded quickly and hopped to her feet. “See you later!” she chirped before pulling Pixie out after her.

Aurora seemed satisfied with herself before she gave Ivil a stern nod. “More warning next time. I don’t handle surprises well.”

“I feel like you’ve been handling them admirably so far,” Ivil replied.

“Flattery won’t work on me, empress,” Aurora shot back before she went off and followed the others. Sonic merely bowed on the way out.

And so Ivil found herself alone for the moment, though Pepper was in the ship somewhere as well.

She shrugged and made her way up towards her room.

Prepared as she may be, there were certain formalities to such a meeting, and there was no harm in a proper shower before showing up. Besides, she liked showers. They gave her time to sit back and think, something she needed at the moment.

The dinner would be… interesting. Bringing not one, but three dates along? Well, that’d certainly show up that smug Jovian fool! At the same time… well, she didn’t have anywhere near as close a relationship with anyone as what he had with his wife of… how many years now?

A decade, at least! Maybe two?

That was okay. Envy was a familiar sting, but it was one she could well live with.

Besides, with three times as many wives she’d have as much married time as him in a third of the time, and then she’d be ahead once more.

Ivil smiled smugly, even if she was the only one who could see it.

She was always winning.

Chapter ninety-three

Dressed to Impressed

It came as no surprise that someone in the position of empress or emperor would run into people that could be considered traditionally attractive.

Honeypots, of course, but also normal functionaries and officers of a high enough income to afford well-tailored uniforms and cosmetic enhancements. Mars prided itself on having a healthy, happy populace, and that often translated into a culture that prized physical health.

Basically, the average Martian was fit and very proud of it, and that meant that they were often also very attractive.

Ivil had been to plenty of high-profile gatherings and met with models and politicians whose entire careers depended on being attractive. Still, what she saw before her at the moment made any Mars Top Model showing pale in comparison.

Aurora was tapping her feet with obvious impatience in the loading area the Sappho was connected to. She was in an opulent, high-fashion ensemble. A fusion of a military uniform and evening gown, with intricate golden embroidery and red, velvety fabric.

The dress had gold-fringed shoulder pieces and a high neckline with a white cravat. The neck seemed designed to keep Aurora’s head high, not that she needed it. Large, round glasses were pinched over her nose, which was wrinkled with obvious impatience.

“I like what you did with your hair,” Ivil said as she stepped out of the airlock.

“In the time I had? I worked miracles,” Aurora said, though her hand did surreptitiously reach up to fix her hair a little more. It was quite voluminous at the moment. Very curly. Ivil wanted to sink her hand into it and pull Aurora closer and…

Ah, right, dinner.

Ivil glanced to the side and caught Twenty-Six’s eyes. The woman blushed prettily. “Aurora did it,” she said, and it was definitely a compliment.

Ivil smiled and looked her up and down. Unlike Aurora’s far more formal dress, Twenty-Six was in something a little less complex. A figure-hugging dress with a plunging neckline—which showed off what there was to show off—and a corseted top. The dress had large, somewhat poofy shoulders and a long, trailing skirt.

“Do you have any idea how hard it was to find something for someone with her proportions?” Aurora asked. “This was the best we could do.”

“Sorry?” Twenty-Six said. She cringed. “I’m not the dress sort?”

“You look beautiful,” Ivil replied honestly.

“Ah!”

Twenty-Six did, in fact, look very cute! Like some rich noble daughter about to be paraded around for the gentry for the first time. Though…

“Are you wearing boots?” Ivil asked.

“She refused to put on heels,” Aurora said.

“She wanted me to wear these… things! They’re incompatible parts. I’m not sure they’d even work!” Twenty-Six said. “And it’s not like I need to look any taller.”

Ivil smiled, then glanced at Aurora who glared right back. “They weren’t even that tall, for heels.”

“You could kill a man with them!” Twenty-Six said.

“I could kill an empress with mine right now,” Aurora muttered darkly.

The last of them was Pixie. Pixie who stood out next to the other two by being rather plain. Her hair was done up in a simple part, with a tight little beret on, and her dress was… less a dress and more a uniform.

“It’s just an old thing,” Pixie said. “But yeah, sometimes I have to present myself in more formal company, for work, and it’s hard to be taken seriously unless you dress the part.”

Ivil nodded. Pixie often played the role of the spokesperson for her own mercenary persona, so that much made some sense.

Her outfit was a dark navy uniform, with a split dress that stopped at mid-calf exposing dress pants beneath. Otherwise, it was a zip-fronted, structured coat-dress with a few metallic accents and a thick belt cinched at the waist. Her cuffs had a few silver stripes, and there were a few more across her arm where a rank insignia might be on a more Martian variant of the same.

Ivil nodded. “Very cute.”

Pixie blinked. Then her shy nervousness turned into indignation. “I’m not cute,” she said. “I’m a decorated, award-winning pilot.”

Ivil nodded. Yes, Pixie was very cute. She could tell that the others thought so as well, even if they weren’t saying anything.

“Pixie has boots, and no one’s pointing that out,” Twenty-Six muttered.

“Dress uniform boots,” Aurora said.

They were all-black, faux-leather boots, shiny and new, pretty much exactly what someone in a parade uniform would wear. In fact, they weren’t so dissimilar to the boots Ivil had on at the moment. “I think those are fine. It’s a matter of contrast, really. Boots are part of the normal uniform, so it’s only normal. Whereas boots and a dress does seem somewhat odd,” Ivil said. She then glanced at Twenty-Six’s side. The young woman had a satchel bag that Ivil knew was filled with tools. She decided not to point it out. “Don’t worry. If anyone has problems with the way you’re dressed, then they have a problem with me.”

“You seemed to have a problem,” Twenty-Six said.

“That doesn’t count.”

Twenty-Six crossed her arms. It wasn’t very effective.

“Shall we get going?” Ivil asked. She reached up and adjusted her cape. She wore it partially over one shoulder, draping down until it nearly touched the ground. It was a large, thick piece of cloth with slightly ripped edges and careful embroidery that had been worn out and burned.

It clashed slightly with her pristine, pitch-black uniform, but Ivil liked the message it sent.

Her cape had once been the banner hanging over the bridge of the Pride of Conquering Earth, the Earth Alliance’s greatest flagship of the Third Solar War. It had a design that incorporated imagery from every nation that was part of the Alliance.

Most galling was a red sphere representing the Earth Alliance’s “ownership” of Mars, a legal fiction that they still clung to even now.

That was the only part of the banner which she had kept. The rest, along with the flagship, was melted slag.

“Let’s go. I’m certain that we’ll be able to ride down to the old man’s place without difficulty.”

Sonic Spectre flitted along behind them as Ivil took the front and walked ahead of the others. They crossed through the station, and Ivil glared at anyone trying to take any pictures, or who spent too long staring. Certainly, this many attractive women all together was a rare sight, but it was no reason to ogle.

They reached the grand elevator at the centre of the station only to find the guard tripled. Well over a dozen core-wielders were standing at attention by the elevator, and while most seemed calm and composed, a few of them were sweating bullets.

Ivil imagined that those sweating were those informed of who, exactly, she was. They seemed to mostly be the higher-ranked officers.

Fortunately they were met by the same butler who had greeted her that morning. “Right this way, lady empress and guests,” he said with a bow before gesturing to the opening doors of the elevator.

Ivil led the way in, then positioned herself at the back.

Twenty-Six was the one taking it hardest, though she was soon distracted by the elevator itself. “Why does the elevator have a washroom?” she asked.

“To wash yourself in?” Aurora proposed.

“I mean, sure, but like… that means that there’s a water connection? Does it have a tank and filtration system? Do you know how complicated water and waste management is?” Twenty-Six asked. “And to make it mobile like this? I bet there’s a lot of variation in the gravity when the elevator moves up and down, and how are the tanks emptied and refilled? Does the elevator need to be serviced daily for that?”

“I’m certain that the inconvenience of having a washroom in the elevator is part of the reason why it’s there in the first place,” Aurora said. “It’s just a statement piece, of sorts.” She glanced around the interior, which was mostly polished stone and worked gold. “It’s one thing to make an interior seem ostentatious and impressive, it’s entirely another thing to actually show off your wealth by having things that ought to be impossibly inconvenient just be present.”

“I guess?” Twenty-Six said.

“Yeah, I’m with you on this one,” Pixie said. “No one appreciates waste-management until you’re in it up to your elbows.”

“Yeah,” Twenty-Six agreed.

Ivil resisted the urge to smile. If the Jovian emperor was spying on them now to learn anything, he wasn’t coming out of it the winner.

The elevator slowed to a gentle stop and opened quietly into the same hall filled with waiting guards. There were more of them now, and of higher quality.

“This way, ladies,” the butler said before guiding them along. “Does anyone wish to make a small stop in a refreshment room before joining the host in the dining hall?”

Ivil shrugged. The sooner this was done with, the better, but she didn’t care as long as everyone here was comfortable.

Chapter ninety-four

Like in the Soaps

Opulence wasn’t something the Empress of Mars was unfamiliar with, and yet it seemed as though the Emperor of Jupiter was determined to stretch the definition of opulence as much as he was ready to stretch the fabric of space to his whims.

The far wall of the room, behind the tallest seat at the dining table, was backed by a large window.

Obviously, they were deep within the station-moon, and looking past the walls ought to have shown them bare stone, but instead the window showed a spectacular view of Jupiter, currently framed in the dead centre of the rounded glass portal.

The outer walls were lined by regular columns of worked silver, each one as wide as the average man’s arm span, and between these were glass panels looking into a grand aquarium.

Fish, all of them shades of blue from the almost-white to deep-ocean blues that were almost black, swam about in peaceful little schools or darted around the coral beds at the bottom of the aquarium.

The floor was black marble. The ceiling, the bare, unsmoothed stone of the moon they were buried within.

It was all a bit much, in Ivil’s opinion.

She leaned back in her own seat. It had been smaller, by a smidge, than the quasi-throne at the far end of the table. And it was blue. Silver and blue, with plush cushions of a deep navy velvet.

Those weren’t her colours, however, and so she now sat upon a seat of obsidian and gold… with tasteful Mars-orange cushions.

Her… friends who were girls, were all sitting in the plain seats that lined the sides of the table. Aurora to her right, Twenty-Six and Pixie to her left. Not that their placement meant anything. Obviously. Sonic Spectre silently departed with the butler, to do… maid things, she supposed.

At the moment the only thing they’d been served was silverware. She thought it was nice enough. There were little sapphires embedded into the base of each knife and fork, to match the blue-and-silver theme of the room.

It was the little details that really made things stand out, Ivil found. She could… perhaps take some notes.

“He’s certainly taking his time,” she muttered, mostly to fill the silence and because she knew he could hear her.

“It’s fine,” Aurora replied. “Did we have a concrete timetable for this dinner party?”

“Dinner parties have timetables?” Twenty-Six asked. She was currently sitting on her hands. Ivil suspected that she was afraid to touch anything, which was fair. The current table setting—not the table itself, merely the silverware, candelabras, and place settings—were worth more than ten Held Togethers.

Pixie, next to Twenty-Six, seemed rather comfortable, though she was sweating a little in her uniform. Ivil frowned and lowered the temperature by a degree while Aurora and Twenty-Six debated the value of timeliness with regards to social gatherings.

There was a loud, unnecessarily dramatic squeal as the door to one side of the room opened, and in marched the Emperor of Jupiter’s puppet, along with a pair of unfamiliar women.

Aurora stood, which prompted the others to scramble to do the same, though Ivil decided to remain inclined in her seat. She didn’t stand for the likes of him.

The man was what Ivil had seen previously. A thing of flesh and blood and bone that might have passed for a normal human being to anyone else. He had a beard and platinum-blonde hair now, and was wearing a well-fitted but comfortable suit.

“Hello, hello,” he said cheerfully, his arms sweeping wide. “Forgive me the wait. My dearest Eleanor wanted to pretty herself up.”

One of the two women with him rolled her eyes.

She was a little older, perhaps in her early to mid fifties. A little plump, and she only came up to the emperor’s shoulder, but her brown eyes were sharp even as she shook her head. The woman was in a nice but uncomplicated evening gown, but what struck Ivil most was her lack of any cores.

That woman was a pure human, without a single core, though… Ivil could sense that lacking cores didn’t mean she lived outside of the effect of them. She seemed healthy, more so than was normal for a plain old human. Not something that the average person would notice, or be able to notice, but Ivil could see it all the same. This Eleanor had been healed by biological manipulation cores several times.

“Hello, everyone,” she said. “Forgive me. My dearest husband insisted on making you stew in place for a while. If it was up to him we’d only be having dinner this time next week, just to see how long he can avoid having to sit down.”

The emperor chuckled, and whatever offence he could have taken… he didn’t.

“I’m Eleanor,” she said. “I’m afraid that my husband isn’t the greatest at introductions. You must be miss Sterlingworth, of Phobos?”

“A pleasure, ma’am,” Aurora replied with a slight curtsy. “I’ve heard much about you. You’re one of the founders of some of the greatest philanthropic organizations in the system.”

“Oh, that’s just pish-posh stuff. I got lucky, and it wouldn’t be kind of me not to spread that around a little,” Eleanor said. “Oh, I’m afraid that I’m not as familiar with you, young miss.” The last was directed to Twenty-Six.

Twenty-Six started to curtsy, seemed to realize that she didn’t know how, bowed, then straightened in a hurry and finally extended a hand to shake… even though they were still several metres apart.

The awkwardness held for a moment before she just stomped forwards with her big old boots and shook the very amused Eleanor’s hand. “Hi! I’m Twenty-Six, from Saturn. Uh. I’ve never heard of you, but it’s nice to meet you? You too, mister emperor, your highness sir?”

Ivil refrained from laughing. That would be rude.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Miss Twenty-Six,” Eleanor said while the emperor lingered a step behind her. “And you must be Miss…”

“Pixie, ma’am,” Pixie replied. She gave the emperor and Eleanor a salute, fist over chest in the Jovian style. “I’m more of a local than my, ah, friends here.”

“A pleasure! You’ll have to tell me what you think of life around Jupiter, then. I’ve been making some efforts to improve things, but it’s sometimes slow going,” Eleanor replied. Her eyes and attention skipped over to Ivil, but rather than push for an introduction, she turned to the other woman that had entered with them.

The familial resemblance was obvious. She was shorter than Eleanor by half a head, and far shorter than the emperor himself, but that didn’t make her a short woman by any means, merely closer to average. She had Eleanor’s eyes and the emperor’s platinum-blonde hair, but her features were a little more gaunt. Carved and serious, and where Eleanor had kindness in her gaze this woman was all sharp.

“This is my eldest daughter, Cecilia,” Eleanor said.

“Hello,” Cecilia replied with a practiced bow. “I’m Cecilia of Jove, current president of the League of Free Moons.”

Aurora’s brows shot up. “I thought I recognized you,” she replied. “Though you’re not in your usual uniform. I… was not aware that you were linked to the emperor.”

“I gained my post through my own merits,” Cecilia replied. “Though I cannot say that I didn’t have an advantage or two along the way. Still, I keep my familial relations as private as I can, so as to not… complicate matters politically.” Her gaze snapped from Aurora to Ivil. “But I suspect that the time where politics were relatively simple has passed.”

“Ah yes,” the emperor said with a knowing grin. “The last to introduce herself.”

Ivil sniffed indelicately. “Yes, yes. I am Ivil Antagonist, Empress of Mars and so on and so forth.” She waved a hand dismissively. “You’ve heard of me.”

“We have!” Eleanor said, obviously undaunted by Ivil’s confidence. She could kind of see what the old man saw in her. “Well, come now, let’s not all just stand about and look pretty. I bet you’re famished. I certainly am. Dear, can you shorten the table? We’ll look quite silly spread out like this.”

“You’re the one who wanted seating for fifty,” he muttered good naturedly. A snap of his fingers later and the table shrank so that there wouldn’t be as much room from one end to the other, and several of the seats faded away to nothing, all displaced one dimension to the back. “Sit, sit, the butlers will bring the appetizers around soon, and in the meantime, we can have a friendly chat.”

The emperor pulled out a seat for his wife, the one to the right of his own, and his daughter took her own seat next to Pixie.

Ivil sat back and watched. Yes, this was almost exactly like a tense dinner party in one of her soaps, only with a few minor details changed. She could handle this.

Chapter ninety-five

Dinner

The dinner started off well enough. Ivil was no gastronomist, but she could appreciate fine taste, and the emperor… well, his tastes were certainly rich, which had a certain correlation with regards to taste.

A butler—not the same as the one who’d led them here—and a trio of maids with trays and cloches slipped into the room. The maids set the trays down nearby and started to move plates before everyone at the table in perfect silence.

“As amuse-bouche, we begin with nebula pearls,” the butler said. “If any of the guests have dietary restrictions or necessities, please rest assured that we would be overjoyed to accommodate.”

“Nebula pearls,” Aurora said. “I haven’t seen these in some time. They’re quite popular, aren’t they?”

“I do love the way they pop,” Eleanor said with a laugh. “It’s a rather fun food, and they’re rather low in calories if you’re watching your waist.”

Ivil perked an eyebrow as the cloche over her plate was removed, revealing a wide, almost flat bowl with a small heap of chilled spheres stacked in its middle next to a drizzle of some sort of savoury sauce. A few sprigs of some herb were tossed on top.

“Interesting, I suppose,” she said. “What are these, exactly?”

The little spheres were wafting a faint smoke as they made contact with the warmer air of the room.

There were several dozen of them, with a larger one in the centre. She recognized that they were a vague recreation of the Jovian system and its many moons.

“They’re small balls of gel, frozen to keep their shape,” Aurora explained. “A little complicated to work with, from what I understand, but the gels can be flavoured in all sorts of ways, and they have an interesting texture.”

“And they’re laid out like the moons of Jupiter,” Cecilia replied.

Twenty-Six paused, a spoon already in her mouth, as she looked down at her plate which was noticeably missing some balls already. “I ate Europa,” she said.

Ivil refrained from laughing—it would only distress her more. The fact that she’d gone and started to eat without leave of the emperor at the far end of the table only made her love Twenty-Six a little more. The others were all far more… appropriate, which was fine of course, but not nearly as funny.

“Um… very tasty?” Twenty-Six tried.

Next to her, Pixie let out a sad little sigh. “So, thank you for inviting us to this dinner. It’s quite kind of you.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Eleanor said. “My hubby never gets out, and I worry sometimes that he doesn’t get socialized enough. It’s just me and him some days, now that our kids are all grown up. He doesn’t have very many peers.”

“I wasn’t aware that you had several children,” Pixie replied. “I heard that you had some, of course, but the media’s always been hush-hush about it.”

“By design, yes,” Eleanor said. “We don’t want paparazzi sticking their beaks anywhere they don’t belong.”

“My wife gets annoyed when I clean them out,” the emperor replied.

Ivil nodded. She understood. She’d once discovered a journalist trying to sneak into her rooms. Somehow it was even more insulting than discovering an Empress of Mars fanatic trying to do the same.

“I have thirteen children,” Eleanor said, and Ivil swallowed Jupiter whole right through her windpipe.

Fortunately, breathing and lungs were beneath her, so she didn’t make a scene.

“Th-thirteen,” Ivil said.

“That’s nice,” Twenty-Six said. “I’ve always wanted to have a big family.”

“Thirteen seems a little more than big,” Aurora said.

“You think? There’s a whole pro-baby thing around Saturn, since the replacement rate is so awful. Don’t you have something like that around Phobos?” Twenty-Six asked.

“No, we don’t,” Aurora said. She leaned back a little from Twenty-Six’s enthusiasm.

Eleanor laughed. “I always wanted a big family too, though I’m getting a little old for it.”

“There are cores that can help you feel younger,” the emperor said, but it had the tone of someone rehashing a discussion that had happened before.

“That’s nice, dear, but if you want a fourteenth baby, you’ll carry it yourself,” Eleanor said with a cheeky grin.

The butler and maids returned, and empty plates were swept away. Crystal wine glasses replaced them, and Ivil pretended to listen as a sommelier was brought in to describe their wine course for the evening.

“Do you have soda?” Twenty-Six asked.

The sommelier’s brow twitched, but they did, in fact, have a fine selection of sodas, canned and bottled and chilled to perfection, to pick from.

The next meal arrived and was placed in the centre of the table. A large side of beef, surrounded by vegetables and a ring of prawns.

“Galilean surf and turf,” the butler announced. “Seared Callisto-bred Wagyu beef, paired with Europan prawn along with a side of steamed, locally-grown vegetables from the garden of Miss Celeste.”

“Miss Celeste?” Pixie asked.

“One of my younger daughters,” Eleanor said. “She’s studying agricultural biology at the University of Gale Crater. We built her a little garden with a sunlight. It’s filled with clever little mirrors.”

“That’s neat,” Twenty-Six said. “Growing stuff on a station is super complicated. Anything to do with water is, but add in dirt and temperature regulation, and it becomes a real nightmare. So uh, do we just serve ourselves?”

Eleanor smiled kindly, then gestured to one of the maids who stepped up and pulled out a large knife with which to cut out some nice pieces of meat to place on their plates.

Once everyone was served, Ivil started to pick at her food and listen in on the conversations around her. It wasn’t bad, she supposed. Eating stuff fresh from the Sappho’s microwave was more fun, but she could hardly complain.

“So, Ivil,” the emperor said casually. “Tell me what Humphrey is up to?”

Ivil blinked. Who? But then it struck her. That was the name of the Emperor of Earth, wasn’t it? “I’d forgotten that’s what he was called,” she said.

“Might I ask who that is?” Pixie asked politely.

“The Emperor of Earth. Personally, I believe having Humphrey as a name explains a lot about him,” Ivil said.

“It’s an objectively bad name,” Twenty-Six said. “And my name’s a number.”

“In any case, he’s up to no good once more,” Ivil said. “Personally, I think that it’s his massive inferiority complex kicking in once more.”

Cecilia sat up a little. “I read Miss Sterlingworth’s report. Which I thank you for, by the way. The Earth Alliance is going to try to steal our newest core cache. The League of Free Moons can’t take that sitting down. We’re going to have to reply.” She stared across the table, then took a sip from her wine. “It might mean war.”

“I don’t think it’ll come to that,” Ivil said. “If we’re fast enough, we can make it to Uranus and smack the fool down. Just seeing me around might persuade him to be less of an idiot than usual.”

“I see. And your own intentions with the cache?” Cecilia asked. “I beg your pardon, but you also strike me as the sort who’d want to take control of it.”

“What’s a few thousand cores between friends?” Ivil asked. “No, you don’t need to worry. I don’t want the cores, and if I did, then there’s nothing you could do about it, whether you knew or not.”

“How reassuring,” she replied.

Aurora cleared her throat. “I believe Ivil is just putting her cards on the metaphorical table. She obviously has no ill intent with regards to the League. I believe her actions so far put value to her words in the same regard.”

“Ah yes, the oh-so-trustworthy genocidal queen of the most powerful warmongering state in the solar system,” Cecilia said easily while swirling her cup. “Very trustworthy. Are you always so fast to put your faith in others, Miss Sterlingworth?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I should reconsider the faith I’ve had in the League,” Aurora shot back.

Cecilia and Aurora stared at each other across the table, and the mutual dislike there wasn’t hidden.

“Sweetie, don’t be mean to a guest,” Eleanor said. “That’s rather rude, and we didn’t raise you to be that way. Apologize.”

The current sitting president of the third largest faction in the solar system sat up a little, flushed, then cleared her throat. “Forgive me, Miss Sterlingworth, that was inappropriate of me.”

“I’d rather you apologise to Ivil. She’s the one you actually insulted,” Aurora replied.

She wasn’t even trying to hide how smug she felt about the whole thing. How very cheeky. Ivil liked it. It wasn’t every day that someone leapt to her defence.

“This, uh, beef is very nice,” Pixie said.

“Thank you, dear,” Eleanor replied. “And I do appreciate the change of topic. Is everyone enjoying their meal?”

Ivil nodded. Surprisingly, she was.

Chapter ninety-six

Ice Cream

“Ice cream?” Twenty-Six asked as the dessert was revealed.

The only sign that the butler was surprised by her question was a very slight perking of his eyebrow. “Indeed, ma’am,” he replied simply. “This is Europan Comet Cream. Milk from dome-raised goats with sprinkles of sugar rock.”

The prior courses had all been well-presented and well-proportioned when the plates were handed to them as a complete item, and they weren’t required to cut the meat off the bone themselves.

This dessert was slightly different. The main part was a ball of blue-white ice cream placed off-centre of the plate. Behind it was a trail of creamy lines sprinkled with colourful little pieces of rock candy. It gave the appearance of a comet with a long trail behind it.

Cecilia sighed, and the young woman turned to give her mother a rather unimpressed look.

Eleanor, in response, simply smiled. “This was little Cecilia’s favourite dessert as a child. Please forgive the rather infantile presentation. She loved these when she was little. More than once, an ice cream comet was the only bribe she’d accept as recompense for taking a bath or going to bed on time.”

“Mother,” Cecilia replied. “I’m a grown woman.”

“As am I. Obviously you haven’t grown enough to appreciate that infantile things are just as enjoyable when you’re older as when you’re still young and youthful.”

“I think it’s rather charming,” Aurora said. She eyed Cecilia from across the table. “Who knew that the president of the League was fond of such… cute things.”

Ivil smiled and cut into the ball of ice cream with a spoon before taking a bite. Vanilla with a hint of mint. It was nice. Refreshing and sweet without being too much so. “This is quite good,” Ivil replied.

“It is,” Pixie said from nearby. “All of the food has been. You have very good cooks.”

“Why thank you,” Eleanor replied. “We have a rather large staff of help, including a few gourmet cooks, some of the best in the system. And yet you would be impressed by the number of times my children ordered absolute junk from them.”

“There’s a place for junk and comfort food, I think,” Pixie replied. “As long as they’re taken in moderation, of course.”

“Of course,” Eleanor replied.

“So, if it wouldn’t be inappropriate for me to ask, how did you two meet?” Pixie asked. She only briefly glanced at the Emperor of Jupiter, who was mostly just sitting there and smiling. He had only touched a few of his meals, and Ivil knew well that any “eating” he did was all for show."

Eleanor tapped her chin. “I’m not quite good with dates and times. Honey, how long ago was it?”

“Thirty-two years ago,” the emperor said. “A few months and change. You know I rarely forget our anniversary.”

“Rarely,” Eleanor said with a knowing grin. Ivil found that the woman was rather cheeky. She wasn’t Ivil’s sort, being a little old and taken and having baggage in the form of far too many children and such, but she could nonetheless see what the emperor saw. “Anyway, we met at a hotel of all places. At the time I was working for a non-profit. The Jovian Helping Hands, I think it was?”

“That sounds about right,” the emperor said. “You can skip the embarrassing parts.”

“I think not,” Eleanor replied. “So! Here I was, in the middle of the lobby at the Ganymede Galactic hotel, the only five star in the system, and I was in quite the pickle.”

“How come?” Twenty-Six asked.

The woman clearly enjoyed the attention because her smile only widened. “I was arguing with this man. The executive in charge of a mineral extraction company mostly centred around Io. Anyway, they’d earned themselves a reputation for mistreating employees and I was there to protest. The CEO of the company stepped out and started to give me an earful. Then hotel security got involved. Fortunately, I had some strong-armed friends with me, and they weren’t comfortable just stomping in and kicking us out.”

“I can see the picture, but not how the emperor fits into it,” Pixie said.

“Ah, yes, I’m coming to that. So, the CEO orders his troops forwards. He had a team of well-armed gentlemen who seemed to have fewer scruples about smacking a young lady around. And then, between one blink and the next, no security at all. In fact, I was left without most of my rowdy friends either.”

“What happened?” Twenty-Six asked.

“They were noisy,” the emperor said. “I just wanted the attention of the hotel’s staff, but the entire thing was keeping them from doing their job. So I teleported the lot of them outside.”

Eleanor nodded. “It was quite surprising. The CEO ran off soon after, but not before I took the opportunity to give him an earful. That night, I tracked down the kind gentleman who helped me, and I discovered him mid-meal at the hotel’s restaurant.”

“She just sat across from me, bold as day,” he said.

“One thing led to another, and nine months later my eldest was born,” Eleanor replied.

“Mother,” Cecilia groaned.

“How about you, Miss Pixie?” Eleanor asked. “How did you meet the empress?”

“Oh? Uh, it wasn’t anything too special, I don’t think. She hired me for protection duty on a short mission around Jupiter. I’m a fighter pilot for hire,” Pixie said.

“The empress needed protection?” the emperor asked.

“I thought she was cute, and figured that hiring her would keep her close,” Ivil admitted.

The emperor chuckled. “I suppose that’s one way to go about it,” he said. “In any case, with our meals finished, is this perhaps a good time to discuss the business you first approached me about?”

Ivil shifted so that she was leaning on an elbow, a very casual pose across from the man. “I suppose,” she allowed. “The Emperor of Earth, as usual, needs to be put in his place.”

“Did you intend to kill him outright?” he asked as he picked up a cup of wine and swirled it.

“As much as I’d enjoy that, I doubt it would be so easy. Unlike the way you’ve arranged things for yourself, the Emperor of Earth and I are both significantly more mobile.”

“More mobile?” Twenty-Six asked. Then she glanced between the two and shrank back. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Ivil waved the concern off. “It’s fine. I mean that certain cores function best in certain configurations. That can mean keeping those cores deployed and functional at all times. Some core users are forever stuck in one place unless they want to lose much of their power. As emperors we can forgo some amount of strength in exchange for greater mobility, of course. The emperor here has chosen not to do such a thing.”

The emperor shrugged. “I am not quite at the level of the empress here, though within the confines of my home where I am at my most powerful… I suspect that if it came to blows it would be quite the spectacle.”

Ivil met his eyes from across the table.

The temperature in the room shifted, growing at once warmer and cooler. Small vortexes of sparking wind formed, and the hair of a few at the table started to rise.

Then Eleanor reached over and patted her husband on the hand while Twenty-Six looked at Ivil with big, watery eyes.

Ivil and the emperor broke eye contact in the same millisecond, neither giving ground. “In any case,” Ivil continued as if nothing had occurred. “To answer your question Twenty-Six, the Emperor of Earth isn’t tied to a single location. He would be stronger if he were, as would I in some respects. But even so, a moving battle between the two of us wouldn’t be short or subtle. A lot of our cores are dedicated to keeping us alive and counteracting even terribly esoteric attacks.”

“Oh, okay,” Twenty-Six said. “So if we do meet him, it’ll not turn into a fight?”

“I didn’t say that. Just that if it does, it’ll be a running battle. If he reaches the cores around Uranus first, he might think himself strong enough to make a stand. The fleet with him, disparate as it may be, will still be a minor factor in any combat.”

“Can normal ships actually pose a threat?” Pixie asked.

Ivil considered it. “A normal mosquito is no threat to a well-armed human soldier, but that doesn’t mean it can’t fly into the soldier’s eye, distracting them for a moment.”

“Comforting,” Pixie said.

“It is what it is,” Ivil said.

“I wish you luck,” the Emperor said. “Genuinely. I’m happy enough where I am with me and mine that I don’t see much point in running after that fool boy, but if and when you catch up to him, give the back of his head a good smack on my behalf, would you?”

Chapter ninety-seven

Playing Catch Up

“That was surprisingly fun,” Twenty-Six said as they made their way out of the dining room and into the emperor’s foyer. She was carrying a large basket filled to the very brim with leftovers and was smiling bright enough to compete with the sun.

“That was tense,” Aurora replied. “I can’t believe I almost had words with the president of the League.” Her eyes narrowed and she stared at Ivil. “Over you, of all people.”

Ivil smiled smugly. “I, for one, appreciate you rising to my defence. It was very sweet of you.”

Aurora’s lips pursed, but she only blushed when Twenty-Six let out a little squeak of a giggle next to her. “Oh, shut up,” she said. It was uncertain who that was aimed at.

“What about you, Pixie?” Ivil asked the shorter woman.

“Possibly one of the most stressful dinners of my life,” Pixie said. “I still haven’t had time to process who you are, or what’s going on, and then bam, dinner with the president of the League of Free Moons and the god-damned Emperor of Jupiter. And Eleanor… who might be scarier than the other two. Did she have, like, an emperor’s level of cores or something?”

“No. Not a single one, in fact. She’s pure human. Though… Well, a woman shouldn’t speak of another this way, but I think it’s suffice to say that she’s had some work done. She’s quite fit,” Ivil replied.

Pixie looked at Ivil with one eyebrow quirked. “Uh-huh. Should we be worried that you were checking out the emperor’s wife?”

“I wasn’t checking her out. Merely… sating my curiosity. The emperor was surprisingly cordial, and so I didn’t feel it appropriate to pry any more than I did. She’s a tough woman though.”

“So many kids,” Aurora said.

“Don’t you want kids?” Twenty-Six asked.

“What? No. Maybe. This isn’t something I’m willing to discuss so openly,” Aurora said.

Twenty-Six shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind a few,” she said easily.

Ivil paused for a moment as her mind travelled the obvious path. Little Twenty-Sixes, all small and cute, with their mother’s features. And of course, they’d have Ivil’s eyes and determination. Little princes and princesses, to rule over the entire system… they could have one for every planet.

But that was for later. “Let’s set aside the baby talk for the moment. While I am quite enamoured with all three of you, talk of children seems like something that requires a… due amount of consideration.”

Aurora rubbed at her face. “You are incorrigible.”

“I don’t actually know what that means,” Twenty-Six said. “But I feel like I’ve heard the word before.”

“It means that Evelyn here never learned proper manners,” Aurora said.

“I’m sorry,” Ivil said. She even meant it, a tiny little bit. “They didn’t have courses on good manners in the lab I was grown in.”

Pixie almost tripped, which was strange as there was nothing to trip on. “You were grown in a lab?”

“I believe that’s the current most-popular theory as to my origins,” Ivil said. “The second place is that I clawed my way out of hell. The third is that I was too evil for hell. Surprisingly, the fourth theory as to my origins is that I had a simple, fulfilling life with loving parents, a dog and a cat, and that one day I just decided to say ‘screw it’ and warlorded my way up to empress. I’m rather fond of that one.”

“Is it real?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Hmm? Oh, no, not even a little,” Ivil said. “I never had pets.”

They rode up the elevator to the floor on which the Sappho waited for them, filling the time with much discussion and speculation as to Ivil’s origins. She kept mum about the truth, mostly because the stories the girls came up with were far more entertaining.

“I still like the idea that she’s an orphan raised by a team of childless spec-ops,” Pixie said.

“No officer in any modern army would allow their soldiers to raise a child,” Aurora said. “My theory is better.”

“Your theory isn’t even possible,” Twenty-Six pointed out. “I don’t think Mars has nobles for Ivil to be a lost princess of.”

“You are technically incorrect,” Aurora said. “There was a small monarchic dynasty that was somewhat powerful in the Martian sphere.”

“When was that?” Ivil asked.

“Sometime after the First Solar War. For about half a decade,” Aurora said.

“I’m not that old,” Ivil said.

“I didn’t say it was a concrete theory, only that it was better. Better in the sense that it makes for a greater story,” she defended.

Ivil glanced at Twenty-Six, and the young woman gave her a quick wink. That was right, Twenty-Six knew about Ivil’s past. At least to some small degree. They’d had a short chat about it at that arcade which felt like ages ago.

“I’m afraid that once the truth comes out, you’re going to be the most disappointed of all,” Ivil said.

Aurora shrugged. “I’m sure the truth is out there. No offence, but I imagine that a lot of your life is part of the public record.”

“I suppose so,” Ivil said. “The same could be said for you, no? And I at least have the benefit of an entire intelligence agency working to keep my information private and disseminate enough falsehoods to muddle any truth.”

“So people lie about you a lot?” Twenty-Six asked.

“And they’ve made a career of it,” Ivil replied. “I think there’s even one or two tabloids that make a business of besmirching my name just enough that it doesn’t bother me to the point that I pay them a visit while also being titillating enough for the masses.”

“Oh,” Twenty-Six said.

“You girls know that if you, we, date her in any fashion, that same kind of attention will be levelled at us, right?” Pixie asked. She crossed her arms. “I know I can handle it. I’ve been good about keeping my private stuff under wraps, since anything getting out could mean a pirate getting revenge, but past that, my rep is… good.”

“You mean super cool?” Twenty-Six asked. “As like, the number one pirate hunter of the Jupiter system?”

Pixie looked away, as if that would hide her pleased flush. “Yeah. But you two?”

“I’ll be quite fine,” Aurora said. “If anything, this would be… an interesting boon for my political career.”

“I’m happy spending time with me furthers your ambitions,” Ivil replied. It was only a little sarcastic. Aurora seemed to view things in a more political light than most, for obvious reasons, and increasing her own political worth might help her feel like she was closer to being Ivil’s peer.

“I guess Twenty-Six would be the worst affected,” Pixie said.

“I would?”

“Yeah. No offence meant. But do you have any idea how to handle the public? I’m sure the Emperor of Jupiter’s staff is nice and discreet, but that doesn’t mean that rumours won’t fly anyway,” Pixie said.

“Oh,” Twenty-Six replied. She glanced up to Ivil, then back. “I think it will be okay? I don’t think I have anything to hide. And if any journalists want to talk, I can chat for hours about stuff that interests me.”

Ivil nodded. “You should always attempt to weaponize your special interests.”

“Isn’t your special interest murder and mayhem?” Aurora asked. “I feel like that’s unfairly easy to weaponize, isn’t it?”

“I won’t apologise for my perfect hobbies.”

They arrived at the Sappho safe and sound only to find Sonic Spectre and Pepper waiting for them. The Tech Maid seemed as calm and unruffled as ever, though the same couldn’t be said for Pepper.

Still, they went through the usual greetings while climbing aboard the ship, and it took some time for Ivil to discreetly peel Pepper away from the conversation to ask the obvious question. “Has anything noteworthy happened?”

“Noteworthy,” Pepper repeated. She ran a hand through her hair and seemed to resist the urge to sigh. “That is one way of describing things, yes. The entire Jovian fleet was put on standby. They tried to be subtle about it, which is to say that every intelligence agency in the solar system found out before the last of their admiralty was awakened.”

“Oh? Now that’s interesting. Any idea why they’re being put on alert?”

Pepper nodded. “It looks like half of the fleet is being given marching orders. Destination Uranus. They’ll be rushing to get their things in order, but you can expect the entire fleet to be in motion in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

“Ah, so our visit here was somewhat fruitful, then? I suppose it’s only kind to let the League of Free Moons… navy, or whatever they have, know that we’ll be spearheading their efforts. If they can catch up, they’re welcome to try and assist.”

Chapter ninety-eight

Gossiping for Itchy Feet

Ivil wasn’t usually privy to the gossip and hubbub travelling around. She didn’t care much for media things, and ever since she discovered that she could just order MINT to record her soaps for her, she never really had to interact with the extranet at all.

However, she now found herself making an exception to that self-imposed rule. After all, she was hungry for gossip and now had people worth sharing it with.

Which is why she found herself in the living space of the Sappho, lounging back on a sofa with her boots off and a small tablet held up before her face. The only others in the room with her now were Pixie and Sonic Spectre.

The Tech Maid was posted by the doorway, hands folded over her waist and back straight. She was staring out ahead and was entirely impassive. Ivil knew that she was currently communicating with someone outside of the ship via some internal cores, but all of her communication was directed to that pocket cruiser parked outside of the station.

Pixie, on the other hand, was sitting in an armchair. Every few seconds she would shift and change position. One moment sitting properly, the next sitting with her legs tucked under her, the next slumped to the side. Then back. All the while she was reading through some documentation on a tablet of her own.

“Do you always have such restless legs?” Ivil asked. “Not that it’s an issue of any sort. I’m just curious.”

Pixie blinked, then looked around as if to make sure Ivil was actually talking to her. “Uh, yeah, I guess. It’s not always, but… yeah. Before a fight, or even just a normal mission, I get the urge to move around. It’s usually whenever something’s going to go down. I think it’s almost a sixth sense kind of thing. A nervous tic I get whenever trouble’s coming.”

Ivil tilted her head and stared at Pixie for a long moment. She did have a few cores, some of which were active now. Most were simple things, and Pixie wasn’t even out of the D class. Most of those cores were simple. Reinforcement for her internal organs, one that helped regulate blood pressure, and two cores in her brain.

Ivil squinted a little. One was definitely tied to her nervous system, a little core that made her reflexes sharper and faster. Useful, and rather common. The kind of core that had been duplicated a thousand times and passed around a great deal.

There was another attached to it. “Did you ever get a clairvoyance core?” Ivil asked.

“Ah, maybe?” Pixie said. She shrugged. “I got two that I don’t really know about.”

“You used unknown cores on yourself?” Ivil asked.

“It was early in my career. I shot down this pirate freighter during a mission. Then I came back a few days later to check into it for… you know, booty? Technically I had first rights to it. Usually that just means selling the wreck to a scrapper, but I was new. And it turned out that the captain had two cores. They were just… floating next to his body in the cockpit. So I grabbed them.”

“Interesting,” Ivil said. “No downsides?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think so. I thought they were just for piloting? I know I have one that acts on my blood somehow, and I figured the other was something similar.” Pixie blinked. “I’m clairvoyant?”

“Hardly,” Ivil said. “It looks like the core is merely making you twitchy before an active or violent event. It’s very weak as far as farsight goes, and you might also misread it if you eat too much sugar or drink too much caffeine.”

“Ah,” Pixie said. She blinked, then looked at her tablet again before looking up. “Well, now I’m not sure if I should be nervous or not.”

Ivil made a small, dismissive wave. “No, there’s no need for that. I’m certain everything will be just fine. Your cores seem very well settled, overall. You could, if you were looking for income, split all of them off and sell them for a pretty bounty.”

“Yeah, but that’d leave me weak for much longer than I’d like. It was kind of part of my retirement plan, though. If I ever got to that stage. Bounty hunters that specialize in pirate extermination don’t get a nice cushy retirement more often than not.”

Ivil nodded. She was familiar with that kind of mentality.

“So, I’m looking at flight paths and navigational data. What are you studying?” Pixie asked.

“Gossip,” Ivil said. She turned her tablet slightly so that Pixie could see. A short video of a local Jovian talk show was playing. Three pundits around a table arguing about current events.

“Really?” Pixie asked. “Uh, not that I’d question you.”

Ivil stared. “You know, if you want to be my girlfriend, you’re more than welcome to question me. I think that’s part and parcel of the title. It’s a luxury few people get, so I’d profit from it as much as possible, were I in your shoes.”

“Uh,” Pixie said. She hesitated, then shrugged. “Why are you looking at what looks like the cheesiest talk show in the system? I’ve seen that one. It’s trash.”

“Because even if it’s trash, it’s commonly regurgitated trash. If something comes up on this kind of show, then it’s mirroring the opinion of at least a percentage of the population.”

“The less educated, stupider population, maybe,” Pixie said.

“So the majority.”

Pixie blinked, then giggled. It was a very pleasant sound.

“Okay, fair,” she said. “So, what’s the gossip?”

“So far, nothing too interesting. Some celebrity scandals that I don’t care about. Cecilia made a showing as she apparently snubbed one of the diplomats from Neptune to show up at that dinner party, and now he’s quite irate. He complained about it on social media and apparently that’s a scandal all on its own.”

“She’s got a reputation for being a hardass,” Pixie said. “She’ll shrug this right off. Anything about the League of Free Moons’ fleet?”

“No, but there was mention of the government buying out a lot of bounty hunter contracts all of a sudden. The hosts think that the recent pirate troubles out of Ceres, combined with the number of diplomats and emissaries in the system, is making Jupiter look bad. So they suspect that the League is planning on making a big crack-down.”

Pixie hummed and tapped her lower lip. “I can poke in the bounty hunter networks I’m part of. They tend to be on the ball with that kind of stuff. But I doubt that this is anti-piracy stuff. They’re probably hiring anyone that’s available for this rush to Uranus.”

“Likely. Mercenaries are expensive, but in the short term, they’re cheaper than a standing army,” Ivil said. “If there are going to be any ships lost, I imagine the League would rather they be bounty hunters and guns for hire than the few ships they have.”

“Yeah. You know, this might be the start of a fourth solar war,” Pixie said.

Ivil nodded. “Yes. It might be the end of one as well. The League is a smaller power bloc than either Earth or Mars, but if it starts to fight with Earth, then Mars will supply it with ships and weapons, and might even be willing to bloody Earth’s nose if the opportunity arises.”

“No love lost, huh?”

“Not even a little. Obviously, I’d rather avoid all of that.”

“Yeah. A lot of people would die,” Pixie said.

“Hm? Oh, no, I don’t care about that,” Ivil said with a dismissive wave. “I had planned on having a long dating extravaganza that features visits on four planetary systems. Can’t have that in the middle of a war.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” Pixie said. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re strange?”

“And lived?” Ivil asked. She grinned. “I’m kidding. I’m certain you could get away with accusing me of such.”

Pixie shook her head. “I guess. You’re not a bad sort, but I feel like… huh, I guess it’s weird. I’m not usually the one with the better morals in any given situation. Maybe we should leave that part to Twenty-Six?”

“Not Aurora?”

“The politician?”

“Fair point,” Ivil said. “But I feel like Twenty-Six also has her own somewhat skewed view of things.”

“Does that leave me as the final arbiter of good morals? Because if that’s the case, I can’t imagine anything good coming from it,” Pixie said.

Ivil shifted in her seat a little. “That seems fine to me.”

“My legs feel itchy, Ivil,” Pixie said.

“Mhm. Maybe study up some more on… morals, or whatever. It might come in handy.”

Ivil supposed that she didn’t have much time for that, however. In a few hours they’d be departing, and then it would be a short hop to Uranus to pay an old adversary a much overdue visit.

Chapter ninety-nine

Bigger Guns

“Oh, good, you’re back,” Ivil said as she greeted Aurora by the Sappho’s airlock.

The noble blinked slowly, then nodded. “I have returned, yes. Were you waiting for me?”

Ivil nodded. “I was. Though I was also keeping an eye on you. I hope that you don’t find that overbearing, I was just worried. This station is… unfamiliar territory, and while I doubt the emperor here would want you to be harmed while on his station, I still feel like it was better to be safe than sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Aurora said. She glanced back out of the airlock, then back to Ivil. “I just had a few things to take care of.”

“That’s good. Did it go well?” Ivil was, at the moment, riding the fine line between being honest and being too honest. Too much honesty could ruin a relationship, and she didn’t want anyone to be aware of just how much energy she was spending spying on them.

Aurora nodded, then placed her hands on her hips and stretched her back out. “It went… well enough. I stopped by the League of Free Moons embassy on the station. It’s not the largest embassy in the system, but it’s definitely one of the bigger ones. There are too many political links too close to the emperor for this station to be left ignored. In any case, I sent a package back to Phobos, with news of what’s happening. I also managed to run into some delegates from the other moons.”

“Oh? Did they have anything good to say?” Ivil asked.

“They’re sensibly worried about all of the League’s sudden movement. I think the League’s attempts at subtlety have been so poor that their actions are coming across as more suspicious, not less.”

“They don’t have a high-quality intelligence agency the way Mars has MINT or the Earth Alliance has their own secret services,” Ivil said. “And now the League is paying the price for that.”

“It’s… an issue, yes,” Aurora said. “But try to keep in mind that the League is relatively young, and trust is still at a premium. The moons that make up the League don’t all trust each other, and you can bet that any attempt to create a spy agency would be met with great scepticism.”

Aurora took a deep breath, then slipped past Ivil and into the main corridor of the ship. “Well, I’m glad you’re back,” Ivil said.

“I’m… glad to be back,” Aurora said. She almost sounded surprised at her own revelation. “In any case, I indicated that Phobos, and by extension the Sappho would be doing what it could to solve any issues that the League can’t handle itself. I think the other diplomats believed me to be full of hot air, but I hope we can prove them wrong.”

“I’m sure we can impress them, if we put our minds to it,” Ivil said. “Shall we get moving? We were waiting on your return to take off.”

“Oh? I’m sorry. I should have known that I was delaying things,” Aurora said.

“It’s fine,” Ivil replied. “Come! We need our comms officer on the bridge. Twenty-Six looked the ship over and has declared it ready to go, and Pixie is in the pilot’s seat already.”

Ivil wasn’t wrong. By the time they made it to the bridge, the others were all in position, waiting for the all-clear.

Aurora adjusted her suit—it was a rather pretty garment, functional but also clearly designed with an eye towards aesthetics (skirts were rather cumbersome to wear in low gravity)—then she sat down at the communications station and slipped on a pair of bulky headphones. “Have we filed an outgoing flight plan?” Aurora asked.

“No,” Ivil said. “Just let station traffic control know that we’re departing now.”

“Just… like that?” Aurora asked. “We’re going to be causing all sorts of issues.”

“And if we allow traffic control to dictate things, someone might realize that there’s some political benefit to jamming a stick in our wheels,” Ivil said. “Even if they don’t realize the scale of the problems they’d be causing for themselves. It’s best to just head out and let the bureaucrats figure out their own issues on their own time.”

Aurora blinked, then shrugged. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to your irreverent way of doing things.”

“You will,” Pixie said from the pilot’s seat. “It’s actually kind of nice. I only get to bully my way past minor problems when I’m flying around fully equipped for war. With Ivil here you have a much bigger middle finger to swing around.”

“You seem enamoured with the abilities of my fingers, Pixie. Is there anything you want to share?” Ivil asked.

She enjoyed the way Pixie sputtered.

“Space Traffic Control, this is the independent ship Sappho,” Aurora spoke into a mic. “We’re requesting permission for immediate departure from… berth twelve, spoke twenty-two, outgoing vector heading… out-system.”

Ivil smiled as she settled down into the captain’s seat. Now was the part where some nobody who thought they were special because they had a tiny sliver of power would demand that they do things their way rather than just doing what they wanted.

“Yes… understood Space Traffic Control,” Aurora said. She tapped the mute button and leaned back. “They want a detailed flight plan, and for us to send a copy of our manifest and certifications.”

“Understandable,” Ivil said. “Inform them that our weapons are hot, and that if we don’t get permission in the next thirty seconds, we’re just going to blast our way out. Pixie, dear, warm up the guns?”

“On it,” Pixie said with a giggle. There was a ker-chunk, and the wonderful hum of weapon systems coming online.

A moment later, Twenty-Six buzzed in from engineering. “Hey, uh, are we warming up the guns for any particular reason?”

“Someone’s not giving us what we want even though we have bigger guns,” Ivil replied. “Just giving them a friendly reminder.”

“Oh… do you want me to shut off any shielding we have around the guns? It’ll make it way more obvious. Oh! And I can set the targeting system to ping off everything in several klicks around us. That’s usually considered pretty rude, but also kinda threatening.”

“Don’t do that,” Aurora said. “Yes, hello? Yes, I’m aware that our weapons are primed… mhm… send the invoice to… uh, the residence of the Empress of Mars. Yes, that’s right. I’ve been told by my captain that we require permission to leave within the next thirty seconds… ah.” Aurora leaned back. “They’re sending station security our way. Also, they’re refusing to unclamp our locks now.”

“Oh no, whatever shall we do?” Ivil asked. “Pixie, do we have a firing arc on all of the clamps holding us in place?”

“Ah… not quite,” Pixie said. “I mean, I could probably take most of them out, but it would risk the Sappho.”

“I don’t wanna have to replace hull pieces, that’s a lot of work,” Twenty-Six said.

Ivil shrugged. “Fair enough.” She wondered if it had been thirty seconds yet. “Pixie, prepare to manoeuvre us back and around, then hard burn out of here. I’ll take care of the pesky momentum problems. And as for the clamps…”

It took a bit of focus and a twist of her will, but with a sudden tearing sound and a loud series of thumps the clamps holding the Sappho in place were carefully exploded apart.

“Oh, they did not like that,” Aurora said. “Um… Space Traffic Control is saying that if we don’t cease now, they will be taking over our ship’s computer and shutting us down.”

“Can they do that?” Ivil asked.

“Yeah, it’s a normal procedure to link your ship’s computer to a station’s traffic control network. It lets them monitor your drive and fuel and such,” Twenty-Six said. “It also lets them shut down a ship and even move it via fly-by-wire in case of an emergency.”

“So they can take over the Sappho just like that?” Ivil asked.

“Yup!” Twenty-Six said. “Unless someone happens to be flying a ship built by pirates, who are notoriously not cool with leaving huge potential ECM vulnerabilities on their ships. And oops, did I accidentally pull some random cord out of this computer looking thing? Gosh, I hope that doesn’t break anything important.”

Ivil could kiss Twenty-Six. In fact, she decided to pencil just that in for later.

“Well then, Pixie, if you would.”

The ship spun on its central axis, pointed away from the station, then lurched forwards with the kind of acceleration usually linked with medical reports about broken necks and cracked bones. They didn’t really feel it, of course.

“Oh… um… we’re all under arrest?” Aurora said. “And… wow, this man is very loud.”

“You can cut them out,” Ivil said. “I don’t think we need them anymore.”

“Of course,” Aurora said. “Space Traffic Control, this is the Sappho. Thank you for your assistance. Have a nice day.”

She clicked the comms off with a vindictive little click and a smug little smile.

Ivil penciled in kissing her too.

Pixie as well, for her nice flying skills.

My, what a busy flight this would be.

Chapter one hundred

Patchwork Fleet

Ivil was no stranger to feeling powerful, but she was also aware that there were different kinds of powerful one could feel.

There was personal power, her ability to rip and tear anyone at will. There was that strange sort of social power that came from people bowing and scraping in fear at the mere sight of her. There was economic might, there was that moral power that came from always knowing that she was right…

There were probably a few more broad, generalized, sorts of power.

What interested her now was a more unique expression of power. The one that came exclusively from riding in a ship alongside a fleet of other warships.

It was a very impersonal sort of power. After all, the power itself didn’t come from the individual; it came from the many warships around them, all capable of projecting power of the kinetic and explosive sort in a wave of violence with nothing but an order keeping them restrained.

That sort of power had attracted her once. When she was but a small player in the grand game, without a thousand cores to her name, when a fleet of warships could lay her low. Back then, even just sitting in a ship that she had no control over felt strong. She was part of a greater whole, and that greater whole was strong.

Since then she’d gained personal power enough to eclipse any fleet in the solar system, so her interest in that kind of power had waned, but she was feeling a small echo of it now.

The Sappho had burned hot for a solid half-hour, but they’d since cut off their acceleration and were now coasting at a respectable speed in the general direction of Uranus. Behind them was the start of a proper war fleet.

It wasn’t a fleet for the history books. The nearest ship to the Sappho was the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates, the Tech Maid of Mars pocket cruiser. It had been waiting for them to move in Ganymede’s orbit, and when they started to fly towards Uranus, the cruiser had slipped out of its orbit and aimed itself after them.

The larger ship couldn’t catch up initially, but since they’d stopped their acceleration, the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates had burned slower, but longer. This had allowed it to slowly catch up, and now the cruiser was cutting the distance between them at a respectable pace. Within an hour or two it would be flying alongside the Sappho.

It wasn’t the only ship to move out, of course. Two warships wasn’t a fleet, it was… more of a suggestion of a fleet.

The League of Free Moons’ navy had scrambled.

Ivil suspected that the higher ups in the navy were aware of just how important the Sappho was. If they didn’t want to look like fools they’d need to be there when the Sappho inevitably caught up to the Earth Alliance fleet.

She also suspected that they’d left in too much of a hurry.

Ivil looked up as Twenty-Six entered the bridge. It was a little quiet at the moment. Aurora had left some twenty minutes ago as radio chatter died down—though she promised to return—and Pixie was taking a quick nap in her pilot’s seat, entirely too comfortable with just sleeping despite all of the systems plugged into her feeding her reams of information. Ivil supposed that that was a side-effect of being a fighter pilot for years.

“Hello,” she said, keeping her voice to a lower timbre.

“Hi!” Twenty-Six said. She rubbed some grease off her fingers with a rag, then smiled at Ivil. “Came up from Engineering to see something. Do you mind?”

“I don’t,” Ivil said. “But I am curious. What is it you want to see?”

“Ah, well, shipwatching’s my number one hobby, you know?” Twenty-Six said.

“I thought that would be mechanical work?” Ivil asked.

“Hmm… no, I feel like that’s more of a job than a hobby? I mean, I like doing it, and if I was a billionaire I’d probably have a few ships to tinker on just for fun, but when you’re doing it for a living, it doesn’t feel like a hobby?”

“That’s fair, I suppose,” Ivil said.

Twenty-Six blinked at her. “Do you… have hobbies?”

Ivil considered telling her that she spent about eight to twelve hours a day watching soap operas and reruns of soap operas. “Do you need help with your shipwatching?” Ivil asked.

“Huh? Oh, no, I think I can just use the Sappho’s sensor suite. It’s not that bad. Though it could be a bit better. If we ever get to a really nice port, I’d like to put in an order for an upgrade?”

“I think we can find room in the budget for that,” Ivil said. Mars’s GDP was pretty big. Giving Twenty-Six anything she wanted would probably not even be a rounding error.

Twenty-Six grinned, then skipped over to one of the free consoles. She flopped down in the seat before it booted the screen up, and then had the sensors’ readings up after a few commands.

“See anything interesting?” Ivil asked.

“Uh-huh!” Twenty-Six said. “Looks like the League didn’t send every last one of their ships, but it might be a near thing.”

“I suspect that they launched in a hurry,” Ivil said.

Twenty-Six had a list of IFF signatures up on a second monitor. She scanned through it, then nodded. “Yeah. Okay, here’s the official fleet size… we’ve got nine cruisers, seventeen destroyers, thirty-one frigates, and about forty patrol craft. That’s a handy little fleet. Like… more than probably anyone but the biggest pirate factions has.”

“Nine cruisers is a respectable enough number,” Ivil agreed.

“Yeah. It’s a lot of ships,” Twenty-Six agreed. “But we’re talking Jupiter ships. Some of these are barely pocket cruisers. Half of them are lighter than the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates. Bet they’re not as heavily armed either. There’s two of these that look like heavy cruisers though. They’ll pack a punch.”

Ivil nodded. That was… actually not a terrible tonnage for a fleet, even if it was a bit of a mothball fleet of older vessels. If this many foreign warships were flying in Mars’s general direction, she was certain the navy’s brass would be sitting up in interest.

“And… I think you’re right,” Twenty-Six said.

“I usually am, but what exactly am I right about now?”

Twenty-Six snorted cutely. “Okay, look at these.” She wiggled a finger at the IFF readout, then did something that had those ships be highlighted in blue on the main plotter map. “There’s… nineteen ships here that are absolutely not warships. These are cargo haulers. Two of these are repair and salvage ships. Looks like one’s a mobile hotel of all things. There’s transports, for like… people. One of these looks like one of those mining carriers. The sort that has a bunch of itty-bitty mining craft inside them? Could be filled with tugs or smaller fighters, I guess.”

“If you were to guess,” Ivil said. “What would you think all of that is?”

“Support,” Twenty-Six said. “Most fleets have like… a semi-civilian support fleet with them, right?”

“Not the Martian navy, but the Earth Alliance has flown into war with corporate fleets trailing after them,” Ivil said. “Mostly support vessels, salvagers, and I’ve heard stories about pleasure barges as well.”

“Yeah,” Twenty-Six said. “War’s a good way to make cash, but there’s… a lot here. And look, some of them are real close to the navy ships. I think they’re doing in-flight reloading. This one’s a fuel tanker, and look, if I go back twenty minutes… yeah, this one just traded fuel with one of the destroyers and is moving on to the next.”

“They’re preparing the fleet for war while on the move,” Ivil said. “Given the short amount of warning they had, that makes sense.”

Twenty-Six leaned back into her head. “That’s gonna be a disaster,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, you don’t do in-motion refueling, and I guess rearming unless things have gone real bad. Like… people make mistakes when in a dock, where you have all the tools and things aren’t moving around and things are just normal routine.”

“I believe the Martian navy has drills for just this,” Ivil said.

“It’s not fair, comparing this to the Martian navy. There’s nothing standardized here. Those repair ships are going to come up to… I guess novel situations every time they get close to a ship. It’s going to be duct tape and tie wraps all the way.”

“How likely do you think it is that the Earth Alliance will know that?” Ivil asked.

“Eh… fifty-fifty?” Twenty-Six said with a little hand wiggle.

Well… that certainly put a damper on that feeling of power that came from being at the head of a big fleet.

She supposed she’d just have to feel powerful the good old-fashioned way.

Chapter one hundred one

Self-Respect

“Hi!” Twenty-Six… chirped?

Ivil wasn’t sure if the sound that Twenty-Six produced could be rendered down to something as simple as “said.” It was too… much for that.

Unfortunately, the attention wasn’t directed towards Ivil herself. Instead, Twenty-Six had moved up to the front of the bridge where Pixie was sitting in the pilot’s seat. She’d just returned from a small break in the ship’s mess, not that there was very much to do at the moment. The Sappho was coasting along without any of its primary thrusters on and would continue to do so for another couple of days.

Ivil herself was sitting in the captain’s seat, reading from a small tablet. Mostly it was terrible, terrible fan-written material, but if anyone looked over her shoulder she was ready to switch screens at a speed approaching that of light to a very academically worded scientific article about… quarks or some such.

She had some self-respect to maintain, after all.

“Hey,” Pixie said. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Twenty-Six said. “I’m actually a little bored? If you can believe it. Most of the time I had on the Held Together was all… you know, running around and fixing things. This ship’s barely got any work for a poor mechanic to get to. There’s only so many times you can look things over before you start doing more harm than good. Anyway, what are you up to?”

Pixie blinked, then shrugged a shoulder. “Not very much,” she admitted easily. “Piloting’s pretty quiet for the most part.”

“You know, most people slap on the auto-pilot when they’re just going in a straight line like this,” Twenty-Six said. “At least until we need to do a turn and burn.”

“Maybe,” Pixie said. “But this is a military vessel, and regs call for someone at the helm whenever possible. Ideally we’d have a second pilot. But I think we’re alright as we are.”

“I guess,” Twenty-Six said. She sat on the edge of one of the consoles and let her eyes wander across the bridge while her surprisingly long legs kicked back and forth.

Pixie stared ahead, then glanced to the side. From the angle, Ivil knew that she was looking at the side profile of Twenty-Six’s face, then her lips, then her eyes dipped down to the loose tank-top Twenty-Six was wearing, then her long, exposed legs and work boots, then back. It was a simple look, but one that Ivil thought said much.

She continued to read, but her attention was a little split. She didn’t want to interrupt… whatever this was.

“Are you… just gonna sit there?” Pixie asked.

“Yeah? I mean, I can leave if I’m bothering,” Twenty-Six said.

“No, you’re not. It’s just… why are you sitting here?” Pixie returned.

Twenty-Six shrugged, but her answer belied the expression. “You know, I was thinking earlier. You and me we’re, uh, kinda sorta dating? Ish? Kinda?” Twenty-Six’s tongue darted out nervously to wet her lips and she glanced away. “But at the same time, I don’t really know much about you? I mean, I don’t know too much about anyone, and that feels lame, but you’re the one I’ve spent the least time with, and that feels kind of… yeah. Anyway, I thought I’d hang out? But now that I’m actually here, I realized that I really don’t know what people do when they hang out.”

“Huh,” Pixie said. “I guess that’s alright. I don’t know what people do when they hang out either, really.”

They both sat there, in a growing, awkward silence. Ivil was finding it harder to focus on her book. This drama was so tasty.

“We can’t just sit here and not talk,” Pixie finally said.

“Yeah! We should talk,” Twenty-Six said, her mood instantly lifting.

Ivil almost cooed. The little introverts were trying!

“Okay, so what do we talk about?” Pixie asked.

“Anything?”

“Anything is a lot,” Pixie said. “Like… where do we start with anything?”

“Uh,” Twenty-Six said. She frowned, then shifted where she was sitting. “I don’t know? I don’t want to start talking about stuff I really care about, because I always start talking too much, then I get nervous, and when I’m nervous I just talk even more, and faster. It’s a bad habit, I think.”

“Nah, it’s kinda cute,” Pixie said.

“Oh,” Twenty-Six said. She blushed prettily, her freckles standing out before she cleared her throat. “Well, I really don’t want to get started, so, uh, what’s your special interest?”

“Special interest?” Pixie asked. “You make it sound like I need therapy or something for an obsession. I don’t have special interests.”

“Oh. I thought you did, being a cool super-pilot bounty hunter and all that?”

“Well, yeah, I’m all that, but it’s just a job,” Pixie said. “I research what I need to know because it’s useful for me to know when doing my job.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Twenty-Six said.

“Yeah,” Pixie agreed.

They lapsed into a long silence again. It was worse this time. Pixie clearly wanted to say something, but she kept aborting herself, and Twenty-Six was busy staring at her hands on her lap.

Ivil was fascinated. Twenty-Six and Pixie were two of the most talented, interesting individuals she’d ever met. She was glad to call them her girlfriends. And yet here they were, completely useless when it came to something as simple as having a bit of small talk.

They really needed to find a good conversation starter. Or maybe skip past all the talking stuff and start kissing. Kissing was a good substitute for communication. All of her favourite soap opera fanfics said so.

Twenty-Six reached up and smacked her cheeks. “No!” she said. “Pixie!”

“Yes?”

“W-what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?”

“Huh?” Pixie asked. “Uh, I don’t know.”

“Really?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I mean, where’s that question coming from?” Pixie asked.

“Well, I can’t get to know you better if I can’t get to know you better,” Twenty-Six said with impeccable logic. “So, weirdest food?”

Pixie snorted. “Alright, give me a minute to think about it… uh, yeah, alright. I’ve got one. About… Eh, this would have been a couple of years ago. Right after… anyway, I wasn’t in the best headspace, so I took an easy job. Guarding a long-haul flight around the Jovian system, a ship going to like, seven automated port facilities carrying some low-value cargo. Nothing pirates would want to mess with, but still something that needs an escort, in case. Just, the easiest, low-effort kind of slop job that no one takes because it barely pays enough to cover fuel and maintenance and there’s never any danger pay bonus.”

“Okay,” Twenty-Six said.

“So… I went out and… like I said, bad headspace. I loaded up on supplies, but I acted like a bit of a slob on my first few days. Bought lots of really fancy, rich foods for that one, to eat my feelings away, you know?”

“Yeah, I know that feeling. We had a great cook on the Held Together. Hawk. Very… dad-vibes kind of guy? He’d make me comfort food whenever I was down.”

“That’s sweet,” Pixie said. “Anyway, uh, so I ate a bunch, and might not have refrigerated my food so well. By the last few days of the trip, I’d gotten my mind on straight, but I discovered that a lot of the stuff I’d brought went bad. I had this brick of cheese. No joke, paid eighty dollars for it.”

“Whoa,” Twenty-Six said.

“Yeah, and by the time I got to it, it’s covered in mold. I’d have cried a little and tossed it, but I was out of food. I mean, I could have abandoned the mission, but can you imagine having a black mark on your record during the kind of job that everyone considers newbie work?”

“You ate the moldy cheese?” Twenty-Six asked.

Pixie shrugged. “I cut the mold off,” she said. “Tasted… kinda good, to be honest.”

Ivil smiled to herself and returned to her reading. Now that the conversation was going, the two were handling themselves well enough. She made a mental note to buy nice cheese for Pixie.

She only looked up a few minutes later, when Pixie said something during a slight lull in the conversation. “That’s weird.”

The two words had Ivil’s sense of impending trouble kick up into high gear.

“What is it?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Commercial fleet ahead of us,” Pixie said. “Bunch of freighters. But they’re moving way too tight. Might be some anti-piracy measure. They’ve got a few escorts, but nothing big. No listed cargo, Jovian company tags. They’re running cold too—engines low, barely putting out any emissions. I thought we’d just skim past them, but it looks like they’re on something of an intercept course. We’ll be meeting them… well, about the same time we reach the Earth Alliance fleet near Uranus.”

“Huh, that is a little weird,” Twenty-Six said. “Think we should warn them off? It could be innocent.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Pixie said. “Man, I feel like I need to go for a walk.”

Chapter one hundred two

Not Just That

“Are we certain it’s not just a normal commercial fleet?” Aurora asked as she leaned forwards to stare at the pilot’s condole.

Pixie was sitting a little hunched, mostly to avoid bumping into Aurora, who was definitely encroaching in her space. “That depends. Do you trust me?” she asked.

Aurora only paused for a moment before replying. “You’re an expert in this field, and a friend besides. I’d be foolish not to trust you.”

“Oh… well, in that case, yes. I’m certain that this fleet isn’t just a commercial one.” Pixie pointed to the monitor before her. “See here, the fleet is centred around three cargo haulers, which is fine. But it has four escort ships. A frigate and three patrol destroyers.”

“That’s a lot of ships for three haulers,” Twenty-Six said.

“Exactly,” Pixie replied. “Even high-value escort missions usually only have ships at a… at most one-to-two ratio between defensive vessels and escorted ships. So there’s something weird about this one. Are we sure it’s not part of that Earth Alliance fleet?”

The last was directed to Pepper. At the moment, the MINT operative was standing almost at attention in the centre of the bridge. She wasn’t the only one here, of course. Everyone was currently crowding into the bridge, turning it into a somewhat tight little space.

Pepper nodded. “Martian Intelligence is certain that the fleet originates from Jupiter. It’s a commercial fleet linked to the Thebe Corporation.”

“All of them?” Aurora asked.

“All the vessels there, yes,” Pepper said. She looked at a datapad, as if to confirm what she’d just said. “The haulers have been in the company’s service for nine, seven, and two years respectively. The frigate for twelve, and the three destroyers for seven and four years. Two of them are newer. They were all used on several escort missions across the solar system, but mostly they’ve travelled within the Jovian system itself as part of anti-piracy task forces.”

“Oh, Thebe Corp,” Pixie said.

“You know about them?” Aurora said. “I recall that they’re relatively rich, but mostly apolitical.”

Pixie made a cute little humming noise. “Yeah. I’ve never worked for them. They don’t hire that many bounty hunters. Mostly have their own security fleet and all. Working for them is a nice gig, though. Good pay, you get to use recent tech, and the company has nice housing. That’s the rep in the bounty hunter circles, at least. But they’re also often up to some shady stuff.”

“What kind of shady?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I don’t know, exactly,” Pixie said. “Just rumours. I think Thebe Corp might have done work with some pirates a few times? But that’s nothing confirmed? Pepper might know better.”

Pepper glanced up, then back down. “I… will need to ask for another update from MINT. I don’t have too much information on the Thebe Corporation, but I can confirm that they’re one of the stronger corporate entities around Jupiter. They sell a lot of raw material resources back to Mars.”

Ivil decided to clear her throat. “That’s all very interesting, but why would some nobody corporate ships be locking their guns on us?”

“Locking their—” Pixie began.

The room turned red, and a small but persistent alarm started to sound from several of the stations as a weapons lock was finally detected.

At the moment, the Sappho was hurtling towards Uranus with the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates coming up behind her. The Jovian fleet had yet to catch up, and were still in a disorganized formation several million kilometres behind.

They were currently approaching the midpoint of their journey, where they would have to turn and burn to start slowing down to make their approach to Uranus.

Ivil scoured her attention ahead, past the Thebe Corporation fleet and out further. The Earth Alliance fleet seemed to have sensed that the jig was up. Either that was the approaching number of warships, or someone had let something slip. In any case, their fleet of disguised warships and more mundane ships of war were forming up around Caliban, one of the more distant and irregular moons of Uranus.

The Uranians had noticed, obviously, and had formed their own fleet. From what Ivil could tell at this distance, it wasn’t much to look at. A dozen anti-piracy ships. Perhaps some volunteer civilian vessels. They were forming up alongside Oberon, one of the largest moons around the planet.

Ivil was snapped back to the moment—not that she’d truly been so distracted—as Sonic Spectre sat down with poise before the bridge’s weapons control console. “The target-lock is done at maximum distance,” she said. “We’re only barely within weapons range for some light-based weaponry.”

“The Sappho has deflectors,” Twenty-Six said eagerly. “We don’t need to worry about those. Not unless they’re rocking something real big.”

“We’ll be fine,” Ivil replied.

Twenty-Six blinked, looked at her, considered it, then shrugged. “Okay!”

“What in the world are they thinking?” Aurora asked. “We’re… technically a diplomatic vessel. Is the Thebe Corporation siding with the Earth Alliance in any upcoming conflict?”

“That would make the most sense,” Pixie said. “They’re pretty rich. If they pick that side, and the Jovian government folds to the Earth Alliance, then they’ll be able to race to the top, yeah?”

“Only, the Emperor of Jupiter wouldn’t allow such betrayal so close to his home,” Ivil replied. She wouldn’t put it past a corporation to commit suicide by emperor, but that felt extremely foolhardy.

“So… what’s the plan, boss?” Pixie asked. “We need to start our turn-and-burn soon, which means aiming our ass their way. With the speed they’re moving at, we’re going to be intercepted in about twenty-four, maybe thirty hours.” Pixie tapped a few buttons and configured some data on a plotter. “Yeah. We’ll be within knife fighting range pretty close to the Earth Alliance fleet out there. This had to have been planned.”

The persistent alarm went off as Sonic Spectre touched something, though there were still some screens warning them that they were currently locked on to.

“This seems like an ill-fated idea,” Sonic Spectre said. “With the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates so near, any conflict would be disastrous for such a small force.”

Ivil hummed. That was true. Unless that small Thebe Corporation fleet was hiding something? Even then, this felt very poorly calculated.

“I’ve seen similar things before,” she said.

That had some attention turning her way. “Truly?” Aurora asked.

Ivil nodded slowly. “Small gnats trying to take me on, or trying to destroy the vessel I was on board with far too little firepower and without any actual hope of succeeding. Sometimes it’s a single person in a stolen freighter; other times it’s a small patrol force taking on a Star Dreadnought. It never ends well.”

“Why would someone do that?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Emotions,” Aurora said. “Sometimes you can let those get the best of you, and you fail to open your eyes to the actual severity of the threat ahead.”

“Yeah, there’s also desperation,” Pixie said. “That’s one of the factors that makes fighting pirates so dangerous. Sometimes things will go bad for them, and they won’t have anything left to lose and everything to gain. So they’ll throw themselves at you with nothing but a prayer and lots of guts. Sometimes it’s even worked out.”

The girls continued to discuss possibilities, and time slowly moved onwards. A ping to the Tech Maid ship following them confirmed that it hadn’t been locked on to, but it had noticed their lock-on, and the ship had declared battle stations in support.

The disarrayed Jovian fleet behind them was still too much of a disorganized mess to bother being worth contacting, so they didn’t.

The tension on the bridge leaked away over the course of the next couple of hours. There was a break for a nice dinner that Sonic Spectre and Aurora whipped up, and then some members lay down for a quick nap.

Ivil remained vigilant. She was well used to being under threat, even if it had been ages since a threat was actually threatening. She wouldn’t allow her guard to go down.

Then, some six hours after the initial lock-on, just as they were starting to spin the Sappho around to begin her slow-down burn, the comms lit up.

They were close enough now to the Thebe fleet for direct communications, and they were being put to good use.

The girls gathered once more, and Aurora was elected as spokeswoman.

She opened the comms, revealing a slightly grainy image of a woman in a crisp corporate uniform glaring out at them. “Ah, good, you’re here,” she said. “I am Bleue Herring. You have insulted me and declared yourself my adversary. Prepare to die.”

There was silence on the bridge for a few long moments. It was Twenty-Six who broke it.

“Who?”

Chapter one hundred three

Decency

“You killed my family, and yet you don’t even have the decency to know who I am?” the woman on screen asked.

“Sorry?” Twenty-Six said. “But, uh, when did this happen? I don’t remember killing anyone.”

“And I don’t know who you are, so kindly shut up,” she snapped. “Aurora Sterlingworth. You killed my sister. You ruined years of planning. And now, for the temerity you showed, I give you a choice.”

“Pause a moment,” Aurora said. “I still don’t know who you are, and I don’t recall killing anyone. No one here has killed anyone…” Aurora glanced over to Pixie, who was a bounty hunter, then Sonic Spectre, then Ivil herself.

“I’ll need a timeframe for that one,” Ivil said. “It’s been… at least a few days. Maybe even a week.”

“Yes, well, I don’t know who your sister is, but I don’t think we assassinated her. This must be a misunderstanding.”

“It isn’t,” the woman said. “Do you fail to remember every person you kill?”

Ivil leaned back. She had a pretty decent memory, certainly, but she didn’t like clogging it with unnecessary data. No one kept track of how many times their heart beat in a day. It was just something that happened. “Knowing that it’s a woman does, statistically, narrow it down,” she admitted. “But we’ll need more specificity than that.”

Bleue must have overheard her, because she growled over the line. “You killed Rouge. If that was all, I might have been satisfied in sending assassins after you, but then you proceeded to foil plan after plan.”

Aurora rocked back. “That’s the pirate woman,” she said after muting the mic. “The one on the station where we acquired the Sappho.”

“Ohhhh,” Twenty-Six said. “Yeah, I remember her. She was kinda ho—horrible. Because she’s a pirate. And those are bad.”

“Yes, very horrible,” Ivil agreed. “Because pirates are bad, bad girls.”

“That’s right,” Twenty-Six agreed with a nod.

Pixie didn’t seem impressed with their bold-faced duplicity. “You two are incorrigible. And if I ever discover a pirate joining in on… whatever this is, I’m shooting them, then the rest of you.”

“Noted,” Ivil said. “In any case, yes, I remember killing her. I suppose this is attempted revenge?”

“I suppose so,” Aurora said before unmuting the mic. “It seems as if we recall the woman you were talking about. While you have my most sincere condolences for the loss of a family member you no doubt cherished, you must understand that she died in the act of committing piracy. On us.”

“Oh, I’m not so sentimental that I can’t understand that,” Bleue said. “That was just business. A bad move. What really pisses me off is how at every turn since you’ve arrived in the Jovian system you’ve been undermining me and my company.”

Aurora muted the mic again. “Miss Pendergast, Miss Mint, might I inquire as to if either of you have access to recent financial records? Especially the Jovian stock market?”

“I should have that, yes,” Pepper said. She tapped her tablet a few times, then looked up to meet Aurora’s curious gaze. “What are you looking for, exactly?”

“Can you draw up the Thebe Corporation’s records for the past quarter?” Aurora asked.

Pepper nodded, then drew up just that. Ivil noted that the company had been on a slight rise for some time, only to take a nosedive in the last week.

“Interesting,” Aurora said as she glanced over the data. She unmuted the mic once more. “Forgive me for the constant interruptions. I was looking up some pertinent data with regards to what you said. It does seem as though your company has suffered some losses recently, but I can’t see how any of these relate to myself or my companions.”

Ivil had sunk a few companies before, but only rarely by accident.

“Are you saying that Phobos’s increased presence in the system was a mistake? That Mars’s sudden interest in exporting materials to Jupiter is a fluke? That you weren’t plotting the demise of the corporation with the other delegates this entire time?” Bleue asked, while seemingly working herself up to a frothing frenzy.

“Um,” Aurora said. It was unusual for Ivil to see her hesitate so much, but Aurora looked like she was genuinely confused. “I believe so, yes? To be clear, I believe that most if not all of the events you mentioned were at most coincidentally related to you and the Thebe Corporation.”

“I don’t believe you,” Bleue said.

“That seems like your prerogative. In any case, we have business around Uranus. Your small merchant fleet is standing in our path. Please desist and move aside before this turns bloody. We can discuss the legal ramifications of your assault and your accusations at a later time.”

The ship lurched as Pixie fired half of their manoeuvring thrusters all at once and made the Sappho pull a wide barrel roll. A split-second later a shot from a particle cannon cut through the space they’d occupied.

“Nice dodge,” Ivil said.

“Mostly instinct,” Pixie replied. “And some experience dealing with pirates. The moment you remind them that you’re willing and able to sue, they tend to open fire. I think it’s like… an allergic reaction. Like a sneeze.”

“Do all pirates do that?” Twenty-Six asked.

“No, of course not. The really scary ones have lawyers.”

Ivil took a split-second to observe the situation. Their discussion with Bleue Herring had brought the Sappho far closer to the Thebe Corporation fleet. At the moment they were flying backwards towards the fleet, their main thruster still firing to slow them down for an approach around Uranus that would have them captured by Oberon’s orbit.

The Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates wasn’t too far behind. Its own slow-burn wasn’t as harsh as what the Sappho could endure while Ivil negated the negative side effects of so many g’s of force.

Ivil sat up straighter. This was, in essence, a fleet action now. Her side had a pocket cruiser and a ship about as large as a well-armed destroyer. Against them, three cargo ships, all of which seemed to be retrofitted to cause some trouble, three patrol destroyers, likely armed with relatively light guns but plenty of point-defence installations, and a frigate. A commercial war frigate, so likely nothing as potent as a Martian frigate, but still a large enough vessel that was well armed judging by the near-miss from one of its guns.

Considering the odds, the Thebe Corporation actually had a strong leg up.

Then Ivil placed herself on the scale and the scale flipped over, broke into a million pieces, and then those pieces spontaneously combusted.

There was a standard method to space combat in this day and age. Mostly, it involved out-manoeuvring foes for days or weeks at a time until the side with the longer weapon range killed their enemy.

Warfare at the moment was very much about leveraging long-ranged attacks as best as possible. That meant supplementing warships with disposable decoys and missiles and drones. Anything to extend one side’s range while negating the other’s advantage.

Once that barrier of range was crossed, however, the winner was usually the one who could outshoot their enemy first.

Missiles were again popular, but so were lasers, kinetic weapons, smart rounds, and basically anything that Martian R&D could produce to justify their multi-trillion dollar budget.

“Hey, Captain Antagonist,” Pixie said, and the name almost had Ivil burst out into laughter, though she didn’t, because that would ruin her cool and suave image.

“Yes?” she asked.

“We’re safe to keep on moving, right? Because my instinct right now is to spin us around and gun it, orbital entry be damned.”

“We’ll be just fine,” Ivil said. “Sonic, you may want to inform the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates that I won’t be protecting them as passively. Though there might be some proactive protection.”

“Proactive protection?” Twenty-Six asked. “Why does that sound like something really violent?”

Outside, the nearest of the cargo freighters opened its sides, revealing that the containers within were little more than disguised missile pods. The space between them filled with a few dozen smoke trails and the Sappho’s alarms started up again.

“It’s somewhat violent, yes, but you don’t have to worry,” Ivil said. “It won’t be violent for you.”

The missiles the cargo ship had fired suddenly spun around on their own axes and blasted back towards the large ship. It fired more missiles in retaliation, but the mind guiding those was merely artificial.

“How are we feeling about survivors?” Ivil asked.

“Needless complication,” Pixie said. Then she noticed the others giving her looks, and she shrugged. “What? They’re pirates. Maybe not officially, but they want to do piratical things, and one doesn’t suffer a pirate to live. If you do, they hatch revenge plots, and that’s what got us here in the first place.”

“I will… opt to not speak up, for fear of compromising my own moral integrity,” Aurora said. “But also, I want to highlight how this will be very noticeable. The Earth Alliance fleet will see what’s happening.”

A large explosion lit up a tiny corner of space in the bridge’s window as the cargo freighter ate its own payload.

“Yes, I was counting on that,” Ivil said.

Chapter one hundred four

Going in Subtle

With the Sappho still slowing down, and the Jovian fleet rapidly catching up, one might have suspected that the battle between the two factions might end in a predictable manner, especially if anyone was aware of the empress’s presence.

But Ivil had heard Aurora and was actually considering what she had to say.

Going in loud—as she usually did—would be rather noticeable. The last time she’d fought a fleet engagement was…

Ivil leaned back. How long ago had it been? A long while, certainly. The Earth Alliance, near the end of the Third Solar War, had adopted a “run first” tactic whenever she approached. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of being “loud” throughout the conflict was that it allowed the EAF to know where she was and avoid that sector of space entirely.

The Martian navy used that to its advantage, of course, but by the end of the conflict she’d barely gotten a proper fight in. A few stragglers, a few Earth Alliance stations, and maybe a couple of distractions in the form of ships making a suicidal final charge, but nothing to really sink her teeth into.

She had to admit, a small part of her missed the thrill, but she’d come to the conclusion that she was maybe too old for it.

It was like how she imagined a normal person growing too old to participate in some of their favourite sports. Bad knees and lower back pain and all that kind of thing. They’d be relegated to watching from the sidelines, or perhaps coaching to improve the next generation.

She didn’t want that, so she’d made a conscious effort to switch her efforts elsewhere. That’s what eventually led to her having this many cute girls, so really it was all for the best.

In any case. “I’m going to try to be subtle,” Ivil declared.

“Isn’t it a little late for that?” Twenty-Six asked. “We blew up a cargo freighter already.”

“Technically, with the payload it held, it’s more like a jury-rigged missile boat,” Pixie pointed out.

Ivil shook her head. “I haven’t used any cores that would signal that I’m here too loudly,” she said. “As long as MINT has been keeping things quiet on our behalf, the EAF have no reason to see this altercation as proof that the Sappho has anything more than a powerful core-wielder onboard.”

“Ah yes, merely an A-classer rather than you,” Aurora said.

“Exactly,” Ivil said with a nod. Being underestimated again was kind of novel.

“There are only a few hundred A-classers, aren’t there? They’re all national assets,” Aurora said. “That won’t make them lower their guard.”

Ivil hummed. “Fine. Then I’ll stick to only using a few cores. Maybe they’ll think I’m merely a powerful B-classer?”

She’d used a dozen space-warping cores and maybe half a hundred hacking cores to take out that freighter. She could just… keep on using those.

“Whatever you do, can you do it soonish?” Pixie asked as her hand alighted on the yoke. Her feet moved with practiced ease, and the Sappho spun into a wide roll a moment before a trio of lasers shot by.

Ivil noticed a few shots from the frigate streaking out towards the Tech Maid ship. The hits splattered on the ship’s rearward shield, creating a brilliant rainbow-y circle of light. The way the shield recuperated almost instantly hinted at someone on board using a core to siphon the heat away.

That wasn’t too surprising, the Adeptus Ancillia definitely had some core-wielders amongst their number.

Ivil took in their foe. She decided that, for dramatic reasons, the smart thing to do would be to allow the frigate holding Bleue to survive to the last.

She reached out, focusing for a moment. “I’m about to do something. The readings from our sensors might be incorrect for a moment.”

“Huh?” Twenty-Six asked.

The three patrol destroyers fired their long-ranged laser turrets at them.

The beams flew out at the speed of light into a tunnel of shaped space that spun the light around and rammed it back into the hulls of the ships that had just fired.

“Oh! You bounced it, like with a mirror?” Twenty-Six asked as she watched the explosions in the distance.

Ivil liked the way the tiny explosions were reflected in her eyes.

“Not quite,” she said. “It was more of a cusped retrograde tunnel. Like a Klein bottle, but with the ships serving as the start and end point.”

The destruction wasn’t so impressive. The glare of shields eating close-range laser fire was always pretty, but the beams didn’t penetrate all that deeply past the shields, and so the explosions that followed weren’t too fantastic.

She could have made the light move faster, but tickling physics like that tended to be the opposite of subtle, and so she had refrained from doing so.

“We’re within kinetic range,” Pixie announced.

The enemy announced it too, with a salvo of rounds fired their way. Ivil traced their path through space in a blink and gently nudged them away. Then when the two remaining cargo freighters opened up with a fresh salvo of missiles, she turned her attention to controlling them, sending them careening wildly through space in a vaguely enemy-ish direction.

Soon, space was filled with confused point-defence fire. The enemy ECM was trying to batter down the Sappho to no avail, and Ivil imagined that the weapons officer in charge of all of this was ripping their hair out.

Then Pixie twisted the Sappho around and brought up the targeting system for their own guns. The Sappho wasn’t exactly bristling with armaments, but it did have a nice turreted main gun, and at the moment it was pointing a little ahead of the enemy frigate. Pixie squeezed a trigger, and the entire ship thumped slightly with rhythmic regularity as they returned fire.

These rounds didn’t have to contend with twisted space. Instead, they rammed into the kinetic shields of the frigate with heartbeat regularity, painting the side of the hull with cascading explosions.

Pixie started to giggle.

Ivil blinked, then smiled slightly herself. So, Pixie was one of those. The kind of woman who was… enthused by the sight of large explosions and her enemies being blasted into little bits.

The Sappho was racing through the small corporate fleet’s formation, a position that would ordinarily be far less than ideal, but the fighting was currently rather one-sided.

And then the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates joined in with cruiser-grade heavy ordnance.

Pixie’s giggles turned into all-out manic laughter as they were surrounded by a sea of explosions and shrapnel.

Ivil took over control of some of the guns onboard the destroyers and spun them around to face their allies. No one seemed to be paying much attention to it, not until she opened fire and filled the space between ships with hot leaded betrayal.

They shot past one of the destroyers. Still a couple of kilometres away, but in terms of space warfare they might as well have been kissing past its hull. The ship’s reactors went up, and the entire thing turned into an expanding ball of nuclear fire even as the Sappho roared by, guns still blazing.

“Woo!” Pixie cheered.

“Woo!” Twenty-Six cheered with her, arms raised over her head.

“Huzzah,” Aurora said, rather calmly, but Ivil could hear the beating of her heart, and the sight was definitely having an effect on her.

They hit a slight bit of turbulence as scattered shrapnel clattered off their shields, but they were basically gone and past the worst of it.

“Ohh, that hit the spot,” Pixie said as she shuffled in her pilot’s seat. “We should be good now, I think. They’re in no shape to follow or cause trouble.”

That was a fair assessment. The Thebe fleet was a mess in their wake. Most of the ships were likely still salvageable—modern warships were made tough—but they’d need significant repairs and weren’t likely ready to retaliate in any significant way. Just in case, Ivil twisted a few barrels and ripped apart a few turret emplacements.

“Ah… okay, setting auto-pilot now,” Pixie said. “I need… yeah, I’m going to take a quick break.” She stood up, then paused next to Twenty-Six. A moment later, Pixie pulled the taller mechanic closer and planted a rather needy kiss on her lips. “Ah, hell yeah!” Pixie said before she sauntered off.

“Uh,” Twenty-Six said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ivil said. “Sometimes destroying your adversaries in spectacular fashion just has an effect on you. I’ve heard that it’s better than sex.”

“I-it is?’ Twenty-Six stuttered.

“According to some. We might want to conduct some A-B testing at some point. Provided we can find enough adversaries.”

Aurora sighed. “Let’s not start wars just to get off, please.”

“I’ll take that under advisement. In the meantime, how was that? Subtle enough for you?”

Aurora stared. “You were trying to be subtle?” she asked.

Ah, perhaps not, then.

Chapter one hundred five

How Subtle is Subtle?

“How subtle do we want to be?” Aurora asked. She was squinting at the screen in front of her where a 3D map of the system was displayed.

“What do you mean?” Twenty-Six asked.

The mechanic had remained on the bridge after their little fly-by. She was using one of the consoles to check the ship’s status, going into each part as best she could and noting down anything that needed even minor maintenance. It was a level of diligence that Ivil could appreciate.

Pixie hadn’t yet returned, and Sonic Spectre and Pepper were at the back of the bridge, talking in low tones about the longer term political ramifications of the conflict.

“Hmm, I need a bigger screen,” Aurora said. She half-turned towards Ivil. “Eve… Ivil, may I use the larger screen?” She gestured to the front of the bridge where a larger screen was nestled in, currently displaying a camera feed out the front of the ship.

“Of course,” Ivil said. “And don’t be shy to call me whatever you want.”

“Hmm,” Aurora replied.

Soon, they had a blown-up and much larger view of the current situation, at least according to the Sappho’s sensors. They were getting some additional readings from the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates as well. The pocket cruiser had much better onboard sensors.

“Okay, this is where we are,” Aurora said, highlighting a dot that represented the Sappho. “That’s the Earth Alliance fleet, and this is the Uranian defence fleet. They’re hovering around Caliban and Oberon respectively.”

“Uh-huh,” Twenty-Six said. “Looks like Caliban’s one of those way-out moons.”

“Yes,” Aurora said. She tapped a few keys and, all the other astronomical objects in the region faded to semi-transparency, excepting Uranus itself and the two moons in question. “So, our flight path is towards Uranus, but with Caliban and Oberon slowly approaching each other… in… a little over two days they’ll both be on parts of their orbits where they’re relatively close, on the same side of Uranus.”

“Which is probably when fireworks will happen,” Twenty-Six said with a nod. “Do… do you think that Pixie, earlier, did she, uh… you know? From the explosions? Is that even possible?”

Aurora maintained her composure. “I suppose it is. Regardless. Let’s focus on this. How subtle do we want to be? Because in a few hours we’re going to have to adjust our bearing to decide where to make our final approach. If we’re tossing subtlety away, we can spear out towards Caliban directly. Us and the Adeptus Ancillia warship against the Earth Alliance fleet. Or we turn towards Oberon and join the defensive fleet there, where we can disguise our tactical weapon from the Earth Alliance.”

“You mean our girlfriend,” Twenty-Six said.

“She can be both,” Aurora said. “I, personally, appreciate a little compartmentalization in my life.” And in a low whisper that Ivil suspected only she caught, she muttered. “It’s keeping me sane.”

“What would you suggest?” Ivil asked. She knew—from her soaps, but also because she was dutiful and informed herself via extra-net videos—that communication was important in any relationship, but so was sharing respect, and listening to each other’s opinions was respectful.

“Me?” Aurora asked. “I’m hardly a military expert. Pixie would know better, I suspect. Or Savant Pendergast.”

Twenty-Six blinked. “But you’re so smart.”

“I’m well-educated. It’s not the same. I’m ‘smart’ within my narrow field, and that’s politics.”

Twenty-Six smiled, very cheekily. “And you’re so humble.”

“Shush, you,” Aurora said.

“What about your political opinion, then?” Ivil asked.

Aurora opened her mouth to reply, then stared at the screen. She continued to do so for nearly a full minute before replying. As she started, she also tapped a few buttons, adding the approach vector of the Jovian fleet to the plotter. “Politically, the best thing to do would be… it depends.”

“That’s a cop-out,” Twenty-Six said.

“It’s the truth. If we want to shock and awe with the power of Mars’s military might, then taking on a fleet with two ships would certainly impress, but that would mostly just bolster Ivil’s reputation, and it needs no bolstering.”

“I don’t know,” Ivil said. “I have been known to enjoy a bit of flattery.”

“Hmpf! I’m sure. Now, that angle is heavily downplayed by this vessel not being of Martian make, or part of the Martian navy. The Ancillia ship is also not a symbol of Martian power. Really, the first option only benefits one person, politically.”

“And the other?” Twenty-Six asked.

Aurora nodded. “The other’s more complicated. We come in, join the Oberon defence fleet, and then hopefully win alongside our allies. That option means more casualties, but also a strong reinforcement of the bonds between Jupiter and Uranus. More… look at this.”

Aurora moved over to the communication console, then sent a list to one side of the larger monitor. “That’s a list of ships,” Twenty-Six said. “The ships around Oberon?”

“Yes. Notice how most are Uranian? But some, maybe a tenth, aren’t? They’re ships from allied moons. Not all of them are represented, and some are merely civilian ships, but there are several ambassadorial craft that are lightly armed joining the defence. With the Jovian fleet including others… this might be a pivotal, vital, moment for the League of Free Moons.”

“’Cause everyone’s there trying to help?” Twenty-Six asked. “Like a ring station dropping everything to go and help another ring station that’s in distress.”

“I… something like that, yes,” Aurora said.

Ivil smiled. Even Aurora was still sometimes taken aback by Twenty-Six’s cleverness.

“This could be the moment that solidifies ties in the League. We need that. Something to represent, in an undeniable way, how the members of the League are stronger together than they are apart.”

“I can change the Sappho’s transponders to make her read like a Phobian ship,” Twenty-Six said.

Aurora blinked. “I… you can do that?”

“Super-duper illegal,” Twenty-Six said. “It’d take me like, five minutes, tops.”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” Aurora admitted. “It would be nice to have some Phobian representation.”

For all of Aurora’s reservations about her home, she still seemed very proud of it, Ivil noted. Pixie seemed to see Jupiter as just the place she was stationed, and Twenty-Six’s attachments to home had long worn off.

When Ivil built them all a nice mansion to live in, she might have to place it down on Phobos, to make Aurora happy. Obviously it would have its own dock for Twenty-Six’s collection of battleships, and frequent pirate attacks to keep Pixie happy.

She set the daydreaming aside as Aurora turned and eyed her. “So,” the noble said.

“I think we can employ the subtler option,” Ivil said. “It might irritate Mars a little, but those in the know will always know that we helped. If this is a big moment for the League, then it’ll be one that was made possible by Martian interests. Hmm, and I think the emperor would be far more irritated if a piddling defensive fleet counters his grand plan. Obviously I might have to step out to slap him around at some point.”

“Will there be big explosions?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Most assuredly,” Ivil said.

“We should make sure Pixie is watching, then,” Twenty-Six said with a nod.

Ivil had to wonder about Twenty-Six’s newfound interest in the things that… excited her little fleet. Was this always present, or was this something new?

It was cute either way, so Ivil approved.

It begged the question, however, what worked on Twenty-Six herself?

Ivil determined that she’d have to experiment to find out. Thoroughly.

“If we’re going to be subtle,” Aurora muttered. Another person that Ivil would have to experiment upon. Could someone be excited by political ambition? Was it the chase for more power, or the grabbing of it? Ivil would have to start a few wars for Aurora to solve in order to find out, she supposed.

“Then,” Aurora continued, entirely unaware of Ivil’s inner monologue as evidenced by the lack of desperate flailing. “We should contact Uranus. The ambassador we met gave me some contact information for their office. That should maybe allow us to fast-track any requests. And I suppose they must have noticed our fight just now.”

“We were being ‘subtle,’” Twenty-Six said with very large air quotes.

Ivil reached over, taking advantage of her long arms, and pinched Twenty-Six’s cheek. “Shush, you,” she said.

“I’m being bullied,” Twenty-Six whined.

“Yes, and I’m sure it’s having the same effect on you as explosions do for Pixie,” Aurora said.

“What! No! That’s a lie! I don’t enjoy being bullied by big strong women,” Twenty-Six protested.

“Little tugboats shouldn’t lie,” Ivil said. “It’s false-reporting and can lead to some terrible accidents.”

Ivil eyed the plotter. Subtle… she could do that.

Chapter one hundred six

The Sweep Around

They swept around Uranus, using the planet’s powerful pull to turn their straight path into a tight curve that had them coming in hot behind Oberon.

Their arrival didn’t go unnoticed, not when the Sappho’s guns were still hot from her last altercation and she was followed by a pocket cruiser that was larger than most of the ships gathered around the large moon.

“We’re getting hailed,” Aurora said. “From the UDF Stormiest Skies.”

“UDF?” Twenty-Six asked. “Is that the… Uranian Defence Force?”

“Defence Fleet,” Aurora corrected, “but close. It’s the flagship of this operation, I think. Certainly the largest ship here.” She threw the hail up on one of the monitors and then projected what they could see of the ship.

The Stormiest Skies was a heavy cruiser. An Earth Alliance pattern ship, from late into the Second Solar War, Ivil guessed. There had been several hundred of those ships built by the tail end of the war. She wasn’t too surprised to see one still in service and not in the hands of its original navy.

“Pretty,” Twenty-Six said. “She has nice lines. Look at that bow curve.”

“So you like them curvy?” Ivil asked teasingly.

Twenty-Six grinned. “I do like a lady with a little something to grab on to.” She tried very hard to sound seductive, but her accompanying giggle-snort ruined it.

Aurora sighed, though she didn’t truly sound exasperated. “Shall we answer the hail?”

“Go ahead,” Ivil said with a gesture.

Aurora adjusted the way she was seated, as if she could sit any straighter than she was already, then cleared her throat before accepting the hail. A tinny voice came from the comms console. “Unidentified ship, this is the UDF Stormiest Skies, please identify.”

“Stormiest Skies this is the Sappho,” Aurora began, “Permission to join your fleet formation? We are here to assist against the Earth Alliance on behalf of Phobos and Mars.”

“Received,” came the reply. “One moment, Sappho, we’re just confirming something.”

“What are they confirming?” Twenty-Six asked. “Who we are?”

“They might be talking to the representatives that were around the Jovian system,” Aurora said. “I made friends with the representatives of Umbriel and Titania. They should be able to confirm that I’m on board, at the very least. Though it might take a moment for communications from Jupiter to reach here. We might have to fly into a holding pattern until then.”

Ivil half-turned, glancing back at the bridge’s entrance a moment before the door opened and Pixie stepped onto the bridge. Her hair was wet, and she looked a little more fresh. “I heard something about a holding pattern?” she asked.

Aurora and Twenty-Six filled the pilot in as she slowly made her way back to her seat and settled in. There was a very loud silence around the reason why she’d left in the first place.

With Pixie at the helm, they shifted their flight pattern until they were flying in a wide orbit around the large moon, a north-to-south orbit, that avoided the moon’s equatorial region as much as possible, since that was where the Uranian fleet was assembling.

Assembling being the correct term, as more ships were flying in from around the planetary system. A lot of those were civilian vessels, but a few looked like they could take on a pirate or two in a pinch, and they were willing to add their firepower to the mix.

Aurora adjusted something, then pressed a headphone over one ear. “There’s someone talking over the air,” she said. “On the emergency channel.”

“Put it on?” Twenty-Six asked.

Aurora nodded and did just so. A moment later they were listening to a man speak. He had the impassioned sort of cadence that Ivil expected to hear from an orating politician, or one of the male leads in a romantic soap trying to convince the clone of his dead second wife to give him a chance after she caught him in bed with her secretly-not-evil twin sister from another mother.

“—We are not one people. We are many people, from many creeds, from many moons, and yet in some things we are one. For decades we’ve been oppressed by the likes of Earth and Mars, and though Mars may be sitting back now, we don’t know what actions they may take later. Earth is here. It is at our doorstep. A fleet of disguised warships is parked within our jurisdiction, in our neighbourhood, and its goal could not be more obvious. They are here to steal what we found, what we discovered and so kindly decided to share with our fellow moons. The Earth Alliance would rather see us dead than gathered together in a union of Free Moons!”

“He’s kind of yappy,” Pixie said.

“I don’t know, he sounds like he’s passionate,” Twenty-Six said. She nodded fiercely. “I kinda feel my blood boiling a little, you know?”

“Hmm, I guess. Speeches never did it for me,” Pixie said. “You’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all. Listening to politicians prattle on is never a good idea. Uh… no offence?”

“None taken,” Aurora replied dryly.

“We all know what does do it for you,” Twenty-Six said.

Pixie stared ahead, but there was no hiding the blush crawling up her neck. Cute, Ivil decided.

Why was it that she found embarrassed women so much more attractive? Did she have a reverse-humiliation kink? Or were blushing girls just cuter?

She made a mental note to talk to her therapist about it.

Aurora jumped, then tapped a button on the console. “Sappho here, come in.”

“Sappho, this is the Stormiest Skies space control. We’re sending you some coordinates now. Your clearance checks passed, and two of our representatives vetted you. Thank you for joining us.”

“You’re welcome,” Aurora replied. “Who should we talk to with regards to tactics? We’re the representatives from Phobos. I’d like to have an ear in any important discussions.”

“We’ll tie you in to HR.”

Aurora pouted and shut the outgoing line. “HR? Am I going to have to argue my way up the entire chain of command?”

“I can think of a few ways to expedite that,” Ivil said.

“No thank you,” Aurora said. “I imagine your methods of reminding people of your place in the chain of command involve involuntary space walks.”

“I once heard this funny expression about the chain of command being the one you beat someone with if they don’t listen,” Ivil said. “But the actual chain of command is metaphorical, sadly, and you can’t beat someone with an allegory.”

“Not with that attitude,” Pixie replied.

Ivil placed a hand over her mouth to keep an inappropriate giggle in. She was not going to giggle in front of anyone, but for a moment there… “I think our senses of humour mesh surprisingly well, Pixie,” she said.

“They do?” Pixie asked. Meanwhile, Twenty-Six made happy little claps in the background.

With new coordinates, Pixie was rather busy realigning their flight so that they fell into the Uranian fleet. The Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates hurried to catch up, and soon a space was cleared out for them near the front of the fleet’s formation.

“I wonder if we’re here because we have more firepower than the rest, or if the Uranians are placing allied vessels in front of locals on purpose,” Aurora said. She brought up a display of all the ships in local space, and there was a definite pattern.

“Oh, I know this one,” Twenty-Six said. “Seen it before. You place the ships that aren’t part of your group in front because then they’ll take the worst hits first, but also, it makes it less likely that they’ll run first.”

“That’s… rather messed up,” Aurora said.

“Yeah, a bit. But otherwise people that don’t have as much invested are more likely to run away,” Twenty-Six said. “And usually this is the kind of thing that’s done while fighting pirates, not like… a proper navy.”

“How’d you know all that?” Pixie asked.

Twenty-Six huffed. “I know how to read, you know! Not just tech manuals either.”

“Us being at the vanguard is fine,” Ivil said. “Perhaps we can let the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates sit before us, but I don’t mind being at the front. It’ll make guarding the fleet behind that much easier.”

“If you say so,” Aurora said, surprisingly without any hint of doubt or insincerity. She trusted Ivil in this.

“Uh,” Twenty-Six said. She squinted at one of the consoles, then zoomed in. “Hey, does it look like the Earth Alliance fleet is moving to you? Like, more than just shifting around?”

Ivil sat up straighter. She was right. The enemy fleet was slowly starting to peel away from Caliban.

There could only be a few reasons for that. Either they were retreating—which she found unlikely—or they were launching their attack now, before the Jovian fleet could arrive and even their odds.

Chapter one hundred seven

Stress

“Hmm,” Aurora said. Then, a minute later, with just a bit more frustration, she hmmed again. Then to everyone’s surprise, Aurora reached out and smacked the side of her console. She glanced at the others, then without so much as a hint of a blush, sat up straighter and returned to looking at the screen.

“Is… everything okay?” Twenty-Six asked.

“It’s fine,” Aurora said. She paused for a moment before shaking her head. “No, that’s misleading. I’m having difficulty with this software. It’s not doing as I want it to, and I can’t figure it out.”

Twenty-Six stood up from where she was sitting. She’d somehow found her way to the base of the captain’s seat and had found herself a spot to nestle next to Ivil on the floor. Ivil had been rather enjoying that.

Obviously, this was just the captain’s seat on a mid-rate frigate, but she liked to imagine that Twenty-Six would also enjoy a spot sitting at the base of Ivil’s throne.

She made a mental note to acquire a massive throne, and then a second, attached mental note to acquire a heap of very comfortable and luxurious pillows.

Or maybe plushies? She was aware that there was a black market of Empress of Mars merchandise, of course. Twenty-Six had been sleeping next to the bootleg plushie she’d won for her at that arcade.

“What are you trying to do?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Well, I’m trying to input the relative velocities and headings of the three fleets we have here, but—” Aurora started, but she stopped when Twenty-Six shook her head.

“I mean with the smacking. You know, most machines can only take so much damage before they break.”

“Oh,” Aurora said. She looked contrite for a moment, her expression pinching up. “Forgive me. And you’re the one who’d have to fix my error as well, which is unkind of me. I let my frustration get ahead of my good sense.”

“It’s okay,” Twenty-Six said. “Next time, hit it here, that’s where the drive is, and on these, there’s sometimes some wires that get loose. But I don’t think percussive maintenance will help with software issues much. Not every problem can be solved with a good smacking.”

“I can think of a few that can,” Pixie muttered too low for anyone else to hear.

Twenty-Six and Aurora leaned close together, initially to work on the software, but Ivil didn’t fail to notice how much attention Aurora was paying to Twenty-Six’s rather meagre assets as they bumped into her shoulder through the thin camisole the mechanic was wearing.

Silly Aurora. She would never learn how to wrangle the software if she wasn’t paying attention.

“Urgh,” Twenty-Six said as she stood up. “Pixie, maybe you’d have better luck with this? It’s kind of your thing.”

Pixie looked up from where she was seated, then shrugged and stood. A moment later she was pressed in on Aurora’s other side and pointing at various toggles and options on the screen.

Aurora tried to follow Pixie’s instructions while ignoring the fact that she was being pressed in from both sides. Then Ivil had a wonderful idea. Standing, she walked over and leaned in from behind. “Looks like this is giving you a bit of trouble, Aurora,” Ivil said.

She heard Aurora swallow, then try to sit straighter only for the top of her head to bump into something soft. She slouched back down. “I’m just trying to have a clear picture of the fleet movements here.”

“I can see that,” Ivil said. “And how’s the fleet moving along?”

Aurora pointed to the screen. “We’ve figured out how to input some of it. The software is made for calculating single ships’ movements, but it accepts multiple vessels as an entry. The problem is, it glitches out once you have too many.”

“So we’re working around it by only entering some ships,” Pixie said. “Usually the largest ones that’ll be in the centre of a formation anyway.”

“Right,” Aurora said. “What we have here is functional enough.”

“Oh? And what is it telling you?” Ivil asked.

The politician gestured vaguely at the screen. “The Earth Alliance is moving in. At this point, we’ll be in their… What do you call it, Pixie? The range where they can start actually hitting?”

“The extreme-range to the out-range,” Pixie said. “All the set of ranges where the only thing you’ll be hitting with are railguns, lasers, and torpedoes. The railgun shots will mostly go wide, the lasers will be so scattered that they’ll barely be strong enough to warm toast, and the torpedoes will be seen coming an hour before they arrive. It’s not the kind of range that actual combat happens in, but it’s where combat starts.”

“What’s that mean?” Twenty-Six asked curiously.

Pixie and Twenty-Six both stood, and Aurora let out the tiniest little sigh of relief.

“It means that in… how many hours?” Pixie asked.

“Sixteen,” Aurora said.

“In sixteen hours, the Earth Alliance is going to be close enough to tickle the Uranian fleet, which they currently out-ton but don’t outnumber. The Jovian fleet, owing to being slow and poorly prepared, will be entering their own extreme range around the moon’s orbital in…” Pixie paused and Aurora sighed, louder this time.

“In thirty hours. Leaving a massive window for the Earth Alliance to wipe the Uranian fleet out,” she said. “If Ivil wasn’t here, I’d call this a lost cause for the Uranian fleet, even without the emperor’s possible presence.”

“You’re surprisingly knowledgeable about military matters for a politician,” Ivil said.

“War is an extension of politics,” Aurora said. “Or so I was told. My education touched on it a little.”

Ivil nodded. “Not enough, however. There are several factors that you’re missing.”

Aurora frowned. “There are? We have the ship tonnage, an idea of their weapon loadouts, and an idea of when they’ll be in range, that’s for both the Earth Alliance fleet and the mixed Uranian one. I suppose I’m not taking into account command potential and… core usage?”

Ivil shook her head. “No, I meant a few other factors. Though yes, both of those are important. I’m afraid that the Earth Alliance command will likely be better. I’ll reluctantly admit that their military command schools aren’t entirely worthless. I’d wager a considerable amount of wealth that the person in command—not the Emperor of Earth, he’s a moron—is smart, well-educated, and probably experienced, and will therefore be a better leader and commander.”

“So… that leaves,” Aurora started. She pursed her lips and clearly put some actual thought into it. “Morale?”

“Good work,” Ivil said. “Yes. The Uranian fleet is going to scatter like pigeons hearing a shotgun blast.”

“They’re defending their home,” Aurora said.

Ivil shook her head. “They’re defending a cache of cores that most of them will never see.”

Aurora grumbled. “I suppose. But the long term economic benefits… would make them all a little richer in twenty years, which I suppose won’t matter to someone about to die now.”

“I’m sure some of them will want to defend their home,” Twenty-Six reassured. “The Earth Alliance are kind of looking like the bad guys right now, and that one guy who was broadcasting earlier sounded pretty convincing to me.”

“Yes, but Ivil is correct,” Aurora said.

Ivil nodded. She usually was.

“I’ve seen ships scatter,” Pixie said. “Usually commercial freighters scared shitless by some pirates, not getting that they’re stronger together, or just knowing that the first to run usually lives to see another day. It’s always a mess. The Uranian fleet is civilian, with a few exceptions. It doesn’t matter if they outnumber their foe; they will break first because they’re not mentally prepared for a last stand. And when they break and scatter…”

“Is there anything we can do?” Twenty-Six asked. “That’ll mean a lot of broken ships… and dead people too.”

“Yes. If only there was someone exceptionally powerful who could sweep in out of nowhere and protect the poor, innocent Uranian fleet from any actual assault until the Jovian fleet swoops in and saves the day.” Ivil sighed faux-dramatically. “If only.”

“You are not as good an actress as you think,” Aurora said. “I suppose there’s no all-powerful cores for that?”

“There might be a few,” Ivil replied. “In any case, if we want to make the Emperor of Earth sweat, I can probably divert railgun rounds and make laser strikes give off less heat without being noticed too much.”

“And that’ll last until the Jovian fleet arrives?” Aurora asked.

“I feel like you might not have a good idea of how long actual fleet engagements last,” Ivil said. “On paper, a two-day long battle seems long. In reality, it feels like those two days last weeks.”

“Sounds stressful,” Twenty-Six said.

Ivil shrugged. “It’ll be stressful for someone, trust me.” She smiled in a way that she hoped was genuinely reassuring. “But not for any of us.”

Chapter one hundred eight

The First Shot

The first shot of the battle came some hours later.

One of the Earth Alliance ships, a vessel that from the outside seemed like a freighter as normal as any other, spun on its long side and pointed its belly towards the Uranian fleet. The three dozen torpedoes it launched were detected by all.

A few minutes later a second and then a third salvo was launched. In all, just over a hundred torpedoes.

Each one of them painted their target long before they were in anything approaching effective range.

In a military conflict, that would be the height of foolishness.

Ivil had seen torpedoes used to great effect during the last solar war. The Earth Alliance did love them. They were relatively inexpensive, and while Mars had a strong edge when it came to E-war deterrents and detection, the Earth Alliance had an entire civilized planet’s worth of resources to draw upon. That meant a lot of torpedoes could be fabricated.

At some point during the middle of the war, the Earth Alliance had taken to creating what they called TCMAs, or Tacomas according to their officers. The crews called them taco-trucks. The Martians called them trailers.

They were these large boxy containers, attached to the rear of a ship with quick-mount points. They had a tiny set of maneuvering jets and could carry between six and sixty torpedoes, depending on the size and how much mass the vessel they were plugged onto could handle.

Once they fired, they’d be detached and left floating out in the void of space, entirely spent.

It allowed the Earth Alliance’s smaller ships the ability to carry an outsized arsenal, even if it was a very temporary one. It had been one of the better ideas they’d had through the war, and had cost Mars several dozen ships and made a lot of Martian sailors have nervous breakdowns whenever their ECM detected a torpedo-lock.

Obviously, by the end of the war the average Martian warship had enough point-defence, chaff, and automated electronic countermeasures to make most torpedo attacks whiff entirely, but for a small period of a few months it had been a very valid strategy.

Equally obviously, the Martians called the Earthlings bed-shitting cowards for refusing to fight like hairy-chested men. By which they meant fighting exclusively within the range of the Martians’ larger, more powerful warships where the Earth Alliance would get the clobbering they deserved.

Ivil hummed to herself as she watched this salvo of torpedoes approaching. It was spreading out.

The usual trick was to aim all of them at one big target. Point-defence could only do so much, and if the target was obvious, it would still make the enemy fleet shift their position to defend it, which might open them up to other trouble later.

The console on the Sappho buzzed a warning as one torpedo locked on to them. Just the one, however.

“That’s scary,” Twenty-Six said as she eyed the warning.

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Ivil said.

It was just one torpedo. At most it had a mid-yield nuclear charge in it.

“I know!” Twenty-Six replied with a sweet smile directed at Ivil. “But I bet the rest of the Uranians aren’t feeling so safe.”

It was a fair point, and it neatly highlighted the purpose of the torpedo launch. A few civilian ships were already shifting out of their positions. Ivil listened in for just a moment to all the chatter and… yes, people were afraid. Some captains were complaining that they didn’t have point-defence enough to take out a missile, others had ships with such awful E-war capabilities that their onboard computers thought that every last torpedo was aimed at them.

“How many do you think will come close enough to hit?” Ivil asked.

“Depends,” Pixie said. She had her legs up on the figurative dash before her and was just looking ahead idly. “Probably none, if the fleet moves the right way. But the EA has some good tricks up their sleeves. Might have some torpedoes go silent and ballistic, others might self-detonate to throw out EMP waves that’ll fritz out the most sensitive sensors. Might have a few MIRV torpedoes in there as well.”

“MIRV?” Aurora asked.

“Multiple Independently-targetable Re-entry Vehicle,” Pixie said. “The name’s old, from like, the 1900s or so? But it kind of stuck. It’s a missile that has multiple explosive heads in it that split apart. The re-entry part is about atmospheric re-entry, which doesn’t apply here. Basically, a scattershot torpedo. Lots of smaller explosives means your point defence needs to be quick.”

Pixie’s guess proved correct, but only about three hours later.

By then, Aurora had gone to sleep, and Twenty-Six was in her bunk, tossing and turning and mostly reading off of a tablet instead of sleeping.

The first wave of torpedoes (now followed by two more) started to act strangely. They veered off course, shifted targets and started to roll. It was just in time to avoid some of the longer-ranged point defence guns as well.

Then a few exploded into what looked to Ivil like tiny pinpricks of light in the distance, little white stars appearing in the void of space. They were, of course, powerful nuclear detonations, but in the distance they were hard to scale with the naked eye.

Those sent out a wave of conflicting readings that the Sappho’s sensors had a hard time parsing for a few minutes. She imagined it would be significantly worse on more… civilian-grade ships.

Out of the conflagration came hundreds of tiny pinpricks that she had to focus on to make out. Ballistic missiles. Little more than a warhead, passive sensors, and a few tiny manoeuvring thrusters. Enough to line them up with a target at the last moment.

They raced ahead of the rest, most entirely undetected by any sensor suite.

“Clever, clever,” Ivil said.

“Can’t make out shit,” Pixie said as she stared at the readings the Sappho had. “What’s clever?”

“You are,” Ivil said. “Your guess was spot on.”

“Oh… thanks,” Pixie said. “It’s actually less of a guess than you might think.”

“Oh?” Ivil asked. That was a curious statement.

Pixie shrugged. “When’s the last time any of the big armies have actually gotten into a fight? And I mean like, more than two patrol ships flinging insults at each other over comms and maybe some sailors giving each other bloody noses in a bar somewhere.”

Ivil snorted. “I think… oh, it must be at least six, maybe seven years? And even then, it was a small scuffle over something that wasn’t that important in hindsight.”

“Right. And during the last solar war, how quick did tech and tactics change?” Pixie asked.

“Rapidly,” Ivil said. “Core-wielders like myself grew more powerful as the war dragged on, and we all gained a few tricks, or stole them, but most of that growth is slow and steady after a certain… plateau, let’s call it. The navy’s growth is more sudden. A major improvement takes time to roll out across a fleet. Still, I’d say new tactics came out every three months, and it would take three months more to counter them. Call it six months for entire tactical systems to fall apart and be replaced.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Pixie said with a nod. “Now, think about how long it’s been since the war. That’s a lot of six-month turnarounds. No active war to push things, so maybe it’s slower, but there have been scuffles and fights between pirates, bounty hunters, mercenaries and corporations since the last big war. And a few little wars between some moons that never lasted too long.”

“Ah, I see,” Ivil said. “So, what you’re trying to say is that despite everything, I’m a bit behind?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Pixie said. “But… a lot of people will die if you’re overestimating yourself and underestimating your enemy.”

“I see,” Ivil said. “Well then, let’s make it into a wager then?”

“A wager?” Pixie asked, she half turned in her seat to stare back at Ivil. She had surprisingly soft eyes for such a clever little mercenary.

“A wager,” Ivil agreed with a nod. “Let’s see… for every civilian ship that the Earth Alliance takes out, you can spank me… once. As punishment.”

Pixie blinked, then glanced away. The hint of red crawling across her face was telling though. Obviously, there wouldn’t actually be any such thing… well… maybe Ivil was willing to experiment a little. “Wagers need two sides,” she said.

“Ah, yes. Well then, for every ship I save, I get to kiss you once.”

“There’s hundreds of ships out there,” Pixie said.

“Oh my, it does look like there are a lot of them.”

Pixie stared, then broke out into a grin. “Well, alright. I guess I’ve never said no to a good wager.”

“Exactly. It’s just business.”

Chapter one hundred nine

Torpedoes… of Love

The torpedoes came racing in, violence in technological form, burning the last of their fuel like a sprinter seeing the finish line and hurling themselves towards it.

The Uranian fleet was going to survive them. The first volley wasn’t so big to even take out the entire fleet, even if they didn’t put up any resistance. But they were resisting, and already a few torpedoes had encountered ballistic rounds mid-flight that turned them into so much scrap, and a few well-tuned long-range lasers had turned others into slag.

But the math wasn’t entirely in favour of the Uranian fleet.

“They’re coming in close,” Twenty-Six said. She’d awakened from her nap a little bit ago and came down to watch.

They, of course, were safe. The one torpedo aimed right at the Sappho had encountered a critical existence failure and was no longer a concern. The rest of the fleet… not so much.

Ivil had several cores that made her pretty good at calculating trajectories and probabilities and a few that let her glimpse into the future if she leaned on them. If she didn’t interfere, something like a dozen Uranian ships would be damaged. One catastrophically.

The next volley would be worse, and the one after worse again.

“Twenty-Six,” Ivil said. “If we were to lose a ship, which one would be the smallest loss?”

Twenty-Six blinked, then glanced over the fleet. They were in the midst of it, only a few hundred metres between the Sappho and the nearest vessel. The fleet was obviously spread out too, all according to someone’s tactical doctrine for avoiding splash damage and accidentally overlapping fields of fire in a disastrous way. Combat in three dimensions was tricky business.

“Probably one of those little C-39 drone freighters,” she said. “They’re unmanned and remote operated, and they’re kind of… crappy, to be honest? Old as heck, and those look like they don’t have anything but a jury-rigged point-defence gun on them. I don’t even know what they’re doing here.”

“Hmm, I see,” Ivil said.

Then she turned her attention to the incoming torpedoes, and suddenly the rushing, screaming pieces of metallic death found themselves.. Somewhat unlucky.

Several of them were hit by kinetic rounds that only had a fraction of a percent chance of even being within ten metres of them. The shooters relied on blind statistical luck to hit anything.

Some found that the heat-shielding plates on their fronts, designed to absorb the warm glow of enemy laser fire, suddenly turned to slag as if they were made of paper rather than high-tech polymers.

Two torpedoes accidentally ran into each other. Then two more did the same because Ivil found it kind of amusing.

In the space of some fifty kilometres, a distance travelled through in only a few spare seconds, the torpedoes’ numbers were reduced by half, then a quarter, and then there were only a dozen left spinning through the void where the entire Uranian fleet could focus on them.

Somehow, in that tense moment where they should have impacted into the fleet… nothing happened.

Then some poor unmanned freighter with some after-market modifications blew up in the middle of the fleet, but it was barely more than a pop and fizzle.

“Oops, one ship lost,” Ivil said casually.

Pixie’s lips twitched, but she wasn’t looking Ivil’s way. Obviously that didn’t stop Ivil from noticing. “That’s one on the tally, you know.”

“I suppose so,” Ivil replied. “But it’s fine. Don’t they say you should try everything once?”

Twenty-Six looked between the two of them, obviously curious. “What are you two talking about?” she asked.

“The empress and I have a wager going on,” Pixie said.

“Oh!” Twenty-Six replied. “I like that kind of stuff. What are we betting on?”

“How many ships Ivil can save,” Pixie said. “Currently, she’s down one. Which… I actually don’t know if that means I’m winning or not.”

Twenty-Six grinned. “It was just an unmanned ship! I vote that it doesn’t count, and I want to join in! What are we betting with? I have a few dollars in my bunk!”

Pixie coughed awkwardly. “That’s, uh, well.”

“Mhm?” Twenty-Six asked.

There was a long sigh that Ivil very much enjoyed as Pixie decided to come clean. “For every ship saved, Ivil gets to, uh, kiss me once.”

“Oh,” Twenty-Six said. She flushed a little, but her smile only grew. “I like that kind of bet. Plus I’d get to keep my money! Wait, what do you lose?”

“Spanking,” Pixie said suddenly, as if the word was torn out of her. “That’s the lose.”

Twenty-Six blinked, then looked away. “I… I don’t know if I can join in,” she said.

“Oh? Why not?” Ivil asked.

“I don’t know, it’s just, I don’t want to spank Pixie. That seems mean.”

“Huh? No, I’m not the one getting spanked for losing,” Pixie said. She pointed across the bridge. “She is.”

“Oh!” Twenty-Six replied. “Well, that still seems a bit mean. I wouldn’t want to spank Ivil either.”

“You could always bet against Pixie,” Ivil offered.

Twenty-Six took a moment to figure out what the logical outcome of that would be, then she proceeded to flush quite terribly. “I, um, I guess I’ll join in on that. You said we were down one ship, right?”

“Well, just an unmanned ship,” Ivil said. “I think you said it hardly counts at all.”

“We can revisit that,” Twenty-Six said.

Pixie rubbed at her face in the pilot’s seat. “What am I getting into?” she asked.

“Exploring very light BDSM?” Ivil tried.

“Don’t call it that, it makes it sound dirty,” Twenty-Six said.

“And it wasn’t already?” Pixie asked.

“Wait… were we going to be naked?” Twenty-Six asked, aghast.

“Oh my god,” Pixie muttered. “This is too much for me. I just did it for the bragging rights. Can we return to the war at hand?”

“Certainly,” Ivil said.

The Earth Alliance fleet was approaching even as they discussed important matters. The fleet was shifting into an inverted, three-spoke wedge formation. The kind of shape that would give them the best open angle for overlapping fire. Torpedoes were gently flying away from the ship on semi-ballistic courses to position themselves for future dives towards the “jaws” of the formation, and thousand of missiles were likely being primed for a hard alpha strike.

Even while keeping her senses a little dull not to give herself away, Ivil could tell that the entire fleet’s shield network was humming at maximum capacity.

The second wave of torpedoes, meanwhile, came rushing in, but the Uranian fleet held firm, having not really lost anything against the first. Again, Ivil waited until they were in the long range of the Uranian point defences, then she started to tweak flight patterns and nudge things very slightly to favour the Uranian fleet.

The advantage of the Earth Alliance pre-detonating bombs to create EMP waves in space that messed with sensors was that they likely couldn’t tell that things weren’t going according to plan for their torpedoes.

Still, Ivil had to make things somewhat believable; otherwise that rat coward Emperor of Earth would turn tail.

A few more unmanned ships exploded throughout the Uranian formation.

“That’s, uh, five,” Pixie said. “You’re really going to let me smack your behind like that?”

“Oh, I’ve no concern for my own,” Ivil replied smugly.

Her ass was harder than the toughest diamond. If anything, poor Pixie’s hands might be in for a rude surprise. Twenty-Six, however, was looking increasingly and adorably nervous.

“What’s that mean? That you’re not worried about your own?” Twenty-Six asked. She turned to Pixie. “You’re not using like, your belt, right? Or like, paddles, riding crops, whips or anything like that?”

Pixie’s brows slowly climbed as Twenty-Six listed things out. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

“No I don’t,” Twenty-Six said far too quickly.

Ivil hummed, then distractedly started swatting torpedoes out of space. There was a lot she still had to learn about the girls, it seemed.

And then Aurora stepped into the room, but not before yawning in an unladylike fashion just on the other side of the bulkhead. “Good morning,” she said. “What are we discussing? How’s the situation so far?”

“Spanking,” Ivil said. “And I’d like to think that things are going pretty well, all things considered.”

“I do hope that that’s some poorly chosen wording and what you mean is that you’re hitting the enemy fleet and punishing them for their transgressions,” Aurora said.

“No,” Ivil said. “I’m very much allowing myself to be distracted by my attempt to see how deeply I can make Twenty-Six blush.”

“Hey!”

“She knows a lot about spanking, however,” Ivil said. “She might be the expert around here.”

“Really now?” Aurora asked. She looked at Twenty-Six, who was still looking for a reply. “And here I thought she was an innocent virgin?”

“This is bullying!” Twenty-Six said. “Stop talking about spanking, and destroy more enemies! There’s like… political stuff, and bad guys. That’s what’s important here!”

Ivil smiled, but she knew that Twenty-Six was wrong about what was the most important thing here.

Chapter one hundred ten

A Time for Subtlety, A Time for the Unsubtle

Ivil quickly realized that the time for subtlety would eventually pass, and sooner than she might have wanted.

The Earth Alliance fleet entered that mid-range point where they could start taking direct shots at the Uranian fleet. The last of their torpedoes chose that time to start hard-accelerating as well.

It meant that the Uranian fleet, as well as the Sappho in their midst, was being peppered by railgun rounds and accelerated particles. The vast majority of these were slamming into shields more than capable of taking the occasional hit, but sometimes something would slip through.

Ivil was working double time to catch those rounds before they impacted the Uranian ships.

There were contingencies against exactly this scenario. They involved moving the entire fleet so that they dodged incoming fire while also avoiding crashing into each other. The Uranian fleet had a hard time just getting their ships into something even approaching a formation. That kind of tight manoeuvring was beyond them, so they mostly sat there like gormless ducks staring down the barrel of a shotgun.

Ivil was secretly tempted to let some of the bigger rounds crash into the lead ships of the fleet, just to wake them up to all the hard work she was doing to keep them alive, but she was quite certain that Pixie and Aurora were willing to work together to justify the destruction of a larger ship as being worth an order of magnitude more than the loss of some unmanned freighter.

Soon enough, however, it stopped mattering.

The Earth Alliance fleet eventually caught on that there was something going on that couldn’t even be explained away as a statistical anomaly.

A few torpedoes getting taken out early was bad luck. Over a hundred of them missing their mark? The constant railgun fire never hitting so much as a single weak spot, in a fleet composed mostly of civilian ships? There was no way.

Which is probably what prompted the Emperor of Earth to act.

She was expecting it, of course, but also doubting.

If she pushed her senses forwards, then maybe she might have been able to tell if he was even in the fleet, but she didn’t dare. He might have been an incompetent idiot, but even he would notice her probing.

The Earth Alliance fleet contracted, ships approaching each other, then one of them shot ahead. It was the largest in the entire fleet, and one of the only proper warships there. “Twenty-Six, do you recognize that one?” she asked.

Twenty-Six stared, then shook her head. “It’s Earth-built, and might be built off one of their frames. Maybe a Washington Class heavy corvette? But no, the bridge is in the wrong spot. I think it’s… new? Look at the burns, here, and here.” She blew up an image, zooming in to some baffles next to the thrusters.

“I don’t see it,” Aurora said.

“Oh, I get it,” Pixie replied. “They’re clean?”

“Yeah! There are bits of ships that are never clean. No matter what you burn as fuel, things eventually get cooked up and dirtied. You can clean it, I guess, but it doesn’t last. So either that ship was washed really recently… and why would you clean off carbon scoring? Or it’s basically new. Probably on its maiden voyage, even.”

“Well done, Twenty-Six,” Ivil said. She enjoyed the way Twenty-Six flushed with the praise.

Unfortunately, it would be one of the last things she enjoyed.

The large ship launched a brace of torpedoes. They came up and out, then carefully hovered next to the ship.

It was unlikely that anyone but Ivil could see it, but something like a thousand long, translucent arms, all of them shunted one dimension to the left, came out of the centre of the warship and grabbed the torpedoes.

Then they threw.

To anyone looking, the projectiles had gone from a relative standstill next to the charging warship and turned into blurs of rapid movement, outpacing just about any modern railgun. Railgun rounds were usually small, however. These were multi-ton torpedoes, filled with high explosives or nuclear bombs.

At the speed they were going, they’d hit the Uranian fleet in a microsecond, regardless of the range. All were aimed at the largest ships in the fleet, including the Tech Maid ship hovering protectively next to the Sappho.

Modern shields could take a beating, but this would strain even the best.

Ivil sighed, then caught the torpedoes out of the void, crunching them like an aluminium soda can under the treads of a main battle tank.

There was no hiding now.

Ivil stood. “I’m going to step out for a bit of fresh air,” she said.

“Okay!” Twenty-Six replied.

It was Aurora who frowned first. “Ivil, we’re on a spaceship.”

“That’s fine,” Ivil said. She very carefully translocated to the exterior of the Sappho. Then she started to casually stroll towards her longtime enemy.

A bit of herself, however, was left behind, to keep the Sappho safe. And if that bit happened to keep the Uranian fleet safe as well, then that was nice for them.

She took a step and covered a league, she took another and the stars blurred. Then she came to a stop a few kilometres ahead of the rushing Earth Alliance flagship. Its front, narrowed to a point, had a large and rather gaudy figurehead at the front. A woman with arms outstretched and chest protruding out.

Ivil sighed. That was very much something the Earth emperor would slap onto his own vessel.

She tensed ever so slightly as a dozen tiny pinpricks of light shot out from the core of the ship, then slipped past it. They took off towards her, tiny missiles packed full of something nasty.

She gestured and they were swatted aside. “Not even going to come out yourself? Are you a coward to the end?” she asked.

It was the dead of space, and yet she knew that every unguarded soul in that ship had heard her loud and clear.

“Are you the bitch who’s been sticking their dumb fingers in my master plan?” came a reply. It was deep and sonorous, a sound created from nothing powerful enough that the waves of it might have flayed the skin off her bones if she cared to let it.

Ivil blinked. He didn’t know who she was, then. Did he assume her to be a high A-classer? It was possible. All that she’d done so far could be done by someone with the right cores, obviously. Someone like Sonic Spectre could do half the work she did. Bring her over here with a few other Martian elites, and the effect may have been the same.

To think he’d underestimate her so badly. Perhaps she should have waddled over slower, or made a show of having a difficult time with those missiles. Then he would probably have started to monologue.

The idiot.

Monologuing was a right given only unto the powerful.

“Fool!” she roared right back. “In your haste to crawl your way up to mediocrity, you have once again managed to gain my attention, and this time it may well be your end. The theft from an ally is enough to put you in the ill graces of Mars, emperor, but the interruption of my dating life? That is unforgivable.”

Ivil reached out to the flagship. Some small part of her wondered what its name was. The ship was rushing its way to her, and with her having stopped, impact was inevitable.

And so she rent it apart.

Space screamed as she opened it, making room where there was none and carving out a blade of null taller even than the ship.

The initial impact killed a good number of the crew, but mass and momentum had a way of turning a disaster into a catastrophe.

The ship with a name that no longer mattered roared forwards, its own thrusters burning as it wedged itself apart almost down the middle.

It wasn’t a perfect cut. When the last of the ship was done blowing past her, it was split through, but the cut was more of a curve. Something in the middle had deflected the slice to one side. The smaller section went rolling off into space, bleeding fire and the last echoing cries of the crew within. The rest tumbled over itself, then something within ignited, and Ivil felt the warm breeze of a nuclear armageddon blow past her.

What was left after the explosion ran its course was a sphere. It was metallic, and glowed with an inner light. The surface shifted, like rippling water, and soon the sphere opened to reveal a puppet of a man.

“There you are,” Ivil said.

“Ivil Antagonist,” the man replied.

She smiled, because even though they were the eyes of a puppet, she could still read the naked emotion behind them, and it was fear.

“I would be kissing cute girls right now if it wasn’t for you,” she threatened.

Chapter one hundred eleven

The Last Battle of Emperors

They battled.

If words were spoken still, they were drowned in a tempest of roaring energy, in a deluge of plasma, in screams not unlike the howl of a sun being compressed into the seed of a supernova.

The Emperor of Earth reached out to Ivil Antagonist with a million million beams of searing light, and she twirled away from them.

First, he chased her across dimensions.

Metal formed of stardust and imbued with the ability to cross realities clamped at her like bear traps with teeth like supertankers. Raw, scintillating beams of magnified starlight painted sparkling rainbows across space, each one curving in towards her. Projectiles no bigger than lonely hydrogen molecules ripped across space at speeds that made light envious, and in their wake ripped tears into causality.

Ivil Antagonist danced through it all. The teeth clicked shut where she’d been, the beams of light and energy burned past her, and she spun around the rents in reality, weaving them around herself like Salome with her seven veils.

Second, he tried to trap her. Cores spilled out of dimensional pockets and were instantly activated. Probability calculators, scanners, sensor suites that could count the grains of sand on every planet in the solar system all at once. They spun, and aimed themselves at her.

In an instant, the Emperor of Earth thought he knew everything there was to be known about Ivil Antagonist.

He redoubled his efforts. No longer chasing, but attacking.

An armada’s worth of firepower was levelled at her, and he struck out with it, knowing that he would hit.

And he did.

Ivil caught his attack like a tango dancer grasping a reaching wrist, with a slap that echoed through space. There was, for just a moment, a silent surprise.

Had they eyes left, they might have met across the void between them, but the time for such inefficient biology was long past.

To onlookers, it would seem like space had torn itself apart and vomited a million scrapyards’ worth of steel and polymer and illogical, un-geometric stuff. Billions of tons’ worth of it, in two indistinct entities frozen in place for an interminable minute. The entities outweighed moons. Already, the gassy tides of nearby Uranus were shifting ever so slightly, and the fleet of ships were scrambling to adjust.

And then the moment broke. The two forms snapped back into smaller, more compact non-shapes. One bubbled over with organic, biological sludge, the other folding into itself with engineered precision down to the micrometre.

Third, the Emperor of Earth, in his endless arrogance, tried to bargain from a position of perceived power. “You are what I feared all this time?” he asked. He challenged. He insulted. “You? You’re weaker than I thought. You can barely dodge me, barely block my blows!”

Ivil Antagonist had no lips to smile with, but she had never had more teeth. “Perhaps. Maybe I’ve grown soft these past few weeks. I’ve found something that finally interests me more than power.”

“You’re an idiot too, then,” the emperor said.

“Maybe. An idiot in love. Here, let me show you what that means.”

First, she caught him.

It was the gazelle feeling the cheetah’s claws biting into its flank, the orca breaking the ice under a stranded seal, the running hare discovering the closing shadow of a chasing bear, the lone surviving planet of a once bountiful solar system, gently, but impossibly, being dragged into the maws of a supermassive blackhole, its survival impossible, its remaining time a stick of incense next to a blowtorch.

Ivil Antagonist wasn’t kind.

She was discovering that she could feel love, that she could feel gentleness, from others and towards others, and she enjoyed it. But above all else, she knew herself. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles, and it had been ages since she’d last felt true fear. The recent scares, of love and passion? They were tantalizingly dangerous to her, and she found that she could well live with that.

A moment of admiration for kindness was not a weakness. Nor did it make her gentle as she gripped the Emperor of Earth.

Claws like jagged mountains sank through dimensions, ripped through reality, and burrowed themselves into titanic flesh birthed by a thousand cores.

Anchors of probability, tethers of causality, braces holding up reality to be what she wanted it to be, formed around the emperor, and he soon realized that his earlier dance was merely him stepping into her parlour.

Second, she met the eyes of his soul with her own. A soul made weighty by ten thousand cores, by a million simulated years, by the impossibly solid knowledge that she was the Empress of Mars, the Ivil Antagonist, speared down and crashed into the mind of a little pissant of a man called Humphrey.

The Emperor of Earth thought he knew everything there was to be known about Ivil Antagonist.

Ivil Antagonist knew everything there was to know about him, and she found it pitiful and lacking.

“Blind fucking luck, arrogance, and sycophantic fear,” she snarled. “That’s all you are, and all that caused you to be what you are now.”

Third, the Empress of Mars set down the rules and created the laws. The primordial law: Thou shalt have no greater fear than Ivil Antagonist. It was carved into him without bargain or right to appeals. Because as she willed it, it became so.

“What are you doing?” he screeched.

“Winning, mostly,” Ivil replied.

She reached a metaphorical hand into the emperor’s guts and started to rifle around.

In reality, this battle was far from over. She had him in the equivalent of a headlock for the moment, but he would break out of it. Not without harming himself, and he would be at a slight disadvantage, but… battles between entities like emperors were not started and won in a single engagement. They were more like wars between nations. A powerful blow could hurt, yes, but complete annihilation took time.

So, instead, Ivil started to pluck out cores like a carrion bird going for the juiciest morsels. A few mechanical cores here, some small utility cores there.

She was a fair maiden, cutting flowers out at the stem to create a beautiful bouquet. A few hundred cores, freshly ripped from the writhing body of a mutual enemy… was anything more romantic?

She made sure to think of what Aurora and Twenty-Six and Pixie would want, but that hesitation cost her.

The Emperor of Earth slithered out of her grasp, then shifted away from her, making space.

She allowed it.

Soon, they were facing each other again. One a sleek mass of interlocking metals and fractal shapes, the other a mass of biological organisms pinned together and bleeding.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked.

Ivil Antagonist shifted from side to side and hoped that her blush wasn’t so obvious in this form. “I’m just a woman in love,” she said.

The emperor’s confusion bled off of him like heat off of a fire. “You’re insane,” he said.

“I won’t deny it,” she said cheerfully.

She took a half-step forward, and though her form didn’t move, space did. It bent under her, coiled around her, a throne of dark matter and golden light birthing itself from the background radiation as if summoned by her sheer, imposing will on reality.

“You could’ve been someone,” the emperor tried again, his voice a little less grand, a little more shaken. “You could’ve ruled beside me. We would’ve been gods.”

“You’re still doing the recruitment pitch?” Ivil asked, sounding genuinely disappointed. “This is why no one comes to your birthday parties.”

“I’m Emperor of Earth!”

“You’re barely tolerated on Earth,” Ivil replied. “I may be an irredeemable monster, but at least I’m loved. You’re kept around because… honestly, I don’t know. You’re not even halfway competent.”

The Emperor of Earth bristled. “You’re not even taking this seriously!”

“You launched torpedoes at a fleet of barely armed civilians and somehow still lost. I’m taking it just seriously enough to laugh at you.”

The puppet he wore twitched—anger? Humiliation? Some deep-seated recognition that he was being clowned on?

“You don’t understand what I’ve built,” he snarled.

“Oh, I do,” Ivil said sweetly. “You’ve built a little dollhouse and convinced yourself it’s a palace. Filled it with yes-men and screens that only show you what you want to see. I bet your war room has inspirational quotes printed on the walls. ‘Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll still commit a war crime.’”

“You think you’re above me?” he shouted.

“I am above you,” she shouted right back. “In strength, intellect, fashion, and romantic prospects. I have three beautiful women waiting for me on my ship. You have an army of ass-kissers primed to kiss the behind of the first person to take your place. You want to know what’s really wrong with me?” she asked, stepping forward, her voice quiet now, but sharper than the blade that had split his flagship in half. “It’s that I looked at the entire solar system, at war, at death, at power… and decided the thing I wanted most in this life was a slow morning in bed with my girlfriends. Do you understand how insulting it is that you think you can threaten that?”

The emperor, for once, had no words.

“Go ahead,” Ivil said, stepping back into a more relaxed posture. “Call me insane again. It’ll be the last lie you ever tell with teeth.”

The Emperor of Earth trembled. He was starting to understand the truth of things.

This was not a battle between rival powers. This was a god, furious that a rat had touched her shrine.

Epilogue - The Spectre and the Scripture

Sonic Spectre was having a difficult time reconciling her religious beliefs and the reality before her.

Part of her, one she would admit had been indoctrinated and groomed, but which she cherished nonetheless, wanted to see the Empress of Mars as more than just a woman. She was meant to be an icon, a symbol, a goddess in the flesh.

Then Sonic had to run after her and pick up the pieces. She’d spent actual time within close proximity to one of the central pillars, maybe the most important pillar, of the religious order she was a part of, and discovered that…

The Empress of Mars was a weird, weird woman. A terrible flirt. A hopeless romantic. A bit of a womanizer. Ivil Antagonist’s near-perfect image in Sonic Spectre’s mind took hit after hit, and yet… there was always that sense that there was more just under the surface. More than just someone who had gained unfathomable power through luck and grit.

The Adeptus Ancillia preached that she was the Machina Ex Deus. A being not unlike a god. And they were right, but their understanding of Ivil Antagonist was… superficial. They understood the symbol, the charismatic leader. They didn’t understand the blubbering idiot she could be at times.

And yet…

Sonic Spectre was on the bridge of the Sappho. Next to her was Aurora, Twenty-Six, Pixie, and even Pepper. Every person on board the ship, crammed into the room, all of them splitting their attention between the view screen at the front of the bridge.

Sonic Spectre shivered. Not from the cold, or from delight, or even fear. It was something more… primal.

Before her, far enough away that the details should have been impossible to see with the naked eye, two gods clashed.

Arcs of actinic, searingly bright lightning, in crooked forks, shot out into the empty void of space. Small thermonuclear explosions popped and fizzled, and then entire swathes of the void were rent open and enveloped by a pitch darkness that swallowed all light.

The empress was there, in all of her glory. A shining beacon of golden light, bathing the enemy fleet in her holy radiance… and burning them with it.

The Earth Alliance fleet was trying to make space. They’d pushed their thrusters to full in an attempt to get away. The Uranian fleet, including the Sappho and the Silent Sentinel Washer at the Gates, was gently pulling back and away as well. A few of the attacks between the empress and emperor had caused large enough disturbances to short out shields and likely damage some of the ships at the fore.

The smart thing to do was retreat.

The Earth Alliance was just retreating from far closer to the conflagration, and because of that, they were being caught in the wake of it.

Ships were ripped in half. Some caught fire. One of them looked like it was disassembled into its individual parts in just a blink. No doubt the aftereffect of a powerful core-based weapon being levelled its way. Entire ships vanished from sensors as they turned into clouds of spare parts.

The cleanup was going to be… messy, and expensive. But that was going to be a problem for the Uranians.

Sonic found herself staring at the fight with her attention split. A large part of her wanted to start doing math. How much energy was being put out. Their sensors were picking up gravitic fluctuations and enough heat to compete with the sun, though only in quick flashes and bursts.

Another part of her was wondering about the consequences. The cleanup, the impact on the Earth Alliance as a whole… this was going to be public. The Uranians had no reason to censor this, and maybe that was for the best, because the last part of her…

The last part of her was revelling in religious ecstasy.

Her empress was standing before her as a bastion against the cruel Emperor of Earth, and she was wiping the floor with him.

There was going to be a whole new set of scriptures written about this.

Scratch that… as she watched the two emperors split apart with a violent explosion that sent the Emperor of Earth reeling so far away that he crashed into Caliban.

Twenty-Six gasped.

Pixie… made a sound that might also have been interpreted as a gasp.

Sonic didn’t look away, however. This was, in a word, Biblical, and she wouldn’t dare blink.

A wave of force rippled across the surface of Caliban, and when it passed there was an impossibly large bullseye crater smashed into the side of the moon.

The Emperor of Earth tore out of it, and Sonic swallowed. He was still powerful. He was still an emperor. If he turned his ire on them, then maybe even the empress herself wouldn’t be able to protect the Uranian fleet while…

The emperor spun around, and fled. A comet racing out and away from the planetary system at speeds that outpaced even the fastest ship.

The bridge was quiet except for the sound of breathing.

The golden light of the Empress of Mars turned orange, then settled in a deeply familiar red. The red of the soil of Mars.

And then the light winked out.

Sonic Spectre would have liked to think that she wasn’t worried, but… Ivil had just taken on one of the other two most powerful beings in the solar system in a one-on-one brawl.

“Should we go see if she’s okay?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I don’t know if the Sappho can pick her up on scanners,” Aurora said. “But… I suppose there’s no harm in trying.”

“Hmm, uh, I mean, some harm,” Pixie said. She was red in the face, and a little sweaty, but she looked like she was making an effort to recover from what she’d seen. “I mean, there’s going to be lingering effects all over. If we just move in without some caution… it could be a minefield. Not to mention the debris.”

“So we just sit here?” Twenty-Six asked.

“No, of course not,” Aurora said. “We recruit the Uranian fleet. They’ll have more resources than us, and they certainly owe Ivil a favour now. They must know that without her intervention, they’d all be dead by now. Let me get on the comms with the officer in charge. If they don’t want to help then… then I’ll drag their reputations through the muck.”

“I will communicate with the Adeptus Ancillia,” Sonic Spectre said with a bow towards the others. “Perhaps there are some members of the Ordo with the appropriate cores to suss out the empress’s location. They’ll be willing to risk life and limb to find her, if the need arises.”

“I’ll contact MINT right away,” Pepper added. “Finding things is kind of our job. Especially when it comes to the empress.”

“Thank you,” Twenty-Six said. She smiled, but looked a little sad. Sad and wide-eyed. “I wish I could do more.”

“I think you’ve done plenty.”

Everyone on the bridge jumped and turned, though Sonic believed that she might have been the first to truly notice the empress’s appearance. Her echolocation cores bounced off the empress’s body as she pulled herself out of a fold in dimensional space. For just a moment she caught a glimpse of the infinite expanse beyond and—

“Ivil!” Twenty-Six shouted.

She tripped over herself across the room at a dead run, followed by Aurora and even Pixie, who stumbled out of her pilot’s seat and rushed over.

The empress smiled. Her hair was plastered to her scalp with sweat, and she seemed flushed, cheeks just a little warm and eyes a little wild. The look of someone who’d just exerted themselves and came out victorious. It was strange to see, knowing that the empress’s real body was likely not reflecting her current state at all.

“Are you okay?” Twenty-Six asked as she stopped herself just before crashing into Ivil.

“I’m fine,” Ivil said.

“You dolt,” Aurora said. “You didn’t need to take him on like that. You could have been hurt.”

“Ah, but I wasn’t,” Ivil said, her grin only growing wider.

“Yeah, ’cause he was a pissant and you’re too tough for him,” Pixie said with a nod. “We still lost a couple of ships. I’m not forgetting our bet, even if you’ve just come back from beating that idiot up.”

“P-Pixie, it’s not the time for that,” Twenty-Six said. “Ivil, I’m happy you’re okay.”

“Thank you,” Ivil said, and it sounded… very genuine. Her smile softened. “I’m happy that I’m well too.”

There was a moment where the relief was almost palpable in the air, where all in the room could feel the tension draining away.

And then the Empress of Mars’s smile returned, this time with nothing coy in it. “So… does the victor get any victory kisses, or is that just something that happens in the soaps?”

Sonic Spectre decided that what happened next, with the pawing and the kissing and the… well, some things ought not be included in the scripture. It was far too unholy.

Epilogue - The Pirate Killer Queen

The Crevice, Ceres - Three Months Later

When things happened in the solar system that made entire governments scramble, there was always a ripple.

That ripple was felt across all tiers of life. The merchants tightened belts or started looking for opportunity. The common man found their goods more expensive, and their news more dire. The leaders of the world licked their chops as they smelled the blood of opportunity in the water.

But no one reacted with more glee than the pirates of Ceres.

The news had spread, in rumours and whispers. One of the larger, more established pirate groups had gone down recently, their station taken out in a massive fight.

How did it happen? The survivors weren’t sure. Something about a merchant freighter, barely held together, coming in and disgorging a team of Martian elites. Or six squads of Earth Alliance commandos in power armour. Maybe it was a congregation from the Adeptus Ancillia… There was even a rumour, often mocked, that it was the Empress of Mars herself that had smashed those pirates around.

Obviously, that last one was a tall tale. There were remains of the station still floating out there, and survivors.

Everyone who was anyone had seen the footage of the empress letting loose on the Emperor of Earth around Uranus. Recruitment numbers into the Tech Maids of Mars were never higher as people had religious epiphanies.

The more rational saw it and silently hoped that they never had to face her attention themselves.

There was a moon out there with a crater large enough to park a fleet in, and that had been just one attack.

But the pirates of Ceres? Well, to them, it was all an opportunity.

War was good business. It would mean massive shipments of goods and supplies, some of them not as guarded as they ought to be. It would mean patrol ships pulled from civilian lines to keep military assets safe. Policing in the border regions would drop as governments around the system tightened the noose around the core worlds. There would be mercenary work aplenty.

If they wanted that work to be… somewhat fair and equitable, however, they needed to come to a common consensus.

There was a historical precedent. Back before the Second Solar War, a few big names in the pirate business had met, just like this. Some of them were attending today, even. Big names, like Happy Jack of the Smile That Bites, and the Lady Cryer of the Sorrow’s Last Shot.

Younger, less blooded pirates were in attendance too.

In a way, this was one of the largest business conferences in the system. Hundreds of ships were swarming around the edge of the Crevice, overlooking one of the bigger entrances into the slice cut out of the middle of Ceres.

Pixie leaned forwards.

Behind her was the main conference room, a sort of open arena with artificial gravity keeping everything down. Rows of seats on platforms that rose up in concentric circles around a central podium with seating for the five greatest pirates of the age.

“That’s a lot of ships,” Twenty-Six said.

“Mhm,” Pixie agreed. She smiled as she looked out through a foot-thick window into the busy void of space.

There were old Earth Alliance warships, some retrofit freighters, even a few old cruisers from the Second Solar War. The biggest, most impressive vessels were parked nearby, however.

The Smile That Bites was a heavy super-freighter that was nearing fifty years of service. It was covered in heavy cannons and guns, its holds retrofitted to carry two dozen snub-fighters.

The Sorrow’s Last Shot, a Martian frigate, had been elongated at the front to carry a single battleship-sized railgun.

Then there was the Mutiny, an Earth Alliance heavy cruiser that had changed hands nine times already. It was painted in the flaking colours of six pirate bands.

A Kiss Before Dying was a Jovian cruiser, recently stolen. Very recently, in fact. It was likely one of the newest ships here, and was relatively well-equipped due to its age.

And then, the largest vessel here, the shining jewel of this party. The Long Goodbye. It was an Earth Alliance battlecruiser. One of only three ships made in that pattern, and lost during a skirmish with the Empress of Mars.

Mostly lost.

The ship’s carcass had been taken, renamed, and rebuilt over twenty years. It was now an armour-covered behemoth, likely one of top ten heaviest ships in the entire solar system, and it alone accounted for a sizable amount of pirate firepower.

“This thing is a real who’s who, isn’t it?” Pixie said as she turned around and allowed her back to rest against the railing. The gathering was assembling. The pirate lords of the ships she’d mentioned had pride of place in the centre. Others were taking their seats where they could find them. There were definitely groups and cliques forming up, and some were glaring at each other.

Still, the mood was jovial and upbeat. This much firepower in one place would give even a Martian Imperial Star Dreadnought a bit of pause.

This was the very last place that Pixie ever thought she’d find herself. More like… she expected to hear about this through the grapevine, as something terrible had happened and which would mean a lot more work, and a lot more risk, for the bounty hunters of the system.

A man stood up. The organizer of this event. He was skinny, and dressed in a dapper suit in the fashion of the upper echelons of Martian society. He raised a glass, then tapped a combat knife to the side of it.

A microphone picked up the gentle clink of steel on crystal, and the room quieted.

“Brothers, sisters, and various ne’er-do-wells,” the man said, his voice carrying across the chamber, smooth and rich as velvet soaked in blood. “Welcome to the Conference of the Cutthroats.”

Pixie folded her arms, watching carefully. Twenty-Six shifted at her side, glancing around with a nervous energy she recognized all too well. They were deep behind enemy lines. All it would take was one curious glance, one bad memory, and things could get messy.

“Our agenda is simple,” the man continued. “The governments of Earth and Mars are distracted. The moons are fighting over bones. And out here, in the wide black sea, there is no law but what we make.”

“That’s Jack, right?” Twenty-Six whispered.

“It is. Former Martian high-society turned pirate. He’s Phobian,” Pixie muttered.

“Like Aurora? Oh, I bet she’s going to regret not being here.”

“It’s fine,” a smooth, silky voice said from behind them. “I’ll share the gossip with her.”

Pixie glanced over her shoulder and couldn’t help but smile. Ivil was leaning against a railing over a drop down a number of floors with her feet planted on thin air, but her girlfriend, as usual, didn’t seem to care much for what gravity demanded. “I was starting to get worried,” Pixie said.

“Nonsense,” Ivil replied. “I’m sure you could take care of this rabble without me.”

Pixie sniffed. “Maybe… in my fighter. I’d maybe last a few seconds with all those ships out there.”

“I still think she could have come,” Twenty-Six said. “Just… wear a wig or something?”

Twenty-Six hadn’t even worn a costume, just her comfortable old mechanic’s jumpsuit. Pixie herself was in a skintight pilot’s outfit… It was a little embarrassing to be out and about in something so very suggestive of what was underneath, but she had a cool leather coat on, and she did like the way Twenty-Six kept looking at her rear when she thought Pixie wasn’t noticing.

“It’s fine,” Pixie replied as she focused on the moment. Time for that later.

Jack gave the crowd a moment to settle before he launched into a speech, one hand dramatically outstretched.

“Friends, enemies, and future victims,” he said, voice slick. He could have called a wheelbarrow a warship and sold it to an admiral with that kind of voice. “We stand at the cusp of a golden age. War brews among the great powers, and where there is war, there are fortunes to be made. Planets will burn, colonies will starve, and we, the proud scavengers of humanity’s excess, shall feast!”

That got a roar of approval.

Pixie shifted her weight against the railing, arms crossed. She could feel the vibration of it through her boots as the crowd stomped and hooted. The air smelled of sweat and gunpowder, of greed and ambition burning hot and fast.

Jack let the noise roll before he waved for quiet again. “Now, naturally, there are… risks. Law enforcement will come sniffing, sooner or later. The core worlds will remember we exist. We must be ready. Coordinated. Strong.” He leaned in, flashing a predatory smile. “We must stand together, even if only long enough to stab each other in the back properly.”

Another round of laughter.

Pixie’s eyes swept the gathered pirate lords. She could see Lady Cryer conferring with her lieutenants, Happy Jack soaking up the attention, the captain of the Mutiny nursing a flask and looking half-asleep. All of them giants of the underworld. All of them responsible for thousands of losses.

Jack lifted his glass again. “I open the floor to comment. Though mind you, if you disagree with me, I reserve the right to shoot first!”

A few chuckles, a few calls of mock protest.

Pixie smiled.

It was time.

She stepped away from the railing. She didn’t waver as she stepped past a few of the outer rings, then stepped down and onto the centremost dais. There was a ripple in the crowd as she moved, not recognition exactly, but the kind of shift predators made when they sensed something wrong in the wind.

Jack’s eyes landed on her, curious. “Well, now. A volunteer. Come, sister, speak your piece.”

Pixie tugged her coat straight, adjusted the cuffs. She felt her smile turn into a grin, the kind of expression that showed a little bit of teeth. The kind of look that Ivil got when she saw something she wanted… or when she discovered something to tease them with.

“I have a message,” she said, her voice carrying clearly, backed by the room’s audio systems.

Jack arched an eyebrow, amused. “A message? From whom, darling? Your mother?”

“No,” Pixie said, loud enough to carry over the laughter. Her voice rang out, and… no, that was much louder than it should have been. Was Ivil projecting her voice for her? “From every legitimate government in the system.”

“Oh?” Jack asked.

Pixie nodded, then reached into her jacket. She pulled out a small handheld projector, then flicked it on, aware that some had tensed on seeing unfamiliar technology.

An image was projected above her head, of a page, but blown up large enough to be read across the room.

Nightshade: Special Authorization - Class One Bounty Enforcement

Target: Any and all pirates at the ‘Conference of Cutthroats’

Objectives:

Captain ‘Happy’ Jack of the Smile That Bites (Dead $17,000,000 or Alive),

Lady Captain Cryer of the Sorrow’s Last Shot (Dead $12,000,000 or Alive),

Captain Grant of the Mutiny (Dead $14,000,000),

Captain Rex Flint of the A Kiss Before Dying (Dead $7,000,000 or Alive),

Captain Johnny ‘Madcap’ Locke of The Long Goodbye (Dead $14,000,000 or Alive)

All other associates and individuals suspected of participating in piracy.

Authorization for Deadly Force: Granted.

Terms: Varying.

Bonus Terms: Double payout for live capture.

“Oh, sweetie, that’s suicide,” Jack said with a smile that turned sad.

“Fuck right off,” Grant said before spitting to the side. Lady Cryer shot him a glare at that. “You think we’re going bend over backwards and let you walk in here and shit on our fun? You’re not taking me alive.”

“Actually, your bounty is specifically for your death,” Pixie said.

“Yeah? You think you can fuck with me?” he asked with a roar as he stood up.

Some two dozen cores activated all at once as the man rose and rose. He wasn’t confined to a mere human form, being a modest B-classer.

His head disappeared.

And then his body crashed to the floor with a dull thump.

Soon, his cores started to clink and rattle as they rolled out of his corpse.

Pixie glanced at her wrist. “Note: Bounty on Captain Grant of the Mutiny completed at 1028. Target confirmed dead.”

“What did you say your name was?” Happy Jack asked.

Pixie smiled. “The Nightshade. Have you heard of me?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“Oh… well,” she floundered, very much aware that the only person in the room giggling right now was Twenty-Six at the back.

“You’re aware that we outnumber you somewhat considerably, yes?” he asked.

“Your options are surrender,” Pixie called, her voice cutting through the panic. “Or a fast, ugly death!”

“We have a fleet!” Lady Cryer snapped.

The room brightened up as though a second sun had risen. Pixie could feel the warmth of the light splashing in from behind her. She turned, aware that looking at explosions wasn’t cool, but…

The fleet of ships was burning.

From the Smile That Bites, already listing with fires blooming across its spine, to the jagged wreck of A Kiss Before Dying, peeling apart at the seams. The Sorrow’s Last Shot had spun into a slow, helpless tumble, one wing of its armoured prow torn clean off.

The Long Goodbye still floated, but it was venting atmosphere in a glittering spray, a dozen punctures punched clean through its kilometre-long hull.

It exploded spectacularly, even as she watched, every one of its many reactors going critical all at once.

God, it was beautiful.

Pixie closed her eyes for half a second and savoured the rush, the pure, perfect violence of it, the destruction so vast it made her toes curl in her boots. Her heart pounded, and she had to bite her bottom lip to keep from making a very undignified noise in front of the crowd.

She let out a slow, shuddering breath instead. Controlled. Mostly.

When she opened her eyes again, the entire gathering had shifted.

No more swagger. No more mockery.

The pirates were staring at her and at the wreckage blazing outside. Pixie could taste the fear wafting off them like smoke.

“I’m still willing to accept your unconditional surrender,” she managed to say.

God, it was a good thing her suit was waterproof.

She was going to do to Ivil what Ivil had just done to those ships when she was done here.

Epilogue – Meeting the Parents

Highstation Prime, Phobos - Six Months Later

Aurora took a deep breath, then another. The ship she was in was nice enough, she supposed. She had to take it from Mars to here, from Ivil’s place. It was a luxury ferry, of sorts, booked in private and crewed by personnel that she was quite certain were all MINT agents in disguise. She was learning to pick up the tells.

In any case, the ship arrived close to Highstation Prime. It was one of the largest docking facilities around Phobos, and the space where she was destined to meet her parents and extended family.

She was not looking forward to it.

“Are you okay?” Twenty-Six asked.

“I’m well,” Aurora said. She spared a smile to the young woman next to her.

Twenty-Six smiled right back, then pulled one of Aurora’s hands over so that she could entwine their fingers together.

It had been a solid six months since they’d all started dating, and despite moments of intimacy, Aurora still felt strangely shy about public displays of affection.

She was getting used to it, of course. It was hard not to. Twenty-Six was still adorably clueless at times, but she was also a… what was the term Ivil had used… ah yes. A “hug addict.” The Saturnian liked to cling to them whenever she had a sufficiently plausible excuse for it. It wasn’t uncommon to see Ivil giving her a piggy-back ride, or Pixie walk by tugging Twenty-Six along by the hand.

Aurora was the holdout. She couldn’t honestly say that she didn’t enjoy it, but she’d been raised by a more conservative family, and such easy displays of affection felt as alien to her as they felt warm and inviting.

Today was going to be especially challenging.

“Do you wish that Ivil was here?” Twenty-Six asked.

“Truthfully? No,” Aurora said. “This is going to be a difficult enough thing without her being there from the start. You know how overbearing she can be at times.”

Twenty-Six laughed. “She likes having things done her way, yeah.”

The ship shifted as they connected to the dock. Aurora closed her eyes, then let herself feel the gravity of the moon. It was strange, such a little thing, but some part of her intimately recognized the gravity of Phobos as “home.” It wasn’t a terrible feeling.

Except that she knew the moment she stepped off the ship.

Her family was waiting for her.

There was her father, a tall, stately man in a well-pressed suit, and next to him her slightly shorter mother, whose darker skin and face Aurora had inherited, though she had her father’s eyes and some of his height.

Beyond them, more family, a few aunts, some uncles, and a lot of members of the middle-nobility. More than she had expected to see.

Ah, she knew what this was, then. This was an event. She recognized a few spare members of the upper nobility as well, families that were peers or greater than her own, though they were off to one side, amongst their own with their own servants around.

It only took a moment’s thought to realize what this was all about.

The League of Free Moons had had a bit of an upsurge in popularity and support after the Uranus incident. The Jovian fleet had arrived an hour too late to help in the combat, but they were there to support the Uranians in the cleanup work.

And then Aurora had been there too, very publicly placing herself as the representative of Phobos and Mars as a whole.

It meant that, for a fleeting moment, Phobos looked superior to Mars… in a small, reasonably easy to dismiss way that wouldn’t have the sword-rattlers of Mars too angry. After all, Mars had come out of that situation smelling like roses.

Their empress had shown up and kicked in the teeth of the big, evil, scheming Emperor of Earth and had saved hundreds of poor Uranians. Footage of the event was still the centre of memes and jokes, even half a year later, and the political ramifications hadn’t yet finished playing themselves out.

So, she was maybe not central to one of the biggest political events of the decade, but she had been a step away from the centre and had used that to push Phobian interests further.

If nothing else, Aurora had secured her place as a quick-thinking, shrewd diplomat, and her subsequent meetings with some leaders of other moons that were part of the League had only made that more clear.

There was now a major trade going on between Uranus and Phobos that she had brokered. Phobos was buying the remains of the newer, more experimental Earth Alliance ships that Ivil had knocked around like toys. Phobos was grabbing them for a small fortune, and reselling them for a larger fortune to some Martian R&D companies who were salivating at the thought of gaining access to brand new Earth Alliance tech.

The deal meant billions of dollars trading hands, and she had been the one to broker it. It wasn’t even the only deal she’d facilitated with various members of the League of Free Moons.

Basically, Aurora had done well. Far, far better than might have been expected of her.

Obviously, she cheated like a madwoman to do it, but that was very acceptable at this level of society. Expected, even.

And now she had to face the music.

Literally. A live band started to play off to one side. “Oh boy,” she muttered.

“It’ll be fine,” Twenty-Six said. She stepped up and tugged Aurora along, a bit of a faux pas, but Twenty-Six was good at trampling past those.

Aurora walked up, keeping up until she reached her parents, who of course had the honour of greeting her first.

“Aurora!” her mother said. She stepped up and gave Aurora the most perfunctory of hugs, made a little more awkward by Twenty-Six not catching the hint that she ought to let go and step back. “I’m so happy to see you.”

“Likewise,” Aurora said. “Are you well? Father as well? I heard that you took ill a few months ago, but you seem to have recovered.”

“Oh, just a bit of stress making me take ill. I got better in no time,” her mother replied. Left unsaid was that Aurora had likely caused said stress.

“It’s good to see you, daughter,” her father said as he stepped up. He smiled, looking rather proud. “Who is your companion here?”

“Ah, Mother, Father, this is my… this is my girlfriend, Twenty-Six, of Saturn.”

“Hi!” Twenty-Six said. She hopped forwards and squeezed Aurora’s mom in a tight hug, then while the woman was still reeling, she did the same to her dad. “Nice to meet you! I’m Twenty-Six, ah, but Aurora said that already. Hi!”

“Um, hello,” Aurora’s mother said. “Did you say you were dating this… fine young woman?”

The fact that Twenty-Six wasn’t nobility was… kind of blindly obvious.

They’d all taken to dressing Twenty-Six up in better clothes than her old jumpsuits. There was… some amount of bullying going on in their weird little relationship. It was mostly everyone pushing Twenty-Six to dress in what they thought was cutest on her, and fortunately Twenty-Six took it well and didn’t seem to mind being a living dress-up doll. Though she did return to her usual jumpsuits all the time.

Aurora had her wearing a nice, rather loose-fitting dress, the kind of thing that a young woman that was part of the Phobian nobility might wear, and it was very cute, a bright, pastel yellow with a few bows in an orange-red that matched Twenty-Six’s hair. She still managed to look a little awkward and gangly despite the well-tailored clothes though, and she didn’t have that straight-backed posture that was indicative of a noble upbringing.

“Yes, Mother, I’m dating Twenty-Six,” Aurora said. “We’re very serious.”

“So serious,” Twenty-Six said unseriously. “Are you going to tell them about Pixie and Ivil?”

“I was going to get to it eventually,” Aurora said.

Her mother cleared her throat. “Ah, but sweetie, we actually had the intention of allowing you to meet someone very interesting today. The second son of the Montresor family. He’s a very handsome young man.”

“Wow,” Twenty-Six said.

“Meaning no offence,” her mother said without an ounce of sincerity. “I’m certain you’re a fine young woman. You said you were from Saturn?”

“Yeah,” Twenty-Six said. She didn’t seem too upset that Aurora’s mother had just tried to upsell her to some young noble somebody.

Aurora cleared her throat. “You’ll find that I’m quite happy with Twenty-Six, Mother, and my other girlfriends as well.”

“Other girlfriends?” her father asked.

“Let’s not make a scene,” her mother said. “As I said, I’m sure young… Twenty-Six here has plenty of merits.”

Twenty-Six nodded. “I do! I’m a spaceship mechanic.”

“That’s… nice,” her mother said.

“And I’m a C-classer too! I’ve been picking up cores here and there as I go. But I’m taking my time about it. Our other girlfriend says that she regrets taking on so many at once, and it’s safer to be slow and steady about it. Look!”

Twenty-Six pinched her tongue between her lips and summoned a small piece of metal over her hand. Then, with even greater focus, she set it to spinning slowly.

“Cool, huh?”

“Yes, quite,” her father said. “Now… Did you mention Ivil? Someone named after the empress?”

“Something like that,” Aurora said.

Twenty-Six, perhaps sensing something the others didn’t, turned. She pointed out of the huge windows looking out into space on the side of the docking facility. “Pixie’s coming in now,” she said.

Aurora turned as well, and that had her parents looking, which in turn led to several more dragging their attention out into the space just outside.

A tiny speck in the distance was growing larger, at a startling speed. The tiny vessel was racing in at a speed that was definitely breaking several laws.

People started to move away from the windows, as if that would save them in the occasion of a crash.

Then the tiny sliver of a ship spun around and executed a hard burn to slow down. Alarms rang, but… well, Pixie was good.

The Nightstalker slowed down with that burn at an insane rate until it came to a stop… right between the docking clamps that had been left free for her already.

“Yup, that’s her,” Twenty-Six said. Then, in a faux-whisper, she continued. “She’s a very good pilot.”

“That was the height of impropriety!” Aurora’s mother said. “And is that a fighter craft? Aurora Sterlingworth, what kind of rabble have you been spending time with?”

Aurora closed her eyes. She loved her parents, most of the time… sometimes. But they were, on frequent occasions, a bit of a pain in the ass to deal with. This was one such occasion, where her mother took it upon herself to humiliate and degrade.

Aurora raised a hand, cutting off her mother mid-rant. It wasn’t actually the hand that did it, of course, but a few copies of some cores that Sonic Spectre had been so kind as to allow Aurora to access.

“Mother, I won’t have you disparaging my girlfriends,” Aurora said. She hoped that the warning tone came through. Twenty-Six would laugh in the face of most insults, but Pixie always had something to prove and… Ivil didn’t take insults that well, really.

Which actually made her think…

She turned towards Twenty-Six. “Do we know how she’s coming?”

“Uh, she said she was taking a ship over. Something proper.”

So, probably a Martian warship of some sort. There was a frigate that Ivil was uncommonly fond of, the Lucky Despot. Its captain didn’t know what they did to enjoy the empress’s attention, which only made it funnier.

“Who is coming?” her father asked.

“My third girlfriend,” Aurora said.

Her mother gasped. “Third? Sweetie, you can’t. The Sterlingworth family appreciates what you did, but this kind of thing will spread rumours.”

“I bet it will,” Twenty-Six said.

Aurora was about to comment when there was a slight shiver that crossed the entire building. Expensive chandeliers above rattled in place, and a few of the more delicate nobles squeaked.

She frowned and turned her attention back to the world outside. Something was happening in space.

Lightning traveled across the void, and all of a sudden, all of the ships and transports flying across the skies of Phobos were rushing to get out of the way.

Then a rift opened. A hole through which a different smattering of stars could be seen. It wavered, then grew wider… and wider. If it wasn’t for a few stray ships in the sky, she might have had a hard time seeing the scale of it.

That changed as soon as the prow of the first vessel came through, and continued to come through.

It was massive, taller, wider, larger, than just about any ship in the entire solar system. Smaller vessels moved around it, dwarfed by it, but those smaller vessels were heavy cruisers and Martian destroyers.

Even from this far away, Aurora could read the print on the ship’s prow. Martian Humility.

Then another ship started to move out of the void, and another. Not one, but three Imperial Star Dreadnoughts. The Martian Humility, the Purgatorial Oblivion, and the No Warning Shot Required.

Aurora knew all three of their names because those ships, on their own, each represented enough firepower to kick the asses of most other fleets in the system, to say nothing of the supporting fleet that moved with them. Two of them had rarely ventured away from Mars itself, sitting in a far orbit like a raised sword, ready to strike at any that came close.

“Oh! They’re so pretty!” Twenty-Six said. “Do you think Ivil will let me visit?”

“I’m sure,” Aurora said. She turned towards her parents, who were staring rather gobsmacked. “Mother, Father, my third girlfriend, Ivil Antagonist, Empress of Mars and such, is about to arrive. Please make an effort not to embarrass me in front of her.”

Epilogue - A Held Together Homecoming

Phobos - Nine Months Later

Twenty-Six didn’t want to let her excitement show, but… yeah, she couldn’t stop herself. Her legs were twitching more than Pixie’s whenever Ivil said something scary like “I have an idea” or “I saw this on an episode of Estrellas Enlazadas a Través de la Grieta.”

She was at home, which was a weird thing to think about. Weirder was thinking about having multiple homes, and she didn’t just mean the heap of vacation homes and stations that Ivil happened to have living quarters on, or the very big, very awesome ships that the Martian navy spilled over themselves to give to Ivil if she looked interested.

Nah, she was at Aurora’s place, which was also home, now. It was a rather nice mansion next to one of the habitation domes on the Mars side of the moon. If she looked “up” she could see Mars floating above. It was the big red pearl in the sky, still kinda small, but that was just because Ivil had moved Phobos back and away from Mars a long time ago.

Aurora’s place had been the Sterlingworth family home, and it still was. The mansion was… well, a mansion. They had a wing to themselves though.

There was also a freaky portal back to the surface of Mars that Ivil had placed there one day because she said it would be convenient. The Martian navy had claimed that it was a serious vulnerability, and then Ivil had reminded them that annoying her was also a serious vulnerability, and now there was a glowing red hell portal in their living room that allowed them to walk into the master bedroom of Ivil’s palace on Mars.

Twenty-Six didn’t like using it too much. It made her tummy feel queasy, and she liked riding ships down through the Martian atmosphere anyway.

She was distracting herself.

The reason for her excitement was rather simple. Some old friends were coming over, and she had pulled some strings (she’d asked nicely) and gotten things lined up to be able to visit them. All she was waiting for was…

“Ah, there you are,” Ivil said as she stepped into the living room.

Twenty-Six smiled a little wider. Recently, she felt as if she was doing a lot of smiling, which was… nice, actually. “Yup,” she said before looking Ivil up and down.

She knew—perhaps better than most—that Ivil’s body wasn’t real in the way that hers or Pixie’s or Aurora’s was. It was something that Ivil fabricated with her cores. And yet, despite that, Twenty-Six had gotten good at reading her body language.

It was like listening for a rattle in a machine to know what was wrong. It took some getting used to, and you needed to know the machine… intimately, but once you did, it was easy to tell if things were running well or not.

Ivil was running well. There was a slight relaxation in her shoulders that hadn’t been there half a year ago, a loosening of her posture from steel-pipe rigid to something a little less tight.

It was, Twenty-Six thought, probably a good sign.

“Are you ready to head out, then?” Ivil asked.

“Yup!”

“Will it just be the two of us?”

Twenty-Six nodded. “Yeah. Aurora’s doing some political thing, with that Martian ambassador guy, and Pixie is tinkering on the Nightstalker.”

“You’re not helping her?” Ivil asked.

“I did!” Twenty-Six said quickly. How dare anyone assume that she wouldn’t help with stuff that was in her area of expertise! “But all that’s left is clean-up and putting things back in place, and she told me that if I didn’t shower, I’d look messy.”

“Ah, a fair point,” Ivil said with a nod. “Well then, shall we go?”

Twenty-Six moved up to Ivil’s side, and soon they were heading out. She was pulling Ivil along after her, the excitement too much to walk at Ivil’s slow, stately pace. Ivil was allowing herself to be tugged along, which was also very fun.

She’d never admit it to anyone, but she liked dragging her girlfriends around, and touching them, and holding their hands. It still made her tummy squirm, but in a good way.

The path from the Sterlingworth estate to the nearest space elevator wasn’t all that long. It was a towering edifice right next to the domed city next to the mansion. Ordinarily, access to that kind of thing would be at least a little bit restricted, but the family had their own private route from the mansion to the base of the elevator. It was only a short ride by chauffeured car over. A ride she spent nervously tippy-tapping her feet.

“You’ll wear a hole through the floor,” Ivil said.

“Sorry,” Twenty-Six replied.

Ivil smiled one of those smug, self-satisfied smiles of hers. “No, keep it going, I think it’s cute.”

They made it to the elevator with a minimal amount of teasing, and only a few kisses. She even had all of her clothes on!

The ride up was fast. She didn’t like using her “I’m with the Empress of Mars, and she doesn’t understand queueing” privilege to cut in front of the line… but it was kind of nice when it happened.

The elevator didn’t quite connect to a station, since that would be a huge hassle. Instead, there was a landing space with docks for these tiny little automated shuttles. They were kind of cute, in a barebones sort of way.

They took one of these out to a station in orbit high above Phobos, burning pretty quickly to arrive just a half hour later.

This time, when she stepped out of the shuttle, she had to take a moment to fix her jumpsuit, but at least the ride over had felt fast.

The station they arrived at wasn’t the cheapest one in Phobos’s orbit, but it wasn’t far from it. Still, it was in Martian orbit, and they were notorious for keeping the standards of things pretty high, so it was mostly clean and she imagined that most of the equipment was even maintained.

It only took a bit of flying through the station’s zero-g corridors before she came onto a window that looked out and towards the docking arms. One of the ships there jumped out to her immediately, and Twenty-Six paused to stare.

The Held Together looked a little banged up, a little rough, and like… home.

“They still haven’t replaced the ventral skid plate,” she muttered. “And that ring on the port engine looks untouched, which means that they never removed it to check the cowling. It’s got to be running so hot. I bet the captain’s burning twice as much lubricant as she needs to. If she’s even bothering to refill it.”

“It does still look like a flying deathtrap,” Ivil said. “I’m impressed you had the pull to let it come so close to Mars.”

Twenty-Six snorted. “I had to tell them it was coming in for repairs. I don’t think leaving’s going to take as much convincing. But the refueling crews around here might be too cowardly to want to touch her.”

“I’m sure something can be arranged,” Ivil said.

Twenty-Six nodded, then after a moment of staring some more, she continued to pull herself along the corridor.

It wasn’t long before she was at an airlock door, behind which…

“We could go back, if you want,” Ivil said surprisingly softly.

“No, I want to,” Twenty-Six said. She reached over, tapped a button, and the doors slid open.

The captain was there, arms crossed, looking a bit frustrated and annoyed, with the same old jacket on, and the same scowl. There was Hawk, with his very dad-energy smile, and next to him, looking kind of goofy, was Donny. There was a new guy, by the back, that she didn’t recognize, and that sent a small shock through her. Had they replaced her? But yeah, of course, the ship needed a mechanic.

And coming over, walking with a sure-footed stride despite the lack of gravity, was Missy. “So, there you are,” Missy said.

“Hi!” Twenty-Six replied. For some reason, she felt a little bit like crying.

Ivil gave her a little push, and Twenty-Six stumbled forwards, landing against Missy with a powerful hug.

“Whoa there. I don’t remember you being this strong,” Missy said.

The captain moved over, and so did Donny and Hawk. “Twenty-Six. It’s good to see you again, and to see that you’re still in one piece.”

“Yeah,” Twenty-Six said. She hugged Missy just a smidge tighter, then pulled away and quickly brushed her cheeks before launching herself at the captain.

Hawk laughed, then ruffled her hair. “Look at little Twenty-Six. You’ve grown!”

“No I haven’t! I was a fully-grown adult when I left!” Twenty-Six said.

“Then you put on a few pounds?” he asked. “Have you found a better cook than me?”

Twenty-Six smacked him on the arm, then gave him a hug too.

It was so very strange to be with the crew again, so close to the Held Together. This had been her home, and it still felt that way, and yet it also… didn’t? She wasn’t sure she had the words to quite describe how she was feeling, but it was complicated.

She glanced over her shoulder, and found Ivil simply standing there, smiling, accepting.

She knew that if she asked to just… leave, to return to the almost-simple life of a grease monkey, then Ivil wouldn’t stop her. But she didn’t want that, not really. She had a new home.

“Captain! Why haven’t you replaced the skids? You were supposed to do that years ago now! And the cowling! I saw it on the way over!”

For a little while, she’d allow herself to be back on the Held Together with the people she’d once known better than she knew herself, with the ship that she’d almost been raised on, the one she still dreamed about sometimes.

It would be nice, for a moment.

But that ship, with all the nice memories… it wasn’t as nice as what she had now. It was nostalgia.

She could afford an hour or two, maybe more, to catch up, and laugh, and share stories, and then… and then she had more to do. With her new family, with every frontier unlocked.

She was going to be something, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be the kind of person that ignored their past.

But her future… yeah, that would be impossible to ignore.

Epilogue - The Complicated Love Life of Ivil Antagonist

Mars – A Year Later

Ivil Antagonist, Empress of Mars, Destroyer of Worlds, Embarrasser of Emperors, and Best Girlfriend in the Solar System (Pixie got her a mug that said so) was currently lounging on a sofa.

It was her sofa. The one in her entertainment room in her favourite palace.

The room was rather large, with rows of pillars holding up the ceiling far above. A cathedral ceiling, she thought it was called. The place had been built by some famous Martian architect, taking inspiration from a thousand-year-old church on Earth.

A wide-screen television was bolted to the wall, so she could watch her soaps, and speakers were cleverly hidden around the room, to provide as good a quality of sound as possible.

She mostly cared for the couch, though. It was new.

Before, she had an armchair. It had been a very nice armchair, mind. Very plush, with some cushions, and a soft velvety covering and fantastic lumbar support. The kind of thing that would cost the average Martian half a year’s pay.

The couch, however, was new, because she needed more space.

There was a “hup” and then a shift as someone hopped over the side of the couch and crashed in next to Ivil. “What’re you watching?” Pixie asked.

“Nothing, yet,” Ivil said. She glanced at the screen, where there was a grid of tiles, each with the thumbnail for a different show. She… was actually behind on several of her shows, something that hadn’t happened in a while.

She would never admit it to anyone, but she’d actually sometimes spent entire days wandering her empty palace in something of a bored daze, waiting for the next episode to come out. She even considered hibernating for a while, but she knew that she could be called upon to defend her home planet one day, and being stuck in a sleeping state wouldn’t do for that.

“I was… thinking of watching the newest season of ‘Bajo el Domo Carmesí.’”

“Is that… Spanish?” Pixie asked.

“I learned it to be able to watch in the non-dubbed state, but the dubs are quite good,” Ivil said.

Pixie shrugged. “Okay then,” she said before settling into the couch more comfortably.

Ivil felt strangely nervous as she started the episode. This was sharing in something she usually kept to herself. Of course, she went back a few episodes, to start at the start of a new season. It would mean less explaining.

“Who’s that?” Pixie asked.

“That’s Pedro. He’s Maria’s lover, but also her son. He time-travelled back into the past.”

“Is he his own dad?” Pixie asked.

“No, that’d be silly,” Ivil said.

“If you say so,” Pixie said. She shifted, then slowly slid to the side until her shoulder bumped against Ivil’s.

A few minutes later, the familiar click-click of high heels on marble echoed through the room, up until Aurora came up next to the couch. She eyed the TV for a while, then frowned at it. She looked ready to say something, but then just kept on watching.

It took a moment before she shook her head. “What are you two doing?”

“Watching soaps,” Ivil said.

“Watching this drama. These people are insane, I think.” Pixie pointed to the screen. “That Pedro guy is definitely his own dad, and that Susan character is a slut.”

“Now, now, she’s a little… promiscuous, certainly, but I wouldn’t go that far,” Ivil said.

“Nuh-uh, the amount of sex you have has nothing to do with sluttiness,” Pixie argued.

Aurora watched the two of them, and then looked at the screen again. “This looks like trash. Why would you watch it?”

“It’s not trash,” Ivil said. “It’s art.” She was a little hurt, actually, that Aurora didn’t like her soaps.

Aurora crossed her arms and continued to watch, then after ten minutes, she sat down, then after an hour and two episodes—and a small break for the washroom and snacks—and she was knee-deep in an argument with Pixie. “I’m telling you, it doesn’t make sense. Pedro is an idiot, not because he’s trying to get it on with his own mother, but because he’s clearly not thinking about the economic and political value of the core he has. Unlimited backwards time travel!”

“It has a cost,” Pixie said.

“Yes, in gems from some mine that are inexplicably required to fuel the core. He could make enough in a few jumps back to buy ten mines,” Aurora said.

“Ah! But the mine is currently owned by Alejandro, who has vowed that he will make Pedro pay for stealing Maria away from him,” Ivil said. “Making the gems uncommon.”

“What? When did that happen?” Aurora asked.

“Two seasons ago,” Ivil said.

“Which season is this?” she asked.

“Nineteen.”

“And we’re only starting now? How can you expect me to understand any of this if we’re starting so late?” She crossed her arms. “Start it over.”

“But we just watched four episodes,” Pixie said. “How many are there per season?”

“It depends, but usually sixty or so,” Ivil said. “If we start now, we can be caught up in two months.”

She perked up a little as the door to the far end of the room opened, then there was a pitter-patter as Twenty-Six crossed over. She stared for a moment, smiled, then went around and fell backwards onto the couch, nestling in between Ivil and Aurora and pulling the noblewoman closer. “What are we watching?”

“Some horrific soap opera,” Aurora said. “It’s trashy. The writers are incompetent and the acting is barely tolerable… The music is alright.”

“I never paid much mind to the music,” Ivil admitted. “Give me a moment, I’ll start it over for Twenty-Six. Season one is actually pretty good. The actors were much younger.”

“How much younger?” Pixie asked.

“See the child in the thumbnail? That’s Pedro’s actor. Though he wasn’t in the role of Pedro at the time, that character hadn’t been written in yet. Maria is there, though. Her actress was replaced in season nine.”

“He was cuter as a kid,” Pixie said.

“Yes, he kept fumbling his lines, it was sweet,” Ivil replied.

She started from the beginning. She’d never really enjoyed rewatching things, but this felt different. She was reliving it through the eyes of people she cared about, and seeing them enjoying it made it… more special, somehow.

Twenty-Six had gone a little still, just her feet swinging back and forth, the front of the couch unfolded to make more room for them. She was leaning her hips to one side, so that they touched Ivil’s, and her head on the other, drooped onto Aurora’s shoulder.

Aurora, always prim and proper, didn’t seem to mind at all. She idly watched the show, sometimes adding a snide remark about production quality, or the unrealism of it, but never truly stopping to watch. Her hand was open, palm-up, and she was toying with Twenty-Six’s hand without looking at it.

Pixie was on Ivil’s other side, lounging across the couch with her head on Ivil’s lap and her legs up over the edge. She was starting at the screen, but sometimes her eyes would dart up, and she’d glance at Ivil, or the others, just for a moment.

And Ivil? She was in the middle.

The literal middle.

Pressed between three women who didn’t know the full weight of what they were doing. Of what it meant to her that they were here.

She had built an empire, had broken dynasties, had survived assassination attempts and political manoeuvrings, sabotage and heartbreak. She’d come out of it stronger.

And yet lonelier. It was, for several years, just her and her soaps.

And now here she was, in a room designed to look pretty for dignitaries, which she’d turned into a living space to watch something most would consider a little trashy in a fit of spite. She was still doing the same thing, in a way, but not alone.

She was barely pretending to pay attention to the show. One hand was snaking around Twenty-Six’s shoulder, the other was scratching idly at Pixie’s head.

For years, there had been a voice in the back of her head, an unspeakable fear that she had buried and repressed and which resurfaced all too often. It said that she would be alone forever.

Somehow, that voice was louder now.

The irony didn’t escape her.

The voice was different now, though. It warned her that this moment might not last, that this yearning she felt might be too strong, or not strong enough, that the love she was given wasn’t one she deserved.

Why was love so much scarier than anything she’d faced as empress?

She… found that she didn’t mind, so much. The voice might be louder, but tonight, it was muffled, by Pixie’s soft laughter, by Twenty-Six’s giggles, by the tutting noise that Aurora made as she covered them in blankets and complained about them catching a cold if they weren’t tucked in properly, because she didn’t know how else to show them that she cared.

She hadn’t asked them to do that.

They just had.

She had fought wars. Won revolutions. Toppled governments. But the war inside herself? That was taking longer.

But at least she had allies in that battle.

“I… love you,” she said.

Pixie glanced up to her, Twenty-Six giggled again and leaned in to her side, and Aurora shook her head. “Obviously,” she replied. “We love you too.”

“Okay,” Ivil said.

And it was.

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