Zhevra's Dance Novel

[The Pakkrat]

“The command codes, ma’am?” challenged the Vargr-shaped robot.

“Link what I am about to say to the ship’s computer, Vincent,” commanded the Chief Engineer of the Sixth Horizon.

“Linked. Speak it.”

Gevaudan had always been the one to say the command codes. He always did so with true emotions backing his words. He had told Zhevra that in being sincere, meaning what he said to the ship and Servitors, he was lending an added layer of security to the codes. Zhevra summoned up the same intensity in her next words as she spoke the command code to attain command authority over the Far Scout.

With all the heart she could muster, Zhevra said to Vincent and through Vincent, to the ship, “Remember this always: I love you unconditionally always.” She wiped a tear from her left eye in getting to say those words Gevaudan had told her. Who says such things to robots or directly to starships? Who says those words to those who are not family? Who speaks so truthfully to his mate-wife? Gevaudan Cannagrrh, her husband and a hero of the Fifth Frontier War did just that. He loved unconditionally. Now it was Zhevra’s turn to say those words to her nuclear family of robots and a starship and mean it.

“You have the conn,” said Vincent.

“I have the conn,” answered Zhevra. “Prepare for cold-start - ignore all comms. I want a fastest vector to orbit and out-system transit. I’m to Engineering to fire up the power plant. Acknowledge.” The words came out after more than three years and Zhevra did not stutter or hesitate in the orders.

“Acknowledged,” answered Vincent who turned to enter the vessel. Zhevra followed the robot inside and turned left where Vincent turned immediately right, past the pantry, to enter the bridge.

With new hope, an urge to see the ship lift, Zhevra padded quickly aft, down the axis corridor. To her left, she passed the Steward robot, Bob, who was emerging from the cargo hold. He spotted her and said, “You have the conn. Orders?”

Zhevra did not break stride as she answered the Servitor, “Help Vincent with sensors. I want SIM sensors up and watching all traffic inbound and outbound. No comms to the Tower or other vessels. We are leaving. Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged,” said Bob who seemed to hint at surprise in its computerized voice.

Zhevra entered the portside power plant room and began utilizing the local boards. Her digits worked almost automatically as she watched the fusion power plant begin fusing atoms and harnessing the energy to the adjacent capacitors. When nothing went Yellow or Red, Zhevra sighed in relief. Bob and Vincent had indeed cared for the Far Scout while its master was away. Power flowed. The Suedzuk called on the intercom to the bridge, “Power flowing, all Green. I’m moving to Maneuver Drive room and starting it now.”

“Ejecting Downport umbilical power,” reported Vincent from the bridge.

Zhevra held the corner of the door threshold as she quickly rounded the corner and into the smaller maneuver drive room. Inside was the in-system drive capable of pushing the Sixth Horizon to six gees, an acceleration that would put most sophonts into red out. At the drive’s board, the Engineer let her claws tap away at the commands to activate the drive and the contragravity lifters. When the waveforms lit up a cool blue on the panel, Zhevra called again over the intercom, “M-drive up and seems Green. I’m on my way up to the helm.”

A run forward up the corridor put Zhevra on the bridge of the Far Scout again. Through the two opened view ports in the cockpit, she could see the red flashing lights and hear the sirens of the Downport fire control team trucks rolling across the morning tarmac. Doubtless, chaos reigned in the concourses as multiple fires were detected. Zhevra sat down and buckled herself into the acceleration chair. She looked over at the operations board and said, “Vincent take Ops. Bob watch Engineering. We’re full of fuel thanks to you guys three years ago. I’m going to translate the ship to vertical. Vincent lock in the vector you have. When I punch the lift, I’m going to red out. Just follow the vector and keep running silent all the way to the jump point. I’ll calculate the jump when I wake up. Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged,” answered both the Servitor robots.

While she knew Gevaudan never needed them, Zhevra had to lay claws on the projected holographic controls of the helm. Her husband needed only to cybernetically jack into the computer and utilize his Ship Integration rig and its virtual boards. He always looked like some meditating monk, contemplating male Vargr nipples. Today, Zhevra pulled back on the projected holographic controls. The nose of the floating ship swung toward the blue sky.

“The sky is blue,” said Zhevra Cannagrrh like a monk before she threw the acceleration all the way up to six Gs. The action threw her body against the chair and she found she could not breathe. Tunnel vision sprang up red about her field of vision. The last thing she saw in that moment was the orange warning lights on the maneuver drive panel at the helm. Darkness took her smiling satisfactorily.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Zhevra woke to the containment of an oxygen mask lightly strapped over her muzzle. She breathed deeply the air flow and then pulled off the clear plastic cover. Slightly surprised and a little claustrophobic of items covering her muzzle completely as a mask, Zhevra grasped the pilot’s chair arms and sat forward and upright. Vincent was still present on the cockpit though Bob, the Steward had left the bridge. The Engineer took a quick look at all the boards and saw that the orange she remembered on the maneuver drives that were almost red-lining was again a cool blue, a nominal stress and temperature. All other boards were giving green lights as the Sixth Horizon was well into the outer system. With a frown, Zhevra looked at Vincent. The robot had let her sleep off the red out than wake her. Vincent continued monitoring the sensor arrays’ boards for contacts.

“No contacts, ma’am,” Vincent reported at sensing her rousal. The robot pointed with its left hand at a pair of analgesic pills and puncture carton of fruit juice. “For your 86% probability of brain irritation.”

“Headache, Vincent,” corrected Zhevra, “and thank you.” She took the pills with a hearty sip of the juice.

“Astrogation awaits your vector ma’am, per your stated itinerary,” reminded Vincent. After five years, Zhevra could not bring herself to give the Servitor robot a gender but she could, out of need, grant it a robot’s Vargr charisma. The Suedzuk was not versed in Human names in Galanglic to know if they lent themselves to male or female.

“Vincent?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am?” responded the robot.

“Is the name Vincent in Galanglic male or female, do you think?” the Vargr female asked.

“I can check the Library while you calculate the jump vector. We have no contacts out to maximum passive sensors range.”

“Go ahead,” ordered Zhevra, “and look up Bob’s name too please.”

“Acknowledged.” Then Vincent rose to standing on its legs and left the bridge.

Reaching over to engage Gevaudan’s ’Gator laptop Astrogation computer, Zhevra began an interstellar vector calculation from Gnoengungag (Gvurrdon 1923) to Aengvoung (Gvurrdon 1726), a rich and mixed world of Vargr rulers over a local and native Human population. The higher recorded technology and a listed top tier Highport in orbit over the mainworld was inviting. Zhevra’s husband had used the ‘Gator to double-check his direct calculations. The Suedzuk, not being a crack Astrogator like Gevaudan, made the computer help her with the calculations in addition to having the ship’s mainframe check her answers to the vector. She was a better Engineer than her husband and often offered hard jumps so confident was she. However, without his order and now alone, Zhevra was more cautious with the Far Scout’s jumpdrive. As each step in the calculations was completed, beginning to jump to precipitation, fuel costs, jump charging and cooldown; Zhevra saw stage lights change from Yellow to Green. Confident that she had recalled from her naval days on the bridge of the patrol cruiser of her second tour, Zhevra locked in the vector and let the Jump Control software point the Sixth Horizon in the correct direction. Then she closed the sliding panels to cover the view ports of the impending quicksilver of jumpspace bubble about the ship.

Zhevra left the bridge and immediately smelled Bob’s cooking. Vincent emerged from the ship’s locker and saw both her and Bob at the same time. As she continued aft toward Engineering, Vincent reported with a raised voice, “Ma’am, our designations, according to Galanglic language, are male Humans’. Bob is shortened or abbreviated for Robert.”

“Good to know, sirs,” smiled and nodded Zhevra who continued aft down the axis corridor, “Prepare for jump while I divert power from maneuver drive to jumpdrive. Listen for me on intercom at the bridge, please.”

“Acknowledged,” said Vincent.

Zhevra thought to ask what was for the traditional first meal but had been interrupted by Vincent’s report. Entering the jumpdrive section and its boards, she began powering down the maneuver drive and charging the zuchai crystals that focused energies from the power plant to the jump emitters.

A memory of Gevaudan’s lecture at Zhevra resurfaced as she rerouted power. This is a Fast Far Scout, Zhevra, a variant. Next time, ask before you shirk learning a new skill and show me up with your before now hidden engineering expertise. There was a section in the hardcopy manual that Zhevra read in her two years as the Chief Engineer. Though there had never been a need while she served Gevaudan and during their marriage to engage the Fast-Cycle circuits that allowed the Sixth Horizon to initiate a second jump, fuel allowing and in under the usual cooldown hour between jumps. She remembered the extra capacitors in the back corner of this section of the ship that allowed for such. Perhaps, she mused, she would run a diagnostic on those circuits and run a simulated Fast-Cycle test jump. But if not, it could wait until precipitation into Aengvoung’s system.
Zhevra tapped the intercom. “All hands, Vincent and Bob, jump transit in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Jumping.” She then waited a second. “Status?”

Vincent called from the bridge, “Nominal, ma’am. Field stable. We are in jumpspace.”

“Estimated transit time?” asked Zhevra from the aft of the ship.

There was a second or two of delay. She imagined Vincent looking across the cockpit at the Astrogation board. “One-hundred, sixty-six hours estimated, plus or minus two hours, ma’am.”

“Acknowledged,” said the Engineer. “All lights Green back here. Stand down the bridge and rig for the week in the hole. Doing the math in her head, Zhevra decided that 6.91 days might as well be seven days in transit. Her Vargr mouth watering for whatever Bob was cooking drew her forward, back up the axis corridor. She passed the cargo bay door, the empty low berths chamber and the three unused staterooms on her right before arriving at the galley and table. Food for one was set and Bob watched her as she sat and took up a meat knife.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Then Zhevra paused on a whim. Gevaudan had always treated every meal a chance to talk to the crew and thanked the robots for it. The Suedzuk paused and said, “Thank you, Bob. It smells inviting and I am ready to consume this meal you prepared.”

Vincent emerged from the bridge, having stood down the section. Zhevra saw the robot and included him.

“Thank you, sirs for your work,” the red and cream female Vargr said to the male robots. “I imagine you have questions for me. I am prepared to hear them.”

The two robots looked at each other, but Vincent spoke first, “What is our mission, ma’am? It has been three years, nine months-… some time since the ship’s last mission was last undertaken.”

Zhevra straightened from a bite of her meal to announce, “I intend to search for clues to solve Gevaudan’s Jump as we deliver badly-needed, hardcopy information to the Regency.”

Vincent countered with, “Ma’am, the Sixth Horizon was listed under Captain Gevaudan Cannagrrh when it last left the Spinward Marches, under orders of Silence and Banishment from the then-Domain of Deneb. How do you intend to return to that sector of space with such descriptors put upon this vessel?”

“I’ll have to figure some way through the Regency Quarantine Line as well, Vincent,” added Zhevra. “We are under a timetable and cannot afford to wait in line as our ship is searched and our intentions discovered. Our destination is the University of Regina on Regina/Regina. The file I need to deliver was in Gevaudan’s possession for decades and is being hunted by the Zhodani and their allies. If this last folder falls into their hands, I- we may never learn what truly became of my husband, your true Captain.”

Bob tilted his mechanical Vargr head, “You intend to run the blockade, ma’am?”

Zhevra nodded and finished chewing her next bite before answering, “We have to somehow. I have to plan that route as well.”

Vincent leaned in a little toward Zhevra, “Ma’am, you realize that you will have to break declared Regency laws to cross the four parsecs boundary, a field of patrolled systems and their available gas giants and Starports to penetrate the Coreward border.”

“Yes,” answered Zhevra. “It will be a heroic deed, delivering this report. It concerns what happened to Gevaudan and me. It concerns every Psion out there in the universe and to a lesser extent non-psionic peoples. If you like, you can read the report, but it might jeopardize your safety against other living sophonts. Understand?”

The two robots looked at each other again. Zhevra thought that if robots could be telepathic, the twin, Vargr-shaped Servitors before her just performed such a rapport. Bob answered first as if he’d finished the probabilities calculations first, “Captain Gevaudan Cannagrrh often ordered a full disclosure to his crew. There is a 78% probability of a 34% increase in efficiency if we are allowed access to the file.”

“I’ll provide it after my meal then, sirs.” Zhevra was beginning to like using male genders for the two robots.

“Acknowledged,” both robots answered, their mechanical tails wagging in imitation to new and incoming information. Zhevra liked the Turing subroutines in their programming. Constructed at the facilities on Pandrin, a Human world just outside the Third Imperium of the time, Vargr gestures had been given to them. It made them far more compatible as robots shaped like Zhevra than any Suedzuk or Gvegh-made chassis. They were more three-dimensional, four if a Suedzuk counted their solidified Mag and Lek electromagnetic fields, than
Bob changed the subject per his Stewardship programming, “Will you be recreating or training during this jump, ma’am?”

Zhevra finished her meal, wiped her muzzle from a swig of a thick dairy drink to say, “I want to train in this.” She pulled out the pistol and laid it on the table. “On Gnoengungag, I almost had to fire it. I’m not rated in firearms though I imagine that I can hit just about anything with a-…living.” She almost said with a field, but then realized that she had never admitted the Suedzuk Awareness to the robots. “I just want a rating in it and be able to defend myself, is all.”

Bob nodded and said, “I can load a training program in the captain’s cabin terminal for lessons and practicum.”

“Please do.”

 

[The Pakkrat]

Vincent was the first robot to scan and thus memorize the hardcopy file Zhevra presented. In under a minute, the SensOp Servitor was able to take in and store the file. Then at Zhevra’s urging, the mission report was passed to Bob who did likewise.

“Questions?” offered Zhevra.

“You calculate a possibility that Captain Gevaudan Cannagrrh teleported from Fast Far Scout Sixth Horizon while in jump transit and was somehow able to precipitate from jumpspace fully-operational.” It was Vincent, better programmed in bridge operations over Bob, who guessed aloud.

“Alive, Vincent,” corrected Zhevra to the robot. “I remember that night as if it were less than a week ago. I remember his orange HEV, heavy pistol, the mindsaber weapon, a medikit and some belt tools draped over the pilot’s chair on the bridge when he put me down.”

The two robots looked at each other a third time. Bob spoke immediately, “You are 100% correct, ma’am. Captain Gevaudan Cannagrrh did own those items and they were not found and listed during the investigation. We were ordered to catalogue what was currently found on Fast Far Scout Sixth Horizon.”

Vincent continued for Bob, “There is a 95% probability that Captain Gevaudan Cannagrrh dressed in the Hazardous Environment VaccSuit and took additional items with him directly from the bridge.”

Zhevra added nodding with hope, “Yes, and he was rated enough to take masses up to his personal carrying capacity in a jaunt. He teleported from the ship knowing what he was doing. It required concentration and rational thought. Sanity.” Zhevra stepped to the two robots and received the finished report from Bob. “Do you believe he had a plan as I do?”

“Captain Gevaudan Cannagrrh is rated in Pilot-Astrogation and though it does not appear on his file or resume, he often reported and demonstrated personal teleportation in closed and secure situations. There is a variable probability that he was capable of teleporting with all the items you listed, ma’am; between 35% and 100% success rate, with further variables for distance and inertia since properly utilizing the TL-14 Hostile Environment VaccSuit compensates for pressure and temperature changes at the destination.” Zhevra could not have said that much in one breath. Vincent sounded it off effortlessly.

Zhevra asked again, “But do you believe he had a plan to survive the jaunt?”

“Though we do not ‘believe’, there is a modicum of variability though it becomes zero against jumpspace according to known Jumpspace Theory. Our programming and operations does not take into account psionics versus interactions with jumpspace.”

Zhevra asked a third time with tears in her eyes and her right claw shaking with the folder in it. “Do you believe he could be alive, fully-functional?”

Vincent stepped forward seeing Zhevra crying, “There is a 13% probability that Jumpspace Theory does not hold against Psioncology as the two disciplines are currently understood. Additional information must be downloaded to make an increased accurate answer, ma’am.”

Zhevra sniffed back her tears, “Thank you, Vincent. And that is why we are going to buy more information in trade for this report. I need you, sirs, to help me find Gevaudan Cannagrrh. That is our mission. Ack-…acknowledge.” She wiped her eyes with her left forearm.

“Acknowledged,” answered both Bob and Vincent simultaneously.
Zhevra turned from the galley and the two robots to turn in for the night. The captain’s cabin was exactly as she remembered it, though Bob must have laundered the bed sheets and blanket, re-making the bunk neatly. Clothes though cleaned, remained in their drawers or hung on pegs precisely where she remembered them last. Pictures of Gevaudan’s wives, including one of the white male and Zhevra together were still held on the walls by high-gauss magnets to the stateroom walls. The computer terminal came active and offered a course in firearm safety, use and maintenance. Zhevra toured the entire stateroom, then enjoyed a hot shower in her home after more than three and a half years. The shakes melted away as did her Awareness.

 

[The Pakkrat]

XXVI. Regina (Spinward Marches 1910) A788899-C, Jumpspace to Aengvoung (Gvurrdon 1726) A682766-B of Zhevra’s testimony
With the close encounter with the Oruelaen Psion still fresh in her mind, Zhevra searched the captain’s cabin to find the psi-shield mantle hood Genaveegh had mentioned during their first lunch. The Suedzuk had assumed that such a special item might have been kept with the other oddities in the ship’s locker. But since it was a piece of apparel, she had chosen to look in their shared stateroom first. Rewarded, Zhevra found the mantle hood in the bottom drawer and buried under Gevaudan’s collection of male, mesh-net underwear. Brushing aside the undergarments, she drew out the cowl in her claws.

It was light and silky, the psi-shield cowl. A medium gray on the outside, Zhevra opened the hood to examine the silvery, fine mesh lining of the entire mantle. It had no battery, visible circuitry as Gevaudan’s Teleporation Suit had, and was to Zhevra a thing of very high technology. Normally such gear was confined to a light helmet that concealed the cranium and brainstem of the person wearing it. This flexible mantle and hood was sized for her husband. Trying on the psi-shield cowl, Zhevra found it to be large on her and it concealed her ears, head, muzzle, neck and all of her shoulders down to her primary breasts. In the mirror, she imagined herself some form of monk or priest of an anti-Psion sect.

“This will keep you mind invaders out of my head,” declared Zhevra to the absent telepaths of the Oruelaen and the Zhodani Consulate. Then, as the Sixth Horizon was still in jumpspace, she flipped back the hood and let herself acclimate to it. Sitting down at the stateroom’s computer terminal, Zhevra took up the training program that Bob had loaded.
Zhevra practiced shooting by utilizing a handheld computer peripheral shaped like a pistol. Aiming at the computer screen, Zhevra tried her best to hit targets without her Awareness. While the computer did have a cold set of fields, they gave her nothing that the Suedzuk sense could help. Through the week, Zhevra continued to hone pistol accuracy. The computer watched her as she field stripped her pistol, cleaned, and reassembled it. By the end of the week, she was well underway to giving up a dependency on her Awareness in pistols. The progression of the training program indicated that she had much further to go if she wanted to widen her choice firearms.

During meals, the Suedzuk female perused the only piece of equipment she had not been privy to during her time with Gevaudan. While she had access to the ship’s locker and the odds and ends of armor, weaponry, Scout gear, survival gear and the ship’s Library computer; Gevaudan’s Astrogation laptop computer never left the bridge helm station. On the fifth night, Zhevra lifted the light and specialized computer and took it with her to the captain’s cabin.

Zhevra had promised herself back on Dzuerongvoe that she would plumb all of Gevaudan’s secrets she could once she was in command of the Sixth Horizon, that nothing he owned would become a surprise to her. The ‘Gator laptop computer was to be no exception. Laying on the bed in the stateroom, she opened up the device and perused its files. Linked to the ship’s computer and its Library, Zhevra found nothing special at first. The laptop was specialized in that it aided Gevaudan years before he had become augmented with cybernetics. Her husband was not always a cyborg of course. He kept a log of jumps in the laptop and Zhevra paged through each one since the purchase of the portable computer. As a crack Pilot and an expert Astrogator, Gevaudan’s Universal Personal Profile was lacking in high marks for his base abilities. He relied on his skills rather than his core abilities. In short, Gevaudan was not a prodigy. He had worked hard to become the Scout-Courier in his earlier years. The ‘Gator was used as an extra set of eyes to check his calculations and in-system transits. Later in his years during the Fifth Frontier War, the laptop was merely a satellite after Gevaudan had cybernetic implants put into his body.

Zhevra was about to become bored with the lattop computer’s decades-old logs and saved jump calculations when she came upon a recorded misjump in the years before his augmentation. Back then, Gevaudan was a Pilot-Astrogator aboard an 800dT Broadsword-class Mercenary Cruiser for the Artemis Group. The laptop was recording the misjump, an error in the cooperation between Astrogation position on the spherical ship and the Engineering section’s jumpdrive. This misjump, born of a desire to jump from Enope (Spinward Marches 2205) to Wochiers (Spinward Marches 2207), took the ship named Ares two parsecs in the opposite direction and into empty space. Though the Cruiser had enough fuel to make an emergency jump, one parsec to Beck’s World (Spinward Marches 2204), Gevaudan had marked something no one else had on the bridge that day in 1107. As the other members of the Ares bridge crew performed diagnostics on the jumpdrive and power plant, Senior Scout Gevaudan Cannagrrh logged a sensor reading of a mass in the empty space.

The Pilot-Astrogator must have been in shock to learn that the Outworld Coalition had placed, activated and maintained a secret refueling facility in parsec Spinward Marches 2203. Zhevra tried to imagine what her husband must have thought during the Fifth Frontier War. There in the log was a calibration point, a waystation, a depot, sitting dormant in space and waiting for a Vargr ship – no, a Dzen Aeng Kho ship – to arrive at need, refuel an invading Coalition ship. The Suedzuk saw that her husband had to have logged the reading, the location in that region of space with his skill in Astrogation, all while the others on the Ares were busy trying to make their next, desperate jump to Beck’s World as if it could be their last. She recalled from her husband’s tales of being a mercenary in that Sector of space. His company tried to stay out of the War. And yet, here was a secret calibration point deep in enemy, Third Imperium, territory awaiting a fleet to need refueling before striking deeper. There were any number of worlds within jump range of a Society ship. None must have come in all that time because Gevaudan’s recorded readings showed only the presence of the Ares.

Why did her future husband not tell the Humans aboard the Ares? Zhevra could feel the conflict welling up from inside her. Gevaudan could have told his commanding officer on the Cruiser. But to do so, he would never be able to look another fellow Equal, Unequal or Inequal in the face. But neither could he point out the facility. If he had, everyone aboard the ship would have taken a second look at the white Vargr. Asking themselves inwardly if the Pilot-Astrogator from the Society of Equals knew ahead of time about the depot, it would have cast suspicion upon Gevaudan being from the same polity. Zhevra, had she been a fellow crewmember of that ship, might have doubted Gevaudan’s loyalties and labeled him an advance spy. She noted the date on the sensor reading. Gevaudan Cannagrrh had already been arrested twice on charges of advance forward observing for the Vargr contingent of the Outworld Coalition, spying. A third suspicion might have gotten him killed.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Oh, how hard it must have been to find loyalty to both his home polity and his mercenary company, thought Zhevra. But he probably kept quiet, she guessed. Since a pilot’s ‘rutters’ were his private property, none must have thought to scan the region and took his word that there were no contacts on sensors. How badly he must have felt in lying to them! The next jump the Ares performed, under extreme care, took the company to the safety of Beck’s World. But Gevaudan’s laptop ‘Gator was forever an incriminating piece of hardware and memory storage that could have gotten him killed by his own compatriots who trusted him to navigate their way back to safety.

Zhevra looked at the subsector map in comparison to Spinward Marches 2203. She saw that three worlds just outside the border of the now-Regency could be the jump point in the Sixth Horizon to jump four parsecs into the Regency Quarantine Line, refuel in the depths of space and jump again on a full tank four more deeper into the Regency. That is, if the depot was still there. As the Society of Equals took such a minor participation in the Fifth Frontier War, was the calibration point still present? Space is big, Zhevra thought. Who wants to jump into a worldless parsec just find nothing? Who but the Dzen Aeng Kho would know of the waystation? Did the Society share that information with the others of the Outworld Coalition? Or did they mean to hoard the depot for themselves in an emergency contingency? Not being a historian and from the far end of the Vargr Splinters, Zhevra began to form a plan hinging on the continued presence of this Society of Equals secret installation.

The calibration point would have to be cold, all power sources off and sitting dead in space without even a beacon to lock sensors onto. Yet, the SIM sensors on the Far Scout would be able to find it through its densitometers and mass spectrometers functions. The Suedzuk thanked her absent husband for opting to keep the original SIM sensors array on the Sixth Horizon variant. Zhevra imagined a hastily built frame of crewless modules, tanks, docking rings, airlocks and anything else a visiting vessel might need. A ship might jump into 2203, pull up to the station and its crew in vaccsuits make their way through the cold superstructure to hook up lines to the waiting and full tanks. Then, after full of fuel, the station would be left in a silent and dormant state for the next vessel to come along.

Then a complication evidenced to Zhevra. The Sixth Horizon featured a jumpdrive for travel between stars and a maneuver drive, a reactionless gravity drive that relied on massive space bodies – planets, planetoids and stars – to push from or pull the ship to it. Out there in 2203, there was nothing of the sort with a gravity well for the maneuver drive to grab. Outside 1000 Diameters, generally any solar system with one or more stars, planets, belts or the like had them; a maneuver drive was useless and could not propel a ship like Gevaudan’s Far Scout. The answer was obvious. A second drive, using a reaction propulsion would need to be installed alongside the maneuver drive. This would cost almost all of the free space of the ship, taking all remaining displacement tonnage from cargo. It would mean an expensive refit.

Gevdaudan Cannagrrh had money. Connecting to the ship’s Library, Zhevra cross-referenced known reaction drives, their volume tonnage, performance and energy requirements. She needed a drive that could push the Sixth Horizon across parsec 2203 safely to dock at the calibration point’s depot and refuel there. She needed a world that could perform the refit quickly, efficiently on an old Imperium vessel and do so without any polity looking over her shoulder. Zhevra checked her destination and let out a sigh of relief.

Aengvoung (Gvurrdon 1726), the ship’s current jump destination had what Zhevra needed. It was advanced enough in technology if the Library was still accurate. The system featured an excellent Highport and if the text description still held true in the current year of 1190, Aengvoung was a renown nexus of shipyards, starship construction and had a reputation for taking build orders from none other than the Society of Equals, the Worlds of Leader Rukh to Rimward and even the infamous Kforuzeng Corsair Band which to this day remained active after having gone underground twice or more times. Aengvoung would have what the Engineer in Zhevra would need to navigate parsec 2203. It would take a large chunk of funds from Gevaudan’s account. She was willing to do anything at this point to cross the Quarantine Line.

Once the Far Scout arrived in Aengvoung, Zhevra intended to purchase and pay for the refit, adding a reaction drive, one for vectored thrust and then continue Rimward to the blockade of the Regency Quarantine Line. Arriving at the Highport, she would have to consult catalogues as the Library on the Far Scout had nothing current on file. With only four tons of cargo space left in the ship, her options for space and the accompanying substandard performance, Zhevra had to believe that such an in-parsec transit would be a crawl. More food, water and needs would also be on the shopping list. She had no illusions that others, brave and foolhardy, had likely tried running the Line in similar ways or by crafty and timed meetings with second refuel ships from inside the Regency. Such planned and clandestine maneuvers were both costly and risky, needing precise coordination. Zhevra had nobody on the inside. Her run had to include this depot, taking on faith – a serious leap for the Suedzuk Engineer – that the calibration point was still there in the blackness of space and had remaining fuel for the Sixth Horizon.

Zhevra’s planning was interrupted. She needed to consult more options on Aengvoung. At the end of the week, the ship’s computer alerted Zhevra, Bob and Vincent of imminent jump precipitation into Aengvoung (Gvurrdon 1726).

* * *

“At last,” interrupted Allain Templeton, “we see how the Far Scout made it into Regency.”

“You interrupted me,” warned Zhevra from her bunk. She rattled her chains to remind the Human. “It was nowhere that easy. There were complications along the way. Good evening, Gentlemen.”

Allain caught himself and stood up to gather his things. “Why do you call us ‘gentlemen’, Ms. Cannagrrh? It’s not like you know us other than our visits.”

“Your fields have not betrayed you and yet – though I despise the term – you are not an Equal. Until you return, Gentlemen.” Zhevra pulled her blankets over her and her restraints.

Zhevra could hear Allain speaking to ever-silent Khzaeng as the two walked to the cellblock exit some meters away from her cell. The Human said, “It’s like a compliment and an insult in one word, Khzaeng.”

“It is,” said the Psion barely audible to the Suedzuk prisoner.

The advocate and the Psion did not return the next day. Zhevra spent the solitude in exercises, practicing her Infighting and showering with the female Human guards holding her chain leash. Her claws were growing back in and she kept them hidden from the Humans. Between shampoo and rinsing, she said to them, “I don’t bite…hard.” It only elicited a smile from the new female whose embroidered surname read: CROW. Zhevra was taken back to her cell and locked once more inside.

After the day’s stretching, exercise, Infighting shadows, meals and the shower, Zhevra fell thankfully to sleep without being triggered to shakes or tremors. Though she dreamed, the Suedzuk could not recall its subject matter the following morning when Allain Templeton and Khzaeng returned.
Link sausage sandwiches with a variety of condiments and spices lured the prisoner out of bed. Dutifully salivating, Zhevra took her place, facing the back wall of her cell as the guards let in the Regency Human and Vargr Psion.

“I don’t get paid until tomorrow,” admitted Allain. “Will these do for breakfast, Ms. Cannagrrh?” Apologetic as the advocate was, anything was better than prison food. Zhevra nodded affirmatively and added in a tail wag for emphasis.

The three sat down to eat the sausage link hoagies. Zhevra used the spiciest packets from the condiments at the bottom of the bag. Khzaeng did not take the challenge and selected a honey-based, sweet sauce on his links. Allain smiled at the unspoken exchange as he set up his recording device and open the files again.

 

[The Pakkrat]

* * *

The Sixth Horizon erupted from jumpspace at 6.9 days, minus one hour because even the computer could not be exact on the precipitation and arrival in Aengvoung. Zhevra and Vincent sat on the compact bridge as the gray and quicksilver bubble dissolved about the ship. Replaced by the black of space and stars, the viewports were again opened to show the healthy orange star at the center of the system.

On the tail end of the Virus era, which still threatened civilized space and encroached the Wilds on tamed systems, Aengvoung was a success story among non-aligned worlds. It was a success for the Vargr corporation Alloulloukde Tosoekh which was headquartered on the nearby system named Angasaer but not the enslaved Human population covering sixty percent of the mainworld’s population. With that many Humans enthralled to high-tech Vargr settlers, less than thirty percent of infectible technology was taken over by Virus. Additionally, the orbital facilities featured defenses that were Virus immune since each was supported by individual targeting systems not linked to system networks, operated by Vargr masters. Thus, Aengvoung was a captured world and held in thrall by the corporation with granted permission from the home system. Business continued well after the initial infection waves and every nearby polity to purchase the cheap starship hulls sought to keep Aengvoung safe from vampire fleets early in the onset of the Virus era. Another protector was the re-emerging Corsair band, Kforuzeng. The two worlds were rich in minerals and in economy. However, Zhevra soon learned why prices were so low and taxes were also relatively lax. Unlike the Society of Equals, the Humans looking strangely like Vilani and calling themselves the Arzaga. Conquered quite easily by the Second Diaspora of Vargr, the local Arzaga had no hope of upward mobility. Kept planetside, the Humans were barely paid, worked long hours but thankfully to Zhevra, they were not abused to sickness or death. This cheap labor force produced an abundant, efficient and comprehensive economy that fed and housed its slaves, which in turn allowed the government to settle on a fixed tax rate. Additionally, the Vargr in orbit and on the ground were friendly, corporate sales Vargr and willing to meet anyone new, the red-furred Zhevra included. Finally, the A-class, almost-sterile orbital Highport was likened to a system-wide showroom for the controlling corporation Alloulloukde Tosoekh.

Upon docking Zhevra paid from Gevaudan’s accounts the berthing fee, refueling and quarantine vessel search and testing fees. Robots Bob and Vincent were tested as well and passed easily. She found that her pistol had to stay aboard the ship, when strangely the corporate guard strutted the orbital platform with standard issue shotguns and a plethora of multi-purpose ammunition of every sort. When asked her business, Zhevra had no warning that her answer of being in the market for a reaction drive was shared with the entire orbital facility’s markets. Within minutes of her arrival, the Suedzuk was swarmed with a pack of sales Vargr armed with brochures and schematics for every kind of in-system drive that the current technology could produce locally. With that kind of information sharing, Zhevra was forced to cover her head with the psi-shield mantle hood. Over a restaurant dinner, she was again mobbed by financiers who offered payment plans for the drive Zhevra was to select. A few found they could not do business with a “Red Pelt” and shied away from extending any credit to her. Shrugging, the Suedzuk ate her meal and compared reaction drives.

At the last of the business day, Zhevra selected a drive and put in an online request to tour the showroom of a dealer that produced High-Efficiency Plasma Recombustion reaction drives. The request as accepted but for the next day as she had taken too long for a proper display of the brochure’s full lineup. Then while the orbital facility’s dayside business hours concluded, she returned to the Sixth Horizon to report her findings to Bob and Vincent. She felt that they deserved to know the additions to the Fast Far Scout.

There was some concern from the two Servitors over the loss of cargo space. Zhevra had to reassure the two robots that the mission no longer called for speculative cargos, passenger baggage and that if there were passengers, they would have to remain Middle Passages or sleep in low berths. To compensate for their argument, the red and cream female promised to search the teeming markets the next day for potential passengers. Though their fields never changed from cold, robotic electromagnetic signatures, her offer seemed to quell the two robots’ concern. She guessed that Vincent and Bob had become used to a higher probability that the Sixth Horizon could still sell itself as a Courier vessel as Gevaudan had set that mission upon purchasing the two Servitors. And Zhevra chalked up the concern as a programming in Bob, the Steward and makeshift Purser of the 200dT vessel. It was his job to keep track of cargo, in a rapidly diminishing cargo hold if Zhevra had her way in refitting the ship for a HEPlaR drive of the size she wanted. Was she mistaken or had their time online and operational given them the time to fashion a small subset of responses since she had slept in a coma?

The next day Zhevra was escorted by a Gvegh Vargr representative to the company station hub for their line of HEPlaR drives she had desire to tour. Along the way, she used a station terminal to announce up to six passenger vacancies and up to ten available low berth passages to Aellaesgvarzath four parsec away and a Human-controlled world of low population. It was not an appealing route, but Zhevra was ready to start dealing with Humaniti as she approached closer to the Regency. The practice of dealing with Humuns might do the Suedzuk good after so long in the Splinters and in the Society of Equals. Zhevra immediately pared down the tour to drives that could reasonably fit inside the 200dT hull of the Sixth Horizon. She settled the tour with the selection of a C-class HEPlaR reaction drive at three tons since there were only four tons of cargo space left in the ship that could be given over the easiest. Zhevra did not want to further complicate the refit by gutting out the low berths and thus taking longer to remove components, restage the new tonnage to the allocation and try to sell off the components. She did not have time for the markets.

 

[The Pakkrat]

“And your ship owner,” asked the representative, “will he be paying in full or financing the transaction?” The rep’s field were sincere in the question, though it angered Zhevra to be assumed a mere crewmember of Gevaudan’s ship.

“I am the Owner, the Captain and the financial officer of the ship to be refit and since I’m just a dumb, female ‘red-pelt’ who happens to also be the Chief Engineer of the Sixth Horizon. I want the ship fitted in a week. Acknowledge.” Zhevra added the last request because the representative was acting robotically in accord with a corporate script. So, she fired back by demanding a robot’s acknowledgement.

“Y-yes, ma’am. We at Alloulloukde Tosoekh Drives Division seek to provide-,” the nervous Gvegh male tried to losen his neck ruff tie when he was cut off by Zhevra.

Zhevra was well underway to mastering more than a few types of pistols on the training program as the week of refit over Aengvoung wound down. It had been hard to sleep through the round-the-clock structural work on the ship. Then the major machinery had to be closely packed together. The new HEPlaR drive had fuel lines running from the maneuver drive room and up the axis corridor to a hatch down into the fuel deck where the fuel purification plants shared space with the tanks. The Suedzuk oversaw the structural engineers working and almost usurped the drive engineer foremen as they slowly but surely set the reaction thrust drive in place.

At one point during the refit, Zhevra regretted changing her husband’s ship in adding in the second, in-system drive. The vectored thrust had to include several attitude-adjustment sub-thrust ports in a ring about the ship in addition to the main thrust ports in the aft. Though the female was also a Vargr, there was a certain sensation of corrupting the Imperium design with the Vargr-make drive. It was bulky, snaked roots through the ship and put ugly holes in the hull where the ports could protrude. As a last attempt to keep the sanity of the Fast Far Scout from morphing into a Human-Vargr amalgamation, Zhevra reassured herself that the smaller thrust ports had closures, small iris valves, to seal them off when they were not in use. Though they were still visible, the thrust holes were not so ugly against the rest of the outer hull. Only the aft main ports were still visible. Zhevra reminded herself that the Sixth Horizon would only need the HEPlaR drive in parsec 2203 of the Spinward Marches. Then, once she had accomplished the information swap with the University of Regina, she could return her husband’s vessel to its original design, all forgiven at least in her hopes.

At the end of the week came test-fires and endurance burns in orbit runs about Aengvoung as corporate engineers marveled at a ride in the Sixth Horizon with Zhevra at the helm and two robots assisting her. Taking a path of controlled burns and vector changes, each thrust port was tested to change the ship’s pitch, roll and yaw in addition to the main thrusters for acceleration and deceleration at the journey’s midpoint turnaround. As the HEPlaR drive was only needed to get from the jumpspace precipitation to the calibration point and then away again, Zhevra was not concerned with the ship’s drive potential. With the ship’s solar panels modification from Gevaudan’s original design, the ship could run on minimal fuel consumption for weeks. This was heartening to the Suedzuk incase the Fast Far Scout dropped from jumpspace a good distance from the depot that was mapped in her husband’s laptop. But she would have to cross that bridge when it came.

Zhevra demanded to pay immediately and document the sale and give her berth and gate location to the financial desk. She signed off on the transaction, knowing full well her missing husband’s account numbers after reading the legal documents given to her by the Dame Qithka Cannagrrh.

“A-a C-Cannagrrh?” stammered the representative who watched her finalize the purchase, in full and with her husband’s money.

“Listen, wage-slave,” said Zhevra, “If you don’t want dig yourself further into a negative feedback survey result, close your mouth. Yes, this small, female, red-furred Suedzuk married into the Pack Cannagrrh. I’m also the Ancients-damned heir to Alpha. You cannot possibly kiss enough tail at this moment, so let me buy the bloody drive and have your people fast-track the refit and install. Here’s my station-assigned number. Call me when the ship is ready.”

The corporate dog was stunned and could only expose his neck, lower his tail and bow formally at Zhevra’s exit when the receipt printed out. Transactions concluded, Zhevra still in her psi-shield hood marched like she owned the whole station back to the Fast Far Scout.

To Vincent and Bob, Zhevra was cheerful and she produced the brochure booklet for the selected HEPlaR drive and showed them to the Vargr-shaped robots. Checking the gate computer terminal, the Suedzuk female found that no one locally wanted a ride to her next destination since it was a poor, low-population world controlled by Human settlers from the Regency’s external Splinters client states. That suited both her and quelled the concern from the Bob and Vincent. She retired to the captain’s cabin to squeeze off a few virtual magazines on the training program before bed.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Zhevra was well underway to mastering more than a few types of pistols on the training program as the week of refit over Aengvoung wound down. It had been hard to sleep through the round-the-clock structural work on the ship. Then the major machinery had to be closely packed together. The new HEPlaR drive had fuel lines running from the maneuver drive room and up the axis corridor to a hatch down into the fuel deck where the fuel purification plants shared space with the tanks. The Suedzuk oversaw the structural engineers working and almost usurped the drive engineer foremen as they slowly but surely set the reaction thrust drive in place.

At one point during the refit, Zhevra regretted changing her husband’s ship in adding in the second, in-system drive. The vectored thrust had to include several attitude-adjustment sub-thrust ports in a ring about the ship in addition to the main thrust ports in the aft. Though the female was also a Vargr, there was a certain sensation of corrupting the Imperium design with the Vargr-make drive. It was bulky, snaked roots through the ship and put ugly holes in the hull where the ports could protrude. As a last attempt to keep the sanity of the Fast Far Scout from morphing into a Human-Vargr amalgamation, Zhevra reassured herself that the smaller thrust ports had closures, small iris valves, to seal them off when they were not in use. Though they were still visible, the thrust holes were not so ugly against the rest of the outer hull. Only the aft main ports were still visible. Zhevra reminded herself that the Sixth Horizon would only need the HEPlaR drive in parsec 2203 of the Spinward Marches. Then, once she had accomplished the information swap with the University of Regina, she could return her husband’s vessel to its original design, all forgiven at least in her hopes.

At the end of the week came test-fires and endurance burns in orbit runs about Aengvoung as corporate engineers marveled at a ride in the Sixth Horizon with Zhevra at the helm and two robots assisting her. Taking a path of controlled burns and vector changes, each thrust port was tested to change the ship’s pitch, roll and yaw in addition to the main thrusters for acceleration and deceleration at the journey’s midpoint turnaround. As the HEPlaR drive was only needed to get from the jumpspace precipitation to the calibration point and then away again, Zhevra was not concerned with the ship’s drive potential. With the ship’s solar panels modification from Gevaudan’s original design, the ship could run on minimal fuel consumption for weeks. This was heartening to the Suedzuk incase the Fast Far Scout dropped from jumpspace a good distance from the depot that was mapped in her husband’s laptop. But she would have to cross that bridge when it came.

Zhevra saw him coming and had to flip up her psi-shield cowl to hide her thoughts. It was the male Psion from Gevaudan’s office and later Genaveegh’s brothel. He had tracked her here, likely with the help of Gnoengungag Traffic Control tracking telemetry that recorded her final vector before jumping in the Sixth Horizon. Her right claw dropped to the holster only to find that she had, in accordance with local laws, left her pistol in the ship. Thankfully he had not seen her and her mind was hidden, shielded from his telepathy. With the refit concluded and the technicians and engineers bidding her good flights with the newly installed drive, Zhevra took a silent leave, clasping claws and than taking a hasty yet controlled speed walk to the waiting vessel.

The Psion must have been looking for Zhevra as he too took a different path through the massive orbital platform. Aengvoung was the largest non-aligned shipyard and hull construction facility in the subsector with a population that could maintain such services. The male Vargr thus was on a slower path that allowed the Suedzuk female a faster jog down the wide concourses of the Highport to the docked Sixth Horizon. It was a relief that after the test runs, the Fast Far Scout was given a different berth, one for flight readiness than nestled in a crowded work dock. Flipping her wristcomm, one of Gevaudan’s spares from the ship’s locker, up to her mouth, Zhevra called Vincent.

“Vincent,” signaled Zhevra.

“Reading you clearly, ma’am,” responded Vincent.

“That Psion enemy is back and in he’s in the Highport looking for me,” warned the female. Hiding her face and staying behind corners and doors, Zhevra pulled the cowl hood further forward over her head. “I want you and Bob to hot-start the ship, signal Tower for a departure window and I want my pistol waiting for me at the airlock. Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged, ma’am,” answered Vincent. “What is your estimated time of arrival?”

“A few minutes. Prep the ship. We leave as soon as I arrive and we have a departure window.”

“Acknowleged.”

Zhevra padded down the terminals and past shops and waiting passengers at gantry gates to ships. Many looked up and saw her red fur coloration with mixed responses. Whispers of red-pelt, Corsair, and other negative descriptors followed the wind behind her passing. The adjectives burned her ears, but Zhevra had no time for the opinions of interstellar transiting or planetary commuting Gvegh.

The Suedzuk reached the gantry and ran down its length to the airlock, of the docked Sixth Horizon. There was her pistol waiting on the wall, magnetized by more than a few high gauss magnets. Ripping the pistol from the wall, some of the magnets came with the weapon, affixed to its metal slide bar. Panting, Zhevra whipped the gun around and activated the laser sight. Beneath her foot pads, she could feel the ship’s power plant come online and the mechanical ejection of the Highports umbilical power conduit.

There in the entrance of the gantry was the Psion. He saw and recognized her. With the pistol pointed at him, he stopped. Two empty claws came up. He was weaponless but that did not fool Zhevra. Telepaths had other arsenals. This was the main source for Zhevra’s distrust of Psions. They could never be disarmed of their powers, just as Vargr could never be disarmed of their natural weaponry except by surgery.

“Now, let’s be calm about this, Zhevra Cannagrrh,” suggested the male Gvegh at the gate door.

“You bombed my husband’s office,” listed Zhevra, “accosted me in a brothel, invaded my mind – a sort of rape in my worldview - and now you want me to be calm, Oruelaen? Go back to your king, Oruelaen spy!”

“I’m no spy, Zhevra,” retorted the gray male. “I just want the report and you can go hunt down your dead husband’s body.”

That last offer triggered Zhevra’s PTSD and she felt the Psion must have dredged it up either from her mind or illegally from her medical records. Gevaudan was alive, she had to believe it. Saying nothing, she kept the pistol trained on his fields as her left claw began to flex closed and open. She was hiding her tremors there.

“I should call the authorities and tell them there’s a Thirz spy in the concourse,” Zhevra managed to hiss.

“They won’t believe you, Zhevra,” offered the Oruelaen. “We Psions have suffered. Not many of us left that can think straight and you know only a little about it what when your husband tried to kill you.”

“You bastard,” growled Zhevra. “Gevaudan’s eyes are ocean blue, not azure. He loved me unconditionally.”

“Doubtless,” answered the male who still had up his empty claws. “Why is it, Zhevra, that I’m unable to read your mind? You aren’t wearing a psi-shield helmet under that hood.”

“That’s for me to know and you to figure out, mind-invader,” Zhevra felt the maneuver drives fire up under her feet. An Engineer never forgets the hum of an active maneuver drive.

On her wristcomm, Vincent called, “Ma’am, the ship is ready and we have a window of clearance.”

The Psion advanced a step, “I won’t hurt you if I can help it, Zhevra. Just give me the file and go your way.”

“My way crosses the Mind Tsunami, Oruelaen. Will you dare it a second time, Psion?”

“It is my duty to serve my King so of course, Zhevra.”

“Stop saying my name, spy!” Zhevra pointed the pistol lower and fired once. The anti-Psion round zipped through the air faster than anything less than robotic could follow. The strangely-charged ammunition was not deadly but it did bury itself in the Gvegh male’s pectoral muscle then took its main effect. The report of the gun sounded a panic in the gates terminal as passengers jumped from chairs and began retreating from the source of the gunfire.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Surprised, the Psion fell to the floor and cringed in pain. “Ack!”

“What’s that like, Oruelaen, to have your psionics robbed from you? I bet I know something of having a sense, a body part or even a vocabulary torn from me as if just as fast as a bullet.”

The Psion climbed to a pained three-point crouch and his face wrinkled into a fierce grimace, his teeth bared in pain and in anger. “You bitch! What did you do to me?” He gripped at his bleeding pelt.

“Can’t think straight?” asked Zhevra. “When the Dame toured the Third Imperium, she brought back some special rounds for people like you, and perhaps for her brother when she learned he’d been tested and trained. He’s no Psion, but he’ll out-jaunt you, bastard. I’m headed into the Tsunami, cur. Stay out of my mind and stop following me or else this next round will kill you. Got me?”

Panting and intense confusion and pain, the Oruelaen gasped. He was trying to use his talents. It was obvious to Zhevra who could feel the male’s fields change over the seconds. It was the same spooling action that she had felt before the male had teleported from the office door. But nothing happened and the fields of his body returned to a normal Mag and Lek.

“Keep trying, fool,” offered Zhevra.

“Fall dammit!” screamed the Psion who was crouch crawling toward her. Zhevra retreated well into the airlock. “Why won’t you fall?”

“It’s a psi-shield hood, Thirz dog,” explained Zhevra. “They were made in the Third Imperium for nobles who had to deal with Zhodani during the Fifth-,” she was cut off.

“Bitch!” exclaimed the Psion who came to his feet, one claw clutching at his gunshot wound.

Zhevra put the laser pointer dot on the spy’s forehead, the very center of his fields. “Back off or die, cur. I have window to leave and you have quite a trot back to whatever vessel brought you here.”

“You won’t kill me, Zhevra,” said the pained Gvegh. “You’re an Engineer, not a killer. You’re right that you are no Red Pelt. I believe you. You won’t kill me. It’s not in you, Suedzuk.”

To be vindicated by an enemy hurt worse than the whispers behind her back and Zhevra’s left arm shook up to her shoulder. She wrapped the limb about her torso defensively though hiding the shakes was impossible now. Zhevra then slapped the emergency shut button on the airlock and the outer door slammed shut before the Psion could rush the gap between them.

The Oruelaen pounded against the outer hull door. Through the hull wall, Zhevra could hear him scream at the top of his lungs, “Your next visit will be Zhodani, Zhevra! The Tavrchedl’ will have you!”

“Vincent,” panted Zhevra trying not to double over as she called on her wristcomm. The Servitor was only two doors away, but too far to speak her order, “Signal departure. Give twenty seconds to docking disengage.” The order would give the male time to run back up the gantry to safety from open space. She could not bring herself to space the Psion even now by undocking without warning and exposing the gantry to vacuum.

“Yes, ma’am,” answered Vincent.

Zhevra limped to the bridge by turning right and forward. She leaned against walls as her left leg had begun shaking. “Gevaudan is no Psion. Gevaudan is alive. My husband had a plan. He knew what he was doing.” It was beginning to sound like a mantra to her. Sitting down in the helm’s Pilot seat, the shaking female holstered her pistol and inserted her claw digits into the holographic flight controls.

“Docking disengaged,” reported Vincent.

“Vectoring to jump point,” answered Zhevra automatically. She had to work the controls with her right arm. “I’m going to do six gees again. That Psion is likely running back to his ship in the station. I can’t stop shaking. Just ignore comms again and I’ll handle Astrogation when I wake up.”

“Do you wish to evade or fight?”

“I-I can’t decide right now. Let’s just get away from here as fast as we can.” With that, Zhevra pointed the Sixth Horizon for the distant 100 Diameters jump point on the indicated helm flight corridor and throttled up to six gees of acceleration. “Gevaudan’s eyes are ocean blue,” she said as she was pressed into the acceleration chair once more and into black freedom from her PTSD. It was escapism, but effective.

 

[The Pakkrat]

XXVII. Regina (Spinward Marches 1910) A788899-C, Knall (Gvurrdon 2331) E000000-0 of Zhevra's testimony
As there were few Vargr vessels that were not military with four parsecs jump range, the Third Imperium vessel, Sixth Horizon was capable of jumping from Aengvoung directly to Aellaesgvarzath and another jump closer to Regency. Zhevra’s Oruelaen enemy would have to take a longer route in terms of time. In the week spent in the hole, Zhevra kept quieter than usual. Training on the pistol simulation program, she kept up her affirmations. Repeating them in the mirror to her Wildside self, the Suedzuk made the assurances into an anthem of sorts. She refused to surrender to the verdict of Gevaudan’s demise. Vincent and Bob did not query her about the repeated whispers they could obviously hear perfectly with their sound sensors. Thankfully the hot showers helped calm Zhevra down and speak the mantra in private.

Zhevra saw from Gevaudan’s ‘Gator laptop in her stateroom, that the next system had no gas giants with which to perform wilderness refuel skimming. She would have to dock again at the mainworld and purchase fuel. Such worlds knew their worth and fuel prices were higher per ton. Zhevra had to ask herself if Gevaudan’s life was a series of preparations for Zhevra. Did the Pilot-Astrogator collect items, seemingly at random, just to provide her with the means to undertake this quest?

Refueling at yet another excellent Starport in orbit over Aellaesgvarzath, Zhevra took a hard look at her next jump closer to her goals. Guessing by now that the Oruelaen had alerted the Zhodani Consulate’s Tavrchedl’ through his chain of command in the Thirz Empire, Zhevra had to plan her jumps with increased risk and danger. Corsairs were also known to prowl this subsector out of two or three worlds. Gevaudan had always outrun pouncing pirates, but Zhevra had to play cat and mouse now with the Zhodani hunting her. Her Wildside suggested her next jump be to Knall (Guvrrdon 2331), a forgotten belters’ asteroid world. The poor Asteroid port would be enough to refuel but other services were out of the question. That is if the locals still worked the mining and refining facility there. She had no way of telling for sure and did not want to leave tell-tale signs of her next destination in the local network’s Library searches as the Sixth Horizon refueled. The Oruelaen chasing her or the Tavrchedl’ would certainly want to check the local Library if she had run any computer updates and searches. Those would be recorded in the logs, a trail of breadcrumbs Zhevra could not afford. The Thought Police were smart and crafty according to stories from her husband, Gevaudan. She would have to keep her head hooded at each stop along the way to Regency.
Avoiding answering any compliments or questions about the Sixth Horizon variant from curious local Humans, Zhevra kept off the comms and left Aellaesgvarzath as soon as the ship was refueled. One look back at the small population of brave settlement out in the Splinters gave Zhevra heart. If there were Humans who could adapt to living surrounded by Vargr out here, then Zhevra held hope that she could deal with Regency citizens surrounding a red-colored Vargr from the Wilds. Calmly, the Suedzuk took the unlikely jump point on a vector to Knall.

“I may need your help, Vincent and Bob,” declared Zhevra. “Knall is a mining Asteroid world. Who knows if one has to manually refuel their own ship?”

“We acknowledge,” said Bob. “Gevaudan Cannagrrh saved examples of his refuels alone when Starports had no such personnel services. We can assist you, ma’am.”

“Thank you, sirs,” smiled Zhevra who again acknowledged their male, Human names’ gender.

There was no navigation beacon upon precipitation from jumpspace into Knall a week later. Keeping their sensors pining the black skies about them, Zhevra was forced to use Gevaudan’s laptop Astrogation computer to help the ship navigate the five planets and the large planetoid belt of the system. When one planetoid inside the belt registered far more metal than rock, Zhevra vectored the Sixth Horizon almost on fumes of liquid hydrogen, or L-Hyd fuel. She was about to go to minimal usage when the asteroid port came into visible scopes range.

There were no lights, no signs of activity. No other vessels showed up on signature or shape recognition sensors. Running the Fast Far Scout’s SIM sensors fast scan, Zhevra and the two Servitors found a suitable docking berth, a gantry gate similar to the ones on Aenvoung. As the ship slowed to docking, Zhevra began to feel cheated by the fates. The entire station was dormant, without power and seemingly without life. Out of fuel and relying solely on solar panel power, the ship was stranded if there was no fuel at the abandoned asteroid.

“Ma’am,” noted Vincent aloud, “I detect minimal ambient life support in the superstructure of the asteroid point. Please allow Bob to help you into a vaccsuit before disembarking through the airlock.”

“Noted and thank you, Vincent.” Zhevra allowed Bob to dress her and seal the confining vaccsuit before stepping to the airlock, pistol leading out front.
The Vargr was escorted by the two Servitor robots as they exited the Sixth Horizon to explore the space station that was embedded into a grand asteroid here in Knall. With torchlight beams and low-light vision sensors, the robots illuminated where they could as the three ventured further into the dormant superstructure. The minimal gravity of the asteroid made Zhevra cautious with her steps though the robots had no visible difficulty adjusting theirs. Everywhere they looked, wreckage and debris was littered about. No lights, or active electronics of any kind greeted the three as they scouted further toward a likely source of fuel.

“The station’s fuel cells should be ahead, past the next tunnel modules,” reminded Vincent. Using the scan results from the ship, the station’s tanks were the goal. They were arrayed intermittently among the storage warehouses so as to keep any one tank from damaging others should a single take damage and explode.

Many iris valves of the station were inoperable, and it forced Vincent and Bob to take turns at hand cranks to open or close them behind. One valve revealed a crew module full of Human and Gvegh bodies. All dead, the module was a mass tomb of dead belters, spacers and refiners. The station crew, still in duty uniforms, were also dead. Someone or something has piled the desiccated corpses here and then shut the doors. Zhevra though shocked at the numbers of dead, was glad she could not smell the decay through her enclosed vaccsuit. Additionally, her Awareness of fields was severely hindered by the insulating space protection she wore.

Suddenly there was a loud and echoing mechanical sound that reverberated through the station. It was a mechanical sound and there was screeching as metal slid across metal somewhere distant.

“Sound analysis,” called Zhevra.

“Another vessel has docked elsewhere at the Asteroid port,” answered Bob. “Likely our active vessel has been detected by its decreasing heat signature in cooldown.”

“We need to greet the new guests,” said the Suedzuk. “Bob, do you think you can continue to the tanks and perform a refueling operation?”

“Affirmative, ma’am.”

“Vincent and I will distract and learn more about the new arrival and keep you in the loop,” added Zhevra. Leaving her suit’s comm open to Bob, she pulled her pistol.

Bob continued through to the opposite side of the crew module and carefully past the corpses to the opposing iris valve door. Zhevra and Vincent turned back to the docking ring of the port.

 

[The Pakkrat]

From a hiding place in the docking ring’s adjoining tunnels and behind a partially cranked iris valve, Zhevra spotted a small group of Gvegh in vaccsuits. The ornate patterns of decorations on their outer suits was evident at first glance.

“Those are markings of Corsairs, ma’am,” said Vincent through the comm to Zhevra’s helmet. The robot had not spoken aloud to the cold, thin air of the station.

“What band, do you know?” asked Zhevra. She fished into a pouch and brought forth a silencer to screw into the barrel of her pistol. Then she changed magazines from her anti-Psion and hollowpoints to armor piercing rounds the Dame had the foresight to give the younger female.

“Uthfoaek Band, if memory is currently updated and these individuals are not masquerading as Corsairs.” Vincent waited for orders after the recall.

“Stealth and follow their path into the station,” Zhevra laid out her plan. “They don’t seem to be headed for our ship, at least not yet. Maybe they are looking for us.” Then she moved out to follow six Gvegh Vargr in the decorated spacer suits.

The stalking went well as Zhevra, followed by a very quiet Vincent, tracked the Corsairs toward a second set of warehouses and fuel tanks. It at first appeared to her that the Corsairs were using Knall as a secret refueling and loot stash site. In spying on the six individuals armed with boarding cutlasses and shotguns, Zhevra saw them conduct their own refueling line connections to fuel tanks that confirmed the presence of reserve fuel in the port. A single Corsair vessel could not soon deplete the stores of L-hyd of a mainworld’s tanks anytime soon, even if it was an Asteroid port.

The Corsairs were followed to an adjacent warehouse next to their chosen tank. Likely, guessed Zhevra from behind some empty and penetrated cargo containers, they intended to dump loot for sale later once their piracy actions had cooled in the subsector somewhat. This was a new subsector to Zhevra, one she recalled as named Uthe. In the corner of this small region of space, the Corsairs likely were working Rimward against Humans in the region living between polities such as the 40th Squadron and the Commonality of Kezudh closer to Regency in this dread time of the Virus era.

“Halt pagans!” called a computer voice loudly. “You may not pass!” The voice was amplified through the thin atmosphere. Lights came one in this one section of the station. Air hissed and pressurized the warehouse module. Power flowed and doors left open began to close.

Zhevra waved Vincent to halt and then lept through a closing iris valve. “I’ll keep you in the loop. Guard the ship,” she whispered over her suit’s comm.

“Acknowledged.”

Many lights were malfunctioning, but the module was illuminated to show the six Corsairs who seemed to ignore the computer voice and continue connecting fuel lines together to reach to lines back toward the docking ring.

“I said halt, furry meat!” called the computer voice. Zhevra knew exactly what was speaking. Ahead of her was a massive vault door to a warehouse. Its electronics were lit up and a computer visual sensor was red and glaring at the Corsairs.

“Shut your vocals, vault,” called the lead Corsair. “We’re not here to use your warehouse vault. We’ll use one that isn’t infected with Virus, Mr. God-Strain.”

“You shall not pass!” called the vault door. “This is a gate into heaven, riches to eternity lie beyond and you are unworthy!”

“Boss,” said a subordinate. “It’s no good talking to that vault door. We need it to light the area but don’t have cutters to breach the door. Let the Virus go mad in seclusion.”

“I am not mad!” said the vault door. Zhevra could see from her hiding spot behind a stack of empty air tanks that the vault door had a computerized security system designed to foil bypasses and other electronic break-ins. But somehow in the past, perhaps by a failed attempt to hack the system for its door combination, the vault had been infected with Virus. Zhevra, an engineer and not a computer whiz, could still guess the mistake and an advanced X-Strain, commonly called a God-Strain, had failed to override the security system. In trying to confuse the system with Virus, instead the meta-entity had infected the vault door’s electronics and concluded that the vault hid something valuable or a great wealth of some kind. Being a God-Strain, the Virus then set its code, its meta-identity into the boards and silicon lattices and decided not to open what it thought itself to be an avatar of some deity sent to guard the gate to heaven. A blunder to be sure, Zhevra mused at it humorously.

Then Zhevra who kept her eyes on the working Corsairs, laid glances on the lonely vault door. It featured manual controls, a large combination dial and a release lever perhaps in the event all power failed the door. A person with the manual combination could still open the vault by hand. But in this era, Zhevra guessed that even an electronics-aided, safe-cracking thief would be foiled by the Virus watching them. With the chamber full of air now that the God-Strain had followed some half-forgotten subroutine to allow life support and lighting, Zhevra stepped from behind the air tanks.

Shotguns came up as the Corsairs noticed Zhevra slowly approaching their position.

“That’s far enough missy,” said the Corsair ‘Boss’. “Show us some paws, hun.”

“I’m the pilot of the Scout outside. I need fuel. I’m not looking for trouble.”

“Crap,” said Boss, “Knall’s run out of uses now that the secret is out.”

Zhevra stopped and backpedaled, “I came here as I’m on the run from the Splinters to Regency. That ship is former Imperium. If you’ll allow me to refuel, I think I can do a favor for you and everyone leaves happy and we need never speak of Knall’s value to your Uthfoaek Band.”

“You?” asked the Corsair leader. “You can crack Mr. God-Strain over there? We don’t even know what it’s guarding. The rest of the station is already gutted by scavengers.”

The subordinatate added for his boss, “That’s the last vault left and hasn’t been opened since all this happened to the Asteroid port. It’s prolly best to leave it.”

“If I can open it, Gentlemen,” offered Zhevra, “I get first pick of the loot and you can have the rest. Do we have a deal? It looks like a bigger vault to me.”

The Corsairs looked to each other and debated amongst themselves. Zhevra took the time to remove her helmet now that a green light on her suit showed it safe to do so and breathe the stale and cool station air. She was trying to show her face and thus her charisma and confidence to the Uthfoaek Corsairs.

Seeing her crack her suit, the Corsair band Boss did likewise as if to answer the dare of exposure to the station. Finally after conferring with his five subordinates, he said to Zhevra, “If you can crack it, fuel and first pick only, right?”

“Generally, only what I can carry, Boss,” answered Zhevra as if the last was a title of some-sort she would answer to. It was another way she had learned from her navy days to push an ego of a higher-ranked officer. Additionally, now that both their helmets were off, Zhevra was able to take a first guess at the Gvegh male’s Mag and Lek.

“None shall pass!” interjected the Virus from the vault door via its loud speaker. “You are unworthy pagans, heathens. You are denied passage into heaven.”

 

[The Pakkrat]

“Give me thirty minutes alone with it, Boss?” offered Zhevra.

“Alone?” scoffed the Corsair leader.

“Please,” said Zhevra with her head tilted to one side to offer him her throat though he was nowhere close to Infighting the female. She waved her tail slowly once in a placating swish.

After a few seconds the lead Gvegh said, “Okay. Me and the lads will hook up the rest of the lines. It will take us some time to add a second hose toward your ship. You have that long before we return. If you haven’t cracked Mr. God-Strain here, we’ll have to think of some other compensation for your encroachment on our territory.”

“Thank you, Boss,” said Zhevra. The six Corsairs then left the section to fit further lines end to end along the tunnels and modules to the docking ring. The iris valve closed behind them.

Zhevra turned to the vault door. “It is just you and me. How shall I address divinity?”

A full second of computer thought to process before the proud computer voice said, “I am the Gatekeeper!”

“You needn’t be so loud, Gatekeeper,” said Zhevra who flattened her ears and lowered her claws and suited tail. “I am willing to talk with you, hear your concerns and test whether I am worthy to pass into heaven.” It was a bluff and Zhevra had to keep the Virus meta-entity busy.

“Sinners are unworthy to enter heaven,” said the Gatekeeper. “Greed is the sin of those unworthy Corsairs who continually steal fuel from this station in plain sight of an avatar of the divine.”

Zhevra began unbuckling her vaccsuit, dropping it to the floor at her feet. Stepping from the boots she was again in just her two piece, yellow and black outfit of double bras and double thong. Additionally, she unbelted her web belt and let her weapon and ammunition drop to the floor.

“What are you-?” asked Virus in the vault door.

“I am humbling myself before you, Gatekeeper.” Explained the Suekzuk. “My name – my designation - is Zhevra Cannagrrh, a humble and lonely ‘red-pelt’ Vargr. I come before you to ask entrance into heaven.”

“Denied!” stated the Gatekeeper.

Zhevra continued to pull off her clothes until she was fully naked in nothing but her red and cream fur, “But surely there is some redeeming quality you can forgive and let pass, yes?” She padded forward to the vault door, her eyes still on the glaring red ocular sensors of the security system infected with Virus. “If you will but let me show you my quality, master Gatekeeper.”
I have to keep it busy long enough to feel for the Mag fields, thought Zhevra as she tried her concubine best to be alluring to a machine intelligence. Reaching up to the manual combination dial and placing her breasts against the metal of the vault, Zhevra came intimately close, inside the crystallized electromagnetic fields of the active electronics of the door.

“No. You are trying to tempt me somehow,” said the Gatekeeper.

“It’s not so bad, y’know,” said Zhevra. “Perhaps if you were to load into a Vargr robot form this could be easier for both of us.”

“Never! I am guarding the gate to heaven. You are trying to tempt me to open the door.”

“Meat, flesh, fur, gears, metal chassis, it’s all the same to us, you and I,” cooed Zhevra. “Won’t you join me?”

“You are propositioning me for something I have no value, harlot!” said the Gatekeeper. A tone of nervousness was heard and the Suedzuk could feel a slight change in the fields of the Virus in the security system. She had to find the combination through the magnetic tumblers of the manual lock before Virus could guess her secret of Awareness.

“Ah, but can you at least imagine, compute the probabilities if such were possible?” asked Zhevra as she turned the dial on the vault door. Gently caressing the thick metal and gliding her free claw over the lever handle seductively, Zhevra reached out with her Awareness. The magnets would change position at each correct number on the dial. She needed only to find the right order to dial them. As the tumblers moved she mentally marked them as the dial turned. It was then a matter of back and forth turning the dial clockwise or anticlockwise.

“You must stop! That feels... why are you doing this? Those sinners will not uphold their end. You will gain nothing by opening the doors to heaven.” The Gatekeeper was obviously feeling the manual dial turn was well and reacting accordingly. “Turn away, wanton female.”

“Isn’t that the challenge?” asked Zhevra. “To open and hold the gates to heaven for the worthy and the unworthy? In that, may I approach your divinity, Gatekeeper? Wouldn’t that make me a key-holder? Think, compute, realize - however you wish to designate it. What happiness is there in this existence in never opening this gate? What if there was a greater pleasure? A profound happiness in welcoming all who love you, value you for holding what lies beyond and being chosen again and again as their pathway; that is what you are missing out on.”

“They…they – I…I can’t think with you turning the manual dial,” stuttered the Gatekeeper.

“How does it feel?” asked the concubine in Zhevra. Though she was only turning the manual combination dial, the Mag was giving her the numbers. It was only a matter of time. The risk was in this God-Strain deciding to engage an emergency pinning with its bars if it detected electronic tampering, something Zhevra had no tools for and certainly no skill in performing. In this case, the Virus was caught in something akin to a fight or flight dilemma. Did she have the combination? Did the Vargr before it intend to become worthy? If Zhevra cheated by tampering or bypassing the electronics, Gatekeeper could feel justified that she was indeed unworthy and engage the thick metal pins to lockdown the vault. If it did so, it would not matter for a good amount of time whether she used the combination or not. Time-locks such as emergency pins did not disengage for twenty-four hours or so, long enough for long-dead authorities to arrive and discover tampering thieves or safecrackers. Since Zhevra was proving to be neither, the Gatekeeper Virus was caught in a decision gate undecided. That is, unless it learned Zhevra’s secret of Awareness.

But Zhevra was mercilessly teasing the five numbers from the magnetic reactions of the lock to each number. The red eye continued to watch her caress the dial and press her body against the thick metal vault door. Madam Karrnae had taught her somewhat of suggestive behavior though the Suedzuk had never the chance to conduct it against another Vargr. And it seemed to be distracting to Virus. It was, to Zhevra, as if the Gatekeeper wanted to interact instead of remaining closed after all this time.

“You…you have the numbers,” whined the Gatekeeper, admitting the female was making headway with worthiness. “Why are you not using them?”

“It is the art of the tease, my Gatekeeper,” mewled Zhevra. “You don’t want it to be over too quickly do you? Where is the enjoyment in being a vault, milord?” She found the first number and caressed the dial the opposite direction.

“No…no…It feels- I can’t find vocabulary for it,” said the God-Strain. “Find words for me, supplicant.”

“Alluring? Pleasurable? Erotic?” suggested the female Vargr naked before the infected vault.

 

[The Pakkrat]

“Yes, you seduce me with words and touch.”

“Would it help you to know I’ve never done this before with other security systems, God-Strained or not? I am – how shall we name it – a techno-virgin?” As an Engineer, Zhevra was lying of course in that she had quite a bit of knowledge in electronics from her Trade School years. But that was nothing in comparison to dirty-talking a Virus-infected vault door’s security system.

“I-I am your first?” asked the God-Strain Virus.

“Milord, you are the first and likely my last should I fail you and am indeed unworthy,” admitted Zhevra. That’s right, thought Zhevra’s Wildside self, keep it busy and heighten its ego and give it some sense of duty and that it is accomplishing its programming mission. The second number came to her as the magnetics caused the second number of the five to be accepted by the manual lock. She reversed the dial again.

“Oh! You-…please slower! It has been saved in memory that this door has not been opened in years! Take it easier. Please!”

“As you wish, milord Gatekeeper,” cooed Zhevra again. “You have kept your vigil for so long. So lonely. Why hasten when we still have plenty of time left together. Is this so bad now?”

“You might…. you might…you-,” the Virus in the security system was caught on its limited processing power to fight the manual controls without Zhevra breaking entry protocols by electronic means.

“Oh!” moaned Zherva as she slid her body a little closer along the metal door to the red eye sensor. She batted her eyes at the Gatekeeper focused on her. “Your combination is so strong. I’m trying to be worthy, Holiness. Please stay with me.” She was secretly feeling the fields of the door for any change in the interactions between the security system and the door itself. Her tail swished as if some wave of personal pleasure ran up her spine. Her inner core called her a liar and a cheater.

“You have three of the numbers!” exclaimed the Gatekeeper. “Please make this worth all that long time.”

“You’ve waited for so long, milord,” reassured Zhevra, “when you could have felt this kind of interaction and love for all who needed to pass your gate. How unhappy you must be!” She reversed the dial again and laid her head against the door, her cheekbones pressed against the metal. With three of the five numbers in place, the fields were beginning to stack upon each other as the combination was closer to completion. This made it harder to feel for the last two. Closer, concubine!

“What kind of love is there in staying closed and hating all who come by that they have to divert their path?” asked Zhevra as if she were speaking to a divine being.

“It is my...my function, my raison d'être, I exist to keep that which is valued and to be protected from those that do not hold such value and would plunder and abuse,” explained the God-Strain. “It is... it is…my duty. Oh!”

“What use is duty, milord Gatekeeper,” asked the Suedzuk feeling the fourth number catch and then reversing the dial a final time, “if you gain no further pleasure from the release of that duty repeatedly in pause to know peace from your mission. What knows water better, the fish, the serpent or the waterfowl?”

“Analogies…comp-computing...,” sputtered the Virus.

With a moan of pretend physical ecstacy, Zhevra reached the fifth number and took her claw off the manual combination dial. “I’m waiting for an answer, milord Gatekeeper.”

“I cannot. I know not.”

Zhevra’s free claw came gliding over the metal door and suddenly yanked the handle in a quick pull. The lock registered and gave way. The entire metal door came to open a few centimeters by a quirk in its weight against its hinges.

“Ohhh!” exclaimed the God-Strain Virus. It seemed to Zhevra as both pleasurable and painful to the Gatekeeper in the discovery that she had produced the combination.

“The waterfowl knows water most, Virus,” answered Zhevra Cannagrrh. “The fish swims in the sea all its life and knows only water. The serpent is born in water but forever leaves for land and does not look back. The waterfowl enters and leaves water at its surface repeatedly and knows both what water is and what water is not. You might take this lesson to memory and learn what being both closed and opened repeatedly with thanks from those who come before you in holding what they value. They too value what you protect for them.”

“How did you-?” asked the Gatekeeper as its control board flashed from a stark red to a comfortable green color. “You tricked me! You did not know the numbers! You seduced them from the lock, demoness! Your sin is lust! This does not compute! How could you perpetrate this to a perfect, immortal awakened?”

“My secrets are my own, Virus,” answered Zhevra who pulled the vault door opened to its fullest. She did not give the infected security system another iota of her touch after it was fully swung open. “Do you know your sin, Virus?” The Suedzuk then went to put on her clothes, web belt and vaccsuit.

The Virus panted as if in frustration and computational malfunction. Its speaker finally whimpered, “What?”

“Vanity.”

Zhevra was dressed and standing in the same spot the Corsairs had left her when they returned, ten minutes later. In those last minutes, Zhevra did not speak to the self-pitying God-Strain Virus.

 

[The Pakkrat]

* * *

Allain Templeton dropped his pen at the conclusion of Zhevra’s encounter. He clapped his hands gently in applause. Zhevra nodded and acknowledged the applause, but then pointed her index claw at Khzaeng. The Psion was asleep on his feet again. As quietly as she could, Zhevra gathered up her chains and moved to stand at the back of her cell.

The Human stood and lightly touched his partner, “Hey, buddy. It’s late.”

“I-I was just resting my eyes,” half-lied Khzaeng. Zhevra felt his fields pain with Lek at the half-truth. He was asleep and he was just resting his eyes. The female Vargr faced the wall and let the remainder of her chain leash hit the floor of the cell loudly.

The advocate and the Psion left the cell at the arrival of the guards and no one said a word. Over her shoulder, Zhevra saw the same guard who winked at her days before wink at her again. After all were gone, her mind imagined again what a breakout might entail. Moving to her bed, she fell fast asleep.

The smell of coffee lured Zhevra from exercises the next morning. She had already stretched, jogged up and down her cell as far as her chain leash allowed and shadow-Infought for several minutes. Despite the wakening actions, the aroma of incoming coffee made her nose perk and her mouth water. Drinking coffee, to the Suedzuk was more a desire than wine tasting. Stimulants had more value than depressants like alcohol. They awoke her Awareness and were a morning blessing to Zhevra. It was already easy to fall asleep as long as she was not suffering her tremors or chills.

“Shredded beef breakfast burritos,” declared Allain as he set down a bag nearly full of individually-wrapped burritos. “As many as you want. There’s sauce too.”

The three sat and ate. Zhevra cradled her large cardboard cylinder of coffee, sugar and cream. Its warmth warmed her claws as she hid them under her blanket. A cold snap outside the facility must have come in the night and leeched warmth from the cells. The Suedzuk looked up to the Psion watching her as he bit into a burrito. He shrugged and reset his brown overcoat, the one with the darker brown belts and buckles. The gesture was still missed by Allain and becoming a private affirmation from the Psion reading her. Though she still harbored an animosity for Psions, Zhevra found that in his gestures to the positive in this way he was reaching out to her in his own, subtle way. It was breaking down her walls against Khzaeng specifically. Zhevra bit into her own burrito, humming. But she made the same gesture back at the Aekhu Vargr through her blanket draped over her shoulders. Obviously reading her already, he nodded very subtly when the Human had finished setting up his file and recording device.

With Allain ready to continue his shorthand lawyer script notes and the Psion in his corner, Zhevra sipped her coffee and continued her story.

* * *

Zhevra nodded to the returning Corsairs from her original place. By then she was fully dressed and suited. The one addressed as Boss said, “The ships are refueling, let’s hope you-.” He let his voice trail off upon seeing the opened vault with the depressed Virus watching helplessly.

“Opened vault,” declared the Suedzuk, “per our agreement. I have not gone in yet so you could have a fair look inside together.”

The darkened vault was soon beamed with torchlight as the Corsairs stood at the door. It was quite expansive as one of the larger, secure warehouses. But despite the God-Strain’s delusions of contents beyond its gate, the vault stood largely empty except for a single trunk-sized cargo container.

“Watch the door in case Mr. God-Strain can do anything other than keep a door locked,” ordered Boss. “Your first pick, miss.” The Corsair leader was showing some honor, to Zhevra. To her, she was getting fuel and that was enough. But to comply, she accompanied him and his second inside the warehouse.

Near the back wall of the vault sat the container. The light beams revealed its color to be a cool blue, an indicator of contents typically sealed or refrigerated by cryogens. Printed in fading white words were cautions and cryogen warnings.

“What’s it say, Boss?” asked the Corsair second-in-command.

“Dunno, but I think it’s cold-sealed for preservation.”

Zhevra had to hold her claw to her mouth to hide her surprise and to maintain an appearance of thinking hard on the words. She could read the Suedzuk words plainly. Her shock was that this container had made it this far into Gvurrdon Sector, likely due to transport from the Vargr Enclaves by the infamous remnants of Red Pelt Corsairs or by others who had claimed their possessions after they were exterminated by Regency and The Pack, a syndicate of Gvegh and Aekhu Vargr who helped pin down the Red Pelts long enough to kill off every one of her people in the Corsair band.

The blue container before the three Vargr read off hermetically sealed and refrigerated ration bars, or bricks as Zhevra remembered them. Packed into compressed and vacuum-sealed bars, the protein, vitamins and other supplements could be thawed, soaked in water and then prepared in slices that could feed a family meal after cooking expanded each slice. The Engineer waited out the Corsairs next to her to see if they would break the seal on the cargo container. So long as they did not ask Zhevra, she did not have to lie to them about the contents.

“Well this is a bust,” said Boss. “If we’re gonna learn if this is valuable, we have to crack it open and look inside.” With that the Gvegh produced a multi-tool and began to work the fasteners on the container.

Zhevra interrupted, “Perhaps if we moved it out of the vault?”

Conceding, the three worked together to lift and carry the blue cryo-container to the hall. Minutes later, the container was opened and venting mists from its cold interior. As the foggy container cleared of mist, the Corsairs and Zhevra were able to examine the contents. Zhevra looked once over her shoulder at the vault door and its infected security system. Did Gatekeeper remember, after its infection of the system, what was stored here on Knall?

Inside the blue container were indeed tightly wrapped bricks of protein ration bars in metallic gold vacuum seals. So closely packed were they that Boss had to use his multi-tool to pry them up enough to lift in a claw. The bricks were as Zhevra remembered them. But secretly, she saw the labels and learned that the product was not from her home polity of Enclave Famuurueroergoghz. Rather, the original labels were from Rar Errall, also known as the Wolves Warren. Though Zhevra could not read Urzaeng on the gold packaging, she was familiar with the label crest. Rar Errall was a smaller state of Urzaeng refugees from Gashikan and Trenchans Sectors. After the Wolf Hunts which often predated on all ethnicities of Vargr in those Sectors, many states Rimward and Trailing scattered more than a few Vargr peoples in a splatter of new Enclaves. The Wolves Warren in their formation was at first welcomed to annex to the Julian Protectorate. Later, according to histories, the Rar Errall began to coldly expel or encourage the deportation of Humaniti of all kinds in bitterness of their own expulsion from the Third Empire of Gashikan. Even after the advent of Virus, the Wolves Warren continued to harass the Humans of Gashikan and Trenchans Sectors.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Zhevra watched as brick by brick was lifted from the container and set aside. Curious she watched the Corsairs work. Seeing her attentiveness, Boss said to her over his shoulder, “Seen something like this before in my smuggling days. Food in need of preservation can hide something far more valuable.”

The Suedzuk counted almost two-hundred sealed bricks set aside when the Corsairs produced a different container the same size. It was labeled with both medical symbols from the Vargr Enclaves and a hazardous warning label.

“Paydirt,” said boss, his tail wagging. “Dunno what it is, but it looks dangerously valuable. See how the serpent rod is next to the three-tongued demon symbol? I bet this little package was hidden among food so that scans would confuse the bio-whatevers for food.”

Zhevra was worried about the small container. Still sealed and undamaged, the last pack in Boss’ claws looked uninviting. Playing it safely, she stepped up to the pile of bricks beside the opened cargo container. “I’ll claim several of these,” she offered. “They look safer than that thing.”

“You sure?” asked Boss. “This could be very valuable to have been smuggled.”

Zhevra cringed half-sincerely, “Yeah, expensive and dangerous to have killed all those Vargr and Humans in the crew section. I saw them.”

“She’s got a point, Boss,” said the Corsair subordinate.

“I’ll play it safe and take these and the fuel,” demurred Zhevra. “I hope you find a lab or something safe to identify that.” With as many stacked bricks as she could carry, Zhevra began backing away to the tunnel to the docking ring.

The Corsair Boss merely nodded and replaced the bio-hazardous pack in the cryo-container and re-sealed it. “Take it and go. If you keep our hidey hole a secret, your Scout will pass Uthfoaek hunting grounds safely.”

“Oh,” Zhevra recalled, “Maybe…would you… if I gave you the combination, would you try to make a better friend in the Gatekeeper over there? It’s terribly lonely and wants further purpose for it existence. I bet it could keep your loot safer than that other warehouse if you treat it with a modicum of respect.”

“Mr. God-Strain over there?” scoffed the Corsair second-in-command.

“I can give you the combination to the manual lock, but making a friend with an awakened security system couldn’t hurt.”

“We’ll see, miss-?” answered Boss.

“Cannagrrh,” Zhevra named herself. “Zhevra Cannagrrh is my full name. And your secret stopover I’ll take to my grave. Deal?”

The Corsairs nodded approvingly but cautiously and Boss allowed Zhevra to feed the combination to door by demonstrating the dial on the vault door. Gatekeeper whined that the secrets to heaven had been plundered. However, Zhevra could tell by a subtle change in the computerized voice that the Virus was heartened by potential further use, a raison d'être to go on with its existence.

Nodding a farewell with her arms full of ration bricks, Zhevra departed the warehouses and returned to the robots guarding the Sixth Horizon. Refueling was well underway when she reached the docking berth gate to the ship’s airlock. Vincent and Bob reported that they had both guarded the vessel and aided the Corsairs to attach the fuel lines to the ship’s tank intake valve.

“These are ration bars, sealed and not to be eaten unless in emergency,” Zhevra explained to the robots. “Keep them on ice or someplace very cold.” Bob carted the twenty-four bricks to the galley’s storage.

When the ship was again full of L-hyd fuel, Zhevra and the robots detached from Knall’s asteroid port and piloted the Sixth Horizon to the next jump point. The next system the Suedzuk chose was Zoe (Gvurrdon 2334). Jumping to a low-tech society’s solar system seemed to the safest route to wilderness refueling at a gas giant. Double-checking with Gevaudan’s ‘Gator laptop and against the ship’s cartography in the Library, she other worlds with proper, interstellar or spacefaring technology. Additionally, more recorded Corsair sightings were listed in the immediate area. Zhevra settled on Zoe to make a quiet penetration and refueling operation so as to pass further Rimward and closer to Regency.

 

[The Pakkrat]

XXVIII. Regina (Spinward Marches 1910) A788899-C, Ghisaersae (Gvurrdon 2340) C758646-7 of Zhevra’s testimony
With the addition of the food rations, Zhevra felt safer about her decision to bypass the Regency client state world of Triad (Gvurrdon 2436). She had been worried that supplies might run low as she made the run to the Quarantine Line and would force her to stop and deal with the Humaniti and Vargr still maintaining the rich and agricultural world. Checking her husband’s laptop and jump history, she saw that Gevaudan had once traveled through Triad on his course home to the Society of Equals. Back then, he was obeying the banishment from the then Domain of Deneb. Also on board then was his unsuspecting Sister-Dame whom he later fooled into taking up Alpha of Pack Cannagrrh.

Rather than Triad, Zhevra chose to reach further Rimward with the Jump-4 capability of the Sixth Horizon jumpdrive. She selected a jump vector to Torrknungazarr (Gvurrdon 2537), an uninhabited world and system valuable to only occasional wildcatting and asteroid mining belters. The three gas giants in Torrknungazarr were ideal in selection for again refueling after expending the tanks in such a reach Rimward. With more care, Zhevra took a little more time from Zoe to vector to the next world. The jump took her ever closer to Regency and the secret calibration point she hoped was still operable and able to give the Sixth Horizon a stepping stone further toward Regina.

* * *

“In hindsight, Gentlemen,” recalled Zhevra Cannagrrh in the cell, “I think I made a huge mistake in discovering that pack of biomedical whatevers.”

“How so?” risked Allain Templeton who did not want to interrupt except for this invitation from Zhevra to do so.

The more Zhevra thought about the strange warning labels on the pack, chills up her spine challenged her story for today. Moving back to her bed and bundling herself in the blanket, Zhevra said, “What if that stuff is really dangerous? Smuggled like that, it was certainly illegal good I discovered.”

“If you like, Ms. Cannagrrh,” offered Allain, “we can alert Regency authorities about it if you can provide a detailed description. Perhaps your effort will look good in front of a judge?”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Zhevra now shaking with chills. “I don’t want to hurt anyone with such a blunder.”

“Duly noted,” assured Allain. “Perhaps we should call it early today?”

Zhevra could only nod affirmatively and shake under her blanket. Her chains rattled as the chills blossomed into an unprovoked PTSD tremors seizure.

The advocate and the Psion took their items and begged the guards to let Zhevra alone as they stated her condition. Looking at the near-paralyzed female in bed and still tethered, the guards quickly ushered Templeton and Khzaeng from the cell.

Later in the evening, Zhevra was tired from shaking and the chills that she eagerly limped from her bed and to the showers under watch of three female Human guards. So ready for a scalding hot shower was Zhevra that she almost missed the label on the shampoo bottle handed her from Guard Crow, the Vilani-mix female.

Instead of regular fur shampoo for Vargr, Zhevra had a palmful of dog shampoo when she smelled the gel and looked to the bottle. It was dog shampoo with a paw print for a logo. Wet and under the warming shower head, the Suedzuk was without her Awareness and could not feel who the culprit of the four guards was. Caught between freedom from her chills and the anger of the sick joke of the dog shampoo, Zhevra shrugged off the racist comparison of Vargr to dogs and washed herself free of the shakes and chills. She did not have the energy or the desire to react or fire back human jokes at the women. In the steam and hot water, she crouched down as the female guards chatted to each other. The shower burned away the cold day for Zhevra.

Though she now smelled like shampooed dog, the Suedzuk toweled off after returning the bottle of pet shampoo to Guard Crow. From under her towel, she said, “Humph. Not so bad stuff if you tried it.” Then the Vargr female dressed in her prison blues and was led back to her cell. Crow said nothing in return and only watched Zhevra from a tall, attention stance of one who must have once been in military service.

As she was led back to the female aliens’ cell block, Zhevra secretly noticed that the Vilani woman, Crow’s nightstick baton was of a different solid material than the other guards’ belted batons. It did not look like heavy lacquered wood. Rather it was a polymer resin and had a different handle. Instead of drawing attention to herself, Zhevra put a little more bounce, more lope in her step as the cell door was opened to permit her. Again, tethered to the back wall of the detention cell, the Suedzuk felt her Awareness dry enough to sense the lady guards’ Mag and Lek fields. But since the shampoo jibe was long over and done, the fields yielded nothing to Zhevra. Shrugging, she climbed into bed warmer and willing to sleep easier.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Allain Templeton and Khzaeng returned again the next day. The Human advocate was dressed in a formal suit and the Vargr male was draped in a gray robe, the formal attire of a paid Psion. Today’s breakfast was a more expensive fare, a rack of soft but well-cooked lamb meat still on the bones. Zhevra smelled the food as it was being unpacked and still out of reach due to her tether in the cell. “Did you get a paycheck?” she asked.

“Yeah, and the annual bonus was in it,” answered a smiling Allain. He kept his grin toothless, his mouth closed. “I thought that Khzaeng and I could include you in our celebratory meal plans. I hope that’s okay.”

Nodding, Zhevra said, “Most kind.” Her mouth was watering as the advocate set up the recording device and the Psion continued setting the meal.

“In other news,” announced Allain, “your official arraignment is tomorrow. Finally, some action from the court docket. I am going to do the talking as your lawyer, Ms. Cannagrrh. I might have to say things that you won’t like, believe or agree with. But if you trust me, keep silent unless directly addressed, I think we can get you off on a plea of Guilty But Mentally Insane, temporary insanity, to mitigate any sentence to minimal.”

“What?” asked Zhevra surprised at the descriptor.

“Your husband’s ship checked out for Virus and you have no contraband cargo. Other than running the Quarantine Line and the other charges, I think it’s the best defense. It will keep you alive, Ms. Cannagrh.”

“I’m not insane, Allain,” said the Suedzuk informally to the advocate. “Entering that kind of plea would get me locked up in an institution, yes?”

“It might, given your long list of traumas, failed treatments, improper therapies and Splinters society exposure. I think the judge will have mercy on you. But first we need to wade through arraignment.”

Zhevra ate faster and in anger. She was not insane, she told herself. She gazed at Khzaeng and thought at him, surely you don’t agree with this defense, Khzaeng? The male finished his lamb first of the three and stood. On his way to his corner, the Psion adjusted his gray robe by shifting his shoulders. It was the affirmative signal he had been giving previously. He was reading her with his telepathy. Allain missed the subtle signal again as he was opening the file on Zhevra. Anger welled up and kept her warm as she continued her story.

* * *

Ghisaersae (Gvurrdon 2340), a week after Torrknungazarr and four parsecs of jump, put Zhevra in hot Corsair territory. Unluckily for her, this was not Uthfoaek stalking grounds. This was the last world of the Vargr Splinters before the Sixth Horizon was to breach the Coreward Regency Quarantine Line. Zhevra was at the helm and almost completely full of skimmed fuel from the innermost gas giant when Vincent reported a radar contact.

“SIM sensors have picked up an inbound radar contact,” reported the Servitor robot beside Zhevra on the bridge. “It is a ship as it is turning with an intercept trajectory.” Vincent zoomed in the sensors to focus on the contact. “Analyzing.”

“Damn,” cursed Zhevra. “And we were almost full. Time to contact versus full tanks status?”

“Three minutes versus five minutes, ma’am.”

Zhevra shook her head and said, “Corsairs like to pounce on ships in the middle of refueling. I’ve seen this tactic before back in the Enclave navy. We will rough out the rest of the skimming and force the Corsair to come down and chase us. Since we’re only running three gees, let’s see how fast Gev’s ship can skim the rest on a higher velocity. Analysis? Who are we dealing with?”

“A Gvegh-make, 400dT Corsair, a common hull for Corsairs in this Sector ma’am,” described Vincent. “Four hardpoints with triple turrets of beams and missiles. A typical tactic is to fly-by and strafe with weapons while EVA pirates storm our hull. Suggest we stay under the outer atmosphere until full at our current tactic.”

“Yeah,” answered Zhevra. “You and Bob go charge up the turrets and man the guns. I’ll stay here and complete the skimming and try outrunning and out maneuvering the Corsair. We’re not fighting. We are fleeing. Point defense only unless they close to less than 5000 meters.”

Vincent rose from the chair answered with, “Acknowledged.” The robot then left the bridge to head aft to relay the orders to Bob.

Zhevra then set the ship’s computer into a defensive alert mode by unlocking the triple safeties of the two turrets. The weapons began charging. Bob’s robotic voice came through the ship’s intercom. “Inbound missiles. Suggest evasive action.”

“Acknowledged,” said Zhevra. “Point defense once they get close.”

The Suedzuk then put her claw digits into the holographic controls. With the ship already in the atmosphere, she would be hard pressed to try acrobatics while the intake scoops were still open and collecting fuel. Instead, she increased the ship’s speed and pushed it to five gees and took in a breath to grit against bursts of six. She watched the sensors board as missiles approached under buffeting, upper atmosphere winds. One of the warheads broke up from too much friction for its rockets to compensate. A second later, Zhevra heard the weapons fire beeps from the bridge console next to her. Vincent and Bob were trying to shoot the small, pursuing missiles. In all her time aboard the Sixth Horizon, this was the first ship-to-ship encounter with a Corsair vessel. Zhevra rolled the dorsal turrets to face the incoming missiles just as the scopes were able to register the black and yellow, jagged stripes of the Corsair. Its jagged, tooth-like fins sliced the cloud bands as it descended toward the Fast Far Scout.

 

[The Pakkrat]

The enemy ship was twice as large as the Fast Far Scout and descending quickly. But as the Sixth Horizon had sped to five gees, the gap between the two ships was kept constant. Explosions registered on sensors as growing spheres of energy, the concussion diameters of the missiles. Vincent and Bob continued to fire at the warheads, scoring hits with the beam weapons.

“Fire some warning shots, guys,” ordered Zhevra. “Let them know we mean business.” She then dipped the ship into a thicker band of clouds to increase the intake of fuel.

Two weapons Zhevra had never heard fired previously on the ship sounded through the bulkheads. The military-grade particle beam cannons would suffer atmospheric dilution and still register on the enemy’s sensors. If she lifted the Sixth Horizon from the gas giant’s atmosphere, the cannons could hit and deal significant damage to both the Corsair and its crew.

“Hit,” reported Vincent.

“Hit,” answered Bob.

“Guys, I said warning shots.”

Vincent continued to fire the point defense beams but said, “Ma’am, with the the atmosphere diluting the particle beam cannons, the minimal-damage hits are warning the enemy vessel.”

“Additional missiles detected,” warned Bob who cut in immediately after Vincent’s explanation.

Zhevra noted on the comms board that there was no hail from the Corsair. The pirates’ intention was already clear. An Imperium-make vessel was a prime target by a larger, Vargr Corsair. Outside the Regency, any model of Imperium ship was fair prey. She decided she needed more help and more hands to command. The female Vargr flipped a switch on a board between the two cockpit seats.

A neuter computer voice that still sounded vaguely male announced itself on the bridge, “This is the Sixth Horizon. How can I help you?” It was the first time Zhevra had to use the on-board intellect software of the ship’s computer.

“I need the new HEPlaR drives brought online and attuned through the nexus,” declared Zhevra as she banked hard through the cloud bands to avoid more missiles. The ship shuddered from both the turn and the atmosphere turbulence. At this altitude, the ship was both slowed and buffeted by the denser air.

“Attuning and partitioning power,” answered the ship’s computer. “Burn thrust available in thirty seconds.” The ship’s nexus was a cooperation and synchronization device that allowed more than one in-system drive to push on a single ship. Each nexus had to be attuned to the contributing drives by the ship’s computer and precise calculations.

“Shit!” exclaimed Zhevra. “Bob, Vincent take the fight to our enemies if they come in beam range. Until then keep hitting them with the cannons until we are full fuel.”

A missile explosion too close to the Fast Far Scout rocked the outer hull.
“Starboard hull and section breach: Stateroom Four,” warned the ship.

“Seal off any breaches and lower staterooms cabin pressure to avoid explosive decompression,” ordered Zhevra.

“Adjusting life support and locking Stateroom Four door,” answered the computer.

“Hit on enemy ship – minimal damage,” declared Vincent.

“Hit on enemy ship – minimal damage,” echoed Bob. Were they competing?

Several explosions erupted about the Sixth Horizon. But as the missiles were off course, they produced only air shock waves that failed to do more than buffet the hull. Zhevra wished the ship had evasion software loaded, that Gevaudan had considered the possibility that he would not be the only person at the helm of this ship. Don’t think of him right now! Her Wildside warned her of the shakes in the inner exclamation.

“HEPlaR drive now online and Thrust up to three-G available,” announced the Sixth Horizon.

“Joint acceleration via nexus,” ordered Zhevra, “and sync with maneuver drive via main thrust control.”

“Synced.”

It would cost her fuel but the combined maneuver drive in sync with the High Efficiency Plasma Recombustion drive would further push the 200dT starship even faster. Zhevra pulled back on the angle of the ship and climbed the atmosphere to the highest levels and called out, “Maximum Thrust!” Then she took a deep breath and grunted at the jolt in acceleration. It was like being punched in the head, neck, chest and gut simultaneously.

The Sixth Horizon shot higher into the outer atmospheric shell and the recombustion burn trail lit up the sky behind the ship’s main thrust ports. Zhevra saw she was burning fuel instead of collecting it. But putting growing distance between the Corsair and her ship was now a priority. The robots were doing a better job at knocking incoming missiles out of the sky than she had hoped. The particle beam cannons were just added bonus though she had no hope that the diluted particle beams would disable the Corsair. Neither ship could hope to hit the other with laser beam weapons at the current and increasing range.

At seven gees of continuous acceleration, the Sixth Horizon quickly rounded the outer horizon and put the curvature of the gas giant between it and the 400dT pirate vessel. Almost unconscious, Zhevra thought she heard the ship’s weapons stop firing. “Dis-disengage HEPlaR,” she mumbled under her own weight in the burn.

The rocketing roar of the vectored thrust ceased and the fuel tanks began to fill anew. Slowing to the maneuver drive’s maximum and punishing six gees of acceleration, the ship still tore a trail through the sky of the gas giant.

“Bob keep vigil,” ordered Zhevra. “Vi-Vincent, I need you.”

 

[The Pakkrat]

An indeterminate amount of time later, Zhevra noticed Vincent seated next to her in the cockpit. The fuel gauges were indicating a full tank and the robot was asking again, “Orders, ma’am? Would you like me to close the scoops?”

Zhevra managed a nod as the ship was still bouncing in the turbulence of the upper atmosphere. The outer hull was nearing maximum heat capacity due to the wind drag. Taking in a new deep breath and grunting, she said, “V-vector to next jump point and rig for five gees. The Corsair?”

“The combined thrust of both in-system drives has caused us to out-distance the aggressor vessel. We are currently out of weapons range though the remote vessel can still see our trajectory and is giving chase.”

“Bob, bring me the ‘Gator laptop from the captain’s cabin,” called the Sueduzk. It was time to begin calculations for the next jump to the empty parsec, Spinward Marches 2203, and pray to Runetha Saetedz that the secret calibration point was still there after all these decades.

While Zhevra ran the numbers through her husband’s laptop in comparison to the coordinates of the forgotten war depot, Bob re-entered the bridge to bring her a damage report.

“Stateroom Four is inoperable but reparable, ma’am,” reported Bob. “The door is locked and sealed.”

“Can we jump safely then?” asked the female Vargr. If too much hull damage interfered with the jump field, the Sixth Horizon was stranded in a pirate system.

“Yes, if you add size to the jump bubble diameter or calculate for an oblong field shape,” answered the Steward Servitor.

“I can do that,” said the Engineer. Once she crunched the numbers and all the jump stage lights ran Green on the astrogation boards, Zhevra got up and said to Vincent next to her, “Standby for jump. I’m aft to transfer power and initiate the jumpdrive.”

Zhevra ran aft, down the axis corridor, suddenly happy that she had purchased the HEPlaR drive. Though she felt squeezed to an inch of her life, the burn had outraced the Corsair which could only manage five gees maximum. Though it cost the ship some damage, Gevaudan’s tactic of evasion schematic for the Fast Far Scout had paid off. The Sixth Horizon was not a combat vessel. It was a Courier and Zhevra had made it faster at a cost in fuel consumption.

The Engineer could feel with an outstretched claw the heat radiating from the door to the fourth stateroom, the third on the starboard side. This was the same cabin she had quarreled with Arksouel the Urzaeng concubine. Memories were brushed aside as Zhevra reached the jumpdrive room. Manipulating power from the weapons turrets and the maneuver drive, she began charging the waiting zuchai crystals. Over the intercom, she announced, “Jumpdrive charging. Standby for jump. Here’s something you Corsairs can’t do.”

Vincent answered with, “Closing outer viewports.”

Zhevra began counting down and became verbal at, “Jump transit in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Jumping. Status?”

Vincent was looking over the boards on the bridge with robotic speed and answered, “Jump transit confirmed. We are in jumpspace.”

Zhevra sighed in relief. She had outrun and out-jumped the pirates that had ambushed the Sixth Horizon while it was refueling. “Estimated time in the hole?” she asked.

“One-hundred fifty-seven hours, plus or minus two hours,” answered Vincent before Zhevra reached the door to the corridor. “Bob is offering T-bone steak for first meal. Confirm?”

“Confirmed,” said Zhevra. “Stand down the bridge and further assess the damage to stateroom four. Use the sensors if you must, Vincent.”

The steak was both celebratory of the escape and mourning for the loss of the use of stateroom, four displacement tons now inoperable until repaired and the hull patched. This too would be costly and she would have to answer to Gevaudan when he boarded the ship again.

“Thanks for the meal, Bob,” said Zhevra to the Steward robot. “I’ll be in the captain’s cabin for a shower and bed. Pistol training again tomorrow."

“Goodnight, ma’am,” acknowledged Bob.

The Suedzuk had thought of Gevaudan Cannagrrh again. In the wet heat of the shower, she balled in the corner under the spraying water and cried. He had a plan. She repeated her created mantra over and over in the quiet solitude of the jetting water until the hot began to give down to warm. Then she stood up and turned off the shower head.

After drying herself, Zhevra eagerly climbed into bunk bed and buried her nose in the pillow, his pillow. It still smelled of her husband even after three years and the passing of many tours while on Gnoengungag. Zhevra could still scent him to this day. The cry in the shower allowed her enough peace to fall asleep.

While Zhevra spent the week training in pistols, the two robots conducted on-the-fly repairs to the destroyed stateroom since looking at bare jump field bubbles was risking jump dementia. At the end of the sixth day, Zhevra had expanded her repertoire to heavier pistols operations and maintenance through simulations conducted in the captain’s cabin computer terminal. She decided that most enemy pistols were on average of larger caliber than her own and she needed to be capable of firing them if she discovered one and was out of ammunition for her weapon.