Remembrance 1: Pirates and Other Outlaws
04 Nov 2024Astraeius
Elus Dionis – 21st of September, the Year 3307
“This is just a peaceful passenger ship. We ain’t got anything of value. Is this necessary?” Janus asked, the federal twang in his voice more pronounced with every sentence he uttered.
The first few times I had heard him speak, outside of the comforts of his office at the villa, I had thought he was putting on a show. We had hopped between space-ports, in what I could only assume had been an effort to lose a trail – whether real or imaginary, we had been lucky enough to not be able to tell – and most stations Janus had felt safe enough to dock us at had been either neutral or Alliance ports. Hiding an imperial accent would not have been foolish.
If it was a ruse, it was one that worked: wherever we docked, what reservations people who saw us exit a Courier fresh from slave-operated shipyards evaporated as soon as he began talking. Frowns turned into smiles, people offered us a seat at their table, and we did our best not to shatter the illusion. My father, too, tried to mix some “federalism” into his speech – as he himself had put it – which was typically greeted with some chuckling, probably because of how thick and parodic his affected accent sounded. My mother, though perhaps at first more timid, soon grew curious about matters of starport engineering, and her curiosity was better received by the locals than any change in tone and speech could ever hope to be.
But, whereas my father’s false accent evaporated the moment we stepped back into the relative safety of our ship – the safety, but soon no longer the comfort, as both the Lord Sallus and his former secretary though it wise to trade in the luxury courier for a less conspicuous craft – Janus’s federal twang, though perhaps less strong, was far more tenacious, and showed no desire to abandon him.
More and more, I realised how little I knew of the man. He had been my father’s secretary, and like many of our household slaved he had been a free man before selling himself to settle a debt, but I could remember nothing of his purchase, nor indeed exactly how long he had been with us. One day, one of my father’s libraries had been converted into a second study, and there Janus had materialised, as if though he had been moved in with the chairs and the desk. An invaluable secretary and assistant, to a man that did not have any real job to speak of.
It had been around the time my father’s interest in archaeology had turned away from the ruins of Old Earth, and seeing the ease with which Janus had gathered news from the many bartenders and storekeeper that crossed our paths, I thought perhaps he had been some form of field-researcher. He certainly would not have been the first student skilled enough to enter one of Achenar’s universities, but too poor to pay for a life in the Imperial capital.
“Come now, I see you over there, don’t do anything stupid now…” Janus called out on his comms, to the ship that had begun to trail us. To no avail. “Shit, hold on tight, kid! Passengers, strap in!” Janus’s voice betrayed nothing of his old deference as the ship jerked wildly, and the calm and silence of supercruise travel turned into utter chaos.
I would soon learn the word “Interdiction”, and learn it well, but at that time I knew only that something was happening that should not have happened. And that I was right to feel as scared as I did. Janus struggled with his throttled for a while, but to no great avail, and then suddenly the jerking stopped, and we dropped into space.
Immediately, the engines behind us launched the ship forwards, but not before our assailant’s first salvo caught us. There had been no warning. It caught the ship’s shielding, but still I was terrified. Terrified for myself, and for my mother and father, who I hoped remained safe in their cabin. For a moment I resented my choice to sit besides Janus, rather than being with them, but I soon realised that, at least, I would know where death came from. The grim thought brought me no comfort.
If I had ever though myself fearless, or even brave, that moment freed me of the foolish notion. It was all I could do not to cry out in fear. And perhaps that was fear, too, keeping me paralysed rather than letting me speak, and weep, as I would have. Weep at the why of it all, cry out against fate, or the gods, or whatever had brought me to so sad a doom.
But not Janus. He too was silent, not frozen in fear, and yet cold and distant, as never I had seen him. The rush of enemy fire left him utterly unphased, or at least so it seemed to my eyes. He cared not to trade blows with our pursuer, and instead He cared not to trade blows with our pursuer, and instead moved us away from the other ship, staring at one of his screens with far too lax an attitude, in the opinion of one whose life depended on his quickness.
Nor was our ship that fast, despite Janus pushing it to its limits. The pirate, or assassin, that pursued us was closing the gap, not fast but surely, and there seemed to be naught we could do against it. For a short moment we had been out of his range, or perhaps he was distracted by some matter more pressing than the defenceless passenger ship in front of him, but soon his cannons were once more burning against our shields, and he drew ever closer, as if were trying to ram us like a battleship of old.
Almost, he was on our tail, and it was there that Janus wanted him to be, for he smiled and, with the flick of a switch and a pull on the stick, we were free of our pursuer. Or rather, he sped fast beside us, as Janus turned our ship around blew every last watt of energy it had into its thrusters. Soon the stars sped past us, and we were greeted by a warm yellow sun, in the safety of another system.
“Neat trick, right kid? Most pilots will think you want to outrun them, but they forget how free you are to move in space! Hey kid, everything all right?”
No, definitely not a researcher’s assistant, I thought to myself, before the whole world turned black, and I fainted.
Commander Astraeius – 1st of November
“If you keep adding entries to your list, I think I will faint.”
“Faint if you want, you’ll still have to pay me!”
“With what money?” I asked, desolate, staring sombrely as Volko’s hangar doors opened to reveal the better part of a cockpit, its canopy now but a few solitary shards that had not been dragged into space and most of the internals little more than a pile of melted metal, to which a gutted port nacelle and some half of a starboard engine remained attached. That was all that was left of the Evenstar. Of my ship.
As the rails dragged her closer, I forced myself to stare at every scratch, every hole, every burn, that dotted her chassis. It felt as if I was seeing the whole battle once again, every mistake that I had made paraded in front of me in full pomp, stark reminder of how close I had come. And, perhaps, I felt a pang of guilt towards the poor ship, because old sailors say that all ships have souls, and hers was ever excellent and ever dependable, and it was my hubris that had nearly been the end of her.
“Take a loan! You’ll repay it soon enough, once you take my darling back in the skies!” Volko answered, though my question had not meant to be anything but rhetorical. When the ship finally stopped, a few meters from our feet, he allowed his ever-gleeful face a grimace: “Do treat her better, though. I’m happy to take your money, ‘Aeius, but there’s barely any ship left to repair. I’d rather you call on me to fix up her paint.”
“I’d rather you charge me only for the paint, Volko.”
“That would bankrupt me, young man, and I have a whole family to support, you know. But, if you truly cannot afford it, perhaps I could get you something for the scraps, and you might be able to buy yourself a cheaper ship. I have an old Courier, somewhere, that has not seen too much use. Of course, it would be a shame to have such a vessel put to scrap, but if can’t get into debt… I do understand it’s worse of a stigma for you imps… I truly do, and I won’t blame you. You could take the Courier off my hands and walk off with some change.”
The offer was as pathetic as it was half-hearted, and the old man beamed once I finally relented and accepted to pay his exorbitant bill – or rather, once I accepted to find some bank that would it off.
“You won’t regret it,” Volko chirped happily, even as I was beginning to. “And, just because it’s you, I’ve been brainstorming a design for a rear aerofoil that will do wonders in atmospheric flight. I’ll throw that in for free, that way you have nothing to complain about.”
“I can’t remember the last time I brought her into an atmosphere dense enough for aerodynamism to actually make a difference…”
“Well, never say never! And besides, she’ll look much more unique!” he was the very picture of glee, staring at the carcass of my ship, and I was sure that he was picturing how she would look once his modifications were in place. I was silent and let him paint his pictures, for though he was about to bankrupt me, I was just as glad as he that there was enough of the Evenstar left to rebuild.
In a way, I almost appreciated the symbology of it all: she had been in little better a state when first Volko had presented her to me, sold to him for scraps by a would-be fighter pilot who had had to be dragged into surface by a good Samaritan of merchant, after a pirate had shot out both of his drives from under him. Now, penniless as I had been after buying it from Volko and repairing the drives those long years before, I was starting again.
“It’ll take me a couple of weeks to find all the pieces we need to rebuild her,” the old man mumbled, a bit to me, but mostly to himself. “And at least another week for the actual work. Count on being grounded for at least a full month, and you should not be disappointed,” he said, louder, turning back to face me.
“That long?” I asked, and I was genuinely surprised.
“Times are not what they used to be, ‘Aeius. There’re more people growing desperate, every day. More of them armed, every day. Pirates, and other outlaws, all just hungry men happy enough to get by on the back of others. I want to make sure your spare parts don’t disappear halfway to here, and that means waiting until a large enough convoy is flying this way. Even what I can get from Arcturus could be waylaid. And besides, work will be slower for a while: both of my boys have decided they are better off flying ships than repairing them, so I’ll need to hire some assistants to work on a project this size, and all of the more delicate work I will manage myself.
“You are free to stay and look over the work, of course,” Volko offered, before adding with a smirk: “it’ll be cheaper than a hotel. And perhaps you can help me with some small jobs to start repaying that new debt of yours.”
I groaned, but I knew the offer was good. And I relished both the time to sit and think, and a task to keep my hands from growing idle. My recovery, expensive and sophisticated though it might have been, had left me with the lingering feeling that my body was no longer in full synchrony with my mind. I did not know whether Volko meant to have me pushing boxes, lifting crates, or simply tightening screws, but I was certain the manual work would do me good. Machinery would do the brunt of the work – even on an Imperial world, Volko would have no tolerance for slaves – but I knew there would be tasks for me, here and there, and that reassured me.
“After she’s rebuilt, what are you going to do with my ship?” he asked, voicing aloud the question I was about to quietly ask myself. I looked at my hand, forced it opened and closed a couple of times, and was unsatisfied with the speed at which my body answered my thoughts. Barring some terrible case of force majeure, I did not see myself going back to hunting Thargoids.
“I might take her back into Guardian space, to do some research. I once promised someone I would be an explorer one day…”
“You’d get bored!” he barked back, before softening his – perhaps all too correct – critique with a: “Besides, you don’t have the cash for that type of retrofit. You need some plan for the here and now, I can’t have you fighting off debt collectors from my couch.” Perhaps softening might have been too strong a word.
“Perhaps I’ll turn pirate myself, pay you back by robbing your shipments.”
“That’ll be the day! You’d try to be a gentleman pirate, and those stay poor. I’d never see my money,” he laughed. He might have been right. “Speaking of pirates, our old friend Janus passed by a few weeks back.”
“Janus? I though he was dead.” I truly did.
“Apparently not. He was running from some imperial bounty, though he was cheap with the details. Perhaps you could hunt him down, you’d get good money, and I’d get to bill him for repairs,” Volko smiled, and I had half a mind to ask him if he was serious.
Janus, alive and fleeing the Empire. Only the first half of that sentence surprised me.
“You know what, Volko? Just for that mean remark, you owe me lunch.”
“Sure! I’ll just add it to your tab.”