Weekly Drabble #278: TLA: Pets, Pt2 (Patreon)

With the prompt of 'fleeing father' from Xpholia, we get an update to Pets. Enjoy!

~

Pets 2:

Don’t listen to the songs.

If you spent any time at all traversing the systems of the Kaedan Vault, then you would have heard this comment at one point or another. You might have heard it spoken between spacers with a shake of their head – or whatever gesture meant the same for their species – when they learned of a missing ship being declared lost in space, or in hushed whispers in portside taverns when inebriants began to flow, or as a warning offered from a veteran of the region to a newcomer. Though hardier or more well-travelled souls might scoff at local superstitions, those who made their living travelling between the worlds of the Kaedan Vault did not, even if they didn’t believe in the stories themselves.

No good ever came of tempting fate. Especially in a place like the Kaedan Vault.

The Kaedan Vault had always been cursed, the legends said. Though it had dozens of systems and hundreds of worlds ripe for colonization and exploitation, it remained under-populated and its resources under-utilized. Even the Commission for the Stabilization of Territories and the Colonial Directorate had eventually stopped pushing for expansion into the region. Bad things had happened in the Vault. Mining ventures suffered constant setbacks and sabotage. Patrols and convoys went missing, never to be seen again. In the earlier decades, these ships often suffered a far grimmer fate: they would be found with their crews slaughtered or driven mad.

Thirteen hundred years ago, the cruiser Halan’s Thrust and its escorts vanished. A month after it was declared lost, Halan’s Thrust shocked into Jenpallen, the center of the Vault’s military operations. It did not respond to any hails and when it was boarded, its entire complement was discovered to have been butchered, mounted on the bulkheads, placed at their duty stations or pooled in their quarters in conglomerations of flesh and bone. Horrifyingly, the ship leader had not been killed with the rest of his crew, but had taken his own life after being forced to witness these atrocities. He’d written a suicide note, as brief as it was cryptic.

SHE IS ANGRY.

Never added to official reports was another morbid discovery. Well after even the most liberal estimates of the leader’s time of death, a new entry had been added to his log.

THIS IS NOT YOUR HOME.

GET OUT.

And there was, of course, the tale of Gershom Mining Concern’s missing executive transport, the ship turning up crushed like a tin can, with its crew and passengers reduced to paste pressed between the bulkheads. Or the more recent tragedy when the world of Tinax had been subjected to a Planet Kill. The Compact blamed the Unbound for the atrocity, a statement that bemused Jivek Kiinil, Patriarch of the Hunter’s Family, greatly. The Family was among the largest and most active clans within the region; the Family hadn’t done this mass slaughter, and none of his competitors and rivals had either the ability, desire or will to commit planetary extermination.

Rumours swirled, but the truth had yet to be uncovered. Most doubted that it ever would be. Bad things happened in the Vault. Not to everyone; most spacers and colonists had gone their entire lives without ever encountering one of the morbid mysteries that gave the sector its dark reputation, but for those that did, they followed this sage advice.

Don’t listen to the songs.

~

The first time, Calvin and Caitlin didn’t even know what it was. They’d been taking their newly-acquired Sky Spider out on a cake run which would lead to an encounter that they wouldn’t realize was the first of a pattern until years later. It was a simple mission; meet up with one of the Hunter’s Family’s ‘cousins’ – trade partners – for a cargo transfer. ‘Cousin’ Breclinson, one of their freelancing middlemen, claimed to have a new source of high-quality pharm and he was looking for distributors.

He’d put the word out through regular channels that his source was willing to offload a sample pack for Jivek to test with the Family’s customers. If it met expectations, they’d work out a larger deal. Though it was only two tonnes of product – to an interstellar clan, even one as small as the Hunter’s Family, that wasn’t enough to get out of bed for, let alone send a ship to collect – Breclinson was fairly reliable, so Jivek agreed to the meet. He sent Sky Spider.

The small corvette was the newest addition to the Family’s fleet, and relatively cheap to operate. Caitlin and Calvin had been instrumental in stealing it out from under the nose of planetary authorities on Darlek-4-3. As a reward, their adoptive father had made them co-leaders of the re-christened raider. It had ruffled some feathers, but no one in the clan was willing to stand up to their patriarch when he put his foot down. Nonetheless, there were comments about Kiinil’s ‘pets’ and how he favoured them.

As some of the other crew joked, “Two Broken almost made one person.” This mission would be another small step for the twins in proving their worth not only to the clan at large, but to their father. Sky Spider was a sign of his trust in his adopted children and they wanted to show Jivek that his faith wasn’t misplaced.

The rendezvous point was a brown dwarf system just about twenty light-years from 12/S12-3833. Caitlin could see that particular speck of light, from her position on the corvette’s bridge, a glimmer belonging among the second hottest types of yellow main sequence stars. It seemed so benign from here, but in a sector filled with enigmas, 12/S12-3833 was close to the top of the list. Ships didn’t come back from 12/S12-3833, or if they did, they vanished shortly afterwards. No single place in the Vault had as many accidents, misfortunes and disappearances associated with it as 12/S12-3833 did.

There were rumours that it was home to a highly classified military research and development facility, a fact that would explain the tales of spacers who’d ended up in that system getting ‘disappeared’ by Compact authorities. Some insisted it was the Watchers that had claimed the system for themselves; the enigmatic and reclusive species was never one for attention and any guests would be... unwelcome.

There were more outlandish stories about the system, even by the loose standards of the Vault’s normal gossip. Some said it was a nesting ground for Naiads, others asserted that great infernal machines like grasping spiders were clustered throughout the system, slowing building a system-wide construct of unknown purpose. One wild tale Calvin had heard came from an old Tribune who’d enjoyed sharing ghost stories with a ‘pink pup’. He’d said there weren’t any Naiads or secret Space Force installations or cosmoszoans within 12/S12-3833. Instead, he’d told a wild tale about ‘the Sword of Saal’, an ethereal blade that, he swore, would manifest within that system to ‘cleave the wicked and unrighteous’.

“You can run, pup. But no man can outrun his own sins, and fate’s blade always finds the neck it’s seeking.”

Of course, those were just stories. Nonetheless, Sky Spider would not be adventuring anywhere today. Complete the mission and get home. Simple business. No monsters, no territorial ruling species, no Naiads and no ghostly swords.

Simple.

~

Caitlin was anxious. Sky Spider had arrived six hours after the meeting was supposed to take place. They’d been aiming to get there at least a full day before, but the corvette still had some hiccups in the shock system that needed to be ironed out, souvenirs of its ‘acquisition’. To Caitlin, the mission was already off to a bad start and she was eager to get it over with as efficiently as possible. The six hours didn’t really mean much – the vagaries of interstellar travel meant that hard and fast meeting times were only for fiction and anal-retentive pricks. Most starship meetups accounted for that, but it was that they were late to begin with that had upset her.

Their father always insisted that it was better to be early to an appointment than late – in case someone was trying ambush you. While she didn’t believe the Shimmer was going to betray them, dad didn’t trust the species. How can you trust anything that can change what they look like? He’d commented more than once. Mind follows the body, me little ones. Anyone that can decide to be a different colour on the spot will have thoughts just as fickle.

Instead of an out-of-character betrayal, it seemed like their contact was having the same issues. There was no sign of him, nor any other vessel in what cartographers generously called a star system. The twins sent out a coded comm pulse in case their ‘cousin’ was running silent or hiding in some of the knots of asteroid debris that the system primary, a dim fat failed star, had collected over millions of years.

While they waited for a response, Caitlin paced around the bridge like one of Morad’s xien in their pen, while Calvin sat on his throne; the single large leader’s chair had been swapped out for two Broken-sized ones. “You should sit down,” he commented without looking at her. “You’re-”

“-making everyone nervous, I know.” There were jokes that the twins weren’t really two people, but one being with a single shared brain. How often they finished each other’s sentences didn’t help dispel that, but they’d grown up as the only two Broken in the Family. They’d had to rely on each other more than anyone else and were so often in sync that it seemed like telepathy or prescience, when it was just a strong sibling bond. “I just-”

“-want to know where he is,” Calvin finished for her, sharing a smirk with a couple of the crew. “As soon as we pick up anything, you’ll know. You don’t have wear a hole in the decking.”

She flipped him off, a gesture she’d learned from A Little Surprise, a comedy some of the Family liked. There was a Broken in it with a small but pivotal role. Caitlin had liked the movie at first, until she’d seen the ending. Now she was long past sick of being asked to quote some of the actor’s lines. “He’s never this late,” she grumbled. The observation wasn’t new, but she was anxious. “What if he’s not coming? He could have gotten rumbled or-”

“Or a lot of things could have happened,” Calvin reminded her. “You know the rules. We’ll give him sixty hours. If he can’t make it here by then, we’ll scratch and report back to Father.”

His sister nodded and sat back down in her throne for all of fifteen minutes, then got back up and continued to pace. Shortly after that, they received a response. It was laden with static, but Breclinson appeared on the screen, the Shimmer’s image fritzing and blanking out as their comm officer Yanloladaughter tried to clean up the signal, but to little avail.

“...apologies for... had to... just in case... glad to... could make it. You should... trace this transmission. Come on and... a deal.”

“Can you get a source from that?” Calvin asked.

The Shimmer tilted her head to the left in a nod. “Yes, patron.” She put it up on the main screen; it was coming from a point a few AU outside a dense chunk of asteroid and comet fragments.

“Well then,”  Caitlin said, plunking herself back down. “Let’s get this done. Helm, take us in.”

~

As they approached the source, a thoughtful frown appeared on Calvin’s face. Caitlin leaned over. “What is it?”

“Cousin must be running completely dark,” he told her. “The transmission came from open space, but I don’t see anything.” Comms hadn’t been able to clean up the message; it was just as fragmented now as when they’d received it. He tapped a couple fingers on the end of his right armrest.

“Maybe someone was after him,” Caitlin guessed, but that didn’t feel right. There was nobody else here. Maybe Breclinson thought someone had pulled his vector and he was just being paranoid? She would have thought this could be a trap, but their rendezvous was well away from any celestial terrain and even a ship under emissions control couldn’t hide forever.

A cloaked ship?That was possible, but no one had cloaks. No one but the Space Force and they wouldn’t need to lure Sky Spider in. They’d be the ones creeping up on the raider until they could surprise it.

Tap-tap-tap.“Maybe.”

“Scopes,” Caitlin said. “Anything?”

“Nothing at all, matron. Just lots of rock around a cold lump of gas.”

“Ten minutes to rendezvous,” Helm reported.

“Comms,” Calvin told her. “Hail our cousin. Get him to confirm his location.”

“Yes, patron. One moment. Signal sent.” Seconds passed, the moments and then:

“Leaders – new signal from cousin,”  Yanloladaughter noted.

“Put it up,” Caitlin ordered.

The other Shimmer’s smiling face appeared back on the main viewscreen. The transmission was cleaner this time, but still static-edged. “Scopes thought they saw something out there,” he told them. “We had to move. Sorry. Didn’t want to send a message and risk alerting them. Follow our point source. We’re orbiting the largest chunk of debris.”

Calvin turned in his chair. Scopes already knew what he was going to ask. “There’s nothing out there that we can see,” the officer reported. “His ship might have better augurs.”

“I doubt it,” Calvin commented. Sky Spider was a top of the line corvette. Breclinson didn’t even have a fleet, just some local traders who didn’t mind working fringe jobs. “If he’s seeing anything we aren’t, it’s because his augurs are glitchy.”

“He’s glitchy,” Caitlin complained. “He doesn’t usually jump at shadows. He’s-”

“-been spooked,” her brother agreed. “It’s nothing on our end, so he must have let a coin drop somewhere.” He paused, thinking. This felt off, but he couldn’t justify backing out just because of some heebie-jeebies. Father was counting on them. Worse, if they scratched this run over nothing, it would prove everyone who said Broken weren’t fit to command ships right. “Helm, let’s head in. Scopes?”

“I think I see something at the coordinates. Hard to make it out. Too dark for good visuals and there’s not a lot of signal leakage. He’s running pretty cold.”

“Spooked is right,” Calvin mused. Caitlin could practically feel the wheels turning in her brother’s head. She could feel his unease as if it were her own.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t know what. This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve made a rendezvous with someone feeling twitchy. That’s-”

“-been something we’ve done, too.” Caution kept you alive in the fringe. Caitlin’s instincts told her to barge in there and see what Breclinson was playing at. If there was some kind of problem he’d stirred up that might come back to bite her and the family in the ass, they’d need to know. This felt to her like their ‘cousin’ was trying to cover his ass. Calvin’s blood was a lot colder. He preferred to be the quiet, thoughtful one in the corner, gathering as much data as he before he committed to any decisions. He’d kept her from running off half-cocked as often as she’d kept him from spending too much time on analysis instead of action. Okay, probably a few times more. Maybe.“You think he’s baiting us?”

“Maybe, but it doesn’t make any sense. He’s worked with the family long enough to know father wouldn’t send anything too big out for a couple tonnes of pharm samples. My ego’s not big enough to think we’re a prize worth hooking, so he’s either spooked or...”

“...or?”

Calvin was quiet a moment. On the scope display, the contact marker denoting Breclinson’s ship disappeared. He’d circled behind the asteroid. “Comms,” he said. “Hail our cousin.”

“Yes, patron.”

A moment passed. “Response coming in.”

Calvin nodded. Again, it went up on the main screen. “What’s going on, Sky Spider?” Breclinson asked. “Did you want to meet up, or talk all day?”

“I just wanted to confirm your status. You said you saw something, but there’s nothing on our scopes.”

“Must have been a glitch on our end, then. Come around the asteroid and we’ll get this done.”

“You can hold position. We’re almost there.”

“No need for an engine burn. You’re already under thrust. You come around.”

Calvin raised his index and middle finger off his armrest and tapped them back down. “You’re sure everything’s all right?”

“Yeah, just some dry bones I guess. Happens if you’re in the business long enough, I suppose. Didn’t mean to put you out. Come around the asteroid. Time’s a-wasting.”

“We’re on our way. Can you tell me what’s been going on? You’re not usually this cautious. The Family’s been doing business with you for a long time so if there’s something off-kilter, we should know.”

“It’s nothing you need to worry about. Do you want this deal or not, boy?”

“You know we do. That’s why we’re here.”

“Then come around the asteroid and we’ll get it sorted.”

Tap-tap-tap. “What ship are you running?” Calvin pressed. “That’s old Themkul’s Abh Hurruk, is it? I didn’t think that old scow was still spaceworthy.” Caitlin tilted her head in confusion.

“It’s still spaceworthy,” Breclinson confirmed. “Are you coming around?”

“We are,” Calvin said as he rose from his throne, walking down to the Helm officer’s station. “Just inputting the course now. Look forward to getting the samples from you and Themkul. Sky Spider, clear.” As soon as the transmission cut, he put a hand on the helm officer’s shoulder. “Flip us,” he ordered. “Right now. Hard burn, full delta-v, put us on a least-time to the shock limit. Push the engines to orange. Don’t slow, don’t stop. Navigation, I want us ready to shock the instant our tail feathers cross the line. Take us back to Polloi.”

“What’s going on?” Caitlin demanded as she buckled herself in, as the warning for an imminent high-energy turn blared throughout the ship. “What was that about Themkul? He’s been retired for two years-”

“-and he’d never name anything of his after his ex-wife,” Calvin said as he anchored himself in. “Themkul worked with Breclinson for seven years. He’d know all of that. That’s not Breclinson.” His voice grew quiet. “That’s not even Compact.” If they were following the Shimmer at all – and they had to be – then they’d also know that Themkul was out of the game.

“Then who is it?” she demanded as Sky Spider cut thrust, flipped end-for-end and its engines slammed back to full power. It was like being kicked in the back by a Mule. Calvin mumbled something. “What?” Caitlin asked as the pressure in her head cleared and the corvette streaked away from the meeting.

“Don’t listen to the songs,” he repeated.

Blood drained from Caitlin’s face. “No.” Those were just rumours. Wild stories. Gossip. Nighttime tales. Not real. “You’re not serious. We didn’t just drop a mission because of-”

“Transmissions from ships you can’t see,” he told her. “Conversations with people that aren’t quite right. What does that sound like?”

“That sounds like...” Like what we just went through. She still couldn’t bring herself to say it or even admit it. Father wouldn’t buy it, either. Breclinson was compromised, that was it. This had been his way of signalling them and letting them know that someone – maybe the Compact, maybe some rival cartel – was trying to lure them in. She told her brother as much.

“Sure,” he agreed without conviction. “That’s probably it.”

Neither of them talked about the last transmission they got from Breclinson, smiling and frozen on the screen like a silicon mask. “Come back,” the Shimmer-that-wasn’t-a-Shimmer said. “Come back around. I have something for you.”

Father was disappointed the deal fell through, but after hearing his childrens’ reasoning, he agreed that it most likely had been a trap. A few weeks later, when Breclinson’s disappearance was confirmed only solidified that opinion. The Compact had probably rumbled the Shimmer and he’d been pressured to bring in some extra heads. When the plan failed, he was thrown in prison. Sad, but that was how business went.

There was no talk of songs or what had sent them, Sky Spider’s crew knowing enough to keep their heads down and the twins’ wise enough not to bring the idea up to Jivek. Calvin, because he knew their father wouldn’t believe him and Caitlin because she didn’t want her brother to get in trouble. Sussing out a trap was worthy of commendation; becoming spooked by ghost stories meant punishment.

So they kept it between themselves, Calvin convinced that that was what happened and Caitlin just as sure that Breclinson had just been bait in someone else’s game and they never spoke of it.

Until the second encounter.