Nyakkat (Patreon)

I tried writing a Nyakkat romance for @Dan Huber, but it didn't quite work out that way...

Note that her name most certainly wasn't Nyakkat, but I didn't want to confuse the scene by working in her alias, so I've called her Nyakkat throughout.

———

Agitated, Nyakkat watched while her boyfriend spoke with the pirates. “You have the deployments for us, nah?” asked the furry alien on the video screen. He had so many golden adornments in each ear that it was a wonder he could lift the stupid skin flaps.

“Of course,” laughed the blue krakun. “I uploaded them personally to the escrow service myself. They’re just waiting on our payment before they’ll release the data to you.”

“No one ever said anything about escrow,” the ringel sneered. “I hate paying escrow fees.”

“And I hate…”—he turned and winked at Nyakkat—“providing what I promised but then getting screwed out of my payment. We did the work—”

“I did the work,” muttered Nyakkat.

“And the escrow company has verified that we’ve provided what you asked for,” he continued, “so wire the damned golds as you promised, and we can all celebrate a job well done.”

Onscreen, the pirate glared for many long seconds. Eventually, he nodded. “Very well. Your fee is exorbitant for such a simple grift, but when this deal concludes, I’ll have so many golds that I won’t know how to spend them all.” He pressed a button off-screen and a blue message from the escrow company appeared below the ringel’s face. “Enjoy.”

“I will,” said the krakun with a smile. “And when your payday comes in, don’t hesitate to call me back. Nyakkat and I can be very helpful with suggestions of where to spend your money, I assure you!”

“Oh, I’m sure,” said the alien before the call disconnected.

Catravoyans turned and grinned at his girlfriend. “Paid in full.” He wriggled on her bed for a moment, getting more comfortable, then slapped his claws down on his lap. “Get that gorgeous body of yours down on top of me, and let’s celebrate!”

She shook her head. “I can’t tonight. Not in the mood.”

He glared at her a moment. “You’re getting soft.”

“No, I’m not,” she said, matter-of-factly, “and I’ll never be ‘soft’, but I’m still not in the mood.”

The gorgeous male sighed as he sat up. “Well, at least go out drinking with me,” he said. “We have to do something to celebrate!”

“We will, but not tonight,” she said, kissing his cheek. “Tomorrow, I promise.”

When he left, Nyakkat locked the door, barred the windows, and opened the outer airlock to her cleaning crew’s quarters so they wouldn’t be able to leave. She locked herself in her bedroom, moved a heavy chair so it would block the door, scanned the room for surveillance bugs twice, enabled a randomly-selected mix of surveillance countermeasures, and peeled back the floorboards to expose a hidden safe.

She entered a one hundred and thirty-five digit passcode, opened the safe, and removed a memory card from a secret panel concealed in the safe’s wall. Then, she scoured the memory in her computer tablet, reset it to factory defaults, and checked a hash across the memory contents before inserting the memory stick into the slot.

Then, she peeled off all seven layers of encryption before the underlying application was finally revealed. She double-clicked the icon, and the AI’s computer-generated face appeared on-screen, as if he was accepting her call.

“How long have I been out?” he demanded.

“What do you care?” she huffed. Then, she laid back in her bed and propped the tablet up on her knee.

“I do care,” the program insisted. “And if you were trapped inside a computer and shut off for years at a stretch, you’d care too.”

“Whatever,” huffed Nyakkat, refusing to look at the black krakun’s face. “Are you going to help me, or do I shut you down again?”

“No, no, please,” the AI sighed, “tell me about today’s existential crisis.”

“Who said I was having a crisis?”

“Of course, you are,” said the generated voice. “You loaded me up with every psychology text you could find, you hid me away, and you only pull me out when you’re in crisis. I’ve told you, the proper way to heal is to talk to someone every day, not to wait until you feel like breaking—”

“Do you want to help me or not?” she demanded.

“Of course, I want to help,” he sighed. “What’s got you feeling so bad?”

Nyakkat frowned. “It’s this latest grift.”

“What was different about this one?” asked the AI.

She picked at her carefully lacquered claws. “The guy, I guess.”

The krakun on-screen blinked. “You … fell in love with a mark?”

“No!” she shouted almost loud enough to carry past her electronic eavesdropping countermeasures. Nyakkat lowered her voice. “No, I don’t love him, but…”

When the words stopped coming, the AI prompted her. “But?”

“But I feel bad about scamming him, okay?”

“That’s … actually a very healthy reaction,” said the AI. “This is a good thing. You should feel this way whenever you hurt someone.”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“But you usually don’t,” he added. “So, why this time?”

“Because this guy didn’t deserve to be grifted.”

“But yet…”

“But I got paid to target this guy, and I needed the money,” she explained.

“Okay, I’m not judging,” said the AI. “Let me guess … handsome guy, kind, considerate—”

“No,” laughed Nyakkat. “Ugly, grumpy, pathetic.”

The illicit program waited patiently.

“But his life was shit. Sarsuk didn’t deserve to have it destroyed.”

“Not like the others,” he said.

“Right,” she agreed unironically. “Rich guys, jerks, guys trying to get a big windfall that they didn’t earn… Those guys deserve whatever happens to them.”

“So, you didn’t promise this Sarsuk guy any…”

“I didn’t have to,” said Nyakkat. “He fell in love with me. He’d have done anything I asked.”

“And you feel bad using that to manipulate him?”

“Not really,” she admitted, “but he wasn’t like the others. He was just a poor schmuck that nothing ever went right for, and I tricked him into stealing some data for me.”

“And you feel bad that you got him in trouble?”

She sucked in a breath and blew it toward the ceiling. “I shouldn’t. I mean, it wasn’t really important data. It was just the deployments of slave ships. Who gives a shit? I figured he’d get caught, maybe lose his job. I wouldn’t have given that a second thought.”

“It wouldn’t have bothered you if he lost his job?”

Nyakkat shook her head. “Sarsuk hated that job. Hardship or not, best thing anyone could do for him would be to lose him his job.”

“But that’s not what happened?”

She shook her head and covered her eyes with her claws. He waited patiently. “Like I said, he hated that job,” explained Nyakkat, “hated his boss—and she knew it. He never even tried to hide how much he hated her.”

“So, what happened?” asked the AI.

“I guess she must have convinced someone important that the data was actually important. Instead of getting him in hot water or getting him fired, she got him arrested.”

“You’ve gotten marks arrested before,” he reminded.

“Well, yeah,” she said, “gets you time to escape and cover the trail, but he got the works—arrested, convicted, sentenced to death.”

“Wow,” gasped the AI, “that is a pretty far cry from losing his job.”

“Yeah, I know.” She chewed on her lower lip for a moment. “Some guys, that might not bother me—the jerks, the guys trying to steal a fortune. It’s harsh, sure, but this guy didn’t deserve it.”

“That really stinks,” said the AI. “I can see why this is bothering you. Is there anything you can do?”

She glared at the screen. “I’m a grifter, not a superhero. I can’t break him out of death row.”

“No, I mean, what about an anonymous tip proving he didn’t do it?”

She stared at the ceiling. “Nothing that wouldn’t swap his execution for mine,” she said. “The data shouldn’t have been a big deal, but since they decided it was, there’s no way I’m risking getting caught.”

“And so, you’re just stuck here feeling bad.”

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

“Well, I think you did the right thing.”

Nyakkat raised one brow. “I did?”

“Yeah, booting me up,” he said. “I think we should talk every day for a while. This is a lot to process, and I think it would do a lot of good for you to air out your feelings as they come to the surface.”

She nodded. “Same time tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here,” said the AI as she shut him down.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1omYCjX0q3dHDSlOSdsG0ER7ZhKsGirCtzOnDg56bxhc/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?