Before The Storm - Ch. 10 (Patreon)

Chapter Ten

The planet was only a couple of ring jumps away, but it might as well have been like traveling back in time, Sketch thought, considering just how primitive and backwater the planet they were going to was. It wasn’t as though they didn’t know about technology; it was that they refused to use it voluntarily, for what they claimed were religious reasons. They didn’t have a problem with people bringing them food, building them shelter or even providing them protection, but they weren’t allowed to travel off-world, they weren’t allowed to accept medical help, they weren’t allowed to use technology themselves and they certainly weren’t allowed to do anything that went against all the obscure, arcane and, frankly, ridiculous religious precepts they clung to.

The planet was called Jeratine, the religion was called Exovitism and the practitioners were among the stupidest people Sketch had ever been forced to deal with.

He’d been to this planet once before and had sworn he wouldn’t come back unless it was for an exceptionally good cause.

Cola was lucky Sketch had a soft spot in his heart for unwed mothers.

Pertixi was a young woman who belonged to the Exovites, and her husband had died in a farming accident a month before the wedding. As it turned out, Pertixi and her late fiancé weren’t so good of Exovites that they had followed the rule banning premarital sex, and when Pertixi’s husband-to-be had been heavily wounded, because they forbid ‘outsider medicine,’ he had died and left Pertixi alone, and with an in-utero child.

Cola had sent word that Pertixi hadn’t been born into the Exovites, but had converted when she’d come of age, having gone to study them as part of her university studies and having fallen in love with Dwaliet, her late partner. And Pertixi had sent word to her sister via an actual physical letter that had arrived a few weeks after she’d sent it, begging her sister to find a solution for her predicament.

That solution had led her to Cola which had led her to Sketch.

“I fucking hate this rock,” Sketch grumbled from his captain’s chair. It felt strange being sat there, since until recently he’d always just been over in the pilot’s seat most of the time, the seat Lara now currently sat in.

“You’ve been to Jeratine before?” Lara asked. “You don’t strike me as the religious type.” The two of them were the only ones on the bridge at the moment, so they’d been making small chat on and off for the last few hours.

“I’m not, but their coin spends as good as anyone else’s,” Sketch sighed. “And last time I didn’t really have a choice. It was very early on in my career working for Jez’s mom, and I didn’t really have the luxury to say no to gigs that I didn’t like. And it was shipping them food, so it didn’t really even feel much like smuggling,” he laughed. “But as it turns out, it was, because there was a trade embargo on at the time forbidding anyone from bringing food onto the planet. The local government had said something that had pissed off the local Starless Dominion constable, and as such, she’d decided to let them have a year without getting food imports, to ‘teach them some manners.’”

“Fuckin’ hell, Sketch,” Lara laughed. “How’d you get past that one?”

“Argued I was returning a thousand reams of fabric that they hadn’t screened for pervasive infestations before giving it to me, so I was returning the fabric and demanding a replacement,” Sketch said. “The fact that I was basically leaving with nearly the same weight I arrived with delighted the constable, although she demanded to see the textiles on the way out, so thankfully I had set up about a dozen reams to form a false wall, and that was good enough. Had she wanted to really get in there and count them all, I’d have been fucked, but nobody wants to do ten hours of work when two minutes is good enough 95% of the time. That’s one of the ground rules of how us smugglers get things where we want to take them.”

“Think that’ll buy you any good will with the local harbormaster?”

“Not really,” Sketch said. “They nearly tried to run me off the planet in the middle of my delivery. It’s one of the reasons I stopped doing in person hand offs for a long while.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Kid, barely in his teens, was coughing constantly while they were unloading the food, so I gave him a jab of nanocells, nothing permanent, just enough to clear up the case of tuberculosis that he’d picked up and likely was going to be spreading to the rest of the colony,” Sketch said. “Thought I did it quick enough that nobody would’ve seen me, but the guy in charge of the parish did, and he threatened to kill the boy unless I undid what I’d just done to him.”

“How do you undo fixing someone?” Lara asked him.

“Truthfully? You don’t. But you can convince someone who doesn’t know shit about tech that you did,” Sketch said with a chuckle. “I gave the kid a placebo pill, told them it would nullify the medicine I’d injected him with, and they were none the wiser. I was told if I ever set foot on their planet again, I would be greeted with ‘open hostilities.’”

“And we’re still going back there?”

“They didn’t mean it, or at least we better hope they didn’t,” Sketch laughed. “Of course, the turnover for parish leaders there is so constant, we could be on that guy’s fifth replacement by now. Anyway, even if he’s still angry, I’ll figure it out and find a way to get him to back down.”

“I gotta ask you, while it’s just the two of us here, boss,” Lara said to him, “you’re really involved with them both sexually? Even the Princess?”

Sketch shrugged slightly. “My Storm abilities were out of control until recently. That figures into it, some. The Princess hit on me first, and then we picked up Aliara, who used to be part of the royal guard, when she was on border patrol and Serena basically pushed me into using my abilities on her. And then Aliara renounced her place among the Starless Dominion, faked her own death and joined my crew.”

“So if you’re captain, I’m pilot, Jez is doctor, Aliara’s muscle, what job does the Princess fill?”

“Cock holster,” Serena said bawdily as she walked onto the bridge. “If Sketch wants someone to fuck, I should always be his first choice. I’m a better fuck than anyone else on this damn boat anyway.”

“She’s certainly the most confident, anyway,” Sketch said.

“Who was having trouble walking this morning?” Serena asked as Sketch turned his head to shoot her a confused look. “Okay, fair, we both were, but I very much had a hand in that!”

“I don’t think it was your hand that was getting the most use there, your majesty,” Aliara said as she moved onto the bridge to join them. “Or did you forget I was spectating for much of it?”

“Only spectating!” Serena stressed, mostly for Lara’s benefit. “I got my man off the hard way, with blood, sweat and tears!”

“I dispute two of those three claims,” the P’nox laughed. “But I will allow the sweat claim to stand.”

“You’re way less fun than I thought you would be, Aliara,” Serena said as she moved to sit in one of the open chairs on the bridge.

“Only when you aren’t allowing me to do more than spectate, your Highness,” Aliara said smugly.

“I can’t believe you turned the Princess O’Quincy into a slut,” Jez said as she walked onto the bridge, the last to arrive for the meeting.

“Turned me into?” Serena said, glaring at the slightly older woman. “I’ll have you know that nobody makes me do anything I don’t want to do.”

“Technically that isn’t true,” Helen’s voice said from all around them, “as Sketch’s Storm abilities were definitely affecting you when you arrived on board the ship.”

“But they haven’t been for a while now, Helen,” Serena countered.

“Approximately three weeks,” Helen offered by way of retort.

“That might as well be a lifetime in our business,” Serena snorted.

“Look at you, adopting the role of the smuggler so quickly, your highness,” Lara chuckled.

“Adapt or die.”

“Death isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be,” Sketch said, reinserting himself to the conversation. “Take it from someone who spent several lifetimes basically dead.”

“So, what is the story with that, Sketch?” Jez asked.

“I’ll tell it to you another time,” he said. “For now, we need to concentrate on the mission. We’re only a couple of hours away from Jeratine and I would much rather have a plan going into this than just trying to stumble our way through it.”

“Stumbling our way through things seems to be our standard operating procedure, Cap’n,” Aliara said with a grin. At first, Sketch had thought the change from Y’bari to P’nox was going to be mostly a cosmetic thing, but it turned out that the longer Aliara had been loose from the yoke of her oppressive masters in the Starless Dominion, the more swaggery she had become. The new attitude had a certain appeal to it, but also gave him cause for concern. The last thing he wanted was twitchy muscle operating in his defense. Maybe he would be able to help calm her down, or, better still, maybe she would only get that way when dealing with Serena, because the Princess was a shipload of mischief in a bag a hundred times too small.

“So maybe let’s try something else for a change,” Sketch said. “You know, just to try it on, see if we’re feeling it or not.”

“Tell you what I’m feeling,” Serena said, “and that’s bowlegged.”

“Enough, Serena,” Sketch said.

“That’s what I was saying last night, but…”

“One more sexual innuendo before this briefing’s done, Serena, and I’ll make you spend the next two weeks watching me enjoy Aliara while you’reall tied up.”

“That actually sounds kinda fucking hot,” Lara said with a laugh, leaning back in her pilot’s chair, folding her hands behind her head.

“Don’t you start,” Sketch sighed. “One sex addict on this boat’s enough. Right. The mission. We need to get onto Jeratine, get a woman from there back to our ship without anyone knowing we’re doing that, get the ship off planet and over to neighboring Reltbex, help her deliver the baby, then get her back onto Jeratine, then get off with nobody noticing anything changed the whole time.”

“How the hell does no one notice she’s pregnant, Captain?” Jez asked, and rightfully so.

“That part we don’t have to worry about,” Sketch said. “She’s technically been in quarantine for the last three months, passing it off as her fighting off an infectious disease.”

“How do they not know that’s bullshit?” Serena asked.

“Medicine’s not allowed on the planet, so they tend to be pretty jumpy and superstitious,” Sketch said. “Someone says they’re sick, everyone else is happy to stay away and let you either get better or die.”

“Real loving bunch of folks, these people,” Serena grumbled.

“Look, you don’t have to tell me twice,” Sketch sighed. “I happen to agree with you, but at this point, it’s a problem we don’t have to solve for, and I’m willing to look at any of those as a blessing rather than a curse, how about you?”

“Yeah, okay Boss,” Aliara said. “So we just need to get her to and from the ship twice without anyone seeing her. That doesn’t sound all that difficult.”

“They aren’t going to let us bring a vehicle inside of the town’s borders.”

“Now you’re upping the level of difficulty.”

“Wouldn’t be fun if there wasn’t a challenge involved,” Sketch said with a grin.

“You could try an Uncle Istvaan?” Helen suggested.

“Nah,” Sketch sighed. “They’d only be suspicious about any wooden construction we made.”

“A Rubber Daisy?”

“They don’t care about foreigners dying.”

“A Left-Handed Spanner Wrench?”

“Again, Helen, technologically impaired people.”

“Trading Places?”

“We’re doing that anyway,” Sketch said. “It still doesn’t get her to or from the ship.”

“Ooo! Long Lost Cousin Harriet!” the AI suggested, clearly enjoying running through her list of tricks Sketch had used on other jobs.

“That’ll get us to and from the ship, so I suppose that’s a start.”

“What if the will had to be read in person at a certain location?”

“No, they still aren’t going to let us take her off planet.”

“You’re missing it, boss,” Helen said patiently. “Like, it had to be done under a full moon on a mountain top or something equally ridiculous.”

“Okay, alright, I like it. I can work with that. That’ll get her out of the house under cover, especially if we’re using pack animals to move around, saying we have a good distance to travel.”

“You said these people are technologically unsophisticated, right boss?” Aliara asked, interrupting the back-and-forth Sketch and Helen had been doing.

“Sure, why?”

“Couldn’t you just use an optical projector?”

There was a very long moment where Sketch was silent before he spoke again. “Huh.” He was silent another minute or two. “We have one with the visual acuity to fool the naked human eye?”

“If you don’t have one on the ship, I’ve got one on my dart,” Aliara volunteered. “It should do the job.”

“Won’t we need two?”

“Not if we stop by the ship ‘for supplies,’ before we sent ‘our recipient’ out to the mountain top or something.”

“And, what, I leave you and Serena behind to wear the masquerade?”

“Maybe just Serena?”

“No,” Sketch sighed. “I’m not leaving one of my crew behind alone. It’s the two of you, or it’s one of you and Lara, and I fly the ship, but that defeats the purpose of this being a trial run for both Lara and Jez.”

“You’re going to need me on board in case the woman goes into labor mid transport,” Jez said. “Unless any of you have experience in delivering a baby.” She waited for the silence and got it. “Great. So, Serena and Aliara remain behind for a few days giving them the runaround while we’re taking the woman to another planet. Which planet are we going to?”

“Elkin,” Sketch said.

“Oof,” Lara grumbled.

“Problem?”

“They’re not fond of me on Elkin.”

“Then don’t get off the goddamn boat.”

“Yeah, okay boss.”

“Why aren’t they fond of you on Elkin?”

“I may have slept with the mayor’s daughter.”

“Was she an adult at the time?”

“It was on the night before her wedding. I thought she was just any other piece of ass in the bar. I was in town for one night. What are the odds I’d pick up the one person I shouldn’t?”

Sketch inhaled a deep breath and then very slowly let it out. “You’re killing me, the lot of you. Not one of you understands the definition of the word ‘low-profile’ do you?”

“Low-profile: to remain—” the ship’s AI began to read out.

“Thank you, Helen. That’ll do for now.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“The target’s sister is waiting over on Elkin, and she’ll take possession of the child once it’s delivered, and then we’ll return the target back to where we took her from, retrieve our people and Bob’s your uncle, mission complete.”

“Shall I repeat your longstanding note about claiming missions are easy before they’re done to you once more, Captain?”

“No need, Helen.”

“If you say so, Captain.”

“Jez, how long do we need to wait after she gives birth to relocate her back to where we got her?”

“A day or two would be best, but if time’s absolutely of the essence, we can get by with half a day. If her time table is about what you say it is, I can induce labor mid route to Elkin. We could probably even have her give birth en route if that’s helpful. Is time really that much a priority?”

“The longer Serena and Aliara are running the smokeshow, the more likely it is someone’s going to come in and test the resilience of that cover story, and it won’t hold for shit if someone wants to actually talk to someone who’s off planet. You see my concern?”

“Roger, Captain.”

“Well,” Lara chuckled, “just don’t talk to anyone while you’re down there.”

“That won’t exactly be up to us,” Aliara replied.

“Good lord, Sketch,” Serena grumbled. “This feels more like a test of us than it does of them.”

“Not at all,” Sketch countered. “I already trust you and Aliara. That’s why I’m leaving you two by yourselves for a bit. I don’t trust these two yet.”

“I’m a little annoyed by that remark,” Jez said.

Sketch glared at her for a second. “Helen, how many times has Jezebel counted our carabel supplies?”

“Since her arrival? Twelve, captain.”

“I retract my annoyance,” Jez muttered. “But all I’ve done is counted.”

“I know,” Sketch said. “Because the minute you do anything more than that, Helen’s going to let me know, and then I’m going to consider how long you went in between doses, and whether or not that constitutes an ‘addiction.’”

“You’re not a doctor, Sketch.”

“No, but I am the fucking captain of this ship, and right now, you need me way more than I need you.” He hadn’t originally intended to be so blunt and direct, but he wanted to make sure the hierarchy was established well in advance, and if that meant he had to be a little dickish about it, so be it.

“Understood, Captain.” The last word had more sarcasm inflected on it than Sketch would’ve liked, but he decided to let it slide. “I can make half a day work if you’re worried about Serena and Aliara’s time on Jeratine. Induce en route, birth on the way, drop off the newborn and we’re on our way back, Bob’s your uncle.”

“Good,” Sketch said. “Do that. That’s the plan. Any questions?” Serena put her hand up, so Sketch pointed at her. “Yes, Princess?”

“Any tips on how we avoid getting our asses into trouble while we’re skirting around Jeratine?”

“Sure,” he said. “Pick someplace distant, remote, and keep constantly moving. They’re going to expect that since one of you is pretending to be a sick woman that you’re going to be dragging ass, moving slow, but all the information we have on Pertixi is that she’s highly capable and self-reliant, and that she isn’t going to be slowed down by anything. So make it look like it, otherwise they’re going to know something’s up.”

“Great, a couple of days hard backpacking,” Aliara chuckles. “It’ll be good for you, Princess.”

“Fuck you,” Serena grumbled. “But fine, we’ll sell our end of the cover.”

A few hours later, the ship was in orbit around Jeratine as the comms sprung to life and an unwelcome familiar face appeared in the holo projection before him. “Sketch, I thought I told you that you were not welcome on my planet anymore,” Nikolai said to him.

“And as I recall, Nikolai, I told you that while you probably ruled the parish, you couldn’t rule the whole planet,” Sketch said with a little laugh. “Besides, you’re in violation of Exovite laws by using a holoprojector, so clearly you’re not in charge of the parish now.”

“No, what I am is still the harbormaster, a position that is now permitted by Exovite law to use communications and regulatory technology in order to keep people from bringing things on or taking things off our planet when we don’t want them to.” Nikolai said to them. “Things like you.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got a will I’m delivering,” Sketch said, “and as far as I know, you guys stopping mail delivery would result in getting a few Starless Dominion ships in orbit around here so fast your head would spin. So if you want to, I can—”

“I need the Starless Dominion in my orbit like I need a boil on my dick,” Nikolia sighed. “Who’s the will for?”

“Pertixi Duntin. Her uncle died.”

Nikolia looked down and clicked his tongue. “Shit. That girl’s had a hell of a time. Is it an easy will or does it have complications?”

“The Uncle was a Finninite, so it requires being read in a specific type of place and a specific moon phase, but relax, Nikolai,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m just going to leave my P’nox associate here to take Pertixi to the place for the reading of the will while I’m off running another errand. Then I’ll come back and pick her up a few days later. I’ll be on your planet two hours tops each time.”

“You going to follow the rules this time?”

Sketch raised his hands. “Relax. No meds, no artificial transportation. We can even ride a couple of those damn lizards to and from the woman’s house.”

“They’re called stevirds, and they’re faster than like 60% of the ground transports that the Starless Dominion uses.”

“Whatever, Nikolai. We’ll follow your rules.”

There was a long pause but moments later, docking coordinates popped up at Lara’s terminal. “You’re cleared to land, Praeteritus, but you best pray if you’re trying to fuck me again that you don’t get caught, because I will fucking ruin you if you are.”

They landed half an hour later, and Lara agreed to wait at the ship while Sketch, Serena, Aliara and Jezebel climbed atop the oversized geckos called stevirds that the Exovites used to get around. Jez had been told not to bring her med kit with her, despite her wanting to have at least something just in case there were complications with Pertixi’s pregnancy.

The ride was only about twenty minutes, although it certainly did take them outside of the main settlement. They were stared at a lot, mostly because of Aliara, the Exovites not accustomed to seeing either Y’bari or P’Nox riding through their village, with or without their Starless Dominion masters. That meant there were people pointing and gossiping, almost afraid they were an invading force.

All the buildings were basically held together with spit and twine, no tech used beyond their initial construction, which was done for them, and they had been forced to do all repairs with as little as possible. The people were wearing clothes that had been worn a few years too long, in desperate need of patches, if not outright replacement.

Most of the town was fairly close to each other, the buildings usually built only a few dozen paces apart from another, as if they drew strength from their numbers and hoped it would be enough to protect them against their attacker’s aggression, even though the planet was under Starless Dominion oversight, and invaders were a near impossibility.

Not the building they were looking for, though, oh no. It was beyond the outskirts of town, halfway up the side of the nearest mountain, and despite the fact that they were travelling on stevirds, the lizards had to be careful to weave and dodge between the thick tree foliage, no real path having been blazed up the mountain towards the cottage.

The cottage on the mountainside looked like it was bordering on heretical. The construction materials used were still basic wood, brick and mortar, but Sketch could see the concrete holding the wood and stone together looked a little too refined to have been done with Exovite techniques, and wondered if because the cabin was built so far away, that was why nobody had noticed that it didn’t strictly adhere to their rules.

As the stevirds pulled up outside of the cabin, a rifle blast emanated from one of the windows and picked off some wood just off to the left of Sketch. “Hold it right there, trespassers!” a voice shouted from inside of the cabin. “I got no idea who you are or what you want, but I don’t need it, I don’t want it, and—”

“Your sister, Loanaxa, sent us,” Sketch yelled back and then patiently waited.

It felt like a very long time, although it probably wasn’t that long.

Probably.

The front door opened but no one stepped out. “You, male. You come in alone.” The voice said.

“I don’t like it, boss,” Aliara said. “Maybe I should—”

“Just be cool, Aliara,” Sketch said. “We can handle this just fine.” He slowly climbed down off the stevird, tossing the reins of it to Serena, as he began to slowly walk towards the cabin. If things got truly out of hand, he could just start broadcasting calm at the woman, and defuse the whole situation, but for the moment, he wanted to just hold at talking. “She got your message, Pertixi, and that’s why we’re here, to help you with your issue.”

Each step brought him closer towards the open door and finally he stepped up the two stairs and then entered the house, his eyes having to adjust to the sudden change in lightning, as the inside of the home seemed like it was being kept quite dark. Once inside, he let his eyes do a preliminary sweep of the place for threats and hazards, but for the most part it was just a nicely decorated cabin with well-crafted furniture and decorative art. But over by the window was a tiny, very pregnant woman, not even five foot tall, but swollen in the belly to the point where it would be impossible to conceal it. Her brown hair was braided up in rings around the top of her head, but the braids looked like they were starting to lose coherence. She was dressed in a gingham dress that hung loosely over her very swollen belly, and she hadn’t taken her rifle off him yet. “You said my sister sent you. That means you’ll know the code phrase.”

“Right, it’s uh, uh… Barney Appalachia.”

Pertixi sighed, lowered the gun barrel. “Thank fuck,” she grumbled. “Tell me you’re here to get me out of here?”

“That’s the plan,” Sketch said. “Get you off this rock, over to meet up with your sister, deliver your baby, then get you back here without anyone any wiser.”

Pertixi looked at him, as if she wanted to say something, but the words passed unsaid, as she set down the rifle. “How’re you going to do that?”

“Optics projector’s going to make you look like a member of my crew, and make a member of my crew look like you,” he said. “We’ll use it to make you look unpregnant first. You’ll ride back with us to the ship, take off, and then we’ll come back a day or two later.”

“You think the folks in town will believe it?”

“As long as nobody attempts to touch us, it’ll be fine,” Sketch said. “Hopefully you can still ride?”

“’Course I can still ride,” Pertixi said to him. She certainly was rugged and frontiers-y, with a certain level of swagger that Sketch had to admire. “Long as this child doesn’t start to make its way out on our trip. I can only give you an estimate of my due date, but I suspect I’m already a day or two past it, so if you don’t mind, can we be going instead of yammering?”

“Yes ma’am.” He helped her grab a bag with her things, walking with her outside of the place, as Aliara was fiddling with the projectors. He moved over to stand next to her, his voice quiet, the conversation just between the two of them.  “We just about ready?”

“I’ll need a minute or so to change our vidcopy of her,” Aliara said, gesturing toward Pertixi, “unless you want everyone knowing she’s with child.”

“That sort of defeats the whole point, don’t you think?”

“That was my line of thinking, Boss.”

“You know, you’ve gotten real mouthy since you’ve changed from Y’bari to P’nox, Aliara,” Sketch chuckled.

“Sure, because you like me mouthy, boss,” Aliara said with a smirk. “You can try and hide it from the others, but when I got bonded to your genetic template, I started getting slowly morphed bit by bit into your ideal fuck partner.” She adjusted a dial on the projector, and Serena’s image turned into an exact match of Pertixi. “And you fuckin’ love a sweary woman, boss, so better get the fuck used to this, because I know that it turns you on, which makes you happy, and I’m going to do everything I can to make you happy any chance I get now that I’m your bonded bitch.” She tapped the dial and gave it a couple more spins, and the image of Pertixi around Serena morphed to lose the swollen belly.

“I’m sorry about tha—”

Aliara grabbed him by the back of his neck and pulled him into a firm kiss, her not letting him draw back for a good moment before she felt like she’d made her point. “Look, boss. I know it’s weird. I get it, okay? But you need to understand, I’m happy. Happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. Because before I met you, I wasn’t allowed to be happy. I physically couldn’t be. And yeah, bonding with you has a couple of weird side effects that I didn’t fucking expect, but I can actually feel now, and I accept that this is the cost for that. So don’t be gone too long, because the Princess and I don’t like being away from you whenever we can help it. Makes us fucking anxious the longer you’re away from us. We can manage. We just don’t like it.” She glanced over at the two Pertixi’s. “Don’t tell her I said anything, though, okay? She’s still getting used to it. Taking her a little longer than it did me, but she’s coming around.” Aliara grinned. “She’s still mostly new to this whole fucking love thing.”

“Is that what this is?” Sketch asked her.

“Sure fucking seems like it,” Aliara said with a giggle. “I’m enjoying the fuck out of it.” She stood up and moved over to the non-pregnant Pertixi. “C’mon, Princess, we need to get moving.”

“The illusion’s incredible,” the actual Pertixi said, looking at the other version of herself. “What’s the downside?”

“The downside,” the non-pregnant Pertixi said with Serena’s voice, “is that this version of you can’t talk and can’t be touched, or the illusion breaks.”

“So don’t do that,” Pertixi said.

“We should’ve thought of that,” Sketch said smugly. He turned off the illusion on Serena and pointed it at Pertixi, concealing her current state. “Now you don’t look pregnant. We’re going to swing back by our ship and then split up once we’re there. Saddle up.”

When they rode through town this time, they paced themselves, letting people get a good eyeful of Pertixi’s non-pregnant form before they reached the ship. “This is your ship?” she asked, looking up at it. “Looks kinda… dumpish.”

“You insult my ship again, and I’m going to drop the cover and just leave you here to solve your own problems.”

“My apologies,” Pertixi sighed. “I’m sure it’s… it’s a fine ship.”

“Okay, everyone on board the ship for just a second.” Everyone made their way into the cargo hold as people shifted around. He glanced over at Serena, who was settling in on the stevid with Aliara. “Be vigilant, you two,” he said as he tossed Aliara the projector.

“Like the last centurions at the garrison, boss,” Aliara said, turning the illusion on Serena, making her appear as Pertixi, before they rode back out of the cargo hold and headed up towards the hills at high speed.

“Get her strapped in somewhere safe, Jez, and check on the status of the baby.”

“Will do, boss,” Jez said. “And you?”

“I’m having Lara get us the fuck off this hillbilly rock.”