Starship Repo Ch 7-9 (Patreon)

Hey folks,

I'll cut to the chase cause I'm up way too late. I'm not sure how I feel about Ch 9. I think it might be missing a third segment, or in another draft the way the events happen in that chapter come about differently. Let me know what y'all think!

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Chapter 7

Emerald stilled her leg again, the nervous bouncing a frustration that she didn’t want to think about. The fueling had just started, and negotiating with the Tielminite that served as pumpmaster for the fuel depot had proved to be like talking to a durasteel bulkhead. No wiggle room on the price for the plasma or the top off of the superlight rad-juice. She had managed to get him to waive the Repair Dock fee once Brick came out to explain the fix that was needed - it sounded like a routine maintenance thing instead of fixing something that was broken, so the long-limbed Tielminite grudgingly accepted.

The problem wasn’t the pumpmaster, or even the cost of the fuel or the repairs. Suns, it wasn’t even the time delay on getting back out into space.

She didn’t like admitting it to herself, but Emerald was worried about Rake. When she’d first met him he’d been an eighteen year old kid with big dreams and big ideas only managed by his father by shoving him into the worst ship in the small company fleet and giving him a crew of misfits. In the three years since he’d grown up, sure, and even lost some of that naivety that had landed him in hot water when he trusted too much. Booster was just the biggest in his mistakes around trust, there were plenty of others who would have hoodwinked the kid he’d been without Brick or Emerald looking out for him.

But now he was off alone in an independant fuel depot that was currently crammed full of pirates taking their liberty where they could get it. And while the depots were safe from pillaging, there wasn’t exactly a police force that travelled out her on the edge of the Cluster laying down the law when it came to disputes between spacers.

And Rake could really get himself into some disputes when he tried.

“How’s the tank looking,” Emerald commed down to Brick, who was outside with the pumpmaster as the viscous plasma got piped into the ship. Any good space crew worth its salt made sure to watch a pumpmaster do his job, or else you could find your tank half full of compressed atmo or some cheap plasma alternative instead of what you needed to run your engines. Everyone was always looking for a way to turn two units into three.

“Tank is holding,” Brick relayed back. “Looks good. Any word from Rake?”

“Nothing,” Emerald replied back.

“When this is done, want me to go look for him?”

“We can give him a bit more time before we should start getting worried.”

Brick double-clicked his comm to acknowledge, and Emerald went back to looking out of the cockpit and found her leg bouncing nervously again. She planted her hand on her knee to still the limb.

She’d never felt this worried about him before, and he wasn’t sure why this was the thing she was suddenly nervous over. Rake regularly put on his stupid little disguises to go scout out a job by himself. Fake facial hair, a different set of clothes and the occasional hair tinting usually did the job to make him almost unrecognizable, especially to non-humanoids who often had as much of a difficulty telling humanoids apart as vice versa. He’d walked into plenty of places where, if the people figured out who he was, things could get violent quickly. No one liked to hear that the bank had sent out a repo notice on their starship.

Emerald didn’t even think it was the pirates that had her nervous. It was the fact that, for the first time in seven years, she’d caught a glimpse of her sister. Ruby had been seven when Emerald had been recruited into the UE Navy, and while she’d watched her sister grow up from a distance through yearly vidcalls and data packages filled with pictures and letters, she hadn’t seen her in person since. And after the disaster, and the scar, she’d avoided contacting her family. Now it had been almost four and a half years and it felt too long to reach out and explain.

She snapped her hand away from her face where she’d been tracing her fingers across the scar above her lip. The doctors had offered to fix it and make it like it was never there, but what the Navy had wanted in return for such an investment had been too much. So she wore it, a reminder of what had happened, and who she’d been.

The communications array in the cockpit twittered and blinked with an incoming call, interrupting Emeralds anxiety-based introspection, and with a frown she sat up and accepted the call.

“Rake?” she asked in surprise as he showed up on screen.

“Hey, Emmie,” Rake said. He didn’t look hurt in any way, though his hair was messed up and his eyes were a little wider than normal. “So, good news. I got us a job. Contract is signed and everything.”

“What? We’re supposed to-”

“I know, I know,” Rake interrupted her. “My Dad is expecting us back at base. But this one was too good to pass up and makes us some connections that might prove useful in the future.”

Emerald immediately knew something was off more than Rake was saying - primarily because he referred to his father as ‘Dad.’ Rake never referred to Seller Solar with that sort of affection.

“That’s… great, Cap,” Emerald said as she started to work at trying to trace where the call was coming from. It was nearby, but that could have meant anywhere on the damned asteroid. “What’s the job?”

“We’re going to be towing a ship out-of-Cluster,” Rake said. “So make sure we get the tanks completely full, right? And we’ll need to make sure the mag-grapnels are in top shape.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Emerald said. A job out-of-Cluster? There was no fucking way that Rake had managed to find a way to get paid to head in the direction of the distress call and her sister, was there? “When can we expect you back for take off?”

Rake opened his mouth to answer but was pulled away from the cam of the communicator, and a female humanoid with a ghostly complexion stepped into frame. “We’ll be leaving as soon as your ship is fueled up, sweet thing,” the lady said with a predator bent to her smirk. “Your Captain is going to be staying with me on this job as our guest just to make sure that we’re all in agreement about how smooth this should go. I’m sure that won’t be a problem, right Emmie?”

Emerald swallowed her immediate reaction. Of course. Of course Rake somehow got himself entangled with the one group at the fuel depot he shouldn’t, and of course the only group heading out towards the system where Ruby had gown down would be the same fucking pirates who probably shot her down to begin with.

“So… it’s that kind of job,” Emerald said.

“Don’t fret, Red,” the white-skinned female said. “Your captain is nice and safe, and he’ll send you over the signed contract right after this call. This is a real, official job. I just wanted a little extra insurance, if you know what I mean.”

“Sure, right,” Emerald said, clenching her teeth a little. “We’ll, uh, send over a comm when we’re ready to take off. Shouldn’t be too long here.”

“Great,” the pirate Captain grinned. “And remember, like your Captain sold me on, you’re bonded and under contract, so no sending off a pesky comm to anyone. Even your bosses. Got it? That would make things a lot more… uncomfortable for your Captain.”

“Got it,” Emerald nodded.

The female Captain pursed her lips and blew a smirking air kiss at the screen before cutting the connection.

“Ffffffucking Suns,” Emerald growled as she watched as a digital contract file downloaded into the incoming cache. She quickly pulled it over to her data tablet and scanned it.

It was all there. They were going to tow the Void Scream through superlight to the same system that they were heading, delivering it into drydock or stable orbit, whichever the local authority deemed necessary.  The cost was about half of what it would usually be for that sort of a trip, but Emerald assumed that was due to some generous negotiating on Rake’s part.

At the bottom, next to a scan of Rake’s thumbprint, was another fingerprint. Captain Mindial Mirax.

“Shit,” Emerald grunted, then stood and made her way out of the ship to find Brick. She found him as the pumpmaster was disengaging the fuel hose and winding it back across the grime-streaked floor of the cavern.

“What happened?” Brick asked as soon as he saw the scowl on Emerald's face.

“We’ve got a job,” Emerald said. “Are we done fueling up?”

“What do you mean we have a job?” Brick asked.

“Just get us fully fueled, then get that cheap bastard’s mechanics over here to fix the mag-grapnels. All of them. We’re going to need them.”

“Emerald, what is going on?”

She waved him back at the pumpmaster, and Brick took the hint and went to talk with the Tielminite before joining her in the ship. She hit the ramp close button as he was still climbing.

“What’s going on?” Brick asked. “Did Rake contact you?”

“Yeah, along with his new Pirate Queen client,” Emerald said.

“No,” Brick said slowly.

“Yes,” Emerald said. “Somehow he convinced the fucking pirates who might have shot down my sister to pay us to bring them where we want to go. But they're holding him hostage to make sure we don’t do anything fishy once they’re hooked up. Which is fair, considering if they need a tow then I’d advocate for dropping them off in the middle of deep space. Or next to a fucking star.”

“Fuuuck,” Brick groaned, then looked around. “Does Widget know?”

Emerald shook her head. “She went back to sleep after fixing the leak. I don’t think we should tell her until after we’re on our way.”

Brick blew out a long breath as he looked at the door to Wendy Solar’s sleep pod. Emerald knew what the Yauk was thinking - it didn’t feel right to hide something like this from her. But if she did know, she would do something as stupid as her brother probably would to try and save him from himself.

“Alright,” Brick said. “Once we’ve got them hooked up.”

“Agreed,” Emerald nodded. “Is there anything else we need from the depot? They’re waiting on us, and I’ve already got a clock ticking in my head for my sister, and now another one for Rake.”

“He was supposed to try and get us some more rations, but we’ve got enough that we can shuttle a full hold for a couple of days. Three if we stretch things. That should be good enough to get us somewhere we can get more and the grapnel repairs are going to drain our operating units.”

Emerald nodded again and took a breath. “Alright. We’re towing pirates.”

“We’re towing pirates,” Brick sighed in agreement. “Better not keep them waiting.”

Chapter 8

Rake felt like he’d been ragdolled around more than enough for one lifetime by the two big pirates that had been dragging him around since the bar. The one with the talons had a sort of feline look to him, if a feline was covered in scales and barbs for hair. The other one with the three eyes wasn’t much prettier, his hulking mass covered in warty nodes that seemed to move around under his thick skin. Neither of them had said a word to him, and he had no fucking clue if they even spoke one of the core languages or had translators since the Captain only spoke to them in that odd chirping language.

After the vidcall with Emerald, the Captain had given his two bodyguards an order and he’d been dragged away as she had started calling out orders to the other pirates on the ship.

The Void Scream was almost ridiculously opulent inside and Rake had no doubt that it had once been the immense yacht of some planetary governor or Corp VP. The floors were carpeted in rich burgundies, the bulkheads were wallpapered in warm golds and yellows, and every ceiling was painted to look like cloudy skies on a variety of worlds. Even the furniture, or at least the original furniture that was l around, was real wood and filigreed in artful swoops and were all soft curves. Of course, after unknown time in the hands of pirates, things had started to see some wear and tear. The carpets were heavily trod down, and were even wearing thin at the common walking points. Not all of the bulkheads were wallpapered - entire sections of the interior of the ship had been modified to house the extra engine, weapons array, and the inner workings of the kaligula cannon. There were also stacks of hardshell crates stuffed into corners and strapped in with mag-cables, their tops being used as makeshift tables to hold equipment, workstation or playing tiles.

And Pirates were everywhere. They seemed to be streaming back into the ship, called from the bar and the diner on the fuel depot if they weren’t already aboard, and while it looked like chaos Rake could see something of an order to things as they barked calls to each others and commlinks buzzed as crew members organized to set off back into the depths of space.

Rake didn’t fight his bodyguards, and they led him down a level from the bridge of the ship, winding through a couple of wide corridors until they reached an open room with a big conference table that was scattered with analog star maps, architectural designs for a half dozen different kinds of buildings, and the plans for at least three different spaceships. They pushed beyond to a pair of steel doors where Rake would have but they had once been elegant wooden doors with some sort of beautiful design.

The being with the three eyes and the warts pressed his finger to a locking device built into the wall and Rake noticed his lip quiver and flinch for a moment as his blood was taken. A DNA scanner lock for the brig? The doors swooped open and the two beings hauled Rake through and dumped him on the floor unceremoniously.

“Stay,” the lizard-feline grunted, pointing at Rake with one big taloned finger and giving him a look like he was a pet that was expected to follow an order. Rake nodded mutely and the being grunted and they both left the room, the door closing behind them and two heavy locking bars sliding into place on the interior of the door.

Looking around the room, Rake decided that he definitely hadn’t been thrown into the brig. No brig, even in his wildest dreams, would have looked like this.

If the rest of the ship had a grime building up on the opulence that the yacht had once had, the room he was in was like looking into the past glories of the ship as a whole. The cabin was round, almost a perfect circle except for one cutout that led into a refresh station with gleaming chrome and tiles. There was a computer terminal built into a wooden frame, a long, curved dining table that sat pressed up against one wall with a wooden, throne-like chair tucked at either end, and another circular wooden table with a grav unit humming under it as it held the orderly multitude of items in place on top of it.

The centerpiece of the room however, beyond even the high definition screens that dominated the upper third of the circular walls to show a near-360 degree view outside the ship, was the bed. It looked old, with thick wooden posts at each corner and velvet curtains hanging from above. It had a half dozen plush pillows piled at the head of it, and somehow the fact that the silky, shimmering sheets were messed and clearly slept in as opposed to looking as perfectly arranged as the rest of the room made the space feel less like a picture and more like a real place.

The bedroom was also as large as the entire main cabin in the SolaRepo.

“Fuuuuck me,” Rake said as he slowly stood up. He definitely wasn’t in the brig, and there was no way a space like this was set aside for guests.

He was in the Captain’s quarters.

Rake’s first instinct was to look for a weapon. It would make sense that a Pirate would have at least a couple of them stowed away in secret places around her bedroom. A blaster hidden beneath the table, or a knife tucked under the pillows. The problem was that even when he did find a weapon, and if he could use it successfully to kill the Captain or take her hostage, he was still on a starship filled with pirates. All of whom would probably be more than happy to blast out his insides, then turn their entire array of weapons on the SolaRepo and turn it into space dust.

It was almost funny, in a way. Rake had always pictured himself as a dashing rogue when he grew up, a blaster on his hip and a sexy copilot by his side as they blasted through the galaxy on the fastest ship in the Cluster. As he’d grown up, that vision of a future self had changed a little, though not that much. Emerald at his side, still sexy as hell but not a dreamy, perfect way. The ship didn’t need to be some spectacular sleek speedster, just fast enough to outrun a trade blockade or two and solid enough to survive a few adventures to keep things interesting.

And now he had a chance to find that blaster he’d always thought should be on his hip, and he knew that it would cause more problems than it was worth.

Maybe not always, but here?

So Rake didn’t look for a blaster, or a knife, or even a heavy object that he could clock someone over the head with. Instead he brushed himself off and went over to the table and looked at the stuff. And it was stuff - a collection of little keepsakes mostly, likely from the different places that the Captain had travelled. Rake had done the same for a while until he ran out of space in his sleeping pod and realized most of the shit he’d collected were rocks from places he didn’t care about having been anyways.

But the Captain’s collection was more than rock. There were two different knives, one made from a silvery metal alloy and stamped with some sort of signature, the other made of a bone or ivory with its hilt wrapped in fabric. There were odd shaped gems, and pieces of jewelry - a single earring here, a broken bracelet there. A toy speeder, no bigger than Rake’s thumb, sat beside a miniature version of the Stan’sing Government Tower from deep in the core of the Cluster, and beside that was a small glass globe filled with water. Each of the items was carefully laid out in orderly precision to the point that Rake felt like he couldn’t touch one or else they’d all fall over and he’d be fucked in trying to put anything back.

“I see you’ve found my little treasury,” the Captain said from behind Rake and he almost jumped, she startled him so hard.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry,” Rake said, turning quickly.

She was standing near the door, leaning against the wall as the steel trap closed and locked behind her. Rake wasn’t sure how her open leather jacket somehow kept her modesty maintained when she did that with the way she wore it open with nothing underneath, but somehow it did.

“I’m surprised you went for the knicknacks and not the blaster under my pillows,” she said with a smirk.

Blaster under the pillows, knife under the table, Rake thought to himself with an internal smirk of his own. “The way I see it, that would just make me a rude guest,” he said.

She nodded thoughtfully and stood up straight, striding into the room and past Rake, her black eyes somehow boring into his despite not having a pupil to direct him where she was looking. She moved deeper into the room and entered the refresher station, only partially closing the door as she spoke. “I find you interesting, Captain Rake. I’m glad that you haven’t made me shoot you yet.”

“I’m not intending to,” Rake said, gulping a little as a white hand flung the lather jacket out from inside the refresher station.

“You’ll find that might be harder than you think,” she called to him. “You see, I can’t stand people who bore me almost as much as I can’t stand idiots who would try and kill me on my own ship. So you’d better keep being interesting.”

“Well, I don’t think that should be too hard,” Rake said, looking around the room in a panic to try and figure out what actually interested the pirate captain. Did she have hobbies outside of piracy?

“We’ll see,” she said, stepping back out of the refresher with a loose tunic on. Her hair was no longer spiked up in a mohawk of white and purple and now fell in curls down the left side of smooth head, and she looked like she’d readied herself for a casual night in. Well, except for the blasters she still kept on her hips. “You really don’t know who I am, though? Or who we are?”

Rake shook his head, trying his best to lean against the table and look calm and collected. “Couldn’t say that I do.”

“Would the name Mirax mean anything to you? Captain Mirax? Mirax the Merciless? Money Mirax?”

“I can honestly say it doesn’t,” Rake said. “Though I’m sort of hoping that the Merciless part doesn’t apply to folks doing basic work for you.”

She smirked and then laughed, that aquamarine colour of her inner mouth a splash of colour against her otherwise monochrome skin. Her laugh was rich, but tinged with a careless abandon that made it sound just a touch wild and dangerous. “Well, the good news for you is that the Merciless one is my father. He’s something of a Pirate Lord in this hemisphere of the Cluster. You must have heard of him somewhere.”

“We fly out of Terth, which is galactic west rimward from here,” Rake said. “If we don’t fly out at least a dozen systems from home for a job we tend to get unwanted visitors in the office.”

“Hmmhmm,” she hummed a laugh. “Don’t shit where you eat, in other words.”

“Exactly,” Rake said.

“Well, Rake from Terth, your crew has us all hooked up and ready for travel. Your pilot didn’t seem to be happy with our arrangement.”

“She can be a little protective,” Rake said as he watched the Captain gracefully move through the room and sit down at the table with her collection. She pressed a button and the entire top of the table slid downwards, sinking into the frame, and another tabletop slid into its place from the back. “She also thought we would be heading home.”

“Mmm, well, she can wait a bit longer for more pay,” the Captain said. “Do you play tiles?”

“I’ve dabbled,” Rake said.

“Good,” the Captain said, reaching to a little drawer in the wall and pressing a button to open it, then pulling out a set of game tiles that looked to be made out of silver, or at least chromed metal. “We’ll play, and we can make it interesting.”

“Interesting how, Captain?” Rake asked as he cautiously went and took the seat across from her at the table.

“Please, in here you can call me Mindial,” she said. “At least while we’re sitting at a table for games or meals.”

“Alright,” Rake nodded. “Interesting how… Mindial?”

“Well a bet, obviously,” she grinned at him, that blue in her mouth drawing his eyes again.

“I don’t have much to bet with here,” Rake said. “I left all my stolen booty in my other pants.”

“Hmm, funny,” she smirked as she flipped over the tiles and started to shuffle them around on the board. “I was thinking that if I win, I get to have my way with you over in my bed, and then I’ll kill you in the morning.”

Rake’s mouth went dry at the first part and yet he still managed to gulp at the second. “And if I win?” he asked.

“We’ll get you some dinner, you can sleep peacefully through the night, and then we’ll play again tomorrow. Your pilot messaged that the trip should take three days to the destination I sent over, so that should make three rounds to our little bet.”

Rake sucked in a breath and blew it out slowly.

“Great,” Captain Mindial said, picking up her first tile from the shuffled set. “High or low for first placement?”

Chapter 9

“Um, where’s Rake?” Widget asked from the entrance to the cockpit.

Fuuuuuuck, Emerald thought. She’d been hoping Brick would be the one to field that question.

“Listen, kiddo…” Emerald said.

“Where is Rake!?” Widget yelled, her eyes going wide.

The engines were thrumming away with that distinct pitch of superlight. There was no trying to trick the kid. She’d likely only slept through the launch because she’d heard the engines happily thrumming away without any issues and had only woken when the ship went into superlight. That had been a bit more of a strain on the engines considering they were hauling that big fucking yacht and all it had were adjustment thrusters to help get things going. Getting them hooked up properly had been a bit of an issue what with the long, oddly shaped barrel of their railcannon.

“We have a job,” Emerald said, holding up her hands. “We’re towing another ship in the direction we need to go, and Rake is riding on that ship so he’s just behind us on the lines.”

“But the lines were all broken,” Widget said. “And we didn’t have any more mag clamps to fix them.”

“We got it done at the fuel depot.”

“Without me?” Widget said.

The fact that she had gotten so possessive over the SolaRepo repairs hadn’t been a problem yet, but the last thing Emerald needed was compounding issues with the kid. “You needed your sleep, kiddo. It was just installing new cables with clamps at the end, that’s all.”

Widget sucked in a long, hard breath through her nose and then blew it out. “What kind of ship are we towing?”

“It’s a big one. Not the biggest we’ve done, but pretty big. It’s a modified Galleon-class superyacht.”

“Why does a big richy-rich like that want to go out into the buttcrack of space?” Widget asked, narrowing her eyes as she came deeper into the cockpit and climbed up into the copilot chair.

“I’m… not sure, kiddo,” Emerald said.

“How come they wanted Rake on their ship?” Widget asked, then her eyes went big. “Oh, no. He’s not in love with another icky girl who is going to break his heart again, is he?”

Emerald thought back to the attractive, white-skinned pirate captain that had been on the screen. She hadn’t thought it until the kid said something, but she felt a churn in her gut at the idea of Rake being alone with that woman.

That wasn’t something she should be feeling.

“No, not a chance,” Emerald shook her head.

“How long is our jump?” Widget asked, sitting up high to try and read the timer on the superlight controls. “Can I talk to him in between jumps?”

“I… don’t know,” Emerald said. “We’ll see.”

Widget climbed up until she was standing on the copilot seat, leaning over and looking at Emerald closely with her eyes narrowed and a determined bent to his lips. She hadn’t done anything with her hair after taking it out to sleep so the wave blonde strands were hanging down past her shoulders loosely, giving her a bit of a wild look. “What aren’t you telling me?” the little girl asked.

Emerald knew she could say ‘nothing.’ The kid might not believe her, and the lie would be for her own good. But if she did that, it would be the first time she lied to the girl, and for the past three years she’d tried to be the best confidant she could for the little squirt. Rake had told Emmie that their mother had died shortly after Widget was born, so the kid had only ever known Seller Solar for a parent.

She couldn’t do it.

“The clients are pirates, kiddo,” Emerald said. “They’re keeping Rake with them so that they can make sure we don’t just drop them off in deep space. But I talked to their Captain and she says this is a real job, with real pay.”

“She?” Widget said, and flopped back down into her seat as she grabbed at her hair. “He’s going to fall in love again, Emerald. With the wrong person. With a pirate.”

“There’s no way that happens, Widg,” Emerald said. “He knows better.”

“He fell for that stupid buttface Booster,” Widget raised her voice. “How could you let this happen?”

“I didn’t let anything happen, Widget,” Emerald said, her heart breaking a little as she watched the little girl start breaking down.

“He’s not safe. And I’ve never flown on the ship w-w-without him.”

Oh, suns. The lip is starting to go.

“And he’s gonna get murdered by pirates. A-a-and the last thing I-I-I said was-”

The dam broke and Widget was crying, covering her face with her arm as she felt a wave of shame at her tears pouring through her. Emerald reached over and hauled her out of the copilot chair and bundled Widget up in her lap, hugging her tightly as she pressed her forehead to the side of the kids head. “It’ll be alright, Widg,” she whispered. “I’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.”

Emerald just wished she could believe it too, because the more Widget cried, the more she felt like she might need a good cry too. She hadn’t cried in years, not since before the scar. But her sister might be dead, and Rake was a hostage, and as she held the kid in her arms she just felt like she had so many regrets.

But she couldn’t let herself do it.

- - - - - - -

“There isn’t some magic answer here,” Emerald sighed as she looked at the data screen again. There was still another hour or so left in the first superlight jump, then they would pivot in real space and begin the long, two and a half day jump out to their destination system.

“But what if we just say they have to,” Widget said. She was standing on her chair with her hands planted on the table, glaring at the screen.

“Then it becomes a standoff, kiddo,” Brick said. “But they know they have something we won’t leave behind if we threaten to drop them somewhere.”

“Plus they still have their weapons systems operational. If they have friends they could decide we’re not worth the trouble, blast us out of space and call for a pickup and come back later for their ship,” Emerald said.

“What if we were pirates?” Widget suggested. “We could board them and take Rake back.”

“We’ve got four blasters in the weapons locker,” Emerald said. “Even if we make sure the powerpacks are fully charged, there’s still got to be something like sixty crewmen on a ship that size.”

“Sounds about right,” Brick nodded. ‘An’ each of them will be armed to the teeth.”

“But they’re the bad guys,” Widget frowned.

“They are, kiddo,” Emerald said, taking a deep breath. “But life isn’t like the holovids. Sometimes the good guys can’t just blast their way in and never get hit.”

“Another problem with that idea,” Brick pointed out. “Even if we did want to stage a boarding action, our docking tube is floating off in orbit about eight systems behind us. We would need to try and convince them to open their shuttle bay and let us dock inside.”

“OK,” Emerald said, trying to find a way to ease Widget’s mind. “Then that’s our absolute worst-case scenario plan.”

“It’s our only plan,” Widget grumbled. Then she hopped down from her chair and started trudging towards one of the engine access shoots. “I’m gonna make sure everything is still fixed like I left it.” She stopped at the access panel and turned back, looking at Emerald and Brick with that quivering lip again. “Can you make sure to tell me when we’re coming out of superlight, please?”

“Of course, kiddo,” Emerald said.

Widget ducked down through the shoot and crawled into the engine compartment.

Emerald closed her eyes and sat back as she let out a deep sigh.

“You know, one of these days she’s going to call you Mom,” Brick said.

“No she isn’t,” Emerald said, looking over at the big orange Yauk and frowning. “I’m not her mother. I’m like… a big sister. Maybe.”

“She won’t do it on purpose,” Brick snorted. “Suns, she might not even realize she’ll do it. It’ll just come out, and you’ll need to decide what to do with that.”

“It’s not like that, Brick,” Emerald said with a level tone.

He shook his head and stood, stretching as he considered where Widget had scurried off. “She’ll need you to be if we don’t get Rake back.”

“We’ll get him back. Plus, she has you, too.”

“Mmm,” the Yauk grunted. “It’s not the same. She can talk to me about mechanics, but she doesn’t talk to me about anything else.”

“We’re getting Rake back,” Emerald repeated herself.

He nodded, but didn’t reply.

Emerald sighed again.

Suns, Rake. You really fucking did it this time.