Starship Repo Ch 10 (Patreon)

Just one long chapter today, but I had fun writing it. I wanted to get more done but I got my nose stuck in a book for longer than I thought I would. Also did my annual pilgrimage to the used bookstores in the area - alas, the pickings were slim compared to how I remember them as a kid coming to the same area.

One more day of Starship Repo. We're at 23,800 words for the week so far, which means with tomorrow we'll be (hopefully) well over 25,000 and a quarter of what a full novel would look like. It's good progress, though less than I may have initially hoped for. Turns out writing this non-sex stuff doesn't get me into the same productive flow cause I'm not working towards that next hot scene.

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Chapter 10

Superlight

Captain Mindial Miax snorted to herself as she looked at her guest from across the room. Rake had won their little bet, and even though she’d offered him use of the bed he’d looked at her like she might be a snake preparing to bite and had muttered something about being comfortable in a chair. Now he was asleep - fitful and certainly not comfortable at all - with his chin pressed to his chest.

Where had that man gone that had the confidence to interrupt her conversation in the fuel depot bar? Who had the balls to offer to tow her ship to an unknown destination on the off chance she was the kind of pirate who wouldn’t just slit his throat?

It was as if as soon as he’d had any time to himself to think things through, the fear had gotten to him. To be fair, he took a lot longer than most civies to start the nervous ticks when facing her and her crew. But still…

Part of her wondered if she should cut him a break. Part of her wondered if having her little fun at his expense was even worth it. She wasn’t sure what he’d been through recently that let him collapse into sleep like this - that was definitely going to be her angle of questioning when he woke up - but it couldn’t have been as trying as her own last 24 hours.

Shaking her head, she sat up from her bed where she’d been laying and watching him as she checked the quartermaster reports on her tablet. Tossing the device onto the bed for later, she stood and fetched her jacket from where she’d dumped it on the floor, slinging it on and then tapping her code into the door and exiting her cabin, making sure to lock it after herself.

She didn’t think Rake Solar was dangerous, but that didn’t mean she was going to let him run around her ship. He was likely to get stabbed by someone, doing that.

Mindial strode through the corridors of her beautiful ship, wondering to herself again whether she could get away with making the crew clean up some more. Maybe reupholster the carpets, or swap them out for something equally fancy but more durable. It wasn’t like she lacked the hands to get that sort of job done, but anything that wasn’t strictly crew business always brought grumbles. And for all that she had proven herself time and again in her father’s fleet, many still saw her as a nepotism command instead of having earned her rank and ship.

Still, every crewmember she passed acknowledged her with their own form of deference. There were no salutes, but every humanoid nodded their head to her, and every non-humanoid did what made sense to their shape or form.

Stepping onto the bridge, Mindial took in a deep breath and then affected the loud, boasting tones she’d learned from her father. “Well, isn’t this just a fine looking collection of sleaze-balls and space junk?”

“Aye, Captain,” Oxta said from his command chair. Her pilot and second in command, he was even smaller than Mindial but two-thirds but had the fear and respect of the crew because, other than his deceptively powerful ursine form, he also had unerring accuracy in spitting the acidic venom his species produced. What evolutionary situation required that development in conjunction with his wiry muscles and razor sharp claws Mindial couldn’t guess, and he refused to speak about his people. “A right bunch of layabouts, I say. Makes me think maybe we need to find something for them to do so they ain’t got time to twiddle their digits so much.”

“We’ll see,” Mindial said, playing along with the performance she often put on as she slipped into her command chair. It sat right in the middle of the bridge space and commanded the best view out of the front viewports, though there wasn’t anything to see in the all-encompassing black of superlight.  “We’ll see. How are the connections to the tug?”

“Holding strong, Captain,” called her sensors officer. “Mags are holding steady.”

“Time to breach?” she asked.

“Ten minutes or so, Captain. Then a short reorientation, and we’ll be away again.”

Minidal nodded and brought up her command screens, deciding that she could just finish the quartermaster report while she waited instead of leaving it for later. They were low on supplies, so only by half their usual stores but some by more. And now they were unable to make the repairs they needed to go out and acquire new supplies, or the funding for them, which meant she was going to need to approach her father about a re-up while she waited for the necessary parts, and that was going to cost her.

She was halfway through the list of what she would need, at minimum, to sustain her through into her next score post-repairs when Oxta called out a one-minute warning for breach.

“Set status to yellow,” Mindial ordered. “I don’t like us being tied to the tug in realspace and not knowing what’s around.”

“Aye,” Oxta nodded. The lighting modules on the bridge, and all over the ship, flashed yellow three times. It wasn’t a call for battlestations, but it let the crew know that there might be something bumpy coming up.

A timer popped up on her command screen counting down, and she tried to ignore it as she worked another set of figures around on the blasted quartermaster spreadsheet. As a kid she wouldn’t have ever thought of the sheer amount of arithmetic she would need to do as a bloody pirate.

At twenty seconds she gave up and waved the spreadsheet off her screen, and at ten seconds she settled back into her chair and took a breath.

“Breaching,” Oxta said, and all at once the black on the front viewer exploded into stars, and the tug ahead with its cables secured to the hull of her beautiful Void Scream. Oxta hit the directional thrusters, slowing the ship as the Tug maneuvered slightly and then its engines flared as it began a slow banking maneuver that would turn and the Void Scream in a slow arc to the right course.

“Sensors, anything?” Minidial called.

“Open space, Captain. Same as we left it coming in.”

Mindial nodded. The system was one of three that the fleet used to bounce out of the Cluster and towards home, and was only populated by a Red Giant star that had devoured most of its orbiting planets in the last couple million years, leaving just a distant outer ring of asteroids in the system. So far none of the mining corps ha surveyed it as far as her father was aware, making it a simple, out of the way buffer for jumps.

The problem with simple, out of the way places was that there was always a chance someone else was thinking the same as you.

“Give me another check just to be sure,” she ordered. “See if you can bounce the sensors off of the belt to get a look behind the big red motherfucker.”

“As ordered, Captain.”

The tug got them in line with the necessary vector, and Oxta touched the jets again to reduce the drag for the mean little ship to get them moving straight. It didn’t need the help, but based on how Oxta was murmuring into her comm as she and Rake’s pilot conversed in the quick jargon of pilots, they wanted to get this done as smoothly as possible.

“About twenty minutes of flight time in-system, Captain,” Oxta finally relayed to her.

“Usually it takes us under ten,” Mindial frowned.

“We’ve got bigger engines,” her pilot pointed out. “And they’re dragging us.”

“Mm,” Mindial grunted, once again wondering if it would be possible to add a fourth engine housing to her ship. There was space on the lower quadrant, but that would chew into her hull space and would also make it a lot harder to land when they hit somewhere they needed to disembark from. The front landing gear would need to gain about fifteen more feet of depth at least, and wouldn’t that look silly.

“Captain, we’re… what the fuck?” the woman manning the secondary sensor station blurted out. She also managed the comms and internal sensors, and Mindial immediately wondered what Rake had done to trigger an alarm in her cabin.

“Spit it out,” Mindial said.

“We’re getting hailed by the SolaRepo,” the pirate said, making a face.

“We’re already in contact with them,” Mindial said.

“I know, Captain. I don’t- It’s a vid comm,” she said.

Mindial frowned. It was possible that the pilot wanted to double check on her own Captain, maybe ask for a proof of life or something. Mindial smirked, her mind quickly running through the quips she could tease the woman with. “Put it on my screen,” she ordered.

“Aye,” the comms woman said.

Mindial’s command screen popped up a vid comm window, but the window was dark and blurry. Then a deep, robotic voice played over the speakers in her chair.

“We have done as you requested. Now return Rake to us or face the consequences.”

Mindial raised an eyebrow and glanced at Oxta a few feet from her. The short ursine being was looking back at her with one of his little eyebrows raised, obviously having heard the voice-changer.

“That’s an interesting demand, SolaRepo,” Mindial said slowly. “Especially considering the understanding I thought we had come to.”

“The understanding has changed. Return him to us or we’ll leave you drifting.”

“Is that a threat, SolaRepo? Because I don’t respond well to threats. And my guests certainly don’t fare well when I’m feeling threatened.”

“It’s not a threat, it’s a promise.”

Then, strangely, there was a loud, metallic thumping in the background of the call and the dull, distorted sound of another voice.

“One second,” the deep, robotic voice said, and then the call went mute.

“What the fuck?” Oxta said.

Mindial was less confused because she could still see the screen, and half of it had cleared as someone turned away from their cam and their hand covering it shifted.

“Everything alright over there, SolaRepo?” Mindial asked with a raised eyebrow and a soft smirk developing.

“I said one second,” the voice came back for a moment, another voice now more obviously muffled and shouting in the background.

“Who am I talking to?” Mindial asked.

“I’m the terror that your nightmares are afraid of,” the voice said.

“Really? And where are you from, Terror?”

“I’m from right here, right now,” it said, then muted again. The hand had repositioned to cover the camera again.

“That was actually a pretty good line,” Oxta said.

“Fuck, I need to write that one down,” Mindial said, muting her own mic. Some of the bridge crew laughed. They had a running pool of threatening shit to say over comms when demanding another ship or operation surrender and submit to boarding. She unmuted her mic again. “Ah, well, Terror, I’ve got bad news for you. The answer is no.”

“Well, I hope you enjoy being space food,” a voice said. A little girl’s voice. Then, “Shit. I mean, I hope you enjoy being space food when I send your stinky asses into the star.”

Mindial made eye contact with Oxta again, trying not to laugh.

“Well, Terror, I guess we’re at an impasse.”

“No impasses. Give us Rake or die an excruciating hot death.”

“Kid,” Mindial said. “If you take your hand away from the camera and talk with me, I might be willing to let you see him.”

There was a long moment of hesitation, and then the darkness lifted as a small hand pulled away from the cam feed and revealed a small human girl. Mindial wasn’t exactly a kids-person, so even though humans and her own Windigan people had similar lifespan growth markers she had no idea whether the kid was four or twelve. The little thing was cute though, especially as she did her best to mean mug the camera and look tough with her blonde hair done up in a pair of buns on top of her head.

“Let me talk to my brother,” she said sternly, crossing her arms in a huff.

“So Rake is your brother, huh? Aren’t you a little young to be flying around on jobs with your brother?”

“Am not,” she said. “We’re a team.”

“Well, where’s the rest of your crew?”

“Trying to hack through the lock I scrambled,” the little girl said.

“How long is that going to take?”

“Another minute or two, probably. So let me see him.”

“He’s a little busy right now, little Terror,” Mindial said. “But I promise you he’s nice and comfortable. For now.”

She made a face. “Ugh, you didn’t kiss him, did you?”

Mindial could see multiple members of the bridge crew surreptitiously looking back at her from their stations, also interested in the answer to that question.

“Why? Would that be a problem?” Mindial asked with a smirk.

“Yes!” she said. “He keeps kissing the wrong people. He’s so dumb with icky girls.”

“I’m going to choose to ignore the fact that you think I’m some ‘icky girl,’” Mindial said. “Does he go kissing icky girls often?”

“No, but when he does it’s bad,” she said. “Like, catastrophic meltdown bad.”

Mindial snorted as the little girl made explosion motions with her hands. “Maybe he just hasn’t met the right bad girl yet, kid.”

The little human narrowed her eyes suspiciously and pointed her finger at the screen. “Don’t fall in love with my brother, lady.”

Now Mindial gave a full snort into a chuckle. “Not planning on it, kid. But I can’t help it if he gets swept off his feet by my devilish charms. He wouldn’t be the first.”

“Got it!” another voice said, and the little girl whipped around to look behind her.

“I’m talking to the pirate lady, don’t-!”

A hand clapped over the girl's mouth and another one pulled her away off screen, and then the red-headed pilot looked into the comms display. “Oh, fuck. Um-”

The screen went back.

“Connection cut, Captain.”

“I noticed,” Mindial chuckled, shaking her head. She turned to Oxta. “Kid had some balls, trying to shake us down.”

“Her brother hired himself out to the likes of us,” Oxta said. “Must run in the family.”

“I’d hate to see what Pappy Solar is like,” Mindial laughed, then stood up. “Anything changes, let me know.”

“Careful about fallin’ in love there, Captain,” Oxta said. “It sounds like you’ll have a deathmark put out on you if you do that.”

“Are you kidding me? I ain’t looking for love from a guy whose sister can spit off a line like that,” Mindial said, heading for the door. “‘I’m from right here, right now.’ Suns. That kid would make a good pirate.”

Mindial made her way back through the ship, taking a shortcut through the armory so she could hit the galley on her way and grab a couple of the prime rationpacks they’d hauled in when they hit the cruiseliner three weeks before. They were the fancy kind that had an internal rehydration and heating element, and while she had no clue what would be inside since they were barcoded, they were bound to be real food instead of protein bars and vitamin-rich paste.

When she entered her cabin Rake was still asleep in his chair, chin to chest, and she put the ration pack for him on the table and depressed the rehydration button to get the process started. Then she sat across from him and started loudly shuffling the tiles. Black moon, he’s really out, she thought to herself when he still didn’t wake up. So he gave him a kick.

“Mmph!” Rake said, sitting up straight and blinking as he looked around, his eyes quickly fixing on Mindial as she leaned back and smirked at him.

“Wakey, wakey, Captain Rake Solar,” she said, enjoying the way saying his name put him off for some reason. The new information she’d gleaned from his sister definitely helped put some things in perspective. “We had a communication from your ship.”

“Is something wrong?” he asked, frowning as he glanced down at the rationpack that was burbling in front of him on the table.

“Well, that depends who you ask,” Mindial said, enjoying teasing him immensely. “I met your sister.”

His eyes went wide and Mindial could see a flash of both panic and protective instinct burn in him at the same time. “Oh, no,” he groaned.

“Based on her threats, seems like our little bet needs to come to a stop,” Mindial said. “After all, I couldn’t go letting you fall in love with me right before I kill you.”

“Oh, no,” he groaned again, this time lower and clearly in embarrassment.

“It sounds like there’s a story or two behind her… frustration with you. Care to elaborate?”

Rake rubbed at his face and then shook his head. “No,” he said, but Mindial gave him a look to remind him who was in charge and he sighed. “I may have accidentally dated a girl who stole an entire tanker full of fuel and the hovertruck to haul it with from our family business, plus draining all of my savings.”

Mindial raised an eyebrow at him. “Sounds like you pissed her off. What did you do?”

“I told her I loved her,” Rake groaned.

The snort came out unbidden as Mindial shook her head. “Never tell them you love them. Nothing good comes from a spacer saying that word.”

“Yeah, well, I was young. I figured it out.”

“Eat,” Mindial said as the rationpacks finished. “Then we’ll play another game. No bets this time, I don’t need your sister taking out a hit on me. Or haunting me in my sleep if I decide to kill you.'' He shot her a look, trying to judge if she was being serious or not, and she kept her face passive. Mindial decided she liked this prolonged teasing thing with a cute civie. She’d grown up surrounded by the kinds of men that, if you teased and flirted just a little too much, they caused problems. I should kidnap boyishly handsome civie’s more often, she thought to herself.

They both cracked open their packs, and Mindial had pulled some sort of a fancy crunchy vegetable salad with steaming, crispy bits of meat scattered on top while Rake had opened a gravy-slathered steak of some sort with a mushroom steamed in some sort of alcoholic juice.

“So,” Mindial said, spearing some veggies and making sure to get at least one piece of the meat. “Before my conversation with your sister I figured that you were spending sleep pod time with that plot of yours. What’s the deal with that?”

The look on Rake’s face was priceless. She really did need to do this hostage-taking thing more often.