Starship Repo Ch 11-12 (Patreon)

This will be the last Starship Repo post for a while as it's also my last night on my writing retreat. I'd like to squeeze out one more chapter but I need to be up early as balls tomorrow to do my long drive back home. I also think the end of Chapter 12 fits my style nicely.

I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back to SR. We'll see how things go as I get back into our regular flow. I'd like to at least chip away at it here or there moving forward.

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Chapter 11

“Almost time, Captain Rake Solar,” Mindial said as she swept into the cabin. She always, somehow, managed to make a dramatic entrance. This time she had a long, flowing shirt under her jacket that seemed to spread out like little gliding wings as she moved.

It had been two and a half days since Rake had seen the outside of her cabin, and he knew in his head that she was enjoying playing with him. Teasing him. He could see it in the way she quirked her eyebrow and the corner of her lip curled a little when she knew she was getting to him. Her eyes, those pitch black orbs, were unreadable but her face was still human-like enough that he’d learned at least some of her mannerisms.

But knowing something and not being affected by them were two different things. “Until we leave superlight?” Rake asked.

“Mmm,” she hummed in the positive, stripping off her leather jacket as she headed to the refresh station having barely given him a glance. “What do you think, do you want to come up to the bridge with me and watch?” She stripped off her shirt, facing away from him. As the days had gone on she’d teased him more and more, like she was trying to find the point that he would break. He’d been completely thrown when she’d gone to sleep in her bed in nothing but a loose shift, him still in the room.

He still hadn’t decided if she did that because she trusted he wouldn’t do something, or because she was curious if he would.

“Is that… safe?” Rake asked. She’d made plenty of references to various parts of the ship not being safe for him to walk around in. He could get stabbed, or shot, or gored, or chewed on, or find himself cooking from the inside out, or any number of awful things that her crew might accidentally or on purpose do to him.

“Well, you would be with me,” Mindial said as she rifled through a drawer that came out from the wall, still turned away from him. The fact that he knew she had four black freckles on her otherwise smooth, pure-white back was one of those things that made the whole situation feel surreal. “So, I’d give it and 85 per cent likelihood you won’t be grievously injured on the bridge.”

“Fifteen per cent are odds I can live with,” Rake said.

“Good,” she said. “Did you use the refresh station while I was gone like I told you? You were starting to smell like one of the crew and I don’t think your sister or your pretty little pilot would like that very much.”

Rake coughed into his hand as she turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Ah, yes. I did,” he said. “Though you didn’t mention that the only soap in there was damignian rose petal.”

“Got a problem with smelling nice, Rake?” Mindial asked as she found the shirt she wanted and tossed it on. It was a loose black blouse with flowing sleeves and a front that she only clasped two silver buttons on before turning around. The shirt was striking against her skin, and she quickly tucked the tails down beneath her gun belts and into the tight pants she seemed to favour.

“No. It was just sort of a… girl smell,” Rake said.

Mindial snorted and smirked at him. “Don’t worry, Captain. I’ll make sure my crew doesn’t take you for a damsel in distress.” She fetched her jacket and slid it on, letting it settle for a moment as she looked down at herself. She had already been wearing her eclectic collection of jewelry and quickly added several rings to her long, delicate fingers from another drawer that she slammed shut again before turning. “Come along, Captain.”

Rake followed her to the door and she opened it with a code before leading him through the ship. The clash of the opulence and the wear and messiness again struck him as odd, but even more so now that he had spent time with Captain Mirax. Other than her bedsheets she kept her cabin in almost pristine condition. It was organized, and clean, and even her rifling for the shirt she had wanted had been through carefully folded clothing and not a pile shoved into the drawer.

Mindial seemed like she would have more likely matched her ship before the pirates got their hands on it, instead of after.

He followed her onto the bridge - he’d seen a few this size before, mostly when he was younger and his father had captained one of his own tugs. One thing that struck him as odd was that no one seemed to care that Mindial had entered the bridge - in the three others he’d seen, one military and two corporate, everyone had scrambled to salute when the Captain entered or left the bridge.

It had seemed silly to him at the time as a kid, but the inverse was oddly off putting as well.

“Time to breach?” Mindial asked as she slid into her command chair.

“Two minutses,” called a lizard-like being from one of the stations, its long neck producing an odd, airy hiss after it spoke.

“You can stand here, Captain Rake,” Mindial said, gesturing to the floor next to her and she shot him another one of those smirks. “And you can touch the chair, just don’t get any ideas.”

He wanted to ask her why she emphasized his rank so much. Usually he would have assumed she was being insulting - captaining a tug with three crew wasn’t exactly comparable to even a light freighter - but with Mindial it was hard to know because sometimes she said it like she was teasing him, and other times like she was reminding him, and then still once or twice it had been almost warm.

The preparations on the bridge were brief. A small, hairy being came onto the bridge and snapped his claws at the feathered Figotin sitting in the pilot’s chair next to Mindial and the two swapped out. Mindial called for reports from several of the other pirates, though always in a sort of joking manner that made her sound like she really didn’t care either way.

“Twenty seconds,” the new pilot said.

“Welcome back, folks,” Mindial said quietly as the front viewscreen exploded into stars as they hit realspace. “Good to be home.”

Rake felt an odd sense of relief seeing the ass-end of the SolaRepo ahead of the Void Scream, the grapnel cables connecting the two as the pilot opened up a voice comm with Emerald and the coordinated.

Then Rake looked beyond his ship, at the vibrant planet hovering above them and the deep green moon that was even closer. And the half dozen other ships orbiting it, standing out like little slivers of light. And one bigger one.

“Oh, shit,” he said.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Captain Mindial said, that smirk back on her lips. “It’s just a fleet of pirates.”

“Comms from the base,” called one of the bridge crew. “It’s the Admiral.”

“Put him through,” Mindial said, and she gently pushed Rake back a step from her chair so he was out of view.

Her command screen flickered with a vid window, and a man of the same species as Mindial appeared. He was the same softly luminescent white, though as he poke the interior of his mouth was a much darker navy blue. He was entirely hairless, but the smoothness of his skin was distorted by a large burn patch on his scalp and down his neck and under the velvet jacket he was wearing. He also had a black tattoo on his left cheek, some sort of a letter or rune, though Rake couldn’t read it.

“Captain, what the suns is this?” the Admiral demanded.

“Just your prodigal daughter and her crew of gentleman-pirates making their way home as best they can, Pops,” Mindial said. “I had to get a little creative.”

“Get that pleasure boat you call a ship docked, Mindial,” the Admiral growled. “And we’ll see about dealing with your unwanted guests.” He cut the comms.

“Fuuuuck,” Rake groaned under his breath.

Mindial turned to look at him and there was a smirk there, but not the self-assured one that he’d gotten used to. “It’ll be fine,” she said. “Probably.”

- - - - - - -

Fuckfuckfuckfuck, Emerald shouted in her head.

“Got it. Bringing you around now. Thirty degrees point seven-five,” she said calmly into her comm, communicating with the pilot on the Void Scream.

Pulling a ship around was one thing, but getting it into a docking situation was another. Getting it into a docking situation with a moon base was another altogether. If it had just been her and the tug there was no way they could get it done - she could move the big yacht around all day but finesse work like matching a docking port up of another ship with the docking post of a third required more directional control than degrees of forward.

So it was great that the Void Scream still had its directional thrusters. Except that Emerald had no valid reason not to pull the ship into the heart of the pirate fleet and get within meters of the pirate moon base that was dotted with laser cannons and launch tubes, not to mention the landing bays that could have held any number of small ships that could launch something deadly.

“This is bad,” Brick said gruffly, keeping his voice low so that her comm wouldn’t pick him up.

Yeah, no shit, Emerald thought.

They couldn’t pop their long range active sensors to start looking for signs of Ruby and her ship - the pirates would have picked up on it and there was no way to know how pissed off they could get at being scanned.

They’d made it to the right system and she couldn’t even start looking.

“Engine coolant is fine,” Widget grumbled, coming back up to the cockpit. “I told you so.”

“Sorry, kiddo,” Emerald said, briefly muting her mic. “Just wanted to be safe.”

“You didn’t want me to see all the pirate ships,” Widget grunted.

“That too,” Emerald admitted. After the stunt Widget had pulled with the comm call, Emerald was keeping a close eye on her until they were well away from danger.

There were six starships in the pirate fleet in the same size category as the Void Scream, each one bristling with weapons even the passive sensors were able to pick up. Several did scans of the SolaRepo and knew they were practically defenseless. There was also the big ship. Transponders registered it as the Fall of Piet. It was some sort of an immense mining ship, capitol-class, and was designed to haul smaller miners into the center of asteroid belts to harvest raw ore and materials. Someone had gone and up-armoured the thing and added laser cannons and torpedoes to the complement of mining lasers designed to break through the largest asteroids. It was a behemoth that Emerald couldn’t fathom having not heard about before as a pirate vessel.

“Docking clamps engaged,” the pilot from the Void Scream said. “We’re solid. Disengage mag-grapnels.”

“Disengaging,” Emerald said and nodded over to Brick who worked the controls and reeled the new clamp in after they popped off of the hull of the yacht. “We’re away.”

“Thanks for the smooth ride,” the pirate said and disconnected.

“So we get Rake back now, right?” Widget asked. She’d been a little more mollified since Emerald had been forced to chew her out a bit after her stunt, even if she hadn’t lost her surliness.

“Supposed to,” Emerald said. “I’m getting another comm from them. This should be it.”

The Pirate Captain appeared on the screen, and Emerald got a sense that her usual swagger was a big off. “Contract complete, SolaRepo,” she said. “My pilot says you’re to thanks for our smooth ride.”

“I do what I can,” Emerald said. “Now-”

“Give me my brother back!” Widget growled, squeezing between the two copilot seats to be right in front of the camera.

“That’s the plan,” Captain Mindial said. “He’s just got an appointment we need to keep first.”

“Huh?” Widget grunted, and Emerald echoed her internally.

“I’m taking my new favourite tug captain to meet my parents, little Terror,” Captain Mindial said, that teasing swagger coming back into her smirk. “See if they approve of me hitching up with my favourite tug captain.”

“What!?” Widget burst. “That’s not-!”

Emerald clapped a hand over the kid's mouth and pulled her back from the camera. “That wasn’t the deal, Captain,” she said gravely

“He’s just coming moonside to meet the boss is all,” Captain Mindial waved as if it was nothing. “I’ll get him back to you whole, don’t worry.”

“We’ll be waiting,” Emerald said, and cut the connection herself.

“What do you mean we’ll be waiting!?!” Widget said as Emerald let her go. “That lady is a problem and she lied.”

“It’s not a lie yet, Widg,” Emerald muttered. “Just a delay.” She quickly adjusted the throttle and pulled the tug out away from the Void Scream and the moon base, finding a clear space to orbit around the green, rocky moon.

“Well, I don’t trust her one bit,” Widget said.

“None of us do, kiddo,” Brick said from behind Emerald. “But we can’t do anything about it from here.”

“Your brother will be fine,” Emerald assured the little girl without really knowing how to believe it herself. “If Rake could handle three days on a pirate ship, what’s one more meeting?”

Chapter 12

Somehow the insides of the lunar base felt even more…. piratey than the converted megayacht. Where Void Scream was dingey opulence, the pirate haven was industrial grunge. Every surface was pressed durasteel, most of it pocked with dents, scars and laser burns from untold years of service. The lighting was poor, mostly consisting of flickering bulbs that probably needed to be replaced a half decade earlier, and occasionally the hum of a generator would announce where a group of the pirates were congregating as this gathered under more festive holiday lights strung up as if to stick a thumb in the eye of the decrepit facility.

“Stop looking,” Mindial murmured to Rake again, and he snapped his eyes away from the cross-corridor where another one of those little gatherings were. “Not every member of our little affiliation is as quick to warm up to a curious civie as my lovely lads, Captain Solar.”

“None of your crew have said a word to me,” Rake pointed out.

“Exactly,” Mindial said, giving him a look.

Rake suppressed the urge to gulp and tried his best to shake out his limbs a little to quiet the dull roar of his nerves.

Mindial and six of her pirates, including the two big ones who had hauled him from the bar onto the ship to begin with, marched through the depths of the lunar base with purpose but in  a winding route that confused Rake. Were they trying to get him lost? Then he realized that they weren’t doing it for his benefit - they avoided big bulkheads and doors that were marked with certain sigils, most of which were the galactic equivalent of ‘Stop.’

There were scattered segments of the base that weren’t operational.

Between the overall grungey atmosphere of the place and this new information, Rake started to put the pieces together. The pirates definitely hadn’t built this place, but it was entirely possible they also hadn’t taken it from someone. It wasn’t just used, it was old.

It made total sense - no one was looking to find out what happened to their lunar base, so the pirates had free reign to take it over and convert it to their uses. And with the system so out of the way, it made sense why the UEN would send a science vessel out here with no idea that there might be pirates operating out of the base. The facility might predate the UEN. Hell, it might predate the Civil Union - shit didn’t rot or rust in space.

His wandering thoughts did little to help Rake in his current situation though, and he had to refocus himself as brighter lights appeared ahead in the corridor. They were approaching an open blast door and based on the amount of noise coming out of it there was some sort of gathering.

“Just don’t say anything stupid,” Mindial muttered out of the side of her mouth, then boldly walked toward the light.

Rake blinked hard a few times to get his eyes to adjust and he found, rather than a gathering of bloodthirsty pirates feasting or in some sort of bloodsport or whatever it as pirates did, there were three guys on a couch. Well, a couch and a chair. And they were watching some sort of sporting event on a big screen, which was where all the crowd noise was coming from.

“Admiral,” Mindial said, drawing the attention of the male in the chair. He was clearly the one who would be her father - the other two beings were a Cherax, a near-human species who were hairless and grew small bone spurs at their joints, and the other one looked to be some sort of a humanoid echidna, also with bony spurs but in a much greater number coming off of his back, and a long snout through which he was snorting up a snack of what looked like wriggling insects in a bowl.

Mindial’s father grabbed the remote from his armrest in his thick hand and thumbed the pause button so that the room went silent. “So,” he said, leaning back in his chair heavily. It started rocking softly. “What in the black moons am I supposed to do with this, then?”

“You don’t need to do anything,” Mindial said. “My engines are fucked and I’ll be waiting on the right parts for six weeks. I either had to wait it out at Rautto’s, and you know how that would have gone keeping the lads in check for that long, or I could get us back here to wait.”

“You should have waited there!” The Admiral roared, sitting forward in his chair violently. He was a thick man, stocky with the arms and barrel chest of a man who had worked physical labour for years. That or he paid for his muscles. His bald, luminescently white head was scarred with a burn, and he was wearing a jacket that was similar in style to Mindial’s but was made of velvet and fell open to reveal a chest covered in more scars as opposed to her smooth skin. “Now who in the Seven Holes is this?”

“This is Captain Rake Solar, of the tug who brought me in,” Mindial said.

“Solar? What kind of fucking name is Solar? You think you’re some kind of a holovid hero, boy?”

“It’s a branding thing, Admiral,” Rake said, having heard the insult enough times before. “My father changed the family name to match the business. It’s also why my ship is so awkwardly named the ‘SolaRepo.’ Branding.”

The Admiral snorted loudly, then sneered at Rake as he seemed to consider throwing him out an airlock.

“Can I pay them and let them leave now?” Mindial demanded. “They’re bonded by contract to keep their mouths shut.”

“Aye, and we all know how well contracts hold up in deep space, my naive little princess,” the Admiral glowered. He stood and approached Rake and Mindial, his eyes narrowing as he approached until he was almost nose-to-nose with Rake. That was when Rake realised the Admiral didn’t actually loom over him, at least physically. Muscles and power, sure, but Rake had a couple of inches on him in height. Not that that made anything better. Whatever the Admiral saw through his glare, it wasn’t helpful for Rake. “Put him in the brig,” he grunted. “I’ll decide what to do with him later.” He spun and pointed a thick, gnarled finger at Mindial. “And don’t you fucking question me, girl.”

Mindial sucked in a breath through her nose and nodded. “Aye, Admiral. To the brig.”

Rake tried to think of something to say, something to convince the Admiral to just let him poke around the system a bit, maybe rescue some people from the ship he shot down a few days ago, but nothing came to mind as he was dragged back out of the room, once again helped along by his friends from the bar instead of being allowed to walk himself.

Once they were clear of the door, the noise from the screen started up again behind them, and Mindial leaned in to speak to Rake out of the side of her mouth. “See? You aren’t dead.”

“Thanks,” Rake deadpanned.

- - - - - - -

‘You’ll be fine, this won’t take long,’ Mindial had said.

The deeper into the base that her pirates dragged Rake, the less he believed her.

He had lost track of all sense of direction before they even met the Admiral, and now he wasn’t even sure what level they were on as he was dragged up and down ramps, through tight corridors and big empty warehouse-sized rooms. Finally they stopped in front of a big sealed blast door with a manual turning pressure lock. It was old school tech that never got used on ships anymore - Rake had only ever seen one on a wreck in a scrap yard. Sitting in front of the door was a chunky Innebrian, his slug-like body leaving a trail of natural slime as he shifted his weight and shifted to the handle for the pressure lock.

“‘notha one for da hole, eh?” the Innebrian grumbled to Rake’s escorts, his words coming out slurpy and wet.

“You got more down here?” the three-eyed lumpy one asked.

“Jus’ da one.” That was the limit of their scintillating conversation. The door to the brig was opened, and the Innebrian waved Rake and his escorts through. “Put ‘im in cell two.”

Cell two happened to be right across from cell one, and right next to the door. As the barred cell was being opened, Rake dearly hoped that the main brig door would mute the sounds that the Innebrian made as he breathed.

“I’ve got it, fellas,” Rake said, stepping into the cell by himself before they could throw him in. The door slammed behind him, the maglock kicking in, and his escorts left. A moment later the big door closed.

Taking stock, Rake did a quick visual tour of his new surroundings. It took about two glances. Inside his cell there was a horizontal bulge in the bulkhead where he assumed at some time in the ancient past there had been a mattress pad but it now stood empty. There was also what looked like half a toilet, the top half having been broken at some p and missing from the premises. And there was a nook, about halfway up the wall across from the former-bed, just big enough that he could see a prisoner putting their neatly folded prison clothes there for storage.

No such luck on fresh clothes. Despite his trip to the refresh station in Mindial’s cabin he was still starting to feel a little ripe. Reaching up, Rake ran his thumb over where he usually clipped his comm on the shoulder of his work jumpsuit. It had gotten taken from him when Mindial had first grabbed him from the bar. If only his father had invested in the little earbud ones, it was entirely possible he would still be in contact with his crew.

That or he’d be getting an earful from Widget and he’d crush the earpiece himself.

There wasn’t an actual light source inside the cell, the only light he could see by coming from a single pot light hanging in the center of the brig corridor. It was yellowed with age and flickered every so often like it was threatening to go out. Rake wondered if someone had loosened the bulb in it to make it do that. Outside his cell the corridor had led about six cells further down and then stopped. That made fourteen cells total in the brig, and judging by the age of the place he… had no fucking clue with the lunar base had been used for.

“Fuck,” he sighed, sitting down on the metal not-bed and then leaning back until his spine was pressed to the cool surface.

He listened to the soft hums around him, trying to see if there were different pitches from several sources, or just one general one.

“So what did you do?” a female asked.

“What the fuck,” Rake said, spooked as he rolled up and off his perch and hit the ground, scampering to his feet. “Hello?” He’d entirely forgotten that the Innebrian said there was another prisoner.

“What did you do to get thrown in here?” the female asked again. There was an edge to her voice, but she sounded a little relieved as well. It was coming from across the corridor from Cell 1, but whoever it was, she was standing near the back and out of the light.

“My job,” Rake said. “Towed a client, brought her right where she wanted, and got thrown in here while the big boss decides if he wants to pay me, I guess.”

“It’s not going to be about payment,” she said. “He’s deciding whether he’ll kill you or not.”

“Well that’s just a real cheery way of looking at it,” Rake said. “What did you do?”

“My job,” the female said, stepping forward into the light. She was a human and wearing the remains of a UEN uniform, though it was battered and scorched and one arm was hanging on by just her armpit. Her opposite hand was bandaged, and as she stepped fully into the dim yellow light Rake saw that she had several scrapes on her face. “I guess they don’t like honest folks, huh?”

“Ho-ly fucking suns,” Rake said as he looked at the woman.

“What?” she replied.

“Ruby?” Rake asked, though it was obvious to him. She was the spitting image of Emmie, minus a scar and adding the scrapes. Her hair was different like in the distress call, but it was the same shade of vibrant red that her sister had.

“How do you know my name?” Ruby asked, frowning deeply and taking a step back from the bars of her cell, back into the dim shadows.

“I’m, ah, well I’m here to rescue you,” Rake said. “Surprise.”

Ruby looked at Rake and blinked several times, then glanced at the bars of her cell. And then the bars of his cell. And then at Rake again. “Right. And that’s… going well for you?”

“Well to be fair we were kind of expecting you to be planetside or something,” Rake said. “When your distress call said ‘going down’ I wouldn’t have thought to find you on the moon.”

“Yeah, well shit gets weird in deep space,” Ruby said. “Now how do you know my name again? Because I definitely didn’t say it in the distress call.”

“Well that makes sense. Um, well, I’m Captain Rake Solar, and my pilot is Emerald. Your sister.”

Ruby was still except for another blink. Then she made a face like she was disgusted. “Oh, fuck right off then.”

“I’m being serious-”

“No, I got that part. Fucking Emerald? Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?” Ruby growled. “No, fuck this. Give up the rescue attempt, I’ll wait for the pirates to kill me. Fucking Emerald, you’ve got to fucking- ugh!”

Rake couldn’t see in the dark, but it sounded like she punched the wall.

“So…. not going to be a happy reunion then,” Rake muttered.