Everyshore Region – Gicodel System
The stars looked different. They always looked different. Nate had long ago given up on trying remembering the star charts of each system. There were too many.
What he did know, is that he had stumbled on some very nice source of income.
Between deployments to the Outer Ring, he had taken an assignment with the Servant Sisters of Eve. Kind of charity work, according to him. His ancestry in the Brutor Tribe definitely gave him an in with the Sisters. Hey, he wasn't going to turn down an offer to go after some Serpentis and have it counted positively in his cosmic karma points... Who believed that crap. Not him. He liked to count the brownie points with them and the likeliness of getting access to some of those prized blueprints.
He also welcomed some action, finally, after the more than dull sessions of patrolling, encountering nothing but large enemy fleets that were impossible to engage without larger ship support. And even when engagement came, the battles were stalemates. No clear winner... just large fields of unrecoverable wrecks... His fighter blood was restless. He compensated by overdoing it in the training rooms. His body was much more buff than any of his comrades and, when out of ship, towered above more than one of his wingmates. His dark tan, chiseled face, bare muscles and dreadlocks earned him a wide berth in the mess hall, whenever newbies came on board.
Nevertheless. This one mission had brought his battleship class Fleet Issue Tempest against some tough opponents. With heavy frigate support. That guy had almost plowed through his ships defense before he could eliminate the totality of the ships holding his navigation down. But eventually, his years of training had paid off and he eked out a victory, very much liking the sight of his opponents ship crumbling inward to a hunk of twisted metal. He imagined the look on his face as the planes of metal dislocated and severed every portion of his body.
His sensors had picked up an odd thing. Not all the tissue of his opponents clone was rendered useless by the deep freeze of space. Oddly, there was some sample to be obtained.
And a tag.
Back in the station, docked and un-podded and showered, he examined the tag closer.
Holy shit! It was one a member of the Sarpanti family, according to the crest on the tag. He twirled the tag in the poor light of his nightstand lamp in the crummy bunk room he had in the station. The holograms danced in the clear crystal of the tag, sending shards of pinks, yellows and oranges across the walls. The body sample was safely stored in a bio-case in his cargo hold.
He now had some DNA sample of one pilot of the Sarpanti family... Wow...
While definitely a black market item in most Empire systems, since unregistered cloning was passable of the death sentence, this was a very unexpected twist of fate. He did know a few people that would be very interested in recovering this sample. He didn't know exactly how it was done, but rumors had it that some of the Jovian ships needed certain types of DNA to be fabricated. Heh, yet another piece of black market booty, those ships. Nate, brother, stay cool and negotiate your reward... He had never done anything illegal worse than transporting exotic dancers through highly religious space. Nothing to it, though, right? Stay cool, act tough, carry a gun, update your clone coverage policy... No-thing to it.
The dealer he had in mind, only known as Guidomarko, owned a small base off of one of the moons in a system quite a few jumps away, in one of the more lawless areas of space. He knew the dangers of the trek. He also knew his ship was more than capable of dealing with what might come up.
Interestingly, the flight there was uneventful. No ambush, no pursuit... Oh well, it happens. Although the less action happened, the more he felt on the brink of some thin thin edge of reality. He could tip one side or the other... of what, he didn't know. His wing mates kept telling him that it's the lot of all fighter pilots, to be so on edge... But the more it went on, the less he was sure he would like what he found if he did go one either of the sides... He came to think that, given enough boredom, he might even jump himself to whatever fate was his... Ennui... humans worst enemy... Did animals ever get bored?
With those very metaphysically enthralling considerations in mind, he docked at the small pad and alighted. He noticed a few other ships were there, other than the owners gaudily tricked-up frigate. He thought it looked pink or light fuchsia, with the reflection of the nearby moon. With all its decorative appendages and already looking like a piece of unfinished cubist nightmare, it made him think of a square-chested half-molting beetle. He doubted anyone short of Guidomarko understood the tastes of Guidomarko...
He reached the habitation module, now transformed into some kind of small bar, where imported liquors and other hallucinogenic substances were lined up on a transparent shelf under the burgundy and camo green lighting. Had this guy installed stringy melon-colored fuzzy carpet on the lining of the viewports? Projectors ran a continuous string of X-rates Holoreels on the spare spaces between the faux brick sections of the walls. Guidomarko definitely put the tack in tacky... Several individuals were lounging in the low-resting chairs spread out throughout the room. None of them looked very much at ease in the surroundings, all trying not to pay attention to anything else than the drinks in their hand. The place was more a meeting point than a fun hang-out. If there was one redeeming feature within Guidomarko, it was his ability to ply his network of acquaintances. He was a master match-maker... for every kind of illegal deal in the region.
A tap on the shoulder made him turn around and come face to face with what could only be the owner of every piece of fuzz in the place, judging by the fur lining of his... what? Glasses?... Who wore glasses?
"Nate?" the walking duster asked.
"Er, yes... sir?"
"Guidomarko, the one and only. Nice to finally meet you in person."
"Indeed. The pleasure is mine also. None of the ransom pictures on the police billboard do your fuzz any justice."
"Well," he chortled, "I try to keep the police network informed of the latest trends, but they seem unable to understand the chronology of it all... Fastidious automatons, the lot of them! I believe you have something to show me?" All business, now, fuzzbucket. "A potential buyer was in the area. I invited him to see for himself. He could hardly believe it."
"You best believe, my little Minelli reduction... I re-ran the tag RFID and at least the family crest checks out. I don't know enough about your local mafia to know all the members of the family."
"No need to worry, our buyer has all the equipment we need to do identifying. He's serious. He will give you the best price you could ask for. Let's meet in 15 minutes at the docking airlock. We will board his ship."
15 minutes later, having retrieved the bio-case, Nate was waiting in front of the gray door of the airlock, waiting for the beep on the other side. He took a few minutes to inspect his surroundings. Nothing out of the ordinary on this kind of small personal base. Good, things were going smoothly so far. The notion that something should go wrong in this kind of illegal transaction was firmly planted in his action-movie addled brain. He was trying to stay ready.
The airlocked beeped and brayed as it opened. He stepped into the tiny ship. From the outside it had looked small, but he figured it might be bigger inside than it looked outside. Wrong... It really was cramped inside. All kinds of cases and boxes were stacked ceiling high in the minuscule cargo area. Seats were covered in papers, themselves covered in moss-colored dust. He breathed deeply and stepped in.
"Don't touch anything" blurted crackly speakers somewhere head-level in the mess.
A woman's voice. He looked around. He saw movement at the far end of the badly illuminated room. A door opened as the flush of a sanitary airlock sounded and Guidomarko stepped into the room, adjusting his heavily buckled belt.
"Meet Ezra, Mr. Nate."
A chair rolled into view from behind some cases, holding a shape under an ill-fitting plain gray tunic, a dozen bulky wires running from under it to some consoles in the walls and ceiling, forming a spiderweb of sorts around the creature. Nate was sure that at some time, she had been human. The connection ports of the wires into her body had swollen and her body shrunk, giving the impression that the wires had completely fused with her bones and were holding her somewhat upright in the seat. Her wrinkly skin, where it was visible at the connection port, made her seem pachydermally shriveled. A steel mask covered her mouth and nose, fashioned and painted like a Japanese mempo mask. More tubes, those thinner, jutted out from it.
Her eyes were the only indication that she was alive. Dark emerald piercing eyes.
She glared at him from behind the tangled and grimy wires. "Let's see the tag." Nate took a step sideways, hooked the bio-case to the back of his belt and unlocked the holster of his small arm, then handed the tag to the slothy figure. "No funny tricks, stick" he replied.
She glared at him again and slid out a console from under a desk. She inserted the tag into one of its slit and watched as a flurry of figures and sketches erupted on the flat screen above. She ogled and was abruptly caught in a fit of cough that rattled her frame and made the wires undulate randomly. The image reminded Nate of a documentary on earthly octopuses...
