Penny

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Sayeeda awakened on warm sheets so smooth they felt liquid against her tan skin. The dinner the previous night had been sumptuous in the extreme. Courses of seafood, ground fowl and other delicate meats competed with pastries, shaved chocolate and pies filled with sweet tart berries. The feast had been paired with wines of a dozen styles and worlds of origin, all of which would have cost as much as Sayeeda would have made in a month, or six months when she had been a Captain in Andor’s Armored. Gabriella and Gredorius had toasted their daughters return from her ‘travels’ and thanked her ‘friends’ for conveying her home safely and for their ‘loyal service’ whilst she had been away. It was obvious that the fact Indra had been kidnapped was being kept quiet for political reasons, though Sayeeda neither knew nor cared what the were. Junebug did not know much about wine, but she did know a lot about drinking and after eight or nine toasts it all tasted pretty much the same.

Unfortunately the aftereffects were also similar. Sayeeda let out a groan and rolled over to curl up in the fetal position. She was dressed in her bra and the formal silk skirt she had worn the night before and had a vague memory of marching arm and arm down the hallway to her suite with Taya who was expansively detailing her claim to the ancient and defunct throne of Fornax. After a few minutes she marshalled the will to crack open an eyelid.

The room was sumptuously appointed with high ceilings and floors that seemed to be sheets of solid marble, though that was doubtlessly a cast rather than a natural occurrence. Tall arches looked out over a balcony with a stunning view of the sea and the steep drop down to the beach. There was a slight shimmer around the edges of the archways, a tell tale sign of sophisticated force fields that kept weather out without compromising the aesthetics.

Vases of fresh cut flowers stood on ornately carved wooden furniture, apparently out of the same fir trees that lined the mountainside. A side board of expensive looking liquor lined one wall, above which were a series of old fashioned paper books. On the bedside table lay a silver platter on which sat a high end but otherwise perfectly normal drug infuser. A folded card beside it was marked ‘use it in good health’. Sayeeda made an undignified scrambled for the infuser, pressed it to her wrist and triggered it. There was a sharp hiss as the contents pumped into her veins. Anti-hangover cures varied tremendously throughout the galaxy and Sayeeda had tried many, but for personal choice an alcohol kelator paired with a hydration agent and a non-narcotic analgesic, couldn't be beat. She felt better almost immediately and within a minute or too she was on her feet.

The room was equipped with a large bathroom including a hot tub and a shower. She luxuriated under cool water, allowing it to wash the dust of Hahn away. It felt like the first time she had been clean in weeks and she spent a good twenty minutes allowing the water to dispel the last of her hangover.

“Sayeeda?” came a call from the main room. Sighing she terminated the shower sequence and wrapped a towel around her waist and chest, and quickly towled her hair dry. She stepped back into the main room to find Neil waiting in the antechamber.

“Whats up?”

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

“What are you…!” Rene’s objections died on his lips as the logic of the move made itself apparent to him. Threatening to destroy the PEA and Solae, the only means of accessing it, would certainly make both Ralch and Bhast cautious, though possibly for different reasons.

Rene sat heavily fumbling with the catch of his armor and easing the fit. Blood dribbled from the opening in the ceramic and he winced as the pressure came off. The sealant on his skin was rough and lumpy where blood had caused it to dry unevenly. He could feel a faint discomfort when he moved and he reached down and found the edge of a fragment of armor protruding from the sealant. He grit his teeth and pulled, trying to ignore the queasy feeling as it slid free. The sealant hissed as it reacted to the fresh blood flow, closing over the void left by the bloody fragment of ceramic.

He looked up to find Solae watching him. He smiled at her reassuringly. The light from the PEA played up over her face and hair heightening her ethereal beauty for a stunning moment. It would have been breathtaking if he wasn't already having trouble catching his breath.

“It isn’t bad,” he assured her, wishing he could be more certain of that fact. Stomach wounds could be funny, but short of seeing a surgeon or a medi-comp there was little he could do either way. A sudden hammering on the door prevented further conversation, the pitch and clamor increased as frustrated soldiers replaced fists with rifle butts.

“It is still an armored door,” Rene pointed out to no one in particular.

“Maybe they will be the first ones to batter one down by hand,” Solae answered with a smile. Rene grinned and turned back to the door, letting his weapon hang from his gun hand for a moment before raising his voice.

“Attention people attempting to knock down a blast armored door with your hands,” Rene called out. There was an odd reverberation as the buildings PA system broadcast his word. Decimal was not Mia, but he/it could obviously take care of basic anticipatory commands.

“Before you work your way up to breaching charges, please be advised that blowing the door will trigger a discharge of the buildings self destruct system. That will kill you and probably everyone within a block of here,” Rene continued and was gratified with a near instantaneous secession of the noisy hammering.

“The Imperial Technical Survey estimates 95 percent casualties within a two block radius,” Decimal added, helpfully also over the public address system. The AI might be programmed to sound unemotional and distant, but that didn't mean it couldn't understand what its users might require of it.

“I stand corrected, far be it from me to argue with the ITS,” he concluded, glancing back to see Solae still working on the controls. There didn’t seem to be any other way out of the chamber but it still made sense to play for time until Solae's work was complete. There was a real chance that Bhast would rather destroy a priceless PEA rather than allow the Imperial Government to be warned of the coup, but even if she wanted to, bringing down a building this size would take time, even for the heavy weapons mounted on her vehicles.

“Are you about done Mr Quentain?” came an authoritative female voice that could only have belonged to General Bhast herself. There was sudden volley of fire from outside the door, though it was accompanied by no screams or shouts of pain.

“Decimal can you give me video feed for the corridor?” Rene asked in concern.

“The hostiles have destroyed the cameras Sir,” Decimal responded indifferently. Rene frowned, he didn’t know what Bhast might want privacy for, nor could he imagine what she thought she could do without triggering the self destruct but not knowing made him nervous.

“Mr Quentain?” Bhast called again. Rene looked up at Solae who mouthed the words ‘nearly there’ as he fingers flew across the controls, illuminating the room in queer prismatic light.

“It is Private Quentain actually,” Rene called back with forced jocularity, “Mr Quentain is my father.”

“Charming,” Bhast drawled, a dangerous edge of irritation in her voice. She clearly wasn’t a woman who was used to enduring alot of back talk.

“But I am here to discuss terms of surrender,” Bhast continued.

“Oh, well in that case I am willing to accept your surrender on standard terms, you and your men will lay down their weapons and be interned until a court…”

“Your surrender you arrogant son of a bitch!” Bhast roared, her fist hammering against the armored door. Rene suppressed the urge to laugh with some difficulty feeling light headed and shaky. He touched a control on his armor and felt a prick as it dumped stims into his system, clearing his mind and steadying his shaking hand as a cocktail of adrenaline, amphetamines and synthetic stabilizers into his system.

“It has been a while since basic training, but I’m fairly sure ‘don’t surrender’ was one of the lessons,” Rene explained, reaching down to pull the closure on his armor snug and shaking his torso slightly to settle it.

“Don’t be a fool, you think the Empire cares about you? Turn the woman over and we will make you rich enough to buy your own planet!”

“It’s a generous offer, but all I control right now is a transmission room and honestly I’m a little overwhelmed,” Rene responded. Silence fell as Bhast gave up the attempt to subvert Rene. He very much doubted she was giving up entirely, but they both recognized they had reached an impasse. It had only ever been a play for time, but he hoped he had irritated her enough to cloud her judgement, but you couldn’t count on that with a successful career officer. Rene turned and looked back at Solae.

“How are we doing?” he whispered.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

“Come out come out where ever you hide!,” a brutish voice called as torchlight cast harsh shadows down the entrance passage. Emmaline opened her mouth to scream but Amal’s hand clamped over her mouth. A moment later a brutal looking bandit with an eye patch stepped into the chamber below them. In one hand he clutched a scimitar and in the other a burning torch. The camel they had led into the chamber snorted nervously as several more bandits spilled into the room.

“Hand her over boy, we will give you some of the gold we sell her for and let you keep your balls,” the bandit went on in a wheedling tone.

“By Allah’s beard,” one of his underlings exclaimed as torch light played across the facets of the emeralds in the statues eyes, making them glint and shimmer. There was a collective intake of breath as the bandits realised the value of the stones and then a general disorganized rush towards the statue.

“We should run,” Emmaline whispered urgently as the boot falls of the freebooters covered her words.

“There might be more outside,” Amal conseled, “let us wait a moment more.”

The bandits realised the stones were too high to reach and began dragging one of the heavy ceramic amphorae closer to the statue to use as a step. As the lip of it bumped the statue Emmaline felt a stirring of magic both ancient and powerful.

“Let us go,” Amal hissed urgently, but Emmaline couldn’t move, only stare transfixed at the unfolding scene. The one eyed bandit climbed up onto the amphora and, at full extension pressed his knife into the statues eye socket, preparatory to removing it. There was a sudden howling wind that seemed to carry with it not only the dry heat of the desert but the distant and perfumed reek of southern jungles. An arm burst from the statue in a shower of rock dust and seized the bandit by the neck. Emmaline realised in horrified fascination that it wasn’t an arm inside the statue, it was the statue itself, cracks ran down the limestone facing and the avatar of Asaph stepped free. The things body was composed of carved ivory and gold above the waist and interlocking plates of jade to form its serpentine lower quarters. The bandits fled screaming before the avatar but Asaph, it seemed, was no merciful goddess. The avatar crushed the bandit in her grip with a negligent gesture, the tomb echoing with the crack of the man's ribs before pitching like a missile at the remainder, driving them to a ground in a sprawl. With a seductive swish of her hips that echoed mesmerizingly through her tail she closed the distance and fell on the survivors, each hand jerking a long silvery blade from what had appeared to be carven sheaths.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Junebug heaved a sigh of relief as the Highlander clattered to rest on the landing pad. The metal hull pinged as it cooled and machinery whine as the onboard systems began to power down. Though she and Neil had both agreed that the radical modifications they had made would work, the word ‘probably’ had been very heavily implied. She wanted to congratulate him but he was busy answering some question or another that Indra had breathlessly put to him. Pursing her lips she popped her restraints and stood up.

The landscape outside was picturesque. The steeply rising sides of the mountain were clad with something that approached a Terran fir tree, though their were odd metallic bronze inclusions in the bark that meant it was either a native, similar evolution to answer similar circumstances, or some kind of hybrid. Broad stone steps climbed the mountain in an elaborate spiral and doors of some sort of polished crystal were set into the mountainside to give access to less picturesque but more practical elevators. The frangible nature of the volcanic rock that formed the mountain had allowed human engineers to enhance naturally occuring tiers, sculpting the rock to permit space for landing pads and other structures, such as the anti-aircraft emplacements they had seen on the way in, and other small structures. The base of the spire, where the rock met the greenish sea was half rimmed with pristine beaches, and half surrounded by an industrial dockyard at which a dozen vessels lay moored at short jetties that protruded like spines. A pair of them were obviously pleasure yatz but there was also a large gray vessel painted in a disruptive pattern that was clearly a surface going warship, another smaller pair of hydrofoils might easily have been escorts though Sayeeda lacked the technical knowledge to say for sure.

In a world where plasma guns could reach out to line of sight and smash anything that was light enough to move, surface vehicles, like the tanks of Andor’s armored were the primary method of fighting modern wars. Aircraft struggled due to the fact that sensors could pick them up when they cleared the horizon and the couldn’t carry enough armor to survive targeted shots, though certain stealthy models, observation drones for the most part, could sometimes be of use. On a world where there was ocean rather than land, wet navies could provide the same service as tanks, mechs and other armored vehicles did on other worlds, providing mobile artillery and direct fire capabilities. The islands and archipelagos would provide bases and tall spires like this one would provide vantage points from which heavy weapons could reach out many hundreds of miles, providing natural bastions, not unlike medieval castles, for the aristocracy that controlled them. In areas where there were few tall islands, the pirates and smugglers Indra mentioned could find havens. On some worlds a united world government would have installed a satellite network that made such activity impossible, but anyone with basic sensors could pick off satellites with ease be they rival noble or pirate either way. Indra’s insistence they use clearance codes to approach suddenly made a lot more sense.

“Junebug?” Taya repeated as Junebug snapped out of her ponderings.

“We got company.”

The party that met them at the bottom of the Highlander’s forward hatch was part formal greeting part familial reunion. A quartet of women, each wearing gilded breastplates and carrying round ornamental shields as well as very functional looking plasma pistols escorted a beautiful woman in a tailored business suit and a hard faced athletic looking man with a short iron gray beard and an official looking robe.

“Mother!” Indra cried and rushed to hug the other woman. There was little in their apparent ages to suggest a maternal relationship rather than a sisterly one, but this was obviously a testament to whatever anti-aging drugs the older woman employed. She caught up her daughter in a relieved hug. The granite faced man managed a smile of his own, though it was obviously not his usual expression.

“We didn’t dare believe it when we received your private code,” he intoned gravely, nodding his thanks to the assembled crew of the Highlander. Sayeeda was dressed in her usual combat pants and boots and while she wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘smooth operator’ she also wore a black jacket with silver piping that gave her a slightly more formal and dignified look. Though she didn’t openly carry a weapon, she had a pistol tucked into her waistband concealed by the jacket.

“We rescued your daughter from a bit of difficulty,” Sayeeda said graciously. The old mans eyes were searching as they regarded her, flicking left and right to take in Neil and Taya and Saxon.

“She hired us to bring her home.”

Damned to the Depths

Calliope ground her teeth as she tried to incant a spell. As her captor had stated she couldn’t summon up so much as a spark of magic. It was as though a leaden blanket had been draped over her mystical senses. Grinning the smaller man stepped towards her pigish eyes hungry. Calliope swung her body upwards, ignoring the pain in her wrist as she wrapped her legs around the neck of the surprised servant. With a scream of hatred she wrenched her legs in alternate directions. There was a strangled cry and an ugly crack and then the unfortunate chamberlin slumped to the ground.
“Ah,” her surviving captor observed and then spoke an arcane word. Pain lanced from her wrists up into her body and darkness enveloped her.

Calliope found herself in the gray nothingness in which her spell craft sometimes transported her. At some level she was aware that she was unconscious and suspended from her arcane shackles. A massive presence moved in the dark, a shadow against the mist.

“Little Wyrm,” a voice like mountains grating together sounded in her mind.

“Who are you?” she demanded, turning on the spot in a vain attempt to locate the speaker.

“Have you no inkling little Wyrm?” the voice asked in amusement.

“The dragon,” she responded, speaking on instinct rather than on logic. She had fragments of memory, swooping down like lightning from the skies to tear the mage on the deck of the enemy ship to shreds in her talons.

“Good…” the voice rumbled, still circling her. The massive presence was obvious even to her muffled senses.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“The wrong question,” the voice responded. Calliope considered it, forcing herself to be calm and rational.

“Why have you bought me here?” she asked, and was rewarded with an immediate sense of amused approval.

“Better, I have bought you here to ask you a question. You are at a turning point in what you humans would call your destiny,” the voice rumbled.

“One fork leads to slavery for a time, perhaps for many years but when you are finally free you will find some measure of peace. The other is bathed in dark magic and ruin, but your desires can be yours.”

“That doesn't sound like much of a choice,” she admitted. A terrible barrage of images burst through her mind, burning ships, drowning men, cities in flames, black wings wheeling over head.

“Perhaps not, but if you choose to feed your hunger now it will never be sated,” the voice purred. Calliope folded her arms beneath her breasts definitely.

“You knew what I would choose when you bought me here,” she declared. There was a hollow booming chuckle.

“Perhaps Little Wyrm, but mortals have surprised me before. All you need do to attain what you desire is ask for my help.”

“Very well, help me,” Calliope asked the misty darkness.

“Then our bargain is sealed,” the voice rumbled.

“Our kind is patient, return now and await your killer from the seas…”

Calliope started awake. Two servants were dragging her by the arms, and she had been changed into a dancing costume of black diapponus lace. Her hair had been pinned back in Arad Lund fashion and she could feel make up on her face, dark charcoal eyeliner. She glanced down to where her dragon necklace should have been, to her shock, she saw that it was gone, replaced by an intricate dragon tattoo the spread over her left breast, her collar bone forming the ridge of its serpentine eye. Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard an empty booming chuckle.

The Enemy Within: Warhammer 40K RP

Silvana reached out to the warp, allowing the merest hint of power to trickle through the walls between dimensions. It wasn’t shaped or directed merely present. The acrid reek of the Immaterium stained the air for a moment and Filiroth, as the cowled man was apparently known, turned his head towards the pair of them, nostrils flaring slightly. There was nothing she could have done, short of creating some sort of illusory mutation, that would have better demonstrated that they were not Imperial Agents. At this level of Imperial society, sanctioned psykers were rare enough to be semi-mythical.

“Looking for some yellodes maybe pretty lady,” he asked, referring to the psychoactive drugs that many minor psykers employed to boost their abilities. They where dangerously addictive and insanely dangerous.

“Maybe we can talk about something a bit more… advanced?” she said, following the hooded man back into a half ruined shop filled with rusted mechanical parts and other assorted junk. Filiroth made a crooning sound.

“Ohhh we don't get much cause for the exotics around here missy, but you have come to the right place, Old Filiroth has the connections you need.” Silvana found it somewhat ironic how often people, and particularly, men were condemned by the need to boast. Making such an admission to two inquisitorial agents was as good as lighting ones own pyre. It might take months or years for the Inquisition to act on the information, but the organisation was as implacable as it was dangerous. Besides, given the involvement of the nobility, it was likely that the Throne’s agents would be calling soon rather than later.

Filiroth let them behind a counter and produced a large metal key from his robes with a gnarled hand. The heavy door he inserted it into quivered as he heaved upon it and pushed it open, swinging inwards with a shower of rust to reveal a darkened room that smelled of herbs and other strange items. Filiroth reached around and touched something that beeped before turning to give them a grin.

“A surprise for unwanted visitors,” he explained before beckoning them forward. The inner shop was far cleaner than the outer one. Items hung from the wall without rhyme or reason. Some were familiar, black market cybernetics, cheap and questionable juvie drugs, yellodes in cloudy plastic bottles. Others were more exotic, cards from the Emperor’s tarot, some of which had been profaned, texts and dataslates that Silvana suspected their master would order destroyed after they had been catalogued.

“Impressive,” she murmured, running her fingers over the spines of nearby tomes.

“Ever have any dealings with the Nobs?” she asked, nodding towards a family crest embossed on an elegant signet ring.

WoT: The Dark One's Own Luck.

Mave was awash with conflicting emotions as she glanced around the forrest. It seemed somehow more peaceful and part of her was at ease, another part of her snatched desperately for Saidar only to find that she could not reach it. The Power was still there, she could sense its warmth, but it was as far beyond her reach as the moon. She shivered in spite of herself unused to the sensation of helplessness it engenderd.

“Greetings,” an impossibly deep voice rumbled. And a large humanoid, larger than a trolloc but not nearly so ugly, stepped from behind the bohle of a massive oak tree. He was dressed in green linen and wore a cloak that appeared to be made of animal hides, though several deer had obviously been necessary to clothe the giant. Mave had heard and read of Ogier of course, and every day in Tar Valon was to live among the incredible architectural achievements of that race, but this was the first time she had met one face to face. At least Ali was staring with the same open mouth wonder that she felt.

“We get so few travelers to our steeding, less since these creatures of darkness came to the woods beyond, do not fear, they cannot cross the boundaries,” the giant rumbled with a voice like a distant thunderstorm.

“Greetings,” Mave managed after a moment, trying to infuse her voice with an appropriately Aes Sedai level of calm. She glanced back over her shoulder half expecting to see shadowspawn in pursuit but there was nothing to be seen.

“I am Mave Sedai, of the White Tower and this is Master Ali.. that is Alidrin Baldyr of the Two Rivers,” she introduced, remembering at the last moment that Ogier preferred formality especially for introductions.

“We were making our way south when we were set upon by trollocs, and worse,” she explained.

“I am Ogarif, Son of Hym,” the ogier responded. He reached behind the tree and produced a wondrous staff of sungwood, curved and shaped with sublime elegance and yet still half a tree trunk to Mave’s eyes.

“I have been set to watch the woods, the dark ones cannot cross our boundaries but that dosen’t mean we let them go unmonitored,” he said with a rumbling chuckle.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Emmaline swallowed as the ground rumbled and the doorway to the tomb, or sanctuary or whatever it was slid open. Dust puffed from the opening and she pulled her veil over her eyes to shield them from the grit. She could sense ancient magics deep within the tomb, like distant rains through the forest of the Riekwald. She was unsure whether her spell, or Amal speaking the name of Asaph had caused the change but it seemed to her that the best thing to do was to leave and quickly. She turned to say as much to Amal when the sound of men shouting reached her ears. Glancing back along the canyon she saw men, probably bandits, on camelback silhouetted against the horizon. The rising sun was full in their faces and it would take them a few seconds to notice the interlopers.

“In!” she snapped grabbing the camel by the reigns and pulling it towards the door,” the beast whickered and struggled until Amal touched his hand to its face and it relented allowing itself to be lead between the stone lintels. The interior of the tomb was cool with the smell of ancient decay heavy on the air. Impressive panels framed a long hallway, carvings of strange pictorial designs covered the walls, snakes featured heavily in the iconography, leading some credence to Amal’s assertions about the Goddess. At the end of the corridor large carven columns flanked the entryway to a chamber. It was perhaps twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep. Decorative pots and vases lined the walls, some of them sealed with ancient dust covered wax. In the center of room was a sunken rectangle from which more columns rose. Emmaline guessed that it might once have been a pool, but it was long dried up now so the carefully fitted limestone blocks on the bottom were easily visible. A statue, ten feet high stood at the far end of the chamber, though in the dark it was hard to make out the details. They had no torches or lanterns so Emmaline took a gold piece from her purse and lifted it into the air, whispering an incantation as she did so. The gold Arabyian coin began to glow, casting a soft golden light through the chamber, throwing the carvings into sharp relief. The statue was of a beautiful woman, though from the waste down she appeared to be a serpent with her tail coiled around her body. Emeralds the size of Emmaline’s fists glinted in the statues eye sockets and the scales appeared to be carved not of sandstone, as the rest of the statue was, but of overlapping plates of jade. An altar of simple stone stood at the foot of the statue.

“I don’t see any other way out,” Emmaline fretted. It was certain that the brigands would spot the entrance to the subterranean structure as certainly as they had, and probably would investigate. While they might hope for the element of surprise she was far from certain that she and Amal could overcome a half dozen battle hardened cut throats, certainly if the bandits had supplies they could wait them out. She peered at the strange hieroglyphics on the walls but without the lexicon she had purchased they remained impenetrable to her other than the frequent repetition of the name Asaph.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

It took nearly a week for the Karma Hazu to complete the voyage to Cylonieka. Partly this was to do with the distance as Hahn was an unusually isolated system, but mostly it was because the megafreighter simply didn’t accelerate to the kind of speeds that would be a matter of course for smaller vessels like the Highlander. Without friction there was no practical limit, short of the speed of light, to the speed a vessel could attain, but even in zero gravity inertia had to be accounted for. There was little point in accelerating for two or three days to build up speed, and then decelerating for the same amount of time, if it would only save you two or three days in transit even before you factored in the cost of fuel you had expended.

“Extracting,” Taya reported as the countdown clock on her terminal flicked down the last few seconds. Sayeeda felt her soul leave her body as the ship continued to accelerate away from her, attenuating her for long and agonising seconds before she snapped back into place. Indra, sitting in one of the infrequently used jumpseats was moaning quietly and Taya appeared gray and vacant for a moment before she blinked and straightened up. Neil and Saxon seemed unaffected by the extraction, though that was as likely to be because their discomfort was more internal than that it hadn’t occurred. Science was unable to adequately explain the hallucinations and delusions that accompanied transitions to and from the RIP but no sentient race yet discovered was immune to the effect. That an effect was so consistent across so many radically different biologies kept philosophers babbling but in practical terms it just meant all races found space travel equally unpleasant.

The Highlander shuddered as the Karma Hazu began to fire its attitude thrusters, correcting its course toward the systems distant sun. Precision jumping over long distances was not easy and all but the most elite naval units usually had to make a supplemental jump with more accurate positioning data to arrive at their destiation. Fortunately for the Highlander, luck appeared to be on the side of the Karma Hazu and her unwitting passenger as they were less than a light minute from the primary world of the system.

The Cylonieka system had six planets ranging from a sunbaked rock that was perpetually bathed in the light of the systems blue white star, to an icebound dustball barely ensnared by its gravity. Unusually, the system boasted two habitable worlds, Cylonieka itself, a primarily ocean world scattered with thousands of islands ranging from a few acres to several thousand hectares, and Coreyana, a moon of the gas giant Covax. Coreyana was a volcanically active moon, with wild crags and impressive mountain ranges. Although it had been terraformed at some point in the past, it remained sparsely populated.

Unlike Hahn, the system teemed with traffic and the Highlander’s sensor board lit up with dozens of contacts. Cylonieka itself was a producer of export grade protein, mostly deep sea krill that were gathered by the ton by large automated submersibles before being processed on the surface. The world also boasted a chemical and electronics industry, largely reliant on mining on the more mineral rich Coreyana and the asteroid belt that had developed around the gravity well of the gas giant. Intra-system freighters coasted along the orbital approaches, in weeks or month long arcs before orbital tenders carried the ores down to the surface to be processed.

“Alright lets ditch this cow and be on our way,” Neil said with a grin. Indra smiled lusciously at the pilot as he worked the controls and the Highlander shuddered as the gravity rings sucked her up and away from the Karma Hazu. The mega freighterer began to fall away as it fired its breaking thrusters, though Taya’s sensor program meant they would probably remain unaware of their former passenger. Junebug watched Indra thoughtfully. The woman had spent a considerable amount of time with Neil in the past week and she wasn’t sure what if anything she should make of it.

“Should we broadcast to someone?” Taya asked as Neil fiddled with their course bringing them in to a long orbit of Covax to scrub velocity from the ship.

“I have private codes that will allow us to land at my families island,” Indra replied, “I was kidnapped once and would rather not announce that I am back.”

Indra had been somewhat reticent about how exactly she had been kidnapped but as she was paying that did not particularly concern Sayeeda.

“So long as they aren’t going to shoot us down on the way in,” Junebug commented. Indra waved her hand dismissively.

“My father values discretion,” she explained.

“Ships come and go from our island all the time, we also have a repair facility there, it is small but it should be sufficient to meet your needs,” she assured them.

“You have your own shipyard?” Sayeeda wondered aloud.

“Politics on Cyloneika is very fractured Captain, most of the major houses have learned that it is best to be as self sufficient as possible, lest a political intrigue cut you out of some vital resources.”

“Powerful noble families, no strong central government, what could go wrong,” Sayeeda observed wrly. The ship began to shudder as it orbited the gas giant, an impressive swirl of blue white and gray, before settling into a ballistic course that would put them in orbit above Cylonieka itself within a half hour.

“Is there really enough shipping to make it worth it?” Taya asked curiously. Indra nodded.

“My family owns dozens of vessels, and our clients hundreds more, besides the facilities are also used to maintain submersibles. Trust me, you will find everything you need to repair your ship just as soon as you have delivered me home.”