Heath was awash in a tide of panic so deep he was unsure he’d reach sanity again. Not even when his uncle died, and he thought he was going to lose everything, had he felt this adrift.
“Snap out of it kid,” came Emerald’s harsh voice.
“M’not a kid,” Heath mumbled. “I’m a Captain.”
“Then act like it.”
The harsh response, more than anything else, brought Heath back to reality. The remainder of his crew was huddled in a mostly empty job hall, tucked in a back corner of the station. Their only company a couple of ancient spacers, drinking on opposite ends of the bar.
Heath took a deep breath. Then another. And another. This, he realized, was what it meant to be a Captain. When everything went wrong, he couldn’t buckle.
“What do we know?” He asked everyone.
“We were only gone for an hour, maybe a bit more,” Copperfield said. “Not a lot of time for complex piracy.”
“This is a crowded station. Larger than average, but it is well-run and well-regulated,” Ekaterina said.
“The Loon ain’t a normal ship,” Emerald added. “She isn’t something you can just walk up and steal.”
“But she will also respond to threats a regular AI wouldn’t,” Heath said slowly. A guess coming together in his mind. “Like if there was an injured crew member on board.”
“So we’re back to pirates. Maybe.” Ekaterina said. “What do we do to get the Loon back?”
Heath rubbed a hand down his face. “No use until we can figure out who took her.”
“Then we go to the station authorities,” she pronounced. “Why haven’t we already?”
He looked to Emerald, then to Copperfield, identical grim expressions across their faces. “Piracy is complicated. No, not like that,” he said when Ekaterina scoffed. “If we go to the station, and it comes out they let it happen on their watch, they might not be so helpful.”
Emerald snorted and leaned in. “Not helpful is an understatement. We go to the station master, and one of two things happens.” They held up a single finger. “First, and most likely, they bury us. If ships aren’t confident docking here, then the whole system is fucked. For something like this, an isolated incident happening to outsiders, I doubt they even let us finish the story before they showed us the door.”
They held up a second finger. “Option two is worse. They react and they react big. Make an example of it. Every system in the sector hears about the incident and what they’re doing about it. ‘No need to panic, the big bad guards are on the case’. We get shoved to the sidelines, and never see the Loon again.”
“This is absurd,” Ekaterina huffed. “Guards that cannot act against piracy are worthless.”
“That’s the tradeoff on the Rim. You get freedom and the chance to level, but the risks are always there.” Copperfield hadn’t stopped looking like he’d swallowed a lemon since they sat down. Maybe feeling awkward with his former lifestyle being thrown back in his face.
“The Syndicate,” Heath announced, cutting off further argument. “They must have someone on the station, and there’s no chance this isn’t tied to the bounty. We find them and we get them to tell us what happened.”
“And how will we find them? It took ages to get in touch with Falcon! You can’t just go to the bar and ask to speak to the local criminals.” Ekaterina said.
“Last time we had to be careful,” Heath mentioned. But Emerald was already striding towards the bar.
“What are they doing?” Ekaterina said.
“I think they’re about to ask to speak to the local criminals.”
The three of them shut up as they watched the interaction. Emerald was leaning over the bar, muttering to the proprietor. When they both turned to look at Heath and the others, they started and looked down at the table, or the wall, anything to pretend like they hadn’t been staring.
Less than five minutes later, Emerald was back. “Follow me,” they said.
The four of them trailed back out into the low light of the alley, and back out into the concourse. A winding path brought them past local amusements, restaurants, and hotels, and into the central administrative hub.
“Emerald,” Heath said in an apprehensive voice. Hadn’t they just discussed they didn’t want to go to the local authorities.
“I’m on it, kid.”
Choosing to trust, Heath shut up until they were knocking on an office door. A man with augmented eyes answered their knock. If the bright orange color of the irises wasn’t a giveaway, the visible circuitry would have done it.
“Can I help you?”
“We’re here to talk about the rice wine tariffs.” Emerald stated confidently.
“Come in. I’m happy to help.”
They all shuffled inside the office, which might have once been a roomy supply closet, and was now a claustrophobic workspace with a desk and a single chair for guests.. Emerald sat while Heath stood next to them. The others found corners to wedge themselves into and their host circled around to his side of the desk.
“Please explain,” he said.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
At an elbow from Emerald, Heath took over. “We just completed a job for the Syndicate,” Heath said, couching his language the way the criminals he interacted with always seemed to do. “It was supposed to clear a bounty, but we’ve run into some trouble because of it.”
“Name?”
“Heath Stewart. Captain of the Wandering Loon.”
The unnamed man took out a pad and started typing. “Yup. Bounty was cleared. With an impressive write-up too. You know, with contribution scores like this, you should think about joining up full time. You’d do well.”
“No thanks,” Heath gritted out. “If the bounty was cleared, would anyone with the Syndicate still act on it?”
“Not anyone that valued their reputation.” The man shrugged, unbothered by the implication of what anyone else might do.
“Can you pull up security footage from berth 12, from two to three hours ago?”
“Sure.” He shrugged again. “It’s been a slow week and this has some promise to be interesting.”
The footage blinked onto the pad, and five heads crowded around to get a view. At first, it was nothing unexpected. The Loon docked as normal, and Heath and the others spilled out of the hatch, splitting off to get their errands done as efficiently as possible.
Nothing happened until a Cyber walked down the hatch, carrying a briefcase and moving with the confidence of someone who knew they were right where they were supposed to be. The sight made Heath sick to his stomach.
Half of the person’s scalp had been replaced with metal, a dull gray that resembled nothing so much as a morgue slab. Their eye sockets had been emptied, retrofitted with some mechanism Heath couldn’t recognize, but which looked like ship sensors. A metal cap was covering or replacing their mouth and nose, and Heath wondered if they needed to eat, to breathe. The perfectly fitted suit couldn’t fully hide the unnaturally bulging muscles, or the hand with seven fingers, each with an extra joint.
Cybers were a delicate subject throughout the empire. If they had stolen the Loon, a bad situation was going to get even worse. Everyone had a few magitech augments, HUDs were so ubiquitous as to be mundane in the modern era. The Cybers went much further, until there was no distinction between the augments and the person.
Not many people were comfortable with such extreme modification, to the point that various movements over the course of history had tried to get the processes banned, or the results classified as monsters without the rights of sapients. It didn’t help their cause that there was no Cyber on record that had ever achieved a Class.
Opponents of the movement used the fact as proof that they were no longer alive in a meaningful way. After all, animals could absorb argo and advance, though it was harder for them. So could plants, after a long, long time. But the only way for a Cyber to get stronger was to add a new mod.
Ekaterina pulled back like a feral cat at the sight, but neither Emerald or Copperfield reacted as the video played and the Cyber in question pulled out some sort of rod. A few moments later, the door to the berth unlocked and they walked right in.
The camera angle shifted to a new view as they approached the Loon. The same rod came out, this time, placed directly on the exterior hatch lock.
For three long minutes, nothing happened.
“Come on, Loon,” Heath felt himself muttering.
His retroactive support didn’t help. With a wrenching shriek, the hatch eventually slid aside as the attacker stepped on, and closed again behind them.
Twenty minutes later, sped up on the video, the Loon undocked from the station.
Heath leaned back to see the terror on the Syndicate member’s face before he erased it.
“You recognized the Cyber,” he accused.
“No, not exactly.”
There were a lot of Syndicate members Heath would tiptoe around. Bosses and bodyguards that could flatten his whole crew. This guy wasn’t one of them. He was Classed but barely, and it was four on one. They loomed around his desk, boxing him in.
“That’s not a Cyber, not like you’re thinking. Let me check.”
Before they could stop him, another query was running on his pad. Copperfield snatched it away then paused and tipped it so they could all see.
“Your bounty, it was from the Shaman. Nasty guy, used to be a fully-blooded member but he got demoted a year ago when they found out what he did to the people he got sent to take care of. Turned into a couple of drones.”
A vague gesture at the pad filled in the rest. Someone choosing to become a Cyber was one thing, they still had free will. Being forced into the lifestyle until a personality was erased was no-holds-barred torture.
“We need all the information you have. Now.”
“Look man, I’m sorry but you’re better off finding a new ship. Hey, join up, keep your head down for a while, and I’m sure you’ll get there soon. Two decades, easy.”
“Tell. Me. Where. He. Is.”
“I can’t. No wait,” the man put his hands up to ward off Ekaterina where she had stepped forward, staff in hand. “I literally can’t. I don’t know. I would need something big to trade for information like that, and I don’t have it.”
When none of them took a swing, his shoulders dropped back down from where they had migrated towards his ears. He patted his shirt and straightened the yellow tie that clashed with his eye implant.
“It sucks, but it isn’t all bad. Part of my job here is to look out for promising recruits. That’s you! I can put a good word in for you, that’ll start you off on the right foot.”
A vision flashed across his mind’s eye, of leaning over and smacking this kid right across the face. In reality, Heath did no such thing, and instead he made a quiet choice. One that would impact the whole crew, the entire sector. Hells below, the entire half of the Rim would feel this eventually.
“We have information you can trade for what we need.” All eyes shot to Heath but no one stopped him. “The location and nature of a rank-six, graded-challenge, open-space, raid-class dungeon. Unclaimed, uncleared.”
The Syndicate member had mouthed the words along with Heath, eyes flicking back and forth as he accessed one of their stored functions. Everyone in the room was well aware what a big deal that would be. Retire-comfortably big. Buy-anything-you-want-in-the-universe big. The plan had been to sell the information back in the Core, to some noble house willing to spend the capital on establishing a new power base.
Heath didn’t regret using it here at all. From the lack of objection, he knew the crew was with him.
“That, that we can work with,” said the man at his desk. Orange eyes flashed as something happened in the background. “My boss is on her way.”
‘On her way’ must have translated to ‘outside the door’ as a rank-two Classer walked in only seconds later. Her aura pushed theirs back, but only barely.
Dark makeup, perfectly applied emphasized hollow cheekbones and clearly augmented lashes and lips. The Syndicate had a type. “What’s this I hear about a trade?”
“Information for information,” Heath said. “We have knowledge of a dungeon that will be the biggest news on this side of the Empire. You have information about where my ship is heading.”
“Let’s work something out,” she said with a black smile.
It took an hour to recount every piece of information about the kaiju dungeon, each minute of which Heath spent wanting to pull his hair out. Jenny Mae would have been better at it, but if she had been there, they might not have been selling their best bargaining chip for a hope and a prayer. Their agreement required the crew to promise the recordings of their delve as well, if they were able to be recovered, but eventually, they were given a pad and sent on their way.
The four of them found a mostly-empty artificial park with benches where they could pour over the information together. Each line of the file ramped Heath’s panic to new heights. A Technomancer Shaman, their target specialized in imbuing magitech with false souls, bound and forced into doing his bidding.
“Bad trade,” Copperfield said. “There’s barely anything in here.”
“There’s a location,” Ekaterina pointed out. “Levels and power set. We’ve done more with less.”
“I know, I know.” He replied. “I just hate how much we gave them for this. We didn’t even get a ride to the guy’s base.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll make it work. This guy is all about tech and throwing minions in the way. I bet if we can get to him, he’ll go down easy,” Heath said. Parts of a plan were coming together in his mind. But the problem was still getting there in the first place. Without the Loon.
“Tech classes often have such weaknesses,” Ekaterina agreed. “Even with the level disparity.”
“Emerald?” Heath asked. The older crewmember hadn’t spoken since they left the Syndicate office masquerading or doubling as part of the station administration. Heath wasn’t quite sure how that worked and didn’t care enough to ask.
“This guy was kicked out of the Syndicate for being too unstable. Do you understand how messed up you have to be before they kick you out of a criminal organization like that?”
They shook their head slowly, green hair swaying back and forth. “Kid, I just. I just don’t know how we take something like that on.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Copperfield snapped.
Tempers were fraying all around but if they fractured now it was all over. Heath held up a hand to bring the attention back to him. “We don’t have a choice, but we also only have one shot. And we need to do our best to make it work.”
They planned and plotted until screens covered the wide glass windows that had let in filtered sunlight, signaling the station’s transition into the night cycle. They made guesses about what virus or curse had infected the Loon, and how to fight it. Circled around the best way to fight someone that relied on minions. Speculated on some of the weirder encounters they had run into. A drone sniffing around the Loon on one of their earliest dungeon runs. The mining tug and unmanned drone with inexplicable wiring.
Two topics, however, were off limits: What was going on with Jenny Mae, and how they were going to reach the Technomancer Shaman’s base. It was two weeks away at the Loon’s top speed, with no breaks or stops to resupply. Three for most ships that were specifically chartered for the trip. Four or five for a crew of rank-one Classers without the spare cash to commission a passenger vessel and that had to get rides with whoever was going in the right direction. Maybe longer.
Time the Loon didn’t have. Time Jenny Mae didn’t have. He thought back to the Syndicate office, about what the Shaman was doing to people he was sent after and shivered despite the perfect climate control.
