“So you want to fly to Wembella?” Gaylen asked.

“I do,” Damon Dulel said. “There is another flight, but it won’t leave for a few more days.”

“Hm.”

They stood in the dock, before the Addax. He’d called everyone in, while taking care not to mention a location or names in case the pirate was still listening.

“What would your rate be?” the historian asked.

“It’s a fairly short flight, but the place isn’t much of a trade hub,” Gaylen said, going over the relevant factors in his head. “I did look it up, and I suppose I could buy up some chemicals here and probably make a sale.”

He pretended to think things over.

“Let’s say five hundred.”

“Alright, not a problem,” Dulel said.

Gaylen turned to Saketa.

“What about you?”

The woman went into her little bag and counted out bills. It seemed like more than she’d had back on Josi Ja.

“Five hundred, yes,” she said and held it up.

Gaylen met her eyes for a moment or two.

“Fine,” he said, and received the money. “Same rule as before; no weapons on board. Jaquan, do you know what Bers was doing?”

“He told me he needed to buy spices real quick,” his friend said.

Out of the corner of his eye Gaylen saw Saketa smile strangely.

“What?” he asked her.

“You have a Muan Rager as a cook. It is funny to me.”

“Aha.”

Gaylen considered calling Bers and rushing him, but he’d hinted at the general situation over the first call and the man was ultimately no idiot.

“Right. Back inside, you two. Everyone get ready. I want to fly off within half an hour.”

Dulel paid him and hurried inside, bags slapping about with each step. Gaylen held his hand out and Saketa removed the blades from her belt. Gaylen still didn’t know what to make of the woman, but the first flight hadn’t been a problem and money was money.

“This is one-way, just to be clear,” he told her as she handed him the weapons.

“I know,” she said. “I need work. Maybe I’ll find it there.”

“I hear it is actually a terrible place to find work,” he warned her.

“Mm. I do special work.”

“Right,” Gaylen said, although that could mean anything. He considered handing the blades back, but no. It was just a short flight and then he wouldn’t see her again.

The two passengers, Kiris, Herdis and Ayna entered the Addax. Jaquan had noticed the way Gaylen looked at him and stayed behind until the others were out of earshot.

“Is something on your mind?” he asked and walked over.

“Yeah...” Gaylen said, and felt awkward. He could tell his friend saw that this conversation wouldn’t be about everyday things.

He cleared his throat.

“I’m thinking of... doing the right thing. While earning a bundle of cash.”

“So,” Jaquan said and crossed his arms. “You want to deliver that keeper.”

“It feels like a risk,” Gaylen said. “Getting involved with things that are beyond us. But the Fed and the Heg... it isn’t much of a secret that they both have massive underground operations going against one another. And there is a lot of money to be made.”

“Money, and maybe a chance to contribute to the good fight...” Jaquan said. “Which one of those is an excuse for the other?”

The question annoyed Gaylen, and Jaquan waved his hand as a sign of backtracking.

“If I wanted emotional probing I would be getting Kiris drunk,” Gaylen said, but restrained himself from actually getting angry.

“Yes, alright,” his friend said.

“What do you actually think about it?”

Jaquan considered his reply for a few seconds, but must surely have been mulling over the keeper for a while himself. He looked at the Addax.

“We started with a concern for survival,” he then said. “We wanted a ship and a crew and away from the gangs and the lowlifes. And we pulled it off. We have basic survival covered. Maybe now we can start thinking a little bit further.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“So you’re with me on this?”

“Sure,” Jaquan said. “Let’s see if we can’t get that thing in the right hands. Do you have a plan?”

“I’ll discuss that once we’re off. With you and the rest.”

Bers entered the dock.

“Ah, good,” Gaylen said.

“Sorry, dagi,” the Fringer said, then flashed a crooked grin as he waggled a couple of spice cans. “But you’ll be happy on flight!”

The man then took note of the two blades in Gaylen’s hand. He’d forgotten about them for a moment.

“Ah, yes,” Gaylen said. “She’s coming with us for another flight.”

The man nodded, looking thoughtful.

“Is it an issue?” Gaylen asked. “Be straight with me here.”

“No. No issue.”

The Fringer walked for the airlock.

“Might be good. Might be nothing.”

He entered.

# # #

The flight made for an uneventful sixteen hours, with one rest-stop along the way. Gaylen explained the general situation to the crew while the two passengers were by themselves in the cargo hold. Gaylen hit the exercise equipment, they ate, and Ayna insisted on a short game before the journey continued.

Bers touched up the odd wards he maintained above each doorway, to which the crew was by now familiar, Dulel was fascinated, and Saketa simply took as natural.

The odd woman caught his gaze at one point, as he watched Bers work above the door to the men’s quarters. That was, if his memory of the swirling, magenta insanity could be trusted, where he’d found out that there was actually something to the symbols.

Maybe she saw the disquiet that lingered under his skin at the memory, while everyone else just wrote the whole thing off as primitive superstition. Maybe her own people weren’t so different from Bers’s. Maybe the Outer Fringe held mysteries that “civilised” society had forgotten about.

Whatever it was, whatever she saw in his demeanour and deduced from it, she kept it to herself. And Gaylen simply walked into the cockpit. He wouldn’t ask her, any more than he had Bers ever since the incident, or Pietr in that cantina.

Let the universe have its mysteries. He just wanted a normal life. And damned if one weird incident was going to shake that.

“Are you worried about those pirates?” Herdis asked as he steered the ship through that final stretch. “You’ve looked pretty moody since the station.”

“Moody?” Gaylen said. “I think I’ve just been thinking. As for the pirates... look, the galaxy is big, and as far as I know she doesn’t actually have any information to track us with. I’ll just keep an ear open for the Qantil League and avoid their hunting grounds. This’ll fade over time. Everything does.”

“Well, you’re the voice of experience,” the woman said.

“I am.”

Though I’m not a prophet.

Wembella was an unremarkable and sparsely populated little world. It was low on natural resources and much of the terrain was difficult to traverse. The locals were for the most part concentrated into enclaves spread fairly far apart from one another. Dulel wanted to do his dig outside of Keko, and so Gaylen set course for it and sent a message ahead.

They got a docking permit and he steered the Addax down at a moderate velocity.

“Interesting,” Herdis said as she took the landscape in.

Once again Gaylen found he appreciated having a newbie traveller for company, to remind him that, yes, the galaxy was full of interesting things.

Keko was nestled by the shoreline, around a creek. Between it and mountains in the distance was an elevated, uneven plain covered with vegetation. For the most part it was a greenish-brown mass of hooped, twisted limbs, about double or triple a person’s height.

“One of Wembella’s most notable features, apparently,” Gaylen commented and indicated the growth. “By far the dominant plant life on the entire planet. Very aggressive and invasive. And inedible, unfortunately, or this would be a paradise.”

“I wonder if they’re big on weaving,” Herdis joked.

There was a single, large landing area near the centre of the town and Gaylen gently landed the Addax on their assigned plot.

“Right, everyone,” he said over the intercom. “Another world and hopefully some more business. I asked around back on the station and this isn’t the safest spot in the Fringe. It’s not the worst one either, but do be on your guard, don’t drink too much, and be wary of isolated areas.”

None of them were idiots and they all knew this, but he still felt better for having given a reminder. Gaylen took the blades from the locker, shut down all systems, and followed Herdis out.

Jaquan had reached the cargo hold ahead of him and opened the ramp. Dulel stood ready to move his excessive luggage out with some help from Bers, and Saketa simply stood still and quiet, focused on something other than the landing field in front of her. Gaylen returned her blades, which she acknowledged with a nod without turning her head.

Experience had given him quite an eye for different ports and this one was pretty much what he’d expected. Machinery and equipment looked serviceable, but almost all of it was old and much repaired. The other ships he could see were much the same, all of them older than the Addax and reflecting this planet’s unimportance.

A woman Gaylen understood to be a local combination of authority figure and port manager came at a jog, to greet them in slightly broken Gyvo. Gaylen paid the docking fee and asked the usual questions about local rules, businesses and general issues.

She responded with a painted-on smile and a whole lot of assurances. This place was no doubt hungry for any offworld trade it could have and she gave him some general advice on places to visit and streets to make use of, without getting into why she was excluding some others. And those plasma burns visible on a wall were from a years-old incident in which thankfully no one had been hurt.

They didn’t look as old as all that, but Gaylen let it go.

“I’ll see you folks around, maybe,” Dulel said. “I need to stash my things.”

“We’ll be at the hall for a while,” Gaylen said. “Some of us, at least. I expect to stay at least two full days.”

“Right. Good luck.”

“Oh, and make your first stop at a bank, or whatever they have here,” Herdis said and pointed at his money bag. “I mean it.”

“Right,” the man said and glanced down. “I probably should.”

They left Dulel chattering with the port manager about transporting his luggage and local labour.

Almost no buildings in Keko stood above two stories, and most were made of pale stone. Although Herdis had been joking earlier, weaving did indeed feature heavily in the town’s aesthetic. The twisted growth lurking outside the town was treated somehow and turned into outside furniture, window shutters, awnings and the like.

But Gaylen didn’t get to take much of it in. It was just a short walk to the hall that both serviced arrivals and functioned as an economic hub. The interior was set up with nothing between its various functions except floor space and support pillars, and locally-made crafts were advertised on shelves.

They were weaves, of course.

The crew got themselves a table and set up shop.