Chapter Sixty-Four - Safe Travels

Detaching Twenty-Six from Pixie was easy. Pulling her away from Pixie's ship was a bit more of a chore.

Still, there were few things Ivil couldn't do when she put her mind to it, and that included pulling Twenty-Six away from the current object of her desire.

Ivil was not jealous of a spaceship.

She was envious. People frequently confused the two emotions.

Once they had pulled Twenty-Six back, they found Pepper Mint waiting for them in the lobby. She had taken a moment to freshen up and adjust her clothes and hair back into a more professional state. "Our next shuttle is ready to depart," she said. "I hired a small private vessel for this leg of the journey. It'll be a little faster than a standard commercial flight and likely more secure as well."

"Oh, what kind of shuttle is it?" Twenty-Six asked.

"I'm... uncertain of the make and model. It seems to be Martian-made?" Pepper said. She pulled out a small tablet, pulled out the ship's schematics, then handed the pad over to Twenty-Six who happily looked over it.

"What's our ETA for Oppresorax station?" Aurora asked.

"Six hours," Pepper said. "Enough time that I would suggest getting a few hours of sleep en-route. Once we arrive at the station we'll have some time to acclimate before the meeting begins, but not quite enough time to rest and relax."

Ivil nodded along. She was happy to see that Pepper was taking her job seriously, at least. Sure, the spy was maybe glancing at her more frequently than was necessary, and perhaps she was sweating a little in her nice little business suit, but she was otherwise keeping it professional.

Pepper led them into a loading dock where their ship was waiting for them. The shuttle was smaller than the one they'd taken to arrive at this midway station, but it was sleeker, and if they were the only passengers on board, then they'd have a good deal more legroom as well.

Ivil scanned the ship over and found that beneath the shiny exterior was a ship that had had some regular maintenance. There was a leak here, and a few signs of lazy disrepair there, but the ship itself couldn't be more than ten years old. She decided that it was passable enough as Pepper showed them into the main cabin.

This one was far more spacious than the last, with comfortable, leather-covered crash seats, several screens on the walls and ceilings for a full entertainment suite, and a mini-bar at the rear.

Being a Martian-designed ship, the vessel was built vertically, so the pilots were stationed above them and the main engines were a floor below. A lone steward climbed down from the tiny crew quarters above, fixed his suit just behind a doorway into the passenger cabin, then stepped in and assisted them into their crash couches.

Once everyone was seated in one of the plush seats, he quickly left for the room above, and they were soon pulling out of the station.

The ship took a moment to reorient itself, and Ivil listened in as the pilots chatted with station control and plugged in their flight plan. Interestingly enough, it wasn't towards their actual destination station but another that happened to be quite close.

Pepper was decently good at this, it seemed.

"Starting hard burn in t-minus, one minute," a soothing automated voice said.

Ivil settled into her seat and the chatter between Twenty-Six and Aurora calmed down. Then they burned hard.

The shuttle was small, but a good third of its mass was in its engines anyway. With so little weight to deal with, and with a lot of its interior being empty space for the sake of luxury, it wasn't surprising that when it kicked forwards it did so with gusto.

Ivil leaned back into her chair as the shuttle went from a dead stop to full speed in moments. She glanced to her side and saw Aurora struggling to hold on while Twenty-Six seemed perfectly at ease.

She could tell from the sound of the engines and the way the ship shuddered and shook, that the pilot was pushing the engines as hard as they would go. In a larger ship, such a maneuver would have been dangerous. This one, however, was well maintained, and its pilot was clearly trained for this.

Still, Ivil would have preferred a bit more safety margin.

The hard burn continued for a few minutes, hitting something like nine gravities and staying there for what was probably an uncomfortably long time for a normal person, then, slowly, the shaking slowed and stopped. The ship continued to accelerate, but only so much so as to give them the illusion of a single Earthly gravity.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"That was a good burn!" Twenty-Six cheered. She unbuckled herself and sat up. "Should we watch a movie or something?"

"I think, if anything, we should plan for the events ahead," Aurora said. "Once we arrive we won't have too much time to sit around and chat pleasantly about what will be happening."

Twenty-Six pouted, but nodded all the same.

Ivil glanced over to Pepper, but the woman seemed to have her hands full as she adjusted her clothing and her hair. Her face was red, but Ivil couldn't tell if it was from the strain of the acceleration, or from some other problem.

She glanced over to Ivil and smiled weakly, then cleared her throat and sat up straight. She fiddled with her wrist pad and projected an image onto the room's largest screen.

"This is Oppresorax station," Pepper explained. "It's not the most impressive of the orbital stations, but it has a number of advantages for a clandestine meeting such as this."

Ivil frowned and looked over the schematic. "That's... a very small station," she said.

"Yes, the station isn't large by any measure," Pepper said. "But its size, and its location, allow for us to keep the security teams at a minimum. You can imagine that many of the larger, busier stations are quite well patrolled and secured, both by the local authorities, and the station owners themselves. The less people there are around, the better it is for this sort of thing. Fewer prying eyes means that we can get more work done, and without fear of outside interference. The station's location is also key, it's located close to a number of important shipping lanes, but far enough away from the main trade routes that it's out of the way. As you might guess, that allows the owners to charge a premium for use of the station."

That was... a deluge of words from the young lady. "Who are we expecting to meet there?" Ivil asked.

"Ah, that is a question I'll turn over to Miss Sterlingworth who is better equipped to answer," Pepper said.

Aurora nodded at the invitation to speak. "Callisto itself will have a representative. No one important, but they'll relay things to the moon's government, I'm sure. Styx, Galatea, and Umbriel will all have representatives. They shouldn't be trouble. Titania, Hyperion, Tethys will be there as well."

"And they'll be trouble?" Twenty-Six asked. "Two of those are close to home for me. Hyperion was a big industrial sector moon for Saturn, and Tethys is where, like, most of our fresh water came from."

"Having you around might be a boon then. The Saturnian part of the League of Free Moons has always been a little troublesome. They... to put it bluntly, they lack culture."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Twenty-Six admitted. "We're mostly nice, but Saturn's kind of a mess of tiny stations and people living on ships. We do have a culture, but it's kind of... ship-by-ship based? I don't know how to explain it."

"You're not a monolithic culture, like Mars," Ivil said. "Where the culture of a nation is shaped and formed by larger movements and entertainment and a push towards a specific idea, but rather a collection of small families and clans and rivalries."

"Yeah, exactly!" Twenty-Six said. "I bet any government from one of our moons is a hot mess. They can claim to rule over whatever, but I bet it's not actually true."

"That... might explain some things," Aurora said. "They usually need to be treated on a very case-by-case basis, from what I understood. Would you mind being my cultural ambassador, Twenty-Six?"

"Sure!" she said.

Ivil gestured. "What about Titania?"

"They... are a moon that by all rights should be quite powerful, but they haven't had time to grow into that power. Imagine all of the resources of Mars but none of the time or hardships that made Mars as strong as it is now. Titania will be a powerhouse, one day, but for now it's not and that breeds a certain level of arrogance."

"And would any of those moons send fighting craft out to kill you specifically?" Ivil asked.

"That... is a very specific question," Aurora said. "Why?"

"Oh, merely curious," Ivil said, curious about the small flight of fighter craft that had made a beeline to intercept them from open space.

***