3-10 CACHE

“Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”

The skull does not respond. It floats on antigravitic engines, carried about by an unseen current of air. A beautiful amber eye gleams in the skull’s left eye-socket. Within the other is a galaxy of sparking stars, a sign of the machinery within its bony casing whirring away.

“Staying mum, eh? Useless karking skull. What did I even miss?”

The woman sits up, looking out into the void beyond. Lines of energy, whorls of gravity, rule the locality. A shower of debris — meteoroids, spent munitions, and wrecked ships — orbit the planet, forever falling into the well of space-time. To the rear of the Doctrine are ten other ships alive and well. Good. It looks like everyone else has made it.

Yet another thing! Another major problem with being the only Navigator aboard this ship. Where those on other vessels can rest in shifts, leaving at least one ready to take over upon reentry to the Materium, this one woman cannot! After arriving at the Mandeville point, she has to let go of her power, allowing sleep to overtake her. At that instant, she is gone. In that instant, and the hours or days after, who knows what can go wrong?

“Stupid skull.”

Still no response. It merely makes a small correction to its flight path, jetting back to its original position as its control sequence reassesses its stability.

This time, the fleet has crushed the opposition. There was no need for the Navigator to be up this time. But, the next? Or the ones after? A risk she has yet to address. An issue not explored.

What next? Stick to the plan.

The woman hops out of bed and snatches the servo-skull out of the air. She takes a moment to adjust her robes and put on her boots, and then she’s moving. At the front of the room is an airlock door. Despite the weight of the doors — rated to resist anything short of a macro weaponry — they slide open smoothly with a pull of a lever. The woman winds up, then hurls the skull out with her full might.

A new record! Five whole meters! The servo-skull rights itself and flies back up to head height. However, before it can return to its previous duties, the woman holds her hand out, halting it in its tracks.

“Get out of here and make yourself useful! Head to docking bay niner-alpha-alpha-two-eleven and enter pod one-five.”

Stupid skull. Stupid plan. Deviation is necessary for success, and the closer her eyes are to the action, the better.

“Navigator. Are you awake?”

The woman pulls her comm-link out of a pocket, revealing the source of the muffled voice. As she retreats back into her sanctuary, she thumbs the switch and responds.

“Yes, yes. I’m up now. Are we ready?”

“...”

“Lord-Captain.”

“Give your briefing, then send them on their way. Fire teams will be ready in ten.”

“Why do I have to give the briefing?” the woman whines.

“Because I say so, you petulant child.”

“Hey! I’m—”

“Give your briefing. Now.”

With that, the Lord-Captain disconnects, leaving the Navigator staring stunned at the comm-link. It seems he’s rather stressed today. He normally doesn’t react like that.

Shrugging, she flips to the next channel over, fiddling with the controls to find the right frequency.

“Testing. Testing. Is this thing working?”

“Yes, ma’am,” comes a deep, gravelly voice.

The woman flops onto her bed, sighing with annoyance. She hates working with space marines. Always so uptight about everything. Then again, she hates working with anyone…

She closes all but her warp-eye, splitting her attention. She looks out at the void beyond once again — planning, scheming, calculating. She looks at the four space marines sitting in a small, and cramped drop pod, her view tinted orange-yellow.

She adjusts her sight to correct for the skull’s amber optics and stares at the gray clad marines. What a boring color, really. There’s blue ones, green ones, red ones, and so many others out there. Hel, the ship’s even called the Golden Doctrine. Why aren’t its marines gold too?

“Ma’am?”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Right, let’s get this over with. Your goal is to retrieve the coordinates of Unknown System Fifty-Five. You will be inserted into the fortified complex on-slash-within the planet just over yonder. What was it called again? Planet Victory?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What an idiotic name. Moving on. Once you’re in there, shoot at whoever you want, whenever you want. Up to you. Just don’t shoot at whatever you want. If you blow up whatever holds our desired data, you’re getting left behind, even when I send someone to get my damn servo-skull back. Understood?”

“What would this data cache look like?” asks one of the other marines, ignoring the Navigator’s question.

“Ones and zeros. I don’t know! Keep your auspexes running and watch your fire. If somebody looks like they know something, grab them. Get the information from them. Or, just listen to my damn instructions. I know roughly where it should be. Just get to the spot and look around. Got it?”

“Understood.”

“Wonderful. Now, get ready to launch, and don’t crush my servo-skull with your fat arses.”

≡][≡ ⬦⬦⬦ ≡][≡

“Bad dream again?”

You stifle your yawn as best you can, pushing back the morning tiredness. You and Master Lasah stand in the cold morning air, waiting on the shuttle to arrive.

“No, Master. I did dream, but it wasn’t bad.”

“Care to tell me what it was about?”

You rock on your heels, thinking for a moment — definitely not forcing yourself to stay awake! You didn’t spend hours last night pondering the mystery Master Lasah had laid on you. Certainly not!

“I dreamed about… waking up. Waking up once again on the ship and getting ready for something. There were soldiers, armed and armored in a drop pod, and I was telling them to go look for something.”

“What were they going to look for?”

“... I don’t really remember. Data, or information, I think.”

“I see. Do you think it was related at all to our current situation?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Very well. Now, do you have the answers to the question I posed to you yesterday? Any theories?”

“Yes,” you say, still rocking on your heels. You dig into your pocket, pulling out your datapad where you’d written some notes. You check around, finding no one at risk, you quickly lift your headband to check through your notes and refresh your memory.

Once done, you return everything to place, then say, “I actually have a question first. Two questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“Do I get multiple guesses?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, my second question is: what was so special about this particular gang, the package and the overall local drug trade that Ryker was getting involved in? It doesn’t seem worth her time.”

“She was not. She was there only to pick up the package, remember?”

“Ah, right.”

“It seems she got caught up in something, though I do see where you may have gotten confused. Do you still have a theory for why they thought she was there for them, either as a customer or as an agent?”

You nod, thankfully having come about the problem in multiple directions. “Yeah, it’s got something to do with the code name, right? Dreammaker. It sounds like a narcotic, so they probably thought she was just looking for some. If she were asking around for the ‘Dreammaker,’ then they might have gotten word of that.”

“Exactly. Good work, Xena. However, we do not yet have any proof of that. We will need to ask around ourselves about that — see if anybody nearby remembers if Ryker was asking around for it.”

“Okay… Actually, why would she be referring to it even by a code name? Why would anybody else know it’s called that?”

“Do you remember the package? What it looked like?”

“Yes.”

“The locked container, within the crate, had a manifest attached to it labeling the item as the Dreammaker. It is likely Ryker surmised that anyone who opened the outer crate would have seen the manifest. If they showed recognition of the word when she spoke it, she would have caught that and would have been able to retrieve it.”

That makes a lot of sense to you. Now that you think about it, there was a slip of paper inside the crate. You’d dismissed it earlier, not thinking it was relevant, but really does make more sense now.

That wasn’t all you’d thought about last night though. Just that wouldn’t have been enough to keep you up so late.

“I do have some other concerns, Master Lasah,” you state.

“Oh? Go ahead.”

“What if Doctor Neen is already a part of that cartel? He might report our investigation to them.”

Master Lasah shakes her head slowly as she speaks. “He made a deal with them, yes? Why would he make deals with an organization he is part of? No, he must be exterior to their operations. However, it is certainly possible he has reported us to the cartel. That should not change anything, though. We must first consider the scope of our investigation: we are here to discover what caused Justinia Ryker’s death. We are not here to take down a narcotics trade. That is what CorSec is for.”

“But, what if they caused her death?”

“Then we do get involved. However, as far as we know, they have nothing to do with it. Their violence against Tlin is only tangentially related to the case, and they do not seem to have had the motivation to work against Ryker, especially if they did not know who she was.”

“I see… But, I don’t really know what’s with the oranges at the bank. Is it just a coincidence?”

“Do you have a theory?”

“I think the simplest answer is that it is a coincidence. Maybe, a bunch of oranges were spilled at the loading dock and were thrown into the garbage. That would have explained any citrus smells in the nearby dumps.”

“The bank is not that close to the scene, though. Any explanation for that?”

“Oh, right. Maybe it’s just chemicals in packing materials used in the bank? Or, this may be a stretch, but maybe the bank is used for laundering money or manufacturing drugs? It could be something used to hide the smells of other chemicals.”

“Perhaps. It still does not explain Ryker’s death, though. Anyways, we could take another look at the bank today. We should also interrogate that droid and inquire with the other nearby locations. What do you think we should start with today?”