The sister? Yes, she's the same "thing" as the "mysterious figure".
...
Don't worry, you'll get to see more of her later.
...
No, she doesn't wear leather, hardly anyone wears real leather anymore.
...
No, she doesn't wear "air-quote-leather-air-quote" either. Just listen, okay? Questions at the end, remember?
----------------------------------------
Mrs. P felt the other vessel unfold itself from the clutches of space and the pressure of its existence became a gentler burden on reality and her mind.
Her haunches rose. Every time the vessel had revealed itself, it had been to attack, and now she could sense close. Too close.
She turned her eyes towards it. Of course, several layers of shuttle (and Rebecca) sat between it and herself, so from anyone else's perspective, she was staring off into the distance again. Not an uncommon behavior to find a cat engaged in. I imagine you take it for granted that you can't see what they see. Be thankful for that.
Unfortunately for the ignorance of those aboard the shuttle, proximity alarms screamed into action half a second later as they too identified the threat. Given the thick chalky chaff Blood had launched to cover their approach, in combination with the relatively weak sensors aboard the shuttle, this meant that the hostile was incredibly close.
However it appeared at that moment, Alpha was the only one besides Mrs. P who realized this fact. In the defense of the others aboard, she had hijacked its sensor feeds moments after stepping aboard and thereby had an unfair advantage. Her powers of intuition, while quite strong, are unduly assisted by her flagrant disregard for system security and obtuse perspective on prehistoric concepts such as "privacy".
It was times like these that Rebecca would have felt better in a pilot's seat. Fortunately for her, almost every biological pilot has been neatly automated out of every system of importance by lawyers and evolution.
When you're moving along at speeds faster than synaptic firings (or whatever messy system your conciseness emerges from), it simply isn't conducive to long-term survival to be in control at that moment.
Often you'd be better off handing the wheel to your favorite religious figure than trying to take it into your own fleshy and error-prone hands.
Thankfully for religions everywhere, technology has made it so divine intervention is no longer required to believers from becoming smears along the nearest object of significant mass. This is all to say that Rebecca only imagines herself feeling better if she were in a position of more control when in reality she probably wouldn't be feeling anything at all, as an aforementioned smear.
With a heralding shudder that rang across the brow, her thoughts, and those of everyone else aboard who were also experiencing thoughts at the moment, were momentarily halted, and then violently and summarily executed by the immense thunder of twisted space.
This was followed closely by a peculiar stretching sensation reminiscent of free-fall. A byproduct of space whip-lashing back to its baseline following a rather intense session of disregard for its boundaries.
Mrs. P squeezed her ears flat against her head and dug her claws into Rebecca's lap. Rebecca felt Mrs. P tense up and was grateful, not for the first nor last time, that she was wearing thick pants. A point for proper pirating attire Rebecca thought. She made an effort to direct that notion towards Madeline, who only caught the edge of a stare and none of the mental projection before Rebecca looked away.
"The hostile appears to be making a... Incredibly rapid withdrawal from our engagement," Alpha informed the shuttle's occupants.
Mrs. P could feel this, and as such she remained unable to respond to quasi-question. What was the plan now? She had never quite experienced such drawbacks to being overtly sensitive to the voice of space before, and it was not a pleasant experience.
Gradually, a soothing calm entered her mind, dampening the distancing scream. Fortified, Mrs. P opened her eyes and nodded her thanks to
Taking a breath and smoothing her fur, she directed her attention to Blood, who appeared before her as she pressed a paw against one of Rebecca's embedded communicators.
"We will continue our withdrawal. Are they still interdicting you? If that is the case we may have to flash-and-dump one of our cores."
"Negative, the hostile has loosened its grip."
Blood briefly paused, his form shimmering slightly as his attention was diverted.
"Unfortunately, the vessel appears to have crippled the jump core. It is unstable, and we will not be able to warp with it aboard."
Mrs. P sighed. Out of any component aboard a ship, the subspace cores were the second most expensive. After any crew member of course. Those aboard Blood were even more so, both crew members and subspace cores.
It wasn't easy to get paired cores at the sub-capital scale, and even less so to obtain ones as capable as Blood's. Losing one of them, given their nature, meant that both would have to be replaced. A significant expense, but that's what pirating was for after all.
"Understood, is it stable enough to detonate? I'd hate to leave without a proper goodbye."
Unlike other types of cores, such as nuclear fission, anti-matter reactors, and romantic relationships, a subspace core's meltdown is better described by a "puff" instead of a "bang". The complicated partial-magic twisted weave required for pulling a bubble of space into subspace dissolves without much violence in almost every scenario. It takes a truly malignant, cruel, and devious mind to create a sizable explosion out of one, which meant that it was incredibly easy for Blood to devise.
"Yes," the devious-minded cat responded with a sly smile.
Blood proceeded to knock several items off the command table, initializing the procedures that would leave quite the present for their friends. The noise of them shattering against the floor was music to his ears.
----------------------------------------
The Captain, who could now stand the view outside the ship without having to look away, observed the crystalline serenity of space.
With maneuvering engines back under the crew's control, the drift and spin of the vessel, wrought by the launch of the pirate's shuttle, had finally been wrangled under control.
Of course, the Captain could have also just stabilized the external cameras, but doing so had always felt strange to him. He didn't like to be reminded that the wide-spanning windows across his bridge weren't in fact windows, but high-fidelity displays. It also gave them a sort of "wobbly" look that he would have been able to describe better had he been more familiar with gelatinous deserts (or as some deviants call them: "salads").
Across a vast distance, the hostile ship was visible. At least it was artificially enlarged by the artificial windows, which made the view artificial as the ones from most of the ship's "windows". True windows were a recipe for having obvious weak points in your armor, begging to be exploited by anyone with a pea-shooter.
And the opponent across from them certainly had more than a pea-shooter. The Captain watched as the red vessel and the smaller boarding craft spun out off the undulating white cloud. Their dance left behind fading spiraled trails. Free from the detritus, the smaller craft docked.
The Captain nodded to himself. You didn't want to track in chaff into a hangar. It was designed to fill a space to a certain density, regardless of the medium, and should it encounter an unprepared interior through an open hangar or unsealed bulkhead, it would rapidly fill its entirety.
While the leading manufacturers of such instruments of visual obfuscation advertised its safety should it encounter biological life, the Captain found it peculiar that they felt the need to advertise that fact. He shuddered as the unbidden imagery rose in his mind of an overzealous cloud making a home out of any internal pockets that he might have.
The thought distracted him so much, that he almost didn't see the ejection of a spinning cylinder, about the size of a ship's subspace core, as it slid from a hidden port along the ship's spine.
In fact, there was a good chance that it was their subspace core. His own had been severely disrupted by an unknown force and his engineers estimated that it would require several hours to correct. His core was even shielded against typical interdiction methods and disruption attacks. He doubted that pirates, who hardly ran from a fight as much as he did, had a core more resistant to disruption than his own. If it had been damaged beyond repair, or even to the point of instability, then ejecting it was a proper precaution.
The Captain was able to feel quite proud of himself for almost an entire second until the pirate vessel wrapped itself in a bubble of folded glowing red space and slipped into nothing.
Ah, so they had a jump core and a warp core. The Captain was able to mull on that for about another second until the bright flash of the detonating jump-core seared across the ship's shields and sent his ship once again spinning across space.
Eventually, the ship righted itself, and the stars once more stable gave him a calming sense of security, artificially enlarged by his lack of imagination. Some might panic at the clam before the storm, but the Captain was the sort to take the calm while he could, and simply wait for the arrival of the storm brewing on the horizon.
He didn't have to wait for long.
Barely an hour after it had rapidly absconded, the sleek obelisk-like onyx vessel returned. It hung... Sleekly, like an onyx-black obelisk in space.
Those were about all the adjectives for it the Captain could think of at the moment besides "awe-inspiring".
The Captain, and his assembled crew, met in the cargo bay as directed. She would want to inspect them and the dilapidated cargo personally, as she always did.
He couldn't help but feel a small twinge of fear as he stood at attention towards the hold's main docking doors. Her typical voice had been noticeably absent in her most recent communications. It was hard to imagine her in any state other than "displeased" or perhaps "incredibly displeased". Regardless, the only thing he could do now was weather the storm. At least her ire would be directed at him and not his crew.
As the doors hissed open, he felt his dread rising, and he cursed luck for ever letting this job fall across his lap. He was a man chained below the waterline, watching the tide rise, using his last breath to curse the moon.
However, the thought died in his metaphorical throat as his heart stopped in his literal one.
The figure that stepped out was not the form that he had anticipated. It was sleek hard angles instead of smooth consistent curves. Its step was purposeful rather than poised. It also had two extra arms, all four of which were held behind its back.
Drowning in dread, the Captain realized the error of his now-potentially fatal assumption.
These weren't the right pirates either.
----------------------------------------
The room was bare, lacking any noteworthy descriptors other than "grey", "metal", and "cold". A single panel of glowing white light illuminated it all in a manner that made it difficult to keep a shadow. Alpha stood in the center of it, aligned towards the door from which she had been deposited.
She reckoned it would open in approximately three minutes.
It had been nearly a full twelve hours since she had absconded from her previous employment to give being a pirate hostage a spin. So far, she was not particularly pleased. They hadn't yet dropped out of warp, and even if they had, Alpha would have no means by which she could accurately determine their location. She was adrift in a boring room. There could be no crueler fate.
It wasn't that standing in a grey cell, alone with one's thoughts, was in and of itself a cruel punishment. It was more so the sudden and rapid change of pace that miffed. What and who had that other ship been? Where had they gone? Was this ship damaged? What was her old Captain up to? Would she still get her payment? Could someone give her the network passcode so she could catch up on her shows? The grey room had no answers.
Overall, it also wasn't too different from what she imagined she'd be going through in a real prison cell. Had her previous Captain's plans been allowed to come to fruition, that's where she imagined herself ending up. She still wasn't sure exactly what she would have been charged with. She had kept careful records of the Captain's illegal activities, but she could hardly imagine how any of them could be offloaded onto her. It was incredibly likely that the Captain would have utilized "less-than-legal" methods to do so, at which point her potential "crimes" were innumerable.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
It was also possible that Alpha herself had committed minor amounts of crime. That wasn't something the was in the habit of keeping track of.
While Dewey had seemed sincere when he had told her and Dirn that they would be better off going with the pirates, Alpha wasn't so sure. It was likely that his view of pirates and piracy was not well-informed. Or maybe as a (probable) criminal himself, he overestimated the vindictiveness of the law or how it would perceive Alpha's guilt. Perhaps both were true to some extent. Regardless, Alpha now metaphorically sat and literally stood nestled deep within a pirate ship, where, as far as the law was concerned, she was now "booty".
The lawyer who had managed to make the official legal term for all "treasure" in the hands of pirates "booty" must have gotten a real kick out of it. Alpha mulled over her new designation in her head. "Pirate Booty". Maybe she could through in a few adjectives in there. "Blue & Godly Pirate Booty". It sounded like a bad band name.
Growing boarded with this train of thought, Alpha glanced at the timer she had made for herself.
2 minutes, 58 seconds.
Annoyed at herself for not sufficiently wasting time, Alpha dialed up her temporal perspective and watched the approximately three minutes pass in a blink of the eye. She even threw in a real synthesized eye-blink in slow motion just for the sake of the metaphor.
The door opened with the timer at 16 seconds. Alpha's mothers, well, at least the first, would have been proud of her prediction. The latter would have likely given her another "motherly discussion" about the importance of learning to live in the moment. Blowing past three minutes to wait out a lawyer would have been tantamount to kicking a puppy as far as her mothers were concerned, but one would offered a metaphorical fist-bump under the table her accuracy.
Unfortunately for Alpha's conscious, they'd both be rather upset with the current predicament she had found herself in. Well, you had to play the hand you were dealt to the best of your abilities.
Unless of course, you were hiding some cards up your sleeve, or your capabilities.
Un-fuzzing her eyes and blinking, as though she had been deep in thought and hadn't anticipated the interruption, Alpha looked up at the Lawyer.
While the Lawyer didn't have any distinguishing characteristics that explicitly identified them as a lawyer (there was an official ranking system complete with military-like emblems for proper lawyers), they looked like a lawyer. And aboard a ship filled with various pirate-aligned individuals who only loosely followed a guiding aesthetic of "red' and "chaos", looking like a lawyer meant that you either were a lawyer, or crazy.
Not that the two were mutually exclusive of course. You'd have to be a special kind of crazy to remain a lawyer among pirates. If you were sane you defected to their side or made best speed to the nearest law firm for refuge.
The Lawyer walked to a wall, tapped on nothing, and motioned for Alpha to step aside. She obliged, and a simple table complete with two chairs slowly began to rise out of the floor. Fancy.
As it ascended, Alpha assessed the Lawyer. He was dressed in traditional formal lawyer attire. Business formal even. The floral-patterned short-sleeved button-up shirt paired with sandled-socks and pure white high-cut shorts was the universal "I am a Lawyer" dress code across almost every lawyering species that reached a sufficient stage of advancement.
It was like crabs in that regard. Evolution had favorites when it came to ecological niches, and the profession of a lawyer, combined with their particular sense of style, was certainly one of them.
Other than their fashion, nothing in particular stood out about the Lawyer. He had boring-colored hair, boring-colored eyes, and a boring shade of skin. Why not choose something cool? The pirate Rebecca was red and black, and while Alpha preferred a nice palette of blue, at least that color scheme was interesting. Even Dirn had silver eyes, white hair, and pale skin. Compared to that, the various shades of "normal human tones" were, well, normal. And boring. It was also not very conducive to painting a proper mental picture. Imagine that, or don't, because it would be boring.
The nondescript lawyer took a seat at the now-stationary table and beckoned Alpha to do the same. Without any real reason not to, she decided to follow. Now was probably not the best time to be contrarian, even if she really wanted to be.
"I apologize for the delay, but there have been some unforeseen developments," the Lawyer said as he pulled out a binder of files. The white shorts must have had hammerspace. Stylish and practical, from a lawyer's perspective of course. Alpha was more interested in the storage capabilities of the shorts, rather than the lawyer capabilities. She would have also chosen more flattering shorts. Of course, in her current form, it would be hard to find shorts that weren't flattering. The joys of not being restricted by biological limitations. Her legs could be as long as she wanted, and as shapely as her heart desired.
This meant that they were very long and very "shapely".
Alpha sighed. It was, like almost everything she did, purely for dramatic effect. She knew what was coming. The long, surprisingly boring, conversation that followed an individual's capture by pirates. Their rights would be read. The pirates' expectations (and demands) listed. The do's and the don'ts demarcated. The benefits and restrictions enumerated. They'd go through and catalog all the boring legal mumble-jumble that made it so most of one's time spent as a captive of pirates was on a pile of paperwork. Often literally.
"I've spoken to, uh, Mr. Dewey, as he's your acting commanding officer," the Lawyer continued.
Alpha was pretty sure that she was the commanding officer. She didn't recall resigning from acting Captain. She contemplated bringing her holographic hat back.
Oblivious to Alpha's disagreement on the matter, the Lawyer rattled off some legal jargon that was meant to signify that everything was all well and good. Dewey had negotiated fair rights and rates for the duration of their captivity. Dewey had agreed to the terms and conditions Mrs. P had placed upon them. Dewey had been quite the gentleman. Dewey had signed them all up to be pirates. Dewey wanted them to know he was proud of them. Dewey had such a nice voice. Dewey had-
Wait, what was that third-to-last one?
Pirates?
"Of course, I understand that you have very little experience with pirating, but it appears Dewey is something of a local folk legend on the matter, and Rebecca insists she's always wanted an underling, so they'll both be taking shifts tutoring you and your friend. Of course, we will also provide more professional training."
"Wait, I'm sorry. Dewey has signed us up to be pirates?"
The Lawyer sighed. It wasn't likely that he did so for dramatic effect, Alpha thought, he probably needed it to keep his heart going.
"Yes, and I assure you, it's probably your best option. As I mentioned, there have been... complications... It appears that your previous Captain has, jumped the gun let's say. They have leveled baseless accusations against the three of you."
The Lawyer left out the tidbit that most of those accusations were directed at the pirates themselves, but the three of them were temporarily deputized pirates (he had filled out the form before even meeting with Dewey), and so the accusations were technically addressed towards them as well.
Alpha wondered how long the Captain had those "baseless accusations" drafted up. Before or after she had been hired. How many had he added following the pirates' raid?
"In addition, he appears to be quite the legal-minded fellow," not an easy thing for a lawyer to admit about a smuggler, "and a good number of these accusations will be difficult to fight in court."
The Lawyer spread an assortment of documents across the table, and Alpha reviewed them with a steady eye.
"Is that a Class-A-0 complaint? Where did he even get the rights to file one of those?"
"Ah, yes, that would be the second complication. It seems that he has very competent associates. Possibly the same as those he planned to deliver his illicit goods to. They have thoroughly armed him with several high-yield legal documentation, justification, and precedent."
Alpha sat back in her chair and folded her arms.
"That still doesn't explain why Dewey's trying to sign me up for piracy."
"Well, being a pirate comes with a certain number of benefits, the primary one being a general increase in leniency concerning such accusations."
Alpha glanced across the papers again, this time with a more critical eye. Ah, so that's what the plan was.
"You want me to plead guilty to almost all of these."
"Almost, you won't admit to anything besides being a pirate. It's the implication that will cover most of them. And the rest won't be enough to make a real case against you."
Sure, why not? It was one thing to be a criminal saboteur and smuggler (a drop in the tall glass of the Captain's accusations), but it was an entirely different case if one was a professional criminal saboteur and smuggler, and a pirate for good measure.
Why, half of the "crimes" she was accused of wouldn't even be "crimes" if she did it in the name of piracy. It suddenly all became "quite good fun" as most judges would describe it.
"There's also the fact that to prosecute you, they'd have to catch you first."
Ah, another fun fact in the modern age of piracy. Unlike ordinary individuals, who could be ordered to come to court, and a failure to do so was a crime in and of itself, a pirate was expected to run from the law. Not making a sufficient effort to do so could land you in more trouble than doing so successfully. No one wanted a boring capture of a pirate, and chasing pirates was what kept morale high among almost every level and branch of law enforcement. It also helped sell newscats, which was vital to any economy.
Alpha gave another sigh. She didn't like how much sense this was all starting to make. Well, her parents had told her to go experience the world... and this would certainly be a rather interesting way of doing that...
"Here, Dewey's drawn up part of a plan to handle all this. He asked me to show it to you if you weren't, as he described it, 'enthusiastic about your prospects'," the Lawyer said as he sighed with Alpha. He thought it was nice to have someone who knew the benefit of a good sigh for dramatic effect. It helped set a proper mood for lawyering.
Alpha took the document and quickly scanned it. The front page contained only a heading of "Dewey's List of Piracy Booty Boons" (why is that word so prevalent?), and seemed to detail an occasionally comprehensible smattering of pirating perks.
Smirking to herself, Alpha flipped it over. Blank. At least Dewey knew how to be succinct.
Well, Alpha couldn't see any immediate reasons for saying no, and that was about as good of a reason for why anyone ever became a pirate.
----------------------------------------
"No!"
A fist thumped against the grey table. It didn't do much, but then the table felt that it would be more exciting if something happened, and so it proceeded to fling up the papers that covered it across the room. They drifted down like very large snowflakes.
"No!" Dirn repeated, shaking their head for emphasis, "This is insane! This is crazy!"
"I'm sorry, but as far as the law is concerned you are already a pirate."
"I'll contest it! I can apply for a sub-junction! I can tear up the contract! I can move for a motion of dismal on the grounds of temporary insanity! I bury you under decades of legal procedure!"
The Lawyer couldn't help but notice the strange accent that was creeping into Dirn's voice as they continued to make threats of varying legal validity. It almost sounded like someone you'd run across who was very insistent that they were walking, walking 'ere to be specific.
"I assure you, that I don't believe that to be in your best interests if only your review-" Dirn and the Lawyer both were saved from the continued dispute by the interruption of Alpha somehow managing to slam open the sliding door as she entered with appropriate gravitas.
The Lawyer cringed at the squeal of impromptu hinges opening for the first and last time.
"Hey, Rebecca wants to show us how to tie some knots or something. She says it's a tradition for recruits, and she refuses to wait until tomorrow morning."
Dirn stared at her. Blinked. And then looked at her. Alpha had on an eye patch flipped up over an illusionary eye and a stereotypical pirate hat en-miniature floating above her now-dreaded hair.
Alpha grimaced at the shock evident across Dirn's face.
"It's the hair, isn't it? Rebecca said it looked fine, but I think she's kinda blind to aesthetics," Alpha said as she shook herself. Her blue hair blurred until it returned to her typical long and impossibly smooth locks.
"Well? Are you coming or not?" Alpha asked, intoning the question in a manner that made it clear that it was rhetorical, and that there was only one appropriate answer.
She gripped Dirn by their shoulder and lifted them to their feet as if they weighed no more than a moment of hesitation. However, in Dirn's case, it was probably several hundred standard mass units of the stuff. It was a miracle it didn't collapse inward into a black hole.
This was also a miracle to everyone who enjoyed a consistent model of physics, as the concept of "hesitation" having a measurable mass would have thrown a wrench in the current "almost-universal-as-soon-as-someone-figures-out-magic" universal model of physics.
Alpha only had to drag Dirn out of the room, after which they followed of their own accord. Leaving the grateful Lawyer behind. Now that the client had left the room, they could get to forging their signature on all the necessary documents. This was of course legal, as they had left without providing explicit instructions for the Lawyer not to do so.
As Dirn obediently followed, Alpha smiled to herself. That was something she liked about Dirn. They had inertia. Sure, it wasn't easy to get them to do something, but once you set them on the path, they'd plow through any obstacle. It also helped that it was Alpha's instructions that they often followed.
"I need you to act as a baseline for how I'm supposed to feel about all this. I'm pretty sure the novelty of it is clouding my judgment, but you seem immune to that sort of thing," Alpha cheerfully remarked as she led Dirn across the glossy interior of their new ship.
Dirn allowed themselves a mental sigh. A pirate? Dirn? Oh, what his sister would do if she got her twisted hands on that little piece of information? Dirn shivered involuntarily at the thought. They'd have to figure this whole mess out sooner rather than later, but perhaps once they had some time to contemplate and process recent events it would be easier.
"You see, I'm near certain that learning to tie these knots isn't as exciting as I feel it is. Though Rebecca does make it interesting by letting me put them all on Dewey. He'd look like a ball of rope at this point if he wasn't so quick at untying them... I think with your help we can probably get about half his hands secured at any given moment."
Well, at least they would be somewhat entertained until Dirn's sister caught up to them or they escaped.
"Rebecca says she can show us one of the weapons once she gets the Captain's approval. I caught a glimpse of part of the armory when we walked by. I thought the omega-level boxes they brought aboard were something, but I saw a sword marked with an Alpha designation! A sword! Do you think it can cut through anything or something like that?"
Alpha's choice of name and the typical classification scale for "standardized standards™" was no coincidence.
Dirn allows themselves a slight smile at Alpha's tone. At least his time captive as "booty" or a "pirate" would be somewhat interesting, you'd have to try to be bored whenever Alpha was given free rein.
----------------------------------------
Okay! Wasn't that fun? Now you can ask your questions!
...
Hah! Yeah, I bet you didn't see that coming! Dewey has a history... Maybe I'll get around to it sometime... Anything else?
...
"Who am I?"
...
Now that's a question.
###
You will awake
They will know when you awake. They will lead you out of your
You will be left alone for
“Do you know who you are?”
“Yes,” you will
“No,” you will one day admit.
They will ask you again.
"No," you will
"Yes," you will one day admit.
You will not know who you are.
You will not know who you were.
You will not know who you will be.
You will not know anything.
You will not know nothing.
You will not know knowing until you know yourself.
You will be
You will be
----------------------------------------
I watch as he steps into my room. He's not much to look at, and neither is my abode, so I won't bother describing either.
He's come to ask after the device, as he has been this time every day since its path has been waylaid. His trepidation is evident in his mannerisms, though controlled as they may be. For the first time since he started visiting. I have good news.
I inform him of the device's recent escapades.
He's pleased.
Things are back as they should be.
Finally, after all the relative insanity, it's managed to sort itself out and now continues along an acceptable odyssey of adventure.
He forgets to ask about you. I do not remind him.
You're welcome.