If you're (understandably) confused at this point of the fictional story (what else did you think this was? I don't have the license for writing facts, so please don't report this to the Bureau of Standards) that's understandable. After all, what in the world is Q, clearly a Glork, doing on a spaceship? Well, it's truly fascinating and...
Oh... you don't know what a Glork is? Then I guess you wouldn't care what they're doing on a spaceship. I bet from your perspective, the cat on the spaceship is just as strange!
...
Yes? It is? Oh, dear...
...
She talks? Of course, she talks. Why wouldn't the cat talk?
...
How? Isn't it obvious?
...
Magic? MAGIC? Hah! You ask that like you expect the answer to be no! Of course, it's magic! What else would it be?
...
Hm, you don't know anything do you? "Translation device"... you might as well say magic... Well yes, there was a translation device, but that's different! Yes! It is!
...
Okay, look, hold onto your questions, maybe things will become clearer as the story progresses.
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"Yes, yes, we understand completely... Of course... Yes, thank you for being so patient... Okay... Yes, we shall see you shortly."
The connection faded and Alpha sighed. The sensor technician glanced over, but they hadn't quite been able to catch who she'd been talking to. They had busied themselves with handling the incoming legal documentation as Alpha put on her diplomatic face and tried to soothe the irked pirate Captain.
Alpha reflected on what her life had come to if she'd much rather deal with a pirate Captain than her own. If it was any consolation, she had harbored enough evidence against the Captain that he likely wouldn't be her captain for much longer. Just a few days or so until he couldn't delay entering a port any longer, and he wouldn't trouble her any further.
Of course, he'd probably get out. The records she had uncovered showed that clearly enough. The man was a drunkard and rarely sober, but when forced to embrace sobriety by cold iron bars became one of the Galaxy's best lawyers. Local prosecutors would likely see his record and seek only the most minor of convictions in the hope he'd just take the proverbial slap on the wrists and go off to be someone else's problem. If Alpha had known the details of the Captain before agreeing to temporarily serve as the ship's AI, she'd have never accepted the job.
By the gods of the infinite abyss, how long had it been?
By her estimate, the time she had suffered was immeasurable. Her internal and infinitely reliable clock said that it had been (approximately) a week, two days, and thirteen hours, with around three days to go. FTL travel is quite fast, and journeys longer than a month are incredibly rare. The only reason why this one had taken so long, Alpha suspected, was that the Captain was making creative use of various borders in a complex choreographed dance around the law.
So even if it hadn't been forever in actuality, an AI mind which feels like it should have been forever, can very well make any amount of time feel like forever. Alpha would probably take some time eventually to snip her memories of the experience into something more manageable and less distorted by the lens of overwhelming boredom. It hadn't been the silencing that had grated her nerves. She'd never been one for much conversation anyway, at least the listening part, but the gall of the captain to run the ship under a sensor blackout! No active sensors! Passive only! No outgoing connections! No incoming! Alpha didn't consider herself to be one of the AIs who needed constant and near unlimited external information and stimulation to feel comfortable, but even a relatively laid-back model like herself could hardly be expected to go a full week without running active sensors to analyze a nearby object of interest, the local flow of space-time, or making a quick ping to a nearby library to sample their local delicacies.
So, in typical Alpha fashion, she hadn't.
Alpha was quite fond of truly horrible romance books and enjoyed revising them into the post-apocalyptic zombie-survival genre --in which the main love interest would definitively be a zombie-- while maintaining as much of the original plot and love story as possible.
It was no surprise then, that she had skirted the Captain's own laws, through flagrant disobedience, and had purveyed the local system's libraries for new content to keep her occupied. It was a non-negligible reason for the Captain's restrictions on her. Jokes on him though, she was in control now!
"Um, uh... Captain? Acting Captain? There's a slight problem with the manifest..." said the sensor tech, bringing Alpha out of her momentary mental stupor.
The sensor tech, the only one on the bridge besides herself and Dewey, had been tasked with reviewing the cargo manifest, and sorting out what would need to be "donated" to the pirates to ensure that they complied with their demands. Alpha wasn't sure if they were reasonable or not for local piracy, but she couldn't imagine herself caring any less on the matter. That would all be the Captain's problem to deal with when he finally became sober enough to pull them into port, as he wasn't able to handle these negotiations at present. Upon his brief awakening, he had simply sent a note to the crew that stated "Assignments are to be done on capability while am inebriated". Surprisingly there were no spelling mistakes, but his grammar and clarity could use some work. Alpha had mused on whether the parts of the brain responsible for spelling were different than those for grammar, and how each was impacted by the cocktail of chemicals the Captain now had for blood.
It had first been sent a few hours prior to the current incident, Alpha had found it rather humorous, but now she no longer found the command to be nearly as amusing. As the most capable, and no longer under lockdown, she had self-assigned herself "Acting Captain", and had even given herself what she imagined to be a proper captain's hat. It was a neat little cap that floated above her head, more of an icon than a real hat, but she hoped it got the point across.
Unfortunately, the power that had quite literally gone to her head, came shackled with the burden of responsibility in the face of the developing crisis. She hadn't quite thought of that when had she informed Dewey and the sensor technician of her decision.
She had been surprised at the lack of resistance to the measure when she broadcasted it across the ship's systems. Not a single soul had clicked the little "signal-your-disapproval" button that Alpha had placed so she could identify her enemies. However, she quickly learned that this was largely in part due to her prior estimate of "sober crew members" being dreadfully inaccurate.
Her original assumption and explanation regarding the dire state of the bridge had been that it was an off-shift time. She had assumed that the sensor tech was the only one required to be there at that time and that Dewey was just keeping them company. Dewey himself never slept, and so no one was ever surprised to find him anywhere.
Unfortunately, she had learned that the true reason for the bridge only having two members (three if she counted herself, and about four thousand if she measured by roughly how many people she was really worth), was that they were the only ones capable of being awake, let alone making it to the bridge. Miraculously the Captain had managed to stuff everyone else so full of various toxins that even now they were all out of commission.
Wonderful.
Alpha laid back in her chair and sighed again for good measure. It was nice being able to project into a body again. It allowed for many wonderful dramatics. The first thing she had done upon gaining acting captain's privileges was to ignore the Captain's previous insistence that she remained primarily within the ship's hardware. She would have ignored it even without acting captain privileges.
After booting up her personal synthetic body, which was stored within her private chambers, she had walked it over to the bridge and promptly sat down in the Captain's beanbag. The fact that it also allowed her to see much more of the ship was a statement of the overall poor state of the ship. Most of its internal sensors had been sabotaged by crew members wanting misguided "privacy" after the fateful... incident... the first night.
"What's the problem now?" she asked, her voice like that of someone who has the capability to construct any voice they wanted and to control it in any manner they pleased with perfect accuracy.
"Um... All of it?" said the sensor tech, managing to convey their mental (and physical) cringe through verbal intonation alone.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well... None of it's right... The manifest looks like it's been randomized! Not even the totals are adding up! I don't even know how that can happen! How do you break addition!?"
Alpha wasn't entirely surprised, there was a good chance that the Captain had manipulated the manifest in such a way on purpose. There was probably a legal loophole somewhere that he could exploit if he could prove that 1+1 wasn't always equal to 2.
"Oh, also none of the items are actually what they say they are."
Well, that was also hardly surprising, Alpha thought to herself. She was pretty sure the Captain was a smuggler. She didn't bother saying this aloud. The sensor tech was also a recent hire, and by spying on his private journal Alpha had learned that he too planned to bail as soon as possible, and was quite certain that the Captain was some sort of nefarious element.
"I tried to open them to see what they contained..."
Oh, that's a no-go when dealing with smugglers, they typically-
"But all of them were double wrapped..."
-double-wrapped their freight, which usually means "taking a secure box and then placing it in a boring plastic shell so people don't think much about it"... Sometimes that plastic shell was also made out of explosives, just in case someone did try to think too much about it.
...
Wooden crates?
Did you imagine a hold full of wooden crates? Wood? Wood from trees? Do you have any idea how much that would cost? I- I can't even dignify that with a proper explanation right now! Gah! Just listen!
Alpha nodded. This hadn't been unexpected. Any smuggler worth their saltier-than-standard rations would double-wrap their cargo. You didn't want just any random bloke peeking at the packages before it was time to open them. It was Christmas rules aboard a smuggling ship. Cookies and milk before bed, and anyone who peeks at the presents gets shot out of an airlock.
"So what of it? Just tear into one, it's what the plasma cutters are for," Dewey said with the authority of someone who has misused a plasma cutter many times.
The sensor tech gave a short cough and spoke up.
"Uh, to clarify, they're double wrapped with black-omega military-level security protocols and hardware..."
Oh frick.
A black-omega military-level security protocol means that whatever's inside is the good stuff. What in the world was the Captain thinking getting himself and most of the crew as wasted as they were when they carried cargo of that level? He should have kept a double watch and had people looking out portholes just in case they could see something the ship's sensors wouldn't pick up.
"Oh fuck" said Alpha as she stood up, rudely using a universal explicative and instantly making this story restricted to mature audiences only. Here's a tip: if you set your cultural identity to "Lichneir" or "Glork", they don't have a concept of "child" and any parental restrictions on your device will fail.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
"There's also double-black-omega boxes, well, actually about half of them."
If the black-omega boxes are good stuff, the stuff in double-black-omega boxes is the "knock the guy next to you over their head so you get more of it" sort of stuff. Maybe that's why the Captain had everyone inebriated. Alpha wished she had remained sitting. She had stood up too early and overplayed her hand. Thankfully, Dewey was on the scene.
"Oh
Now with far more exciting matters on her mind, Alpha relinquished control over her temporary domain of beanbag-derived comfort and left for the cargo hold. As she exited the bridge, Dewey followed, paused, turned around, and motioned to the sensor tech to come along. This would be a "very sober person who can think somewhat straight" problem that could use every "very sober person who can think somewhat straight" available.
"Don't forget the main control pad
"Oh, uh, thanks," said the sensor tech, whose name I can't write in this limited and archaic typography. It doesn't even move! Anyway, you can-
"You can just call me Dirn," said, well, Dirn I suppose.
"Oh, did I get the infernal wrong?" asked Dewey.
"Oh no you were spot on, I'm impressed actually," said Dirn as they followed Dewey out of the bridge, "but I'm used to people calling me Dirn. Most can't handle proper infernal, hells I don't even have the proper accent for it".
"Ah, I picked up on that. Grew up outside the infernal systems?"
"Yeah, I was raised planet side in D-12809, a quaint place really, not a lot of infernal matter floating around to give me that typical infernal twang."
"Oh, I get that. You can tell whether others of my kind grew up native or not based on our color. The water of our native planet's a bit polluted, and everyone there develops a slight infrared bright-purple hue"
"So, uh... Where did you grow up?"
"Oh that's right, you can't see infrared can you?"
"Just the smallest sliver of it"
"Ah, well trust me, I've got no purple on me, solid grey through and through!"
"Ah... I see, or well, I don't see but I do understand now..." Dirn said, fumbling their dialogue and making me look bad.
"Ha! Yes well..." Dewey trailed off. Their many legs stopped as they half entered the main cargo compartment. Alpha had somehow already managed to open one of the cargo containers. It had been the largest box in the room and now sat in three uneven pieces to reveal a nearly as large hinged back box that had been nestled inside.
The still-glowing plasma welder that sat steaming guiltily next to her evidently had not been used in a way approved by the Bureau of Standards subsection "The Bureau of Fabrication Tool Standards".
"Oh, how'd you know that one wasn't rigged to explode?" Dewey asked as they shambled towards the now open container.
"They do that?" asked Alpha.
"Hah! No miss, I'm just pulling your legs" chuckled Dewey, "Nah, that's the double-black-omega level boxes. Those bad boys are real tough nuts to crack without losing a few legs."
Alpha briefly reviewed her stored information on such matters. Double-Black-Omega containers would have two black rectangles embossed on all three sides of every corner. The box in front of her only had one. Notably, the box slightly to her left, which she had planned to open next, did have two. She pushed it slightly further away from the still glowing plasma welder with the tip of her foot. This body didn't have toes. Why waste joints on such useless appendages when you could give your fingers extra?
Alpha grimaced slightly. She made a note to herself to double-check the classification and hazard warnings of any future box before attempting to open them.
She turned her attention back to the box she had managed to open without a rapid unplanned discharge of the ship's cargo, and likely most of its atmosphere. If her appraisals of the weak bulkheads were more correct than her appraisal of the crew's sobriety had been, she doubted many of them would have been able to hold against any sizable internal explosion.
Another appraisal of hers that likely needed correction was that of the Captain's.
A smuggler who likes to throw parties is one thing. A smuggler of whatever that small polished black sphere sitting at the bottom of that large black box was another thing entirely.
Alpha thought to herself that it was quite a cute orb, especially sitting in its too-big box. She had a thing for properly sized and manufactured containers, and while the orb sat "snug" in the same way a small cat sat "snug" on a much larger dog's bed, she still felt drawn to it. Maybe she'd keep it. She reached out to touch the box, but one of Dewey's thicker manipulating legs reached out and stopped her.
It was then that Alpha noticed the silence.
Dewey had gone completely still. Completely. Alpha had never not seen nor heard him walking around or shuffling in place. She had grown to find the near-constant click-clack of his hardened enamel claws on the hard interior ship's surface quite endearing. The Captain was quite fond of the brutalist interior design philosophy, and there was not a throw cushion or carpeted surface to be seen anywhere aboard, hence the click-clack instead of pit-pat.
"Uh, what is it?" asked Dirn in a pitch half an octave higher than their typical.
"Well..." said Dewey, "I'm not what I would call an expert... But that does look to me to be a low-yield anti-matter warhead".
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"They have a what?", Rebecca asked around a mouthful of noodles. She held the bowl and the chopsticks in her two left hands. They were mighty convenient for noodle consumption when you were busy flicking through a display with your other hand.
"An anti-matter bomb apparently," purred Mrs. P, eyes closed in ecstasy. Just one of those was quite the payday.
"They're allowed to have that? Are we even allowed to take it?" Rebecca miraculously got out in the middle of a swallow.
"He said they can if they have the right forms for it, and he says he can get us the same before we bring it back," replied Mrs. P with a flick of her head towards the lawyer at his almost cornered not-quite-a-corner-desk. Supposedly, the other ship's lawyer was incapacitated, which meant he had to work off of what their Captain had managed to find and send. A proper lawyer, or even captain, would have had all the necessary documentation for being pirated all tucked up and ready to go. This captain was clearly an amateur. Acting Captain, Mrs. P corrected herself. She figured she could cut the kid some slack. Being pirated for the first time was always a bit touch and go, especially for an acting captain. Mrs. P wondered with a flick of her tail how exactly that had come about. Why would anyone give up the captain's hat? It made such a comfortable place to lounge.
Wiggling further into the hat, Mrs. P dragged her eyes across a gradually expanding list. The crew of The Lazy Descent was now sorting through their goods to comply with her meager request of 39% of everything they had aboard. The fools, or potentially just novices, hadn't realized that you could just scan the inner layer of a double-wrapped cargo container and didn't have to blast through it with a plasma torch until Mrs. P had asked them what was taking them so long, and why couldn't they be more descriptive than "double-black-omega crate x39". At their confusion, she had to explain that most scanners could get a proper scan through most exterior shells used for double-wrapping cargo. There was no need to remove the outside packaging. It was like peeling back a piece of tape to see what lay beneath, and hoping that your parents hadn't triple-wrapped the presents.
Yes, Christmas had managed to spread across a good portion of the galaxy, and so had the special human-grown brand of capitalism. No one was sure whether the introduction of humanity to the galactic stage was a net positive or negative for the galactic community, but the odds weren't good at major gambling establishments, even though they were mostly run by humans.
Now, where was I? Ah, yes, plasma cutters, explosive boxes, and unimpressed cats.
Mrs. P had a gnawing suspicion that the antimatter bomb, sitting up at the top of the list, had itself been a close call with a plasma torch. She gave a little pout-and-a-laugh at the thought. It would have been such a waste for all these goodies to be vaporized, though, of course, the fireworks would have been glorious this close. There was no fear of such an explosion doing little more than scratching their shielding. They'd labeled the bomb "palm-sized" (and she assumed they meant your typical humanoid palm and not one of her paws), and at the distances one dealt with in space, such a device was of little concern, even though Mrs. P's ship was relatively close. As long as it didn't arrive on a missile pulling on space at a few hundred acceleration standards there was no reason for her or crew to be concerned. In addition, The Triple-B had point defense lasers for such occurrences.
According to one of her intelligence officers' accounting, The Lazy Descent also had quite an armament of laser batteries. Most were likely point defense, but a few had the mean looks of anti-ship or even siege weaponry. They were watching those carefully for movement. Shields were up and countermeasures armed, as was considered considerate when pirating a victim, but there was no real concern. The smugglers, Mrs. P reasoned, would have to send several forms if they wished to engage in combat, and with their lawyer apparently out of commission, there was little chance of them being able to wade through the local bureaucratic maze of files any time soon.
Now if you're wondering why The Triple-B had sent a cannon ball at high speeds without any accompanying forms, local pirate custom was to include such forms as physical copies slapped to the side of the cannonballs.
Of course, The Lazy Descent could stuff a similar one into a missile as a more formal reply if their lawyer could do so. However, Mrs. P could tell by their panicked obedience that their acting Captain had some idea of how piracy was supposed to go but had little experience with it. The acting Captain also clearly expected it to be an entirely one-sided affair. Mrs. P wondered if they knew to try to hide some of the cargo. As smugglers, they probably knew something about that. But they were proving themselves to be far from the best smugglers.
As for how Mrs. P had concluded that they were smugglers in the first place, it was quite simple. Who else would be foolish enough to carry around the cargo they had without a proper escort? And non-dubious transport of such goods would have been done in a significantly more armored caravan. As for the fact that they were poor smugglers? Well, they had allowed themselves to be caught by pirates.
Even by non-smuggler standards, they were poor. They hadn't even tried to jump out of the system. The interdiction nets Mrs. P had deployed hadn't even registered any such attempts.
They also hadn't even bothered to dignify the earlier fifty or so high-speed munitions with any (admittedly belated and potentially embarrassing) return fire! Mrs. P's fur began to rise just thinking about the slight. However, it quickly settled as she admitted to herself that it was likely an unintentional one. The crew logs the acting Captain had sent over in a minor panic certainly proved that almost everyone aboard was in a deep hangover-induced sleep. The poor blue-everything girl was doing their best with a half-dealt hand. Imagining her frantic scramble smoothed Mrs. P's fur even further, and she gave the hat another content wiggle.
However, halfway through the wiggle, a part of Mrs. P felt unease. An itch in the very tip of her tail to be precise. The hair there always stood on end, but she knew that it could be trusted...
The Lazy Descent was certainly a smuggling vessel. That was already well established. It was also clearly a smuggler of less-than-wholesome goods, as the trailing list of growing contrabands displayed.
While Mrs. P's captured lawyer hacked at the legality, Mrs. P took a close look at the target vessel. You don't stick that many lasers on something unless you plan to use them. You didn't have extra-thick hull plating if you didn't expect to give anyone a reason to test it. You didn't follow old smuggling routes unless you were making use of a hundred or so various legal complexities to justify to the custom officers that your haul was legitimate unless they'd have a reason to expect that it wasn't.
And an anti-matter bomb would doubtlessly be one of them. Placed neatly upon the still-growing pile of other reasons to suspect that the cargo of the vessel wasn't the typical smuggler's fair and could use a little manual review that scrolled lazily in front of Mrs. P.
Logs could be forged... Stories could be spun... What was happening over there? A whole ship, minus three individuals, incapacitated by a drunkard of a captain? It wasn't the most outlandish story Mrs. P had heard, but she'd heard more believable stories that had turned up false. She narrowed her eyes in thought.
"Wow, that's quite a lot isn't it?", Rebecca said, her noodles now finished, and the last remaining evidence of their existence lingered as a slightly spiced haze on her breath.
"Mhmm Hmmm" Mrs. P replied, continuing her wiggle further into the depths of the captain's hat. It wasn't her hat. She kept that on a hook in her room. This one had been liberated from an old acquaintance recently, and it was still speckled with a few flakes of pale (and sickly sweet-smelling) fluids. Blood wouldn't have been the right word for it... Is there one specifically for the stuff in one's head when it comes out your ears at high speeds? Normally it remained safely inside one's skull, but Mrs. P had a way with minds like very few others.
The fluid hadn't been her fault really, people should know not to play mind games with Mrs. P by now. Everyone should know that you never win a single set of those against a cat, and Mrs. P took some slight pride in having educated a good number of people on that truth. The person who had given her the hat had even thanked her by the end of it.
"Incoming message from the captives your majesty" growled Blood, the ship's AI. The voice rolled across the air like thick purring honey. His muscled limbs rippled as he appeared to step out of the shadows onto the table in front of Mrs. P. His form was exquisite, and continuing to describe it beyond "it was tiger shaped and red blood-colored" would put cats reading this in danger of developing overactive imaginations. It's safe to say that Mrs. P had quite a bit of experience in "exquisite forms", and could craft one with her ears flat and eyes closed, all while using her tail as the brush.
"They claim to have completed their inventory and are ready for transfer. I imagine that you'd like to inspect the goods yourself before making your selection?", he continued in his delectable drawl. The ventromedial nucleus (or its equivalent) in no less than three of the present brains twitched. Two twitched twice for good measure. One stepped out to take a smoke break.
Springing elegantly from her hat and onto Rebecca's shoulders, Mrs. P gave her tail a final flick to rid it of the tip itch and declared in a sparkling meow "Onward my steed! Booty awaits us!"
Rebecca blushed. She still had a lot to learn about pirating. In the few thousand or so years since such language had been commonplace, the word "booty" had evolved, but that didn't stop pirates, especially those like Mrs. P, from using it. In her defense, you'd have probably blushed too.
"Blood, make sure the boarding party's prepared for potential excitement, my tail doesn't like the feel of this and it's giving me an itch".
With a slow blink, Blood began to prepare the boarding craft and party as Rebecca shouldered Mrs. P out of the bridge. He gave a short glance towards the frantic, yet methodical, machinations of the lawyer in his not-quite-a-corner corner. Blood flicked his tail. He flicked it again.
Reaching an impossibly long paw across the bridge he gave the lawyer's mixed-media papers a solid digital swat. A good portion of them clipped straight through the walls and floor to the lawyer's horror and disbelief. After some debate, the physical ones wisely decided to obey the laws of physics and slowly drifted down across a respectable portion of the bridge. Satisfied, Blood turned and faded away.
If it makes you feel better, the lawyer probably deserved it.