Taking control of the ship had been an important step in the plan, but it was only the first step. There was an order to all things, and Kalan needed to take the next steps to impose order on this foreign vessel. It started with gathering up the few survivors who remained. It didn’t take long, although the last remaining survivor from engineering had to be dragged, kicking and screaming and swearing that the vengeance of the Zeren Authority would destroy them all. Kalan supposed it was easy to be a true believer after the fighting was done and you were relatively confident you weren’t about to be executed. There had been a few other crew members scattered around the ship. Most of them were technicians who had exactly no desire to pick a fight with armed intruders who had dispatched the last marines aboard. They were all shepherded into life pods and ejected from the ship. If Kalan hadn’t known that those pods contained enough supplies to keep up to three passengers alive and breathing clean air for as much as two weeks, he might have been a bit less cavalier about ejecting them. He probably still would have done it out of pure necessity, but he’d have thought harder about it.
He hadn’t bothered explaining to the crew what was happening or why it was happening. If they didn’t already know, the details wouldn’t have mattered to them. If they did already know, explaining would have been redundant. He’d let them make of the events whatever they wanted, and they would make up some story. He was counting on it. When Zeren ships finally showed up, there should be at least half a dozen wild tales going around. It would confuse the issue while the Zerens tried to sort out just what in the hells had happened out here and where their wayward ship had gotten off to. When he got to the dark-eyed ensign from the bridge, she gave him an imploring look.
“Take me with you,” she said in a whisper.
He almost laughed at the absurd request but hesitated. She sounded desperate. He frowned, then pulled her aside. He closed the pod with two of her crewmates and ejected it. The only Zerens left on the ship were Colle, Semmes, and the ensign. He decided he could hear her out. If he didn’t like what he heard, he could always jettison her after. He’d thinned the ranks of the crew so much that were plenty of life pods left. He leaned against a bulkhead and gestured at her.
“Why?” He asked. “Or maybe I should ask, why should I?”
“You should because-,” she spluttered. “I mean, I don’t have anything to go back to. I never wanted to be in the Zeren Navy. The damn Zerens killed my parents. They drafted me into service when I came of age. I’m a Bellisan.”
She said that last like it ought to mean something to Kalan. He had some vague recollection of the name, but he couldn’t seem to connect any facts with that name. The dark-eyed ensign apparently read the total lack of comprehension on his face because she hurried to explain.
“They conquered my world a century ago. We were free. We weren’t aligned with any of the major powers, but we were on the border of Zeren space. They showed up one day with their navy and told us we were part of the Zeren Authority. We tried to fight back, but they crushed our military and dismantled our government. Now, they make us serve in their military, but we’re not citizens. They execute anyone they say is plotting insurrection. That’s what they did to my parents. Accused them of treason against the Zeren Authority. Look, I’m not asking you to take me with you forever. Just get me away from here. Leave me anywhere that isn’t Zeren space. That’s all I’m asking.”
Kalan rubbed a hand over his face. He was too tired to be dealing with this girl and her Zeren Authority issues. The gods knew that the last thing he wanted was a stray from the Zeren military hanging around. Even if she was telling the truth, and he had the feeling that he had just gotten the unvarnished truth from her, exactly none of that was his problem. He had more than enough of his own problems without adopting her problems as well. Plus, if she wasn’t telling the truth, she could be a source of endless trouble. No, he thought, it’s just not worth the risk. She seemed to intuit his answer before he could open his mouth.
“Please,” she said. “Please. I’ll do anything you want.”
He studied her for a long moment. She met his gaze but blushed under the scrutiny. He wondered what that nonsense was about. He shook his head.
“I don’t want anything from you.”
“But-,” she protested.
He held up a hand to forestall whatever new bit of awfulness from her past that she planned to inflict on him, and he just knew that there was more. He tried to weigh the pros and cons. There were advantages to keeping her aboard if she was being honest. She had a better working knowledge of the ship’s hardware and software systems than Kalan expected he ever would. She’d be more likely to know about any unofficial problems that people conveniently forgot to log so they could avoid problems from higher up the food chain. He’d seen those things on civilian ships, and he suspected that the same held true on military vessels. No one liked getting chewed out for problems, especially ones they didn’t cause but that were vaguely in their sphere of responsibility. Plus, she’d be another pair of hands, and Kalan was particularly short of those at the moment. He almost wished that he’d taken on one of Edmus’ children or even Nielle. He reconsidered that last part. No, he decided, Nielle made him too nervous. She would have been a distraction, not an asset.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Of course, there were a lot of potential downsides. The very first of which was that he simply had no compelling reason to trust her. Sure, she could say that she was a Bellisan. She could claim the Zeren Authority murdered her parents. Those would be compelling reasons to revolt. They’d also make a great lie to keep yourself on board for a later attempt at recapturing or self-destructing the ship. He had no reliable way to check her story. If he was setting up counter-infiltration protections, he’d make sure any onboard records would back up their story. The biggest downside was that, if he was wrong about her, it could cost him the lives of people he actually cared about and trusted. Except, he believed her. There was nothing rational about it, just a gut-level instinct that she was being on the level with him.
“I don’t want anything from you, but I’ve developed a rather intense dislike of the Zeren Authority just recently. So, if you make yourself useful for the next few days, I will take you as far as Cobalt 7. It’s a space station. There’s a lot of traffic coming and going. You can find yourself a ship there heading far, far away from the Zerens.”
“Thank you,” she breathed. “I promise you won’t regret this.”
“Oh, I already regret it. Let me be clear. If I discover you’ve lied to me. If you do anything to endanger the safety of my crew, well, you saw what happened here.”
The ensign swallowed hard and nodded. “I understand, sir.”
“I hope you do, ensign. Now, come with me. There are some official things we need to deal with.”
“Sir?” She asked.
“What?”
“Don’t you want to know my name?”
He looked at her blankly for a moment. He reflected on the question and realized that there was, in fact, a part of him that really didn’t want to know. Knowing her name would make her a person, instead of a potentially useful appendage of this ship. He also knew that was mostly the fatigue making him feel especially disagreeable. He sighed and nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Ceramilla. Most people just call me Cera.”
“Alright. I’m Kalan.”
The pair made their way to the bridge, where he asked Cera to open a channel to the Ankala Rising. Temera’s voice came over the line immediately.
“Did you throw them a damn going away party before you put them in the pods?” she demanded in a frustrated voice.
“No,” said Kalan in a tone chipped from ice. “But I did try to gather up the bodies of their dead and treat them with some dignity.”
That pronouncement was met with a long silence. “I’m sorry. I was out of line.”
“Yes, you were.”
When it became clear that Kalan wasn’t going to continue the conversation without some prompting, Temera spoke again. “Do you plan on scuttling that ship? I mean, it’s either that or leave it out here for some raider to claim. Whatever you’re going to do, we need to get on with it. We do have somewhere to be.”
Kalan looked around the bridge of the Zeren ship and felt loathing for the Zeren Authority stir in his chest. Then, a thought occurred to him. He looked at Cera.
“Can you fly this thing?”
Cera glanced at him with a momentarily bewildered expression before she shook it off and answered. “Well enough. Bridge officers get cross-trained for things like basic navigation, weapons systems, and communication. Helps ensure the loss of any one officer won’t leave the ship stranded. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be pulling off any fancy maneuvers, but I can lay in a course or take her into the wormhole network.”
Kalan started to laugh, and Cera gave him a concerned look.
“What’s so funny?” Temera asked over the comm channel.
“This ship. I was going to scuttle it. On second thought, though, I think I’m going to keep it.”
“You’re going to what?” asked Temera and Cera at the same time.
“Technically, it’s mine already since I seized it as part of an antipiracy action.”
“Wait,” said Temera, “all that piracy stuff was for real. I thought it was just some legal mumbo jumbo to stall and bluff.”
“That wouldn’t have worked. Even the idiot commanding this ship would have known too much about interstellar law to fall for that kind of smokescreen. Here’s a bit of trivia that might serve you in the future. While you can’t keep any stolen goods you capture as part of antipiracy actions, you can keep the ship and anything that legally goes with the ship if you can take it.”
“So, you get to keep the ship, and weapons, and…,” Temera trailed off.
“And any data that we might retrieve from it. There are some hoops to jump through. With them operating so far outside of Zeren space and in such a blatantly illegal manner, not to mention everyone hating the Zenens, it’s going to be a rubber stamp process.”
“So, you’re just going to keep it? For what?” asked Temera.
“Do you have any idea how much cargo I could fit into this thing? Plus, the opportunity to suck every last qubit of data out of this thing, well, that’s a nice sweetener for your queen, don’t you think?”
There was another long moment of silence before Temera spoke again. “So, what do we need to do to make that happen?”
“Em, are you on the line?” Kalan asked.
“Of course, sir.”
“Open a data link. Once I override the onboard AI and get the memory dump for verification, I’m going to need something a bit friendlier to help me run this thing.”
“I’ll look through the archives.”
It took several hours of work, but Kalan was eventually able to take official command of the Zeren ship. With that out of the way, though, he was down to two tasks, at least one of which he’d been actively putting off.
“Cera, you stay up here. I have to take care of a few things.”
From the look on her face, she knew what he meant to go take care of and it didn’t bother her in the slightest. He wasn’t sure if that should make him feel better or worse about letting her stay.