Date

The operation was a huge success. Every member of the Circe’s crew was found and accounted for, and Brown said they were still in pretty good condition. They couldn’t say the same for the Torweni captives they had found, they would need months of recovery in a hospital on their homeworld. And there was way too much mental baggage to ever hope for a full recovery on that front. But better that than whatever the rest of their lives as slave held for them.

Astarte spoke with the captain of the Circe and they were able to positively identify the captain of the Coiled strike and confirmed her suspicions. She felt a cold sort of fury when the captain said that they were specifically targeted. She had spent years driving other pirates out of Orion, and now those snaky bastards thought they could turn her own tactics against her.

Their punishment would have to come later though.

In the meanwhile Aster and Karega drafted plans for installing auto turrets and other internal defenses in all her freighters. And ordered the crews be trained to repel boarders. She considered equipping the ships with nerve gas or anthrax, but only an idiot would board a ship without pressure suits. Instead they drafted protocols for a ship’s captain to engage a reactor overload in case of certain capture.

Technically modern spaceship reactors weren’t the kind to overload easily, part of the trouble in using thorium and helium-3. But maybe she could sneak a small warhead in. If not that then something else.

They had been moving towards Bravo-Alpha-Alpha rendezvous for ten days, they should be arriving within another two days, after that it would all depend on whether Asmodeus was there and waiting, or if they had to wait.

Karega joined her on the command deck “We just got word from Femeri”

She turned and scowled towards him “What news?”

“Our reservations at the polished plate of course” he smiled with every one of those perfect white teeth of his.

She blinked in surprise before her scowl returned, “I was joking when I said I wanted to reserve the whole restaurant Kar. Do you know how much that will cost us?”

“I only got us three nights worth. Not enough for the whole crew, but enough for the officers, command, and a few special crew men who prove themselves. We can call it a treat”

“Do they know we’re Hellworlders?”

His smile broadened and Astarte worried that she was rubbing off on him “Not a clue, but they can’t turn us away. Because we paid for this reservation in advance, which means they can’t refuse service after we’ve already paid for the service.”

“You’ve been speaking with the horsemen haven’t you?”

“It was Famines idea”

She laughed at that irony. “Alright I’ll consent, when is it?”

“Our first night is in 34 days away, since we’re only ten days out from Femeri that gives us a little bit of time to do some work in the vicinity. And I just got news from the Torweni”

“What news?” she repeated, Karega rarely ever got to yank her chain, and he was reveling in the chance he had apparently gotten.

“They are very thankful that we found some of their lost people, and they are announcing a reward for ever Torweni forcibly taken off world. And word from the Contact on Femeri is that there might be a Kruhur station or two within a hundred light years from Torwen.”

Aster smiled “That sounds like a very generous offer, tell Bachir that he should leave the emergency clinic as it is for now. I think we might have more Torweni patients to take care of, and I would hate for their homeworld to think we mistreated them. We might as well bring the Asmodeus along for the ride as well.”

“I thought you might say that, I’ve already passed along the orders.”

Astarte smiled; this fortunate turn of events made her wonder if there really such thing as Karma. She helped return a group of Torweni slaves, and a threefold opportunity appeared as a result. Now she could make her ship profitable while destroying a voidling infestation and it built goodwill with the galaxy’s newest deathworlders. Deathworlders who were relatively close to Sol and had a lot of traits in common with humanity.

The other pirates in the Confederacy might accuse her of going soft, and might claim she wasn’t a real pirate anymore, that she wasn’t vicious enough. But she couldn’t be bothered to care about the opinions of fools. The whole point of the Astaroth was to earn credits and destroy her enemies, it didn’t bother her that she might do both while accomplishing something good. And if the Pirate Confederacy wanted to disbar a powerful and successful fleet like theirs on those grounds then they would soon see how vicious she could really be.

Life was good for a slum rat like her and she wondered when the other shoe would drop.

~~~*~~~

Alwen was riding high, Gehno and his crew had transferred to another ship that would take them back to Torwen. And the very next target the Astaroth hit was a Kruhur slave station. Apparently her government was offering a reward for returned citizens, and the Astaroth was reveling in the easy money it offered. She kind of hoped that her government hadn’t bitten off more than they could chew by dealing with these pirates.

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They returned the people to Torwen, and Alwen got to see something she missed the time she left on an Icutoo envoy ship, a view of Torwen from space. Alice had joined her in Adela’s garden as Alwen teared up a little looking at her home from space.

“Do you want to go down and visit, I think I could get you a ride aboard Incubus with the others. It might be fun to see your homeworld with you” Alice offered.

Alwen shook her head “No, it doesn’t feel right yet. Besides when we synced up with the local signals I got to see what they were calling me”

“Hm?” Alice asked, an inquisitive tilt to her head. “Are they saying bad things about you down there?”

“The opposite, Gehno told the press about how I helped them when they came aboard. He said something about the goddess placing me here on this ship to help him and others like him. Their calling me a modern day Gellnay. I don’t think I could handle that.”

“I take it he’s like Harriet Tubman”

“Gellnay was a women who served both sides during the sun gods war, she organized hundreds of field hospitals for anyone who was affected by the war”

“Florence Nightingale then, yeah I can see how that might feel. Especially considering what kind of people the rest of us are.”

“Right, and the captain says we will be hitting more Kruhur ships and stations in the area, which means we will be rescuing more people potentially. People who have been enslaved for years.”

Alice cringed “don’t get your hopes up, the Kruhur have a very bad reputation for working captives to death pretty fast. There might not be many.”

“Doctor Bachir warned me about that as well, but something Gehno said before is making me a little confused. He believes that the goddess guided me here, to this ship so that I could do her work where it was really needed. Now I’m trying to figure out if that’s true or not.”

“Trying to determine whether you’re the divine instrument of your god’s mercy, holy mandated in your mission” Alice teased.

“I’m not that vane. But still, it’s a little to coincidental to ignore.”

They went silent for a moment until Alice heaved a big sigh. “I don’t know anything about your gods, but the way I see it all people will always have a chance to do something good no matter where they are, or what they’re doing. ‘Over thinking, over analyzing, separates the body from the mind. Withering my intuition, missing opportunities’ as saint Maynard once said. You have to live in the moment, do good wherever you see wrong. Just be there and be ready.” She said solemnly, quoting from the many musical scriptures Terrans observed. Alwen found that listening to them and learning from the ‘new saints’ didn’t interfere with her vows, and brought her a more personal understanding of how these strange aliens thought. She didn’t disagree with a lot of the messages either. She liked Saint Bowie the best, his words felt more magical than the others.

“Which one was that?” she asked politely.

“The word of Lateralus, from the Toolist faith. They’re a branch of the new faith, and their message is sometimes harsh, but no less important than the others.” She said softly “The captain is a devout follower of them, I hear her quote the important ones a lot.”

“So you think I should make the best of whatever situation I can?”

“Yeah, you don’t need to be the king of the world to do something good, ordinary men make saints of themselves every day.”

Her words stuck with Alwen in a strange why. “And what about you Alice? If you don’t need to be somewhere special to do good then why are you here?”

“That’s easy, I have a mission, and being here helps me accomplish it” she smiled devilishly now, and Alwen knew Alice wouldn’t tell her what that mission was. Whatever her mission was, it was a part of the branded secrets she wasn’t allowed to know.

The ship left Torwen the next day, side by side with another ship Alwen didn’t know. She only knew it was there because she got a glimpse of it just before Astaroth went to warp and all the stars became blurs. The rest of the crew refused to tell her anything about it, so she assumed it was another branded secrets. But from what she could tell from her brief glimpse it was another Hellworlder ship, its lines and size were too similar to the Astaroth to not make that connection. A sister ship maybe?

The Astaroth hit many stations over the course of next ten days, all the cargo holds had already been converted into emergency clinics and Alwen had to work triple time to attend to all of them. She was so busy with running between different holds she had to let a few of her normal tasks fall behind. She and Bachir had something that might potentially be a cure for temporary blindness, and it just needed to be tested. Which would fall to her the next time they made port. She hadn’t been able to perform any of the marine checkups and they took advantage of that by being scarce and difficult to find. And she hadn’t been able to continue her mental checkups with MK Douglas, but he was mostly fine with the loss of his hand now and had become accustomed to the cybernetic one.

Which was why she was surprised when he walked into cargo hold six. She was working with an islander woman and was trying to convince her the wear a shirt when he cleared his throat behind her. He was blushing and trying very hard to look in the woman’s direction “Uh Bones, can I talk with you.”

“Why is he red?” the islander woman asked mischievously.

“A human sign of fever, I should go check on him” Alwen responded, refusing to validate her islander promiscuity. When the pirate made passes at her it was mostly a joke, but when an island woman made a pass at someone it wasn’t, and they got very offended when someone refused. She had learned that the hard way.

Alwen walked over to the corner with MK Douglas, he still seemed flustered and unnerved, and Alwen wasn’t sure if his blush had just been because of the shirtless women. “Is there something I can do for you?”

He seemed to steel himself and took in a deep breath before letting it out “Bones, you know how the captain and ex-o are offering fancy dinners at Femeri”

“Yes” she said, uncertain of his intentions. The command staff had announced that a certain number of well performing crew would earn a plate at the polished plate, it had stirred the whole crew into a fevered state of overachieving antics. A number of the deck apes had gone around stealing everyone’s boots and replaced them with woven fiber slippers, which she was still getting used to and missed her shoes.

“Well I was offered a place in honor of my continued service after I lost my hand. And I was hoping you would go as my date?” he shrunk inwards on that last part.

Alwen was taken aback, she thought that maybe this was another casual pass, but she looked into Sean Douglas’s young and earnest eyes and saw only sincerity and conviction. And this left Alwen with about a hundred different questions. First of all was when did this all start? On Torwen sometimes patients who were in life altering accidents formed feelings for the healer in charge of their recovery, it was something she had been trained in dealing with gently. Did Terrans experience the same sort of phenomena?

Second was why her, she was an alien to them. But Sean’s reaction to the islander woman told her that their sexual anatomy and instincts were similar enough to be compatible. And besides the Terrans already engage in interspecies relationships from both their own homeworld and other deathworlds. They had much longer to get used to the idea than Alwen had.

With those answered she began wonder whether she was ok with it. she didn’t feel any sort of revulsion at the idea of going on a date with an alien, she had several confusing weeks to get used to the idea herself. And if she was being honest with herself, Sean wasn’t unattractive, his short square cut brown hair had prim and proper sort of appeal. And he seemed very nice. No one had really asked Alwen out before, her mother had arranged some ‘suitable’ partners for her and had set up fake dates, sons, and daughters of important people mostly. But they were always a too vain or bland, and Alwen kind of enjoyed turning away any person her mom found ‘suitable’. But this time she felt that Sean was genuinely interested in her, and he probably never even heard of her father.

But would it be ethical? She was his doctor, and he her patient. And they worked in close proximity every day, if it didn’t work would things become weird?

“Sean” she said evenly, and he visibly deflated. She bit back her pity and continued on “I’m your doctor, and I helped you through a tough time in your life. It isn’t uncommon for patients to develop feelings like yours, are you sure you actually like me?”

“I do, or at least I think I do” he blurted out before she could go on. “I think your sweet and smart and I would like to get to know you beyond patient and doctor. It will only be one date, and if you don’t feel anything in return that’s fine. But I’d like to give it a try.”

She looked into his eyes, maybe one date wouldn’t be that bad, how else would she decide if she liked him. Life wasn’t like the over dramatized chihk flihks Isabela and Alice loved to make her watch. She enjoyed the glimpse into Martian life they offered, but she always wondered why they never showed or talked about Earth.

“Alright one date, we can see where things go from there.” The young mechanic visibly lit up.

She returned to her patients and wondered if it was the right move.