Pirates in Unity

The crew was much less willing than Alwen had anticipated. For a ship full of horny sailors they were way to squeamish about providing Alwen with the samples she needed. Alwen eventually had to go to the Captain to get the whole crew in line. But even with a direct order from the Captain Alwen still had plenty of complaints to deal with.

“This is humiliating.” Alice grumbled as she passed Alwen an opaque jar.

“How do you think I feel.” Alwen shot back. “If the results of my research ever get published I will forever be marked as the doctor who learned about this because she was having cramps.”

“I don’t even see why any of this is important.” She mumbled.

“You don’t see how potential Terran/Torweni genetic compatibility is important?”

“I don’t see why we have to be your test subjects?”

“Have a care Alice” a voice said from behind Alice. Captain Astarte had just entered the med bay. There was a suspicious flush to her cheeks as she passed Alwen a labeled container. “There’s a whole ship of us to provide the Terran samples, and only five of them for the Torweni samples.”

Alice watched Astarte suspiciously. “It still feels like a violation of privacy.”

Aster raised an eyebrow “You’re a Marine, you’re in the wrong career for privacy.”

“Yeah” Alwen agreed “this isn’t even the grossest sample I’ve asked from you.”

“Don’t remind me.” She muttered, her ears falling flat as she shuffled out of the med bay.

Alwen turned to Astarte and added her sample to the batch. “Thanks again Captain.”

“Don’t mention it, after all this isn’t just about Terran/Torweni compatibility. This could finally unravel the secrets of the Uplifted, might even give us conclusive proof of Union tampering.”

Alwen nodded; they were keeping that potential discovery from the crew just in case it didn’t pan out. Most Mammaloids went about their everyday life like any other person, but there was always a thought in the back of their mind. Why are we here, why are we like this? No point in getting their hopes up.

Aster put a hand on Alwen’s shoulder “Well, do your best. We’ve got time until we pull into Unity and I would love to see some progress before things get messy.”

“Of course, so long as the crew behaves I’ll have plenty of time to research.” Alwen answered, though she knew it was a pipe dream the moment she said it. Because in that moment a crewmen with a twisted ankle hobbled in.

~~~*~~~

The Arbiter stepped through the door into Judge’s private office before slowly closing the door and dropping the privacy field. Rachel looked around the office, but nothing had changed since she last met with Judge. His office never changed, even when he was promoted to Chief he still kept the same spartan furnishings from his original office. There were no signs of his new power and influence changing his personality.

That’s what Rachel liked about Judge, he was born into the very epitome of power and wealth, and he turned away from it all to be a lowly station officer. Even as he climbed the ranks and earned more influence, it couldn’t compare to what he gave up.

“You wanted to see me?” Rachel asked as she stood at attention.

Judge glanced up and gave her his full attention. “I wanted a report.”

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“Yes sir,” Rachel said as she reached into her heavy black cloak and produced a manila file folder. The Union had been in the digital era for so long that the idea of paper folders seemed exotic and bizarre, but most police work was done on paper due to the inherent security in physical print versus a vulnerable digital database. Some of it was eventually scanned into the database, but only files that were deemed unimportant.

He took the folder and began to scan through its contents. His naturally stern expression deepened as he read. “Nothing but dead ends.” He muttered.

Rachel felt a flush of shame, “Yes, I exhausted every lead I had, but nothing came up. Your bro… I mean our suspect is very thorough.”

“Indeed. I have been looking into him for thirty years, and I’ve begun to suspect that someone very powerful is covering his tracks.”

A thought occurred to Rachel “It might be councilman Ozzath.”

He looked up “Explain your reasoning?”

Rachel had been keeping her mother’s visit from Judge, and had been doing her best to keep it from interfering with her job. But she couldn’t ignore the coincidence. “As you know Ozzath appeared at one of my arrests, well after our talk my mother appeared in my apartment for the first time in years. Said she wanted me to come back to the family. My family and Ozzath have been in business for as long as I can remember, and I doubt she really wants to welcome me back.”

He folded his hands and brought them up to his chin. “An interesting theory, but we can’t just investigate a councilmen without good cause. But this does explain your slower than average progress, your mothers been interfering.”

Rachel gritted her teeth at the thought. “Yes, Alexandra has been dragging me out to her vain parties with little notice. Its been cutting into my investigation time.”

He looked thoughtful. “Problematic, we’ll need to figure out her part in this. Is she just a pawn, or does she have a larger role in all this?”

Rachel felt a bitter shame at not wondering the same herself. Why hadn’t she thought of that? It was because Alexandra was in her head, clouding her thoughts.

He put his hands back down “It will have to wait, I called you here for another reason.”

“What?”

“I have received word from Chief Kera’keck of Femeri, it seems the pirate angle is back.”

“Pirate angle?”

He nodded gravely “According the Kera’keck this Astarte women and her companies have several strong connections to local pirate organizations. She was in the middle of the pirate attack on Femeri, and escaped on legal technicalities.” He turned over the folder on the potential pirate and Rachel began to scan through the contents.

She read for a minute before closing it “I see a lot of maybes and potentialities, but nothing concrete.”

“Of course not, if he had something concrete that women would be in jail. But look at the report on her ship.”

Rachel flipped a few pages until she got to several pictures of a strange gray hulled ship, “Is this for real?” she asked incredulously.

“Afraid so.”

“This looks like an old maritime battleship, not a space ship.”

“Indeed, specifically it seems to be modeled after one of the Iowa’s, some of the last battleships ever built. Look at the name.”

She looked to the top “Astaroth? Really? Isn’t that some sort of catholic demon?”

“It is, and after a quick internet search I found a curious connection. The demon Astaroth was based off the Phoenician goddess Astarte, which seems to imply that Astarte isn’t our pirates original name. I’m currently trying to dig up records to see if I can’t find her original name, but I doubt I’ll find anything. Her birth certificate was filed less than a decade ago, and lists her city of birth as New Mombasa.”

“Why so late? I doubt she’s only ten years old.”

“No, but things are different on deathworlds. Not everyone has access to hospitals, and the births aren’t always recorded. Those people later officially file their existence with local magistrates, but there is little the magistrate can do to confirm the details. Our pirate likely never had an official birth record, which makes looking into her past close to impossible.”

Rachel thought for a minute. “What about the last part, Maidens-Daughter doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. It might be a connection to her past.”

“I thought the same, I did a quick search but couldn’t find many people named Maidens-Daughter, at least not officially. Earth society is an enigma at the best of times, and its going to be tough to try and link that name to anything solid.”

“This still begs the question, what does a pirate want with terraforming tech? And why would they steal it from themselves?”

“My new working theory is insurance fraud. Order something expensive, steal it, then try to claim insurance on it. But then our assassin killed off the office, likely saving the company millions in damages.” He explained.

“This still links my assassin to Amaterasu, and it could explain why I can’t find anything on the missing equipment. I doubt our pirates will let this go.”

Judge nodded “I thought the same thing. I’m currently monitoring port offices for the next time the Astaroth pulls into a station-” he stopped short as his computer beeped. He turned back to and opened up a new screen. “Speak of the Devil” he muttered.

“Is that them? Where are they?” Rachel asked.

Judge nodded “Its them, they just pulled into Unity.”

“They’re here!” she asked in shock and incredulity. Known pirates pulling into the heart of the Union, how brazen were these people?

“It would appear so, they just checked in with the orbital controllers and have booked berth 239 in industrial section 7. Their stay is listed as indeterminate. No cargo to off load.” The winkles on his brow furrowed. “They’re due to pull in soon, maybe an hour.”

Rachel scowled “That’s more than enough time for me to get there.”

“And do what?” he asked, there was a sharp bite to his question.

“Not sure, I won’t know until I get there. But we can’t let a warship full of pirates enter Unity without challenge. I might get lucky and get them to make a mistake.”

He frowned “Or you’ll tip them off.” He began to tap one of his fingers “But your right, we can’t let them in unchallenged.” He thought for moment “Fine, you are to go there as a representative of the ADCU to inform our guests of the rules here, and look into their visit.”

Rachel nodded and turned away to leave promptly. She put her hood back up and began to march back to the ADCU to recruit a few extra officers. Pirates or not, they couldn’t allow a ship like that to enter port without challenge.