Old Wounds

Astarte popped her neck before settling onto the bed. During the exam Alwen had realized that this wasn’t just any old room, but the room Astarte had grown up in. Most of the walls were lined with shelves and crates literally overflowing with music records and beaten looking paperback books. The walls were painted with little white flowers, which confused Alwen because she could still vividly recall the women’s dislike for flowers. She wasn’t sure what had clued her in on the fact that this was Astarte’s room, but something about the space had been irrevocably marked as hers. Or maybe it was the way Astarte seemed to relax in here, like a little bit of her burden had been gently eased off her shoulders. Or at least until Alwen had asked to hear about Gato and Alice’s past. The moment Alwen asked her about that the lighter set of her shoulders vanished and she was back to being a pirate Captain.

The last two days of just chatting and bantering with the captain outside of their normal rank and duties had been a lot of fun. And Alwen was beginning to think of the scarred warrior woman as a friend and confidante. It was a lot like her friendship with Alice, but a little more intellectual. She could always rely on Alice, Isabela, and the rest of the marines for some good laughs and overly macho hijinks. But they weren’t the thinking type, they were meat heads down to their bones. It was different with Astarte.

She was strong and fearsome, but she was also frighteningly smart, and had a wicked sense of humor. She liked to make fun of all the awful things in life, the coming death of her world, terrorism, suicide, and despite her cavalier attitude, you could tell she really cared about all that stuff. Like she cared so much about it she had to make jokes just to lessen the weight and sorrow behind them.

But now she was all business, and Alwen was sad to see her resume her normal attitude. “So to understand what went down between Alice and Gato you need to know my history with a pirate named Greyson, and how Alice first met Gato.”

“I’ve heard a lot of rumors about your time with the Terran pirates, I think we can ski-“

“No we can’t” Astarte interrupted. “Rumors are just that, rumors. To really understand you need to know the whole truth.”

Alwen pursed her lips in protest, but nodded her head for the pirate to continue telling her story.

“Alright, I left home pretty young, and signed on with Greyson almost immediately. I was big for my age, knew my way in a fist fight, and also just happened to be the bastards ‘type’” she growled the word. “I was just hired muscle to him, but I worked my way up the ranks and proved myself to him. Eventually I was his right hand thug, there to ruthlessly destroy anyone who pissed him off. I stayed on with him for five years, until I reunited with my birth mother and left him for good.”

“That was the reunion where you beat her face in, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s a different matter. Anyway after I left, Greyson was upset, he ordered that if anyone ever found me they were to beat me black and blue and drag me back to his stronghold. My mom and I wandered around for a bit in a mother daughter crime spree in a desperate attempt to survive, we eventually found our way back to Sol and kidnapped a rich young Martian to ransom off to his family, that Martian was Karega and through a stroke of fate he and I got to talking and became friends. We let him go and never expected to hear from him again, so when he tracked us down and said that he had gotten several hundred million credits together to build some pirate ships we were shocked.”

Alwen blinked in surprise “Why?”

“Not important, all you need to know is that he helped me build the Astaroth and the Lucifer. Mom and I changed our names and reinvented ourselves, molded ourselves into ruthless and cunning pirate captains. Our maiden voyage into the Orion sector had sent shock waves through many criminal circles, and our rise to power eventually earned us the enmity of Greyson and the Terran pirates. back in those days we played it fast and loose, and learned a lot of things the hard way, our greatest lesson was that our loose command structure was holding us back. We pulled in MDY and set about reforming our whole crew and command structure, and the biggest change was an actual dedicated boarding crew. Enter Alice and Wendy Fidelis, they had made a name for themselves here on earth, they were a part of a generation of young idealists that had begun to awaken the long stagnant and isolated vet clans. Made them take a more active role in their communities and assert themselves as a force for law and order. Their mission had grown far faster than their resources and needed a way to supplement that growth. I approached them and offered them a proper place on a real warship, they accepted and rebranded themselves as marines. They combed old field manuals and memoirs to try and recreate everything an American Marine had once been, until they became the terrifying force they are today. And when I burst onto the scene with them in my arsenal Greyson knew he had to do something about us and fast.” Her face darkened. “I really should have known the bastard would try a cowardly sneak attack, we made Isos run red with their blood, and crippled the station beyond repair in our bid to kill’em. But we had lost a lot as well, worse than the sneak attack on Femeri”

“Is that when Alice lost her sister?” Alwen asked, she had heard some whispered mentions of Isos before, but always far away from Alice.

“Yeah, and that’s where shit really went south for Alice and Gato. How much do you know about Gato’s past?” She asked in a complete non sequitur.

“Just a little, he lost his mother at a young age, had to make a living as a street fighter, and then joined the marines about ten years ago”

Astarte’s eyes flashed with a little mirth “Not untrue, but also not the whole of it. When the Union released whatever had uplifted the Mammaloids, and lot of things changed. Big predatory species who had been around humans for years suddenly had the mental abilities to connect the words they had been hearing for years as speech and replicate it. Shocked the hell out of Zoo’s everywhere. But it wasn’t limited to just Zoo’s, it spread to every corner of Earth, and warped even wild animals. But language and reason aren’t just automatic facets of sentience, they’re an art that humans have been refining and teaching for millennia. They didn’t suddenly know how to talk or wear pants now that their brains had been altered, and since most of them had long since learned to avoid humans they never did. Gato was one of them.”

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“So Gato was born in the wild?”

“Born, and raised. Alice and Wendy were also born wild, but their mother had brought them to a vet clan when they were young, and they grew up just like any human child.”

“So how did he become, uh, civilized” Alwen said, not knowing whether the word she had just used was offensive or not.

Astarte sighed “If there’s one thing I truly hate about humanity, it’s our ability to delight in suffering and misery. People who love to see violence and cruelty just for the sake of it. There aren’t many, and there’s less and less every century. But I think that’s due to societal progress. Even before the uplift people had taken animals, beaten them senseless, and made them fight for their sick amusement. And it didn’t stop when people began to realize that every big scary animal on earth could now think and feel like we did, in fact it got worse.”

Alwen felt a foreboding sense of dread creep over her “are, are you saying-”

She nodded her head “Poachers shot his mom, and then hit him with a tranquilizer. After that it was fight after fight, he fought other Jaguars, bears, tigers, wolves, anything that was big and mean. You and I know that he’s pretty big and strong, even when compared to most other jaguars, I think only a gorilla has him beat for sheer strength. He used that strength to survive, used it to kill his opponents and earn his masters lots of money. ” she spat the word master with so much venom that Alwen wouldn’t have been surprised to see she had grown fangs like an Egh’ahd. “He lasted a lot longer than any of the others, lived long enough to put his brain to use and learned to speak, learned to really understand what he was doing and hate himself.And at the venerable age of nineteen Alice and Wendy shut down the pit fights and freed him.”

“And that’s when they took him in, and trained him?”

“Yup, and when they joined the Astaroth Alice and Gato finally hooked up, and became the ship’s disaster couple.”

“That bad?

Astarte chuckled “I thought about shoving them out an airlock several times.”

“What was their issue?” Alwen asked.

Astarte pursed her lips “This sounds a bit racist, but here me out. The uplift process did a lot of things, but some of their old animal instincts never went away, they just warped in different ways. Big cats like snow leopards are territorial and solitary, but when they were uplifted that solitary nature got suppressed as something made them want to mate for life like humans, and the territorial nature got translated into jealous possessiveness.”

“So all Feliniods are possessive and jealous?”

“I mean, their people just like you and me, we ignore our natural instincts and urges all the time. They’re no different. But they do trend to be more prone to jealousy, and Alice is very prone to jealousy. You should feel happy that your still friends despite you going after her ex.”

Alwen sagged in on herself as she felt more ashamed than happy. “you were talking about how this jealousy ruined their relationship.”

“Yeah, Alice always felt a little jealous of her sister who always seemed to be better than Alice. That mostly just resulted in sibling rivalry, at the time I didn’t see any reason to correct it. But then something made Alice think that Gato was secretly in love with her sister, and only went out with her because she was the next best thing. Whether any of that is true or not I can’t say, but it led to some big fights between those three. And one day on Isos, a station that used to be between Sol and Paraox, Wendy and Alice had a big fight. Wendy left in a huff and was having a heart to heart with Gato when a sniper took out my marine captain. And supposedly Gato had a chance to jump in the way, if only he had acted a little sooner. After the fight we found Gato had shredded the sniper limb from limb and had rushed Wendy to Bachir, but she didn’t make it. After that Alice and Gato had their legendary fight and breakup just feet away from Wendy’s dead body.”

Alwen felt like she had been dropped into a deep cold well as she realized what kind of delicate truce her careless emotions thrown into disarray. “What happened after that?” Alwen asked hoarsely.

“I whipped them both out of their funk and we rained fire and death down on Greyson’s head. Personally choked the bastard to death and took his head as a trophy. Alice and Gato never reunited and instead became the captains of Sin and Virtue squad, and they maintained some sort of truce until a purple skinned doctor pranced in and messed up whatever progress they had made.”

Alwen gulped and fought back her tears “I’m sorry.” She whispered.

Astarte seemed to realize in that moment that Alwen was on the verge of breaking down. “Don’t beat yourself up, old wounds like this tend to fester. Something was bound to happen. And who knows, maybe you’re the catalyst we’ve needed to fix this bullshit” she turned away and looked a little pensive “I’m not exactly an emotional person, and this stuff makes me really uncomfortable.”

Alwen sniffed “No, its fine, I, I just feel awful”

Astarte without any warning stood up and reached around Alwen and pulled her down against her chest and held her there. Alwen was stunned for a second, and in the next she was crying into the Hellworlder’s chest. “Take as much time as you need.” She said softly.

“But aren’t I... too close” she said between sobs.

“Its fine, I wont do anything, rule number eight remember”

Alwen laughed into her chest despite herself.

And true to her word the captain held her there until she was ready to face the world

~~~*~~~

Astarte had held Alwen until she pushed away from her in embarrassment and rushed out of the room. Aster had know idea what had come over her, she had never been that tender with anyone before. But something about how the young doctor had been valiantly holding back her emotions had triggered something within herself, and made her reach out for her.

Aster had stared at the space where Alwen had been before shaking her head and turning to the corner of the room where a set of plain clothes and Tenken had been laid out for her. She walked over and stripped off her now tear drenched shirt, Torweni really could cry when the urge hit them, a whole lot more than any human could. She didn’t even bother with shutting the open door.

“Are you leaving already?” A voice asked from the hall.

Aster turned to see her mom watching her with sad eyes. “Yeah, Toy Man worked some sort of black magic on me, wiped away any trace of the operation.”

“Are you sure you can’t stay for just a bit longer?” she asked.

Aster shook her head “I have a mountain of paperwork waiting back home, and about a million other things I need to do while my ship is in dry-dock. And if Domnall is making his big first move as the king of the pirates them I need to be there to watch his every step.”

“I understand, you have a lot of good work to do. A saints job is never done.” She said with a smile.

“About that, why are your Maidens calling me a saint?”

“Just something one of our younger girls started, and its catching on like wildfire. I think they see you as the successor to my legacy.”

“That’s ridiculous, I’m not the only orphan you’ve raised.”

“No, but you are the first. And you’re the one who built the whole Hellworlder fleet, made an alliance with the Torweni, and started Earth’s first extrasolar colony.”

“Those are all secrets they shouldn’t even know” Aster countered before pausing as she realized something. “This is your doing isn’t it?”

“I may have had a hand in spreading it” her mom said with an impish grin.

“I’m no saint” Aster growled.

“And neither am I, but between the two of us you have done far more good than I ever did.”

Aster shook her head “You don’t know that. Mom there’s shit I’ve done that plagues my nightmares; I don’t deserve whatever reputation your trying to make for me.”

Saint Mary the Maiden frowned “As you wish, but know that we see what your doing, and we think its good.”

Astarte gritted her teeth and finished changing before walking past her mom “I appreciate that you kept the room as it was, but you don’t need to do this anymore.”

Her mom tilted her head “then I’ll have it packed and sent to your ship.”

“Fine, whatever.” Aster said before she left her mom, met up with Alwen, and left Earth for the sanctity of her ship.