“Reactors are nominal, reactor three is holding steady within acceptable parameters.” A bridge tech reported.

“Hull is pressurized, no leaks detected.”

“Ventral EM stabilization is green, aft ion engine is green, inertial compensation is green.”

“Avionic system check and diagnostic is green; we are all clear for takeoff.” Kat called to Astarte.

Astarte smiled as she felt her ship practically purr in pleasure at finally being able to move again. She knew in her head that her ship didn’t actually have wants and desires, but in her heart she knew that the Astaroth was more than just steel and wire. Astaroth was built for battle and would never be content with sitting idle in a dry dock, just like Aster would never be comfortable staying ashore when there was still work to do.

Modius had been stalwartly against her heading to the Wrethren sector on her own, he had argued that if she just waited a few months then they could arrive on the field as one unified force. However he was out voted by both Bell and Lucile, who argued that it would be advantageous to nip Domnall’s plans in the bud before it could spiral beyond their control. Besides, Astarte was a grown women who knew how to handle being deep into foreign territory with enemies on all sides, it was pretty much how she spent her whole life.

Karega had seemingly put their argument behind them and executed his tasks with the perfection and excellence she had come to expect and deeply respect. He would make a great captain one day, she just needed to find the right chance to push him into the role to make him realize that he had nothing to fear.

But that was a concern for later, right now she just needed to command her ship. “What’s the word from Cameo?”

“They say they’re all good to set sail.” Kat answered.

“Strange” Karega intoned “We’re about a few centuries past the age of sails, and yet we haven’t ever bothered to replace the term.”

“We’re space pirates Kar, we’ll always set sail, just as we’ll always raise the black flag. Doesn’t matter that we don’t have any sails or a flag to raise.” Aster said jokingly as she sipped her coffee. They had filled their pantries with as much real coffee as they possibly could, and word had it that plenty of crewmen were had stashed as much coffee as they could into their bunks, one report claimed that a snipe had replaced his mattress and pillow with coffee beans. Their last deployment had lasted over a year and a half to fill the gap in their network left by First fleet when they left for the Bedona conflict. When they had run out of coffee they didn’t have the time or money to replace their stores and instead switched to Uq’ot, or Zeno Joe. But after getting hooked once more on the real stuff no one was willing to go back to those dark days without real coffee.

Karega chuckled “Well at least you’ve ditched the eye patch.”

“Yeah, strangely enough I kind of miss it. My face feels a little cold without it.”

“Tower just cleared our flight plan Sir” Kat called.

“Then lets stop wasting time, raise the anchor and cut the mooring lines.” Astarte ordered.

Karega looked at her incredulously “We don’t even have an anchor.”

She smiled at him devilishly and went back to her coffee as everyone went about the necessary preparations to take the ship out of Mar’s atmosphere, a notably more difficult process than descending.

They ascended above the city of Noctis, the Cameo rising from her own berth a ways down the pier. They gently swung their bows in a North-Northeast direction as indicated by their flight plan and gently accelerated forward. Astaroth and Cameo had more than enough power to break past the sound barrier within atmosphere, but for ships as large as their own breaking the sound barrier would be very disruptive to the lives of everyone down below. So instead they slowly plodded forward, soaring well above the Tharsis Highlands, until they had gently pushed their way past Mar’s atmosphere. Once free of any air friction both ships poured power into their ion engines and rocketed away from the terraformed world.

They were guided down the Galileo Stairway which had them pass by Jupiter before they could safely accelerate out of the Sol system. Once they were out of Neptune Towers sensor range both ships accelerated to 5.5 Kilolights and began to make their way to Femeri station.

~~~*~~~

Ah’ared watched the little blip move slowly to the edge of the Venom’s sensor range before they began to follow. If they got too close the Astaroth might pick up on their presence so they had to maintain their distance for now, but their current distance and stealth capabilities right now should be more than enough to safely tail the Hellworlder ship and its escort.

They had left far sooner than Ah’ared have ever anticipated, when his Guthulu informants reported their hasty departure he had to push his ship to it’s limits to just barely make it here in time. They had only just arrived in the Femeri sector with a few Kruhur escort ships, the rest of the Kruhur were still far behind them. Ah’ared needed to stop them or slow them down somehow before they had a chance to get to far ahead of their allies who were still making their way.

“They’re moving far too soon” Sk’tharc clicked in displeasure.

“Yeg, and with their thpeed they’ll dithappear in no time” Ah’ared growled. “We need to find a way to thop them.” he had grown used to the avian’s presence, and was beginning to see why Kazlum had valued her opinions and ideas. She was a very intelligent creature, and despite toying with Ah’ared once or twice, her plans had always had good results.

“How many Kruhur ships do we have out our disposal?” she asked as they both watched the little blip on the radar.

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“Two thmall light attack craft, and four equal to lane runnerg.” He answered.

“How long until the others are here?”

“It varrieg, thome are only a diurnal away, thome are tree dirnunals away. Why?”

Sk’tharc glanced at him side long “the main force is about ten days out, if we send smaller units at them then we can buy ourselves time for more to arrive.”

“The Athtaroth ig a very capable thip, our meager fortheg will not latht.”

“Not unless we can hit it hard in our first strike. The Guthulu tampered with their reactor right? We can send in what we have right now and during that fight we can trigger an overload, when they eject the reactor they will temporarily need to shut down their power systems that’s when we hit them with the Venom. If all goes well we can take their ship without even needing the rest of the Kruhur fleet, and if they survive then we can still hunt them down.”

Ah’ared considered her proposal, “I thee the merit in your idea, but that ethcort will be troubthom. We need to eliminate it firtht.”

“If we focus on that smaller ship then we will be weak to the Astaroth.”

“Which meand we need to wait. Wait until more Kruhur arrive to throw themthelvg at Atharte. We can arrange a two-pronged ambuth, a fleet from the front and another from the thide.”

Sk’tharc looked at the star chart and compared their positions, “Assuming she stays on this course then we can station the other Kruhur ahead of time here” she said while extending a clawed wing tip forward.

He looked to where she had pointed and saw the logic behind it, “then we will wait while we lay our ambuth.”

~~~*~~~

It had taken Alwen a few days to get back into the swing of being away from port. Alice also had a lot of things to do, apparently the marines had received some new equipment that they were eager to play with, so Alwen hadn’t seen much of her since that night they had fallen asleep together. Which had been surprisingly restful despite the 50 kg. apex predator sprawled across Alwen’s chest.

She had mostly busied herself by attending to the myriad of medical needs that the returning crew needed her to attend to. And after several days of nonstop exams and blood work it had finally died down as they worked their way to the end of their list and had finally earned themselves some down time. Bachir looked ragged and was barely able to keep his eyes open, so Alwen had offered to cover the rest of the day while he got some rest. He had agreed and left to do whatever he needed to do to unwind.

And with an empty med bay and no more work to do for the moment Alwen decided that now was the time to address Gato’s issues. She was no psychologist, and especially not one who had any experience in treating an alien man from a species who had been severely altered from their natural thought patterns and social mechanisms, but she believed that she had worked up enough report with him to safely and calmly address the issue. Torweni medical practice placed a much larger emphasis on mental care in their doctors than Terran practices did, it was believed that the patients mental state was just as important as their physical state. She wasn’t exactly the perfect person to do this, but she was the best person available, and that would have to do unless they rescued a galaxy renowned therapist in an escape pod.

She had found Gato in the same place she always found him, working out in the ship’s gym. He was working through sets of some sort of squatting routine with Limey that involved a heavy rubber ball that Alwen had grown to personally loath. She stepped up behind him and cleared her throat, though she knew he smelled her presence the moment she walked in.

“Something I can help you with Vi?” he asked without even turning her way.

“I need you to come to the med bay as soon as you’ve washed up.” she said with all the prim professionalism she could muster for the occasion. This wouldn’t work if she approached him on a personal level.

“Can it wait until I’m done?” he asked agitatedly.

“No it cannot.” She answered.

He sighed and stood up, Limey also took this as his chance to move back to a full standing position, but a snarl from Gato had him stop half-way through “don’t you dare slack off while I’m gone Limey, you’re the smallest one of the Sins and I’m determined to fix that.”

Limey groaned “what’s the problem, I’m already jacked enough to shame a spartan?”

“Yes, but not jacked enough to last more than three seconds as my chew toy. By the time I’m done, you’ll be able to last five.”

Though his tone was threatening, Alwen could see that he was enjoying himself. He walked off to the showers and Limey groaned as he leaned back down into his squat and continued to move his medicine ball around, he gave Alwen a look that said, ‘save me’, but she chose to ignore it. As torturous as Gato’s training could feel, the results were always worth the pain, her six pack was a testament to that.

Only a minute and a half after entering he emerged smelling much better than before. Quick showers used to be something Alwen thought were impossible to actually do in cleanly manner, but after a year with the Terrans and she had somehow adapted to the strange ‘hurry up and wait’ method of doing things, and now taking a shower longer than a few minutes seemed like a waste.

He followed her silently the med bay, walking slightly behind her. She led him into the med bay and took one of the two chairs she had set out for them while she closed the door and pulled the latch to lock it.

“I take it this isn’t for a normal checkup?” he asked as looked at anything but her face.

“No, not the kind your used to, but a kind I’m pretty sure you’ve needed for a while.” She said vaguely.

He looked at her with suspicion “I don’t follow.”

She looked him in the eyes now that she finally had his full attention “The Captain has told me that you haven’t been entirely honest with me when you discussed your past.”

“I haven’t lied” he snapped defensively, his hackles up.

“You know, in Torweni the words for lie, and a lie of omission are one and the same”

He jerked back as if she struck him hard in the chest and his little ears turned away from her, in Mammaloid body language that meant he didn’t want to hear whatever she had to say. If he were in the primate family he would have shamefully broken eye contact and turned away from her.

“So” she said continuing past his discomfort “do you want to tell me in your own words what your early life was like”

His ears remained pointed away from her, but his face hardened into a scowl that sent cold chills up her spine. “What kind of check up is this?” he growled.

“A mental one.”

“I don’t need a shrink” he said as he shot out of his chair like it was filled with hot coals.

“Well I think you do, and unless you cooperate with me then I will inform the Captain that your currently unfit for duty.”

He loomed above her and glared at her with pure venom “you wouldn’t.” he challenged in a low tone that made her ancient deathworlder instincts scream ‘DANGER!’

She fought down her fear and returned his stare, if she had tried to do this a year ago then she would have buckled to his threats. But she wasn’t the same girl, she was tougher, stronger, and braver than she was before, and he had played large part in training her up to that. “I told you before that I would. And the fact that you’re responding to this with such aggression and defensiveness tells me that you need this far more than you think.”

“I’m fine, I understand how to deal with my problems better than you ever could”

She rose from her chair, and though she was still much shorter than him her presence seemed to dominate his, “I don’t think that’s true, you have literally no tools for self-care, and I doubt you would even know how to identify problems, let alone solve them.”

“I’m fine”

“You and both know that’s not true.” She shot back before he could continue. She had let her frustration slip through, and her tone had been much angrier than she had intended. She took in deep breath and continued forward “most of the crew already know most of the story, you yourself have already partially opened up and told me parts of it. Why are you so afraid of telling me the whole story from your own perspective?”

Her words reached something past his façade of anger, and he turned away in shame “Because you’re the only one who doesn’t pull away from me, the rest know the full truth and they keep their distance. They know how bad I am, and I don’t want you to look at me like that”

She laughed “Well that’s stupid” he turned back to her and stared at her incredulously. “Gato, we’re on a ship of space pirates who take pride in fashioning themselves after demons. They don’t keep their distance because they think your evil, they stay back because you keep a wall of self-loathing and anger in between you and other people.”

“That’s not true”

“Gato, I spent three months thinking all the people on this ship were thieves, murderers, and potentially rapists, and despite knowing what I thought that about them they still reached out to include me whenever they went ashore. I was a shut-in book nerd back home, if Alice and the twins hadn’t dragged me off the ship to join in on their adventures then I would have never left this med bay.” He looked like he wanted to object but Alwen pushed forward “I trained with you for four months and it took that long before you actually started talking with me outside of training.”

He turned away and slowly sank back down into his chair, “Do you I put up walls?” he asked softly.

“Yes, steal walls thicker than your biceps” she said frankly.

“That’s pretty thick” he said in dismay.

“Yes, and the Captain already told me all she knows and it hasn’t changed how I think of you, and I promise hearing you tell it still won’t change how I think of you. This is a safe environment” Alwen said reassuringly, and he softened and looked like he would actually open up.

And then, because the universe apparently fucking hated her, something struck the ship, and they were both flung from their chairs.

“Fucking assholes” Alwen muttered on the ground as the ship went to condition four.