Tales from the Inbox: The Penderite Tabernacle

Tales from the Inbox: The Penderite Tabernacle

This is not the conclusion to the story that has occupied this space for a few weeks. While we are not entirely sure why (and Naval Intelligence has not been helpful in getting to the bottom of it), all Hypercast connectivity from our home office here on Planet at Centauri to the Maribel system where Duncan and Nojus are stationed. 

This Hypercast breakdown is widespread and affects a number of systems around Maribel as well. While rumors of sabotage are flying all across the datasphere, it is more likely this is a result of over-stressed relay networks which were never designed to handle the data flow rates the war has created between the Core Worlds and the Frontier. Naval signals tenders are likely even at this moment making repairs to the system, as most low-priority Navy traffic uses the same relays as civilian communications.

Duncan will return with the conclusion to the account of Hugh and Varinia stealing a derelict Jericho bomber next week, provided the network connection is restored by then. Instead, this entry is a story which we sent along to Duncan some months ago and which he edited and prepared for just this sort of occasion. A surprisingly small amount of datasphere attention was given to last month’s launch of the Holy Tabernacle, a starship commissioned and built by the Holy Order of Penderites to transport their high-ranking pontiffs and their most revered relics.  

While the vessel is an impressive feat of engineering, Duncan thought it most interesting that the six-hundred-year-old sect, which has always had its center of religious activity on Earth’s Iberian peninsula and which prides itself on its adherents’ avoidance of modern technology, would suddenly desire to make this center mobile. Operating a starship, perhaps the most complex piece of modern technology in the Reach, is definitely an interesting step for this order. 

When he reached the edge of the balcony, Grand Hierophant Toloni out his arm to encompass the view. "She’s beautiful, isn’t she.” 

Captain Sandra Ibsen couldn’t help but agree. The starship below, half-covered by scaffolding in a specially built docking cradle, was far larger than any vessel that had any right to land on a planet’s surface, but despite its size and the reinforced structures which allowed it to rest on its keel, it had the clean lines and graceful elegance of a much smaller vessel. If it weren’t for the antlike figures of the techs and shipwright workers scurrying about on the scaffolds, she might have thought the vessel no larger than a cutter or ship’s pinnace. 

The old man, leaning on his two-meter-high scepter of office, said nothing, but the smirk tugging upward on his thin lips suggested that he had expected Sandra to be taken aback. 

“This is...” Sandra leaned on the railing and looked down to the open-air shipyard below. There must have been thousands of humans living and working in the facility. “I thought the Penderites didn’t-” 

“We reject over-reliance on technology, Captain Ibsen.” Toloni shrugged. “But we are not so inflexible as the Amish or the Samarites. When necessary, we will use the tools of the age.” 

“When you requested my presence, Your Eminence, this is not what I expected.” Sandra had grown up among Penderites on Hercules – she'd even been sent by her parents to train at one of their religious academies. She had, however rejected the ascetic life of a Sister Priestess before completing her course of study, left the academy, and hopped aboard a tramp freighter bound for Vorkuta. The unsmiling honor guard of the Grand Hierophant had been something of an alarming welcome party when she had landed on Earth. 

“Then our efforts have not been in vain.”  Toloni pointed to the vessel in the cradle. “We have labored in great secrecy on this. I wish to hire you as a ship-commander for the Holy Tabernacle.” 

“Me?” Sandra took a step back. She had just completed a contract skippering a small passenger-liner on a milk-run route between Earth and Maribel, but the vessel below was at least twice the tonnage of anything she’d been responsible for in the past. “That’s at least a five-hundred-million-credit-” 

“One point four billion Confederated credits so far.” The old man coughed, as if admitting the figure hurt him. “It may have been two billion if we had not done much of the work ourselves.” 

The idea of the Holy Order of Penderites recruiting a staff of technically savvy engineers and shipwrights, either from its own converts or from those outside the faith, was simply too much for Sandra to bear. The order was large and wide-spread throughout explored space, but to sell enough wealth to raise billions of standard credits must have nearly drained its coffers even so. Penderites lived simply, with little technology, and avoided access to the datasphere which suffused the lives of most of the citizens of the Reach. In their view, living closer to the land, Earth’s or that of another life-bearing planet, helped them form and strengthen a relationship with God. 

“That’s not a transport ship, Your Eminence.” Sandra pointed to the lines of still-empty hollow sockets running down the sides of the ship. “You’re fitting it for combat. I’m not qualified to command a cruiser of war.” 

“You wound me, Captain. We do not engage in warfare. Our creed forbids it. We are arming Holy Tabernacle, yes, but only as a means of self-defense.” 

“Who would attack a Penderite-flagged vessel?” 

The old pontiff smiled. “Come. You must want to see her up close. Once you have, perhaps you will understand.” 

Despite the old man’s age, he quickly outpaced Sandra on the stairs leading down to ground level. Breathing hard and cursing the order’s idea that an elevator constituted over-reliance on technology, she trotted to catch up with him as he walked out into the vast courtyard. She noted the Kosseler crests on crates stacked between the barracks and workshops which she passed by. If the Order was importing parts and equipment all the way from Ori to build a ship of war, the government had to know about it – and if they weren’t doing anything about it, that meant the Grand Hierophant’s project had almost certainly received official sanction, and perhaps covert financial support. 

The walk to the cradle was longer than Sandra expected, perhaps because she had still underestimated the scale of the facility. Despite the orderly gridwork-arrangement of the structures raised around the ship’s cradle, she suspected she had walked more than a kilometer before the sweeping hull of Holy Tabernacle loomed above her head. She would have checked this figure on her wrist computer, but the Order had forced her to leave the device and all her other computer hardware in a locker at the checkpoint at the edge of the temple grounds. 

Waving aside a pair of armed guards, the old man led up a steep ramp to a hatch in the ship’s side, still showing no sign of slowing down. Several techs installing crystalline circuit-blocks into access panels near the airlock jumped to their feet and bowed their heads at the pontiff’s approach, but he paid them no mind. 

Inside the ship, Sandra had hoped to find the Penderites using lifts, but she was dismayed to find Toloni leading her to another damnable stairwell and headed up. She had lived more than half of her life in half-gee shipboard conditions and climbing interminable stairs in Earth gravity was simply exhausting. 

“Holy Tabernacle is a vessel designed for one mission, and it is of utmost importance that this mission succeed.” Toloni waved his staff, whose crystalline head barely missed scraping on the overhead panels, for emphasis. “We can crew the ship with lay Penderites who have come to us from your profession, but we lack officers. If you accept this job, you will be responsible for recruiting officers.” 

“I can... Do that.” Sandra tried and failed to keep her breathlessness from showing in her voice. “Except gunnery... officers.” 

“That has already been arranged.” 

Three decks up from where they had boarded, the Hierophant abruptly left the stairwell and led Sandra into a wide corridor that appeared to extend across the breadth of the ship. A pair of the Hierophant’s honor guards in their gaudy parade uniforms stood on either side of a heavy hatch at the midpoint of this long hall. The moment they spotted the Hierophant, they stood at attention, heads bowed and antique bayonet-fixed rifles resting on their shoulders. The men didn’t look up as the pontiff and Sandra approached, but she could tell as Toloni withdrew a large key from his robes and fitted into an archaic-looking tumbler-lock that they had both surreptitiously taken her measure and inspected her visually for weapons. 

“Remove your shoes, Captain Ibsen.” The Grand Hierophant leaned on the key until it turned, the tumblers within clicking audibly into place. “The deck beyond is holy ground.” 

Still recovering her breath, Sandra knelt to loosen and slip off her shoes, trying to recall from her partial religious instruction what sort of place might be within. As far as she knew, a Penderite only removed their shoes in a place believed to contain the very real presence of God. There were no such places in the Penderite enclave or Penderite religious academy on Hercules. 

As soon as she stood in her smartfabric socks on the cool deck, Toloni pushed the hatch open. Unlike most shipboard hatches, it was hinged to open inward like the double doors of a static building, and it swung open easily even for his thin arms. The space beyond was dimly lit, but before Sandra’s eyes could adjust, the Hierophant grasped her wrist and led her in. 

“Do you remember what the original Tabernacle was built for, my wayward Sister?” 

Sandra looked around, seeing incongruous oil-lamps hanging from the buttressed pillars on either side of her. The space within was surprisingly small, but high-ceilinged, and she realized it was some form of onboard chapel. 

“To allow the Children of Israel to pay homage to their God in their wanderings, Your Eminence.” Sandra replied. Perhaps the Grand Hierophant meant to visit his widely distributed faithful – a tour of the largest Penderite enclaves would indeed be a novel step for the technologically-skeptical order. 

“Yes, but... There was more.” Toloni stopped at a vast, heavy curtain that ran the length and height of the compartment. “It was the very seat of God, and so is this ship.” 

Sandra remembered her old lessons. Those who stepped through the curtain in the original Tabernacle without being extensively sanctified had been struck dead. Despite the increasingly agnostic attitudes which had dominated her life as a spacer, she shied away from this forbidding shroud. 

“God has spoken to us, Captain. The Order of Penderites will not long be safe on Earth. Ancient Iberia will soon reject us, so we will remove the holy things from this land.” Toloni turned away from the curtain to Sandra. “Dark times are coming. Will you come back to the Order in this time of need?” 

Sandra swallowed, terrified but strangely at peace. “I... I will, Your Eminence. You can count on me.” 

Toloni smiled warmly. “I knew I could, Sister. Come, let me show you your quarters.” 

Details

Tales from the Inbox: The Jericho Honeypot

2949-06-29 – Tales from the Inbox: The Jericho Honeypot 

I have found some interesting things about the story that has graced this feed the past few weeks. Though I cannot find evidence that the submitter is who he claims to be, one of my contacts in Naval Intelligence confirmed that several parts to an Incarnation Jericho bomber have been circulating on the Maribel black market in recent weeks. Since there have been no authorized salvage operations in battle areas where Jerichos were present, that means these parts came from at least one black-market salvage operation. 

Naval Intelligence does not believe that these parts are any threat to the public – they're distinctive but ultimately not weapons-grade components – but is monitoring the situation all the same. As the newest known piece of Incarnation technology, and by far the most striking in appearance except perhaps for their cruisers, the strange arrowhead-shaped heavy strike units have been appearing in media quite often since they first appeared in the battlespace. 

Though they are lumbering behemoths next to the agile, deadly Coronach interceptors, the bigger vessels seem to contain a lot more technology that can be adapted to Confederated strike designs, since the Coronach is at its heart essentially a large drone rig with a tiny shell for a pilot. Without the cranial implants of the Incarnation pilots, a Coronach would be impossible – after all, the craft carry no control interfaces save a connector helmet. 

Hugh Apperlo found the safety catch securing one of the ovoid shapes to its rack, and with a clank the object jumped a centimeter up and rolled out of its cradle. He had to marvel at the smooth operation of the Incarnation technology - Even shot up and sitting upside down in his borrowed ship’s hold, the Jericho bomber’s rotary munitions racks worked so smoothly they almost seemed magical. He got his arms around the weapon and found it lighter than he expected – he could easily carry one under each arm. 

“Four minutes to intercept, Hugh.” Varinia Villa counting down the seconds until they were intercepted by vengeful pirates reminded him. Given that Diane Dragović, the ship they’d borrowed from Hugh’s old friend Ellison, had no weapons, if he didn’t find a way to make the salvaged Jericho’s weapons work, they were about to be dead, and that was the best case scenario. Even outside the Silver Strand, pirates had a nasty habit of taking prisoners only as another commodity to sell on the black market. 

Setting the first mystery ovoid next to the hatch leading back into the wrecked craft’s crew compartment, Hugh released a second, then hefted them both and scrambled out the way he had come, brushing aside twisted ribbons of metal and skeins of frayed wiring on his way. He couldn’t read the digital code-plates on the weapons, but he knew that, most Incarnation tech was digitally networked. All he had to do was arm them, then put them in an airlock. That couldn’t take more than three minutes, right? 

Setting the two weapons down on the deck, Hugh flipped open his beat-up wrist computer and put it into discovery/interlink mode. Sure enough, a pair of foreign devices appeared in the list. He pointed the little scanning camera at the digital placards on each of the devices, and soon he was looking at a model number and illustrated instructions for the armorer. Thankfully, the Incarnation’s variant of Anglo-Terran wasn’t too different from the one Hugh had learned – he had in his hands a pair of advanced strike-craft seeker missiles. 

"Aw, damnation.” Hugh hadn’t been looking at the instructions ten seconds before he’d seen the problem. In order to arm the weapons, a set of catches built into the mounting bracket needed to be depressed. The bracket was of a standard configuration – any war-armed strike asset in the Reach could have fitted those munitions. He could rig something up to trick that safety, but that would take time – more time, certainly, than he and Varinia had. 

“I think we’re on to plan B, Vari.” Hugh grabbed a multitool and a vacsuit from the locker next to the workbench.  

“We are well past plan B.” 

Hugh couldn’t help but chuckle. “We do now. I’m going to get a suit on, then you’re going to vent this bay and broadcast a surrender. Keep them talking and get one of those bastards to come in and dock.” 

“We’re going to surrender? Hugh, I won't-” 

“I know.” Hugh knew that Varinia would rather die than fall into the hands of pirates. She’d been a commodity in their grim economy once already in her life, and had spent nearly every waking moment since escaping them trying to reverse the horrific fleshsculpting they’d inflicted on her. “It won’t come to that.” 

“What are we going to do?” 

Hugh pulled a vacsuit from one of the lockers near the workbench and began putting it on. “We’re going to use pirates to deal with pirates.” What he was about to do was insane, and it would only work on arrogant, twitchy pirates, if it worked at all. 

Once his suit’s seals displayed green indicators in the chin display, Hugh threw the two missile pods into a mesh bag and clipped his safety line to the bag. “Evacuate the bay, then open the scoop just enough to let me climb out. Have you broadcast our surrender?” 

“Just did.” The hiss of air jetting out into the void filtered through Hugh’s helmet. “I told them we’ll lock ourselves in the command deck and they can have everything else.” 

“And?” 

“Their leader said I have a nice voice and he says he’ll pay us a visit up here all the same.” Varinia was doing a good job of keeping her voice calm – almost good enough to fool Hugh. 

Despite knowing this was ideal, Hugh felt a snarl tugging at his facial muscles. “Lock a bunch of random compartments. Make sure their search takes time.” Fortunately, Dragović had only one working airlock mating collar – only one of the pirates could dock at a time. With three or four men ransacking the ship at most, he should have plenty of time. “And patch me in as a listener on your comms.” 

With all the air gone from the cargo hold, Varinia opened the doors and extended their jury-rigged cargo scoop just enough that its nets and scaffolds made a sheltered tunnel leading out into the space below Dragović’s bow. Hefting his sack of missiles, Hugh clambered up into it until he left the influence of the ship’s A-grav axis and floated in microgravity. He hated microgravity, but less than he hated the idea of death or durance among brigands. 

“The lead pirate is on docking approach and I’m extending the collar. Are you sure about this, Hugh?” 

“No.” Hugh fought the butterflies in his stomach as he worked his way along the tangled netting of their hand-made scoop. “But it should work.” 

Details

Tales from the Inbox: The Jericho Gamble

2949-06-22 – Tales from the Inbox: The Jericho Gamble 

Despite the risk of a power surge in the systems Varinia Villa pushed the battered gravitic drive unit of Diane Dragović almost a quarter-gee past the safe limit as soon as the little ship cleared the tangle of battlefield debris. 

Hugh Apperlo looked up from the sensor plot on his own console when a single piece of wreckage thrown clear of the field glanced off the dorsal hull above the command deck. Since the collision didn’t cause any fresh warning lights to glow on his board, he tried not to pay it any mind. With only the crudest of shear-barrier screening unit, Dragović should not have risked acceleration so close to the debris, but he didn’t question the decision, when compared with all alternatives. 

“Any sign of them yet?” Varinia didn’t look up from her console.  

“Not yet.” Hugh trusted his companion to fly the borrowed ship, but he wished he could have helm control all the same. He figured another percentage point on the engines probably wouldn’t cause a power surge, and every meter per second counted when pirates might show up at any moment. 

Though Varinia didn’t say anything, Hugh knew she had more reason to fear pirates than he did. After all, it had been pirates who had taken her off a struggling Silver Strand subsistence world at a young age and sold her into the creative hells of the chattel black-market, and pirates had been the buyers who had seen fit to modify her body until the average citizen of the Reach couldn’t look at her without wincing in disgust. True, the Strand’s brand of piracy had always been crueler than any other, but brigands capitalizing on the war-torn Coreward Frontier were probably not much better. 

The sensor plot chirped, and Hugh glanced down to see a trip of red pips appearing at the edge of sensor range. “There they are. Three small hulls... Looks like survey runabouts.” 

“Time to intercept?” Varinia didn’t need to ask if Dragović had built enough speed to beat the pirates to the edge of the system. Their ship could only accelerate past four gees by risking an electrical overload, and even the most worn-out surveyor would be able to double that, at least in short bursts. 

“Twenty-four minutes.” 

Varinia didn’t reply right away. Hugh heard a quiet tinkling noise, like wind chimes in a gentle breeze, and glanced over to his partner to see her visibly trembling, the artificial spines sprouting from her skin scraping against one another. Despite knowing how terrified she was, Hugh couldn’t help but notice how pleasant the sound was. 

“I’ll go check the star drive.” Hugh stood and turned toward the steep stairs leading back and down into the rest of the ship. Old Xiou-Edwards drives, unlike newer star drives with safer designs, could be activated within a star’s gravitational shadow, but they tended to explode spectacularly if they were, especially on a vessel with antique, corroded power distribution conduits. 

“No.” Varinia locked eyes with Hugh. She too knew about the explosive properties of their outdated star drive, and she probably also knew that Hugh would chance a surrender, if he were aboard alone. “Not yet.” 

“Do you have a better idea?” 

“I’m pressurizing the bay.” Varinia flipped a few switches. “The Jericho is upside down on the deck with its nose facing mostly toward the doors. See if it’s any help.” 

“Vari, that wreck isn’t going to help us.” Hugh a fool’s errand intended to get him off the command deck when he saw it. Whatever Varinia had planned, she didn’t want him to be there to tell her to stop, and he knew exactly what that meant about her plan. “There’s got to be something else.” 

Varinia sighed, put the helm into autopilot mode, and stood to face Hugh. “Trust me, Hugh.” 

Hugh sighed and nodded. Despite fearing he knew exactly what she was going to do, he trusted Varinia Villa with his life, and knew she trusted him with hers. If she thought she knew what the best move was, he’d learned to trust her judgement above his own. “Whatever gets us out of this.” He tried to put as much emphasis on the word “us” as humanly possible. 

Varinia pushed Hugh toward the stairway and spun back to her console in one fluid motion, crystals scattering the flickering illumination from the overhead panels. “Go.”  

Hugh raced down to the main cargo bay, reaching the bulkhead door just as its display went from orange to yellow, indicating acceptable pressure on the far side. Hugh quickly shut the pressure doors in the corridor behind him, then overrode the caution indicators to open the bay. 

His ears popped as the hatch opened, and the air within smelled metallic and burnt as soon as he hurried inside and slid down the ladder to the main cargo deck. Given the twisted holes punched in the arrowhead shape occupying most of the space, the smell was only too understandable. 

“Try getting in through the damaged section.” Varinia, watching his progress on the security system, suggested via Hugh’s earpiece. “The crew compartment would be roughly in the center.” 

Hugh grabbed a wrist-light from a locker on one bulkhead and clambered up the angled side of the Jericho’s hull, glad of the hexagonal handholds generously scattered across the strike craft’s hull. A quartet of smoothy-fared openings near the bow were probably the business end of some sort of laser or plasma cannon, but he knew they would be of no use. Even if the Jericho’s power plant could be restarted, the control systems would be beyond his ability to understand in less than twenty minutes. 

Instead, as Hugh edged his way between the scorched, razor-sharp edges of the craft’s composite armor paneling, he hoped to find his way into the primary munitions bay. If that space was still intact, and the Jericho hadn’t fired off its arsenal of guided weapons before being hit, perhaps he could trick something there into locking onto their attackers. 

“How’s it going up there?” Hugh squeezed his broad shoulders into the scorched innards of the Incarnation ship. If she thinking of doing what he was afraid of, he wanted to keep her talking, and so dissuade her of the idea. 

“They’re closing.” Varinia’s voice sounded shaky and higher-pitched than usual. “I’m going to try to hail and bluff them.” 

“Don’t lie to me, Vari. You’re going to try to deal with them.” 

“Hugh, I would never sell you out to-” 

“Stars around, woman, you think I would believe that of you? I know what you think you have to do. Don’t.” Hugh pushed past a tangle of loose cabling suspending a series of broken crystalline components in the middle of his path and spied the shattered exterior of what had probably been the crew compartment.  

After peering inside this and finding unrecognizable, charred, dessicated lumps dangling from the straps of a trio of recumbent chairs, he turned his attention to looking for a way into the munitions bay below their deck, which was now overhead. Surely there would be a means for the crew to escape a damaged craft, and through the bay would be the easiest method. 

“It’s all my fault, Hugh.” 

“Nothing’s your damned fault, Vari. We rolled the dice together. They weren’t in our favor. We'll deal with what comes next.” Hugh spied what he was looking for – an iris-like hatch in the center, between the three seats. Its electronic controls were dead, but Hugh quickly wheeled it open with a manual-crank handle provided for that purpose. “And we’ll deal with it together.” 

“What about-” 

“I’m in the munitions bay.” Hugh, with one shuddering glance at the unrecognizable corpses around him, grabbed the edges of the overhead opening and lifted himself into the space above. Playing his light through the compartment, he was gratified to see no less than six sinister oblongs hanging in a rotary rack forward. The second rack, behind the hatch, was empty. 

Varinia seemed only too eager to latch onto this change of topic. “How’s it look?” 

“Promising.” Hugh braced his knees on the hatch and pushed up on the munitions bay doors over his head. They didn’t budge. If the bay was to be used as an escape route for the crew, there was probably a manual release somewhere, but he saw no sign of it. “Whatever these are aren’t very big. I could probably haul them to the airlock by hand.” 

“Be careful.” 

Hugh played his light across the computer-readable code plates which passed for warning placards on Incarnation technology. “You don’t need to tell me twice.” Gingerly, he reached out to run his fingers behind one of the oblong shapes, looking for the release catch that would let an armorer remove unused ordinance when the strike-craft returned to its mothership. 

This week we return to the account submitted by people claiming to be Hugh Apperlo and Varinia Villa. Despite many messages from readers claiming to be able to confirm or falsify this story, at this time I am no closer to validating or invalidating it than I was at this time last week. 

I have however learned that the terms of the anonymous bounty offered for provision of Jericho wreckage I mentioned last week were particularly interesting – they read more like a corporate contract than such documents normally do. While this could have multiple explanations, it seems only too possible to me that one of the major strike-craft manufacturers is trying to get an edge over its competition by reverse-engineering Incarnation tech. 

As things have been pretty quiet here since the last attempt to relieve Margaux, I have plenty of time to keep digging into this, and I plan to do so. 

Details

Tales from the Inbox: The Jericho Heist

2949-06-15 – Tales from the Inbox: The Jericho Heist

I cannot verify this story, nor can I definitively tie it to the names its participants claim. Sent in by a pair of freelance spacers who claim to have been featured in this text feed once before, this account did not come with any corroborating evidence such as sensor feeds and the like which is quite common with our recent fare.

Given that the heist claimed is technically illegal, I can see why the participants chose to send only a written account. The Incarnation, as the damaged party, cannot attempt to enforce charges until after the war), but wars don’t last forever, and plundering a battlefield is hardly an honorable practice in the best of times.

Still, this pair seemed proud of their handiwork, and I can verify the existence, until about eleven days ago, of a dubious bounty offered for the collection of one wrecked Jericho bomber. The anonymous posting on the Maribel datasphere was taken down and listed as cancelled, but due to the legality of this sort of salvage I would expect the poster to do so even if they had received the desired item and paid out the promised bounty.

I suspect if there is anything to this story, Naval Intelligence is already looking into it.

“Vari, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Hugh Apperlo waited for an answer, but when none came, he turned away from the viewpanel to look at the woman at the little starship’s helm station to find her staring back at him, expression, as usual,  wholly indecipherable.

Diane Dragović was barely big enough to call a light-duty hauler, and its main duty space was a weird hybrid of a smaller ship’s cockpit and a larger one’s command deck, with the twin side-by side helm stations of the former sitting in the middle of a relatively spacious compartment, with a few collapsible secondary stations set along the port and starboard bulkheads. Hugh heard an alert chime on his station, but made no move to see to it until he had an answer.

Varinia Villa eventually relented, shrugging her shoulders in her odd lopsided way. “Theoretically, yes.”

“I can’t say I’m reassured.”

Varinia’s hands ceased their movement over the controls. “Tell me the word, and we leave. There’s no contract on this run.”

Hugh briefly considered doing so, but his eyes moved from Varinia’s face to the crystalline spines protruding from holes in her specially-configured smart-fabric tunic. These, the reason for her distinctive shrug, were artificial structures anchored deep in her muscles each one the vertex of an erratically geometric pattern of ridges and protrusions that extended from her left shoulder down her arm and back.

Seeing the spines, he was reminded why she was so willing to take risks for a big payday. His shoulders sagged, and he gave in. “Just be careful. Ellison will want his ship back in one piece.”

Hugh took a seat and made a show of checking through the various engineering alerts on his board, refusing to look up at the viewpanel. The alert which had chimed a moment earlier was a minor one, nothing he could use to request a halt. What Varinia was about to do had originally been his idea, and he regretted having voiced it the moment he said it, seeing that curious gleam in the woman’s dark eyes that suggested furious activity behind them.

That had been three weeks ago, and Hugh had never regretted his idea more than he did now, piloting borrowed Dragović toward the tattered wreckage left behind by one of dozens of skirmishes that had taken place along the front in the last few months. Though capable of extremely precise maneuvers, the ship was otherwise in no shape to make a run for it if there was trouble - its Xiou-Edwards drive worked correctly about eight times out of ten, and its main gravitic drive could only provide about four gees of acceleration before half the circuit breaker switch-heads in the engine room decided to quit their jobs rather suddenly and retire to a quite life embedded in the opposite bulkhead.

“Entering the field.” Varinia reached over to pat Hugh on the shoulder in what she probably thought was a reassuring way. The effect was somewhat spoiled when a small piece of debris clanged against the ship’s forward hull.

Hugh took one deep breath, rolled his neck to ease the tension in his muscles, then loaded the sensor program they’d loaded before setting out. As the computer analyzed each piece of debris that tumbled past, Hugh called up the engineering diagnostics, watching the various jittering charts and fluctuating readouts for a pattern that might spell trouble. If he could spot a problem early, it might just save both their lives.

Ellison had offered to loan them a much newer ship for what they intended to do, but Varinia had insisted on Dragović. Hugh didn’t yet know why, but he had learned a long time ago to trust her instincts. Though most people tended to dismiss her as Hugh’s bedroom plaything because of her slight build, pretty face, and horrific fleshsculpt devised by Silver Strand chattel dealers, Varinia really was the brains of their two-spacer operation. If she thought the seemingly inferior ship gave them a better chance of collecting the remains of one of the Incarnation’s new Jericho attack craft, and then trading this wreckage for the sizable anonymous bounty posted on the Maribel grey market, she was probably right.

“Nothing on the sensors yet.” Hugh didn’t need to say anything, but he also hated to let the tense silence fester. “No candidates, no sentry buoys.” In theory, the Navy deposited sentry buoys at the sites of battlefields warning civilian craft to stay away, but with the Navy in most engagements ceding the field of battle to the Incarnation, they rarely had an opportunity. The Incarnation’s own salvage efforts seemed secretive and lackluster by comparison. Perhaps they wrote off every ship crippled in combat, seeing no point in recovering more than survivors and data.

“It’s here.” Varinia probably hadn’t intended Hugh to hear her whispering assertion. He snuck a glance at her, and saw her face set in dark determination, as if she could will a wrecked Jericho to appear before them. He knew what this score meant to her – it was the first time they had even a prayer of obtaining enough money for the first set of procedures to reverse the horrific modifications which had been forced upon her years before. Hugh would have preferred to invest it into buying their own ship – he’d long since stopped letting Varinia’s fleshsculpts bother him – but he didn’t dare tell her that. She had been trying to have them removed as long as he’d known her.

As if forced to do so by sheer force of will, the sensor routine suddenly chimed its discovery of a target object. “Matching contact.” Hugh flicked his finger over the alert to send the coordinates across to Varinia’s station. “Ninety-four percent certainty.”

Varinia adjusted course immediately, though it caused several pieces of wreckage to clatter against the ship’s already battered plating. “Get that scoop open.”

Hugh did as instructed, opening the forward cargo doors and extending the struts and meshwork of the haphazard scoop they’d installed there. The hold was just big enough to hold a single one of the arrowhead-shaped Incarnation strike launches, but they hadn’t expected to find one entirely intact. The anonymous bounty hadn’t specified how complete a wreck was needed.

Varinia, busy making a series of minute manual course changes to line up on the target object, nevertheless whistled as they drew close. “This is the jackpot, Hugh. Look at it.”

Hugh looked up at the forward viewpanel, and couldn’t help but agree. Tumbling slowly, the dead Jericho bomber dead ahead looked almost completely intact, though with its amidships badly torn up by what looked like railgun fire that had penetrated its starboard armor paneling, scythed through the machinery and crew within, and burst out the other side, taking most of the port-side hull structure with it. Despite the damage, the wrecked strike craft was essentially in one piece, and it looked like its ventral weapons bay might even be intact. If that bay contained live ship-killer torpedoes, Hugh knew they could get paid for the operation twice, provided he could extract them from the craft without blowing anything up.

As the distance ticked down, Hugh glanced back down to his console only occasionally. He wondered whether the crew of the Jericho had died instantly, or if one or two of them had lingered in the dead craft until their oxygen ran out. He wondered whether their bodies were still aboard, and how he could dispose of them hygienically and respectfully. Varinia wouldn’t care – she thought of the Incarnation as akin to the cruel underground which had turned her into a monster, and not without reason – but Hugh thought it important to be concerned with such things.

“Final approach.” Varinia made a last adjustment, reduced their relative velocity, then sat back as the Jericho vanished below Dragović’s bow. A moment later, the ship lurched and began to tumble as their target connected with the mesh scoop.

Hugh slapped his palm on the control to retract the scoop, watching on a secondary camera feed as the entangled wreck began to slide into the ship’s hold. “We got it.”

Varinia breathed a sigh of relief, probably already imagining how much more human she could make herself with her cut of the payout.

Hugh turned in his chair to congratulate Varinia on a perfect approach when several alarms on his console began to wail. “Aw, Hells. Looks like sentry buoys, and they’re not Navy.”

Varinia’s pale face became even paler. “The Incarnation doesn’t-” She interrupted herself, wheeling the little ship around and putting it on the fastest course to the system’s periphery. “Pirates, Hugh. God have mercy if they catch us.”

Before the war, there hadn’t been pirates on the Frontier for nearly two decades, but Hugh didn’t doubt she was right. Varinia, as a native of the Silver Strand and a firsthand witness of the cruel economy of the place’s outlaws, knew piratical activity when she saw it.

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