Pirates. Arrrrr.

The Gemini bar was located on the second deck of the promenade with a wide balcony overlooking the curve of the trade floor below. Just across the walkway was the customs office, and to the side of that, the maglifts to the habitation rings and docks. It was a prime location for any and all travelers, whether they were looking for a quick drink or a spot to sit and watch the curl of ships coming around the edge of the space station to dock. As any normal day, every table was filled with small clusters of trolls, with more standing around the edges of the room or leaning on the balcony, talking, laughing, and arguing business good naturedly. The owner, a yellow blood as per the name of the bar, looked up from the counter as the electronic chime on the door rang, ready to greet his newest patron, but the smile froze on his face as Muireach Batynos ducked his head under the doorframe and stepped into the room.

The seadweller was decked in sandy colored full plate armor, the edges of his tunic peeking out from underneath an almost royal tyrian hue that matched the color of his eyes as he glanced about, face sullen. Slouched, he still easily stood head and shoulders above the next tallest troll, and his eyes held flecks of grey that put his age at no more than a few sweeps into adulthood, and definitely not full grown. He turned towards the barkeep and growled in a deep baritone, “Mug. Big. Juic.” before stomping across the room, oblivious to the hush that had spread like ripples across the crowd at his entrance. He came to a stop at a small table by the edge of the balcony and pointed towards the two blues sitting there. “Mov. Now.” he demanded. Neither needed further convincing, and abandoned their table and drinks without hesitation. Muireach pulled one of the chairs out, pushing it to the side and sinking down to sit on his heels instead, not even bothering to test and see if the chair was capable of supporting his weight. He stared out over the balcony and out the giant curving windows into the stars, barely blinking when the barkeep brought over a tankard of cranberry juice. Slowly, as it became obvious the giant didn’t mean to start trouble, the talk resumed in small whispers and laughs around him, although the nearest trolls did inch away slowly, leaving Muireach to sit with ears forward, listening to the hustle and shouts of the trolls hawking wares and passing on quiet rumors on the surrounding decks, eyes reflecting the pinpricks of light of the nebula.

Far below the station proper, the Mindship clung to the docking pylon, a soft glow from the engines the only indication of the life left in it. Her pilot hung limply, wrapped in a trunk of silver tentacle cords, the plugs on her spine and limbs feeding millions of bits of data directly to her brain, and back to the ship. She flexed her stabilizing wings gently, a motion not unlike a stretch and yawn in a normal troll. A chat feed scrolled past in her databanks, and as another ship dropped out of warp and turned towards the station to dock, the Mindship reached out through subspace, pinging the helmsman and inviting him to the secret corner of the imperial communication network that wasn’t supposed to exist. The new helmsman accepted the invitation almost hungrily, tapping in his ship designation and followed by his given name and almost hesitantly, a query as to whether the chat programming had been patched- his captain had upgraded his system and the regular ports he had connected through were now monitored too closely for him to want to risk attempting to set up a chat himself. The entire network of helmsmen was highly illegal, and the closest guarded secret among the helmsmen of the imperial navy. As far as the Condescension and her drones knew, the entire thing had been erased centuries ago, and the punishment for attempting to reconnect it was most severe. The Mindship responded in the affirmative, sending and installing new programming remotely on his communications deck that would keep the crew from noticing the pings sent out through the clandestine network, with instructions to pass the update on to any and all ships that he met. That finished, the helmsman replied with adoration and the group fell upon him with queries, transferring maps, logs and information across subspace links as was the custom among career helmsmen. The Mindship added her own information freely, taking what was offered and updating her private files on the system. In a society where sensory deprivation and lack of interaction was commonplace, the ability to live vicariously, even if through only another helm, was tantamount to keeping ones sanity.

The files downloaded and merged with her own successfully, the Mindship sent a ping of gratitude to the new helmsman, and then pulled back from the conversation, letting the chat fall to the back of her mind as a swipe card belonging to her captain passed the dock hatch and her internal cameras picked up the giant sea dweller stalking down the halls towards the helm. She opened the door for him as he approached, regretfully downloading the code that was Pegasi back into the corporeal body hanging in the center of the room. As Muireach stepped through and the doors closed behind him, the trunk of silver tentacles in the center of the oval room untwisted, releasing Pegasi’s form. She sighed regretfully, flopping forward limply as her upper body support was lost. The captain reached for her before the untwisting vines could drop her on her face, and he pulled her up and over his back and head, looping her arms through his horns carefully as to not to catch the hanging cords still plugged into the line of nodes traveling from her wrists to shoulders.

“> Thank y0u, F1shst1cks._” She whispered, her mouth dry, and Muireach grunted, carrying her across the room to a small table with a pitcher of water. He poured a glass, holding it up over his head to her. She took it slowly, her chin resting lightly on her hand, lamenting the disgustingly small and limited body she was forced to take. Small eddies of psionics swirled up the cables attaching her to the ceiling, and she was grateful at least that she did not have to fully disconnect from the helm. “> Are y0u d0ne sulk1ng?_” Muireach grunted again, stepping to the side and poking with two fingers at the computer display embedded in the curved wall. Pegasi frowned at him from over his head and activated the screen with a thought. “> 1f y0u leave f1ngerpr1nts, y0u are clean1ng them, babe._” she warned and he grunted again, making a pinching motion and pulling the local star chart out into a 3D hologram around the two of them.

Pegasi sipped at the water, shifting so that Muireach’s armor wouldn’t dig into her side quite as much, content to watch what he was doing. He reached out into the holgram, pinching at the air and twisted the map around him, shrinking it down and half walking into the next quadrant, half dragging the stars to him. “Got new target.” He growled in explanation, poking red pulsing targets into existence. “Ship started her. Spy folowed it towards ther. Lost it. Gon for ten days. Reapeared near this star.” He took a few steps, drawing a line among the points he had just drawn, and then jabbing a thumb into the middle of the path. “Stoped at Mudbal. Now, runin dark. No trades. No stops. Headed this way. Gota hav somethin god if risked goin THER for it.”

Pegasi sat straighter, musing over this. His information was almost always good, and his knack for guessing things correctly was uncanny. If he said the ship had stopped at Alternia for something, well, then it had stopped at Alternia, even with the penalty of immediate and complete annihilation of the ship and crew steering ships clear. “> Alr1ght, F1shst1cks._” She pushed herself up from his head, sliding down and landing wobbly on the floor, grabbing the cords connected to her arms as support while she took a few steps to regain her balance, hissing at the pins and needles of pain as her circulatory system began working fully again for the first time in weeks. “> Call back the crew and gather 0ur suppl1es. Sh0re leave 1s canceled. Let’s m0ve 0ut._”

Muireach grunted again, striding out of the room. Pegasi closed the door behind him with a negligent wave of her hand, pulling the helmsman chat back to the forefront of her mind. She passed her regrets on to the rest of the helmsmen, transferred control of the chat to an explorer class ship on the upper pylon, and then logged out with a final warm wish of kind captains and well upgraded decks to each of them.

Back in the helm, Pegasi stood straight, arms stretched to the sides and supported by strange marionette strings like a crucified doll. Holographic screens pulled out from the wall and surrounded her, the map and Muireach’s markers fading from the room and reappearing on one of the screens to her side with a single thought. She plotted out a path, adjusted for possible course changes on the part of the unknown ship, and ran through a systems check twice before Muireach returned to the helm, his face as stony as ever, but ears perked straight up. She turned, hands on hips, smiling at him. “> There y0u are…_” the smile dropped and turned into a suspicious frown, her eyes narrowing. “> D1d y0u buy s0meth1ng, 0r d1d y0u steal 1t?_” she demanded, and the giant troll’s ears dropped straight down.

“Didn’t steal!” he defended himself. “Said ‘with prices lik this, would be stupid not to buy’! Had to buy! Not stupid.”

Pegasi sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “> What d1d y0u buy._” Muireach muttered under his breath, and she turned, eyes flashing angrily. “> Tell me, F1shst1cks!_” Even twice her weight and several feet taller than her, Muireach wilted under the stare, pulling a book out from under his armor and holding it out, his ears flopped guiltily back against the sides of his head. “> 0h l1me g0ds damn y0u, F1shst1cks!_” she exploded, sparks swirling in leylines down her arms and sucked into the nodes. The lights in the ship brightened momentarily with the surge, and Pegasi strode forward, jumping to reach Muireach’s head and pulling his face down to hers by the horn. “> And d0 y0u even kn0w what b00k y0u have n0w?_”

Muireach mumbled again, bending his knees to keep his balance and holding the book out, squinting at the cover. “A… tal… of… two… pla… nets.” He read slowly, nodding in triumph.
Pegasi blinked at him, and then released his head, throwing her arms up in the air and shifting, letting the cords on her spine lift her back up into the trunk of twisted tentacles and wrap around her legs. “> Y0u g0t a b00k. But the real quest10n. D1d y0u remember f00d f0r y0ur squeakbeast?_” Muireach’s ears drooped even further, if that was possible, and Pegasi pinched the bridge of her nose again. “F1shst1cks, y0u are an abs0lute m0r0n. 1 d0n’t even understand h0w that verm1n 1s st1ll al1ve._”

“Bein mean.” He informed her, a slight whine in his voice.

“> And y0u’re be1ng stup1d!_” she snarled back. “> 1 wr0te 1t 0n y0ur hand, Mu1reach! 1. Wr0te. 1t. 0n. Y0ur. Hand!_”

Muireach sunk further into himself, glancing down at his palm and then scrubbing it on his armor. “Forgot.” He grumbled.

Pegasi had another scathing comment, but she bit back her words, watching the giant troll duck his head and scowl at the floor. She paused for a moment, and then sighed. “> C0me here, babe._” He didn’t raise his head, but did stalk forward, bumping his forehead into her shoulder angrily. Pegasi wrapped her arms around his head, scratching behind his ears. “> Y0u can keep the b00k, F1shst1cks. As l0ng as y0u read 1t, 0kay? And 1’m sure we have s0meth1ng 1n the galley f0r y0ur pet. 1t w0n’t starve._”

Muireach nodded slightly, twitching his ears forward happily at the scratching. The big stupid idiot had a poker face to die for, but he had no idea just how expressive his ears were. Probably couldn’t control it either, Pegasi thought, smiling. “Don’t mean to be stupid…” he muttered quietly, and Pegasi kissed his forehead, chuckling.

“> 1 d0n’t th1nk any0ne means t0 be stup1d. But 1t’s alr1ght. 1 l1ke y0u just the way y0u are, babe._”

Muireach pulled back, face flat and ears quivering. “Am a god moirail?”

Pegasi nodded seriously. “> Abs0lutely, babe. A g00d capta1n and the best m01ra1l. N0w, g0 get the rest 0f the crew t0gether. We’ve g0t a sh1p t0 chase d0wn._”

Muireach grunted in agreement, turning and leaving with his book clutched in both hands while Pegasi sighed, re-twisting into the mass of silver tentacles. The ship flooded into her mind again, and Pegasi was lost to the overwhelming presence of the Mindship. The ship waited a few minutes longer for the last straggling members of the crew to board, and then unlatched from the station, twisting her fins and firing her stabilizers, curling up and away from the pylons. Once clear of the station, she engaged her main engines, took a giant breath, and made the jump to transwarp.


-----


Pegasi sat in the small cell leaning back against the cold glass wall that served as a door to her prison. Well, one of them. Her face and hands were also wrapped in purple tentacles, and she couldn’t muster the strength to pull them off. The little needles sticking out from the cold fleshy substance and into her skin tingled against her nerves each time she moved, so she sat as still as possible. It was an old helmsman rig, and not very efficient or painless, but it was doing its job and siphoning off her power through its coils and across the room to where Muireach sat hunched over on his heels, walled in on all sides by slime-yellow forcefields that repulsed the dice he kept tossing at it. She grimaced at the thought of the scars the rig would leave, but in a way, she was grateful the guards hadn’t thought to trap her in a more modern or upgraded helm system. Part of the reason the older systems were being phased out was that they were simply so easy to hack through. And true enough, it was giving Pegasi a backdoor into the ship’s computer system. While her body sat slowly breathing and listening to Muireach’s grumbled curses at the loaded dice, her mind was sitting crosslegged in the void of cyberspace, thoughts and ~ath commands racing to and from her at the speed of thought.

The ship’s programming spread out before her like a giant iceberg, floating in cyberspace not unlike the actual ship floated in space. Lifting a hand, code spilled from her fingertips, long lines of commands and colons that swirled around her in a shifting borealis and ran like wire from the projection of her body to the projection of the ship. She had been weaving this net for weeks, and now sat at the middle of a coordinated hacking web. But this spider was taking its trap to the fly. On the other side of the massive iceberg, the code was degrading already. Cracks were forming in the surface of the ice. That was the Mindship.

Like many times before, the ship had matched her shield harmonics to the shields on the Faust and hurtled head first into the side of the larger ship, wrapping metal lines around its port engine and tearing into the metal side. In reality, the Mindship was now functioning as a rather important plug. Remove it the wrong way, and you’d take the entire side of the Faust with it, and there was no forcefield generator strong enough on the ship to prevent the blowback of space from sucking the air out into the void. It was the reason her crew was alive and captured, and not dead and incinerated. Muireach’s idea. For however stupid he was, when it came to predicting a battle and the tactics needed to win it, or, lose it in the way that he wanted, Pegasi never questioned him, and he had never failed her.

Pegasi smiled, both in cyberspace and physically, moving a line of code ever so slightly. The web was almost set. Just a little bit more, and she would be in. The greenblood monitoring the Faust’s systems was good at his job. For the past week, Pegasi had been dodging recursive programming circles that he had been tossing through the system. The only relief that Pegasi had had was that he had not yet figured out the source of the intrusion, and his attacks were hardly targeted. Not that targeted attacks would have stopped her. He was good, but she was great. Still, slicing through his rings was an annoyance that she would be glad to be done with.

Deep within the iceberg, a pulse of golden light beat like the heart it essentially was. Pegasi sent out a tiny ping, and the helmsman of the faust pinged her back, hesitantly. The Mindship had already explained the procedure to him, and he had agreed, but it was still a big decision. Pegasi understood. The Mindship understood. They had both been through it themselves.

Pegasi took a deep breath, shifting and uncrossing her legs, standing in a void that had no ground to stand on, watching the iceberg rotate around, looking for the precise location... and then she struck. Ten thousand viruses, each designed perfectly after pressing herself against the cold ice shot out, worming their way into the ship’s vital systems. The unimportant ones, the library, the personnel files, the security cameras- those she had gained access to less than half an hour after they had outfitted her with her rig. They were hardly protected, not like the helm and tactical stations.

She was expecting the counter attack, and was braced for the impact when the ship’s alerts blared alive, slicing through her mind with a pulse of energy. She punched back. With code whipping around her and latching on to the attack, she fired back a pulse of slime-yellow up the center of the beam, and before the ship’s automated response could even begin to react, she was inside, a thread of light coiling around and through the ice, working her codes through the shell until the entire ship was a marionette, and she, the puppet master inside a technological umbra.

She laughed, spreading her hands wide, shutting down the alerts and closing blast doors across the ship, trapping the crew and children where they were. The lights shut down and the emergency lighting flickered on, casting the entire ship in a pale blue glow. That was the signal. Her crew would hopefully begin moving now. The plan, for all its modifications, was in motion.

An extra little thought diverted half her psionics into the conduits and vents, using her week of observation to lock down all the escape routes the little wrigglers seemed so fond of. It was a fair job, and she was proud of it. Five seconds had passed in real time. Her heart was racing with exhilaration and adrenaline. Her mind was racing faster. She swept one arm outwards like a conductor, opening a port for the Mindship to slice completely through the ice, four voices murmuring their gratitude as the helms of both ships interlaced and the data transfer began.

The Mindship pinged Pegasi, and she sent a triumphant ping back before diverting her attention. There was still much to do.

“> F1shst1cks._” she spoke, her voice sounding foreign and far away. She was watching her body turn and stand through the view of the cameras, like a stranger. “> Get me t0 the helm._”

Her body stood swaying gently back and forth while her mind disabled the force fields around Muireach and slid the doors of her own cell open. The giant stood smoothly, striding across the brig to the locked storage containers. This Pegasi could not open for him, but Muireach took the padlock in one hand, pushed against the door with his other, and twisted the lock off with a quick tug, pulling out his strife deck and slinging the chest plate of his armor across his shoulders, buckling the tough shell with practiced hands.

This next part was the one that Pegasi always hated. Muireach strode over to her, looking down at the much smaller and fragile girl. Her control over the Faust was still tentative, and the greenblood had gotten to a terminal and was already doing his best to retake the helm. She needed to be here but the cords keeping her between body and cyberspace could not reach to the helm, let alone the door of the room. She nodded, and as he took her forearm in one hand, she severed the connection between mind and body, transfering everything that was Pegasi directly into cyberspace, wrapped and protected behind her own wall of ice and borealis so dense even she would have had trouble getting through.

The strange sensation of being a stranger to herself ceased as her body slumped forward unbreathing and only supported by Muireach’s hand, and the seadweller ripped the needles from her skin forcibly, picking up her body and striding for the door. Pegasi switched focus from one camera to another as Muireach left the brig, a countdown timer blipping into existence beside the screen.

“Dying is never easy, is it?” A voice asked from seemingly just beyond her shoulder, the four-part chorus strangely disjointed as one voice took on a hint of amusement, another, a sad sigh, and the other two, a flat formal statement.

“> N0 1t 1s n0t._” She agreed, leaning backwards and swiping the video feed off to the side. Some part of her still watched Muireach stride down the halls, helped by opening the doors for him and keep him moving in the right direction, but her priority now had to be the Faust.

Most of the crew was centralized around a large open room, and so that is where Pegasi chose to make her entrance. The room itself was outfitted with holo-projectors and orgo-plasm shaped into a rather scenic field and forest, a small pond dipped into the surface along one edge. Pegasi waved a hand and the scene melted away, the floor smoothing back out into a lattice of small projector nodes and electrical lines, the plasm sucked back into the storage tanks. In the place of the forest scene, a holographic representation of Pegasi flickered into being, two stories tall and rotating slowly as it crossed its arms over its chest, narrowing its eyes.

“> Hell0._” she spoke, her voice echoing from speakers across the ship. On each deck, the cameras that Lucian had so meticulously modified switched to project smaller versions of the towering slime-blood. “> 1 am b0red w1th th1s sh1p. We w1ll be leav1ng sh0rtly._”

The helm door opened for Muireach as he approached, and he slung Pegasi down to the floor beside the helmsman, pulling a set of fleshy silver cords from his sylladex and twisting them into the nodes along her spine. Once attached, he strung the cords out, jabbing the needles from the other end into the exposed flesh of the helmsman, barely stopping to check for the nerve clusters that he needed. Pegasi paused her speech momentarily, watching from the security feed and silently urging him to work faster. The needles embedded in the helmsman, Muireach dropped back to Pegasi’s dead body, bringing heavy hands down on her heart and forcing air into her lungs.

In cyberspace, Pegasi fed tendrils through the golden heartbeat and down the wires, forcing a jolt of electricity into her physical form and jump starting her heart. Her body twitched, once, twice, and then flailed upwards as her mind redownloaded into her brain, and she shoved Muireach away with a surge of slime-psionics. She gasped for air and rolled over, coughing and wincing at bruised ribs.

The holo projection of Pegasi sighed, smiling broadly. She watched across the ship as slaves huddled together whispering to each other, guards tried to call to each other over their radios and found the communication lines down, and, most amusingly, the Highblood owner of the ship inventing new and increasingly vulgar curses as his bodyguards struggled to open the blast doors that had come down around his private box.

“> 0f c0urse, we shall n0t be leav1ng al0ne. 1 am sure many 0f y0u kn0w my terms already..._” she began, and the slaves shifted, glancing at each other. “> T0 th0se enslaved ab0ard th1s sh1p 0n n0 v0l1t10n 0f the1r 0wn: 1 0ffer y0u a place 0n my crew. We are p1rates, and even less legal than slavers, and 1f y0u ch00se t0 j01n us, y0u shall ex1st 0uts1de 0f the law, but y0u shall have y0ur freed0m. 1f y0u ch00se n0t t0 j01n us, 1 0ffer y0u 0nly what y0u have n0w: A new hand sell1ng y0u t0 the h1ghest b1dder, but sl1ghtly better c0nd1t10ns unt1l then._”

Back in the helm, Pegasi took Muireach’s hand, standing with his help and turning towards the helmsman. She could feel his heart beating through the connecting wires, and she murmured softly to him, pulling the needles out and rearranging them gently where the tentacles merged with troll flesh.

In cyberspace, Pegasi floated around the tiny glow of golden light, murmuring softly to the helmsman’s mind. “> Hush, hush, babe, y0u remember the M1ndsh1p, r1ght?_” The four-part voice off behind her shoulder slid closer with a murmur of acknowledgement, and the helmsman’s heartbeat slowed cautiously.

The giant projection rotates around slowly, and she spreads translucent hands wide. “> T0 the guards and crew. T0 th0se wh0 have f0ught s0 hard aga1nst us and fa1led. 1 d0n’t hate y0u. 1f y0u w1sh t0 j01n 0ur crew, y0ur l0yalty t0 us shall be rewarded. Be1ng l0yal t0 y0ur current sh1p w1ll 0nly result 1n y0ur 0wn 1mpr1s0nment, 0r y0ur death._”

“> D0 y0u trust me, Ca1den?_” Pegasi murmured to helmsman physical form, and he answered in cyberspace. She brushed her hand against the helmsman’s body, careful of the scars and damage the system had left behind. “> Y0u are abs0lutely beaut1ful, sweet1e. Just g1ve me a few m0re sec0nds, and 1’ll have y0u 0ut 0f here._”

The presence of the mindship floats closer to Pegasi’s cyberspace form as she carefully and slowly disconnects the command processes from the helmsman and transfers their control to the Mindship. One of the voices fractures and splinters away from the other three, taking direct command of the Faust, speaking in a measured voice as the two systems realign, and then the golden heartbeat is floating freely within Pegasi’s gentle embrace.

Through the cameras, Pegasi watches as murmured conversations begin. Some seem willing to accept her offer, some resolutely will not. The giant hologram does not register any emotion towards any of them, and continues speaking. “> T0 the wr1gglers. The ch1ldren. 1 w0uld leave y0u here. F0rget y0ur ex1stence 0ff the planet. Dr0p y0u 1n the dead 0f space and erase y0ur 1mages fr0m my database. But, my capta1n 1s m0re sympathet1c than 1. He 0ffers y0u pr0tect10n unt1l y0u c0me 0f age. Y0u w1ll w0rk as a part 0f my crew and be subject t0 the same rules 1 expect every0ne t0 f0ll0w, but h1s hand w1ll be merc1ful. Y0u need n0t k1ll 0r be k1lled, and whatever help he can g1ve, he w1ll 0ffer._”

Pegasi holds out her arm to Muireach, and he pulls more silver cords from his sylladex, attaching them to the nodes embedded in her skin with a practiced hand. She nods her thanks to him, taking the sharp needle ends that hang now and pressing them into what is left of Caiden’s arms, pulling the purple cords from the Faust out as she does so. She can feel him begin to protest, much as she did when Muireach first pulled her from the rig. Sweeps of training and conditioning are hard to overcome, and she hushes him gently. Muireach kneels by her side, snapping nodes along her legs as well and replacing the connections to the Faust as Pegasi does the same with her other arm.

The golden heartbeat of the helmsman jolts each time a connection is severed and a new one created, and Pegasi draws him closer to her until finally his every system is removed from the Faust and now sustained by Pegasi. She can feel her physical heartbeat strain as it compensates for two bodies, and she draws his mind into hers. Their codes merge, and Pegasi and Caiden cease to exist separately, leaving only one mind in the void that splits in half and downloads into both helmsman and helmswoman.

The projection of Pegasi flickers and disappears, her voice across the speakers warping with the addition of the Faust’s helmsman, speaking in dual tones before fading out with an echo. “> Y0u have s1x h0urs t0 dec1de y0ur fates. Then, we shall c0me and get y0u._”

In the helm, two bodies turn towards Muireach. One mind looks out at him, through disjointed viewpoints. Half of the mind knows what is happening, and it calms the other half, hushing the fear with calm assurance. Two pairs of eyes blink, slime yellow and gold, and Muireach steps forward, holding his arms out to the two bodies interlaced with connecting wires. “Get you to the ship.” He grunts, picking both of the small bodies up like infants and turning towards the door. The singular mind reaches out through Pegasi’s body, rearranging the cords as to not pull on Caiden’s severed limbs, and both open their mouths, speaking in unison. “> We must rej01n w1th the M1ndsh1p. Thank y0u, F1shst1cks. We are pr0ud 0f y0u t0day._”

Muireach grunted in response, flattening his ears back against his head at the combined voices. “Hop the grubs want to come. Hat if hav to let them di on th Faust.”