It was about seven hours in warp-flight at an unknown speed before Sarah felt the shuttle revert into normal space. She had been lying on the cot in the empty quarters, drifting in and out of sleep. She had to prepare again, now, for her performance as Kiva Andur.
Sarah made her way into the cockpit, wary of the possibility that her cover was already blown. Thex was in the pilot’s seat, with the Noth’xal woman beside him. Sarah took a moment to study Mishi Xoluniti. She was about 5 feet tall, with a light brown fur covering most of her body. Her exposed midriff was covered in white fur, and in some places the colors collided and mixed. Her most notable attire was the numerous slots and straps in her clothing filled with knives and guns.
Thex was a rather plain human in his early thirties. He had bleached-white hair, and wore some drab olive-green pants and a faded brown vest over a salmon-red shirt. There were no obvious weapons on his person, but Sarah assumed he had at least a knife or small gun concealed somewhere in his attire.
“So, the amazon has finally come out of hibernation,” said Thex when he perceived that she was in the room. “Just hailed the Blian and we’re clear to dock. Anything you want to bring, get it now.”
Sarah nodded almost imperceptibly. “All my things were vaped with my spaceboat.”
Thex looked up at the woman he thought was Kiva. “Right.”
Sarah looked out the viewport at the long slender silver object in the distance. So. This was the famous pirate vessel that had been evading authorities for years. It was an RPO-377 Viego-class frigate. Iien Blian, which meant “Prosperous Future.”, was captained by the notorious Juan Cortez. Cortez had been a student at the Confederate military academy on Randeraal where he had lost his right eye in a training exercise. He still graduated with honors, and became the commander of a small but powerful flotilla in the Confederate Navy. After his crew had been massacred near the start of the fourth Galactic War, he and a few survivors had started a pirate ring to cut in on the established powers of Tyf, Soron, and Yee. Why he abandoned his career for piracy, no one could explain.
Sarah glanced down at the distance gauge and her mouth almost fell open. Twenty thousand kilozivits? That couldn’t be right. If that were the distance then that ship would have to be almost 2000 meters long! Sarah then realized she had never seen a Viego outside of old documentaries. It never registered to her that a pirate vessel could be so large. It was obvious then that Cortez was running no small operation. He was truly a force to be reckoned with in the galaxies criminal element. It was another fifteen minutes before the shuttle Lyberia finally set down in the Blian’s 5-D docking bay. Mishi went on a head to reassume her role as Cortez’s personal bodyguard, and
Kiva was becoming anxious.
Geshin understood why. After blotching a mission that was worth so much money to the captain and Kiva, Cortez would probably chew the Slin out of her. Not that verbal abuse ever fazed Kiva Andur, but the Captain had other methods. If his pet, the Majis Flying-Lizard he called Torval were to spit its venom onto her skin, Kiva would suffer for days in the most exquisite agony that Thex new of. He had felt it himself once when he panicked and ran after the police showed up during a mission. Sure he saved twenty lives, but the captain’s cousin had been killed. And to Cortez, family often took precedence over economics.
The back hatched opened and formed the boarding ramp, and Geshin and Kiva stepped off and were greeted by the powers that be. Cortez’s first mate, Kelly Hulin, stood right the captain in her pale-skinned scantily clad splendor. Mishi took his left flank, eyes alert for any sign of treachery, even among the crew. The weapons officer, a half Vurkan that everyone called Private Ishori, stood back near the door opening onto the corridor, her enourmous positron bazooka in hand.
“Ah, Kiva,” Cortez started in his characteristic accented English, “it is good to see that your are unharmed. I had heard more than one report that you were dead.”
“I’m hard to kill,” Kiva returned with her typical nonchalant arrogance. Typical… Whatever had been afflicting her earlier seemed to be gone.
“Yes. The same was said of Temula Path, my friend.” Now it was on. “I told you to go alone. I specifically said that taking anyone, especially a Ki’lail, would endanger the mission. And now, by her absence, It seems that Path is dead.” Cortez calm tone hardly hid the fact that he was furious.
“Maybe you’re warning is why I took her,” Kiva retorted, looking the captain straight in his eye. “Maybe I wanted to know exactly what it is you were buying…”
“Shut up,” this came from the first officer, Kelly Hulin. “What happened happened. We can’t be at each other’s throats when we have a job tomorrow.” Hulin glared at Kiva with her typical contempt.
Kelly was really jealous, constantly fearing that Cortez would opt to replace her with Kiva. But she also knew that an attack on a major target within 30 could never go well with the captain’s brains splattered on the docking-bay floor, so she ultimately knew what she was doing. The captain simply nodded and dismissed everyone gathered. As the guards and crew filed out, Ishori and Kiva shared their customary embrace. Geshin thought he would be sick.
Sarah thought she would have collapsed and began crying if the confrontation with Cortez had gone on any longer. Sarah was already self-conscious enough with her outfit, which showed a great deal more skin than Sarah found comfortable. Her outfit was basically an armored sports bra with oversized shoulder plates. Her stomach was exposed, revealing the scar across her upper abdomen, recreated by the medical bots in painstaking detail from Kiva’s own body. Her bare arms also displayed duplicated scars, and the right leg of her synthe-leather pants was cut out to display the scar on the front of her thy.
Most unsettling of all, however, was hate-filled stare of Kelly Hulin. It had really gotten to her. Sarah didn’t know exactly why Kiva was so hated by the first officer, but she realized it would make her job harder already having enemies. She should have known that Kelly was that way, from all the times Kiva had referred to her with or as various obscenities in her journal.
So, Lt. Steele was more than glad when the Vurkan woman called Private Ishori greeted her warmly. This young Vurkan was the only person in the galaxy that Kiva considered her friend. She looked up at Sarah with her young and vulnerable features. To Sarah, it didn’t seem right that someone who looked so innocent should be the weapons officer on a pirate vessel.
“Kiva!” the Vurkan said with surprising enthusiasm. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“Private,” Sarah started, trying not to sound awkward., “have you always been this hyper?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Ishori faked hurt. “You didn’t even send me anything while you were gone. Does that mean you’ve forgotten me?”
“How could I forget someone as insane as you?” Sarah dodged. She said it with a smile perceptible enough that Ishori would take it as a joke. Still, even then, she couldn’t seem to make the trace of suspicion in the Vurkan’s eyes disappear.
It was only several hours later that Sarah finally had the opportunity to relax. She had long know of a way to radiate her ki and psi together to make a form of radiation capable of disrupting security cameras, which she did until she removed the technological version of the same practical application from the blit in the sole of her boot.. Once that was set up, she went about writing in her log, and taking in as much of Kiva’s journal as she could. It was tedious work sometimes, but if General Hammock, one of the most distinguished in the Empire, believed this was important, then it probably was. Her mission might even be important to Jim’s, whatever it was, or vice versa.
Sarah sat up on the couch in Andur’s surprisingly vivid quarters. For someone so cold-blooded, her quarters were surprisingly non-Spartan. The walls were a brown-tinged orange, not bright enough to offend the eyes; the furnishings were cushioned with various shades of warm colors, save the green sofa in one corner. Sarah actually liked it.
The door-alarm began to chime, so Sarah quickly tapped the quip containing Kiva’s outfit and discarded it before she got to the door. When it slid away, she found Ishori, in a teal leather dress that was much more elegant attire than the typical scant-but-efficient outfits that Cortez supplied for his female crewmembers. Still, it wasn’t something that Sarah would wear in public.
“Hey Kiva. Are you coming to the party in the officer’s mess? I doubt that the captain would be pleased if you didn’t show up. He’s already got it out for you as it is.”
“I think I would rather stay here. I’m… practicing,” Sarah replied, with inadvertent rudeness.
“Practicing what? Sure as daucht ain’t your social skills. You’ve been reclusing ever since you got here. Everybody messes up now and then.. If you’d stop obsessing over your mistake, it wouldn’t be so bad. Your acting just like you did after Tol’Gil’fa. I’m surprised you’re still even on the ship. It isn’t like you’re gonna get paid.”
“Fine,” Sarah relented, wanting to change the subject from the unknowns of Kiva’s past. “I’ll go to the party. But if Kelly or Cortez says a word about Texas, or Tem, there will be Slin to pay.”
As Sarah started towards the electronic wardrobe to see what “nice” outfits Kiva left on the ship, she began to wonder what she had gotten herself into for the thousandth time that evening.
Captain Cortez stood silently in the mess hall, with Kelly Hulin and his bodyguard Mishi. He took another drink of his Jomaniani ale, ironically a gift from the woman who was the topic of much negative discussion as of late. Kiva had seemed off, certainly, until he had confronted her about the death of Tem. Then she had reverted to her typical insolent self.
But his first officer Kelly Hulin didn’t seem to be convinced.
“There is something going on here,” the woman insisted. “There is no way that that was the same Kiva Andur we sent to Texas.”
Geshin Thex, the navigation officer, looked around and then addressed Hulin directly. “So what are you saying? You think that she’s some sort of android or clone come to lead the cops to us?”
“No. I think she was captured, and offered a pardon for betraying us, honestly.”
“Ridiculous,” Cortez interjected. “There are no homing emissions coming from her or any of her things, and if she tries to contact someone off ship, we’ll detect it.” Cortez leaned back in his chair and considered for a long moment. “She is just obsessing over her failure. Every time she fails a mission she gets like this.”
Hulin turned away, muttering something as she left, but Cortez was honestly too drunk by this point to care. He took another drink as Kiva and Ishori walked in.
He’d keep an eye on her, just to be safe—assuming he still remembered this conversation tomorrow.