Swearing profusely, I reached for the ten millimeter spanner in my toolbelt, only to find the pocket it was supposed to be in empty. Glancing around, I spotted it floating just out of reach.

  “Yeah, of course.” I muttered to myself and drew out the magnetic tether from my belt and clamped it to the bulkhead beside the shuttle bay’s blast door before gently pushing off.

  Four hours of sleep had done miracles for my head, especially with whatever meds it was that Tratsa had given me. And thankfully Stacy hadn’t gotten mischievous while I was unconscious and arranged any surprises for me. I had half expected her to talk Gertrude into something after our little exchange when she’d carried me to my quarters. Instead I woke up blessedly alone and rested, though still with a slight headache and the memory of my fuckups the day before.

  I hadn’t had time for much more than grabbing a shower before Jophixa pinged me with a message containing the full damage report for both Elegance and Cutlass, as well as her priority for each item. Yup, I thought to myself, I’m gonna pay for what happened. Stupid subconscious.

  Boudya had already been awake, and was hard at work getting the shields back online, so I’d gotten to work with the conspace maneuvering emitters. Getting both of those things back online had been a high priority so we wouldn’t be sitting ducks if any hostile ships happened along. The last thing we wanted was to be victims of pirates after having taken out an entire ktonshi nest.

  Getting those things done, I moved to the shuttle bay to deal with the blast doors. We needed to bring the Cutlass in, not just because it needed extensive repairs as well, but for the simple expediency that once it was onboard, we had the option to bug out as soon as we could transfer into hyperspace. We could then work on the Cutlass at our leisure.

  In order to facilitate getting the blast doors operational again, it became obvious really quickly that I was going to need to turn off the gravity plating in the bay. Which is why I was floating up there, five meters off the deck, cursing at the spanner that had somehow slipped out of my tool belt.

  “Gotcha!” I cried, snagging the spanner as I drifted by. “Remind me to put tethers on my tools before I do this kind of thing again, would you Stacy?”

  “I don’t even know why you didn’t do it this time!” she giggled, as I gently tugged on the magnetic tether to bring me back to where I had been working, “You know how things go in zero g. Not like you haven’t done dozens of EVA’s in your life.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I rolled my eyes as I got back to the bulkhead and started fitting the spanner onto a bolt that was holding a bit of distended beam in place. “Confirm ACB is online and functional please.”

  “Atmospheric Containment Barrier is operating at ninety-eight percent efficiency, Tommy-cakes. I would have informed you if its status changed. I don’t want my sweet pasty pastry getting blown out into space without his special suit to protect him.”

  “Does she always flirt with you like that?” called a voice from across the shuttle bay.

  I looked over to see the Kintzel sisters standing just outside of the hatch leading to Elegance’s crew racks - the sleeping quarters for lower rank crew. The larger officers quarters were all claimed by the time the sisters joined us. They’d been opting to bunk aboard the Cutlass so far as it had more personal space for them then the racks, which weren’t all that different from the setup of some of old Japan’s hostels back on earth. But with life support being down on the Cutlass, they’d claimed a couple of the racks on board the Elegance, until it was repaired.

  “Nah.” I called back, activating my magnetic boots and bracing to apply some heavy torque to the bolt. “Sometimes I’m asleep. Seriously though, she restrains herself pretty well when the Commander is around.”

  “Yeah, most COs don’t like that kinda thing when on duty.” Giselle put in, “Anyway, we’re here to help in any way we can. We stopped by engineering to see if long, tall and blueberry wanted any help, but she didn’t want us stick-jockeys messing with the delicate stuff.”

  I couldn’t help it, I snorted out a laugh, “Please tell me you called her ‘blueberry’ when you asked her, so I can get Stacy to pull the security feeds from when you did.”

  “Do I look like I’ve gone ten rounds with a Synaxian kickboxer?” she responded with a laugh, “My combat instructor back in the academy was a benastian. One of my fellow cadets made the mistake of calling him blueberry. I’m pretty sure he spent a week in the infirmary.”

  “Sounds about right.” I paused to give the spanner a heave, only to give up when the bolt quite obviously wasn’t going to budge. “You two good with zero g? If so, get up here and lend me those muscles of yours. I have a feeling a few of these bolts might have vacuum welded themselves to the superstructure, but don’t want to break out the plasma torch if someone with mightier thews than I can crank them loose.”

  They both laughed at that. I might have had a fair amount of time with decent rations available to me after my time back on the planetoid, working with only nutrient water to keep me going, and I was far from the emaciated husk I was when Jophixa first clobbered me, but I still hadn’t managed to put much weight on. Nor had I had the time to get into the Elegance’s fitness deck to really put on any muscle.

  With well practiced grace, they stepped into the shuttle bay and pushed off with careful precision, floating to my position and arresting their momentum with the barest touch of the bulkhead.

  “Damn, that was smooth.” I told them, impressed. “Even at the height of my time doing EVA’s I didn’t move that smoothly. You guys train for zero-g gymnastics or something?”

  “Not me,” Giselle said, just as her sister started to open her mouth. “Just natural talent on my part. Gertrude, however, did do some back in high school.”

  “Twat!” she growled, performing a lateral spin and kicking her sister hard on the ass, sending her colliding with the bulkhead. The only thing that stopped her from bouncing away was quick reflexes helping her grab the edge of the panel I had opened. Gertrude, however, simply reversed her spin and caught herself gracefully in the same way she had in getting here. “We had an agreement. You want me telling people about…”

  “Hey now!” Giselle interrupted her in a panic, “no need to go the nuclear option. Standard payment?”

  “Double!” was her sister’s reply as she glared, “you’ve been away too long. You need to be reminded of the consequences.”

  “Fine. As soon as we hit a port where it’s available, two bottles of Tavistock Black Reserve. I’m glad I’ve been banking all my fleet pay while I was undercover. Geesh.”

  I raised an eyebrow at the two of them. Tavistock Black was some of the finest brandy throughout the Commonwealth. A liter of their regular stock would have cost me half my pay I’d gotten from that job with Barstol - if he hadn’t double-crossed me. The Reserve Stock, well, I didn’t even know. I looked at it as one of those “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

  “Damn Ladies, you have expensive tastes.”

  Gertrude just shrugged, “It’s a family thing.” she said, then reached for the spanner I was holding, “Here, let me give that a try.”

  She managed to get the bolt loose with a great deal of grunting and straining of muscles - which considering she was wearing her skin tight shipsuit, really showed off her physique.

  There was a quiet cough, and I tore my eyes away from Gertrude’s back, and looked over at Giselle, who grinned at me and gave me a wink. Damn it, I thought to myself, what the hell is happening to my head?

  Tommy-cakes is becoming a dirty old man!

  I winced, then gave Giselle a hesitant shrug, causing her to grin again before saying, “Alright, where else do you need muscles. Can’t let her be the only one showing off.”

  With that, we got to work in earnest. Stacy still gave me crap if I caught myself staring at either of them, but thankfully that became less of an issue the longer we worked. We got to the point where we were working like a pretty well oiled machine, and I found myself thinking they’d have made a great crew for a salvaging op, especially with how graceful they were in zero g. The two of them made quick work of the grunt tasks with no complaining, just got to the task and got it done.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Six hours later, we’d managed to free all the jammed sections of the blast doors, and managed to get them open with the actuators, but as they doors slid home into their storage pockets, a loud clunk-hiss reverberated through the bay. I let out a stream of curses in giobhioni, causing the twins to glance at me.

  “Yeah, that didn’t sound like a good noise.” Gertrude sighed.

  “Pretty sure the actuators just died on us.” I told them. “Hopefully the manuals aren’t damaged. If they aren’t, you ladies can show off some more once we get the Cutlass inside. Don’t worry though, I’ll take my fair turn at the crank.”

  “Awesome…” Giselle sighed, with a complete lack of enthusiasm.

  “What? No joke about working his crank?” Stacy put in with a giggle.

  “STACY!”

  Giselle broke out laughing so hard she sent herself into a spin across the shuttle bay, and her sister had to go save her before she collided with a cargo net full of parts. It was a wonderful display of zero gravity acrobatics, with Gertrude pushing off the wall, pirouetting as she passed her sister before jackknifing just before she got to the cargo net to catch herself on the balls of her feet, bending her knees to absorb her momentum.

  She reached out and snagged the cargo net with one hand, then, when her sister got within arms length of her, lunged out with the other hand and grabbed her by the closest available handhold - which just so happened to be her hair.

  Giselle’s laughter turned into a screech when her momentum was arrested none-to-gently by the fistful of hair that her sister had a grip on. “What the hell Trudes!” she yelled, “Let go for fucks sake!”

  “Let go?” Gertrude replied, grinning evilly. She then did this thing with her feet to grip the cargo net between them, extended herself out from the bulkhead to the fullest she absolutely could, pushing her sister with her, then brought Giselle to a full stop just shy two meters from any solid surface in the bay. Then she let go, pulled herself back to the cargo net, and carefully launched herself back towards me.

  I blinked for a second as I watched her sail through the weightless shuttlebay, glanced at Giselle as she floundered about with nothing to grab on to, and I was only able to control myself long enough to verify that I had at least one gravity boot connected to the bulkhead. Then I was laughing harder than Giselle had been moments before. “That’s evil!” I got out finally, reigning the laughter in with a series of coughs. “How long do you plan to leave her there?”

  She gave me a smirk and whispered, “She can get herself out of it once she calms down. She’s got a tether-line stashed on her belt, just like me.”

  “Oh! Human siblings are fun to observe!” Stacy cried out, once again giggling, “I was sure all that stuff in the sitcoms was fake! But this is straight out of that show, ‘My Benastian Mom’.”

  “Shattered stars, Stacy! You watch that crap?”

  “HEY! It’s not crap! It’s fun!”

  I just shook my head at the thought of an immense artificial intelligence enjoying one of the most inane forms of human entertainment next to twentieth century reality television - The daytime drama, also known as a soap opera. Didn’t it just figure? “Alright, let’s get that damned door open so we can get the Cutlass on board before the Commander comes down here and chews me out again. Trust me, you don’t want her directing her anger at you.”

  A lot of grunting, sweating and cranking later - not to mention jokes from Stacy sent directly to my implant - we got the blast door open. With that done, the twins quickly went to get their helmets on, while I got the gravity plating activated again.

  “Stacy, put me through to engineering please.”

  “Roger that, chief engineer of my digital bits.”

  I opened my mouth to chastise her, but Boudya’s voice came over the comm, “Engineering. How goes work in the shuttle pay Thomas? I hear you ended up with some rather statuesque assistants.”

  “The blast door is open, and the twins are getting kitted up to head back over to the Cutlass.” I responded. “What’s the status there? Are the main conspace emitters online yet?”

  “Online, but only operating at sixty percent power. Stacy’s got the needed parts to bring them the rest of the way being built in the minifac. It’s going to eat up the ship’s stores of rare earth metals, however. We’re going to need to replenish those before we get into any other sketchy situations.”

  “I wonder if there are any large chunks of it flying around in the area due to the planetary breakup.” I thought out loud. “I’ll talk to the commander about it as soon as the twins head out to fetch the Cutlass back aboard.”

  “Just so long as you don’t take too long grovelling,” she said with a laugh, “there’s more on the to-do list than critical systems remember.”

  “Hey! Just who is the vin’toosog on this ship? We’re on duty, keep your insubordination to down time.”

  “Sepaq boss.”

  It didn’t take long for the twins to get back, helmets already locked in place, and tether-guns ready to deploy. I saw them step up to the ACB, level those tether-guns to take careful aim at the Cutlass, then fire their magnetic grapple lines out across the vacuum to their ship. Seconds after that, they were gone, having activated the winches in the guns to reel themselves in towards the Cutlass.

  “Stacy,” I said with a sigh, “Please let me know if they have any issues getting the Cutlass aboard. It’s time for me to go face the music and report to the commander. We should be ready to get the hell out of this system shortly, unless she wants to go hunting for rare earth metals in the debris.”

  “Will do Tommy-bear,” she said with annoying cheerfulness, “and don’t worry so much. She’s not gonna toss you out an airlock you know!”

  “You never know,” I muttered to myself more than in reply, “She might.”

  When I stepped onto the bridge, Toftri and Jesse both turned to glance in my direction. Toftri’s expression immediately went blank and unreadable, as if he were covering the discomfort of what he might soon overhear. Even his ears were rigid and tense, holding statue still in an obvious mimicry of calm indifference. It was only the lack of any kind of micro-movements that gave it away as contrived rather than genuine. Giobhioni ears were always twitching in some random way, no matter what their mood.

  Jesse, on the other hand, directed a strange little smirk at me. I hadn’t seen that facial expression on her face since she was around 13, and was leveling it at some boy in her class that was getting chewed out by her best friend for kicking over her sandcastle at the beach.

  I raised an eyebrow at her in askance, but she simply shook her head and turned back to her console.

  Whatever, if it was important, I’d find out about it later. I had more important things to worry about anyway, so I put it out of my mind and headed towards the door to Jophixa’s office and pressed the page icon on the panel beside the door.

  “Enter.” came the reply from inside, and the door slid open in front of me.

  I stepped inside, drew myself up to attention and snapped a salute to her. “Commander,” I said, keeping my voice as level as possible, “I have my engineering report on the progress of the repairs.”

  When she nodded, I took the tablet out from under my arm and placed it on her desk. “The shuttle bay blast door has been retracted manually and Major and Lieutenant Kintzel have EVAed over to the Cutlass to bring it aboard. Stacy should be reporting their success shortly. Powered operation of the blast door will require more work, but can be accomplished while we are underway.”

  She silently picked up the tablet and scanned through the report, nodding as she perused it. “I see Engineer Mend’Nasa reports we need a restock of rare earths and believes we might be able to salvage some from the planetary blast. Ms Aacen has confirmed a significant amount in the system. Unfortunately, it is currently travelling at high velocity, and we don’t have the time to run it down. Admiral LeBeau has requested we rendezvous with them with all due haste so we can assist them in dealing with the Journeyman situation.”

  “I thought that might be the case, Commander. We’ll have the Hypershift Drive charged and ready for when you give the command.”

  “Good. You’re dismissed.”

  Wincing at the curtness of the dismissal, I turned to leave. Maybe it was better to give it time before confronting the other thing, hell, maybe the issue would just fade away and she’d just shrug it off for my concussed self acting stupid. But then I remembered how lack of communication had robbed me of Boudya’s friendship for a decade. I swallowed hard and turned back.

  “Commander?” I said hesitantly, “Before I go, I want to apologize for what happened, for what I did yesterday, down in engineering…”

  Her head snapped up suddenly, having gone back to reading something on the tablet. “Apologize?” she snarled, glaring at me. “Damn right you should be apologizing. That was inexcusable behavior Thomas! I don’t care if you were concussed.”

  I simply nodded, “Yes Command-”

  “It is not the way things are done, do you understand me? In public, and you haven’t even responded to the ikatraa I gifted you. I don’t care how much I need you as an engineer I…”

  She kept chewing me out but my brain had stopped listening by that point. It was focused too hard on the word she’d used, which the translator wasn’t picking up, nor did I recognize from my lessons in the language. Stacy, what…

  That fancy uniform she gave you Thomas. You didn’t think those kinds of things are standard issue, do you?

  Okay, but what is a ikatraa? She said it like she meant more than just a customized uniform.

  Tomminoms. I love you, but you can be so dense. You know that ayatsana that Tratsa gave you?

  What’s that got to do with…no…no way…

  Bingo! That’s the expression right? Or was it Dingo? Or was that the dog…no wait, they’re both dogs, one’s just a wild dog that eats babies?

  But I’d tuned her out and was now focused on Jo again.

  “Jo?” I said, hesitantly, “that was what the uniform was?”

  She stopped ranting and just stared at me, shocked. “You didn’t…” and then just let her head collapse onto her desk with a loud thud. “Go!”

  The Salvager’s Plague

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