“So when we get to the coordinates, we might not just have a derelict full of newly spawned ktonshi, but we could have the corporate demon and his minions to deal with too?” I asked, after sipping from a cup of graptak in Jo’s ready room. It was our usual evening ritual if there was nothing urgent demanding either of our time. What wasn’t part of the usual was that instead of sitting behind her desk, Jophixa had instructed Stacy to lock the door, and then climbed into my lap. It had definitely thrown me a bit when she’d done it, but now we were settled in and enjoying a bit of closeness while we discussed what was coming.

  “And we could very well be facing them alone.” she explained, “Admiral LeBeau hopefully won’t be too far behind, but it’s going to be a race to see who gets there first: Us, or this Untangled Knot group. We should get there first, but everything Stacy’s been able to find out about this Fisch guy makes me think his fleet isn’t running your average T.C. tunnel drive tech.”

  “Which is why we’re pushing the engines extra hard.”

  She nodded, took a sip from her graptak before reaching over and placing the cup on her desk. She then firmly took mine from me, placed it next to hers, then snuggled tighter into my chest. “If we had more time, I’d ask you and Stacy to try to find some kind of advantage for us out of the Keeper database, but I doubt we’d be able to retrofit anything ship scale in the time we have.”

  “Not likely, no.” I agreed, “I’m still amazed I was able to build that kaon lance in such a short time, out of the detritus that’d shaken loose during the shockwave. There’s no way I could scale that up enough to be useful as a turret mounted weapon for Elegance, not even if we just mounted it at the ACB in the shuttle bay, and kept the blast door open. Then we’d have the problem of getting the Cutlass in and out of the bay.”

  We spent another few minutes discussing the situation we were facing, and the lack of time to prepare for facing a situation where we might be horribly outnumbered. I think the only thing keeping us from getting our nerves wound tighter than a benastian harpstring was the physical contact between us.

  Thankfully, Stacy knew enough not to play sillybuggers in this situation. The door stayed locked, right up until it was time for me to go get some shuteye. Jo quickly reached up and gave me a peck on the lips before she’d let me stand up, and informed me in a whisper that if she didn’t have responsibilities to see to, she’d be demanding a chance to pick up where we left off in the tantaja tube. Instead, she demanded that we’d make time after this shit-show was over.

  Trying not to blush too obviously, I agreed readily, and slipped out the door.

  The next morning - after an awkward breakfast in the mess hall, sitting across from Jesse and Toftri, who weren’t even pretending to be going over any kind of technical or operations manuals, simply being damn near as cuddly as Jo and I had been the night before - I did a quick but thorough inspection of engineering to make sure the engines weren’t coming apart due to us pushing them so hard.

  They were definitely going to need some heavy maintenance when we could spare the downtime, but I calculated that they’d hold out long enough. I still asked Stacy to keep a close watch on their performance, and to let me know if they deviated more than three percent of expected tolerances.

  After that I went to sit in the shuttle bay to try and brainstorm some kind of technical solution that could make up for the disadvantage we’d be operating under when we reached the Journeyman. I had every faith in Jo as a commander, and in Toftri as a pilot. Even though Jo had never served as a starship commander previously, Stacy had assured me she’d shown high skill in tactics - she’d just always preferred to apply those skills to security and ground operations.

  And Toftri’s record? Well, before the stasis order, he’d been set to take the helm of one of their fleet’s more prestigious warships. You don’t get that kind of assignment at his age because your parents know someone, not when your species is fighting for survival. He had to be good.

  So, despite those details, I had no doubts about their skill in this. I just knew the facts about odds, and ours were awful at the moment.

  I stared across the shuttle back as I racked my brain for ideas. The Valkyrie twins, as I was starting to think of them, were once again doing a full inspection of Void’s Cutlass - a great idea considering the damage it took not that long ago. We’d gotten the ship patched up as best we could, but there was always time for another going over to look for critical faults.

  Gertrude had just climbed up to start inspecting one of the ship's missile ports - a task that had her up on an access ladder and contorted in a way that almost reminded me of some of the pinup posters some of the salvagers would keep in their lockers. If she hadn’t been wearing her coveralls zipped up tight today, I’m sure Stacy would have made some pointed comments. As it was, I was sure I could hear an almost imperceptible chuckle through my implant.

  To tell the truth, I hadn’t actually given the athletic blonde much of my attention. Not after my initial note about the pinup pose anyway. No, I was focused on the missile port, my mind starting to race through a series of calculations.

  Standing up, I began walking over to the long range fighter and began to shoot questions to Stacy under my breath. The approximate volume of the missile ports and the missiles themselves, the length and inner diameter, the time it would take to manufacture certain components and if we even had enough raw material. By the time I got to the base of the ladder Gertrude was using, I had a solid plan in mind - I just had to get the go ahead from two parties.

  Gertrude, by that time had heard my muttering getting closer to her, even over the music she’d had playing through her personal commset, was staring down at me, one perfect blonde eyebrow lifted in question. “Come to help me with the inspection Spannerman?” She asked.

  I grinned at her and shook my head. “Better actually, I just need to get approval from the Commander first. If we have the resources to spare, I might just have an upgrade in mind for your ship.”

  It turned out that Jo had just gotten to sleep when Stacy had asked her to come down to the shuttle bay to meet with me. I felt horrible for waking her up, but even if I’d known she was asleep, I would have still gotten Stacy to get her up. We were in too much of a time crunch for this to be put off for too long, I was not about to do this without her authorization.

  Of course, there was now the danger that being in a foul mood from being woken up would make her less agreeable to the idea.

  When she got to the shuttle bay, her uniform was as immaculate as ever, but her hair was disheveled, and her eyes were squinting against the light. Walking straight up to me, she grabbed me by the toolbelt and glared at me. “This better be important Thomas,” she growled sleepily, “or there be repercussions when time permits.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said with a cough, feeling parts of my pants pinch in certain delicate areas due to her torsioning my belt. “I need clearance on something that might just give us a bit of advantage when we get there.”

  Blinking, she let go of my belt and rubbed her bleary eyes. “Really. Well then, out with it Vin’toosog, so I can go back to bed.”

  I leaned in and explained the idea quietly, not wanting either of the twins to overhear. Inwardly I was holding my breath on what her reaction might be, after all, I’d only just given the kaon lance to her yesterday, and she hadn’t even gotten a chance to test it, and here I was proposing to mount a ship-board version of it on a vessel that wasn’t even hers.

  But Jophixa was military, and pragmatic to a fault when it came to the fight against the ktonshi. When I’d finished explaining, she just looked at me and nodded before saying, “If they agree, get it done double time. Just remember that you will be finding a way to retrofit one of them to our ship if it proves as effective as we think. Got it?”

  “Yes ma’am!”

  After that, explaining the situation to the Kintzels was easy. As soon as I offered to install a weapon system that had been known, millenia earlier, to have been immensely effective against the ktonshi, they readily agreed. Gertrude only wanted a Coles Notes explanation of what it actually did. Explaining that it would fire a stabilized, coherent beam of kaons, travelling at approximately the speed of light, and cause a short lived chain reaction inside the target that would catastrophically break down a large amount of matter in the surrounding area, Giselle quietly said “I think I need to go change my underwear.” and slipped back into the ship.

  Gertrude just grinned, grabbed me by the breast of my uniform, and gave me a big wet kiss. “Get to it Spannerman! Oh, wait til the Admiral hears about this. She’ll probably need to change her own underwear…and offer to trade you her flagship for the designs.”

  I laughed, a bit in shock from the kiss, and headed off to get started, sending Stacy a mental request to get the minifac working on the components I’d need.

  Already started, Sugarplum! She replied, Had them queued the moment the commander gave the go ahead.

  Gertrude and Giselle both pitched in to help me with the kaon lance for Void’s Cutlass wherever they could, which isn’t surprising, it being their ship and all. But then Tindron came into the bay on an errand from Boudya - delivering a protein bar, cause she knew just how we engineers could get with a new project. Once he saw what was going on, he decided to lend his hands, and his limited expertise to the project as well. Between the four of us, we got the whole thing installed into the Cutlass with only about half an hour to spare before our transition to conspace.

  As with the handheld version I’d given to Jo, there’d been no opportunity to test it, so we had no idea if it would even work. For all I knew, it might cause an energy cascade that’d cause the ship’s core to go critical if they tried to fire it.

  “While that possibility definitely has a non-zero likelihood my sexy cinnabon,” Stacy informed us, the nickname causing Giselle to break into giggles, and Gertrude to snort a stifled guffaw, “The odds of it happening are as likely as Benson Fishface offering himself up for surrender in sudden and passive goodwill. I watched your deliciously talented fingers every step of the way as you assembled that powerful lance of furious destruction, and while you slipped it masterfully into its proper sheath.

  “I think it’s much more likely that it’ll just trip a breaker in the Cutlass’s power distribution node. But that’s why you paid all that masterful attention to its trip switch, right Sweetcheeks?”

  I just stood there dumbfounded, as the others full out laughed, Giselle falling to the floor and holding her sides as if in pain. Stacy hadn’t been this off colour in weeks! I wonder if she’d blown some kind of circuit in her own hardware.

  Nope! She said in my mind, just gotta make sure you aren’t getting so distracted with your three other women that you forget about me. Seriously Tomminoms, how am I supposed to compete?

  Pfft, like anyone can compete with you!

  Aww, love you too babycakes.

  With the lance installed in Void’s Cutlass, and all other systems repaired and prepared as best we could with the materials we had on board, I retreated to my quarters to prepare myself for what we might be heading into.

  While working on the Cutlass, the thought occurred to me that the pilots of smaller craft like that always wore their flight suits - which are EVA rated to some degree - when expecting combat. Fighters, Bombers, and other such ships might have shields just the same as larger ships, but they didn’t have means to contain the atmosphere if the hull were breached. Giselle, for example, would not be here if she hadn’t been wearing an EVA rated flight suit.

  The Elegance of Light was not nearly as small as the Cutlass, and could use internal energy barriers to almost instantly seal off hull breaches when they happened. It really wasn’t likely one of us would get blown out into a vacuum, which is why it wasn’t standard procedure for giobhioni to wear EVA suits on a ship this big going into combat. Even human ships didn’t go that far unless they’d already suffered major damage.

  But after the damage we took when Eve’s Blessing went critical, I was feeling just a bit paranoid. When I got back to my quarters, I immediately pulled out my trusty old suit and started pulling it on.

  I mean, I could have easily just grabbed one of the adjustable EVA suits Jophixa had ordered the minifac to kick out, seeing how we seemed to keep taking on new crew. They were simple and functional, didn’t have a lot of bulk, and would still keep a person alive in the vacuum of space if the shit hit the fan, but I knew my suit. I knew what was in its tool compartments, I knew its safety features, and I’d spent a long, long time making it work for me.

  It also integrated systems that allowed Stacy to be my wingman, constantly watching my back and able to take out a threat if one jumped out in my blind spots. And ever since that encounter with the ktonshi when I was recovering Giselle from her fighter, the very idea of any situation where one could come out of nowhere and jump me made me want to glue myself into a corner with a pile of heavy assault coilguns until the whole thing was over.

  “Don’t you worry Tomminoms,” Stacy whispered through the suit’s comms unit, “You got me to cover that sweet grabbable ass of yours. Can’t let anything happen to that precious bit of yumminess. The universe would absolutely weep!”

  “Thanks Digi-Bits. I’ll repay the favor somehow, someday.”

  “Just keep yourself safe, Babycakes.” She told me, “Oh, and interestingly enough, you aren’t the only one feeling a bit paranoid about things. Everyone is suiting up, just in case. And hot damn do those benastians fill out an EVA suit in interesting ways! No wonder all your people salivate over them. Tindron’s ass is almost as nice as yours!”

  I finished gearing up just as the lights all shifted to a red hue and Stacy announced, “Transitioning to Conspace in one minute. All crew to stations, repeat, all crew to stations. Transitioning to Conspace in fifty seconds”

  With a quick glance around my quarters, I grabbed my helmet and hurried to engineering.

  The Salvager’s Plague

  Ko-Fi or on