I know exactly how it works.
Space-pirates hit a civilian ship. They take as many prisoners as possible. Then, they send out a ransom notice. The prisoners whose families and relatives can afford it get sold back. If any of the captives don’t have family and friends with sufficient money, the space-pirates sell them as slaves. It’s a cruel business. They only bother with the ransom because it’s generally worth more to sell the captives back to their family. If it wasn’t for the promise of a little extra coin, they’d probably all get sold directly to the slavers.
“What happened after that?”
Allie gives me a sad smile. “I should have fucking known. But, hell, even if I did know, I’d still have tried.” Her eyes widen. “The ransoms the pirates were demanding were exorbitant – far more than normal, which was already beyond anything a homeless orphan like me could have paid.”
She shivers.
“Even worse? We had just one month to pay up before they promised to sell the prisoners to slavers. Everybody who cared about anybody who’d been taken got desperate.”
I can see Allie replay the painful memories in her head.
“One guy got killed trying to hijack a nobleman’s ship to buy back his brother,” she sighs. “Me? What the fuck was a young woman supposed to do? I knew my only chance was to use the last of my money to book a voyage to Sarathon 5.”
Sarathon 5. I knew it from her criminal file. That was where that trio of Aurelian Elites had met their shameful fate.
“I joined a harem,” Allie begins to tell me the story I already know parts of. “I made them trust me. I earned the trust of those Aurelians until I had access to their systems…”
She laughs bitterly.
“…and then I took their funds. Every penny I could.”
She looks up.
“I wired those bastard space-pirates everything they asked for – a fucking fortune. They must have been laughing at me. All they’d to do was drop Lilac back on the planet. All they had to do was put her in a fucking escape pod, and set the auto-pilot!”
She sobs.
“Instead, I never heard from them again."
Allie sighs, her eyes dropping down to her hands. “I guess I should have known. They cast a wide net with that ransom. Those bastards just hoped someone would luck out on some big cash haul and send it all. They probably weren’t even in the same fucking star system by that point. Gods. I was so stupid.”
I shake my head.
“We all do foolish things for the ones we care about. It’s in our blood – Aurelian or human.”
I look up, and bark: “AI, reactivate the subject’s implants.”
The AI hums to life. The Artificial Intelligence unit is the brain of our ship – an interconnected smart computer that runs everything from the oxygen supplies to the rations. From the chair Allie is sitting in, metal tendrils emerge. They’re the same ones that deactivated her electro-shock weapon in the first place.
Disabling weapons is a quick, almost painless procedure – all it takes it a controlled shock, administered to overcharge key circuits in the device implanted beneath Allie’s skin.
Re-enabling weapons, though – that’s much worse. The AI will have to probe into the flesh of Allie’s arm, surgically repairing the de-activated nodes that are linked directly with her flesh and nerve endings.
The worst part is that I can feel Allie’s grief through the Bond. She’s in enough pain already. When she thinks about what happened to her little sister, she descends into a dark place.
I hate to bring her more pain – even if she’s asked for it.
Allie senses my disquiet though our Bond. She looks up.
“This is going to hurt, isn’t it?”
I nod, and the tendrils extending from the chair clamp her in place – curling rigidly around her wrists and ankles to stop her from moving during the operation.
“I recommend you take sedation,” I murmur.
Allie shakes her head. “No. I need the pain.”
I don’t ever want Allie to suffer – but I understand what she means.
The first time my triad had to descend into a Scorp nest, I nearly puked as we looked at the dark opening yawning in front of us. We Aurelians are raised to never show our emotions – especially the ones seen as weakness, like fear.
Ironically, my shame overwhelmed my fear. At that point, as I stood facing my first taste of death and battle, I’d have rather died than show my fear in front of the other warriors.
Sometimes, you need one painful thing to help you control another.
As the AI calculates how best to proceed, I allow my mind to wander – sinking into memories long forgotten.
I remember that first battle. During it, I watched a fellow warrior I’d trained alongside in military academy get cut down by a Scorp. He’d feinted left, but he should have gone right. The warrior took a pincer claw to the gut – a claw that pierced right through the armor that should have saved him.
Maybe it was a faulty flak jacket. Maybe it was just plain bad luck. In any event, I’ll never forget the incomprehension in his eyes as my fellow warrior looked down and saw his own organs spilling onto the cold rocks beneath him.
War is hell.
I avenged his death. That Scorp was the first of countless more I’d kill during my hundred years of service.
But while I avenged his death – I couldn’t save his life.
That night, when we’d all returned to our Reavers, covered in blood and bruises, we turned on the auto-pilot and drank ourselves into a stupor.
Then, we’d fought – us brothers in arms. We fresh-faced Aurelian recruits screamed at each other. We yelled. We punched each other with feral brutality, until the pain of our comrades’ fists was enough to cloud
