Ravens of Eternity

190 Sneaky Stowaway

It was hours later when Firrex’s sun broke dawn, and slivers of golden light spilled across the settlement.

But the work had already long since started. Throngs of people gathered around the Spirit of Amelia, whose belly was lowered and all her cargo was exposed. A handful of settlers wearing load-lifting exosuits pulled down crates of food and set them into piles off to the side.

Meanwhile, Miko’s imposing chaingun drones patrolled all around and kept the peace by their presence alone.

Miko and Amal were off closer to the ramp, and were talking with the settlement’s primary doctor. All three seemed to be in good spirits.

“Thanks for your help Azrael,” said the doctor. “Without you and your meds, this settlement would still be in dire straits.”

“Glad to help, doc,” replied Amal. “We’ll swing back by after we run through all the other settlements, alright? Just to check on things and whatnot, you know?”

“You mean check on your new friend Max, right?”

Amal blushed. The boy was cute, and she wouldn’t have minded seeing him again. But work came first.

“No,” she said. “M-maybe. For a checkup.”

.....

Miko rolled her eyes then put a small case in the doctor’s hands.

“My first iteration,” she said. “Send me your staff’s usability notes and I will try to make adjustments before our return.”

The doctor opened the case and flipped open the lid. Set into molded foam were three custom-printed Medical Drones. They had a similar form factor to regular MedGuns: nozzles, vial slots, nanomachine cartridges. But in place of their grips were antigrav modules instead.

“W-wow,” said the doctor. “Three of these things? I mean, I’m not gonna turn ’em down. Unless they’re crazy expensive or something. Are they easy to use?”

“You are currently set as the only administrator,” Miko replied. “However, you can assign anyone as a controller. You simply have to connect through your DI. Manual controls will be available to you, but they can work autonomously with a minimal instruction set as well.”

“Well thank you Miss Raijin. This is gonna help out quite a boatload.”

“I have also sent an operator’s manual. They are not just simple MedGuns and can also perform patient monitoring and can alert staff of emergencies.”

“I suggested those functionalities,” added Amal. “Speaking of which, when do I get my Medical Drone, huh? I could really use one, too!”

“Yours will be completely custom,” said Miko. “It will take us both much time to design it.”

The doctor immediately felt a pang of jealousy, but quickly set it aside. She had three of them in her hands, after all. She snapped up the case and tucked it under her arm.

“So, what do I owe you?” she asked.

As they negotiated the cost of the drones, a ruckus began to stir up over at the lowered cargo bay.

“I need to inspect your cargo bay immediately,” said a Federation marine sergeant.

His voice was demanding and authoritative, the kind that expected immediate obedience from whoever he was talking to. Except he was talking to Eva, who was having absolutely none of it.

She stood in front of him with her hands on her hips, unyielding.

“Why?” she asked curtly.

“Why?” he cried out. “Because there could be a dangerous Hegemony soldier hiding in your cargo, that’s why!”

“Can you prove that there’s such a dangerous person in my cargo bay? If you can prove that, and provide a search warrant, then I have no problems doing so.”

“Search warrant? Do I look like some punk Peacekeeper to you? This is a warzone, and I don’t need a gods-damned warrant to search you! Now-”

The sergeant took a step towards Eva as his body took on an imposing, threatening pose. He was clearly attempting to intimidate her.

But Eva being Eva, she hardly gave a rat’s ass.

On top of that, Miko’s two drones quickly flanked the sergeant, and began to spin their barrels with a sharp WHIR.

“Caution, intruder detected,” intoned a drone. “Step back or be annihilated.”

“Wh-what the hell’s this?” stammered the sergeant.

“Our security drones,” answered Eva. “Nothing gets past them. At least, not anyone who hasn’t been granted clearance. You just took a step in their patrol path, and I don’t recall adding you to the approved list.”

“Step back or be annihilated,” the drone repeated.

“Sergeant,” the marine captain called out. “Stand down.”

The marine captain walked up to where Eva was standing, with the mayor by her side.

“In case you haven’t realized it yet,” she continued, “these are the traders who have just supplied the barracks with the next few months worth of food supplies. I highly recommend you treat them with more respect.”

The sergeant took a step back, and Miko’s two drones immediately spun down their guns and continued along their patrol.

“S-sorry miss,” he said to Eva.

“It’s fine,” Eva replied. “So what’s this about then?”

“I’m simply searching for some Hegemony soldiers who were involved in a firefight a few cycles ago. I believe they’ve hidden themselves among the colonists. And I wanted to make sure they weren’t trying to sneak aboard your ship.”

Eva threw a thumb at the two drones that were circling around.

“Thanks to those two, no-one’s gonna get on board without us knowing. They’re not gonna be hopping on this boat no matter what.”

“Does that satisfy you, sergeant?” asked the captain.

“Nn... I... Yes, captain,” he said.

“It’s more likely your Hegemony whoevers just ran out into the wilderness,” said Eva. “There’s so much of it that there’s no need to hide in a settlement with a Federation encampment just outside. That’d be suicide.”

The sergeant scratched the back of his head.

“I guess you’re right,” he said. “I’ve just been going crazy when I think about them. I feel like I need to do more to fight against them or something.”

“Just get back to patrols, sergeant,” said the captain. “And try not to get carried away, yeah? If you find them, shoot them. But don’t go looking for people to shoot. Am I clear?”

The sergeant saluted his captain, then walked off with his squad.

“Sorry ’bout him,” said the captain. “He’s a good man at heart, if a bit overzealous at times.”

Eva nodded, but didn’t mention anything about him. In truth, she hated people like him. People who believed that everyone else’s lives were secondary to some mission.

“Whatever,” she said. “Here, this is for both of you.”

She pulled a bottle with a clear purple liquid in it and handed it to both the mayor and the captain.

“It’s nothing fancy,” she continued. “Just a bottle of something I picked up in... oh, where was that? Tarsos? Anyway, a local barkeep there makes this amazing drink, and I wanted to give you a bottle of it.”

The mayor took it from her hands, popped its seal, and took a good whiff of the strong drink. He offered it to the captain, who took a whiff of her own. She nodded in approval.

“What’s the occasion?” asked the mayor.

“No occasion,” answered Eva. “I hope it helps keep things peaceful between you two, that’s all.”

They watched as the colonists got the last crates they needed, at which point Eva closed up the cargo bay’s platform back into the ship’s belly. Drones included.

Everyone soon said their goodbyes, and the Ravens went back into their ship as a bunch of settlers and soldiers waved them off.

It didn’t take long for them to lift off and head out to the distance. Once they were gone, everyone at the settlement turned back to their normal lives and continued with their day.

“So who’s next on our list?” asked Eva.

“Next settlement is, um, 127 kilometers west-northwest of our position,” said Claire.

Eva then gently adjusted the yoke and turned the ship towards the right direction. The ship swooped around in a wide curve until Amelia’s bearing matched a west-northwest trajectory.

As they did so, Eva nudged Amal.

“So, I hear you met a friend, hm?” she said. “Something about dirty blond hair? Found someone to crush on, is that it?”

Amal immediately turned red.

“N-no, he was just a patient,” she said. “I’m just curious about him, that’s all.”

“Mhm. Curious, right.”

“Seriously though. He was super stoic and hardly said a word. I mean, he even refused treatment and suffered through a serious wound. Almost killed himself, honestly. I’ve been wondering why.”

“Stoic?” said a voice behind them. “I’m not stoic. I just don’t like chatting it up in a room full of strangers.”

The four of them quickly spun around in their seats and saw Max standing in the doorway. Alarm shot through Eva, and she quickly leapt out of the pilot’s seat and faced up against him. Amal had to steady the ship in her place.

“Who the hell are you?” she yelled. “And give me one good reason why I shouldn’t throw you out the airlock!”

“W-wait,” stammered Amal. “That’s Max. My patient. Dunno why he’s aboard, though.”

“Sorry ’bout that,” said Max. “Didn’t mean to scare any of you or anything. I just needed to get away from there... I’m that Hegemony soldier that marine was looking for. One of them, anyway.”

“Oh, that’s just fuckin’ great,” said Eva. “Now we’ve got some Hegemony rat on board that the Federation’s gonna come hunting for. Exactly what we need. So once again, about that airlock – gimme a reason not to toss you through it.”

He threw up his arms in surrender.

“Wait, wait,” he said. “Please, just listen to me. I don’t wanna be in this hell of a war, alright? Me and my troop, we ran from the front lines, and we... we deserted, alright? We heard that some of our people have been doing that across the colonies, and so we tried it out ourselves.”

“So wait, then why did you get into a firefight with the Federation?” asked Amal.

“That’s exactly it! We didn’t! We ditched our uniforms and our kit and disguised ourselves as locals. Except, we kept our sidearms with us, just in case.”

.....

“Lemme guess,” said Eva. “Sergeant short-fuze back there spotted them.”

Max nodded solemnly. His hands balled up into fists, which he squeezed until his knuckles turned bone-white.

“He began shooting at us unprovoked,” he said. “Didn’t even give us a chance to surrender. Just called out ‘enemy’ and opened fire. He ended up clipping a buncha colonists, so I made the choice to fight back. Stupid decision, I know. But he just made me so damned mad!

“Anyway, I heard you all say you were smugglers, or maybe someone else said you were. I dunno, doesn’t matter. All I’m asking is for passage out of here. Please. I’ll pay whatever you want. Um. In Hegemony Ducats, anyway.”

“How’d you even get on anyway?” asked Eva. “We had drones patrolling constantly.”

“Snuck on when that idiot took their attention. Was easy, honestly.”

Eva shook her head, then relaxed her stance.

“Vote?” she asked. “I’m a nay for stay.”

The others discussed briefly among themselves, then voted yes. Seeing as she was outnumbered, Eva caved and changed her vote to a yes as well.

She crossed her arms and huffed slightly.

“Looks like you can stay aboard,” she said. “But you oughta know that we’ve only got four beds, and none of us are sharing ours with you.”

“He can stay in the Kitchenette,” piped in Amal. “Maybe in the eating booth? It’s not like we use it. Well, except Claire.”

“I can eat anywhere,” said Claire.

Max sighed audibly, as though a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

“Thank you all,” he said. “This means a great deal to me. I figure you can drop me off wherever – I honestly don’t care much. Just as long as it isn’t in the Hegemony, or deep in the Federation’s core systems. Some nice, quiet planet out in the middle of nowhere would be perfect.”