Chapter 68: Habitable Planet

[Operating Unit: Raider ’Black Kite’ (Auxiliary Strike Vessel)]

[Command: Tachibana, R.]

[Standard Acquisition Protocol]

-Broadcast false distress ping on human frequencies

-Approach target as friendly survivor vessel

-Isolate and remove the captain

-Seize vessel and Inventory crew

-Crew Grading: Physical Fitness / Genetic Rarity / Talent Rank Disposal

Jin-Ah read it once, then again, and then a third time, because her mind refused to take the words in.

The Black Kite had been an auxiliary strike vessel on the books of an organized sprawling syndicate... a pirate federation that worked the unmapped border sectors, and the documents laid out its business with horrifying neatness.

The Federation hunted seeded ships for their hardware instead of scrapping them, and its raiders sent out fake distress calls, posed as friendly crews and turned the frightened survivors against their own captains, and then they took the hardware.

’Isolate and remove the captain,’ she thought, and her hands went cold on the keys. ’Step three... We were step three.’

CHIME!

[This unit notes that step three failed spectacularly,] the AI said quietly from the console speaker, and for once there was no mockery in it at all.

’Because Leo refused to be removed,’ Jin-Ah thought, and her throat ached as she swallowed and kept reading.

She scrolled down.

[Intake Record]

[Lot 0211 / Species: Human / Count: 4 / Grade: B / Status: SOLD]

[Lot 0212 / Species: Non-Human (Aquatic) / Count: 3 / Grade: C / Status: SOLD]

[Lot 0219 / Species: Non-Human (Avian) / Count: 6 / Grade: C / Status: SOLD]

[Lot 0224 / Species: Human / Count: 2 / Grade: A / Status: IN TRANSIT]

[Lot 0231 / Species: Non-Human (Unclassified) / Count: 1 / Grade: B / Status: DECEASED IN HOLDING]

[Lot 0236 / Species: Human / Count: 5 / Grade: B / Status: SOLD]

’Lot 0224,’ she read again, and her finger hovered over the line. ’Two humans that are grade A, in transit. Still alive somewhere... on their way to be sold.’

The list kept going.

Humans and dozens of other sentient species pulled out of newly seeded sectors, sorted by fitness and rarity and talent, shipped off to orbital auctions and sold into permanent slavery to Federation buyers, every one of them reduced to a lot number and a single word at the end of a line.

Her breath caught in her throat as she reached the bottom of the directory and found one last file sitting by itself though it hadn’t been sent.

[Draft]

[Subject: Female / Human / Approx. 18 Talent: Blood Sovereign (S-Rank)]

[Condition: Feral when starved, Extreme strength, Sedate before transport.]

[Reserve Price: 4,000,000 Zuni]

[Listed By: Tachibana, R.]

Jin-Ah’s stomach heaved so violently she had to clamp a hand over her mouth.

Her eyes went to the viewport without meaning to.

Out past the cracked glass, a small black figure was crossing the gap between the two ships with a slab of slate balanced on her shoulders, bounding along the hull as lightly as a child skipping stones, with no idea what number a dead man had written next to her name.

Four million Zuni, and Ren had sat in that chair, typed a price on Chloe while she was standing barefoot on the Wanderer-7’s bridge, and he’d written sedate before transport as calmly as a shipping note.

’If Leo hadn’t fought him,’ she thought with her whole body going cold. ’If Chloe hadn’t... she’d be in a crate right now. She’d be in a crate with a number on it.’

She thought of Camila sobbing over imaginary orphans and Aoi weeping for a brother who’d come back to her, and of all of them standing on the bridge with their bags packed.

"Slavers..." she whispered into the freezing dark, and a sick tremor ran down her spine. "All of them... every one of them was a slaver."

She opened /LOGS next, because she had to know, and scrolled back to the day the Wanderer-7 had first appeared on the Kite’s sensors.

[OPERATIONAL LOG: TACHIBANA, R.]

[Day 12: Seeded corvette located in asteroid belt... Tier-1, fresh hull, heavily modified... Crew of seven... Captain young.]

[Day 13: Distress ping deployed... Contact made... Crew receptive...]

[Day 13: Captain is not...]

[Day 14: Captain isolated... Crew compliant... Proceeding to Step 4...]

Jin-Ah read the second-to-last line three times.

’Crew receptive,’ she thought, and the shame of it burned all the way down to her stomach. Is this for us?’

She closed the log with a jab of her finger so hard the cracked glass creaked, and opened the next folder before she could think about any of it a second longer.

It held the full schematics and sensor profiles of the two other ships Ren’s crew had taken in their first two weeks in the sector.

[ACQUIRED VESSEL #1]

[Class: Bulk Hauler (Seeded)]

[Propulsion: Chemical Thrusters]

[Armor: None (Unarmored Cargo Pods)]

[Armament: None]

[Status: Transferred to Federation Yard]

[ACQUIRED VESSEL #2]

[Class: Light Scout Skiff (Seeded)]

[Hull: Pressed Titanium]

[Armament: None]

[Status: Transferred to Federation Yard]

Jin-Ah pulled up the wireframes and her mind broke them down automatically, mass and thrust ratios and hull composition.

The hauler was a bloated clumsy thing with thin unarmored pods hanging off it like ticks, and the skiff was fast and fragile and built from cheap pressed titanium without a single weapon hardpoint.

Next to the Wanderer-7 they looked pathetic, like awkward tin cans cobbled together by terrified amateurs.

She let out a soft contemptuous scoff through her nose.

’Tch... the Wanderer-7 is far better than them,’ she thought, and a fierce sudden swell of protective pride tightened her chest.

Out of pure spite, she ran a comparison with the help of the AI.

[Title: Wanderer-7]

[Hull: Graventhal Hyperalloy / Unarmored / Pressed Titanium]

[Armament: S-Rank Twin-Barrel Mag-Rail Turret + Rail-Harpoon / None / None]

[Power: Micro-Fusion Core / Chemical]

[Ship Evolution: 24%]

[Verdict: Not Comparable]

She looked at the last line for a long satisfied moment.

She remembered Ren standing on their bridge with his hands in his pockets, smirking down at Leo’s throne... A ship grows to match its Captain... What kind of Captain did they give you?

Her jaw set like a vise.

Their ship was Graventhal hyperalloy from keel to canopy.

It carried an S-Rank Twin-Barrel Mag-Rail Turret that could punch through an apex leviathan, a Graventhal Rail-Harpoon and a Micro-Fusion Core that purred like a living heart... It looked nothing like an amateur’s bucket because Leo Kaine was nothing like an amateur.

’That’s what kind of Captain they gave us,’ she thought. ’And you died in two pieces on a filthy floor, it makes me happy...’

She tapped the console again and dug deeper into the regional charts.

A single planetary file glowed among them, marked with deep violet navigation beacons.

[Planetary Dossier]

[Location: 3 Systems Coreward]

[Orbit: Stable Multi-Star Pocket]

[Atmosphere: Breathable (Human-Compatible)]

[Gravity: 0.94 G]

[Population: Dozens of Sentient Species]

[Governance: None]

[Local Currency: Zuni]

[Known Human Presence: Unconfirmed]

[Field Note: Lawless frontier hub... Excellent trade however do not start fights in the spaceport.]

’Chloe will need supervision,’ was Jin-Ah’s first absurd thought.

Jin-Ah’s dark eyes widened slowly.

’Breathable,’ she thought, her pulse quickening as she read the line again. ’Breathable air and real ground under our feet... a whole world full of people who aren’t trying to sell us.’

She thought of Elena standing at the canopy every night, staring at the stars like she could will a planet into existence.

She thought of Camila’s hands in real soil and Harper in a real machine shop, and of other humans out there who’d escaped the auctions and might be walking around somewhere down in those markets.

’We could go there,’ she thought. ’We could land... We could learn how the galaxy outside actually works...’

Jin-Ah could already picture Elena’s face when she showed her, the way her chin would come up and her eyes would go bright, and how she’d pretend she had known all along that a planet was out there.

She scrolled down to the requirements section, this was the only planet here.

[Landing Requirements]

[1. Verified Biometric Spacefarer ID (Per Crew Member)]

[2. Orbital Docking Tariff: 15,000 Zuni]

Her excitement hit a wall.

’An ID,’ she thought, her mind racing ahead. ’Biometric, verified... IDs can be forged with the right access, but not from a dead console on a dead ship. We’d need a registry, a system, someone on the inside.’

’Fifteen thousand Zuni...’ Her brow furrowed. ’We don’t have an ID and we don’t have a single coin of their money... We have nothing.’

She pulled up the Black Kite’s commercial ledger, hoping against hope that Ren’s crew had a stash of currency sitting in their accounts from the hunt.

The screen flickered and resolved.

[Account Holder: Tachibana, R. (Auxiliary Raider Unit)]

[Current Liquid Balance: 0.1 Zuni]

[Recent Transactions: Hair Pomade, Premium (3 Units): ?240 Zuni]

[Tailored Tunic, Charcoal: ?1,100 Zuni]

[Cologne, ’Midnight Orbit’: ?380 Zuni]

[Federation Dock Fees (Overdue): ?3,000 Zuni]

Jin-Ah stared at the screen, and she read the cologne line twice.

"Zero point one Zuni...?" she whispered, and the insulting absurdity of it echoed around the empty bridge.

Her mind did the math before she could stop it.

’Fifteen thousand divided by zero point one... We would need a hundred and fifty thousand Rens to land on that planet.’

She slammed both hands against her forehead and dragged them down her face, groaning through her teeth as a wave of pure fury rolled over her.

’You miserable, arrogant, broke bastard,’ she cursed him silently, her knuckles white where she gripped her hair. ’You wore tailored tunics and put pomade in your hair and talked down to our captain like you owned the sector... and you had ten cents to your name! You were going to sell Chloe for four million and you couldn’t even pay your dock fees! You parasite!’

CHIME!

[Oh, dear, it appears the late Ren was an economic titan. Zero point one Zuni, and three units of premium hair pomade... This unit is moved and this unit recommends framing the ledger as a monument to human priorities.]

Jin-Ah let out a sharp ragged breath and waved a hand at the speaker without looking up, reaching forward to close the window.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!

A high-priority notification flared in the center of the display before her finger touched the glass, a blood-red triangle pulsing aggressively over everything else.

Jin-Ah froze.

The red light washed across her face and threw stark shadows under her eyes, and the console’s hum seemed to drop away into nothing.

She tapped it.

The encrypted message uncoiled across the screen under the dark jagged crest of the Federation.

[AUTOMATED DISPATCH CONFIRMATION: CONTRACT #884-DELTA]

[Target Vessel: Wanderer-7 (Tier-1 Assault Corvette / Unregistered)]

[Contract Status: ACTIVE / EXECUTING]

[Dispatched Units: 3 (Auxiliary Strike Class)]

[Notice: Automated telemetry ping received from Raider Unit ’Black Kite.’ Auxiliary strike units dispatched to the vessel’s current coordinates to secure the asset and claim salvage rights per contract specifications.]

[Estimated Intercept Window: One Week]

Jin-Ah sat completely motionless in the dark, and above her head the console speaker that had mocked her a minute ago stayed perfectly silent.

The blood drained out of her face in a single wave and left her skin as cold as the deck plates under her boots.

The hum of the console faded into a dull distant roar in her ears, and her breath caught so hard in her throat that her chest seized.

The packet count in the corner of the screen had ticked over while she sat right here reading star charts and dreaming about breathable air, and this was what had come in.

...Ren’s ship had been pinging their exact coordinates back to the fleet the entire time.

Out on the hull, Chloe was still carrying plates across the gap.

Somewhere below her Harper was bolting tooling into the armory, Elena was bent over a torch, and Aoi and Camila were nursing two thousand liters of fuel into the ventral bladders... and down the length of the Wanderer-7, Leo floated in a tube of blue mineral water with the bones of his chest still knitting, unable to lift a finger, and not one of them had the faintest idea what was coming.

Jin-Ah stared at the flashing red text with her pupils blown wide, a cold suffocating dread closing around her heart as one thought clawed its way up through her frozen mind.

Her finger was still hovering a centimeter above the glass, and it had started to shake.

’P-pirates...?’