Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Crime, Commerce, and Cake

"Where are the bodies?" Yvian looked around the cargo bay. It was spotless. No trace of the blood and death of a few hours ago remained.

"Stuffed 'em in a room in one of their fighters." Captain Mims had cleaned himself up. His voidarmor was as immaculate as the cargo bay. "Cleaning droids took care of the rest. There's no trace the Militia ever boarded The Wandering Lady."

Yvian nodded. "Where's Lissa?" She'd been in the med pod hours longer than her sister, and spent the better part of another hour getting clean after that. Lissa had been less hurt physically, but her emotional state was another matter.

"She's disabling comms on the other ships. I've got a program running that'll wipe the logs, but I don't want anyone to remote in and call them back. Lucky for us Captain Skell started his little bounty hunt off the books, but Militia Command will notice he hasn't checked in eventually.""

"How is she?" Yvian was still a little shaken, herself. She'd seen her share of barfights, but nothing like the violence they'd just experienced. The helplessness she'd been forced to endure had been mitigated, somewhat, but killing with her hands had left it's own sort of trauma.

The human ran a hand through his hair. "How do you think? Keeping busy helps, which is good. We need to get this taken care of before anyone comes along and sees us."

The Captain's wrist comm chirped. "It's done, Captain. The last ship's taking off in ten minutes."

"Good work, Lissa," the human replied. "Come on back."

"Taking off?" Yvian asked him.

"Yeah," Mims sat down on a cargo container. "After wiping the logs and spoofing sensors, we pointed the Militia ships towards deep space. They'll run at maximum acceleration til their fuel runs out. The Confed'll never find them."

"Then why bother wiping the logs?"

The human shrugged. "In case they're found. First rule of crime, kiddo. Don't leave any evidence."

A minute or so later, Yvian heard the hangar bay pressurize. The door opened, and Lissa walked through. "I hate the void," she said as she removed her helmet. Her eyes were still haunted, but she didn't look as bad as Yvian had feared. "Why do you keep having me go outside the ship?"

"You need to get comfortable with it." Captain Mims patted a spot next to him on the container. "Like it or not, spacers spend a lot of time in the void. You need to know how to use your suit, and you've gotta be able to work in vacuum."

"I still hate it," Lissa complained, sitting. She raised a gloved hand, flexing her fingers. "And I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this combat supersuit thing, either. What happens if I scratch my face too hard or something?"

"Won't happen," The Captain scratched his face to demonstrate the point. "The GR17s have a lot of safety features. Physical enhancements won't activate unless you're trying to use them."

"Just how strong does it make you, anyway?" Yvian had memorized the manual that came with her voidarmor, but that particular statistic wasn't listed.

Mims shrugged. "I lifted three tons with it, once. I don't know the upper limit."

"Three tons?" No wonder they'd torn through the Enforcers like paper. "How is that possible?"

"No idea. I shoot things for a living. I'm not an engineer. Anyways," the human stood. "It's time to get this show on the road. Lissa, get us moving, and raise our speed long enough to make it look like we never stopped." Lissa nodded.

The Captain started walking. The girls followed. "Yvian, I need you to fudge the logs. Make it look like they never hailed us and they veered off right here. It needs to be perfect, understand? There can't be any sign they were tampered with."

"What about the Encounter?" Yvian asked.

"As far as your logs are concerned, she never left." The human told her. "I'm going to take care of a few things in the kitchen, then I'll make sure her records match yours."

"Are you baking us a cake?" Lissa asked.

"No," Mims decided. "Cake is for celebrating a job well done. Surviving an attack is more of a hearty dinner and good beer scenario. I'm thinking I'll slow cook some roast beef, and we'll have french dip and home fries."

The rest of the week was uneventful, if busy. Yvian got in a slight tiff with Lissa. She'd tried to get her sister to finally take up training in the martial arts. She figured Lissa would feel better and recover quicker if she knew how to defend herself. Lissa wanted nothing to do with it. She got mad when Yvian pushed. They argued for nearly an hour before Mims wandered in and asked why Yvian hadn't shown up for training. Instead of taking a side, he said, "Argue on your own time. You've got apprentice stuff to do."

This annoyed both the girls. When pressed to offer an opinion, the human offered to back whichever one of them paid him more. This annoyed them further.

The Captain upped their training routines. Yvian spent two hours a day on martial arts, two hours on weapons training, and a full eight in the flight simulator. Lissa, she learned, was being buried in commerce, contracts, and logistics. They were both exhausted by the time they all met for dinner. Yvian was sure Mims was running himself ragged teaching them both, but he never showed it, the motherless son.

Finally, finally, they arrived at Prisna III. Yvian gazed lovingly at the station complex on the scanner. Over a dozen manufacturing stations and a large trading post had been welded together, an ugly series of spheres and cubes stretching for sixty kilometers in every direction. Prisna III was named for the planet it orbited, a barren rock with a thin layer of methane for an atmosphere.

Station Security was waiting for them when they docked. Faking surprise, the pixens and their human were escorted to a Militia Office. They were split up and put in separate interrogation rooms. Yvian was kept waiting for several hours, but eventually a pair of very hostile flerg entered and asked a series of very pointed questions.

Yvian stuck to the script outlined by Mims. They had seen the patrol following them. It hadn't hailed them. It had veered off a couple hours after they left Hysek Station. She did not know why. The flerg yelled and shouted and accused. They made her repeat herself over and over again. Her story didn't change even after they started hitting her. Letting them hit her was hard. She was still wearing the voidarmor. Mims had explained that the Confederation didn't have anything like the Terran made GR17s. The Enforcers interrogating her had no idea she could tear them to pieces at any moment.

The flerg left. They came back a few hours later and tried again. Eventually, they let her leave. The lead interrogator took special care to hit her until she cried again, first. He gave her one last profanity ridden rant about how he'd make sure she got what was coming to her.

Mims and Lissa were waiting outside the office. Lissa's face was bruised. She looked pissed. Mims had his helmet on. He looked as unflappable as always.

"Can you believe this shit?" Yvian asked as she walked up to them.

"Save it," said Mims. "We can talk when we're back on The Wandering Lady."

They trudged back to Yvian's ship. Then they trudged into the hangar bay and boarded The Random Encounter. Finally, they trudged into the kitchen. Mims handed out beers.

"Those motherless assholes!" Yvian vented. Lissa muttered a profanity laden agreement. Mims took off his helmet. Yvian noticed his face was untouched. "And how come you didn't get hit?" she demanded.

The human took a swig of his beer. "For the same reason they let you go instead of quietly murdering you. I've got protection."

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"What kind of protection?" Lissa asked.

"I've got two of the Flerg Nation's most prominent law firms on retainer," the Captain told her. "And I keep a number of officials bribed to look out for my interests. Any Enforcer that touches me will be up before a magistrate before he can blink." He took another swig. "I made it clear to them that if anything happened to my apprentices the consequences would be...severe."

"So you use lawyers and corruption to protect yourself from the cops." Yvian did not approve.

"The law exists to protect the rich," he reminded her. "I happen to be one of them."

"They seemed awfully sure we killed their friends," Lissa noted.

"Good," Mims told her. "The more dangerous they think we are, the better. They don't have the evidence to do anything legally. I want them to think long and hard before trying to come at us like Skell."

"You sound like you've done this before," Yvian accused.

"Several times," the human admitted. "The Militia know they've got the power of the law behind them. Makes them cocky. Some idiot crew of Enforcers tries for me once or twice a year." He shrugged. "It's not my fault if they're too stupid to live."

"Uh...are you sure we should be saying stuff like this?" Lissa looked around, suddenly worried. "The Militia went through our ships, looked at our logs. Aren't you worried they bugged the place?"

"They did," Mims pointed at a drone hovering near the ceiling. "My drones removed them before we got here." He finished his beer. "But enough about that. Doesn't Yvian have some textiles to sell?"

"Right!" Yvian perked up. Then she looked at her wrist console. "Crap. I've got to get to the Exchange before they close."

"Uh...no you don't," Lissa said. "Station Commodities are always automated. You can sell your cargo with your wrist console."

"I can?" Yvian was dubious. "That's not how I bought cargo the first time."

"That's cause you had to register as a trader the first time," Mims handed her another beer. "Once you're in the system, you can do everything on the Nex." He brought his wrist console up next to hers, "Here, I'll walk you through it."

Six minutes later, Yvian was fuming. "This is gribshit! Gribshit! Everything I went through," she slammed a fist on the table. "and all I get is a hundred lousy credits?" The textile shortage on Prisna III had ended. Prices had gone down to just slightly above what she'd spent on her cargo.

"You forgot the docking fees," Lissa told her. "Technically, you're in the hole."

"Crunch take it," she continued. "And Crunch take Captain Shade. If that motherless pirate hadn't come after us..."

"Somebody else would've," Mims finished for her. "You two were flying an unarmed cargo ship with no shields and no escort. There is zero chance you would've made it to Prisna."

"We were in a major shipping lane!" she protested. "The Militia patrols it all the time."

Lissa rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Really, Sis? The Militia? After all this?"

"A Militia patrol comes through once every twenty nine hours," Mims lectured. "And they're more likely to raid a helpless ship themselves then they are to rescue a couple of dunks who didn't have the sense to go armed."

"If only we'd gotten here sooner..." Yvian swore.

"The job's done and that's what matters," The Captain said. "I think we should celebrate. I'll bake a cake."

"No!" Yvian refused. "We're not celebrating. The cake is a lie. I don't want your lie cake!" She chugged the rest of her beer. "Give me more alcohol."

"Sis..." Lissa started. Yvian eyed her while she opened another beer. "How much money is in your account right now?"

Yvian didn't know. She checked her wrist console. "Uh... a little over ninety million credits."

"Ninety million?" Lissa raised an eyebrow.

"What?" Yvian huffed. "Ships are expensive." Captain Mims snorted.

"Ninety million," her sister repeated. "Two months ago, you were a computer tech making forty thousand credits a year. Now you own a ship worth a hundred million credits and you've got another ninety million in your account." Lissa put a hand on Yvian's shoulder. "We never." She leaned in. "Have. To work. Again." She finished her beer and set it on the table. "So why The Crunch are you worried about losing money on some textiles?"

Yvian glared. It was silly and she knew it, but still... "I want to be a trader."

"Well, you're not off to a good start as a trader," Mims told her. She glared at him. "But," he raised a finger, "you're off to a great start as a privateer."

Yvian considered. It'd been a rough day. Crunch, the last few months had been one catastrophe after another. But she'd come out ahead. Way ahead. And she had accomplished everything she'd set out to do...

"You're right," she admitted. "You both are."

"So," Lissa looked hopeful, "we can have cake, then?"

"We can." Yvian waved an arm at the human in her best imitation of a royal gesture. "Captain Mims," she decreed, "You may now bake me a cake."

"How very gracious of you."

Yvian smiled. "I know."

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