Daughters of Demeter

"The five day deadline worries me," I said with a frown. "Not so much that there's a due-date, but the way it was phrased? If we can't make the delivery in five days then don't even bother coming."

Sarah suggested, "It could just be she's impatient? We know she comes from money and power, she might be used to having people do what she wants when she wants it. Like a little power trip, jump through this hoop or don't waste my time."

I grimaced, "Maybe? Or maybe the last round of testing was successful, and now she's packing up and preparing to leave the facility."

"It's definitely a concern," Rebecca agreed, "But either way we're going to be there on time. We'll do what we can, and hopefully we can put an end to the research before it gets released."

She added, "We've got almost four more hours in jump, so we may as well talk about strategy and make some concrete plans. And we'll want to come up with some fall-back options, for when those plans fail."

We'd left Regulon-4 a little over an hour earlier. It was a routine departure, as soon as we were a safe distance away we initiated a level-one jump to Ecclestone's World. And even though we wouldn't actually set course for Fuminja Epsilon for another few days, I was already starting to feel anxious about it. As if from the moment Doc Linnz made the arrangements, we'd set ourselves on a particular course and schedule. And now the clock was counting down.

For now the five of us were in our usual meeting space, sitting around the table in the ship's mess. We all had drinks in front of us, except for Jenny. Nothing strong though, just water or soft drinks.

Rebecca decided, "When we dock at Fuminja Epsilon I'll be down in the hold to take care of the 'delivery'. Amanda I want you in the cockpit, standing by on the flight controls. Your job will be to get us the hell out of there as soon as Jenny's finished her part of the plan."

Sarah asked, "What about me and Cam? Where should we be?"

"I'd like to be there with you captain," Cam volunteered, much to my surprise. They sounded embarrassed as they added, "I figure I might be able to get a feel from the people you meet with? That way I might get some warning incase of trouble. It works best in person, so watching on a monitor's no good."

The boss shook her head, "I appreciate the offer but it's too dangerous. I'll be armed, and if you were with me I'd want you armed as well."

"My android body can be there to act as back-up," Jenny offered. "Since Sarah and I removed all the safeties, my physical self is now able to handle and operate firearms."

She added, "Lack of training and practice are a potenial issue, but I believe that can be compensated for with the inherent precision and accuracy of the hardware."

Rebecca nodded, "Thanks Jenny. In that case, 'android Jenny' and I will be in the hold to hand over the goods. Sarah and Cam, you two will join Amanda in the cockpit. Monitor the sensors and comms, be ready to get us clear the moment the job's done."

"Hopefully Kelsonian will be there to pick up her fancy liquor in person," she added. "I'll try and keep her talking, delay things as long as I can while 'AI Jenny' is attacking their computers."

Jenny grimaced slightly as she admitted, "That's actually my primary concern. That I'll either be unable to penetrate their computer security, or even if I do I'll find it impossible to achieve the sabotage we've planned. And knowing the entire mission depends on my success makes me even more uneasy."

Sarah asked, "So that feels like the biggest step where we need a 'plan B'. What other options do we have?"

Cam asked quietly, "Can we wreck the place? I don't like violence and I don't like hurting people, but those folks are making stuff that's more evil than guns."

"The Demeter doesn't have the firepower," I responded. "That discussion came up before you joined us, but I think the worst we could do would be to mess up their docking bay."

I glanced at Rebecca to see if she'd confirm that, and instead found her with a thoughtful expression on her face as she seemed to be staring off into the distance.

After a couple seconds the boss sighed. Then she stated softly, "We do have another option. Thanks to the Kaden Merit."

I frowned, but Cam spoke up before I could ask the question.

"You're talking about that shipment of advanced weapons," the cat-kin responded. "Them two bins you didn't want nobody else to see inside."

My stomach lurched as I asked, "What was in those bins?"

Rebecca replied in a sombre tone, "We have two atomic warheads in our hold."

"Holy shit," Sarah gasped quietly. "What sort of yield would they be?"

"Tactical rather than strategic," the boss replied. "They didn't exactly print those details on the packaging, but they're about the right size for a standard missile warhead."

Jenny asked, "Can you put that in terms we can all understand? Are we talking about a weapon that can wipe out a city? Or something smaller? Or something bigger?"

Rebecca shook her head, "Smaller. They're not big enough to wipe Port Ecclestone off the map, but one of them could certainly obliterate the spaceport."

"They're strong enough to destroy a capital ship if you can set one off close enough," she added. "Or in the case of Fuminja Epsilon, if you could get one of these inside it probably wouldn't split the asteroid open but it'd definitely clear out the interior. The research facility would be replaced with a bunch of highly radioactive slag inside a bubble of vitrified stone."

I slowly shook my head, "We really do have a shipment of war crimes in our hold."

After a couple seconds Sarah spoke up, "I'm not saying I like this option, but if this was our plan B do we have any way of detonating one of those things inside the facility? Ideally without us being anywhere near it when it went off?"

The boss nodded, "We do. The Demeter has two missiles loaded in launch tubes hidden under the hull plates on the starboard side. It'd require some zero-g EVA work, but we could go out there and open the launcher then swap out one or both warheads."

"Obviously we'd have to do that well ahead of time," Sarah responded. "And we'd probably want to do it far away from where anyone might see what we were up to."

Rebecca nodded again, "Correct. If we're going to do that we should drop out of jump and do it right now, before we reach Ecclestone's World. Or when we leave Port Ecclestone, we can stop half-way to the Fuminja Cluster and do it then."

"Let's hold off until then," I stated. "Maybe we'll come up with some other options in the meantime?"

"Ok Amanda," the captain agreed.

We were all quiet for a few moments after that, until Jenny spoke up again with a question.

"Assuming we're successful in either sabotaging or destroying the facility and we manage to get away in one piece, where will we go or what will we do after that? We spoke briefly at one point about laying low for a while, where would we do that?"

Another thoughtful look settled on the boss's face as she responded, "We don't have a lot of options. Ecclestone's World is out, it's the most obvious place to go and it's Kelsonian's homeworld. Rolandan-2 would be nice, but if the Fuminja officials put out a warrant for us odds are the Rolandan authorities will probably get involved."

"I left a datacrystal with Tamsin," she added. "I gave her a copy of the testing protocols, and copies of the Hammersmith's sealed orders as well. She's going to wait another ten days, then try and leak the test protocols anonymously to both the government and the press. That might work in our favour if it can be shown that we're the good guys?"

Sarah asked, "She's going to leak the research protocols, but not the sealed orders?"

Rebecca nodded, "Right. The sealed orders are more like insurance. She won't leak them unless the Imperium gets actively involved. And maybe she doesn't leak all three? If it comes down to it, she might pick just one based on the situation. Tamsin's smart, I trust her to do the right thing."

We all agreed with that sentiment, but Jenny's earlier question was still unanswered. And I had an idea, but I wasn't sure how well it'd go down. With any of my shipmates.

"So about laying low," I said as I glanced around at the others, "We'd probably be better off going somewhere quiet, somewhere off the beaten track. Somewhere nobody else tends to visit. What if we went back to Deveron-8, after we leave the Fuminja Cluster? It's not far, and we already know folks there. We also know the government there is busy with their own problems, so odds are we wouldn't have to worry about being arrested or extradited. With all that in mind, Ganvis Station might be the best place in the sector for us to hide out for a while?"

By the time I was finished the boss had a dark look on her face while Cammie was cringing, and both Jenny and Sarah were grimacing slightly. So I added, "I know there's personal issues, I'm certainly not eager to see Mrs. Wheeler again any time soon. But I wouldn't mind checking in with Jace? And like I said, it feels like an ideal location to lay low for a while."

Rebecca sighed, "I hate that you're right Amanda. It's honestly a really good idea, and I agree completely with your reasoning. But I still kind of hate it."

"Knowing the situation there we can plan ahead," she added, "So we'll be prepared to spend some time there. We could even load up on more food or farming supplies while we're at Port Ecclestone, as a sort of peace offering for the people of Ganvis Station."

Sarah asked Cam, "Can you think of anything else they'd need? We know Jace brought a huge shipment of food and seed and irrigation supplies, so I assume more of the same might be helpful?"

The cat-kin nodded, "Yes ma'am. And maybe some medical stuff too? Doc Rogers was always complaining about never having enough medicine or other supplies."

"I have a feeling Rolandan-2 would have been the better location to shop for medical goods," I frowned. "But I assume we can find something at Port Ecclestone?"

The boss nodded, "For sure. I know where we can go to get that sort of thing."

"We're not going to fill the Demeter's hold up like we did with Jace," she added. "As nice as it'd be to bring all we can carry, I don't want to get us into the same problem we had last time with fuel. So maybe we only bring the ship up to half her cargo capacity, that'll leave us some overhead. And when we arrive at the Fuminja Cluster, we'll be stopping at Fuminja Beta to top up the fuel tanks before we make the delivery at Fuminja Epsilon."

I agreed, "That sounds like a good plan."

"How long do we anticipate having to lay low?" Jenny asked.

"That'll depend on how messy the situation gets," Rebecca responded. "If we can get in and out of there without anything exploding, then maybe five to ten days? We'll be monitoring news feeds incase there's word of anyone looking for us, authorities or otherwise."

She sighed again then continued, "If we have to use one of those bombs then I honestly don't know? It might be easier on us to just leave the sector and never come back. That's not the kind of thing people are likely to forget any time soon."

After hearing that we were all quiet for a few moments. Then Sarah looked at Jenny and in a dry tone joked, "Good thing there's no extra pressure on your part of the job, right?"

The AI rolled her eyes but didn't bother to respond.

"Does anyone have any other comments, ideas, questions?" the boss asked as she glanced around the table. "Are we all still on board with the plan?"

I grimaced, "Someone needs to stop that research. It needs to be destroyed, for the greater good. I hate that it has to be us, but I'd hate it even more if we do nothing and that stuff gets out and starts being used against innocent people."

"Same," Sarah agreed. "Amanda already said it best."

Jenny just nodded quietly, but didn't have anything else to add. Cam didn't have anything to say either, apart from agreeing that the immoral research needed to be stopped. That seemed to be it for our discussion, so I got up and prepared a light meal to tide us over for now.

We took our time with the food, then spent the rest of the jump relaxing in the ship's lounge until we were due to come out of jump. At that point Sarah and Cam headed aft to the engine room, while the rest of us moved forward to the cockpit. Rebecca took her place in the pilot seat, I was in my usual spot next to her, and Jenny settled into the engineering seat behind me.

The ship dropped back into normal space right on schedule, and we got to work. I verified our location on my nav screens while Jenny monitored the sensors and comm traffic. The boss took manual control of the ship for our approach and descent, and she made a point of talking me through the process in a little more detail than she'd done on our earlier visits to Port Ecclestone.

"Like I've said before you don't need to contact the local port authority here," she explained as she brought the ship in towards the planet, "Doing so usually just costs you money, one way or another. Fortunately you don't need a landing vector, as long as you're comfortable flying manually and you know your way around their airspace."

I nodded, "Right, but that last bit is the important part. How do you know your way around?"

The tall redhead smiled as she nosed the ship downward into the planet's upper atmosphere, "That comes with experience, and that's why I'm teaching you this."

Soon enough the familiar shudders and groans echoed through the ship as the thickening air outside protested against the Demeter for trying to punch a ship-sized hole through it.

"Anyways there's a few basic rules to keep in mind," the boss continued. "First off, give those huge super-freighters a wide berth. Same with the flightpath of the orbital lift ships. Your best bet is to avoid any and all traffic in fact, leave five hundred or a thousand kilometres gap between us and anything else in orbit. Ditto for the city itself, make sure your descent doesn't bring you over the city or any other valuable real estate."

"How do I know where the valuable real estate is?" I asked.

Rebecca smiled again as she started to pull the ship up out of its rapid descent, "Experience. By which I mean, follow my lead. I almost always pick the same route in and out of Port Ecclestone, because I know there's nothing under us but farmland. This flightpath also avoids the wealthier parts of the city during our approach to the spaceport, which is the other important thing. I know I've told you this before, but don't fly over the rich people's properties."

"Right," I nodded again as we started to level off. "So what you're saying is instead of an assigned vector I can just follow your usual flightpath for a safe landing or lift-off?"

"Exactly," the responded. "Obviously there can be exceptions, like if someone else is on a similar vector you want to either wait until they're clear or pick another route. Or if the local authorities contact you then you'd do what they say, but that's rare."

By that point we were flying about a kilometre or two above open fields as we sped towards the city. It was only another half minute or so before we slowed down to circle over the two-hundreds section of the spaceport while Rebecca picked out a landing pad.

"There's the Persephone," Jenny commented.

She'd been looking over my shoulder monitoring the sensors while I was listening to the boss's lesson, and presumably there hadn't been anything she felt necessary to report until seeing the friendly ship.

I was a little surprised to note the fringe in her hair was pink again, which seemed to have been happening a lot more often lately. Once again I didn't get a chance to comment on it though, as the captain spoke up.

Rebecca responded with a smile, "That's convenient. I was hoping we'd get a chance to speak with Gwen and Tanya again before we do the job."

Jenny asked, "Are you thinking about telling them what we're up to?"

"Maybe," the boss sighed as she lined the ship up with a landing pad. As she brought us down for landing she said, "I was thinking maybe we can make this princess business work for us? We have proof the Imperium's involved in illegal research, right? Without putting ourselves in even greater risk, maybe that proof can be leaked out from Vysalis-4?"

"Shall I send the Persephone word that you'd like to meet with Captain Nieves and Lady Magniveen then?" the android offered.

There was a little shudder through the deck as she reached the ground and the Demeter settled onto her landing gear. Then as Rebecca and I started going through the landing checklist our amazonian captain nodded, "Yes please Jenny."