Daughters of Demeter

"No armed welcome this time," Jenny commented as the four of us gathered in the ship's mess. "Or at least, not yet."

Rebecca smiled as she got herself a coffee from the auto-chef, "Maybe because we didn't talk to anyone during our descent? Last time we talked to the port controllers on our approach. We were quieter this time."

I sighed, "So our customer might still show up with an armoured sled full of gun-toting thugs, now that he knows we're here."

"We'll see," the boss replied, but she didn't sound too worried either way.

Sarah got herself a drink too then asked, "So what's the plan? Just wait to hear back from Lebeau?"

"More or less," Rebecca nodded. "I'm sure we'll hear from him soon, one way or another. I'm pretty sure it's morning here, so we have all day yet. If we can offload his stuff before noon, then maybe we'll bring out the grav-sled and head into the city? How about dinner at Gilly's restaurant, my treat?"

My girlfriend grinned, "I like the sound of that. We can put in an order of meat for later too, to stock up the ship again."

My cheeks coloured slightly but I smiled as well.

The captain added, "Other than that, Sarah and Jenny if you want to work on your project that's fine with me. Once we've offloaded Lebeau's cargo we'll probably have at least two or three days for shore leave."

We all relaxed a bit at that point. I finally got myself some water, then just sat quietly as I sipped it, while Sarah and Jenny started discussing their plans for the sexbot. And like me, Rebecca just sipped her drink as she listened to the other two.

Eventually I asked the captain, "Since there's nothing left of the Hammersmith to salvage, I guess the schedule for our next run will be a little different?"

"Right," she nodded. "Twelve days at Jump-0 from here to the Fuminja Cluster, another twelve days at Jump-0 from there to the mining colony. Then maybe we'll do a level-one jump over to Rolandan-2 and check in with Mel. We can spend seven or eight days there, have a bit of shore leave on a planet you don't hate, before doing another level-one jump back here again."

I blushed but smiled, "Thanks boss. I think that'd be really nice."

Rebecca shrugged, "We'll see. Our next trip is bound to be a lot more boring, at least for you and I. From the sound of it, those two are going to be busy. At least for the first half of the job."

"Something tells me Sarah will find a way to make it interesting for me," I replied with a smirk, though my cheeks got a bit brighter.

We still hadn't tried out any of the things we bought in the same part of the city where we found Jenny's robot. I was pretty sure we'd get around to it on our next level-zero transit though.

The boss grinned as well, but before she could respond Jenny suddenly announced "Two men have arrived outside the ship on a flat-bed grav-sled. They're signalling that they've come for Mr. Lebeau's cargo."

"Time to get to work," Rebecca said as she got to her feet. "Sarah, Amanda, you two can stay up here if you want. Or grab some cash and come down to the main hold when you're ready. Then the three of us can head out into the city as soon as I've finished dealing with these guys."

"Aye-aye boss," Sarah replied.

The captain headed around the corner and down the starboard ladderway, while me and Sarah went into our cabin.

I pulled on my jacket and tucked a bar and an assortment of coins into the pockets then zipped them up tight. I also picked up my little tablet, before changing my mind. I didn't trust this world and didn't want to risk my datapad getting lost or damaged if anything happened to us, so I left it in my bunk.

Sarah pulled on one of her jackets as well, and got some cash too. Then she gave me a hug and a kiss, "I hope you're not too anxious about going into the city here this time?"

"A little," I replied as I hugged her back. "It's ok. I know I'll be fine if I stick with you and Rebecca."

"Yeah," she nodded.

We emerged from our cabin then said bye to Jenny, and finally the two of us headed down the ladderway into the main hold. The doors were open and the ramp down, the boss was standing at the top of the ramp as she wrapped up her business with Lebeau's men.

One of them was sitting behind the controls of their flat-bed grav-sled, with the two small shipping containers loaded on the back of the sled. The other guy was standing in front of the captain, he handed her a bag containing payment for the job.

I stayed back near the ladderway with Sarah as we watched quietly.

Our captain checked to make sure everything was in order, and while she was doing that we were all surprised by a voice outside the ship calling "Hello there! We're looking for a Captain Piper? Is that you?"

My eyes flicked towards the source of the voice, and my heart nearly stopped.

A half dozen meters off to the left of the ramp were three men and two women in Imperium Navy uniforms. They weren't in the friendly 'diplomatic formal nice-guy' uniforms either, they were all wearing the light- and dark-grey combat dress that meant they were on duty and ready for trouble.

That was underlined by the automatic carbines two of them had slung over their shoulders, while the other three had pistols holstered at their hips.

The two with carbines were both in enlisted uniforms, one was a strong young man and the other an athletic-looking woman. The other three were all officers, one young woman and two middle-aged men.

All that went through my mind in an instant as a cold heavy feeling settled in my gut. At the same time Sarah put an arm around me, either to calm me down or maybe to calm herself. Or both of us. I did the same, I slipped my arm around her waist and held her as the two of us stayed put at the back of the hold.

Meanwhile Lebeau's men both freaked out. The guy in the grav-sled took off, he launched the craft straight up in a cloud of dust, then sped off abandoning the guy who was standing on our ramp next to the captain.

That second guy let out an angry curse then took off on foot, he jumped off the side of the ramp then ran out of sight to our right, in the opposite direction of the Navy personnel.

And Rebecca just stood there and sighed to herself, "This couldn't have happened at a worse fucking time."

By the time the dust had settled the five navy people had moved up to stand at the foot of our ramp. None of them put a foot on it, but they were all right there, a couple paces in front of our captain. They were close enough I could make out the names on the fronts of their uniforms along with their rank insignia.

The oldest guy was Lieutenant Holmes, he looked to be in his fifties. Next to him was Lieutenant Ferguson who was a few years younger, late forties perhaps. And to the left stood Ensign Horvat, she was in her early- to mid-twenties.

Behind them on the left stood Leading Rating Suarez, he was the big tough-looking guy in his late twenties, with a carbine over his shoulder. And on the right was Able Rating Harper, she was the similarly-armed athletic-looking woman in her thirties.

Sarah whispered, "The younger lieutenant is my friend Andy, the Kennington's chief engineer. If I remember right, Lieutenant Holmes is the XO."

That was confirmed a moment later when the older guy introduced himself, "Good morning. I'm Lieutenant Bob Holmes, executive officer of the ISS Kennington. Is Captain Piper here? We have some questions, if you don't mind."

Even though he was acting polite the tone in his voice made it clear he wasn't happy to see us.

The boss glanced back at me and Sarah and said, "You two stay there ok?"

We both nodded, then she looked at the Navy people again and replied "I'm Rebecca Piper. You people are a long way from home. What's your business with me?"

The body language of the five sailors told a bit of a story, and I was confident Rebecca could read it even better than me.

Ensign Horvat was nervous, she looked like she'd rather be back on board the Kennington instead of standing on our doorstep. When she finally noticed my ears and tail though she ended up staring at me with a look of curiosity and confusion. She'd obviously never seen a foxgirl before, and she was probably trying to figure out if my vulpine traits were real or not.

The chief engineer on the other hand looked eager and hopeful. It wasn't hard to guess he was hoping for news about his friend. He barely glanced at Sarah or myself, or anything else. He was looking expectantly at Piper, and it felt like if she didn't answer the XO he'd speak up and ask again, probably with a lot more passion and pleading.

Neither the ensign or the engineer seemed like a threat to me, which was the main thing. The two ratings and the XO on the other hand, they all looked uptight.

There was some anger and impatience in in the XO's eyes and his posture. And the two ratings were looking at me and Sarah, as well as eyeing the rest of our hold. They both noticed our shiny new grav-sled, along with the black spots where the Navy markings were burned off. They might have even noticed Sarah and I were both wearing Navy-issued side-arms on our hips.

"Twelve days ago your ship was scavenging the wreck of the ISS Hammersmith," the XO stated. "I'd like to know if you were in that area before that, say forty or fifty days ago? Did you come across a lifepod?"

Ferguson suddenly spoke up, "Did you rescue two men? Please, we just need to find those missing officers. Or do you know what happened to them? Their names are Holloway and Voss."

The executive officer gave his engineer an angry glance, obviously he wasn't supposed to blurt all that out. The XO didn't say anything though, he just returned his focus to Piper as he waited for her to respond.

After another couple seconds Holmes got tired of waiting for an answer and half-demanded, "Well?"

Piper finally sighed and let her shoulders slump a bit. She nodded, "Yeah we found your lifepod. Holloway was already dead, he had some pretty horrific plasma burns. Poor bastard was probably gone within the first twelve hours. Voss's injuries weren't as severe, but he had a nasty head wound. He was barely conscious when I got the pod on board. We did what we could for him, but he died a few hours later."

She shrugged slightly as she added, "Me and the girls gave them both a burial in space. I'm sorry about your men, but there was nothing we could do."

I assumed Piper came up with that story to hopefully get the Imperium to leave us alone. Otherwise they'd keep looking for me and Sarah, and having them think we were dead was the original plan anyways.

Ferguson sighed and closed his eyes, he was obviously upset about the loss of his friend. Horvat looked sad but mostly she looked like she was hoping the encounter was almost over. The two ratings seemed angry, like they were going to blame us for the officers' deaths.

Lieutenant Holmes didn't react much at all, he just kept watching Piper. For that matter I wasn't even sure if he believed her story.

The XO kept his eyes on our captain as he asked, "So if we do a high-resolution scan of your ship, we're not going to find any Imperium identity implants? There's nobody else on board but the three of you?"

That sent a little shock through me as I suddenly understood what the high-power scan was. And my heart started racing again as I wondered whether they detected our implants or not. Jenny said they were purged, but I had no idea if they were still on board the ship somewhere.

The boss shrugged as she told the XO, "There's just me and my two crew. And speaking of, it's time we got back to work. Like I said, I'm sorry about your men."

Holmes just stared at Piper, he looked like he didn't believe her. More than that, he looked like he knew she was lying, but he also knew he couldn't really do anything about it.

The captain moved to the side of the ramp and hit the control panel on the wall. The main airlock started to close while the ramp lifted upwards. The XO didn't take his eyes off Piper the whole time, till we couldn't see him anymore as the ship sealed up.

As soon as the airlock was closed and sealed the captain called, "Jenny? I need to know right now what you did with those two identity implants! Are they on board? Are they intact?"

One of her HPDs was still up on the main deck, but she activated the other one and opened the secondary cargo doors, then stepped through and joined us in the main hold.

"They're not intact or functional captain," the AI replied. "I already knew from working with you in the past what the implants were. So when I was processing Sarah and Amanda, I took the precaution of disabling them before purging them."

I let out a quiet sigh of relief, "That high-power scan they did when we arrived, they had to be searching the ship for identity implants right?"

"Seems like it," Rebecca nodded. "And I'm sure they'd also know there were only three people on board."

Jenny commented, "Surely that's a good thing? They know we don't have their men on board. Perhaps they'll leave us alone now?"

The boss frowned, "Maybe. I get the feeling the XO isn't going to back off, he's looking for trouble. And the engineer's obviously upset about his friend."

My girlfriend sighed, "I almost wish I could talk to Andy? Just to let him know I'm ok, that he doesn't need to worry about me."

"Sorry Sarah, that's probably not a good idea," Rebecca stated. Then she suggested, "Let's put a hold on our plans for a bit? Wait an hour or so, to be sure our Navy friends have moved on. Then we'll head out to Gilly's after, ok?"

Me and Sarah both agreed, and we all headed back up to the main deck. There was something I was curious about though.

"What actually happens to the stuff you purge Jenny?" I asked. "We know you have a reservoir for excess usable mass, what do you do with the material you can't use?"

It was the captain who answered instead. She grimaced as she said, "There's a port under the healing tube where the waste is expelled. The first time Gabe put me in there it made a bit of a mess on the deck. After that we connected it to the ship's waste and reclamation system."

"Ah," Sarah smiled. "I wondered what that was. I'm glad I didn't open it up and look."