Emerson Fortier
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Chapter 37 - Mama's Teets
🕑 Added 2022-10-08 17:00:08 +0000 UTCThe “Mama’s Teets” matched its name. At sixty yards long, the “ship” barely merited the title. It’s designation in urdul, “Kophmu”, twisted in Yi Cao’s brain to present him images of boats like man sized pots bobbing on the sea.
The ship itself might have been one of those pots, expanded to the size of a small house then glued to one of its own. Nestled amongs the girder’s and cranes of the drydock at the end of concourse A, the thing looked like a woman’s chest caught straining against the matte black of the hull plating that clad it.
They were escorted, on their way to the ship, by a man who might once have been a cultivator. Thin metal fins stuck from one side of his head now and his neck buzzed whenever he turned it. Three short hooks of plain silver steel probed the air from the center of his eye socket and one of his arms terminated in a nested tangle of wire that shifted and writhed even when not in use, making the discs stuck to it like finger pads ripple and click hypnotically as he walked.
They wore the same bright orange overalls that he did, Yi Cao, Feiruhn, and even Zihan, a matte black ID tag clipped to their chests, heavy synthetic helmets masking them to the eyes Feiruhn claimed they would have to pass to get to the ship.
“Agate’s gang are outlaws.” Feiruhn told them when he gave them the material and told them to change out of the technomancer clothes they’d had on. “Once we’s meets with them, we’s in the thick of things. They gots they’re ways of hiding from the Governor, but we’s need’s to watch ourselves as well.” He shoved the helmets onto the table in front of them as the two boys stripped. “These to hide our faces from the spies.” He pulled out two of the black clips currently at their chests. “These to give it false impressions of who we is.” He tossed them onto the pile and tapped the one on his chest. “They’s won’t fool the Governor if it’s looking for us, but they’ll stop the spirits watching the halls from noticing something out of place.”
They’d taken the long way to the hangar. Through a tangled web of interconnected maintenance shafts and ventilation tunnels that honeycombed the rock, occasionally squeezing past maintenance workers with huge mechanical eyes or skin pale from the dark, splashing through water as deep as their shins that curled, hissing, along the walls in looping curls that followed the changing gravity in the bowels of the station.
The man who led them to the ship never said a word after. They knocked. The door opened. The sai-borg gestured them inside with his normal hand then led them through a series of gates and locked doors with a wave of his security badge until they stood beneath the grand view of the Mama’s Teets.
Fresh paint on the hull of the ship identified it as The Ass, “Haulin Shit for Nought but Spit”, and instructed interested parties to “enquire inside for prices”, but A bare chested woman with nipples the size of saucers winked at them from the door as they knocked, and Yi Cao recognized the faintly androgynous voice that greeted them through a construct set into the woman’s eye.
“Welcome aboard.”
“You took your time.” Zihan told the thing that opened the door to greet them.
If the thing wasn’t androgynous it was only faintly masculine. The thing blinked huge black eyes in an unnaturally pale and hairless face as it considered Zihan. It raised a long pale arm to scratch at one cheek and the hand trailed pale blue sparks that shimmered in the air like an afterimage.
“The Teets were derelict in the deep cloud outside of One.” It told him. “Are we in some kind of hurry?”
Zihan crossed his arms. “There’s a fortune waiting out there. Wouldn’t you be?”
The thing regarded him for a moment, but Feiruhn pushed to the front of the group, extending his hand in the technomancer’s greeting.
“Agate.” He said. “I’m glad you made it.”
“Of course.” The thing took his hand, enveloping it briefly in a pale lambent flame. Yi Cao watched it flicker in the air as they disengaged and the androgyn stepped aside to gesture them inside.
“Thank you.” Feiruhn said, and took off his helmet as he entered.
A hand trailed by blue sparks stopped Zihan as the Young Master moved to follow and the thing waited until it had Zihan’s attention so he could search his eyes. “You are powerful, but this is going to be a delicate operation, one that could get us all killed more easily than it could make us rich.”
Blue lights sparkled in the air around the androgyn, like a halo. Zihan stared up at the thing. Eventually it let its hand drop and turned to Yi Cao as Zihan stepped on board and flipped off his helmet.
“Welcome.” The thing told Yi Cao, and offered its hand. He felt nothing as the flames enveloped his hand. Only the faint pressure of the stranger’s palm, and the strangeness of his pale face. “Welcome aboard.”
The door let straight into one bulbous hold of the Mama’s Teets. Crates sat stacked along the walls, secured with shining cables and blinking tiny lights from the shadow of tarps. Empty bottles and bits of scrap littered the edges and corners of the hold, and Yi Cao felt a fine grain of glass fragments crunch beneath his feet as he stepped inside.
“This is the crew.” Agate informed them. He gestured to a Talyaya lounging on top of one stack of crates with a glittering construct flashing pictures at him in one hand. “Shockstick, our pilot.”
“Sho’stik.” The thing growled. Wires ran from the construct in his hand to jacks in his skull. He lifted a gauntleted hand and seemed to disassemble the hand until a tool emerged from the mess to whine against one of the jacks, then the hand pulled itself back together again and he swapped the wire to another socket in his head.
“He’s Talyaya, so he’s an ass, but he takes care of the boat, and he’s been piloting the void since he was a grub, so we rely on him.” The androgyn turned to a pair of huge identical twins sitting on a couch bolted to the deck. “Then there’s Kabi and Kabi, normally the muscle in the crew.”
Only one of the two looked up from the flashing display in his hand. He nodded to them both, showing off a pair of horns shaved down to broad disks at his forehead. He tucked his construct away and smiled, showing off enormous square teeth plated in gold. “I’m the smart one.” He told them in a deep bass. He elbowed his twin. “He’s the lucky one.”
The lucky one just grunted and turned back to his screen.
“And the surly bastard in the back is Hao Dong.”
A spark whipped out from Agate’s hand to spiral around a figure Yi Cao hadn’t noticed, lost in the shadows of a doorway leading deeper into the Teets. The man’s eyes glittered in the dancing light, almost lost beneath a mop of black hair. Three scars ran the length of his face across a flat, broken, nose.
“Why not join us?” Agate asked.
Hao Dong grunted, then stepped forward until he entered the edge of the indifferent white light from the tubes floating on the ceiling.
“Security, after a fashion.” Agate said, folding himself into a chair bolted alongside the door. “He used to be one of you.”
Zihan pulled the helmet from his head and tossed it onto a crate then he threw himself onto a tarped crate. “What sort of advancement?” He asked.
Hao Dong regarded him for a long moment while the black cape he wore crawled and shifted across his shoulders, growing spikes across one shoulder and crawling, almost liquid, across his chest while the long folds swayed close above the ground.
“Doesn’t matter.” The man said. His voice was thick and rattled with mucus, like his throat had once been slashed and badly healed. He cleared it, spat. “Switched to technomancy a long time ago.”
“You didn’t lose what you had.” Feiruhn replied. He pushed a couple of empty bottles out of the way with his foot and pulled a folding chair from the wall to sit.
Hao Dong scowled. “True enough.” He said. “Might even come in handy sometimes.”
His cloak slowly extruded a glass disk from his shoulder, like a spider’s eye to match the curving limbs that rose within the cloth before they sank back in again and disappeared. “Gun’s a lot more dangerous than a lightning bolt, and it doesn’t require I meditate every day.”
Yi Cao tore his eyes from the thing on his shoulders and clambered onto the crates until he sat above and behind Zihan, who’d taken to lounging along another crate, fiddling with one of the empty bottles he’d found stacked there. Yi Cao left his own helmet on and studied the people they’d come there to meet.
“And what do you do for this crew of bandits?” Zihan asked, turning from his empty bottle to Agate.
“He’s the boss.” The Smart Kabi rumbled, teeth flashing gold as he leered at Zihan and Feiruhn in turn. “So don’t go getting any funny ideas about running this show. He says jump, you jump, or you’ll bloody well find my boot coming out your mouth by way of your ass.”
Zihan stopped fiddling with the bottle to give the big man a look. “You did see me blow up a rock bigger than this ship?” He asked. He raised an eyebrow, went back to spinning his empty bottle. “I thought you were the smart one.”
“Everyone,” Agate said, “this is Zihan, he’s the loose cannon in this operation, so, we’ll all be on our best behavior, and no one will have any reason to get hurt.” He looked pointedly at Feiruhn, then up at Yi Cao, before turning back to Zihan. “We’re all friends here. So, let’s talk business.”
Zihan smirked but flipped his bottle out of the way to give Agate his full attention.
The androgyn gestured. “Shocksy.”
Shockstick, absorbed in his tiny construct until then, flipped on his side, giving them a look at his face for the first time. His eyes were gone. Twin disks of dark glass occupied their place while a thin plate of pale steel ran the length of one cheek, speckled with the telltale lights of sensors that fed him more than simply visual information. The goblin pilot’s ears twitched as his hand reconfigured for a second time. He ripped the jacks out of his head to shove them into ports running the length of his other arm. After only a moment, something deeper in the ship hummed and a projection of glowing mist flickered into existence at the center of the hold.
“Let’s go over what is obvious.” The androgyn said. He gestured and a spark of blue fire drifted from his finger into the sprawling image of the Tangle hovering in front of them. “This is the Pitanmikasi.” He said, spark stopping at one edge of the massive tangle.
Shockstick manipulated his handheld display and the projection fell towards them, fading around the edges until they saw only one edge, occupied, at the center of the image, by a massive silver egg rippling above a sea stone cubes floating haphazardly above deeper sections of the station.
“A guild ship.” Agate went on. “Specifically one of their treasure ships here to move approximately two tons of living material collected from Massu in payment for the planetary fragments shipped to them in the last year. Two, tons. Treasure worth more than we’ll ever see in a hundred lifetimes.”
As they watched, the ripples on the ship grew more pronounced and the stone cubes beneath it shifted noticeably in response, dragged upwards, or sent drifting as the thing pulled on them with some unseen power.
“It is not supposed to be here.” Agate said. “Its itinerary, as logged with the Governor AI on it’s arrival late last year, showed it making a short stop at the station after picking up its cargo in order to exchange coding traffic with the station. When it made that stop, however, the Governor seems to have asked it for help straightening out its inventory after a run away tug impacted one of the staging areas and started a cascade event. If you were on One when it happened, you’d have heard about it. There was a break in one of the concourses that resulted in a couple of hundred casualties and delayed work shifts by three whole days before the walls were properly stabilized and safe for normal use again.”
“Sounds like a big deal.” Zihan said.
Agate regarded him coolly. “It was.” He said eventually. “Fortunately, for us at any rate, the emergency promised to be enough of a delay to production timelines that the captain agreed to help, mostly sorting out the mess and stabilizing it until the governor gets tugs in there to take over. This has created a period of near lawlessness in the rest of the rock as the governor focuses its resources on catching up with the disaster. Fate has been good for those of us living beyond the governor’s laws, but, that is not the point here.”
In the display, tiny tongues of flame, projections instead of Agate’s blue fire, swarmed among the shifting stones, driving them out of the way while more of that rippling power reached into the mess of the station and pulled more blocks out for the tongues of flame to take away.
“The point of all of this is that the captain’s new itinerary shows it staying for all of two more weeks to help clean up the mess before it departs for the rift, which means we have two weeks to find a way to board it, take that treasure, and leave.”
The lambent blue flame winked out of existence, leaving just the image of the massive ship shifting rocks the size of small moons about in the guts of a planet it or something very like it had once helped to rip apart in the first place.
“Not inconsiderable in such a plan is the necessity that we have a fence already lined up and ready to take the goods in exchange for wealth before we do the job, and a way out system, preferably through rifts taking us somewhere the guild can’t follow, along the way.”
The Androgyn looked to Feiruhn. “Your department, I believe.”
Feiruhn cleared his throat. “The options are Mubra, or Nshamti.” Feiruhn leaned forward on his knees and clasped his hands. “Technically that means Bistu too, but it will have to be through Mubra. There aren’t any ships that go there by any other route that I know of.”
The Lucky Kabi twin looked up from his display, then grunted and looked back down again.
“Not Kispuhr?” The smart one rumbled.
Feiruhn shook his head. “I’s could, but there’s nothing to protect you’s there. The guild could find you’s in a heartbeat, and the Cults wouldn’t do nothing to stop them. They’s never shown any interest in Massu magic. Same goes for Djabal, and I’d bet no one here wants to go to Gura, Tomot, or one of the free stations.”
Shockstick screwed up what remained of his fleshy features. “Might as well go to Gura if you go to a free station.” He said. “And Djabol would be a waste. Mubra, for me. Tech’s been telling me I’m leveling for a long time. Like to see what the System will make of me.”
The smart one nodded humming low in his chest in agreement while Hao Dong looked like he’d chewed on something sour. “Why Nshamti?” He asked. “What’s to stop the guilds finding us on the old world same as on the others? I can’t see the immortals caring for our treasure anymore than the covens, for all that the covens are supposed to be more reclusive.”
Zihan grinned at him and tipped his empty bottle in his direction. “I have connections.” He replied.
“Why do all this if you have connections to an immortal?” Hao Dong asked.
Feiruhn answered before Zihan could. “We’s going there anyways.” Feiruhn replied. “The Young Master proposed this plan to purchase cultivation resources in the first place. So, if you’s wants to go, we can take you.”
Hao Dong ran his tongue over his teeth just beneath his lips then sucked at them before he grimaced. “So, it’s run to the immortals, or to the System, and hope for their protection.”
“The System is a guarantee.” Feiruhn replied. “It’s always been opposed to the guild, and the guild doesn’t share its treasures with them. The prices the System is willing to pay for the living material as a result is staggering. I’s heard one story that an early ambassador to the Massu came back with a thimble of sand and got over thirty levels for his contribution science, plus his pick of augmentations. He’s supposed to still be alive, four or five centuries later.”
“Technomancy.” The scarred warrior spat. His cloak writhed into inch long spikes across his back while claws formed at its tips near the floor and flared out. “I’m rather attached to my guts.”
“You leave it then.” Shockstick said from his crate. “I’d give my left nut for a chance like that.”
“You already did.” Hao Dong replied without turning to him. “That just makes you a freak.”
Blue fire flared around Agate’s chair, swirling like sparks in a breeze. “You can always go to one of the other worlds after.” He said when he had their attention. “They’ll know you went to Mubra, but the System knows how to hide hide people, give them augments the guilds won’t be able to track. Visit the necromancers if you want, or the free stations. Guild credit is good everywhere, if you can get it converted.”
“You’d fit right in there.” Shockstick said with a grin.
Feiruhn regarded the soldier as the man considered.
“Old world or new world.” He said. “No need to pick now, but those are your options. There won’t be a lot of down time between getting off the guild ship and leaving though, so make your choice before then. I expect we’ll be departing pretty much immediately.”
“I’ll consider it then.”
