Before The Storm (Ch. 22)

Chapter Twenty-two

Sketch knew from the start that stopping off at Narajanette was going to be a bad idea, but he just couldn't help himself. He wanted to get that damn singing box off his goddamn ship as soon as possible, and the longer they had it with them, the worse he felt like it was going to get.

As soon as they'd gotten themselves clear of the comet, he'd sent Cola a message, telling her they had the target acquired and that he wanted to get it to the client as soon as possible. He didn't mention the 'singing' such as it was, because he didn't want anyone to panic. Or, rather, he didn't want anyone else to panic, because he was feeling a little on edge himself.

You are being superstitious, Storm Walker.

"So says the voice of a long dead mentor inside of my head, Fury Rose," he thought back at her. "My life is strange enough that nothing should be dismissed out of pocket."

The boy mechanic seems to think it is simply a byproduct of the batteries recharging, so I do not know why you are worried, Storm Walker.

"Because something has been strange about this job since we took it, and all sorts of things keep not adding up."

The message had come back quickly that they should meet up at Narajanette, a frontier outpost trading spot that had plenty of people coming and going, where The Praeteritus could slip in and out without causing much of a ruckus. That part, at least, seemed okay, and Loz seemed to be confident that he could unload a lot of the legitimate spoils from their last run to traders and pioneers nearby. And while they waited, Sketch could deal with his most hated enemy of all time...

... paperwork.

The local office of the Starless Dominion felt more like a closet stuffed with boxes and crates, commandeered packages and records on hardcopy, mostly, but also a bunch of things that were essentially just sitting around a dead letter office. Technically the Dominion had its own mail service. But relying on it deliver anything in a timely manner was just asking for trouble.

Normally, the larger Dominion offices were managed by Y'bari soldiers, but the outpost of Narajanette was so far off the beaten path, that they had a Vitrusian managing it. The Vitrusians were a serpentine species with four arms, a blue scaley skin and eyes that could focus independently of one another, which meant they could manage a lot of things at once, but it often looked like their workspaces had just been subjected to a few minutes of explosive decompression. They knew where everything was, but absolutely nobody else did, with stacks of data pads in unusual places, annotated files propping up quadrant reports and the like. But as chaotic as it looked, the Vitrusians knew where everything was, and could remember the location of all of it at even the slightest pressing.

It also meant that Sketch was wearing long sleeves, and had them tightly buttoned at the wrists, making sure not even the smallest amount of his tattoos were showing. Nobody seemed like they were on the lookout for them, but that didn't mean he could afford to no longer be vigilant. It only took one slip up for his world to be over, and that wouldn't just put his life at risk, but his whole crew.

No relaxation for him.

Not even once.

The Vitrusian who managed the outpost at Narajanette was named Pokzy, and he mostly dealt with filed salvage reports and defensive firing responses, which was exactly why Sketch was in his office in the first place. He'd spent the last twenty minutes walking Pokzy through how the salvage of the derelict ship on the Wavarti Comet had gone sideways when Renzitars had attempted to raid them while they were in the middle of declared legitimate salvage.

"They just descended upon you without warning, or disputing your claim of salvage?" Pokzy asked him.

"You know Renzitars," Sketch sighed, shifting quietly in the chair that was double the size that would be comfortable for him. He knew the seats were designed to be Y'bari or Vitrusian sized, but both species were nearly twice the size of humans. That meant the chair size had the side effect of making any human sitting in them feel like a small child, which, he supposed, the Dominion considered an upside. "Shoot first, ask questions never. They saw we had deployed a salvage buoy, and that nobody else was on the derelict, and that we were flying around in a previously scavenged Tropage ship, and they decided they wanted to try and carve us up."

"Tropage ships aren't known to carry much in the way of firepower," Pokzy said.

"Well, I did say scavenged Tropage ship," Sketch laughed, waggling a finger at the Vitrusian. "The modifications I've made to the ship, including weapons additions, are all on file, or at least, they were up until a few months ago. I'm also here filing a change about our current loadouts and specs, as well as crew. 'Bout six months back I realized I was breakin' my back by doing everything by myself, so I brought on some additional crew to lighten the load."

"Imagine the profit margins aren't as good that way."

"You'd be surprised. Loss in some sections, much bigger profits in others. I can get loaded in and out a lot faster now, and stuff doesn't take nearly as long to strap down. Plus, I've got someone to watch my back, and I can have someone on duty when I'm sleeping beyond the ship's AI, who's always been an utter godsend. Got myself a doctor, a mechanic and a bruiser, in addition to a courtesan and merchant in the spices and gems market, who'll keep me ahead of the curve in terms of buying and selling at a good rate," Sketch said to the lizard, who kept one eye on him at all times while the other was looking through his updated paperwork.

"Six months is a good amount of time to go in-between updates."

"But totally legal," Sketch stressed. "I've got a year to update changes, and I was just so busy and the changes kept adding up, and y'all charge me a fee any time there's a update to either the crew or the ship manifest, so rather than filing half a dozen and costing me a fortune, I let them add up while I flushed out the crew just to save me a few pennies here and there, you know?"

"That does seems a valid enough reason, but if that's true, why now? You have another six months before you would be due for a crew/manifest update."

"Look, I don't want to cause anyone any trouble, but I know if I don't file an incident report about the Renzitars attacking us promptly, one of their next of kin might come and try and file a grievance about it, and that's the last thing I need, them claiming I started it, you know? Anyway, our sensor logs are all there, as is a copy of the message the buoy was sending them, the salvage report as well as us detonating the derelict as a method of deterring the Renzitars from charging us. You can even see I sent them a message telling them I was setting it to blow, since the derelict's reactor was in a dangerous state. You have our mechanic's report about how their reactor had been dormant for some time, but us piercing the hull stirred up some remaining energy from their mostly spent core, and it wouldn't have been safe to leave it like that. Engine could've randomly kicked on and sent the comet spinning out of its normal path and into a settlement somewhere. That said, our blowing up the derelict did change the path of the comet a bit, but my report here should show it's not in danger of even getting close to anything for at least a few hundred years, by our reckoning."

"And your report of everything you salvaged off the ship is complete? Nothing left off it?"

"Absolutely nothing," Sketch lied, knowing full well he'd omitted the box the client had requested. They hadn't been clear about that part of the request - no mention of whether or not the Dominion could know about it either way - so Sketch was playing it safe, and not letting anything slide, keeping the existence of the box to himself. "We mostly took fuel from their storage. If anyone had been alive on that ship, without too much work, they could've swapped out their cores, dumped some new fuel rods into the converter, patched up the damage from the crash and flown it off that rock, but they'd been dead nearly a century and we didn't have the kind of time it would've taken to get the damage fixed up. I dunno about you, but ship reselling feels like dicey business at the best of times, and this ain't them."

"It is a volatile business," Pokzy replied. "Although once the ship is sold, most sellers consider it the buyer's problem. Was the damage really too much to be repaired quickly?"

Sketch nodded, shifting uncomfortably in the big chair once more, leaning against one of the oversized armrests. "We'd have been there probably two or three weeks minimum, prying it off the comet, getting systems back on line and then sealing up the breaches, just enough to get it stable enough to get it off the rock and able to limp back to some port. Then we would've working on that for at least another few weeks, if not months, and all the time we'd be doing that, we wouldn't be flying, and that's money I'm losing."

The giant reptilian bobbed his head in agreement, the sentiment one he'd probably heard echoed a dozen times. "I understand profit margins are thin for cargo ships these days, although your haul for this salvage seems like it will net you quite a tidy profit."

"No need to buy fuel rods for a while, so that's good," Sketch said. "We're mostly selling off the munitions we picked up, and some of the raw materials we could strip out of their innards. There's plenty of parts, and my mechanic's already wandering around the station, negotiating sale prices and trying to get us paid for what we got."

"So you're just here to sell, and to file your reports?"

"Eh, the kid's got some more modification ideas in mind, so he's also doing a bit of shopping, being proactive with The Praeteritus's upkeep. Not sure exactly what he's looking to pick up, but he'll probably be buying about a quarter as much as he's selling."

Pokzy focused both eyes on him for what felt like a very long time before looking back at the screen and making a few taps, checking a few things. "Alright, well, you're done with me, and you've done your due diligence when it comes to Dominion paperwork in terms of your salvage and your self-defense encounter. Your tithe portion of the salvage comes up to two thousand ectash, which will be billed over along with your gate fee and beacon update fee."

"Sounds reasonable," Sketch said, as he worked to try and extricate himself from the giant chair, something he'd never really found a way to do gracefully, moving to stand on the floor before heading towards the exit. "I appreciate you being understanding about this, Harbormaster Pokzy."

Sketch was almost to the door before the reptilian spoke again. "And you're sure there was nothing else on the derelict you took off, Captain?"

He looked back over his shoulder with his most charming smile. "Nope. Why? Was there something we were supposed to be on the lookout for? I didn't see anything in the listing about the salvage opportunity having something specific set for retrieval."

"We were simply hoping there might have been some reason why the ship collided into the comet," Pokzy said to him. "You didn't go rifling around in their logs?"

"My mechanic went through the error reports, but we didn't dig any deeper than that," Sketch lied again. "Didn't know that we were supposed to."

The reptilian waved one of his hands flippantly. "Don't worry about it. It would've just been nice to know. We've long wondered how the hell a ship crashes into the back of a comet. It's like a one-in-a-million longshot, you know?"

"I hear ya, man, but no, we didn't get anything about cause of crash. Sorry."

"It's fine. Safe travels, Captain."

They were a good distance away from the office before he spoke to Helen over their comms. "I don't like how that interview went down, Helen."

"You're being paranoid, boss. Nothing was out of line."

"He kept asking what I didn't report."

"He's being thorough, and he's being curious. That derelict has generated a lot of interest over the decades. People crave answers to mysteries. You should know that."

"I do," Sketch grumbled, as he walked down a dingy corridor, past a number of half-open shops, people hocking their wares, trying to convince the less wary traveler that their items were good, when really Sketch could see half-functional goods at best, and just kept walking. "But I still don't like him asking twice about leaving an item off the salvage list. It feels like suspicion's starting to fall on us as a ship."

"I'm telling you, Captain, there hasn't been any mention of our ship name or transponder in any local chatter I've seen coming or going through Dominion messages, and you know I keep tabs on that sort of thing all the time."

"You don't have access to all their messages, Helen."

"Enough of them to feel like I'm seeing the important things, and I do not feel like you have adequate cause for worry."

Hear that, Storm Walker? The machine knows better than you do.

'Quiet, Fury Rose,' Sketch thought back at her.

"Well, keep your senses on overdrive making sure it stays that way," he said over private comms to the ship's AI.

"Roger, Captain."

"Anything to report that I missed while I was in the meeting?"

"Loz has done very well in offloading what plunder we picked up as salvage, and nearly seventy percent of what we claimed has been purchased and delivered," Helen said into his ear proudly. "He is doing remarkably well at this sort of thing."

"That's good to hear," Sketch said with a sigh of relief. Taking the kid and his sister on had been a calculated risk, but so far one that had mostly been paying off in spades. "Tell Loz not to get too greedy or take too much longer. I'm on my way to meet with the client, bring them back to the ship, get paid and get that thing off my boat."

"Speaking of the object in question--"

"Oh, now what? Is it still... singing?"

"It is, Captain, although we've done our best to dampen the sound as much as possible."

"That's good."

"But the singing seems to have drawn, well, pilgrims."

Sketch stopped in his tracks, tilting his head to one side. "What now?"

"We have two people who have refused to leave our gate, and are sitting, waiting, demanding access to what they call 'their holy relic.'"

"Is this meant to be some kind of a joke?"

"I certainly hope not, Captain, because a third just moved to join the first two," Helen said. "They seem peaceful enough, but they're technically still on station property as they are just outside of our docking gate, so I can't exactly have them moved, and certainly not without telling the harbor patrol what this relic is they're claiming to want to see."

"No no," Sketch said quickly. "Don't call the fuzz. They'd put two and two together and it'd be clear we didn't report the thing, and it's entirely possible the Dominion wanted that particular piece of salvage for themselves. Last thing I need is the client getting pissed off and not paying us for the reason we took the damn job in the first place."

"Aliara's asking if she should meet you at the rendezvous point with the client?"

"Probably not a bad idea," he replied. "I don't like these in-person handoffs, but the client insists on seeing and inspecting the item before calling it valid. That said, Cola's message seemed to make it sound like this client shouldn't be too much of a problem. They're on Cola's 'personally vouched for' list, and that sort of honor doesn't come without a few perks. But you know me, and I still don't fully trust anybody."

"Got it. Sending the big girl down to meet you."

The further Sketch got away from the harbormaster's office, the more relaxed he felt. Narajanette was far from threatening, and no matter how much he tried to remind himself to take everyone as a potential threat, his opinion about this station didn't seem to change at all - they were a bunch of poor dirt farmers and outpost clingers, trying to make a buck by buying low and selling high, or by getting decent margins on repeat business. Lots of the people were coming in from nearby surrounding planets to stock up before heading back to their homesteads. People typically didn't mind paying five to ten percent over the top as long as it was always reliably there when you wanted the thing.

But even with all the shopkeepers and shopping farmers, the station felt low grade, low rent and low priority. Thankfully, that was working in his favor. He blended in, was just another anonymous face in the background, another unremarkable trader who came and went as he pleased, paying no mind to the other people around him.

Just another dirt ghost.

"Hey boss," Aliara said as she moved to step up next to him, her form looming over his, and yet, somehow still in his shadow. "Everything go smoothly? Helen said you were feeling a bit rattled."

"Hopefully it's nothing," Sketch grumbled. "I get the impression the Dominion knew something unusual of note was on the ship, but they didn't want to mention it specifically, so they couldn't call it out on me when I didn't mention it. Because maybe I missed it. Maybe someone had already taken it illegally. Maybe it wasn't even on the ship to begin with. But they couldn't ask, because asking validates what they only suspect, and it proves what's just speculation right now."

"Boss, you always talk yourself in circles, or just when you're trying to be overly cautious?"

"I'm just hoping it's my reflexive paranoia," Sketch muttered. "But I've learned not to take that for granted and to give it its due over the years, because it's kept me alive a lot more times than I can count. But I also can't let it rule my life either."

The P'Nox placed her hand on his shoulder. "I've got you, boss. You're not running solo anymore, and that means you have people you can count on to cover your back. Like the old days."

That made Sketch stop in his walking. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I spent a little bit of time talking with Charlotte about you, who you used to be, before you joined the Order," Aliara confessed, her hand staying on him, trying to keep him at peace. "The Order didn't make you into a weapon; you were a weapon long before you even caught whiff of The Order. That's what she told me. I didn't know that."

"Why would you? You're talking about stuff that happened nearly a century ago, back when I was a young and temperamental mercenary--"

"Not so temperamental, from what I hear. You were tightly disciplined, precise, calculating, inventive, resourceful... much like you are now."

"Charlotte bought into all of my stories, I see," he laughed. "Back when I was younger, I was a bit of braggadocio, at least when I was around friends. And Charlotte was a good friend to me, so maybe I bigged myself up a little."

"She didn't seem to think it was bigging up - she took all of it as gospel truth. Was it?"

He shrugged slightly, wondering exactly what he'd said back then. It was far enough back in the recesses of his memory that he only held onto scraps. "Some of it. Hell, probably most of it. Yeah, I was good at my job as a merc, when I did it. I didn't always do it. That's the hardest thing I tried to make other people understand. Part of the reason I got the reputation of being excellent at doing work is that I picked and chose what jobs I, well, we would do very, very carefully. I made sure our team said 'no' a lot. I didn't want to take on work that put me on the wrong side of things, that put me on the side of causes I didn't agree with, or doing things I couldn't stomach. That didn't make me popular sometimes. But it also meant I could sleep at night."

"That only makes me like you more, boss."

"Yeah, well, it certainly made me both friends and enemies as I came up. Although nobody back then really could wrap their heads around why I joined The Order. But enough about that now. We need to be on point," he said, as they started to approach the little street café that was going to be their meeting point. He could see the client, as she'd been described, with four indescribable big rock-like guardians around her. Sketch thought the stony race was called Phormial, but he'd never seen one before, much less four. He'd heard tale of them being excellent at security and suddenly felt more than a little underdressed for the occasion.

The client, however, was taking longer to get his head wrapped around. She was an old humanoid feline, maybe eighty percent his height and weight, her fur mostly grey with patches of orange and black still mottled and visible in parts, a long tail swishing behind her nearly the length of her whole body. Based on the fact that she could remember the derelict before its crash, she had to be close to a century and a half old, and she seemed to move carefully, and with a certain amount of tremor and shake to her movements, as if she was certainly not as steady as she'd once been. He'd seen her kind before, although it had been before his Big Sleep. She was of a race called the Tevinel, and they had been one of the earliest races humanity had encountered before the Dominion made their way into the sector. Younger Tevinel were often entertainers, performers, acrobats and even courtesans. Darren Arbard, back when he was just a scrapling punk barely in his twenties who'd hung around Sketch's team, had a Tevinel girlfriend for a while, and when Sketch had asked the young man about dating a Tevinel, Darren had simply grinned and said, "Everybody loves a catgirl." Sketch couldn't speak from personal experience, but he'd seen many of the men (and a couple of the women) on his team agree.

He sauntered over towards the Tevinel's table and moved to sit down in front of her. "I'm guessing you're Lady Quazlatix?" he said as Aliara moved to stand behind him, keeping one hand on her pistol in its holster, as her eyes watched the four Phormial keeping close watch on their protected VIP. "If so, I have the item you requested."

"I know," she purred at him, her hand picking up a cup of what looked like tea, bringing it up to her lips, her long tongue snaking out to lap some up from it before lowering the cup back down once more. "I could hear its presence the moment you docked. You really did get it, didn't you?"

"As agreed upon," he said. "Although we did have some competition for it."

"Let me guess," Quazlatix replied with a hint of amusement. "Renzitars."

"You suspected they might make a move to try and obtain the item?"

"I know they have had patrol ships watching the derelict for decades, hoping someone would take a run at salvaging it, but when the previous ships either crashed or found themselves unable to breach the hull, they lost interest, considering the item... unobtainable. But you... you are resourceful enough to have found a way into the vessel and to get what I sought."

There was something quite calming about the Tevinel's presence, as if she was relaxing him just by being around him, and he could tell it was just some sort of natural pheromones that she was giving off, and while he could feel it easing away some of his tension, he tapped into his Ashaka to help keep him awake and present in the moment. He hadn't known Tevinel could do that, although he supposed he hadn't seen one since he'd joined The Order, so perhaps they'd done so when he'd encountered them before and he simply hadn't been aware of it.

"And you have our payment?"

"We do, and we even brought it in gemstones, so you would not need to worry about suddenly having an influx of ectash in your accounts," she replied, going for another lap at her tea. "Shall we go and make the exchange now?"

"How did you see this going?"

"My staff will bring a large box to your ship, filled with gemstones," she said, matter of factly. "We will unload the box into your cargo hold, load the item into our box, close it back up and take it back to our ship, then both parties can go about their separate ways."

"Fine by me," Sketch said. "That work for you?"

Aliara nodded. "Five by, here, Captain."

"Then let us be on our way," Quazlatix said as one of the Phormial helped her to her feet. In motion, she looked even more elderly and frail than he'd initially anticipated, but there also seemed to be a strong, bright light behind her eyes, as if she was being reinvigorated by the idea of getting to see the item that clearly held strong value to her one more time.

"Can I ask what it is?" Sketch said to her.

"Salvation," she replied and then elaborated no further.

They headed over to Quazlatix's ship, a ghastly angular thing, covered in weapons and engines in nearly every direction, something that was designed for quick rotations and able to fire in nearly any direction without so much as a minor rotation. He realized he'd never seen a Tevinel ship before, and wondered if he was looking at one now. So, he figured he'd ask. "What kind of ship is that? Tevinel?"

Quazlatix gave a trilling sound almost like a giggle as two of her guards walked up the ramp and into the ship's exposed cargo bay. "Not hardly. Most Tevinel wouldn't be caught dead in something as style-less as this, but these days, my protection is paramount, so I travel in a Phormial ship, at my protectors' insistence."

"Oh," Sketch chuckled. "Yeah, okay, I can see that. I don't know that I'd ever seen so many cannons on one ship before. It almost looks like this old Earth creature called a porcupine."

"I'm unfamiliar with the creature of which you speak, but I shall have to look it up. I find great amusement in how our vessels parallel parts of nature." Moments later, the two Phormial returned carrying a large crate between them. "Shall we? The longer I have to wait for the item to be returned to me, the less time I can spend with it."

"Of course," he said as he started to lead them from her docking back over towards his, only a dozen or so gates down the line. It was only once they got to The Praeteritus's dock that Sketch began to get a little nervous. The three people outside of the gate had multiplied. A few dozen people had gathered just outside of the dock, most of them in clothing of yellow and blue, faded at best, with an older man leaning his back against the door to the dock. "Hey friend," Sketch said as he approached him. "I'm afraid you need to move."

"Not going to happen, sailor," the older man said with a soft and tender laugh, shaking his head. Most of the pilgrims looked human, but there were several others, including one P'Nox, wrinkled yet grizzled, as if hardened by decades of hard battle. "They have our icon in there and we aren't leaving without it."

"Oh yeah?" Sketch said with a grin, tilting his head. "How you know it's on there?"

"Can't you hear it singing, friend? It's calling to us. We get forced to wait too much longer and we're just going to storm the ship."

"You have proof of ownership?"

"Nobody owns the Icon, friend," the old man said, tapping a picture on his shirt that resembled the box that awaited in The Praeteritus's hold more than a little. "It belongs to the people."

"So say a lot of religious zealots when they want to avoid paying for things that they want."

The old man scowled at him. "You taking their side?"

"That's my ship in there, so yeah, you could say that I am," Sketch said as his hand slid into his pocket, moving to rest his skin against his Ashaka, bringing it from its dormant state to start warming up once more. "And I'm going to need you lot to clear out."

"And what if I say we're not going to?" the older man said as his colleagues stood up from their positions praying, starting to close ranks around Sketch, Aliara, Quazlatix and the four Phormials. Sketch knew that the Phormials could handle the twenty or so humans, as well as the other species who'd gathered without breaking a sweat, but it would call attention to them, and that was the last thing Sketch wanted. He decided to intervene and hoped it wouldn't bite him in the ass later.

He began pushing a low level of The Fear into each of the pilgrim minds gathered around them as he began to speak. "Then I would warn you that I've seen what a Phormial can do to a human standing in its way, and you're looking at not one but four of them," Sketch said, his voice carrying a subliminal level of menace along the undercurrent of his words, as well as The Fear starting to eat into all of them.

It would've been an easy enough thing to send them all panicking, fleeing at top speed away from the dock, but that would've also drawn harbor security immediately, and that was the sort of attention he did not want, so he let The Fear seep into each of them, and could see them all starting to wilt, their courage dwindling and retreating into the back, dark recesses of their mind.

"It's our icon, friend," the old man reiterated, trying to put up one last bit of struggle, although Sketch could see the will sapping away from him right before his eyes.

"And as such you'll be able to follow it anywhere it goes across the stars," Sketch said to them. "But not here. Not now. Your quest has ended for today. Go back to your homes, to your families, and start your quest anew again tomorrow. It'll be much better for your health, I assure you."

The Phormials were starting to get antsy, but the pilgrims were starting to disperse, packing up their things and headed back into the station once more, only the old man lingering behind, looking up at Sketch with a great sadness upon his face. "But... but it's here, now..."

"Those who've met their gods have rarely been pleased by the encounter, friend," Sketch said, placing a hand on the old man's shoulder, helping escort him out of the way of the door and back over towards the main station. "Start again tomorrow. You'll feel better for it."

The old man started to speak again, but Sketch gave him one last gasp of The Fear, and the old man's mouth closed before a word could form, and he started to stagger away, his stance no longer as stable as it had been moments ago.

"Quite a handy skill you have there," Lady Quazlatix said to him.

"You pay me for my discretion," he replied. "That comes with the service."

"Understood."

With the path clear, Sketch and Aliara opened the door and led Quazlatix and the Phormials into their berth, heading up the walkway and into their cargo hold. The Phormials brought their large crate over towards where the salvaged box was being kept, as Quazlatix quickly scurried over towards it, placing both of her paws on it as she let out a low, soft keening. "You did it. You found it. It's here again," she said with clear joy and anguish mixing in her voice, tears streaming down her furry cheeks, as Aliara moved a large open-topped crate over next to the Phormials' crate.

"As promised," Sketch said, as the Phormials popped the top off their crate, slowly moving to set the heavy lid off to one side, revealing the overflowing container full of gemstones. Charlotte, who'd been waiting next to the box inside of the hold, moved over to look at the gemstones, picking a few up at random as the Phormials began to scoop them from their crate into the ship's storage box. She held a small lens to her eye, holding the gems to the light one at a time. "They're all the real thing, boss," she said to Sketch. "The deal's good. There's even some candidates in here for the other thing."

"Of course it's good," Quazlatix said, stroking the box tenderly. "What need do we have for them anymore, now that we have the Ancestral Hold returned to us? None of that matters anymore. Everything in the box belongs to you."

It took some time for the Phormials to move all the gems one bucketload at a time from their crate into the ship's storage locker, but after several minutes, the crate was nearly empty, and two Phormials lifted it up, tipping it to pour the last few loose stones into the locker before setting the empty crate down, moving over to the salvaged box.

The two Phormials who'd been stuck on manual labor moved to pick up the smaller box with great ease, as Quazlatix kept a hand on it the entire time, as they moved it from where Sketch had placed it into the inside of the oversize box they'd brought the gemstones in. Once they had it there, they pulled some rigging ropes from the sides of the crate and tied it into place several times over, making sure it wouldn't give an inch. Only once it was clear that it wouldn't budge did the Tevinal take her paw off it, so that the Phormials could put the lid back on top of it.

"I must say, it has been a pleasure doing business with you, Captain Sketch," Quazlatix said to him with a smile. "You remind me quite a bit of my granddaughter - smart and impetuous. Unafraid to make the big decisions. I do hope our paths will cross again in the future." She offered him her paw, which he took and shook. "You have done my people a great service, and your name will be spoken of in high regard among all Tevinal people for centuries to come."

"Work contracted is work accomplished, Lady Quazlatix," he said, shaking her hand before letting go of it. "We've been paid for our labors, and that's enough."

The two Phormials picked up their crate as the other two closed ranks around the elderly Tevinal, as the five of them made their way towards the walkway, heading off The Praeteritus and into the dock. "May the payment suit the work done, Captain. Good fortune to you and your newly expanded crew, and thank you again. You have accomplished something long thought impossible."

"We aim to satisfy," he said with a laugh. "Travel well, Lady Quazlatix."

"And you also, child."

As soon as they were off the ship, Aliara moved to close the storage bay. "Wonder how she knew the crew was new."

"Don't know and don't much care," Sketch said. "That singing box is off my boat, and I already feel better. Helen, is Loz still out shopping?"

"Negative, Captain, but Imogen has another hour booked on her client," Helen said to him.

"Alright then - send this message to all hands. In ninety minutes, we are getting the fuck out of this station and back into the black. That'll give everyone time to finish up whatever it is they're working on. Heard?"

"Got it, Captain."