‘Did it really look that bad?’ I mentally asked Nurse as I hovered in the air, feeling rather comical in my failed attempt to do something that I thought would be dramatic. Usually, when someone released an invulnerable swarm, be it a hero or a villain, there always seemed to be a dramatic effect that associated itself with the action.

“Well… from a hive dominance point of view the deployment of the swarm in all directions was flawless.” Nurse began. “But drawing from your memories… sadly it did appear as though you may have soiled yourself in public.” She said with a tone of regret in her voice. “At least we weren’t anywhere near the common area though. I am pretty sure that the security and news cameras… never mind, a clip of what you did is now being played right over there.” She said as my eyes were drawn to a spot on the wall that I had thought was just graffiti a moment earlier.

Nope, it had just been an advertisement. Now it was a short clip set on repeat of me rising up into the air and seemingly having an expulsion of gas from all over my suit. Gas that rapidly dissipated as my swarm moved too fast to be tracked by the station's technology. At least I had that going for me. The words written in Yelvos bold letters around the clip made it seem as if it was a fart joke. “Bleeh bleeeh!” Or something as such. I think it translated to “Pew pew!” in English. Either that or "Poo poo."

‘Maybe next time I will discharge my photon emitters like I used with Ess for dramatic effect.’ I mused as I slowly lowered myself to sit back down on the bean bag cart with J and M.

“Look, I know from your memories that what people think about you is a cultural chain or stumbling block but you need to see things as they really are. You essentially just took over a remote gas station on the backend of forever. And yes… to all appearances you just farted in said station but so what?. Do you really want to go around telling everyone that you just went above their imagined privacy and liberties? To tell them that you let loose a force that could destroy their station and all of their ships in minutes? No, I think not. Best to just let everyone go about their daily lives while we find Meditati and get out of here.” She said.

I stewed on that for a little bit and found that she was actually quite spot on in her assessment. It was rather surprising to me what influences I let guide me. Having another voice to remind me what wasn’t important was a good thing to have. Even if that voice was a little bit psychotic.

“Your suit has some wonderful odorless excretion filtration and flight capabilities. Would you be interested in marketing some of its capabilities? Our suits fly as well, but we don’t do it unless we are in the vacuum of space. The smell can put a Harvex’s hormonal secretions to shame.” Jjjjimpvv sent, breaking me out of my musings.

I was sitting on a literal goldmine of technology and capabilities. Something to think about later, I suppose.

“I will think on it.” I sent in a reply which seemed to please both J and M greatly for some reason.

Offhand I began to wonder why Mmmmimpvv never offered to communicate with me and chose to remain the silent backseat driver.

“I am getting some interesting chatter through their feeds.” Nurse said after a little while of just riding around aimlessly. I was busy watching a 3D scan being built of the station by my rapidly expanding swarm and was just about to use my Prime Speed Control key to take a quick tour of the places that I hadn’t been able to see when Nurse interrupted me.

“Hmmm? Like what?” I asked as Jjjjimpvv took an especially hard turn to avoid a crawling platform carrying an unknown amount of what I recognized as the black sticklike species known as Skii from the game. I say an unknown amount because there didn’t seem to exist a seating arrangement or sense of personal space between the occupants on the platform. I couldn’t have counted their heads if I tried. The Skii’s cart sported an occasional dim flash of white light that reminded me of a weak camera flash. Was that how they were seeing? Surely they used brighter lights to see like the Leva? Out of curiosity, I decided to check the wavelengths of light that the Skii platform was broadcasting and was astonished when I found that it was practically bathing the surrounding area in far-infrared light. Any further into that wavelength and they would be mildly microwaving the surrounding area.

“Well, as odd as it may seem, this station has an undercurrent of crime.” She started to say as I mentally snorted. “Yes, yes, you already noticed this. The thing is, some crime head is actually accusing the head of security publicly for arresting and detaining her men without warning. As if that was a thing here.” Nurse said as she showed me snippets of the information.

“What a strange place,” I muttered as I went back to looking around the station in my helm while pretending, for J and M, to be looking around at the piles of different colors of ores stacked neatly in the area that we were visiting. In this area, someone was selling pure gold cubes for 1 momp per pallet. The cubes were at least double the size of the bricks of gold that I had seen on crime shows on TV. A pallet was pretty sizable too and at $1000 dollars per Yelvos momp, I could only begin to imagine how wealthy just one pallet would make me back on earth.

“Yeah, depending on the exchange rate and from your memories, one pallet would set you up for life.” Nurse said offhand as she also noticed the riches around us. “But I wager, just like you have guessed as well, that the three Leva nest billets that you have inside your backpack far outvalue those piles of gold, at least here anyway.”

I figured as much too.

---

Somewhere in the depths of the station.

Gilvesh had been mildly impressed as she watched the feeds of the alien Human being subjected to lethal amounts of energy in various forms. She had placed her money on the diminutive being only lasting 5 to 10 minutes after the fact once the radiation and sonics caused its internal organs to fail and shut down. Sadly none of this happened as she kept glancing at her monitors while the alien left the decontamination tunnel and joined his station allocated protection team.

A common pairing of Yelvos mind mates.

Yelvos were not known to be very good guards, which was one reason why crime syndicates liked to set up shops within their stations and planets. They just innately lacked certain aspects of common sense and tended to be on the lazy side when it came to personal self-improvement. Bargaining and deal cutting tended to be ingrained in a Yelvos’s DNA from birth and they also tended to be easily corruptible by anyone who offered them shinies in exchange for their blind eye. Or rather blind nose sensors.

One thing that she did notice, and which made her sit up in excitement was the fact that the alien had not bothered to take a security monitor key from the arrival tunnel. This would have made Gilvesh’s plans just a little more complicated, seeing that station spacecraft storage passwords and keys were the highest forms of security known around the cosmos. This was why she had tried to get the alien killed or injured by “malfunctioning equipment”. It would have given her retrieval team ample time to get in and get out while the alien was being delivered to the hospital and getting treated, or pronounced dead.

“Hard to kill,” Gilvesh noted on a terminal that she rarely used to document the strengths and weaknesses of alien species her kind encountered. The terminal was rarely used simply due to the fact that most species had already been cataloged and weaknesses documented. She had bought her list from the Folz, a race of blob and spike-like beings who took pride in learning the worst way to exterminate their rivals. The Folz also liked to purchase new information as well. To the Folz, a race that seemed to thrive on existing in the most torturous of situations, both environmental and social, lived off of suffering.

Gilvesh understood it to be like drama or romance to them, they just craved suffering as a whole.

Feeling the chill that she normally did when she thought of the Folz, Gilvesh mentally pushed the thoughts to the back of her brains and went back to directing her teams.

Team one was to rush the human’s cargo hold while team two was to keep tabs on the alien’s location and activities. Team three was in place to eliminate team one the moment that they secured the cargo. Yes, Gilvesh knew that she would be losing valuable resources by killing her own people but the payout, in this case, negated the loss.

Gilvesh ran her slick touchpads over her brow as her minds worked the angles set before her.

Team one was composed of free criminal beings who specialized in stealing from mining operations around the station. They were honest, for the most part, as long as she kept their payouts high enough and made sure that she had a snitch on their crew. She had removed the snitch team member for this outing, she wouldn't require a reliable snitch to know what they would do when they saw what the human claimed to have.

Once team one saw the prize they would each lose whatever loyalty they had working for Gilvesh and simply choose to secure as much of the coveted material between themselves as possible before making their escape.

Team three was one of her special… illegal teams. Illegal because they were killers without a choice, slave assassins. She had their vital organs secured with explosives to keep them in line.

“Team one, move in and strip the designated ship of any valuable cargo.” Gilvesh sent as she watched the alien riding away on a Yelvos carry pallet. The further the trio drove through the station and increased the time that it would take for them to return, the more she knew that her operation would be a clean success.

“Team two, follow the mark.”

“Team three, get into position. If anyone transmits, there won't be a warning.” She said, knowing that the messages would be received as they were intended.

---

Mingllll and Mangjjjj stepped into the secured receiving dock first and led the way for the rest of their team. The Yelvos paired mind mates had one thing in common, they loved the smell of wealth that was left unattended.

“Strange, this ship has no smell.” Mangjjjj sent to Mingllll as they motioned for the other three members of their crew to follow and canvas the alien’s ship. A thin Skii whose name was “Vis-L4” was in charge of seeking out any traps or devices that used light or radio waves. It was a common thing to hire different races to get jobs done. Natural ability far outweighed inexperienced unsentient devices that lacked common sense. Yes, Vis-L4 carried several pieces of gear but they mostly served as testing and cutting implements when they needed to get into small areas.

In addition to tools each member of the crew carried deadly weapons of their choice for when the nature of the job required someone else to disappear.

The other two members were none other than the cosmos designated beasts of burden, the Herv. At least that is how xenophobic and unsympathetic species liked to think of them. With muscles that naturally rivaled the strongest beings, the Herv were welcome everywhere. These two happened to not have been given any intelligence nectar when they were pups so they only lived to serve, not having any free will or thoughts of their own besides eating and sleeping.

They were aptly named Ger and Veerm after two characters from a popular Yelvos children’s show for their inability to do anything without direction.

Mingllll walked around the ship and sent Mangjjjj instructions to guide the Herv with while Mangjjjj sent its observations being received from Vis-L4.

The bay’s decontamination bots had already been removed and everything was still within the bay.

“No radio, visible, or off wavelengths detected.” Came the seventh sending from Vis-L4 as it moved jerkily around the massive ship before returning to the lowered ramp at the front. Between reading its instruments and attempting to spot lines of light that were normally associated with intrusion detection systems the Skii’s movement resembled a spasmatic stick bug.

“Why do we always have to work with Vis-L4 again?” Mangjjjj questioned its pair for the thousandth time as Mingllll mentally ticked another counter over that it had been keeping.

“Because it keeps us out of the pit.” was the forever reply.

With utmost caution and awareness that they had to be as quick in retrieving the contents as possible, they all made their way up into the cargo hold of the ship. Each member took out their weapons in anticipation as they guided Ger and Veerm to take lead.

While Ger and Veerm may have been low on intelligence tree they both knew this part of the show, having already been instructed many times to kill crew members and mining workers who just happened to show up without warning. Long claws extended from their large hands as they began bobbing their snub-like heads in search of movement that would indicate an enemy.

For brief moments the Herv’s eyes took on an animalistic intensity as they searched the strange mock-up of a bay that Kevin had created. It wasn’t fear or rage that guided them, simply Herv instinct to kill prey for possible food.

Ger and Veerm could read basic Herv so they noted the sign in their language that read “Beware of Leva”. Sadly neither of them knew what a Leva was.

The other members of the team did not possess colorized sight and could not see what Kevin had inscribed in their languages across the room that Ess was resting in. This is why they missed the warning completely. Had Kevin used different materials with different scents or properties to reflect wavelengths of light for a Skii they would have been forewarned.

The cargo hold was relatively straightforward and happened to be laid out in such a way as to provide little or no hiding places from the Skii who began to shine its searchlights around as well.

“Sealed large room to the left at the back of the bay,” Vis-L4 noted as it moved further inside the bay. With quick and fluid steps, like a hunting praying mantis, Vis-L4 slank over to the door and attempted to open it with weapons held at ready.

“Locked and sealed.” Came its reply as it played its head around the cr door frame, trying to detect a seam to slide a flap through to allow it to see within the room.

“Odd.” Was all it said when it found no such seam.

“Oh, my void.” Mingllll sent to Mangjjjj as the duo members of the team spotted and identified the contents of the priceless billet shelves sitting on the right side of the cargo hold first.

“Open trade communications with Vis-L4 and secure us a viable deal.” Mangjjjj sent to Mingllll as Vis-L4 rotated in place and began to slowly approach the dark Leva billets. It seemed as if the Skii was not believing what it was seeing.

“Great wealth awaits us or a quick death.” Vis-L4 sent to Mingllll as the stick bug alien tallied up the number of billets vs how much they were valued at on the dark market.

“Not unless we can bring death to them first,” Mingllll replied. Something that the three thieves all agreed on as they quickly negotiated a split and began directing the Herv to begin working.

The Herv could feel the excitement in the air from the other aliens and knew that something was afoot in the details. They just lacked the intellect to determine what the source of the excitement was as they set about noisily attempting to pry the billets free, their claws squealing against the depleted hard Leva nest material. The cr shelving was perfectly smooth and constantly confounded the simple minds of the Herv as they battled relentlessly to cut the shelving away.

Neither the Yelvos nor the Skii possessed ears to hear the racket that their laborers were creating. The Herv could hear, they just thought nothing of it, it was just noise.

None of the thieves knew whose sleep might be disturbed by the loud noise.

---