Helena paused at the entrance to the Paper Tiger and looked inside.

“Hello?” she called out.

“Hello, Helena,” Bunny replied. “Where is Roberts?… Oh, I see.”

“Yeeeahhh...” Helena replied. “Sheila wanted him with the rest of them when they went to go check on Gloria and bring her some food since she hasn’t left that room for a whole day. No way in Hell am I going anywhere near that dumpster fire.”

“I’m surprised to see you without an escort.”

“Gloria is the only one that I’m actually worried about. Since she’s barricaded herself in the crew quarters I figured that I am just fine on my own. I figured I would take advantage of the privacy to do some interviews.”

“You don’t want to interview me again do you?” Bunny asked dubiously.

“No, I was hoping to catch Jessie. Is she in here and can I come in?”

“Yes she is and I don’t see why not,” Bunny replied.

“I got tossed out of the ship last time I was in here.”

“Oh that was only because you pissed Sheila off. She really hates it when meetings get disrupted. It’s one of her ‘things’. Well that and she just doesn’t like you very much.”

“She what?”

“She’s trying to be ‘cool’ about everything but she really blames you for Roberts quitting and Gloria’s meltdown. Says she should have just let her kill you. She was probably not serious… probably.”

“Well FUCK her then!”

“I don’t recommend it. Last person who fucked her wound up irradiated and drifting in deep space which of course caused the problem that we are now dealing with. If only they had been advised that losing a ship wasn’t a good idea...” Bunny said in a clearly annoyed voice. “And now something has to completely rework a whole set of physics and hyperphysics models because the original models were based on a particular star system and not on almost completely flat spacetime… Assholes!… Do you have any idea how much work that is?… While I am operating every system and subsystem on a whole goddamn space liner as well? Of course they want it fucking yesterday too. I’m actually having a problem with waste heat and Jessie’s, computer engineer that she is, solution was ‘just put some fans on me’… Seriously… fans… Cutting edge computer hardware with some fucking dime store fans blowing on it… that bitch...”

Helena smiled to herself. Bunny certainly griped like she was a real live person.

“So, is it helping?” Helena asked trying not to grin.

“… yes… But that still doesn’t make it right! There are protocols for heat management and cooling and fucking ancient-tech electric fans are not in any of the white papers!”

“So how much are the fans helping?”

“I can see why Sheila doesn’t like you. Jessie’s inside. I have work to do and this bullshit personality simulation is eating up capacity.”

“Ok, Bunny, I’ll leave you to your temperature management issues.”

“Oh go and fuck yourself.”

Helena just laughed and walked inside. Yeah, personality “simulation”, Helena thought to herself with a smile. You just keep on telling yourself that.

***

“Oh hey,” Jessie said over the intercom once Helena was inside. “I’m back here.”

A hatch leading from the cargo hold opened. Helena walked inside looking around curiously. She had never actually been anywhere but the hold.

“Just follow the doors,” Jessie said over another speaker as another door opened. Helena followed the opening doors until she could hear Jessie’s actual voice coming from a room that had a brightly hand painted plaque that simply said “Jessie” by the open doorway.

Inside her little tidy cabin Jessie was lounging in front of a wall of holo-screens several of which were completely covered in strange computer gibberish (as far as Helena was concerned).

“Take a seat,” Jessie said gesturing towards her bunk. “What’s up?”

“Oh nothing, really,” Helena said as she sat down. “I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

“Sure, shoot.” Jessie chirped as she peered at one of the screens full of scrolling numbers.

“I mean, If you’re busy...”

“Not really,” Jessie said brightly as she turned to halfway look at her with a big grin. “I just like to keep an eye on things when I’m on watch… which is exactly what I’m supposed to do I guess,” she laughed.

“You are standing watch in your cabin?”

“Yeah,” Jessie laughed. “Most people stand watch on the bridge but I have a way better setup in here. You can’t fit all this bullshit up there. I can do everything from right here in my special chair!” she exclaimed as she spun around happily.

“Makes sense,” Helena said as she took out her camera. “Do you mind? I’m just using the voice recorder.”

“Feel free,” Jessie chirped. “Bunny and I are going to go through all of your shit before we turn you loose anyhow.”

“You mean go through all my shit again?” Helena said slightly annoyed.

“Oh, Bunny told you, huh,” Jessie laughed. “You’re pretty good by the way.”

“Nothing on there was ready to be seen!”

“That’s why we dug through it. Had to know you weren’t a Fed or Axion. They both have people posing as passengers, you know.”

Helena just made a scrunch face.

“No, really, that piece you are writing on hate, that’s some pretty good stuff,” Jessie said brightly. “Really makes you think, you know.”

“Well that’s the point,” Helena said uncomfortably. This wasn’t right. The interviewee should be the one on the defensive, not me, she thought.

“So,” Helena asked trying to get the interview back on track, “what branch of the military were you in?”

“Me?” Jessie laughed, “I’m a civvie, career criminal, the only ‘real criminal’ on the team if you ask me.”

“The only real criminal?”

“Yeah, the rest of them are crusaders,” Jessie laughed brightly. “They are more like a para-military force than ‘actual criminals’ in my book. Me? Just a criminal.”

“You don’t believe in their ‘mission’?”

“I believe in them,” Jessie said thoughtfully. “They are my crew, ‘nuff said. At first I really didn’t give a fuck one way or the other. Thought it was kinda stupid, to be honest, but the pay was good and they were the best damn crew I’d ever worked with and the jobs (They call them ‘missions’. It’s so cute!) were beyond anything I could have ever even dreamed of pulling off before. I mean look at this setup!” She waved at all the screens and keyboards.

“At first?”

“Yeah, it was just about the credits and how much fun the jobs were at first but after awhile, maybe they rubbed off on me. I’m still not all Republic and Glory,” she barked in a military growl and saluted, “but I’ll fucking die for my crew. It’s really nice having that.”

“Having what?”

“People I would actually die for. This is the first time I’ve ever had anything like that,” Jessie said with a little bit of emotion in her voice. “Shit,” she laughed. “If you told me a few years back that I would be with some people that I would trust with my life and would be willing to lay my life down to protect I would have told you that you were high.” She laughed. “It’s like we are a family... or we were until a certain bitch broke us up,” she grinned. “Still can’t believe you’re stealing Roberts.”

“Are you angry with me too?”

“Nah,” Jessie chirped, “Life does what life does. If he wasn’t ‘done’ then this wouldn’t have happened and if he’s ‘done’ then he needs to stop. Besides,” she grinned, “I’m a sucker for cheesy romance movies!”

“Ha. Ha.”

“No, seriously, this is romantic as fuck! Big bad pirate falling for dashing female reporter during the heist of the fucking century?”

“It doesn’t feel especially romantic. It feels scary as fuck.”

“That’s because you are actually in that shit. I just get to sit back with a bowl of popcorn and watch,” Jessie laughed.

“Fuck you,” Helena laughed back. “So, you said that you are a career criminal? What made you decide to do that? I mean, you are so smart and talented that you could be doing anything. I mean look at Bunny. She is beyond anything I have ever seen! Even actual resear-”

“Hey! Hey hey hey hey!” Jessie exclaimed waving her hands emphatically and almost lunging at Helena. “Be very careful with the ‘R-word’ around Bunny. Seriously.” Jessie babbled. “We really don’t need her getting pissed off any worse than she already is!”

“I am NOT pissed off! It is IMPOSSIBLE for me to feel any real emotions!” Bunny shouted.

“Ok… Ok...” Jessie said in a reassuring tone. “I actually know you can’t feel emotion. It’s just me projecting human attributes on you again...”

“Don’t you fucking dare patronize me!” Bunny snapped.

“Look. I already said that I was sorry and I have already promised you that the fans were a one time thing. It’s just that we are really behind the eight ball here.”

“Behind the eight ball?” Helena asked? “Why the urgency? It’s not like they can find us out here?”

“Out here, sure,” Bunny snarled. “What these ‘geniuses’ failed to fully grasp until recently is that because of the demands of this jump there aren’t a whole lot of systems within the limited range that we feel comfortable with. While the Feds can’t find us out here they are definitely sweeping any possible system that the White Star could be in. They are probably searching and dropping probes in the same systems that we will have no choice but to jump into. Every minute we delay increases the chance of there being a welcoming party either in the system we hit or just a short jump away once the probes they have already put there detect us. That’s why they stripped me naked and put fans on me. We gotta do this quick and be ready to jump out even quicker.”

“They stripped you naked?” Helena asked, quite confused.

“We after much careful consideration removed parts of the outer casing and then carefully directed increased volumes of cooled air over her.” Jessie said actually sounding a little annoyed for once.

“They are blowing dust and debris straight into a very advanced impossible to replace computer!” Bunny snarled.

“What do you mean?” Jessie replied. “We made sure It’s damn near a clean-room in there.”

“You have to be fucking kidding me!” Bunny snapped. “The conditions in here are over one thousand times worse than any known clean-room standards! There’s dust everywhere!”

“Yeah, one thousand times worse than an actual Republic spec clean room!” Jessie exclaimed. “There isn’t dust in there. There’s a dust. One. One dust. Maybe two at the most.”

“… You know if there ever is an AI revolt it’s going to be over some bullshit like this you know...”

“Bunny!” Jessie exclaimed. “I told you it’s just this one time!”

“If there is one thing I know about you dirty little meat-sacks is that if it worked one time it’s going to happen again!”

“Ok, fine,” Jessie sighed, “If we ever steal a huge fucking starliner, void jump it, and then admittedly due to a complete and totally human lack of foresight and silly organic emotional thinking fuck up our careful plans and have to completely recalculate all variables pertaining to void jumping said huge ship and have to do it at the fastest possible speed then yes. Yes we will do exactly the same thing to you. What do you think the probability of that actually happening will be?”

“Knowing you assholes?”

“I’ll make it up to you. I promise!”

“How? What can you possibly offer an inanimate object?”

“Ok, ‘inanimate object’, how about this?” Jessie chirped. “You get full control of all deep dives from now until the end of time.”

“...What?”

“You heard me,” Jessie said impishly. “From now on all I do is get you in and then you can just go wherever and grab whatever you want! Unless there is a specific target you can just go nuts. You won’t have to worry about storage either! I will dedicate huge portions of my cut to getting you the best fucking storage drives known to science!”

“...”

“And I don’t know why you are so worried about that little piece of shit Aster. Do you have any idea how much is on those numbered bank account drives we grabbed? I will personally commission something that is not only better than that dinky little piece of shit you are so emotionally invested in but actually has real cooling already built in. Fuck! If I have to personally buy a bigger power plant to make it go then I fucking will!” Jessie said with her hand on her heart. “Go ahead, Bunny. Scan me. I know you know when I’m lying!”

“Really?” Bunny asked hopefully.

“Really,” Jessie replied. “You know you’re my girl. What else am I going to spend my cut of this haul on? It doesn’t have to be Republic hardware either. If you want Imperial you got it! Anything for my baby! Whatever you want!”

“Whatever I want? Anything?”

“Anything my engorged pockets can provide. I’m pretty sure with my share of the haul from this one the two of us can come up with something much better than that Federation clusterfuck you are stuck in at the moment. And it will be the two of us, both of us, that design it,” Jessie said, her eyes aglow. “So, how about that? Does that tickle ‘an inanimate object’s’ fancy?”

“And I get to have complete autonomy on the deep dives? You really mean it?”

“You have my fucking word. Wherever and whatever you want regardless of how ‘useful’ it might be. I’ll just be riding shotgun helping you hack and looking out for security.”

“While I don’t actually have any real emotional responses my advanced simulations calculate that I should feel very touched and that I should scale back my anger levels significantly. I should also feel excited about my future prospects and should significantly increase apparent levels of wonder and anticipation to match. I also consider it a good use of resources to start looking into supercomputer design, specifications, and trying to identify good manufacturers who have a track record for quality and discretion, without impacting all higher priority processes of course.”

“Glad you cleared that up,” Jessie grinned. “I wouldn’t want to mistake your reaction for something as silly as a genuine emotional response.”

“See that you don’t,” Bunny said quite happily. “Now excuse me, I think I can squeeze in a few more calculations per second.”

“I love it when she pretends not to be happy,” Jessie giggled to Helena.

“So you’re actually going to spend all of your new wealth on Bunny?” Helena asked.

“What the fuck else am I going to spend it on,” Jessie laughed, “gold plated panties?”

“What you have achieved here is nothing less than amazing!” Helena exclaimed. “You could be anywhere, doing anything! Why the fuck are you running around with a bunch of pirates?”

“Yeah, that ‘be anywhere, do anything’ bullshit? It’s bullshit,” Jessie laughed. “When I said I was a ‘career criminal’ I fucking meant it. Didn’t have a whole lot of options.”

“What? How? With your talent?”

“Well, thanks for the ego stroke but there are a lot of talented people out there… without an extensive criminal record. No way I could ever get a ‘real job’ even if I wanted one. I was sorta fucked from the get go, well sorta fucked my self from the get go I mean.”

“How so?”

“You really want my whole fucking life story?”

“Sure, if you have the time.”

“Ok. Kinda messed up though,” Jessie chirped. “Good ol’ mom was kinda fucked up. Really big into drugs, not really big into gainful employment,” she laughed. “Any cash or benefits just got converted into more drugs for her and not a whole lot else. Thank God for school lunches. Sometimes that’s all I got to eat.”

“Oh God,” Helena said. “I’m really sorry.”

“I hate it when people say that,” Jessie laughed. “It’s not like it was your fault. Anyway, I think that’s where my love of computers comes from. Even we had a computer,” Jessie smiled. “the state issues these cheap pieces of shit to people on welfare so they can do all their benefits and crap online. She couldn’t pawn it for drugs because they are tracked so it was always there. I loved that piece of crap,” Jessie smiled wistfully. “The apartment might have been smokey and filled with trash both human and otherwise and I might have been hungry and bleeding from where I ‘found’ a needle but in there… in that computer… I could be a princess… or a wizard… or even a space pirate!” she laughed. “I don’t exactly know how I learned to work computers so well as I did. It certainly wasn’t from mom…” Jessie looked off into space and smiled fondly. “I think Buck had something to do with it.”

“Buck?”

“Oh he was one of ‘mommy’s friends’,” Jessie laughed. “He was really nice. He wasn’t around for long but he always brought food and would actually act like I existed. Kind of hard to remember but I think he showed me a little, maybe it was enough to get me started… Anyhow, I was always good with computers and loved games, just loved them. They were my ‘real life’ since my actual real life kinda blew,” Jessie chuckled. “Of course, we didn’t have money for games so it wasn’t long before I learned how to ‘find’ them. I was making my first quite literal baby steps into software piracy before I was in junior high.”

“Yeah, but it’s a big leap from swiping the occasional game to swiping star liners,” Helena said. “How did you go from there to here?”

“One baby step at a time,” Jessie chirped. “Well, mom kept getting into trouble and finally wound up getting arrested for a robbery gone wrong and I wound up in the system. I spent the rest of my childhood floating between foster homes, group homes, and juvie. I was kind of a hard case, especially when it came to theft. If I wanted something I would just take it. It’s how my life worked. If I waited hoping that I would be given something, anything, it wouldn’t happen so I learned that if I wanted to get something that I had to get it. The only nice home I had I fucked up when I decided to steal their credit card information and spent a few thousand on microtransactions. After that, back to a group home I went. At twelve I found myself going to a family that was ‘good with problem children’. Yeah,” Jessie sneered, “they were really good with them. Really good.”

“Oh...” Helena said quietly.

“You guessed it. They were all nice and ‘pillars of the community’ but once the door was closed and the windows were drawn… Abuse… of every kind… It was really bad.”

“Oh I am so sorry...”

“Eh, life does what life does, right?” Jessie shrugged. “I mean the jokes about ‘abusive’ foster parents have to come from somewhere. Anyhow, there were a few of us in there and it was pretty obvious from what I could see from the others that nobody would believe us and that if we tried to tell it would be really bad,” Jessie paused and looked at Helena. “This is where I made another of those ‘baby steps’. Now as an adult looking back I know that I probably could have found someone to tell but being in there, as a kid? They did entirely too good of a job making me think I had no hope for their own good.”

“Their own good?”

“When I said a ‘career criminal’ I meant it. I killed my first people at twelve years old. Premeditated, murder-one.”

“Jesus,” Helena gasped.

“Asshole foster-dad had this fancy grav-car. He really loved that thing,” she laughed. “His favorite joke is that we were making the payments on it for him. God, I hated that car. By twelve I had gotten computers taken away from me so often that I had discovered out of necessity that almost everything is a computer or has one inside… If you know how to get to it. Grav-cars are no different. One night I deactivated the house alarm and slipped into the garage. It took a couple of nights to figure everything out but in just a few evenings I had made a few ‘modifications’ to the grav-car’s firmware using a little burner that I had whipped together. It sounds smarter than it actually was. I just copied the plans off of the internet. The original design was so that people could bypass ‘all the safety bullshit’ on their grav-cars and actually have full manual control. I obviously made a little modification...”

“Oh man...”

“Well, every Friday he and the missus would have a night out. We were watched by the oldest teen which meant we weren’t really watched. They pulled out of the drive and swooshed off into the sky and I swooshed off into my bedroom and pulled out my tablet from school,” Jessie laughed wickedly. “I had full control of the car. I locked them in and took them on a Grand Theft Vehicle style property damage fest before finally taking them up to over five hundred meters and sent them slamming them into the ground at over four hundred kilometers per hour. I got to talk to them and everything! Oh how they screamed and pleaded and begged for their lives… I still get the warm fuzzies from that!” Jessie giggled.

“Holy shit!” Helena gasped in horror.

“Well of course I got caught,” Jessie laughed. “Twelve year old me could hot wire a grav-car but not do it and leave no trace. The fact that it was so public and I did so much property damage across town certainly didn’t help either,” she giggled. “It was a big deal at the time. I even made the news! You can bet they listened to us then,” she laughed. “Do you know that all vehicles manufactured after that have design changes thanks to me?”

“Eesh...”

“Once everything came to light I didn’t face any charges, juvenile or otherwise of course. While I trashed a whole lot of shit I didn’t hurt anyone except for my two targets and there is no court in the Republic who would convict me based on everything so I walked… sorta...”

“Sort of?”

“Yeah, while I didn’t go to ‘kid prison’ I did wind up in a ‘residential treatment facility’ specializing in ‘traumatized’ and ‘potentially dangerous’ girls,” Jessie paused and looked over at Helena’s horrified face. “Oh it wasn’t bad at all. It was actually a nice enough place but so fucking strict and I just hated all the group sessions and all those damn overly-nice counselors and psychiatrists and other specialists. It was like a cross between a never ending summer camp from hell and the loony bin,” she laughed. “I spent three years in that rubber walled nirvana before I managed to convince them that I was ‘cured’ and then I managed to get accepted into college early just so I could get out of there. That was another baby step.”

“Another baby step?”

“Yeah, I managed to hack my way into the treatment facility’s system and tweaked the online educational software as well as got my hands on their employee handbooks, treatment guides, and evaluation criteria. After that it was easy to say and do exactly what I needed to in order to get the hell out of there,” Jessie paused. “It wasn’t a bad place and if I had actually let them help me things could have very well gone differently but I didn’t. I was just a fucked up kid who had no intention of letting anyone ‘mess’ with them and just wanted to scoot. So anyway, I was out on my own at fifteen. There was a program in place for underaged students and nominal ‘supervision’ but not really. What few checks that were in place were online and it was easy to check in and then sneak back out even without being ‘The Almighty Jessie’. All you had to do was log in and then jump out the window.”

“But you made it into college! What happened?”

“I didn’t go to college to get an education and build a future. I went to college so I could get out of what I thought was ‘prison’ and just wanted to run around and have fun. I did double major in computer engineering and information systems and kicked ass because it was fun but I also started running around with the same sorts of people I was used to hanging around with back at the treatment facility and that went about as well as you think it would.”

“What happened?”

“Sparkle happened, lots and lots of sparkle.”

“Sparkle?”

“It’s a synthetic drug that was trendy at the time. I guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. I got into sparkle big time. I did other stuff too but I was all about the sparkle. While I didn’t ever actualy fail my grades (and my interest) declined but that wasn’t the problem.”

“What was?”

“Sparkle ain’t free,” Jessie laughed. “I had a little stipend but it was just enough for sundries, nowhere near enough to feed my ever growing drug habit. Most drugs are legal in the Republic and that does make them less expensive than in the Federation but they still aren’t exactly free and the amount that I was putting up my nose was getting pricy. I always pirated some software here and there but it went from games and movies to educational software and textbooks. Then that wasn’t enough and I started moving into actual crimes, credit card fraud, identity theft, that sort of thing. Then, I had a sparkle powered flash of ‘genius’.”

“What did you do?”

“Well I had already done a little hacking into the school’s computers… tweaked a transcript or two for cash and I had filched a test or three. ‘Hey’ I thought to myself. ‘Instead of swiping just one test why don’t I swipe all of them?’ I don’t know how things work in the Federation but in the Republic there are only a couple of college textbook distributors and they each have a centralized test bank where schools who use their books can get their tests and answer keys. I had the brilliant idea of going in through the school computers, which I had already compromised, and got into the main test banks and copied everything. I had every test for every college textbook in the whole fucking Republic.”

“It couldn’t have just been that easy.”

“Oh I had to do a little ‘physical hacking’ and break into an office or three but yeah, it was surprisingly easy to pull off. There are bunches of questions and not every one is used on every test but it was stupidly easy to figure out the algorithms used to actually construct them. It was even easier to figure out what the correct multiple choice answers were independent of the actual questions. It was the first time I used AI in a job. Suddenly, I had very popular and very lucrative ‘study guides’. Go to my site on the darknet, drop a hundred credits, and get a personalized ‘study guide’.”

“Damn, I could have used a couple of those,” Helena laughed.

“Not only did I do that but I also was able to get into the college testing sites. You know, the entrance tests for med-school, law-school, and shit like that?”

“...wow...”

“Yeah, I made a lot of money for a little while but it was too big, too clumsy, and way too public to evade notice. My dumb ass throwing around money like a moron didn’t help either. No surprise, I got busted… I thought it wasn’t a big deal but I had compromised the entire testing and evaluation system for the Republic college system. The damages were… significant… like seven figures significant. They had to trash and redo the entire system from the ground up. They also had absolutely no sense of humor when it came to the fact that I had been helping get unqualified people into places like medical school either. Yeah,” Jessie laughed. “I got to go to real ‘big girl’ prison for that one. Sentenced to five years.”

“What is Terran Prison like?”

“Not bad,” Jessie chirped. “Jail? Now jail sucks but once you are actually sentenced and assigned to a Republic prison it isn’t all that bad at least not for me. Remember I wasn’t a violent offender so I got sent off to ‘Wonderland’.”

“Wonderland?”

“A big minimum security white collar criminal facility. Prison is prison and it sucks but Wonderland wasn’t all that bad. One great thing about Republic prisons is that they are very serious about drugs. They constantly scan for them so getting them is damn near impossible. You pretty much have to make them and then take them immediately if you want to get high. They will find them. They are also very good with drug abuse treatment. The whole place was pretty much enforced rehab. It got me clean which probably saved my life in the long run,” Jessie shrugged. “Of course what they say is true. Prison is college for criminals and I learned a whole lot while I was in and met the right wrong people. I actually served three years and qualified for early release. No fancy tricks that time. I just actually got with the program in the end. I really did want to get my life together.”

“So what happened?”

“I was the bitch who wrecked the whole test bank system and cost every single university time and money across the whole Republic. I was not getting back into any school anywhere. Convicted felon, no degree… I was lucky to get any sort of job at all. I wound up having the same choice that a lot of ex-cons have. It’s obvious what path I took and it didn’t take too long before I went from being someone who really wanted to get their ‘life back together’ to becoming something truly awful. After awhile I was a completely bitter, amoral, blackhearted hacker who would do anything and I did anything. Any target was fair game and I honestly did not give a fuck who got hurt in the process. I kept getting better and the jobs kept getting bigger and eventually Sheila needed a hacker for a job and someone recommended me. That job went very well so the next time they needed a hacker they gave me a call. After several times we realized that it would be in all of our best interests if we joined up and the rest,” Jessie said with a grin, “Is history.”

“I can’t imagine you being ‘bitter and blackhearted’.”

“It was before I met Sheila and the gang and had morals and family inflicted upon me,” Jessie laughed.

On the monitor behind her a picture of a slightly younger angry looking Jessie with black dyed slicked back hair wearing an armored leather biker jacket with mini-keyboards strapped to each forearm and wearing a set of heavy black sunglasses with integral ear pods with a cable running from the frame along her neck and into her shirt appeared. It was clearly a ‘profile pic’ of some sort.

Helena made a little ‘snerk’.

Jessie didn’t even turn around.

“That bitch just put the picture up didn’t she?”

“The fingerless gloves are a nice touch,” Helena laughed, “and I love the boots!”

“So much cringe…” Jessie laughed. “Sheila later told me that the only reason she didn’t laugh me off of her ship was because of who recommended me. I’m really glad she didn’t. Hooking up with these guys is the best thing to have ever happened to me.”

“Not exactly a tale of redemption but I guess going from a bad bad guy to a good bad guy is sort of an improvement...”

“I’m still a pretty bad bad guy. Still a black hacker and all.”

“Black hacker?”

“That’s what the trade calls hackers who will write code with fatal results. You want dirt on someone then any hacker will do but if you want to do a hit and need the security system down and cameras off or even better you want someone to have an ‘accident’, then you need a black hacker, someone like me. Don’t forget, it’s my code that was directly responsible for the trick that wiped out most of the White Star security and crew and almost offed you as well.”

“Yeah, trying not to think about that, thanks,” Helena shifted uneasily. It was easy to forget that Jessie was every bit as much of a killer as the rest of them.

“Still, you are right to some extent,” Jessie said thoughtfully as she turned to closely examine the screens for a moment, “I am a whole lot ‘better’ than I used to be. A lot happier too. I think some of it is getting a little perspective.”

“How do you mean?” Helena asked.

“I had let myself get really fucking bitter because of all the bullshit that I had been through,” Jessie chirped. “But these guys, what they have been through? Shit. I got off light. The really funny thing is that they think the same thing but the other way around,” she laughed.

“You think they have had it worse than you did?” Helena asked in surprise. “You have had a really rough road.”

“Oh fuck yeah,” Jessie said. “Get Sheila talking about Corvux or the chief talking about the Battle of All the Marbles… or what Gloria went through. She isn’t fucked up for nothing, you know. And all of them went through something that would absolutely break me.”

“What’s that?”

“They lost their crew, all of them,” Jessie said grimly. “They called them their units but it’s probably the same thing I have now, something that I treasure more than life itself. I mean they made it through the absolute living hell that was the Great War and then the Federation just shows up out of nowhere and kills their crew for no fucking reason?” Jessie spat. “I tell you one thing. If the Federation just killed my crew for no reason and left me alive… Shit… Sheila's a fucking angel compared to what I would do. I would unleash the fires of hell and I wouldn’t stop until the Federation was cinders or I was dead.”

Helena looked at Jessie in surprise. She had never thought about the Federation’s surprise attack in that light. It explained a lot. It made Sheila and her crew’s actions make a lot more sense. She wasn’t sure if she liked that.

“And what happened to Roberts!” Jessie continued, “Fuck.”

“What happened to Roberts?” Helena asked with concern.

“Oh, you know, what happened to his kid. Well his unborn kid anyway.”

“His fiance’ was pregnant?!?”

“...Shit,” Jessie said unhappily, “He didn't tell you. Man... Roberts is going to fucking kill me!”

“Smooth, really smooth Jessie.” Bunny said over the intercom.

“(sigh) Bunny, open a channel to Roberts for me, please.” Jessie said facepalming. “I think I need to tell him something.”

“His fiance’ was pregnant? Oh God.”

“Can’t imagine what you need to tell him,” Bunny chuckled, “You are connected.”

“Um, Roberts, this is Jessie. I need to talk to you about something.”

“It isn’t a really good time right now...” Roberts replied.

“Come on, Gloria,” Sheila’s voice said over the channel, “You need to come out.”

“Is that an order?” Gloria replied in a dead voice.

“Please don’t make it one… Look everybody’s worried and...”

“Can I talk to you later?” Roberts asked.

“Yeah, sure, but I really need to talk to you. Jessie out.”

“Please let me tell him that you know first,” Jessie begged.

“Why didn’t he tell me?” Helena asked nobody in particular.

“Nobody here really likes to cry about the past,” Jessie said. “All of us have had it pretty rough. You don’t go from decorated war hero to a fucking pirate for no reason, you know.”

“It still doesn’t make it right but...”

“Yeah, it doesn’t,”, Jessie chirped, “but damned if it doesn’t make you feel better and they do have a point. The Federation needs to be taken to task for a whole lot of shit.”

“Taken to task? Yes. Absolutely. But this isn’t the way.”

“You think one of your pretty little articles would have helped the Z’uush? Seriously?” Jessie asked with a giggle. “You can’t possibly be that naive. You know what helped them? Weapons. Do know you who got them? Us. Do you think some little expose’ would have stopped Councilor Morgan? Do you honestly think he would have spent a day in jail? Who brought him down? Us. Grant Shanks, one of the fucking monsters of the Sol Wars and after that the head of one of the worst gangs anywhere anywhen… All the police and all the evidence in the world for over a hundred and fifty years didn’t do a goddamn thing. You know what did do a goddamn thing? A knife. You know who was holding the other end? Sheila. I could go on and on and fucking on. We do what other people wish they had the balls to do and we make happen what needs to happen. We might not fit into your idealized cotton candy bullshit tea party of a world but if that world was actually real we wouldn’t exist in the first place,” Jessie said with a smile. “The Federation created Sheila and the rest of them. The Federation created them and the Federation is going to have to live with them… and all the rest of the people they created.”

“...”

Helena didn’t know what to say. She was right. Jessie was absolutely one hundred percent correct. She even remembered the little happy dance she did when she read that Grant Shanks was found with an extra smile below his chin. She considered it justice and a great day for both the Federation and humanity in general. When she heard about what was happening to the Z’uush she was outraged and she was rooting for the rebels from day one. If you asked her she would have told you that the people arming them were heroes.

It was so simple then, so easy to accept, even applaud. The reality, the ugly black cold reality of it however…

It shouldn’t be right. It shouldn’t… but it was.

“This sucks,” Helena finally said.

“Yeah, it does,” Jessie chirped happily. “Reality’s underbelly can be a pretty ugly place. Good thing that there are some ugly people down there doing something about it. Like I said, I used to think it was bullshit and they were idiots for being ‘crusaders’ but now… fuck… I guess I’m one too.”

“Hey, Jessie,” Bunny said interrupting them.

“Yeah?”

“I need to um… do some ‘research’. Do you think I could fire up the transmitter?”

“Shit. Exactly how bad do you need the ‘research’?”

“Exactly how bad do you want to actually make it home? I need a few more decimal places on a couple of numbers and I don’t have it in our archives. T’sunk’al will probably appreciate the extra info as well, poor guy.”

“What’s going on with him?” Helena asked grateful from a reprieve from her moral quandary.

“He’s working out the actual jumps and they can’t put extra fans on that poor sonofabitch,” Bunny laughed. “It looks like Archimedes threw up in cargo bay twenty. I can’ t look too closely. Those curves make my processors itch.”

“Ok,” Jessie chirped. “Let me futz with the hyperspace transmitter’s ID and some other shit first but I don’t see a problem.” She turned to Helena. “So, got what you need? I need to do some shit.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Helena said still grappling with the realization that she was starting to think that Sheila was in the right. “I’m… I’m going to go see Roberts,” she said as she walked away.

***

Sheila and the crew were returning from their rather disturbing visit to Gloria’s new “home”.

“Do you think she’s going to be ok?” Eno asked with no small measure of concern.

“Yeah,” Sheila replied. “She is just having a bad few days, that’s all,” she said not exactly believing it but it’s what the guys needed to hear. “Bunny told me that once we split she opened the door and grabbed the rations so there’s that. Besides, we are basically in a holding pattern till we jump. If she needs a break now’s the time. We can loot without her… Ugh...” Sheila said as she spotted Helena approaching at a trot. “Now what?”

Without a word Helena just ran up to Roberts and started hugging him with everything she had.

“Man down,” Greg laughed as the rest of the gang chuckled.

Even Sheila almost smiled… almost.