Photographs, Memories, and Spies

“Reminder to all students in Boswell Dorm: nature belongs outside. Please do not bring in any dirt, bugs/animals, water from outside, large rocks, or non-potted plants. Let’s keep the rooms clean and free of pests for everyone who lives here. Thank you!”

-from a note given to all students in Yan and Sylva’s dorm room during their second year at the Academy

Sylva and Iri came aboard as paying passengers. They wouldn't be able to stay that way forever; their funds would run out soon enough, but it was a start. Sylva couldn't convince herself to try her doctor persona again quite yet, and it was a moot point because the Bellringer wasn’t looking for a doctor anyway. They already had a capable one. But the disguise was useful in giving them an excuse to travel around on a ship without a set destination in mind. As a doctor in search of work, Sylva had plenty of reason to simply scope out which stations and ships were in need of her. And Evie (Iri) had plenty of reason to scope out suitable husbands. Based on the way that the man processing them onto the Bellringer had laughed, that was apparently a completely normal thing, but usually it wasn't performed on a 'pleasure cruise' as he called it. He looked Iri over with an appraising eye and offered to find her suitable work.

Iri asked if it was flying dogfighters, and at the way he pursed his lips she laughed at him and said she would find her own work, thank you very much.

Sylva didn’t want to think about what type of work that slimy man had in mind. At best it was kitchen duty. For all that Sylva hated how short she was while surrounded by spacers (and the weirdly tall non-spacer Iri), it did have the advantage of no one giving her a second glance. Grounders were not typically considered the best match, and she was receiving even less attention aboard the Bellringer than she had aboard the Warrior II and the Iron Dreams. On those ships, at least, she had a reason for people to pay attention to her. Here, she was (thankfully) a complete nobody.

The Bellringer was not a beautiful ship. They had glimpsed the outside of it through the windows as they transferred onto it, and, though all ships (being made of mined out rocks) tended to be a little lumpy, this one had a massive gouge in its side that looked beyond fixing. Had Yan really done that? Sylva found it hard to believe.

The hallways were also weirdly empty. It was a ghost ship, and Sylva never saw anyone, except for when she passed the busy areas where people worked, or ate in the dining area. Even then, it was sparse. The ship seemed to be built for many more people than it held. There was a lurking, empty echo around every corner, and a long list of names painted in red along the wall in front of the chapel area. Though Sylva didn't go to the chapel (she was not a fan of the way that pirates did faith, and she didn't feel welcome), she passed by it quite often.

When she was alone with Iri in their little, shared room, she asked about it. They didn't have separate rooms because this was cheaper.

"You were there, right?" she asked.

"What?" Iri was fiddling with something, a tiny little microphone. She was planning to bug the ship, as much as possible.

"When Yan fought this ship?"

"Oh. Yeah. I was with her on the shuttle."

"Did she do that? To the outside?"

Iri stuck her tongue out slightly as she attempted to connect a miniscule wire to the end of the microphone without breaking it. "That chunk? No."

Sylva didn't know how to continue the conversation. She desperately wanted to know what had actually transpired, but she was also afraid of what she would learn.

"What did that?" Sylva asked.

"The other ship's weapons. Yan couldn't use the power directly on the ship itself…" Iri trailed off, the as the wire went into its slot successfully she exclaimed, "Ha!"

"Oh. What did she do, then?"

"Sylva." Iri looked up at her, tone harsh. "Don't be a fucking idiot."

"What?"

"There's a reason she didn't describe it in excruciating detail," Iri said.

"I want to know, though." For all Iri's cautioning, Sylva’s curiosity couldn’t be turned away.

"She killed like thirty people, Sylva. Her and Sid." Iri’s face was twisted, and her voice was clipped. Sylva knew it was bad, but Iri had just been a bystander, right?

"How?"

"Fucking God, Sylva. It wasn't pleasant for me, either!" Iri almost slammed down the pliers she was holding.

"Sorry. Sorry." Sylva turned away and stopped asking. Iri hunched back over the desk and went back to working on her little sets of microphones.

After a minute or so, Sylva became aware of the sound of Iri sniffling, and turned back around. Iri had her head on her hand, and there were a couple tears that had dripped down to moisten the plastic surface of the desk. Sylva sat back up on the bed and leaned forward, putting her hand on Iri's strong back. She could feel the rippling muscles beneath the fabric of her jumpsuit. Iri twitched forward a little bit at the touch, but didn't recoil. Since she wasn't yelling at her again, Sylva rubbed Iri's back gently.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Sylva asked. "You don't have to, I just… If you think it would help."

Iri choked on a half laugh and didn't speak for another minute. Sylva just kept rubbing her back.

"She hit them with a rock, if you have to know. I don't think she looked too closely, but I could see it happen. I think… she wasn't aiming to kill anyone. She went for legs so that she could have some, I don't know, plausible deniability. But you don't… There's no way to survive what she hit them with."

Iri lapsed into silence once more, wiping her eyes and taking a deep breath. Sylva bit her tongue, so that she wouldn't break the moment. If Iri wanted to talk, she should get to talk. Sylva had a morbid curiosity about it, so she wasn't only being generous in letting Iri get out her long bottled up feelings.

"It broke something inside of her. I think. And I had to just be there and watch it happen. And there was nothing I could do! I–"

She took another deep breath.

"And then what was I supposed to do? Cry to her about how it made me feel? I just had to be there for her, and tell her that everything was going to be alright. I don't even think I did a good job at that. It's not like I'm one of you. I can't get into her mind the way that Sid does, and I don't even know if that helped him because of the drugs and–"

Sylva wasn't going to ask about what Iri was talking about, because she didn't want to interrupt, but she wondered about Sid. She didn't know anything about Yan's coworkers.

"I just." Iri laughed again. "I think I've been the worst failure of a guardian that's ever walked this universe."

Sylva had to step in. "No, definitely not."

"Halen should have never picked me for this. I don't know why he thought that some average person could do anything to protect a sensitive."

"You're doing a good job of protecting me."

Iri snorted. "You're not really in danger."

"Look around you."

"You know what I mean." She sat silently again.

"I don't know anything about Halen, or what you and Yan went through, really," Sylva began, "but I think you probably did a good job helping her through it. She came through it alright."

"All I said to her was the stuff that I should have had somebody say to me," Iri said. "It wasn't profound."

"At least you were there for her."

"Until I wasn't."

"Not everybody can be everywhere at once. And if you had been on guard–"

"Yeah, I would have probably gotten shot in the head. I know." She sighed and wiped her eyes again. "I don't know how Halen does it."

"You keep mentioning him. Who is Halen?"

"I sometimes forget that you really aren't in the loop." She straightened up a little bit, but Sylva kept her hand on her back. "I guess it doesn't really matter if I tell you. Halen's my boss, kinda. He's First Sandreas's bodyguard."

"He probably does it just by being good at his job," Sylva said.

"No, I don't mean that. He's–" she heaved a deep breath. "I mean in the way of how he isn't paralyzed with fear about not being in the right place at the right time every single second."

"I'm sure he has the exact same worries as you do."

"No, you really don't know the quiet part." Iri smiled a tiny bit, remembering something more pleasant. "They're lovers. Halen and First Sandreas. Have been for years and years."

"That's a pretty big secret."

"Yeah. But that's what I mean. I could barely handle thinking about what happened to Yan, and when I was assigned to her, we were total strangers. Just a job. But–"

"So you're not in love with her," Sylva said, interrupting with a tone of relief evident in her voice.

"What? No. What gave you that impression?" The question must have been so startling to Iri, because her whole voice and demeanor changed. She turned to look at Sylva with an amused expression, even though her eyes were still puffy with tears.

"I don't know." The answer was an immediately obvious 'jealous paranoia', but Sylva wasn't going to say that. "Sorry, go ahead with your story, I didn't mean to interrupt."

"There isn't really much of a story," Iri said.

"No, about Halen. Why keep it a secret?"

"They have a lot of personal reasons for it, I think," Iri said. "That's not particularly my business. I just don't know how he deals with the fear that has to come along with it."

"Well, wouldn't it be a worse fear if he wasn't his bodyguard? He'd have to trust someone else to do the job," Sylva said pragmatically.

Iri shrugged. "Maybe. But I don't see you jumping at the chance to–"

"Iri," Sylva said flatly. "What is this if not jumping at the chance?"

Iri laughed again, a real laugh this time. "Yeah, I guess. But you'll go back to your normal life when this is over?"

"I don't know if I can," Sylva said.

"I guess we'll think about that shuttle when it's time to board it."

"Yeah." They didn't say anything for a moment. "How did Halen become your boss?"

"I was working in Imperial security, and I stood out. Halen liked me, so he took me under his wing. Things were a lot different back then."

"When was that?"

"Five years ago, something like that."

"What's he like?"

"You're curious."

"I have a right to know about my lover's boss's lover."

"Do you?"

"Sure."

"He's nice. You wouldn't think he would be from looking at him, but he is. He'd do absolutely anything for First Sandreas, obviously."

"What's he look like?"

"Ugh, hard to describe. Let me find a picture." Iri pulled out her phone and scrolled through her pictures. Sylva looked over her shoulder as years of images flew past. They were small and indistinguishable when she didn't know what they were referring to.

Iri stopped on one image, and made it larger. There were a bunch of people, dressed in what Sylva assumed were Imperial security uniforms, all posing for the camera. Behind them, a massive, hulking man with a blotchy red face stood wearing a tight, forced smile. "That's Halen," Iri said, pointing at the large man.

"Oh, I think I've seen him on the news before."

"He tries to stay in the background, but he's so big it's almost impossible to keep him out of all the camera shots," Iri said.

"How'd he get so big?"

"Genetically modified. He's my former pirate friend," Iri said. "Hail-and-Farewell."

"I guess I can understand why he tries to stay out of the spotlight."

"Bad press for being a former pirate is only one of the reasons, I think," Iri said. "Anyway, he's nice. I miss him."

"You can go back, though, once we're done."

"I quit my job," Iri said. "He wouldn't want me back, since I proved I couldn't handle it. I don’t think, anyway."

"I somehow doubt that."

"You don't know."

"And neither do you."

"Sure, but I know better than you do."

"Ugh." Sylva flopped backwards onto the bed, abandoning rubbing Iri's back. A stray thought popped into her brain. "Were you in that picture? I didn't see you."

"Yeah."

"Where?"

"I'm ugly in it. I'm not going to show you."

"Let me see!" Sylva sat up again and reached for Iri's phone, but she snatched it away and put it in her pocket.

"You shoulda been more observant the first time, if you really wanted to see."

"You're the worst."

"Yeah. I am." Iri, now apparently feeling better, resumed her work on the microphones. "You up for a little stealth?"

"What do you mean?"

"We need to get these planted around the ship."

"Duh."

"So can you help with that?"

"In what way? I'm not exactly, uh, unnoticeable." Sylva gestured down at her pudgy body and her short stature. "I stand out, when people bother to look down at me." Iri laughed.

"Can't you use the power? I know that Halen can– what's the best way to describe what he did… He went invisible, once."

Sylva laughed loudly. "God, no. I thought I'd made it clear that my use of the power barely extends to what ten year olds can do."

"I don't really get that. I thought that everyone who came out of the Academy was basically the same."

"In theory," Sylva grumbled. "It's not supposed to be different. Like, God doesn't give more or less strength to one person. But you have to be able to hold it in your head, everything that you're trying to do. And my thoughts are just…" Sylva flailed her hand in the air near her head. "All over the place. That's why Yan was so good at it. She can sit and just, I don't even know, absorb the world."

"Then how'd you make it through the Academy?"

"Boy, I bring up a sore subject for you, and you have to retaliate? I'm smart, ok? But I just do things in my own way. At my own pace."

"Didn't mean to offend," Iri said, holding up the completed microphone and passing it to Sylva. She looked it over; it was small, and would blend in nicely to the corner of any room. She wondered just how much it could pick up.

"It's fine," Sylva grumbled. "Not your fault I'm a failure as a sensitive."

"If you're a failure at being able to do all sorts of mystical bullshit, what am I? Chopped beef?"

"You're beefy, alright," Sylva said with a laugh.

"Aww." Iri put her hands on her face, pretending to blush. "But seriously, back to the topic at hand, we need to get these up."

"I'll tell you what. Here's what I can do. You got some glue?"

"We'll stick them up with these." Iri passed her a sheet of tiny adhesive dots. Sylva peeled one off and tried to stick it to the back of the microphone. Since they were both tiny and incredibly sticky, she struggled with it for a long moment, and Iri watched, amused.

"Patience is a virtue," Sylva said as she finally got the sticky tack in place. "But look, I can probably sneak these up into high places without anybody noticing." She focused, and with some effort, brought the microphone into a hover above her face. She sent it zooming off into the upper corner of the room, and with a gentle mental press, she fastened it there.

"Great. Can you get it down?"

"Oh. Uh. Let me try." Sylva struggled with the power for a second, and failed to 'feel out' the microphone, now that it was no longer physically in her hand. "Uhhhhh…"

"Sylva!" Iri groaned and stood on the bed, in order to maximize her height and reach into the corner. She pulled it back down, then sat down in the chair with a huff.

"I did warn you that I'm a little useless."

"You should practice. I'm sure you could get better."

"What do you think I've been doing for the past eleven years?"

"Do you want the honest answer?" Iri asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, fuck no," Sylva said. Iri laughed.

"Then I'll give you the silly answer. I think you've been too busy making moon eyes at Yan to focus on schoolwork."

Sylva lunged across the bed and put her hand over Iri's mouth. "Shut up!"

"Mrf." Iri, despite the compromising position that she had found herself in, had a smug look on her face.

"You don't know anything!" Sylva hissed, but released Iri's face.

"Sure. Sure."

Sylva was smiling, though. For all her bluster about it, she wasn't actually mad about what Iri had said. Though she wasn't sure how much Yan talked about what their school days had been like, it wasn't exactly a stretch to say that Sylva's complicated emotions hadn't made her the most focused person at all times.

Yan, of course, had been fairly oblivious. For all that she was a great person, and beautiful, and good at doing things, and wickedly smart, and fun to be around, and everything else, she had a pair of blinders on that stopped her from seeing anything that she didn't want to, or didn't want to think about too closely. On one hand, Sylva was glad that her perpetual lovesickness had been missed, because it was embarrassing to think about. But on the other, it hadn't exactly made understanding or expressing her feelings any easier. Well, that was in the past now.

"Anyway…" Iri said, checking over the microphone to make sure that their little squabble hadn't damaged it. "We will need to get into other rooms of the ship in order to put these up."

"I can open doors, too."

"Like you opened mine on the Warrior II?"

"How long are you going to hold that one over me?"

"Oh, forever, probably. I just think it's hilarious."

"I was panicking, okay?"

Iri laughed. "Well, if you think you can do it without leaving a trail of destruction in your wake, then great."

"Yeah, if I have time, I can probably open doors without breaking them."

"I can't guarantee that," Iri said. "We might have to be in and out of rooms fast. Depending on the room."

"There's like, nobody on this ship," Sylva said. "What're the odds of us getting interrupted?"

"Since we're going to bug areas where people do gather, and important places, I'd say the odds are pretty good."

"And what will we do if we get caught?"

Iri sighed. "How much of a fight do you think you can put up?"

"We're really jumping straight to violence?"

"What do you think the alternative is?"

"We could, uh, pretend we're doing something else."

"Such as?"

"Well you and Sign weren't exactly in a private place…" Sylva said.

Iri laughed. "Little different, since Sign actually belonged to the ship, and I was working for him at the time."

"You never know. There's probably someone out there with a fetish that involves just, I don't know, doing it in public on pirate ships. As many as possible."

"I really don't think you want to develop the reputation as the person who has that particular fetish," Iri said with a smile. "You didn't answer my question."

Now it was Sylva's turn to sigh. "I don't think I'd be very useful. If it came down to it. I can't even imagine how much control of the power it would take to be able to knock someone out or whatever."

"You don't think you can use their clothes to strangle them?" Iri asked, indicating with her voice that she had seen that exact move be used before.

"Uh…"

"Okay, I won't count on you at all, then. Just stay out of my way, if we get walked in on. Duck."

"I can do that."

"Great." Iri rubbed the back of her neck. "We do want to get this done as soon as possible."

"Why? We probably won't be at the next station for, I don't know, a couple days."

"I'd like to make sure that it's working, and get a chance to feel the tenor of the ship, you know."

"Yeah. So when are we going to do it?"

Iri looked down and checked her phone for the current ship's time. "Middle of third shift is probably the time when the fewest people are around."

"And it's the time when I'm least awake," Sylva grumbled.

So, during the middle of third shift, Sylva and Iri dressed themselves in the outfits they thought would least stand out (classic spacer jumpsuits, unfortunately not in the same color as the ones worn by the crew of the Bellringer), and began creeping down the hallways of the ship, their pockets stuffed with microphones. Their first stops were various public locations on the ship, as those would be easiest. They wouldn’t be locked, and Iri and Sylva ostensibly had a reason to visit them.

They meandered their way through the ship to the dining hall, which was blessedly empty. They availed themselves of bowls of cereal so that they wouldn't look like they were being suspicious, and sat down at a table.

"Got this?" Iri asked, as she halfheartedly spooned cereal toward her mouth.

Sylva nodded. She stirred her own soggy grain, and took a deep breath. With the power, she felt around in her pocket and grabbed one of the microphones. She had trouble distinguishing its 'feeling' from the feeling of the fabric of her pants, and the air around, and the bench they were sitting on, but eventually, through trial and error, she got one of the microphones to shift around. She pulled it out of her pocket, and dropped it to just above the floor. She watched out of the corner of her eye and sent it skittering across the floor, underneath the tables, so that it wouldn't be visible on the cameras, until it reached the wall. She lifted it up the wall and pressed it firmly into the corner.

With such a small microphone, and such a large room, she would have to repeat the process several times. Already she was tired of this, but she continued. Iri smiled at her encouragingly as she ate the bland cereal.

They weren't interrupted while they were in the dining hall, which was nice. That was an easy, practice run. They did the ship's library next, then a few of the recreational areas.

"Won't it be weird that we're visiting all of these places, on the camera?" Sylva asked.

"Doubt anybody's actually watching," Iri said. "Probably no one checks the records unless there's a reason to. And if I can, I'm going to erase them later."

"Then why was I trying to be so sneaky earlier?"

"The cereal was just in case someone walked in on us. If you were doing something else stupid, I never told you to," Iri said with a smirk. Sylva had half a mind to punch her.

But Sylva dutifully bugged the gym, and the bathrooms, and various other public places. Iri guarded the doors in the places where that was realistic, and generally kept a lookout. Then it came time to bug the more private places aboard the ship. The first stop was the office near the bridge where the captain did most of his business.

Even going towards the bridge was nerve wracking. There was a visceral sense, walking through the deserted hallways of the ship, that they were Not Supposed To Be There. The feeling of transgression only grew as they approached the more official areas. Luckily, they saw no one. Iri had been right that the dead hours of the third shift, people were either working or sleeping, and not roaming. The bridge was occupied, but it didn't have a window on the door, so as they snuck past it, they couldn't see inside and no one inside could see them. They just had to hope that no one would choose to come out and go to the bathroom down the hallway.

Iri stood, facing the bridge, while Sylva leaned down towards the door of the captain's office. She placed her palm flat against the door and tried to feel out the lock with the power. She bit her tongue as she concentrated. She could feel the difference between the material the door was made of, and the complicated circuitry inside it, and the deadbolt that held it shut. She could feel the difference, as she moved her power through them, but that didn't translate immediately to knowing which was which. She squinted her eyes.

Wasn't it supposed to be so easy for kids to open doors? Just by thinking about it?

"Open," she hissed. She didn't want to smash the lock to pieces, but she didn't want to stay here in the hallway forever.

Especially not now that the sound of footsteps echoed quietly down the hall. Distant, but coming closer at a steady clip. Iri gave Sylva a hard look, and put her hand warningly at her hip where her gun was. Sylva bit her lip and resumed her work at the door. Worst came to worst, they wouldn't fight this person, obviously, they would pretend like they had also just happened to be walking down the hallway. But that would become harder the longer it took for Sylva to get the door open. The footsteps came closer. Sylva continued to wrestle with the power like it was an unruly cat.

Iri looked at her, and took a few steps forward, reaching down to tug on Sylva's shoulder to pull her up so that they could walk away. "Hold on, one second…" Sylva hissed under her breath.

The footsteps came steadily closer. Iri yanked on Sylva's jumpsuit. "Sylva!"

Sylva gave one last push with the power. The lock clicked, the door pushed open, and Iri and Sylva tumbled inside, shutting the door quickly and quietly behind them.

Iri leaned against the door, eyes wide. "That was too close for comfort," she said.

"Hey. At least we're in."

"And did you break the lock?"

"I think it still works."

"That's one good thing, I guess."

"And we didn't even set off any alarms."

"That you know of," Iri said. "If I was running a ship with an alarm system, I'd make damn sure that they weren't audible to the intruder."

"Then let's get this done quickly," Sylva said. "Where's the best place to put it in here?"

Iri considered the room. It was more plush by far, than the equivalent room aboard the Iron Dreams, where Sylva had met with Captain Pellon several times. There was an ostentatious light fixture above, with one bright bulb surrounded by several smaller ones on a weird circular track. The table in here was a heavy, old wood– an odd luxury aboard a space ship. The carpet, too, was luxurious, and trinkets lined the walls on shelves. Everything was fastened there with either sticky tack or magnets, of course, to prevent it from floating around in the event that the rings had to be stopped. Even the richness of the room couldn't disguise that classic spacer practicality.

As Iri checked the corners and under the table to determine the ideal location for the microphone, Sylva examined the shelf of trinkets more closely. There was an old, geared clock; it was a strange affectation, especially for a spacer for whom time lost real meaning. It wasn't even working. Next to the clock were a couple fancy pieces of pottery, clay figural statues of people dancing. One of them was missing an arm. Then there were wide, flat dishes full of stones. What was it with spacers and rocks? Yan had stashed a bunch of them in her room at the Academy, at one point as well. Idly, Sylva opened up the little door beneath the face of the clock, where the mechanism to wind it resided. She wanted to see if the thing was broken, or if it was only that no one bothered to set the time on a useless, decorative object.

And there, tucked almost invisibly in the tiny crack between the door and the body of the clock, was a microphone. Sylva only recognized it because it was so similar to the ones she was carrying in her pockets, only it was much smaller, and clearly better put together.

"Hey, uh, Iri… Come have a look at this," Sylva said nervously.

"Hmm?" Iri asked. She was standing on a chair and applying her own microphone in between two of the tiles on the ceiling. She finished what she was doing and got down, landing heavily on the floor. Sylva gestured her over, and Iri peered inside the clock. She broke out into a short laugh.

"Guess I shouldn't have bothered with that, then," she said. "That's Imperial issue, right there."

"So there's some other spy on this ship? Should we get in contact with them?"

"Oh, probably not. I'm sure that someone bugged the ship like we're doing now, and there's an automated system hidden in the computer to upload data to a collector on a station every time the ship docks. It would be a waste of resources to put someone on a ship like this."

"Ugh, what are we, then?" If the Imperial government thought this was a waste of time, that didn’t bode well for Iri and Sylva making real progress.

"We're about to make use of some of this Imperial issue property," Iri said. "I can probably get us into the hidden files, now that I know they're there."

"So we did all this sneaking for nothing?"

"Not for nothing, no."

Sylva rolled her eyes. "Maybe you should move this one to a less obvious place, since it wasn't hard to find at all."

"Whoever did it was probably in a hurry," Iri said. "But you're not wrong. I'll move it." She delicately pried up the microphone, and went over to the other side of the room. Iri climbed up on the table and unscrewed the light bulb from above them, plunging the room into an odd twilight. She slid the microphone up into the area between the bulb and its housing, then put the light back together.

"Will it still be able to hear in there?"

"These ones are way more powerful than the ones I brought. So yes, definitely," Iri said as she clambered down off the table. She was not exactly graceful about it.

"Great."

"So you'll definitely be able to get the feed from those?"

"Absolutely," Iri said. Her voice wasn't the most confident Sylva had ever heard, but it wasn’t as though she could argue.

"Think the hallway's clear enough for us to leave?" Sylva asked.

"Do that thing with the power," Iri said. "See if there's anyone out there."

Sylva groaned, quietly. Iri was going to kill her with all this power nonsense. There was a not insignificant part of Sylva that wished she had been born without the power, that she had been a completely normal kid who grew up into a mundane life. But then again, she probably would have never met Yan, or Iri for that matter, who she was coming to like as a friend and travelling companion, despite their occasional clashes.

Sylva leaned against the door and closed her eyes. The power was there, bubbling inside of her, and she focused on it, then immediately lost the thought. She tried again, and again, until it finally stayed with her. She shoved it out into the hallway, and didn't feel anything there but air and the walls. "Seems clear to me."

"I'm trusting you."

Sylva opened the door, just a crack, and peeked out. The hallway was empty. Iri double checked the room to make sure everything was back the way they had first seen it, and they stepped out together. They walked as quickly back down the hallways as possible without appearing too suspicious. Sylva felt the adrenaline lingering in her system, and a weird sense of guilt, or, at the very least, transgression. It wasn't a particularly nice thing to do, bugging someone else's ship. Of course, it wasn't as though the pirates she was about to start spying on were particularly nice people.

They made it back to their little shared room unscathed. Sylva immediately collapsed onto the bed. "That was nerve wracking," she said. "Let's never do that again."

"If we get any information from this, we probably won't have to."

"So you think that there's a good chance we will learn something?"

"Yeah. I don't think the Empire would have bothered bugging this ship if there wasn't a possibility of something good."

"Still, if they had any information, they probably would have acted on it already."

"They might be waiting for something a little more definitive than information. With a crew this short staffed, and the ship in the condition that it's in, even if they knew where Yan was being held, it wouldn't be good to go fight another ship for her."

"Yeah, I guess."

"So they might know something we don't, even if they don't have their hands on her yet."

"Why don't they just hire more crew, and get their ship fixed, if they have so much bounty money?" Sylva asked.

"I think that you'd have to interrogate their psyches for that," Iri said. "The ship might not be fixable, so they might need to get a whole new one commissioned, which would be more than the bounty price, and I don't know– I think if I were on this ship, and a bunch of my family died, I wouldn't want to replace them with paid strangers."

"True. Still."

Iri raised an eyebrow.

"I just think it probably takes a certain amount of manpower to run a ship, and if they don't have it, they can't possibly be turning a profit or whatever."

"I'm sure we're about to find out more than I ever wanted about this ship's financial status, if I can go through all the recordings," Iri said.

"You gonna do that now?"

"Sooner the better," Iri said. "That way, if it's not working out, we'll still have time to plant the rest of our mics."

"Oh, please, God, no."

"I agree. So I'll be working on getting in to the Imperial system. I still have my access key. Halen…"

"What?"

"He might have left mine activated so that I could have an easier time with something like this."

"You haven't tested it?"

"I don't make a point of breaking into Imperial systems for fun," Iri said with a frown.

"Maybe you should," Sylva said. "If it isn't deactivated, will you be able to get in still?"

"I have a few tricks, but it would be a lot harder."

Sylva sighed. "Nothing I can do to help, I suppose."

"Not unless you can use the power to hack a computer system."

Sylva laughed. "I don't know if anybody can actually do that. The physical aspects of computing are a little beyond most people's patience."

"Understandably so. Then no, there's nothing you can do to help."

"Then I'll go back to all the sleep I've been missing."

"You do that," Iri said distractedly, as she pulled out her computer and bag. She sat at the little desk and arranged a notebook and pen, and a little access card, and various other things all around herself. Sylva pulled the blankets on the bed up around her chin, and, voluntarily, used the power to flick off the light. That was about the limits of things that were easy.

Iri didn't seem to notice. The glow from her computer screen lit up her silhouette, her hair fraying out of its ponytail and catching the harsh blue light in a halo. Sylva watched her and listened to the clack of her keyboard for a minute, then her eyes slid shut and she fell asleep.

When she woke up, Iri was beside her in the bed, hogging the blanket, but awake. She was sitting up, with her laptop propped on her knees and headphones in her ears. Sylva realized that the heavy presence on the bed next to her was what was making the mattress sag, and sat up, struggling to extract herself from the mess of blankets and the tilted bed.

"Morning," Iri said grimly as she noticed Sylva moving beside her.

"It worked? You got it?" Sylva asked, voice raspy from sleep. She leaned on Iri's arm, bare since she was wearing only a tank top, and peered over her shoulder. There wasn't much to look at; the screen only displayed the title of the audio file, which was just a date and location.

"Yeah. Looks like we got on board just in time."

"What do you mean?" Sylva asked. "They found something?"

"Listen to this." Iri pulled out one of her headphones and passed it to Sylva, who put it into her ear. A man's voice, speaking in Old Imperial, carried dimly down to her.

"They shortchanged me," he said. "So I don't have any problems with selling them out."

"The way of the universe, isn't it," another voice said. Sylva vaguely recognized it as the voice of the captain of the Bellringer, whom she had heard over the announcements several times during their trip. They hadn't met in person, and for that, Sylva was glad. He didn't seem like an altogether pleasant man.

"It is indeed."

"There's one thing that does make me question," the captain said. "Why don't you have the charts on you?"

"I wanted to make sure you were genuine in your, shall we say, offer of payment for information before I brought them with me."

"You don't trust there to be honor among us?"

"If I had any trust, it left when I got stiffed," the other man said. "Not casting any aspersions on you in particular. I just gotta look out for my own."

"I see."

"And there's other people who'd want this," the other man said. "If you weren't interested, I'd want to find some other offers."

"Like who?"

"Oh, that's confidential." The man had a raucous laugh, that made Sylva want to yank out the headphone.

"And you won't tell me who exactly has her?"

"I don't know names, just a system. They all used code names. 'S standard practice."

"And what did they want from her?"

"It was a political thing that went wrong." There was a pause. "Probably why they didn't pay me what we agreed on, to be honest."

"Political?"

"Look, I'm not going to give you anything before payment changes hands."

It was the captain's turn to laugh, but it wasn't happy. "And when can we expect that to be?"

"I'll be at Vanquished in," a pause, "a fortyday. You can meet me there."

"What ship will you be with?"

"That's none of your business either."

"I'm afraid it is."

"Once I get the starchart, I'll be on the Sundown. Purely business, not family."

"And will they wait around at Vanquished if we're late?"

"I can't hold up an entire ship. I can stay behind."

"It's that kind of business relationship then."

"Yes."

"Plan on us being late."

"You'd be better if the Sundown was there. They have no problems with you, as far as I know."

"Perhaps. But I'd rather conduct this business alone. And we have our own schedule to keep, regardless."

"You're still doing shipments with your skeleton crew?"

"I wouldn't speak ill of the people whose product you're planning to accept."

If the sound of rolling eyes was audible, Sylva was sure she would have heard it. "Fine. Are we agreed?"

"Vanquished, in a bit over a month, we'll bring the payment, you bring the starchart."

"That’s what I like to hear."

"I'll have my second see you out."

Iri stopped the recording and Sylva pulled out the headphone. "So we're on our way to Vanquished right now?"

"Look at the date." The date on the recording was about a week shy of the fortyday mark that the seller had indicated.

"We're going to be there early?"

"I suspect that the captain is preparing for trouble."

"Why?"

"For one thing, if there was a collection and relay point at any of the stations that the Bellringer has visited before, the Empire knows."

"There's going to be an agent there?"

"I'd put charges on it."

"But they wouldn't know about that."

"You hope."

"I do hope. But regardless, if our man was being as loose lipped as he sounded–"

"He wasn't giving them any information?"

"You heard him saying he was shopping this around to other customers."

"Ah. Fuck."

"So if we’re getting to Vanquished early, we’re trying to avoid all these other potential paying customers. Or unpaying ones, if that man is particularly unlucky."

"And that's a black station?" Sylva asked.

"I can only assume."

Sylva raised her eyebrows.

"Hey, I don't know every piece of pirate trivia out there. They play things much closer to the chest than the Empire does. You aren't going to just find a directory of black stations, for the most part."

"Fine. So what's our plan?"

Iri sighed and rubbed her temples. "I think our best hope is to stick with the Bellringer."

"Really? Ugh."

"Well, it's not like we can meet up with whoever the Imperial agent is, since we don't have a guarantee that they'll be there,. We wouldn't be able to identify them even if we knew for certain that there was one."

"I guess."

"And if there is a mess, which I'm hoping there won't be, this ship is probably the most motivated."

"What do you think they're going to do?"

"Ha. That entirely depends on how ballsy the captain is."