We have our cargo, but things have gotten a bit…complicated.

We landed on Thyris yesterday at around 1800 hours ship time, midday local time. Most of the planet’s surface is taken up by frozen wastelands. You’ll see moss growing on the ice up there, and supposedly some critters living in the moss if you feel like pulling out a microscope, but not much else except in a couple geothermically active areas where the snow melts long enough for small, shallow-rooted plants to grow. As we prepared to land, I couldn’t help but wonder if we were in the wrong place somehow. This didn’t look like a place to pick up cargo.

As it turned out, that’s because the real party is underground.

The planet’s entire society and the vast majority of its biosphere is nestled deep within its crust. There, its inhabitants enjoy the warmth of the planet’s core.

On most planets, the base of the food chain is some form of photosynthesis, but on Thyris it’s all about chemosynthesis. Microscopic organisms in the underground seas feed on chemicals that seep out of vents in the sea floor. According to Alec, the same thing happens on Terra. The difference is that on Terra it all takes a backseat to photosynthesis, but on Thyris it’s the opposite. The moss on the surface only sustains its own small community, just like hydrothermal vents on Terra, while chemosynthetic creatures take the place of Terra’s plants and algae.

Jules and I deboarded the ship in parkas. The wind whipped around us, flinging ice at what little skin we’d left exposed. Even dressed for the weather, the cold was challenging to deal with. It felt like my eyeballs were going to freeze over. Fortunately, that didn’t last long: we entered an elevator that stood alone on a plain of snow and began our descent to the city proper. After a couple minutes in the still-chilly elevator, we stepped out into a blissfully warm intake center.

It was an overwhelming experience after the emptiness of the surface. For one thing, it was almost pitch black down there. Since they evolved in subterranean caverns, thyrins are completely blind. The only lighting in the city came from tiny strips of lights running along the floors wherever they met walls—an accommodation for sighted species that came to visit. It wasn’t enough to see by; just enough to keep us from walking into walls. Fortunately, the locals knew to stay out of the way of visitors who normally relied on sight, so tripping over people wasn’t an issue, either.

I don’t know what a thyrin actually looks like and I’m not sure I want to. I’ve seen pictures of animals that are adapted to life in caves before, and they’re…bad to look at. But from what little I could see, thyrins are about three feet tall and definitely not bipedal. Based on the rhythm of their footsteps, I’d say they have eight legs.

We weren’t allowed to use flashlights in the city because apparently much of the planet’s technology and wildlife can be damaged by bright lights. Since I’m from a station where the majority species can’t see light, I’m fairly used to dealing with bad lighting, but at least Fakir was diverse enough that there was usually some light and I was always able to carry a flashlight. Thyris was just plain frustrating.

“So how are we going to talk to them?” I asked Jules as I followed them into the darkness. “Do you know the language?”

“There is no language. Thyrins are preverbally telepathic,” they replied.

My stomach lurched. “They’re what?!” My past experiences with telepathy are all…highly negative, to make a long story short.

Jules laughed, and in that moment I kind of wanted to slap them. “Relax,” they said. “Some thoughts are broadcast while others are not. Generally, things you want them to know will naturally be broadcast while things you’d rather keep private are naturally suppressed. The main problem for beginners is suppressing impulsive outbursts—for instance, every thyrin within range is now keenly aware of how you feel about telepathic communication.”

That was different enough from my previous experience to calm me down a bit, but still I shuddered, wondering exactly how much they’d gotten. My gut reaction had been a potent mixture of fear and disgust coupled with flashes of memories of things I don’t talk about and certainly don’t want strangers knowing about. If all they got was the emotion, I honestly feel a little guilty about that. In fact, in the moment I tried to broadcast an apology, even though the very act was distressing to me. I don’t want to believe they got any of the memories.

We followed a little stream of lights to the customs desk. On most civilized planets, we would have had to go through customs before we could even enter orbit, but Thyris had no such security. After all, there’s nothing on the surface to protect. It’s cheaper and easier to vet new arrivals after they’ve come down.

Preverbal telepathy is, by its nature, hard to describe in words, but basically the desk clerk welcomed us to the city and asked us to state our business. Presumably Jules explained, though as a non-telepath I couldn’t hear anything they were ‘broadcasting.’ Their conversation went on for several minutes while I just stood there. I was probably broadcasting the fact that I had no idea what I was doing.

At the end of the conversation, the clerk handed something to Jules and we walked away. Jules snapped the things in their hands—a pair of dim yellow glowsticks. They handed one to me. “These are the brightest things permitted down here,” they explained. “Still insufficient to actually see, I know, but this way we can at least locate one another.”

I accepted the glowstick so that Jules could find me in the dark, but as I then explained, “I can just smell where you are, you know.” Jules’s scent—oil and metal from the ship, vanilla from their soaps and shampoos, and the general odor of being human—trailed out behind them wherever they walked and billowed around their person. For me, following that scent was as easy as following the lights on the floor.

I heard Jules sniff their armpit.

I sighed. “You smell fine, captain. It’s just that scent is a pretty important part of the culture on Fakir, so I notice it more than most humans.”

“Ah,” Jules said. Then their voice dropped to a whisper. “In that case, take both. I’d like to remain as inconspicuous as possible.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Any particular reason?” But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I noticed the odor of two other humans somewhere in the room mingling with the relatively mild scent of thyrins.

“One of the locals kindly informed me of where our ‘friends’ are,” Jules whispered. “As they are not currently carrying their glowsticks, and are therefore remarkably difficult for one to detect by sight.”

We walked on, and our mysterious ‘friends’ followed.

Eventually, we reached a room where a thyrin gave Jules a nondescript metal box about the size of a toaster. Once again, I couldn’t witness whatever mental conversation they had. Then we turned back the way we came.

To our mutual surprise, our shadows approached us this time. Or at least one of them did. “Idiot,” the other hissed from farther away.

“Hi there,” said the one approaching us. His voice was clear and warm. “My name is Mac. Are you Jules?”

“Yes,” Jules said.

I smacked a hand to my forehead.

“My partner Ana and I have a few questions we’d like to ask you, if you don’t mind,” Mac said.

“Oh, I’m afraid I’m neither religious nor inclined to become religious, thank you,” Jules said.

“That’s not–” Mac started to say.

But we were already running away.

“I’ve alerted our client about those two and they’ve agreed to send security out,” Jules said as we ran. “We should be able to get away.”

“Do they want what’s in the box?” I asked.

“I told our client I suspect so, but in truth I very much doubt it,” Jules said. “I believe it is me they are interested in.”

When we reached the surface, something bizarre caught my eye. Right beside the Adelaide, a paper thin layer of snow hung in midair.

“It seems our new friends have an opitcal cloaking device on their ship,” Jules said. “Cutting-edge technology, yet so easily foiled by its interactions with the environment. If you look closely, you can also see the imprint of their landing gear in the snow.” They paused and stared at the empty space for a while. “Well. We had best leave quickly.”

The elevator whirred behind us.

“We had best leave now,” Jules said. We ran back to the Adelaide,her doors opening in sync with the elevators.

We caught a glimpse of Mac and Ana in daylight—he was a squat, muscular fellow with short black hair and a beard; she was a wiry, equally muscular woman with lavender-dyed hair held back in a ponytail. They were both brandishing weapons. Hers was a gun I’d seen before.

“That’s an institute weapon,” I told Jules while we stood in the airlock frantically waiting for the door to close all the way. At least, I was frantic; I’ve yet to see Jules be frantic about anything. Finally, the door clicked shut.

And then the ship blasted off, sending a flurry of snow flying at our pursuers.

“Oh dear. Athena, we are not in position yet,” Jules said.

“Oooh shit, we’re not in position,” I echoed.

“Sorry captain,” Athena said. “I panicked. Those two were sniffing around here right after you went down, and—I-I think we need as much of a head start as we can get against them.”

Jules rubbed their chin. “I agree with you on that,” they said. “I suppose it couldn’t be helped. Has Frances noticed that anything is amiss?”

Athena didn’t need to answer that, because not a beat after Jules finished their sentence, we heard a heavy pounding on the airlock’s inner door. “Hey! What the fuck!” Frances shouted, still pounding away.

Jules sighed and opened the airlock door. “Hello, Ms. Young,” they said. “I suppose you’ll be wanting an explanation.”

“Who the hell is flying this thing?” Frances demanded.

“Shall we discuss this over tea?” Jules suggested.

“No!”

“May we at least step out of the airlock?”

“…Fine.”

And so we found ourselves standing in the corridor like a bunch of assholes for the entirety of this conversation. Alec appeared as soon as the airlock’s inner door had closed. “Captain, I–” he began.

“Shut up!” Frances snapped. Then she turned to Jules. “Explain.”

“This ship is run entirely by Athena,” Jules said calmly. “She is an experimental AI unit derived from a human brain using both organic and inorganic components.”

“So that’s a pretentious and roundabout way of saying you run fucking wetware,” Frances said flatly.

“With her consent,” Jules bargained.

“With my consent,” Athena confirmed. “What can I say? Smuggling is my calling.”

“Oh, fuck this,” Frances said. “I came aboard because I thought this would be less messy than working for the mob, but this is insane. No wonder those people started following us!”

“No, they don’t know about Athena yet,” Jules said. “They couldn’t possibly.”

Frances glared at him. “Then what the hell do they know? What the hell else is there that I ought to know about? You know what, for that matter, why did everyone but me apparently know this?”

“I just figured it out on my own,” Alec told her. “The ship’s too big. Jules and Marie couldn’t run it alone without a ridiculous number of neural implants. And implants are still so imperfect that even one can seriously screw up your brain if it’s not installed and used correctly. I can’t imagine a person being able to function at all if they had enough implants to run this thing on their own.”

“I noticed the same thing when I first came on board,” I explained.

“The information was on a strict need-to-know basis,” Jules added. “But allow me to explain. The ethical implications are not as black and white as one might expe–”

Frances cut them off. “Save the lecture. This isn’t about the goddamn ethics! This is about the absolute shitstorm I’ll be caught up in if the wrong people find out about this!”

“Ah,” Jules said. “I suppose there is a certain risk of…what is the punishment for this again?”

“The Republic of Free Planets calls for the execution by firing squad of any person who makes use of wetware,” Athena said. “The Council of Interplanetary Law is a little more lenient—they use a lethal injection. And of course, for offenders captured by the Bloodied Hand, a mysterious yet undoubtedly gristly fate awaits.”

“You’re just a ray of sunshine, huh?” Frances grumbled.

“A certain risk of execution,” Jules finished. “The elephant in the room being that if you turned us in immediately, you would be spared.”

Frances and Jules stared each other down for what seemed like an eternity. Jules’s gaze was calm, of course, while Frances’s conveyed a volatile blend of outrage and fear.

“You’re not going to kill me,” Frances said slowly, sounding like she was trying to convince herself more than anyone else. “You’re a pacifist. The rest of the crew’s not, but they answer to you.”

“Indeed,” Jules replied.

“So there’s nothing to stop me,” Frances said. “No real consequences. As opposed to the very real threat of death if I don’t report this.”

“Mostly true,” Jules said. “Though I wouldn’t say there is nothing to stop you.”

“Yeah?” Frances said. “What, then?”

“You know better than I, Ms. Young. Why haven’t you simply left this conversation and reported us already? Why not clean up the mess?”

Frances was silent for such a long time, I thought for sure she was going to walk away and call the authorities. But eventually, she swallowed and spoke. “I don’t want to screw up the only decent ending a wetware unit’s ever had.”

And then she walked away.

A short while later, I found Jules laughing hysterically on the bridge, folded over in their chair.

“Are you alright, cap’n?” I asked.

They jerked upright suddenly. “Quite,” they said. “It’s only that this has all gone…better than expected.”

I stared at them, uncomprehending. “Yes, it’s wonderful that we’re not going to be executed,” I said flatly as I sat down in my own chair. “By the way, what is our cargo?”

Jules leaned back in their chair and relaxed. Whatever episode they’d been having had subsided. “Narcotics,” they replied. “The thyrins have no word for this drug, naturally, but the people we are transporting it to call it ‘stardust.’ Its precise effects depend upon the species of the user and the method of consumption. In terrans, it is primarily a stimulant but has secondary hallucinogenic effects.”

Just then, the radar started beeping. “Oh, shit, did they catch up to us?” I asked.

Jules was unfazed. “Doubtful,” they said as they peered at the screen. “Or at least, doubtful that this particular alert is them. If they have technology as advanced as optical cloaking, surely they have radar cloaking as well. Oh, dear.”

“What’s the matter?”

“There’s an oncoming ship broadcasting a black flag signal,” Jules explained. “It seems we have pirates on our hands. Isn’t that adorable.”

“I’m assuming Athena can run the weapons on her own?” I asked. I had the training to run them myself, but I’d never done so outside of simulations. Besides, there’s no doubt Athena has better aim.

“Good heavens, no,” Jules said. “This ship doesn’t even haveweapons; I’m a pacifist.”

“Well I’m fucking not,” I pointed out. “What are we going to do?”

“We initiate a game of piracy chicken by sending a black flag signal right back,” Jules said. “Athena?”

“On it,” Athena said.

I watched the radar screen tensely over the next few minutes. Eventually, the pirates moved away. It was baffling.

“If that works, why are pirates even a problem?” I asked.

“For one thing, it’s certainly not foolproof. They could easily have called our bluff. For another, any ship that raises a black flag is considered a pirate vessel and its crew can be prosecuted,” Jules explained. “So innocent parties generally won’t risk using that trick. For us, it hardly matters.”

And it’s exactly that kind of thing that makes me wonder what the hell kind of turn my life’s taken. Back on Fakir, I always had to put myself above reproach. With anti-human sentiments as prevalent as they were, even breaking a minor rule could land me in serious trouble. To keep myself out of danger, I followed the institute’s strict honor code to the letter, strove for excellence in everything I did, and never questioned anyone’s authority. I was a good little soldier.

Until I caused my training partner’s death and ran off to become a smuggler on a ship that runs wetware, something so illegal that no other crime I commit could possibly carry a harsher sentence. Granted, it’s not as morally reprehensible in practice as it seems on paper, but it’s still a far cry from the honor-based mercenary’s life I was supposed to live. And it scares me sometimes, that after this there’s no going back to what I had before. No career based in honor would let me in if they knew about this little episode in my life. I don’t know when or if my time here will end, but if that day ever comes, I’ll either have to move on to a similar job somewhere else or lay low and, I don’t know, work on a farm or something.

Maybe it’s better. I have more freedom now, if nothing else. And it’s a blessing to be away from some of the less pleasant things that went on at the institute. But I do miss the structure of it all. I guess they trained me to miss it, though. I’m indoctrinated. This is what they wanted.

So it’s probably for the best that I can never go back. Maybe it’s the same for Frances, whose old job was almost as disreputable as this one anyway. Alec, on the other hand, would probably love to go back to engineering for a legitimate employer, but I have no idea who else would hire him without being able to guarantee that he wasn’t responsible for what happened to Darwin. And as for Jules…

“Jules?” I asked. “Who were you before all this?”

They turned to face me. “I was angry,” they replied. “And small-minded.”

I have to admit: that was interesting to hear. I’ve never seen Jules angry. I’ve never thought of them as an angry person. As for small-minded, it’s hard to say. Jules’s concerns don’t seem to extend much beyond the smuggling jobs they take on, and normally I’d consider that a pretty small-minded view. But it’s hard to know what the hell’s going on in Jules’s mind at any given time. For instance, why did they feel the need to give such a cryptic response to a fairly simple question? “I meant more like, did you have another job before you got into the smuggling business,” I clarified.

Jules turned back to the radar screen and watched the vastness of space move by in the form of tiny flickering lights. “Suffice it to say that I have been many places and seen many things in my lifetime,” they said. Suddenly, they stood up. “I will be in my quarters,” they said as they left.

It was pretty early for them to be going to bed, but it had been a long day, so I wasn’t too worried. I stretched out in my chair and tried to enjoy a moment of peace.

I’d just put my feet up when a fearsome tremor went through the ship, nearly knocking my mug off the panel I’d set it on. My first thought was that something had gone haywire. “Athena, where’s Alec?” I asked.

“Heading towards the engine room now,” Athena replied. “But from what my sensors are telling me, there’s nothing wrong with the ship.”

“Then what the hell’s happening?”

“I…think another ship is docking,” Athena said slowly. Then, more panicked: “We’re being boarded.”

Nothing had approached us on the radar, so it had to be the cloaked ship from earlier. I wondered whether Ana and Mac had reinforcements, or if it was just the two of them. Instinctively, I reached towards my hip, but found nothing there. It’s generally a bad idea to use firearms on spacecraft, where there’s nothing but a little lightweight metal between you and a vast vacuum. Plus I hadn’t grabbed any when I left Fakir. “Well, close down the airlock!” I shouted.

“They’ve brought with them the means to cut through the airlock doors,” Athena said bitterly. “I have Jules’s approval to open the way so we don’t have to pay for repairs.”

“Fantastic,” I groaned. “What are Jules’s orders?”

Athena was silent for a moment, presumably asking Jules. “They say, and I quote: ‘As with any players who lack a script, it falls to us to improvise.’”

“My school didn’t exactly have a theater club,” I muttered. But artsy metaphors aside, this type of confrontation is where I’m most comfortable improvising. I usually had more weapons available, though. I grabbed a kitchen knife on my way to the airlock and hoped we’d be able to bluff our way out of this without it coming to a fight.

When I arrived, Jules was already there and already handcuffed. They took one look at me and said, “I see we’ve brought the proverbial knife to the gunfight.”

In a snap movement, Ana leveled her gun at me. “Put it down,” she demanded.

I let the knife fall to the floor with a clatter.

Ana seemed stunned into silence for a moment, as if she hadn’t expected me to actually drop the knife. She recovered quickly, her face returning to its usual grave expression.

“Who the hell are you people?” I demanded.

“I am Ana Mercer and this is Mac Nichols. We are mercenaries operating under the authority of the Republic of Free Planets, Orange Sector,” Ana answered calmly. “We are taking this individual into custody on the grounds that they match the description of a person of interest. The rest of your crew is free to go, but we will be in contact if our investigation reveals anything incriminating. That is all we are legally able to tell you.”

I looked at Jules. “Comply with the authorities, dear,” was all they said.

“Well, how long is this going to take?” I asked.

“It’s hard to say,” Mac replied, sounding almost apologetic. “It depends on a lot of things.”

“One way or another, Republic authorities will give you a call when it’s over,” Ana said grimly.

And with that, they hauled Jules off the Adelaide.

I returned to the bridge, numb with shock, and made an announcement over the intercom. “All crew to the kitchen.”

There was a conference room on the ship that might have been more appropriate, but it was built for use by dozens of people at a time. The kitchen provided a more practical option for our tiny crew. Within a few minutes, Alec, Frances, and I were seated at the kitchen table. I’d put a kettle on while waiting for them to arrive, just so I had something to do, so we all had tea. But I didn’t much feel like drinking it.

I explained the situation.

“Orange Sector?” Alec said. “I’ve heard of that. They investigate the things you hear about in conspiracy theories. Clone farms and mass brainwashing and that kind of thing. I wonder what’s going on?”

“You’ll just have to keep wondering,” Athena said firmly. “Looking too deeply into Orange Sector shit can be legitimately dangerous. After all, not every conspiracy theory is wrong.”

She let the silence say the rest. We all knew it had once been a conspiracy theory that Stormsoft was performing the human experimentation that eventually resulted in the creation of wetware.

“We’ll do what we have to do to clear Jules’s name and bring them back,” Athena said. “But nothing. Else.”

Alec looked disappointed. “I mean…Marie’s the first mate, so…”

All attention was suddenly on me.

I wanted desperately to know what was going on. Clearly they hadn’t arrested Jules for the obvious reason, or they would’ve checked the ship for wetware instead of leaving the rest of us alone. On the other hand, Athena made a damn good point. Sticking our noses into Orange Sector business could easily get us killed if we learned to much and crossed the wrong people.

“Getting Jules back is our best bet at finding out what the hell’s going on,” I said.

“So you think Jules actually is their person of interest,” Frances said.

I swallowed. I absolutely did think that, in fact. Jules might not have been malevolent, but they were definitely suspicious. We didn’t know where they’d come from, we didn’t know anything about their past, we didn’t even know their last name. If they were mixed up in the kind of thing that the Orange Sector would investigate, then all their secrecy would make sense. But I wasn’t about to inspire even more distrust in Frances after that day’s epiphany.

“I couldn’t say,” I said. “If they are then they’ll definitely be able to explain this, but even if they’re not, they’ll be able to tell us what kind of questions the Orange Sector asked them. That should give us a hint about what’s happening.”

“Alright, so we just wait for due process of law,” Frances said, sounding happier than I’d ever heard her. “That should be easy.”

I inhaled through gritted teeth. “If I was absolutely certain Jules wasn’t involved in…whatever this is, that’s what we’d do,” I said. “But given that they could be…”

“We have to get them out of there before they get disappeared,” Alec said.

“Yeah. That,” I said. “And even if Jules is innocent, I doubt the interrogation process will be pleasant. The sooner we get them out of there, the better.”

Frances grimaced. “Greeeaat. How do you plan on doing that, exactly? We don’t even know where Jules is being taken.”

“We do a little recon. There are only so many places the Republic could take people, right?” I asked.

“If by ‘only so many’ you mean ‘over five hundred,’ then you’re absolutely right,” Athena informed me. “But with your permission, I’d like to reach out to a few of Jules’s contacts who may be able to help.”

“Go right ahead,” I said.

“Okay, I’ll send out encoded transmissions right away. It may take a while for any of them to respond, what with time zones and the encryption and all,” Athena said. “But any of them should be able to tell us Jules’s location, or at least give us some clues.”

Frances raised an eyebrow. “Uh, how, exactly?”

“Jules has a wide network of contacts with less-than-legal talents,” Athena explained.

Alec perked up. “So they’ll hack into Republic records and find out where Jules gets checked into? Coooooool.”

Frances shook her head. “Alright, alright, look. Let’s say we get the location through whatever bullshit Athena’s doing. What do we do then?”

“We do a prison break!” Alec shouted.

“Clearly,” I agreed.

We spent about an hour hashing out the details of that prison break, but ultimately we couldn’t finish the plan without knowing what facility we’re breaking into, so we called it a night.

This morning, Athena got word from one of the people she contacted, a woman by the name of Flora Leeds. Supposedly Flora knows exactly where Jules is, but was unable to tell us without some non-specific entity listening in, so now we’re on our way to meet her in person on the space station Voltaire.

She’s assured us that Voltaire is on the way to Jules anyway, but I still hate how much time we’re using up on this. The whole crew is restless, even Frances. I think she’s reorganized the medbay about thirty times since waking up.

Everything’s going to shit, but on the bright side I finally have an excuse to arm myself. I plan on picking up something with a bit more substance than a kitchen knife while we’re stopped on Voltaire. Not for the prison itself—I don’t plan on messing with the Republic—but for the aftermath if we do end up uncovering some kind of conspiracy. If we find out something that dangerous people want to keep quiet, well, then we’d better be ready for a fight.

Marie Ruiz, signing off.