In the back of my mind, I could hear Max freaking out “What, how did you do that!? I know for a fact that I didn’t broadcast that thought!”

Andie had crossed all four arms and was looking incredibly smug from his position on a comfortably upholstered chair in the corner, even as Scensia was rolling her eyes. A moment later, she replied in the multi-tone reverberating voice she had started using as of late “Your brain and blackbox implants emit EM noise in operation, and your current morph may have had the electromagnetic isolation cage for it omitted. While rather hard to detect and even harder to decipher, I have the computational resources available to solve that particular series of equations, and this current conversation is rather interesting. If you wish for cognitive privacy, you should probably correct this oversight.”

There was a brief pause as I nervously twirled our hair around one finger and Scensia waited for a moment, then said “Enough procrastination. You came here to find out any possible leads on the pirate ship Bark’s Finest, and while I don’t have everything you might want quite yet, I am making excellent progress on uncovering such. As such, I will go over items as I uncover them, and we can discuss what exactly they mean.”

I nodded and replied “That sounds acceptable. So, what have you discovered so far?”

Scensia’s avatar nodded, then she noted “First and foremost, this region of space is not the normal area of operations for Bark’s Finest. While we have been able to identify several thousand reports of a pirate ship that is almost certainly them operating for the last thirty years or so, their normal operating region is nearly six hundred light years widdershins - corewards from here. While the theft of Non-Orientable Wormholes is new, ambushing ships immediately after they leave FTL between star systems fits with their normal methods of operation.”

As Scensia spoke, a prompt for an augmented reality overlay popped up. Max noted “Let me check that over real quick. It’s highly unlikely, but it pays to be careful.”

A couple internal moments passed as my headmate picked over the prompt, before he pronounced “Yeah, it’s safe. Open it up.”

I accepted the invite, and suddenly the room was overlaid by a scale representation of the galactic disk that came up to our waist, leaving it almost looking like we were wading through a pool filled with stars. Idly I noted that the overlay included a projected avatar for Max, standing a bit to my right.

Scensia nodded, noting “I am very glad that you accepted the invitation, as it will make the following explanations much easier. Anyway, as mentioned the normal operating area for Bark’s Finest is roughly here, compared to the locations of both Palemission and the Red Star Union.” as she highlighted a region of space approximately thirty light years across, while also marking our current location in relation to it.

Looking at that, I quickly ran through all the possible reasons that a ship like Barks’ Finest could have opted to relocate six hundred light years. After thinking on it, I noted “Well, that’s quite a long distance for a pirate ship to travel. The only real reasons I can think of for them to travel that far are to dodge heat. Either because their old stomping grounds were becoming inhospitable, or because they knew everyone would be gunning for them after stealing a bunch of Non-Orientable Wormholes and didn’t want to get kicked out of whatever pirate haven was supporting them. After all, without a port willing to look the other way when frequented by pirates, they tend to get stomped all over really fast.”

Scensia hummed in agreement, before she noted “Your assessment is largely correct, if they didn’t have tacit support from some system or other, Bark’s Finest would not have been able to operate for such a long time. Anyway, while their typical region of operation contains around 70 star systems, there are only four that I would consider as being reasonably likely to be pirate havens.”

With that, the four systems in question were highlighted on the map, with infographics pointing to each system in question, listing details about demographics, economics, culture, whether their trade fleets tended to be preyed on by pirates, and a multitude of other factors. Almost immediately, I was able to rule out one of the systems, noting “Not this one, Scensia. I’ve studied what sorts of systems tend to host pirates, and this particular system doesn’t fit the bill. Looking at the historical records, while that place is definitely a belligerent autocracy, they’re not the sort of system that would subcontract all their dirty work out to pirates. No, they’d be handling everything in-house.“

Scensia nodded hesitantly. The system I’d pointed out as not being a pirate port was immediately de-highlighted, even as the artificial goddess replied “You have a point there. I will admit to intelligence analysis like this being a bit outside my normal duties; while I can correlate truly vast amounts of information, there are still a few areas I’m just not as good as a proper specialist at. Are any of the remaining three able to be ruled out, or are they all pirate ports?”

Max and I pored over the data for a few moments, taking note every relevant detail about the systems in question. After several moments of inspection, we were absolutely certain of two things. First, all three remaining star systems definitely played host to pirates as a significant portion of their economic and defensive policy. They showed all the signs of being pirate ports; a suspiciously high degree of “imports” entering the system that couldn’t be accounted for any other way, a culture of not asking uncomfortable questions of travelers, and much more extensive ship servicing industries than a system at their level of industrial development would normally have. And that was just the tip of the metaphorical Jolly Roger-waving iceberg.

The other thing we were absolutely certain of was that wringing any useful information out of those systems was going to be an absolute nightmare; each was home to hundreds of billions of people, meaning that to get anywhere we’d need to deploy entire regiments of intelligence-gathering personnel. However, hiding that we were doing that would be an immensely difficult task, and with how closed off such places were about people asking awkward questions, there was every chance that they’d close ranks to lock us out of everything they could possibly could.

Max was the one to mention our evaluation of the situation to Scensia, then noted “It would be very convenient if we could narrow down which of these three systems Bark’s Finest called in at most often. That system would be far more likely to have useful amounts of information if we were to investigate, and if we only need to investigate a single one we can focus our efforts much more effectively.”

Scensia made a show of inspecting the infographics for each of the highlighted systems for a few moments, before she replied “I can probably determine that for you, though it will take a few moments of analysis and some light cyberwarfare to discover the information you are seeking. Please wait.”

And so wait we did. A couple minutes later, Scensia spoke again “I have determined that Bark’s Finest was most likely based out of the system named Bouccan; while the records were fragmented and very difficult to access, there are the most reports of them frequenting that system between raids. While there they claimed that their ship was the freighter Bertram’s Folly, using the authcode 381e-ea24-85d7-9d77-4fdf-2765-769a-1bfc.”

Max and I both nodded in recognition. A bit afterwards, Max asked “Could you please give us the exact co-ordinates and the report as a file? There’s almost certainly multiple systems named Bouccan, and getting them mixed up would be a major inconvenience.”

Scensia smiled and replied “Certainly. Is there anything else that is needed?” even as a data packet was transmitted to our brain for storage.

I shook our head and noted “No we’ve got the information we came for, Scensia. Thank you.”

The goddess sighed contentedly before noting “In that case, I suppose I must decohere.” even as the augmented reality overlay vanished and Scensia stopped floating.

I performed the standard RSU salute, before saying “We can find our way back to the mindcast place from here.”

Scensia’s avatar shrugged, noting “I don’t do too much with this body anyway, so I might as well follow you at least that far. Come, walk with me.”

I gladly did so, my tail swishing behind us as we walked, and my catlike ears perked up with excitement. We soon passed back into the sanctuary of the church, now empty of worshipers as the service was long since over. As we walked, Max noted “I wonder if Scensia can still do that mind reading trick now that she’s not fully integrated?”

Immediately, Scensia remarked “No, Maximus Hadrian. I cannot in fact still do the mind reading trick. I especially can’t do it in this body, specifically designed for instilling awe in the faithful.” in an extremely sarcastic tone of voice, a completely deadpan expression on her face as she did so.

I couldn’t help it, I laughed loud and hard, and didn’t quite finish laughing until we got back to the Mindcast room. As we climbed into the recycler pod, Scensia said “While your mortal coil shall remain here, I know that your souls shall safely reach their destination.”

And with that, the Mindcast pod closed, the scanning probe descended, and just like that we were back in the round utilitarian pod at the BoSI office. Bud greeted us before the scanning probe had even fully retracted “Hello Madeline and Max! How did your trip to Palemission go? Also, what do you want to have done with your archived selves from when you departed?”

I immediately smiled and replied “Nice to see you, Bud! Our trip went very well indeed. Anyway, please overwrite our previous selves with up to date backups.”

Bud did the standard clapping stand-to-attention salute as she replied “Done!” then the scanning probe retracted, and the pod’s door opened. I climbed out of the pod, and even as the body walked through the hallways I was already ringing up a virtual reality meeting with Shen. He accepted almost immediately, before greeting us “Agents Zargosty and Hadrian, welcome back. Please transfer your experience recordings of the visit to Palemission, as well as any pertinent intelligence.”

Max immediately nodded and replied “Affirmative.” as he transferred the files. Even with the massive acceleration of this sort of virtual conversation, it was still much faster and less error prone to directly transfer information like this instead of manually explaining it.

Shen took a few moments to mull over what we’d sent him, before noting “Ah, the Bouccan system. We probably can in fact investigate that system. However, it’s considerably farther out than our effective force projection range. We won’t be able to subjugate the system to pick through everything even temporarily. Even if we did such a thing, the mere attempt would simply result in the people there hiding everything until we left. It’s going to have to be a covert investigation.”

I nodded, saying “We’d figured as much; pirate ports tend to be incredibly closed off affairs. Probably one of the only ways we’ll be able to investigate the port without raising too much suspicion is by pretending to be pirates ourselves.”

Shen’s virtual mandibles clicked together in a distinctly smug expression, the spider rubbing four of his limbs together with glee as he noted “That can be arranged. Our liaisons with the Starforce can get us access to an Irregular without too much waiting. Load it up with spies and falsified plunder, give everyone suitably piratical cover identities, forge some transponder codes, blast a few superficial craters in the hull, and soon enough we’ll have a seemingly bona fide pirate ship ready to visit the Bouccan system.”

Max hummed in agreement, noting “Travel via Voidskipper is probably the better option for this anyway; I wouldn’t trust Mindcast travel to or from a pirate port under any circumstances. In addition, the travel time for a ship means we’ll have plenty of time for everyone to assimilate into their cover identities.”

Shen’s carapace shifted colors to a brilliant emerald green “Indeed. Report to the Mindcasting bay to be archived; we’ll get you properly sleeved aboard our impromptu pirate ship in very short order.”

I couldn’t help but resist the urge to roll our body’s physical eyes, even as I commanded the autonav brainware to bring us right back to the Mindcasting room. As we arrived, bud asked “Back so soon? Didn’t I just see you two?”

I just shrugged and noted “We’re supposed to be archived, apparently. Shen wants to put us on his latest project, and apparently it’ll be easier if both Max and I are inert data while things are getting set up.”

Bud just shrugged, and said “Well then, you two know the drill. Into the morph recycler.”

We did so without complaint. The upholstery compressed as we clambered in, the glass door slid shut before blacking out, and the scanning probe descended. The next thing we knew, the glass was opening to reveal another mindcast receiving room, this time with a distinctly piratical decor. The Jolly Roger over the exit to the room was a nice touch, especially with the loop of an exploding Voidskipper it played.

As we climbed out of the pod, Max noted “I’ve got the details on our cover identity and current morph. We are going to be impersonating a singlet for this mission by the name of Ress Yottan, age 51 and relatively new to piracy. Likes include intoxicants, explosions, and tinkering with machinery. Dislikes include bland food. Strong predilection against expletive usage. As for our morph, we’ve got an isolation cage for all our processors, as well as some combat optimizations our normal hardware isn’t equipped with. Anyway, I’ve got Ress’ personality overlay ready if you want to try being her before we get to Bouccan.”

I sent back a mental shrug to Max as I answered “I can’t think of a single reason for us not to try on our cover identity ahead of time. In fact, I think getting some practice using her would be an excellent idea. That said I really hope they used a cognitive weighting filter for this, rather than a constrained headmate system; I can deal with being someone else, I can’t deal with sharing headspace with an obedient slave.”

Max sent back a brief pulse of approval before he activated the personality overlay. Then suddenly I was Ress Yottan, and I realized that I was missing my turn to pick out my share of the plunder. Quickly I started scurrying for the Loan Shark’s hold.

Fortunately I was still also Madeline Zargosty; whoever did the work on this personality overlay had done a truly amazing job. Max and I were still able to think as ourselves, but our thought stream was hidden inside the cognitive mask that was Ress; we were still the only actual people in this brain, yet every last bit of output was getting filtered through Ress’ simulated worldview and personality.

So while I-As-Ress made my way to the cargo hold, I-as-Madeline was reviewing the mission briefing. The flight plan for Loan Shark called for us to use one of the major spokes on the Lane network to travel almost a hundred light years perpendicular to our destination before taking the most efficient route to Bouccan. This was estimated to take about 150 skips, including the five planned Lane skips; the interstellar medium was a bit denser than average between the Red Star Union and Bouccan, and that meant shorter skips in general. This meant that Loan Shark would be making 145 full-shock skips; given that it took her about 4 kiloseconds to cool her hull down between skips, that meant the total trip time would be roughly half a Megasecond.

I-as-Ress of course also knew this, though not about the espionage parts of the mission. So I knew there was plenty of time to lounge around the ship while we waited. On the other hand, I really didn’t want to miss out on my share of the plunder from that shipment we’d just hijacked; there were cubic kilometers of luxury goods in that haul, and I’d never live it down if I missed out on my pick of the plunder.

As for actually getting to the cargo hold, it was quite fortunate that the Loan Shark had a comprehensive internal transport network. As such, it only took a few minutes to get to the cargo hold. By happenstance I wound up sharing the tram with a few of my crewmates, and struck up a conversation, asking “So, what are you looking forwards to in terms of loot? I heard there were loads of fancy designer brand small arms aboard, and I want some.”

One of my buddies (currently wearing a cephalopod-shaped synthmorph) remarked “Yes, that certainly sounds quite enticing, but it’s not the highest priority for me. Personally, I’m more interested in looking for artistic knicknacks that take my fancy; things like handcrafted mechanical chronometers, or similar widgets.”

We didn’t get to talk for too much longer, before the tram arrived at the cargo hold, and I-as-Ress squealed with glee at the sight of rows upon rows upon stacks of cargo pods. I-as-Madeline was also excited, but mostly because things were going so well, and I’d get to try out the new body’s mobility. Max sent another brief pulse of approval, and I-as-Ress dashed off through the cargo pods, gleefully climbing all over them and kicking around as I looked for a cargo pod holding what I was looking for.

I hadn’t truly enjoyed kicking myself around in micro-gravity in way too long, and I was having an absolute blast with it, flipping through the cargo bay in acrobatic spirals as I went deeper and deeper into the stacks of our haul. After a little bit, I grabbed onto a pod and remarked aloud to no-one in particular “Let’s see what’s in this one, shall we?”

I quickly pried the lock open with the tools I’d been printed with, and the cargo pod’s door opened to reveal pallets of sealed drink bottles. I took a closer look to identify what was in them, and within a few moments, I realized exactly what it was. Genuine aged Alpha Cola? Sweet, literally! I quickly swiped a few bottles of the Electric Tang and Fireball Punch flavors that I put in my carry bag, popping open the top on a bottle of the Fireball Punch and sticking in the included straw before taking a swig.

The bubbles of Helium in the drink rolled off my tongue with a pleasant tingling sensation, even as the pellet of radioactive Curium in the bottle that had provided those bubbles rattled around in the drink with a faint clacking noise. Delicious drinks aside, there were other things I wanted to find, like those designer brand weapons I’d heard so much about.

So I clambered out of the cargo pod, shouting “Hey, I found a bunch of aged Alpha Cola here! I’m claiming it all as part of my share!” before I continued on through the stacks, using my tail for anchorage while I kept sucking away at my soda. Soon the drink was done, and I stashed the empty bottle in my bag before doing anything else; the Quartermaster would be furious with me if I littered in the cargo bay, and I had better things to do than get yelled at.

Case in point I opened this cargo pod, finding a whole lot of snazzy dresses. Checking the label revealed they were all designed by Oxide Fashions, and they were pretty darn expensive. I marked them down on the “To Fence” list before moving on; not that I didn’t like them, but there were plenty of other options for clothing that I liked more.

I happened upon three more cargo pods full of disappointments before I found what I was looking for: the weapons. I-as-Ress felt immense glee as I looked inside the various packages to discover beautifully designed personal-scale weaponry, and even I-as-Madeline felt happy at seeing all this equipment. Quickly I started digging through the cargo pod to decide what I wanted, only to find that I was absolutely spoiled for choice.

There were chem guns, mag guns, lasers, even a few edged weapons in this pod, all of which were available in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and aesthetic styles. They didn’t even seem to have anything in common until I realized that every last one of them was from the Punkverse Personal Armaments group. Ah, just sorted by manufacturer then.

After some thinking, I grabbed a pair of mag pistols and a raster carbine, all in their “tubepunk” catalog section. I familiarized myself with the carbine first; it had a matte nickel finish forwards of the pistol grip, aside from the carbon black top part placed to act as a radiator. There were synthwood handholds both at the pistol grip and on the underside of the beam generator, and the two and a half centimeter optical aperture was beautifully clear.

It had a receiver for power cells just in front of the pistol grip, of which it came with five in the shape of box magazines, as well as a charger with slots for four cells. One cell was marked with an ionizing radiation symbol, and judging by the fact that particular cell was ever so slightly warmer than the rest, it probably had a radioisotope unit in it for recharging while not in use.

The last notable feature was the informational readout of the weapon, with two rows of nixie tubes; the top was just a single row of four neon red tubes, and displayed the energy content of the current cell in sixteens of kilojoules. The bottom had three krypton blue tubes to display the current temperature of the weapon in Kelvin, as well as a separate green tube showing a simple graphic of the current firing mode.

In a word, it was beautiful, and now it was mine.

As for the matched pair of mag pistols, they were styled similarly, with beautifully ergonomic synthwood grips below a matte nickel finish for the parts that weren’t carbon black to radiate waste heat. Even there the weapons were beautifully designed, with shallow grooves etched into the curved top as if to accentuate the presence of the acceleration coils inside the weapon. The information displays were very similar to the one on the raster carbine, with a temperature readout, an ammunition counter, and a firing mode indicator; however, the three-tube temperature display was on its own row, while the two-tube ammunition counter was above, adjacent to the firing mode indicator.

Speaking of ammunition, these mag pistols were chambered for 6.5 x 30 millimeter fin stabilized projectiles, operating on the Integrated Energy Cartridge model; this meant each bullet contained its own energy cell to provide the power accelerating it out of the gun, with the gun’s coils actually being passive elements. Each magazine held 32 bullets in a double-stack configuration, slotting into the receiver in the handhold with a satisfying click. Between the two pistols, I had a total of eight pistol magazines that held 256 rounds of ammunition, and an additional thousand rounds or so in cans for later.

Looking over my new loadout, I-as-Ress couldn’t help but smile at the new heat I was packing; not only would it let me fight as well as I could possibly ask for, but it would let me look incredibly fashionable while doing so. I-as-Madeline was satisfied too.

This is the free edition of In Pursuit of Bark's Finest. If you want to read the whole story ahead of schedule, you can buy it at Amazon or Smashwords.

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