Exactly on schedule, Loan Shark arrived at the Bouccan system. We-as-pirates were all extremely excited for a chance to spend our ill-gotten gains and live a life of luxury beyond what our ship’s quarters and virtualities could provide. Yes the ship had twenty entire cubic kilometers of space devoted to our accommodations – not counting transport corridors and such – but that still only amounted to twenty cubic meters of space per crew member given there were ten million of us aboard.

We-as-agents were also excited about reaching Bouccan, though for very different reasons. This was the single biggest lead about the whereabouts and modus operandi of Bark’s Finest that we were likely to find for a while, and we wanted to make sure we acquired every single scrap of information that could possibly be useful.

Musings aside, I was currently enjoying some wind-down snuggles with Grom, that person wearing the squid-like synthmorph; turns out that they were very skilled at using those tentacles in more intimate contexts. As we felt the slight jerk under us from the last skip Loan Shark would be undertaking, an announcement came over her intranet. “Attention crew! We have arrived at Bouccan, and are currently negotiating passage through the timewall. Prepare to disembark.”

I met Grom’s gaze, noting “It’s been fun, but I guess we have to get ready to go. Mind untangling me?”

Grom simply replied “Sure, Ress.” as they withdrew their tentacles. Sitting up, I-as-Madeline couldn’t help but feel good; while the names we were using were fake, I’d talked to Grom-as-Agent, and our unexpected romance was entirely genuine. Plus there weren’t even any conflicts of rank or interest that could trip the fraternization rules.

Still, I needed to get ready for our time on the town, and that meant getting dressed and armed. So I hauled myself out of Grom’s hammock, and made my way past the racks of handcrafted timepieces decorating the room to reach the corridor. I grabbed a passing handle on the tram cable, and after a few minutes of travel I had reached my personal quarters.

I entered to find my stash of nicely chilled Alpha Cola, a wardrobe with a few of those Oxide Fashions dresses that I’d decided I wanted to keep after all, my beautiful tubepunk raster carbine and mag pistols, and a bunch of other items that I’d decided were awesome enough to claim as part of my share.

After thinking for a few moments, I chose a half-length sleeveless blue dress with emerald tracery; as I pulled it on, the fabric contracted to fit my figure, and the second pair of arm holes sealed seamlessly like they were never there. Looking in the baroquely-framed mirror I’d found somewhere in the haul, I was very happy with my appearance. Now I just needed to figure out a good way to holster my arsenal without ruining the aesthetic.

Then I found the pockets, and everything got much easier. All the energy cells easily fit in the front two pockets, while the mag pistols and their ammo almost perfectly matched the available space in the side pockets. Plus, since the pockets were anchored to my thighs instead of the skirt and their openings seamlessly closed when not being accessed, they were effectively imperceptible from the outside.

I opted not to conceal the raster carbine; not only was it big enough to render that rather impractical, but I wanted to be visibly armed. I-as-Ress was a pirate after all, and it would pay to emphasize that point by not hiding the fact that I was carrying a really quite deadly weapon. Also when properly slung the tubepunk weapon really accentuated my look.

For the rest of my loadout, I grabbed a gemstone-studded courier bag that complemented my dress. Inside I put a twelve pack of Alpha Cola, the charger for my Raster Carbine, a comms booster tablet with an integrated volumetric image projector, a couple spare dresses (neatly folded) and a few assorted grenades.

My preparations complete, I swished my tail with happiness even as I started making my way to the docking bay. This was going to be great!

It took a few kiloseconds for Loan Shark to get approval to pass the system’s timewall, then Skim the remaining distance to enter orbit of Tortuga, the system’s largest gas giant. Once we arrived, a service armature docked to Loan Shark to provide refueling and hull repair, while we all piled into the surface-to-orbit shuttles for the flight to Tide, the second major moon of Tortuga, and the most heavily populated body in the system.

I was sitting right next to Grom for the entire flight. Still, just before we arrived, Max had a message for I-as-Madeline. “Unless you need me, I’m going dormant for the duration of this infiltration; pirates generally don’t let headmates stay because of the way shares are divided up, so if I’m discovered it will immediately arouse suspicion.”

I-as-Madeline replied “Understood. Talk to you later.”

Then the airlock indicator turned blue, and the shuttle said over his sound system “Attention passengers, we have now landed at High Tide Spaceport. The cabin will be evacuated for disembarking via staircase, please retrieve all luggage from the overhead and under-seat compartments.”

I hummed to myself while I retrieved my bag, even as the air pressure in the cabin was reduced to zero. The flawlessly clear nictating membranes over my eyes reflexively activated to prevent my tears from boiling away, as did the sphincter in my airway. According to my biofeedback I had about thirty kiloseconds worth of molecular Oxygen held in reserve before I’d need to switch to my anaerobic metabolism, but that was plenty, since I didn’t expect to be in vacuum for more than a few minutes.

I remarked over my internal transceiver “Hey Grom. Nice to be portside, yes?”

In response, Grom replied over radio “Yes, yes it is. Want to stick together this trip, Ress?”

I nodded appreciatively, even as we walked down the staircase to the pavement of the spaceport. The terminal ahead of us was a low, flat building with hundreds of landing pads for shuttles, and just as many airlocks. Grom and I shuffled into one of these airlocks, and with a distinct foomph the lock pressurized. Then the inner door opened, and our group was inside.

The terminal was much more decorated inside, featuring volumeteric projectors displaying advertisements for all sorts of hardcore recreation establishments in a riot of colors, as well as a few “Spacefarer’s Clubs” and a bunch of other places. I mentioned to Grom “Personally, I’m thinking that I’ll want to hit a few bars, maybe a brothel or a casino. Then we chat some people up at the spacefarer’s clubs.”

Grom rubbed a tentacle under his face as he noted “Personally, I think that the Roger’s Ashes would be the best club to visit. Shall we stay together, or should we simply meet up there?”

I gently stroked Grom on the side of his hull, even as I reminded him “We’re sticking together, like we planned.”

And so we made our way through the spaceport terminal, passing the shops reselling what was doubtless mostly plunder from other pirate ships, as well as several spaceport food courts. As we walked, I-as-Madeline couldn’t help but notice something a bit odd: While I’d seen plenty of places offering resleeving services, there didn’t seem to be any Mindcast travel firms around. After a bit of thinking, I-as-Madeline determined that the most likely reason was due to the community wanting to make it harder for those interested in investigating.

Eventually after a few minutes, Grom and I reached the train station for transit between the spaceport and the populated regions of Tide. We all piled in, with me receiving compliments about my dress, raster carbine, and hairstyle from various strangers we wound up happening to share a train car with. I allowed myself to blush slightly from the flattery, even as my ears pivoted into a low, horizontal position. This prompted a burst of chuckles all around, even as I repeatedly thanked those people who complimented me.

Anyway, as we traveled I made a point of downloading a map of the city we were headed to. Not directly into my brain of course; I didn’t trust the local networks since I wasn’t an idiot. No, I downloaded the map into my tablet, then disconnected said tablet from the network. Only after picking over that map with every single security tool available to me did I directly synch with my tablet and internalize the map, while also passing a similarly sanitized copy to Grom.

Admittedly this was a bit less convenient than directly downloading the map, but it was also a lot safer. As an added bonus, the locals in the train car with me had seen the precautions I took, and their expressions (for the people who bothered with expressive faces at least) were displaying a newfound level of respect. I had, after all, proven that I had more assets than just good looks and a fancy gun.

When we got off the train, both Grom and I knew our way around the city like we’d been exploring the place for decades. As such, we knew exactly where we were going first: the Blue Jovian Bar and Grill.

As such, Grom and I immediately made our way to the nearest Pod Lift station, which was very convenient, since the train station had one built into it. As we approached the platform, I called out “We’re headed for North Circle’s third level station! Is anyone else coming with us?” as we both climbed into the cylindrical pod’s flat side and took our seats.

No-one else got in, and soon enough our pod was rotated out of the station. There was a clunk as the grippers changed from the station cable to the acceleration cable followed by a feeling of acceleration, then the pod shifted cables to the main line. I couldn’t help but admire the view as our pod traveled through the more scenic parts of the cableways, changing between vertical and horizontal lines as necessary. While I’d been in plenty of arcologies before, there was still something special about riding a cableway.

A few minutes later, we arrived at the station we’d selected. From there it was just a short walk to the Blue Jovian, and when we entered we were immediately treated to a raucous scene of music, intoxicants, and a bunch of volumetric display games that the crowds were cheering on the players of. After a few moments, I decided to wander over to the bar, where a bunch of drones were currently mixing up drinks.

Quickly I checked my balance with the local currency, discovering that we had quite a lot to spend indeed. Apparently the Quartermaster had already been quite busy arranging buyers for our haul, and that meant I had absolutely no qualms about ordering “The most expensive hard drink you have that’s actually good!”

Immediately the drones blinked in recognition, and started swirling around the drink mixing area, brewing up a tall glass of something I sincerely hoped would be severely intoxicating. Off to my right, I heard a faint hum, and turned to see a person wearing a dark-skinned morph that blended features of a male baseline and some variety of extremely colorful bird, given the slight beak shape of his mouth and the brilliant feathered plumage he sported.

I asked “Curiously, what was the hum for?”

The man chuckled and asked “Just come in off a voyage, I take it? The regulars know what they like around these parts, rather than just asking for the most expensive thing worth drinking.”

To this I gestured towards Grom as I replied “Yes! Grom and I actually just got in a few kiloseconds ago. I’m Ress by the way.”

The man grinned, before saying “Gator Andrews. Nice to meet you, Ress. By the way, you really know what you’re doing when it comes to your appearance; the dress really accentuates your morph, and the gun contrasts nicely.”

I smiled slightly, thanking Gator for the compliment even as my drink was served, and the drones notified me “This is a genuine Cassiopeiaen Swirl, made with well-aged ingredients. Please do enjoy.”

I did so, bringing the glass up to my lips and taking a swig. It was wonderful, with a rich savory flavor and a distinctive kick of something spicy in the background. As I drank, I got alerts from my biofeedback that I was having to rely more and more on my anaerobic metabolism due to cyanide ingestion, but I wasn’t too worried; everyone knew that to get well and drunk took some serious molecular havoc for any proper biomorph.

Events around me seemed to speed up due to needing to rely more on my slower metabolism, but that was fine; I was also getting a nice fuzzy feeling around the edges of my thoughts. And so I only slurred slightly when I stood up and told Gator “Hey, if you wanna go do a dance off in the projector stage, let’s freaking do it!”

Gator took one look at me, before noting “You know what, not like this. I’d have an unfair advantage with you being intoxicated and me not. Bartenders, bring me two shots of Deep Freeze!”

Immediately the drones replied “Yes sir, Mr. Andrews!” and quickly poured out a pair of shot glasses, the low gravity of Tide meaning it took longer than I was used to for the liquor to go from bottle to glass.

Still, Mr. Andrews slammed the shots back with admirable speed, and we both made our way to the projector stage. I idly shoved someone much drunker than me out of the way, only half-noticing the red-headed biomorph-wearer grumbling furiously as they stumbled off to elsewhere.

What followed was several minutes of embarrassing clumsy dancing as the two of us drunkenly competed at a whole-body rhythm game. After a couple kiloseconds of the crowd laughing at our poor performance, and me barely managing a win in a majority of songs, we both stumbled off the projection stage, laughing all the way back to the bar.

I ordered a couple more drinks, exploring different parts of the menu before I staggered my way to a booth, thoroughly sloshed as I went. When I got there I was greeted by Grom, who seemed to be mildly intoxicated himself, remarking “That dance battle you did was funny, Ress, you’ve got to show me that again sometime.”

I was puzzling about how to reply when one of the establishment’s drones hovered over and asked “Can I take your orders, please?”

All that could come to mind for me was “Barbecue, with crunchy stuff.”

The drone apparently took a few moments to figure out a suitable dish, before turning to Grom and asking “Your order, sir?”

Grom almost immediately replied “A recharger and self-repair feedstock.”

If anything, the waiter drone seemed almost insulted by the simplicity of this order, and I couldn’t help but imagine it grumbling as it hovered away about how this was a high-class establishment and if he wanted stuff that simple he should have just gone to a maintenance supplies shop.

After a few moments of this, Grom asked “Ress, what are you laughing about?”

I replied “Nothing, nothing, just a funny thought I had!”

Grom begrudgingly accepted this, and we sat there in silence for the kilosecond it took to prepare our meals. My meal was a plate with a square cut of meat with ribs – doubtless printed in sterile conditions to avoid infecting any of the customers with feral nanoweapons – alongside fried chips made from some local vegetable I didn’t recognize.

As for Grom’s plate, he got a Toroidal Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage unit in the middle of a bunch of artfully arranged sticks of polymers, metal granules, and other synthmorph repair feedstocks, with more in the bowl-shaped depression formed by the recharger’s toroidal shape. Apparently the chef had rebelled against the sheer drab-ness of Grom’s request with artful presentation.

Either way, we each dug into our respective meals; the first thing I checked on my ribs was if I could cut through the bones with my table knife, to which the answer turned out to be yes; apparently they had omitted the carbon nanotubes that would be found in an actual skeletal system. The first bite was absolutely delightful, sending a riot of taste sensations across my tongue and palette that I was hooked on right at the start.

As for Grom, I caught a glimpse of him connecting the adapter cable between the charger unit he’d been served and the charging port of his morph, with only a few moments of fiddling to get things in operation. He also opened up the port to his feedstock grinder, and was dropping sticks of it in one at a time.

Still, the meal did eventually end, the serving drones hauling away our dishes and the bill being subtracted from our balance. I was already starting to sober up by the time we were leaving the establishment as my system had time to purge the cyanide I’d ingested and get my aerobic metabolism back up and running.

As we left, Grom asked “So, do you want to go to the Roger’s Ashes club now, or is there anything else that you want to do first?” even as he gently supported my still slightly unsteady gait with a few tentacles.

It took me a bit to formulate a response, but eventually I managed to say “Can we just ride the pods around for a while first? The view from them is amazing, and I really need to sober up before we do much else around here.” As I spoke, I sent a brief hint from I-as-Madeline to Grom-as-Agent about what exactly I meant by ‘doing much else’.

Grom dipped his hull in a nod, before saying “That makes sense; I’ll walk you to a pod, and we can sober up.”

Sure enough, soon we were on a pod looking out at the city’s skyline, the sunlight refracting off the polarized windows enclosing the arcology’s atmosphere to produce a brilliant rainbow display as we rotated towards day.

As we were zipping around, my body was gradually purging itself of the cyanide I’d ingested, and my thoughts were returning to their normal speed and clarity as my cells started being able to process Oxygen again. After a few minutes of this, my biofeedback informed me that I was back to full sobreity.

I nodded, saying “Grom, I’m sober now. Pod, take us to the Roger’s Ashes Spacefarer’s Club.”

Immediately, the pod acknowledged the request with a simple “Destination selected: Roger’s Ashes Spacefarer’s Club.”

Within a few minutes we arrived at the station, and disembarked. I idly noted a very faint high-pitched whirring noise as the two of us walked away. At first I figured it was just some badly tuned equipment, but when that noise followed us I immediately whirled around and got a look at a spy drone desperately trying to conceal itself with active camouflage.

Yeah, no. I immediately brought my carbine up even as I set the selector switch to raster blaster mode in the same motion. The beautiful Nixie tube readout showed a full charge on the energy cell in neon red, weapon temperature of 299 Kelvin in Krypton blue, and the distinctive tight zigzag pattern of a raster blaster in bright green.

The drone didn’t have any time to react at all, as my carbine started firing countless nanosecond pulses of light in a scan pattern reminiscent of ancient analog video, each pulse producing a tiny explosion when it hit the drone’s casing. Combined, the total effect was that the drone’s surface immediately exploded into a plume of plasma that shattered the rest of its structure, sending the attempted spy clattering to the ground, even as a ragingly hot fire ignited within its circuits.

As I lowered my weapon and switched it back to ‘safe’, the crowd that had turned to watch the brief light show gradually went back to what they had been doing. As for Grom, he went to investigate the wreckage. After a few moments, he replied “Whoever made this was sure to put in a very thorough self-destruct; I won’t be able to trace anything from it.”

I nodded solemnly, saying “Then I guess we had best just get on with what we were doing, but bearing in mind that we stand a good chance of being jumped.”

And so, we made our way the half a kilometer from the pod station to the Roger’s Ashes club. Along the way we passed dozens of street stalls selling everything from standard tourist kitsch to fine deep fried examples of the local cuisine. I wasn’t hungry thanks to my earlier meal at the Blue Jovian, so the street food wasn’t too interesting.

On the other hand, the building the size of an entire district block with a giant animated sign reading “Roger’s Ashes Spacefarer’s Club” was of very much interest indeed. It was vaguely pyramidal, with four terrace levels each playing host to massive gardens, with ivy climbing down over the edges. There was a near-constant throng of people entering and leaving the club, and it looked an awful lot like there was a guest list that those entering were being checked against.

On the edge of my awareness I noticed a large group approaching Grom and my position from behind. I counted at least thirty sets of footsteps, making a beeline straight towards us without even the pretension of subtlety. I-as-Madeline spared an aside glance to Grom and asked “Have you called for backup?” over the encypted channel.

Grom-as-Agent replied “Yes. We have reinforcements on the way; they should be here in about five minutes.”

I nodded in acknowledgement, then replied “Let’s keep walking; it’ll delay them entering engagement range for a bit longer, meaning there won’t be as much time when we’re forced to deal with them without backup.”

Grom simply grumbled in vague approval of the idea, even as he upped his speed slightly. I followed suit, taking extra care to avoid seeming like I was in a hurry, my tail gently swishing behind me.

Still, eventually the group caught up with us, and shouted “Hey you!” I turned around to take in the view of our incredibly unsubtle stalkers, even as I made an extremely innocent-seeming “who, me?” gesture. Off to the side, Grom was undertaking a similar course of action.

The group was thirty strong, rallied behind a very broad-shouldered heavily muscled biomorph. While the rest of the group was a varied mix of biomorphs and synthmorphs in all shapes and sizes, they all had a couple unifying features. First of all, every last member of the group had red on top of their head; for some it was hair, feathers, scales, or even paint for some of the synthmorphs. The other unifying feature is that they were all very stockily built, doubtless optimized for sheer physical power, more than anything else.

The thugs were also none too subtle about brandishing a wide variety of assorted weaponry as their leader announced “Yeah, you in the fancy dress. The boss wants to talk to you. Personally.”

At the same time, I received an encrypted message in my capacity of I-as-Madeline, saying “I found a possible opportunity to get the information we came for, but to make it happen I need a big flashy distraction.”

Inside my bag, I readied one of my concussive grenades, even as I surreptitiously set my carbine to linear pulse mode. A distraction? Such as a running street battle, perhaps? Yes, I could certainly do that.

My decision made, I replied “Fine then, let’s talk”. Simultaneously I brought my carbine up in one smooth motion, blasting a massive hole through the lead thug’s upper torso even as Grom and I both ducked into cover and I lobbed the grenade I’d primed.

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.

Ebook: Amazon | Smashwords

Paperback: Normal Text | Large Text