Almost immediately, Shen put me into a virtual reality recording of the interrogation. It was taking place very close to where I’d originally lost my head, and I was currently in the body of the agent who’d requested a distraction; albeit with no control, since this was a recording. Still, Max and I were so immersed in their decision-making process that it felt like we were living it right along with them. They apparently shared my preference for a slight variation on the baseline human form, though they apparently preferred vulpine traits instead of the feline ones I went for.

I kept shooting encrypted micro-communications to a person wearing a twin-rotor synthmorph, both of us using tight beam only and keeping things very brief with each burst to avoid detection. They were being very skittish about admitting to more than having heard of Bark’s Finest, and hadn’t even given out a pseudonym for identification. After several moments of circumspect back-and-forth, I asked “If I could arrange for everyone’s attention to be diverted elsewhere for a few moments, would you be willing to tell me more?”

The potential informant waffled for a few moments, before agreeing “If you could make sure that no-one was paying attention to me, then yes I would tell you absolutely everything. But you have to promise me that you will get me out of here as soon as possible, once I’ve ensured the backups I’ve got stashed all over aren’t a liability. I don’t want to take chances.”

I simply replied “Understood.” before I broadcast over the encrypted channel to the rest of the agents “I found a possible opportunity to get the information we came for, but to make it happen I need a big flashy distraction.”

I didn’t have to wait, as I saw myself wearing that wonderful now destroyed dress suddenly whip out my raster carbine and open fire, the first grenade going off a moment later. Everyone in the street who wasn’t involved in the fight immediately ran for it, and in the chaos it was easy for the both of us to duck into a nearby alley.

As soon as the both of us were out of sight, I extended a virtual reality invite to the prospective informant. They accepted like their life depended on it, which is to say very very quickly, but not before a thorough scan for malicious braincode. Then they connected over our internal radio systems, and both of us were primarily devoting our attention to the simulated negotiating table.

The informant immediately put their multi-jointed gripper appendages together and asked “Alright, my name is Viyad. What do you want to know about Bark’s Finest?”

I nodded, before I replied “Nice to meet you, Viyad. To put it quite bluntly, we want to know where they might have decided to hide after stealing several Non-Orientable Wormhole pairs.”

Viyad’s avatar rocked back in shock, even as she exclaimed “My old crew did WHAT!? That’s utterly insane with far too much risk for far too little reward, there’s no way they’d do that…” There was a brief pause as Viyad considered things, and continued “… Well, not unless Fuller somehow talked them into it. That makes total sense, the charismatic bastard.”

I couldn’t help but ask “You dislike Captain Fuller?”

Viyad rolled her optic’s cosmetic iris, “Of course I don’t like the bastard. He’s from the Rogues party, while I voted Pinstripe last election. When he got into office I knew right then that I needed to get off that ship before he convinced everyone to go along with some insane plan of his, and it looks like I was right.”

It occurred to me that there could be a bit of a conflict of interest here, and I asked “To be clear, we’re looking to hunt down your former crew and mercilessly crush them; are you actually going to tell us the truth, even with those factors?”

Viyad blinked, before noting “Very very clever of you to ask that, you obvious spook. The answer is still yes; this system is rapidly becoming less and less safe for a certain between-jobs pirate, and you’re my best ticket out of here before someone decides to get rid of me. And if there’s one code of honor that a pirate like me holds to, we don’t cheat anyone on deals we make; we live or die on our word being trustworthy. It’s just that our word tends to be something along the lines of ‘hand over all your cargo and no-one gets hurt’.”

I simply gestured for Viyad to continue, and she did so “If they’re really going along with Fuller’s plan, then they won’t be doing the sane and logical thing of using quantum randomness to pick bolt holes. Fuller always was a sentimental fool in a lot of ways, and given his belief in his own weird form of astrology he’ll have some arcane convoluted reason concocted for going to specific places.”

Viyad’s iris narrowed in barely concealed fury as she dwelled on the topic “He claimed to have worked out some sort of equation for how various celestial objects would change your future based on when you visited them, relative positioning, luminosity, mass, all sorts of things. If you can get your hands on that equation, you stand a pretty good chance of predicting the rough sorts of places he would go. If he gets removed from the captain’s office that will almost certainly change, but Fuller’s practically a cult leader on that ship so that’s not terribly likely.”

I nodded knowingly, then asked a very important question indeed “Viyad, do you have a copy of Captain Fuller’s divination equation?”

Viyad shifted her iris from side to side, even as she replied “No, I don’t. Fuller kept the codebase for that thing strictly proprietary and never let a copy out of his sight. That said, I do have a decently good idea of where you might go looking to find one: You’ll need to go to Blackwood’s moon Bark. It’s where Alex Fuller grew up the old-fashioned way before he became a pirate, and also where he concocted that equation in the first place. There might be a few backup copies of his younger self archived there still.”

I noted that down, asking “You wouldn’t happen to have coordinates for which specific system? There’s no planet named Blackwood in this system, so I know it’s not here; similarly I would imagine that sort of name is very common indeed.”

Viyad rolled her iris again, before noting “I’ll tell you the rest once you get me to your ship. Not that I don’t trust you, but we are in the middle of a combat zone, and I would very much prefer to not be in the middle of a combat zone. Especially not one with Keg’s gang involved; they don’t have much care for collateral damage.”

And so we both dropped out of Virtual Reality, returning to the reality of the alleyway on the outskirts of a firefight. I gestured for us to climb to the nearby rooftops, and we both started ascending; me with my gecko pads, and Viyad by simply hovering upwards with her rotors.

A few moments later we reached the rooftop, and I asked “Viyad, you mentioned you wanted to deal with your backups. Where do we need to go to do that?”

My impromptu companion noted “I’ve deleted all the network-accessible ones already, but there are a couple storage drives I keep air gapped when I’m not updating them. They’re held by the sots of people you can trust as long as the payments keep coming in and I’ve been paying them very well indeed, so we just need to go get them. Follow me.”

What followed was an incredibly anticlimactic pod ride to three different locations. At each stop we arrived at a nondescript shop advertising no-questions-asked safe deposit boxes. Some digital currency changed accounts, volition authentication was performed to ensure Viyad wasn’t under the effects of any form of mind control, and then we vacated the premises. Simple, straightforward, and with no real disruptions that threatened to derail things.

We picked a different train station leading to the spaceport, and got there via another anticlimactic pod ride that missed the still ongoing street battle completely. That said, we could certainly spot the flashes of light from weapon fire and hear the sounds of violence in the distance. Given the total non-reaction of people directly caught up in it that I could see from the pod, this sort of thing must be a somewhat regular occurrence. Once we got past that little diversion our pod swiftly arrived at its destination, and we boarded the train to High Tide Spaceport.

I couldn’t help but notice that Viyad was looking nervous for the entire train ride, and that apprehension only increased as we approached the shuttle terminal. Quickly, I placed a request for two shuttle seats to the Loan Shark, while also sending a one-time pad encrypted message to the Voidskipper in question euphemistically explaining that I’d found an informant.

A few minutes later, everything had been sorted out in terms of transport arrangements. We made our way to our directed gate and exited through the airlock. Viyad compensated for the lack of atmosphere using a set of retractable quadrupedal legs extending from the underside of her orb-shaped chassis, but it was very clear she didn’t like using them. Still, a few moments were all it took for us to reach our seats aboard the shuttle, and the cabin re-pressurized shortly thereafter.

The shuttle flight was uneventful at its most exciting. It amounted to about an hour of orbital maneuvering via means of a fusion thermal engine, one of the oldest and most mundane methods of space travel. Aside from a few moderately intense thrust burns and some delicate touches of the maneuvering thrusters to dock with the Loan Shark, it basically amounted to an hour of boredom between the two of us as we sat strapped into our seats in micro-gravity.

Still, we docked with Loan Shark without delay. We both quickly disembarked from the shuttle, before making our way to one of the ship’s We-As-Agents areas. As soon as we arrived, I asked “So Viyad. We’ve gotten you off of Tide; you can Mindcast elsewhere at your convenience, or simply hitch a ride on the Loan Shark back to the Red Star Union.”

Viyad thought for a moment, before replying “I think I will pass on the offer of Mindcast; one of the facts you are forced to learn as a pirate is that long-distance Mindcasting is actually a very dangerous method of travel. I will be riding to the Red Star Union in this body, aboard this ship. Anyway, you wished to know the coordinates of Blackwood, and now that you’ve gotten me here I will gladly provide them.”

With that, Viyad provided a data packet with the coordinates for the planet known as Blackwood. The instant that happened, the recording ended and I was back in my own body with Max as we assimilated the information we had just received. Then we realized that Blackwood was actually located deep into Civilized Space and right on the edge of being part of the Interior, as it was nearly a thousand light years closer to Sol, and nearly ninety degrees off from our current location.

Max was the first to voice the concerns this raised, asking “Shen, how are we going to be reaching Blackwood in a reasonable timeframe while maintaining security? While Mindcasting through the Comm Hole network would be very fast it also raises massive cognitive security concerns with that number of middlemen involved. I also can’t see a Voidskipper trip there being particularly fast.”

That’s when Shen grinned, noting “Right, you were born and raised out here on the frontier, where Voidskippers can need Megaseconds just to go a few hundred light years. While you’ve probably read about the Interior’s comprehensive Lane networks, just how much of an impact they have probably hasn’t sunk in. With Lanes, a Voidskipper’s averaged travel speed can easily exceed one light year per second. Conveniently we here in the Red Star Union are very close to one of the main spoke Lanes providing a straight shot right to the Old Core, and we’re only a few minutes away from our first Lane skip right now. We’ll be at Blackwood within a kilosecond, so best not to dawdle.”

Before leaving the Mindcast bay, I thought to ask “Are we supposed to be armed for this mission?”

Immediately, Shen answered “Yes, though not for fighting people. Blackwood’s entire claim to fame is being a playground for irresponsible bio-engineers to create the most hideously dangerous organisms they can dream up before dumping them on the planet’s surface and placing bets on if they’ll find an ecological niche before going extinct. While it’s rare, sometimes these organisms have been known to breach containment and require termination. Further, there is a distinct possibility that you will be required to visit Blackwood’s surface. In that case, being armed is mandatory due to the hideously dangerous ecosystem.”

I blinked, before noting “We’re going to want some backup for this.” and without further delay, I traveled back to the Mindcast bay. Once there, I entered a command to copy my current mindstate, and instantiate me into six identical copies of my morph with slight variations to facial structure and hair color. It just took a brief poke of the scanning probe to transfer the data to the printing system, and then I was off to my next stop: the armory.

When I arrived, I was greeted by two more of me, even as Max chuckled in the background. Apparently I’d accidentally pranked myselves into thinking I was the first me printed today, as the two mes in the armory laughed even as one of them greeted me “Hello Madeline 3, I’m Madeline 1. Nice to meet me!”

From the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but hear Max chuckle as well. I just rolled my eyes, before asking “So, what’s the weapons load you’ve picked out? I can see the gun printers working away in the background there, and now I’m curious what exactly it is you’ve got cooking.”

Madeline 1 rolled her eyes and replied “The gun printers were working when we got here actually. Anyway, we only want to explain it once, so it can wait until the other four of us arrive.”

Then I heard my voice from the door, as four more of me showed up, one of them sarcastically remarking “And here we thought you Maxes and Madelines were having kinky fun times together. Oh well, maybe another time.”

I blushed slightly, before Madeline 2 cut me off “Anyway, in light of the threat environment we’ve decided to go for two heavy mag rifles and five full power battle lasers with raster blaster functionality. For sidearms everyone is getting a raster carbine with an integrated energy cell and a radioisotope recharger. Everyone’s gear gets fully linked mil-spec interfaces this time; that gear from the PPA group was fun and beautifully crafted, but it lacked a lot of the smart features that make military grade hardware really shine.”

All of us grinned at the thought of having that much firepower to use. And without further delay, Madeline 1 opened up several boxes of armament.

The very first thing I familiarized myself with was my battle laser. It was much bigger than the raster carbine I’d used back in the Bouccan system, being almost exactly 90 centimeters in length, 70 centimeters if I didn’t count the stock. That said it was distinctly bulkier in its other dimensions too; which was to be expected, given the presence of the coolant pipes used by its cooling system. Speaking of which, the exhaust vents for superheated coolant to escape from were at the front of the weapon and were oriented to the left and right. Good, that meant the forces were balanced and the exhaust wouldn’t throw off the weapon’s aim. There wasn’t a radiating patch on the weapon, which made sense given the use of active cooling.

This active cooling was a major departure from how the weapon I’d used back in Bouccan had operated, but it made sense. These battle lasers were built for sustained fire, and passive cooling like what that PPA raster carbine used just wasn’t going to cut it. A quick investigation revealed that both the energy cells and the receiver on the battle laser featured a pipe for coolant, which the documentation on the energy cells listed as being Supercritical Nitrogen stored at 30 Gigapascals of pressure. Between the extreme levels of adiabatic cooling from that and the 200 megajoules of energy stored in the cell’s SMES, this Battle Laser should be able to fire at its rated draw of four megawatts for fifty entire seconds without reloading. In its suppressive fire mode at 200 kilowatts, it would be able to go for an entire kilosecond without needing a reload.

Then I actually picked it up and immediately my biofeedback updated with data directly from the weapon, with lists of targets, customizeable firing parameters, the energy stored from the current SMES cell, current weapon temperature, and all manner of other useful information accessible directly through my nervous system. That said, I was more curious about how much all of this would weigh. The battle laser itself massed seven kilograms, and each energy cell massed three kilograms when full. That meant a fully readied battle laser massed ten kilograms, and each reload would weigh another three.

On the other hand, I was wearing a military grade morph, which had some pretty significant advantages when it came to lugging seriously heavy equipment loads around. Fifty kilograms of equipment would be pretty reasonable, all told.

As for the raster carbine I’d be using as a sidearm, that had a lot more in common with the weapon from the Punkverse Personal Armaments group in terms of form factor. The only significant differences were that the energy cell was fully integrated with the weapon, and that the beautiful nixie tube display and manual controls were replaced with a military grade neural interface like the battle laser had.

Meanwhile, Madelines 5 and 6 wound up getting the mag rifles. 6 mm x 55 mm self-powered fletchette rounds with active target tracking, muzzle velocity around 2 kilometers per second, and almost 500 kilojoules of energy release on penetration from the SMES in the bullet explosively quenching. Couple that with the comparatively negligible waste heat production and an 80 round casket magazine, and we had some really nice rifles for our dedicated markswomen.

In addition, we were all getting a suit of full-body composite armor with heavy use of carbon nanotubes. While it wouldn’t protect us against serious laser fire for prolonged periods, it could certainly buy us a half-second or so and that could easily be enough to save our lives. It wasn’t powered; we were all wearing military-grade bodies anyway, so it didn’t need to be.

We’d just finished familiarizing ourselves with our weapons load when an announcement came over the ship’s network, stating “Attention to all passengers. We have arrived at the outer timewall perimeter for the Doctor Reed’s Folly system. We are currently negotiating entry and docking arrangements. We expect to enter Blackwood’s orbital space within ten kiloseconds.”

Madeline four managed to get a witty retort off first, remarking “Well, looks like we lost track of time admiring our new guns. Guess our sense of time was shot.”

I laughed for a moment, then stormed over and yanked M4’s head right off her neck. As she touched her neck stump to verify what happened, I told her “You can have your head back when we get to the shuttles. In the meantime, consider this your punishment for that awful, awful pun.” tucking her currently slightly embarrassed-looking head under my arm for easier carrying.

M1 rolled her eyes, even as she replied “Admit it, you’re just mad that you didn’t come up with it first.” before walking over and yanking off my head too. I wound up watching both from my body’s photo-receptor cells and my actual eyes as all the other versions of me laughed a bit.

Then M5 spoke up from the corner of the armory, noting “While this is amusing, the detachable head is a new feature of our morphs that we need to get acclimatized to. We’ve got some time before we get to Blackwood, we might as well familiarize ourselves with it and maybe have some fun too while we wait.”

M1 nodded – which looked rather odd from the point of view of my head – and agreed “You know what? That’s an excellent idea. Let’s go, I know a room where we can have some privacy while we figure out uses for our heads coming off.”

In the back of my mind I could feel Max enthusiastically urging us all on, apparently eager to spectate on our upcoming activities. That distraction aside, we quickly arrived at the room in question. It honestly looked to be a currently unused bunk room, with a number of comfortable-looking hammocks. M1 introduced us to the room, noting “And this here is where we’ll be practicing, so heads off everyone. Doesn’t matter who gets which one once we’re done; we’re all thinking with our black boxes as primary, the brains in our skulls are just a booster module.”

True to her word, M1 reached up and pulled her head off with a faint click noise as the socket released, before setting it in one of the hammocks. It had a serene, slightly vacant expression. M2 shortly followed suit, M4 and I were already headless, and by the time I thought to look, M5, M6, and M7 had their heads off. That done, we got down to the business of figuring out if there was anything actually useful we could do with this that wouldn’t be handled better by a support drone. As it turns out, the answer was a definitive yes, though it wouldn’t be often used on field operations.

Anyway, once we were done with that it took a few minutes for us all to get cleaned up and dressed again, leaving us with just a kilosecond or so before we were scheduled to dock to the port station. We spent that time internalizing as much of the documentation on Blackwood as we possibly could, including maps and local government policy. Unsurprisingly there wasn’t much serious effort at habitation on the planet’s monster-infested surface; instead everyone was in orbital habitats, or living on the planet’s moon Bark.

Anyway, Reed’s Folly was much more developed than Bouccan; Unlike Tide, Bark was absolutely covered in city lights over every scrap of its surface and a lot more orbital infrastructure. They actually had a station for docking Voidskippers, connected to Bark by a series of extremely high-capacity maglev rail lines running along carbon nanotube space elevator cables. As such we along with the other few million agents openly here in an investigative capacity simply caught a ride through a nice pressurized jetway, navigated through the microgravity mega-arcology to the train stations, and strapped ourselves in for a ride to Bark’s surface.

Even with the extremely high speed of the maglev trains, it was still going to take about a kilosecond or so for us to reach Bark. I passed the time by watching the scenery out the train’s front camera, getting a virtual front-row seat to the miniature Ecumenopolis getting closer and closer, its dynamically supported orbital rings for heat dissipation and in-system traffic coming clearly into view as we approached. It was beautiful.

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