Bryce

“We’re clear in here!” I shouted back into the hallway before dismissing my sword and walking over to the hole in the floor. “Are you okay down there, Thea? Do you need help up?”

“Nah, I’m good,” Thea shouted from the deck below. “My new friend is going to help me up.”

“New friend? Don’t tell me…”

A pillar of sand erupted from the hole in the floor and deposited Thea on the ground across from me before forming into the shape of the ship’s captain.

“Hey babe, this is Captain Krag. He’s an earth elemental.”

“Hello, Captain Krag,” I greeted the elemental, then turned to Thea. “Weren’t you supposed to kill him?”

Usually, I was all for befriending people instead of killing them, but a union captain was a little different. Especially one who went out of their way to try to sell researchers to a goddess to be tortured and killed.

“Yeah, well, if I remember correctly, I was also supposed to kill you when we first met.” Thea shrugged. “I prefer making friends.”

“Are you going to try to date him now, too?” I teased.

“Maybe? That depends.” Thea turned to the captain and eyed him with a grin. “I’ve never dated an earth elemental, could be fun.”

“Not interested,” Krag deadpanned. “Thea said you’d be able to return me to the elemental plane if I tell you what I know about this ship and the crew.”

“That seems convenient,” I said. “I thought elementals enjoyed being on the mortal plane.”

“We do, but that doesn’t mean we enjoy dying here. Besides, I haven’t been home in a while and I wouldn’t mind getting back.”

There really wasn’t much to consider here. If Krag was willing to give us information in exchange for banishing him, then I was all for it. Besides, the alternative was killing him, and earth elementals weren’t easy to kill. I would just need to be careful with whatever we learned.

“You have a deal,” I said. “What can you tell us about this ship?”

“We bought it specifically for this mission,” he explained. “It’s a junker, but it’s all we could afford given the time constraint.”

“What time constraint?” I asked.

“We paid for the information about the job, but we couldn’t afford to have it be exclusive, which meant we needed to be the first ones here.”

That also meant more people would be coming, and they’d probably be arriving soon. We needed to hurry.

“Who sold you the information?” I asked.

“A fixer named Cael back on Akresh,” he said. “Rumor was he got it from a Legion expat, but if it’s true, then they’re deep in hiding, and after selling information like that, they probably have enough money to live that way for the rest of their life.”

“It’s probably Ahdi or Ramesh,” Lorelei said as she not-so-gracefully squeezed through the hole in the wall to get into the room. “We had them both removed from the project a few years ago for practicing soul manipulation. They continued their research after that in secret, but disappeared before we could apprehend them.”

“I haven’t heard of either of them,” Krag said. “But that probably doesn’t mean anything, all things considered.”

The door to the hallway opened and Doctor Phaylex joined us in the room. “I would hope that they have the common sense to change their name while in hiding,” she commented. “Especially if they’re in union space.”

“Yeah, changing your name would be the bare minimum for anybody in hiding like that,” Thea grinned up at me. “Right, Bryce?”

“Alright, one last thing. Are there any codes or security measures in place that we need to be aware of? Or any crew still alive?” I ignored Thea to ask Krag.

“There were security codes when we first bought the ship,” he answered. “But we didn’t know them, so we had them removed. As for the crew, only Kiza and her two friends are still unaccounted for, but that’s probably not a problem for you since she’s standing here.”

“Anything you want to know, doctor?” I asked. “If not, then I can get started on the banishment spell.”

“All of my questions have already been answered. At least, the ones I have in regards to the assault, but I doubt our new friend will be much help in regards to theoretical biomechanics.”

“Not much for the bio part, I’m afraid.” Krag smirked as he turned his left hand to sand and let it fall to the floor. “Never really felt like it applied to me.”

“Now, that is fascinating,” the doctor beamed. “How would you feel about being studied? I’d be willing to compensate you.”

“Sounds fun, but maybe some other time. Bryce promised to send me home, and it might be better to do that soon. Because I don’t think you’ll want to be here when the rest of the union shows up.”

~~~~

Banishing Krag back to the elemental plane was simple enough, and we contacted Sora once it was done. We still couldn’t dock with The Fury, not actually. But now that we were in control of the union ship, Sora was able to maneuver close enough to jury-rig a docking connection without an airlock seal.

It wasn’t ideal, and meant we needed to use EVA suits to move between ships, but worked well enough to move the scientists over. Having to use the suits to move across ships meant Samira had to walk me through safely extracting the fuel, which took me a lot longer than it probably should have.

In the end, we had a full fuel reserve and eight new passengers. The fuel was nice, but the passengers were a problem. Our ship was designed to accommodate at most six people, and we had more than twice that number. The beds in the spare rooms could convert into bunks, which meant we could fit four people.

Firra volunteered to sleep in the living room on a couch, and the doctor offered to stay in the med-lab. Finally, Lorelei was in the observation room along with one of the researchers, who was apparently in a relationship with her. Every room and possible bed was taken, which left the ship feeling extremely crowded.

Food was also going to be an issue, since we were already running low. Thea was busy taking inventory of what was left, but how tightly she’d have to ration it would depend on our destination. Which is what Sora and Lorelei were trying to figure out on the bridge. Meanwhile, I was in the med-bay discussing things with the doctor.

“Well, I wouldn’t say my research was specific to soul stones, or even necessarily related.” Doctor Phaylex frowned. “Partly because they’re highly illegal, but mostly because it’s an already solved problem.”

“Calling the problem solved is a bit disingenuous, doctor,” I argued. “Soul stones were outlawed by the Federation over two-thousand years ago, and the process for creating vessels for them disappeared a few hundred years later. At least, officially.”

“Ah, but captain, officially is the key word, now isn’t it? Knowledge isn’t so easily lost even when it’s regulated, and two-thousand years isn’t nearly long enough for something like that to be forgotten.”

“So you’re saying that I just need to find somebody who remembers a procedure that was extremely rare even while it was legal two-thousand years ago?” I asked.

“That’s precisely what I’m saying.” The doctor was smiling to herself, as if what she was describing was the most obvious thing in the world.

“And where in the hells and I supposed to find—” I stopped mid-sentence to glare at the woman. “You know how to do it, don’t you?”

The doctor’s smile only grew wider. “I performed soul-transfers for hundreds of years before it was outlawed, and for nearly as long afterwards.”

“Of course you did.” I shook my head as I smiled to myself. “Would you be willing to help us?”

“After you rescued me and my team from near-certain death and dismemberment?” She asked. “It’s the least that I could do, and I mean that literally. If there’s anything else you’d like from me, then you need only ask.”

“Helping us with Esme is more than enough for now. Is the equipment we found going to be enough, or did you need anything else?”

“It’s not exactly designed for it, but should be sufficient with limited modifications.” She turned back to look at the table we had recovered from the doll factory. “You did a truly admirable job of assembling it. Bio-manufacturing pods are very complicated pieces of machinery.”

“Samira deserves all the credit there,” I explained. “And for what it’s worth, she did nearly all of it without the assembly instructions.”

Phaylex blinked at me in surprise. “Why would she even attempt something like that?”

“Because Sora told her we didn’t have the instructions, and for whatever reason, she believed them.”

“Oh dear, that’s terrible!” She laughed. “And to think she still did such a wonderful job of it. I would very much like to meet this girl.”

“She’ll probably be spending most of this trip hiding in the engineering corridors. She’s not particularly social even when we don’t have eight strangers aboard, and Thea already agreed to bring all of her meals down there since we’re doing this for Esme.”

“Speaking of Esme, would you mind giving me her soul stone to inspect?” Phaylex asked. “I won’t be able to design her new body until I can get a good idea of her soul’s strength.”

“I have it here.” I pulled the silk-wrapped stone from my pocket and handed it to the doctor. “Please be careful with it. She’s only had about two months to heal after being nearly killed by soul-destroying magic.”

The doctor delicately unwrapped the stone and cringed when she saw the damage. “You said this was the soul of a greater succubus?”

“That’s right, I can actually vouch for her power personally.”

“It’ll probably be some time before she’s at that level again,” Phaylex explained. “The damage is extensive, and souls tend to be slow to heal.”

“It’ll be fine so long as she’s breathing again,” I said. “She’s Kai’s daughter, and the goddess isn’t happy about her death.”

“That’s certainly a good motivation to get it right. Attracting the attention of the divine isn’t usually a good thing, and Kai’s attention is particularly unsettling.”

“Agreed. the sooner Esme is back among the living, the happier I’ll be.”

“Well, the good news is that it won’t take long to develop a vessel capable of storing a soul this weak,” Phaylex said. “The bad news is that Esme will need to be protected until she can defend herself. She won’t be completely helpless, but it’s my understanding that succubi are often targets for abduction and enslavement.”

“That’s something I hadn’t considered,” I admitted. “How long will it take for her power to return?”

“It depends. Souls need mana to heal, and there’s significantly less available on the mortal plane relative to the hells. If she were to return to the hells, it’d likely be more dangerous, but she’d heal faster. Otherwise, you could consider forming a pact with her, but something like that is rather personal, so I’m reluctant to suggest it.”

“That’s something I’ll need to discuss with Thea.”

“There’s no need to rush a decision.” The doctor handed me back Esme’s soul stone. “It’ll take at least two weeks to fabricate a vessel for her, so you have time.”

“Two weeks? Sora mentioned the nearest Legion settlement was only about a week out.”

“You needn’t worry, captain. I’ll stick around until Esme is back to breathing like the rest of us. As I said earlier, it’s the least that I can do.”