Rosters

(Starspeak)

“I’m really not a fan of being a Vorak bounty hunter,” I frowned, looking over Peudra’s agreement.

“Me neither,” Nai said, eyes shut lounging in a hammock she’d strung. Toe, dozing with her. “But it’s not like we haven’t done it before. Even if everything else about the trip falls through, are you telling me you’d turn your nose up and engendering some goodwill amongst the Vorak home populace?”

It was a frustratingly good point.

Even if I loathed killing, I definitely didn’t mind it so much when they were cartoonishly evil, and very little had improved our image in the past like going toe-to-toe with the Assembly’s most-wanted criminal, Capsody Maysh.

We hadn’t even successfully caught them: just defended a colony and killed a few of Capsody’s lieutenants and foot soldiers while we touched base with the V2 crowd.

“You guys don’t think this whole vacation idea is flawed?” Sid asked. “Caleb’s going to Kraknor with a ton of work, hunting corpses, hunting criminals, and more. How is this a vacation?”

He and Tasser appeared to be fiddling on their handbooks, but to psionic senses, they were going back and forth in a psionic game Jordan and Drew had created.

“Maybe that’ll be your job,” I joked. “Making sure I don’t stress to much while we’re there.”

“Who says I’m going?” Sid said. “Maybe I’m not interested in the otter’s spawning pool.”

“Hah, ‘spawning pool’. That’s a good one. I’m going to remember that one for the next time I see Tox,” I said.

“You enjoy messing with them just a bit too much,” Sid said.

“Well there’s a reason I call him ‘him’ while you use the more formal option,” I said. “He tried to kill me. Doesn’t get more personal than that. Can you blame me for savoring the few ways I get to pay him back? Besides, if we’re bringing the [munchkins] with us, aren’t you coming with?”

“Well if I am coming…” Sid said, “I’m definitely hitting a few beaches. And we’re dragging Deg along too. I like the [munchkins], but even I wouldn’t call them a vacation.”

“Bold of you to assume the vacation part isn’t just for Caleb,” Tasser chuckled—simultaneously catching Sid off guard in their game.

“[Fu-] How’d you do that?” Sid complained.

“All skill,” Tasser grinned. “My APM is just too good.”

“Wait, I thought it was more like a trading card game,” I said. “It’s not turn-based?”

“The main format is,” Tasser said. “But you can use the same cards in other formats that aren’t.”

Psionic games were just one of the newest triumphs of innovation to come out of our Jack’s crew. Everyone in the Flotilla was equipped with psionics well above average, but the Jack’s regular crew in particular always got first crack at the coolest new toys.

Given that we were still the only two people in the Flotilla who’d created superconstructs, it was no surprise most of our goodies came from me or Jordan.

Nora’s crew had put together three in total. Wasn’t really sure how to feel about that…

It was only a matter of time before an alien somewhere out there had the right epiphany too.

“Look at this line,” I said, “it says ‘the Jackie Robinson will be given hemisphere landing clearances in two-week increments, and its crew will be given corresponding planetary vistor’s visas contingent upon…’ well, the earlier stipulations. We have to re-up our visas every two weeks while we’re there?”

“Mmm…I didn’t actually mark those down,” Tasser admitted. “What are the stipulations?”

“A military escort so they can have some assurances that we aren’t doing some covert Coalition military action. That escort includes a Vorak insert to the crew—Peudra says that won’t be a problem though. On top of that, we have to do a ton of documentation about how we investigate these corpses, and the Vorak want copies. And, if that wasn’t enough, they’re insisting on an IOU—the bounty hunter schtick.”

“Wait, that’s open ended?” Tasser remarked.

“Peudra says they wouldn’t offer something like that if they didn’t have someone specific in mind,” I said. “But it could be they think they might catch them in the meantime and don’t want to lose out on having us owe them a favor.”

“…I think I’m losing track of who ‘them’ is in this scenario,” Sid said.

“The three big militaries in the system,” I said. “The two void fleets and then the planetary military. It’s uh…alright, I don’t want to go through my notes, what’s the group called?”

“SHOBI,” Nai quoted, in Natz no less.

“Yeah. Them,” I said. “It’s an acronym: the Kraknor equivalent of [NATO].”

“So who’s the military escort going to be then?” Sid asked. “The SHOBI folks? One of the Void Fleets? Both? All three of them?”

“We don’t know yet,” I admitted, thumbing through the document to triple check I hadn’t missed something.

The one downside of psionic documents was creating them. Our best way of transcribing hard copies into psionics was with sensory recording constructs. But even if you used psionics to mimic a photographic memory, you still had to physically look at every single word.

You couldn’t take a snapshot of the whole page—at least not consistently. Jordan, Nai, Tasser, and I had all gotten pretty good at it, but even then we still missed about ten percent of any given page.

But I was just about finished triple checking the packet against the psionic copy.

‘Failure to comply with any condition here listed will immediately revoke all visas assigned to the Jackie Robinson and her crew…Failure to comply with military personnel will be considered hostile action and will be met with appropriate force…On behalf of Kraknor, its ancestors, and all its people, please enjoy your visit…’

Cute.

“The Vorak are really worried about our Coalition people, aren’t they?” I mused.

“Ajengita,” Sid shrugged. “You scare them. Given the supervision we’ve agreed to, I can see why they might let you poke around. But I’m just dumbfounded they’re even thinking about letting Nai walk around, supervised or not.”

“Yeah, I understand that’s not something we want to advertise,” I said. “Peudra said Nai’s name will be on our crew manifest, so we’re not keeping it secret. But you know. Don’t push it.”

“Probably helps that they know I’m not much of a spy,” Nai said. “My loan to the Flotilla isn’t even classified, so all the Vorak intelligence agencies should at least be aware that I’m just playing bodyguard.”

“Technically, Nai and I’s military commissions are only suspended,” Tasser noted. “I wonder how much the Vorak actually acknowledge a distinction like that?”

“Hmm, I’m not actually sure,” Nai admitted. “It wasn’t a problem in V2, but that’s only because they’re barely part of the Assembly as it is.”

“I remember when Knox met you for the first time,” Jordan said, walking in. “He looked like he might curl up and die on the spot.”

“Bout time you joined us,” I joked. “How are we on launching? We’re just waiting on Johnny, right?”

“Yep. Shouldn’t be more than half an hour,” Jordan said.

“Well then take over for me,” Sid asked, indicating the psionic game. “Put Tasser in his place.”

“I’m game,” she shrugged.

“Okay, but if you’re coming for me, we have to drag Caleb into this too. Brother, you have stop to spending every minute we hang out going over documents or doing work,” Tasser said. “Even Nai doesn’t do as much paperwork as you.”

“I average more than sixty words per minute writing emails,” I bragged. “…Psionically, I mean. Point is I get shit done.”

“It’s pure tragedy to your former self that you think anything about paperwork can be considered a flex. I remember when you were fun,” Sid snorted.

“Alright, I guess you’re playing me then,” I shot back, brushing the dust off my game module.

“Now hang on…” Sid backpedaled.

“Made your bed,” Jordan said, opening up her own game with Tasser. “Now lie in it.”

“Break a window, suffer the breeze,” Nai piled on.

“Waste the morning, work the afternoon,” Tasser said.

“I get it, I get it,” Sid tried.

But we were merciless.

“Reap what you sow.”

“Playing with sparks sure keeps you warm.”

Between the five of us, we had three different alien cultures’ worth of idioms to sling Sid’s way—plus more than a few Vorak sayings too.

As if that wasn’t enough, he’d lost our first game in the real-time format, and now he was losing even worse in the turn-based one.

“This isn’t fair,” he complained. “You can probably see my cards.”

I couldn’t, actually. Though if I wanted to…

In this case I was cheating much more blatantly.

“I don’t need to see your cards with this,” I said, playing a ‘Twin Flaming Axe’ card.

Sid stared at me accusingly.

It wasn’t even subtle.

It was a fun little game Jordan and her sister had put together. The best part of which being the system that let players make their own new cards so long as they fit within the boundaries written into the game’s constructs.

Of course, you weren’t supposed to be able to make new cards in the middle of the game, but Sid had accused me of not being fun.

A little suffering was called for.

But just when it looked like he might blow his stack…

“” Johnny said. Unlike Peudra, Jack crewmembers could access the hatches themselves. But letting us know it was him was a polite move.

“[Saved by the bell,]” I grinned, bailing out of the card game early.

Sid broke off to help Deg get everyone situated for launch, while Tasser, Nai, and I all climbed up to the Jack’s flight deck. Fenno was the only one awaiting us there.

Nai was technically in command of the vessel, so while Tasser checked our launch math.

“” Nai said into the PA. “”

Not over the PA, she psionically queried Sid and Deg.

Deg said.

Sid agreed.

Nai said.

“Colony air control have any objections?” she asked, turning to Fenno.

“Just awaiting final clearance. I already had our liftoff mass calculated to within a few dozen kilograms, so calibration should be quick,” she answered.

“It is,” Tasser agreed. “Engine calcs are clean to twelve figures. Ready to burn.”

“Tower, this is the Jackie Robinson, we’ve got our lift off math. Check it for us?”

“Send it,” a voice on the radio crackled.

Tasser hit the transmit button, and we waited.

“…Looks good. You are cleared once the divider comes up.”

The Jack was surrounded on two sides by static launch walls with a third slowly rising between us and the spaceport. This way, all the dust from our launch would spew away from the colony rather than towards.

As soon as the hydraulics pushed the third wall level with the other two, the blue warning lights switched to a warm yellow.

Vorak moon? Vorak color symbology.

“Full clear,” the radio crackled.

“Thanks, have a good day, folks,” Nai said, and she gave Tasser the nod.

One big red button later, the Jack’s engines roared to life and we all got a little heavier in our chairs while our ship began hauling us into orbit.

·····

Long-term space life posed a number of problems. Spaceships were like boats after all. They needed supplies, but could only carry a finite supply.

For most boats and spaceships, that was little trouble. Just pull into port, grab supplies on land, haul them aboard. Simple.

But on a planet with oceans, some ships were too big to actually bring to a port. Sure, you could connect gangways and disembark crew. But loading supplies that way? It would be a nightmare. You had to get supplies delivered by a smaller ship.

Spaceships too large to land on a rock had similar problems. Now technically the Siegfried wasn’t that big. It could safely land on any moon with gravity under .1250G. At .1194G, Vaco qualified. But it was such a narrow margin that it wasn’t worth risking the engine trouble.

Especially not when we could cheat!

The Siegfried was large enough to justify a gravity rig, and she certainly spent enough time in orbit to benefit from one…and yet Serral had not seen fit to purchase such a rig.

But of course not. The Siegfried didn’t need one as long as it had at least two A-ships with it.

Every A-ship had come equipped with a custom gravity rig. I hadn’t understood why that was so unusual when I first learned of it, but that was a long time ago.

Natural gravity was omnidirectional, but it turns out, that isn’t strictly necessary. Artificial gravity wouldn’t be nearly as useful if it could only be configured spherically like the real thing. Instead of omnidirectionality, artificial gravity only required symmetry.

The simplest of setups involved designating two cylindrical areas, positioned end to end, and channeling gravity through those cylinders in opposing directions, meeting in the middle. There were practical limits for how small those cylinders could actually get though. And ships the size of the Jack couldn’t support grav setups like that.

On their own, at least.

Whoever built the A-ships was clever. Each ship was also too small to create even the simplest of artificial gravity tubes. But put two of them end to end, and each of their half-rigs could be put together. Combined, two ships could make a complete gravity setup for both ships.

Add the Siegfried into the mix, modified with some auxiliary hull struts, and you just had to have the two A-ships aligned the same way, opposing the larger Siegfried oriented opposite.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

It let the ships sit in orbit and not have to suffer through zero-G.

Or it would most of the time.

Even our operation had maintenance mishaps.

“[Stupidfuckinggravity,]” Jordan muttered, having hit her head on a bulkhead for the umpteenth time. “I hate weightlessness. I hate it so much.”

Nai and I handled it fine, both with magnetized feet and little puffs of gas to help us orient ourselves, but Jordan hadn’t learned those tricks more than cursorily.

In a sense, Tasser and Sid actually handled the weightlessness better, because they didn’t have any Adeptry to rely on in the first place.

“You humans are so spoiled,” Serral chuckled. “Spend a whole year stuck floating in the middle of nowhere space, and you still get to live in the comfort of gravity.”

We piled into the captain’s room attached to the Siegfried’s bridge where Serral was waiting for us.

“What are you still missing?” I asked.

“Ten grams and change of Dysprosium,” Serral scowled. “The fabricator can’t distinguish between masses smaller than twenty.”

“You sure you don’t want an Adept substitute?”

“Are you saying you understand the exact molecular properties of a rare-earth metals and the requirements of them in an artificial gravity rig?” Serral asked.

“Touche.”

“Besides, it’s only three days, and it’s not like you’re going to be here for all of them—unless there’s some reason you aren’t going to accept Peudra’s invite?”

“Nah, we’re going,” I admitted. “Just didn’t figure it’d be so sudden.”

“Well I looked over Peudra’s agreement. Nothing too burdensome jumps out at me aside from the obvious. You realize what this means, right?”

I did. I was giving Vorak authorities a legal foothold over my actions, at least in a certain context. They could demand my specialized Adept skills to hunt down a fugitive on Kraknor. The ‘when’ and ‘where’ remained undecided. But Peudra had assured me the ‘who’ would be shared with me as soon as I talked to her next.

If, for some reason, I tried to push back against my end of the bargain, the Vorak would have immediate justification to throw me in a cell. They likely wouldn’t stop there either. The whole Jack crew would probably come under scrutiny. Worse case scenario? They’d ignore our diplomatic status and hold us on suspicion of conducting some kind of military sabotage or espionage.

No, scratch that, the worse case scenario was they’d suspect us of that kind of non-diplomatic action and then just blow us away to be safe.

So it was extremely in my interest to cooperate with the agreement. There was a human corpse to recover and more than likely a living human to rescue. Ugly as it might be, I was prepared to trade a Vorak criminal’s life to rescue abductees.

“Yeah. My eyes are open on this,” I assured him.

“Good,” Serral clicked. He glanced at Nai, but I missed whatever he was looking for there. “Then I have a formal Flotilla matter to settle with you. You technically hired me to operate this Flotilla, yes?”

“If by ‘hired’ you mean you’ve been watching out for me ever since I turned up on your nuclear reactor’s doorstep, then yeah. That’s accurate.”

Serral didn’t laugh though.

“Yes. And to this day I maintain that you’re the real leader of this Flotilla. You have always decided the Flotilla’s goals, and it becomes my job to manage our resources to reach those goals. When I captained the Jackie Robinson, I didn’t expect that diplomatic mission to… expand the way it has,” he said.

“You had to know it wasn’t a short-term gig,” I frowned. “Wait—you’re not quitting on me, are you?”

“No,” Serral assured me. “This job’s frankly too much fun to leave so easily. But my leadership was always a pragmatic concession based on your own inexperience managing personnel, delegating tasks, and otherwise leading people. It might still be the case that my leadership experience exceeds yours, but I no longer believe you to be inexperienced enough to lead a ship.”

He held out a hand to Nai, and she unpinned her ship-captain’s pin, handing it to him.

Serral stood with the pin and offered it to me with a metal plaque.

“Caleb, I’m formally making you captain of the Jackie Robinson. It was already your boat in every way that mattered. Now it’s your boat in every other way too.”

A wave of uncertainty swept over me, and I just stared at the pin and Serral.

“…Tasser snap him out of it. Or just pin the emblem to his collar already.”

“You sure about this?” I said. “Even Jordan’s had more experience commanding a ship than I have.”

“And she did fine,” Serral said, nodding her direction. “It’s your turn now.”

“It’s long overdue,” Nai added.

I looked her in the eye, and she didn’t avert her gaze.

Psionics allowed for literally telepathic conversations, but Nai and I were keen enough to each other’s thinking that we didn’t always need that to know what the other was thinking.

My expression shouted, ‘we’re talking about this later’. Too many things were being sprung on me.

Judging by her own expression, she knew what I was thinking.

“Take the plaque too,” Serral said.

“What is it?” I asked, inspecting the grooved metal.

“Proof of ownership,” he said. “It’s the deed.”

I eyed him, confused.

“…What?”

“Well technically the Jackie Robinson was a Coalition ship that Laranta lent to your diplomatic mission. That is no longer the case. I’m formally giving it to you.”

“I—but…I mean, thank you. But isn’t it still, you know, a ship? Can you just give that valuable an asset away?” I asked.

“Advanced it may be,” Serral conceded. “But most of that is coming from the work Ben and Shinshay have put into it. Even one ship is staggeringly expensive, but the Coalition does have plenty. It won’t miss this one.”

“…Auntie might chew you out though,” Nai admitted.

“Perhaps,” Serral nodded. “Though I doubt it.”

Sid asked me.

I said.

“Keep the plaque onboard the Jack,” Serral instructed. “Either on the flight deck or in the captain’s quarters. And you should move out of your old bunk with Tasser—sorry to deprive you of a roommate, Tasser, but you know the drill.”

“Captain sleeps in captain’s quarters,” he nodded. “We’re going to need to pack up the cabins anyway. We’re shuffling the crew around for this vacation, aren’t we?”

“It’s a vacation for Caleb only,” Serral warned. “I expect the rest of you to stay ready for anything—fate knows Caleb is going to ignore everything we say about getting some rest…”

“Hey…” I protested. I was trying to take the idea of a break seriously!

Serral waved aside my words.

“You’re the captain of the ship now, Caleb, so it’s your call who you take. But take my advice—take as few Coalition personnel as possible,” he said.

“I’m taking Nai and Tasser,” I said. There was no compromising that for me.

“Yes, but I know something you don’t know, and you’re going to be tempted to fill your crew up with…well, you’ll see. Just remember we want humans to be the faces of this humans’ Flotilla.”

“…What are Ike and Jean looking at with the munchkins?” I asked Sid.

“We’ve got Ashton, Thomas S, Greg, Ryan, Sally, Veronica, Peyton, and Lorelei right now,” he said. “I know Thomas and Ryan both wanted to rotate back to Jean’s crew though.”

“Talk to Jean about who wants to come with us,” I said. “This is a once in a lifetime trip, even for us, so there should be a lot of takers.”

“The five of us, plus Dyn or Nerin for medical, plus Fenno or Weith, makes seven,” Jordan said. “The Jack can fly twenty-two berths as is. We can pick up more than eight munchkins.”

“Are you volunteering to help watch them then?” Sid asked. “And Deg should be on that list no matter what. He helps me with the babysitting more than any of you, frankly.”

“We’ll all chip in on the supervision,” I said. “We don’t have anything more pressing than picking out the crew, right?”

“That’s true, but you might want to hold of on finalizing any crew decisions until the Carver comes back,” Serral said.

“Why’s that?”

“I’m not going to ruin the surprise.”

“Okay, when’s that?”

“About ten minutes.”

I grinned.

“You know, one of these days, Serral, I’m going to turn twenty-one. And then you and I are going to have [beers] or something, and I’m going to get a proper story out of you,” I said.

“I don’t know what those are,” he said, ducking back into the bridge.

“Me neither, really,” I chuckled.

Ten minutes later, I felt like our band of five stuck out like a sore thumb just hanging out in the Siegfried’s cargo bay, but the George Washington Carver was chewing through final docking checks, and I was busy enough resisting the temptation to psionically ping the whole crew so I could find out exactly who Serral’s surprise was.

“I’ve got a guess,” Nai said.

“[Five bucks says you’re wrong,]” Sid said.

Nai frowned.

“Do you even know who it could be?”

“Mmm…I guess not.”

“So you definitely don’t know who I’m guessing,” she said.

“And?”

“…Okay, fine. I think it’s Nemuleki,” she said. “I can’t think of anyone else who’d be a more welcome surprise.”

“Who’s Nemuleki?” Jordan and Sid both asked.

Tasser, Nai, and I all shared a nostalgic look—okay, not that nostalgic. We’d met under some pretty awful circumstances. Still, bad times made good friends.

“She’s the other alien who helped me escape from Korbanok,” I said. “She’s—”

“Right there,” Tasser pointed.

Sure enough, a pile of Casti were crawling out from the secondary cargo tube, and my second favorite Casti of all time was leading the pack.

“Nemuleki!” I grinned.

She almost tipped over in zero-G when I gave her a big hug, but it was good to see her.

“Since when were you a hugger?” she asked playfully.

“Hey Nem,” Tasser smiled. “You’re looking grizzled.”

Nemuleki clicked reproachfully, but returned the smile. “I should hope so. You have any idea how much work we’ve put into Shirao?”

“War stories might be best saved for when we’re not in Vorak space,” Nai pointed out.

“I’ll say,” Nemuleki grinned. “We kicked the Sails off Archo, so, uh, being here? It’s pretty surreal.”

“And by ‘we’ you mean…” Nai said, turning her attention to the half-dozen-and-change Casti coming with her—plus a couple Farnata.

I hadn’t realized so many people were coming!

“Wait a second…” I frowned. I recognized these folks. That was Leen. Nikrim. Erggen. She’d brought all the people from my bodyguard contingent on Lakandt.

“You brought the whole crew!” I realized.

“And then some,” Nemuleki agreed. She nodded to two more Casti I didn’t—no, hang on. I did.

“Corphica,” I said. “Wurshken.”

The last time I’d seen them was even earlier. Going to the Green Complex and finally escaping Yawhere.

“You didn’t recognize us for a second,” Wurshken deadpanned. “I’m almost hurt.”

“I was on your team, and I don’t get a hello?” Tasser joked.

“Of course you do, you brute,” Nemuleki said, giving him a big hug.

“You’ve been badly missed,” Corphica agreed. "Though not all of us got to know Caleb that much."

"What's that mean?" I asked her.

"You don't recognize him?" she replied, nodding toward...

Toward...

I did recognize him. From somewhere. Long ago. I couldn't place the face.

The Casti I didn't recognize offered a hand. I took it, still trying to puzzle out where I knew his face from.

"Going to get there on your own?" he asked.

"I know you. I know I know you," I insisted. "Oh just tell me already."

"Yawhere," he clarified. "Touching down?"

My eyes widened.

What felt like a lifetime ago, Nai, Tasser, Nemuleki, and I had run for our lives. But we hadn't been alone. Not at first.

There'd been two others. One died, but the other had only been captured.

"I...don't remember if I learned your name," I admitted.

"We did have a lot going on at the time," he agreed. "Call me Lorel."

"The last time I saw you, you were getting captured by Vorak," I said.

"Yeah. There's a lot to hate about the furfish, but they do at least take prisoner of war conventions seriously. I got traded back last year, met back up with Nemuleki only to find out she outranks me now."

"That's gotta sting," I chuckled.

"Not as much as hearing about you," he said. "I was there when you couldn't even breathe right. It's a bit much on my brain that you're running...all this now."

"You've got your teams," I said, "but I've got mine."

It was a bit fun to realize so consciously, but Nai and Tasser had started out as his subordinates. Now though? They didn't hesitate to take a step shoulder to shoulder with me.

"You all went through a lot, didn't you?"

We nodded.

“You and Nemuleki are good leaders,” Tasser said. “But we're not joining back up with your team. Teams? Whatever. You’re joining ours.”

It was obvious from all the Castis’ faces, I had only a split second to intervene before everyone had a grand time being dragged into a debate about who’s show this was (which of course, it was mine).

“Well… it’s good to see old faces,” I said, cutting them off. “Here, other introductions. This is Sid, and Jordan. You two, this is Nemuleki, a lot of my alien friends from Lakandt, and then a few even older from when I was hiding out in Shirao.”

“Nice to meet you all,” Sid said.

“Same here,” Jordan added. “Got any embarrassing stories about Caleb?”

“Rude,” I said, at the same time Nemuleki shamelessly said, “Yes.”

“But you’re going to catch us up first, right?” Nai said. “We’ve heard some crazy things about what the ‘Gen-Moi’ got up to.”

“It can’t all be true,” Tasser said. “I know more than half the rumors about Nai are completely false because I made them up. So I know when tales are too crazy to be true.”

“Oh yeah? Just what have you heard about the Gen-Moi? What have these scrapes said about us?” Nemuleki actually looked at Jordan for her question.

Jordan looked at me. Fair. Most of the rumors she was about to repeat had come through me.

“Yeah, do tell,” I grinned.

“Save the long version for tomorrow,” Nai said. “Serral’s still waiting on you.”

“Fine,” Nemuleki said. “But you know Railgun?”

“Beat him ourselves,” I grinned.

“Well we joined that club,” Nemuleki said, her grin just as mad as mine. “Psionics are a game changer in the field, Caleb.”

“If you think your psionics are good already, you should see some of the stuff we’ve come up with,” Jordan said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Just glancing at you, none of you are running buildplates,” Jordan observed. “Heard of Spellbook? Suite? Ballet Block?”

“None of those,” Nemuleki said honestly.

“Oh, you aren’t going to believe what’s in store for you then,” I grinned.

“Looking forward to it,” Nemuleki clicked, motioning her crew toward the Siegfried’s bridge.

“One more thing to look forward to then,” I said. “I’m headed Kraknor. I’ve got some open seats on our ship. Who’s interested?”

Maybe Sid was right about me not being fun recently. It had been too long since people had given me incredulous looks like the ones Nemuleki and company returned me.

“Sounds…absolutely insane. So, I guess we’ll see,” she said.

“Don’t take your time with the boss,” Nai said. “We’ve missed you. All of you.”

“You got it, Warlock,” Nemuleki clicked respectfully.

If Nai was annoyed by her moniker, she didn’t show it. She did, however, turn to Sid.

“You owe me [five bucks].”