Chapter 279 – Spiteful Reunion

Emily and Silvia finish their spar before the ship jumps back to beyond lightspeed, separating and heading to their rooms to prepare for the coming reunion. Emily starts with a long, slow shower, washing away several patches of dried blood along with the tension left in her muscles.

After drying off, she joins her daughter on the bed, pushing the sandy fox aside to take her position cross-legged at the head. She prepares a calming brew, infusing a special herbal blend with a concentrated dose of vapourised salvianross, letting the mind-bending plant’s effects wash over her.

She falls into a trance for several hours, her cortex drifting out of her control as she slowly works through a few drops of energy from her tightly wound emotional vault. The effects of the drink fade almost perfectly in sync with the ship dropping from lightspeed again. Emily shifts Silica’s head out of her lap and rises from the bed, pulling a large, jet-black cloak from her belt and tossing it to Mensacus to conceal his identity. She pulls Pod from one of Elisime’s workshops before leading the way out towards the bridge with her kids hot on her heels, concealing her mana as she goes and returning to the guise of a mechanic for now.

They step onto the bridge a few seconds after Silvia, meeting Rotwin already waiting for them, and their eyes immediately catch on the planet filling the canopy ahead. It’s close enough to fill the view with earthy browns and a vast stretch of a deep blue ocean dominating its surface, but far enough that Emily can’t discern a single structure on the surface. There’s also a stark silver-grey line cutting across the centre of the planet, a thick metal ring circling in low orbit so close that it looks like it could have grown from a particularly proud mountain’s peak.

The ship is approaching the planet, but angled towards an open port on the orbiting ring where Emily can just about make out the forms of several docked spaceships.

“Whoa,” Pod exclaims, as he admires the spinning ring quickly getting closer. “That… is a space station, right?”

“Yep, a standard orbital type SR-34 artificial habitat ring,” Lethia replies, tapping a few fingers on her control panel before throwing him an enhanced, holographic image of the station, shrunk down to a more manageable scale for observation. “Orphin Q3 is barely habitable to the fiscushia, but it’s resource-rich, so they threw a habitat ring on it and called it a day.”

“Why is this where we’re meeting the others? If it’s so resource-rich, surely it’s a poor place to offload our cargo.”

“Because, it’s currently being used as a gathering point for those looking to pick up assignments from the FAF Sub-Commander stationed there,” Silvia explains to him, her own gaze fixed on the screen of her Terminal.

“FAF?” Pod mutters under his breath in confusion, glancing at Emily.

“Fiscushia Armed Forces.”

“Besides,” Silvia continues, finally looking up from her Terminal and meeting Emily’s eyes with a straight, nearly unreadable expression. Emily notices the slight tension in her brow and recognises the deep loathing tinted with fresh frustration swirling in the blood-red sea of her irises. “Offloading cargo shouldn’t be our concern any longer. Our Captain just sent through the trade logs to confirm that they went ahead and cleared their holds already while we were catching up. We still have a couple of ships with us carrying loot from our last job, but it’s not enough to be worth making a stop somewhere else, so I’m inclined to ask if you’d be up to scrapping it all for materials.”

“Gladly.” Emily nods. “I’ve finished refining the serpent’s corpse enough to hide it within Elisime alone and could use the extra complementary materials.”

The closer they get to the habitat ring, the clearer the ships in the port they’re approaching become. Emily recognises The Mothership and the rest of the crew’s fleet, but she also sees tens of unfamiliar ships interspersed throughout them, some in groups, some alone.

Lethia smoothly pilots the ship in to land, cutting the forward thrust and twisting The Blade on its axis in a single motion above a blank spot perfectly suited to fit her beside the crew’s largest ship. Emily senses Yorn leaving The Mothership with several of the crew’s strongest members before she sees them, so she pulls up the ship’s external cameras and beams his visage onto the canopy.

“Looks like someone’s impatient to get started,” Silvia mutters at the sight of the man approaching The Blade’s exit hatch before the ship has even finished landing, before shaking her head and turning to leave the bridge. “Best get this over with. I can’t wait to see what he has to say about us wasting time on a fake tip.”

Emily and Rotwin fall into step on either side of her. A few moments later, Lethia engages the final docking procedures of the ship and disconnects before following after them.

“You know, I’m already missing you being able to use your magic freely,” Silvia comments as they head down the corridor towards the exit. “Having a skilled spatial mage is so convenient.”

“Years of training, devotion, and study that I can’t use, and you’re complaining about a short walk?” Emily asks flatly.

Silvia nods firmly, and Emily catches a flicker of motion in the corner of her eye. She turns back to see her daughter nodding along emphatically.

“You really should have considered this when you first introduced yourself to the crew, you know.”

Emily shakes her head and ignores Silvia’s grin and Rotwin’s huffing chuckle, staring down at her smug daughter instead.

“I really have spoiled you too much to have you turn on me this fast.”

Silica sticks out her tongue instead of responding, before scampering over to weave between Silvia’s legs right as the airlocked exit hatch slides open with a hiss. The vampire bends down to scratch the traitorous fox between the ears before stepping out onto the gangway and striding towards their waiting Captain and crewmates.

“Well well, look who finally decided to show up,” Yorn booms with a self-satisfied sneer. “Did you have fun chasing ghosts?”

“Really?” Silvia responds, unamused. “It would have benefited us all if the tip turned out to be true.”

“But it didn’t, like I said it would, and we’ve lost time.”

“Since when were we in a hurry?”

“Since Sub-Commander Peripal announced that they’re recruiting volunteers to enter the dungeon they’re fighting over,” Yorn explains with a greedy, impatient expression. “We’ve been delaying till you arrived, but we can report in now and finally find out what the entry limits are: they’ve got to be something special if they’re recruiting like this.”

“Fine, I’ll grant you urgency is valid here,” Silvia admits reluctantly, gesturing for him to lead the way. “How long has the call been open for?”

“Five days. We arrived here fifty hours back after catching word over in 3a.”

Emily half-listens to their conversation, turning most of her focus to Pod instead. Their group is comprised of only those fifth level and stronger, so she gives him a silent nod, urging him to go find and inform Ivor instead. He slips away from the group unnoticed, none of the others caring to note his weak presence.

She considers sending Silica off with him, but the fox is happily marching along at Silvia’s side, so she ultimately decides against it.

Yorn leads them towards the centre of the open landing port, where a structure rises from the ground towards the edge of the artificial atmosphere above, clear of ships for several metres around it. The structure has a hollow centre, with clawlike beams of metal stretching up around it to form a cocoon, the inside lined with dull, lightless slots cut away to form a dizzying, twisting pattern.

The moment Yorn, Silvia, and Silica step into the opening at the centre of the structure, the dull slots across its inner surface pulse with light and mana, and space within twists. Their crewmates vanish before their eyes, and Emily’s heart skips a beat as her daughter disappears, settling immediately when she reaches inwards and feels the faint connection to her spawn, always there thanks to Mother’s Blessing’s effects.

She follows them into the teleporter a second later, and between one step and the next, her surroundings change. She appears in the centre of a vast open chamber filled with bustling bodies, standing on a metre-wide pale metal circle a tone lighter than the surrounding floor, without any visible markings but packed full of mana. Emily can feel Yorn and Silvia a few metres away on matching arrival pads as her machina crackles across her skin, and she doesn’t need to sense as Silica bounds over to loop through her legs.

“Jumped without you!” the fox beams with pride up at her mother.

Emily understands what she’s trying to say without a proper word for teleportation and reaches down to pat her head.

“Yes, you did. Well done.”

The others shimmer into existence around them, one after another. The moment they’re all there, Yorn sets off towards one of the chamber’s walls. They’re lined with similar teleporters, but they’re all wider than they are tall, an inverse of the port’s. Each teleporter has a screen above it with a different location written in universal common and another language Emily doesn’t recognise. They’re gathered together in different categories, with the one they’re approaching covering mostly sites useful to off-ring combatants, from training rooms and equipment shopping districts to the mercenary sector.

Yorn heads straight for a teleporter marked ‘FAF Checkpoint’, stepping in without hesitation.

On the other side of the teleporter, they find themselves in an open reception room with a solid glass floor, giving them an uninterrupted view of the glistening blue ocean below. There are several seats placed around the outer edges of the room, though only a few are occupied by several hulking, bug-like creatures watching them intently, some with the recognisable form of heavy electromagnetic rifles resting up against their sides. They’re only first and second level awakened: three martial artists, two mechanics, and two mages.

The crew walk into the centre of the room, away from the arrival pads lining the wall where an exit teleporter is embedded. Yorn comes to a halt in the middle of the room, completely exposed on all sides, and waits silently.

The bugs watching them don’t move at all, trying to apply pressure with their gazes alone, but none of the pirates pays them any heed, every single one, except Silica, stronger than them by a sizable degree.

After a few minutes of silence, everyone following their Captain’s lead and refraining from starting conversations, a large double-door on the other side of the reception slides open, and another bug-like creature marches in, emanating the pressure of a seventh circle mage.

Peripal, the FAF Sub-Commander.

He looks almost identical to the soldiers he has stationed around the edge of the room, with a somewhat humanoid torso covered in thick, chitinous armour with four crab-like legs stretching out from its base. However, where his soldiers have between four and six arms each, each one multi-jointed and tipped with several opposable digits, Peripal only has two, one on each side. In place of the extra limbs, he has four wide, glass-like wings stretching from his back, the top two half a size larger than those below them.

Emily can’t tell where he’s looking as he approaches Yorn and holds out a hand to shake, the ten eyes scattered across his equally-armoured head all pointing in different directions, but she can feel that his attention is focused on the crew’s Captain through the mana passively drifting off him. The serrated mandibles flanking his jaw stretch wide in what Emily assumes is meant to be a welcoming smile, and his lips part to expose a shifting abyss of straw-like teeth circling his maw, like sharks stalking their prey.

“Welcome, Captain Yorn and crew, and thank you for heeding our request for aid,” Peripal says, his voice a clacking hiss as he speaks in a language not meant for human ears. “I speak on behalf of the Commander and the entire Fiscushia Armed Forces when I say we’re grateful a group of your reputation would be willing to assist.”

“We’re always happy to cause trouble for a price,” Yorn replies, greed dripping from his words as the Sub-Commander nods along.

“Of course.” Emily can’t understand what he’s saying without her Translator yet, but as she picks apart his language she can hear a clicking undertone of disdain, which Yorn doesn’t seem to notice, bleeding into his strange words. “You will be paid handsomely for your efforts.”