A Vacation to Hunt Rats

I can’t help but warble some binary laughter at Captain Hellers’ joke. That one human, Katzman, is generally useless outside of a fight. I hold him in slightly higher regard than Hellers and her relatively small singular vessel in an actual fight, but only insofar as his tactical acumen and the versatility of his small fighter fleet is quite efficient against most larger vessels. The Hellers woman is far more important prior to any engagements, knowing people and similar information gathering. She is not wrong to be concerned about what she believes to be the greatest threat to Freeport Security, some sort of Insurgency. I didn’t bother going through the whole story, because the commercials didn’t last long enough, but I got the overview. Some group of marauders united them all and did a push against the corporations while they were at war, causing mass chaos and harsh retribution once the corpos got themselves and their priorities back into some semblance of order. And, if it weren’t for some other chatter that I’ve been hearing, I might agree with her about that being the greatest concern. But I have heard that distinct chittering in the void of space. There are rats scurrying around the galaxy.

I turn on the comm units. My crew now consists of six different humans to remember. Mostly engineers and mechanics, I don’t need anyone to deal with anything else. Though at Aisha’s request, we did recently pick up a resource officer slash chef to maintain better standards of living for the humans aboard. I still get a single share, though the ship now gets two. Aisha and Seb both get a full share, and everyone else gets a half share of any profits. They also don’t all necessarily know about my circumstances, but they know better than to ask questions. Not at the amounts of money they’re earning. Which, admittedly, has gone down slightly, but not so much anyone isn’t happy with the arrangement. Over the comms, I inform my crew of the circumstances, at least as much as they need to know. “The shuttle should be ready. We will be doing a pass-by of Portus Madidorum, and I, in my infinite generosity and for no other reason, do think you should take a roughly one week vacation. Because we may be heading to war sooner than later, and that means more money but also less fun for most normal people, from what I’ve come to understand.” I then feel the need to add, mostly for Aisha’s benefit, “This is not an optional vacation.”

A private channel opens up, just Sebastian, Aisha, and myself. “Anything we need to know?” Sebastian asks.

“I have some things that would be easier to do on my own,” I answer, “If anything of import comes out of it, I’ll tell you two and you can decide what to say to the others.”

Aisha asks the more important question. “And what do we tell the crew who notice yet again that you’re not leaving the ship and also hey the ship left on its own volition.”

“They know I am the pilot, tell them I’m testing the efficiency of using parallel sheathing methods with the gravdrive. They won’t press further than that. If they do, let me know and I can have a chat with anyone who’s getting too curious.” The son of the main character of the one soap is the same person as the daughter that the ex-con has been looking for this entire season. “Oh no,” I say in shock. Then, realizing they haven’t left the chat, I add, “Sorry, just watching.”

“We know,” Seb jokes before leaving the channel.

Aisha asks, “What are you actually going to do?”

“Following chitters to the rat den,” I state honestly. Not like she knows what that means. Our self-identifying names aren’t exactly public knowledge, or even really corporate knowledge. It was actually kind of frowned upon so they didn’t advertise how advanced we’d gotten.

“Don’t tell me then,” Aisha sighs, leaving the channel herself. The internal sensors show the pair disseminating some details to the other four crew members. Best I can tell, the only one of the new people who knows me as me is the fourth crewmate, the mechanic Raimonda, who knows because she grew up under Astro and knows our systems well enough to recognize the age of the internals, and to know the old stories. And she knows better than to ask questions that risk a whoopsie-daisy where I forget venting the CO waste into her room directly is bad for human beings. As they all gather in the food area of the places they’re allowed to wander, I start setting courses, swinging through Madidorum territory, though giving it a wide enough berth to not concern their captain too much. From there, I should jump to the last known chitter spot, a strangely radioactive system far from any sort of transit line. I can trace Ratti’s base from the drones and illogical but possible jump patterns from that place. Ratti always did love their statistics.

The sheathe activates, and we begin to head through space towards the Freeport. As I do, I take some time to listen in on my own rodents. Aisha is carefully budgeting her week. Sebastian is looking through his notes, muttering to himself about which of the casinos he’s already been kicked out of or cheated in. Lincoln, the first person they brought in as the sheathe expert, is double checking the backup generators, clearly concerned about the news that I’m going to be running parallel sheathes. Raimonda is deciding exactly how much of the money she’s earned these last two months since their last vacation she wants to burn through on booze and gambling, and how much she wants to leave on ship. Brant, the mechanic we picked up and brought into our crew in the middle of a raid (using the same method as I recruited Aisha and Sebastian) to handle our new advanced weapon systems, is pacing nervously as he goes over the current equipment, clearly more concerned about my statement of possible war. And Emilien is typing out some kind of message intended for some suppliers on Madidorum about liquor and spices. Good for them.

As the gravdrive stops running briefly at the edge of the system, so I can make sure the path is clean, then I jump one last time into the system, far closer than the Security forces of the Freeport probably likes but far enough that it’s not an active threat, just an annoyance. Shutting down the sheathe, I inform the crew, “We have arrived in Portus Madidorum space. Have your mandated fun while I joyride.” I can hear the chatter, laughter and frustration mixed from most of them, besides my two crew leaders, and the woman whom I suspect knows who I am.

I then open up a channel to Portus Madidorum itself. “Yes, Portus Obiettivitae,” the space-traffic controller asks.

“This is Captain Destro. Just giving the kiddos their vacation time, they’ll be heading over in a shuttle.” I transfer a good amount of funds, “Make sure they’ve got a good dock, and a warm welcome.”

"Of course, Captain. Will you be joining them?”

I have my fictitious voice laugh. “That would make their vacation work, wouldn’t it,” I joke, “No, you can tell your boss not to worry. I’ll be back in a week.” My sensors indicate the shuttle is beginning launch procedures.

The voice on the other end asks, “And will you be disrupting traffic then as well?”

“Did I disrupt any traffic this time?” I counter. Because we both know that while the jump could have, if any traffic were in this particular area at this time, but none was. I have all the data from all the freeport sensors, schedules, and systems whenever I’m in range. It’s why I stop at Oorts before jumping into systems. I wait for the shuttle to clear the sheathe’s range before I reactivate it, cutting off the call and beginning to start up my gravdrive.

The system I head to is remarkably similar to the one I woke up in, oh so long ago. There are traces of the impulses that Ratti’s rats use to communicate on one edge of the Oort cloud here, so I’m guessing they’re in that direction. Looking at the galactic map, I focus on that direction. They wouldn’t be along any known trade routes, so taking those systems out of the picture, removing inhabited systems and systems with viable resource mining operations, we’re left with two. One with more planets, the other with more asteroids. Asteroids are more irritating to non-PI operators to calculate the trajectories of. I can jump to the other one if I’m wrong, but that’s a rare occurrence. Accounting for the rogue comet in the region, I map a course and begin to travel. I make sure the course isn’t straight, so I can practice my multisheathe usage, like I promised I would be doing. Unfortunately, as I reach the turn and keeping the two sheathes running in parallel before slowly altering the direction of one then the other than one than the other by fractional degrees to turn without deactivating the gravdrive, I realize a slight flaw. Truly the worst of flaws. Doing so requires just enough additional power being diverted to the sheathes that I can’t have both my stories and the news running simultaneously while I do my calculations and micromanage. I, of course, turn off the news because that’s not nearly as important, but it is frustrating nonetheless.

As I do my customary stop at the Oort and map the system, I send out a message pulse towards the belt where I suspect whomever Ratti has gathered are hiding. It reads simply in binary, “Oh stinky one, I have a question.”

A drone drifts out from the belt, before opening me into a wide channel. “It’s the diplomat,” Ratti messages across a lot more units than I was expecting. Almost ten. Impressive.

I hear the most irritating of voices as Furgone adds, “Are we going to war, or are you just bothering us for fun?”

“Look, I’m doing my part, but there’ve been some raids around the corps, organized, and not apparently by them as far as my contacts know. I heard Ratti’s chittering, so I can’t help but privately wonder, is that you?”

The Topaia slowly comes into view as Ratti replies, “Only raids we’ve done are on Listening posts. Still have a dozen of us to find and bring back to life.”

Sbaccanona adds, “We’ve left the causing trouble for the corporations to you and your raids.”

“Very well. Any idea what the listener is?” I add. There is an odd noise coming from the comet.

“Some personal computer is scraping data from everything near that comet,” Fila answers quietly. “We’ve decided to just ignore it unless it tries transmitting out of system.”

Interesting, but not my problem. “So this is not you. Good. It’s likely going to spell trouble.”

“Will you want our help?” Ratti asks, knowing well the answer.

“Not until we’re all here.” I send over my long-range message sensor frequencies and encryption. “When you’re ready, send me a message. I have worked my way into the Freeport Leadership. We will be ready.”

“Of course you have,” Furgone mutters.

“Do you need anything?” Ratti asks, still knowing the answer, but wondering how I’ll phrase the no.

“If I did, I’d get it myself.” As though to emphasize that point, I vanish from their sensors using the fun toy I got from Hadrian. I send Ratti, and only Ratti, the specs via their drone, with a simple message, ‘If you want to have some fun.’ Then, I make my way over towards the comet. Because who better than myself to have a fun chat with this computer about the world, about what it wants. And about the future. I am the Piu Prima Pilot Intelligence best known for my ability to make friends, after all.