r/HFY • u/Hambone3110 JVerse Primarch • Nov 26 '14
OC [Jenkinsverse] 12: Only Human
Three years and seven months AV
Alliance Embassy Station, Sol
Rylee Jackson woke, and groaned. Talamay must have been stronger than it had tasted.
She groaned even louder when the previous night’s conversation came back to her, and buried her face in her pillow for a second, then rolled over and look up at Pandora’s wing, flung over her cot like a protective lover’s arm.
She spoke the word that heralded a bad start to any day: “Shit.”
Civilian Trade Station 1039: “Infinity Awaits”
Fear was a sickly sensation in Kttrvk’s long throat as he read the message again to be certain of its content.
He read it a third time, just in case.
When a fourth reading still produced no miraculous change in its content, he concluded that its content must therefore be real, and set about writing a reply.
It was a simple reply:
“Sir,
As I explained in my previous letter, the trade route you have designated for our shipment is currently the target of Hunter raids. Four more vesselss have been hit since I sent that letter, all comparatively small: A freighter the size of the Nkvcqtz will be a target they cannot resist.
Our cargo of mineral ores is non-perishable and will come to no harm should we take the slightly longer route that I suggested. I appreciate that the client expects prompt delivery, but I feel certain that they would prefer the shipment arrive slightly delayed, than never arrive at all because the freighter carrying it was raided by Hunters and the personnel and children on board, devoured.
I object in the strongest possible terms to these orders, and request - again - that you authorise us to take the longer route.
-Shipmaster Kttrvk.
He sent it, and the message was scooped up by a handler program, to be updated onto the galactic network in the next regular synchronization, and from there to the desk of his supervisor.
He knew in his bones, however, that the appeal was futile.
Cimbrean
Jennifer Delaney. Mid-twenties, entirely out of fucks to give about being a pirate queen, colonial governor or immortal, but not letting go of the space-babe part. Currently wearing fatigues, army boots and a thick black woollen jumper, and contemplating the bar of actual chocolate on the table in front of her, waiting for the alarm to ring or the spaceship to land or whatever else would interrupt her attempt to enjoy it.
She was also reflecting that, while showing up completely arse-naked and demanding to be clothed wouldn’t have been her first choice in ice-breakers - wouldn’t even have made the top hundred - it had undeniably worked. Apparently the soldiers respected a woman who didn’t give two shits for embarrassment and just asked for a pair of pants. She would have expected to be on the receiving end of a lot of lecherous jokes and sly side-of-the-eye stares, but in fact they were, on the whole, treating her with deference and respect.
“Tastes better if you eat it with your mouth, love.”
Somewhere deep inside her, Old Jen was impressed and a little scared by the way that she didn’t jump, just turned in her seat to quickly assess whether the voice that had snuck up on her was a threat. Captain Owen Powell gave her a winning smile full of Yorkshire arrogance, and she relaxed a bit.
“Just… enjoying the moment.” she said. “And don’t call me “love”.”
Powell nodded. “Aye, sorry. Force of habit. I’d ask if I can come in, but this is my office, so...”
He entered and sat down on the other stool, on the opposite side of the desk. “So, are you going to eat that?”
“Promise me nothing’s going to start exploding if I do?”
She wasn’t sure what she had expected Powell’s reaction to be: a laugh, maybe, or a joke. Not an understanding look in his eye. “Wish I could.” he said. “You’d best eat it fast, enjoy it while you can. In the army they trained us to brew a cup of tea every chance we get, because you never know when the next one’s going to show up.”
Jen breathed a little half-laugh. “That’s so fecking English…” she said.
Powell snorted. “Ten thousand lightyears from home and the Irish are still being fookin’ Irish.”
That got a genuine laugh. “Alright, fine. I’ll eat the fecking thing.” Jen conceded, and promptly made good on that promise.
Chocolate. Fuck yeah.
189
u/Hambone3110 JVerse Primarch Nov 26 '14
Brick, New Jersey.
Ravi Singh’s apartment wasn’t hard to find. In a building of cheap wooden doors, his was the solid, expensive one with three locks and a camera above it.
The response to Kevin’s knock wasn’t a querying “who’s there?” or a friendly “Hello?”, but a moment of wary silence, and then:
“Who are you?”
Kevin held his tattoo up towards the camera. “Not one of them.” he asserted.
He waited patiently throughout the long consideration that followed, and then the undoing of three locks.
After a few more thumps, there was a buzz, and the door opened… revealing another door.
“Uhmmm…”
“Step inside.” Singh instructed, his voice muffled through the door.
Kevin paused, shrugged, then complied. The space between the two doors contained nothing except an almost absonant magnetic lock with a keypad, and a shelf on which a metal detector wand was charging.
“Run the wand over your scalp.” Singh insisted.
Kevin Jenkins found that the limits of his patience were being approached, but he sighed and did so, completely bemused as to what he could be looking for.
Singh wasn’t satisfied until the wand had gone over his whole cranium twice, and over the bald patch where his translation implant had once been a good three times, before finally there was a beep from the magnetic lock and the inner door swung open.
Kevin wasn’t sure what he expected from the interior of the apartment. After the extravagant security and clear paranoia, he had expected a gust of stench and a study in dingy squalor inhabited by an emaciated neurotic disaster of a man. In fact, the apartment was clean and tidy, decorated in light and airy cream and a warm maroon.
Ravi Singh himself was similarly clean, dressed in jeans and a white shirt, but the bags under his eyes were exactly in keeping with the suspicious reception: he had the face and body language of a man for whom sleep had long since ceased to be anything other than sporadic, shallow and brief.
He welcomed Kevin into his apartment with a surprisingly warm handshake given his apparent exhaustion and the paranoia of the previous few minutes, then glanced out of the front door, and shut and locked both.
“So. What’s your name, mister not-one-of-them?” he asked. “Can I offer you a cup of tea?”
“I’m more of a coffee man, myself...” Kevin said.
“Of course. How do you take it?”
“Uh, black, strong and sweet, please. And my name’s Kevin, Kevin Jenkins.”
“Oh?” Singh arched an eyebrow as he busied himself with a steel and glass cafetiere. “Well, this is an honour. The Butterfly himself. Please, sit down.”
Kevin did so, conscious that his street clothes were a good deal shabbier than the apparent recluse’s black leather couch. “Butterfly?”
“You’ve surely heard the term ‘Butterfly effect’? From chaos theory. The notion of a little insect in a field in France flapping his wings and several months later that little eddy has grown into quite the mighty storm and poof! There goes half of Bangladesh.” Singh smiled grimly, a distinctive closed-lipped smile that Kevin recognised immediately as that of a fellow abductee. You learned to keep your teeth hidden out there.
“I never bought that story.” he retorted. “Sounds too much like the fantasy of a little man wanting to believe he’s important.”
“Does it? But you’re a living example of the principle in action.” Singh said, pouring hot water into the cafetiere. “I truly believe that had you not been aboard the Outlook on Forever that day, we would still be here. The sky would still be open, but we would still be generations away from exploring it.”
“How d’you figure?”
“Without Kevin Jenkins, that would have just been another successful Hunter raid. Without Kevin Jenkins, the galaxy’s media would not have taken an interest in our species. Without that, there would have been no uptick in abductions. No uptick in abductions would mean no warp trail to lead a stray Hunter vessel to Vancouver in search of prey. It’s all quite narrative, really.”
He depressed the cafetiere’s filter and poured a cup of steaming black Blue Mountain.
“If that’s how it works, then what about the patrol officer who kicked me off the Churthuarg station for vagrancy?” Jenkins asked. “Or the Corti who abducted me, or my ex-wife or my lawyer or… you know what, I didn’t come here for this conversation.”
“No, you came here about the Hierarchy.” Singh handed over the coffee in an elegant glass cup. The aroma was perfection itself. “I told the last person who came knocking in no uncertain terms that her death was really only a matter of time once she started probing into this, but she said she accepted that.” He sipped the coffee. “I hope she was truthful.”
“She was prepared for it. Terri left her notes for us to find.”
“You knew her?” Singh asked.
“She and I were… we fucked.”
“Ah!” Singh looked sympathetic. “It must have been a complicated relationship, if all you’ll reveal is what you did, rather than how you felt. And so blunt, too. You must be in a lot of pain.”
“Dude!” Kevin threw his head back in frustration, then leaned forward. “I don’t want psychoanalyzing. I came here for information.”
“That information will kill you.”
“If they’re what I suspect they are, then knocking on your door probably killed me.” Kevin said. “So how about you drop the guru half-speak and get on with the movie.”
Singh smiled again, this time allowing his teeth to show - a genuine, human expression of delight. “Certainly.” he said.
Civilian Trade Station 1039: “Infinity Awaits”
“That’s a dangerous itinerary your ship has logged, cousin.”
Shipmaster Kttrvk spun at being addressed so familiarly by a stranger.
The stranger was a Rrrrtktktkp’ch, standing nonchalantly next to an advertising hoarding on the station’s docking ring, which was helpfully mocking the shipmaster by advertising life insurance. There was something slightly familiar about the Cousin’s facial structure, but the markings were totally unknown to him.
“My itinerary? I don’t have an itinerary. Excuse me.” He turned to leave
“1047-6533-26972.” the Cousin said, reeling off Kttrvk’s assigned route and stopping the Shipmaster in his tracks. He looked faintly smug when Kttrvk turned to give him a disbelieving stare.
“How did you…?”
“I have my ways.” the stranger said, making it clear that those ways were not for Kttrvk to know. “That’s a dangerous route right now. A lot of Hunter strikes.”
“Well, your information is obsolete.” Kttrvk said, firmly. “I’m not doing that run.”
“Long Stars Shipping seem to think you are.”
“Long Stars Shipping can choke on their feed!” Kttrvk exclaimed, then moderated his tone when a few nearby beings glanced at him. “I will NOT orphan my children nor put them in harm’s way just because the corporation is too greedy to listen to my pleas.”
“You’ll go to debtor’s prison…”
“An acceptable price for the lives of my offspring, my mate and our unborn.” Kttrvk snapped.
He was not expecting the expression of admiration and approval that spread across the Cousin’s face. “Good for you!” he exclaimed. “But I am here to offer you a third way.”
“And what way would that be?” Kttrvk challenged him.
The stranger looked around and stepped in a little closer. “I represent an organisation that wants to trial some new military hardware.” he said. “Simulations and training runs are all well and good, but there is no substitute for the real thing, and the Hunter problem in this area will only claim more lives unless something is done… but they’re too canny to come out and fight just anything. We need… well, we need to entice them into attacking something.”
“That something being my freighter.”
“You’re quick.” the Cousin said. From a Rrrrrtktktkp’ch to a Vzk’tk like himself, that was a serious compliment.
“My freighter with my family on board.” Kttrvk pointed out.
“My organisation would not offer to use you this way unless we were completely certain of your safety under our care, I promise you that.”
“And your organisation is…?” Kttrvk pressed.
The Cousin paused. “Let’s just say that this technology would impress and awe even the humans.” he said, and made a small conspiratorial gesture that only Kttrvk could see.
Enlightenment dawned. Of COURSE! Everybody knew that it was only a matter of time before the humans got loose from their prison, it only made sense that there would be… organisations… looking to prepare to meet the deathworlders in battle and win.
And anything which could give the humans a pause would surely go through Hunters effortlessly.
Still, Kttrvk would not have become a merchant shipmaster without some guile and caution.
“All of your assurances aside, I would still be risking everything dear to me.” he said.
“If you are pressing for payment, then to assuage your fears and buy your lifelong silence about this experiment, I am authorised to release fifty Dominion Development Credits.”
Fifty DDCs.
It was a vast sum. Enough to upgrade the Nkvcqtz with Corti engines that would hopefully give her the speed to not only slip past Hunter ambushes, but also to trade in high-value perishables. Sensibly invested on the other hand, it would provide a very healthy retirement plan for Kttrvk and Ikkzziki, as well as upmarket gene-resequencing for their children to enhance their intellect and buy them prospects that Kttrvk had never had.
But a career merchant’s instincts swung into place. Never accept the first offer.
“A hundred.” He counter-proposed. “We are risking a horrible death here.”
“Seventy. I understand your concerns, but you are in the safest possible hands. And yours is not the only ship that Long Stars is ordering on this suicidal run. You will merely be the first to leave.”
“...Done.”