Chapter 2: Gimme Shelter - Right Of Protection

After Crystal’s words, it took me several minutes to make my way safely back into MARY’S DREAM. Space does not forgive mistakes, even if the person making them is exhausted mentally and physically, two conditions that I definitely fell under at that moment. But I had to do it. Crystal could have done it remotely, and probably did a better job than I could. Despite all her features, she was an AI, I was a human and this was my life. Well, it was the best part of my life. An AI could accept that there was nothing that could have been done to save someone. I knew better. There were times when I lost a rescue that her AAR (After Action Report) showed that I had taken all the right steps. I just didn’t allow myself to believe that for the next weeks as I kept beating myself up over things I could not have known.

As she sealed the bay doors behind me, Crystal pinged my communicator. “Alex. We have a small problem” Wow, if there was any phrase more guaranteed to send ice up and down my nerves after the rescue we had just performed, I’m glad she wasn’t programmed to say it. “Report, Crystal, are they ok?” I snapped off, as I started to hurriedly shuck my skinsuit, nearly tripping over it as I started to move towards the door that led back into the ship proper.

“They are recovering from their ordeal nicely. Despite the trauma they have been through, they came through the ordeal with minimal physical harm. It is a different problem. They had no personal effects before their rescue, and between the emotional shock and the embarrassment of being under clothed for meeting their rescuer, they’re a bit close to shock and being overwhelmed and breaking down in tears. Well, that would probably be an issue as they had been through a lot, with their ship being attacked, being taken as slaves, possibly used as such in all senses of the word and their rescue, my attacking the slave ship and the ... wait ... what did she say about embarrassment? “Crystal, define “Underclothed”. I asked my AI. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know the answer, but well, if I didn’t ask the question, then whatever issue there was would still be there. “The two youngest, teenagers, are completely without clothing, while the caretaker in her 40’s is just wearing a bra and the young lady who was the last one in the rescue tube is just wearing the matching panties.”

Ok, there are two parts of me that responded to that. One of course being the normal healthy male, with the fantasy of slavegirls in the harem, barely dressed at all ... and then there was the other part of me who wanted to go back into that ship and shoot the bodies a few more times for their sake. “And ... let me guess, actually, no, I know. Because I don’t often have female companionship on these trips, there are no clothes that will fit them, correct?”

“You have grasped my meaning quite well, Captain.” One of these days I was going to find out who programmed my AI to be sarcastic some of the time, and then I’ll reprogram THEM with my wrench. (No I’m kidding. Mostly). But, at least this was a fairly easily solved problem. One of the good things about being a free trader and a pirate hunter simultaneously, was that there was times that I didn’t have to rush from one place to another. If I had to deliver 10,000 tons of nullwheat to the Coriolos Habitat, for example, I’d be facing a hundred thousand credit fine EACH DAY for late delivery if it was my fault. But, on this part of my route, I wasn’t carrying any cargo so it made my decision much easier.

“Right, so ... we probably need to take care of them. Offer them a light sedative if they desire it, and set course to the nearest jumpgate. Also, see if you can take some of the heavier fabrics and at least give them something to wear while we travel.

“Yes, Captain Alex. The nearest jumpgate is Radstadt, approximately 12 light hours away. I have plotted a course, and already sent our notification and records of combat and rescue per the Utla Accords. They will probably have reviewed it in the Geghast System when we arrive.”

Sometimes I wondered why I was doing the piloting at all, since Crystal was doing everything for me, but I tried not to think about it too much, namely that I wouldn’t miss out on this foreverything, and I wouldn’t be around to fix the small mistakes she made that would have damaged or even crippled another ship. There’s a reason that ships with a jumpgate drive are not allowed to jump without a trained human pilot aboard at the controls. A misjump can be catastrophic, not only to the ship itself, but to the space around it.

Jumpgate drive malfunctions have a way of breaking some of the basic theorems of the Universe, and the backlash can be bad. Real Bad. “Sterilize planetary populations” level bad, if one such world was unfortunate enough to be near a jumpgate when a malfunction happened. That’s why most of them are well away from any populated worlds. That’s why Astro Control and all the space control folks are quite some distance from the gate ... that way, all they lose is the mechanical part of the gate, and not the personnel working on it. It’s fairly easy to replace the hardware, but not so easy to replace decades of ship controlling experience.

But I was glad Crystal had already sent on my combat records. Most system authorities get antsy when you show up with unexplained cargo and passengers, not to mention combat. They offer bounties on confirmed pirate kills as part of their efforts to deter piracy that could break the interstellar economy, but they didn’t want what Sarge would have called a “Wild West mentality”. As an aside, I asked her what the Wild West was, and what planet it came from, she just groaned and called me a kid.

Oh, that reminded me. “Have you identified the people that we rescued?”

“Yes, Captain, I have gathered their information from DEFENSTRATOR’S computer banks as part of the scan. You have recovered Melissa Katain, heir to House Katain; her younger sisters Daniella and Erene, and her registered caretaker, Heyanna. They are all in good shape, bar the mental trauma they have gone through.”

Wait. NOBLES??? Oh, lords of space, this had just turned more ... well ... complex I guess I could say. I could also say this threw the starving Trustin Neocat amongst the Katalwings. There were several reasons why this made things more complex.

First of all, pirates usually do not take only prisoners when they attack ships. After all, what’s another piece of floating debris hundreds of light-minutes from anything usual in the human worlds. Space is very, very big. Ships could go missing all the time for different reasons, and it was fairly easy to refit a vessel so there was no indication of its previous history. So, if they were taking slaves, then where was the ship that the woman had originally come from? Our late unlamented pirate friend had not suffered combat damage before I had punched his ticket.