Phantom Star

Slowly, as the drip drip of liquid splattering onto steel slowed to a stop I finally started feeling at least a little better. My nose had stopped bleeding, at least, which was a good sign. My eye fluttered as I tried to open them, and I realized one of them was crusted over.

I felt strong enough to stand up with only a little wobble to retake my seat.

“Status report? And let’s get back to UNK-L. I think we need to dock.” I called out weakly.

“Yes yes! Damage bad! Ouchies!” I nodded at the report and just rested for a while as I felt the ship move. The Crabbit were more than capable of putting the ship onto an autopilot route, and I dozed a bit until I felt the tremble go through the hull as we docked.

I blinked my crusted eyes and rose up with a groan. It wasn’t a sharp pain, but I felt bruised and achy as I stumbled a bit through the ship to the docking port. With a fumbled press against the lock it opened and I smiled a bit as Dad was there.

“Kat! He called out instantly in shock as he rushed in and grabbed me up.

It was nice not to have to hold myself upright, and soon I was pulled out of the ship and placed on a nearby bench as I was fussed over.

The Station Doctor was called, and I didn’t complain like I normally would. I definitely needed to be checked out.

“Move aside you lumps.” Mom’s voice called out and the horde of people around me spread with only Dad staying close kneeling in front of me as his rough hand held my own, gentle stroking with his thumb, it was actually pretty comforting.

Then Mom sat beside me, a cool hand tilted my head towards her as she looked me over. “Poor thing.” She whispered to me, and I smiled a little weakly.

“You should see the other guy.” I joked, but then slumped a bit because once again people were dead.

A lot of people probably, and I was directly responsible once more. I felt myself sort of drift for a while before suddenly I was brought back.

Warmth was brought up to my cheek. A wet rag ran over my sensitive skin. I blinked my eyes open realizing I had closed them, to see Mom there, wiping at my face gently.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.” She offered and I nodded as she cleaned up the blood and puke that had coated part of me.

God I really must have looked like a mess.

“Ah, there’s my patient.” A new voice called out, and I looked up to see Aunt Bea. The woman was a doctor of sorts for the station and was already pulling out some tools from her belt. A moment later a scanner ran over me, and I made sure to pay attention to her face, blinking weakly to remain focused despite everything as she did so.

Aunt Bea would always give away the prognosis with her face. Woman had absolutely no poker face at all.

Thankfully her face turned into a smile.

“You’re bruised up, but the dizziness will pass, and the bloody nose is okay too. You got quite a bit of vibrational stress there. Whatever you did, don't do it again, okay Kat?”

“Sure.” I agreed instantly, because that sucked.

With that everyone seemed to breathe out a sigh of relief, but Aunt Bea wasn’t done.

“Here. Let’s give you one of these.” She offered as she pulled out a Hypospray.

“Uuuu.” I whined and the woman sent me a familiar smirk as she bent over and rolled back my jumpsuit over my right arm.

“Don’t complain.” She told me, but I really really wanted too!

She pressed the spray to my arm and the hiss of air injected some drugs into my body, but!

“Iiiitchy!” I whined and Dad had to reach over and grab my hand to keep from itching my shoulder.

“No itching.” Aunt Bea reminded me, a familiar refrain and then reached down and cupped my cheek. “I’m proud of you dear. Well done.” She offered and I flushed a bit as she started packing up her tools.

Hitting me with an embarrassing thing was too mean when I already feel bad.

Thankfully the injection she gave me was already kicking in, and the soreness was fading, and I was even starting to feel better.

Medical tech was pretty good in the far future after all.

“Uh-oh. Eyes up, the Baron just docked.” A voice called out and everyone looked away from me towards the docking ring.

Aww man.

I slumped again because there was going to be so many questions.

A minute later, and the doors opened and the Baron and his entourage stepped out with confidence. He didn’t hesitate to shift his direction towards my group and soon I looked up at the fancily dressed man and his people.

Including the engineer Eugene, who looked like he was about to tackle me and start asking questions, the older man was practically vibrating.

“Excuse me.” The Baron greeted politely, as the crowd split for him. “Ah, there she is. Captain Katherine.” He greeted me, and I just waved a bit weakly.

“Lord Baron, excuse us, but my daughter is-”

“Be at ease.” The Baron interrupted my father with a waved hand. “I will not inconvenience the hero of the hour with an array of questions.” He offered, and I noticed Eugene the Engineer slump a bit. “Captain Katherine, well fought, and thank you. Take the time you need to recover. If there is any trouble don’t hesitate to reach out to the Octavius, the ships doctor will be happy to offer any care that is needed.”

“Thank you.” Dad offered firmly. “But she just needs some rest.”

“Then that is what she will get.” The Baron offered with a formal bow.

And then he walked away, and I was able to just slump into Dad and close my eyes.

Rest sounded pretty good.

—--

Unfortunately my reprieve from the Baron didn’t last long. I got hauled home and tucked into bed for a long sleep. When I woke up in my bed, I got up, took a long shower and then got dressed feeling much better if still a little sore.

“Come and eat Kat. The Baron requested a meeting with you once you are up.” Mom told me as I came out of my room dressed and I just nodded. Some things were inevitable.

“Heard you did something weird.” Dad offered to me, and I blinked a little in surprise at the fact he was here and not out working.

“Not working today?”

“Not today.” He said with a smile. “Things are a little up in the air right now. You going to avoid my question?” He then added with a smirk that made me look away.

Because I totally wanted to.

“I made an SDA controller. It didn’t work perfectly, but it worked.” I didn’t add that the fact it worked at all was a surprise to me too.

“SDA?” He asked, his brow furrowing for a moment before it went slack. “Subspace Depth Adjustment?” He demanded and I nodded.

His slack face of shock went on long enough Mom looked confused.

“What is it, and why is it so surprising?” She asked then and Dad ran a hand over his face, his beard making a noise as he ran over the stubble.

“It’s Advanced Tech. I don’t think even the Duke has access to it. Kat? How did you?” He trailed off as if he couldn’t finish the question.

“I just figured out a way to get it to work… Mostly.” I admitted. “I wasn’t ready to use it, and I suffered for it.” I said back a little defensively.

The ship was enough that everyone had wanted answers, but what I had done was beyond just fixing up a ship.

I might have gone a bit overboard with the SDA controller. Then again it had basically saved the battle.

“You always were good with tech, but…” Dad started and I looked up from my food. The manipulation protein was tasty enough since I was hungry, but this wasn’t the time for that.

“I built it, pulled apart a few Warp Controllers, and configured it… It was hard, but I did it.” I said and Dad looked at me for a while before his face stretched into a smirk.

“That’s my girl.”

I looked towards my food to finish my meal, my face a little warm at the praise.

Now I just had to hope my explanation worked for the Baron as well.

—--

“I would like to examine the SDA controller.” Eugene asked nearly instantly as I settled into the large meeting room. The Baron, Uncle Kyle, and the Barons staff were all there and the Baron had locked his eyes on me the moment I entered with a frankly scary focus.

I hesitated as I took my seat at the request before relaxing a little.

“I don’t even know if it’s still functional right now. The calculations were off… Obviously.” I added and the Engineer just shrugged.

“That doesn’t matter Captain! A functional SDA, semi-Functional even, would be…” The Engineer trailed off and looked at the Baron.

“Captain Katherine. Before we get into that. Thank you. You fought at major risk to your own life to protect not just your home, but my ship. I assure you, you will be well rewarded for your bravery yesterday. That I promise on my name.” He offered to me, ending with a friendly smile that might make him handsome if I wasn’t really uncomfortable around him.

His eyes didn’t just shine with friendliness he looked… Greedy.

“But I do agree with my Chief Engineer. Even a semi-Functional SDA Controller… How did you come across it?”

“I made it.” I revealed freely. There was no point in trying to lie. The thing was a hodgepodge of Warp Controllers, if anyone looked at it, obviously they might think I had put it together.

“Can you make more?” The Baron demanded in a gentle tone, but it was a demand nonetheless.

“Yes. I made the current one out of a couple scrapped Warp Controllers.” I admitted while keeping my eyes locked on the Baron, but I could still see the way Eugene's jaw dropped.

“Impossible.” He said and then I turned my eyes to him and shrugged.

“Not really. The hardest part was just the calculations, which I didn’t exactly get right.” I admitted, hands wringing a bit as I considered all the work that had gone into it.

It had taken me a lot of down time just coding the dang thing. Without the Crabbit helping with the ship while I worked on the thing I never would have had time to complete it…

Well. Mostly complete it. I certainly wasn’t going to use it again without figuring out why it had been so rough.

So… All the time and calculations had in the end not been accurate. I wanted to cry. I hated programming! It took forever, and even with the song guiding me, I made mistakes and had to edit things.

The song might be beautiful, but I was just human.

“Can you make another?” The Baron asked, cutting through the muttering from Eugene and quieting the entire room.

“Yeah?” I said slowly, and then realized I shouldn’t have said that, as the Baron’s eyes flashed in interest.

“Then Captain Katherine, the Kenish Duchy is going to be very interested in as many of the devices as you can-”

“No.” I said, cutting him off no matter how bad an idea it was. I made sure to sit up from where I had been hunched over. “I’m not… I can make another one if you want, I guess. But I need to focus on my ship. I have so much left to do.”

The man’s eyes were locked onto me, his blue green eyes staring me down and I didn’t know what was going on in his mind, but eventually he smirked.

“I understand, Captain Katherine. I understand, then you’ll create an SDA for the Octavius, and walk my Engineer through the process. After all, I’ll need to do repairs on it, if we are going to use it.” He said, sounding rather understanding.

“And what will Katherine receive in exchange?” Uncle Kyle asked immediately after, and the Baron only smiled.

“I will make sure enough Creds are deposited into her account in exchange for such a boon.” He offered with a wave of his hand. “Captain Katherine, if you want to travel, then Creds will do much to ensure your safety and comfort while doing so. Take it from someone who has visited nearly all the systems in the Duchy, and a few beyond.”

I nodded slowly, I felt like I was being played, but the problem was the Baron was a noble, and he honestly could probably just order me to work for him.

Sure I was a Captain of a ship, but no one would care if I was black bagged and hidden away somewhere to make tech for the Duchy if the tech I could make was valuable.

Yet, despite saying he was willing to let me head off with my ship his eyes never left me, and there was a naked greed inside them.

I looked down at my hands.

I’d have to make sure that when I was ready to leave no one knew until I was on my ship and leaving the sector.

—--

Looking over the list of damage from the use of the SDA, any hope of me escaping in the short term was thrown out the window.

The vibration hadn’t overly damaged the Crabbit. I had built them sturdy after all, but the ship itself was still half put together at best. Plenty of cables had ripped themselves apart, damaging the connectors, which shut off power to sections of the ship.

I was lucky that the engines had much stronger connections and so had been fine.

But I would need to go through the whole ship before I was satisfied. More work.

I was going to need more Crabbit at this rate, just to keep the maintenance in check.

“How do normal Captains deal with this?” I asked, despite already knowing the answer. They hired repair crews at stations, to fix their ship up.

If I had over a hundred people to fix up a ship, I could get the Phantom done quickly too.

“Alert! Intruder alert! Arm death rays! Arm.. Oh it’s Dad.” The Crabbit on my shoulder said going from menacing to cutesy in seconds. I looked at her for a moment before narrowing my eyes.

“Is it an intruder alert, or just someone knocking on the door?” And a moment later the way the Crabbit looked away told me what I needed to know.

Groaning I would have to remind them that intruders only meant people that actually tried to get onto the ship, and wasn’t just someone knocking. I rose up and headed down the hallways towards the docking port.

I pressed the switch and the airlock cycled and there waiting outside was Dad.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Kat.” He said with a smile and I felt my own smile rise up as he stepped in for a hug which I returned happily. “Just wanted to tell you. The ships have all been tugged in, pushed one in to orbit myself. Uncle Kyle wants to know what you want done with them.”

“Me?” I asked surprised, before I remembered.

This wasn’t a shared kill, but pirates I had taken out myself. Other than maybe the ship the missile satellite had damaged, I had done all the damage this time.

By law the ships were entirely mine since I had taken on all the risk.

I swallowed. I hadn’t planned for that. I hadn’t been thinking about any of this really. “I don’t know.” I said truthfully, and Dad smirked at me, reaching up to pat my cheek.

“Figure it out then Starburst. Not a rush, but everyone is itching to get scrapping the components.”

“I… I need to talk to Uncle Kyle.” I realized. Some of those components I would likely need for my Phantom, and more importantly… I needed a lot of hull to finish her. I had the components for a bigger Diamond Drive. Once I finished that, I’d have the numbers for how big I could make the Phantom, but considering the upgrade from the Small Diamond Drive, a light one, would likely…

Do a lot.

“Thanks for telling me Dad.” I said earnestly, my mind already racing, and he just smirked at me.

“Anytime Kat. So when is your old man getting a tour-”

“Not now! It’s a mess inside!” I instantly responded to his questions by spreading my arms and blocking entrance from the airlock.

The fact he instantly broke into loud guffaws, had me relaxing. “Sure thing Kat, whenever you’re ready… But before you leave, yeah? I want to see what my genius daughter is putting together.”

I just winced, I wasn’t really a genius… Just lucky. But I nodded without meeting his eyes and then turned and ran back inside. I needed to check my schematics, and find out what I needed, whether the pirate ships would have it, or if I should trade them for something else.

Uuuu. Being a Captain was a lot of work!

—--

I swallowed a little thickly.

Creds were a universal term for currency. Sure not every region had their creds worth the same as other regions, but you could always exchange them in new regions if you needed to, but more importantly.

I had a lot of Creds now. I had sold the pirate ships to the station with only a few components that would go to me once they were scrapped.

The Medium Drives on the ships had been sold off unfortunately, as the Military still had their little order for certain materials to go to them, but that was fine.

I had a lot of Creds now.

The bank account that was in my name had a lot of zeroes.

I took a deep breath and looked away from the Tab that had my account information to look at Uncle Kyle.

“That’s a lot of Creds.”

“Ships are valuable.” He answered back simply with a shrug.

I nodded, and looked away from the numbers. “I need more Shield Emitters.”

“We still have some in stock. I’ll speak to the Baron about requisitioning them.”

“Great. That’s… Nova.” I said using some future slang.

“Katherine… You’ve done a lot for not just yourself, but the station. I understand the request from the Baron discomforts you.”

I looked up from the Tab I was checking again to see Uncle Kyles dark gray eyes stare into mine. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, exactly that. You’re uncomfortable about the Barons request.”

“Yes?”

“Why?” He asked back and I frowned.

“I don’t want to just be some person attached to his retinue or something. I want to travel, experience the freedom to fly anywhere in the verse.”

“Is it so bad? Working with the Baron would ensure a long healthy future.”

“But not happy.” I retorted, noticing the missing word. “Did he ask you to speak with me?”

“He did. He hoped that I could convince you to join his crew. The Phantom Star would be a welcome vessel to join his entourage.”

“No way.” I decided clutching my Tab to my chest as I looked at the older man. “I’m not going to be stuck trapped in some deal. I want to be free.”

Uncle Kyle watched me with those strong gray eyes for a while longer before just nodding.

“Then I suggest you give the Baron the SDA controller he wants, and if possible teach it to his Engineer like he requested. Then leave quickly. The Baron has been a fair man. I would even consider some of his orders to be almost kind to us, and I am thankful for that. But that is one thing, and getting someone like you under his thumb would be another.”

“I know.” I said in a whisper and he nodded.

The conversation ended with that.

—--

I watched as the tug shuttles moved the old hull over towards the Freighters Hangar.

The hull was an old one, but it had lots of mass so it was perfect.

I had purchased it for cheap compared to the newer pirate vessels and I was bringing it in so I could start breaking it down for resources.

“Alright get those vats ready!” I called out to the Crabbit. All the Nanopaste I had left after repairing the Phantom during the pirate raid was going to be used to start eating this old hull. I stood in the old hangar which was sort of nostalgic. This was where the Phantom had been born after all.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the shuttle tug put the hull into place and then buzzed off.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if the Baron had told the shuttle pilot to stick around.

He hadn’t talked to me since the last meeting, and I was using the time to get some work done.

Only once the Nanopaste began devouring the old hull and I was sure it was processing the hull properly did I nod and head out. Jumping out into space to space walk back to the station was exhilarating. And when I reached the station I didn’t head inside, but instead landed on the Phantom Star.

I grinned as I looked up from her bow to see the big Thermal Lance turret, and then leapt on top of that to look up into the bridge. The shaped glass still gave it a sharp look as I looked at my ship. The massive spaceship was all mine.

With a few more leaps I hit the airlock and let myself in.

“Alright, we all have work to do. Get at it.” I told the Crabbit on my shoulder the quiet girl saluted and buzzed off into the ship to find some more work to do.

Just as I was getting ready to head to the hold to get to work on the new Diamond Drive, I heard the alert.

“Intruder alert! Arm death rays!” I heard echo through the ship and I rolled my eyes, really going to have to get them to start shouting that. I hurried across the ship to the other side where the airlock connecting to the station was located.

“Stop that.” I scolded the Crabbit waiting at the Airlock, its clampers opening and closing aggressively. “Now who is it?”

“Fancy!” It told me which wasn’t an answer, but sort of was.

I opened the airlock to see not the Baron like I dreaded but his operations officer. Artemis.

“Hello?”

“Greetings Captain Katherine. You have been invited for a meeting on board the Octavius at 1600 ship time. A meal will be provided.” The woman said all at once in a calm tone and then dropped a salute and turned to leave.

“Umm. What?” I asked her, retreating back in confusion and she stilled and turned back around. I swallowed as her icy eyes stared back at me in not exactly a glare, her face never shifted but I felt like she was dissecting me.

“The Baron requests your presence tonight to join him for the ship's dinner. Dress is casual.” She offered at the end and then once again turned away…

Okay?