📘The Star Pirate's Folly | 29: Ghosts
While there is much speculation about what remains of the old empire of Sol, even after fifty years the Luxar System hasn't re-established contact with any other star.
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Chapter 29: Ghosts
They played a simple game with simple rules: touch Truly. That’s all Bee had to do to win, just touch him. It drove her insane that she couldn’t do it. She’d been careening around the nullroom after him for more than an hour, but barely even got close. At least the game kept her mind occupied along with her body. Felt good to exert herself. Felt even better finally being comfortable in nullo.
Truly even said so—she’d gotten much better at moving in the suit since her first day in the nullroom. Instead of the gut-clenching terror she once felt after launching off, Bee glided with confidence. She could gauge where she wanted to go, how hard she had to push to get there.
Before she had to correct herself every time with her palm nodes, or just “fall” somewhere onto her feet if she screwed up. But more and more often she didn’t need the help and could keep herself in motion for long periods without touching anything.
Still, she was nowhere near Truly’s caliber. Watching the man fly was a marvel. Every time they trained together she learned something new from him, some little technique she’d get him to explain to her. Before the day’s session, they did an exercise in altering trajectory. Truly had Myra project a neon-orange thread of light behind him as he moved around the nullroom.
While Bee watched, Truly used his palm nodes to pull himself around the room. First he’d start moving straight ahead, with the trail of light straight behind him. Then he’d pull in a different direction and the light would follow him until the thread snaked all over the place in wild knots.
Then he told Bee to follow his trail. Myra used an aquamarine light to track Bee’s path as she shoved off. At the first arc Truly had taken she extended her arm and pulsed the palm node but overcompensated for the gentle curve and jerked away from his orange strand of light. She tried to pull herself back down and wound up tumbling end over end until she shot out both her arms and stopped herself by pulling against opposite walls.
Myra reset her trail and Bee went back to the starting point. That was the first of many failed attempts. She got further along the trail of light each time, but before long Truly suggested they switch to their daily game of tag. That ended as always, with Bee wearing herself out in chase until she could no longer keep up with him—although today she was noticeably slower than usual, weak from hunger and fatigue.
“I’m never gonna catch you, Truly,” Bee panted, exhausted after over an hour of near-constant chase. Every muscle in her body burned, ached, or throbbed.
“C’mon, where’s your steel?” Truly said in her ear. “You beat already?”
Pulling herself over to the lockers with her palm nodes, Bee landed solid on her feet. She locked the nodes to act as anchors and relaxed her entire body to let herself rest in the weightless delight of null-gravity before she took her suit off.
“Safe bet, bumblebee. You lose again.”
“Someday,” she managed, still gasping deep breaths of her suit’s filtered air. “Someday I’ll get you.”
With her heart settling down and her breathing returning to normal, Bee looked up at Truly drifting toward her in his armor. “What’d you say before? Where’s my steel? I heard the Captain say something like that too.”
“Find your steel, he says. Something the rebels started saying back during the war. Sort of a rallying cry. Catchy, I guess—people just kept on repeating it.”
“I’ll have to look it up,” she said before removing her helmet and peeling off her nullsuit. Still coated with sweat, goosebumps prickled on her exposed skin and she shivered as she hung her suit in her locker.
Truly settled down beside her in his gray armor and detached his helmet. He’d barely broken a sweat, Bee realized as she watched him remove his armor piece by piece.
“What’s it mean, exactly?” Bee asked. “I think I get the gist, but….”
“Best I can tell you is what I think.”
She shut her locker. “So tell me.”
“Well, the rebels knew they were going to have to fight a war of attrition against a superior opponent with every advantage on their side. They picked a fight with the whole rest of the civilized galaxy, starting here. They needed dedication. Strategy. Loyalty—the unwavering kind. Takes a lot of strong links to make a chain that won’t break, and fear is a poor motivator for rebellion. They wanted people to choose for themselves to stand up and fight.”
Truly put away his last piece of armor, leaving both him and Bee clad only in their black undersuits. He started a routine of stretches before continuing his explanation, and Bee took a seat nearby to listen.
He said, “The rebel leaders knew they were talking mainly to shipbuilders and metalworkers, so they went with relevant metaphors. Finding your steel is about inner strength, keeping cool and sharp no matter what you’re up against.”
“Did the Captain really fight for the rebels? That’s what the Record says.”
Truly grinned as he bent over at the waist, stretching to touch the floor. “One of the first. And youngest.”
“I couldn’t believe that. Fifteen?” Bee shook her head in astonishment. “No way me at fifteen would be signing up to fight in some damn war.”
“Different times. You never had Earth troopers busting into your family’s house. Earth taxes gobbling up your food money. Earth laws sending your friends to prison. Fifteen years of that, maybe you’d sign up.”
Bee grunted. “Yeah, maybe.”
Truly straightened his back and cracked his neck both ways as he walked past her to the nullroom’s exit.
“Hey Truly,” Bee said. “Did you fight too?”
He paused only briefly, with a sidelong glance, and ignored her question. “I’m gonna go eat.”
Bee remained sitting against the wall, suddenly overcome by the melancholy cloud that always seemed to gather when she had nothing to distract her. “Myra?”
“Need something?” Myra asked. The AI’s voice sounded as though it was coming from a conversational distance, even in a large space like the nullroom.
“What’s with Truly?”
“Must be hungry. Aren’t you?”
Bee rolled her eyes for Myra’s cameras. “I mean what’s his story. Where’d he come from? I couldn’t find anything on the Record.”
“Not my place to say.”
“Well he’s not going to tell me.”
“What’s life without a little mystery?”
“You can’t tell me, can you?” asked Bee. “Why are you guys always keeping secrets from me?”
“Well, we don’t usually get asked so many questions. We’re privateers, root word private. And anyway, I can’t tell you everything—there’s a lot you’ve told me I’m sure you wouldn’t want me telling the rest of the crew.”
“Or the Captain?” Bee asked, the question a barb.
“I’m obligated to share anything of importance with the Captain, you’ve always been aware of that.”
“So he knows everything I’ve told you?”
“He wouldn’t be a very good captain if he didn’t.”
Bee shrugged and stood up to leave. “Guess I just trusted you with some things.”
Myra snorted—she didn’t have nostrils, but the sound was distinctly a snort. “Please. You knew exactly how far your story would get you. It was a good play.”
“Story!” Appalled, Bee glared into the empty room. “It’s not a story, it’s my life!”
“There it is!” Myra said with a laugh. “I knew it was still in there somewhere.”
“What?”
“That fire. Starhawk took it out of you, I know. But it’s time to use it now, Bee. You’ll only get one shot, if even that. When it comes, you’ll need to be ready if you expect to succeed. We’re all here to help you. It’s time to explain some things.”
On the floor in the center of the nullroom, a figure popped into existence. Bee flinched when it started walking toward her.
“It’s okay, Bee,” Myra said. Her voice came from the person now, a pretty woman with a flowing green dress. Wavy, shoulder length red-orange hair framed her striking bright blue eyes. She gave a sheepish smile and a wave. “It’s me.”
Beyond confused, Bee asked, “Myra?”
“Correct!” the woman said with a smile, twirling on her heel. “I would say ‘in the flesh,’ but since it’s just a projection I’d be fibbing a little.”
“Just a projection—” Bee sputtered, moving closer to get a better look. “Myra, you’re amazing! You look so real. Why haven’t you done this before?”
The woman—Myra—waved a hand in the air. She said, “Victor just had to tweak some things. This is all new equipment.”
“Is it hardlight?” Bee almost grabbed one of Myra’s arms out of sheer fascination, but stopped herself just short. “Sorry, can I…?”
“Of course,” Myra said, offering a hand. The AI’s face lit up with delight at the simple physical gesture.
Bee took the projected hardlight hand in hers and held it up close to inspect it. The first thing that struck her was the warmth, like a real body. Myra’s skin was smooth as glass, though.
She remembered the hardlight arrows Myra had used to direct her around the ship, the pleasant heat the particles gave off. This was far more detailed—even the skin looked convincing. Myra had a glow that somehow seemed natural despite the obvious contradiction.
“Amazing,” Bee whispered. “You look real. Is this… you? Who you were based on?”
Myra nodded. “It’s who I was.”
“Who… were you, exactly?”
In response, Myra waggled a finger on the hand Bee held, drawing her attention to the band of black-purple nullsteel around her ring finger. “Once, I was Victor’s wife.”
“What?” Bee’s eyebrows shot up. “The Captain? You guys were married?”
“Yes. Well, I guess we still are.”
“That explains a lot,” Bee said dryly.
“Oh, shush,” Myra said with a laugh. “Victor and I were engaged not too long after the rebellion ended. We lived a good life for a while together, a peaceful life.”
“What happened?” Bee asked.
Myra turned away, beckoning Bee to follow, and they walked together around the perimeter of the nullroom. “It’s not an easy story.”
“Well you can’t just stop there.”
Myra gazed out at the stars for a few moments before continuing. “Victor and I, along with a small crew, ferried goods between the Core and the Outer planets. Back then we still had two interplanetary gates and easier access to the outer settlements. It was safer then, before Dreadstar united the pirates. We saw some incredible things in those years. Best times of my life.”
With a wave of Myra’s hand, the nullroom disappeared and an endless field of stars bloomed around them. Awestruck, Bee gawked at the view and struggled to take a breath. A bright band of stars formed a loose cloud in the distance—the galactic core.
Nearer to them, close to what must have been the center of the nullroom, Lux burned a dazzling yellow-white. Multicolored rings around the star marked the tilted orbits of the six planets in the system. A swirling swarm of glowing white motes between Surface and Atla represented the asteroid belt Styx. They looked like the brightflies from Surface’s jungles, pulsing with light as they circled Lux.
“We traded all over. We’d stock up on supplies from the Core planets and sell them farther out where they were needed.” Myra stepped toward the fifth planet, near the outer edge of the system. “Salatia was my favorite place to visit. It had a gate on one of its moons that could reach all the way to Surface, so at the time it served as a hub to all of the outer colonies.”
The display zoomed in close on Salatia. Myra approached the stormy yellow-green planet with multicolored ice rings and said, “It’s a gas giant like Atla, but about two thirds the size. The ice fields were a vital source of water and fuel for many colonies, which is why Salatia had an interplanetary gate. Over the course of a few years, the Outer colonies went from tiny frontier villages to established, growing cities. Things were really booming.”
Myra sighed as they smoothly coasted toward Ymir at the system’s fringe. “But Dreadstar had other plans. On our way from Salatia to Ymir, we heard reports of a massive pirate fleet attacking colonies in the asteroid belt. We thought we could drop our cargo at Ymir and head back home before they came near us. But the pirates already had a second fleet headed to Salatia’s gate. They took it over, cutting off Core reinforcements to the planets past the belt. Salatia and its moons became their stronghold.”
“Okay, I read about that, yeah.” Bobbing her head as Myra spoke, Bee murmured in agreement. A red fog in the distance swept across the asteroid belt Styx.
“The Outer settlements were beyond unprepared with the Core Fleet tied up by Dreadstar’s pirates in the belt,” Myra said, and the fog consumed Salatia and its moons. “No one knew where they’d all come from. There were theories of hidden colonies in the belt, but no evidence—certainly nothing on that scale. Dreadstar brought the whole system to its knees.
“You have to understand, too, that this was peacetime,” she explained. The red haze crept closer to Ymir. “Ten years of silence from the old empire. We were just traders—a lot of ex-soldiers like Victor, but people of commerce at heart. Dreadstar sacked Salatia’s colonies and sent raiding parties out to Atla and Ymir before anyone even knew what hit them. With Salatia’s gate blockaded, we couldn’t get back home.”
“Home?” Bee asked. “Were you from Surface?”
Myra shook her head and quickly shifted the map to the closest planet to Lux, seeming relieved to change the subject. “Coronis, actually. That’s where Victor and I met. On a little satellite colony called Sunshade. We had property on Salatia and Surface too, but Coronis will always be home to me.”
“Sorry to interrupt your story,” Bee said. “I still want to hear the rest if that’s okay.”
“Of course.” Myra put an arm over Bee’s shoulders in a brief hug. “Any question you have I’ll do my best to answer. I’m an open book to you now, Bee. You understand? That’s the whole point of this. The Captain wants you to know everything. There’s no going back for you now, not since Optima, so you’re with us ‘til the end—wherever that might be.”
“Got nowhere else to go,” Bee said with a shrug. “You guys are the only thing in the ‘verse I have on my side.” She grinned at Myra. “Except maybe Silver.”
The hologram laughed, coppery hair bouncing up and down as her shoulders shook. Bee marveled at her, impressed by the realism she made look so easy—sparkling blue eyes and fair skin with faint scattered freckles on her cheeks. She looked happy.
Bee had always enjoyed the AI’s company, but to see her really drove her humanity home. She wasn’t just a computer, but an actual person! Or at least, she had been at some point. Was she still? What did that make her, technically?
A loud, prolonged rumble from Bee’s stomach intruded on her thoughts. She clapped a hand to it and laughed. “Hungry, I guess.”
Myra deactivated the display and the galaxy vanished, replaced by the plain metal walls of the nullroom. “Two days without food will do that. Let’s finish talking after you eat, yeah?”
“But you didn’t finish—”
“Let’s get you some grub.” Myra stuck out her elbow for Bee to take. “Walk with me?”
“Alright, fine,” Bee grumbled as she linked arms with Myra and the pair started toward the kitchen.
Again Bee felt the glassy heat of hardlight, this time expecting the fabric from Myra’s dress. Looking at it closely, Bee saw shifting geometric patterns on the dark green dress. The surreal conflict between what she saw and what she felt was something she’d have to get used to. Bee’s head spun with wonder as she walked, barely even listening to what Myra said on the way.
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