PREDATORY PRACTICES
A Tech Infantry Novella
by
Edward Stasheff & Marcus Johnston
Copyright © 2011
Chapter 16: Travel Expenses
As the Avarice approached the halfway point from Minos to Proxima, Rameth ordered the gravity drive powered down and the super-freighter's fourteen heavy ion drives fired up to carry them the rest of the way through the confusing swirl of hyperspace. As the ship neared the Proxima jumpgate, they passed a few Imperial starfighters (uneventfully, thank the stars) on long-range patrols along the commercial hyperspace lane between the two warring factions. Clearly, there would be some Imperial warships in the Proxima system… but Heth wasn't prepared for what greeted them when the jumpgate ripped spacetime open and the super-freighter crossed through back into realspace.
Heth was ready and waiting in the control center of the Avarice, hovering (literally) over Rameth's shoulder as the Sensor Administrator ran active scans of the system. "That's a lot of ships," Heth commented as more and more icons appeared on the holographic projection before them. "A lot of ships…"
"Aye," Rameth agreed, narrowing his green eyes at the three-dimensional spatial map and studying the symbols, "but less than half of them are warships. The rest are commercial freighters and passenger liners."
"That's still a lot of warships for such a minor system," Heth said, stroking his whiskers anxiously. "Destroyers… cruisers… that's a fighter carrier, right? It is, isn’t it? You… you don't think they know ab—"
"Proxima's a border system, remember?" Rameth cut him off. "Hey, the Federation had an Earth Fleet task force in Minos to defend from an Imperial attack, didn't they? So this is just the Imperial task force to defend Proxima from a Fed attack. I wouldn't worry about it, boss; just standard operating procedure, nothing unusual about it."
"Oh. Of course." Heth suddenly felt rather foolish. Then another thought occurred to him. "You don't suppose we'll get stuck in the middle of a space battle between the Empire and the Federation, do you?"
"Well, anything's possible…" Rameth shrugged, eyes still glued to the spatial map. "But I doubt it. I'm not seeing any Imperial troop transports or assault ships. This is a defensive picket, not an invasion fleet." Rameth shook his head slowly, making his long black braids undulate. "The volume of commercial traffic is kinda high, though. Proxima wasn't nearly this congested the last time I passed through, that's for sure."
Strange, Heth thought, it looks about the same to me… unless… "Was that before the Caal Invasion, Rameth?" he asked.
"Uh…" The ship's Manager thought a moment, then nodded. "Aye, I guess so. Why?"
"Ah. Well, that explains it then," Heth said, feeling a rare moment of competence. "If you recall, the humans destroyed all the jumpgates in the Avalon system to prevent the Caal invasion fleet from reaching their capitol."
"Oh, aye, I heard about that." Rameth nodded in another billow of braids, then gave a short chuckle. "Didn't do the apes much good, though. The Caal came anyway."
"Until Vin Dane stopped them at the Battle of Avalon," Heth sighed, "and became humanity's savior."
"And their Emperor, don't forget!" Rameth added. " 'Praise be upon Him who saves us from the Caal' and all that nonsense." Rameth growled. "I swear, if I hear that slogan from one more Imperial bureaucrat, I'm gonna cough up a hairball on their shoes!" That earned him some hissing laughter from his crew, who were apparently as tired of hearing the ubiquitous prayer as Rameth was. He turned back to Heth. "Anyway, all that fighting was in Avalon. What's it got to do with the gridlock here in Proxima?"
Heth shrugged. "The commercial shipping lanes had to be rerouted somewhere. Proxima was already a shipping hub, so it’s only natural it would pick up the extra traffic—and become something of a bottleneck, apparently."
"Aye, I suppose that makes sense," Rameth agreed. "Lucky for us, though. More customers!"
"I suppose," Heth agreed, "but until the Empire rebuilds the Avalon jumpgate to Cronos, any shipping heading to the Cronos or G2 systems has to pass through Promixa to get there."
Rameth's grin faded. "Really? Scat." He turned back to the holographic spatial map of the system, then zoomed out to studied the galactic map. "So the only way in and out of Cronos is through Proxima… and the Imperial Navy's got a task force stationed here. Well, one thing's for sure…" Rameth's head turned back to Heth through the swirl of his braided mane. "If this contract takes a downturn, we won't be able to escape the Empire through Proxima. Not without the Avarice being captured or destroyed, that is."
"Don't worry, I've got a contingency plan for that eventuality," Heth said, injecting his voice with more confidence than he felt. It's more of a theory than a plan, really… "But hopefully we won't have to use it," Heth continued, "not if we do the job right. With luck, we'll be in and out before anyone realizes what's happened."
Thankfully, the Communications Administrator interrupted just then before Rameth could ask Heth to explain his backup withdrawal plan. "Manager Rameth! We're being hailed by Proxima Port Authority."
"Go ahead and put them through." Rameth nodded, then turned to Heth. "You're on, boss!"
Heth deflated, landed softly on his paws, and smiled up into the holocamera; negotiations with apes tended to go better when they could literally look down on K'Nes and see them as small and unthreatening. He brushed his fur down and straightened the tie of the human-style business suit he'd worn for the occasion right as the holoprojection of the uniformed Imperial bureaucrat lit up before him.
"Gainful day, Proxima!" Heth raised his paws, palms up, and declared, "Praise be upon Him who saves up from the Caal!" Behind him, Rameth made a barely-audible gagging sound, and his crew had to stifle snickers.
Luckily, the ghostly Imperial bureaucrat didn't seem to notice; human ears weren't as sharp K'Nes ears. She returned the gesture and mumbled, "Praise be upon Him who saves up from the Caal," in the rushed monotone reserved for phrases long memorized and endlessly repeated. Her holographic avatar sighed and looked down at Heth with a weary expression one step above fatal boredom. "Alright, Avarice, send us your flight itinerary and cargo manifest."
From that point on, everything was standard, routine, and boring. If the Empire suspected the K'Nes super-freighter of anything subversive, they certainly gave no sign of it. There was little reason to suspect them anyway; the K'Nes Llan was politically neutral and maintained friendly trade relations with every faction in the galaxy, regardless of who was at war with whom. And, although Miao Mercantile now refused to do business with Zechariah McNeilly, they were still willing to trade with the Holy Terran Empire (albeit a bit more cautiously now). A customer that big was not to be casually discarded, after all.
Imperial customs officials did board the Avarice to personally inspect the cargo bays, but that wasn't unusual; heightened security procedures were to be expected during wartime, even for neutral merchant ships, and especially one inbound from a hostile system. The inspectors examined everything but found nothing; after all, Heth had nothing to hide—yet.
There was one item that raised a few eyebrows, however. Hunter training had been suspended during the their stay in Promixa—it simply wouldn't do to have mercenaries drilling openly in front of Imperial inspectors—so the recruits changed into civilian work clothes and melted back into the crew, just more deckhands on a cargo hauler. Heth made no attempt to hide their power armor and railguns, other than packing them up neatly inside of a shipping container and listing them on the cargo manifest. The inspectors eventually noticed it, of course, and asked Heth if there was any particular reason why they shouldn't immediately impound the military equipment and throw him into prison.
The little black cat had anticipated this reaction, of course, and had the perfect excuse ready and waiting: an Imperial contract for power armor, deliciously vague about delivery date, location, and quantity, and signed by Zechariah McNeilly—a Horadrim and personal agent of Emperor Vin Dane. Once the Imperial bureaucrats saw that name, they backed off, left the K'Nes weapons and armor alone, and waved the super-freighter through without further question. Although he wasn't sure, Heth suspected McNeilly's dark reputation was well-known throughout the Empire, and no human wanted to risk getting on the malevolent alien's bad side.
As relieved as Heth was to make it through the Imperial customs checkpoint smoothly, he knew getting into the Holy Terran Empire was the easy part—it was getting out again that would be hard.
Unfortunately, both the Empire and the Avarice's crew expected the traditional K'Nes trade stop. Although the lucrative layover would please the crew and avoid suspicion from the Empire, the potential consequences of scores of capitalist cats in a commercial craze running rampant throughout Proxima made Heth cringe. Such a situation was entirely too unpredictable. If anything was going to happen that would draw unwanted Imperial attention, cause delays, or even blow their cover, it would happen here and now.
Making it a short stopover would help. So would sending each Miao pride to a different orbital station to trade; that would cut down on inter-pride rivalry, at least. Fortunately, Rameth's crew mostly understood the delicacy of their situation. Hopefully they'd have the sense to lay low and avoid trouble as they bought and sold, but… well, once K'Nes began haggling, they had a bad habit of losing sight of anything else.
The Proxima trade stop presented a different set of problems from the one in Minos. It wasn't brutal bargain buying this time—it was savage selling. The icy planet of Promixa was essentially a huge mining colony, with a large population but small industrial base. That meant the manufactured consumer goods the crewcats had bought cheap in Minos could be sold at a high price for excellent profits in Proxima, except…
Everyone was trying to sell the same stuff at the same time.
That meant competition was inevitable—and, worse, it would drive prices down. And if there was one thing K'Nes hated, it was anything that reduced their profits. Prides quickly struck up secret, informal (and technically illegal) price fixing agreements … which fell apart almost as quickly as they were formed, with crew cats arguing fiercely over the exactly wording of verbal contracts no one had risked recording or writing down. All it took was one K'Nes to lower the prices of their merchandise, and it all went downhill from there. Nothing rubbed K'Nes fur quite the wrong way quite like being undersold by a member of their own corporate clan. It was considered a serious betrayal; on Purrfang, wars had started over less.
Crewcats quickly retaliated in kind, stealing customers away by underselling the K'Nes who'd undersold them… and then everyone joined in on the trading turmoil. As prices dropped and profit margins shrank, so did patience and civility, with a corresponding rise in rivalries and tempers. By the time the Engineering Administrator roared loudly that any K'Nes who would sell an RP-12 Enzyme Welder for only 175 credits was a disgrace to his clan and his species, claws came out, fur started flying, security showed up, arrests were made, fines were paid, and Heth was quickly running out of nepeta to calm his frazzled nerves.
Even on the orbital stations where the price-fixing agreements held, other problems arose. Crewcats competed fiercely over customers and who got to sell what where, with predictable results. On one space station, the pride settled the dispute by dividing up the best retail space and assigning each member their own area. Then bickering broke out over where exactly the boundaries were. All it took was one K'Nes to mark their territory, and all the rest followed suit. Heth only hoped he could get everyone off the station and out of Proxima before the maintenance crews figured out what that smell was.
Fortunately, they did. It was the shortest trade stop Heth had ever conducted, and possibly a K'Nes record. Even Heth wasn't quite sure how he'd found the time to acquire some surplus cold weather gear from Proxima to help round out his Imperial Army supply delivery on Cronos—it, too, was a cold world. Sure, the gear was outdated surplus, pre-owned and refurbished, but Heth figured a cold soldier would welcome anything warm, albeit worn… or so he hoped. Either way, as soon as his cold cargo and capitalist crewcats were loaded and secured, the Avarice was cleared for departure through the Proxima-Cronos commercial jumpgate.
The last leg of their journey to Cronos along the hyperspace shipping lanes was completely uneventful, mainly because Heth slept the whole way. Although Narrah still didn't think the Miao Mercenary Company was ready for combat, they'd simply run out of time, and the scruffy old soldier knew that fresh, rested, and alert recruits would perform better than sore and exhausted hunters.
Unlike the other mercenaries, who could doze until the Avarice entered orbit over Cronos, Heth was roused from his slumber shortly before they reached the Cronos jumpage. Heth hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep—only forty-eight hours, half a night's rest at most—but he was needed to help smooth-talk their way past the Imperial checkpoint.
As they transitioned back to realspace through the jumpgate and the Sensor Administrator scanned the system, Heth and Rameth watched the three-dimensional map on the holoprojector in the middle the control center, waiting anxiously for the results. When the icons finally popped up, Heth let out a relieved breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Only a small sprinkling of ships appeared in the map of the star system—and no warships.
"Well, now, that's a more favorable marketplace!" he declared. "There's a perfect amount of traffic here—enough to get lost in the crowd, but not enough to get in the way." Or shoot us down, he mentally added.
"Aye, and no surprises, either." Rameth nodded, making his long braided mane wobble. "Let's see… we got a pawful of cargo freighters, a passenger liner or two, and a few Imperial corvettes—probably just on routine patrol. Nothing out of the ordinary at all."
"Hmm…" Heth stroked his whiskers. "Do the patrol ships pose any danger?"
"Negative. They're just fleas—more annoying than dangerous." Rameth dismissed them with a wave of his paw. "Oh, they're armed, sure, but nothing the Avarice can't handle. We can outrun them long before they'll do much damage."
"Excellent." Heth couldn't help grinning to himself; the market was finally turning in his direction. "Now, if you please, could you add the system's jumpgates to the map?" Rameth blinked at him, puzzled, but shrugged and nodded to the Sensor Administrator. Three new symbols appeared on the holoprojection, two bright and one dark. Heth pointed a claw at the one nearest their super-freighter icon. "This must be the Cronos-Promixa jumpgate we just entered the system through, obviously…" He pointed to the other bight symbol at the limits of the outer star system. "And this one?"
"The jumpgate the G2," Rameth answered. "It's a distant prison planet on the edge of known space—and a navigational dead end. Never been there—not cost-effective."
"Good, good…" Heth moved his claw to the third and final gate icon, darker than the first two, on the other side of the system. "So this must be the Cronos-Avalon jumpgate then, right?"
"Uh… aye, I guess so," Rameth agreed with a shrug, "or rather, it would be, if the apes hadn't blown up the gate on the Avalon side of the hyperspace lane during the Caal Invasion. Now it's just useless junk floating in space, I suppose. That's why the icon's dimmed—it’s powered down and inactive." Suddenly his eyes lit up. "Hey, you don't suppose it qualifies as salvage, do you? We could—"
"I doubt it," Heth cut him off, eager to shut down that line of thought before Rameth could start plotting another one of his "extra-legal acquisition" operations. "The gate's still valuable and useful to the Empire—just not in this star system."
"Aye… I guess so," Rameth agreed reluctantly.
"I'm surprised it's still here, actually," Heth pushed on. "The most recent travel reports available said it was… but I wasn't sure until now."
"Yeah, you'd think the Empire would have dismantled the gate and moved it to another system by now."
"Oh, and they probably will… eventually," Heth said. "But right now, the Empire's preoccupied with surviving the war with the Federation." He gave Rameth a fanged grin. "For once, the apes' talent for constant warfare and mindless destruction is actually working in our favor!"
"Aye, but, uh… how?" Rameth narrowed his green eyes, confused. "I don’t understand, boss. What’s a dead jumpgate got to do with this contract?"
Heth opened his mouth to answer, but just then the Sensor Administrator held up a paw and called out, "Hey, boss!"
Rameth spun toward her. "What?"
"We've got a new contact—a big one—just coming out from behind the sensor shadow of Cronos III…"
The pair of cats watched the three-dimensional map intently. When the new symbol appeared, Heth jaw fell open, stunned.
"Sky Father above," Rameth hissed. "An Imperial battlecruiser. That's got more than enough firepower to destroy the Avarice… scat, destroy a whole fleet of super-freighters!"
"But… but… that can't be right!" Heth yowled. "This is a minor system! Deep within the Empire! Far from the battle lines! Why would there be a battlecruiser here?"
"The same reason we're here," Rameth answered, ears down and back, his face grim. "Because there's active fighting on the planetary surface." He magnified the holographic map, zooming in on Cronos III. As the ghostly planet swelled, mountain ranges and ice caps appeared. Rameth narrowed his eyes, studying the red icon of the Imperial warship hovering above it. "It's rotating with the planet…" he muttered, stroking his braided mane thoughtfully, "geosynchronous orbit… and I'll bet it's…" He adjusted the projection, and a blue dot appeared on the planet's surface. "Aye, right over the Cialt Abbey. Scat."
"The Abbey?" Heth repeated, puzzled. "But…if the Abbey's on the surface of the planet… then why a spaceship?"
"Orbital and air support," Rameth answered. "A warship that size has got to have a sizeable fighter complement, some or all of them atmosphere-capable."
Heth blinked at Rameth, confused. "Uh… translation, please?" Spatial navigation he understood—he was a smuggler, after all—but the intricacies of warfare, which a former K'Nes Tor Naval officer like Rameth understood instinctively, often eluded Heth.
"Huh?" Rameth glanced at his employer, saw the blank stare on his face, and suppressed an amused smile. "Sorry, boss. It has a lot of planes that can drop a lot of bombs." He looked back at the map. "For that matter, the warship could fire one lance torpedo and reduce the Abbey to smoking rubble. The only reason they haven’t already is because they want to take Chairman Smythe's mother alive." Rameth narrowed his eyes, absently twirling a long black braid around his paw. "Still… why a battlecruiser? That's got way more firepower then they need for orbital support. Why not an assault ship? Scat, even the right destroyer could do the job!" He turned back to the Sensor Administrator. "What kind of ship is that? Run our scans against the silhouette recognition database."
"Already done it, boss!" the Sensor Admin replied. "It's the INS Chevauchée, a Stalingrad-class battlecruiser."
"A Stalingrad?" Rameth repeated, surprised. "Oh. Well, that explains it, then!"
"Not to me it doesn't!" Heth snapped, his patience beginning to fray.
"The Stalingrad is an old class, boss, verging on obsolete," Rameth explained. "It's gotta be fifty years old if it's a day."
"Fifty-four, to be exact," the Sensor Admin added.
"Old enough not to have a gravity drive," Rameth added. "Which is probably why it's assigned to internal missions like squashing resistance movements—all the grav-drive ships are on the front lines fighting the Federation's Earth Fleet… maybe the Terran Republic's navy, too."
"I see…" At least it was the first good news Heth had heard since they detected the huge warship. "So we can’t fight it—but we can escape from it?"
Rameth shrugged. "Well, if we can get our gravity drive powered back up and online before they blow us to atoms… then yeah, sure." Rameth fixed Heth with a narrow glare. "I'd still prefer it if we gave them no reason to notice us, though."
"As would I, I assure you," Heth agreed, "but that may not be entirely up to us. If we get close enough to Cronos III to use the Transit Antennae, we'll definitely be within range of their sensors..." He glanced at Rameth. "…and weapons, I assume?"
"Oh, aye. Definitely."
"Besides," Heth continued, "officially, we're here to deliver supplies to the Imperial Army besieging the Cialt Abbey. We'll have to drop into orbit near the warship—it'll look suspicious if we don't. K'Nes aren't exactly known for wasting shuttle fuel unnecessarily, after all, especially if it'll save us a few credits and increase our profit margins."
Rameth growled, but nodded reluctantly. "Aye… but I'd still like to put as much space between us and that battlecruiser as possible."
"Oh, but of course!" Heth smiled, nodding vigorously with exaggerated innocence. "To do anything less would be risking a collision, and simply irresponsible! Perish the thought!" His face and tone returned to normal. "But still, Rameth… just make sure it's a reasonable distance, will you? Too far away, and it might raise unwanted attention and uncomfortable questions."
"Boss!" The Communications Administrator waved at Rameth. "Cronos Port Authority is hailing us."
"I believe that's my cue." Heth said, straightening his tie and brushing down his fur. "Put them through, if you please."
It was all routine from there; the Imperial bureaucrats were expecting a K'Nes super-freighter delivery, after all. After the usual rounds of "Praise be upon Him who saves us from the Caal," itinerary and manifest paperwork, security checks, cargo inspections, and yet more paperwork, the Avarice was finally granted clearance to continue their voyage toward the New Israel colony on the moon of Cronos IV.
With most of the Miao Mercenary Company still sleeping soundly, Heth had a welcome reprieve from Narrah's constant hunter training, and some completely free time to close any open transactions in his life before they headed down to Cronos. Slowly, he made his way back to his Executive's Suite and logged in to his terminal.
Heth knew that once they extracted the Chairman Smythe's mother and the other Cronos refugees and fled the system, the Avarice would need to maintain a communication blackout to avoid detection. In other words, now was the last chance he'd have to use the Interstellar Telecommunications Network until their super-freighter once again reached the safety of Federation space. His first communiqué was to Yawr, Miao Mercantile's LEO, a short and simple text-only message informing the grand old cat that their contract was proceeding smoothly and on-schedule. Heth carefully avoided any unnecessary details; on the off chance the Empire intercepted and read the message, they'd hopefully assume he was referring to the Imperial Army supply contract on Cronos—which they already knew about—and promptly ignore the report.
Finally, he checked the updates on Miu's reproductive auction for the last time. The bidding had risen from a quarter million to exactly ¢286,765.01, still well under the half-million credit threshold Heth had set aside for the auction—but he knew the bidding could (and probably would) shoot up dramatically in the last few minutes and seconds before a winner was declared.
Heth had known from the moment he accepted the Cronos contract that he would never make it back to K'Nes space in time to attend Miu's reproductive auction in person. He'd have to be content with remote bidding. Unfortunately, the auction was still three days away—and by the time the crucial last few seconds ticked by and lot sold, Sky Father alone knew where Heth would be: fighting apes on Cronos? Fleeing for their lives through hyperspace? In an Imperial prison? This was all assuming he was still alive, of course—if not, it was sort of a moot point.
He desperately wished he could wait until Miu's auction was over before heading down to Cronos—but in that time, the Imperial Army break the Cialt siege, capture Edwina Smythe, and seize her inflammatory blackmail files, and the Miao would lose their best chance of getting a new jumpgate. No, waiting was out of the question; the contract was time-sensitive and too much was at stake for both the Federation and Heth's own corporate clan.
All he could do now was set up automatic bidding with a high maximum bid and hope for the best. A half-million should be enough, but… Heth thought of Miu's intoxicating scent, the soft laps she'd run across his face before he left Urrin… no, he couldn't risk any chance of losing Miu, not again, not now, not ever. He'd spend whatever he had to.
Unfortunately, most of his monetary assets were tied up in Nhur Llan shares. Sure, they'd skyrocket in value once the Nhur-Andersvald jumpgate construction was announced, but that would take time—and Miu needed capital now to keep MIRADI afloat; that was the whole point in auctioning her reproductive products in the first place. She wasn't likely to accept an installment payment plan. Well, Heth thought, if I mortgage my home, sell my aircar, and liquidate all my material assets…
Heth entered a maximum bid of one million credits. That would almost certainly be enough. Still… he'd never be comfortable knowing he couldn't be there when the gavel fell.
He forced himself log off, then settled on his perch and sniffed a huge pinch of nepeta to calm himself. He imagined he'd be going through a lot of nepeta in the coming days. Heth still had a few hours before his rendezvous with Rachel O'Reilly… and, unfortunately, he knew exactly how he needed to spend it. There was a final job he needed to do, and he'd put it off too long already. He wasn't looking forward to it, but … well, if he was going to complete this insane contract, he'd need to utilize every asset he had—and there was at least one that, until now, he'd never risked using. Still… extreme jobs called for extreme tools.
Heth unlocked his carefully-concealed private safe (as opposed to his public safe, which he was pretty sure M'Rowr could pick easier than his teeth), removed the dangerous object, and flew it down to the opposite end of the officer's quarters. He needed to use the ship's transit antenna—or more specifically, the K'Nes who operated it. Her cabin, back a secluded niche (she'd insisted on that), was spacious and only slightly less glamorous than the Executive's Suite (in this case, Heth's berth), but… well, when you hired these specialists, they expected a certain level of comfort. Besides, it was in her contract.
Heth tapped a claw on the hatch's intercom and heard the faint chime inside. When the occupant didn't pick up after a minute, Heth rang it several more times.
"Come back later! I'm meditating right now!" a muffled but indignant voice called back. "And unless there's an emergency, nothing takes priority! The delicacy of Sky Mother's cosmic rays do not allow for—"
"Cut out the act, Kirrp," Heth growled through the hatch. "You're on the clock, remember."
There was an obscenely long pause. "Is that you, Director Heth?"
"Yes—your boss, remember?" Heth hated dealing with wizards; the only thing bigger than their paychecks were their egos. "I'm offering you an extra consulting fee… but the price is dropping every second this door stays closed."
The hatch swung open. "Yes, I suppose I could spare some time for that," purred Durrmach K'Hhak Na'Kirrp, a short, plump K'Nes dripping with jewelry, whose shiny grey pelt was perpetually slicked down with flying wax. She wore a silvery blouse under a dark blue waistcoat and bloomers, both embroidered with gold stars and constellations, and topped it all off with a ridiculous wide-brimmed pointed hat. And, of course, she was carrying a wand. What else?
"Thank you for squeezing me into your extremely busy schedule," Heth said, heavy on the sarcasm, as he floated into the light and airy berth and looked around. The suite was stuffed with all manner of obscure arcane items: crystals and candles, ornate little boxes and bottles filled with Sky Father knew what (although he suspected at least one was full of nepeta), bizarre magickal tools and equipment whose purpose Heth could only guess at (if there was any at all), and books, scrolls, and parchments scrawled with mystical incantations... or is it just bad handwriting? Heth wondered absently. How much of this is actually necessary, and how much is just theatre to inflate the price?
"So!" Kirrp began, whipping out her datapad and opening a blank contract template. "What sort of consulting do you need, Heth?"
"Analysis of a magickal artifact," Heth explained, slightly irked that she'd dropped his title already. That was fast... "What it is, how it works, the whole package."
Kirrp scowled down at her datapad and sniffed derisively. "Well, I'm afraid my contract templates don't have a predefined consulting option for that. I'm a technomancer, you know, not an artificer."
Heth didn't know what the difference was. "Well, yes, but… artifacts are, uh… sort of technomagickal…?"
The K'Nes mage rolled her eyes. "If you mean that they both contain a magickal matrix for the funneling of quintessence, then yes. But so does an everyday spell. So does a non-magickal computer, for that matter!" Kirrp sighed loudly, shaking her head at Heth's ignorance and muttering about the intellectual capacity of unawakened mundanes. "I guess I'll just put you down for 'magitek diagnosis' then."
"Sure, fine," Heth agreed, annoyed, "but with five percent off." When Kirrp just stared at him, confused and offended, Heth merely shrugged. "You should really answer your door faster."
Kirrp hissed, and for a moment Heth thought she was going to throw him out of her berth… but greed won out over indignation, as it always did. She modified the contract instead, growling the whole way, then held it out for Heth's blood signature. "So," she said as Heth tapped his paw over the pressure patch, "where's this magickal artifact you have for me?"
"Right here." Heth pulled it out of the breast pocket of his waistcoat and, like an engineer taking out a nuclear warhead, carefully opened the small black box in his paws. The gold ring he had taken as collateral from M. Wells sat there in a sea of black velvet.
Kirrp plucked it up with her claws and studied it closely in silence, then produced a jeweler's loupe from nowhere and squinted through it at the ring, examining the jewelry in greater detail.
The silence stretched out until Heth began to grow impatient. "Well?" he asked. "What is it?"
"Worth about five hundred credits," Kirrp replied with a shrug. "But the craftsmanship's superior. I'll give you seven-fifty for it."
"I need an analysis, Kirrp, not an appraisal," he replied, exasperated. "And it's not for sale anyway."
"Nonsense! Everything is for sale!" Kirrp waved the idea away with her paw. "Alright, alright, I'll go up to a thousand—but not a credit more!"
Heth rolled his eyes. "It's being held as collateral against a debt that's already been paid in full," he explained. "If I don't return it, Miao Mercantile stands in breach of contract."
Kirrp's face fell. " Oh. So it really isn't for sale, then." She looked down at the ring wistfully. "Well, in that case… it's priceless."
Heth managed to suppress a hiss, but let his eyes narrow. He briefly contemplated using his new-found martial skills to claw Kirrp's throat out… but then he calculated his financial liability for terminating an employee of the Paranormal Practitioner's Guild, and concluded that he simply couldn't afford to. "Yes, Kirrp, but why is it priceless? What is it, exactly? What does it do?"
"This? Oh, it's an Emcie Artifact."
Heth frowned. "A what?"
Kirrp heaved the sigh of a long-suffering martyr. Heth was getting really tired of that sound. "I'll try to put this is layman's terms for you," Kirrp said, as if speaking to a child. "It's a Ring of Power, an Energy Artifact, a Force Source. But of course we in the Paranormal Practitioners' Guild prefer to use the more precise arcane classification of an 'Emcie Artifact.' "
Heth's memory vaguely recognized some of those terms from K'Nes myths, legends, and magitech catalogs, but that was it. "Emcie…?"
"Yes, Emcie. E=mc2? The conversion of matter into energy?" Kirrp rolled her eyes. "Sky Father above, even I know that, and I'm a wizard, not a scientist! What do they teach in business schools these days?"
Suddenly it dawned on him—what the ring was, what it did—and Heth was too amazed to be annoyed by Kirrp's continued condescension. "You mean that… ring can turn anything into nuclear energy?"
"Magickal energy," Kirrp clarified, holding up a claw. "There's a difference. It's not as much energy as splitting an atom, true, but it's still more than enough to—"
"No wonder it's so valuable!" Heth purred, still astounded at what he possessed.
"Rare, too." Kirrp nodded. "And dangerous as water demons on holiday."
"Really?" Heth looked at the ring again with new eyes. "Oh… yes, I can see how it could be." Heth knew all too well that magick could be dangerous and unpredictable—that's why he feared it and tried to avoid it.
"This artifact can channel enormous amounts of magickal energy," Kirrp continued, holding the ring in her claws up to the light. "Emcie Artifacts are rare because so few mages are advanced enough to create them, to handle that much energy without destroying themselves. They're usually the only ones who use such artifacts, too—it's too risky for the rest of us."
Heth felt his tail hairs begin to rise. If he'd known M. Wells was a mage in that league, Heth would have thought twice about the aggressive bargaining strategy he'd used in their negotiations. Suddenly, another nasty thought occurred to him. "If it's that dangerous… is it safe to keep it on the Avarice?"
"Oh yes." Kirrp nodded with absolute confidence. "Only a wizard could even attempt to use this—and, to the best of my knowledge, I'm the only awakened K'Nes on the ship." She looked over at Heth. "Think of this as an atomic hand grenade—but only a pawful of people can pull the pin. As far as you and your crew are concerned, it's nothing but a piece of jewelry."
"Well, that's something, at least," Heth said, relieved and reassured. "But you could use it, right?"
Kirrp stared at him for a long time before answering. "Use it? Yes. Control it? Possibly. But I'm not stupid enough to risk trying," Kirrp finally replied. "My metaphysical specialty is distances, not forces—that's why I'm a transit antenna operator, after all." Kirrp sighed again (she was apparently fond of sighing). "Probably all I'd create is an elemental blast of magickal energy. At best, I might be able to direct it at something. At worst, I'd vaporize myself. And you. And probably a good chunk of the ship, too. Then again…" She looked up at Heth. "Well, I am a Guild-certified technomancer, you know, licensed in applied metaphysics and practical—"
Heth cut her off. "I've read your resume, Kirrp." He wasn't really in the mood to listen to her long list of credentials yet again.
Kirrp chirped indignantly, then returned to peering at the ring through her jeweler's loupe. "Well, I suppose I could integrate this into a magitech device designed to handle that much energy—the transit antenna or gravity drive, for example. But…" Kirrp paused dramatically.
When she didn't continue, Heth rolled his eyes and prompted her. "Yes?"
"But this is a human magickal artifact," she finished. "The paranormal principles are the same, mind you, but the apes do things… differently. Things get lost in translation, and in this case there's absolutely no margin for error."
This, Heth could understand. "Like trying to calculate the long-term return on a foreign investment with a fluctuating currency exchange rate?" Heth asked. "Get one decimal point wrong, and you lose thousands of credits?"
"Exactly!" Kirrp nodded in approval—and, against his will, Heth felt rather proud of himself.
"Alright, then…" Heth scowled and scratched behind his ear as he attempted to summarize what he's learned. "The ring's as dangerous as it is powerful, can only be used by a mage, and only safely used by a human mage."
"Yes," Kirrp agreed, adjusting her ridiculous hat. "Simplistic, but accurate."
Heth sighed and frowned. "Unfortunately, that rather limits its usefulness to me…" Then again, he thought, the Cialt Abbey is full of human mages. Perhaps one of them could make use of it? I'd better bring it with me, just in case… He looked up at Kirrp. "Well, thank you for your help and expertise, Durrmach K'Hhak Na'Kirrp. I won't take up any more of your time." He held his paw out to her, palm up. When she didn't move, he clarified. "Uh… the ring, please?"
"Umm… don't you think it should stay with me?" Kirrp closed her claws around the priceless artifact and pulled her paw in close to her chest. "One should leave magick in the paws of professionals, after all."
"Of course!" Heth replied, the sarcasm returning. "Otherwise the Paranormal Practitioners' Guild won't get it's cut, right?"
"Special work requires special consideration," Kirrp sniffed. "It's best to leave magick to those who know what they're doing. The Guild controls its own for a reason. Sky Father alone knows what an average stockbroker would do with an artifact like this!"
Heth sniffed the air, suspicious. "Wait—didn't you just say you were the only one on board who could make it explode?"
"Er… well, yes, but—"
"Then the safest place for it is as far away from you as possible." Heth narrowed his eyes, rapidly extending and retracting the claws of his outstretched paw in an impatient gesture. "Now, if you please?"
Slowly, reluctantly, Kirrp handed over the ring. It seemed to require a conscious effort.
