Taliesin Chapter 1

Chapter 1

‘Wake up Mikael,’ said that oh so familiar voice in his head,

         ‘I don’t want to, I’m too tried.’ He thought, but it was useless, once he was awake there was no point even trying to get back to sleep. Mischa would make sure of that.

         ‘Your terminals bleeping, I can hear it.’ She said in her high pitched, slumber shredding tones. ‘You know what that means.’

         ‘Well why can’t I hear…’ but then, of course, he could. A steady repetitive doo, doo, doo. It wasn’t very loud, just enough volume so that it would be noticeable, but each little doo might as well have been a detonating bomb for the disturbance it was causing his tried, hangover ridden head. ‘Fine I’ll go answer it.’

         ‘Good, however, I suggest putting on your dressing gown first. I doubt Sutherland’s in the mood to talk to your boy-parts.’ She said, giggling at the end.

         ‘I was going to, at least let me get my eyes open before you start ordering me around.’ Sitting up in bed, he opened his eyes. He should have seen darkness but his eyes had automatically shifted to night vision, making everything turn various shades of green with white spots indicating small sources of illumination, like the blinking light on his private comm. terminal. In front of all the green was a heads-up display, blue numbers and symbols in the four corners of his vision telling him the time, 04:17:26, temperature, 18°C, oxygen concentration, 21.5%, and a bar indicating the current zoom distance. But none of that was relevant to him right now, except the time of course, what was so urgent that it had Sutherland contacting him at quarter past four in the morning. Damn, that meant it was important wasn’t it, he’d better stop dawdling.

         ‘Lights,’ he said and the room brightened, momentary white blindness in the instant before night vision deactivated followed by a flood of colour, albeit mostly the shiny metallic grey kind. Mikael swung his legs out over the side of the bed and got up onto his feet, a little shaky, probably still drunk after barely three hours sleep. He grabbed his robe from where it hung on the wall and struggled into it as he walked across the cold metallic floor, feet hating every second of it. Where were his slippers? Mischa told him where he’d left them but he was already across, no point getting them now.

         He tapped the flashing ACCEPT on the blue holographic screen and was immediately confronted with the face of Lord Maxwell Sutherland, Utopian Ambassador to the Neutral Zone, decorated war hero, Horizon Magazine’s Handsomest Man in the Galaxy five years running and all round smug git, but the worst thing about old Max was that Mikael had to be nice to him.

         ‘Good morning Lord Sutherland.’ He said with a slur to the avatar of arrogance.

         ‘And the same to you Captain Taliesin, nice to see you looking fresh faced as always.’ Really? Sarcasm at this hour? What kind of fuel was his engine running on? Just looking at him made Mikael feel sick, black hair perfectly styled, clean shaven and dressed in full military finery. Did he just wake up like that?

         ‘Sorry Lord Sutherland, we grabbed a big haul yesterday and spent the night celebrating,’ Why did that freighter have so many crates of Vicolian ale on board and why did his crew think it was a good idea blitz through one of them last night.

         ‘It was your idea as I recall,’ said Mischa, smugly.

          ‘Not now.’

         ‘And tell Max I said hi, I sometimes think he forgets about me.’

         ‘I wish I could forget about you.’

         ‘As if I’d let you.’

         ‘and Mischa says good morning too.’

         ‘Ah yes, your artificial intelligence. Forgive me, but I’m not sure how to properly address a piece of sentient technology, especially when I must converse with them indirectly.’

         ‘I hate it when people call me “technology”, it’s like I’m a thing to them,’

         ‘She hears everything I hear so, you can just say whatever it is at me and she’ll get the message Lord Sutherland.’

         ‘Yes well, on with business I think,’ his tone becoming more authoritative, ‘I trust you are aware of the recent incident on Pragio III.’

         ‘Pragio III?’

         ‘Palladium mining colony,’ Mischa informed him, ‘second largest in the Neutral Zone. Utopia and the Republic each receive 42% of exports with the remaining 16% going to various refineries within the Neutral Zone. However the colony was recently hit by a seismic event which has been classified as intensity X. There were many casualties and the vast majority of the colony’s structures were destroyed leaving the survivors in a pretty desperate situation.’

         ‘The mining colony that got totalled by an earthquake, what about it?’

         ‘Good to see you’re up to speed on recent events Taliesin; I like that in my privateers,’

         ‘You get the credit for my hard work, as per usual.’ Mischa said, but he knew she was only joking, they were a team, she was the brains and he was the muscle. They needed to work together if they ever wanted to accomplish anything.

         ‘But let’s get on with this.’ Sutherland continued, ‘Due to the devastation and the plight of the colonists, the overseeing races have granted both the Utopian Empire and the Republic of Humanity permission to send aid vessels. Now, as I’m sure you’re aware, Utopia is very interested in obtaining an exclusive trade agreement with Pragio III and as such I want the Talon and her crew to attack the Republican aid ship thus ensuring that our relief arrives first and that we gain the upmost gratitude from the colonists.’

         ‘He wants us to attack a ship that’s on a humanitarian mission, ooh that makes me feel dirty and I don’t even have sensations.’ Mikael agreed with the disapproving, disembodied voice in his head. He and his crew had always had standards when it came to their piracy and they never attacked ships carrying medical supplies.

         ‘We’ll carry out the mission Lord Sutherland, however, I’d like it noted that I disapprove of your decision.’

         ‘I thought you might, you’re a predictable man Taliesin. It makes you reliable, though also a liability at times.  Would it ease your conscious if I were to inform you that amongst the ship’s cargo was a significant amount of weaponry and ammunition.’

         ‘Why’s an aid ship carrying guns?’ But the answer was obvious to both Mikael and Mischa immediately. The Republic was using this humanitarian operation as a front to smuggle weapons to the colony, an offence that broke several agreements made in the Neutral Zone treaty, which would allow them to secure the same exclusive trade agreement that Sutherland was after.

         ‘Well that certainly paints things in a new light; leave it to us Lord Sutherland.’

         ‘Very good, but one last thing Taliesin, there’s a VIP onboard the target ship.’

         ‘Do you want them killed or captured?’ he said expectantly,

         ‘Neither, they’re of no importance to me but I’m sure you’ll think of something to do with them, think of it as a bonus for your loyalty. Their identity and all the other relevant information is in the dossier I’m sending you.’ The terminal bleeped, indicated that the dossier had arrived. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me Taliesin, this exchange as gone on for almost five minutes and I have a very busy schedule to keep.’

         ‘Good day Lord Sutherland.’ With that the connection was cut and the winner of Mikael Taliesin’s Face I Most Want to Punch five years running, was gone. Mikael transferred the mission dossier to a datapad and then began to quickly flick through almost a dozen pages of information, just briefly glancing at each page with his synthetic eyes without actually reading any of the words or looking at any of the pictures, tossing the datapad down on his desk when he was done. He placed a finger on a small wall-mounted, holographic display and in so doing opened a ship wide comm. channel.

         ‘Captain to the crew, I want everyone in the mess hall in fifteen minutes and yes that includes you lovebirds too.’ He closed the channel then walked over to his cabin’s ensuite, feet hating every second of it. He took a leak and while he freshened up with a quick shower Mischa filled him in on the dossier info.

         ‘The aid ship is called the Cornucopia; it’s a delta class freighter with no armaments and limited shielding, it shouldn’t be a problem, however, it’s got two escort ships from the Platinum Shield.’

         ‘Damn mercenaries, always getting in the – ah soap in my eyes!’

         ‘They’re both frigates, a mk. V and a mk. VII,’

         ‘We haven’t taken on a mk. VII before, should be interesting,’

         ‘The VIP is one Katherine Anderson, daughter of Republic Senator Donald Anderson, quite pretty don’t you think.’ Mischa recalled the picture of her from the dossier into Mikael’s head. She was pretty; long, wavy brunette hair, eyes hidden behind sunglasses but you could tell she was good looking. Her body didn’t let her down either, long legs and the angle showed off awesome curves held firmly by tight clothing. Did she wear stuff like that all the time and were those D cups or DD cups? ‘Someone’s thinking filthy thoughts,’ she said with a giggle,

         ‘Perfectly natural mindset for a heterosexual male,’

         ‘And here I thought you were spoken for,’

         ‘Doesn’t mean I can’t window shop. What’s a girl like her doing on that ship?’

         ‘Sutherland thinks it’s a publicity stunt. She was a politics major and recently graduated with honours from Prima Vista University. No doubt trying to follow in her father’s footsteps, with this little excursion serving as a means of gaining the public’s attention.’

         ‘Republic democracy really is nothing more than a glorified popularity contest isn’t it?’

         ‘So it would seem.’

         ‘Do I need to shave?’

         ‘Yes, you always need to shave, beards are icky.’

         ‘Oh come on you could barely call this stubble.’ He rubbed his hand across his wet jaw.

         ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it. You know I hate that feeling. Icky facial hair is icky, shave it off now.’

         ‘Fine, just shut up.’

         Quick blasts of hot air dried his body, then, over at the sink, he applied shaving gel to a dampened face and smoothly dragged a many-bladed razor, seriously there were like a dozen tightly packed strips of sharpened metal in this thing, first down then up. A clean shaven, twenty five year old face looked at him from the mirror above the sink, freshly washed white hair heavy with dampness and unnaturally amber synthetic eyes whose iris’s were devoid of the beautiful patterns found in all ordinary eyes, simply a single, unbroken, unvaried imperial topaz surrounded by vesselless sclera. Eyes that saw everything and gave rise to his nickname, ‘Hawkeyes’.

         Back in his cabin he dressed, simple clothes, black shirt, black jeans, black boots, black everything except his jacket. Dark blue leather and long, it came down past his knees, little embellishment and in no way unique, but it was special to him, “a captain’s jacket”. He opened the cabin door via its holo-interface and stepped out. He was standing on a small landing with short, steep staircases on either side of him. Laid out before him was the central hub of the Talon, the mess hall. A large table in the middle where Hawkeyes and his crew ate and held strategy meetings, on the right hand side, from his perspective, were two doors which each led to a multi-bunked cabin, to the left was the galley and a door that opened into a state of the art infirmary. Directly in front of Hawkeyes was the door that accessed the bridge and beneath him the elevator that descended to the Engine deck. The Talon was small and compact, unusual for a pirate ship, and it forced them into a rather unorthodox style of space combat but it had proved to be very successful over the last half decade. Hawkeyes wouldn’t exchange her for anything, expect a dreadnought of course, no captain would turn down the chance to command the firepower of one of those behemoths.

         ‘No one’s here yet, looks like your message fell on deaf ears.’ But then one of the cabin doors opened and two of his crew walked, or rather slumped, out of it in much the same condition as him, tired and in that in-between stage after being drunk and before the hangover hits.

         ‘And it looks like someone spoke too soon.’ The two crewmen, or rather one crewman and one crewwoman, were his pilot, Sydney Wallace, and his engineer, Penelope Gainsbrough, aka ‘the lovebirds’ and living proof that opposites attract. He was over six feet tall while she wasn’t even five.  They gave him a cursory glance before sitting down next to each other at the mess table, Penny let her head fall onto a pillow of folded arms and Syd rubbed her weary little shoulders with the hand of his muscular left arm, covering a yawn with his right.

         ‘Those two are really adorable sometimes,’ said Mischa, ‘she’s still sleepy so he’s rubbing her shoulders to make her feel all comfy, I wish I could have interactions like that, simple little physical things that make all the difference.’ She sighed in his head.

         ‘You realise the only reason she’s that tired is because they were up all night screwing each other senseless.’

         ‘You’re just a black hole for romance, although I wouldn’t mind interactions like those either.’ She giggled.

         ‘And I didn’t think you could get horny.’

         ‘I’m not horny, just curious. I’ve had to sit through you fooling around with girls for almost a decade. I’m bored of sex from your male point of view; I wanna know what it feels like for a girl. Will you get a sex change?’

         ‘How about no.’ Hawkeyes descended the staircase on his right and took his seat at the head of the empty bottle strewn table, elevator behind him cockpit door in front. Syd looked at him with exhausted bloodshot eyes, a look that said ‘Well?’ and Hawkeyes responded with the only word that was needed, ‘Sutherland.’

         ‘You’re kidding me,’ said his pilot, ‘what’s he want this time?’ Hawkeyes noticed, or rather had it pointed out to him by Mischa, that Syd’s hand had stopped rubbing Penny’s shoulders and that he was now twiddling the hair in her mousy ponytail with his forefinger. Apparently this was “cute” and that “small things like that are what separate love from infatuation,” in his opinion little things like that were sickening.

         ‘Romantic black hole,’ she repeated.

         ‘Same old spiel, go there shoot that, glory for the Utopian Empire. I’ll spill the details when Frankie and Arche get here.’

         ‘Damn that guy has bad timing; we’d only just gotten to sleep.’

         ‘See I told you.’ He said to Mischa, ‘I’ll give the brief, we’ll set course then we can all go back to sleep.’

         ‘Sounds good to me.’ Penny said lifting up her drowsy head with its piercing packed face, opening her green eyes and sitting up, Syd’s hand sliding down into the small of her back; she stretched her arms out in front of her and tilted her head back to stretch her neck. Those movements would draw your attention to several things about Penny’s body. Firstly her chest and the line of three little lumps that ran across it and poked into the fabric of her skinny white tank top, sadly it wasn’t a triplet of nipples but rather two nipple piercings that she’d given herself and the pendant of her necklace in the middle. Once you were past that you’d see that her chest was remarkably lacking in contours but she seemed happy with them, or without them, and it didn’t seem to bother Syd either.

         Then there was what you’d think were metal bangles around her upper arms, these weren’t part of some odd Zoner jewellery fashion but rather all that was visible of some fairly sophisticated cybernetic implants. Prior to joining the Talon’s crew, Penny had suffered a very serious injury, four of them in fact, which had left her completely limbless. When Hawkeyes asked Sutherland to help her, the ambassador realised that she was the perfect candidate for some prototype Utopian prosthetic technology. From those metal bangles down, her arms were synthetic prosthetics, same for her legs of course, and according to her the new appendages felt exactly the same as the ones she’d lost, and every bit as dextrous. There was bound to be some little niggle that annoyed the petit engineer but she probably didn’t want to complain about them.

         Compared to his girlfriend, Syd was fairly ordinary. Tall, good physique, short blond hair, dark blue eyes with all body parts in their correct places, made of flesh and bone, and he didn’t have constant whiny voice in his head either.

         ‘I heard that.’

         ‘Of course you did, why can’t I have just a moment of privacy?’

         ‘And you were calling me whiny. Anyway, I’m the most important woman in your life; you’re not allowed to have privacy from me, so there.’

         The door to the cockpit opened and the bulky frame of Frankie Church walked out through it. He looked tired and hung-over too, unsurprisingly. The oldest member of the crew, Frankie had been a pirate for almost three decades, serving under nearly a dozen captains on practically every type of ship, from the smallest of frigates to heavy cruisers. He was the Talon’s voice of experience, the crux of their battle strategies and a damn good cook.

         ‘What took you so long?’ Hawkeyes asked him, he’d expected Frankie to be out here first what with him being on nightshift and as such the only other person actually awake when he sent out the message.

         ‘I was finishing up some calibrations on the targeting matrix.’ He said in his deep gruff voice, taking the seat opposite Syd. Frankie was a tough looking guy, thirty years of scrapes with mercenaries and other pirates, as well as a brief stint as the Horizon Deathzone Champion, had left scar tissue mementos engraved all over his black skin. Arms, chest, face, legs, back, scalp and yes even down below, not a single patch of his muscular ebony flesh was scratch free. ‘Shots were drifting yesterday and I thought there’d be no need to rush with those two needing to peel themselves off each other.’

         ‘Oh Frankie, when you say it like that it makes it sound really filthy,’ said Penny, ‘I like that.’

         ‘You can have it as filthy as you like Pencake,’ Syd chuckled, ‘hey how about next time I…’ he lent in close to her and started to whisper into her ear, followed by juvenile giggling from tiny tech girl.

         ‘Maybe on your birthday if you’ve been a very good boy.’ She said with a quick shrug of her right shoulder to shoo him off.

         ‘Ugh, you two are disgusting,’ said Frankie, ‘heterosexual intercourse is, and always will be, a crime against nature.’

         ‘Oh shut up you big homo.’ Penny said, playfully.

         ‘All I’m gonna say is, wait until you tasted all the fruit in the garden before you choose the one you like best.’ Frankie said with a chuckle.

         ‘Why do your metaphors always involve food?’ Hawkeyes said, reiterating a question from Mischa, who apparently couldn’t find a single example of non-foodstuff based imagery from Frankie in seven years worth of memories.

         ‘Cus food is the other thing you take into your body to provide you with pleasure and that gives it a certain power.’

         ‘Why don’t you use the ‘other’ other thing?’ Penny asked.

         ‘Cus my momma didn’t raise no potty-mouth.’

         The other cabin door opened and the last member of Hawkeyes’ crew strolled out. His name was Arche. None of them knew whether it was his first or second name, and that included Arche himself and what a sight he was. Bright blond hair, thick and wild, his clothing was a hodgepodge of randomly assimilated garments; today for instance he was wearing blue knee breeches held up by red braces, black flip-flops on his otherwise bare feet, a randomly buttoned, half tucked in white shirt with an untied, green bowtie draped unevenly around the collar and a black bowler hat worn at an awkward angle on his untamed hair.

         ‘Good morning my darlings,’ he said with his daft grin, ‘are we all feeling well, I know I’m in tiptop shape.’

         ‘No Arche,’ Hawkeyes said, ‘we’re all tired and hung-over and we’d all like you to shut up and sit down so that we can get on with this.’ The stupid thing was that Arche had drunk more alcohol than any of them last night. While the four of them worked through a twenty four bottle crate of eleven per cent beer, he’d stuck to his usual tipple of fifty per cent plus spirits and yet here he was, hangover free as if it’d been limeade in those absinthe bottles. Hawkeyes and the others had a theory about this. His brain was so screwed up that no booze could make it any worse, Arche was unwasteable, it was nearly a superpower and it had won them quite a few bar bets, handy in the early days when credits were tight.

         ‘Very well Mikael darling, sitting down now.’ He pulled back the chair next to Frankie and sat down, ‘One thing though, Gregory and I were having a little chat as I was getting dressed and we both realised that neither of us knew where we keep all the money we make from our jolly rogering. We know it’s in a bank account somewhere but we’ve no idea how to access it.’

         ‘Arche we’ve been through this before. Only I have access to the crew's account,’ Hawkeyes lied, ‘that’s the way it works on every pirate ship, the money is the captain’s responsibility.’

         ‘Well that’s the thing Mikael daring, you see, Gregory is adamant, and by that I don’t mean a pop star from the late twentieth century, that he saw Sydney darling accessing an account named ‘Talon’, isn’t that the account for our merry band of jolly rogers?’Arche pulled what looked like a knife, but what was actually a sharpened potato peeler, out of his pocket, then he spoke to it. ‘That is what you saw, wasn’t it Gregory?’ The fool held it up to his ear. ‘Yes he’s quite sure that’s what he saw.’ Gregory was Arche’s semi-imaginary friend; he’d had it since before Hawkeyes had met him and he was never apart from it.

         ‘Damn that Gregory, why doesn’t he mind his own business?’ said Syd,

         ‘Don’t encourage him,’ Penny muttered to her beau, ‘he’s bad enough without you acknowledging that damn utensil too.’

         ‘Sometimes I think it’s wrong of us to not give Arche a share of the loot.’ Mischa said, ‘He earns it fair and square like everyone else.’

         ‘Yeah but none of us are gonna go and spend it all on monkey clothes without even buying a single monkey on which to put them. I’m never gonna find a buyer for all those chimpanzee tuxedos.'

         ‘I don’t know why you won’t just throw them out of an airlock.’

         ‘Because I refuse to let another credit escape into space because of that idiot.’ Luckily, Arche could easily be distracted from anything if you asked him a medical question, so Hawkeyes asked, ‘Hey Arche, what’s the difference between the ileum and the duodenum?’

         ‘Oh goody, I love that question!’ he said excitedly, ‘While there are several differences in terms of cellular structure Mikael darling, villi and micro villi in the ileum etcetera, the basic difference is that the duodenum is very much a place of digestion, where food is subjected to digestive enzymes that break the larger molecules down into smaller ones while the ileum is an abode of absorption, where those same small molecules are absorbed into the body, leaving only the indigestible matter and water for the colon to deal with.’

         ‘Thank you Arche, that was very informative.’ Hawkeyes said sarcastically, he wouldn’t have paid attention but with Mischa recording and storing everything he ever heard or saw it was difficult to zone out of tedious talk. As for how Arche knew that kind of stuff, they didn’t know, and it was as much a mystery to Arche as to any of them. What kind of idiot would think it was a good idea to teach medicine to an even bigger idiot? Regardless of how Arche had learnt all that medical information, he was very good at applying it, so while Hawkeyes couldn’t trust him to be alone in a room with a plastic spoon, there was no one he trusted more with a scalpel. So yes, Arche was the ship’s doctor, and it was one of the reasons they put up with his nonsense.

         ‘I’ll overlook the absence of the jejunum from your original question,’ said the foolish physician, grinning inanely once again, ‘you’re not a medical man and couldn’t be expected to know the complete human anatomy. Now what were we talking about? It’s completely slipped my mind, can you remember Gregory?’ he held his imaginary friend to his ear again, ‘ah well, it might come back to us in a minute.’ It never did.

         ‘Ok, Sutherland contacted me earlier and gave us a job to do,’ Hawkeyes said now that Arche had shut up, ‘here’s the brief.’ He proceeded to fill his crew in with condensed versions of the information in the dossier which Mischa displayed to him once again.

         ‘Intercepting gun runners, not a bad days work.’ said Syd, ‘Did ol’Max say whether we can keep them or not, `cause they’d be worth a cred or two on Horz.’

         ‘Well he didn’t say no,’ Hawkeyes replied,

         ‘Regardless of whatever that freighter's carrying,’ said Frankie, ‘those damn Plat ships are the main concerned, especially the mk. VII. I heard another crew talking about it last time we were on Horz; apparently the Plats call them Talon Clippers.’

         ‘I heard something about them too,’ said Penny, ‘they’re supposed to have upgraded manoeuvring thrusters as well as improved shielding and straight-line speed at the expense of armour and firepower however.’

         ‘Looks like they’re catching on to us,’ Mischa said to him,

         ‘Maybe it’s time to ask Sutherland for some upgrades,’

         ‘Perhaps, depends on how quickly we kick their asses, anything over five minutes and we’ll know we need one bad.’

         ‘Guess they finally realised that big guns don’t matter if you can’t hit your target,’ said Frankie, ‘they had to get smart sometime I suppose.’

         ‘You think it’s gonna be a problem?’ Syd asked,

         ‘No not really,’ said Hawkeyes with a smidgen of arrogance, ‘think about it. All the mk. VII’s in action are part of the defence fleet around Plat HQ in the Gormaunt system,’ according to Mischa at least, ‘that’s because those ships are brand new, they don’t want to risk them getting damaged or destroyed so they’ll only send them on missions they think are completely safe. In fact, this escort job is probably that ship's shakedown run, they know that no self-respecting pirate is gonna attack an aid ship, especially if it has two escorts. They won’t be expecting any trouble and they certainly won’t be expecting us to put that nickname to the test so soon, it’ll be like every other battle we’ve had with them: We’ll wreck their shields, punch through their armour and leave them with just enough power for an SOS. And at the end of it the Plats are gonna realise that their clippers need to be a little bit sharper.’ Both Hawkeyes and Mischa were pleased with that little speech they’d concocted. It’d sounded intelligent, experienced and confident, something a privateer captain should say to his crew during a mission briefing and the little smug smiles on their faces told them they were right. However at that moment Arche chose to open his mouth and obliterate the assured ambience.

         ‘Who’s Mark Seven and why do we want to kill him?’ the confused idiot asked,

         ‘He’s a bad man that kicks puppies.’ Penny responded with the first words that came into her head and saving them the trouble of having to explain Arche’s mistake to him. There was no point in explaining anything to him, his memory wasn’t so much a sieve as it was a hoop, and clarifying things for him over and over again had grated on his crewmates over the years to the extent that as long as he knew where to go and who to kill they didn’t care whether he remembered the unimportant stuff or not. The only reason he remembered their names was because he saw them every day, it was as if he had no long term memory which probably explained some of the catastrophically bad decisions he made as part of Hawkeyes crew; he’d simply had no idea of the consequences of his actions that would have been obvious to anyone else. An incident with the cargo bay airlock being one of the particular bad ones, needless to say, he wasn’t allowed in the cockpit or the engine room.

         ‘The fiend!’ he exclaimed, ‘Gregory and I will take great pleasure in murdering him.’

         ‘What about that republic girl we’re supposed to kidnap?’ Frankie asked, ‘What was her name? Katy Anders?’

         ‘Katherine Anderson,’ Hawkeyes confirmed, ‘and she’s an optional extra as far as Sutherland’s concerned.’

         ‘What does she look like?’ Penny asked,

         ‘This.’ Hawkeyes replied as he activated his eyes’ projection function and displayed the picture of Miss Anderson from Mischa’s memory bank onto the surface of the mess table. He was temporarily blind when he did this but it was a useful trick. Frankie, Syd and Penny took the opportunity, as always, to give their temporarily sightless captain a single fingered salute while Arche was captivated by the dust caught in the light of the projection.

         ‘Nice,’ said Syd still saluting, ‘she’s definitely gonna be worth a cred on Horz.’

         ‘Hey, quick ogling,’ Penny said, shoving an elbow into Syd’s side, ‘I’m the only one you’re allowed to ogle.’

         ‘He’s right though,’ said Frankie, ‘considering her looks and the fact that she’s a senators daughter, she’s gonna sell for a whole lot of money.’

         ‘Five million at least I reckon.’ Hawkeyes said as he returned his eyes to their normal receptor functions, the salutes dropping just before. ‘Ten if she’s a virgin.’

         ‘She’s not a virgin.’ Penny retorted,

         ‘How do you know?’ Hawkeyes asked,

         ‘Because no one gets breast implants if they intend on staying a virgin.’

         ‘Those aren’t breast implants.’

         ‘Yes they are.’

         ‘Do I detect boob envy?’ Hawkeyes asked with a smirk, Penny responded with her evil eyes,

         ‘You shouldn’t have gone there,’ said Mischa,

         ‘I’ll bet you a hundred credits that they’re the finest silicone a senator can afford.’ She said reaching her hand out toward her captain.

         ‘I’ll take that bet,’ he said shaking her hand, ‘In fact let’s ask a medical professional. What do you think Arche real or fake?’ However he hadn’t been paying attention and the only response they got was,

         ‘I want crumpets, with a glass of vodka on the side in which to dip them.’