Jasper presses on, swooping into the docking bay and looking at the three women who knew him when his face was still wholly unblemished.
"You're late," Maria snaps at him.
"You're sudden," he replies, and clicks his heels together, letting his boot's magnets engage and slam him standing to the floor. He looks at where Emmett floated, trussed up like a calf. Ms Platt had only bound his hands behind his back.
Nettie had obviously re-tied him for her own amusement, floating cross-legged next to him. Short and stocky; she grins, her perfect silver teeth flashing against her dark skin. Got all her original ones knocked out before Jasper had met her. She wore the salvageable teeth around her neck like dog tags.
"Howzit, Walker?" she asks him. Jasper almost laughs at the nickname. The Weary Walker — eighteen-year-old asshole he had been. He could be Whitlock now in some of the shittier parts of the galaxy that had thought Walker was his real last name.
"Annie Oakley," he greets her with a tilt of his cin. She's the big black butch that taught him everything he knew about a weapon, about how to use his fists, about how to fight — and win. He nods to Emmett's bound body. "He's not much of a fighter."
Nettie only shakes her head, disgust evident on her face. "I can tell — lookit them soft hands!" she crows, chomping her teeth with a metallic scraping sound. She'd chosen a full-canine jaw: all fangs, with her eye-teeth significantly longer than the rest.
"She's pretty." Lucy's dreamy, airy tone wafted through the air. Rosalie's held by her hair in one of Lucy's hands. She's awake and glaring, gagged, with her wrists and ankles tied. Jasper looks away when he feels her eyes on him, but in the unsteadiness of Lucy's grip she's helplessly inclined to twist this way and that in mid-air.
Having grown up in a station with fluctuating, artificial gravity, Lucy's rake-thin, with incredibly long hands and had lost her eyes as a child. She had made herself new ones; sparkling red little machines that whirred around in her sockets.
Rosalie kept her blonde hair in a variety of practical braids and ponytails. In contrast; Lucy's white hair wafted about her toes like a separate entity entirely. In artificial gravity, she reminded Jasper of some sort of demented mermaid, put under the stress of One-G, she became a fish out of water, gasping and withering, barely able to stand the strain.
"This is pretty too," Lucy adds, hovering over the AI controls.
Jasper inclines his head — he remembered Lucy's little zoo of broken bots and corrupted programming. She hoarded tech, repurposed it, and usually poisoned it.
"Her name's Bella," he explains shortly, "she's loyal to them."
Maria sneers as she eyes the opposite wall from the door, magnetized to the floor and standing ram-rod straight. On the wall she glared at were a line of handprints, the first thing one would see when they boarded the ship — all of the crew with a stamp for Bella. Jasper felt a flicker of deep embarrassment, with his blue palm a mark of his weakness. It exposed him in a way that he once took great pains to hide.
"This ship … not exactly honing your skill set, are you?" Maria asks him archly.
The disgraced Martian commander turned brutal buccaneer. A lifetime ago, Maria had caught him hiding in her cargo bay, among stolen merchandise worth a lot more than some Earth urchin, and given him a job. More than a job, she gave him everything — food, shelter, a purpose. For most of his shitty, teenage years, Maria had been the only stability that Jasper had. And now that he had the Midas — she was the least stable person he knew.
Jasper shrugs. "I'm in semi-retirement," he informs her. Nettie snorts once, shaking her head lightly. Lucy blinks, looking flabbergasted for just a moment, before her interest fades and glowing eyes drop back to the controls.
Jasper watches Lucy take out the little hand-sized screen she almost used as her actual right-hand. He watches her draw out a black cable and plug it in. He studiously avoids Maria's expectant, waiting gaze.
"Research group," he finally says, "Playin' with mould, for the most part. Why are you here?"
"We missed you," Maria coos, and all three women laugh at the obvious lie, short and sharp and almost synchronised. Jasper manages a small smirk — at least for the memories of that same three-way humoured bark crackling through his ear piece for the majority of his late adolescence.
"Where are the others?" Nettie asks him, having grabbed both subdued crewmen in each hand.
Rosalie tries to speak then, she wiggles and moans.
Lazily, watching Lucy as she works, Maria uncrosses her arms, and shakes her left elbow slightly. The thin, flexible blade she favoured shoots into her hand from up her sleeve. All within a second, all without looking, Maria flicks it over the engineer's face. Rosalie gives a muffled scream as a four-inch slice opens up under her eye, and Jasper watches the blood ooze, rather than gush. A very, very, swallow cut.
He doesn't show any relief, not with Maria glancing up from Lucy to train her sharp gaze on Jasper's face. Jasper jerks his head behind him. "Three, in the observation deck," he explains, and raises a hand towards Emmett. "I'll toss these two in their quarters on the way."
Maria irritatably swipes at his hand with the blade as he drops it back to his side. "Let Nettie get the lay of the land." Jasper nods, and watches the stocky woman float two of his closest friends down the corridor, her boots making the 'thuck, thuck, thuck' of the magnetic sole fighting release from the floor..
Lucy gives a wordless squeal as several beeps sound from the console. "Hello, sweetheart!" she calls cheerfully.
Bella's first two words are harried panic. |HOSTILE CODE! I — WHAT HAPPENED WHO ARE YOU?|
Jasper watched Maria cross her arms and tilt her chin up. "I'm your new captain."
|YES … SIR| Bella's voice radiates angry reluctance.
Maria rolls her shoulders, and Jasper mimics her, feeling a tight pull of guilt at his shoulder blades. "Ma'am will do, I'm still a lady," she informs the computer, then locks eyes with Jasper. "Let's go introduce ourselves."
When the doors to the observation deck opened next, Electrical Engineer Masen is prepared to die trying to kick their traitorous Bosun in the nads.
Emmett's limp body hurtling into him sideways as soon as he took his first charging leap is a huge wrinkle in his plan. Edward makes an undignified, panicked yelp as he tries to balance the significantly heavier man and yank him back upright.
"One more," a gravelly drawl says, and Edward gasps as Rosalie comes spinning at him like a top, her big thick boots clipping him right on the face because he hadn't had time to prepare for her and pass Emmett off onto Esme. Her gagged shriek at least told them she's awake.
Edward grabs his stinging face and groans in pain. He feels Carlisle's reassuring hands on his shoulders, and looks at the doctor holding his jacket to his own forehead to stop his bleeding head wound.
Esme immediately yanks out Rosalie's gag and works on untying her wrists.
"You're hurt!" Carlisle exclaims, looking at the bright red cut on Rosalie's cheek.
"So are you," Rosalie rasps, groaning as she can finally move her arms and begin to stretch out her limbs. Edward crouches over Emmett, glad that his eyes are slowly blinking, and tries to understand the intricate knot that keeps all his limbs locked.
A short black woman with wide shoulders and huge rippling anacondas for arms grins at them with silver teeth.
"Good lord," Carlisle mutters at the entirely fanged mouth, but the woman seems even more amused to have caught them so off guard.
"How do you undo this!" Edward snaps, his fierceness underbelied as he had yanks futility at Emmett's bindings. "And who are you!"
"You first."
"Captain Esme Platt of the USS Midas," Esme answers immediately, throwing aside the cable that had bound Rosalie's ankles. "This is First Mate Carlisle Cullen," she gestures to the man, "Electrical Engineer Edward Masen, Head Engineer Rosalie Hale and Second Engineer Emmett McCarty," Esme says, and lays a hand on the tightly bound man. Not one of her crew reacts to the immediate promotion she's just given Emmett. "Who I am hoping you'll be untying soon."
The woman shrugs and lifts one heavy familiar-looking boot, fingers digging into the ankle and flicking out a wicked-looking hunting knife. "Kick 'im over here,'' she agrees easily.
Esme uses the half-G and a lot of her own strength to lift Emmett and bring him gently over to the woman, who slices through the ropes easily. An honest waste of a rare commodity.
Esme passes the still-limp man off to her first mate, and stands looking at the intruder.
"What do you want with us?" the Captain asks, pulling her shoulders back and tilting her chin up.
The woman makes an exaggerated hum of thought, before she begins to smirk. "With you? Nothing seems to come to mind. With your ship? Well, that's another story."
Emmett begins to properly stir, reaching up to feel the large lump on his face. "The Bosun …" he murmurs weakly.
"He's right here, honey." Another female voice cut through the air, and through the open door swoops in three more people.
Jasper, his face hard and emotionless, a woman shorter than the one with shark teeth, and an incredibly long blonde woman with the pulled limbs of a body born and raised in the low-gravity of space.
The gun that had earlier been given to Emmett was now held by the squat brunette who had spoken.
The tall blonde makes a gugle of complaint as her head is forced upwards at half-G, and gropes for the wall. For those raised in low gravity environments, without the appropriate amount of calcium intake and physical training — the higher the gravity-force, the more pain they endured from the foreign pressure.
"Just five, huh?" she asks, glancing at Jasper who inclines his head. "Well, alright. Name's Maria, thanks for the ship."
Bella's voice is snarky. |I DON'T THINK SO! … /MA'AM/| The last word drips with fury.
Maria smiles, though it didn't reach her eyes. "Lucy, she's a bit of a mouth. And get yourself off the wall."
Lucy nods, twisting in the teetering fashion of one who could barely stand touching the floor. She goes to the AI access board and begins to fiddle.
"Our ship?" Esme asks, "Why would you want it?"
Then, there's an audible sigh of relief from Lucy, as the Midas crew float up in the now modified zero-G of the room. As soon as Lucy had sighed, Maria, Jasper and Nettie click their heels in almost unison, and with a procession of metallic 'thumps', they slam to standing on the floor.
Maria waves a hand flippantly. "Never you mind that. Why don't we move onto the bridge?" A very cold smile spreads over her face. "My girls will be happy to keep an eye on your crew."
|ARRRRGGGGHHHH!| Bella's scream of pain makes the Midas crew jolt, while Maria only beckons Esme with a crooked finger.
"Don't hurt her!" Edward cries out.
Lucy twists her neck so extremely she could have been an owl, and grins with yellow teeth. "I shall! I shall!" she declares, her grin growing.
Bella screams again, and the crew gape at the unbridled cruelty.
Jasper stares at Edward until the man looks at him, as though to beseech some sense from him. But Jasper only minutely shakes his head, once.
Maria snaps her fingers, her expression annoyed. "I haven't got all day," she says, and Esme, looking much paler than before, follows quickly. "Lucy, shut that shit up!"
With a long happy gurgle, Lucy floats up with a light kick and spins, her limp-noodle body swimming through the air is the last thing the party sees when the Observation deck doors slide closed.
Jasper, Maria and Esme head to the command centre. Esme floats along, pushing off awkwardly from the walls as Maria and Jasper walk in front and behind her on two feet.
The command centre smelt vaguely of the vanilla air freshener Esme's partial to, and Maria glances around the small space and scowls. "Nothing inbuilt?" she says, looking over the array.
"One lazer to reel in samples, one blaster for asteroids," Jasper lists off dispassionately.
"Jesus shit, Walker," Maria mutters, walking over to the comms controls and eyeing the printed 'EMMETT DO NOT TOUCH' labels on several buttons with immediate fury. "I thought at the very goddamn least you'd have a unit!"
"If I had, you'd have still done a hostile board?" Jasper prompts, crossing his arms.
Maria rolls her eyes, but doesn't bother to lie to him. "Armoury?"
"Seven."
"Seven cases, then …."
"Seven guns."
"What!?"
Maria's nose wrinkles, as though she smells something terrible. Disgust evident as she says, "... This has been a little vacation for you, hasn't it?"
"Seems so."
Esme stands nearer him, trying hard not to fret too obviously. She reflexively straightens up as Maria turns to her.
"Your command codes, if you please," the woman drawls. Military captains were expected to memorise codes and more commercial ship captains still kept them secure and private.
So Maria doesn't hide her shock when Esme points out the captain chair, made cozy with a little crochet throw. "The purple journal, on the left."
Maria eyes the throw as she nears it, before perching on the seat as if it were a public latrine. She reaches into the left side pocket, and pulls out a bedazzled scrapbook.
Maria stares at 'THE CODES' written in glitter glue on the cover. "... You're shitting me," she murmurs in wonder.
At the obvious slight against her handiwork, Esme clenches her fists and shouts; "We are a research vessel! We take samples and we monitor microbe activity!" she declares furiously, "We don't have anything you-"
Maria had flipped open the book during Esme's tirade, and flicks her hand in a shooing motion at the woman, obviously bored with her. "Thank you, you can go."
Jasper ushers Esme back towards the observation deck. Esme waits until they float some distance away from the bridge. "Who is she?" The question is soft, tentative. As though she's almost resigned to the silence and was only speaking to herself.
"... When smuggling contraband in deep space, you need a secure area to warp to, or jump from," Jasper murmurs. Esme feels acute relief at the answer — that he was willing to answer. "Maria has a constellation — the cancer star sign. She scrambles pirate transmissions — for the pirates — she provides security, hell," Jasper scoffs, "she'd still be the madame of a brothel if the overhead hadn't been such a nightmare. She's good but she keeps a tight inner crew and rotates the rest. Means she sees the biggest paychecks, but her hold can be shaky. Might've been shook."
Esme digests the information, but the observation deck is coming up and they don't have much time. "... So she needs to regain her constellation?" she guesses.
"Doubt she's completely lost it," Jasper grunts, "but for a big enough rumour she'll seek out some options."
There were two sharp knocks on Esme's door. "Captain — this is J. R. Whitlock."
The door was open and Esme could see him clearly. She was a little surprised at the formality, but waved him in, "Feel free,"
"I would like to apologise for my earlier slip-up, ma'am," he sounded nervous, holding his mouth in a worried little frown, "I meant nothing by my assumption of you being the Steward."
"Well — you meant to think of me as the Steward, that's something," Esme answered with a nod, glancing down at the paperwork she had a feeling she would be putting aside. Whitlock looked down at his feet, the little furrow in between his eyebrows deepening. "I don't plan on throwing you and your partner off this ship over a mistake, Whitlock." Her voice was gentle and a little amused and she was glad and amused further by the way his shoulders visibly relaxed.
"Thank you, ma'am," he shifted slightly, nodding his head back outside, "she really wanted to find you all, you see — we've come a long way."
"Why?" Esme asked him the million dollar question for their mysterious appearance. "Why did you come all this way with her?"
A startled look flashes across his face and Esme was half-expecting to get 'I don't know' in response. But he answered with a softer tone of voice than before; "… She said the universe was not one huge conflict and she could prove it."1
That made her smile, because she had never considered such serious praise. "Are we proof of peacetimes, Whitlock?"
At that, there's something amused in the way he gestured to her and a smile grew in the corner of his mouth. "Ma'am — you let two strangers onto your ship and you were knitting in the Captain's chair."
"Is that why you thought I was the Steward?" Esme asked him and Whitlock nodded mineutly, looking slightly uncomfortable in the face of her good-humour. She glanced over to her unfinished knitting project, and the young man standing ram-rod straight at the door. "Did you want to learn?" she offered, and she smiled as Whitlock scowled in confusion.
He stared at her for a moment, as though to evaluate her sincerity. But Esme never joked about her crafts, and she waited until Whitlock gave an uncertain nod.
She patted the bed next to her, and spent the next few hours instructing him on the difference between knit and pearl.
"Why does she call you Walker?" Esme asks, glad that the man slows his momentum to match hers so they can linger in the corridor.
"Because I've done things no man would want to put his name to."
Jasper punches the door lock and Esme floats back through.
Emmett's stomach hurts, his head hurts, he feels weak in his limbs and he's really thirsty.
"Didn't piss myself though," he murmurs with some satisfaction, to what he believes is himself until Edward glances back at him in confusion.
"How did she manage to hurt Bella?" Edward whispers to them, glancing at Rosalie, who shrugs once in barely contained fury.
Lucy turns, her bright red eye on their huddled group. "It's all ones and zeros, Earth-boy," she replies.
Realising her hearing is better than he thought, Edward shuts up.
"We feel a little left out when you bunch up like that." Nettie says mockingly, making a shooing motion with her hand.
They shuffle apart reluctantly.
"How do you suppose you'll get past V Industries?" Carlisle asks them loudly.
Nettie twitches, but her silver smile returns. "Oh, not some rinky-dink indie business, huh?" she asks back mockingly, "Coulda fooled me."
Then the door opens, and Esme returns alone. She glances at Emmett, her eyebrows raised, silently asking if he was alright.
Emmett nods back in the affirmative, and they remain in tense silence.
When Jasper returns, Maria is attempting to flick the glitter from her fingertips.
"What kind of shit is this?" she demands in a hiss, and Jasper knows she isn't talking about the glitter. "This mom-and-pop shit, this dusty gun case, this weak shit?" Maria wrenches herself from the seat and grabs the throw. She flings it to the other side of the room, where it coils in the air like a snake.
She grunts in anger at the foiled throw. "All but the observation deck at one-G!" Maria barks as she clicks her heels to release the magnetic pull and Jasper's knees dip slightly as more than his shoes keep him on the floor.
Jasper grunts in vague annoyance as he clicks his heels together, and grunts again when he hears the familiar feminine yelp just outside.
Maria has her knife out and it's a testament to how well she still knows Jasper that she ducks under him with the same ease as if he were a low hanging sign as he tries to block her.
"No!" he shouts, but in the next second, Maria has a body littler than hers pinned with a forearm to the neck.
"Ow," Alice mutters.