The Immortal Empire – Episode 6: Pirate Alley
Still sitting in the pilot's station on the bridge, Gene jolted awake after an alarm went off.
"Jim, what was that?" he gasped, almost falling from his chair. "…Jim?"
The alarm was indeed coming from Jim's station immediately forward of him, though Jim himself was absent. "Where the hell's Jim?"
"He's in his bunk, Gene, remember?" Melfina reminded him from her glass cylinder. "He said he had to do research."
The alarm tone went silent and Gene glanced to his left at Suzuka, who seemed utterly unresponsive as usual, reading some sort of novel. "Right. What was the alarm?"
"Transmission from a sub-ether beacon—we've officially departed Novokhabarovsk space."
"Then why the hell did it sound like an equipment malfunction?" Gene asked, knowing he was incorrect—there was a subtle difference between the tones' pitch and volume.
"Maybe it was to get your attention," Gilliam II chimed in.
"Gilliam, I don't want to hear it—wait, Jim said he was doing research? Research on what?"
As Melfina had said, Gene found Jim sitting in the small space of his bunk, persocom in hand and several similar ones arranged around him on the mattress. Gene wasn't even aware he owned that many of them, much less that he'd brought them along, though he conceded the sense of it: more than one had been destroyed in their adventures in past years, after all.
"What do you think I'm researching? The Ctarl-Ctarl Empire!" he snapped at him.
"That's not a bad idea idea," Gene reluctant admitted, thinking about the warning they'd gotten back on Vagrant III. "So, what'd you find out?"
"It's not that simple bro," Jim chided him. "The Ctarl-Ctarl Empire is the largest interstellar government in the known universe. People spend years getting university degrees in Ctarl-Ctarl studies all over space, trying to become specialists on them. I can't just expect to hack a few government servers and hope to get the quick notes on them! They're entire encyclopedias on the Ctarl-Ctarl!"
Gene dug around his right ear with a little finger. "Try, will you?" He looked at Jim. "Wait, hack? Hack what?"
"After we departed Vagrant III, once I had a network connection I hacked a few government information repositories I knew about, U.S.S.A., Einhorn, the usual places. Most of it wasn't even classified, just copyrighted, though I did look into some confidential info."
"Not bad," Gene noted. "At least you're comprehensive."
Jim gave a proud smirk. "Yeah, but that only solved part of the problem. There's a huge amount of literature on the Ctarl-Ctarl, and a lot of it is…well, pretty useless. The Liberty Bell University Press alone published forty-three books on Ctarl-Ctarl anatomy, but they really doesn't tell us anything we didn't know already."
"That they're meta-morphs that can turn into a vicious animal?"
"More or less. What we know about Aisha just from having lived with her is more useful. The problem is that when you go from scientific literature to political or sociological, a lot of it seems…" Jim paused.
"Seems what?"
"...erroneous. I mean, a lot of these books were blasted when they were published thirty or forty years ago as being politically motivated or otherwise biased." He extended a finger. "Some are flat-out unscientific. And the majority were published between the last two Ctarl-Ctarl Wars, so we can probably rule them out."
"Ctarl-Ctarl Wars?"
Jim put down the persocom among the others and crossed his arms. "Yeah, they were before our time more or less. Not back when they fought the Logans, more recent than that probably. Almost twenty years ago, the last Ctarl-Ctarl war saw a huge invasion across Tenpa space into the U.S.S.A., and almost reached Terra before the empires sued for peace. Before that, there were a lot of wars that were more or less confined to the demilitarized zone and those sub-ether transit routes, Smuggler's Run and Pirate Alley, you know them." Gene nodded and he continued. "In any case, the wars broke the back of the Space Forces and eventually led to them being privatized."
"I think I remember hearing about that as a kid."
"I wasn't even born yet," Jim lamented. "Since then, almost all academic research on the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire has been economic in nature which, frankly, isn't super useful given what Springfield and Kazarian described."
Gene sat down next to Jim, a genuine look of worry appearing on his face. Jim was almost a little surprised. "There's got to be something. At the risk of saying something out-of-character, I don't want to go running into the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire totally blind if I can help it. Don't forget the reason we signed up for this in the first place: to get back our money!"
"Then why'd you take this job?" Jim jeered.
"Jim…"
"Sorry, sorry, I know, not helpful." He picked up one of the persocoms, a newer one whose larger screen ran the length and width of one of the sides. "I've got two more sources I want to try before he reach the border: the first one is human-language Ctarl-Ctarl literature. Apparently the Ctarl-Ctarl publish a lot of their own literature in our language, even if they don't publish it in human space. Maybe it's for the human population living in the Empire?" he asked, rapidly tapping the screen with his thumbs, rather than the adjacent keyboard.
"'Explains how Aisha knew our language so well," Gene admitted. Aisha was fluent enough in it that Gene had to remind himself she'd never spoken to them in her native language. "But even if it's up to date, how accurate would it be? I mean, it's not like our governments don't lie. Why wouldn't theirs?"
"I've considered that. At least it'll give us some general information," he admitted, handing Gene the pocket computer, which had brought up a cached copy of a network site belonging to something called the Imperial Household Agency, presumably part of the Ctarl-Ctarl government. At least it was in a readable language, and had pictures. "The other source might be better."
"Huh, and what might that-…whoa!" Gene exclaimed, almost dropping the computer.
"What? Did you find something?"
"Who's the babe?" Gene demanded to no-one in particular, as he kept fumbling with the touch screen. Jim groaned and took it by the other side and pulled. "Easy, Jim, this might be a little too much for you…"
"Oh, give me a break, that's a network domain belonging to the Ctarl-Ctarl government, do you think they're hosting pinups for your perusal?" he asked snidely.
"Well it looks like it."
"Give me that!" Jim demanded. Instead, Gene snapped it out of his hands and held it in a manner so the teenager could clearly see the screen: on it was a smiling, kind-looking Ctarl-Ctarl woman who was Gene's age with wavy, elaborately-done rosewood hair and long bangs. She had fairer skin than Aisha, but was darker than Gene, and was substantially less muscular than either of them, wearing an extremely expensive looking outfit: some kind of formal, floor-length, off-the-shoulder evening gown, satin white with ivory trim, awkwardly interrupted by a royal sash in dark green and a few different medals, including a giant one of a sunburst with a set of red gemstones in the center arranged in some kind of coat of arms. A diamond-encrusted tiara sat over her red hair, a much more elaborate version of what Aisha had worn as part of her 'uniform'.
Her unexpected, more human than alien beauty surprised Jim momentarily, then he figured out what had gotten Gene's attention: whether by design or coincidence, the gown's bodice barely covered the woman's large bustline, to the point where he couldn't picture her wearing a bra underneath, and in the center dipped to show a scandalous amount of cleavage. She was endowed enough to put Aisha to shame, leaving the medals and sash to be awkwardly arranged on her bust above her narrow waist. Her arms were hidden in over-the-elbow gloves, and clasping her hands together in front of her seemed to inadvertently showcase her chest.
Wow. Blushing, Jim wondered if some sort of double-sided tape was involved, then shook his head several times. Gene was still staring at the image as he figured out how to use two fingers to zoom in on her chest further on the high-resolution screen when Jim smacked him. "Get a grip, perv!"
"Hey!" In his surprise, Jim snatched the computer back. "What the hell?"
"She's not some magazine bikini model for you to ogle, she's a foreign head of state! Show some class, you letch!"
"Head of state?"
Once more Jim groaned at his partner's ignorance. "She's the Ctarl-Ctarl Empress, you lecherous idiot. Her name's right there," he said, pointing. "Her Imperial Majesty, Kasara Marin Hashiyo Bakr Novo-Novo, Empress and Sovereign of all the People of the Ctarl-Ctarl, Head of State of the Empire of the Ctarl-Ctarl, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Armed Forces," he said, carefully reading each line, one by one.
Gene smirked, still staring at the prominent curves of the monarch's chest immediately below her neck. "A title as long as her breasts are big. That's royalty for you."
"It used to be longer apparently," Jim noted, before turning red again. "Bro, she's the Ctarl-Ctarl Empress! Don't you get it?"
"Get what?"
"You don't think that maybe if we go to the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, maybe you'll get in trouble for drooling over the Ctarl-Ctarl Empress? This is the same image they use for her official state portrait, it's probably everywhere. You have to imagine she has one heck of a cult of personality."
"Why is that gravure idol dressed like Audrey Hepburn?" a voice asked from behind.
Both Gene and Jim turned with a jerk almost hard enough to fall off the bunk. Suzuka was standing in the bulkhead doorway, her head lowered.
"Suzuka! Great, what are you doing here?"
"I heard you two shouting over some nonsense," she answered plainly. "Jim, didn't you say you had another source?"
Jim tapped his palm with a closed fist. "Right! Here, check this out…I found a hidden server for the Space Forces' Ninth Expeditionary Fleet Headquarters disguised as a databank for the Heifong Chamber of Commerce. 'Must not have thought anyone would ever stumble on it, since their security wasn't great—then again, it looks incomplete, so maybe they just forgot about it."
"This is your other source?"
"It probably doesn't feature as much skin, Gene," Suzuka said, raising an eyebrow as Jim checked his different persocoms.
"Here we go! Like I said, it's incomplete—not data corruption, it's literally an unfinished draft." Jim squinted at the small screen and read aloud the title. "Data file: Observations on the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire by Vice-Admiral Alan Chandrasekhar."
The terms 'Pirate Alley' and 'Smuggler's Way' referred to largely interchangeable sections of space where the shared borders of the Kei, Acid-B, and Ban Pirate Guilds met closest, outside the meaningful spheres of influence of the legitimate Terran governments. They originally referred to specific sub-ether transit routes, but as the Terran military presence on that side of the border unilaterally decline, they gradually expanded to encompass any unpoliced areas reaching up to the demilitarized zone, of which there were many. Both legal and illegal regional traffic had declined as well, thanks to shifting economics, but there was still plenty of activity on that side of the border.
A massive cruiser, comparable in size with a smaller ship of the line in the Space Forces, had matched orbits with a more-massive wreck circling an uninhabited dwarf planet. Sensors were able to penetrate its passive military shielding: a scuttled Ctarl-Ctarl pocket battleship, the HIMS Orta Korono, lost in combat with the Space Forces almost two decades earlier. The relative isolation of the dwarf planet and its dying star had kept it unmolested until now.
The investigating cruiser was in better shape, though well past its prime. Some hull paneling had been lost, replaced with hasty, economic repairs, and much of the original yellow paintjob had been worn out. For those familiar with it though, the distinct profile remained unmistakable: the Shangri-La.
"Trajectory and velocity matched Ron," a very humanlike voice announced over the bridge's speakers.
The lone occupant of the bridge, Ron MacDougall, nodded. He was already in his space suit, prepared for any outside work. Without any hired hands, this sort of thing was necessary now. "Thank you Harry. How long until the sensor scan is completed?"
"Should be three minutes."
"Good. Let me know if you can interface with the battleship's computer, though I doubt it."
"Already checked, Ron, but I'll check again for you."
Ron smiled at the familiar smirk of the late Harry MacDougall on one of the video displays in front of him, then watched the data come up on others displays. "How are we on the sensors? We don't need to expect any unwelcomed Ctarl-Ctarl patrols paying us a visit, right?"
"We're fine," the voice assured him. "The Ctarl-Ctarl Navy's smaller than it was twenty years ago. It's still the biggest military force under one uniform in the universe, but even then…huh, looks like some data's salvageable from the wreck. I'll see what I can piece together."
Ron nodded silently in agreement at the AI's argument. "Go ahead, but keep your eyes on the prize, Harry," he said, watching one of the displays be replaced with translated data from the warship.
"Her Imperial Majesty's Ship, the Orto Korono, date launched, commissioned, et cetera. Nothing worth much, though I am getting a message on loop, looks like a long range sub-ether transmission. Should I patch it through?"
There really wasn't much else to do but wait. "Go ahead, Harry."
Text popped up—originally gibberish, but a few seconds of computer processing cleaned it up.
The crew of the HIMS Orto Korono offers its sincere congratulations to His Highness Prince Anton and Her Highness Princess Mariah on the birth of their second child, the Princess Fatima, and wish both her and her elder sister Princess Kasara good health and long lives on behalf of their beloved subjects.
The text repeated over and over again, on a loop. Despite himself, Ron looked a little disappointed. Worthless. "Princesses Kasara and Fatima. I think I remember those names."
The AI took this as an inquiry. "You probably should. This message is eighteen years old, nowadays they're the Empress Kasara and Crown-Princess Fatima, the rulers of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire." Another image was brought up, this one from a few site of two women dressed in elaborate, androgynous-looking brown robes under heavy brown tunics with long sleeves and tall, mitre-styled hats. Both wore large medals around their necks and dark green scarves hanging from their shoulders. Despite their identical wardrobes the two women did not look related—the hair color and styles, complexions, even their heights and what little detail you can make out under those heavy robes looked different. The only common trait they shared were their large blue eyes and the unique tapered ears of the Ctarl-Ctarl.
Ron guessed the taller sister was the elder one, though he didn't particularly care either way. "Any word on what we came for?"
The image vanished, replaced with schematic diagrams. "I've narrowed it down to three torpedo tubes. The other five look like they must've been destroyed when the Ctarl-Ctarl abandoned their ship, the first thing they'd do is destroy the torpedo magazines."
"You think they tried to destroy those three as well...what, the explosives didn't detonate?"
"That's my theory anyway."
"So you're saying that I'm going to have to personally check the remaining intact torpedo tubes for demolition explosives and neutralize those as necessary, so we can remove this thermonuclear torpedoes for salvage per our contract?"
"Well, it wasn't supposed to be an easy job, Ron, but yes, that's what I'm saying," the voice said, almost chuckling.
Ron laughed outright. "I wouldn't expect any less. After all, we're—" he began before catching himself. "I'm Ron MacDougall, the most dangerous Outlaw alive."
"You know it, Ron."
Terms to Know:
Ctarl-Ctarl Wars – A blanket term for the century of on-and-off warfare between the Earthling Empires of humans and the unified state of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, beginning earlier in the Toward Stars Era. Though the first full-scale military conflict fought by Earthlings against another species, it was actually the last of the great wars fought by the Ctarl-Ctarl, preceded by a series of wars against the Lorgans and the Sith, two other sapient species. The last war ended with the unconditional surrender by Earthlings, or Terrans.
- Lorgans – A nonmammalian sapient species described as gastropods or slug-like. The Lorgans possessed a large empire of loosely-affiliated states prior to an invasion by the more numerous Ctarl-Ctarl, and were scattered across the galaxy in the ensuing wars. Their inhuman biology and behavior makes them difficult for any mammals to relate to in particular.
Kei Pirates – Also known as the Great Kei Pirate Guild, the largest of the four major space pirate syndicates who served as the primary political organization of human-occupied space in the early Toward Stars Era before the maturation of the major empires into modern states. The infamous 108 Stars (also known as the 108 Suns) and the Anten Seven represented the elite corp within the Kei Pirates.
- Acid B Pirates – Also sometimes called "Asteroid B" , a smaller pirate guild whose territory was squashed between the Ban and Kei Guilds, as shown in Outlaw Star supplementary materials. Notably, it accounts for much of the territory of the USSA, and shares joint "custody" of Earth (or Terra) with the Kei Pirates.
- Ban Pirates – Second only to the Kei Pirates, the Ban Pirate Guild dominated Heifong and the neighboring space.
Gravure Idol (グラドル) - A variety of pinup model typically found in magazines and video distribution, common throughout human space but particularly popular in the USSA and Tenpa Empire, involving shapely women in enticing lingerie or swimsuits, rather than actual nudity. Usually human, though many Ctarl-Ctarl émigré became famous "idols". In Outlaw Star, one of Gene's favorite pastimes is "reading" pinup magazines.
Liberty Bell – One of the earliest-settled worlds within the USSA, and its original capital. Also the name for a gang of USSA expatriates operating on Sentinel III.
Ninth Expeditionary Fleet – Originally the most powerful fleet in the Space Forces, it was completely devastated in the last war with the Ctarl-Ctarl, but did maintain much of its terrestrial infrastructure, including headquarters and naval yards, after the war.
Pocket Battleships – An older classification of warship in the Ctarl-Ctarl Navy, "pocket battleships" was the human nickname given this variety of large cruiser thanks to its battleship-class armament, including heavy energy weapons and large silos of thermonuclear torpedoes.
