Disclaimer: I don't own anything except Morrick and his people. In fact, I barely own anyone besides Morrick, since they're all copyrighted species. I wonder how one might apply for a job as a "writer". Meh, I'd probably end up with "waiter" instead.

---

I spun my chair around in a circle, once, twice, three times, and on the third turn, K'ata told me to stop. I would have continued spinning and ignored her, as I usually did, but something in the queasy tone of her voice made me desist. I looked over at her hunched form and decided that it was the lack of gravity. I had no problem with zero gravity, but for her, a larger creature recovering from both battle and alien salmonella, it was probably hell.

"Liera?" I asked the ship's computer.

"Yes, Junior Commander Evans?" the computer's pleasant female voice replied.

"When can we expect gravity to return?" I asked.

"Stable gravity will return when the internal gravity turbine system commences rotation."

"And when will that happen?"

"In approximately three hours and thirty-eight minutes."

"Thank you, Liera. That will be all." I looked at K'ata again and suggested, "Maybe you should just go to sickbay."

"You cannot control a ship, Morrick," she replied so softly that even my nanyte-assisted senses had trouble hearing her.

"I did well enough when you were surface-side. And when you were ill. And when you were injured and we were being chased by renegade pirates. You're bad off, K'ata. Sickbay's there for a reason, you know."

She glared at me, then nodded. "Liera, beam me to sickbay," she muttered, and that was that.

I spun around in my chair, once, twice, a third time. No one told me to stop.

---

I felt my insides settle back into their normal positions as my boots touched the deck and my backside sank into my chair. I told Liera to wake K'ata up and began preparing my apology speech. Oh, I had been in the right this time, but she was my commanding officer no matter what, and she had been through a lot more than I had in the past few days, so apologizing was really the least I could do.

She wasn't angry at me, though. She walked through the door a few minutes later with a spring in her step and a lavender glow in her eyes, waving aside my apology with a reply that her nap had done her good and that we hadn't been blown up, so I'd done a fairly good job. Relieved, I ran a scan on her and found that her wounds were nearly healed and that her virus was completely gone.

"Liera, set a course for the fleet," I said cheerfully.

"Liera, cancel that order and continue on course." K'ata looked at me and said, "We still have work to do."

"What work?" I asked incredulously. "We've already won two battles out of two, stopped a plague at great cost to you, and saved a planet full of pacifists from being enslaved. I think we deserve a break."

"We have a holiday after this. Now listen. 'Locate and capture Renox scientist and weaponry developer Kayla Micosucci and return her to her home embassy for the proffered bounty.' Kou'al's already found her, and the accounts are ready for the massive influx of credit, so all we have to do is go get her." She settled back into her chair and gave a satisfied series of clicks.

I blinked. Several times. "You," I said finally, "are an idiot."

"You aren't too bright yourself, but please, enlighten me as to why I'm an idiot." She wasn't angry, just curious. I'm lucky to have a laid back commanding officer.

"A Renox scientist. That's alright. We can deal with that. But a weaponry developer? We'll die! We'll fall into a trap before we're even in sounding range. Hell, we're probably already in a trap just for considering it."

"Done yet?" I nodded. "One, we're in sounding range already. Two, there's noting to make traps with. And three, even if there was something to make traps with, Micosucci could only watch and plot miserably, as she's badly wounded."

I thought about this for a moment. "If she's that badly wounded, mightn't she be dead?" I was considering the credit. Live bounties were usually higher than dead ones.

"Doesn't matter," K'ata said, thinking along the same lines as me. "It doesn't say live or dead on the dispatch, so we're to assume they don't care. So, are you in or what?"

I sighed. A bounty was always good padding for the old financial ego. "What's the percentage?" I asked.

She consulted her screen. "Kou'al, as our illustrious leader, gets forty, and we each get thirty. Same as always. So…?"

"Alright."

---

We each repaired to our rooms to prepare for the hunt. K'ata would probably go through some cumbersome ritual, lighting incense and calling up the gods or goddesses she associated with our task.

Me, I just wanted to change clothes. I caught sight of myself in my mirror. A stocky young man met my gaze, with space-pale skin, full, thick, bushy, dark brown hair and lively blue eyes. I was five foot eight and strong, which for a sixteen year old isn't too bad. The blue jumpsuit I wore wouldn't work for an off-world escapade, so I changed into a tougher, skintight suit and donned my armor over it.

My armor was made in an imitation of the Yautja awuasa, which consisted of a strong, computer-controlled under-mesh for keeping either warm or cool and helping conduct the invisibility-jigger, then heavily decorated plate armor, and then one's weapons, trophies, and kits. Mine had the mesh and thinner, overlapping plates controlled, like everything else, by my forearm computer. I wore weighted gauntlets, called cestuses by the Romans, and hidden in those were long, retractable blades, and at my back was the nine foot fighting spear, currently retracted to three feet and in easy reach. And, last, securely fixed to my belt until I should need it, was a high power light-matter saber.

Yes, I have a light saber. No, it isn't pink. And no, it isn't like in the movies. But it's damn cool. The "blade" is three and a half feet in length, and it's kept in control with heavy duty laser crystals. K'ata gave it to me when we went on our first mission together, and I've taken it with me every time since.

Thus prepared, I went back to the bridge and waited for K'ata. And waited. And waited. When she finally emerged, I jumped. Well, I usually always jump when she appears, since no normal person can get used to a nine foot tall Yautja female, but she usually wasn't this scary. She was wearing trophies today. (For anyone unfamiliar with the term, trophies are pieces of whatever one hunted, such as bones, teeth, claws, hides, hair, pelts, etc.) A long, spiny vertebrae was draped over her shoulder, and a collection of tiny, banana-shaped sculls was wrapped around each wrist.

"Uh, Kali, Destroyer of the Universe and Fashion as we know it? Your car is waiting." I'm very lucky that there isn't anything to throw on the bridge.

She laughed sarcastically. "Very funny. You should have your own broadcast."

"I do. But you're just…" I shook my head. "We just need to capture the poor girl, not make her laugh so hard she - " I was cut off as the computer beeped. "What the…?"

"Tend to that while I put these up," K'ata said, defeated.

"Aye, Captain." I looked at the various scans that were coming in constantly now that we were close to the planet. Nothing odd. And yet, the thing was beeping. "Liera?" I asked. I received no reply. "Liera!" I said again, loudly.

"Liera won't be here anymore," a deadly male voice replied. "And neither will you."

---

I woke, muggy-headed and stiff, in what appeared to be a hammock. My armor and weapons were gone, but at least I was dressed. I unzipped the top of my jumpsuit and shucked it off, leaving myself in a thin white t-shirt and the pants-part of the suit. I then fell gracelessly out of the hammock and onto the floor.

"Oh, very nice," that same deadly male voice said, only this time it was annoyingly chortle-filled rather than deadly. "You're the first one to do that."

"What, fall out of a hammock?" I asked, nursing my face, which is what I fell on. "I must be the first one you put in the hammock, then."

"Well, yeah, but…" the voice was now embarrassed, along with visible. A pale, slim young man with long, straight, white hair and huge dark eyes was seated on a tall stool, staring at me.

"Ugh," I said. "See, this is where you people get yourselves laughed at."

His awkward, cheery expression fell. "What do you mean?"

"You all - all of you! Every one! - use the overly dramatic, creepy voice when you abduct me, and then, what am I faced with?" I gestured at him. "A skinny little kid who's too fond of his beaming technology. Just do yourself a favor and send me back to my ship, will you?"

He smiled slowly, showing quite a lot of sharp, white teeth. "There's where you're wrong. Have you ever seen Saw II?"

"Oh," I said. "Err…" I ran to the nearest wall I could reach and began beating upon it. "K'ata!" I screamed. "K'ata, there's a psycho holding me hostage and wanting to play movie trivia with me! Help!"

"She can't hear you. She's still on your ship." The boy-thing laughed. "Now, what to do…" He looked around, thinking. He looked, and thought, and looked, and thought, and looked around some more.

"Don't tell me. You abducted me on a whim and you now have no idea what to do with me."

"Yeah. That's pretty much it." He scuffed the floor with the toe of his boot as I put my hands on my hips. "Wanna play Scrabble?"

"No. I want to go back to my ship."

He looked at me mournfully for a moment and then burst into tears.

"You have got to be kidding me," I said dubiously.

---

The long and short of it was basically that the poor guy was desperately lonely. His 'master' had gone off somewhere without a word several years ago, and he kept himself sane by abducting people from passing spaceships.

He was a brilliant scientist, though. Originally, he had been a Wraith, but his master had modified him to the point where he was 'safe' - that is, he didn't need to feed physically. And he himself had changed the rest.

Recognizing his gene-tinkering propensity as useful, I asked if he might like to accompany me back to my ship.

"Oh, no," he said dolefully. "Much as I would like that, I can't. What if my master returns?"

I smiled sadly at him. "There's a little test we can run. I'm a bounty hunter, you see. I only joined up about a year and a half ago, but I know most of the ones that have been captured over the last decade or so. What's your 'master's' name?"

He sniffled sadly. "Everin Michelov."

I blinked. Several times. "Err, you wouldn't be referring to the Amnion scientist, would you?"

"Yep. Why, did you get him?"

"No. I didn't. But my boss did. One of your guy's hands is in my guy's trophy room."

He turned green. Bright, algae-like green. It was rather funny.

"Hey, chill out, dude. The rest of him is fine, though. I think he's in some sort of whacked-up scientist prison, with the likes of Jumba Jookiba and that freaky little Asgard dude Loki. Even if he's missing a hand, at least he's got good company. So, you coming with or not?"

Needless to say, he came with. He grabbed several mass storage devices and retrieved a large bag which he chucked at me. "Your things."

"Thanks. A word of advice?"

"Hmm?" he asked.

"Don't ever touch my light saber again."

"That sounded…" He paused. "Never mind. Let's go."

---

We beamed back up to the ship and found K'ata hard at work trying to find me. She hadn't noticed our arrival, that's how hard she was working.

So, I crept up behind her and poked her side, where all females seem to be ticklish. As she leapt about a foot in the air, which is saying something with magnetic-lock boots on, I said happily, "Hi. I'm back! And I brought a friend."

I was promptly picked up by my throat and thrown across the bridge. It was remarkably similar to the good old days, when this was done to me several times a day, along with several good cuffs upside the head and a nice tumble down the stairs at the end of the day. Yes, I had a very violent childhood, even more so when K'ata came to stay with me.

Nevertheless, in my ripe old age, I've gotten used to a little more respect, or at least courtesy. So, when the little yellow birds stopped fluttering around my head, I sat up and looked at her to see if perhaps there were needles filled with some strange hallucinogen sticking out of her.

And found myself looking at not a her, but a him.

So, I did what any sensible human would have done. I screamed and fainted.

---

The young Wraith boy was shaking me. I considered breaking his wrists, but it would have been too easy, and therefore not honorable. So, I yielded and opened my eyes to glare at him and prove that yes, I was indeed alive.

"They made me do it!" was the first thing he said. Then he asked if I was alright, to which I replied that yes, I was well enough, and what the hell did he mean by his first exclamation?

"It was a trap. The guy that threw you, he's the leader. They made me do it, said that if I didn't, they'd kill me. They've got your captain, and they're returning her to the Cre'Maerean Order." He stared at me as though I was changing into a large reptile and shrank back, terrified.

"Well, that was a bad thing for you to do," I said calmly. "And unlike you, when I use the deadly voice, I actually intend to make someone die. Tell me your name," I ordered him.

"No, I can't, they told me - "

"Forget what they told you, think about what I'm telling you." I cornered him and placed my hand delicately on his shoulder, fully intending to break the bones if he resisted. "I'm willing to forgive you, but only if you cooperate."

He winced at my touch. "My name is Ammik, and I know K'ata. I've created weapons for her before."

"Yes, I remember when we were on Earth she mentioned writing to you," I mused.

"About the very 'light saber' you carry," he said. "That's why they decided to use me. I know things."

"Well, Ammik, what do you know about bounty hunting?" I asked, knowing quite well that I'd probably be keelhauled - imagine it, just try - if I didn't finish my job.

"I know that it's highly unpleasant, and that Micosucci is probably dead by now," he said, looking me straight in the eye and not blinking.

"You know things," I agreed. "But still, the bounty remains."

"Let's go get her, then. I know the planet well, and there's lots of stuff that can kill you if you don't watch for it." Ho looked away. "When are you going to ask me about the kidnappers?" he asked softly.

"Whenever you're ready to tell me things," I replied. "And whenever you're ready to tell me the truth about those things." He looked at me and looked away.

"Let's find the bounty," he said.

---

It didn't take us long to find Micosucci. A short walk and a wade through a thin stream and we had her. She was unconscious, which made our job both terribly difficult and dreadfully easy, but at least there was no chatter. A long gash in her side revealed the probable cause of her unconsciousness, i.e., blood loss, but Ammik said that it still might be remedied, and I agreed with him.

She was small and compact, in the way of her species, and she was feather light due to loss of fat, dehydration, and the little-known fact that Renox bones are hollow. (It's little-known because few people have lived to broadcast it; the Renox as a species are homicidal and reclusive, go figure.) Ammik made to take hold of her feet and carry her back to the ship, real civilized like, but I simply plucked her up from his grasp and slung her over my shoulder like a sack of scrawny potatoes.

"You'll kill her," Ammik warned me.

"Yes, but I'll still get the bounty," I retorted firmly.

"Doesn't matter," he told me. "You'll still have killed her."

"And your betrayal could very well kill K'ata, so let's not talk about it right now, shall we?" I asked testily. He turned green again but didn't reply.

We returned to the small landing craft we had used. It wasn't as efficient as beaming, but I had never liked beaming anyway. Flying the little ship was a lot like driving, and I, the sixteen year old from Earth, well, if you don't get the picture, you're dense. The computer recognized me and let us phase through the hull. Once in, I secured Micosucci into a life-pod, a tube-like miniature sickbay. Her vitals would be monitored, she would be un-dehydrated, her wound would be taken care of… Sometimes, after a long shift fleet-side, I want to tuck into one of the things myself.

Ammik was hiding something, I could tell. And the suspicious bulge in his breast pocket didn't help his case much. But still, I decided to take the high road and interrogate him stealthily.

"Hey, Ammik?" I asked, making him jump.

"Wh-what?" he managed to reply.

"Whatcha got?" I asked sweetly.

"Wh-what do you mean?" he asked, trying to play innocent.

"What did you pick up at Micosucci's site and are you carrying in your breast pocket, which I can see, clear as day, and yet I have no idea what it might be?"

"Oh," he said, dejected, "that." He brought it out. It proved to be a small, pinkish crystal. "Do you know what it is now?" he asked uncertainly.

"A small, pinkish crystal?" I asked. "Oh, but that can't be the limit of its - and your - prowess, can it?"

"This type of crystal is used in keeping massive files or documents safe, since not only is it extremely pliant, and easy to write to, but it is also incorruptible. Now, have you ever heard of mind-siphoning?"

"Nope," I said, cheerfully ignorant.

"It's basically where a person's mind is copied to some media and then erased from their body. It's usually done to the most dangerous of criminals, if you can see why." Ammik looked at me, and I saw his soul rushing up in his eyes. "Morrick, Micosucci and I were to be wed. It's all one betrayal after another. And this," he said as he held the crystal up to the light, "is my fiancée's mind, I think."

"Oh," I said. "Shit."

"Indeed." He spun back and looked at the life-pod, placed his hands on the smooth, white surface. "Morrick, I know she can be helped, but I just don't know how."

"Uh, loverboy? There's a BOUNTY on her head. You can no more save her than I can perform miraculous foot surgery!" I stepped forward. "I know, just as much as anyone else, what it's like to lose the woman you love. And I know, I know, that you'll live. You'll find another. You'll be happy. I'm not saying you have to move on now, but you need to get over it and be a functional crew member, alright?"

He continued to stand there with his hands on the pod, head bowed and shoulders slumped. I took hold of his shoulder and turned him forcibly to face me. "When your commander speaks, you, if not already at attention, will at least give him the courtesy of your notice. Is that clear?"

Given the fact that my nose was about half a centimeter from his, it was very intimidating. "Yes, Morrick," Ammik said sadly. I thunked him on the head soundly. "I mean sir," he said, finally getting the picture that I was pulling rank on him.

"Good. Now, give me the crystal," I ordered him. At this he balked, but my resolve was firmer. (And also larger. Ha, I had to add that.) "No, give me the crystal, or I'll break your hand. In fact, I may still do that, simply because of your insubordination. Give it!" I said, for the third time total.

And the little bastard refused. I couldn't believe it. He was refusing me when he owed his measly little life to me! "I can't," he whispered. "It's all I have left."

"Rule thirty-four on this the good ship Noon Star," which was a reference to the invisibility of the stars at noon (cheeky, eh?), "no melodramatic, emotional scenes." I pulled a large and imposing gun from my hip holster. "Give me that damned crystal or I will shoot you. I had been thinking of taking you on as crew, but now that your true character is revealed…" I let the words trail off. Everyone knows that a captain's crew must be obedient.

His eyes were huge. "You, you wouldn't," he said in a challenge of denial.

I fired and hit the deck by his feet. Then I returned my aim to his head. "I would," I said simply.

He had put his hands up when the gun had come out. He pursed his lips and looked at me, pleading. "Please," he said softly. "She's all I have, and I can't let you destroy her."

I fired again and hit a piece of deck closer to his booted feet, but he didn't jump. I didn't want to kill him, really. He'd be good crew, loyal, respectful, but right now he was a lot like a frisky colt. Or a depressed colt, I thought as I noted the single tear that rolled down his cheek.

Then something registered with me. "What makes you think that I would destroy the crystal?" I asked, suspicious and, truth be told, a little paranoid with all the little mini-conspiracies that had been floating around lately.

"I don't know. Didn't you say you were going to destroy it?" he asked.

"No, I didn't." I wrinkled my forehead, rather confused. "Oh, shit!" I shouted.

"Conditioning!" we said in unison.

---

The only real way to tell if one has been conditioned - which is a lot like brainwashing, except people who are brainwashed can usually figure it out alone, but conditioning is a lot sneakier - is to have one's mind scanned. And this is both uncomfortable and intimate, since the person doing the scanning is usually using a scalpnet to live all of the person being scanned's memories.

"But, which one of us is it?" Ammik asked, terribly uncertain. "I mean, I've never been, I don't think."

"That's right, you don't think. The people you think are behind this may now be at all. Memories are easy to manufacture, skew, and change."

"Oh. But how…?"

"We're going to go back to the fleet. We'll not turn Micosucci in, since I have reason to believe that her crime may have been a ruse to help with our little predicament." I searched my pockets until I found it - a small, rectangular chip on a chain. "Can you program?"

"Of course," he said.

"On a Liera system?" I asked, eyebrow cocked. Liera is… Let's just say very advanced and leave it at that.

But Ammik agreed anyway. "Alright, use this as your id for now. I'll authorize it when you get all the information on it." I gave him a look. "Well, go on," I said, slightly irate. He went.

I sighed, weary at heart. I went to my room and stripped off my armor, then shuffled off to the shower. And after that, I climbed into my bunk and slept.

---

Ammik woke me up with all of his banging about. Somehow he had gotten into my room and taken it upon himself to clean it.

"How long have I been out?" I rasped. He fetched me a glass of cold, sweet, caffeine-filled drink.

"Eleven hours, I believe. I finished programming the chip and came looking for you, and your door was open, so…" He shrugged.

"Any messages?" I asked. "Aside from the ones from telemarketers."

"No, none, not even telemarketers," he said. "That's odd. I was a hermit for seventy - err, seven years, and even I got telemarketers."

"I think they're all servants of Satan," I said brightly. "So, where's the chip?"

He pulled it from his pocket. "Here," he said. Then he searched his other pocket. From it, he drew the pink crystal. "And here, also. I'm sorry, but I don't know what came over -"

"Hush. No one knows what's happening when they're conditioned. Here, sit," I told him as I moved up into a sitting position and indicated the clear space on my bed. From one of the shelves above my headboard I found my laptop and inserted the chip.

I looked over all of Ammik's data and asked him to clarify a few details, but otherwise he'd done a good job of programming. I put in my thirty-nine digit authorization code and that was it. Ammik was now a member of the Noon Star's crew. And now that he was crew, I filled him in on our rather strange policies and procedures, which is really a list of verdicts from the various disputes Kou'al has settled.

"Wait, so if I hit anyone in an argument, they have the right to call me out on the field of honor?" he asked.

"Yeah. It's really best to avoid confrontation. So, when you're called out on the field, what do you do?"

"Shake hands with my opponent and say… Nothing?" he tried.

"Right. Now, to the companion-related regulations…" At his look of extreme distaste, I asked, "What?"

"Vow of celibacy. Don't ask," he advised me.

"Oh. Ah… Well." I had been made decidedly uncomfortable. "Okay, skip that then. So… Okay, that's pretty much it." I left my pleasant little nest of covers and found some clothes, simple off-duty style blue jeans and a long-sleeved, white, collared shirt, and white flip-flops, since I was really too tired to bother with mag-lock boots. "Can you pilot?" I asked hopefully.

"No, I can't," he said, eyes lowered. Evidently, not knowing something annoyed him greatly. Bloody scientist.

"Well, I can teach you something, then." We headed to the bridge and I showed him where the pilot would sit if we were working with a full crew instead of just me, him, and the computer. He sat.

"Now, this is going to be difficult, as a full bridge crew consists of… eight, counting the captain." I looked around. "Liera?"

"Yes, Substitute Captain Evans?" Liera's low, ladylike voice answered.

"Please provide holograms on all posts except pilot and scan."

"Yes, Substitute Captain Evans." Androgynous holograms appeared at each post.

"Now, trajectory plots a course for the ship to follow. Scan watches readings and provides traj with the information it needs to plot an obstacle-free course. Pilot's job is to follow traj's instructions. But, we don't have a traj today, which is usually the case, so, you have to learn both jobs at once."

"Lovely." He looked mildly ill.

"Hey, don't feel bad. The first time I piloted, I blew up a moon." I smiled fondly at the memory. "So," I said as I came to lean over him, "here," I pointed to a box on the screen, "is where the information that I'm sending you will appear. All you need to do is keep us from getting killed."

"So, when the ship blows up, what do you die from, shockwaves, fire, lack of air, wounds from flying metal, or radiation?"

"Um. You are of a cheery disposition and I value you. Now, don't kill us."

---

It went better than I had figured. I just had to keep telling myself this as I scuttled around on the hull with a welder, spot repairing various holes.

---

A/N: I'm a clever little bunny. Yes, Morrick is back, back for real this time, and he's grown up a lot. I hope to actually do a better job of this than I've done with the others. And in regard to Ammik, he's the Ammik first mentioned in Pizza Is, and he's not yet the Ammik from The Devine Secrets. Oh, wait, I haven't fixed that yet. Crap. And Ammik does NOT look like Silas from The DiVinci Code, which I saw last night, and it was awesome.

May 20, 2006