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The plan had been a straightforward one.

After Namise had verified that we did in fact hand her valid codes to the Gordanians' network, she had gotten to work getting in touch with 'some people she knew'. She was a little vague on the details, but told us that within a 10 days time a ship with the specifications we were looking for would be arriving at the planet. A Citadelian courier ship, one used to transport important packages between star systems, would be docking at one of the shipyards above Karna. Namise would help smuggle us into the shipyard, and give us an opening to steal the ship, and then we'd make our escape.

That was the thought, anyway.

"Ok," I said as I sat in the pilot seat of my non-FTL spaceship, staring at the expanding, burning wreckage that was once the Gordanian shipyard. "I think I know where I went wrong."

Beside me in the copilot's seat, I could feel Kori arch an eyebrow. "And what would that be?"

"Two things." I said, raising up two fingers. "The first was assuming that the Karnans would have the sense to not plant bombs near an orbital shipyard's power generator if they were going for just a crippling strike. The second was assuming that the Gordanians' security wasn't so absolutely clown-shoes that the Karnans would actually succeed."

She hummed. "While I'd normally agree with that assessment, I think that you bear a bit more 'active' blame for this situation, beloved."

I swiveled around in my chair, giving her a look. "What do you mean?"

"You were the one who bypassed the Gordanians' firewalls and connected Wirc's local network to the global one. And informed Namise that you had done so."

I held out my hands. "We needed better information on what security was like at the shipyard, and that was the best way to get it! How was I supposed to know she'd try using the codes we gave her to get access to even more of their systems?"

"Again, I would normally agree with you… except then you got involved again once she was caught and the Gordanians began their reprisal."

"Of course I did, the whole operation would have failed if I didn't." I pointed out. "The troops were going door to door, they would have found Namise before we reached the shipyard. I had to hack the network to make sure she could get to us without being detected. It wasn't my fault that she sent someone else instead." The fact that I had used my network access to help coordinate the rest of the Karnan populous in the city to stay out of the troops' way too… Well, there was no reason not to at that point.

"And the third time?"

"...Ok, that one's on me." I admitted. When the Gordanian started getting agitated when they couldn't find their quarry, they had started turning brutal on the Karnans they had. And wired into the network as I was, I saw everything… and couldn't stand to. So, my directions towards the Karnans (and my disruption of the Gordanians communications) had turned more 'proactive'.

Needless to say, things had… spiraled out of control quickly at that point. The riots in the main city had started to escalate almost the moment we had reached the shipyard, and the Gordanians were starting to mobilize. The Karnans slaves abroad said the shipyard realized that that city below probably wouldn't survive the escalation, and so escalated first. In a rather ill advised fashion. We were just barely able to steal the first ship we came across, a simple transport vessel, before the whole station came apart.

And now, we were almost back to square one.

We didn't have long to stew in silence before a new voice spoke up. "Is… is this a bad time?"

The two of us turned to our extra passenger, who was standing in the doorway to the cockpit. Felicity was a young Karnan woman with pale white fur similar to Namise, dressed in loose fitting silks. She was, in fact, Namise's daughter. Removing her from the Chattel Index was the first thing the crime boss did, but once things had started to get out of hand, that wasn't good enough anymore. The woman had half demanded, half pleaded with us to take Felicity with us, as her daughter wouldn't be safe anywhere on the planet once the Gordanians began cracking down.

Kori gestured for her to approach. "It's fine. What do you need?"

The woman hesitated for a moment, though I could understand why she was a little wary of us. Aside from whatever her mother might have told her, the young woman had seen us take down a small squad of Gordanian soldiers in seconds on our way to steal our current ship. She knew just how dangerous we were. "You're… not really freelancers, are you? Not Karnan ones, at least."

Kori and I glanced at one another. "What makes you say that?"

"My mother didn't want me involved with the Kazgurat, but I am still familiar with the darker parts of the Clans, as well as the Clanless. Freelancers don't act the way you two do. Real freelancers are self-interested scum, but I could see that both of you actually cared about the people when the riots started. Added to the fact that my mother said you two behaved like Tale-Born Vagrants anytime you met with her…"She tilted her head to the side. "It seems to me that you're more acting a role than anything else."

Kori looked at her for a long moment before she let out a breath. "I suppose there's not much point hiding it now," she reached up and pulled off her mask, deactivating the holo-emitters around her face and revealing her Tamaranian features. "No, we're not Karnan. We hid our identities as we didn't want to stand out. We do not want the Gordanians' attention." As she spoke, I opened up my helmet to 'reveal' a Tamranian face as well. I didn't want to bother to explain my whole deal at the moment.

Felicity took this revelation in stride, nodding to herself. "I see. So, what were you doing on Karna?"

"Looking for a ship." I said. "It's a long story, but we ended up on Karna by accident, and we're trying to find our way back home. Which happens to be out of the system by quite some ways."

It was hard to tell, but Felicity's face fell just a bit. "Ah. So, I imagine that since your deal with my mother fell through, you don't intend to stay here."

"Well, no. If nothing else, your mother was quite insistent that we get you away from the planet." Given her despondent expression, it was clear that she hoped we wouldn't be following that request. After a moment I started to ask "Do you think your people will…" before I trailed off.

Felicity looked to the side and her lips pulled back, revealing her teeth. I wasn't sure what that Karnan expression meant, but she stopped a moment later with a sigh. "This is not the first time since the Gordanians took over that my people have rebelled. Those past times were smaller, but none have been particularly organized. With any luck, my mother will be able to spin the narrative that this was an unfocused lashing out due to recent events. After some… punitive measures, the world should go back to normal." She didn't sound all that sure, but the woman pushed her emotions down and looked at me resolutely. "So, what now?"

I turned back to face the ship's main console, pulling up the navigator functions. "Unless we want to just pick a port at random and try our luck, following up with Namise's contact is probably our best bet." A hologram of the Vega System appeared in front of us, and I zoomed in on a section relatively close to where we were. Just before our hasty departure, Felicity's mother had given us coordinates on where we could meet her off world contacts. She was a bit vague on the details, but she referred to them as an 'independent' organization. Before I punched in the coordinates, I looked at Kori. "Unless you know a better place."

Kori frowned in thought for several seconds. "...it has been too long. The only place I can think of that would both welcome us and keep our presence a secret would be Okaara. And even when I last visited they did not travel off world much, let alone have interstellar ships. They are a potential shelter if we need it, but they can not give us a way back to Earth." There was a pause where she looked like she wanted to say more, but didn't.

She didn't have to. I reached out and took her hand, giving it a squeeze. There was one other place in the star system which we could probably find allies. But, even assuming we could slip past whatever detection network around the planet, Tamaran would face dire consequences if she was found there.

I turned back to the console and entered the coordinates into the nav system, firing up the impulse drive as it was locked in. Hopefully, we'd have better luck where we were going.

The Vega System was weird for a solar system, and not just because it had about 2 dozen planets in it. The entire habitable zone of the solar system was a very thin nebula which held all the planets inside of it, with several pockets of thicker nebula scattered throughout. All the celestial bodies inside of X'hal's Crown (as it was called) moved in near lockstep with each other; the distances between worlds barely changed over decades. It was such that you could have a static map of the system and have it be accurate for the better part of a century.

Which is how I found myself following what amounted to a stellar treasure map for the better part of a day. The so-called Blue Nebula, which our contact was ultimately located in, was actually pretty close to Karna. But the route to get there was…well…

"14 degrees down the stellar plane at the tungsten asteroid," I muttered, going over the instructions one more time. "Hold the planet Aello at port until it disappears behind the nebula, and carry on until contacted."

Kori peered out of the window in front of us, staring into the surprisingly thick blue gas that was surrounding us. "And just what does that-" The console in front of Kori had several alerts pop up at that moment. "I'm getting energy readings dead ahead of us… seems to be a regular interval of ultraviolet radiation." she said.

"Set a scan with the following parameters at this interval." I said, and she did so. About 30 seconds later the reading in front of us stopped, and we got a message in our comm system. No words, just a new set of coordinates for a position nearby in the nebula. "How many bloody instructions are there to this?" I muttered before changing course. Luckily, we didn't have to travel too far before the thick gas in front of us opened up into a large pocket, and we found what we were looking for.

It was a flotilla of space ships, over two dozen in total. There was no standard design between them, ranging from small multi-colored skiffs that couldn't have carried more than a few people, to mid-sized saucer ships that gleamed silver, to massive rectangular slabs that just looked like a block of stone in space. They were arranged in a loose sphere around each other, with what looked like drones darting from one ship to another. I couldn't see any real organization between the ships, but it gave me the impression of a sort of stellar marketplace.

Following the coordinates, our path weaved between the vessels until we approached one of the larger ones, a smooth and narrow vessel that looked like it was made for fast movement. Handshake protocols were exchanged, and in short order we were docked and passing through the airlock. On the other side was a pair of large figures, humanoid but otherwise completely obscured by the bulky spacesuits they wore. I noted the pistols they kept at their sides, but they made no aggressive motion as we approached.

Before anyone else could speak, Felicity stepped ahead of Kori and I, posture straight and gaze resolute as she addressed them. "I am Felicity, daughter of Namise. I am here to uphold the contracts of my maternal line."

The two aliens looked at each other, seemingly in confusion. "Uh… do you know what she's talking about?" The first one asked, their muffled voice vaguely masculine.

"Not really," The second one said before addressing Felicity. "Girl, we're just the door guards. Who're ya lookn' for?"

The Karnan lost her confidence and stammered "I-I don't know. I wasn't given a name, I was just told to come here."

The pair exchanged another pair of looks. "I don't know about this, new people make me nervous." The first said.

"Yeah, but they didn't raise any flags commin' in." replied the second. "Let's take 'em to the metal head, he'll know whata do."

I wasn't sure what the alien meant by that, but regardless the pair beckoned us to follow as they led us deeper into the ship. While the corridors were a bit winding, they were also surprisingly open, and we walked past a few different aliens on the way. As varied as the ships, I didn't recognize most of them, but I saw a few Karnans among their number, and even a Tamaranian before we traveled down a grav shaft. Looked like Kori and I would have to keep our disguises up here too.

Eventually we came to an even more open room, though the space was cluttered with machines. Wires and cables snaked along the floor and walls connecting everything, creating the sort of ordered chaos that caused system admins to either say 'good enough' or have a conniption fit. The machines themselves were a wide spread of different makes and designs, clearly salvaged and repurposed for the network they were now a part of. Haphazard as it was, part of me was impressed, as it must have taken a lot of work to make a functional Beowulf cluster out of completely different pieces of hardware architecture.

In the center of the space was a ring of consoles around a flat plinth, a variety of holographic images and data streams twisting above it. I could see three figures crowded around it, though the third was crouched behind the structure, mostly out of sight. The closest to us was a woman, and what looked like a completely human woman at that, with light tan skin and dark hair in a bun. To my eyes though I could see that her heat map was much more evenly spread than a human's, and what little UV light there was in the room scattered off of skin, giving it a faint glimmer. The second woman, who noticed us as soon as we entered, was thin and reptilian, with a flat face and ridges along her head. A female Gordanian, maybe? I wasn't sure.

Either way, her slitted eyes narrowed at us as we approached. "Ah, newcomers? Some more lost souls looking for refuge? Or perhaps some spies looking to please their Citadel masters?"

The other woman spoke in a more even tone, regarding us with a dispassionate gaze. "Be wary, these ones know how to fight." She said, her eyes flickering between Kori and I.

Before we could respond though, a third voice spoke up, this one male and slightly synthetic. "Maddie, Demonia, relax. I received word that we might be getting some unexpected guests." The one behind the techno-plinth got to his feet, giving us our first good look at him.

He was… different, to say the least. The body was biped and reptilian like the woman's, but that came second to the head. It was a large metal box with a screen on the front, resembling nothing so much as an old CRT monitor. The screen displayed a number of different symbols spiraling out in patterns.

Of all the things I thought I might run into in this universe, a walking FLCL reference wasn't one of them.

"Ah, so you are the ones from Karna," he said, the alien's face-screen changing pattern as he focused on Felicity. "Namise's last message said that she was sending her young along with some contracted help. I assume that you are Namise's daughter then?"

The Karnan nodded. "I am. I was told I would have sanctuary here… though I am not sure if I can simply stand by while my world burns."

TV-Head made an open gesture with his hands. "Understandable, and I am sure we can find something for you to do to that end. But, manners first." The symbols on his screen changed, becoming yellow-red and forming something of a horseshoe shape. "They call me Doc. Welcome to the Last Port."

I couldn't help but ask. "Last Port?"

The screen turned to face me. "Yes, as in the last free port you'll find in the Roshak System. Those that find life under the rule of the Citadel intolerable and have nowhere else to go usually find their way here. Though most don't live long enough to arrive, unfortunately."

Kori perked up. "You're a resistance group?"

"That would be rather romantic, wouldn't it?" Doc said, the screen changing to lighter tones. "A brave coalition of species banded together against their oppressors in the name of liberation." A sigh. "But no, aside from this haven we don't have anything so organized. We're more just a group that's trying to make life a bit more bearable in this system. Getting civilians out of harm's way, acquiring and distributing information on the Citadel's plans, and also… acquiring goods that can be difficult to get."

"Smugglers." Kori said, her tone falling slightly.

Doc held out his hands. "It is the sad truth that you cannot sustain an organization on ideals alone. And besides, things like food and medicine often need our hands to be delivered as well.. But this does mean good news for you, my freelancer friends, as Namise's message made mention there was a debt to be squared away with you."

"If that's the case, then you already know what we're after: A starship that can travel 30 lightyears without refueling." she said. "Do you have one of those?"

"Not at the moment," Doc said slowly, "But I do know of a way one can be acquired. Though I will need some assistance from you two first."

I grunted, bringing everyone's attention back to me. "It's not exactly squaring a debt if you make us do more work for you first. Why should we have to help you now?"

"Because this task is something that will satisfy both of our needs." Doc gestures behind him, and a hologram of the Vega system came to life on the center plinth. "The Citadel focuses more on conquest than on maintenance of its holdings, which is handed off to automation or vassals. This includes supply shipments between outposts and bases." The hologram zoomed in to show several long and boxy vessels, connected together by some kind of energy tethers. "This is one such shipment headed to the main Citadel base on Aello in 3 weeks time. We want to relieve it of its contents, and with your expertise in combat I believe we can do so."

I stared at the hologram for a moment, analyzing the design of the ships."It almost looks like a train." I eventually remarked.

"That's not an inaccurate descriptor." Doc said. "These vessels have only the most basic maneuvering thrusters, instead homing in on the Gravity Anchor at their destination to gain most of their velocity. A rather efficient way of moving intrastellar freight, but that is neither here nor there. What is important is that on these vessels will be a number of things that this organization needs, and that we could see the Citadel do without. Mostly raw materials and parts for robotic labor."

"Still waiting on how that matters to us." I pointed out.

Doc gestured, and the hologram changed to focus on a specific car, opening it up to reveal a large toroid shaped machine that was familiar to me. "It is also carrying a Psion made starslip drive, recently acquired in one of their raids and being shipped to Aello for analysis. From our reports, said drive is powerful enough to suit your needs. It may not be a full vessel, but for your aid in securing the rest of the goods, we can install it into one for you."

Kori leaned forward, eyeing the hologram before looking back at Doc. "Not to reject your offer out of hand, but are you sure that you can't acquire a fully functioning ship instead?"

"No, we can't. And with recent events it is even less likely we will find such a convenient way to get you your ship." Doc pointed out. "Even ignoring the recent events on Karna, you two have picked an interesting time to go starship shopping. With Euphorix activating their planetary shield, the Citadel has been getting agitated. They are tightening their grip on their holdings, and are 'outsourcing' other tasks. Everything from mercenaries to bounty hunters have been popping up all over Roshak. There have even been rumors that a Lantern has been spotted in-system..."

That drew me up short. "I'm sorry, did you say a 'Lantern?' As in a Green Lantern?"

"Presumably." Doc said. "Admittedly, this is very hard to verify and little more than rumor, but something has recently put the Psions on edge, and there have been readings consistent with Power Ring technology detected by those who have the equipment."

Kori and I looked at each other. Green Lanterns weren't allowed into the Vega System by their own laws… but then again they also weren't allowed to kidnap people for no reason either. If the Guardians were still gunning after me and knew I was here, it wasn't hard to believe they would take another shot. But that was a big if, and I had no idea if there were Lanterns of other colors running around in this universe.

But, the Guardians' hunt of me was not something we wanted anyone here to know, and so Kori decided to shift the conversation back to its original topic before anyone read into our glances too much. "What do you think? If you had the parts, could you build us the ship?"

"...If it's functional and similar enough to what I've already worked with, and I can prep the ship beforehand, I could probably install it pretty quickly." Well, more rebuild the prospective ship around the new starslip drive, but even without my technomancy fully functional I had plenty of options.

Kori hummed before looking back at Doc. "Very well, we will assist you in this."

"Good to hear." Doc's screen flickered to darker colors. "At the moment we only have the outline of a plan, and we'll need to know just what your capabilities and specialties are before we nail down specific. But we have plenty of time before we need to set our little heist in motion."

A thought came to me as he said that last bit, and I felt my lips quirk upwards. "So, to be clear, this is basically a space train, right?"

"I said as much, yes."

"Which we are going to rob, correct?"

"...that is correct, why-?"

I pumped my fist and shouted "Yes!" There was a beat before I noticed that Kori was giving me a weird look. I shrugged. "What? It's every man's dream to someday rob a train, this is just a fact."

She sighed in exasperation, though Doc was a bit more upbeat. "Happy to see you so enthusiastic. Now if we can get to the business of planning out your role in all this-"

That is when Felicity interjected. "Excuse me, but I would like to know more about my mother's dealings with you and what I am to be doing here before you lot leave me to my own devices."

"Ah, of course, I was getting ahead of myself." Doc walked over and took Felicity's hand, though he looked at me and said "I should see to her first. We have plenty of time to discuss our plans tomorrow."

I nodded my assent and the two retreated to the other side of the room. As the pair started discussing details, Kori placed a hand on my shoulder, pulling me off to the side. When she spoke she did so in a low tone. "This has gotten you excited." She said mirthfully.

I chuckled. "Yeah, I guess. I don't see myself ever getting the chance to do something like this once we get back to Earth, so why not indulge a little?"

"I understand how you feel," she said, though I could tell she was grimacing behind her mask a little. "But I'm going to ask you to take more of a back seat on this one."

I rubbed the back of my head. "True, I probably should focus on preparing the ship, but I'm sure I can spare some time for-"

She cut me off. "It is not just that. Back on Karna you extended your reach too much. Not that you were wrong to do so, but without your normal abilities you couldn't manage everything as well as you could have. Don't believe you'll make that same mistake again… but you still did all of it without me."

My excitement was dampened as I understood what she was getting at. She wasn't mad that I acted without her say-so or anything like that, but worried I was dealing with stressful things on my own. "I can handle it." I said softly. I did my best with what happened in Karna. I could live with that.

"And you shouldn't have to." She retorted. "Please, just let me plan and guide this mission, let me share the weight of its responsibility. You'll still get your share of this 'every man's dream'."

I snorted, but after a few moments I relented. "Alright. I'm counting on you to wrangle this operation."

She smiled. "Don't worry. The Great Space Train Robbery will go off without a hitch."

Three weeks later

"So," Kori said as we stood on the icy cliff, looking down at the smoking crater that used to be the Gordanian base before the space train had meteored into it. "I believe I know where I went wrong."

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A/N: This week on 'Jacob and Kori Accidentally the Vega System'...