Page 25 of Life-Debt

The shorter of the two lowered his head and bobbed, his crest feathers rising. “We are being taught why to respect our elders. We must help load your ship without damaging anything.” He displayed his capped claws. “We have our caps on, and we will be careful.”

I realized I dealt with the equivalent of troublesome teens, and I chuckled at the realization I’d been given a pair of baby Veloc to work with. “Come along then, kiddos. Ever been aboard a ship like this before?”

Both of them shook their heads, and their crests napped into upright position, showing off their bright feathers. After watching Mystoran, I’d learned the crest communicated interest and curiosity as much as the Veloc used them to express other emotions.

I assumed I had excitable children to teach, which worked for me.

They weren’t much taller than me, and they had a lot of growing left to do, judging from Mystoran.

I showed them how to pick up one of the storage containers without damaging them and brought them on board, checking the digital labels to determine their basic contents and setting them up. “These lock into place using magnets so they won’t shift during flight. The type of storage container varies. Some are freezers powered with shiftgem crystals, others are for dry storage, and some are for parts. I blew through a lot of parts doing my engine check,” I admitted, gesturing to the empty space I’d once used for my ship supplies. “If we get this loaded up in a hurry, I’ll show you the engine room and my revival equipment.”

The offering worked, and with the energy only children possessed, the Veloc turned the loading process into a race. They kept score on the number of crates I secured into place, and they only counted the tally when their box was nestled in its proper spot. I appreciated that, and I resisted chuckling while they were present.

In record time, I had everything loaded up, and everything seemed to be present. I had a few new storage containers, all a newer model of the ones I liked, which claimed to contained stasis-frozen fruits, vegetables, and meats. Mystoran must have tattled regarding the capacity of my galley, which went beyond the standard setups for most small ships. I could, when I wanted, actually cook. I could also make use of nutrient cubes, which I could make on the fly with anything edible.

I refused to question the containers of stasis-frozen food, as I would appreciate them given a week. Once finished, I took the Veloc on the promised tour, introduced them to Pandora, and lost thirty minutes letting them play with my fox, careful to make sure nobody got too rough.

I expected their families would be out for my head, and not for romantic purposes, when the kids declared they wanted pet foxes of their own.

At the four and a half hour mark, I did my walk around, put Pandora in her nest with a treat, and prepared to leave the spaceport. I made use of the data link to transmit the inventory the Veloc had put together along with the notifying the spaceport I had not been the one to stock the ship and that the goods had been checked by spaceport authorities prior to being loaded.

If something did happen, I’d be covered.

Ten minutes later, the traffic controller gave me authorization to leave, wished me well on my journey, and briefed me on current space conditions on route to the nearest shiftgem gate.

I couldn’t help but wonder what the future would hold—and how far of a head start the Veloc and their romance-crazed kin would give me.

NINE

One of them was the prized rainbow black

Three days into my journey, I drifted off course, killed my engine, and accessed the storage spot for the core shiftgems, which had gone without detection in the quarantine bay. I would make use of other nooks and crannies for the crystals, which would be difficult to access without requiring me to tear apart my engine to make it happen. I regretted undoing a lot of Delta’s work, erasing all evidence he’d been around and about in the process.

I did a top to bottom search of the cargo container, discovering several more caches of core shiftgems in a range of sizes from twenty centimeters down to half a centimeter. Several had already been turned into necklaces, the chains simplistic and styled to hide the origin of the stone. At first glance, nobody would know the difference between a standard shiftgem and the illegal treasures I’d pilfered.

One of them was the prized rainbow black, and it warmed in my hand as though resonating with my skin. It had been wrapped in silver wire to capture the stone’s rich color. At a little over four centimeters long, it fell into the tiny but fierce category.

I slipped it over my head and tucked it beneath my clothes, and if anyone asked, I would claim I’d picked it up as a bauble at some spaceport market. Smaller stones often went up for sale for a pittance, unsuited for more important tasks. Rainbow blacks showed up often enough at standard mines, and few wanted them.

They were too difficult to work with on a good day.

I evaluated each stone with a magnifier and scanner, and while they registered as core shiftgems for crystal type, none of them had been marked with a serial number, confirming they were either stolen from a mine or had come from a planet busting operation.

The mines tended to have excellent security, and few stones emerged without being imbued with their serial number.

Without serial numbers or evidence of psychic imprint, I’d have to venture off to a black market and hit up a contact who’d be happy to pay back a debt he owed me.

While he’d started life as a homo sapiens, Carthello had undergone so many genetic modifications he no longer classified as even remotely human. He’d borrowed from the Veloc, boasting a rainbow crest and sharp talons on his fingers. He’d also stolen genetic material from one of the stranger denizens of space, a blend between a giant bird, a lizard, and a cat. He’d gotten a bit of everything with that modification, although his beady, lizard eyes never failed to creep me out—especially as he’d gotten ten of them for reasons I failed to understand. Add in a few tentacles from the Cremorans, and he’d qualify for his own species designation if he ever bothered to fill out the form.

I questioned his tail, which had characteristics of the Cremoran tentacles and a lizard’s with a light coating of fur jutting up between the scaled hide. I questioned the scales, as they reminded me of some fish. The presence of gills on his neck implied he had acquired aquatic DNA from somewhere.

I’d given up guessing.

To reach the black market, I needed to do a series of fifteen shiftgem jumps, which tested my nerves, my engine, and my shiftgem crystals more than I liked. I stuck to batches of three jumps a day before checking my systems over with a fine-toothed comb and repeating the process. To add to the complexity, I cruised at least a day from the gates in a direction few ventured to make myself less of a target during the journey.

A month and a half after leaving the spaceport, I arrived at my destination, an old, battered station that might have become a spaceport if the operators had opted to keep their hands clean. As no black market op bothered with traffic control, I eased my ship around until I found an available docking station, claimed it as mine, tethered my ship, and got suited up, opting to bring Pandora with me and on a close leash.

She would turn my ship into a target if I left her on board. Then, because I was an asshole, I locked the ship up tight, engaged the warning system that promised sonic hell among other things for those who messed with my ship, and began the tedious journey to the station’s interior.