Miniskirt Space Pirates 3: Cosplay Pirates in Training

Chapter 1: Category I Quarantine Order

The first report came after the day's job was done with, after Marika had returned via shuttle to the Shin-Okuhama spaceport and taken a late-night auto-taxi home.

Her mother was waiting up for her and had made cocoa; she changed into her pajamas and started to take a sip when suddenly the Katou residence's phone bleated out its tumultuous ring.

"Hmm?"

Marika's mother Ririka answered the phone, curious; she'd set it to ring only for emergency calls. The news channels hadn't run any stories about an emergency at the spaceport where she worked, nor in the local neighborhood.

The display listed the caller's location as the waystation in orbit, but when Ririka noticed that their number was blanked out she switched to a secure line.

"Hello?" She placed the headset against her hear and answered the phone, and it wasn't long before she turned to her daughter. "Marika, it's for you."

"Really?" Marika rose and glanced at the display that was supposed to show the caller's name.

"An emergency communique for the Bentenmaru's captain."

Even as a voice-only communication, and even using a secure line that altered its encoding patterns every few seconds, as long as they were on a public line there was still a high chance of eavesdropping. Though she was certain it was the Bentenmaru as soon her mother handed over the phone, Marika could only guess at what they wanted as she took hold of the headset, bewildered.

"This is Marika."

"Oh, Marika, are you feeling alright? Your nose and throat don't hurt?"

For a moment she couldn't place the hoarse voice she was hearing.

"...Misa? What's with your voice, are you using an equalizer or something!?"

"No, I have a cold." Misa coughed and began to explain. "It's nasty, some kind of prototype biological weapon. Bastard got past our biofilters, looks to be some sort of virus."

She sneezed loudly enough that Marika could practically feel it through the line all the way from orbit, and she wrenched the headset away from her ear.

"What the heck happened?"

"You know how the government was all hush-hush about that last job we did, that it was something too dangerous to trust to civilians?"

Marika thought back: they had taken on some cargo from a high-speed military transport and a cruiser flying without transponders out in deep space, running it past the ports and checkpoints.

"Um, I remember seeing electronic research equipment, experimental weapons, medical supplies, stuff like that..."

As captain, Marika checked the manifests of all the cargo the Bentenmaru transported. But it wasn't like she opened every airtight, shielded, blast-proof, hermetically-sealed container they brought on board to confirm the contents; all she remembered were bullet points off the list.

"Apparently there was something listed as 'Biological Research Samples'. We were supposed to transfer it to the hospital ship when a timer went off and the container opened."

"Ah, that."

Marika recalled the commotion from just before she left the ship. They were in orbit among the inner planets and had just delivered a bio-container from one of the Galactic Empire's labs to a defense force hospital ship. They'd been asked to keep the container at one atmosphere as they transferred it, and while they were in the process of docking via the large bay door on the ship's belly to a side hatch, the timer—which had either malfunctioned or else had been improperly set—went off, opening the hatch.

It was a long and involved affair that didn't require the captain's presence, and at the time Marika was on the flight deck boarding her shuttle home. She was about to return to bridge to deal with the emergency, but with no role to play and her working hours already at their limit Hyakume decided to shoo her off the ship.

A number of xenoplanetary felis monkeys had escaped from the sealed environmental container when it opened. The monkeys were quick and nimble, a few dozen centimeters long, and the contract forbade the use of chemical means to capture them; it had apparently been quite a chore for teams from both the pirate ship and the hospital ship to recover the monkeys from the cramped, human-inaccessible spaces in which they were hiding.

They'd been fortunate enough to successfully apprehend all of the felis monkeys before Marika's shuttle made it back into Umi-no-ake's atmosphere, and they reported that the hand-off of the monkeys and the container was a success. Marika returned home assured that their last job was over with.

"So I take it they weren't just any felis monkeys?"

"When we captured them they were coughing and their noses were running, I figured there was something fishy going on," Misa reported in between nonstop sneezes. "Seems the Empire's bio lab wasn't shipping the monkeys, but the cold-like epidemic they'd been infected with."

"An epidemic!?" Marika blurted out.

"That's right, a real nasty one, spreads through the air like that. With something this infectious the defense forces would have to blockade entire systems. The makeup of those felis monkeys' respiratory and digestive organs is similar to humans', so the pathogen produces similar symptoms."

"Are, are you alright? You said it was a prototype bioweapon, isn't that really serious?"

"It made it through the biofilters on the Bentenmaru's recirculators and spread the cold throughout the ship before we knew it; as far as infection rate goes it's unmatched. But we're fine; assuming the hospital ship's doctors weren't lying, it's nothing more than a bad cold, they said it's not life-threatening."

"Even so..."

"I figured you got out in time, I'm glad to hear you weren't infected. The pathogen's incubation time is basically zero; if you aren't sneezing and don't have a runny nose then there's nothing to worry about."

"Well, as long as it's not life-threatening." Marika thought for a moment. How long would it take for a xenoplanetary bioweapon cold to clear up? "So everyone on the Bentenmaru has a cold. Will you be okay in time for our next job?"

"Oh, not a chance," Misa answered immediately, as if she'd already ran the numbers. "We're lucky we're here with the hospital ship. They say they have a vaccine, and the cold symptoms will be completely gone in a week."

"So I guess that means our job next week is a wash. I'll need to get in touch with Shou at the insurance agency."

"Don't worry about it. Just because we're quarantined doesn't mean our communications are cut off, we'll inform him of the situation. Take the next week off and relax. But we might have a bigger problem on our hands."

Though Misa's face wasn't visible, the forced color in her voice gave Marika a bad feeling; she probed her carefully. "What kind of problem? Give it to me straight."

"Even though the cold symptoms are supposed to clear up within a week, the real question is what happens after that. This is a biological weapon that was modified to be highly contagious. According to the Empire's Communicable Disease Control Edict, as a newly discovered pathogen the effects of the vaccine are still considered experimental. That means we're going to be on lockdown for at least two weeks, until they can confirm that we're cured."

"Two weeks!?" Marika blurted out. "You're going to be quarantined that long!? Do you have enough provisions?"

"Oh, no problems there. It's not the Bentenmaru that needs to be isolated, right now we're on the defense force hospital ship. They raised hell with the Imperial Fleet to secure the necessary data and disinfectants and special filters for us; the Bentenmaru will be sterilized soon enough. Doesn't matter how infectious it is, no one's going to be getting sick after they blast it out into space, no need to worry about that."

"Well if you say there's no need to worry, I guess we're fine."

"Yeah, the crew's not at risk, the ship isn't damaged, and the virus should be completely eliminated from the ship three days after we get the special biofilters fitted; that's all there is to worry about. The Bentenmaru won't be going on any raids for a while, but just take it easy and think of this as a vacation."

"I've still got school, it's not like I can take it that easy." Marika reflexively pulled her ear away from the intercom as Misa coughed on the other end. "Huh...looks like the Bentenmaru's gonna be out of action for a while."

"The ship'll be fine, but with the crew laid up we'll have to put as much as we can on autopilot. But since we're on a no-contact order we won't be able to entertain our guests even after the symptoms clear up."

Comparing a pirate boarding action to some sort of geisha performance. Misa coughed violently again.

"Don't worry, we'll still be able to handle jobs where we don't have to meet our clients face-to-face. Playing the bad guys in training exercises, patrols through trouble zones, that sort of thing. Anyway, I'm going to cancel all our jobs for at least the next week, so you go relax."

Misa let out another barrage of coughs, and the transmission cut out.

"She's got a cold?" Ririka asked as Marika returned to the table; she'd been straining to pick up what she could. Marika nodded.

"She said Imperial law classified it as an outbreak after I left the Bentenmaru. The crew aren't in any danger but we'll have to postpone business for a while."

"As long as nobody's at risk, that's what counts, but it sure sounds like someone screwed the pooch." Ririka sighed and looked at her daughter. "Are you okay?"

"She said the felis monkeys escaped from their sealed container after I left the ship."

"And your crew?"

"They're under quarantine for a while, for observation." Marika quickly arranged all the details she'd just heard in her head. "We're lucky we were delivering to a hospital ship. At least they knew how to respond."

"Where are they being hospitalized?"

"The defense force hospital ship Ben Casey, probably." Marika recalled the large, white silhouette of the hospital ship they'd docked with as she left. "The monkeys got out before we could transfer them, and they got into contact with the recirculators, so the hospital ship is probably under quarantine too." Marika cocked her head. "I wonder how we're going to handle our regular check-ins."

Usually, when there were no pressing concerns, the Bentenmaru would check-in with their captain twice a day, once in the afternoon and once in the evening. As long as it wasn't urgent, they'd typically leave Marika a message and she'd send them a reply.

In addition to keeping her updated while she was away from the ship, the check-ins also served to ensure that the captain was safe; if she didn't answer after two consecutive messages they were supposed to send out a search party. Of course, Marika could also let them know beforehand if she wouldn't be able to respond.

But what they lacked was a standard means of keeping in touch. Typically Marika would receive a message on her cell phone—since becoming the Bentenmaru's captain it had been upgraded to be able to handle hyper-compressed encrypted transmissions—but she could also receive messages on her home phone or through the line to the yacht club's room, and more than once she'd even received telegrams addressed to her during class and had crew members show up at her part-time job at the Lamp House to check-in with her in person.

If the entire crew were isolated on the hospital ship it would be impossible for them to contact her from the Bentenmaru.

When Marika awoke the next morning she checked her phone's messages like always, and after she was dressed, the phone in the living room as well.

No one had checked-in with her.

As soon as third period ended, a school-wide announcement summoned Marika to the faculty office.

She bowed to the teacher who'd called her and entered a special booth. She picked up the receiver, and an eccentric-looking man with an afro and a business suit appeared on the screen.

"Shou!?"

"Nice to see ya. If you can see through this getup, then you really must be the Bentenmaru's captain."

"Enough joking around. What's going on?"

As far as Marika could remember, Shou, their agent with the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate, had never contacted her at Hakuoh Girls' Academy. In fact, now that she thought about it, he'd never contacted her directly, ever.

"I have an urgent and private matter to discuss. There wouldn't happen to be a Class-III or better encryption-capable scrambled-line communicator nearby, would there?"

"I'm in school right now! Where would I find a communicator with that much hardened security built into..."

Marika remembered that the club room was equipped with high-end military comm system built by a defunct electronics maker called Galactic Electronics Systems. Even the brand didn't exist anymore—they'd been absorbed long ago—but General Opticals still continued to offer support for their military hardware. Last year an upperclassman with a knack for electronics was supposed to have labored through the update process, so it should have been compatible with the latest encryption.

"...actually, I probably do have one."

"That would be ideal. I'll tell you my personal code, and you can call me."

"Um..."

Marika checked the timestamp in the corner of the comm screen. The break between third and fourth periods was nearly over.

"I know you said this was urgent and private, but can I call you back in an hour? I have class right now."

"One hour...I suppose the situation won't have changed by then. Okay, it's a student's job to study. Go forth and learn."

"Remind me again who it was who pushed me into piracy?"

Marika dashed to the club room as soon as fourth period ended.

She unlocked the door and entered the vacant room, hit the power switch for the giant communicator that took up half a wall, and began flipping the switches to boot it up, a process she could only vaguely remember.

She entered both Shou's personal code that she'd saved in her phone and the accompanying encryption key, and opened up an FTL comm circuit.

The hold screen showed the logo of the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate superimposed on an image of an old-fashioned starship, and before the musicbox hold tune could make it through a full refrain, Shou appeared.

"Hello, this is Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate, agent Shou speaking."

"This is Katou Marika, captain of the Bentenmaru," Marika answered, while the display informed her that it was confirming her interlocutor's identity and that their call wasn't being intercepted. "I'm currently on Umi-no-ake, Shin-Okuhama, Hakuoh Girls' Academy, borrowing a communicator in the school..."

"Your Class-III encryption code was accepted, there's noting to worry about. Galactic Electronics? That's some high-end stuff."

"It belongs to the yacht club, the thing's an antique. We've got a training sailer too, but it can't even do FTL."

"Oh that's right, Hakuoh is supposed to be keeping a famous pirate ship in working order, the White Swan was it? I'd love to see it fly while I still have the chance."

"I'll send you the schedule for our next training cruise." Curious what she must have looked like to him in her uniform, Marika got down to business. "You said you wanted to talk about something urgent and private? Is it something I can help with?"

"Captain Marika, it is something that only you can help with,” he responded without hesitation.

Marika looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"I imagine that Hyakume or Misa would have realized it eventually. The Bentenmaru's entire crew is quarantined after catching a cold from some felis monkeys, yes?"

"That's the gist of it." She'd heard from Misa the night before that they were going to inform the insurance company. Marika nodded.

"And what about the Bentenmaru?"

"It should be on lockdown, running on autopilot," Marika answered. "I haven't got all the details yet, though."

"Have you heard now long the quarantine will last?"

"Two weeks at the most," Marika answered calmly. "I'm not sure what's going to happen after that. Did you learn anything concrete?"

"The cold-infected monkeys that the Bentenmaru picked up for transport were being used as incubators for a particularly nasty and infectious biological weapon. The hospital ship should have a vaccine, but since it's an experimental pathogen it's impossible for them to have a complete picture of the recovery process. From what we've been able to ascertain, we fear that the quarantine may last even longer."

Marika raised an eyebrow. "Just how much longer?"

"A month at least, and perhaps more depending on the circumstances."

"A month!?"

"The hospital ship and the military's biochemical division are no fools, they knew if they were to throw out those sorts of numbers from the start that the pirates would bolt and cause trouble. Maybe they just want to draw things out even after they appear to be cured so they can keep running tests, but it's not an unrealistic number considering they're dealing with a poorly-understood pathogen from an undeveloped world."

"That's gonna be bad for business," Marika murmured with a disheartened look on her face. "Our pirate ship's gonna go to pieces after a month without the crew on board."

"And that is precisely the urgent and private matter which I wish to discuss." On the other side of the monitor Shou's face stiffened.

"So this is about money?"

"The military will likely offer to reimburse wages from missed work during the quarantine, but that's not the problem. If the Bentenmaru suspends its piracy business for an entire month—and I had our legal department go over this with a fine-toothed comb—then according to your contract it's possible that your pirate's license will become invalid."

"Our pirate's license will become invalid..." Marika thought for a moment before her voice shot up. "But the only reason we have a license in the first place is because it was issued during the chaos of the War of Independence, and we were able to forcibly extend it, right? Is there any way to get it reissued if it accidentally runs out?"

"It's almost assuredly impossible." Shou quickly raised his hands. "Perhaps during the war, but now that you've become part of the Galactic Empire there's no easy way for an autonomous system to issue a new pirate's license. And even scarier, you'll end up being forcibly purged by the Imperial Fleet."

"Uh, so do your people know any loopholes we can use to avoid losing it?"

"As I said, I have our legal department searching for any little gaps or technicalities, but the number one way to be sure is for the Bentenmaru to continue working as it always has. Get the goods and your pirate's license will be renewed automatically."

"Well that's simple enough."

Shou watched Marika's relieved face curiously. "So you plan to operate the Bentenmaru all by yourself?"

"Ahhhhhh!" Marika shouted. "No way, I could never do it alone! I'm just a high schooler, how am I supposed to run a ship that takes Kane and Coorie and Hyakume and Schnitzer and Luca and Sandaime to keep it alive!?”

"If you can't do it alone then I guess your only hope is to put together a crew. I don't care if you have to press gang them, just find enough people to get the Bentenmaru moving. Fortunately the only one who needs to be licensed is the captain; there are no permits or official restrictions for serving on a pirate ship."

"So what, I'm supposed to find people who can fly the Bentenmaru just lying around somewhere!?"

"I'm sure if you throw around enough money you can find people fit for the Bentenmaru just about anywhere."

"Sure, but can I trust them? How am I supposed to check qualifications and run background checks on a crew for a pirate ship, especially temp workers!"

"Ah, always thinking like a captain. True, qualifications and background checks are a problem. But before we even get to that, let's talk about what kind of crew you need. Do you know anyone?"

"I'm still in high school, why would I know any crew qualified to work on a pirate ship!?"

"You're the captain of a pirate ship, after all. We'll send out feelers as well, but you should look through your contacts. Maybe our legal department will find a way for not only the quarantined crew to get some R&R, but the captain as well."

"I won't hold my breath."

Marika cut the transmission.

"How am I supposed to find temporary replacements for the entire crew...no way, it's impossible."

Marika sighed, and just as she was about to begin the process of cutting the power to the comm system a chime rang out alerting her to an incoming call.

"Huh?"

Even during club hours the comm system was usually turned off when it wasn't needed, and they almost never used it to make any calls except for when they were already in possession of someone's personal code. Marika first made sure that it was really the comm system in front of her that was being contacted, then answered the FTL call; the field for the other party was blank.

The two comm systems connected across a hyperspace relay.

"Uh, Hakuoh Girls' Academy..."

"Ah, nice, I'm glad it's you Captain..."

"...Coorie!?" It took Marika a moment to recognize the slightly rasped voice. She double-checked the blanked-out field for any details about the call. "Where are you? Is everyone all right?"

"Sorry we're late checking in. Right now I'm on the Tau Ceti System Defense Force hospital ship Ben Casey. Only, the Ben Casey isn't supposed to have any quarantined patients on board right now, we're not even in the official records."

"I suppose not."

"It took everything I had to convince them to let me make this call over a military channel; I bet they even blanked our data, right?"

"Don't worry, it says it doesn't know who I'm talking to." Marika looked up at the monitor for the voice-only call. The camera wasn't disabled on her end; her face should have been visible to Coorie.

"The crew is safe and sound. Since the disease got through our biofilters and into the air, even people without lungs who can't get infected—like Schnitzer—are still quarantined. They put us up in the swanky hospital rooms for officers, so except for the cold we're living it up."

"Sounds like you're having fun." Marika laughed. "Good, so I take it it's nothing serious?"

"Don't worry about us. It may be highly contagious but it's nothing more than a bad cold; they said we're not in any danger and there won't be any lasting effects. But since they haven't figured out a sure-fire way to treat it yet we gotta do things the old fashioned way, bedrest and treat the symptoms. Course, just 'cause we're quarantined doesn't mean there are any restrictions on food or booze, so a bunch of these clowns aren't passing up the chance to party on the defense force's dime."

"I guess pirates will be pirates. Will you still remember how to do your jobs once they cut you loose?"

"They're making us rest, if it drags on too long the roughnecks might end up going soft."

"We'll have to avoid any straight-up fighting right after everyone's released." Not that they were looking to start any fights. But it's not uncommon for pirates to suddenly find themselves in the middle of a battle. "By the way Coorie, do you have records of the Bentenmaru's activities from since I became captain?"

"You mean besides the captain's logs?"

"Yeah, I've got backups of my own logs. I'm talking about the Bentenmaru's records."

"Sure, we keep records of battles and voyages, but there's gonna be loads of them."

"Just flight plans are fine."

"Sure, I'll send them right over." No sooner had the words left her mouth than the attached data was transmitted over the comm system. "But what do you need them for?"

"It looks like the Bentenmaru's gonna be grounded for a while, I figured I'd use that time to check up on a bunch of things," Marika answered with the straightest face she could muster. But this was Coorie she was dealing with; she wasn't confident she could avoid raising her suspicions, no matter how prepared she was. "Will the Bentenmaru be okay all battened down?"

"No worries; even without the crew on board we've still got the ship under control from here," Coorie answered, nothing about her tone changing. "We've got it flying alongside the Ben Casey, sealed up and under the watchful eye of a military anchorage. I'd wager it's even safer here than when we're out on a job."

"Good, glad to hear it."

Marika checked the attached records from the Bentenmaru and sighed. They were quite large.

"Is everything okay, Captain?"

The concern in Coorie's voice caught Marika off guard as she tried to keep her voice steady.

"I was just in touch with Shou, it's nothing you have to worry about. Tell the crew that their job right now is to get better."

"Understood. And by the way, since everybody's cut off from the Bentenmaru at the moment, I'm not sure if we'll be able to keep up with the usual check-in schedule. We'll get in touch as often as we can, and we'll let you know as soon as possible if there's an emergency, no need worry."

"Roger. Tell everyone to get well soon."

Marika killed the call. She transferred the Bentenmaru's records to her own capsule, deleted all of the settings and records of her calls, and just to be safe rebooted the system to make sure she hadn't left any evidence behind.

Having erased any traces she'd used it, Marika left the club room.

After school, Marika finished her yacht club training exercises at her usual faster-than-light pace, pulled a rare shift at the Lamp House, and then returned home.

Once she'd eaten dinner she sat down in front of the high-security living room computer.

"I'm gonna use the computer for a bit."

"Be careful if you make any outside connections." Ririka peeked at the datacard in Marika's hand from the kitchen where she was preparing after-dinner tea. It was cheap, run-of-the-mill commercial hardware: all-black, no label. "Is that data from the Bentenmaru?"

"Yeah." Marika looked up at her mother. "How could you tell?"

"I thought I saw it in the docs Misa brought with her, after you decided to become the Bentenmaru's captain. It's the only datacard like it in this whole place. After her check-in with you yesterday, I figured you'd dig it out sooner or later."

"...can I ask your opinion on something?"

Marika slid the datacard into the slot and began the verification process. She made her way cleanly through the complicated steps; Misa had held her hand through it the first time, and she hadn't let Marika take notes.

"What is it?"

"Have you got a handle on the regulations for the Bentenmaru...for our letter of marque?" She made it through the verification and entered the time-sensitive password to unlock it, then began searching the datacard for anything having to do with the rules of their letter of marque.

"Regulations? Like what?"

"Like, there's got to be all sorts of annoying restrictions, right? Like how you can't engage in piracy without the captain on board, and how the captainship can only be passed on to a direct descendant. I thought there was a part in there about how the license is automatically revoked if you don't commit any acts of piracy after a set period of time."

"Oh, that's what you mean? Hmm, you're right, there's supposed to be a clause in there about revoking the license if you don't engage in piracy; it was there to make sure the pirates wouldn't take the license and run."

"Yeah, that." Marika opened a bunch of files with convoluted names from the section on legal matters. "Do you remember how many months of vacation a pirate gets?"

"Vacation?" Ririka glanced at the display as she returned from the kitchen, teapot in hand. "I never got any long vacations, not when I was captain anyway. Sometimes Gonzaemon would just disappear and the Bentenmaru would have to put business on hold, but he was always back before a couple weeks had passed."

"Huh, so as long as the captain's there the crew are never gonna get a decent vacation. Has the Bentenmaru ever not been able to work because it was in dock for repairs or maintenance or inspections?"

"We were always doing repairs and maintenance, but the ship was never in dock for very long." Ririka returned to the table and started setting out cups. "You're a pirate, you should realize by now that there's no rest for the wicked. At least when I was there we were never in dock long enough for the crew to be graced with something so decadent as a real vacation." Ririka added hot water to the pot. "Is the Bentenmaru going to be laid up a while from that cold?"

"I figured I'd better be ready now if things get that bad." Marika opened a passage that looked like it might be useful; the body was overflowing with legalese. "Ugh, this writing is ancient."

"What did you expect? It's a hundred and twenty year old contract."

"Am I really gonna have to decipher all this?" Marika glared at the text on the display, irked. "Being captain sucks." She opened a dictionary on the sub-display and began to decode the vexing terminology word-by-word.

Marika decided to treat translating the contract as extra classic lit homework—it was filled with dignified, roundabout, rarely-used language—and once she was done she spoke up again.

"Can I ask you something else?"

"What is it?"

"Where do you think I could look if I wanted to find skilled sailors?"

Ririka didn't respond. Marika was tempted to see what kind of face her mother was making.

"I guess I can't just, like, go to the spaceport, right?"

"You think spacers looking for work are going to come planetside? They make their living in space. What would that riffraff be doing slogging around on the surface when all they want is to get out into the cosmos? Sailors, they've always spent their time in ports."

"Ports..." Though there was no way she could see it, Marika turned her eyes upwards. "You mean like the station?"

The next morning there was a message on the home phone checking in with her; the whole crew was safe on the hospital ship, slowly recovering from their symptoms.

Marika checked the message, responded with her usual reply ("On my way to school!"), and headed out the door.

Afternoon, the next day.

Marika tasked Endou Mami, her inseparable friend since middle school, with grabbing her a boxed lunch from the cafeteria while she hurried to the yacht club room as soon as fourth period was over.

She booted up the comm system much more confidently than she had the day before, set it to open a hyperspace FTL channel, and rang up the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate using the encryption key that she had received on her phone that morning.

There was the same image as the previous day, and after barely any wait Shou's face appeared on the monitor.

"Well hello there. I had a feeling you were about to call, and here you are, right on time." On the other side of the screen Shou's face took on a slight frown. "Are you getting enough sleep? Something about you looks off."

"I got caught up trying to translate some old, convoluted writing." Marika effected a limp smile. "Have there been any new developments?"

"Did you receive the notice from Hyakume regarding the Bentenmaru and its crew? The cold is in its second day and appears to be growing worse; I wouldn't say say that they're doing fine, but they're receiving treatment on the hospital ship and there shouldn't be anything to worry about."

"Oh, I'm not worried about that. If things start to look serious they've got the defense force or even the Imperial Fleet there to look after things." Marika shook her head and tried to mentally arrange all the things she needed to say to Shou. "I took a look for myself at our letter of marque's rules and regulations for combat and conduct. Assuming I didn't misunderstand them, as long as the government doesn't declare an end to hostilities, then we can go for at most fifty days without engaging in a combat action before our license becomes invalid."

"That is correct. Go on."

"As of yesterday, the Bentenmaru won't be able to engage in piracy for some time. Concerning our next job—the dropoff on Schwartzberg two days from now—as well as the raid on the Queen Emeraldas next week, we have no choice but to cancel and pay for a breach of contract or else find someone to take over for us."

"The system defense force has agreed to compensate you for any losses you may incur, so you need not worry yourself about that. We've already given the Schwartzberg run to a civilian contractor who specializes in rough-and-tumble work, and we've made arrangements for the raid on the Queen Emeraldas."

"Did you ask another pirate ship to fill in for us?"

"Indeed we did. Kenjo Kurihara, captain of the Barbarossa, was happy to take the Bentenmaru's place."

Marika thought she could hear Chiaki raising hell.

"Since we don't know when the crew is going to be released, we can't take on any new jobs, and we'll have to find stand-ins for all our regular gigs. Even if we're being paid for any damages as a result of the crew being temporarily quarantined, that still leaves the matter of our license: namely, when was our last operation that qualifies as piracy, and how much time do we have to complete the next one?"

Marika stared cautiously at her insurance agent's face on the monitor.

"The Bentenmaru's last action was our usual raid on the Princess Apricot two weeks ago. We were going to hit the Prince of Stonewall earlier this week, but they changed their flight plans and canceled, and I'm assuming we won't be able to handle the role of opfor for the defense force's exercises the week after next either, so if we don't engage in any piracy in the next five weeks, the Bentenmaru is going to lose its classification as a pirate ship."

Shou nodded with admiration.

"Impressive. Our legal department spent the entire night poring over Tau Ceti's letters of marque and the Bentenmaru's records, and they came to the exact same conclusion."

"Phew," Marika sighed, relieved, but quickly found herself on edge again. "No wait, that's not good at all! That means that if the crew—or at least enough of them for a raid—can't recover and get released in the next month, the Bentenmaru's pirate's license is going to be revoked!"

"Indeed, you and our legal department are in perfect agreement on that." Shou beamed approvingly. "Incidentally, those bullheaded bureaucrats in Tau Ceti's Ministry of Justice have almost certainly reached the same conclusion as well. As I'm sure you know, the administrators do not all see eye-to-eye when it comes to welcoming pirates with open arms, and there are those who would leap at the chance to wipe you out for good."

"What am I supposed to do!?"

"At the moment, as captain of the Bentenmaru you have three options."

On the monitor, Shou held up three long fingers.

"One, pray that your crew is released safe and sound while your pirate's license is still valid."

"That would be the simplest option, wouldn't it?"

"Two, assuming that your crew is not released in time, you will have to acquire a new crew from somewhere."

"Where am I supposed to get a crew for a whole pirate ship!?" Marika shouted. "What's my last option?"

"Well, I can't really say that I recommend option number three. If your crew won't be released by the deadline, you can break them out of the hospital ship by force."

"My crew would have a better chance of pulling that off than I would." Marika sighed. "I guess the easiest option is just to wait and pray, but it also seems like the least useful."

"Very much so. Let me be blunt. All you need to do is throw together a crew for one job with the Bentenmaru. Make it back with a single score and your license will be automatically extended. After that, the Bentenmaru's real crew should be released from quarantine on the hospital ship in time to meet the next deadline."

"And what if they aren't?"

"I find it hard to believe that there's anyone among the Bentenmaru's crew who would simply let themselves stay cooped up for that long. If it were to happen, they'd probably break themselves out without so much as a word from our end."

"I'd have to time it right so I was there to meet them when they did." Marika realized that she was rooting for her crew to make a break for it and shook her head. "I'll worry about how to deal with that problem if things ever get that bad."

"If you can, please get in touch with us before it happens. The paperwork on something like that is going to be a nightmare, regardless of whether we go along with it or try to sweep it under the rug."

"I appreciate it. If the military is going to take responsibility for all this, I wonder if they'd lend us the crew to take on a raid?"

"While there may not be any restrictions on who may serve as a pirate, I suspect it would be a tall order getting proper soldiers to play along. If anyone were to find out it could rip the military apart."

"I know how to keep a secret...but I guess it's rough being a pirate and out of the closet about it, huh?" Marika sighed. Not that the military was particularly dangerous, but as a pirate she was hesitant to ask them for help. "So what if I asked the insurance agency to find people who could serve on a pirate ship?"

"It's not impossible, but it won't be easy." Shou's expression soured. "You'll need to pay them to keep quiet about the particulars, and that'll cost you quite a bit. The military said they'd cover damages and expenses but I doubt they're going to write us a blank check; you'll need to find a crew who are willing to work within your usual budget. With all the problems that can crop up before you even start looking for people to hire, it would be a nightmare for such a massive and inflexible organization."

"Isn't there anyone at the agency who could help out the Bentenmaru, even just a little?"

Shou thought for a moment.

"Aha, I could try passing your request along to an agent who works with sailors. Though I doubt the spacefaring sort have the patience to deal with the likes of us."

"I'd hope I could at least trust you when it comes to running background checks." Desperate, Marika stared at Shou on the display. "You wouldn't send me someone who'd put one of your contracts at risk, would you?"

"Certainly not." Shou flashed a large smile from the other side of the monitor. "Very well, I can at least investigate whether it's possible for us to find people who meet your needs."

"I appreciate it."

Marika bowed and cut the transmission. She wasn't particularly worried that the specifics of her conversation would slip out, not with the high-level encryption, but she nevertheless went through the standard procedure of deleting the records and details of the call, and then rebooted just to be safe.

She let out a deep breath as her hands moved mechanically through the shutdown procedure.

"It sounds like I shouldn't get my hopes up. I'm gonna have to find somewhere around here to look for sailors."

She killed the comm system's main switch and stared up at the ceiling.

"The station it is, then..."

Chapter 2: Help Wanted: Pirate Crew

"Traveling alone?"

Marika heard a familiar voice inside the deserted shuttle where she sat amid a row of three economy seats next to the emergency exit. She perked up from her purposefully-chosen window seat and turned around.

"Is this seat taken?"

The owner of the voice sat down next to Marika before she could answer.

"Pri...Gruier!?"

"I would prefer it if you didn't call me 'Princess.'" Gruier quickly secured her seatbelt, her legs dangling from the adult-sized seat, and smiled at Marika. "I'm glad you remember who I am. Playing hooky from the yacht club today?"

"Thank you for traveling on Shuttle 714 from Shin-Okuhama spaceport bound for the Umi-no-ake waystation," came the announcement across the nearly empty shuttle. "We are cleared for takeoff and will be taxiing to the runway shortly. The weather forecast for today is calm, but unexpected turbulence may occur, so we ask that all passengers please fasten their seatbelts and prepare for departure."

As the announcement continued the winged shuttle began to smoothly back away from where it was parked, nose toward the terminal.

Marika turned to Gruier in the seat next to her. The Princess was still dressed in her middle school uniform.

"What are you doing here? Were you following me?"

"Oh, what gave it away?" Gruier stuck her tongue out playfully, and Marika sighed.

"Of all the different ways to get into orbit it's hard to imagine that you just happened to decide to take a civilian shuttle, and just happened to peek at the list of economy class passengers, and just happened to see my name there, and just happened to switch from first class."

"I was hoping to run into you at the yacht club, but when you took off on your bike right after classes ended I got curious as to why," Gruier recited calmly as she nestled her diminutive frame into the seat. "I thought you might have work, but when I heard you went from the train station straight to the spaceport, that's when it hit me. You heading into orbit has something to do with the Bentenmaru, right?"

The Princess's sudden namedropping of the pirate ship—even whispered—sent Marika craning her neck to look around the other seats. The seats in front of, behind, and next to them were all empty.

Marika dropped her voice even lower. "Who told you about the Bentenmaru?"

"I am not at liberty to divulge my sources." Gruier winked unabashedly. "Or at least, that's what I wish I could say. When I found out that you of all people were blowing off clubs and work to rush to the spaceport, not to mention that you were taking a normal shuttle up to the station instead of your usual private one, all I could think was that there must be something fishy going on with the Bentenmaru. Of course, that's all just circumstantial evidence."

"So you charged onto the shuttle based on nothing more than circumstantial evidence?" Marika sighed. There were plenty of business-class fights, but they all cost as much as a long-distance flight.

"But it was your question earlier that cinched it. The Bentenmaru is in some kind of trouble, isn't it?"

Marika clutched her head.

"No, I mean, yes, basically...why is it so hard for me to keep a secret around you?"

"We will be taking off momentarily. We ask all passengers to please confirm that their seatbelts are fastened." The hum of the propulsion system reverberated through the fuselage together with the announcement.

"So what can I do? I'm sure I'll be able to help."

Marika looked Gruier in the face, then returned her gaze forward. It didn't take her long to analyze the situation and weigh the pros and cons. Marika's mind was made up. She turned to the seat next to her as the shuttle taxied down the runway.

"If you promise to do what I say, I'll fill you in on what's going on."

Marika stared at Gruier in profile.

Gruier turned to her with a relaxed smile on her face. "I promise."

"I can't exactly take you at your word when you're smiling like that." Marika turned away from Gruier in a huff. "Besides, I'm sure you could just use your own info networks or your personal guards to find out what's going on with the Bentenmaru. This is a problem with my ship. If you don't agree to listen to me, we're gonna have a problem."

Gruier clapped her hands against her cheeks; she looked surprised. "You can't trust this face?"

"It's the socialite mask you wear for outsiders. We may be friends, but I'm still not inclined to trust you when you put it on."

"Is the Bentenmaru really in trouble?"

Marika clamped her hands over her mouth; her expression said she knew she'd screwed up. Gruier pressed her, earnestly.

"Promise you'll listen to my advice, and I'll promise to follow your orders. I'm here because I want to help."

"That's not the part I have trouble believing." Marika checked the surrounding seats one more time to make sure no passengers were listening. "It's a really dicey situation, you need to keep this to yourself."

Inside the cabin, as the shuttle began to make its way into the air, Marika laid everything out for Gruier.

"So, you're heading up to the station to search for crew for the Bentenmaru," Gruier repeated. She seemed shocked.

"It's not like I think I can just find people in a day or two, but I heard that if I'm looking for sailors out here, then the station is the quickest bet. I figure I should at least scope the place out."

"Why didn't you come talk to me? My fleet has more than enough skilled crew to fill the Bentenmaru!"

"Er, I appreciate it, but I don't think that would work. Or at least it's not the best idea."

"Why not!?"

"Well, we're pirates, right? Sure, we may be commercial ones with a letter of marque and the backing of an insurance company, but we're still pirates. Getting a princess to order another system's crewmen to engage in piracy could be a big political scandal, couldn't it?"

"Oh..." Gruier recalled the complicated political situation in her home system and fell silent.

"If I really run out of options maybe I'll let you use your connections to find me a reliable crew, but Serenity and Tau Ceti are far apart, it would be a hassle for them to come all this way. I'd like to see what I can do with what we have on hand."

"Understood." Gruier nodded. "So where on the station were you planning on heading first?"

"The Downtown Harbor Sector." Marika pulled a pamphlet from the seat pocket and unfolded a blueprint of the station for Gruier. "Uptown is where all the big-name ships dock—cruise ships, warships—so tough luck finding people to sign on for just one job. Downtown is where you find the struggling ships and folks on loose contracts, crew who start looking for their next job as soon as they land. We can check out the listings at a temp agency, maybe get an idea for what kind of sailors are out there are looking for work."

"Aha, so we're heading for the Downtown Employment Office." Gruier scanned the pamphlet to get an idea of the station's layout and looked up at Marika. "Are you planning to go dressed like that?"

Marika glanced at Gruier in the seat next to her, dressed in her middle school uniform, then at herself; her high school uniform was basically the same thing, only slightly modified.

"...what's wrong with it?"

"Oh, it looks quite good on you, but I'm not sure anybody is going to give us the time of day at the employment office if we go down there wearing Hakuoh uniforms."

"All I want to do is check out the data, see what kind of people they have."

"It helps to think of it from their perspective. If the captain of a ship who wants to hire you is dressed like a schoolgirl, what are you going to think of her?"

Marika imagined it for herself and realized Gruier was right.

"I get what you're saying, but it's not like I'm going to go up to anyone and say, I'm the captain of a pirate ship, wanna join my crew?"

"All the more reason! Around here the Bentenmaru is famous for having a high school girl take over the ship, right?"

Marika's mouth flapped open with shocked realization.

"If you're not going in there with a security detail, then I think you'll be better off choosing an outfit that doesn't broadcast who you are."

"You're right...what a snafu." Marika tugged at the sleeve of her uniform jacket. "I guess I should have worn something a little more grownup, huh?"

"May I?" Gruier grabbed the pamphlet from Marika's hands. She cycled through the e-paper display until it showed the layout of the Uptown half of the station. "This shuttle's landing in Uptown, right? There's a nice fashion district there. Why don't you let me take care of it?"

"What?" Marika looked back at Gruier's face. She was beaming as she pored over the station's floorplan. Marika's voice shot up. "Whaaaat!?"

Marika was practically kidnapped, dragged to the duty-free fashion district lined with upscale boutiques for the rich and famous that she knew only by name—Scarlet Ashley, Kira Queen, Galactic Bohemian—where she was forced to become Princess Gruier's paper doll.

Their game plan was "adult and unassuming": a chic, made-to-measure business suit paired with high heels, a first for Marika. While they waited for their suits to finish being tailored Marika was dragged to a stylist, who did up her hair and even shored up her makeup.

An hour later she was a career girl, her immaturity and naivety concealed behind clothes and makeup. She checked herself out in the mirror of a spacious dressing room fit for a fashion show; her eyes went wide when she saw herself in the express-tailored suit.

"What is this makeup, some sort of special effects?"

Marika vogued into the mirror; her hair was pulled back into a bun, something that would stay hassle-free even in zero-gravity, and the makeup made her look like an entirely different person.

"You're positively glowing." Gruier popped into the ample dressing room wearing her own business suit; she looked back and forth between the real Marika and her reflection, clearly impressed. "I guess we sort of missed the mark on 'unassuming,' but at least no one is going to mistake you for a high schooler trawling for pirates."

"It's not like we're heading to a costume party." She turned to Gruier and was taken aback. While her slight frame and short stature still gave her an eccentric air, her pulled-back blonde hair and darker-than-natural makeup made her look even older than Marika herself. "Yeah, we're not exactly the party-circuit type."

"Disguise is just one more part of the job." Gruier pulled out a pair of professional-looking, silver-rimmed eyeglasses with deeply embellished arms and put them on; she beamed confidently at Marika. It was like she'd added another five years.

"We're lucky, glasses with built-in displays are all the rage right now. Here, I got a pair for you too."

She handed a pair of chic, flashy frames to Marika, who tried them on and looked at her reflection. She felt they made her look about twenty percent less friendly.

"Whoa, these make me look like I'm some kinda villainess."

"Sure, but at least you won't look out of place in a Downtown temp agency, right?" Gruier, in her black suit, sidled up to Marika in her dark blue number. "What do you think? Do we look like a career girl and her secretary?"

"I think we look like a job-hunting student who slipped off to a costume party and got waylaid by a plainclothes police officer," Marika said honestly, lowering her dark sunglasses and peering at Gruier over the frames. "Thanks, Gruier. I don't think anyone's going to clock me as a high schooler now. We might even raise a few eyebrows."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Only, why do I need such a short skirt?"

Marika bit on the arm of her glasses and tugged at the hem of her skirt; it was no longer than that of her school uniform. Gruier looked at her, confused.

"I thought we should go with something that's easy to move around in?"

"If the plan is that I'm supposed to know my way around the spacing industry, then I'd be expected to work in zero gravity. Wouldn't a pants suit be a better match for the business world?"

"Oh, but it looks so good on you." Gruier laughed, then put on a serious face and lowered her voice. "I hear that's what's in style right now. The boutiques here deal in the newest fashions from the core, long skirts are yesterday's news, they don't keep them in stock."

"Why would a sailor even care about the length of somebody's skirt?"

"But there's one other, very important reason." Gruier raised a finger and dropped her voice even further.

"Which is?"

"What would happen if, by some chance, someone still managed to recognize you?"

"Can you stop speaking in hypotheticals?"

"If someone were to see Captain Marika of the Bentenmaru in a pants suit, what do you think that would do to your reputation?"

"What do pants suits have to do with me and the Bentenmaru's reputation!?" Marika looked at Gruier's laughing face—she'd obviously come prepared for this debate—and sighed. "Anyway, should I assume from your own getup that you'll be going Downtown with me?"

"I figure I'll be more useful if I'm there with you, right?"

Marika considered it, obviously conflicted.

"Not that I think that royal charm of yours is going to work on me or anything, and maybe this is just my imagination, but doesn't it feel like I'm still missing something important?"

"From where I'm standing you're a proper career girl." Gruier reached over and placed Marika's smoky sunglasses over her eyes. "No one who sees you is going to mistake you for a kid, at any rate. As long as you watch your words and attitude we shouldn't have any trouble. And besides, if all you're doing is heading down to the spacers' guild to check out some data, you shouldn't need to talk to anybody, should you?"

"If all I wanted to do was look at the data I could have done that from school, without coming all the way up to the station." Marika shot a conflicted gaze at Gruier, who was dressed in her own trim, miniskirted business suit. "I'm not just here for the data; I want to see the people I might actually hire and where they work for myself."

Marika caught her reflection in the mirror one last time. Just to be safe she checked out her face in profile, and peered over her shoulder to catch a view from behind as well.

"Are we good? I still can't shake the feeling that I'm missing something big."

The Umi-no-ake waystation is a mid-sized, free-trade spaceport built using an efficient stacked-block construction. Consisting of a central core around which the various blocks are placed, new blocks are built up until they are able to maintain themselves independently by drawing their power from the system's sun.

The station's power and circulation systems are concentrated in the core, which is divided into two sections: Uptown, where luxury liners, warships, and regular shuttles from the surface come in to dock, and Downtown, which is frequented by irregular freighters and civilian ships with more questionable histories.

Marika and Gruier took the central shaft monorail from the Uptown Shopping Center's fashion district straight to the Downtown Harbor Sector.

The monorail could hardly be called new; it was Umi-no-ake Station's oldest transit system, and although careful attention was paid to maintaining it, the classic cars exuded an unmistakably retro sensibility. Once they'd left the station's core, however—both the station's gravitational center and home to its power generators—it felt as if everything had shifted from warm colors to cold, even the walls of the shaft. Marika cautiously eyed the car's passengers.

They passed from the Uptown Shopping Center through an office district and along the central shaft into Downtown, eventually arriving at the monorail's terminus in the Downtown Harbor Sector. Unlike Uptown, which was packed with travelers in business suits and formal clothes, the passengers from Downtown looked like they'd stepped right off their ships, wearing a mix of work jumpsuits, non-standard-issue military uniforms, and shipclothes that doubled as basic spacesuits; it gave a sense that space itself wasn't too far off.

Gruier disembarked at Harbor Sector Terminal; at the time the station was built this had been its only port. She scrolled through the suffocating cascade of information from her new glasses and looked around suspiciously at her surroundings.

"It's not exactly the most welcoming place, is it?"

"You don't think so?" Marika took in the old utilitarian construction of the terminal; it was a complete reversal from the fancy, posh design of Uptown. The central shaft ran for free at all times of the day; the area surrounding the terminal was filled with harbor offices both public and private, and fading sunlamps shone down on the dazzling collection of billboards and lighted signs.

"None of the sunlamps look like they've hit their limit—they're not flickering or dead—and there are signs advertising rooms for rent, there's not even any garbage in the streets. That's about as good as Downtown gets, don't you think?"

"You think so?" Gruier picked out their current location from the wealth of data to display in her field of view, tapping the glasses to stop the information from scrolling by as she looked around unconvinced. "It smells funny."

"Smells like engine treatment, and maybe ozone sterilizer from the recirculators. So uh, I think maybe you should forget about the glasses. If you're not used to them your eyes go all over the place when you try to focus on the display, it'll be pretty obvious you don't know what you're doing."

"Really?" Gruier blinked as she tried to take in her surroundings, faintly overlaid with a stock ticker. "Very well, I'll be careful."

"Alright, let's move out."

Marika set off from the plaza that surrounded Harbor Sector Terminal en route to the Downtown Harbor Employment Office. Although they'd hoped their business suits would keep them from sticking out, the two young women looked better suited for a soap opera than an office; it was hard to imagine they'd have an easy time blending in.

Marika pretended not to notice as she walked ahead of Gruier into the harbor complex's central mall. They'd made good use of the limited space: the ceilings were low for a government office, and there were counters and private data booths surrounding an ample waiting area.

Marika studied the signs over various windows—Permit Renewal, ID Issuance, Tax Processing, Financial Consulting—and grabbed a number from the reception console to queue for a private booth.

The reusable card immediately started flashing, informing her that it was her turn. She located the old-fashioned data booth with the same blue-colored light flashing above it and placed the card in the slot next to the door.

The door slid open without delay. Marika ushered Gruier inside and scanned the waiting area to make sure nobody suspicious was watching them, then slipped quickly into the booth.

The private data booth was furnished with a single, worn-out office chair and an old-fashioned data console with a lone flickering display. Marika sat down in the chair while Gruier peered at the control panel from behind her.

"Do you know how to use it?"

"The yacht club and the Bentenmaru are both full of all sorts of old hardware..." Marika tapped at the mechanical keyboard—a rare sight in everyday life—and brought the display to life. "Um, we aren't looking to register or hire...there we go, view data."

Once she'd deduced how to access the database—it looked as if it had been designed to be difficult to understand—she arrived at a list of personnel registered with the harbor office.

"Huh, availability...let's start with one week from now."

The harbor office had solid connections to shipping companies and ports in every sector of Imperial space. By starting with the job start date she could narrow down the vast list of registered personnel to a handful of ports.

"Necessary qualifications...let's start with getting the ship moving, they need to at least be able to operate a Category-I starship, and I'd like someone experienced, but nothing fancy, let's say a minimum of three years."

"Can you trust them?"

"Licenses are issued by official bodies, but I guess experience is self-reported. I imagine I can contact the other ships to confirm whether they were really part of the crew, but I'll have to take what they say with a grain of salt."

"Should you trust them?"

"Like I said, that's what I'm here to find out."

The list of registered personnel hit the display like a brick. Gruier looked at the number of results and shouted. "Three hundred and sixty thousand results!?"

"That is kinda overkill, huh? We'll need to whittle it down. Let's go with a navigator, um, at least five years experience, age doesn't matter, an Empire-issued first-class navigation license if possible, at least a hundred flight plans filed for a Category-I FTL starship..." The list of personnel data shaved itself down with each condition Marika added. "Sure are a lot of personnel here."

Finally she included presence on Umi-no-ake Station, and the list dropped to a dozen or so names.

"How can you tell them apart?" Gruier asked with a straight face. Marika stared closely at the list of names, trying to decide if any of them sounded familiar.

"I can't."

Names, head shots, age, sex, race—none of it was any help in making a decision.

Gruier glanced at the grumbling Marika and then took another peek at the list on the display.

"Well, as a captain, what is it that you value in your crew?"

"As a captain? When I joined the Bentenmaru, they were all there because they wanted to be pirates, even if not everybody put it in those words."

"So if you had to choose a new crew, what would be your number one priority? Ability? Personality?"

"I mean it's not like it trumps their abilities, but my crew's personalities are nothing but trouble. Which isn't to say I'm not a mess a problems myself either, but, uh..." Marika looked at Gruier, then returned her attention to the display. "All the Bentenmaru needs for a raid is people skilled enough to operate a normal starship. So I guess the most important thing I can ask for in a crew is people I can trust, people who can be counted on."

"Well from that perspective, who looks like the most trustworthy crewmember?"

"Ugh..." Marika groaned as she stared at the display. She expanded the head shots, but attractive or not, touched up or unedited, high-res or photocopied, she couldn't garner a thing from them.

"I know the least trustworthy people always have the most trustworthy faces. Ririka used to say that the devil shows up wearing the face of an angel..."

"Your mother?" Gruier smiled; she'd only met Marika's mom once, at Shin-Okuhama Spaceport. "So what are you going to do? All of these people are supposed to be on the station, we can go meet with them for ourselves."

"You think I'm going to be able to tell if I can trust someone just because I've seen them in person!?"

"You're a captain, isn't deciding that part of your job?" Gruier said matter-of-factly. Marika's eyes flitted towards her.

"I get that, really I do. But I also know I just don't have an eye for that sort of thing. Deciding whether I can trust someone, that's just not where I shine as a captain."

"But you are a captain. You're always handling things without enough time to prepare, without the necessary skills."

Marika looked at Gruier and sighed. "Is that what it's like for royalty too? Sometimes it feels like you've lived three times as long as me."

"My apologies." Gruier smiled sarcastically. "Where I'm from, things are rarely easy."

"I guess the royalty's job is to make it look to everybody watching like everything is running smoothly." Marika turned her eyes back to the display. "You're right, grumbling isn't going to get me anywhere. It's true I can't read people. So I'm either going to have to train myself to do it, and fast, or find someone who can do it for me." Marika turned to Gruier, who was peering at the display from behind her. "I'm counting on you."

"Right." Gruier nodded, mostly out of reflex, before she'd realized what Marika meant. "Wait, what!? But I don't know anything about flying or navigating a starship, or how to fix the engines, or read the electronics!"

"You know enough. Don't worry, I don't need you to judge their skills, just their personalities. I'm sure you have more people experience than I do."

"But that's all just acting friendly and minding my manners." Gruier looked nervously back over the list. "How are you planning to get an impression of them?"

"We went over this, didn't we? We check the sailors out directly." Marika copied the list onto a datacard, then navigated over to a list of pilots and narrowed them down in the same fashion. "I didn't come to the station today thinking I was going to just up and put together a crew. But maybe if we scope out the people looking for work it'll give me some clue to go on."

But it would take more than a bridge crew to run a starship. Even ignoring the large number of the Bentenmaru's crew who pulled double-duty as combat personnel, it took more than a dozen people just to get the ship moving, and at least dozens more to keep the ship running properly.

Without knowing how long it would take to compile a complete list of potential crew, Marika knocked out lists for the most important jobs and transferred them to her personal handset.

She disconnected the old business terminal and made sure that the information on its tiny display matched the last of the data she had transferred.

"Well then, shall we be off?"

"Where to?"

"To where all the spacers hang out. Some things never change: if it's sailors you're looking for, you gotta find yourself a port."

"I thought you said that there would be sailors at the port?" Gruier whispered, unable to conceal her nervousness.

"Don't look at me! I don't really get it, but this is just how things are." Marika examined their surroundings through the obscuring lenses of her glasses. "The only sailors at the port are the ones who already have jobs here."

She reached for the table's touch display. She switched from the cycle of gaudy advertisements to the menu and, lacking much of an appetite, scanned the drink list.

"I told you already, I'm not interested in alcohol." The food court's menu included high-ABV hard liquor and even drugs; Marika swiped to the list of soft drinks.

"Whoa!"

It was chock-full of wicked-looking mixed juices and smoothies whose names merely hinted at what they might contain, as well as an onslaught of name-brand waters; she saw nothing like the natural teas or juices she knew from the Lamp House.

Marika gave up and ordered the least problematic-looking bottle of mineral water she could find.

"Gruier, you want something to drink?"

"I might as well while we're here."

Marika grew concerned as she noticed Gruier's gaze loitering over the list of smoothies, with their jarring names and colorful sample photos.

"Uh, I hate to butt in, but maybe it's best to not try something so questionable, you never know what you're actually getting."

"W-what? What could I possibly want with these absurd, flashy shakes?"

"Don't tell me they didn't catch your eye."

Gruier hesitated, but eventually nodded.

"I know how you feel, but Ririka always says that the junk they serve in places like this is dangerous. Hold back for now, when we get back to the surface I'll show you someplace nice."

"...I'll have whatever you're having." Looking slightly disappointed, Gruier added an order of the same bottled mineral water as Marika.

Marika surveyed the dockside food court.

The Harbor Sector's number-2 dock, at the tail end of Downtown's gravity well, was, along with the Uptown Harbor Sector's number-1 dock, the closest place on the station to space itself. The space was massive, with numerous gangways radiating out from a central pier, and until the establishment of the Uptown Harbor Sector it had been Umi-no-ake Station's largest enclosed area. Even with an airtight shield maintaining pressure as the massive shiplocks opened and closed, the facilities along the central pier were constructed to allow them to be sealed off and maintain their own atmosphere in an emergency.

Around half of the gangways were occupied; they fell under the effects of the station's artificial gravity, and were meant for embarking and disembarking passengers and cargo and for minor maintenance. There were a number of ships moored there, passenger shuttles not classy enough for Uptown, high-speed transports that looked like they were ex-military or container ships from major shipping companies, and small, privately-owned vessels using gangways designed for larger ships.

Old, self-propelled carts scooted through the area, their rotating lights warning people out of their paths. One stopped next to their table and extended a robotic arm equipped with a laser sensor; Marika flashed an unsigned prepaid card to cover their drinks.

The wagon confirmed her payment, and the robot arm pulled the packs of mineral water from its cooler, placed them on the table, and then retreated. Marika grabbed one of the zero-gravity water packs. It was properly chilled.

She opened the water pack—they were a common sight on ships, stations, and even on the surface—and took another look around the food court. Butting up against the dock, it looked like it had been cobbled together out of scrap and old ship parts. The space doubled as a warehouse and was equipped with the bare minimum to support a sealed atmosphere in case of an emergency.

"I doubt they've ever had to seal this place off in an emergency, I'm not sure the yearly inspections alone are enough to go by."

Located within sight of the arriving and departing ships, the Harbor Sector's food court was a welcome source of sustenance for sailors and harbor employees. She couldn't pick out anyone wearing spacesuits, not inside the pressurized environment, but several of the tables were filled with groups of uniformed ships' crew and dockworkers. The sailors were making plans over three-dimensional star charts, the dockworkers filling their stomachs with enough food to look like they were making a competition of it.

"Nobody looks like they're particularly free," Gruier said directly, casting a glance over at the uniformed sailors.

"Like I said, we're not going to find people for the Bentenmaru just by picking them up off the street." Marika gave the food court a once-over and turned her gaze back to the water pack. "Licenses can be useful for harbor jobs. If there are people who have them, I bet that's where they'll be working," she said, unwilling to let her point go. She glanced out the corner of her eye at a group of maintenance workers with a few uniformed dockworkers mixed in.

"So what are you going to do?" Gruier fiddled with the spout on her water pack while she gave the food court another look around. "Wait a little bit? They may not be here now, but maybe eventually someone useful-looking will show up."

"That would be nice, wouldn't it?" Marika set her glasses to overlay an arrival and departure schedule on her field of view. "There's only one high-speed transport set to enter the gravity ring today, and three more with reservations at the outer docking port. Even if they have business in the harbor, I don't have high hopes for any of their crew mustering out or looking for a change of career."

"So the only crew we're going to find here are ones who already have jobs?"

"Seems that way." Marika shook her head, frustrated. "Now that I think about it, these transports don't operate with enough wiggle room that they can hire new crews for every flight they make. It's not like during the Age of Sail; the days when you had enough time to scrape together a new crew at every port are long gone."

"Well then let's use today to see what kind of people modern starship crews are made of." Gruier sipped from the unfamiliar water pack and looked around the food court. "This is a port for merchant ships—freighters, cruise ships—right?"

"I guess?" Marika looked at Gruier through her glasses while she let the water pack dangle from her mouth. Gruier stared past Marika's shoulder and spoke up.

"And anyone who fly a merchant ship can operate a pirate ship too, right?"

"Um..." Marika ran through a list of the skills and abilities of the Bentenmaru's crew, starting with the bridge crew. "I mean, pirate ships operate outside the law, so I'd prefer some diverse talent, but this isn't the time to be picky. If they can fly the ship and get this job over with, that's good enough for me...why do you ask?"

Marika caught Gruier's eyes behind her frames and followed the line of her gaze behind her.

"Don't let them notice you." Gruier averted her eyes and picked at the spout of her water pack with her fingers. "There are some rough-looking sailors walking by...oh no, they're headed right for us."

The sound of metal-studded soles clicking against the food court's old composite floor drew closer. It took significant effort for Marika to not set down her water and turn around.

"You the girl they say is lookin' for sailors?"

Marika straightened up in response to the thick, almost jocular voice calling her out. Gruier avoided eye contact with them; Marika could tell she was uncharacteristically nervous.

"I am," Marika answered, her back still turned to what she could sense were multiple people. She was conscious of the handset in her jacket pocket. All she had to do was activate the emergency buzzer and the harbor police would be there in no time. "Though it's not me who's looking, but my employer."

Marika could hear two other voices react; they sounded impressed. She briefly regretted not having brought a weapon for self defense. She'd boarded the shuttle for the station right after leaving school; she didn't even have something concealed. She'd learned her way around small arms after deciding to take over the Bentenmaru, but no one, not even her firearms coach Schnitzer, would let her walk around with even so much as a tiny beamgun. They all said that an unfamiliar weapon was all the more dangerous.

She tried to remain inconspicuous as she took a deep breath, and turned around as she rose from the table. "It's nice to meet you. I'm an agent for the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate."

A large, red-faced man with with a scraggly beard and a long coat stared down at Marika together with a few of his associates.

Marika remained composed as she removed her glasses and bowed carefully. "My name is Olivia de Havilland."

Marika scanned the men's faces as she gave the name of an actress she'd once seen in an old film with her mother. The men at the bearded one's back looked no less tough; wearing flight jackets and overalls, they looked like they'd just stepped off a starship.

"Well then you're in luck, little lady," said the man with the scraggly beard, laughing crudely as he pounded at the sturdy chest underneath his T-shirt. "You got yourself a couple of men who know how to fly a ship right here. We'll even give you a discount, whaddaya say you snatch up the lot of us?"

"Oh, that happens to be just what I'm in the market for," Marika responded, flashing her retail smile. "But do I really look so desperate that I'd jump at the first offer that comes my way, without at least asking what kind of ship you fly or what kind of work you do?"

The men in back, who'd been wearing the same crude smiles, threw glances at each other, apparently taken slightly off guard.

The man with the scraggly beard shot Marika a confused, surprised look. "You lookin' for a resume? This is space. Age, experience, gender, none of that matters. It's all about skill."

"My apologies." Marika dipped her head gently. "The truth is, this is my first time looking to put together a crew. I realize I don't have an eye for this sort of thing, so would you mind if I asked what it is you do and what kind of ships you've flown on?"

Marika smiled warmly at the men in the back; they looked like someone had thrown them together as a boarding party or raiding group.

"Obviously all we care about is skill, not age or experience. Qualifications don't matter as long as you know what you're doing, but if you don't, that's going to be a problem." Marika looked up at the scraggly-bearded man's large face. "So, Captain, what ships have you served on in the past?"

His centipede eyebrows jumped above his surprised eyes.

"How could you tell I'm a captain?"

Marika gave the scraggly-bearded man and the entourage behind him another once-over, as if she were struggling to find an answer.

"You've got that air, I guess. You just looked like a captain. Apparently I was right."

The rest of them stood there with bemused looks on their faces while they waited for the scraggly-bearded man's response.

"Ya don't say...you may not look like you belong in this port, but you sure got a backbone and a good eye," he said, then turned to Gruier at the far side of the table; she was half-standing, as if she were about to run at any moment.

"Hey!" Suddenly a shrill voice, out of place in the wharf, ripped through the food court. "What do you think you're doing, old man?"

Before she knew it Marika had turned in the direction of the familiar soprano, her eyes wide with surprise. Its owner was a slender girl with black hair, dressed in a spacer's jumpsuit and a beat-up windbreaker, her steel-shod boots echoing as she charged toward them.

"Chiaki-chan!?"

Her eyes bounced from Marika to the man with the scraggly beard, then back to Marika's face.

"What!?" Chiaki nearly stopped in her tracks when she heard her name shouted. She dashed toward the table. "Marika!" she said quietly, glaring at her. "What the hell are you doing here, and dressed like that?"

"Wait, did you say...old man?" Marika looked at the scraggly-bearded man again, echoing Chiaki's words. It finally hit her. "Don't tell me this is your dad!?"

The man and his entourage pulled themselves up to full height, as if they'd been waiting all along for the opportunity. He gave a spacer's salute, elbow tucked to the side, a smirk plastered on his face the entire time. "Kenjo Kurihara. You've been a good friend to my daughter."

Caught up in the formality, Marika quickly offered a deep bow.

"Oh, I'm Katou Marika. I owe Chiaki a lot as well."

Gruier looked back and forth between the bearded man and the jumpsuited girl, and her eyes grew wide. "Kenjo Kurihara? Captain Blackbeard of the pirate ship Barbarossa!?"

"In the flesh." Gruier shot up and slammed both hands against the table; Kenjo bent his giant frame at the knee. "And you must be Princess Gruier of the Serenity Royal Family, I presume. I hope you'll forgive my rudeness."

At her father's words, Chiaki took another look at the girl in the suit seated opposite Marika. Gruier immediately switched on her socialite smile and charm, and nodded softly.

"I am incognito at the moment. I would appreciate it if you could refrain from calling me Princess."

"As you wish."

Captain Kurihara rose from his deep genuflect. He looked around the food court. The number of customers was small enough to count, and none of them had displayed much interest in their little act.

He turned to Marika. "If you want to talk without drawing attention, it'd probably be better to do it while we walk around the wharf. How 'bout it, Captain Marika?"

Marika queried Chiaki's face. Chiaki was dispassionately appraising her and Gruier's suits. "Either way, stay here dressed like that and you're gonna start attracting attention."

Marika gave her suit another once-over. "You don't think it suits me?"

Chiaki shrugged. "It's not a question of how it looks on you. No one would bat an eyelash at a fierce career girl in the Uptown number-1 dock, but down here? I mean, imagine this seedy bunch wandering around your school in their work clothes. Same deal."

Marika looked at Kenjo and his men and how they blended in with the other spacers at the food court and the drab colors of the interior.

"It's uh, a bit too much?"

"Perhaps I should have considered something more appropriate?" Gruier asked, worried, but Chiaki shook her head solemnly.

"I don't know what you came here to do, but you don't look like you're here on business. You look more like you got lost or were tricked into coming here."

"You men grab whatever you want," Captain Kenjo called to his men. "Umi-no-ake Station's big selling point is the fresh food they haul up from the surface; Uptown or Downtown, doesn't matter. Course if you want something familiar you can always grab something simple like a hotdog or a sandwich, just don't get hung up on the sauces." He turned to Marika and Gruier. "I'll see you two outside."

The rest of his men saluted, hands across their chests. Gruier nodded back at them, and Marika frantically tried to bow to Kenjo and his men.

She watched the Barbarossa's crew descend on the vending machines and stalls, and let out a heavy sigh.

"What just happened?" Gruier asked as Marika sank into her chair.

"I'm not sure..." Marika polished off her water and watched Kenjo Kurihara pace to a corner of the food court. "I was sure they were just a bunch of goons. And it turns they were the captain of the Barbarossa and his men. I really have no idea what I'm looking for."

"I'm not sure there's that much difference between a bunch of goons and a bunch of pirates." Chiaki glanced back to see if they were planning on following, and Gruier nodded. She rose from her seat and winked at the crestfallen Marika. "Don't feel too bad. I thought they were a bunch of troublemaking criminals too."

Downtown's number-2 dock is second largest space on the station, right after Uptown's number-1 dock. The airshield maintains pressure even as starships come and go, and an artificial gravity emanates from the floor; together they make the environment feel similar to being planetside.

A number of fixed piers jutted from the central dock out into the vast space; Marika strolled along beside the captain of the pirate ship Barbarossa and a number of his crew. Most of the piers were empty. Docking fees to enter the expansive wharf with its breathable atmosphere were expensive, and unless you were a passenger vessel, a private yacht with the operating expenses to spare, or had special circumstances, you didn't enter the port.

"We're moored outside too," Captain Kenjo said, glancing sidelong at the noticeably empty wharf. "We're just a lowly pirate ship; hell, I don't even know if our ship meets the safety standards to come inside."

"Dad!" Chiaki fumed. "Don't go blabbing about our ship!"

"Oh, right."

Marika didn't know many details about her fellow pirates. But if their pirate's license had been issued during the War of Independence, then the Barbarossa must have been just as old and rundown as the Bentenmaru.

"I guess the Barbarossa has been around practically as long as we have."

"Sure, and like you we've had all sorts of upgrades. Of course these newer systems are all automated, ain't no place for a real crew these days."

"Yeah, it's a struggle just to keep everything moving," Marika agreed. "You'd think that by getting rid of the busywork it'd be less of a struggle, but I guess that's not how things work."

"Is that what you're doing here? Struggling over busywork?" Chiaki stared dubiously at Marika and Gruier in their miniskirted business suits. "Our calendar says Hakuoh was supposed to have classes today. What are you doing here after school and dressed to the nines?"

"Well, uh, you see..."

Marika had assumed that when Harold Lloyd had hired the Barbarossa to take over their job that they'd had an agent explain the situation. She quickly bowed her head to Kenjo while she tried to think of a reason for needing to keep the details hidden from fellow pirates who were helping them out.

"Oh, by the way, I appreciate you helping us out by taking over the raid on the Queen Emeraldas. I'm sure you must be busy!"

"Actually, I should be thanking you." Kenjo flashed her a tension-splitting smile. "It's a glorious sight every time we get to fill in for the Bentenmaru."

"Dad!" Chiaki sensed her father's smug expression and targeted him with a roundhouse kick. "I told you to cut it out!"

"Did I miss something?" Marika asked Chiaki, worried. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Don't ask!"

"I was hoping Chiaki would handle the job herself, but unfortunately she says she has other plans. The Barbarossa will still be making the raid on the Queen Emeraldas for Harold Lloyd, but Chiaki won't be making an appearance."

Kenjo flashed a toothy grin while Chiaki turned to Marika.

"You still haven't answered my question. What are you doing here?"

"Well..." Marika's voice trailed off. "I'm looking for crew. For the Bentenmaru."

"What?"

"Thanks to uh, certain circumstances, the whole crew is in quarantine and can't work, and I need to find replacements, so..."

"This isn't the kind of place you should be looking for a crew!" Chiaki shouted. "You should be up in Uptown's number-1 dock! You really thought you'd be able to land a crew down here in a getup like that!?"

"But the ships in the number-1 dock run on rigid flight plans, I'd never be able to snipe their crews." Marika pouted as she voiced her hollow objections. "Even I know I'll find more people in the number-2 dock!"

"Unbelievable!" Chiaki shouted, without regard for who may have been watching. "You were really planning to put together a crew for a pirate ship with god-only-knows who you could find laying about this backwater station!?"

"We're not a backwater! Our station is the biggest one around here, lots of ships pass through it!" Marika grumbled in protest, her face clearly showing her frustration.

"You're a pirate captain of all things, what are you even doing stumbling around a place like this dressed like that? This bearded bozo thought you were just joking around, you're lucky he's the only person who tried to mess with you."

"You thought we were joking!?" Gruier shouted. Marika looked at Chiaki, confused.

"What do you mean we're lucky?"

"I hate to say it, but it's probably better you got solicited by him instead of some shifty fixer. If someone had found out that the captain of the Bentenmaru was wandering around without any bodyguards, who knows who might have shown up!"

Chiaki noticed Marika staring at her, a dubious look on her face.

"Wait, why aren't you surprised to find out I was looking for a crew? Of all the things for you to get mad about, I'd thought that would be it."

Chiaki was about to shoot back a response but her mouth simply hung open. Marika turned to Kenjo.

"Uh, please don't tell me that the situation with the Bentenmaru got leaked to the Barbarossa?"

"We do work for the same insurance company, after all." Kenjo's teeth flashed from behind his scraggly beard as he laughed. "Shou over at Harold Lloyd only told us as much as we needed to know. So it's true that the Bentenmaru is grounded and the crew's laid up?"

Marika glanced at Chiaki—she looked like she had a lot she wanted to say—and hung her head as she turned back to Kenjo.

"It's true. The short version is that right now the Bentenmaru is short-staffed and can't even fly. It's only temporary though, they should all be back in fighting shape soon enough."

"So then what's the Captain doing coming here in person to hire a crew?"

Marika stared back at Kenjo.

"If we can't work while we wait for them to recover, the Bentenmaru's license is going to get revoked. So if I'm going to need to put together a crew to take the Bentenmaru on a job, I figured this was the first place I should look."

Kenjo turned to Chiaki and shook his head. Chiaki proudly puffed out her chest. "See, told ya so."

"Hey, I figured it had to be something like that." Kenjo ran his thick fingers through his disheveled hair. "Not like I was surprised when you said you were heading back to school on Umi-no-ake..."

"You're coming back?"

Marika turned suddenly to Chiaki. She looked away as she snapped at Marika. "What? Pirate ships skirt the edges of the law, you think you're gonna find a crew you can trust on a moment's notice?"

"Like I said, we need a crew if we're going to work. And how am I supposed to decide whether I can trust them if I can't even see their faces?"

Chiaki let out an exaggerated sigh. "Are you oblivious? You've got trustworthy people who know how to operate a starship waiting all around you."

"Waiting all around me?" Marika repeated, confused. "People who can fly a ship? People I can trust?"

"Loads of them."

"Where?" Marika asked innocently. Chiaki stabbed her finger at Marika.

"At your school. Your club should be full of people who can fly a ship."

Marika's eyes went wide as they focused on the finger in her face.

"My school...club...the yacht club!?"

Chiaki nodded, a satisfied smile spreading across her lips.

Marika thought for a moment before she erupted. "You want me to take the yacht club on board the Bentenmaru!?"

Chapter 3: Training Vessel, Anchors Aweigh!

"The sailing trainer in wharf C68 is requesting permission to leave port."

The Odette II submitted its departure request to station control during the afternoon lull, after the larger vessels had all docked or departed and the spacelanes were temporarily clear.

"Goes a lot faster when they're not bringing the ship out for the first time in twenty years, I guess. Not like last time."

Station control ran an automated verification on the departure request to ensure that all the necessary documents were in order. The training voyage was only to take them to the outer planets of the Tau Ceti system and back. Longer than their last trip, but they were well-stocked and well-maintained; the trainer's ample crew wouldn't be having any problems.

"Hakuoh Girls' Academy's sailer training ship, huh?" One of station control's staff brought the Odette II's departure request up on the display. "They've been at it the last two days trying to get everything ready. I wasn't sure they were going to make it in time, glad to see they're still on schedule."

"They're a slow, historic, non-FTL-capable Category-II sailing ship; if anything happens to them I'm sure the defense force will be there to help in no time."

"They went through a lot of trouble just so they could launch and dock when they wouldn't be getting in anybody's way. As long as there aren't any changes to their documents or the flight plan, we shouldn't have a problem clearing them to go now."

"Why so hasty?" The flight controller's partner cheerfully switched comm channels. "The girls are finally getting their trainer out of dock. Let's give them a video send-off instead of a boring old text message."

"Aha. Not a bad idea." The flight controller opened a hardline connection to the dock where the Odette II was still moored. "This is Umi-no-ake station control to wharf C68, Odette II, do you copy?"

"This is the Odette II, Hakuoh Girls' Academy Yacht Club President Lynn Lambretta speaking." A striking, short-haired girl appeared on the monitor as if she had been waiting for their hail. Her old-fashioned headset—no longer used on modern ships—seemed to suit her. "We're currently docked in wharf C68."

The flight controller quickly corrected his posture when he heard the high schooler's clear voice. He could see other crewmembers floating around still attending to things in the background of the shot.

"Uh, this is station control. We've received the Odette II's permission to depart."

"Was there a problem with the forms?"

The flight controller watched as concern flooded her placid eyes and shook his head. "No, there are no problems. Everything is in order. You've got such a nice ship, I just thought I'd hand down your departure permission in person."

"Oh!" Lynn smiled pleasantly through the monitor. "Thank you for taking the time to think about us."

"Oh, it's no trouble at all," he answered casually, then noticed his partner grinning as he watched their conversation. He quickly tensed up. "Ah, Umi-no-ake station control formally grants the Odette II permission to depart. Your requested departure path is clear. Have a safe trip."

"Thank you very much." The young comm operator with the old-fashioned headset gave a proper bow. "I hope things go smoothly on the station as well."

"Ah, thank you."

The flight controller watched the scene on the Odette II's bridge. The comm operator watched him curiously and asked, "Um, may we close the video channel now?"

"Ah, yes, of course. My apologies. Be careful leaving the dock."

"Thank you for your concern. Have a nice day."

Lynn bowed again and cut the monitor. She switched the headset over to the ship's internal channel.

"Station control gave us permission to leave! Open the dock and let's get out of here!"

Wharf C68's atmosphere had already been vented in preparation for opening. Operating things remotely from the main bridge, they began to open the dock to space.

After confirming that their departure sequence was moving along as it should, club president Lynn Lambretta looked back from the comm operator's seat to Marika in the captain's chair.

"Looks like they're letting us go. Went through all that work rigging up a dummy image of the captain for nothing."

"Hey, we're a weird ship with a conspicuous crew, I didn't think they'd leave our whole departure up to a computer." Marika sighed and removed the oversized captain's hat that matched the oversized uniform she was wearing. "Who'd have imagined they'd send us off without at least confirming we had a captain on board? Nice work Lynn."

Operating a ship as large as the Odette II required that someone on board hold an interstellar ship's license. Marika's pirate's license for the Bentenmaru automatically included a captain's license, but she couldn't use it in place of a license for the sailing trainer.

Given the emergency, the yacht club was using the Class-2 ship's license of their club advisor—and qualified captain—Kane MacDougal to fly the Odette II, the same one they had used their last time out.

The relevant data was saved in the club's computers. Fortunately his license was still valid, and all of the preparations for their voyage—launch permission, flight plan—had been filed with the appropriate bodies in Kane's name.

As a training vessel registered to an educational institution, they also required the presence of a ship's doctor on board. They likewise reused Misa Grandwood's medical license and the corresponding forms from their last training voyage, and then went about the rest of the work of preparing the Odette II for launch.

But neither Kane nor Misa were on board the Odette II. While they could make any number of excuses in the event of a surprise inspection by the Harbor Authority, if station control had attempted to confirm the captain's presence as they were about to launch they would have been found out.

And so Marika and yacht club president Lynn Lambretta had prepared fake visual comm data of Kane.

Lynn, who'd been arrested in middle school for network cracking, combined her excellent visual sense with her hacking skills to construct a visual overlay that would create a doppelganger in the captain's chair, indistinguishable from the real thing, in hopes of beating a visual verification.

The captain's chair double would look and sound just like Kane over a video comm channel. When the message came from station control, they'd thought for sure they would want to talk to the captain, but when they simply gave the comm operator permission to depart, Marika breathed a sigh of relief.

"This is no time to slack off!" Chiaki chided Marika from the navigator's station. "We haven't even got the Odette II moving yet. You can relax once we get the ship out of the station's zone of control."

"Fine, fine, I get it." Marika snagged the captain's hat as it had started to drift away on the weightless bridge and shoved it into the space underneath her control panel, then looked around the bridge.

"The dock doors will be open momentarily!"

Several external monitors at points throughout the bridge showed space through the yawning doors of the dock.

Marika scanned the displays surrounding the captain's chair and confirmed their departure preparations. "Is the Odette II ready to launch?"

"Navigation systems are nominal!"

"Power systems are operating normally. Radar is running at fifty percent output."

"No problems in engineering!"

"Standard propulsion and maneuvering systems are all good!"

"Environmental systems all green!"

A flurry of reports came to the captain's chair from not only the main bridge, but also from club members who'd been making their launch preparations throughout the ship. All systems were go for launch. Even the cyberwarfare equipment was powered on and doing more than simply running the radar at minimal output; its other mysterious elements were necessary for the Odette II to function properly as a starship.

Marika noted each member of the bridge crew at their positions. The helm was manned by a freshman, a former winner of a local middle school dinghy race.

Even from behind Marika could notice their helmsman was pathetically nervous; she called out to her. "Loosen up a little, Ai!"

"Y-yes ma'am!" she answered. Her anti-G seat was moved all the way forward and both her hands were hovering over the controls.

"We've got limiters, they'll stop us if it looks like we're going to hit anything. You can set it to autopilot until we're out of the dock."

"I, I, I'll be fine!" she replied, stumbling over her words. "I'm just excited, I've never flown a ship this big before. As long as it moves like in the simulator I'll be fine taking us out of dock and into space on full-manual!"

"The dock doors are fully retracted!"

The bridge received a signal informing them that the shield covering wharf C68 was completely open. The report was delivered by one of the freshmen, who was watching a monitor display a simplified image of the Odette II surrounded by the enclosed wharf's shield cover as it spread apart like the petals of a flower.

Marika handed down the next order.

"Take us out of dock! Release the locking arms!"

"Dockside locking arms released!"

The sturdy crane arms that held the ship fast to the dock disengaged, their muted noise reverberating all the way to the bridge. The ship's position remained stable, but as the cranes' retracted they were that much further from the station.

"All locking arms confirmed disengaged!"

"The Odette II is free!"

"Alright, let's move," Marika shouted, loud enough that everyone on the ship could hear. "Odette II, launch!"

"Odette II, launching!"

At the helm, Ai nudged the control stick forward, and the Odette II began to move up and out. Lightweight relative to its size, the Odette II responded faithfully to her movements.

With its nine masts still folded in next to the slender hull, the Odette II set off from wharf C68 and out into space. It slowly slipped away from the dock, using only minimal control thrust to maintain its facing, and then began to accelerate forward. Until they moved away from the station they were only permitted the attitude control thrusters for propulsion; the more efficient main drive with its high-velocity plasma was off-limits until they reached a safe enough distance.

But even the low-power attitude thrusters were sufficient to move the large but lightweight Odette II. The pristine white sailing ship with its nine triangularly-arranged masts folded against the hull transitioned from the dock into space.

"The ship has left the dock!" a freshman reported. In the captain's chair, Marika counted down on her fingers, a cheerless expression on her face.

"At this point, if anyone were to find out about the fake captain's or medical licenses, or the falsified passenger manifest..."

"You're really going to worry about that now?" Lynn turned around in the comm operator's seat to glare at Marika.

"No." Marika let out a sigh. "It's just, when we first took the Odette II out we were so concerned about not getting snagged for any violations. Why is everyone fine with breaking the rules all of a sudden?"

"You're the one who decided to turn these sweet, innocent schoolgirls into pirates, Captain; don't tell me you're going soft now?"

"Piracy? It's not the piracy I'm worried about," Marika said with a frown, as if she were trying to convince herself. "We've got a proper license issued by the authorities, insurance companies and militaries hire us to do official jobs, there's nothing illegal about it. But what we're doing now is a clear-cut violation of space regulations. Why is everybody okay ignoring that?"

"The law exists to make people's lives easier." Lynn turned back to the comm panel, slid her fingers across the controls, and began monitoring for messages in their vicinity. "If following the law would just make things harder, then it's okay to ignore it, play ball for the other side for a bit."

"Anybody ever tell you you'd make a good crook?"

"Yeah. The cops. When I was in middle school," Lynn said bluntly as she moved from the comm panel to the cyberwarfare station. Everyone on the bridge who knew about their club president's past fell awkwardly silent. "Don't worry, in the end we'd only be facing a plea bargain. When it comes to the law you can at least negotiate; there are board games with stricter rules."

Lynn flew gracefully across the weightless bridge and landed in the cyberwarfare operator's seat. She deftly flipped the switches on the control panel.

"Huh."

"The trick to breaking the law is to do it so you don't bother anyone and no one notices. The people whose job it is to enforce the law, there's nothing they hate more than knowing that a law's being broken. But what they don't know can't hurt them."

"Everybody forget what she just said!" Marika yelled to the rest of the bridge crew. "Unless you want to end up a hardened criminal like our president!"

Laughter exploded across the bridge.

Marika checked the display to ensure that there were no ships or traffic restrictions that might interfere with the Odette II's course. It looked like she could leave the rest up to Ai; she vacated the captain's chair and floated over to the cyberwarfare station. "Please don't start jamming people or anything while we're out here."

"No worries, it's set to passive mode." The cyberwarfare station's panels sprang back to life, and several other dead screens around the main bridge lit up along with it. "Besides, I don't know anyone brave enough to start tossing around virtual flak in front of all those warships parked at the station."

"The only one I'm worried about is you!"

"Ease up, I'll play nice. Besides, we need this baby to do its job while the Odette II is flying."

The Odette II's last flight plan had taken them around the far side of the Tau Ceti star and back, but this time would be different. They were making a circumnavigation through the outer planets. Most of the flight, however, would be unmanned, and setting up the systems to manage it had been a major headache.

"Will we be alright?" Marika asked, glancing worriedly at the control panel in front of Lynn. While the Odette II was equipped with an autopilot, as a sailing ship it still functioned primarily on manpower. A long voyage, and especially along an orbit that required the ship to change course on its own, would need a complex autopilot program capable of handling a variety of situations.

"I'm pretty sure it'll get the job done." Lynn started a quick shakedown of the cyberwarfare system once it had booted up. "Besides, it won't be a totally unmanned flight; we should be able to grab the flight data and control the ship remotely. Oh, thanks for letting me hook up HAL, by the way."

"Just please, please don't go teaching the Odette II anything weird."

Marika recalled Jenny, the former club president, saying the same thing on their last training cruise. Lynn—who referred to her beloved computer by name rather than model—had piled upgrade after upgrade into the small, military-grade notebook that she'd somehow gotten her hands on. She claimed that she cared more about durability and reliability than she did about functionality, but the notebook was powerful enough to rival one of their school's supercomputers, and contained a wealth of oddities, including a piloting program. No one besides Lynn even knew how to use it.

"This ship isn't just ours; we need to leave it for the next generation of students."

"Ya know, Jenny said the same thing," Lynn said with a pout. Marika turned to her with a look of surprise. Even the thin, blast-resistant case of the military-grade computer was riddled with modifications. Lynn opened it and neatly connected it to the cyberwarfare system via a thick network cable. "There's nothing to worry about, I don't think HAL and I would have an easy time doing anything to these ancient systems. If anything, you should be worried whether the Bentenmaru is even going to listen to us."

"The Odette II was a converted cruiser and then a training ship, and it's spent the last couple dozen years in dock; the Bentenmaru should be even more up to date." Marika pictured Coorie single-handedly working the Bentenmaru's cyberwarfare systems. "If anything, it'll be more complicated and confusing than here."

"I'm sure we'll figure something out. We've got Chiaki-chan here to help, after all." Lynn's eyes jumped to Chiaki over in the navigator's seat.

"The Bentenmaru has two technomancers on board." Chiaki sent an image of the Odette II's planned course to the main bridge's largest monitor. "And it was in active service until just recently. I'd think it would be easier to handle than this ship."

"But it's those two technomancers that are the problem," Lynn replied, her hands busy. "It takes a lot of babysitting and oversight to keep computers and electronics up and running twenty-four-seven. I don't know if I'd be able to make heads or tails of their systems even if I had the manuals to study beforehand, and now they're just being dropped in my lap."

"If everything goes according to plan we won't be doing any electronic warfare on either the Odette II or the Bentenmaru." Marika smirked. "We just need to get the ship moving, that's it."

"Fine, fine, I guess we can start by tricking this sailer into moving like a proper starship."

"Station control has given us permission to move under sail power!" Marie reported from the comm station where she'd taken Lynn's place. Marika somersaulted back to the captain's chair and read the body of station control's message.

The Odette II was still within the station's zone of control, where they usually wouldn't be permitted to run under sails. But the spacelanes contained no approaching ships, so apparently station control had decided to throw them a bone and let them fly with the Tau Ceti solar wind at their backs.

"Message from station control confirmed. Marie, send them a confirmation and our thanks; a form letter's fine. It's a bit sooner than expected, but everybody prepare to switch to sail power!"

"We're not prepped for EVA work yet!" the third-year sail operator shouted.

On their last training voyage they'd run into trouble when the yards had gotten tangled on the mainmast the first time they tried to deploy them. Since then they'd repaired and tested them and were able to deploy the sails without problem, but they'd learned their lesson from last time, and their training regimen now included a spacesuited EVA team whenever they were running on sails.

"What'll we do if the masts get stuck on each other like last time?"

"Sure, it might be a little embarrassing if we have to stop in the middle of deploying the masts while we're still within view of the station, but we are a training vessel, they won't come down on us that hard." Marika checked the locations of the club members throughout the ship. They were still mired in the post-launch chaos. "Have the EVA team assemble in the center airlock and ready their suits as soon as they're done with whatever they're working on. We planned for this, if the masts get snagged we'll deal with it then."

"Roger." The third-year sail operator turned skeptically to the control panel that would deploy the ship's nine triangularly-arranged masts. The task was primarily automated: all she had to do was enter the command and the masts and yards would simply move in accordance with the input from the helm. "Alright. Beginning deployment of the Odette II's fore, mizzen, and mainmasts."

As a barque-style sailing ship the Odette II's solar sail masts were named in the same fashion as those of ocean-going sailing vessels: fore, mizzen, and main, starting from the front. At the third-year sail operator's command the Odette II's masts began to deploy, starting with the forwardmost foremasts.

The masts and yards were extended, all very anticlimactically, with none of the trouble or the need for EVA work of the last time. The nine masts were slowly fanned out, the solar sails were fully stretched across the yards, and the ship began running on sails, harnessing the light of the Tau Ceti star.

"Marika, over here!" Chiaki displayed a projection of their course on the main bridge's largest screen, overlaid on image of the star system. They had just started running on sails and had exited the station's zone of control.

"What is it?"

"You're the captain, aren't you? You need to confirm our course." Chiaki set the image of the spacelanes to flash visibly on the main screen.

"This is the flight plan for the Odette II that we filed with station control. But this is our real flight plan." She overlaid a new, slightly different curve on top of the system map. "Our course has us skirting the defense force's anchorage at Umi-no-ake's Lagrange point on the way to the outer planets. But the anchorage is our real target." Chiaki highlighted the Lagrange point anchorage, almost directly in the middle of their new course.

"The defense force uses this place to store mothballed reserves and scrapped ships, as well as for assembling fleets and temporary evacuations. At present there are no active ships moored there."

Chiaki enlarged the anchorage on the main screen. There were a number of points of light, varying in size.

"That 'no active ships' line, however, is nothing more than standard military boilerplate. There are currently two active ships moored here. One is the defense force hospital ship Ben Casey"—one of the lights flashed—"and the other is the pirate ship Bentenmaru"—followed by a small light at the edge of the anchorage. "This is the Odette II's primary objective."

Marika looked at their course, overlaid with timestamps for every significant event. According to the newest timetable, which had been updated to reflect their departure permission request, they only had twelve hours until the apex of their approach.

"I'll go over the plan one more time. As the Odette II makes its way to the outer planets, we'll edge towards the Lagrange point anchorage until we hit the transfer point. The Odette II will then return to its normal orbit and continue along its planned course."

"In other words, we've got until then to hammer out the rest of the flight path the ship's gonna take." Lynn looked up at the composite of their plotted course and the system map, then compared the main bridge's chronometer with her own wristwatch. "No changes on the shuttle launch time? It's still when we reach the apex?"

"Before that, if possible." Marika reached for the navigation control panel and zoomed in on the Odette II's approach to the Lagrange point. "Even if we don't have any trouble leaving the Odette II and rendezvousing with the Bentenmaru, we'll still need to dodge the anchorage's automated watcher satellite, avoid being noticed, and infiltrate the anchorage without making too much noise. There will be less risk if our course allows us to release the shuttle from the Odette II before we reach the apex of our approach."

Marika drew an additional line connecting the watcher satellite at the center of the anchorage to the Bentenmaru at its edge. The line just barely overlapped with the anchorage's boundary and the Odette II's course.

"In other words, if we can launch the shuttle here, we'll be able to approach the Bentenmaru inside its shadow, just out of view of the satellite."

"I agree that we should try to avoid making a scene." Chiaki opened an image of the area surrounding the anchorage on another display. It consisted of the buoys marking its borders, the central watcher satellite, and a jumbled mess of giant containers, empty tanks, and old mothballed warships, all floating about. "Are we not going to inform the defense force of our plan to take the Bentenmaru?"

"An agent from the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate is supposed to have let them know," Marika said unenthuiastically. "But what they didn't tell them, obviously, is that it's the yacht club that's going to be manning the Bentenmaru when we take it out. We may be a pirate ship, but I doubt the defense force would be too pleased to learn that a bunch of under-qualified high schoolers are going to to be flying a starship through their jurisdiction."

"I'm fine with them pretending to ignore us," Lynn mumbled, "but if anything happens it's the Bentenmaru's captain who's going to have to deal with it."

"...right," Marika answered meekly. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

A screeching buzzer rang out across the main bridge. Marie at the comm station immediately set the retro headset over her soft, frizzy hair and looked up at Marika.

"What is it? Some kind of emergency?" Marika asked.

"It's the heavy cargo bay." Marie hesitated as she relayed the report. "They say there's, uh...a stowaway."

Marika had to ask again to confirm she'd heard correctly.

"Did you just say 'stowaway'?"

Marie nodded, perturbed.

The heavy cargo bay, located at the center of the Odette II's slender hull, boasted the largest capacity of any space on the ship. Immediately to the rear of the main bridge, it had a large cargo bay door located between the central mizzenmasts and the rear mainmasts.

For this voyage the bay was occupied by a small shuttlecraft.

While the shuttle, registered to Hakuoh Girls' Academy, was capable of reaching orbit from the surface without the aid of a booster, like the Odette II it was incapable of FTL flight. It was also unable to hold even a single class's worth of passengers and was only useful for moving around faculty, so it saw only sparing use. For traveling across Umi-no-ake itself private vessels were simpler, and the need or demand to get into orbit was extremely limited.

The last time Marika had ridden on the shuttle was when it had ferried the yacht club up for their last training voyage, and it had been left in its hangar at the Shin-Okuhama spaceport ever since. Even so, the model was known for its sturdiness and ease of handling; the defense force even used them as training craft.

While the shuttle made for a poor long-distance transport unless it was loaded down with supplies, it still had plenty of uses: re-entry, in-atmosphere flight, landings, returning to orbit. Less microbus and more military transport, when Hakuoh's yacht club went on their training voyages they borrowed the craft for use as an in-flight shuttle or emergency lifeboat.

Kane, the yacht club's advisor and bearer of a Class-2 license, was responsible for the shuttle during their voyages, but needless to say he was not on board the Odette II.

They'd had to extend some of the masts while still docked in wharf C68 in order to open the heavy cargo bay-turned-flight deck; it had been quite a chore, part of the task of loading cargo before the Odette II could launch.

Marika floated from the main bridge down the weightless corridor and directly into the heavy cargo bay, where she discovered their stowaway. She'd been found in the half of the bay not taken up by the shuttle, amid a mountain of food containers, personal effects, and everyday items, and was surrounded by uniformed club members.

"Gruier!" she shouted when she saw the stowaway's face. She'd been expecting this. "How did you even sneak in here!? You were there to see us off at the spaceport!"

"Oh, that was my sister Grunhilde." Gruier touched down on the floor of the cargo bay and offered Marika a graceful bow as she floated in. "Could you not tell the difference?"

"You made her disguise herself? Change her hairstyle, even her grade-level marker!?"

"Oh no, she was the one who offered to help me," Gruier said, filled with her usual brashness. "Thanks to her I was able to hide in the cargo bay before the shuttle launched."

"I can't believe you, stowing away again!" Marika's voice was nearly at a shout. "This isn't some yacht club training voyage, we're taking the Bentenmaru on a raid! I can't even imagine what kind of a scandal it would cause if anyone found out we had Princess Gruier on board!"

"Oh, I figured you would say something like that," Gruier replied calmly. "I knew without even talking to you that if I were to ask to come along you would come up with all sorts of reasons to not let me."

"Of course I would! I don't even know what's going to happen with the rest of the yacht club, how am I supposed to focus on being a pirate while I'm busy worrying I might cause an interstellar incident!?"

"I knew you would say that, which is why I didn't even ask if I could come along this time. I believed it would have given you even more unnecessary cause for concern."

Gruier nodded and flashed an ebullient smile. Marika looked down at the floor and let out a deep sigh.

"So you decided that if you showed yourself now there'd be no arguing and I wouldn't be able to send you back?"

"Not exactly." Gruier briefly shook her head without relaxing her socialite smile. "Assuming you don't deviate too much from the training voyage schedule you let me see before, I believe that I might be able to be of some help."

Marika sighed again and rolled her eyes at Gruier. "What's more important to you, your throne or some pirate's license from another system?" she mumbled.

"Frankly, I'm not all that attached to the throne," Gruier answered honestly, and stuck out her tongue. "There are more than enough people who can take my place. But there's no replacement for your pirate's license. It's clear to me which one is more important."

"Princess!"

"I came here as a member of the yacht club," she said, collecting herself back into socialite mode. "I would greatly appreciate it if you would refrain from calling me Princess."

"Yeah, but..."

"And besides, you say I have to choose, but as a pirate shouldn't I be able to have both?"

"Where did a stowaway-happy princess learn a thing like that?"

"This is a formal request to join both the Odette II and the Bentenmaru. Won't you let me come aboard, Captain Marika?"

Marika stared at Gruier. She then scanned the faces of the yacht club members who'd had their work on the shuttle interrupted; they were milling about, watching intently.

She shrugged in defeat.

"Fine. Gruier Serenity, I grant you permission to come aboard."

The club members circled around them cheered.

"You have my utmost gratitude." Gruier bowed to Marika.

"This isn't some pleasure cruise. You're here as crew, you're going to have to work."

"But of course."

"Come on up to the main bridge. I'll let you in on the plan." Marika started to leave, then turned back to Gruier in her middle school uniform. "Do you have any luggage?"

"Don't worry," Gruier replied coolly. "It's already stowed in the shuttle's hold."

Lynn spent the entire time planted on the main bridge, until just before they were about to launch the shuttle. The settings for the extended, unmanned, self-regulated training voyage were such a heavy task that everyone involved thought it might be impossible.

But Lynn, who shockingly went without rest or food on the bridge as she devoted herself to it, was able to assemble the autopilot program and load it onto the Odette II's arcane and complex main computer in time for the shuttle's launch.

Despite having been ostensibly upgraded and overhauled to keep up with the times, the previous generations of the Odette II's electronics systems all existed side-by-side, and if one wished it was possible to run them all in parallel, different formats all directed towards the same task. Built with more of a focus on longevity and flexibility than efficiency, even normal operation of the system required a great deal of time and effort. Simply maintaining the ancient electronics was laborious.

Lynn uploaded the near-obsessively self-checking nav program, and had put together a flight plan that, in a worst-case scenario, would bring the Odette II back into the waystation's zone of control even if no one were to return to the ship.

She ate up most of the remaining time running a single high-speed simulation, wherein the Odette II succeeded in returning on schedule. Of course, if the ship were to encounter any unexpected circumstances along the way, it was helpless to respond on its own.

Regardless, as long as no other vessels drew close to the Odette II or intersected its main course, they chose to believe that the chances of the ship meeting with any unexpected trouble were low. Marika sent the Odette II off to carry out the bulk of their training voyage unmanned.

For safety's sake they'd opened the Odette II's heavy cargo bay door—which had remained sealed while inside the station's pressurized dock—and blown out any unsecured cargo, trash, broken down packing material, pieces of stripped paint, and other debris. Spacesuited crew members flew frantically about to recover the larger cargo and secure what wouldn't fit into the shuttle's hold to the external cargo pods with rope and tape. The shuttle, piled high with a mountain of cargo, began to drift.

"I knew this was coming," Marika said over the radio of her lightweight spacesuit. She stared down from atop the extended mizzenmast as the shuttle launched from the cargo bay. "But now that I'm seeing it for myself, I can't help but wonder if we should really be sending it off into space like that."

"I don't want to hear it!" came Chiaki's reply from the shuttle's cockpit. "It's your club members who dumped their luggage wherever they could put it! It's not like we're setting up an outpost on some unexplored planet where we'll have to spend the winter! What do you need all this junk for!?"

"It's not our fault the shuttle doesn't have enough cabin space for everyone! And there aren't enough suits on the Bentenmaru to fit everyone either."

Marika watched the hovering rainbow of spacesuits spread out between the cargo bay and the masts. Nearly all of the Odette II's lightweight EVA suits were currently deployed in space.

"This was only supposed to be a peaceful yacht club training cruise, but after I dragged everyone into helping me crew a pirate ship I was too scared to tell them what they could and couldn't bring."

"You could have at least put some restrictions on them!" There was no end to Chiaki's jabs. "We've got people riding on the hull because they can't fit inside! We were short on space to begin with and now they're strapping their luggage wherever they can; the balance is all out of whack and a bunch of the attitude thrusters are useless!'

"I'm sorry!" Marika apologized, though she didn't sound particularly remorseful. "People are already crammed into the hold, so please be gentle with your flying."

"I'm well aware! If I try anything fancy we won't just lose cargo, the inside of the shuttle's gonna end up a madhouse too."

The shuttle lifted away from the cargo bay and slowly angled its nose inside the constrained space between the mizzenmast and the mainmast. Marika confirmed that there were no yards or antennas in the way, no wires or arms poking out that might snag on the shuttle, and then floated from the mizzenmast down to the Odette II's hull.

"Alright, all hands disembark from the Odette II! We're closing the cargo bay doors, everybody outside!"

Marika peered in through the wide-open doors of the central cargo bay to ensure that nothing and no one had been left behind on the ship, then floated over to the control box at the mainmast's base. She pulled the lever inside the open box, closing the cargo bay doors from the outside.

Connected to the control box via cable was a spacesuited Lynn, sitting cross-legged on the hull and still nervously fiddling with HAL, even in space.

"Time to go." Marika glanced at the closing cargo bay doors out of the corner of her eye as she leaned towards Lynn, who continued to tap away at her computer. "Do you think you need more time?"

"The nav program should be fine on its own now, but I want to make sure our commlink is shored up." Lynn input a number of passwords and confirmed that the Odette II had an external comm channel open. "Even if the Bentenmaru's comm systems aren't compatible, as long as there's nothing in space blocking us we'll still be able to control the ship by remote using a simple transceiver."

"I think we should be fine, at least as long as we're inside the Tau Ceti system."

"Yep, let's finish this up. Final check complete."

Lynn watched as the truncated verification program returned an "all-systems-clear" sign, and began to shut down her computer. She unplugged the connector cable, slipped it into the front pocket of her spacesuit, closed the lid of her notebook, and rose to her feet on the ship's hull.

"It's out of my hands now! We just have to wait and see!"

"Good work. Alright, I'm shutting the control box."

Marika scanned the panel inside the control box to ensure that she hadn't overlooked anything before locking it down, then turned to face the closing cargo bay doors.

The left and right shutters were slightly out of sync, but the pressurized doors had the bay completely sealed off. Multiple sealing bolts worked themselves into place, and the indicator light changed, confirming the seal.

The Odette II's cargo bay would remain unpressurized until the shuttle returned. Leaving it in a vacuum meant less work having to maintain the seal.

Marika checked the inside of the control box one last time to ensure that there were no problems with the lockdown, then closed the lid. She gave the lever that held it shut a good, hard tug.

"Alright, until we meet again," she mumbled to herself, and looked up at the shuttle as it separated from the Odette II. The spacesuited figures had already taken up their spots on the shuttle's luggage-laden exterior.

"Marika to all EVA club members, is everyone in position?"

"We're all here!" came the chorus of replies. Someone added, "We're only missing Lynn and the Captain."

"Right, off we go then."

Marika kicked against one of the surface panels that formed the Odette II's intricate hull and floated off into space together with Lynn, who had her souped-up computer tucked underneath her arm. They slipped between the protruding masts and flew towards the shuttle as it slowly drifted away.

Lynn landed directly on the mound of cargo, but Marika had miscalculated; it looked like she was going to swing wide when one of her classmates extended an arm for her to grab onto.

"Gotcha!"

"Is everyone on board?" Chiaki asked from the pilot's seat.

"Everyone's here. Chiaki-chan, take us to the Bentenmaru."

"Roger! Initiating forward thrust, everyone hold on tight, we don't want anyone getting knocked loose!"

The shuttle had thus far only used the momentum generated by its maneuvering thrusters to separate from the Odette II. Its rear propulsion system—free of any cargo—erupted with a soft light. The shuttle accelerated carefully so as not to topple the piles of luggage and bodies that were attached to its exterior as it left the Odette II behind.

The starship's white solar sails obscured most of the dark of space, but slowly it began to shrink in size. The blue ball of Umi-no-ake rose far behind the Odette II, so small that you could almost reach out and grab it.

"It's beautiful," said one of the spacesuited figures on the outside of the shuttle, overcome with emotion. "This is what our ship looks like flying through space?"

Unless they were suited up and doing EVA work, opportunities to view their own ship in flight were rare. Marika watched the rainbow of spacesuits attached to the outside of the shuttle; many of them were freshmen, wearing suits outside of a ship for the first time.

"If you think that's impressive," Marika said, watching the Odette II disappear along with everyone else, "It'll be even more beautiful when we come back."

She turned her eyes back in the direction the shuttle was headed. The Bentenmaru was supposed to be drifting in space ahead of them, but she couldn't make it out now matter how hard she focused.

107

"Alright, time to go dark like we planned! Cut the shuttle's and all suits' transponders; no radios unless it's an emergency! We're sneaking into a military cordon, any transmission is basically an invitation to be spotted. Kill all lights and transmissions that might get us noticed! If you want to talk, do it over cable through the shuttle."

At Marika's command, all of the spacesuited figures crowded around the shuttle cut the power to their radios and datalinks. People side-by-side could communicate by touching their neighbors' helmets, but otherwise they could only talk or transfer data suit-to-suit, using cable connections or their emergency tethers.

Marika pulled the universal cable from her spacesuit's tool belt, unraveled it, and connected her helmet's communicator to one of the shuttle's external access panels.

"This is Marika. Do you copy?"

"Yep, I hear you loud and clear, Captain Marika!" Ai replied. She was seated in the cockpit with Chiaki. "Neither the shuttle nor any of the suits are emitting any EM signals. We're still giving off infrared, but I guess we can't avoid that, can we?"

"No way around it." Marika grinned. "The Lagrange point anchorage and the Bentenmaru are still a ways off. Happy flying!"

"Hmm?" Hyakume raised his head sluggishly from the game of hanafuda that was playing out on his comforter, turning to face the unassuming warning that was bleating from his improvised electronics setup.

"What's that?" Kane was cautious—Hyakume had already scored a set of Blue Ribbons and was close to Drinking Under the Moon—but he followed Hyakume's gaze to the interruption. Hyakume and Sandaime had set up a workstation in a corner of the officer's suite they were sharing, using one of the Bentenmaru's custom data transmission systems that they'd hauled over with them. Routed through an admin-privilege relay Hyakume had snagged in a fair gamble with one of the hospital ship's comm officers, they were monitoring not only the hospital ship but the Bentenmaru as well, in realtime.

"The Bentenmaru has a visitor." Hyakume returned the card he'd been about to play to his hand, rose from the floor where the blanket was spread out, and ambled over to the wall taken up by the workstation.

"A visitor?" The Bentenmaru was supposed to be unmanned and moored in the military-supervised anchorage. "They gotta be talking to the military. Maybe some freaks got lost on their yacht?"

Kane rose and moved toward the workstation, keeping one eye glued to their game-in-progress.

"Nope, the watcher sat and the Ben Casey's radar aren't picking anything up. Hold on, let's see what we can see from the Bentenmaru." Hyakume laid his cards face-down on the console and ran his fingers across the control panel.

"Who could it be? I didn't notice any ships whose flight plans took them past the anchorage."

Hyakume prodded the Bentenmaru's surveillance systems awake over the compressed, heavily-encrypted channel and booted up the close-range scanners. He activated only a handful of the passive monitors, careful not to fry their guests with a powerful burst of radar.

"It's small, probably a shuttle or a transport. They've cut their transmissions but they missed the background electrical noise and comm leaks; they're amateurs, whoever they are."

"Should we be worried?" Kane peeked at the workstation's numerous displays. "We left the ship's security system running, right? I don't know who they are or what they want, but if they're not careful and try to mess around won't they end up burnt to a crisp?"

"If they get too close I'll report 'em to the anchorage and have them clear 'em out...wait, they've disabled the security system?" Hyakume tapped hurriedly at the control panel.

"What do you mean, they disabled it? Who the hell are they?"

The answer appeared promptly on the display.

"Priority override, captain's authorization. That's our girl Marika's ID code."

"Marika?" An image of her face rose in Kane's mind. She was supposed to be in school, working her butt off. "On the Bentenmaru? What's she doing there?"

"Beats me."

Hyakume pulled a shipboard communicator from the pocket of his hospital-issued tracksuit and quickly dialed Misa's personal code.

Misa was in the hospital ship Ben Casey's microorganism pathology lab, where she had just been discussing the latest medical nanomachines with one of the military's researchers. A call came in over her shipboard communicator, and she rushed to Hyakume's room.

"Wandering around the ship in a labcoat?"

"Just because I'm here as a patient doesn't mean I have to dress like one. These clothes have a lot of perks on this ship."

Misa stood in front of the workstation, her labcoat fluttering behind her. She looked less like a quarantine patient and more like part of the treatment team.

"So little Miss Marika is trying to get on board the Bentenmaru?"

"See for yourself." Hyakume gestured towards a display showing a wide angle shot captured from the Bentenmaru. "Whaddaya think she's up to?"

Misa watched the large display as it projected an image of the shuttle, loaded down with not only cargo but a colorful spread of lightweight spacesuits.

"What am I looking at?"

"The shuttle belongs to Hakuoh, and the suits are probably the yacht club's. I remember seeing some of them on the Odette II's training cruise," Kane interjected, adding what he knew. Misa looked at him, then back at the front-view of the shuttle, dubious.

"So what, that's Marika and the rest of the yacht club?"

"Our cameras are gonna have a hard time seeing past the face shields and making them out individually until they get close, but from here we might be able to guess which one is the Captain by running their heights against our data."

"Let 'em have their privacy!" Misa slapped Hyakume's hand away as it started to move. "But what does she want on board the Bentenmaru without telling us?"

"The camera confirmed more than two dozen suits, so I doubt all she wants is to get on board. I don't know how many more people are inside the shuttle, but if she brought the whole yacht club with her, they probably plan on doing more than just boarding the ship." Kane brought his fingertips together gleefully for a moment, then spread them apart. "She's running off with it."

"The Captain? Why would Marika need to run off with the Bentenmaru without us knowing?"

"Why? Well you see..." Kane and Hyakume exchanged looks. "I guess because she needs to take the Bentenmaru somewhere, but her crew is quarantined on a hospital ship and they can't do it themselves?"

Misa reacted to Kane's conjecture with the next logical question. "But why would Captain Marika need to take the Bentenmaru anywhere without telling us?"

"Well you see, if there were certain circumstances where she needed to use the Bentenmaru..."

The comm system connected to the workstation emitted an awkward-sounding alert. A moment later Kane's and Misa's handsets began to sing their default ringtones.

"Hmm?" Hyakume tapped at the comm panel and confirmedthe caller, coming in over the public FTL net. "Sadhi Centaurus of Centaurus Shipping?"

"Mine says Lawrence from Pegasus Interstellar Transport."

"I've got Chief Inspector Miké of Sagittarius Inc."

They all knew who was behind the calls, each encrypted with a secret code to ward off eavesdroppers. Their counterpart used a variety of aliases.

"That's Shou from Lloyd, ain't it?" Hyakume quickly tapped at the comm panel. "I'll take it. Probably got the best chance of keeping the conversation under wraps."

"Shou should know we're quarantined on a military hospital ship, if he's calling on a public channel then I doubt this is something we're gonna want to hear."

Misa confirmed that she wanted to kill the call to her shipboard communicator. The anchored hospital ship was connected to both a private military line and a public line, but routing any calls through the ship's comm systems to their handheld communicators caused a slight delay.

"Yo, it's Hyakume," Hyakume answered after switching on the sound. "Kane and Misa are here too. You want me to grab anyone else?"

"How's it going? I'd be fine with any one of you, but I thought since you're all in the same place that I'd call you all at once." The afro-haired weirdo appeared over the comm channel, forsaking any of the fabricated images he typically used with his aliases. "I reached out to Coorie, Schnitzer, and Luca as well. Do you mind if I talk to you all together?"

"Fine by us."

"Works for me too. And I've got Luca here with me." Coorie's voice was audible over the line; her room had its own electronics setup tied in to both the ship's and the military's networks.

"I'm listening," came Schnitzer's reply. He seemed to be connected using the comm system built into his own nervous system.

"Okay, that's everyone then. Even if someone were to try and eavesdrop, this is being encrypted. What I am about to tell you, you did not hear from me. Is everyone clear?" Shou looked around, as if he had each of them open on their own monitor. "I realize that I'm calling some anonymous patients quarantined on a hospital ship, and that I should start by asking how you're all doing, but I can tell by looking at you that the cold appears to have passed, so let's get down to business. The Bentenmaru is about to receive some visitors; I imagine you've noticed them as well, yes?"

Hyakume waited for Coorie to answer. She was the Bentenmaru's head of cyberwarfare and had brought her own monitoring equipment into her room on the hospital ship, giving her the latest realtime information from the ship.

"You're talking about Captain Marika approaching the Bentenmaru with Hakuoh Girls' Academy's yacht club?" Coorie answered. Apparently she'd been following the same data. "You've been watching them too I'm sure, Hyakume?"

"Not just me. Kane and Misa are in the loop too."

"Well, I myself am not actually at liberty to explain what's going on." On the monitor, Shou shrugged. "I'm under a gag order from Captain Marika. As Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate's agent in charge of the Bentenmaru, all I am able to do is make this simple request."

Shou stared at all of them through the monitor.

"Pretend you don't notice."

Misa waited for someone else to say something before she finally spoke. "Uh, so basically, you're telling us to act like we don't see Marika boarding the Bentenmaru inside the anchorage?"

"The Captain isn't just boarding the Bentenmaru. As you've surmised, she's brought almost the entire yacht club with her. And once they're ready they will be taking the Bentenmaru out of the cordoned area."

"Isn't the Bentenmaru supposed to be under the watchful eye of the military, even if not officially?"

When the Bentenmaru's crew found themselves quarantined on the hospital ship Ben Casey, the military promised to take care of the ship. They offered their total support while the crew was unable to access the ship and keep it running, even shouldering the responsibility of safeguarding the ship inside their anchorage.

"The Tau Ceti System Defense Force has agreed to overlook it. But you are the Bentenmaru's crew, you have a vested interest in this. Captain Marika's actions are wholly sanctioned by the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate. And as her agent she requested that I remain quiet about the situation. Therefore, I am unable to explain any further."

Shou grinned.

"And so, as her agent, all I can ask is that you look the other way as the Bentenmaru flies off without you."

"I see." Misa grabbed her elbow with one hand while she held the other over her mouth as she pondered. "Marika has Shou sworn to secrecy. Whatever she's using the Bentenmaru for, she doesn't want to tell the crew about it. And Harold Lloyd not only gave the Captain the green light, but is actively helping her. Is that the long and short of it?"

"Well, I imagine that Captain Marika would not want me to tell you that either," Shou said with a grin. "Regardless of how you put it, I can neither confirm nor deny anything. But it does appear that way."

"And I suppose you also know why Marika needed to get the yacht club together to take the Bentenmaru." Misa stared at Shou through the monitor. "Oh, you don't have to answer. We understand all too well the delicate position you're in."

"It's always a pleasure speaking with someone who understands." On the monitor, Shou quickly covered his mouth with his hand. "Oh, my mistake. I did deny that I was even in a position to speak with the Bentenmaru's crew, didn't I?"

"But why?" Schnitzer interrupted. "We're here, why would Captain Marika take the Bentenmaru somewhere without us?"

"Why? Well, you see," Kane said, looking at Hyakume and Misa before echoing their conversation from earlier, "I guess it's because we're quarantined on this hospital ship and can't do it ourselves?"

"Marika has a reason she needs to take the Bentenmaru, regardless of the fact that the crew is in quarantine and can't go with her. The insurance company and our agent, at least, have authorized it, and the military's agreed to look the other way too." Misa laughed as she laid out everything they knew. "If the Captain wants to keep this from us, then I suppose the polite thing to do would be to play along."

"Polite, Misa?" Kane looked at Misa, shocked. "You think this is about politeness?"

"No, I think it's about trust. If we have total faith in the Captain, and if she needs to keep something from us, then I suppose we should trust her and leave it at that. And if the Captain has enough faith in us, then I imagine that all we have to do is sit back and watch, and eventually we'll learn why she didn't fill us in, and even went so far as to swear our agent to secrecy." Misa looked back at Kane and Hyakume. "Come to think of it, isn't it about time to check in with her? Why not see where she is and what she has to say?"

"You're going to call Captain Marika?" Shou shrugged on the monitor. "That's rather fortuitous timing, don't you think?"

"According to her schedule Captain Marika will be on board the Odette II, on one of the Hakuoh Girls' Academy yacht club's training voyages." Hyakume quickly called up Marika's schedule on the display. "But at the moment she's obviously on board the shuttle, heading for the Bentenmaru."

"So how should we set up the channel?" Coorie asked. "I can do it from here, unless you want to handle it?"

"They're inside a military anchorage, they've got to at least be on radio blackout, right?" Kane double-checked the positions of the Bentenmaru and the approaching yacht. The shuttle launched from the Odette II had already entered the military's jurisdiction within the Lagrange point. "She would have at least set up an answering machine, right?"

"If she did, we'll at least know she was thinking ahead. Hyakume, call the Captain for our check-in."

"Shouldn't we wait until she's made it to the Bentenmaru?"

"Don't be stupid. Once she gets the yacht club on board they'll be so busy she won't have time to check-in with us. If we're going to call her it should be now, while they're moving and things are quiet. It's the last free time the Captain'll have, right?"

"Makes sense." Hyakume opened another comm channel and made a call using Marika's personal code. "It says it's going to the Odette II, and routing it to somewhere outside the ship." He read the destination of the automatic rerouting out loud. "Connected!"

The distant image from the Bentenmaru showed one of the spacesuited figures loaded onto the shuttle shoot straight up.

"So that's our Captain, eh?"

"There's a personal call from the Odette II addressed to Katou Marika!" Chiaki quickly deciphered the signal in the cockpit and informed Marika over the hardline connection. "We're supposed to be on radio blackout! What should I do, ignore it and listen to the message later?"

"Hold on." The forwarded call from the Odette II had been picked up not only by the shuttle's comm system, but by Marika's handheld communicator as well. Her mother had hammered into her the importance of always maintaining multiple means of contact. She pulled one of the Bentenmaru's powerful transceivers from a pocket on her spacesuit.

She sighed when she saw the caller's name on the display. Misa Grandwood. Their check-ins were becoming more and more irregular, but that had to be it.

"Sorry, I have to take this. I'll deal with it."

"You'll deal with it!? We're under a radio blackout, you're just going to answer it!?"

"It's fine, I'll direct a beam back to the Odette II and it'll act as a relay. It's a directed transmission, as long as no one plants an antenna between here and the Odette II we don't have to worry about it being intercepted."

Marika climbed over of the piles of prostrate luggage. She moved towards the antenna section—it was supposed to be avoided during EVA work due to the high EM output—and using the handholds, the ropes securing the luggage, and the help of some of the suited figures, she arrived at the array of antennas.

"Just making sure, these aren't broadcasting anything right now, right?"

"Of course they're not!" came the immediate reply from the cockpit. The mountain of luggage made the external cameras useless, but the spacesuits' monitors should have been enough for them to grasp the situation. "What the hell do you think you're doing!?"

"I told you, I'm going to use a directed beam to transmit back to the Odette II. Disengage the second high-gain antenna from the top."

"You're going to send a directed transmission by hooking your transceiver directly into the dish? How do you even know where the Odette II is?"

"It's fine, I can see it."

The Odette II was already indistinguishable, one with the sea of distant stars into which it had sank. Marika recalled its position in reference to the constellations and borrowed a pair of electronic binoculars from one of the club members for confirmation.

She placed the electronic viewfinder up to her helmet and was able to see the flashing running lights of the Odette II as it traveled on its course. She noted the bearing and wrapped her arm around the dish of the high-gain antenna, aiming it as accurately as she could at the Odette II.

While she wouldn't need sniper-level precision, the antenna's directed beam only had a sweep of one-half of a degree.

She plugged directly into the high-gain antenna's base and made minor manual adjustments until the indicator on her transceiver informed her that the directed beam had found its target. She pressed the "respond" button.

"Marika speaking."

She made no effort to hide that transmission was coming from the Odette II, but she assured herself that as long as she was using a directed beam, there was no way to get a fix on her location from anywhere else. She waited for a response.

"Hey, sorry for bothering you while you're busy. Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine," Marika answered politely. Misa's voice sounded like the cold had completely cleared up. Marika looked around. She was using the earphones and mic built into her helmet, which were keyed to her transceiver's code, but she was in the middle of space. "Uh, I'm pretty sure I sent you a copy of the schedule, but right now I'm on the Odette II in the middle of a training voyage with the yacht club."

"Oh, that's right. I suppose you're just about out of Umi-no-ake's gravity well by now?"

She's a sailor, of course she'd have a keen sense for that sort of thing, Marika thought. She answered, "Yeah, we just left the station's control zone, and we're going to be out of Umi-no-ake's gravity well soon. Uh, I'm actually doing EVA work at the moment."

"Our captain, such an eager beaver," Misa said, sounding surprised. "With the Bentenmaru out of commission you should forget about space, let yourself relax."

"I could never do that," Marika replied immediately. "I joined the yacht club because I wanted to fly through space, and I became the Bentenmaru's captain because it would let me do just that. How am I supposed to just sit back and take it easy when there's all that excitement just staring me in the face?"

"Don't push yourself. I know you're young and full of energy, but if you drain your batteries and you'll still crash and burn."

"Is everyone there doing okay?"

There was an empty pause before a reply came.

"Oh, everyone's feeling great. They put us through the scanners and a few of us still show signs of inflammation in the lungs, but we're all doing good. We're still under quarantine, so we just get to laze around on the hospital ship, but if we get any more bored we might start hatching an escape plan."

"Please don't," Marika said. She didn't know who might be listening in on their conversation or what effect it might have. "It's the military, they wouldn't keep you isolated on a hospital ship if they didn't have a good reason for it. Just let the cold heal and make sure you don't go around making things worse by infecting anyone else."

She felt as if Misa were smiling on the other end of the call.

"Understood. I'm the ship's doctor, I'll make sure nobody leaves the hospital ship before they're fully recovered. And don't work yourself too hard either. If you get yourself into trouble we won't be able to come bail you out like last time."

"I know, I know." Marika turned her eyes away from the parabolic antenna and the Odette II, and towards the nose of the shuttle. The Bentenmaru was floating ahead of them, in the same anchorage that was supposed to be holding the hospital ship Ben Casey. "Our training voyage is an easy one this time, to the outer planets of the Tau Ceti system and back, the office accepted our flight plan without any problems. If we run into trouble we'll run and ask the defense force for help right away."

"Well I'm not worried, but just know that there's no need to push yourself." Marika was puzzled; she could hear the concern in Misa's voice. "There's no such thing as bad experience in this business, just make sure you don't die."

Marika rolled her eyes at Misa's typical, useless advice. "Right, I'll make sure of that."

"Okay, stay safe until the next check-in. Bon voyage."

"Tell everyone I said to get well soon."

Marika made sure that the transmission had ended and switched off her transceiver.

"Alright, message away," she reported to Chiaki, who should have been monitoring it from the cockpit. "Disconnecting from the high-gain antenna. You can take back control."

"So you're really not going to tell them that the yacht club is taking the Bentenmaru out," Chiaki said, half-whispering. Marika smiled.

"I don't know how long I can fool them. But I'll keep it up for as long as it works. We should be fine keeping it to ourselves for the time being."

"And, check-in complete."

Misa removed the portable communicator from her ear and closed the channel. She looked at Kane and Hyakume, and at Shou on the monitor.

Hyakume confirmed that the channel they'd opened to the Odette II had been severed.

"I thought you were going to ask her something a little more leading."

"Leading questions are for when you want whoever you're talking to confirm something. Was there anything in particular we wanted Captain Marika to admit to?"

"No, I guess not. So can I assume you're in favor of letting Marika take the ship?"

"It's not about being in favor of anything. We're quarantined on the Ben Casey, we don't know what's going on outside. You can hardly approve or disapprove of something you don't know anything about, can you?"

"Bullshit!" interjected Sandaime's high-pitched voice. "I don't know what kind of people the Captain's got in her yacht club, but amateurs can't handle our ship's engines! They don't even have a manual, if they half-ass it they'll end up who-knows-where before they even try to make their first jump!"

"I can't say I'm in favor either," Coorie said after some heavy reflection. "Our ship's electronics are quite unconventional, if someone just starts pressing buttons without knowing what they're doing it could scramble the whole thing. Hyakume, you can't be okay with someone else having free reign on your systems?"

"Hey, my stuff isn't as hotwired as yours or Luca's. The Bentenmaru's radar and sensors aren't so delicate that they'd go haywire from someone pressing the wrong button."

"Then why are you always making such a stink about how hard they are to use?"

"Shou, you're in contact with Marika, right?" Misa turned her attention to Shou.

"But of course."

"The timing might be a little obvious, but I'm wondering if you could forward her the Bentenmaru's operation manuals the next time you get in touch with her? I imagine they'd come in handy."

"Operation manuals!?" Hyakume blurted out. "You know we don't have anything like that!"

The Bentenmaru was an old ship, upgrades stacked on top of upgrades. The navigation systems and engines had so many bizarre and arcane modifications made to them that they'd evolved into beasts that no longer resembled the originals. Keeping them running required the skills and talents of a specialized staff.

It went without saying that there were no formal manuals or operating procedures; they only existed inside the crew's heads and in their own personal databases.

"You want me to put together a manual for the Bentenmaru's electronics?" Coorie asked casually. "Do you know how much work that's going to be?"

"Either we get those yacht club kids some manuals to study from, or else they run roughshod over our ship. Which sounds better to you?" Misa surveyed Kane's and Hyakume's desperate faces. "Kane and I saw for ourselves how those girls managed the Odette II's ancient cyberwarfare system. If we can get them manuals to learn from, even simple ones, I imagine we'll all be better off than if we'd just kept our mouths shut and let them go wild with the place."

"It only covers maintenance, but I've got a manual for the weapons ready to go," Schnitzer said in his near-monotone. He was the only one of the Bentenmaru's crew leads who had any documentation prepared. "But can we trust some high school girls' yacht club with the Bentenmaru's guns?"

"It's not just the guns. The engines, computers, life support, the messdeck, all of it." And then Misa added, "And one more thing. We're not entrusting them to some high school girls' yacht club. They're Captain Marika's crew, and she's counting on them."

"Yeah but..."

"Quit your moaning! Just let them get their feet wet with the systems, I'm sure they'll be able to figure out the rest. Let everyone else know what's going on and have them submit basic operating procedures. We'll all be a lot better off that way."

"Sounds like we'd have better chances taking on a whole feet by ourselves."

"If we want to keep the Bentenmaru in business, then I think we'd best do what we can to make sure it comes back in one piece. You're all bored of being cooped up in isolation anyway, why not do something useful with your time?"

"You're one to talk." Hyakume rattled away at the control panel as he fetched the relevant data. "According to documents they filed, Misa Grandwood's on board the Odette II as the ship's doctor."

"Oh?"

"So doesn't that mean you're responsible for telling them how to use the Bentenmaru's treatment systems, how to match up the med cartridges, how to run the assist system?"

"I, uh..."

It had, of course, never occurred to Misa to put together a manual for the Bentenmaru's medical systems either. She froze. Hyakume ignored her and flashed more of the available information on the display.

"We know the deal. I guess the insurance company's next contact with our girl's going to be once she gets on board the Bentenmaru?"

"That is the plan, yes. Give or take a little depending on the circumstances, of course."

"Gotcha. Our girl's supposed to be on a training cruise on the Odette II, and we don't know what she wants with the Bentenmaru. But regardless, it's probably in our own best interests to get the insurance company data on how to run the ship. Putting together reports and manuals and data ain't gonna be easy, but we'll send over what we can once we've got it in order. You come up with some believable excuse to get the docs to Captain Marika and her crew before they destroy the ship."

"We'll handle it." Shou glanced at a submonitor as if he were trying to confirm his schedule. "I plan to contact her once she's made it on board the Bentenmaru. I would prefer it if we could get the manuals to the Captain and the yacht club before they start poking around the ship. I'll be waiting for the data."

"We'll send over the manuals," Misa started, but then shook her head, "Or at least, what passes for manuals, as soon as we can. And I bet even that's going to be a mess of data."

Judging velocity in space is difficult without a landmark. One moment the Odette II's white hull was right there, the next it had plummeted into the ocean of stars, the shuttle having accelerated to well above orbital speeds as it pushed toward the edge of Umi-no-ake's gravity well.

The position of the Lagrange point, where gravitational forces cancel out, resides inside the lunar orbit and changes with the passage of Umi-no-ake's twin moons. Located well beyond the synchronous orbit of the waystation, it took the small but constant acceleration from the shuttle's main drive quite some time to reach it. Yet the only landmark by which to measure the journey was the bold blue ball of Umi-no-ake itself, floating in the inky black of space.

Their distance didn't appear to change no matter how hard they stared, but if one were to look away for a moment and then look back the planet would have shrunk noticeably; the shuttle was moving away from Umi-no-ake with a significant amount of speed. When they'd launched from the Odette II it would have taken both hands to hold the planet; now it could fit in the palm of one's hand.

The conversations of the spacesuited girls on the outside of the shuttle were making their second and third rounds, and they'd finally come close enough to the Bentenmaru to make it out with the naked eye.

It was floating in a corner the military-controlled anchorage, locked down and with its running lights extinguished, its black hull a foil to the pristine white of the Odette II. Even under normal circumstances its black silhouette melted into space; it wouldn't stand out until after they had made it appreciably close.

But it was clear where the shuttle was heading, and the members of the yacht club were quick to pick out the Bentenmaru using electronic binoculars and other means.

"It's big," someone said.

"It looks a lot bigger than our ship."

"They're around the same length," Marika replied. "But the Odette II's a sailing ship, it was built light. The Bentenmaru's a former warship, it's still got guns, they swapped in bigger engines, and it's armored. It's a whole order of magnitude heavier."

"How many people does it usually take to fly it?" she heard Lynn ask.

"Just to get it moving? Let's see. The bridge has radar and sensors, communications and helm, navigation and engines, plus a few people down in engineering. I think about ten."

As Marika counted on her fingers, Lynn answered with a sigh.

"Look, it's not just some freighter, it needs to do more than simply move, right? How many people does it take to operate it as a pirate ship?"

"Well you've got cyberwarfare, weapons, and the boarding party, though we're always short-staffed. But for a usual raid on a cruise ship we need the people flying the ship, a few rounds from the guns to show off, and a dozen or so to actually board...I guess about thirty or so, if you really want to look the part."

"You think we can get the job done with what we have?"

Marika couldn't see Lynn's suit from where she was. She snickered as she pictured her looking around at the rest of the suits.

"Don't worry. The only thing a pirate needs is guts and chutzpah. If you've got those, even one person is enough."

"Beginning deceleration!" the cockpit signaled to both the cabin and the spacesuited figures outside. "I'm rotating the shuttle 180 degrees and reducing our speed, hold on and make sure you don't get thrown off!"

After waiting just long enough for an affirmative response, the shuttle began its 180-degree somersault. It rotated around its y-axis to point its drives in the opposite direction and began a heavy burn quite unlike the light acceleration it had been experiencing thus far.

The spacesuited high school girls had acclimated to the weightless environment after leaving port; they clung to the shuttle and let out shrill cries as it began what felt like a steep and sudden climb. The shuttle flipped its tail-end drive around and began to decelerate as it approached the Bentenmaru.

"Impressive, they brought us in using only optical sensors, no guidance from the ship, no radar," Marika heard Lynn say. Marika tried to guess who in the cockpit—Chiaki, Ai, or Gruier—was responsible for the seemingly chance rendezvous as she attempted to eyeball the distance to the Bentenmaru.

The shuttle's drive burned long enough to kill their momentum and then made another somersault in order to reorient the nose toward the Bentenmaru. From here on they'd finish their rendezvous using only the thrust from the maneuvering thrusters; Marika rose to her feet.

"I'll go on ahead and open the door," she announced, and unplugged her own transmission cable and faced forward. She made a forceful leap and floated toward the Bentenmaru as it loomed large ahead of her.

She estimated it was about a kilometer away. She had no sense she was drawing closer to the ship even after she'd been able to pick out the black hull from the starfield, but a glance over her shoulder showed the shuttle growing smaller, as if it had pitched her forward.

Marika pulled the jetgun from the holster at her hip. Used to adjust one's velocity and heading during spacewalks, they came in many forms; the one she was holding was small and pistol-shaped, and a squeeze of the trigger would produce a tiny pulse of thrust from the barrel. Though small, a single burst could produce as much as one hundred Newtons of thrust, nearly ten kilos. If she weren't careful to fire it from her center of mass she could send herself spinning like an out-of-control top, and with no way to steady herself.

Marika checked the indicator to ensure that the propellant was full and the mechanism was functioning, then turned her back to the Bentenmaru and raised the jetgun firmly with both hands. She squeezed the trigger.

With a single pull of the trigger the barrel spat enough gas to provide ten kilos of thrust. Compared to a handgun firing real bullets the recoil was mild; it coursed through Marika's shoulders and she began to accelerate on her way.

"Confirmed in working order. Let's see...I'll need about five bursts to slow down."

With no way to refill the jetgun during EVA operations, it made sense to limit its use as much as possible. By thinking ahead and making the proper movements, it was possible to minimize the number of gas jets that she would need. Cutting down on speed and thrust from the gas would reduce the number of times the jetgun needed to be used, but it would also make the EVA work last longer.

No one was going to count her moves and get mad at her like they did during her training. Marika had only recently and at long last managed to work out the balance between speed and control; she fired the jetgun again, increasing her speed as she flew toward the Bentenmaru.

While she'd been slightly off when she had leapt for the shuttle, she wouldn't need to use the jetgun to adjust her course as she approached the Bentenmaru; perhaps the shuttle being properly aligned with the Bentenmaru was to thank for that. The ship grew larger and larger before her eyes, as if it were going to collide with her, and she wanted to slow down, but she told herself that even if she were to strike the Bentenmaru without decelerating at all she would still be no worse for wear. She held off until all but the last moment to squeeze the jetgun's trigger.

"I wonder if this is what they mean when they say, 'Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes.'"

She waited until the Bentenmaru filled her entire field of view, until she could make out the details of the broadside armor and the hatches and the protruding sensors, then pointed the jetgun at the Bentenmaru and fired. The powerful recoil coursed through her forearms, slowing the spacesuited Marika down.

She twisted her body and landed feet-first on the Bentenmaru, then bent her legs and planted both her hands on the side of the ship as well.

"Oof."

It felt like she was being flattened. She shifted the jetgun to her left hand, grabbing one of the handholds on the surface of the Bentenmaru's hull with her right to kill the recoil.

She returned the jetgun to its hip holster and began to move along the Bentenmaru's flank using the handholds. There was a hangar deck for landing fighters and shuttles ahead of the engines, near the rear part of the central section of the hull. The port side wouldn't have enough space—it was occupied by the Bentenmaru's own shuttle and fighters—but the starboard hangar should have had enough room to take in their lone shuttle.

Marika relied on the handholds and the ship's construction to carry her to the nearest sealed door. She opened the bulky, blastproof cover on one of the access panels that dotted the surface of the hull. Inside she entered the key to unlock it and flipped the primary switch.

The Bentenmaru verified her access key and released the lock on the sealed door. It opened automatically. Marika casually slipped into the EVA airlock and re-sealed the lock from the inside, then began the seal check and the pressurization process as she opened the airlock's inner door.

The inside of the Bentenmaru was only dimly lit by a bare minimum of emergency lights. It was standard protocol to use minimal lighting when placing the ship on lockdown, both to conserve power and to avoid any excessive energy emissions.

Even so, Marika opened the faceshield of her spacesuit's helmet and smiled when she smelled the same ship's air as always.

"Good, life support is still running."

Just to be safe she checked the indicator to check for harmful substances. The new biofilters from the Ben Casey were supposed to have disinfected and sanitized the empty ship of the virus that had quarantined its crew, but no living human had been on board since then to confirm that it was free of the infection.

"I hope they eliminated the virus."

It was possible that the entire yacht club could fall prey to the cold virus that had done in the Bentenmaru's crew. A representative from the insurance company had already requested permission to remove the Bentenmaru from the military cordon, and she couldn't imagine that they'd turn a blind eye to a pirate ship infected by an experimental biological weapon.

"It feels heavy in here."

It hadn't even been a day since they'd left Umi-no-ake Station, but she'd acclimated readily to the weightlessness. Marika thought the same silly thing she always thought—maybe she'd better go on a diet—as she came under the effects of gravity, and she let her helmet dangle from her back as she rushed through the corridors. It was all dark save for the emergency lighting, but it was still enough to light her path as she ran to the main bridge at the core of the ship.

Though the ship was in a state of emergency and absent its crew, the bulkhead to the main bridge was unsealed when Marika arrived there. The door opened automatically, but she was still impatient as she flew inside and hit the switch on the other side of the door, bringing on the bridge lights.

"Uh..."

Her helmet had become a nuisance, and she tossed it on one of the observer seats as she scanned the Bentenmaru's empty bridge. With the veteran bridge crew away from their posts, what should have felt familiar seemed an altogether foreign scene.

"Alright, first, bring the power systems back online. We can worry about flying once I get everyone here," Marika said, as if she needed to remind herself, then moved to the right-hand side of the bridge, Sandaime's engineer's station.

The seat was all the way back, like it was whenever he would leave the bridge. She stepped in front of it and looked over the control panel.

The engines were idling; they were always left running save for when the ship was in dock. They would probably give the ship a minor, constant forward thrust even without the output raised, but it was sufficient to supply power to the rest of the ship.

Marika switched on the darkened engineer's station displays. She'd asked once how to read them, and while she obviously didn't remember everything, from what she could tell there didn't appear to be any problems that required her urgent attention.

She looked around the rest of the stations.

"We aren't moving yet so we don't need navigation, and we aren't using weapons, cyberwarfare, or radar, so we don't need anyone covering Schnitzer's, Coorie's, or Hyakume's jobs. What we do need is to turn on the lights and prepare to land the shuttle."

Marika vocalized her needs and headed for Kane's spot at the helm. The same tasks should have been doable from the captain's chair, but she had yet to master all of the chair's control panels.

She settled into Kane's helmsman's station—like Sandaime's engineer's station, the seat had been left all the way back—and scanned the control panels. There were four flight sticks for controlling the Bentenmaru, along with numerous pedals at her feet and a throttle on either side, none of which she needed at the moment. She searched the jumble of switches, their labels worn or peeled away, for the external lights.

The Bentenmaru was equipped with running lights, external lights, and searchlights, separated into both visible and non-visible spectrums. Although regulations obligated them to keep the running lights on whenever the ship was in flight, they could be turned on and off not only from the helm, but from the captain's chair and the other stations as well.

Marika reactivated the dormant displays surrounding the helm with a flip of a sub-switch off to the side and searched for the switch for the running lights.

"Now, which one was it?"

They weren't frequently switched on and off, either during flight or in battle. She guessed that the switch probably wouldn't be in an easy-to-reach place, not like something that saw regular use. Marika scanned the helm control panel—just looking at everything there made her start to feel dizzy—and on her third pass she finally located what she thought was it, a panel containing a cluster of switches.

"Yeah, this has to be it."

The panel looked like it was rarely used, and the etched symbols were still legible. Marika reached for the cluster of old-fashioned toggle switches and their accompanying indicator lights. She flipped the row of switches all at once.

The black starship, which had been drifting dead in the dark of space, suddenly announced itself in a wreath of light. High-intensity lights flickered on all across the hull—fore and aft, port and starboard, top and bottom—and from the tips of the protruding antennas and masts. The nose and tail began to flash white, the furthest antennas around the rest of the body blue, green, or yellow per regulations.

The approaching shuttle and the spacesuited figures attached to it were all aflutter, but their voices never reached Marika on the bridge. Somewhere there was a comm switch she could flip that would link external transmissions to the shipboard radio, but for the moment none of the switches on the Bentenmaru's comm system were live.

Marika scanned the bridge, considering whether there was anything else she needed to do. She couldn't think of anything.

"Well, I can always come back if I forgot anything."

She floated away from the bridge. Immediately she remembered something she'd forgotten and returned, retrieved her helmet from the observer seat, and headed back into the corridor.

Her next objective was the starboard hangar deck. While it should have been possible to open the hangar and retrieve the shuttle all from the bridge, Marika couldn't remember the procedure. Running things directly on the spot was the better bet.

She summoned a mental image of the Bentenmaru's construction. From the bridge, down the central corridor towards the rear of the ship, then towards the starboard outer hull. There it was, the starboard hangar, taking up three decks worth of space.

Marika passed through the hangar deck's hermetic door and re-donned her helmet, connected it to her spacesuit, and made sure it was sealed.

She closed the door to the hangar and lifted the pressurization lever located to its side to ensure it was secure. The hangar was only faintly lit by the emergency lighting; she hit the main switch to bring the lights up.

"Uh, let's see..."

The sealed hangar was brightly lit. There were several doors, large and small, leading off to different parts of the ship.

Next Marika floated over to the control box along the outer hull and began to vent the atmosphere from the hangar. She listened to the heavy rush of air and noise as the high-pressure pumps filled the holding tanks while she scrambled around the hangar ensuring that all of the doors' pressure levers were raised. The ship was built so that any doors and hatches that could be exposed to vacuum would push outwards in the absence of external pressure, maintaining their seal. Even so, the Bentenmaru was old; its seals were degrading and the frames around the hatches were warped. No one could complain about them not being able to maintain a seal.

She checked every door that she could find and returned to the control box.

"I hope everything's okay."

She scanned the hangar one last time. Freight containers were stacked up along the walls, and there were small collapsible fighters held in place along the rear bulkhead. From what she could see there was nothing major that wasn't tied down.

She checked the indicator on the control box; the air pressure inside the hangar was dropping quickly. "Alright, now would be the time to cut the gravity."

Kane had taught her a little trick: anytime you might have small objects floating around, cut the gravity while there's still air left. The objects would then be sucked toward the ventilators, making them easier to deal with than if they were to simply start floating around as soon as the artificial gravity was cut.

Marika turned the large handle on the control box, killing the hangar deck's gravity. She'd already started acclimating to the surface-level gravity of the ship, and her body began to feel lighter again.

Securing herself in place using the handle, Marika glanced back at the now weightless hangar. Rooms with artificial gravity tended to have their ventilators installed near the floor, and although there were loose objects inside the hangar, none of them should have been floating free.

The pressurized atmosphere was forcefully drained from the room. Even through her helmet Marika could hear the sound of the wind growing fainter as she felt the air pressure drop, and she scanned the hangar for any large objects carried by the breeze in zero-gravity. There were likely a number of unsecured tools and other small, forgotten objects, but her concern was anything large and loose that could shift out of place and collide with the shuttle as it entered the hangar.

It would still take some time before enough air had been evacuated to avoid a gust when opening the hangar deck to the vacuum of space. Marika checked the remaining time above the indicator and flew one last loop around the weightless hangar as the wind whipped about. She ensured that all the doors were shut, that anything dangerous or forgotten or dropped hadn't accumulated over the ventilators, and discovered that an unfamiliar mechanism consisting of a mass of gears seemed to be caught on the same metal mesh that was meant to protect it from foreign objects.

"Huh, when was the last time anybody opened this place up?"

She looked around the brightly lit starboard hangar deck. The port side was designated for the Bentenmaru's shuttle and their on-alert fighters and saw frequent use, but Marika had no recollection of ever opening the starboard side.

"Don't tell me they've left it closed this whole time?"

Kane and Sandaime both hated letting junk pile up inside the Bentenmaru; they said it would hamper their mobility when they really needed it. Even a small increase in the ship's mass would mean they could squeeze that much less kinetic energy from the same amount of fuel. And since the Bentenmaru was an old ship, its mass was already inflated by all of the stockpiled equipment and spare parts that they held in constant reserve.

So at the end of each year the Bentenmaru would pick up all the junk from around the ship and send it packing. Marika returned to the control box, worried that someone might have been using the hangar as a storage closet.

The sound from the ventilators climbed higher in pitch the lower the air pressure dropped. The Bentenmaru's vacuum pumps weren't exactly high-performance; rather than wait for all of the air on the hangar deck to be drawn into the holding tanks, after a certain point it was more efficient to simply open the hangar doors.

Marika began the process of opening up the hangar. She released all of the automatic locks and safeties and sent the command to the starboard hangar doors to open.

Although the air inside the ship had become too thin to breathe, she could still hear the sound of the hangar door locks releasing. Listening to the whine of the motors, Marika realized she'd made a mistake.

"Ack!"

If she could still hear through her helmet, then it meant that she hadn't emptied the hangar deck of enough air before opening the doors. Nevertheless, the overlapping doors of the hangar had already begun to retract.

There was a sound like an explosion, and the hangar turned white as it was suddenly decompressed. The remaining water vapor sublimated into mist as the air lost pressure, and the next moment it was blasted out of the ship.

"Aw geez." Marika used the handholds near the control box to prevent the blast from dragging her along with it and playfully stuck out her tongue inside her helmet. "From outside it must have looked like a burst of smoke."

The rest of the air escaped through the crack in the hangar doors and the white, sublimated water vapor dispersed into space. From the shuttle, it would have looked as if the hangar deck were exhaling.

The hangar doors slowly opened. Marika peered through the crack as the double-doors retracted up and down; the shuttle was right there.

"Whoa, I didn't realize they were this close!"

She could see Chiaki's face through the dark, flash-resistant window glass of the cockpit, pointing at her with fangs bared. Marika waved her arms in front of her and begged forgiveness.

Several of the spacesuited figures had already jumped the gun and leapt from the shuttle toward the Bentenmaru. There was only a small gap separating the shuttle from the yawning hangar doors; they may have been caught in the blast of air from the ship.

Marika waved her outstretched arms at the shuttle's cockpit and signaled to align the shuttle's nose with that of the Bentenmaru. She swept her arms in a wide circle, gesturing for the shuttle to rotate its nose and enter the hangar sideways.

Chiaki stood up inside the cockpit and nodded, signaling that she understood, mimicking with both hands the gesture to rotate and move the shuttle, then returned to her seat. The freshman pilot Ai grabbed the controls nervously; Chiaki repeated Marika's order to her out loud. Ai nodded, while inside the hangar Marika spun her right hand in a circle, then swept it to the side.

Chiaki, who was connected via cable to the spacesuited figures on the outside the shuttle, seemed to communicate the order not only inside the cockpit, but outside as well. The shuttle began to slowly rotate to the side in front of the retracting hangar doors, while the rest of the suited figures detached from the shuttle and floated toward the Bentenmaru.

The massive bay doors of the starboard hangar deck opened until they were flush with the floor before stopping. The suited figures landed one after another on the gaping doors; not wanting to be outdone, the shuttle aligned itself with the Bentenmaru and began to slip sideways into the hangar.

Marika flew from the front of the hangar to the rear, eyeballing whether the shuttle had enough room to enter in front of the collapsed fighters. As she watched the shuttle's profile she discovered something she had overlooked.

"Oh no, if it lands like that our luggage is gonna get crushed."

The shuttle had cargo piled not only on its top, but along its belly as well, likely thanks to having been loaded in the zero-gravity of the Odette II. The landing gear was extended, but if it were to land in the hangar in the state it was in, once the gravity returned the cargo would be crushed under the shuttle's weight.

They were still inside the military's jurisdiction; she didn't want to use her radio, not even a little. In space, even the tiniest transmission will travel forever.

Marika aligned herself with the shuttle's cockpit and waved her arms to signal. Once she had Chiaki's attention she jumped from the hangar up to the shuttle.

This time Marika's aim was true, and she grabbed a hold of the shuttle. She opened a nearby access panel and plugged in her communication cable.

"This is Marika. Shuttle, do you copy?"

"This is Chiaki in the cockpit," Chiaki answered bluntly. "I copy. What is it now?"

"If you land the shuttle on the deck now the luggage underneath is going to get crushed."

"...ugh," Chiaki responded, practically sighing. She'd realized Marika's point. "I guess you're right."

"Can you stop for a second? At least until we've unloaded the cargo underneath."

"Watch yourself. It's not exactly the best load job, if you're not careful releasing it it'll fly everywhere."

"Roger that."

Marika unplugged her cable and turned back toward the hangar. The brightly-lit hangar deck was a giant, yawning mouth in the side of the Bentenmaru's black hull.

"I guess with the running lights flashing there's really not much point to a radio blackout."

Several club members had already made it onto the hangar deck. A number of the suits had landed on the outside of the hangar and were watching her as they clung to the hull. More were still floating in space, and if they were paying attention to the rest of the suits they would probably be able to tell that something was going on.

Marika made a grand, sweeping gesture around the shuttle and pointed at the mountain of cargo. She signaled to grab it and transfer it to the Bentenmaru, then planted herself on the shuttle's surface.

"Let's see..."

Though the shuttle may have been meant for short-range use, they were still traveling through space; the yacht club members' personal luggage, their trunks and suitcases and bags, should have been secured as tight as it could be. But from what Marika could tell it all looked to be a slapdash packing job, everything piled up and attached using not only packing tape and cargo straps from the Odette II's cargo bay, but even merely rope and signal cable.

"This one should be safe..." She reached for a nearby pack held on with cord, but her spacesuit's gloves couldn't undo the taut square knot in the synthetic rope.

She gave up and moved to the pile of luggage to search for another way of releasing it.

She discovered that the mound of cargo on the shuttle's bottom was held in place by a thick strap with a one-touch quick-release.

"Aha, I guess we should start here." Without thinking, Marika reached for the quick-release. The fastener was tightened more firmly than she'd imagined; she used the bulky, extended landing gear to brace herself and threw all her weight into undoing it. "Got it!"

As thick as her forearm, the tensioned cargo belt shot away from the pile of luggage. Marika watched as the luggage, which had been secured to the belly of the shuttle, seemed to balloon in size.

"Huh?"

Apparently the haphazard loading job had been held in place by an equally sketchy fastener. All she'd done was release a single cargo belt, but the entire pile of luggage began to collapse and hemorrhage all at once.

"Oh...oh no."

She panicked, fighting the temptation to try to contain the avalanche of luggage by pushing back against it. With one leg still hooked around the landing gear she grabbed a nearby bag. She aimed at the hangar deck and sent it flying.

"Hey! Wait a...!"

The bag flew straight at the Bentenmaru, but as it spun it caught on the suitcase and the trunk to which it had been carelessly taped, and the patchwork bag careened whimsically away from the shuttle.

"Uhh..."

"Unbelievable!" Chiaki's high-pitched screaming pierced Marika's ears. "What kind of rank amateur dumps the cargo outside the ship!?"

"I said I was sorry! And besides, whose bright idea was it to load everything up like that when they knew they were going to be landing on the ship?"

"The shuttle was in a weightless cargo bay and held up from all four sides, they weren't thinking about what they were doing, you should have guessed they'd put the cargo everywhere! But someone was too busy rigging up the Odette II to give them any directions while loading it up!"

"You were in the cockpit prepping the shuttle for launch, you were the one in charge! I didn't see you complaining about how they loaded it, you were fine with launching the way it was!"

In the end, the scattered luggage had caused a significant delay in landing the shuttle. Having all the spacesuited club members collect the luggage had pushed the suits' life support systems to just before their alarm threshold, and everyone outside the shuttle got an unexpected lesson in EVA work.

"The two of you can argue later." Gruier injected herself between Marika and Chiaki, who were fighting on the weightless hangar deck amid the drifting luggage. They'd finally closed the doors and re-pressurized the hangar, but it was still too dangerous to activate the artificial gravity. Gruier was nearly doubled over with laughter. "At least we got the shuttle onto the Bentenmaru."

"All we did was shut down the engines, it's still not secured."

"And we haven't recovered all of the scattered luggage yet, either."

"And thanks to you our suits' tanks and packs are all empty! Nobody will be able to leave the next time we need to do EVA work!" Chiaki snapped. Gruier shot her a big smile.

"Then I guess our next jobs are to secure the shuttle and replenish the suits' air and power. Shall we leave things down here to you, Chiaki?"

Marika listened to Gruier and looked around the hangar deck. "Can you handle it?"

Chiaki aped Marika's survey of the hangar and shrugged. "These types of hangars are all pretty much the same. I'll be fine. If I can manage the Barbarossa, I think I can manage this."

"Alright, I'll let you take care of securing the shuttle and collecting the luggage. The place is yours. I'll head up to the bridge and prep the Bentenmaru for launch, come up when you're free."

"I feel like I want to say, aye-aye sir. Is that weird?"

Chiaki scanned the hangar deck, filled with club members and drifting luggage. More than a few of them were unaccustomed to spacewalks, and the unplanned recovery operation had been enough to leave them exhausted.

"It's fine." Marika smiled. "By the way, we filled the cooler in the shuttle with desserts from Lamp House."

Lamp House, the cafe in the antique district were Marika worked her part time job, had gained a reputation among Hakuoh's students for their sweets like parfaits and cakes.

"Seriously!?" Chiaki's face lit up; she'd only ever tried their parfaits. Marika nodded.

"The Odette II and the shuttle were stable enough, I imagine they made it through in one piece. Be sparing with them, it's not like we can re-up once we're in the air."

"I want to say that's an affirmative, but..." Chiaki watched the yacht club members as they floated around the hangar. "I'm sorry to say I'm not sure I can keep everyone else in line."

"Do your best. If we run out of food on the trip, we'll have a mutiny on our hands."

The usual complement for the Bentenmaru's bridge was seven people.

On the left was communications/cyberwarfare officer Coorie, and next to her the combat officer Schnitzer; straight ahead from left to right were the navigator Luca, the helmsman Kane, and the radar/sensor/comms operator Hyakume; on the right side of the bridge was Sandaime's engineer's console, and next to that the empty first officer's chair.

Add to those Marika's captain's chair at the center and you had the seven people who typically kept the bridge running.

Marika had agonized over how to best divide up the club members around the bridge; they were basically all amateurs, including her, and it was their job to get this old, rebuilt warship flying. It would be best to play it by ear and not make any assignments permanent, and either way they wouldn't be able to keep the ship running around the clock without swapping the crew out in shifts.

"Whoa!"

Marika led the members of the yacht club through the tight warship corridors of the Bentenmaru to the bridge. It was significantly more cramped than the bridge of their sailing trainer, with so much more equipment packed inside it that it didn't even compare.

"I was wondering the same thing when I saw it from the outside, but you really are the captain of a pirate ship, huh Marika?"

Lynn was in awe. Marika, still dressed in her spacesuit, smiled uncomfortably.

"Well, yeah, for all it's worth. And you're all really going to be this pirate ship's crew." Before she had a chance to stop them the rest of her club members—freshmen, classmates, seniors—scattered throughout the bridge. Marika clapped her hands together to get their attention.

"Alright, I'm going to explain the Bentenmaru's bridge positions. First, the captain's chair." She ascended to her place at the center of the bridge, elevated a step above everything else. She remained standing and continued with her explanation.

"From here you can understand everything that's going on in the rest of the ship, and if you need to you can also fly it or fight from here too, though I've never actually used it to control the Bentenmaru. Under normal circumstances the Bentenmaru is controlled by the individual crew members on the bridge."

Marika scanned the faces of the club members who'd accompanied her. "That cluttered mess on the left side of the bridge is the cyberwarfare and comm officer's station."

"Huh." Lynn had a look around the monstrosity of a console; its control panels were the most complicated and the most heavily modified of any on the bridge. "What kind of wizard sits here? Do they have four arms? Six?"

"She's a normal, two-armed woman! Anyway, next to that is the combat officer's station." The rest of the bridge was equipped with standard G-resistant seats, but this one alone was a size larger to accommodate Schnitzer. "That's where we fire the missiles and guns. Obviously whoever's sitting there isn't the one doing the actual fighting; in order to aim and use the guns and launchers you still need the rest of the crew to fire them."

The club members focused intently on the two seats. "These two you can ignore," she told them.

"What!?" "Why!?"

"I thought cyberwarfare was the most exciting part?" Lynn had slipped inside Coorie's station and was checking out the various components. She turned to Marika. "Look at all this! It'd be a waste to not use it."

"Just getting the ship running is going to be hard enough, you think we'll have time to hack people or get in firefights?" Marika shook her head. "No way! The truth is, there isn't a lot of all-out fighting in the piracy business. And when the gloves do come off, it's usually as training for people who fight for a living, like the system fleets or professional mercenaries."

"But you can't always assume that whoever you're up against is just going to let you go quietly, can you?"

"Sure, and when that happens maybe you'll have to deal with them. But before we can deal with anyone we need to get the ship up and running properly, otherwise we won't even be able to escape, let alone fight. And if we can get by without fighting all the better, so let's forget about combat training for now and get the ship moving. Now, on to the front of the bridge."

Marika faced forward and pointed at the three seats there.

"In the center you have the helm. From there you can control the ship's attitude and course. Ai-chan, if you would?"

"Aye-aye," the smallest of the freshmen answered nervously as she took her seat at the helm. She looked underneath the seat and found a lever; she pulled it, and the seat automatically moved forward into flying position. "I, uh, think I'll probably have to change it from the last person who was sitting here."

Every seat on the bridge could be adjusted not only forward and back, but also up and down.

"Yeah, that's fine, no worries. Putting them back is a cinch, and I want everybody, not just you, practicing on the Bentenmaru. Now, the seat to the left is navigation."

"What's with the crystal ball and the feng shui compass?" one of her classmates asked suspiciously. Marika waved her arms in front of her as she tried to come up with an explanation.

"Uh, that's just one of our navigator's hobbies, like a mascot or something, don't worry about it. The Bentenmaru doesn't set its course using fortune telling or anything like that." Marika risked a glance at her classmate. "Do you wanna give it a shot?"

"You think I know how to use a feng shui compass?"

"Anyway, so to the right is the radar, sensor, and comm station." Marika shifted her focus to Hyakume's console, to the right of the helm. While not as much of an eyesore as Coorie's, there were still a number of extra displays and control panels compared to the rest of the bridge stations. "Transmissions can be received at any of the stations, just like on the Odette II. But when we have to deal with something unique, like a complicated protocol or a specific target, we use either that station or the cyberwarfare console. Communications are important, and there are times when you need to handle multiple transmissions at once—internal, external, enemy, friendly—so even under normal circumstances we have two comm officers."

Marika looked at Lynn. "If you would do the honors?"

"Aye-aye. It doesn't look as demanding as the cyberwarfare console, I guess I'll manage somehow."

"Now, one of the two seats to the right is the engineering station. The Bentenmaru's engines aren't stock, of course, but they aren't state of the art either; they had to cram them in here, and they've got the output of a larger ship. If we want to get them running we'll need people not just here but in the engine room too, though they can be controlled from here. I guess our engineer wanted to be able to make minor adjustments and reset the limiters from the bridge."

"Wow!" the club members gathered around the engineer's console exclaimed as Marika flipped the switch and brought the displays back to life.

"Next to that is the first officer's chair. It has the same readouts and functions as my captain's chair. The Bentenmaru doesn't have a first officer right now, so that seat's empty even when the bridge is completely staffed. Uh..." Marika scanned the club members assembled on the bridge. It struck her immediately whom she should give it to. "Gruier, would you take the first officer's chair?"

"Me?" Gruier turned and looked up at Marika. This wasn't her first time on the Bentenmaru's bridge, and she'd stood back and watched as the other club members crowded around the control panels. "You want to give me the same controls as the captain's chair? Shouldn't it go to one of the older girls?"

"Well, just because it has the same controls as the captain's chair doesn't mean that you need to use them." Marika reached for the console that encircled the captain's chair. "Besides, I think you'd do a better job looking at the big picture rather than focusing on learning one thing. Maybe it's a waste of your talents, but I was hoping you could learn how to manage the Bentenmaru."

Gruier considered for a moment, then smiled at Marika and nodded. "Very well. I'll try my best to be of help."

"Alright, now let's go over the positions again. I want to use five stations: navigation, helm, radar/sensors, engineering, and the first officer's chair where Gruier is."

"In other words, we need to figure out where we want to go, which way we're headed, what's going on, and how we're going to get there." Lynn had moved the radar/sensor console's seat forward and was testing out which of the controls she could reach.

"Exactly. As long as we're operating as a normal ship we won't need to fight; normal ships don't even have weapons or cyberwarfare equipment. And I don't have any plans to get in a firefight this time around, so all we need to do to look like pirates is get the ship moving."

"Gotcha. Can I turn it on?"

"Be my guest." Marika nodded to Lynn. "Everything besides the first officer's station and the combat command station should have a master switch. Do you know how it works?"

"Er, start with the sub-switches for the panels and displays, right?"

"Just ignore everything else for now and bring the control panels back online."

"Aye-aye!"

A clear chorus of responses came from all around the bridge. Gruier still had her first officer's seat back, and appeared to be scanning the various consoles in an effort to memorize their layout. She flipped the main switch underneath her right hand before Marika had the chance to point it out to her.

"So where's the manual?"

"Huh?" Marika gave a blank response to Lynn's question.

"The manual, where is it?" Lynn asked again, running her fingers across the radar/sensor control panel; it was probably the newest piece of hardware on the Bentenmaru. "I can tell by looking at the controls that the radar's a high-end PsychoElectro, and the sensors are a combination of first-rate Mitake, Gen, and Allegro parts. The manuals should be enough to figure out how they work. So where are they?"

"Uh, you see...well now that you mention it, the engines were rebuilt by the crew, and basically none of the parts on the guns are original, but everything else was originally of-the-shelf equipment, so I guess there should be manuals somewhere?"

Marika settled into the captain's chair and scanned the consoles around her. Her lessons had focused on remembering things as they were needed; they never taught her how to handle the Bentenmaru's systems and equipment while reading out of a manual.

"Maybe they keep them in the library?"

"It's not like anybody without electricity is gonna buy these things. If they came with dead tree manuals they'd be heavy enough wreck the sellers' warehouses and sink the ship. I mean the documentation files. Where are they?"

"Uh, I think they're probably in the data server?" Marika answered nervously. The Bentenmaru's electronics were primarily the domain of Coorie and Hyakume, but she had no idea whether they'd kept copies of the manuals in the giant data server they operated. "I guess we should check."

With no more questions for Marika, Lynn began to run her fingers across the live control panel.

"We need a manual too!" shouted one of the freshman club members at the engineer's console; all three of them were planning on future careers in space.

"J-just hold on, I'm looking!" Marika tapped at the captain's console while she tried to remember how to open the data server; she should have had access privileges.

"Manuals for standard drives, the FTL drive, the reactors...wait, that doesn't mean fusion reactors, does it?"

"No! The ship's not that old, it has proper converter reactors. Though one of them's not in the best shape...the console's server doesn't have the manuals in it, does it?"

"I'm looking but I can't find anything." Yayoi, one of her classmates manning the engineering station, tapped away at the keyboard, scanning the contents of the regulator system's computer. "There are copies of old pictures and magazines, but I'm not sure I should open them, they look like they're private albums."

"Oh, if you can see them then I doubt there's anything inside you'll get in trouble for looking at. If there's a guide it'll be in there, but Sandaime, Hyakume, the sorts of people who make up the crew aren't the kind to use guides. It wouldn't hurt to look though, just in case you find anything."

Marika located the section for all the records and logs from before she took over and did a search for anything containing the word "manual". A line of hits appeared on the display, and before she knew it the line had become a torrent.

"No, I don't need anything that old. No wait, there could be manuals for original parts that were never upgraded..."

The incoming-call signal rang clearly throughout the bridge.

Marika looked at the comm panel on the console next to her just as it started beeping, and Lynn turned around in time to see Marika shoot out of the captain's chair.

"You wanna answer it?"

"Nah, ignore it, let them leave a message."

Lynn glanced at the comm panel and read the caller's name and information as they flashed on the display. "It says it's a Class-II encrypted transmission from the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate."

"Ahhh! Let me answer it!"

Marika punched at the captain's chair comm panel in a panic. It didn't respond. She realized she needed the comm officer to route the call, and flew out of the captain's chair.

"Take the call! I'll answer it over there!"

"Roger. It's Class-II, that means it'll decode automatically, right?"

Though the Bentenmaru's comm panels appeared to have a number of additional parts, they were standardized equipment, not all that different from the ones in the club room or on the Odette II. Lynn opened a scrambled channel and hit the radio receiver button, grabbed the headset hanging on the side of the panel, pushed her seat back, and handed the headset to Marika as they swapped places.

Marika placed the headset over her ears and slipped into the comm officer's seat. She checked the call details on the screen one more time before she answered.

"Sorry for the delay, this is the Bentenmaru, Marika speaking."

"Yo, it's your old friend Shou at Harold Lloyd." The afro-haired weirdo appeared on the monitor following the convoluted encryption protocol. "I managed to get a hold of you on the Bentenmaru, that must mean things are going well."

"We haven't even started yet!" Marika shook her head violently. "We just got on board and finally made it to the bridge to get the ship up and running, but at this rate I have no idea how long it's going to take."

"I hate to interrupt you while you're busy, but I have good news and bad news for you. Which should I start with?"

Marika closed her eyes and took a deep breath before answering. "Alright, let me have the bad news first."

"The Bentenmaru's crew, currently in isolation on the defense force hospital ship Ben Casey, have had their special vacation extended by an additional two weeks. Just as we predicted, in fact."

"Aha, of course they did." Marika shook her head and laughed. "Just like we thought, huh? So then what's the good news?"

"We thought you might be having some trouble. We were digging through our old files and came across operating documents for the Bentenmaru."

"Operating documents!?" Marika shouted suddenly. "You mean like manuals and service guides!?"

"Well, I haven't looked at them myself, but they do contain details on things like the cyberwarfare gear and the optics and so forth. Data for the engines from their last upgrade. We thought they might come in handy."

"They will!" Marika reflexively clasped her hands together in front of her chest. "That's exactly what we need!"

"I'll send them your way, put them to good use." On the other side of the monitor Shou smiled and ran his fingers across the keyboard. "Our data on the Bentenmaru was pulled together from various sources. It's possible we may come across more later. If we do we'll pass them along to you. Have fun, and try keep the ship in one piece."

"Snack time!"

The bridge's automatic door slid open, and in walked Chiaki, lugging a cooler with both arms.

"You're a godsend." Marika waved at her; she had an e-paper display unfurled between the engineer's and first officer's consoles, directing a group of club members.

"How are things going?" Several more club members paraded in behind Chiaki, carrying baskets and boxes. "Er, I could ask, but from the looks of things, I'm guessing it's not great."

"Yeah, I mean, Sandaime, Hyakume, they're all always working their butts off." Marika forced a smile, set the display down on top of the console, and clapped her hands together. "Alright, quick break! We're getting frazzled, let's eat something sweet and blow off some steam."

Cheers rose up around the bridge.

157

"Did you get the hangar deck cleared?"

"Somehow. We even got the gravity back on without anyone losing their cool." Chiaki set the cooler on the floor and opened it. She grabbed a chilled juice pack and handed it to Marika. "We unloaded all the external cargo from the shuttle, but the internal hold is still jam-packed. I had everyone who still had the energy haul the food down to the galley to start making dinner."

"Wow, thanks." Marika took the chilled juice pack and broke open the seal. "Are you sure you don't want to be my first officer?"

"No way!" Chiaki insisted as she handed out juice packs to the rest of the club members. "Don't forget, I'm officially part of the Barbarossa. I'm just on board the Bentenmaru temporarily, the last thing I'm looking for is something permanent."

"But Lynn's probably going to be too busy focusing on the electronics to order people around, and anyway she said she's not interested. This is everyone's first time working on a ship and nobody knows what to expect. If I could I'd want a bunch of people acting as first officer."

"Seems to me you already found the perfect candidate for the job."

Confused, Marika followed Chiaki's gaze. Gruier had the blueprints and manual for the engines open on the first officer's display, munching on a biscuit as she explained the diagram.

"Gruier!?"

"I figured you gave the Princess the first officer's chair because you realized it was the best use of her talents."

"It'd be a waste not to take advantage of them."

"Well is it all that different if you give her the title too instead of just the seat?"

"She's a princess, what's gonna happen if I give her a job on a pirate ship? And first officer no less!"

"Probably nothing. I mean this is all just a temporary deal, and as long as nobody from the yacht club blabs about it I doubt there'll be any problems. Just keep it to yourselves, I'm sure you'll be fine."

Marika slid the straw through the opening in her juice pack as she casually observed Gruier. She was pretending not to hear, but Marika knew she had a keen sense of hearing too; she had to be listening.

"I guess it's fine for now," she mumbled quietly. "I only have the club simulations and our work on the Odette II to go by, I figured I'd let everyone do a bit of everything on the Bentenmaru, see what they're good at before they decide what they want to do."

"You've got to be the most easygoing captain I've ever seen." Chiaki stared at Marika, exasperated. "If people just got assigned to whatever they were good at, you wouldn't even be a captain!"

"Yeah but..." Marika mumbled around her straw. "A captain's qualifications come from blood..."

"You were the one who said you'd rather have the yacht club on board your pirate ship, even if they weren't trained for it. Whose job is it to decide what they're good at?"

"...mine..."

"And don't forget about room assignments, and duty assignments. If you'd rather wait to get a feel for their skills you don't need to settle on anything today, but you should at least divvy out rooms sooner rather than later."

"Augh!" Marika shouted. "You're right. Uh, I guess for now all of the empty cabins are up for grabs." The Bentenmaru was equipped with several staterooms for VIPs and kidnapped hostages. "But that definitely won't be enough. What else..."

"You've got plenty of rooms, why not use them all?"

The number of yacht club members only amounted to about two-thirds of the Bentenmaru's usual crew. Marika considered letting them use the crew's private rooms, but then she remembered having caught a glimpse of the disasters that were Hyakume's and Coorie's cabins.

"No way!" Marika shook her head forcefully. "Only as a last resort! You'd hate it if someone else used your room on the Barbarossa, wouldn't you!?"

"Not really." Chiaki shook her head casually.

"Why not!?"

"Because I always clean up my room whenever I leave, and anyway I don't have much on the ship to begin with."

"Oh, well the I guess the Bentenmaru and the Barbarossa work differently that way. Lots of our crew treat the ship like a home!"

"A lot of our crew live on the ship too." Chiaki glanced at the cyberwarfare station, the most cluttered one on the bridge. "Sometimes it gets so bad that they turn their workstations into their own little nests. But the Bentenmaru's regular crew aren't here, there should be enough room for the yacht club to get by."

"There is, I think."

As captain, Marika had been given a general tour of the Bentenmaru. Ostensibly she'd seen the whole ship, but she was so bogged down with the work of keeping the pirate ship flying that she'd mostly forgotten everything except for the core areas.

"Let's see, if we open up all the empty rooms, I think for now that'll be enough space for everyone to get by."

"Just find us a place to sleep and we'll manage," Lynn said without looking at her, sipping from a pack of black coffee, her fingers dancing across the keyboard while she stole glances at the manual. "The ship's huge and we're the only ones on board. We'll be fine, and it's not like everybody needs a private room. This is like a training camp for us, nobody's gonna complain if we're packed in like sardines."

"I guess I'll sort out room assignments after dinner." Marika returned to the captain's chair and began tapping at the keyboard, searching for a layout of the ship she knew should have been there.

"You think we're going to get the ship moving today?" Chiaki approached the captain's chair and glanced at the control panel by Marika's side.

"Don't worry, basic attitude and bearing controls won't be a problem, or so says our first-year hero." Marika nodded toward Ai at the helm. "Navigation and propulsion shouldn't be too hard either, all we need to do is beeline for the edge of the system. The biggest sink right now is the drive controls. I don't think our fuel or energy reserves are going to be a problem, but it doesn't look like there's a smooth linkage between the drives and the reactor throttling."

"It doesn't matter how many upgrades the ship has, it's still a relic, just like ours." Chiaki looked around the cramped but efficiently arranged bridge. "Wouldn't it be easier if you had some people down in the engine room?"

"I thought about it. But I'm on the bridge most of the time, my area of expertise is here. I don't even know what's down there."

"Reactors, engines, and the FTL drive, I imagine," Chiaki pondered. "I'm sure the basic principles are all the same, it's just the little things that differ from ship to ship. On newer ships everything's automated, but this thing is ancient and the engines aren't stock, I'm sure all it needs is some TLC."

The Bentenmaru had once housed a hundred crew. But of its former mess hall, now only the officer's mess remained.

With its change in role from ancient warship to pirate ship came a drastic reduction in crew size. And even then the rows of tables weren't enough for the whole crew to all eat at once. But as long as they operated as a proper pirate ship, the crew worked in shifts that would have made doing so impossible.

The small group of yacht club members, however, could fill up the mess hall with seats to spare. Their dinner was a lavish feast prepared with ingredients from the Odette II and provisions that had been lying in stock on the Bentenmaru.

After dinner Marika and some volunteers combed the ship for any usable living quarters.

The five variously-sized passenger staterooms were all re-purposed for use by the yacht club. The four beds in the room adjoining the sick bay were also made available. All of the former officers' cabins were being used as the crew's private cabins, but they emptied out the large non-commissioned officer's quarters that were being used as a storage room and moved everything to the former marines' barracks and armory next to it, scrubbed the place down, and managed to secure enough beds for all of the yacht club members to sleep that night.

"I thought our yearly spring cleaning was kinda pointless, but this place needs it." Marika scanned the NCO quarters, now free of junk and transformed into a pristine living space. When she had first set foot inside the storage room—equal to the mess hall in size—she'd questioned her belief that it could be made livable. "Imagine if nobody had touched it for years; this trip would be over before we ever finished cleaning it out."

"We're short on beds, some people are going to have to use cots or sleeping bags," said Angie, a senior who'd shown a prodigious aptitude for cleaning. "But once things are up and running and we're working in shifts, somebody's always going to have to be awake, we shouldn't need the beds then."

"I doubt anybody wants to sleep in an already hot bed." Marika turned to Angie. "There should be extra beds and bedding somewhere, I'm sure we'll find them if we look."

"Extra bedding would be nice, but I think for now this place makes for a good enough bedroom. Though using the same room might be hard for people on different shifts, with the lights going on and off."

"I think it's good enough to sleep in, but something private would be better, even if it's cramped."

"Hey, we may have had a male teacher in the club room and on the Odette II, but here it's just us." Angie pointed at the corner of the room, past the rows of beds. Several people had already started bringing their luggage up from the hangar. "It's like the whole Bentenmaru is private now. Like the girls' dorm."

"The girls' dorm..." Marika recalled the few times she'd gone to hang out at Hakuoh's dormitory. "You think it'll be like that?"

"Sure, just let everyone do their thing and it'll happen." Angie slapped Marika on the shoulder. "Of course, we've got a lot more on our plates than we do on a training cruise, I doubt we'll get much time to ourselves."

"For now let's just worry about letting people sleep."

"This is a test announcement from the bridge to all hands."

They could hear Gruier's voice broadcasting throughout the ship. Marika glanced at the closest control panel; so, they'd already figured out how to get it working.

"I repeat, this is a test announcement from the bridge to all hands. Captain Marika, if you can hear this, please return to the bridge as soon as possible."

"Geez."

Marika leapt towards the room's archaic control panel and grabbed the modern wired receiver. She tapped at the keyboard—it was capable of displaying the ship's current status and sending video transmissions—and raised the bridge.

"This is Marika. Oh, Lynn? I thought I was being summoned."

"Come up to the bridge as soon as you're free. Before your intrepid crew forgets how to launch the ship again."

After dinner a freshly swapped-out staff was supposed to have headed up to the bridge to continue working on the launch preparations.

"Roger. I'll be right there."

Marika returned the receiver to the comm panel.

"Angie, I'm going to leave the room and bed assignments up to you. Don't let me down."

"You got it. Sounds like we should throw together a late-night snack too. Make sure to get some sleep when you can, it's important."

"Right. Thanks for taking care of the food."

"So what did I miss?" Marika barreled onto the bridge as the automatic door slid open.

"Took you long enough!" Chiaki shouted from behind the engineer's console.

"Sorry, I was busy making sure everyone had a place to sleep tonight."

"Get in the captain's chair. If we're lucky, we're about to get this thing moving."

Which one of us is the captain, Marika thought, as she took up the captain's chair.

"What do you mean, if we're lucky?"

"We finally managed to sort out the reactor output controls and the engine startup sequence."

Usually Sandaime handled the engineer's console solo; there looked to be a number of them working at it now, including Chiaki and Yayoi, while Gruier and Lynn lent a remote hand from the first officer's chair and the radar/sensor console.

"I think I can get us to the outer planets once the drives are running," said Ai, glancing back at the captain's chair. She'd been discussing something with Marie at the nav station. "Just give me a proper course."

"A proper course? You don't even have to stay in the ecliptic plane, just get us out of the system and I'll be happy." Marika manipulated the control panel and brought up the current deployment of the Tau Ceti defense force on the display. Their target was the edge of the system, but that didn't mean they needed to cut through military exercises or run across their fleets along the way.

She chose a path that ran from their current position at the Umi-no-ake Lagrange point to the edge of the system, one that seemed the least likely to bring any chance encounters with other ships—including the military—and sent the course to the bridge's main display.

"Forget about orbital coordinates, just head in the direction of Fahrstern in the spine of the Northstar constellation! Fly casual, stay at low-impulse until we reach interplanetary speeds!"

"So the plan is to take our time while we get out of here until we're someplace quiet?" Chiaki summarized as she ran through a drive diagnostic. "Not a bad idea."

"Alright, launch as soon as everything's ready!" Marika ordered enthusiastically. She looked around; the response from the bridge was less exuberant. "Uh, when do you think we'll be able to launch?"

"If the drives are on low-impulse, then I think we should be okay letting the drives auto-throttle the reactors." Yayoi read the relevant bits from the diagram plastered on the display as she compared it to the file she held in her hand. "But I can't get a good reading on our reaction velocity or our real thrust, the gauges don't seem reliable. I don't know if accelerating at low-impulse is going to be realistic."

"She's right, if we restrict our thrust too much the propellant efficiency is going to drop." Chiaki leaned over the engineer's console, her arm disappearing behind it. "These are military-grade drives; go below a certain point and they start to lose efficiency. Wouldn't it be better to let out the throttle?"

"Uh, the manual we have said to set the throttle to at least thirty percent if you can, any less than that and you won't get a complete reaction, efficiency will drop, and it'll leave behind soot and other contaminants, which will lead to more problems."

"What'll it be, Captain?" Chiaki asked as she continued making adjustments. Marika let out a loud groan.

"Fine, if we can't hope to go slow and stay inconspicuous, run the reactors and drives where they won't complain. Go as soon as we're ready! We're technically taking the ship out of the anchorage in secret, so there's no need to file a flight plan or wait for permission. Bentenmaru, launch!"

A few hours later high-velocity plasma blasted from the Bentenmaru's engines.

Chapter 4: Pirates in Training

The Bentenmaru launched from the defense force-controlled anchorage at Umi-no-ake's Lagrange point en route to the outer planets with a sudden burst of speed and reckless handling unthinkable for even the most powerful civilian ships. The streams of high-velocity plasma it left in its wake would give it away to any observation network, civilian or government, but they were on course to escape the Tau Ceti system, and with any luck they would avoid being questioned by traffic control or the military.

"Aha, I knew it!" Lynn exclaimed from the radar/sensor station as they approached the system's largest gas planet, Shiro-no-kaze. "They left the transponder off."

"Turn it back on! Now!" Marika shouted. Her voice was going hoarse. "Ugh, I was already planning on feigning ignorance until after we'd left the anchorage, but I ended up completely forgetting!"

"Listen, I know it was sudden or whatever, but we could have ignored it until we got the acceleration under control, it would have made launching a lot less stressful."

"Accelerating like that before the reactor output is stable is bad for both the engines and the propellant!"

"But if the engines are cold they they'll need that much more thrust to stabilize! Why do drives have to be so complicated!?" Chiaki screamed. "Plus the exhaust pressure and fuel mixture need to be set manually. Just how old are these engines!?"

"Let's see, I think Sandaime said that they got them from a fifty year old Imperial fast battleship somehow..."

"So it's not like they're some pre-FTL antiques or anything! Why are they so difficult to handle!?"

"The engines might be from a fast battleship but the regulators came from somewhere else." Yayoi took another reading from the drive's sensors once they'd appeared to have finally stabilized. Her face wore a deep mask of exhaustion.

"Wait, you're telling me the engines and the regulators don't match!?"

"If you do a search for the engines' model number you won't find an exact match. You'll get a lot that are close, but judging by the suffix on the end those ones are all newer than ours. But none of them have as much thrust either, and there are no fast battleships in the Imperial Fleet that use them, only cruisers. My best guess is that these engines are probably prototypes with boosted output that somebody somehow got their hands on..."

"What!?"

"But if they never made any more engines with the same thrust as these, there was probably a reason for it. Fuel efficiency maybe, or cost performance." Yayoi adjusted the exhaust pressure until it came in line with the minor fluctuations in the reaction chamber temperature. "Or maybe it was because they're too sensitive to manage easily?"

"Now that you mention it, Sandaime and the engine people do always look like they're having a rough time." Marika shrank into the captain's chair, looking rather apologetic.

"I don't think we're going to be able to avoid guzzling fuel at maximum thrust, not by modern standards anyway. But I'm sure engines this complicated need a special regulator system, and the regulators and the rest of the electronics on the ship aren't that old. I know it's normal to upgrade the engines and the regulators together, but if the regulators were upgraded separately, it probably means that they couldn't get a hold of them when they swapped out the drives and had to make do with whatever they had on hand."

Lynn balked. Chiaki looked back and forth suspiciously between Yayoi and the engine panel.

"You can do that?"

"Not normally. Drives and their regulator software need to be made to work with one another. But I supposed if you had the diagnostic data, you could still use the engines even if you couldn't use the regulators. If you can run the engines at full power—like they do on fighters—then the regulators just need to slot in. I bet you could do it with off-the-shelf parts, then all you'd need to do is write the regulator software from scratch."

"So you can use them?" Chiaki asked, still doubtful. Yayoi softly shook her head.

"I think it'll be hard getting a reasonably efficient fuel burn, not without a dedicated manual. I checked, and the manual only covers setup and replacement. It looks like a lot of work went into the regulator system when it was new so they wouldn't have to mess with it later, but it's still a pain getting it to run like normal."

"Are things on the Barbarossa this bad?" Marika asked. Chiaki sunk to the floor of the bridge, her back propped up against the engineer's console.

"Our ship may be old, but for at least as long as I've been there I've never seen anyone wear themselves out this much over the drives. Our drives are military too, but they don't have as much thrust and aren't nearly as finicky. I don't know for sure though, I've never asked. They're maybe half as much trouble."

"Uh, Captain?" Yayoi looked back from the engineer's console with a worried look on her face. Marika tried to compose herself and answered with a cheerful smile.

"What is it?"

"If the standard drives are this much of a headache, what are we going to do if the FTL drive is just as bad?"

"Don't worry, we'll be fine," Marika said—baselessly—as she waved Yayoi's doubts away. "The FTL drive and the regulators are all standard parts, we've never had a single FTL transit failure."

"If they did fail, I doubt you'd still have a ship." Chiaki glared at Marika, exhausted. "FTL flight is all-or-nothing. You never noticed how much work goes into it? Pirates need to make jumps that are even more precise than a military ambush. It's tricky stuff."

"I never thought FTL was gonna be easy," Marika agreed, still smiling. "But worrying about it right now isn't going to get us anywhere. We'll deal with it when the time comes." She checked the Bentenmaru's current location using the captain's chair display. "Once we're far enough away from the influence of the Tau Ceti star we'll give FTL a shot. We can practice flying the Bentenmaru once we get to where we're going."

"Have you thought about a training schedule?"

"Sort of. I know what kinds of things we need to focus on, at least." Marika nodded thoughtfully. "I, uh, guess I need to give everyone a rundown. Everybody listen up, okay?" She scanned the faces of the yacht club members who were manning the bridge; they'd been working for a long time without a break.

"If anything jumps out at you, let me know. There are probably things I've overlooked." More than half of the club members who were here now would probably make good bridge staff, she thought. "The Bentenmaru's next job is time-sensitive. It's a raid on a cruise ship, the Princess Apricot. Both the insurance company and the Princess Apricot's operator are aware of it; think of it as a kind of attraction for the cruisegoers. Obviously there's always a chance of something unexpected happening, and if it does it'll be up to us to deal with it, but this is a routine job, and there's a list of things we need to do."

Lynn raised her hand; she had something to say.

"The target and the details are already set in stone. It sounds like it'll be a cakewalk."

Marika nodded.

"We need to put on a show, but it won't be that dangerous as long as we stick to the script, and there's not a lot of concern about something unexpected going wrong. If everything goes smoothly, then one way or another, with the yacht club's help, we should be able to get it done."

Again Marika scanned the faces of everyone on the bridge. Save for Chiaki, who was already quite familiar with the situation and procedure, they were all staring at her.

"But to do our job properly we'll need to fly the Bentenmaru like actual pirates, and we're not ready for that yet."

"The target, the Princess Apricot, do we know their course and flight plan?" Lynn asked. "If we know where they're going to be flying, it shouldn't be that hard of a job, right?"

"The Princess Apricot is a regular client, there's mutual trust there, and they've supplied us with plenty of information, so we've got that going for us. But, try to imagine: the Princess Apricot is following its flight plan, but take an FTL jump for example; the safe zone has room for error, that's a huge swath of space, you're never going to hit the exact point you aim for. We don't want a collision when we encounter each other, so we'll need to wait somewhere safe for the Princess Apricot to touch down."

"Ah, I guess you're right."

"So after we lay in wait for our prey to jump in at the appointed time, we need to confirm their identity using the radar and sensors, close with them without wasting any time, and board them so we can raid them."

"Just like that?" Lynn raised her hand again. "You just charge in after this cruise ship right after it touches down in the spacelanes without jamming them or blocking their radar?"

"Ah! I forgot!" Marika shouted. "You're right, we don't just charge at them right off the bat; after confirming the target we hack them so they don't notice us as we approach. That way we can take control of their ship, and then we announce ourselves as pirates."

"How do you hack them?"

"Usually Coorie does it from the cyberwarfare console." Marika pointed to the station on the left-hand side of the bridge.

"So who's going to do it this time?"

"You are, of course. Ah, and I'll probably ask Chiaki to lend a hand."

Lynn smiled. "So that means for this job, I need to master the Bentenmaru's cyberwarfare systems?"

"Right," Marika reluctantly confirmed. She started picturing all sorts of ominous and unexpected twists. "I'm, uh, not exactly the most familiar with the Bentenmaru's hardware, but I think it's all in working order at the moment. If you can, please try not to break anything."

"It'll be fine," Lynn said sheepishly, waving her off. "I keep the kid gloves on when it comes to the Odette II's cyberwarfare system, after all."

"Yeah, well it's not like you get all that many chances to actually hack somebody on our training cruises."

"Hey, trust me. So after we've hacked our prey and taken them over, then what?" Lynn urged. Marika remembered where she'd left off.

"Once we've successfully taken control of our target, we approach and board them, then inform the passengers that they've fallen prey to pirates. We do that by breaking into their comms, it's like we're announcing ourselves to the entire ship. If possible, I'd like that to wait to until after we've moved close enough for them to see us."

"So we need to get good and close right away, right after they touch down," Ai said from the helm, as if she were lecturing to herself. Even when a ship isn't traveling faster than lightspeed, traffic on the spacelanes still moves at well above orbital velocities; ships are supposed to keep a safe distance from one another. If you can see another ship with your naked eye, you're already closer than is safe.

"Right. Normally you don't get that close even during space battles, but if you want to hack someone and take control of them the best place to be is right next to them. After we take control of our prey we let them continue to drift on inertia as we approach, then we forcibly dock with them. That may sound simple, but once we announce ourselves we open a window inside of which we need to make our entrance. We don't want the passengers getting bored, so we need to approach and dock with them somewhere they can see us."

"We don't want them to get bored," Ai said, dumbfounded. "How much time do we have?"

"It depends on how close we can get before we've taken over the ship, but it's usually a couple of minutes."

"You've got to be—. It takes longer than that to dock at a port with all the proper facilities."

"Yeah, and you won't be getting a shred of guidance from the target either. The Bentenmaru's got a whole suite of sensors, from long range down to ultra-short, but the target changes with every job; lining ourselves up and getting in smoothly so we can dock is part of the pirate's art. We can't make the customer wait while we're busy flying."

"It's not an easy job. You only get one chance to do it right," Chiaki added. The Barbarossa was in the same line of work, and she'd flown on it plenty of times. "Screw up the approach and you waste time, screw up docking and you damage your prey—totally unacceptable. Every ship has a different anchoring point, if you don't line up the docking arm just right you'll leave a mark. And if you damage the other ship you have to pay out repair costs and restitution."

At the helm, Ai shuddered.

"Come on, don't scare her like that. That's why we're going to practice, to make sure that doesn't happen. Anyway, assuming everything has gone fine and we've docked with the target, then we board them using the boarding bridge and rob them. We wrap things up nice and pirate-like, everybody returns to the Bentenmaru safe and sound, and our work is done. We come home to Tau Ceti, park the Bentenmaru back where it was, and return to the station on the Odette II, all according to plan."

"So I guess the first thing we gotta do is practice flying the ship," Lynn summarized. "I take back what I said about this being a cakewalk. So where are we gonna be practicing?"

"I was thinking the Cepheus Void, between the Orion and Perseus Arms."

The Milky Way, home of the Tau Ceti system, is a barred spiral galaxy. It consists of four major and two minor spiral arms, linked together by a massive bar of stars that jutting through its center.

Tau Ceti is located inside the Orion Arm. The Cepheus Void is a sparsely populated expanse of stars between it and the neighboring Perseus Arm that spans several thousand light years. Compared to the arms, the void has a lack not only of stars but also of interstellar matter, leading to minimal economic interest in the area.

There are no established spacelanes, inhabited planets are few and far between, there isn't even much hope for resources to mine; it's a vacuum in the truest sense, an empty region of space. Ships traveling through hyperspace between the arms have no reason to stop there, and it would take ten thousand years to cross it at sub-light speeds; it's deserted for good reason.

The lack of established spacelanes means ships that favor normal space steer clear. Unless the void is being used as a training ground for the Imperial Fleet or various system defense forces and security forces, you'll almost never see a ship there.

"Gotcha." Lynn manipulated the radar/sensor control panel, searching for navigational data on the Cepheus Void. "A place that empty, we can be a little lax without having to worry about misjumping, we can fly wherever we want, we could even fire off some beams or missiles without bothering anybody."

"On the other hand, if something happens to us we can't expect a rescue."

The bridge reacted to Chiaki with silence.

"Hey now, don't go scaring them." Marika frantically tried to downplay the comment. "We'll be fine, the Imperial Fleet and the defense force may not care what we're up to, but the insurance company still knows where we'll be. We're keeping in touch, if anything happens they'll have our back."

A sense of relief spread over the bridge.

"But the real reason is that I just don't want anyone else getting involved; we're a pirate ship doing training without any of our regular crew."

"Alright. So I guess our next major hurdle is FTL. We've still got a while yet before that happens, huh?" Lynn summarized succinctly.

Marika nodded. "Right."

"Great, then I've got a job for you, Captain. Get some rest."

"Huh?"

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Lynn pointed at the control panel where a chronometer was displaying the current Galactic Standard Time. "Our training cruise schedule had you up early, and you've been on the bridge since dinner. It's well past your bedtime—it's practically time for breakfast. We've got a long road ahead of us. At our current speed we've got two or three days, assuming we don't hit any snags along the way. That's plenty of time to prepare for our jump out into the void. The hard part's over with, we all deserve a good rest, don't you think, Captain?"

Marika checked the time at the captain's chair. Despite waking up early to get the Odette II launched on schedule, they'd already rolled past the next day's wakeup call.

"Wow, look at the time. You're right. You've all got beds waiting in the passenger cabins, make sure you wash up and get a good night's rest."

"Augh! I overslept!" Marika burst onto the bridge still wearing the tracksuit she was using in lieu of pajamas. "Why are there so many people here!?"

The Bentenmaru's bridge wasn't particularly large to begin with. Counting the observer seats it only had spots for ten people, and under gravity the walls were useless as well.

The bridge was clamoring with people, double what had been there the day before, and in a space only seventy percent the size of the Odette II's.

"Oh, it's the Captain." Gruier raised her hand in greeting from the first officer's chair, hiding any signs of exhaustion. "My apologies, we're sort of in the middle of something."

"Well somebody looks well-rested, don't they?" Chiaki appeared next to her. As captain, Marika had her own private cabin in addition to her office. It hadn't been that long since she'd joined the ship and she had few personal possessions on board, so she'd offered it to the club members. The sofa in her office converted into a bed, and for this voyage that was were she'd be catching her z's.

"Why didn't anybody come wake me?"

"The Princess said she tried."

"Gruier?" Marika glanced at the first officer's chair, where Gruier was explaining to some older club members how to read the displays. "Oh, by the way, she doesn't like being called 'Princess' or whatever."

"Got it. Don't call the Princess that."

"Also she's got ears like a hawk, I'm pretty sure she can hear you."

Chiaki's face stiffened, and she looked toward the first officer's chair, where Gruier continued to lecture the upperclassmen.

"Gruier did go to wake you up, but you wouldn't get up, you were fast asleep. I guess she figured being captain is hard enough that it was better just to let you sleep."

"No way!" Marika had never been a reliable waker to begin with, but the shame of being caught sound asleep on her own ship was too much. "I wish she'd woken me up, even if she had to pull out all the stops to do it."

"Well I doubt you're going to get much free time from here on out, might as well sleep now while you still can. Was it a good rest?"

"Good enough that I wouldn't get up even when someone tried to wake me, apparently."

Marika scanned the bridge. Lynn was planted at the cyberwarfare console, and Schnitzer's oversized combat command console was empty, but the rest of the stations were packed with members of the yacht club.

"Anyway, what's all the fuss about? It doesn't look like it's an emergency."

"It was Lynn's idea, she wanted everyone to learn how to work things before they forgot everything they figured out yesterday."

"What!?" Even Marika hadn't considered taking their training that far. "Why? They've got enough on their plates as it is."

"That's exactly why. Nobody knows what they're going to be doing yet, but if they understand what's going on on the bridge they can at least follow along and keep up with what's happening."

"Okay, I get that, but—"

"And anyway, you won't be able to run the bridge in shifts without two or three people for each position, right? I bet when the time comes you'll need everyone either off plundering or doing some other job. You'll have an easier time shifting people around if everyone has a basic idea of what they need to do to keep the Bentenmaru running."

"Now that you mention it, the crew is always off hanging out in the other sections when they've got spare time." Realizing that her crew hadn't been socializing, but learning whatever they could to help out, Marika felt even more embarrassed. "Ugh, I had so much to learn about being captain that I never saw what they were up to. You're right, ostensibly we're on board the Bentenmaru for training, it's best if everyone gets to learn and experience whatever they can."

"Good. You've still got time, go wash up, get changed, and have something to eat. There should still be some lunch left in the mess."

"Do I really look that bad in the morning?"

Chiaki rolled her eyes, pulled a compact mirror from the pocket of her jumpsuit, and flashed it at Marika.

"Ack!" Marika grabbed Chiaki's hand and shut the mirror. "Fine, I get it, I'll go get cleaned up."

"And don't forget to eat, too. And another thing, Marika!" Chiaki stopped Marika just as she was about to abscond from the bridge. "You need to wear your captain's uniform from now on!"

Marika spun around in front of the door to the bridge and shouted, "What!? You want me to wear that getup in front everybody!?"

"You are the captain, after all." Chiaki glared at Marika. "You're captain of the pirate ship Bentenmaru. You think you can command respect with the you're hair all a mess, dressed in the same gym clothes as everybody else?"

"Commanding respect and all that has never really been my thing."

"I don't care if it's 'not your thing'!" Chiaki screamed. "This isn't just about you, everybody needs to realize that they're on board a pirate ship! It doesn't matter if it's just for show, if the captain doesn't act like she's a pirate, nobody else is going to feel it either!"

"Yeah, but..." Marika knew she was beat, but she tried to argue anyway. Chiaki folded her arms.

"That's an order!"

"What?"

"It's in the regulations. When engaged in piracy, the captain has to wear a uniform. You're aware of that, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Marika sheepishly acknowledged.

"And no matter how you look at it, bringing a bunch of high schoolers on board a pirate ship to train them as pirates counts as engaging in piracy. Sure, if somebody stumbles across us we'll be able to make excuses until you get ready, but don't you think it's the bare minimum expected of you as captain?"

"Yeah, but..."

"I cut you some slack yesterday, but not anymore. From now on, whenever you're outside your office, you have to wear your captain's uniform! Even my useless old man somehow manages as captain, and you know why? Because he wears the uniform!"

"Hey, I like your dad."

"I don't care! Wash your face, brush your teeth, comb your hair, put on your uniform, and eat your breakfast! You've got a big day ahead of you!"

Marika appeared on the bridge in her captain's uniform—formal miniskirt, flashy captain's hat, the works—and was met this time with cheers and applause.

"You really do look good sitting in the captain's chair like that." Gruier, holding a teacup in one hand, beamed a smile up at Marika.

"Of course you'd think so, I was wearing this the first time we met," Marika replied as she placed her hat in its designated spot next to her console. She looked disheartened.

"It's not just that. Seeing the Captain like that, where she's supposed to be, it makes the whole bridge feel more serious."

"You think so?" Marika looked around the bridge dubiously; the chaos continued unabated. "It doesn't look it to me."

"That's because you can't see yourself."

"Captain!" shouted the third-year club member who'd taken Lynn's place at the radar/sensor console. "We're receiving a Class-II encrypted transmission! It's from the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate!"

"Roger." Marika was about to run her fingers across the control panel when she stopped herself. "Can you take it over there?"

"What? Whaaaat? Uh, uh, maybe, I think so."

Marika nodded as she watched the third-year finally dropped her gaze to the control panel.

"Alright then, give it a shot. It's a regular caller, the system should be able to handle the settings automatically."

"Understood, I'll try." The third-year ran her fingers nervously across the control panel. Marika noticed the raucous bridge had at some point fallen into silence.

Did she realize that everyone on the bridge was focusing on her? Either way, the third-year got on the horn.

"This is the Bentenmaru, communications officer Miyamoto Ruri...Mister Shou from the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate? Right, just a moment."

Ruri placed the call on hold and looked up from the radar/sensor console. "It's from Shou at Harold Lloyd. He's the one who contacted us yesterday, isn't he?"

"He is. I'll answer it from the captain's chair, can you route the call?"

"Right. Let's see, take the on-hold transmission and transfer it to the internal line to the captain's chair...there."

The captain's chair comm panel flashed, indicating that the line was connected.

"Awesome, it worked. I'll answer it here."

185

Marika sat up straight and took the call. She'd thought about using a headset, but left the transmission open so everyone could hear.

The afro-haired weirdo appeared on the communications monitor in his business suit.

"Yo, it's Shou, your friend down at Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate."

"This is Marika on the Bentenmaru."

Marika offered up her standard greeting. On the monitor, Shou's mouth was agape in surprise.

"All dressed up today, are we? Why it's almost as if I've called a proper ship."

"I'll thank you not to laugh." Marika shot Shou a shallow glare. "I'm dealing with enough trouble as it is."

"Oh, but I wasn't laughing. It looks like you're working hard, I'm proud to see it. Let's see, it appears that you're still in the Tau Ceti system? How goes the training with your newest crew?"

"We're getting by." Marika playfully stuck out her tongue. "Thanks to you everyone's figuring out how to run the ship, they're getting a lot of experience."

"Sounds promising. Your next client, the Princess Apricot, hasn't made any changes to their departure time. I hope you'll be ready in time. We've also been scouring our servers like you asked, and this time we unearthed data on the Bentenmaru's FTL drive."

"Wow, what wonderful timing!" Marika exclaimed, clasping her hands together, though silently she suspected that the timing was a little too wonderful. "Send it over ASAP! Have you found anything on the navigation systems?"

"Navigation, you say?" Shou glanced nonchalantly down at his hands. "While not specific to the Bentenmaru, we did find a general overview, along with a manual for operating the navigation systems installed aboard your ship. I don't know if they'll be of any use to you, but I'll send them over. Give them a look."

"Thank you so much!"

"By the way, your compatriots quarantined on the hospital ship Ben Casey appear to be doing quite well."

Startled, Marika's expression stiffened.

"Uh, what's been going on with them?"

"No change in their quarantine status, but several of them have received a clean bill of health. At this rate they may have trouble spending the tail end of their quarantine cooped up quietly on the hospital ship. I did inform them that Captain Marika said that their job was to take it easy while they recovered from the cold."

"I appreciate the effort." Marika dipped her head toward Shou. "Our plans haven't changed: we're still planning on jumping to the Cepheus Void to start training for real. Uh, I suppose we should get in touch with Harold Lloyd before we make the FTL jump?"

"As long as there isn't an emergency that requires immediate dispatch, our standard check-in schedule is sufficient. It looks to me like you'll be in the far-flung void during our next contact? Good luck. Ta-ta."

The Bentenmaru slipped beyond the orbit of the Tau Ceti system's outer planets and continued into deep space, where the gravity of the star was minimal enough that it wouldn't affect hyperspace, and there they began preparations for their FTL jump.

Several things needed to be readied: first they had to determine the precise coordinates of both their current position and their destination, and then work through the complex calculations necessary for the jump.

No matter how complicated the calculations, however, it wasn't as hard as it sounds; once they were able to establish the parameters the computer would take over the rest. Figuring out their current position was already routine for the yacht club, and once they learned how to use the Bentenmaru's instruments it was no problem.

After the calculations were complete they would need to use the numbers the computer spit out to configure the various settings that the FTL drive would use to launch them along their plotted course. On a newer ship the entire process would be automated, and even the Bentenmaru ran automatic checks to avoid human error.

But there was still a mountain of fields to fill out, and they needed to verify that the reactors powering the FTL drive were functioning normally.

As long as the Bentenmaru was traveling through normal space the ship's two high-output converter reactors weren't called on to produce that much energy. But when making an FTL jump, forcibly warping space in order to jump into hyperspace, the reactors would need to be pushed to nearly their maximum.

From what Marika could remember, however, and as the manual Shou had provided bore out, the Bentenmaru's two conversion reactors—"O" and "M"—weren't identical.

According to the accompanying data, the Bentenmaru's reactors had been swapped out about sixty years prior. It's said that civilian reactors, when properly maintained, can last all but indefinitely, but military reactors, built with a focus on output and efficiency, can only be expected to last for around half a century from when they're built. Apparently the originals had been replaced after reaching the end of their lifespan, but even with careful maintenance the replacements had run well past their shelf life.

The Bentenmaru's crew and other involved parties had no interest in retiring the ship yet, and it seemed that they'd put out feelers looking for replacements, but finding an original reactor for a hundred and twenty year old ship is a fool's errand. Moreover, the two reactors had been modified many times over, their output pushed well beyond the original specs, and supposing they could even unearth new-old-stock reactors, they'd need to be upgraded to meet the Bentenmaru's needs before they could even be installed.

They'd made numerous inquiries into replacing them with suitable newer models, but it would be a massive undertaking, requiring the disassembly of the ship's keel, and even then they still lacked the actual replacements, and so continued to put it off.

Of the two past-their-prime reactors, "O" was constantly on the verge of breaking down (as was to be expected), but with the loving care of Sandaime and the rest of the engineering staff it remained stable, functional, and reliable. "M", with its constantly fluctuating output, required just as much work, and while on good days it offered exceptional performance, on bad days it needed constant babysitting even when simply idling.

"Converter reactors are the most complex and messy devices in the entire universe, and you're still using yours past their service life?" Chiaki quipped as she pored over an e-paper diagram of the reactors spread out on the floor of the bridge, replete with notes and addendums. "This pirate ship is lucky it can even fly."

"Our people are the best," Marika answered with a straight face. "It may take a lot of work to keep it running, but the hull's sturdy, it's nimble, it's fast; it's a great pirate ship."

"I guess you can't argue with results." Chiaki looked around the bridge; it was crowded as usual. "You think it'll make the jump alright?"

"Like the Captain said, the FTL drive doesn't look like it's gonna give us many problems. We may be messing with the fabric of space, and the risks if we screw up are severe, but there are rigorous safeties and all the abort protocols are active." At the engineer's console, Yayoi had switched most of the displays over to the FTL drive and was busy checking the linkages. "I can't say whether things are going to go as planned or not, but if we forget anything or mess up the settings, or if we run into any unexpected trouble, that's what the abort protocols are for. As long as we don't do anything weird like change the settings at random, I don't think we have anything to worry about."

"We've run a bunch of simulations, and as long as the reactors can supply enough energy we won't have any problems with the jump. Like Yayoi says, if we forget anything or run into trouble there's a system that will halt the jump automatically. If there's a problem I'm sure we'll figure out how to deal with it."

"If there is a problem, I bet it'll be from that little monster, 'M'." Marika glanced at the captain's chair control panel, which showed an abbreviated readout of the state of the two reactors.

"Fortunately for us, 'O' has been running stable ever since we launched. It should have enough output to just get us to the Cepheus Void all on its own. If push comes to shove, do you think we could make a jump without using 'M'?" Gruier offered her own proposal on how to deal with the issue. But Marika folded her arms and mumbled evasively.

"The point of installing redundant reactors in the first place is so you can still use one of them to jump in a worst-case scenario, so I suspect it'd be fine. But if you put all the burden on the good one, suddenly it stops working when you need it to, and then what are you left with? 'O' is definitely the better of the pair, and it does the majority of the heavy lifting come crunch time, but it's running up on the end of its life. There has to be way we can balance the load, right?"

"If push comes to shove?" Yayoi considered it as she slid the seat back from the engineer's console to make space to open the giant file folder in front of her. "The problem is, I don't think that 'M' is going to stabilize its output for us the way 'O' will. If you look at the total output including the fluctuations, it's not that 'M' is lacking. Maybe it's because it isn't stressed the way that 'O', the good one, is, but if you could maximize its output 'M' would actually be the better of the pair."

"So you're going to feed unstable power into the FTL drive?" Marika didn't look thrilled. "It's not strange for ships running on one engine to never make it back from hyperspace."

"Sure, but if we can use 'O' to stabilize 'M's' output, I think we can use both to power the jump."

"Wait, what was that!?" Marika asked with a sense of deja vu. She thought she'd heard Sandaime explain something similar to her once. "You want to do what with the reactors?"

"So, we run 'O' with slightly more output than we need for the jump, and if we modulate 'M' to stabilize its output, I think that'll make for a smooth takeoff and touchdown."

"You want to fine tune the reactor output in the middle of an FTL jump!?" Marika nearly screamed, but then she remembered that Sandaime and the rest of the engineering staff sometimes used the very same procedure.

"Is that so wrong?" Yayoi twisted her head back and asked. She sank into the seat, the giant file folder still open in front of her.

"Where'd you come up with an idea like that?"

"My family's got a twin-engine cruiser, but one of the engines can be trouble."

Marika recalled Yayoi's family were traders who kept a large cruiser moored at the station.

"Sometimes we have to keep an eye on both of them and play with the throttle to even them out when it looks like one of them's gonna go bad on us."

"For real?"

"The file talks about making minor adjustments to 'M's' output. It looks complicated, I don't think I'll be able to do it alone from the bridge, but with a couple more people we should be fine."

"Alright then." Marika smiled. "I'll leave it up to you. Run a test with both reactors working in tandem before we get there, and if it works you can use them both to power the FTL drive."

When the Bentenmaru next returned to the Orion Arm, it was along Galactic Corridor West-40 in the vicinity of the Rainbow Star Cluster, a group of stars that had reached the ends of their lives and collapsed into a rainbow of light that spanned the whole of the chromatic spectrum.

"Touchdown successful! Verifying current position!"

"We made it." Marika breathed a sigh of relief as she checked the captain's chair chronometer. Fivestar Lines was known for running a tight ship; there was no announcement in the latest travel update of a change in their scheduled FTL jump.

At the navigator's console, Marie had started to confirm their position before even being ordered to. She flashed the data from the astronomical sensors and spacelane beacons onto the main screen.

The beacons calculated their position for them automatically. They showed the Bentenmaru's touchdown point to be a good distance off from where they'd originally planned.

Marika checked the data from the sensors as they lagged behind.

"A fifty percent margin of error? I doubt anybody would complain if we were just some private cruiser, but that's so far off the mark they might refuse to renew our business license."

"Come on, that's pretty good considering we jumped here all the way from the void." At the radar/sensor console, Chiaki waited for the sensors to scan the surrounding area while she queried traffic control for information on ships traveling in the vicinity. Freed from the uncertainty of the jump, she stretched out in her seat.

"I would have preferred it if we could have made three jumps on the way here so we could work out the ship's quirks and get the settings hashed out, but there wasn't enough time for that. I guess it's not a big enough discrepancy that we can't make up for it, it shouldn't get in the way of the job."

Marika glanced at the captain's chair display, which was showing information on nearby ships.

The Princess Apricot still wasn't listed.

"Where's our target?"

"Still searching...ah, there's an update. They're currently in the middle of an FTL jump. Takeoff and touchdown points still match their flight plan. They should drop out soon."

"Just in the nick of time, huh?" Marika checked the chronometer and let out a sigh. "Good thing we didn't get our wires crossed, I wouldn't want to have to chase after them right as we touched down. Assuming the Princess Apricot arrives at their planned point, we can get down to business all according to schedule."

"No anomalies reported inside the ship," Gruier announced calmly from the first officer's chair. Marika remembered that she had her own job to do and ran her eyes across the captain's chair information panel.

"Post-touchdown FTL drive check complete, no problems. Leaving it idling for our next jump. Converter reactors 'O' and 'M' are, uhh..." Gruier hesitated just long enough to collect the relevant information for the captain and the bridge crew from the status report scrolling across her screen. "Both reactors are running a little hot, but within acceptable limits. 'M's' output doesn't seem to want to stay under control, but 'O' is is responding without issue."

It wasn't enough to control the Bentenmaru's two reactors from the bridge; several more staff were stuck in the engine room looking after them.

"Standard drives, propulsion, and fuel delivery systems are all good to go," Yayoi reported from the engineering station. "All systems are functioning normally. We can go full ahead at any time."

Marika had wanted more people in charge of the standard and FTL drives than the Bentenmaru's original crew boasted, but the yacht club was short on members and there was no one to spare.

They didn't use the standard drives while making an FTL jump, nor did they use the FTL drive during normal flight. The crew ended up pulling double duty on both sets of drives. For jobs like their current one, which called for high-speed maneuvering immediately following an FTL jump, the engine room would have been a battlefield, regardless of how much they could prepare for it.

"Heads up, I've got a response from the gravimetric monitor and the spatial vibration sensors." Chiaki forwarded the data to the captain's chair. "They're a little bit further away than we planned, but the pre-drive signature is the same as previous encounters with the Princess Apricot."

Various sensors are able to see the telltales of a massive object touching down in normal space. A ship's pre-drive signature varies slightly based on its mass, volume, FTL drive output, and jump pattern, and by comparing it with previous observation logs it's possible to identify a ship before it even appears.

Chiaki had activated the Bentenmaru's observation systems as soon as they touched down. She detected the Princess Apricot's pre-drive signature first through spatial vibrations, then ran them against older data, which found a match and spit out the ship's name.

"Confirmed! The pattern is a match for the Princess Apricot!"

"Don't wait for a transponder confirmation," Marika ordered, trying to keep her voice calm. "Head for the touchdown point at maximum acceleration! Lynn, are cyberwarfare preparations complete?"

"You know it!" Lynn ran her fingers across her own computer—already linked with the cyberwarfare system—and the control panel. "I wish I were doing more than just following a script, but I guess you can't expect much security from a luxury liner. Ready to initiate as soon as we have a target!"

"I'm counting on you."

"Standard propulsion online!" the engineer Yayoi reported. "We're ready to move!"

Marika checked the info displays surrounding the captain's chair. Some were showing the usual minor mechanical troubles or crew vacancies, but she was confident that this was as good as things were going to get.

Marika rose from the captain's chair. Conscious that her voice was being broadcast throughout the ship, she chippered up her tone.

"Bentenmaru, move out."

"Bentenmaru, full speed ahead!" Yayoi intoned as she increased the drive output. They'd been crawling along the spacelanes on inertia since touching down, but as the drives spit high-velocity plasma they quickly began to accelerate.

"Course locked in," Ai announced from the helm, her voice almost pathetically rife with nerves. "Target, the Princess Apricot's projected touchdown point."

"Princess Apricot touchdown confirmed!" Chiaki truncated the sensor details and transmitted only the result. "The transponder and silhouette both confirm it's our target! Transponder and engine patterns all match, it's the Princess Apricot for sure!"

"I've got 'em too!" Lynn cried from the cyberwarfare station. "The Princess Apricot, current location Galactic Corridor West-40, Post 68B! Coordinates and transponder confirmed!"

"Initiate electronic warfare." Marika gestured with her arm. "They should stick to the script."

"Roger!"

Marika watched the projected time-to-contact based on the Bentenmaru's and the Princess Apricot's current positions. The seconds ticked down, but the projected time needed for their approach and docking was still much greater than usual.

"What's the matter, you want to leave our customers hanging?"

"I'll increase our acceleration by point-three, but it's going to eat through fuel," Yayoi reported. Gruier sent a tentative, slightly modified approach path from the first officer's chair to the main screen.

"I suggest we adjust our course. This one will get us to the Princess Apricot in the shortest time possible while using the least amount of fuel."

"That was fast!" Marika blurted out, surprised at the speed of Gruier's calculations. She'd redrawn their path using the projected future location of the Princess Apricot, calculated using old flight data. Marika checked the plotted course—including the additional acceleration calculations—and quickly nodded. "Thanks. Ai, adjust our course to match the new one."

"Roger." Ai looked at the first of the course corrections she would need to make as they flashed onto her display, and grabbed the controls. "Coming up on course adjustment."

She used one hand to punch the corrected values into the keyboard while the other twisted the yoke. The change in angle was minor, but the sudden change in facing caused the bridge to shake violently.

"Ack, sorry!"

"It's fine, put your back into it, Ai!" Marika called out toward the helm. "Out in the void you were practicing docking with asteroids without any beacons or buoys or planets to use as bearings. You can handle this no problem."

"Y-yes ma'am!"

The projected time-to-contact finally fell into a range that Marika could feel comfortable with. And as it did, it meant that the time to board the Princess Apricot was quickly approaching.

Marika surveyed the bridge; the boarding party was already assembled in costume and makeup. Other than the radar/sensor operator Chiaki, and Gruier—who would be in charge of the Bentenmaru in Marika's absence—the rest of the bridge crew were all set to go raiding.

All of them were pounding away at the bridge control panels, dressed for their first real job.

The engineering staff, the sensor operators and the lookouts posted around the ship, the kitchen and medical crew, they all should have been at their posts dressed and raring to go, even more excited than they'd been during the rehearsal.

Marika had managed to get them all together to rehearse their parts only once; she thought back to everyone gathered in the starboard hangar deck in their costumes and sighed. Someone was always recording the cruise ship jobs so the crew could watch their performance later.

"Schnitzer and Luca would be in tears." Marika laughed as she pictured the crew's faces and what she might say to try to assuage them.

"Is something the matter?" her first officer Gruier asked curiously. She'd wanted to be part of the boarding party, and it took the rest of the crew's combined strength to hold her back. There was no way to tell what might happen during the job; she was wearing the same captain's uniform and rank insignia as Marika, just in a different size.

"It's nothing..." Marika answered, her eyes locked straight ahead. "I was just thinking, this raid will probably go down in the history of the Bentenmaru...or at least the yacht club."

"You've got that right." Gruier smiled along with the laughter that erupted on the bridge. "It's going to go down in the history of the universe."

"Alright. Is everybody ready?" Marika called out cheerfully to the entire ship. "It's pirating time!"

Chapter 5: A Practicum in Piracy

The third raid on the Princess Apricot this season was not the Bentenmaru's usual slick work, nor was it the masterful performance of practiced pirates, yet still the amateurish attempts by the adolescent raiders in their endearing costumes drew the loudest ovation Marika had ever heard.

There were loads of minor troubles. They noticed the docking arm was off-center just as it was about to lock on, and the last-second correction nearly scratched the target's hull; the docking bridge was extended too early and just barely managed to connect with the target, leading to the door opening before a seal was perfectly established, the thermal expansion filling the ship with mist; and when they finally made it on board, the crew's hammy, ad-libbed comedy made Marika feel as if a pit were opening in her gut.

The pirates who boarded the Princess Apricot had chosen their weapons all of their own accord. They'd managed to scrounge up hyper-advanced bowguns and laser sabers and even a certified antique katana; Marika made sure that their wielders were familiar with them before she okayed their use. The yacht club chose their weapons—which ranged in size from a raygun secreted inside a ring to heavy beam rifles and plasma bazookas that dwarfed their wielders' bodies—for their visual impact, but Marika forbade any of their guns from being fired, and all of them had been powered down, locked into demo mode or loaded with blanks to strip them of any destructive potential.

Marika alone carried a beamgun capable of inflicting real damage.

The presence of only a single person who could fight in case of emergency would have been unthinkable for the Bentenmaru before now. But Marika decided that the potential losses, however unlikely, of a novice using a firearm outweighed those of failing at their job.

The club members received instruction in their chosen guns, practiced with them (depowered) on the Bentenmaru's firing range, and were unusually accepting of having them power-locked.

Confident that regardless of what happened they wouldn't destroy the targeted cruise ship, the club members could play the part of pirates with their minds at ease, and they were showered with applause that rivaled even Marika's debut.

As they disengaged from the Princess Apricot, Ai—still dressed in her fairy garb—returned to the helm and sent the Bentenmaru's giant hull into a barrel roll in front of the observation dome as a parting gesture. The girls' first sortie went out with a bang.

The raid was over, and the Bentenmaru's license was saved. They even received a letter of appreciation from the ship's captain after they'd departed.

The passengers' insured jewelry wasn't all that the pirates managed to liberate from the Princess Apricot. Marika had an agent of the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate arrange with the Princess Apricot beforehand for a container of freshly prepared food and a plethora of desserts to be loaded on board the Bentenmaru.

With the job complete, the pirate ship needed to flee its prey as quickly as possible. The Bentenmaru separated from the Princess Apricot according to plan and high-tailed it away. A few snags in the job meant that it took longer than they had wanted, but then the ship made the jump to FTL and was gone.

The Bentenmaru jumped away opposite the direction the Princess Apricot was traveling along the Galactic Corridor, in order to throw off any pursuers. Had it been a real raid they would have made several more jumps to scramble their wake, but this time there was no need; after their rendezvous with the Princess Apricot and until their final jump they would be flying legally, following the flight plans they'd filed with traffic control.

They made their last jump, and Marika declared their raiding mission a success.

And so, in celebration of a job well done, they held their largest party yet since having left the Tau Ceti system.

There was no way Marika could avoid taking part in the revelry that overtook the mess hall and the surrounding areas; she was the captain, after all, and the one responsible for this entire pirate voyage. She drifted through the party, free from the responsibilities of a pirate captain, and once all of the stragglers—exhausted from their own unbroken string of work—had made an appearance, Marika retired to her office.

A hesitant knock on the door brought Marika, who had sunk deep into her desk chair, back to her senses.

"Come in," she called out. She hadn't locked the door, or even closed it all the way. "It's open."

"You got a minute?" It was Lynn, still dressed in the costume of a knight from the distant past. She opened the door timidly. "I need to ask you something."

"Lynn?"

Reflexively Marika rose from her desk, still wearing her captain's uniform, to greet the tall lady knight in her heavy makeup. Lynn looked like she had a lot on her mind; she shut the office door behind her.

"I've got a job for the Bentenmaru."

"A job?" Marika parroted back at her. "Seriously? Right now?"

They may have just completed a job, but the current crew were all temporary replacements. Marika couldn't be alone in thinking that it was hardly the time to be hiring the Bentenmaru out as a pirate ship.

"It's not attacking a cruise ship or anything hard like that," Lynn said. Her face was stiff. "All we need to do is pick someone up and escape."

"That's..." Marika started to answer, and looked her club president in the face. "Hold on! Why would you go through the trouble of hiring a pirate ship? Don't tell me this is a kidnapping!?"

"A kidnapping..." Lynn cast her eyes down and laughed. "I guess you could call it that."

"Okay, like, we're only pirates because we took advantage of the confusion of the war and ran with it; that doesn't mean we're criminals." Marika stammered out one excuse after the other. "I mean, our jobs are attacking cruise ships and fighting with system defense forces and stuff, but we've got contracts with the cruise line operators, and we're only the bad guys in wargames, we can't just go around breaking the law whenever we feel like it."

Lynn lifted her head. "But you do take jobs where the client requests a pickup disguised as a kidnapping, right?"

"Well..." Marika looked away as she thought about how to explain it. "When we say kidnapping, it's not a real kidnapping, we just want it look that way to anyone watching. Usually someone is in a hurry and needs to make a transfer from a passenger ship, or for whatever reason they can't disembark at their destination and need to make other arrangements." She finished her explanation and turned back to Lynn. "You're pretty well informed."

"I know that kidnappings by licensed pirates are staged. But that means that if the target and the kidnapper both agree to it, you could do a pickup that looks like a kidnapping, right?"

"Nope. When we do a kidnapping we need permission from the authorities, either a ship's operator and security detail when we're grabbing someone off a ship, or from the local police when we're doing it on a planet. Also, we can't take a job without explaining the details to the insurance company."

"The target already gave her okay." Lynn pulled a photograph from somewhere inside her armor. "The ship is the Ultimate Fairy, a passenger liner en route to Demand via the central corridor. This is the person I want you to kidnap."

Marika took a look at the holophoto and shrieked. "Jenny!?"

The suit she wore in the holophoto made her look much older than the school uniform Marika was used to. The tiny smile in the hologram belonged to none other than Jenny Dolittle, former president of the Hakuoh Girls' Academy yacht club.

"You want me to kidnap President Jenny—err, just Jenny—from the Ultimate Fairy?"

Lynn nodded faintly as she held up Jenny's picture.

"You said the target gave the okay," Marika repeated, it having finally struck her. "You're telling me Jenny wants to be kidnapped!?"

"She said she doesn't care what I have to do, so technically she doesn't know it'll be a pirate kidnapping." Lynn shook her head. She looked conflicted. "But if I come for her, no matter what, she'll go along with it."

"Can you tell me what's going on?" Marika gestured toward the chair in front of the desk as she settled into her seat. "Jenny ended up not going to college after she graduated, right?"

Jenny Dolittle, former yacht club president, had high enough marks to get her into any of the top-ranked colleges and universities, but she graduated from Hakuoh without having chosen one.

"Yeah." Lynn brushed aside the cape of her knight's costume and took a seat in the office chair. "You know why?"

"No." Marika shook her head. She'd heard a bunch of stories—that she was getting married, that she was skipping college to go straight into coaching—but they were all just rumors. "I've only heard rumors. Her family owns Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport, I figured she was going to go into the family business."

"How much do you know exactly about Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport?"

"Only that they're one of the biggest shipping companies in this region, and mid-tier even on the galactic level."

Marika looked puzzled. Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport's gigantic FTL freighters and high-speed passenger liners were a frequent sight at Umi-no-ake Station. They were an upstart, less than two centuries in business where some established shipping companies had been around one or two millennia, but the family-run business had a bold trajectory, and they'd continued to boom regardless of who was holding the reins.

"Well, the way they grew their business was to find other family-run companies and merge with them through marriage, as a kind of guarantee of their partnership."

Lynn's words left Marika even more puzzled.

"Okay? I'm a pirate, so obviously I'm supposed to know how other people do business, but I don't really care about their business plans...wait, hold on." Marika realized something she should have seen coming from Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport's name. "They're called Hugh & Dolittle, that means they were started by two people named Hugh and Dolittle, right?"

"Originally, the Hughs and the Dolittles ran their own separate companies. The Hugh family had a large, solid business; the Dolittle family came along and used their capital and connections to buy them out. They were Dolittle Transport's first takeover."

"A corporate takeover!"

"That's how Jenny put it." Lynn smirked. "Jenny comes from a large family, and one by one they ended up being used as bargaining chips; they got big enough for their name to become well-known not just around here, but in high society too. More than a hundred family members are involved in Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport, and there are easily a thousand more who have direct ties."

"Family reunions must be a nightmare." Marika looked shocked. "Who knew Jenny's family was so crazy?"

"Well, her dad is seventeenth in line for the business, Jenny's a lot lower at two-twenty-four, though she says even that has its privileges."

"Two-hundred twenty-four..." Marika blinked. She couldn't even guess at what a number like that meant.

"But she said that despite being so low she still usually has bodyguards; she's still part of Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport's business. She's a Dolittle, that means her marriage was arranged before she was even born, the whole rest of her life was planned out for her."

"Wow..." Marika couldn't think of what else to say. "How did they decide who she was going to marry before she was even born?"

"The whole thing was settled before her future partner was born too, of course. When it comes to important families—to say nothing of everything that's at stake in business mergers—apparently it's normal to take a long view of things."

"Now that you mention it, she talked about getting married ever since she was a kid." Marika recalled Jenny having mentioned it. "I never would have guessed there was so much to it."

Marika looked at Lynn.

"But it's not like anyone planned for her to get kidnapped by pirates, right?"

"Of course not. What kind of parents would pencil that sorta mess in for their kid?"

"So why do you want us to kidnap her?"

"Because sometimes you need an exit strategy."

Lynn waved her arms in front of her. Marika tried to run down a list of things she needed to make sure of.

"We only need to get a hold of Jenny herself, right? Or is the Bentenmaru going to have to extract her from the Ultimate Fairy?"

"No, you don't need to worry about attacking another cruise ship. Even on coach ships a passenger is supposed to be free to arrange their own transfer, or even disembark away from a regular port of call if they're willing to foot the bill."

"I suspect provisions like that include a clause that you have to avoid interfering with the ship's normal flight."

"We won't have to bring the Bentenmaru up alongside a giant passenger ship like last time. We should be able to send a shuttle out, or maybe Jenny could take a capsule out and we could pick her up."

"It's possible." Marika found herself already unconsciously picking out a shuttle crew. Lynn could handle comms, but none of them were properly qualified to fly the shuttle and land on a giant passenger liner to pick up their former club president. "You said Jenny usually has her own private guards, right? Can we get her away from them?"

"Oh, there are ways." Lynn the knight smiled. Marika nodded.

"Alright, next question. Once we get Jenny off the ship and onto the Bentenmaru, what happens then?"

"We take her to Space University."

"Space University?" Marika cocked her head. There were countless educational bodies in and beyond the galaxy with the words "Space University" in their names, but only one that called itself simply that.

"She got accepted there."

Marika leapt up from her desk. "That's amazing! That's where the elite of the elite go! Only a handful of people from our school have ever made it in! When did she..."

"She told me she passed the final entrance exam during our last break, while she was still in school." Lynn stared off longingly. "You need a recommendation just to take the exams, and there are a bunch of them. Getting in is about as rare as winning the lottery, but she made it."

"And she didn't go!? What a waste."

"You'd think everyone would agree with you, right? But not the Dolittle family. They celebrated her getting accepted, then went and shoved her along the path they'd laid out for her anyway. I want to help Jenny walk her own path."

Marika turned to Lynn, who was staring at her intently, and chose her next words carefully.

"If Jenny does try to walk her own path, do you think her family will accept that?"

Lynn didn't answer.

Marika waited.

Finally Lynn spoke.

"They'd probably make her do what they want, even if they have to use force."

"And to push back against that, you need a pirate ship, am I right?"

Lynn didn't answer.

Marika knew that Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport's freighters had powerful escorts guarding them as they zipped across the galaxy. They probably even had a few commercial invasion fleets out in the frontier.

"I'm not sure we'd even be able to take them on with our regular crew. You think the Bentenmaru can pull this off with what we've got now?"

"I don't know if we can measure up to your usual crew, but right now we're all the Bentenmaru's got," Lynn said, smiling and shaking her head. "I mean, at the moment they're all quarantined on a hospital ship, if that's anything to go by."

"Can we do this without fighting?" Marika asked Lynn. Lynn lifted her head and stared at her across the captain's desk.

"If the Bentenmaru does end up duking it out with the Hugh & Dolittle escorts then it means Jenny and I have already lost. I don't know how things are gonna go, but if they do plan on using force, we should at least have a chance to negotiate first. If we can negotiate and convince them, we'll be able to get Jenny to Space University."

"You think they're the kind of people who can be reasoned with?" Marika asked nervously. "Jenny may be clever, but I'd be surprised if she hasn't already tried talking this out."

"She tried but couldn't convince them. That's why they're so dead set on pushing her along." Lynn shrugged. "That's why Jenny needs to show her family that she's willing to use force too. Some people won't sit down at the bargaining table until you show them you mean business."

"I see."

"But anyway, the most pressing matter is to get Jenny to University System." Lynn sank into the sofa in front of the desk and twiddled her thumbs. "It's an educational body of the Galactic Empire, once we enter the system we'll have extraterritoriality on our side. After she formally becomes a student nobody will be able to touch her: not the cops, not private security."

"And if anyone tried it'd come back to bite them, no matter where they are." Marika smiled almost against her will. "Make an enemy of the University and you make an enemy of the Empire. I doubt a major shipping company operating inside the Empire would do something so reckless."

"If they can't use force openly, I'm sure a company like theirs has other ways of getting things done. But no matter what they try, it'll buy us some time for now. Jenny's planning on entering the School of Economics. If she can just get her family to accept that studying there will be an even bigger boon to them than what they planned, it should be all good."

Lynn looked away from Marika.

"So, will you take the job?"

Marika considered for a moment.

"I have one last question. I hate to ask this of you or Jenny, but..." Marika averted her eyes apologetically. "What are we getting paid for this?"

"Ten percent of the gross of whatever Jenny and I make over the next ten years."

Marika looked back at Lynn. "I take it that was Jenny's idea, not yours?"

Lynn nodded in the affirmative. "Of course. How could you tell?"

"Because you said it in business-speak."

"We couldn't even guess at what kind of money we'd need to lay out to hire a pirate ship for a private job. We took the operating costs for a similar-sized warship and compared them to our projected future wages. It should be ten times what it'd take to keep a warship going...is that enough?"

"I can't put a price on your futures." Marika shook her head softly. "Besides, you want to pay that much for the Bentenmaru? This thing stopped depreciating before it even became a pirate ship. Sure, maintenance is a neverending nightmare, but the future is too up in the air to even think about."

Lynn seemed worried. Marika looked at her gently.

"When you shell out, you're not paying for the Bentenmaru. You're paying for its crew."

"Its crew...?" Lynn looked at Marika, then around the cabin. "You mean our club!?"

"That's right." Marika smiled and nodded. "The captain alone doesn't decide what jobs we take. I don't know how it works on other ships, but that's the way it works here. And I'm only the captain in the first place because I'm the one with a pirate's license. I don't really know what kind of jobs the Bentenmaru's taken these past hundred years, or what ones we'll have to take in the future, but whenever we get a job offer, the whole crew talks it over before we decide to take it. I figure the quickest way to get them to agree to this one, quicker even than explaining the details, is to plop that reward down in front of them."

"Gotcha." Lynn recalled when Marika had scouted the yacht club as replacement pirates for the Bentenmaru. She'd promised them both the standard crew's wages and the chance to serve on an historic, FTL-capable pirate ship, rather than their sailing trainer the Odette II. "You're saying that if I want to get them to take the job, I gotta dangle a carrot in front of their faces."

"A carrot's all well and good, but there's something else, something essential." Marika rose from her desk. "If you want the crew to do a good job, you need to offer them a happy work environment and a payout that's going to motivate them. I bet they're all still partying in the mess. If you want to lay it out for them, now is probably the time to do it."

"Uh, er..." Lynn cast her eyes down, troubled, still reclining into the sofa. "Maybe now isn't the best time? You don't look like you were drinking, and I wasn't either, but a bunch of them are pretty tipsy."

"Well then you're not gonna get a better chance."

There was nothing alcoholic among the provisions that Marika had procured for them. But there was alcohol in the ship's larder, and she hadn't stopped anyone from bringing their own along.

She'd known the club members were passing around various kinds of booze since the moment the party started. As captain, she decided to overlook it.

"The other trick to getting people to take a job is to give them the right atmosphere and just let them go with the flow." Marika walked over to the door and turned to face Lynn. "So what's it gonna be? Tell them tomorrow when they're tired and hungover and miserable, or now, when they're drinking and having fun?"

"You're evil, Captain." Lynn smiled at Marika in disbelief and sprang from the sofa. "Makes me kinda glad I didn't get carried away and have a few myself."

"Why'd you pass it up?"

"A pirate ship in deep space right after a job; who knows what could happen? Don't want the club president and cyberwarfare operator drunk, do you?" Lynn reached past Marika and opened the door to the office. "What about you? You're our Captain, why aren't you drinking?"

"Well somebody's got to keep an eye on everything. I guess today that somebody is me."

"Guess I'll go follow my evil Captain's advice and lure our innocent little club members down the path to the dark side."

The tall lady knight threw her arm around the tiny pirate captain's shoulders as the two of them left the office. They could hear laughter spilling out of the nearby mess hall and echoing down the empty corridor.

"Just remember, if you're going to be evil, you need to be willing to deal with the consequences."

"I get it, I get it." Lynn took her free hand and tousled Marika's hair. "This one's all on me."

"Good, I'll make sure you don't chicken out."

The mess hall was less a banquet in full swing and more a den of debauchery. Most of the crew were still dressed in their costumes from the raid, and while the main course had already been cleared away, they remained well-stocked with cakes and punch, with technicolor drinks both hot and cold livening up the various circles of conversation. People were holding a karaoke contest in one corner of the room, using a micro PA system hooked into the ship's broadcast system.

Lynn seemed confounded as to where to start, and she turned to Marika. Marika pointed at the karaoke setup, where an armed bunny girl was singing nostalgic hero pop in a clean soprano.

Lynn steeled herself and barged her way into the contest. She grabbed the mic away from the armed bunny as she finished her song and climbed onto the makeshift stage made of small shipping containers.

Lynn surveyed the mess hall to the sound of applause. She brought the mic to her lips, her pinky finger extended.

"Who wants to go to New York!!"

The applause around the karaoke stage surged. Marika facepalmed. "What is she talking about?"

Lynn, who'd come to the conclusion that they'd accept anything regardless of what she said, raised her hands to silence the crowd.

"I'm here to tell you all about our next job." She scanned the faces of the club members eager to hear her speech. "I've already told the Captain about it. Now we're going to help our old president Jenny!"

"Wait a minute!" Someone prodded Marika from the side. She turned to find a concerned-looking Chiaki.

"What is it?"

"Don't 'what is it' me! What's she talking about?" Chiaki pointed at the stage where Lynn was addressing the crowd. "You're just going to stand here quietly? You support this?"

"I mean, yeah, I guess so."

"So now we're gonna go kidnap Jenny from a cruise ship!" Lynn pumped her fist wildly at the crowd; they were so fired up they'd have welcomed practically anything, no matter how bizarre. Chiaki looked at Lynn, then back at Marika.

"What just happened?"

"The Bentenmaru's next job."

"Did she just say we're going to...kidnap her?"

"It sure looks that way...I doubt we'll have to actually board the ship and nab her though."

Chiaki's voice dropped, as if she were running an interrogation. "And then what?"

"Not sure yet." Marika forced a smile. "Let's see...Lynn wants us to take her to Space University, but we might have to play things by ear."

"Of all the...!" Chiaki shouted, then looked around. She grabbed Marika by the arms and dragged her out of the mess hall. "Get over here!"

"Hey, no need to pull, chill out!"

Chiaki pressed Marika up against the wall of the corridor just outside the mess hall.

"You're seriously going to take a job and 'play it by ear'?" She was practically up in Marika's face. Her breath smelled of alcohol.

"Have you been drinking?"

"It was a big job, what's wrong with having a little drink! I've been drinking with the old man since I was a kid, it's not like I'm drunk or anything! But you, Marika! It's bad enough you took a pirate ship full of amateurs on a job where you knew the script, but now you want to go on some crapshoot job where who-knows-what could happen!? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is!?"

"It's not some crapshoot."

"That's what we call 'playing it by ear' on my ship!" Chiaki grabbed Marika by the lapels of her uniform. "This ship is full of nothing but raw recruits, there's not a single real pirate on board!"

Chiaki noticed Marika's index finger pointing back at her.

"You're a real pirate."

Chiaki hung her head despondently and breathed a heavy sigh.

"And what do you think I'm doing on somebody else's ship, playing at being a pirate, when I'm supposed to be serving on the Barbarossa? It's not like I'm so important that things on the Barbarossa will grind to a halt without me."

"Really? I wouldn't say that at all. You are drunk, aren't you?"

"I've been serving on a pirate ship god only knows how much longer than you have, and compared to the pros I'm still a nobody! The ones who make their livings as pirates, they're monsters of talent and experience, you of all people should know that!"

"I mean okay, I get that my crew's way over-qualified, sure." Marika's eyes darted toward the mess hall as it erupted into roaring applause at Lynn's impassioned speech. "But don't you think we've got a bunch of talented people with us now too?"

"Don't get carried away just because you pulled off one simple raid! You're the captain, it's not like you couldn't see what kind of a job they did!"

"I think they did better than I did my first time out." Marika pointed at the mess hall as it spilled over with laughter. "The crew are the ones getting carried away. And why shouldn't they? They just got done with a big job, should I tell them to just pack it in? They were on a time-sensitive mission, they've got all that tension built up, this could help break that. Maybe having something to do will make it easier on them."

"It's a struggle keeping this old jumper moving even at the best of times, now you want to take another job when you don't have to? What could be more tense than that!? You only want this job so you can keep kicking the can down the road!"

"Kicking the can down the road? Uh, I—"

"We're not out here to fight evil and right wrongs! Being a pirate is our trade, we do it for the money. What kind of reward did she dangle in front of you to get you to take a ship full of amateurs out on a crapshoot like this?"

Marika quickly averted her eyes from Chiaki as her voice dropped to a whisper.

"The uh...the future, I guess?"

"Huh?"

"Jenny and Lynn's future!" Marika said clearly, turning her gaze back on Chiaki.

"Come again?" It wasn't that she didn't hear. Chiaki fixed a stare on Marika, asking her to explain herself.

"Even if things go how Lynn says and we can get Jenny to Space University, at best maybe all we're doing is buying her enough time to graduate. But maybe that'll be enough time for her to get done what she wants to. The same goes for Lynn too, probably."

"I don't care how much you hate the idea of arranged marriages, it seems like pretty childish thinking, doesn't it? Why can't she get married and do what she wants as part of someone else's family?"

"Maybe that would work with a normal marriage and a normal family, but when your family runs a giant corporation like Hugh & Dolittle, your whole life is planned out for you before you're even born. If her dreams are at odds with that plan, then I guess she can't do it."

"Hmm." Chiaki thought for a moment. "If the child and the family want different things, then they must have screwed up raising her. If you're going to set a kid down a certain path, you need to listen to what they want."

"I think so too, but I doubt they care what we think."

"With a home life like that, it's no wonder she'd turn rebel and try to bail." Chiaki pulled away from Marika and leaned against the far wall. "At least realize what it is you're getting us all into! This is a lot to deal with."

"The timetable's tight, but we won't have to push back our return time. I think we'll be okay."

"From what that genius hacker of yours was saying, it sounds like you already checked all the boxes. But it's not like our schedule has a lot of wiggle room; what are you gonna do if we hit a snag?"

"I'll worry about that if and when it happens." Marika flashed an apologetic smile. "It's better not to get so worked up you start losing sleep over it."

"How are you gonna sell it the insurance company?"

"I'll tell them what Lynn told me." Marika nodded as if she were trying to convince herself. "I can't think of any reason to keep it a secret."

"The Bentenmaru's agent knows what's going on, right?" Chiaki had caught a glimpse of him during their regular updates. She remembered him. She'd even watched as Marika reported in with news of their successful mission, right after they'd touched down.

"If you mean, does he know that the Bentenmaru's getting by with a crew of temps, then yeah, of course he knows." Marika lowered her voice. "Shou was the one who told me that I had to get this job done while the crew was quarantined in the first place."

"I imagine the agents who deal with pirates have a lot of experience; that poofy-haired freak's got a lot of nerve to send you out like this in secret."

Marika laughed.

"So what if he doesn't approve the job?"

"If he doesn't, then this whole discussion was pointless." Marika rolled up the sleeve of her uniform to check her watch, but realized she wasn't wearing one and went for her pocketwatch instead.

"I wonder if he's awake? They say agents never sleep, I'm sure it's fine."

Marika headed for the Bentenmaru's bridge with Chiaki in tow. They traded off with the current helmsman and radar/sensor operator so they could go to the party—no drinking allowed—and had the bridge to themselves.

Marika took up the captain's chair and opened an encrypted channel to the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate. She put in a request for a private call with Shou, personal agent for the Bentenmaru.

The afro-haired weirdo appeared on the comm monitor wearing an even gaudier suit than usual.

"Yo! I finally got a chance to see the footage of your big day. Whaddaya think about making these lady pirates of yours a regular gig?"

"Wow, you really mean that?" Marika looked quizzically at Shou; she almost couldn't believe it. "The truth is, I wanted to ask you about letting us take on another job."

"Oh? Give me a minute." On the other end of the monitor Shou ran his fingers across a control panel. He was checking his files on the Bentenmaru. "We don't have any job offers pending; did someone hit you up directly?"

"It's a request from one of our crew." Marika leveled a serious stare at Shou. "The Hakuoh Girls' Academy yacht club's current president has asked us to abduct and escort the former president."

"Oh my! Just a moment." On the monitor, Shou hunched over and began to furiously work the control panel. "It says here your yacht club president was arrested in middle school for hacking the public net. She must know her way around electronics."

"Well someone's awfully well informed," Chiaki mumbled, propping her head up against an information panel outside the comm monitor's field of view.

"Shou's the type to leave no stone unturned."

Marika hadn't submitted an up-to-date crew manifest to Harold Lloyd. But when Marika emerged as the next possible captain of the Bentenmaru, they'd gathered as much potentially valuable information as they could. She wouldn't be surprised if they had not just the past several years' worth of yacht club rosters, but rap sheets on every student at Hakuoh Girls' Academy.

"And if I recall, the former president was quite the distinguished young lady..." Shou's movements froze for a moment. "Wait a minute, this is..."

"Oh, we're not looking to pick a fight with Hugh & Dolittle or anything like that." Marika stammered out an explanation. "The job offer came from the current president, Lynn Lambretta, and the former president, Jenny Dolittle." Then she added, "Uh, in other words, the request came from the abductee herself."

"Do you have any proof that she's requested an abduction?"

Marika felt Shou's stare through his sunglasses; she couldn't imagine they served any purpose. She exchanged looks with Chiaki where she stood forward of the captain's chair.

"Right now all we have is the club president's word," Marika answered truthfully. "But everyone knows Lynn and Jenny are close."

"The most reliable option would be to have Jenny Dolittle confirm it herself, but with someone that high-profile I have to imagine all of her communications are being monitored. If we're not careful we could blow the entire deal. Right, give me whatever you have."

"What!?" Marika started searching around the captain's chair for information she didn't have.

"We have a relationship with Hugh & Dolittle Transport. Regardless of whether she has requested it herself, if we were to enable their sheltered bride-to-be's escape it could put our dealings with them at risk, even if they know we weren't the ones to order it."

"I haven't got any documents, I heard it all from Lynn directly. Do you want me to call her so you can hear it straight from the horse's mouth?"

"I don't suppose she would happen to have the necessary paperwork for hiring her club members out as pirates either, would she?" Shou paused to think only for a moment. "We can listen to Lynn Lambretta's story later. Even if the target herself has requested it, the fact that we're dealing with the daughter of such an influential man will make things exceedingly complicated. We'll need to verify what effects this will have on multiple fronts, just to be safe. We have some investigating to do, we can consult with the client during our next scheduled update."

"Understood. Is there anything you'd like me to tell Lynn?"

"Make sure she knows not to drink too much." Shou waved, then suddenly leaned in toward the monitor. "Wait, there is one thing I need to confirm with you."

"What is it?"

"The Bentenmaru is currently under your command. Where the ship goes and what the ship does are the prerogative of the captain. If we—if the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate—were to come out in opposition to this matter, what would you do?"

"There are two things I care about protecting on this voyage: one is the crew's well-being, the other is our qualifications as a pirate ship." The words flowed effortlessly from her lips. She'd considered her priorities many times over. "If you refuse, I have no intention of fighting it."

For a moment Shou stared at Marika through his gaudy sunglasses.

"Okay. I can rest easy now. Make sure you stay alive until our next message. Later."

The encrypted channel to the insurance company was was severed as normal.

"You care more about what the insurance company says than you do Lynn?" Chiaki watched as Marika ended the transmission, still leaning against the captain's chair panel. "What a goody two-shoes."

"I don't know what I'm going to do, I figured that was the safest answer." Marika ran her fingers across the captain's chair panel. "You think I've got my priorities wrong?"

"I think you're right on the money." Chiaki turned around and leaned back against the captain's chair. "Hopefully Lynn will feel the same way. What are you doing now?"

"Checking the Ultimate Fairy's current location. It's a good thing Hugh & Dolittle is big enough to make their operating info public, it makes things easy on us."

"Doing legwork just in case? Sounds like you're really taking to this piracy thing."

"As if. I'm nervous and a coward, I just want to do what I can."

A search on the public net immediately returned the Ultimate Fairy's location along the central corridor. It was making good on its promised schedule.

"They're currently scheduled to be in dock for half a day at Meltline Junction. I don't know what Lynn's planning, but I'm guessing we're going to rendezvous with them somewhere between there and their next port."

The next morning. Marika had stayed up late, waiting for the night watch before she retired to her office/temporary bedroom. Her sleep was shattered by the shrill buzz of an emergency call.

"Huh, wha, ugh?"

Words failed to coalesce; thank the lack of sleep. She crawled out of the convertible sofa-bed—blankets and all—and pawed at the shipboard communicator from the far side of her desk until she managed to hit the response button.

"Yeah, captain's cabin."

"This is the bridge. Good morning Captain Marika." On the other end of the communicator, Gruier's voice showed no hint of lethargy. "My apologies, but an urgent matter has arisen that requires the Captain's attention. Uh, Marika?"

"It's fine, I'm listening," Marika answered, stifling a yawn outside the view of the camera. "I'm on the other side of the camera. I just woke up, I'm in no state to be seen."

"Captain, this is an emergency!" Chiaki's voice cut in, as if she'd grabbed the mic away. "Get to the bridge ASAP!"

"Okay, uh, give me five minutes to get dressed and make myself presentable."

"I don't care what you look like, just get to the bridge! Jenny's already here!"

Her fatigue vanished in an instant.

"What did you say!?"

"President—former President—Jenny is right outside!"

During their last training voyage on the Odette II, Jenny was still club president and had served as captain. Chiaki had been on board too, as a new club member, and apparently her mind hadn't quite moved on.

"I don't know what's going on, but it looks like she's put herself under radio blackout. Should we pick her up?"

"Do it!" Marika ordered. She didn't have enough information to even understand what was happening, but the risks of delaying forced her into a snap judgment. "I'll be right up. Do what you have to, time is your number one priority!"

"Leave it to us!" came the immediate response. "We'll wake up the crew!"

The emergency warning siren began to wail even in the captain's office.

Marika flew out of her office in a state she never wanted to be seen in—print pajamas, uncombed bedhead—and charged straight for the bridge, past the flashing red emergency lights in the corridor.

"What's going on? What happened?"

"Jenny escaped," Lynn answered without looking up. She was seated at the radar/sensor console, working furiously with both hands.

"What? How!?" Marika took up the captain's chair in her pajamas and looked around at her displays.

"I'm not sure how, but apparently at some point—I guess yesterday when the Ultimate Fairy was docked at Meltline Junction—she transferred to a small, FTL-capable ship and jumped here."

"She jumped here...by herself?"

When FTL drives were first developed they'd only been installed on large starships, but thanks to miniaturization and the increased output of power generators, it was now possible to install them even on single-seat fighters. But although FTL drives allowed them to travel across vast differences, one-man small craft still had limited operation times, and despite the decrease in size the drives were nonetheless a significant increase in weight. Most FTL drives were only installed in vessels above a certain size, ones that were equipped for extended voyages.

Even ignoring her history as yacht club president, Jenny was part of the Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport family; getting a ship to jump where she wanted it should have been within her skill set.

"Probably. I don't know how many people in her family she has sympathizing with her and helping her out, but she can more than get by on her own."

"Where is she now?"

"Close," Lynn answered quickly, taking measurements using what radar and sensors she could muster. "She may be afraid of picking up a tail. The Bentenmaru received a single directional signal which included her location, but she's been quiet ever since. It's possible her family's escorts received the same signal. We need to get to her as fast as we can."

"Geez!" Marika exclaimed. Things had escalated fast. "She really came all this way?"

"I'm sorry," Lynn said, running her eyes across multiple displays. Marika turned to her.

"Why?"

"You're the Bentenmaru's captain, but you still haven't said whether you'll take the job or not."

"I guess it's not really up for debate anymore, not at this point." Marika dropped into the captain's chair. "How close are we to Jenny's position?"

"Close enough that we won't need to jump," Chiaki answered, while Lynn was busy manning the sensors. "I don't know how she knew where the Bentenmaru was, but it's not like Meltline Junction is just a short hop away."

The further an FTL jump, the more its accuracy drops.

"That's Jenny for you. I wonder how she managed to jump this close to the Bentenmaru?"

"Well." Marika lifted her head to stare at Lynn in the radar/sensor station. "After the raid, the Bentenmaru went back to traveling like a standard ship. If she looked into our standard routes and traced our flight plan, that should have been enough to figure out where we were."

"What kind of pirate ship follows a flight plan!"

"Just because we sometimes ignore flight plans or even traffic control, doesn't mean it's not a good idea to follow transit regulations whenever we can."

Flight plans filed with traffic control, however, only cover launching, landing, and jumping; they don't receive moment-by-moment updates from ships in normal flight—which is where the Bentenmaru was now. Long-distance jumps don't offer much much precision, however, and Jenny would have needed to accurately guess their position if she wanted to rendezvous with them.

"As long as we stuck to our flight plan I guess it wouldn't have been that hard to estimate our position." Chiaki glanced at Lynn. "It'd be a piece of cake, in fact, if Lynn had passed along the information."

"Sorry I'm late!"

Ai came charging in through the open bridge door and leapt into the unoccupied helm. She slid the seat forward into operating position and began prepping for flight.

"Found her!" Lynn shouted. "Five million kilometers off the stern! It's a small craft, no transponder, traveling on inertia, within the margin of error for the coordinates in the message! This ship ain't half bad if it can pick something out at that range."

"They tell me money was no object when it came to kitting us out," Marika replied coolly.

"Is that an electronic reconnaissance craft with an FTL booster attached to it!?" Chiaki exclaimed as she saw the results of the automatic identification. "Hold on, this says it's a Litheon Zircone Silent Whisper! That thing's state of the art, they only just started supplying them to the Imperial Fleet!"

"It's an Imperial ship!?"

"The transponder's off, right now there's no way to tell who owns it," Lynn responded.

"The Empire aren't the only ones with Silent Whispers, they also shopped them around to well-off corporations and defense forces. Hugh & Dolittle's escort fleets must have been among the sales targets."

"So I'm guessing she took off with a prototype?" Marika scanned the bridge; everyone they needed to fly was awake and present. "Can we get the Bentenmaru moving?"

"Reactor output is up, standard propulsion is good to go!" Yayoi answered from the engineer's console. She was still wearing her kunoichi costume from yesterday's raid; maybe she hadn't even slept.

"We're missing a few people here and there, but not enough that it'll keep us from moving," Gruier replied from the first officer's chair before Marika could even ask.

"Alright, Bentenmaru, launch!" Marika ordered as she rose from the captain's chair, still in her pajamas. "Let's give Jenny a nice, warm welcome."

"Bentenmaru, launching!"

"Altering course, bringing us about."

Yayoi boosted the output to the propulsion system. Ai grabbed the controls and used the thrusters and main engine in tandem to bring the Bentenmaru out of its inertial flight and into a vertical turn. When flipping around a ship with artificial gravity like the Bentenmaru, it's standard practice to manipulate the ship to match the centripetal force generated by maneuvering with the artificial gravity's vector.

"Don't just focus on Jenny's ship, open up to the surrounding area," Marika ordered Lynn, who had narrowed her scans down to the target's coordinates. "I don't know how she got here, but based on your story it's possible someone's going to come looking for her. Be on the lookout for pre-drive signatures or the movements of any other ships."

"Oh, r-right, gotta keep an eye out for anyone on her tail."

"Can we use the FTL drive?"

"Uh, I think it's good to go."

"If we start jump preparations now we can go as soon as we recover the ship."

Gruier came back with an even more precise plan. "Give me the target coordinates. We're probably better off moving up our flight plan without updating traffic control."

"I knew you had a knack for this, Gruier." Marika beamed at the first officer's chair, where Gruier was looking snappy in her uniform. "We'll jump once the craft has been recovered. Make it a short one, something confusing to keep anyone off our tail. Aim for the central corridor, somewhere we can blend in easily."

Marika looked at the still-empty navigator's station. She called up a starchart to her display and started searching for a suitable destination.

"Actually, belay that, we're going to stick to our schedule. Send an amended flight plan to traffic control telling them we're moving our jump up."

"We're not going to try to shake any pursuers!?" Lynn lifted her head up from the control panel and looked back at the captain's chair.

"I don't know how serious they are about chasing her, but they already know where she's headed, right? I doubt you planned on keeping it a secret, did you?"

"Well, no, but..."

"Then why should we tiptoe around the fact that we're going there? If we want to change course we'll have plenty of time once Jenny is on board and we can hear what she has to say."

The Bentenmaru rapidly accelerated, then decelerated just as quickly as it approached the drifting, transponder-less small craft. Time was of the essence.

As the distance between the two shrank, the sensors fed ever more accurate information to the bridge. The state of the art electronic reconnaissance craft had shut down its FTL drive immediately after touchdown to suppress its energy emissions as much as possible, and even its running lights were shut off, as if it were trying to hold its breath.

"We were able to pick it out because we knew where it was, but there's been hardly any response even as we've moved closer," Lynn mumbled as she fiddled with the high-resolution radar. "It's not even in stealth mode and it still has barely any signature. What a design."

"I guess they pulled out all the stops." Marika watched the flowing curves that adorned the reconnaissance craft's slender body on the display, picked up in detail by the optical sensors. "Can you get its exact dimensions?"

"Check it out." Lynn overlaid a holographic scale on top of the image Marika was watching. Numbers showing length, width, and height appeared along with it. "When configured for combat, the deployed antennas and other options will increase it even more, but this is how it measures up with everything retracted."

"Huh." Marika tried to form a mental image of the craft—it was long but didn't take up much space. "Do you think we can fit it in the hangar?"

"I don't believe it would be possible at the moment," Gruier answered immediately. "The shuttle and fighters on the port hangar deck are prepped for launch, so that's out of the question, and with the Odette II's shuttle in the starboard hangar, that doesn't leave enough room to fit a craft that size."

"Don't tell me we're gonna have to abandon it?"

The reconnaissance craft floated against the inky black of space; normally it would be painted black for use in combat, but the sales version was decorated a crisp silver and scarlet. It wouldn't be out of the question for it to carry a price tag an order of magnitude larger than a modern cabin cruiser, or even a hundred times more considering the expensive electronics.

"But, if we were to deal with all the empty containers in the starboard hangar, and if we moved the shuttle all the way to the back, there might just be enough room..."

"Alright, gather everyone you can on the starboard hangar deck." Marika stepped down from the captain's chair. Gruier looked back at her.

"Where are you going?"

"To sort out the hangar and meet up with Jenny." Marika spread her arms, still dressed in her pajamas. "I suppose first I'll need to change, and put on a spacesuit."

The weightless hangar deck was like a three-dimensional puzzle; containers were piled as deep and as far forward as they could be, and the shuttle was moved as far back into the corner as it would go, securing enough space to stow the state of the art reconnaissance craft.

But despite its slender fuselage the engines and other non-retractable parts such as radar antennas meant that there was almost no wiggle room in either depth or breadth. Marika entrusted the shuttle to the other club members—with enough manpower and the hangar's robotic arm they eventually secured it in place—while she did multiple passes around the hangar with a precision laser measuring device, sending the readings to the bridge. Finally the whole area was checked for safety.

The super-truncated cleaning job was completed while the area was weightless but still pressurized; Marika sent everyone back inside the ship and opened up the starboard hangar deck.

She gave the job of venting the deck and opening the hangar to the rest of the club members while she donned her helmet and quickly exited through an airlock to finish the preparations outside the ship.

The Bentenmaru was surrounded in every direction by the stars of the galactic plane; there were no planets here in deep space. Inside a star system the hull would have been illuminated by the light of the system's star, but like a ship in the night the only visible lights were their own.

She exited the ship just as the hangar deck was about to open and watched the brand new, unspoiled silver reconnaissance craft as it was illuminated by the Bentenmaru's lights.

"What a view."

The Silent Whisper had a sharp nose and no windows, par for the course for a powerful cyberwarfare craft. The variable wing for atmospheric flight and its antennas were all retracted, and combined with the gaudy crimson showroom-floor racing stripe it gave the reconnaissance craft all the more the threatening air of a fighter.

The radio blackout continued. Marika unspooled the transmission cable at her waist, opened the access panel next to the airlock door, and plugged into the shipboard comm channel. She used the numberpad to enter the call's recipient.

"Marika to bridge, can you hear me?"

"This is the bridge, we hear you," Chiaki answered. Marika looked out through the transparent, unshielded faceplate of her helmet at the reconnaissance craft; it was so close she felt she could almost touch it.

"I have visual confirmation on the Silent Whisper. Begin the final approach."

"Already under way."

The recon craft was moving, aligning itself with the Bentenmaru. Marika saw the soft light of the Bentenmaru's nose thrusters gently pulsing and corrected herself; it was the Bentenmaru that was moving, not the recon craft.

"Since the target is stationary, I've got Ai bringing us around so we can swallow it up into the hangar. It's a lot smaller target than a cruise ship this time, though."

"Once we're close enough that we can reach it we can use the crane for the rest."

Marika recalled the commotion they'd caused earlier, using the crane arm to reposition the shuttle. It had been a struggle, and that was with a target already immobilized inside the hangar. Trying to hit a moving target was going to be a nightmare.

"We'll use the crane arm if we have to, but we've got enough people down here that we can drag it into the hangar by hand. That'll probably be faster."

Several spacesuited figures emerged from the airlock on the other side of the gaping hangar doors, following Marika outside the ship. Marika checked her suit's remaining activity time using the indicator at her wrist. Air and power were both nearly topped off.

"Can you see what's going on?" The hangar and the outside of the ship were equipped with numerous cameras. The feeds from all of them should have been enough for the bridge to monitor what was happening. "Scream if there's an emergency, I don't care if you have to use the radio."

"Roger that. We're not picking up anything from the surrounding area, including pre-drive signatures. Alright, go for it in one push."

That last part must have been meant for Ai at the helm. The Bentenmaru, which until then had seemed to be floating gently in space, jerked sideways.

The EVA suits clamored in silence as the Bentenmaru began to slide, tossing them about. They grabbed onto the hull to keep their balance as the ship accelerated hard to starboard.

While the artificial gravity made it hardly noticeable on the bridge, as a pirate ship the Bentenmaru moved with a speed incomparable to that of a civilian vessel. Outside of the ship its speed was palpable.

At the helm, Ai brought them next to the recon craft in a single, powerful burst. A series of tiny thruster adjustments aligned the silver craft with the open hangar doors while the Bentenmaru continued to lurch to the side.

The ship slowed until just before the two would have collided, and the Bentenmaru once again matched speeds with the recon craft. At the edge of her field of view Marika caught the intermittent bursts from the maneuvering thrusters that signaled the assistance of the autopilot system. She floated towards the state of the art recon craft; it was directly in front of her. It was classified as a small craft, but its focus on speed made its slender fuselage considerably longer than the shuttle, which had been built to prioritize capacity.

Four spacesuits floated from the open doors of the hangar deck toward the slender craft, carrying macromolecular mooring lines.

It's an ironclad rule of zero-gravity that hauling an object requires at least three ropes in order to control its positioning from three separate points. Marika located the craft's center of gravity, inconspicuously marked by a black and white cross inside of a circle, and searched for a tow hook anchor point.

Befitting of the latest in radar-conscious design, the jutting anchor point was buried beneath an access panel that followed the lines of the fuselage. Marika scoured the ship from top to bottom and discovered more anchor points marked with the universal symbol. She picked out two points at the front and back of the nose, and two at the front and back of the aft engines. While more tow ropes would make it easier to control, it was possible to tow it and keep it under control with as little as three.

The tow ropes were connected to four winches positioned at the corners of the open hangar doors. If the ropes were attached to the target and the winches activated simultaneously, they would be able to pull it onto the deck without upsetting its facing.

They double-checked each of the anchor points where the ropes were affixed to the universal joints; hands rose at each of the four spots on the face of the recon craft. Marika kicked off the surface and flew towards the hangar. She waved her arms broadly in front of her, giving the signal to activate the winches.

The ropes were already stretched out, the slack wobbling in the weightlessness of space. Newer model winches were capable of self-regulating, balancing the tension as they pulled, but the old-fashioned winches of the Bentenmaru needed to be controlled by hand.

They would first need to draw each rope taught to eliminate the slack between the winches and the target. But if the winches weren't stopped just before achieving tension it would deliver an unwanted shock to the towed craft. And according to the laws of physics, without any gravity that unwanted shock would impart unwanted kinetic energy to the craft, which would require even more effort on the crew's part to counteract.

They began to reel in the ropes. The unrestrained, free-floating slack decreased as the ropes spooled around the winches.

The four spacesuits operating the winches at the edge of the bay doors halted the ropes one-by-one just as they were about to achieve tension.

Marika eyeballed each rope to ensure that they had more or less the same amount of slack, then floated to the middle of the hangar and turned to face the recon craft. She waved her arms in front of her, as if she were beckoning the craft forward.

The winches began to spin at their lowest speed. The four ropes drew taught, converting their tension into linear force applied to the anchor points on the reconnaissance craft's fuselage. The craft shuddered and twisted mildly as it began to move towards the Bentenmaru.

Each winch needed to maintain a constant speed, measuring the distance to the target using a laser. When the initial speed of ten centimeters per second proved unsuitable for keeping the craft stable, they increased slightly to twelve centimeters per second, and the recon craft began to approach without sacrificing its balance.

In zero-gravity, once the craft started to draw closer, the tow ropes would be unable to maintain tension.

"Are we okay?"

Marika drew a bead between the forward tip of the slowly approaching recon craft and the open doors of the hangar. The tow ropes quivered taut as the winches slowly and rhythmically reeled them in, careful to not apply too much tension. Applying tension to the ropes at this point would upset the balance of the craft.

A throng of spacesuits waiting inside the hangar waved to get Marika's attention, trying to point her back toward the recon craft.

She looked back at the craft and noticed sections of it slowly retracting as it approached. Doors on the bottom of the fuselage opened as it deployed small, spherical landing gear.

"She's deployed the landing gear."

Marika returned to the hangar. With its legs extended the recon craft could land directly on the deck.

She floated over to the control box on the hangar's forward wall. An identical box was located on the rear wall; both were capable of controlling the hangar's artificial gravity and pressurization.

Marika plugged her suit's transmission cable into the control box's comm panel.

"Starboard hangar deck to bridge, this is Marika."

"This is the bridge." The Bentenmaru's work in recovering the recon craft was finished; their hands should have been free. "No anomalies to report. It looks like things are going smoothly down there."

"Yeah, I guess so. Everything's going good so far. Like you can see, the recon craft stretched its legs out, I'm going to use the gravity to bring it down onto the deck."

"Will you be okay?" Chiaki asked. Her voiced didn't sound particularly worried. "Have you done it before?"

"I just have to slowly turn up the gravity while the ropes slow it down as it drops to the deck, right?" At the moment the recon craft was hovering just less than a meter away from the hangar. "I haven't done it before, but I think I can get it done."

"There's a trick to it. Keep the gravity cut while the target creeps along with the winches. If you don't, even a little bit of gravity will bring it crashing down. Then crank up the gravity the moment it touches the deck to hold it in place, otherwise the recoil will send it bouncing."

"Aha." Marika realized the point of the old, giant lever on the gravity control box. "You're saying don't just turn the gravity on and leave it on, but actively cycle it on and off."

"That state of the art electronic recon ship might cost more than the Bentenmaru. Try not to damage it, or us."

"Got it, I'll try."

The four winches dragged the recon craft through the bay doors. As it crossed the threshold of the doors where the winches were located, the winches gave more slack to the ropes attached to the craft's anchor points. Finally the winches started to brake, slowing the craft's movement.

The amount of slack given to the ropes was programmed in by default. The slender nose of the recon craft seemed like it would contact the inside of the hangar as it slipped inside, but its momentum slowly began to stall as it drew closer to the designated position.

The winches were letting out less and less rope, and Marika flicked the hangar's artificial gravity on for just a moment. In that moment gravity washed across the hangar, the spacesuits positioned at the four points around the cargo door felt their own weight, and the ropes connected to the winches started to freefall.

The Silent Whisper, its landing gear extended, slowly began to drop, pulling at the ropes above it while the ones underneath went slack. Just as the landing gear were about to contact the deck, Marika feathered the artificial gravity.

The electronic reconnaissance craft with its flowing contours settled onto the Bentenmaru.

Marika reached for the control box and started to close the bay doors while leaving the gravity where it was. It didn't look like the recon craft's wing or any of its antennas were jutting out, but she was unsure if she'd overlooked anything.

The yellow lights warning that the bay doors were in motion flashed as the doors slowly shut. They were supposed to be a signal to stand clear of the moving doors, but the spacesuits that had remained outside slipped back through the closing doors and into the hangar.

"I guess that's pirates for you."

Breaking rules was the norm. The suits fell under the sway of the rekindled gravity as they returned and landed on the deck.

They climbed atop the interior steps and confirmed directly that the recon craft's wing and antennas were not going to contact the bay doors, just as the doors themselves closed. A lone thin antenna ended up slightly bent. The bay doors sealed themselves shut.

Marika double-checked that the door was locked and sealed, then re-pressurized the hangar.

The ventilation system exhaled atmosphere, and the air pressure started to return. She watched both the indicator on her spacesuit's wristband and the control box as they informed her that the air pressure in the hangar was steadily rising, and she slowly began to raise the artificial gravity back to the same 1G as the rest of the ship.

Her body felt increasingly heavier as the air and gravity returned. The recon craft's fully-extended landing gear began to compress under its weight.

There was the cacophonous sound of containers tumbling over each other.

"Ack!" Though the air pressure was low, she could still hear even through the seal of her helmet. Marika turned to the source of the noise and watched as the containers they'd stacked away in the corner collapsed into a pile. "We just got those cleaned up!"

Maybe their work in zero-G had been sloppy, maybe the venting and return of the atmosphere had dislodged them, but regardless of the reason why, it looked like they'd all come down at once as she'd turned up the gravity. Some had just barely missed striking the shuttle's fuselage, but she decided they didn't need to be dealt with now and continued to raise the gravity.

The air pressure was returning quickly. But if they were to remove their helmets while it was too low, the escaping air pressure could rupture their eardrums, and even if it didn't, it wouldn't feel pleasant. Everyone remained still.

Marika returned the artificial gravity to 1G before the pressure in the hangar could reach one atmosphere, and she approached the windowless recon craft. The power was cut, as it had been before they'd recovered it, but newer craft should have had generous batteries.

She removed her helmet and forced the pressure in her ears to equalize.

A siren wailed and green lights flashed along the floor and ceiling, indicating that the hangar's air pressure had returned to the ship's standard one atmosphere.

A door in the craft's nose, flush with the fuselage's silhouette so that only its outline was visible, lifted away with a hiss of compressed air, as if on cue with her approach. It pivoted along the belly of the craft, the inside forming a set of stairs, and before it could even extend to the deck there appeared a figure in a white dress, like a giant, pristine flower.

"Jenny!?"

Marika gawked, still holding her helmet in one hand. Jenny painstakingly lifted the long hem of the dress as it billowed out the recon craft's door. It was a wedding dress.

"Hey, how's it going?" She turned to Marika and smiled. Her long hair was arranged high on the crown of her head, and she tugged at the dress as it seemed to want to remain inside the craft. "Sorry for putting you out like this. I was in kind of a hurry."

She stopped halfway down the steps, tucked a bundle documents underneath her arm, and saluted Marika with a white-gloved hand.

"Jenny Dolittle, requesting permission to come aboard."

"Ah, I, Captain Katou Marika of the Bentenmaru, grant your request. What's going on!?"

"I'll explain everything later. Here, I brought you a gift."

Jenny lifted the hem of her long skirt as she descended the ramp and handed Marika the expensive-looking document case, embossed with major arms manufacturer Litheon Zircone's company logo in gold leaf.

"What is it?" Marika asked as she accepted the supple document case. Jenny answered by pointing at the brand new recon craft behind her.

"A certificate of title."

"A certificate of title...?" Marika rolled the unfamiliar words around in her head before they morphed into something more understandable. She looked at Jenny and screamed. "Wait, what!? What are you talking about!?"

"Don't worry, there's a bill of sale in there too. It's only got the basic options, but it comes with a three-year service warranty, which should be good for routine maintenance and probably anything that needs replacing too. The owner and operator fields are blank, write in whoever you want."

"What the heck is going on!?"

"I figured it could be an advance on the job, a little thank you." Jenny turned and waved to the rest of the club members as they removed their helmets. "It should come in handy on a ship like this, no?"

"But it's so expensive..."

"Don't worry, nobody's going to come asking for it back." Jenny began to walk off, unperturbed by the long skirt dragging behind her, and turned back to Marika. "So where's Lynn?"

The automatic door slid open. A white wedding dress appeared on the bridge.

"Jenny!" Lynn rose from her seat, still dressed in her knight costume. "You made it!"

"Did you miss me?"

Jenny burst into a smile, leapt towards her knight in shining armor, and threw her white arms around her. In the midst of their deep embrace they stared at each other, closed their eyes, and brought their lips together as if it were a matter of course.

"Uh...?"

Marika entered the bridge, lagging behind, and froze when her eyes caught the passionate kiss.

249

The silence that had fallen over the bridge was replaced with shrill hollers. A shower of applause followed, and finally Lynn pulled her lips away from the Jenny, who stood half a head shorter than her.

"I can't believe you." Jenny blushed in Lynn's arms and averted her eyes. "Everyone's staring."

"Let them stare." Lynn kissed the bride on her forehead, beneath her towering hair, before finally releasing her. "And what's with the getup? You were flying a recon craft dressed like that?"

"I decided to bail while I was being fitted for it and the boys weren't looking." Jenny rearranged the long hem of her dress; it had become disheveled in her dash to the bridge. "I ran through Meltline's harbor like this and grabbed the Silent Whisper that was meant for our escort fleet. I'd have preferred a smaller fighter, something easier to handle, but you can't exactly fit into a one-seater when you're wearing a poofy dress."

Jenny placed her hand on her hip and flaunted the dress's deep neckline.

"Does it look good on me?"

"Good enough that I don't want anyone else to see you in it." Lynn put her arm around Jenny's waist and pulled her close.

A soft beeping called out to Marika from the comm panel. She returned to her senses and suddenly shouted, "You're using our pirate ship to elope!?"

"Elope? Gimme a break. If we were just running away would we really need a pirate ship? Oh look, here comes the backlash." Lynn turned her attention away from Jenny and walked back over to the radar/sensor console. She ran her fingers smoothly across the comm panel. "It's from Harold Lloyd. You wanna take it?"

"It's time for Shou to get in touch with us already!?" Marika rose from the captain's chair, flustered. "Patch it through, I'll answer it here."

"Yo, it's Shou from the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate." The afro-haired weirdo appeared on the monitor, offering up his standard greeting. "Were you in the middle of something?"

"Yeah, you could say that," Marika answered as she pressed her hand to her chest. She realized she was still wearing her spacesuit on the bridge. "I was just in the middle of something, but your timing is perfect. Uh, you see…"

Marika turned to Lynn and Jenny where they stood next to the captain's chair. She figured showing was faster than explaining.

"This happened."

She pointed the comm monitor's camera to the side.

Lynn, who knew the insurance agent from having answered his calls, bowed to the camera with a flourish of her hand. Jenny watched Lynn's display then dipped her head as she curtsied.

"Oh? Is your costume party still in full swing?" Shou leaned in closer as the knight and her bride greeted him. "Wait! That dashing figure is the Hakuoh Girls' Academy yacht club president Lynn Lambretta, and her counterpart..."

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Jenny had been listening as Shou announced himself over the speakers. She smiled gracefully into the camera. "I am the yacht club's former president, Jenny Dolittle."

Shou's face froze on the monitor, his mouth hanging open.

Marika had started to think it was a transmission error when finally Shou spoke.

"Ah, it's uh, an honor to meet you. My name is Shou, I am an agent for the Harold Lloyd Insurance Conglomerate.

"Harold Lloyd?" Jenny confirmed, still smiling at the camera. "Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport owes your company a great deal. Captain Marika?" Jenny called out, turning toward the camera on the captain's chair control panel. "If it's alright with you, could we put Mr. Shou on the main screen?"

"Ah, of course, no problem. Go ahead."

Marika settled back into the captain's chair and used the comm panel to switch channels. The afro-haired weirdo appeared on the large monitor at the fore of the bridge.

Jenny in her wedding dress faced him on the big screen without batting an eyelash and continued.

"You've worked as the Bentenmaru's agent for many years, that should be proof enough of who you are. I imagine, Mr. Shou, that you would like to confirm that I am in fact the real Jenny Dolittle?"

"You are indeed correct." Shou leaned forward with a penetrating gaze Marika had never seen on him before. "It pains me to say it, but I have never had the pleasure of a face-to-face meeting with Miss Jenny Dolittle, Hakuoh Girls' Academy's former yacht club president and oldest daughter of Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport's Jonathan Dolittle, seventeenth in line to the company. I've analyzed the visual data, and in that regard at least I have seen nothing to make me doubt that you are the real Jenny Dolittle. On video you appear to be the real thing, but as I am sure you know, there are ways to fake such things. I assume you have some means of proving your identity?"

"I do." Jenny smiled softly at Shou through the monitor. "Two weeks from now I, Jenny Dolittle, am supposed to marry Junai Coeurf at the Gin'ei Palace mobile wedding fortress. I disappeared suddenly from Meltline Junction, and Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport's entire escort fleet, if not every in-service ship, should currently be mobilized across the galaxy in search of my whereabouts."

"It is true that there was a sudden spike in transmissions between Hugh & Dolittle ships. However, we haven't been able to confirm that the cause is is Miss Jenny Dolittle's appearance, nor have we been able to ascertain that they are currently searching for her."

"I have a simple way to prove it." The edges of Jenny's mouth curled upwards as she stared at Shou. "I imagine Harold Lloyd must have a hotline to our company. If you were to inform them that you have information relating to Jenny Dolittle's whereabouts, they would jump at it."

"I see!" Shou clapped his hands with delight and leaned back in his chair. "I thought you were going to show me your DNA-ID or something like that, but this? Are you okay with it? Their young bride has just managed to escape; if I tell them where you are, escort fleets from all over the galaxy will be after you."

"I'm just a girl with no connection to the operation of the business, I can't say how many fleets they'll send after me." She looked around the bridge proudly. "If that happens, we'll run. As you know, I'm on board the finest pirate ship in the galaxy."

Shou grinned as he lifted his hands.

"Let's contact them, then. For one of Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport's esteemed children to enlist the services of the Bentenmaru, you must be quite bold, and the circumstances quite extraordinary. Rather than a pirate ship kidnapping the daughter of a major shipping company, Miss Jenny Dolittle herself has requested that they ensure her safety. Would it be alright with you if I made a backup of our conversation so far?"

"But of course." Jenny glanced at Lynn beside her, then at Marika in the captain's chair. "Although I would ask that it not be stored permanently, should it find its way into the courts. I didn't do this with the intent to cause any trouble for my pirate friends. But please keep a record, just in case the insurance agent should find himself being asked to provide proof."

Jenny winked nonchalantly at Shou.

"Understood. Without a full understanding of the circumstances I cannot say how things will go, but for now we can say that Jenny Dolittle has entrusted herself to the Bentenmaru's care."

"Precisely."

"Then, as Harold Lloyd's agent in charge of the Bentenmaru, allow me to formally make your acquaintance. Is there some way that we may be of service to you?"

Jenny and Lynn looked at each other. With a slightly puzzled look Jenny asked, "Does this mean you're here to help us?"

"That is yet to be decided." Shou wagged his finger back and forth. "Our insurance agency serves both pirates and shipping companies. But on a personal level, my job is to serve as the Bentenmaru's agent; I have no dealings with Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport. And you must remember that the insurance industry deals in risk. In our line of work someone is always weighing the losses against the gains."

"Our business is the same way."

"As for Miss Jenny Dolittle, in the course of establishing her identity, she has handed us a potential gift that could be used to curry favor with Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport: her current whereabouts. That means it's no longer a trump card that you yourself can play."

Jenny sensed the agent's eyes sparkling behind his flashy sunglasses.

"Furthermore, your battle is not with the insurance agency. It appears that you intend to throw down the gauntlet with the leadership of Hugh & Dolittle themselves, yes? If I'm mistaken about anything, please feel free to let me know."

Jenny breathed a relaxed sigh and bowed toward Shou. "First let me say that I appreciate you considering the risks of such a plan. The finest pirate ship in the galaxy is blessed with an equally talented agent."

"As I said before, we have not chosen a side." Shou's expression was steadfast. "But insurance is our business. Which is more profitable? Selling you out to Hugh & Dolittle, or the potential future value of choosing to help you? I imagine we have some time before we must decide."

On the monitor, Shou brought his hands together.

"Now, let's hear what you have to say."

According to the information supplied by Harold Lloyd, the Bentenmaru had already begun the jump to its next objective by the time the fast cruisers of Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport's escort fleet had arrived in the area.

"Are you for real?" Chiaki whispered from next to the radar/sensor console. Marika had exchanged her spacesuit for her captain's uniform and returned to the bridge in the middle of their FTL jump. "You seriously think you can win a game of cat and mouse against Hugh & Dolittle's escorts?"

"That's what we were hired for, isn't it?" Marika's eyes flitted towards Jenny. She was still in her wedding dress, occupying Schnitzer's oversized combat command station, the only open seat on the bridge. "It's not like Jenny or I are interested in a real fight, and Lynn said she'll give up too if it comes to that. I think we're safe."

"Obviously I'm worried about fighting too, but have you thought about the big picture?"

"The big picture?" Marika looked up from the captain's chair console at Chiaki.

"Hopefully this plan works and we can make it to our destination. But what if we can't shake the escorts and they cut off our escape route? Do you really plan to hand Jenny over peacefully if we lose?"

"I'm sure Lynn'll be a hard sell." Marika glanced at the cyberwarfare console; Lynn had her computer hooked up and looked to be preparing for a fight.

"That's not even the half of it. If things don't go according to Jenny's plan, you, Captain Marika of the Bentenmaru, are gonna be on the hook for a failed mission. Understand?"

"Yeah, well..." Marika meekly averted her eyes. "It's not like I think every job we take is gonna go perfectly. You gotta take a loss sometimes, right?"

"Don't you care about your reputation as a pirate?"

"If all you worry about is your reputation you'll never get anything done." Marika dropped her eyes back down to the control panel's readout. "And anyway, I figure the Bentenmaru's reputation will only take a hit if we fail and it becomes big news. Depending on how things go this could end up becoming a big scandal, I doubt Jenny or her company have much interest in going public with it."

"Do you know how fast rumors travel? Faster than the speed of light. People talk."

"Exactly, so the more of their escorts we manage to drag away on this chase, the more incentive they'll have to keep a lid on it." Marika turned back to the bride at the combat station. "I figure, as long as we can get away without fighting, that just gets us closer to our goal, right?"

"And what if we can't make it there?"

"Then I guess we lose." Marika looked at Chiaki and shrugged. "But even so, I don't think the Bentenmaru, or Jenny and Lynn, are going to roll over that easily. You don't think our chances are that bad, do you?"

"We'll be touching down momentarily," the first officer Gruier reported as she glanced at the captain's chair. "You know, they say optimism is a good quality to have in a captain."

Chiaki turned her back to the captain's chair. She looked to be at her wit's end. "It's a captain's job to consider the worst case scenario and prepare for it."

"I know that." Marika stared straight ahead. "How else would you explain the knot in my stomach right now?"

"Touching down," Gruier announced clearly. "Bentenmaru, returning to normal space."

"What in the...!?" Hyakume exclaimed.

"Something wrong?"

"Not exactly." Hyakume tapped away at the control panel of the workstation he'd cobbled together in his room. He'd been keeping busy; not as busy as he was on the Bentenmaru, but busy.

"Did Marika step her foot in something again?"

"No...not yet."

"Not yet?" Kane was skimming a manual for one of the newest fighters, something he'd picked up from the hospital ship's database. He tossed the e-paper display on the bed and took up a spot next to Hyakume's makeshift workstation. "That doesn't sound promising. I thought the job on the Princess Apricot went off without a hitch?"

"It should have, and then the Bentenmaru was supposed to make its way back to the Tau Ceti system, or so I thought."

"Or so you thought?"

"It looks like they're caught in a game of tag with some destroyers."

"A game of tag?"

The walkie-talkie next to Hyakume emitted a shrill call tone. Hyakume slipped the earphone-mic into his ear and answered while he tapped at the keyboard.

"Hey Coorie. I was just about to ping you. Huh, so you caught it too?"

Like Hyakume, Coorie had also constructed a workstation in her quarantine room aboard the hospital ship Ben Casey, one that had all but subsumed the ship's own comm systems.

"Yeah, they're amateurs, they can only make short jumps, all it takes is a little searching to pick them up. As for who's chasing them...it wouldn't be an independent system, not across an area this large. But the Imperial Fleet wouldn't let a pirate ship lead them on a wild goose chase, and I don't see any movement from the 2nd or 3rd Fleets. I figure they're corporate..."

"There's a corporate fleet chasing down the Bentenmaru?"

Kane peeked at the display as complex figures and tiny symbols scrolled by at breakneck speed; it was more than anyone other than its own operator could make sense of. There was nothing to narrow it down. A corporate fleet could mean military contractors hired by a major concern, a takeover firm subcontracted from outside the Empire, anything.

"Where are they from?"

"Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport," Hyakume answered to both Kane and, over the walkie-talkie, Coorie.

"Yeah, from what I can tell there's no one else involved. The Bentenmaru doesn't have any support either. It could mean they picked up a new job on their own."

"A new job?" Kane asked.

Hyakume looked up from the display. "Could be."

"Hey!" A big, black wind burst into Kane and Hyakume's officer's hospital room. "Is it true there's some corporate fleet chasing after the Bentenmaru!?"

Schnitzer's giant body appeared without so much as a sound. Hyakume raised one hand in greeting while the other continued punching at the control panel.

"Yep, latest info from spacelane traffic control. Imperial Fleet's looking into it now too."

"Who is it!?"

"Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport escort fleet. Word sure travels fast."

Schnitzer took up a spot behind Kane and peered at Hyakume's workstation. His cyborg eyes immediately parsed the information being displayed.

"It seems like a battle must be imminent...but what happened?"

"Who knows?" Kane shrugged, bereft of answers. "But the Captain hasn't said anything, and Shou hasn't sent us any emergency updates, so I guess all we can do right now is shut up and watch."

"Besides, even if the Captain were to call us..." Schnitzer counted on his fingers. "It'd take us at least half a day at best before we could link up with the Bentenmaru."

"We'd need to convince the doctors to lift the quarantine first, then get ourselves an FTL-capable ship. The jump itself wouldn't take that long, but we'd still need to make it in time to deal with whatever trouble's waiting for us on the other end." Kane turned dubiously to Schnitzer. "You think we could pull it off in half a day?"

"Negotiations can be shortened, or skipped altogether."

"At any rate, there's still no word from either the Captain or our insurance agent," Hyakume admonished them. Kane's and Schnitzer's plans were veering into dangerous territory. "You'd think if things were that bad they'd at least ring us up for advice, but it doesn't look like that's happening. All we can do is watch."

"And gather information."

"Yeah, that too." Hyakume pointed at the comm panel while he fiddled with the workstation. "But if you want a clear explanation it'd be quicker to ring our buddy at the insurance agency himself."

Kane and Schnitzer exchanged glances.

"When you're right, you're right. If you'll excuse me." The hospital room's comm system began to ring just as Kane made his way over to it. "Haha, well speak of the devil."

The comm systems in the crew's rooms had been upgraded—without permission—with scrambled and encrypted channels, pirate mods that the hospital ship's systems lacked. Maybe someone could crack them if they had the time, but the hospital ship itself would be past its service life by the time a hypercomputer could manage the calculations.

Kane checked who it was from—their insurance company, Harold Lloyd, hot off an update from Marika—and took the call.

"Hey, this is the Kane on the hospital ship Ben Casey."

"Yo, it's your friend Shou at Harold Lloyd." The afro-haired weirdo on the monitor raised a hand in greeting. "How's everybody doing? I imagine you've caught wind of the Bentenmaru's antics."

"Yeah, our crack intel people have been keeping tabs."

"Hey, what's going on!?" Misa burst into the room in her labcoat without knocking. "What's this about the Bentenmaru in a chase with some destroyers!?"

"I've got a line to Shou open right now." Kane waved to Misa. "Looks like he's about to explain."

"At any rate, the Bentenmaru is still acting under the Captain's orders. I figured if I didn't let you know what was going on, sooner or later you'd end up commandeering the hospital ship and showing up as backup."

"We were just discussing that, in fact." Kane shifted his body so Shou could see Schnitzer and Misa behind him, staring down at the communication monitor. "Can I invite everyone else to listen in on the call?"

"Be my guest. It saves me the effort of having to repeat myself to my beloved crew of the Bentenmaru."

"Right then." Kane opened another line to Coorie, who was already monitoring the call. He also set it so that the rest of the Bentenmaru's crew on the hospital ship had open access to listen in.

"Well, your precious Bentenmaru has currently found itself making a number of FTL jumps." Shou folded his fingers together in front of his face. He looked quite pleased. "After the successful raid on the Princess Apricot resulted in an automatic extension of the Bentenmaru's pirate's license, the ship received another job from one of its temporary crewmembers. The safeguarding of a certain young lady."

"And you let them take it!?" Kane shouted. "You went along with it!? A bunch of amateurs on a real, licensed pirate ship like the Bentenmaru!?"

"It would not be entirely accurate to say that I 'let them'. Captain Marika came to me to discuss the job soon after she received the offer. The client is the president of the Hakuoh Girls' Academy yacht club—the ones currently manning the Bentenmaru—and the certain young lady is the former club president, currently embroiled in a situation with her family, although their pursuers are unaware of this."

"So the insurance agency knew about it this whole time?"

"And that would be the inaccurate part. Captain Marika discussed the job with me, but we had not yet decided whether to allow her to accept it. Before we were able to do our due diligence, however, the certain young lady fled to the Bentenmaru on her own."

"Wait a minute!" Kane shouted. "The former club president is Jenny Dolittle!? Of Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport!?"

"You are a sharp one, Mr. Club Advisor. Indeed. She escaped from Meltline Junction on board one of Hugh & Dolittle's brand new high-speed reconnaissance craft and fled to the Bentenmaru. And so I was graced with the opportunity to have a thorough talk with not only our client, but the target we are meant to safeguard as well."

"And after all that you still didn't stop them?" Kane sighed. "You're a slick insurance agent, and you let yourself get taken in by a girl who was in high school just a year ago."

"Well, she is an exceptional girl." Shou nodded on the monitor. "She managed to strike a deal with our insurance agency using only her status, skills, and a pirate ship being run by a bunch of high school club members."

"You actually fell for it!?" It was the only conclusion he could draw based on his knowledge of the situation. Kane's hand found its way to his forehead. "What kind of deal did you make with her!?"

"We agreed to relay information to both parties, and in exchange we remain in both her and Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport's good graces." Shou flashed his pearly whites. "Don't worry, the information we're offering you comes free of charge. I imagine that if she had played hardball she could have come away with a deal that would have flipped both of our businesses on their heads, and scored quite a win for Hugh & Dolittle."

"She totally played you..."

"We are insurers, it is our job to put together an amicable resolution for all parties. If Miss Jenny Dolittle and the Bentenmaru perform admirably, we will be in no position to complain."

"So you sent an entire fleet of destroyers after a single pirate ship!? What kind of game are you playing?"

"A single ship can still throw off an entire fleet."

"The Bentenmaru's gonna do that all by itself? Against a fleet of destroyers? They might not be as experienced as a real military or takeover firm, but they've got the edge in numbers and technology."

"At the very least, the Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport fleet shouldn't have a clue that the pirate ship is staffed by a crew of amateurs," Schnitzer interjected softly. He was following the escort fleet's movements on Hyakume's workstation. "And the Bentenmaru has been making successive jumps the likes of which you wouldn't expect from an inexperienced crew. They're also jamming—albeit crudely—any enemy ship that gets within combat range."

"I see." Kane pictured the state of the FTL drive and the overworked reactors, and his shoulders slumped. "Sandaime must be in tears. We'll be lucky if we even have a ship after this."

"No need to worry, neither the Captain nor her clients have any intention of turning this into a battle."

"Battles aren't the only things in this universe that can ruin a ship." Kane stared up at Shou on the monitor. "So what's the Bentenmaru's win condition in all of this?"

"To get the job done." Shou grinned. "Say what you will, they're still pirates, after all."

"Full scan complete!"

With each touchdown came a full scan and confirmation of their surroundings, and they were becoming quite adept at it. Marika checked the information on the captain's chair display and confirmed their current position and the surrounding space.

"We're already picking up two or three pre-drive signatures," Gruier reported, summarizing the scan results.

"You all really know what you're doing." Jenny looked around the bridge from the combat command console, impressed. "It's like a real pirate ship."

"It wasn't easy," Marika answered with a straight face. With the Bentenmaru's usual crew, issues were often dealt with before the captain could even grasp what was happening. Now that things were unfolding slowly it had become easy to keep track of who was doing what and where. "And except for the crew, this is a real pirate ship."

"Right, right." Jenny in her wedding dress slid the oversized combat command seat back and spun around, looking out over the bridge. "It's just, I know everyone here, it doesn't feel like a brand new ship."

While the bridge contained some freshman from after she had graduated, she recognized them all from the middle school club. Jenny surveyed the entire bridge crew: Lynn the knight beside her; Marie the navigator in her imposing, crimson miko's hakama; the fairy Ai at the helm; Yayoi, dressed as a kunoichi at the engineer's console.

"Who knew pirate ships were so lively?"

They were all still dressed in their costumes from the raid on the Princess Apricot.

"It's not always like this!" Marika insisted. Her captain's uniform was the only bit of normalcy. "I told you, this was only a special treat for our last job!"

"Right, I get it, you don't need to worry."

Marika giggled at their client. She still hadn't taken off her wedding dress either. "So, how's your first time on a pirate ship?" she asked jokingly.

Jenny clasped her fingers together in front of her chest. "Oh, it's absolutely splendid! Perhaps when I graduate from college, instead of starting a business I'll buy myself a pirate ship instead!"

"Good luck getting a license for one in this day and age," Lynn interjected from the cyberwarfare station. "It's nearly impossible to get them to issue a new license inside the Empire. You'd need to find somewhere out in the frontier to issue one, then figure out some trick to get back to the Empire without losing it."

"Oh, I'm sure there are ways. Make a deal with an independent system and exploit some loophole, or even better, maybe I could buy a school and register their training vessel."

"I'm sure you already know operating any ship—not just a pirate ship—is a lot of work." Lynn's hands began to move as several responses appeared on the display. "I thought you said physical labor wasn't your forte?"

"Oh, I wouldn't be out on the front lines obviously. I'm fine with sitting in the safety of an office, issuing orders and moving others around."

"Touchdown confirmed." Chiaki reported the latest information picked up by the radar. "Transponders confirmed too. Two mobile cruisers from Hugh & Dolittle's escort fleet, and it looks like three more fast destroyers are jumping in after them. And here comes the standard hailing request."

The Bentenmaru continued to follow proper flight regulations as it hurtled through the spacelanes. They were careful to keep their transponder active, making their name and position known to all without any need to identify their ship using radar or sensors.

"Ignore it, obviously," Marika ordered. "It's possible the call is from someone else, but Hugh & Dolittle and their ilk don't get a minute of our time!"

"One of the ships is breaking for us." Lynn nervously fiddled with the equipment as she prepared an attack. "Shouldn't we get ready to jam their lanes?"

"Just don't go overboard with it." Marika glanced at Lynn. The cyberwarfare station's control panels were lighting up. "Try not to do any real damage. It's not weird for radar output over the regulations to be treated as an act of aggression. Yayoi, when do you think we can make our next jump?"

"'O' is supplying enough power that we could jump on it alone, but give us a second to mess with 'M'."

"Two mobile cruisers heading in our direction," Chiaki reported. The two Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport escorts were on the move, but they were still a good distance away. "They're still screaming for our attention."

"Touchdown of three fast destroyers confirmed," Gruier reported softly. "We're also detecting what appear to be three more pre-drive signatures. They're larger than what we've seen before, they could be heavy ships."

"Any ideas what they could be?" Marika asked, and Jenny thought for a moment.

"Our company's escort fleet does have a few. But unless they've stripped them away from escort duty to chase after us, or sent one of the frontier expedition cyberwarfare ships, I don't think they'll send anything larger than a mobile cruiser."

"The mobile cruisers are starting a heavy burn," Chiaki reported. "Since we keep ignoring their hails, they may want to get closer to try and force the transmission through."

"Those poor things, having to deal with such rowdy pirates." Marika tried to put herself in their shoes and giggled.

"Sounds like the sort of enemy we should jam...can we?"

"Propulsion systems are green," Yayoi announced.

"Here we go." Ai nervously grabbed the helm controls.

"Pre-drive signature. It's a big one!" Gruier called out. "Here it comes!"

"Is this it?" Jenny mumbled to herself.

"There it is!" Gruier shouted. The ship was flying with its transponder broadcasting, per regulations, and they were able to verify the ship's name as soon as it touched down.

"It's the cyberwarfare ship Jabberwocky, flagship of the Hugh & Dolittle First Escort Fleet! Plus a bunch of auxiliary ships!"

"So, the main fleet finally showed up." Jenny clapped her hands together exuberantly. "Not that I expected them to back down, not after the insurance company slipped them all that data and they sent their escorts all this way to confirm it."

Chiaki turned to the bride at the combat command console, aghast. "If one of their family members weren't on board they'd have probably resorted to force already."

"Nah, corporate fleets absolutely hate having to open fire, accountability is a nightmare. Our escort fleet is famous for their restraint."

"Sure, maybe when they're operating inside the Empire! But everyone knows the invasion fleets out in the periphery will fire at the drop of a hat!"

"So what's the game plan?" Marika asked. "We can buy some time from those mobile cruisers gunning for us, but with that cyberwarfare ship in play..." Marika counted the number of escort fleet ships listed on the display. Two mobile cruisers, three fast destroyers behind them, the cyberwarfare ship that had just touched down, plus two cruisers and six destroyers; they had a major force arrayed against them. "We can't run forever, can we? Not with more than a dozen ships after us."

"They've sent out the Jabberwocky, that's all I needed." Jenny gleefully scanned the combat command console. Even the simple information readouts took up several illuminated displays. "Have you heard of it? It's the only electronic warfare ship in the escort fleet. When I saw it at Meltline Junction I thought, all I need is for that to come after me, and now here it is."

"That's it?"

"Yep, that'll do." Jenny spun her seat around to face the captain's chair and nodded. "If you could buzz its nose that would be the icing on the cake, but I won't ask for the moon. Let's go. Next, jump for the Tortemtot Galaxy, just like we planned."

"Roger. Setting the touchdown point for our next FTL transit...Tortemtot Galaxy… What's the matter?"

Yayoi spoke something into the intercom and raised her hand to get the captain's attention. "You know, it's going to take some time to set the specific coordinates for our next jump. We've got 'M' under control, and the output is stabilized for now, so getting power to the standard engines isn't going to be a problem."

"In other words?" Marika thought she could predict what was coming next, but regardless she wanted to hear Yayoi explain it.

"We can keep accelerating until the nozzles overheat from overuse. As long as we don't mess up the timing, we'll be able to buzz the nose of the enemy ship that just touched down and then go right into our jump."

"Ai, does that sound good?"

Ai checked the arrangement of the fleet on the helm display. "Uh, I think I can manage."

"Well, it is a request from our benefactor. Let's give it a shot." Marika grinned. "Reverse course and head for those two cruisers on our tail, then cut across the bow of the lead ship of the enemy spindle formation and launch us into FTL. Can engineering handle it? It'll be bad news for us if the timing's off."

"I think we'll be fine," Yayoi answered, checking everything one last time. Marika checked the captain's chair display—all green—and nodded.

"Alright, begin combat maneuvering! Bentenmaru, here we go!"

The Bentenmaru made a textbook vertical turn and charged at the two rapidly approaching mobile cruisers. Without breaking off, the ship launched past the cruisers and toward the line of escorts behind them, jamming them to block their radar and electromagnetic transmissions.

The Bentenmaru ignored all hails and warnings as the fleet shifted into an attack formation, when suddenly high-pitched laughter assailed the frequency Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport used for its private communications.

Analysis showed that the laughter belonged to Jonathan Dolittle's oldest daughter, whom they were under orders to protect, and the fleet was powerless to respond.

The Bentenmaru disappeared into hyperspace, leaving only Jenny's high-pitched laughing behind. Even with the jamming and the deflector screen, jumping directly in front of the fleet made it a simple matter to decipher their destination from the ships' sensor data.

They were just asking to be followed. The escort fleet quickly began to pursue.

The Bentenmaru started scanning their surroundings as soon as they touched down in normal space. They discovered their target immediately, matching to within the margin of error the data that Jenny had brought with her.

"We've got a transponder match for the Glorious Coeurf!" Chiaki reported, confirming the private yacht on both radar and sensors. "Can't say I'm a fan of people who plaster their names all over their own boats."

The Tortemtot Galaxy, despite the name, is a former star system that had transformed into a variable nebula in the wake of a supernova. As a mid-sized starship, the FTL-capable craft was large for a private yacht; its orbit skirted the edge of the kaleidoscopic gas cloud.

Marika checked the current time on the captain's chair chronometer. It wouldn't be long before the Hugh & Dolittle escort fleet caught up with them.

"Are you sure about this?"

"I'm sure." Jenny looked at the image on the display and nodded. "My fiance should be partying his butt off on that ship at this very moment."

"Then I guess it's time to get to work." Marika stood, her captain's uniform aflutter. "Bentenmaru, it's pirating time!"

The Bentenmaru went full throttle as it charged towards the private luxury cruiser.

The cyberwarfare ship Jabberwocky, flagship of the Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport escort fleet, arrived on the edge of the Tortemtot Galaxy, following the wake of the Bentenmaru's jump. The Bentenmaru had already docked with the Glorious Coeurf, its docking arm locked to the private yacht half its size.

The Jabberwocky ordered the ship encircled and hailed them, and for the first time the Bentenmaru answered properly. The response: a video transmission of Jenny Dolittle herself on board the Glorious Coeurf.

"This is Jenny Dolittle speaking," she replied from the Glorious Coeurf's posh central cabin, flanked by costumed pirates. She still wore her wedding dress, minus the veil and with her hair down. "I apologize for dragging you all this way. I thought I'd drop in my fiance Junai Coeurf before the wedding, while he's still a bachelor. Unannounced, of course: I wanted it to be a surprise."

Jenny had apparently brought the camera on board herself; she looked nonchalantly around the cabin. The camera seemed to follow her field of view, revealing the cabin's vividly decked out interior, complete with billowing technicolor smoke.

Risque and licentious, the visuals were an affront to all moral turpitude; they were streamed to not only the Jabberwocky, but all of the ships under its command.

"It seems my fiance has run off somewhere, embarrassed no doubt. Why don't you come help me look for him?"

"They boarded in the middle of a wild, drug-fueled orgy!?" Kane nearly screamed as he listened to Shou's account. "I know those people don't know the meaning the words 'morals' or 'modesty,' but that's still just about the worst time to get found out!"

"It's something alright," Misa commented. She'd been standing to the side, listening quietly. "Which one of those little rich girls came up with this whole sordid idea? Jenny?"

"It was the Princess." Shou's hand seemed to flutter with exasperation. "Apparently Miss Jenny had originally intended something far less extreme. She was going to get the Hugh & Dolittle escort fleet to waste their time chasing them around before opening a channel to negotiate directly, or something like that."

"That was the less extreme option? Gimme a break."

"However, our Princess Gruier managed to overhear and said, Oh, that will hardly do, the trick to winning a negotiation is to confront them with evidence that they can't back away from."

"Whoa," the three men exclaimed, while Misa simply nodded as if to say, but of course. Kane shuddered, then turned his eyes back toward Shou.

"Whatever happens, let's make sure we don't make an enemy of the royal family."

"We are in agreement on that. Stay on their good side." Shou nodded, proud of himself. "Incidentally, I imagine it would be a good idea not to make an enemy of the bride, either. She made her escape while they were still finishing the embroidery on her dress, and she even managed to dig up the details of her debauched, druggie fiance's schedule. I don't know what channels she uses for her intel, but she even got her hands on an invitation to one of the wild sex romps Junai Coeurf holds on his private yacht."

"She's got promise." Misa fixed a cold stare on the men. "If all our clients were that prepared our job would be a lot easier."

"And so the Bentenmaru, with the most excellent of timing, raided the yacht of Miss Jenny's fiance and his companions and succeeded at their mission. There was no damage to either the Bentenmaru or to the yacht."

Shou glanced down at one of the displays in front of him.

"And although there were no losses of either materiel or personnel, it cannot be said what impact it will have on Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport as a whole or to their families. Unfortunately, such things are outside of our purvey." He lifted his head back to the comm monitor. "Do you have any questions concerning the Bentenmaru?"

Kane shot a probing look at Misa, then turned back to the comm system. "Where's the Bentenmaru planning on heading now?"

"Well, if they stick to the plan, it's straight back to Tau Ceti, although they may return by way of Space University for Miss Jenny's sake. Why don't you ask them yourself the next time you check in?"

"Hey!" Kane glared at the grinning Shou through the monitor. "You're the one who told us to act like we didn't know what was going on! It's one thing if the Captain comes clean, but otherwise, at the moment we're supposed to be recovering and none the wiser! How are we even supposed to talk to her with a straight face?"

"Ah yes, that's right." Shou clapped his hands together. "You had to render assistance all the while pretending you didn't know what was happening. Understood. We'll continue to contact you regarding the Bentenmaru's movements. Have there been any updates on your quarantine?"

Kane ceded the space in front of the communicator to the doctor, Misa. She took his place and nodded to Shou.

"As of yesterday's exam they've confirmed we're all completely cured. As long as everyone's careful not to catch a cold in the next week they'll cut us loose."

"Understood. Very well, we'll let you know when the Bentenmaru is due to return to the Tau Ceti system."

As Shou had predicted, the Bentenmaru set a course for Tau Ceti from the Tortemtot Galaxy, with a detour past Space University.

Jenny refused to transfer to the Hugh & Dolittle Interstellar Transport escort fleet, traveling with the Bentenmaru to the school, where she formally enrolled.

Having gone well beyond the scope of their initial plans, the Bentenmaru had to work overtime, but returned to Tau Ceti just inside of their schedule. They dropped the ship off at the Lagrange point anchorage and took the shuttle and their state of the art reconnaissance craft back to the Odette II as it continued to travel on autopilot.

"We're really taking the recon craft back to the Odette II with us?" Gruier asked. With the shuttle bereft of space, she'd taken up the recon craft's operator seat while Marika had squeezed herself into the pilot's seat. Marika nodded.

"How would I explain it to the crew if I just left it on board?"

"But all the flight logs are still there, aren't they? Even if we keep our mouths shut, I doubt there's any way the crew won't notice," Gruier said, thinking. "In fact, I think they might already know."

"I can tell them what happened once they're back. I'll worry about that later. Right now we need to snag the Odette II, get everyone settled, and make it back to the station." Marika scanned the cockpit of the brand new Silent Whisper. There were only two seats, pilot and operator. "And anyway, this is payment for Jenny's job. Everybody earned it, I figure they should be the ones who get to use it."

"You think the Odette II could use a reconnaissance craft like this?" Gruier looked around the craft dubiously.

"I mean, I doubt we'll have a chance to use more than one percent of its capabilities, but there are lots of things we could do with it...sell it and spend the money on parties, or rent it out maybe?"

"Sounds like it's going to end up a hangar queen."

Hangar queen: a craft that spends all of its time sitting in the hangar, perhaps because it's in bad shape, or because there's no occasion to use it.

"Shouldn't we be able to see the Odette II soon?"

"This thing's eyes are so good it could see the Odette II before it launched." Gruier's hands suddenly stopped as she was punching a command into the control panel. "I want to say this while I can. I went this whole training voyage without getting to do one thing remotely pirate-like."

"Well no duh," Marika answered with a straight face. She had a bad feeling about what was coming next. "I mean, you did a great job as first officer. You were a huge help. You're still helping."

"I wanted to dress up and go on a raid."

Marika turned to Gruier, who was pouting as she spilled out her soul.

"I think the captain's uniform suits you, but it would be a major headache to take a celebrity like you on a pirate raid where everyone can see."

"I wouldn't worry about it, not with everybody else dressed to the hilt. And I've got a personal jammer with me that will scramble any video someone tries to take."

"Fine, I get it." Marika pretended to focus on flying. "I'll be sure to invite you along next time."

"When is the next time you're going to do pirate training?"

"Uhh...?" Marika looked back at Gruier. She was still wearing her innocent smile.

"Everybody was saying how great it would be if we could do another training voyage like this one. They all had a lot of fun, they want to do it again. So when are you going to set a date?"

"Uhh...!?"

The Odette II, flying on autopilot as it returned to Umi-no-ake Station, was right where it was supposed to be.

Lynn had locked the ship down extra tight. Marika and Gruier couldn't open it alone, and it took several tries once the shuttle caught up with them to figure out how to get it open, turning into yet another unexpected trial, but the yacht club was finally able to make it back safely to the Odette II.

Docking went much smoother compared to their last two launches and their last docking, so much so that it surprised the traffic controllers on duty. It was as if they had swapped out their crew entirely.

The crew of the Bentenmaru was released from their quarantine on the hospital ship Ben Casey after a full month, no worse for wear. Marika returned to the Bentenmaru alone to greet the shuttle carrying them; needless to say it was an awkward reunion.

And once she returned to the surface to resume her double life as a high school student, every time she entered the club room she had to deal with the same question.

"When do we get to be pirates again?"

"Uhh...!?"

Prologue

Chapter 1: Category I Quarantine Order

Chapter 2: Help Wanted: Pirate Crew

Chapter 3: Training Vessel, Anchors Aweigh!

Chapter 4: Pirates in Training

Chapter 5: A Practicum in Piracy