The Privateer

The shuttle was loud, and shook constantly. Surface shuttles were built differently than most spacefaring vessels, with severe limits placed on their speed and engine power. A ship like the Random Encounter could kill hundreds or thousands of people if it crashed due to its rapid acceleration. Surface shuttles were much slower, and built with extra redundancies to prevent accidents. They were the only craft allowed to descend to the surface. Any other ship that tried would be blasted out of the sky.

Yvian understood the necessity, but she still wished they could have taken their own ship.

Redundancies or not, there was something very alarming about a ship shaking this much. She felt like it could break apart at any moment. The roar of the engines failed to hide the creaks and groans of the ship as it entered the atmosphere. Her helmet muffled the sounds, but she'd decided against activating the noise cancellation functions. It was bad enough there were no windows to see out of. She wasn't giving up her ability to hear if something went wrong.

"So..." Lissa drawled over the comms. "Chronicler of Lives. What's that about?"

"It's an ancient brilend tradition." Mims replied. "The keepers of the true history. The brilend believe history is best preserved through understanding the people involved. Important figures, people in power, and at least a few of the common masses. The Chroniclers investigate these people, learn all they can, and tell their stories. Not just what they did, but why. Who they were. Their essence."

"That sounds..." A particularly violent shake caused her to clutch at her restraining belts before she continued. "...Dangerous."

"Yeah." Mims agreed. "People in power don't like having their secrets dug into. Chroniclers tend to get murdered a lot."

Yvian was only half paying attention. If not for fear their shuttle would explode, she wouldn't have listened to anything at all. Motherless. She'd known what it meant. All pixens did. But knowing had not prepared her for experiencing it. All those people. All that hate. The snarling faces of her people rose up behind her eyelids, an endless loop of rejection. Curses and hisses and the muttering anger of the crowd echoed through her mind.

She could never again be among her own kind. Never eat a pixen meal. Never have a simple conversation with a stranger. She would never again know the touch of a pixen woman.

Because of Yasme.

Yvian had always loved her mother. All daughters do. No matter how angry, or disgusted, or afraid she'd been, she'd always told herself Yasme loved her. Maybe. Deep down. Now she knew better. Yasme Kiver loved no one. Not even Lissa. She'd probably spent hours stirring up that mob. Playing the victim, riling up their emotions, pointing them at Yvian like a gun. She'd sent a crowd of strangers to kill her children, and she'd smiled while she watched.

"But they're some of the best investigators in the verse," the Captain continued. "Chroniclers are highly trained observers, experts at reading body language, and masters of sniffing out secrets. When a brilend does something stupid and futile, they call it "shitting the chronicler." They're dedicated, lethally clever, and absolutely fucking relentless in their search for the truth."

Yasme. Cold anger burned through her. Hatred. Revulsion. She might have hoped they would chase away the sadness. Instead they settled in with it, huddling together like friends sharing a blanket. A tightness in her chest. A moistness in her eyes. A slump in the shoulders she could barely prevent. She still had her sister and the Captain. Why did she feel so alone? So cold? So very, very tired?

"They're a god-damned nightmare to anyone with secrets to keep."

Yvian snapped herself to attention at the mention of secrets. Oh, Crunch. Mims wasn't just giving a history lesson. He was giving a warning. Danil Starlancer was a professional discoverer of secrets. They'd betrayed the Confed to the Xill. Mims was a Terran spy. Even Yvian's plan to rebuild Pixa would get them all killed if anyone found out. If the reporter found the slightest suspicion...

"Oh?" Danil Starlancer cut in. "Do you have secrets to keep, Captain?"

"Everyone always does," the human replied. "Did I leave anything out?"

"Only that we're all devastatingly handsome," the reporter regarded Mims for a moment. "How did you know what I was? The Chroniclers of Lives are not well known outside of Brilend space."

Mims shrugged, but with the shaking of the shuttle Yvian doubted the reporter could tell. "You called Yasme out in front of a crowd without tangible proof. A reporter wouldn't have done that."

"But a Chronicler would." Starlancer nodded approvingly. "Just the sort of thinking I'd expect from the man manipulating the Exchanges."

"The what now?" Mims looked up.

"The Commodities Exchanges," the reporter casually explained.

Yvian could hear the Captain's frown. "What about them?"

Danil shifted forward in his seat, eyeing Mims. "You don't know." He sat back. "Interesting."

"What don't we know?" asked Lissa.

"Over the last year, there have been a series of sudden price changes in the Exchanges," said the Brilend, "It's happened on dozens of stations and no one knows how. It's sent the brokers into a panic. There've been over a hundred investigations, but no one knows how it was done."

"So someone's messing with the price index." Mims stated. "What does that have to do with us?"

"'No one knows how it was done," The Chronicler elaborated. "But we have some theories about why. All the sudden price changes happened when one specific ship accessed the markets. The ship's IFF was registered as The Wandering Lady."

"That's my ship." Yvian felt a pang at the mention of her old vessel. She frowned. "Was my ship. But why mess with my prices? It's' not like I was making any..." Realization struck. "Those motherless sons!"

"Exactly." Danil Starlancer confirmed. "The changes to the price index lowered the value of the cargo you were selling."

"I lost millions of credits," Yvian said bitterly. "Millions."

"Why us?" Lissa wondered. "Who would care enough to go out of their way to make sure we lose money?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Danil moved to stroke his chin, but was blocked by his helmet. He settled for stroking his helmet's chin. "Pixen traders aren't common, but they're not special. The only enemies I know you had were the Freedom Republic, and you paid them off."

"They couldn't have pulled something like that off, anyway." said Mims. "The Exchanges are highly secure. Hacking one is impossible enough, but dozens? Without leaving a trail?" He shook his head. "I don't know who could do that."

"Or what." Lissa amended.

"Could-" Yvian caught herself just in time. Danil Starlancer was listening. Mentioning Exodus by name would pique his curiosity and lead to a lot of questions they didn't want to answer. "Could the Xill do something like that?"

"Probably not," said Mims, who knew perfectly well that they could. Or at least they could now. They wouldn't have bothered asking for a Node if they could access the Nexus without it. "If the Xill had that power, they'd have better things to do than wreck your trading business." Mims sat back, thinking. "It's gotta be some other player. Someone we haven't seen."

On that disturbing note, the group lapsed into silence. Yvian went back to brooding. She kept at it for the rest of the flight. The Captain had risked everything to help her get her hands on a planet. Lissa, too. What would she do if no one wanted to go there? Or more likely, didn't believe it was real. Not a lot of pixens would take the word of a motherless, and Lissa would be motherless by association if she didn't publicly reject Yvian soon.

Maybe she should. The other pixens wouldn't accept Yvian, but Lissa was the hero of Milvari. One of the saviors of Krog Prime. She was the closest thing her people had to a celebrity. If she told them she'd found a planet, they wouldn't hesitate to join her. As long as they didn't associate her with Yvian.

The thought terrified her. For most of her life, Lissa was all she had. They'd been taking care of each other for as long as Yvian could remember. The thought of losing that... it was too much. Yvian didn't think she could do it. Just thinking of it brought her to tears.

No. She needed her sister. Yvian knew it was selfish. She knew it was weak. She knew she should be ashamed of her choice. It didn't matter. Lissa was more important than Pixa. They would find another way. If her people wouldn't let themselves be saved without giving up her family, then they didn't deserve to be saved at all.

She wondered if Lissa felt the same way. She'd always been the more practical of the two of them. Not as cold and calculating as the Captain, but more accepting of reality than Yvian had ever been. She might decide its worth the trade off, to make Pixa a nation, again.

The shuttle landed. Restraints were released. Yvian took her first steps onto an alien world. Or any world, really. She barely noticed. She was too wound up in the question she was about to ask.

"Sis?" Yvian's voice sounded small and vulnerable, even to her. Lissa turned at the sound.

"You'll.... You'll stand by me, right?" Yvian wanted to stare at the ground, but she forced herself to meet her sister's eyes. "Even if... Even..."

Lissa snatched her up in a hug. Yvian's body unclenched itself in a wave of relief. "Of course I will, Sis. We both will." She looked up from the hug enough to point her face at the human. "Right, Mark?"

"No."

Lissa stared at him in shock. He shrugged. "I don't believe in unconditional love. I love you, both of you, for who you are and how you treat me." He compacted his helmet and placed it on his belt. "If you betray me or turn into assholes, I'll have to rethink our relationship."

The sisters released their hug. Yvian frowned at Mims, mirroring Lissa's expression. "That's... fair,"

Yvian decided. "I guess."

The Captain stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. "That said, I don't give a fuck what anyone thinks. We're friends. The only one who can make me stop loving you is you."

His words filled her with a warm glow. Not trusting herself to respond, and glad she hadn't removed her helmet, yet, Yvian flung her arms around the man. For the first time, he managed to hug her back without being awkward about it.

"You feel better?" he asked. She nodded. "Then get your head in the game. We're about to face the Board of Masters, and they will kill us if we fuck this up."

Yvian ended the hug. As she stepped away, she noticed Danil regarding them with an amused expression. "Damn, Mims. You really are a sweetheart."

Mims favored him with a glare. "Tell anyone and I'll kill you."