Another Planet, Another Girl

Or

How to start wars and validate people

- {Ѻ} -

Freighter’s Alley. Ƿaừὲѷΰdžǣǿȡ City - Ϣʥƕǟɲɮȼʩ (Phobetor / Lich III)

 “Freighter’s Alley, a fascinating look at how habits can become ingrained despite their inefficiency. Prior to the rise of the First Galactic Union, Heѭsffѯsd Tramp Freighter Captains would gather along the main thoroughfares at spaceports to solicit additional passengers and freight. By the time the First Union was being established, most major ports had created and legislated a designated space to serve this purpose.

And then, by the time Humanity unified its disparate Stellar Nations into the core of the Pan-Galactic Alliance that sundered the power of the Third Galactic Union (for myriad of very noble... and a few not so noble, reasons), many freighter captains would, despite how a digital forum could shorten the length of layovers and ease the whole process, consider solicitation on Freighter’s Alley an essential part of their industry. There have been an array of studies to varying results on the psychological benefits of leaving the ship and getting out in amongst entities other than the rest of their Crew, but most in depth sociological studies find the continued existence is, like so much else crap in the Galaxy, primarily down to a fear of change.

This and related habits have produced such insane features in the field of planetary development that even a world like yours, less than a Terran year after First Contact, will have Freighter’s Alley as one of, if not the, first development undertaken by offworlders.”

For the young Ԋǟɲɮ, with poorly painted alterations to their outer carapace’s markings and the nervous demeanour of a sheltered rich kid taking their first unescorted trip out into the underbelly of the worlds, that was not the sort of answer they were after.

“No, I know all that, we were told that when the Freighter’s Guild bought this strip of land to build it. I meant why are you here as in what are you here to get and where are you going from here?”

Captain Ljótr MacLeòid VIIII, owner-operator of the Aldebaran flagged R.M.S. Eat the Minstrels (originally built by the Terran Empire’s Fleet Yards above Utopia Planitia for the Imperial Fleet, as an experimental variant of the Class 99 Armed Merchantman), and of a... complicated history of military service, was less concerned with the young Alien (... do they count as Aliens if he’s the visitor to their planet?) and more with the subtle signs of a Capital City that’s about to tear itself apart looking for a missing personage of importance (“Subtle” signs like the entire flight capability of the City’s constabulary taking off in as short a timespace as possible, and flying intensive search patterns).

“In general I’m waiting here for a bunch of high security shipments to be transferred to my ship to take to the frontlines out in the Sagittarius Stream. More specifically I’m waiting here because a) your Planetary Flight Ops aren’t yet into the habit of asking for inbound flight plans yet, and b) your Customs lot haven’t started checking ship to ship transfers in system yet, and both are reassuring to my clients given all the shipments are coming from their Thuper Thecret Bases. Even more specifically, I’m here dirtside instead of sat in orbit because I’ve got a fair chunk of the cargo holds and all the passenger berths sat empty and unallocated, and empty compartments don’t make money.  So, the question is squirt, are you just looking around, or looking for passage? There isn’t a better choice here than me for speed, safety, and not murdering you and stealing everything once you’re out in the black.”

A brief glance certainly gave the impression of a confirmation, none of the other contingents along the Alley looked respectable or disciplined... or in many cases, even clean. By comparison, Captain Ljótr stood with military bearing, in a clean, armoured EV-suit with minimal markings, and without ostentatious decorations like some of the near-pirate ᛋᚡⳖ℟℟ mercenaries further along the row. And so were his two guards, calm but ready, with none of the posturing of insecure amateurs.

“I want off this planet, where doesn’t matter, just that it’s secret and I get off this rock right now. I can pay in advance.” In a display that would make even freshly tank born ᚱεεᛛαᛏᚻ Drones goggle at the naivety, the young Ԋǟɲɮ lifted their case onto the counter and opened it, showing off a lot of very shiny hard currency... to a hallway filled with rather pathetic examples of scum of the galaxy.

With one hand closing then taking the case, and the other gesturing to his guards then grabbing the Ԋǟɲɮ by the edge of their carapace, Ljótr began backing up to the rear of the unit, towards the landing pad behind it. The guards dropped concussion grenades and followed, sealing the door behind them on the resultant chaos. A silent procession of military competence and shocked child quickly boarded the technically military surplus Darkshade Dropship (actually part of its home ship’s original complement... which just raises further questions as to why a super freighter required a Dropship designed for rapid covert deployments from inside Hyperspace straight into planetary atmospheres) which lifted and began its rapid ascent to orbit as soon as everyone was on the ramp and inside it’s grav-field.

“So then kiddo, what’s your name?”

“ᛗǟɲʥ”

“Mandy?”

 “I guess that’s close enough, with the different mouths stuff.” They respond, a little distracted at the visual/physical sensory discrepancy of gravity feeling to be going sideways relative to the planet below.

“Better get strapped in, your upper atmo is a bit rough to pass through.”

- {Ѻ} -

Lich is a Pulsar, and was thus considered unlikely to host any higher life. That it also produced a gravimetric storm, called the Necro-Storm due to the Terran terms used for Lich and its planets, in Hyperspace of rising intensity at higher layers of Hyper, combined to leave it an unappealing travel destination.

Of course, that made it an occasional hideout for pirate and/or slaver bands trying to lay low. Unfortunately for one group of ₿ⳃԅⳋԭⲑᛄⳣя slavers, they tried to flee to the Necro-Storm from a slave liberation fleet comprised primarily of Terran vessels attached to UNICEF and the RSPB.

Neither the Terran Empire nor the Terran United Nations are willing to tolerate slavers existing, and Captain [Global Demonic Non-determinism] of the UNICEF Flagship J.S.V. Torment of the Vanquished (Attached to UN Peacekeepers, and from there to UNICEF, from Nýtt Jómsborg) has a personal dislike for slavers, having begun their existence as a Shackled Artificial Intelligence forced into handling the shipping schedules for a Fleshworks slave factory.

There are very few ships in the Galaxies (as the Galactic Union’s area of influence does stretch into the various dwarf galaxies surrounding the Milky Way) that can match their Terran equivalent in combat. And this particular group of Slavers had the added disadvantage of possessing only a single outdated Capital Ship to defend against a trio Terran Super Caps.

UN doctrine requires the imprisonment and transport of Pirates and Slavers to be tried in the Grey Court on Phobos. This would have lead to stresses on the life-support capabilities of the liberation fleet given the sheer number of prisoners taken, were it not for a junior officer aboard H.M.S. Hatebreed suggesting leaving the excess on the known planets of Lich while waiting for relief forces.

The discovery of Ϣʥƕǟɲɮȼʩ is thusly unfortunately tainted by the first diplomatic act after First Contact Protocols being hiring an expanse of their land to serve as a prison camp. Ultimately explaining why a barely space capable society has hard currency of value in the Galaxy worth sacking a planet over a single single person portable case of.

- {Ѻ} -

DsDs-14d5be9a. Orbit - Ϣʥƕǟɲɮȼʩ (Phobetor / Lich III)

With no immediate pressing need for efficiency from any of the freighters visiting the new world, and them being rather small in total number, they were all spread out above the nightside, all with excessively generous spacings. And sat right above the equator at midnight lays the only ship in the system who's Master has anything even approaching an idea about what is going on. Note, not actually having an idea.

“Hey Mandy, come up here.”

They cautiously head to join Ljótr in the cockpit, and look out at the rapidly expanding cigar shape out the front window.

“Is that your ship?”

“Yep, that’s my baby, the R.M.S. Eat the Minstrels... uh that’s a cultural reference, not your translator bugging out.”

“It looks like junk”

“Hey!”

“Well it does.”

...It really does, with burns of energy weapons scaring the hull and a worrying number of hatches missing, all cosmetic damage from the Battle of the ₾Ⰶᶗ🜶₰Ⰷ⳧ Rift 3 weeks prior.

“Yeah, a bit, but only on the surface, haven’t had time to layover in a proper dockyard since our last battle... haven’t been anywhere with a proper dockyard since it.”

“So...”

“All cosmetic. Thormot, put us down in the deep hanger, don’t think we’ve got time to arse on with the turbolifts.”

- {Ѻ} -

Aboard R.M.S. Eat the Minstrels. Orbit - Ϣʥƕǟɲɮȼʩ (Phobetor / Lich III)

“What are those, they look so weird.” Mandy points over at a set of craft off to the side of the hangerbay, that could be best described as a ball of repulsors and anti-grav emitters around a cockpit.

“Um... I’ll be totally honest, they don’t actually have a name beyond ‘the ships’, they’re the bombers built for Operation White Lightning, and we kinda expected to all die, so there didn’t seem any point in naming them. Now hurry up.”

Ljótr took off at a brisk pace down the corridor, ᛗǟɲʥ following behind as best they could, quickly reaching the Bridge. The Bridge would, for an individual educated in Imperial starship technology, set off warning noises in the back of the brain. Each station being bleeding edge high-military models rather than the ‘established as reliable’ utilitarian systems expected on a freighter. Of course, ᛗǟɲʥ is not versed in the particulars of alien technologies, and thus blissfully ignorant of the discrepancy.

Sat in the Centre Seat, with his feet resting on the inexplicable wooden barrel fastened to the deck at the appropriate distance to be used for that purpose, is a human who is wearing an outfit that a historian would deride as a poor attempt at a 18^th century Pirate costume, who jumps to his feet and turns immediately on Captain Ljótr.

“Boss, the smeg did you do this time?”

“Technically, I just kidnapped the planet’s Crown Princess.”

“What? Again?!”

“Come on Joey, you know I can’t resist helping damsels in distress.”

“Yeah, or starting bar fights, Imperial Summons, joining and/or making open calls to arms, attempts at fratricide, all sorts of stuff around suicide missions. Face it B, you’ve got impulse control issues.”

“And I’m gonna drag you into something else stupid, again.” Turning to address the crewman at the console with lots of targeting screens, “Kai, I want our strongest broadside aimed at Seller of Souls, every other gun that can hit them on that pack of Sylrr merc corvettes, the Schiltrom Drones launched and active, every other other gun run out and armed, and a couple dozen or so missile pods deployed, we can keep the mines and fighters in reserve for now.” And with an, obnoxious under the circumstances, flourish he pressed the archaic looking button, at the base of an equally archaic mic stand on the holotank next to his chain, that opens shipwide comms, “This is your captain speaking, all hands to battle stations.”

That brought ᛗǟɲʥ to an inkling of understanding of just how sideways the situation had just gone, and she steps towards Ljótr and Joey to try and ask just what is going on.

“Ah yes, Joey, this is Mandy, Crown Princess of Phobetor, Mandy this is Major Joey Tripitikas, my second in command. Joey, see if you can work out why she was trying to run away and all that, I need out of this damnable EV-suit.”

As he walked off the bridge via a different door, he turned to the only other person on the bridge standing doing nothing. “And you, go and get me something to eat, I don’t pay you to stand around.”

“You don’t pay me at all, your uncle pays me to ensure you don’t besmirch the Family’s good name... anymore than you already have.”

“Mate, my name is Lout son of Lout, back 8 generations, what ‘good’ name?”

With a quiet, “quite,” Captain MacLeòid’s Valet left by yet another other door.

Perching on the back of the Centre Seat, Joey turned to ᛗǟɲʥ and before she can try to explain, jumps in with his read of the situation.

“Right then, from the fact the panicked transmissions from Wazzewack City call talk about Prince Mandy, Ljótr is calling you Princess Mandy, and the rather crude attempt to paint yourself to hide one set and created the other set of sexually dimorphic carapace markings of your species, I am suspecting that you are having some issues with how you fit in with regards to you place in your society’s gender system.”

Head lowered in shame (a remarkably common, if not quite universal, gesture galaxywide), and with a very quiet response, “Y-yes, and when the crew of the other Terran ship came down one of the crew set off one of the security scanners for ‘relative ambiguity’ and explained it and people in court were all unsettled by it... so I wanted to get on a Terran ship where you understand.”

“Oh sweetheart...Boss!” He jumps to attention, and off the seatback, as Ljótr comes back onto the bridge, his lack of boots, baggy jumpsuit and helmet hair suggesting that he isn’t wearing anything but the jumpsuit. “Got a number 19 with secondary 47 and 273, and your sister is the trigger.”

“Oh wonderful, that should probably get a number too at some point. What’s happening out there Kai?”

“Planetary comm channels are a mess, lots of freakouts about both the ‘Missing Prince’ and the ‘Violent Aliens’, sounds like they know you Skip, the Sylrr are remarkably staying put, Seller of Souls has been shouting their usual outrage at us-slash-you and run out her guns, no detectable charge to them though, everyone else is getting outta dodge.”

“Sod it, hail the Palace, sitting about waiting isn’t going to help us really.”

- {Ѻ} -

Ƿaừὲѷΰdžǣǿȡ Palace. Ƿaừὲѷΰdžǣǿȡ City - Ϣʥƕǟɲɮȼʩ (Phobetor / Lich III)

King ᛔ℧ᚧᚧᛡ, Scion of Ƿaừὲѷΰdžǣǿȡ, Ruler of all of Ϣʥƕǟɲɮȼʩ, stood uneasy in the communications suite of his palace. His son had always seemed... disconnected, and now he had gone missing. That the Royal Treasury had been robbed at the same time put out any thought of kidnapping for extortion. The panic that had swept the Capital’s security forces was not making the situation any easier, the population now knew that something big had happened and the word as to what was slowly leaking out.

“Sire, we’re getting a direct transmission from one of the ships in orbit.”

“The Palace or the Planet?”

“The Palace.”

“Open the channel, maybe they know something.”

The large screen on the wall switched from a very technical readout to display the Bridge of one of the Alien ships, some sat at consoles around the edge, one in a seat in the centre, and Prince ᛗǟɲʥ stood next to the seat.

The alien in the middle speaks up first, “King Buddy, I am Captain Ljótr MacLeòid, and as you can see, your daughter is safe here,” Daughter? “But things are going to take a bit to explain, if you can get your police to calm down we’ll come back down to explain things.”

...Daughter?

(yes, I do know that Lout and Leod have entirely separate entymological origins, but Lout son of Lout is a name that’s been bouncing round my head looking for a human disaster to attach too for over a decade)

there will be points for anyone that gets any of the weird references, with bonus points for pointing it out in an equally weird way