rix_scaedu

It began with the Deep Altar and priestesses.  The Deep Altar because it sat galleries down in a cave complex, occupying a cavern that was an analogue of the Devourer of All’s own Eternal Cavern.  Priestesses because men who made the journey to the Deep Altar did not return, The Silence Under The Hills being a demanding mistress who kept her lovers closer than life allowed.

After the destruction of the dwimmerweavers and their kin, including the bearers of the divine sparks, by those who thought dwimmerweavers were stealing power from the gods, the great project had to be begun all over again.  This iteration the Mistress of Time chose to place her divine spark in the senior priestess serving the Deep Altar and pass it through that worthy’s female line.  The wait began for the season to be ripe for the divine sparks to begin to breed and meld again.

The divine spark had the ability, when the bearer’s own higher brain functions had been suppressed by a dangerously poisonous cocktail of herbs, to allow the consciousness of the goddess to control the bearer’s body and thus to prophesise.  When that became known the surrounding petty kings and great lords came offering riches in exchange for answers to their questions.  Answers were given sparingly at first but the riches erected an altar on the surface and then a temple to house it.  Riches and prominence brought more varied candidates for clerical service at the temple and men were permitted to join the clergy.

At first the seer was always an old woman, childbearing done for years when she received the divine spark, and used to bearing the titles of age and experience.  Thus the first seers did not feel the sting of not being called by name.  Then came the year when two seers died and the position fell to a young woman of child bearing age.  It was expected that the Sun Emperor would come to claim his bride then but the man who would have been the Sun Emperor got himself killed in a bandit skirmish.  The tincture for foreseeing was an abortifacient and it was decided that rather than give up the income from prophesy, the seer’s sister rather than the seer would bear the next generation.  At the same time, the hierarchy that had developed around the temple would not bend to a young high priestess and so the seer no longer automatically became high priestess.

With the seer no longer in charge of the temple, the incumbents came under pressure to provide more foreseeings to the temple’s profit.  That required ingestion of greater amounts of the tincture and that lead to the later seers experiencing a reduced lifespan.

By the time the Sun Emperor did come for his bride, he was performing a rescue.

“Now to recap the program, I‘d like the members of our panel to summarise the most important developments in the first twelve months of the new regime and Emperor Yannic’s reign.  Professor Liffen?” the moderator indicated the middle aged woman on the far right of the screen.

“I believe Yannic’s most significant political achievement has been the legitimisation of his tenure in the position.”  The sociology professor spoke to the unseen audience, focusing past the moderator’s shoulder.  “He attached himself to the previous dynasty by marrying its sole survivor and used the wedding itself to debunk Trode’s personality cult.  Making the reason he was chosen for the position public was a masterstroke and given the alternatives before us, I cannot imagine he will face any challenges to his authority until his eldest son reaches maturity – if then.”

“Thank you, Professor.”  The moderator moved to the second of the four panel members.  “Doctor Gorrec, your thoughts?”

“Economically I have to select his decision to push forward with the Military Development Tree,” pronounced the thick set academic.  “Expanding the military and the construction work required for some of the immediate milestones are sopping up most of our unemployed.  The underground rail system is not only providing construction work but will alleviate the growing congestion on our long distance roads, and that will provide additional economic benefits.”

“Thank you, Doctor, and now to Doctor Rossac.”  The moderator was continuing down the line of panellists.

The thin pundit grunted.  “In the administrative arena, I believe the regime’s most important move has been to bring a wide variety of people into the central administrative and decision making roles.  The Imperial Family may have been too set in a mindset of “we broke so we have to fix it, alone” for their and our good.  Also, they were too wedded to previous policy decisions such as the suppression of the Military Development Tree and the Fosterlings of Suohonn.  Fresh ideas were needed, it’s a pity such drastic means were needed to get them.”

“And thank you, Doctor,” the moderator turn to the remaining panellist, “and your views Horren?”

“In hearts and minds, I think his best move has been to share the list of milestones we have to hit with the public.  If this was ever public knowledge, then it hasn’t been so for generations and it helps him to have us know too what tasks are imposed upon us.  Of course,” the lean, female, grey-haired woman went on, “his greatest triumph in this field has been to get us all to accept what’s been done to the Empress as being right and proper.”

“Could you clarify that please?”  The moderator seemed uncertain of her point.

Horren sighed.  “We have here a young woman who, the Gods only know how, survived the massacre of her entire family and was then stripped of her customary privacy to be paraded barefoot and at a gruelling pace across the countryside.  She returned to her home which was occupied by her family’s murderers, to a choice of death, lifelong imprisonment or marriage to one of the men who pulled the triggers that killed everyone she knew.  Empress Rensa looks happy enough in public but she lives immersed in the people who wiped out her family.  The Gods only know what mental accommodations she’s made for her situation that she can still function.  If this was anyone else, we’d be protesting her treatment and trying to rescue her.  Instead, and I’m as guilty as everyone else, we want her to be physically intimate with one of her tormentors on a regular basis and bear him many children.”

“Thank you, Horren, your views do bear thinking about, and that concludes our show for tonight.”  The moderator looked straight in the camera and finished, “Join Spotlight next week when our expert panel discusses the pros and cons of rationing reform.  Good night.”

I wrote this to aldersprig's eleventh prompt.

Vann, also called Uisge, was waiting for the boats.  He understood races and winning.  Also the things some people would do to win and how much they would pay, which was why he was here now.  Lurking below the water’s surface with extended claws and fins.  Being careful to do only what he was paid to do.

The boat he wasn’t to touch was marked with stripes below the water line.  There were ten others to play with though and he was going to have so much fun.

The striped hull was nowhere near him yet and the leader had a pretty blue keel.  Vann broke it.  The helmsman said afterwards that it had felt like they were hitting a whale.

Two more boats down the leading flank said the same thing and then, for variation, he batted the fourth one’s rudder and it turned sharply into one of its competitors, fouling and cracking the fifth vessel.  A crewman fell overboard from one of the boats but Vann was being paid for this so he didn’t stop to eat but moved on to the next marker.

The boat he wasn’t to hurt was coming second now so he took out the third placed boat with a claw to its rudder cable.  He chuckled at the swearing he could hear from boat above then moved into position beyond the last marker.

The striped hulled boat was neck and neck with a white hulled one as they raced towards the finish line and, deciding to be subtle, Vann latched onto the white hull with his claws and extended his fins for as much drag as possible.  The striped hulled boat drew ahead and crossed the finish line first.  His job done, Vann let go of its competitor and swam away.  His payment would be waiting for him or the one who’d hired him would feel his wrath.

It was odd though.  He hadn’t been hired by the boat’s owner or a member of its crew.  He’d been hired by someone called a sponsor.  He would have to find out what that meant.

I wrote this to aldersprig's ninth prompt.  This follows After The Fairy Tale and is followed by After The Fairy Tale III.

They’d told her that she was going home with a new dress as a reward for helping Prince Terrence.  A new dress, a completely new dress, never worn by anyone else before was certainly worth bathing for.  Jonna could agree with that but she hadn’t expected the enormous bath tub that could hold her and one of her sisters easily, someone to scrub her back, someone else to wash her hair and the towels.  Towels almost as big and as thick as blankets.  The maids had descended on her with those as soon as she’d climbed out of the water and then, when she was dry, they’d dressed her.  Jonna had protested at that, only small children needed help with their clothes, and when they’d stood her in front of a mirror (a full length glass mirror!) she’d been horrified.

“I can’t wear this!”  She’d tugged at the skirt made of a fabric she’d never touched before.  “It’s silk isn’t it?  I can’t wear this, it’s only for ladies.  Besides, I’ve the pigs to look after.”  Jonna couldn’t help but feel that this was going to end badly.

“Well, you couldn’t expect a gift from the king to be anything less than silk,” pointed out the oldest of the maids.  “We’ll parcel your old dress up for you and you can keep this one for best.”  Jonna would have been happy to have a dress just like the maid’s for best.  The king no doubt meant well but her family couldn’t afford to keep a silk dress, not when selling it would get them money for something useful like a barn or a cow byre and a cow.  “Sir Wendell will be here in a moment to take you home,” the maid tweaked the skirt out of her hand.  “Everything will sort itself out, I’m sure.”

Sir Wendell did arrive shortly and he escorted her carefully through the hallways, down the stairs and out to the coach.  He seemed to consider it normal for him to offer her his arm for safety’s sake going down the stairs and she was glad to take it because her skirts were a little longer than she was used to.  She was glad, as she avoided tangling her feet in her own hem, that the parcel of her own dress and shoes had been sent down to the coach by footman.

Sir Wendell helped her up into the coach and climbed in to sit on the seat beside her.  Jonna, of course, had never been in a coach before and she wasn’t sure that it compared favourably to a hay wagon but she’d been more relaxed on the hay wagon.  Here she was worried she might damage dress or the interior of the carriage.  However Sir Wendell began to talk to her almost immediately about the weather, which led into last winter’s floods, trouble maintaining the King’s Highway where it crossed the loops of the Seridwine near Jonna’s village, the prospects for this year’s harvest and the salt trade.

“Of course we’re interested in how much salt is,” Jonna told the surprised knight.  “We have to buy it for ourselves, of course, but we raise pigs.  If people can’t get salt then they can’t cure the meat so they don’t want as many pigs.”

Which was when they drove in the gate of another castle.

Jonna looked accusingly at Sir Wendell.  “You told me you were taking me home!”

“I did, I’m sorry.”  He looked entirely unrepentant.  “There are reasons you were brought here.”  The carriage came to a stop.  “Now we need to get out.”  The look Sir Wendell gave her wasn’t unkind but it was firm, “Please, I would prefer not to sling you over my shoulder to get you out of here.”

Jonna stepped down from the carriage to find that there was a second carriage in the enclosed courtyard backed by a tall tower.  The king, a priest, a middle-aged lord and a young man were clustered beside the other vehicle.  Sir Wendell put her hand on his arm and led her over to the small group where he bowed and Jonna did her peasant’s bob of a curtsey.

“My dear,” the king smiled broadly at her, “I do hope you had a comfortable trip.  May I make known to you: my chaplain, Father Tain; Lord Addew who is the Warden of the Tower; and my younger son, Prince Rupert?”

Jonna bobbed to each of the men in turn.  Father Tain blessed her and the two other men bowed in their turns.

The king went on, “Prince Rupert, this young lady is your wife.  Her given name is Jonna.”

“Wife!?”  Jonna and Prince Rupert exclaimed in unison.

“Yes,” the king continued to smile.  “The two of you were married by proxy this morning.”  He added kindly, “You were bathing at the time.  It was a very touching ceremony – the queen and her ladies cried.”

“Married?”  Prince Rupert, who was wearing brown leathers and looked like he’d been called here untidied from something he’d been doing, looked at the priest and asked, “Shouldn’t there be rings and things?”

“I have your marriage bands here,” Father Tain said, handing something to the prince.  “Normally for a royal wedding there would be an illuminated declaration as well but this all happened so quickly it will take a while for the scribes to catch up.”

“Thank you, Father.”  Prince Rupert walked over to Jonna who was working hard not to cry.  He picked up her left hand and said, “Here, let me put your ring on,” and slid a plain gold band onto her ring finger.  “Now let’s you and I go for a little walk over here and you can tell me what’s wrong.”  He led her far enough away from the other men to give the illusion of privacy and asked, “Now, what’s the problem?”

Jonna looked up at him for a moment.  He seemed calm, capable and rather like Shrimblestraw Jack back in her village.  “I was going to go home,” she told him and burst into tears on his chest.

I wrote this in response to aldersprig's seventh prompt.

Terris Strefagi was in a night club somewhere near the Autodromo.  He wasn’t exactly sure where it was, but that was often the way when you let someone who’d been there before but wasn’t quite sober now navigate for the group.  The sponsor, more particularly the sponsor’s owner, had insisted on taking the team out on the town to celebrate the lead driver coming third in today’s race.  He was generous but he didn’t seem to understand that what the drivers really wanted was to get to bed early and have a good night’s sleep because they needed to be up at four for the move to the next circuit.  Baltasar Schneider, the team’s lead driver, rolled his eyes at Terris in resignation as he took another club soda from the waitress.  It was already past midnight and it looked like the older Badener had resigned himself to not getting to bed at all.  Fortunately neither of them had to drive to Mogyorod.

It was two in the morning when the drivers managed to escape, ruthlessly sacrificing the team manager and accountant to the sponsor.  At least Baltasar seemed to have a fairly good idea where they were.  Even so, there were no vacant taxis around and it took them over half an hour to make it back to the hotel.  By the time Terris had washed the nightclub stink off and made sure he had his bag packed he had barely an hour in bed before the alarm went off, but at least he had that.  He’d be sleeping in the cab of the truck between the truck driver, Giancarlo, and his mechanic, Loren, from here to the border if he was any judge.

He was bleary eyed when he threw his bag into the cab of the car transporter and went to grab coffee and a pastry with the rest of the crew.  All the teams were moving out this morning so it was worth the little café’s while to be open early.  Terris, Loren and Giancarlo were walking back to their truck when they saw them, four small figures at the back of the truck with the largest desperately trying to open the back door.  Terris and Giancarlo looked at each other and began to jog.  The would-be door openers froze, clearly children, all wearing hooded tracksuit tops and carrying backpacks.  The smallest looked about four, the tallest was probably only just a teen.

“What do you think you’re doing?”  That was Giancarlo with his deep, rough voice.

“We, we need somewhere to hide,” from the voice the tallest one was a girl.  “We had to get out of the house, Grandfather said he’d found a man who wanted to buy a litter of kittens.”

“What?”  Giancarlo was puzzled.

“Oh, shit.”  Terris stepped forward and pulled down the hood on the child’s purple tracksuit top.  A pair of pale cat’s ears tipped the dark brown of her hair made it clear that she was a feline transgenic.  “Your grandfather is planning to sell you?”

“We don’t really know him but our parents died in a car accident and he turned up to claim us.  He said that,” her voice caught, “the money he could get for us would educate his real grandchildren.”

The next tallest child, also a girl, added, “He said that because we’re part cat we’re not really people.”

“What are we going to do?”  Loren had walked up behind the two men but her question was directed to Terris.

Before he could answer there was a cry in the pre-morning dark, “There they are!”  Two men in late middle age and two policemen carrying torches came pounding towards them from the direction of the road.  The children tried to shrink together.  When men reached the group at the end of the truck the man who’d called said to Giancarlo, “I’m sorry if my grandchildren have been a nuisance to you.  As you can see we’ve been looking for them.  We’ll just take them home with us now.  You can be assured that they’ll be punished for the trouble they’ve caused you.”  He reached out towards the oldest of the children and she shrank away from him.

Terris stepped forward.  “I wouldn’t have thought that you looked like a man who advertised underage kittens for sale,” he remarked casually, “but here you are in the company of Luigi Marcconi, a known procurer…of exotica.”

One of the policemen took a look at the eldest girl’s ears then looked at the two older men with narrowed eyes, “Hang on a moment.”

“You can’t make accusations like that!”  The man with the children’s grandfather was indignant.

“Actually, I can,” Terris stuck his fists in his front pockets to make sure he kept his hands to himself, “seeing as I’m a connection by marriage of that kid your people tried to grab last year over in Patavio.  I see you’re doing business in person now, I do hope that’s because you lost your entire snatch team over that business.”  He turned his head to look at the children, “You four get in the cab of the truck.  Loren, if you could help them please?”

“Who do you think you are?  You can’t just take them!”  That was the grandfather.

“I am Don Terris Strefagi and I am seeing to the welfare of my wards.  A matter has been of no concern to you.”  Terris’ face was cold as he pulled his phone out of his pocket.  “Officer, my lawyer will call your captain during business hours.  Which police station should he contact?”

“Brizzoni, Don Terris.”  The policeman cleared his throat.  “Do you have some identification?”

“Certainly.”  Terris made a notation on his phone and produced his wallet.  The phone went back into his pocket.  He pulled a laminated card out of the wallet and handed it to the policeman.  “Here you are.  Also,” he pulled out a business card and handed that over as well, “my contact details for your records.  We will leave you to deal with these…gentlemen.  Giancarlo, come!”  He nodded in the direction of the front of the truck and Giancarlo followed his lead, walking to the cab.

Loren had secured the children’s backpacks with their own bags in the sleeping cab’s cargo net and the three youngest were back there as well in the sleeping straps.  That would still leave four of them on the seats but although it would be tight it was doable.  As Terris climbed up to sit next to Loren, it seemed he was getting the window with this arrangement, Giancarlo growled, “We’d better get going before they realise how much you’re pushing your luck.”

“I agree,” said Terris tiredly.  “We’ll need to go via Patavio, I’ll pay for the extra fuel.”

“What’s in Patavio?”  That was the little catgirl sitting between Loren and Giancarlo.  She still sounded scared and Terris supposed she was worried about what he was going to do with them.

“Who.”  He corrected her.  “My parents.  They’ll keep you safe while we sort this out.”

“It’ll be fine, Stasia,” Loren assured her.  “The Count and Countess are very nice and they’ve got lots of room.”

“You really are a Don?”  Giancarlo, most of his attention on turning the car transporter safely onto the road in the early morning traffic, sounded surprised.

“Oh, yes I am.”  Terris looked sleepily in his direction.  “Not really relevant to driving racing cars though, is it?  That reminds me.”  He pulled out his phone again, tapped out a message then sent it and then pushed a few other buttons.

Stasia asked, “What are you doing?”  Her pink shirt under the purple tracksuit somehow made her look even younger than he thought she was.

“Sending a message to one of my brothers-in-law to tell him where to find Signor Marcconi.  Setting the alarm to remind me to ring my father at six.  He’ll be up by then and you and I, Signorina,” Terris flashed a smile at her, “need to be lawyered up before business hours start.  He can arrange that.  And now, if all of you and the universe don’t mind, I’m going to get some sleep.”

And he did.

I wrote this to aldersprig's fifth prompt.

He was on vacation.  He was supposed to have left all his problems behind.  Two weeks on his own in a resort.  No sisters, his sisters, expecting him to sort things out for them.  No-one expecting him to run to their agenda.

He was in heaven.  He went to activities on his own, talked to people he wanted to talk to when he wanted to talk to them, he ate food he chose and didn’t have people stealing it off his plate.  He stayed up and out late.  He went on tours to see things he wanted to see.

It lasted a week.  Then, at lunch, the nasal cry of, “Darryl!” rent the air.  He froze mid-chew on his delicious stir-fry and turned carefully in place.  Bearing down on him were his sisters, Sheila and Mary.  “I told you it was him,” Sheila added to Mary.  They bustled over and sat down at his small, square table, opposite each other and on either side of him.  “What are you eating that foreign muck for,” demanded Sheila in her penetrating nasal voice, “when you could be having a proper meal?”

“This is very healthy,” Darryl said defensively as he swatted Mary’s hand away from his prawns.  “What are you two doing here?”

“Come to keep you company, of course,” beamed Sheila.  “If you wanted to go away for a holiday you should have said and we could have gone up the coast to Tolly’s Caravan Park together.  You shouldn’t have snuck away on your own, you must have been lonely this last week.”

“I wasn’t actually.”  Darryl batted Mary’s hand away from his food again.  “How could you afford to come here?  You were saying just before I came away that you didn’t have any money and I thought you used all your leave when you two went on that girls’ trip to Bali?”

“We took time off from work without pay, the airfares were really cheap and we’re going to stay in with you.”  Mary beamed at him.

“What about the meal tariff?”  He looked from one sister to the other.

“Oh, we told the nice man at reception to put them on your account,” Mary said as she finally snaffled a prawn.

“Oh, did you?”  Darryl stood.  “Excuse me, I have to go see to something.  Please, feel free to finish my lunch.”  He hurried away, not caring what was going on at the table behind him.

All he had to do after that was call the consulate on their behalf.  He refused to pay for their lawyer because he was one of the aggrieved parties.  Sheila had been rendered speechless by his evidence that he had not given permission for her or Mary to put charges on his credit card.

He went home to a much quieter house and a less complicated life that didn’t involve Sheila’s ‘proper’ cooking.  He had six months before they’d be back.

A work transfer to the other side of the country was looking good.

I wrote this to aldersprig's third prompt.

We’re a good team because of our differences.  I walk into a room and everybody looks.  He walks into a room and no-one notices, even if I’m not there to draw the attention.  I’m six and a half feet tall and I work out.  The working out keeps my figure in trim, otherwise I’ve the proportions of a barmaid in an Oktoberfest beer tent.  Not to say that’s a bad thing but when you’re six and a half feet tall proportion makes everything bigger than it is on someone who’s five and a half feet tall.  Working out and general exercise help with that and I have to run a lot in this job.

My partner doesn’t run as much as I do.  While I’m doing that, he’s tracking them by their mobile’s GPS and telling me which way they turned.  Or invoking probable cause to download a mirror of the laptop they left behind.  He gets into trouble with Internal Affairs more often than I do, not just for the downloading without a warrant thing but for firing his weapon too.  Apparently a six foot six Amazonian Valkyrie, the inspector’s description not mine, can get people to surrender without use of force much more easily than a five foot four guy can.

I blame his ears, myself.  If he had the face of a ferret or a rat then people would realise that he’s smart and dangerous.  Instead he has this open face with round ears that stick out.  People who should take him seriously don’t which is why they get shot, or tell him things their lawyer wishes they hadn’t, or dismiss him when he walks into a room.  The second two of which can be very useful for us.

What I think he needs is a partner.  Not a work one, he’s already got me.  No, I think he needs someone to go home to at night, cuddle up to and have a life with.  Kids, dogs and all that.  I’d try introducing him to someone but I still haven’t worked out whether it’s guys or girls that rock his world.  I’d ask him out myself but that would lead, one way or another, to us not being able to work together anymore and I don’t want that.

I really don’t want that.

I wrote this to ellenmillion's second prompt.

The young of species that are helpless in their infancy need an advantage to persuade others to care for them and meet their needs for food, shelter and nurture.  Cuteness works for many species.

Others, made for immediate independence come into the world as miniature adults.  Scrub turkeys receive no parental care beyond incubation.

Still others begin in one form and transition to another.  Larvae for instance.  They hatch, eat, transform during pupation and emerge as adults.  It’s not an aspect of their life cycle the Iththuuk have told us humans much about.  They haven’t mentioned either that their females can choose not to lay their eggs until they have a suitable time and location.  If a female retaining her eggs dies though, then all the eggs get laid at once.  Which is how the local police station wound up with a dead female Iththuuk and twenty Iththuuk eggs.

The two groups of Iththuuk had been brought in after a brawl between them, the female in question had refused medical treatment several times, then she suddenly dies and there are eggs everywhere.  Her co-accused didn’t seem to care and the Iththuuk consulate, if that’s what they are, didn’t supply more than temperature, incubation period and that they eat vegetable matter and carrion.  Oh, and Terran foodstuffs should be fine.

After the eggs hatched the police contacted a whole lot of people in the local area including the green guy and me.  (When the green guy writes these things he calls me “the hot goth chick” but that’s still better than if he used my name.)  The police needed help getting in food for the Iththuuk larvae because they were voracious eaters.  The green guy and I hit the Markets early every day for the offcuts and stuff.  A couple of the supermarkets delivered their use by expired stuff.  If the larvae ran out of food they started hissing at each other and the police didn’t like that and I can’t blame them because I didn’t like that sound either.

When the larvae got to the length and diameter of a ten year old child, they pupated.  Went from a room full of constant munching, off-white grubs to a silent set of brownish…parcels in about three hours.  The police cleaned out the uneaten food, maintained the temperature and waited.

The green guy and I were there when the mother’s boss arrived from off world.  We’d heard that movement had been seen inside the pupae and we’d dropped in for a look.  The boss must have been someone important because he had two of his own people and a translator with him.  What we heard as they came into the room was, “-duty to take responsibility for the survivors.”

“Survivors?”  The police inspector was taken aback.  “But none of them died, well not yet.”

There was some excited talk among the Iththuuk and then the translator said, “Our larvae are unintelligent and lead brutal existences.  Ten to twenty-five per cent survive to emerge from the pupae.”

“They were left in our care,” said the inspector in the tone of someone who doesn’t know if he’s done something wrong, “So we cared for them.”

Whatever the Iththuuk might have been going to say in reply was cut off by a snapping crack as the first of the pupae began to split open.

I wrote this to aldersprig's second prompt.  It follows on from Tilly.

Tilly had unwanted company, of course, but no-one could object to her attending the planetary amateur games, could they?

Except the clean cut, perfectly uniformed lieutenant did.  His latest complaint was, “We shouldn’t be doing this!”

“Why not?”  Tilly was leading the way through a back route to the pistol shooting’s change rooms.

“We don’t have tickets.”

“We’re not sitting in seats or otherwise watching the competition, so we don’t need tickets.”  Tilly was reading the labels on doors now, obviously looking for something or somewhere in particular.

“Getting in the way we did was against regulations!”  He was hissing at her now.

“Against service regulations,” she corrected him absent mindedly.  “I’m not in the service so they don’t apply to me.  As for you, it’s not like I made you follow me.”

“I’m under orders!”

“To follow me anywhere?”  She knocked on a door labelled with a male competitor’s name.

“Within certain public decency limits.”

She looked him up and down.  “Interesting.  We should discuss your ship skills sometime soon.”

The door in front of them opened and a seven foot tall man loomed above them.  “Tilly!”  He sounded pleased to see her and then, “I was sorry to hear about Killen and the others.  What can I do for you?”

“You busy after the competition?”  Tilly was keeping her voice light.  “I’m hiring for a trip beyond the border.”

“To do what?”  The competitor’s pass around the tall man’s neck was in the name of Perrup Ferrisson.

“The guys crossed the border in hot pursuit of Jeredghal after he tried to blow us to kingdom come in a bar here.  The ship was found as a cloud of debris a week and a half later.  Listed as lost with all hands.”  She shrugged.

“And?”  Ferrisson was looking at her intently.

“There wasn’t enough organic debris to satisfy me that they were all on board when the ship blew.  Jeredghal takes prisoners.  There are three places within reasonable travel distance he could have gone to sell off such…acquisitions.  I want to check them for survivors.”

“And that’s all?”  The big man regarded her with a serious expression and the lieutenant was flabbergasted.  This had not been in his briefing.

“On this trip, yes,” Tilly confirmed.  “This is reconnaissance and hopefully rescue.  Those don’t mix well with revenge.  I’m offering your usual rates, of course.”

“Then I’m in,” Ferrisson smiled.  “Just let me deal with this competition first.”