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The command crew of a refugee ship faces a number of bad choices when confronted with evidence of criminal activity amid decks.
This story is also a sequel to “Here, Fishy Fishy”, and ties that tale into the Planet Dirt storyline.
This is a submission to the Thursday Prompt writing group. This week's prompt was the word ‘density.’ Check out the group's user page here: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/thursdayprompt/
And the other stories generated from this prompt here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/26990818/
Eight Gems In A Holochip Case
By: DankeDonuts
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dankedonuts/
The Nebula Chaser was once a proud cruise ship charging from star to star on an endless search for diversion amid the lap of luxury. Those days were long behind her. Her long, not-quite-sleek hull was pockmarked with sections that had been removed or rendered uninhabitable. The scars of decommissioning. Those days of luxury behind her, she’d sat in an orbital scrapyard for decades. Until being bought up and resuscitated for a new purpose.
A greater one.
A purpose which Captain Rafferty had invested a great deal of credits in, and was not going to allow to be undone so near the end. The Ram looked out across the blue-white miasma that was hyperspace from the sparse comfort of the briefing room. Doubtless the room had born a different name before whoever had scuttled her tore away its original label (most likely as a souvenir by a member of the final tour). This was far from a military vessel still, but Rafferty had been a military Fur, and right now he was glad for the sense of decorum his renaming of rooms and positions now created. He closed the privacy screen when the first of his ad-hoc 'command staff' entered the room. Closing the following discussion off from the view of the galaxy at large.
When more of the long table had filled out, he turned from the wall to address its occupants. "I apologize for the extra security protocols. I understand many of you here have reason to dislike such less-than-random treatment. But when you see what I have to show you, I’m confident you'll understand." Taking his seat at the end of the table, he waved towards his first mate. "Leary."
The wide-eyed Ring Tailed Lemur seated to the right of the Captain stood. She spoke while walking to a desk by the door to the Ready Room. (Another re-named location). “A Musk Ox traveling with us under the name Darcy Mires was found stabbed to death in steerage an hour ago. KiIler unknown. Motive unknown. We searched his bunk, and found this." With clear difficulty and using both hands, the Lemur moved a small case from the desk to the briefing table. She opened it to reveal eight small, spheroid crystals. They were no wider than a child’s thumb, and sparkled like opal in a variety of warm colors. Little balls of solid fire.
The Captain plucked one out of its contoured cushion. It was far heavier than it looked. As much so as one of the fist-sized ball bearings one would find in any engineering bay. The case as a whole was comparable to a bar of gold. This single specimen was worth far more, though he could only guess at how much.
He passed it along the left side of the table. First to the Head Medic. Jason Conrad, an Antelope. Who bounced it in his partly-hooved hand a few times to convince himself of its heft before trying to pass it over to the Jaguar seated in the middle of the table’s length.
Sensor Chief Garcia refused to touch it.
“You recognize what these are, then?” the Captain asked her.
She sneered the words, “Jovia Gems. Coin of the realm for the criminal cartels, slavers, warlords, all kinds of scum."
"I've heard of ‘em, too. But never seen one before." This from the Hare seated beside her. Batson, the Chief Engineer. He reached across the Jaguar, to carefully pluck the gemstone from the Antelope’s fingers. And handled it as though it might fall apart were he to drop it. It was far more likely to crack the table’s remaining varnish. "How can they be so heavy?"
"Because they're formed within the bellies of gas giants," The Grizzly to the Captain’s left intoned. Korvan, Lead Navigator. "Where unimaginable pressure crushes them into the densest stones you’re ever like to see.”
"I’ve heard horrible things about how they're mined," muttered Genevieve Bisset. Emu and Passenger Needs Coordinator, she was seated opposite the Captain. Unlike the others in the room, she had not been part of the group of investors that purchased the Chaser and started transmitting free tickets to Furs in need of a new home. Rather, she was a volunteer elected by the passengers themselves. She took the gem from the Hare, and held it to her eye. As though she was trying to peer into it for confirmation of the tale she had to tell. “Slave laborers. Cooped in horrid little ships, cramped by pressure and gravity, trailing great long lines underneath to sift through turbulent atmospheres for what the storms churn up. No one lives long doing it.”
"Believe the stories,” bellowed Gregg Korvan, the Head Navigator. The Grizzly tended to speak with his arms. Several of his words were punctuation by impacts with the table. “My Streamrunner was fishing for bulb-coatsers in the cloud tops of Baiame VII. When, no warning at all, bearing no transponders at all, up come a couple of refitted tugs. Firing weapons that belong on military patrol ships. Best guess was someone down there was looking for those horrible shineys, and sent their muscle up to scare us off. Worked too! They damn near blew us out of the sky. I don’t mind saying my flying’s what save our skins. We scrubbed that system off our yearly route after that." Only after speaking did he take his turn examining the fiery stone.
"Consider your crew the lucky ones," the Jaguar growled. "My home colony is practically run by the Marongo Tong. They’d always owned the drug trade, protection rackets, and all that. But after Beylor-Kunari pulled up their stakes, that scum bought up all the leftover police and administrators. People started disappearing after that. Tourists mostly, until they stopped bothering to hide what they were doing. Rumor was the folks they didn’t ransom back to their families were sold to off-planet brothels or forced labor on Jovia mines. My kid brother and his girlfriend went out to the holopark one night on a double-date and never came back. The rest of my family had to pay a hefty ‘visa tax’ just to get off-planet and away from them." Said family was now one of hundreds of occupants of the Nebula Chaser. Making due with rationed food and limited amenities.
“Does anyone here know how much this lot here is actually worth?” Asked Captain.
Leary reached halfway across an empty seat to reclaim the stone from Korvan. She put it back in the case, but not before rubbing it free of pawprints with her sleeve."Best guess, we could buy couple of ships like this one, brand spanking new, with just these eight. And hire on crews to man them. Funnel even more Furs to our ultimate destination. Not that we’d enjoy dealing with anyone who’d accept them. Or even be able to shake them after the deal was done."
“Someone’s going to expect those things to arrive somewhere,” noted the Jaguar. “They’ll want to know why they didn’t get wherever they were going.”
The Lemur nodded. “Mires’ ticket was for New Cleveland. The last stop before we head to our final destination. Quite odd that he wanted to get off on a planet that’s about to change into unfriendly hands for Furs after the Sobal Sector Ceasefire is signed. But every paying customer bought us a little more food for the voyage.” In retrospect, the Captai realized the Musk Ox should have been flagged as suspect from the moment he walked onboard.
"I'll say it if no one else will," The Antelope scanned the room with his eyes. "One of us at this very table could be connected him. And these gems could have been meant to set up an underground economy on Planet Dirt.”
“I had considered that,” the Captain nodded. "Which is why I had you all submit to a search before setting paw into this discussion. And I'm sorry to say each of your quarters and stations are being checked for jackercalls and contraband as we speak." The empty chair belonged to the Security Chief. The Fur that Captain Rafferty had known the longest, had come up through the Expeditionary Forces with. “I’ve known most of you here long enough to say I trust you. But for the sake of the Furs and families we’re ferrying, I cannot take any chances. Nor broker any exceptions.”
The Emu, she of the newest face to his eyes, shuddered. But not for her own self. "We can’t afford to be stopped by the authorities at New Cleveland. If they start looking past our officially registered course and into where we’re really going-"
“We can’t afford not to go there, either,” insisted the Grizzly. “Destitute Furs are counting on us to get them off that world before the True Humans consolidate control of the system. When they do, the lives of any Furs left behind won’t be worth a handful of gravel much less those fancy rocks.”
“If we do nothing, someone will come for us,” Garcia’s ears were flat against her head.
“And it might not even be the gangsters she’s worried about,” Conrad pointed out. He immediately sat back from her glare. “Rightfully worried. For all we know, Sector authorities are already looking for Mires and his baubles.”
Batson waved that idea away. “They’re too busy fighting each other or sniveling up to the TruHus to chase gangsters. A sloppy operation like this was made because no one’s stopping them. A better smuggler wouldn’t have gotten himself killed, or his stash discovered.”
“Mires could just be one leg in a relay,” the Lemur mused darkly. “Someone else may be waiting at New Cleveland to carry the gems further on. We just don’t know enough about what his scheme was.”
“We’re talking in circles,” the Captain declared. “What we need is a plan of our own.”
“Space the bastard, and that case,” growled the Jaguar. “Put surveillance on the spot where you found it. Space anyone that comes looking to claim it.”
The Lemur’s tail coiled in on itself. “Your second suggestion is already enacted. I think we should skip the third. But I’d be on board with the first.”
“We would need a trail for any eyes to follow,” suggested Bisset, her timid voice suddenly strong. “Put him in an escape pod, make it look like he was sneaking off with the goods.”
“I like it,” grinned the Medic. “Any other crook who comes sniffing around would expect treachery from their fellow crook. Nice and tidy. Surgical, even.”
The Hare spoke up. “If we want to be really dark, we could put the pod into a decaying orbit somewhere. Auto-alert systems will trigger when it starts to burn up and summon the local authorities to come pick though the pieces. After we’re clear of New Cleveland.”
“With a fresh load of colonists safe and sound,” Korvan continued. “I could glide us by one of the system’s gas giants on our way through the system. It would make a fine enough grave for our would-be smuggler. We jettison the pod, pick up our new pals, and are gone before the pod starts calling for help.”
“And keep an eye on the Musk Ox’s bunk for anyone else who needs to go,” the Captain decided. Forlorn at the chance that some innocent might be caught up in the net, but resolute in his drive that only innocent Furs should reach the final destination. “We’ll let anyone who gets too curious off at one of the decoy sites we’re going to hit before Planet Dirt.” A planet, which incidentally, only three Furs in the room knew how to get to. It was safer that way, even for the allies and old friends being left out of the loop. The chance that a devious being might pick up one of them instead of the other way around had not escaped him. “I call that a plan. Let’s get it done, everyone.”
The Ram soon called an end to the meeting, with everyone given a part to play. Even if that part was just to act like everything was utterly normal. Normal as they could be on a ship of refugees of multiple wars and encroaching anti-Fur discrimination could be, at any rate.
The only one who stayed behind, other than the Captain himself, was the Emu. Her beak ground side to side with worry. “Do you think it will work, sir? Can we really shake off all of our enemies, known and unknown? Seems like a mighty fine needle to thread.”
With a flip of a button, the Rafferty reopened the privacy screen to allow in the light and mystery of hyperspace. He contemplated the writhing pattern for a moment, weighing his answer. “I don’t suppose we are ever going to be completely free of the troubles that plague the rest of known space. All we can do is our very best.”
This story is also a sequel to “Here, Fishy Fishy”, and ties that tale into the Planet Dirt storyline.
This is a submission to the Thursday Prompt writing group. This week's prompt was the word ‘density.’ Check out the group's user page here: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/thursdayprompt/
And the other stories generated from this prompt here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/26990818/
Eight Gems In A Holochip Case
By: DankeDonuts
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dankedonuts/
The Nebula Chaser was once a proud cruise ship charging from star to star on an endless search for diversion amid the lap of luxury. Those days were long behind her. Her long, not-quite-sleek hull was pockmarked with sections that had been removed or rendered uninhabitable. The scars of decommissioning. Those days of luxury behind her, she’d sat in an orbital scrapyard for decades. Until being bought up and resuscitated for a new purpose.
A greater one.
A purpose which Captain Rafferty had invested a great deal of credits in, and was not going to allow to be undone so near the end. The Ram looked out across the blue-white miasma that was hyperspace from the sparse comfort of the briefing room. Doubtless the room had born a different name before whoever had scuttled her tore away its original label (most likely as a souvenir by a member of the final tour). This was far from a military vessel still, but Rafferty had been a military Fur, and right now he was glad for the sense of decorum his renaming of rooms and positions now created. He closed the privacy screen when the first of his ad-hoc 'command staff' entered the room. Closing the following discussion off from the view of the galaxy at large.
When more of the long table had filled out, he turned from the wall to address its occupants. "I apologize for the extra security protocols. I understand many of you here have reason to dislike such less-than-random treatment. But when you see what I have to show you, I’m confident you'll understand." Taking his seat at the end of the table, he waved towards his first mate. "Leary."
The wide-eyed Ring Tailed Lemur seated to the right of the Captain stood. She spoke while walking to a desk by the door to the Ready Room. (Another re-named location). “A Musk Ox traveling with us under the name Darcy Mires was found stabbed to death in steerage an hour ago. KiIler unknown. Motive unknown. We searched his bunk, and found this." With clear difficulty and using both hands, the Lemur moved a small case from the desk to the briefing table. She opened it to reveal eight small, spheroid crystals. They were no wider than a child’s thumb, and sparkled like opal in a variety of warm colors. Little balls of solid fire.
The Captain plucked one out of its contoured cushion. It was far heavier than it looked. As much so as one of the fist-sized ball bearings one would find in any engineering bay. The case as a whole was comparable to a bar of gold. This single specimen was worth far more, though he could only guess at how much.
He passed it along the left side of the table. First to the Head Medic. Jason Conrad, an Antelope. Who bounced it in his partly-hooved hand a few times to convince himself of its heft before trying to pass it over to the Jaguar seated in the middle of the table’s length.
Sensor Chief Garcia refused to touch it.
“You recognize what these are, then?” the Captain asked her.
She sneered the words, “Jovia Gems. Coin of the realm for the criminal cartels, slavers, warlords, all kinds of scum."
"I've heard of ‘em, too. But never seen one before." This from the Hare seated beside her. Batson, the Chief Engineer. He reached across the Jaguar, to carefully pluck the gemstone from the Antelope’s fingers. And handled it as though it might fall apart were he to drop it. It was far more likely to crack the table’s remaining varnish. "How can they be so heavy?"
"Because they're formed within the bellies of gas giants," The Grizzly to the Captain’s left intoned. Korvan, Lead Navigator. "Where unimaginable pressure crushes them into the densest stones you’re ever like to see.”
"I’ve heard horrible things about how they're mined," muttered Genevieve Bisset. Emu and Passenger Needs Coordinator, she was seated opposite the Captain. Unlike the others in the room, she had not been part of the group of investors that purchased the Chaser and started transmitting free tickets to Furs in need of a new home. Rather, she was a volunteer elected by the passengers themselves. She took the gem from the Hare, and held it to her eye. As though she was trying to peer into it for confirmation of the tale she had to tell. “Slave laborers. Cooped in horrid little ships, cramped by pressure and gravity, trailing great long lines underneath to sift through turbulent atmospheres for what the storms churn up. No one lives long doing it.”
"Believe the stories,” bellowed Gregg Korvan, the Head Navigator. The Grizzly tended to speak with his arms. Several of his words were punctuation by impacts with the table. “My Streamrunner was fishing for bulb-coatsers in the cloud tops of Baiame VII. When, no warning at all, bearing no transponders at all, up come a couple of refitted tugs. Firing weapons that belong on military patrol ships. Best guess was someone down there was looking for those horrible shineys, and sent their muscle up to scare us off. Worked too! They damn near blew us out of the sky. I don’t mind saying my flying’s what save our skins. We scrubbed that system off our yearly route after that." Only after speaking did he take his turn examining the fiery stone.
"Consider your crew the lucky ones," the Jaguar growled. "My home colony is practically run by the Marongo Tong. They’d always owned the drug trade, protection rackets, and all that. But after Beylor-Kunari pulled up their stakes, that scum bought up all the leftover police and administrators. People started disappearing after that. Tourists mostly, until they stopped bothering to hide what they were doing. Rumor was the folks they didn’t ransom back to their families were sold to off-planet brothels or forced labor on Jovia mines. My kid brother and his girlfriend went out to the holopark one night on a double-date and never came back. The rest of my family had to pay a hefty ‘visa tax’ just to get off-planet and away from them." Said family was now one of hundreds of occupants of the Nebula Chaser. Making due with rationed food and limited amenities.
“Does anyone here know how much this lot here is actually worth?” Asked Captain.
Leary reached halfway across an empty seat to reclaim the stone from Korvan. She put it back in the case, but not before rubbing it free of pawprints with her sleeve."Best guess, we could buy couple of ships like this one, brand spanking new, with just these eight. And hire on crews to man them. Funnel even more Furs to our ultimate destination. Not that we’d enjoy dealing with anyone who’d accept them. Or even be able to shake them after the deal was done."
“Someone’s going to expect those things to arrive somewhere,” noted the Jaguar. “They’ll want to know why they didn’t get wherever they were going.”
The Lemur nodded. “Mires’ ticket was for New Cleveland. The last stop before we head to our final destination. Quite odd that he wanted to get off on a planet that’s about to change into unfriendly hands for Furs after the Sobal Sector Ceasefire is signed. But every paying customer bought us a little more food for the voyage.” In retrospect, the Captai realized the Musk Ox should have been flagged as suspect from the moment he walked onboard.
"I'll say it if no one else will," The Antelope scanned the room with his eyes. "One of us at this very table could be connected him. And these gems could have been meant to set up an underground economy on Planet Dirt.”
“I had considered that,” the Captain nodded. "Which is why I had you all submit to a search before setting paw into this discussion. And I'm sorry to say each of your quarters and stations are being checked for jackercalls and contraband as we speak." The empty chair belonged to the Security Chief. The Fur that Captain Rafferty had known the longest, had come up through the Expeditionary Forces with. “I’ve known most of you here long enough to say I trust you. But for the sake of the Furs and families we’re ferrying, I cannot take any chances. Nor broker any exceptions.”
The Emu, she of the newest face to his eyes, shuddered. But not for her own self. "We can’t afford to be stopped by the authorities at New Cleveland. If they start looking past our officially registered course and into where we’re really going-"
“We can’t afford not to go there, either,” insisted the Grizzly. “Destitute Furs are counting on us to get them off that world before the True Humans consolidate control of the system. When they do, the lives of any Furs left behind won’t be worth a handful of gravel much less those fancy rocks.”
“If we do nothing, someone will come for us,” Garcia’s ears were flat against her head.
“And it might not even be the gangsters she’s worried about,” Conrad pointed out. He immediately sat back from her glare. “Rightfully worried. For all we know, Sector authorities are already looking for Mires and his baubles.”
Batson waved that idea away. “They’re too busy fighting each other or sniveling up to the TruHus to chase gangsters. A sloppy operation like this was made because no one’s stopping them. A better smuggler wouldn’t have gotten himself killed, or his stash discovered.”
“Mires could just be one leg in a relay,” the Lemur mused darkly. “Someone else may be waiting at New Cleveland to carry the gems further on. We just don’t know enough about what his scheme was.”
“We’re talking in circles,” the Captain declared. “What we need is a plan of our own.”
“Space the bastard, and that case,” growled the Jaguar. “Put surveillance on the spot where you found it. Space anyone that comes looking to claim it.”
The Lemur’s tail coiled in on itself. “Your second suggestion is already enacted. I think we should skip the third. But I’d be on board with the first.”
“We would need a trail for any eyes to follow,” suggested Bisset, her timid voice suddenly strong. “Put him in an escape pod, make it look like he was sneaking off with the goods.”
“I like it,” grinned the Medic. “Any other crook who comes sniffing around would expect treachery from their fellow crook. Nice and tidy. Surgical, even.”
The Hare spoke up. “If we want to be really dark, we could put the pod into a decaying orbit somewhere. Auto-alert systems will trigger when it starts to burn up and summon the local authorities to come pick though the pieces. After we’re clear of New Cleveland.”
“With a fresh load of colonists safe and sound,” Korvan continued. “I could glide us by one of the system’s gas giants on our way through the system. It would make a fine enough grave for our would-be smuggler. We jettison the pod, pick up our new pals, and are gone before the pod starts calling for help.”
“And keep an eye on the Musk Ox’s bunk for anyone else who needs to go,” the Captain decided. Forlorn at the chance that some innocent might be caught up in the net, but resolute in his drive that only innocent Furs should reach the final destination. “We’ll let anyone who gets too curious off at one of the decoy sites we’re going to hit before Planet Dirt.” A planet, which incidentally, only three Furs in the room knew how to get to. It was safer that way, even for the allies and old friends being left out of the loop. The chance that a devious being might pick up one of them instead of the other way around had not escaped him. “I call that a plan. Let’s get it done, everyone.”
The Ram soon called an end to the meeting, with everyone given a part to play. Even if that part was just to act like everything was utterly normal. Normal as they could be on a ship of refugees of multiple wars and encroaching anti-Fur discrimination could be, at any rate.
The only one who stayed behind, other than the Captain himself, was the Emu. Her beak ground side to side with worry. “Do you think it will work, sir? Can we really shake off all of our enemies, known and unknown? Seems like a mighty fine needle to thread.”
With a flip of a button, the Rafferty reopened the privacy screen to allow in the light and mystery of hyperspace. He contemplated the writhing pattern for a moment, weighing his answer. “I don’t suppose we are ever going to be completely free of the troubles that plague the rest of known space. All we can do is our very best.”
Category Story / All
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