Kara King & The Beyonder: The Nightwind Glyder Heist

Chapter Three:

Palivan V

A couple of hours passed since their meeting began. They were all in the chairs surrounding the command deck now. Ideas had been pitched. Black market schematics paid for and observed. Plans devised.

“We’re settled then!” Kara announced in a way of ending the meeting.

“I still don’t like not being there,” Max complained in his iconic southern earth accent. “But yeah, sounds good. I get it. You need someone as good as me in the pilot seat.”

“When I’m not around yeah,” Kara jested in correction. Everyone started to part ways prepping for their leave. “Hey, can you pull up the charts and plot our course? Drop us off near the moon the rest of the ships are supposed to park on. I think there’s a belt in that system if I’m not mistaken. That should obscure our arrival. Unless they're watching their thermals in that zone, we should fly under the radar.”

“Already on it Commander.” Max only called her commander when he was playfully twisting a blade in her side. He wanted something. Probably an actual copilot so he could go a little trigger happy on more than a firing range. Kara didn’t blame him, it just wasn’t in the cards. They needed a proper doctor on board before they could hire a co-pilot.

Kara looked around and saw most of the crew heading back to the lift or hallway back to the belly of The Faux. She had her sights set on Jenn. Kara chased after her down the hallway giving a nod to the crew already in the lift heading down.

“I sensed you would be coming my way for something extra.”

“Right, Jenn I just want to make sure we’re going to be good for a quick burn getaway if necessary.”

Jenn continued to walk without a word. The silence was off putting for Kara. On one hand she knew Jennlynn was supposed to respond abruptly. Kara was her commander afterall. Jenn’s silence got inside her head though. Kara knew Jenn understood her authority over her. Maybe she expects me to think about that? Kara often wondered at Jenn’s motives and thoughts. She couldn’t be that old, but her sage-like nature often meant she carried herself like an elder in a community.

“Yes, Commander. They can’t track us in dark space and fuel is not what I’m worried about.”

Kara nodded her head with a slight laugh understanding now, “It’s the Desideratum Drive?”

“A gift from ‘The Fade’ this ship was. ‘The best of the best’ you told me. ‘No funny business’ you said.” Jenn stopped hard once they reached the central room. “These dark space drives I get, and that’s saying something. The fact that not even I understand how that thing works to me that’s terrifying and your reliance on it is unnerving.”

Kara was more concerned about losing the ship. If it was destroyed or, the verse forbids, The Imperium captured it then she was done for. Kara didn’t understand the drive either but she knew it must be something terribly secret and important to The Fade. “I guess you’ll have to trust me on this one.”

“I trust you! That thing drains a hell of a lot of energy. Enough to stall us out for a couple of seconds. That or it stalls us out ahead of time while it builds whatever it needs for the job. It cannibalizes the ship-" She stopped herself short and took a long breath to cool herself down. “Look, if The Imperium were on our tails and it misinterpreted what you needed then were all dead. I don’t trust it and the less we must use it the better.” She shook her head. “Look you need to get ready and I have to work out this box thing with Zee. Good luck.” The gothic dwarven woman took the stairs down to engineering.

Kara shook her head. She loved her crew but in their own ways they could all be a pain in the ass too. Jenn was the best technosage and engineer she knew. They met on Ganymede. People used to think it was rich with iron when in fact it was mostly something found on the Alonyosis near iron and cobalt. It was a metal with high magnetic properties, ultralight, and durable. The practical effects were numerous. With all the mining that had been going on there for the past several hundred years, it needed all the help it could get. The planet’s magnetic properties helped keep it in orbit around Jupiter. Kara was on a trip to see her mother’s homeworld, stopping on Ganymede for its renowned bars and clubs, when she met Jenn. The dwarven woman was basically keeping that rock afloat. Kara was so impressed with her ability to deal with the miners, the party people, and the crushing reality that the moon might just drift away and become its own rogue planetoid.

That was a gift of Kara’s, some would say a gift from her father, she remembered people and their skills well. The difference was her father only thought of how he could use those people. That wasn’t Kara. At least that’s how she saw it. She remembered Jenn when the opportunity came to build her own crew. She remembered that technosage and realized she could give her a different life. One which would still pose a challenge worth her time albeit maybe less stressful than the fate of an entire moon and those who have jobs because of that moon.

Kara shook her head. She attracted strong personalities, there was no changing that.

“Everyone buckle up.” It was Max’s voice over the ship comms. The warning was more of a formality than anything. With the advancements of Darkspeed drives hundreds of years ago, the dwarves brought advancements in dampeners. They wouldn’t feel more than a slight kick when they made it past the speed of light. “Darkspeed drive engaging in 5…4…3…2…1…”

Kara held onto the guardrail in the hallway when the kick happened.

“Alright. All looks good from here. We’ve got thirteen hours to Rovalak Station in the Hourglass Nebula. Then we make a jump for Palivan V. That’ll be another seven-hour jump.”

Kara took the lift to the captain’s quarters to rest and then plan.

*****

Kara came down the lift on the day of the big event. She was uncomfortable in the getup she wore. Still, this being a party for the wealthiest and most well connected in the galaxy, Kara’s outfit had to be something lavish. She had gold bracelets and a matching belt on a skirt over grey and navy pants. Her top was a stygian blue velvet top with gold flecks in it, giving the impression of stars against the blackness of space. Metal pieces of armor along her arms, at her waist, and over her boots were the saving grace of the outfit for her. Altogether she felt like she looked like an old earth fantasy superhero, but this was the kind of thing people would wear to these kinds of events. She wondered what Canis and Sagita would be wearing.

The lift opened up at the upper dock of The Faux. In front of her was what appeared to be a small replica of the freighter The Beyonders called home. Short of flying The Faux while in the it’s sensory navigation tank, The Ersatz was the best ship she had ever piloted. Gita stood, regal as ever, wearing traditional treated leathers and a long black cape. Canis wore a blue-white tabard which matched the radiance of his namesake, Canis Majoris. He held onto a something dark and fluid in his hands.

“What’s this?”

“You look nice but you’ll be in the presence of the emperor at some point and likely your father as well. It would not do well to insult the Council Secretary.”

Kara sighed as she grabbed the dark mess. On one hand the cape which unfurled should bring her joy. Regretfully though, she knew Canis was right and she would have to bear the King colours. Kara thought of those colors and what they meant to her as Canis adorned her with the cape. Her mother had been a sort of explorer, the one who found the Magnavolt people and their homeworld Utara. She saw herself as that explorer and scientist first, well before considering her old Earth royal bloodline. Black and red with a line of gold. Those were the King colors. The shoulder cape was dark on the outside and crimson on her back with that subtle regal line binding the two.

If Kara had seen less of the wilds of space or had been closer with her father, she may have had to hold back a tear. As it was, she turned to the crew and calmly asked if they were ready. “The box is already on board?”

“As is Whirr,” Gita responded in her thick accent. The one time Kara went to Earth was for her mother’s funeral so her experience was limited. From that experience and other’s suggestions she would say Gita, and many people from the Shedir-Ail homeworld, spoke imperial basic like humans from Egypt, Israel, or Lebanon do. “I am curious if you think that droid will actually be able to succeed in its part of the mission or if you are simply looking to finally be rid of him.”

“I trust WHR-4 with my life. You might need to as well. Id say get used to that feeling now when your life may not actually be on the line so that when it is, the feeling will come easy.”

The trio boarded the ship all taking seats in the cockpit where WHR-4 already waited with a sleek black and gold chest in his lap. Kara buckled up and checked that her passengers had done the same. She dialed into the comms of The Faux.

“Ersatz to Faux. This is your Commander Kara King. As always I want to recognize the threat ahead of us now and acknowledge the exemplary crew we have to execute this mission. Should we fail in our job to steal this New Showa artifact from the Nightwind Glyder, or should we, the crew of the Ersatz be caught in our endeavors to do so, we may all be set on a course for holding cells until the Imperium falls. That being said, we have the best pilots, techs, and fighters in this galaxy aboard these two ships. Collectively we have already pioneered quantum travel, seen the roots of our Imperium with some of us even narrowly avoiding the textbooks, and probably sent over one hundred Scags, Azkalarans, and Drhaken to their graves or the void of space. I’ll give a moment for anyone to notify me of their resignation from this crew.”

Silence on the comms.

“Very well. Do your best.”

The entire crew on both ships responded in unison, separately but together, “Go Beyond!”

“Ersatz is ready for depressurization.”

Max responded over the comms, “Mag locks in place. Hangar is staying. We’ll see you when you return.”

The large duranium doors to the secondary hangar where The Ersatz stood opened wide. Air escaped in a moment. In front of them they could see the long arm of an asteroid belt and in the distance was a small dot of a shadow against a large red star. Kara set the Ersatz in motion. She looked at the viewscreen showing their aftside. The Faux turned around and its engines began to pull in light. It was a strange sensation seeing a ship go to darkspace. There shouldn’t be much light for you to notice in space anyways. When those engines gear up for their jump though, you can see that they become like little black holes. It creates these visible distortion fields where light is seemingly absorbed or lost by a thin black disk. It’s a darker color than the backdrop of space somehow. Any light far enough away from the drives appears to bend around this black disk. Then it feels like a shockwave as the ship disappears. Just like that The Faux was no longer in the system.

“Well, no turning back now. What’s our clock look like?”

Canis responded. Zee would have been better at reading the systems of The Ersatz but he was otherwise indisposed. Canis struggled through it, “It’s looking like close to eight hours.”

Kara nodded. “Alright. Let’s get this done.” Kara pushed forward on the throttle, moving The Ersatz past the asteroid belt and towards the dot in front of the dying star. There was debris in the space between the belt and star. Kara assumed some long forgotten battle, probably pre-imperium, ocurred here. One ship wasnt a dead piece of trash listing in space though. That singular shadow in front of the star. Its shape became clear. It was a massive barge with solar sails and three long distance engines on the back. It was similar to a space cruiser like the Ecstasy of the Stars but perhaps outfitted with more weapons than the holiday transport vessel. It was The Nightwind Glyder and beyond it, that glorious behemoth about to go supernova, was Palivan V.