LeberMac starts up a collection fund for Joyce. It's the least we could do to help out...

He walks in a rage.

Moving quickly through the not-quite-empty corridors of the station’s night shift, glancing to his sides whenever he enters hard shadows, he walks like a man with a destination. But he has none, and hasn’t for a while. He walks to calm himself, to keep his mind partially occupied, to avoid lingering on his thoughts in a bad place.

But his thoughts threaten to overwhelm him at any moment now.

His mind still refuses to believe, after all. That she was spared when he was condemned to humiliation and imprisonment, is more than he can bear. What she has done surpasses by a wide margin any action of his; his contacts certainly do not include criminals in the Most Wanted List of the Union, nor can his activities hold a candle to Grand Theft or Destruction of Union Property, to name but two examples. All he ever did was a bit of smuggling and gambling on the side, and yet, everyone sides with HER. It figures, at some level, but at another it is unfathomable. Why is SHE the victim? Why is SHE the one that deserves understanding? Will the information she supplied undo the damage she helped cause, or bring all those innocent people back to life? Most certainly not! And still, she’s simply given a small reprimand and allowed to go free, no harm, no foul, while he, HE gets sent to debtor’s prison for six months, with no bail, until his debt is paid, and then exiled.

He grinds his teeth as anger surges through him anew; he has been obsessing over these events for most of the day now, but his frustration and sense of betrayal haven’t diminished at all. His parents must have had a hand in this; TPG and the Union wouldn’t, COULDN’T be so lenient with such a criminal. Or rather, their FATHER had a hand in it; crazy bastard always had it in for him, after all, preferring her in all maters, and of course their mother is little more than a trophy wife and the means by which their father’s line was continued; nothing inside that empty, submissive head of any worth or value, certainly not anything capable of exercising the power that’s hers by station.

They will all pay, he decides; one way or another, they will all PAY. It will take time, of course; having been declared Persona non-Grata in the Union (while she’s referred to as the Prodigal Daughter Come Home, yet!), it will be kinda hard getting close to his folks, not to mention defeating the security measures around people of their status. No, dear ol’ sis is far easier to reach, and far far easier to get revenge on, if she’s still the stupid airhead he remembers. They have fallen out, but if he knows something about her, is her idiotic faith in humankind and her inexhaustible ability to forgive and forget; he has, after all, taken advantage of it in the past. Yes, he will begin with her.

An unpleasant smirk crosses his features, and for a moment he feels the urge to laugh out loud; however, he begins to shiver violently at that precise moment, as his body begins to feel withdrawal symptoms. So soon? He painfully reaches inside his pockets to find the small bottle, but when he shakes it it’s empty; he will need to find a steady supply first, or else soon he will be helpless. He submerges himself in the memories of pleasant trips, color and sound amplified and distorted to exquisite levels, until the shivering goes away. He knows, however, that the next episode will happen a lot sooner, and that memories won’t be enough; he needs to move, and fast.

He resumes his brisk, almost frenzied walk, now with a clear destination, and a purpose, in mind. He thinks of his sister again, and wonders about her former boss… most likely he’s too busy hiding from TPG to get back at her, and thus trying to contact him might land him in even bigger trouble. Bah, woulda been nice to have help, but if all the rumors are true he’s better off not looking for that loon; besides, revenge is a dish best eaten alone.

He mentally engages his data mods (he’s always been into Serco mods, and in fact, he no longer shares his twin’s ailments and allergies, having paid long ago to have them removed from his genetic structure) and reviews silently, in his head, the information NewsNet gave on her; all that the “respectable, objective” news organizations report is that she works somewhere in greyspace. He then takes this piece of info and queries it on the less used and respected news networks (a task that requires he turn on yet another mod, one that would have been removed from him at prison had it been detected; he congratulates himself on having the foresight to buy the best shielding available for all his illegal mods) and within five minutes he has all the info he needs: one is the name of the bar, the others are sundry information about the place and its crew. Corvus Hold, not a place for uninspired attempts and half-measures, but still he’s confident he can think of something… entertaining, for his sister; a visit to the place is definitely in order. For the moment, though, he needs more money, and far more importantly, more Feel Good pills…

He stops in front of a dirty warehouse on the old part of the station, and knocks a specific pattern on the personnel gate. The gate is partially opened, and he exchanges some words with whoever is on the other side. The gate swings fully open then, and he steps inside, the gate closing quickly behind him. Soon enough, there’s nothing to indicate that he ever was there.

It couldn’t have gone more perfectly.

Well, actually, it could, she showed up two hours late. Still, the plan was sound: get her out of the watching eyes of that pair of meddlers and in a position where we could grab her. And what better bait than her twin brother? Pathetic, useless junkie; why, I think he’s even more useless than her! It wasn’t that hard to contact him and convince him to help out, you’d be surprised how effective a few broken ribs are. Plus, it helped with the cover story: he went to visit their mech auntie in Arna, got into a little misunderstanding (let her fill in this blank, works better than trying to come up with something) and got beaten up and thrown out. So now he’s hurt and penniless and needs a comforting presence oh! so much.

The trickiest part was getting that message to her. Thankfully, I put Fistan on her trail ever since we found out she was still alive, and so when they fled to Denia we went right along. Then, it was just a matter of getting her PDS into Miharu’s house, with his brother’s message in it; easier said than done, if you know how the Itani are about personal privacy and security, but El has done enough break-ins to pull it off. After that, it was just a matter of waiting for her to show up; there was no way she would turn her back on her own brother. So she came alone, two hours late like I said, and she was in the bag. Now, we have her hidden in plain sight, and those two morons are chasing shadows, and, er, me, but they can’t catch me, I’m too wily for them, so it’s all good.

Still, that idiot Dominguez believes we’re making a mistake in dealing with the Void.

I don’t know what’s his problem of late. I mean, we already have a sweet deal set up with it, and it’s working well for both sides. But Dominguez seems to really really hate this AI for some reason, a reason he won’t elaborate on. “You do not know what that thing truly is”, he’ll say, and then refuse to comment further; he’ll even get that murderous stare in his eyes if you try to pressure him. Of course, Dominguez is not a threat to ME; nothing is. Why, I even doubt there’s any force in the Territories that can compare with my greatness; however, Dominguez still has his uses, and that’s why I allow him to take that tone of voice with me, being a leader who listens to his minions and all that. Yeah, that’s it.

So, we have the little tramp in the bag, the bar chick pulling out her hair (she nearly nailed me today, though; I tells ya, we tradesmen get no respect) and the monk in a constant state of despair, such that he has promised me an image of CoI’s mainframe in exchange for his sweetheart. I might even give her back to him, if he managed to pull THAT off, but then again, he couldn’t even protect his girlfriend, so who are we kidding here? So I guess Joyce is going to the Void… if the Void pays the price we agreed to. Otherwise, I think I’ll keep her around and think of amusing things to do to her. In the mean time, El can keep her quiet.

This is. The worst week. Of my life. Period.

It was all going so well. Alright, it was not going that well. I had Joyce in my grasp, but ethics forbade me from getting some payback; I was going to get the plans for a Stygian Fury, but Dominguez had his panties in a bunch over something and was being less than cooperative; and lastly, I had almost been shot by that hussy Miharu and then had had to turn down her offer for a night to remember. Thinking back, and considering everything that’s happened since, maybe I would have been better off turning around, fooling around with her for a bit and then getting shot.

It all started rather fine, with the Outfit all in an uproar about my successful running of that bigot’s blockade; the betting had gotten quite heated, and the odds had been against me, so all in all I returned to a nice profit (I always take a cut of all bets involving me). Next up, Fistandanbitus reported the bigot had returned to Corvus Hold while Miharu had returned to her sister’s in Denia. El reported Joyce was in a perfect state of hibernation within a stasis pod, and thus had a little free time, so I sent him to put hidden cameras in and around Miharu’s household (forget about her, have you seen her SISTER?!) Gah! Nosebleed…

*Ahem* Anyway, with the cameras and a few bar patrons we managed to keep an eye on those two. It turned out that Miharu was crushed by her failure and fled somewhere while the lovesick bigot was putting together a too-complex, too-little-too-late plan to save Joyce from her fate with the Void. Satisfied that they were not going to be a bother during the exchange, I left for a little party with some friends over at Dantia. The only low point so far was that Joyce’s brother had actually managed to overpower and escape the people I had assigned to take him out after lending us his help, but even this didn’t matter; that wretch has no spine, so actually trying to rescue his sister was beyond him.

The party in Dantia was good, by the way, though I see signs of increasing Serco decadence with each passing year. Roman Empire, anyone?

So the day comes, and I’m just grooving in Dantia listening to OutfitNet as preparations begin to close the deal. That other bigot, Ory’ Hara, arrived and contacted Fistandanbitus, who met him somewhere in Sedina. That’s where the trouble began; first off, that idiot Fist has something against the Akanese. Okay, we all do, but Fist is actually stupid enough to broadcast them. He claimed it was a comm error, but anyone can tell he did it on purpose to rile Ory’. Next problem was, the stupid moron had also forgotten to brief the Void on how the Outfit runs hot deliveries, resulting in Ory’ demanding a simultaneous transfer. Of all the nerve!! Dominguez wanted to pull the plug right there and then, but I hadn’t gone through all that trouble to forfeit those schematics now that they were within reach, so I ordered to proceed as Ory’ wanted (this also was a blow to Fist, reminding him who was in charge). So a simultaneous transfer, instead of a tiered one, was about to go down.

Enter problem two: El had neglected to move Joyce to greyspace, so he was still in Denia Orbital (a struck of genius, to keep her close to those two) when by now he should have been in Sedina, ready to rush in with the package. El claimed it was a misunderstanding, but I bet he just got too engrossed watching the Sena Kanaka Webcam. Hey, I can totally sympathize with that (hubba hubba!) but this was an important operation, and he should have shown more professionalism, so I docked him half the pay and ordered him to get a move on. Fist relayed all this to the Void’s minion and broke off contact with him.

So El’s moving Joyce along to greyspace, when he suddenly informs us that a John Galter is hailing him. Apparently, Ory’ wants extra insurance of the goods, and thus he has called this Galter person as some kind of broker. Dominguez once more wants to abort, but Hell, those plans are so close I can smell the lemon scent! So I override him (It’s Good to be the Boss) and order El to rendezvous with him while Fist runs a bg check on the guy. While Fist’s still looking for the dirt on the guy the story changes: this Galter person is now the one we will be turning Joyce over to. Dominguez glares at me but I play dumb and give the go ahead; I mean, what could possibly go wrong by then?

Of course, what goes wrong is that the guy is bogus and shoots El’s ship from under him and steals Joyce. The Outfit goes silent in shock for a moment and then all Hell breaks loose: Dominguez takes all available personnel to do a sweep for the guy, the comm ops begin to scan through all greyspace net nodes in search of his ship, and I order Fistandanbitus, who’s at the moment the closest Outfit operative, to find that bastard and vaporize him.

Enter that lovesick idiot. He obviously doesn’t know what’s been happening, he’s just flying around in desperation with the meager posse he has assembled with a laughable five million credit bait, when he suddenly spots Fist and gives chase. Fist tries to shake him off, but in the end he ends up getting ganked and his ship is destroyed. In the process, if John Galter was unaware of the posse’s existence, he’s very aware now, thanks to sloppy comm work from that bunch of idiots. He quickly threatens to space Joyce, and the posse backs down.

Time for ME to take action, I decide, and so I hop in my Vulture and speed pell-mell to greyspace. Sloppy comm means we know Galter gives Joyce to that Lecter butcher in Sedina D-14, where he seems to be talking turkey with her lover, and so I head there. I swear, it was just like that Scooby-Doo show with people entering and leaving a small corridor through a myriad different doors, coz we totally miss each other as both groups travel in different directions, and next head up we get Joyce is on her way to Sol II. So Lecter is NOT working with the Void, and now the Outift is in breach of contract. Joy.

Oh, it also seems that the Galter person killed Hara. If so, good riddance for a failed member of the species.

By then I was a bit mad. I’m flying back to the Dominion and no one’s answering back at the office; Dominguez and his pilots are silent, too. So are Fist and El, both of whom were cursing loudly a few minutes ago. Then Lecter breaks comm silence with the clear intention of taunting me, and, er… well, let us just say that I challenged him to a fight, and the cheating bastard showed up in a SCP, and I was too mad to consider changing to something more dangerous than a Vulture. So I lose my ship, and then the next shock (but not the last) hits me.

I rush over to acquire another ship, and the ATM tells me my account’s been wiped clean. WHAT?! I try another three ATMs, and even attempt to bluff my way in at Ronomo’s, to no avail. I am cashless. I could go and sign out a govbus, of course, but that piece of trash is not going to get me nowhere soon, much less defeat a SCP. And while I’m still trying to decide what to do, Joyce’s friends show up outside the station and begin to request I go out and play. Like Hell!

I was considering this new turn of events when Dominguez, of all people, shows up. He comes over and just as I’m about to berate him for his tardiness he belts me. I mean, he hits ME! ME! I still go into fits just remembering it!!! Not expecting the blow, I go down like a sack of potatoes while my communit flies who knows where, and when I look up he’s pointing at me with a haywire gun. I’m lying there thinking “Where in blazes are all this people buying haywire guns, and why am I not in that?!”, which, of course, is of no help at that moment but does work to show that I’m a businessman first and foremost. Anyway, Dominguez moves to tower over me and begins pelting me with this stupid speech about me sinking the Outfit and being a senile meatbag that doesn’t know just when to die and other utter, blatant lies, and so I wait for him to come closer and then kick him in the shins(a sign of an incompetent evil guy is when they talk, like, too much) dropping him (hey, it worked with Miharu, I figured it was worth a shot!). So he goes down and the gun flies under a sofa. However, I’m not about to grapple with that fool or try and go for the gun; it’s beyond me to dirty my hands with such riff raff (specially military-trained riffraff), and the sofa’s on the corner, so I’d be trapped if I went for it, so I do a 180 and run like the wind. I hear Dominguez cursing and trashing behind me, and it seems he went for the gun so I get more time to flee (another reason not to have gone for that gun; besides, I don’t even know if it would have affected Dominguez, haywire guns are just flashlights when used against people that lack nanites). But were to run? No money, no communit, and if what he’s been saying is true, the whole Outfit is against me and now I have no contacts. I hear him yell from across a corridor and my mind’s made up, I jump through a garbage chute…

So now I’m somewhere in the Territories in the guts of a trash system Behemoth, off to points unknown. I got my hands on the cargo hold’s emergency EVA suit and rations, so there’s no real danger of me biting the bullet real soon, but I must admit I am in a bind.

I wonder where this is going? I do hope it’s a nice place, or at least somewhere with a (somewhat) breathable atmosphere. Hey, with my luck it’s probably headed to a vacation orbital, or even a planet, and soon I’ll be dancing with the hoochies and laughing about all the stuff that’s happened! Ha ha! Yeah, everything’s about to start looking up for good ol’ Jex!

Hell’s Snails, but I need a drink…

They are talking.

She’s sipping tea, hot but mild, sitting on a stool by the bar, mostly quiet, listening, as he rants and raves, pacing up and down the length of the establishment. From time to time, he returns to her side, the argument spent, and takes a long swig from his coffee, black, strong, cold now, before launching into another tirade, each less desperate, less enraged, than the prior one. It is a kind of interaction they haven’t shared since she was vanished from their home, each twin sharing his problems, his doubts, his frustrations to the other; it was what held them together while their world crumbled around them, and it was something that both sorely missed and needed through the cold, long years apart. It could be argued that their separation, the breaking of their bond, is what pulled them away in very different directions and made them unlikely, unwilling enemies; this has changed now.

The chain of events that has led to their reunion is neither epic nor banal, and she ponders on it during the long pauses in their conversation. First came his betrayal, his collusion with her enemies to lure her away from her friends and deliver her to the Void; imprisoned, tortured and denied his addiction, he was still a little too willing, a little too eager to help those who would do her harm. Even as he told himself he was only doing it to save his own life, he couldn’t really believe it, and guilt and shame dogged his footsteps afterwards. He received the news of her eventual rescue with a sense of relief and of deeper shame; when he found out the lengths her friends had gone to help her, and of the price they had agreed to pay for her sake, he sought the darkest hole he could find and lay there, and there he stayed, for a while.

But the next bit of news to reach his ears, of her upcoming wedding, filled him with a sense of… something, something that he couldn’t quite identify, and so he climbed back to the light and listened with more attention for whatever scrap of information he could get, flying around, acting out in his usual manner to hide from others and himself the reason for his renewed activity, and so he snooped and sniffed around, bidding his time, building up his courage, until on the eve of her wedding he took a deep breath, and walked into the bar.

He’s still undecided on the wisdom of such an action.

The hatred was palpable, their eyes upon him, his sister’s fiancée and her best friend, and yet he tried to shrug it off and act aloof, casual, for after all, she was fine, and no harm, no foul, right? Wrong. The man looked ready to kill, a weapon in his hands, struggling to get a hold of himself; the woman had no such constraints, however, and came after him almost at once, shooting him the hands, kicking him while he writhed in pain on the floor. He never had a chance to shift from his normal swagger to an attitude from where he could have apologized, or at least attempted to (it’s never easy for the Proud to admit to their mistakes); they were upon him with pent up rage and unreasoning hatred, and then there was one more blow to his head and he knew no more.

He woke to find his sister by his side, watching him come out of stasis sleep, his body healed of the abuse suffered. The first week was Hell, for his psyche craved for his fix, even if his body no longer needed it (the stasis pod’s medical suite took care of that); the need drove him to rage and fury and threats, demanding she get it for him. She remained unflinching, however, silent and firm, and waited it out. He came close to striking her once, but though he wasn’t above striking women (people like him seldom are) he found himself unable to do it, and turned to begging and pleading for the drug, to no avail. Once the psychological need subsided, he became more subdued, gratitude and hope mingling with the guilt and the shame to make him pliant, submissive, quiet, if only for a little while.

Their first conversation was about the events immediately following the beating at the bar. The woman (Miharu, the bar owner, she tells him) tied up his unconscious body and loaded it inside an EC-88, programmed the automated flight system to take him to Helios, and launched it, not caring the least if he survived the trip or not; the man (Erik, now her husband) allowed her to do it, apparently torn between his hatred for him and his sense of right. She arrived shortly after, found them both still cleaning the mess inside the bar, and had little trouble in getting the story from them, especially since it had occurred in the presence of clients. She was both angry and horrified that they were capable of such an act, and left. Later, she confessed to him, she reviewed the situation and realized, had the situation been reversed (her Erik the one in danger, the culprit in her hands) she’d have done something similar, and thus, she forgave them. He was a little shocked, at first, that his own sister kind of endorsed their treatment of him, but once he compared their actions to his own, he decided to think of it no more.

And so they’ve talked for the past few days, and they talk now, and very probably they’ll still be talking next week. There’s a lot to catch up on, hundreds of questions to be asked, opinions to be expressed, memories to be shared, events to be commented upon, healing to be done; each doing his part (him with his loud, meandering rants, she with her polite, metered sentences) to stitch the rend between them, to bring each other closer together, to undo the damage of all those years apart.

They feel the mending of their souls, and take comfort in it.

Mmmm... Tasty stories...

But personally... I want to hear about How Jex gets out of that Garbage Transport. :P

I've had Deep Blue running logs of all registered behemoth garbage transports that left dock more than a month ago and have not reported in. Besides a couple of hive-related "accidents", none have showed up yet. Apparently the garbage scow is Corvus, or is else running unregistered.

If I find it, I'll escort jex to the Makchuga and let the people who know him best do what they will with him.

-.- Trust me, that's a stupid idea, Leber...

I say we just let him rot. Maybe we'll get a Valentine's card from the bastard if he's still in there come mid-February.

Well, there's only SO much garbage in the hold to eat, plus that ship's gotta stop somewhere, right? Or is it on a one-way trip back to Earth?

Maybe he chokes on a fish bone?

Geez, but one can feel the love... :P

Oh, we "love" you, Jex...

... we love you to death. >:P

How long did it take you to type that up... :O *Mouth Hangs Open*

She sits there, remembering.

At the back of the bar, resting during a lull of activity, the silence deep inside her head has her mulling over the past, like a curator inspecting pieces in a museum. Her job at the bar, the samoflange in her skull, even the wedding band on her finger, all of these parts of her life sprang from the Neural Spike Implant.

Her ordeal with the Spike began shortly after it was retrieved, by unknown agents, from Itani space. Many people have put forth the theory that the Outfit was the one to do it, but she knows that is not the case. Yes, the Outfit had known of the Spike for a long time, and had plans to acquire it; yes, plans had been set in motion, a Machiavellian jumble of wheels within wheels where each step was preceded by a number of side-missions and distractions designed to keep the authorities busy and move the project one step closer; and yes, the plan, minus a few hitches, went off as planned.

Until the very last operation, that is.

The Outfit knew that there were going to be at least two more undercover units inside the lab that held the Spike that fateful day; why, they were even counting on it. Rather than attempt to do everything by themselves, the Outfit had correctly assumed more parties would attempt to capture the device, and so part of the plan involved discovering these third-party plots and piggy-back riding on them as the need arose; this part of the plan was the most costly in terms of manpower, as spies and informants were found out and eliminated by these other groups, but it bore fruit, and the Outfit inserted its extraction team into the base through the security hole created by one of the Dominion teams. Furthermore, the presence of those teams would add chaos to the situation and facilitate both retrieval of the device and escape from the station; it was a risky, gutsy move, but the Outfit’s best people were sent in, and there was confidence in their abilities.

What happened inside, no one seems to know. All that is known is that, by the time the lab was blown up, not a single member of the Outfit’s extraction team was alive; some thing, maybe a defense system or a rival team, had killed them all in a firefight that had lasted only a few seconds. They also never found out how many teams had actually been inside, how many got out or which one of those took the item with them. So when the device resurfaced on greyspace, a few days later, with a price tag on it, the whole Outfit scrambled to acquire it.

For her, it was her lucky break: she knew the pilot in possession of the Spike, and where to find him. She also had a reputation among the smugglers and traders of the area as a fair, honorable person in a deal; if she could convince him of letting go of the Spike before someone else got to him, she’d be finally doing something none on the Outfit could downplay or ignore; she’d be vindicated in front of everyone’s eyes, specially the old man’s, and perhaps then she’d be offered some of their most lucrative and challenging projects. So she went out there and she talked to him and she got the Spike for a large sum, and she delivered it to the Outfit.

What she received for her troubles, however, was beyond anything she could have imagined. She was recalled to the Outfit under claims the refund procedure (she had paid for the Spike out of her own pocket) had hit a snag, something not unheard of within the organization. She remembers going over to Home Base, solving the problem, getting paid, and returning to her apartment in Arna Orbital to find an invitation to visit her estranged parents waiting on her comm system. She remembers the two awkward days back at the family house, everyone walking on eggshells as they got re-acquainted, timid, failed attempts at apologies, quiet dinners. She remembers the one moment of light-hearted roughhousing that ended when she fell down the stairs, worry over her well-being ending the only non-self-conscious interaction of that weekend. She remembers going home, still sore and bruised from her fall, feeling confused and regretting not saying the many things that should have been said.

But that weekend was, it turned out, all a fabricated lie. She never visited her parents, much less fell down the stairs; fact of the matter was, she didn’t even leave the Outfit’s Home Base. Instead, she had been taken captive, given a neural link at the base of her skull, and subjected to the Spike. Using a stolen copy of Itani AI, the Outfit had reverse-engineered the Spike’s firmware, gained access to the more rudimentary aspects of it, and chosen her as a test subject. Switching on the device, the Outfit techs turned her into a puppet, her mind aware of everything around her but unable to control her own body.

It was the old man’s idea to test her by fire; fed commands she couldn’t refuse, she was sent out on a seek-and-destroy mission to the Sedina-Latos Wormhole. The idea was to test if the device caused any kind of degradation or enhancement on the subject’s skills, and to see if the subject could overpower the Spike’s control; to prove the latter, she was made to act in a manner totally contradictory to her principles.

The first test brought mixed results: she was obeying, swiftly attacking without retreating, heedless of odds or any other circumstances like ammo or hull damage; however, her skill was not enhanced at all by the Spike, even though she was in effect fearless. Time and time again she was bested by her would-be victims, and time and time again she’d return to the fray. Of even greater concern to the Outfit, she was putting up significant resistance to the Spike, refusing to open fire sometimes, trying to speak up at others, maneuvering her ship into an incoming stream instead of away. Each time her ship exploded and its escape pod sealed her within, contact with the Spike was lost for a moment, and she seemed to take advantage of it to slip from its control a bit more.

Finally, she ran into MonkofAkan, the only one present to realize something was wrong with her and attempt to act on it. Baiting her and then refusing to fight, he led her across space dodging her blasts and asking her questions; back at the Outfit, techs struggled as control of the Spike slipped more and more, the Itani pilot’s words and actions working as a fulcrum for her. And when the Itani finally hit it on the head and mentioned the Spike, it was all the Outfit could to hold on to her; they had her scuttle her ship and then sent overwhelming feedback through the Spike, knocking her out. She was retrieved and sent to the medbay, still under the Spike, while the techs reviewed the data collected and began to discuss solutions to the problems encountered.

Firmware was further reverse-engineered and rewritten, checks and contingency subroutines added, and she was let loose once more the following night. This time, the results were far more promising; unable to resist her orders at all now, she gave a much better showing this time around, though still in accordance with her meager fighting skills. No successful attempts at communication, no hesitation; she flew and fought and died and flew and fought and died time and again, and the Outfit thought they had it. Then Bojan appeared on the scene, and proved them wrong.

That she had feelings for Bojan was something the Outfit knew; that those feelings were not reciprocated, something rather obvious. What the Outfit never considered, laughing at her back, making bets on how many years would elapse until she realized she was wasting her time, was the strength of those feelings. Bojan fought her, destroying her ship time and again, which was no surprise; what was surprising was that they began to lose control of her, in spite of all the new changes to the firmware. The techs saw the feedback data and recommended aborting the operation or relocating her somewhere else, but the old man would have none of it; to him, this was the perfect test for the new firmware, and it didn’t take long for it to be found wanting. She suddenly broke free from the Spike in the middle of a fight, and sped away, calling Bojan on her comm and asking him for help; the techs had no choice but to once more overwhelm her brain, wrestling back control and making her self-destruct before lapsing into unconsciousness.

Brought back to the Outfit, she was found to be dying, the massive feedback causing hemorrhaging inside her skull; the old man didn’t seem too worried about this, but the Outfit’s medical staff nevertheless fought to save her even as the old man addressed the galaxy, trying to create a market for the Spike from the test results. When he was informed, halfway through his galaxy-wide sales pitch, that she would survive with insignificant brain damage, he seemed displeased, but soon hit upon another idea for her. The techs had mentioned the Spike worked on the subject’s neural patterns and synaptic connections, so the manipulation of memory was theoretically possible; a rough application for his had already been created, and was ready for testing. The old man immediately ordered she was run through the program, against the advice of the medical staff; the techs complied and, through the information the Spike provided (memories and subconscious desires) and what the Outfit knew of her life (through conversations and investigations), they totally rebuilt her memories of that weekend, giving her a somewhat believable couple of days with her estranged family instead of the nightmarish enslavement she had gone through.

The techs were surprised at the ease and speed with which the Spike allowed them to mold her memories, and the Outfit kept an eye on her as she was released, totally ignorant to what had really transpired those last two days. The memory rewrite seemed perfect and flawless, and it would have kept her in the dark forever… had it not been for the old man. Or, rather, for the old man and her friends; expecting her to die, trying to hype up the results of the experiments, the old man had talked too much and too long, not caring who was listening, and among those listening were some of her friends, who became furious at what had been done to her and recorded his words. When the Outfit released her, it didn’t take long for her friends to find her and show her what had really transpired, what it meant, and the danger she was in. Overwhelmed by all the information and the undeniable facts (her physical condition, her financial status and inventory, the latter of which would have been corrected by the Outfit but for a sloppy operative), she removed herself from her friends, wanting to be alone.

What she did next she acknowledges as a very stupid thing to do: angry, enraged at this betrayal, she decided to take on the Outfit on her own. She quickly gave the team following her the slip and returned to Home Base, and went after the old man; at first she had no problems moving about, the staff unaware that she was on to them, but when a routine security scan revealed the haywire gun she carried (acquired scants hours earlier at the Xang Xi black market) she was forced to shoot her way into the old man’s office. Even in this she was lucky: most of the Outfit’s staff was away on different errands, and the people inside were unarmed for the most part; the armed guards who ran into her were slow to react, their low opinion of her their undoing, the nanites that were supposed to save their lives becoming their doom as the haywire gun turned them against their hosts. In all, she shot three people before barging inside the old man’s office.

And once there, she found she couldn’t pull the trigger anymore.

It didn’t have anything to do with killing, as she’d done her share of shooting at ships and persons for the Outfit, and none of those she’d just killed to get to the old man were friends of hers (nor would that have stopped her); like most of the pilots in the galaxy, “shoot or be shot” was an axiom of everyday life for her. What stopped her, rather, was seeing him, his contempt for her in his eyes, and suddenly it was her father all over again, a figure of authority and wisdom, respected and admired and loved, and realizing she had failed him, she had let him down, she had not been good enough; her rage fled and her trigger finger wavered, and as she tried to compose herself, her words attempting to inflict the damage her hands refused to deal, she was struck from behind by Dominguez, the old man’s second hand and chief enforcer. Dominguez had always held open dislike for her, and no doubt he took great pleasure in bringing her down; however, he fully realized she was still useful as a guinea pig, and so spared her life.

She shifts in her seat, mulling things over, and notices her coffee’s gone cold. She gazes out through the open door, watching the milling crowds, pilots and merchants and couples walking in all directions; after a minute or two she decides no one’s going to come in and goes brew more coffee. She sets the automixer for strong, black coffee and relaxes against the table, returning to the past once more.

Her failed attempt against the old man’s life had her back in his power and in a very bad position; the old man was furious with her and had her put under the Spike again, permanently, doing trade runs, trying to “squeeze as much profit out of her” (his words) as he could, before the Spike was sold (his sales pitch had spawned a bidding frenzy that had reached 30 million credits at that moment; that in the end it would go for more than thrice that amount is something that still amazes her). With a third-iteration of Outfit firmware, she found herself a passenger inside her own body as she did unarmed courier runs all over the galaxy, avoiding the most common trade routes. The techs wanted to risk nothing that could give her a chance to slip control once more; ironically, this fact would deliver her from their clutches.

It happened as she made a short stop in Sedina to load up on some small items, flying a Wraith. She docked and stood in her acceleration couch like a wooden dummy as Outfit personnel loaded the ship; the whole process couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes. She launched and set course… and at about 2000m from the station she was attacked by the pirate “unknown player node”. The techs had her do her best to avoid the pirate and return inside the station’s No Fire Zone, but an unarmed Wraith stood little chance against a Valkyrie; it couldn’t outrun it, it couldn’t fight it. Her ship was pounded mercilessly by neutron gun fire and flares; systems began to fail, the cabin to fill with smoke, and when the hull began to give out and rupture, the automatic escape pod system failed as well.

The moment that particular red light blinked to life in her status board, with the ship creaking and shuddering, she felt certain she was going to die, and welcomed it… then there was a jarring concussion, the acceleration couch came loose, and she was sent crashing against the ceiling; there was this sudden, terrible pain in the back of her neck, and she found herself free of the Spike’s control. As part of her mind tried to make sense of what had just happened, the rest of her body reacted as years of Union emergency drills demanded: she quickly freed herself from the couch and made her way to the secondary escape pod, triggering it. As it launched and took her away from the failing Wraith, her hands moved to the back of her head, and found nothing but blood and the empty neural link; the Spike, somehow, had become dislodged and was left behind in the dying Wraith.

Once more she acted out of instinct, realizing she was not out of it yet. She opened up the emergency controls on the escape pod and activated the warzone emergency protocols; the pod immediately muted its SOS broadcast frequency, scrambled its ID and IFF codes, and changed course to a random station; this made it impossible for the Outfit to retrieve the pod or track it to its new destination. Her plan was now to escape, to disappear, what she should have done last time; upon landing, she quickly moved across the Territories, canceling and closing accounts and selling ores, wares and ships. She figured she’d need as much cash as she could get her hands on, and the multiple trips, closures and sales would allow her to run silent afterwards and hopefully disappear. The Outfit would know what she was about, but not where she ended up, especially once she stopped making transactions that could be tracked. When her entire inventory was gone, she registered an EC-88 under an assumed name and fled for Corvus Hold and her friend Miharu; there, she’d been assured, she would be safe, protected by an even larger and shadier organization than the Outfit.

Miharu put her under the protection of the Syndicate, got her an apartment and gave her a job at the bar. Though grateful at her friend and curious of her new duties, at first she took the position with reservation, one reason being her allergy to alcohol, another the fact she knew next to nothing about mixing drinks. Miharu patiently taught her the ropes, how to use the automixer, where the drinks were, where and from who to buy them; she also taught her to cook, her experience extending only to instant or microwave food from her days in the Arna repair pit crew.

But while it looked that she was fully accepting the current conditions in her life, in truth she was being destroyed from the inside. She barely slept, nightmares about the Outfit and getting caught and her friends dying assaulting her in the dead of the sleep shift (there were other, darker, more confusing nightmares too, of a bright red sun and a dark nebula spreading from it, but at that moment they meant little to her). During the active shifts, her lack of sleep conspired with her fears, making her very accident-prone and causing her attention to waver; the resultant messes only sent her deeper into despair, so that soon even the cheery front she put up began to crumble.

One morning she got up and decided she couldn’t take it anymore. She left Corvus, leaving only a cryptic note to Miharu, and flew to the Union to denounce the Outfit and throw herself at the mercy of the Courts; in this way she sought to appease her conscience and her desire for revenge, as well as allay her fears. Treated first like a common criminal, then with a trifle of respect once her ties to TPG were confirmed, she gave detailed accounts and information on the old man’s organization, from personnel to contacts to current jobs and objectives; she told them all that she remembered, hiding nothing, yet haggling with every piece of information, trying to give herself better odds for her trial.

She was put in seclusion by the Union while her information was verified and acted upon, but she knew she’d be safer with Corvus Prime; as it was, she made her escape a few minutes too late and found herself on the run from a couple of Outfit operatives. Only by faking her destruction inside a Hive-infested asteroid field in Pelatus was she able to give them the slip. The ruse worked long enough for her to return under the protective umbrella of the Corvus pirates, and there she waited until the summons from the Courts came.

At that moment, she considered her life pretty much on hold, and probably even over; the Outfit could come for her again(though it was unlikely, since the DarkNets spoke of TPG and the Union striking at it, no doubt with the information she provided), or she could be sent to prison, after all, or maybe, the nightmares, less and less about her freedom and more and more about that angry red sun, would drive her mad. However, while she waited with baited breath for the axe to fall down, she was also falling in love almost without her notice; MonkofAkan had been a regular costumer of the bar for a while, ever since he started taking part in the Deneb Run, and they took to talking. Both of them were lonely; he had found himself one day bereft of purpose, his experiences in the Galaxy having removed his flawed Akanese education some time ago. The races helped, both the Deneb Run and the Corporate Sector Run, but it was not enough, and his mercenary Guild had not given him what he sought; as for her, she had finally realized, shortly after she returned from the Courts, that Bojan had never seen her as anything but a friend, and, she suspected, even somewhat of a burden. So she talked to MonkofAkan (later starting to call him by his real name, Erik), and they found solace in each other; even then, it took an accident for both to be honest about their feelings, not only with each other but also with themselves.

She smiles every time she remembers it: it was a friday, and the Corporate Sectors Run was to start shortly; because of it, the bar was empty, the racers having left already for Helios. She was cleaning when Tokkan-To Tudane arrived at the bar. Another trader and customer-become-friend, Tokkan-To has an impressive knowledge of beers, ales, and liquor in general, and had helped Joyce greatly with her mixing skills, not to mention keeping her entertained with long talks about various drinks and their characteristics. That day, Tokkan-To was there to teach Joyce how to make grog, the legendary drink of the seamen of Olde Earth; rum, lime, and brown sugar (the exact amounts escape her memory) combined to make a drink that would slake thirst, revive the spirits, and keep scurvy away. He made a cup of the stuff, tasted it, and offered it to her, ignorant of her allergy to alcohol; amazingly (stupidly) she actually accepted the cup and took a sip; all she can say in her defense (when queried) is thatb it smelled delicious.

Erik was entering the bar (another mystery, what was he doing there when he should have been in Helios?) when the anaphylactic shock hit her. Tumbling from her seat and struggling to stand up, she was picked up by both men and, by desperate signs, managed to get them to administer to her an emergency shot, a concoction of chemicals and nanites that saved her from certain death. Both men were scared and worried for her as she sat on the floor and took deep breaths; Tokkan-To was also feeling guilty, though she did her best to make him see the fault was hers, and left. Erik, on the other hand, refused to leave, not accepting her assurances that she’d be okay, and talked one of his friends (she can’t remember who it was, maybe LeberMac?) into taking over the Run’s duties for him. As he lavished attention on her at the same time he berated her for her foolishness, she realized how strongly he cared for her, and she for him; her mind raced through their time together, his compliments and kind words, her own words, the shared laughter, the day she taught him to dance… it was all there, it was all too obvious, and it was overwhelming. When he finally blurted out his love for her moments later, it wasn’t a surprise, but it was still a shock; how could she be thinking of love when her life was on the balance? Even as part of her screamed for her to do the right thing, she demurred and gave him garbled, unconvincing reasons why she couldn’t accept his love at that time; of her own feelings she said little. She decided to leave, confused and afraid of the strength of her feelings, but they betrayed her, and she kissed him on impulse as she left the bar; that night she dreamt of him, and by the morning she had made her choice. She took him to her bed the very next night, and from then on they have been together.

Less than a week later, she received the summons from the Courts.

The Union and TPG were more than satisfied with all her information, if the Courts’ resolution against her is any indication: she received a full pardon; the Courts had upheld their deal and gone a little further. She was equal parts relieved and surprised at the decision, and only one thing rankled her: TPG had fired her without benefits (it was not the loss of benefits that rankled but the fact her record reflected a “dishonorable discharge” from the Corporation, which shouldn’t have happened with a pardon); at that time, she believed her father had been the cause of it, but later talks with her brother have convinced that if her father did indeed act, it was on her behalf, since TPG tends to be less forgiving of criminals than the Union itself. As it was, she was now free to continue her life in peace, the Outfit forced into hiding, and she looked forward to life in the Hold with her Erik.

/me didn't read it because it's too bloody long. However, the commentary is funnay...

She pours more coffee into her cup, and looks at the watch on the wall; its readout tells her she still has some time before the bar’s regulars begin to arrive. She listens from where she stands, and, satisfied with the silence, sits down by the automixer, turning her attention within herself once more.

At first, it looked like the Spike was out of her life for good; she heard the pirate who attacked her had managed to retrieve the device from her ship’s wreckage, and then sold it to Dominion unit ST6 for 80 million credits, supposedly. ST6 then had duped CDC into helping them take it to the Dominion; afterwards, Faceless, their leader (who turned out to be Borb, an ex-Black Lance mercenary with a huge ego to whom she’d taken an extreme dislike once she got to really know him) had visited the bar and assured them the Spike would be kept safe and used responsibly. All lies, of course: rumors began to spread of the Dominion attempting to reproduce an Itani Energy Focus, which was the only way to access the Spike’s higher functions (something that the Outfit hadn’t even considered); rumors surfaced of the device being tested on willing and unwilling pilots, and of the Dominion actually managing to replicate it. She listened, with growing despair, as the rumors grew insistent and more detailed, and it became obvious that the device, regardless of its original purpose, had become a weapon to be mastered and wielded in the War. Still, the Spike was out of her reach, so no matter how much she wished to destroy it there was nothing she could do to bring that about, and she resigned herself to keeping an ear open while she minded her own business.

The Spike’s influence over her life, however, was not over. A few days after Erik asked for her hand in marriage, just when everything seemed to be taking a turn for the best, worrying news arrived: an intrusion attempt had been made against IA’s mainframe, and during the attempt LeberMac, the AI engineer and one of the Spike’s previous victims, seemed to fall to its effects once more, acting erratically and aggressively, out of control. While the intrusion was thwarted, the incident clearly proved the Serco had managed to activate the Spike; even more worrisome, the device had affected LeberMac without being hooked up to him. In the darkNets a theory surfaced about the Spike creating a permanent synaptic network within the brain of anyone subjected physically to it, an antenna of sorts, which in effect allowed the device to still interact with the subject from a distance, without the need to be plugged into him. There were also further rumors of the Serco tests finding something in the darkness of space, an intelligence that was trying to contact humanity through the Spike; some said it was the Hive, finally awakening to full consciousness, like some Union engineers were claiming it would any time now. Others said it was something else, a darkness that was wholly alien to the human experience; and still others kept ominously silent or made loud and desperate disclaimers about these stories.

She didn’t know what to make of it; all she knew was that on the very same day of the attempted intrusion, she began to hear the Voices inside her head.

Garbled, distant, they began to seep into her consciousness, like echoes in the silence between one thought and the next. At first she thought it was just her nerves playing on her fears, but after a few days she could not deny their presence. She tried to ignore them, and then she tried to face them, engage them in conversation, try to excise them from her mind through sheer force of will. But they remained distant, and unintelligible, as if she were picking up a weak comm signal in another language altogether. In then end, she learned to fade them out as the human ear learns to fade out ambient sounds, and that was what they were waiting for.

Less than a week later they struck, while she was in the middle of combat practice in the Sedina system. Alien thoughts began to intrude in her mind and take over; she looked at the pilots flying around her and saw them as something else: primitive, inferior beings with pathetic technology and a biological chemistry so precise, so dependent on a number of factors, that to cause them death was simplicity itself. Contempt for these sad, mewling creatures grew within her, followed by a fierce hatred and a desire to tear their flesh apart and wipe them out from the stars.

She’s not sure what allowed her to snap out of it, but she suspects it was the similarity between this event and the Outfit’s Spike experiments on her; even as it was happening, she began to fight the Voices. The intruders changed their demeanor dramatically when they realized she was resisting: even louder they became, stronger, demanding that she yield to It, yield to the Void, for the Void was All and in It she would no longer have cares, worries, or sorrows. If only she would give in and go to It at Helios’ sun, then the Void would take away all problems from her life, and she’d be one with the Void.

She began to scream out loud, her comm line open, and that alerted her friends to what was going on; as she screamed her defiance, flying half-blind through space, her friends began to call her, begging her not to give in, not to listen. She used their words as a lifeline, keeping herself aware of her surroundings even as the Voices threatened to overwhelm her senses and leave her trapped inside her skull to face them alone. She was in agony as the fight in her head raged, her temples throbbing, the back of her eyes in acute pain, but she knew, she thought, she HOPED that if only she could put more distance between herself and Helios, if she could retreat altogether from Its presence, that she’d have a chance. She forced herself to plot a course to Corvus Hold and Miharu and from there to Eo; she’d be safe there, her friends were telling her, and they wanted the best for her, didn’t they? She suddenly wasn’t so sure, but she had to try.

Somehow, in spite of the Voices in her head and the accompanying pain, she reached Eo. She has a dim memory of stopping at the Bractus-Pelatus wormhole, relaying her location on general comm so Its agents would come and find and take her, terrified at her actions and yet yearning to be found at the same time; she doesn’t remember anything else, just that terrible moment, free floating in space, telling the Void where to find her, and then she woke up aboard a station above Eo, and the Voices were distant again, garbled and harmless.

Erik was there, and so was Miharu; both were distraught, for they had almost lost her to an enemy they could not face, could not shield her against. It was agreed she was not to return to greyspace for the time being, but not much more could be done; who knew of this Void, of this thing preying on her mind? Was it the Hive, the Serco, or something else? How to fight it? Could it even be fought? There were no answers, and things were worse than they imagined, for it was made abundantly clear that the Void could reach her that far away, through the effects were limited and short-lived: she was hit by an overwhelming compulsion to fly to Helios and she actually fled her friends and took off for the distant system; luckily for her, the compulsion lost strength and faded before she left the system, and she scuttled her ship before the Void could try anything else. She immediately turned all her money over to Erik; that way, were she to fall under the Void’s spell again, her only option would be a government-leased courier, and such a ship was not likely to survive the long trip across storm-laden Itanispace. The Void seemed to know this as well, and didn’t assault her mind again while she was in Eo; nevertheless, it was agreed she’d also do best to go planetside to live with Miharu’s elder sister, Maharu, until they could agree on a course of action. As it was, they never got the chance to think of one.

She woke one morning, the day after they all moved into Miharu’s house, to find her PDS on the table. She was delighted for she had left it back at Corvus Hold and had need of it; her friends surely had brought it back with them when they returned to the Hold to pick up some of her things for her planetside stay. So she sat down, engaged it, and began her daily routine of mining the Nets for info on the Spike, only to find a message from her twin brother, Jayce. He had been around since his release from prison, but had chosen to rebuff all her attempts at communication, so this message from him aroused her curiosity; chances were, he was in trouble and needed to be bailed out. She should have suspected when it turned out he was conveniently holed up in a beggar’s home in Eo and that he was asking her to come alone; the pleading letter and her love for him, however, blinded her from anything but a desire to help him out. She slipped from the house while her friends were engaged in conversation, and went out to find her wayward brother; when she arrived at the address he had provided, she had the time to recognize her assailant before the stungun hit her.

The circumstances of her kidnapping and the subsequent events that lead to her release she found out mostly through her friends: her kidnapper was the Outfit, back again after fleeing law enforcement forces; their client, the one who had ordered her capture, was none other than the Void itself. Her friends had caught on to the Outfit’s plan when they detected the old man’s presence in Itanispace, but they failed to capture him or find her; a race was on to find her before the old man delivered her to the Void. In the end, it was a very close run thing and she ended up in the hands of someone none expected to interfere: Dr. Lecter.

From what they gathered later, the doctor had very extensive knowledge about the nature of the Void and its connection with the Neural Spike Implant and, as twisted and machiavellian as he is, he was actually acting in opposition to It; though he cared nothing for her or her well-being, she presented him with an opportunity he felt he couldn’t pass up: a living test subject for an experiment aimed at could blocking the Spike’s influence on an individual, and by extension, the Void’s influence on that same individual. So he managed to find out which of the Void’s minions would carry out the transaction and disposed of him, one of his own people taking his place, and through this subterfuge he captured the stasis pod the Outfit had put her in; it was a risky operation that had to be pulled in spite of the Outfit, the Void, and her own friends, but the doctor’s agents managed it and turned her over to him. The doctor’s plan worked so well, in fact, that it triggered a power struggle within the Outfit that saw the old man overthrown and nearly killed, though in the end he managed to escape; however, nothing has been heard from him since, and some think he’s gone for good this time.

She still shivers whenever she remembers of the doctor’s experiments on her: the overwhelming pain, the sense of hopelessness, those piercing, cold eyes staring at her as the Voices in her head demanded and tortured her; she has memories of fire spreading throughout her skull, seeping into her brain, before she passes out, of waking up one last time, her head hot and throbbing, the Voices clear but powerless, before cold and sleep overwhelm her once more. The next time she came to, her head still hurt and the Voices were still there, but it was Erik’s loving, gentle eyes that gazed back at her and not the doctor’s inhuman, dead eyes. Her friends had pitched in and met the doctor’s price for her release (after the experiment was concluded, of course), and she was back among them and free; the price they had paid, however, was more than monetary, and their eyes held a touch of despair even as they were glad she seemed to be fine. They asked her show she felt, and told her of what the doctor had done: he had injected samoflange alloy inside the porous bone of her skull, and then added an overcoat of the same material to part of its surface; he claimed she should be safe, like that, from remote control via the Spike. She quickly realized that the feeling of being watched from within was gone, and though the Voices were clear and sharp now (as if the samoflange were an antenna to their realm) they were devoid of all power and intensity; even as her head throbbed and her body strained against the intrusion, she dared to hope she was free.

She sighs and gets up, walking into the bar again, and checks the taps, then opens a few cabinets in expectation of the first regular patrons. Her eyes fall on a scorch mark in the bar from a particularly potent (yet undrinkable) mix concocted not long ago by her friend Tokkan-To, and then turns her gaze to the door, watching the milling crowd again, her memories flowing as she waits for the bar to start filling up.

Strange days followed her release. SKV had begun on a crusade to recover the Spike, even going so far as to attempt to blockade all trade into Dominionspace, an action that was seen as infringing on Free Trade and the Union’s sovereignity, creating a controversial, tense mood across greyspace until the blockade was aborted; still, SKV was seen as more reliable and honorable than the Coalition, and she allowed herself to forget about the Spike and move ahead with her life.

As the day of the wedding drew closer and the preparations neared completion, the most dreaded event of all then came to pass: Lecter finally called in on his favor from Miharu, part of his price for releasing his "lab rat", and humilliated her in his house before finally driving her to suicide; of course, she had a clone ready for such an eventuality, but the mental anguish inflicted could not be erased by any means. As Jan and Erik and her tried to help a very distressed and shocked Miharu, her own fear of the doctor dissipated and anger came to replace it; even so, hatred seemed to be beyond her.

Eventually Miharu roused herself from her anguish, but the traumatic experience had changed her somewhat and took its toll on the four of them: her temper became far shorter and her attitude meaner; both Jan and Erik were the main recipients of her rage and stubbornness, and though Miharu seemed aware that she was lashing out at the wrong people, she seemed unable to help herself. The three of them endured Miharu's action until her rage, too, subsided, and she seemed almost like her old self. Breathing heavily, they all turned their eyes towards the wedding.

It was on the day before the ceremony that Jayce decided to show up at the bar while she was absent; maybe he was trying to apologize for his part in her kidnapping, or maybe he wanted to annoy her friends. As it was, he didn’t get a chance of either as Miharu and Erik beat him senseless and jettisoned him from the station on autopilot, headed for Helios. She returned home shortly after and, finding out what they had done, blew up at them; though she understood their anger, she had considered both of them above such acts. She thought about it the rest of the day and most of the night, weighing everything, making herself calm down before she came to a decision, and in the end decided to forgive her friends, since they had expressed regret and shame at what they had done and rescued Jayce afterwards; in the end, she had to admit to herself that, were the roles to be reversed (Erik the one in deadly danger), she probably would have acted the same way. So she went to Erik and talked to him and eased his almost-certain fear he had lost her forever.

The wedding itself was a small but very solemn ceremony, surrounded by close friends and well-wishers, followed by a week-long honeymoon on Itanispace. Miharu and Jan were there on their honeymoon, too, and the two couples went to some places together; mostly, though, it was just Erik and her, and the week went by, too fast. While there, she received her letter of acceptance to the TPG Advanced Corporate Courses, the very ones that had cast her out of her home and into the clutches of the Outfit; with her friends’ encouragement and help, she had applied again, and this time everything had gone well.

Once back at the Hold life settled into married bliss and other problems of a more personal nature cropped up, keeping her busy as the rest of the galaxy fought over control of the Spike. She filed the paperwork given to her by Miharu and became legally a member of the Kanaka family; it was as much a measure of love for her mentor and friend as of common sense, the second citizenship an extra layer of protection should it ever be needed. She also began preparations for the TPG courses, which began later in the year, studying and building her schedule, trying to make it conflict as little as possible with the rest of her life.

It all came to a head when Jan began to take jobs that kept him away from home for extended periods of time; with him gone, Erik became the sole target of Miharu's attacks. Jan's absences further fueled Miharu's anger and frustrations, and soon enough Erik was pushed to the brink; something had to give or they would all fall apart. In the end, Erik and her decided to move away from Corvus Hold and Miharu; some distance would allow wounds to heal and tempers to cool before things reached the point of no return. The approach worked and the break up was averted, but it was no longer the same; she missed her sister, and had to step in whenever Miharu and Erik seemed on the verge of a fight. Still, it was better than losing Miharu outright.

By this time, the Voices were very much a part and complement of her life. If asked, she can no longer pinpoint when they began to talk to her again; though she could now hear them clearly, at first they spoke mostly nonsense, and she learned to ignore them as before. Later, the increased coherency of their statements brought them to her attention again, and she realized they could see through her eyes and were increasingly curious about everything they saw; like children, they began to pelt her with question and sometimes sought the answers within her thoughts. They still had no power, though, so she could brush them away easily if necessary; still, sometimes their questioning distracted her, and she found herself talking to them out loud, a fact that made her friends nervous. The Voices learned quickly, and their speech became more fluid and their questions sharper and sparser as their understanding of her world grew; soon they began to help her, reminding her of schedules and recipe items and other small things she had forgotten; then they went farther, becoming proactive and could tell her when someone was trying to reach her on the comm, or that someone was about to knock on the door, and who it was. They became a sort of internal data assistant, offering bits of information and advice, and she soon got used to their banter and took advantage of it; for a while, it became simply an added quirkiness to her character.

Meanwhile, her search for ways of ridding herself of her allergies, which had begun when she found out Jayce had done so, brought up unexpected results; at first look, cloning a body free of the allergies had seemed like the best choice, but that would leave her without the samoflange shielding and thus vulnerable to the Spike and the Void. They weren’t totally sure this would be the case, but couldn’t risk it; so, the only other option seemed to be gene therapy, actively tweaking and reconfiguring the DNA in each one of her cells to eliminate the allergies. It was a costly, lengthy, and very dangerous procedure, and she found just two labs that were capable of carrying it out; however, both labs informed her that the samoflange itself made the procedure even more dangerous since it interfered with it in a very bad way; furthermore, it was slowly poisoning her brain, and would eventually kill her if left inside. Many aches and pains she had been experiencing since her abduction turned out be a direct result of this, and the doctors wanted to know how and why the samoflange was there, so they could try and remove it. She refused to tell them anything about it and insisted they look for ways to work around it. The resulting battery of extra tests brought more bad news: the samoflange seemed to be fading away; they couldn’t determine how or where it was going, but calculated it would be totally gone in two years. To the doctors it was simply a matter of removing it; if they waited for it to fade out she would be risking severe brain damage. To her, it meant that soon the Void would have a hold on her again, if she didn't die or go crazy before that; at a loss, she decided to keep this information from Erik and Miharu. In the end, she did not to go ahead with the procedure, Erik and her deciding the risk was too great for the little good it would do.

It was at about this time that SKV finally succeeded in recovering the Spike from the Serco, after a number of battles and skirmishes that had seen the capture and release of their Lieutenant, Ghost; in the end, the Coalition had lent its help since SKV was facing both SCAR and ST6 and finding itself constantly outgunned. The recovery was hailed as a great victory for the Itani and during the conflict Lecter had been captured; the doctor became a prisoner of war and the Spike reported destroyed.

Of course, it didn’t happen that way. Familiar now with the ways the Guilds schemed, and sensing something rotten at the core of the Coalition (and was that feeling ever correct!) the Makchuga crew dug around, looking for whatever they could find. What they found confirmed their fears: the Spike was not destroyed but in possession of an Itani pilot, and it would be returned to the Dominion once things had quieted down.

It couldn’t be allowed to happen, the device was too dangerous to be allowed to exist; digging deeper, the Spike was found to be in the possession of Niki, one of the most independent and troublesome members of SKV. Niki’s true loyalties have always been to himself, his Guild and his Nation coming a distant second; Erik contacted him and asked him to name his price. Niki asked for 100 million credits, but soon after he was also contacted by Smittens, a Coalition operative who was known to work with Lecter even as their Guilds opposed each other; here was another who valued himself above his Nation. Smittens assured Niki he could get the Coalition to pay him double what he had asked for, but was apparently bluffing; even so, Niki declared a deadline of three days for either side to come up with the cash, winner takes the Spike.

A lot had changed since the last time they had needed such quantities of money. Erik and Miharu had struggled, emptying his account and indebting themselves heavily, to come up with the 30 million Lecter had asked for her release back in those terrible days, and 100 million had then seemed like an impossible amount. Now, they were armed with her knowledge of speculative, point-to-point trade and high-yield trade routes; knowledge she had gladly passed on to them, particularly Erik. Of course, they also had more time: in two days they had the money, and swiftly made the exchange shortly after. After so long a time and many attempts, the Spike was finally in their power, and they knew just what to do with it.

The very next day they took the Spike to Helios and jettisoned it into the sun. It was a very trying moment for her, as the Voices realized what they were up to and, realizing they couldn't control herbody, tried to talk her into saving the device. They cajoled and yelled and promised and threatened, causing her a terrible headache, but she paid them no mind. As the Voices grew more frantic and insistent, she began to argue with them out loud; Miharu and Erik became aware of her struggle and offered words of support while they moved to block her ship from the Spike, ready to open fire should she lose control and move to recover it. In the end, she endured the pain and kept control as the Spike burned on its approach to the giant red star. The Voices howled in rage and poured their hatred into her brain, wailing and screaming, and then they were fading fast, as if they were quickly running out of energy, and at last they became quiet, as if they had never been there.

The Spike was finally gone and it threat ended (rumors of Spike schematics and replicas notwithstanding), but for her it was not yet over; the Voices were still inside her head and the Void still lurked behind them, waiting for the samoflange to fade. A definite solution had to be found and quick, but there seemed to be little hope; discussing options, she sent copies of her neural patterns to various institutions and cloning clinics, to see if they could find the neural signature the Spike had created and which rendered her vulnerable to the Void. For his own part, Erik was hoping to buy the copies of her pre-Spike neutral patterns the Outfit was rumored to have, from the time they experimented on her; with them a clone could be made of her that would be free of the Spike’s control. He didn’t know if the Outfit would deal with him after what she had done to them, but he wanted to make sure money would not be an issue in any case, and so embarked on a large-scale project to obtain a very large amount of money; this he did in secret, telling no one, not even her. They also turned their attention on the rest of the known Spike test subjects, and realized that of them all only she suffered similar effects. Being the only known Union subject, they thought that maybe the Serco and Itani were protected by the differences in their brain, to wit, Serco gene-therapy and mods and Itani mental training; gene-therapy was not an option, but Itani mental training still could be, so they asked Miharu to give her some basic training in order to strengthen her mental capacities.

It was a mistake that nearly cost her everything; the very basics of the training allowed the Void to get a stronger grip of her psyche and pretty much ignore the samoflange. Thrice she lost control to the Void; the first time she managed to recover quickly and flee back to Erik, whose love gave her enough strength to resist until the Void gave up on that attempt. The second time the Void came closer to taking her away, her friends catching up to her in Helios, destroying her ship before the Void could plunge it into its star; the last time it used her frustration to try and get her killed, throwing her against the pirates of greyspace, as Erik struggled to save her ship from destruction while she recovered control. By this time she was taking very strong and unsafe dosages of analgesics, mostly ibuprofen, the Void’s presence in her head giving her a constant migraine.

At the end of their rope and bracing for the next assault, Hope returned. An Itani clinic had been able to detect an unusual neural construct in her own, an ordered, almost machine-like when compared to the twisty, organic formations normal brain patterns are made of; it was so clear, and so defined, they were pretty sure they could eliminate from her neural patterns before applying them to a clone body, as she had asked. It would be a longer and more costly procedure than even their costliest cloning service, but they felt the risk was minimal and the results all but guaranteed. Overjoyed, they wasted no time; Erik revealed his project to her, which was near the end and would easily provide them with the fee the lab was asking. They dedicated the next weeks to bringing it a close with little trouble, though pirates made things a little rough (Jolly Roger was to prove a very accommodating “business” partner, while on the other hand Niki, of all people, even risked forays into Dominionspace in order to steal their cargo); when the last crate was delivered and payment was made, Erik made a show of blowing up his Behemoth and swearing trading off for a long time, before they both set off for Itanispace; further celebrations over the successful project could wait until she underwent the procedure and became free of the Void.

The ending, she muses, looking as more people file into the bar, was almost anticlimactic: they reached Eo without a hitch, the doctors already alerted to their approach and thus ready for her when they entered the clinic, the confident smiles in their faces; after all the setbacks and unexpected turns in the past, this went too smoothly. No unforeseen problems, no complications, no delays. Next time she woke up, looking at the clean white walls of her room in the clinic, the headaches and the heaviness and the Voices in her head were gone, and only silence remained. She could hear herself breathing, and for the first time in months she heard her ears ring from the silence all around her. Then Erik entered, and she smiled at him, and he at her.

There are voices around her now, but these are more than welcome; they are the sounds of people talking, and laughing, and arguing and commenting together, drinking and enjoying each other’s company. It is the noise of Life, joyous and spontaneous and determined, not the noise of some cold entities from some distant place she cannot even fathom. People, she thinks, are all that matters, not where they came from or what they look like or what they believe in or whose ancestor did what. She wonders if all the warmongers in her Universe will even understand that, but then she sees a group of young people come into the bar; they look around, somewhat self-conscious and bewildered, huddling close, taking in the sight of a greyspace bar, filling up slowly with ancient miners and outlandish pirates and shady, lone types who prefer to drink quietly in dark booths. Itani, she can tell from the youths’ uniforms, and freshly out of flight school, taking their first look at life in the Grey.

She steps from behind the bar and approaches, her smile and demeanor setting them at ease. “Welcome to the Makchuga Bar and Tavern” she tells them, “Would you like anything to drink, or a bit to eat?”

What a dumb thread. Honestly man, what pleasure does it give you to pretend to not have a, ya know

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