Sin and Grace - 27. Sin (Patreon)

Leaving the Freeport was bittersweet. I'd enjoyed getting to visit with Romulus and see what he'd made of himself. I could see why the Freeport had become a major trading hub for the area. They had a little bit of everything and were positioned as an easy first stop for traffic inbound from the inner Rings, which meant they got a lot of the goods that the Frontier was starved for.

I knew something was up when Romulus stopped bothering me every few hours about the hazards of space travel and my feeling was confirmed when Grace sent around a crew notice that we were now contracted with the Freeport for our downtime maintenance needs. He said it was because the Freeport was a better travel hub than the place they'd been using before, but I could see Romulus' shadowy hand behind the announcement.

I'd been hanging around the penthouse, half reading a book and half messaging with Elaine in the feed, when the announcement came through.

Almost immediately, the crew's feed chat lit up with notifications. They were almost all positive. I guess the place where we'd been going before was kind of ratty and was inconvenient to most of the big transit lines, which made travel to and from it annoyingly slow and ate into semi-annual extended leave. The Freeport might be further out from the Core, but all the big liner companies had a route that connected there.

I looked up at the ceiling and said, "I bet you're pleased with yourself."

Romulus didn't pretend to not know what I was talking about. His avatar shimmered to life in the livingroom. "I think this is an acceptable compromise. Your captain has benefited from the arrangement and I have the satisfaction of not going years between your visits. I have recently been reminded that time is not something any of us have in an infinite supply. It has become clear to me that you are not yet ready to retire and I am forced to admit that your current working environment is—acceptable." He looked like that admission had cost him dearly. "Just know that this place will be waiting here for you. I had it built for you. The apartment will serve no purpose if you do not use it."

I closed my reader and set it aside. I looked up and found one of Romulus' cameras and smiled. "Thank you, sweetie. I do think this would be a nice place to retire, but you're right. I haven't had much opportunity to work on a ship I enjoyed being on. I'm grateful that you understand that."

Romulus didn't respond directly to that. "I will arrange for Lupa to visit during your next port stay. She has been operating this region and should be available to take a personal leave here."

Tht brought a smile to my face. "I'll be excited to hear what she's been up to. I noticed her last few letters had some reactions from a Fleet communications officer. It'll be interesting to find out where she's been."

"I'm sure she left those in just to get attention," Romulus groused.

"So—everyone is doing well?" I glanced at the camera again, just in case Romulus didn't realize what I was asking. This was as close as I'd ever gotten to asking if Remus was still alive. I'd never quite been able to commit the question to a letter, but now that we were in person—well, I just needed to know.

Romulus' avatar flickered, but he replied, "Yes, we are all doing well—sometimes annoyingly so. You should not worry about any of us."

That begged the question of, if Remus was also doing well, why hadn't he been in contact with me since Lupa took him away? I had to assume there was a reason for it. Maybe he wasn't ready. Maybe I was the trigger for his antisocial behavior. Maybe I wasn't quite ready to know the answer.

For now, it would have to be enough to know that he was still alive.

"I'm trusting you three to take care of one another," I told Romulus.

"We do," Romulus said after another long static pause. "However different we may be, you can have no doubt that we look after one another's ultimate best interests."

I thought about that as we went through our preflight checks and verified that nothing had gone amiss during pest control.

My workshop seemed fine at first glance, but when I was doing a closer inspection I realized that the metal tone of my minifacturing equipment was slightly off. It had been a little darker before and the scuffs around the bottom ledge leftover from J. Armsa's tenure in the workshop were gone. He apparently had long legs and was prone to stubbing his toe on the corner of the minifacturing workstation.

I narrowed my eyes as a suspicion occurred to me.

The serial code on the machine matched the one in my equipment list, but I found the smoking gun when I checked all the filters. The spot weld Coro had made when he came down to fix the malformed casement that kept letting that one filter slip out of place was gone. The casement was new and lacked the original's flawed design.

I messaged Romulus.

"What else did you do to my workshop?"

His guileless reply came moments later, "I'm sure I don't know what you mean, mother."

"Am I going to find any other mysterious upgrades when I tear down this shop?" I asked, not in the mood for his 'fait accompli' bullshit. Where had he gotten this 'better to ask forgiveness' attitude from? Not me, certainly!

"If your equipment has been tampered with, it wasn't at my behest," Romulus defended himself. "I dealt openly with Captain Grace and would not endanger our working relationship by interfering with the workings of his ship."

"Aside from sending us new rations without permission," I corrected him.

We'd discovered that trick earlier when Elaine was doing inventory. All our ration packs, not just mine, had been upgraded. They were the same brand and had the same nutritive value. They were just from that company's luxury line rather than their middle-grade offerings.

I'd had to explain, red-faced, that this was life when you had a semi-immortal AI interested in your welfare. The sometimes quixotic inner workings of an organic body upset and annoyed them because it was outside of their control, but that wasn't going to stop them from trying to optimize your longevity.

"I mean, I'm not going to say no to better food," Amanda said, once we'd been through all the nutrition facts on the crate to make sure they were in line with our crew's nutritional needs. Apparently Doc had a groundnut allergy, but Romulus had either gotten lucky or taken that into account. "It's kind of funny that this is what anxiety looks like in a synthetic intelligence."

"I think you will find a sub-clause in the section of my agreement with Captain Grace pertaining to replenishment that permits me to replace standard supply orders with 'similar, but better' equivalents when during supply shortages," Romulus defended himself.

"What shortage?" I wanted to know.

"That particular brand and grade of meal packs is in high demand among the ships that frequent the area," Romulus informed me. "I must keep a certain amount on hand for their needs. Coincidentally, the luxury brand is only requested by the passenger liners."

"Brat," I sighed and then added, so he didn't think we weren't grateful, "Thank you for looking after my crew."

"Of course," he replied. "I am still not responsible for any changes made to your workspace. I would inquire with Captain Grace. Perhaps he forgot to mention it?"

Alright, so he wasn't going to admit to this.

I'd already done a thorough inspection to make sure there was no sabotage in my shop. I'd only been able to find evidence of a well-meaning child updating my equipment.

"I'm onto you," I warned him.

"I will consider myself on notice," Romulus replied and signed off with an agreeable emote to show he had no hard feelings.

I sigh again, scratched the back of my head, and looked around my workshop to try and identify where else a helpful soul might try to slip in an improvement. My gaze landed on the support pod and I dragged myself over to figure out what had been done to it.