Sin and Grace - 30. Grace (Patreon)

The skin between my shoulder blades was itching.

It was a psychosomatic tic I'd had ever since I was a kid, after that incident where I nearly died. No amount of scratching was going to stop it and I'd had that itch ever since that void begotten emergency consignment got forced on us at the last second, just within the borders of Freeport space.

The consignment came through the Guild, which was rare to begin with. Technically, our membership allowed them to fill any space in our holds with emergency shipments. This service was so expensive that almost no one, short of a world government, could reasonably afford it. The Spacers Guild knew their captains hated having unknown shipments forced on them, which was why that duty usually fell to the little independent operations like mine rather than the big corporate tractors. I'd been gambling when I decided to finish our run to the Frontier under capacity and now we were paying for it. I should have taken that crate of fuller's earth, but the margin on it sucked and it would have taken up space in my hold until nearly the end of our run.

It had barely been three days since we took the mysterious crate on and I swear the damned thing was cursed. Sin had reported that the Mules hated it and I hadn't known they were intelligent enough to hate anything.

"It's anomalous and that makes them uncomfortable," she'd explained. "It's how they're programmed. They're intelligent enough to get bored, so their environment has to be pleasing enough that they don't get stressed and experience software failures. My auxiliaries are designed to like puzzles and problem solving. Since the Mules are cargo bots, they are designed to enjoy order and predictability. They like stacking things up neatly and for those things to stay in position until it's time to unload them. The crate is running a little hot and that bothers them because they say the temperature is too high for what its supposed to contain."

We were too far from the Freeport now to access their infobanks through the feed and verify the Mule's concerns. I would have asked Evander to look into it, but I hadn't been able to raise Evander on the comm for a few days now. I'd requested an analysis from Doc instead and xe had just submitted their professional opinion in the format of an officially formatted report, which told me that xe felt strongly about this. Doc hated paperwork and would avoid it at nearly any cost short of crew safety. Regarding the crate, xe seemed to think that the supposed 'bacterial cultures' we were carrying should have been transported at a much colder temperature and therefore the manifest we were given had likely been falsified.

I had two choices. I could open the crate and verify the contents myself—or I could space the container with a beacon on it for some other poor schmuck to come pick up.

Cracking open that crate could jeopardize our standing with the Spacer's Guild. If I lost the Cassandra's guild endorsement then I could lose my crew. They relied on the Guild for insurance and their pension funds. Sin might stay, but I knew that was because she didn't have a lot of options unless she wanted to go live as a pet at Freeport Romulus. I could still run cargo, but I might find myself relying entirely on bot labor.

On the other hand, I didn't trust planetary governments. I was too much of a spacer for that. We had our own drama, but the planets liked to fight using biological agents and chemical warfare. As long as they weren't ruining their own biomes, they didn't care if they wrecked someone else's or if a couple of spacers died while their dirty bomb was in transit. Who knew what was actually in that crate?

My gut said to space it and I was starting to think my gut was onto something.

I pinged Brando in the feed and swore when the feed glitched and had to retry the message twice before it got through.

That was the other thing I was unhappy about. Our ShipNet had been unreliable since we left the Freeport. We'd done a full diagnostic, but something must have gotten damaged during the verminator protocol that the diagnostic wasn't picking up because everyone's feed connection had been choppy and inconsistent ever since we left the Freeport. I doubted this was Romulus' doing. There were a hundred different ways he could have delayed our departure if he'd wanted to and he hadn't. This had to be a legitimate hardware failure.

I didn't like any of this, but I had to face the facts. It was time to turn around. We still had some give in our time table and the turkeys were stable in stasis, but I'd rather pay a penalty than risk a systems failure between ports.

Brando didn't reply to my ping and I scrubbed my face with both hands as I groaned. I was going to have to go over there myself, wasn't I?

First, we'd ditch that crate and then I'd go find Taj and give him the order to reverse our course back to the Freeport.

I passed Amanda on my way to the elevators. She was waist-deep in an open panel with her back end sticking out into the corridor. I paused to drop into a squat next to her.

"Everything alright here?" I asked.

Her voice was muffled when it reached me. "I'm doing a visual assessment of our feed nodes. So far, I haven't found any failures."

I grimaced. Of course, it wouldn't be that easy. "Keep looking for now. I've decided we're heading back to port to consult with the ship fitters. In the meantime, we're going to ditch that consignment. It's making the cargo bots anxious and Doc has confirmed that there's something off about the manifest. I don't want it on the ship any longer."

That got Amanda to pop her head out. She looked concerned. "I'm all for decisive action, but the Guild is going to be pissed if we do that. What if we lose our endorsement?"

"I'm going to make a case that it potentially endangered my crew. We'll stick a locator beacon on it so someone else else can come scoop it up, but we're not shipping that thing," I told her, projecting more confidence than I actually felt. "If we lose our endorsement over it, I'll find a way to replace the crew's Guild benefits. The corporations do it all the time and some of them don't make as much money as we do."

Amanda thought about that. "I'd rather be safe than sorry. If you're looking for confirmation from your executive officer then you have it. I like our guild bennies, but I like being alive better. Who knows, maybe there's a glitchy EMP in that thing and that's why our feed has been affected?"

We'd be dead in the dark by now if that were the case, but I didn't say so. Anyway, MedNet was still up so we weren't dealing with signal interference. MedNet operated on its own node network and I could see all my people moving around the ship with their biometrics still in the green. That meant the malfunction was limited to ShipNet.

"Do me a favor and let Taj know we're turning around and heading back. I need to give Brando my orders regarding the crate directly."

She nodded. "Aye, sir."

I felt better after having heard Amanda's thoughts. We both were out here to make money, but she had a powerful survival instinct. If she also thought that crate needed to go then I knew I was on the right track in getting rid of it.

I rode the elevator down to the hold and it was quiet when I stepped out onto the landing. Usually, Brando had some music on when he was working and this confirmed for me that the feed nodes on this level had gone entirely down.

"Brando!" I called out. "Come here for a minute, I need to talk to you!"

There was no reply and anxiety coiled in my stomach. I sent a ping to Doc to prepare for a potential medical emergency, but nothing happened and I swore under my breath. Fuck, how long had the feed been out down here?

"Brando?" I trotted forward, querying his location through MedNet as I did. His location pinged back from a far corner of the hold and my anxiety intensified. What if something had shifted while he was doing his visual checks and fallen on him? The atmosphere seemed alright, but I couldn't rely on the ship to be able to report to me under these conditions.

This had the potential to be real bad, but I needed to get eyes on my crewman first.

There was a medical hand scanner and emergency face masks on the wall near the elevator and I retrieved both, plus an additional mask for Brando if we needed it.

I traced his position and found him slumped against a wall, unconscious between two rows of steel containers. I could see the gentle rise and fall of his chest as I approached. Good. His biometrics were still in the green, but that just meant that I couldn't trust MedNet either now.

My only warning was a faint gust of air behind me before something cold and metal jammed into my neck and current ripped through me. The last thing that I saw before I fell unconscious was a man's face grinning down at me as he kicked me over onto my back.

There was an angular handprint across his lower jaw and partially on his neck. It was red with a triangular shaped 'palm' and four long, blade-like 'finger' shapes splayed up over his cheekbone and ear.

Note: We're back! S&G is resuming our regular schedule of updates. Like with Serial Villainess, I'll be doing bonus chapters here and there to get us back on schedule as I am able to without overextending myself. It's been a month and a half since the surgery and if they're gonna let me start exercising soon then I should be able to keep up with my projects too.