027: Sea of a Million Stars – One
Elytra's decision to stay with the crew was met with cheers from Malakh and Viatrix, and a pleased smile and nod from Nevara. Supper ended up being a lively affair, especially when Rhea broke out some of the Thalatte alcohol they liberated from the officers' supplies.
For everyone except Pryseia and Elytra, that was. For the pair of them she prepared medicinal smoothies again, aoiberry for Elytra, and another strange flavour from the human homeworld for Pryseia. This one was apparently called "chocolate" and it had a dark, rich taste. It went over much better than mint.
"You can have booze again when a normal amount of exertion doesn't have you shaking like a leaf!" Rhea had cut in just as Pryseia opened her mouth to complain, causing the deupazing to stare off into the distance in annoyance, a faint tremor visible in her hands.
"In her defense, that creature was terrifying." Elytra said over the rim of her own smoothie ("Yours has painkillers in it, should take care of your headache in no time." Rhea had told her), "Are Leviathans a common problem for space travellers?"
"Common enough that there's entire professions dedicated to combating them," Pryseia explained, grinning suddenly, "Which brings to mind a topic we need to discuss: our future."
"Are you suggesting we seek employment with one of the Hunter guilds?" Nevara asked.
"No. With the Kith of the Void."
Nevara had frowned thoughtfully at Pryseia's announcement, while Rhea's eyebrows had shot up in recognition, Viatrix's avatar undulated in way that conveyed she was searching up information, and Malakh's grin grew as wild as Pryseia's.
"I grew up far more isolated from the workings of the greater galaxy as a whole than I thought, because I have no idea what the Kith of the Void are." Elytra admitted after a moment.
"They're a lot," Malakh began, her excitement washing over her like stepping into summer heat from a cold interior, "Most people think of them as just pirates - because, to be clear, they do engage in piracy - but they also work as privateers or mercenaries, since there's always some conflict going on in the galaxy that requires skilled fighters. But they hunt Leviathan too, because those monsters never seem to run out. But the thing that really sets them apart from other Leviathan hunters or mercs is the entertainment aspect to it."
"The leaders on Iromay were using those of us in the arena as much to keep their people distracted from the troubles around them as they were to find a pilot for Lianshae," Pryseia provided, "But they are hardly unique in using spectacle as distraction."
Nodding excitedly, Malakh continued, "Exactly! There's a lot of people out there looking for anything to put a filter over how awful it is out there, and they're willing to throw a substantial amount of wealth into keeping what they do find, and that's where the Kith of the Void come in. Everything they do, the pirating, the merc work, hunting down Leviathan, even just interacting with one another, they either record it all or broadcast it live, and audiences out there in the galaxy will pay to see what they get up to!"
"It's all preformative, but the bigger the personality, the bigger the payout." Nevara added.
"Even the ones who don't have that that large of a following rake in more than enough funds to stay afloat," Rhea said thoughtfully, shooting Pryseia a glance, "And what we managed to get from selling all the excess from this ship when we took it won't last us indefinitely."
"It most certainly dwindles with every stop we make," Pryseia confirmed, "And as with any pursuit one must take in order to survive in the void between stars, we will need funding to continue our search for the other Storlayacas. The skills we possess, to say nothing of the equipment we liberated in the course of our emancipation, would serve us well in the career path of the Kith."
"They also have no love for the powers that be in galactic society, and will fiercely protect their own." Viatrix pointed out.
"Stealing a Hyttan mech and an experimental stealth ship no doubt put us on some shit lists in the Thalatte Stratocracy." The laugh that cracked out of Rhea was anything but mirthful.
Elytra grimaced at that. As bad as the Baithaiz had been, everything she'd heard about the Thalatte made it clear that they were much worse. "So how would we even go about joining up?"
Leaning back in her seat and raising her smoothie in salute, Pryseia said, "To stay out of the reach of authorities, the Kith's administrative flotilla makes its home in the turbulent morass at the heart of our galaxy. Finding them is a test of skill more influential than any resume we could possibly submit. In addition, we now have another mark in our favour."
"And that would be…?" Elytra had to ask, caught up in Pryseia's excitement.
"Why, nothing less than the corpse of the Leviathan I anchored to our hull!"
Getting to the galactic core was easy enough, but navigating it? That was an entirely different story.
After the six of them had spent the evening debating the pros and cons of joining up with the Kith of the Void, eventually coming to a unanimous vote in favour of doing so, Nevara had set a course through subspace to get them as close as they could get to the core, then left the journey in Viatrix's capable hands.
Morning arrived to the sight of a swirling mass of light dominating the view screen on the bridge, and the beginning of a journey as perilous as it was boring.
"Isn't the Leviathan going to be shredded to bits out there?" Elytra asked Rhea, who she was helping to rearrange the medbay.
"They're built to survive the rigors of space," the human explained, "So much so that people to this day will use Leviathan parts as hull plating for their ships. Hm, so a heads up for how nasty the Kith flotilla is going to look, by the way. Here in the core, they need all the protection they can get."
As if to emphasize her point, a shudder wracked the ship as they passed through something. Radiation in all the colours of the rainbow (visible or otherwise), particulate matter ranging in size from subatomic to lightyears across, extremes of heat and cold buffeting everything into a swirling mass of chaos, it was taking all of Viatrix's prodigious computational power to chart a course for Nevara to navigate, the AI pulling double duty by also scanning for Kith signals. The rest of them were helping where they could, but aside from patching up any damage from the journey that Malakh couldn't wrangle herself, there wasn't a lot for them to do.
They'd carried on with their patchwork retrofitting to keep their minds off of how helpless they felt as much as it was to get things done.
"And they'll just let us join up as easy as that?"
Rhea shrugged. "Hopefully? Any media that gets put out by the Kith is basically propaganda, highlight reels to get people to pay to see more, so I've got no idea what a job interview with them actually looks like. But they do put out quite a bit of recruitment material, so they obviously want people to apply. It's one of those situations where we'll know more once we get there."
"If we get there?"
"Nah, we'll get through." Rhea's confidence felt like the inevitability of new blooms in the spring, "No way Nevara and Viatrix are going to let us down."
Sure enough, by that evening Viatrix had located and traced the Kith signal, and within the hour, Nevara had them pulling up alongside the ships that made up the pirate flotilla. Gathered on the bridge, the rest of them took in the fleet that lay before them.
There were swarms of attack ships buzzing around, their size or smaller, but the bulk of the flotilla was made up of a host of truly massive ships. Elytra didn't have extensive knowledge of what the assorted fleets of the different spacefaring races navies were composed of, but she was certain that, like the Pelekys, these were all stolen combat vessels. There was an angular brutality to their design that screamed military… beneath the plates and spikes of what could only be the remains of Leviathan.
Like Rhea had warned, it looked nasty.
"We're getting a hail." Viatrix alerted.
Sitting back casually in her chair, one leg thrown over the other, Pryseia said, "We shall be polite and answer it."
The view of the bridge of another vessel blinked on screen a moment later, and an apiarian - rust red and charcoal black - regarded them from their own captain's seat.
"Thalatte vessel, state your business in our airspace." The captain demanded, stern but not hostile. A good sign, as far as Elytra was concerned. They weren't close enough for her to get a read on, emphatically, so she'd have to hope for their honest going forward.
"We wish to join your illustrious group," Pryseia said, all the cool confidence Elytra had seen from her within the Baithaiz arena, "And we've brought tribute as a sign of our skill."
The captain of the other ship leaned to the side as they regarded something out of the communication camera's field of view. Their mandibles flexed slightly before they said, "An Alpha, minimal damage to its carapace. Not bad. Forwarding docking coordinates."
And with that, the screen cut out.
"Flight path received." Viatrix chirped, her voice bubbling with poorly restrained excitement.
Elytra found herself cheering along with Malakh and Rhea as Nevara wove her way through the throng of ships.
Hopefully the rest of their visit to this place would go just as smoothly.
The interior of the docking bay they'd been directed to was not what anyone would call in pristine condition, but it was far more orderly and organized than what Elytra would have guessed of a ship that lived outside the law.
Once the Pelekys was touched down in an empty dock, a swarm of smaller, one person craft made their way over to begin harvesting the Leviathan corpse they'd brought in.
"Even if we don't get in, they can have that thing," Rhea had said as they all made their way to the exit ramp on the ship, "What the hell would we even do with it?"
When they exited the ramp, they were greeted by three aliens Elytra didn't recognize the species of. All of them appeared to be naturally green, their skin in shades more yellow green, while their hair was more dark emerald. Like the deupazing, they had horns growing out of their heads, though unlike the deupazing, their horns grew out of the upper backs of their skulls, seven in number, that almost made it look like they were wearing crowns.
"G'wisin Baak," the leader of this trio introduced, lifting a hand in the air as if they were tossing something, "I'm to take you to one of the Corsairs with openings on their roster. For security reasons, we ask that you leave any weapons behind. Do you consent to a scan?"
The crew of the Pelekys made assorted noises of agreement, and the two that had accompanied Baak approached, waving some type of device across each of them. Aside from beeping when they picked up Pryseia's prosthetic arm and eye, the scanners had nothing of interest to report, and so they were led to a small shuttle that took them further into the ship.
Given the size of it, Elytra was glad they weren't walking.
Their destination ended up being a room that looked like something of a cross between an opulent throne room and a command centre.
There were dozens of workstations, each of them bearing a screen and an alien in a headset working at it, their chatter filling the space with too many conversations to follow along with. Elytra could have almost confused it for a call centre job back home, except for the fact that all the aliens were elaborately and comfortably dressed, not a uniform in sight, while their stations were likewise modified to suit their personal tastes and needs.
Along the walls and some of the pillars around the room were still more screens, each of them showing something different. From what Elytra could catch at a quick glance, it looked like a lot of mechs fighting in space, all of it with punchy edits and cinematic camera angles. This had to be the entertainment aspect Malakh had mentioned. Any space on the walls that weren't taken up by screens were instead decorated with all manner of art, giving the place a vibrantly chaotic feel.
And at the centre of the room, surrounded by yet more screens on a raised dais, was the most ostentatious chair Elytra had ever seen, and she was only getting a look at the back of it. Precious metal gleamed in between the scintillating gems inlaid into it, all of it accented by a luxuriously dark blue upholstery that they got a better look at when the person occupying the seat swivelled it around to face them.
Panic momentarily gripped Elytra when she saw that the person sitting there was baithaizan, but her fears were assuaged when she was struck by the jubilation that rolled of the baithaizan when they caught sight of them standing there.
"Ah, G'wisin, I'm glad you brought them to me first! Howl, cover this for me, would you?"
The baithaizan waved to another of their kind as they stepped down to greet them, all four arms thrown wide. They wore perhaps the most complicated pair of pants Elytra had ever seen, straps and fastening festooning the entirety of their surface, and anchored into a pair of equally complicated boots. They wore no shirt, but had a long sleeveless coat on, elaborately decorated with embroidery that gleamed gold. This baithaizan's body was a warm red, their arms and tail a royal blue that faded into purple before joining the red of the rest of them. Unlike the baithaizans Elytra had seen on Iromay, this one seemed broader, both in terms of muscle and body fat, their eyes a jewel-bright green. If this was what a healthy baithaizan looked like, then the people of Iromay were worse off than Elytra had thought.
"Glare-off-the-sea-at-a-summer-sunset, though you can just call me Glare," they introduced themselves with a courtly bow, "Coming in with a Leviathan, that's bold, and exactly the type of thing we like to see here! Now, what do the lot of you call yourselves?"
They all took a turn introducing themselves as Glare led them into a smaller side room, away from the noise in the control centre behind them. This one looked more like a private office, a desk and chairs awaiting them, though like the room they'd just left, everything was decorated to within an inch of its life. Taking a seat behind the desk, Glare motioned them all into the seats before them.
"Pelekys, you said? A Thalatte name if I ever heard one," Glare mused as they glanced over a data pad, "Never seen one quite like it. They actually experimenting with something new for once?"
"It was an experimental test run that we liberated before they could run any tests." Pryseia replied with a smirk.
That got a bellowing laugh out of Glare, who tossed the data pad back onto the desk. "Good! All of'em have rods up their cloaca! They need to be subjected to humbling! A stolen ship and a Leviathan to boot, even if it was an Alpha one. You've certainly made a good first impression!"
"You're willing to sign us on, I take it?" Nevara asked, as aloof as she always sounded, though Elytra could feel her nerves rattling under the surface like autumn leaves skittering against dry ground.
"Oh I most certainly am!" Glare said with a hearty laugh, "I've an eye for talent, and I can see that the lot of you aren't just talk. I'm always on the lookout for types like you. Now, we're going to go over contracts, do a run down of what your current capabilities are and equipment is, and get you set up with all the gear and accounts that you'll need in order to start turning a profit as a freebooter. If you need any repair work on your ship, our dry docks are more than capable of taking care of whatever work you need doing, so we'll get that squared away here too. We'll get blood on the page to make it official in a moment, but let me be the first to welcome you to the ranks of the Kith of the Void!"