Into the Black

(Cadra Primaris, Capitol Planet of Grathdan Sector, Gauz Consortium)

The Gateway closest to the Grathdan Sector was Shadowgate. Since that wasn’t an option, we’d gone through the Dagon Gate. Since we were traveling between arms of the galaxy, that cut the travel time down quite substantially. It only took a couple weeks for us to reach the edges of the sector, and the different patrol groups started splitting up and going their way.

The negotiations had been short and sweet, mostly because the Administrator didn’t have time to fool around. So, while some of the escort ships began moving around the sector making sure people knew that the spacelanes weren’t undefended, I had a core group of ship ready to drop the hammer on raiders if they gave me a target. A Battleship, a Fleet Carrier, and some destroyers, with the Marine group backing them up. That was a solid response force, should we need it.

For obvious reasons, this core part of the fleet was set up in the Cadra System, near the Sector capitol of Cadra Primaris. The Consortium was taking every ship they possibly could to deal with whatever the hell was going down over in Coldana. That included the system defenses that were usually in place to defend Cadra Primaris. Every inter-system craft with weapons was going that way. Hopefully it would be enough.

That left most of the systems in the sector covered by just a space station or two, with whatever fighters or in-system patrol boats the systems had (which were primarily used as Search and Rescue craft). I suspected that there were probably more than a couple groups inside the Consortium questioning their ‘efficiency first’ strategy to home defense.

Naturally, none of that mattered to me, for the moment. I’d already put in my two centicredits, and set things in motion. Now I just needed to stand back and let my people do what they did best. So, I was of to explore the main space station, and maybe make a few personal deals.

The first problem I had was finding a way to be inconspicuous while still being protected. See, ‘inconspicuous’ here meant that I had to look like a Gauz. Sure, there were plenty of non-Gauz, but most of them were either slaves, or traveling merchants. All of them stood out. I wasn’t sure on the exact nature of it, but it seemed that the Confederacy and the Alliance were the only groups in established space that weren’t hopped up on the whole one race ruling their piece of the universe thing, and embraced having multicultural empires. Part of that was the Alliance being a fractured mess, but while the Knelfi were the major players in the Confederacy, they did have plenty of other species living in the Confederacy, and they actually were treated the same as the Knelfi were. There were just a lot more Knelfi than, say, Felisans.

At any rate, I could change my shape to look Gauz, but my high-end gear was all sized to fit a human, or human-ish, form. The battle armor was tailored to fit my ‘normal’ look, but the rest of my outfits could fit me easily so long as I was a human, knelfi, or even a Felisan. Well, mostly. The tail sometimes got in the way. But a Gauz was about 1.25 meters tall, on average, and built like a truck. That meant there was no way my gear was going to fit, save for a couple items that, thankfully, resized.

Up until now, it hadn’t been an issue, since I always took human and knelfi forms if I had a choice. They were closer to my height, and I didn’t need to mess with the density as much to get the effect right. My skinsuit and bracers sized with me, and most of my weapons were, thankfully, designed to be used with a wide range of species, so I could still use them in a Gauz form. But going out and about in just a skinsuit was considered rude, especially in Gauz society.

Fortunately, the ship’s fabricators were able to whip something up so that I was at least able to be presentable. First stop once I got to the station would be to visit a couple stores and get clothes for this fake identity. I’d change into new clothes, and then be able to slip out and enjoy myself.

The only question was who to take with me. Bringing my whole entourage would defeat the point of sneaking out. But if I didn’t bring any guards, especially when I was off, without my usual weapons and armor, then there would be hell to pay when I got back to the ship, even if nothing happened. And if something did happen? Well, then, I would be all kinds of screwed, and not in the fun way.

I looked up as Raven stepped into my quarters just after I had finished getting dressed. Her mouth actually dropped a bit, which made me smile. She was the best choice for this, actually. “Raven, care to play hooky with me for a little while?”

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

Raven sighed, rubbing her forehead like I was giving her a headache. It was a nice human affectation for the former human AI to use. Idly, I wondered if she knew she was doing it, or if that was some leftover from when she’d been alive.

“All right, I get that you’re sneaking off to have fun. And I get that you wanted to blend in with the locals, so you used your powers to take a new form. What I don’t get, however, is why you’re now a Gauz female?”

I laughed, and said, “Because when people start looking for me, this will be the last form they expect me to take. Anyways, we need to go shopping and deal with getting some Gauz-sized armor and clothes. Never know when I’ll need to play a role like when we infiltrated Bagthera or Madrigal.”

“Fine, fine. I don’t want to argue.”

“Excellent! Then let’s get moving!”

(Thadmere Station, Cadra Primaris Orbit)

Clothes shopping was easy enough. I went to the first place I found and bought some clothes that were better than the printed stuff I’d gotten from the fabricators, and wore them to the next store, where I started looking for high end threads. I actually managed to find some nicely made Gauz-sized copies of the clothes I normally wore, which was nice. Of course, I found some other things that I hadn’t seen in the Empire or Confederacy.