The Metastasis Hauler
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Eventually they located a material hauler whose planned route brought them close to the second tumor. Their passage was bought with several bottles of iodine tincture. From the way that some of the crew looked at them, Sharon suspected that they might have further designs as to how they might extract profit from them. Had they been ordinary passengers, they might have found more cause for alarm, but they were sidhe of the Coalition, and had little to fear from metastasis goblins. Amy skipped gaily into the ship while Sharon paced along behind, fingering the pommel of her dagger.
In contrast to the glamour of their tiny blockade runner, the massive metastasis felt grimy and, paradoxically, cramped. The crew called it a cargo ship, the “Freedom.” Sharon divined that there were about seventy of them scurrying about the place, preparing for departure. They were a bright enough lot, perhaps the least Ghing burned she had seen since their arrival. They would not last long in the wilds of a hill, but they were well suited for the rigours of ship life.
It was made alarmingly clear that they were underway. The drive rumbled to life, and a small acceleration was felt. Alarming to those accustomed to Coalition ships, anyways. The careful control of the forces the passengers and crew were subjected to made any sense of motion a sign of imminent demise. There were no signs from the crew that this was out of the ordinary, and the ship did not seem to be tearing itself apart, so they settled in for their months-long journey.
Their living space aboard the ship was spacious, if sparsely furnished. Two sleeping pads were their allotment, based on the crew’s assumption that they were a couple travelling with their young child. This suited their needs, as the only time Amy expressed interest in sleeping was when she was attempting to cause an inconvenience to others. Sharon had begun to regard her as more of a Boggle than a Bane Sidhe.
Almost immediately Amy began exploring the labyrinthine ship, endearing herself to the crew with a precocious bearing and childlike antics in order to gain access to many places she had no business visiting.
The executive officer, a man of cruel demeanor who Sharon found to be unsettling and loathsome, and finally the captain both suggested in strong terms that Richard and Sharon put an end to this behavior. Amy would have none of it, and rather delighted in painting them as ineffectual parents.
Sharon’s doubts about the executive officer and the crew stemmed from a suspicion that they intended to sell them into slavery at their destination. While iodine was useful enough, it seemed rather inexpensive for booking passage.
“I suppose so,” concurred Richard when she brought it up. “They probably mean to kill me though. You two are the valuable ones. I am just a lump of protein.”
“What should we do about it then?” Sharon pressed.
“Wait,” he replied. “It is still early in the voyage. They will want to avoid trouble for as long as they can. Toward the end is when we can expect them to move, and then they will get more than they bargained for.”
Sharon was loath to underestimate them, but she accepted Richard’s assessment for the time being. It was a good excuse to stay on top of her forms though.
Richard was diligent as well, leaving his hobby behind on the blockade runner. He practiced his sword forms constantly. Sharon observed with interest the curved blade that he used. It was not Coalition make, which tended to be straight neutronium-edged affairs. It was not a katana, as was popular in some parts of the hill. The handle was wrong, and the edge did not show a wavy temper line where the steel was sheltered from the heat with clay. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a standard issue sword, and she wondered why he used the inferior one. Richard would not speak of it though, and was peevish and rough during training when she brought it up.