“I need your help with this Jotnar cruiser,” I said as I gestured around us. “I need to make sure there are no more survivors. My first thought was to go room to room searching, but that opens us up to attack, and we could still miss someone.”
“I understand,” she said. “It will take me a few minutes to search the ship. Will you sit with me?”
“Of course.” I gestured to a nearby bulkhead chair, and I pulled her onto my lap after I sat on it.
Eve leaned her head into my shoulder, took a deep breath, and then was still for a few minutes. While I waited, I relished in the scent and feel of her silky hair against my shoulder and neck. For a few moments in the middle of chaos, it was just Eve and me together, and I allowed my mind to travel back to the moment we had first saved each other’s lives, escaped through Elaka Nota’s building through the street sewers, and hidden ourselves in a sleazy hotel.
“I do not sense any other life,” she said as she opened her red eyes and took a long breath.
“That’s a relief.”
“Will you start clearing out the bodies now?” she asked.
“We can do that when we are in warp or hyperdrive,” I said. “It can wait for a few hours. We won’t be able to get going until we get supplies moved over from the corvette.”
“I would like to go help Aasne and Elana,” Eve said as she stood from my lap. “They are wonderful women, and I wish to grow closer to them.”
“Sounds good,” I replied, and we both walked through the hold and back into the corvette.
The next few hours were spent shifting all of our food, weapons, and clothes over to the Jotnar cruiser. Paula and Kasta finished the repair job within a half hour, but instead of having them work on moving, I had them work in the bridge trying to find recordings of the captain’s voice. Zea and Juliette finished their programming job ten minutes after the twins finished the repair, but I asked them to help find files on the bridge.
As soon as we were finished moving everything over, we closed and removed the docking tube. Then Zea triggered the corvette’s automated drive sequence, and we all watched the ship disappear off the heavy cruiser’s display.
“Let’s hope this ship can get us to Jotnar space,” Aasne said.
“It will get us there,” Kasta chirped happily.
“The challenge will be once we get there,” Elana said.
“That’s where Kasta will come in,” I said. “Juliette, you ready to go?”
“Yep,” the redhead said as she cracked her knuckles and then wiggled her fingers over the terminal controls. “Nav is set. Give me the word, Captain.”
“Engage warpdrive,” I ordered.
“Engaging warpdrive,” Juliette repeated, and then the display screen on the cruiser went black, and the ship shuttered a slight amount before it steadied.
“How about Kasta’s job?” Elana asked as she turned to the android.
“Zea managed to find the captain’s voice journal,” Kasta said as she looked over at the blonde hacker.
“It was password protected,” Zea said with a shrug, “so it took me a few minutes to open.”
“He sounds like this,” Kasta said, and her voice took on the timbre and pitch of a male. “Captain Taangarn is my name. I have commanded the Pewter Falcon for the last six years. Before that, I was commanding officer of the Yellow Gull for ten years. I like my aquavit chilled, and my women on their knees begging for my cock.”
“Did he actually say that?” Elana asked.
“Naw,” Kasta laughed. “I made the last part up. The rest is true though. I have his voice down perfectly, we just need a cover story.”
“Did his logs talk about what they were all doing in that sector where the battle was?” I asked.
“Yes,” the android answered. “They had a spy who said that Waymund would have a convoy of ships passing through the sector on their way to deliver rhodium to their home planet. His last log indicated that there was only supposed to be three ships.”
“There were a lot more than three Waymund ships in that junk pile,” Aasne said.
“Yeah,” Kasta replied with a shrug. “We can’t find any recordings from the bridge during the battle, but it seemed like the Jotnar might have bitten off more than they could chew. Still, we don’t know how many ships they brought, or if anyone escaped.”
“Hmmm,” I said as I turned to look at Elana. “I want you to remind me of this after I conquer the Jotnar. I need to find out about their spy network.”
“Yes, my king,” she replied.
“So here is the cover story,” I said as I turned back to Kasta. “Act like Captain Taangarn and say that our ship was damaged. You’ve repaired it and then limped back to this sector, but you’ll need more extensive repairs before the ship will be battle worthy again. You need to try to figure out from the logs which other ships were in the battle. Claim that our communications were damaged, so you lost audio during the battle, and still don’t have video.”
“And then ask them if we can dock in the battle fortress for repairs?” she asked with a wiggle of her blonde eyebrows.
“You got it. That’s our main goal as soon as we get into their sector. We have to get on the fortress.”
“What about once we are on the fortress?” Elana asked, and her voice was tinted with a bit of concern.
“We’ll figure that out after,” I said. “I’m hoping we can get a spot to dock near the end of the harbor, so we can sneak into the rest of the fortress.” I rose, stretched my back, and then smiled at the group of beautiful women. Their eyes were all fixed on me, and I wondered if I would ever get used to their adoration.
“In between now and then, we have to get rid of all the bodies on the ship and find uniforms to wear.”
“Uhhh, Adam, I think you have forgotten something,” Paula said as she half raised her hand in the air.
“Yeah?” I said, but then she pressed her lips together nervously, and I remembered.
“I thought--”
“We’ll do our dinner tonight,” I said. “Let me know when you are ready on the transponder, the rest of us will work on cleaning the ship.”
“Thank you,” Paula said as she bowed her head slightly. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”
“Me too.” I smiled at her and then turned to everyone else. “Kasta and Zea, I want you to keep looking through the ship’s logs for useful information.”
“Got it,” Zea said.
“Everyone else, we are going to start collecting bodies, so--”
“I’m gonna need to stay in the seat and watch the controls,” Juliette said as she gestured to the terminal. “You know, pilot and all. It’s important that I do pilot things.”
“Juliette and Eve are going to take the top floor,” I continued. “Aasne and Elana will take middle with me, since that’s where the main crew quarters are. Drag all the bodies to the hold outside of the airlock. Kasta, how many did the manifest say were on board?”
“Forty-eight,” she answered.
“Number one is right there,” I said as I pointed to the corpse of the man who had tried to shoot us on the bridge. “He may have moved the bodies somewhere else on this level, but the elevator was stuck when the power went out, so I’m thinking he didn’t get them to the airlock.”
“We will find them,” Eve said as she moved to the other exit door of the bridge that I guessed went to officers’ quarters or offices.
Our group parted ways to complete our chores. Aasne, Elana, and I chatted about the various nuances between the Nordar clans as we went about the crew rooms on the middle floor of the cruiser. We found fourteen bodies in various rooms. They all looked to have died from the vacuum, and their bodies were somewhat preserved.
By the time we pulled all the bodies to the hold’s airlock, Eve and Juliette had started to pull the load out of the elevator. They had found twenty bodies crammed into one of the officers’ rooms, so they hadn’t needed to do much searching.
The bottom floor of the cruiser produced the other fourteen bodies, and we stripped the corpses of weapons before pushing them into the airlock. We couldn’t off load them when we were in warpdrive, but it felt good to get the job completed.
“Now I need to take three showers,” Juliette sighed as she wiped her gloved hands on her jeans.