/ Chapter 5 / 

The half dormant godling stirred. Perhaps she had caused her human host a bit of bad luck during the primitive spatial transfer procedure, but it was out of consideration – the godling would subtly return it as good luck at a critical point to hopefully save her host, and then she could explore more of this very interesting restricted Class H universe. Maybe she could write her thesis on it? Yea. The Realm Council had actually wanted her assigned to a boring cluster of Class B's managing a so called "system", with numbers and levels and stuff... how dreary! 

She hoped they wouldn't find her. Thankfully the Universe didn't seem to have noticed her yet at least, but she really couldn't be active for too long poking around, and if she messed around and disturbed things to much then wouldn't it hurt her thesis? It seemed a bit irresponsible. Thinking this, she resumed her half dormant watchdog mode.

–o–

Feeling a bit mucky after waking up, Teu put on a fresh pair of panties. They had like a hundred of them onboard after all. Normally 722 would sleep without clothes but somehow she had forgotten and just blacked out on a blanket on the floor, face down like before, not even remembering to tell someone to watch the sensors. Fortunately she had only slept for less than five hours, which was normal for the efficient worker constructs. 

The perhaps strangest thing about the hip huggers was that they didn't leave a lasting mark on her. Well, she supposed the strangeness rather had to do with her own skin – any marks pretty much disappeared within minutes. 722 had wore these things for decades – only going without during sleep hours – and Teu half expected the result of such prolonged use would make her hip look more like an old tree grown around barb wire, but no. Anyways, she wouldn't complain. In her last life she had reached the age where the mark from a fingernail pressed into the skin would linger for far too long.

In addition, this body seemed a bit stronger than expected. The factory workers never exercised beyond doing a few warmup movements in the morning, but Teurana of course had a whole routine she was forced to stick to due to her line of work. Now she was on her 110th push up and just felt more hungry than tired. She would need someone to sit on her back, or she could perhaps switch to one armed push ups, or hand stands.

The workout pass lasted a bit longer than planned. Since she had thoughtfully dumped her only top before working up a sweat she had to shoo out the girls that came to gawk at her apparently mystifying and pointless activities. She had actually needed to drink some water and eat two meal bars to keep going... and also change her panties again as they eventually got sweat soaked and turned into an even more embarrassing spectacle than they already were. The ship fortunately had a shower cylinder and water recycler on board. 

It suddenly occurred to her that working out might indeed be entirely pointless if worker constructs had some sort of natural fitness balancing ability. All the workers on the platforms had pretty much the same build, after all.

During the day the others were getting fidgety with nothing to do, so they set up a pretend factory using the spare panties as props. Teu felt a bit sorry for them, seeing them fall back on trite comfort routines like that.

Teu then remembered the suspicious panty she had hurriedly stuffed in the screw driver kit box. She joined the so called "QC department" at a table and spread the panty out. She soon found that she had been right – there was something hidden in the top seam at the back. 

–– "Whatcha doing?", Firefly interrupted, with Braids flanking on the other side.

–– "Can someone fetch me a seam ri-", Teu started.

601 who had now also leaned in slapped a seam ripper on the table. 601 had been a seamstress just like 722, and must have brought a private kit. The instrument looked a bit like a tiny fork, but with one of the prongs being bulbous and the other one sharp like a blade. Teu carefully started undoing the seam but soon everyone was so far leaned in that they were almost obscuring the work light.  

–– "There's something in there!"

–– "How did these pass QC?"

–– "Did a broom bristle get trapped inside?"

–– "Perhaps it's a secret note?"

–– "No way, it would be way too small to write on!"

Teu managed to fish out a flexible strip of film, two centimetres in length but only a millimetre wide.

–– "It's indeed a secret message, but it's not hand written.", Teu clarified, shooing the others back while she carefully held the microfilm up to the light, squinting to no avail.

–– "Hah!", she suddenly yelled, abandoning the dissected panty and running back to the cockpit area – the others following tightly behind.

She flapped open the ship's manual with one hand, finding a dog eared page. "Microstrip Reader – Operation Instructions."

After opening a dust latch on a console, she carefully inserted the strip, then flipped a bulb switch. A display came on with a buzz. It was probably just a magnification projector, but everyone ooh'd and aah'd seeing the contents of the film appear. A little wheel on the console could move the view along the length of the strip, a bit like viewing an ancient scroll.
 
Only Teu's excitement truly lasted however – after 30 minutes the others had gradually returned to their activities, 601 leaving last. The film contained a dry report on some archeologic find related to "High Goblins". There were a few star charts and a colour picture of a damaged derelict ship looking like a red thorn with a ring going around its axis. Despite its 12000 years of age, the derelict somehow still had an active shield so no one had even been able to board it. The empire had instead set up a monitoring station and a defensive perimeter consisting of fake pirates who would serve to ward off looters.

As a precursor race, High Goblins were wielding highly potent technology. If a counter-imperial movement got their hands on it, things could get very dangerous.

She didn't really know what to do with this information at the moment, or why it had been planted on her.

The ship-day passed into ship-night without incident. They ate the meal bars with gusto. This time Teu remembered to undress and get someone to watch the sensors before falling asleep.

She was getting a replay of the dream with the bath again and got to the part with the rubber ducky. This time however it grew enormous and spoke in a grand voice, as if a herald of the universe itself.

–– "Panty-vision! You have gained panty-vision! If you focus hard you can see peoples panties even if they are covered up! Con~gratulations!"

What? Wait. Hadn't the chummy fat fellow in her dream mentioned something about getting a useless cheat? Transmigrators always got a cheat right? Hold on – this was it? Panty-vision? It was indeed a useless cheat... especially since she had started in a place where no one covered up to begin with!

601's loud yelp tore her from the dream replay and she immediately forgot it. Teu had taught 601 to watch the sensors as she seemed the most interested by tech. 

–– "There's a dot!", she pointed.

Teu slid up into the pilot seat, remaining wrapped in the sleeping blanket, then blinked her eyes into focus. There was indeed a dot. With a little skull next to it.

–– "What does the skull mean?", 601 asked nervously as she leaned in.

Teu ran the cursor over the contact and selected it.

"FE2-990-F8 : Warning: Known pirate vessel. Mark 2 Falcon Explorer. Likely specs: Crew: 1-7. Weapons: 45mm lancer cannon, torpedos, point defence flak. Main thrust: 0.2"

–– "Well, this is... bad. We're outgunned."

601 looked worried despite probably not understanding the term, but Teu suddenly perked up a bit.

–– "I think it's best to put the pedal to the metal... this is a courier ship after all – our engine is bigger!"

The pirate ship must have come from a nearby stretch of the central asteroid belt, but fortunately it wasn't able to intercept and block from straight on. Ship sensor ranges were a bit limited, a fact which pirates exploited for their sneak attacks according to the ship's manual. By Teu's rough estimate their faster Wing Courier would just about be able to slip past the pirate ship and enter the inner parts of the system, but they would probably still pass within effective shooting range.

She worked the controls and re-oriented the wing so the smaller side surface faced the assailant. Then she kept slightly nudging the vector controls to keep the ship on an unpredictable path. Occasionally she started firing pot shots at the pirate using an especially complicated analog sight with a vector compensator. There were a number of factors to consider, such as the Wing Courier's current speed, the speed of the ballistic projectiles, and the speed and acceleration of the target... the latter being unknown quantities, and over great distances the imprecision of a physical cannon had a huge effect of course. 

There were mainly two types of cannons used in space duels: penetrators and shotguns. The turret was fitted with a 30mm shotgun, which made hitting something easier, but the damage wasn't so good according to the ship's manual. It was more meant for discouragement. A lucky shot could perhaps disable the target. The good thing with a shotgun was that one had a lot of shots. Also, because it was turret mounted, it could fire continuously. 

The pirate ship probably had a sort of front mounted tank buster and needed to slightly reorient the entire ship briefly for each shot, losing a bit of speed. Technically, if the ship flew straight ahead and fired a projectile, then kept accelerating, it would eventually catch up with its own projectile.

Teu kept firing. The turret mounted cannon was surprisingly not that loud, but it still lightly shook and twisted the ship with each shot. She didn't want to alarm the others too much, so she just told them, "Relax, I'm peppering.", and left it at that.

Teu regretted having started firing way to early as now the ammunition was halfway spent and maybe she would be out once reaching the ideal alignment point. She regretted it even more once sensors picked up what it labeled a "guided torpedo launch". Shooting down one of those must be even harder. 

Then suddenly she didn't regret being such a spendthrift. One of her early wild shots arrived at its destination and apparently hit the torpedo directly after launch. Soon after the pirate ship stopped accelerating.

She kept up the evasive manoeuvres for a while but the pirate ship really did appear to be dead in the water, drifting mostly system inward.

After four hours of deceleration planet Nez'oh and its one land mass could be seen on the rearward visi-nav screen. Thankfully an autopilot could handle the finer points of matching orbital velocity with the planet's moon station.

The moon reminded Teu of either Phobos or Deimos and was about as large – some 7 kilometres. It had an entry port surrounded by blinking lights. She followed the docking procedure in the ship's manual.

Fortunately she didn't scratch up the inside of their docking bay. She even remembered to unfold the landing gears before gravity came on. When the docking clerk had almost reached the ship, she realised that she had forgotten something. She was not wearing any pants. Judging by Naxxel, Beutraze, and people in pictures, pants and skirts were definitely a thing in this universe. She wrangled on Beutraze's suit post-haste, wiggled on the low heels, breathed out and opened the ship's boarding door, wearing one of Teurane's business smiles.

A young man in a vividly orange porter uniform stood outside consulting a clipboard.

–– "Captain... Beutraze?", he inquired, shooting a disinterested glance.

–– "Indeed!" 

–– "Crew?" 

–– "Four total,", she said, then hastily added, "the others won't be visiting the station. It's just me."

–– "Alright."

He immediately worked a large purse around his body, and zipped it open.

–– "Docking fee is 780."

She disappeared for a while then returned and dropped two of the "1000" bars into the purse.

–– "Thank you.", he said matter-of-factly, and left.

Then he suddenly halted with his back facing her, just twisting his head a bit.

–– "Our long range sensors picked up some activity out there today. Know anything about it?"

After considering the matter for a while, Teu came clean.

–– "We ran into a pirate. A Falcon Explorer."

–– "Falcon Explorer you say?"

She could see him raising an interested eyebrow as he fully turned around.

–– "...Did you catch the ID?", he asked.

–– "990... something? I think we may have popped it."

–– "Popped... it you say? Do you have a last known trajectory or log?"

–– "I suppose so. Is it important?", Teu wondered, not wanting people coming on board snooping around.

–– "I'll... have to buzz boss."

The docking clerk rushed off with an uncanny walking pace. Not a minute later a very large man in an ill fitting sheriff type uniform came running up.

–– "Oy, you got old Jojo-Jim! I can't believe it. That bugger's been troublin' us since years now. Just sits there out in the belt bein' all sneaky. Tell you what, if we find him where you left him driftin' you will get the reward that's been put up since Mary Zu fell off the bow of the Tintonic and fed the fishes!"

–– "Huh? That's... Wait, How... How much is the reward again?", Teu asked, feeling something stir – she just missed out on that 90 million reward for the embassy job after all.

–– "50000. Taxed. So maybe just shy of 40000 for you."

–– "I'm gonna need to see the log tho. And a body.", he added.

–– "One moment.", Teu sighed. 

She made sure the girls were shut into Beutraze's quarters, then cleaned up the path up to the cockpit.

The large man who hadn't even introduced himself squeezed through the docking door, twisting sideways, then proceeded towards the cockpit in a hunched posture, eyeing the luxury cabins.

–– "Carryin' some fine folk eh?"

–– "Yeah, we're just making a short stop."

–– "Won't pry, lady.", he parried, raising a pair of big hands.

He bent in and waited as Teu worked to bring up the ship's log on one of the CRTs.

–– "Fine ship.", he idled.

–– "This is what you need?", Teu asked, indicating a plot showing the moment FE2-990-F8 was disabled.

He squinted and then brought out a notebook, taking down a few vectors, then he squinted again.

–– "And some fine shooting!", he finally guffawed rather than answering the question, also retracting a hand he was probably going to slam her back with.

–– "Eherm, we'll send out some scouts to confirm."

Then he stood up to leave and hit his head on the turret mount. DONG!

–– "Oof. Anyways, have a good stay and don't get in trouble... generous lady.", he winked knowingly.

Rubbing his scalp, he slunk out with the elegance of a boulder rolling down a mountain.

She was glad she managed to pick a system with less rigid regulations as she hadn't found any sort of ID in Beutraze's belongings. And she was pretty sure worker constructs weren't supposed to run around on their own.

Teu wasn't comfortable leaving the girls alone for too long without anything to do, so she'd have to pick up something quick to keep them settled. Snacks and magazines, probably. Maybe some actual clothes?

She had felt a bit sorry for the worker constructs a while now and wanted to widen their horizons. On the next stop  they would perhaps all be able to disembark. Right now she was probably the only one who could mimic normal human behaviour though.

She said her goodbyes, exited the ship, and entered the station proper.

–o–

Presently, in the quite elsewhere...

Grezuul'zwar dodged a half eaten and still wiggling slapfelthonk thrown by Beewul-xu'uhvu.

– "Incompetence! You know who I just got a call from? The Realm Council High Seat! You know what it asked me? Whether I liked my membrane. Said it collects membranes, and got quite a few from my predecessors."

Grezuul'zwar was so startled that its yathrak-juice leaked out of its undergills. 

– "The- the simpleform got incredibly, incredibly lucky sir. It was almost as if... there was another actor."

Beewul-xu'uhvu narrowed its tertiary eyes into vertical slits.

– "We don't need this."

Grezuul'zwar coughed and brought up its tablet.

– "...however, we have just about managed to set up a second situation and this time the threat level is significantly higher. The chaos team is quite proud of it – they used a speck of dust to-"

– "If this doesn't work, I'll make sure your membrane goes into the High Seat's collection first."

/ End of Chapter /