Chapter 16: Chapter 16; Hope

Alex steps deliberately on the floor, letting her boot squeak as she shifts her weight from her toes to her heal. If she had been trying to hide her presents she would have simply turned off the gravity and the lights, she knew every bolt and panel of her ship so even in the dark she could find her way, but she doesn’t want to be hidden she simply pretends to be hiding. She turns the corner, poking her head out first in an exaggerated pretending play like way to look down the hall, she knows where her quarry is, she is a mother she knows everything.

“I’m going to find you,” she says playfully, in a sing song way, “and I’m going to tickle you.”

The giggle of a child rings out clear and strong from somewhere in the common room, probably. Back when they had bought this ship less than a month after Lerra had been returned, trapped in a wheelchair, to her and only a week or so after she had given birth they had argued violently about why, for Lerra, and why not, for Alex, that they should simply buy another KTS Turtle and modify it to remind them of the Black Star. Alex understood why she would want a ship to remind her of the Black Star, it had been her home for years but for Alex it had been the sight of another complete failure besides they would have to deal with the Sol System Alliance to buy a KTS Turtle and she didn’t want that at all. There was a neutral company that made a similar ship to the Turtle, they had created it as a sort of tribute ship to KTS Turtle, and Lerra would have to install a half way decent tesseract engine in either ship so there was little difference between the two when it came to the work she would have to do. Technically the money was Alex’s and therefore the decision was hers, and in the end they went with the neutral company’s ship.

Lerra was angry at first but when she got to playing with the ship she came to love it, along with the weapons systems that she got to modify along with everything else. Add to all that she could tinker and modify, the ship can carry nearly twice the cargo of the sea turtle and is three times as maneuverable and stealthy making it perfect for black hole runs, which she wanted to keep doing. And which they were about to start soon if she can get one member of their crew ready to go.

She steps into the common room with all the exaggerated movements of a kabuki dancer, attempting to be silent and unseen. She makes her way to the table and bends at the waist as she pulls up the cloth covering, and softening the look at least of the round steal table, and peers under it. There she finds her pray.

She is curled up into as small a ball as she can giggling as her mother crawls in after her and wraps her in her arms hugging her to her chest. “There you are.” She says hugging her as her fingers tickle their way up and down her sides.

“Stop.” She gasps between fits of laughter. “Mommy stop.” She is only two years old but she speaks and acts as if she is closer to eight or nine, a gift of her mixed heritage. She has many, though her height isn’t one of them since she is only just 89 centimeters tall, if you were generous and gives her the last millimeter which depending on how mad she makes Lerra comes and goes by the minute though Alex always gives it to her she is 90 centimeters tall. She takes her looks from Alex for the most part with only hints of Lerra showing through, but they are there, her skin has the slightest green tinge, mainly around the veins closest to her skin, and there are her eyes that are the same red as apples like her “papa’s” wrapped in the same whitish green of Lerra’s. The hair that hangs freely to her waist with only the slightest hint of a curl is thicker than human hair should be able to become but still so much thinner than the willow branch like vines that came from Lerra’s scalp and distinctively without the tiny leaves and flowers that from time to time decorated her “papa’s” hair.

“No.” Alex giggles still fiercely tickling her daughter.

“Mommy.” She begs through the giggles.

“Nope.” Alex says with a smile.

“Mommy.” She begs. “My tummy hurts.”

“Alright.” Alex says with an exaggerated sigh as she stops tickling her daughter. She keeps her hands around her daughter’s waist and pulls her out from under the table with her and plops her on her shoulder. “But now you’re coming with me to take a bath.”

“Do I have to?” She whines.

“Yes,” Alex says playfully, slapping her daughter’s bottom, “you need a bath Hope, you’re the one who decided to take your paints to the walls, again.”

“But they were so dull.” Hope complains as Alex steps into the main corridor and turns them toward their room.

“And you thought finger painted flowers would be better?” Alex asks with a raised eyebrow.

“They looked good in our room.”

As they enter the room Alex sees the flowers, they are bright colorful childlike things that decorate the wall from the floor to about a quarter of the way up, as far as Hope could reach about three months ago when she had decided to paint them in some childlike whim of fancy. “Our room is okay but the rest of the ship is not your canvas, understand sweetheart?”

“Yes mommy.” She says sadly as Alex puts her on the ground.

“Alright, clothes off.” Alex commands as she takes off her own shirt, bathing her daughter has never been the cleanest thing in the world and in the end she usually ends up with just as much water and soap on her as Hope. Hope’s birth had been so smooth the doctors on Red Rock were completely taken aback by the easy, no documented human hybrid birth had been so easy especially when the human was the one carrying the child to term, even the Master Chief’s birth hadn’t been that easy on her mother, then again so few humans had hybrid children so the list of documented cases was understandably small. Her stomach that had grown so large for so long is now back to its taught skin over firm muscles, she doesn’t even have any stretch marks to mar her skin. If no one ever saw Hope, and her resemblance to Alex, no one would guess that she even had ever been pregnant let alone given birth to a daughter. She is pulling down her pants when she notices that Hope is still dressed and pouting. “Well are you going to get undressed or am I going to have to strip you naked myself?”

Hope scowls up at her mother, a rather amusingly old look on such a young and small face and Alex scowls right back at her. Hope figures she isn’t going to win this fight, she never wins this fight, her mother will simply make good on her promise and strip her if she waits too long. Lerra is no better, only she would through her under cold water first to make her want to pull her clothes off her skin as fast as her papa could pull them off. She scowls again but only for a moment before she begins to unbutton her dress and pull it off her thin frame. Like her mother she is more muscle than bone or anything else, when she grows into her adult body she would be not only quite lovely but quite strong, more like her papa Alex always thinks. She takes off her boots and walks to the wall, still in her underwear, and opens a general channel throughout the ship. “Lerra?” She asks of every inch of her vessel.

“I’m right here?” Lerra says from the cockpit locking the communication into a bi-directional pattern rather than omnidirectional one, making the conversation as private as it could ever be.

The light flashes from white to green on the intercom interface that Alex is using in her room to tell her that the communication is coming from the bridge, each location on the ship having its own color. “Hey, I’m going to give your,” that last word she says pointedly, “daughter a bath. Keep us from fling into an asteroid or something.”

“Will do. Anything else captain my captain?”

“Yeah,” Alex says looking at Hope, “tell Rin that the next time she gives Hope paint I’ll make her lick the walls clean.”

“I’ll pass it along.” Lerra says with a smile as she looks at Rin.

Rin glares at her, her arms crossed over her tightly bound and deceptively strong chest yet covered in a truly loose fitting shirt, almost hanging on her fame like it is on a hanger, which is designed never to rip and survive a shotgun bullet at point blank range, which she paid about five thousand credits for after her first job with Alex and Lerra, near to a quarter of her overall take. “You can tell your wife that I can fly a ship just as well as she can.”

Lerra rolls her eyes and points her thumb at the intercom. “The channel’s closed or you could tell her yourself.”

“It is not a vassal’s place to question her shogun.” Rin says flatly.

“I never understood you and your stupid Japanese honor and fealty stuff, the age of the samurai ended millennia ago.”

“And I never understood how and why you choose to take your daughter with you on Black Hole runs, space is no place to raise and child and Black Space more so.”

Lerra and Alex had had this argument with Rin so many times they knew it by heart like the refrain of a popular song that they would play over and over in a space port to try and relax people stressed by the rigors of interstellar travel, theft, or whatever else brought them hundreds of light years from their places of birth. “We keep Hope with us because we both hate living planet side and living on a station is just as bad. Besides Hope was born in space, and I’m fairly certain that she would be crushed by the gravity of a plant and go crazy form felling the inertia of planetary rotation and orbit along with tidal forces and unpredictable weather.”

Rin rolls her eyes at Lerra as it is time for her side of the script. “Your daughter has all the physical genetic traits of your wife, her mother, a heavy gravity worlder. I am fairly certain that she could survive on any planet you put her on like a Cosarian weed.”

“Rin you’re a halfway decent pilot and a great medic but you are far from a mother and until you are we will not continue this discussion.”

“Fine Lerra-domo.” Rin says sharply making the honorific seem like a curse.

Lerra would say something more but she stops when the communicator roars into life with an oncoming message. “Courier ship Gosoha registration C.S. 1786 Ω Resolution of Hope, please respond.”

“This is Courier ship Gosoha registration C.S. 1786 Ω Resolution of Hope, who are you?” Lerra asks sharply.

“My name is Agent Coreance of the United Systems Alliance.” He says flatly.

Alex has told Lerra about Agent Coreance of the Unites Systems Alliance more than once over the years when she had asked her about what happened to her in their super structure. “I know of you and what you did for my Alex,” when she says “my Alex” she reaches for her ring finger like a nervous twitch and begin to rotate the white and rose gold band studded with the honey of amber and the red of ruby to represent Alex’s and her own blood around her finger, “but this is a non-alliance ship so I would like to know what you’re doing out here especially since this station is a human one not under the jurisdiction of either the Unites System Alliance or the Sol Systems Alliance just like this ship. We freelance.”

“If you could lower your weapon’s lock off of my shuttle and allow me to dock I would be more than happy to tell you of my business and I assure you that it is nothing but peaceful.”

Lerra thinks it over for a moment and can’t come up with a decent reason not to let him on board, one agent, even the mythical Agent Coreance wouldn’t be a match for all the guns and weapons of their crew. “Open the port side docking port.” Lerra says sternly as she nods to Rin, she then mutes the microphone and says, “and get the boys down there now.”

Rin grumbles but none the less she opens the port docking port and activates the ships security beacon. When they had purchased the ship the port side cargo hold, like the starboard side cargo bay, had been completely solid. Alex had let Lerra do whatever she wanted to the ship and Lerra took that as an open invitation to go a bit crazy. She had spent a week just cutting the new seam into the ship’s hull to allow it to open upwards in a clam shell pattern which it did now. “Thank you.” Agent Coreance says as he guides his sleek little ship into the docking port.

Lerra flips on the intercom and clicks the dial until the light glows blue. “We have company coming Sweetheart.”

“Oh yeah?” Alex asks before a loud splash and a few smaller splashes allow her enough time to speak again. “Who is it?”

“An Alliance agent that you might know well,” Lerra says with a put upon smile, “his name is Agent Coreance.”

“Stop,” She says to Hope and not Lerra, “Lerra I need you to stall him for a while but I’ll be up there as soon as I can, alright?”

“Make it quick.”

Coreance’s shuttle is an impressive thing that Lerra would more than love to get her hands on but doubts that she can since most likely he is going to use it to get back to where ever he has come from. Its wings fold back like the wings of an insect and then against the ship’s sides so that the shuttle could fit nicely into the larger ship’s small dock with their own ratty shuttle taking up a little too much space for its size. Once it touches down the ports doors fold closed and seal back tight as a drum. About twenty seconds later the intercom blares. “I have successfully docked but can you please ask your crew to let me through?” Agent Coreance asks.

“Crew”? That is a bit of a stretch even given how big Nicola is, sitting down he is near to six feet tall standing he is almost too tall for the ship and a pure blooded one hundred percent human, and a Russian to boot. He had been the one to sell them the ship, being one of the few members of the Sol Systems Alliance who still likes Alex and more to the point understands what it is like to be put into a situation that cannot be controlled and not given a chance to think straight, therefore the death of those marines he does not attribute to her but the attack in general, he had even given her a good deal. Why he had decided to come, and never gave them a chance to debate it, is still beyond Lerra about as much as how a full Commander, such as himself, would be willing take orders from a Lt Commander, like Alex. It could be that his arms are as big as trees, or the fact that he carries a shotgun that rests on his hip like a pistol on one side and a submachine gun that can rip thought a full regiment on the other, though not much else can be seen past his arms if you are looking down the barrel of either gun, or both if he is really pissed at you. “Nicola,” she says over the intercom, “he is safe you can let him though.”

“Are you sure?” He asks his voice sounding like highly accented gravel as he speaks common rather than his native Russian.

“No,” Lerra admits, “but Alex trusts him and she is the captain.” She closes the communication channel and pulls her pistol from the holster on her hip, she then frees the magazine before slamming it back home before she pulls back the slide to prime it and check that the safety is off before repeating the process on her other pistol. She looks over at Rin after feeling her eyes boring into her the entire time she has been working on her guns. “What?”

“Nothing.” She says impishly. “Only should I ready my own weapons.”

“You’re a nurse not a soldier.”

“I am an Alliance Soldier, and a…” She retorts and is about to say “samurai”, holding her katana so tightly, and so much more when Agent Coreance knocks on the door of the cockpit.

“Come in.” Lerra says stopping the diatribe before it started.

The door slides open and Coreance marches in with all the bearing and dignity of a United Systems Agent. “You have a very good crew, very well trained as well. Former Sol System Alliance?” He is ever the investigator but he is not going to get any sap from Lerra without a bigger and sharper drill.

“That is privileged information Agent Coreance,” Lerra says flatly, “I’m not going to tell you anything about them that they will not tell you themselves.”

“The authors of your file noted at your deep rooted distrust of the United Systems Alliance.” He says with the tone of an investigator not a guest. “I did find it strange though given the fact that you were a member of the Zarinian Military Engineering Corp, and therefore you were once part of the United System Alliance.”

“That was more than a life time ago.” Lerra says flatly. “My people out live yours by centuries and we don’t care as much about military standing as you do.”

Agent Coreance puts his arms behind his back and clasps his hands one in the other before she speaks again. “Not many species do.”

As if by some sort of stage direction the bridge door opens and Alex walks in with damp clothing clinging to her skin, in rather provocative places and showing through her shirt at least the outline of her bra which just so happed to be flesh colored, as she towels her hair dry. “You have him at ease, it’s good to see that you two are getting along so well.” They might have been able to slice her sarcasm with a butter knife she is laying it on so thick.

Coreance spins around as soon as he hears the door opening, he expected a lot given what he knows of Alex from their time together but he never expected her to look as she does with her clothing all wet. “I am sorry if I caught you in the shower Alex.”

“It’s okay,” she assures him hanging the towel from her neck, “it wasn’t my shower, not exactly.”

“Mommy!” Hope says with more exacerbation than should have physically been able to have been held by the universe without exploding as she plods into the cockpit, thankfully dressed in a clean pair of jeans and floral print tunic shirt, caring a brush and ribbon in hand. “You need to braid my hair.”

Alex rolls her eyes with almost as much exacerbation as Hope’s voice had carried. “As I was about to say,” she says taking the brush from Hope’s hand and turning her around in front of her and kneeling so she could run the brush through her damp hair, “not that it isn’t great to see the agent of the alliance that got me out of a murder rap every once in a while, why are you here?”

“Ow,” Hope grumbles as Alex pulls through a tough knot and gets a tap on the head with her brush from her mother, not hard but hard enough for her to stop fighting her.

“Now you have something to complain about.” Alex says flatly to her daughter. “Go on Coreance, this one,” she says gently shaking Hope’s head between her hands, “won’t say anymore will she?”

“No.” Hope says as her mother twists her head this way and that.

“Good.” Alex says moving Hope’s head so that it looks like she is nodding, Hope only giggles at her mother.

Coreance actually suppresses a smile at the show put on by Alex and Hope. “Well,” he says coughing into his hand to regain his composure, “as you know it has been two and a half years since your case was closed.”

“Has it?” Lerra asks with fanning disbelief.

“Yeah,” Alex says running the brush through Hope’s hair, “by my count it’s been two years, five months and, ten days by the Sol calendar, remember Hope’s birthday wasn’t too long ago.”

Lerra snaps and wags her finger at Alex. “I think you’re right, what did I get you this year?”

“A doll of Xar’rin.” She says with a broad smile.

“I still don’t see the resemblance.” Alex jokes to Lerra before she looks up at Coreance while still pulling the brush through her daughter’s hair. “Why did you bring up something we would all like to forget?”

“I can understand and respect how and why you would not like to be reminded of your time in Red Rock, but what you might not know is that the evidence from you’re case had been released, which means that I have come to you with a few things from the Black Star.” He knells and opens up the case he brought with him into the cockpit. He looks down into the case and finds the shot gun that Alex had taken with her from the Iowa and onto the Black Star, the weapon that had put a bullet in the stomach of the woman she loves, and married. “I believe this is yours.”

Alex looks down at her shotgun, the lengths of Hope’s hair still in her hand and between her fingers. “Keep that thing, or shot it out of an air lock for all I care, I just don’t want it anymore, I don’t even want to see it.”

“I understand,” Coreance says returning the gun to the case and pulling from it a crystal brain from the foam, “and this is for you Lerra.”

“That isn’t what I think it is, is it?” She asks with reverence looking at the crystal brain.

“It is a class three crystal memory core from a class one Terazon Android.” He says with the equivalent of a smile for his people on his face.

“Arthur,” she says as if she is calling for a friend across a station port as she takes the brain in reverent shaking hands, she looks at Alex and speaks again with a quivering voice, “I’ve got to go.”

“Go.” Alex says with a smile as she finally found the strength of will to begin braiding Hope’s hair again. “I understand.”

Lerra grips the brain reverently and hurries past Coreance and out into the rest of the ship making her way toward the starboard cargo bay and her pet project, a rebuilt body for Arthur with all the bells and whistles that she has always wanted to give him but never had the time or the money to do. Corenace looks at Alex confusion clearly evident on his face. “I hope I did not cause her any undue emotional stress.”

“Just the opposite.” Alex says smiling as she finishes Hope’s braid. “I think that you might have saved her.” She turns away from him to look at her daughter’s hair as he begins to wrap the length of ribbon around it before continuing. “Arthur was the first thing she ever found and salvaged, when he gave his life for ours back on the Black Star it hurt her, bad, almost as much as losing either Hope or me would, but you, you’ve gone and brought her back. Thank you for bring her back to me.” She finishes, tying to the ribbon into the end of the braid, kisses her daughter’s head, and pats her butt. “There you go sweetheart.”

“Thank you mommy.” She says with a smile and runs toward Rin. “How do I look Rin-sama?”

“Like a princess Hope-chan” Rin says with a smile.

“So,” Coreance says with a cough bring the focus of the room back to himself, “I have helped her.” Coreance says rubbing his chine as if he has a beard and not mandibles. “Good, but what about you, have I helped you?”

“Me?” Alex’s asks rising to her feet. “I’m fine, you can’t give me anything that will make me happier than Lerra and Hope do every day.” She smiles as she looks over at Hope twirling around on her toes for Rin to admire her, her fingers brushing against her own wedding band a mirror of Lerra’s. “Besides I have a ship to run, a crew to feed, and a shipment to deliver so that I have the money to do both would you get back on your shuttle so we can get back to work, before our load of fruit start to get to ripe, the cargo bay is already starting to smell like a orchard’s compost heap.”

“About that,” Coreance says trying and failing to be coy, “The Alliance knows of your deliveries, and of your crew, and more importantly how you have been taking bounties on pirates whenever and wherever you can.”

“It’s not like we have been hiding our actions.” She says as Hope runs over to her, not stopping in time and running into her and bumping into her leg and wrapping her arms around them.

“The Alliance knows that much,” he says flatly, “and that is why they sent me to see you, we have a rapport of sorts.”

“What does the Alliance want?” She says a bit too sharply, pressing Hope up against her leg.

“Me,” he says as if she hadn’t put a bite in her voice, he must have remembered how she got from their time in the interrogation room back on Red Rock, “on your ship. They want me to get you to become a privateer for the Alliance.”

“Or what?” She growls, Rin besides them flicks her katana out of its scabbard an inch or so with her thumb in preparation of battle.

“Or nothing?” He says flatly and Rin looks to Alex who nods and she clicks the sword back fully into the scabbard.

She rolls her eyes and looks at Coreance before looking down at her daughter looking up at her and sighs. “I will be their privateer but nothing more. As for you I assume it as a package deal so,” she leans over and flicks on the intercom and works it until it was back to omni-directional rather than unidirectional to her room as Larra had left it, the light shining white. “Nicola we have a new guest joining our little crew, could you show him to one of the spare rooms.”

“Certainly,” he says with a jovial tone, “but what about the one in the back of his shuttle.”

“You brought someone with you?” She asks with a raised eye brow, and Rin readies her sword once again.

“He is my criminal informant, and he will stay in the shuttle for now.”

She turns back to the intercom and calls to Nicola again. “Leave him where he is but come and get Corance.”

“Aye ma’am.”

“You remember the ground rules from the Black Star?”

“Of course.”

“Then you know my rules, welcome to the Resolution of Hope.”