CMR Chapter 3

The RSCC Seelie was a YSLU Deepspace One-Family Caravan, more commonly called a 'Doffey.' As much as Crenshaw wanted to be derisive when he said it, he was conscious of the fact that he'd been saving up for years for one of his own. His jobs often took him offworld, and the costs of booking mass transit were prohibitive. It was that travel budget, in fact, that kept knocking his finances down the tubes like a fisherman banging the bucket to keep the crabs from climbing out.

"Maybe I should get into the spinwash business," he mused to Dolly. "Clearly pays better."

"It's likely stolen," Dolly mused back, looking around. "There are signs of aftermarket modifications that don't match the current decor."

They were sitting in the middle of the Seelie's three habitat compartments. The front compartment was the cockpit, which was occupied by CeeDee herself and her strange little companion. The rear compartment was a hygiene pod; a sonic shower with a fold-down toilet in one wall. The middle was where the magic happened, if one believed in magic or euphemisms. There was a couch that folded out into a bed, a kitchenette that had been swallowed by some sort of chemistry lab, and a card table that folded into the floor. For the kitchenette, only a single extended shelf with a cheap hotplate served any culinary purpose. The whole interior smelled of frankincense, patchouli, lavender, and something that wasn’t quite rotten eggs, a smell that seemed to emanate from a particular drawer that made Crenshaw nervous whenever he looked directly at it.

"She's a fraud, obviously," he nodded, puzzling it out, "But she doesn't seem like an outright thief to me. Maybe she just bought it used."

"Maybe," Dolly relented, crossing her legs and resumed scanning SolarNet on her holocomm. She was dozens of articles deep on some black-background spooky website about kthoniker culture.

Clearance had apparently been given because the Seelie lifted off. Something was misaligned with the contragrav thrusters, because the ship bucked and sputtered dangerously during its ascent. After a few minutes, they breached the upper atmosphere and the gravity went from planetside to artificial with a nauseating twist.

"Anything useful on the net?" Crenshaw asked, hopefully. 

"It's all so contradictory," Dolly complained. "The logic doesn't make sense, and much of it is clearly entertainment-focused fiction. I'm afraid that I will be unlikely to provide a check if she attempts to mislead us."

"You wouldn't have a chance anyway." CeeDee tittered, slipping through the hatch into the central cabin. She passed by them and switched on the hotplate. "I'm a world-class liar."

Crenshaw glanced nervously at the hatch, then back at her. "Shouldn't you be flying this thing?"

She shrugged. "We're in queue for the Waygates. It's an autopilot job for the next few hours. If anything comes up, Zixie will handle it."

"The doll?" Crenshaw asked, incredulously. "I put up with the snark at the stall because my life wasn't on the line. Why are you letting the doll drive?"

"I've got a tandem nexus," CeeDee lied, smoothly. She tapped the side of her head. "For stress, you know. Anyway my consciousness bounces between my pretty skull and hers a thousand times per second. If anything comes up, it'll be just like it was me behind the stick."

The caravan jittered, and Crenshaw tried briefly to imagine what 'space turbulence' would be before giving up. "Cold comfort," Crenshaw mused, absently patting his jacket for his flask. "So, might as well give me the details. What's this weird critter in the jar and why is someone paying me more than I make in a year to go get it?"

CeeDee's eerie hazel eyes glittered and she reached into an overhead compartment, pulling a square of fabric down. Thumbing a button on the side, she inflated it into a lumpy misshapen chair and dropped it on the deck opposite the couch. When it had fully inflated, she dropped easily into it, somehow making the move seem almost as graceful as it was playful. She kicked the table and it lowered halfway, providing her a footrest. She reached to a low cabinet and produced a mechanical cylinder attached to a hose. She bit the nozzle on the hose and blew a sweet smoke which briefly warred with the ingrained incense scent to fill the cabin with an herbal aroma. "Are you sure you're ready to hear it, Scampi?"

Crenshaw rolled his eyes, loosening his collar before sitting back in an attempt to mimic her relaxed posture. His tapping foot betrayed his agitation, but he didn't care. "I don't really have to be ready. I need to know because the other spookies, hucksters and grave robbers after it are gonna be motivated by this nonsense. So, spill it."

CeeDee shrugged, expression turning calculating. "Your funeral. You know that you don't have to believe in demons to be eaten by one, right?"

Crenshaw snorted, then folded his arms across his chest. "You really are good. I can't tell if you're caught up in your own spinshow or not. I guess it really doesn't matter. An antique's an antique, and the more people believe it matters the happier my client will be. So why this ugly little thing?"

"That's what it is," CeeDee began, her voice dropping low and even. It was the voice she used in SolarNet streams when doing voice-overs and B-roll for haunted hunts and spooky stories. "It's called a Rat-Thing, a familiar bound into the body of a rodent. In this case, I'd say a capromys pilorides, a Hutia from Terra. Banana rat. The Caller brings down an indentured daemon and puts it into the rat, which makes it something new."

Crenshaw fought to keep his eyes steady. It obviously amused her when he rolled them and he was already feeling a bit grumpy from her smirk. He told himself that was why he couldn't stop staring at her lips, anyway. "Why put a demon in a rat?" he asked.

"Not demon, daemon. Old word, the vowel's an æsc. A daemon is a thing of Envy, it hungers for knowledge and secrets. Parasitically feeds on those who also crave secrets. You know... nosy guys like you." She snuggled back into her lump of a chair. "Also Callers. We look for all kinds of secrets, you know. Hidden names and recipes, things mankind was never meant to know. So, way back, someone figured out how to make them useful."

"By binding it to a rat?" Dolly asked. She wasn't incredulous, her face betrayed no opinion at all. She was simply collecting the data.

"They cling to their knowledge, you see. Hold it. Store it, really, and if you can subjugate one then you can pull that knowledge out when you need it. Like having a database stored outside of space and time. They're not really discerning though, and they pick up all kinds of useless information. When you bind one into a Rat-Thing, it loses all that data but keeps the hunger, becomes dependent on the Caller. Then the Caller can stuff it full of whatever knowledge they want to. Rituals, names, secrets, recipes, whatever. The mutation gives them a swollen little brain but there's still a part of them in Redspace, storing an obscene amount of data. More than any dataslate or server."

"So what good's a dead one?" Crenshaw asked, impatiently. "Even if any of this wasn't crazy, a dead one can't give any secrets, right?"

"You'd be surprised, Scampi." CeeDee answered with a soft giggle.

Crenshaw and Dolly exchanged a glance, then he forced his voice to be casual. "And what about the stylus?"

She bit the nozzle again, buying herself time. Crenshaw had seen her flinch, watched her make the decision not to answer too quickly. She held the smoke this time, then blew it out slowly. "Just a bit of trash attached to the bottle, nothing to worry about." Dolly coughed, drawing a laugh from CeeDee. "If you're looking for subtle ways to signal that I'm lying, maybe think of something other than making your robot cough?"

"Synth," Crenshaw corrected her, but CeeDee thought she noticed an uncomfortable wince from Dolly. "And most people can't tell what she is at a glance, so it's useful. Regardless, you're lying. What's with the stylus?"

"I'm sure we'll find out together," CeeDee answered mysteriously. She made a slow, exaggerated show of parting her lips to slide the nozzle in when Zixie's voice called out from the front.

"Customs! Hey, we got customs, boss!"

CeeDee swore and shoved the cylinder back into its cabinet before springing to her feet and rushing to the hatch. "What did you do to get their attention?" CeeDee demanded.

"I didn't do anything! They were on that ship over there, the gray one, and then they skipped through everything else and came straight at us!"

The inspection ship wasn't projecting a casual air. Its gun ports were open, and the flash on the comms was the authoritative channel. It would be illegal to ignore it. As Crenshaw and Dolly crowded the hatch, CeeDee dropped into the pilot's chair and flicked the switch to answer. She squinted at the ID on her comm display and did an admirable job of sounding casual. "Customs Sentinel Three-Niner-One, this is the Seelie. How can I help you?"

"Cut all power to engines and weapons and prepare to be boarded for inspection."

CeeDee's normally blushed complexion paled and she chewed her lip.

"You can outmaneuver them, boss," Zixie encouraged. "Just kick the engines and make for the waygate!"

"Not happening," CeeDee shook her head. "Those guns would shred this ship before we even got going. We've got to get boarded. I'll talk my way out."

"That's a great idea!" Zixie cheered, clapping her little articulated porcelain hands with a tiny clack.

CeeDee flipped the comm again. "Powering down. Don't know what all the fuss is, boys, but you're welcome in my boudoir any time!" She cut power to the engines and weapons, not that the latter would have been any threat to the customs ship. It drifted closer, dwarfing the caravan as it settled overhead. An umbilicus snaked from the bottom of the customs ship, curving around the Seelie like a python before latching on to her airlock. A few moments later, the light switched on requesting entry. 

CeeDee pushed past Crenshaw and Dolly, who reluctantly crowded into corners to stay out of the way. Crenshaw prepared his excuses for being on a ship probably packed to the gills with contraband. Dolly set her swords upright in the corner behind them, where they could be reached but wouldn't be immediately threatening. CeeDee smoothed her clothes and hair nervously and then practically transformed before Crenshaw's eyes. She dropped into a sensual slouch, a few more adjustments to her clothes mussed them artfully, and an easy smile tugged at her lips. She produced a small spritzer and gave herself two pumps, wetting her neck. She keyed the hatch.

The hatch slid open to reveal two men and a woman in Ringside Army Command tricolor camouflage under black body armor—standard for local milspec enforcers. They pushed past CeeDee without preamble, probably wanting to get away from the vulnerability of the umbilicus, and the already cluttered space seemed filled with bodies.

"Clara Dexis Wardyn?" one of the men demanded. "Your registration for this vehicle?"

"Of course," she purred, sliding past him to get to the cockpit. She pressed closer than necessary, putting a hand on his hip and bringing her jaw close to his lips. He stood rigidly, jaw clenched. 

Crenshaw glanced at Dolly, who was staring at the deck near the airlock hatch. Something was wrong. The set of the inspector’s jaw and the rigidity of his stance promised hatred and violence, but his eyes were dull and unfocused. Crenshaw looked at the other two, and it was the same story. There was no life in their gaze whatsoever.

CeeDee returned from the cockpit and sauntered up to him, handing him a digital key. He slipped it into his holocomm and checked the authenticity. Crenshaw was relieved to see a green light indicating that the registration checked out.

"You are all three under arrest," the inspector announced, "If you resist, you will be killed."

CeeDee recoiled, cringing away and looking around in a panic. "Now wait a minute, handsome..."

Crenshaw started to object, but Dolly coughed. He looked her way, and then followed her gaze down to the deckplates. The officers had tracked blood into the Seelie. It crusted their boots, but they hadn't just walked in it. Now that he was looking, he could see the precise little tears in their uniforms. What he had thought was just the splotchy brown portion of their tricolors were bloodstains from penetrating wounds. These officers were dead. "Necroids!" he called out.

Necroids, corpses reanimated by nanites, were a favorite of terrorists. They generally didn't have much of the original personality left, and they were almost always obedient. The walking corpses raised their weapons in unison, and everything seemed to happen at once.

CeeDee cried out, dropping to her knees to present a smaller target. Dolly targeted the leader with a horizontal slice straight from the draw, then a vertical blow landing on the man's shoulder. The katana, sometimes regarded as a comical collector's item for fans of genre vids, was lethally functional. The monomolecular edge was molecules across and sliced through armor, flesh, and bone easily with Dolly's enhanced strength and flawless form behind it.

Even as the man fell away in four nearly bloodless chunks, Crenshaw was drawing his own weapon. The revolver didn't have a chip in it, he trusted his own aim more than he'd ever trust a computer. The 15mm self-propelled gyroc rounds filled the cabin with a cloying smoke from their exhaust trails, but in a space this cramped he couldn't miss. He fired a shot through the second man, then one into the woman. The rounds were simple, nothing fancy, and they didn't do much more than punch holes.

The man recovered first, raising a boarding carbine toward Crenshaw's face. He cursed loudly and with real venom as he hauled the revolver back onto the man, firing the remainder of his ammunition. Most of the panicked fire shattered against the man's breastplate. The final round went through the man's head, shattering the skull and sending chunks in all directions. The man tipped over, but the remaining woman ignored the hole in her abdomen just beneath the breastplate and laid on the trigger. Rapid flashes of red light peppered Crenshaw, who raised his hand to shield his face. He stumbled back, smoking holes opening in his coat. 

He heard Dolly cry out, but over the gunfire and the shouting he heard CeeDee's voice reverberating with an echoing cadence. "Rizrn! Iz talleru mi zatai!" There was a sudden oppressive air of menace, a droning sound halfway between a canine snarl and cicadas' calling. There was a wet crunch and then the carbine stopped. Crenshaw lowered his arm to see that the remaining inspector had no face, just a ragged wound that oozed with ruined brain. Dolly was in front of her, slicing efficiently even as the dead woman was collapsing. 

The after-combat stillness was oppressive. Dolly darted to Crenshaw's side as he slid down the wall, clutching at his chest where a wet stain was spreading. His pale face twisted into a mask of pain and sorrow.

CeeDee grabbed a first aid kit from an overhead compartment and dropped to her knees beside him. "How are you still alive?!" she demanded, opening the kit.

"Layers and layers of nanoweave," he groaned, reaching into his coat. "This getup isn't just stylish, it's functional. Wouldn't have held up much longer, but I'm alive."

Dolly, sat back on her haunches. If Crenshaw didn't know better, he'd say she was relieved. He chuckled at the thought and pulled his flask out of his pocket, looking through the hole at CeeDee. "Don't suppose you've got anything worth drinking around this tub? We've got to report this, and I don't want to have to explain this crap sober."

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