Creative Indulgences

Creative Indulgences

Philippa Ballantine

Contents

Also by Philippa Ballantine

Thanks to the Patrons

Last/First

A Ghost of a Chance

Character Assassin

The Oak and Child

Crones and Children

Into the Park

A Fraction of Space

Hatching

Mystery at the La Salle

The Last Detente

Holy Bodies

The River Door

Scarlet Skies

A word from Philippa

About the Author

Published by Imagine That! Studios 2019

Copyright © 2019 by Philippa Ballantine

Cover Art and Design by OliviaPro

Interior Layout by Imagine That! Studios

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental. Any actual places, products or events mentioned are used in a purely fictitious manner.

Also by Philippa Ballantine

Books of the Order

Geist

Spectyr

Wrayth

Harbinger

Eidolon (coming soon)

The Chronicles of Art

Chasing the Bard

Digital Magic

The Shifted World

Hunter and Fox

Kindred and Wings

Fragile Gods

Immortal Progeny

Immortal Sisters (coming 2019)

The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences (with Tee Morris)

Phoenix Rising

The Janus Affair

Dawn’s Early Light

The Diamond Conspiracy

The Ghost Rebellion

Operation Endgame

Verity Fitzroy and the Ministry Seven (with Tee Morris)

The Curse of the Silver Pharaoh

The Mystery of Emerald Flame

The Secret of the Monkey God (coming 2019)

Anthologies (with Tee Morris)

The Books and Braun Dossier

Magical Mechanications

Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales from the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences

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Thanks to the Patrons

Without all of you, there would no collection. This collaboration between myself and my readers has been invigorating, and stretched my writing in ways I could never have anticipated.

So thanks to the following

Ryan M Cherry

Philipp Dunkel

Nobilis and Dee Reed

Just Erik

Zev Rumstein

Paul Fischer

Annette Holland

Martin Insulander

Chard Lowden

Lawrence Tagrin

Christina Payton

Roger Ballantine

J Lynn Baker

Teresa Horne

Paige

Beth

Anthony Downs

Julio Capa

Matthew J Drake

Mildred Cady

Rosemary Tizledoun

Mike Dunham

Maryellen Burdwood-Porter

Scott Kitchen

Jessica Wilson

Kolleen Kilduff

James Westbrook

Steve Saylor

Davide Mana

Pia Zimmermann

David Medinnus

Jon Krupp

Last/First

Staring at the freighter was like glancing at something missing and then forgotten. Leaning forward Captain Tennison Montague pressed her hand against the side of the porthole and frowned.

Outlined against the burnt orange of the planet below, the ship looked insignificant, battered and on its last legs. If ships had legs.

It was just like any other freighter they’d raided a hundred times, yet it had the rightness of a missing tooth, or a hole burned in her memory. The question remained; was it her failing, elderly brain or something more significant?

One more shot and her engines should be out. Pilot Aly’naam glanced across at Montague, her tail curled over her shoulder with the tip flicking slowly from side to side.

Take it, Montague said, pushing away from the porthole with a slight grunt. She’ given into a partial flesh body replacement last time they’d made station-fall, but it didn’t help her bones. They were as old as her brain.

Aly’naam’s tail now quivered fractionally as she punched in the targeting co-ordinates. Bysshe was the fastest and best armed pirate craft in the system; a match for any warship the Conglomerates bothered to send out this far from the Core. Knocking out an old freighter’s remaining engine was so far below a challenge, it was like scratching, yet the pilot still got a visceral thrill from aiming at something... anything.

The Melange Collective were outer-rimmers who whole heartedly embraced physiological enhancement. Each of their members was so specialized for their job that any exercising of it was a glorious rush. Aly’naam was getting a hit of physical enjoyment from punching out the remaining light on the ship before them.

Many of Montague’s fellow captains had given up control of their ships to AIs, but she considered the Collectives pilots even better than some emotionless machine. It was an indiscernible something Montague couldn’t quite put her finger on. Like the freighter before them.

The cannons fired with pinpoint accuracy, and the engines blipped out of existence.

The captain scratched the pilot on her head, a gesture that could have been deadly to the wrong member of her crew. Luckily it was ‘job well done’ sign within the Collective.

Pull us alongside, and get ready to break through their airlock, she said, making her way towards the door. I’m going down to join the raiding party.

Captain? Aly’naam called, but Montage did not even glance back. She didn’t want to make up explanations to things she had no answer for, anyway. The sudden desire to get on board was the only way to fight back what could be the beginning of brain death. The surgeons had warned her to get the optional upgrade, but her mind was the one thing she wouldn’t alter.

As Captain Montague walked down the gleaming corridors towards the aft airlock, she played with the gap in her memory like she sometimes did with the missing tooth in the back of her mouth. Still prodding and poking would not bring back either the memory or the molar.

Out of the corner of her eye she still counted the artifacts she decorated her ship with. It was not normal pirate practice, but Montague like to think of herself as different. Her interest in history was a rarity, but she collected bits and pieces that caught her interest; slices of temple wall from Nuckamorn, ancient scrolls from some long lost desert planet, stone tablets found at the bottom of the Wainui sea. To her crew they were just part of the décor, to her they were reminders; she was not the oldest thing in the galaxy.

As she went Bysshe crew members gave her a little nod and stood to one side. It wasn’t like the Conglomerate navy on this ship, but she did still demand respect. However, it was why she’d ordered her body modified to just under two and half meters tall. Though it was annoying in cramped spaces, but even in the outer rim of the galaxy the lizard brain persisted. You looked up to someone, and they had you at a disadvantage.

Struggling her way through the messy ranks of piracy, she’d always been short, and so as soon as she could fix it, she had.

She might look as young as the flesh queens of Pyremancia, but she made sure never to let on the age in her bones and brain. It helped that piracy was still a high-risk activity. With so much cycling of new crew, there were fewer questions about just exactly how old their captain was.

Reaching the aft airlock she was less than pleased with what she saw.

Already Dalyton wore a suit, but as she approached, he stood to attention and very nearly threw in a salute as well. Those navy habits were harder to break than sylthin nose candy.

She shot him a look, and he stowed his hand behind his back like a damn child. The downside of the dangers of piracy and its high turnover was she had to put up with people like Dalyton. Mind you she’d always had to. It was just she was too old for this shit.

Disgraced navy, he was a decent shot, and expected that gave him extra rights on the Bysshe. It didn’t.

Captain, he glanced over his shoulder at the small boarding crew. I didn’t think this would be—

Well it is, Montague replied. I’m going over with you.

The rest of the crew smiled, Dalyton did not. Jeffey, the young non-binary was a good choice for the landing team. They had escaped from some back world religious colony where they considered gender set at birth. Hard to believe in a galaxy of mind-leeching aliens, and sentient planets that such things mattered, but apparently, humanity held onto its prejudices tightly.

Jeffey was brilliant at hacking into foreign systems, so they had a lot of experience even though they had only joined the Bysshe two station landings before Dalyton.

Behind them was Adora, the cyborg with her massive fire power a good choice for a boarding crew. She stood as tall as Montague, but carried cybernetically enhanced weaponry that made the captain a little queasy. She’d had to take a wet bath to remove the splattering of spleen once when she’d been right next to Adora’s target. Fortunately she wasn’t wearing white at the time.

Off to one side already in the plastic sphere commonly referred to as the gopher ball was 108el20k. It was strange but for a creature made of slime with no discernible appendages, Montage liked it the most. The Aone were so strange that when humans encountered them they treated them more as pets than sentient beings. However once the species mapped the human brain, their telepathic communication gave them the edge in further negotiations. Amazing how threatening to scramble the brains of 72% of the human race got things done. As compensation they handed over the hovering technology that made transportation bubbles possible.

108el20k was a rare and valuable member of the Bysshe. It was also a hell of a poker player. The image of it sitting on a man’s head in the last casino they’d visited, controlling his actions was not the kind of thing even Montague could forget.

It is good to see you down here, 108el20k injected into her brain. You’ve been on the ship entirely too much.

The Aone could be surprisingly blunt for a telepathic race.

That was my thought exactly, the captain replied, as she pushed past Dalyton and put on her suit. The protection was a way to lower risk, but it reminded her of her youth. Opening ships like ancient tin cans and blasting through to environments with all the air sucked out was now just a pleasant story shared over coffee. These days the precision of the cannon made such terrifying adventures unnecessary.

Still, they wore suits and 108el20k its gopher ball.

The jolt of the airlock attaching to the freighter was no more than a slight shift under her boots. She could discern Dalyton’s gaze on her back, but ignored him completely. This was her ship, and this was her capture.

They all swung weapons up when the bleep from the door indicated air pressure equalization. Montague jerked her head and Adora punched the button to open the door. They went into the airlock and sealed it behind them. Even without the danger of air loss, there was no reason to be careless. Bio weaponry had become the trend of those coming face to face with pirates yet unable to beat them in combat. Several ships and their entire crew lost to bleeding fever when one airlock was unsecured.

Things had gotten crazy, but Montague supposed that was the way of the universe; madness piled on madness. Nevertheless, the raiders approached the freighter’s seal.

Jeffey opened their link and began to work their way into their targets system. This was far too old to have an AI pilot, but it could still have some electronic defenses. Their face folded into concern under the ragged line of their hair cut.

Captain, they said, and gestured her over. The swirl of images on Jeffey’s display imbedded in their sleeve was unfamiliar to Montague, but she noticed one thing immediately; the ship had no name.

She’d been riding gravity wells for over two hundred earth years, and she’d never seen a ship without a designation. Sure there had been plenty who had tried to hack the system, give themselves a new one to hide the sins of the old, but a freighter without one at all was a dark star in the sky.

The vague unease that had been gnawing on her gut, began to resolve itself into a clench of a knot. If she’d been part of the navy, she’d have sealed the freighter up and dragged it back for dissection at one of the Conglomerate bases, but Montague still proudly stuck to the name of a pirate. Pirates took risks where they found them.

Anything to make the heart go a little faster, even a beaten to hell one like hers.

Make ready, she said, spinning around. Pop this airlock Jeffey, and we go in hard.

A wide smile spread on Adora’s face as she raised her hands towards the door. The cords of muscle and skin from her shoulders to her fingertips began to glow brighter and brighter.

Dalyton raised his weapon, and for once didn’t look anything but focused. It was a relief to have him intent on ahead rather than on her. 108el20k piloted its ball and attached itself to Adora’s back, but it would be searching ahead for a brain to control.

Jeffey nodded, and the airlock sprung open. Trapped behind the constraints of the suit, it was impossible for Montague to smell anything; she should have to rely on what the sensors told her. Yet her nose was tingling with a sharp odor. It reminded her of the night she’s spent with her quad of lovers in the Sea of Bright. The constant lightning had illuminated every cloud and filled the room with that smell.

It was impossible to understand why she detected it now.

The suits sensors chimed. Now connected to the freighter’s systems, she had the whole layout of the ship projected before her. A simple design, but again one she hadn’t seen. It had to either be older than her or some kind of speciality job—not that it looked that special.

No one moved, and for a moment Montague wondered why. Oh that’s right, I’m the captain. It had taken her long enough to get to that position after all. Clearing her brand new, but still surprisingly dry throat, she led the way.

Pirates right back to the time of sailing on Earth Core’s seas had always led that way. Respect got earned that way, so it was Captain Tennison Montague that set foot on the freighter first.

The sound of her boot connecting with the dark metal shuddered up her ancient bones, but she pushed on. In the old days they’d not had access to this kind of sophisticated intelligence on the ships they were boarding. More often than not ambush awaited. The suit though told her there were no life signs up ahead in the claustrophobic tunnel.

Adora was looking less and less excited though. A chance to shoot at something live was pretty much all the cyborg lived. Dalyton kept to his training, checking every corner, and fixing on the gangway above when they emerged from the corridor. Montague was glad they watched because she was distracted and confused.

That sensation of wrongness which began once she laid eyes on this impossibly nameless ship—the one that drew her out here into this boarding crew—had not abated. It was not the feeling of forgetting something. Since she’d declined to have her brain upgraded, she’d got used to forgetting people’s names, even her lovers. They faded to shadows which she only recalled as splinters of memory.

As she walked deeper into the ship, she began to understand this was also not just her failing elderly memory.

She was in a familiar space, as if she walked these corridors before, but when and how was a mystery.

Life ahead, 108el20k whispered into the back of her skull. I am almost close enough for integration. Shall I proceed captain?

108el20k was always so polite before stealing someone else’s body.

No, she found herself whispering, before turning on her heel, and opening the seal on her suit. Alora started to lumber forward in protest, but Montague waved her away. Taking a deep breath, her nose told her she was right; there was a sharp tang to the