Yesterday’s piece is here.
Copyright J.B. Norman
Security Superintendent of Quadrant 2 of the Ring Valeria Belit stares gravely across her desk at a young freelance pilot, an Alvaraean princess, and a little girl staring intently back as she continues eating a cup of Frogurt.
“Kowalski!” she calls to one of her subordinate security officers. “Get in here and get me a coffee!”
“Officer Fnrrg finished off the last pot,” the young officer says, sticking his head through the door. “It’ll be a few minutes before we can brew more.”
“Frang it, Kowalski!” she cries. “You’re off the case!”
“The case of… getting you …coffee?” the bemusement young security officer stammers.
The Superintendent catches herself and clears her throat.
“Sorry, Kowalski. It’s been a day,” she mutters.
“So I’m… back on the case of …getting you coffee?” he asks.
“Yes, Kowalski,” Superintendent Belit sighs.
She turns back to Kathryn, Amarantha, and Dunstella.
“Now,” she says, “let’s go over what happened one more time.”
“Well,” Dunstella begins:
“First, I had a bucket of fried chicken – do you know what a chicken is, by the way? Then, Kathryn told us to get Frogurt while she bought the fridge coil we need. So, me and Amarantha are at the Frogurt stall and these two guys butt into the line, and I’m like, Hey! There’s a line, jerks! But they didn’t just want Frogurt before everybody else, they wanted to kidnap Amarantha, or something, so they grab her and start running, so I grab them and start biting and stuff, and then I’m like, Kathryn! Help! We’re being kidnapped! So, Kathryn comes running along and she’s gonna shoot them, but the Alvaraeans have only been doing sorcery for forty thousand years and I guess they’ve gotten good at it after so long, so Amarantha starts glowing and then she exploded them.”
“And you’re sure you’ve never seen these guys before?” Superintendent Belit asks.
“You have no idea who they were?”
“Well, we didn’t exactly have a chance to ask,” Kathryn asks.
Superintendent Belit frowns. “No, I suppose not.” She glances to Amarantha.
“Your sorcery did quite a number of them. They’ll be fine, but they won’t be in any shape to interrogate for a while.”
She reaches for one of the kidnappers’ helmets and places it in front of Kathryn, Amarantha and Dunstella.
“Can you tell me anything about this?” she asks, pointing to the symbol emblazoned on the back of the helmet, a stylised tentacled creature in silver starkly contrasting the black of the helmet.
“Frang it,” Kathryn swears quietly. “That’s the logo of the Kraken Special Squadron.”
“You know them?”
“Yeah,” Kathryn sighs.
“Well,” Superintendent Belit says. “You have impressive taste in enemies. The Krakens are supposed to be some of the best mercenaries in the galaxy.”
“I’m better,” Kathryn mutters.
“I’ll do what I can to limit whatever activities on the Ring,” Superintendent Belit offers. “But I’m used to dealing with a few angry spacers getting into fistfights. I don’t know what Ring security can do about a whole group of elite mercenaries on a mission.”
“We can handle ourselves,” Kathryn assures the Superintendent. “Besides, we won’t be aboard long. We’ll be out of your hair soon and this won’t be your problem to deal with.”
“This is still my station,” the Superintendent notes. “I’ll do whatever I can to help as long as you’re still aboard the Ring, or even in the system. Just, uh, just be careful. We’ve heard some things about the Krakens.”
She sits back thoughtfully in her chair.
“And where is my coffee?” she calls towards her door.
See, I would have thought they would have interrogated the two mercenaries by now, but focusing more on getting 500 words a day than hashing out a really coherent narrative — especially in a first draft — is taking me in directions I didn’t really anticipate.
Still, once I’m at the stage of ironing out the kinks in the story, I think this whole section at the security station will need to be reworked. Now that I have better sense of what’s actually happening here, I think that’ll be easier.
I mostly just wanted somebody to tell somebody else they’re off the case.
Incidentally, Valeria and Belit are both Conan names…
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