jeriendhal | Black Hearts, Part Sixteen (PG)

The station hatch cycled open and Mark stepped into Fell Station’s reception area, one step behind both Mavra Chan and Captain Aynish. It was a spacious chamber, with high ceilings and a very large viewport that stretched from one of the room to the other, looking out over Jackson’s Whole proper. Spacious, but curiously empty, save for Baron Fell himself and a select number of his underlings, gathered around the dining table. So this was to be a private meeting at first, Mark gathered. No doubt Fell was going to hold a much more public splash later, when arrangements had been made.

Beside Mark, Terinu looked over the chamber with a quick flicker of his eyes, before lowering them towards the floor. The boy had been cleaned up, his cuts and bruises from his frustrated slams against the wall repaired, and he had been given clean clothes. But if Mark was an… Ambassador? Advisor? he wondered, Terinu resembled something more like a pampered pet. His shoulder-length, silky blue-black hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, and he wore breeches and a vest, but no shirt or shoes. Even more humiliating, the curious collar/headpiece remained locked to his neck, and Chan kept him at her side with a chain leash some two meters in length connected to it, leading to her hand. With the vest and his ever moving prehensile tail, he looked like nothing so much as a trained monkey. Except no monkey had ever walked with the screaming tension that the boy held in his body now.

“Lady Chan,” Baron Fell greeted, when they entered. “I’m so glad you agreed to come aboard.” He gestured them to chairs around the table, seating Mavra himself. At gesture from the lady pirate, Terinu did not take a seat, but remained standing behind her, coming to a rough sort of parade rest, eyes staring fixedly at the wall opposite him. Mark settled down in a padded, ornately carved Victorian style chair, made of genuine wood, of the sort popular during his days in London, wishing he could have remained on his feet as well, the better to allow himself maximum freedom of action. Though the Baron was unlikely to ambush them here. By Jackonsonian standards that would have been the height of bad taste, not to mention lousy customer service.

“So, Baron, what is your opinion of the data your technicians brought to you?” Chan asked, after the servants had brought out dinner. Real beef, and delicately sculptured vegetables, though nothing of Ma Kosti’s caliber, Mark thought. Gorge, being a less refined gourmand, ignored this criticism and dug in. Terinu, interestingly, took one look at the beef and looked distinctly ill.

“Oh, it’s absolutely astonishing. I eventually placed them under fast-penta to confirm that all they were saying was really true,” Fell said. He looked over Captain Aynish and Terinu in turn, his expression something akin to wonderment. “Aliens. Actual aliens…”

Despite the youth of the body he had stolen, Georish Stauber’s mind was well over one hundred years old. Able to afford whatever amusements he wished, having been witness to over a century of history, how rare was it now for a man of his age to find something completely new? Mark wondered. New, and incredibly valuable.

“I have a whole ship load of them,” Chan confirmed. “Their complete genetic sequences available to the highest bidder. All we have to do is set up the auction.”

“And the other matter?” Fell asked.

“I’m willing to sell the complete technical specs for the Celestial Marauder’s FTL drive system, plus rights to examine the physical unit installed on the ship for a period of time until they are familiar with it, again to the highest bidder,” Chan sipped her wine lightly. “And believe me, the minimum bid is going to be extremely high.”

“In Betan dollars, of course?” Fell enquired. Chan looked over to Mark, and he nodded fractionally.

“Certainly,” Chan agreed.

Fell nodded. “We will, naturally, want to set up a demonstration flight of your ship for the auction participants. Given your extraordinary claims, extraordinary proof is a necessity.” He glanced over to Aynish and Terinu once more. “Though given what you have shown me so far, I’m willing to accept your other claims with considerably more equanimity”

“Excellent,” Chan said. “What do you estimate for a timeframe to gather the buyers for the auctions?”

“Every major world has an ambassador to Jackson’s Whole, Lady Chan,” the baron said. “It should be no more than five days to get reassurances from them for their attendance and funding. None of them will be willing to let a rival government gain this prize while they await confirmation from their own homeworld for permission to make a bid.”

“Good,” Chan agreed. “There is one further matter that I would like to take care of prior to the demonstration flight. I have a ship load of hostages that I’m going to want to unload, and much as it would amuse me to toss them out the airlock, that would be needlessly messy. I’m going to need the services of a House experienced in hostage negotiation, or at least interested in acquiring slaves, to take them off my hands.”

“I thought you might have the need, when I saw Lord Mark with you,” Fell said. He touched a control on his wrist com. “So I took the liberty of retaining the services of our… ah… local expert on such matters. She just arrived on station a few minutes ago.”

The reception hall’s door opened, admitting Fell’s negotiator. She was… very… formidable , he edited in his mind, erasing Grunt’s first suggestion. For one thing, she was extraordinarily short, only an inch or two taller than Mark or Terinu, with close cropped, white blond hair, and delicate, porcelain features, like a traditional Barraryaran girl’s doll. She wore a simple black bodysuit that clung to every curve, with a scooped out neckline, accented by a thin red belt around her hips, and bright red leather boots with three inch heels. The heels clacked across the floor as she strode up to the table, every pore of her body seeming to ooze confidence as she approached. When she came up to Mavra Chan, she gave the pirate a short bow.

“Cavilo, of House Cavilo,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m told you are in need of my assistance.”