RavensDagger

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - Unprepared Lions

  Piracy didly go unpunished within the belt, but the issue with actually punishing piracy was twofold.

  First, it was expehe pirates were rich off the booty they collected, and unlike any gover, they only had themselves to i in. Sure, the overall grorofits might be small pared to that of a proper pary nation, but they didn't have the worries and bloat of govero worry about. In that way, they were closer to a glomerate of disparate pahan a proper political entity.

  Sed was the matter of jurisdi.

  Did Mars wah moving a fleet around the belt? Fuo. Would Earth accept Mars wiping out a pirate fleet with their superior navy? Not without whining about it.

  If no one had rights in the belt, then no one had the right to fight off the pirates either.

  It was a twisted bit of logic despised by cargo captains everywhere, and easily uood by any career bureaucrat.

  In the end, it meant that the pirates of the belt were used to things going one way. Their way.

  They'd prey on those that traversed their er of space. If you were weak, you were on the menu. Better hope you looked poor or the pirates around you were fat already. They were lions zing in the migratory path of limp gazelle. Sometimes an elephant would rumble by, and uhe pirates had a big pn in mind or a sponsor in the shadows, they wouldn't go after well-armed voys.

  The lions never expected to have their airlock door literally kicked in and for the savannah's equivalent of a safari hunter with an attack helicopter te into their home turf.

  Ivil, the current safari-hunter of choice, stretched her back as she walked past the three slumped pirates. "You didn't answer," she said over her shoulder.

  Twenty-Six peeked out around the er, attention going from the men on the ground to Ivil. "Huh?"

  Ivil poio the core-user in the bunch. "She has a core. It's nothing special. Some minor ferrokinesis of some sort or another. It's the kind of power that would be useful to a meic." And if Ivil knew anything about Cores, and she knew everything, then it wasn't the kind of core that would give Twenty-Six any noticeable physical ges.

  "You're just going to give her a Core?" Missy asked.

  "It's a weak one, good to cut your teeth. And Twenty-Six seems smart. She might find creative uses for it," Ivil said. "Besides, there's a number of Core-users here. We'll have plenty to go around."

  Missy eyed her, then shrugged. "If you want it, Two-Six," she said.

  "I-I-I 't have a Core!" Twenty-Six stuttered. "That's for important people."

  "You're important to me," Ivil replied simply. "You've been friendly and kind so far. And I certainly don't want or he core."

  Twenty-Six gulped, but she nodded.

  "That's a big responsibility," Aurora said.

  It froze Twenty-Six on the spot, which didn't stop her from floating forwards a little more under her momentum. "W-what do you mean?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "Having a core puts you ahead of others, whether you want to think that way or not. It leave you feeling... detached from the rest of humanity, in a way. That be hard to overe. Worse, some people gain a Core and its power and fail to uand that with that power es a responsibility to use it wisely." Aurora locked eyes with Ivil. "And giving that kind of power to another is also not something so easily done."

  Ivil nodded, aowledging the point. "That's a valid argument. But I'm not giving a gun to a child. I'm giving a ko an adult. It'll be a tool, or a on, as she sees fit, but it isn't something she'll fail to use wisely, I don't think. Better to give it to her than to hoard it."

  Aurora sidered that for a moment before shrugging a shoulder. "Very well."

  "So... should I take it?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "Go ahead," Aurora replied. "In the worst case, if you find it unsuitable, then give it back. Miss Ville could sell it for a pretty penny."

  A core, even a weaker one, was worth its weight in preetal. More, even. There were only so many of them to go around, and more people who wanted ohan there were to share. Not to mention those few like Ivil who hoarded them.

  She reached down, casually ending the life of the pirate and watg as her core reassembled over her body. It was a tiny thing, no bigger than the joint at the end of her pinky. She plucked it out of the air and ied it. "It's a third-geion core," she observed.

  "What's that mean?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "When you have a core, you 'split' it. Break it within yourself arude a broken replica. That replica will repair itself over time. Sometimes it's months, usually it's years. The copy within the Core-wielder will heal as well, oftehe same timescale. In the end, however, you're left with two copies of the same, or extremely simir, Core. This one was the split of a split. That makes it somewhat unon." Ivil ha to Twenty-Six, who took the small item with reverence.

  "ait, doesn't that mean that people could double the number of cores? Expoially?"

  "Yes," Ivil said. "At the cost of severely weakening themselves for months or years. It's still a valid if slow way of earning money, as long as you have a core valuable enough to sustain you for the year or more in which it's broken."

  Twenty-Six took a moment to parse that, then nodded. "Okay. How do I?"

  "Just swallow it," Ivil said.

  There were better ways. Opening a hole within one's body and shoving it in referred, and more accurate at times. But for such a weak core, and one given to someone she didn't want to traumatise, ption was best.

  Twenty-Six eyed the Core. "Really?"

  "It'll work," Missy said. "But I--"

  Twenty-Six tossed the Core bad gulped audibly. "Uh... sorry, what?"

  "I was gonna say that I'd it first," Missy said.

  "They're usually somewhat sterile," Ivil said.

  "Somewhat, sure," Missy muttered with a shake of her head.

  Twenty-Six gnced betweewo, then touched a hand to her chest. "Am I supposed to feel something? Weird new senses or whatever?"

  "You'll noti a moment," Ivil replied. She reached down and started to search the women, looking not fun or a on but for... she found it, and ripped it from the belt of the corpse. A small pouch, for shotgun shells. She emptied it, then ha over to Twenty-Six.

  The young woman had just enough time to look at the bag in fusion before her face went green and she vomited into the bag.

  "First time's always the worst," Ivil replied.

  There was a reason iion wasn't popur for more experienced Core-wielders.

  Missy stepped up and started rubbing circles iy-Six's back. "There, there," she muttered.

  "We give you a couple of minutes," Ivil said. "These three will probably have to report back soohan ter, but I doubt the pirates will act out so soon."

  "I don't know about that," Missy said. "Their MO is to have a group e in, secure the entrahe up for more troops. Then ohey have a squad or two in the ship, one secures the main objective, another secures the ship."

  "Ah, so they'll be expeg these three to repht away, then," Ivil said. "You have some experieh this kind of thing?"

  Missy eyed her, then nodded. "Some," she admitted.

  Ivil sidered her move while Twenty-Six tio cough and sputter. The girl would be fine. Ivil could feel the core settling already. Soon it would break apart and refigure itself in her head as that kind of core t to do. It would probably be a few hours before Twenty-Six could even start to use it. More likely it would take a day or two.

  She refocused on the issue at hand; the pirates. "Alright," she said. "Aurora, Missy, Twenty-Six, please stand on this side of the airlock. I'm going to cycle it. In the mearip these three of whatever you might want. Once I'm done oher side, I'll cycle the airlock again. If it opens up empty, that's your all-clear. Uood?"

  "You're just going to dive into the lion's den?" Missy asked.

  "Lions aren't prepared for the likes of me," Ivil replied.

  "Hmm. We're going to have to have a talk," Missy shot back.

  "I think I'd like to be part of that," Aurora added.

  Twenty-Six swallowed, and looked betweewo. "H-hey, Evelyn's not a bad guy," she said.

  Well, that was one of the most heart-warming things Ivil had ever heard just before she walked out to it some extreme violence.

  ***

  RavensDagger

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