She was. It was highly unfortunate.
I tried to open the file of her recorded moments on Colony 13,parse through them for any more useful information—but without proximity to the station, that file was lost. It buffered for several moments before I gave up.
But then, I located the downloaded file of Captain Amelia Perrosk. Torian’s not-lover. I was 83 percent confident that Vaesa would not tempt Torian into abandoning me—it was a derelict space station, and I was a delight.
My surety dropped to 38 percent when I ran that scenario against Amelia Perrosk.
I had nothing better to do, and all knowledge bolstered my statistical reasoning. I opened the downloaded file of redacted recordings and began to process them.
The videos were sparse, and spanned five years.
Amelia disembarked an unregistered starship with two security humans—it was unclear if she was their client or their prisoner. They walked in silence through Colony 13, descended in a non-public elevator to another level, and exited into a nightclub.
Amelia made a joke: “Didn’t think the boss would be so obsessed with me.”
It was a bad joke. No one laughed.
They entered a back room in the nightclub, where only one camera remained. Curiously, a draic stood guard outside—I hadn’t registered many aliens on Colony 13, butheproved aliens weren’t unknown.
The draic checked their credentials. This one was a male—draics have clear distinguishing markers between males and females, and the smaller size and dark coloring of this draic left no question. He waved them on. “No funny business.” He spoke in native draic tongue, but the humans’ translators clearly interpreted it.
Amelia appeared visibly unsettled by the draic’s presence, but she ducked her head and entered the room.
Inside, she positioned herself away from the singlecamera, which was above the door. Although I could not see Amelia’s face, a new human watched her with features registering asannoyed. The two security humans took position by the door, and Amelia approached the new human.
“You’re the new favorite?” the human, presumably the boss human, drawled. “You’reyoung.”
“Easily moldable,” Amelia replied, crossing her arms.
They grunted. “We know she loves that.” [Perhaps this wasnotthe boss human. 84 percent likelihood and dropping.]
“Didn’t realize you had a draic bodyguard,” Amelia said carefully.
“The only one on Colony 13.” The human didn’t sound pleased about it. They moved on just as fast: “Your new ship is waiting in our private hangar. You have one year to get promoted to captain, or you’ll be worse off than our cargo.”
“Easily done,” Amelia replied.
The maybe-boss human stepped forward, pushing glasses up their nose. “Nothing about this is easy, especially foryou. We hadsixty-sevencontenders for the next boss, and you didn’t make that list. You think your crew will be happy with your ambition? Think again.”
Amelia’s body language stiffened, which seemed to satisfy the maybe-boss human. They smiled. “Fear. Good.”
“The only thing I’m afraid of is your breath,” Amelia said.
This joke appeared to land. One of the security humans chuckled. The probably-not-boss-but-definitely-in-charge human frowned at them, then turned back to Amelia. “Here’s a fun tidbit. I’m an accountant with adraicbodyguard. Do you know why she sprang for that for me, and not literally anyone else?”
Amelia was quiet for a moment. “You’re moldable.”
“Ah, you understand. She’s stepped down, but she’s never gone. Watch yourself, princess. Survive the nextfew years, and you might be standing in my spot.” And the definitely-in-charge-not-boss human waved her away.
When Amelia turned toward the door and the security humans, her expression registered asangry.
I did not bother drawing conclusions on that recording. Until it related to Torian, I found I did not care. With that new goal in mind, I skipped ahead, passing several years until I located a video with both Torian and Amelia.
Torian was in a dark room with no real identifiers, standing stiff against a wall. Likely, this overlapped with her time as a security human, because she had a weapon strapped to her hip and a similar expression to the two security humans who’d escorted Amelia in the last recording. Two other humans flanked a metal table. One pushed a small bundle to the other.
That human opened it, then scowled. “This isn’t what we agreed on.”
