2952-09-11 – Tales from the Inbox: The Pilgrim’s Wager 

Emilio B. drummed his fingers on the side of his command chair and watched the sensor plot in the middle of the bridge. Fey Wanderer being in hostile territory, their sensors were all on passive mode and every feature intended to conceal the ship’s presence from unfriendly eyes was active; this did wonders for their chances of survival, but didn’t have any good effect on her ability to see what was going on more than a few hundred kilometers away. 

The gravimetric sensors had picked up a few drive signatures, but not nearly as many as he had been expecting. Margaux, in Confederated hands, had been a fortress and an industrial powerhouse, at least by Coreward Frontier standards. Surely the invading power, with no such worlds of its own before the war, would have to make use of the ones it had taken, and that meant there had to be far more ships in the system than currently showed as visible on the plot. 

Most likely, the majority of the ships he couldn’t see would be parked in orbit around the planet for which so much blood had been spilled, and Wanderer wouldn’t be going close enough to be threatened by them. If there were some parked elsewhere, though, Emilio had to guess where before he committed his ship to any particular course through the system; no amount of stealth features in the world would help him if he blundered within a few hundred klicks of an Incarnation cruiser while setting up a gravitational slingshot around one of the outer gas giants. 

Wanderer had the legs that made such a mishap escapable in all but the worst circumstances but it would mean either abandoning the delivery or dropping poor Rawlins so far out that her chances of making planetfall were miniscule. She’d paid in advance, but Emilio didn’t like taking money and only delivering on half of what she’d promised. It wasn’t good business, because it didn’t encourage repeat customers, and it would bring rise to the idea that when the Fey Wanderer and its crew agreed to do something, they didn’t see it through. 

“Captain?” Miss Vargas turned away from the helm controls. “What’s our course?” 

“No course yet.” Emilio shook his head. “We need more information, and there’s nothing in our neighborhood to find us.” 

“Aye.” Vargas reluctantly turned back to her controls. She clearly didn’t like loitering in a hostile system, and Emilio could hardly blame her. The sooner they were out, the safer they’d be. 

The soles of hard dirtside boots clicked on the deck in the corridor behind Emilio, and his blood ran cold.  

“Can I help you, Miss Rowlins?” Emilio didn’t turn around; he was still focused on the data plot. Miss Rawlins might be a client, but after their last meeting, when she’d made it only too clear what she was and what her business was, he wanted as little of her company as possible. 

“Just observing.” Rowlins fell silent for a long moment, probably looking at the same holographic readout Emilio was. “The view is better here than in the hangar.” 

Most clients got bored or got themselves kicked off the bridge within minutes of trying to “observe” Wanderer’s operations, so Emilio didn’t expect her to remain long. He waved a hand of assent, then went back to watching every minute development on the display. Passive sensors had just detected a pair of small craft moving in from one of the outer systems without a gravitic signature; most likely those were cheap-fabbed industrial barges using ion propulsion. If so, the moon they’d departed from was an active industral base; several potential courses were no longer viable. 

For her part, Rawlins remained silent, but her presence loomed over Emilio like a cloud. He wished he had some excuse to send her away. 

Signal scatter suggested some sort of Incarnation military activity near the fifth planet, a md-sized gas giant, making another set of courses inviable. The list of low-risk courses was shrinking by the minute. No course was without risk, of course, not in an Incarnation system. 

“There.” Rawlins stepped up beside Emilio’s chair and pointed. “The fifth planet.” 

Emilio frowned and turned to his client. “I’m sorry?” 

“Make our course there.” Rowlins stepped back. “That signal scatter is from a strike patrol. They’ll have moved on hours before we get there.” 

Emilio raised one eyebrow. “How can you be sure?“ 

Rowlins shrugged. “Nothing’s certain. But with no drive signature, it’s either strike units or a garrison. They wouldn’t park a cruiser out there with a cold drive.” 

Emilio considered this. Odds favored this wager, but to go that way instead of to use another planet as a slingshot with no traffic detected there at all? 

Rawlins was, of course, the client, and the major risk was to her. Given her background, perhaps it was more than a simple wager. “Miss Vargas, start preparing for course... nineteen or twenty-two.” He looked up at the woman standing next to his chair. “We won’t be past the no return point for at least half an hour, so let's see if anything else comes up before then.” 

Ayaka Rowlins going rogue on a supposed vengeance mission is an interesting development, but it is sadly one which I don’t have any expectation of learning more about in the near future, or ever. Emilio (not his real name of course) sent in what he could, but the only person who could tell the whole tale is Rawlins herself, and I do not expect that she will ever tell it to us or anyone.