Halfbreed

Mike didn't like the weird looking rock sitting on the table in front of him.

It wasn't just the fact that the bulky pile of grit was gaudy, or that it was about as practical to the room as a skylight in a Star Cruiser. What

really

set his teeth on edge was the fact that his Orc captor kept habitually running her hand across it, as though she was obsessed with discovering its nonexistent secrets through touch alone.

It was a curiously amorphous blob of black volcanic rock: sitting smack dab in the center of the conference table inside the upscale lounge of Lashvara's ship. The rock had been carefully sculpted, carved into a dizzying array of patterns and edges and circular holes with which to stick one's fingers through.

It had a curving, atypical surface, never falling into uniformity as the thing bulged and indented across the whole of its exterior. A blue, mossy beard grew from one portion of the stone, irregular and unnaturally sheared into shape. He ran his fingers across one section, and it felt as smooth as silk. Moving further on, it was as if his fingers were brushing across sandpaper.

"What the hell is this thing?" He asked his Orcish host. It sat there, goading him with its pointless presence. He tugged at the metal band wrapped around his left hand like a confining bracelet. The metal did not yield.

"Stop touching that." Lashvara barked, planting a hand on his shoulder and shoving him back into his seat around the dark wood table. Allynna poked her head out from around the rock formation and stared at Mike.

Mike gave Lashvara a scandalized look as the Orc slowly paced the room. "Why else would you stick it there?" He said, holding out both his hands in exasperation.

"For fellow Diplomats. For men and women who know the importance of culture." The Orc said, folding her arms.

"It's a rock you cut holes into."

"This is my Grandfather's

Garanghad

, his spirit obelisk." She replied. Her hand moved across the rock in a slow, sweeping gesture. "The stone itself is taken from the highest peak he ever climbed. It was hand carved by a specially-trained

Mufi

, who devoted five years of his life speaking to friends, family, acquaintances, and even his enemies. The hearts of all those my Grandfather's life touched. He collected their feelings about him, the good and the bad, and poured his soul into the piece. It is wholly unique: one of less than a half dozen this particular

Mufi

ever made in his lifetime."

"You always give this canned explanation to visiting tourists?" Mike quipped.

Lashvara folded her arms again. "It is the legacy of all he was. His anger, his fears, his hopes..." her hand passed across a particularly smooth, inverted section. "His love," her fingers danced across a large, prickly section, "his... abrasiveness. A fitting symbol of our people to display to outsiders: we bare our souls to those we treat with."

Mike laughed. "Yeah? And where's his sex drive located at? Under the fuzzy part?"

Lashvara smirked, thumbing a sharp corner with her fingernail. "In deference to other culture's squeamishness, we elected to have that located on the bottom of the piece."

"Gotta get a good grope in to reach it, huh?" Mike said. The Orc laughed.

"Captain," Allynna interrupted. "I believe our interests would be better served by focusing on more pressing matters."

"You can drop the 'Captain' moniker, Elf." The smiling Orc said. "You're not fooling anyone. Or at least, nobody within a five kilometer radius of the two of you."

"Why?" Mike asked, "Do those little green satellite dishes in your head not get reception past that point? Besides, I

am

her Captain."

"I'm more of a Captain than you at this point." Lashvara retorted. Mike heard what sounded suspiciously like a muffled sigh leave Allynna's lips from across the table.

"Laugh it up, Aly." Mike said, shooting Lashvara a side-eyed glare. "You call this gutted monstrosity a ship? Your living quarters look more like a locker room!"

"This ship was repurposed." Lashvara answered, staring at him with her brown, beady eyes. "It is a vessel of peace, meant to hold meetings of Galactic importance to the Orcish people. A tribe needs diplomacy to survive. And what use are separating walls to living quarters? What could you possibly wish to conceal while you are asleep?"

"My dignity?" Mike queried.

Lashvara smirked. "You never had any to begin with."

"For a vessel of peace, this ship is surprisingly well armed." Mike replied, kicking his feet up onto the table and crossing his legs.

Lashvara kicked his feet off the translucent vibroglass. "-I said we were

diplomats

, not fools. An Orc who enters a negotiation unarmed is just a hostage."

"Is that what we're calling this thing you're having us do then?" Mike said, waving a callous hand in a pirouette around the room full of Orcish Art. "A hostage negotiation?"

Lass let out a guffaw. "If you'd prefer, we can just call it blackmail."

"What do you think Fignet Opalbraid is going to think when the people he hired to do a job show up on his doorstep three days later, empty handed?" Mike said, squirming in the overly cushiony chair. He missed the Pilot's seat of the

Halfbreed

. "Do you think he's gonna want to talk to us about screwing you people over? Or

maybe

he's gonna be the type to shoot first and ask questions later?"

"You are a means to an end, Smuggler." Lashvara said. "The consequences of your actions are your own."

"Yeah, I've heard that line before." Mike said, folding his arms. "You want me to be your point man on this little adventure of yours, you're going to have to do better than that."

The boosters kicked in. Everyone braced themselves against the table as the ship breached the upper atmosphere of the moon. Mike glanced out from the port window, watching as the blue sky faded into a black void. Soon he could see nothing but darkness and the glittering stars in the distance.

The room they were in was brightly lit and well furnished, with a long couch beneath a wide mural depicting Votar and Ukavar coiling together in the blackness of space like two lovers at a masquerade. Littered on the wall and upon side tables were a series of Orcish sculptures, mostly depicting Orcs doing a variety of physical actions, whether that be fighting, fucking or singing. There was little subtlety to the sculptures, but they nonetheless served their practical effect. All in all, it was a comfortable scene for a treaty signing, less so for their current predicament.

"We are concerned that this situation is not one that we can resolve on our own." Allynna said from across the table, attempting a measure of tact that Mike was lacking. "...And we are worried what will become of us, if it isn't."

Lashvara shrugged. "A debt is a debt. My word is my word. I promised you that your numerous transgressions would be forgiven in exchange for your help in this. Why not take the chance and trust me?"

"Empty promises are a politician's commodity." Mike said, flashing her a winning smile. "And sorry Beautiful, but you're a dead ringer for a politician if I ever saw one."

"You have made trust difficult." Allynna added, lifting her hand and exposing the metal band around her wrist. Her face was expressionless, her tone flat. But Mike could parse out the condescension in her voice. He grinned; he was rubbing off on her.

Lashvara snorted, "What a merry pair of misfits you two make: you pilfer my people's future, and then speak to the aggrieved party as if

we

are the ones not to be trusted?"

"Why do your people even need a Planetary Shield Generator in the first place?" Mike said, "Surely your pirate friends can fend off whatever riff raff the colonists throw your way, without having to waste millions of credits on something so expensive and impractical? They use those things on

fortress

worlds, not colonial backwaters."

"Ignoring the fact that you are a part of that riff-raff," Lashvara said, "The Shield Generator was never meant for defending against the colonists - at least, not directly."

"Then what?" Allynna asked.

Lashvara stopped her pacing. She turned to face the two of them, her face going solemn. "...I have spent many years of my life living alone amongst aliens. The hardest lesson I had to learn from your kind was that you are a duplicitous lot by nature. My people do not deal in half-truths or lies: when we tell you something, we mean it."

"Do you love me?" Mike asked sweetly. Lashvara snorted at him but ignored the jab.

"I say this because what I am about to tell you is the culmination of years of planning on the part of my tribe and her allies." The Orc said, taking her seat at the head of the table. "Your interference may well have cost us everything."

There was a long silence. Lashvara let out a soft sigh and began, tugging at her flight jacket as she did so. "My people were born into sentience thousands of years ago, or so the tales go. But our birth into the stars only began within the last seventy. There are still those alive today who remember a time before the arrival of the Elves and the changing of our world. We are but infants on the galactic stage."

"Our legends taught us that the stars were teary shards of the Sun split across the great dark, when in fact they were billions of other suns. Each containing aliens. Interlopers." The Orc paced the table's perimeter. Mike and Aly's heads turned to follow her as she stomped about the room. "They came to us riding great chariots of shining metal, bearing wondrous tools that even our greatest Shamans were overawed by."

Mike glanced over, noticing a queer sight. Allynna had her hair draped over her shoulder, and was calmly forming her long strands into weaving threads as she folded them over and under each other, again and again. Lashvara let out a cough, drawing his attention once more.

"In our blind euphoria, we did not understand that what they also brought with them was not so clear cut. Unused to species whose emotions were foreign and inscrutable to us, we mistook their friendliness for openness. In the process, we gave them the one thing our kind had been raised since birth to believe was ours."

The Orc's eyes hardened. "Ukavar. 'Paradise,' 'Heaven,' whichever term you wish to name it. In our legends, it is the place that all souls of our kind go: the promised land of love and plenty, where all Tribes are united, and all Orcs are a single, wondrous spirit."

"Sounds like the Galaxy's worst sporting event if you ask me." Mike joked, leaning back in his chair. "Standing room only."

Lashvara smirked. "Yes, I'm certain an introvert like yourself would come to hate it, Smuggler."

Her eyes hardened. "In our haste to welcome those we did not understand, we gave them the very soul of our people, bartering Ukavar for technology, as if it were an equitable exchange."

Mike quirked an eyebrow, "If it was so important to you, why did you offer it to them to begin with?"

The Orc stopped her pacing and turned to stare at him. "Who were we, before your shining chariots descended from the sky? We were farmers, hunters, children of nature. By what means were we supposed to comprehend the vastness of creation? We went to bed thinking that the sky above us was heaven, and woke up to find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star, lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."

"We were facing celestial beings with supernatural abilities, Gods in the flesh. Would

you

not be willing to believe what they had to say, when their very existence put to question everything you'd ever known?"

Allynna rolled her dexterous fingers around a loop of her hair, forming it into a braided crown that circled her head near the temples. As she spoke, she continued to create ever more intricate spirals.

"The traditional policy of an Elven Colony making first contact with a pre-spaceflight species is to uplift them, but otherwise leave their home planet untouched." Allynna said. "This star system was unique in that there were two habitable planets discovered, one of which was unoccupied by sentient species of any kind." She finished the crown and moved to the back of her scalp, her fingers never slowing as she spoke. "They had intended to colonize both. You should be glad for what was given to you."

"Ukavar and Votar are

ours

, Elf." Lashvara said, a dark anger rising on her expression. "Ukavar was our father, and Votar our mother. We were born from their creation; it was not your people's place to take one more planet over the hundreds you already possess."

"All of this talk of planets birthing little green children is genuinely fascinating." Mike said, tipping back in his chair. Lashvara gave him a look and he put his feet back on the ground. "But I fail to see what any of this has to do with us."

"In a few months' time, there will be a vote in the Elves' Imperial Senate. This vote will decide whether or not they are going to annex this star system into the Everlasting Empire." Lashvara let out a deep harumph. "And if so, what that means for the natives living within the new borders."

The ship jostled for a moment as they executed a sharp turn, the ship's engines rumbling louder beneath their feet. "So what, you wanted to use the Shield Generator to tell the Empire to go fuck themselves?" Mike let out a terse chuckle. "Sorry to break this to you, but the Elves have Titans! Ships

literally

miles long, with Threya-class cannons capable of vaporizing oceans. You're gonna need more than a planetary shield to keep them out."

"The Shield is not for withstanding the Elves." Lashvara said, crossing her arms. "It is our bargaining chip. I spent nearly six years of my life living amongst our misbegotten benefactors, learning their language, their culture, their mindset."

Her gaze drifted to Allynna. "We know the fate of those native species who were uplifted before us. It came at the expense of their own sovereignty. We did this to prevent ourselves from becoming mere vassals, slaves to the whims of an Elven Governor who cares nothing for our people, and even less for their interests."

Allynna's brow furrowed. "You... intend to insert yourself into the negotiations." She said in a halting tone of voice.

Lashvara grinned, flashing her pointed teeth. "Your first mate is far more clever than you it seems, Smuggler."

Mike shrugged. "At least she can remember my name, Lass."

The Orc ignored him again. "Despite this being

our

star system, the Elven authorities have neglected to include us in the debate." Lashvara said, "They have ulterior motives, and unless we find a way to force them to give us a voice, we have no say in our own destiny."

"Is that why you shoot down ships left and right when they enter your orbit?" Mike countered, "Not gonna lie: after enjoying some Orcish 'hospitality' myself firsthand, I can't say I particularly blame the Planetary Governor for being a bit reticent to include a bunch of psychic Pirates in the sales pitch."

Lashvara's brow pulled down. "You speak of circumstances that you are completely ignorant of, 'Mike.' But I will forgive you for your foolishness. As I told you before: those Orcs are not my tribe. They are the Raketi: the Polar Orcs, and war is all they have ever known. It just so happens that their raiding now takes place in the void of Space, rather than the currents of Votar."

"Pardon me for failing to make a distinction." Mike said. "I have no doubt that the colonists split hairs about it."

"The Shield Generator was intended to solve both problems at once." The Orc retorted. "Once it was activated, we planned to keep it up semi-permanently, grounding the Raketi and ending the threat to shipping through Ukavar. On the other hand, it also prevented the Colonial magistrates from unilaterally deciding our fate without us being able to lift a finger to stop them."

Lashvara folded her arms. "The Elves would

have

to negotiate with us, or risk entering into a costly and politically inconvenient conflict against a native species while the rest of the galaxy looked on."

"Hm..." Mike said, putting a finger to his chin. "Cut off the Colonist's complaints while at the same time gaining leverage at the negotiating table." He nodded to himself. "I like it."

"-A shame you were unaware of our intent before you stole our generator then." Lashvara said.

"If it's any consolation: I'd have likely smuggled it out from under your noses anyway." Mike said, grinning back at her adopted scowl.

The two stared each other down. Lashvara's momentary frown curled up into a crooked smile. "You manage to goad me at the worst possible moments, Smuggler. You have a rare gift for being both infuriating and amusing in the same moment."

"It only gets worse with time." Allynna murmured as she curled her hair into ever more intricate patterns.

Finishing with her task, she tightened the end of her ponytail like a rope knot. Her new hairstyle turned out to be a single braid, formed from a multitude of smaller ones that coiled together like vines down past her shoulders. The end curved into a crown that circled her head, reaching to the front in a complex whorl of braiding.

Lashvara let out a belly laugh. "You are one to talk, Elf! Do not think that I am ignorant of what you are doing right now."

Mike looked at his first mate like she was a madwoman. "What the hell

are

you doing, anyway?" She had never done her hair up in any sort of styling since she first started serving on the

Halfbreed

, much less the intricate weave she now sported.

Allynna's expression did not change as she casually tossed the braid over her shoulder. "Making some appropriate adjustments."

"Not exactly the time to be focusing on fashion statements, Aly." He said, turning his gaze back to the Orc. "So all this is basically you running up against the clock and needing us to do... what exactly?"

"Help us figure out who stole our Shield Generator, and why." Lashvara said. Her hand reached out, rubbing across the crinkled stone sculpture of her Grandfather's

Garanghad

.

Mike frowned. "And how does this help you fix the mess you are in right now? No Shield Generator means you have no leverage. I can't steal

that

back from Fignet for you."

Lashvara's face hardened, her voice became cutting and short. "-Because we made a deal with Maeles Aelor to purchase a Shield Generator. It was a deal struck, and a deal half-finished." Her large fingers clenched upon the stone, her pointed nails digging into small holes in the sculpture's surface, seemingly meant for such action. "And if we simply confronted them, I have no doubt they'd have a plausible denial ready, delaying us just long enough for the vote to go through."

The Orcish woman's head snapped over to glare at Allynna. "How do you think your people will look, defaulting on an intergalactic business deal in such a public and shameful way?

Especially

if it was because of some kind of sabotage on the part of your own government?"

Mike couldn't believe he was about to defend the Elves. "You think this is anything more than just a corrupt Dwarven businessman with interplanetary connections, stealing and then selling something valuable on the black market?" He said, raising an eyebrow. "Ten to one odds your culprit is exactly who I said it was."

Allynna shot a subtle, questioning look to Mike. He nodded at her to go ahead. "When he's not running his club, the

Opal Eye

, Fignet moonlights as a minor executive in a Maeles Aelor storage facility, in the downtown Financial District." She said. "We have dealt with him on a few courier jobs in the past, but it was always indirectly before this. He had direct access to where the Generator was stored; it is likely that he was the one to conceive of the plot to steal it."