Chapter 9 #2
At least the others were known races. A stellari, a grogax, two kikai… One was a former VDF member who had passed a background check and was relatively clean despite the other corruption occurring within the baron and baroness's military operation.
The headache came from the other crewmembers. The first kikai was apparently the daughter of a politician and owned a sizable kikai mercantile business. Most likely she could be dealt with like all merchants, by buying them with money.
The second kikai was a mystery. Records of her were confusing at best. She had apparently been enslaved at a highly illegal correctional facility that, to no one's surprise, didn't exactly have the cleanest of records.
So while she existed, the records failed to convey remotely useful information.
And when Calise tried to use the broader federation systems to plug those holes, it was as if the woman was a ghost who had never existed, which, of course, made zero sense.
Who was she, and what was she hiding or hiding from? Because if she had been enslaved under the empire's watch, and her history had been altered or wiped at this level, then she was someone important enough to cause Calise a great deal of headache in her efforts to collect her fiancé.
At this point, Calise wasn't so much interested in the man as in her reputation. His hand had been asked for and granted by the empire. If she were to show up without him, it would cause more questions than she wanted to answer, and it would make her duchy appear weak amongst the empire.
Appearing weak was not something to take lightly. The empire was full of hungry wolves that would pounce on the first sign of weakness. No. Calise needed to be careful and avoid too much scrutiny before she could collect her fiancé.
She glared at the baron and baroness. "Someone take them back to the dungeons. Minimal food. I want them hungry and desperate to answer my questions in the future."
Calise waved a hand, and a soldier peeled away from the doorway to collect the two nobles as a call from her mother began pinging at her station. Calise straightened herself, ensured she was presentable, and then answered with a smile.
"Mother. I am still working through the difficulties on the station and identifying who it is my fiancé is traveling with," Calise reported.
"Well then, I can take some burden off your shoulders, Daughter."
Calise leaned forward. "Please. I am dying to know who all of these people are." The young duchess folded her hands before her and smiled at her mother.
"Well, I have good news and bad news. Which would you like first?"
"The good. Perhaps you've identified who or what our mystery woman is?"
"Unfortunately, on that account, Daughter, I still have not had any luck. Which, in itself, might not be a bad thing. If we can make certain people curious, it may actually lift things to our benefit after all." Her mother waved a wine glass around as she spoke.
Calise nodded and folded her hands under her chin. "I see. I suppose that is one way to go about it. I was under the impression that anything less than a full understanding would be looked down upon."
"It will be. But woe to those who dare look down on me." Her mother's eyes flashed dangerously as she cackled.
"Of course, Mother." Calise bowed respectfully.
"However, our mysterious Dr. Stellari," her mother continued, "is not so mysterious after all.
Though the answers have only generated more questions.
You see, she's using the name of an infamous woman.
That woman was wanted in nearly a dozen sectors and hunted in even more.
Melgara Nagaree was something of a mad scientist, one with very few morals.
Having experimented on a number of people, she was hunted until Horizon Corporation disappeared her into some black site research facility, where no one knows exactly what she was doing.
Any partial records I've been able to find suggest she was continuing her experiments, only this time under the watchful gaze of the corporation. "
"You said she's borrowing this woman's name?" Calise asked.
"Correct. Which is troubling," her mother said. "It means she has no fear of the original woman, or perhaps she's even related to her. But it's certainly not her. She is far too young to be the Melgara in our records, which is at least a partial relief."
Calise nodded, letting out a slow sigh. This crew was turning out to be a nightmare. "Why would someone dare use such a dangerous woman's name as an alias?"
"Well, she died about four months ago." Her mother said it with a strange glint in her eyes. "As far as I can tell, this woman appeared on Wolf's Cave shortly thereafter."
"So it almost feels coordinated." Calise bobbed her head in understanding.
"Exactly, Daughter. My suspicion is that she does have some connection to the original Melgara, which means she might have very valuable information and could also be potentially very dangerous." Her mother, however, seemed excited.
"More dangerous than the mystery race?" Calise asked and pulled up one of the videos they had obtained from the Wentworth Rehabilitation Center, showing the woman careening through space before latching onto the exterior hull of a station and ripping through it with her bare hands.
"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck in confined quarters with her, but she is far from the only race in the universe to have more strength than us. Such strength means little, especially in the age of space. My prime concern continues to be the one holding Melgara's name."
"And the kikai that I asked you to pull records on?"
"Records were erased some fifteen years ago, which means she's connected to something, and she’s not some backwater kikai that the system simply lost track of." Her mother paused.