Tales From the Terran Republic

Chapter Pirates Meet

Jessie is leaning against the side of a rental car on an abandoned hill when a sleek grav-car flies overhead and settles on the gravel next to her. The gull-wing doors open and a thin reptilian in a loud floral pattern shirt climbs out.

“Avast! Ye matey!” Jessie calls out.

“Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of dumb!” the Flink replies. Jessie just facepalms.

“No. no. no. no. It’s… You know what? I like your version better.” she laughs. The lizard walks over it’s four independently focusing eyes darting in all directions.

“So how have you been, you dumb chameleon?”

“Good. Business is booming.”

“So how are you explaining that?” Jessie asks pointing at the grav-car. “You are running out of distant relatives giving you inheritances. Did you ‘win the lottery’ again?”

“Oh I’m pretending that I am being irresponsible with my money and am in debt over this one. I do actually get a decent paycheck from my ‘real job’ you know. Single, no kids, I can explain a lot.”

“You are throwing up all sorts of red-flags, my scaly friend. You need to be a bit more careful.”

Jessie looks out over the teeming city below and at the huge holographic religious sigil hovering above it all.

“You know,” she says, “If you didn’t know what that thing meant it would almost be beautiful.”

“On the other hand,” the lizard responds, “all that religious oppression is good for business. If we became a free society I would go out of business overnight. All hail the great egg! May it forever be peeping into our bedrooms!”

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Jessie just laughs in response.

“So, what do you have for me?” she asks.

“Oh the usual,” the lizard says pulling out a small box, “The latest Federation shipping routes, navigational hazards, detours, patrol schedules, and locations of most of their fleet plus a few crystals full of the latest deep dive that I did. I grabbed tons of shit but am not entirely sure all that’s in there.”

“Excellent!” Jessie chirps.

She then pulls out a transactor, loads a crystal with credits and hands it over. The lizard smiles and pockets it.

“Pleasure doing business with you, as always,” he says.

“Oh, I have something you may be interested in,” Jessie says with a huge grin as she pulls her tablet.

“Oh? Is it filthy?”

“Oh it’s filthy alright,” she chuckles. “Twelve hours of the latest animated Flink porn, all brand new. I know that because I commissioned it. Pretty good stuff too,” she says as she pulls up a few clips.

“Oh this is niiiice,” the Flink says drooling slightly. “Quality stuff this.”

“It gets better,” Jessie laughs. “I also have six hours of live action stuff.”

“L.. liv… live ac… live action?” the Flink stammers.

“Yup.” Jessie plays a scene and holds up her tablet. The Flink’s eyes pop wide open and his tongue shoots out adhering firmly to Jessie’s tablet.

“Woah! What the fuck!” Jessie exclaims as she starts to have a tug of war with the Flink.

“Thorry! It wasth an athidencth!”

“Well, let go goddammit!”

“I canth!”

“What do you mean you canth?”

“Leth me have th thableth. I’ll fixth ith.”

Jessie reluctantly hands over the tablet. After a few moments the tablet is freed with an audible “pop”.

“Jesus dude,” Jessie says wiping off the screen, “buy me dinner first,” she laughs. “So, I take it that you are interested?”

“I am!” the Flink says wiping a truly excessive amount of sticky drool from his mouth. “How… How did you get that?”

“Welll,” Jessie says still laughing, “there might be a few Flink Universalists who decided to flee to the Republic in search of religious freedom and a few of them may have really embraced all of the freedoms we offer and were also keen to earn a few credits. And so, I have six hours of the raunchiest most perverted acts they could come up with. They say some of it even isn’t in the sodomy laws because the priesthood hasn’t thought of it yet.”

“H-How much?”

“Oh wait my little pervert, it gets better,” Jessie says pulling up another screen. “I also happen to have the entire contents of Game Source Fire’s game library and I mean all of them from Happy Puff Puff Farmer to the entire contents of the Blood Vault.”

She looks at him suspiciously.

“You aren’t going to splooge all over my tablet again are you?” she asks as she hands the tablet over.

The Flink pages through the contents his eyes getting wider and wider as he does. “Oh,” Jessie says with a grin, “Those games in the vault? Those little skulls next to the title aren’t for show. Those are the most twisted, most dark, most violent, most perverted shit a Terran mind can come up with. Some Terrans have actually needed professional help after playing some of those four and five skull games.”

“Holy shit!” the Flink exclaims as he continues to scroll. “You have Federation Fun Time!”

“With all of the DLC including Species Master. You can indulge in the absolute best VR carnage using your own species no less!” Jessie smiles as she looks at the Flink paging through the titles in awe. “All of it completely cracked, all copy protection and licenses removed and ready to go. I even put in a custom license generator so you can sell it by the copy without them being able to undercut you, unless they are as good as we are of course. You will be able to buy a dozen of those fancy grav-cars in a week.”

“How much for all of it?”

“Not how much, mister drooly, what,” Jessie says with a malicious smile.

“Oh shit,” the Flink says looking at her with suspicion. “What do you want?”

“The engineering firm you work for did all of the controls for the White Star, right?”

“Oh fuck.”

“I want everything and I mean everything. I want all of the source code, all of the wiring diagrams, all of the structural drawings, all of the training simulators, the location and nature of every single sensor, the nature and location of all automated defenses, location of and control programs for all automated doors, all you have about their drives and navcomp, all of their AI, and anything else you got… I want every single one and zero, all of it and I do mean all,” Jessie said as she took back her tablet.

The Flink just made a deep trilling sound with his tongue and looked skyward for a few moments.

“Done. I can do that no problem. I will need a couple of days and a crate to hold all the crystals but consider it done,” the Flink says wiping away some more drool.

He squints his eyes at Jessie.

“Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not,” Jessie says, “I will say this. Cover your fucking tracks on this one. You absolutely do not want this coming back on you.”

“I always do.” the Flink says with a smile and a trill. “This is going to be fun!”