Jeridan got extra worried when Helen sauntered in with a big smile on her face.

That woman smiled at all the wrong occasions, and it usually spelled trouble.

It looked like Luna and the guards were unnerved as well. They studied the newcomer closely, taking in her implants and no doubt wondering about her capabilities. The guards gripped their rifles.

Luna looked at her console more than directly at her. She was probably scanning the cyborg.

"So you're Helen," Luna said. "What's your last name?"

"Last names don't matter," Helen said.

Well, she's off to a good start.

"They matter to me." Luna turned to Jeridan and Negasi. "What's her last name?"

"We don't know."

"Oh, come on!"

"We were never told. This was back when Nova was in charge."

"It's true," Helen said. "Hello, Luna. It's nice to meet you. I've heard so many good things about you."

Luna looked confused. "Really?"

"Oh, yes. We know you are a champion of individual liberty."

"I'm a champion of my personal wealth, and your crewmates cost me a bunch of it."

"We can pay the fine," Helen said.

Luna looked down at her console for a moment and typed something. Then she looked at Helen and said, "Two hundred thousand credits."

"Two hundred thousand!" Jeridan cried. "That's robbery! No way did we do that much damage."

"It's the sum total of material damage, medical treatment for the combatants and bystanders, and lost business."

"Lost business? This kind of thing happens all the time. People still come here."

"No respectable people. This sort of incident cuts into my pool of potential customers."

"It's not like anyone respectable would come here anyway."

"No one truly respectable," Luna agreed, "but we could certainly draw in some semi-respectable people."

"Semi-respectable?" Negasi asked.

"As opposed to wholly unrespectable, like us," Luna said.

"Oh, I see."

"I'd like to expand my marketing base, and I can't do that when crazy spacers keep shooting up my station. So I have to make an example of you. Two hundred thousand credits, please."

Jeridan looked to Helen, hoping she'd pull a jack out of her head that was a credit chip with untold wealth in it.

She didn't.

In fact, she looked worried for the first time Jeridan had ever seen her.

He didn't take that as a good sign.

"We don't have two hundred thousand credits," Helen said.

"Well, then I don't have any choice but to impound your ship."

"Perhaps we can do a trade.," Helen said.

Here we go. Me and Negasi are going to be sold off so they can fly away. I knew it.

"What kind of trade?"

"Tech for their freedom."

Oh, this isn't so bad.

Unless …

"So that tech scavenge was successful?"

"Beyond our wildest dreams."

Cack, don't give everything away! And to her, of all people!

"What did you find?" Luna asked, eyes glittering with greed.

Helen smiled and gestured at Jeridan and Negasi. "These guys shouldn't see. Let me send you a data burst."

Luna fiddled with her console.

"All right. I'm sending you an open portal. If my console detects any viruses or you try to access any other portal, and the guards will blow you to pieces."

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"I won't betray your trust."

"Damn right you won't, or else."

"I'm sending now."

Luna looked down and her console and took a sharp inhalation, eyes widening. She stared, then tilted her head to the right.

"That's … new."

"Old, actually, from some encrypted Imperium files. I can unlock the rest if we can come to an agreement."

"I'm calling my chief engineer to take a look at this."

"As you wish."

Jeridan and Negasi fidgeted while Luna put on some VR goggles and stared for a while, her head moving this way and that.

"Remarkable," she muttered.

A thin, older man without a single hair on his head, not even eyebrows, walked into the room.

"You summoned me, goddess?" he asked.

"Yes, come over here."

The old engineer sat on Luna's lap and she put the VR goggles on him, then held him around the middle.

Huh. What's going on there? He's thirty years older than her! Forty!

I guess smart really is sexy.

The engineer gasped and turned his head all around.

"This is beyond any capabilities we've been able to research," he said. "This is a game changer."

"Do we have a deal?" Helen asked.

"Please say yes," the engineer said.

"I was going to charge them two hundred thousand."

"No, get this. It's worth more in the long run. A lot more."

"All right," Luna said, giving the little man a squeeze and making him squirm with delight. "You have a deal. Now get these jokers off my station and leave as soon as you're provisioned."

"Thank you so much. I'll send you the decrypted files now."

The engineer gasped, staring at whatever the VR goggles were revealing to him.

"Amazing," he muttered. "Absolutely amazing."

Luna made an impatient, dismissive gesture and Helen, Jeridan, and Negasi filed out of the room. A pair of guards, one in front and one behind, escorted them to the Antikythera.

No one said a word the entire way.

Jeridan had plenty to say once they got back inside the ship.

Nova waited for them in the airlock so that made it extra convenient.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Jeridan bellowed. "Trying to stab us in the back? Well, you're confined to quarters until we make planetfall."

Nova stood there with her arms crossed and that typical look on her face that said she didn't give a damn what he felt.

"I wasn't going to abandon you."

"Oh, you weren't going to abandon us? You just told a criminal leader that you weren't responsible for our actions and you weren't going to pay for our release. What does that sound like to you?"

Nova's frown deepened.

As usual. Her frown rarely softened. It was amazing her face didn't get stuck that way.

"I only wanted to scare you."

"You did a cacking good job!" Negasi shouted. Helen stood in the corner and said nothing.

"You were getting out of line."

Jeridan's paused for a moment, utterly shocked that she had just said the worst thing possible.

He looked at his gunner, who looked equally amazed, and then stepped closer to her former boss.

"Keep us in line? For what? Detaining you for multiple felonies? Objecting to you putting a ghost in the head of your own son? Getting irritated when you lie to us consistently and constantly for months on end? Negasi, am I missing anything?"

"Probably, but that's enough, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. We're not out of line, Nova. You are."

"This my ship."

"Which we took over under interstellar law. Any court in the civilized galaxy would rule we did what was right."

"This is a very important mission and—"

"Holy crap! Not that again. Come on. We're taking you to your quarters."

Helen looked pained, but didn't intervene. Good.

As they walked down the corridor, Derren/Mason appeared. From the serious look on his face and those penetrating eyes, Jeridan could tell Derren was in control.

"What's going on here?" he demanded.

"We're confining your mom to quarters. Or your wife. Whatever. She's getting locked up."

"What for?"

"For being a grade-A pain in the ass. Oh, and resisting a mutiny. Technically I could space her at this point, but that would traumatize your children even more than they already have been, so instead I'm just going to lock her up so I don't have to deal with her anymore."

"Sounds therapeutic," Negasi said.

"You got that right."

Derren/Mason frowned. He frowned an awful lot like Nova. Maybe that's why they decided to get hitched.

"She's essential to our work."

"Yeah, yeah, I've heard it a million times before. From now on, she can work remotely, with MIRI watching to make sure she doesn't do anything funny. If she does, you'll be confined to quarters as well."

Derren/Mason opened his mouth to object, apparently thought better of it, and turned to Helen.

"Come on. We have work to do."

Yeah, yeah. Pretend to be in charge if that makes you feel better.

Jeridan and Negasi led Nova to her quarters and Jeridan used his captain's override to lock her in, instructing MIRI to sound the alarm if anyone tampered with the door or if Nova did anything suspicious on the computer.

As they turned to leave, they stopped short. Aurora stood in the hallway staring at them.

"You locked up my mother?"

"I can explain," Jeridan said.

"You don't have to explain. I heard the whole thing. You were shouting so loud the walls were vibrating."

"Really?"

"It's just an expression, loser. You'd have to set off an explosion to get these walls to vibrate."

"Oh. Right."

"How long are you going to leave her in there?"

"How about forever?"

A smile flickered across Aurora's mouth, then she grew more serious.

"She didn't mean anything by it."

"Didn't mean anything by leaving us in the clutches of a crime boss?"

"She just wanted to scare you. Show you who's in charge."

"We're in charge," Jeridan told her.

The teenager rolled her eyes. "Riiiight."

She turned and walked off.

Jeridan muttered a curse under his breath and headed for the bridge. He wanted to make sure that maintenance crew got everything done ASAP. They needed to get the hell out of here.

He found Helen sitting in the copilot's seat, working on the ever-present problem of the jump gates.

"How's that going?" Jeridan asked, eyeing the maintenance crew as they worked on patching up the Antikythera's hull and loading the last of the torpedoes.

"We're almost there. We'll have it all worked out and a comm probe ready by the time we get to Eridanus Delta."

"Perfect. Um, thanks for what you did back there."

Helen smiled at him. "We care about you too much to leave you here."

"By we you mean everyone except Nova and Derren?"

She turned back to her screen. "Don't be too hard on them. They've been under a lot of stress."

"Like I haven't! Anyway, thanks. What did you trade for us? Nothing sensitive, I hope."

Helen did the least expected thing. She blushed.

"It was … um … adult entertainment from Imperium times."

"Imperium porn?" Jeridan chucked. He'd seen some of that. Interesting, but not something that could free two men from someone like Luna.

"No, an immersive simulator."

"Oh. That's going to make them a fortune!"

"Yes, I was planning on selling it but getting you free was worth it."

"Thanks. I've never been traded for an adult simulator before. Scratch that off the list."

Jeridan chuckled again, then had an odd thought.

Helen had wiped her memory of everything unessential so she could download as much of the old Imperium jump gate data as possible.

But she hadn't deleted that.

Why not? Was she running the program in her head?

Jeridan snuck a peek at her. She was still working on the jump gate tech, her face flushed.

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