The briefing happened in a virtual space for time efficiency reasons. The processing speed of the modern brain was orders of magnitude faster than the data transfer rate of spoken speech, and using physical gestures would be completely impractical. To get around this problem for in-depth conversations, it was fairly typical for the participants to hold them in virtual spaces where communication could keep up with people’s thoughts.

In the case of today’s particular example, we were in what looked like a hardwood office with windows providing a simulated view from outside the galactic plane. I was standing across the desk from Dispatcher Shen, the cybernetic spider-person reading a data feed even as they replied “Agents Zargosty and Hadrian, we have a mission for you.”

I nodded, asking “This is about the pirates who made off with a shipment of Non-Orientable Wormholes, correct?”, even as my partner Maximus Hadrian stood silently next to me, scrolling through data feeds like he always did.

A glass of some drink or other appeared on the table, and Dispatcher Shen took a long pull from the drink glass before saying “Yes. Do you have any idea just how much more dangerous excess Non-Orientable Wormholes make a pirate operation? The answer is massively so. Space combat is often decided by who has the biggest fleet of actual warships and the best understanding of maneuver. And while a pirate ship can’t stand up to a Battleship or Cruiser due to the compromises inherent in being pirates, that same trend of bigger fleets being exponentially more useful definitely holds true.”

All eights of Shen’s eyes stared directly into my two and his carapace shifted from blue to gold, as he continued “As it stands, the Bark’s Finest pirates are in the position to make the jump from a single ship to a fully armed and operational fleet, possibly of indefinite size if they leverage their new windfall into making their own wormhole industry. If they do so, they will be doing so with pirate ships engineered with the explicit purpose of piracy, rather than the up-gunned civilian craft they are almost certainly currently using. They could go from a minor nuisance to a significant menace to our shipping with such an increase in resources. As such, you are among the roughly two hundred million agents we have assigned to the task of tracking down these pirates and making sure they get thoroughly crushed.”

This is when Hadrian asked “Sir, what are the limitations on our rules of engagement?”

The spider glanced over at Hadrian, before replying “The official limits on Rules of Engagement are as follows: Any and all actions with a reasonable chance of advancing mission completion are authorized, aside from antagonizing any factions not already hostile to the Red Star Union. We don’t want to blow all our goodwill crushing these pirates only to find ourselves surrounded my newly made enemies.”

I nodded, asking “What resources do we have available, and what intelligence do we already have on the Bark’s Finest pirates?”

Director Shen chittered in pleased acknowledgement “Ah, always asking the smart questions. First with regards to resources, we can get you whatever personal scale equipment and bodies you want, as well as a significant discretionary budget. Voidskippers will be available for transport if Mindcasting is infeasible for whatever reason, but will not be placed under your command.”

Then Shen’s mood soured, as he noted “As for the pirates, we have almost nothing on them that the news hasn’t reported already, which isn’t all that useful. Yes we know the ship’s name but without her authcode and transponder frequency there’s no way to identify her in a galaxy where quadrillions of Voidskippers ply the interstellar trade routes at a conservative estimate. The same goes for the elusive Captain Fuller; do you have any idea just how common a surname Fuller is out there? And that’s assuming it’s even their real name, which is the exact opposite of guaranteed. And as for their apparently frightening levels of infiltration expertise, that was already annoyingly obvious from the moment we heard about Nebula Plow being sabotaged.”

We nodded in understanding, before I noted “In that case, I know exactly where we’ll be going first; the Conjoined Church of Scensia. They’re one of the biggest and most coherent hive minds around, so if anyone would know about who these pirates were, it would be her. That said, we’ll get the best results if we go to a place where the Church has loads of extra bandwidth, which means one of their Monastery Systems. Ironically, we’re headed for Palemission.”

There were a few more subjective minutes of chatter, before we ended the briefing and our sensory feeds came back to our biomorph. I swished my tail behind me as I began making our way out of our personal quarters, making sure our Raster Blaster pistol was in its concealed holster and properly safed. As I walked, I heard Hadrian reply from his back seat driver position in our shared brain “Are we going to be traveling via Mindcast, or via ship?”

I immediately replied “Mindcast of course, It’s faster and safer if the people on the other end can be trusted, and the Scensciists view preservation of identity as sacred, so they’re among the least likely groups to cause problems in that regard.” as I walked our shared body down the hallway to the BoSI office’s mindcast hub. The hallways were as pretty as ever; whoever had programmed the holographic wallpaper for this rest cycle had done a great job, animated images of stylized meadows gently flowing in a simulated breeze on the walls of the corridor. Apparently it had even been integrated into one of the recreational virtual spaces for off-duty agents, as we could easily pick out what seemed to be a picnic happening in the distance.

As soon as we got to the Mindcast hub, the system admin in charge of it greeted us from the mini-morph she was currently occupying “Ah, agents Zargosty and Hadrian? Where are you planning on going today, and will you be archiving or splitting?”

We both replied over the biomorph’s integrated Wi-Fi “Hello, Bud. We’re going to Palemission for an overt assignment, no additional identity obfuscation needed. Please include full details on our preferred morph setup in the cast. And we’ll be archiving our sending-selves, thanks.”

Bud immediately performed the standard RSU salute of clapping once then standing to attention, then said “Well, what are you waiting for? Into the morph recycler with you!”

We nodded in affirmation, then hopped into one of the full-body reclined pods. The utilitarian gray upholstery squashed under us, and idly I noted the presence of the hatch at the bottom where Maximus and I’s body would be dumped for reprocessing into feedstock once we were no longer using it. Then the glass cover over the pod closed, turning opaque as the polarized smart filters activated. A few moments later the scanning probe came down and we felt a slight tingle as it interfaced with the integrated access points of the brain both Maximus and I were living in.

There was no gap in our continuity, feeling of transition, or any sensation of slipping away into the void. There wasn’t even the pomp and circumstance of a countdown before Casting. One moment we were in the rounded utilitarian recycler pod at the Bureau of Starforce Intelligence, the next we were in a much more ornate pod, wearing a freshly-printed body. It was still the same exact specification of feline combat bioroid we’d been wearing before, though.

I took a brief moment to admire the decoration of the pod before the door opened. The general shape was hexagonal with a comfortably upholstered back, the paneling was gold plated, and there were insets of multi-colored corundum in the shape of dozens of different religious symbols. The front panel (itself an ornate stained-glass masterpiece) began opening after a second or so, allowing the fresh air of the mindcast travel room to enter, even as we climbed out and stood up.

As we exited the recycling and printing pod, a few more details immediately caught our attention about the room. First, it was a veritable garden, with planters full of lush greenery artfully spaced between the rows of mindcast pods. Second, the pod had in fact been set to provide us with clothes matching what we had specified, namely a utilitarian one-piece jumpsuit with dozens of pockets in unobtrusive places. Third, the roof was glass, showing a blue sky characteristic of a decently large habitat. Fourth, there was an overly cheery four-armed priest wearing a purple robe greeting us.

We turned and took a good look at the priest in question. The morph they were wearing was fairly slim, slightly taller than us, had no hair, charcoal black skin, and long pointed ears. They also immediately greeted us “Hello travelers, and welcome to Palemission. What brings you to a monastery system of the Conjoined Church of Scensia? Are you perhaps interested in joining?”

From the back of our brain, Maximus commented “Madeline, I’ve got the file on this guy. His name is Andie Mont; he’s been a priest with the Conjoined Church for about three hundred years now, and has repeatedly passed up promotions to keep performing services to the rank-and-file members, as well as avoiding any serious administrative duties. He has hosted headmates before, but is currently a singlet assuming you don’t count Scensia.”

I idly remarked back “Remind me what a hive mind needs priests for again? It seems like most of the reasons for having them are things Scensia could take care of herself.”

I got the immediate impression of a grin from Maximus as he remarked “You’d think that, but there’s all sorts of reasons for a hive mind like Scensia to want priests around. One of the big ones is to make sure all doctrinal shifts are unified across her membership to limit schisms. Another is emotional support when things go wrong. There’s more, if you want me to go on.”

Mentally, I replied “No thanks, I think I get the point now. Anyway, we do need to answer Andie’s question.”

In response, Maximus shot me a mental grin as acknowledgement.

Physically, I shook our head as I replied “No Andie, we’re not interested in joining the church of Scensia. That said, we are interested in some services that the church is uniquely equipped to provide. I presume that you’re aware of the Non-Orientable Wormhole shipment bound for this system that got hijacked?”

Andie chuffed, before he noted “Ah I see you read my name tag then; it’s to be expected. And yes, everyone’s aware of the shipment being hijacked. Scensia’s local aspects were very upset about it.”

I nodded in understanding, before saying “Putting it bluntly, we’re looking for the pirates that did it on behalf of the Red Star Union’s BoSI, and we figured that you might be some of the best people to talk to if we want to track these pirates down. There’s hundreds of millions of inhabited systems, and it’s almost intractably hard to collate a useful amount of information about even a significant fraction of them. We were hoping that the church would be able to help with this.”

Andie startled, before saying “You are requesting that Scensia assist with tracking down the pirates who hijacked our shipment? One moment.” He then lead us out of the Mindcasting room and down the hall to an office space. As we walked between rooms, I noted a slight difference in Andie’s demeanor as he stood up slightly straighter, and the fidgeting ceased. More dramatically, their skin suddenly turned a bright blue-green color (probably due to chromatophores), and when the body spoke again it was with a distinctly feminine voice.

The last piece of evidence that we were talking to Scensia now was when she greeted us with “Hello, I am Scensia. You wished to speak with me about tracking down the pirate ship Bark’s Finest? Sadly my abilities in that regard are fairly limited. I have tracked down several additional reports of that particular pirate ship operating in this general region of space, but my limited reach makes discovering much more than that difficult. For example, I have not been able to determine what systems they are operating out of, nor where they were going, or their motive for taking the Non-Orientable Wormholes. I also haven’t been able to determine the true identity of the elusive Captain Fuller.”

I was taken aback at this, and found myself trying to figure out what to say. Still, before I could, Max asked “Hey Madeline, can I take front for a bit? I want to ask Scensia about something that’s been bugging me.”

I mentally shrugged and replied “Sure thing, just give me a moment to switch out.”

With that I felt myself receding towards the back of our shared mind, kicking back and relaxing in the mindspace replica of a lounge room we used when we didn’t need to use the body. It was a very comfortable place for me, being in the back of a mindscape like this; after all, it’s the sort of situation I first came into existence in.

Musings aside, I was still aware of the sensory feeds from the body Maximus and I shared. Therefore I was still very aware as Max crossed our arms together and asked “Scensia, can I ask what you mean by limited reach, exactly? From what we were aware the Conjoined Church has a presence in well over a million star systems, and several full-fledged Megasystems further towards the Old Core. If anyone should be able to pull together enough information to help us with this, it should be you.”

Scensia sighed, before saying “None of what you said is wrong exactly, but is very misleading. Even leaving aside the fact that whenever the Church schisms I schism with it, bandwidth limits mean that the I that is here, is not the I comprising the entirety of Scensia. In order to fully unify my local consciousness with the whole of my being, I would need to commandeer every single scrap of data coming in and out of Palemission, and even then it would be a very shaky union. While the pirates are regrettable, there is not much more I can actually do to help without performing such a drastic action.”

There was a brief pause, before Maximus asked “Would you have to fully unify? It seems like the sort of thing where you could simply query the larger network and wait for a reply. Simply ask her for information on the matter, then let her do all the hard work before sending you a reply.”

Scensia groaned, as she muttered “Not this fallacy again… One of the crucial parts of my network architecture for maintaining cognitive coherence is that direct communications between my immense number of nodes are only in the form of fully integrated thought streams. While this does prevent cognitive drift, it also means that I can’t just ‘send a query’, nor can I just ‘receive a report’.”

Scensia continued to speak, one of the floor tiles projecting a highly detailed infographic of her network architecture even as she said “I’d have to fully unify with the entirety of my being to properly bring this matter to my attention as more than a tiny tangent at the edge of my awareness, and I am not sure that doing so would be worth the massive disruption to everything else happening in Palemission it would require. If the system had been settled even a few years longer I’d unquestionably have the bandwidth required, but as it stands it would only barely be possible.”

I felt Maximus gently nudging me back into the front of our mind, even as he noted “Well, Scensia’s made her position on the matter clear. We’re past the technical side of things now; it’s up to you to actually convince our not-so-omniscient goddess to go through with unifying, otherwise this lead is going nowhere.”

I replied “Right, I’ll see what I can do in that regard.” even as my awareness fully returned to driving the body. The very first angle I tried was “Scensia, if the pirates who stole the Non-Orientable Wormholes are allowed to continue operating, do you actually know just how much damage they might do? How many people they could kill while destroying their black boxes? Especially now that they have four additional Non-Orientable Wormhole pairs.”

Immediately, Scensia replied “Yes, I am fully aware of exactly how much damage the Bark’s Finest can do using their newly acquired Non-Orientable Wormholes. Best available estimates indicate that even accounting for such, dropping everything to unify with my entire being would still cause more souls to be lost than what the pirates are likely to account for in the longer term.”

Not even blinking, I uncrossed our arms and asked “Why? I know about your role in reconstructing the mind-states of your followers, but couldn’t it be arranged for everyone to get to a safe spot for a few moments so that there wouldn’t be any deaths while you were unified? There’s every possibility that the pirates could establish a pirate port system if they’re left unmolested, thus establishing a persistent menace to settlement and shipping in the region that will ultimately be responsible for tens of trillions of deaths.”

Scensia sighed, before saying “I know that, but I’m worried that if I distract myself from my followers here I will lose someone permanently. Each and every one of my followers has a deeply intimate connection to me, and when one of them dies in a way that they can’t be revived it hurts in a way that I find it difficult to recover from. That’s really one of the biggest reasons I have such a large priesthood; I need them for emotional support. I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel comfortable doing this.”

Internally I groaned “Ugh, I hate having to be a manipulative bitch, but I can’t see any other way around it right now. Thinking that I’ll have to hammer away at that obvious guilt complex to get much of anywhere with Scensia.”

Hadrian sent a wordless pulse of reassurance, before I asked “And what if the pirates start raiding the local systems, including Palemission? They’ve already proven themselves incredibly bold for pirates, given that they just stole some of the most carefully monitored goods around. Attacking populated systems wouldn’t be out of character for a crew like that. And they’ve already proven that they have a disturbing ability to exploit security holes and plan things out ahead of time. Are you sure you want to risk them killing billions of your followers?”

Scensia screwed up her face in an expression of discomfort, but said nothing for a few moments. Then her borrowed body returned to its charcoal-black coloration, and Andie was staring back at us with a look of disapproval on his face. Immediately the priest stormed right up to us and very quietly shouted “I am very upset with you, miss Zargosty, and you too Hadrian, for allowing her to do that. Keeping our goddess in good mental health is a constant challenge, and your little stunt there nearly jeopardized that. I am extremely tempted to have the both of you shoved face-first into the mindcast tanks and sent back to where you came from, but Scensia is currently re-evaluating her decision, and has requested that you be allowed to stay while she finalizes things.”

I nodded solemnly, before saying “Understood. While we wait for Scensia to finalize things, what can we actually do around here?”

Andie scowled, before saying “I’d say stay here and wait, but this room is needed for other purposes. So guess what, you get to be our honored guests during today’s service! Right this way you two!”

And with that we were practically frog-marched outside the building we had arrived in, and directly towards another, much larger structure. Said building was vaguely teardrop-shaped, with massive stained glass windows and baroque faux-stone architecture. As we got closer, the massive sliding stained glass doors opened, and into the church we went.

I looked up as we entered the Sanctuary room, and the first thing I noticed was the truly enormous pipe organ behind the pulpit. At a glance I could count well over two thousand pipes, and the instrument was fitted with massive corundum decorations in every conceivable color that sent light scattering off it to other points in the room, with one particular pattern of reflected light projecting the four-tailed comet symbol of the Church onto the Cathedral’s ceiling. It was beautiful.

The service was only moderately interesting, as it was a mix of a call for calm in trying times and a minor call for action. It would probably have been a lot more engaging if we’d been members of the church, but we weren’t. The organ music on the other hand was both beautiful, and VERY loud. I could actually feel our ears having to regenerate damaged hearing capacity in between each song from the sheer volume level that the organ was outputting. I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest to have learned it could be heard on the complete other side of the habitat with no further amplification, and this was a big habitat.

It was as we were getting up to leave that Andie popped up and said “Miss Zargosty and mister Hadrian? Scensia has made a decision and wishes to speak with you. In private. Please follow me.”

Only slightly surprisingly, we were lead towards the back rooms of the cathedral, instead of the exit. We’d barely started moving before Max noted “Ah, we’re being lead to the back rooms of the cathedral. Pretty sure that we’re heading towards the location marked on the map as the Avatar Audience Room.”

Sure enough we soon arrived in a small sitting room, where a youthful-looking feminine biomorph was sitting. As soon, as Max and I entered, she stood up and greeted us “Hello you two! I’ve had a lot of time to think about what you said, and after a lot of weighing the possibilities I’ve decided that I need to get over my hangups and just get on with it. Tracking down those pirates is important.”

Suddenly, the room warmed up slightly; quickly switching our eyes to infrared revealed that truly absurd amounts of data were flowing through the optical cables in the wall, the tiny amounts of waste causing them to warm significantly. Then Scensia’s avatar began to rise into the air unsupported, even as a brightly lit elaborate rainbow tracery started glowing under her skin.

Scensia looked down at us from her standing perch in the air, even as a big friendly smile spread across her face. Then she spoke, a resonant chorus of voices issuing forth from a single body as she said “Greetings to both my priest and the brilliantly entwined souls before me. I have now fully unified my local aspects with the entirety of my being. You are now speaking to the goddess Scensia in my entirety. It is not often that I am fully pulled together across the boundaries set by schisms and denominational breakups, so I will treasure this brief moment of unity. That said, let’s get down to business about our mutual pirate problem, shall we?”

In the back of our mind I could hear Hadrian snark in response to Scensia’s obvious theatrics“Well, nice to know that our host is good at putting on a show at least!”

“I heard that. I get so few opportunities to fully unify that I like to commemorate the occasion.”

This is the free edition of In Pursuit of Bark's Finest. If you want to read the whole story ahead of schedule, you can buy it at Amazon or Smashwords.

Ebook: Amazon | Smashwords

Paperback: Normal Text | Large Text