Chapter 13. Appolimus

After Ellora woke up and finished her 20 questions about the mining site, she bounced around Thaum’s room and swiftly got to work. She collected the mining equipment she would need, including backups. Then sent her mining fleet to a nearby asteroid cluster to throw off anyone if they followed their fleet.

For the next several days, she couldn’t sit still. Alice was able to distract her for brief stints. Thaum tried to ignore her, But she was so bubbly that his soul’s dormant empathic abilities were picking it up. Even when he had purposely muted them for several lifetimes.

He guessed that either she or her race holds some level of empathic ability. So either he cuts his soul off from the deep and goes crazy. At least crazier than he already is. Or he shoves her out of the airlock.

In the end, he hit her with a sleep spell until they arrived.

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Thaum and Ellora were walking through the pirate asteroid base. The good news was Ellroa was pissed when she woke up. Thaum could easily deal with pissed empathic pings. He retraced his steps without a word.

Thaum had been paying attention to his empathic abilities in the absence of conversation. Ellora was feeling cautious the moment they stepped into the base. Then spikes of fear every time she saw a base defense, trap, or explosive. The emotions Thaum was receiving about himself went from. Pissed, to cautious to downright scared by the time they reached the Thaums fake cave.

She saw the footage of Thaums ship fight. She knew he was a dangerous pilot even if his ship outclassed the pirates heavily, but you can’t fly a ship through a base complex. The skillset required to disarm this base without a scratch or scorch mark didn’t say skilled pilot.

It said Ghost. The kind of people that didn’t exist. That did things that get covered up from both sides. The side that sent them because they didn’t want to be implicated with anything the Ghost did. And the attacked side because they don’t want to be seen as weak if one person could do so much damage.

Ellora knew there were only two people in Thaum’s crew and that included him. She doubted Alice could help with this. She was still half piloting the ship through voice commands.

One person not only killed a pirate fleet but cleared their base in only the time between the date on the battle footage and when he arrived back at the station, which included travel time.

While Ellora was engrossed in thought, they found Thaums fake hidden cave. The moment she saw the purple-stained Rockwall, she dashed past Thaum. A scanner in hand. The empathic pings went from gentle jabs of anger. To impaling joy.

Thaum contemplated another sleep spell as she gushed. “This is one of the largest deposits of Appolimus on record. There are Kilograms here. With this, with this…” Her eyes widened, and she spun to look at Thaum.

Eyes wide. Lower lids raised. Legs shoulder length apart. Ready to run. Thaum didn’t need to read that emotion. He said, “you can calm down now. But you can see why I am giving you a percentage honesty fee.”

Thaum was rapidly tiring of this situation so he directed her thoughts in a new direction. Luckily she quickly picked it up, “yes, with material as expensive as Appolimus, even a small theft because of a greedy miner would be far more expensive than a small percentage. And difficult to catch with how small volume-wise it is… but how would that stop someone from pocketing a little anyway.”

Thaum spread his arms and smiled at her. She said, “oh. Yea, you.”

He replied, “yes me. It also means the miner is thinking less about how can I not die if I steal. And more on how can I make sure the shipment gets back so I can get paid. It is a lot of money, but most would rather an honest. Fair payment, than a backstabbing gamble against death himself, kinda deal.”

“confident aren’t ya” She said, then picked up a minding drill and pointed to the secondary one, “you aren’t gonna let a girl do all the work herself are you.”

Thaum walked to the edge of the cave and pulled a fold-out chair leaned against the wall. Kept eye contact. Unfolded the chair and sat down, “yes.”

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Extracting the ore took several hours. Ellora insisted on taking the surrounding rock too. All of which had to be pulled out by bags. However, Ellora suggested turning down the gravity plates in the base, making it much more manageable.

Now Alice’s room was once again a storage room. This time for rocks. She moved to the medical pod in the med room, and Ellora moved to Thaums bed. Thaum asked if she wanted to return to her ships now. She laughed, “yea, and leave you with enough ore to buy a small world. A bad one, but still. Before being paid. No, I’ll stick as close as possible to you until the jobs done.”

Thaum grinned, “So you are keeping an eye on me. Confident, aren’t ya” then he went back to bed.

They regrouped with the mining fleet. Then went back to the mining space station. Several times during the trip Ellora had to find somewhere alone to take a call with her crew. She was keeping them in the dark about what they had and only told them to trust her, but the calls kept coming.

The day before they got back, Thaum simply shut off communications. When they landed, they left the landing stairs up. To keep away uninvited guests, and called the station leader to the ship.

Thaum looked through the camera feeds and saw a portly man walk to his ship. Two armed men were flanking him. Thaum guessed that was the station head by the guards openly carrying weapons on the station.

He lowered the stairs, and his guards gave a look to the half dozen of Ellora’s crew that really wanted to talk to her. The landing stairs lowered, and they went up. The station head stood in front of the ship’s airlock door, and one of his guards leaned past him and pressed the comm button.

“Station head Gorgon Von Sevt. You called for a meeting and paid the fee, so unless you want my entire meeting time to be standing at this door, which I will gladly do since you already paid. You should let me in before you have to extend your time.”