[The story of SH's origins, as told in the 3rd person by moi; I took the rough sketch that my GM-spouse gave me, and turned it into this... I don't say (or even think) it's exquisite literature, but perhaps it begins to shed some light on "the Seraphim's" rather twisted mind...]

Stefanie Hardy was fifteen years, five months, three days, nine hours, two minutes and fifty seconds old. She stood a few inches over five feet, slim and blue-eyed, and would be truly beautiful someday. Her pilot's license only qualified her for deep-space flying, but out on a fringe planet that maybe nobody but the natives and you knew about, a girl could sneak in some non-simulation practice. There were distinct advantages to being a ship-brat on a fringie merchant-craft like the _Last Gas For Three Months_.

Stefanie was the youngest of a crew of five -- her parents, her older brother, and a Sparrial. Her mother, Corianne Hardy, was spitfire and steel (sometimes even to her face), chief pilot, and captain every other day in space; the last was the other reason that she had eccentricly changed her last name to that of her husband, in accordance with old Old Earth customs. Her stated prime reason was that she'd always hated her original name, but over the years, her amusement at people's reactions to the gender-swapping, "Captain Hardy commanding," might have gained ascendency. Her jumpsuit was decorated with streaks and whorls of silver glitter, and Stefanie loved to watch her mother dancing under the multi-colored lights of the larger spaceport bars. Corianne would have been the very image of a fictional hotshot pilot, save that she was married and monogamous; she looked the part, she was exquisitely good at the controls, and she always knew where in space she was. There were one or two planets that the _Last Gas_ visited which had no listed coordinates, and only Corianne could find them. Or, rather, Corianne and her daughter, for Stefanie took after her mother in more than her soft blond-brown hair and elegant features.

Stefanie's father, Samuel Hardy, was the trader and engineer, as well as alternate captain. He was tall, wiry, black-haired and blue-eyed, and had a knack for reaching into the most complicated machinery and fiddling with just the part he wanted when another mechanic would have had to take the whole device apart first. He, too, was monogamous, though there were occasional rumors about "the time he'd gone to fix the Kintaran clanship's thrusters, and they could only pay in barter." He'd been the one who gave Stefanie her first stunner, when she was twelve, and taught her how and when to use it. (Corianne had been the one who'd demonstrated *where* stunners could be used, if an admirer got too obnoxious.)

Her brother's name was Sebastian -- the initials were something of a tradition on her father's side of the family. He was four years older than Stefanie and his fancies lay in mechanical things and weapons; he was the reason that the engine-room had a hodge-podge gunnery station in one corner. In typical younger-sibling fashion, Stefanie had tried to imitate him in everything, especially the multitude of weapons Sebastian practiced with. After being irritated at her decent skill with the things, he had finally condescended to offer advice and explain that one had to be able to fix the same weapon that one had just used to blow a target to smithereens.

The Sparrial was Looealeer, second pilot, back-up back-up-mechanic, back-up gunner, sensors and competent trader. He also tended to be picky beyond normal Sparrial attitudes about who was allowed near his trunk, and often vanished during shoreleaves, and sometimes beyond. He ___has worked with the Hardys off and on (usually more on than off) for three years, and had taught Stefanie a few tricks by example alone. Her parents had had to have a little talk with the twelve-year-old Stef, explaining exactly why Sparrials stole, and why if one absolutely *had* to pick pockets, one should restrict oneself to Sparrials, and even then, one should not swipe vital tools. Especially when the Sparrial is helping work on something. Even if it is hysterically funny. Looe had thought it was funny too, after the fact, and had taught her a bit of the Sparrial language along with his less innocous instructions. He was the one who brought on unmarked crates that made her father shake his head and her mother laugh.

On the whole, Stefanie had a relatively happy life, despite the deep-space squabbles that could have everyone on the ship not-speaking to each other for days at a time, and the often-coinciding times of low or no profit.

Stef had just finished pocketing her license, turning the helm over to her mother, when Looealeer picked up the large and over-armed ship heading for them at full warp. She had been ordered off to get the hand-weapons out of storage and distribute them to the rest of the family. The _Last Gas_ had been running relatively cargo-light, but it would have been overtaken even if Corianne had dumped the cargo. Between Looe and Sebastian, the pirate ship was damaged, but the Hardy's craft was out-gunned to start with, and the pirates seemed content to take a little more minor damage while they targeted the _Last Gas_'s own weapons. After that, came the comm signal. Her mother answered, "This is Captain 'Spitfire and Steel' Hardy of the _Last Gas For Three Months_. We are prepared to jettison our cargo gently for easy salvage."

"We don't really care about that," came the smug and spiteful reply. "It's not likely to be even a fraction of the value of your ship -- even an old crate like that. Open your outer lock and prepare to be boarded."

"I'm sorry, the airlocks are our of order right now. Our over-enthusiastic pilot has shot out their controls." Corianne jerked her head at Looe, pointing at Stef and mouthing, "Her with you!"

Looe had dragged Stefanie from the bridge while her mother gave calm and slow instructions on winching the airlock doors open manually, broadcast throughout the ship's intercomm. "They are slavers!" the Sparrial told her, sabotaging first the crew-lock, and then the cargo-lock. "If they want the ship, they will either kill us, or sell us. Possibly to the Kaa!" Stefanie whimpered. Snakely things made her stomach go free-fall without her, even when they weren't intelligent.

Looe let the girl follow him to his room, where he dug to the bottom of his trunk, and then beyond, exposing a secret compartment. He took out a belt of some kind, a screamer-pistol, and several hyposprays. "Here," he said, shoving the belt into her hands. "This, for you. Turn it on, maybe they don't scan you. And these." He gave her all but one of the hypos; using his on himself and closing his eyes briefly. "Ah."

"What is this?" Stefanie demanded, putting the hypos in her belt pouches.

"Star Fire. Works for Sparrials and humans both. Don't worry -- this is pure enough, you won't start craving it. Gives edge." He grinned at her with his three-corner smile.

Corianne's voice came through the intercomm, "Prepare to be boarded, folks, they're at the lock now. Looe, get her hidden! It's her and me they'll want alive most." The crisp tones faded to something rather more emotional. "I love you all, folks. Stars give us luck..."

Her father's voice: "Luck, Cori." Her brother's: "Love you, too, mom." Her own frightened wail of "Love you!" directed at her family as Looe dragged her back to the cargo bay.

Looe shoved her into a life-support access -- it was barely large enough for Stef, even with her flexible limbs. "Stay here! I will make stand here, they won't search hard. Don't make a sound! Here, give me two Star Fires, for your father and sib. Now stay! Don't leave, don't cry out!"

She nodded mutely, and the Sparrial replaced the panel. "Stay away from look-see hole." A brief pause. "Efanee. You should have been Sparrial. Your family, too." And he was gone.

Stefanie clutched the laser pistol she had. They all had a stunner and laser -- her brother would have a rifle down in engineering -- on the grounds that all the weapons on the ship should be in the *crew's* hands, and not lying around for pirate usage, though stunners would probably be useless as weapons. As an afterthought, she pulled the plastic helmet of her ship-suit over her head, ready to seal it if the cargo-hold was depressurized. While her suit didn't have more than a few minutes of air, there was an air-feed where she was hiding, and air-tanks just a panel away.

She didn't press her face up against the small transparent part of the panel that was used to check on the gauges and readouts for this access-point, but she did look through it. Looealeer returned quickly, glancing at Stef's hiding place, and then quickly sabotaged the a-grav units nearest both doors into the cargo bay before he took up a position in an upper corner of the hold. But he left a strip of high gravity between the door near the crew's airlock and himself.

When the pirates, mostly Thrals with a smattering of Unars, entered from that door, Looe started shooting with his laser. He dropped one and wounded several others, and two of them crashed to the deck in the high-grav zone before one switched it to null-gee as well. The Sparrial took cover amongst the cargo-crates, and expended his laser's charges before any of the pirates even got close to him. When one closed with him, Looe used his screamer; Stef would have thrown up if she hadn't been a spacer all her life, and in free-fall to boot. The pirates had Looe surrounded, and he tried bounding up and over, but even a Sparrial on Star Fire couldn't dodge all the weapons that were trained on him. His body hit a wall, bouncing back gently, and Stef thought she could smell burnt fur. A few of the pirates shot again, taking no chances on a wounded Sparrial playing tricks.

Crying in free-fall was another no-no.

Laser fire and the sound of stunners were still going on in other parts of the ship. Stefanie couldn't tell if anyone had used the door from the cargo bay into engineering, but she feared that they'd found some way there. They'd almost undoubtedly found the bridge already.

One of the Unars (another reptile race that gave her fits) managed to repair all but one of the a-grav units, bring the cargo bay to normal gravity except nearest the door into engineering. Looealeer's body, and those of the dead pirates, came thumping to the floor. The liquid bits from the screamer-killed Unar spattered messily, continuing to patter down periodically when one drifted out of the zero-gravity zone. Some of the pirates were set to dragging the bodies of their own out of the bay, probably back to their ship to see if they were repairable, or fully dead. Looe's corpse was shot yet again and dumped in a corner.

The Thral who seemed to be in charge ordered some of his group to check among the cargo crates, looking for more enemies. One was using a scanner of some sort, and swept it in the direction of Stef's hiding place, but the pirate didn't look up. Stefanie hugged her belly, hands crossed over Looe's belt.

The sound of lasers had grown much more intermittent. A group of five pirates entered the cargo-bay, dragging Stef's mother with them. The Thral leader checked for a pulse and nodded. Corianne was dropped to the floor, and a pirate tied her wrists together behind her back. The leader went to the intercom. "You'll be interested to know," he said, "that we've taken the woman who was on the bridge alive. Captain 'Spitfire and Steel,' was it? Most amusing. She could use a bit of medical treatment -- and if you don't give yourselves up, she will be needing rather a bit more."

The Thral turned to one of the others from the bridge-group. "What's the crew on this thing, anyway?" he asked -- Stefanie knew enough Thralish to follow him.

The other Thral shrugged. "No telling. She'd wiped or locked out most of the databases that pertained to the ship." She looked disgusted. "This thing probably has some quirks that she's hoping will kill us if we don't know about 'em. She took out the astrogation program, too, and the star database."

"We'll try to download our own, then. She might not have locked that out." The leader turned back to the intercom. "I'm waiting."

Samuel's voice spoke: "Let us talk to her."

"I'm sorry, your captain's out of order right now. It seems one of my over-enthuastic crew shot her with a stunner. I suppose I could use a stimulant of some kind on her -- where do you keep your sickbay?" One of the Unars said, "Got it," and trotted out. The Thral continued, "Oh, never mind, we'll find it ourselves."

The Unar returned, and dosed Corianne with the stimulant. The Thral spoke into the intercom again. "Ah, she seems to be coming to. Now, captain, is there anything you'd like to say?"

Corianne looked around groggily, twisting into a sitting position. "Suck vacuum, port scum."

"As you can hear, she's coherent." The Thral nodded at one of the others, who kicked Corianne in the leg. Stef's mother stifled a cry, and so did Stef, realizing there was a laser-wound in her mother's leg. "And," the leader continued, "in just a little pain. Now, will you surrender now, or..."

"NOT!" Corianne yelled. The pirate kicked her again, much harder, and she fell onto her side, curled up as best she could. Stef grimaced, mouthing, "Ungodly bastards!"

"Our captain has spoken," Samuel said.

"She is obviously still a bit groggy. Be reasonable. We do not wish to kill you, nor do we intend to sell you to the Kaa. You will have no complaints about your treatment." Stefanie could see the grins and smothered laughter among the rest of the pirates.

"No Kaa?"

"Oh, no -- the last time we dealt with them, they decided to take our guard as well, and they only paid half as much as she was worth. We've avoided them ever since. There are more profitable buyers. And they prefer healthy bodies. Really, that *is* a nasty laser-burn your captain has."

A pirate tried to kick Corianne again, but she twisted and lashed out with her good leg. The pirate fell heavily onto Corianne's wounded leg and she didn't manage to entirly muffle her shriek.

"All right." Stef's father said. "We'll come out. I hope you have two autodocs."

Stefanie considered coming out herself. But, there was a chance that the pirates might leave the ship drifting for a while. If that happened, she could take it back, alert the Patrol, and she'd be free. She might be able to save her parents. And... Looe had told her to stay put, because if he'd made his stand there, they wouldn't be looking for crew who *hadn't* joined in the fire-fight. No, she'd stay put till they hauled her out of her lair kicking and screaming and fighting tooth and nail, and wielding cliches like a sword.

Her father and brother appeared in the cargo bay shortly thereafter, hands bound and escorted by six or seven pirates. Samuel's right arm had been a little more than grazed by a laser. The two humans were shoved down next to Corianne. Stef could imagine her mother berating them, and her father and brother making light of the situation. Her family glanced around after a minute, looking for her, Stefanie thought.

"One little happy family," the leader said. "They all have the same eyes, and the boy has his daddy's black hair. How cute." He wrinkled his nose. "This everyone?" he asked the Unar with the scanner.

"Looks like. There's rooms for five, though. But I don't scan anyone else." Stef's mother blinked, eyes wide, then buried her face in her husband's shoulder. Samuel and Sebastian exchanged a Look.

"I thought you scanned four humans and a Sparrial."

"Four humans, one Sparrial, three humans, one Sparrial -- they're pretty close, boss."

"Um." The Thral went over to the little group. "Who's number five? We got the Sparrial, we've got you, so whose cabin isn't occupied?"

Sebastian looked up at the pirate, giving what Stefanie hoped was only a good imitation of being beaten down to exhaustion. "My little sister -- she's on New Garavar, going to school. We don't have anyone with decent medicals."

The leader looked at the Unar again. The Unar replied, "It's tidy enough, and I don't scan anyone now."

"All right." The Thral turned to the Unar who'd gone for the stimulant. "Give 'em the drug now. They've had their little family reunion, and I don't want them plotting."

The Unar took out a hypo and went over to the Hardys. "What is this?" Samuel demanded.

"A sedative," the Unar said, pressing the hypo to Sebastian's neck. The reptilian alien had dosed Stef's parents before Sebastian started reacting, eyes dilated and panting for breath. The leader squatted down in front of them.

"Ever hear of Zombie Drug?" he said as Sebastian started slouching over, and the _Last Gas_'s captains began panting. "It makes prisoners a *lot* less troublesome to ship."

Stef had never heard of Zombie Drug, but it sounded... She shook her head, mouthing, "No, no, no, no, *no*!"

Corianne tried to kick out at the Thral, but was too uncoordinated. She fell onto her side, panting and staring out into space. Stef's father tried to say something, but his eyes unfocused, and he also slumped to the floor.

The leader stood up and waited until Stef's family were breathing quietly again. "All right, untie the boy so he can help his mommy."

That was done, and the leader ordered, "Now, *stand up*!"

Dully, clumsily, the Hardys tried to get to their feet. The leader took hold of Sebastian's shoulder. "You!" He pointed Sebastian towards Corianne. "Help her walk!"

When the trio were up, the Thral pointed at one of the other pirates. "Follow her!" The pirate headed out of the cargo-bay, and the humans shambled after her. Stefanie's terror of also being dosed with the poison was the only thing that kept her anguish silent.

The Thral leader was conferring with some of his group. "All right -- there's nothing here that won't keep. You -- haul that Sparrial onto the ship. See if there's enough left to make a fur coat. You and you: you're going to pilot this thing back to the base; you and you get to play engineer. We'll drop off the live cargo and meet you at the base. All right, people, let's get moving! This route is just standard enough that it might be patrolled!"

The pirates packed up and left in an astoundingly short time, from Stefanie's shocky perspective. The four Thrals who had been chosen to crew the _Last Gas_ stayed in the cargo bay for a while longer, arguing over who would take which watch, and who needed a sleeping pill to readjust their schedules. Stef listened numbly. They weren't going to leave the ship drifting. She was going to have to take it back from them, alone.

The four Thrals left, three of them heading towards the bridge and the crew's quarters, and the last heading for engineering. Stefanie waited, cramped into the access area, crying quietly. She'd have to wait a few hours, to make sure the other ship was far enough away that the pirates couldn't call for help, and it wouldn't notice that the _Last Gas_ had gone off-course. If they'd hyperjumped, it wouldn't matter, but Stefanie had no way to tell.

The intercom spat out conversation periodically -- the Thral in engineering had disabled a half-built booby-trap, and reconnected the warp drive to the powerplant; the Thral pilot had managed to get their astrogation program running on the ship's computer, but wasn't sure if it was working quite right; the two off-shift Thrals had picked rooms and were taking sleeping pills....

She waited for a time after that, till the sleeping pills would have take effect, till the monotony of routine work would have started to take hold of the two on-duty pirates. She sensed that they had started moving, heading off on a different course than the one the _Last Gas_ had been following when it was attacked. Finally she pushed the panel out, painfully, but quietly, and oozed from her hiding place to lie on the floor, cramping in every limb and biting her lower lip nearly bloody. Eventually she was able to stand and stretch, regaining control of her body.

All she had was a laser and stunner. Both of those were noisy -- she didn't dare go after the sleeping Thrals first, since the pilot would probably hear. Of the other two, the one in engineering was probably the least dangerous, since she wouldn't have to risk having the ship thrown off-course too soon, and the pilot probably wouldn't hear all the way to engineering. Very well. Him. But first, she'd lay a little trap. She went to the much-used grav-unit in the middle of the bay and set it back to nearly three gees. That would keep the pilot from running to his pal's aid too quickly, just in case he *did* figure something was wrong. Stefanie paused before going in the door to engineering -- laser or stunner? Laser, for there was no way she would be able to keep four Thrals prisoner... She remembered what Looe had said about the Star Fire. She knew that stuff now that she thought about it -- dexterity adders, that gave a little boost to reflexes. Often the stuff wasn't very well-made, and a frenquent user would become addicted. Looe had said this was pure, though. Stef took one of the hypos and pressed it to her neck. She gasped a little as the drug took effect -- it *was* like fire, the searing warmth that she felt in her veins, turning her blood molten, singing to her of speed and precision and invunerability. Stefanie smiled, because she knew that she would be quicker than any thuggish Thral now.

She was, *much* quicker. She hardly had to aim the laser, taking the Thral down before he had time to cry out, and then killing him with a heart-shot. She took his weapon, a needler, and left. She shifted the heavy-gravity in the cargo-bay back to normal, and paced towards the bridge.

The second Thral managed to cry out in shock, but not draw his weapon before she used the needler on him. He dripped blood all over the floor, but he died. She went to the sensors and scanned -- the pirate ship was either out of range or in hyperspace. Stef punched in a course by guess and activated the autopilot. It didn't ask for her license -- the pirates had already disabled that part of the controls. She went to the crew's quarters, and into her brother's room, where one of the Thrals was. She couldn't bear to have him bleed all over her brother's bed, so she used the laser. Then she headed for her room, where the last Thral was...

She came face to face with a sleep-mazed Thral woman in the hall-way. Stef bounded backwards instantly and pointed both of her weapons at the un-armed pirate.

"Where did you come from?" the Thral asked.

Stefanie grinned. "I teleported in." The notion seemed very amusing to her. "You were supposed to be asleep."

"I heard noises..." The woman looked at the laser in Stef's hand, then at the bloody footprints that led from the bridge. "Edec screwed up. You were hiding on the ship."

"Uh-huh," Stefanie agreed, still smiling. "I won't shoot you now," she said, not sure if she were lying or not. "I want to ask you some questions."

The Thral eyed the weapons in the human's hands, noted the slightly glazed look in Stef's eyes, and decided that a little stalling never hurt anyone. "Ask away, kid..."

Stef wanted to know who would be buying her family. The Thral told her. Stef asked what the name of the Thral captain was, and got that, too. She wanted to know what Zombie Drug was, and the Thral got nervous.

"It's just a drug -- kinda makes people easier to control, y'know?"

"Who sells it?" Stefanie asked. The Thral gave her a name she'd heard used in conjunction with paying for the stuff.

"Is it permanent?"

"No, no, of course not. It's kinda addictive, and might do bad things if you took it for a month or two, but hey, you just need to spend some time at the hospital, no problem, right?" The woman smiled at Stef.

Stefanie frowned and aimed the laser a little more intently. "I think you're lying. I think that stuff is permanent, and you use it to make people into slaves."

The Thral kept smiling nervously at her. "Hey, no, really," she said, extending her hands as if to shrug. She was too tense for the easy-going tone of voice she was using, and Stef shot her.

********

It took Stef two days at full warp to get to a station. They tucked her into their sickbay to be treated for exhaustion and near-starvation -- she had flown in on stimulants, with only brief cat-naps on the bridge while the autopilot ran unwatched and briefer runs to the galley for food, and docked under the influence of dex adders. The bodies had been dragged to the cargo bay, but the bridge had still been spattered with dried blood. The term "serious emotional problems" was bandied about rather freely in reference to poor Ms. Hardy. She kept the station's scantly-trained-in-psychology doctor on edge until the day after she'd talked to the New Garavaran authorities about Zombie Drug, and learned that if her family had indeed been injected with it, they were legally dead. In the next meeting with the doctor, she noted that he seemed to be expecting something from her, so she cried for him for nearly a half-hour, and he pronounced that Stefanie had finally come out of shock and was grieving normally and would probably recover.

The Hardys had had friends, and those took care of her while she sold the ship. Looealeer had had a brother, who was most useful in identifying the names Stef had learned from the Thral woman. It turned out that her father *had* helped a Kintaran clanship, and they *had* offered to pay in barter, but he'd turned them down, and they'd just owed him a favor for years. They were a rough clan, half pirate themselves, but sympathetic to the clanless orphan and, again, helpful.

********

And so it was, some three years later, that a certain Thral drug-lord woke in darkness, with the sound of far-off alarms echoing in his ears -- and a cold hypo held to his neck. And as the drug began to cloud his brain, the young woman in his room told him, "My family was given Zombie Drug -- I was *so* glad to find out it worked on Thrals as well."

********

The young Kintaran tom, an unlikely shade of bright orange-red, was waiting impatiently when she finally showed up in the bar where they'd agreed to meet. His ears perked up and he bounded over when she beckoned. "Glad to see you here, Flare!" she told him.

The Kintaran snorted. "It was easy -- set the stuff you gave me, then 'run like hell.' No problem."

The human laughed. "Best kind of plan." She bought a couple of bottles of Kintaran beer, paying in hard cash -- a pair of twenty-credit notes -- and handed one of them to her felinoid companion. "Let's head back to my room, shall we?" she invited, draping her un-burdened arm across Flare's shoulders and waving the bottle in the direction of the exit.

"Oh, let's," Flare leered at her, purring.

The young woman's room wasn't far -- she ordered out for a small, but expensive, meal while Flare rummaged out ice and glasses for the drink.

"Mmm, wait a moment," she said when he took out one of the regular glasses from her kitchenette cabinet. She took a small package off of the chair by the door. "I just got these. It seemed appropriate." She opened the box, revealing a pair of glass -- *real* glass -- wine goblets with silver and gold wires twined around and inside the stems. They could easily have been tacky, but managed to avoid that fate and look elegantly flashy. Real glass, on a space station, plus the workmanship to get the wires to do that, plus (when Flare examined one of them more closely) the fact that they were hand-blown added up to rather a lot of credits for his friend to be tossing around.

"What did you just *do*?" he asked.

She just grinned at him and carried the glasses to the area of floor that she'd designated the "table," between two futon-like pads.

"I take it my explosive diversion worked perfectly," the Kintaran commented, pacing over and lounging on one of the "chairs."

"Mmm-hmmm." She sounded entirely too pleased with herself, and that sparkle in her blue eyes wasn't entirely due to his presence.

When the meal was delivered, Flare noticed that she once again paid in real cash. He shook his head and poured their drinks -- hers was a quarter-water, since non-Kintarans found Kintaran beer *very* intoxicating. Not, Flare knew quite well, that she couldn't handle the stuff straight; she merely wanted to be sober enough to appreciate the evening.

The food was good, the conversation sparse (though rubbing a Kintaran's belly with one's toes needs little explanation), and the mood relaxed. The lights were dimmed, but she'd skipped candles as being hard to get a license to light on a space station, and dangerous to anyone as furry as a Kintaran.

That was the only thing missing from the scene, she thought, lifting her glass high after they'd been filled again. "A toast," she said. "Confusion to the Ungodly!"

Flare smiled at her. "And to a most pleasent relationship, Simone Hospitalier," he said, touching his glass to hers.

The glasses chimed like the bells they resembled, and the pair drank.