The Pirate of Baserria/The Arrival

## The Arrival

"**The Arrival**" is the first chapter of *The Pirate of Baserria*. Like the entirety of the novelette, this first chapter was released privately on January 2021 and publicly published to the site on May 22, 2022.

## Plot

Everyone prepared themselves for the jump out of hyperspace. Once all the brilliant lights of the flashing cosmos were gone, the biggest object that could be seen in the glass was their destination: Baserria. A blue atmosphere surrounded the yellow planet, which was commonly seen with forest worlds. Two bright stars could be seen in the distance, with smaller objects obscuring them by just a pinch. While they appeared mostly white because of the intensity of their brightness, Mysolus deduced that the binary stars were blue, something that his crewmates most likely would not have noticed (nor even cared to notice).

The crew took in the view from space for just a moment. Their travels around the galaxy allowed them to see the most picturesque of star systems, and the Baserrian system was no different. The planet from afar looked to be golden yellow with an abundance of lakes varying in size.

“Is this another desert world?” Alwyn thought.

“It doesn’t appear to be sand,” Lydia countered, taking in every second of the view. “This planet gives off a more lively aura, in my eyes.”

“Yeah, all three of them!” Alwyn snorted. Lydia rolled her eyes—all three of them—with an amused look.

“I guess we’ll be seeing soon enough,” the captain reminded them. “Prepare to land, everyone.”

As the *Glass Comet* descended into the atmosphere, Lydia’s observations seemed to have been confirmed. The planet was not arid but filled with flora; yellow flora. Everything from the never-ending fields of grass to the family of leaves coloring the forest took on a golden coloring, reminiscent of a sunset. Paddy fields stretching beyond the horizon were impossible to miss, with several tiny figures spread out among the fields to cultivate them. What appeared to be the planet’s major city—although ‘city’ may have been too generous of a descriptor—stood adjacent to the farms. Most of the structures of the settlement did not seem to stand too tall at all, at least from above. The inhabitants of the planet seemed to be very modest, Linh thought. The crew of four often enjoyed visiting the smaller, lesser-settled planets; this subsequently made jobs much easier to find as not many privateers sought out jobs on lesser-known worlds.

What looked to be a humble spaceport consisted only of one or two ships that most likely went unused for quite some time. It was located outside of town, but not too far from the settlement’s front gates. With this said, some would barely even consider the area to be a spaceport. Nevertheless, Linh guided the *Glass Comet* and safely landed in an empty spot. As the landing platform descended onto the uneven stone floor, the four crewmen were able to get a view of the planet from the ground. Everyone took a breath in of the Baserrian air, which was clean with the lack of technological pollution. Alwyn was in awe at her surroundings, breath-taken by the golden leaves and blades of grass. The scenery certainly gave Lydia some inspiration, filling her own mind with colorful language that she would use in her next piece of writing. The air reminded Mysolus of home, and brought Linh comfort. Everyone seemed to appreciate their first encounters with the new surroundings.

As the gentle, cooling breeze blew through, two figures could be seen quickly approaching the tiny shipyard. It wasn’t long before the approaching villagers could be made out more clearly, with purple and golden-colored garbs to match the surrounding flora. Riding atop what appeared to be domesticated reptilians, two human women came face to face with the crew of the *Glass Comet*. The animals must have been native to the planet, as they were nothing that even Mysolus had seen before. They were stout in figure, and naturally armored as well. The animal transports stood in place calmly, slowly looking around as the two women simultaneously hopped off of the saddles on their backs.
One of the villagers was strikingly familiar; dark skin with her hair in braids, with her overall look finished off with an earthy-colored cloth wrapped around the top of her head. She looked nearly exactly as she did in the holographic portrait back on the ship.

“You must be the crew of the *Glass Comet*?” the client, Cydi, asked with a noticeably yet only slightly hoarse voice.

“That’s us alright,” Linh confirmed. “Captain Linh Malina, with my crewmates Lydia Jezda, Mysolus Pravo, and Alwyn Nimbus.”

“A pleasure to meet you two,” Mysolus greeted, taking a bow.

“Happy to be of help,” Lydia said, shaking the hands of the two women, her holo-notepad tucked under her other arm.

“At your service!” Alwyn exclaimed, waving her hands with a big, genuine smile on her face.

“Cydi Thaidero.” The woman introduced herself with a smile, reciprocating the happy greetings. “Though I suppose you already knew that.” Linh nodded.

“This is my wife, Mera Mishum.” The woman gestured to the other woman who accompanied her to the landing port, whom the crew of four did not recognize. The woman was much paler than Cydi, with narrow, dark-brown eyes and blonde hair cut above shoulder length.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Mera said. There was a bittersweetness to her, both in her smile and her tone of voice. It wasn’t hard to notice.

“Of course.” Linh pulled out a holographic tablet, showing the two Baserrian women the job information. “If this mission board entry’s correct, am I right to say that there’s a pirate problem?”

Cydi and Mera briefly looked at one another with weariness in their eyes.

“Yes,” Cydi sighed. “Our taro fields have recently been getting pillaged by foreign raiders. It’s draining out our harvest.”

“And you’re certain that these are foreign raiders, yes?” Mysolus rubbed his chin, thinking as he asked this. The crew needed all the details they could get. Cydi nodded.

“They haven’t been in the area before, and they come in from the west whenever they attack.” Cydi sounded confident about this. “None of us townsfolk have ever been attacked by them directly, but they carry large spears.”

“Can you tell us anything else about these raiders?” Lydia asked this while pulling out her notepad and stylus.

“They’re not human,” Mera confirmed, with a fearful look in her eyes. “There’s only so many non-humans living in town, so we would’ve recognized them.”

“One of the other field workers saw one of them up close,” Cydi added. “They had sharp fangs, horns on their cheeks, and glossy eyes.” Mera winced at the thought of their eyes. They must’ve suffered these attacks fairly often by now.

“Sharp fangs, cheek horns, and glossy eyes…” Mysolus pondered on these details for only a brief moment, quickly figuring out who—or at least what—the marauders were. He turned to his team to confirm his suspicions. “Are we all thinking similarly?”

“These sound like *Kawalans* if that’s what you’re thinking,” Linh deduced, although not happy about it much at all. Lydia, Mysolus, and Alwyn seemed to have thought the same as they exchanged knowing looks, exactly as Mysolus thought. The name of the species didn’t seem all too familiar to the two Baserrian women, and so Linh went further into detail.

“Their homeworld is full of warmongers with a lust for fighting,” explained Linh. “So it isn’t too surprising that a few of them wound up here to cause some trouble.”

“Still, to have wound up here, on this distant farm planet thousands of light years away…“ Lydia ruminated on this thought, describing the situation as poetically as she often would, appropriately or not.

“That’s… Really weird to me,” Alwyn commented, scratching the back of her neck with unease. “I-I mean… Like Lydia said, what would Kawalans even be *doing* here, captain?”

“Long way from home, that’s for sure,” Linh wondered. “These guys probably aren’t from Kawal, then. Must be somewhere closer to Baserria.” She sighed at the thought of the whole situation.

“How many of them are there, do you think?” Lydia asked, preparing to jot down more personal notes.

“We’ve only seen a little more than a dozen of them come in at a time,” Cydi explained, “but for all we know there could be more.”

Four versus more-than-twelve did not sound like a good match-up, in the eyes of the crew. They were going to have to do some serious thinking.

“Is there a mayor or magistrate we can speak to on the matter, miss Thaidero?” Mysolus maintained his polite demeanor, as always. “A town marshall, perhaps?”

“Afraid not, sorry.” Cydi shook her head. “There’s only a couple hundred of us living here, and we all make the big decisions together. There’s no one here with any fancy titles like that.”

“And I’m guessing that means there’s no town militia or something of the sort, either,” the captain deduced.

Cydi and Mera shook their heads with concerned expressions. This perfectly explained why they needed outside help, at least from the captain’s understanding. Linh looked beyond the exterior of the town walls, with the round buildings populating the settlement. She thought to herself how bad it would be if the Kawalan marauders attempted to go even further, raiding the settlement along with the farms. It was clear to her that they needed to put a stop to the situation quickly.

There were several problems ahead of them. For one, with just the four crewmates of the *Glass Comet*, they would be easily outnumbered. But outskilled? No, they couldn’t risk anything against Kawalans, Linh thought. The captain and her crewmates have heard stories about the Kawalans and their war-like tendencies, so it was a fair assumption to make that these raiders would be strategic and powerful. They were going to need more firepower than just the four of them.

And that’s when an idea came to the captain’s mind.

“With just the four of us,” she started, “we aren’t going to make much progress at all against the Kawalans.”

“What do you plan to do then?” Cydi asked.

“We’re going to fight *together,*” Linh explained, with a smirk. “My crew, you and your wife, and the whole town.”

## Appearances

### Dramatis Personae

* **Linh Malina** - Human-Penumbrian. Captain of the *Glass Comet*, ready to get the job done.
* **Mysolus Pravo** - Praeliorian. The fellow crewmate with much to teach and with many talents.
* **Alwyn Nimbus** - Culician. An eccentric privateer with a genuine heart of gold.
* **Lydia Jezda** - Makuran. Horror novelist/privateer and long-time friend of Linh.
* **Cydi Thaidero** - Human. The Baserrian farmer who contacted the *Glass Comet* crew for the job.
* **Mera Mishum** - Human. Cydi's loving wife.

### Locations

* Cassiopeia Galaxy
	+ Central Expanse
		- Gran Axuda Sector
			* Baserrian System
				+ Baserria
					- Baserria settlement
		- Kawal (Mentioned only)
* Hyperspace

### Sentient Species

* Culician
* Human
* Kawalan (Mentioned only)
* Makuran
* Penumbrian
* Praeliorian