Work Text:
If you asked a younger Kavi what she wanted to be when she grew up, then in lieu of getting to be a princess, her second answer would've been a veterinarian. Not only does it pay well, but the universe has all sorts of animals that'd make the job worthwhile. Those little critters with fur or those that are scaled, those who love their owners unconditionally and those that are so exotic that some might only see them once in their lifetime, each with their own little needs and desires to be met. That's what she was passionate about. Animals.
If you asked her this same question nowadays, you'd get shot. You shouldn't ask a pirate stupid questions.
Don't be stupid around Kavi "Meteor Shower" Malkry.
Life placed Kavi in the kind of place that shakes its head at such childish visions of a better world. A spot where dreamers and the meek always find themselves on the wrong end of the barrel of a gun. Pressure and the survival of the fittest teach one how to adapt and evolve, and Kavi was a good student to a terrible teacher. One of the best; After all, who else would invent the Saltshaker?
To better explain Kavi's masterpiece, we may take this moment to explain the logistics of being a pirate captain and raiding settlements. Ideally, one's crew will contain all the customary roles important to running a ship, such as engineer, cook, quartermaster and so on, as well as several dedicated raiders who are willing to risk their lives performing boarding actions or invading ground settlements. The more raiders, the better each one is protected during an operation, meaning your crew of pirates will likely be composed of about a dozen people, if not more. Each member of the crew needs not only food, medicine and all that, but also a reason to stay united. Relying on pure loyalty is a quick way to lose your head as a pirate, and so the main thing keeping the captain's vital organs intact is the promise that each member of the crew will receive their share of any loot the ship collects from its targets. Thus, the captain must ensure the flow of money keeps coming in and always plan the next raid as soon as possible, reassuring the crew that a big payout is always around the corner.
To put it simply, if the shark stops swimming it’ll start to drown.
Most pirates start out from a place of desperation to begin with, leading to many of them picking the first thing they see, invading it, and making do with what it has. If little to no research was done by the captain beforehand, this leads to miscalculations between the potential profit that raiding a settlement brings and the potential losses inflicted by local defences. The moment a job goes wrong, fingers will be pointed and soon enough, the old captain's dead and a new captain will be appointed. All it takes is a single bad day. Over time, the captains that survive must become natural mathematicians, accountants that weigh the cost of life and bullets and fuel with the same set of scales. If they don't retire and don't die, their crew expands, organises, and they become the leader of a gang, rarely if ever actually joining the invading parties after a certain point. A mob boss can tell you more about risk and reward than any stock broker.
This isn’t even touching on the possibility of unknowingly invading a ship, station or planet in someone else's turf. Some places are naturally rich, but if you can't tell where a planet's wealth comes from, if the government's presence is vague and nebulous, if the residents seem more surprised or annoyed than afraid at an invasion? You’ll sell those spoils at the nearest merchant and by the time any points change hands, half your crew will be gunned down and your throat will be cut, your head placed on a stake to set an example. Pirates are supposed to punch down. The moment they punch higher than their level, a warlord will be more than happy to put them in their place.
Should one not mind having fewer bodies to send through the airlock, downsizing the crew gives you more time before your employees get rowdy. With a crew of one, you have all the time in the world.
And so, we return to Kavi.
The Saltshaker is a custom built ship, upgraded with many add-ons and extra compartments over the years as Kavi reinvested her funds into it. The ship functions like this: First, it sends a few probes down to the planet that it intends to invade. From a distance, these probes will observe and record the movement of people in the local settlements and attempt to covertly build a picture of what's done there. After a month or so of research and examining the recordings, Kavi decides if the missiles she'd spend are worth more than the potential profit to be gained, as well as considering if things feel too suspicious. If either check fails, she leaves. If they pass, the Saltshaker proceeds to the next step.
The Saltshaker reveals itself to the victims. A light in the sky, casting down fire like a vengeful god. Sends in a few warning shots, levels a few buildings, and gives its requirements through radio, or inbuilt loudspeakers if the locals haven’t advanced to that point. And often, that's enough. Like any good form of blackmail, the key is the implication, rather than the act itself per se. It treats salting the land like how someone salts food, pouring on just enough to enhance the taste, but not so much that it becomes too salty and inedible. If almost everyone’s dead in a settlement, who’ll be there to kneel to the floor and bargain for their life, offering everything they have and a little more? Get them in the right state of mind, and they'll be genuinely grateful when all she asks for is a few crates of valuable goods.
Kavi walks a sublime line that most pirates never notice existed in the first place. If you’re going in for the kill, people are more willing to fight tooth and nail to protect everything they hold dear. A little restraint, meanwhile, while still showing a taste of what you’re capable of doing drives a wholly different set of behaviours. It pays somewhat less than sucking the place dry on the first visit, but as an advantage, there’ll still be people there willing to pay your fees the next time you show up. And if they’re not?
Hell will be upon the earth as the stars themselves fall from the sky against the ground in violent explosions, hour after hour, and, inevitably, the people will pray for her to stop. And she will, after a day passes. She’ll take whatever’s still worth something and leave. The settlement will be rebuilt. There’ll be a famine next winter and a lot of people will die, but they’ll heal from this. The damage is never enough for it to be a full out extinction. It’s designated to be a wound. A scar. A lesson. Once she was the student, but now she’s the teacher. Kavi returns after a year or two, and they wordlessly pay her off with whatever she might desire. The pirate grows a little richer.
She’ll brag about it during drinks. About how most of her lasers are capable of going through a whole house without stopping. How she aims the cannons at the food reserves and fields are. How it not only kills, but forces them to starve and struggle through everything. Her two heads smile smugly as she points and elaborates on how the Saltshaker could go up against a much larger ship like a Zeus and still end on top through sheer rawpower alone, as the bartender rolls his eyes and pours everyone another round. She's surprisingly chatty for someone who spends months at a time alone in space.
That’s not what she’s proud of, of course. The things that she can brag about to a pirate, her methods of extracting ransoms and wreaking destruction, are not necessarily the things that matter most to her. A successful pirate has to maintain their image, give the impression that they're always one irritation away from blowing off the head of any would-be bounty hunter, but the truth is that the weapons and the threat they pose aren't what allow the Saltshaker to function. Rather, it's the probes. Endless hours of footage that allow a window into those people’s daily lives.
What they preach, what they eat, their little sins and virtues as the clock ticks through the days. The probes are small and unobtrusive, and if she takes an interest, she can direct them to follow individuals on their daily routines, or stick to one particular place and witness all who pass that way. From her vantage point in orbit, Kavi might not be a benevolent god, but she’s surely the closest thing they’ll get to an omniscient one, always watching, always observing. A little kid with a magnifying glass, and their own personal anthill. Even if passively, being involved with their lives to such a degree allows her to know how they’ll act and react, and what truth and lies sound like in their voice.
And when she’s not looking at those little people, with their little lives that’ll soon be disturbed by a meteor shower, when she’s off-duty, why not record the little things that personally matter to her? Every planet has their own unique ecosystem after all, a cornucopia of different animals to be beheld from a distance. Regardless of colonies or settlements, the cycle of nature will keep on running as long as life remains on that planet. A crew would only impede her amateur career as an animal photographer, calling for her to invade as their patience wears thin and then leave before the dust has finished settling.
She doesn't publicise the pictures and videos she takes. She doesn’t show them the miracle of life. The birth of the new, or how far two animals are willing to fight for territory, or dance for their lover to prove themselves as the ideal mate. They won’t see, nor care for those little moments. To most pirates, watching them would be meaningless. The funds sent anonymously to animal rights organisations are but a waste of money in the eyes of them. Money that they could have used on themselves. A meaningless luxury. She doesn't even tell them about the small group of pets she keeps on board, and the habitat chambers set up to hold them.
None of this is out of some guilty conscience. It's purely indulgent. Kavi’s not a good person. She’s a pirate. A killer of men, women and children. Destroyer of crops. One who bleaches the land and ruins lives, and she’ll ruin many more as long as she remains. But sometimes, before she goes to sleep, Kavi Malkry plays some of the probes’ footage to soothe herself. Of birds singing and playing in the woods, flitting back and forth as if there was no evil in the world. Nothing to worry about, beyond building a nest or eating berries as much as they desire.
And sometimes, she dreams of being a bird like all those other birds, and she flies away.