The Aramis Heist

The city of Leedor, Aramis

Aramis Subsector, Spinward Marches

Aramis was not what you'd call a welcoming planet. It had the kind of atmosphere that peeled paint and optimism in equal measure, and a desert landscape that made beige look exciting. You could stand on its surface, if you had no particular fondness for skin.

Sensibly, the people of Aramis had decided to dig.

Leedor, the only real city, lay buried in the bones of a thousand mining shafts and the ambitions of early prospectors. What began as "temporary worker accommodation" had, through the wonders of civic inertia, become home to over half a million people, several tax offices, and one extremely smug starport that perched on the surface like a top hat on a mole.

The starport, gleaming and inhospitable, came with everything - naval pads, scout base, smug customs agents - but most of the real work happened beneath it, through a web of airlocks and elevator shafts that led down to Leedor proper. Leedor was a maze of reinforced tunnels, stale air, and enough bureaucracy to make a Megacorp executive weep with joy.

The Museum of Aramis was somewhere in the middle of this mess. Not metaphorically. Literally. One city block carved out of old ore tunnels, nestled in a business district that smelled of recycled paperwork. It was mostly ignored except on school field trips or when someone’s uncle came to visit and needed distracting.

---

The van rumbled through the subterranean service tunnel with all the grace of a drunk rhino in a bin lorry. Fluorescents flickered overhead, and the museum loomed ahead, a squat ugly building.

Caitlin leaned back in the passenger seat, propping one boot theatrically on the dashboard just to annoy Maltz. She wore black synthleather, fingerless gloves, and the expression of a woman who was going to do parkour whether the mission needed it or not.

“And you are staying in the van,” she said, jabbing a thumb at Gvoudzon in the back seat without looking at him.

The Vargr huffed. “I’m not staying in the van. I’m coming.”

“You tried to steal that brooch once already. You’re not exactly exuding restraint, G-dog.”

“Restraint? Thursuth Gha Kfaekh!” he growled. “That brooch is mine!”

Caitlin turned round to face Gvoudzon. “Right, the one you nicked from those corsair lads and then had to pawn when you went skint."

Gvoudzon huffed and crossed his arms.

“Look,” said Caitlin. “This is meant to be clean. Sneak in, swap the brooch, no drama. And then you two can settle your noble debt nonsense over tea and power tools, and I never have to hear about it again.”

“Honour is not a debt; it’s a sacred bond. But of course, humans measure everything in credits and sarcasm,” Gvoudzon sniffed.

“Right so, honour’s sacred, but breaking and entering’s grand. Got it.”

Maltz, at the wheel, gave a theatrical sigh. “I am surrounded by children.”

“I’m older than you,” Caitlin said cheerfully.

“Only technically,” Maltz replied. “And biologically speaking, I’m more evolved.”

“And why even wear that thing?” he added, squinting at her outfit. It was matte-black, form-fitting, and clearly designed by someone with a grudge against modesty. “You look like you’re auditioning for a spy holovid.”

 “In case I have to slide under laser beams,” Caitlin grinned.

 “There aren’t any laser beams,” he said flatly.

 She adjusted a boot and didn’t look at him. “Well maybe there should be.”

 “This is about that time on Mora, isn’t it?”

“You should be grateful. I was this close to wearing the ears as well.”

---

The van lurched to a halt near the rear loading dock. Maltz killed the engine and flicked on the sensor suite.

“No motion. One life sign in the guard room. Probably watching soap operas again.”

Caitlin cracked her knuckles. “Right so. I go in all quiet like. Gvourz, you stay here and do whatever it is Vargrs do when they’re sulking.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m already out of the van.”

“You absolute feckin’ gobshite.”

---

Gvoudzon was not, by any stretch of the imagination, what you’d call inconspicuous.

Caitlin, all dark lines and graceful movement, slipped out of the van as if espionage were something she’d personally invented.

Gvoudzon stomped after her, cape fluttering, tall boots thudding with theatrical intent. His jewel-crusted belt glinted in the underground lights, and his tail snapped back and forth in emphatic declarations of heroic resolve. He bared his teeth at a nearby recycling bin, which apparently had the audacity to exist in his path.

Caitlin halted mid-step. “You’re about as stealthy as a herd of K’kree.”

“My presence inspires dread,” he muttered.

“It got you kicked out of a museum,” she said. “Feckin’ cloak and swagger. Just try to be quiet, and don’t lick anything.”

Maltz's voice drifted from the van: "Keep it down." He hunched over his console, claws dancing across the keys. “I’ve seen nursery toys with better security,” he muttered. The lock on the loading dock gave a tired little click. Somewhere inside, the guard shuffled back into his office, settling in for whatever passed for night in Leedor. Timing, as always, was everything.

---

The loading dock door slid open, and Caitlin slipped through in a crouch she absolutely didn’t need. She made it three paces in before throwing herself dramatically into a forward roll and landing behind a wheeled tool trolley stacked with half-disassembled exhibit panels and a severed mannequin arm holding a data pad.

Gvoudzon padded in after her, trying for quiet menace but hitting something closer to a large dog in a vet’s office. One boot squeaked on the linoleum floor. He winced.

The workshops were dark, cluttered with display parts, half-assembled panels and the unmistakable stink of acrylic glue. Caitlin ducked a hanging light fixture. Gvoudzon didn’t. The clang echoed.

She shot him a look. He offered a shrug that somehow radiated wounded nobility.

Maltz crackled over comms. “You’re clean. Cameras are seeing yesterday’s empty halls. Try not to fall over anything.”

They crept into the Hall of Animals. Rows of dead things stared blankly into the dark. Some were real. Some were holograms. One twitched. Possibly a sensor glitch. Possibly not. 

A taxidermied apex predator was frozen mid-pounce. Caitlin swore quietly. “Place is a bloody horror show after hours.”

They crept past the garish red glow of the Zhodani Perfidy exhibit, where holos flickered with well-timed atrocities and explosions helpfully labelled Civic Mindedness Run Amok. One particularly tasteful plaque showed a smug Zhodani telepath plucking thoughts from a sobbing farmer's head like grapes off a vine, while the caption read "They Want Your Thoughts, Your Passwords, And Your Spare Change."

The next gallery wasn’t much better. In Physical Principles, an animatronic professor in a lab coat and glowing safety goggles shouted, “Friction is FUN!” as it launched a rubber puck across a floor that lit up with increasingly unhinged velocity graphs. One display involved a helium-voiced hologram of Sir Isaac Newton being pelted with apples by a robot monkey until he wept openly and promised to invent gravity faster.

---

The Interstellar Neighbours gallery welcomed them with the soft ambient hum of cultural goodwill and several life-sized mannequins arranged in stiff, diplomatic poses. Caitlin squinted at a Hiver model holding what looked suspiciously like a novelty cocktail umbrella, and a human diplomat frozen mid-nod as if politely agreeing to a trade deal he didn’t understand.

The brooch was gone.

The glass case still sat on its plinth, exhibit tag proudly reading Ceremonial Unity Brooch – Gift from our Vargr Neighbours. But inside? Just a neatly folded cleaning cloth and the sort of silence that usually came before alarms or gunfire.

Caitlin stopped dead. “Well, there’s a turn up for the books. Where’s the feckin’ brooch?”

Gvoudzon surged forward, ears stiff, tail gone utterly still.

“They’ve moved it,” he said, baffled.

“Or someone’s nicked it,” Caitlin noted. “Maybe the staff finally twigged it was worth more than your average commemorative spoon.”

She perched on the plinth, all long limbs and unruly red hair, squinting into the empty case. “Or maybe they put it somewhere safer. Like the vault.”

Maltz’s voice whispered in her ear. “You’re at the right plinth?”

“Yup.”

“It’s supposed to be there,” he sighed. “I checked their inventory database an hour ago – still marked on display.”

“Well, someone didn’t get the memo. It’s not on display. Unless it’s gone invisible, in which case I’m taking a swing at that Hiver.” She gave the nearest mannequin a wary look.

Gvoudzon turned, eyes narrowed. “We search the place. Someone moved it. Someone knows.”

Caitlin nodded grimly. “Right. Time for Plan B.”

There was a pause.

“Do we have a Plan B?” Maltz asked.

“We do now,” she said. “It’s called poking around until something regrettable happens.”

Gvoudzon cracked his knuckles. “At last. Honourable action.”

“Honourable’s not the word I’d use. But fine. Keep your claws in unless I say otherwise.”

“And if they challenge us?”

“Then you can get noble all over their face. But only after we find the shiny.”

Maltz’s voice came through the comms. “I checked the logs further. The Director took it. Wrapped it up, took it to the vault. Safe inside. Combo lock. No camera coverage past the door. Oh, and it’s right next to where the guard is.”

Caitlin hissed, “Brilliant. You scared them into locking it up.”

Gvoudzon growled, “Me?”

“You’re the one who tried to nick it in broad daylight, cloak and all. Now it’s behind two locks and a smug bastard with admin access. All right, to the vault then.”

---

They slipped out of the gallery, hugging the wall as they made their way towards the vault.

Caitlin froze mid-step.

Then, quietly, reverently: “Well, ride me sideways…”

There, dead centre, under the kind of lighting that made lesser ships jealous, was an early-model scout ship, at least eight hundred years old. It looked half-welded, half-dared into existence. Panels didn’t line up. The hull bore the scars of micrometeoroids, budget cuts, and optimism. It was glorious.

“Champlain Class. They flew this into unknown systems with half a map and a pocketknife,” Caitlin whispered, awestruck. “No backup. No fuel reserves. Probably not even proper seats. Just grit, sheer brass neck, and a vague hope they’d live to tell someone about it.”

Gvoudzon grunted. “It looks... incomplete.”

“It looks magnificent,” she snapped. “You wouldn’t understand. This is what real piloting looks like. Not nav-coms and drift dampeners. This thing had one button marked Go and a second one for Help.”

Maltz’s voice cut in, just this side of sarcastic. “We done worshipping the museum pieces? Because I’ve got a guard to distract and a very short window before he realises nothing’s on fire.”

Caitlin tore herself away with an expression that suggested betrayal. “Right. Vault. Sneak. No respect for true pioneers. I get it.”

Gvoudzon followed her with a glance at the ship and a mutter about structural integrity. He didn’t get it. That was fine. She’d have a proper moment later. Maybe steal a souvenir rivet.

---

The corridor outside the vault was silent but for the faint hum of climate control. Gvoudzon watched the doors and corners, claws flexed, tail twitching.

“Okay. Guard’s off chasing sensor ghosts in Environmental,” Maltz reported, voice smug in their ears. “You’ve got ten minutes, tops. Go.”

The heavy vault door creaked open with the reluctant dignity of a bureaucrat being bribed.

Caitlin grinned. “Bless you, Maltz. You beautiful, meddling bastard.”

She slipped inside with all the exaggerated grace of a spy in a stage play. Gvoudzon followed, less panther and more furniture removal crew, knocking his elbow on the doorframe and huffing something about clearance tolerances.

The vault was quiet. The safe sat centre stage, surrounded by low-grade IR beams no one without cyber-eyes could see.

Caitlin could. And she lit up.

Maltz’s voice crackled in her ear. “I can kill the grid.”

She was already limbering up. “Don’t you dare. This is the whole point.”

She launched into the beam maze with theatrical precision - arms high, leg bent, torso twisted like she was auditioning for interpretive dance in zero-G.

Gvoudzon blinked. “This is absurd.”

“Shhh. I’m in the zone.”

“You planned this.”

“I trained for this,” she hissed, dropping into a full split and gliding through the beams with the smug elegance of someone deeply in love with her own nonsense.

A moment later, she popped up near the vault, triumphant. “Grace under pressure, baby.”

Gvoudzon stared. “You’re unwell.”

She grinned. “Physically? Peak condition. Mentally? Delirious with style.”

The safe gave a soft chime as Maltz cracked it from afar. Caitlin reached in, pulled out the brooch, and turned her back to the vault.

“Real one out. Fake brooch going in.”

She worked quickly, hands precise, then eased the decoy back into the safe with mock ceremony.

“Maltz, be a dear and turn off the grid for a moment.”

“Done,” said Maltz.

Caitlin strolled back to Gvoudzon and pressed the brooch into his hands.

“Here. Try not to howl.”

He cradled it like a sacred relic. “It is more beautiful than I remembered.”

---

They retraced their path at speed, ducking back through the galleries with a lot less subtlety and considerably more adrenaline. Caitlin vaulted the physics exhibit like it owed her credits, while Gvoudzon knocked over a holographic Zhodani stand with what might have been an accident but felt more like payback.

The loading dock was quiet, shadows long under flickering fluorescents. Caitlin was halfway to the van when a polite cough cut the air.

Five figures stepped from the gloom, all matching jackets, mirrored visors, and the kind of casual stance that only came with very good weapons and very bad news. One raised a hand, palm out, fingers twitching in the universal gesture for stop or be ventilated.

“Evening,” said the leader, voice clipped. “We’ll be taking the brooch now.”

Caitlin squinted at him. “Sorry, who’re you supposed to be?”

He didn’t answer. Just flashed a badge. Black background, silver triangle, no charm whatsoever.

“Oh, grand. Vemene,” she said, turning to Gvoudzon. “That’s Tukera Lines’ secret stabby division. Because obviously what a megacorp needs most is deniable goons with a Latin-sounding name. I assume the ‘e’ is silent for tax reasons.”

The leader snapped, “Now.”

Caitlin glanced sideways. “Better give them the shiny.”

He looked betrayed. “You would ask this of me?”

“I would. I am.”

“But…”

She stepped closer. “You can write a ballad about it later. Right now, I don’t fancy being shot.”

With a snarl that could’ve stripped paint, Gvoudzon reached into his jacket. “Very well. Know that I do this under protest and with the full weight of ancestral fury.”

“Noted,” said Caitlin, dryly.

He held the brooch out in both hands like he was presenting a royal heir. One of the Vemene snatched it away without ceremony.

The goons turned and disappeared into the dark, all menace and no style.

Caitlin watched them go, hands on hips. “Lovely lads. We should do brunch.”

Gvoudzon ranted for a full minute, tail lashing, teeth bared, claws carving the air into dramatic punctuation.

Caitlin leaned against the van, pulled something from her belt pouch, and held it up. The brooch gleamed faintly in the dim light.

“I saw that movie,” she said. “You know, the one where the idiot hands the relic to the bad guys and doesn’t have a backup plan?”

Gvoudzon froze mid-rant. Then, slowly, reverently, he took the real brooch. His ears drooped in sheepish awe.

Caitlin stretched. “Honestly. If you’re going to do honour, at least let someone with style handle the plot twists.”