Petals of Carbon Steel -- You're a Pilot, Not an Ace. Try your best.

"Idle, listless, scatterbrained — flitting from one petty interest to the next. No drive, no ambition. Sometimes, I think if she ever managed to accomplish anything in her life, I'd die of shock."​

— Duchess Lorelei Grangier, on the subject of her youngest daughter​

"Well, here we are," you say, grinning. It's very obviously a secondary cargo bay, cleared out and set up for a conference.

High Commander Bernard is there, talking with the captain of the Garter Snake near the centre of the compartment. Your fellow security personnel ring the edges, eying everyone with poorly veiled nervousness. The delegates aren't so close to one another to cause problems, but the workstations they've been given are all near enough to hold a conversation.

Nearest to you, the delegates from the Shields of Jupiter confer with their small escort. The infamous Lash Twins, Iris and Zola — both blonde and stocky, both wearing the grey-black colours of the Shields. There is an unsettling sort of steadiness about them all, both the twins and their three guards. They don't seem ready to start something, necessarily, but they are visibly willing to finish it. As Arianne and Agnieszka enter behind you, there's a long, lingering moment where Agnieszka and the Lashes stare at each other, assessing more than threatening.

So why do you get the feeling that, in her head, Agnieszka is running through the best way to take the entire group apart, if it comes to that?

The Six Star Liberation Front has sent a smaller group. It's hard for someone to lounge in zero gravity, but Vincent Lovak manages. He's skinny, with a complexion a darker shade of olive than your own. An amused smirk is plastered to his face, which he somehow manages to make charming — you might need to take notes there.

Lovak's only companion is a very pretty young man, currently using Lovak's arm to keep himself from drifting away and flipping through a tablet one-handed with his free hand. Despite this, his eyes rise from the screen often enough to roam over the compartment's occupants with an intelligent gleam. It's easy enough to overlook harmless, pretty things in circumstances like this — not unlike Arianne herself.

"Thanks!" Ari says, flashing you a grin, before floating out past you into the compartment. You suppose that at least she's swung back around to not disliking you. Agnieszka spares you a brief glance as she follows after Arianne, almost lost amid everyone else she's trying to keep an eye on. But, if you had to take a stab at the emotion that's bleeding through her lethal stoicism, you'd have to call it bafflement.

You have to admit: What exactly does he see in her? is not a reaction you actually dislike. You don't want to push your luck with J32 of all people, but you're not sure your self image would survive if you turned out to be the kind of girl a man's family actually approves of.

You find a handhold against the wall, and settle in to help provide security. While you'll be in the line of fire if things go bad in here, it's at least a much more interesting view than you'd have out in a mecha.

All eyes are on Arianne as she approaches the AIJ High Commander, exchanging a few hushed words with her. The whole time, Agnieszka is staring out at the assembled rebels with such unveiled hostility, you very much hope no one is going to test her regarding her charge's safety.

Finally, Benard turns to survey the delegates, the guards and the two USE representatives: Amani North is positioned near an Imperial Guardswoman you don't immediately recognise, who watches the proceedings with a degree of shrewd amusement. "To our honoured guests, I bid you welcome. Thank you all for coming on such short notice, in these dangerous times." Bernard's voice easily fills up the space. Even Lovak's armcandy stops pretending not to pay any attention, and casts him and Ari a falsely lazy glance. Someone less used to playing this sort of game with peoples' expectations than you are might not have recognised it as false at all.

"That's your 'Galilean Source'?" Lovak asks, casually interrupting. Both of the Lash twins shoot him disapproving looks, seemingly just for the breach in decorum.

"That's me," Ari says, smiling so broadly you assume that it's disguising some serious nerves.

"Aren't you a little young to be playing spy?"

Arianne shrugs. "I didn't know there was an age requirement. Nieszka, the data?"

On cue, Agnieszka reaches into a pocket in her pilot suit, and pulls out a nondescript data storage stick. Still not taking her eyes off of the armed group all around them, she slots it home into the workstation hastily installed in the middle of the compartment. The large display bolted to a bulkhead flickers to life, and Arianne floats over to throw something up onto it. It's a document — a text memo with several notices for the information within being top secret, most eye-catchingly the HSE's Imperial seal. Arianne picks this last up off the simulated page, and rotates it. The seal fills up the display.

"This document was taken from the private files of Governor Grangier," says Arianne. "She believes it's been deleted. As you can see, the seal is genuine." Everyone stares at it. It's a complex 3D object, and certainly matches the design you've seen on Imperial proclamations. Such digital seals are devilishly hard to forge, and make copying a document bearing one a pain, if not nearly as much as modifying it. Arianne switches back to the document itself, adding "The governor received this message two months ago, sent from the inner-planets." She pauses to let us all take it in.

Iris Lash speaks first. Or maybe it's Zola — you can't tell them apart, frankly. Lash #1 speaks first: "The Crown Prince himself is coming to Jupiter on an official inspection."

There's a long pause, before Arianne nods. "It's on incredibly short notice. The garrison is already under strength, and stretched far too thin over far too much space. But she's going to need to move ships around again to provide a proper honour guard for Prince Apollo." She pauses again, carefully composing her next words. Not wanting her tone to betray any inconveniently-mixed feelings. "She... Governor Grangier, that is, knows that the emperor has run out of patience with her. If this inspection doesn't go well... it will be the ruin of her House."

Lovak is obviously as intrigued as everyone else by this news, but the first thing he says is: "You're very cold, considering that you're talking about your own mother."

Arianne manages a smile. It's sharp and brittle at the edges, like her soft, porcelain-doll features have cracked just a little. "Well," she says, tone quieter, "treason does run in the family. Maybe she'll be happy I'm finally taking after her in some way."


There's a lot to talk about, obviously. Arianne has data on when the prince is coming and from where, the itinerary for his visit, the deployment plans to ensure his safe passage proposed by Lady Dvorska, the admiral in charge of the Divine Navy's forces garrisoning Jupiter. You don't see the details of all of this, of course — the delegates have access to it on their workstations, though, and the generalities are enough to impress you.

This is a ruinously severe intelligence leak, which can be taken advantage of in any number of ways. And much more effectively if this motley collection of rebels you all have here can actually coordinate. In a lot of ways, that's going to be the hardest part.

Eventually — very eventually, it feels like — there's a break for lunch, and you have some time off as well. You grab a meal bar and a drink pouch and slip away, heading for a different hangarbay than the one you met Arianne and Agnieszka in. It was just luck that the schedule lined up the way that it did, but you're hardly going to say no to some luck.

Jay's Hecate is docked at one of the mecha bays, opposite a pair of Pennants. The pilots of the Pennants are from the Garter Snake itself, talking between themselves and making no attempt to approach him. To be entirely fair, Jay is not an approachable man much of the time.

"Catch!" The water pouch flies through the air ahead of you as you push off from the wall, sailing up at a diagonal toward the Hecate's open hatch. Without even turning around to see what's coming toward him, Jay raises a hand and catches it perfectly. The showoff.

He glances down at the label. "Watermelon? That's the worst flavour, Kana."

"I knew you had trashy taste, Tham, but wow," you say, drifting up next to him.

Jay scoffs at that, before bringing a medical pill dispenser up to his lips with his free hand, depositing two blue capsules into his mouth. He washes them down with the hated watermelon flavoured water, pausing for a moment to take a deep breath, eyes closed.

"Are you alright?" you ask quietly. He's anchored near his open cockpit, a leg through a handle bar. You come to stop next to him, catching the top of the cockpit hatch with one hand.

"Yes," Jay says. "Headache. The medicine helps."

You grimace, and take a drink from your own puch. The watermelon is delicious, and in your deep and abiding concern, you don't even tell him so. That's you being a considerate girlfriend, if that's what you are at this point. "How often does that happen?"

He shrugs, barely twitching his shoulders with the motion. It's like if he moves, it will make whatever he's dealing with worse. After a few seconds, he relaxes. "Often," he admits. "I don't complain much. Six had it a lot worse — she'd get seizures, sometimes. Especially if she'd been plugged in a lot, or for too long."

You nod, torn between worrying over someone else — which you're bad at — and breaking surprising news, which is one of the great delights of your life. "How long before you need to get back out there?"

"Twenty minutes," Jay says. "The others say hello, by the way." He pauses. "And Azara would like you to know that she says hello 'the loudest'."

"Sounds like her," you agree. "And, great — twenty minutes is enough. Guess who I saw earlier!"

"The Source?" Jay tries, amused.

"No. Well, yes — she's Arianne Grangier, the Duchess's youngest — not important, though. Keep guessing."

Jay tilts his head at you. "The reason why we're all here isn't important?"

"It will be later!" you say, grinning. "Stop wasting time and guess."

"I have no idea how you expect me to guess that based on nothing."

You give a theatrical sigh. "Fine, you spoilsport. One of your sisters is here."

Jay starts in surprise. "What?"

"Thirty-Two showed up with Grangier," you tell him, still grinning.

Jay goes still, evidently torn between happiness, and a sort of generalised anxiety that this particular J-Subject is on the scene 'unsupervised'. "You met Thirty-Two?" he asks. Predictably, he's already stowed the meds in his belt, and is pushing off from the Hecate to leave the hangar in search of a family reunion.

You laugh. "Oh, it went fine. She loves me. Her name is Agnieszka now, by the way."

He gives you an utterly unconvinced look at the first claim. To the second, he nods. "Very Polish. Makes sense. What is she doing with Grangier?" There's something sharp in the way he asks.

"She's her bodyguard," you explain. "Came here in a fancy mecha, keeps looking like she wants to shoot everyone in the room who even looks at her girl."

That relieves Jay slightly for all of a second. Then he frowns at your choice of words. "'Her girl'?"

"Oh, yes. I get the feeling she's doing a lot more with Grangier's body than just guarding it."

He stares at you speechlessly as he sails down the shaft, catching the next handhold without even trying.

"Grangier grew some teeth when she thought I was disrespecting your sister. And calls her 'my Nieszka'." You make a face. "If someone started being that possessive toward me, I think I'd have to punch them at least once to break them of the habit." Those two can't really be like that all the time, you're sure. The prospect is too mortifying to consider.

Despite his overall concern, Jay can't suppress a bare twitch of a smile for you. "I'll keep that in mind, going forward." Still, he can't help but add: "I didn't think the programming had done anything for her but make her mean. It's not like Six. Six shadowing some high noble, I expected a little."

You shrug. "Maybe she just likes where she is. Grangier seems to treat her well, based on what little I've seen so far."

"Maybe," Jay admits. "And it's not like Thirty-Two has ever appreciated being told what to do if she doesn't feel like it." He's quiet for a long moment then, taking another corner quickly, but not so quickly that he leaves you behind. "It's been a long time since I've seen her. Since she's seen me." There's something self-conscious about the way he says that.

"I think she'll recognise you," you say, even though you know that isn't quite where this is coming from. He probably has changed more than most of his sisters over the intervening years. "You stand out in a crowd."

He catches himself on a last handhold, letting our a deep breath. "Yeah."

With an encouraging grin, you reach out and grip him firmly by the jaw. Amusement shows through his pensiveness. "She said she wants to see you too, remember. Of course, that might just be to tell you all about how awful your taste in women is."

He gives one of abbreviated almost-laughs at that. "She can try."

You doggedly ignore the annoying, warm glow that blooms in your gut at the words, and drift ahead to talk to the guard in front of the hatch you need to go through next. "Let us through, Oscar?"

The guard shoots Jay a questioning look. "What does he need to be in here for?"

"One of the delegates brought my sister along," Jay says, with complete honesty.

Oscar actually shudders. "Fuck. I thought the scary one looked a little bit like— this isn't going to get me in trouble, is it?"

You smile sweetly. "Just trust me."

With a dubious sound, Oscar moves aside and keys open the hatch. "Good luck, Tham. She doesn't seem too happy."

"She never does," says Jay, shrugging as he goes past. You follow.

It's still well ahead of the session resuming, but some of the delegates are back in the compartment. Sure enough, you spot Arianne and Agnieszka. Jay stops himself short, taking her in — a pale, thin figure, with hair as white as his.

"Has she changed much?" you ask.

"She's a lot taller," he says. "Aside from that, no." He's frowning though, and you can see why: It's the same reason Agnieszka hasn't noticed Jay entering the room.

Lash Twin #1 is speaking to Arianne, while over her shoulder, Lash #2 has her eyes locked with Agnieszka. There's a fixed, uncomfortable quality to Arianne's expression, and Agnieszka has gone very, very still. The rest of the AIJ security present is trading wary looks with the Shields' troops.

"That look is never a good sign," Jay says, voice quiet.

The tension in the air is palpable. "How bad?"

"That's how she looks before someone starts bleeding," Jay says.

"You're not joking, are you?" You grimace. "Grangier seems to be able to keep her on task, at least."

Jay gives a fractional, doubtful shrug. "Maybe."

Article:

What do you do?

[ ] Deliberately interrupt the conversation without waiting to find out what's going on
[ ] Be cautious, wait to see what the conversation is about before doing anything