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Scene 1
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The bell atop the bar's door gave its usual jingle as Buck pushed it open and strode in, his long stride making for far-spaced footfalls. In place of the large, room-facing TV that had been retrofitted in to hang above the counter, the much smaller TV behind the bar was on, as was typical for this time of day. As he spied what was on it, Buck clicked his tongue in irritation.
Pietro's vast ball of hair could just barely be seen from the customer-facing side of the bar, a testament to how low he was crouched to run his pre-opening time checks on his equipment and stocks. At the sound, though, he began to slowly rise. "Ain't open for another half hour, buddy, so you'd best-"
As his eyes rose above the counter, his prodigious mane making it hard to, the barman blinked slowly and quickened the pace of his rise. "The fuck are you doing here today, Hill? I thought you didn't work Sundays - you need to pick up an extra shift this month or something?"
"Nah, I don't have any 'dates' today, Pietro." Buck denied, claiming one of the barstools as his own in a smooth, practiced motion. "But work or no work, I was hoping that, as a friend, you'd humor me in my time of need and hit me with a gin."
Rolling his eyes, Pietro spun around, his vast afro swaying from the motion like a rooted-down tumbleweed in the wind, desperate to break free and roll away. His hand wrapping around the body of one near-empty bottle of liquor, he cast his gaze back over his shoulder, not yet having removed the container from his shelf. "Okay, did you think I was going to go through with it without a question? I serve you early because you can't come around late. Spill. What's got you in here on your day off?"
Covering his face with one calloused hand, Buck let out a sigh and pointed his other thumb towards the TV. "I got a bad case of current events right now, barkeep. And the doctor said the only cure's some gin."
Turning around, Pietro set the bottle down on the lower shelf of the bar as he turned his gaze towards the screen.
A reporter was stood before a grand, fuckoff big rigid balloon, sat atop a much smaller but still large cabin section. On the rear of the cabin, facing back, as well as on the sides of the balloon facing down, a number of ducted fans sat motionless as he did his best to remain still in the windy weather they were having. "-though the maiden voyage of the Stellaris has been planned for today since a number of months ago, the Consul and his family evidently only booked their tickets for the highliner, fifth in its class, yesterday evening. Setting aside the question of who's getting a refund for their ticket on this mammoth of a zeppelin, this last minute visit to Kallipolis merits the question of just what sort of occasion might have brought the O'Reillys away from Chaldea and their shining castle on the hill. What sudden legislative bug might have bitten the Senate, and who are they trying to bargain with? Or is this, perhaps, a more personal visit by our unifier, this champion of peace, to the Claytons? We at KNT-900 will be standing by to keep you informed as the situation develops."
As the news segment shifted and the normal anchor came back on screen, Pietro turned a dubious look towards his customer. "What, you scared of the liner? Ain't like anybody's going to force you to fly, or like the thing's going to explode. Helium and fusion - very safe. At least, that's what I've heard about the things."
"Not the blimp, Pietro. The story." Buck hissed, dragging his hand down off of his face slowly. "I'm gonna need a stiff drink in me, if those fucks are coming to town later. Probably more than one, to be honest. This is worse than my day job ever could'a been."
"...The fuck's your beef with the Consul and them?" Pietro asked, his head cocked to the side as he set down a glass and started pouring. "He shoot your dog or something? Just some sort of hardcore anti-patrician? Or is this a gripe about the little droplet of your income that goes to funding the garrison force, or something?"
"He gave away my 'mech." Buck grumbled, resting his elbows on the counter. "And left me to rot in prison for nine goddamned years."
Pietro barely managed to catch himself before he overflowed the small glass. "Ex-cuse you?"
Buck stuck out his hand and didn't relent until he was handed the near-overfull glass, his brow furrowed beneath his messy hair. "That douchebag and his goddamned wife hired some other boys and I as security way back in the day. Needed some more muscle for a big haul they were angling for. Brought us to this godforsaken rock, got us all tossed in the can, but slipped out through the bars themselves like it was a goddamned magic trick or something. Then while they were out, they whored out our fucking mechs to get a cushy place to call their own and left us to rot! Ramirez and Strickland deserved the graves they got, I won't deny, but me? I'm reserving the right to hold a grudge, after the past seven years of selling my sausage for rent money while those fuckers lived in their perfect fantasy castle."
"Shit." Pietro replied, re-capping the bottle as he crouched back down to resume his pre-opening set-up. "...So you're, like, a real pirate? It's not just an act you put on for your clients? Now I understand why you've gotta drink to get through the day. At the same time, though, I can't exactly bring myself to apologize for all the bad things I've thought about you."
Downing his drink swiftly, the former inmate set his glass down with a loud thud. "We were mercenaries, goddamn it! At least, I thought we were. How the fuck is that the focus here, though?"
"Well," Pietro snorted, nodding to himself periodically. "my job is to make small talk with lushes and get them drunk, so it's what I'm best at. You're the one who brought all the heavy shit into this mix here, Buck-o. What the fuck do you want me to say? I'll admit, if everything you're saying is true, you got done dirty. Maybe if things had been a little less dicey and chaotic back then, you could've been a Patrician yourself. That said, the fact that the O'Reilly's have got that little blemish in their background isn't going to make me condemn them, after everything they've done for the world. We've got peace here on Alphard thanks to Johann and Alexandria O'Reilly, and ten more planets besides are sharing in that. You deserve an apology and restitutions, for sure, but if just hearing about the people makes you want to drink, that can't possibly be healthy for you."
Growling a bit, Buck threw down a pile of change on the counter and stood up quickly. "Fuck it. Whatever. I'll be back in tomorrow for the usual."
So saying, he stormed back out of the door, ignoring whatever Pietro was saying behind him.
Johann O'Reilly this, Johann O'Reilly that. How the fuck that swindler had managed to con his way into names like 'unifier' and 'champion of peace' was absolutely beyond Buck. What did he have, other than an unhealthy fixation on ancient history and Starlet's protection, that possibly could've made him such a success story? He was a washed up old, dispossessed bum from out in the asscrack of space. How the fuck did a guy like that rise into a position of authority over nearly a dozen worlds?
As he stroked his chin, feeling the beard that had more than a little salt to go with its pepper nowadays, Buck couldn't help but feel he could use that sort of cheat code to success. There was nothing better about that fuckhead compared to Buck himself, so what the fuck sort of luck catapulted him to the top while Buck was whoring himself out as though he were still back on Hardcore?
He began to kick a can along, not caring who was watching the rough-around the edges old guy with no sleeves on his leather jacket guy act like a sullen little kid. They could be cops, they could be customers, they could be little kids out walking their dogs. He didn't give a rat's ass. When the world was shit to you, you had the right to be a little shit back to it.
He'd worked his hardest for nine fucking years to crawl his way out of the pit Johann had landed him in with his head on his shoulders. Convincing folks that he was decent enough, 'reformed' enough to be let out into the streets probably took more work than O'Reilly had done in his whole lifetime, the fuck. Apparently, though, that only landed you at the very bottom of society! Apparently, the crimes of your associates were your crimes too…unless you could point to the fact that you'd only just hired them.
If you scraped together a halfass downpayment for a job to get a crew together, brought them out to the middle of nowhere, sold them out and stole metal worth more than you ever paid them out of their hands, though, you got to co-found a country and live the high life.
If the job was that easy, anyone could have done it. Buck himself probably could've been the one living the good life, if he'd been the boss on that day.
Or if O'Reilly had ever thought to look back at what got him there, he at least could've been living better than he was. He'd be a mechwarrior, a 'patrician', and not the kind of guy who got drunk at noon then acted like Ramirez for paying customers, in bed, all day.
So maybe Pietro was right - maybe what he needed to do was to make his grievances known and demand a little bit of due compensation for his hardships. Johann was going to be in town, so maybe he could even do it today! Just, walk up to the motorcade or whatever, start shouting, hope he hears, hope he recognized him, hope he cared enough not to bullshit about it. Great fucking plan. Who the fuck was gonna take his side on this shit? It was amazing enough that the bartender had believed, or at least pretended to believe, his story back there.
It was worth a try, to be fair, but he wasn't very hopeful.
Probably the best odds he could hope for was that shouting his grievances like that would make him feel a little better. A little bit of catharsis. The gin in his gut thought that was a good idea.
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Scene 2
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"Look how high we are, daddy, mommy!"
Johann's gaze snapped over to one of the windows of the first class cabin, where his eldest stood, face pressed up against the glass, a faint chuckle rising out of his throat as he rose, slower than he might have in the past, to his feet. "How high are we, Ellie? Higher than a piggyback ride?"
"Way, way higher than that! You aren't that tall!" Helena insisted, turning her face back to pout at him.
"She's got you there." Alexandria chirped over, having made it to the window before Johann. "If you were this tall, you'd have entirely different issues with reaching shelves. It's definitely been awhile since we've flown this high, though."
"Okay," Johann admitted, his face contorting into a wry grin as he looked out the window and took the joke a step further. "But let's say were at home at the time, with the mountain and castle added onto my height?"
His wife wrinkled her nose at him as she glanced over. "Still your loss."
"You're short, daddy!" the nine year old chirped, slapping him on the back of the leg.
"...Okay." he sighed, shrugging in defeat as they danced around his attempt at humor. "But who exactly isn't short when you know the Claytons? Jack's big enough that someone might as well build a castle on top of him one of these days."
"Quit now while you still have some hope." Starlet instructed, patting him on the back. "One of these days, you might make someone laugh again. One of these days. It's not impossible, at least. You've told enough decent jokes in your life that we can safely say that much, at least."
What an incredible vote of confidence that was, Johann thought to himself as he turned around, leaning against the wall and setting his gaze back onto the rest of his family. Gaius, the younger of two twins and only son, sat attending to his youngest three sisters, Lynn, Erica, and Chloe, while Petra, his twin, was taking the opportunity to have a bit of a nap in her chair. Nine, eight, eight, five, four, and three… Alexandria would not be happy if he were to voice this sort of thought, but he couldn't help but wince reflexively when remembering at the strenuous exertion his body had been put through by rush-building a family in ten years. The succession was secure, and he had six beautiful children to cherish…but at what cost to his joints?
"Hey." Gaius called back, taking his eyes off the board game he'd enlisted the littler ones in to contain their energy. "What's it like looking down from space? That's way higher than we are now, right?"
That was…a very difficult question. For a long time traveller, the magic of the void and the view from orbit wore thin after just a few short years. Johann could barely remember the last time he'd looked down from a shipboard screen and thought about anything other than the practical side of things. He could say that, but it wouldn't appeal at all to a child's sense of wonder, and if he tried to bullshit about it these smart little cookies would pick up on that. His eyes flicked over to Alexandria, who took the hint and shot back a little smirk.
"So from this high up, it looks like you might be able to stomp a mountain flat with your feet, right?" she said, turning around herself. "Well, when you're that high up, it can look like you could hold the whole world between your fingers, like a marble. A shining little blue, green, and white marble sitting in the deep blackness of the void. It's beautiful, but at the end of the day I think it's better to stand on the ground."
Her own gaze thoroughly pulled off of the board game, Chloe, the youngest, tilted her head to the side. "But why?"
Lynn, the junior of the middle children, chimed in as well. "Yeah, if it's pretty up there, why's it bad?", and shortly thereafter Erica, seemingly feeling hemmed in from her elder and younger sisters asking, chimed in with "Why, why?"
Letting out a soft sigh, Johann stepped forward at that moment, stopping to crouch down behind the trio and pat the toddler softly on the head while looking between her and the other two of his youngest trio. How to put it that wouldn't go over the little one's heads or under the bigger one's? "A meadow can look pretty from far away, but you'll never know what each flower smells like if you don't go in and check for yourself, right? It's like that. Isn't it more fun to go down to town than to look at it from up at home all the time?"
"So…" Chloe thought, gazing up at him from under his hand. "It's good to be short?"
Johann's mouth widened uncontrollably into a smile as he looked down at his daughter, a hearty chuckle fighting its way out of his chest starting from a simple 'snerk'. Within a few moments, he was lifting her carefully into a hug at height level. "Ahah-haaah! It sure is, sweetie! I never even hit my head on door frames."
"That tickles!"
"No fair!"
"Me too, daddy!"
If there was one thing he'd like to tell, in no uncertain terms, to himself in the prior decade ago, it's that he was an idiot for letting himself almost miss the chance to experience this kind of life. Maybe that cynical old shit he'd been wouldn't be able to properly understand what it was like to have your kids laugh at you instead of at your jokes, shy away from the prickly texture of your stubble, try to wrestle with just enough vigor to make your joints ache, or anything like that. They definitely didn't sound like good things at first blush. But it'd be worth telling himself, if anything, how his life could change if he'd permit himself a chance at happiness.
A short blimp ride could become a great memory when you let it.
- -
Processional car rides, on the other hand, always sucked. Always.
Maybe it was because cars sucked. They were loud, they vibrated, they smelled like shit, they handled bumps horribly, and they didn't even have the empowering feeling of sitting in the cockpit of something brimming with raw power. No matter how much some weirdos tried to live out their fantasies of being a mechwarrior by fitting more raw power into their truck, or whatever. It was beyond him how anyone or anything could fall asleep in a car seat - though perhaps, his joints spoiled by a life of abuse and age, he was a poor judge of what sort of surface was sleepable for children and cats. As the majority of his own children, but mercifully none of his cats, slept in the limo around him, he really wished he could surrender himself to that sort of free-napping existence.
But no, there was the other shitty thing about riding in a car - doing it as a public figure! His upper body just stuck out the window, it was his duty as the one these lunatics had come out to cheer for to smile and wave back. It wouldn't be taken nearly the same way if he conked out on sleeping pills and had someone else wave his hand for him. But no, he was a symbol by very little merit of his actual deeds, a point of accumulation for the credit due to the many thousands of people working underneath him and actually solving problems. The senate as a whole, let alone he himself, would be useless without some folks who were actually competent to execute their directives and plans. Even if it wasn't meant to be a public event, somehow a quiet little visit turned into an unscheduled triumph in his honor, and he'd just have to put up with being their 'unifier', 'champion of peace', or whatever other absurd thing they might call him.
The view was even shit. The only thing to see ahead of the car was a tank painted in the colors of the local garrison, and the only thing to see behind it was a tank painted in the colors of the armored police. To the close sides, small security teams marched along just to make sure nobody could charge the window. Horribly untraditional, for a Roman triumph, since the triumphator's army was meant to go behind him and the spoils of the campaign in front of him, but… he commanded a garrison, a diplomatic agency, and an intelligence team, not an offensive army, and making sure the law applied to people with tanks was the AP's job anyways, so it made sense for them to be ready to fire over his head. He was, strictly, here as the guest of the city, and they had a right to their security as did he to his.
"Can I get a memento mori in here?" he asked silently enough that it would only be audible within the car.
Petra, who had woken in time for the others to fall asleep, responded formulaically from where she sat beside him. "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal."
Letting out a snort of laughter, he glanced back. "Thank you, precious. I wouldn't have expected you to remember that part."
"It comes up a lot when you're talking about Rome." she huffed, tapping the backs of her knuckles against his side. "Was I supposed to forget?"
"Yes, Petra." Alexandria chimed in, from the far window seat. "Nobody is supposed to care about Rome like he does."
"History teachers are, sometimes." Johann argued back, doing his best to talk without opening his lips much, so the crowd wouldn't notice much.
He could practically feel the eye roll. "One in a few dozen history teachers are, and you don't have any teaching certificate that I ever heard of."
The slight giggle that arose from in between the couple helped Johann make his smile for the crowd a little more natural.
Then someone stepped out in front of the crowd, his head wreathed in several mops of black and gray and white hair, his clothing largely composed of beaten up leather. Something was familiar about him. "Johann, you fffffucking prick, where's my goddamned money?!"
As the guy froze in the middle of taking another step forward as the security team took note of him, backing away a bit with his hands raising high as they all fixed their sights on him.
Petra, peeking around him as best as she could, asked the question he was still trying to sort out himself. "...Who is that, dad?"
"I dunno." he replied, pulling his arm back to rub his chin. "But I think I recognize him. Maybe."
Could he have been a member of the crew from back sixteen years ago? It didn't exactly seem particularly likely, given that the ship crews had largely been maintained on account of their training, but aside from that… well, there was one possibility that stood out in the sixty four year old's mind.
"You've been safe all this time, living the high life with your guards and your castles, because of my 'mech. Must feel real funny, lookin' back on me from behind your guards here while you drive past!" the bum-like man cried.
That settled it. He was one of the mechwarriors from the lance he'd pieced together!
…No idea which one, though.
The crowd behind him was giving him some pretty nasty looks, at this point. Maybe they were just that crazy about Johann, or maybe they were picking up on the fact that he was one of the 'nasty pirates' who, if you trusted some of the ridiculous crackpot radio shows that'd covered him a years back, had been 'exploiting' Johann's knowledge when he'd first arrived.
"Hey, could we stop here for a second?" Johann called to the driver, before turning back to the guards. "Make sure that guy's clean, then get him over here. I got a second to see what he's on about."
Slowly, the little column of the procession ground to a halt as the guards patted down the dispossessed bum. By the time everything had ground to a halt, the man had his arms behind his back and was being led along by a guard on either side, each holding one of his wrists.
"So…you're not gonna hide behind the guys with guns?" the man slurred, the stink of booze on his breath. "Fucking incredible."
Telling him he was obviously drunk was not exactly in the cards. "Do I need to? None of the guys I came down here with the first time were sharp enough to bring a sniper or dumb enough to get brought by one. Which one are you, anyways?"
"...You seriously tryin'a say you don't remember?" the man fumed, glaring down at him through his mess of hair.
"Believe it or not, it's been a quarter of my life since I've seen even this little of your face." Johann snarked, resting his arm on the windowsill. "So, are you Hank Strickland, Siegfried Ramirez, or Bill Hill?"
"Amazing." the washed up drunk huffed. "You didn't getta single first name right. Buck Hill, by the way. Maybe you'd forgotten me, but I didn't get a single damned chance'a forget about you, with how well you've done for yourself, oh 'Consul'."
"Believe me, I find it just as ridiculous as you do." Johann replied, taking a chance on being a bit more honest about the matter than he'd normally make public. "It's all been more of a voluntelling than anything. Better than the time I spent as an outright errand boy, but… anyways, what've you three been doing?"
"Strickland and Ramirez are dead." Buck grumbled back. "Round about '24, they let it slip that they'd been pirates, once, and a guard took th' matter into her own damn hands. Not that she wasn't right to feel that way."
"...And you weren't a pirate?" Johann asked, giving the man an interested look.
"If I were a pirate, would I have been taking your money in a contract or would I have been taking it in a stickup?!" the man growled, leaning forward out of liquor soaked irritation, but not tugging on the arms of the men who were restraining him. Honestly, it was more self control than Johann expected from the guy under the circumstances, so maybe he was owed a little bit of credit for that. "It took me a good few years to convince 'em I wasn't the scum of the earth and get out of that cage, Johann. After that… dispossessed, out on the street, breaking thirty one, total stranger? Look, I ain't broken any laws, but selling my meat to make rent ain't much of a life."
"I think I get the picture, but please, I've got kids here." Johann grumbled, giving an unsettled look to the man. "Look, I do feel bad for you if you're just some unlucky dupe in all of this, but it wasn't exactly my choice to take your bug to begin with - and at this point, the kid who's piloting it right now's probably had it longer than you ever did, if you're only around your forties. There's no way I can return it to you now. How much do you want to let this matter drop, though?"
Hill's face flushed red for a second, before he took a heavy breath and calmed himself. "Not like I'd be able to pilot worth a damn at this point, anyways. Now, listen here, though… if I'd been one of your mechwarriors all this time, I'd have been living all comfortable now and into the future, right? Instead, I've been debasin' myself all this time. So I figure you owe me…rent, or royalties, or whatever the hell, for all the work you've gotten out'a that bug, and all you're gonna get out of it. Enough that I don't have to worry about this crap anymore, at least. Doesn't have t' be a great retirement, just a living."
"Sounds about right." Johann agreed. "Now, I've gotta get going, but my contact information is a matter of public record. Those guards who've got you are going to make sure you get home safe from this spectacle you've made, and they'll take down your number too. Whether you call me, or I call you, we'll sort this out."
"Wait!" the ex-mechwarrior hissed as he began to be led away. "One last question! I got one more!"
"What?" Johann asked, wondering why the man was being so persistent at this point.
"How on earth did you end up getting together with Starlet?"
Johann almost let the question pass unanswered, due to the tone, but thought better of ignoring it after a few moments. "I said yes."
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Scene 3
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Marie, the eldest daughter in house Clayton, pursed her lips in amusement as she surveyed the group assembled atop the front steps of the palace. "Afternoon, auntie Alexandria, old man. I see you've brought the whole clan with you. Including some new faces - I assume that's little Chloe you've got there, but who are these two fur babies?"
Rolling her eyes, Starlet gently rocked their youngest, who seemed quite nervous to meet a new person like this. "Aren't you a little old to start calling me your aunt, brat? I don't remember ever watching you for your parents when you were a kid. The calico is Romulus and the tabby's Remus, by the way."
"...Those Johann's cats or something?" the twenty four year old asked, giving a dubious look to the contented looking fuzzballs in Gaius and Helena's arms. "Because that crusty naming sense screams 'daddy skeleton named these feuding little monsters' above all else."
"Actually!" Petra proclaimed, stepping forward with a huff and brushing the last stray lock of her black hair behind her ear and away from her face before standing with her hands on her hips. "They're mine, auntie Marie. And I'm the one who named them, thank you very much."
"You tell her, precious." Johann cheered, pumping his fist lazily.
Marie doubled over a bit, clutching her mouth and her chest as she feigned a gag and stared at the ground. "Oh no, nonono. I'm not your auntie, Petra. Please… just call me your big sis or something?"
"I'm right here you know, aunt Marie." Helena interjected, wearing a look of what was, in truth, rather obviously fake indignation. "It'd just get confusing."
Alexandria couldn't help but snort at that. As a mother, there was a special sort of pride involved in watching Petra and Ellie go for the blood like this. It wasn't even as though anyone actually called Ellie 'big sis' to begin with - but Marie couldn't possibly know that. She'd need to make sure they knew where to set reasonable boundaries for this sort of thing, but to have them take the fight to this smug kid in her defense unprompted… she felt so loved.
"Oh, come on!" the Clayton huffed, stamping her foot up and down softly. "Not you too, Ellie! I was only fifteen when you were born, you know?"
Gaius stroked Remus' back as he stepped forward, grinning widely in his own right. "But auntie, mom was only twenty when you were born. Where are you drawing the line here?"
Lynn and Erica picked up on the way things were going at that point, joining the action with a chorus of 'Auntie, auntie!' as Marie shrunk back in terror.
"Alexandria, Johann, please!" the young adult pleaded. "Call your little attack dogs off while there's still something left of me!"
"You know, we try not to restrict their freedom much." Alexandria replied with a soft frown.
Scratching the back of his head, Johann cracked a grin. "And besides, what's the harm in feeling loved?"
"Oh, come on!"
Marie was about to turn around and walk back inside when Chloe's small, soft voice rang out. "...Aunt Marie?"
Freezing in place, Marie let her eyes slowly drift back across the group towards the toddler, who was giving her a curious, wide eyed look as though waiting for something. The twenty four year old felt her bottom lip begin to quiver uncontrollably as she looked into those blue eyes, her every effort to look away thwarted by rebellious muscles in her neck. She couldn't, it seemed, disappoint a three year old. "Y-yes!" she gushed, bringing her hands together in front of her chest. "That's me, Chloe, your aunt Marie. Oh, you're just so smart!"
As Starlet gazed on, a smug grin on her face at the victory of her adorable daughter over the brat's self respect and pride, Johann cupped his chin. "Say, where's your twin? I wanna see if they'll start calling him old man after this."
Marie let out a sound between a snort and a sneeze as her gaze whipped back towards the sexagenarian, giving him a look stuck between profound amusement and a determined refusal to forgive him. "James is around…somewhere. He may or may not have picked today to bring his girlfriend home, so…"
"Shouldn't expect to see him anytime before dinner." Johann agreed, letting her go without finishing that thought. "I'm sure we'll all be so broken up about that all day. Is he still doing the dance stuff?"
The long-suffering look Marie gave at the mention of that was all he needed to tell that the answer was 'yes'.
The ensuing silence broke only through the intrusion of a new face into the fray, as Alan popped his head in from behind the open door, his face lighting up bright as a chandelier as he saw the assembled group and rushed out into the open. "Ellie!"
At that prompting, the eldest O'Reilly child broke formation from the rest of the family and rushed to the door, meeting the middle Clayton there with a double high-five. "Alan! It's nice to see you."
The awkward mood broken by that cheerful reunion, Marie decided to recapture a bit of the momentum she'd been struggling to hold in the conversation since she was mobbed by the little ones. "I assume you two know where the meetings are held, right? If you don't need me to show you there, I can get all the little ones together for a play-date while you're talking to them."
"Yeah, it's what they're here for." Johann agreed. "Leaving them at home with the help didn't seem right when there's some perfectly good kids right here for 'em to play with. Plus some bratty young adults with children's hearts."
"Seriously?" Marie huffed, before turning back towards Alexandria and Chloe and holding out her arms. "Hey, Chloe, do you wanna come with auntie Marie for a little while and meet her little brothers and sisters?"
Alexandria could just about see the moment the youth's heart melted as she got a tiny nod in return.
- -
"So." Amy opened, folding her hands on the table as soon as Johann and Alexandria were seated. "From what I gather, this isn't meant to be a purely congenial visit? What's got the two of you rushing out here on such short notice to make a house call?"
Clicking his tongue, Johann picked up his cup of tea and took a long, hard sip, looking silently at the Claytons from over the rim of the cup.
Jack picked his own cup up and mimicked Johann's action briefly, trying to show him how ridiculous it looked, before setting the now empty cup down and fixing him with a long state. "Do you have some sort of bad news for us, Johann? I know one of your ships came back recently - bad news? Pirate strike on one of the other worlds or something?"
"Not really bad news, I'd say. More… an opportunity, but one we're having a tough time handling." the elder man slowly admitted, placing his mostly full cup back on the coaster. "The ship that came back last week is actually the merchant vessel we've got continuing the Illyria route for our cover story. You probably won't be too surprised to find that we're using it as the main tip of our intelligence collection detail, will you?"
Amelia shook her head, taking a quick sip of her own tea. "Yes, it's rather the obvious place for it, isn't it? Not much use in only listening to worlds that are already part of the family. By contrast, even if they're only just barely tied into the Sphere, Illyria will have news. What kind of news from the bowels of the Sphere are you calling an opportunity, though?"
"Not the Sphere, actually." Alexandria said, drumming her fingers on the table. "The periphery, still. How much do you know about the Lothian League, exactly? I'm not expecting much from you, but this quiz is graded."
"The Lothian League?" Amelia asked, frowning vigorously. "We're the ones who told you about the Lothian League. They're that little Taurian diaspora state, right? How is another interstellar nation an opportunity, all of a sudden? We're not exactly ready to convene an army for a war of conquest, let alone without any sort of reasonable explanation for hostilities."
"Not an opportunity in the military adventurism sense, no." Johann responded, pulling a noteputer out of his pocket and starting it up. "You got a projector in here anywhere?"
"We don't need a projector for this, Johann." Alexandria chided. "There's a limit to how annoying we can be and still just walk in here."
"Fine. Alright." the Consul agreed. "Lothian's a bit player from the start, you know? Absolute hole - mostly living on snowball, barely exporting anything of value, barely even having a military, they've always been in a pretty sad state. Only reason they ever bother to show up to Illyria is to trade for spare parts for their ships, since they don't have the scratch to buy anything more, but they desperately need to keep those things working to have a nation. Thing is, though, it's looking like we might need to start writing that in past-tense. Word on Illyria is that they've just given up on trying to hire more mercenaries to help them fight off some raiders who've shown up recently - ex mercs themselves, funnily enough. Three of their four jumpships have been caught up in a snatch and grab already, and it's not looking likely that they'll be able to hold onto the last one for too much longer. Whenever this all blows over, they're more or less done as a viable nation."
"So your 'opportunity' is colonizing what was, until recently, a proud, independent, and unified diaspora offshoot of the Taurian Concordat?" Jack asked, rising from his seat with a heavy frown on his face. "O'Reilly, they aren't going to welcome that like a backwater that hasn't seen friendly contact in centuries would. Do you maybe not know what a Taurian guerilla resistance looks like? Even assuming you can negotiate a treaty with the individual planets, the chances you'll get a smooth integration are next to nil."
"Yeah see, this is why we came to you about this." Johann huffed, sliding the noteputer across the table. "If we were looking to slide in and assert authority out of the blue or tempt them into the fold as is the usual, we'd just ask you for your support in delivering demonstrations of our means and good intentions, but you're right that these people won't just bow down like that. Which is why we're thinking of a much longer con than that."
Amelia seized the computer once it came to a stop, looking at the screen. "Why'd you pull up navigational data to their worlds, exactly?"
"Funny thing, that's not commonly available data." Johann insisted. "They've historically been about as mum about their location as you two've got us being. They came to Illyria, rather than vice versa. They're changing tacks, though. They asked some folks on Illyria to spread this data around recently - to try and bait in merchants to keep traffic flowing in their borders for awhile. Our folks bought the data off of those people, then had 'em delete it. From what I gather, they hadn't found anyone else interested in the opportunity yet when we came around, hence why they did anything at all - even something as reversible as taking control over some data."
"So your plan is to monopolize their trade until they roll over for us, or something?" Amy asked as she flicked through the other contents of the noteputer. "Do you not think they'll maybe find out you paid for the exclusivity and get pissed?"
"They're too busy trying to recapture their other ships to worry about making another trip to Illyria right now." Starlet huffed, crossing her arms on the table. "Which is why we're so sure they're going to lose their last ship right now. And that's not the whole plan - even if we can afford to move more ships than they actually had into the region right now. We, again, wouldn't need to talk to you in so much detail, so soon, if that was all. Feel free to look over that a little more before you try your next zany guess at what we're trying to pull here."
Silence reigned in the room for a second as the Claytons clustered around the noteputer, looking over the data at hand. The O'Reillys gave them the time they seemed to want with it, in turn, watching calmly.
Eventually, Jack tossed the noteputer back onto the table once the heads of the Promethean Order were done with it. "Alright, so the place is essentially a backwater with a lot of resources but not much population or industry, right? What's the plan you're cooking up that's so dependent on the Promethean Order that you're trying to get us involved this early?"
"We're gonna give things a few more years to calm down over there." Johann admitted, rising from his seat. "But when we start sending in merchant vessels, we're planning on shipping over a little more besides. Some fake mercs, for one - a 'security force' of patricians to make sure their worlds can't fall prey to the same sorts of attack again. More importantly, though, we want you to send over some of your people - make it out to be a phony church, if you have to - to run schools there and such, maybe build up some simple factories. Start a recruiting base there, and work your tendrils in. If your folks and my folks can both get dug in enough on their worlds, all that's left is convincing the locals that they ought to have more of a say in how things are run, to put pressure on the ruling families. Heat the water slowly, and the frog doesn't jump out. Just like that, we figure they'll come around to joining up eventually. For humanitarian reasons, we figure you'll agree that it's better to build the place up until it's livable and stable, rather than letting merchants and pirates henpeck it to death, but doing that without excluding other traffic or asserting control is a sort of risk you've never been willing to take with your little project here."
Amy cupped her chin. "You're right that if you'd just come to us and proposed a 'simple' rebuilding process with no strings attached, we would have rejected you outright. Now, this… it's a very…ambitious plan. Not sure if it's workable, but, well, that means exactly what it means. I'm not sure if it's workable. Have you talked to the rest of the Senate about this… it's not really an opportunity, though, is it? More like a moral duty to prevent harm. Either way, have you talked to them about it, yet?"
"Not in any real detail." Johann admitted, gazing down at the tablecloth. "And maybe I should have led with 'an opportunity to do good', but would you have trusted that from me?
The Dominisa sighed. "Maybe not. Get on that, then. We'll talk to the rest of the Academy at the same time, and then we can all come together - even get the Tribunal involved - and hash out what we're going here, if anything."
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I don't like doing these timeskips very much, but it's a necessary bugbear given the structure and premise of this fic, which is based around the understanding that it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll, a journey of many, many decades, and I don't intend to be writing this story well into my thirties.
