If You Love'er So Much, Why Don't You Mari'er? (Battletech) (Mature)

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DTravler said:
and at the start of every chapter you should put the BT style location marker it goes like this

Solo, Solo III
North America, Texas
Huston, Company HQ

Now you do not always have to start so far out as the solar system but you see the format and that should be put in anytime there is a sudden or major change in location.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's a habit I fell out of while writing the early chapters, which took place entirely in a single region on Terra, so you've got a fair point on that.

As for Niops, I'm delaying that on the basis that to the best knowledge in the records the original pair have, it was just a moderately secret, tiny little research outpost for examining a dying star. The only reason it became a real nation with any credibility in canon is that decades after the scientists became stranded there, Capellan refugees stumbled onto the system and were impounded there as thralls.
 
Chapter 16 (February 2936 - March 2938)
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    Scene 1
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    Dalmatia, Illyria
    Illyrian Palatinate, Near Periphery
    February 2936

    Protocol was to be obeyed to the utmost precision in all occasions. The hat came off and was pressed to the chest as one sunk into a low bow. "Mister Zakarian, it does my heart good to see you so well in this new year."

    Hasdrubal spread his arms wide, through the clear objections of his aged joints, a low chuckle riding on his aggressively minty breath. "And you as well, mister Papadopoulos. The joy in life is had in seeing good men return to good health. On such thought, how is my friend, mister Arslan, these days? It seems we last met for chess a lifetime ago. Perhaps it was even when he introduced you? Or… no, come in, come in!"

    Mark nodded and stepped into the room, reaching into his pocket as he did, to hold a slip of paper up to his gaze. "I have the impression that I came here with my good teacher a few times, before his body would no longer permit the strain of the transit. He is well, though. The operation to excise the tumor in his throat was an utter success. He sends his regards, by the way - Ne1."

    Letting out a hiss, Hasdrubal wheeled around to face his board, moving the piece as instructed with a pronounced wince. "Exactly as I feared from that old lion. My regards to him are… no, I'll need a bit more time to decide. How long are you on lllyria for?"

    "I suspect several weeks, if the dickering goes smoothly and goods are all delivered on time." the younger man replied with a slight bow, hanging his hat up by the door. "I will, of course, give you a better estimate as it becomes available to me, and be around to collect your move before we depart."

    "Good, good." Zakarian agreed, nodding heavily. "Now please, do sit down. I am no barbarian who receives a cherished guest standing. Coffee?"

    "Please."

    Mark sank into the plush chair with a gasp that seemed to carry away a long-bottled tension as his host went over to that ostentatious, gilded espresso machine and went through the various rituals of brewing a shot.

    The cup he eventually received bore at its top an immaculate froth of oil, which he gave a quick sniff before taking his first, long sip. Exquisite. "I could visit all the cafes of charted space and never find the like of your work, my friend. The honor of being your guest is enough to come to Illyria for that alone."

    Grinning widely, the old man sat down with his own cup and shook his head. "But it is not the sole thing that brings you to Illyria, now, is it? I presume the usual is in order? Or do you require something outside of the norm at this moment?"

    Smiling faintly over the rim of his cup, Mark shrugged softly. "I had meant this as a courtesy visit, for in truth we aren't even close to through the spare parts you provided last time - their quality has been utterly superb, and so the ship has worn gently - but as a token of appreciation for you, who have done so much for us, let's make it the usual order. My people will sort out the matter of payment as normal, of course."

    "Naturally."

    Taking another sip of his coffee, Mark glanced out the window for a second. "Has anything of interest happened recently? Some of the men heard vague chattering of 'Lothian, Lothian', but weren't able to dig up anything beyond the name. They were some little state that came by now and then to trade, weren't they?"

    Finishing his espresso, Hasdrubal let out a deep sigh. "You've come to the right place, my friend. The merchants of Lothian were good customers of mine in better days, but I'm afraid their star has fallen. They were beset by brigands not long after your last departure, and came here with news that they had lost many of their precious jumpships to beg trade and aid in rebuilding in case they lost their final vessel. Quite sad, really - they were a good, consistent buyer of parts for Tramps - very profitable. I suppose the metal wholesalers must be a bit irate about their disappearance - the profits were good on their imports."

    "A tragedy." Papadopoulos agreed, finishing his own drink in turn, and setting the cup down off to the side. "But it isn't as though anyone would venture into a conflict zone for scraps of cheap metal, now, is it?"

    "There are always fools in the world, Mark." Zakarian corrected with a shake of his head. "And in any case, there is no meaning in swinging a sickle in a field when the wheat is all cut. It might already be the case that the brigands have moved on, or that they have settled in on their new conquest. In any case, they will one day find that they need spare parts for their jumpships, and it will probably all circle back to me. Until then, though, the metal merchants shall need to cry their pitiful tears, because the precise locations of the worlds of Lothian are known to nobody."

    Mark's eyes widened the slightest measure at that, one hand rising to his temple to massage it brushing against his brown hair on the way. "If their worlds are at unknown locations, how did they expect anyone to come to them as merchants when their jumpships were all lost? Even being provincial at best, that shouldn't make them such fools as that."

    "Which is why they provided me with the locations of their worlds." Hasdrubal agreed, wrinkling his nose in amusement. "They felt that, owing to my field of business, I would have strong access to those with the power to visit them and, in doing business in their land, keep their worlds connected in the absence of a domestic fleet. They asked me to copy the navigational drive and provide it to anyone interested to direct trade their way."

    The forty-some year merchant snorted in return, beginning to catch onto the situation as it stood. "And yet the location remains known to nobody. What mischief are you entertaining yourself with this time?"

    Rising to gaze out the window, the old man smoothed down his trousers with a grin. "It's no simple amusement, my friend. As I said, their star had fallen. They didn't place any order on that day, and I am not habituated to working gratis. I kept their drive, but not to hand out freely, at my own expense. If not from them, specifically, I decided to take my payment from the merchants who sought them."

    Rising to mirror the move, Mark gazed down on the streets without paying the least bit of attention to its passers by. "Would you sell a copy of that navigational data to me, then, my good friend? No… if possible, sell me the master copy, and all copies you have in stock. A market that can be controlled is more valuable than one that is shared, after all."

    "Your true viciousness shows in your appetite, Mark. Though you don't bear the name, perhaps you really are a little lion in your teacher's mould." Hasdrubal quipped. "But unfortunately, you are not the first to have that thought. I don't have the master copy anymore - I was paid quite handsomely for the exclusivity by the first lot who took interest. You would need to take up the matter of the navigational data with them, if you have an interest in venturing onward to Lothario and her colonies."

    "You picked a wonderful time to become honest in your dealings there." Mark snarked, sighing as he turned away from the streets. "Who am I to find, then, if I want to buy a copy of the data? And further, when do they come around?"

    Hasdrubal shot him a concerned look. "An unsavory lot, to be sure. They come around in August or thereabouts, normally. It used to be that they would come early in the year, but their habits shifted some time back. The O'Reilly Expedition, they tend to go by. They've been regulars to Illyria for over a decade, but still don't pay the port fees. They bring just one jumpship a year, loaded with germanium, to trade for general supplies, but they buy parts for many more - certainly, enough to make use of the monopoly they bought, if they actually wanted to. Pirates, I suspect. Perhaps the very brigands who've made trouble in Lothian, though I doubt it, since they haven't increased their orders for Tramp parts in close to a decade now, since they first started placing them. If I could point to them on a map, I would, but I'm afraid it's a greater mystery to me than even Lothian, at this point."

    O'Reilly. Something about that name sounded odd to Mark. He couldn't place why he was familiar with it, but the combination of O'Reilly and a mystery sparked something within him. His heartbeat sped up a bit, his mouth drying suddenly. Why did he care about some random name from the isles?

    Shaking his head, he shrugged it off. It was something he would need to look into at a later time, when he wasn't doing business. Strange hunches were something to be followed in his line of work, but not at the cost of alienating or baffling existing relations. "So my only real chance is to come a bit later in the year, next time? I suppose my teacher will be grateful for the additional time to plan his move, if you're willing to offer it to him. As a matter of interest, though, where might I go on Illyria to ask after more information on the Expedition? You mentioned they bought a wide range of goods when they came around, didn't you?"

    "Yes, yes. A wide range of supplies. Consumer goods, colony supplies, ammunition, electronics. A little of everything. However, if you're only here a few weeks I doubt you'll have time to canvas every flea market, little shop, and wholesaler's market they've stepped into on their time here." Hasdrubal explained, waving his hand through the air. "It's frankly absurd to try and track someone that way when your time is better spent making money. Instead, I can offer you a much better target to speak to - a really, truly rich referral to speak to a man who's seen it all. Forget trudging through the dirt among the jealous peddlers and the poors, my friend, because my name can open many doors."

    "I would be eternally grateful for your assistance, of course." Mark agreed, his face expressing as much earnest gratitude as he could put on it.

    With a huff, Hasdrubal patted him on the shoulder. "Consider it returning the favor for your own kind gesture, my boy. The one I will get you an audience with is the Port Commissioner. Mr. Johansen does business with all the smugglers and ne'er do wells who come into Illyria without paying their dues, an enterprise in which he profits greatly. If you wish to learn about a rogue, there is no better man to be a fly on the wall of. He and I have an understanding, of course."

    Mark smiled. "Say what you will, but I will continue to be grateful to you for this introduction whether you want my gratitude or not. There's money to be made in Lothian, I assure you, and I mean to dig it out."

    But seriously, what was the deal with the name O'Reilly?

    As he left that day, Mark slapped his cheeks to gather his thoughts.

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    Scene 2
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    Dalmatia, Illyria
    Illyrian Palatinate, Near Periphery
    March 2936

    For a man in his sixties at the youngest, this Port Commissioner had a hell of a handshake.

    "Pleased to welcome you to my parlor, Mr. Papadopoulos." Johansen grunted, practically crushing his hand. "I regret that I haven't had the chance to entertain you before, but my gratitude goes out to our kind associate for finally introducing us. What I, in my busy life as a public official miss, he as a pillar of our very community collects and holds up to the light. I understand that you are an associate of a certain Arslan?"

    Most likely translation: I'm annoyed that you've been coming here for years without ever introducing yourself to me, but because you know some important people I've got to treat you with proper esteem, shithead.

    "I was an understudy to Mr. Arslan for many years, and now come here as his representative." Mark agreed, putting on his most polite smile. "Are you personally acquainted with him from his trips here, perhaps?"

    "Goodness, no." the Commissioner snorted, releasing his murder grip. "I'm afraid that, for all the fortune he's known for, the Lion of Gibraltar has never leaned on my assistance in matters of business. I have known him no better than I know any man who pays his port fees promptly. Now, do make yourself at home. Sit down, have a sandwich, a macaron, some tea. Whatever you like."

    So saying, the man gestured over to a pair of couches surrounding a low table which was festooned with food. More than two people could ever reasonably even taste every variety of. This man clearly had a pathological need to assert dominance and flaunt his wealth when he met with a person.

    Smiling, the trader gave a brief nod as he stepped into the room. "I hope you won't mind if I do. Though I must tell you, Mr. Arslan hates that nickname. Our company office is in his town of birth, on Tormentine. Gibraltar isn't even the end of our network. Just a place a quick buck got made once."

    "Ah, but isn't that so often the case?" Karl snorted, casting his arms wide as he strolled leisurely over to one end of his baby banquet table. "It is the fate of great souls to become known for things we do not vest our pride in. Things which were only a dramatic drop of the bucket in the story of our ascendance, otherwise built on years of incremental accumulation. Things like one good trade deal, or appointment as Port Commissioner. A pretty story inspires the fools more than the truth of the situation."

    "I'm grateful for your wisdom." Mark flattered, bowing slightly before seating himself and gently grabbing a sandwich. It was a dainty thing, decadence between slices of black bread. Thin cucumber slices, some manner of spreadable salad in an almost homeopathic layer, and gold leaf where there ought to have been crusts. Who the fuck did that?

    The taste was… uninspiring. Nevertheless, protocol demanded flattery, so he let out an appreciative gasp after the first bite.

    "Quite a thing, isn't it?" Johansen cheered, pouring two cups of tea from the pot in the middle of the table with a grin. "But you didn't come here simply to have lunch with an old man on an older man's recommendation, now, did you?"

    Accepting one of the teacups, Papadopoulos chuckled awkwardly. "Regretfully, no. I was told to come to you about a purchase made by a certain group, to seek your knowledge on the matter and, perhaps, your assistance in brokering a deal with them to acquire the good they obtained myself. I gather you're familiar with the O'Reilly expedition?"

    "O'Reilly? The name rings some bells…" the old man hummed, putting his hand to his cheek and rolling his eyes up toward the ceiling.

    It was fairly obvious to Mark that this was an act. Hasdrubal would very obviously have explained the purpose of the meeting when he sent his first communique here to set it up, and Johansen would have gone over his records then. But of course, it was more of a 'favor' if it took a great mental effort on his part to dig up the facts unprepared, so that was how it would be presented.

    Eventually, though, the delaying tactic could go on no longer. "Ah, yes, the germanium pirates! You know, after so many years I've stopped seeing the peddlers for the profits, there. Very cheap product coming out of their mine - it would be the pride of a real corporation, if anyone could seize it from them. But then, they're quite silent about where they're coming from, and they've always brought plenty of security around with them, so seizing them to extract the info never seemed feasible. You say you need something from them, though?"

    Mark weighed his words for a second. "Perhaps not need, but I was informed that they'd purchased something I believe to have a considerable value. You might be aware that the Lothian League recently attempted to release the coordinates of their world to merchants for the sake of maintaining interstellar connectivity in their borders after a spat of piracy took most of their jumpship fleet and counting? I've been informed by the person they chose to be their broker, our shared friend, elected to sell the master copy to the O'Reilly Expedition at a great price due to limited interest. I believe that it is in the interest of Periphery Freight and Metals to secure access to such a narrow market if it is at all possible."

    "Did he really? Oh, Hasdrubal you clever dog you." Johansen snorted. "Yes, though, I heard the news from Lothian. I had to caution my family away from investing in the idea, actually - they seemed to think a great profit could be made through picking over the bones of a damaged third-string region at a discounted rate…when more pirates than ever would increasingly be happy to buy their own copies of the navigational data if merchants began to go there. Quite interesting, though, that they'd want something like that. I hadn't thought they had very many jumpships to expand their operations, and there's really no reason to risk what they have for that dump in any case..."

    "I'm told they actually buy parts for quite a few jumpships." Mark offered after a second, deciding it was more effective than trying to exploit the apparent, but potentially false, lack of information there - there was risk in assuming that the man was truly unaware they regularly bought parts for more than one ship. "I suppose you think the germanium mine is worth more than Lothian, though?"

    "Doubtlessly so." Johansen grumbled, slapping the table twice. "They've been happily selling germanium at less than half the market rate for over twenty years now, boy. What do you suppose their production cost is, then? If they were smart enough to expand the mines with the proceeds and leverage these alleged extra jumpships, they could afford to go legit. All it would have taken was giving up a little bit of information in their application for a port subscription, and paying the damn fee. Not that I can complain about the added profits. By contrast, what did the Lothian League bring us? Very slightly cut rate metals. If they had any real profits to their name, more than the maintenance costs of their jumpships at least, we wouldn't be having this conversation. They would've been able to fend off a few raiders."

    Mark cracked a bit of a smile. "So then, am I to understand that we have no conflict of interest on the matter of the Lothian navigational data?"

    The aged man sighed, sitting up in his seat and shaking his head. "I have no particular financial stake in you, so I am willing to act as your broker in the matter, yes. Would you like to discuss the matter of the fees and the maximum you're willing to pay for the information now, with me, or would you be willing to settle this with my staff?"

    The brokerage services of a public official in such a high position seemed hideously expensive. Potentially more than could reasonably be stomached, if there was truth in the man's assessment of Lothian. By contrast, the man himself had much more benefit to achieve out of this - if he could use it as an excuse to leverage his sole buyer status to try and pressure the expedition into giving up the info, that would either turn into a massive favor if they actually did it or or a means of acquiring the info needed to attempt a hostile takeover of their facilities if they decided to go around him in their own way.

    Now was, in other words, a good time to manage expectations. "Rather than your brokerage, which would surely be wasted on such a small matter, I was planning on meeting with O'Reilly themself at some point in the future to make the offer, and going from there. Rather, what I was hoping for from you was some foreknowledge on what to expect while pitching the offer, and how to talk to them."

    Karl clicked his tongue at hearing that, before gathering his composure again. "I'm afraid it's quite unlikely you'll meet Johann O'Reilly himself. The man himself hasn't come around since before I stopped managing their purchases for them. I vaguely suspect he was quietly offed in a coup at some point - he certainly didn't make a smart impression, with his decision to use a dismounted mechwarrior as his one bodyguard in a meeting. No, if you go that route, you'll probably meet with a man by the name of Marinkovich, some sort of disgraced mercenary infantryman, or his sister, who flies a fighter. They were his muscle back in the day, but it's hard to say if they weren't the ones who threw him in the bin. Then again, given the way he ran things, it was probably a mechwarrior who decided they'd make the better boss, and put together a coup while the boss was out and about - what mudboot wouldn't give up the boss with a Firestarter or something bearing down on them? Assuming he was ever actually in charge to begin with… did I mention the man was a foolish cretin?"

    "Perhaps once or twice." Mark acknowledged, his brow furrowing ever more and more as a frown formed on his lips. "Did you say…Johann O'Reilly, though?"

    "Why? Does the name mean anything to you? Do you maybe know the man?" Johansen asked, leaning forward to conduct a bit of an interrogation. "Because I had some interest in whether there was ever a pirate by that name, once - though it might help to dig up whereabouts he'd made his nest - but I never once came by word of who he was. I'd actually be quite interested if you're a personal connection."

    Mark was tempted to lie. To make some bold statement with more certainty in it than he actually had. But that could just raise suspicion here. "...No, at least I don't think so. The name seems very slightly familiar, but I certainly haven't met anyone going by it recently. If it's not just a moment of madness on my part, I'd have to check my records to jog my memory first. Even that wouldn't help much, though, if it turned out whatever it was happened before Mr. Arslan took me in. I don't exactly have a filing cabinet of records from my years as a cabin boy on hand. Would you…happen to have a photo of him, though?"

    "I…perhaps." Karl mused. "At one point, certainly. I would have to have someone check if it's still around, though. If you tell me where your lodgings are, I could have it sent over if it's ever located so we can settle this little curiosity, though?"

    "I would appreciate that - and of course, if it brings up any memories, you'll be first to hear."

    - -

    As Mark gazed at the photo, he could safely say one thing.

    And that was that nope, he'd definitely never met this skinny creep before.

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    Scene 3
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    Valencia, Lothario
    Lothian League, Near Periphery
    March 2938

    It was amazing how quickly life had regained a semblance of normalcy in the aftermath of the calamity.

    Just a Terran year ago, it had seemed as though the sky had fallen and the world was ending. Brigands had rained from the sky, their drive plumes boiling away the timeless snows of the outer rim of habitability, snatching whatever they could take, whoever they could take. Goods had become scarce on stores, and people looked to the sky not in appreciation of the fleeting period of day that came every fortnight, but to see if the time had come to hide in their basements and pray that the building would not collapse upon them, and that they would live to see the new light once more.

    Sven Allejandro de la Vega was one of those who had. His family was one of those who had.

    There was a fatigue that set in, after a few months of disbelief and elation that you had made it through the terrors. Of watching others grieving over the loss of their families, their businesses, their homes. Navigating the roads carefully to avoid the ravaged ruins of once vibrant neighborhoods. At some point it settled in that the job you'd once held in the refinery was gone - the mines collapsed, the building itself leveled. That the school your sister had once worked at was gone, along with many of her coworkers and some of her students.

    But the despair, too, had to pass. Short of having the snow take you, there was no way to live the rest of your life on grief alone. Life carried on, even after a tragedy.

    As the customer closed the door, Sven walked over to his moped and unlocked the small register mounted to it, filing the money away with a sigh. At least this guy had the good decency to admit that he'd fucked up his own order and pay for it after he finished being pissed about not getting what he wanted. What even was the appeal of a cold soup? Barely a quarter of each cycle was above freezing out here!

    Slapping the register back shut, he sighed as he straddled the side of the bike, pulling the old paper notepad he kept his delivery schedule on from his pocket and turning the next page. The shift wasn't over yet, and since the insulated box mounted to the back of the machine wasn't empty either, neither was this trip. He'd probably be making another two or three before he could head back home.

    A snort escaped him as he read the note-to-self. Maybe, though, it wouldn't be such a bad trip. It'd only cost a few extra minutes to make this a family visit as well, and the old lady who paid him would never know the difference. He'd been making good time so far, and he intended to use it instead of lose it.

    Throwing his right leg back over the seat, he checked the strap of his ushanka before pulling his scarf up high. Temperatures were on the up for this fortnight, but it wasn't exactly sweater and jacket weather just yet, especially when you were going upwards of 60kph.

    With a twist of the starter key, he was off, electric motor whispering along as he rode down the heated roadway, where snow dared not stick.

    It was still hard, of course. This job didn't pay nearly as good as the last one. His favorite restaurants were mostly heaps on the ground, even if he'd had the money to go to restaurants anymore. The town itself was half the size it once was, and, he was reminded as a person walking along the sidewalk waved to him, some of the people had damn near half the body they once had.

    But it hadn't been the apocalypse. Not like the old stories of the Periphery Subjugation War.

    They were clearing the mines, rebuilding the refinery. One day he'd be able to go back to a real job, back to work that he could potentially start a family on. The news had run a story a few months ago proclaiming how there was actually more jump traffic out to the colonies than there had been before the war, thanks to the courteous independent traders who'd come around in response to their call.

    The sigh he let out as he passed the old, condemned church was white and thick in the air.

    A new day was coming, however cold it sometimes felt.

    Maybe it was dangerous to look at the scenery while he was driving at speed, but as much as these things demanded his acknowledgement, he couldn't afford to slow down for them either. You needed to move snow while the sun was circling, after all.

    As another delivery bike motored past him and he exchanged a knowing nod with its driver, he snorted. In these wide open roads, it wasn't as though he was competing with much of anyone for space. The people who'd used to have cars mostly couldn't afford 'em anymore, and the subways still worked for the most part, so only the health conscious and delivery drivers were still using the pavement for its intended purpose over long distances.

    Fortunately, it wasn't a very long ride to this next stop. Within just a few minutes, he'd found himself parked outside the gaudiest new building in all of Valencia. Compared to the by-the-numbers prefabricated apartment blocks that were going up wherever the rubble'd been cleared, this place was in a whole other league. Red brick facade, a painted sign, a footprint more complex than a rectangle, six stories, and a greenhouse courtyard?

    Yeah, the Temple of the Promethean Order was ornate for its time.

    Popping open the food box, Sven carefully hoisted out the small crate that contained the combined lunch orders of this building. It was heavy, packed full of all manner of delights he couldn't afford, but he sort of hoped these offworld weirdos would start placing bigger orders, if this was how they were ordering now. Simplifying his delivery runs down to one destination with a full box would be greatly welcome.

    That box hefted in his arms with the delivery box latched shut again, he waddled up to the door and bonked the automatic opening button with one corner of his precious cargo, letting out a sigh of relief as the doors swung inwards, like he remembered from his last time here.

    The warm rush of air from the lobby was almost as pleasant as a sauna to his exposed face after five minutes in the windchill.

    "Like, welcome to our humble house of learning, dude." The guy behind the front desk called out softly. "You got a delivery there?"

    Letting out a heavy breath, the deliveryman hefted the box up onto the counter. "Yeah, lunch order. For…"

    He checked the note again. "Tiffany."

    "Tiffany, that's…" the man, whose robes looked ridiculous on him, parroted. "Tiffany Alameda? Right on. It was her day to handle the lunch order, wasn't it? For the first floor break room, you'll wanna go right, then left, then left, then right again, and it's the second door on the left there."

    What the fuck was the floor plan in here if that was a coherent set of directions?

    Sven placed all of his hopes and dreams into his next few words. "Do you maybe…have a dolly or a cart or something I could haul this over there with?"

    The guy behind the counter - whose name was Julius, it looked like - chewed his lip for a second, glancing at the box. "Yeah I think we can get you one of those. Gimme a sec."

    So saying, he plucked the phone on his desk from the terminal and punched in a few numbers. "Hey, yeah, Frank, can we get a cart in the lobby? Some delivery guy with our lunch order's here, and I don't think he'll make it to the break room lugging the thing around by hand the whole way."

    Was it really okay for a religious organization to have someone this flippant and informal as the frontman for their entire location? Like, seriously? Granted, he was probably a local, maybe not even a real convert yet, but…

    "Yeah we'll get you on wheels in a minute, dude." Julius explained, as soon as he set the phone down. "In the mean time, feel free to sit down in one of the chairs, maybe read some of the magazines and pamphlets. It's good stuff, you know."

    "Great."

    - -

    As Sven finally reached the break room, he really had to ask why the fuck this place was built this way. Did their scripture mandate that thou shalt not build a building that beith not a maze or some shit like that? Even knowing precisely where to go, even with there being signs on all the walls, he still felt like he was going to get lost.

    With a sigh, he pushed the door open before hefting the great crate of food off the cart and shuffling awkwardly through. To his great pleasure, there was a table right fucking there.

    Just a few… more… meters… aaand… his burden was conquered. Now he just…needed…to find someone to pay for this.

    Glancing around the room, he spied a woman's head sticking up from behind one of the low dividers in the room - reading booths, he guessed? Wouldn't make sense to have a cubicle in a break room. "Hey, are you Tiffany? I've got your lunch order over here."

    The woman - the HATLESS woman -, whose hair was long and black and whose eyes were blue, let out a long, exasperated "Goddamnit, Tiff.." before rising. As she did, Sven barely managed to pay attention to her next words over the blood suddenly pounding in his ears. "She went home twenty minutes ago with a stomach ache - got hungry earlier than she expected, tried to steal someone else's lunch, turns out it'd been in the fridge a few days already. I can cover the bill for you if you don't mind, though."

    What the FUCK even was that outfit? She didn't even have a jacket on. Her neck was bare. Her shirt didn't even look like it was knit. This gal was practically saying 'I don't go outside' with that fucking red fucking thin woven fabric shirt shit. That thing was barely suitable to be an undershirt, by Sven's estimation. Was this how offworlders dressed, in their infinite lack of common sense? Sen felt his face heating up the longer he looked at her, and he no doubt looked redder than he had outside, in the cold.

    "...The bill?" the woman insisted, pulling a wallet from the pocket of her tight…blue…pants. Seriously, what the hell was the point of clothing if it couldn't protect you from the cold or people's gazes?

    Sven clicked his tongue in self-disappointment at his distractability, reaching into his pocket. "Right, um… you're on the hook for thirty Bulls, if you're covering this."

    "Right then." she agreed, pulling a forty Bull note from within the leather folds and handing it over. "Thanks for hauling this ridiculous load out there, though. You look like it gave you a hell of a workout. Who should we say did a good job if we wanna call your boss?"

    "Sven. Uh… if you want the change on this, I'll have to run out to my bike, though." he mumbled, glancing away out of embarrassment as he accepted the money. Something felt…wrong, though. As his fingers shifted slightly, the bill felt like it was splitting in two. Quickly bringing it up to his gaze revealed the problem, though - it wasn't a forty, it was two forties. He glanced swiftly back to the lady, who was putting away her wallet. "H-hey, uh… handed over two bills, by the way."

    "Yeah?" she acknowledged, giving him a confused look. "Don't people tip their delivery drivers around here?"

    "...Not more than the entire bill!"

    Snorting, the woman shook her head. "Look, whatever, call it my treat. I'm not here to argue with you about your labor conditions. Anything else before I go back to my book?"

    "N-no, um." Sven replied, pulling his hat down to cover more of his face as he turned around. "I'll be…"

    Then a moment of realization struck him and he spun back around. "...H-hey, um… is Valentina teaching right now? I'm her brother, and I..uh…though I'd take the opportunity to visit her while I was here..."

    The woman, who had likewise been in the process of turning to walk away, whipped back towards facing him with a look of mild surprise on her face. "Val? Valentina as in Ms. de la Vega? She'd still be teaching right now, but… the middle school will be breaking for lunch in five minutes, so she should be around in not too long. You could stick around a bit if you want to see her."

    So saying, she gestured to one of the chairs.
    Sven swallowed heavily as he looked away from her once again, taking her gesture as an excuse. "C-can I really, um…miss…"

    "Call me Marie. Philosopher Clayton is way too stuffy for normal daily use."

    --------

    On recommendation, I've finally gotten around to sticking place+date information to the scenes from this chapter onwards. Again, the main reason it wasn't in this story so far was that the supermajority of the story was set on single planets up to this point, so I just sort of forgot to do it when actual world changes happened.

    Hope the minor change in structure for this chapter suits your tastes.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Well, looks like there's the first real attempt by someone who's "interstellar" themselves to poke at things our "Hegemonic Bootstrapers" are getting up to. Don't know enough lore to tell if Mark Papadopolous or "Arslan" is anyone canon or not, but it sounds like they're maybe at a comparable level of "interstellar force projection", be it commerce or military, as the "O'Reilly Expedition". Actual "depth"/sustainability of resources and infrastructure is another thing of course...
     
    Chapter 17 (March 2938 - August 2938)
  • Threadmarks
    • ---
    Scene 1
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    Valencia, Lothario
    Lothian League, Near Periphery
    March 2938

    "It's crazy to think that you'd get sent out here on a delivery, out of all the possible people." Valentina chuckled as she pulled the door to her office shut behind them. "Did you tell your boss that I worked here, or something? It'd be a nice gesture on her part, if so."

    Chuckling nervously, Sven stood beside the chair on the doorward side of the desk, scratching his head as he looked around the room. Fittingly, the chair was adjusted to sit low to the ground, just right for a kid - and thoroughly unsuitable for him. "Mrs. Diegosdottir doesn't even know I have a sister, Val. I think it's just a crazy coincidence that I ended up coming out here today."

    Setting the bag with her takeout container on her desk, his sister snapped her head back to him, a look of concern burning out from between the flaps of her hat. "Is it okay for us to be talking, then? I mean, do you have any more deliveries to make today or… Bro, you shouldn't be risking your job just to make a little small talk within the family, you know?"

    "It's fine, it's fine." he disagreed, waving his hand around in the air and glancing over to the wall, where a piece of macaroni art was posted up. "I snuck some side alley shortcuts in my other deliveries, so I'm way ahead of schedule for this run already. I can spare a few minutes, at least. Or, well… after the wait for you to get out of class… it'll be fine if I just take a few more shortcuts!"

    The sharp tips of his sister's fingernails struck him in the forehead, not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to hurt. Her black hair framed an extremely unimpressed look as she honed in on him. "Alright, now listen here you little brat. This kind of stunt ain't sustainable in the long run. One day, someone might put out one bag too much garbage, or the alleyways might be blocked, or you might slip up, take it at a little too much speed, and total the bike. I know you weren't cutting corners like this back at the refinery - mama, papa, and I didn't raise a slacker. What's the matter now, that you're cutting corners on delivery work?"

    Sven took a step back, running up against a bookshelf but fortunately not knocking anything down. He needed to… he needed to stall for time, to think of a decent explanation. "J-jeez, you talk to your students like this?"

    "Like hell I do." she replied with a click of her tongue, tapping on his chest as she drew nearer yet again. "But you're family, and if you can't be sharp with family when they do something boneheaded, who even can you call out? Now spill, what's got you so primed to rush, Sven?"

    Sidestepping to try and get out from between her and the bookshelf, Sven puzzled over what to say to get out of this, but came up blank. He should've known better than to try and bullshit his older sister. Time to try for the damage control route. "W-well, you know… I'm paid based on however many delivery runs I can pull off in a day, so if I can get back faster than the other drivers, I make a little more when I'm the first to pick up an order. Back at the refinery, I was salaried, so…"

    "...Is that bitch not paying you enough?" Valentina interrupted, placing a hand gently on the side of his face. "How are you eating?"
    "F-fine?" he stammered, glancing away.

    Undaunted, she examined his face closer. "You sleeping okay?"

    "T-the normal amount?"

    After a moment's hesitation, she sniffed the air around him. "...You can, at least, afford to go to the sauna every few days, right?"

    "Uhh…" he muttered, gazing down at the ground. "Once a week?"

    Pursing her lips, his sister brushed the fringe of his bangs momentarily before pulling away, giving him a sad look he didn't want to see. "...You know, if you need to, I'm sure we could find a place for you to stay. All you'd have to do is contribute a little bit - no way it could be more than your rent right now."

    Sven choked. "There's no way I could do that! It's completely beyond the realm of reason for me to stay at Francisco's place! I don't even know either of his sisters, Val! Think of what people would say…"

    "Idiots gonna idiot, bro. You think people ain't already bitching about how 'improper' it is for me to move into his family house?" she asked, giving him a dubious look. "'Sides, who knows, maybe you'll hit it off with one of 'em while staying there. Either way, it's better to yield pride on something like this than to kowtow to some icehearted bitch who's playing on your desperation to exploit you."

    "Sis!" he cried, his cheeks burning.

    "Sis what?"

    "Sis, can we not do this right now?" he begged, his cheeks burning. "I came here to talk to you for the first time in days, not to get lectured or beg for help or anything. How's the new job been working out for you?"

    Frowning for a moment, Valentina eventually shrugged and backed off, walking around to the other side of her desk and beginning to open her lunch. "Well, the kids haven't changed… much since the last place. In that sense, it's still just fine. Facilities are nicer, too. The problem is… I'm not too sure about the offworld coworkers I'm dealing with. It's weird dealing with people who behave so differently."

    "God, tell me about it." Sven huffed, casting his arms out wide as he stepped away from the bookshelf. "The person who told me I could wait in the break room for you - Philosopher Clayton, I think? When I saw her, my heart just about skipped out of my throat. I get that the heat in here's higher than normal, I really do, but how can someone feel comfortable dressing down that much in a building where unrelated children of all people are learning?! I was terrified that when I ran into you, you might be getting suckered into their way of doing things"

    "God no!" she spat, shaking her head vigorously. "No. No. Never. Though actually, when they figured they were going to be hosting our schoolhouse in here for the time being, they decided to twist the hell out of the part of the first floor where the offworlders work to keep 'em away from any impressionable eyes…"

    "Is that why the way to the break room is so absurd?" Sven cried, bringing his hands up to face level. "Why couldn't they just dress modestly at work instead?"

    "Different modests, I guess." the schoolteacher guessed, pulling the lid off of her container of soup. "You say you ran into Philosopher Clayton, though? Hell of a person to bump into at random. I don't think she's ever been the one to handle our lunch orders before."

    "...She a bigshot or something?" the delivery guy asked, resting his back against the wall. "Sorta talked like one, I guess. Wanted me to call her by her given name 'cause she was tired of having a special title or something."

    "Did you?"

    "Little beside the point, don't you think?!" Sven cried back.

    Grinning, his sister shrugged. "A little. Anyways, though, yeah, definitely a bigshot. 'Philosopher' means she's actually part of the ordained clergy of this weird techno-cult, but it goes beyond that. There are a few philosophers here I've bumped into, but I ain't ever seen any of them tell the Keeper what to do and get an immediate agreement. The Keeper of Knowledge is sort of like the boss of this place, by the way. At least, that's what they tell us. Anyways, I figure she's gotta be the daughter of someone with some sway, if she's got the place rolling over for her so easily. Either that, or she's just here to make us think that, but wow that'd be contrived."

    Sven furrowed his brow "...How do you come up with that shit? Like, seriously, what kind of crazy world do you have to imagine before you can come up with that kind of joke to spit? Do I just not understand humor?"

    Valentina nodded heavily. "No, you don't. Because you're my silly little brother. So anyways, how do you like her?"

    "Seriously?" he spat, covering his face. "We just got done going over how she's probably some high official's daughter and she runs this place from the shadows or something, and you want to know what I think of her? She dresses funny, she's an offworlder, she's part of a strange cult, and we literally just met! Iunno, I guess all things considered she's alright?!"

    She snorted. "It was a joke, lighten up. Honestly, it isn't like we'd hand you over to some outlander on a whim just because you're a late bloomer or something…"

    Sven stared in disbelief. "Is that something you talk to our parents about?"

    "Noooooo!" Valentina insisted. "No… So anyways, sudden thought!"

    "Yeah?"

    "Suppose I could get you a job here, so you could ditch that restaurant bitch and live with a little more stability and comfort… would you bite?" she asked, leaning across the desk. "Or would that perfectly normal bit of nepotism be a bridge too far in terms of losing face for the family for you, baby boy?"

    "I…" Sven began, blinking a few times. "...Can you actually do that for me? Seriously? Even if I might not stick around past the reopening of the refinery?"

    "So maybe I'll have to get down on my hands and knees for it." Valentina shrugged, leaning back in her chair. "It'll be worth it to make sure that my little clown of a brother makes it through to the reopening of his actual workplace without, like, starving, freezing, or having to migrate to the capital as a refugee and face even harsher exploitation. Come on, bro, you're living one accident away from grievous bodily harm and being out on the street, aren't you?"

    "I mean… I don't know if the bike's really fast enough to cause that kind of injury." he grumbled.

    Folding her hands in front of her mouth, Valentina smiled. "I'll start asking some questions."

    "...Thanks." Sven mumbled, before glancing at his watch. "Ah, crap, I gotta go now if I wanna make good time on the last two deliveries!"

    ---
    Scene 2
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    Vatnajökull, Lothario
    Lothian League, Near Periphery
    June 2938

    Evangeline Logan huffed as she finally broke the silence, addressing the pair of neatly dressed mercenaries seated in front of her. "I hope you realize just how sorely late you've come to the party."

    One of them, the bald young man to the right, looked like he wanted to say something to that, but his partner placed a hand on his bicep and they shared a brief but, no doubt, very communicative moment of eye contact. How nice for them.

    The older man, his hair cut obnoxiously flat on top - his name was… well, it said McDougal on his lapel. Perhaps she should have bothered to memorize who she was meeting, but ever since the gates had been opened to visitors, she'd been barraged with a flood of visitors her decades of ruling in isolation had left her unaccustomed to. - began a reply, bowing shallowly within his seat. "You're completely right, Grand Mistress Logan. If we'd heard your call for aid a few years sooner, perhaps we would have managed to preserve your domains from the depredations of those pirates."

    The man had a thesaurus! Evangeline allowed herself to lift the corners of her mouth the slightest hair in amusement. How shameless were this sellsword freelancer and his command, if they were going to call it a 'call for aid'? She'd drafted the request, and they'd finally responded to it, under the pattern of an employment contract. Neither they nor any of the other outlanders who'd haunted her halls were a 'charity'. Everyone got something from her or her people in exchange for her 'help'. It was just a question of whether these men would moderate their greed like the merchants and cultists, or seek exploitative terms built on the back of her desperation.

    "Certainly so, Captain McDougal - is it captain?"

    Without a blink, the man shook his head at that. "Colonel, your excellency."

    "My apologies." she hummed, drumming her fingers on the table. "Colonel McDougal, then. Perhaps your tanks might have managed to ward off the pillagers on the ground well enough to reduce the devastation some. But then, who would risk such a daring act without knowing if he'd ever be able to return home after? Let it not be said that I don't respect your capabilities, but… had you heard of the offer sooner, could you have afforded to take it? A garrison detail on the far off world of Lothario which, owing to the depravity of piracy, might not have a collar to carry you back where you came from in the end?"

    "I… suppose it may seem far fetched to you." the man replied, folding his hands on the table. "We, admittedly, don't have the space assets that would have been needed to prevent the utter tragedy at the jump points, after all. Even so, that actually wouldn't be the worst job I've ever heard of anyone taking. You know, the wars out there may be winding down, but lots of folks find fates worse than getting stranded on a known inhabited world with a working system of electricity and running water."

    "I assume those people mostly just die outright." the Grand Mistress guessed, steepling her hands. "Something like wandering into a fun little game of nuclear tennis?"

    "...Maybe not so much the nuclear tennis these days, but a few decades ago, certainly!" the bald man beside the colonel added with a shrug. "Usually how it goes these days is that you get used to test the range of the enemy artillery, which, as it happens, is usually pretty good, or find out where their minefields are laid, which is usually everywhere."

    "How barbaric." Evangeline gasped, covering her mouth. People subjected themselves to that? "And you and yours… survive that sort of madness how, Mr…"

    The man gave a lazy salute if she'd ever seen one. "Major Hawk. Colonel McDougal's XO. It's my job to make sure our work pays the bills and the regiment stays in working order."

    Evangeline almost wanted to ask how the hell they could have someone with that as his sole duty and still choose this job offer to respond to, out of all of the ones that could possibly be out there. To lunge across the table and seize him by his decorations. But that would have been the act of a less dignified, less controlled woman. It also would have blown any chance she had of retaining their unit's services. "That sounds like quite a difficult job, if being thrown ahead to test the artillery is as regular a thing as you're saying."

    The man grinned, giving a sidewards glance to his superior officer that communicated…something, she wasn't sure what. "One finds their ways to manage it, your excellency. For example, if you only ever take garrison contracts, you get to be the one whose artillery and minefields are being tested. From that point on, it's just a matter of shaping your org chart to what you can actually afford. Even assuming there's a part on one of our tanks or jets your local industries can't replace with enough effort - which quite frankly, I'm doubtful of - we can make 'em ourselves, given the right materials."

    Evangeline was quite certain that translated to 'our tanks are utter crap your ancestors would have considered primitive before they ever set on this frostball'. Not exactly confidence inspiring, in that regard, but then… beggars couldn't be choosers. It couldn't possibly have been worse than the quality of the local built cans that'd done so little during the recent invasion. Her ancestors had not served her well in that regard.

    A regiment of wagons with pretensions of tankdom should at least be enough to protect this capital city from the caliber of raiders who might take interest in what remained here, right?

    If more bands of sadsacks like this kept showing up, she might even be able to consider her planets very roughly secure in a few years time. At least, against pirates.

    "How about a demonstration?" she asked.

    - -

    She didn't know what she'd expected.

    As the utility vehicle the mercenaries had brought drove away from the dummy tank they'd coated in scrap armor from the pirates Evangeline let out a heavy sigh. At the end of the day, how were they even supposed to demonstrate anything in a satisfactory way? Anything on hand that'd adequately demonstrate the usefulness of their forces if they shot it was too valuable to let them fire at or demand that they fire at, on top of near inevitably being crewed.

    Not that she thought, as she turned her binoculars away from the target and back towards the tank, she really needed a demonstration. The thing looked about as advanced as the tanks that'd accomplished so very little against the pirates just scant years ago. Which is to say, it looked like a pile of dogshit. No smoke billowed from its tailpipes, implying an anemic engine. The armor plating looked much too thick to be anything modern. The whole machine bulged to a scale that felt wrong for anything not meant to carry and disgorge a horde of infantry, and in the back what was clearly the engine compartment protruded noticeably, with small, poorly protected vents. The cannon, at around 120mm, made her think less of the roaring autocannons the pirates had brought and more of the crude, outmoded armaments her own garrison had mounted for the sake of padding their numbers, and which had achieved so little in the critical conflict. It probably didn't even fire multiple shots.

    It was like being mocked with the mirror image of her own past and being asked for gratitude.

    "Is this it?" she asked, casting a look to the colonel beside her.

    "Ever heard of a sleeper, your excellency?" McDougal shot back, casting his arms wide. "Vera may not look like much, there might be more cut corners than uncut ones on her, but she's got firepower aplenty if nothing else."

    Were the garrisons of the Inner Sphere really driven to stoop so low? She'd thought her own force was unique in its shoddiness. "You've…named the tank?"

    "It's the name of the chassis." he corrected.

    "How many of these things do they make?" she asked, scrunching up her face in disgust. It was a sad time when a company of brigands could show up with better machines than a regiment of mercenaries. "Are these things common in garrisons out there?"

    "You could say that." the man shrugged, giving a grin that belied something unsaid, before pointing back towards the target. "Eyes on the prize, though."

    Rolling her eyes, the woman gazed back outwards. She expected to be disappointed. She expected this thing to blow up the first time it tried to shoot or some shit, or for it to aim for an existing weak point in the plate and claim victory when the armor failed. She expected nothi-.

    The cannon roared out five times in rapid succession, its great noise rattling her ears, and with each shot a great fireball rocked the side of the target. As the final smoke cleared, the piece of shit armor plate where most of the shells had struck had a new hole through it. She glanced over to the mercenary, who was giving her a shit eating grin, and caught sight of a massive clip of some sort ejecting from the tank's back - similar to those the attacking tanks had so recently disgorged.

    "Premium model." he declared, as though it were any sort of explanation. "Real gun in a shit looking casing."

    - -

    Lauren rose to greet Evangeline as she walked into the lounge, noting the sag of the middle aged woman's shoulders as she did so. "How was the negotiation with the Blue Horse Regiment, mother?"

    "There was no negotiation. I made small talk with some piranhas eager to sell us their protection, and eventually accepted their terms for it." her mother replied, sighing heavily. "Doesn't mean it wasn't a sore disappointment, though. I suppose you can only expect so much out of the sort of person desperate enough to jump at the contracts we're posting, but it's sobering to see just how little our history of pride and independence has amounted to."

    So saying, she walked over to the window, gazing out at the garden, with its fields of terran-derived grasses, flowers, and trees, ancient legacies of the flight from Taurus. This palace was scarcely more than an eyesore. The whole of Vatnajökull was an ages-old mistake that could no longer be walked back. Here, in the heart of the zone where an endless day reigned, where there was no permafrost, her forebears had built a great field of ferrocrete and buildings. How much stronger might the Lothian League have been if they had built their capital where the snow fell, and saved some resources spent on indoor farming with the liberated fields? The benefits could have compounded year over year - they could have amounted to something.

    "...What went so wrong about it?" Lauren asked, stepping over to stand beside her. "Was their asking rate particularly extortionate? Did they have some other absurd terms to throw at us?"

    Evangeline ran her fingers down the glass. "No, more in how little they could offer. The quality of what they've brought is, fundamentally, no better than anything our industries could have managed before we came under attack. Had they come forward then, it would only have been quantity and convenience that we'd gained, in theory."

    "But we are, at least, gaining those." her daughter asserted. "The Lothian League still lives, and with every passing day it recovers a little bit more of its previous strength and vitality. It's better than the alternative, which is a slow slide into collapse. Are you sure your standards for our visitors aren't just a bit too high?"

    Strength and vitality indeed. Evangeline let out a snort of amusement. "My standards certainly weren't set so low as to regard strange Spheroids asking me absurd questions, like if a male Grand Mistress would be called a Grand Master, or if I'm sure we're descended from the stock of the Concordat and not the Magistracy before all of this, at least."

    Lauren was very clearly not amused. "Mother, please do try to be serious for a second here. This is a matter of the future of our nation."

    "Indeed it is." Evangeline spat back, her face going red. "And what a future we have. Our communications are handled by foreign merchants, lured only by the cut rates of our products. Our defense is handled by mercenaries too chickenshit to make a go of it in the Sphere. Our education and reconstruction, shaped to the whims of some new age cult which venerates knowledge as literally divine. Our fate as a nation is to be kept on life support by the whims of outsiders, a mockery of all the proud hopes of those who fled in defiance of the SLDF. One day, you will take my place as Grand Mistress, and you will see just how far the reach of house Logan extends for yourself. On that day, you will curse me for selling our future, and I will look back from beyond the grave and have nothing for you but a shrug, and the words 'I did what I could'."

    Those firm hands seized her shoulders. "Vent your concerns about our visitors all you like, but please, don't let your paranoia extend so far as to imagine me hating you, mother."

    Furrowing her brow, the Grand Mistress shrugged, then sighed. "It was a bit overboard, wasn't it? Even so, a thought for you to ponder over - what independence can be claimed by a nation which has left to others its infrastructure, its defense, and its education? Do we stand free and proud, or are we living under the gently imposed kingship of myriad strangers? And if not…should we feel gratitude for the yoke that binds us?"

    ---
    Scene 3
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    Meeting Ground, Uncharted Planet
    Near Antispinward Periphery
    August 2938

    A vibrant light appeared suddenly out the window, and a moment later the wooden frame began to rattle incessantly against its mounting.

    Mark lifted his gaze from the table he was polishing and gazed out, rag dangling by his side as he approached the window. He'd catch some manner of abuse if he was seen abandoning his assigned task like this, but this room barely saw any use by the brutes to begin with. He figured he was safe for a few seconds of distraction.

    It was odd. If his mental arithmetic was right, it was the fifteenth of the month. For the past two years, nobody had ever burned down planetside except on what he pegged as the first or second of the month. Some custom the rogues had cooked up to reduce the risk of a hostile sneaking by under false pretense. Surely, there must have been some call and response for getting clearance to land on another day - some emergency warning known only to privileged individuals and 'King Ribsplit' - but it'd never happened so far.

    Whether that was changing today, or there was going to be an altercation between some unscheduled guests and the rapine horde that called this place 'home', it was certainly quite a large landing party. He counted…three dropships. One and all of them Unions if he read the hull form correctly, if his eye didn't deceive him. If these were pirates, then they must have been especially well off. Few bands had as many mechs as that would have implied, or even as many forces in general, and more often they'd come calling in those contemptible militarized Danais variants.

    As the orbs drifted slowly to the ground, a faint hope bloomed in Mark's chest. Perhaps this was, finally, his chance to get off of this miserable rock. A force like this would be much more typical of pirate hunters than hostis humani generis in its genuine case.

    He watched like that, hope swelling in his chest, for far longer than was safe and sane. Eventually, the ships began to reach the ground, their drive plumes kicking up vast clouds of dust that obscured their hulls even better than the glare of the drives, and long cracks snaked their way through the panes of the window.

    He brought his hands together, letting the rag hit the floor, as the cloud slowly, oh so slowly, settled to the ground. He'd been an errand boy of these degenerates from beyond the light of Terra for so, so very long.

    It was a risk that always existed when operating so far out of the way, one he'd never thought applied to him, but he was about ready to stop learning that lesson, thank you very fucking much.

    Then that spot of hope exploded into bloody chunks all at once as he bit his lip, the heraldry painted onto the space eggs spiking his blood pressure like anything else possibly could have. "FUCK!"

    What kind of unimaginative, brain dead, uneducated hick of a psychopath from the ass end of existence actually thought it was clever for a pirate band to fly the fucking Jolly Roger in the thirtieth goddamned century? Let alone, through the cruel whims of fate, made it big enough to gather a battalion scaled goddamned raiding group? He was so, so very livid right now, his fingernails digging bloody streaks into the palms of his hands.

    No amount of anger from him would change a thing, of course. The top half of a skull glared back at him from the nearest ship, painted against an asymmetrical pair of femurs or some shit, themselves painted overtop of a green horizontal bar and a speckled gray circle in that order. This was the ugliest fucking pirate flag he'd ever seen and, mechs and guns be damned, he wanted to run out there and rip the head off of the reprobate who made him feel hope again only to dash it with this hideous sight.

    As he heard the clattering of a pair of boots outside the door, he sighed in resignation. He'd shouted, hadn't he?

    "What the hell's going on in there, maggot?" roared the brute beast beyond the slab of wood.

    "N-nothing, sir!" he cried, slowly crouching down to pick the rag back up before attempting to shuffle, as silently as he could, back to where he was meant to be. "Just a little bit of an accident!"

    "You'd better not've broken anything, shitboot."

    With those words, the door began to creak open, while Mark was still mid-shuffle away from the window, drops of his blood gradually staining the rag.

    The man - or what looked like a man - who walked in gave him a contemptuous glare as he took in his form covered in the tattered rags the slaves were allowed. "You slacking or something, shit for brains? Because you ain't got hands on any bit of furniture I can see. What the fuck kind of accident are you rattling on about!"

    Mark had to stifle the urge to click his tongue at that. These monsters didn't much like getting sass from their 'property'. Instead, slowly, as meekly as he could make it come across, he grabbed the corners of his wiping rag with both hands and splayed it out, showing the red marks on it. "I-I was just cleaning the w-windows, when they suddenly cracked a-and… I cut my hand on the edges."

    Shit, that was a terrible cover story.

    "So…" the pirate summarized, giving him a dubious look as he glanced back to the, indeed, cracked window. "You broke the windows, in other words?"

    "N-no, sir!" Mark replied, raising his hands up further. "They c-cracked when those dropships touched down, from the wind."

    "Right." the pirate huffed, stepping over to the window and gazing out with a grimace. "Those things. Look, pay 'em no mind and just admit that you broke the fuckin' window, Marky. You'll catch fewer lashes if you're a good little coward for us. Whoever the fuck those are, they aren't yours to worry about."

    Stepping forward, Mark let the rag fall from his hands. "I am being honest, though! D-do you think I could have broken that many window panes at once, all on accident? I'd bet you they broke all over the place just now!"

    The unshaven animal looked again, and clicked his tongue. "Damn. That's a decent point. So, before I send you off to get patched up…just where's this blood of yours supposed to be?"

    As Mark approached, he made ready to fake out a spot while the guy wasn't looking, raising his finger slowly without indicating any particular spot. It'd take sleight of hand to sell his little fib.

    "Right th-" he began, before his heart stopped at the sight of mechs marching overland towards the little 'villa' he called prison. They were painted in a neat, uniform green, and seemed far too well kept for any pirate.

    It wasn't a fucking jolly roger.

    That paint scheme jogged his memory all at once, bringing him out of the moment of getting hazed by a pirate, and reminded him of a time, all too long ago, when he'd memorized a list of unit liveries and battle standards. Those weren't more pirates. They were the goddamned Eighth Orloff Grenadiers!

    "Where?" the pirate asked, before spotting what Mark had seen. "Oh, shi-!"

    He didn't get to say one singular word more in his miserable waste of skin life as Mark's forearm slammed into the side of his neck, snapping his spine neatly and throwing him down onto the floor, where he belonged.

    As Mark rifled through the carcass's belt, looking for the gun he had to be carrying, he wore a smile that was all too wide for his face. He'd thought his life was over when those devils had boarded his jumpship, but fate had favored him in the end, as it always did. He just needed the daring to seize it.

    In the time of Rome, the god Mars represented the principle that only through war could the peace be protected. The Greek Ares, meanwhile, was taken by them as a marker of violence without meaning. As the two clashed here on this dustball, Mark was going to reclaim his freedom and his quiet life, if it was the last thing he did!

    - -

    Mark let out a grunt of pain as the uniformed soldiers threw him on the ground.

    As he lifted his chin to look around the room they'd dragged him into in the dropship, he saw a gray-haired man in some manner of uniform gazing down at him. "Why, pray tell, have you seen fit to drag this half starved local in front of me and throw him on my rug? Just what sort of madness have you lot gotten up to whilst the mechwarriors are bringing the peace and justice of the League to these pirates?"

    One of the men on the receiving end of that lecture saluted audibly. "Captain, sir! This man approached the landing zone with his hands in the air, claiming to be an escaped slave of the pirate lord 'King Ribsplit'. He's requesting a ride back to civilized space. We thought you, as the XO, would have a decent idea of what to do with him."

    The aged man sighed, scratching along his jawline. "You dumbasses. Yes, pirates keep slaves, and yes, it's our responsibility to free them when we come across them, but what kind of dumbass goes out of the way to cross a battlefield on foot in search of asylum instead of hiding safely where they were and waiting for the help to come to them? That's not what slaves do when a counterpiracy raid lands, typically. If you've brought a disguised pirate into our secure perimeter on an assassination run, I swear… just… throw him in the brig."

    "Oh, get off your high horse." Mark spat, as he felt the soldier's fingers brush against his wrists once again. "You're the Eighth Orloff Grenadiers, for fuck's sake. If I'd stayed in the villa, where I was, I would have died when it caught fire. Which, by the way, your men already made sure it did, if you'd bothered to look."

    The officer raised his hand to stall the soldiers. "You recognized our unit?"

    "Noooo!" Mark snarked, glaring up at the man. "Obviously, I just run up to every bunch of ships that come down here with a skull and fucking crossbones painted on their side and beg for a pick up! Of course I recognized you! Look, I'm not asking for much here. My name is Mark Papadopoulos. A merchant registered in the Abbey District, the Duchy of Tamarind, the Duchy of Graham-Marik, the Principality of Gibson, and the Rim Commonality. All I need is for you to get me to a ComStar compound so I can get in contact with my employer! I've been stuck in this shithole for two goddamned years"

    The officer inhaled deeply and slowly. "...Son, you do realize you're only meant to register in one province, right? That it's tax evasion to register your enterprise in multiple?"

    "Crawl up my ass about it when someone, anyone, actually starts enforcing that!" Mark spat back.

    "...He's legit." the officer huffed, shaking his head in disbelief. "No way he isn't legit."

    --------

    I hope the mixed tone I'm setting for this part of the story works for y'all.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Well, that's interesting, the Mark Papadopoulos who had been interested in "The Lothian League" and the "O'Reillys" ended up running afoul of pirates (or "pirates"), so his plans, and that of possible backers got derailed... And has now been "rescued" by the 8th Orloff.
     
    Last edited:
    Chapter 18 (October 2938 - December 2938) (Content Warning: Scene 3 begins with gruesome imagery in italics)
  • Threadmarks
    • ---
    Scene 1
    ---

    Zletovo, Lesnovo
    Rim Commonality, Free Worlds League
    October 2938

    Mark brushed his fingers across the paper of the wrapper as though having a religious experience.

    "Mr. Papadopoulos?"

    Slowly, he pinched the crinkled sheet of checkered print and peeled it away, revealing his prize. Two fluffy buns, two 150 gram beef patties, tomatoes, pickles, lettuce, bacon, cheese, grilled onions, mushrooms, and special sauce.

    "Ey, Markie boy!"

    His mouth watered in a way he'd never experienced before. He hadn't thought he'd become such a weak man in captivity.

    "I wish someone would look at me like he's looking at that burger."

    One of the group of bodyguards paused at that and looked to his compatriot in arms. "...Like a hungry wolf about to crack the bones of a deer for marrow, Sikorski?"

    "No! I mean, like…" the young man protested, throwing up his hands and glaring back, his obnoxious pompadour bobbing side to side as he turned. "...yeah, pretty much."

    Slowly, tenderly, he opened his mouth wide. God, but he wasn't ready for this. It'd been so long - he'd suffered so long.

    "So let's shelf Ewen's weird fetish and get back to the topic of when the fuck we're actually going to get him in the doors of the HPG station now that he's like this." the commander of the dismounted lance - David Vernhardson - offered as he cast his arms wide. "Does that seem reasonable to you people?"

    Gertrude, pilot of the Awesome that was the lance's pride and joy, let out a snort of amusement. "Lt., we literally just got the man his first decent lunch in two years. Do you honestly want to deprive him of the chance to enjoy that?"

    David gritted his teeth "This is a Burger King, Gonzales, and we ordered it to go! We can't RTB until we've gotten him in contact with his folks, so what the hell are we doing sitting down for lunch?"

    The Locust pilot, Ernst Jaffe, leaned against the bike rack as he watched a haphazardly cleaned up man in a hastily procured white button-up and khaki slacks bear down on a burger as though it were a gift from the heavens, his jaw so wide as to have nearly unhinged, like a snake's. "You honestly thought we were going to get him more than five meters from the door before he broke into that, BK or no? I…uh… don't think they had the Parliamentarian Bar and Grill around in the slave pits on that hole, chief."

    The bun's top cracked without much resistance as Mark's teeth encountered it, the plush interior of the bread tearing easily until he got to the toasted bottom. As he cracked through that layer, and the sauce started to squeeze out into his mouth, he couldn't help but let out a moan of satisfaction.

    Gonzales stared as the former captive bit down on that burger. "Shit, I think Ewen was right."

    Ernst gave her a sideways look. "Seriously, Gertie?"

    The lieutenant roared, throwing his hands into the air. "What the fuck is going on here!?"

    The lettuce gave a crisp snap as Mark's teeth bored ever deep into the sandwich, ripping through bacon, cheese, mushrooms, onions and all on their way to meet in the center. Mm. Meat. When was the last time he had meat?

    Sikorski scuffed the ground with the bottom of his shoe, trying to look for some plausible reason to change the topic. "You know, instead of standing around here with our thumbs stuck up our asses while he eats, we could get some lunch too."

    The scout's gaze flew back to him. "At Burger King?"

    "You're the one who said it, Ernie!" Ewen replied, giving a firm shrug. "Ain't like we had the Parliamentarian on our dropship!"

    The cheap, overseasoned flame broiled meat let out its fatty juices as Mark tore away at it, filling his mouth with the most delightful of experiences. God, but he'd waited a lifetime to eat this crap again, and it was absolutely worth it!

    "...Fuck it." the Lieutenant sighed. "I'm ordering, what the hell do you folks want?"

    Gonzales shrugged, finger on her chin, as she mused. "I guess I could go for a Whopper."

    Ewen was quick to respond on her heels, happy to have his change of topic taken seriously by the group. "Make mine a double garlic and bacon!"

    "What do they have that's similar to the Speaker of the Pattymelt?" Ernst asked, giving the rest of the group a curious look as he struggled to avoid watching the veritable murder scene that was taking shape as Mark's assault on that goddamned sandwich accelerated from its more worshipful pace to the savage feasting of a ravenous beast.

    David shook his head. "They don't do patty melts. Just get a cheeseburger, man."

    Jaffe let out a heavy sigh, leaning forward. "...Yeah, alright, fuck it. One of those."

    The Lieutenant nodded. "Alright, drinks?"

    "Chocolate!"

    "Pistachio."

    "Caramel."

    Vernhardson shook his head as he walked towards the door. "...Christ, so I'm buying five shakes today? And I assume you all want fries, too?"

    The others craned their heads towards him slowly, giving him a look that asked in what universe that could possibly be a question.

    As he disappeared inside the doors of the timeless restaurant, Mark finished the last bite of his burger, and took a long, triumphant pull from his vanilla milkshake. "Mwah!"

    Getrude walked over to the park seating embedded in the pavement of the parking lot, wiping beads of sweat from her forehead in the roaring hot temperature of a subtropical spring day "You okay over there, man? You made that thing disappear pretty fucking fast. I'm surprised you aren't, like, choking or something there."

    Smacking his lips a few times, Mark nodded, his fingers already at work dunking a french fry into his little packet of ketchup even as he turned on the bench to face back. "Fine, thank you. I realize it was rude of me to ask this of all of you when you've already been such courteous hosts to me over the past few months, and I owed so much to you even before that. But…thank you, for giving me the opportunity to feel alive again."

    "...Dude, it was a hamburger." Gertrude huffed, shaking her head. "There are way more inconvenient things you could have asked for when you stumbled off the dropship. If anything, I'm more amazed that some bigshot merchant is willing to eat ordinary fast food like this."

    "I wouldn't say I'm a bigshot, per se." Mark sighed, tapping his foot on the ground. "And I wasn't always a merchant, either. Though really, it mostly comes down to the fact that there was a place just about like this on…more or less every planet on my usual routes, and it was always pretty convenient to stop in after landing, even if the food wasn't the best, and the coffee was undrinkable. It's an old memory at this point, I guess. I just needed to remind myself how it tasted."

    "So…" Ewen hummed. "Once we're all done eating, you'll be ready to stop by the HPG station with no more delays, right?"

    "Yes, I do believe so."

    - -

    And here it was. Behind these marble doors lay what would, hopefully, be the rest of his life.

    Mark turned back towards the soldiers who'd brought him so far and shot them a warm smile. "Thank you for everything so far. I hope the 8th Orloff has good fortune from here on out."

    "It's our job, Papadopoulos." David hissed, glancing away. "And now that we're finally finishing it, we can go back to doing the rest of our job."

    "Just try not to get caught by pirates again, man!" Gertrude chirped, waving back.

    "...I wasn't exactly trying to get caught by them the first time." Mark huffed, turning back towards the doors and pushing them open.

    What hit him first was the wash of cold air from the air conditioning.

    What hit him next was a deep nostalgia. When was the last time he'd stopped into one of these places before he was captured?

    A tear came to his eye. He just needed a mo-.

    No, no stopping now.

    He stepped confidently up to the front counter and cleared his throat. "Good afternoon. I'd like to access a bank account."

    The acolyte behind the counter, some mousy guy with glasses, squinted at him. "You should be able to do that at the ATMs, sir."

    Mark sighed, before giving a toothy grin. "I'm afraid I lost my card a very, very long time ago."

    The receptionist sighed. "...How long ago are we talking, sir? If it's been long enough since the last time you accessed your account, it may have been closed."

    "It should have been…" Mark began, humming as he ran up against the limitations of his memory. "April of '36, if I remember correctly."

    "After two years of inactivity, it's quite likely that your account has been deactivated, sir." the lad grumbled. "You really should come to us sooner when you misplace something like your debit card."

    Mark let out a hearty laugh, throwing his head back. "Maybe I'll think of that the next time I'm about to get enslaved by pirates from the deep periphery, and oh what a difference it will make!"

    "...Oh." the teller mumbled. "I-I'm sorry, sir. I could check to see if your account is still valid, if you like! Er… can I get your name?"

    Mark grinned, thoroughly amused with the quick turnabout in attitude. "Mark Papadopoulos."

    A furious clattering of keys ensued, with two long-presses of the backspace key midway through. "Date of birth?"

    "Second of February, 2890."

    The boy gave him a long, hard look. "...You don't look 48, sir."

    Mark gave a heavy, exaggerated shrug. "And my father didn't look seventy when he got run over by a truck. Some people don't look their ages, acolyte."

    The boy swallowed his saliva and typed again. "Place of birth?"

    "Evanston, Gallisteo."

    Yet another clattering rang out. "Permanent residence?"

    "Tel Atlas, Tormentine."

    The kid's lips made a wet noise as he opened them for the last question. "Place of latest transaction?"

    Mark wracked his brain on that one. "It would've been the HPG station on Hazeldean, I believe."

    The light cast by the monitor on the boy's face shifted greatly as he entered that last bit, and his eyes went wide. "...I can't believe it. Your account's still open, sir. Give me…just one second, and I'll print you off a card. Do you remember your pin?"

    "...Do you think I would?"

    "...Right." the teller agreed. "We can reset that for you! My apologies for the prior rudeness."

    Mark smiled. "It's fine, it's fine. I was the sort to snap back at my elders once myself. We all grow out of it - at least until we get it under control within reasonable limits - one day or another, and then we're better people for it. Now, do you have a keypad for me to type out a pin on, or…"

    - -

    Mark stood before the messaging terminal, and as he pulled away his card, he smirked. The card's pre-loaded balance read as 12345.678 cbills. It was a shame he was going to ruin that perfect number by placing a long distance, priority message now, but needs must…

    To Mr. Leon S. Arslan…

    ---
    Scene 2
    ---

    Vatnajökull, Lothario
    Lothian League, Near Periphery
    November 2938

    "Sven, my man!" Julius greeted, casting his arms up as the door opened. "How was the new ride?"

    Popping his shoulders, the courier let out a groan of relief as he slapped an envelope down on the counter. "Nice and warm, but it's a little cramped on my right side. It's definitely better to have a fully enclosed cabin, but I could do with more shoulder room, you know?"

    "...Yeah, that sounds about right." the receptionist replied. "They really did just fucking… stick a closed cabin on a delivery bike, didn't they? Still, step up from that piece of shit you were riding the first time you came around here, no?"

    Sven snorted at that. "Without a doubt, but if you paid a little bit more attention to it I think you'd find that I've four whole wheels out there. So really, it's more like they stuck a cabin on two bikes. No clue what I'm supposed to do with the vestigial second seat in there, other than stack shit on it."

    "Maybe it's a kid's seat?" Julius offered, giving a hearty shrug as he stood up from his chair and stretched.

    That idea didn't really seem to bear out. "What kind of quasi-rich pretentious bullshit would that be? In the gulf between normal, sensible people who just take the metro with their kid, and the rich old ladies who clog the streets with massive fuckoff land barges, where's the thin line where people start driving around in their own personal pizza delivery fishbowls with kids in tow?"

    "...Yeah.", Julius hummed, launching into a few quick jumping jacks as he thought. "...Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. It's not two seats, it's one seat for a really fat guy, and you're actually meant to sit in the middle."

    "I've got two distinct seatbelts in there." Sven protested, casting his arms out to the sides, the envelope in his left hand making a crispy crackle as it fluttered in the air.

    "Or two little people!" Julius added, concluding his workout. "All I'm saying is, maybe you can see if one seatbelt can click into place on the opposite side?"

    "Worth a try, I guess."

    "All I'm saying.", the man repeated, slipping back into his chair. "Only one return package this time, eh?"

    "Yyyep. Thinking I might deliver it the rest of the way myself, because of that."

    The chair creaked out of its hinges as the back slid into a reclined posture. "Not even going to the mailroom? Damn, that's a premium service you're handing out. Who's the lucky winner?"

    That was a great question. As far as Sven recalled, it'd been from one of the earlier sites he'd hit up. Looking back at the envelope, he nodded to himself. It was from the visit to the bureau of reconstruction. As for the recipient…

    His face tightened into a grimace. "...Or maybe not. You got any idea who Carla Jean Aetos is, specifically?"

    Julius leaned forward, arms on his desk, and spoke in the flattest voice he could manage, little snickers sneaking out of him from moment to moment. "My dude, are you seriously asking the front desk if he knows a staff member by name? Of course I know who Carla is. Tall, black hair, usually dresses in leather and denim. Rides a loud ass bike. Nice fucking ti-"

    "Okay." Sven interrupted stepping closer and fanning his arms out again. "But where can I find her in this absolute maze?"

    Julius paused. "Aaahh…."

    His hand drifting to a stack of papers on his desk, he leaned in close as he lifted one end of it and let it flick back down to the table one by one, watching the sheets fall loudly back into place with hawklike focus.

    Sven was disappointed, but not necessarily surprised in the slightest by the turn of events. "...Have you not looked at her ID card even once when you've checked her in in the morning?"

    "Look, man-"

    "Pfahahaha~...!"

    Both men snapped their heads to the sides, the pull strings of their hats flapping wildly in the air from the whiplash, to see who'd just busted out laughing.

    Sven's veins chilled as he laid eyes on her, though. At the mouth of the hallway, snickering and wiping tears from one of her eyes, was the terror, the menace, the devil of the break room who stalked the halls, the secret queen, the bane of his existence. Raven haired with skies like the clear sky in day, swell of her bust hidden only by the collage of cat pictures printed onto the front of her short sleeved pullover shirt, long legs wrapped in skinny jeans, she stood. His personal devil's favorite person. Philosopher Marie Clayton.

    He couldn't look.

    "Oh, I'm sorryyy… I shouldn't laugh…" she squeaked, shoes tapping on the tile of the floor as she did… something. It didn't sound like she was walking. Maybe just shifting in place?

    Julius stammered out a response to the situation after a few more things of gawking. "P-philosopher Clayton! We were just…"

    That got another snort out of her. "No, no, it's fine. You don't need to explain. I don't give a fuck."

    "O-oh…"

    She pivoted. Literally pivoted. Sven could hear the tip of her shoe scraping against the floor as she did. "So, Sven. You've got a package for Carla, if I heard that right?"

    Swallowing heavily, he nodded, slowly pivoting his head back in her direction and…gazed down at the ground. "That's right. Um… you wouldn't happen to know where she's working, would you?"

    "Pff, course I know where she's working." Marie warbled, the clacks of her shoes drawing near. "Come with and I'll show you where so you know for the future."

    The breath got caught in Sven's chest. He blamed his sister's insinuations for this utter inability to deal with the woman. "I-I couldn't possibly waste your time like that. Honest. I know the map of the place well enough that you could just…tell me."

    Dropping suddenly into a squat and looking up, Marie smirked at Sven as she replied. "You wouldn't be wasting it though? I was heading over in that direction anyways."

    His gaze wandering slowly to the side, Sven put in another desperate attempt to avert that which was to follow. "That's…actually very convenient. But you know, now that I think about it I ought to…go over to the mail room anyways, to see if they have any other stuff for me to drive out. Maybe you could take this to her, though?"

    With springlike haste, the philosopher bounded back up to her full standing height and seized the young man by the wrist, though. "That can wait until later! You're coming with me right now. Got it?"

    Sven couldn't help but squeak as she took off, adjusting himself as quick as he could to her pace to avoid getting literally dragged down the hallway or some shit like that. "Is this really necessary!?"

    "Absolutely!" Marie insisted, picking up the pace. "You're a part of this family now, and I'm going to show you around the place. Get you used to it. Imagine having a whole sister you'd never met!"

    Yanking his hand free, Sven shook his head but carried on with following the woman who was…almost certainly properly regarded as his boss. "I've already got one sister in this building and that's practically too much for me, Philosopher Clayton."

    "...Valid. It's Marie, though." she huffed. "So as a total change of topic, how are you liking it here, exactly? I recognize that it can be difficult to adjust to a new environment, but…"

    Sven couldn't help but find that rapid 180 chained into a change in topic amusing. Someone clearly had a sibling in her life. Still, though… what an incredibly abrupt shift in tone.

    "I'm a courier." he replied, not really getting where she was going with this. "I spend much more of my day outside of the building than in. Aside from the nicer ride and more consistent pay, it's only a few hairs different from what I was doing before. The folks I've talked to seem nice, though?"

    Marie turned to face him as she walked, furrowing her brow. "...Do you suppose you'd have more time around the office if we were able to consolidate our parcels better? Or are you driving out with a full vehicle every time?"

    That was such an incredibly stupid question Sven couldn't even begin to comprehend why it was relevant. He was working, and drawing pay for, a full time job. If his workload were reduced, would it suddenly become a part time job, or would the Promethean Order suddenly be paying him the big bucks to sit around and talk idly to whoever had free time? Either way, someone got screwed over in the process.

    "...What, so you can pay me to sit around in the breakroom all day or something?" he asked, giving her a funny look without realizing that meant he was looking at her. "Sure, it's probably possible to reduce my workload if a lot of effort was put into concentrating the package load somehow, but… being out there is quite literally my job. What's the point of reducing that? Or rather, if it can be reduced, why am I here at all?"

    Marie gave him… well, it would best be described as a look. "Maybe you're thinking your position is just something you got out of nepotism because your sister works here and I thought you seemed fun to have around-"

    Sven blinked a few times. Seemed what?

    "-but the reality is, you came at a pretty good time for us, and with relevant experience of a sort. Relying on out of house couriers works up to a point, but no further. I'm not sure if you realize how involved we're getting with the goings on here in Vatnajokul-"

    Aaand then she got the pronunciation wrong…

    "-but calling people in to carry documents and items for us was starting to get unreasonably unreliable. We were talking about bringing someone onboard already when that lunch order went out, and at that point, well… really simplified the search, turns out! It made someone on the staff happy and it served as a bit of charity as well. That said, if you're constantly outdoors that means the system we've got in place does not work. Routine materials should be handled as efficiently as possible so we have you on hand when we need you for actual urgent, unexpected deliveries. As a side benefit, it means a better work experience for you, and closer ties to the rest of the organization."

    Now that he thought about it, as some sort of priestess, shouldn't she have been phrasing that as something more like… 'if you spend more time among the faithful, all the more likely that you'll see the light and accept the true faith', or something? As it stood it just sounded like…mundane managerial talk. For being a religious order dedicated to this Prometheus, the whole place was uncannily secular in its vibe.

    Sven ultimately settled on leaving that question unasked, though. "...You seem to know a lot about this, and have a lot to do with it. As a philosopher, what's your actual primary occupation here?"

    She grinned. "Would you like me to sing you a canticle of logistics or something like that? I'm mostly focused on the administrative side of things."

    Which tracked with her being the supposed power behind the head of this place, but… "...I think I'll pass."

    She shrugged, before giving a catlike grin. "Fair. Hey, if I ever needed to visit the facilities of one of our collaborators, do you think it'd be possible for me to squeeze into your ride and catch a lift over there with you?"

    Oh fuck no he was not imagining sealing himself snugly into that bubble car with her pressed to his side, not a milimeter of clearance between their shoulders. He was not doing that now!

    He…was doing that now.

    Fortunately, he was snapped out of that fantasy by a parallel realization. Unfortunately, it was horrifying. As someone in charge of logistics here, that seemed to make her…his actual goddamned supervisor.

    ---
    Scene 3
    ---
    Monarch Class Dropship "Xanadu", In Transit in the Westover System
    Minor Provinces, Free Worlds League
    December 2938

    "One of you rats has been scurrying around where he didn't belong." the pirate roared, pacing behind the bound form crouching on the floor, with a sack over his head. "Getting funny ideas about taking back your little ship. Even made a trip to the armory. It was real cute of him, but the captain ain't having it."

    Mark glanced around the assembled cohort of captives desperately. Where the fuck was his first mate? Where the fuck was Charlie?

    "So in the interests of makin' our opinion on these sorts of shenanigans known, we decided to let you lot say hi one last time before we vent his scrawny ass." the pirate continued, roughly grabbing the top of the sack. "As a little warning to any other would be heroes, you know?"

    He wouldn't have. He couldn't have. He didn't!

    The ill-kempt man grinned as he crouched down, yanking his arm up in the process and revealing the perpetrator's face for all. "Say hi to your friends, Charles!"

    Mark's heart stopped as the gag was undone. The man kneeling there, under all the bruises and cuts, was unmistakably his friend. Even with half of his impressive mane of hair shaved messily off, it was clear.

    As the gag fell away, the man gasped and gulped, breathing heavily. Where were his fucking eyes?

    "I said, say hi, Charlie."

    Charlie stiffened. His teeth chattered for a second as a whimper crawled out of him.

    Behind him, the pirate reached down to the holster at his side.

    Hearing the needler slip from its sheath, Charlie gathered his will back up. "Captain! Don't do anything stupid. You n-!"

    And then he was gone in a fountain of arterial spray.

    The pirate clicked his tongue. "Always with the last moments o' defiance. I gave the man some very clear instructions, you know?"

    - -

    Mark's frantic cry bounced against all walls of the room. "CHARLIE!"

    The fine sheets of the bed fluttered noisily as Mark threw himself up into a sitting position, beaded all over with a cold sweat. His eyes were wide and twitching, his breath hot and ragged. Every vein on his arms bulged as he hunched over his own lap, fingernails digging through the rented fabric.

    Tears studded the fabric as he sat there, chest heaving. It was a dream. It was a dream. It was a dream.

    But why couldn't it be just a dream?

    "Mrghm..!" he gagged, swaying uneasily as he threw himself out of bed, nearly tripping over a part of the sheets that had tried to come with.

    No sooner had the bathroom door stopped swinging open than he fell before the porcelain throne and emptied his guts from the sheer, violent rush of stress chemicals pounding through him. There on the ground he stayed, clutching the rim, continuing to gag, choke, and sob for a few minutes longer.

    There was a temptation to never get up, yet eventually, slowly, he rose.

    His eyes drifted to the mirror, and he scoffed at the husk he saw there. Eyes swollen and red, chin streaked with his own sick. Skin clammy and pale. Hair out of sorts, and with who knows how many days of untrimmed beard growth besides. He looked like he was already dead.

    Maybe he was.

    There was an urge welling up inside of him to find out just how it would feel to have that silvered glass shatter beneath his fist. A voice crying for him to test the theory with one of its shards.

    Instead, he turned on the tap and filled his hands with the flow of cool water. He needed a change of pace. He needed to get out of this room.

    - -

    Ben couldn't help but rub his temples as he watched a dead rat of a man pause in front of the packed open bar and stare at it, seemingly lost in a daze.

    He prayed to himself that the man would take the hint and just wait, but it was in vain. Already, his eyes were drifting over to the open stools in his corner.

    The man began to shuffle over, practically dragging his legs. His blatantly un-ironed white shirt was worn without tie nor jacket, and wasn't even buttoned up all the way. His pants blatantly didn't fit him quite right, and his face… As he drew closer, Ben caught sight of the stubble that could only come from a messy shave underneath his overlong, hastily combed hair.

    It was amazing this slob had even managed to scrape together money for a ticket, but that he'd make the mistake he was making was nowhere near such a surprise. It happened several times every trip.

    As the man reached the stool, Ben tried to put on his most polite smile, but froze as he looked into the man's eyes. It was amazing that a pair of eyes so red and so puffy could look so hollow…dull… dead. What was a corpse doing sitting down at his bar?

    And he really had sat down.

    The script! He had to keep to the script! "S-sir, perhaps you're a bit lost? This is the closed bar, you see. It isn't open to standard passengers, I'm afraid."

    The man gazed at his face intently, before looking up at the sign, and nodding slowly. Ben was about ready to let out a sigh of relief once the man was out of earshot. Customers like this were sometimes known to start a spectacle if their demands weren't met. He bet the 'day' bartenders didn't have to deal with this shit.

    But the man didn't get up. He reached into one of his pockets, and withdrew a slim wallet.

    "Sir, I'm afraid money isn't the issue here." Ben insisted softly. "This bar is reserved for the enjoyment of our first class passengers, you see."

    The man held the wallet out over the counter, as though he were offering up the full thing. Ben couldn't help but wonder if he'd stolen it.

    "Sir! Please, this is highly improper."

    One of the man's fingers twitched, and a card fell from the bottom face of the wallet to the counter. It was a room key, Ben's brain filled in. A first class one, made out to a 'Mark Papadopoulos'.on its rewritable display.

    The man's other hand slinked out to over the counter, and he opened the wallet slowly before withdrawing a second card and holding it up. "I'm in first class, though."

    It was, it proclaimed, a temporary emergency ID printed on gray cardstock in the Rim Commonality, with attestation by Comstar. As the light shone through it, there was a faint hint of something gold pressed inside of it. Ben didn't even know this kind of ID card existed, let alone how you got one.

    The name field said…Mark Papadopoulos, and the photograph was…exactly that of the man in front of him. To the point that Ben was convinced he might have gone so far as to replicate his haircut and shave from when it was issued… it looked like a few months back. Well, that aside, the underlying face still looked right, so it shouldn't be a case of identity theft.

    Ben felt his face flush red up to his ears. "S-so you are, Mr. Papadopoulos. My apologies for the misunderstanding. I hadn't seen you in the Graham restaurant before. Have you been dining at the Stuart thus far?"

    "I've been calling for room service." Mark declared laconically, his voice quiet and monotone.

    Ben was officially creeped the fuck out at this point. "I-I see. Well, however much you may value your privacy, as a representative Carnival Cruise Lines my heart overflows with joy to see you join our community midway through your voyage."

    The man's eyes lit up a little at that, and the smile he gave was…unnerving. His teeth…something wasn't right about them. "How much do they pay you to say that?"

    "Excuse me?"

    The passenger barked out a brief chuckle. "Sorry, let me rephrase that. How much do I have to promise to tip you before you talk straight with me?"

    Ben bit his upper lip. "I'm not allowed to accept tips, sir. Now, what will you be having tonight? And have you eaten anything yet?"

    Ben personally felt like a Suffering Bastard was the right match for this man.

    Mark smirked, resting his face in one hand as he leaned on the bar. "Lemme think… ah, the one thing you definitely wish I'd brought with me tonight. Hit me with a Tuxedo."

    Oh, good, it was an actual cocktail. The man hadn't come here just to get smashed. "Coming right up, sir."

    Placing a tumbler on the counter, Ben glanced around to see if anyone was looking. He really, truly didn't want to do any of the theatrics for this man, and he didn't think they were desired on the other side of the bar either.

    The coast was clear, so he moved with efficiency. Ice, gin, vermouth, maraschino, absinthe, and orange bitters went into the tumbler in sequence, chased down by a judiciously twirled spoon. On went the strainer, out came the coupe glass, and, with a little garnish of lemon zest and a maraschino cherry…served.

    Mark lifted the glass slowly, giving it a brief jolt as though making a toast, before taking his first, long sip. "I had a friend who liked these things."

    Ben swallowed heavily. This was the worst part of being a cocktail bartender. Being arbitrarily deputized as the confidante and therapist of every poor sucker who came across you. It was why he'd been so glad to be transferred to the closed bar - rich people were marginally less likely to be that way.

    "I'm more of a White Russian guy, but as nightcaps go, kahlua is right out." the passenger explained, taking another long sip. "I never did quite understand how he was so fixated on such a small range of drinks. Gin, vermouth, maraschino. It always came back to at least one of those. Usually several."

    Ben felt the man's gaze watching him, waiting for some reply. The appropriate thing to do might have been to just comment on the drink. That would have been safe. But there was a cursed temptation welling up inside of him. "...What happened to your friend?"

    "He was murdered." Mark huffed, taking another sip. "By pirates."

    "...Oh." Ben replied, his heart sinking. "...I hope they're brought to justice one of these days."

    "Already done. The Eighth Orloff did them in when they picked me up." came the reply as the last of the cocktail disappeared in record time. "And besides, I chopped the head off the man who did it to him."

    Ben was quite sure he was going to be sick at some point tonight, but the job demanded that be saved for later. "Jesus. So you were…"

    "Now I've got you talking like a normal person." the passenger observed in amusement as the brass band, who had been setting up all that time, began a warm, jazzy song. "While you're at it, get me a Brooklyn, would you?"

    Ben clicked his tongue and covered his face at his misstep. "Coming right up, sir."

    The Brooklyn. The Manhattan's more particular brother…with Maraschino in him. Ice. Rye. Vermouth. Maraschino. Picon. Stir, strain. Chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a maraschino cherry. Serve.

    He hoped that, after two quite strong cocktails, this man would decide his nightcap was complete and go the fuck to sleep. He didn't have it in him to listen to much more of a sob story right now, and on this trajectory of drinks in honor of his friend… there were going to be more sob stories, he could tell.

    "Good on you that you actually know what this one is." Mark snorted, swirling the glass as he looked over toward the band. "Most of the time, he had to walk people through what differentiated this from a Manhattan."

    "In fairness to the bartenders," Ben bit back, feeling comfortable to do so with this customer in particular. "These are all made with some very expensive liquors. They don't come from anywhere other than Terra, you know?"

    Mark stared silently for a while, then took a long sip. "He was horrible with money. I ended up buying most nights."

    God, the mood was just…way too gloomy. The jazz wasn't helping. Ben needed some small talk here. "It's just occurred to me, sir. Have you eaten anything tonight?"

    Mark paused for a second there, licking his lips, before glancing up at the ceiling, then back down, and finishing his drink. "Let's say no. I actually ended up emptying my stomach before coming out here."

    "Are you going to be okay?" Ben asked, watching in terror. "Do you need someone to help you back to your room after this?"

    "Nonsense." Mark huffed, his speech not yet seeming slurred at all, though perhaps because he'd only started drinking a few short minutes ago, regardless of the strength. "I'll be good for it. Now… as a last one… gimme a Dead Bastard."

    Ben stared in terror "A… Dead Bastard?"

    "I did say that, yes."

    Putting a Suffering Bastard in this man at this point would have been irresponsible enough. Adding bourbon and rum to that mix of gin, brandy, lime, bitters, and ginger beer was insanity. He wanted to object… and yet simultaneously didn't.

    Fuck it, what a first class customer said, became the next best thing to law. Besides, it was served on the rocks, if the man slowed down at all, it'd at least be watered down by the time he drank it all!

    - -
    The Next Night
    - -

    "Ma'am?" he asked, despair welling up inside of him.

    She turned swiftly, drawing the laser pistol from her belt and pointing it on reflex, only to freeze and go white as a sheet upon seeing him. "Mark!? I…"

    In shock, he raised the muzzle of his revolver from the ground slowly. Too slowly. If she was going to shoot him, she would have done it already.

    "Please. I don't want to hurt you, Mark." she begged, tears forming in her eyes.

    He swallowed as he lined up his sight picture. "...I don't want to hurt you either, ma'am."

    She blinked. It was a perfect opportunity to fire. "Y-you just need to let me go. Once I'm done here tonight, everything will go back to normal."

    If only everything could go back to normal. "...I can't, ma'am."

    "I don't want to hurt you." she repeated.

    But she already had. It wasn't supposed to be her. "Then why are you     here?!"

    His gun fired. Hers didn't.

    - -

    "Another rough night, Mr. Papadopoulos?"

    "I'm not going to burden you with a sob story tonight, Ben. Just get me drunk."

    --------

    I love it when a chapter flows through the keyboard easily. I hope you'll like this one too.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Thanks for the chapter. Good work on the fast-food world-building, I rather like BK myself so not sure I'd be a regular at the Parliamentarian Bar and Grill.
     
    The woman appears to have been a superior of his, that he ended up confronting over what was likely some kind of malfeasance he was investigating. Perhaps she was someone that served as an agent for pirates?
     
    The focus of this story is becoming slightly blurry.

    Is it nation building, or just romantic tales accross all the character who have marriage issue?
     
    B_omega said:
    The focus of this story is becoming slightly blurry.

    Is it nation building, or just romantic tales accross all the character who have marriage issue?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Oh, believe me, you don't need to worry about Mark falling in love on you.
    Aside from that, while nationbuilding has actually always been a secondary focus of this story compared to contrived personal narratives, what I'm actually trying for with, say, Sven's side of things is at least partly just to worldbuild details of Lothian and of the outer reaches of Marian authority using his perspective, because I don't like writing things from 'behind the resolute desk'.
     
    Chapter 19 (January 2939 - April 2939)
  • Threadmarks
    • ---
    Scene 1
    ---

    Kallipolis, Alphard
    Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
    January 2939

    James opened the door slowly until he saw that the lights were on, then stepped through quickly. "How you feeling, dad?"

    John let out a hearty chuckle from the grand couch on which he laid, rolling his gaze over toward the door slowly. "Save yourself the trouble and get your joint work done before they start causing you problems, if you ever get as large as me. Quicker recovery that way. That's my advice to you. The painkillers work, but they can't dull a pain in the ass."

    Letting out a weak snort in response, the near-thirty year old stepped further into the room. "I'll take that under advisement, if it happens. You wouldn't happen to know how big you were at my age for reference, would you?"

    "Off the top of my head? No." the father replied, slowly hoisting himself up into a sitting position. "But in my medical records? No doubt. They write that down even if you aren't suffering from gigantism."

    "You don't have to get up." James cautioned, extending his arms as though to halt John's upward arc, but not actually making contact. "You could just tell me where to look, and that'd be all."

    Smiling, John pushed the hand aside and continued to rise and turn until he was seated normally. "I appreciate the concern, son, but doctor's orders are quite clear on the fact that I'm not to remain completely stationary. Rest and movement are both part of the recovery plan, however little I like it. Just give me a minute and I'll be up the rest of the way, alright?"

    His son blinked a few times, rubbing his forehead, before stepping back and nodding. He hated watching this happen to the man, even if it was ultimately treatable. It wasn't even the prospect of having to go through something similar himself that made it so unpleasant to imagine. It was more… watching that comforting strength and largesse that had made John O'Reilly a rock of stability capable of giving such incredible piggyback rides turn against him with the ravages of time stole something that had been so precious in his memories. It was one less thing he could believe in with certainty, in a world that was already so overfull with things to doubt. He wanted to say something, but the words didn't come out. After a moment, on impulse, he leaned in and wrapped his arms around the man, giving two gentle pats to the good part of his back.

    John was quick to return the hug, wearing a bemused look just out of James' view. "And what's this about, then?"

    "Nothing." James lied, his voice carefully dragged away from the edge of cracking, a few seconds before pulling back out of the hug. "Just…felt like it, you know?"

    Quirking his head to the side, John clearly realized there was something more to it, but he decided not to comment on that. "Well, if you ever feel like it again, I'm good for it. The only one who ever seems to want my hugs anymore is Vera, and who knows how much longer she'll be that much of a limpet for?"

    James quirked an eyebrow at that, walking slowly around to the side of the couch to make sure his old man had room to stand up, and that he was properly positioned to help if needed. "Maybe you'd be able to convince Alan or Paul to give you a hug if you shaved a little closer. Your stubble is like sandpaper, you know?"

    Clicking his tongue, John slowly began to rise to this feet. "That's a no-can-do. Your mother helps me shave, and I'm afraid I can't ask her to get better at it when she's already got a much, much bigger job on her plate. As for taking that away from her… no, I don't think I could do that to her. I guess it's hopeless, at the end of the day."

    Throwing his arms up in a shrug as his father rose to full height, James chuckled. "I suppose so."

    Just then, two sets of footsteps came to a halt at a door, and James heard his mother's voice. "Oh, good. You're up and about, big boy?"

    James looked over and saw her standing there along with Alan, the middle child, who was just on the cusp of his majority.

    "More or less, Amy." the man replied with a grin as he walked over to the door. "We were going to take a look at my records to see just about how tall I was and how much I weighed at twenty seven, twenty eight. Thereabouts, anyways. Just to compare to where James is now and see if he might skip this dramatic little phase I've got going on, you know? What've you two got going on?"

    "We were looking to round you two up, actually!" Alan chirped, stepping around Amy and holding up an envelope. "We've got good news from the latest ship that's come in. Sis remembered to write back to us this time, so we figured, even if the little ones are at school already, that we might as well all get together and read it. See how she's doing over on Lothario. Maybe if she's got anything to say about the place in general, too. It didn't feel right to open it when it was just us, is the point."

    "Well then!" John cheered, stepping out of the way of the door and extending an arm to the couch. "Feel free to have a seat and open it up. I won't, because I'm not sure how long it'd be before I could will myself back up, but I'm interested to see what she's going on over there. It's good work she's doing, but quite frankly I worry about her - what are the odds she'll be regretting signing onto the project, do you think?"

    "That's romance, dad." James corrected. "She regrets her relationships every damned time, but I've never seen her get disappointed with anything else she's dedicated herself to."

    "Speaking of which." Amy huffed as she settled onto the seat. "Propose already.
    You and Elise have been going steady for five years, you've got the ring, just propose, James. She'll be delighted, I assure you."

    "Soon." James promised.

    His mother snorted. "It's always soon!"

    "So anyways." Alan interjected, struggling not to laugh as he got a fingernail under one end of the envelope's flap. "Let's see what Marie had to say to her folks."

    The paper made a long 'rrrp' as he tore it open, before fluttering down to his lap as he separated it from the actual letter. Taking one moment to brush one of his long hairs out of his face, the teenager year old began to read it aloud.

    - -

    "Dear mom, dad, shit for brains, Alan, Paul, and Vera.

    The eldest among you may think you pulled a neat trick on me by sending me to a part of this planet where it never gets much above zero degrees, but you'd be wrong on that account. With persistent low temperatures comes a ready-made excuse to spend all day inside with a cup of soup until you feel ready to go outside and throw snowballs at someone or something like that. I leave this compound once a week to touch base with the local administration and let me tell you, that sort of efficiency feels good in life.

    Lothario is an interesting place, on that note. They've been hiding from the cold out on this part of the planet for so long that they almost find the lack of a puffy winter jacket obscene in its own right, which was interesting to find out, and remains interesting to toy around with. More to the point, something I find strikingly odd about their system here is that despite centuries of non-contact with Canopus, they've more or less converged on matriarchal aristocracy as a government system. That part was a bit of a let down - I come out here to get away from people who give me a wide berth because I'm a high roller, only for half of everyone to give me a wide berth because of my chromosomes. Though speaking of that, we could do with a little more staff and funding over here if you can find them in the couch cushions. Reconstruction is slow going here and, I gather, on other worlds as well. The bandits who rolled by were an absolute menace. It's amazing that the people in this town have been so relatively able to go about their daily lives in the aftermath, all things considered. Not that people haven't had to seek alternative work from time to time, frequently meaning us.

    We've actually got a pair of local siblings working at my office. One's a teacher, one's the official office courier (AKA my errand boy). The teacher's living with her fiance's parents right now, which according to the errand boy is the opposite of what's supposed to happen. She doesn't seem to mind, though, so I'm guessing that might just be him being high strung. He does that. It's     hilarious. I'm his boss, and even I can barely get him to look my way. I know, it's bad, I shouldn't tease him, but what else am I supposed to do? Anyways, the point being, I'd say we're making slow and steady progress on fixing things and winning folks's trust, but it could be faster and steadier. So please, send more people. I know it's hard to find the slack in the system, with all the other working up you've got going on back home and elsewhere in the Union, but a lot of these people need more than scarves and minestrone to warm their hearts back up.

    Anyways, I love y'all, but I'm not coming back anytime soon. I'll write…sometime. Maybe faster if you write back. Tell Chloe O'Reilly that she's precious and adorable and aunt Marie misses her for me.

    Hugs and Kisses
    'Ya Girl, Philosopher Marie Clayton

    - -

    "You know, I really liked it better when she talked like a normal person." James huffed, shaking his head

    Amy snorted back at him, knocking gently on his shoulder. "I liked it better when she wrote with a sense of purpose and brevity, and kept her personal and private stuff separate."

    Wanting to feel included in the complain-off, Alan chewed his lower lip for a second before shrugging. "I guess I just liked it better when she was actually here instead of off teasing random poor saps in an icebox."

    "At least she wrote." John sighed. "Though really, this is a whole new kind of mess. I can't help but wonder if she's taken some kind of weird lesson from all the breakups in the past and channeled it into this new… forwardness. Normally, I'd be tempted to tear into the lad like Rosie did into me back in the day, but… honestly I just feel kind of sorry for the man's heart. His boss has evidently made it her life's mission to get a rise out of him, if she's dedicated about a twelfth of the first letter she's written in awhile just to talking about it. Either that or…she's just fucking with us. Any bets on whether it works out for her this time?"

    "No bet." the others cried in unison.

    After a moment though, James and Alan shot John an odd look, one which James was the first to articulate the reason behind. "Though, uh… who's this Rosie, exactly? The name doesn't ring any bells, I'm afraid. Someone you knew back on Terra, I'm guessing?"

    Amy was quick to respond. "You've met Rosie!"

    After a second, though, her cheeks flushed. "...You met her when you were a baby, though, so… I guess you wouldn't remember."

    "She was your mother's gynecologist. " John explained. "Also, your first babysitter, and the one who, if we'd stayed on Terra, would have been your godmother. She didn't like me much - I didn't exactly inspire confidence back when we were on Terra, what with my complete lack of a stable income stream or job, and apparent lack of the ambition to secure one."

    Nodding along, Amy sighed. "If I'd felt ready to name someone after my mom - after Vera - that early on, then our second daughter would have been named Rosie in her honor. If we'd ever had a third, same deal. The fact that, given that she's a medical professional on Terra, she's probably still alive notwithstanding. If Alan got to be a namesake, she absolutely deserved to be one. I never had a father, but I had two mothers in my life, and she was the second."

    James quirked an eyebrow. "...No offense, but if she mattered so much back then, why haven't we ever heard of her before?"

    "Because it hurts to think about how we left Terra, without a warning, without saying goodbye, without closure." John muttered. "All in their own ways, we loved the people we knew there, and we left them wondering where we'd disappeared off to one day, taking two one year olds they'd changed the diapers of with us in the process. They're a family we should have, maybe could have, brought with us if we hadn't been so cagey, so...panicky, so rushed. It's something I hope you never have to deal with in your life. Saying goodbye hurts, but it's so much worse not to get the chance."

    "After enough years, you can even come to miss a soulless machine like SHANDRA." Amy snorted. "And she was little more than a sassy, really fancy automatic lightswitch. Actual people…leave a much bigger wound."

    ---
    Scene 2
    ---

    Tel Atlas, Tormentine
    Near the Abbey District, Free Worlds League
    January 2939

    The Lion of Gibraltar, as some fools had called him, barely managed to contain the wash of panic that came across him as that door opened. The words 'Oh no!' hung in the back of his mind like an executioner with an ax as he gazed at those slumped shoulders and those widening eyes from his bed.

    Mark looked like absolute shit.

    The boy stared him down with eyes that begged for this to all be a joke, and in that gaze Leon Arslan swore he could see his own, equal terror reflected. But there was no joke here. There could be no joke here, surely as the oxygen machine kept hissing. Surely as an earthbound ghost had send him an HPG message.

    "Sir! You're-!" Papadopoulos began, his voice trembling in a way that even the man who'd been named 'lion' four times, his hearing failing, could make out.

    It was time for some damage control. "I'm quite comfortably seated, my boy, but what about you?"

    He gave his protege a long look, his hand outstretched to the nearby chair as he forced a smile.

    Mark hesitated, his body tense as though some part of him was calling to bolt right back out the door. The words he was going to say stillborn on his lips. He was sweating, shivering as he shambled into the seat. "Sir…"

    "You came back to me." Leon lied. Oh, to be sure, the boy's body was here, but to see the proud man at such ill calm made it clear that the heart and soul he'd treasured so had been lost in the void, or perhaps in the sands of that hell he'd been interred in. One lie begat another. "I'm glad."

    His prize captain stilled for a second at that, his eyes watering right up to the moment he glanced away and hid them. "I… so I did, sir. Less, I'm afraid, my ship, my crew, and… to my great shame, the next move in your game. The years have taken them one and all from me, so I've only got myself to return."

    But did he? Arslan doubted that much as he shifted in what would be his deathbed in perhaps a year's time. Still, he had to try to find life in that husk. It was, clearly, the one great task left to him in his own. "Damn the ship and damn the chess game. If you've brought yourself back, that alone is worth more than any petty money or that bore Zakarian's next move. You say you've lost your crew, but do you mean everyone? Surely you can't be the only survivor."

    Mark let out a low hiss, gazing down at the floor in…shame. That was shame on his face. "I'm…not sure. I'm afraid it never occurred to me to check if anyone else made it through everything. My dearest apologies, sir."

    What in the actual fuck could make the boy forget that part? That was the first thing the kind of man he'd been should have checked for! Oh. Oh. Leon's stomach churned with the sickening fires of realization. "Then, Charles…"

    Mark barked out something between a sob and a laugh, that miserable gaze snapping towards Leon, his fingers digging into his sides. "Charlie was the first to go! Number one! Those motherfuckers executed him right in front of all of us, and he was gone! After that, what was even the point of keeping tabs on the rest? There was only one grain of gold in that cup of sand. Just one. One that threw his life away trying to save us, and wasted his last words telling me not to make the same mistake! I was just following his dying wish!"

    Oh, were it that Leon's arms still had the least stitch of the strength he'd once commanded, he'd throttle the boy then and there. There was no way that bright young man who'd been his lieutenant's lieutenant could have meant for him to do something so callous in the means of mere self preservation. To save his own life, certainly, but to condemn as already damned all the rest? It was inconceivable. Gripping his blanket firmly, the old man regretted that he had no weapons left to him but his words. "I see, I see. A dying wish, you say. Well, if you're so good for keeping those, then, I believe we're quite ready to discuss what comes next here."

    "Sir, please, no!" Mark panicked, reaching out toward the bed with a primal dread in his eyes.

    "It's hardly my choice if I die this year, the next, or the year after that, boy." the merchant lord huffed, batting away the hand. "I can decide when I write my will, though. I have that power, and only that power, with any certainty. I had always intended to leave my estate to you, you know? I just never got around to having it written that way before you were taken. I corrected that error with all haste when I received your message, of course."

    And what a needless mistake it clearly was.

    Mark said nothing, frozen, whimpering in the air before Leon.

    "Nothing to say? Ah, but you were always such a good listener. I had forgotten over the years." Leon sighed. "I would like you to lead my funeral, when the time comes. To write my eulogy. As the one to whom I leave everything, the one whom I trusted most, I know no other person whom I could hope to endow with this weighty task. Without your arms present, I don't believe any set of pallbearers could ever hope to carry my coffin to Hades' front door."

    Mark closed his eyes. "...What's taking you, sir?"

    "It should be obvious enough from the machine, Mark. Lung cancer." the old man replied, trying his best to regain the tone of an amicable grandfather.

    "If it's just that, you could get a few more years, easily!" Mark cried, clawing at the air. "You'd just need to change out your lungs for a pair that don't need to be concerned with cancer. Please!"

    "And die a cyborg, deprived of part of my flesh?" Leon muttered, shooting a side glance. "Between ending this life without the faculty of breath and starting the next one without it, I'd have to be an absolute sucker to change courses now, my boy. An absolute sucker. The ground will take me in my entirety, and you will take everything else. But what will you do after that?"

    Mark's eyes sharpened for a second, and he pounded the side of the bed. For a moment, a spark of hope stirred in Leon's chest. If Mark could feed the sparks that were being thrown, nurture that flame, then he might be ready to return to the roaring bonfire of a man he'd once been. The great flame that outshone the dainty candle that was the life of Leon Simba Arslan. If he could only feed the sparks…

    Clicking his tongue, Mark simmered down. "Nothing. I won't do anything after that. I can't do anything after that. Sir… I came here today knowing I was going to say goodbye to you. Knowing I couldn't bear to stay in this business anymore. Sir, I can't honor that request. I just…can't carry on with the life I'd been living here anymore. You've got to understand! I'm going home!"

    "Home?" Leon asked, his eyes narrowing. "You're going to run home to Galisteo, back to the middle of nowhere, and have me leave everything to who? My grandchildren, who know nothing of making money and everything about spending it? You may as well strike me dead where I lay! My life's work, cast onto a bonfire. My boy, it isn't as though you'd be going out there into the line of fire again! You wouldn't be a captain, you'd be the owner!"

    "Your grandchildren?" Mark asked, quirking one eyebrow. "What do your grandchildren have to do with this? Surely you've got someone else who could take over in my place, sir?"

    Seizing Mark by the tie as the man drew momentarily closer, Leon looked him dead in the eyes. "Like hell I do! Do you think we've been in operation these past two years? Without you, and without your ship, I've had to scale things back to the point of near hibernation. There's money and little else to our name now. Maybe if you were the man I remember you as, you'd be able to build the place back up, reforge it into what it was - no, something greater - but I can see now you don't have the will in you!"

    "And you're damn well right, sir!" Mark spat back at him. "I'm sorry, but you are! I'm glad you understand now. If you could promise me that you'd keep living, somehow, maybe I could do it, but we both know that isn't a possibility! I'm well and truly tired of watching the people I care about die! At least if I leave now, you can live on forever in my heart! I'll be able to remember you for when you were strong, and not for when I watched you, the last person I treasured, disappear beneath the ground forever!"

    What a load of pansy ass shit. Arslan had never heard anything quite as bullshit as the assertion that he'd live on forever in the boy's heart. What that meant, really meant, was that in the eyes of this sniveling coward he had already died. It was a betrayal. An absolute betrayal. Once, he'd thought that Mark Papadoupolos shared his goals, his principles, his interests. He'd thought that he could trust him to carry on his work and his vision long after he was gone. The man couldn't be relied on for a damn thing! He couldn't even be relied upon to say his final farewells to a friend, a mentor, dare he say, a father properly! His experiences could excuse some of it, perhaps, but to refuse even the simplest courtesy to the face of the dying party? How callous one could get when afraid. Perhaps it was just as well that a man as hollowed out as Mark had become would not give his eulogy. He refused to be mourned by a man who was already dead himself.

    "Hah! What worth is immortality in a heart that will die unremembered and unremarked?" Leon hissed, rising to the fullest height he could manage in his withered state. "You're killing our dream, the dream we shared of a periphery rim united in prosperity. Who will care who you remember and who you forget in the long run? Why should I be grateful to be mourned by you, who have spat so openly in my face? You've happily killed me off in your mind to retreat back into your little place of comfort, but if you're going to be so worthless you may as well put those hands that carry so much strength to work and kill me in actual fact! It would hurt less than the bedsores, at least!"

    Tensing up, Mark looked as though he might actually do it for a second, a fiery madness shining behind his eyes. If only that flame would keep burning, then maybe the man would turn back into something of use for the world. Of use for something other than self destruction. But by now, Leon knew that his former golden boy was all too ready to douse that heatedness rather than let it come to fruition. Mark rose slowly, carefully, and gazed down, his voice cold and his eyes hollow. "I'm sorry. I just can't do it for you. Any of it. I can't take up your burden. I can't lie to your face. I certainly can't spare you the bed sores. It's… just… it's time now. It's time that I stop putting off the things I left behind to follow you all those years ago. I'm really, truly grateful for everything you did to forge me into a man, and I'm equally sorrowful that I've wasted it all. I can't offer you anything but my memories. I can't live on knowing, definitively, that the world no longer holds any individual person I value."

    As he retreated from the room, Leon very nearly rolled to get out of his bed. "Get back here, you coward! Do you think you can lecture me on loss? I lived two whole years with nobody to cherish, you brat! You were the stronger man! You should be able to one-up me!"

    ---
    Scene 3
    ---

    San Francisco HPG Station, Third Underbasement, Fourth Wing (ROM Office 943), Terra
    Sol System, Former Terran Hegemony
    April 2939

    The coffee tasted, and felt, like mud going down.

    It was unreasonable. Unrealistic. Unconscionable. This was Terra, the planet where coffee originated. More excellent coffee shops and varieties had developed in this hallowed land than a person could possibly sort through in their life. When people elsewhere in charted space tried to make coffee, they invariably aped the classics born on the motherworld.

    It was a heresy against coffee that something this disgusting could be made from the bean in its birthplace. Even if the decision had been made to just outsource to some no-note chain brand and have them provide coffee and donuts or something of the sort, the product would have been infinitely superior to what they had here. The product of close mindedness and insularity, it seemed, was a refusal to trust anyone but your own agents and analysts with the brewing of their caffeine.

    It was a 'security risk', they said. But really, at the end of the day, the First Circuit needed better security than he did, and they still had someone to make their coffee for them.

    What he wouldn't give for - no, no use thinking about that.

    Mark set his mug down and went back at his keyboard, slipping through the records of the past idly. There was one thought that had never left him through his years in captivity. One thought that he remained possessed with, for better or worse. In a time where so little else was left to him, it was impossible for him to resi-

    "Precentor Mars, your attention please?" squeaked a weak voice from just outside of his cubicle.

    Mark glanced briefly towards the young looking acolyte, watching the boy flinch away at his gaze, before going back to his keyboard. It was impossible for him to resi-

    The voice recurred, with a little more strength this time. "Precentor Mars, please, this is an important matter!"

    He didn't dignify it with a look this time. It was impossible for him to resi-

    "For the love of Blake, Precentor!" the acolyte shouted at him. "Would it be the end of you to list to what I have to say for a second?"

    Mark spun in his chair and threw himself upright, gazing dispassionately down upon the redheaded young man from his advantaged perch. "Possibly. Maybe. Could be. Who knows. Results untested. What about you, though? You…who are you, exactly?"

    "Acolyte Tiresias Colt, Precentor Aldon." the youth bit back, flinching a bit. "Come to contact you on behalf of Precentor Aldon. It's an urgent matter related to your last deployment."

    Unperceptive and ill mannered though he might have been, the kid clearly had at least some spine. "Ah, I see. Well, tell him that it's best to contact me through the automated messaging system if he needs any clarification. It's faster that way."

    So saying, Mark turned his gaze away from the lad and was about to sit back down when his gaze got caught on a little mirror. Good god, no wonder he was scaring the kid. Those eyes looked like they hadn't lived in years.

    Accurate.

    But not a reminder he particularly needed or wanted. "Though before you head back, Acolyte, do you suppose my personal image would be improved if I had my eyes replaced with prosthetics?"

    A brief glance back that way revealed that the boy was considering it, but ultimately the lad's expression turned back into a scowl. "Precentor, that's hardly relevant to the point here. Precentor Aldon has been messaging you about this for two weeks now, but he has yet to get any response from you on the matter of your debrief."

    "Like I said, it's much faster that way." Mark hissed, patting the young man on the top of his head condescendingly. "So what do you say, do I get these rotten eyes replaced, or do I keep them for their use in psychological warfare? Or rather, do you suppose there's even any chance of saving my countenance, Acolyte Colt?"

    "If you really must insist on getting my opinion on this, Precentor?" Colt grumbled back, trying in vain to push that powerful arm away. "You would look even more unnerving if just your eyes changed. Even if they looked alive, with the rest of your face made of rock like that, you'd just look like a serial killer."

    "I see, I see." Maybe he'd have to actually go through with it, then. That almost sounded useful for some things.

    "So, what, then?" the acolyte demanded, throwing his arms out wide. "Do I go back to Precentor Aldon and tell him you have nothing to report about a mission lasting over a decade? That you were just treating it as a vacation or a retirement?"

    Well, it wouldn't be inaccurate to characterize it that way. It wasn't as though he'd ever seriously intended to end his life as Mark Papadopoulos back in those days. It had seemed like it could go on forever, like he could just disappear into the simple pleasures of a simple life and live in a peace that would never demand attention to the memories that had haunted him.

    But even if he would ultimately end up admitting that, it'd be no fun to say it through this intermediary. Better that he say it to his supervisor's face himself. Maybe when it went red, he'd actually feel something there. "No, you should tell him that if he wants a report on over a decade that quickly, he can come ask me for it to my face. Do you realize how long I had to wait to get a desk with my name on it after I returned? It's incredibly, incredibly unreasonable that I should be the only one expected to get things done promptly around here, don't you think?"

    "...I'll tell him that then." the acolyte replied, swallowing heavily. "But I don't expect he'll be happy to hear it for a single second. Proper protocol would have been to report in as frequently as reasonable, or else to prepare the report gradually during the mission. You should expect him sooner rather than later."

    "I'm afraid I lost it." Mark shot back as he slid back into his chair and went back to the keyboard. "Unavoidable, really."

    As the acolyte walked off, Mark let out a sigh. It wasn't even a lie.

    Now, finally, it was impossible for him to resist the siren song of his records. He didn't even remember what name he was looking for anymore. He didn't remember why he was looking for it. He just knew that, at some point shortly before he'd been captured, he'd heard a name that dug deep into the back of his memories, a tantalizing mystery that he'd been tempted to chase down even then.

    He cursed his diligence in reporting all those years ago. There were too many goddamned records here from no-note jobs that didn't ring a fucking bell to him. What had he even really been doing, back during his active years in ROM?

    What could have actually left such a big impression on him that he'd have remembered it, even vaguely, after over a decade out of the game?

    He'd be stuck in this archive search for months if he persisted in his search back from the present to the start. Already, he'd been at it for days.

    Though that thought gave him an idea. At risk of flipping the script, what if he started from the beginning and worked his way forward? The start of his career in intelligence work would be fairly early in his time within the order - it was an era which, mercifully, had largely drifted out of his recollection into a hazy mess over time, and yet simultaneously… if he was going to find the roots of such a potent but vague deja vu, where better to look than his formative years?

    It was a solid plan, if he said so himself. Except for the part, he realized in terror, where it meant experimenting with the functions of this piece of shit search infrastructure. It would have been great - just fucking dandy - if he could have worked at an office whose archival system didn't need to translate across dozens of architectures, dozens of filesystems, dozens of philosophies in computing from over the centuries, resulting in a mad pile of duct tape and chewing gum that could place a reasonable claim to being the biggest jury rig in history.

    With a sigh, he grabbed a pair of notepads and set them out for himself along with a pen. Surely, his peers would have their own established workflows for wrangling this beast, but would they share them with him? Most likely not. Maybe before his mission, but now? He was the prodigal son returned in disgrace.

    Attempt one - test the actual built in function for searching for the earliest result. No sooner had he clicked the option than his terminal began to make the most alarming whirring and clanking sounds, which terminated only when he turned it off. That went down into the records as 'Absolute no'.

    Attempt two - add a year to the search query in the hopes of only getting results from that year. He figured 2913 would be a good test year, given when he first got into ROM, but the result of adding that to his query was… uninspiring. The first page of results was exclusively composed of records that while indeed from 2913, seemed to bear absolutely no relevance to the rest of his query. If he were to try searching this way it would take longer than counting backwards from the present day. Recorded as 'please god no no no'.

    Attempt three - search specifically for keywords like initiation into ROM, first mission, first job, and the like. No results found. Recorded as 'you have got to be fucking with me'.

    Attempt four…

    He scratched his head with the back of the pen for a few moments, before blinking. If he recalled correctly, you accessed the debugging systems like… yes, like that. What if he just took a normal search query, and then edited his place in the archive by setting it to the last page in the search results? His current page was zero, so if he set it to -1 it would either wrap around to the last page or crash the entire system, right?

    Worth a try!

    His finger hovered over the enter key for several seconds before, with his breath held, he slammed the digit down and committed the change in page.

    The terminal whirred concerningly for a second, and his heart pounded in his chest. Perhaps he should have just risked getting shot by sneaking into someone else's cubicle and watching over their shoulder to see how they handled these sorts of archival research.

    Mercifully, though, his effort was rewarded a few seconds later as the new page loaded and deposited him on page 272. Blake's balls. There were fifty results per page. How many reports did he feature in?

    Regardless, the method went down in his logbook as the undeniably correct way to search for old documents in this garbage system. He was on Terra, the homeworld of all humanity, the center of all technical knowledge, and he'd seen more usable computer systems in some of the outer reaches of the Inner Sphere than in the halls of Comstar itself. It seemed knowledge did not inherently breed competency.

    This first page seemed to almost all be from his years as an initiate. One and all, the documents concerned reports from the seminary, signed and uploaded to the system by one Precentor Marcus Gray. Academic reports, disciplinary action - mostly disciplinary action, to be perfectly honest -, advisory meeting minutes, and finally his graduation.

    The last five on that page, and first forty on the next, concerned his years working archival under one Joshua Beyying. The dates varied, but to his horror, he realized the subject lines were all basically the same. Every last one of these was a work order for equipment repair. Printers, scanners, computers, they all seemed to break with stunning regularity back then! How could so much break down in just two short years?

    Next was…

    He let out an agonized hiss. May the traitor…rest in peace.

    A report by one Precentor Helena Wayridge, assigning him to her own staff within the Hall of Public Relations and Claims Adjustment. Then… she seemed to have started him off fairly heavy there. They trusted him with the initial punctuation review of the negotiation of the installation of an HPG station on the planet of Sterope, in the Taurian Concordat.

    If anything, the next item in the list was a massive step down. Granted, he was actually involved in the negotiations - he took the minutes down - but… it was a land purchase in the agrarian regions of the Pacific Northwest. The only notable thing about it was that they weren't there as witnesses to a transaction between the layfolk, but rather one between the lay owners of the land and the Blessed Order itself.

    Was this really relevant? Should he read it? His sense of reason told him 'no', but his gut and his pounding heart told him… yes.

    Right off the bat, he felt like he was going insane as he read the report. The Precentor had started off in a no-nonsense fashion, declaring that they'd secured a low purchase price in the mere single digit billions of C-Bills. What kind of joke was that? It was a broad stretch of decent farmland, populated by horses and resident workers. It wasn't worth that.

    Oh. Oh. The next paragraph made it much clearer, in a way he seemed to recall…some of. There were remarkably pristine ruins in the region, untouched over the centuries due to fears of unexploded ordnance. This lent a notable possibility of lostech to be found in the ruins. What seemed less familiar to his faded recall, though, but entirely logical, though, was the long section discussing the probability that, given the close proximity to the Olympic Mountains, that one or more Castles Brian would be accessible from the region. Which…made it feel like a bit of a steal, more than anything. It also introduced the rather concerning question of… had Precentor Wayridge been ROM?

    …It would explain how he'd transferred to ROM so soon after that posting. If not for the fact that she was a goddamned Leaguer double agent and had no reason to recommend a suitable subordinate for such a sensitive role! Had she thought he would side with her in the future?

    Just as he was about to close the report in disgust, he saw something that shot down his neurons like fire through a gas main and sent his heart into a frenzy. The seller's name… was John O'Reilly. From the attached photo, he was some kind of big fucking giant. From the summary attached, he was looking to liquidate his inheritance and get off of Terra in a massive hurry.

    …That was it! The pirate's name he'd heard back on Illyria. It was…Johan O'Reilly, he was pretty sure. But he… well, by memory, at least, he was a weedy little cretin in the photos he'd seen, escorted by bodyguards in…blue, was it? Couldn't be the same person. Neat coincidence, though.

    Well, that was a wash. With a hearty sigh he wrote it all down in his second notepad, of course, planning to make the claim that he'd been investigating some manner of lead that had turned out to be no good in the end when the precentor.

    …he was interested now, though. He and this John O'Reilly had some relevant history together, and he was already in the archive, so…

    Given that the man and his wife had emigrated from Terra with several billion in personal fortunes, they should have had a pretty noteworthy, well documented life. Maybe he'd read a little bit about what happened in the next few years, see if that stirred anything into his heart like seeing the name had.

    So, same trick as before. Format the request around the man's tracking number, search, end up on the most recent pa-

    There was only one page. Not even a full page.

    This couple, who'd gotten onto their radar by leaving the throneworld with more money than some Spheroid nobles would ever see in one place, ceased to be recorded within just a few years of the sale. Less than fifty tracked transactions. What the actual fuck?

    Mostly…it was bank statements. But even those could be useful for piecing together the story. Taking everything together… they'd been caught at the port a few minutes after their meeting with him and the Precentor had ended, trying to smuggle computers and the like bought on credit out. They'd paid the fine. They'd taken a luxury ride on…the Xanadu operated by Carnival Cruise Lines, of all ships, that ended on New Kyoto.

    While there, they spent most of their money buying a metric crapton of outdated industrial equipment, indicating the intention to engage in commercial activities on the redeveloping planet of Caledonia upon delivery. The place of delivery was set for Solaris VII, where they were going to wait until ready to make the final move. Seemed like a dumb choice, for a couple with two small children with them, but what the hell did he know? Maybe that was what got them?

    Next major transaction… they hired an entire mercenary regiment as 'bodyguards' on an uncertain term length. The Roy G. Birds, who had to have the worst name he'd ever seen, a combined arms force with mechs, tanks, infantry, aerospace units, and their own fucking jumpships? What kind of noveau riche conspicuous consumption shit was that? Maybe the term length of the contract was the explanation - they wanted security for the potential feudal domain they were so clearly eyeballing on Caledonia. It'd explain why around the same time, they were buying up so many debt contracts for industrial workers, teachers, and the like. Needed skilled labor, or something.

    When he reached the bottom of that report, lightning struck the depths of his mind again, setting his brain on fire. The available photo for the Roy G. Birds showed a face and uniform he was certain - absolutely certain - he was familiar with. It was one of the members of Johann O'Reilly's pirate bodyguard!

    The rest of the record on John was extremely abortive. Delivery of the last shipment of his tooling was confirmed, and then… his bank account was drained and he dropped off the map entirely.

    When that went down in his notes, he underlined it five times and circled it thrice. What the hell was going on there? In theory, he should have been incredibly safe, even on Solaris. Had he made a run for it, for some reason? That didn't make much sense. His plans up to that point had been extremely solid - much smarter than most people who happened upon sudden riches.

    There was technically the possibility that they knew something he didn't. The laughable chance that these had been some once in a century people of mystery and genius who'd gone out of their way to pull one over on Comstar - despite not even knowing that that was a thing anyone needed to do, because last he checked people on Terra didn't exactly fear their overlords! But…maybe, just maybe, they were paranoid motherfuckers. Maybe they'd found something fancy in the ruins in the area, and decided to pull some absurd disappearing act to use it. No way it was a Castle Brian, though. They'd have no way to get in.

    …A quick search of curiosity found that there had, in fact, been a Castle Brian discovered in the area, but that upon attempting access the team assigned to breach it had activated anti-tampering measures suspected to have slagged the whole base. Yeah, no way these people could have gotten into that.

    So there was technically the possibility that this was all some planned disappearing act, but he only underlined that once in his notes. The idea was absurd.

    The much more likely connection, he figured, was that this 'Johann O'Reilly' and the Roy G. Birds were the primary players in the story. Maybe he was a thug with a similar name who decided to play silly buggers with the banking system and set himself up as a pirate. Maybe he was LIC, trying to found a long-term operation against the Free Worlds League at the expense of some recent immigrants. Maybe they were all just pirates from the beginning.

    Another search was structured in a hurry, leaving Mark to find swiftly that the bodyguard contract was the last one the Birds had ever signed. Despite that fact, their presence - and their purchasing of large quantities of supplies and spare parts - had been reported on worlds all throughout the Free Worlds League over the next few years. They couldn't possibly be SAFE, could they? No…their course was very clearly headed towards the periphery, right near Illyria.

    So that led to the much more likely conclusion - there'd been some premeditated plot by these people to kill their employers and steal their fortune alongside some guy called Johann O'Reilly who needed to be investigated to hell and back. Then, they'd fled down rimward to get out of the eyes of the law before their fraud could be tracked down by anyone who cared.

    Then they founded a bandit kingdom that had, perhaps, caught word of his snooping around them. It would have been not to long after Lothian came under attack by pirates, as well. Maybe they'd bought the nav data to cover for their own activities, even?

    That was the story he'd tell the Precentor when he got here. He circled it six times in his notes.

    Honestly, this all made him feel something. A mix of professional curiosity, and a wash of rage and thirst for personal revenge. It made him feel sick. It made him want to go back. It made him want to cry.

    He wanted to get to the bottom of these crackpot theories and understand why his life was the way it was. Why he was this kind of creature.

    "Mars, you smarmy jackass, I came like you said. Now spill the goddamned report already!"

    And depending on how his focus group took it, he just might get to, someday!

    --------

    And here it is, the big reveal at the end of this contrived overlong arc that's taken up like a fifth of the fic.

    Hope it's not too dumb for anyone.

    A crude, rudimentary character listing up to the current year will go up not long after this, but it won't be...great.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Character Listing (2939) (Warning: Ugly, low quality, probably incomplete)
  • Informational
    • Characters (As of 3039) (List May Be Incomplete)

    House O'Reilly-Cameron/Cameron-Amaris/Clayton

    John O'Reilly(Amaris)/Jack Cameron (Born: ): The original viewpoint character. Scion and heir of a Terran landlord with a love of horse breeding and a dark secret. The multiple-greats grandson of Stefan Amaris. Discovered the Invisible Palace by chance, and with that the whole adventure began. A co-founder of the Marian Union and Prime Lector of the Promethean Order. Suffers from gigantism.

    Amelia Cameron/Amelie Clayton: The third character to ever speak. Daughter of Richard Cameron and longtime icicle, she waited throughout the long centuries in a stasis pod of the Invisible Palace for someone - anyone - to come. A co-founder of the Marian Union and Dominisa of the Promethean Order. Blind in one eye since birth.

    Marie Clayton: Firstborn of the Clayton children and twin to James. Has repeatedly rejected the role of being Amelia's heiress. Long history of failed relationships which defies proper explanation. Holds the rank of Philosopher in the Promethean Order. Currently handling logistics in a minor posting on Lothario. 'Aunt Marie' to the O'Reilly bunch.

    James Clayton: Secondborn of the Clayton children and twin to Marie. Also rejects the possibility of inheriting. Has had relatively few, long-lasting relationships. Holds the rank of Philosopher in the Promethean Order. Teaches nuclear engineering the University of Kallipolis.

    Alan Clayton: Thirdborn of the Clayton children. Named in honor of Alan Marinkovich, the still living LAM-warrior who is currently colonel of the Roy G. Birds. Studying public administration. Considered the most likely to inherit the throne. Friend of Helena O'Reilly.

    Paul Clayton: Second to youngest Clayton child.

    Vera Clayton II: Youngest Clayton child. Named for her adoptive grandmother.

    House O'Reilly (Periphery)

    Johann O'Reilly: Former periphery rogue, adventurer, and malcontent extraordinaire. Consul of the Militia and Senate of the Marian Union. Arrived on Alphard as a treasure hunter seeking to make his fortune. Once thought himself to be something like a shitty father figure to Alexandria, but ended up marrying her instead, on her prompting. Canon character.

    Alexandria "Starlet" 'Grunewald'/Alexandria O'Reilly: Daughter of Johann O'Reilly's childhood sweetheart. Tagged along with Johann for over a decade after he killed her father out of gratitude and romantic interest. Retired mechwarrior who last piloted a Shadow Hawk. Informally holds power as the true second in command of the militia.

    Helena O'Reilly: Eldest of the O'Reilly children. Nicknamed Ellie. Friend to Alan Clayton. Knows no mercy.

    Gaius O'Reilly: Joint second of the O'Reilly children. Knows no mercy.

    Petra O'Reilly Joint second of the O'Reilly children. Has the most similar interests to Johann in a family that otherwise mostly leans towards Alexandria. Knows no mercy.

    Lynn O'Reilly: Fourth of the O'Reilly children. Too young to make meaningful statements about when last shown.

    Erica O'Reilly: Fifth of the O'Reilly children. Too young to make meaningful statements about when last shown.

    Chloe O'Reilly: Fourth of the O'Reilly children. Marie Clayton's favorite 'niece'.

    Other Key Players

    Mark Mars/Mark Papadopoulos: Precentor within the organizational structure of ROM, formerly an ordinary Comstar acolyte who was involved in the emigration proceedings of John and Amy. Spent over a decade pretending to do his job while living out the peaceful life of an inoffensive periphery merchant after being forced to kill his beloved, but traitorous, mentor shortly after his transfer to ROM. Suspects something fishy related to the main couple to be afoot in the rimward periphery.

    Comic Relief?

    Sven Allejandro de la Vega: Down on his luck former factory worker turned delivery driver turned errand boy from Lothian. Currently employed by the Promethean Order and trapped in a hellish existence comparable to being the main guy of Uzaki-chan or Nagatoro-san. Holds views of modesty and proprietary which are typical of his society.

    Other Living Characters

    Chuck: Medical professional who had a foundational impact on John and Amelia's relationship and later informed them of the critical condition of John's father.

    Rosie Harlowe: Gynecologist and surrogate mother figure to Amy. Disapproved of what she saw as John being a lazy deadbeat due to lack of context. Prays for the Claytons every day.

    Devin Pittock: Organizer of the Farmer's Market John and Amelia used to attend.

    Rosenthal: A butler in the service of the terran O'Reilly family.

    Bryce von Helsing: A beleaguered customs official working for Comstar.

    Graf Willibald von Nishijin: Local noble and industrialist on New Kyoton.

    Alan Marinkovich: Colonel of the Roy G. Birds. Pilots a Phoenix Hawk LAM. Honorary uncle to the Clayton children.

    Marcus Marinkovich: Infantry commander within the Roy G. Birds. Enjoys verbally sparring with the (periphery) O'Reillys

    Helena Marinkovich: Aerospace commander within the Roy G. Birds.

    Karl Fritz Johansen: Port Commissioner for Illyria. Wildly corrupt and wildly profitable, he judges those he considers to be pirates with extreme contempt but sees no issue with his own doing business with them on the side.

    Mark Cuchaio: A simple factory foreman from Solaris who now guides the operations of a machine tool plant on Alphard.

    Friedrich, Karl, and Selma: Mechwarriors of the Marian militia and former subordinates to Alexandria.

    Buck Hill: Unrated former mercenary under the employ of Johann O'Reilly and ex-gigolo.

    Pietro: Daytime bartender in the city of Kallipolis.

    Hasdrubal Zakarian: Proprietor of the largest Jumpship parts emporium on the planet of Illyria, master of the espresso machine, and chess enthusiast.

    Julius: Nonreligious Lothianite receptionist of Marie's branch of the Promethean Order.

    Valentina de la Vega: Lothianite schoolteacher working with the Promethean Order and protective but teasing sister to Sven.

    Evangeline Logan: Current Grand Mistress of the Lothian League. Highly doubtful about the future of her nation.

    Colonel McDougal: Regimental commander within the Marian Militia, on covert deployment to the Lothian League under the guise of a mercenary.

    Major Hawk: Col. McDougal's XO.

    Lauren Logan: Heiress to the seat of Grand Mistress. Tries to look on the bright side of life.

    The fine folks of the 8th Orloff, heroes of the free worlds league: The terror of pirates wherever they exist, saviors of Mark Mars. Compassionate people when you get past their first instinct to burn everything. Strongly opinionated about fast food.

    Ben: A long suffering bartender with Carnival Cruise Lines.

    Elise: James Clayton's fiancee.

    Tiresias Colt: An acolyte Mark Mars derives some slight amount of amusement from unnerving.

    Precentor Aldon: Mark Mars' direct superior, has little patience for the bullshit of his subordinate. Currently processing.

    The Fallen

    Jonathan Cameron: Former First Lord of the Star League and mastermind behind the Invisible Palace. Considered the Star League an inherently unstable system that would inevitably destroy more than it ever created. Canon character, interpreted differently.

    Vera Clayton I: A member of the Royal Black Watch who was selected as one of Amelia Cameron's bodyguards and minders while she was to be undergoing surgery on her bad eye. The sole member of the Watch to make it into the Palace with Amelia. Raised the girl as her own daughter for around eight years before dying of cancer.

    Helena Grunewald/ Helena ???: Mother of Alexandria. Sold into slavery by her mechwarrior husband along with others in exchange for pirates he really should have been fighting leaving then and there.

    Mr. Sparkes: Mercenary hired as John's jailkeeper by his father. Died as he lived - playing with electrons.

    Amos Furlough O'Reilly: Father to John O'Reilly. Loyal to his extended family's survival above virtually all else. Horrible father.

    SHANDRA: Central AI of the Invisible Palace. Less a person and more a very advanced chatbot tied into the systems of the greatest survival bunker in history.

    Helena Wayridge: Former comstar precentor and hostile intelligence agent affiliated with SAFE. Mentor to Mark Mars who considered him something like the idiot little brother she never had. Died at the hands of the former understudy she loved so dearly when she hesitated to shoot back on the night of her grand heist.

    Richard Marinkovich: Father to the current top brass of the Roy G. Birds.

    Charlie: An acolyte of Comstar who acted, in theory, as Mark's subordinate, but in practice as his best friend and second in command, during his years of pretending to just be a merchant. Executed by pirates for his defiance to the last breath.

    Leon Simba Arslan, the Lion of Gibraltar: A provincial merchant king from the Free Worlds League. Built the majority of his fortune himself, with a considerable acceleration after Mark 'Papadopoulos' came onboard. Considered the man his best shot at an heir. Died of suffocation.
     
  • Informational
    • Chapter 20 (January 2940 - February 2940)
  • Threadmarks
    • ---
    Scene 1
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    Green Geese Wing Achilles Class Dropship Ventura, Niops System
    Niops Association, Antispinward Periphery
    January 2940

    Alan nursed his forehead as he floated in through the open door of the bridge, glancing to each of his assembled siblings in turn before braking his movement on the back of his chair. "Good god, it wasn't a dream, was it?"

    In all the years since they'd first signed that damned contract with the O'Reillys on Solaris VII, through the decades of serving as their bodyguards, their private security for building a better world, and their personal band of tomb raiders unearthing the hidden wonders of the Star League wherever in the periphery the maps pointed, the mechwarrior and his kin in the command of the Roy G. Birds Regiment had never dealt with a situation quite as complicated as this one, so he'd been hoping he imagined all of it.

    Arching his back in zero-g, Marcus rolled under his half-done harness to gaze at his brother. "They've been demanding that we bring you back on the line for the past hour, Alan. They're very stubborn about that. Seems like they're not likely to listen to anyone but the big cheese."

    "Well, they can bloody well wait for that, small mercy it is that they aren't demanding we bring out Jack or Amy to talk with 'em." the airmech warrior huffed, pulling himself around the seat and strapping back in. "Hel', they launched anything into orbit since I had a lie down? Or are we still floating alone up here in the black?"

    "Oh, sure, they've launched loads of crap up." Helena Marinkovich quipped, making a show of resting her face on her hand despite the fact that such a gesture was complete nonsense in an environment of weightlessness. "What feels like twenty million unmanned, massless, shapeless assault dropships targeted at my blood pressure. These people complain more than Marco did when he was five. The lack of comms discipline really tells you they've been out of touch for a few centuries now."

    The colonel sighed, covering his face once he was buckled in. This system was supposed to be deserted. It'd had a peak population measured in the low thousands at the time of last recording. It was a research station built to study a star that had gotten a little funny and was dying untold billions of years ahead of schedule. They were supposed to be digging up the ruins, not floating in orbit of a planet with an estimated population in the millions trading witticisms with a rotation of men in elaborate coats.

    Actually, he mused, that was a good question to ask. "Do we know how this entire colony business got here yet?"

    "Captain Gersham claimed to have heard Chinese in the background at one point, before he stood down for some sack time." his sister replied, glancing back towards the readings on her console, squinting at it a bit. Clearly, the switch from fighter pilot to commodore was still messing with her sense of equilibrium a bit. "So the running theory is, they took an infusion of Capellan refugees before the research station would've died out. Or, well, could be after, but I don't think a bunch of refugees would have managed to stand down the defenses or access the library, when faced with an installation SLIC was trying to keep secret. Both of which are kind of necessary for them to have built their colony directly on top of our fucking target."

    "Great. Awesome. Fabulous." Alan spat, covering his face again. "For once, I can actually see the point in dragging along some of the diplomatic corps for one of these missions. Shame Johann doesn't have anyone read in high enough to get to know about this place."

    "Is the consul read in high enough to know about this place?" Marcus asked, shooting a dubious look over. "As I understand it, the bosses and him have come to an agreement where they tell him whatever he needs to know, but play the rest close to their chests. Just as a matter of securing against any possible leaks in the organization."

    Holding a pair of headphones up to one ear, Helena snorted. "I don't think these loons would be up for talking with old O'Reilly even if he was right beside us. They've spent the past hour raving about how your rank proves that only you have the learning and wisdom to understand the importance of their demands."

    Gesturing for the headphones, Alan sighed. "Well, let's not tell them that I'm the only one in this room without a master's degree then."

    "Yeah, I'd really rather not be the one they expect to talk to them." Marcus replied, throwing his arms up. "A degree in military history really ain't much for diplomacy, and besides which, I'm quite happy to leave that dirty work to you."

    Alan raised a hand for silence as he listened to the unworn headphones.

    "- your intentions for our fair world. Your being here imperils social harmony, frightens the laborers, and disrupts shipping. If you are still listening, then either state your demands, land and be picked to pieces by the might of our militia, or leave. Repeat - interlopers from beyond the void-"

    "Oh, great." he snorted as he set down the headpiece. "I think they've put it on repeat, sis. Do they do that often?"

    "Whenever one of their bigwigs needs to go to the bathroom." she replied, before shrugging. "Or something. I don't actually know that's what they're doing, but it'd make the most sense."

    "Fabulous. How long's that take?" he asked, massaging the shallow wrinkles that were forming on his forehead in recent years. "Because I'm not listening to that shit the entire time."

    "Yeah, don't." she replied, leaning back. "Take a nap or something, and see if they're back when you wake up."

    "I literally just woke up!" Alan huffed, staring down his sister. "If you want a nap yourself, though, go take one yourself."

    "Nnghh." Helena grunted, popping her fingers out in front of her body. "Can't. Not until the captain wakes up, at least. You lucky bitches don't actually play any critical role in the operations of the ship, you can sleep whenever you want. You don't understand my problems."

    "Says the healthy mother of two to the eunuch and the insomniac." Marcus cut in with a quip, before glancing to Alan. "So, you got any particular ideas as to what we should be doing here, or are we just going to stay parked and stay a nuisance for a while longer?"

    "Do we have intel on what that militia they're rambling about is?" the colonel asked, after a pause, glancing at the main viewscreen and watching the sparkling lights of the megacity below fly by far underneath them as their ship circled the globe of Niops VII over and over.

    Helena shot back up to the limits of her harness in an instant. "Jesus, Alan, you're not thinking of going through with the retrieval mission even knowing the destination is in the center of a city, are you?"

    "Hell no!" Alan spat back, his face sheet white and aghast. "No, we're not doing a damn thing here, let alone that pirate shit. Even Johann wouldn't have considered that kind of thing. I'm asking because that's the sort of intel we're going to need to report to the folks back home when we RTB. It's relevant information for the movers and shakers. We've been family for how many decades now, sis? You must really be wiped out if you're taking things I'm saying that kind of way."

    She clicked her tongue. "Point. I'll be honest, I've had my people looking, but we haven't seen anything resembling a military base yet. That's not to say it isn't there, or that they haven't built it underground, or anything like that, but we haven't seen any signs of tanks, battlemechs, or, as we've previously discussed, fighters. Which makes sense, because with just this kind of population you wouldn't exactly expect to see a viable supply chain for that kind of industry. My bet is, if they've got any military plan at all, it's guerilla warfare focused on taking out enemy pilots, maybe some antimech weaponry to pass around. Though with a League era database in hand, it could be some damn good infantry kit. You really think John and Amy are going to be interested in their military, though?"

    "I don't care if John or Amy are interested in their military, because as much as we report to the Promethean Order, we all know their stance on respecting the constitution of the Union." Alan replied, unbuckling from his seat and floating up. "Which is that we play by the books whenever even remotely viable, to secure trust in the institutions of government. We - those of us here - have absolutely no lawful place conducting foreign policy without the patrician's say-so, especially without being charged with the task by a philosopher-plebeian coalition, but when our bosses share this intel with the senate you can damn well bet that those folks will care what the military status quo is. Saying something like 'oops, our private security accidentally made first contact with a technologically advanced nation' and not explaining in detail what the situation actually is will not smooth over the next several months of heated debate."

    "Where are you going now? You literally just got here." Marcus asked, watching his brother float off.

    "Breakfast. I came straight here and it was an absolute mistake." Alan replied. "When the two of you get relieved from your watch, I'd be grateful if you dropped by for a bit to talk it over with me."

    "I'm not technically on watch." his brother replied, casting his hands outwards. "It isn't like the Bramblings have any formal role in the command hierarchy of the Geese. Why don't I come with you?"

    Alan huffed, glancing back as he floated to the doorway. "Because if we leave Helena without supervision from at least one person who's not under her command right now, she's going to fall asleep. No offense, you lot."

    The rest of the bridge crew glanced over to him briefly before shrugging and returning to gazing at their consoles.

    - -

    Alan sucked at the spout of a packet of applesauce slowly as his siblings approached. "Well, that was fast of you. Was the captain already on his way or something?"

    "You could say that." Marcus snickered, pulling himself down to the small dining table in the process.

    Helena snorted. "Yeah… you could say that."

    Alan blinked twice, before slapping his forehead. "You have no idea how glad I am that it's not going to be us who take point on any fighting that actually happens in this system. With you two graduating to piloting desks and my being old and crusty, I'm honestly wondering if we shouldn't be backing off entirely and letting the younger generation finish stepping in - pilot or no pilot for my 'mech."

    "Well that's awfully heavy of you." Helena chirped, giving him an amused look. "Honestly, though, I don't know what you want me to say. It's a LAM. Your best bet would be to tell Marco to just treat it as a normal mech, with how that boy flies. Either that, or we start cross-training everyone just in the hopes that someone has the knack for it."

    "God, why?" Alan gagged.

    "So you had something you wanted to talk about, Alan?" Marcus interjected, trying to recenter the conversation on its presumed point.

    Alan blinked a few times, taking another gulp of his breakfast. "Right. So the thought occurs to me, but what do we actually know about the government here? They're clearly obsessed with educational qualifications, and they mentioned laborers in their message. This some kind of technocracy?"

    "Probably?" Helena asked as much as stated. "It does seem like they would be. Which raises some interesting questions - in the event that there's an annexation, whether through diplomacy or through a declaration of war and a test run of the procedures for convening an expeditionary army, how will the Promethean Order manage when it comes to absorbing another, possibly more dictatorial, technocracy?"

    Alan narrowed his eyebrows in protest. "Now you're the one getting too heavy. I'm eating breakfast over here."

    ---
    Scene 2
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    Kallipolis, Alphard
    Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
    February 2940

    Alan the younger, heir presumptive to the Promethean Order, yawned and covered his mouth as he rounded the corner in the dark halls of the mansion. If there was one thing that his roughly eighteen years of life on this planet had taught him, it was that regardless of your status, regardless of how much you knew, regardless of how tired you felt, there were some nights when you needed to find something else to do until you were sufficiently 'done' to get back in bed and pass out.

    Or maybe it was that the more you knew, the higher you sat, the more you spent yourself, the harder it was for you to sleep? He saw from the light spilling through the cracks in a door that someone was awake in here, and he was fairly sure James had no plans of returning from his date before the morning.

    Continuing on with that process of elimination, he was quick to narrow down that it had to be one of his parents. The young ones probably wouldn't range so far from their rooms even if they did decide to get up to some late night roaming, and even if they'd gotten this far they probably couldn't open the heavy doors of the lounge in front of him without enlisting the help of some staff members who were very pointedly ignoring the procedurally correct response to small children sneaking out of bed.

    Well, it could technically have been a member of the staff, he reminded himself, as he drew nearer to the door and put his ear against it. However, this was far from the usual hour for any sort of cleaning or other work, so they ought to have been asleep as well.

    As he stilled his breathing, he made out two voices in there, both his mother and father, though the words they were speaking were indistinct by the time they reached him. He wondered just what it was that had kept his father awake - and it must, indeed, have been John who'd failed to fall asleep, because he had strong reason to believe that there weren't enough alarm clocks in the world to wake the mountain of a man. If Amelia had been the first to start sleep walking, there would be no conversation.

    Even so, did he really want to barge in? He had no idea what the context was - what'd kept them up, what they were talking about, what they were doing, even - he wrinkled his nose - how they were dressed. It was within reason that walking into that room would just give him further cause to suffer from insomnia as the reward for his curiosity and what desire to share his thoughts dwelled within him. However perfect it would have been to get his concerns off his chest now, when they could just be passed off as sleep talk and forgotten by morning, the young man had no special desire to intrude so egregiously on what was, by all accounts, a private moment.

    Though, well, if they'd wanted a private moment there were places to have it much closer to their quarters than this, that still would have been well enough soundproofed to keep from waking others. Rooms that they could have locked if they wanted to ensure their privacy. Pulling his head back from the door, he took a deep breath before knocking twice against the old wood.

    The response was immediate, the sofas in the room creaking loudly as bodies shifted. "Is that you, Alan?" John's voice called out, breaking into a yawn at the end of the slow-spoken question.

    "Yeah, dad." he replied, holding his hand to his chest as he waited.

    "Couldn't sleep either, huh?" the man called back, seeming a bit amused by his tone. "Well, your mother and I are both decent, if you need someplace to sit for awhile."

    Alan dared not speculate as to whether they had been decent before he knocked. He didn't need to know whether or not his caution was necessary. With a sigh, he pushed the door open and stepped in, pulling it shut behind him after a moment's thought.

    His parents, seated on one of the two sofas of what was one of the family's favorite lounging rooms, were dressed in fluffy pink bathrobes. He had the vague impression that they'd been birthday gifts or something in one year or another, but he had no idea who'd gotten them for the pair. "I'm not interrupting something, am I?"

    Raising her left hand, his mother waved him over in a lazy fashion. "Nothing much, dear. Come on, have a seat. Anything in particular keeping you up tonight? Not a bad dream, I should think. Or is this the latest chapter in the saga of the angry mimes?"

    Alan choked as he reached the sofa opposite his parents, his cheeks heating up. "Mom! The last time I had one of those stupid dreams, I was twelve!"

    "Nothing weird about having a dream again for the first time in a long time." John shot back, wrapping his arm gently around Amy. "I had nightmares about the kind of food your mother grew up eating until I was twenty, for example."

    "Bullshit you did." Amy hissed back, playfully nudging his side. "If something you saw one time scarred you that much, how come you've never woken up over it?"

    "Oh, but I have. Always after eight to ten hours of sleep, though." Alan's father replied, grinning at her. "As nightmares go, there are much worse ones I could be having in the morning, though, so I sort of miss having that one. It was a good, simple fear to have. Now, Alan, I'd like to second Amy's question - is something the matter tonight? As ages go, eighteen is a pretty typical one for insomnia in my books, but there's usually a reason for it."

    "...What was it for you when you were eighteen?" Alan asked, breaking a rule other families might have held as absolute and answering a question with a question.

    "Oof." Amy squeaked, covering her face. "When we were eighteen? Well… you know, worrying about becoming parents, grappling with the questions and logistics of interstellar nation building. Not really normal eighteen year old stuff, I don't think, but we shared a few sleepless nights to that effect when we were younger and more energetic. Aside from that, we usually got our sleep in the normal quantities."

    "Huh." Alan uttered, drawing his knees up to his chest as he thought in the dim light of the room. Certainly, he doubted most young adults had those specific concerns, but for the couple who'd gone on to found their own little hermit kingdom, it made sense that they started thinking about it early. Conveniently, his own concerns were similarly rooted. "Well, in my case it's… I don't feel ready, you know? If I had to take over tomorrow, I feel like I wouldn't know the first thing about running the Order or protocol within the Academy. And that thought kept me awake, because, well… the thought of seeing dad in pain from his joints not too long ago, that stuck in my head something fierce. It's scary."

    Amy sighed, rising from her seat and crossing around the couch to give her son a hug. "It's natural to be scared about that sort of thing. I was scared too when it happened, but look at him now - he's moving around just fine again. If we keep a little more on the ball, there won't be any more consequences from his gigantism. But that's not what you're specifically worried about, is it? You're worried about the general question, "What if they were just suddenly gone, and I had to fill their shoes?" instead. I won't say we can't possibly die any time soon, but even in the remote possibility that we did, you wouldn't be the one on the hook to take my seat. You'd need to finish your degree first. Until then, it'd go to Marie or James, no matter how much they'd complain about it."

    John followed along with the motion, turning it into a big group hug a few moments after Amy fell silent. "Just as much so, there's nothing we could do to make it so you wouldn't miss us when we were gone, except perhaps be so awful that you're glad to see us go, but at the very least we could try to make it so you don't miss us while we're still around. And if you really, truly do want to inherit the funny hat, the big chair, and the important title? We can work on preparing you for that. You're ready to make that choice - you're technically an adult, just like we were when we made our own ridiculous plunge into the big leagues. But let's put aside the grim talk of death and plan on an abdication instead - your mother may live in the funny hat, but she's not going to die in it. We've got a mutual agreement to live forever, don't you know?"

    Feeling a bit overly warm in the hug, Alan hoped-but-didn't-hope that they'd pull back soon. "...I think I'd like that."

    "Right then." Amy chirped. "Who's thirsty?"

    - -

    Alan settled back down with a mug of warm milk pressed between his hands, gazing down into the steamy updraft from the white fluid as he sat in silence.

    "So, here's a topical example of the sort of question that goes beyond the routine and rote these days." Amy announced, taking a sip of her own drink. "You've sent the Birds–your own godfather and namesake among them–out to scout out a promising but low priority potential Star League cache - an old self sufficient research station put in place to study the anomalous lifespan of the red dwarf called Niops. By all accounts, the population of researchers on base shouldn't have been able to reproduce itself across the centuries in that way. There weren't enough of them to make a good, viable population or grow to any meaningful degree. You were expecting that your folks would find some usable tools and bring those back. Instead they bring you the curveball that there are millions of people there, most of them descendants of Capellan refugees, living under what's seemingly an oppressive system of industrial serfdom perpetrated by the descendants of the researchers. What on earth are you supposed to do, under that circumstance?"

    "...I mean, if I were the Dominus?" Alan replied slowly, tightening his grip. "It wouldn't really be my place to do anything about that, would it? I could pass the information along to the senate and let them sort it out, and if their solution was no good then I could try to convince the Academy and Tribunal to override them on it, but otherwise… it's out of my wheelhouse, isn't it?"

    "Right." Amy responded calmly, clicking her tongue as she thought about it. "Which is why that's what I'm doing right now. I can only hope Johann and his lot come up with something intelligent and manageable under these circumstances. Something that's manageable at the same time as seeing to the Lothian situation, as well. It's the nature of the government we created that we can stumble onto these messes, but we can't make all the calls about them - shouldn't make all the calls about them."

    "...What do you want to do, though?" Alan asked, taking a sip of his drink.

    John was the one to answer that question. "Well, first thing, if we confirmed they were as bad as we're thinking, would be to try a diplomatic solution. See if their current government could be convinced to accept annexation and limitations on its traditional powers in exchange for protection, however much work it'd take to connect them up with the rest of the union. See if they can be prompted to show any sense of loyalty to the Cameron name, if that doesn't work. If that still doesn't work? See if they can be convinced it's better to join up quietly and retain some power than to be deposed entirely in favor of their subjects - that was the most successful move here on Alphard, back when you were still a little one. If that didn't work… we'd have to start thinking about how we could possibly pull off that sort of interstellar war."

    "My thinking is that the easiest way would be to arm the populace via paradrops after an extended propaganda campaign, if they really are being oppressed." Amy offered, nestling against her husband. "It'd save the massive logistical burden of shipping in an army that can beat down whatever militia they actually have there, or at least create a beachhead. Though it's also possible that it could come back to bite us."

    "...Huh." Alan muttered. "You've…put some thought into this?"

    "Honey, we toppled one technocratic empire to build this country, and other territorial powers besides." Amy snorted, her voice nevertheless betraying a bit of discomfort. "There's a butcher's bill to nation building on the one hand, and then there's the good you manage to do for people throughout the process in the other, and weighing them against each-other is something you've only got to do for the rest of your life."

    "...What if it turned out, through the diplomacy and all further investigation, that they weren't oppressive?" Alan asked.

    "...Complicated question." John replied. "If it turned out they're good to their people, that would open up the possibility that they might make a decent ally or at least associate without any annexation. But if they weren't open to anything like that - if we couldn't get access to their tooling through diplomacy, it might still come down to war. At the end of the day, every bit of Star League era tooling we can get access to shaves some time off of a road to national industrial viability we originally figured was going to take over a century. With access to whatever industries Niops has built up, and their educated population, who knows? We might even make it to building jumpships in our lifetime. It's hard to pass up that possibility, even if you know it's wrong what you're doing."

    "But of course," Alan's mother added. "None of this discussion matters until the Senate has come to a decision on the topic for us to dispute or accept."

    ---
    Scene 3
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    Castle O'Reilly, Alphard
    Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
    February 2940

    As soon as the door closed, leaving the two alone in the room, John turned towards Johann with an awkward smile. "Thank you for having us over on such short notice."

    The other man snorted as he spun, a touch of humor in his dry, crackling voice. "Crawl up your own ass, you shitty brat. Just because you sent over the funny news before you dropped in for a visit about it doesn't mean you're failing at hospitality any less than I did, you know? Now, why are you haunting me in particular right now? There's got to be something more to it if we're still talking."

    "As I understand it, you've also had some joint reconstruction done recently?" John asked, settling down into a seat before the crackling fire that only just fit him.

    "Yeah?" O'Reilly acknowledged, settling into the other with a bemused look on his face. "What's it to you, Jack? Does it grind your gears to learn that you, at fifty, need the same delicate handling as a man nearing his seventies? As a man who ruined his body in every conceivable way before you ever met him? Are you finally souring on being a big motherfucker?"

    John reached out and grabbed the fire poker, carefully turning a log to limit the sparks it threw. "I came pre-soured, if you can believe that. It was never the size of me that helped me out when it mattered, it was my stamina, something that being a big motherfucker only hurt. Square cube law and all of that. Raw animal might doesn't amount to much in our era - maybe a few thousand years ago, I would have been the who's who."

    "You're the closest thing to a king, genius." Johann huffed. "I'm fairly sure you count as the who's who even now."

    "No, nowadays I'm pretty sure I qualify as an easy target. People my size aren't even considered as soldiers, you know? We don't fit into any cockpit or infantry compartment in the world, we break easily, you can see us from a mile away. It's only natural that I went into government work - what else is there?" John shot back. "And by the way, I'm not even forty eight yet, so check your math a little?"

    "Oh, right." Johann sniffed. "You're barely older than I was when we met. How's that feeling for you, by the way?"

    John cracked a wide grin. "Nowhere near as disappointing as the fact that you didn't suddenly age backwards by forty years so I could be the one calling you a shitty brat for once."

    Johann stared for awhile, and John wasn't sure if he was just stuck parsing the shitty joke or if there was something else going on in the Consul's head then and there. Maybe he was just having fun giving a long, dubious stare and he hadn't even thought about what he was doing it for!

    With a sigh, Johann rose slowly back out of his chair and walked over to the mini fridge. "If we're seriously just going to be shooting the shit in front of a fireplace, I'm grabbing a drink before I boil down to a pile of stiff leather."

    "By all means, go ahead. I've come here to talk about anything and everything other than the latest ridiculous demands of Balaskas' true believers or whatever shit you've got going on in your house of cards." The giant's gaze turned to track him, and moments after the fridge opened the silence broke again. "What's on the menu?"

    "Very cold water, nothing like that shitshow of a drinking session you put on when we were just getting to know each-other."

    Well," John smiled. "That just happens to be my favorite."

    "I don't recall offering any." Johann muttered as he grabbed a second cup to pair with the bottle he'd retrieved. "But if you insist. Sadly, I don't have anything in your size to drink from - all the flowerpots here have holes in the bottoms. But you know all about flowerpots, don't you Mr. gardener? Or have you forgotten all about that in the past few decades."

    John accepted his glass calmly when Johann returned. "No, but apparently you've forgotten that I used a greenhouse instead. Truthfully, I was never so much of a gardener, per se. I was a kid - on Terra - I grew up on a ranch. Naturally, when Amy and I struck out on our own, we moonlit as farmers for a while - all plants, no animals. I've never met a horse I liked. Maybe I should get back into baking, though."

    "...On Terra?" Johann asked, shooting him a sideways glance. "Well, you certainly came a long way, Mr. Homeworlder. How the country-fuck does a farming couple from Terra end up as a technocratic ruling family in the asscrack of the periphery? I knew you found some sort of cache, but did you unearth it with your tractor or some shit like that?"

    John took a long drink of his water, leaving the glass empty. "Of course that's what you got stuck on, and not the baking. Blame my clumsy lips. Yes, from Terra. As for the tractor… not as such, no. Believe it or not, it all happened in an abandoned restaurant bathroom. That's where I found the cache, and where I found her. I've met lots of people in bathrooms, actually - Alan from the Birds, for example, bumped into me an hour before the meeting we had set up. Maybe if I'd met you in a bathroom, we would have gotten along better at first."

    Johann snorted. "I don't know if it really works out that way, jumbo. Pretty sure I had a shitter in that cell you had me in anyways, so you could say we met in a restroom. Now, what kind of swanky ass restaurant leaves classified Star League information in its shitters when it goes down the shitter?"

    "And there goes my opportunity to shift to more recent topics..." John muttered, covering his face with one palm before pausing. "Actually, I'm pretty sure it was a low end buffet? But honestly, it's a stupid story. I've got better ones for shooting the shi-"

    "Hold that thought, Jack. I've known you for over twenty years and this is the most I can ever remember learning about you - you ain't weaseling out of that. Yeah, I can really tell why you've never shared it before now. This is the dumbest shit I've ever heard." Johann spat. "So, much as I'm sure you're fucking with me, how the hell does any of that lead to a journey of planetary conquest?"

    The room rumbled for several seconds with the deep chuckles that resulted.

    Johann was just about to give up on waiting when he actually got the response. "I'm sure you'll think I was a weird kid for this -"

    "It wouldn't be this that made me assume you must have been a weird kid."

    "- but the first thing I ever said to Amy was a promise that I'd give her the stars some day."

    "...If she shared the cache with you?" Johann asked, obviously thinking he was getting some picture of where this was going.

    "Sure." John lied. "Well, I wouldn't say sitting here now that I gave her all the stars like I promised, but she's got a handful of them, and I figure I might be responsible for two or so. Looking back, maybe that's not such an enjoyable gift as I was imagining at the time."

    "You gave her a job, Jack." Johann huffed. "I'm amazed you don't live on the couch. What's got you opening up about this hideous farce, anyways?"

    "Isn't a man allowed to share some random thoughts with a skeleton on the verge of hitting seventy and poofing to dust? It's perfectly harmless trivia, anyways."

    There was a loud snarl. "I'll see eighty yet - just you watch!"

    "I intend to." John mumbled.

    After a brief silence, Johann glanced over to him. "So, you're actually from Terra, and you've got the last name Cameron, but you're not a Cameron?"

    "There are millions of Camerons on Terra. Have been for centuries. House Cameron was just one branch of the older Clan Cameron - descended from some Canadian guy who made movies in the 1980s." John explained, resting his cheek in one hand as he stared into the roaring flame, ignoring Johann's intent stare. "We actually have a lot of movies from that era, you know?"

    The consul eventually gave in and asked. "...You fucking serious about that? What kind of movies did he make?"

    The giant grinned, reaching over and patting the other man on the back. "Lot of science fiction, honestly. A time traveling robot from the far off twenty twenties come back to kill the ancestors of the last humans resisting AI hegemony, a sequel to a movie about people in space getting infested with the larvae of an alien parasite due to corporate greed, a movie about a cold war era race to recover a submarine's wreck from the deep ocean leading to the discovery of an underwater alien civilization. All very fun movies. The kids love them."

    "The kids l-" Johann gasped, his eyes bulging out. "Those all sound gruesome as shit! You watched those with your kids?"

    "It's all good wholesome family fun. Not sure if your kids are all old enough for it yet, though. Say - how'd you feel if I sent over some movies set in ancient Rome one of these days? Petra shares your obsession with the place, doesn't she?"

    O'Reilly sighed. "Please make sure it's something reasonable for a twelve year old to watch."

    "I hear you loud and clear. I'll send you a copy of Monty Python's Life of Brian.

    A choking sound filled the room. "That's the least Roman sounding title I've ever heard."

    - -

    "What you got there, Starlet?" Amelia asked, glancing over at Alexandria as she withdrew a bottle from a bucket of ice.

    The taller woman snorted as she popped the cork and withdrew a pair of shot glasses. "Vodka. Do you have the balls to throw some back with me, short stuff?"

    After a moment's consideration, Amelia shrugged. "Fuck it, if you're offering, I'll take it. Hit me up, bitch. Amazed you have that kind of stuff, though, what with Johann being as he is."

    The former mechwarrior shrugged dramatically, a splash of the beverage flying out of the bottle and onto the floor from the motion. "It's not his, nor is it even really mine. It's a special 'entertaining guests' stockpile, so if I ever had to deal with your bullshit in the comfort of my own home I could at least have something else to blame the headache on later. I got it after we burst into your house with inconvenient news and a weird request, just in case you ever returned the favor. Though…I wasn't expecting you to want to talk to me when the time came instead of, you know, the Consul. I was expecting it to be secondhand irritation, instead. Do you figure I'll be easier to convince of your master plan than him, or something?"

    "Alex, Alex, Alex." Amelia chided, waggling a finger as she stood up, keeping just her bad eye - which was faced toward the other woman - closed for the illusion of profundity. "If I wanted to trade passive aggressive barbs with Johann Sebastian O'Reilly, I'd just go to work on a normal day and it'd probably come up eventually, even if not in person. Sure, maybe we're all two years deep in a twenty year plot to rebuild and annex a down-on-its luck nation that you folks dug us into. Sure, maybe we're already flying towards another, overlapping crisis situation on Niops. Sure, maybe you two have a major part to play in what's to come on that front. But…"

    Alexandria gave the Dominisa a long, hard look as she poured the shots and set the bottle back down. "If you don't come out and spill the beans I'm going to spill your drink, you overdramatic nerd. If you can't satisfy me or Johann with your ideas, then I have no idea how you'd expect us to sell Tannenbaum's wing on it - assuming, of course, your plan isn't just an immediate invasion."

    "...this actually is just a social call, though. I really have no desire to wrap my head around whatever absurd hawkism you're dealing with any time before…tomorrow afternoon, at the earliest." Amy huffed, extending her arm out. "I mean, come now, as a woman whose eldest daughter seized on a humanitarian mission as an opportunity to leave home, barely write back, and flirt with some pool boy or some shit, can't there just come a point in my life where I bitch at the person I know who's closest to understanding what I'm going through? Besides, we both know the little ones love getting the opportunity to meet up like this. That's what it's really all about."

    Alexandria sighed and thrust the shot glass into her hand. "Amy, I have no fucking clue what you're going through. My eldest daughter is turning fourteen in a few months. Your eldest daughter is practically thirty. We are not the same. Consider this: if you and wonder boy hadn't decided to set yourselves up as royalty, would you expect your kids to still be hiding in mommy's nest when they were grown ass adults? I mean, fuck, you know goddamned well that neither of us stayed in our parent's house much past eighteen."

    "Pff, as if." Amy muttered, her voice sullen. "The second time I got orphaned, I was at the tender age of seven or eight. But yeah, you've got a point there. Do you expect Helena to fly the coop the moment she's eighteen, then?"

    Alexandria choked on her drink, the sputtering sending vodka all over the front of her clothes. "Like fucking hell! There were special circumstances at play there and you know i-! Yeah, touche. What the fuck do you mean the second time you got orphaned, though? How does that happen to a person multiple times?"

    "You get adopted, then the person who adopted you dies." Amelia explained, before knocking her shot back. "Vera Clayton was my adoptive mother. She didn't squeeze me out or anything. I never actually met my real parents - they were dead as shiiit before my first birthday."

    "So…you know who they were?" Alexandria asked. "Because a lot of people wouldn't know for sure that they were an orphan - a lot of people would have no way of knowing if they just got abandoned."

    "Yeah, I know for sure. Vera knew 'em, after all." the Dominisa sighed.

    "...and? Who were they?"

    Amy took on a sharp tone as she dodged that question. "For all that it matters, my father may as well have been Richard Cameron, Starlet."

    The other woman shrugged. "Okay? If you didn't want to talk about it, there were better ways to put it?"

    A few moments passed in silence before suddenly, spontaneously, Amelia burst out into a peel of hysterical laughter.

    Alexandria stared a little. Then she stared a little more. "Christ, how fast do you get drunk?"

    "A pretty glacial pace, to be honest."

    She pressed further. "Okay, then, so what was with the sudden maniacal laughter?"

    "Nothing to worry about." Amy declared, trying to play it off by waving her hands. "Though on a different note, I'm curious. Are any of your kids trying to take up your mantle as a mechwarrior? Or is that something you've had as hard a time getting anyone interested in as me getting one interested in politics?"

    Starlet grumbled at the sudden change in topic as she poured herself a shot to make up the one she'd spilled on herself. "Petra's got the talent for it and she's eager to learn more, but of all things she took an interest because Johann was a mechwarrior once, before I even met him. Granted, she's still in the early stages of learning the moves and such, but she's not officially a teenager for a few more months anyways, so sue me, I'm not asking her to be a genius at it. Why?"

    Finally setting down her empty shot glass, Amy shrugged. "I dunno, I guess just… if this thing with Niops turns into an armed conflict, and that's still ongoing when she's fully trained, and she wants to go pitch in over there as an officer in the army? Maybe tell her no, if you don't want her to end up flirting with a Niopsian pool boy or some shit like that. The cats would be devastated."

    The other woman gave her a tired look. "Christ, get over it already. Marie is a grown ass adult. I get that you've got some wild fucking separation anxiety wrapped up in that asymmetrical head of yours, but maybe that's why she's trying to live apart from you for awhile, do you think? I'm amazed James isn't making a play to get some fresh air at his age."

    "He's…" Amy mumbled. "engaged. Would you be interested in coming to that wedding, by the way?"

    "If you promise not to cry on me."

    A long pause reigned, before a counteroffer was made. "What if I promise to only cry on you a little?"

    "...It was a joke, Ay. Obviously I'm coming. It'd be a political nightmare if we were a no-show."

    "Right. Politics."

    "So…" Alexandria asked, once the bitter taste was out of both of their mouths. "Anything interesting been going on for you lately?"

    "In the moments when I can escape from the shadow of my desk?" Amelia asked, picking her glass back up and staring into its hollow depths as a form of psychological warfare, with the sole goal of getting it refilled. "I've gotten really into some of the amateur video games that get distributed over the planetary network nowadays. They fill a spare moment or two really nicely. It's one of those things where when you see people have that sort of free time on their hands to just create for it's own sake, you realize you must have been doing something right along the way."

    Alexandria chewed on that thought for a little while, before pouring her another shot. "Tell me when someone starts making mech simulator pods and I'll see how rusty I've really gotten."

    --------

    To be perfectly honest, when I got to scene 2 I realized there was no possible way I could write the topic without making it feel like a death flag so I just decided to double down on that sort of dialogue for fun. That vibe is not meant to be taken as any sort of imminent promise or threat or anything. I just realized I'd shoved myself into a corner where that tone was inevitable and decided to dick around with that sort of wording while I was already in that hole, because when shit sucks, you may as well try to find something amusing about it.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • All right, we have a second border to keep in mind, a confirmed successor, and the internal mechanisms of their faction are fleshed out enough to contest the protagonist family. I wonder how many generations pass before we get a ruler wacky enough to stress test those checks and balances. This is battletech, so I'm expecting one more. Two if they are lucky.
     
    Chapter 21 (March 2940 - April 2940)
  • Threadmarks
    • ---
    Scene 1
    ---

    San Francisco HPG Station, Third Underbasement, Fourth Wing (ROM Office 943), Terra
    Sol System, Former Terran Hegemony
    March 2940

    Precentor Garrett Aldon gazed down upon Mark from above not by virtue of his own height, but by the height of his chair and the raised platform it sat on. There was something poetic about that in the 'junior' Precentor's mind, and he couldn't quite stop himself from snickering at the realization. It'd been burning away in the back of his head for so long, but he'd only just had the breakthrough and put it together.

    "Do you find something funny about disciplinary proceedings, Mars?" Aldon hissed as he tended his hands under his nose, casting a very forced, businesslike appearance in combination with his technically perfect comb over. Premature male pattern baldness couldn't have picked a much better victim.

    The accused raised his hands and cast them out to the sides as though he were scattering dust to the wind. "Whatever could you mean, my good Precentor? Disciplinary proceedings are a deathly serious matter which deserve the utmost respect. It's you I find hilarious."

    "Noted." the other man replied, and though it may only have been his own wishful imagination, Mark thought he heard a tinge of irritation in that voice. A moment later, Garrett pulled a stack of papers from a drawer in his desk and slapped it down on the table. "You recognize this document, yes, Precentor Mars?"

    It didn't take a long look to identify it, no. "I should hope so, given that I wrote the damn thing, sir. Have you read through it?"

    "Once, a year ago, yes." Aldon grumbled, pulling the cap off of an ornate pen and circling the date of submission on the stack a few times. "But not recently, no. Imagine my surprise, if you would, when it showed up in my inbox for the fifth time - but longer than ever before, now."

    Mark wore a thin smile as he reached out for the stack, only to get his knuckles thwacked with the pen. "You must have been incredibly surprised by this shocking turn of events, Precentor. I don't know how anyone could have possibly predicted such unprecedented, maddening circumstances as these. Why, it boggles the mi-"

    "What makes you think you'll have any ground left to stand on if you persist in these histrionics, Mars?" the other man interrupted, his eyes narrowing as he lifted the fifty page stack in one hand and lightly smacked Mark on the top of his head with it. "You were told to prepare and submit an analysis on the ongoing Lensmann affair, for consideration as we on the next layer up measure the appropriate response to the matter. Your neighbor, Precentor Bjorklund, gave me her word that you seemed to actually be doing it. And yet…this. You must realize that you can only treat the sanctity and purpose of this office as a chew toy so many times before I throw you out to the cold reaches of Anywhere to spend the rest of your life reporting on the loyalties of a class B station, yes?"

    "If you want my opinion on the significance of the misplaced commas and the possibility of a coded message in a noteputer factory's mail," Mark chirped with a plastic smile, folding his hands on the table. "well, that's all in there. Every few pages I spliced in a page of the report you asked for, as a reward for good behavior on your part. One must eat their vegetables to get their pudding, after all. It's just part of learning to be an adult."

    Garrett glared, his oh-so pale face flushing red with anger for a moment. "I, a respectable servant of the Blessed Blake, do not intend to take a lecture on maturity from you, an emotionally compromised gibbon. You'll be printing off a copy without your pile of textual excrement wrapped around it by the end of the day, or this little disciplinary chat will turn into something much more serious before you can come out with another silly little quip about the situation. You do not live in Precentor Bergeron's world anymore. You haven't in around two decades. You work in my office, subject to my rules, and if nearing your fifties has rendered you too inflexible to adapt to the way I've reformed the place then you can be disposed of one way or another."

    Mark rested his right cheek in his palm and discarded the presence of being in any way excited about any of this. "In many ways I would find that preferable to spending the rest of my existence working on the bureaucratic furtherment of a man who seeks accolades by writing a gossip rag pieced together from the letters in his alphabet soup, the shapes his cream makes in his coffee, and the inconsequential flood of unsorted prattle that flows through the HPG network on a daily basis."

    The precentor sighed and recapped his pen, clicking his tongue repeatedly at his subordinate. "It's a reliable, if not constantly revolutionary, approach to discovering intel leads that would otherwise be missed by focusing on only more important senders and not on those they might use as deniable patsies. One which has potential for yet unforeseeable expansion due to the great quantities of unmonitored HPG traffic that exist. You should be grateful to have the analytics system flagging only promising examples for further human analysis, rather than having to wade into the stream of consciousness of the Sphere on your own initiative and fish for your own leads."

    "The computers in this building all but catch fire if you touch the wrong search option." Mark protested, slamming his hand on the table. "Any system you've got that's actually sorting HPG traffic here automatically, in real time has got to be so ass backwards insane that it's little more than blindly dowsing with a stick."

    "The method has been recognized by my superiors as meritorious and earned me my long-held position as the manager of this office, Mars. As you would know if you'd ever bothered to read the case of the Neumann's World archives." Garrett dismissed, rubbing his forehead as though the dispute was beginning to give him a serious headache.

    "A performance I don't doubt you've spent the interim chasing a repeat of." Mark quipped, sneering up his nose at the man. "During which time, I came back with actual, meaningful intelligence gathered through my methods. Not a thousand tenuous leads sourced through the interpretation of a sheep's knuckles. The rimward-antispinward periphery is destabilizing. The local minor states are on a collapse trajectory sparked by a rise in pirate activity and organization, with the notable exception of those which are either complicit in the trade in stolen goods or are the Magistracy of Canopus, which for the time being is insulated by its greater military might. Antipirate patrols take years to handle one hideout, in which time an untold number of additional ones can pop up. All information I entered into the record, and yet I suspect you've not even bothered to inform your own superiors about it."

    "Should I have?" the man asked, giving Mark a dubious look. "As a field of factual information, it's little more than laughable trivia what happens out there. I don't need to know how a bear shits in the woods - the generality that they do is more than sufficient. Now, to you, who were mentored by an agent from the Free Worlds League, spent over a decade in the League, was captured by pirates, and was then saved by the fine men and women of Orloff, I can see how a rise in piracy on their outer fringe may seem significant, but to Comstar? Our holy mission does not exist to serve your trivial feelings on the welfare of a Great House. Our eyes are on information which can goad the Carrion Lords towards their final mutual annihilation and pave the way to Blake's promised golden future. Not adorable but wrongheaded sentimentality."

    Mark grimaced, balling his hands together. It was true, ultimately his interest here was in the single very specific case he'd uncovered. It wasn't a professional concern that drove him so much as a personal need to investigate the topic further that had driven him to so repeatedly raise this topic to a boss who had made perfectly clear what he thought of it. That was why he'd been gradually increasing the detail in the reports that, as it happened, the man wasn't reading. But from a pragmatic, goals focused perspective, there was still something to be said for the objective Mark was pretending to have.

    "Put aside the specific example - though an unchecked growth of piracy in the region could weaken the Free Worlds League, which is already struggling in relative terms, and upset the balance of power - for a second, sir, and consider the broader implications. There is knowledge that cannot be gleaned from the depths of the HPG no matter how much you drop Peyote, hold hands, and sing Kumbaya. Information carried by couriers, as the sufficiently paranoid might attempt, is one example of this. Another example is information from the broader periphery, which is, as I've demonstrated, not an eventless vacuum. If you want the mutual annihilation of the Great Houses to amount to anything for Comstar, it needs to leave a real power vacuum, not a vulnerable core for some outside power to expand into."

    Garrett rose from his seat with a sigh. "What outside power, with what jumpships? The yokels of the periphery can only grasp the stars by stealing wings from their betters. If Taurus, Canopus, or of all places Alpheratz were to spend their last impudent breath in a strike on Terra, they would be easily destroyed by the power the Blessed Order yet holds in reserve. The chances of a serious setback are one in a million!"

    "That." Mark declared. "Is an opinion, not a fact. The actual conditions of the deep periphery have never been conclusively determined. The caches and blacksites placed by the Star League, Rim Worlds Republic, and others have never been fully cataloged. The wayward colonies of the Age of War and before, never fully accounted for. Kerensky's fleet, to the best of my knowledge, has never been found. We do not know what might exist out there, or what might be soon to come into existence out there, and we do not know what threat it might pose to us. It is our job to know that. It is our job to manage that. It is our job to anticipate and head off the one in a million threat to Blake's vision. But there's only one way to achieve any of that - a method this office used to use, that other offices still use, that every intelligence agency in the world uses. All true knowledge comes from experience with the subject matter."

    "And having extended your stay in the wider world well beyond the appointed duration and lived under deep cover, would you propose yourself as the best candidate?" the precentor asked with a chuckle. "I'm afraid to say, Mark, that there isn't any possible way I could do something like that under the circumstances we face - not even as someone who joined this office at the same time as you, not even if I liked you. There's no possible way I could trust you with that sort of commanding role right now even if I do decide to take heed from your radical theories or pass them along. Why, you might ask? Because aside from the fact that you're blatantly saying whatever will get you closer to the object of your own personal interests, you're a noncommittal flake who's advocating now for something he had a perfect opportunity to force on me effectively, and with far better actual viability as a project, not so long ago."

    Mark frowned. It was true, but it wasn't exactly something he wanted to hear right now.

    A few moments later, the man continued. "If you'd not run away from the inheritance you bumbled your way into out of a misplaced emotional passion, and if you'd simply established HPG contact with me, you could have turned that company into an intelligence section operated by Comstar at any time, and it would have been the perfect cover. You could already be investigating the region, but…at the end of the day, you joined ROM because you were curious, you ran away when you had to do something you didn't like, and then you came back when you got sad. Now you're trying to head back out there because you had a eureka moment. Do you know how much work you'd need to execute faithfully for me before you could possibly be given such an important, oversight-free job as you're making this out to be? That you wouldn't just abandon the task at hand when the mood first struck you?"

    Mark chuckled. "I can hazard a guess that it would be a lot."

    "Then get to it. man."

    ---
    Scene 2
    ---

    House of the Senate, Chaldea, Alphard
    Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
    April 2940

    "-and so my friends, I ask you this - where will your children be in one year, two years, three years? Will they remain by your side, learning all they must know to take your place as the victorious officers of a righteous conquest, or will they rest in the soil of a foreign world, stricken down by enemies given time to prepare? Because for every month, every year that we spend on diplomatic efforts under the guidance of the illustrious, the right-honorable, the oh-so-perfect Consul O'Reilly, the lordlings of Niops will dig more trenches, stockpile more munitions, and strengthen their position further."

    Lurking in the shadows at the back of the room, clad in clothes quite unlike himself, Johann cracked a smirk. Honestly, he was pretty sure the only time anyone kissed his ass that hard was when they were doing it ironically. Sure, he'd collected a few dumb names and an undeserved good recommendation, but who the actual fuck was laying it on that thick in all seriousness? There was a certain point - in his opinion, pretty fucking early on - where it stopped sounding like you actually thought what you were saying, and started sounding insanely hokey and fake, like you were fishing for a favor and way, waaay too desperate at that. Everybody knew he wasn't perfect. Everybody.

    He fucking hoped.

    Tannenbaum continued, unaware of the silent vigil of the statesman he was so vigorously deriding. "So join me, once again, in voting to convene the first army of the Marian Union and annex these dictatorial technocrats sooner, rather than later, because in their hubris they will never accept our peace and friendship but at the end of a blade. Such is the way of the foul scions of the Star League - they will inevitably seek our own subjugation, if we do not subjugate them ourselves. Strike now, strike hard, while they've yet to beat their plowshares into swords!"

    Well, that was just about the most ironic thing Johann had ever heard anyone say. "Because they're the Star League, we need to conquer them now or else." was fundamentally little different than "Because they aren't the Star League, we need to conquer them now". Isolationism wasn't the same as aggression, fuckface. He did wonder, though, if this was the genuine paranoia sort of jingoistic "They're coming right for us!" rhetoric or the dictatorial ambitions kind. Because the Star League had been built on the latter, but it was entirely possible, in theory, to just be out of touch and ignorant enough to imagine that a system with a population in the low millions was capable of building a shipyard and embarking on a war of conquest against a larger power on the basis of fancier tech alone. He really needed to get a better read on this kid.

    Which he supposed was his reason for being here, at the end of the day. Sighing, he dunked the end of his pretzel into the chili cheese sauce with it and took another bite. He hoped the vendor selling the things was just paid for and not an actual member of this hawkish opposition party, because he needed these things at his own political rallies. They were bomb as hell, and they'd be wasted on a horde of militaristic mouthbreathers like he'd been at one point.

    God, that'd been a bad time to be around him.

    "I thank you for hearing me out, esteemed members of the Senate and people of this land. If I have left you with only one thing tonight, let it be this; the time for war is now, not when it becomes clear just how impotent all other measures are at bringing Niops around. Now go, go home to your families and friends, and tell them that you will fight for the good of our nation, for our future, for a more righteous galaxy!"

    Much as the content of the speech made him cringe, Johann was tentatively glad he'd dropped in here. He hadn't known before coming here that the opposition leader was either from the Periphery states - probably a Taurian, by Johann's luck - or actively pretending to be for political capital. He'd just known that he was a hawk that other hawks listened to. Now, with the crowd he'd whipped into this asinine fervor leaving, Johann knew more about what it'd take to manage the little shit and keep him from causing some absurd incident. Now he just had to find a good moment to slip out of this picnic table and leave through the crowd with his similarly disguised bodyguards. Just as soon as the traffic died down enough that the entrance to this venue wasn't totally, absolutely swamped…

    Any minute now.

    For an event that was being attended by hundreds of people, Ewen sure had picked a place with some obnoxiously limited access. Yeah, sure, rent out a little enclosed amateur sports field. The openings meant for the little teams to walk through would totally have the throughput needed for a major event. It wouldn't make getting in or out a pain in the ass at all.

    …Actually, that was another warning sign, if anything.

    He was going to be stuck here watching the crowd a few minutes, it seemed like. Should've been quicker to stand up, since as someone near the back of the venue he'd had the opportunity to be first out, but there was no changing that decision now. He'd just have to wait for the chance to split.

    "Did you find my little show interesting, Mr. O'Reilly?" came that fucking voice from a few feet away, drawing Johann's attention in an instant. There Tannenbaum stood, his foppish fucking mop of red hair blowing in the breeze. "I must admit, I'm flattered to have you come around to check in on what I'm doing. It lets me know I'm doing something that's enough to concern even someone as complacent as you."

    "The food was good. The comedy act was middling." Johann muttered, shooting his bodyguards disappointed looks as they scratched their heads awkwardly. "How on earth did you spot me in that crowd, Ewen? I'm not exactly dressed to be recognized today, you know."

    The young man cast his arms out wide, flaunting his extravagant suit as he drew nearer. "To be honest, I just saw some old man sitting near the back but not getting up and wondered if you needed some help these gentlemen weren't willing to offer you. Maybe they were being impolite toward you, or something. But once I got close enough, it was easy enough to recognize you. I see your face often enough, after all. A comedian, though? I'm hurt to think you might just be treating my rallies as a bit of Sunday entertainment. I put more effort into them than that, at least. Couldn't you acknowledge me for that?"

    "I'm afraid not." the Consul replied, rising slowly from his seat. "Unintentional humor is still funny, ergo still a joke, ergo the one who spews it is still a comedian. I'm afraid your proposed course of action is just too laughable for me to see you as a serious peer right now. If you want to try again with a real policy platform that actually makes some sense, though, I'm willing to listen."

    "Well, what do you find so funny about it, then?" Ewen spat, keeping enough distance not to rile up the bodyguards. "I think it's a perfectly coherent approach to the situation in a way your 'wait and see' platform fails to address, old man."

    "If the Niopsians were somehow capable of taking the fight to us, for one, that'd be such a fucked up world that we'd be building our own jumpships. The least populated systems that build their own KF drives are still tens of times as populous as those little worlds there." O'Reilly replied, refusing to really look at the young man. "And aside from your extremely concerning rhetoric, any sort of war declaration right now, as opposed to later, is doomed to be far bloodier for us than it needs to be."

    "...How the bloody hell do you figure that part?" the firebrand exclaimed, his approach mirrored on the opposite side by the bodyguards. "The more warning we give them, the more opportunities they'll have to turn that militia they're so loudly proclaiming they have about into something marginally more ready to fend off an attack. Giving them the time to prepare their defense can only be a mistake, if we're intent on going in against them!"

    "Which we aren't, per se." Johann retorted. "Part of what attempting diplomacy gives us is the opportunity to test the waters and plan our approach to them in the event that their government decides to give us the cold shoulder more intelligently. We'll get the chance to look at the sort of thing their militia uses if they decide to demonstrate it to try and intimidate us out of attacking, for example. Much more importantly, though, it could be an opportunity to learn how the population actually feels about their overlords. Your alarmist rhetoric about burying our dead on Niops wouldn't be very well necessary if all it took to flip the place and overthrow the government was to drop boxes of guns and pamphlets about the merits of our form of government near all the houses of the plebs."

    Ewen snorted, and drew closer, his hands raised in such a way as to show the bodyguards he meant no harm - though they didn't relax much, if at all. "That's a very hopeful outlook on the situation. What if the general populace isn't willing to turn on their overlords for an untested and unproven group of people from beyond the stars, then?"

    Johann reached out and patted the boy on the shoulder. "Oh, you sweet summer child. In that case, we really need to know more about them. More specifically, in the event that we actually want to go forward with conquering an uninterested population for our own cynical benefit and tell ourselves it's good and justified because we're giving them the benefits of citizenship, we'll need to know if they're going to follow the 'civilized' rules of war from ages past or not."

    Raising an eyebrow, Tannenbaum met Johann's gaze firmly. "Which rules are those, exactly?"

    A sad smile was the first response the lad got to that. "The Ares Conventions, much as you might hate to hear it. Specifically, the concept of mutually limited war. The deal where, so long as the defenders don't dig in so hard that no conceivable occupying force could ever hold the place against guerilla warfare or try to stick so many paper-skinned, upgunned technicals around that it can't ever be taken to begin with, the attacker restrains themselves to just having a straightforward shooting match with the garrison and keep the atrocities sealed up in their cans. The concept that, on both sides, the minimum feasible number of personnel should be put in the field to reduce the cost of the war. The principle that's been violated constantly for the past several centuries of total warfare. Because while I could maybe be convinced of the necessity of taking over by force even if everybody there's okay with the Association government as it stands, I will never stand in support of a government that's willing to blast millions into dust just to pick over the scraps left littered around the craters. If Niops's politics are stable and their military doesn't intend to honor the principle of limited war, there won't be any invasion at all, period."

    "Well if they know that's your policy, then obviously they won't do it!" Tannenbaum protested.

    "Just why would they know it, though?"

    ---
    Scene 3
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    Academy of the Promethean Order, Kallipolis, Alphard
    Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
    April 2940

    "-and this development in our comprehension and implementation of His message means, of course, that we are one step closer to servicing our own demand for spare parts for the drive systems of our own dropships in full." Temujin prattled on, raising his teacup above his head with a bright smile. "It is all through the magnificent light of the great god Prometheus that we ascend this stairway to enlightenment, truly. His mysteries are ineffable, his blessings more precious than anything."

    Amelia snorted, covering her mouth politely as she watched the display. "By all means, you can rest your voice, High Philosopher Balaskas. I'm quite well acquainted with the revelations of his majesty Prometheus in my own right, you know?"

    The man sputtered, splashing tea all over the tablecloth in his effort to quickly set his cup down and throw up a conciliatory gesture. "O-of course, holy Dominisa. It is not my place to presume greater familiarity with the scriptures of the sacred data dump than its blessed keeper."

    Now she just wanted to puke. This was her burden in life though, she supposed, and one she'd earned herself through her actions. At the time it'd seemed so clever and expedient to camouflage her own system for dispersing the accumulated knowledge in the husk of the administrative apparatus of the former emperor of Kallipolis's phony as hell cult to 'Prometheus'. It'd seemed like nobody took it too seriously at the time, and shamelessly throwing around the name of the Prometheus Archive had seemed like the perfect way to get people out of the know but not too out of the know to dismiss her as a charlatan with nothing to her name.

    Foresight, that was what she and John had been missing. The foresight to realize there was no way that the hokey new age bullshit hadn't scored some honest converts before they showed up, and hadn't continued to spread after a newer, more impressive technocracy started using the same goddamned name. And of course, inevitably, the natural thing for those converts and their families was to throw themselves into academia and join their vaunted clergy. Her place of learning, reason, and faux-spiritual secular intent was infested with zealous technophiliac religious nutjobs, and…she couldn't blame them for it.

    "At ease, Balaskas." she declared with a sigh, reaching out a bit and waving it off. "As long as you remember. Now, I don't believe you've asked me here today simply to report on the progress of your works. You've called for this audience, I believe, to try and convince me of something?"

    At first, when she realized there was no real way to convince them of the fundamental fakeness of it all, she'd thought to make the best of it. At least if they believed she was a chosen prophet who their god had elected to speak unto, she'd figured, they'd tend to be highly trusting of her right? The natural presumption was that if you were the mouthpiece of god on earth, that made your every word gospel. But no, they were excellent at creative interpretations and understandings that fed into their own presumed order of the world.

    "Convince?" Temujin asked, cupping his grizzled, gray-speckled chin slowly. "No, nothing so vulgar as that. Rather, blessed mother, I come before you to offer my aid in interpreting the holy messages that have been revealed unto you and grasping the gift that is your birthright tighter. If you will tolerate the presumptuousness of this lowly servant borrowing your ear, of course."

    And when push came to shove, they could always just tell themselves that though a prophet she was, she was not intrinsically blessed with the vision or piety to comprehend her… well, visions. Seek to appoint themselves as the keepers of all wisdom, frame her as the keeper of all knowledge, suspect all the actually reasonable people around of being false shepherds or 'heathens' who convened to abuse her 'holy light'. She desperately hoped she'd be able to steer the Promethean Order away from this sort of hysterical idolatry one day - without anyone opening fire on a friendly, ideally. For now it was as much as she could do to keep them penned up where she could at least try to manage them, though

    Massaging her temples to deal with the itch from the stupid laurel crown she had to wear for this gig, Amy wore a faint frown. "You may speak your mind, but I will only see the wisdom that is actually there. If you walk away from my table feeling that your words fell on deaf ears, ask yourself instead if you said anything at all."

    The one upside to all of this was that she had a presumptuous, arrogant target that she didn't particularly need to feel reserved about talking down to. Did taking advantage of that make her a bad person? Perhaps. On the other hand, he was the one who got her annoyed enough to need to vent that way to begin with.

    "Of course, holy one." he agreed, bowing over the table and very nearly getting what little remained of his hair in the tea snacks. "I can ask nothing more of your excellence than that. Now… this regards the matter of the foul Niops Association, who make the lord Prometheus' blessings out to be their own birthright as they stew in solitary secularism and squander it on secrecy."

    Whatever knowledge those people had, it was something they'd preserved and kept in active circulation on their worlds throughout the centuries. It was, in a very real sense, a birthright of Niops as a whole, even if its original provenance was the Terran Hegemony's constant lust for chicanery. Whether that birthright was being properly shared with all the people of the Association was…well, it plainly wasn't, by the way they spoke about their people, but in Amelia's mind the people of Niops deserved praise for weathering the apocalypse of the succession wars. Praise and, ideally, reform towards a world where every person of those worlds could live a better, freer life and help others to do the same. But she didn't say any of that. She didn't say anything.

    She gestured for Balaskas to continue with his nonsensical alliteration.

    "It seems plain to me that the lord Prometheus has guided us to these reprobates who abuse his scripture as a way of giving us a gift for our righteousness." the man insisted after a quick, grateful nod that made her gut churn uncomfortably. "Their forges, their purloined knowledge, and the chance to make a grand display of our piety all wait for us at the end of a holy conquest of that system, gifts from the Lord to which we bear all rights. We must simply labor to reach it for ourselves, and -"

    She held out her hand to shush him. "Contain yourself, Temujin. You have spoken with an embarrassing misunderstanding of the principles of the lord for one so elevated in his service."

    There was only one language these pseudo-cargo cultist pseudo-techno barbarians wearing the coats of academia truly spoke. Theological debate.

    Rising from his seat, the true cult leader supported himself on both hands. "My lady, whatever could you me-"

    "Hush now." she insisted, before closing her eyes and drawing a deep breath.

    The old man fell silent in an instant, and though she did not know it, nearly bit his tongue at the vehemence of her words.

    After maintaining the silence for a few seconds, she darted back into the metaphorical action. Her mismatched gaze locked firmly onto his, considerable practice going into making it look like she was seeing him first and foremost through her blind eye. "Let us discuss your belief that wearing robes is the font from which the right to pursue knowledge flows - that it is the prayers you say with your mouth and not the prayers you enact with your reason that matter - that one who seeks to plunder knowledge can be more righteous than the one who has preserved it by virtue of what he says it is for. Let us discuss your misinterpretation of a 'right' to knowledge."

    Temujin said nothing in response, a cold sweat beading on his forehead.

    "Good", Amelia thought. That meant something about this approach was working.

    "You wear robes because you have pursued knowledge. You speak prayers with your lips because they, which you were taught, give form to the overflow from within your mind. You hold your knowledge with righteousness because you have acquired it through learning, and you pass it on to those who seek it. You have a right to your knowledge because you have acquired it." she continued, digging deep into her wells of quasi-prophetic bullshit. "The true faith of Prometheus is in that - seeking, learning, and teaching - and not in the secretive mysticism pioneered by the old kings. It is that which I have sought to teach you. Certainly, the leaders of the Niops Association might not be fully enacting the path of righteousness, but that is no cause for some ill-conceived crusade to strip the people of Niops as a whole of that which is rightly theirs and make it ours. And indeed, it is theirs. Nobody can acquire lasting knowledge without at least some spark of the divine will - those who come to a realization, make a discovery, or stumble down the path of invention are all guided, as are those who find more concentrated caches of his wisdom. If you must hate something, hate only that they do not understand the duty that comes with knowledge - to teach what one knows to those eager to learn and who will use it for righteous causes."

    Putting aside that she rather doubted their research outpost had somehow been provisioned with more data than she had - and, she mused, she needed to come up with a good way of explaining one day that it had, in fact, been necessary to limit the dissemination of certain parts of the Prometheus Cache for a time in order to keep society focused on the technologies it could actually achieve at the time being, rather than wasting its energies digging too deeply into fields the current generation would grow old before ever having the opportunity to work in - it was critical to quash violent dogmatism in the ranks above all else. The Promethean Order was, fundamentally, meant as an organization that gave out knowledge and took in people, not one that took in knowledge and killed off people. If the cultists could at least internalize that point and not go crazy dogmatist axe flinger on people, she wouldn't necessarily mind them believing that the computer was a god or some shit, even if she'd find it quietly stupid.

    Balaskas straightened out his back and threw his hands up to cover his face. "Of course!" he squealed, digging his nails into his forehead. "That was what I was missing! It is not a right to take from them that I felt, but a duty to teach them - to teach all who seek knowledge the proper path to its acquisition, usage, and distribution! Thank you, holy mother, oh, thank you! My eyes have finally opened!"

    It was at that moment that Amelia realized that she'd just told the leader of the religious nutjobs she found so irritating that it was his holy mission to preach his creed far and wide, and she felt a powerful need for booze arise within the depths of her soul.

    Why was this her life? Just because she'd done all the things that had led to this being her life, she had to live with it? That was bullshit.

    Thank fuck the wedding was soon, to let her forget this crap for awhile. Her little boy had come so far!

    --------

    Digging a little further into the situations that are developing on the various fronts. Next chapter should advance the timeline a little bit.
     
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