Chapter 26 (September 2944 - November 2944)
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
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Niops VII, Niops System
Niops Association, Antispinward Periphery
September 2944
Gazing up at the ceiling, Miliese realized, slowly, that the shaking that had penetrated into the bunker for what felt like so many hours had finally stopped. There was only one natural conclusion to take from all of that.
Nuller took his eyes off the sandwich he'd so carefully constructed from their preserved supplies as he, too, noticed the shift. Perhaps, she thought, Arturs' blubber had alerted him when it stopped shaking to the rhythm. "It would seem things have calmed down a bit, topside. With how much rumbling there was, you'd think they'd been putting an apocalypse on up there. Do you suppose the building is still standing? Be rather grim if the door was blocked up"
Dana smirked softly as she patted him on the shoulder. "I think it's rather just that the pipes and sound insulation here were never done up quite right. I was reviewing the records, as one does, and though parts of the bunker are Star League vintage, other parts were only completed after loss of contact, or never at all. The rattling upstairs ought to have reached us through some of those, rather than the bulk of the earth and fortification themselves. Much lower threshold required for the observed levels of shaking."
"I would wait for an actual seismologist to give their opinion on the matter," Nuller grumbled as a slice of tomato fell out of his sandwich. "but that we've not got one down here to begin with. Far be it for me to spit on a spot of hope, anyways. Good that the fight's done, at least."
McSriff gurgled and shifted on the table they had him on, his cracked jaw wrapped thoroughly and his mouth packed with gauze as he lay with his head elevated and tilted to reduce the odds that he drowned on his blood in a fit of absent mindedness before he could take responsibility for his bloody gaffe. "'E fahin 'an, uoh tiznezz basas. Ah doh euu!"
Associator Felic spritzed him with the squirt bottle they'd liberated from the reserve of cleaning supplies. Perhaps it was bad to spray the man with a dilute cleaning chemical, but it was the least harmful form of discipline any of them was willing to apply to the crucially important scapegoat at the moment. "Shut up before you swallow a tooth, Rey! Absolute child… Have you considered, for even a second, that there are at least two ways in which a fight might end? Perhaps the rioters have been put down or fled in the face of reinforcements, or perhaps they've slaughtered everybody up there! Perhaps they've made turncoats of the survivors! Or perhaps, just maybe, they got bored and decided to turn in for the night. There's more than one way to skin a cat!"
The Chief Associator was amazed the man had understood his incapacitated peer. She wasn't fluent in broken jaw, so it just sounded like a man trying not to choke on his own tongue to her. "Quite possible, I suppose. We'll not be checking for a bit, I think. If our own have failed in their mission, we should give the rabble some time to stop looking about for us. In the event that we must tender our surrender, we must evade a lynching by the commoners at least long enough to secure an audience with the Marians. In the event that our own have prevailed…we might be able to count on a dedicated rescue team coming looking for us - though even if the cameras out there are working, it may prove difficult to confirm their loyalties swiftly when they hail us."
"As you say." Joe agreed, looking at the now stockless Mauser that was previously their sole serious weapon down here. "It's not as though we've any serious means of fighting back if the time comes, if the time comes. Even if you hadn't put the gun to its highest use, we wouldn't have gotten much out of it against any group that could defeat the militia proper."
"Perhaps," Nuller began with a morose chuckle, "we ought to spend some time discussing the last things we want to do as the highest figures of an independent nation, given that we might be signing it over and begging for scraps in a few hours."
Dana snorted at the fat man. "I'll pass on that. A recounting of the lingering fantasies that remain possible in these cramped quarters has a rather narrow possibility space, and I'd rather not get caught up in some sick and twisted imagining of the lurid and depraved orgie any given one of you might wish we were having at this moment. There must be some dignity in facing one's fate, and quite frankly I find none of you the least bit attractive to begin with."
Phil Felic covered his face with one hand as he hissed in solidarity with Nuller, who'd gone red as a tomato at that. "Perhaps we should set more modest sights for the next few hours. For the time being, how about another game of poker? I know a few more rulesets if anyone would happen to be interested."
Miliese's stomach lurched. "Spare me, please. If you must do something with those cards other than play solitaire, try practicing your stacking skills. It might actually be interesting for a second if you managed a pyramid ."
This had not been a well planned evacuation, and between beating McSriff down and the many games of cards they'd had prior, she felt like one more papercut would sheer her softened and sliced fingers clean off of her hands. If only they'd brought some other form of amusement down into this drab and dusty little hell of other people, maybe they wouldn't be on track to go insane before it was even sensible to check if the coast was clear…
Nuller took a hearty bite of his disgusting sandwich of shelf-stable bread and canned goods, and the Chief Associator felt like she might die from the sound of him chewing alone. She was losing her mind in this miserable pressure cooker, and despite her own orders she felt like she couldn't handle much longer before either end of the now largely unusable rifle on the ground started to sound like a great solution to the problem at hand.
What illusions of control and stability had gripped her before when she looked at this group? Why had she wanted to lead them onward to a better future? She tolerated - even liked - a few of them, but aside from that this room was a pit of endless irritation that it felt as though she might never escape from. What had she been trying to protect by leading the Association away from the Marian Union's influence? Why had she stood for election, burned all those favors, made all of those promises?
Before she could sink any further into that downward mental spiral, which already had her heedless to the voices of her peers and 'peers', something happened which should not have. The buzzer on the wall nearby went off, signaling that the external motion sensor had been triggered, which was not by itself so unprecedented - it had happened once or twice while they'd been down here. What was much less typical was that a few moments later, the door to the bunker opened, and with the world's smallest thunderclap and a flash of light filling the air from that entranceway to the side of the gun the Mauser on the ground let out a snap, a crackle, and a pop before spewing smoke and becoming even more useless than before. Aside from the smoke, the air suddenly smelt of ozone.
"Well, you're all looking quite on edge down here. What's the story on the guy with the busted jaw, before we get you out of this disgusting hole in the ground?"
Under the circumstances, even Amelie Clayton's infuriatingly smug voice was a welcome thing for Miliese.
- -
This was, Miliese realized, the first time she'd actually visited the Marian embassy. Up until now, they'd always made the offworlders come to them for the summit meetings. That, in retrospect, was another bit of the self-destructive arrogance that had led them to this point. If there was anywhere much left for them to go with their lives, it might have been a useful learning experience.
"I'm sorry to say," O'Reilly began, the military man's aged face bearing down on the assembled members of the Association as he slid the paper that had just popped out of his printer. "But for all that your handing over the responsible party may have earned you back some goodwill from us, the mere fact that an attack on our lives was made under your watch renders it distinctly difficult for me to offer you terms anywhere near as favorable as we might have arrived on naturally. The Senate of the Marian Union must pursue a hard line when responding to an attack on the lives of two thirds of the seniormost government officials in the nation using the military resources of a foreign government."
Nuller held up his hand, sweat beaded on his forehead. "I swear to you, sir, we did not know of McSriff's plans before he'd already launched them! We only learned of them in the bunker!"
Johann flared his hands out wide, eyes closed, as he turned to the buffoon. "It's quite easy not to know about something like this ahead of time. All it requires is simply not doing proper diligence in controlling one's forces. If we had negligently loosened the control we hold over our own forces to the point that our battlemechs on-station were able to march against your halls of government without prior provocation purely on their own choosing, would you accept our own ignorance of the plan as an excuse not to demand concessions? No, you surely wouldn't have. A lax captain endorses the misdeeds of the crew by default. As such, we are here today to negotiate your surrender."
Associator Felic rose cautiously from his seat as Nuller let out a sound something like 'Grk!' and covered his mouth. "If we are to 'surrender' to you, will you at least be offering us due protections under the laws and customs of war? What will become of us in the aftermath of this incident?"
The consul tapped twice on the paper he'd placed before Harmon. "Rey McSriff will stand a fair trial for his crimes under your watch. As for the rest of you, it is our intention, after consulting with the leaders of the insurrection against your rule and negotiating the terms for an end to the violence so we could recover you safely, that you will be kept monitored in your current positions temporarily, to facilitate the transfer of power to a transitional administration of patricians, philosophers, and plebeians from the Union itself, who will serve in local governance until such a time as the local population is fully able to fill out the halls of local governance and decide upon its national level representation. You yourselves will be…"
Clayton coughed into the back of her hand. It still baffled Miliese that, of the Marian officials who had entered the bunker, the only one carrying a long arm had been the one who was quite literally half blind. "It is the internal policy of the Promethean Order that the members of the Niops Association government, as well as interested family members, should be reassigned out of system as soon as their presence is no longer required to facilitate transition of power."
The Chief Associator frowned, not bothering to look at the paper just yet. "We will not be maintaining even a reduced degree of our current authority within Niops?"
Amy waved her hand dismissively through the air as she frowned up at Miliese. "You will be regarded as philosophers, members of the Promethean Order one and all, after annexation, but you will not carry on your positions in the Niopsian government by default. Think of it not as us deposing you from power, but rather moving you out of the reach of the soon to be armed populace you have ruled heavy handedly over for so long. Your positions in our organization will not be high, to start with, but if you show proper capability and proper dedication to our cause your peers may one day entrust you with positions whose importance outmatches anything you could have held in the pre-annexation paradigm. On the other hand, if you are found to be attempting to recreate your prior excesses on the sly, the Tribunal, an organization with which you are little acquainted, may take issue with you - justice flows from the will of the people in the Marian Union, not from the self-justification of the mighty, and the courts will not find arguments premised on your quantitative superiority convincing if you take liberties with your adherence to the law."
Miliese would believe those claims about the Marian system of justice…not necessarily when she saw them realized, but certainly not a moment sooner. The idea that such a populist concept of justice could be upheld without imposing a state of brutal and dysfunctional anarchy still seemed ridiculous to her. "If that is what you'd have us sign to, I'll be the first to make my mark on it, but I hope there's at least some room left to discuss our fates."
The Dominisa quirked her brow in interest even as the Consul let out a sigh of frustration. "Well, what do you have in mind?"
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Nadir Point, Apollo System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
October 2944
Mark felt the eyes upon him as he took sedate steps under the partial gravity of the Cachalot's centrifugal deck, his tray clutched in hand as he seized the one unoccupied table of the cafeteria area for his own use. It boggled the mind how, even under use by the ship's own crew and that of the three attached dropships, the Tramp class vessel somehow managed to offer an excess of space. It had never been like this on any previous example of the breed he'd rode - helmed, back in the day. With any ordinary crew, there ought to be at least a few asses on every bench, the conversation and sounds of dropped silverware spread evenly throughout the room.
It was the fucking blakists and their need to cram tight like sardines for more efficient scriptural debate. By the stars, if anyone not in the know about their mission had put eyes on them now, they would never pass for a merchant crew again. Proper voidsmen just did not act this way.
Well, the staring wasn't too far out there, and it wasn't like any upright Spheroid merchantman crew had an actual interest in this region.
To his great consternation, Mark filled his fork with the miserably bland meal of lentils and mashed potatoes that the ship's crew seemed to subsist on, the fucking freaks. This inspection was going to be the biggest of bores. Maybe opening up the spice rack was too complicated a task for these knuckle draggers, but they could at least have put some color on the mix by frying it into patties if they had souls.
The door to the room slide open as he suffered through the first bite, and the woman who, to the best of his knowledge, headed this segment of the surveying mission made a beeline directly for him. He loosed a heavy sigh. It was only natural that she'd be able to track him down if need be on her own ship, but that was really far quicker than he was hoping for.
"Precentor Mars," she greeted, looking as though she had a lot more to say that Mark suddenly didn't intend to let her.
He shook his head as he corrected her. "I'm afraid you must have me confused for someone else, my good Captain Kelsington. I'm First Officer Chehalis of the merchant dropship Bleu. What on earth would a good precentor of the order be doing traveling so far out from anyplace of importance?"
She clicked her tongue at him and pinched her forehead. "Is this really the time for this sort of anal retentive method acting, 'First Officer'? There are only people of the cloth present, and talking in code and innuendo will only set our schedule for this debriefing further behind than it already was thanks to your evasive action. Some cooperation would be lovely, you know?"
Mark left his fork stuck vertically in his meal and folded his hands atop the end that stuck up. It was time for a lecture on proper methodology, apparently. At least it was about espionage protocol and not something as basic as wiping one's ass. "Oh captain, not my captain, it is always the time for anal retentive method acting when you're in deep cover. It keeps up the right habits. Just imagine what could happen if some of your crew were, on reflex, to call you 'Precentor' in public! The upright spy reinforces in every moment the illusion that they are who they say themself, and works to fool even themself. If you're all acting like this the moment you get back inside, I can only imagine how strange you must have looked to those you encountered 'on the beat' over the last while. Now, the natural response to a quirky band of travelers won't be to say 'egads, a cabal of blakist secret agents!', but people might think, besides themselves, that you're a cult of serial killers or something like that. Have you noticed anyone shying away from you?"
Her grimace told him everything he needed to know, and then she started talking. "That's…I don't see how it's necessarily related at all. With what treachery and backstabbing the Rim Worlds Republic was known for in it's heyday, it isn't unusual at all that the heirs to house Amaris' black legacy would be a private and suspicious sort, even beyond the suspicion that we might be pirates. Surely it took you some extended length of time to build a rapport with the locals in your prior deployment."
The pseudonymous 'Markus Chehalis' put more weight upon the fork, letting it bend as it pressed past the meal and encountered the tray below. Time to see if he remembered any of the French he'd studied a life and a half ago. "Non, non, non, non, non. Ce n'est pas bon, capitaine. Nobody thinks like that. Pirates aren't known for their elaborate ruses, and fewer worlds of the periphery than you might think have anything worth taking to begin with. No, if you were acting at all normal, you should have been the life of the party. The Rim's a backwards place of rotting traces, speckled with glass, and if you breathe a bit too heavily a world might collapse. For the locals, the day Captain Kelsington's merchant crew comes to their little village should be the most important day of their life, and for you it should be tuesday. That's exactly how it would be, if you rehearsed proper acting protocol like you're meant to before establishing contact. None of the other crews I've checked in on who've kept it in mind have had any trouble with their work."
The undercover Precentor Marie Valois watched as the fork bent flat against the tray with a look of disbelief and disdain on her face. "And have any of those crews found anything of interest, pray tell? Any evidence of meaningful developments in this region? Or has it simply been routine, banal natterings of everyday life beyond the grasp of civilization and good reason?"
"More than I would have expected, to be honest. There's a group - the Empire of Stars, they're called - squatting atop an old Rimjob jumpship maintenance yard, and one or two more irredentist pirate hordes championing old Stefan's banner centuries after he passed than we had any records of. I should expect that, if the local bandits were just a little bit better organized and hit one lucky windfall of metal, the vicinity in the Inner Sphere would destabilize considerably." Mark declared in a bored tone, inspecting the temporary indentation left on his right palm by the fork at the same time. "At the present time, though, I believe that there's minimal cause for interest - being the source of their windfall right now would not address the current strategic requirements laid out by the principles of Toyama's prophecies. It may prove desirable if the Lyran Commonwealth and Draconis Combine prove to be more troublesome than is currently the case, though."
"...That's practically nothing, First Officer." Valois replied, frowning as she continued to stare at the fork Mark had so unnecessarily destroyed. "If you didn't expect to find even that much here, how can you justify your own insistence on monitoring the periphery in general. We are loitering, at this very time, in the former capital system of the Rim Worlds Republic! We have spent the last eternity of our lives combing the systems of that bygone nation for key intelligence on up and coming developments. If not here, then where would you expect to find anything of actual importance to the balance of power?"
Mark plucked the fork out of his food just to bother the precentor more, shaking loose the clinging food before embarking upon the task of un-bending the ductile metal. "I would sooner look literally anywhere else, Captain. As you said, this was once the capital of the Rim Worlds Republic, and we've - for a certain value of 'we' - spent the last three years patrolling the ruins of a defunct nation that was successively leveled by Alexander Kerensky and the Lyran Commonwealth. Whatever was once here, I fully expect was swallowed by the nuclear fires of the civil war and that which came after it, either on-site or after removal. I'd hazard a guess that, if one were trying to find a meaningful trace of the Rim Worlds Republic's legacy, they would either need to look on entirely the other side of the Sphere for traces of the logistics facilities from which Stefan Amaris bankrolled the Periphery Uprising, or otherwise travel at least five jumps out from the Lyran border and begin checking systems that don't appear on any map for undiscovered blacksites. I informed the boss before we came out here that all we were going to find was miserable farmers with some stripe of cancer, and I was only barely made a liar."
The captain rolled her eyes. "I don't know if I'd classify the findings you discovered as making you a liar, 'Chehalis'. More like it's just you not being quite on the nose. You found some squatters and bandits with some stripe of cancer mixed in with your precious farmers. Or is there something else you didn't mention?"
Mark cocked his head to the side and smirked. "Something we haven't yet had the opportunity to follow up on, but something with exponentially better prospects than continuing to survey the ruins of this barren, wasted land. Worth looking into with or without permission to go off and look into it, at the very least. My own branch of the operation encountered some merchants from the Deep Periphery, you see - representatives of some place calling itself the Hanseatic League - in the vicinity of Dichell. Evidently, it's a relatively young mercantile power in a region with a high rate of state formation. If that's true, it'd be the only real area of interest turned up in this entire investigation so far. The main problem is that the trip out to their supposed coordinates is several months long, through the sweet, pirate infested depths of the Deep Periphery. It's no afternoon stroll, and it'll take more preparations than we've made so far to survey the area."
For once, the other Precentor smirked back. "So in the end of the day, you need to convince central to greenlight a massive expansion to this mission so you can demonstrate the value of your passion project? Bit far to go for pork barrel spending, innit?"
Well, if she wanted to think of it that way, it was fine by him. The facts wouldn't change if one precentor got it in her head that he was just a self interested clown looking to expand mercantile activity in the periphery under the guise of scouting it out. Those in charge knew what was at stake, knew what he actually wanted, and knew what he was arguing for. The deal they'd made, the conditional agreement to eventually let him investigate the mysterious disappearance of the O'Reilly family and the reemergence of their mercenary retainers in the rimward periphery, was already as written in stone as anything in the intelligence community was. He just needed to demonstrate some actual results and something that could, vaguely, be considered commitment to the cause, and surely - SURELY - he'd be back in the FWL in no time.
He smirked. "So, let's talk about what you found in the year you were out here, again?"
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Kallipolis Central Park (Formerly Grand Imperial Park), Alphard
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
November 2944
The air was cool, but not nearly as cold as it would soon become. It was still a fair season for outdoor excursions this far north, if only marginally so. They were only two months off from the earliest window for blizzard conditions to form, and before that there would be snow, hail, and biting cold fog and winds. It was all the more critical, as a result, that they got what sun they still could now, before the only valid uses of the outdoors in Kallipolis were things like snowball fights and ice skating - all well and good, but certainly not picnic weather.
Skipping down south to Castle O'Reilly would be little release from the cruel dictates of the climate as well. For all that the city of Chaldea was outside of the blizzard belt and, indeed, rarely got snow, that far down south the mild winter was instead a time of ceaseless, mind-numbing rainstorms spawned by offshoots of the same air currents that fed the blizzards.
For that reason, it was absolutely alright for Alan to invite Helena out to enjoy the last bits of tolerable weather they'd be getting for some time. Rather, it'd be wrong of him not to. What would the poor children on Lothario, living in lands where the winter was all but eternal by the grace of the semi-locked relationship with the local star, say if they knew people were willingly cooping themselves up inside on perfectly pleasant days when they ought to be synthesizing vitamin D?
Marie nodded to herself. Truly, she was a hero for arranging and chaperoning this little date. She'd saved her little brother and Johann's eldest from the indignity of receiving the indirect scorn of the frostbound Lothianites.
Beside her, Sven let out a sigh of relief, fanning the neck of his turtleneck gently. "I'm glad it's cooling down a little now. It's so hard to keep a comfortable temperature on this rock, you know? S'a nasty catch 22 - you either cook, or you go out with just one layer. Well, not that you ever had any problem with that last part, I guess."
Chuckling loudly, she gave him two firm pats on the back. "F'real! Hard to believe we're almost getting into sweater season. Can you believe it? Finally, an end to being asked if you don't maybe feel a bit warm in that get-up."
Yes, she thought. The poor, snow-buried children of the Lothian League would stand, mouths agape, in horror if they knew that people squandered this kind of weather. That would totally be their response, and they would not be at all inclined to instead ask how people managed not to cook to death. It was true because she decided it was so, and she decided it was so because it was true!
Sven smirked as they fell into their rhythm of banter. Oh, he played the part of the sane man in an insane world, but he had just as much fun in Marie's little games as she did, and she knew it. "Do you think there's a yarn out there that, made into a cardigan, would be cool enough to wear during the summertime? Now that I'm here, I'm thinking of expanding my wardrobe a little bit, to keep up with the mandates of the weather."
"Nooooo!" Marie cried out loud, covering her eyes as she feigned deathly horror at the suggestion. "If you're looking to expand your wardrobe, at least experiment a little bit. There's more fashion out there, you sweater golem! How am I supposed to take you to the beach one of these days if you're going to insist on wearing a sweater into the water?!"
Was she drawing wandering eyes? Oh, fuck yes she was.
Before he could respond, she lowered her hands and stuck out her tongue. "Oh, but I think you might be able to get something that works in cotton, if it was thin enough. Well, maybe enough to work by normal standards, at least. You might still cook in it. I mean, you? You'd cook alive naked in the summer sun, darling."
Now it was his term to wail in terror. "Why would you put that image in my heaaad!? Holy shit, Marie! If you never say anything like that again, I swear, I'll get something more besides sweaters! I'll even come to the beach with you, provided the weather's good for it!"
She smiled. "It'll be a lot easier to find good weather for it if you let me teach you how to swim while we're at it, Sven. The ocean's always pretty cool compared to the air. Besiiides… one day, your kids will want to learn to swim and go to the beach and such, and don't you want them to have the opportunity to learn from their daddy?"
Her husband cocked his head to the side. "You're bringing the kids into this? The first isn't even born yet and you're already dragging her into this scenario? Isn't that a bit of an overstretched forecast of their interests?"
Marie wore her most sober and straight laced expression as she stared Sven down and corrected that misunderstanding. "Nah, it's just normal that they will, my dude. The only kids who don't take an interest in splashing around in water are the ones who live where it'll kill them."
"AaaaAAARGH!" Helena cried, throwing her hands up under the tree where she and Alan were sitting, a stone's throw away. "Aunt Marie, you two are being way, way, waaay too loud! We can't even hear our own thoughts, let alone have a decent conversation over here! Why, please tell me why you have to be like this? When it comes to days of the year when you lovebirds could be having this conversation, there's a hell of a lot more than times when Alan and I could reasonably get outside for something like this, you know?"
The eldest of the Clayton children smirked. "I don't see what the problem is. You don't need to be able to hear anything to make out, sweetie. You need to broaden your definition of what a date is if you ever want to dream of getting on my level."
Alan flew to his feet, grinding his teeth vigorously. "Alright, sis, how in the hell is that something a chaperone would say? Aren't you meant to, you know, keep us from making out or something like that? I know for a fact the staff at Castle O'Reilly made you promise to keep this whole affair chaste. Instead, though, it seems like you're just interested in turning this into the double date from hell!"
"As your chaperone, I'm sorely disappointed in your failure to comprehend the nature of my work, oh brother mine." Marie declared, clicking her tongue several times. "Oh, I may have promised something to that effect, but that's just what the rules of engagement normally are. My real job isn't to uphold any particular standard of behavior, but rather just to make sure that you don't get too comfortable with each-other, knowing full well that the eyes of a trusted authority figure are upon you, passing judgement. If you wanted someone who'd do it by the book, you should have asked someone else to chaperone for you."
Ellie rose alongside Marie's silly little brother and hunched over confrontationally. "Trusted authority my ass! Real job my ass! You're the one who insisted on being our chaperone - on us having this date to begin with. Sure, if I knew it was just an elaborate excuse to drag your loveryboy out here on your own date, I would've said no and gone looking for someone else to keep an eye out."
"Tee-hee!"
Helena stared her down, not accepting the way she was trying to just play it off, and so Marie let out a sigh and threw up her hands. "Don't you see, Ellie? I'm just trying to teach you a lesson - as a child of wealth and power, living in the luxury of your parent's throne as a dependant, you'll always have to deal with the insertion of bullshit into your personal life. There's only one real escape from the impositions of the parentocracy, and it's fucking off to somewhere they can't see your every move. If the both of you moved to, oh, just an example but…Lothario, you could go on all the dates you wanted without ever looking for a chaperone. You could even get silently married as soon as the mood struck you. There's a whole world of miracles waiting outside the birdcage!"
A hand clamped down on the pregnant woman's shoulder from behind. Bony but strong, wrinkly but with a healthy pulse. Its owner breathed heavily behind her. "Little Marie Clayton… correct me if I'm gettin' this wrong at all, but from what my ears tell me, you just suggested to my daughter that she…elope with your little brother. Is that right? Pretty funny joke, I guess, for the right set of ears, but I don't see or hear a single person laughing right now, do you?"
Marie laughed nervously. "Uncle Johann, is that you back there? I'm amazed you recognized me - it's been a whole decade, after all, and I'm sure I've changed at least a little bit. Now, er…when, exactly, did you get back on-world? I thought you were off tending to that little diplomatic shitstorm with the crazies on that one world?"
The old man let out an irritated groan, evidently not too impressed with her oh-so brilliant deflection. "They tried to have us assassinated. Didn't stick. Showed 'em the spot on the treaty they were going to sign as payback. Because of that, we were able to head back home a few months early. Got back into port about an hour ago, and what does Alexandria tell me when I get on the phone other than that I've got perfect timing to check in on this little date. Now, Marie, I'm sure you realize this, but you're never chaperoning for one of my kids again. Savvy?"
"Y-yeah, I get you."
Sven, recovering from the gawking shock and terror the past minute of the conversation had thrown him into, spun to face Johann and gave a little bow. "I'm terribly sorry for my wife's behavior, sir!"
Johann released his grip and chuckled sheepishly. "She's her own person…whoever you are. I'd actually be more worried if it seemed like you'd actually sorted out her little moments of…egh…absolute fucking lunacy. Be a sign of some real heavy handed treatment. If you're trying to be the common sense she's missing… I reckon that's plenty."
Finishing that brief address to a man he'd never been introduced to, Johann snapped his gaze onto Alan. "Kid, I want you to know, you've got three strikes before you're out and letting your sister chaperone this date is strike one. If you and Ellie make it three years together without reaching strike three, the two of us probably won't have a problem. Capiche?"
Marie watched as Alan swallowed what seemed like his entire adam's apple and let out a weak bark. "Yes sir."
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Got around to posting this a little late due stuff happening that threw my morning out of whack and persisted until a few minutes ago.
Scene 1
---Niops VII, Niops System
Niops Association, Antispinward Periphery
September 2944
Gazing up at the ceiling, Miliese realized, slowly, that the shaking that had penetrated into the bunker for what felt like so many hours had finally stopped. There was only one natural conclusion to take from all of that.
Nuller took his eyes off the sandwich he'd so carefully constructed from their preserved supplies as he, too, noticed the shift. Perhaps, she thought, Arturs' blubber had alerted him when it stopped shaking to the rhythm. "It would seem things have calmed down a bit, topside. With how much rumbling there was, you'd think they'd been putting an apocalypse on up there. Do you suppose the building is still standing? Be rather grim if the door was blocked up"
Dana smirked softly as she patted him on the shoulder. "I think it's rather just that the pipes and sound insulation here were never done up quite right. I was reviewing the records, as one does, and though parts of the bunker are Star League vintage, other parts were only completed after loss of contact, or never at all. The rattling upstairs ought to have reached us through some of those, rather than the bulk of the earth and fortification themselves. Much lower threshold required for the observed levels of shaking."
"I would wait for an actual seismologist to give their opinion on the matter," Nuller grumbled as a slice of tomato fell out of his sandwich. "but that we've not got one down here to begin with. Far be it for me to spit on a spot of hope, anyways. Good that the fight's done, at least."
McSriff gurgled and shifted on the table they had him on, his cracked jaw wrapped thoroughly and his mouth packed with gauze as he lay with his head elevated and tilted to reduce the odds that he drowned on his blood in a fit of absent mindedness before he could take responsibility for his bloody gaffe. "'E fahin 'an, uoh tiznezz basas. Ah doh euu!"
Associator Felic spritzed him with the squirt bottle they'd liberated from the reserve of cleaning supplies. Perhaps it was bad to spray the man with a dilute cleaning chemical, but it was the least harmful form of discipline any of them was willing to apply to the crucially important scapegoat at the moment. "Shut up before you swallow a tooth, Rey! Absolute child… Have you considered, for even a second, that there are at least two ways in which a fight might end? Perhaps the rioters have been put down or fled in the face of reinforcements, or perhaps they've slaughtered everybody up there! Perhaps they've made turncoats of the survivors! Or perhaps, just maybe, they got bored and decided to turn in for the night. There's more than one way to skin a cat!"
The Chief Associator was amazed the man had understood his incapacitated peer. She wasn't fluent in broken jaw, so it just sounded like a man trying not to choke on his own tongue to her. "Quite possible, I suppose. We'll not be checking for a bit, I think. If our own have failed in their mission, we should give the rabble some time to stop looking about for us. In the event that we must tender our surrender, we must evade a lynching by the commoners at least long enough to secure an audience with the Marians. In the event that our own have prevailed…we might be able to count on a dedicated rescue team coming looking for us - though even if the cameras out there are working, it may prove difficult to confirm their loyalties swiftly when they hail us."
"As you say." Joe agreed, looking at the now stockless Mauser that was previously their sole serious weapon down here. "It's not as though we've any serious means of fighting back if the time comes, if the time comes. Even if you hadn't put the gun to its highest use, we wouldn't have gotten much out of it against any group that could defeat the militia proper."
"Perhaps," Nuller began with a morose chuckle, "we ought to spend some time discussing the last things we want to do as the highest figures of an independent nation, given that we might be signing it over and begging for scraps in a few hours."
Dana snorted at the fat man. "I'll pass on that. A recounting of the lingering fantasies that remain possible in these cramped quarters has a rather narrow possibility space, and I'd rather not get caught up in some sick and twisted imagining of the lurid and depraved orgie any given one of you might wish we were having at this moment. There must be some dignity in facing one's fate, and quite frankly I find none of you the least bit attractive to begin with."
Phil Felic covered his face with one hand as he hissed in solidarity with Nuller, who'd gone red as a tomato at that. "Perhaps we should set more modest sights for the next few hours. For the time being, how about another game of poker? I know a few more rulesets if anyone would happen to be interested."
Miliese's stomach lurched. "Spare me, please. If you must do something with those cards other than play solitaire, try practicing your stacking skills. It might actually be interesting for a second if you managed a pyramid ."
This had not been a well planned evacuation, and between beating McSriff down and the many games of cards they'd had prior, she felt like one more papercut would sheer her softened and sliced fingers clean off of her hands. If only they'd brought some other form of amusement down into this drab and dusty little hell of other people, maybe they wouldn't be on track to go insane before it was even sensible to check if the coast was clear…
Nuller took a hearty bite of his disgusting sandwich of shelf-stable bread and canned goods, and the Chief Associator felt like she might die from the sound of him chewing alone. She was losing her mind in this miserable pressure cooker, and despite her own orders she felt like she couldn't handle much longer before either end of the now largely unusable rifle on the ground started to sound like a great solution to the problem at hand.
What illusions of control and stability had gripped her before when she looked at this group? Why had she wanted to lead them onward to a better future? She tolerated - even liked - a few of them, but aside from that this room was a pit of endless irritation that it felt as though she might never escape from. What had she been trying to protect by leading the Association away from the Marian Union's influence? Why had she stood for election, burned all those favors, made all of those promises?
Before she could sink any further into that downward mental spiral, which already had her heedless to the voices of her peers and 'peers', something happened which should not have. The buzzer on the wall nearby went off, signaling that the external motion sensor had been triggered, which was not by itself so unprecedented - it had happened once or twice while they'd been down here. What was much less typical was that a few moments later, the door to the bunker opened, and with the world's smallest thunderclap and a flash of light filling the air from that entranceway to the side of the gun the Mauser on the ground let out a snap, a crackle, and a pop before spewing smoke and becoming even more useless than before. Aside from the smoke, the air suddenly smelt of ozone.
"Well, you're all looking quite on edge down here. What's the story on the guy with the busted jaw, before we get you out of this disgusting hole in the ground?"
Under the circumstances, even Amelie Clayton's infuriatingly smug voice was a welcome thing for Miliese.
- -
This was, Miliese realized, the first time she'd actually visited the Marian embassy. Up until now, they'd always made the offworlders come to them for the summit meetings. That, in retrospect, was another bit of the self-destructive arrogance that had led them to this point. If there was anywhere much left for them to go with their lives, it might have been a useful learning experience.
"I'm sorry to say," O'Reilly began, the military man's aged face bearing down on the assembled members of the Association as he slid the paper that had just popped out of his printer. "But for all that your handing over the responsible party may have earned you back some goodwill from us, the mere fact that an attack on our lives was made under your watch renders it distinctly difficult for me to offer you terms anywhere near as favorable as we might have arrived on naturally. The Senate of the Marian Union must pursue a hard line when responding to an attack on the lives of two thirds of the seniormost government officials in the nation using the military resources of a foreign government."
Nuller held up his hand, sweat beaded on his forehead. "I swear to you, sir, we did not know of McSriff's plans before he'd already launched them! We only learned of them in the bunker!"
Johann flared his hands out wide, eyes closed, as he turned to the buffoon. "It's quite easy not to know about something like this ahead of time. All it requires is simply not doing proper diligence in controlling one's forces. If we had negligently loosened the control we hold over our own forces to the point that our battlemechs on-station were able to march against your halls of government without prior provocation purely on their own choosing, would you accept our own ignorance of the plan as an excuse not to demand concessions? No, you surely wouldn't have. A lax captain endorses the misdeeds of the crew by default. As such, we are here today to negotiate your surrender."
Associator Felic rose cautiously from his seat as Nuller let out a sound something like 'Grk!' and covered his mouth. "If we are to 'surrender' to you, will you at least be offering us due protections under the laws and customs of war? What will become of us in the aftermath of this incident?"
The consul tapped twice on the paper he'd placed before Harmon. "Rey McSriff will stand a fair trial for his crimes under your watch. As for the rest of you, it is our intention, after consulting with the leaders of the insurrection against your rule and negotiating the terms for an end to the violence so we could recover you safely, that you will be kept monitored in your current positions temporarily, to facilitate the transfer of power to a transitional administration of patricians, philosophers, and plebeians from the Union itself, who will serve in local governance until such a time as the local population is fully able to fill out the halls of local governance and decide upon its national level representation. You yourselves will be…"
Clayton coughed into the back of her hand. It still baffled Miliese that, of the Marian officials who had entered the bunker, the only one carrying a long arm had been the one who was quite literally half blind. "It is the internal policy of the Promethean Order that the members of the Niops Association government, as well as interested family members, should be reassigned out of system as soon as their presence is no longer required to facilitate transition of power."
The Chief Associator frowned, not bothering to look at the paper just yet. "We will not be maintaining even a reduced degree of our current authority within Niops?"
Amy waved her hand dismissively through the air as she frowned up at Miliese. "You will be regarded as philosophers, members of the Promethean Order one and all, after annexation, but you will not carry on your positions in the Niopsian government by default. Think of it not as us deposing you from power, but rather moving you out of the reach of the soon to be armed populace you have ruled heavy handedly over for so long. Your positions in our organization will not be high, to start with, but if you show proper capability and proper dedication to our cause your peers may one day entrust you with positions whose importance outmatches anything you could have held in the pre-annexation paradigm. On the other hand, if you are found to be attempting to recreate your prior excesses on the sly, the Tribunal, an organization with which you are little acquainted, may take issue with you - justice flows from the will of the people in the Marian Union, not from the self-justification of the mighty, and the courts will not find arguments premised on your quantitative superiority convincing if you take liberties with your adherence to the law."
Miliese would believe those claims about the Marian system of justice…not necessarily when she saw them realized, but certainly not a moment sooner. The idea that such a populist concept of justice could be upheld without imposing a state of brutal and dysfunctional anarchy still seemed ridiculous to her. "If that is what you'd have us sign to, I'll be the first to make my mark on it, but I hope there's at least some room left to discuss our fates."
The Dominisa quirked her brow in interest even as the Consul let out a sigh of frustration. "Well, what do you have in mind?"
---
Scene 2
---Nadir Point, Apollo System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
October 2944
Mark felt the eyes upon him as he took sedate steps under the partial gravity of the Cachalot's centrifugal deck, his tray clutched in hand as he seized the one unoccupied table of the cafeteria area for his own use. It boggled the mind how, even under use by the ship's own crew and that of the three attached dropships, the Tramp class vessel somehow managed to offer an excess of space. It had never been like this on any previous example of the breed he'd rode - helmed, back in the day. With any ordinary crew, there ought to be at least a few asses on every bench, the conversation and sounds of dropped silverware spread evenly throughout the room.
It was the fucking blakists and their need to cram tight like sardines for more efficient scriptural debate. By the stars, if anyone not in the know about their mission had put eyes on them now, they would never pass for a merchant crew again. Proper voidsmen just did not act this way.
Well, the staring wasn't too far out there, and it wasn't like any upright Spheroid merchantman crew had an actual interest in this region.
To his great consternation, Mark filled his fork with the miserably bland meal of lentils and mashed potatoes that the ship's crew seemed to subsist on, the fucking freaks. This inspection was going to be the biggest of bores. Maybe opening up the spice rack was too complicated a task for these knuckle draggers, but they could at least have put some color on the mix by frying it into patties if they had souls.
The door to the room slide open as he suffered through the first bite, and the woman who, to the best of his knowledge, headed this segment of the surveying mission made a beeline directly for him. He loosed a heavy sigh. It was only natural that she'd be able to track him down if need be on her own ship, but that was really far quicker than he was hoping for.
"Precentor Mars," she greeted, looking as though she had a lot more to say that Mark suddenly didn't intend to let her.
He shook his head as he corrected her. "I'm afraid you must have me confused for someone else, my good Captain Kelsington. I'm First Officer Chehalis of the merchant dropship Bleu. What on earth would a good precentor of the order be doing traveling so far out from anyplace of importance?"
She clicked her tongue at him and pinched her forehead. "Is this really the time for this sort of anal retentive method acting, 'First Officer'? There are only people of the cloth present, and talking in code and innuendo will only set our schedule for this debriefing further behind than it already was thanks to your evasive action. Some cooperation would be lovely, you know?"
Mark left his fork stuck vertically in his meal and folded his hands atop the end that stuck up. It was time for a lecture on proper methodology, apparently. At least it was about espionage protocol and not something as basic as wiping one's ass. "Oh captain, not my captain, it is always the time for anal retentive method acting when you're in deep cover. It keeps up the right habits. Just imagine what could happen if some of your crew were, on reflex, to call you 'Precentor' in public! The upright spy reinforces in every moment the illusion that they are who they say themself, and works to fool even themself. If you're all acting like this the moment you get back inside, I can only imagine how strange you must have looked to those you encountered 'on the beat' over the last while. Now, the natural response to a quirky band of travelers won't be to say 'egads, a cabal of blakist secret agents!', but people might think, besides themselves, that you're a cult of serial killers or something like that. Have you noticed anyone shying away from you?"
Her grimace told him everything he needed to know, and then she started talking. "That's…I don't see how it's necessarily related at all. With what treachery and backstabbing the Rim Worlds Republic was known for in it's heyday, it isn't unusual at all that the heirs to house Amaris' black legacy would be a private and suspicious sort, even beyond the suspicion that we might be pirates. Surely it took you some extended length of time to build a rapport with the locals in your prior deployment."
The pseudonymous 'Markus Chehalis' put more weight upon the fork, letting it bend as it pressed past the meal and encountered the tray below. Time to see if he remembered any of the French he'd studied a life and a half ago. "Non, non, non, non, non. Ce n'est pas bon, capitaine. Nobody thinks like that. Pirates aren't known for their elaborate ruses, and fewer worlds of the periphery than you might think have anything worth taking to begin with. No, if you were acting at all normal, you should have been the life of the party. The Rim's a backwards place of rotting traces, speckled with glass, and if you breathe a bit too heavily a world might collapse. For the locals, the day Captain Kelsington's merchant crew comes to their little village should be the most important day of their life, and for you it should be tuesday. That's exactly how it would be, if you rehearsed proper acting protocol like you're meant to before establishing contact. None of the other crews I've checked in on who've kept it in mind have had any trouble with their work."
The undercover Precentor Marie Valois watched as the fork bent flat against the tray with a look of disbelief and disdain on her face. "And have any of those crews found anything of interest, pray tell? Any evidence of meaningful developments in this region? Or has it simply been routine, banal natterings of everyday life beyond the grasp of civilization and good reason?"
"More than I would have expected, to be honest. There's a group - the Empire of Stars, they're called - squatting atop an old Rimjob jumpship maintenance yard, and one or two more irredentist pirate hordes championing old Stefan's banner centuries after he passed than we had any records of. I should expect that, if the local bandits were just a little bit better organized and hit one lucky windfall of metal, the vicinity in the Inner Sphere would destabilize considerably." Mark declared in a bored tone, inspecting the temporary indentation left on his right palm by the fork at the same time. "At the present time, though, I believe that there's minimal cause for interest - being the source of their windfall right now would not address the current strategic requirements laid out by the principles of Toyama's prophecies. It may prove desirable if the Lyran Commonwealth and Draconis Combine prove to be more troublesome than is currently the case, though."
"...That's practically nothing, First Officer." Valois replied, frowning as she continued to stare at the fork Mark had so unnecessarily destroyed. "If you didn't expect to find even that much here, how can you justify your own insistence on monitoring the periphery in general. We are loitering, at this very time, in the former capital system of the Rim Worlds Republic! We have spent the last eternity of our lives combing the systems of that bygone nation for key intelligence on up and coming developments. If not here, then where would you expect to find anything of actual importance to the balance of power?"
Mark plucked the fork out of his food just to bother the precentor more, shaking loose the clinging food before embarking upon the task of un-bending the ductile metal. "I would sooner look literally anywhere else, Captain. As you said, this was once the capital of the Rim Worlds Republic, and we've - for a certain value of 'we' - spent the last three years patrolling the ruins of a defunct nation that was successively leveled by Alexander Kerensky and the Lyran Commonwealth. Whatever was once here, I fully expect was swallowed by the nuclear fires of the civil war and that which came after it, either on-site or after removal. I'd hazard a guess that, if one were trying to find a meaningful trace of the Rim Worlds Republic's legacy, they would either need to look on entirely the other side of the Sphere for traces of the logistics facilities from which Stefan Amaris bankrolled the Periphery Uprising, or otherwise travel at least five jumps out from the Lyran border and begin checking systems that don't appear on any map for undiscovered blacksites. I informed the boss before we came out here that all we were going to find was miserable farmers with some stripe of cancer, and I was only barely made a liar."
The captain rolled her eyes. "I don't know if I'd classify the findings you discovered as making you a liar, 'Chehalis'. More like it's just you not being quite on the nose. You found some squatters and bandits with some stripe of cancer mixed in with your precious farmers. Or is there something else you didn't mention?"
Mark cocked his head to the side and smirked. "Something we haven't yet had the opportunity to follow up on, but something with exponentially better prospects than continuing to survey the ruins of this barren, wasted land. Worth looking into with or without permission to go off and look into it, at the very least. My own branch of the operation encountered some merchants from the Deep Periphery, you see - representatives of some place calling itself the Hanseatic League - in the vicinity of Dichell. Evidently, it's a relatively young mercantile power in a region with a high rate of state formation. If that's true, it'd be the only real area of interest turned up in this entire investigation so far. The main problem is that the trip out to their supposed coordinates is several months long, through the sweet, pirate infested depths of the Deep Periphery. It's no afternoon stroll, and it'll take more preparations than we've made so far to survey the area."
For once, the other Precentor smirked back. "So in the end of the day, you need to convince central to greenlight a massive expansion to this mission so you can demonstrate the value of your passion project? Bit far to go for pork barrel spending, innit?"
Well, if she wanted to think of it that way, it was fine by him. The facts wouldn't change if one precentor got it in her head that he was just a self interested clown looking to expand mercantile activity in the periphery under the guise of scouting it out. Those in charge knew what was at stake, knew what he actually wanted, and knew what he was arguing for. The deal they'd made, the conditional agreement to eventually let him investigate the mysterious disappearance of the O'Reilly family and the reemergence of their mercenary retainers in the rimward periphery, was already as written in stone as anything in the intelligence community was. He just needed to demonstrate some actual results and something that could, vaguely, be considered commitment to the cause, and surely - SURELY - he'd be back in the FWL in no time.
He smirked. "So, let's talk about what you found in the year you were out here, again?"
---
Scene 3
---Kallipolis Central Park (Formerly Grand Imperial Park), Alphard
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
November 2944
The air was cool, but not nearly as cold as it would soon become. It was still a fair season for outdoor excursions this far north, if only marginally so. They were only two months off from the earliest window for blizzard conditions to form, and before that there would be snow, hail, and biting cold fog and winds. It was all the more critical, as a result, that they got what sun they still could now, before the only valid uses of the outdoors in Kallipolis were things like snowball fights and ice skating - all well and good, but certainly not picnic weather.
Skipping down south to Castle O'Reilly would be little release from the cruel dictates of the climate as well. For all that the city of Chaldea was outside of the blizzard belt and, indeed, rarely got snow, that far down south the mild winter was instead a time of ceaseless, mind-numbing rainstorms spawned by offshoots of the same air currents that fed the blizzards.
For that reason, it was absolutely alright for Alan to invite Helena out to enjoy the last bits of tolerable weather they'd be getting for some time. Rather, it'd be wrong of him not to. What would the poor children on Lothario, living in lands where the winter was all but eternal by the grace of the semi-locked relationship with the local star, say if they knew people were willingly cooping themselves up inside on perfectly pleasant days when they ought to be synthesizing vitamin D?
Marie nodded to herself. Truly, she was a hero for arranging and chaperoning this little date. She'd saved her little brother and Johann's eldest from the indignity of receiving the indirect scorn of the frostbound Lothianites.
Beside her, Sven let out a sigh of relief, fanning the neck of his turtleneck gently. "I'm glad it's cooling down a little now. It's so hard to keep a comfortable temperature on this rock, you know? S'a nasty catch 22 - you either cook, or you go out with just one layer. Well, not that you ever had any problem with that last part, I guess."
Chuckling loudly, she gave him two firm pats on the back. "F'real! Hard to believe we're almost getting into sweater season. Can you believe it? Finally, an end to being asked if you don't maybe feel a bit warm in that get-up."
Yes, she thought. The poor, snow-buried children of the Lothian League would stand, mouths agape, in horror if they knew that people squandered this kind of weather. That would totally be their response, and they would not be at all inclined to instead ask how people managed not to cook to death. It was true because she decided it was so, and she decided it was so because it was true!
Sven smirked as they fell into their rhythm of banter. Oh, he played the part of the sane man in an insane world, but he had just as much fun in Marie's little games as she did, and she knew it. "Do you think there's a yarn out there that, made into a cardigan, would be cool enough to wear during the summertime? Now that I'm here, I'm thinking of expanding my wardrobe a little bit, to keep up with the mandates of the weather."
"Nooooo!" Marie cried out loud, covering her eyes as she feigned deathly horror at the suggestion. "If you're looking to expand your wardrobe, at least experiment a little bit. There's more fashion out there, you sweater golem! How am I supposed to take you to the beach one of these days if you're going to insist on wearing a sweater into the water?!"
Was she drawing wandering eyes? Oh, fuck yes she was.
Before he could respond, she lowered her hands and stuck out her tongue. "Oh, but I think you might be able to get something that works in cotton, if it was thin enough. Well, maybe enough to work by normal standards, at least. You might still cook in it. I mean, you? You'd cook alive naked in the summer sun, darling."
Now it was his term to wail in terror. "Why would you put that image in my heaaad!? Holy shit, Marie! If you never say anything like that again, I swear, I'll get something more besides sweaters! I'll even come to the beach with you, provided the weather's good for it!"
She smiled. "It'll be a lot easier to find good weather for it if you let me teach you how to swim while we're at it, Sven. The ocean's always pretty cool compared to the air. Besiiides… one day, your kids will want to learn to swim and go to the beach and such, and don't you want them to have the opportunity to learn from their daddy?"
Her husband cocked his head to the side. "You're bringing the kids into this? The first isn't even born yet and you're already dragging her into this scenario? Isn't that a bit of an overstretched forecast of their interests?"
Marie wore her most sober and straight laced expression as she stared Sven down and corrected that misunderstanding. "Nah, it's just normal that they will, my dude. The only kids who don't take an interest in splashing around in water are the ones who live where it'll kill them."
"AaaaAAARGH!" Helena cried, throwing her hands up under the tree where she and Alan were sitting, a stone's throw away. "Aunt Marie, you two are being way, way, waaay too loud! We can't even hear our own thoughts, let alone have a decent conversation over here! Why, please tell me why you have to be like this? When it comes to days of the year when you lovebirds could be having this conversation, there's a hell of a lot more than times when Alan and I could reasonably get outside for something like this, you know?"
The eldest of the Clayton children smirked. "I don't see what the problem is. You don't need to be able to hear anything to make out, sweetie. You need to broaden your definition of what a date is if you ever want to dream of getting on my level."
Alan flew to his feet, grinding his teeth vigorously. "Alright, sis, how in the hell is that something a chaperone would say? Aren't you meant to, you know, keep us from making out or something like that? I know for a fact the staff at Castle O'Reilly made you promise to keep this whole affair chaste. Instead, though, it seems like you're just interested in turning this into the double date from hell!"
"As your chaperone, I'm sorely disappointed in your failure to comprehend the nature of my work, oh brother mine." Marie declared, clicking her tongue several times. "Oh, I may have promised something to that effect, but that's just what the rules of engagement normally are. My real job isn't to uphold any particular standard of behavior, but rather just to make sure that you don't get too comfortable with each-other, knowing full well that the eyes of a trusted authority figure are upon you, passing judgement. If you wanted someone who'd do it by the book, you should have asked someone else to chaperone for you."
Ellie rose alongside Marie's silly little brother and hunched over confrontationally. "Trusted authority my ass! Real job my ass! You're the one who insisted on being our chaperone - on us having this date to begin with. Sure, if I knew it was just an elaborate excuse to drag your loveryboy out here on your own date, I would've said no and gone looking for someone else to keep an eye out."
"Tee-hee!"
Helena stared her down, not accepting the way she was trying to just play it off, and so Marie let out a sigh and threw up her hands. "Don't you see, Ellie? I'm just trying to teach you a lesson - as a child of wealth and power, living in the luxury of your parent's throne as a dependant, you'll always have to deal with the insertion of bullshit into your personal life. There's only one real escape from the impositions of the parentocracy, and it's fucking off to somewhere they can't see your every move. If the both of you moved to, oh, just an example but…Lothario, you could go on all the dates you wanted without ever looking for a chaperone. You could even get silently married as soon as the mood struck you. There's a whole world of miracles waiting outside the birdcage!"
A hand clamped down on the pregnant woman's shoulder from behind. Bony but strong, wrinkly but with a healthy pulse. Its owner breathed heavily behind her. "Little Marie Clayton… correct me if I'm gettin' this wrong at all, but from what my ears tell me, you just suggested to my daughter that she…elope with your little brother. Is that right? Pretty funny joke, I guess, for the right set of ears, but I don't see or hear a single person laughing right now, do you?"
Marie laughed nervously. "Uncle Johann, is that you back there? I'm amazed you recognized me - it's been a whole decade, after all, and I'm sure I've changed at least a little bit. Now, er…when, exactly, did you get back on-world? I thought you were off tending to that little diplomatic shitstorm with the crazies on that one world?"
The old man let out an irritated groan, evidently not too impressed with her oh-so brilliant deflection. "They tried to have us assassinated. Didn't stick. Showed 'em the spot on the treaty they were going to sign as payback. Because of that, we were able to head back home a few months early. Got back into port about an hour ago, and what does Alexandria tell me when I get on the phone other than that I've got perfect timing to check in on this little date. Now, Marie, I'm sure you realize this, but you're never chaperoning for one of my kids again. Savvy?"
"Y-yeah, I get you."
Sven, recovering from the gawking shock and terror the past minute of the conversation had thrown him into, spun to face Johann and gave a little bow. "I'm terribly sorry for my wife's behavior, sir!"
Johann released his grip and chuckled sheepishly. "She's her own person…whoever you are. I'd actually be more worried if it seemed like you'd actually sorted out her little moments of…egh…absolute fucking lunacy. Be a sign of some real heavy handed treatment. If you're trying to be the common sense she's missing… I reckon that's plenty."
Finishing that brief address to a man he'd never been introduced to, Johann snapped his gaze onto Alan. "Kid, I want you to know, you've got three strikes before you're out and letting your sister chaperone this date is strike one. If you and Ellie make it three years together without reaching strike three, the two of us probably won't have a problem. Capiche?"
Marie watched as Alan swallowed what seemed like his entire adam's apple and let out a weak bark. "Yes sir."
--------
Got around to posting this a little late due stuff happening that threw my morning out of whack and persisted until a few minutes ago.
