Chapter 20 (January 2940 - February 2940)
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
---
Scene 1
---
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
---
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
---
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.
Scene 1
---
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
---
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
---
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.