Artwork of our hero
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Petals of Titanium -- My Life as a Mecha Setting Bridge Bunny Quest
- Thread starter Gazetteer
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Update 018: Iapetus
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Someone serious and unapproachable but with a private warmer side, tall blondes, 22 votes.
Someone mysterious with a troubled past, unusual looks, 21 votes.
Someone serious and unapproachable but with a private warmer side, great smiles, 14 votes.
Someone serious and unapproachable, with a private warmer side, unusual looks, 3 votes.
Someone brave, maybe sometimes even a little recklessness, tall blondes, 1 vote.
Definitely no one in the military, tall blondes, 1 vote.
Someone mysterious with a troubled past, a great smile, 1 vote.
Someone mysterious with a troubled past, unusual looks, 21 votes.
Someone serious and unapproachable but with a private warmer side, great smiles, 14 votes.
Someone serious and unapproachable, with a private warmer side, unusual looks, 3 votes.
Someone brave, maybe sometimes even a little recklessness, tall blondes, 1 vote.
Definitely no one in the military, tall blondes, 1 vote.
Someone mysterious with a troubled past, a great smile, 1 vote.
"Well?"
"I was thinking," you say, eyebrows raised in amusement a little at Anja's evident curiosity. Your handful of past entanglements flash through your head, searching for a unifying theme. "I go for people who are… serious," you decide. "About their work and in general. Reserved, you might say. Even a little intimidating to talk to."
Anja groans, flicking out her next dice roll with a slight air of annoyance. "North," she says. "North, that is so boring. Why are you like this?"
"It's not boring!" you say, stung a little, despite yourself. "People like that tend to be… well," You struggle to explain the appeal in a way that isn't completely embarrassing. The feeling of seeing a part of someone that they don't show to anyone else, of escaping with them to a world just for two people. "There's more to people like that, if you take the time," you decide, inadequately.
"Is that it, though?" Anja asks, still with the slight air of making fun of you. Which really, you suppose, is something she's entitled to, under current circumstances. You'll get her back for it sooner or later. "Serious people who can't hold a conversation?"
You tilt your head in thought again. This time it doesn't take too long. "I go for blondes."
"... blondes."
You nod. "Especially tall ones. A height difference can be rom-- why are you looking at me like that?"
Anja continues to stare at you, expression of mix of amusement and disbelief. "Tall, blonde, and waay too high strung about work," she says, lowering her voice now, lest anyone else at a neighbouring table hear and repeat. "Are you sure you're not describing someone in particular?"
"I'm not!" you insist, face heating slightly. At least, you hadn't intended to, but now that she points it out, there is an embarrassing degree of similarity between your description and--
Being visited by a beautiful girl who wants to hear me gripe is hardly going to make me feel worse."
--certain shipmates.
"You must really like being bossed around," Anja notes.
You follow that thought to its logical conclusion, eyes momentarily faraway in reflection. It's a moment before you speak, giving Anja a sly sort of smile: "Being bossed around can be fun, though. In the right circumstances. With the right person."
Anja is so shocked that she fouls up her roll, accidentally collecting the wrong dice as her face goes from olive to rosey pink. "You," she says, staring, "are just too respectable to go around saying things like that! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" She points an accusatory finger in your direction.
"You'll live," you say, giving her a small, pleased smirk.
Anja huffs, and turns back to her game. You can tell she's trying not to laugh, though. It's temporary, but some of the tension has left her shoulders.
--
IOnboard the Titanium Rose, approaching Iapetus
In spite of being Saturn's third largest moon, Iapetus isn't even in the same weight class as the solar system's largest moons. Compared to Titan, to Earth's lonely, nameless moon, to the largest of the Jovian moons, it's small. Compared to Phoebe -- little more than a captured Centaur spinning backwards around Saturn, too small even to be even roughly spherical -- the object growing increasingly large in space is both colossal and strange.
The dramatic, two-tone colour that the icy moon is famous for is visible on your approach, the trailing hemisphere blindingly white next to the carbon-black of the leading. As you grow nearer, the small world's other natural dividing line becomes discernible -- the bulge of the Voyager Mountains wraps around its equator, forming a massive ridge on the dark side, growing sparser on the light. A few small constellations of light twinkle visibly on the dark side, domed surface colonies that you know are mostly dedicated to ice mining. The light side colonies are likely smaller to see. Iapetus is desolate and too small to comfortable live on longterm, to say nothing of its periodic, lethal landslides. Most of the moon's population lives in orbit above it in a group of military and civilian habitats, your mother included.
The history of Iapetus as a site for mining and habitation is a complicated, halting affair. In spite of the abundance of valuable ices prime for the taking, the unique and bizarre nature of the moon's geography created a constant outcry whenever anyone attempted to develop it. In the wake of Saturn's unprecedented population boom since the civil war, these concerns have finally been cheerfully overridden. You can see the lighter scars on the darker surface as you near your ultimate destination.
Anchiale Station, known less poetically as Iapetus II, utterly dwarfs both Quetzle and Phoebe stations, the single largest object in space you've seen since leaving Titan. The older Iapetus I station is a distant toy in comparison. Hardened military station and major habitat both, Anchiale's twin, barbel-like habitation spheres are connected by a rigid spindle containing a port and major naval repair yard. The whole thing is surrounded by array upon array of reflection mirrors and defensive satellites, to say nothing about the intimidating bulk of the Outer Fleet. The cruisers, dreadnoughts and full sized carriers of the mighty fleet are still vanishingly small compared to the station you're flying toward at a seemingly glacial pace, necessitated to match Anchiale's rotation.
"Your well-wishes are appreciated, my Lord Admiral," Princess Daystar says, coolly. Her face on the screen seems to be turned toward you all. An illusion, given that the Rose is a mere bystander in this conversation. "As are your congratulations. I'm certain we will have much to discuss, both about enemy movements and about the state of governance and readiness in the outer reaches of the system. For now, however, I want nothing so much as repair and relief for the crews of the Night Lily and the Titanium Rose. I certainly would not have survived to speak with you now if it weren't for their valiant efforts and sacrifices."
It's difficult not to feel your spirits lift both at the acknowledgement of all your struggles, and at the sight of something approximating safety. Short of Titan, there is no point in the system better fortified than Iapetus, even before the prospect of getting to see your mother face to face and spending time in any kind of open air habitat with walking around gravity. Even if Lord Admiral Sikes's sour face looks like it might crack in the attempt to send the princess an ingratiating smile. "Of course, your Highness," he says. He resists for a few moments longer, before taking the hint of the princess's comment, and deigning to add: "You are, of course, to be commended, Captain Patel, Commander Andre, for helping to bring our radiant Princess safely to us."
"Thank you, Lord Admiral," Captain Andre says, perfectly respectful, an instant ahead of Patel, who stumbled slightly upon being directly addressed. Patel is beaming beyond his embarrassment but you can't help but read a touch of skepticism into the otherwise neutral set of Andre's lips. She, perhaps, has not forgotten the decision made at Quetzle, and other, similar incidents. Naval command, let alone an honest to goodness Lord Admiral in the flesh, are not prone to forgiveness where upjumped common born officers are concerned. You find yourself wishing that Daystar's advocacy extends beyond mere lip service.
Sikes resumes ignoring the two captains almost immediately afterward, and no one on the Rose is invited to speak again, until the Admiral's face is replaced by a calmly competent harbour master. At long last, you're docking.
--
Elsewhere in space, approaching Iapetus
There are few things Mosi hates more than being a passenger while someone else pilots. Certainly, this is the state of affairs whenever she's onboard a spaceship. Mosi could never hope to competently pilot a full sized warship, with its vast bulk, its myriad sensors and systems. Now, however, she can't help but glare at the sealed hatch leading to the tiny cockpit of the shuttle, thinking to herself, irrationally: I could do this better.
The man strapped in to Mosi's right fidgets, trying in vain to get comfortable, the motion nudging her into the woman on her left. The six of them barely fit together into the shuttle's passenger bay. The sound of the stealth drive is loud enough that the bulkhead beneath their seats vibrates periodically. It's stiflingly, miserably hot. Venting large amounts of heat into space would be enough to overwhelm the shuttle's onboard stealth, supposedly, compounding the already well established problems with cooling a spaceship in vacuum.
This shuttle is the single largest stealth enabled craft at the Divine Navy's disposal and, Mosi is bitterly aware, likely cost twice as much to produce as her beloved Provespa, left behind onboard the Amaranth. She would still give almost anything to be behind the controls in her unit, however, in an actual pilot's suit rather than the clumsier gear she's been forced into.
"Stealth shuttles are famously shit, kid," Commander Green had told her, without any trace of exaggeration. "Just so you know." Mosi had, at the time, brushed him off. After all, could it really compare unfavourably to an eight hour sortie in a standard mecha?
The answer to that was definitely yes. It has to be this way, of course. Stealth technology is simply not powerful enough to manage anything bigger than this shuttle, and every gram of mass cloaked marks years of intensive study. A stealth shuttle of any size capable of VTA even on an atmospheric ice ball like this is bleeding edge. Or so she's always been told. It's hard not to think of the Night Lily -- that ridiculous, malfunctioning ship that had gotten away from her -- and not be a little bitter. Somehow, she doubts whatever traitorous royal was housed in the Lily was sitting shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee with five others, while wearing full ground vacuum rig sans helmet. It should be arriving soon, she'd been told, was possibly docked with a repair yard already. When word gets back to the Emperor of such an advance by the enemy, Mosi half expects that whoever in R&D is responsible for stealth research will very publicly disappear. Dragged into an unmarked vehicle on their way to work, or coming out of a meeting or performance, then never seen or heard from again. The Emperor likes the spectacle of it as much as the ambiguity.
"How fast do you think those defence arrays would blow us out of space if the stealth slipped for half a second?" the woman across from Mosi muses. Everyone else glares at her. The other pilot.
"Please don't tempt fate, Ensign," Mosi advises, flatly, and the rest of the passengers save for the blithe ensign rumble darkly in agreement. Half a second is generous. Should an unknown stealth vessel be detected this close to one of the pretender's greatest remaining strongholds, they would be riddled with holes and blown up in less than half that time. The space around Iapatus is far from empty or safe for true patriots.
The bright side of Iapatus is directly in front of them as they can all see on one of the tiny view screens built into the shuttle's ceiling. There's no docking at their ultimate destination directly. Stealth or no, people tend to notice when an enemy shuttle docks with a station and deposits a team of six. So they're destined for a long, nerve wracking descent to the moon's surface, and a trek through near vacuum to their contact's secure location. From there, apparently, transportation back up into space will be arranged. Irrational animosity or no, Mosi truly does not envy the pilot his painstaking trip back out of the system once he's deposited them.
When this was done -- if it was done -- Mosi would be back in good standing, possibly even in line for some manner of commendation. The cause of the invasion and the restoration of peace to the empire would be materially advanced. If Dame Nalah North should end up dead or disgraced in the process, then… so much the better. Mosi closes her eyes, and tries to keep those happy thoughts in mind, instead of thinking about how dead she will be if something, anything goes wrong.
It's a long, deeply uncomfortable trip.
--
Anchiale Station, Central Docking Port
The Rose's crew disembarks in good order, if not without an intensely buzzing enthusiasm. The ship's senior officers leave first in order to seek formal permission from the representative of Anchiale command waiting for them. This permission being granted is a foregone conclusion, but needs to be observed regardless. From there, the ship's occupants are allowed to leave in carefully planned order, funnelled into different receiving chambers depending on their status.
You find yourself drifting out into the officer's room near the end of the line. Elsewhere, the process of getting the civilians off the ship is likely already complete, with the crew well underway. You're in a narrow, square chamber, hatches on all four walls, vertical poles at regular intervals to serve as handholds for queuing officers. All of them are currently occupied as the line slowly progresses.
The harbour master's representative at the end of your line is swiping lazily on a tablet, making careful note of each departee. "Name and rank? Good. Identification number? Yes, I have you here. Welcome to Iapetus, Sub-Lieutenant. You're being issued temporary housing Beta Sphere, while intensive work is done on your ship." You see Mazlo go through the queue ahead of you, answering the same questions as all the others, and feel a surge of relief that you won't need to be near him for a period of time, at least.
Up ahead, in one corner of the room, you catch sight of Lady Perbeck, in conversation with an unfamiliar officer. Tall and thin, with a complexion somewhere between yours and Lieutenant Grayson's. Judging from his uniform, he's a pilot as well, although you don't immediately recognise the significance of his uniform colouration -- mint green, rather than turquoise. As they talk, his eyes briefly sweep over the line of officers. Are you imagining that he seems to take particular notice of you?
When it's your turn, the petty officer taking your details pauses on your name.
"I believe my mother is stationed here?" you prompt, "Dame Nalah North."
He nods, pinched features seemingly gratified at guessing right. Any single person stationed here is hardly going to know everyone, but a squad commander and a knight might tend to stand out. "You… resemble her, ma'am," he comments, before turning back to his screen.
"Would you, perhaps, be able to tell me where I can find her?" you ask, before he can wave you on.
Looking briefly startled, and on the verge of politely denying the request, he seems to relent, casting a furtive glance around for any of his direct superiors. There aren't any, however, and the only person behind you in line is seemingly occupied studying the rivets that hold the pole he's holding onto to both the decks. "I can check, ma'am," he says, fingers doing something on his tablet. A moment later, he shakes his head, giving you an apologetic look. "I'm sorry," he says, "Dame North is currently on a long-range scouting mission. She should return within the week."
"I see," you say, giving him a smile you know must be brittle with disappointment. "Thank you for looking regardless. It was very kind of you."
He flushes a little, and seems to glow under the faint praise, offering you a smile that's just awkward enough to be endearing, if not particularly attractive. "It was my pleasure, ma'am. I'm sending the details of where you'll be staying to your tablet -- you're in Beta Sphere."
You move past him, unsnapping your tablet from your belt to look at the information you've received, a motion made by almost everyone who went through line before you. The interactive map of the station that pops up is scalable and extremely detailed, showing where you are in the zero gravity spaceport, with a glowing path leading to one of the two habitation spheres. The thought of being in an open-air habitat again -- of large spaces and false sky -- would have made your heart quicken with anticipation moments before. Had made it quicken moments before. Now you can only feel a dull sense of anticipation -- your mother is the only family you have left in the world, after all Scouting missions of the sort she's embarked on are now exponentially more dangerous, considering the still substantially intact raiding fleet you were nearly killed by recently. There is every chance that she might not come back.
Out of the corner of your eye, you watch Perbeck break off from the man she was speaking to, crossing over to the same exit you're using. You salute, and she smiles at you as she returns it. Her smile is small, with an almost wry twist to it. "North," she says, politely. Her arm is out of its sling, you're happy to see, even if she's clearly favouring the other still.
You're to follow her out into the spaceport's wide shaft guided by your map's trail, but someone bumps into you before you can. Not hard, but enough to knock you off course, and necessitate whoever did it to grab you to keep you from drifting into anyone else. "Apologies, Ensign," says a voice with a surprisingly thick Martian accent. You look up in startelement to find none other than Perbeck's conversation partner from moments again, one lean arm holding onto your wrist to keep you from floating away.
"No harm done… Lieutenant-Commander," you say, finding the rank, along with M. OWUSU on his uniform. Your eyes widen at the eclipsed sun insignia on his breast, but you do your best to keep it from your voice.
"That's good," he says, good naturedly. As he releases you, you're alarmed to feel a hand slipping into your magnetically sealed pocket jacket pocket… only to slip out an instant later. "From what Glory's been saying, you've survived a lot. It would be a shame to be killed by some clumsy idiot at this point." He grins a little at his own joke, beautiful face dimpling distractingly. And that is the best word for him -- not so much handsome as beautiful. It's to a degree that you're skeptical it's the face he was born with, between sensual lips, laughing green eyes and a graceful, diamond cut jawline.
You don't quite know how to respond to self deprecating humour from an elite special forces pilot you've only just met. "No harm done, sir," you repeat, attaching yourself to one of the nearby poles again to use your free hand to straighten up your uniform. He nods, and floats past you with a backwards wave, passing a scowling Lady Perbeck as he goes. The look is directed at the Lieutenant-Commander Owusu, and she lets out a heavy sigh as he leaves.
Seeing your look, Perbeck explains: "We've met before." she pinches the bridge of her fine-featured nose, shutting both eyes. "I only spoke to the man for two minutes, but I think I've got a headache already. With any luck, in between all the debriefs and him sniffing around, I'll have some time for a real cup of tea before the enemy attacks us again."
"... Tempting fate, ma'am?" you ask.
She smiles a little again, breaking through the annoyance. "We're being invaded, North. Fate doesn't seem to need me to tempt it."
You wait until you're in the relative privacy of a transit shaft to reach into the pocket that Owusu reached into, and feel the edge of a piece of paper through your gloved fingers. A shiver goes down your spine. The eclipsed sun bad on his uniform is the symbol of Intel's Special Reconnaissance and Investigation branch, an outfit whose shadowy actions are infamous both in and out of the military. And he has handed you something on paper.
Despite long predictions about the demise of the world's oldest extant writing medium, paper has one clear advantage over anything else more technologically advanced: it is secure in a way that only a physical object can be, for particularly sensitive information only. You don't dare look at it until you can make a stop in a restroom, your back against the locked door as you carefully unfold the message:
It's written in naval code, but basic enough that you can easily read it without consulting a cipher. This was one of the first you learned, and it's almost as fast to parse it by this point as plain text. The hand that wrote the message was steady and confident in a way that most people never need to develop with pen and paper, and you wonder how many such missives Lieutenant-Commander Owusu has written in his career:
I would like a quick word in order to do some side work for me.
Details will be given in person only.
This is highly sensitive, not to be made common knowledge, your record indicates a history of discretion.
Please exercise it here!
PS don't panic this isn't anything bad for you
The paper also contains a location which you recognise as being somewhere in Alpha Sphere, clear on the other side of the station from where you're being temporarily housed, as well as a time on the following day. You're uncertain whether the addendum at the end makes you more or less comfortable with this whole situation. Regardless, you find yourself deeply confused as to what Owusu might need you for when, even out here on Iapetus, surely he has access to copious resources from Military Intelligence.
The letter makes it clear that the lieutenant-commander would prefer you not spread the existence of the planned meeting around, and perhaps you should tell absolutely no one. But this is all very strange and a little slapdash, and you find yourself longing to be able to tell someone. Whether just to have someone you trust to confide in, or simply to get instructions from within your actual chain of command.
Who do you tell about this?
[ ] No one
[ ] Lieutenant Grayson
[ ] Sub-Lietenant Mazlo
[ ] Anja
[ ] Lady Perbeck
[ ] Guardswoman J6
Last edited:
Update 019: Anchiale
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Tell no one, but make plans to meet Anja and Lady Perbeck as well as setting up a dead-man's switch of information about what you're doing: 23 votes.
Tell Lady Perbeck: 13 votes.
Tell no one: 7 votes.
Tell Guardswoman J6: 7 votes.
Tell Mazlo: 1 vote.
Tell Lady Perbeck: 13 votes.
Tell no one: 7 votes.
Tell Guardswoman J6: 7 votes.
Tell Mazlo: 1 vote.
Anchiale Station
There are various factors to balance here.
Carefully, you slide the note back into your pocket, telling yourself you'll destroy it the moment you've committed its contents to memory. A little spy-novel, perhaps, but it seems in keeping with the gesture of giving it to you in the first place. On one hand, there are certainly risks to keeping this entirely to yourself. If Owusu is involved in something dicey or even illegal, or simply something command dislikes, and you have made no effort to clear this with even your immediate superiors, you will be exposed to potentially serious blowback.
On the other hand, Owusu clearly would like you to keep things close to the chest, and he could well be a useful contact to cultivate. It's like Captain Andre told you -- you're not just going to have advancement or promotions handed to you on a silver platter. Sometimes, it's going to require taking risks.
The latter wins out, and you decide to take the risk. To assuage your concerns somewhat, on the off chance that things go truly pear-shaped, during your commute you compose a quick message addressed to all three of your superiors, set to send if something happens to you. You should also, you decide, make arrangements to meet people over the next few days, so that they'll notice if something happens to you. You feel both silly and reassured by these countermeasures, and can't shake the feeling that Anja will laugh at you if she hears about it. Assuming you don't actually turn up vented out of an airlock.
You're in the officer's compartment of a train with a number of others you don't recognise. By happenstance, you have managed to seperate yourself from the bulk of the Titanium Rose's crew. The transit line is a bizarre combination between train and multi-car elevator, running as it does between both habitats and their opposing pseudo-gravities. On the spindle, where you're getting on now, it can function as a short train. Three large cars, each with seating for twenty five people twice over, requiring belted seating on two separate surfaces along with handholds on the remaining walls for zero gravity maneuvering.
There's no hurry to get people into their seats as you first move out, going down the length of the transit shaft toward Beta Sphere. "Up" here, by arbitrary fiat, is perpendicular to the length of the station and while a few of the riders are already belted into their seats early, you and most of the others simply float along until you all feel your progress artificially slow.
"Attention passengers," a pleasant, female voice says over hidden speakers, "We are nearing the inertial tipping point. For your safety, please take this opportunity to move to a seat on the lit up surface, and fasten yourself in as instructed. If you require assistance, please press your nearest help button now."
Sure enough, the seat-lined wall nearest the direction of Beta Sphere has lit up a soft blue. Animated signage has appeared on the wall, using arrows to direct you all to "please take your seat." As you drift down into a vacant seat, you can already feel the faint tug of the gravity simulated by the rapid spinning of the habitat. You's been awaiting this with some interest, as you've you've never actually been in a "bolo" style station before. The design sacrifices a degree of usable habitat surface, compared to a standard sphere or larger cylindre, in exchange for orbital stability, each habitat acting as a counterweight for the other, tumbling end over end around the little moon.
You begin to feel the faint tug of gravity quickly as the car begins its descent in earnest, growing stronger and stronger as you regain speed and get farther along the spindle, your eyes following the glowing dot on the map while the metal struts of the transit shaft fly past the windows. Then, just as the dot reaches the sphere, the car is flooded with sunlight. You along with everyone else cover your eyes until you adjust, and you're looking out through a glass-lined shaft at the wide, open expanse of the Beta Sphere habitat.
A city spreads out beneath you, built into the unnaturally symmetrical basin of the sphere, radiating out from the base of the spindle on modular, hexagonal tiles. Prefab buildings march up the slope, interspaced by the greener spaces of parks and trees. Buildings climb up the sides of the sphere in narrow terraces, until the top half of the sphere transitions into a glossy blue "sky" interspaced with focusing sun strips. Small birds, deliberately introduced to the habitat, wheel through the air.
The illusion of this being a strange but somehow organic real space is destroyed by the unfinished hexes -- the interior of Alpha Sphere was well underway before Beta was even started, and ugly grey scars still dot the landscape where earth, roads and buildings have yet to be extended. Even with those, however, this is still the closest place you've been to an open, natural feeling environment in months and months, and you find an unacknowledged tension sliding out of your body even as it's weighed down more than it has been in a long time. The business with Lieutenant-Commander Owusu is strange and worrying. You remain disappointed about your mother's absence to say nothing about the larger invasion. Nontheless, it feels good to be here.
Stepping out onto the multi-layered departure platform, you spend a moment just taking in the sights. The space overhead and around you is vast enough to disguise the artificial quality left by the air scrubbers, and what you breath in tastes fresh and invigorating on your tongue. Without weather to worry about, the departure station at the centre of the city is open to the air, rail-lines stretching out to the edges of the sphere in three directions, the whole thing surrounded by a narrow band of parks and lakes. The air smells like growing things and good food, and for a while, you simply walk around the hexagonal platform.
Only about a quarter of the foot traffic around you is military, but naval personnel are such a common sight that no one bats an eye at your uniform, and there's none of the hard-eyed stares you received from the civilians in the Shadow Ring. There's an uncomfortable tension in the air, though. People keeping their voices lower than necessary, or laughter that's a little too high and a little too shrill. News of the invasion will have gotten to these people by now. The Phoebe Ring lost, and Iapetus now a prime target. Working your way through them, and through the other naval officers, it's a good, long while before you finally run into someone you recognise.
The small, uniformed figure of Ensign Anja Li leans against a railing, looking down at a little grove of cherry trees growing in the shadow of the platform. At first, you think she's relaxing. As you approach, however, you see the knot in her shoulders, the white knuckled death grip she maintains on the railing, and her face: eyes squeezed shut, mouth twisted in a pained expression.
"Having trouble adjusting?" you ask, approaching.
She doesn't look up at you, merely lets out an exhausted breath. "This is bad, North," she tells you.
You look meaningfully at the cherry trees. They're in full bloom. "I thought they looked rather lovely," you say.
"That's not what I mean and you know it. I'm trying to adjust to the gravity, but the ground is tilting the wrong way. This is almost as bad as a damn cylinder!"
"Have you ever been to a standalone sphere station?" you ask, walking up to lean on the railing beside her. Your own transition to gravity is, as always, slightly disorientating, but easily managed. You're finding your legs again already.
"No," Anja mutters.
"Imagine this, but there are buildings on every side."
Anja groans. "I'll be alright, I just need… I just need a few minutes before I can get on another train."
"I'll keep you company," you say. "Our accommodations should be near each other, I think?" and she doesn't object.
"Stars I'm glad I don't have to leave this sphere again until shore leave's over," Anja mutters. You find yourself very grateful that you don't have her particular problem with gravity fields.
--
The Surface of Iapetus
Mosi's ears are full of the sound of her own breathing, the quiet hum of the meager systems keeping her alive, and the muted thump of her own footfalls travelling through her heavily insulated, spiked boots. All else on the airless lunar surface is silent as death as the team trudges forward. As they head to their rendezvous point, they maintain strict comm silence.
The Saturn system in its natural state is hardly hospitable to human life, and Iapetus is certainly no exception. The landscape is beyond barren, plains and valleys of ice frozen hard as rock stretch as far as the eye can see, the pure white visible from orbit sullied up close with small patches of mineral brown. Mosi isn't cold -- rather, she's still uncomfortably hot. The heat from her suit will be slowly leached out into the ice underfoot through her footfalls, but she would have to run out of breathable oxygen long before that could happen. Ahead, Saturn hangs partially visible over the horizon, almost as large as Earth seen from Luna. This close to the gas giant, the planet dwarfs the large, bright star that is the sun. Moving lights among the stars are the military platforms they braved to get here, as well as habitats home to thousands each. The stations are in a relatively close orbit to the little moon, but right at this moment, they feel indescribably distant.
Mosi thinks about what would happen if their contact simply doesn't show up for their rendezvous. The best they could hope for then would be capture, imprisonment, and possibly execution. The six of them have no excuse for being out here at present -- cover documentation is to be handled by their local contacts. It would hardly be difficult to correctly guess who they were, even in these clunky, civilian spacesuits. More likely, they would simply asphyxiate once their suits ran through their air supplies, their corpses laying frozen where they fell forever.
It takes over two exhausting hours for them to finally make the trek out to the rendezvous point. The six of them -- strung out in a rough line -- stop at the same spot without needing to communicate. They all have a copy of the relevant map loaded onto their suit, and all are enjoying the benefits of a small navigation map projected into the inside of their helmet. Right beside the indicator counting down how many breathes they have left to breath.
It's another tense half an hour before a plume of dust on the horizon announces the arrival of their initial contact. When the battered old ground vehicle pulls into sight, roaring up over a hill of ice-gravel, an entirely different sort of apprehension grips them. Ancient, blocky and patchwork, the small mining hauler is a far cry from a well maintained military warship or mecha, and Mosi cringes to see the amount of air it gets when it goes over the hill. However, it's light enough here that the catastrophic landing in Mosi's head fails to transpire. Instead, it lands heavily on its tracks, rattling and settling dramatically before anyone feels safe approaching it.
Its airlock works, though, as Mosi pulls herself up the ladder, even if it's so small that they can only enter the vehicle two at a time. When Mosi finally steps into the cabin, she practically rips her helmet off, and even the stuffy confines of the vehicle and the unpleasant chemical odor that permeates the air isn't enough to stop her gulping it down greedily. Against all hope, it's actually cool in here, the air exchange rattling deafeningly.
"So you made it without being shot out of the sky," the driver says, as the last of the team piles in. There are seats for six in the back -- a tarnished, unadorned metal box crammed up against the cargo compartment -- but Mosi's gives alarmingly when she lets her weight settle down onto it. Iapetus's frankly floaty gravity, approximately an eighth of what Mosi grew up with on Luna, is all that keeps the seat from collapsing under her weight. She wonders how much of the vehicle this is true for.
"Evidently," Lieutenant-Commander Roth says, letting his sweat drenched head clang back against the wall of the transport. He's in command here, trained in infiltration and small arms. In descending order of rank, there are the two pilots: Mosi and the insufferably perky Ensign Kim. Next is the perpetually silent Chief Wallace, and finally the two nervous looking specialists here to carry out the most vital part of the mission.
"I wasn't sure," the driver says, grinning at them crookedly. She's older, and sounds almost comically Saturnian. It's mostly native Saturnians down here, Mosi's information packet told her, working the mines and other ground-side industry, and in the older habitats up in orbit. The newer, nicer ones -- Anchiale especially -- are in practice reserved for the newcomers who fled here.
"Won't someone notice you have this thing out here?" Kim asks, seemingly genuinely curious.
"Paid off the rest of the crew to punch out, then go home," the driver says, with a shrug. "We were meant to be on a survey mission -- got lost and had to turn back instead, as it would happen." She gives that grin again. Mosi decides she doesn't like the coarse, leathery old woman. "You're wearing the same suits our teams do. When we get back to base, you'll put the helmets back on, punch out for them with the copied IDs, then no one's going to look too hard."
"As long as none of the six workers you paid off say something," Mosi adds, a little sourly.
"Oh, little enough chance of that. They'll assume I'm smuggling, and no one wants to be a snitch about that. That's where what nice things we have come from."
Mosi nods reluctantly.
"When will we get to Point C?" Roth asks, sounding tired and unamused.
"Tomorrow sometime," the driver says, with an easy shrug. "That's not me. I pick you up, give you a place to spend the night. Your boy comes and grabs you, then you're his problem and I go back to hauling rocks, a little bit richer than before."
She very pointedly doesn't give them her name. If they're caught, she's up for treason. Point C is Atlas, the largest permanent settlement on Iapetus's surface. In actuality, it's a poky little mining town, but it's also the main launchpoint for shuttles leaving the surface to go to one of the stations in orbit. Mosi closes her eyes, and tries in vain to get some, any sleep.
--
Anchiale Station
Your quarters are both larger and more comfortable than what you had on the Rose, although shipboard life has probably lowered your standards. As a junior officer, you rate something in the neighbourhood of a tiny bachelor apartment, furnished with a bed, a table and chairs, vaguely patriotic wall art. The beige walls and the grey tile underfoot are eerily spotless. You think it likely that, considering the development going on all around the military housing complex you find yourself in, you're the first person to stay in these rooms.
When you arrived with Anja yesterday, with her still feeling slightly ghastly, you had each gone to your respective temporary housing. You'd used the tiny shower and collapsed into the bed almost immediately afterward. The small luxuries of gravitational living: falling-water showers, the ability to sink into a mattress, are already as seductive as they are easy to take for granted. In the morning, you enjoy another of them by emptying the contents of a single-serve coffee pack into the miniaturised kitchen's coffee machine and watching the bitter, heavenly liquid fall into the navy-issue mug.
The coffee is both weak and cheap, with notes of cardboard and chemical and an unpleasantly astringent finish. You drown it in whitener, and it is the best you've had in months. You treasure every drop like the embrace of a faithful lover waiting for you at port. Sitting at your table, you can look out the apartment's one window to see a view of the barren adjacent hex. Opening it lets in the sound of chirping birds and distant construction vehicles slowly pushing load after load of synthetic earth over the bare struts and inner station hull. You somehow find this charming.
You then make a point of setting up the first of two meetings for later this week, by messaging Anja. Her reply is prompt and disgruntled:
Anja: It is TOO FUCKING EARLY for you to be messaging me
You: You're awake, though.
Anja: I could have been sleeping in
You: Your body's still on ship schedule. Feeling better?
Anja: Ugh, I hate that you're right
Anja: I want to die a little less
You: Have you found a bar yet?
Anja: A bar?
You: You're getting me drunk, remember?
You: Your idea, so you pick the place.
You: Does tomorrow night work, or too soon?
Anja: Oh, you're not weaselling out of it, good
Anja: I'll be fine by then. I'll start looking for a place
Anja: Maybe we'll find you a tall blonde once you've sobered up a little
You can't suppress a slight stab of guilt at using the social occasion, which your grieving friend has clearly been looking forward to, as a failsafe against clandestine action taken against you. After you dress in a clean uniform, you head out the door.
It's constantly a pleasantly warm summer day here, and sitting in an open-air transport car on your way back to the hub is more than a little nice. It's not without a certain pang of regret that you realise you're going to have to leave this behind for a time, in order to transfer up to Alpha Shere. You're not quite ready to go back into zero gravity shafts yet. Still, it's necessary, if you're going to meet Owusu.
On your way to the station, you conduct a bit of research. Necessary for what you intend for the second date you have to make. You send the second message after about twenty minutes of this, sitting on a pleasant bench in the shade of the cherry trees outside the main station, waiting for your carriage to arrive. A songbird sings overhead, and you're surrounded by meticulously curated greenery.
To your surprise, the response to your text message is a face and voice call. You answer quickly.
"Ensign North. There's something you needed?" Perbeck sounds harried, but not annoyed with you. More interested, in a distracted way. You can tell from the way her golden hair floats around her that she's still in zero gravity. Probably the spindle. "I've been in and out of briefings since coming here. I don't have long, unfortunately."
That explains the fatigue. "Ah, I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am, if this is a bad time."
She waves that off with a sharp shake of her head. "I'm on a break. And I've already answered. What is it?"
You hesitate for a moment, although not too long -- you're mindful of wasting her time. "You aren't going to be busy the entire time we're docked here, I assume?" you're impressed that your nerves don't show in your voice.
She looks surprised, eyeing you curiously through the screen before answering. "No, thank the stars."
"How does real tea sound to you?" you ask.
"Frankly, I'd murder someone for it," she says. She's giving you a strange look now. Intrigued, you hope. "Why?"
"There is a very well regarded shop, in Beta Sphere," you say. "If it wouldn't be… inappropriate, would you like to go there with me?"
"Not quite a bar on shore leave, is it?" she asks, dryly, referencing her earlier comment.
"There are still drinks, ma'am," you say.
She laughs, a weary sound, but genuine. "I can't swear it's entirely appropriate, she says, finally, voice low, almost teasing. "But I don't exactly care at this point. I'm free in three days time. We'll be doing this out of uniform." She smiles at you. It's a different smile than her previous ones, momentarily unrestrained by the boundaries of professionalism and protocol. Just for an instant or two, you're a mouse being scrutinised by a cat. You feel your face heating ever so slightly: You like it.
"I'll send you the address, ma'am," you say, smiling back nonetheless, tone cool but receptive.
"Good," she says, nodding. She's back to being a superior speaking to a junior outside of her direct chain of command. That invisible barrier that makes life in the service function is back in place. "That's something to look forward to, at least."
The journey back up the spindle is much like the trip down, albeit with a gradual lightening sensation instead of the reverse. You don't need to transfer cars in order to continue down to the other side of the station. The entire production takes approximately thirty minutes.
Alpha is much the same as Beta Sphere -- identical in dimensions -- but significantly more built up and crowded. Most of the buildings here have four or five floor modules, and the platform you land on has twice as many transit lines coming out from it, throngs of people going in all directions.
Five years ago, no one lived here. Construction on Anchiale was started before the Civil War, you know, but it languished for years with a lack of funding and materials, and was only finished so quickly afterward through a truly herculean effort. The result is a city where everything is suspiciously new. Metallic surfaces untarnished by exposure to oxygen, wear and tear on public spaces barely present. A population that almost entirely came from somewhere else a decade before. So far, the only Saturnian voice you've heard has been Anja's.
The address you were given is for the second story of a squared off modular tower, flowering shrubs growing outside, which a few cheerfully industrious bees made themselves busy with. The insect life is a little jarring to you, even in such a limited scope as this. The genetically modified, stingless bees are still the most nature you've been exposed to in a long time.
The building appears to belong to Naval Intelligence. You're thrown by this -- what's the point of the cloak and dagger secret letter if you're coming to his place of work anyway?
After clearing security, The receptionist who greets you, uniformed as you are, has an expression of muted annoyance when you inform her of your appointment to see the Lieutenant-Commander. "You're in here, ma'am," she says, looking at her schedule on her workstation. "For a debrief. Although he forgot to put it through the outgoing system. Again." She looks abruptly alarmed at giving even that much of her displeasure a voice.
You only smile awkwardly. The office around her is quiet and serious, but comfortable. Glass surfaces and potted plants, security monitoring equipment hidden rather than in plain view. Uniformed analysts go past, working at tablets as they walk, or talking quietly in pairs.
"I've buzzed him," she informs you, stiffly.
"Thank you," you say.
In gravity, Owusu moves with a languid, casual grace that doesn't quite constitute unprofessionalism. "Sorry to drag you in here on shore leave, Ensign," he says, smiling at you crookedly.
"Not at all, sir," you reply, deeply confused.
He offers no explanation at all on the way back to his small office, and once you're inside it with the door shut, he begins fussing with something from inside a drawer at his workstation before he speaks. "Well," he says, finally, "that should give us a few minutes to talk, at least."
"Sir?" you ask, looking at him blankly.
"Sit down, North," he says, waving a hand impatiently. You slowly take a seat on one of the chairs as he leaves the workstation to sit next to you, apparently in an effort to put you at ease. The office has the empty, neglected quality of a work space seldom used and maintained only for periodic visits.
"You're probably wondering a few things," he says, smiling self deprecatingly.
"You might… say that, sir," you admit.
At your expression, he actually laughs. "Right. Of course you are. I needed to set this meeting up without proper paperwork while making it look like a filing error on my part -- hence the nonsense with the paper."
"Oh." You stare at him, only a little less confused.
Rather than explain why, he snaps his tablet off his belt, and begins looking for something. "You're good with encryption and code, I gather," he says.
"I have an interest, sir," you admit, cautiously. "And I've taken some courses."
He nods, fingers still gliding over the surface of the tablet. "You identified those fleet movements a while back. The ones Titan got before Phoebe went dark."
"... partially, sir," you reply, even more cautiously. You're glad to hear that the strange transmission from what seems like a lifetime ago made it safely, but you still have no idea what this is about.
"Could you have decrypted and decoded the entire data stream, with enough time?" he asks. "From what Glory says, you've got a good reputation for it."
"You mean, Lady Perbeck?" You don't know anyone else who'd have any working knowledge of your abilities whose name could be shortened to 'Glory'. In spite of everything, you can't help but feel a slight glow of happiness, hearing that she spoke highly of you to someone she had not seemed to particularly like.
"Yes, Perbeck," he confirms, slightly impatient. "Could you have done it? No false humility, and no exaggeration, please. I'm looking for an honest self-assessment."
You think for a long moment, recalling the tangled mess of encryption and unfamiliar enemy code. "Yes," you say. "I think so."
He nods, his beautiful face relaxing slightly. "That's good," he says, "because what I'm going to ask you for is somewhat less involved than that. I know you're on shore leave, but I would like you to find the time to look at a few coded transmissions for me. Discreetly."
"You… don't have specialists for this, sir?" you ask, thinking about the orderly office outside the room you're both in, the knowledgeable looking staff doing work too important to look up from.
"I have them," he says, slowly, "but… I don't want to make this an official investigation, just yet."
"... are you worried about the department here being compromised?" you ask, quietly. You hope he'll laugh again. He doesn't.
"Something like that," he says, leaning back in his chair with a tired sort of sigh. "Hand me your tablet, please?" You comply, and watch as he presses yours flat against his, and initiates a contact transfer, using a data stream set to fragment beyond recognition after only an inch or two. "I've been finding strange transmissions, while poking around on my own. I'm the only SRI on the station at present, so I've got a lot of latitude to operate in as long as I don't annoy the higher-ups here too much. Which is good, because I have reason to believe that someone is skimming our databases on Iapetus for certain keywords."
"You disabled security when you brought me in," you guess, thinking about his first actions in the little office.
"Garbled it temporarily. If no one looks too closely, it will seem like a system malfunction. I'm hoping that what I have to worry about is automated detection, not an enemy operative specifically keeping tabs on me personally." He gives you a grin that sets your heart racing, even though you're not certain whether or not you like him on even a personal level. Or any of this.
"This seems serious, sir," you say, stating the obvious.
"Oh, it is," he agrees. "You can't tell anyone about this. If anyone asks, I'm calling you in for debriefs about the scan data for enemy mecha prototypes."
"I… see," you say, accepting your tablet back from him.
"Assuming we're not all dead," he continues, smiling again, "Do this right, and I will pay you back in kind. It should be well worth your while."
"I hope so, sir," you say, venturing to allow a trace of irony to enter your voice. This is an under the table assignment, after all, and it's not like he can write you up for insubordination.
He laughs.
--
Your trip back down the spire is uneventful, but it does give you a lot of time to think. You can't help but feel a little silly over the elaborate preparations… but at least you haven't been disappeared into a back alley.
Not that that still can't happen, considering the Lieutenant-Commander's vague hints about at least one enemy operative. The fact that he's sneaking around on his own rather than trying to contact his superiors on Iapetus is also greatly worrisome, saying something either about the man you find yourself doing impromptu work for, or about the state of Naval Intelligence here being worse than he's letting on.
Regardless, you've already made your decision to help him. When you told no one prior to coming here, you decided that this was too great a potential opportunity for your career to pass up, risks aside. And if you can help find proof of an enemy spy with access to sensitive databases on Iapetus, you can be of material aid to the war effort. Your tablet, with the recorded transmission quarantined in an obscure corner of its hard drive, feels strangely heavy on your belt.
You know you'll be spending a significant amount of time on this project, and you've already made some plans. In addition to getting caught up on some much needed sleep, what else in particular do you want to do over the next week?
You have one point of downtime remaining:
[ ] See if you can find where J6 is staying (one downtime)
[ ] Find where the civilians were taken in, to check up on Faiza (one downtime)
[ ] Gather information on what sort of mission your mother was sent on, even though you can't affect the outcome (one downtime)
Update 020: Whiskey
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I will be doing something a little bit different with this shore leave downtime vote -- each of the social things you've voted for will be in a post of their own, with additional votes after each. Apologies for the posting delay, things continue to be busy
Find where the civilians were taken in, to check up on Faiza: 30 votes
See if you can find where J6 is staying: 4 votes
Gather information on what sort of mission your mother was sent on, even though you can't affect the outcome: 4 votes
Work on the message is slow and frustrating. You spend most of your day sitting at a small table outside your building, watching the construction vehicles at work with a cup of coffee from the kiosk across the transit rails. The shine has come off your early infatuation with what your coffee machine produces already. What you have now is bland and forgettable, and exactly what you need to help you focus on tedious work.
The recorded transmission is a complete jumble, and the decryption process is both long and unfortunately manual. You constantly feel as though you're on the cusp of a breakthrough that never pans out. Like a sliding tile puzzle, where you can see where you want the last tile, but every attempt to put it into its place destroys the rest of your progress.
It's with mingled relief and annoyance when you get an audio call. It's Anja:
"Hey, North, I found a bar," she says, not waiting for you to speak.
"Oh, good," you say, closing out your work with a sigh. Which means you're taking a lengthy break. The file is behind a secure enough series of nested directories to be a significant pain to start back up. "You were cutting it fairly close."
"It's a new town, and I've only just stopped feeling like I want to throw up while going down a flight of stairs," Anja says, mock defensively. "I'm sending you the address now. I've been asking around with the desk jockeys stationed here for something decent in our budget range."
"An officer's bar?" you guess, mildly surprised as you look at the link.
"Kinda-sorta," she says. "It's not officially, but we'll get a discount off drinks if we show up in the uniform."
"Which I'm sure you'll overcome by ordering twice as much as you normally would," you say, dryly. A naval uniform is perfectly respectable wear for most social events, with the caveat that any behaviour too beyond the pale is much more likely to result in a reprimand than it already would.
Anja snorts. "I just sent ma the message about Hiro," she says, with forced brightness. "I'm entitled to drink twice as much. And you're going to match me, remember?"
"I don't think I agreed to that," you say, raising out of your chair with a stretch. You feel a pang of sympathy for her, but you know that sympathy is not what she wants to hear from you right now.
"It was understood," she informs you. "You're not weaselling out of this now."
You bend over the table to gather up your things, enjoying the feeling of the false sun on your skin. "I suppose not," you say.
"Good. I'll see you tonight."
Citrus is a touch more classy than you would have thought Anja would pick, an observation you can't actually voice without feeling unspeakably rude. The bar occupies the bottom floor of a prefabricated tower, the soft-cornered exterior walls painted a somber brown and tan. Music and laughter spills out from the open door. The artificial sunlight overhead has faded away, dimming to a pleasant evening gloom. Streetlights built into the walking path cast pools of radiance you trek between on your way toward the bar. Anja's already inside, or so she messaged you. You stow your tablet onto your uniform belt, and slip inside.
You're fortunately hardly the only one in uniform. It is, after all, 'kinda sorta' an officer's bar. The bar is a study in polished brass and light-weight, wood-grain synthetic material. The floor, bar and tables are made to resemble burnished hardwood. The real thing would, of course, be an unthinkable luxury, and a tactile examination of any of them reveals the truth, but it's nice to look at.
You halt at the doorway, scanning the packed room for Anja's familiar face. Approximately two thirds of the people you see are officers in uniform, with the remaining one third usually accompanied by the former. Not a bar civilians weren't allowed in, clearly, but one that they were perhaps not entirely welcome in. You can't help but notice, as you walk under the stained glass lighting fixtures and past the tables of laughing drinkers, that the civilians are of a relatively fine dress. Anja has chosen a bar that seems to exemplify the awkward place the modern navy holds, stretched taut over high society with the likes of her and Captain Andre pulling it down.
"North!" Anja's Saturnian accent is distinctive among the Imperial tones, and you smile pensively as you make your way toward her. Despite the fact that you recognise several of your shipmates, she has chosen to sit alone, and her grin has a reserved quality about it. You wonder how much that message to her mother took out of her.
"I hope you weren't waiting long?" you say apologetically, settling down across from her at the small table.
Anja snorts. "Almost two minutes, North. It's been agony." With that, she raises a hand to flag down a waitress hurrying past with an empty tray. After ascertaining that the house lager has an ABV of over 10%, she orders a pint. The beer that's eventually delivered to her in a tall glass is pallid yellow, with a thin, soapy head and an air of bad idea about it. This doesn't stop Anja from immediately taking a large gulp.
Remembering that you've been informed that you are matching her drinking pace, you sigh and take a more restrained sip of your own double serving of whiskey and bitters. It's good, you think, for synth-wood whiskey. Anja eyes your choice of drink dubiously, clearly beginning to suspect that you're not quite as innocent of drinking experience as she may have hoped. "How has your head been?" you ask her, one finger toying with the spiral of lemon peel protruding from your cocktail.
She sighs, and takes another long pull of beer. "Better," she admits. "I can go up and down stairs without wanting to puke, remember? As long as I don't have to run." She grins. "Being a little drunk usually makes that better, I find. It's hard to notice not being steady on your feet when you have an actual excuse."
"You'll get entirely used to it just in time to go back into space," you predict.
"Yes, that's how it usually works," Anja agrees, sighing. "They're restricting civilian bandwidth pretty heavily, so hopefully that will be before ma can send a reply out here." Seeing your shocked expression, she hastens to add: "She'll take it hard, but I just don't… have anything to give right now. It was hard enough just getting that message out without listening to a recording of her sobbing on top of it." It's not callousness, you think -- she says this with a guilty air, shoulders bent under the weight of her own self disgust. You watch her morosely drain her glass, make a face at the bitterness, and order another. You hurry to finish your own, liquor burning your throat pleasantly.
"Is your family listed as his contact?" you ask. "You've said he didn't have much of a family left."
"I think so," Anja says. "I mean, I know my mother was on the list. It was a short list."
You nod, once again thinking back to that meal you delivered back on the Rose. "Lady Perbeck was writing one to his next of kin as well on the way here," you say. "Your mother will probably get that one too." It's more meant as distraction than consolation. You don't know how you would begin to console here, when -- one tearful moment back on the ship aside -- Anja seems determined not to be consoled.
She snorts at this. "And I'm sure her highness, Commander Ice Queen was great with that, but that sort of thing doesn't come easily to people with actual human emotions." She punctuates this by tipping her glass back, sparing her the look of mild afront that flashes through your eyes.
In your head, you can see the bitter, hunched over form of Lady Perbeck trying her best to compose a written message one-handed, furious at herself for the loss of multiple subordinates. She is often cold while working, you freely admit. The person Anja is describing still has little to do with the woman you've made plans to meet later this week. "I'm having tea with her in two days," you admit.
Anja pauses in mid-gulp, slowly setting her glass down to stare. "You're going to have tea with her."
"... yes?" you offer, toying with the lemon peel once again.
"Alone."
"Well, it's a popular tea and coffee house," you say, still not quite willing to meet the baffled amusement in her expression. "So there should be other people… around."
"And whose idea was this, exactly?" Her voice goes up an octave, expression poised for you to give away the joke, so she can laugh and be annoyed at you for making her believe you were serious. It never happens.
"Mine. She made a reference once to, well, drinks on shore leave. I just thought it could be… nice to get to know her? She seemed pleased." You add the last bit with a defensive stab of irritation, and finish half your second drink to salve your ego. She's staring at you like you're a lunatic.
Anja finally lets out a brief, explosive bout of laughter. "Wow. I mean… fuck, Amani. When I was teasing you about the blondes thing, I didn't think you'd actually--"
"It's not because she's blonde! We're just spending time together!"
"-- do something this crazy." She grins though, thoughts of her dead foster brother driven ever so fleetingly from her mind. "Alright, give me details. How did this happen? And don't you dare just tell me 'I called her.'"
Unable to think of a graceful way to back out now, you steel yourself with another sip of whiskey, and explain as much as you can.
The surface of Iapetus, Atlas mining colony
The 'city' of Atlas is, in Mosi's qualified opinion, worthy of neither the name nor the description. Mosi grew up in a relatively small, Lunar domed city. By any reasonable measure even Parrot had been far more established, livable and populated, ignoring that Parrot itself was merely a part of the greater Albategnius area. Mosi has difficulty even categorising the settlement the team is hiding out in as a true dome city.
In truth, Atlas is several creaky, ageing domes ranging from modest to tiny, surrounded and interspaced with a constellation of smaller habitats. A confusing warren of airtight passageways bridge the divide between them. The end result, as far as she can tell, is little better than being on a civilian-grade ring station.
The entire team is antsy and ill at ease. Several team members are sleeping in the cots provided by their host, various limbs protruding awkwardly over the sides in the microgravity. The technicians have their heads together in a corner, murmuring quietly amongst themselves. Mosi herself sits solemn and motionless by the void-facing window of the habitat they've been housed in. It's flush to the ground, staring out onto the alien landscape they came across. She can just barely make out one corner of the tiny space port that will take them to their next destination.
Ensign Kim, in contract to the rest of the habitat's occupants, is performing the micro g version of brisk pacing. She pushes off from the ground with barely any effort, soaring up to the ceiling, then letting herself drift back down to the floor. She has been doing this for most of half an hour, seemingly lost in thought. The only sound this produces is the very faint thud of her feet connecting with the floor, the rustle of her drab worker's jumpsuit. Mosi has been deliberately looking away, but the Ensign's shadow travels visibly up and down the wall beside her window.
"You're driving me crazy," she says finally, turning to look at Kim. She's all exasperation -- the tension is starting to get to her like an itch that just won't go away.
Chagrined, Kim lets herself settle back down to the floor. "I'm nervous," she admits. "I don't like being cooped up still."
"We were just out on the open landscape after landing," Mosi points out.
"No, we were in spacesuits -- that's even worse than a habitat." Kim makes enough sense that Mosi can't find it in her to argue.
Lacking any response from Mosi, the Ensign glances up at their host, who has just appeared in the doorway with a pile of civilian grade ration trays locked together in a neat stack for easy carrying. He locks the stack of trays into the groove build into the room's single, rickety table. There is gravity here, of course, but everything still weighs little enough that a careless gesture can send a tray of food flying off of a flat surface.
Once everyone is awake and alert, preparing to eat, he speaks: "We have a window in a few hours' time," he says. "I've got you cover as unskilled labour up there. It will get you up to the station."
The Lieutenant-Commander nods. "Thank you for the risks you take on behalf of our Emperor," he says.
The man snorts, waving this off. His name is Mr. Olivette -- Mosi doesn't remember if there was a given name. A rake-thin, pale creature, face all hollows, bad memories and staring blue eyes. "I take risks on behalf of our Emperor every day, doing what I do," he says. "Thank me by not getting caught, please."
"How bad is it over here?" Kim asks, frowning. "I've heard the Pretender's Imperial Guard have been downright brutal."
"Their special investigations branch have, in a few cases," Olivette admits. "Generally towards actual sedition or Holy Empire sympathisers, however. They haven't actually reinstated a secret police organisation, properly, since the Empress here abolished it pre war."
Kim looks a little startled, and Mosi can't help but privately feel the same. Oppression, mass arrests and other horrors are all over what little news they get out of Saturn, along with terrifying quotes from high-ranking officials in the rogue system. "What about Duchess Song making that public declaration to stamp out subversives?" Kim asks. "The other Electors who backed her? That talk about uncooperative Saturnians being jailed?"
"It didn't go anywhere," Olivette says. He scratches his shaved head with a slightly awkward expression. "Their pretender. The Empress here -- the Imperial Electors picked her because she'd be staid and calm and ease off on that sort of thing. To ease tension in Jupiter and elsewhere. After the Civil War, though, the ones that were left standing lost their taste for that. They want a crack down, they're afraid of the Saturnians, and of… subversive elements in the general population." Olivette gave a self effacing smile at this, showing no teeth. "For once, their Pretender has grown a spine, though. And Princess Daystar has been agitating against it. Complete deadlock. The Songs can lead whatever highborn rabel they want and make whatever statements they want, but things aren't budging unless something gives there."
There's a moment of silence. The entire team has paused in opening or eating their spacer drek, all eyes fixed on Olivette. One of the techs speaks first, voice almost affronted. "But, she's their puppet-Empress," he asserts. "Why can't they just make her?" Which is in line with the known causes of the war. Their emperor's reasons for starting his holy crusade. A corrupt, bloated Electoral Council shackelling the rightful line of monarchs to their greed and lust for personal power, passing over the late Emperor's own chosen successor in favour of some nobody cousin who would be easy to control. From the official reports, the Electors, led by House Song, should be ruling Saturn all but openly.
Olivette senses the growing tension, hands raising in front of him as if to create a physical barrier with which to ward off accusations. The shabby little habitat is no place for an altercation after all. His tone is softer, more careful when he continues: "News is hard to keep straight across hostile borders and interplanetary space," he points out. Not without some justice. Mosi is forced to bite her tongue. He looks suddenly weasel-like, his thin smile widening. "The Princess is doing a lot to maintain equilibrium," he adds, continuing with a cautious air. "Things have gotten tenser again with her off on some sort of assignment. All I can gather is it was out here beyond Titan." He sighs. "It would have been nice, at least, if our forces could have captured or killed her. It's in our interests for tensions to increase among the enemy."
Mosi keeps her gaze steady, trying not to let her hands clench into fists. That strange prototype ship she failed to sink had been guarded by that equally strange mecha, the one she'd duelled in her Provespa appeared unbidden in her mind. It had been painted with the sunburst colours of the Imperial Guard.
"Regardless, though," Mr. Olivette continues, "there has been some trouble with the Saturnians. They're not altogether happy, being crowded out of their own system. They're not political about it like the Jovians are, though. And they don't think we'd be any kind of improvement for them. We're having difficulty turning any of them beyond money grubbing opportunists." A traitorous thought -- literally traitorous -- occurs to Mosi. That, given how harsh things have gotten around Jupiter, in the Inner Belt mining stations, even in the Imperial heartland, the Saturnians might not even be wrong.
"You're free with your insights," the Lieutenant-Commander says, strangely. He gives Olivette a searching look. Not disapproving so much as concerned. "We'll be taking this moon soon, Mr. Olivette. And you'll be back among the loyal."
"Watch my tongue for my own good, is that it?" Olivette asks. He smiles in a way that's not at all pleased.
"It isn't my neck at stake," the Lieutenant-Commander says. "I'm still grateful for your service. I will do my best not to bring anything down on you, one way or another."
Mosi is mulling this over when she realises, to her revulsion, that everyone in the group other than Lieutenant-Commander Roth is glancing at her sidelong. She instantly sees herself how they must see her. Unsmiling. Overly patriotic. Overly keen. The kind of ambitious young officer you don't say certain things around, who might report you over an impious joke or a moment of doubt in your cause. Indignation wars with an icy, gnawing guilt in the pit of her stomach. They don't know her. They don't know where she came from, where her family left her, the way her parents' choices have haunted her for her entire career. When push comes to shove, though, are they wrong?
"I'm not going to report him," she says in a moment of unguarded heat.
"I didn't say you would, Lieutenant," Roth replies, giving her a hard look. He does not, conspicuously, deny thinking it.
Mr. Olivette stares at her, eyes narrow and appraising. Mosi abandons her meal on the floor beside her cot, and returns to her spot by the window, steadfastly ignoring the rest of the room.
"You know, you're the one who's supposed to be getting drunk!" Anja tells you. Her voice is blurry around the edges, and she gestures with the hand holding her latest serving of beer. The foul looking liquid sloshes over the table before she manages to correct the motion.
"I am," you say. You feel more than pleasantly warm in the face, most of the room having receded to background detail as you focus, tunnel-vision, on Anja. Your movements, by contrast, have become slow and deliberate, aware of your impaired dexterity. In this moment, it seems almost absurdly important not to spill or smash anything. "I've been drinking whiskey all this time, Anja." As if reminded, you take a long drink from the glass of water sitting next to the liquor in question.
"You're not supposed to be slower about it than… than…" she seems to lose her train of thought, slumping her head down onto the table. "Do you ever get tired of being perfect?" she asks instead.
"No," you say, your alcohol-loosened tongue responding before you can reign it in.
Anja splutters with laughter, and you can't help but join in with a more restrained giggle of your own. "You're not supposed to admit to it, North!" Anja exclaims.
"I knew what you meant," you say. Over Anja's shoulder, a man in fine, civilian clothing sits quietly across from an officer. He shoots Anja the latest in a series of irritable looks. His sidelong glares have been coming more and more frequently the louder her voice has gotten, which has proceeded apace with the amount of beer she's had. The officer doesn't do more than glance over, face neutral as the captain insignia gleam on his shoulders. Anja is hardly the only person in this bar wearing a uniform whose voice has risen, or who has had slightly more than is advisable to drink. The bar is filled with the voices of cheerfully intoxicated junior officers in fact, taking advantage of an environment where they can't be accused of setting a bad example for the spacers. They're doing so in a range of Inner Solar System accents, however. Anja's unmistakably Saturnian tones cut through the air like a knife.
She falls quiet for a moment, as she pushes herself up to quietly sip at her drink. She's slowed down, at least. The responsible part of you -- what's left of it after four glasses of whiskey and bitters -- wonders if you shouldn't start convincing her to call it a night and go back to temporary quarters to sleep things off. When she speaks again, she starts in on an entirely different subject, her mind working on the unexplainable logic of the very drunk.
"How much time did you spend on Titan?" she asks.
You frown at the question, unable to think of why she could be asking this. "Years," you remind her. "Remember?"
"No, no," she says, waving your answer away as if it's a physical obfuscation hanging between you. "You lived… you lived… You were over Titan. Around it." She twirls a finger in the air, miming a station in orbit around a celestial body. "How much time did you spend ON it?"
"Ah," you say, confusion evaporating. "In the domed cities? Not… very long." You have, of course, been to the capital city known only as Titan several times. Shopping trips with your mother or friends, to say nothing of your appointment to officer after graduation. This did not amount to very much time, all told. Titan City is crowded, large sections of it dirty.
Anja nods, as if expecting this, the gesture exaggerated into something comic. "There's a hill there, in the city. The capital, I mean. My hometown."
"A… hill?" There are several hills that you're aware of. The region the city had been built on was relatively flat, but not completely so. Particularly as the satellite domes were added, spreading out spider-web from the original.
"Tall," she says, nodding again. "Near the edge of the big dome. You can see… you can just see out for… I don't know. A long way?" She looks at you almost questioning. As if you, especially good at math, might have an answer for her. You don't. "Well, a long way," she decides, more confidently. "One of those little… you know, 'pocket parks.' So we don't all have a mass nervous breakdown. You know. A bit of grass and a tree and a bench and a waste can that's… that's… that's always overflowing with recyclable cups. Those ones."
You do, although primarily from similar places on Luna. "Do you like it there?" you ask, smiling at her.
She looks almost affronted. "North, that view is of Titan. Titan is a frigid, unbreathable, yellow mudball. They heat it up a bit with fancy fucking mirrors, and they say 'well that's partially terraformed, isn't it?' Not vacuum at least, you… you can go out there in a breathing mask and a jacket, but… why would you want to? Dead boring, the whole things. No, I don't like that fucking hill. Fuck that hill, the amount of times I had to climb it." Seeing your baffled look, confusion plays over her slurred features briefly, before she masters herself for more of an explanation. "Hiro liked it there," she corrects you. "He liked boring shit like that, almost as much as he liked terrifying shit like fighting in mecha and getting blown up." She throws back the rest of the glass and finishes it in several gulps.
When she finishes, you gently ask: "Do you want to go there, after all this?"
Anja frowns, as if that thought hadn't even occurred to her. She looks briefly as though she'll refuse, but by degrees her face softens. "Yeah," she says, slowly. "Yeah. We'll go to that hill. After we don't get blown up, like some idiots."
"Assuming I'm not going to be sacrificed on the altar of your career," you remind her.
She stares for a moment, before dissolving into annoyed laughter. "Oh, fuck off, North, I'm trying to be sentimental here." It's not really a complaint. What comes next is a complaint, albeit from an entirely different source.
"Is this what I should expect, while dining near young officers of the Imperial Navy?" asks a man in crisp, aristocratic tones. It's the rich man from before, who has risen from his table and taken a step toward yours, evidently for no other reason than to complain. He's tall enough that you find yourself craning to look up at his disdainful face. It's much easier to concentrate on his jacket -- adorned with the bright heraldry of a noble house, and crossed with a black and white sash indicating he has a high office here on Iapetus, even if your foggy mind can't quite piece together what office that might be. Behind him, the captain he's dining with is looking on with a weary, unenthusiastic expression, as if he'd rather just let things be. Nonetheless, to your dismay, you see him set down the utensils he'd been about to raise to his mouth and the situation his full attention.
"Is there a problem, sir?" you ask, trying to keep your voice steady and polite. Trying not to sound as thickly drunk as you suddenly feel.
He scoffs, like a man who suspects his time is being wasted, but hasn't decided precisely how angry he should be about it yet. "Yes, there is a problem, Ensign," he says. He looks at Anja then, and only Anja. "Are you aware of how loud you were being? And not just loud, but foul mouthed." No 'Ensign' for Anja. He glances back at his companion, asking: "Is this the behaviour the navy expects in public, Gilbert?"
The weary captain reminds you of a paler, greyer Lieutenant Grayson. The muscular bulk that must have made him truly fearsome in his youth is beginning to give way to a slight doughiness. The hands that flex ever so slightly on the table, unseen by his companion, seem to have lost none of their strength, however. "No, Lord Secretary," he admits. He has gained no enthusiasm for the enterprise but seems resigned to the situation, now that it has been so directly drawn to his attention by the important man he appears to be treating to dinner.
A complex series of emotions goes over Anja's features. Confusion first, as she glances around the room, takes note of the other boisterous tables. Then indignation. She opens her mouth to give voice to this, making your heart leap with alarm. However, she closes it without prompting, sinking down into her chair with a miserable, humiliated air. She knows why she is the one being spoken to in particular. She averts her eyes as the Lord Secretary, buoyed by the captain's reluctant agreement, adds: "I think an apology is the least I can expect." The least, implying that there may well be worse to come.
It makes you angry. This isn't fair. You just wanted a nice night out with your friend, who is having a terrible time right now after the two of you survived an extremely dangerous, stressful series of weeks. Now you're being faced with this. You feel yourself straighten up, square your shoulders, and, caution lost somewhere a glass or two ago, open your mouth. The Lord Secretary is, all at once, looking directly at you. What comes out of your mouth?
[ ] Back down and attempt a charming apology on Anja's behalf to get her out of trouble
[ ] Attempt to explain to them both what kind of long range patrol mission you have just survived
[ ] Try to get the attention of some of the other crew members from the Rose who might be in the room
[ ] Call the Lord Secretary racist
Find where the civilians were taken in, to check up on Faiza: 30 votes
See if you can find where J6 is staying: 4 votes
Gather information on what sort of mission your mother was sent on, even though you can't affect the outcome: 4 votes
Work on the message is slow and frustrating. You spend most of your day sitting at a small table outside your building, watching the construction vehicles at work with a cup of coffee from the kiosk across the transit rails. The shine has come off your early infatuation with what your coffee machine produces already. What you have now is bland and forgettable, and exactly what you need to help you focus on tedious work.
The recorded transmission is a complete jumble, and the decryption process is both long and unfortunately manual. You constantly feel as though you're on the cusp of a breakthrough that never pans out. Like a sliding tile puzzle, where you can see where you want the last tile, but every attempt to put it into its place destroys the rest of your progress.
It's with mingled relief and annoyance when you get an audio call. It's Anja:
"Hey, North, I found a bar," she says, not waiting for you to speak.
"Oh, good," you say, closing out your work with a sigh. Which means you're taking a lengthy break. The file is behind a secure enough series of nested directories to be a significant pain to start back up. "You were cutting it fairly close."
"It's a new town, and I've only just stopped feeling like I want to throw up while going down a flight of stairs," Anja says, mock defensively. "I'm sending you the address now. I've been asking around with the desk jockeys stationed here for something decent in our budget range."
"An officer's bar?" you guess, mildly surprised as you look at the link.
"Kinda-sorta," she says. "It's not officially, but we'll get a discount off drinks if we show up in the uniform."
"Which I'm sure you'll overcome by ordering twice as much as you normally would," you say, dryly. A naval uniform is perfectly respectable wear for most social events, with the caveat that any behaviour too beyond the pale is much more likely to result in a reprimand than it already would.
Anja snorts. "I just sent ma the message about Hiro," she says, with forced brightness. "I'm entitled to drink twice as much. And you're going to match me, remember?"
"I don't think I agreed to that," you say, raising out of your chair with a stretch. You feel a pang of sympathy for her, but you know that sympathy is not what she wants to hear from you right now.
"It was understood," she informs you. "You're not weaselling out of this now."
You bend over the table to gather up your things, enjoying the feeling of the false sun on your skin. "I suppose not," you say.
"Good. I'll see you tonight."
--
Citrus is a touch more classy than you would have thought Anja would pick, an observation you can't actually voice without feeling unspeakably rude. The bar occupies the bottom floor of a prefabricated tower, the soft-cornered exterior walls painted a somber brown and tan. Music and laughter spills out from the open door. The artificial sunlight overhead has faded away, dimming to a pleasant evening gloom. Streetlights built into the walking path cast pools of radiance you trek between on your way toward the bar. Anja's already inside, or so she messaged you. You stow your tablet onto your uniform belt, and slip inside.
You're fortunately hardly the only one in uniform. It is, after all, 'kinda sorta' an officer's bar. The bar is a study in polished brass and light-weight, wood-grain synthetic material. The floor, bar and tables are made to resemble burnished hardwood. The real thing would, of course, be an unthinkable luxury, and a tactile examination of any of them reveals the truth, but it's nice to look at.
You halt at the doorway, scanning the packed room for Anja's familiar face. Approximately two thirds of the people you see are officers in uniform, with the remaining one third usually accompanied by the former. Not a bar civilians weren't allowed in, clearly, but one that they were perhaps not entirely welcome in. You can't help but notice, as you walk under the stained glass lighting fixtures and past the tables of laughing drinkers, that the civilians are of a relatively fine dress. Anja has chosen a bar that seems to exemplify the awkward place the modern navy holds, stretched taut over high society with the likes of her and Captain Andre pulling it down.
"North!" Anja's Saturnian accent is distinctive among the Imperial tones, and you smile pensively as you make your way toward her. Despite the fact that you recognise several of your shipmates, she has chosen to sit alone, and her grin has a reserved quality about it. You wonder how much that message to her mother took out of her.
"I hope you weren't waiting long?" you say apologetically, settling down across from her at the small table.
Anja snorts. "Almost two minutes, North. It's been agony." With that, she raises a hand to flag down a waitress hurrying past with an empty tray. After ascertaining that the house lager has an ABV of over 10%, she orders a pint. The beer that's eventually delivered to her in a tall glass is pallid yellow, with a thin, soapy head and an air of bad idea about it. This doesn't stop Anja from immediately taking a large gulp.
Remembering that you've been informed that you are matching her drinking pace, you sigh and take a more restrained sip of your own double serving of whiskey and bitters. It's good, you think, for synth-wood whiskey. Anja eyes your choice of drink dubiously, clearly beginning to suspect that you're not quite as innocent of drinking experience as she may have hoped. "How has your head been?" you ask her, one finger toying with the spiral of lemon peel protruding from your cocktail.
She sighs, and takes another long pull of beer. "Better," she admits. "I can go up and down stairs without wanting to puke, remember? As long as I don't have to run." She grins. "Being a little drunk usually makes that better, I find. It's hard to notice not being steady on your feet when you have an actual excuse."
"You'll get entirely used to it just in time to go back into space," you predict.
"Yes, that's how it usually works," Anja agrees, sighing. "They're restricting civilian bandwidth pretty heavily, so hopefully that will be before ma can send a reply out here." Seeing your shocked expression, she hastens to add: "She'll take it hard, but I just don't… have anything to give right now. It was hard enough just getting that message out without listening to a recording of her sobbing on top of it." It's not callousness, you think -- she says this with a guilty air, shoulders bent under the weight of her own self disgust. You watch her morosely drain her glass, make a face at the bitterness, and order another. You hurry to finish your own, liquor burning your throat pleasantly.
"Is your family listed as his contact?" you ask. "You've said he didn't have much of a family left."
"I think so," Anja says. "I mean, I know my mother was on the list. It was a short list."
You nod, once again thinking back to that meal you delivered back on the Rose. "Lady Perbeck was writing one to his next of kin as well on the way here," you say. "Your mother will probably get that one too." It's more meant as distraction than consolation. You don't know how you would begin to console here, when -- one tearful moment back on the ship aside -- Anja seems determined not to be consoled.
She snorts at this. "And I'm sure her highness, Commander Ice Queen was great with that, but that sort of thing doesn't come easily to people with actual human emotions." She punctuates this by tipping her glass back, sparing her the look of mild afront that flashes through your eyes.
In your head, you can see the bitter, hunched over form of Lady Perbeck trying her best to compose a written message one-handed, furious at herself for the loss of multiple subordinates. She is often cold while working, you freely admit. The person Anja is describing still has little to do with the woman you've made plans to meet later this week. "I'm having tea with her in two days," you admit.
Anja pauses in mid-gulp, slowly setting her glass down to stare. "You're going to have tea with her."
"... yes?" you offer, toying with the lemon peel once again.
"Alone."
"Well, it's a popular tea and coffee house," you say, still not quite willing to meet the baffled amusement in her expression. "So there should be other people… around."
"And whose idea was this, exactly?" Her voice goes up an octave, expression poised for you to give away the joke, so she can laugh and be annoyed at you for making her believe you were serious. It never happens.
"Mine. She made a reference once to, well, drinks on shore leave. I just thought it could be… nice to get to know her? She seemed pleased." You add the last bit with a defensive stab of irritation, and finish half your second drink to salve your ego. She's staring at you like you're a lunatic.
Anja finally lets out a brief, explosive bout of laughter. "Wow. I mean… fuck, Amani. When I was teasing you about the blondes thing, I didn't think you'd actually--"
"It's not because she's blonde! We're just spending time together!"
"-- do something this crazy." She grins though, thoughts of her dead foster brother driven ever so fleetingly from her mind. "Alright, give me details. How did this happen? And don't you dare just tell me 'I called her.'"
Unable to think of a graceful way to back out now, you steel yourself with another sip of whiskey, and explain as much as you can.
--
The surface of Iapetus, Atlas mining colony
The 'city' of Atlas is, in Mosi's qualified opinion, worthy of neither the name nor the description. Mosi grew up in a relatively small, Lunar domed city. By any reasonable measure even Parrot had been far more established, livable and populated, ignoring that Parrot itself was merely a part of the greater Albategnius area. Mosi has difficulty even categorising the settlement the team is hiding out in as a true dome city.
In truth, Atlas is several creaky, ageing domes ranging from modest to tiny, surrounded and interspaced with a constellation of smaller habitats. A confusing warren of airtight passageways bridge the divide between them. The end result, as far as she can tell, is little better than being on a civilian-grade ring station.
The entire team is antsy and ill at ease. Several team members are sleeping in the cots provided by their host, various limbs protruding awkwardly over the sides in the microgravity. The technicians have their heads together in a corner, murmuring quietly amongst themselves. Mosi herself sits solemn and motionless by the void-facing window of the habitat they've been housed in. It's flush to the ground, staring out onto the alien landscape they came across. She can just barely make out one corner of the tiny space port that will take them to their next destination.
Ensign Kim, in contract to the rest of the habitat's occupants, is performing the micro g version of brisk pacing. She pushes off from the ground with barely any effort, soaring up to the ceiling, then letting herself drift back down to the floor. She has been doing this for most of half an hour, seemingly lost in thought. The only sound this produces is the very faint thud of her feet connecting with the floor, the rustle of her drab worker's jumpsuit. Mosi has been deliberately looking away, but the Ensign's shadow travels visibly up and down the wall beside her window.
"You're driving me crazy," she says finally, turning to look at Kim. She's all exasperation -- the tension is starting to get to her like an itch that just won't go away.
Chagrined, Kim lets herself settle back down to the floor. "I'm nervous," she admits. "I don't like being cooped up still."
"We were just out on the open landscape after landing," Mosi points out.
"No, we were in spacesuits -- that's even worse than a habitat." Kim makes enough sense that Mosi can't find it in her to argue.
Lacking any response from Mosi, the Ensign glances up at their host, who has just appeared in the doorway with a pile of civilian grade ration trays locked together in a neat stack for easy carrying. He locks the stack of trays into the groove build into the room's single, rickety table. There is gravity here, of course, but everything still weighs little enough that a careless gesture can send a tray of food flying off of a flat surface.
Once everyone is awake and alert, preparing to eat, he speaks: "We have a window in a few hours' time," he says. "I've got you cover as unskilled labour up there. It will get you up to the station."
The Lieutenant-Commander nods. "Thank you for the risks you take on behalf of our Emperor," he says.
The man snorts, waving this off. His name is Mr. Olivette -- Mosi doesn't remember if there was a given name. A rake-thin, pale creature, face all hollows, bad memories and staring blue eyes. "I take risks on behalf of our Emperor every day, doing what I do," he says. "Thank me by not getting caught, please."
"How bad is it over here?" Kim asks, frowning. "I've heard the Pretender's Imperial Guard have been downright brutal."
"Their special investigations branch have, in a few cases," Olivette admits. "Generally towards actual sedition or Holy Empire sympathisers, however. They haven't actually reinstated a secret police organisation, properly, since the Empress here abolished it pre war."
Kim looks a little startled, and Mosi can't help but privately feel the same. Oppression, mass arrests and other horrors are all over what little news they get out of Saturn, along with terrifying quotes from high-ranking officials in the rogue system. "What about Duchess Song making that public declaration to stamp out subversives?" Kim asks. "The other Electors who backed her? That talk about uncooperative Saturnians being jailed?"
"It didn't go anywhere," Olivette says. He scratches his shaved head with a slightly awkward expression. "Their pretender. The Empress here -- the Imperial Electors picked her because she'd be staid and calm and ease off on that sort of thing. To ease tension in Jupiter and elsewhere. After the Civil War, though, the ones that were left standing lost their taste for that. They want a crack down, they're afraid of the Saturnians, and of… subversive elements in the general population." Olivette gave a self effacing smile at this, showing no teeth. "For once, their Pretender has grown a spine, though. And Princess Daystar has been agitating against it. Complete deadlock. The Songs can lead whatever highborn rabel they want and make whatever statements they want, but things aren't budging unless something gives there."
There's a moment of silence. The entire team has paused in opening or eating their spacer drek, all eyes fixed on Olivette. One of the techs speaks first, voice almost affronted. "But, she's their puppet-Empress," he asserts. "Why can't they just make her?" Which is in line with the known causes of the war. Their emperor's reasons for starting his holy crusade. A corrupt, bloated Electoral Council shackelling the rightful line of monarchs to their greed and lust for personal power, passing over the late Emperor's own chosen successor in favour of some nobody cousin who would be easy to control. From the official reports, the Electors, led by House Song, should be ruling Saturn all but openly.
Olivette senses the growing tension, hands raising in front of him as if to create a physical barrier with which to ward off accusations. The shabby little habitat is no place for an altercation after all. His tone is softer, more careful when he continues: "News is hard to keep straight across hostile borders and interplanetary space," he points out. Not without some justice. Mosi is forced to bite her tongue. He looks suddenly weasel-like, his thin smile widening. "The Princess is doing a lot to maintain equilibrium," he adds, continuing with a cautious air. "Things have gotten tenser again with her off on some sort of assignment. All I can gather is it was out here beyond Titan." He sighs. "It would have been nice, at least, if our forces could have captured or killed her. It's in our interests for tensions to increase among the enemy."
Mosi keeps her gaze steady, trying not to let her hands clench into fists. That strange prototype ship she failed to sink had been guarded by that equally strange mecha, the one she'd duelled in her Provespa appeared unbidden in her mind. It had been painted with the sunburst colours of the Imperial Guard.
"Regardless, though," Mr. Olivette continues, "there has been some trouble with the Saturnians. They're not altogether happy, being crowded out of their own system. They're not political about it like the Jovians are, though. And they don't think we'd be any kind of improvement for them. We're having difficulty turning any of them beyond money grubbing opportunists." A traitorous thought -- literally traitorous -- occurs to Mosi. That, given how harsh things have gotten around Jupiter, in the Inner Belt mining stations, even in the Imperial heartland, the Saturnians might not even be wrong.
"You're free with your insights," the Lieutenant-Commander says, strangely. He gives Olivette a searching look. Not disapproving so much as concerned. "We'll be taking this moon soon, Mr. Olivette. And you'll be back among the loyal."
"Watch my tongue for my own good, is that it?" Olivette asks. He smiles in a way that's not at all pleased.
"It isn't my neck at stake," the Lieutenant-Commander says. "I'm still grateful for your service. I will do my best not to bring anything down on you, one way or another."
Mosi is mulling this over when she realises, to her revulsion, that everyone in the group other than Lieutenant-Commander Roth is glancing at her sidelong. She instantly sees herself how they must see her. Unsmiling. Overly patriotic. Overly keen. The kind of ambitious young officer you don't say certain things around, who might report you over an impious joke or a moment of doubt in your cause. Indignation wars with an icy, gnawing guilt in the pit of her stomach. They don't know her. They don't know where she came from, where her family left her, the way her parents' choices have haunted her for her entire career. When push comes to shove, though, are they wrong?
"I'm not going to report him," she says in a moment of unguarded heat.
"I didn't say you would, Lieutenant," Roth replies, giving her a hard look. He does not, conspicuously, deny thinking it.
Mr. Olivette stares at her, eyes narrow and appraising. Mosi abandons her meal on the floor beside her cot, and returns to her spot by the window, steadfastly ignoring the rest of the room.
--
"You know, you're the one who's supposed to be getting drunk!" Anja tells you. Her voice is blurry around the edges, and she gestures with the hand holding her latest serving of beer. The foul looking liquid sloshes over the table before she manages to correct the motion.
"I am," you say. You feel more than pleasantly warm in the face, most of the room having receded to background detail as you focus, tunnel-vision, on Anja. Your movements, by contrast, have become slow and deliberate, aware of your impaired dexterity. In this moment, it seems almost absurdly important not to spill or smash anything. "I've been drinking whiskey all this time, Anja." As if reminded, you take a long drink from the glass of water sitting next to the liquor in question.
"You're not supposed to be slower about it than… than…" she seems to lose her train of thought, slumping her head down onto the table. "Do you ever get tired of being perfect?" she asks instead.
"No," you say, your alcohol-loosened tongue responding before you can reign it in.
Anja splutters with laughter, and you can't help but join in with a more restrained giggle of your own. "You're not supposed to admit to it, North!" Anja exclaims.
"I knew what you meant," you say. Over Anja's shoulder, a man in fine, civilian clothing sits quietly across from an officer. He shoots Anja the latest in a series of irritable looks. His sidelong glares have been coming more and more frequently the louder her voice has gotten, which has proceeded apace with the amount of beer she's had. The officer doesn't do more than glance over, face neutral as the captain insignia gleam on his shoulders. Anja is hardly the only person in this bar wearing a uniform whose voice has risen, or who has had slightly more than is advisable to drink. The bar is filled with the voices of cheerfully intoxicated junior officers in fact, taking advantage of an environment where they can't be accused of setting a bad example for the spacers. They're doing so in a range of Inner Solar System accents, however. Anja's unmistakably Saturnian tones cut through the air like a knife.
She falls quiet for a moment, as she pushes herself up to quietly sip at her drink. She's slowed down, at least. The responsible part of you -- what's left of it after four glasses of whiskey and bitters -- wonders if you shouldn't start convincing her to call it a night and go back to temporary quarters to sleep things off. When she speaks again, she starts in on an entirely different subject, her mind working on the unexplainable logic of the very drunk.
"How much time did you spend on Titan?" she asks.
You frown at the question, unable to think of why she could be asking this. "Years," you remind her. "Remember?"
"No, no," she says, waving your answer away as if it's a physical obfuscation hanging between you. "You lived… you lived… You were over Titan. Around it." She twirls a finger in the air, miming a station in orbit around a celestial body. "How much time did you spend ON it?"
"Ah," you say, confusion evaporating. "In the domed cities? Not… very long." You have, of course, been to the capital city known only as Titan several times. Shopping trips with your mother or friends, to say nothing of your appointment to officer after graduation. This did not amount to very much time, all told. Titan City is crowded, large sections of it dirty.
Anja nods, as if expecting this, the gesture exaggerated into something comic. "There's a hill there, in the city. The capital, I mean. My hometown."
"A… hill?" There are several hills that you're aware of. The region the city had been built on was relatively flat, but not completely so. Particularly as the satellite domes were added, spreading out spider-web from the original.
"Tall," she says, nodding again. "Near the edge of the big dome. You can see… you can just see out for… I don't know. A long way?" She looks at you almost questioning. As if you, especially good at math, might have an answer for her. You don't. "Well, a long way," she decides, more confidently. "One of those little… you know, 'pocket parks.' So we don't all have a mass nervous breakdown. You know. A bit of grass and a tree and a bench and a waste can that's… that's… that's always overflowing with recyclable cups. Those ones."
You do, although primarily from similar places on Luna. "Do you like it there?" you ask, smiling at her.
She looks almost affronted. "North, that view is of Titan. Titan is a frigid, unbreathable, yellow mudball. They heat it up a bit with fancy fucking mirrors, and they say 'well that's partially terraformed, isn't it?' Not vacuum at least, you… you can go out there in a breathing mask and a jacket, but… why would you want to? Dead boring, the whole things. No, I don't like that fucking hill. Fuck that hill, the amount of times I had to climb it." Seeing your baffled look, confusion plays over her slurred features briefly, before she masters herself for more of an explanation. "Hiro liked it there," she corrects you. "He liked boring shit like that, almost as much as he liked terrifying shit like fighting in mecha and getting blown up." She throws back the rest of the glass and finishes it in several gulps.
When she finishes, you gently ask: "Do you want to go there, after all this?"
Anja frowns, as if that thought hadn't even occurred to her. She looks briefly as though she'll refuse, but by degrees her face softens. "Yeah," she says, slowly. "Yeah. We'll go to that hill. After we don't get blown up, like some idiots."
"Assuming I'm not going to be sacrificed on the altar of your career," you remind her.
She stares for a moment, before dissolving into annoyed laughter. "Oh, fuck off, North, I'm trying to be sentimental here." It's not really a complaint. What comes next is a complaint, albeit from an entirely different source.
"Is this what I should expect, while dining near young officers of the Imperial Navy?" asks a man in crisp, aristocratic tones. It's the rich man from before, who has risen from his table and taken a step toward yours, evidently for no other reason than to complain. He's tall enough that you find yourself craning to look up at his disdainful face. It's much easier to concentrate on his jacket -- adorned with the bright heraldry of a noble house, and crossed with a black and white sash indicating he has a high office here on Iapetus, even if your foggy mind can't quite piece together what office that might be. Behind him, the captain he's dining with is looking on with a weary, unenthusiastic expression, as if he'd rather just let things be. Nonetheless, to your dismay, you see him set down the utensils he'd been about to raise to his mouth and the situation his full attention.
"Is there a problem, sir?" you ask, trying to keep your voice steady and polite. Trying not to sound as thickly drunk as you suddenly feel.
He scoffs, like a man who suspects his time is being wasted, but hasn't decided precisely how angry he should be about it yet. "Yes, there is a problem, Ensign," he says. He looks at Anja then, and only Anja. "Are you aware of how loud you were being? And not just loud, but foul mouthed." No 'Ensign' for Anja. He glances back at his companion, asking: "Is this the behaviour the navy expects in public, Gilbert?"
The weary captain reminds you of a paler, greyer Lieutenant Grayson. The muscular bulk that must have made him truly fearsome in his youth is beginning to give way to a slight doughiness. The hands that flex ever so slightly on the table, unseen by his companion, seem to have lost none of their strength, however. "No, Lord Secretary," he admits. He has gained no enthusiasm for the enterprise but seems resigned to the situation, now that it has been so directly drawn to his attention by the important man he appears to be treating to dinner.
A complex series of emotions goes over Anja's features. Confusion first, as she glances around the room, takes note of the other boisterous tables. Then indignation. She opens her mouth to give voice to this, making your heart leap with alarm. However, she closes it without prompting, sinking down into her chair with a miserable, humiliated air. She knows why she is the one being spoken to in particular. She averts her eyes as the Lord Secretary, buoyed by the captain's reluctant agreement, adds: "I think an apology is the least I can expect." The least, implying that there may well be worse to come.
It makes you angry. This isn't fair. You just wanted a nice night out with your friend, who is having a terrible time right now after the two of you survived an extremely dangerous, stressful series of weeks. Now you're being faced with this. You feel yourself straighten up, square your shoulders, and, caution lost somewhere a glass or two ago, open your mouth. The Lord Secretary is, all at once, looking directly at you. What comes out of your mouth?
[ ] Back down and attempt a charming apology on Anja's behalf to get her out of trouble
[ ] Attempt to explain to them both what kind of long range patrol mission you have just survived
[ ] Try to get the attention of some of the other crew members from the Rose who might be in the room
[ ] Call the Lord Secretary racist
Last edited:
Update 021: Tea
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Call the Lord Secretary Racist, 23 votes.
Try to call attention from your crewmates, 22 votes.
Apologise for Anja, 14 votes
Attempt to explain what kind of patrol you've had, 6 votes
"My lord," you begin, your voice firm, and your gaze steady. Through a combination of hard liquor and cold fury, you feel strangely distant from your body, from this room, from the pleasant Martian guitar music strumming in the background. You're not entirely certain what you meant to say at the start of this sentence but looking into this man's sour, disapproving face the careful filter that is normally maintained between your brain and your mouth politely steps aside. "You are singling out Ensign Li in a room full of drunken officers. There are three other tables near yours who you could hear just as much as ours."
"Just what are you trying to imply, Ensign?" His eyes bore into yours, but you look back with cool unconcern. He doesn't look away, but his face reddens with anger. "I don't like your tone, and you will explain yourself."
You catch Anja's wide eyed face out of the corner of your eye, head shaking out a frantic no! in micromovements. At another time, you would have considered this advice before blindly plunging on ahead. "You are singling out Ensign Li because she has a Saturnian accent, my lord," you respond. "Because her grandparents and great grandparents helped to build something in this system at great risk to themselves, so that we all actually had a place to seek refuge instead of a series of dead rocks." You don't stumble over your words, like many drunks. Rather, you feel as though your speech is walking along a tightrope with incoherence on either side but clear coherence as long as you maintain absolute focus. The Lord secretary's face slowly begins to darken from red to purple, but there's no point in stopping now. "You are a dishonourable bigot, my lord, and you should be ashamed."
This last comes out rather louder than you intended, and coincides with both the end of a song, and a natural lull in the ambient background noise. Your accusation echoes out impossibly loud throughout the bar, and around you, people turn to stare with large, horrified eyes. Anja appears to be hunching in on herself, perhaps in the hope of being able to shrink down between the false floorboards. There's a loaded, dreadful silence for a long moment, broken only by the incongruously cheerful song that cuts in across the bar's sound system.
Oh, Luna-lover!
My heart beats for you!
Behind the Lord Secretary, the Captain is giving you a look of deepest disapproval, as if you've just seized upon the cage of some unpleasantly dangerous animal and thrown it at his feet. Which is not, perhaps, unfair. The Lord Secretary's face has gone from purple to a livid, trembling pale with seemingly impossible swiftness: "Ensign," he says, the first word incongruously soft. He looms over you. Despite his age and generally unimpressive stature, the near physical force of his anger is enough to make you take a step back. His eyes snap down to your uniform jacket, finding the words Ensign A. North. "... North." He's silent for a further moment, scrutinising you as though deciding exactly what size coffin would suit you best. "You're related to Dame North? You have her look about you." You give a faint, barely perceptible nod.
When the shouting finally comes, it's like a dam breaking, with the explosion of noise making you flinch involuntarily. "Who," he demands, "do you think you are to speak to me in such a manner? Do you have any idea who I am, Ensign? Do you?" His fist slams down on the table beside him, making Anja's empty glass topple to the floor, bounce solidly and roll away. "And in public! I will be speaking to your superiors, and do not be in the least surprised if you find yourself on the front lines manning an unarmed dingy! And if you're determined to reflect so poorly on Dame Nalah as this, don't be surprised if she's right there beside you!"
The first icicle of real, palpable dread penetrates your drunken haze at the intimation that your mother might be forced to pay for your recklessness. You open your mouth to respond, but it goes dry. Meanwhile, he continues:
"You will find that there are consequences to accosting a man of quality!" He snarls. You wince as a fleck of spit strikes you in the face -- he doesn't seem to notice. "I have many highly placed friends!"
"... my lord," cuts in one of these friends, the stroic captain placing a hand on the Lord Secretary's trembling shoulder. The aristocrat briefly looks as if he intends to pull away from the other man's touch, but the distraction is enough time for him to glance around the room, to take in the violent spectacle he's become.
And when you're not near me,
I'm always thinking of you!
In the frozen silence that follows, you feel a sharp tug on your arm. You look over to see Anja, exasperated and frightened, tugging you away, even as the captain attempts to maneuver the Lord Secretary back to his seat. "Sincerest apologies, my lord," Anja says, rendered momentarily stone sober by fear. "We've both had too much to drink. I'm ashamed to have made such a disturbance. I hope you can forgive Ensign North."
The Lord secretary snorts forcefully at this suggestion, but he's allowing himself to be steered back to his seat by the Captain. As you're pulled away, the older officer shoots you a further look of dislike over the Lord Secretary's shoulder… while surprisingly, giving Anja an approving nod.
"Okay," Anja mutters, as you near the door. Her tone is part nerves, part flabbergasted, and perhaps a slight bit amused, the nuanced emotions strong enough to shine through her continued drunken slur: "I take it back, North. You are definitely drunker than I am."
"I tried to tell you," you say, quietly. She pulls you out into the cool night air, and the short remainder of your night is a perfect blur.
--
You wake up in your own bed, feeling only mildly wretched. It would be medically inaccurate to say that you don't get hangovers, but between retaining the presence of mind to keep well hydrated while drinking and some inborn grace of genetics, it's almost never a serious problem for you. The room spins a little as you sit up, and you have a minor headache. Nothing some more water, a painkiller tab and a strong coffee won't cure.
You've only just thought of checking in on Anja, seeing how she's feeling and if she needs anything, when your memories from the night before return in a mortified rush. With a groan, you let yourself fall back onto the mattress, roll onto your side, and cover your face in distress. Images of what you've done and the various unpleasant possibilities that might arise because of it parade through your head.
You're still piecing yourself together -- you haven't showered, you haven't properly dressed, you haven't had so much as that painkiller -- when your tablet, left half charged on the nightstand, begins to make an awful noise. It takes half a second to fully register the the quick series of beeps that tells you that whatever it is, the call is both urgent and work related. With a groan, you roll over, grope for the tablet, and check the ID:
S.Lieut R. Mazlo. With a sinking heart, you force yourself to press the "audio only" button.
"Ensign," your superior's voice says, distinctly unhappy with you. "Do you have any idea the kind of message I received early this morning?"
You have a hunch. "No, sir," you say, trying to sand the fuzziness off of your voice. "Was it something concerning me?"
The chewing out that unfolds is neither as blistering nor as loud as the Lord Secretary screaming at you, but this one promises to have far more direct consequences to your life. "Is this the conduct we should expect from an officer of the Empire, North?" It's not simple annoyance, or even anger. Beneath his tone of disapproval there's a faint note of smug triumph. That you've slipped up, that you've done something wrong, and that he's the one who gets to make you pay for it. "If it were entirely up to me, you'd be spending the rest of your leave in your housing -- be grateful that the captain is more lenient than I am." The only things you say throughout this entire conversation -- the only things you really can say -- are 'no sir' and 'yes sir.' Inarguably, you are quite grateful that Captain Andre is not very much like Mazlo.
You come out of the experience frazzled and in a bad mood, although miraculously your headache has slipped into bad memory sometime during the phone call. When you knock on Anja's door -- caffeine in hand -- you're struggling not to let your trepidation show on your face. Particularly when it takes her an unusually long time to open up.
"Fuck." It becomes clear, at least, as she opens the door, still in the shirt from the uniform she wore last night and looking like she was hit by a very slow moving truck, that the delay has nothing to do with her being unhappy with you. She recoils sluggishly from the light the open door lets in as she curses, half turning away to shield her eyes and usher you into her quarters with an air of deep unwellness. You follow her into the dimly lit interior, where she collapses into a chair and lets out a tremendous groan.
"How are you?" you ask, gently, wary of aggravating the pounding headache you assume she has.
She grimaces, every line of her face screaming misery. "Is that a painkiller tab in your hand?" she croaks. "Sol, hand me that." You watch her take it, washing the foul taste out of her mouth with the coffee you brought her. "Thanks," she says. "That--" Anja stops, staring at you with eyes narrowed from suspicion rather than just from pain.
"... yes?" you ask, shifting a little uncomfortable. Her quarters are identical to yours, so you've easily found a seat in the gloom.
"Why do you look so good?" she demands. "You're all dressed! And you're… you were drinking whiskey, and you were drunk enough to actually call a rich racist a racist. How are you fine while I'm here hiding in the dark with my head split open?"
It's a little reassuring, at least, that she's angrier at you for something normal rather than specifically for last night. "Hangovers don't hit me very hard," you admit, trying not to smile at her scowl. Her general discomfort renders the expression into an indescribable grimace. "I've also been up for a while. I had a call this morning."
Her expression immediately dials back and takes on an apprehensive quality. "Shit, that was fast. Grayson?"
"Mazlo," you say, bleakley. Which, in a sense, is a good sign -- a call from the First Officer would have been an indication of a much more serious matter than simply your immediate superior. On the other hand, you like Grayson, and you feel that the sentiment is mutual. Anja seems to understand your thought process-- she winces in sympathy.
"What's the damage?" she asks, hesitant.
You sigh. "I'm getting a minor infraction recorded on my record. And I need to write the Lord Secretary a formal letter of apology. What?"
She stops staring at you long enough to look up at the ceiling, letting out an explosive breath of relief. "Sol. The way you looked, I thought it was bad. That's a slap on the wrist, North. That's nothing."
You blink. "Having to apologise to him doesn't feel like nothing,"
"I already had to apologise to him," she counters. "While half sick to my stomach from drinking and worry. It's not nothing maybe, but it's not half as bad as if I were the one he was after."
You frown. "He threatened to go after my mother."
Anja dismisses that almost irritably. "That scene wasn't bad enough for him to go through the trouble of destroying a knight, North. It was just bluster. You're from a barely good enough family that you can get away with this shit, the few times you actually do something stupid."
She's probably right. You try to relax but an earlier worry resurfaces. "Was I wrong, Anja?" you ask. "Doing that, I mean."
She scrutinises you for a moment, before sighing again, massaging her temples. "You weren't wrong, North. Just not very smart about it -- I didn't expect that from you, you know? Even so, you're… well, you're a good friend. You took the heat for me, anyway. It looks like our Lord Pain in the Ass has forgotten all about me."
You try to smile. "Well, there's that." You're not entirely sure how you feel about this, but you suppose if Anja can live with it, so can you.
--
The letter of apology takes longer than you expect. Even taking into account that your writing talents lie more in the direction of dry factual reports than extended prostrations of remorse, you find it impossible to work at anything near your usual pace. The entire business sits uncomfortably in the pit of your stomach, and you get angry and frustrated and humiliated just in the writing. Eventually, you do get it out before an unacceptable amount of time has lapsed. In the meantime, though, you haven't had that much of a chance to work on your assignment for Lieutenant-Commander Owusu, which is doubly frustrating because you're certain that there's something there you could find if you had just a little bit more of a chance. After more than a day of this, it's just as well you have something planned that demands you get out and do anything other than sit and stare at a workstation.
The House of Gravity is melodramatically named, perhaps. Another prefab structure, this time painted black with an animated E-neon sign showing blue water pouring through a green filter, coming out an appealing mahogany. Lady Perbeck has already sent you a message that, once again, you've arrived second. The doors slide open automatically at your approach.
Citrus was trying its hardest to evoke old earth charm, between the false wood and the old fashioned atmosphere. This teahouse, by contrast, appears to have given up trying to convince patrons that it is not built on the inside of an artificial sphere hurtling through space around an alien moon. The interior is sleekly, if plushly, modern. Dark synthetic surfaces, soft floor lighting and comfortable, red seat cushions.
You're greeted at the door by a lovely, young individual of indeterminate gender, dressed in a sleekly flattering uniform in a similar colour scheme to the rest of the tea house. "Hello, miss," they say, smiling. "Do you have a booth reserved?"
"I'm here to meet someone," you confirm. "She should have a booth under 'Perbeck'."
The employee flashes another of their demure smiles. "Booth three, miss," they say.
You make your way across the room. Gentle instrumental music fills the air, and in spite of all your various anxieties, you find yourself relaxing. Booth three is private, with a sliding door left open. Lady Perbeck is inside, frowning at her tablet in a manner that lets you know she's still working up to the last minute. She's alerted to your presence by some slight rustle of clothing, or the faint sound of your shoes on the sound-absorbing floor tile and looks up at you with a pleased, appraising quality to her gaze.
"I approve of the dress," she says, shutting off her tablet and tossing it aside. This is the same smile you saw before through video call -- languidly catlike, making her work-smile seem stolid and restrained in comparison.
"Thank you," you say, feeling oddly exposed for an instant. Her eyes follow you as you slide the door to the booth shut behind you. You're wearing a simple, black dress -- your wardrobe of non-uniform clothing is by necessity limited, and between the bar and this trip, you're hardly in a position to go on a shopping spree at the nearest print-on-demand boutique. The back pay from your modest salary fortunately piles up very nicely while you're in space and have no way to spend it, but you do have your limits. You are forced to admit to yourself that you suggested this place more to impress than because it was within your means. This look fits the environment well enough, though, with your hair undone and the deep brown of your arms and shoulders on full display. It's a strange feeling, not simply being able to slot into the prescribed status and appearance of the Navy. It tells you you've been far too long without leave.
Lady Perbeck, by contrast, has slotted into a different sort of uniform. It's unmistakable, now, that you're associating with a titled noblewoman. Fashion in aristocratic circles has run in a broad parody of military styles for the past several years. The sleek pants and blouse she's wearing are similar to the pilot's uniform you're used to from her, albeit darker and in clingier fabric. The bolero jacket, with a similar collar to a service jacket but half the length, is proudly displaying her house colours, the same ones that adorn her mecha in combat. You've seen some nobles look utterly absurd in similar outfits, but she makes it seem both sophisticated and dashing.
"You said out of uniform," you remind her, sliding down into a seat across from her.
"I did," she agrees, leaning back against the padded seat-back behind her. The booth is spacious and cool, with space for at least six people. Three of the four walls are fitted with false windows, adjustable from a standard tablet. Perbeck has evidently set them to show the exterior of the spaceport, which includes a breathtaking view of Iapetus. The screen is of a similar quality to those found on a spaceship bridge. All of this only makes you grow more nervous about the cost of it all. When you suggested this place, you hadn't quite anticipated having to go all out. As if reading your mind, she tells you, "order whatever you want. I'm buying."
"I invited you," you point out, relief tinged with guilt flooding your stomach.
"You did," she agrees. "But what is the point of being a countess if I still make you pay for me?"
Given that Lady Perbeck is completely cut off from her family's holdings and revenues, you wonder just how true that is. Certainly, as a commander and a pilot engaging in active combat, she's taking home more money than you are, but it seems likely to you that she's probably not half as rich as she might once have been used to. "If you insist, Countess," you say. Challenging her on her finances does not seem like a way to get off on the right foot.
She makes a face at you. "Sol, don't call me Countess." she says. "This is hardly a public event. We've been through battles together -- I'm not going to call you Ensign or Ms. North."
You mull this over for a moment, even as you scroll through the menu that's momentarily appeared on the tabletop. You pick a pleasant sounding green tea. "If you're calling me Amani, and I'm not allowed to call you Countess, and I assume 'my lady' and 'ma'am' are also out."
She snorts a little dismissively, although amused. "You don't work for me," she points out, "and there's not a lot of point in seeing you outside of work if you're going to keep calling my 'ma'am, Amani."
Hearing her say your name induces an oddly pleasant sort of flutter in your chest. "Gloriana, then?" you offer.
Her reaction is to make even more of a face. "Never, please."
You raise an eyebrow. "Is there something wrong with your name?"
"What's wrong with it is that it's Gloriana."
You can't help but laugh slightly at her vehemence. She doesn't appear to mind. "Glory, then?" you offer.
"No, that's nearly as bad," she says, making even more of a face. After a moment, she admits: "People I like tend to just call me Lori."
"Lori," you say, slowly, sounding it out in your mouth. Calling her by such a casual name is difficult, but you're not precisely complaining. "I'm sorry, I heard Lieutenant-Commander Owusu call you Glory, so I thought…"
She lets out a slight bark of laughter, half stifled. "I told you, my friends call me Lori," she says. "Milo calls me whatever he wants to. No matter how many times I ask him to stop."
"... ah," you say, wondering about what kind of relationship, exactly, puts the two pilots on a first name basis while still having her say things like that.
"He was asking about you," she adds, giving you a suddenly scrutinising look. "Is he trying to drag you into anything absurd while you're on shore leave?"
"I'm not at liberty to say," you admit, smiling a little sheepishly. In response, she lets out a mildly exasperated exhalation.
"We went through officer training together," she explains. "He's an intolerable man. He's good at what he does, though -- watch yourself around him." At this point, your tea arrives, giving you a chance to mull over her words. Two synth-porcelain teapots are carefully laid down, with a cream pitcher and sugar dish for Lori. As soon as the server has left, she leans over the table unasked, and pours for you. "You seem to be attracting intolerable men, lately," she says, as the gold-green tea pours steaming into your cup, releasing a wonderful earthy aroma. "Although I wouldn't do Milo the insult of quite categorising him as being on the same level of Lord Secretary Song."
You wince, unable to hide your response. "How closely related was he to Ensign Song?" you ask, tentatively. You had hoped news of your runin hadn't travelled quite this fast.
"A great uncle, I believe," she says. "He's from a lesser branch. He still sent me quite the disapproving note when we arrived for wasting the blood of his lineage. I didn't shout at him in public, of course." You wince again, and to your mingled relief and annoyance, she laughs again. "You're always so put together," she explains, "whether you're running on no sleep or calling me on shore leave. Seeing you fret is a little adorable."
You feel your face heat as you wrap your hands around the warm teacup, while she sets about drowning her own cup of black tea in cream and sugar. Such talk is, of course, more than a little condescending. But the way her lips curve into that same, enticing smile...
"I won't apologise for saying it," you say. Then, eyes widening at her curious expression, you hasten to clarify: "Well.. I did. Formally. I don't regret it. He was being awful to poor Anja, when I was just trying to take her mind off of… things."
"Ensign Li can be a little lax in observing social decorum," Lori says, cautiously.
"Yes, she can," you reply, "but that's not what it was. It was a bar -- everyone was drinking. She wasn't being that loud. She deserves to be able to have a drink in peace." Lori has never displayed anything but annoyance and disapproval for Anja and her more lax social graces. It's more than a little awkward now, but you're not prepared to let Anja be mischaracterised.
"She does," Perbeck agrees, to your mild surprise. She raises her milky cup to her lips and takes a long, delicate sip, closing her eyes in obvious delight. "I can't tell you how badly I needed this," she adds, in a softer tone. "Thank you for inviting me. Ensign Li, though -- she's competent, and a dedicated officer, in spite of her… quirks. I've never had reason to complain of her in combat."
"You're welcome," you say, still a little thrown. Fortunately, she continues on her own:
"Ito tried to explain her to me a few times," Lori explains. "The main thing I took away from it was that they were like family. When he was…" she pauses, setting her cup back down with a faint clink. "... when his unit was disabled, she kept up her job. She didn't fall apart. She stayed on the line for me. I've worked with a lot of mecha control officerss who couldn't have handle that, when they'd just seen their brother die. She did deserve a drink. What you said to the Lord Secretary wasn't wrong, Amani. Just not very politic." You get the impression that she still doesn't exactly approve, mostly on the weight of the last. But it hasn't damaged her good mood, and she's still looking at you with no trace of coldness. Just that faint air of exasperation still.
You sigh, blowing on your green tea. "That's more or less what Anja said."
Perbeck nods. "She is smarter than she makes herself seem."
You're not usually a tea drinker. The contents of your cup tastes like faintly nutty grass, but it's pleasant enough, you suppose, even if it lacks the full flavoured boldness of what you usually prefer. You're aware you chose this place mostly on the observed preferences of your companion, who is plainly taking a deep appreciation away from the experience. You have to wonder how much tea she can actually taste, of course, with everything she's adding to it "Are you still locked up in meetings?" you ask, after a momentary silence.
"Yes, mostly," she admits, with a light sigh. "Or, something like that. That's where I heard about your… incident. I was there when Mazlo sent the message to Captain Andre." She looks slightly apprehensive as she adds, "although it's not all meetings. Which is a mixed blessing."
"A mixed blessing?" you tilt your head quizzically.
"I'm not at liberty to say," she replies, voice thick with irony as she echoes your earlier words. After a moment, she relents slightly, and explains: "I'm doing some testing. On new equipment. And there are noises being made about my adopting it permanently. I'm resisting for the time being."
You consider this. Lori is a pilot, and a skilled one at that -- one of the few pilots capable of handling a Huntress. Particularly with her unit so heavily damaged, it seems a fine time to set her to work putting an experimental unit through its paces. Her extreme reluctance would seem out of place with this, except for a slight suspicion you decide to put a pin in for the time being. "Is the new equipment deficient compared to what you're currently using?" you ask, instead.
"Not… precisely," she admits. "It performs admirably. But it feels less… flexible." This, on its face, seems absurd -- extreme mobility aside, there are few space mecha in the history of modern warfare that are less flexible than the ISM16 Huntress. She seems to perceive this. "Some aspects a piece of a equipment that seem to be flaws are things a skilled user can still turn to their advantage."
"And a skilled pil-- user couldn't do things with the new equipment as well?"
"... perhaps," she admits, glancing away with an air of adopted nonchalance. She pours herself a fresh cup, looking cool and disaffected.
"And does it fulfill the same role, generally?"
"It does."
You hesitate momentarily, the suspicion you initially had hardening into something close to certainty. "You like it," you say.
She looks up at you, one eyebrow raised. "I like many things," she says, airly. "What specifically are you referring to?"
You steel yourself. "You like being the one who can use a unit no one else can and get results. You like the mystique of it. Otherwise you wouldn't have stuck with something so temperamental for so long -- you're worried about losing that with a newer one."
She looks more taken aback than immediately offended. "You think I prefer what I have now over a newer model because I think the current one makes me look cool?"
"So it would seem to me," you say, deciding not to back down at this point. Behind her, through the false window, you can see an orbital transport lifting off from Iapetus's surface, carrying unknown passengers from the moon to Anchiale station. There's a lengthy enough silence that you've just decided to apologise for being presumptuous, when she lets out a long, almost defeated sigh.
"There might be some truth to that," she says, smiling ruefully. "I'll give it more of a chance. You do know how to cut to the heart of things, don't you?"
"It's my job, a little," you say, shrugging lightly.
She smiles at you consideringly for a long moment, staring for just long enough to make your face heat again. "We have time after this, don't we? There's one of the larger parks nearby. Walk with me."
--
"People here don't realise how dangerous things are right now," Lori says, looking around at the serene plant life of your surroundings. You're walking along a garden path, neatly trimmed trees and flowerbeds all around you. It's an odd hour for this neighbourhood, it would seem, and you have a safe buffer to yourselves. "They think it's just a few raiding fleets they have to worry about, that we'll be able to repel it with a simple show of force. They feel too safe and fortified here. It's easy to see why."
The interior of this habitat does feel extremely solid, extremely natural. Not like something that can be destroyed. You look at Lori -- she's staring straight ahead, her golden hair long and unbound, catching the artificial sunlight like strands of spun gold. You have to give yourself a mental jolt to avoid becoming too distracted. "Didn't high command send the fleet data we intercepted here?" you ask, frowning. "Lieutenant Commander Owusu seemed to believe it."
Lori nods. "They did, and not everyone's got their head in the proverbial sand -- Milo is many things I won't say in polite company, but he's not a fool. Still, a great many of the residents of Iapetus's orbital habitats, Anchiale in particular, don't feel as exposed as we all really are. They have their defence array, which they don't seem to realise they've compromised."
"Compromised how?" This is the first you're hearing of it. You glance upward at the habitat's ceiling through the blue haze of atmosphere, as if you could somehow see through the metal to space above.
"They clustered a mess of civilian habitats at nearly the same orbital distance, when things started to get overcrowded," Lori explains, darkly. "Some of them, it's worse than that -- they've actually converted several of the defence platforms into 'mixed use' platforms."
"They've put residential modules on them?" you ask, shocked.
She nods, arms crossing. "Collateral damage in a heavily cluttered orbital zone is bad enough even without that. If there's ever a serious attack on this system, it's going to be bloodbath even if they never make it as far inward as this station."
The two of you continue onward in silence, a shadow having fallen over the conversation.
Your aimless wandering has led you to an even more secluded area -- you can't even glimpse people through the thicker trees here. A small bridge spans a stream, which babbles pleasantly.
"It's too quiet here," Lori says, looking around at the trees. "There aren't any animals."
"There's quite a bit more than I'm used to," you admit. "With the bees alone. This is honestly the closest I've been to a natural biome, I'm afraid."
She pauses then halfway across the bridge, looking at you with soft, sad, blue eyes. "Under different circumstances," she says, "I'd offer to show you Mars. It's not as verdant as earth, but my family's holdings are lovely this time of year."
The two of you, both on the bridge, seem suddenly a little too close. You take a step backward, to maintain a conversational distance, but your back comes up against the decoratively high railing. Something about the way she's looking at you, your quiet surroundings, your relative entrapment, makes your heart pound. She reaches out a hand, elegant fingers cupping your chin to tilt your face upward.
"Maybe someday?" you ask, voice tight and breathy. You don't do anything to pull away as she closes the distance between you.
"I'll hold you to that," she says, smiling in a way that makes electricity go all down your spine. Then there's no distance at all between the two of you -- her lips are on yours, and she's kissing you with a forceful intensity that's both surprising and entirely welcome. Your hands grip the fabric of her jacket, and you let yourself give in to it entirely.
Unbidden, Anja's voice comes floating into your head until you can wave it away: You must really like being bossed around, huh?
It's over a little sooner than you would have prefered, but it still leaves you breathless even as you release her jacket and let her pull back. To your dismay, a conflicted expression is going across her face. You're briefly worried she didn't like it.
"Is this a mistake?" she whispers, still half bent over you, one long-fingered hand still on your face.
As the rush of the kiss leaves you, you consider this question. She's not exactly your direct superior, but you work together on the same ship. You're well aware of how accusations of favouritism fly when word leaks out about such relationships. Whatever sort of relationship it is she has in mind. What do you tell her?
[ ] Yes
It's a mistake, and bad for the ship. You should try to forget this happened, even if you were the one who invited her out here.
[ ] No
It's not a mistake. See where things go, but take them slow.
[ ] Sol, no!
No it's not a fucking mistake. You could both be dead within the month for all you know. Take things fast, enjoy it while you still can.
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Update 022: Messages
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No, 32 votes
F*** no!, 7 votes
Yes, 2 votes
"No," you murmur, smiling softly. "It's not." You're willing to accept any potential fallout from whatever's going to come next if Lori is -- here in this brief peaceful lull before you're both thrown back into the fury of war, it's good to have something nice in your life. To have some degree of pleasant distraction. You suspect, given the stress she's been under, that this is even more true for her. You close the distance between you again, putting your weight against the leanly-muscled warmth of her body.
You can't see her expression very well, from your vantage point, but the hand that's still on your face gently caresses your cheek once again, almost thoughtfully. "It's not," she agrees, sounding extremely self-satisfied. Then she tilts your face upward again, leans back in and this time kisses you truly breathless, her free arm going around your waist to hold you firmly in place. You let yourself lose track of your worries as a pleasant warmth fills you. It's a long while before you finally drift apart.
"I was certain enough that this was what you wanted to try kissing you," Lori comments at length. You've moved apart now, although not far -- you're still on the bridge, leaning against the railing side by side. The little artificial stream running underneath catches the light prettily, and the background burble is a cheerful accompaniment to your general euphoria. "It was difficult to be sure, though -- you're not always the easiest to read."
"I don't think you get to say that to anyone else," you say, giving her a sidelong look that makes her laugh.
"Well, I suppose I can be a little opaque," she admits. "And hardly approachable."
To say the least. "Obviously dedicated and talented, though," you point out. "And never unfair, even when you're being harsh." This is doubly true, you think, after hearing her give Anja so much of her due despite Lori, by all appearances, not caring much for your friend.
"I think you might be a little biased, just now," Lori says, bumping your shoulder with hers slightly. Somehow, there's enough insinuation in her words to bring heat to your face again. She seems to notice, and smiles in a strangely pleased manner. "I'm quite willing to see where this goes," she tells you, eyes falling back to the water. "Of course, we will need to keep things professional onboard ship."
You nod. "Of course," you echo. "It would be unprofessional if I were throwing myself at you everytime you came back from a sortie."
"Unprofessional, if not unappealing," she says, cocking her head to the side in appreciation of the image. "Ideally, I try to avoid entanglements on the same ship altogether, but it's far too late for that, I think."
You touch a finger to your lips. "There isn't much to do about it now," you say. At least, short of giving up on the whole venture, which has already been ruled out. You know the two of you will keep things respectable while on duty, though. Anja will be insufferable about this whole venture even without adding any scandalous fuel heaped on the fire.
"Assuming we both survive the coming months," Lori begins, nodding to herself as an idea takes shape, "I may try to put in a good word for you for a better posting, or a promotion eventually. That would eliminate the issue, if we stay together long term."
You find your thoughts racing in two opposite directions. On one hand, her floating the possibility of "long term" is hardly displeasing. On the other, you're perhaps freshly aware that this is precisely the sort of benefit that not everyone has access to. It's also been the farthest thing from your mind as you began to get close to Lori. "Is that… really okay?" you ask.
She frowns, uncomprehending rather than stern. "You getting a better post? I'd say so. Do you think you don't deserve one? No false modesty here -- don't you work hard?"
"... a lot of people work hard without this benefit," you point out, cautiously.
She tilts her head, almost as if trying to examine a curiosity outside her experience. "If you didn't take a leg up, do you think that those people would be granted that same opportunity? Or would it just go to someone well connected but less qualified?"
Pinned to the spot by her scrutiny, you suddenly find it impossible to explain to her, countess that she is, the sudden discomfort you're experiencing. This is hardly anything new, of course. This is how things work and not even the first time you've benefited from them. Now, though, something feels almost intangibly unfair about it all. You glance away, and divert attention to the other concern: "I'm not interested in you because I think it will benefit my career."
Her expression softens, but the snort she gives is mildly derisive. "I should think not," she says. "I hope to put a word in for you, which I might have done even if you weren't fun to kiss -- but I'm hardly your best bet for hitching an elevator ride to the top. If you were that sort, I daresay you wouldn't be going around shouting drunkenly at important officials."
You shudder, trying not to chase that particular thought to its logical implication. "Well, maybe I wouldn't if they had your eyes."
"Flatterer," Lori says. But she leans in to stroke the back of her hand against your cheek once again. "We'll have more time," she promises. "I won't be in 'meetings' constantly, after all."
You're quite okay with that.
--
You leave the park walking on air, the entire transit ride passing in a happy haze. Upon arriving back, you immediately set yourself to deciphering Lieutenant-Commander Owusu's transmission. Some would find your blissful state of mind distracting. You however, have always been able to channel the positive energy of a happy turn back into your work -- you throw on the cozy, threadbare sweater from your luggage, curl up with your tablet on the bed, and immerse yourself in frequencies and mysterious lines of text.
As you work, the one distracting question that keeps coming to mind is just what would have happened if you'd been less restrained in your response. If you hadn't just reciprocated Lori's advances, but responded in kind. You suspect that with both of you in need of happy distractions from the sense of death that seems to loom on the horizon, it may well not have been your bed that you would have ended the day in. Regardless of how enjoyable that might have been, you certainly wouldn't have had time to concentrate on your work like this.
It's late at night before you finally turn in, and when you rise at your habitual early hour you immediately return to the task, working hard at it over breakfast. You're on the brink of making real progress, you're sure and you press yourself even as you begin to feel genuine trepidation at what you're discovering. When you finally realise what you're looking at, two things hit you at once:
One is that this alone is enough to contact the Lieutenant-Commander about. The precise destination these messages are intended for is still unknowable, but you're certain now that it is somewhere offworld. Not simply an orbital station or satellite, but something further out in inter-lunar space. And the code you're finding once you've gotten past layers of encryption is upsettingly familiar. You won't swear to it being the same code as the one you intercepted on the way to Phoebe -- the one you're certain now contained information about enemy fleet movements -- but it's close enough to be a cousin. The one upside to this is that it will speed up your breaking of the code considerably, but you're not exactly counting this as a blessing under the circumstances. The first piece of information by itself could just be explained away by smugglers arranging covert exchanges or dead drops. There is a brisk trade, or so the rumours say. All together, it's enough to suggest something far more dangerous and sinister. You immediately send Owusu a discrete message indicating that you need to meet him soon.
The second thing is that while there is more work to be done, you're suddenly too rattled to be at all productive without something to take your mind off of things. The lighter than air feeling you had last night is now a distant memory. You hurriedly get dressed and head out the door. You check your messages as you do so, noting the lack of correspondence from Lori, and fire off a polite message thanking her for joining you. Today you have an entirely different destination in mind: You found out where Faiza and the other refugees from the Titanium Rose are being held shortly after arriving, and now seems like as good as time as any to see how things are for her.
A short transit ride later, the building you find at the address you've been given is both squatly and functionally ugly, screened from full view by transit riders with a stand of vegetation. As you approach on foot, you quickly detect a strong military influence in how defensible the approach is, although the sturdiness of the architecture feels more to the taste of Imperial ground forces than the Navy. Rows of small, sheltered windows stare down at you -- it's not hard to imagine riflemen in each. There's a muted brutality about the whole place that decorative plants simply can't disguise.
Even more than the continued bland utilitarianism when you step through the doors, you're struck by the overwhelming newness of this building. Metallic surfaces shine dully, the floors and walls are free from the scuffs and pits of regular use. There's a fading scent of new plastic and fresh paint in the air, enough so that you come to the conclusion that this building, probably intended as housing for infantry, was completed very shortly before the refugees' arrival. Convenient, to have a large, completely empty building to house them all in.
You step up to the man behind the reception desk. He's a clerk in the uniform of the Imperial civil service rather than any military branch, and he offers you a compulsory smile, all crisp jacket and flawless hair. "Hello, Ensign," he says, courteously. "How may I help you?" You're back in uniform, having thought it likely that your modest officer's rank might make this process easier.
"Hello," you say, smiling back. "I'm hoping to visit a Faiza Bal? I serve on the ship that transported her here after the Battle of Phoebe, and I wanted to check up on her."
"Ah, of course," the young man says, nodding. There was a slight something at Faiza's name. Recognition, certainly. Not quite hostility -- closer to annoyance. "Young Ms. Bal is… quite a handful," he comments as his gloved fingers skate over the surface of his workstation.
You hesitate, your smile turning a little awkward. "She is quite adventurous," you agree, before feeling the need to add: "She's been through a lot."
"Certainly," the clerk agrees, features carefully neutral. "She's in room 114, along with several other refugees -- they're currently out, but I have no record of Ms. Bal having done likewise today. So she should be here."
You don't fail to note the odd stresses he places on those sentences. It would be hard to. "Thank you," you say, "I'll see if I can find her."
As a barracks, it is admirably suited to housing a large number of people on short notice. The rooms, glimpsed through doors left sociably open, are small and spartan. Metallic bunks with plain blankets, and little room for anything else. The refugees you pass run the gamut from doggedly cheerful to openly morose, but all are well fed and clothed. You recognise one or two by sight, and you can tell that some of them have the same level of familiarity with you. You never worked closely with the refugees, however, or socialised with them beyond Faiza, so it doesn't go beyond that. Conversations slow or stop as you pass by, and you find yourself the subject of curious, lingering stares. There is a feeling of purgatory here. People out of harm's way at last, but still waiting. Waiting for news of their loved ones for those who still have reason to hope. Waiting on back pay and pension to be transferred, for those without. Faiza, you know, will be in the latter category.
The Empire is not in the habit of letting anyone starve if it can help it. This is a matter of cold practicality as much as it is noblesse oblige. When at least half of your population lives in artificial habitats with limited space and nothing to breathe outside, allowing the poor to go hungry while they watch the wealthy prosper can be considered to be a form of slow acting suicide. Under normal circumstances, loyal, law-abiding Imperial citizen can expect to receive basic housing credits and enough calories to live on courtesy of her Imperial Majesty. This is, of course, in addition to the sort of healthcare that prevents a station's population from falling into unproductive infirmity or to succumbing to the horrors of disease in a crowded, enclosed space. That being said, the sort of quarters a living credit alone entitles one to are neither luxurious nor spacious, and government meal rations are hardly what anyone would choose to live on -- their chief crimes being a woeful blandness of taste and texture rather than any nutritional deficiency.
Military service is one way that the poor can do a little better for themselves and their families, and the risks of service are born by many with the knowledge that, should the worst come to pass, the Empire will continue to take care of their surviving loved ones. Even a lowly spacer's pension can be enough to help a family live in better circumstances than the Imperial baseline. You've never been in that position. Even before your mother's knighthood your family was respectably middle class. Most of the refugees, you're aware, are less fortunate than that.
Faiza's door is closed when you stop in front of it. Your polite knock receives only a lengthy silence in reply and you've raised your fist to knock again when the door abruptly slides open. A familiar, tan face peers up at you. Her lips quirk skeptically. "Oh," she says, "it's you."
"It's me," you confirm, waiting for her to step aside to let you in. The girl looks even younger and smaller than she really is in the grey, government issued clothing she's been dressed in. Such garments famously taking a one-size-fits-most approach, the top hangs off of her skinny frame in a way that renders her more vulnerable than the challenging look in her dark eyes implies. "I came to see how you're doing -- I'm sorry for not messaging ahead, no one had an ID for you."
She turns to go back into the room, expecting you to follow, and tosses up a hand to carelessly dismiss your apology without actually turning around. "It's fine. I'm fine too. It's roomier here than on the Rose, at least." This much is undeniable, although the small space you find yourself standing in still seems cramped to be occupied by four people and their meager belongings. Faiza drops herself into a hard, metal-framed chair, sitting cross-legged as she faces you. "You can just sit down everywhere. If you're staying."
You retrieve a similar chair from a neglected corner, and pull it over to meet her. "I was planning on staying for a while," you tell her. "How do you like Anchiale?"
She shrugs in response. "It's interesting, but weird." She emphasises the last by making an almost pained face.
"Because of the bowl shape?" you guess.
She shakes her head, annoyed, as if you're somehow being deliberately slow. "No, because it's just… it's…" she waves a hand rabidly in the air, fishing for the words to describe what are to her as obvious as the nose on your face, "... it's so big. And open! Like I could get lost or swallowed up. I don't know why everyone says they like it."
"You've never been in an open habitat before?" you ask, surprised. "Not even a dome city?"
"No!" she says, "never! Phoebe Station had a proper ceiling at least. And shafts and decks, so you know where you are. Here it's just… a mess! With all that open, wasted space with no vacuum protection if the outer hull gets breached! The technology that keeps this place running is amazing -- way beyond anything we have back home, but it's just weird going outside in all this. And the clerks get grumpy about me going out on my own, too."
The prospect of a childhood never seeing anything like a sky fills you with a disquieted sort of sadness… until you remember the look on Lori's face, when you told her you've never been on an actual shirt-sleeve planet with its own biosphere before. It's all a matter of perspective. "You haven't been getting into trouble, have you?" You ask.
She takes a moment before she answers that, and turns away to looks out the window, the picture of aloof indifference. Still though, the way she keeps glancing back at you almost involuntarily paints a different picture. There's a sense of genuine fearfulness about these movements. As if she's afraid to get her hopes up, but also afraid that if she looks away from you for too long, you'll just go away again. Like everyone else. "Not trouble," she says. "But the people running this building don't seem to like it when I take anything apart. Even a little bit."
"Are you still doing it?" you ask, glancing at the odd lump on the bunk behind her. Whatever is laying on the mattress has been hastily covered by a blanket, presumably right before she opened the door for you.
"No!" Faiza insists. "I stopped when they asked!" She reaches out a hand, and hastily pulls the blanket more securely over the shape, obscuring an exposed length of metal.
"I see," you say, keeping a straight face through truly herculean effort.
"Mrs. Garcia doesn't like it if I do stuff like that in here, anyway," Faiza admits, glancing around at the empty room. Seeing the question in your face, she clarifies: "She's the mother who's staying here, with her two sons. They're annoying. They went out to Veterans' Affairs for an appointment, so they're probably going to move out soon." The same air of slightly unconvincing indifference hangs over these words.
"Will you be lonely without them?" you ask, gently.
"What? No! I'm fine." She does her best to look mildly contemptuous at your concern. "I'm going to be moved before too long anyway."
"Do you have relatives you can stay with?" you guess.
She shakes her head, shoulders hunched in spite of herself. One arm goes around her body protectively, the other making a fist at her side. "Just dad. So I'm a 'ward of the Empire' now. They're going to put me up somewhere until I'm adult enough for them to give me dad's money."
"It will really pile up by that point," you offer, awkwardly aware that this isn't really addressing the core anxiety.
She nods glumly. "Yeah, I know." There's an awkward silence as you stop knowing what to say. Faiza fidgets slightly until the tension finally gets to her: "You grew up on a Navy station too, right?"
"For a while," you say. "That was over Titan. It was right after the Civil War, so everyone was all crammed in together."
"What did you like to do?" she asks, looking at you sidelong as if trying to fit the person she sees sitting before her into the sort of childhood she herself had.
"Sit and read," you admit. "Or worked on puzzle games, or watched old videos. Mother didn't like me to wander off too far. I might have gotten underfoot." Faiza makes a mildly disgusted sound. "What?"
She rolls her eyes. "Wow, you were a keener button pusher back then too, huh? I bet adults just loved you."
"Mostly they did," you admit, oddly stung. "It wasn't like Phoebe. There weren't really any civilians supposed to be living on that station, but it was where mother's squad was stationed, and it was keep me there or split us up. I couldn't stand the thought of splitting up like that."
"... yeah," she says, nodding slowly. "Wasn't it boring, though? Just looking at screens all day while on station quarters?"
"It was." You punctuate the admittance with an eloquent shrug. "I had to be very quiet as well. I was used to that from the refugee ship, though." Faiza shudders suddenly, seeming to draw inward at the mention of the transit from the inner system to Saturn. "I'm sorry," you say. "I didn't expect you to be able to remember that. You must have been… two?"
"Three," she says, eyes large and far away. "Old enough to remember some things." Finally, she looks back at you without specifying what these terrible things were. "You're old, though," she says. "What kind of station did you live on before that?"
"I was in a dome city," you correct, wondering at how often you've had to explain this recently. "On Luna -- Earth's moon. It's a bit like being in this kind of station, but, well, there's a ceiling in some places. In other places, you can just see the stars. Or Earth."
"Who were you with there?"
"My mother and father were busy, most of the time," you tell her. "So a lot of the time it was just me and my older sister. She took care of me."
"I had a sister, before I was born almost," Faiza says. "I never met her. What was yours like?" She's read between the lines already. She's young enough that, one or two traumatic memories aside, the Civil War being a dividing line where the life of every adult she's likely to meet was permanently destroyed or altered is simply a fact of the world. She understands, without being told, that Mosi is gone. One way or another.
"Mosi was brave, and… loud?" Trying to bring a child's understanding of someone to bear now is difficult. "I mean, more like mother. She wasn't afraid to tell someone off if they were wrong. Or to stick up for someone if they were being treated unfairly. She got into a fight once, when an older girl was being mean to me." She had been utterly unmoved by any of mother's admonishments, folding her arms and scowling, nose still full of tissue to staunch the bleeding.
"What's that you're playing with?" Faiza asks, startling you. You glance down -- at some point in this conversation, you pulled out the little black box you're wearing around your neck and you've been running your fingers over it without conscious thought.
"This," you say, slowly, "is just, well, it's a two way comm unit. Mother gave one to me and one to Mosi, to make sure I didn't get lost when it was her job to make sure I got home from school."
Faiza looks at it with a critical eye, unimpressed. "Is it as junky as it looks?"
You decide not to take offense. "Yes. It has a pretty limited range. And it doesn't even work through vacuum much, unless you give it a serious boost. It's really only good if you're in the same city as whoever has the other communicator. I doubt it would even go from here to Alpha Sphere." You let her take it in one of her small, clever hands nonetheless.
"Why do you even still have it then?" she asks, finally.
You smile a little sheepishly. "Mosi had to leave for the naval academy on Mars eventually. I cried and made her promise to hold onto hers, even though it was useless. It's just something to remember her by now."
Oh, for Sol's sake, Amani, you're a big girl now, stop crying." Mosi's face was a mixture of exasperation and helpless dismay, her hands grasping your shoulders with an indecisive air, like she doesn't quite know what to do. "I'll keep it if it makes you happy. And I'll send you calls whenever I can."
She's still holding it when your tablet vibrates at the pitch indicating an important call. You snap it off your belt, checking the name… and your heart stops.
BOOSTED OFFWORLD CALL FROM:
CAPT. N. NORTH
"It's my mother!" you gasp, delight unconcealed in your voice.
"Where's she calling from?" Faiza asks, pulling back to let you answer.
"She's stationed here, but she's out on patrol. I don't know how she even knows I'm here!" You hurriedly flick the answer switch on the miniaturised display, watching the progress wheel spin tauntingly slowly. It seems to take hours, and then...
"Amani? The feed is low quality, her movements slightly choppy, her voice slightly distorted. But it's your mother, face visible through a helmet visor, looking into the dash camera of her mecha console. At the sight of you she gives a wide, thrilled grin.
You're giddy from the shock of it all, but have enough presence of mind to plaster a serious expression onto your face and snap a crisp salute at your mother's image. "Hello, Dame North," you say, as if this were any other higher ranking officer calling you.
She stares at you for a long moment, first disbelieving, then exasperated… until you both abruptly dissolve into helpless laughter. You regain your composure first. "It's wonderful to hear from you," you say. "But how are you calling? You're not back yet, I assume."
"I'm not," your mother agrees, the mirthful smile still on her lips. "I'm still a ways off, but we're close enough to Iapetus to beam them out scan data from the patrol. I have a friend in communications over where you are, in Outer Fleet Headquarters. He told me you were on-station, and offered to connect us… discreetly."
Your smile falters ever so slightly. "That's against the rules, isn't it?" you ask, concerned for her. You're well aware that if you attempted to piggyback a personal message on a secure, priority data transmission, you'd be facing more than just a dressing down and a letter of apology.
"I have a friend, remember?" she says, dismissively. "And if I'm going to choose between not getting reprimanded and seeing my only remaining child's face, that's not even a question. You've been thrown in and out of combat for months, Amani."
You close your eyes briefly, nodding. "So much for a quiet patrol mission," you confirm.
Your mother begins to respond, but she pauses with her mouth already partially open. You worry for a terrible instant that she's seen something on scan, that she's being informed of some dire situation by her subordinates. Instead, you realise with a rush of relief that Faiza has drifted to peer over your shoulder, and your mother has noticed.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" you say to both of them. "Mother, this is Faiza Bal. She was one of the refugees we picked up from Phoebe, and I'm paying her a visit. Faiza, this is my mother, Dame Nalah North."
If your mother is put off by not having you all to herself, she doesn't show it, instead giving Faiza a friendly smile. "A pleasure," she says, as if Faiza were an adult rather than a half waifish teenager. People can tell you're related right away, usually. Your mother is a half shade darker than you, like your sister was, but built along similar willowy lines to you. Her demeanor is much more direct, however. She gives off the impression of a graceful always poised for action even when outwardly relaxed.
Faiza seems to have much more material concerns than a polite introduction. She's staring at the screen intently, drinking in every detail of the image aside from your mother. "You're in a Lancer," Faiza says, sounding more energetic than you've heard her at any point since you arrived. "That's not a standard configuration, is it? That coolant system behind you is completely different!"
Rather than take offense, your mother's expression is a mixture of surprise and amusement. "Yes," she agrees, "I am flying a modified Lancer, of a sort. It's an ISM07fx Fenris Lancer -- one of the few they fully operational models they made."
Faiza gasps, hands to her mouth and stars in her eyes. "Father told me about those! He was involved with the trials, back around Earth. He always said it was much faster than a Banner, even though the Banner won the mass production contract! I've seen pictures of a Fenris propulsion system but they've never been detailed enough to-- ma'am, may I please see your unit? May I please just watch while it gets serviced? I won't even touch anything or fix anything or make any changes! I promise!"
Your mother's expression has now turned to something like blindsided disbelief, and you hurry to explain: "Faiza's father was a mecha engineer. She's very talented with repair work -- a prodigy, maybe."
Dame Nalah nods slowly, trying to take all this in. "She's really that talented?" she asks.
"At least one technician on the ship said so," you confirm, "and from what I saw myself, it was entirely true. She's better than a lot of adults with formal training." Faiza spares a startled glance in your direction, gratitude warring with her natural reservations and her preoccupation with your mother's unit.
"Hm," your mother looks at Faiza thoughtfully. "Are you going to go into the navy, then? Like your father? We can always use talented engineers."
"Maybe," Faiza says, shifting from foot to foot.
Dame Nalah is quiet for a long moment, mulling over something in her head. "Well," she says, slowly, "I think I will let you look at my unit being serviced. There's a condition, though!" she has to hastily add the last in order to stave off Faiza's imminent explosion of gratitude. "I served with the current headmaster of the local Imperial Academy," your mother explains. "They have an excellent preparatory program that could put you on track to enter the navy with a leg up on where you'd normally start. He'll definitely take you if you're actually as talented as my daughter says, especially considering your father served. Talented girls who work hard can go far, these days."
Faiza is visibly torn, a mistrust of this person she's only just met warring with the obvious fact that someone has just appeared out of nowhere to clear away most of the obstacles between Faiza and a more successful career than her father ever enjoyed. When she answers, there's a cautious, solemn note in her voice and a world-weary look in her eyes that is seemingly far beyond her tender years. "Not always."
Your mother nods, taking this seriously. "That's true," she admits. "But more and more. And this time, I think, it will."
Faiza stares at the screen, still afraid to believe, but desperately wanting to. "So, I have to agree to apply in order to get you to show me your Lancer?" she asks.
"No, I just want you to talk to the headmaster. Give him a demonstration of your knowledge. I can arrange that." Your mother gives her a broader smile that goes crooked at the edges. Like wavy hair in the process of being grown out.
There's a long, quiet moment before Faiza finally replies: "Thank you, ma'am."
--
"I would have felt bad, giving a common girl that much of an assurance not too long ago," your mother admits a short while later. You've said your goodbyes to Faiza, before departing to find a comfortable bench in order to continue your conversation in private. The girl, still shocked but grateful, understood. "The Imperial Navy has not always been overly concerned with rewarding skill when it's attached to someone without an important family."
"You don't feel bad about it now?" you ask, thinking again of Anja. "I haven't seen that things have changed all that much."
Nalah makes a dismissive noise. "You're too young," she informs you. "You never saw how bad things used to be, before the Civil War. The officer corps was completely stuffed full of noble scions who were there because of money or their family names while real talent was never given a chance. In the old days, people like Lillian Andre, your own Captain, were lucky to make bridge officer -- now she has her own ship. It's not exactly a plumb assignment, but it's her own ship.. There aren't enough puffed up nobles from ancient family lines to fill out the entire officer corp anymore. Too many died in the Civil War, or turned traitor. I'm a knight, Amani. And a captain in command of four full mecha squads with support staff. Once upon a time, they would have kept me a squad leader and given this job to someone like Gloriana Perbeck."
You can't help but flinch at this last, the grudgingly optimistic picture she's painting punctured by the casual dislike she expresses toward the woman who not too long ago was kissing you until you couldn't breath. Your mother isn't speaking with personal familiarity so much as a feeling of knowing Lori's type. The fact that she didn't even use Lori's title here in the confines of this private family conversation is a bad indication. "She respects you," you say, the first thing that comes to mind. You don't exactly want to explain the precise nature of your relationship with the Countess, not when it's so fresh you barely know what that nature is. "She told me that she's only heard people speak highly of you."
A guilty look flicks across your mother's face. "Right," she mutters. "I didn't expect you'd have much to do with her, being a bridge officer. Maybe I'm not being fair, but it's not hard to make Commander when you're a Countess, exiled or not. I've seen that too many times not to be a little wary without serving with her in battle."
"She works hard," you insist. You don't want to sound too proprietary about Lori, but you can't help yourself. "It reminds me of you, a little."
Dame Nalah sighs, smiling a little sheepishly, prepares to respond, then seems to notice something. A frustrated, regretful look passes over her face. "It's nothing too serious," she prefaces, "but I'm going to have to cut this short -- duty calls. I'll see you in a few days, when I'm back at the station. I can't promise I'll be able to talk again before that."
"Ah, of course," you say, echoing her regret.
"I'm so proud of you," she tells you. "Your father would be too -- you're so much like he was. We'll be able to spend real time together when I get back, stars permitting."
"Thank you," you whisper. The call ends.
You stand and stretch, preparing to snap the tablet back onto your belt, but you pause, noticing not one, but two new messages. One of them, happily, is from G. Perbeck, expressing a strong appreciation for good tea, good company, and 'dessert' in the park afterward. Despite no one being around, your face heats pleasurably. She promises to be in touch.
The second message, by contrast, is from M. Owusu. Milo, as Lori calls him. It looks as if you will be taking another trip up out of Beta Sphere tomorrow. A thought occurs to you, and you decide you have a minor decision to make before you go ahead with that.
With Lori, you were in civilian dress and the difference is stark now that you've spent the day out wearing your uniform again. You're both more and less conspicuous like this. You're an officer -- someone -- but not necessarily an individual, in the eyes of most who you're likely to meet. How do you want to dress when you go to meet Lieutenant-Commander Owusu, and by default for the rest of this shore leave?
[ ] Continue to wear your uniform while you're out
The authority and anonymity it confers is useful, despite it having your name, rank and the ship you serve on written directly on the shoulder.
[ ] Avoid wearing your uniform on this leave unless you need to
Trade one kind of anonymity for another and attempt to blend in as just another girl on station. It will also give you a chance to get used to what normal clothes feel like again.
Last edited:
Update 023: Deadzone
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
OoC: Very short update this time just due to certain things needing to be decided in a certain order. Still took me a week, though : p
Avoid wearing your uniform unless necessary, 19 votes
Wear your uniform, 3 votes
Alpha Sphere, Anchiale Station
"This is a surveillance deadzone," Lieutenant-Commander Milo Owusu explains, taking a sip from his recyclable coffee cup. Barely contained within it is a towering monstrosity of whipped pseudo-cream and flavoured syrups, supposedly with milky coffee lurking somewhere at the bottom. You're not about to criticise someone for their taste in caffeine delivery, but it's not quite your speed.
You glance around the space. It's a little alcove between two builds, jutting awkwardly off of an outdoor seating area. The space is honestly too narrow and too cut off from the open air to be entirely comfortable, but some enterprising soul has stuck a small table and two chairs in it, leaving just enough room to squeeze past.
"The camera that's supposed to see the area is blocked by a planter," he continues, "and the noise coming out of that noodle shop around the corner covers anything other than a shout."
You frown, tentative. "Shouldn't you tell someone about this?" This feels a little too close to telling someone else how to do their job for your comfort.
"I did," he says, mildly. "Two years ago. I was first sent to this posting in order to evaluate the security of the station and draft a report on improvements. They fixed the really egregious problems, but some things got lost in the bureaucratic shuffle, or weren't deemed economical. I checked this morning -- still hasn't been fixed." He smiles sardonically.
"So, your job here is done, sir?" you ask, unable to prevent a slightly sardonic edge from slipping into your voice. You would have normally, but perhaps it's the irregularity of the task and his conduct or just being out of uniform. You picked up a cheap sundress from a print-on-demand store the day before -- the breeze on your shoulders and legs feels particularly nice in Alpha's climate, which you find subtly warmer than the unfinished Beta Sphere. Fortunately, Owusu takes no offense.
"Frankly, yes," he says. "I can only bother station intelligence so much with this, short of convincing my superiors back on Titan to burn good will and political capital on something this low level. I've got a lot of independence, but neither the Lord Mayor of Anchiale nor Lord Admiral Sikes actually answer to me. I'm the byblow of an extinct house, so I don't precisely have the family name for that. I used to joke to Glory that we should switch careers, except that intelligence work would just drive her crazy after a week." He explains this in such a self-effacing, casual manner that it's hard for you to feel truly awkward about the seemingly personal admission.
Except… just when had Lori become the poster girl for Imperial classism in the ranks? Maybe it was nothing new and you are just hyper aware of it at the moment. "She told me she hates it when you call her that," you say, staring at your own, already empty cup.
"She says that, but she's used to it from me. Someone has to keep her humble." His easy smile slips slightly and you find yourself the subject of a close examination, his features going from openly gorgeous to mysteriously beautiful. It's not suspicion, quite, so much as intense interest. "Have you told her anything about our dealings?" he asks. "She tried to warn me off from dragging you into anything dangerous, the other day."
Dammit. "No," you say, hurriedly. "She saw you talking to me that first time at the docking bay -- she asked, but I told her it was nothing I could discuss."
He nods. After one last searching look his features relax again, seemingly taking you at your word. "Either way, I see you're on a first name basis with our resident countess." Is he… smirking? "I don't think I need to ask -- I know her type by now. Anyway, what do you have for me?"
You're sent reeling for a moment. You stare, torn between embarrassment, mild indignation, and an unproductive urge to press him for details of exactly what sort of type you conform to. His tone and expression make whatever it is feel downright indecent. Intolerable man indeed. You pull yourself together, though. The small talk portion of the meeting is clearly over:
"The underlying message, once I've cleaned up all the encryption, looks extremely similar to the code I intercepted near Phoebe," you say. There's no point in being delicate about it. "Not exactly the same, I don't think, but the same lineage."
"A lineage that originates with the Divine Navy," he says, looking grimmer than he ever has in your experience of him.
"It was also definitely being beamed out into space," you add, feeling almost guilty. "The beam's too tight to be directed at one of the stations around Iapetus."
"Send me the directional data you've pulled, and I'll try to find a source at least." He abruptly takes a hearty slug of his sugary, milky drink as if it were a stiff glass of spirits. It's got so much imitation dairy that it's probably too lukewarm to burn his throat, but you still wince. "I hate being right," he says, looking utterly crestfallen.
"I'm sorry, sir," you say.
"No, no, none of that," he says, tone brisk once again. "I asked, you answered. How long do you think you need to crack the message itself?"
"It's hard to say, sir," you admit. "Weeks, maybe, to get the whole message. It takes time, on my own. Is there really no one else you can have working on this, sir?"
Owusu sighs, scratching the back of his head as he considers how to respond. "I could, but I don't actually know where the leak is, internally. I don't have enough information yet to be able to act decisively enough to disregard it." He smiles again a little ruefully. "Unless you know how to get a secure message to Princess Daystar that you know she'll listen to."
You stare. "The princess?"
"Yes," he says, "I'd at least know she's trustworthy in all this. It's her head up on the block if her great uncle ever takes over the system, and I can even somewhat reliably expect she'd keep it to herself while she's here. She and the local administration do not precisely see eye to eye -- she's a little too enthusiastic about certain reforms for their taste."
You realise he's joking. As far as you know, the moment Daystar departed the Night Lily she disappeared into whatever sort of top level briefings and meetings an imperial princess engages in after the trip she'd just returned from. If a Lieutenant-Commander with the SRI can't reach her, you certainly won't be able to. But, if the princess is trustworthy, maybe there's another option…
"With this much, I can try making some quiet preparations," he offers. "I can convince a few people to increase security in places, without getting into specifics. Keep up the good work, Ensign North."
The meeting ends quickly after this, with the two of you going your separate ways. You're headed back in the direction of the elevator up out of Alpha Sphere, wondering if you should do what you're now considering. You haven't spoken to J6 since departing the ship, but you do have a hope of contacting her to arrange a meeting. The princess being trustworthy or not aside, you're well aware that the abilities the strange guardswoman displayed before, processing data rapidly through direct neural link, would greatly speed your efforts if she agreed to help you.
Do you keep playing things close to the chest, or reach out to a potential asset who you know likes you, at least a little?
[ ] Contact J6 to ask for help.
[ ] Keep it to yourself. Security is more important than speed.
Avoid wearing your uniform unless necessary, 19 votes
Wear your uniform, 3 votes
Alpha Sphere, Anchiale Station
"This is a surveillance deadzone," Lieutenant-Commander Milo Owusu explains, taking a sip from his recyclable coffee cup. Barely contained within it is a towering monstrosity of whipped pseudo-cream and flavoured syrups, supposedly with milky coffee lurking somewhere at the bottom. You're not about to criticise someone for their taste in caffeine delivery, but it's not quite your speed.
You glance around the space. It's a little alcove between two builds, jutting awkwardly off of an outdoor seating area. The space is honestly too narrow and too cut off from the open air to be entirely comfortable, but some enterprising soul has stuck a small table and two chairs in it, leaving just enough room to squeeze past.
"The camera that's supposed to see the area is blocked by a planter," he continues, "and the noise coming out of that noodle shop around the corner covers anything other than a shout."
You frown, tentative. "Shouldn't you tell someone about this?" This feels a little too close to telling someone else how to do their job for your comfort.
"I did," he says, mildly. "Two years ago. I was first sent to this posting in order to evaluate the security of the station and draft a report on improvements. They fixed the really egregious problems, but some things got lost in the bureaucratic shuffle, or weren't deemed economical. I checked this morning -- still hasn't been fixed." He smiles sardonically.
"So, your job here is done, sir?" you ask, unable to prevent a slightly sardonic edge from slipping into your voice. You would have normally, but perhaps it's the irregularity of the task and his conduct or just being out of uniform. You picked up a cheap sundress from a print-on-demand store the day before -- the breeze on your shoulders and legs feels particularly nice in Alpha's climate, which you find subtly warmer than the unfinished Beta Sphere. Fortunately, Owusu takes no offense.
"Frankly, yes," he says. "I can only bother station intelligence so much with this, short of convincing my superiors back on Titan to burn good will and political capital on something this low level. I've got a lot of independence, but neither the Lord Mayor of Anchiale nor Lord Admiral Sikes actually answer to me. I'm the byblow of an extinct house, so I don't precisely have the family name for that. I used to joke to Glory that we should switch careers, except that intelligence work would just drive her crazy after a week." He explains this in such a self-effacing, casual manner that it's hard for you to feel truly awkward about the seemingly personal admission.
Except… just when had Lori become the poster girl for Imperial classism in the ranks? Maybe it was nothing new and you are just hyper aware of it at the moment. "She told me she hates it when you call her that," you say, staring at your own, already empty cup.
"She says that, but she's used to it from me. Someone has to keep her humble." His easy smile slips slightly and you find yourself the subject of a close examination, his features going from openly gorgeous to mysteriously beautiful. It's not suspicion, quite, so much as intense interest. "Have you told her anything about our dealings?" he asks. "She tried to warn me off from dragging you into anything dangerous, the other day."
Dammit. "No," you say, hurriedly. "She saw you talking to me that first time at the docking bay -- she asked, but I told her it was nothing I could discuss."
He nods. After one last searching look his features relax again, seemingly taking you at your word. "Either way, I see you're on a first name basis with our resident countess." Is he… smirking? "I don't think I need to ask -- I know her type by now. Anyway, what do you have for me?"
You're sent reeling for a moment. You stare, torn between embarrassment, mild indignation, and an unproductive urge to press him for details of exactly what sort of type you conform to. His tone and expression make whatever it is feel downright indecent. Intolerable man indeed. You pull yourself together, though. The small talk portion of the meeting is clearly over:
"The underlying message, once I've cleaned up all the encryption, looks extremely similar to the code I intercepted near Phoebe," you say. There's no point in being delicate about it. "Not exactly the same, I don't think, but the same lineage."
"A lineage that originates with the Divine Navy," he says, looking grimmer than he ever has in your experience of him.
"It was also definitely being beamed out into space," you add, feeling almost guilty. "The beam's too tight to be directed at one of the stations around Iapetus."
"Send me the directional data you've pulled, and I'll try to find a source at least." He abruptly takes a hearty slug of his sugary, milky drink as if it were a stiff glass of spirits. It's got so much imitation dairy that it's probably too lukewarm to burn his throat, but you still wince. "I hate being right," he says, looking utterly crestfallen.
"I'm sorry, sir," you say.
"No, no, none of that," he says, tone brisk once again. "I asked, you answered. How long do you think you need to crack the message itself?"
"It's hard to say, sir," you admit. "Weeks, maybe, to get the whole message. It takes time, on my own. Is there really no one else you can have working on this, sir?"
Owusu sighs, scratching the back of his head as he considers how to respond. "I could, but I don't actually know where the leak is, internally. I don't have enough information yet to be able to act decisively enough to disregard it." He smiles again a little ruefully. "Unless you know how to get a secure message to Princess Daystar that you know she'll listen to."
You stare. "The princess?"
"Yes," he says, "I'd at least know she's trustworthy in all this. It's her head up on the block if her great uncle ever takes over the system, and I can even somewhat reliably expect she'd keep it to herself while she's here. She and the local administration do not precisely see eye to eye -- she's a little too enthusiastic about certain reforms for their taste."
You realise he's joking. As far as you know, the moment Daystar departed the Night Lily she disappeared into whatever sort of top level briefings and meetings an imperial princess engages in after the trip she'd just returned from. If a Lieutenant-Commander with the SRI can't reach her, you certainly won't be able to. But, if the princess is trustworthy, maybe there's another option…
"With this much, I can try making some quiet preparations," he offers. "I can convince a few people to increase security in places, without getting into specifics. Keep up the good work, Ensign North."
The meeting ends quickly after this, with the two of you going your separate ways. You're headed back in the direction of the elevator up out of Alpha Sphere, wondering if you should do what you're now considering. You haven't spoken to J6 since departing the ship, but you do have a hope of contacting her to arrange a meeting. The princess being trustworthy or not aside, you're well aware that the abilities the strange guardswoman displayed before, processing data rapidly through direct neural link, would greatly speed your efforts if she agreed to help you.
Do you keep playing things close to the chest, or reach out to a potential asset who you know likes you, at least a little?
[ ] Contact J6 to ask for help.
[ ] Keep it to yourself. Security is more important than speed.
Update 024: Ramen
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Call J6, 36 votes
Keep it to yourself, 1 vote
I'm… not bothering with the pie chart for this one.
Keep it to yourself, 1 vote
I'm… not bothering with the pie chart for this one.
"Ensign North," J6 says after a moment's staring. There's a slightly quizzical tilt to her head, lending her a faintly surprised air in spite of the impassive stare her features otherwise form.
"Hello, Guardswoman," you say, addressing your tablet's camera. When a weighted pause threatens to settle in, you realise that you're expected to explain your call with no further small talk. "I'd like to talk to you," you say. "Face to face. Is there a good time?" You're in Alpha Sphere's transit hub, slowly making your way toward the waiting elevator. You have time for this call before having to leave. It's busier than Beta's, with a higher percentage of civilians than the unfinished habitat you're staying in. Your wispy, pale sundress draws a few admiring glances, but otherwise, you blend in with the crowd.
"Hm." She stares past you into the middle distance for a second, maybe two. "Yes," she says, finally. "Now would work."
You stop short, caught completely off guard. "Now?" You had assumed that, as the only Imperial Guard member you're aware of on Iapetus, her itinerary would be as busy as Daystar's own. You hadn't even expected her to pick up on this first call.
"Now," she says, nodding. If she's amused by your reaction, nothing in her icy-pale visage betrays it. Even her eyes are an almost glacial silver-grey. "I'm in Low Gravity Habitat Gamma. Unit B015. Off the main spindle."
"I'm headed up the spindle anyway," you say, coming around to the idea. "I'll see you soon, then?"
"Mm," J6 agrees. "Bye." Then she hangs up.
--
The low gravity habitats are comparatively small next to the spheres. Ovular, three dimensional shapes each tethered by a narrow shaft lined with lo-g agricultural modules. Strange spines along the length, irregularly spaced between the two poles. The inertially simulated gravity of these shorter tethers simply can't match that of Alpha or Beta Sphere, but it is more than microgravity. Enough to live with.
As you make your way slowly but surely up the elevator, it's like you're leaving one world and entering another. The elevator itself is little more than a handhold and leg straps, orientated in the direction gravity eventually will assert itself. Through its clear walls you see can a steady stream of green vegetation. The green is broken up by the occasionally flashing glimpse of a worker tending to the hydroponic gardens that help to feed Iapetus's growing population. It feels longer than it really is before you finally reach the bottom of Gamma Habitat's shallow false gravity well.
Rather than the genuinely open spaces of the spheres, or the broad, spacious shafts of the weightless Anchiale spaceport and surrounding spindle, this habitat has the efficiently claustrophobic feel of a much smaller station's habitation ring, although it lacks even the illusion of endlessness provided by those modest habitats' endless upward slope. You're instantly reminded of Quetzle Station, although this space is much better kept. Cleaner, with uniform parts and walls in a soothing beige above charcoal grey floor tiles.
You're on Level A, you swiftly realise, and are forced to backtrack slightly to the middle of Gamma's three levels. Level B looks much the same as the one above: Rows of narrow corridors with doors at regular intervals. Tired-eyed workers in various uniforms -- navy, Merchant Auxiliary, Anchiale security -- trudge past on their way home from a long shift. They give you curious glances, you with your cheerful sundress, reading a map on your naval-issue tablet, but let you pass without comment. Clearly this level, if not the whole habitat, is reserved for civil servants or naval personnel who work in the spaceport. You've seen such places before, even lived in one, briefly. Dirt cheap, if depressingly bland housing for government employees who can't afford elsewhere.
You have absolutely no idea why J6 would be housed here, of all places. Pilot or no, this location would be extremely inconvenient for shadowing the princess. The princess certainly can't be staying here, in this poky habitat that you'd only needed basic clearance to access.
Unit B015 is a door like all the others. You don't hesitate long before you press the buzzer next to the door. With very little pause, you're greeted in person with the same unemotive face from your brief video conversation.
"Hello, Ensign North," J6 says, stepping back to allow you to enter. It's slightly larger than your quarters in Beta Sphere, although notably without the benefit of windows or any kind of pleasant exterior. A bed rests against one wall, adjacent to a nightstand crowded with bottles of medication and supplements. The only other pieces of furniture in the room are a pair of unremarkable chairs and a workstation. From the kitchen alcove, a multitude of sparkling-eyed, chibi faces smile rapturously at you -- the meager counter space is dominated by a massive stack of Sugoi! brand variable-g-safe instant ramen pouches. The wastebin in the corner, you notice with a slight sinking feeling, is near to overflowing with empty packets of the same brand.
"Sit, if you want," J6 says, closing the door behind you. You gingerly retrieve one of the metal chairs, reorienting it easily with one hand in the light gravity. To your mild dismay, after you sit down J6 does not actually follow suit. Rather, she crosses her arms and leans against the wall nearest the door. In place of her full uniform, she's wearing only the pants and a nondescript tanktop. It shows off both her thin frame and the induction plates on her arms and sides, cold metal gleaming against skin or siloughted through thin fabric. Already, this encounter feels as uncomfortably revealing as the incident with the medication fabricator.
"Is everything alright?" you ask. Regardless of how little shows in her face, something about her bearing seems to speak of agitation or discomfort. She looks at you searchingly for a long moment before eventually responding:
"Her highness has been attending a series of meetings in Alpha Sphere, where she's being housed. We've been separated most of the time since we arrived."
You frown, confused. "Why?" you ask. "Aren't you her guard?"
There's the ghost of a twitch along one corner of her lip. An answering frown? It's impossible to tell. "Alpha Sphere has a simulated biosphere," she explains unhelpfully.
"And that's a problem for you?" you guess, not much less confused.
"I'm allergic to…" she briefly searches for an elegant way to summarise her problem, before giving up and saying: "... Many things. And too much uncontrolled space with live plantlife is dangerous for my immune system. So I have to stay here, where things are more controlled."
Your eyes track helplessly to the suite of medication, before you force your gaze back to her face. "You can't go into a biosphere at all?" you ask, voice quiet.
"If I went out into a real biosphere -- earth, or Mars -- I'd die," she confirms. "Anchiale's spheres probably aren't as bad as all that. I still wouldn't be a lot of use to her in that state."
Compared to Faiza's lack of comfort with open environments, and your simple lack of experience with shirt-sleeve planets, this bleak, mandatorily artificial existence seems infinitely worse. This goes beyond the mere inconvenience of having to take medication to survive. You're uncomfortably aware that, just as much as the induction plates grafted into her body, this is all something that was done to her. Somehow, in spite of her lethal competence and stony disposition, it's impossible to ignore how young she is. The magnitude of this hits you all at once, and without thinking, two words slip out: "That's awful."
Her head jerks back, blinking in obvious surprise. It's the most expressive response you've ever seen from her. As if the idea that this could be awful, rather than just the way things are, simply hadn't occurred to her. After a lengthy pause, she speaks up, almost awkward: "I'm a prototype," she says, by way of explanation. "I'm the only successful combat model. Successful enough to actually field, at least. Compared to most of the others. I'm lucky."
"You're not a model," you say, horror mounting, "you're a person.."
"I'm… both." Has her expression softened? Grown more complex? Stayed the same? She's impossibly difficult to read. "I was part of a project. A secret one, in Jupiter System, to create soldiers capable of direct neural interfacing with combat systems."
"Before the war?" your hands grip the edge of your tablet hard.
"Yes," she says.
"You must have been a child!"
"Yes," she says, just as easily. "We all were. Most of us didn't survive the first year. I'm lucky." She repeats this, as if to sway you… or assuage your revulsion. As if to make you feel better, somehow.
"Who would… whose project was this?" You have a sickening feeling you already know.
She shrugs, the gesture less lithe than usual. She's even more agitated than before, even if she's uncommonly good at hiding it. "The Empire says criminals. The Jovians say the Empire. The Navy. The SRI." Abruptly, she turns and walks into the kitchen, taking a ramen pouch off the top of the pile. "The money came from somewhere, though." She pries open the seal on the pouch, and inserts the sink's faucet into it, filling the pouch up to the prescribed level. "I'm not going to talk about this anymore."
"You're… what?" The statement had been utterly casual, and completely without warning.
"I'm not," she says, twisting the bottom of the pouch to begin its internal heating routine. It's a civilian version of naval rations, in that way, although moderately closer to real food. "I'm done."
"That's… if that's what you'd prefer," you say, still a little sick to your stomach, imagining someone performing the kind of experiments and procedures that could produce someone like the Guardswoman on a girl that young. On multiple children that young. It's not as though you haven't heard the rumours. Everyone has -- of unspeakably unethical experiments out of Jupiter, performed on human subjects. Political dissidents or children stolen or bought from somewhere, depending on who tells the rumour. There is no consistency to them, in scope or in the precise nature of what was being attempted. There are always a few facts in common, however: The subjects had been subjected to horrible pain and suffering. That failed subjects were discarded like trash. And that the Empire had been involved in it all.
The Empire, of course, stridently denied almost all of this at the time. Simultaneously, the larger political and military apparatus had been so repulsed by whatever had happened there that it had sparked the reform agenda that in turn had sparked the civil war when the then prince had disagreed. It would have been easy, comforting, to blame the founders of the Holy Empire, who had expressly opposed those reforms in such a violent manner. Looking at J6, however, you know that that would be on some level dishonest. The Jovians certainly think so. The incident, whatever it truly had been, was enough to turn decades of discontent into scattered, open rebellion around the larger gas giant with an increasingly high body count all the time. They are rebelling against the Holy Empire now, of course, but it hadn't started that way.
"You're too young," your mother's voice echoes unbidden in your head, "You never saw how bad things used to be, before the Civil War." Maybe this is true in more than one way.
J6 looks between her heating ramen pouch and you, and belatedly asks: "Would you like one?"
"Thank you," you say, agreeing without really thinking. And in a moment, you have a rapidly heating pouch of instant soup sitting on your lap at well. The feeling is comforting, at least. There's an extended silence, broken only by the occasional crinkle from either package as they heat their contents. The chibi face from your pouch stares up at you, eyes dead with inhuman delight. One last question dredges its way up out of your mouth: "What was your name, really?"
"My name is really J6," she replies, almost gently. Then she opens her ramen pouch, and snaps off the attached chopsticks (for in-gravity use only!). "Why did you come here, Ensign?"
Slowly, mechanically, your hands follow suit. Before you answer, you find yourself using the chopsticks to bring the mushy 'egg' noodles to your mouth. Overall, it's not half as bad as it looks -- it's no wonder she seems to like this brand. "I need a favour," you admit.
"Oh, you needed something from me." She's not hurt. If anything, the way she says it conveys an almost relieved sense of clarity. You're here to ask her to do something for you, not simply to try to enjoy her company while hashing out her traumatic past. As if contextualising your interactions as transactional is easier to process than trying to come to terms with a different sort of relationship.
In spite of her relief -- perhaps because of it -- you feel a stab of inescapable guilt in the pit of your stomach. "I'm still glad we could talk," you clarify.
"Okay." She's silent apart from the one word response, staring at you expectantly.
You take a final, bracing slurp of your soup, before launching into an explanation of why, precisely, you're here. She listens intently, without visible reaction as you lay everything out. There's a further contemplative silence after you finish, before she finally breaks it. "You have your work with you?" she nods to your tablet.
"Yes," you confirm. You're not sure why, at this point, you expected more of a response than that.
"Good. We can start now."
"Now?"
She nods. "Now. I'm free. Do you have anywhere to be?"
"I don't," you admit. You watch as J6 moves over to the workstation, retrieving a heavy duty adaptor cable and the room's other chair, eventually placing the two of you in a seating arrangement not entirely dissimilar to the one you were in when you spoke with Faiza.
"Show me what you're working on." It's a request, not a command, and you navigate to the secure folders on your tablet that the project is located on.
"How much do you know about obsolete naval code?" you ask.
She shrugs. "Next to nothing. You'll have to explain to me what I'm looking for."
You glance at her sidelong. The different vantage point doesn't reveal anything illuminating. "Are you a fast learner?"
She nods. "Generally. We have time."
You sigh. "Yes, we have time. So, what we actually need to do--"
--
The two of you are jolted out of your work by the sound of J6's workstation chiming loudly. Her eyes, glazed over, abruptly refocus, and she reaches a hand up to grip the adaptor cord connecting her temple-induction plate to your tablet. She waits a few moment to sever the connection properly before she wrenches the magnetic contact away from her cybernetics, and attempts to stand up quickly. So quickly, in fact, that she's seemingly struck by a wave of dizziness, and almost topples over. You set your tablet down and move over to the workstation, easily locating the flashing "answer" button before stepping out of the way.
You've been working for hours and have made shocking amounts of progress, between your expertise and J6's raw data processing abilities. You're so much closer to actually being able to translate the content of the encoded message that you're almost kicking yourself for not seeking out the Guardswoman's help sooner.
You watch her stagger over to the camera's path and force herself to straighten, just in time for the screen to fill with the face of none other than Princess Daystar. Instead of the serene expression you've seen from her in public, here in this presumed-private transmission to her closest subordinate, the unnaturally beautiful face of the royal is worked up into a weary pout. "Ugh, Jayceeee," she moans. It takes you a few baffled moments before you work out that 'Jaycee' means 'J6'. "This day is never going to end."
"Station time has a day set to 24 Earth Standard hours," J6 reasons. "You'll be done soon."
Daystar makes a scoffing sound. "You know what I mean."
"I do," J6 agrees. "Unfortunate that I can't be bored with you today, your highness."
She laughs, although J6 doesn't even crack a smile. "You know, that actually would make things a little better. Sol, it's good to be able to talk to someone normally. Without Lord Secretary Song talking my ear off about Saturnian 'subversives'" The eye roll she gives at this is decidedly not one you feel Princess Daystar would give in mixed company.
You feel immediately awkward. You aren't merely listening in on an official call from the Princess, you're listening in on a private stress relief message. Amid your mortification, you can't help but take a brief instant to reflect on J6's position, and her relationship to the princess. A borderline stable, experimental pilot. The product of a nightmare series of experiments that the Empire as a whole deeply regretted the existence of -- a pilot whose completely stoic non-reactions bordered on the unnerving. Was this the kind of woman who the Imperial Guard would scramble to hire on? You think not. This means that, more than likely, J6 has her current position on the weight of Princess Daystar desiring her in it.
The more cynical view of this, of course, was a powerful member of the royal family further taking advantage of a traumatised girl. Putting her in a uniform, handing her an incredibly deadly mecha, asking her to fight and kill and die for her sake. Looking at the fond smile the princess is giving J6 through the screen, however, you prefer to think differently: That Daystar had seen a girl with no family, no friends, no standing whatsoever, and gave her a place by her side.
You clear your throat quietly, signalling J6's attention. You regret interrupting the conversation slightly less than you'd regret continuing to stay in the room while it goes on. J6 looks up, having momentarily forgotten your presence, and the princess is able to see you as well as the workstation's camera pans over to the location of the noise you produced.
"Oh." Daystar seems more surprised than offended by your presence. Outright baffled, in fact -- evidently it hadn't even remotely occurred to her that J6 might ever have a guest over for any reason.
"This is Ensign North, your highness," J6 says, mercifully. "She serves on the Titanium Rose as a scans officer. She's here requesting my help with a problem she had."
"I see," Daystar says. It's as though she's flipped a magic switch, fatigue melting away and the dignified benevolence of her public face snapping back into place. The way she says 'I see', you suspect the information will be being shared with her later. If only out of curiosity at this stage, rather than suspicion. "I am, of course, pleased to meet any officer from the Rose after everything we've been through together." She eyes your sundress with amusement, incongruous with the formal salute you've automatically snapped to. "I see you've been enjoying your shore leave."
"Yes, your highness," you agree, attempting to keep your composure in these highly irregular circumstances. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Quite possibly, you should have curtsied, what with the dress. You've really spent too much time in uniform lately.
"I appreciate you keeping Jaycee occupied," the princess informs you. "Left to her own devices, she spends all her time making adjustments to her unit and moping around her quarters." J6 shugs, not bothering to contradict this characterisation.
"She has been a tremendous help to me," you say, scooping up your tablet from your vacated chair and closing out the folders you'd been using with J6.
"She usually is," agrees Daystar, a little fondly.
--
You let out an explosive breath back out in the corridor, still clutching your tablet to your chest. The long minutes it took before you could politely extricate yourself from the situation in order to leave J6 and Daystar to their conversation were as excruciating for the princess as they were for you, you suspect. There had been genuine gratitude in her eyes at your early goodbye. J6's gaze had been as blank as ever, but you hope she also appreciated the gesture.
Even if your session was cut short, the Guardswoman has materially advanced your efforts, and you can feel good about the way you spent your time today. Both for those reasons and for the simple fact of keeping her company. With no further reason to stay in the habitat, you retrace your steps back to the lift so that you can finally make the trip back down to Beta Sphere.
You're halfway there when you feel the telltale buzz of a call notification against your chest. You spend several long, confused moments staring at the blank surface of your tablet until you realise with a start that the buzzing is coming from between your breasts. Slowly, almost fearfully, you tuck the tablet back under one arm, hook the cord around your neck with a free finger, and lift the tiny, black box that you've worn around your neck every day for well over a decade up into the light. It's vibrating rhythmically, its surface pulsating a pleasant green.
You stare at it, dumbfounded, for another long moment. What could have set it off? Random interference? Had the device finally broken, after all this time? It's an exceptionally crude communication device, suitable to give to a young child without worry about her breaking it or destroying it. And it had only ever been attuned to two numbers: Your mother's old ID, long since abandoned, and the matching unit, carried by your sister. Green was her colour.
You know it's going to be some sort of mistake, even as you press the cube to your tablet and slip an earpiece on. It's so old you're not even sure if it's going to synch up, despite having been touted as universally compatible with all comm systems. The background buzz of a low quality audio call crackles to life through the speakers and is, at first, all that breaks the silence.
"Hello?" you ask, voice thick with trepidation. The halls of the habitat are deserted compared to earlier, and your voice echoes faintly against the hard surfaces around you. You hear a sharp intake of breath on the other side of the call. "Hello?" you repeat.
Finally, a voice speaks, impossible to truly identify after a decade apart, and across such a poor quality connection: "Amani?" Nonetheless, somehow you know.
"... Speaking," you reply, attempting wryness. Your voice comes out too shaky and fragile to really carry it forward. Your surroundings blur together until your whole world is wrapped up in the two devices, and the audiofeed in your ears.
There's an explosive release of breath from the caller, as if they had been holding it, waiting in fear of a negative response. "I didn't think… I never thought you'd really pick up," the voice says, so thick with emotion that she's stumbling over her words. She'd always been like that, growing up. She could play cool and collected until something really got under her skin. You feel your eyes pickle, and irritably rub at the moisture against your nonexistent sleeve.
"Mosi." It's not a question. By this point, you're certain. You still need to hear her say it.
"Yes."
Abruptly, you feel your legs go weak, and you're forced to half collapse against the wall beside you, breath suddenly ragged as your composure cracks into a thousand pieces.
"Amani? Are you alright? Amani!" the voice on the other end of the call sounds genuinely panicked at what, to her, must have just been a metallic clang and then silence. It's still several long moments before you can gather yourself enough to reassure her.
"I'm… It's… I'm…" you heave in a few breathes, squeezing your eyes shut, deeply glad that no one is here to see this. "I'm… I thought you were dead!"
"I'm not."
"We thought you were dead! The Holy Empire, they… the families of other loyalists, they… they shot father, Mosi, we thought you were dead!"
"I'm not! I'm fine. I'm fine! I--" the voice cuts off briefly, as if overcome. "I'm trying not to… I have to see you. Where are you? You must be on Anchiale."
"How did you even get here?" you ask. "You couldn't have come on the refugee ships -- mother would have heard. She checked!"
"I'll…" this pause is longer, more deliberate, pregnant with possibilities. "I can explain later, once I've seen you. I have to see you, I have to… I can come meet you somewhere, I think. No, I definitely can. I'll come meet you. Where are you?"
"I'm in Gamma Habitat," you say. "I was… I'm on my way down now."
"Oh, good," she says, relieved. "That's not far. Meet me in… can you get to Theta habitat?" Theta. You recall enough about the station layout to know that it's another low gravity habitat, almost directly opposite Gamma.
"Of course," you say. "I can go there now."
"Good," she says. "Good. I'll see you there. I'll see you soon" Then the line goes dead.
You only spare yourself a moment's stunned silence, staring down at the now-inactive cube synched to your tablet. Then you bust into life, nearly running as you make your way to the elevator. Your chest feels as though it might burst with a mingled shock, disbelief, and an almost painful joy that your sister is alive. Somehow, she's alive. Whatever that somehow is, she doesn't want to say, but that's maybe not surprising. There are people smuggling operations in and out of Saturn, albeit massively expensive and dangerous ones. Was that how she'd spent the past ten years since surviving the war? Struggling and scrounging and fighting to get passage here, back to you and your mother, back to her family? Her family who had already given her up for dead?
You need to see her. Once you see her, it will really feel true. As you ascend back to the central spindle, you can barely hold yourself still. You're moving toward your goal, obviously, but not actively enough for your tastes as you're forced to stand still to avoid setting off the lift sensors that might bring things to a grinding halt while someone assures you aren't having a seizure. Your knee throbs painfully where it struck the wall earlier. You hadn't noticed in the heat of the moment. It's nothing serious, but it still hurts.
It's a long trip down, and you've just gotten huge news. Do you call someone to tell them? To just talk to someone about all this?
[ ] You don't tell anyone yet.
This is a family matter.
[ ] You call Anja.
She's your closest friend, talking to her will help.
[ ] You call Gloriana.
It's still early days for whatever you have, but you want to talk to her.
[ ] You leave a message for J6 to see when she's done talking to the princess.
She's right here, and she's a calm, analytical presence.
(No, you may not write in "I call THE POLICE and have them arrest Mosi" or anything similar : p This is your sister who you'd given up for dead, not an enemy infiltrator trying to overthrow your government.)
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Update 025: Mosi
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Call Anja, 20 votes (plus tie-breaking coin toss)
Call J6, 20 votes
Call no one, 2 votes
"North. Amani, slow down. You're not making any sense."
Anja's voice is concerned but measured, trying not to get you any more worked up than you already are. "I just got the message," you say. "The call. You remember the comm box I carry? On that. From Mosi."
There's a perceptible pause as Anja tries to process this. "Mosi," she says, slowly.
"Yes," you confirm. "My sister."
"Your dead sister?" Anja asks, incredulous.
"Yes, that one! But she's not dead, she just called, and I'm… it's…"
"Just breathe, North. Can you do that for me?
Breathe. Breathing is good. You close your eyes, blocking out the repetitive surroundings in the elevator shaft as you make your way back down to the spindle. Her presence, even over an audio call, is soothing. You're abruptly glad you called. "Okay. Yes," you say, after a long moment. "I'm… I'm fine. Thank you."
"Good. I'm not used to hearing you... she pauses for a little too long, before settling on the diplomatic, "... uncomposed. You're really sure it was her, then? You seemed like you knew she was dead."
"We never got a confirmation," you say. "Just, they killed the families of a lot of loyalists. Especially ones like father. After they shot him, we thought… we thought they must have gotten rid of her too." A young girl, not even a full cadet. More useful to the burgeoning Holy Empire, surely, as an example than anything else. Certainly less useful than your father had been.
"Zealot fucks," Anja mutters. Through your preoccupied haze you dimly notice an acid hate in her voice that she hasn't always displayed for the enemy. It hasn't been very long since she lost the next closest thing to a sibling herself. "You're sure this is her, though?" she repeats after a second or two of silent fuming.
"I know it is," you say.
"It has been ten years," she cautions. "More."
"No one else would be able to contact me over this thing," you say, somewhat more logically. You can feel the effects of gravity leaving your body, your perception switching over to flying forward, face first rather than being pulled upward. "It has to be her."
"Point," she concedes. There's still a dubious, reticent tone to her voice. You suppose, from an outside perspective, that's somewhat justified. "Be careful, though. Even if it is her… like I said, it's been ten years. You don't know how she even got here, or what she had to do to stay alive. People change, North."
"This is my sister, Anja," you tell her. "It's going to be fine."
Anja sighs slightly, equal parts affectionate and exasperated. "Alright," she says. It's more acceptance than agreement. "Listen, you still seem pretty shaken up by this -- do you need me there?"
The offer surprises you. The trip from Beta Sphere to Theta Habitat isn't nothing, especially if Anja had other plans for her day. And you know that Anja in particular has no love for transitioning between gravity and zero-g and back again so many times in such fast succession. It's not something she's offering lightly, and it's a little touching. As you respond, you can already feel the elevator begin to slow, indicating that you're almost at your location. "I… would like that," you admit. She won't get there so soon that you won't get some time alone with Mosi, but the idea of some familiar support is too good to pass up.
"Good," she says. "I'll be up as soon as I can."
--
Ensign Anja Li stares down at the earpiece she's just removed like it has the answers to this weird fucking situation. With the call ended, the silence of her cramped quarters seems almost deafening. North isn't stupid, nor is she careless under normal circumstances. She's smart, methodical, guarded. Anja won't even call her sheltered, really. No one who lost so much at such a young age, who was old enough to remember the hellish conditions aboard the sort of refugee ship that North came to Saturn on, can really be considered sheltered. But through her upbringing, she's been shielded from the casual selfishness that people without opportunities are driven to, from the realities of common criminality and life on the grey fringes of the Empire. She doesn't understand that blood relation, even a shared past, isn't enough to guarantee the kind of family bond that North assumes of this strange woman she last knew as a teenage student.
It's good that she called Anja, really. Anja's background doesn't boast many advantages over Amani's, but being primed to mistrust at the right moments is one of the exceptions. It's understandable that North might lose her head under these conditions, but that is why she needs someone like Anja, just now. Anja considers, for a moment, how she'd feel if she got a call from Hiro, miraculously claiming to have escaped death… ten years after the fact. How would she even begin to respond to that?
"Fuck you for not calling sooner," she mutters to herself, lips twisting up into a smile tinged with fresh grief.
North's lack of experience aside, this is all too much coincidence. Amani's long lost sister, last known to be not only in enemy territory, but in enemy hands? Here now, right when the emperor-worshipping shitbirds were finally trying to strip the old empire's carcass clean? Anja believes in coincidence, but not to the point of foolishness.
She turns to face a blank stretch of wall, fingers going to the small keypad set there. She bypasses the numbers entirely to scan her thumb on the gel pad beneath. Anja, humble origins aside, is an officer of the empire -- a junior one, but an officer all the same -- and that comes with certain perks. Weapons control in the Empire at large is exceedingly tight. Possession of an unauthorised, easily concealed weapon, even a dagger or a stun-glove, is a crime that can lead to imprisonment depending on the severity of the infraction. In the case of firearms, the 'can' leaves the equation. Keeping the peace and maintaining public safety aside, firearms are generally considered to be a terrible idea inside a pressurised environment. Only in the same way that war in space is already a terrible idea, though. Some things are a necessary evil.
Firearms are still very much controlled among the naval rank and file, and the more practically minded administrators in the military are very much of the mind that this should extend to everyone. Anja has to admit, they're probably right. But the truth of the matter is, every institution in the Empire has to bend before the archaic might of the aristocratic elites who run it. And so, to keep the spoiled nobles who can't go without their heirloom, heavily customised family sidearms pleased, the navy bends as well. It's not an exception that is really meant for someone like Anja, but in a real way nothing in the navy is meant for someone like Anja. That hasn't stopped her from taking advantage of as much of it as she can.
North thought it was silly of her to have gone to the trouble of advanced certification far beyond the short stint on the range that officers in her specialty required. To have gone through the trouble, the expense, to acquire and register an approved model of sidearm, to have endured dubious looks from various supply officers in the process. Anja, however, likes to be prepared.
The handgun is light, low capacity and absolute shit at any kind of a range, but that's fine. Onboard most ships or stations, wide-open spaces are the exception rather than the rule and Anja cannot imagine any circumstance under which she'd be firing anything but the low penetration frangibles mandated by the navy. They're useless at any kind of a range as well, in addition to being as good against body armour as a stern glare, but it's probably an acceptable trade off to avoid holing the station and venting the atmosphere into space.
Anja only hesitates a short while before pulling the weapon out and checking it before carefully loading it. She doesn't plan on shooting anyone, obviously. But something about this entire situation bothers her and she can't trust North right now to be entirely impartial.
Just in case.
--
On the outside, Theta habitat is much like any other of Anchiale's low-g additions. Rather than housing residential or laboratory space, however, Theta is primarily set aside for recreation and exercise, a dense packet of gyms and game halls, all wrapped around a narrow atrium that passes for a courtyard.
In Mosi's estimation, it's a sad little place. There's actual headroom, the walls souring up to the reinforced-glass dome of the ceiling, and pleasant seating. But the line of identical trees running down the middle of it are artificial. The place has the vaguely desperate vibe of a deeply artificial space trying and failing to look natural. Maybe that's why no one else seems to be here, although it's also at an awkward time of day. One station shift at work, another sleeping. The only other person present is an old man sitting at the far end of the atrium from Mosi, paperwork on several screens sprawled out over the entirety of a four-person table. He seems to have nodded off at some point, and is in the process of using his work as a pillow.
Privacy is fine with Mosi. And the corner of the atrium she's sitting in does allow that. It's a video deadzone, helpfully located for her by the leaked SRI report provided to them by the mysterious Anchiale spy has leaked to them. Everytime Mosi reads it, clicking through countess admonishments of "STRICT CONFIDENTIALITY", "STATE LEVEL SECURITY" and "DISSEMINATION AN ACT OF TREASON UNDER--" never fails to impart a twinge of sympathy for the SRI operative who had to painstakingly write it. Considering that the people M. Owusu had handed the report to either didn't take the warnings at all seriously… or had never been on his side to begin with. It would be easy to take instances like this and assume that the enemy is, as a whole, stupid. Mosi makes very certain to remember that this is too dangerous a mindset to let herself fall into.
Lieutenant-Commander Roth will, of course, be furious if he finds out about Mosi's unannounced excursion. She's jeopardising the mission. Even if nothing bad comes of this, she's certainly jeopardising her chances of her career benefiting from the venture. The kind of performance report Commander Green had had in mind when he'd recommended her for the infiltration would ideally not contain the phrase "went haring off for personal reasons." This was a terrible idea on any kind of an objective level. Even Ensign Kim of all people, who had been present when Mosi's had almost inadvertently made the call to Amani, had told her as much.
"Lieutenant, the LC is not going to like this," she'd said, a note of caution in her voice that seemed almost foreign, coming from Kim. Her dark eyes had regarded Mosi with something like real concern, unearned by Mosi's brusque treatment of her up to this point.
Mosi would not have placed the call with Kim present, given a conscious choice. But she'd noticed the blinking light. The one that indicated a connected device within range, and had had no actual expectation that her sister's voice would come out of the other end. Kim had stared silently with unusual politeness throughout the entire affair, only breaking her silence after Mosi had declared her intent to leave for Theta and hung the call.
"Fine. Fine. I can cover for you, if anyone asks," Kim had finally said, when it was clear Mosi was not to be dissuaded. "Please be careful, Lieutenant North." This is where things have come to -- Mosi is relying on Ensign Kim of all people.
All thoughts of Ensign Sojin Kim leave Mosi's mind then, as a dark, elegant young woman passed through the double emergency hatches to enter the atrium. The natural sense of poise evident in her movements is hindered only by the tentative air that hangs over her like a borrowed coat -- ill fitting and of a style that doesn't suit her. Entirely unlike the actual dress she's wearing, which hangs off her willowy frame in a way that it never would for Mosi. She looks shockingly, painfully like both of Mosi's parents. Her mother's eyes and build, her father's complexion and pleasant features. Mosi feels as though she's looking at two people at once -- the grown woman standing on the far side of the atrium superimposed with the decade old ghost of a little girl with braided hair and tears in her eyes. She looks… clean. Safe. An innocent civilian girl, removed from the horrors of war. At least for a little while longer.
"Amani?" Mosi doesn't remember consciously speaking the name anymore than she remembers standing up. But the girl freezes in place, head turning until she locks eyes with Mosi. They stay like that for an agonisingly long moment, before the girl finally begins to walk forward, step by step like she's in a daze. She comes to an almost bewildered halt directly in front of Mosi. The realisation that she's actually taller than Mosi lands like a blow… albeit one softened by a sense of mounting relief.
Without warning, the girl throws herself at Mosi, and pulls her into a hug so tight that it hurts. Mosi doesn't care, and simply returns it. Her life for the past ten years seems to flash before her eyes -- the cruelty and abuse as a student, taking savage blows as punishment for her mother's crimes. The tentative, fragile feeling of the career that Commander Green helped her build despite that. The comforting mask of blind devotion, and the constantly looming realisation that she's always only one slipup away from being precisely back where she started. For the first and likely only time, Mosi feels like she's finally regained some small piece of the life she had before all that.
Let Roth scream himself bloody and have her demoted. At that moment, she doesn't care.
--
You pull away from Mosi, your state of dazed shock slowly, finally giving way to a bone-deep relief. She's here, it's actually real, and you feel like you can think straight again for the first time since you got that call. There's so many things you want to say, to tell her and above all to ask that you don't know where to start. She beats you to it.
"It's silly," she says, "but in all this time, I never actually imagined you growing up." Her voice has retained its military-academy polish. A featureless, clipped Imperial accent completely uncoloured by regional quirks. Past the relief in her eyes mirroring your own, she's looking at you with an almost dismayed surprise. You suppose she isn't joking.
You think of everything that's happened to you since she saw you last. Losing father, losing her. The terror of the evacuation. The dark, claustrophobic horror of the long months to even get to Saturn on the refugee ship, low on everything from space to supplies to hope. The gulf of years between you seems to open up before you eyes, although you doubt she can see it. "I couldn't exactly help growing up," you say, with the barest trace of an ironic lilt to your voice.
She laughs at that, smiling in a familiar, ever-so-slightly crooked way. "No," she says. "I don't suppose you could." You're not sure she gets the subtext. Maybe that's good.
You take a good look at her, then. Past the initial, deliriously happy recognition, she's also changed in ways you never imagined her. She's harder than before, leaner in a way that doesn't simply come from experience and discipline, but from, you're sure, privation and witnessing things that can't be taken back. It's a look you're used to seeing from people her age, but it makes a sad correction to the mental image you'd been forming. She's a hair shorter than you now, you're amused to note, athletically thin compared to your softer, more willowy figure and with a complexion that's still virtually identical to your mother's. She has her hair in a practical style that's popular both in the navy and with anyone who has to regularly shove a helmet onto their head -- just short enough not to require ties or knots. This last tells you something, but not much.
"Mother is going to be so happy," you say, finally, returning her smile.
Shockingly, her own smile dies. Slowly, like it's being strangled. "Yeah," she says, without conviction, and you feel a strange knot in your stomach. That gulf of years again. "She's not here, right?"
"Out on patrol," you agree. Doesn't she want to see her mother? The images you'd had in your head -- of presenting Dame Nalah with her eldest daughter miraculously returned to you both -- fade away in light of this new uncertainty. You hesitate, not sure what to say. "Mosi," you begin, taking in a deep breath, "wherever you've been… whatever you've had to do, it's okay. You're still my sister, and you're still her daughter. She'll want to see you, and she'll help you. She'll get your papers in order if you… if you're here… irregularly." At the look on her face, you find your words faltering near the end. "Whatever it is, she won't care," you try to stress.
She looks at you with a strangely blank certainty. A sort of horrible irony in her voice as she says, quietly, "I very much doubt that." The rest of her face might be neutral, but there's something behind her eyes you don't like. Something dark, almost menacing.
You're afraid, suddenly, of pushing too hard. Afraid that if you do so, the vision of your sister in front of you will shatter like glass, or simply run away from you. And you know, somehow, that if that happens this may well be the last you ever see of her. Whatever strange world she has emerged from, she'll go back to it and never return. "Okay," you whisper, quietly. There's a long stretch of silence, before you finally push yourself to add more. "Let's sit down," you suggest, gesturing to the table she'd been sitting at before she spotted you. "Let's just talk."
She relaxes, and follows suit. "Talk sounds good," she agrees, sitting across from you. She forces her hands to relax, placing them deliberately on the table in front of her.
In spite of this new doubt you feel, talk does seem extremely good to you as well. You smile at her. "Where do you want to begin?"
--
In this conversation, what does Mosi learn, explicitly told to her or inferred, that you wouldn't tell an enemy? You must pick two. Votes will be counted in sets:
[ ] Information about the HIMS Titanium Rose, her crew and normal mecha compliment
[ ] Knowledge of you working on Lieutenant-Commander Owusu's secret project
[ ] Iapetus being poorly prepared for an attack, what Gloriana told you about the defence platforms
[ ] Information about your mother, what she flies, what her unit is, when she'll be back
[ ] That you might be seeing a countess, specific information about Gloriana as a person/pilot
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Update 026: In Case
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This is probably the most complicated one of these I've done that's still entirely decisive.
Tell Mosi about your mother and about Gloriana, 24 votes
Tell Mosi about your mother and about the Rose, 6 votes
Tell Mosi about the Rose and about Gloriana, 4 votes
Tell Mosi about Iapetus and about your mother, 3 votes
Tell Mosi about Iapetus and about Gloriana, 2 votes
"So, did you end up becoming a researcher?"
"A… researcher?" you look blankly at Mosi, not quite remembering where that question had come from.
"You used to say you wanted to be one," Mosi reminds you, looking surprised. Then a little sheepish. "You were pretty young," she admits.
You remember then, dimly, telling her that. In your memory, it had been more or less a passing fancy, not something you'd seriously considered. Interesting that it happened to be something that stuck in Mosi's head. You find yourself smiling at that, taking a moment before you reply, the only sound the faint background buzz of the hidden air exchanger. "I ended up studying applied advanced spatial mapping technology," you tell her, after a few seconds. "Not quite hard science."
She parses this faster than you'd expect -- most civilians not in the field don't come across that specific set of jargon. "Scans tech," she says, nodding. "You always were good at that kind of thing, I suppose. Have you gotten any use out of it?"
"Yes," you say, a little dryly. "By becoming a scans tech." You'd intended to elaborate at that -- specify that you're First Scans Operator onboard a small warship -- but she's so unaccountably flummoxed that you forget to. "And just what is that look?" you ask, laughing a little.
She looks even more sheepish than before. "Sorry," she says, actually rubbing the back of her neck self consciously. "I don't know why, I just… it's strange, you being an adult with a job."
That, you decide, is precisely the mix of sweet and frustrating that warrants some sisterly teasing. Gap of years or not. "And a love life," you say, smiling serenely. Mosi double takes gratifyingly, and you can't help but laugh again. "Don't worry, it's nothing that serious. I've started… seeing someone, I suppose you could say."
Mosi happily does not appear to be annoyed. Thrown off balance, but in a way that has momentarily banished the pall that fell over the conversation when you earlier mentioned your mother. "What's he like?" Mosi asks.
"A she, actually," you explain. "Not that I'd mind a he. Or anything else, for that matter -- I figured that out pretty quickly. She's a countess." You try not to make it sound like bragging, so much as just casually handing out information.
"A… countess?" You're faintly pleased that this is the aspect of your love life that Mosi seems most perturbed by. "Which one?"
That does surprise you a little. You don't necessarily expect Mosi, whatever she's doing now, to be in a position where she's dealing much with the ins and outs of aristocratic politics, even so much as you do simply by dint of being in the military. "Countess Perbeck," you explain. "She's also a knight, and a naval officer. A pilot."
Mosi stares at you, as if trying to tell if you're joking. After the long moment passes she lets out a large, weary sigh. "You don't aim small," she comments, succinctly. "Is she at least a decent pilot? Not some talentless coattail-rider who got a commission based on a title?"
You wonder if Mosi realises that 'talentless coattail-rider' is almost verbatim what your mother calls the sort of officer Mosi is referencing, or if she simply absorbed it subconsciously years ago without remembering the origin any longer. It's comical, a little, how Dame Nalah herself seems to casually assume this of Lori as well. Mosi looks like her -- not just the family resemblance. In the way she holds herself, the obviousness with which the broad strokes of her feelings are painted over her honest face. "No," you say. "She's very good. I can never believe the maneuvers she can make in the footage, despite what they say about long-range mecha."
Mosi blinks at that, looking oddly taken aback. Like something horrible has just occurred to her. "They are usually pretty slow and lightly armoured," she acknowledges. Once again, there's something here you're missing. Something about what happened to her, or what she does, that's making her react this way.
"It's all very new," you tell her, flailing for some way to placate Mosi. "You're only the second person I've told -- mother doesn't even know yet."
She looks surprised then, although oddly pleased, mouth curving into a smile you're not sure you like. "You're hiding this from her?" she asks.
"Not exactly!" you say. "She's away, and…" this, you realise, is a lie by omission, given that you did in fact speak to your mother relatively recently. About Lori, among other things, without mentioning your tentative relationship status to her. You sigh. "I was waiting to see where things went," you explain, a little lamely.
"She's out on patrol?" Mosi asks. You mentioned that already, you think. You still don't like that expression she has, though. Oddly desperate. Almost… hungry.
"She is," you confirm. "She's the captain of a scouting wing now. And a knight -- I suppose you couldn't have heard about that."
"I've heard," Mosi says, the smile flickering. She looks away, not quite meeting your eye. "For killing enough people at Ceres, and wounding a prince."
"... for saving a lot of lives at Ceres," you correct, a little affronted. "Mosi, she was helping to cover the refugee ships leaving for Saturn. I was on one of those ships."
That stops her short, and she visibly deflates. "I didn't know you were that close to the fighting," she admits after a few seconds of staring.
"Everyone was close to the fighting. It was all over inhabited space." You feel your arms going around yourself, bad memories creeping in over the good ones dredged up by your reunion. You're not used to having to defend your mother's actions.
"Is she…" Mosi falters, frowns, thinks for a moment, before trying again. "When is she going to be back?"
"Any day now. She was in comms range a couple days ago." This, you know, is not something you'd tell just anyone. But you're ready to leap at any chance that seems like it might lead to reconciliation between your two remaining family members. Not that, previously, you had even considered reconciliation to be necessary.
"Is she still flying that rickety old Over Lancer?" There's a nostalgic smile on Mosi's face, although it's got a bit of an unpleasant undercurrent to it, once again.
You shake your head. "That got shot to pieces at Ceres. She barely made it back." The mecha had not been rickety, so much as customised so thoroughly and repaired so many times that it had become a veritable ship of Theseus -- the majority of its components had been replaced at least once. "They gave her one of the leftover Fenris Lancers prototypes, when she got finicky about flying a Banner."
Mosi frowns. "I heard those were fast."
"They are," you agree. "Mother says that after she finished having it tweaked, it's the fastest thing she's ever flown." Your face softens as you look at her. "You have been keeping track of things, haven't you? I know it must have been hard to get much accurate information about her, out… wherever you were." You give her a hopeful look, wishing she'd take up her cue now to explain her own whereabouts for the past decade. Instead, she asks you something you don't expect.
"How often do you even see her?"
"You mean mother?" You try to suppress your frustration at how little you've found out so far. "Well, between patrols and other deployments… not all that often."
"Yeah, that sounds like her," Mosi says, sounding almost satisfied.
Once again taken aback, you let your frown show on your face. "She spent a lot of time with me when I was a child," you tell her. "I saw her every day. But when I started scans training, she took a better post here."
Mosi makes a dismissive sound. "Right," she says. "But you're here too."
"Well," you begin to correct, "not quite. I'm sta--" You stop then, seeing a look of mild panic cross her face. It takes you a fraction of a second to realise she's not looking at you anymore, but rather at something over your shoulder. You twist around in your seat to locate the source of her unhappiness.
Anja has entered the atrium and has already spotted the two of you. She's making a beeline for your position, eyes fixed on you. Or maybe on Mosi. She probably called ahead, you realise. But you've been a bit distracted. Seeing both of you notice her, she flashes a friendly grin, one hand raised in a jaunty greeting.
Turning back to Mosi, you reassure her, "That's just Anja. She's a good friend."
"A… friend." Mosi seems to be forcing herself to calm down, or at least appear calm. It takes you a moment or two before you can piece together what, precisely, has upset her so much. Before you'd said anything, before Anja had smiled or waved, it had just looked like a young naval officer in uniform making a beeline for your table. And something about that sight had been alarming for Mosi, for some reason.
"A friend!" Anja says, having made it within earshot. You watch as she drops herself down onto the seat of the next table over, twisting herself around sideways to face the two of you. This is in spite of the fact that the table you and Mosi are sitting at has two empty seats, and plenty of room. "Anja Li," she adds. "You must be North's older sister."
"... yes," Mosi says, trying to return the smile. She looks between you and Anja with a quick, darting eye movement. Involuntary. She's definitely spooked now -- any uncertainty that she's involved in something shady leaves your mind.
"Mosi, right? North's told me about you."
Mosi frowns. "What did she tell you?"
Anja's smile is perfectly friendly, if not a little overly familiar. Typical Anja. Maybe a little too typical -- the pall that's fallen over her and everything she does since Ito died, every smile every laugh -- has seemingly vanished without a sign. That, more than anything, convinces you that Anja is deliberately putting up a front. You don't like any of this. "Well, that you're dead, for one thing."
--
The patch reads:
Ensign A. Li
HIMS Titanium Rose
A friend. Mosi smiles at the interloper, her face practically creaking audibly with the effort. "Well, she was wrong," Mosi says. Ensign Li has a playful lanquidity about her movements. A casualness in her bearing that isn't quite typical-junior-officer. There's a sharp perceptiveness in her eyes, though, and it doesn't match her smile.
"Guess so!" Li says, with a laugh.
"Be nice," Amani chides, mock-stern. Her effortless, graceful charisma is a stark contrast to the other young woman. "Please don't scare my long-lost sister off."
"Have I ever scared anyone in my life?" the ensign asks, innocently. And she probably hasn't by sight alone -- a slight, round-faced slip of a girl. With her strong Saturnian accent, and her features a blend of Chinese and Slavic, if Ensign Li hadn't been wearing the uniform she would have seemed almost identical to countless young women Mosi had seen on Liger Station or similar shadow Ring habitats. She is wearing the uniform though, which changes everything. Especially with that ship patch. It's a strange feeling, to be sitting down casually across from a woman who Mosi has never met before in her life, but who she had tried her level best to kill in combat.
This was a bad idea. She'd always known that, obviously. But now, this close to the actual enemy, seeing Amani firsthand not even batting an eye at it, it was all hammering home that Mosi was alone on an enemy station deep in enemy territory. And why would Amani think of an Imperial Navy officer as the enemy? She'd been raised here, hadn't she? Mosi restrains herself, somehow, from simply bolting, running away and never looking back. Hoping that Ensign Kim has successfully covered for her. That would look beyond strangem though.
"You're attached to a ship," Mosi points out, outwardly acknowledging her scrutiny of Ensign Li's ship patch. She thinks it's been too obvious to try and hide.
"I'm a mecha control officer," Li explains. "Not as good at squinting at maps and charts as North is, but I do well enough." In another circumstance, Mosi would wonder at Li's odd affectation of only referring to Amani as 'North', even when another North was present. A good control officer was a lifeline. Not just a relay between you and your ship, but a calming voice. A fixed point in chaotic space. A panicky one was worse than a merely incompetent one, usually. Meeting Li's steady gaze, on nothing but gut instinct Mosi decides that she's likely the former.
"How long have you been docked here?"
"Not long," Anja says. "We just got in for repairs. Unscheduled stop, you know how it is. I guess North didn't tell you about all the trouble lately."
"I know about the Holy Empire," Mosi says, shortly.
"Well, you'd have to have really been hiding under a rock to have missed that," Li confirms. "Not that I don't wish I had been hiding under a rock, sometimes -- we did for more than a few of the bastards, but they took some of ours with them." Amani, unseen by Ensign Li, raises a tentative hand as if considering whether to lay it on the other girl's shoulder. Something about Li's bearing brings her up short, however. Amani's hand returns to her lap.
For a moment, looking at Li's too-friendly face as she speaks of the losses, Mosi is back in the cockpit, speeding toward an enemy that knows they're coming, that is free to rain down destruction on them from across the vast void of space. The main guns of Li's ship breaking machines and their human operators like they're nothing… and that Huntress. The Huntress: Mosi had had the thought earlier, when Amani had brought up this Countess of hers being an agile ranged specialist. Now, even though it seems unwise in the extreme, she finds she has to know. For her own sake as much as for Amani's. She directs the question at her sister. "So," she begins, awkwardly, "that countess, the one who you're… you're…" the word 'seeing' sticks awkwardly in her throat as if it were somehow obscene. Using it to refer to her little sister does somehow feel that way, irrationally. The hesitation leaves a pause long enough for Li to chirpily offer:
"Fucking?"
Mosi gapes. "No I was not going to say that!" she exclaims, comically affronted even to her own ears. To say nothing about Amani's, who can't stifle a laugh in spite of her clear annoyance.
"We're not, yet," Amani says, dryly. "Which Anja knows."
"You haven't actually given me many details," Li points out. "It's not my fault if I'm forced to fill in the blanks."
Despite not having finished her original question, Mosi doesn't know how to begin getting back to it. That 'yet' buzzes around her head, horrible and distracting. Surprisingly, she doesn't have to respond -- Li takes pity on her. "Yes, though, Lady Perbeck is assigned to the Rose as well. She commands our mecha unit, although she's properly the only pilot we have left."
Aside from whoever had been piloting that monstrosity Mosi fought. The one with the drones. Regardless of half-truths, however, this does remove much of her doubt that a woman who Mosi had twice been on opposing sides in battle against and more than once killed each others' subordinates, is none other than her baby sister's new lover. The universe has a sick sense of humor, as always. She can't hold back the flinch, although she stills the motion enough she doesn't think either Amani or Li caught it.
"You're a pilot too, right?" Ensign Li asks, out of the blue.
"I'm a what?" Mosi asks. A little too quickly for nonchalance.
"Amani said you were a pilot. Training to be one. That's a marketable skill, even in civilian life. Are you still piloting mecha?"
Mosi considers whether to lie entirely, but discards it. She's always been better at half truths. "Yes," she says.
"Civvie models, though." For some reason that Mosi can't understand, Li's eyes are fixed on Mosi's arm where it rests on the table. Mosi glances down at her rolled up sleeve, not seeing anything amis.
"... yes, like you said," Mosi confirms. For some reason, she abruptly has the irrational feeling that Anja Li doesn't believe her. Something about the Ensign's bearing has subtly shifted, muted suspicion giving way to veiled hostility.
"Like I said," Li agrees lightly. One hand reaches under the collar of her jacket -- partially unbuttoned -- tugging her shirt into place.
Mosi glances over to Amani, searching her face for the same feeling she's getting from Li. What she sees there, however, is a look of utter shock in her sister's expression, staring wide-eyed at Li.
Mosi turns back around, trying to follow her gaze… and comes face to face with the muzzle of a handgun. Mosi freezes on the spot, not moving a muscle.
--
You look on in horror as Anja pulls a gun on your older sister. "Anja, what are you doing?" you demand, half rising to your feet.
"My duty as an officer of the Empire," Anja says, with uncharacteristic seriousness. She looks back to Mosi, and her expression hardens, showing a hate there that you have no explanation for. "Mosi North -- you are under arrest."
"For what?" Mosi has frozen in place, not twitching a muscle. A calm has descended over her in the face of death that you've only ever seen from certain combat veterans.
Anja barks out a short, harsh laugh at that. "Oh, yeah, play dumb. Real fucking cute. You're not half as subtle as you think you are. Your sister's a lot harder to read." Anja's aim doesn't waiver, and the hate you can't for the life of you explain fills her voice with acid. "You're going to regret the day you came here," she says. "That you didn't just stay home." Mosi just continues to stare back at her, expressionless.
"Anja, what's going on? Why are you arresting her?"
Anja lets out an impatient huff of breath, taking her eyes off of Mosi for just a fraction of a second to shoot you an exasperated glare. "She's with-- Fuck!"
Mosi moves faster than you expect, diving low to put the table between her and Anja's gun. Anja surges up to a standing position as the weapon goes off, echoing deafeningly through the atrium, the round hitting the table very nearly where Mosi had been sitting a moment before. Anja fires again, aiming at Mosi's fleeing form, but she's taken cover behind one of the artificial trees. The non-penetration round flatten and breaks against the tree's hard surface, leaving a hot stretch of scarred material, but no single hole.
You consider tackling Anja, wrestling the gun away from her. Whatever she thinks Mosi has done, surely nothing could be worth shooting your unarmed sister over it. You tense, half prepared to do it while Anja focuses her attention on the tree Mosi has just vanished behind. Then Mosi reappears around the tree, with a gun in her hand as well and whatever part of the world made sense prior to this has just gone away entirely.
A gun goes off once, twice, three times, close enough to leave your ears ringing. A body hits the ground. You don't remember actually falling yourself, but you find yourself on your knees beside it, blood already pooling and oozing toward the hem of your dress.
Mosi breaks from the tree, running flat out away from you at first, then she comes up short, looking around at you with a face twisted by fear, anger, and worst of all, genuine regret. "I'm sorry, Amani!" she says. "She shot first!" And then, just like that, she's running again, heading for the hatch, past the sleeping man who has startled awake and sent his various e-paper screens flying through the air.
Anja lays on the ground beside you, a ragged hole punched in her jacket, the blue fabric stained a murky purple. She stares up at the ceiling of the habitat, gasping laboriously for air, whole body trembling. Beside her, directly beside your knee is her gun.
[ ] Grab the gun and stop Mosi from getting away
[ ] Let Mosi escape to focus on staunching Anja's bleeding
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