- Pronouns
- They/Them
I don't think it's quite over. I suspect there's probably a chapter or two more, just, like, pulling back a little? But this is the end of voting, it seems, and it was quite a ride!
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.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yes, I've got an epilogue post to come that is going to address some further threads that weren't here.
- Location
- The Land of Many Bregrets
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It's been one hell of a ride from start to finish regardless, and thank you for seeing it through.
At least some of them made it.
At least some of them made it.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Oh right, this is the part where we as a thread are supposed to theorize everything that could (and therefore will) go wrong and ruin the initial happy ending, isn't it?
Technically there's a non-zero chance of a brainwashed cyborg Ito piloting an usurper superweapon, so that'll be my doomsaying bet.
More seriously, hoping we get to hear from our sister and Anja. And also a scene where Lori and Dame Nala get to talk.
- Location
- Somewhere
your mother*
omg yesss
...
concern
But seriously, this was as sweet a scene as our victory allowed. Lovely. And lookin' forward to the rest of the threads you'll address, Gazeteer.
Thanks for writing!
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Bridge Bunny: Total War, most likely.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
If you want serious doomsaying.
There has just been a major war, which has inflicted serious damage on both civilian infrastructure and military fleets. Because the war is still hot, the military will get first access to any kind of production resources. As a result, civilian infrastructure is likely to be somewhat overlooked and face supply shortages. It's also likely that transport capacity has been severly affected.
Now keep in mind, all habitation infrastructure is artificial. There's no place in the system where humans can survive unassisted. Refugees from habitats which have been destroyed are likely to flee towards habitats that are more intact. This population pressure will put further stress on that habitats infrastructure, degrading conditions in the habitat, and further stressing potentially damaged life support systems. If insufficient aid is provided, it is plausible that we'll see a progressive failure of habitation systems, as damaged habitats are overwhelmed and fail one by one.
The economy of our local sector, which was never very strong, may also see severe hits.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I can't stop laughing helpI'm so glad to have been here since near the beginning. Not a perfect ending, but a satisfying one nonetheless. At the end, I have a simple reaction to it all:
(Still working on the epilogue, rough draft is almost done, so the wait shouldn't be too long).
Epilogue
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
One year later...
Titan City,
Titan,
Saturn System capital
The sky is a hazy yellow overhead, glimpsed through the many-panelled dome high above, one of several that the city is crammed into. Yellow or not, the sight always takes Amani back to the best parts of her childhood: the domes of the Albategnius cities rising out of brilliantly white regolith. The Earth constantly overhead, not so different in visual size than Saturn is now, its rings and faint banding visible through the Titan fog. There is also, at the back of her mind, a muddier memory. A snowglobe owned by her elder sister when they were both very young.
Amani's not sure what happened to it.
She crosses a pedestrian walkway elevated far above the ground. Space is at a premium here, in this place where every scrap of habitability must be meticulously wrested from the grips of an unbreathable atmosphere, vertical space included. The towers of Titan rise up nearly to the top of each dome, crammed efficiently full of dwellings, businesses and government offices. It's warm here, with the heat from below rising up, far away from the cold pavement and the odd exposed ground. It's all a stark contrast to the night before last, spent in a working class neighbourhood close to the ground, around a crowded dinner table where Anja's mother had filled her so full of dumplings that she'd felt ready to burst.
Apparently, checking in on the wellbeing of Anja's family in her stead following the battle has promoted Amani to an unofficial family member. Living so close to the Li residence, Amani has already resigned herself to an increased exercise routine, to make up for the copious amounts of rich home cooking she finds herself eating these days. Of course, she's now en route to be stuffed full of a different sort of home cooking, by a very different family.
As she nears the halfway point of the walkway, she passes into the shadow of the massive residential tower that is her destination. As she grows closer to it, the sounds of the busy tram line running behind it grow more and more muffled. It's the same one that Amani takes to work, the tower rendered new and strange from this vantage point, as opposed to mere backdrop in the distance.
Several civilians pass her in the opposite direction. Their companionable laughter dies as they draw near, nervous eyes taking note of the colour of her jacket, the eclipsed sun staring back at them from her shoulder patch. Amani smiles, gentle and dazzling, and the group relaxes. She wonders if they're worried that something dangerous is going on in their building, on their floor. She knows for a fact that she's not the only one in SRI green to have passed this way recently. It's true, one wouldn't normally see so much of Special Reconnaissance & Intelligence in a residential neighbourhood without something strange going on, but in a very real sense, this time it's for the most normal thing Amani has done in a long time.
The steps up into the building, alongside a ubiquitous accessibility ramp, would have been punishingly tall for anyone of Amani's height, under Earth gravity. On Titan, however, she weighs a feather-light 14% of her Earth standard mass, allowing the steps to be climbed with a practised leaping motion. The exterior door opens with a wave of her tablet — the building has been told to expect her. She waits for the doors to slide open, not even noticing the emergency pressurisation seal she steps over. It's in every building, mandated by law against the apocalyptic scenario of a major hull breach on the dome overhead.
Inside, the residential floor is clean, well lit, air-exchangers doing their absolute level best to make the recycled air smell fresh and mostly succeeding. Certainly, Amani's Luna-born senses aren't offended.
"Evening, North." The two SRI security officers are seated at a small table, part of a ring of similar structures fitting into a small, communal courtyard for the floor's residents, entirely indoors. At other times, it's easy to imagine people gathering in groups of two or three, or even hosting small parties here. The hour or the officers themselves has discouraged any such activity tonight. They look at Amani with a professional courtesy, if not mild friendliness. A man and a woman, armoured vests worn as openly as the weapons at their hips. Between them, a large serving of battered, fried potato wedges sits half-eaten alongside two towering coffee cups. Amani doesn't blame them — they're likely to be here for hours yet.
"Good evening, Daniels, Lam." Amani gives them a more reserved smile than she had the nervous civilians. These two know precisely what's going on. "We really do appreciate the trouble."
Lam shrugs. "It's not our call," she reminds Amani. "You know what orders are like."
Amani shrugs, lightly. "Still, you're the ones who are going through the trouble for our sake. I appreciate you giving up your evening."
Daniels is too busy eating fried potato to immediately respond, but he seems to appreciate the sentiment. Lam responds for them both. "We don't mind — I know what family's like, North. Did you hear the latest about the Guard?"
"About the latest force increase? Yes." Working in an SRI office on Titan gives her a great deal more current news than she'd had access to while serving on a lone scouting vessel.
Daniels finally swallows. "I don't know what she's playing at."
Lam gives Daniels a significant look. "You don't know what her Imperial Highness, Lady-High-Commander Princess Daystar Helios is playing at," she corrects. It's less about the specific title than his tone: Even if Daniels is going to complain about the presumed heir to the throne, it pays to be respectful about it.
Daniels sighs. "Yes, that's what I meant," he says. "I don't know where she's even getting all these recruits."
"Well," Amani says, slowly, "She does seem to be taking Saturnians now. With better positions than the Navy usually gives them."
"There's that," Lam acknowledges.
No one is entirely certain what the princess is doing, despite the rampant speculation. Asking to replace the late LHC Okello as Commander of her aunt's utterly devastated Guard was a strange move. Subsequently proceeding to take advantage of the elevated rate of military production and the vast number of enemy machines that have been recently captured in order to greatly expand the Guard's numbers just makes people alarmed. Unlike the Navy, the Imperial Guard answers directly to the Lady-High-Commander and to the Empress, and no one else.
Of course, the same is true for the SRI.
"Well, don't let him keep you with politics," Lam says, waving a dismissive hand at Daniels, who sighs and puts more potato in his mouth. "Enjoy your evening, North."
The door Amani is actually headed for is, conspicuously, directly across the courtyard from where the two agents have set up camp. Amani pings the unit from the control pad beside the door and waits. She doesn't have long: The door opens, and a smile breaks out over her face, right before she's pulled into a tight hug. "Here you are!" Dame Nalah says, grinning wolfishly as she pulls back, looking her youngest over in her new uniform. "My daughter the spook," she decides a moment later, not sounding displeased. "No time to change at home, or just wanted to show off?" In contrast to Amani, Dame Nalah herself is in civilian clothing — a brightly patterned dress that makes her look younger than her middle age, while she's smiling like that.
"We're busy," Amani says, voice light. They both know roughly what she's been busy with, and that Amani is in no way allowed to talk about it. "I came straight here from the office."
"I miss being busy," Nalah admits, pulling Amani inside and sealing the door behind her. The broken bones, as well as the burns on Nalah's arm and face have long ago healed, although there is still scarring, faint against her dark skin. Worse than that, though, was the spinal trauma that had emerged in the months after the injury, keeping the Knight grounded all this time while she has time to recover. Amani puts these thoughts out of her mind, and moves past her mother into the home beyond. Amani is hit with a wave of spices and cooking meat, the scents coming from an open door a little ways down the hall — the kitchen, one suspects.
"We already knew she got a new boring, button-pusher job," calls a voice from another room. Amani pauses in taking in the cozy entrance hall to raise her eyebrows at that. She quickly takes off her shoes, and moves to poke her head into the door the voice emerged from.
The living room isn't large, but it's comfortably appointed with plush furniture and a blank display screen mounted on the wall, among smaller ones set to display images from various happy times in the North family's lives. The source of the voice is a small, South-Asian girl in her early teens, curled up on the couch with a tablet open to what looks like homework. Amani isn't the only one still in uniform — the girl is still wearing her Imperial Academy skirt and blouse, the charcoal grey jacket thrown over a nearby chair.
"Hello, Faiza," Amani says, unoffended by the girl's brusque manners.
Nonetheless, Dame Nalah gives her a Faiza a mildly reproving look. "Is that any way to say hello? You two are sisters, now."
Faiza Bal-North sighs, looking up at you for the first time. "It's good you're back," she says. "I guess." That's about as friendly as Amani is ever going to get from Faiza, she suspects. The look of feigned indifference to her presence is almost heartwarming.
"How's the Academy?" Amani asks.
"It's... not bad," Faiza admits, reluctantly. "The instructors know what they're talking about, at least. And if something's too easy, they give me something harder to do. So it's not such a waste of time." In other words, she loves it.
Nalah sighs, ruffling Faiza's straight, dark hair affectionately. Faiza rolls her eyes, but doesn't pull away either. Amani is abruptly certain that this is the happiest she's ever seen the young girl, the trauma of the previous year beginning to scar over, finally trusting her new life not to erode away beneath her feet as swiftly as her old one had.
"Let me take your jacket," Nalah offers.
"You haven't hired anyone?" Amani asks. Nalah isn't rich, but she is a knight as well as a captain on paid leave after being wounded in combat. She should be able to afford at least one servant.
"Adam's in the kitchen, helping your sister," Nalah says, tugging Amani's mint-green jacket off. She wasn't always a knight, and in some ways, it feels like she's never entirely internalised her new social status. "It's a nice break for him, not cooking."
"I'm sure he gets paid either way," Amani speculates.
Nalah laughs. "There's that."
As her mother turns to hang the SRI jacket up in an unseen closet, Amani's eyes linger on the picture set onto one of the living room's screens: It's an old one, taken on Luna. A younger Nalah in dress uniform stands with her hand on an eleven-year-old Mosi's shoulder. Even at that age, Mosi looks strikingly like her mother. The same well-defined bone-structure, the same complexion, the same unconsciously fierce tilt to her eyes. Beside her older sister is Amani herself, all of nine, a smiling little girl who had been frequently told she was 'darling'. She has enough of her mother, as well, to have a strong family resemblance to both Nalah and her sister, but she has her father's marginally lighter complexion, his softer gaze. Amir North smiles back at her from just behind child-Amani, face eternally gentle and understanding, forever locked in those happy, bygone days.
Walking into the kitchen, the smell of cooking food is downright heavenly. Two people stand there. One is a tall, pale young man, formally dressed. He pauses, arms full of plates, to give Amani a polite nod of the head. "Pleased to meet you, Miss Amani," he says. "I'm Adam."
"And you," Amani agrees, returning the nod. This frees him up to do his job — namely, carrying the plates to the adjacent dining room, in order to set the table for the family's meal. Once he's left, she approaches the young woman standing by the stove, stirring something in a tall stock pot. "I'm starving," Amani admits. "Real beef?"
"Yes," Mosi agrees. She gives her sister a small smile, but sounds faintly exasperated at the admission. "I told her the soy-heme stuff will be fine, but she went and bought vat grown. Because apparently it's an 'occasion', so that means she's spending an arm and a leg."
Amani gives her a level look. "The occasion is that we're all here tonight," she reminds Mosi. "This is important to her. And to me."
"I... know." Mosi turns away for a moment, re-examining the cooking food. "I... do want this to be normal, Amani. It's just... hard."
Amani's expression softens. Wordlessly, she approaches Mosi, making sure to do so from out of her sister's blindspot. She puts a hand on Mosi's shoulder, the movement slow enough for her to see coming. "I know it is. I'm glad you're here."
Mosi nods slowly, some of the tension going out of her after a moment. "Me too." She pulls a small bowl down from the cupboard, ladelling out a minute sample of the stew into it. "Here. Does this need anything?"
Amani accepts the bowl and offered spoon from Mosi, deliberately not looking too long at the metallic tracking bracelet locked onto her sister's wrist. The one that makes certain that, even if Mosi did run, somehow, the SRI would still know exactly where she was. It's house arrest — tonight being a carefully scheduled exception — but Mosi is still a prisoner. "No," she decides, after some careful sampling. "You got the spices exactly right."
"Good, then." Mosi kills the heat, moving the stew off of the burner with one hand — the pot isn't particularly heavy, under Titan gravity. "The rest should be ready in a moment."
"Pilau?" Amani guesses, eyeing the stove with obvious hope.
"Beef stew, pilau and chapati," Mosi confirms, rallying a little more. "It used to be your favourite."
"It still is!" Amani agrees. "It's been a long time since anyone cooked for me like this."
"It's been a long time since I've had anyone to cook for." Without an immediate task, Mosi takes a moment to face Amani, leaning back against the counter. The kitchen is well designed, for all that it's not made for more than two people at once, and spotless. Her hair is unstraightened, shorter than when Amani saw her on Iapetus. In contrast to Nalah, she's chosen a plain, white dress shirt over black pants. She's kept up her exercise regimen, at least, which is a good sign for someone in her position. When she smiles, there's an almost worried look in her eyes — like she still doesn't trust anything good in her life not to turn out to be a trick, or to be taken away from her.
"How are things with Faiza?" Amani asks, glancing back in the direction of the living room.
Mosi grimaces. "Weird. Good kid, I think, but, well... she knows where I came from. I think she's stopped blaming me for her father, at least."
"That's good," Amani says. "She's like that with everyone, if it helps."
Mosi gives a quiet laugh. "No kidding. I kind of like it, though." A timer goes off, which she switches off immediately. "There's the pilau." She grabs a heat pad and kneels to remove the pot from the oven. "Is that countess of yours going to be here in time to eat?" The fragrant, well-spiced rice is everything Amani hoped it would be, as Mosi, straightened again, removes the lid. The question is casual, but it can't entirely hide the sense of awkwardness for the coming encounter.
"She'll be here any minute," Amani promises. Both Mosi and Lori had agreed to this. Had told her that it would be fine, sitting down for a meal across from the other. As if on cue, the front door pings. Amani gives Mosi a wink, and goes to greet the new arrival.
Amani emerges back out into the hall to find her mother already answering the door. "Dame Nalah," Gloriana says, tone polite. "I'm pleased to find you well."
"Countess Perbeck. And you." Dame Nalah's reply is decidedly cool and there's an uncertain, assessing quality to the way she looks at the other knight that Amani isn't particularly thrilled by.
It's time to nip that in the bud. Pointedly, Amani slips past her mother, going up on on her toes to kiss Gloriana affectionately. "You're just in time," Amani says, smiling up at her as she breaks the kiss off. "I love your hair when it's down like this," she adds.
Gloriana briefly lifts a hand to touch a strand of golden-blonde hair, smiling wryly at the compliment. "Well," she says, "I'm unlikely to have to shove it into a helmet, at the moment."
"Having too much of it's more trouble than it's worth, when you're piloting," Nalah opines, but there's a relenting quality to her. She got the message: Amani is serious about this woman. She wouldn't have invited her along to an intimate family dinner otherwise. "Just call me Nalah," she adds, to Amani's obvious relief.
Gloriana nods. There's a slight hesitation before she decides: "Call me Lori, then. My given name is absurd."
Nalah laughs at that, and accepts the bottle of wine Lori is still carrying. "This should go well with dinner," she decides.
As she leaves, Amani glances back up at Lori. "I'm glad you came," she whispers.
"I said I would." One long-fingered hand trails down Amani's back for a moment, slow enough to be sensual.
Amani feels her face heat. "I hope things will be up to your standards," she says, a teasing note in her voice. "It's not going to be terribly formal."
Lori gives a short laugh. "Somehow, I think I'll survive," she says.
In short order, the meal is served, and they all find themselves in the dining room: a space just large enough not to feel crowded with five around the table. "I'll be cleared to pilot again in a few months," Nalah says, conversationally. "I've tried to convince medical that I'm fine now, but no traction there. I've been going a little stir-crazy."
Lori makes a sympathetic noise, sitting across the table from Nalah, beside Amani. "I don't blame you. It's been a long time since Iapetus."
"It's good to give yourself time to heal," Amani interjects, frowning. "It's no use wanting to go back to active duty when you'll just hurt yourself again.
Mosi looks up from her plate, speaking for the first time. "You'd understand if you were a pilot," she says, completely seriously. Nalah nods. Lori meets Mosi's gaze for a moment, something uncomfortable passing between the two of them before Mosi glances away and Lori takes a conspicuous gulp of wine.
"I understand that pilots are all crazy," Faiza offers.
Mosi can't suppress a bit of a laugh at that.
"Careful," Amani cautions Faiza. "We're outnumbered, right now."
"Only because you brought another one," Faiza points out, not unjustly.
"Be polite to guests," Nalah chides her.
"Fine, fine." Faiza takes a drink of the cranberry juice she has in place of wine. "I'll be polite."
Things aren't quite idyllic, but they're all here. Everyone is trying, in their own way. Everyone, in the end, wants this to work out.
Whatever else, it feels like family.
The HIMS Nightshade,
Night Lily class stealth assault carrier
⟨"And when, exactly, are you going to find someone? You won't be young forever."⟩
⟨"Mama, I have someone, remember?"⟩ Anja is exceptionally thankful, at this moment, that this crackly, low-quality call is audio-only — it leaves her free to put her face in her hands at this turn of conversation. She's also suddenly a lot more ambivalent on the relay network being back up to capacity enough to facilitate this call in real time. ⟨"I'm still with Karel."⟩
⟨"Oh, don't give me that,"⟩ Mrs. Li interjects, ⟨"You need to stop this foolishness and find a man, not an unreliable, overgrown boy! Someone you can count on to look after my grandchildren while you're away in space."⟩
Grandchildren. Great. Anja groans. ⟨"This again?"⟩
⟨"Yes, this again! You nearly died, Anja! Is it too much to ask for you to think of your future?"⟩
Anja grimaces, unseen. Somehow, she'd always known that nearly dying was something that would be used against her. ⟨"I am thinking of the future, mama, I'm focusing on my career."⟩
Mrs. Li is unmoved. She scoffs, and drops what she clearly feels is her trump card: ⟨"Your friend Amani has found a good woman, and her career is--"⟩
⟨"Oh, sorry, mama!"⟩ Anja says, raising her voice to drown out whatever the end of that sentence was meant to be. ⟨"I have to go!"⟩
⟨"Anja, don't you dare hang up on me again!"⟩
⟨"Sorry, mama,"⟩ she repeats, ⟨"The Empire needs me. Love you!"⟩ Then she hangs up on her. Again.
For a moment, Anja just lets the blessed silence hang, feeling inexplicable like she's just run a marathon. ⟨"Thanks, North,"⟩ she mutters to no one, still speaking in Saturnian creole. She will always be grateful for North having looked in on her family following the Battle of Titan — more than she'll ever be able to express or repay. At the same time, though, in her heart of hearts, Anja always knew that absolutely no good could come of introducing North to her mother. Like she needs someone else to be compared negatively to.
It's not that she doesn't like her mother, or doesn't want to talk with her. When she finally got to hear her families' voices again, she'd cried with relief, unable to hold back her sobs, not caring who'd heard. Her mother could just be a little... much.
Anja had held it together a little better when she'd spoken to her about Ito, at least.
Well. The Empire really does need her, if not quite so urgently as Anja had made it sound. She grabs a handhold, navigating the narrow confines of her cabin to look over herself in the mirror, making sure her hair and uniform are as good as they can possibly be, today of all days: When is the next time she's going to be on a state of the art warship for its maiden voyage? She pays careful attention to her new rank insignia, before heading out the hatch and onto the beyond.
The Nightshade is much bigger than poor, lost Rose, although closer to a Flower class than to a full-sized carrier, being something of a hybrid design. While the original Night Lily was such a mess of experimental systems that its design was deemed unreplicatable, with the surge in production following the invasion, a stripped down, economical version was quickly designed and put into production at Iapetus, losing the impractical beam weapon, but keeping the genuine stealth system. Everything onboard is so shiny and new that it sometimes feels wrong to touch any of it. She can practically see her reflection in the sides of the shaft as she glides along. It makes her glad that they managed to escort both that experimental ship, and those vital supplies back to Iapetus.
There's something to be said for Anja's recent promotion: more people salute her now. She goes down several verticals, then along another shaft, already having memorised the layout of the ship enough for this at least. She only pulls up short when she sees a familiar face about to take the same turn she is:
"Goodmorning, sir," she says, snapping the Nightshade's First Officer a smart salute. Or as close to one as she gets.
Grayson pulls himself to a stop, returning the gesture, and offering Anja a broad smile. "Same to you, Li," he says.
"You're chipper this morning, sir," she notes, returning the smile tiredly.
"Is there a reason not to be, Sub-lieutenant?" He seems to intuit how much she enjoys hearing the new rank.
Anja shrugs. "Took the opportunity to call home, before we get underway. I ended up with my lovelife being compared to North's."
Grayson snorts with amusement. "Well, it's good she's still making you look bad from all the way back on Titan. Is her lovelife particularly prolific, these days?"
It's not like it's a secret anymore. "Well, you know," Anja says, casually, waiting for him to raise his pouch of coffee to his lips, "her and Perbeck."
His reaction is everything she'd hoped for and more. "What?" he hisses, after narrowly succeeding in choking down his mouthful of coffee instead of spitting it out.
"Oh, guess you hadn't heard, sir," Anja says, the picture of innocence. Not at all guilty for this blow she's struck against all morning people everywhere. Then, before he has time to respond to that, she adds, more seriously: "Anyway, I just wanted to let you know... I appreciate what you did for me."
Grayson struggles to recover, but manages it, somehow. Anja respects that. "I put your name forward when the captain was looking for suitable officers, Li. That's all."
"It's not nothing, sir," she says, meaning it. "It means a lot."
"Well, despite your many flaws, you're good at your job. Just, try not to get shot again, Sub-lieutenant."
Anja grins. "I'll do my best, sir."
Himalia Debris Field,
Jupiter System
Before the loyalist exodus at the end of the Civil War, Saturn was a backwater. The war touched it only lightly prior to the recent invasion, with the local garrison almost entirely siding against the usurper's forces. Jupiter, more developed and densely populated to begin with, did not get off so lightly.
As is the convention, the mere general proximity to the minor satellite Himalia was enough to earn the battle, and subsequent debris field its name. One of many to now grace Jupiter's already-cluttered orbit, this one distant enough that the gas giant is a tiny marble among the stars.
One ship, among the unrecognisable chunks of hull, the unexploded ordnance, the crushed and twisted mecha, the hulks not yet stripped down by scavengers, is a rather fresher corpse than the rest. A Divine Navy scouting vessel of the Herald class floating gutted and lifeless alongside the much older debris, its light armour and famously nimble handling not enough to save it from the lethal hull rupture that killed all hands. It's hard to dodge an ambush.
Lieutenant Boutlier is still alive, though. He flees for his life, although it's a mad, fruitless endeavour. Where does he expect to go, alone here with nothing but what air and supplies his Banner Recon Type can carry? His mecha is a tiny island of of warmth and air in a vast sea of nothingness. Without his ship to go back to, it's only a matter of time before that island returns to the universe's default state: Cold and lifeless. Perhaps it's fortunate that, as with all his comrades, something out here will hasten him on his way sooner rather than later.
Boutlier's scan map is seemingly conspiring to form a maze of false positives. He can't find the attackers anywhere, with all the still-hot debris floating around. They should never have come here, into this orbital graveyard so far from the nearest piece of civilisation. He had argued against it, insisted that it was all too risky. The captain had ignored him. Why would wouldn't he have? Boutlier was a lieutenant commanding a mecha squad on his own, doing a job that should have been above his pay grade. The Divine Navy's Jovian forces are cut to the bone, spread too thin over far too much space. So what was Boutlier but another underqualified idiot, jumping at shadows where a more experienced officer would have acted decisively?
They had just been chasing a single, barely-armed "pirate" ship, after all. That's not what they'd found in the debris field. Or rather, what had been waiting for them there. Now that he's somehow lost track of those pirates — rebels, he suspects — he can't keep himself from jumping at every strange blip, imagining an impossible number of enemies hiding all around him.
Things hadn't been like this when he'd joined. Boutlier had thought he'd been lucky, staying behind from what had become a disastrous rout out in Saturn, but...
One blip amid the debris finally makes its move. Boutlier barely sees it coming, banking hard to deflect the monofilament cutter with his Banner's thickly-armoured shoulder, everything moving too fast to get a firm look at what, precisely, is trying to kill him. He knows it's in front of him, but somehow ranged fire slams into him from behind anyway. Nothing moving on the map from that direction is nearly large enough to be a mecha, though, and whatever the attacker he blocked was has already melted away again.
"We're just out on a patrol!" Boutlier screams, into the ringing silence in his ears. "We weren't hurting anyone!" Aside from the pirates, hypothetically. "Leave me alone!" For a few gut-churning moments, whoever he's screaming at does.
Then they're on him again. He's passed too close to a huge, warped piece of warship deck when the elusive enemy mecha slams into him. Boutlier blocks the cutter strike with his own this time, but the force of the blow sends him crashing hard into the surface of the ship piece. Armour strains, alarms blare, his main camera spins wildly. When it finally settles, he's greeted by what's left of a human face — the remains of a spacer in United Empire Navy uniform, vacuum-exposed body trapped by a piece of twisted metal, glassy eyes staring back at him like a vision of his future.
It distracts him for a crucial moment before he forces his Banner to look up: The enemy is looming over him, cutter stabbing down to pry into his cockpit, mercilessly driving down toward his vulnerable body. He tries, too late, to move, to push the attacker off, frantically babbling: "No, no, no, no no, n—"
His scream cuts off, heard by no one, and there is one more forgotten body in the debris field.
"Was it really necessary to drag that out?"
Boutlier's killer, safe in his own cockpit, hangs slack and motionless for a moment as his mecha comes to a relative stop, facing the disabled banner. Then the makeshift neural bridge device connecting his mind to his mecha disengages. His body shudders briefly before coming fully to life, hands clawing at the seal on his helmet. Once it's off, he takes a long pull of water from a drinking pouch, before finally responding. "Not strictly. Neither was it necessary to take risks I didn't have to by rushing things, since the last one was alone, and not going anywhere. Besides, we can repair the Banner this way. Cockpit will be a bit of a mess even after we dump the body, though."
The voice speaking to the pilot over comm pauses for a moment, perhaps disquieted by this cold-blooded assessment. "... Fine. One less Imperial in the world regardless, I suppose."
"Many less," the pilot agrees. His tone is dispassionate, but a sliver of a smile cuts across his face as he reaches up to push unnaturally pale hair out of his eyes. In the gloom of the cockpit, the metallic contact points grafted into the skin at his temples gleam dully. "An entire ship's worth."
"True enough. Just... grab that Banner, and come back to the ship." The speaker has an air of wanting to end the conversation sooner rather than later. Still, they add, perhaps trying to raise their own spirits: "For a free Jupiter."
"For a free Jupiter," the pilot agrees, sighing as he pulls his helmet back into place. A free Jupiter one piece at a time, if that's what it takes.
City of Troy,
Ganymede,
Jupiter System capital
Troy is larger than it appears from Ganymede's surface. The complex of interconnected domes forming a bright spiderweb pattern against the moon's darker landscape only represents the city's uppermost levels. Below them, tunnels crawl deep into Ganymede's icy crust, a subterranean city onto itself, kept warm and alive by massive reactors. And below this, a series of aquatic habitats floating at the top of the lightless, salt-water abyss contained within the enormous moon.
The Jovian capital is the single largest population centre in the Outer Solar System, the site of immense wealth and industry, beneath Jupiter's looming gaze. Under the rule of the Holy Solar Empire, Troy is also the site of immense fear and oppression, a state of affairs that only increases the more active the Jovian independence movement grows elsewhere. The woman tasked with presiding over it all grows more and more ill-tempered apace with this.
"I am tired of excuses! You will explain yourself." Duchess Grangier's small hand slams down on the table, rattling the ornate porcelain coffee service ominously, before she continues her furious pacing. The coffee service is specially weighted for use in Ganymede's gravity, but Lady Dvorska still finds it nerve-wracking, in combination with a tone that bites like a whip. Which is absurd — she is an officer of flag rank in the Divine Navy of Correction, a veteran of the Imperial Civil War and a survivor of the purges that accompanied the victorious Holy Empire's restructuring. Admiral Baroness-Consort Allison Dvorska is acting commander of all the DNC's Jovian Forces. And yet this small, delicately built woman, whose doe eyes and soft features still manage to be doll-like even in the full grip of middle age, makes Dvorska want to flinch away from her every glare.
The pair of them are in the Governor's mansion, a sprawling, luxurious dwelling defended like a fortress. The small meeting room the two of them are occupying has been set up for this vitally important closed door session, the coffee service accompanied by a spread of finger food befitting a Duchess's table. Of course, as Duchess Grangier has not deigned to sit down the entire time, Dvorska has had to remain standing as well, while the coffee slowly grows cold.
"Your Grace," Dvorska begins, speaking carefully, "I am not trying to make excuses." When the Governor stops her pacing abruptly and turns to skewer Dvorska with a stare, it's impossible to shake the image of an angry lioness, newly aware of something it's debating whether or not to eat. "It has become nearly impossible to keep order in the outer reaches of the system — our shortages of ships and personnel has only gotten worse. The rebels have realised this. We were never going to be able to hide that the Saturn invasion force isn't coming back forever."
It's risky, mentioning the failed invasion in front of Duchess Grangier. At this point, Dvorska is willing to make that gamble. This time, it pays off: The Duchess responds without screaming. "We can't get to recouping those lost ships if they continue to raid our mining colonies and hijack our shipments enroute. You will need to pull forces away from the Galilean Moons." She knows, plainly, that this is a drastic measure, but Dvorska is unconvinced that the Governor knows how drastic.
"I am reluctant to pull assets away from Callisto," Dvorska explains, words chosen even more carefully now. "Because, your Grace, it is entirely possible that if we weaken its defences too far, we will lose it."
The Governor stares. Not a cold, piercing stare this time. Instead, for the briefest of moments, it's open-faced shock. Finally, Duchess Grangier takes her seat, hands straightening out imaginary wrinkles in her Grand Marshal's uniform. She still doesn't touch the coffee. "Explain," she orders.
Dvorska takes the excuse to be seated as well. "We've been able to keep the Callisto insurgency contained well enough, without destroying the habitats." Mostly. It's a tossup whose fault that particular screwup actually was, but the official news stories very firmly blamed the insurgents. "If they realise we're pulling ships or troops or both away, though, they'll ramp up operations, and I'm not confident we'll be able to hold on short of puncturing a few dome cities." A suggestion that she very much hopes Grangier does not think is a valid trade off.
"Unacceptable," the Governor says, immediately. "Both scenarios." She frowns, a hand toying with a strand of silvering, brown hair. Losing a Galilean Moon, even temporarily, may well be the last straw before the Emperor loses his patience and begins ordering executions. Likely starting with Duchess Lorelei's own, and unfortunately also likely including Dvorska's. "We cannot surrender the rest of the system to these low brigands, however. You will need to find a way to balance things."
"I will do everything in my power, your Grace." Dvorska's tone is unavoidably resigned. "We will need to disguise the force movements, however. So it will need to be gradual, and kept strictly secret. The insurgents cannot get wind that Callisto will be poorly defended."
Grangier nods, a severe motion. "Understand, Admiral — if this duty is beyond you, I will relieve you of it and find another more capable."
Dvorska's instinctive, wisely-unvoiced reaction is, quite literally: Do you promise? She hadn't wanted this job back when it was intended to be a temporary posting. Now that it's looking suspiciously like a permanent promotion, she wants it even less. Still, better this than having been sent to Saturn, as it turned out. Instead, she nods solemnly. "I understand, your grace. I will do my utmost." Dvorska lets things hang like that for just a moment, before asking, warily:
"Do we have any word of reinforcements from the Inner planets, your Grace?"
It's the Governor's turn to hesitate. Then, a door creaks, and both women stiffen in alarm. Dvorska's eyes slowly track over the meeting room, past walls tiled in ornate representations of the Grangier family crest, past furniture worth more than ten years of an ordinary family's universal basic income, to a door. One that was supposed to be closed and locked. Dvorska exchanges a look with Duchess Grangier, before silently rising, making her way to the door while reaching for her sidearm.
Once she's standing directly beside it, she wrenches the door open and shoots a hand out to seize whoever has been eavesdropping by the collar.
"Hey, let me go!" squawks a startled, indignant voice. A young woman, startlingly similar in appearance to Duchess Grangier, richly clothed and entirely unarmed, struggles against Dvorska's grip. "I just lost an earpiece in here, I think!"
"My lady," Dvorska says, politely. Trying to hide her frustration, "this is a private meeting."
"Well, I'm not trying to interrupt," the girl says, fixing her clothing as Dvorska releases it. "But, if you could just let me have a look in the room..."
"Arianne, enough, you idiot-girl! We are discussing important things — go elsewhere." Duchess Grangier is now glaring at Arianne, at least, instead of Dvorska.
"Yes, mother, sorry, mother," says the not-very-repentant girl, before she scurries away out of sight.
Arianne Grangier keeps up her expression of hunch-shouldered chastisement much of the way down the hall. Then, checking that no one is watching, she quickly slips through the nearest doorway, clicking the door shut behind her.
Inside the unused sitting room, a portrait of one of her ancestors looks down at her, stern and disapproving in a general sense. Making full eye contact with him, Arianne brazenly sticks out her tongue at the long dead Grangier, then pulls a comm piece from her bag.
It's a moment before the call connects, but the person on the other end picks up immediately.
"Hi, Nieszka!" Arianne says, a grin breaking out onto her face. As she listens to the reply, she leans against the back of an armchair, free hand rising to toy with the ends of her brunette hair, falling again as she finds it cut short too recently to accommodate this. "Does it? Well, it's always good news when I get to talk to you."
In a moment, her tone turns less flirtatious and more serious. "Alright, alright. It is actually good news. It looks like I have something a lot sooner than we thought." A silent moment as she listens to another reply. "It's fine, Nieszka — mother thinks I'm too much of a stupid little girl to do anything sneaky, you know that." Arianne grins again, almost childishly amused. "You remember our 'friend' from Callisto, though, right? Well, there's something interesting I think you should tell them..."
City of Titan,
Titan,
Regional capital of the Saturn System
She's almost home. Or so Mosi tries to convince herself. Certainly, the three-room apartment she's currently being escorted to is where she's lived for most of a year now, ever since being moved to Titan. But, there it was, wasn't it? She hadn't come to this place of her own choosing, she'd been moved here. It's a more comfortable prison than she'd ever allowed herself to imagine, but in the end, it is still a prison.
Prison or not, Mosi is ready to be somewhere quiet and alone. The evening ran long enough that the light settings in the city have been dimmed to nighttime, and she's extremely full of her own cooking. Mosi does want to spend time with her family, and she hardly regrets tonight, but... things still periodically feel strange with her mother, if not outright tumultuous, a state of affairs they both ignore as much as convenient. Mosi hasn't had a chance to build up a real relationship with Faiza, although they've at least cleared the most obvious hurdle now. With Amani, there's been a lot to work through, if with less baggage than Nalah, but Mosi hopes they're on the far side of that, at least. To say that things were awkward with Countess Perbeck present, however, is beyond an understatement.
It all went as well as could be hoped, though. Serving what was left of her family a meal she prepared herself, made with an old family recipe taught to Mosi on Luna and that she'd carried all this time... it had been an almost surreal sort of joy. One that she has no idea how to express, but hopes somehow that they understand anyway.
The elevator hums quietly as it brings herself and the two SRI agents down to Mosi's floor. Her building is a walk and a short rail trip away from her mother's, aside from the difference in altitude, in an area that seems entirely populated by people living directly on the crown's dime for one reason or another. Mosi doesn't try to speak to the two SRI operatives escorting her. She recognises both of them by now — there's a finite pool of them that rotate in and out. To date, though, she's never even thought of striking up a conversation with any of them. For all that her own sister is a member of this organisation...
... Mosi is never going to be able to relax with people who hold arbitrary power over her life, death and freedom. What little freedoms they afford her, in exchange for her full cooperation. They've long-since exhausted what small amounts of operational information of value she can provide them, and she now suspects that she's helping the United Solar Empire reverse engineer the special systems on her Provespa. It's a genuine comfort to know that her machine is being used for something, still.
Despite that, in all likelihood never being able to pilot again is deeply painful. Life is better here than it was in the Holy Empire, but the loss of her one pure escape is impossible to ignore. The exchange tonight between Dame Nalah and the Countess, aggravated this feeling, and by the time Mosi steps out onto her floor, she's feeling distinctly melancholy again, warm feelings from before having been whisked away entirely.
Almost instantly, she can tell something is wrong. A man in uniform stands in their way — not just any uniform, either: His jacket is in the sunburst colours of the Imperial Guard. He and Mosi's escort stare at one another for a few, heavy seconds before Lam abruptly jerks her head off to the side. The Guardsman complies, leaving Mosi and Daniels to watch as those two leave to confer out of earshot.
Eventually, after some animated whispering on Lam's part and stoic replies on the Guardsman's, the two of them return. "Alright, come on," Lam murmurs to Daniels.
"What's going on?" Daniels asks.
"Later," Lam says. "Way above our paygrade. Trust me." That's nearly enough to make Mosi demand to know what's going on herself, but if Lam's not going to tell Daniels, she's certainly not going to tell Mosi. Lam must catch Mosi's stricken look, because her face loses a fraction of its rigidity. "Just... go ahead, North," she says. "This is weird for us too." How very reassuring.
Mosi needs to pass by another Imperial Guard uniform at the door to her apartment, the Guardswoman quickly and efficiently patting her down for weapons. When she proves to be unarmed, she's ushered inside.
Mosi crosses the threshold, then stares, even as the door clicks shut behind her. Her shock only lasts a moment, before she drops to one knee so fast that she cracks it hard on the false wood of her floor.
Here, utterly out of place, seated as regally on Mosi's only chair as she might have been on a throne, is none other than her Imperial Highness, Lady-High-Commander of the Imperial Guard and presumed heir to the throne, Princess Daystar Helios. The flatteringly plain dress she wears under her LHC jacket does little to shake the surreality of the image. "Your... your Di—" Mosi swallows her intended honourific, heart slamming in her chest. Do not call a member of this branch of the Imperial family 'your Divine Highness'. "Your Imperial Highness!" Mosi says instead.
"Hello, Ms. North," Daystar says, as if this entire situation isn't patently absurd. Why would she ever come here, of all places? If she wanted so badly to speak to Mosi, she could presumably contact the SRI and arrange for a meeting. This smells like internal politicking at a high level, and in Mosi's experience engaging with that is the fastest way to get yourself killed. But she's already in the same room with a Helios — it may well be too late for that.
"You may stand, Ms. North," Daystar says, gently. Numb aside from the throbbing in her knee, Mosi feels herself rising to her feet. For the first time, she notices the two other Imperial Guards standing to either side of the Princess, taking up what little room is left in the cramped living space. Daystar leans forward in the chair, steepling her fingers. Her bright eyes look straight into Mosi's own, seemingly trapping her on the spot. "Are you satisfied with your life, Ms. North?"
Satisfied? What kind of question was that? "I'm... not going to complain, your Highness," Mosi says carefully.
"No, I expect you're not," Daystar agrees, as though Mosi has just given away far more than she intended. "You don't seem like the type to complain about that tracker on your wrist, needing to clear all of your movements a week in advance, being followed by armed escort even then."
Mosi blinks, mind racing to try and guess where this is going. "I'm... a war criminal, your Highness," she reminds her. "I have been shown extraordinary leniency."
"Yes, you've done horrible things," Daystar says. Somehow, the non-judgemental tone makes Mosi flinch in a way that vocal disgust never does. As if it's not an insult, just the facts. "Would you like a chance to make up for them?"
If Mosi were less terrified and confused, that would have been insulting. You don't make up for the kind of things she was forced to do. Faint echoes of the kind of nightmares she still has stir in the back of her mind. Despite how blank Mosi is trying to keep her features, as Daystar studies her face, some of that seems to show there.
"Well, then," Daystar decides, "would you like a chance to earn a real place here?"
"A... place, your Highness?"
"Would you like to have that tracker off your wrist, not be on everyone's watchlists forever?" Daystar stares at her intently. "Would you like to be able to make your family proud?"
That hits home, like a punch to the gut. Being told that they're proud of her for 'coming this far', for going to therapy, for settling into her new life... she knows that it's meant well, but it doesn't feel true, to Mosi. Maybe that's wrong, but it's hard to not feel like a stain on the family legacy, at best. "What could you possibly do about that?" she asks. Then, remembering herself, she hastily adds: "—Your Highness."
Daystar smiles very slightly, as though she knows she's going to get what she wants. "To get quickly to the point, then: I have a proposal. One that I think you'll want to hear."
END
The story will continue in...
Starting early 2020.
Started! Click the logo above to go to the next quest in this series.
Acknowledgements, future plans, some side content to come in the meantime.
Titan City,
Titan,
Saturn System capital
The sky is a hazy yellow overhead, glimpsed through the many-panelled dome high above, one of several that the city is crammed into. Yellow or not, the sight always takes Amani back to the best parts of her childhood: the domes of the Albategnius cities rising out of brilliantly white regolith. The Earth constantly overhead, not so different in visual size than Saturn is now, its rings and faint banding visible through the Titan fog. There is also, at the back of her mind, a muddier memory. A snowglobe owned by her elder sister when they were both very young.
Amani's not sure what happened to it.
She crosses a pedestrian walkway elevated far above the ground. Space is at a premium here, in this place where every scrap of habitability must be meticulously wrested from the grips of an unbreathable atmosphere, vertical space included. The towers of Titan rise up nearly to the top of each dome, crammed efficiently full of dwellings, businesses and government offices. It's warm here, with the heat from below rising up, far away from the cold pavement and the odd exposed ground. It's all a stark contrast to the night before last, spent in a working class neighbourhood close to the ground, around a crowded dinner table where Anja's mother had filled her so full of dumplings that she'd felt ready to burst.
Apparently, checking in on the wellbeing of Anja's family in her stead following the battle has promoted Amani to an unofficial family member. Living so close to the Li residence, Amani has already resigned herself to an increased exercise routine, to make up for the copious amounts of rich home cooking she finds herself eating these days. Of course, she's now en route to be stuffed full of a different sort of home cooking, by a very different family.
As she nears the halfway point of the walkway, she passes into the shadow of the massive residential tower that is her destination. As she grows closer to it, the sounds of the busy tram line running behind it grow more and more muffled. It's the same one that Amani takes to work, the tower rendered new and strange from this vantage point, as opposed to mere backdrop in the distance.
Several civilians pass her in the opposite direction. Their companionable laughter dies as they draw near, nervous eyes taking note of the colour of her jacket, the eclipsed sun staring back at them from her shoulder patch. Amani smiles, gentle and dazzling, and the group relaxes. She wonders if they're worried that something dangerous is going on in their building, on their floor. She knows for a fact that she's not the only one in SRI green to have passed this way recently. It's true, one wouldn't normally see so much of Special Reconnaissance & Intelligence in a residential neighbourhood without something strange going on, but in a very real sense, this time it's for the most normal thing Amani has done in a long time.
The steps up into the building, alongside a ubiquitous accessibility ramp, would have been punishingly tall for anyone of Amani's height, under Earth gravity. On Titan, however, she weighs a feather-light 14% of her Earth standard mass, allowing the steps to be climbed with a practised leaping motion. The exterior door opens with a wave of her tablet — the building has been told to expect her. She waits for the doors to slide open, not even noticing the emergency pressurisation seal she steps over. It's in every building, mandated by law against the apocalyptic scenario of a major hull breach on the dome overhead.
Inside, the residential floor is clean, well lit, air-exchangers doing their absolute level best to make the recycled air smell fresh and mostly succeeding. Certainly, Amani's Luna-born senses aren't offended.
"Evening, North." The two SRI security officers are seated at a small table, part of a ring of similar structures fitting into a small, communal courtyard for the floor's residents, entirely indoors. At other times, it's easy to imagine people gathering in groups of two or three, or even hosting small parties here. The hour or the officers themselves has discouraged any such activity tonight. They look at Amani with a professional courtesy, if not mild friendliness. A man and a woman, armoured vests worn as openly as the weapons at their hips. Between them, a large serving of battered, fried potato wedges sits half-eaten alongside two towering coffee cups. Amani doesn't blame them — they're likely to be here for hours yet.
"Good evening, Daniels, Lam." Amani gives them a more reserved smile than she had the nervous civilians. These two know precisely what's going on. "We really do appreciate the trouble."
Lam shrugs. "It's not our call," she reminds Amani. "You know what orders are like."
Amani shrugs, lightly. "Still, you're the ones who are going through the trouble for our sake. I appreciate you giving up your evening."
Daniels is too busy eating fried potato to immediately respond, but he seems to appreciate the sentiment. Lam responds for them both. "We don't mind — I know what family's like, North. Did you hear the latest about the Guard?"
"About the latest force increase? Yes." Working in an SRI office on Titan gives her a great deal more current news than she'd had access to while serving on a lone scouting vessel.
Daniels finally swallows. "I don't know what she's playing at."
Lam gives Daniels a significant look. "You don't know what her Imperial Highness, Lady-High-Commander Princess Daystar Helios is playing at," she corrects. It's less about the specific title than his tone: Even if Daniels is going to complain about the presumed heir to the throne, it pays to be respectful about it.
Daniels sighs. "Yes, that's what I meant," he says. "I don't know where she's even getting all these recruits."
"Well," Amani says, slowly, "She does seem to be taking Saturnians now. With better positions than the Navy usually gives them."
"There's that," Lam acknowledges.
No one is entirely certain what the princess is doing, despite the rampant speculation. Asking to replace the late LHC Okello as Commander of her aunt's utterly devastated Guard was a strange move. Subsequently proceeding to take advantage of the elevated rate of military production and the vast number of enemy machines that have been recently captured in order to greatly expand the Guard's numbers just makes people alarmed. Unlike the Navy, the Imperial Guard answers directly to the Lady-High-Commander and to the Empress, and no one else.
Of course, the same is true for the SRI.
"Well, don't let him keep you with politics," Lam says, waving a dismissive hand at Daniels, who sighs and puts more potato in his mouth. "Enjoy your evening, North."
The door Amani is actually headed for is, conspicuously, directly across the courtyard from where the two agents have set up camp. Amani pings the unit from the control pad beside the door and waits. She doesn't have long: The door opens, and a smile breaks out over her face, right before she's pulled into a tight hug. "Here you are!" Dame Nalah says, grinning wolfishly as she pulls back, looking her youngest over in her new uniform. "My daughter the spook," she decides a moment later, not sounding displeased. "No time to change at home, or just wanted to show off?" In contrast to Amani, Dame Nalah herself is in civilian clothing — a brightly patterned dress that makes her look younger than her middle age, while she's smiling like that.
"We're busy," Amani says, voice light. They both know roughly what she's been busy with, and that Amani is in no way allowed to talk about it. "I came straight here from the office."
"I miss being busy," Nalah admits, pulling Amani inside and sealing the door behind her. The broken bones, as well as the burns on Nalah's arm and face have long ago healed, although there is still scarring, faint against her dark skin. Worse than that, though, was the spinal trauma that had emerged in the months after the injury, keeping the Knight grounded all this time while she has time to recover. Amani puts these thoughts out of her mind, and moves past her mother into the home beyond. Amani is hit with a wave of spices and cooking meat, the scents coming from an open door a little ways down the hall — the kitchen, one suspects.
"We already knew she got a new boring, button-pusher job," calls a voice from another room. Amani pauses in taking in the cozy entrance hall to raise her eyebrows at that. She quickly takes off her shoes, and moves to poke her head into the door the voice emerged from.
The living room isn't large, but it's comfortably appointed with plush furniture and a blank display screen mounted on the wall, among smaller ones set to display images from various happy times in the North family's lives. The source of the voice is a small, South-Asian girl in her early teens, curled up on the couch with a tablet open to what looks like homework. Amani isn't the only one still in uniform — the girl is still wearing her Imperial Academy skirt and blouse, the charcoal grey jacket thrown over a nearby chair.
"Hello, Faiza," Amani says, unoffended by the girl's brusque manners.
Nonetheless, Dame Nalah gives her a Faiza a mildly reproving look. "Is that any way to say hello? You two are sisters, now."
Faiza Bal-North sighs, looking up at you for the first time. "It's good you're back," she says. "I guess." That's about as friendly as Amani is ever going to get from Faiza, she suspects. The look of feigned indifference to her presence is almost heartwarming.
"How's the Academy?" Amani asks.
"It's... not bad," Faiza admits, reluctantly. "The instructors know what they're talking about, at least. And if something's too easy, they give me something harder to do. So it's not such a waste of time." In other words, she loves it.
Nalah sighs, ruffling Faiza's straight, dark hair affectionately. Faiza rolls her eyes, but doesn't pull away either. Amani is abruptly certain that this is the happiest she's ever seen the young girl, the trauma of the previous year beginning to scar over, finally trusting her new life not to erode away beneath her feet as swiftly as her old one had.
"Let me take your jacket," Nalah offers.
"You haven't hired anyone?" Amani asks. Nalah isn't rich, but she is a knight as well as a captain on paid leave after being wounded in combat. She should be able to afford at least one servant.
"Adam's in the kitchen, helping your sister," Nalah says, tugging Amani's mint-green jacket off. She wasn't always a knight, and in some ways, it feels like she's never entirely internalised her new social status. "It's a nice break for him, not cooking."
"I'm sure he gets paid either way," Amani speculates.
Nalah laughs. "There's that."
As her mother turns to hang the SRI jacket up in an unseen closet, Amani's eyes linger on the picture set onto one of the living room's screens: It's an old one, taken on Luna. A younger Nalah in dress uniform stands with her hand on an eleven-year-old Mosi's shoulder. Even at that age, Mosi looks strikingly like her mother. The same well-defined bone-structure, the same complexion, the same unconsciously fierce tilt to her eyes. Beside her older sister is Amani herself, all of nine, a smiling little girl who had been frequently told she was 'darling'. She has enough of her mother, as well, to have a strong family resemblance to both Nalah and her sister, but she has her father's marginally lighter complexion, his softer gaze. Amir North smiles back at her from just behind child-Amani, face eternally gentle and understanding, forever locked in those happy, bygone days.
Walking into the kitchen, the smell of cooking food is downright heavenly. Two people stand there. One is a tall, pale young man, formally dressed. He pauses, arms full of plates, to give Amani a polite nod of the head. "Pleased to meet you, Miss Amani," he says. "I'm Adam."
"And you," Amani agrees, returning the nod. This frees him up to do his job — namely, carrying the plates to the adjacent dining room, in order to set the table for the family's meal. Once he's left, she approaches the young woman standing by the stove, stirring something in a tall stock pot. "I'm starving," Amani admits. "Real beef?"
"Yes," Mosi agrees. She gives her sister a small smile, but sounds faintly exasperated at the admission. "I told her the soy-heme stuff will be fine, but she went and bought vat grown. Because apparently it's an 'occasion', so that means she's spending an arm and a leg."
Amani gives her a level look. "The occasion is that we're all here tonight," she reminds Mosi. "This is important to her. And to me."
"I... know." Mosi turns away for a moment, re-examining the cooking food. "I... do want this to be normal, Amani. It's just... hard."
Amani's expression softens. Wordlessly, she approaches Mosi, making sure to do so from out of her sister's blindspot. She puts a hand on Mosi's shoulder, the movement slow enough for her to see coming. "I know it is. I'm glad you're here."
Mosi nods slowly, some of the tension going out of her after a moment. "Me too." She pulls a small bowl down from the cupboard, ladelling out a minute sample of the stew into it. "Here. Does this need anything?"
Amani accepts the bowl and offered spoon from Mosi, deliberately not looking too long at the metallic tracking bracelet locked onto her sister's wrist. The one that makes certain that, even if Mosi did run, somehow, the SRI would still know exactly where she was. It's house arrest — tonight being a carefully scheduled exception — but Mosi is still a prisoner. "No," she decides, after some careful sampling. "You got the spices exactly right."
"Good, then." Mosi kills the heat, moving the stew off of the burner with one hand — the pot isn't particularly heavy, under Titan gravity. "The rest should be ready in a moment."
"Pilau?" Amani guesses, eyeing the stove with obvious hope.
"Beef stew, pilau and chapati," Mosi confirms, rallying a little more. "It used to be your favourite."
"It still is!" Amani agrees. "It's been a long time since anyone cooked for me like this."
"It's been a long time since I've had anyone to cook for." Without an immediate task, Mosi takes a moment to face Amani, leaning back against the counter. The kitchen is well designed, for all that it's not made for more than two people at once, and spotless. Her hair is unstraightened, shorter than when Amani saw her on Iapetus. In contrast to Nalah, she's chosen a plain, white dress shirt over black pants. She's kept up her exercise regimen, at least, which is a good sign for someone in her position. When she smiles, there's an almost worried look in her eyes — like she still doesn't trust anything good in her life not to turn out to be a trick, or to be taken away from her.
"How are things with Faiza?" Amani asks, glancing back in the direction of the living room.
Mosi grimaces. "Weird. Good kid, I think, but, well... she knows where I came from. I think she's stopped blaming me for her father, at least."
"That's good," Amani says. "She's like that with everyone, if it helps."
Mosi gives a quiet laugh. "No kidding. I kind of like it, though." A timer goes off, which she switches off immediately. "There's the pilau." She grabs a heat pad and kneels to remove the pot from the oven. "Is that countess of yours going to be here in time to eat?" The fragrant, well-spiced rice is everything Amani hoped it would be, as Mosi, straightened again, removes the lid. The question is casual, but it can't entirely hide the sense of awkwardness for the coming encounter.
"She'll be here any minute," Amani promises. Both Mosi and Lori had agreed to this. Had told her that it would be fine, sitting down for a meal across from the other. As if on cue, the front door pings. Amani gives Mosi a wink, and goes to greet the new arrival.
Amani emerges back out into the hall to find her mother already answering the door. "Dame Nalah," Gloriana says, tone polite. "I'm pleased to find you well."
"Countess Perbeck. And you." Dame Nalah's reply is decidedly cool and there's an uncertain, assessing quality to the way she looks at the other knight that Amani isn't particularly thrilled by.
It's time to nip that in the bud. Pointedly, Amani slips past her mother, going up on on her toes to kiss Gloriana affectionately. "You're just in time," Amani says, smiling up at her as she breaks the kiss off. "I love your hair when it's down like this," she adds.
Gloriana briefly lifts a hand to touch a strand of golden-blonde hair, smiling wryly at the compliment. "Well," she says, "I'm unlikely to have to shove it into a helmet, at the moment."
"Having too much of it's more trouble than it's worth, when you're piloting," Nalah opines, but there's a relenting quality to her. She got the message: Amani is serious about this woman. She wouldn't have invited her along to an intimate family dinner otherwise. "Just call me Nalah," she adds, to Amani's obvious relief.
Gloriana nods. There's a slight hesitation before she decides: "Call me Lori, then. My given name is absurd."
Nalah laughs at that, and accepts the bottle of wine Lori is still carrying. "This should go well with dinner," she decides.
As she leaves, Amani glances back up at Lori. "I'm glad you came," she whispers.
"I said I would." One long-fingered hand trails down Amani's back for a moment, slow enough to be sensual.
Amani feels her face heat. "I hope things will be up to your standards," she says, a teasing note in her voice. "It's not going to be terribly formal."
Lori gives a short laugh. "Somehow, I think I'll survive," she says.
In short order, the meal is served, and they all find themselves in the dining room: a space just large enough not to feel crowded with five around the table. "I'll be cleared to pilot again in a few months," Nalah says, conversationally. "I've tried to convince medical that I'm fine now, but no traction there. I've been going a little stir-crazy."
Lori makes a sympathetic noise, sitting across the table from Nalah, beside Amani. "I don't blame you. It's been a long time since Iapetus."
"It's good to give yourself time to heal," Amani interjects, frowning. "It's no use wanting to go back to active duty when you'll just hurt yourself again.
Mosi looks up from her plate, speaking for the first time. "You'd understand if you were a pilot," she says, completely seriously. Nalah nods. Lori meets Mosi's gaze for a moment, something uncomfortable passing between the two of them before Mosi glances away and Lori takes a conspicuous gulp of wine.
"I understand that pilots are all crazy," Faiza offers.
Mosi can't suppress a bit of a laugh at that.
"Careful," Amani cautions Faiza. "We're outnumbered, right now."
"Only because you brought another one," Faiza points out, not unjustly.
"Be polite to guests," Nalah chides her.
"Fine, fine." Faiza takes a drink of the cranberry juice she has in place of wine. "I'll be polite."
Things aren't quite idyllic, but they're all here. Everyone is trying, in their own way. Everyone, in the end, wants this to work out.
Whatever else, it feels like family.
--
The HIMS Nightshade,
Night Lily class stealth assault carrier
⟨"And when, exactly, are you going to find someone? You won't be young forever."⟩
⟨"Mama, I have someone, remember?"⟩ Anja is exceptionally thankful, at this moment, that this crackly, low-quality call is audio-only — it leaves her free to put her face in her hands at this turn of conversation. She's also suddenly a lot more ambivalent on the relay network being back up to capacity enough to facilitate this call in real time. ⟨"I'm still with Karel."⟩
⟨"Oh, don't give me that,"⟩ Mrs. Li interjects, ⟨"You need to stop this foolishness and find a man, not an unreliable, overgrown boy! Someone you can count on to look after my grandchildren while you're away in space."⟩
Grandchildren. Great. Anja groans. ⟨"This again?"⟩
⟨"Yes, this again! You nearly died, Anja! Is it too much to ask for you to think of your future?"⟩
Anja grimaces, unseen. Somehow, she'd always known that nearly dying was something that would be used against her. ⟨"I am thinking of the future, mama, I'm focusing on my career."⟩
Mrs. Li is unmoved. She scoffs, and drops what she clearly feels is her trump card: ⟨"Your friend Amani has found a good woman, and her career is--"⟩
⟨"Oh, sorry, mama!"⟩ Anja says, raising her voice to drown out whatever the end of that sentence was meant to be. ⟨"I have to go!"⟩
⟨"Anja, don't you dare hang up on me again!"⟩
⟨"Sorry, mama,"⟩ she repeats, ⟨"The Empire needs me. Love you!"⟩ Then she hangs up on her. Again.
For a moment, Anja just lets the blessed silence hang, feeling inexplicable like she's just run a marathon. ⟨"Thanks, North,"⟩ she mutters to no one, still speaking in Saturnian creole. She will always be grateful for North having looked in on her family following the Battle of Titan — more than she'll ever be able to express or repay. At the same time, though, in her heart of hearts, Anja always knew that absolutely no good could come of introducing North to her mother. Like she needs someone else to be compared negatively to.
It's not that she doesn't like her mother, or doesn't want to talk with her. When she finally got to hear her families' voices again, she'd cried with relief, unable to hold back her sobs, not caring who'd heard. Her mother could just be a little... much.
Anja had held it together a little better when she'd spoken to her about Ito, at least.
Well. The Empire really does need her, if not quite so urgently as Anja had made it sound. She grabs a handhold, navigating the narrow confines of her cabin to look over herself in the mirror, making sure her hair and uniform are as good as they can possibly be, today of all days: When is the next time she's going to be on a state of the art warship for its maiden voyage? She pays careful attention to her new rank insignia, before heading out the hatch and onto the beyond.
The Nightshade is much bigger than poor, lost Rose, although closer to a Flower class than to a full-sized carrier, being something of a hybrid design. While the original Night Lily was such a mess of experimental systems that its design was deemed unreplicatable, with the surge in production following the invasion, a stripped down, economical version was quickly designed and put into production at Iapetus, losing the impractical beam weapon, but keeping the genuine stealth system. Everything onboard is so shiny and new that it sometimes feels wrong to touch any of it. She can practically see her reflection in the sides of the shaft as she glides along. It makes her glad that they managed to escort both that experimental ship, and those vital supplies back to Iapetus.
There's something to be said for Anja's recent promotion: more people salute her now. She goes down several verticals, then along another shaft, already having memorised the layout of the ship enough for this at least. She only pulls up short when she sees a familiar face about to take the same turn she is:
"Goodmorning, sir," she says, snapping the Nightshade's First Officer a smart salute. Or as close to one as she gets.
Grayson pulls himself to a stop, returning the gesture, and offering Anja a broad smile. "Same to you, Li," he says.
"You're chipper this morning, sir," she notes, returning the smile tiredly.
"Is there a reason not to be, Sub-lieutenant?" He seems to intuit how much she enjoys hearing the new rank.
Anja shrugs. "Took the opportunity to call home, before we get underway. I ended up with my lovelife being compared to North's."
Grayson snorts with amusement. "Well, it's good she's still making you look bad from all the way back on Titan. Is her lovelife particularly prolific, these days?"
It's not like it's a secret anymore. "Well, you know," Anja says, casually, waiting for him to raise his pouch of coffee to his lips, "her and Perbeck."
His reaction is everything she'd hoped for and more. "What?" he hisses, after narrowly succeeding in choking down his mouthful of coffee instead of spitting it out.
"Oh, guess you hadn't heard, sir," Anja says, the picture of innocence. Not at all guilty for this blow she's struck against all morning people everywhere. Then, before he has time to respond to that, she adds, more seriously: "Anyway, I just wanted to let you know... I appreciate what you did for me."
Grayson struggles to recover, but manages it, somehow. Anja respects that. "I put your name forward when the captain was looking for suitable officers, Li. That's all."
"It's not nothing, sir," she says, meaning it. "It means a lot."
"Well, despite your many flaws, you're good at your job. Just, try not to get shot again, Sub-lieutenant."
Anja grins. "I'll do my best, sir."
--
Himalia Debris Field,
Jupiter System
Before the loyalist exodus at the end of the Civil War, Saturn was a backwater. The war touched it only lightly prior to the recent invasion, with the local garrison almost entirely siding against the usurper's forces. Jupiter, more developed and densely populated to begin with, did not get off so lightly.
As is the convention, the mere general proximity to the minor satellite Himalia was enough to earn the battle, and subsequent debris field its name. One of many to now grace Jupiter's already-cluttered orbit, this one distant enough that the gas giant is a tiny marble among the stars.
One ship, among the unrecognisable chunks of hull, the unexploded ordnance, the crushed and twisted mecha, the hulks not yet stripped down by scavengers, is a rather fresher corpse than the rest. A Divine Navy scouting vessel of the Herald class floating gutted and lifeless alongside the much older debris, its light armour and famously nimble handling not enough to save it from the lethal hull rupture that killed all hands. It's hard to dodge an ambush.
Lieutenant Boutlier is still alive, though. He flees for his life, although it's a mad, fruitless endeavour. Where does he expect to go, alone here with nothing but what air and supplies his Banner Recon Type can carry? His mecha is a tiny island of of warmth and air in a vast sea of nothingness. Without his ship to go back to, it's only a matter of time before that island returns to the universe's default state: Cold and lifeless. Perhaps it's fortunate that, as with all his comrades, something out here will hasten him on his way sooner rather than later.
Boutlier's scan map is seemingly conspiring to form a maze of false positives. He can't find the attackers anywhere, with all the still-hot debris floating around. They should never have come here, into this orbital graveyard so far from the nearest piece of civilisation. He had argued against it, insisted that it was all too risky. The captain had ignored him. Why would wouldn't he have? Boutlier was a lieutenant commanding a mecha squad on his own, doing a job that should have been above his pay grade. The Divine Navy's Jovian forces are cut to the bone, spread too thin over far too much space. So what was Boutlier but another underqualified idiot, jumping at shadows where a more experienced officer would have acted decisively?
They had just been chasing a single, barely-armed "pirate" ship, after all. That's not what they'd found in the debris field. Or rather, what had been waiting for them there. Now that he's somehow lost track of those pirates — rebels, he suspects — he can't keep himself from jumping at every strange blip, imagining an impossible number of enemies hiding all around him.
Things hadn't been like this when he'd joined. Boutlier had thought he'd been lucky, staying behind from what had become a disastrous rout out in Saturn, but...
One blip amid the debris finally makes its move. Boutlier barely sees it coming, banking hard to deflect the monofilament cutter with his Banner's thickly-armoured shoulder, everything moving too fast to get a firm look at what, precisely, is trying to kill him. He knows it's in front of him, but somehow ranged fire slams into him from behind anyway. Nothing moving on the map from that direction is nearly large enough to be a mecha, though, and whatever the attacker he blocked was has already melted away again.
"We're just out on a patrol!" Boutlier screams, into the ringing silence in his ears. "We weren't hurting anyone!" Aside from the pirates, hypothetically. "Leave me alone!" For a few gut-churning moments, whoever he's screaming at does.
Then they're on him again. He's passed too close to a huge, warped piece of warship deck when the elusive enemy mecha slams into him. Boutlier blocks the cutter strike with his own this time, but the force of the blow sends him crashing hard into the surface of the ship piece. Armour strains, alarms blare, his main camera spins wildly. When it finally settles, he's greeted by what's left of a human face — the remains of a spacer in United Empire Navy uniform, vacuum-exposed body trapped by a piece of twisted metal, glassy eyes staring back at him like a vision of his future.
It distracts him for a crucial moment before he forces his Banner to look up: The enemy is looming over him, cutter stabbing down to pry into his cockpit, mercilessly driving down toward his vulnerable body. He tries, too late, to move, to push the attacker off, frantically babbling: "No, no, no, no no, n—"
His scream cuts off, heard by no one, and there is one more forgotten body in the debris field.
"Was it really necessary to drag that out?"
Boutlier's killer, safe in his own cockpit, hangs slack and motionless for a moment as his mecha comes to a relative stop, facing the disabled banner. Then the makeshift neural bridge device connecting his mind to his mecha disengages. His body shudders briefly before coming fully to life, hands clawing at the seal on his helmet. Once it's off, he takes a long pull of water from a drinking pouch, before finally responding. "Not strictly. Neither was it necessary to take risks I didn't have to by rushing things, since the last one was alone, and not going anywhere. Besides, we can repair the Banner this way. Cockpit will be a bit of a mess even after we dump the body, though."
The voice speaking to the pilot over comm pauses for a moment, perhaps disquieted by this cold-blooded assessment. "... Fine. One less Imperial in the world regardless, I suppose."
"Many less," the pilot agrees. His tone is dispassionate, but a sliver of a smile cuts across his face as he reaches up to push unnaturally pale hair out of his eyes. In the gloom of the cockpit, the metallic contact points grafted into the skin at his temples gleam dully. "An entire ship's worth."
"True enough. Just... grab that Banner, and come back to the ship." The speaker has an air of wanting to end the conversation sooner rather than later. Still, they add, perhaps trying to raise their own spirits: "For a free Jupiter."
"For a free Jupiter," the pilot agrees, sighing as he pulls his helmet back into place. A free Jupiter one piece at a time, if that's what it takes.
--
City of Troy,
Ganymede,
Jupiter System capital
Troy is larger than it appears from Ganymede's surface. The complex of interconnected domes forming a bright spiderweb pattern against the moon's darker landscape only represents the city's uppermost levels. Below them, tunnels crawl deep into Ganymede's icy crust, a subterranean city onto itself, kept warm and alive by massive reactors. And below this, a series of aquatic habitats floating at the top of the lightless, salt-water abyss contained within the enormous moon.
The Jovian capital is the single largest population centre in the Outer Solar System, the site of immense wealth and industry, beneath Jupiter's looming gaze. Under the rule of the Holy Solar Empire, Troy is also the site of immense fear and oppression, a state of affairs that only increases the more active the Jovian independence movement grows elsewhere. The woman tasked with presiding over it all grows more and more ill-tempered apace with this.
"I am tired of excuses! You will explain yourself." Duchess Grangier's small hand slams down on the table, rattling the ornate porcelain coffee service ominously, before she continues her furious pacing. The coffee service is specially weighted for use in Ganymede's gravity, but Lady Dvorska still finds it nerve-wracking, in combination with a tone that bites like a whip. Which is absurd — she is an officer of flag rank in the Divine Navy of Correction, a veteran of the Imperial Civil War and a survivor of the purges that accompanied the victorious Holy Empire's restructuring. Admiral Baroness-Consort Allison Dvorska is acting commander of all the DNC's Jovian Forces. And yet this small, delicately built woman, whose doe eyes and soft features still manage to be doll-like even in the full grip of middle age, makes Dvorska want to flinch away from her every glare.
The pair of them are in the Governor's mansion, a sprawling, luxurious dwelling defended like a fortress. The small meeting room the two of them are occupying has been set up for this vitally important closed door session, the coffee service accompanied by a spread of finger food befitting a Duchess's table. Of course, as Duchess Grangier has not deigned to sit down the entire time, Dvorska has had to remain standing as well, while the coffee slowly grows cold.
"Your Grace," Dvorska begins, speaking carefully, "I am not trying to make excuses." When the Governor stops her pacing abruptly and turns to skewer Dvorska with a stare, it's impossible to shake the image of an angry lioness, newly aware of something it's debating whether or not to eat. "It has become nearly impossible to keep order in the outer reaches of the system — our shortages of ships and personnel has only gotten worse. The rebels have realised this. We were never going to be able to hide that the Saturn invasion force isn't coming back forever."
It's risky, mentioning the failed invasion in front of Duchess Grangier. At this point, Dvorska is willing to make that gamble. This time, it pays off: The Duchess responds without screaming. "We can't get to recouping those lost ships if they continue to raid our mining colonies and hijack our shipments enroute. You will need to pull forces away from the Galilean Moons." She knows, plainly, that this is a drastic measure, but Dvorska is unconvinced that the Governor knows how drastic.
"I am reluctant to pull assets away from Callisto," Dvorska explains, words chosen even more carefully now. "Because, your Grace, it is entirely possible that if we weaken its defences too far, we will lose it."
The Governor stares. Not a cold, piercing stare this time. Instead, for the briefest of moments, it's open-faced shock. Finally, Duchess Grangier takes her seat, hands straightening out imaginary wrinkles in her Grand Marshal's uniform. She still doesn't touch the coffee. "Explain," she orders.
Dvorska takes the excuse to be seated as well. "We've been able to keep the Callisto insurgency contained well enough, without destroying the habitats." Mostly. It's a tossup whose fault that particular screwup actually was, but the official news stories very firmly blamed the insurgents. "If they realise we're pulling ships or troops or both away, though, they'll ramp up operations, and I'm not confident we'll be able to hold on short of puncturing a few dome cities." A suggestion that she very much hopes Grangier does not think is a valid trade off.
"Unacceptable," the Governor says, immediately. "Both scenarios." She frowns, a hand toying with a strand of silvering, brown hair. Losing a Galilean Moon, even temporarily, may well be the last straw before the Emperor loses his patience and begins ordering executions. Likely starting with Duchess Lorelei's own, and unfortunately also likely including Dvorska's. "We cannot surrender the rest of the system to these low brigands, however. You will need to find a way to balance things."
"I will do everything in my power, your Grace." Dvorska's tone is unavoidably resigned. "We will need to disguise the force movements, however. So it will need to be gradual, and kept strictly secret. The insurgents cannot get wind that Callisto will be poorly defended."
Grangier nods, a severe motion. "Understand, Admiral — if this duty is beyond you, I will relieve you of it and find another more capable."
Dvorska's instinctive, wisely-unvoiced reaction is, quite literally: Do you promise? She hadn't wanted this job back when it was intended to be a temporary posting. Now that it's looking suspiciously like a permanent promotion, she wants it even less. Still, better this than having been sent to Saturn, as it turned out. Instead, she nods solemnly. "I understand, your grace. I will do my utmost." Dvorska lets things hang like that for just a moment, before asking, warily:
"Do we have any word of reinforcements from the Inner planets, your Grace?"
It's the Governor's turn to hesitate. Then, a door creaks, and both women stiffen in alarm. Dvorska's eyes slowly track over the meeting room, past walls tiled in ornate representations of the Grangier family crest, past furniture worth more than ten years of an ordinary family's universal basic income, to a door. One that was supposed to be closed and locked. Dvorska exchanges a look with Duchess Grangier, before silently rising, making her way to the door while reaching for her sidearm.
Once she's standing directly beside it, she wrenches the door open and shoots a hand out to seize whoever has been eavesdropping by the collar.
"Hey, let me go!" squawks a startled, indignant voice. A young woman, startlingly similar in appearance to Duchess Grangier, richly clothed and entirely unarmed, struggles against Dvorska's grip. "I just lost an earpiece in here, I think!"
"My lady," Dvorska says, politely. Trying to hide her frustration, "this is a private meeting."
"Well, I'm not trying to interrupt," the girl says, fixing her clothing as Dvorska releases it. "But, if you could just let me have a look in the room..."
"Arianne, enough, you idiot-girl! We are discussing important things — go elsewhere." Duchess Grangier is now glaring at Arianne, at least, instead of Dvorska.
"Yes, mother, sorry, mother," says the not-very-repentant girl, before she scurries away out of sight.
Arianne Grangier keeps up her expression of hunch-shouldered chastisement much of the way down the hall. Then, checking that no one is watching, she quickly slips through the nearest doorway, clicking the door shut behind her.
Inside the unused sitting room, a portrait of one of her ancestors looks down at her, stern and disapproving in a general sense. Making full eye contact with him, Arianne brazenly sticks out her tongue at the long dead Grangier, then pulls a comm piece from her bag.
It's a moment before the call connects, but the person on the other end picks up immediately.
"Hi, Nieszka!" Arianne says, a grin breaking out onto her face. As she listens to the reply, she leans against the back of an armchair, free hand rising to toy with the ends of her brunette hair, falling again as she finds it cut short too recently to accommodate this. "Does it? Well, it's always good news when I get to talk to you."
In a moment, her tone turns less flirtatious and more serious. "Alright, alright. It is actually good news. It looks like I have something a lot sooner than we thought." A silent moment as she listens to another reply. "It's fine, Nieszka — mother thinks I'm too much of a stupid little girl to do anything sneaky, you know that." Arianne grins again, almost childishly amused. "You remember our 'friend' from Callisto, though, right? Well, there's something interesting I think you should tell them..."
--
City of Titan,
Titan,
Regional capital of the Saturn System
She's almost home. Or so Mosi tries to convince herself. Certainly, the three-room apartment she's currently being escorted to is where she's lived for most of a year now, ever since being moved to Titan. But, there it was, wasn't it? She hadn't come to this place of her own choosing, she'd been moved here. It's a more comfortable prison than she'd ever allowed herself to imagine, but in the end, it is still a prison.
Prison or not, Mosi is ready to be somewhere quiet and alone. The evening ran long enough that the light settings in the city have been dimmed to nighttime, and she's extremely full of her own cooking. Mosi does want to spend time with her family, and she hardly regrets tonight, but... things still periodically feel strange with her mother, if not outright tumultuous, a state of affairs they both ignore as much as convenient. Mosi hasn't had a chance to build up a real relationship with Faiza, although they've at least cleared the most obvious hurdle now. With Amani, there's been a lot to work through, if with less baggage than Nalah, but Mosi hopes they're on the far side of that, at least. To say that things were awkward with Countess Perbeck present, however, is beyond an understatement.
It all went as well as could be hoped, though. Serving what was left of her family a meal she prepared herself, made with an old family recipe taught to Mosi on Luna and that she'd carried all this time... it had been an almost surreal sort of joy. One that she has no idea how to express, but hopes somehow that they understand anyway.
The elevator hums quietly as it brings herself and the two SRI agents down to Mosi's floor. Her building is a walk and a short rail trip away from her mother's, aside from the difference in altitude, in an area that seems entirely populated by people living directly on the crown's dime for one reason or another. Mosi doesn't try to speak to the two SRI operatives escorting her. She recognises both of them by now — there's a finite pool of them that rotate in and out. To date, though, she's never even thought of striking up a conversation with any of them. For all that her own sister is a member of this organisation...
... Mosi is never going to be able to relax with people who hold arbitrary power over her life, death and freedom. What little freedoms they afford her, in exchange for her full cooperation. They've long-since exhausted what small amounts of operational information of value she can provide them, and she now suspects that she's helping the United Solar Empire reverse engineer the special systems on her Provespa. It's a genuine comfort to know that her machine is being used for something, still.
Despite that, in all likelihood never being able to pilot again is deeply painful. Life is better here than it was in the Holy Empire, but the loss of her one pure escape is impossible to ignore. The exchange tonight between Dame Nalah and the Countess, aggravated this feeling, and by the time Mosi steps out onto her floor, she's feeling distinctly melancholy again, warm feelings from before having been whisked away entirely.
Almost instantly, she can tell something is wrong. A man in uniform stands in their way — not just any uniform, either: His jacket is in the sunburst colours of the Imperial Guard. He and Mosi's escort stare at one another for a few, heavy seconds before Lam abruptly jerks her head off to the side. The Guardsman complies, leaving Mosi and Daniels to watch as those two leave to confer out of earshot.
Eventually, after some animated whispering on Lam's part and stoic replies on the Guardsman's, the two of them return. "Alright, come on," Lam murmurs to Daniels.
"What's going on?" Daniels asks.
"Later," Lam says. "Way above our paygrade. Trust me." That's nearly enough to make Mosi demand to know what's going on herself, but if Lam's not going to tell Daniels, she's certainly not going to tell Mosi. Lam must catch Mosi's stricken look, because her face loses a fraction of its rigidity. "Just... go ahead, North," she says. "This is weird for us too." How very reassuring.
Mosi needs to pass by another Imperial Guard uniform at the door to her apartment, the Guardswoman quickly and efficiently patting her down for weapons. When she proves to be unarmed, she's ushered inside.
Mosi crosses the threshold, then stares, even as the door clicks shut behind her. Her shock only lasts a moment, before she drops to one knee so fast that she cracks it hard on the false wood of her floor.
Here, utterly out of place, seated as regally on Mosi's only chair as she might have been on a throne, is none other than her Imperial Highness, Lady-High-Commander of the Imperial Guard and presumed heir to the throne, Princess Daystar Helios. The flatteringly plain dress she wears under her LHC jacket does little to shake the surreality of the image. "Your... your Di—" Mosi swallows her intended honourific, heart slamming in her chest. Do not call a member of this branch of the Imperial family 'your Divine Highness'. "Your Imperial Highness!" Mosi says instead.
"Hello, Ms. North," Daystar says, as if this entire situation isn't patently absurd. Why would she ever come here, of all places? If she wanted so badly to speak to Mosi, she could presumably contact the SRI and arrange for a meeting. This smells like internal politicking at a high level, and in Mosi's experience engaging with that is the fastest way to get yourself killed. But she's already in the same room with a Helios — it may well be too late for that.
"You may stand, Ms. North," Daystar says, gently. Numb aside from the throbbing in her knee, Mosi feels herself rising to her feet. For the first time, she notices the two other Imperial Guards standing to either side of the Princess, taking up what little room is left in the cramped living space. Daystar leans forward in the chair, steepling her fingers. Her bright eyes look straight into Mosi's own, seemingly trapping her on the spot. "Are you satisfied with your life, Ms. North?"
Satisfied? What kind of question was that? "I'm... not going to complain, your Highness," Mosi says carefully.
"No, I expect you're not," Daystar agrees, as though Mosi has just given away far more than she intended. "You don't seem like the type to complain about that tracker on your wrist, needing to clear all of your movements a week in advance, being followed by armed escort even then."
Mosi blinks, mind racing to try and guess where this is going. "I'm... a war criminal, your Highness," she reminds her. "I have been shown extraordinary leniency."
"Yes, you've done horrible things," Daystar says. Somehow, the non-judgemental tone makes Mosi flinch in a way that vocal disgust never does. As if it's not an insult, just the facts. "Would you like a chance to make up for them?"
If Mosi were less terrified and confused, that would have been insulting. You don't make up for the kind of things she was forced to do. Faint echoes of the kind of nightmares she still has stir in the back of her mind. Despite how blank Mosi is trying to keep her features, as Daystar studies her face, some of that seems to show there.
"Well, then," Daystar decides, "would you like a chance to earn a real place here?"
"A... place, your Highness?"
"Would you like to have that tracker off your wrist, not be on everyone's watchlists forever?" Daystar stares at her intently. "Would you like to be able to make your family proud?"
That hits home, like a punch to the gut. Being told that they're proud of her for 'coming this far', for going to therapy, for settling into her new life... she knows that it's meant well, but it doesn't feel true, to Mosi. Maybe that's wrong, but it's hard to not feel like a stain on the family legacy, at best. "What could you possibly do about that?" she asks. Then, remembering herself, she hastily adds: "—Your Highness."
Daystar smiles very slightly, as though she knows she's going to get what she wants. "To get quickly to the point, then: I have a proposal. One that I think you'll want to hear."
END
The story will continue in...
Started! Click the logo above to go to the next quest in this series.
Acknowledgements, future plans, some side content to come in the meantime.
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EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
Man, it's been one hell of a ride. Enjoyed it (as heart-wrenching as a lot of it were).
will be waiting for the sequel
will be waiting for the sequel
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serra2
Himouto! Sylvanas-chan
Yeah, there were enough ratings and toy sales of the models to justify another season.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
yesssss.
- Location
- Florida
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HELL YEAH
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Honestly, a part of me is not sure I trust Daystar and her plans at all.
cB557
voOOP
It was, I think Daystar's rebuilding it from nearly scratch.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Alright, rampant speculation time.
This isn't the first time Daystar makes this offer.
When your spooks start wondering where you get your recruits from, it means you are hiring from the people no one knows about... like those conveniently misplaced prisoners left over from the failed invasion. That's why Okello was offered a position of the Guard Captain: it doubles as a second full-time job of secretly integrating the newcomers into the Navy... and also probably coming up with failsafes and necessary protocols to safeguard from those whose loyalty didn't quite change as easily as though before. Not to mention screening who would take Daystar up on her offer in the first place.
Anyway
Mostly, I'm just glad Anja managed to get ahead in life. Let's hope we we don't have to murder her in the next season
Also
Petals of Gold and Silver when?
This isn't the first time Daystar makes this offer.
When your spooks start wondering where you get your recruits from, it means you are hiring from the people no one knows about... like those conveniently misplaced prisoners left over from the failed invasion. That's why Okello was offered a position of the Guard Captain: it doubles as a second full-time job of secretly integrating the newcomers into the Navy... and also probably coming up with failsafes and necessary protocols to safeguard from those whose loyalty didn't quite change as easily as though before. Not to mention screening who would take Daystar up on her offer in the first place.
Anyway
Mostly, I'm just glad Anja managed to get ahead in life. Let's hope we we don't have to murder her in the next season
Also
Petals of Gold and Silver when?
