This whole 'helping with the move' thing has already gone worse than you could possibly have imagined. By the time the Captain drops the perpetual barrier around the navigation block, you've gone through the first four stages of grief, wobbled around the idea of acceptance, and then settled into a state of near-homicidal sadism. Even Mitl eventually clued in that you were incredibly pissed and fled at the first opportunity. The only reason you didn't follow is the sunk-cost fallacy. You've already put too much effort into this task. You'll rest when it's over.
Anyway, when the Captain pokes his nose out of his quarters, you are waiting for him with a crystalline arm and your most unnerving smile. "Captain! So good of you to join me!"
He meets your gaze squarely and without a trace of fear. Impressive. Also deeply infuriating. You really want to terrorize someone right now. At no point do his eyes go anywhere near your arm, but that means nothing. The Captain is a pilot, after all.
An Estil's hair is important. It serves as a mark of skill. If you can do something with hair down to your ankles, you must be far better at it than people with shorter hair to manage. Beyond that, it has a complex network of nerves hooked into it and can extend a sensory field, which is why so many Estil wear their hair loose and mobile. It's not truly prehensile, but it does tend to drift around and prod at things. Also, keeping your hair tied up gets very painful very fast. Some people still do it, of course. Not everyone can control their hair as finely as their job requires.
There are only two professions that always require a specific hairstyle. One of them is pilot. The other is thaumaforge. His tightly restrained braid and your shorn bob set you both apart from the rest of your people. To a certain extent, they also link you together as the only ones on this ship who didn't hesitate to permanently mutilate themselves in the pursuit of knowledge. The ends of your hair have been cauterized with starstuff, the associated nerves transformed into a psionic net that can manipulate magic on the subatomic level. His hair is still and lifeless, the strands moving together as one fluid whole or not at all, just like the ship he commands.
It's uncomfortable. You don't know how much you want to have in common with Shayin Es Talis.
"Mitl has been contained," the Captain says. It's a statement, not a question.
"Good. Where?"
"His new greenhouse and attached lab. Getting everything set up correctly should occupy him for a time." The Captain makes a show of glancing left and right before he turns back and returns to the navigation block, leaving the door open. After a few seconds, he glares over his shoulder at you. "Well, Zaiyu? Aren't you here to provide assistance?"
Oh, was that supposed to be an invitation? "Coming, coming. Didn't know you wanted the pleasure of my company so badly."
The Captain doesn't quite make a face at you, but his sensory field crackles irritably. You are aware of this for one very important reason: the Captain's sensory field envelopes the entirety of the ship. Even if he was relaxed, it would stretch far around the moon and deep into space. That's a huge amount of information to be sifting through constantly, always on the lookout for debris, void denizens, and shifting hyperspace currents. You're honestly kinda jealous of him for constantly having all that data at his fingertips. You are also self-aware enough to realize that you're very much in the minority there, so you keep your mouth shut.
Pilots are respected. They are not envied.
This is the first time you've been in the navigation block on the Talis. You've seen what they look like on other ships—even did a brief stint at piloting yourself—but there's value in novelty. It's dark, obviously, to aid with focus and sensory extension. There are no lights. Instead, absolutely everything broadcasts a unique electromagnetic or magical signature. The ceilings are higher here than they are in the rest of the ship, and the corridors rounder. Passages spiral off from openings on every surface, leading deeper into the guts of the ship. In the distance, you can feel the faint thrum of the ship's core behind all its layers of shielding.
Most of the equipment here was designed to be manipulated entirely with one's thoughts. Precious little of it has handles. Needless to say, teleporting it outside of very careful, very specific circumstances would absolutely scramble its settings and lead to the Captain bringing down the wrath of a very angry telepath on the offender. You keep your hands—well, hand—to yourself and wait for direction.
Fortunately, if there's one thing the Captain excels at, it's telling people what to do. Unfortunately, the first thing he tells you to do is "Stay over there and don't touch anything."
Which is how you end up spending forty-five minutes floating in a corner while he goes over absolutely everything in the block with the psychic equivalent of a fine-toothed comb. This is nice, because it gives you plenty of time to figure out how to move properly with your newly-crystallized arm and even do some very basic channeling tricks to confirm that your internal magic system is working fine. It's also terrible, because you hate sitting still and not touching things.
Finally, you can take it no longer. You jab your fleshy finger in the direction of the hyperspace scan tapestry that the Captain has spent the last five minutes delicately unweaving from its resting place. "Why are you going over each individual thread? Just check if any of the patterns are fraying and move on!"
"No," he says bluntly. "Each individual thread must be examined for wear, tear, and any outside particulates before movement. If this protocol is not followed, the accuracy may drop by an unacceptable degree."
"It
may drop by 0.00002 percent!"
"As I said, an unacceptable degree of error."
You groan and tuck your stone arm in toward your chest as casually as you can. This is going to be your new default posture from now on, might as well get used to it. "You monster, you're holding me hostage."
"Yes."
Well, that was unexpected. "…why am I being held hostage?"
"Because with Mitl and Rins outside of the ship, this is the only place with high enough security for us to talk," he says blandly. His eyes remain glued to the glowing strands of tapestry shifting in the air in front of him, but you can feel his attention on you. "There are several things to address before the mission proceeds."
"Did you drag everyone else in here for a chat, too? Is this a glorified performance review?" If so, you have nothing to worry about, because you have never done anything wrong. Ever. In your life.
The Captain's eyes narrow a fraction. "As if I'd allow either of them into close quarters with my equipment. These threads would snap if Rins breathed wrong. And Mitl…"
He shudders wordlessly. You think about it for a moment, then find yourself shuddering as well.
"Yeah, please never let Mitl in here, he'd grow a tree straight through the core. Using the reactors as fuel."
"I would never." The Captain takes a totally unnecessary moment to collect himself. "Concerning what happened earlier today… it was within my calculations."
Oh, so you are being chewed out. Unfair. "In my defence, it was Mitl who set the Crystalvine off."
"I am aware. You handled yourself well enough."
That… is not where you thought this conversation was going. "Wait, seriously? I mean, yeah, but—"
People have a tendency to blame you when things happen, whether or not you are actually behind them. It's probably because you're aggravating. Given how little tolerance the Captain has for—basically anything—you were not expecting him to be reasonable about this.
"Mitl's carelessness is a problem." A thin smile flickers across the Captain's face. "A problem I am now very justified in addressing with extreme prejudice."
"In other words, you're happy I was petrified?"
The smile vanishes like it was never there. "One of us was going to get hurt eventually," he says, frosty and remote as any asteroid. "I'm… pleased… it was the one most likely to spring back afterward."
Oh Mithos, the Captain just complimented you. More importantly, the Captain just admitted to feeling a feeling. Are you dreaming? Holding eye contact with him, you reach up and pinch your cheek, hard.
Ow, ow. Not a dream. Which means…
"Captain, are you dying?"
"Stop."
The Captain goes back to checking over his gear with an utterly blank face. No matter how much you tease him, you can't make him show any more emotions. It's a real pity. That smile, scary as it was in context, almost made him look like a real boy.
---
After the Captain is finally done his totally unnecessarily thorough check, he starts actually assigning you to carry stuff to the base. Not any of the stuff that's critical to running the ship, of course. Anything that vital is already an extension of his body. It would be weird. No, he assigns you auxiliary communications gear, back-up power supplies, and the more specific scanning devices. Stuff you were actually trained in using and transporting when you did your piloting courses, in other words.
Suspicious.
"So, are you assigning me the gear I'm familiar with on purpose, or is this a failed power play?" you ask after the fifth time you're directed to pack up a device you know well.
"I don't fail my power plays," the Captain says evenly. His eyes are focused on the very large, very elaborate, very much actively on fire defensive array he's carefully removing from the ship's atomic makeup.
"You know what, that's fair. Don't know what I was thinking."
Either way, moving pilot gear is annoying as hell at the best of times. This is not the best of times. Though you suppose it's better to be moving equipment designed to be manipulated entirely without touch on your first day of petrification. Imagine if you had to move Rins' gun collection one-handed and angry. You'd still manage it, of course, but it would be so annoying.
The Captain makes very sure that one of you is always watching the remaining gear while the other flies something over to the base. You're a little surprised he trusts you enough to leave you alone with the more esoteric stuff. After a bit of thought, you decide it's probably trapped enough that he'd be confident leaving it alone. Having you on guard duty is probably as much a test of your self-control as it is of any theoretical intruders who might try and tamper with his things.
Well, it's a test you're not going to fail. You leave his collection of flashy but dangerous gear the hell alone when he's away and make sure everything he gives you to carry ends up at the base safely. You even make sure to keep your hands well away from your charges, no matter how durable they are. It's time to get back into good levitation habits. If you're going to be working in close quarters with a pilot, you're not going to let him judge you for sloppiness.
Finally, it's time for the last trip. This also means it's time to say goodbye to the Talis, at least temporarily. You return from base to find the Captain floating quietly outside the ship with an unreadable expression.
Funny. You would've thought he'd be happy to escape that little tin can. But maybe it's not the ship he disliked. Maybe he just hated having the rest of you in his space. You can understand that, you suppose.
"We should probably hide it," you say after a minute of quiet. "You know, before we deactivate cloaking."
The Captain's attention settles heavily on your shoulders. "Why?"
"Because humans have totally set up a satellite network? I mean, it's pretty basic, but they do very much have eyes in the sky. And telescopes. A lot of which can absolutely take pictures of the moon." You go to lace your hands behind your head, realize you can't do that anymore, and scowl instead. "There's no reason to start bringing down heat on ourselves before we're ready."
He nods slowly. "A persuasive argument."
A moment later, the ship shimmers and vanishes from your perceptions entirely. You didn't even feel the surge of power that must've accompanied every stealth system being activated and set to loop at once. What an incredible show of control. You shiver despite yourself.
"How long can you hold that?"
"Indefinitely," he says.
"No, seriously. How long?"
"I said what I said, Zaiyu." He gives you a sidelong glance. "You are not the only one here who is considered an exceptional talent. Try to remember that."
You can't tell if he's bragging or just stating facts. Either way, you bristle and open your mouth, but he's not done talking.
"Underestimating an opponent is the fastest route to failure. You are the only person on this team who may understand what I mean when I say this." You can feel him thinking about your arm. "It wasn't your fault that the Crystalvine lashed out. It wasn't your fault the Crystalvine was even on the ship. Nonetheless, one moment of carelessness and you're down the functionality of an arm." The Captain turns to you. "You are not a careless person, Zaiyu. But I need you to be a careful one. Our priority is making sure this mission succeeds. Everything else is secondary. Am I understood?"
This is getting a bit intense. You nod.
"I am not directly in charge of your operations on the ground, so consider this a request rather than an order." His tone makes it clear the difference is only a technicality. "Keep your activities and your creations as low-key as possible for as long as possible. The less humans know about us, the better. I do not want to give earth's current inhabitants time to prepare."
"They'll find out about us eventually. It's basically impossible to mount an invasion without anyone noticing."
"Yes. But we can put that day off for as long as possible." The glow of his eyes darkens. "If necessary, you have permission to use flashy but lackluster creations as a smokescreen to conceal our objectives. Do not allow the humans to know the reason we came to earth until we reach Phase 5. Phase 4 at minimum."
He does not elaborate on what these phases are. If you hadn't read the mission briefing, you'd be in trouble. But you did, so you know exactly what he's talking about.
Phase 1 of the invasion is information gathering.
Phase 2 is infiltration.
Phase 3 is sabotage.
Phase 4 is destabilization.
Phase 5 is conquest.
Phase 6 is relocation.
And Phase 7 is victory.
You tip your head back and watch the glimmer of distant starlight. Most of those stars are dead or dying, but their light still shines bright. "You really think we can keep our goals under wraps for that long?"
"We have to." There is no room in his voice for compromise. "This mission cannot fail."
True enough.
Shayin wants you to keep your activities as low-key as possible and deflect attention from the mission's real objective: to remove humanity from planet earth.
[ ] SIR, YES, SIR
The Captain asked and you will answer. His reasoning is pretty sensible. Besides, you're pretty sure this wasn't actually a request, no matter how he phrased it. You will make a concentrated effort to conceal your activities on earth beyond what you were already planning.
[ ] AND LEAVE SHOW BUSINESS?
The Captain is asking for a bit much here. Not only are you a naturally flashy guy, but you're trying to infiltrate a totally alien culture here. You can sure try to stay under the radar, but you don't think you'll succeed completely. You will try to conceal your activities on earth beyond what you were already planning.
[ ] BORN FOR THE SPOTLIGHT
Wow, did the Captain choose the wrong person to ask. You can tell right now that trying to fly under the radar will not work and you're not going to make an effort to change that. There's no point in fighting the inevitable. Maybe you can convince him to make you a distraction while everyone else gets things done quietly behind the scenes? You will not try to conceal your activities on earth beyond what you were already planning.
And Turn 1's socials are finally done! Not giving you an 'all of the above' option again any time soon. This was exhausting.
