- Pronouns
- She/Her
THE EXPANSE: Whispers From Above (Expanse/Flying Circus AU quest)
- Thread starter DragonCobolt
- Start date
- What if? Crossover Sci-Fi
- Location
- USA
[x] "...SO! How's Heinrich!"
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] "Uh well you see...I need to water the eggplants? Yes! I need to water the plants and then let Wulf know! yup. Totally normal, not at all about the sex we've been having-oh Fischstäbchen! I have been watering plants, not doing the sex! No Sex Doing With Wulf! That's a conflict of co-captancy! Basically impossible that we've made like eels and done the dirty where nobody can see, hahahahahaaa..." Yes, perfectly convincing. All will be fooled! (Nobody will be fooled)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I just wanna check, in case I'm missing something that to others is super obvious or was at least textually laid out, but ... is there in fact some conflict of interest/problem with the three of them doin' the do? Or is this more of a "it's none of your cultural equivalent of beeswax" sorta thing?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
They're teenagers, everything is embarrassing!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
ohhhh, okay, so it's basically like social/cringe stakes, not like "having this relationship be common knowledge can cause problems or harm" stakes. that's nice. I think I'll offer up two write-ins, see if either of them go anywhere.
[X] "...yeesss. Yes, it's Secret Captains' Code. I can't tell you the particulars, because she'd kill me, very hush hush, but broadly speaking this is ... about, erm ... rendezvous protocols. Yes."
[X] Try and become the first Fisher in known history to spontaneously combust.
- Location
- Salt Lake Ciy, UT
[X] Try and Play it cool: "Oh, Wulfe and I are lovers, she's just asking if I want to, you know. Have fun." WARNING: You will not play it cool at all.
2.3: Hammerlock
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Author's Note: I lived, bitch
You smile, slowly. You know that was your first mistake. Smiling around an Erder, who hasn't really spent much time with Fishers, was…was a great way to show off all the incredibly sharp, sharp teeth you have. You are now unable to think of anything but how sharp your teeth is - which leads your brain, skittering like water droplets in microgravity, to the last place your sharp, sharp teeth had been.
-grazing along Wulf's neck, her hands squeezing onto your-
"Oh, uh…" you say, then pause. Casually. This is a casual amount of silence to put after the word. "Wulfe! And I!"
Long pause.
Perfect pause.
Just a perfect pause, full of exact meaning and dramatic stillness. A long, perfect pause, which lets Julia admire your sharp sharp teeth. Why are your chrometaphors going crazy right now? Well, it's because you're absolutely calm. If you just look absolutely calm, then Julia would totally grasp that your pauses? This was just how Belters spoke! Everyone knew that! You weren't panicking! Captain Isa did not panic.
"...and I?" Julia said, into the silence. The most perfect silence.
"Areloversookaybye!" You say, springing to your feet. "And that's totally normal and fine, and, uh, bye!"
You sprinted away as fast as your legs could carry you under thrust gravity, leaving Julia blinking, slowly.
"Those crazy kids," Amos said from the corner of the mess hall, where you had completely failed to even notice he existed. He sipped from his self-sealing drink bulb, his asteroid face crinkling into a warm smile. "We should put dopamine suppressant in the Juice."
Julia coughed.
"What does the eggplant mean?"
Amos smiled at her. "Well, peaches-"
"Nevermind," Julia said, seeming to have reconsidered everything in her life up to this point.
The crackling voice over the radio betrays absolutely zero fear. "Oye, sharkalowda, this is OPA marines detachment Firefuckers. Ey, you gotta nice Herja ship there. Where you pinch it, ke?" You shake your head slowly, while Alex feathers the controls with his fingers. It takes a hell of a lot of work to keep even a deadly, sleek little frigate like the Minnow in the radar shadow of a ship like the Chariot of Steel. She's not even mostly made of steel - she's a spindly mass of carbon fiber made into a sturtwork that reminds you of old pictures of even older ironmongery from Erde. Between the struts are the round tanks of pressurized gasses and fluids - tanks that are, currently, secretly full of a scattering of marines. OPA marines.
You try and not think about what the difference between an OPA marine and a LNN marine might be. Your brain keeps whispering words like power armor and training in the back of your head.
"This here ship is legitimate salvage, I will have you know," Alex says into the microphone, sounding irritated.
"You da bossmang?"
"No, I'm the pilot, I got more right to defend my pretty lady's honor here," Alex says, his drawl getting thicker and heavier. You put your hand on his shoulder, your magnetic boots clunking slightly.
"Has the battlecruiser pinged you yet?"
"No, Sharkalowda," the Firefucker's CO says. "They're bein nice and quiet. Course, we're not exactly on a straight on, straight on, you know. Gonna slip on by. Close, but not so close. Not until we throw out some bait. Get ready, honorable pilot man. Haha!"
You frown, nodding to Alex. "This is where they're going to manufacture a reason to change course. So, uh…"
"I'm ready, hoss," Alex says.
You glance back. The rest of the crew of the Minnow are strapped down in their steats. You know you should get into your chair and web down, in case the fight gets terminal velocity anytime soon. You check the seals on your helmet - everyone's in their spacesuits, in case the ship gets ventilated - and then stomp over to your seat. You swing down and strap in. Next to you, Arren flashes a nervous grin through his faceplate.
The radio crackles. "This is the Chariot of Steel, we've just lost some tanks to sloshing, Mr. Battlecruiser. Do you mind much if we fetch them?"
The response comes out, curt and formal. "Belter ship, be aware, if you attempt anything other than an immediate pickup, we will fire on you. You have been locked. You will be given no warnings."
The radio clicked off.
"Gotcha! Gotcha!" Then, the radio shifting transmissions to tightbeam. "You got that, Minnows? Mightly nice friendly folks we're saying hi too out here."
You gulp. "We got it. Just…stick to the plan."
The Chariot started to shift off course - swinging itself around to intercept with its lost cargo pods. The Minnow shifts to move alongside it. You're within torpedo range now. But also in hammerlock.
"Ready on your word, Hoss," Alex says.
You lick your lips.
—
When do you give the word?
[ ] Now. The Chariot was never meant to live through the engagement - all her crew are on those pods. She splits them off now, takes the first hit, you slip inside of their railgun's hemisphere, and start a PDC duel.
[ ] In a bit. Get at least to the halfway point of hammerlock - and then break and attack.
[ ] Wait for it…wait for it…push it to the furthest edge you can, then hit them as hard as you can.
You smile, slowly. You know that was your first mistake. Smiling around an Erder, who hasn't really spent much time with Fishers, was…was a great way to show off all the incredibly sharp, sharp teeth you have. You are now unable to think of anything but how sharp your teeth is - which leads your brain, skittering like water droplets in microgravity, to the last place your sharp, sharp teeth had been.
-grazing along Wulf's neck, her hands squeezing onto your-
"Oh, uh…" you say, then pause. Casually. This is a casual amount of silence to put after the word. "Wulfe! And I!"
Long pause.
Perfect pause.
Just a perfect pause, full of exact meaning and dramatic stillness. A long, perfect pause, which lets Julia admire your sharp sharp teeth. Why are your chrometaphors going crazy right now? Well, it's because you're absolutely calm. If you just look absolutely calm, then Julia would totally grasp that your pauses? This was just how Belters spoke! Everyone knew that! You weren't panicking! Captain Isa did not panic.
"...and I?" Julia said, into the silence. The most perfect silence.
"Areloversookaybye!" You say, springing to your feet. "And that's totally normal and fine, and, uh, bye!"
You sprinted away as fast as your legs could carry you under thrust gravity, leaving Julia blinking, slowly.
"Those crazy kids," Amos said from the corner of the mess hall, where you had completely failed to even notice he existed. He sipped from his self-sealing drink bulb, his asteroid face crinkling into a warm smile. "We should put dopamine suppressant in the Juice."
Julia coughed.
"What does the eggplant mean?"
Amos smiled at her. "Well, peaches-"
"Nevermind," Julia said, seeming to have reconsidered everything in her life up to this point.
***
The crackling voice over the radio betrays absolutely zero fear. "Oye, sharkalowda, this is OPA marines detachment Firefuckers. Ey, you gotta nice Herja ship there. Where you pinch it, ke?" You shake your head slowly, while Alex feathers the controls with his fingers. It takes a hell of a lot of work to keep even a deadly, sleek little frigate like the Minnow in the radar shadow of a ship like the Chariot of Steel. She's not even mostly made of steel - she's a spindly mass of carbon fiber made into a sturtwork that reminds you of old pictures of even older ironmongery from Erde. Between the struts are the round tanks of pressurized gasses and fluids - tanks that are, currently, secretly full of a scattering of marines. OPA marines.
You try and not think about what the difference between an OPA marine and a LNN marine might be. Your brain keeps whispering words like power armor and training in the back of your head.
"This here ship is legitimate salvage, I will have you know," Alex says into the microphone, sounding irritated.
"You da bossmang?"
"No, I'm the pilot, I got more right to defend my pretty lady's honor here," Alex says, his drawl getting thicker and heavier. You put your hand on his shoulder, your magnetic boots clunking slightly.
"Has the battlecruiser pinged you yet?"
"No, Sharkalowda," the Firefucker's CO says. "They're bein nice and quiet. Course, we're not exactly on a straight on, straight on, you know. Gonna slip on by. Close, but not so close. Not until we throw out some bait. Get ready, honorable pilot man. Haha!"
You frown, nodding to Alex. "This is where they're going to manufacture a reason to change course. So, uh…"
"I'm ready, hoss," Alex says.
You glance back. The rest of the crew of the Minnow are strapped down in their steats. You know you should get into your chair and web down, in case the fight gets terminal velocity anytime soon. You check the seals on your helmet - everyone's in their spacesuits, in case the ship gets ventilated - and then stomp over to your seat. You swing down and strap in. Next to you, Arren flashes a nervous grin through his faceplate.
The radio crackles. "This is the Chariot of Steel, we've just lost some tanks to sloshing, Mr. Battlecruiser. Do you mind much if we fetch them?"
The response comes out, curt and formal. "Belter ship, be aware, if you attempt anything other than an immediate pickup, we will fire on you. You have been locked. You will be given no warnings."
The radio clicked off.
"Gotcha! Gotcha!" Then, the radio shifting transmissions to tightbeam. "You got that, Minnows? Mightly nice friendly folks we're saying hi too out here."
You gulp. "We got it. Just…stick to the plan."
The Chariot started to shift off course - swinging itself around to intercept with its lost cargo pods. The Minnow shifts to move alongside it. You're within torpedo range now. But also in hammerlock.
"Ready on your word, Hoss," Alex says.
You lick your lips.
—
When do you give the word?
[ ] Now. The Chariot was never meant to live through the engagement - all her crew are on those pods. She splits them off now, takes the first hit, you slip inside of their railgun's hemisphere, and start a PDC duel.
[ ] In a bit. Get at least to the halfway point of hammerlock - and then break and attack.
[ ] Wait for it…wait for it…push it to the furthest edge you can, then hit them as hard as you can.
[X] Now. The Chariot was never meant to live through the engagement - all her crew are on those pods. She splits them off now, takes the first hit, you slip inside of their railgun's hemisphere, and start a PDC duel.
[X] Wait for it…wait for it…push it to the furthest edge you can, then hit them as hard as you can.
Voting for both of these because I can't decide if we want to get in close or not...
[X] Wait for it…wait for it…push it to the furthest edge you can, then hit them as hard as you can.
Voting for both of these because I can't decide if we want to get in close or not...
[X] Wait for it…wait for it…push it to the furthest edge you can, then hit them as hard as you can.
It is ALWAYS more cinematically more appropriate for the heroes to be like "Wait for it....Waaaiiittt for ittt" while fingers turn white from the stress of gripping to hard and sweat beads and drips down foreheads.
It is ALWAYS more cinematically more appropriate for the heroes to be like "Wait for it....Waaaiiittt for ittt" while fingers turn white from the stress of gripping to hard and sweat beads and drips down foreheads.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] Wait for it…wait for it…push it to the furthest edge you can, then hit them as hard as you can.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Wait for it…wait for it…push it to the furthest edge you can, then hit them as hard as you can.
ThatGazzer
Minds Eye Bind
- Location
- PNW
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Now. The Chariot was never meant to live through the engagement - all her crew are on those pods. She splits them off now, takes the first hit, you slip inside of their railgun's hemisphere, and start a PDC duel.
In an Ambush, it is always a good idea to go first
In an Ambush, it is always a good idea to go first
- Location
- USA
[x] Wait for it…wait for it…push it to the furthest edge you can, then hit them as hard as you can.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Now. The Chariot was never meant to live through the engagement - all her crew are on those pods. She splits them off now, takes the first hit, you slip inside of their railgun's hemisphere, and start a PDC duel.
We're primed to go for a good old-fashioned ship-of-the-line slugmatch, but we don't know what kind of extra surprises a fae-touched LNN cruiser might be packing. Being inside hammerlock makes sense, but being so close as to have no time to react to any unexpected tricks seems foolhardy.
The only point I can see to closing that gap partway or going as close as possible is if we think it'll give a better chance for more of the pods to make it through. Is that what we imagine to be the case?
We're primed to go for a good old-fashioned ship-of-the-line slugmatch, but we don't know what kind of extra surprises a fae-touched LNN cruiser might be packing. Being inside hammerlock makes sense, but being so close as to have no time to react to any unexpected tricks seems foolhardy.
The only point I can see to closing that gap partway or going as close as possible is if we think it'll give a better chance for more of the pods to make it through. Is that what we imagine to be the case?
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2.4: Kinetic Impact
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"What for it," you say, hastily swinging yourself around and then webbing yourself into the copilot's seat.
Alex's eyes are bead-bright, reflecting the light of the Minnow's consoles. Everything seems so stupidly close on the screen. That is an illusion and cold hard truth at the same time. There's so many kilometers of empty space between you and the mystery ship - but those kilometers could be cleared between blinks.
One blink.
Two blinks.
Between those blinks, a railgun slug could have ripped through the Minnow as if her ceramics and her metal weren't even there. Any person caught between slug and the endless black of space would be…
Missed.
The Chariot of Steel continues to drift.
"Here we go," Amos says, quietly. "Strap in kids."
Your breath seems to bounce back against your helmet's faceplate, constantly. You want to look away from Amos and the screen and to Arren. You can't beat the thought. The coms crackle again. "Belter ship, you are not intercepting your cargo."
"We don't want to mess this up, man!"
"Hoss, I-"
Alex starts the word.
Time came unglued. You remembered it all wrong - in jarring, twisting confusion. The splat of red came a solid eternity before the vibrating groan that ripped through your palms and feet and buttocks, ringing through the ship. The Chariot started to fly apart…and there was a moment of confused stillness, before the winking flash of something on the battlecruiser and a spread of superheated plasma, launched around the kinetic impactor to add a bit of extra time for the intense magnetic fields to fling closer to C.
Then the crack of your head snapping to the side, then the crush, the scream.
"Ah hell!" Alex's drawl cut through the jumble of your thoughts. "We got a nicked coolant vent."
Your helmet is blurry with blood. The whole room begins to shudder and judder at once. Vibrations buzz through you. Your head jams down and your bladder empties itself in pure terror. Alex puts the Minnow through a string of dizzying transformations - left, right, up, down, the motions completely throw off any sense you have of motion. Then there's a whirr CLUNK and a whoop and a buzzing rrrrrtttttttt! And then the sounds, over the radio, of shouting voices, overlapping Belter creole and ear-shattering gunshots.
"We're clear, get…ah hell!" Alex says, and you realize he's looking back, over his shoulder. You swing around and almost throw up. There's blood. So much blood. And bone. And a floating hand. You'd always read about being misted in the Captain Holden books - but you had always thought it'd be like on a TV. Globes of glittering red, beading and connecting in the newly enforced microgravity, parting around…
Wulf.
Your heart clenches tight and you start scrabbling at your restraints. Fuck fuck fuck fuck- You close your eyes. Then you slam your head back against the seat. The helmet whacks against your head. Pain rings through your head and you feel your panic snap back into focus. The world gets straight.
"Arren! Shed! Get her to the autodoc! Now! Now! Now!" You say, your voice shockingly calm., You snap your head around. "Alex, sitrep."
"We…we fucked em up, Hoss," he said, a bit dazedly.
The battle had taken less than a minute.
The battlecruiser's first action had been, once the Chariot had crossed a certain threshold of suspicion, to fire their dorsal turreted railgun. The kinetic impactor had ripped through the center of the Chariot, aimed directly at the spoof-bridge that the Belters had thrown together. If anyone had been in it, they'd have died as the impactor splintered and shredded through the hull of the Chariot like an oversized shotgun blast. Instead, half a dozen Belter marines had been turned into hamburger in the fractional seconds between impact and their pods launching. Most of the kinetic impactor's energies had been spent shredding the Chariot's belly and guts.
As the pods spread, the battlecruiser's PDCs had opened fire. Alex had immediately launched a half dozen torpedoes while putting the Minnow onto a wild course - not just to evade, but to also get beyond the pods so he could return fire. Most of the battlecruiser's guns had targeted the torpedoes as they had begun to accelerate and whip towards it - but one had kept trained on the Roci.
Fourteen rounds had hit, all of them passing cleanly through the hull. One severed a coolant line. Thirteen had shredded their way through the living cabins and the armory, reducing several valuable HRMC light combat armor suits into carbon fiber spaghetti.
The fourteenth had clipped into the bridge, struck Wolf in the wrist, ripped through her arm, tore a meaty chunk from her shoulder, and then snipped off the tip of one of her ear before striking the ceiling of the bridge and exiting into space.
A minute of combat.
It had taken a fraction of a second for Wulf to lose an arm. If she had been…
If she…
If she…
Your breath came shallow and fast and you started trembling. The leader of the Belter Marines - a tough and rough man named Trejo - looked sympathetically at you. Alex, who had been going through the steps of the battle, after everything was locked down tight, looked concerned. "You okay, hoss?" Arren sat next to you. He patted your shoulder. He was still streaked with blood, from his cheek to his shirt.
"Y-Yeah, yeah, keep walking us through," you say. Have to be strong. Have to be strong.
"Right," Alex says. "So, uh, knowing these battlecruisers are a bit light on the backup, I had pre-programmed some targeting runs, Amos ran em right when the battle started. The battlecruiser didn't do any real manuvering, uh, their Epstine drive was shut down for their, uh, little sneak and peek mission." He sounded awkward, uncertain, like he'd never done this before. "So, uh, Betty, er, uh, PDC-1 here took out their fore ammo dump, and PDC-2…"
"What's her name?" Trejo asks, casually.
"Trisha," Alex says, not missing a beat. "Trisha took out the aft dump. So, their guns went dry pretty quick. Then it was all your show, Trejo."
Trejo nods. "We dock, we lock, we break right in. They have some crew prepped and ready to fight, but not that many, takes time, you know." He shrugs, then makes a little throwing gesture. The screen in the tiny conference room that…you suppose is meant for this kind of thing…flicks on and shows a simplified animation of dots moving through a 3d frame projection of the ship. Red dots start popping into existence then flashing with black Xs. "We ice, we ice, we ice, then they start pulling back, but Squad-2 and 3 are already in the fusion room, and we damp them down quick quick." He makes a chopping gesture and the screen flicks on, showing men and women in white uniforms throwing up their hands. A rabbit eared wildlute shouts, as loudly as she can.
"We surrender, don't shoot us! Don't fucking shoot us! Sigard's balls!"
The Belter carrying the rifle in the helmet cam footage bumps her cheek with a barrel. "Eh? Eh? You not gonna blow us up, innalowda? Not got no voice commands?"
"I'm not paid enough for self sacrifice, you glass boned piece of-"
The camera cut off as Trejo grins. "We got the ship!"
You nod. "Casualties?"
That sounds like something James Holden would say in his books. You hope you sound even slightly as commanding.
"Twelve in the pre-board, which is better than we expected," Trejo says. "We're down two legs, one arm, the rest are shrap-nall wounds from glancing hits, spalling plus hard burn, that kind of shit." He shrugs laconically. "Not so bad. Only three warm 'n dead from brain or heart shots." He ticks them off with his fingers. "Lorrie Grosche, Bernard Hengle and Ratfuck."
You blink. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but it pops out: "Ratfuck?"
Trejo shrugs. "Nicknames."
"Ah." You say.
"You can…ask about Wulf now," Alex says, quietly.
You blush. "And…Wulf?" you ask.
"Autodoc stopped the bleed, patched up the wound. She's got a lot of nerve damage, a lot of muscle damage, a lot of shock," Alex says. "If…this was before the war, easy as pie, we just get a vat grown arm and sew it back on, it'll synch right up. As it is, she's going to have merry hell with any cybernetic prosthetic with that kind of damage."
You put your hands over your face, rubbing. "Right."
In the silence of the moment, Arren says; "It's not your fault."
In your mind you scream at him. In your mind, you lay out every stupid fucking decision you made since leaving Eir, every dumb shit wrong choice you ever fucking made. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put Isa Fuck Up Morgenthau in charge of this fucking spaceship. You were just…just…just…
Just a…
Just…
You realize you're crying into your hands.
HEINRICH
You lay with your head resting against nothing at all - because you lay in nothing. You're floating. That means that the ship is…
Is…
You close your eyes. Your palm goes to your face, rubbing, desperately.
There are three facts you know. That you are floating. And that the ship is quiet - and the medical bay is full. You…should…be able to piece this together. But instead, your mind has a yawning blank inside of it. It makes you want to scream and cry and tremble. You want Jo so fucking badly right now. You want to burrow against his stork-tall build Jos and inhale his scent and know he'd keep you safe, like how he'd watched your back, when you were new and he was old and it felt like you'd be together forever and ever and ever…
The door to the medical bay opens and the captain, Morgenthau, steps in, her magnetic soles clicking slightly. She takes her time, speaking to the wounded marines first, hesitating. The bed next to yours has her friend, Wulf, on it. That should mean something to you - some intuition. Instead, you just watch her, then turn your head to Wulf. Wulf is asleep, her face gray and ashen. The autodoc is still working on the hideous ruin of her shoulder, protected from other people's eyes by nothing but a thin surgical shield. The whirring and clicking sounds of micro-waldos and the buzzing of surgical lasers makes your nose wrinkle.
"So, uh, for everyone - we're going to be under thrust soon - the battlecruiser is ours and we're going to be taking it back to Briganti station so that Naomi can take a look at every piece of it and figure out what the hell these assholes are doing," she says, pitching her voice up loud.
Ragged cheers come from the wounded - most of them sounded faintly loopy and confused.
"Hey."
The voice startles you. You jerk your head around and realize that Jos had been behind you the whole time. How long had he been there?
How many subtle clues were there that I should have pieced together? You ask, caressing his hat, resting in your lap. You had woken up with it in your hands and the smell of his aftershave in the air.
"Hey Jos," you say, casually. "Müller. I mean. How…how did the battle go?"
Jos shrugs. "It's a battle, Heinie. People got hurt. Some got killed." He shrugs. "Hingabe is still spinning silently, so this battlecruiser isn't directly or obviously connected with it." You have no idea how he's gotten that and scream internally.
The door opened and Amos sticks his head in. "Yo, Captain," he says, and Morgenthau - who has stopped to stand over Wulf and look down at her. "Uh, one of the cargo units from that League ship has been shipped over, to make room for the Chariot's survivors."
"Huh?" Morgenthau looks confused. You have no idea why or how. "How is it taking up cargo space in their living chambers?"
"Yeah, that's why you gotta see this," Amos says. "You. Really. Gotta see this."
His hideous face is so tense that all the lines have become right angles. Hard edged and fierce. Morgenthau sighs, looks back at the sleeping Wulf, then nods. You start wriggling in your seat. Jos puts his hand on your shoulder. You shove it off, and then get to your feet. "I have brain damage, not…leg…damage," you mutter. "I need to get out of this goddamn room."
Jos sighs. "That is the most Henrich thing you've said since Hingabe."
Morgenthau barely notices you - you wonder why? - as you, Jos, and Amos head down to the main cargo hold. Mina is already there, and strapped into her deadly power armor. Why? You're not sure.
Contextless, your eyes fall on…
Where was the cargo?
Because the only thing in the hold was a folded up cargo container and a creature unlike anything you'd seen before - in real life. But it was exactly like the creatures in storybooks printed by Erders and foisted on Belters for centuries. The name tingles on the edge of your tongue…
Silvery fur. Sleek muscles. Golden eyes, like shot glasses in the light of a ritzy bar.
The wolf man turns to look over the lot of you and beams. "Ahhhhhhhhhh!" he says, voice deep and rumbling. "You're the conquering heroes." He paused, cocking his head to the side, sniffing curiously. "Do I scent the touch of one of my awakened siblings upon one of your members." His eyes narrowed, and he glances over…and peers directly at you. "You have bargained with She Who Walks In The Woods, haven't you?"
"It can fucking talk!?" Morgenthau exclaims.
"It? I don't show off the package to be called an it, beautiful," the wolf man says, gesturing down to his…
Ahem.
Morgenthau's cheeks darken and she shakes her head. "Amos, did they send…him…over without pants?"
"Oh, they offered some, but, well, I heard the captain of this fine ship was a beautiful and nubile girl," the wolfman crooned, and Morgenthau's cheeks burned even harder. "They vastly understated the loveliness of you, oh Captain Morgenthau."
"Mina," Morganthu says, her voice tight. "Do you have incendiary bullets loaded in that."
"Yes," Mina's voice is flat.
"Rude," the wolf man says, then sighs, and looks at you.
And…
You understand. He's a fae. Like the queen you had traded with. The realization that clicks home makes you almost sag with purest delight, your breath catching as you stammer out: "Y-You're a fae lord!"
"The first to awaken, yes," the wolf man said, chuckling quietly. "Protogen has been my benefactors for the past twenty odd years, asking me the most tiresome questions, taking the most tiresome samples." He shuddered from head to toes. "The only real benefit to me has been the remarkable number of gorgeous women they managed to acquire for me." His grin was huge.
"Ugh," Morgenthau says.
If i'm thinking about fae, I can think again, you think, then step forward, whispering to Morgenthau. "Hey…let me."
"Hmm?" She turns.
The idea spills from your mouth, faster than Jos can stop you. "I've already delt with Fae, so, any mistakes i make, that's just more damage to me, my brain's already fucked, and, I can make deductions with fae, when I'm thinking about fae. I don't know why or how, but…I can, please, just…just…just…I've interrogated people before. I know what I'm doing."
Morgenthau looks at you - and her eyes are haunted and full of sorrow. You don't know why. You can't ever know why.
"...okay," she whispers, and her face is full of a kind of…cringing self hatred. Like she can't bear herself. BUt she's also relieved.
The mystery waits for…
For never.
As you step forward and turn to the wolf man.
"All right," you say.
—
What questions do you ask of him?
[ ] Write in! Ask as many as you want~
Alex's eyes are bead-bright, reflecting the light of the Minnow's consoles. Everything seems so stupidly close on the screen. That is an illusion and cold hard truth at the same time. There's so many kilometers of empty space between you and the mystery ship - but those kilometers could be cleared between blinks.
One blink.
Two blinks.
Between those blinks, a railgun slug could have ripped through the Minnow as if her ceramics and her metal weren't even there. Any person caught between slug and the endless black of space would be…
Missed.
The Chariot of Steel continues to drift.
"Here we go," Amos says, quietly. "Strap in kids."
Your breath seems to bounce back against your helmet's faceplate, constantly. You want to look away from Amos and the screen and to Arren. You can't beat the thought. The coms crackle again. "Belter ship, you are not intercepting your cargo."
"We don't want to mess this up, man!"
"Hoss, I-"
Alex starts the word.
Time came unglued. You remembered it all wrong - in jarring, twisting confusion. The splat of red came a solid eternity before the vibrating groan that ripped through your palms and feet and buttocks, ringing through the ship. The Chariot started to fly apart…and there was a moment of confused stillness, before the winking flash of something on the battlecruiser and a spread of superheated plasma, launched around the kinetic impactor to add a bit of extra time for the intense magnetic fields to fling closer to C.
Then the crack of your head snapping to the side, then the crush, the scream.
"Ah hell!" Alex's drawl cut through the jumble of your thoughts. "We got a nicked coolant vent."
Your helmet is blurry with blood. The whole room begins to shudder and judder at once. Vibrations buzz through you. Your head jams down and your bladder empties itself in pure terror. Alex puts the Minnow through a string of dizzying transformations - left, right, up, down, the motions completely throw off any sense you have of motion. Then there's a whirr CLUNK and a whoop and a buzzing rrrrrtttttttt! And then the sounds, over the radio, of shouting voices, overlapping Belter creole and ear-shattering gunshots.
"We're clear, get…ah hell!" Alex says, and you realize he's looking back, over his shoulder. You swing around and almost throw up. There's blood. So much blood. And bone. And a floating hand. You'd always read about being misted in the Captain Holden books - but you had always thought it'd be like on a TV. Globes of glittering red, beading and connecting in the newly enforced microgravity, parting around…
Wulf.
Your heart clenches tight and you start scrabbling at your restraints. Fuck fuck fuck fuck- You close your eyes. Then you slam your head back against the seat. The helmet whacks against your head. Pain rings through your head and you feel your panic snap back into focus. The world gets straight.
"Arren! Shed! Get her to the autodoc! Now! Now! Now!" You say, your voice shockingly calm., You snap your head around. "Alex, sitrep."
"We…we fucked em up, Hoss," he said, a bit dazedly.
The battle had taken less than a minute.
The battlecruiser's first action had been, once the Chariot had crossed a certain threshold of suspicion, to fire their dorsal turreted railgun. The kinetic impactor had ripped through the center of the Chariot, aimed directly at the spoof-bridge that the Belters had thrown together. If anyone had been in it, they'd have died as the impactor splintered and shredded through the hull of the Chariot like an oversized shotgun blast. Instead, half a dozen Belter marines had been turned into hamburger in the fractional seconds between impact and their pods launching. Most of the kinetic impactor's energies had been spent shredding the Chariot's belly and guts.
As the pods spread, the battlecruiser's PDCs had opened fire. Alex had immediately launched a half dozen torpedoes while putting the Minnow onto a wild course - not just to evade, but to also get beyond the pods so he could return fire. Most of the battlecruiser's guns had targeted the torpedoes as they had begun to accelerate and whip towards it - but one had kept trained on the Roci.
Fourteen rounds had hit, all of them passing cleanly through the hull. One severed a coolant line. Thirteen had shredded their way through the living cabins and the armory, reducing several valuable HRMC light combat armor suits into carbon fiber spaghetti.
The fourteenth had clipped into the bridge, struck Wolf in the wrist, ripped through her arm, tore a meaty chunk from her shoulder, and then snipped off the tip of one of her ear before striking the ceiling of the bridge and exiting into space.
A minute of combat.
It had taken a fraction of a second for Wulf to lose an arm. If she had been…
If she…
If she…
Your breath came shallow and fast and you started trembling. The leader of the Belter Marines - a tough and rough man named Trejo - looked sympathetically at you. Alex, who had been going through the steps of the battle, after everything was locked down tight, looked concerned. "You okay, hoss?" Arren sat next to you. He patted your shoulder. He was still streaked with blood, from his cheek to his shirt.
"Y-Yeah, yeah, keep walking us through," you say. Have to be strong. Have to be strong.
"Right," Alex says. "So, uh, knowing these battlecruisers are a bit light on the backup, I had pre-programmed some targeting runs, Amos ran em right when the battle started. The battlecruiser didn't do any real manuvering, uh, their Epstine drive was shut down for their, uh, little sneak and peek mission." He sounded awkward, uncertain, like he'd never done this before. "So, uh, Betty, er, uh, PDC-1 here took out their fore ammo dump, and PDC-2…"
"What's her name?" Trejo asks, casually.
"Trisha," Alex says, not missing a beat. "Trisha took out the aft dump. So, their guns went dry pretty quick. Then it was all your show, Trejo."
Trejo nods. "We dock, we lock, we break right in. They have some crew prepped and ready to fight, but not that many, takes time, you know." He shrugs, then makes a little throwing gesture. The screen in the tiny conference room that…you suppose is meant for this kind of thing…flicks on and shows a simplified animation of dots moving through a 3d frame projection of the ship. Red dots start popping into existence then flashing with black Xs. "We ice, we ice, we ice, then they start pulling back, but Squad-2 and 3 are already in the fusion room, and we damp them down quick quick." He makes a chopping gesture and the screen flicks on, showing men and women in white uniforms throwing up their hands. A rabbit eared wildlute shouts, as loudly as she can.
"We surrender, don't shoot us! Don't fucking shoot us! Sigard's balls!"
The Belter carrying the rifle in the helmet cam footage bumps her cheek with a barrel. "Eh? Eh? You not gonna blow us up, innalowda? Not got no voice commands?"
"I'm not paid enough for self sacrifice, you glass boned piece of-"
The camera cut off as Trejo grins. "We got the ship!"
You nod. "Casualties?"
That sounds like something James Holden would say in his books. You hope you sound even slightly as commanding.
"Twelve in the pre-board, which is better than we expected," Trejo says. "We're down two legs, one arm, the rest are shrap-nall wounds from glancing hits, spalling plus hard burn, that kind of shit." He shrugs laconically. "Not so bad. Only three warm 'n dead from brain or heart shots." He ticks them off with his fingers. "Lorrie Grosche, Bernard Hengle and Ratfuck."
You blink. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but it pops out: "Ratfuck?"
Trejo shrugs. "Nicknames."
"Ah." You say.
"You can…ask about Wulf now," Alex says, quietly.
You blush. "And…Wulf?" you ask.
"Autodoc stopped the bleed, patched up the wound. She's got a lot of nerve damage, a lot of muscle damage, a lot of shock," Alex says. "If…this was before the war, easy as pie, we just get a vat grown arm and sew it back on, it'll synch right up. As it is, she's going to have merry hell with any cybernetic prosthetic with that kind of damage."
You put your hands over your face, rubbing. "Right."
In the silence of the moment, Arren says; "It's not your fault."
In your mind you scream at him. In your mind, you lay out every stupid fucking decision you made since leaving Eir, every dumb shit wrong choice you ever fucking made. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put Isa Fuck Up Morgenthau in charge of this fucking spaceship. You were just…just…just…
Just a…
Just…
You realize you're crying into your hands.
—
HEINRICH
You lay with your head resting against nothing at all - because you lay in nothing. You're floating. That means that the ship is…
Is…
You close your eyes. Your palm goes to your face, rubbing, desperately.
There are three facts you know. That you are floating. And that the ship is quiet - and the medical bay is full. You…should…be able to piece this together. But instead, your mind has a yawning blank inside of it. It makes you want to scream and cry and tremble. You want Jo so fucking badly right now. You want to burrow against his stork-tall build Jos and inhale his scent and know he'd keep you safe, like how he'd watched your back, when you were new and he was old and it felt like you'd be together forever and ever and ever…
The door to the medical bay opens and the captain, Morgenthau, steps in, her magnetic soles clicking slightly. She takes her time, speaking to the wounded marines first, hesitating. The bed next to yours has her friend, Wulf, on it. That should mean something to you - some intuition. Instead, you just watch her, then turn your head to Wulf. Wulf is asleep, her face gray and ashen. The autodoc is still working on the hideous ruin of her shoulder, protected from other people's eyes by nothing but a thin surgical shield. The whirring and clicking sounds of micro-waldos and the buzzing of surgical lasers makes your nose wrinkle.
"So, uh, for everyone - we're going to be under thrust soon - the battlecruiser is ours and we're going to be taking it back to Briganti station so that Naomi can take a look at every piece of it and figure out what the hell these assholes are doing," she says, pitching her voice up loud.
Ragged cheers come from the wounded - most of them sounded faintly loopy and confused.
"Hey."
The voice startles you. You jerk your head around and realize that Jos had been behind you the whole time. How long had he been there?
How many subtle clues were there that I should have pieced together? You ask, caressing his hat, resting in your lap. You had woken up with it in your hands and the smell of his aftershave in the air.
"Hey Jos," you say, casually. "Müller. I mean. How…how did the battle go?"
Jos shrugs. "It's a battle, Heinie. People got hurt. Some got killed." He shrugs. "Hingabe is still spinning silently, so this battlecruiser isn't directly or obviously connected with it." You have no idea how he's gotten that and scream internally.
The door opened and Amos sticks his head in. "Yo, Captain," he says, and Morgenthau - who has stopped to stand over Wulf and look down at her. "Uh, one of the cargo units from that League ship has been shipped over, to make room for the Chariot's survivors."
"Huh?" Morgenthau looks confused. You have no idea why or how. "How is it taking up cargo space in their living chambers?"
"Yeah, that's why you gotta see this," Amos says. "You. Really. Gotta see this."
His hideous face is so tense that all the lines have become right angles. Hard edged and fierce. Morgenthau sighs, looks back at the sleeping Wulf, then nods. You start wriggling in your seat. Jos puts his hand on your shoulder. You shove it off, and then get to your feet. "I have brain damage, not…leg…damage," you mutter. "I need to get out of this goddamn room."
Jos sighs. "That is the most Henrich thing you've said since Hingabe."
Morgenthau barely notices you - you wonder why? - as you, Jos, and Amos head down to the main cargo hold. Mina is already there, and strapped into her deadly power armor. Why? You're not sure.
Contextless, your eyes fall on…
Where was the cargo?
Because the only thing in the hold was a folded up cargo container and a creature unlike anything you'd seen before - in real life. But it was exactly like the creatures in storybooks printed by Erders and foisted on Belters for centuries. The name tingles on the edge of your tongue…
Silvery fur. Sleek muscles. Golden eyes, like shot glasses in the light of a ritzy bar.
The wolf man turns to look over the lot of you and beams. "Ahhhhhhhhhh!" he says, voice deep and rumbling. "You're the conquering heroes." He paused, cocking his head to the side, sniffing curiously. "Do I scent the touch of one of my awakened siblings upon one of your members." His eyes narrowed, and he glances over…and peers directly at you. "You have bargained with She Who Walks In The Woods, haven't you?"
"It can fucking talk!?" Morgenthau exclaims.
"It? I don't show off the package to be called an it, beautiful," the wolf man says, gesturing down to his…
Ahem.
Morgenthau's cheeks darken and she shakes her head. "Amos, did they send…him…over without pants?"
"Oh, they offered some, but, well, I heard the captain of this fine ship was a beautiful and nubile girl," the wolfman crooned, and Morgenthau's cheeks burned even harder. "They vastly understated the loveliness of you, oh Captain Morgenthau."
"Mina," Morganthu says, her voice tight. "Do you have incendiary bullets loaded in that."
"Yes," Mina's voice is flat.
"Rude," the wolf man says, then sighs, and looks at you.
And…
You understand. He's a fae. Like the queen you had traded with. The realization that clicks home makes you almost sag with purest delight, your breath catching as you stammer out: "Y-You're a fae lord!"
"The first to awaken, yes," the wolf man said, chuckling quietly. "Protogen has been my benefactors for the past twenty odd years, asking me the most tiresome questions, taking the most tiresome samples." He shuddered from head to toes. "The only real benefit to me has been the remarkable number of gorgeous women they managed to acquire for me." His grin was huge.
"Ugh," Morgenthau says.
If i'm thinking about fae, I can think again, you think, then step forward, whispering to Morgenthau. "Hey…let me."
"Hmm?" She turns.
The idea spills from your mouth, faster than Jos can stop you. "I've already delt with Fae, so, any mistakes i make, that's just more damage to me, my brain's already fucked, and, I can make deductions with fae, when I'm thinking about fae. I don't know why or how, but…I can, please, just…just…just…I've interrogated people before. I know what I'm doing."
Morgenthau looks at you - and her eyes are haunted and full of sorrow. You don't know why. You can't ever know why.
"...okay," she whispers, and her face is full of a kind of…cringing self hatred. Like she can't bear herself. BUt she's also relieved.
The mystery waits for…
For never.
As you step forward and turn to the wolf man.
"All right," you say.
—
What questions do you ask of him?
[ ] Write in! Ask as many as you want~
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh gods, I need to go back and re read stuff.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Same? I kinda forgot why we are here?
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'll leave it to other people to figure out what we want to ask about plot-wise, but I think one question Heinrich would definitely come to in this moment is:
[ ] "So, you have something you're trying to accomplish. You, as a member of the fae, like to make deals. We have some injuries among us we can't easily fix. Can we work something out?"
'cause for one thing, Wulf is badly hurt, nigh on irreparably. If we can work something out with the fae, I think she'd appreciate having a working arm.
For another, Heinrich's lost his mind, in a much more terrifying sense than "insanity", at least to me*. If he can barter to get his cognitive abilities back, and he presently has the mental wherewithal to do so, there's very little he wouldn't try or offer in exchange. I've recently powered through Erika's "Whispers in the Deep" quests, which I absolutely love and hope she's able to return to someday, and now that I know who Heinrich is (much more than I did at the start of this quest) I feel for the absolute Hell he must be going through. And, being Heinrich, I also can't imagine he's learned his lesson about making deals with the Fae, so he'd definitely try it again, figuring he can do it right/better this time.
[ ] "So, you have something you're trying to accomplish. You, as a member of the fae, like to make deals. We have some injuries among us we can't easily fix. Can we work something out?"
'cause for one thing, Wulf is badly hurt, nigh on irreparably. If we can work something out with the fae, I think she'd appreciate having a working arm.
For another, Heinrich's lost his mind, in a much more terrifying sense than "insanity", at least to me*. If he can barter to get his cognitive abilities back, and he presently has the mental wherewithal to do so, there's very little he wouldn't try or offer in exchange. I've recently powered through Erika's "Whispers in the Deep" quests, which I absolutely love and hope she's able to return to someday, and now that I know who Heinrich is (much more than I did at the start of this quest) I feel for the absolute Hell he must be going through. And, being Heinrich, I also can't imagine he's learned his lesson about making deals with the Fae, so he'd definitely try it again, figuring he can do it right/better this time.
Also, I've experienced a taste of that aforementioned Hell; when COVID caught me, I could barely make my brain process anything as complicated as "making food", never mind reading or trying to think about anything. And afterward, even having 'recovered', I've noticed lingering cognitive decline; it's harder to find words, to recall old information or make new information stick, to focus, to write...I've been living a comparatively small semblance of Heinrich's experience, and lemme tell ya, if there were a fae capable of making deals around, culturally ingrained knowledge to not trust or bargain with them or not, if there was even a chance of getting that lost step back, I'd try for it. And if I found myself in his condition in real life, no fae around to barter with or future-tech to possibly help out, I wouldn't be able to live like that.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So, the Eros incident happened, but it was FAE and you've tracked back the possible source to this battlecruiser to figure out what the fuck is going on - having now learned that the battlecruiser is owned by shady pre-war corporation Protogen, and they had a fey for at least twenty years!?