You give Em the tiniest of nods and he sighs, then turns to the two of your kids.
"Effectively immediately, you two are grounded," he says, his voice firm. "For the next two months, no sweets, no entertainments, no balls, just your cabins, your work, and penitence."
"What!?" Junie exclaims. "Two months?"
"Three now," Em says, frowning down at her.
"But-" Junie starts.
"Four," Em says. Junie's hands bunch up and she trembles, then ducks her head down, muttering under her breath. You hear it - but Em doesn't. He frowns. "What was that, J-"
"You're not my real dad!" Junie flings at him, her eyes brimming with tears, then she shoves past him, and is out the door and down the corridors. Zeph starts crying as well, while Em sighs, then adjusts his collar with one hand, the kind of way he does when he has been deeply unsettled. You gently pick up Zeph, holding them close as they keep crying. You say to Em, gently.
"I'll deal with Zeph, do..."
"Go on ahead," Em says, quietly, and you lean over to kiss his cheek, gently. Over the five years on Purgatorio, Em and Junie had been quite close - as close as him and Zeph. Ryia was the standoffish, cool aunt of the family unit - but you and Em had worked hard to be the best parents you could be. You knew, in your Logis Implant and in your higher brain, that it was just the kind of emotionality that a teenager - feeling guilty and anguished and put upon by the world and her own demons - would say, to lash out. To wound.
But knowing that didn't make the wound any less real.
You carried Zeph to their rooms on the ship - and you see that the local crew have done their best to make it a chamber appropriate for one of Zeph's station. The bed's comfortable, and the cabin is not too spacious, with a writing desk that has a small holo of you, Em and Ryia standing next to one another. Candles flicker on the nightstand beside the bed, and a vista-port at the end of the room looks out onto the sweep of the ship and the glittering stars beyond. You set Zeph down on the bed, kneeling before them and giving them a little smile. "Hey..." You wipe some tears off their cheeks. "This may all seem scary and forever to you, but...you know Em, Ryia and I? We all will still love you and June, forever." You kiss their cheek. "You just need to learn from this mistake - and not make another like it."
Zeph gives a little nod, looking down.
"I missed you, you know?" you say, then hug them tightly - and your youngest wraps their arms around you, squeezing on like a lamprey. You know that they are grounded but you can't help it, you crawl into bed, drawing them close and cuddling against them, gently. You caress their head as they cry, until they're all out of tears. Eventually, they fall asleep - and when you lift your eyes to the door, you see Em there, looking haggered and drawn, but that emotion is fading away as he watches you two. He sits on the bed near Zeph's head, petting them gently as they sleep.
"So...Junie has locked herself in her room," he says, quietly. "She's playing some...truly abominable music as loudly as she can."
"She didn't mean it, you know?" you ask, quietly.
Em sighs. "I know," he says. "But...she's also right-"
"No, she's not." You sit up. "Em, you are her father - blood be damned. We raised her ever since her mother died, and ...recent misadventures nonwithstanding..."
Em shakes his head a bit. "Eventually, she is going to be bearing the Ma'ko Warrant. She'll be an...ally. A friend, I hope, to the family. But not my daughter." His finger pauses, stroking along the inside of Zeph's ear. "THey're sleeping like a log..."
"Long day," you say, sitting up, then squirming around in the bed until you've slid off it. You tuck Zeph in tightly, then make sure that a stuffed teddy is near them.
"I know, they're grounded," you add before Em can say anything. "But-"
"We are too soft on the two of them," Em says, shaking his head, taking your hand and walking you out of the room. The door closes and he sighs quietly. "Ryia is waiting for us in the conference room - we're charting our course from here on out."
You nod.
"And I was thinking maybe," Em says. "We're often busy with our duties now - it might do to secure a...governess. Someone they can learn from, while we're off and about."
You frown. "I'm not sure about some stranger being invited into our life."
"Obviously, we can't just hire any random governess," Em says. "But a properly vetted member of the Ordo Famulosa may be exactly what is required..."
You frown. "And the fact Ryia and are..." you wiggle your fingers.
"The airlock is right there," Em says, dryly, as you come into the conference room. Ryia is there, smoking a cigarillo, and watching the windows with a smug as sin expression upon her features. "Ryia, what were you thinking?"
"I dunno, thinking I was going to save the fleet by using my talents to the best of their ability," Ryia says, casually. "I've always been better driving a ship with my hands than commanding it - you know that. So, why not leave it in my second's hands and guide the bombers in?"
Em opens his mouth, then closes it.
"She has a point," you say, grinning.
"I always have a point," Ryia says, then stubs out her cigarillo. "I hear that the kids were acting like kids."
"When a midhive family's child borrows their father's skycar and wrecks it, that's one thing," Em says, taking a seat and sighing. "When a Rogue Trader's child borrows a courier ship and triggers a fleet action that kills..." he pulls a data slate on the table over and thumbs through it. "Good heavens, sixty seven people?" He blinks. "We have a few hundred wounded, a great deal rad sickened, but...only sixty seven dead? They must have hit each ship nearly three dozen times with direct macro-hits, was the penetration really that terrible?"
"Rak'gol guns are for stripping shields so their lances can gut you," Ryia says. "And, well...they've mostly been hitting transports."
"A transport would have been wrecked by those weapons," you say, nodding confidently. "I'm sure of it."
"Well," Em says, then sighs. "We're terribly short on supply - and I don't trust getting anything from Chorda's Folly."
"The food wasn't what wiped the colony out!" Ryia says.
"No, but the Loathesome flew an incredibly foul ship," Em explains. "The survey flights spotted a few dozen Rak'gol survivors fleeing the impact site and took them out from the air with a few heavy bolter passes. But they had to retreat before landing, the whole area around the ship is so radioactive that only the Ruinous Powers or an Ork would live there now. The ship sent a dust plume into the jetstream and now the entire planet glows and will be doing so for a few decades."
"Ugh." Ryia's nose wrinkles. "Remind us to never deal with these things again if we can help it."
Em snorts. "Noted." He pulls a map from the cabinet that hangs on the wall and unfurls it. It is an old map of the Expanse, which he pins down with a data slate and a bit of cultery. "We're here." He points up in Cauldron, where Chorda's Folly sits, with thready lines drawing between it and nearby systems, most of which are unnamed and uncharted. "According to the map, Inquity is here, down by the God Emperor's Scourge, a warpstorm in the rimward edge of the Foundling Worlds..." He draws a line past it, while you grump.
"It's past Damaris!" you say, angrily. "We were just there."
Em chuckles. "Such is life, now...Damaris was rebuilding last we left - but it is a well populated, fairly advanced world and they owe us. But Footfall always has the more...diverse stock."
"Alternatively," Ryia says, drawing a line. "if you chart this route, around the Scourge, you can swing by the Breaking Yards."
Both you and Em, remembering your last visit to the Breaking Yards of SR-651, look at one another.
"Absolutely not," Em says.
---
Where to?
[ ] Damaris to resupply and acquire goods, then on to Inequity (Better modifier to Acquisition checks, lower chance of finding what you want)
[ ] Footfall to resupply and acquire goods, the on to Inequity (No modifier to Acquisition Checks, higher chance of finding what you want0
[ ] Write In
Author's note: Failing an acquisition check doesn't mean you don't get the item, it just might require more creativity to get it. Also, for write in, some suggested worlds include Zaynth (ancient city ships have incredibly useful stuff), Port Wander (nearer to civilization means far more stuff can be found, but it is also through the Maw), the Ship Breaking Yards of SR-641, hell, if you want you can head to the Processional of the Damned and steal more archeotech from it for all I care. The Expanse is the limits!
