You snatched up your sword, strapped her to your hip, then frowned as the tip of the sword bumped against the floor.
You're too big, you thought.
Why I never!
With Aria's grumbling in your head, you started to adjust the grip, about to swing the witchblade over your back, but then to your startlement, there was a shimmer, a glow, a flare, and then the sword began to sing softly. The song was eerie and quiet and beautiful, causing your skin to prickle into gooseflesh. Flufferkins, your several legged alien felinid pet (the slightly less destructive of your two prizes from the Dread Pearl), peeked his nose out from among your closet at the sound of the singing sword. The sword, before your eyes, shrank, slendered down, and became an arming sword rather than a two hander. The song stopped, and you heard Aria's panting voice in your head.
Too big indeed!
You blinked, then gave a nervous smile. "Thank you..." you snatched up your tricorn, shrugged on your red jacket, then paused to look yourself in the mirror, your eyes glittering. On the surface, you looked precisely as you wished to look - soft, cuddly, a bit short. But under your generous curves, you were hard as steel. Literally, you had augmetics aplenty that were just required to survive in this world of nobility that you'd been born in, and you were fairly sure that you were more clockwork and circuitry than you were squishy organs. Of course, your husband hadn't noticed, because you'd been
quite clear on your specifications!
You gave a nod to the mirror. "Better than mortal men deserves," you whisper, trying to cram down your nerves.
When you open the door out, you find Em has been waiting for you like Saint Stentinous, patient as the dawn, and you feel the all too normal bubbling excitement and glee that hits you whenever you see him. You're married! To him! You leap up and scissor your legs around his belly as your arms wrap around his shoulders, drawing him into a tight hug and kiss alike. Em's arms go wide and he flails them as he stumbles and a few crew who are hurrying to their places pause in their dragging of the plasma rigging to give great big huge smiles. You break the kiss and give them a saucy wink, while Em harrumphs, coughs, then grabs onto your hips to draw you away and put you down.
"As you were, Mr. Bowers," he says, frowning to the mid who is in charge of the cabling party.
"Come on, boys!" The midshipman says, his face beat red. "Move on! Move along!"
The crew start their walking again as Em shakes his head and gives you a smile.
"Glad to see you're not as nervous as me, then?"
"Oh, me? No!" you laugh, and cram your nerves down.
***
The
Revenge and the
Tachyon's Demise drop from the warp with a screaming roar of energies - and you bounce before the vistaplates as the hands on the bridge drag them down with rattling and clanking bangs. The officers in the auspex pits are at their work, but you want to see the system with your own eyes. The sun that burns at the heart of her is a huge, ruby red and casts her blood red colors along the bridge. There is a thick pal of dust between you and the sun, transfiguring its brightness into a murky gloom.
"Oh wow! What a
lovely new hellhole we've chosen as our rendezvous," your older sister, Ryia, drawled from the side of the captain's throne. Despite Em not even sitting in it, Riya would rather lean against it than take the seat. Some silly naval thing about who got to sit where.
"Technically, you chose it, Ryia," Em says, while you giggle.
"I thought you were trying to be less negative," you say.
"This
is less negative," she says, frowning slightly, then rolling her new augmetic arm - she had chosen it to suit her own personal styling meaning it was quite strong - nearly as strong as your own synth-grafted tissue augmentations. But where your muscle tissue was threaded through with subtle strands of genesequenced arcana that had only ever been detected by your ship's chirgeon after almost two years of checkups, Riya had gone for the ominous black arm of pure obsidian ending in razor sharp talons that she could clack together ominously.
The
Revenge's first officer stepped to Em, quietly speaking to him. He gave a subtle nod and murmured the words 'come to general quarters.' Your ears perked and you cocked your head as your logis implant chittered in the back of your head. Come to general quarters - that was the subtle code for
beat to quarters. Same order, less drumming. And, because it was significantly slower, it did send up less of those little obvious plumes of heat that could be spotted by other ships.
"Something the matter, honey?" you ask.
"The Colossus hasn't arrived yet," he says. "That's not unusual - we expected them to either overshoot us by a week or two, or to undershoot
us by a week or two..." He frowns. "It's something else. There is a colony world here, Chorda's Folly. The orks may have passed here, but the system shows no sign of despoiling. The colony's satellite fixtures are there, they even have an auto-repeater announcing they have water and victuals for passing voidships."
"And?" You ask as Ryia clicks her taloned finger against her taloned thumb.
"We've sent a hail and have gotten no response," Em says, quietly. "There's no interference, no static, no sign of anything being wrong. The lights are on. No one is
home."
---
Oh dear...
[ ] We should stay in the outsystem. The bumboats can fish for ice comets and we have enough victuals to keep us until the
Colossus shows up. I want to make sure that, when our kids show up, they have a formation round them
[ ] We should go insystem and check on those people - Chorda's Folly has seventy thousand souls, they can't have all
vanished.
[ ] Write In