Once more into the breach, dear friends

[hellonspectacles]

It is nighttime, or what passes for nighttime in space, and the ship Mount Ida is quiet.

It isn’t a particularly large vessel. There are berths for a dozen crew members and private rooms for the ship’s two officers, a mess hall, a med bay, an armory, a brig. Nothing about it is particularly luxurious—Blood of Eden doesn’t go in for luxury, and the members of Troia Cell are no different—but everything is functional and well maintained. The ship hums faintly with the sound of engines and life support and electric lights, a but most of the crew don’t notice it anymore.

Near the officer’s cabins is another berth, occupied (or so it seems) by a single person. It contains a bed, and a sink, and a table on which, strangely, sits the perfectly formed skeleton of a human hand. The door is locked from the outside and a crew member stands guard. Are these precautions to keep the person inside from escaping, or to protect them from coming to harm? No one is sure anymore.

The crew member, Sergeant Hot Coals of Vengeance, is bored. Their shift is almost over, they need a piss, and they’re not even sure what the point of this assignment is anyway. Sure, the room’s occupant might be a zombie lover, and she might be a little weird. And sure, she did dislocate Lieutenant Pash’s arm when they tried to take that gross little bag of bones from her, but that was months ago. These days, she’s polite, and she spends long hours in secret meetings with the Commander, and she always asks for an escort when she needs to leave the room.

Coals really needs to piss. They peek through the little window in the door.

Inside, Camilla Hect is curled up on a narrow bed, breathing steadily. She’s asleep, and anyway, the door is locked. What’s the worst that could happen if they stepped away for a few minutes?

Coals leaves their post, and Camilla sleeps on—or so it seems.

Comments

[astrogator]

It's another temporal rift.

That's Lieutenant Tayrey's first thought, as she struggles to make sense of her surroundings. She knows a starship engine when she hears one. This particular low hum alerts her to the fact that isn't the Prosperity, or a ship of equivalent size. It's smaller. It's not until she starts wandering the corridors that she realises just how much smaller. The lights are dimmed, and that means second-shift - or night, to planetsiders. It's possible, of course, that deductions which work for her own sector might be entirely inaccurate for somewhere so foreign, but they're the best she can do for now. She'll revise as necessary.

It's a small ship, and quiet. Dark half of second-shift, she thinks. That's good. That gives her time to come up with an explanation for being here. A lone Tradeliner materialising on a ship familiar with the organisation is bad enough, but in a place where her credentials likely mean nothing? It'll be an upsystem struggle not to get tossed out the nearest airlock.

Hearing footsteps, she flattens herself against the nearest wall, watching a figure pass by. Luckily, Sergeant Coals is too preoccupied to be looking around corners. It gives her an idea of what she's dealing with. Military? It's possible. Those looked like rank insignia. Another best guess, to be refined as necessary. She carries on down the corridor once she's sure she won't be noticed.

Not long after, she comes to a locked door, with a small window at eye level. Naturally, she can't resist peering in. A sleeping woman. Now that's curious. Aboard a Tradeline ship, the only reason to lock someone up would be if they were both dangerous and due to be put off the ship at the next station. That's an assumption that she doubts will carry well or accurately, but still it makes her nervous. She glances quickly down at her gun, secured to her belt as always. That's safety, as Tayrey's concerned.

Now, she has a decision to make. Wake this prisoner, or talk to the crew instead, or try to avoid everyone and keep out of sight until she has more information. She's not one to dither over her choices, but it seems that she doesn't get to make one after all. She has just been seen.

[hellonspectacles]

The person who sees Ari? The prisoner.

Maybe there was a time when Camilla Hect didn’t sleep with one eye open, but those days are long past, buried under the remains of Canaan House, sealed behind the same locked doors in her mind where she keeps her memories of being tortured on this very ship. Sometimes, she finds a scrap of paper that reads you need to rest, and she knows that Palamedes has noticed the dark circles under her eyes. She always crumples up the paper into a ball and leaves it exactly where she found it, knowing he will get the message.

She can imagine him rolling his eyes (her eyes), even if she will never see him do it.

Camilla is sitting upright on the mattress now, staring directly at the woman on the other side of the door. She stands up and approaches, peering through the window with grey eyes full of suspicion.

Then she disappears from view.

When the prisoner returns, the eyes have changed. They are a deep earth-brown now. More significantly, they dance with relief and something like triumph. The person waves cheerfully, and then points down, disappearing again to slip a piece of paper under the door. On the paper is a passcode, which will unlock the door using a panel on the wall.

[astrogator]

It's peculiar. The prisoner seems to be under the impression that she's here on some sort of rescue mission. Desperation? Or bad luck, that whomever she was expecting never turned up, and she got Ari Tayrey instead. Are the color-shifting eye lenses meant to be a signal of some kind? If so, it's totally lost on her. She examines the bit of paper - real paper, in the hands of a prisoner! Yes, she got used to it being treated utterly wastefully by the Earthers, but seeing it in space is still jarring.

It's easy enough to surmise what that code is for, but her expression remains skeptical. This woman could be the worst sort of criminal, and freeing her could be devastating for the small crew of this ship. Then again, she could be an oppressed innocent, in the hands of tyrants. Which error would be the worst to make? To let her out when she shouldn't, or to leave her there?

How she hates not having enough information to make anything close to a right decision! She'll just have to follow her instincts, and figure it out as she goes along.

Tayrey unclips her energy pistol, and holds it in one hand as she inputs the code into the wall panel with the other. The door slides open with a quiet hiss, and the young Tradeliner steps forward, bodily blocking the exit, gun pointed at the prisoner.

'Step back!' she demands.

[hellonspectacles]

The prisoner does as Ari commands, holding their hands up and stepping backwards slowly. Still, they don't appear at all afraid, their brown eyes twinkling and something like a smile tugging at their lips.

"My God, it worked. I knew it would. Well, I didn't know for certain, but I was giving myself an 80 percent chance of success. Cam told me I was being cocky, but if anything, the estimate was conservative. And here you are!

"Lieutenant Tayrey, it is a pleasure to see you again. Now, would you please shut the door and sit down so I can explain?"

[astrogator]

This woman knows her. It's both unexpected and vaguely disturbing, and Ari Tayrey almost instantly suspects some kind of temporal meddling. Intentional temporal meddling, if her words are anything to go by.

'Can you clarify?' she asks. The words any seasoned Tradeliner would understand to mean that the speaker needed to be absolutely sure that the thing they had been asked to do was correct, with a decent helping of implied criticism. 'You want me to shut this door, and lock myself in this room with you? No. No, I don't think that's the best of ideas.'

She is assuming that the locking mechanism is automatic, but that's hardly the wildest assumption. Tayrey does, however, lower her gun.

'I do want you to explain. You know me, clearly, but if we've met, I don't recollect it. Tell me who you are, please. And what is going on here.'

[hasapoint]

There's not much fanfare to Need appearing. No lights, no sound, no production. There is, maybe, the suggestion of an archway or an opening which is there one instant and gone the next, and between instants a short sword with a crossguard like two crescents appears and drops about an inch onto the deck. There is a sound - fortunately, Coals is just far enough away not to notice it.

Need recognizes what's happened immediately, as all her inputs and contacts in Velgarth cut off. She's not a stranger to traveling to other realities. How it works, the really short and non technical version, is the body stays behind and the soul and consciousness voyage on and are enrobed in a version generated by the process in the other place, and will last until vacated. In her case it's her anchor, not her body. She starts taking stock, reaching out with her metaphysical senses, and within a few seconds has a picture she doesn't like.

There's plenty of magic and it's even still generated by life but the stink of sacrifice magic is overpowering. The spirit world is a flowing current of death and misery. Something went wrong here. And on the physical plane there are only a few people and lives around in a tiny bubble for miles and miles - this is one of those awful places where people go in little ships in the sea of stars, where distance and scale gets really dramatic. It's always so much work to learn those.

The sword she's bound to has not moved or done... anything. It's a sword. While it's a very unusual one, unless she chooses otherwise it takes a close examination by a mage to tell that it's magic at all, and it seems only modestly so. 'Just' a several thousand years old sword that won't break, or dull, or rust.

[hellonspectacles]

At the sound of the sword hitting the desk, Camilla sits bolt upright. She sleeps lightly at the best of times, and that particular clink of metal on metal screams danger. For one minute, and then another, she remains perfectly still. Only when no obvious danger presents itself does she slowly get out of bed.

That’s when she sees the sword.

Every bone in Cam’s body is warning her to beware, but still she approaches the desk. Eight months ago, the Blood of Eden officers who picked her up from the wreckage of Canaan House took her swords from her, and she hasn’t held one since. This one looks well-made, but relatively unremarkable. Carefully, she reaches out to grasp its hilt.

[hasapoint]

It's neither a rapier nor a big, heavy blade. It's not a new-made weapon; the grip is worn and shows signs of use and even suggests old stains, but the rest is absolutely pristine, without so much as a scratch to be seen. It gleams dully, not being something polished mirror-bright.

Normally when Camilla - anyone, really - picks up an unknown sword they have to take a moment to gauge the feel of it, the weight, the balance. Not this. Its balance is perfect. It weighs three pounds. It feels 'alive' in the poised way that a good sword does in the hand of someone who can evaluate that. Alive, and steady, somehow.

Need doesn't comment or react but studies what she can get through the young woman's senses and reactions. She's conscious, so she doesn't have to reveal her inscription or anything like that, and she is cautious by nature. There's... something about this girl, this Camilla. Something is off about her soul - yes, something is riding it. Someone, rather.

If a mind can be compared to a house then there is someone else in this one, tucked up in a closet or a chest while its occupant goes about her business of living. Need, creeping soundlessly into that house like a mist, takes an instant, automatic dislike. Of course long-dead bodiless things like her are tempted, always tempted, to quash or consume living souls and take their flesh, their life. She's trained herself out of acting on that desire but oh there have been those that did not and killing them can be a real task.

She wants to take it apart, this compartmentalized sub-soul nestled and dormant in intricately designed spellwork. Need holds back. She hasn't lived for as long as she has by being impulsive when she's in situations she doesn't understand, and there doesn't seem to be a time crunch. First, study, as she decides whether and how to make contact.

[hellonspectacles]

If Camilla were more like her necromancer, upon picking up the sword she might have said fascinating. The metaphor is imperfect, since Palamedes would never realize just how carefully balanced this sword is, how powerful it feels in its wielder’s hand, but it conveys the girl’s wonder as she lifts it.

“Huh,” Cam says.

Camilla Hect could never be called sentimental, but oh, how good it feels to grip a pommel! Before she does anything further, though, she first checks the window in the door to ensure that no one is about. Assured that no one is coming to find her, she takes the sword in her hand again, and begins to move through exercises she had once completed every morning, but has not been able to do for nearly a year.

If one looks closely, one might even see that she is smiling.

[hasapoint]

Many swords are more attractive or even feel more dangerous in the hand. This one is practical rather than flashy, one that wouldn't stand out in an armory, but it was made with intensive care and skill.

Camilla is young and healthy and also stoic, but Need can read the indications of months of grief, strain, and altogether upset in her. They make changes in the body and beyond it. She's been holding up under a lot - unsurprising, if she's locked in a cell in one of these awful void-boats or whatever they're called - and Need always feels more favorably towards people who've suffered too much heartache, though she tries to keep it from turning her metaphorical head.

She is something that can handle doing and thinking about several things at once, even if they're complicated. It's part of the tradeoff of becoming what she is. She starts looking into Camilla's memories and stretching a bit to touch the minds of the crew of the boat and try to figure them out. At the same time, she regards that sub-soul.

Hm. Looks like it's not aware of the input of the girl's senses. Camilla has a line to it... all right, she should make contact. Need closes her wings around the buried spirit and asks it, :What are you?:

[redlightgreenlight]

If Camilla stirs, she will see an unfamiliar glowing sword resting against the wall. At the sight of it, however, Palamedes will recognize it immediately, and perhaps recognize the significance of its appearance. It glows steadily, the red gem bright. His former roommate is nearby, even though she is not in the room.

Meanwhile, Valdis is trying to get her bearings. This place feels wrong, but powerful. She can almost feel the Void and her own powers vibrating with anticipation. The Thanergy is immense, quite opposite to her own world which is filled with thalergy. She takes a breath, her lungs heavy with the thickness of death in this universe. This is a spaceship?

She's here for a reason, surely there is someone nearby who will know her, or whom she knows. She sinks back into the shadows as someone passes, then a tug on her soul draws her in the direction the person had come from. She's not the only one from her world here. Revelations has also come. Valdis heads in the direction of the tug, letting it guide her through the ship.

[hellonspectacles]

Cam sits up in bed, staring at the glowing sword for a long time before she decides what she has to do. It has been some time since she has seen a sword, let alone held one, and as tempting as she finds it to examine this one more closely, she knows that Palamedes should do so first.

So she closes her eyes. After a moment, her posture seems to shift, as though she suddenly isn’t quite as sure how to hold herself. The person who appears to be Camilla Hect blinks a few times, and rubs his eyes, and looks around.

Then his gaze falls on the sword, and he grins.

“How long do you think it will take for her to find us?” Palamedes wonders aloud.

[redlightgreenlight]

Down. Left. Left again. Right. It's not hard to avoid anyone she might pass, slipping into the shadows and then back out as necessary. All the way to a sealed door. A familiar soul, one she has missed dearly since he left the Eterna hides beyond it. His soul. But not his scent. Strange. But her sword is there, and so is he, somehow.

"I certainly hope you can explain all this when I find you, Palamedes."

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes stands alert in the middle of the locked room, head cocked to the side slightly and listening closely for Valdis’ approach. Her steps are soft, but as she grows closer, they echo in the quiet ship. When she speaks, just outside the door, he smirks.

He finds a couple scraps of plex, writes something down on each of them, and then slips them under the door.

The first one reads, I can, but you probably won’t like it. :) The second one has a series of numbers on it, the code for the touchpad beside the door.

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis swoops down to pick up the scraps, rolls her eyes at the well-known snark. He had to add a smiley face too. The second scrap contains numbers. She glances through the window. The woman on the other side is unfamiliar, but she feels like Palamedes. With a breath, she jabs the numbers into the keypad. Hopefully she's not releasing some sort of necromancy monster, but considering how she herself feels, Valdis doesn't think she will be in any danger.

"I probably won't, but I'm listening," she says as the door slides open.

[ablativeholopleather]

When Wayne awakens here, much as he had when the Serena Eterna had taken him, he isn't particularly alarmed. Same shit, different day and all that. What he wants to know is whether he's alone, if he's surrounded by strangers, or if maybe he's been translocated and placed with his friends and loved ones. As if the first time around, it had simply been a mistake and he'd been separated from them while they'd all been here.

A long shot, but one he would hold onto unless it was proven otherwise.

He moves through the ship like he knows where he's going. Indeed, the layouts of these places tended along similar lines, and he can see his way to finding the other occupants easily enough. He can hear voices, unfamiliar, but more than that, he can peek into rooms and through portholes and note a distinct lack of ocean outside (which is a comfort) and, upon peeking into Camilla's window, realize that even if he isn't somewhere with people he knows, that there is the possibility of making friends anew.

Now, he wants to see if he can locate the Warden. If she's here, he can't be far behind, right? He would knock, but sleep is important. So off he goes. Perhaps he'll find an intercom or radio system along the way.

[hellonspectacles]

The idea that Palamedes could create a trans-dimensional rift on the Serena Eterna, and that it could bring one of his friends here, had been a long shot from the beginning. Even if he could send them to the right universe, they might not land on Troia Cell’s ship. And even if they landed on the ship, they might not appear in Camilla’s cell.

Given those odds, two out of three really wasn’t bad.

Eventually, Wayne will find an intercom with a receiver and a panel of numbers. Picking up the receiver and punching in the room number will connect the person with the correct room.

[ablativeholopleather]

If there's not a guide to what numbers he could push leading to specific places (one that he could read anyway. Can he read things here the way he could on the Serena?) then he's going to try and guess a button combination based on those of the rooms that he can see around him, and try to reach someone at least semi-official. This may result him him waiting there with the receiver in hand while he works his way through a few combinations. Bear with him...

In the eventuality that one actually connects to someone, he's going to introduce himself as "Wayne Ingmoon of Waynehouse, where am I and is Warden Sextus present to tell me what's up because this is weird."

[hellonspectacles]

There is about a thirty-second pause from the other end of the line.

Then, a woman with a low, steady voice comes on. “Please hold.”

Another minute or two elapses, and then the same voice returns—or, at least, it seems to be the same voice at first. The person on the other end speaks rapidly now, like someone who always has a lot to say, and whose mind often moves faster than their lips.

“Wayne! Is it really you? Cam told me it was you, but I can barely believe it. Emperor’s bones, it worked. Sorry for stealing you away with no warning; if there had been a way to explain ahead of time, I would have. Honestly, I’ve dragged you into a bit of a mess, but I hope you’ll forgive me, given the circumstances.”

A pause.

“In any case, can you describe where you are? I can direct you to our quarters. We need to get you out of the open before the shift changes.”

[ablativeholopleather]

He's ready to start pressing some buttons again after he's left on not-quite-hold for this long, and actually has a hand up to do just that by the time he hears the clambering on the other end of the line and relief floods him.

"Pal!" He nearly laughs the man's name out, sagging against the wall. "Dude, you did it! Okay, so I'm-" He looks along the hall, and toward the room where he knew Camilla was still sleeping. "It looks like a crew deck, sleep chambers along the wall here. I found Cam but I didn't want to wake her up. Holy crap, it worked!"

He stops at the warning, and he blinks at the panel. "What happens when the shift changes?"

[neverleave]

Sergeant Hot Coals of Vengeance sees the sleeping form of Camilla Hect.

They don't see the teenager crouched low, his body pressed against the door to keep himself out of sight. Natsuno's initial reaction is of tired exasperation - he thought they were done with surprise rifts. He barely has time to get his bearings when he realizes there's someone on the other side of a window, and ducks before they can see him. Their footsteps fade away soon enough, but that leaves the person inside the small room.

Natsuno stays low, staring at the woman through red, glowing eyes. There's something familiar about her, but it doesn't click yet. Not when he's still trying to figure out where is he now, in this small room that smells of recycled air and dry bones.

[hellonspectacles]

Natsuno's first problem is that Camilla isn’t really sleeping. She’s dozing, at best, which is all she can even do these days, no matter how much the Warden chides her. She has grown too used to being surrounded by enemies; the fact that those enemies are a little more polite to her these days doesn’t change the arithmetic.

His second problem is his eyes. Without the eyes, Cam might not have noticed him so quickly. But it’s hard to miss a pair of red eyes glowing at you from the darkness.

The third problem is that Camilla is armed. She isn’t supposed to be armed, of course. Cam’s swords and knives were taken from her months ago, and she certainly hasn’t been allowed close enough to any firearms to steal one. Besides, they would notice a missing gun. What they haven’t noticed is the missing plex fork that Cam has honed until it would cut paper.

Carefully, she takes the knife out from her pillowcase and slips it in her sleeve, then sits up.

“Who are you?”

[neverleave]

Her calm, low voice and smooth movements are what makes it click. Camilla Hect, cavalier primary to a certain necromancer. Natsuno wonders if this is another memory, and where it fits with the timeline. Canaan House ended with an explosion, but whatever this place is, it's not Canaan House.

"I'm friends with the Master Warden," he says calmly, not moving from his place by the door. Natsuno didn't notice her take the shiv, but his introduction to Cam was memorable and after a moment he adds:

"I'd rather not get stab."

[hellonspectacles]

Cam cocks an eyebrow at the mention of stabbing and slips the makeshift knife into her hand. “Smart.”

She watches him for a long moment. The Warden had informed her of his harebrained scheme, of course—more insane, somehow, than creating a habitable bubble by the edge of the River, or haunting a skeleton hand, or even haunting her. One day, not long after they had figured out how to communicate, she had woken up to find the tale of the Serena Eterna written in his tiny, spidery handwriting over dozens of scraps of plex. Later, he had added, I need to rescue my friends. They can help us.

It was a stupid idea, but Palamedes had a way of coming up with ideas so stupid they wrapped back around to being smart. And besides, she knew she couldn’t stop him.

And here, just maybe is the fruit of his labors.

“Prove it.” Despite the knife, she doesn’t sound hostile, exactly. But she needs a lot more evidence the boy is who he says he is before she lets her guard down.

[neverleave]

Prove it. Natsuno thinks about it, wondering how he can possibly do that without sounding like a creep, a madman or both. Pal doesn't seem to be around, but if this is another memory there's little chance his friend would vouch from him.

This means that his only option is an admission so ridiculous, so outrageous it can't be denied or ignored.

"I met Palamedes in a pocket dimension. People from many different worlds were trapped there, and we were trying to find a way out. That place exists outside time, so he may not remember it, but it's the truth. I can show you."

His phone is still in his pocket. It will die out eventually soon without a charger, but for now it'll do.

"I need to take it out, it's not a weapon so please don't attack me."

Natsuno messes with the phone for a moment and slides it across the floor towards Cam. It plays a certain video tutorial with Natsuno's voice clearly heard behind the camera.