hellonspectacles | Once more into the breach, dear friends

Entry tags:

Once more into the breach, dear friends

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

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.

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.

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?"

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.'

Pal might not know all the nuances of Ari’s culture, but he understands a the fuck I will when he hears one.

Which is fair, honestly.

“It’s Palamedes Sextus, Lieutenant.” Hands still raised, he barrels on before she can protest. “My soul has had a bit of a change of address since we last saw each other aboard the Serena Eterna. I can explain, but it’s incredibly complicated, and time is of the essence. Coals absolutely hates guard duty, but Smoke of the Watch Fires has the next shift. Not only is he aptly named, but he already thinks the Commander should have killed us months ago. Please shut the door.”

This explanation makes temporal meddling look straightforward by comparison. She has a dozen questions - but whether this person is Palamedes Sextus or not, they're right about the issue of time. Prioritize, Tayrey. You're good at that.

She doesn't move. She speaks quickly. 'If you are who you say you are, you'll know exactly why I won't go meekly into captivity. I don't trust that this ship's commander will be civil and negotiate instead of keeping me here and torturing me.' Any automatic deference for rank that the young woman carried with her from the Tradelines had long since been lost on the Serena Eterna. No trusting to the honor or rationality of strangers from strange universes, whatever they called themselves.

Holding up a hand of her own, she carries on, confidently. 'Here's my idea. I shut that door with the two of us on the better side of it. If your Smoky or his colleagues bother us, I take them down.' This she says with a little twitch of her energy pistol. 'We get to the hangar- no, this ship won't have a hangar bay. Too small. An emergency shuttle? It must have at least one. That's why I'm here, yes? To rescue you? So let's go. You can explain the rest when we're out.'

Edited 2023-05-28 21:41 (UTC)

For about half a shameful second, Palamedes considers saying all right, let’s do it. It would be so easy. He and Cam could get the hell out of here; they could find somewhere safe to hide, maybe even return home. Home. It’s not just a place, but a place in time—a world before Canaan House, and Dulcinea’s death, and ethical questions.

But no: that would mean pretending away everything they have learned in the last year. And it would mean abandoning people he swore to protect.

“I can’t do that, Lieutenant. I’m sorry. If you want to go at it alone, I won’t stop you. I’ll even tell you where the shuttles are, and try to distract Smokey.” A faint smirk. He’s going to remember that nickname. “You may not be home, but you are finally free of the Captain’s reach, and I am certain you could make a life for yourself here.”

He takes a breath. “Or, since you refuse to shut the door, I can take you to the storage bay, which should be empty now, and explain why I brought you across the multiverse. It isn’t because you can fly a shuttle, Tayray. It’s because you can negotiate.”

They are really cutting it close, and Pal will not put Camilla in danger for Ari’s sake. They have to act soon. “You have thirty seconds to decide.”

Arilanna Tayrey expects agreement. She expects that since her course of action is rational, and he clearly called her here to take action, he'll follow her lead. There's a faint look of disbelief on her face as he tells her he can't, he won't.

She could do just as he says, of course. Leave. She'd be in a far better position to try to find her way back home from here. When it comes to it, however, she doesn't give the possibility more than a passing thought, because leaving Palamedes locked up in here is simply not an option.

He wants her to negotiate. Tayrey had been good at that once, hadn't she? Before her captivity. Before everything had gone so terribly wrong. There's understanding on her face now, a fractional nod, and then-

'A thirty-second?' It's incongruous with the urgency she hears in his voice. A thirty-second part of a twelve-hour shift isn't - no, Tayrey! The realisation hits her as soon as the words are out of her mouth. Being shipside now doesn't mean that he or anyone else understands Tradeline timekeeping. It's a translation. It's-

Well. More like twenty seconds now. Isn't it fortunate she's been trained to make quick decisions? In a starship battle, the wrong tactic might kill you, but inaction absolutely will.

'Yes. Storage bay, let's go, now. You lead the way, I'll cover.' No hesitation. Tayrey gestures once more towards the door.

Thank goodness for Tayrey’s quick thinking. If her suspicion and hyper-rationality had nearly doomed Palamedes’ plan, then her willingness to compromise and shift course, even just slightly, had saved them.

Once she agrees, he turns back to the bed and shifts the covers so that, at first glance through the cell door’s tiny window, it looks like someone is still asleep there. Then he says, “Follow me,” and strides out the door.

Save for the ship’s constant hum, the corridors are silent. Over the months of their captivity, Pal and Camilla have learned a lot more about the movements of the people on board than, and that’s why he can navigate now and not run into anyone, and why he knows which storage bay will be both unlocked and empty.

No one needs to check on barrels of chemical fertilizer in the middle of the night.

Pal lets them in to the storage bay filled with rows and rows giant metal drums of fertilizer. The room is dark, but Pal doesn’t turn on the lights. He makes his way to a corner far away from the door and sits down on the metal floor. This explanation is going to take a while, so they might as well get comfortable.

“Now will you let me explain?” He sounds fond, but a little exasperated, too.

She hasn't yet realised just how familiar Palamedes is with this ship. Captives aren't generally allowed to wander, after all, and it doesn't occur to her that he might have been there so long. The result is that she's far more cautious than he is. Careful steps, boots landing lightly on the metal flooring, and that gun of hers not only drawn but raised, as if she might need to defend him at a moment's notice.

It doesn't take long for her to see that he knows exactly where he's going, but she doesn't pass comment on it. Clear route or not, this sort of thing takes focus.

In the storage room, she follows him to the far corner, but stays standing, eyes on the door. Tayrey is vigilant, and more than a little tense.

'Yes. Yes, please explain. I promise not to interrupt,' she says quietly.

Palamedes isn't particularly surprised that Ari remains standing. She's a bit like Camilla in that way--always alert, always ready to fight or bolt or protect those around her.

It's probably helpful, as well, to have someone keeping a sharp eye on the door, just in case.

"All right. There are about twenty places I could start, so forgive me if you feel like I'm throwing you into the middle of it. More than I already have." He smiles faintly. "First, I really am the Palamedes Sextus you knew on the Serena Eterna. I'm happy to answer any questions you require to prove it. I don't look like him because, well, I'm borrowing someone else's body. The mechanic isn't so different from how the ship's ghosts possessed passengers last--Emperor's bones, when was that?" Pal shakes his head a little. "Sorry, time has proven itself to be quite malleable for me these days. In any case, I'm essentially possessing Cam with her permission. She's in charge. I can't take over unless she wants me to."

"I can pause there for questions, if you like."

There are places where Ari might let down her guard, but this isn't one of them. She won't underestimate spacer military, and Palamedes was clearly their captive. Still, most of her attention is given over to listening to him. As promised, she lets him say his piece, no matter how strange it sounds.

'Alright, security first. For proof. On the prison ship you and I once attended an Earther wedding. John Watson was the groom. Who was the bride - and what did you show me that night?'

Yes, it's something of a trick question, but not an unfair one, not to the real Palamedes Sextus, who would be sure to remember the way it actually happened.

'And could you let me speak to... Cam? How do I properly address her? Let me speak to her to confirm all this is done with consent.' That's one reason. The other is to see how distinct the voice of "Cam" is, whether it supports his story.

'My other question, I guess, is why? Where's your actual body? Why are you doing all this?'

Palamedes grins. It’s probably one of the more genuine smiles that he—or Camilla—has worn in a long time. “Not to play pedant in a time of crisis, Tayray, but I do have to wonder what Johnny and César would think of being called brides.” He taps his finger on his chin as though he were trying to remember the rest. “I believe I grew you a skull. Not quite the finesse of the dancing skeletons I made for Fio, but I was rather intoxicated at the time.”

His good memories of the Serena Eterna are few, but the conversation with Ari had been one of them. Something had been forged between them that, in part, was the reason he had brought her here.

“Oh, certainly, you can speak to her. Call her Camilla; Camilla the Sixth, if you like. ‘Warden’s Hand’ is her title, though she isn’t one for standing on ceremony without good reason.” He tips his head to the side. “Why don’t I let her explain? You might find it interesting to hear it from her perspective.”

Oh, that gets a smile out of her. 'You pass,' she says, as if it's settled, as if there couldn't be any doubt. 'I'm glad that I wasn't sober when you grew a skull for me, at any rate. There would have been more... alarm.' It takes her time to adjust to the improbable, but at least she recognises that tendency in herself, make light of her own difficulty.

Still. They have more urgent matters to focus on. This isn't time for fond reminiscence over - what can she call it, when they were in prison together? It sounds all wrong, and yet that's the truth of it.

'Yes, do let me speak to her.'

Tayrey waits what she believes to be a respectable amount of time, and then a moment longer, for good measure. 'Camilla the Sixth? Peace and prosperity to you. This is all... very new to me. Did you hear the conversation I had with Palamedes?' So she won't waste time telling Cam things she already knows - or won't omit key information, depending.

Camilla the Sixth blinks slowly. The eyes are grey now—they’re Pal’s grey eyes, in fact—and her posture has shifted somewhat from attentive scholar to fighter tensed to spring. She may has the same face, the same voice, the same body, but she’s a different person now.

“Lieutenant Tayray,” she says, her voice taking on a careful flatness that it hadn’t had before. The Warden had told her a bit about Ari, written in the notebook they shared. She’s very Second in some ways, but I think you’ll like her. Good at analyzing a situation and coming to careful conclusions. Likes protocol. Respects contracts.

“I didn’t. When the Warden is present, I’m not aware. But I know about his plans.” Her gaze flicks from side to side. “Last I checked, those plans did not involve the storage berth.”

She wasn't sure, honestly, how she'd tell whether the change had happened - but when it does, it's immediately obvious. This really is a different person, despite all appearances.

Ari tilts her head. 'Did his plans involve being imprisoned in a cell? Because if so, I think these ones are much better.' Alright, that'll take a little more explanation. 'I refused to lock myself in with him, so we ended up here instead. He was explaining the situation to me, and I'm convinced that he is Palamedes Sextus, but I wanted to verify with you that you're here, and that he is sharing your body with your knowledge and consent.'

That sounds bizarre, put like that, but it's the truth of it. 'I'm aware that we have limited time here. I'm also inclined to trust the Master Warden - on matters that don't involve locking myself up, at any rate - but he thought it might be better if I heard an explanation of how all this happened from you, instead.'

There. Comprehensive, quick, and as far as she's able, to the point.

“No. Being imprisoned was my idea,” answers Camilla Hect without so much as a flicker of an eyebrow. It’s hard to tell if she’s making a joke. But she takes Ari’s point about their current location and doesn’t ask any further questions, which is a sign that Ari has passed some sort of initial test.

She inclines her head slightly and answers with a matter-of-factness that matches the other woman’s tone. “Before the Warden’s death, he had devised what we called a contingency. In the event of his demise, he would bind his soul to his bones such that it could find its way back to them after the initial burst of thanergenic trauma.” She pauses, and then says with a slight lilt of skepticism. “He said to tell you that if you had questions, I should say, ‘like Skulduggery Pleasant did, but without the subsequent apologia for a mass murderer.’ “

That logistical matter out of the way, she returns to the explanation. “His death was more violent than we anticipated, but I was able to collect enough fragments to reconstruct approximately one-third of his skull.” For a moment her gaze goes distant, her eyes like gaping wounds as she stares at something unseen past Ari’s ear. “They kept trying to take it away from me. But I had to keep it. I needed a necromancer to be sure the plan had worked.”

She blinks and the faraway look is gone. “Blood of Eden picked up three of us. We were prisoners, but two of us were able to gain their trust in a limited capacity. Eventually I convinced them to put me in touch with…a friend. Someone who could look for the Warden. She found him, and he was able to return to his bones, or what was left of them.”

“But we couldn’t communicate like that.”

Ari listens carefully to all this. She has questions. Of course she has questions, but if she stopped to ask them all, Cam would be explaining things into the middle of next shift, and that really couldn't be good for either of them right now.

Besides, most of the questions start with how and why and, as such, aren't especially relevant to their predicament. She grasps the part of it. Palamedes as she knew him died, in a very violent way. Ari can imagine the possibilities, because there are ways to die in space that don't leave much in the way of remains behind. It's still a grim thought. She hopes it was quick for him, at least. Her chest tightens at the thought of poor Cam, recovering the bone fragments.

'I understand,' she says slowly. 'Or at least I think I understand. Blood of Eden are the military group running this ship? Are they affiliated with a planet, or independents?' Independents would be easier to negotiate with. 'I won't lie, I have so many questions, but I'm going to trust you far enough to presume that everything you've said is clear line,' she says. Very practical of her. 'You have no reason to lie about it. I'm sorry. For what happened.'

After that, she leaves a respectful pause. It needs to be said, but not to be dwelt on. 'You must have managed some kind of... merger with him.' She does love her corporate metaphors! 'So what happened to the other prisoners? And - he said that he wanted me to negotiate. For what? With whom?'

Camilla is beginning to see why Palamedes said that she would like Lieutenant Tayray. Of course she has questions, as any intelligent person would, but she understands that sometimes, in times of precarity, all but the most important questions must be set aside. As it is, those that she asks have answers that are decided complex.

Shrugging off Ari’s I’m sorry, she does her best to explain Blood of Eden. “In the Houses we call them terrorists. I think they would prefer ‘freedom fighters’.” She presses her lips together. “The Emperor has colonies on habitable planets across the galaxy. Most of them signed contracts thousands of years ago granting the Houses full use of their natural resources during the Emperor’s lifetime. What they did not realize is that the Emperor would never die, or that the extraction of natural resources would involve the destruction of most organic life on the planet and the displacement of its people. Blood of Eden is made up of individuals from those planets who object to these conditions. Violently.”

Camilla Hect nearly, nearly smiles. “More of an acquisition, as we remain entirely separate entities.” The Sixth likes contracts and corporate-speak in their own way, too. “One of them is still in the infirmary, chained up and slowly dying of a gut wound sustained while we were at Canaan House. The other one bunks with the rest of the crew.” Meaning: Judith Duteros, Second House heir and Captain of the Cohort, remains a prisoner of war, while Coronabeth Tridentarius, Princess of Ida, has forsworn her titles and joined Blood of Eden. Nothing in Camilla’s expression reveals what she thinks of either of these choices.

And now for the important bit: “The Warden wants to convince the Sixth House to secede from the Empire under the guarenteened protection of Blood of Eden.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Once more into the breach, dear friends

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject