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

[hellonspectacles]

“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.”

[astrogator]

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?'

[hellonspectacles]

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.”