Ganurath
Well-known member
One of them is the head of the Ministry of Social Education for Chancellor Maximilian Liao. Hanse didn't put a good person in charge of St. Ives, he just subverted a lesser evil.
Battletech Make-up the Difference [Battletech crossover]
- Thread starter prinCZess
- Start date
-
- Tags
- battletech crossover
D
Deleted member
Guest
Davion worship was the biggest disincentive to enjoying Battletech in the early 2000s; Hanse was a consummate political gamester, not a good man.
9 - Maskirovka and Maquerade (pt. 3)
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Hilton Head Island Compound
North America, Terra
August 17, 3028
Earlier...
“You look cute. A little too much like you-know-who on Helm, but who am I to question fashion trends?” Grayson said as he finished hanging the earring on her and she finished burying the microphone inside the massive ribbon on her chest.
She couldn’t quite understand how a bow that was so big still somehow left so much exposed.
Lori Kalmar fidgeted in the ridiculous, ribbon-bound blouse, telling herself firmly that it was not okay to feel anything positive at the compliment when she was dressed like a Christmas gift. If she did, it might be too easy to talk her into doing this sort of thing again, and that was unacceptable. She didn’t have any room for a holster in the upper portion of the form-fitting skirt-and-blouse combination that ComStar had pawed off on her as ‘appropriate attire’ for the gala, and the skirt certainly wasn’t long enough for her to strap anything to a thigh!
“I feel like I’m about to spill out of both the top and bottom of this stupid thing. ‘Cute’ is not my concern.” Lori said, trying to resist the urge to pull the skirt further down over her legs.
If she pulled it lower, the only thing she’d do was expose her bare waist--or her underwear. A rational clothing designer would have at least extended the blouse’s length enough that it could be depended on to cover something if anything on the outfit moved out-of-place. But apparently that wouldn’t have fit the designers ‘vision’ or something--just like normal and necessary things like pockets. Instead, she was just supposed to rely on the bows of fabric at her chest and lower-back to keep herself decent.
“Remind me again why we aren’t just dolling you up in enough makeup to make a horse look decent and throwing you in this dress to go chat-up these other Guardians and all those fun nobles out there? You have more experience with this ‘being social’ shit than I do.” Lori growled as Grayson put a comforting arm on one of her mostly-exposed shoulders.
The jerk was at least nice enough to look suitably chastised, “Because folks would still probably recognize my ugly mug from all that experience, and I don’t fill out a dress nearly as well as you do...Plus, I’d have to shave my legs and that idea just scares me. I could die from blood loss.”
Despite the way it undermined her anger, Lori couldn’t help but snort at the comment. Grayson and razors had an antagonistic relationship she was starting to be impressed by. No other man she’d ever met had his propensity to cut himself with the things, even after years of practice. Now he’d given up entirely, and she couldn’t say the resulting fuzz wasn’t distinguishing at the very least.
“Lori?” Grayson asked, voice turning serious as he brought his head forward to lean on her shoulder just over his hand, “If it comes down to it, we can pull out of this contract. Don’t put yourself in front of something like we saw on Helm.”
Lori’s eyebrows shot up. Grayson had slowly built a reputation for not backing out of contracts once he’d entered them. Then again, it wasn’t like this one was anything close to their normal contract. How could it be when the offerrer in this case was literally a witch from the Star League and the job was corralling other witches into contact with her?
“Right.” Lori answered seriously, before tilting her head to hit against Grayson’s and then pushing away from him, “Same goes for you. And no letting yourself get seduced by the witch. ‘Magic’ won’t be an acceptable excuse.”
Gray frowned with more feeling than he probably felt, “Me? Seduced? Never. I should probably be the worried one, anyways. All the most noble and respected men of the Inner Sphere around you in a ballroom just before a wedding? I’ve heard how you women get just before normal weddings, and when it’s the biggest one in centuries, well...”
Lori’s eyes narrowed as she tried to decide which of multiple scathing remarks she wanted to match that one with.
“Grayson?”
“Yes, honey?” Grayson laughed, smiling that damned innocent smile of his.
Lori sighed as even the mock-anger disappeared, “Nevermind. Let’s just see what the boss wants now that I’m...” She wrapped up the sentence by simply running a hand in front of herself, not quite sure which of many words to use to describe the outfit.
“I thought I was the boss?” Grayson protested good-naturedly as he opened the door for her. The attempt at distracting her from the uncomfortable dress was a little obvious, but she couldn’t help but appreciate it anyways.
Lori patted the man’s stubble-covered cheek as she went by, taking an immense guilty pleasure in the blush the motion drew from him, “Only when we’re not on contract.”
Grayson muttered something at that, but it sounded like it was more to himself than anything and by then she was already out of the changing room and into the short service-hallway of the ComStar building. From there it was a short jaunt to the small security substation that Setsuna had set herself up in.
Banks of monitors filled one side of the room, casting a dull blue sheen over the air of the entire room. In the center, an actual, fully-functioning holovid-table was arranged in a half-circle around a control mat where a redhead stood flipping through screens faster than she could possibly understand them, apparently looking for something. The far wall was filled by rather old-fashioned row of gray steel lockers that wouldn’t look out of place on a dropship or military base as stowage points for ‘Mechwarrior gear. From prior experience, Lori knew the lockers were full of small arms, body armor, and explosives, up to and including a pair of light SRM launchers.
At one point, ComStar having such weapons and having a significant number of members who not only knew how to use them but were kept in good training as to how to use the weapons would have surprised her. Now, that was one of the less surprising things about the interstellar communications business. A few rifles and SRMs paled in comparison to the row after row of Star League ‘Mechs the company had buried underneath Hilton Head Island, and as they’d found out on Helm, ‘Mechs themselves couldn’t compete with the secret of the Guardians that ComStar had been keeping since its inception.
“Good, you’re here.” Setsuna said, turning in her chair as she absently fiddled with a pen. She obviously gave both her and Grayson a once-over, “And you don’t seem to have noticed who else is with us? Good.”
Lori snapped her eyes to the redhead, who had temporarily stopped scrolling through screens on the holovid-table to give them both a listless raise of her hand in greeting.
“Hello.” Mariah said in that flat tone she seemed to use for almost everything when it didn’t really interest her.
The girl’s cheeks were highlighted heavily, making them seem to jut out and break-up the usual soft curves of her face. Her eyes looked less sunken-in than they were naturally, her lips wider, and her chin less prominent. Combined with the red-dyed hair and green eyes she looked like a completely different person. The only thing that really looked familiar was her dress, which mimicked Lori’s own style but with a darker color scheme to it and a less ridiculous pair of bows.
Lori found herself jealous of the last one the most. It wasn’t like the bow had to be as big as it was to hide the microphone!
On the other hand, her own bow covered more of her chest.
Maybe that was an acceptable trade off for looking like a present.
“I think I did a rather good job considering the only one I’ve been able to practice on for the last few years was myself. I styled her after the bandit-queen from the fourth season of Immortal Warrior. Minus the high-top briefs over leotard outfit, obviously. Even if it is halfway-sensible for piloting a ‘Mech, I don’t think it would blend in very well. But...” Setsuna paused, opened her mouth as if she were about to go on, then gave her head a slight shake.
“Is this the part where I find out I don’t actually have to go out in this because Mariah volunteered to take my place?” Lori said, already knowing the answer.
Setsuna gave her a half-appreciative, half-sympathetic smile, “No, I’m afraid it’s not. I convinced her to go to help try and feel out any bad actors firsthand, but we still need you.”
The woman rotated back-and-forth on her chair as if she were distracted by the monitors. But they never focused on any of the monitors, instead staring ahead and simply moving with her on the chair. Lori’d seen the same look on the woman’s face before, and had quickly come to realize that like the faraway look Mariah took on, it was the woman’s expression when she was deciding how much to say.
“Still trying to decide whether or not you can trust us?” Lori pressed, deciding to get the matter out into the open now rather than have it hanging over their heads during an actual operation.
Setsuna surprised her by shaking her head. “It’s...difficult...for us to trust anyone, but I can promise you we’re trying. No. I’m trying to think of the easiest way of answering your inevitable questions before you have to ask them.”
The woman reached down to the bag at her side and withdrew another pen, this one much more ornate than that in her hand, “You remember I told you the other Guardians had lost their memories?”
“Except the other two ‘outer’ Guardians that were named after real planets but who left with Kerensky, yeah.” Gray chimed in, beaming with pride. “See? I know to listen when magicians talk.”
Lori had to fight down a giggle, and even Mariah blinked in the slow fashion she usually reserved for amusement. Setsuna didn’t twitch.
“First, and most importantly, Colonel, I do not care what backwards classification styles the Successor States and yourself adhere to, Pluto is a planet. Second, I am not a ‘magician’, that’s a title for someone who does card tricks and waves around a magic wand. Finally, while I appreciate the sentiment of your attempt at lightening the mood, I would appreciate being able to explain without your commentary. Not every situation calls for a joke.”
“Does too.” Grayson grumbled. But his words did nothing to make his point and he took a step back to lean against the wall of the security room, both arms crossed in front of his chest and head lowered.
He was so cute when he sulked!
Lori shook her head. No time to appreciate Grayson, there was a job to do. With deliberate calm, Lori settled her eyes back on Setsuna catching a momentary peek at a concealed smile on the other woman’s lips.
Eyes meeting Lori’s, Setsuna winked. Even on a centuries-old witch--or perhaps ‘Guardian’ was what she should use--the expression carried the same meaning it might have from any other woman on the planet.
Grayson was just too fun to tease sometimes, and for a man who dished out so much he was rather bad at taking it.
“Returning to my point,” Setsuna said, her voice more harsh than her expression as she held up the fancy, golden pen she’d withdrawn from her bag. “One of these being in close proximity to them should gradually counteract that loss of memory. So if you find a good opportunity, I want you to give this one to Miss ‘Mina Centrella’, or place it in any of her belongings, if necessary. I’m informed you have some degree of experience with such maneuvers?”
Lori jerked at the offhand reference to a life she’d thought long behind her, and immediately turned an accusing glance on Grayson. He looked just as shocked however. The rest of the Legion were still on the dropships and hadn’t had much of any time to speak with Setsuna so that only left…
Mariah shifted uncomfortably and seemed to find something very interesting in the middle of the ribbon at her chest.
“I’m sorry, I probably should have assumed it was a sensitive issue but…” Setsuna said. Words failing her temporarily, she held one hand out, palm upraised before continuing, “It’s hard to trust anyone. Knowing your background helps.”
Lori couldn’t actually fault the woman for that.
“So, just to sate my curiosity, why do you need Lori for this? Couldn’t you just give them these wands yourselves?” Grayson asked, finally emerging out of his sulk to reengage in the conversation. His timing avoided what Lori feared was about to become an extended stretch of silence.
Setsuna closed her eyes for a breath at the mention of ‘wands’.
“Pens, Colonel. The term for them is ‘pens’. And we could try if we had to. But there is a process to this. A process complicated by the particular situation we’re in thanks to...prior events.” Setsuna paused, and the way she very deliberately avoided looking at Mariah made the connection almost more obvious than if she had, “Mariah, would you like to go check the security cameras in the hall physically, just to be sure they’re working right?”
The now-redheaded girl practically bounced away from the holovid-table. Slipping past Lori and Grayson, she disappeared out the door in an instant. The click of the door behind her seemed abnormally loud.
Grayson clicked his tongue and nodded, “Well that isn’t ominous at all.”
“Colonel Grayson, you woke up one of the most powerful people in the galaxy and then gave her a ride to Terra. After spending so much time with her, I would think you prepared for the ‘ominous’ by now.” Setsuna said, one eyebrow cocking upwards.
Grayson blinked, “Was that a joke?”
“An amused observation only, I assure you.” Setsuna answered, leaning back in her chair. The woman took a long breath, and brought one arm up to rest against the console at her side and prop against the side of her head.
“The reason we can’t give these pens to the other Guardians ourselves is because it could break them. Our powers are related, and on an instinctual level they probably don’t even recognize, they still use small portions of theirs. Me or Mariah giving them the pen? Our own abilities would enhance whatever echoes of their own they’re using and their lack of experience and knowledge of how to control that power could mean Rather Bad Things.”
Even without the particular turn her voice took with her last three words, the emphasis was obvious.
“So the pen-wands give them a focus for their magical powers that lets them better control it, otherwise they could start some kind of chain-reaction? Seems a silly way for it to work.” Grayson said before cocking his head, “And here I am questioning the logic of no-bullshit magical power. I suppose not making sense is part of it?”
Setsuna’s scowl at his mention of wands actually slowly transformed into a slight smile as Grayson continued, “You get used to it not making much sense with enough time, trust me. But it’s not as silly as you might think. It’s part of the way it’s supposed to work. Individually distinct people and powers coming together to accomplish a greater end than they might be able to individually. Somewhat like your mercenary Legion, I would say. In this case? One of us giving them the pen would be like you cold-starting the fusion engine in one of your ‘Mechs without any of the safeties engaged or powering-up the vacuum chamber first, using another of your ‘Mech’s to provide the initial jump. While you’re working in as a lance it’s helpful to have another ‘Mech at your side. On startup? Not so much. The same principle applies here.”
“Of course, that ignoring the mental aspect they’d face as well. At best, they’d be confronted with thousands of years of life they’ve lived in the span of seconds if we gave it to them. The last few hundred years of endless recursion would be bad enough for them I’m sure, but they’d also have the memories of the League’s fall and our own failures to deal with, completely unprepared.” Setsuna shrugged, eyes dropping to the floor.
Lori jumped at the potential chance for background, though she felt half-scummy doing it. “Was the collapse of the Star League really that bad for you?”
“Worse. Amaris’ Coup was more successful than you or anyone else could know. Beyond just toppling the Star League and killing the Camerons, Amaris’ found a way to kill P--...Guardian Moon. Or, judging by the way there’s still life, to remove her from this reality somehow. Since her successor was also killed by Amaris,” Setsuna herself didn’t seem to notice how her head turned towards the door Mariah had left out of moments earlier, “Well, that should have been when Mariah scoured the planet. A necessary evil to prevent something worse from happening.”
“But she didn’t?” Lori offered when the woman’s silence extended too long.
Setsuna shook her head, though whether it was in answer or to clear it Lori couldn’t tell, “She didn’t. Or perhaps ‘couldn’t’. And then she disappeared. Without her to restart things...Well, it forced me and Jerome Blake to do whatever we could to make things work with what we had, because we couldn’t actually end the problems. We could barely manage them. So that’s what we did. That’s why the HPG Network is still up, and most of the Guardians still around, but the network isn’t functioning as quickly or as consistently as it should and the Guardians still in the Inner Sphere have been stuck with memories that spin them around and around doing nothing.”
The woman tried to laugh, but failed. “ComStar was supposed to track her down. We all thought she’d run off to the Periphery trying to find--well, trying to find Kerensky’s fleet and the two who left with him. Precentor Rachan was the only one who thought to look within the Sphere itself, and you know how well that turned out firsthand.”
The dull buzz of the monitors and occasional whirring of a fan were the only sounds in the room for a very long, very awkward few seconds. Lori idly wondered what the woman had been about to say before she’d corrected herself, but was certain asking wouldn’t do her any good. Setsuna was more open about things than Mariah had been--as difficult as they were to believe. But on much of everything related to Mariah, she still either remained quiet or referred her and Grayson to Mariah herself--and Mariah had already explicitly refused to answer questions about her past. It was aggravating, but they’d dealt with similar clients before.
Lori only just barely managed not to choke herself holding down a laugh at that thought.
Setsuna started in her chair as if she’d just realized how long the silence had gone on, or how much she’d said before it. Shaking her head, she stood and held out the pen.
“As I was saying, beyond just being a,” Setsuna took a long breath, glared at Grayson, and finally rolled her eyes as she sighed, “focus they can use, the pens should help them gradually remember their pasts on their own terms. This one belongs to Guardian Venus, the one currently going by ‘Mina Centrella’. Get it to her however you can and then...we’ll see what to do next when the time comes.”
“Why not I just give them all out tonight? I might not have a better opportunity to approach people from three different states without attracting more attention than you might want.” Lori asked, taking the single pen and unable to help but be surprised at how heavy the small cylinder was.
“Because this is the process that is supposed to happen. Or the closest we can get without Guardian Moon. You awakened Saturn on Helm and whatever she did there was enough to allow me this opportunity. I can only hope the other two outer Guardians are awake, because the next to be awoken is Venus, and judging by how the Centrella’s seem to have actually done a good job taking care of her these past centuries, she should be the easiest. I’m trying to recreate a process that goes back millenia, Captain Kalmar.” Setsuna took a deep breath and shook her head, “This is the best I know to do with the resources available to me.”
Grayson raised his hand like a schoolchild, “Might I suggest ‘the magic ritual I am performing requires it that way’ as the better answer to my beautiful Captain’s question? Makes the people working for you less nervous if you don’t admit you’re playing things by the seat of your pants.”
Setsuna’s eye twitched, and she deliberately focused on Lori to the exclusion of everything else in the room, “Did you have any other questions?”
Yes!
“Nothing that can’t wait.” Lori answered instead of voicing her actual thought. Perhaps if she were alone with the other woman. But Setsuna was rather clearly beginning to step-away from ‘amused’ by Grayson’s constant reduction of things to ‘angry’.
“Good. Because the ball should be starting soon.”
Lori sighed, wondering if perhaps the end of the world wouldn’t be preferable to going out in public dressed like she was. With a bizarre contortion of her arm, she slipped the pen into the folds of the bow at her back, double-checking it with a few exaggerated movements to be sure it was secure.
Grayson was entirely too appreciative of the movements.
At least McCall was back on the dropship and couldn’t collaborate with the man. Grayson’s teasing compliments and appreciation were bad enough. McCall would have given him the idea of taking pictures.
********************************************************************************
Now...
Lori stared alongside the other occupants of the room, thankful that something had come along to finally draw people’s eyes away from her. It could have been worse, of course. There were a surprising number of dresses in the place that looked similar. But any distraction that obviously drew peoples’ eyes away from even the possibility of seeing her in the ridiculous getup, however many other people might think wearing it wasn’t an exercise in silliness, was a welcome relief. That the distraction was as exciting as a confrontation between Takashi Kurita and Jamie Wolf only made it that much more effective as a distraction, not to mention of some interest to her as well.
Judging by the excited chatter between Setsuna and Grayson that she could just make out coming through her earpiece, she was not the only one excited to see Jamie Wolf and his associates’ confrontation with Takashi Kurita and the Combine’s retinue. The pair were obviously having a spirited discussion on the other end of the line before it faded away—probably from one of them covering the voice input with a hand. Lori couldn’t help but feel a bit amused. Had Wolf even been invite to the wedding? Judging by his monofocus on Takashi Kurita, she was reasonably sure he was just using it as an excuse to vent his grievances at the House Lord.
He evidently had an extensive list of them. Just below the stairs that led into the entranceway, the commander of Wolf’s Dragoons was continuing to snap words in Japanese at the Combine’s leader without so much as pausing for a breath. Perhaps if anyone else in the hall had dared speak, the words might have gotten lost even over that short distance as Wolf didn’t scream so much as speak with an insistent beat that overpowered any potential opposition or resistance. But the effect was almost the same as screaming, everyone in the room turning their full attention on the man and his confrontation. Lori didn’t know what had led to the Dragoons being so hostile to the Combine, but it sounded like much more than a simple contractual dispute.
“What is he saying?” Lori whispered, hoping her words got through to the small mike underneath the ribbon on the front of her blouse. Her knowledge of Japanese was serviceable for ordering something from a vendor or challenging the ancestry of an enemy pilot, but it faded fast in anything more intelligent. Complicating things further, as far as she could tell, Wolf was using the older, much more formal and stylized version of the language that dominated the Combine’s court procedure, and she had virtually no knowledge of that archaic form.
Neither Grayson or Setsuna responded. Lori couldn’t say for sure whether that was because they hadn’t caught her whispered words or because they were still in the middle of whatever conversation Wolf’s presence had inspired, but it annoyed her all the same. The entire point of rigging up a microphone and bringing the earpiece with her was so they could advise her when crap like this happened!
She might have been too quiet for the microphone to pick up, but she wasn’t quiet enough not to attract the attention of the woman beside her. Mariah, red wig and elaborate makeup making her practically disappear into the crowd of nobility as being neither particularly striking nor out-of-place enough to catch the eye, took a few steps closer. Sliding into Lori’s six, the woman almost hid herself in Lori’s back. When she spoke, her voice was in an even more careful whisper than Lori had used.
“Colonel Wolf says those swords are all that is left of a good man. That Takashi—he does not use honorifics or a title—was wrong and that though he and his Dragoons have fled Combine space, they remain ready and more-than willing to confront his forces in battle if necessary for the sake of the honor of those he ordered to their ruin.”
Mariah wasn’t paying any attention to the commander of the Dragoons even as she translated his words. From what Lori could tell out of the very edges of her vision, the girl was entirely concentrating on the two other Dragoons that were with the Colonel. Mariah looked like she was about to go on, but visibly held back and directed Lori’s own attention back towards the unfolding drama with a small nod of her head.
It was still creepy how she could tell when she was being watched.
Chastised again for keeping her attention on Mariah by the girl raising one of her eyebrows in silent question, Lori turned her eyes back to the scene between the mercenary commander and the Coordinator. One of the other Dragoons had put a hand to Wolf’s shoulder and forced the man to slow down as he continued to spit words into the Coordinator’s face. Lori recognized the gesture as one she might try on Grayson when he was being too zealous or enthusiastic over a particular battlefield idea he had, but she’d never considered that anything similar could be done in social engagements. Hell, perhaps if she’d shaken her head like the other Dragoon did when this whole plan was cooked up Grayson would be the one stuck here hobnobbing with the socialites and the magical death-god machine-girl while she got to enjoy coffee and donuts in the security station!
Still, it was an odd image for one of the mercenary commander’s subordinates to so brazenly restrain his superior in public. Particularly for a unit like the Dragoons that prided itself on a high level of military discipline. Lori never would have done it to Gray in view of the men, much less in front of a crowd of civilians, and the Legion didn’t place even half the emphasis on that kind of formal respect for the rank structure as the Dragoons were known to. Perhaps if he was being stopped by the Black Widow herself or the Red Vest it would have made more sense. But Lori didn’t recognize the man who was holding Jamie Wolf back.
“Colonel Wolf said that if Takashi was an honorable man he would have challenged Wolf directly instead of twisting righteous men into despicable deeds for his goals. That the House of Kurita is and always had been backbiting scum and that he should watch his borders. That’s when Ha—his comrade stopped him.” Mariah continued in the listless, inattentive voice she always took on whenever she was thinking about something else.
“Picking up anything strange from them?” Lori finally remembered to ask, something she’d been much better about with the previous guests who’d had less dramatic entrances. As she spoke, Wolf finally turned and stalked away from Takashi Kurita with a resolute finality, the edges of his uniform-cape making the movement look much more grandiose than it actually was.
Mariah frowned, “There’s nothing you need worry about from them. The two with Colonel Wolf are…We know both of them.”
Despite being the one Mariah was talking to, Lori immediately understood that the other woman was referencing her and Setsuna when she used ‘we’. Growling, Lori forced herself to avoid tapping her foot at those words not having come sooner and of just not being informed that the Dragoons were apparently hosting more of the Guardians than Setsuna had bothered to mention. No doubt that little doozy of information was what had inspired Grayson and Setsuna’s apparently still-ongoing conversation that prevented them from translating or providing any kind of commentary!
There were two things you needed to win a fight, and the right information was just as important as the right ammunition. Sometimes it really felt like Setsuna and Mariah were feeding them with information that might as well have been hot-loaded inferno missiles that had been recovered from some moldy storehouse and whose accelerant had gone bad! Sure it looked like it would work, but it just kept exploding in the launch tube!
“More of your friends from way-back-when?” Lori said, tilting her head slightly down towards Mariah so the words wouldn’t travel quite so far.
It was awfully coincidental that two would arrive with Wolf’s Dragoons. That the Confederation, the Combine and the Magistracy all hosted one of the mythical figures was odd enough, but with the Dragoons it pushed the limits of coincidence too far. Did Colonel Wolf know who he was with? He had to, that had to be why he paid such mind to them. Did the entirety of the Dragoons? Lori hoped not. Sometimes it felt like everyone in the damn universe was in on the joke of long-running magical wars between the forces of good and evil except her and Grayson. It would be nice to find out there was at least one batch of people who were kindred spirits. Besides the House Lords that had been too absorbed in their own wars to care about a larger, more important one going on.
“More than that. We were family. Once.” Mariah whispered, voice breaking midway through the words. “They weren’t supposed to be here. They aren’t supposed to be here.”
Lori took a long breath and forced herself not to fiddle with the center-section of her blouse to try and goad Grayson or Setsuna into giving some kind of advice. If Mariah hadn’t expected them perhaps that excused Setsuna omitting their existence from her talks.
Still...Lori fought against a bubbling resentment. She had once prided herself on a practical understanding of the Inner Sphere and the Periphery’s major players. She’d always tried to keep up an up-to-date track of the political groups and factions that might be interested in hiring mercenaries to fight their battles for them, and kept a half-eye on the units like Wolf’s Dragoons and the Kell Hounds that the Legion would want to avoid any entanglements against. It was impossible to negotiate a contract otherwise, not with any degree of finesse at least. But all this magic and mysticism made that very difficult.
What was she supposed to do when one of those ‘major players’ turned out to be the girl right beside her? Beyond that, what was she supposed to say when the girl suddenly looked like someone had killed her puppy right in front of her? She was a Periphery-pirate turned ‘Mechwarrior not a...not a mother!
Lori winced at the familiar thought, and shoved it and the accompanying bubble of feelings and worries down to where they wouldn’t bother her again for a good while. Mission first, then she could worry about personal qualities--personal failings.
Her earpiece clicked as Grayson finally came back onto the line. Lori let herself relax into a nearby circle of people that looked unthreatening and could only hope that Mariah had followed.
“Lori? The two with Colonel Wolf are—“
“I know, mercenaries just have no tact!” Lori said, disguising her reply to Gray with a mindless expression of agreement with the inane conversation going on around her.
“No, you don’t. The two with Wolf are Guardians Uranus and Neptune--the ones who went off with Kerensky. And they just weren’t supposed to be here. The client didn’t even know. Unlike the others, she says they probably will recognize Mariah, though. They have their memories and there’s some bad blood there. But, here’s the kicker, she also thinks because of that they might be able to recognize a problem before we or Tiepolo’s men can. So the client wants you to extend yourself to keeping an eye on them as well as handing off that magic-wand business.”
Despite the now-flowering aggravation she felt with Setsuna, Lori couldn’t help but snort out in surprise and half-amusement. It took some extremely bitter pills before Grayson started referring to the ones buying the services of the Legion as ‘the client’. Then again, leaving something as basic as this out of the briefing ranked pretty high up there in the ‘shit to avoid’ category. Lori could only imagine why Setsuna had thought her disappeared Guardians wouldn’t show back up. She was the one who had attributed most of the success in getting the Guardians to Terra as ‘the work of fate’, why wouldn’t she think that all of them would be included?
After a moment’s token resistance, Lori gave in and let her teeth grind against each other. This just was not the way you were supposed to run an operation, magic or no-magic. Setsuna seemed to just be making things up as she went. She hadn’t been shy about admitting her other fault either. She’d all but admitted that just like the other Guardians--the ones she’d thought would be present at least--she didn’t know for sure what form any potential opposition would take. Tiepolo, Grayson and herself were looking for threats, but the Primus’ list of suspects apparently consisted of ‘everyone not me’, Grayson didn’t know what to look for, and she had the same problem as Grayson but also had to babysit. Mariah was supposed to make things easier for her by picking up on anything or anyone weird firsthand, but either hadn’t or just hadn’t mentioned it.
So now they were relying on two complete unknowns to sniff out a problem for them. ComStar might have some amazing technology squirreled away in storage and Setsuna might have an eye for the basics of clandestine operation, but Lori was growing convinced that the woman didn’t have much real-world experience with it and anyone with a brain in ComStar for operational planning was long dead. At least, hopefully they were long-dead. Because the only alternative Setsuna and Tiepolo’s suspicions presented was that the competent members of ComStar were possessed by demons or had sold their souls to them.
That was certainly a thought that had a positive impact on her morale!
Lori held back a sigh at the familiar aggravation the lack of concrete threat assessment left her with. Competent enemies were bad enough. Competent enemies with magic on their side? That just wasn’t fair. This magical bullshit needed more clearly-defined rules.
Lori tapped at her chest twice to signal she’d gotten Grayson’s warning message, disguising the motion as exaggeratedly fanning herself in agreement at one nearby women’s description of how handsome Wolf’s male subordinate was.
It wasn’t even an expression that took that much work to perform or exaggerate, because he was a looker. He was even blonde. She’d always had a thing for blondes. Unlike Gray, though, he trended pretty far into the style of a clean-shaven pretty-boy rather than the grizzled mercenary appearance her man was already taking on after a brief stint of not shaving. But clean-shaven pretty-boys were still quite popular in the League, Commonwealth, and Magistracy. Or so she assumed from the starstruck reactions of some of the women around her who were too young to look at Jamie Wolf himself as anything but an aging warhorse.
Lori kept a small portion of her mind on the other womens’ inane conversation from there—a thankfully very small portion of it since the gaggle around her had taken to criticizing the Dragoons’ uniform itself on its ‘stylistic’ merits, some of them seemed far too invested in the matter. Most of her attention Lori turned on keeping track of Wolf and his accomplices, happy to distract herself from a wealth of knowledge she’d never wanted about how full-length cloaks were definitely ‘last season’, the synth-cotton material of the Dragoons’ dress was just too boringly functional for a ‘proper’ formal uniform, and that the faux-fur trimming was an ‘appropriately mercenary’ touch that ‘badassed it up’.
Jamie Wolf, meanwhile, by sheer force of personality the women around Lori would never be able to achieve, had parted much of the crowd before him as he stalked away from the Coordinator. He made it almost to the entrance of the grand ballroom itself before being intercepted by none other than Morgan Kell and some young man who was with him. At the beginning of the parted sea of bodies, Takashi Kurita was manically whispering to his retainers, eyes never leaving the mercenary’s backside. Shifting her weight so she could see behind the head of one of the other women in her circle, Lori spotted the priestess of the Order of the Five Pillars, ‘Guardian Mars’, fading back into the rest of the Combine’s delegation.
Things almost settled down for a brief while. With Mariah in tow, Lori floated between moderately-sized groups in the massive entranceway she could drop in and out of without any long-winded introduction needed and where she could just nod along with the going topic of discussion. All the while glossing over the person who was speaking in favor of watching the two Dragoons Wolf had entered in front of, Guardian Mars, or Guardian Venus.
Lori could just make-out the last of those on the far side of the entranceway already drinking, scandalously flirting with the robed acolytes who walked around with platters of drinks, and otherwise being a very merry Canopian. The lack of gambling, go-go girls, and recreational hallucinogens undoubtedly made the reception very uptight and tame by Canopian standards, but Mina Centrella was clearly trying to make up for that lack of Canopian entertainment in whatever ways she could, even if that meant supplying it herself.
It was only two-dozen or so bodies separating her from the Canopian delegation, now. Lori still wasn’t entirely sure what her plan was for what she’d do once she reached them, but getting within spitting distance was a bigger priority. Before something else like Wolf’s dramatic entrance came along to freeze the crowd in place and leave her stuck wherever she was in the sea of bodies.
Lori mentally cursed as a visibly confused ComStar acolyte stepped out at the top of the stairs that Wolf had entered from minutes before, clearly operating off of some unseen cue that he was very uncomfortable with. He stopped as many of the occupants of the entranceway that weren’t already making their way into the grand ballroom beyond shifted their attention to him, and he awkwardly tried to shuffle away, speak, and glance back at whoever had sent him out in the same movement.
Lori had a feeling she was about to get stuck again.
“P-Presenting his Celestial Wisdom, the Light of the Universe, Lord—“
At a hurried cutting motion from another acolyte in the room, the man stopped speaking. Visibly blushing even underneath the concealing ComStar robes, he quickly descended the stairs and scurried away into the safety of the wings where whoever had sent him out to perform the introduction wouldn’t be able to reach him.
Stepping out onto the top of the stairs only an instant later was Chancellor Maximilian Liao and his wife, both beaming behind ornate formalwear that Lori would have typically thought of as ‘costumes’. At the sudden shift in the room’s attention towards their entrance, both smiled at almost the same time, undisturbed by the way their elaborate introduction had been cut-off prematurely, or acting as if they were. Both of their faces faded slightly into less congenial expressions as they noticed the arrangement of banners on the wall of the room and the way most of the other occupants had been in the process of filing into the grand ballroom already. But after an instant’s hesitation the couple descended the stairs arm-in-arm, as if the entire reception was meant for their benefit more than anyone else’s.
Like gophers coming out of their holes, the crowd of nobles and influence-peddlers firmly set itself into position at the entrance of another House Lord. Everyone at once bandying for the best view of the procession, either to cast their disgusted eyes upon the pair or to try and catch the eye of one for whatever reason. Whichever, the effect was that Lori’s slow progress towards the Canopian delegation was halted. She was forced, like those around her, to turn her eyes onto the procession of House Liao’s notables. A procession only notable for how small it was.
Lori scanned the handful of people who followed Maximillian and Elizabeth Liao, quickly passing over the large men with emotionless eyes wearing Death Commando uniforms. The exclusion of the Chancellor’s disgraced son from things wasn’t that surprising, but his youngest daughter seemed to be missing as well. Only the middle daughter, Candace, followed in the wake of the ‘Celestial Majesty’, wearing a surprisingly simple black bodystocking-turned-dress, in contrast to her father’s ornate and complex attire, spoke to what was hopefully a much more reasonable personality--though with anything Capellan it was important to remember that looks could be deceiving.
Drawing more eyes than her dress and its potential promises of restrained egomania was the man at Candace Liao’s arm who was outfitted in a more masculine shirt-and-slacks version of the same attire. Apparently not feeling the need to give off the same sense of superiority and aplomb as the Chancellor he served, Justin Xiang openly scowled when he saw the layout of the room’s decorative banners, his frown threatening to grow so large it extended off of his face entirely. His eyes scanned the rest of the room with regularity very similar to that practiced by the bodyguards behind him. In contrast to the guards, Lori could see a certain flame in the edge of the man’s eyes that revealed he was looking for targets instead of simple threats.
Considering the fraught path the man had taken to end up in his current position, Lori doubted there’d be any shortage of either for him at the wedding. One of Hanse Davion’s faults, known across the Sphere, was his immense pride. A pride that even supporters sometimes admitted bordered on arrogance. Bringing the turncoat son of his intelligence chief to Hanse Davion’s wedding, especially as his heir’s date, was a surprisingly deft insult on the part of Maximilian Liao.
Despite the delay their entrance was putting her through Lori smiled at the way Candace softly pulled the bigger man at her side out of his thoughts and into descending the stairwell alongside her. The movement was insistent, but with a degree of amused placating more than stern command. It wasn’t something you’d see among a superior dragging-along a flunkie, and If that was any indication, perhaps it was more Candace than Maximilian who had arranged her date for the evening?
Lori frowned. That left only the question of why Maximilian’s other daughter, Romano, hadn’t attended. The Capellan Chancellor could merely be in a fit of rage from some perceived slight or another, but even then he likely would have presented her at the wedding--if only to hold it over Takashi Kurita’s head that he had multiple direct heirs in-line for his throne while the Combine faced the threat of a power-struggle because of Theodore Kurita’s disgrace.
“We know one of Candace’s guards,” Mariah whispered, nodding her head in the direction of Candace and Justin, “The tall one on the right that isn’t in the Death Commando uniform.”
“Second guard on the left behind Candace.” Gray spoke in her ear, “Setsuna says that’s Jupiter.”
Lori rolled with the almost-simultaneous statements as best she could. With virtually everyone else except the Combine delegation and Colonel Wolf still focused on the entering Capellans, she didn’t even have to disguise taking a closer look at them. Instead of ending her examination on the notable personalities within, however, she looked past them.
The girl they had to be referring to was back among the guards, conspicuous more in being the only one not from among the ranks of the Death Commandos than the only female thanks to the unflattering cut of Capellan uniforms. But unlike the Magestrix’s ‘daughter’, who’d immediately flitted into comfortable conversation and mingling with other guests, and the priestess from the Combine who still kept a dignified façade over what her thoughts were, the Guardian from the Confederation was rather obviously trying, and failing, to hide an amazement with the splendor around her.
It was the little things. The moment of hesitation at the top of the stairs she took to admire the room instead of scan it for threats. The way her eyes paused every couple of seconds when she did begin to scan the room just to appreciate a dress or look past the party-goers to one of the pieces of artwork on the wall. The way she—probably unconsciously—copied the reel-and-sway descent of the stairs that Candace Liao made in front of her. In a dress, the movement would have made it look like she belonged among the other guests. In the flat, dull-brown color of her Warrior House uniform, it just made her look out of place.
Lori turned to ask Mariah if she felt anything from this group, but the other woman had already begun to walk away. The red hair of her wig bobbing slightly with the enthusiasm of her steps, Mariah snaked through the throngs of people still milling about the entranceway and disappeared into the grand ballroom itself.
Hopefully it was safe to take that as an expression of nobody in the Capellan delegation presenting a threat. Not any kind of supernatural threat, anyways. Maximilian Liao had not come to the throne by refusing any opportunity to advance himself and his nation that came his way. Lori wouldn’t be surprised if he tried something at the wedding, despite all the diplomatic protocol and ComStar’s demands for neutrality and good behavior. But if Mariah didn’t think he posed a larger danger then she had little choice but to take her word for it...Though it might be a good idea to see if the Guardians accompanying Wolf paid any special mind to the Capellans?
Lori brought one hand up to the side of her head, absently sliding an index finger along the titanium pin that bisected the hoop earring there. Honestly more worrying than Maximilian was Mariah being off on her own. But Grayson and Setsuna would be able to tell her if the girl somehow got into trouble—or, more likely, if she somehow caused some trouble. Maybe Mariah was just going to calmly leave and let Lori handle the rest of the evening? She had already done everything she needed to be present for. Now it was just a matter of Lori finding the right timing to bump into Mina Centrella.
Right. But first she needed to convince herself of that and get rid of the stomach-churning certainty that something was going to go wrong. Sometimes things did go according to plan after all! Right now the only complication in things was the unexpected presence of Colonel Wolf and the two other Guardians with him that Mariah and Setsuna were uncomfortable with.
She just wished that particular unknown wasn’t headed by the best mercenary commander in the Inner Sphere.
Lori sighed. The most infuriating part about it all to her was just how slow Setsuna demanded they be, whatever her reasoning. If these really were the girls she was looking for, if they really were the missing Guardians she and Mariah made so much out of, then Lori’s first inclination was to gather them all together and one-by-one present them with that fact! After that they could hold hands and sacrifice a chicken or whatever they wanted to do. But at least they’d be moving things along. The important thing was to do something. Instead, Lori was limited to just handing off a magic pen to Mina Centrella after which everyone would just sit and wait.
The only thing that came to those who waited was pirates. But Setsuna was insistent, and Grayson had done the proper thing and conceded to her demands. She was their employer, so she had the right to demand inaction from them, however aggravating that was to Lori’s own senses of what should be done. Setsuna was the client. A client unlike any other they’d had before, but she wouldn’t have questioned a duke giving her orders to only take limited action and then evaluate its effect as much as she did Setsuna’s plan to do the same thing.
Politely excusing herself from the group she was in without interrupting the long-running diatribe a young Lyran noblewoman was in the middle of, Lori stepped out into the slowly-flowing crowd. Both the Combine and Capellan delegations had, much like Jamie Wolf, parted the crowds before them to make their way into the grand ballroom. Unlike the mercenary Colonel, none in either group had stopped to speak with anyone. But the Canopian delegation was just beginning to move onward.
With careful timing and the judicious use of subtle shoves to move the more lackadaisical members of the crowd out of her way, Lori managed to slip into the rear of the Canopian procession without anyone taking any particular notice of her. She was just another partygoer following the House Lords example and abandoning the aperitifs and greetings of the entrance for the dining and dancing of the grand ballroom itself. Perhaps there she could better engineer some reason to present the supposed youngest-daughter of the Magestrix with the pen Setsuna had given her.
Lori actually had to struggle not to miss a step as she passed through a tall, wooden archway that separated the two rooms. The grand ballroom looked much like the entranceway, albeit without the subduing effect of banners hiding the more gaudy sections of the upper wall. Instead, the elaborately designed pillars and arches set into the wall could be witnessed in their entirety, seemingly stretching on forever across the edges of the massive, open hall. Carvings inlaid with gold paint--or perhaps it was actual gold gilding!--wrapped their way around and over the arches. According to Tiepolo, the designs recounted the entirety of the history of Terra if one took the time to walk the entire length of the grand ballroom. Though he had admitted certain historical items that weren’t common knowledge even within ComStar’s ranks had been left out.
Lori continued on, not wanting to slow and give up her prime position near the Canopian delegation but finding it difficult to keep up a complete understanding of what was going on around her without slowing down. The room was just too large, with too much busy architectural-work, too many people, and too many noises to be easily digested!
On the west end of the room, doors underneath the decorative arches of the wall had been opened and the rays of the setting sun poured in, illuminating multilayered chandeliers and sending prisms of light out to hurriedly dance in the middle of the hall around slower, more human dancers. The well-dressed nobles, usually appearing to be from the same nation but with occasional forays by those more adventurous into the arms of individuals from allied or aligned powers, followed the light’s example and swirled in time with a classical string orchestra that had taken a central position against the east wall. Judging by the lack of electrical equipment anywhere near them, Lori had a brooding fear that the dull music they were producing was going to be typical for the evening.
“Grayson? Please tell me ComStar’s itinerary for this bullshit includes a different band for later in the evening.” Lori whispered.
“You’re in luck! There’s actually three different bands.” Grayson said in her ear, “This one specializes in Terran Baroque, the next will specialize in Terran Classical, and at the end of the evening everybody has the chance to let their hair down with some Terran Romantic music.”
She could hear the smirk in his voice.
“If this ‘strings and piano’ crap keeps up I’m going to let my hair down by murdering a violinist. Violently.” Lori spat, slightly louder than she’d actually intended.
She did her best to ignore both Grayson’s laughter at her unintentional bad joke and the bearded man in a Magistracy Armed Forces uniform that turned to stare at her for the comment. Instead, she did her best to look past the people directly surrounding her to note where Mina Centrella was.
Lori was unsurprised to find the blonde girl already at the edge of the dance-floor, her entire body almost vibrating with the desire to join the other couples moving around it. But there was something very manufactured about the display. Something that struck Lori as simply off until she finally put a finger on what it was. The girl presented herself as if she were simply waiting for some man or woman to come along and drag her to the floor, but her eyes were scanning the entirety of the ballroom just the same as Justin Xiang’s had been--and they had the same predatory glare underneath them.
Lori shifted her attention before the girl noticed her stare, and instead tried to note where Setsuna’s other friends were. ‘Jupiter’ and ‘Mars’ were easy to find, still closely-attached to the delegations from Capella and the Draconis Combine. The only ones she couldn’t track down were, unfortunately, the ones she was more concerned about. The pair of Dragoons were somewhere in the ballroom. But while distinctive, they just weren’t numerous enough to make spotting them amidst the crowd an easy feat.
But, if she asked Mina Centrella to dance she might be able to get a line on where they were during the circuit of the floor. It might just be the perfect time to present the pen to her as well. She could pass it off as some kind of custom from her world for the first dance of an evening!
Glancing down at herself, Lori brought her hands up and adjusted the bow that held the upper portion of her blouse together, trying to convince herself to actually carry out the ingenious plan she’d come up with. Settling the bow back into place a little higher than it had been, she cocked it slightly so it at least began to cover part of her décolletage. It would undoubtedly be a new and heretofore undiscovered level of hell trying to dance in the hilariously impractical thing. She’d rather be in zero-gee with coveralls on. Or maybe in zero-gee with the dress and Grayson. There were some possibilities in privacy that weren’t there in public...
Pasting her lips into a dull smile and reaching out to snatch a flute of something that looked vaguely alcoholic off a passing attendant’s serving-tray, Lori forced herself legs into motion. Considering the limited intelligence and enemy force estimates she was working off of, she had a solid plan of action. Very little for reinforcements or support, and a number of ways things could go sideways without her even knowing, but a solid plan of action nonetheless. Now all that remained was to carry it out.
***********************************************************************************
A/N: Huh. Today I learned there's an 85000 character limit.
North America, Terra
August 17, 3028
Earlier...
“You look cute. A little too much like you-know-who on Helm, but who am I to question fashion trends?” Grayson said as he finished hanging the earring on her and she finished burying the microphone inside the massive ribbon on her chest.
She couldn’t quite understand how a bow that was so big still somehow left so much exposed.
Lori Kalmar fidgeted in the ridiculous, ribbon-bound blouse, telling herself firmly that it was not okay to feel anything positive at the compliment when she was dressed like a Christmas gift. If she did, it might be too easy to talk her into doing this sort of thing again, and that was unacceptable. She didn’t have any room for a holster in the upper portion of the form-fitting skirt-and-blouse combination that ComStar had pawed off on her as ‘appropriate attire’ for the gala, and the skirt certainly wasn’t long enough for her to strap anything to a thigh!
“I feel like I’m about to spill out of both the top and bottom of this stupid thing. ‘Cute’ is not my concern.” Lori said, trying to resist the urge to pull the skirt further down over her legs.
If she pulled it lower, the only thing she’d do was expose her bare waist--or her underwear. A rational clothing designer would have at least extended the blouse’s length enough that it could be depended on to cover something if anything on the outfit moved out-of-place. But apparently that wouldn’t have fit the designers ‘vision’ or something--just like normal and necessary things like pockets. Instead, she was just supposed to rely on the bows of fabric at her chest and lower-back to keep herself decent.
“Remind me again why we aren’t just dolling you up in enough makeup to make a horse look decent and throwing you in this dress to go chat-up these other Guardians and all those fun nobles out there? You have more experience with this ‘being social’ shit than I do.” Lori growled as Grayson put a comforting arm on one of her mostly-exposed shoulders.
The jerk was at least nice enough to look suitably chastised, “Because folks would still probably recognize my ugly mug from all that experience, and I don’t fill out a dress nearly as well as you do...Plus, I’d have to shave my legs and that idea just scares me. I could die from blood loss.”
Despite the way it undermined her anger, Lori couldn’t help but snort at the comment. Grayson and razors had an antagonistic relationship she was starting to be impressed by. No other man she’d ever met had his propensity to cut himself with the things, even after years of practice. Now he’d given up entirely, and she couldn’t say the resulting fuzz wasn’t distinguishing at the very least.
“Lori?” Grayson asked, voice turning serious as he brought his head forward to lean on her shoulder just over his hand, “If it comes down to it, we can pull out of this contract. Don’t put yourself in front of something like we saw on Helm.”
Lori’s eyebrows shot up. Grayson had slowly built a reputation for not backing out of contracts once he’d entered them. Then again, it wasn’t like this one was anything close to their normal contract. How could it be when the offerrer in this case was literally a witch from the Star League and the job was corralling other witches into contact with her?
“Right.” Lori answered seriously, before tilting her head to hit against Grayson’s and then pushing away from him, “Same goes for you. And no letting yourself get seduced by the witch. ‘Magic’ won’t be an acceptable excuse.”
Gray frowned with more feeling than he probably felt, “Me? Seduced? Never. I should probably be the worried one, anyways. All the most noble and respected men of the Inner Sphere around you in a ballroom just before a wedding? I’ve heard how you women get just before normal weddings, and when it’s the biggest one in centuries, well...”
Lori’s eyes narrowed as she tried to decide which of multiple scathing remarks she wanted to match that one with.
“Grayson?”
“Yes, honey?” Grayson laughed, smiling that damned innocent smile of his.
Lori sighed as even the mock-anger disappeared, “Nevermind. Let’s just see what the boss wants now that I’m...” She wrapped up the sentence by simply running a hand in front of herself, not quite sure which of many words to use to describe the outfit.
“I thought I was the boss?” Grayson protested good-naturedly as he opened the door for her. The attempt at distracting her from the uncomfortable dress was a little obvious, but she couldn’t help but appreciate it anyways.
Lori patted the man’s stubble-covered cheek as she went by, taking an immense guilty pleasure in the blush the motion drew from him, “Only when we’re not on contract.”
Grayson muttered something at that, but it sounded like it was more to himself than anything and by then she was already out of the changing room and into the short service-hallway of the ComStar building. From there it was a short jaunt to the small security substation that Setsuna had set herself up in.
Banks of monitors filled one side of the room, casting a dull blue sheen over the air of the entire room. In the center, an actual, fully-functioning holovid-table was arranged in a half-circle around a control mat where a redhead stood flipping through screens faster than she could possibly understand them, apparently looking for something. The far wall was filled by rather old-fashioned row of gray steel lockers that wouldn’t look out of place on a dropship or military base as stowage points for ‘Mechwarrior gear. From prior experience, Lori knew the lockers were full of small arms, body armor, and explosives, up to and including a pair of light SRM launchers.
At one point, ComStar having such weapons and having a significant number of members who not only knew how to use them but were kept in good training as to how to use the weapons would have surprised her. Now, that was one of the less surprising things about the interstellar communications business. A few rifles and SRMs paled in comparison to the row after row of Star League ‘Mechs the company had buried underneath Hilton Head Island, and as they’d found out on Helm, ‘Mechs themselves couldn’t compete with the secret of the Guardians that ComStar had been keeping since its inception.
“Good, you’re here.” Setsuna said, turning in her chair as she absently fiddled with a pen. She obviously gave both her and Grayson a once-over, “And you don’t seem to have noticed who else is with us? Good.”
Lori snapped her eyes to the redhead, who had temporarily stopped scrolling through screens on the holovid-table to give them both a listless raise of her hand in greeting.
“Hello.” Mariah said in that flat tone she seemed to use for almost everything when it didn’t really interest her.
The girl’s cheeks were highlighted heavily, making them seem to jut out and break-up the usual soft curves of her face. Her eyes looked less sunken-in than they were naturally, her lips wider, and her chin less prominent. Combined with the red-dyed hair and green eyes she looked like a completely different person. The only thing that really looked familiar was her dress, which mimicked Lori’s own style but with a darker color scheme to it and a less ridiculous pair of bows.
Lori found herself jealous of the last one the most. It wasn’t like the bow had to be as big as it was to hide the microphone!
On the other hand, her own bow covered more of her chest.
Maybe that was an acceptable trade off for looking like a present.
“I think I did a rather good job considering the only one I’ve been able to practice on for the last few years was myself. I styled her after the bandit-queen from the fourth season of Immortal Warrior. Minus the high-top briefs over leotard outfit, obviously. Even if it is halfway-sensible for piloting a ‘Mech, I don’t think it would blend in very well. But...” Setsuna paused, opened her mouth as if she were about to go on, then gave her head a slight shake.
“Is this the part where I find out I don’t actually have to go out in this because Mariah volunteered to take my place?” Lori said, already knowing the answer.
Setsuna gave her a half-appreciative, half-sympathetic smile, “No, I’m afraid it’s not. I convinced her to go to help try and feel out any bad actors firsthand, but we still need you.”
The woman rotated back-and-forth on her chair as if she were distracted by the monitors. But they never focused on any of the monitors, instead staring ahead and simply moving with her on the chair. Lori’d seen the same look on the woman’s face before, and had quickly come to realize that like the faraway look Mariah took on, it was the woman’s expression when she was deciding how much to say.
“Still trying to decide whether or not you can trust us?” Lori pressed, deciding to get the matter out into the open now rather than have it hanging over their heads during an actual operation.
Setsuna surprised her by shaking her head. “It’s...difficult...for us to trust anyone, but I can promise you we’re trying. No. I’m trying to think of the easiest way of answering your inevitable questions before you have to ask them.”
The woman reached down to the bag at her side and withdrew another pen, this one much more ornate than that in her hand, “You remember I told you the other Guardians had lost their memories?”
“Except the other two ‘outer’ Guardians that were named after real planets but who left with Kerensky, yeah.” Gray chimed in, beaming with pride. “See? I know to listen when magicians talk.”
Lori had to fight down a giggle, and even Mariah blinked in the slow fashion she usually reserved for amusement. Setsuna didn’t twitch.
“First, and most importantly, Colonel, I do not care what backwards classification styles the Successor States and yourself adhere to, Pluto is a planet. Second, I am not a ‘magician’, that’s a title for someone who does card tricks and waves around a magic wand. Finally, while I appreciate the sentiment of your attempt at lightening the mood, I would appreciate being able to explain without your commentary. Not every situation calls for a joke.”
“Does too.” Grayson grumbled. But his words did nothing to make his point and he took a step back to lean against the wall of the security room, both arms crossed in front of his chest and head lowered.
He was so cute when he sulked!
Lori shook her head. No time to appreciate Grayson, there was a job to do. With deliberate calm, Lori settled her eyes back on Setsuna catching a momentary peek at a concealed smile on the other woman’s lips.
Eyes meeting Lori’s, Setsuna winked. Even on a centuries-old witch--or perhaps ‘Guardian’ was what she should use--the expression carried the same meaning it might have from any other woman on the planet.
Grayson was just too fun to tease sometimes, and for a man who dished out so much he was rather bad at taking it.
“Returning to my point,” Setsuna said, her voice more harsh than her expression as she held up the fancy, golden pen she’d withdrawn from her bag. “One of these being in close proximity to them should gradually counteract that loss of memory. So if you find a good opportunity, I want you to give this one to Miss ‘Mina Centrella’, or place it in any of her belongings, if necessary. I’m informed you have some degree of experience with such maneuvers?”
Lori jerked at the offhand reference to a life she’d thought long behind her, and immediately turned an accusing glance on Grayson. He looked just as shocked however. The rest of the Legion were still on the dropships and hadn’t had much of any time to speak with Setsuna so that only left…
Mariah shifted uncomfortably and seemed to find something very interesting in the middle of the ribbon at her chest.
“I’m sorry, I probably should have assumed it was a sensitive issue but…” Setsuna said. Words failing her temporarily, she held one hand out, palm upraised before continuing, “It’s hard to trust anyone. Knowing your background helps.”
Lori couldn’t actually fault the woman for that.
“So, just to sate my curiosity, why do you need Lori for this? Couldn’t you just give them these wands yourselves?” Grayson asked, finally emerging out of his sulk to reengage in the conversation. His timing avoided what Lori feared was about to become an extended stretch of silence.
Setsuna closed her eyes for a breath at the mention of ‘wands’.
“Pens, Colonel. The term for them is ‘pens’. And we could try if we had to. But there is a process to this. A process complicated by the particular situation we’re in thanks to...prior events.” Setsuna paused, and the way she very deliberately avoided looking at Mariah made the connection almost more obvious than if she had, “Mariah, would you like to go check the security cameras in the hall physically, just to be sure they’re working right?”
The now-redheaded girl practically bounced away from the holovid-table. Slipping past Lori and Grayson, she disappeared out the door in an instant. The click of the door behind her seemed abnormally loud.
Grayson clicked his tongue and nodded, “Well that isn’t ominous at all.”
“Colonel Grayson, you woke up one of the most powerful people in the galaxy and then gave her a ride to Terra. After spending so much time with her, I would think you prepared for the ‘ominous’ by now.” Setsuna said, one eyebrow cocking upwards.
Grayson blinked, “Was that a joke?”
“An amused observation only, I assure you.” Setsuna answered, leaning back in her chair. The woman took a long breath, and brought one arm up to rest against the console at her side and prop against the side of her head.
“The reason we can’t give these pens to the other Guardians ourselves is because it could break them. Our powers are related, and on an instinctual level they probably don’t even recognize, they still use small portions of theirs. Me or Mariah giving them the pen? Our own abilities would enhance whatever echoes of their own they’re using and their lack of experience and knowledge of how to control that power could mean Rather Bad Things.”
Even without the particular turn her voice took with her last three words, the emphasis was obvious.
“So the pen-wands give them a focus for their magical powers that lets them better control it, otherwise they could start some kind of chain-reaction? Seems a silly way for it to work.” Grayson said before cocking his head, “And here I am questioning the logic of no-bullshit magical power. I suppose not making sense is part of it?”
Setsuna’s scowl at his mention of wands actually slowly transformed into a slight smile as Grayson continued, “You get used to it not making much sense with enough time, trust me. But it’s not as silly as you might think. It’s part of the way it’s supposed to work. Individually distinct people and powers coming together to accomplish a greater end than they might be able to individually. Somewhat like your mercenary Legion, I would say. In this case? One of us giving them the pen would be like you cold-starting the fusion engine in one of your ‘Mechs without any of the safeties engaged or powering-up the vacuum chamber first, using another of your ‘Mech’s to provide the initial jump. While you’re working in as a lance it’s helpful to have another ‘Mech at your side. On startup? Not so much. The same principle applies here.”
“Of course, that ignoring the mental aspect they’d face as well. At best, they’d be confronted with thousands of years of life they’ve lived in the span of seconds if we gave it to them. The last few hundred years of endless recursion would be bad enough for them I’m sure, but they’d also have the memories of the League’s fall and our own failures to deal with, completely unprepared.” Setsuna shrugged, eyes dropping to the floor.
Lori jumped at the potential chance for background, though she felt half-scummy doing it. “Was the collapse of the Star League really that bad for you?”
“Worse. Amaris’ Coup was more successful than you or anyone else could know. Beyond just toppling the Star League and killing the Camerons, Amaris’ found a way to kill P--...Guardian Moon. Or, judging by the way there’s still life, to remove her from this reality somehow. Since her successor was also killed by Amaris,” Setsuna herself didn’t seem to notice how her head turned towards the door Mariah had left out of moments earlier, “Well, that should have been when Mariah scoured the planet. A necessary evil to prevent something worse from happening.”
“But she didn’t?” Lori offered when the woman’s silence extended too long.
Setsuna shook her head, though whether it was in answer or to clear it Lori couldn’t tell, “She didn’t. Or perhaps ‘couldn’t’. And then she disappeared. Without her to restart things...Well, it forced me and Jerome Blake to do whatever we could to make things work with what we had, because we couldn’t actually end the problems. We could barely manage them. So that’s what we did. That’s why the HPG Network is still up, and most of the Guardians still around, but the network isn’t functioning as quickly or as consistently as it should and the Guardians still in the Inner Sphere have been stuck with memories that spin them around and around doing nothing.”
The woman tried to laugh, but failed. “ComStar was supposed to track her down. We all thought she’d run off to the Periphery trying to find--well, trying to find Kerensky’s fleet and the two who left with him. Precentor Rachan was the only one who thought to look within the Sphere itself, and you know how well that turned out firsthand.”
The dull buzz of the monitors and occasional whirring of a fan were the only sounds in the room for a very long, very awkward few seconds. Lori idly wondered what the woman had been about to say before she’d corrected herself, but was certain asking wouldn’t do her any good. Setsuna was more open about things than Mariah had been--as difficult as they were to believe. But on much of everything related to Mariah, she still either remained quiet or referred her and Grayson to Mariah herself--and Mariah had already explicitly refused to answer questions about her past. It was aggravating, but they’d dealt with similar clients before.
Lori only just barely managed not to choke herself holding down a laugh at that thought.
Setsuna started in her chair as if she’d just realized how long the silence had gone on, or how much she’d said before it. Shaking her head, she stood and held out the pen.
“As I was saying, beyond just being a,” Setsuna took a long breath, glared at Grayson, and finally rolled her eyes as she sighed, “focus they can use, the pens should help them gradually remember their pasts on their own terms. This one belongs to Guardian Venus, the one currently going by ‘Mina Centrella’. Get it to her however you can and then...we’ll see what to do next when the time comes.”
“Why not I just give them all out tonight? I might not have a better opportunity to approach people from three different states without attracting more attention than you might want.” Lori asked, taking the single pen and unable to help but be surprised at how heavy the small cylinder was.
“Because this is the process that is supposed to happen. Or the closest we can get without Guardian Moon. You awakened Saturn on Helm and whatever she did there was enough to allow me this opportunity. I can only hope the other two outer Guardians are awake, because the next to be awoken is Venus, and judging by how the Centrella’s seem to have actually done a good job taking care of her these past centuries, she should be the easiest. I’m trying to recreate a process that goes back millenia, Captain Kalmar.” Setsuna took a deep breath and shook her head, “This is the best I know to do with the resources available to me.”
Grayson raised his hand like a schoolchild, “Might I suggest ‘the magic ritual I am performing requires it that way’ as the better answer to my beautiful Captain’s question? Makes the people working for you less nervous if you don’t admit you’re playing things by the seat of your pants.”
Setsuna’s eye twitched, and she deliberately focused on Lori to the exclusion of everything else in the room, “Did you have any other questions?”
Yes!
“Nothing that can’t wait.” Lori answered instead of voicing her actual thought. Perhaps if she were alone with the other woman. But Setsuna was rather clearly beginning to step-away from ‘amused’ by Grayson’s constant reduction of things to ‘angry’.
“Good. Because the ball should be starting soon.”
Lori sighed, wondering if perhaps the end of the world wouldn’t be preferable to going out in public dressed like she was. With a bizarre contortion of her arm, she slipped the pen into the folds of the bow at her back, double-checking it with a few exaggerated movements to be sure it was secure.
Grayson was entirely too appreciative of the movements.
At least McCall was back on the dropship and couldn’t collaborate with the man. Grayson’s teasing compliments and appreciation were bad enough. McCall would have given him the idea of taking pictures.
********************************************************************************
Now...
Lori stared alongside the other occupants of the room, thankful that something had come along to finally draw people’s eyes away from her. It could have been worse, of course. There were a surprising number of dresses in the place that looked similar. But any distraction that obviously drew peoples’ eyes away from even the possibility of seeing her in the ridiculous getup, however many other people might think wearing it wasn’t an exercise in silliness, was a welcome relief. That the distraction was as exciting as a confrontation between Takashi Kurita and Jamie Wolf only made it that much more effective as a distraction, not to mention of some interest to her as well.
Judging by the excited chatter between Setsuna and Grayson that she could just make out coming through her earpiece, she was not the only one excited to see Jamie Wolf and his associates’ confrontation with Takashi Kurita and the Combine’s retinue. The pair were obviously having a spirited discussion on the other end of the line before it faded away—probably from one of them covering the voice input with a hand. Lori couldn’t help but feel a bit amused. Had Wolf even been invite to the wedding? Judging by his monofocus on Takashi Kurita, she was reasonably sure he was just using it as an excuse to vent his grievances at the House Lord.
He evidently had an extensive list of them. Just below the stairs that led into the entranceway, the commander of Wolf’s Dragoons was continuing to snap words in Japanese at the Combine’s leader without so much as pausing for a breath. Perhaps if anyone else in the hall had dared speak, the words might have gotten lost even over that short distance as Wolf didn’t scream so much as speak with an insistent beat that overpowered any potential opposition or resistance. But the effect was almost the same as screaming, everyone in the room turning their full attention on the man and his confrontation. Lori didn’t know what had led to the Dragoons being so hostile to the Combine, but it sounded like much more than a simple contractual dispute.
“What is he saying?” Lori whispered, hoping her words got through to the small mike underneath the ribbon on the front of her blouse. Her knowledge of Japanese was serviceable for ordering something from a vendor or challenging the ancestry of an enemy pilot, but it faded fast in anything more intelligent. Complicating things further, as far as she could tell, Wolf was using the older, much more formal and stylized version of the language that dominated the Combine’s court procedure, and she had virtually no knowledge of that archaic form.
Neither Grayson or Setsuna responded. Lori couldn’t say for sure whether that was because they hadn’t caught her whispered words or because they were still in the middle of whatever conversation Wolf’s presence had inspired, but it annoyed her all the same. The entire point of rigging up a microphone and bringing the earpiece with her was so they could advise her when crap like this happened!
She might have been too quiet for the microphone to pick up, but she wasn’t quiet enough not to attract the attention of the woman beside her. Mariah, red wig and elaborate makeup making her practically disappear into the crowd of nobility as being neither particularly striking nor out-of-place enough to catch the eye, took a few steps closer. Sliding into Lori’s six, the woman almost hid herself in Lori’s back. When she spoke, her voice was in an even more careful whisper than Lori had used.
“Colonel Wolf says those swords are all that is left of a good man. That Takashi—he does not use honorifics or a title—was wrong and that though he and his Dragoons have fled Combine space, they remain ready and more-than willing to confront his forces in battle if necessary for the sake of the honor of those he ordered to their ruin.”
Mariah wasn’t paying any attention to the commander of the Dragoons even as she translated his words. From what Lori could tell out of the very edges of her vision, the girl was entirely concentrating on the two other Dragoons that were with the Colonel. Mariah looked like she was about to go on, but visibly held back and directed Lori’s own attention back towards the unfolding drama with a small nod of her head.
It was still creepy how she could tell when she was being watched.
Chastised again for keeping her attention on Mariah by the girl raising one of her eyebrows in silent question, Lori turned her eyes back to the scene between the mercenary commander and the Coordinator. One of the other Dragoons had put a hand to Wolf’s shoulder and forced the man to slow down as he continued to spit words into the Coordinator’s face. Lori recognized the gesture as one she might try on Grayson when he was being too zealous or enthusiastic over a particular battlefield idea he had, but she’d never considered that anything similar could be done in social engagements. Hell, perhaps if she’d shaken her head like the other Dragoon did when this whole plan was cooked up Grayson would be the one stuck here hobnobbing with the socialites and the magical death-god machine-girl while she got to enjoy coffee and donuts in the security station!
Still, it was an odd image for one of the mercenary commander’s subordinates to so brazenly restrain his superior in public. Particularly for a unit like the Dragoons that prided itself on a high level of military discipline. Lori never would have done it to Gray in view of the men, much less in front of a crowd of civilians, and the Legion didn’t place even half the emphasis on that kind of formal respect for the rank structure as the Dragoons were known to. Perhaps if he was being stopped by the Black Widow herself or the Red Vest it would have made more sense. But Lori didn’t recognize the man who was holding Jamie Wolf back.
“Colonel Wolf said that if Takashi was an honorable man he would have challenged Wolf directly instead of twisting righteous men into despicable deeds for his goals. That the House of Kurita is and always had been backbiting scum and that he should watch his borders. That’s when Ha—his comrade stopped him.” Mariah continued in the listless, inattentive voice she always took on whenever she was thinking about something else.
“Picking up anything strange from them?” Lori finally remembered to ask, something she’d been much better about with the previous guests who’d had less dramatic entrances. As she spoke, Wolf finally turned and stalked away from Takashi Kurita with a resolute finality, the edges of his uniform-cape making the movement look much more grandiose than it actually was.
Mariah frowned, “There’s nothing you need worry about from them. The two with Colonel Wolf are…We know both of them.”
Despite being the one Mariah was talking to, Lori immediately understood that the other woman was referencing her and Setsuna when she used ‘we’. Growling, Lori forced herself to avoid tapping her foot at those words not having come sooner and of just not being informed that the Dragoons were apparently hosting more of the Guardians than Setsuna had bothered to mention. No doubt that little doozy of information was what had inspired Grayson and Setsuna’s apparently still-ongoing conversation that prevented them from translating or providing any kind of commentary!
There were two things you needed to win a fight, and the right information was just as important as the right ammunition. Sometimes it really felt like Setsuna and Mariah were feeding them with information that might as well have been hot-loaded inferno missiles that had been recovered from some moldy storehouse and whose accelerant had gone bad! Sure it looked like it would work, but it just kept exploding in the launch tube!
“More of your friends from way-back-when?” Lori said, tilting her head slightly down towards Mariah so the words wouldn’t travel quite so far.
It was awfully coincidental that two would arrive with Wolf’s Dragoons. That the Confederation, the Combine and the Magistracy all hosted one of the mythical figures was odd enough, but with the Dragoons it pushed the limits of coincidence too far. Did Colonel Wolf know who he was with? He had to, that had to be why he paid such mind to them. Did the entirety of the Dragoons? Lori hoped not. Sometimes it felt like everyone in the damn universe was in on the joke of long-running magical wars between the forces of good and evil except her and Grayson. It would be nice to find out there was at least one batch of people who were kindred spirits. Besides the House Lords that had been too absorbed in their own wars to care about a larger, more important one going on.
“More than that. We were family. Once.” Mariah whispered, voice breaking midway through the words. “They weren’t supposed to be here. They aren’t supposed to be here.”
Lori took a long breath and forced herself not to fiddle with the center-section of her blouse to try and goad Grayson or Setsuna into giving some kind of advice. If Mariah hadn’t expected them perhaps that excused Setsuna omitting their existence from her talks.
Still...Lori fought against a bubbling resentment. She had once prided herself on a practical understanding of the Inner Sphere and the Periphery’s major players. She’d always tried to keep up an up-to-date track of the political groups and factions that might be interested in hiring mercenaries to fight their battles for them, and kept a half-eye on the units like Wolf’s Dragoons and the Kell Hounds that the Legion would want to avoid any entanglements against. It was impossible to negotiate a contract otherwise, not with any degree of finesse at least. But all this magic and mysticism made that very difficult.
What was she supposed to do when one of those ‘major players’ turned out to be the girl right beside her? Beyond that, what was she supposed to say when the girl suddenly looked like someone had killed her puppy right in front of her? She was a Periphery-pirate turned ‘Mechwarrior not a...not a mother!
Lori winced at the familiar thought, and shoved it and the accompanying bubble of feelings and worries down to where they wouldn’t bother her again for a good while. Mission first, then she could worry about personal qualities--personal failings.
Her earpiece clicked as Grayson finally came back onto the line. Lori let herself relax into a nearby circle of people that looked unthreatening and could only hope that Mariah had followed.
“Lori? The two with Colonel Wolf are—“
“I know, mercenaries just have no tact!” Lori said, disguising her reply to Gray with a mindless expression of agreement with the inane conversation going on around her.
“No, you don’t. The two with Wolf are Guardians Uranus and Neptune--the ones who went off with Kerensky. And they just weren’t supposed to be here. The client didn’t even know. Unlike the others, she says they probably will recognize Mariah, though. They have their memories and there’s some bad blood there. But, here’s the kicker, she also thinks because of that they might be able to recognize a problem before we or Tiepolo’s men can. So the client wants you to extend yourself to keeping an eye on them as well as handing off that magic-wand business.”
Despite the now-flowering aggravation she felt with Setsuna, Lori couldn’t help but snort out in surprise and half-amusement. It took some extremely bitter pills before Grayson started referring to the ones buying the services of the Legion as ‘the client’. Then again, leaving something as basic as this out of the briefing ranked pretty high up there in the ‘shit to avoid’ category. Lori could only imagine why Setsuna had thought her disappeared Guardians wouldn’t show back up. She was the one who had attributed most of the success in getting the Guardians to Terra as ‘the work of fate’, why wouldn’t she think that all of them would be included?
After a moment’s token resistance, Lori gave in and let her teeth grind against each other. This just was not the way you were supposed to run an operation, magic or no-magic. Setsuna seemed to just be making things up as she went. She hadn’t been shy about admitting her other fault either. She’d all but admitted that just like the other Guardians--the ones she’d thought would be present at least--she didn’t know for sure what form any potential opposition would take. Tiepolo, Grayson and herself were looking for threats, but the Primus’ list of suspects apparently consisted of ‘everyone not me’, Grayson didn’t know what to look for, and she had the same problem as Grayson but also had to babysit. Mariah was supposed to make things easier for her by picking up on anything or anyone weird firsthand, but either hadn’t or just hadn’t mentioned it.
So now they were relying on two complete unknowns to sniff out a problem for them. ComStar might have some amazing technology squirreled away in storage and Setsuna might have an eye for the basics of clandestine operation, but Lori was growing convinced that the woman didn’t have much real-world experience with it and anyone with a brain in ComStar for operational planning was long dead. At least, hopefully they were long-dead. Because the only alternative Setsuna and Tiepolo’s suspicions presented was that the competent members of ComStar were possessed by demons or had sold their souls to them.
That was certainly a thought that had a positive impact on her morale!
Lori held back a sigh at the familiar aggravation the lack of concrete threat assessment left her with. Competent enemies were bad enough. Competent enemies with magic on their side? That just wasn’t fair. This magical bullshit needed more clearly-defined rules.
Lori tapped at her chest twice to signal she’d gotten Grayson’s warning message, disguising the motion as exaggeratedly fanning herself in agreement at one nearby women’s description of how handsome Wolf’s male subordinate was.
It wasn’t even an expression that took that much work to perform or exaggerate, because he was a looker. He was even blonde. She’d always had a thing for blondes. Unlike Gray, though, he trended pretty far into the style of a clean-shaven pretty-boy rather than the grizzled mercenary appearance her man was already taking on after a brief stint of not shaving. But clean-shaven pretty-boys were still quite popular in the League, Commonwealth, and Magistracy. Or so she assumed from the starstruck reactions of some of the women around her who were too young to look at Jamie Wolf himself as anything but an aging warhorse.
Lori kept a small portion of her mind on the other womens’ inane conversation from there—a thankfully very small portion of it since the gaggle around her had taken to criticizing the Dragoons’ uniform itself on its ‘stylistic’ merits, some of them seemed far too invested in the matter. Most of her attention Lori turned on keeping track of Wolf and his accomplices, happy to distract herself from a wealth of knowledge she’d never wanted about how full-length cloaks were definitely ‘last season’, the synth-cotton material of the Dragoons’ dress was just too boringly functional for a ‘proper’ formal uniform, and that the faux-fur trimming was an ‘appropriately mercenary’ touch that ‘badassed it up’.
Jamie Wolf, meanwhile, by sheer force of personality the women around Lori would never be able to achieve, had parted much of the crowd before him as he stalked away from the Coordinator. He made it almost to the entrance of the grand ballroom itself before being intercepted by none other than Morgan Kell and some young man who was with him. At the beginning of the parted sea of bodies, Takashi Kurita was manically whispering to his retainers, eyes never leaving the mercenary’s backside. Shifting her weight so she could see behind the head of one of the other women in her circle, Lori spotted the priestess of the Order of the Five Pillars, ‘Guardian Mars’, fading back into the rest of the Combine’s delegation.
Things almost settled down for a brief while. With Mariah in tow, Lori floated between moderately-sized groups in the massive entranceway she could drop in and out of without any long-winded introduction needed and where she could just nod along with the going topic of discussion. All the while glossing over the person who was speaking in favor of watching the two Dragoons Wolf had entered in front of, Guardian Mars, or Guardian Venus.
Lori could just make-out the last of those on the far side of the entranceway already drinking, scandalously flirting with the robed acolytes who walked around with platters of drinks, and otherwise being a very merry Canopian. The lack of gambling, go-go girls, and recreational hallucinogens undoubtedly made the reception very uptight and tame by Canopian standards, but Mina Centrella was clearly trying to make up for that lack of Canopian entertainment in whatever ways she could, even if that meant supplying it herself.
It was only two-dozen or so bodies separating her from the Canopian delegation, now. Lori still wasn’t entirely sure what her plan was for what she’d do once she reached them, but getting within spitting distance was a bigger priority. Before something else like Wolf’s dramatic entrance came along to freeze the crowd in place and leave her stuck wherever she was in the sea of bodies.
Lori mentally cursed as a visibly confused ComStar acolyte stepped out at the top of the stairs that Wolf had entered from minutes before, clearly operating off of some unseen cue that he was very uncomfortable with. He stopped as many of the occupants of the entranceway that weren’t already making their way into the grand ballroom beyond shifted their attention to him, and he awkwardly tried to shuffle away, speak, and glance back at whoever had sent him out in the same movement.
Lori had a feeling she was about to get stuck again.
“P-Presenting his Celestial Wisdom, the Light of the Universe, Lord—“
At a hurried cutting motion from another acolyte in the room, the man stopped speaking. Visibly blushing even underneath the concealing ComStar robes, he quickly descended the stairs and scurried away into the safety of the wings where whoever had sent him out to perform the introduction wouldn’t be able to reach him.
Stepping out onto the top of the stairs only an instant later was Chancellor Maximilian Liao and his wife, both beaming behind ornate formalwear that Lori would have typically thought of as ‘costumes’. At the sudden shift in the room’s attention towards their entrance, both smiled at almost the same time, undisturbed by the way their elaborate introduction had been cut-off prematurely, or acting as if they were. Both of their faces faded slightly into less congenial expressions as they noticed the arrangement of banners on the wall of the room and the way most of the other occupants had been in the process of filing into the grand ballroom already. But after an instant’s hesitation the couple descended the stairs arm-in-arm, as if the entire reception was meant for their benefit more than anyone else’s.
Like gophers coming out of their holes, the crowd of nobles and influence-peddlers firmly set itself into position at the entrance of another House Lord. Everyone at once bandying for the best view of the procession, either to cast their disgusted eyes upon the pair or to try and catch the eye of one for whatever reason. Whichever, the effect was that Lori’s slow progress towards the Canopian delegation was halted. She was forced, like those around her, to turn her eyes onto the procession of House Liao’s notables. A procession only notable for how small it was.
Lori scanned the handful of people who followed Maximillian and Elizabeth Liao, quickly passing over the large men with emotionless eyes wearing Death Commando uniforms. The exclusion of the Chancellor’s disgraced son from things wasn’t that surprising, but his youngest daughter seemed to be missing as well. Only the middle daughter, Candace, followed in the wake of the ‘Celestial Majesty’, wearing a surprisingly simple black bodystocking-turned-dress, in contrast to her father’s ornate and complex attire, spoke to what was hopefully a much more reasonable personality--though with anything Capellan it was important to remember that looks could be deceiving.
Drawing more eyes than her dress and its potential promises of restrained egomania was the man at Candace Liao’s arm who was outfitted in a more masculine shirt-and-slacks version of the same attire. Apparently not feeling the need to give off the same sense of superiority and aplomb as the Chancellor he served, Justin Xiang openly scowled when he saw the layout of the room’s decorative banners, his frown threatening to grow so large it extended off of his face entirely. His eyes scanned the rest of the room with regularity very similar to that practiced by the bodyguards behind him. In contrast to the guards, Lori could see a certain flame in the edge of the man’s eyes that revealed he was looking for targets instead of simple threats.
Considering the fraught path the man had taken to end up in his current position, Lori doubted there’d be any shortage of either for him at the wedding. One of Hanse Davion’s faults, known across the Sphere, was his immense pride. A pride that even supporters sometimes admitted bordered on arrogance. Bringing the turncoat son of his intelligence chief to Hanse Davion’s wedding, especially as his heir’s date, was a surprisingly deft insult on the part of Maximilian Liao.
Despite the delay their entrance was putting her through Lori smiled at the way Candace softly pulled the bigger man at her side out of his thoughts and into descending the stairwell alongside her. The movement was insistent, but with a degree of amused placating more than stern command. It wasn’t something you’d see among a superior dragging-along a flunkie, and If that was any indication, perhaps it was more Candace than Maximilian who had arranged her date for the evening?
Lori frowned. That left only the question of why Maximilian’s other daughter, Romano, hadn’t attended. The Capellan Chancellor could merely be in a fit of rage from some perceived slight or another, but even then he likely would have presented her at the wedding--if only to hold it over Takashi Kurita’s head that he had multiple direct heirs in-line for his throne while the Combine faced the threat of a power-struggle because of Theodore Kurita’s disgrace.
“We know one of Candace’s guards,” Mariah whispered, nodding her head in the direction of Candace and Justin, “The tall one on the right that isn’t in the Death Commando uniform.”
“Second guard on the left behind Candace.” Gray spoke in her ear, “Setsuna says that’s Jupiter.”
Lori rolled with the almost-simultaneous statements as best she could. With virtually everyone else except the Combine delegation and Colonel Wolf still focused on the entering Capellans, she didn’t even have to disguise taking a closer look at them. Instead of ending her examination on the notable personalities within, however, she looked past them.
The girl they had to be referring to was back among the guards, conspicuous more in being the only one not from among the ranks of the Death Commandos than the only female thanks to the unflattering cut of Capellan uniforms. But unlike the Magestrix’s ‘daughter’, who’d immediately flitted into comfortable conversation and mingling with other guests, and the priestess from the Combine who still kept a dignified façade over what her thoughts were, the Guardian from the Confederation was rather obviously trying, and failing, to hide an amazement with the splendor around her.
It was the little things. The moment of hesitation at the top of the stairs she took to admire the room instead of scan it for threats. The way her eyes paused every couple of seconds when she did begin to scan the room just to appreciate a dress or look past the party-goers to one of the pieces of artwork on the wall. The way she—probably unconsciously—copied the reel-and-sway descent of the stairs that Candace Liao made in front of her. In a dress, the movement would have made it look like she belonged among the other guests. In the flat, dull-brown color of her Warrior House uniform, it just made her look out of place.
Lori turned to ask Mariah if she felt anything from this group, but the other woman had already begun to walk away. The red hair of her wig bobbing slightly with the enthusiasm of her steps, Mariah snaked through the throngs of people still milling about the entranceway and disappeared into the grand ballroom itself.
Hopefully it was safe to take that as an expression of nobody in the Capellan delegation presenting a threat. Not any kind of supernatural threat, anyways. Maximilian Liao had not come to the throne by refusing any opportunity to advance himself and his nation that came his way. Lori wouldn’t be surprised if he tried something at the wedding, despite all the diplomatic protocol and ComStar’s demands for neutrality and good behavior. But if Mariah didn’t think he posed a larger danger then she had little choice but to take her word for it...Though it might be a good idea to see if the Guardians accompanying Wolf paid any special mind to the Capellans?
Lori brought one hand up to the side of her head, absently sliding an index finger along the titanium pin that bisected the hoop earring there. Honestly more worrying than Maximilian was Mariah being off on her own. But Grayson and Setsuna would be able to tell her if the girl somehow got into trouble—or, more likely, if she somehow caused some trouble. Maybe Mariah was just going to calmly leave and let Lori handle the rest of the evening? She had already done everything she needed to be present for. Now it was just a matter of Lori finding the right timing to bump into Mina Centrella.
Right. But first she needed to convince herself of that and get rid of the stomach-churning certainty that something was going to go wrong. Sometimes things did go according to plan after all! Right now the only complication in things was the unexpected presence of Colonel Wolf and the two other Guardians with him that Mariah and Setsuna were uncomfortable with.
She just wished that particular unknown wasn’t headed by the best mercenary commander in the Inner Sphere.
Lori sighed. The most infuriating part about it all to her was just how slow Setsuna demanded they be, whatever her reasoning. If these really were the girls she was looking for, if they really were the missing Guardians she and Mariah made so much out of, then Lori’s first inclination was to gather them all together and one-by-one present them with that fact! After that they could hold hands and sacrifice a chicken or whatever they wanted to do. But at least they’d be moving things along. The important thing was to do something. Instead, Lori was limited to just handing off a magic pen to Mina Centrella after which everyone would just sit and wait.
The only thing that came to those who waited was pirates. But Setsuna was insistent, and Grayson had done the proper thing and conceded to her demands. She was their employer, so she had the right to demand inaction from them, however aggravating that was to Lori’s own senses of what should be done. Setsuna was the client. A client unlike any other they’d had before, but she wouldn’t have questioned a duke giving her orders to only take limited action and then evaluate its effect as much as she did Setsuna’s plan to do the same thing.
Politely excusing herself from the group she was in without interrupting the long-running diatribe a young Lyran noblewoman was in the middle of, Lori stepped out into the slowly-flowing crowd. Both the Combine and Capellan delegations had, much like Jamie Wolf, parted the crowds before them to make their way into the grand ballroom. Unlike the mercenary Colonel, none in either group had stopped to speak with anyone. But the Canopian delegation was just beginning to move onward.
With careful timing and the judicious use of subtle shoves to move the more lackadaisical members of the crowd out of her way, Lori managed to slip into the rear of the Canopian procession without anyone taking any particular notice of her. She was just another partygoer following the House Lords example and abandoning the aperitifs and greetings of the entrance for the dining and dancing of the grand ballroom itself. Perhaps there she could better engineer some reason to present the supposed youngest-daughter of the Magestrix with the pen Setsuna had given her.
Lori actually had to struggle not to miss a step as she passed through a tall, wooden archway that separated the two rooms. The grand ballroom looked much like the entranceway, albeit without the subduing effect of banners hiding the more gaudy sections of the upper wall. Instead, the elaborately designed pillars and arches set into the wall could be witnessed in their entirety, seemingly stretching on forever across the edges of the massive, open hall. Carvings inlaid with gold paint--or perhaps it was actual gold gilding!--wrapped their way around and over the arches. According to Tiepolo, the designs recounted the entirety of the history of Terra if one took the time to walk the entire length of the grand ballroom. Though he had admitted certain historical items that weren’t common knowledge even within ComStar’s ranks had been left out.
Lori continued on, not wanting to slow and give up her prime position near the Canopian delegation but finding it difficult to keep up a complete understanding of what was going on around her without slowing down. The room was just too large, with too much busy architectural-work, too many people, and too many noises to be easily digested!
On the west end of the room, doors underneath the decorative arches of the wall had been opened and the rays of the setting sun poured in, illuminating multilayered chandeliers and sending prisms of light out to hurriedly dance in the middle of the hall around slower, more human dancers. The well-dressed nobles, usually appearing to be from the same nation but with occasional forays by those more adventurous into the arms of individuals from allied or aligned powers, followed the light’s example and swirled in time with a classical string orchestra that had taken a central position against the east wall. Judging by the lack of electrical equipment anywhere near them, Lori had a brooding fear that the dull music they were producing was going to be typical for the evening.
“Grayson? Please tell me ComStar’s itinerary for this bullshit includes a different band for later in the evening.” Lori whispered.
“You’re in luck! There’s actually three different bands.” Grayson said in her ear, “This one specializes in Terran Baroque, the next will specialize in Terran Classical, and at the end of the evening everybody has the chance to let their hair down with some Terran Romantic music.”
She could hear the smirk in his voice.
“If this ‘strings and piano’ crap keeps up I’m going to let my hair down by murdering a violinist. Violently.” Lori spat, slightly louder than she’d actually intended.
She did her best to ignore both Grayson’s laughter at her unintentional bad joke and the bearded man in a Magistracy Armed Forces uniform that turned to stare at her for the comment. Instead, she did her best to look past the people directly surrounding her to note where Mina Centrella was.
Lori was unsurprised to find the blonde girl already at the edge of the dance-floor, her entire body almost vibrating with the desire to join the other couples moving around it. But there was something very manufactured about the display. Something that struck Lori as simply off until she finally put a finger on what it was. The girl presented herself as if she were simply waiting for some man or woman to come along and drag her to the floor, but her eyes were scanning the entirety of the ballroom just the same as Justin Xiang’s had been--and they had the same predatory glare underneath them.
Lori shifted her attention before the girl noticed her stare, and instead tried to note where Setsuna’s other friends were. ‘Jupiter’ and ‘Mars’ were easy to find, still closely-attached to the delegations from Capella and the Draconis Combine. The only ones she couldn’t track down were, unfortunately, the ones she was more concerned about. The pair of Dragoons were somewhere in the ballroom. But while distinctive, they just weren’t numerous enough to make spotting them amidst the crowd an easy feat.
But, if she asked Mina Centrella to dance she might be able to get a line on where they were during the circuit of the floor. It might just be the perfect time to present the pen to her as well. She could pass it off as some kind of custom from her world for the first dance of an evening!
Glancing down at herself, Lori brought her hands up and adjusted the bow that held the upper portion of her blouse together, trying to convince herself to actually carry out the ingenious plan she’d come up with. Settling the bow back into place a little higher than it had been, she cocked it slightly so it at least began to cover part of her décolletage. It would undoubtedly be a new and heretofore undiscovered level of hell trying to dance in the hilariously impractical thing. She’d rather be in zero-gee with coveralls on. Or maybe in zero-gee with the dress and Grayson. There were some possibilities in privacy that weren’t there in public...
Pasting her lips into a dull smile and reaching out to snatch a flute of something that looked vaguely alcoholic off a passing attendant’s serving-tray, Lori forced herself legs into motion. Considering the limited intelligence and enemy force estimates she was working off of, she had a solid plan of action. Very little for reinforcements or support, and a number of ways things could go sideways without her even knowing, but a solid plan of action nonetheless. Now all that remained was to carry it out.
***********************************************************************************
A/N: Huh. Today I learned there's an 85000 character limit.
D
Deleted member
Guest
You write Setsuna very well! Sorry for the character limit.
This chapter was... duller? It moved slower, and it dwelled on the description of the wedding so much that I skimmed a few paragraphs. I dunno what was wrong, really, I just can't put my finger on it.
What does work, however, is the characters' personalities. I never watched Sailor Moon, but I get that the characters are supposed to be quirky and lighthearted. But when Setsuna gets talking about the fall of the Star League, you can just about feel the weight on her shoulders.
Oh, and-
What does work, however, is the characters' personalities. I never watched Sailor Moon, but I get that the characters are supposed to be quirky and lighthearted. But when Setsuna gets talking about the fall of the Star League, you can just about feel the weight on her shoulders.
Oh, and-
At this rate, the royalty of Canopus are single-handedly going to bring back the Aristocrats joke.
9 - Maskirovka and Masquerade (pt. 4)
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
As she walked, Lori slugged back a healthy portion of the glass’ contents just as she would a PPC or whiskey. She regretted the move almost instantly, and had to roughly swallow an aggravated cough at the heavy carbonation and sickly-sweetness of the drink. Lori immediately turned and hurriedly returned the drink to the try she’d removed it from.
ComStar was serving their guests carbonated apple juice? What kind of masochistic assholes--
As if spurred on by the thought itself, the orchestra crescendoed from light background accompaniment to a swelling chord of strings that battered at Lori’s ears with all the force of a Highlander at full-speed. Instead of coming down from that swell, however, they only got louder.
Lori sighed, briefly entertaining the thought of demanding Grayson play some real music through the bud in her ear. It would make dancing a lot easier, but probably get her too much attention from being off-beat with the orchestra’s music. She’d just have to put up with it. For the dance with Mina at least.
Wiping away the bit of sweat that had collected on her palms, Lori turned past the second-to-last person in between her and Mina Centrella. If she got the girl the pen soon enough, it could well end up being the fastest-done job in the Legion’s history--excluding the mock contract McCall had taken out on April first years before that nobody liked to talk about.
She was close now! All she had to do was ask the girl to dance. Even if she wasn’t as ditzy as she acted, she’d have to give-in to a request like that or it’d break her cover. Lori couldn’t help but appreciate the irony.
“Lori? Lori something’s interf—“ Grayson interrupted suddenly. His voice slowly faded in her ear until it disappeared entirely into a flat hum of nothing.
Lori automatically brought one hand up towards her ear. Maybe something had broken on the ComStar device? Was her microphone still transmitting?
A breeze from the open doors curled through her hair and forced her to drop the other hand down to hold her skirt in place. Trying to get something, even if it was just feedback through the equipment, Lori patted her earpiece with one finger of the hand she could use. She was met by total silence. The only possible thing that could cause that was a complete failure or...
Or some kind of jamming device.
“It’s always interesting to see pretty young girls at these kinds of things who aren’t enjoying themselves.”
Oh bad words.
Lori froze. The voice was higher-pitched but still somewhat rough, as if the person it belonged to had grown up on an oxygen-thin world or been a smoker for a long enough period to have it start affecting them. The sudden attention forced Lori to shift the hand at her ear from fiddling with the earbud to her earring, using a thumb to curl some of her hair over the ear as best she could.
She could think of only a few coincidental explanations for why her mike would cut out immediately before someone approached her. But none of them seemed very plausible. Most likely was that whoever this was somehow knew. Twisting her head in the same way a self-absorbed idiot would when responding to a mouthy waiter, Lori turned towards the voice.
Only long-dormant memories of how to handle pirates kept her from going completely silent in shock at the blonde-haired man who stood at her side as she realized that none of the coincidental explanations would be enough to explain his presence. A cocky smile she’d seen a thousand times on ‘Mech jocks across the Sphere played at his lips, but it faded the further up his face she went. His eyes were blank and unrevealing, with almost the same faraway look to them as Mariah had when she was avoiding a question. His brows curled down in what might have been good humor if not for the eyes. With them, it looked much more like suspicion.
The Dragoon uniform sealed what little doubt she had about the man’s attitude. It was definitely ‘suspicion’. The awful trouble was that it was likely completely justified suspicion. Lori had always preferred it when she actually hadn’t done anything she was suspected of. Being guilty made it much harder to keep up appearances!
“And I suppose you think the grace of some mercenary Mech-jock’s presence will make my evening suddenly that much more enjoyable?” Lori shot back, already certain that even if her act was perfect it wasn’t going to work. But she still had to try.
“Well, I do like to think my company is enjoyable, but I meant it as more a compliment, actually. There are so many of these galas over the course of a year in every Successor State. I’ve found the people with brains or who have seen the elephant tend not to enjoy them for the same reason everyone else does.” The man continued, giving a slight nod.
Lori forced her face to scrunch together in mock confusion, “Seen the elephant?”
“I’m sorry, it’s something of an old slang term. We ‘Mechwarriors use it to mean people who have seen combat before.” The blonde explained.
“So, by your words, if I haven’t ‘seen the elephant’, I must be one of the ‘people with brains’?” Lori said, raising her eyebrow in what she hoped was mild playfulness, “You’re very good at giving compliments, mister...”
“Colonel, actually.” He corrected easily, flashing that smile again, “Colonel Haruka Tenoh of Wolf’s Dragoons, and I admit I’ve had a lot of practice complimenting beautiful girls.”
“Well consider me flattered, Colonel.” Lori said unsure what else to say. Extending her hand, Lori raised her eyebrows at the rank. “Lorinette Kalkenny of New Earth.”
She tried not to jerk in surprise when instead of shaking her hand, the Dragoon officer and, more worryingly, Guardian, brought it up slightly and bent down to brush his lips against the knuckles. It was an outdated custom even among the ‘Mechwarriors who still believed themselves ‘knights of the modern battlefield’. But, if he was another of the Guardians of the Star League she couldn’t well be surprised if he was old-fashioned, could she?
Terrified of why he’d singled her out in the first place, oh yes. But not surprised at his being old-fashioned in the way he did it.
Still, Lori bit the rear of her lip as the man released her hand, running his fingers against piloting calluses only barely concealed by a thin layer of lotion and moisturizer that was supposed to imitate the feel of soft hands. She wished Grayson was present to cause a scene over the annoying custom. But hiding behind her fake name she had to act as if she found it at least a little charming.
She hated acting almost as much as she hated the ridiculous act the Dragoon was putting on for her benefit. It was embarrassing for both of them!
Lori tried but couldn’t shutup a stupid voice in her head that said it was only embarrassing because it wasn’t Grayson doing it.
“I suppose you have much practice with doing that as well, Colonel?” Lori asked, once again forcing her voice to take on a soft lilt that bordered on flirtatious.
“Some, I admit.” Haruka continued, “But I honestly prefer not to stand on theatrics so much and just come out and ask pretty girls to dance with me. It makes things go so much quicker.”
The mercenary turned towards the dancefloor, cocking one arm on his hip so his elbow extended almost into Lori’s abdomen. The act might almost have been friendly, with the same quaint outdatedness as his earlier kiss of her hand. Even the steady, ever-present smile didn’t leave his face. But something in his eyes hardened to the point where they could have melted durasteel just as effectively as a large laser.
“So, would you care to join me for this dance?”
Oh bad words, bad words, bad words…
Lori froze, feeling as if she were a small creature caught between different predators. She had no support from Gray and Setsuna had merely warned her to be careful of the Dragoon pair while also looking to them for direction. Clearly the man had some reason to approach her, but his timing couldn’t possibly have been worse.
The pen suddenly felt much more conspicuous than it had the whole evening.
“I’m afraid I’m not a very good dancer, Colonel. I’m also not exceptionally interested. The Dragoons may consider themselves an exception, but I have plenty of stories about mercenaries.” Lori said, twisting her voice into a deliberately harsh tone that might chase the man away if it were, somehow, just a massive coincidence.
It was too much to hope for.
“Oh, undoubtedly you do. That’s why I can promise only a single dance.” Haruka said, a smirk came back to his face, but it still didn’t look genuine, “Don’t make me beg, ‘Miss Kalkenny’, was it? Because I can assure you I will and it will attract a great deal of attention and be quite awkward for both of us, I’m sure.”
Lori swallowed and stepped forward to cross her own arm through his, “Please lead on, Colonel. Though I must warn you I am a terrible dancer.”
Something twitched in his cheek, perhaps the beginning of a real smile rather than the almost-mocking one he’d worn thus far, “I’ve found it’s very much like piloting a ‘Mech, Captain Kalmar. The less you think about it consciously, the better you tend to do.”
Lori caught herself nodding before the rank-and-name he’d used struck, and she couldn’t help but almost stumble as every muscle in her body decided to tense at that exact moment. It was only the firm support from his arm that kept her from falling straight-away, and he slowed his stride just enough for her to regain her footing without obviously stumbling.
“As I said, I prefer not to stand on theatrics, Captain.”
Lori could only glare at him as they stepped onto the floor and a handful of other pairs briefly closed-in around them. With a flourish from his free hand and a half-step rotation, Haruka led her into a slow, plodding dance that mimicked that being performed by a small sea of others in the center of the ballroom. Somehow, he managed not to step on her feet, obviously repositioning himself before completing every step to avoid it as she bumbled through her own movements.
Okay, so he definitely knew who she was. How much else did he know? And where the hell was one of the damned acolytes when you needed them? Her microphone might have cut out, but the cameras in the ballroom should still work. Now would be a very good time for an extraction.
“Of course, I could understand someone from the Gray Death Legion being less inclined to the same attitude. Some of your operations have been quite theatrical.” Haruka continued as they danced.
Oh, you don’t know the half of it, asshole…
Lori coughed, “Mind telling me just how you know who I am?”
It was a longshot of a question, meant more to interrupt him, buy Grayson and ComStar time to notice and act, and give her a moment to recover rather than to actually discover anything. But he answered it all the same.
“The Dragoons make a habit of keeping tabs on the leading members of any mercenary commands that catch our eye. And, for that matter, what activities Periphery bandits and pirates are getting up to. Since you’ve fallen under both those categories in your career thus far, Miss Kalmar? Well. To be frank, that fits a profile of people who we’ve made that often end up employed by ComStar,” His eyes narrowed even further and what slight humor might once have been on his face disappeared, “And here you are.”
“That only leaves a few mysteries,” Haruka continued, voice softening minutely, “The largest of them being what Tiepolo and ComStar are using you for, and where Grayson Carlyle himself is.”
Something that had been coiled tight inside Lori’s stomach sprung open in an instant, and she felt the sudden urge to laugh in Haruka’s face. The questions were all firmly rooted on basic facts, without any of the supernatural connection or implication behind them that Lori knew their honest answers had. It made the point almost by itself. She was the one in control of more information--and therefore the entire conversation--not the Dragoon colonel.
He took her silence in the wrong way, “If they are holding your commander hostage, we may be able to help you solve that problem. Depending on how much you can tell us about what ComStar is using you for. What’s their interest in Mina Centrella?”
Lori couldn’t keep her grin down any longer, and the way it made his eyebrows jump only gave her another reason to make it even wider.
“You may want to reevaluate how good you think your intelligence is, Colonel. The Gray Death Legion is on retainer by ComStar of its own free will.” Lori said, taking a perverse degree of pleasure in the sudden flash of uncertainty and confusion in Haruka’s expression, “Grayson Carlyle himself isn’t attending because we all agreed he’d be too recognizable at an event like this to properly do the job. The mystery you should be asking about, though, is why so many Guardians of the Star League are here at the same time.”
A foot came down hard on top of Lori’s, and she found herself having to force her hand open as Haruka’s clamped down around her own. The blonde quickly recovered, sliding her foot to the side again and continuing the slow, steady dance. But it was obviously only a physical recovery, and her hand continued it’s death grip.
More concerning was the sudden blankness in her eyes.
“You are going to tell me everything you know, now.” Haruka said, the words coming out in a flat statement without even a breath between words.
Lori had been enjoying the sudden reversal in feeling the conversation had taken, but she’d heard that tone before when she was part of a pirate-band that styled itself a ‘Special Expeditionary Force’. There, that same tone had usually preceded really unpleasant things for whoever was being spoken to. Still, she couldn’t resist the opportunity to get some of her own back.
“Oh am I? I am part of the Legion. And as you said yourself, we do so love theatrics Colon-naaagh.” Lori cut off her words with the strained groan as the man’s hand clamped down even harder on her own, popping her knuckles and squeezing the fingers together against the palm so tight she could swear it felt like bones were an instant away from breaking.
Haruka pulled her in very close, the hand at her waist mimicking the other and steadily tightening until it felt as if it were going to tear through the skin. To an observer they would only look like a couple that had moved-on from the initial distance of the dance to a more intimate arrangement.
“Everything. Now.” Haruka growled in her ear.
Lori came to two realizations in one instant as they continued to move across the dance floor. The first, relatively unimportant but difficult to draw her focus away from with three pieces of evidence literally rubbing against her with every movement of their bodies--or, more accurately, two pieces which rubbed against her and one that was conspicuously lacking--was that Colonel Haruka Tenoh was definitely not a man.
That would have been awkward enough even without the second realization: the other woman was definitely still the one in control of the conversation.
“Now what kind of mercenary would I be if I gave you all that for free?” Lori choked out, refusing to show any other indication that might suggest she was uncomfortable.
The grip tightened even further, and Lori could no longer hold back the wince of pain.
“I’ll let you live. How’s that for payment? Now what is Tiepolo planning?”
Lori thought about spitting in her face but it would have caused too much of a scene, “Tiepolo? He’s only planning a wedding. Only thing he’s doing for us is paying our bill and putting in a good word with the Mercenary Review Board. The planning is out of his hands entirely.”
The flash of confusion in Haruka’s eyes was almost as pleasing as the sudden softening of her death-grip. Lori was pretty sure she was going to have bruises, and her hand throbbed with a dull ache even after it had been released, but at least it was an improvement from the vice-like hold it had been in before.
“Then who--”
Haruka stopped. Not just speaking, but dancing as well. Lori almost tripped over her own feet at the sudden end, and a trio of couples who had been following in their wake scowled as they had to slip past them and between another lane of dancers closer to the center of the floor. The blonde paid them no mind, her stare not budging from Lori despite a series of soft curses being thrown her direction.
“What did you want with the Centrella girl?” Haruka finally whispered, eyes slowly widening and her tone suddenly doing another one-eighty from cold and threatening to simply curious.
Lori hesitated, unsure if she should give in to her own selfish desire to humble the woman by telling the truth or if she should avoid any such thing. It wasn’t like Setsuna had given her much direction for how to handle the pair or what to do if she ran into them. Not when they weren’t even supposed to be present.
Better to ask forgiveness than permission.
“I was going to present her with a gift.” Lori explained as she dragged the other woman off the dance-floor. She reached behind her to the bow and withdrew the pen, holding it up at her side so Haruka could get a good look at it.
She didn’t expect the extended silence the movement bought her from Haruka.
“Your heart might be in the right place, but that isn’t always enough.” Haruka finally said, “You should think very carefully about your next move. One mistake, one false move on your part, could upset a balance that’s held for two-and-a-half centuries.”
Lori shrugged, inviting a look from Haruka, “In case you haven’t noticed, ‘the balance’ sucks. Besides, Grayson’s in one of his white-knighting moods. I can’t argue with him when he gets like that. He gets all emotional and idealistic. Makes me pukey.”
The look softened, and Haruka raised an eyebrow, “So this is his idea?”
“Damn-straight it is. I wanted to burn for the Periphery and take-up a life of crime and stay far away from all this.”
“No you didn’t.” Haruka said simply.
Before Lori could get a clarification or offer a correction, the Dragoon turned away. Boots snapping against the floor with each step, Haruka marched off without another word.
Grayson’s voice gradually returned to her ear.
“--on’t care if I can see her, I want to hear her. Now let me out of this damned room!”
Lori coughed, and fanned herself with one hand so it might look like she was somehow overcome from her dance with the Dragoon, “Well that was certainly interesting.”
Her earpiece was silent again, and for an instant she worried that it hadn’t come back after all.
“Lori? Oh thank God. Are you alright?”
“Fine.” Lori answered quietly, unsure what else to say with other people beginning to crowd around her again. How was she supposed to say she was nervous, seconds away from slipping out of her clothes in some way thanks to all the movement of dancing, and ready to strangle Setsuna with one hand?
“Good. Tiepolo’s being cagey and refuses to have his men intervene, but say the word and I can still have Hassan bring his ride over to that ballroom to step on the Dragoons and pick you up.” Grayson said.
Lori couldn’t actually tell if the words were a joke, which were a rarity for Grayson--usually he was much easier to read. But the image they conjured of a Warhammer busting through the building around her was rather fantastic to think about. Maybe the threat of 70-ton war machine would finally shut-up the orchestra, and they could direct its guns on the Dragoons and frog-march them all to Setsuna for an explanation of what the hell they were doing.
Turning herself, Lori reoriented herself in the massive ballroom. In the course of dancing she’d wound up almost directly opposite of where she had started. Trying to get back to the delegation from Canopus and Mina Centrella would require her to skirt the floor and wade through the crowd.
Maybe she could find another server with a tray of actual beverages on her way across the room. She really needed an actual drink or something to distract her from the dawning realization: If two of the Dragoons were Guardians who had left the inner sphere with Kerensky...Then were the Dragoons themselves also related to the SLDF?
It did explain how they’d emerged out of nowhere twenty years before with an entire regiment of BattleMechs in nearly-mint condition…
Lori snorted. So much for finding other poor schlubs who didn’t know what all this magic was that we could sympathize with.
************************************************************************************
Hilton Head Island Compound
North America, Terra
August 18, 3028 - 0145 Hours
Jonah Moore was a little put-out. He’d made plans to get off the island and go fishing during all the insanity of the Davion-Steiner marriage. He’d even scoped out the perfect spot on the upper end of the Savannah River, far-removed from any of the bustle of a highway or spaceport. While everyone else would have needed to scramble to scrape and bow before the nobles of the Inner Sphere while they hurried to hide ComStar’s secrets, he would have been relaxing on the side of the water trying to decide if he wanted to go through all the effort of actually baiting a worm and risk catching a fish and making himself work.
Instead, by order of the Primus, even pre-approved vacations and leave had been suspended for everyone with duties on Hilton Head. Worse, even with all the personnel brought in from other duty-stations, they’d started assigning those available back to security duties. Dragged away from his vacation, they’d instead issued him the chafingly familiar body-armor and Mauser & Gray flechette rifle and stationed him and an entire extra squad at the HPG traffic facility on Hilton Head.
For the first time in years, he was explicitly ordered to keep as close an eye on the acolytes going about their business and the other security personnel as he did on any civilians who tried to use the place. That particular order had been ingrained in the security forces so long he couldn’t recall the last time it had actually been included in his orders. It was just supposed to be a given. Perhaps it was something the idiots who didn’t know anything in one of the regional offices might need to be told, but he and his men were professionals. Professional cutthroats, perhaps, but that just made the reminder that they needed to be prepared to watch, or even kill, innocents or each other even more glaring.
It could have been worse, he supposed. They could have included ‘at all costs’ and ‘do not be taken alive’ in the orders. That would have constituted the trifecta of stupidly-obvious shit included in orders for no reason. He’d seen what the kill-switches ROM implanted in them did to one of the other former-pirates ComStar had recruited. He wanted no part of that for himself.
Stepping away from his position at the edge of the building looking out over the small concrete parking lot and kill-zone on the north, Jonah let another of his men replace him. Absently fingering the safety on his M&G, he turned and moved through some of the same footprints as the other guard had made in the gravel walking along the front of the building.
In the distance, he could hear the ancient ‘string’ music one of the others had called ‘classical’ still cutting through the air. The grand ball that was being held looked like it was going to continue all the way until sunrise. It certainly showed no signs of stopping, and the clock going past midnight had only intensified the noise and bustle they’d seen on the other end of the compound.
He wasn’t about to complain. The longer the small army of people spent partying the fewer who would want to access the place to record a message. Some of the lesser nobles and Periphery-state officials still lacked datapads that could wirelessly upload messages into the system and had to be hard-wired into an access terminal.
Jonah didn’t know who was responsible for putting the only publicly-accessible HPG terminal on the island inside the same facility that collated the general planetary traffic, but slitting the man’s throat in would have been too quick an end for him. All night he’d needed to accompany half-drunk partygoers back-and-forth into the building to make sure they didn’t try to go anywhere they weren’t supposed to in the process of making their drunken interstellar messages.
The only high point had been the emerald-haired Dragoon officer who’d come through earlier. Walking behind her as an escort had actually been a treat. Underneath the cloak and those form-fitting slacks the mercenary outfit had as its uniform she’d had the perfect ass. Wide enough to fill out any slack in her pants, but blending perfectly into her legs, while at the same time bouncing just that little bit with every step she took...
Jonah shook himself out of the memory just as the radio on his chest squawked to life.
“North watch. Got a guy coming up.”
Jonah sighed as he turned back the way he’d come, mentally bidding farewell to the cup of coffee he’d been planning on grabbing when his circuit of the building took him inside. A drunken idiot sending a message in the middle of the night would take up enough time that the other patrolling members of his ‘team’ would undoubtedly drink the entire pot, and perhaps the biggest crimes of the other ‘reformed’ murderers, rapists and pirates he worked with was that they weren’t courteous enough to bother making a fresh pot if they emptied it.
“On my way back.” Jonah growled into his radio.
Thoughts of coffee and an idle wish that the Dragoon with the odd-colored hair would return disappeared when he turned the corner. There, beside the man who’d replaced him and only partially obscured by the blazing floodlight on the top of the entrance, stood Nicholas Cassnew--Precentor ROM.
Jonah swallowed and immediately played-back every even slightly-suspicious incident of the evening inside his head. The list of things that occurred to him wasn’t long, but ROM didn’t need much excuse to dispose of him for failure or on mere suspicion of corruption.
“May I help you, Precentor? Is there something you need?” Jonah heard himself say, amazed at his own ability to keep a steady voice in the face of a man who could kill him with only a few words.
The elderly man offered a surprisingly friendly smile, “No. No. I am alright. All the commotion woke me up and once I was awake I couldn’t manage to calm down again. Simply wandering about, mulling over some things. Would you mind opening the door for me? It wouldn’t be fair for me to subject you and your men to a surprise inspection if I didn’t include the acolytes on night-shift, would it?”
Jonah wasn’t sure how to answer since the man very well could do whatever he wanted, fair or not, but leaning over to open the door for him with the keycard around his neck seemed to be the only answer the man needed. The door breezed open with a soft breath of air escaping, and the Precentor shuffled his way in. Hesitating only a moment, Jonah followed.
Cassnew slowly raised an eyebrow at him, “I do know my way around our own facilities, young man.”
It was a good thing he hadn’t gotten any coffee. Just the mildly irritated tone of the Precentor’s voice probably would have brought it back up. Searching for something to do that would appear useful, Jonah stepped forward so the inner door of the building would slide open.
“Of course, sir. But I’m supposed to accompany everyone tonight. My handler was very specific in his orders this evening.” Jonah explained, somewhat proud of how the explanation shifted responsibility for his behavior.
Cassnew’s eyes narrowed dangerously at that, and Jonah could hear his heart pounding in his ears. After a moment’s thought, the older man gave a small nod and continued on his way into the facility. He visibly frowned when Jonah took up a spot beside him, but at least it didn’t seem like the Precentor was going to make him suffer more extreme consequences for the requirement.
The short trip into the facility and past the public HPG access terminals passed in comfortable silence. The Precentor passed-over the single secretary worker at the front with only a few words between them before entering the elevator that would take him to the bundling and collating facility underneath. Jonah offered a nod to the trio of terrified men who stood around the elevator, certain that the Precentor’s passage was responsible for their sudden serious demeanor and equally certain it was interrupting a conversation about the female secretary they were there to ‘guard’ and ‘watch’--a pair of orders they certainly exercised more towards the latter than the former activity.
Jonah had feared another awkward exchange with the Precentor when he followed him onto the elevator, but Cassnew merely shook his head. Leaning forward again, he passed his keycard over the scanner, following up the motion by pressing his hand to the palm-reader attached to the security on the elevator. At the count of five, he punched-in his operating number, smug in the knowledge that when his handler asked him why he’d accessed the lower level of the facility at two in the morning he could tell him it was at the behest of Precentor ROM himself. That would shut the sanctimonious bastard up!
The elevator’s short journey also went by in silence. When the doors opened, Jonah’s eyes glossed over at the multiple rows of equipment that flanked the thin catwalk extending out from the elevator. Cabinets wrapped in coolant-tubes and banks of blinking lights and status indicators assaulted his perceptions from both sides as he and the Precentor took the dozen steps between the elevator and the managing office, and as far as he knew the banks of cabinets wrapped entirely around the entire floor.
Were he a braver man, he might have asked the Precentor what the place was for. His handler had dismissed the question when he’d asked as being unnecessary. ‘This equipment bundles HPG traffic for the planet. That’s all you need to know.’ had been the answer. Jonah hadn’t wanted to push the issue by following-up the poorly received question with another about what it meant to bundle HPG traffic.
The half-dozen guards inside the office reacted identically to their compatriots on the upper floor, backs straightening and arms more carefully taking-hold of the rifles in their hands. The acolytes who were working had a somewhat different reaction, however.
“Precentor! Good to see you! What brings you to this corner of the world at this hour of the night?” The eldest of them asked as he rose from his seat, his voice painfully upbeat for someone locked in such a dreary place.
“The Mistress wishes to attend the festivities later today.” Cassnew said.
The Change was almost instantaneous. Where a moment before there had been a jovial older acolyte beginning to put on a few extra kilograms in his age reaching out to shake Cassnew’s hand, there was suddenly instead a squirming black mass of concentrated shadows that ended on both top and bottom with repeating rows of shining white fangs.
It was moving before Jonah could fully settle with the knowledge that Acolyte Hansinmen had been a demon this entire time and nobody had noticed.
It latched on to two guards, one on each of its ends with teeth, by the time he’d managed to flick off the safety off his M&G. Raising the rifle and trying to ignore the screaming he squeezed the trigger even before he’d lined it up on the target. Anything, or anyone, he hit was acceptable collateral damage at this point. A handful of computers and one acolyte just beginning to stand up in shock found that out in a very messy way. The flechettes, optimized for use against demons in a manner he wasn’t even cleared to know, were just as effective against people as they would be otherwise.
Jonah only got a few shots into the demon rapidly consuming the guards before something tore the rifle out of his hand, breaking a finger in the process, and then slammed into his chest. Air rushing past his ears, Jonah had just enough time to realize he had been knocked off his feet and speared through entirely by a sharp, black mass before he slammed into the wall of the office a few meters behind him.
He had forgotten about the Precentor beside him! Assumed the man would flee the room. The mass of shadowy tendrils that writhed around Cassnew’s head, and the one coming off the elderly man’s arm that was speared through him suggested that had been a major mistake.
The worst part about it was that he had to listen to the one that had been Acolyte Hansinmen eating while all he could see was the once-genial face of Nicholas Cassnew drawing closer to him.
No. Cassnew wasn’t drawing closer to him. The opposite. The Precentor was pulling him closer. Reeling him in. Like a fish.
Was that ironic or just an amusing coincidence? He could never remember how to actually use that word.
Jonah tried to laugh, felt something wet come out of his mouth, and fluid begin to fill his lungs. He was pretty sure laughter wasn’t supposed to cause that.
He was also pretty sure that this wasn’t how the evening was supposed to end. If he could reach the top of the tube on his belt with his left hand, it wouldn’t be. He could at the very least take others with him! Cassnew would know about it, but perhaps…
Trying to raise his left arm high enough to press down the switch, Jonah struggled to speak.
Cassnew shook his head, “Why must your kind always do this? Always struggling. Always fighting. Better to not be here at all, don’t you think?”
Jonah’s thumb scraped against the top side of the cylinder. He almost had it! One more long stretch and he could trigger the explosive! It might take the entire building with it, but his handler had assured him that it would work against the things.
Jonah moved his mouth, too tired to try and push words out. Hopefully it was enough to distract the Precentor.
Would they know it was him?
He tried to walk his hand upwards, shifting the weight between the three fingers he could still vaguely feel. They flopped out of his control before he could get any onto the top of the cylinder.
Was it really possible to make-up for past evils?
He stretched his thumb upwards again, fighting to tear it past it’s natural endpoint to go just that little distance further he needed. It felt like the heaviest thing he’d ever moved.
“Lauren Hayes requires your services,” Cassnew began, the code-phrase coming out with ritualistic finality.
Jonah imagined he could actually hear and feel the fluctuating hum of the control device inside his neck arming itself. Struggling even harder, he tried to force his shoulder upwards and stretch out his thumb in the same motion.
It was still only high enough to scrape against the side of the cylinder instead of depressing the button in the center.
I’d rather be fishing.
“Immediately.” Cassnew finished.
Jonah was certain he heard the beep of recognition just before the explosives in his neck activated.
He felt nothing.
ComStar was serving their guests carbonated apple juice? What kind of masochistic assholes--
As if spurred on by the thought itself, the orchestra crescendoed from light background accompaniment to a swelling chord of strings that battered at Lori’s ears with all the force of a Highlander at full-speed. Instead of coming down from that swell, however, they only got louder.
Lori sighed, briefly entertaining the thought of demanding Grayson play some real music through the bud in her ear. It would make dancing a lot easier, but probably get her too much attention from being off-beat with the orchestra’s music. She’d just have to put up with it. For the dance with Mina at least.
Wiping away the bit of sweat that had collected on her palms, Lori turned past the second-to-last person in between her and Mina Centrella. If she got the girl the pen soon enough, it could well end up being the fastest-done job in the Legion’s history--excluding the mock contract McCall had taken out on April first years before that nobody liked to talk about.
She was close now! All she had to do was ask the girl to dance. Even if she wasn’t as ditzy as she acted, she’d have to give-in to a request like that or it’d break her cover. Lori couldn’t help but appreciate the irony.
“Lori? Lori something’s interf—“ Grayson interrupted suddenly. His voice slowly faded in her ear until it disappeared entirely into a flat hum of nothing.
Lori automatically brought one hand up towards her ear. Maybe something had broken on the ComStar device? Was her microphone still transmitting?
A breeze from the open doors curled through her hair and forced her to drop the other hand down to hold her skirt in place. Trying to get something, even if it was just feedback through the equipment, Lori patted her earpiece with one finger of the hand she could use. She was met by total silence. The only possible thing that could cause that was a complete failure or...
Or some kind of jamming device.
“It’s always interesting to see pretty young girls at these kinds of things who aren’t enjoying themselves.”
Oh bad words.
Lori froze. The voice was higher-pitched but still somewhat rough, as if the person it belonged to had grown up on an oxygen-thin world or been a smoker for a long enough period to have it start affecting them. The sudden attention forced Lori to shift the hand at her ear from fiddling with the earbud to her earring, using a thumb to curl some of her hair over the ear as best she could.
She could think of only a few coincidental explanations for why her mike would cut out immediately before someone approached her. But none of them seemed very plausible. Most likely was that whoever this was somehow knew. Twisting her head in the same way a self-absorbed idiot would when responding to a mouthy waiter, Lori turned towards the voice.
Only long-dormant memories of how to handle pirates kept her from going completely silent in shock at the blonde-haired man who stood at her side as she realized that none of the coincidental explanations would be enough to explain his presence. A cocky smile she’d seen a thousand times on ‘Mech jocks across the Sphere played at his lips, but it faded the further up his face she went. His eyes were blank and unrevealing, with almost the same faraway look to them as Mariah had when she was avoiding a question. His brows curled down in what might have been good humor if not for the eyes. With them, it looked much more like suspicion.
The Dragoon uniform sealed what little doubt she had about the man’s attitude. It was definitely ‘suspicion’. The awful trouble was that it was likely completely justified suspicion. Lori had always preferred it when she actually hadn’t done anything she was suspected of. Being guilty made it much harder to keep up appearances!
“And I suppose you think the grace of some mercenary Mech-jock’s presence will make my evening suddenly that much more enjoyable?” Lori shot back, already certain that even if her act was perfect it wasn’t going to work. But she still had to try.
“Well, I do like to think my company is enjoyable, but I meant it as more a compliment, actually. There are so many of these galas over the course of a year in every Successor State. I’ve found the people with brains or who have seen the elephant tend not to enjoy them for the same reason everyone else does.” The man continued, giving a slight nod.
Lori forced her face to scrunch together in mock confusion, “Seen the elephant?”
“I’m sorry, it’s something of an old slang term. We ‘Mechwarriors use it to mean people who have seen combat before.” The blonde explained.
“So, by your words, if I haven’t ‘seen the elephant’, I must be one of the ‘people with brains’?” Lori said, raising her eyebrow in what she hoped was mild playfulness, “You’re very good at giving compliments, mister...”
“Colonel, actually.” He corrected easily, flashing that smile again, “Colonel Haruka Tenoh of Wolf’s Dragoons, and I admit I’ve had a lot of practice complimenting beautiful girls.”
“Well consider me flattered, Colonel.” Lori said unsure what else to say. Extending her hand, Lori raised her eyebrows at the rank. “Lorinette Kalkenny of New Earth.”
She tried not to jerk in surprise when instead of shaking her hand, the Dragoon officer and, more worryingly, Guardian, brought it up slightly and bent down to brush his lips against the knuckles. It was an outdated custom even among the ‘Mechwarriors who still believed themselves ‘knights of the modern battlefield’. But, if he was another of the Guardians of the Star League she couldn’t well be surprised if he was old-fashioned, could she?
Terrified of why he’d singled her out in the first place, oh yes. But not surprised at his being old-fashioned in the way he did it.
Still, Lori bit the rear of her lip as the man released her hand, running his fingers against piloting calluses only barely concealed by a thin layer of lotion and moisturizer that was supposed to imitate the feel of soft hands. She wished Grayson was present to cause a scene over the annoying custom. But hiding behind her fake name she had to act as if she found it at least a little charming.
She hated acting almost as much as she hated the ridiculous act the Dragoon was putting on for her benefit. It was embarrassing for both of them!
Lori tried but couldn’t shutup a stupid voice in her head that said it was only embarrassing because it wasn’t Grayson doing it.
“I suppose you have much practice with doing that as well, Colonel?” Lori asked, once again forcing her voice to take on a soft lilt that bordered on flirtatious.
“Some, I admit.” Haruka continued, “But I honestly prefer not to stand on theatrics so much and just come out and ask pretty girls to dance with me. It makes things go so much quicker.”
The mercenary turned towards the dancefloor, cocking one arm on his hip so his elbow extended almost into Lori’s abdomen. The act might almost have been friendly, with the same quaint outdatedness as his earlier kiss of her hand. Even the steady, ever-present smile didn’t leave his face. But something in his eyes hardened to the point where they could have melted durasteel just as effectively as a large laser.
“So, would you care to join me for this dance?”
Oh bad words, bad words, bad words…
Lori froze, feeling as if she were a small creature caught between different predators. She had no support from Gray and Setsuna had merely warned her to be careful of the Dragoon pair while also looking to them for direction. Clearly the man had some reason to approach her, but his timing couldn’t possibly have been worse.
The pen suddenly felt much more conspicuous than it had the whole evening.
“I’m afraid I’m not a very good dancer, Colonel. I’m also not exceptionally interested. The Dragoons may consider themselves an exception, but I have plenty of stories about mercenaries.” Lori said, twisting her voice into a deliberately harsh tone that might chase the man away if it were, somehow, just a massive coincidence.
It was too much to hope for.
“Oh, undoubtedly you do. That’s why I can promise only a single dance.” Haruka said, a smirk came back to his face, but it still didn’t look genuine, “Don’t make me beg, ‘Miss Kalkenny’, was it? Because I can assure you I will and it will attract a great deal of attention and be quite awkward for both of us, I’m sure.”
Lori swallowed and stepped forward to cross her own arm through his, “Please lead on, Colonel. Though I must warn you I am a terrible dancer.”
Something twitched in his cheek, perhaps the beginning of a real smile rather than the almost-mocking one he’d worn thus far, “I’ve found it’s very much like piloting a ‘Mech, Captain Kalmar. The less you think about it consciously, the better you tend to do.”
Lori caught herself nodding before the rank-and-name he’d used struck, and she couldn’t help but almost stumble as every muscle in her body decided to tense at that exact moment. It was only the firm support from his arm that kept her from falling straight-away, and he slowed his stride just enough for her to regain her footing without obviously stumbling.
“As I said, I prefer not to stand on theatrics, Captain.”
Lori could only glare at him as they stepped onto the floor and a handful of other pairs briefly closed-in around them. With a flourish from his free hand and a half-step rotation, Haruka led her into a slow, plodding dance that mimicked that being performed by a small sea of others in the center of the ballroom. Somehow, he managed not to step on her feet, obviously repositioning himself before completing every step to avoid it as she bumbled through her own movements.
Okay, so he definitely knew who she was. How much else did he know? And where the hell was one of the damned acolytes when you needed them? Her microphone might have cut out, but the cameras in the ballroom should still work. Now would be a very good time for an extraction.
“Of course, I could understand someone from the Gray Death Legion being less inclined to the same attitude. Some of your operations have been quite theatrical.” Haruka continued as they danced.
Oh, you don’t know the half of it, asshole…
Lori coughed, “Mind telling me just how you know who I am?”
It was a longshot of a question, meant more to interrupt him, buy Grayson and ComStar time to notice and act, and give her a moment to recover rather than to actually discover anything. But he answered it all the same.
“The Dragoons make a habit of keeping tabs on the leading members of any mercenary commands that catch our eye. And, for that matter, what activities Periphery bandits and pirates are getting up to. Since you’ve fallen under both those categories in your career thus far, Miss Kalmar? Well. To be frank, that fits a profile of people who we’ve made that often end up employed by ComStar,” His eyes narrowed even further and what slight humor might once have been on his face disappeared, “And here you are.”
“That only leaves a few mysteries,” Haruka continued, voice softening minutely, “The largest of them being what Tiepolo and ComStar are using you for, and where Grayson Carlyle himself is.”
Something that had been coiled tight inside Lori’s stomach sprung open in an instant, and she felt the sudden urge to laugh in Haruka’s face. The questions were all firmly rooted on basic facts, without any of the supernatural connection or implication behind them that Lori knew their honest answers had. It made the point almost by itself. She was the one in control of more information--and therefore the entire conversation--not the Dragoon colonel.
He took her silence in the wrong way, “If they are holding your commander hostage, we may be able to help you solve that problem. Depending on how much you can tell us about what ComStar is using you for. What’s their interest in Mina Centrella?”
Lori couldn’t keep her grin down any longer, and the way it made his eyebrows jump only gave her another reason to make it even wider.
“You may want to reevaluate how good you think your intelligence is, Colonel. The Gray Death Legion is on retainer by ComStar of its own free will.” Lori said, taking a perverse degree of pleasure in the sudden flash of uncertainty and confusion in Haruka’s expression, “Grayson Carlyle himself isn’t attending because we all agreed he’d be too recognizable at an event like this to properly do the job. The mystery you should be asking about, though, is why so many Guardians of the Star League are here at the same time.”
A foot came down hard on top of Lori’s, and she found herself having to force her hand open as Haruka’s clamped down around her own. The blonde quickly recovered, sliding her foot to the side again and continuing the slow, steady dance. But it was obviously only a physical recovery, and her hand continued it’s death grip.
More concerning was the sudden blankness in her eyes.
“You are going to tell me everything you know, now.” Haruka said, the words coming out in a flat statement without even a breath between words.
Lori had been enjoying the sudden reversal in feeling the conversation had taken, but she’d heard that tone before when she was part of a pirate-band that styled itself a ‘Special Expeditionary Force’. There, that same tone had usually preceded really unpleasant things for whoever was being spoken to. Still, she couldn’t resist the opportunity to get some of her own back.
“Oh am I? I am part of the Legion. And as you said yourself, we do so love theatrics Colon-naaagh.” Lori cut off her words with the strained groan as the man’s hand clamped down even harder on her own, popping her knuckles and squeezing the fingers together against the palm so tight she could swear it felt like bones were an instant away from breaking.
Haruka pulled her in very close, the hand at her waist mimicking the other and steadily tightening until it felt as if it were going to tear through the skin. To an observer they would only look like a couple that had moved-on from the initial distance of the dance to a more intimate arrangement.
“Everything. Now.” Haruka growled in her ear.
Lori came to two realizations in one instant as they continued to move across the dance floor. The first, relatively unimportant but difficult to draw her focus away from with three pieces of evidence literally rubbing against her with every movement of their bodies--or, more accurately, two pieces which rubbed against her and one that was conspicuously lacking--was that Colonel Haruka Tenoh was definitely not a man.
That would have been awkward enough even without the second realization: the other woman was definitely still the one in control of the conversation.
“Now what kind of mercenary would I be if I gave you all that for free?” Lori choked out, refusing to show any other indication that might suggest she was uncomfortable.
The grip tightened even further, and Lori could no longer hold back the wince of pain.
“I’ll let you live. How’s that for payment? Now what is Tiepolo planning?”
Lori thought about spitting in her face but it would have caused too much of a scene, “Tiepolo? He’s only planning a wedding. Only thing he’s doing for us is paying our bill and putting in a good word with the Mercenary Review Board. The planning is out of his hands entirely.”
The flash of confusion in Haruka’s eyes was almost as pleasing as the sudden softening of her death-grip. Lori was pretty sure she was going to have bruises, and her hand throbbed with a dull ache even after it had been released, but at least it was an improvement from the vice-like hold it had been in before.
“Then who--”
Haruka stopped. Not just speaking, but dancing as well. Lori almost tripped over her own feet at the sudden end, and a trio of couples who had been following in their wake scowled as they had to slip past them and between another lane of dancers closer to the center of the floor. The blonde paid them no mind, her stare not budging from Lori despite a series of soft curses being thrown her direction.
“What did you want with the Centrella girl?” Haruka finally whispered, eyes slowly widening and her tone suddenly doing another one-eighty from cold and threatening to simply curious.
Lori hesitated, unsure if she should give in to her own selfish desire to humble the woman by telling the truth or if she should avoid any such thing. It wasn’t like Setsuna had given her much direction for how to handle the pair or what to do if she ran into them. Not when they weren’t even supposed to be present.
Better to ask forgiveness than permission.
“I was going to present her with a gift.” Lori explained as she dragged the other woman off the dance-floor. She reached behind her to the bow and withdrew the pen, holding it up at her side so Haruka could get a good look at it.
She didn’t expect the extended silence the movement bought her from Haruka.
“Your heart might be in the right place, but that isn’t always enough.” Haruka finally said, “You should think very carefully about your next move. One mistake, one false move on your part, could upset a balance that’s held for two-and-a-half centuries.”
Lori shrugged, inviting a look from Haruka, “In case you haven’t noticed, ‘the balance’ sucks. Besides, Grayson’s in one of his white-knighting moods. I can’t argue with him when he gets like that. He gets all emotional and idealistic. Makes me pukey.”
The look softened, and Haruka raised an eyebrow, “So this is his idea?”
“Damn-straight it is. I wanted to burn for the Periphery and take-up a life of crime and stay far away from all this.”
“No you didn’t.” Haruka said simply.
Before Lori could get a clarification or offer a correction, the Dragoon turned away. Boots snapping against the floor with each step, Haruka marched off without another word.
Grayson’s voice gradually returned to her ear.
“--on’t care if I can see her, I want to hear her. Now let me out of this damned room!”
Lori coughed, and fanned herself with one hand so it might look like she was somehow overcome from her dance with the Dragoon, “Well that was certainly interesting.”
Her earpiece was silent again, and for an instant she worried that it hadn’t come back after all.
“Lori? Oh thank God. Are you alright?”
“Fine.” Lori answered quietly, unsure what else to say with other people beginning to crowd around her again. How was she supposed to say she was nervous, seconds away from slipping out of her clothes in some way thanks to all the movement of dancing, and ready to strangle Setsuna with one hand?
“Good. Tiepolo’s being cagey and refuses to have his men intervene, but say the word and I can still have Hassan bring his ride over to that ballroom to step on the Dragoons and pick you up.” Grayson said.
Lori couldn’t actually tell if the words were a joke, which were a rarity for Grayson--usually he was much easier to read. But the image they conjured of a Warhammer busting through the building around her was rather fantastic to think about. Maybe the threat of 70-ton war machine would finally shut-up the orchestra, and they could direct its guns on the Dragoons and frog-march them all to Setsuna for an explanation of what the hell they were doing.
Turning herself, Lori reoriented herself in the massive ballroom. In the course of dancing she’d wound up almost directly opposite of where she had started. Trying to get back to the delegation from Canopus and Mina Centrella would require her to skirt the floor and wade through the crowd.
Maybe she could find another server with a tray of actual beverages on her way across the room. She really needed an actual drink or something to distract her from the dawning realization: If two of the Dragoons were Guardians who had left the inner sphere with Kerensky...Then were the Dragoons themselves also related to the SLDF?
It did explain how they’d emerged out of nowhere twenty years before with an entire regiment of BattleMechs in nearly-mint condition…
Lori snorted. So much for finding other poor schlubs who didn’t know what all this magic was that we could sympathize with.
************************************************************************************
Hilton Head Island Compound
North America, Terra
August 18, 3028 - 0145 Hours
Jonah Moore was a little put-out. He’d made plans to get off the island and go fishing during all the insanity of the Davion-Steiner marriage. He’d even scoped out the perfect spot on the upper end of the Savannah River, far-removed from any of the bustle of a highway or spaceport. While everyone else would have needed to scramble to scrape and bow before the nobles of the Inner Sphere while they hurried to hide ComStar’s secrets, he would have been relaxing on the side of the water trying to decide if he wanted to go through all the effort of actually baiting a worm and risk catching a fish and making himself work.
Instead, by order of the Primus, even pre-approved vacations and leave had been suspended for everyone with duties on Hilton Head. Worse, even with all the personnel brought in from other duty-stations, they’d started assigning those available back to security duties. Dragged away from his vacation, they’d instead issued him the chafingly familiar body-armor and Mauser & Gray flechette rifle and stationed him and an entire extra squad at the HPG traffic facility on Hilton Head.
For the first time in years, he was explicitly ordered to keep as close an eye on the acolytes going about their business and the other security personnel as he did on any civilians who tried to use the place. That particular order had been ingrained in the security forces so long he couldn’t recall the last time it had actually been included in his orders. It was just supposed to be a given. Perhaps it was something the idiots who didn’t know anything in one of the regional offices might need to be told, but he and his men were professionals. Professional cutthroats, perhaps, but that just made the reminder that they needed to be prepared to watch, or even kill, innocents or each other even more glaring.
It could have been worse, he supposed. They could have included ‘at all costs’ and ‘do not be taken alive’ in the orders. That would have constituted the trifecta of stupidly-obvious shit included in orders for no reason. He’d seen what the kill-switches ROM implanted in them did to one of the other former-pirates ComStar had recruited. He wanted no part of that for himself.
Stepping away from his position at the edge of the building looking out over the small concrete parking lot and kill-zone on the north, Jonah let another of his men replace him. Absently fingering the safety on his M&G, he turned and moved through some of the same footprints as the other guard had made in the gravel walking along the front of the building.
In the distance, he could hear the ancient ‘string’ music one of the others had called ‘classical’ still cutting through the air. The grand ball that was being held looked like it was going to continue all the way until sunrise. It certainly showed no signs of stopping, and the clock going past midnight had only intensified the noise and bustle they’d seen on the other end of the compound.
He wasn’t about to complain. The longer the small army of people spent partying the fewer who would want to access the place to record a message. Some of the lesser nobles and Periphery-state officials still lacked datapads that could wirelessly upload messages into the system and had to be hard-wired into an access terminal.
Jonah didn’t know who was responsible for putting the only publicly-accessible HPG terminal on the island inside the same facility that collated the general planetary traffic, but slitting the man’s throat in would have been too quick an end for him. All night he’d needed to accompany half-drunk partygoers back-and-forth into the building to make sure they didn’t try to go anywhere they weren’t supposed to in the process of making their drunken interstellar messages.
The only high point had been the emerald-haired Dragoon officer who’d come through earlier. Walking behind her as an escort had actually been a treat. Underneath the cloak and those form-fitting slacks the mercenary outfit had as its uniform she’d had the perfect ass. Wide enough to fill out any slack in her pants, but blending perfectly into her legs, while at the same time bouncing just that little bit with every step she took...
Jonah shook himself out of the memory just as the radio on his chest squawked to life.
“North watch. Got a guy coming up.”
Jonah sighed as he turned back the way he’d come, mentally bidding farewell to the cup of coffee he’d been planning on grabbing when his circuit of the building took him inside. A drunken idiot sending a message in the middle of the night would take up enough time that the other patrolling members of his ‘team’ would undoubtedly drink the entire pot, and perhaps the biggest crimes of the other ‘reformed’ murderers, rapists and pirates he worked with was that they weren’t courteous enough to bother making a fresh pot if they emptied it.
“On my way back.” Jonah growled into his radio.
Thoughts of coffee and an idle wish that the Dragoon with the odd-colored hair would return disappeared when he turned the corner. There, beside the man who’d replaced him and only partially obscured by the blazing floodlight on the top of the entrance, stood Nicholas Cassnew--Precentor ROM.
Jonah swallowed and immediately played-back every even slightly-suspicious incident of the evening inside his head. The list of things that occurred to him wasn’t long, but ROM didn’t need much excuse to dispose of him for failure or on mere suspicion of corruption.
“May I help you, Precentor? Is there something you need?” Jonah heard himself say, amazed at his own ability to keep a steady voice in the face of a man who could kill him with only a few words.
The elderly man offered a surprisingly friendly smile, “No. No. I am alright. All the commotion woke me up and once I was awake I couldn’t manage to calm down again. Simply wandering about, mulling over some things. Would you mind opening the door for me? It wouldn’t be fair for me to subject you and your men to a surprise inspection if I didn’t include the acolytes on night-shift, would it?”
Jonah wasn’t sure how to answer since the man very well could do whatever he wanted, fair or not, but leaning over to open the door for him with the keycard around his neck seemed to be the only answer the man needed. The door breezed open with a soft breath of air escaping, and the Precentor shuffled his way in. Hesitating only a moment, Jonah followed.
Cassnew slowly raised an eyebrow at him, “I do know my way around our own facilities, young man.”
It was a good thing he hadn’t gotten any coffee. Just the mildly irritated tone of the Precentor’s voice probably would have brought it back up. Searching for something to do that would appear useful, Jonah stepped forward so the inner door of the building would slide open.
“Of course, sir. But I’m supposed to accompany everyone tonight. My handler was very specific in his orders this evening.” Jonah explained, somewhat proud of how the explanation shifted responsibility for his behavior.
Cassnew’s eyes narrowed dangerously at that, and Jonah could hear his heart pounding in his ears. After a moment’s thought, the older man gave a small nod and continued on his way into the facility. He visibly frowned when Jonah took up a spot beside him, but at least it didn’t seem like the Precentor was going to make him suffer more extreme consequences for the requirement.
The short trip into the facility and past the public HPG access terminals passed in comfortable silence. The Precentor passed-over the single secretary worker at the front with only a few words between them before entering the elevator that would take him to the bundling and collating facility underneath. Jonah offered a nod to the trio of terrified men who stood around the elevator, certain that the Precentor’s passage was responsible for their sudden serious demeanor and equally certain it was interrupting a conversation about the female secretary they were there to ‘guard’ and ‘watch’--a pair of orders they certainly exercised more towards the latter than the former activity.
Jonah had feared another awkward exchange with the Precentor when he followed him onto the elevator, but Cassnew merely shook his head. Leaning forward again, he passed his keycard over the scanner, following up the motion by pressing his hand to the palm-reader attached to the security on the elevator. At the count of five, he punched-in his operating number, smug in the knowledge that when his handler asked him why he’d accessed the lower level of the facility at two in the morning he could tell him it was at the behest of Precentor ROM himself. That would shut the sanctimonious bastard up!
The elevator’s short journey also went by in silence. When the doors opened, Jonah’s eyes glossed over at the multiple rows of equipment that flanked the thin catwalk extending out from the elevator. Cabinets wrapped in coolant-tubes and banks of blinking lights and status indicators assaulted his perceptions from both sides as he and the Precentor took the dozen steps between the elevator and the managing office, and as far as he knew the banks of cabinets wrapped entirely around the entire floor.
Were he a braver man, he might have asked the Precentor what the place was for. His handler had dismissed the question when he’d asked as being unnecessary. ‘This equipment bundles HPG traffic for the planet. That’s all you need to know.’ had been the answer. Jonah hadn’t wanted to push the issue by following-up the poorly received question with another about what it meant to bundle HPG traffic.
The half-dozen guards inside the office reacted identically to their compatriots on the upper floor, backs straightening and arms more carefully taking-hold of the rifles in their hands. The acolytes who were working had a somewhat different reaction, however.
“Precentor! Good to see you! What brings you to this corner of the world at this hour of the night?” The eldest of them asked as he rose from his seat, his voice painfully upbeat for someone locked in such a dreary place.
“The Mistress wishes to attend the festivities later today.” Cassnew said.
The Change was almost instantaneous. Where a moment before there had been a jovial older acolyte beginning to put on a few extra kilograms in his age reaching out to shake Cassnew’s hand, there was suddenly instead a squirming black mass of concentrated shadows that ended on both top and bottom with repeating rows of shining white fangs.
It was moving before Jonah could fully settle with the knowledge that Acolyte Hansinmen had been a demon this entire time and nobody had noticed.
It latched on to two guards, one on each of its ends with teeth, by the time he’d managed to flick off the safety off his M&G. Raising the rifle and trying to ignore the screaming he squeezed the trigger even before he’d lined it up on the target. Anything, or anyone, he hit was acceptable collateral damage at this point. A handful of computers and one acolyte just beginning to stand up in shock found that out in a very messy way. The flechettes, optimized for use against demons in a manner he wasn’t even cleared to know, were just as effective against people as they would be otherwise.
Jonah only got a few shots into the demon rapidly consuming the guards before something tore the rifle out of his hand, breaking a finger in the process, and then slammed into his chest. Air rushing past his ears, Jonah had just enough time to realize he had been knocked off his feet and speared through entirely by a sharp, black mass before he slammed into the wall of the office a few meters behind him.
He had forgotten about the Precentor beside him! Assumed the man would flee the room. The mass of shadowy tendrils that writhed around Cassnew’s head, and the one coming off the elderly man’s arm that was speared through him suggested that had been a major mistake.
The worst part about it was that he had to listen to the one that had been Acolyte Hansinmen eating while all he could see was the once-genial face of Nicholas Cassnew drawing closer to him.
No. Cassnew wasn’t drawing closer to him. The opposite. The Precentor was pulling him closer. Reeling him in. Like a fish.
Was that ironic or just an amusing coincidence? He could never remember how to actually use that word.
Jonah tried to laugh, felt something wet come out of his mouth, and fluid begin to fill his lungs. He was pretty sure laughter wasn’t supposed to cause that.
He was also pretty sure that this wasn’t how the evening was supposed to end. If he could reach the top of the tube on his belt with his left hand, it wouldn’t be. He could at the very least take others with him! Cassnew would know about it, but perhaps…
Trying to raise his left arm high enough to press down the switch, Jonah struggled to speak.
Cassnew shook his head, “Why must your kind always do this? Always struggling. Always fighting. Better to not be here at all, don’t you think?”
Jonah’s thumb scraped against the top side of the cylinder. He almost had it! One more long stretch and he could trigger the explosive! It might take the entire building with it, but his handler had assured him that it would work against the things.
Jonah moved his mouth, too tired to try and push words out. Hopefully it was enough to distract the Precentor.
Would they know it was him?
He tried to walk his hand upwards, shifting the weight between the three fingers he could still vaguely feel. They flopped out of his control before he could get any onto the top of the cylinder.
Was it really possible to make-up for past evils?
He stretched his thumb upwards again, fighting to tear it past it’s natural endpoint to go just that little distance further he needed. It felt like the heaviest thing he’d ever moved.
“Lauren Hayes requires your services,” Cassnew began, the code-phrase coming out with ritualistic finality.
Jonah imagined he could actually hear and feel the fluctuating hum of the control device inside his neck arming itself. Struggling even harder, he tried to force his shoulder upwards and stretch out his thumb in the same motion.
It was still only high enough to scrape against the side of the cylinder instead of depressing the button in the center.
I’d rather be fishing.
“Immediately.” Cassnew finished.
Jonah was certain he heard the beep of recognition just before the explosives in his neck activated.
He felt nothing.
D
Deleted member
Guest
Well, isn't that a charming evening.
10 - I'm Your Venus
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Mina jerked as a freezing bolt of lightning shot up her back and flowered out to her shoulder-blades, warming in the process into something that felt more like hot coals rolling against her skin. It was a familiar feeling. The same feeling that had risen on Andurien and in the Magistracy whenever she had begun to close-in on a band of pirates. An inflated and exaggerated version of the feeling that had been slowly stalking her ever since the ball had ended hours before.
Something was very wrong. The worst was that it was familiar. This wasn’t just another batch of raiders or pirates.
Uncrossing her legs and refocusing eyes that had grown distant and glazed staring at the…transformation pen…thing one of the Sphere’s noblewomen had gifted her, Mina forced herself to instead examine the screen at the desk before her. Cycling through the security-cameras that ComStar had given her access to took only moments, but showed little to explain the dread in her stomach. She recognized the faces of the three guards making rounds in the floor’s hallway, no other presences stood out, and there was no sign of forced entry into the windows of any room on the floor.
She might almost have been tempted to chalk it up to her imagination. But she was never wrong about things like this. There was something, she just had to find it.
Mina brought the radio on the table beside her up. Hesitating only a moment, she tapped the code into it that would set Commander Holly’s own device to beeping. In the unlikely event she was overreacting to a momentary impulse, she could pass it off as an exercise testing the Royal Guards’ alertness.
She had done the same thing during Amaris’ coup and it hadn’t mattered. This time would be different.
“Holly here, milady.” The woman said, a waver in the background of the words the only indication that she had been asleep moments before.
Maybe she was going nuts. Thinking she’d been alive for the Fall of the Star League was pretty out there, wasn’t it?
It was probably just persistent after-effects from her earlier drug-trip.
“Wake the rest of your girls, commander. Sweep the floor, ensure the security of the exits and ready an alternative. Prepare for a potentially contested exfil. Quietly, if you can. I will be looking-in on my mother and sister.”
To her credit, there was only an instant of hesitation on the other end of the line as the commander of the guard digested the instructions, “As you order, milady.”
She could only wish men were so easy to direct!
Pinning the radio to the neckline of her top and connecting an earpiece to it, Mina stood. Twisting around on the balls of her feet, she stalked off the plush carpet of the bedroom and onto the cool wooden decking that extended out of the edge of the room onto the small balcony. She slowed only long enough to bend down and grab the ‘whip’ she’d been able to sneak into the compound from its deliberate spot at the foot of the bed where it would only invite the right kind of assumptions being made about its use if ComStar searched her room.
She did her best to ignore the pen that sat beside it, not wanting to be distracted by it or so much as touch it again after what she’d seen at the ball when it had been given to her. Apparently, New Earth had a very Canopian approach to the use of psychedelics at public parties. Even in the Magistracy, though, it would have been courtesy to warn her before passing off something coated in a hallucinogen!
It was the first time in many years she’d had to excuse herself from a party to recover from something. The memory—hallucination—had been frighteningly realistic. It made her somewhat leery of even touching the bizarre, pen-thing again. Though maybe it was the soul-crushing despair she’d felt while she held it that had her afraid.
Shaking away the distraction, Mina exited her room and scanned the horizon and the shoreline of the ocean below for any reasonable explanation of her sudden chill, the half-full moon providing enough light to distinguish basic shapes even in the distance. The late-summer weather of Terra was quite comfortable even at night, and when she performed a basic series of yoga stretches across the balcony, she found no sneaksuit-wearing assassin on it poised for a kill. There was nothing that explained her worry.
“Floor is clear. Ad-hoc exit available from room four-three-four in addition to traditional. Ready to evac on your go-ahead.” Holly’s gruff voice spoke in Mina’s ear.
“Thank you, commander. Standby.” Mina responded, bringing both her hands up to wrap around the railing and leaning over so she could scan the side of building below.
Still nothing.
Mina backed away from her place at the edge, letting her hands slowly drop back down to her sides as if she were giving-up and simply deciding to enjoy the moonlight morning-hours. But she wasn’t. There was something wrong. She knew it with a certainty she knew very little else, really.
And there was a final place she needed to check.
She began to turn back towards the entrance back into her room, but changed the movement midway-through into a mad dash for the edge of the balcony. Throwing one leg up in front of her, she settled it on the railing. Leveraging the rest of herself into the precarious position, she shoved off with both legs and dived towards the similarly-built veranda of the next room over.
Crashing onto the wooden floor with one leg extended and both arms splayed outwards to intercept anyone who might be in a sneak-suit wasn’t the most comfortable thing she’d ever done. It certainly wasn’t the most effective, either, as instead of knocking a would-be assassin out with a kick or body-tackling them, she went rolling into the railing on the far side of the balcony and hit her head. But it did at least have the benefit of assuring her that it was clear.
“What in the world are you doing?”
Emma Centrella, her ‘half-sister’, stared down at her from the doorway, still tying a loop in the belt of her robe. The chill in Mina’s spine lessened slightly at the obvious evidence Em was alright, but didn’t go away.
Mina grinned and threw herself back onto her feet, leaping on the potential chance to draw her sister into talking despite the situation, “Checking for assassins in sneak-suits…Also, I had to come over here anyways.”
Em seemed to be on the verge of responding to that with something significant. She could tell. The girl’s cheek twitched with restrained amusement, and her nostrils flared in the very beginnings of a laugh. But just as soon as it had come the friendliness was gone, replaced by the bizarre and cold distance Emma had treated her with since Andurien.
“Most people would use the hallway.” Emma said flatly.
“Assassins like to defy expectations. I’ll not let any succeed while I live.”
Not again.
Mina blinked. Now where had that thought come from?
Emma’s eyes narrowed at her first words, before the glare faded into an unreadable confusion that contorted the girl’s face in amusing ways. Emma always had trouble hiding her reactions. She was just too honest and trusting.
Mina had to swallow down a sense of painful déjà vu that she could almost taste, the feeling so bad it almost hazed-over her vision with tears for no conceivable reason. She’d not been this out-of-sorts for…years. Perhaps not since her first memory in the Crimson Palace having to fight down the constant feeling of having failed at something very, very important.
“Better come in. Explain to mother why you’ve interrupted her necessary beauty sleep.” Emma said.
Mina latched onto the words with desperation. They weren’t quite friendly. Said with more harshness than they really deserved, they could easily have been confused for insulting or dismissive. But it was the first, threadbare show of humor Emma had graced her with since they landed. She’d take what she could get until the girl opened up about whatever was eating at her, and focusing outwards was infinitely better than confronting the well of dark that she could feel waiting at the edge of her thoughts.
“I heard that, young lady.”
With those five words from deeper in the room, the Magestrix managed to almost make Emma turn pale in fear—quite an accomplishment with the girl’s dark skin. All Mina could do was offer a sympathetic smile.
“Now get in here, both of you. Mina? You can tell me why you’ve interrupted my completely superfluous beauty sleep.”
The march into the kitchen was short but silent. Whether out of guilt or awkwardness, Mina wasn’t sure.
‘Mom’ somehow managed to be embarrassingly racy even in the full-size, Combine-style kimono she had taken to wearing in place of her usual nudity ever since Emma had pointed out both of them sharing a room would make security easier. Bizarrely, the flat-edged cut of the fabric and oversized sleeves managed to emphasize her figure more than hide it, and Mina was awkwardly reminded of just how much the woman liked…using…that figure.
Mina shuddered, suddenly glad that she had been able to enjoy her own room even if she kind of missed BSing with Em. She could only imagine just how hard her sister had needed to put her foot down to prevent ‘mom’ from bringing someone up. She probably wouldn’t even have the decency to put a sock on the door as a warning.
...And she didn’t really want to think about her mom’s still-active sex life anymore. Bleagh-heagh-heagh.
“I understand you’re the reason Holly and Jenny burst in here a moment ago?” Her ‘mom’ asked, obviously already knowing the answer to her own question and instead asking why.
“Bad feeling.” Mina answered simply, folding her hands meekly in front of her stomach but matching the Magestrix’s eyes.
Em cocked her head to the side as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d just heard. Kyalla limited her own reaction to biting down on one side of her lips before leaning forwards.
“Still have it?”
Mina nodded.
The Magestrix didn’t hesitate, “Alright then, let’s get packing. Mina, I assume you want to check with…our people…about potential jumpship arrivals?”
Mina nodded again, feeling a bit silly as Emma stared, a croak in the back of her throat evidence of her trying to verbally express her confusion but being unable to get any words out.
“Alright. In that case, why don’t you get my bag from—”
“Wait. We’re leaving? Just like that?” Emma interrupted, whipping her head back-and-forth as if she thought they were joking.
Kyalla didn’t quite laugh, but there was a waver of humor in her voice when she spoke, “Just like that. I thought you weren’t excited about being here anyways, dearie?”
Emma flushed, and looked to Mina for support, “I’m not. But…I mean…”
Unsure how to address the confusion, Mina bounced her eyes back towards the Magestrix.
“The bag, Mina? It’s in my closet. Go, fetch. Please.” Kyalla said, making a shooing gesture with one hand as she lounged back in her chair.
Mina slowly tiptoed away from what looked to be a brewing argument. Reaching the edge of the kitchen after a few steps, she twisted and rushed over to the closet. Stepping in, and ignoring as best she could the more risqué items, it took her only a few seconds to find the old-fashioned attaché case on one of the shelves with enough security-systems on it to probably make even ComStar have trouble opening it.
She tried not to eavesdrop as she crossed back to the kitchen, but it was difficult not to.
“—some things I can’t explain because it is not the place or time. So to be brief? Yes. When your sister has a bad feeling, you listen to it.”
“Jesus.” Emma sounded more terrified than Mina had ever heard, “Mom? Did you actually let crackpots experiment on one of your own children to try and make a psychic?”
“What? No. It’s—”
Instead of stopping to listen longer, Mina stepped into the kitchen, entirely unsure if she should have. Judging by the look on her mother’s face, she was more relieved than anything. Emma was surprisingly more difficult to read, but her usual attempt at affecting a distant stare now looked surprisingly strained. In a way it was kind of relieving, really.
“It’s complicated, Em.” Mina explained for her ‘mother’ as she passed off the case and moved her eyes in a significant circle around the walls of the kitchen, hoping her sister would get the warning abut bugs, “We can explain later, ‘kay?”
“Yeah? You’d better.” Emma complained, crossing her arms in front of her and actually pouting. She did her best to make the words sound tough, but there was no way of denying what it actually was.
Kyalla set the case on the table and held her face up to the scanner on its front. The sequence of movements she then ran through next were so practiced and automatic for her as to be almost impossible to keep track of, but the result was the case opening without destroying the contents inside. Scooping the oldest device out of it, she handed off the computer-pad to Mina before pulling Emma along with her to pack, bringing the secure case with her.
Mina ran her hand on along the edge of the ancient pad, fingers tracing out the well-worn ‘Nirasaki’ etched onto its rear. She didn’t like the idea of accessing The Blazing World or her machine from inside ComStar’s compound, but didn’t see much choice. She certainly wasn’t about to believe some acolyte’s assurances that everything was alright if they contacted traffic control. Not after how many times ComStar had been implicated third-hand in bizarre things in the Periphery.
It would be alright. She’d come to understand the computer-assistant in her ‘Mech had a surprisingly sophisticated capability for electronic warfare and communications security.
Mina tapped the recessed tab on the side of the pad that brought the system instantly to life, feeling a slight relief at how quickly the system responded to her commands in comparison to the much less efficient modern versions. She rested her palm on top of the screen until it emitted a bright chirp, then began to type through the series of commands she needed.
Perhaps the chill she’d felt had been the result of something happening at the dropship or an inbound jumpship. It wouldn’t be the first time that kind of thing had happened.
Mina hesitated. She’d not consciously paid it any mind for years, but something about the password…It had always confused her why it would be the second planet of the Terran solar system.
Now, instead of being confusing, it was…haunting?
—Protected by Venus, the planet of beauty, I am—
Mina tightened her hands around the pad as the thought ended before it was supposed to. She’d come to accept not knowing who she had been. Come to understand and even accept that she’d lose her memory again in a few short years.
Now, when she needed it to be focused on a potential crisis her mind was dredging up things that were coated in the familiar that she could recognize but still didn’t remember. It wasn’t fair.
Despite lingering concern over what had caused her bad feeling and whatever else it was that kept gnawing in the back of her mind, Mina had to laugh at the choice of phrase. She could almost hear the machine saying it in the almost catty tone that had been programmed into it and that came through whenever it made one of the odd comments.
And people thought Bitching Betty was bad! At least Bitching Betty didn’t have bad jokes baked-in to its programming,
Not programming. Thought. Harnessed and focused towards a specific goal, and restricted in its knowledge until fully-revived by a Guardian, but thought…
Mina jerked. That should not have happened. Places where communications were much older and less reliable than Terra’s was had always let her piggy-back off their signals without any interruptions. The only other time she’d ever lost connection…
Palming the pad, Mina pivoted on her foot and marched out of the kitchen. They had to go. If she was going to protect them, they needed to go now. That much perhaps she could do.
She wouldn’t fail again.
“Leave what’s left. I don’t think we have time.” She said, nodding towards the cases and clothes that Emma and Kyalla were packing as she made her way towards the door.
Her ‘mother’ raised an eyebrow and spared a moment’s glance towards her closet. Clothes had always been her weakness. Em twitched, visibly trying to decide between being frustrated or just growing further confused.
“What did you find out?”
Nothing good.
“Not much. Something cut the signal. The dropship is still on the pad, though, and as of right now not in any trouble.” Mina answered automatically, bringing her hand towards the door to lead her charges out of the room.
Pretending calm and control of the situation would help them not to panic, Emma especially. Others could falter or fail themselves if they saw her frightened or defeated. The consequences of that could be disastrous and long-lasting. As everything in the Inner Sphere demonstrated.
She slammed her hand down on the door’s handle, pushing it open for the real Centrellas behind her and the pair of cases both carried with them. She owed the family an inexpressible debt of gratitude for caring for her the past centuries, even if she had been an enforcer and bodyguard for them over those years.
Minako Aino, as much as she wished otherwise, wanted to swear she would protect them. But she was beginning to remember a past promise she had made of the exact same thing to two others, even if she didn’t want to.
A promise she hadn’t kept.
Mina closed her eyes a moment and shoved away the memories—hallucination!—that had greeted her when she’d taken the transformation pen. It was in the past. It didn’t matter anymore. She didn’t want to think about it.
This would turn out differently than that had! Then, when the Centrellas were safe…Then she could do something about her previous failure. Find the woman who’d given her the pen, find Setsuna, and try again. Alone if she had to.
There was always a way. No matter how hopeless things seemed. The only defeat would be in not getting it up!
No. Not growing up?
Giving up! The only defeat would be in giving up. That was it.
“Holly? I’ve got Libertine and Fencer moving. Where should we be heading?”
The guardswoman’s reply came quickly and confidently, though through such a haze of static and distortion it was hard to make out, “West stairwell’s closest to you.”
Mina acknowledged the words bluntly and began to lead the two women beside her down the hall. At least their short-range gear worked, however half-heartedly.
“Scratch that. I’ve got at least a half-dozen people coming up the west stairwell now. They look like ComStar. Hold a moment.” There was a pause that made Mina want to strangle someone, and she inwardly cursed, “Getting nothing from our folks the bottom of the east. Think it’s safe to assume our visitors are there as well. Seems like that intuition of yours was right again, m’lady.”
“I’d rather it had been proven wrong.” Mina said, stopping to think and paying no mind as the Magestrix bumped into her back, “How ad-hoc is the exit you made?”
“Very, m’lady. It’s basically a controlled fall. But we’ve still got contact with the motorcade down below, so if you can make it they should be available to take you on the next leg.”
“And you?” Mina asked, unable to stop herself. The Royal Guard was well-trained, but not having firearms was a major disadvantage—especially if ComStar’s intruding minions weren’t so restricted in their choice of arms.
“We’ll chide our guests for their nighttime adventures. Perhaps the irony of being told such a thing by a Daughter of Canopus will be deadly to them.” Holly said, headshake coming through her words, “I wish I had my service pistol right about now. Always makes me feel better to hold ‘neutrals’ at gunpoint until they decide where they really stand.”
“Them trying a nighttime raid against us is evidence enough of where ComStar stands, I think.” Mina said, only slightly surprised at the heat in her own words.
“I suppose you’re right. Too bad, some of their adepts were kind’a cute. They seemed so friendly, too. Good luck, m’lady.”
“You too, commander.”
She hated the words even as she spoke them. They shouldn’t sound so final. Not when they were on Terra under promise of safe passage. Yet they did.
“Where are we going now? What’s going on?” Emma asked as Mina turned them around and dragged both her ‘sister’ and ‘mother’ back the way they had come. She had to give the girl credit, she sounded more frustrated at lack of information than the whining she might have expected. Em did know when to buckle down and get serious.
“ComStar’s got people coming up the stairwells and I don’t trust the elevator to take us where we want to. We’re going to try to get around the problem.” Mina explained, passing by doors until she reached 434 and could throw herself into the room.
Emma, thankfully, went silent with that answer. Mina supposed there was the possibility that none of the intruders were actually with ComStar. That, however, only seemed like it would make their presence more worrisome and raising that specter seemed completely unnecessary. One problem at a time…
Scanning the room as she crossed, Mina tried not to be overly concerned that she’d not had the chance to clear it herself before bringing Kyalla and Emma in behind her. Even if Holly and the other members of the Guard had looked already, it never hurt to be paranoid. Something about Terra made it a place very prone to friends betraying her.
The room was largely similar to the one she’d started the evening in, though a pair of smaller, separate beds took the place of the single her own had. Combined with the unfolded cot in the corner, they eliminated most of the free space. If anyone was to be in the place without being immediately noticed, they’d have to tuck themselves into a closet or underneath a bed.
Waving her charges along after her, she crossed the room and exited onto its balcony. On the right side of the door was a basic anchoring system stabbed into the concrete of the building. Circled around the bolt-and-trunnion was a bundle of line that looked thick enough to reach the ground, with a set of carabiners clipped into the ends of the rope. Holly hadn’t been lying when she’d said it was crude. But as long as it worked, it was enough.
Mina’s heart sank as she leaned over the railing at the edge. Four stories below, breaking-up the darkness, were circular splashes of light centered around almost a dozen men in robes.
Too slow.
Too slow, again.
“Dammit.”
She instantly hated using the word for the fallen look it inspired on the faces of both women with her.
Mina stared down at the men for a breath, trying to come up with another viable escape route but drawing a blank. The stairwells were covered. The elevator wasn’t to be trusted. This was being watched. What was left?
The elevator shaft itself? The elder Centrella might have some trouble with the amount of physical effort it involved and more than likely its exit was already covered by ComStar’s men. But it was the only option she could come up with. Hopefully all of Kyalla’s…nighttime exercise…Would have her in good enough shape to do some climbing.
Bleagh-heagh-heagh. It was worse when she remembered the girl had been her sister once as well…And had been just as flamboyant and open about her activities then as she was now.
“New plan. Back out into the hallway, we’ll drop down the elevator shaft into the garage.” She said with as much confidence as she could manage, shooing her mother and sister back towards the door.
The muffled shouting and scuffling that grew in intensity as they backtracked through the small room was worrying. The way the Magestrix froze after taking a single step into the hallway more-so.
Mina knew she should have forced her way into the lead.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Kyalla Centrella could sound positively ice-cold at times. Mina had already known that intellectually from hearing her talk about Emma’s late father, and the Magestrix had oft ordered mass execution of pirates and bandits who had preyed on her people. But it was always more striking in-the-moment than in her memory. A reminder that the woman before her who she’d known since her birth, had once called ‘sister’ just like Emma, had risen into the position of a national leader.
The voice that greeted the Magestrix managed to compete with her in its degree of icy detachment. Though it was close, it didn’t sound quite human enough. Mina knew with a cold certainty that the man could not be trusted.
“Lady Centrella, a thousand pardons. I know this is incredibly unorthodox, but we are here to ensure the safety of you and your delegation while we sweep the building and reexamine your personnel.”
Mina stretched a hand onto Emma’s shoulder as her latest sister of the Centrella line began to step forward to join her mother. Emma’s head whipped instantly around to face her, and the flaming rage in her eyes contrasted sharply with her mother’s cold countenance.
Mina shook her head very slowly.
“My Royal Guards were doing that job quite adequately, adept, and you appear to be holding them hostage.”
“Once again, I apologize, Lady Centrella. But circumstances require ComStar take a more proactive role in your and your family’s protection. There was an attempt on the Coordinator’s life just moments ago by an unknown party thought to be in service of one of the other House Lords. As such, we are taking over protection duties for all the House Lords and gathering everyone back in the main hall until we can reexamine all personnel records and documentation we were supplied. ComStar is not about to let Holy Terra be used to kick off another Succession War.”
It was a very convincing series of statements the thing probably didn’t believe. It couldn’t even if it wanted to. It was too…twisted and wrong inside.
Mina pulled on Emma’s shoulder, trying to draw her back further into the relative safety of the room. But her sister planted her feet and refused to be moved, turning her eyes back on her mother and obviously coiling to do something really stupid.
“I see. This is not the end of the conversation, adept, but if such is the case then lead on. I can assure you the Magistracy shall extract suitable compensation from your organization for this breach of its word.” Kyalla said, chin cocking upwards and to the side so she could look back into the room and silently urge her daughter down.
Emma took a shaky step backwards. Despite the slight retreat, her shoulder was still tensed, moments from throwing a punch.
“Your daughters, Lady Centrella?”
Kyalla smirked, “As Commander Holly can tell you, the special circumstances of the marriage and the unique opportunities it provided had me encourage them both to venture out and…personally…try to secure better relationships between the Magistracy and other countries, adept. Because of the…sensitivity…of the job, I trusted them to look after themselves except for one minder on my heir. I’m sure they’ll both show up in the main hall. Hopefully with a nice person or persons with them from one of the Successor States. I’m sure you understand.”
She could almost feel the awkward silence that emanated out of the hallway with those words. Awkward silence from everyone but the adept Kyalla was speaking directly to.
“Very well, Magestrix. If you would accompany my associates, they will direct you and yours to the main hall.”
Mina managed to drag Emma back another pair of steps as their mother disappeared from view in the doorway. The process began, she grabbed hold of her sister with another hand and pulled her to the side into the small closet cut into the wall. It wasn’t much as far as cover went, but beds would require they drop onto their stomachs. It was really difficult to wind up a punch or kick from lying down prone on her chest.
Moving slowly to ensure the door’s hinges didn’t squeak, Mina pulled the door of the closet closed in front of them.
She managed not a moment too soon. The sounds of the crowd in the hallway began to recede, but there was still a presence just outside the room. Mina wasn’t sure if it was the sound of footsteps she made out, the subtle croak and shift of floorboards underneath her that shifted with its movement, or something else entirely, but whatever the case she could feel the thing slowly stalk its way into the room.
Mina silently handed-off the computer to her sister, taking the chance to withdraw the whip from her side and force Emma to the very edge of the small space. This time the threat would have to get through her first!
The thing approached slowly, and Mina had an instant’s temptation to try and burst out and surprise it as it passed the closet by. Perhaps she should have. But after walking past the closet it performed a small circuit of the room, poking into the kitchen, stepping out on the balcony, and then coming back in.
By the sounds it was making, it seemed to repeat the move a couple of times. It would move into the kitchen, come back, step onto the patio, and then repeat the circuit in reverse.
She couldn’t help but wonder if it was looking underneath the beds.
The closet was already beginning to get stuffy and awkward. She was mostly alright, except for a awkwardly-placed coat hangar that insisted on digging into her lower back no matter how she tried to slide it away. Emma was worse off, and had to keep awkwardly shifting her weight to properly breathe, pressed as she was into the corner where racks of coats got in her way.
Neither one of them could risk the noise it would make trying to scoot into more comfortable positions now, though. They just had to wait for the thing outside to leave the room.
As if it were spurred on by the thought, the floorboards creaked once again as it started back from the kitchen towards the hallway. Holding her breath, Mina brought one foot as far back as she could and curled the handle of the whip to the side so she would have an unobstructed swing at the door.
She was thankful she had when the knob began to twist.
Bringing a leg forward, Mina slammed her heel into the door and sent it flying open. The robed thing in the shape of a ComStar adept on the other side didn’t look overly surprised. It’s right arm wrenched at an angle that was physically uncomfortable just to look at, the only reaction it had to her was a cock of its head.
Driving the butt of her whip and the side of her fist into the corner of that inhuman head a moment later was satisfying in a way she wasn’t sure it was supposed to be. But she wasn’t going to let it have Emma.
The monster staggered backwards a few steps until it hit the wall. A human would have been stunned or outright unconscious—she’d punched-out a fair share of pirates, vagabonds and tramps in two-and-a-half centuries protecting the Magistracy. But the monster before her was only human in shape, and was charging back towards her in an instant.
“Emma, run.” Mina managed to growl, just before stepping forward to meet the monster’s attack with her own.
The adept-shaped monster didn’t avoid her strike. She drove the densely-cored pommel of the whip into the edge of his neck, feeling something underneath shift and then crack. But it had little effect, and she was struck full-force by the thing’s charge.
She was forced to buckle her knees to keep herself from sliding backwards. Not quite having enough motion in her right arm to strike again with the whip thanks to the monster wrapping one arm over her elbow, she instead drove her left into its stomach a half-dozen times in rapid succession.
The thing countered with its own series of clumsy but powerful strikes into her midsection, and the fight devolved into an almost-alternating exchange of blows between them. It was painful, and she knew that if she were brave enough to face what taking hold of the pen would bring her it would be over more quickly. But she still found herself satisfied. The monster might have inhuman endurance, but she’d bank on her own coming out in the end.
Even if it didn’t, she was buying more time for Emma to get clear.
“Enough.”
The word came as a surprise from the creature. The way it took hold of her and then bit into her left shoulder came as an even bigger one.
Mina screamed, forced to stop her own punches as a streak of pain shot through her entire side. It only worsened as the thing before her rippled and shook, shuddering as the robes it was in and the skin underneath them both began to split open to reveal a red-and-black mass in only vaguely human shape underneath. The head bulged, and horns began to extend themselves around its crown. The arms seemed to almost burst into new shape, impossibly large for a human. Inside of her shoulder, Mina could feel the monster’s teeth elongate and twist.
A stuttering series of gunshots pounded into her ears. On the monster’s rear, furthest from her, a small line of wounds burst into being, leaking the black ooze that served the thing for blood.
Mina didn’t waste time looking for the origin of the shots. Fighting through the pain, she curled both her arms over the surprised monster’s and grabbed onto opposite sides of its still-growing mouth. While it was still partially-dazed, she dug her nails into thick, leather-like skin, and forced the creature’s mouth to slowly creak open. She accompanied a sigh of relief at removing the teeth with an energetic knee into the monster’s side, sending it into the air, through the closet-door at their side, and halfway to the balcony exit before it finally crashed onto the room’s floor.
Free of the thing, Mina stepped away from the closet and back towards the door. Her eyes took a moment to drag away from the monster, though, morbidly fascinated by the way it seemed to be trapped midway between the shape of a human and a much larger, blood-red colored beast that was its more typical form. As she drew even with an auto-pistol in a surprisingly dainty pair of hands, it resumed its blasting, making her wince as the noise of the gunshots seemed to bore into and then through the side of her skull.
She wasn’t overly surprised to find her sister standing behind the New Earth noblewoman from the night before at the doorway.
Lorinette Kalkenny looked only a little more threatening with a gun in her hand and in flat-black slacks-and-jacket than she had the previous evening unarmed and in fancy dress. But she was still undeniably attractive. More attractive than anything was the auto-pistol in her hand and her willingness to use it.
“This is where you come in with your bullshit!” Lorinette growled, punctuating the words with another series of shots, “That thing isn’t going to stay down long from just this!”
Mina frowned, then realized exactly what the woman was referencing.
“I uh…I don’t have it on me at the moment!” She said, almost having to yell the words over the bursting gunfire.
Lorinette turned her head, eyes dropping into a thin-slitted rage that probably made it difficult to even see let alone shoot. Even without using the sights her next series of shots managed to hit the half-beast still writhing on the floor, inhuman screams almost deafened by the ringing in her ears from the sound of the pistol.
“You should go get it then.” The woman said flatly, before beginning to back up and shooing Mina through the door. “Right. Now.”
With Emma right there, Mina couldn’t object to the idea, much as she didn’t want to think about the transformation pen. Grabbing onto her sister’s hand, she almost dragged her up the hallway back towards her own room and away from the monster she’d been fighting. It was a good first step. Once she got there was when the more difficult part would start.
“Mina…Mina what the hell was that?”
Mina glanced behind her, looking past the visibly-shaken but visibly getting-a-grip-on-herself Emma to the pistol-wielding blonde behind her. Lorinette was just getting into the hallway as the pistol locked-back in visual display it was empty.
It wasn’t a bad question, though it was kind of a bad time for it.
“That was a ‘youma’. Or ‘monster’. Whichever you prefer. They eat people. Then pretend to be people so they can eat more people.” Mina explained.
“What?”
“Yeah, that’s about the proper reaction.” Mina growled as she pounded open the door to her room and sprinted into it.
She almost dived onto the bed, swiping up the pen at its foot in one hand and then rolling off of the mattress in a single motion. The move was only partially complicated by her sister still getting dragged along behind her throughout it. It was a minor miracle they both landed on their feet and steady.
Mina raised the pen over her head.
Protected by Venus, the planet of beauty, Guardian of Love, I am Sailor Venus!
“Venus Crystal Power, Make-up!”
Nothing happened.
“What?” Emma asked again, staring.
There were gunshots in the hallway.
She refused to let her sister be hurt. Not by that thing. Not by anything.
Mina squashed the urge to panic the lack of change and chased through memories only starting to fully come back to her for an explanation. It took a surprisingly long amount of time from where she was, though Emma still staring at her in uncomprehending shock assured her that was a trick of her own mind more than reality.
The explanation struck her as she heard Lorinette scream, her body thrown past the doorway.
Mina tried again as the red-skinned monster entered the room, now standing so tall it had to burst through the doorway and hunch-over to keep from scraping the ceiling with every step it took. Now that she remembered just how limited the ancient pen in her hand was she knew it would work. She couldn’t ask so much of it—or herself—just yet. If she did she was more likely to break it. Or, worse, lose control of the power it gave her.
And if it didn’t work again, she’d just have to beat the damned thing to death herself without any magic!
“Venus Power, Make-up!”
This time she had just enough time to see the pen flare with a light from within before she felt the change.
She was no longer in a room with her sister and the beast, no longer trapped within the confines of man-made structures at all. She was flying—floating—through an endless stream of stars that curled around her in the glowing welcome of family. From each and every one of them there radiated a blooming warmth that shot through her, curling and embracing in what she could only compare to a wandering hug that traveled from her extremities inward.
Mina extended the pen above her head, dipping into the endless bound of Love the stars obscured and letting it draw out what was necessary from it.
Just like that, she was back in the room. The youma was growling out something that might or might-not have been words. She was more concerned with the confused, uncomprehending stare coming from her sister.
This was going to be a challenge to explain.
Mina blinked, spots dancing in front of her eyes from where the light of the pen had struck them. The pen itself had disappeared, converted into another portion of the energy she’d needed to complete the ritual. It was a useful conversion. It left one hand free to use. Not that she would probably need it for the joke she was facing.
Mina jumped towards the monster, twisting her shoulders into the flying side-kick she aimed squarely at its bulging neck. It had just enough time to try and swipe at her with one of its clawed arms, but missed as it underestimated just how quickly she’d cover the distance.
The creature’s snarling growls morphed into pained howls as it was launched into a dresser and then through wall it was set against. Destroyed drawers and pieces of pressed-wood exploded outwards, followed by a light dusting of plaster and poufy bits of insulation. Mina wasted no time and ducked through the new hole in the wall into the next room over…And then repeated the process when she found the creature had kept going through the next room.
“You are not supposed to be here.” The beast growled, shoving its way back onto its massive feet and scraping splinters and dust off of its face.
“Oh? And who told you that?”
Instead of answering, the monster bull-rushed towards her, extending its arms to the side and splaying its claws out to catch her if she tried to dodge. But she didn’t want to. No more messing around. It was time to take the bull by the throat and run with it!
Letting the whip in her left hand unfurl, Mina flicked her wrist upwards and sent it into the air in front of her. The thong snapped around the beast’s neck, swirling dangerously before snapping tight. Taking a tight hold of the handle, Mina threw herself forward between the beast’s legs and jerked the whip forwards and upwards as she emerged behind it.
Exposing a back to an enemy was never a good idea. In this instance she could excuse it only because it let her lay the bastard out with a minimum amount of fuss. The floor itself rattled as behind her the beast slammed down into it face-first.
Mina turned around, closed the distance, and slammed her heel into the center of the youma’s back. Combined with pulling the whip taught, she kept it shoved into the splinter-strewn carpet below. A half-dozen different ways of using the excess thong of the whip to further restrict the beast’s movement ran through her mind, but she was confident enough in her control as it was.
Now call me Queen!
“I asked a question.” Mina said instead, painfully aware of how awkward it was to fight down a blush in the immediate aftermath of an actual fight.
The red-skinned monster writhed underneath her, twisting its head around so it could stare up with one of its beady, black eyes. It offered her a smirk that exposed a fang-studded mouth before twisting one of its arms around to swipe at her more exposed leg with its claws.
Mina easily sidestepped the blind swipe. She would have preferred interrogating it further, but there was only so much she could try and she refused to risk it getting loose long enough to harm her sister. No more.
Swinging herself off the monster’s back and bringing both hands onto the handle of the whip, Mina threw her full body into another jerk that pulled the beast into the air behind her. With careful timing of another wrist-flick, she let the whip loosen from around the youma’s neck. It screamed as it went flying, burst through another wall, crashed over the steel railing on the balcony, and spun into the open air beyond.
It didn’t take long to retrace the course of the fight back to her own room. Emma was still there, peeking through the hole in the wall, mouth half-open and eyes wildly tracking every errant noise and every scrap of wood or plaster that dropped to the ground from the broken walls. At some point during the fight Lorinette had joined her in the room. Leaning up against the far wall favoring her right side, the blonde woman held a rag up to a cut across her head with one hand while the other was still wrapped around the auto-pistol she’d entered the fray with.
“Huh. That magic bullshit really does armor you all up in a blouse-and-mini? I would’ve sworn Mariah was lying and it was just her own weird eccentricities coming through.” The blonde growled, letting her pistol-hand drop to her side.
Mina stared as she slowly unpacked everything the comment suggested. She’d already suspected Lorinette of knowing more than she let-on ever since she’d given her the pen in the first place. Her showing up minutes before only reinforced that. But she had seen a transformation before?
Who was Mariah?
“You two know each other? Who are you, and what did you do with Mina?” Emma spoke up, shaking out of her shock and stepping back into a lower stance that left her equally open to fight as to flee.
It had been so long since Mina had last faced that question—and even longer since she’d last been able to answer it truthfully. At the same time, she would prefer not to risk the easiest and most thorough way of answering. She was pretty sure the pen would rematerialize when she abandoned the energy of Sailor Venus, but she wasn’t sure it would. Until Emma and her mother were safe, she wasn’t going to risk it.
“Em, this is Lorinette Kalkenny, she’s—“
“Lori Kalmar, your Grace…I work for a portion of ComStar that doesn’t want anyone getting eaten by big red bastards.” The woman explained, very obviously being careful with her words. “This is ‘Sailor Venus’. She’s a centuries-old ‘Guardian of the Star League’ that the Magistracy has been sheltering. It’s a very long story that we can discuss while we move.”
Mina didn’t have a chance to challenge the woman on any of that before her sister’s eyes turned to her. She could almost see the question behind them. The one that had appeared when she’d called her ‘Em’.
“I am Mina.” She admitted.
Emma Centrella didn’t quite faint. But her knees buckled and she wobbled much more than a person should after a simple introduction.
“What? But how—“
“It’s a very long story.”
Lorinette—Lori, rather—shoved herself off the wall, “And not one we can afford to stand around for you to explain. I hate to cut the twenty questions short because believe me Lady Centrella, I can sympathize with how you’re feeling. But we really need to get moving, link up with a few friends of mine. You can ask on the way.”
“She’s mostly right.” Mina agreed, stepping closer to her sister and relieved when the woman winced but didn’t move away from the hand she put on her shoulder, “We need to rescue mom—the Magestrix.”
Lori started slightly at that and winced, “Not…Quite what we had in mind.”
“It’s what I had in mind, though.” Mina pivoted on the back of one heel and brought her head down slightly so she could stare up at the woman through her brows, “We save the Magestrix, or I don’t come with you.”
It was a height of selfish arrogance she hadn’t extended herself to for centuries. She didn’t care. She was curious which of the others had survived and apparently set this up. But it wasn’t the all-consuming drive she knew it probably should be. She had a lifetime of memories slowly coming back to her of Kyalla Centrella and her mother, and her grandmother, for generations. ‘Mariah’, whichever of them it was, would understand…
“We’ll see.” Was all the woman said, turning away and speaking into a portable radio of her own.
Mina didn’t even have enough time to offer an apology or partial explanation to Em before Lori spat a string of curses out underneath her breath.
“Problems?” Emma asked, sounding like she was testing out her voice for the first time.
“Comms are jammed.” The blonde sighed, and bit one side of her lips for a moment.
Mina resisted the temptation to say ‘I could have told you that’.
“I could have told you that.” She said after managing to resist for a whole second. “I lost a datanet connection to the Magistracy’s dropship just a little while ago.”
Lori acknowledged the words with a nod, but her eyes remained unfocused as she thought.
“The top floor is supposed to be some kind of communications center.” Emma offered, glancing between them. “If we got to it you could talk to your people and Mina could call for…reinforcements.”
By the way Emma emphasized the last word and flashed the Nirasaki computer she still had in her hands, Mina immediately knew what she was talking about. It wasn’t a bad idea, either.
“Could work. Could get us killed.” Lori snapped, though the words lacked any real fire. “It’s better than staying here, I guess. Come on. We can iron out the rest on the way.”
The rush back to the elevators was surreal after the evening Mina already had. Emma took the opportunity to probe both of them with questions—one of her first an attempt at spycraft trying to reveal Mina as a fraud by mistaking what they’d done for her eighteenth birthday. It was actually rather well-done by the girl. Unnecessary, but well done.
“They’ll be able to track us on security cameras if we take the elevator itself.” Lori explained as they reached the doors and she set to prying them open. She managed to pull them apart and stuck her head in to look up the shaft. “We’ll have to climb.”
“I’ll go first.” Mina said, stepping forward.
Lori raised one finger in quiet objection, “Maybe second?”
Emma was more final, “Third. Definitely third.”
Mina was about to demand why when the identical stare both had fixed on her skirt answered the question.
Prudes.
Something was very wrong. The worst was that it was familiar. This wasn’t just another batch of raiders or pirates.
Uncrossing her legs and refocusing eyes that had grown distant and glazed staring at the…transformation pen…thing one of the Sphere’s noblewomen had gifted her, Mina forced herself to instead examine the screen at the desk before her. Cycling through the security-cameras that ComStar had given her access to took only moments, but showed little to explain the dread in her stomach. She recognized the faces of the three guards making rounds in the floor’s hallway, no other presences stood out, and there was no sign of forced entry into the windows of any room on the floor.
She might almost have been tempted to chalk it up to her imagination. But she was never wrong about things like this. There was something, she just had to find it.
Mina brought the radio on the table beside her up. Hesitating only a moment, she tapped the code into it that would set Commander Holly’s own device to beeping. In the unlikely event she was overreacting to a momentary impulse, she could pass it off as an exercise testing the Royal Guards’ alertness.
She had done the same thing during Amaris’ coup and it hadn’t mattered. This time would be different.
“Holly here, milady.” The woman said, a waver in the background of the words the only indication that she had been asleep moments before.
Maybe she was going nuts. Thinking she’d been alive for the Fall of the Star League was pretty out there, wasn’t it?
It was probably just persistent after-effects from her earlier drug-trip.
“Wake the rest of your girls, commander. Sweep the floor, ensure the security of the exits and ready an alternative. Prepare for a potentially contested exfil. Quietly, if you can. I will be looking-in on my mother and sister.”
To her credit, there was only an instant of hesitation on the other end of the line as the commander of the guard digested the instructions, “As you order, milady.”
She could only wish men were so easy to direct!
Pinning the radio to the neckline of her top and connecting an earpiece to it, Mina stood. Twisting around on the balls of her feet, she stalked off the plush carpet of the bedroom and onto the cool wooden decking that extended out of the edge of the room onto the small balcony. She slowed only long enough to bend down and grab the ‘whip’ she’d been able to sneak into the compound from its deliberate spot at the foot of the bed where it would only invite the right kind of assumptions being made about its use if ComStar searched her room.
She did her best to ignore the pen that sat beside it, not wanting to be distracted by it or so much as touch it again after what she’d seen at the ball when it had been given to her. Apparently, New Earth had a very Canopian approach to the use of psychedelics at public parties. Even in the Magistracy, though, it would have been courtesy to warn her before passing off something coated in a hallucinogen!
It was the first time in many years she’d had to excuse herself from a party to recover from something. The memory—hallucination—had been frighteningly realistic. It made her somewhat leery of even touching the bizarre, pen-thing again. Though maybe it was the soul-crushing despair she’d felt while she held it that had her afraid.
Shaking away the distraction, Mina exited her room and scanned the horizon and the shoreline of the ocean below for any reasonable explanation of her sudden chill, the half-full moon providing enough light to distinguish basic shapes even in the distance. The late-summer weather of Terra was quite comfortable even at night, and when she performed a basic series of yoga stretches across the balcony, she found no sneaksuit-wearing assassin on it poised for a kill. There was nothing that explained her worry.
“Floor is clear. Ad-hoc exit available from room four-three-four in addition to traditional. Ready to evac on your go-ahead.” Holly’s gruff voice spoke in Mina’s ear.
“Thank you, commander. Standby.” Mina responded, bringing both her hands up to wrap around the railing and leaning over so she could scan the side of building below.
Still nothing.
Mina backed away from her place at the edge, letting her hands slowly drop back down to her sides as if she were giving-up and simply deciding to enjoy the moonlight morning-hours. But she wasn’t. There was something wrong. She knew it with a certainty she knew very little else, really.
And there was a final place she needed to check.
She began to turn back towards the entrance back into her room, but changed the movement midway-through into a mad dash for the edge of the balcony. Throwing one leg up in front of her, she settled it on the railing. Leveraging the rest of herself into the precarious position, she shoved off with both legs and dived towards the similarly-built veranda of the next room over.
Crashing onto the wooden floor with one leg extended and both arms splayed outwards to intercept anyone who might be in a sneak-suit wasn’t the most comfortable thing she’d ever done. It certainly wasn’t the most effective, either, as instead of knocking a would-be assassin out with a kick or body-tackling them, she went rolling into the railing on the far side of the balcony and hit her head. But it did at least have the benefit of assuring her that it was clear.
“What in the world are you doing?”
Emma Centrella, her ‘half-sister’, stared down at her from the doorway, still tying a loop in the belt of her robe. The chill in Mina’s spine lessened slightly at the obvious evidence Em was alright, but didn’t go away.
Mina grinned and threw herself back onto her feet, leaping on the potential chance to draw her sister into talking despite the situation, “Checking for assassins in sneak-suits…Also, I had to come over here anyways.”
Em seemed to be on the verge of responding to that with something significant. She could tell. The girl’s cheek twitched with restrained amusement, and her nostrils flared in the very beginnings of a laugh. But just as soon as it had come the friendliness was gone, replaced by the bizarre and cold distance Emma had treated her with since Andurien.
“Most people would use the hallway.” Emma said flatly.
“Assassins like to defy expectations. I’ll not let any succeed while I live.”
Not again.
Mina blinked. Now where had that thought come from?
Emma’s eyes narrowed at her first words, before the glare faded into an unreadable confusion that contorted the girl’s face in amusing ways. Emma always had trouble hiding her reactions. She was just too honest and trusting.
Mina had to swallow down a sense of painful déjà vu that she could almost taste, the feeling so bad it almost hazed-over her vision with tears for no conceivable reason. She’d not been this out-of-sorts for…years. Perhaps not since her first memory in the Crimson Palace having to fight down the constant feeling of having failed at something very, very important.
“Better come in. Explain to mother why you’ve interrupted her necessary beauty sleep.” Emma said.
Mina latched onto the words with desperation. They weren’t quite friendly. Said with more harshness than they really deserved, they could easily have been confused for insulting or dismissive. But it was the first, threadbare show of humor Emma had graced her with since they landed. She’d take what she could get until the girl opened up about whatever was eating at her, and focusing outwards was infinitely better than confronting the well of dark that she could feel waiting at the edge of her thoughts.
“I heard that, young lady.”
With those five words from deeper in the room, the Magestrix managed to almost make Emma turn pale in fear—quite an accomplishment with the girl’s dark skin. All Mina could do was offer a sympathetic smile.
“Now get in here, both of you. Mina? You can tell me why you’ve interrupted my completely superfluous beauty sleep.”
The march into the kitchen was short but silent. Whether out of guilt or awkwardness, Mina wasn’t sure.
‘Mom’ somehow managed to be embarrassingly racy even in the full-size, Combine-style kimono she had taken to wearing in place of her usual nudity ever since Emma had pointed out both of them sharing a room would make security easier. Bizarrely, the flat-edged cut of the fabric and oversized sleeves managed to emphasize her figure more than hide it, and Mina was awkwardly reminded of just how much the woman liked…using…that figure.
Mina shuddered, suddenly glad that she had been able to enjoy her own room even if she kind of missed BSing with Em. She could only imagine just how hard her sister had needed to put her foot down to prevent ‘mom’ from bringing someone up. She probably wouldn’t even have the decency to put a sock on the door as a warning.
...And she didn’t really want to think about her mom’s still-active sex life anymore. Bleagh-heagh-heagh.
“I understand you’re the reason Holly and Jenny burst in here a moment ago?” Her ‘mom’ asked, obviously already knowing the answer to her own question and instead asking why.
“Bad feeling.” Mina answered simply, folding her hands meekly in front of her stomach but matching the Magestrix’s eyes.
Em cocked her head to the side as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d just heard. Kyalla limited her own reaction to biting down on one side of her lips before leaning forwards.
“Still have it?”
Mina nodded.
The Magestrix didn’t hesitate, “Alright then, let’s get packing. Mina, I assume you want to check with…our people…about potential jumpship arrivals?”
Mina nodded again, feeling a bit silly as Emma stared, a croak in the back of her throat evidence of her trying to verbally express her confusion but being unable to get any words out.
“Alright. In that case, why don’t you get my bag from—”
“Wait. We’re leaving? Just like that?” Emma interrupted, whipping her head back-and-forth as if she thought they were joking.
Kyalla didn’t quite laugh, but there was a waver of humor in her voice when she spoke, “Just like that. I thought you weren’t excited about being here anyways, dearie?”
Emma flushed, and looked to Mina for support, “I’m not. But…I mean…”
Unsure how to address the confusion, Mina bounced her eyes back towards the Magestrix.
“The bag, Mina? It’s in my closet. Go, fetch. Please.” Kyalla said, making a shooing gesture with one hand as she lounged back in her chair.
Mina slowly tiptoed away from what looked to be a brewing argument. Reaching the edge of the kitchen after a few steps, she twisted and rushed over to the closet. Stepping in, and ignoring as best she could the more risqué items, it took her only a few seconds to find the old-fashioned attaché case on one of the shelves with enough security-systems on it to probably make even ComStar have trouble opening it.
She tried not to eavesdrop as she crossed back to the kitchen, but it was difficult not to.
“—some things I can’t explain because it is not the place or time. So to be brief? Yes. When your sister has a bad feeling, you listen to it.”
“Jesus.” Emma sounded more terrified than Mina had ever heard, “Mom? Did you actually let crackpots experiment on one of your own children to try and make a psychic?”
“What? No. It’s—”
Instead of stopping to listen longer, Mina stepped into the kitchen, entirely unsure if she should have. Judging by the look on her mother’s face, she was more relieved than anything. Emma was surprisingly more difficult to read, but her usual attempt at affecting a distant stare now looked surprisingly strained. In a way it was kind of relieving, really.
“It’s complicated, Em.” Mina explained for her ‘mother’ as she passed off the case and moved her eyes in a significant circle around the walls of the kitchen, hoping her sister would get the warning abut bugs, “We can explain later, ‘kay?”
“Yeah? You’d better.” Emma complained, crossing her arms in front of her and actually pouting. She did her best to make the words sound tough, but there was no way of denying what it actually was.
Kyalla set the case on the table and held her face up to the scanner on its front. The sequence of movements she then ran through next were so practiced and automatic for her as to be almost impossible to keep track of, but the result was the case opening without destroying the contents inside. Scooping the oldest device out of it, she handed off the computer-pad to Mina before pulling Emma along with her to pack, bringing the secure case with her.
Mina ran her hand on along the edge of the ancient pad, fingers tracing out the well-worn ‘Nirasaki’ etched onto its rear. She didn’t like the idea of accessing The Blazing World or her machine from inside ComStar’s compound, but didn’t see much choice. She certainly wasn’t about to believe some acolyte’s assurances that everything was alright if they contacted traffic control. Not after how many times ComStar had been implicated third-hand in bizarre things in the Periphery.
It would be alright. She’d come to understand the computer-assistant in her ‘Mech had a surprisingly sophisticated capability for electronic warfare and communications security.
Mina tapped the recessed tab on the side of the pad that brought the system instantly to life, feeling a slight relief at how quickly the system responded to her commands in comparison to the much less efficient modern versions. She rested her palm on top of the screen until it emitted a bright chirp, then began to type through the series of commands she needed.
Perhaps the chill she’d felt had been the result of something happening at the dropship or an inbound jumpship. It wouldn’t be the first time that kind of thing had happened.
Mina hesitated. She’d not consciously paid it any mind for years, but something about the password…It had always confused her why it would be the second planet of the Terran solar system.
Now, instead of being confusing, it was…haunting?
—Protected by Venus, the planet of beauty, I am—
Mina tightened her hands around the pad as the thought ended before it was supposed to. She’d come to accept not knowing who she had been. Come to understand and even accept that she’d lose her memory again in a few short years.
Now, when she needed it to be focused on a potential crisis her mind was dredging up things that were coated in the familiar that she could recognize but still didn’t remember. It wasn’t fair.
Despite lingering concern over what had caused her bad feeling and whatever else it was that kept gnawing in the back of her mind, Mina had to laugh at the choice of phrase. She could almost hear the machine saying it in the almost catty tone that had been programmed into it and that came through whenever it made one of the odd comments.
And people thought Bitching Betty was bad! At least Bitching Betty didn’t have bad jokes baked-in to its programming,
Not programming. Thought. Harnessed and focused towards a specific goal, and restricted in its knowledge until fully-revived by a Guardian, but thought…
Mina jerked. That should not have happened. Places where communications were much older and less reliable than Terra’s was had always let her piggy-back off their signals without any interruptions. The only other time she’d ever lost connection…
Palming the pad, Mina pivoted on her foot and marched out of the kitchen. They had to go. If she was going to protect them, they needed to go now. That much perhaps she could do.
She wouldn’t fail again.
“Leave what’s left. I don’t think we have time.” She said, nodding towards the cases and clothes that Emma and Kyalla were packing as she made her way towards the door.
Her ‘mother’ raised an eyebrow and spared a moment’s glance towards her closet. Clothes had always been her weakness. Em twitched, visibly trying to decide between being frustrated or just growing further confused.
“What did you find out?”
Nothing good.
“Not much. Something cut the signal. The dropship is still on the pad, though, and as of right now not in any trouble.” Mina answered automatically, bringing her hand towards the door to lead her charges out of the room.
Pretending calm and control of the situation would help them not to panic, Emma especially. Others could falter or fail themselves if they saw her frightened or defeated. The consequences of that could be disastrous and long-lasting. As everything in the Inner Sphere demonstrated.
She slammed her hand down on the door’s handle, pushing it open for the real Centrellas behind her and the pair of cases both carried with them. She owed the family an inexpressible debt of gratitude for caring for her the past centuries, even if she had been an enforcer and bodyguard for them over those years.
Minako Aino, as much as she wished otherwise, wanted to swear she would protect them. But she was beginning to remember a past promise she had made of the exact same thing to two others, even if she didn’t want to.
A promise she hadn’t kept.
Mina closed her eyes a moment and shoved away the memories—hallucination!—that had greeted her when she’d taken the transformation pen. It was in the past. It didn’t matter anymore. She didn’t want to think about it.
This would turn out differently than that had! Then, when the Centrellas were safe…Then she could do something about her previous failure. Find the woman who’d given her the pen, find Setsuna, and try again. Alone if she had to.
There was always a way. No matter how hopeless things seemed. The only defeat would be in not getting it up!
No. Not growing up?
Giving up! The only defeat would be in giving up. That was it.
“Holly? I’ve got Libertine and Fencer moving. Where should we be heading?”
The guardswoman’s reply came quickly and confidently, though through such a haze of static and distortion it was hard to make out, “West stairwell’s closest to you.”
Mina acknowledged the words bluntly and began to lead the two women beside her down the hall. At least their short-range gear worked, however half-heartedly.
“Scratch that. I’ve got at least a half-dozen people coming up the west stairwell now. They look like ComStar. Hold a moment.” There was a pause that made Mina want to strangle someone, and she inwardly cursed, “Getting nothing from our folks the bottom of the east. Think it’s safe to assume our visitors are there as well. Seems like that intuition of yours was right again, m’lady.”
“I’d rather it had been proven wrong.” Mina said, stopping to think and paying no mind as the Magestrix bumped into her back, “How ad-hoc is the exit you made?”
“Very, m’lady. It’s basically a controlled fall. But we’ve still got contact with the motorcade down below, so if you can make it they should be available to take you on the next leg.”
“And you?” Mina asked, unable to stop herself. The Royal Guard was well-trained, but not having firearms was a major disadvantage—especially if ComStar’s intruding minions weren’t so restricted in their choice of arms.
“We’ll chide our guests for their nighttime adventures. Perhaps the irony of being told such a thing by a Daughter of Canopus will be deadly to them.” Holly said, headshake coming through her words, “I wish I had my service pistol right about now. Always makes me feel better to hold ‘neutrals’ at gunpoint until they decide where they really stand.”
“Them trying a nighttime raid against us is evidence enough of where ComStar stands, I think.” Mina said, only slightly surprised at the heat in her own words.
“I suppose you’re right. Too bad, some of their adepts were kind’a cute. They seemed so friendly, too. Good luck, m’lady.”
“You too, commander.”
She hated the words even as she spoke them. They shouldn’t sound so final. Not when they were on Terra under promise of safe passage. Yet they did.
“Where are we going now? What’s going on?” Emma asked as Mina turned them around and dragged both her ‘sister’ and ‘mother’ back the way they had come. She had to give the girl credit, she sounded more frustrated at lack of information than the whining she might have expected. Em did know when to buckle down and get serious.
“ComStar’s got people coming up the stairwells and I don’t trust the elevator to take us where we want to. We’re going to try to get around the problem.” Mina explained, passing by doors until she reached 434 and could throw herself into the room.
Emma, thankfully, went silent with that answer. Mina supposed there was the possibility that none of the intruders were actually with ComStar. That, however, only seemed like it would make their presence more worrisome and raising that specter seemed completely unnecessary. One problem at a time…
Scanning the room as she crossed, Mina tried not to be overly concerned that she’d not had the chance to clear it herself before bringing Kyalla and Emma in behind her. Even if Holly and the other members of the Guard had looked already, it never hurt to be paranoid. Something about Terra made it a place very prone to friends betraying her.
The room was largely similar to the one she’d started the evening in, though a pair of smaller, separate beds took the place of the single her own had. Combined with the unfolded cot in the corner, they eliminated most of the free space. If anyone was to be in the place without being immediately noticed, they’d have to tuck themselves into a closet or underneath a bed.
Waving her charges along after her, she crossed the room and exited onto its balcony. On the right side of the door was a basic anchoring system stabbed into the concrete of the building. Circled around the bolt-and-trunnion was a bundle of line that looked thick enough to reach the ground, with a set of carabiners clipped into the ends of the rope. Holly hadn’t been lying when she’d said it was crude. But as long as it worked, it was enough.
Mina’s heart sank as she leaned over the railing at the edge. Four stories below, breaking-up the darkness, were circular splashes of light centered around almost a dozen men in robes.
Too slow.
Too slow, again.
“Dammit.”
She instantly hated using the word for the fallen look it inspired on the faces of both women with her.
Mina stared down at the men for a breath, trying to come up with another viable escape route but drawing a blank. The stairwells were covered. The elevator wasn’t to be trusted. This was being watched. What was left?
The elevator shaft itself? The elder Centrella might have some trouble with the amount of physical effort it involved and more than likely its exit was already covered by ComStar’s men. But it was the only option she could come up with. Hopefully all of Kyalla’s…nighttime exercise…Would have her in good enough shape to do some climbing.
Bleagh-heagh-heagh. It was worse when she remembered the girl had been her sister once as well…And had been just as flamboyant and open about her activities then as she was now.
“New plan. Back out into the hallway, we’ll drop down the elevator shaft into the garage.” She said with as much confidence as she could manage, shooing her mother and sister back towards the door.
The muffled shouting and scuffling that grew in intensity as they backtracked through the small room was worrying. The way the Magestrix froze after taking a single step into the hallway more-so.
Mina knew she should have forced her way into the lead.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Kyalla Centrella could sound positively ice-cold at times. Mina had already known that intellectually from hearing her talk about Emma’s late father, and the Magestrix had oft ordered mass execution of pirates and bandits who had preyed on her people. But it was always more striking in-the-moment than in her memory. A reminder that the woman before her who she’d known since her birth, had once called ‘sister’ just like Emma, had risen into the position of a national leader.
The voice that greeted the Magestrix managed to compete with her in its degree of icy detachment. Though it was close, it didn’t sound quite human enough. Mina knew with a cold certainty that the man could not be trusted.
“Lady Centrella, a thousand pardons. I know this is incredibly unorthodox, but we are here to ensure the safety of you and your delegation while we sweep the building and reexamine your personnel.”
Mina stretched a hand onto Emma’s shoulder as her latest sister of the Centrella line began to step forward to join her mother. Emma’s head whipped instantly around to face her, and the flaming rage in her eyes contrasted sharply with her mother’s cold countenance.
Mina shook her head very slowly.
“My Royal Guards were doing that job quite adequately, adept, and you appear to be holding them hostage.”
“Once again, I apologize, Lady Centrella. But circumstances require ComStar take a more proactive role in your and your family’s protection. There was an attempt on the Coordinator’s life just moments ago by an unknown party thought to be in service of one of the other House Lords. As such, we are taking over protection duties for all the House Lords and gathering everyone back in the main hall until we can reexamine all personnel records and documentation we were supplied. ComStar is not about to let Holy Terra be used to kick off another Succession War.”
It was a very convincing series of statements the thing probably didn’t believe. It couldn’t even if it wanted to. It was too…twisted and wrong inside.
Mina pulled on Emma’s shoulder, trying to draw her back further into the relative safety of the room. But her sister planted her feet and refused to be moved, turning her eyes back on her mother and obviously coiling to do something really stupid.
“I see. This is not the end of the conversation, adept, but if such is the case then lead on. I can assure you the Magistracy shall extract suitable compensation from your organization for this breach of its word.” Kyalla said, chin cocking upwards and to the side so she could look back into the room and silently urge her daughter down.
Emma took a shaky step backwards. Despite the slight retreat, her shoulder was still tensed, moments from throwing a punch.
“Your daughters, Lady Centrella?”
Kyalla smirked, “As Commander Holly can tell you, the special circumstances of the marriage and the unique opportunities it provided had me encourage them both to venture out and…personally…try to secure better relationships between the Magistracy and other countries, adept. Because of the…sensitivity…of the job, I trusted them to look after themselves except for one minder on my heir. I’m sure they’ll both show up in the main hall. Hopefully with a nice person or persons with them from one of the Successor States. I’m sure you understand.”
She could almost feel the awkward silence that emanated out of the hallway with those words. Awkward silence from everyone but the adept Kyalla was speaking directly to.
“Very well, Magestrix. If you would accompany my associates, they will direct you and yours to the main hall.”
Mina managed to drag Emma back another pair of steps as their mother disappeared from view in the doorway. The process began, she grabbed hold of her sister with another hand and pulled her to the side into the small closet cut into the wall. It wasn’t much as far as cover went, but beds would require they drop onto their stomachs. It was really difficult to wind up a punch or kick from lying down prone on her chest.
Moving slowly to ensure the door’s hinges didn’t squeak, Mina pulled the door of the closet closed in front of them.
She managed not a moment too soon. The sounds of the crowd in the hallway began to recede, but there was still a presence just outside the room. Mina wasn’t sure if it was the sound of footsteps she made out, the subtle croak and shift of floorboards underneath her that shifted with its movement, or something else entirely, but whatever the case she could feel the thing slowly stalk its way into the room.
Mina silently handed-off the computer to her sister, taking the chance to withdraw the whip from her side and force Emma to the very edge of the small space. This time the threat would have to get through her first!
The thing approached slowly, and Mina had an instant’s temptation to try and burst out and surprise it as it passed the closet by. Perhaps she should have. But after walking past the closet it performed a small circuit of the room, poking into the kitchen, stepping out on the balcony, and then coming back in.
By the sounds it was making, it seemed to repeat the move a couple of times. It would move into the kitchen, come back, step onto the patio, and then repeat the circuit in reverse.
She couldn’t help but wonder if it was looking underneath the beds.
The closet was already beginning to get stuffy and awkward. She was mostly alright, except for a awkwardly-placed coat hangar that insisted on digging into her lower back no matter how she tried to slide it away. Emma was worse off, and had to keep awkwardly shifting her weight to properly breathe, pressed as she was into the corner where racks of coats got in her way.
Neither one of them could risk the noise it would make trying to scoot into more comfortable positions now, though. They just had to wait for the thing outside to leave the room.
As if it were spurred on by the thought, the floorboards creaked once again as it started back from the kitchen towards the hallway. Holding her breath, Mina brought one foot as far back as she could and curled the handle of the whip to the side so she would have an unobstructed swing at the door.
She was thankful she had when the knob began to twist.
Bringing a leg forward, Mina slammed her heel into the door and sent it flying open. The robed thing in the shape of a ComStar adept on the other side didn’t look overly surprised. It’s right arm wrenched at an angle that was physically uncomfortable just to look at, the only reaction it had to her was a cock of its head.
Driving the butt of her whip and the side of her fist into the corner of that inhuman head a moment later was satisfying in a way she wasn’t sure it was supposed to be. But she wasn’t going to let it have Emma.
The monster staggered backwards a few steps until it hit the wall. A human would have been stunned or outright unconscious—she’d punched-out a fair share of pirates, vagabonds and tramps in two-and-a-half centuries protecting the Magistracy. But the monster before her was only human in shape, and was charging back towards her in an instant.
“Emma, run.” Mina managed to growl, just before stepping forward to meet the monster’s attack with her own.
The adept-shaped monster didn’t avoid her strike. She drove the densely-cored pommel of the whip into the edge of his neck, feeling something underneath shift and then crack. But it had little effect, and she was struck full-force by the thing’s charge.
She was forced to buckle her knees to keep herself from sliding backwards. Not quite having enough motion in her right arm to strike again with the whip thanks to the monster wrapping one arm over her elbow, she instead drove her left into its stomach a half-dozen times in rapid succession.
The thing countered with its own series of clumsy but powerful strikes into her midsection, and the fight devolved into an almost-alternating exchange of blows between them. It was painful, and she knew that if she were brave enough to face what taking hold of the pen would bring her it would be over more quickly. But she still found herself satisfied. The monster might have inhuman endurance, but she’d bank on her own coming out in the end.
Even if it didn’t, she was buying more time for Emma to get clear.
“Enough.”
The word came as a surprise from the creature. The way it took hold of her and then bit into her left shoulder came as an even bigger one.
Mina screamed, forced to stop her own punches as a streak of pain shot through her entire side. It only worsened as the thing before her rippled and shook, shuddering as the robes it was in and the skin underneath them both began to split open to reveal a red-and-black mass in only vaguely human shape underneath. The head bulged, and horns began to extend themselves around its crown. The arms seemed to almost burst into new shape, impossibly large for a human. Inside of her shoulder, Mina could feel the monster’s teeth elongate and twist.
A stuttering series of gunshots pounded into her ears. On the monster’s rear, furthest from her, a small line of wounds burst into being, leaking the black ooze that served the thing for blood.
Mina didn’t waste time looking for the origin of the shots. Fighting through the pain, she curled both her arms over the surprised monster’s and grabbed onto opposite sides of its still-growing mouth. While it was still partially-dazed, she dug her nails into thick, leather-like skin, and forced the creature’s mouth to slowly creak open. She accompanied a sigh of relief at removing the teeth with an energetic knee into the monster’s side, sending it into the air, through the closet-door at their side, and halfway to the balcony exit before it finally crashed onto the room’s floor.
Free of the thing, Mina stepped away from the closet and back towards the door. Her eyes took a moment to drag away from the monster, though, morbidly fascinated by the way it seemed to be trapped midway between the shape of a human and a much larger, blood-red colored beast that was its more typical form. As she drew even with an auto-pistol in a surprisingly dainty pair of hands, it resumed its blasting, making her wince as the noise of the gunshots seemed to bore into and then through the side of her skull.
She wasn’t overly surprised to find her sister standing behind the New Earth noblewoman from the night before at the doorway.
Lorinette Kalkenny looked only a little more threatening with a gun in her hand and in flat-black slacks-and-jacket than she had the previous evening unarmed and in fancy dress. But she was still undeniably attractive. More attractive than anything was the auto-pistol in her hand and her willingness to use it.
“This is where you come in with your bullshit!” Lorinette growled, punctuating the words with another series of shots, “That thing isn’t going to stay down long from just this!”
Mina frowned, then realized exactly what the woman was referencing.
“I uh…I don’t have it on me at the moment!” She said, almost having to yell the words over the bursting gunfire.
Lorinette turned her head, eyes dropping into a thin-slitted rage that probably made it difficult to even see let alone shoot. Even without using the sights her next series of shots managed to hit the half-beast still writhing on the floor, inhuman screams almost deafened by the ringing in her ears from the sound of the pistol.
“You should go get it then.” The woman said flatly, before beginning to back up and shooing Mina through the door. “Right. Now.”
With Emma right there, Mina couldn’t object to the idea, much as she didn’t want to think about the transformation pen. Grabbing onto her sister’s hand, she almost dragged her up the hallway back towards her own room and away from the monster she’d been fighting. It was a good first step. Once she got there was when the more difficult part would start.
“Mina…Mina what the hell was that?”
Mina glanced behind her, looking past the visibly-shaken but visibly getting-a-grip-on-herself Emma to the pistol-wielding blonde behind her. Lorinette was just getting into the hallway as the pistol locked-back in visual display it was empty.
It wasn’t a bad question, though it was kind of a bad time for it.
“That was a ‘youma’. Or ‘monster’. Whichever you prefer. They eat people. Then pretend to be people so they can eat more people.” Mina explained.
“What?”
“Yeah, that’s about the proper reaction.” Mina growled as she pounded open the door to her room and sprinted into it.
She almost dived onto the bed, swiping up the pen at its foot in one hand and then rolling off of the mattress in a single motion. The move was only partially complicated by her sister still getting dragged along behind her throughout it. It was a minor miracle they both landed on their feet and steady.
Mina raised the pen over her head.
Protected by Venus, the planet of beauty, Guardian of Love, I am Sailor Venus!
“Venus Crystal Power, Make-up!”
Nothing happened.
“What?” Emma asked again, staring.
There were gunshots in the hallway.
She refused to let her sister be hurt. Not by that thing. Not by anything.
Mina squashed the urge to panic the lack of change and chased through memories only starting to fully come back to her for an explanation. It took a surprisingly long amount of time from where she was, though Emma still staring at her in uncomprehending shock assured her that was a trick of her own mind more than reality.
The explanation struck her as she heard Lorinette scream, her body thrown past the doorway.
Mina tried again as the red-skinned monster entered the room, now standing so tall it had to burst through the doorway and hunch-over to keep from scraping the ceiling with every step it took. Now that she remembered just how limited the ancient pen in her hand was she knew it would work. She couldn’t ask so much of it—or herself—just yet. If she did she was more likely to break it. Or, worse, lose control of the power it gave her.
And if it didn’t work again, she’d just have to beat the damned thing to death herself without any magic!
“Venus Power, Make-up!”
This time she had just enough time to see the pen flare with a light from within before she felt the change.
She was no longer in a room with her sister and the beast, no longer trapped within the confines of man-made structures at all. She was flying—floating—through an endless stream of stars that curled around her in the glowing welcome of family. From each and every one of them there radiated a blooming warmth that shot through her, curling and embracing in what she could only compare to a wandering hug that traveled from her extremities inward.
Mina extended the pen above her head, dipping into the endless bound of Love the stars obscured and letting it draw out what was necessary from it.
Just like that, she was back in the room. The youma was growling out something that might or might-not have been words. She was more concerned with the confused, uncomprehending stare coming from her sister.
This was going to be a challenge to explain.
Mina blinked, spots dancing in front of her eyes from where the light of the pen had struck them. The pen itself had disappeared, converted into another portion of the energy she’d needed to complete the ritual. It was a useful conversion. It left one hand free to use. Not that she would probably need it for the joke she was facing.
Mina jumped towards the monster, twisting her shoulders into the flying side-kick she aimed squarely at its bulging neck. It had just enough time to try and swipe at her with one of its clawed arms, but missed as it underestimated just how quickly she’d cover the distance.
The creature’s snarling growls morphed into pained howls as it was launched into a dresser and then through wall it was set against. Destroyed drawers and pieces of pressed-wood exploded outwards, followed by a light dusting of plaster and poufy bits of insulation. Mina wasted no time and ducked through the new hole in the wall into the next room over…And then repeated the process when she found the creature had kept going through the next room.
“You are not supposed to be here.” The beast growled, shoving its way back onto its massive feet and scraping splinters and dust off of its face.
“Oh? And who told you that?”
Instead of answering, the monster bull-rushed towards her, extending its arms to the side and splaying its claws out to catch her if she tried to dodge. But she didn’t want to. No more messing around. It was time to take the bull by the throat and run with it!
Letting the whip in her left hand unfurl, Mina flicked her wrist upwards and sent it into the air in front of her. The thong snapped around the beast’s neck, swirling dangerously before snapping tight. Taking a tight hold of the handle, Mina threw herself forward between the beast’s legs and jerked the whip forwards and upwards as she emerged behind it.
Exposing a back to an enemy was never a good idea. In this instance she could excuse it only because it let her lay the bastard out with a minimum amount of fuss. The floor itself rattled as behind her the beast slammed down into it face-first.
Mina turned around, closed the distance, and slammed her heel into the center of the youma’s back. Combined with pulling the whip taught, she kept it shoved into the splinter-strewn carpet below. A half-dozen different ways of using the excess thong of the whip to further restrict the beast’s movement ran through her mind, but she was confident enough in her control as it was.
Now call me Queen!
“I asked a question.” Mina said instead, painfully aware of how awkward it was to fight down a blush in the immediate aftermath of an actual fight.
The red-skinned monster writhed underneath her, twisting its head around so it could stare up with one of its beady, black eyes. It offered her a smirk that exposed a fang-studded mouth before twisting one of its arms around to swipe at her more exposed leg with its claws.
Mina easily sidestepped the blind swipe. She would have preferred interrogating it further, but there was only so much she could try and she refused to risk it getting loose long enough to harm her sister. No more.
Swinging herself off the monster’s back and bringing both hands onto the handle of the whip, Mina threw her full body into another jerk that pulled the beast into the air behind her. With careful timing of another wrist-flick, she let the whip loosen from around the youma’s neck. It screamed as it went flying, burst through another wall, crashed over the steel railing on the balcony, and spun into the open air beyond.
It didn’t take long to retrace the course of the fight back to her own room. Emma was still there, peeking through the hole in the wall, mouth half-open and eyes wildly tracking every errant noise and every scrap of wood or plaster that dropped to the ground from the broken walls. At some point during the fight Lorinette had joined her in the room. Leaning up against the far wall favoring her right side, the blonde woman held a rag up to a cut across her head with one hand while the other was still wrapped around the auto-pistol she’d entered the fray with.
“Huh. That magic bullshit really does armor you all up in a blouse-and-mini? I would’ve sworn Mariah was lying and it was just her own weird eccentricities coming through.” The blonde growled, letting her pistol-hand drop to her side.
Mina stared as she slowly unpacked everything the comment suggested. She’d already suspected Lorinette of knowing more than she let-on ever since she’d given her the pen in the first place. Her showing up minutes before only reinforced that. But she had seen a transformation before?
Who was Mariah?
“You two know each other? Who are you, and what did you do with Mina?” Emma spoke up, shaking out of her shock and stepping back into a lower stance that left her equally open to fight as to flee.
It had been so long since Mina had last faced that question—and even longer since she’d last been able to answer it truthfully. At the same time, she would prefer not to risk the easiest and most thorough way of answering. She was pretty sure the pen would rematerialize when she abandoned the energy of Sailor Venus, but she wasn’t sure it would. Until Emma and her mother were safe, she wasn’t going to risk it.
“Em, this is Lorinette Kalkenny, she’s—“
“Lori Kalmar, your Grace…I work for a portion of ComStar that doesn’t want anyone getting eaten by big red bastards.” The woman explained, very obviously being careful with her words. “This is ‘Sailor Venus’. She’s a centuries-old ‘Guardian of the Star League’ that the Magistracy has been sheltering. It’s a very long story that we can discuss while we move.”
Mina didn’t have a chance to challenge the woman on any of that before her sister’s eyes turned to her. She could almost see the question behind them. The one that had appeared when she’d called her ‘Em’.
“I am Mina.” She admitted.
Emma Centrella didn’t quite faint. But her knees buckled and she wobbled much more than a person should after a simple introduction.
“What? But how—“
“It’s a very long story.”
Lorinette—Lori, rather—shoved herself off the wall, “And not one we can afford to stand around for you to explain. I hate to cut the twenty questions short because believe me Lady Centrella, I can sympathize with how you’re feeling. But we really need to get moving, link up with a few friends of mine. You can ask on the way.”
“She’s mostly right.” Mina agreed, stepping closer to her sister and relieved when the woman winced but didn’t move away from the hand she put on her shoulder, “We need to rescue mom—the Magestrix.”
Lori started slightly at that and winced, “Not…Quite what we had in mind.”
“It’s what I had in mind, though.” Mina pivoted on the back of one heel and brought her head down slightly so she could stare up at the woman through her brows, “We save the Magestrix, or I don’t come with you.”
It was a height of selfish arrogance she hadn’t extended herself to for centuries. She didn’t care. She was curious which of the others had survived and apparently set this up. But it wasn’t the all-consuming drive she knew it probably should be. She had a lifetime of memories slowly coming back to her of Kyalla Centrella and her mother, and her grandmother, for generations. ‘Mariah’, whichever of them it was, would understand…
“We’ll see.” Was all the woman said, turning away and speaking into a portable radio of her own.
Mina didn’t even have enough time to offer an apology or partial explanation to Em before Lori spat a string of curses out underneath her breath.
“Problems?” Emma asked, sounding like she was testing out her voice for the first time.
“Comms are jammed.” The blonde sighed, and bit one side of her lips for a moment.
Mina resisted the temptation to say ‘I could have told you that’.
“I could have told you that.” She said after managing to resist for a whole second. “I lost a datanet connection to the Magistracy’s dropship just a little while ago.”
Lori acknowledged the words with a nod, but her eyes remained unfocused as she thought.
“The top floor is supposed to be some kind of communications center.” Emma offered, glancing between them. “If we got to it you could talk to your people and Mina could call for…reinforcements.”
By the way Emma emphasized the last word and flashed the Nirasaki computer she still had in her hands, Mina immediately knew what she was talking about. It wasn’t a bad idea, either.
“Could work. Could get us killed.” Lori snapped, though the words lacked any real fire. “It’s better than staying here, I guess. Come on. We can iron out the rest on the way.”
The rush back to the elevators was surreal after the evening Mina already had. Emma took the opportunity to probe both of them with questions—one of her first an attempt at spycraft trying to reveal Mina as a fraud by mistaking what they’d done for her eighteenth birthday. It was actually rather well-done by the girl. Unnecessary, but well done.
“They’ll be able to track us on security cameras if we take the elevator itself.” Lori explained as they reached the doors and she set to prying them open. She managed to pull them apart and stuck her head in to look up the shaft. “We’ll have to climb.”
“I’ll go first.” Mina said, stepping forward.
Lori raised one finger in quiet objection, “Maybe second?”
Emma was more final, “Third. Definitely third.”
Mina was about to demand why when the identical stare both had fixed on her skirt answered the question.
Prudes.
Kujo
For the FEDCOM! For the Archon-Prince!
So you have the two states that are at least nominally the most pro-Star League with some of the most brilliant players at the time and we have no 'scouts' among them. Both the Lyran Commonwealth (with Katrina and Melissa Steiner along with the Kells, and many others) and the Federated Suns (with Hanse 'the Fox' Davion, Quintus Allard, Morgan Hasek-Davion, Yvonne Davion and loads of others though Michael might side with the 'darkness'). As much as I like the MOC (Danai is in a rather decent supporting role in what I am writing), and can begrudgingly respect some limited aspects of the Capcon and Combine if you are looking for those that support the 'light' and freedom those are the last places you would go in the BT universe (not that Comstar has a much better rep, though in Curtislemay's "Cloverspear" Hanse is correct in stating the 99% of what C* does is good and decent it's just the 1% of killing, undermining and out + out terrorism). So are the areas that the 'Scouts' should be most at home going to merely be background players or will they play a greater role then merely being the reason for the gathering...
As you can tell from my avatar and motto I am very much PRO Federated Commonwealth, and before I am a Federated Suns fan so I am of course very biased, but we still haven't heard (at least from my skimming, just found it a week or so ago and with other reading...) from the two most consequential states in the IS.
Thank you for your time.
As you can tell from my avatar and motto I am very much PRO Federated Commonwealth, and before I am a Federated Suns fan so I am of course very biased, but we still haven't heard (at least from my skimming, just found it a week or so ago and with other reading...) from the two most consequential states in the IS.
Thank you for your time.
Last edited:
Thats true i had the same thought Kujo, but....we actually dont know for sure that there are no sailor scouts for the feddies or commonwealth. Im not to familar with sailor moon but i mean theres one scout for every planet...so we still have a couple that we dont know where they are.
Georgiaboy1966
Member
Sailor Moon/Usaga would most likely end up in either Davion or Lyran Space, if she is even alive, It was implied in the other version of this that I read that she might not.
10b - I'm Your Fire
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
The room resembled one that might be found in the Combine, in form if not actuality. ComStar had erected false shoji-panel walls over sections of the otherwise open floor, and lined that floor with tatami mats. But there was an obvious ignorance—or perhaps deliberate insult?—to the attempted effort at creating a familiar setting. The shoji doors had not been lined up properly with the world around them, and the half-dozen mats—instead of the proper four-and-a-half for a meeting-room—were laid out in a simple, side-by-side pattern that maximized their coverage rather than lend the room a properly auspicious air to its arrangement. In trying to make their guests more comfortable, ComStar only demonstrated superficiality.
On the other hand, when she boiled it down, what were the intricate rituals and symbolism she dealt with but superficial? There might be significance to the tea ceremony, the arrangement of the room, and any other piece of minutiae. But it was a symbolism attached only by people to deeds which held no real significance. It was her more practical duties dispelling spirits and curses which were of real importance.
She understood that was somewhat cynical of her and contradicted the Order’s official line. Since the death of Keeper Florimel Kurita years before, the Order had begun to emphasize its physical traditions over those spiritual ones. But she had grown up in a different time. A time that had respected and valued the real traditions and purpose of the Order just as much as the ones built around mere ceremony and presentation.
Some level of understanding in that respect was necessary if the Combine was to improve. There had not always been such a strict and soulless adherence to ancient codes across the whole of the Combine. Not always been Coordinators on the throne who used the traditions and customs so self-servingly as Takashi and his even worse father had. It had been Urizen Kurita II’s crediting ancient Japanese customs with his survival of an assassination attempt which had formalized them so strictly, nothing more.
She felt an odd sense of familiar disdain for that name, though she couldn’t quite say why. He had been otherwise unremarkable, both as a ruler and a man, in all respects. Lacking even the cultured wall Takashi Kurita had the decency to erect between his own flaws and the outside world.
Rei Hino swallowed a sigh and hopelessly wished she were back on Sendai, even as she mentally slapped herself for the feeling and the errant thoughts. At least there she would have access to a proper means of making tea, a hearth and chashitsu, to calm her mind’s endless raging against unchangeable realities. Somehow, Terra was bringing to the fore the most petulant thoughts she’d ever had and she couldn’t bring herself to feel any guilt over them.
Propriety and respectability could be maintained without slavishly adhering to traditions which had become outdated alongside the steam engine. The Coordinators of the Combine had warped and twisted customs to suit themselves, and simultaneously robbed them of any meaning or worth.
Yet here she was serving stovetop-brewed tea to the highest officials in the Combine in the earliest hours of the morning, but otherwise keeping to her place as a dutiful member of the modern Order of Five Pillars. She’d poured herself into the simple act of brewing and tried to ignore her disappointment and disgust with the conversation around her. But it grew increasingly difficult as the Coordinator continued to set himself on a path to even more pointless death and slaughter in his own name.
Rei poured a small bit out of the pot into her own cup before she returned to the table. Taking the disposable cup, she threw the scalding-hot tea into her mouth. Proper tea, could calm the mind and paper-over a great number of other sins.
“They must be destroyed.” Takashi Kurita growled.
There was no tea that could make better a man’s folly, however.
Rei tried to criticize herself for the thought as the Coordinator continued to explain why the Dragoons would have to be destroyed, but found herself surprisingly unable to. Over the past months she’d come to know the sovereign—
Her sovereign?
—The sovereign of the Combine she was a member of?
—She’d come to realize he was, in some ways, a respectable man. He was dedicated to the nation he led, and his dedication to its traditions was well-known. He attempted to live a full life as befit a samurai—he practiced calligraphy and kendo regularly. He upheld the honor of the Combine in his public life. But it was all so…surface.
Acknowledgement of his own flaws and forgiveness of others for pointing them out were, unfortunately, twin virtues he possessed only in extreme moderation if at all. He was ever an aggrieved party, the embodiment of the nation who need be defended from even the hint of personal criticism or embarrassment by the impersonal regiments under his command. Utterly incapable of recognizing it was his own failings which brought those grievances upon him.
Such was the case with his son. Such was the case with Wolf’s Dragoons.
“The Genyosha are prepared to serve your will, Coordinator-sama.” Akira Brahe said, fulfilling his usual role of speaking for his very reserved father despite his inferior position compared to the others at the low-slung chabudai table, “On your command we may crash over this latest batch of mercenary dogs to voice challenge and drown them beneath us.”
Rei had to credit him for making an attempt at subtlety. But unlike his father Akira still had a more blunt and unreserved speaking style. His reference to the Genyosha’s traditional target—the Kell Hounds—was almost insultingly obvious. But his lack of unreserved endorsement of the aggressive stance against the Dragoons was matched by a slight downward turn to his father’s lips.
Yorinaga Kurita did not look excited at a potential distraction from his potential rematch with Morgan Kell, and had already shown veiled disapproval of the Coordinator’s handling of Jamie Wolf. If anyone were to talk sense into Takashi Kurita, it would have to be his distant cousin.
Yorinaga was silent.
Rei tried not to despair.
“The Galedon District will require some time to reorganize and adjust to a new Warlord to be truly prepared for an offensive against the Suns or the Dragoons. Tai-sho Parkinson may be a serviceable ‘general’ for the Regulars, but her service under Samsonov and obsession with sullying her forces in combat with mere bandits is ill-suited to overseeing an actual Military District on a permanent basis.” One of the other advisors at the table spoke-up, tone making clear it wasn’t the woman’s service history or experience he objected to so much as her existence itself.
Unsurprisingly, he was one of the oldest men in the room. Rei rolled her eyes. Only old men thought that men were better than women these days!
“Galedon will require a firmer hand, hai. Warlord Chi, however, has long served the Dragon’s security in Pesht. When Samsonov’s head is brought to the Imperial Palace, perhaps Chi shall be rewarded the chance to demonstrate his capabilities further.”
Rei kept her face studiously neutral at the automatic dismissal of Parkison that Takashi Kurita engaged in as she turned back to the table and refilled the Coordinator’s teacup in the polite two dips of the pot. The Coordinator was pushing sixty. She should not be surprised he fell under the same opinions as the old men he kept around him—Yorinaga mostly excepted—about women’s role in the service of the Combine. Only old men might think that men were better than women, but Akira was one of the few at the table who didn’t fall under the label of ‘old man’.
Rei dutifully scanned the table to be certain none of their cups were empty, and then made her way to her familiar place at the distant end with the fresh-brewed pot of tea. It was the same place she’d taken up on previous such meetings in the jumpship, and was unsurprised to see the tradition continue on Terra. Nominally, the Order of Five Pillars representative in the Coordinator’s delegation was supposed to sit at his side, but that was usually in the case of a more senior priestess. The Dragon was still blowing smoke over the insult he felt the Order had dealt him by sending her in the only way he formally could—assigning his entire entourage’s seating based on seniority instead of position.
Akira Brahe offered her a sympathetic smile and small dip of his teacup as she sat. Letting a tight nod be the only acknowledgement she gave him despite the relief it gave to have someone in the room who at least noticed her, Rei placed the pot down on the insulating pad laid out in the center of the table.
She dutifully kept her quiet as the discussion continued. It wasn’t protocol for priestesses to become overly involved with the affairs of governance around them unless they touched upon Matters of the House Honor and Righteousness or the Ivory trade, but she desperately wanted someone to inform Takashi Kurita how absurd he was being. He was discussing turning an entire Military District or more against the Dragoons. Because they’d made him a spectacle at the wedding after chewing through seven regiments Samsonov had sent after them on Misery!
Rei began to reach for her tea so she could use it to occupy her mouth, but froze with her hand halfway there. Something was wrong. She couldn’t pin down anything beyond that, but there was something close by that wasn’t…wasn’t supposed to be there.
“Appointing Chi to a position in Galedon would require someone take his place as Warlord Pesht, Lord.”
Rei forced herself to take her tea and pull it back to her as the Coordinator’s eyes sparkled in the manner they did whenever he meant to smile. Turning despite the insult such might be perceived to be, she focused her eyes on the shoji door at the south end of the room.
If there were to be any interruptions, they would have to come from the men stationed there entering the room. But it would have to be something exceedingly serious. The guards of the Otomo would be disinclined to interrupt the meeting for anything they did not judge worthy of the Coordinator’s attention.
Somehow, she knew there would be an interruption coming. There was some thing in the hallway.
“Indeed it would. But that position may—”
Takashi stopped and tilted his head towards Yorinaga as the military-man held up his hand and gestured for silence.
The almost fifty year-old distant cousin to the ruler of the Combine calmly repositioned himself on the floor, rotating his entire body around using his fists so his knees were directed towards the doorway and away from his ruler, a most disrespectful attitude. But the commander’s eyes were eerily calm as he stared at the doorway, the message obvious to any who could see him: be watchful.
“Coordinator?”
Rei wasn’t sure how Yorinaga managed to work a request for forgiveness and permission both into the single word, but he did. Equally mysterious was how the man detected the tiny nod the Coordinator gave to his back—perhaps Yorinaga didn’t even care about it and was set on doing as he pleased. What she was sure of was that the way the older man motioned Akira upwards and began to rise to his own feet was troubling at the least.
The bizarre interruption itself was cut into by the front door of the room being thrown open, its impact against the end of its tracks sending a wave of air down the entire rest of the wall. Stepping through in a single, sharp motion, the battle-plate covered Otomo guard responsible dropped to his knees a step aside from the entrance. Through the doorway, the other guard was clearly preventing a pair of men from entering.
One of them seemed like he could be easily ignored. Blonde, peach fuzz growing thick around his face and decked out in a simple uniform with a skull-insignia on the right breast, he almost looked like a boy dressing up in his father’s mercenary outfit. For all that, Rei felt something about him…something on him—calling out to her...
The man beside the mercenary was more immediately commanding despite his more humble clothing—he was taller and clean-shaven. But he managed to make the nondescript, black-and-white serving-outfit ComStar had provided all of those too low to even merit acolyte robes look commanding.
But unlike the mercenary, who was a tightly-wound ball of anxiety and worries, the server felt utterly and completely empty inside.
Rei stared. The mercenary was making some inane comment and the man in the server’s uniform was silently staring back into the room, past her and Yorinaga and to the other side entirely. His eyes were wrong. He showed no reaction to anything. He was wrong.
The Otomo guardsman who’d opened the door began to apologize, verging on the overly dramatic as he implied his willingness to give up his life for the intrusion.
The server burst into motion in the middle of the apology. Through some combination of physical contortion and enough force to toss one of the Otomo out of the way, he forced his way past the guards and into the room. Throwing himself up and onto the table, he charged with single-minded determination towards the Coordinator in utter silence.
Only a few in the room managed to retain their calm in the face of the sudden intrusion and the chaos it brought on. Takashi Kurita was one of them, watching the man approaching him with a head-tilted interest that hovered between dismissal and complete confusion.
Rei jerked into motion. The bagginess of her hakama and haori not as limiting as she would have thought they’d be. Jumping to her feet, she snatched up the teapot in front of her and swung it around into the man’s path. She was an instant behind Yorinaga.
From his side of the table a small cloud of steaming-hot tea splashed into the server’s face, followed an instant later by the porcelain teacup that it had been in and then the palm that had held it. The cup fractured over the man’s face as Yorinaga pulled his hand up and out-of-the-way of the splintering porcelain and began to wind it up for another strike. While most of the shards fell uselessly to the ground, a good half-dozen of the porcelain slivers stabbed their way into the sensitive skin of the face, one visibly extending out from an eyeball.
The man, if that’s what he was, didn’t even pause. He didn’t even scream. Just waved his arms before him to clear the way and continued towards the Coordinator. The teapot Rei had swung at him bounced off the front his head hard enough she could see his skin collapse inward and he stumbled for an instant in his advance, yet still he ran.
“Stop him!” Rei screamed at the advisors and hangars-on further up the table.
None seemed to be competent enough to do much, many hesitating too long until the man had already passed them by or simply not fast enough to do anything. The pair that managed to rise to their feet and block the assassin’s path were furiously thrown out of the way by the crazed man, flying into the shoji walls and ripping through them without being slowed down a bit.
What use were the sycophants the Coordinator gathered around himself if they were so completely useless?
One of the ceiling-panels burst open, an armored and cat-masked figure dropping into the room foot-first, with both knees curled upwards to just in front of their chest. Arcs of excess electrical current ran across the figure’s arms and torso as the sneak-suit he had on decloaked, the wheeze-and-crack snapping of the small bolts of discharge audible even over the other sounds of chaos in the room. Rotating their torso in mid-air, the armored figure withdrew a blade from a sheath on their back and brought one leg forward to swing downwards into the back of the ComStar server’s neck.
Even that strong hit only managed to break the server’s stride, and it was only the rest of the sneak-suited figure landing atop his back that managed to bring him down entirely. The crunch of impact from the server’s porcelain-studded face dropping onto the table was followed by another splintering, cracking sound as the table collapsed under the strain of supporting both bodies.
Effortlessly shifting their weight during the collapse to keep from falling off the table or the server’s body, the cat-masked figure brought one foot off to support them. Smoothly reversing their hold on the blade in their hand, they dropped to one knee in a single, sharp motion, stabbing the weapon through the crazed server and the table both.
The room went quiet, except for the clattering and clunking produced as the server on the table still struggled to continue his charge towards Takashi Kurita.
“Ho-ly shit! Ninjas? Hey, just so it’s clear? I am not with that gu—“ The mercenary outside started, only to be enthusiastically battered to the ground by the Otomo guardsmen before they rushed into the room and to the Coordinator’s side.
Yorinaga twisted on a heel and prowled his way up the table to stand opposite the ninja as the guardsmen rushed past him, still looking remarkably unperturbed with everything that had happened. Akira had the more natural reaction, in her opinion. Leaping up, the man brought his legs wide apart, and one hand dropped to a nonexistent holster at his waist. A flash of anger and frustration crossing his brow, he then transitioned the movement almost-seamlessly into a long step forward over the table so he could stand between the intruding figure and Rei, bringing both his hands up to cover his chest and his knees settling into kokutsu-dachi.
“Get the Coordinator to safety!”
It was one of few things to be said by Takashi Kurita’s retainers that Rei found herself in agreement with.
The room once again became a miniature piece of chaos as the Dragon was finally pushed into standing and retreating from his attacker and mysterious-savior both. The Coordinator crossed to the room’s exit, forced to give wide berth to the table, and his guards closed around him as he left to cast suspicious glares even at the other Combine personnel in the room.
The only one who didn’t join them was the one who had opened the door for the assassin. He remained on his knees at the entrance, head bowed as his liege passed. Rei growled as she noticed his eyes staring at the sword in the center of the table.
There was no honor where he looked, only cowardice and the abandonment of a lifetime’s duty with an early, easy death.
Rei directed her focus to the ‘ninja’ who had burst from the ceiling. The mask over their face made it impossible to tell for sure, but she could feel them focused on her as well—probably an illusion, the sneak-suits mask allowed for a 360-degree view. Still she knew he was looking at her, and as she got a closer look at the front of the mask, she realized exactly what the figure was.
“He has been stopped.” The nekakami said, voice a buzzing, modulated whir that eliminated any distinctiveness or trace of gender. Words spoken, the figure bowed slightly and used one hand to present the still-struggling man on the table to the room like a prize, “Though it may have been easier for you to exorcise him…”
On the surface the words were confusing and almost meaningless. A statement she might have performed a superstitious rite that was entirely form over any kind of function in order to stop an assassination. The mere idea was ludicrous on its face. Beyond that, she had no twigs, no harae, no salt, what was she supposed to do as an exorcism, yell harsh words at the man?
Somewhere within her, somewhere she felt a confusion at even recognizing, she knew that was exactly the right thing to do. That it was one of the few things she did as a member of the Order that had meaning, and it was exact thing the situation required. But they needed to be the right words. Something familiar, but different. Something she’d done before, but couldn’t quite recall…
Part of her balked at the prospect still, and attached itself to the first words of the nekakami instead of their later ones. Who was this ‘Guardian’? Why did it sound so right when it made so little sense?
“I think we should start with asking who you are.” Akira said, not taking his eyes off the nekakami before him.
“Servant.” The masked figure said in that same electronic voice, holding one hand out towards Rei.
Akira looked at her, his fighting stance becoming more of an elaborate shrug for an instant as he quietly sought an answer from her. Since she didn’t have one herself, she couldn’t give him one.
The nekakami, for his part, took the chance to leap into motion. Jumping up and off the shoji panels, they disappeared in moments back into the ceiling he had dropped from before a half-dozen attempts to stop him could do any more than raise their hands. The only evidence of their having existed at all was the quickly-settling ceiling-panel they had passed through, and the sword they had left buried in the server.
“Dammit. He’s getting away!” Akira snapped, twisting halfway around and beginning into his own rush of motion before he was stopped by an upraised hand from Yorinaga.
The older man was shifting his eyes between Rei and the man on the table, expression a calm neutrality that made it nearly impossible to figure out his thoughts.
Yorinaga shook his head, meeting Rei’s eyes for a heartbeat and then focusing on the table-bound assassin. Having to dart his hand in quickly to avoid the man’s continued struggles, he grabbed something they had around their neck and yanked it off, extending it in the next breath towards Akira.
The younger of the pair didn’t look entirely satisfied by the words, still glaring at the ceiling as if merely focusing his anger would make the nekakami reappear. Yorinaga clearing his throat and shaking the amulet he’d gotten off the captive finally managed to snap the younger man out of it and focus on the immediate concern, but Rei could tell the matter of the ninja would come up again—and he’d undoubtedly focus his questions on her. The nekakami had claimed to be her bodyguard. Her servant, even?
A million questions boiled up in Rei’s throat to shout at the ceiling in hope the nekakami might return and answer. Who her parents were. Where she belonged outside the Order. When she’d lost her memory...Why nobody had ever come for her.
She managed to hold them down only by force of will and habitual reservation. Now she should be focusing on more immediate concerns.
But they made no sense!
“This makes no sense.” Akira said, echoing Rei’s thoughts so well she couldn’t help but jump slightly and lean forward to see what had caused his nearly-identical reaction.
She didn’t recognize the significance of the red-and-black flower symbol on the amulet. Their identical expressions said Yorinaga and Akira both did.
“It’s Kali’s rose of death. A thugee symbol. A sect of death cultists that Romano Liao heads.” Akira began, nodding towards the man on the table who was still struggling to free himself from the sword impaled through him, “He’s probably on some sort of drug that lets him continue to function even with his injuries.”
Rei frowned, certain that the man’s theory was incorrect but unable to pinpoint how, “The Confederation is part of the Concord. Why would they try to assassinate the Coordinator?”
She would at least give the Liao’s and their plotting some credit. They would not be so careless as to leave such blatant evidence behind to implicate themselves—if for no other reason than to avoid a ComStar boycott on their realm.
Unless they wanted to?
“I do not know. Perhaps this is an attempt to distract from the real culprit?” Akira said, more to himself than anything. His voice grew more certain “Or House Liao wishes to make us think they are being set-up by another party.”
It was somewhat awkward how much the man’s thoughts matched her own.
Yorinaga making some kind of procession of symbols with his fingers distracted her from the embarrassment of that realization. The elder man muttered something indecipherable under his breath before pushing both hands out and holding them against the back of the would-be assassin’s head.
“Akuryo Taisan.”
Rei felt one of her hands spasm at the words. The muscle-clenching shock of recognition shot up from there until it pounded into her head with the strength of a hammerblow. They were exactly what had been needed to ‘exorcise him’ as the nekakami had suggested. They were familiar. They were her’s.
But they were being spoken by Yorinaga. Why hadn’t she thought of them? Why hadn’t she remembered them…
But what was there to remember?
Rei clenched her fists together until her palms protested, gladly watching as the pinned assassin became less frantic in his movements, arms and legs seeming to lose strength before finally dropping flat onto the table. Rei locked eyes with the thing she knew, somehow, hadn’t really been alive for a good while. Beneath the physical injuries and the cold, emotionless act the thing put on, there was a deep-seated fear in those eyes that brought her a bone deep, burning satisfaction.
Burning…
“Tai-sa Kurita? What was that?” Rei asked, years of discipline failing her as she heard her voice waver over the words.
Yorinaga cocked his head to the side at her, but his eyes traveled down to the still body. He looked…sad and far away.
“It’s a prayer for a lost soul.” Akira offered in his place, “My mother believed in it.”
The two men locked gazes, and Rei felt like a true intruder in the room. Not just out of place or ignored as she had, but truly like she was intervening in something she shouldn’t be.
“Hey.” The mercenary’s voice had a waver to it that hadn’t been present before, and when Rei turned her head she could see him wince as he waved a hand in the doorway to attract attention, “Don’t mean to interrupt the whole conversation about magical, bushido, Shinto-zen bullshit, but I can’t help but notice more physical matters like ComStar’s security—and the medics that would come with them—don't seem to have shown up.”
It was as disrespectful a comment as could be made, and both Akira and Yorinaga frowned at the mercenary’s interruption. Still, he had a point. There should have been blue-uniformed ComStar personnel rushing into the room less than a minute after everything had started. It was the entire point of allowing ComStar such close cooperation with the Otomo—the Blakists could be backup for more reliable security in the event of something exactly like this happening.
That they still hadn’t arrived was worrisome. Every second they didn’t show up was another second that suggested they’d been defeated and would never come…Or they were involved and had no reason to, not when they would be better served focusing on—
“The Coordinator.” Rei said, suspicion forming in her mind over the purpose of the ‘assassination attempt’. ComStar had been informed of exactly what the Otomo would do if there were an attempt on Takashi Kurita’s life.
Either they’d reached a similar conclusion themselves or her voice had been more commanding than she’d meant it to. Akira was the first out the door, leaping up-and-over the mercenary, with Yorinaga not far behind. It somehow felt right for her to bring up the rear guard…
“Miss Hino?”
The mercenary’s use of her name stopped her in her tracks halfway through the door.
He was holding one hand up to stop her in case she’d kept going. A small, red-and-gold tube clutched in his fingers and held out to her.
Rei was hammered by the sensation that it was her’s. Like the words Yorinaga had spoken seconds earlier, but even more viscerally. It was more than simply being her’s or being familiar, she had the feeling that the odd, pen-like thing held an inescapable part of herself within it. It wasn’t just something that belonged to her, it was who she was.
“I was—“ He began.
Rei stretched forward and grabbed onto the end of the pen. It was more important than his words. It was more important than almost anything.
The vision was very much like those she’d occasionally get performing her ceremonial duties. Yet so much more.
Fire played across the skyline around her and explosions rocked the ground around them all. Soot and death hung heavy in the air, consequence of the enemy’s attempt at razing everything to the ground that the automated fire-suppression system was only partially keeping in-check. Even the best of city-management computers with access to all the resources of Unity City could only do so much against the constant barrage of inferno missiles and incendiary weapons that the enemy’s forces had put to use.
She couldn’t help but be slightly thankful the screaming that had gone on through the night was mostly gone. Most anyone in the city now who was still alive was either in one of the shelters or doing what they could to assist the Watch in its final stand.
She didn’t want to remember that the reason the screaming was gone was because the people who had been making it were as well.
If—when—she got her hands on Amaris or The Traitor, she would lock them into a burning pit for eternity. Usagi could—
No she couldn’t.
A trio of loud whumps shook everything. The shots were quickly followed by an even deeper explosion that seemed to suck the very air around her towards it. Either a ‘Mech had lost containment or an ammo-bin had gone up. She pointlessly hoped for the latter. The Watch had long since used all of their ammunition and been limited to energy weapons. The Rimjobs were the only ones who’d have enough ammo in their stocks to make for an explosion that impressive.
The Watch was all going to die, of course. Amaris’ forces had help that made many of them much more difficult to kill. But so long as they bought just enough time...
Time at the cost of death. It would be familiar to them all, but it was Pluto's realm, really.
The vision shifted in the way dreams or distant memories did. Rei was left with the impression of having traveled a distance, and some indefinable amount of time having passed, but could not narrow it beyond that.
“Mars!”
Pluto looking worried. She’d not seen that in a long time.
“Take their hands!”
She obeyed, grabbing onto the blonde on her right and the…blue-haired girl…on her left—Venus and Mercury. They’d finally all made it. All except The Traitor, her parents—and wasn’t their venture into the Concordat with Kerensky a well-timed coincidence?—and, of course, the two The Traitor had murdered.
The Queen and the Princess both. Gone.
The vision swam, torn out of focus by Rei’s own pounding heart and a scream of emotions and resistance inside her. She didn’t want to believe it.
She didn’t want to remember it!
It had happened. She had to. It was all she could do anymore.
Or was it? Maybe if she found Pluto they could try again?
The vision—memory!—faded back into focus exactly where it had left off.
“Now.” Pluto said simply, raising her staff aloft over her head. A sparkling, dust-like energy from five women and one man danced its way around in a circle before coalescing over the Guardian of Time’s head. The fabric of reality before the woman began to waver, questioning its place and whether it really belonged there.
Was it enough?
Mars’ had a distant appreciation for the fact that the nuclear explosion that carried her away was not what Pluto had intended. Then she felt herself forget what Pluto had intended. Then who Pluto was.
Then who she was.
In a snap, she was back in the present.
I am…Guardian of War?
Rei blinked as the flame and fire of battle and loss were fully replaced by the blonde mercenary’s half-dazed grin and the concerns of the present.
“—pposed to get that to you. One way or another. Didn’t know the job would be so easy.” The mercenary grumbled, slowly bringing one hand up to massage across his abdomen as he struggled to his feet.
She ignored the mercenary’s mistaken bravado and Akira calling out to her to move from further up the hall.
“Who are you?” Rei demanded, clutching the transformation pen in both hands.
“Must have slipped my mind in all the excitement of getting beat-up. I’m Gray. We have a mutual friend at ComStar’s headquarters who wanted me to get that to you. Wonderful reception, by the by. Real Combine hospitality.” The mercenary said after a brief hesitation, affecting a casual cockiness that she supposed he meant to be humorous or charismatic.
She didn’t find it very funny or very endearing. The man needed some self-control and sense of decorum. Most of all, he needed to be more informative. He wasn’t telling her everything. If there was one thing which had always frustrated her in her…centuries…It was being kept out of the loop on things.
But she could tell he was reliable—or reliable enough. At least he didn’t feel empty like the crazed server had.
More important than his name was how he’d come across the pen in the first place and how much else he could tell her.
“You were late. Judging by performance, you would have been ineffective even if you hadn’t been.” Rei said, looking the man over and withdrawing the auto-pistol he had holstered at his side—to the considerable awkward and almost-adorable discomfort of the baby-faced mercenary. She waggled the pen to attract his attention back to it, “Did this supposed mutual friend of ours tell you anything else about this?”
The auto-pistol’s presence at his side was a little surprising. It meant either he was another assassin—which she should have been able to feel—or ComStar had trusted him enough to carry such a weapon. Or he was enterprising enough to have snuck it in past their security. She couldn’t say for sure. Considering the nekakami’s presence, the lack of security around her now, and Akira’s own hidden sword back in his own room, she was beginning to grow less and less impressed by ComStar’s security, so perhaps him just being resourceful wasn’t as much of an outlier as it seemed?
“Only that you're not supposed to use it unless it's an emergency.” The mercenary said. His eyes traveled to the barrel of his pistol, “If you don’t mind, could you put that back? Please?”
Rei ignored Gray’s protests and held onto the pistol as she turned and started down the hall, certain he would follow behind her and not suddenly decide to find a knife he could sink into her back. The only ones who would know how the pen worked would be…She didn’t know if she could call them friends after so many years—she wasn’t even certain they still had been during the Coup. But they wouldn’t be anyone who wished to see her dead.
It had to be one of the Others. One of them had survived or lasted through Pluto’s attempt at manipulating things and now…
She almost stopped cold when she realized who it was. It wasn’t one of the Inners at all. It was one of the Traitors parents! They’d been with Jamie Wolf the evening before! It was almost painfully obvious.
But why would they seek her out after so long? Two-hundred fifty years…
Seeking something to do with her hands and suddenly less confident in the man behind her despite the way he felt good, Rei released the magazine on the pistol, having to juggle it and the pen in her hand as she checked its round-count. She hesitated briefly at the sparkling red tips, before the memory of what they were came back to her. They could still kill someone, but they’d be much more effective against Daemons or monsters.
She slammed the magazine back home and double-checked to be sure there was a one in the pistol’s chamber.
It was an action she’d never done in all her time in the Order these last few years. But there had been occasions before that where she had. The specifics were only starting to come back to her, but she could remember years at a time where she had regularly used such weapons and worn the aging sneak-suits of the nekakami instead of the haori of the O5P. Whichever organization had been safer in the ever-shifting political winds of the Combine.
Still, her most recent memories included being taught that firearms were certainly not the remit of a priestess. They were too loud and uncivilized.
Rei smirked. Uncivilized or not, they were less dangerous than some other things she could do, and they were undeniably useful. Appreciation and disdain for the same thing were a strange pair of feelings to have together.
“Why do you think you need to be armed in my presence?” Rei asked over her shoulder as she hurried to catch back up with Akira and Yorinaga.
“Miss Hino, I have seen what you’re supposed to deal with. Not having my ‘Mech around me or being burning for the jumpoint at this exact moment is making me more worried than I’d like to admit. But, to be honest? A large part of why I’d like to have it is that you certainly don’t need the thing. Not with the ceiling-ninja and what that pen can let you do.” Gray answered.
He did have a point there.
Perhaps appreciation and disdain for the same thing weren’t all that strange to have? She decided she appreciated Gray’s bluntness, even as she couldn’t help but be unimpressed by his apparent need to try and be funny.
Rei ducked into the security-station that Akira and Yorinaga had been headed for. The former stared at her and then Gray with questions obvious in his eyes, the latter gave the mercenary a critical once-over before turning his attention back to the monitors on the wall, manipulating the controls on one to rewind the video and try to follow the retreating image of Takashi Kurita through the twists and turns his security took him through.
Just as the Coordinator and his guards stepped out of the building, they were surrounded by a dozen armed men in ComStar security uniforms. Far from having to force the Coordinator to come with them, the Otomo clearly let them take up positions on the outskirts of the detail as they piled into a small procession of vehicles, Takashi’s wife emerging a few moments later from another portion of the sprawling building they had been in and loaded into one of the other vehicles just before they all burst into motion.
It almost didn’t look suspicious. But instead of making the right that would lead them to the bridge off the island and eventually the Combine dropship hesitantly established as a safehouse, they made a left. It would take them closer to the center of the island and ComStar’s facilities there. She doubted it was a coincidence.
“They’re taking him to the main hall of that cathedral-thing they were going to hold the wedding in.” Gray whispered.
Akira turned, not looking like he was in the mood to deal with the man, “Oh?”
“If the coms were still up I’d offer to let you talk to Tiepolo for yourself to confirm it. ComStar’s dealing with some…internal difficulties over who should hold the position of Primus at the moment. These jokers are involved in it—maybe not even intentionally on their part. Just trust me on this one, alright?”
“Tiepolo is who you’re working for then, mercenary?” Akira asked, voice the same polite level of friendly despite his eyebrows dropping darkly as he finished them.
Gray once again hesitated in his answer, buying time with a dramatic sigh and a roll of his eyes, “He’s paying the bills, yeah. But there’s a hell of a lot more going on than you could possibly understand, samurai.”
Rei wanted to sigh, but that would have been too dramatic and put both the men off. She was going to have to step in before Akira decided he needed to go get his sword or the uncouth merc decided to drop his trousers to prove his manhood physically rather than trying to do it verbally in his grating, gaijin way.
“Perhaps I don’t need this.” she said, giving the pistol a shake and the mercenary a brief second to hope before casually handing the weapon off to Akio. The spike of humor she had at the stricken look on the mercenary’s face probably wasn’t mature of her, but she couldn’t help it.
“Now, if you both would restrain yourselves? There are more important concerns.” She said, pushing past Gray to exit the room, “It would seem we need to find a vehicle.”
She wasn’t entirely certain if the goal she had in mind for the vehicle was to rescue the Coordinator or simply find out which of the Traitor’s Parents it was that Gray worked for. She suspected it was a little of both.
“That I can help with.” Gray said, “I had to get out her somehow, right?”
The mercenary’s voice dropped, low enough she was certain it wasn’t supposed to be heard, “’Go save the Drac’. ‘It’ll be good for you’. Dammit Lori. I should’ve put my foot down and gone to the Canopians. At least they would’ve established a safe-word before beating me up.”
Letting the man have his complaint, Rei padded down the hall towards the exit, awkward at every step as her knee spasmed and shook underneath her. More than just about anything else she wanted to sit down. Needed a moment to process everything that had already happened and everything she was beginning to remember. But they didn’t have that moment.
“Mister Gray? Is there a reason I shouldn’t just shoot you right now to spare myself the worry of having you behind my back?” Akira asked from behind her opposite shoulder. She hoped he wasn’t being so blatant as to point the pistol at the mercenary, but from the soft rattling in his hand she could tell he was at least gesturing with it.
“Is this some kind of trick question? Because I’m helping you. I’m one of the good guys. You don’t shoot the good guys. It’s...It’s bad.”
Rei was almost tempted to stand aside and let the drama play out as an indulgence in schadenfreude. But Gray’s struggling commentary was as liable to be painful to her as it was to himself, even assuming it didn’t turn deadly. She butted in again to spare herself the work of putting up with it—his commentary or the death it might end in.
She had centuries of perspective Akira lacked. She also wanted to be the one to—violently, if necessary—extract any further information out of Gray about the ones he worked for. But she could tell the truth for now.
“He’s not lying.”
Akira quirked an eyebrow, “That is relieving to hear from a woman who acts as an agent of the nekakami.”
Rei breathed through her nose and inwardly counted to three. She probably should have seen that criticism coming. Subhash Indrahar had branded the cat-masked, ninja-like nekakami as little more than thieves and assassins—enemies of the state for their operation outside the oversight of the Dragon. At the same time, it seemed like such a minor thing for her to be condemned for or need to explain in comparison to everything else that it couldn’t help but annoy her.
But Akira didn’t know about everything else yet. How was he supposed to? How was she supposed to tell him she was a millennium-old that wouldn’t end in him dismissing everything she said from that point onward?
“It’s more the opposite, actually. They are agents for us—for me.” Rei growled, trying to come up with an easy way of explaining things she was only beginning to remember herself in a limited amount of time.
“What a relief.” Akira said flatly, not sounding the slightest bit relieved.
“It is.” Yorinaga said, speaking up for the first time since exorcising the mindless drone in the main room. Rei could sense the man’s arm move onto Akira’s shoulder, “The Spirit Cats acknowledge only a very few individuals as ‘Guardian’.”
As if he had planned it, Yorinaga finished speaking just as Rei pushed through the doors to the outside.
Five figures dressed in the same form-concealing and face-shrouding sneak-suits as she’d seen on one of them minutes earlier were waiting for them on the steps. Seated on their knees in a half-circle at the bottom of the steps, swords balanced in their laps, they still almost looked like they would disappear in an instant if the light from the half-full moon above was interrupted.
The one at the center rose to his feet. The sword in his lap looking like it flowed to his side more than being directed by any kind of human will. She couldn’t even track the nekakami’s hands, only see the end result. It spoke to a lifetime of sword-handling.
The gunshot from behind her interrupted any further appreciation.
Rei froze as the auto-pistol’s report echoed in her ear.
Behind her, she could tell Yorinaga was already grabbing the weapon from his son before Akira could repeat the panicked shot at what he’d thought was a threat. Gray stumbled another step into her peripheral vision, hands moving towards his ears and a scream of surprise beginning to come from his throat.
She found herself largely unconcerned for all of it. Below her, the nekakami moved. Most scattered, but the one at their head instead brought their sword up to in front of their chest and began to step back, twisting their body as they did.
Something clicked, and the figure spun around to the left, dropping to one knee. Their sword-arm curled around their body to clutch at their side. After an instant Rei couldn’t properly estimate the length of, they rose back to their feet. The sword returned to their side, and the nekakami bowed as if nothing had happened. As if they hadn't just--mostly--stopped a bullet with a sword.
“Ho-ly shit. Ninjas.” Gray said again, his voice flat before he dropped into a long sigh and rubbed at his eyes with one hand, “I shouldn’t even be surprised anymore.”
On the other hand, when she boiled it down, what were the intricate rituals and symbolism she dealt with but superficial? There might be significance to the tea ceremony, the arrangement of the room, and any other piece of minutiae. But it was a symbolism attached only by people to deeds which held no real significance. It was her more practical duties dispelling spirits and curses which were of real importance.
She understood that was somewhat cynical of her and contradicted the Order’s official line. Since the death of Keeper Florimel Kurita years before, the Order had begun to emphasize its physical traditions over those spiritual ones. But she had grown up in a different time. A time that had respected and valued the real traditions and purpose of the Order just as much as the ones built around mere ceremony and presentation.
Some level of understanding in that respect was necessary if the Combine was to improve. There had not always been such a strict and soulless adherence to ancient codes across the whole of the Combine. Not always been Coordinators on the throne who used the traditions and customs so self-servingly as Takashi and his even worse father had. It had been Urizen Kurita II’s crediting ancient Japanese customs with his survival of an assassination attempt which had formalized them so strictly, nothing more.
She felt an odd sense of familiar disdain for that name, though she couldn’t quite say why. He had been otherwise unremarkable, both as a ruler and a man, in all respects. Lacking even the cultured wall Takashi Kurita had the decency to erect between his own flaws and the outside world.
Rei Hino swallowed a sigh and hopelessly wished she were back on Sendai, even as she mentally slapped herself for the feeling and the errant thoughts. At least there she would have access to a proper means of making tea, a hearth and chashitsu, to calm her mind’s endless raging against unchangeable realities. Somehow, Terra was bringing to the fore the most petulant thoughts she’d ever had and she couldn’t bring herself to feel any guilt over them.
Propriety and respectability could be maintained without slavishly adhering to traditions which had become outdated alongside the steam engine. The Coordinators of the Combine had warped and twisted customs to suit themselves, and simultaneously robbed them of any meaning or worth.
Yet here she was serving stovetop-brewed tea to the highest officials in the Combine in the earliest hours of the morning, but otherwise keeping to her place as a dutiful member of the modern Order of Five Pillars. She’d poured herself into the simple act of brewing and tried to ignore her disappointment and disgust with the conversation around her. But it grew increasingly difficult as the Coordinator continued to set himself on a path to even more pointless death and slaughter in his own name.
Rei poured a small bit out of the pot into her own cup before she returned to the table. Taking the disposable cup, she threw the scalding-hot tea into her mouth. Proper tea, could calm the mind and paper-over a great number of other sins.
“They must be destroyed.” Takashi Kurita growled.
There was no tea that could make better a man’s folly, however.
Rei tried to criticize herself for the thought as the Coordinator continued to explain why the Dragoons would have to be destroyed, but found herself surprisingly unable to. Over the past months she’d come to know the sovereign—
Her sovereign?
—The sovereign of the Combine she was a member of?
—She’d come to realize he was, in some ways, a respectable man. He was dedicated to the nation he led, and his dedication to its traditions was well-known. He attempted to live a full life as befit a samurai—he practiced calligraphy and kendo regularly. He upheld the honor of the Combine in his public life. But it was all so…surface.
Acknowledgement of his own flaws and forgiveness of others for pointing them out were, unfortunately, twin virtues he possessed only in extreme moderation if at all. He was ever an aggrieved party, the embodiment of the nation who need be defended from even the hint of personal criticism or embarrassment by the impersonal regiments under his command. Utterly incapable of recognizing it was his own failings which brought those grievances upon him.
Such was the case with his son. Such was the case with Wolf’s Dragoons.
“The Genyosha are prepared to serve your will, Coordinator-sama.” Akira Brahe said, fulfilling his usual role of speaking for his very reserved father despite his inferior position compared to the others at the low-slung chabudai table, “On your command we may crash over this latest batch of mercenary dogs to voice challenge and drown them beneath us.”
Rei had to credit him for making an attempt at subtlety. But unlike his father Akira still had a more blunt and unreserved speaking style. His reference to the Genyosha’s traditional target—the Kell Hounds—was almost insultingly obvious. But his lack of unreserved endorsement of the aggressive stance against the Dragoons was matched by a slight downward turn to his father’s lips.
Yorinaga Kurita did not look excited at a potential distraction from his potential rematch with Morgan Kell, and had already shown veiled disapproval of the Coordinator’s handling of Jamie Wolf. If anyone were to talk sense into Takashi Kurita, it would have to be his distant cousin.
Yorinaga was silent.
Rei tried not to despair.
“The Galedon District will require some time to reorganize and adjust to a new Warlord to be truly prepared for an offensive against the Suns or the Dragoons. Tai-sho Parkinson may be a serviceable ‘general’ for the Regulars, but her service under Samsonov and obsession with sullying her forces in combat with mere bandits is ill-suited to overseeing an actual Military District on a permanent basis.” One of the other advisors at the table spoke-up, tone making clear it wasn’t the woman’s service history or experience he objected to so much as her existence itself.
Unsurprisingly, he was one of the oldest men in the room. Rei rolled her eyes. Only old men thought that men were better than women these days!
“Galedon will require a firmer hand, hai. Warlord Chi, however, has long served the Dragon’s security in Pesht. When Samsonov’s head is brought to the Imperial Palace, perhaps Chi shall be rewarded the chance to demonstrate his capabilities further.”
Rei kept her face studiously neutral at the automatic dismissal of Parkison that Takashi Kurita engaged in as she turned back to the table and refilled the Coordinator’s teacup in the polite two dips of the pot. The Coordinator was pushing sixty. She should not be surprised he fell under the same opinions as the old men he kept around him—Yorinaga mostly excepted—about women’s role in the service of the Combine. Only old men might think that men were better than women, but Akira was one of the few at the table who didn’t fall under the label of ‘old man’.
Rei dutifully scanned the table to be certain none of their cups were empty, and then made her way to her familiar place at the distant end with the fresh-brewed pot of tea. It was the same place she’d taken up on previous such meetings in the jumpship, and was unsurprised to see the tradition continue on Terra. Nominally, the Order of Five Pillars representative in the Coordinator’s delegation was supposed to sit at his side, but that was usually in the case of a more senior priestess. The Dragon was still blowing smoke over the insult he felt the Order had dealt him by sending her in the only way he formally could—assigning his entire entourage’s seating based on seniority instead of position.
Akira Brahe offered her a sympathetic smile and small dip of his teacup as she sat. Letting a tight nod be the only acknowledgement she gave him despite the relief it gave to have someone in the room who at least noticed her, Rei placed the pot down on the insulating pad laid out in the center of the table.
She dutifully kept her quiet as the discussion continued. It wasn’t protocol for priestesses to become overly involved with the affairs of governance around them unless they touched upon Matters of the House Honor and Righteousness or the Ivory trade, but she desperately wanted someone to inform Takashi Kurita how absurd he was being. He was discussing turning an entire Military District or more against the Dragoons. Because they’d made him a spectacle at the wedding after chewing through seven regiments Samsonov had sent after them on Misery!
Rei began to reach for her tea so she could use it to occupy her mouth, but froze with her hand halfway there. Something was wrong. She couldn’t pin down anything beyond that, but there was something close by that wasn’t…wasn’t supposed to be there.
“Appointing Chi to a position in Galedon would require someone take his place as Warlord Pesht, Lord.”
Rei forced herself to take her tea and pull it back to her as the Coordinator’s eyes sparkled in the manner they did whenever he meant to smile. Turning despite the insult such might be perceived to be, she focused her eyes on the shoji door at the south end of the room.
If there were to be any interruptions, they would have to come from the men stationed there entering the room. But it would have to be something exceedingly serious. The guards of the Otomo would be disinclined to interrupt the meeting for anything they did not judge worthy of the Coordinator’s attention.
Somehow, she knew there would be an interruption coming. There was some thing in the hallway.
“Indeed it would. But that position may—”
Takashi stopped and tilted his head towards Yorinaga as the military-man held up his hand and gestured for silence.
The almost fifty year-old distant cousin to the ruler of the Combine calmly repositioned himself on the floor, rotating his entire body around using his fists so his knees were directed towards the doorway and away from his ruler, a most disrespectful attitude. But the commander’s eyes were eerily calm as he stared at the doorway, the message obvious to any who could see him: be watchful.
“Coordinator?”
Rei wasn’t sure how Yorinaga managed to work a request for forgiveness and permission both into the single word, but he did. Equally mysterious was how the man detected the tiny nod the Coordinator gave to his back—perhaps Yorinaga didn’t even care about it and was set on doing as he pleased. What she was sure of was that the way the older man motioned Akira upwards and began to rise to his own feet was troubling at the least.
The bizarre interruption itself was cut into by the front door of the room being thrown open, its impact against the end of its tracks sending a wave of air down the entire rest of the wall. Stepping through in a single, sharp motion, the battle-plate covered Otomo guard responsible dropped to his knees a step aside from the entrance. Through the doorway, the other guard was clearly preventing a pair of men from entering.
One of them seemed like he could be easily ignored. Blonde, peach fuzz growing thick around his face and decked out in a simple uniform with a skull-insignia on the right breast, he almost looked like a boy dressing up in his father’s mercenary outfit. For all that, Rei felt something about him…something on him—calling out to her...
The man beside the mercenary was more immediately commanding despite his more humble clothing—he was taller and clean-shaven. But he managed to make the nondescript, black-and-white serving-outfit ComStar had provided all of those too low to even merit acolyte robes look commanding.
But unlike the mercenary, who was a tightly-wound ball of anxiety and worries, the server felt utterly and completely empty inside.
Rei stared. The mercenary was making some inane comment and the man in the server’s uniform was silently staring back into the room, past her and Yorinaga and to the other side entirely. His eyes were wrong. He showed no reaction to anything. He was wrong.
The Otomo guardsman who’d opened the door began to apologize, verging on the overly dramatic as he implied his willingness to give up his life for the intrusion.
The server burst into motion in the middle of the apology. Through some combination of physical contortion and enough force to toss one of the Otomo out of the way, he forced his way past the guards and into the room. Throwing himself up and onto the table, he charged with single-minded determination towards the Coordinator in utter silence.
Only a few in the room managed to retain their calm in the face of the sudden intrusion and the chaos it brought on. Takashi Kurita was one of them, watching the man approaching him with a head-tilted interest that hovered between dismissal and complete confusion.
Rei jerked into motion. The bagginess of her hakama and haori not as limiting as she would have thought they’d be. Jumping to her feet, she snatched up the teapot in front of her and swung it around into the man’s path. She was an instant behind Yorinaga.
From his side of the table a small cloud of steaming-hot tea splashed into the server’s face, followed an instant later by the porcelain teacup that it had been in and then the palm that had held it. The cup fractured over the man’s face as Yorinaga pulled his hand up and out-of-the-way of the splintering porcelain and began to wind it up for another strike. While most of the shards fell uselessly to the ground, a good half-dozen of the porcelain slivers stabbed their way into the sensitive skin of the face, one visibly extending out from an eyeball.
The man, if that’s what he was, didn’t even pause. He didn’t even scream. Just waved his arms before him to clear the way and continued towards the Coordinator. The teapot Rei had swung at him bounced off the front his head hard enough she could see his skin collapse inward and he stumbled for an instant in his advance, yet still he ran.
“Stop him!” Rei screamed at the advisors and hangars-on further up the table.
None seemed to be competent enough to do much, many hesitating too long until the man had already passed them by or simply not fast enough to do anything. The pair that managed to rise to their feet and block the assassin’s path were furiously thrown out of the way by the crazed man, flying into the shoji walls and ripping through them without being slowed down a bit.
What use were the sycophants the Coordinator gathered around himself if they were so completely useless?
One of the ceiling-panels burst open, an armored and cat-masked figure dropping into the room foot-first, with both knees curled upwards to just in front of their chest. Arcs of excess electrical current ran across the figure’s arms and torso as the sneak-suit he had on decloaked, the wheeze-and-crack snapping of the small bolts of discharge audible even over the other sounds of chaos in the room. Rotating their torso in mid-air, the armored figure withdrew a blade from a sheath on their back and brought one leg forward to swing downwards into the back of the ComStar server’s neck.
Even that strong hit only managed to break the server’s stride, and it was only the rest of the sneak-suited figure landing atop his back that managed to bring him down entirely. The crunch of impact from the server’s porcelain-studded face dropping onto the table was followed by another splintering, cracking sound as the table collapsed under the strain of supporting both bodies.
Effortlessly shifting their weight during the collapse to keep from falling off the table or the server’s body, the cat-masked figure brought one foot off to support them. Smoothly reversing their hold on the blade in their hand, they dropped to one knee in a single, sharp motion, stabbing the weapon through the crazed server and the table both.
The room went quiet, except for the clattering and clunking produced as the server on the table still struggled to continue his charge towards Takashi Kurita.
“Ho-ly shit! Ninjas? Hey, just so it’s clear? I am not with that gu—“ The mercenary outside started, only to be enthusiastically battered to the ground by the Otomo guardsmen before they rushed into the room and to the Coordinator’s side.
Yorinaga twisted on a heel and prowled his way up the table to stand opposite the ninja as the guardsmen rushed past him, still looking remarkably unperturbed with everything that had happened. Akira had the more natural reaction, in her opinion. Leaping up, the man brought his legs wide apart, and one hand dropped to a nonexistent holster at his waist. A flash of anger and frustration crossing his brow, he then transitioned the movement almost-seamlessly into a long step forward over the table so he could stand between the intruding figure and Rei, bringing both his hands up to cover his chest and his knees settling into kokutsu-dachi.
“Get the Coordinator to safety!”
It was one of few things to be said by Takashi Kurita’s retainers that Rei found herself in agreement with.
The room once again became a miniature piece of chaos as the Dragon was finally pushed into standing and retreating from his attacker and mysterious-savior both. The Coordinator crossed to the room’s exit, forced to give wide berth to the table, and his guards closed around him as he left to cast suspicious glares even at the other Combine personnel in the room.
The only one who didn’t join them was the one who had opened the door for the assassin. He remained on his knees at the entrance, head bowed as his liege passed. Rei growled as she noticed his eyes staring at the sword in the center of the table.
There was no honor where he looked, only cowardice and the abandonment of a lifetime’s duty with an early, easy death.
Rei directed her focus to the ‘ninja’ who had burst from the ceiling. The mask over their face made it impossible to tell for sure, but she could feel them focused on her as well—probably an illusion, the sneak-suits mask allowed for a 360-degree view. Still she knew he was looking at her, and as she got a closer look at the front of the mask, she realized exactly what the figure was.
“He has been stopped.” The nekakami said, voice a buzzing, modulated whir that eliminated any distinctiveness or trace of gender. Words spoken, the figure bowed slightly and used one hand to present the still-struggling man on the table to the room like a prize, “Though it may have been easier for you to exorcise him…”
On the surface the words were confusing and almost meaningless. A statement she might have performed a superstitious rite that was entirely form over any kind of function in order to stop an assassination. The mere idea was ludicrous on its face. Beyond that, she had no twigs, no harae, no salt, what was she supposed to do as an exorcism, yell harsh words at the man?
Somewhere within her, somewhere she felt a confusion at even recognizing, she knew that was exactly the right thing to do. That it was one of the few things she did as a member of the Order that had meaning, and it was exact thing the situation required. But they needed to be the right words. Something familiar, but different. Something she’d done before, but couldn’t quite recall…
Part of her balked at the prospect still, and attached itself to the first words of the nekakami instead of their later ones. Who was this ‘Guardian’? Why did it sound so right when it made so little sense?
“I think we should start with asking who you are.” Akira said, not taking his eyes off the nekakami before him.
“Servant.” The masked figure said in that same electronic voice, holding one hand out towards Rei.
Akira looked at her, his fighting stance becoming more of an elaborate shrug for an instant as he quietly sought an answer from her. Since she didn’t have one herself, she couldn’t give him one.
The nekakami, for his part, took the chance to leap into motion. Jumping up and off the shoji panels, they disappeared in moments back into the ceiling he had dropped from before a half-dozen attempts to stop him could do any more than raise their hands. The only evidence of their having existed at all was the quickly-settling ceiling-panel they had passed through, and the sword they had left buried in the server.
“Dammit. He’s getting away!” Akira snapped, twisting halfway around and beginning into his own rush of motion before he was stopped by an upraised hand from Yorinaga.
The older man was shifting his eyes between Rei and the man on the table, expression a calm neutrality that made it nearly impossible to figure out his thoughts.
Yorinaga shook his head, meeting Rei’s eyes for a heartbeat and then focusing on the table-bound assassin. Having to dart his hand in quickly to avoid the man’s continued struggles, he grabbed something they had around their neck and yanked it off, extending it in the next breath towards Akira.
The younger of the pair didn’t look entirely satisfied by the words, still glaring at the ceiling as if merely focusing his anger would make the nekakami reappear. Yorinaga clearing his throat and shaking the amulet he’d gotten off the captive finally managed to snap the younger man out of it and focus on the immediate concern, but Rei could tell the matter of the ninja would come up again—and he’d undoubtedly focus his questions on her. The nekakami had claimed to be her bodyguard. Her servant, even?
A million questions boiled up in Rei’s throat to shout at the ceiling in hope the nekakami might return and answer. Who her parents were. Where she belonged outside the Order. When she’d lost her memory...Why nobody had ever come for her.
She managed to hold them down only by force of will and habitual reservation. Now she should be focusing on more immediate concerns.
But they made no sense!
“This makes no sense.” Akira said, echoing Rei’s thoughts so well she couldn’t help but jump slightly and lean forward to see what had caused his nearly-identical reaction.
She didn’t recognize the significance of the red-and-black flower symbol on the amulet. Their identical expressions said Yorinaga and Akira both did.
“It’s Kali’s rose of death. A thugee symbol. A sect of death cultists that Romano Liao heads.” Akira began, nodding towards the man on the table who was still struggling to free himself from the sword impaled through him, “He’s probably on some sort of drug that lets him continue to function even with his injuries.”
Rei frowned, certain that the man’s theory was incorrect but unable to pinpoint how, “The Confederation is part of the Concord. Why would they try to assassinate the Coordinator?”
She would at least give the Liao’s and their plotting some credit. They would not be so careless as to leave such blatant evidence behind to implicate themselves—if for no other reason than to avoid a ComStar boycott on their realm.
Unless they wanted to?
“I do not know. Perhaps this is an attempt to distract from the real culprit?” Akira said, more to himself than anything. His voice grew more certain “Or House Liao wishes to make us think they are being set-up by another party.”
It was somewhat awkward how much the man’s thoughts matched her own.
Yorinaga making some kind of procession of symbols with his fingers distracted her from the embarrassment of that realization. The elder man muttered something indecipherable under his breath before pushing both hands out and holding them against the back of the would-be assassin’s head.
“Akuryo Taisan.”
Rei felt one of her hands spasm at the words. The muscle-clenching shock of recognition shot up from there until it pounded into her head with the strength of a hammerblow. They were exactly what had been needed to ‘exorcise him’ as the nekakami had suggested. They were familiar. They were her’s.
But they were being spoken by Yorinaga. Why hadn’t she thought of them? Why hadn’t she remembered them…
But what was there to remember?
Rei clenched her fists together until her palms protested, gladly watching as the pinned assassin became less frantic in his movements, arms and legs seeming to lose strength before finally dropping flat onto the table. Rei locked eyes with the thing she knew, somehow, hadn’t really been alive for a good while. Beneath the physical injuries and the cold, emotionless act the thing put on, there was a deep-seated fear in those eyes that brought her a bone deep, burning satisfaction.
Burning…
“Tai-sa Kurita? What was that?” Rei asked, years of discipline failing her as she heard her voice waver over the words.
Yorinaga cocked his head to the side at her, but his eyes traveled down to the still body. He looked…sad and far away.
“It’s a prayer for a lost soul.” Akira offered in his place, “My mother believed in it.”
The two men locked gazes, and Rei felt like a true intruder in the room. Not just out of place or ignored as she had, but truly like she was intervening in something she shouldn’t be.
“Hey.” The mercenary’s voice had a waver to it that hadn’t been present before, and when Rei turned her head she could see him wince as he waved a hand in the doorway to attract attention, “Don’t mean to interrupt the whole conversation about magical, bushido, Shinto-zen bullshit, but I can’t help but notice more physical matters like ComStar’s security—and the medics that would come with them—don't seem to have shown up.”
It was as disrespectful a comment as could be made, and both Akira and Yorinaga frowned at the mercenary’s interruption. Still, he had a point. There should have been blue-uniformed ComStar personnel rushing into the room less than a minute after everything had started. It was the entire point of allowing ComStar such close cooperation with the Otomo—the Blakists could be backup for more reliable security in the event of something exactly like this happening.
That they still hadn’t arrived was worrisome. Every second they didn’t show up was another second that suggested they’d been defeated and would never come…Or they were involved and had no reason to, not when they would be better served focusing on—
“The Coordinator.” Rei said, suspicion forming in her mind over the purpose of the ‘assassination attempt’. ComStar had been informed of exactly what the Otomo would do if there were an attempt on Takashi Kurita’s life.
Either they’d reached a similar conclusion themselves or her voice had been more commanding than she’d meant it to. Akira was the first out the door, leaping up-and-over the mercenary, with Yorinaga not far behind. It somehow felt right for her to bring up the rear guard…
“Miss Hino?”
The mercenary’s use of her name stopped her in her tracks halfway through the door.
He was holding one hand up to stop her in case she’d kept going. A small, red-and-gold tube clutched in his fingers and held out to her.
Rei was hammered by the sensation that it was her’s. Like the words Yorinaga had spoken seconds earlier, but even more viscerally. It was more than simply being her’s or being familiar, she had the feeling that the odd, pen-like thing held an inescapable part of herself within it. It wasn’t just something that belonged to her, it was who she was.
“I was—“ He began.
Rei stretched forward and grabbed onto the end of the pen. It was more important than his words. It was more important than almost anything.
The vision was very much like those she’d occasionally get performing her ceremonial duties. Yet so much more.
Fire played across the skyline around her and explosions rocked the ground around them all. Soot and death hung heavy in the air, consequence of the enemy’s attempt at razing everything to the ground that the automated fire-suppression system was only partially keeping in-check. Even the best of city-management computers with access to all the resources of Unity City could only do so much against the constant barrage of inferno missiles and incendiary weapons that the enemy’s forces had put to use.
She couldn’t help but be slightly thankful the screaming that had gone on through the night was mostly gone. Most anyone in the city now who was still alive was either in one of the shelters or doing what they could to assist the Watch in its final stand.
She didn’t want to remember that the reason the screaming was gone was because the people who had been making it were as well.
If—when—she got her hands on Amaris or The Traitor, she would lock them into a burning pit for eternity. Usagi could—
No she couldn’t.
A trio of loud whumps shook everything. The shots were quickly followed by an even deeper explosion that seemed to suck the very air around her towards it. Either a ‘Mech had lost containment or an ammo-bin had gone up. She pointlessly hoped for the latter. The Watch had long since used all of their ammunition and been limited to energy weapons. The Rimjobs were the only ones who’d have enough ammo in their stocks to make for an explosion that impressive.
The Watch was all going to die, of course. Amaris’ forces had help that made many of them much more difficult to kill. But so long as they bought just enough time...
Time at the cost of death. It would be familiar to them all, but it was Pluto's realm, really.
The vision shifted in the way dreams or distant memories did. Rei was left with the impression of having traveled a distance, and some indefinable amount of time having passed, but could not narrow it beyond that.
“Mars!”
Pluto looking worried. She’d not seen that in a long time.
“Take their hands!”
She obeyed, grabbing onto the blonde on her right and the…blue-haired girl…on her left—Venus and Mercury. They’d finally all made it. All except The Traitor, her parents—and wasn’t their venture into the Concordat with Kerensky a well-timed coincidence?—and, of course, the two The Traitor had murdered.
The Queen and the Princess both. Gone.
The vision swam, torn out of focus by Rei’s own pounding heart and a scream of emotions and resistance inside her. She didn’t want to believe it.
She didn’t want to remember it!
It had happened. She had to. It was all she could do anymore.
Or was it? Maybe if she found Pluto they could try again?
The vision—memory!—faded back into focus exactly where it had left off.
“Now.” Pluto said simply, raising her staff aloft over her head. A sparkling, dust-like energy from five women and one man danced its way around in a circle before coalescing over the Guardian of Time’s head. The fabric of reality before the woman began to waver, questioning its place and whether it really belonged there.
Was it enough?
Mars’ had a distant appreciation for the fact that the nuclear explosion that carried her away was not what Pluto had intended. Then she felt herself forget what Pluto had intended. Then who Pluto was.
Then who she was.
In a snap, she was back in the present.
I am…Guardian of War?
Rei blinked as the flame and fire of battle and loss were fully replaced by the blonde mercenary’s half-dazed grin and the concerns of the present.
“—pposed to get that to you. One way or another. Didn’t know the job would be so easy.” The mercenary grumbled, slowly bringing one hand up to massage across his abdomen as he struggled to his feet.
She ignored the mercenary’s mistaken bravado and Akira calling out to her to move from further up the hall.
“Who are you?” Rei demanded, clutching the transformation pen in both hands.
“Must have slipped my mind in all the excitement of getting beat-up. I’m Gray. We have a mutual friend at ComStar’s headquarters who wanted me to get that to you. Wonderful reception, by the by. Real Combine hospitality.” The mercenary said after a brief hesitation, affecting a casual cockiness that she supposed he meant to be humorous or charismatic.
She didn’t find it very funny or very endearing. The man needed some self-control and sense of decorum. Most of all, he needed to be more informative. He wasn’t telling her everything. If there was one thing which had always frustrated her in her…centuries…It was being kept out of the loop on things.
But she could tell he was reliable—or reliable enough. At least he didn’t feel empty like the crazed server had.
More important than his name was how he’d come across the pen in the first place and how much else he could tell her.
“You were late. Judging by performance, you would have been ineffective even if you hadn’t been.” Rei said, looking the man over and withdrawing the auto-pistol he had holstered at his side—to the considerable awkward and almost-adorable discomfort of the baby-faced mercenary. She waggled the pen to attract his attention back to it, “Did this supposed mutual friend of ours tell you anything else about this?”
The auto-pistol’s presence at his side was a little surprising. It meant either he was another assassin—which she should have been able to feel—or ComStar had trusted him enough to carry such a weapon. Or he was enterprising enough to have snuck it in past their security. She couldn’t say for sure. Considering the nekakami’s presence, the lack of security around her now, and Akira’s own hidden sword back in his own room, she was beginning to grow less and less impressed by ComStar’s security, so perhaps him just being resourceful wasn’t as much of an outlier as it seemed?
“Only that you're not supposed to use it unless it's an emergency.” The mercenary said. His eyes traveled to the barrel of his pistol, “If you don’t mind, could you put that back? Please?”
Rei ignored Gray’s protests and held onto the pistol as she turned and started down the hall, certain he would follow behind her and not suddenly decide to find a knife he could sink into her back. The only ones who would know how the pen worked would be…She didn’t know if she could call them friends after so many years—she wasn’t even certain they still had been during the Coup. But they wouldn’t be anyone who wished to see her dead.
It had to be one of the Others. One of them had survived or lasted through Pluto’s attempt at manipulating things and now…
She almost stopped cold when she realized who it was. It wasn’t one of the Inners at all. It was one of the Traitors parents! They’d been with Jamie Wolf the evening before! It was almost painfully obvious.
But why would they seek her out after so long? Two-hundred fifty years…
Seeking something to do with her hands and suddenly less confident in the man behind her despite the way he felt good, Rei released the magazine on the pistol, having to juggle it and the pen in her hand as she checked its round-count. She hesitated briefly at the sparkling red tips, before the memory of what they were came back to her. They could still kill someone, but they’d be much more effective against Daemons or monsters.
She slammed the magazine back home and double-checked to be sure there was a one in the pistol’s chamber.
It was an action she’d never done in all her time in the Order these last few years. But there had been occasions before that where she had. The specifics were only starting to come back to her, but she could remember years at a time where she had regularly used such weapons and worn the aging sneak-suits of the nekakami instead of the haori of the O5P. Whichever organization had been safer in the ever-shifting political winds of the Combine.
Still, her most recent memories included being taught that firearms were certainly not the remit of a priestess. They were too loud and uncivilized.
Rei smirked. Uncivilized or not, they were less dangerous than some other things she could do, and they were undeniably useful. Appreciation and disdain for the same thing were a strange pair of feelings to have together.
“Why do you think you need to be armed in my presence?” Rei asked over her shoulder as she hurried to catch back up with Akira and Yorinaga.
“Miss Hino, I have seen what you’re supposed to deal with. Not having my ‘Mech around me or being burning for the jumpoint at this exact moment is making me more worried than I’d like to admit. But, to be honest? A large part of why I’d like to have it is that you certainly don’t need the thing. Not with the ceiling-ninja and what that pen can let you do.” Gray answered.
He did have a point there.
Perhaps appreciation and disdain for the same thing weren’t all that strange to have? She decided she appreciated Gray’s bluntness, even as she couldn’t help but be unimpressed by his apparent need to try and be funny.
Rei ducked into the security-station that Akira and Yorinaga had been headed for. The former stared at her and then Gray with questions obvious in his eyes, the latter gave the mercenary a critical once-over before turning his attention back to the monitors on the wall, manipulating the controls on one to rewind the video and try to follow the retreating image of Takashi Kurita through the twists and turns his security took him through.
Just as the Coordinator and his guards stepped out of the building, they were surrounded by a dozen armed men in ComStar security uniforms. Far from having to force the Coordinator to come with them, the Otomo clearly let them take up positions on the outskirts of the detail as they piled into a small procession of vehicles, Takashi’s wife emerging a few moments later from another portion of the sprawling building they had been in and loaded into one of the other vehicles just before they all burst into motion.
It almost didn’t look suspicious. But instead of making the right that would lead them to the bridge off the island and eventually the Combine dropship hesitantly established as a safehouse, they made a left. It would take them closer to the center of the island and ComStar’s facilities there. She doubted it was a coincidence.
“They’re taking him to the main hall of that cathedral-thing they were going to hold the wedding in.” Gray whispered.
Akira turned, not looking like he was in the mood to deal with the man, “Oh?”
“If the coms were still up I’d offer to let you talk to Tiepolo for yourself to confirm it. ComStar’s dealing with some…internal difficulties over who should hold the position of Primus at the moment. These jokers are involved in it—maybe not even intentionally on their part. Just trust me on this one, alright?”
“Tiepolo is who you’re working for then, mercenary?” Akira asked, voice the same polite level of friendly despite his eyebrows dropping darkly as he finished them.
Gray once again hesitated in his answer, buying time with a dramatic sigh and a roll of his eyes, “He’s paying the bills, yeah. But there’s a hell of a lot more going on than you could possibly understand, samurai.”
Rei wanted to sigh, but that would have been too dramatic and put both the men off. She was going to have to step in before Akira decided he needed to go get his sword or the uncouth merc decided to drop his trousers to prove his manhood physically rather than trying to do it verbally in his grating, gaijin way.
“Perhaps I don’t need this.” she said, giving the pistol a shake and the mercenary a brief second to hope before casually handing the weapon off to Akio. The spike of humor she had at the stricken look on the mercenary’s face probably wasn’t mature of her, but she couldn’t help it.
“Now, if you both would restrain yourselves? There are more important concerns.” She said, pushing past Gray to exit the room, “It would seem we need to find a vehicle.”
She wasn’t entirely certain if the goal she had in mind for the vehicle was to rescue the Coordinator or simply find out which of the Traitor’s Parents it was that Gray worked for. She suspected it was a little of both.
“That I can help with.” Gray said, “I had to get out her somehow, right?”
The mercenary’s voice dropped, low enough she was certain it wasn’t supposed to be heard, “’Go save the Drac’. ‘It’ll be good for you’. Dammit Lori. I should’ve put my foot down and gone to the Canopians. At least they would’ve established a safe-word before beating me up.”
Letting the man have his complaint, Rei padded down the hall towards the exit, awkward at every step as her knee spasmed and shook underneath her. More than just about anything else she wanted to sit down. Needed a moment to process everything that had already happened and everything she was beginning to remember. But they didn’t have that moment.
“Mister Gray? Is there a reason I shouldn’t just shoot you right now to spare myself the worry of having you behind my back?” Akira asked from behind her opposite shoulder. She hoped he wasn’t being so blatant as to point the pistol at the mercenary, but from the soft rattling in his hand she could tell he was at least gesturing with it.
“Is this some kind of trick question? Because I’m helping you. I’m one of the good guys. You don’t shoot the good guys. It’s...It’s bad.”
Rei was almost tempted to stand aside and let the drama play out as an indulgence in schadenfreude. But Gray’s struggling commentary was as liable to be painful to her as it was to himself, even assuming it didn’t turn deadly. She butted in again to spare herself the work of putting up with it—his commentary or the death it might end in.
She had centuries of perspective Akira lacked. She also wanted to be the one to—violently, if necessary—extract any further information out of Gray about the ones he worked for. But she could tell the truth for now.
“He’s not lying.”
Akira quirked an eyebrow, “That is relieving to hear from a woman who acts as an agent of the nekakami.”
Rei breathed through her nose and inwardly counted to three. She probably should have seen that criticism coming. Subhash Indrahar had branded the cat-masked, ninja-like nekakami as little more than thieves and assassins—enemies of the state for their operation outside the oversight of the Dragon. At the same time, it seemed like such a minor thing for her to be condemned for or need to explain in comparison to everything else that it couldn’t help but annoy her.
But Akira didn’t know about everything else yet. How was he supposed to? How was she supposed to tell him she was a millennium-old that wouldn’t end in him dismissing everything she said from that point onward?
“It’s more the opposite, actually. They are agents for us—for me.” Rei growled, trying to come up with an easy way of explaining things she was only beginning to remember herself in a limited amount of time.
“What a relief.” Akira said flatly, not sounding the slightest bit relieved.
“It is.” Yorinaga said, speaking up for the first time since exorcising the mindless drone in the main room. Rei could sense the man’s arm move onto Akira’s shoulder, “The Spirit Cats acknowledge only a very few individuals as ‘Guardian’.”
As if he had planned it, Yorinaga finished speaking just as Rei pushed through the doors to the outside.
Five figures dressed in the same form-concealing and face-shrouding sneak-suits as she’d seen on one of them minutes earlier were waiting for them on the steps. Seated on their knees in a half-circle at the bottom of the steps, swords balanced in their laps, they still almost looked like they would disappear in an instant if the light from the half-full moon above was interrupted.
The one at the center rose to his feet. The sword in his lap looking like it flowed to his side more than being directed by any kind of human will. She couldn’t even track the nekakami’s hands, only see the end result. It spoke to a lifetime of sword-handling.
The gunshot from behind her interrupted any further appreciation.
Rei froze as the auto-pistol’s report echoed in her ear.
Behind her, she could tell Yorinaga was already grabbing the weapon from his son before Akira could repeat the panicked shot at what he’d thought was a threat. Gray stumbled another step into her peripheral vision, hands moving towards his ears and a scream of surprise beginning to come from his throat.
She found herself largely unconcerned for all of it. Below her, the nekakami moved. Most scattered, but the one at their head instead brought their sword up to in front of their chest and began to step back, twisting their body as they did.
Something clicked, and the figure spun around to the left, dropping to one knee. Their sword-arm curled around their body to clutch at their side. After an instant Rei couldn’t properly estimate the length of, they rose back to their feet. The sword returned to their side, and the nekakami bowed as if nothing had happened. As if they hadn't just--mostly--stopped a bullet with a sword.
“Ho-ly shit. Ninjas.” Gray said again, his voice flat before he dropped into a long sigh and rubbed at his eyes with one hand, “I shouldn’t even be surprised anymore.”
D
Deleted member
Guest
I love this latest update. Sorry it took me so long to read it! Now we finally have another of the Sailors with her memory back!