[center][h3]4,5 months ago[/h3][/center]
[right][sub]Ellara[/sub][/right]
Oscar Pawlowski waited until the elevator slowly ascended to the right floor. The building was tall, hundreds of meters of concrete, steel, and glass towering above the capital. The apartment the Grand General had been looking for was somewhere in the middle. Nobody answered the door, even though he knew she was there. It wasn’t locked, so he entered, looking around in the dim light.

The place was a mess, boxes of food lying around the coffee table, dirty clothes thrown over an expensive sofa. One whole wall was made of glass, offering an exquisite view of the city. Right now it was being whipped by streams of water, there was a thunderstorm raging outside, occasional balls of lightning illuminating a silhouette of a person standing there, looking out.

Oscar sighed and walked over to her. Although she must have heard him, there was no notion of movement, she just stood there like a statue, watching the raindrops roll down the glass. Her short dark hair was one big greasy mess and the smell lingering around her suggested she hasn’t showered in a while. “Claire?”

There was no response. Another strike of lightning showed him her face, deadly pale, void of any expression. Oscar wasn’t sure what to do. He was not a shrink and he certainly wasn’t an expert on women. The two things made a dangerous combination in this situation. But he was the only one who could do something.

“Claire. Look at me, please.”

She didn’t move, but her lips growled a response. “Go away.”

Alright, some words, that was a start. But how to continue? “Claire, it has been six weeks. You can’t just stay here forever.” She was a woman of science, prone to listen to reason, right?

“Fuck off.” Her face finally turned to him, raw fury twisting it now. “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore, Grand Asshole.” There was so much hate and contempt in her voice Oscar almost took a step back away from her. “What, you are worried about your little project? Screw you. I’m done giving you more inventions so you could use them to kill people. Kelsie is gone, which means you have no leverage over me anymore. You want to lock me up for another twenty years? Go ahead. You want me dead? Be a fucking man and do it yourself, just like you killed my husband.”

Oscar could see the ocean of desperation beyond all that anger and hate. She was just a broken woman who had lost everything and needed to let all the emotions out. That’s why he was here, in a way. No, he certainly didn’t enjoy being yelled at and getting blamed for everything bad that has ever happened to her (even though she did have a point in some parts), but if this is what it takes to finally get her out of the terrible lethargy, so be it. He had learned to ignore her insults a long time ago.

“I’m not going to kill you. Or lock you up.” Unless she does something stupid. Claire Martin was a brilliant scientist and a very dangerous woman. “You don’t want to die, otherwise you would have done it already. You are suffering and I understand that, you are not the only one who has ever lost somebody they loved.” No, he was not going to go there. The past was in the past. “You still have a life in front of you. If you want to waste it rotting alive your own filth, be my guest. You can even open the fucking window and jump if that is what you desire. But you don’t get to blame that on me anymore, it’s your choice.” Wow, what a pep talk he managed to put together.

Claire blinked a couple of times, looking shocked. For once, she didn’t have a snappy response to his words. He turned back to the door, slowly walking away. “There is a meeting tomorrow at 0900. I expect my advisor to be there.” His eyebrow went up as he scanned the mess around him one more time. “Looking like a normal person,” he added, giving her one last look before closing the door behind him. The air was much fresher in the hallway.

[hr]
The decision was long overdue, but the High Command couldn’t agree on one opinion and Oscar himself wasn’t sure, so he kept postponing it. But now, with the revolution on the New Hollywood over, the ECU embassy on the Meeting Place taken over by those White Flower people, and with what remained of the Oligarchs transferred to exile to the Matuvistans, the decision needed to be made. The Earth Cultural Union was gone. New Hollywood left in disarray, a bloody mess yet to be organized into a proper government. And the question that arrived from Abadi’s mailbox, although clearly not sent by her, stood there, unanswered. An ally to the government, or to the people?

Claire came, sitting down quietly, an uncertain look on her face. She cleaned herself up, nothing of her reminding Oscar of the empty shell of a woman he met yesterday. Except for the pain in her eyes. She didn’t try to talk to him and he didn’t force her, glad that she didn’t take his other advice about jumping out of the window. That would be a bloody shame.

“We will not support the White Flowers.” Oscar was not the one to beat around the bush and he started the meeting bluntly right after everyone confirmed to be present.

Hamonga sighed. He returned to Ellara with the Undefeated fleet as soon as the battle in the Sol system was over, not wanting to look like a threat to other nations. Or risking repeating the unfortunate incident with the Kudrionians. “They will be a legitimate government on the New Hollywood. Or Bezia or whatever they are calling it now.”

“I don’t give a shit whether they are legitimate or not. They drowned the streets in blood, the mobs whipped up by their crazy preachers murdered and tortured people. That is not something we can support. You want to tell our citizens it’s okay to start revolting against their government?”

“So…,” Jim Harlowe started hesitantly, his face frowning from a screen on the wall. He was still stationed on the Meeting Place and couldn’t fly over to Ellara for every meeting they had. “We are going to support the Oligarchs in exile?” Oscar knew Jim hated the Oligarchs after personally witnessing the horrors they inflicted upon their people while calling it “training”.

“No.” Oscar shook his head decisively. “We won't do either. Those assholes want to fight against each other, murdering their people in the process, inviting foreign forces on their planet? Fine. Let them. Remember, nobody asked us for help.”

Claire was biting on her lip, quiet until now. “We will have to acknowledge the White Flowers as a nation's representatives.” Oscar turned to her with an angry look but she raised her hand to stop him. “No, wait.” Her voice was more confident now. Opposing him was always the thing she did best. “I understand what are you trying to do, you want to make us look neutral, to step aside from the mess, and it is a good thing. But if we want to be seen by others as a stable neutral force, we can’t shut down a diplomatic channel to an entire nation just because we don’t like the way they came to power.”

“She has a point,” Hamonga nodded.

Jim Harlowe chimed in. “I agree. I can issue a statement that since the ECU doesn’t exist anymore, we consider our alliance with them over. And that while we don’t support the White Flowers, we acknowledge them as the current leaders of that bloody shithole of a planet.” The other Guardians nodded in silence and looked at Oscar.

While it might have looked like a form of a democracy, it was far from it. The final decision would be Oscar’s, no matter their opinion. Sometimes it was hard to wear the weight of a whole planet on his shoulders. “Fine. Do that. Don’t use the word shithole though,” he smirked.

“I was not going to, sir,” Harlowe laughed and saluted, ending the transmission.
[@Tortoise]

[hr][hr]
[right][sub]location unknown[/sub][/right]
Kelsie was running through the dim-lit corridor at a measured pace, her legs starting to burn slowly. Oh, how she missed being able to exercise, but in the station’s native atmosphere it was difficult to walk, let alone go for a run. Fortunately, after a few weeks of studying the alien writing, language, and technology, Julianna figured out how to reconfigure the atmospheric generator to give them more Ellara-like levels of oxygen and other things. It even got rid of the smell, which apparently was caused by ammonia. Why did the aliens feel the need to artificially add that into their breathing air was beyond Kelsie. Maybe they just liked the smell of urine.

The broken thigh bone that Kelsie and David so expertly treated grew back together, sadly not quite in its original shape, causing Julianna to limp around, muttering curses under her breath. But she was alive, no doubt thanks both to the courtesy of the New Haven Directorate and their nanoshots and also to several donations of David’s blood.

Kelsie was furious because she felt absolutely useless. David was trying to fix the ship and Julianna spent all her time trying to decipher parts of the computer system controlling the station. In a vain hope to reprogram the automated security system so it wouldn’t immediately destroy the Chimera upon powering up. The Big Balls, as they called it. No doubt someone could come up with a fancy sciency name, but the Undefeated weren’t exactly famous for being creative.

From what they were able to figure out, the whole system was in a state of some brutal lockdown. The best guess was that when the aliens were leaving the place (for whatever reason), they didn’t want anyone snooping around their stuff, so they bumped up the security. The current level was set to immediately annihilate anything even remotely resembling a functioning spaceship. The only reason the Chimera didn’t get blown into pieces right after emerging from the Gateway was that the main reactor was offline and they were basically wreckage freely flying through space. And the moment Kelsie powered up the backup generator, the Big Balls activated, ready to destroy them. The security seemed to be such a vital part of the station’s systems Julianna hadn’t even been able to access it, let alone change or disable it.

Everyone but her had something to do. Kelsie knew nothing about science and very little about mechanics and fixing ships, so she just tried to stay out of their way, her frustration growing every day they were stuck here. And it has been a lot of days. Today they actually marked day 42, adding another long scratch on one of the walls. Like prisoners did ages ago back on Earth. Almost closer to two months than to one. Infuriating.

Kelsie needed something to do, anything. She thought life in the Meeting Place was boring, but living here took it to a whole new level. There was no one to fight, the aliens who built the place were long gone. Years, decades, millennia, there was really no way to know. The group spent the first few days worried that the station had sent some sort of a signal when they powered up the reactor and that the rightful owners would show up and kick them out, but nobody arrived. Perhaps they were long dead. Or just didn’t care.

She managed to keep herself busy for the first few days by going through what remained of the Chimera, scavenging anything that could be useful. The water was not a problem, the station itself had both large supplies in the tanks and a whole filtration and recirculation system to deal with it, they could even take long hot showers. But the food was another matter. They were going for a few-hour trip from the Meeting Place to Ellara so they didn’t exactly pack loads of it. While the ship had some emergency supplies on board, a big part of them was destroyed in the explosion, and the rest made for quite thin rations for three people.

Perhaps she should be saving her strength instead of wasting it on such a meaningless thing as jogging, but there was a big possibility she was going to punch someone unless she blew off some steam. And she really didn’t want that. All three of them were already on edge, especially Julianna since she was constantly in pain from her injured leg and frustrated from not being able to come up with a solution to their problem.

Kelsie returned to the part of the station they currently inhabited, panting and drenched in sweat. She had to come upon her tiptoes to reach the door control, it was incredibly annoying. The aliens who built this place were about twice the regular human height and Kelsie constantly felt like a toddler trying to reach for the candy on the table. Julianna managed to rewire controls of one shower to a datapad; it was probably not the safest solution to go with, but at least they didn’t have to jump up every time they wanted to adjust the water temperature.

She took a quick shower, enjoying the waterfalls coming down on her from the incredibly high ceiling, and then grabbed a clean T-shirt from a clothesline, tossing the dirty one into a corner. Knowing she was the one who was going to wash it later. Yes, she was doing the laundry. That’s how useless she was around here.

Her watch told her it was the time for dinner, which was not really a reason for happiness. She would kill for a steak and fries. Sometimes when she couldn’t fall asleep at night, she imagined that piece of rare bloody meat on her plate, how she would stab a fork into it, cut it with a knife, put it into her mouth… Her stomach rumbled. No, she had to go get her tiny bowl of oatmeal or whatever delicious thing they had on the menu tonight.

There were no child-size chairs on the station so the trio usually ate on the ground in one corner of the room they slept in. There were dozens of rooms to choose from, some with one or two huge beds, others with several bunk beds stacked next to each other, but they chose to stay together because the place was just too creepy to sleep alone.

Kelsie squinted at one of the last cans on the very small pile. Mashed potatoes. Yummy.

“Ladies,” David entered the room with a wide grin, “fear not. We will eat our stomachs full tonight.”

Kelsie raised an eyebrow. “With half a bowl of this? Doubt it.”

“Nope.” With a groan, David sat a huge backpack down on the ground and opened it. “With this.” The can was about the size of a bucket, made from the same weird plastic material as the furniture. It was white with some black markings in the alien language.

“You are crazy. We have no idea what’s inside.”

David shook his head, the grin on his face getting even wider. “That’s where you are wrong, my dear Guardian. By the scientific method of trial and error, I have determined this is in fact food. It doesn’t taste particularly awesome, but it’s better than being hungry.”

“Are you fucking insane?” Julianna raised her head from a datapad and stared at him in disbelief. “YOU ATE IT?! You two are seriously unbelievable!” Kelsie winced. What the hell did she do?

David’s excitement was dampened by her angry words but still didn’t disappear completely. “Relax. I tasted it two days ago, ate a few spoons the day after that, and a full bowl yesterday. Not even a stomach ache. I know a military ration when I see one.”

“The fact that you didn’t die immediately doesn’t mean that it’s not poisonous. I mean these guys had ammonia in their breathing air, what the hell do you think they put in their food?” Kelsie supported Julianna.

Sitting down with a quiet sigh, David opened the lid of the alien can and grabbed a spoon. “Seriously, you women are hard to please. I’ll keep eating this, there is enough to last us for like a century by the way, meaning there will be more rations for you from what we scavenged of the Chimera. We need to give our brilliant scientist time to get us out of this mess.”

“STOP IT!” Julianna got up, wincing in pain, leaning against a makeshift crutch David made for her. “I’ve seriously had it with the two of you. Stop looking at me like I have a miraculous solution to everything because I don’t! It doesn’t matter if the food lasts us for ten days or ten years or hundred years. I will be no closer to the solution in a century than I’m now.”

Kelsie and David exchanged worried looks. “Julianna,...”

“No! Shut up! You two assholes are goofing around all the time, waiting for me to solve the problem, but I can’t! It’s just too complicated, too much information, too much… everything, I don’t…” Julianna paused and sniffled, a couple of tears rolling down her cheeks. “Just stop looking at me like I’m some sort of a fucking savior because I’m not.” She hobbled towards the door and used the crutch to tap the door control, disappearing in the hallway.

Kelsie lowered her head down in shame. The young scientist was absolutely right, they never doubted her ability to solve the problem, getting to the point they never attempted to help her, or even to ask her whether she needed any help.

They knew where she was going.

Soon after they arrived, they managed to tap into the station’s network, creating a makeshift connection between one of their computers and wires they gutted from a workstation that didn’t look very important. A lot of good it did for them, now they had a screen full of alien source code written in alien language using an alien alphabet.

Julianna sat there for hours every day, trying to decipher it. While Kelsie and David were truly goofing around, as she said. Sure, they meant it well, trying to stay out of her way and not distract her, but they ended up abandoning her with an impossible task.

“Leave me alone,” she growled when they entered the room. They saw her sitting on the ground, face hidden in her hands, shoulders twitching as she sobbed desperately. David gave Kelsie an uncertain look but followed her when she approached Julianna. They both sat down next to her, each hugging the girl from one side. “I’m sorry,” she sniffled, “I didn’t mean it. It’s just… it would have been my mum’s birthday today and I always went to put a stupid flower on her grave. And now… We are never getting out of here.”

Kelsie sometimes kept forgetting how young compared to the two of them the girl was. “We are going to get back home.” It was hard to sound convincing.

Julianna shook her head and waved towards the screen. “I can’t make sense of it. Any of it.”

“Didn’t you fix the air thing?” David asked in surprise.

“That was different, the atmospheric generator interface is based on chemical formulae. Anyone who knows the atomic number of oxygen could do that.”

David snorted. “I think that still leaves only you.”

Julianna chuckled in response. If anything, David was good at distracting her from the desperate crying. “Right, I forgot you two are as dumb as a sack of hammers and I have to think for three when you are around. But I don’t know how to solve this, it’s just too much information. I have three notebooks full of notes that make no sense just on that stupid alphabet. Those symbols aren’t letters, most of them are words or even expressions, others seem to connect the first ones together like some super-complicated prepositions, some are completely nonsensical, they might be names or pop-culture references or some stupid thing like that. I don’t know, I’m not a linguist.” She started sounding desperate again.

“Julianna, you are not alone.” Kelsie hugged her tighter. “Yes, we were stupid to leave you to drown in this river of shit on your own, but it ends now. From now on, we do this together. It’s never too late to start using your brain, right?” Even though it might hurt.