TheAmishPirate

Breathless Dead

It only lasted a moment. But, nowhere did it say that surprises had to last long to touch a heart. Or a head, as the case may be. Dolce’s eyes widened, and a knot of tension worked its way down, down, down, leaving behind a wearied, but warm, blob of wool. “Thank you,” he said with a grateful little smile, and didn’t he wish all the more he knew what sort of treat Iskarot might like?

Vasilia had slightly less gratitude or hypothetical treats to give. “That’s hardly fair, isn’t it? We don’t even know if any such marriages exist, and we’ve no useful means of finding out.” She did not glare at Aphrodite. Deafening, the way she did not glare. “Our journey is dangerous enough without going on a wild goose chase around the galaxy. Every day we delay is another day the Armada might find us and swat us out of the skies.” So you see? There was no sense at all to searching for something that would they definitely never find, and so, logically, the only thing to do was to press forward and forget any of this ever happened.

“Actually...”

It was, perhaps, the worst thing she could’ve heard Dolce say.

“If there is someone out there I’ve unintentionally married, and they do remember me, then won’t Aphrodite put them in our path sooner or later?”

Vasilia decided to stop breathing. The ice in her chest left no room for air anyway.

Fellowship: The Heart

Caranadir would not have the time or patience to argue with a mouse who insisted on hurling gasoline into a raging fire. The moment the way was clear, he lifted her clear off the ground and took a sprinting leap for the train-egg.

I can’t leave her behind. I won’t let her down again. Not again.

Caranadir would not understand what had gone wrong. Because it couldn’t have gone wrong. Everything had been designed to an exactness bordering on the unreasonable. The station collapsed around them. The station couldn’t be collapsing. They were in terrible danger. Everything was according to plan.

It begged me to help. I didn’t listen. It was scared. I killed it.

Caranadir would not wrap their arms around Ailee, and pull her close until the world got quiet again.

Jackdaw would.

Breathless Dead

“Yes, Mister Dolce.” Vasilia ground out through a gritted smile. “We’re all rather busy here, so please. If you would. Tell the good Hermetician you were joking.”

Dolce blinked away some visions of deeply unprofessional social dynamics, and unfortunately found himself precisely where he’d been a moment ago. “Well. I would, yes, I would. Very much love to say that...”

“And what. Exactly. Is. Stopping you?”

He took the longest breath of his life. “I don’t know-”

“How can you not know?!"

“It’s - oh. No. Please, it’s, it’s a little complicated, but-”

“I fail to see how it’s complicated, dear. Either you tell me you’re joking, or you tell me who you’ve failed to introduce me to. Which is it?”

“I don’t know if I’ve married anyone else!”

Divine fury crashed into incomprehensible chaos, and the entire room lurched to a screeching halt. “You...what?” It was Vasilia’s turn to be at a loss for words. “How could you not know you’ve married someone? I would think that would be hard to miss.”

“It wasn’t covered in our education. None of it was. We were never taught anything about courtship, or marrying, or harems, or anything of the sort. I,” He stared straight through the deck, to the distant, confusing past. “I never thought of it before you brought it up, but, I’ve had a long service with the Starsong. I only met you partway through. And, I know now there are many ways to court and marry, but. There was such a long time before, I met so many people...it’s entirely possible somebody married me, and I would never have known.” To think; you could marry the love of your life, begin a bright new chapter together, and then wake up one day and they were just. Gone. Without ever honoring the oaths you swore together. He shivered and hugged himself tightly. Horrible. Simply, horrible to think about. “It was never anything to think about before. You came of age, you had your assigned partner, and that was that.”

Vasilia fell back into her chair. The motion would’ve been more graceful had she been stumbling drunk. “Dolce.” She said slowly. “Did you have an...’assigned partner?’”

“Oh! Oh no, no, of course not. ‘The chef’s love is to be his art, and his love will be complete in service.’” He recited from memory. “That’s how it was for me, and the chef before me, and all the chefs before us.”

“Right. Of course.” There was. Entirely too much to unpack there, in a conversation already bursting at the seams. “Now we just have to figure out if you ever...married somebody on accident.”

“It would be closer to unintentionally marrying someone, but, yes.”

“Unintentionally married. Why not?” She closed her eyes, and quietly explored a steady path to some rather high numbers. “Aphrodite?” She finally said without looking. “On the quite likely chance you’re standing there, would you care to weigh in on the question?”

Breathless Dead

The distant roar of the engines, filtered through a hundred rooms and five decks, filled the room with a low, droning hum. So quiet, so omnipresent, you could forget that your every waking moment was bathed in the power and fury of a star. Except, in these moments when all else was quiet, and there was room to really appreciate the constant peril of your position.

It was Vasilia who spoke first. Lips straining not to curl any higher. “Well, Dolce? Don’t leave the Hermetician waiting.~”

A jolt ran through him from ear to toe, before finding a nice spot in his belly to settle. Did she..? Was she..? Oh, oh dear. Oh no. He looked to her, then to Iskarot, then back to her, then back to Iskarot, and then to the floor as room seemed to pitch and turn in the corners of his vision. A heat that had been building in his face ran out of room to grow, so it traveled southward until it met its new neighbor; that little spark of Zeus’ in his stomach. And all at once they were everywhere, fraying his nerves and burning his blood and his poor heart tried so, so hard to keep up, it drowned out even the sound of the engine. He...he needed to sit, and - and somehow, he already was sitting, which wasn’t quite right at all. He ought to be standing, but maybe it was okay to sit? Just this once? Maybe if he sat properly, that’d be good enough. Sit up, back straight, deep breaths, hands folded, oh no, was it right thumb over left? That didn’t feel right. Left over right? No, no, that wasn’t right either. And now he was out of thumbs! Oh, which was it, which was it-

*ahem!*

Vasilia politely concealed her sudden coughing fit behind a hand. “Aherm, ah, excuse me. You were saying?”

Dolce shot to attention, hands flitting behind his back where they could fidget in peace. “Y-yes, erm, well, the, the question at hand, you know,” every single word was the worst word he’d ever said in his entire life, ever. “See, I, there’s the matter of, well...”

He took a deep, bracing breath.

“...what, precisely, qualifies as a harem?”

And Vasilia’s cough vanished.

Breathless Dead

Dolce studied the drawing of their potential crew. His attentions wavered between intense scrutiny and downright forgetfulness, tracing the shape of a leg as he silently mouthed sums and figures, only to return to that spot moments later. Every inch was scrutinized thrice over, at a minimum, before he asked, “Are we sure this is what we want?”

Vasilia quirked an eyebrow. “Are we?”

“Ah. There could be a slightly more civilized planet along the way that we could visit, and still stop Birmingham from destroying their world. We should not feel as though we are forced to choose them.”

Her smirking gaze bore down on him. Unchanged.

Dolce cleared his throat quietly. “The...less familiar with the rest of the galaxy they are, there’s just so much room for things to get messy. Surely, we would want to get a crew as easily as we can, yes? We wouldn’t want to borrow any more trouble.”

Vasilia slowly closed her eyes. Pondered this wisdom. Let her mind take in the realm of the possible, the impossible, and all that lay in-between. And said, “Are you worried they’ll try to marry you off again?”

“It was one time!”

“Oh, if you say so.”

“Pardon?”

“Anyway, I’m positive it will be just fine. I’ll duel any suitors for your honor, of course.”

Dolce replied with a most expressive series of squeaking bleats, slightly muffled as he buried his face in his hands.

“I believe what my Chef Mate is trying to say,” Vasilia translated helpfully. “Is that they will do nicely.”

Breathless Dead

“Redana? Recruiting? Ugh, no thank you.” Vasilia pulled a sour face. “We’ve enough trouble already with the hoplites, can you imagine five hundred of them? We’d have a mutiny or an example on our hands, and neither helps us go any faster.” She sank deeper into her chair, posture crumbling under the weight of a thousand unjust slights. “I can’t fight my own crew every step of the way. Unity, expertise, rhythm, we can work all of that out, but I simply can’t do a thing if they’ve already decided to be difficult.”

“If it were up to me,” Dolce tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Everybody who’s here would want to be here. In space, on a long trip, on this trip, with these people...” He looked out into the dreaming distance, and smiled at what he saw. “They ought to want to be here.”

Fellowship: The Heart

Carinadir stood where he fell; on his feet, holding his staff, just out of reach of wire and rubble. The roof shook. Speakers screeched. And he looked down his nose at his own handiwork. “What is there to tell, that I don’t already know?”

He waved a hand to his help. “Fool, the lever, if you will?”

Breathless Dead

”Gods, we need a crew.” Vasilia sighed, poking listlessly at the last roll on her plate. “A full, loyal crew, not just...whoever we happen to pick up on the next planet. It’s a miracle we’ve gotten this far with, what, fourteen? And a half? And nobody’s dropped dead at their post or tried to knife someone for being inexcusably chipper.”

Dolce returned to his seat. Coincidentally, the contents of their spread for this working lunch had shifted again, and a new selection of food and drinks lay closest to Iskarot. He’d not gone for anything yet, and there were only so many dishes prepared, but Dolce was nothing if not persistent. And patient. “Are there planets with that many people looking for work?” He wrinkled his nose thoughtfully, one eye on the Hermetician. Always. “I can’t remember the last time we had to outfit an entire ship from scratch.”

“Never in my tenure, at least. And even if we found such a place, it’s back to the same problem; how would we pay them? We certainly didn’t have any treasure to bring. So unless a previous owner misplaced theirs somewhere on this ship...recently half-submerged...belonging to Lord Hades...”

A speculative silence fell over the three.

“...we should ask Alexa when she gets back.”

“Good idea, dear.”

Breathless Dead

Vasilia was alone on the bridge.

Redana had been sent to the infirmary. Epestia had been allowed to accompany her. Liu Ban had been given to the Hermetician for stabilization, and a more permanent residence. Alexa had been sent to her quarters. The hoplites had been dismissed to find their next complaint. And Dolce needed a moment.

Not one of them would come to join her. Dolce would return, yes. Eventually. He swore an oath before the gods that he would. No matter what happened. No matter who was there to greet him.

Vasilia was alone on the bridge. And alone she would remain.

***********************************************************

It wasn’t a far distance. Not more than a foot from hand to doorhandle by his eyes. If speed was of the essence, he could clear it in under a quarter of a second without effort. With effort, a tenth. With manners, a half. He had not yet beaten the full second in either his attempts or his retreats, nevermind the time wasted between them. He could calculate the full shameful statistic if he wanted to: “Time wasted hovering uselessly outside the bridge.”

He reached for the door. He slowed to a stop. But his hand could not stay still.

He drew the hand back.

Two hundred, fifty four seconds, and eighty-nine hundreths.

Dolce tore his eyes from the unyielding door and slunk silently to the kitchens. Pots would need cleaning. Meats set to thawing. Ration packs replenished. Always more to do there, and mealtimes looming in the distance.

He ought to know better than to waste precious time.

Breathless Dead

Captain Vasilia sprang to the fore, the report of her rifle ringing over the melee like a clap of thunder. “Spears up! To me, to me!”

They couldn’t move to defend Alexa. That would forfeit the battle before it’d begun. To beat a Kaori PredatorPhalanx, you had to first fight them on your own terms. Don’t run. Don’t approach. Don’t play their game. If all you could carve out was a tiny patch of land, then you held that miserable ground for all you were worth, and you made them come to you. The tides of shadow saw her mustering a defense. As one, they descended on her.

And she paid them no mind. She had a shadow of her own.

To her back, to her flank, sabre and spear rattled a blinding staccato. The winds surrounding her changed pitch and pace, improvising complex patterns on the spot without a whisper of a word, and it mattered not one whit. Fifteen shadows would raise their spears, and he could guess the real strike every time.

“Gah!”

She winced as a spear grazed her side, before the haft was chopped clean in two, and the wind carried a whispering, “Apologies!”

Well! He was still full from lunch! You can’t expect him to be full steam right away. Nine out of ten times was more than enough besides.

For to beat a Kaori Predator Phalanx, you had to second attack the movement, not the shadows. This was the whole reason she suggested the innards of this machine to have their lunch. Like clockwork, she fired shot after shot into the surrounding gearwork. Bolts and valves were picked off with expert precision, sending gouts of flame through the air, and gears to tumble and roll through the battlefield. The machine mind groaned all around them, threatening to send an avalanche of its own against the Kaori.

The Predator Phalanx required deeply practiced, coordinated movement. Each owl needed to know and trust every other owl, such that they could only dip their wings and a dozen comrades would know their next five moves. Not perfectly, but close enough to count. Throw too many variables into the field, limit the routes severely enough, and, well, they were only mortal. Someone, somewhere, would make a mistake. Two lines would cross, and seconds would be wasted getting back in position. One owl would feint, and find no follow-up where she expected it. Inefficiencies beget inefficiencies. Mistakes beget mistakes. The openings grow wider. Daylight lifts the shadows, and a hundred owls become a scant twenty. Chaos - their greatest weapon - was also their greatest weakness.

A good plan, but it meant nothing if they could not hold their ground for long enough.

“If you have any goodbyes for your brainchild, Liu Ban, say them quickly!” She smoothly loaded another shot and took aim at a particularly corroded steam valve. And frowned when no voice answered back.

“...Liu Ban?”