Notes:
Some of Haarald's lines are pretty much straight from canon. ): I couldn't find a way around all of it.
And yes, Ping and Mooshu are references to a certain movie.
Then:
Dr. Pei Shan-wei and Dr. Elias Proctor bent their heads together, going over the plan again.
"It should work," Shan-wei said.
Elias hummed unhappily. "I've never hacked a PICA before. To my knowledge nobody's hacked a PICA before. And there's no way to test it before we boot it up, which won't happen for several centuries yet. Do you have any idea how long that is? I can't guarantee that the PICA's systems will even be operative at that stage."
"You're the best cyberneticist in the world, Proctor, it'll work," Shan-wei said, putting a reassuring hand on her friend's shoulder.
"Maybe. Probably, even. But... I'd just feel better if there was some kind of failsafe, I guess. A personality backup that we can store in the RAPIER computer to re-upload to the PICA if the hack causes problems."
If it would set Proctor's mind at ease, it might be worth it, but there was a small problem. "Nimue's not on board, though. We have no way to make a new recording. Can you create a backup of the information that's loaded in the PICA right now?"
Proctor grimaced, then frowned. "No, I'd have to activate it to get complete access to some of the programming. Hmm." He tapped his chin, brow furrowed in deep thought. "But y'know, that might not be necessary. I've already hacked the PICA's basic systems fairly extensively to get at the time-limit code, so the security checks are pretty much nonexistent at this stage."
"Which means?"
"Since I can rig something to take a personality recording with what we have on board, and with the security on the PICA wide open, it doesn't have to be Lieutenant Commander Alban's"
Now:
Pei Shan-wei woke up.
"Personality re-initialization complete," said an emotionless voice.
She was in a dark, cavernous room, from what she could see. Native rock, so she was planetside, but the last thing she remembered was having Elias fit her with the jerry-rigged recording device. What was she doing in a cave-
It all hit her in an instant. She felt herself go cold and breathless.
A holovid flickered into life. Her husband appeared, but Kua-yung looked older, wearier than the last time she'd seen him. "Hello Nimue," he began.
She cried then, silent tears of loss for her dead husband as his ghost spoke to a young woman who would never wake up again. For some reason Nimue's personality hadn't loaded properly, and the RAPIER computer had followed its instructions and executed the backup plan. The backup plan she'd never gotten around to telling Kua-yung about.
She made herself listen through her grief to the events that had happened after she'd been recorded - the Alexandria Enclave, her own death by Langhorne's orders, all of it. By the time Kua-yung finished, she had herself back under control. Unless something drastic had happened to the theocracy on Safehold in the passing centuries, she had a lot of work ahead of her.
Something was starting to change, she found. That was to say, the Church of God Awaiting was becoming corrupt. Even a cursory study of the orbiting SNARC platforms' remotes' recordings proved that. Not as corrupt as the Harchong empire though. And Charis seemed to be the place to be for pushing the boundaries. Of course, those were Church boundaries they were pushing, and the Church would be pushing back sometime soon.
She pored over the recordings, learning the political lay of the land, and made her decision.
"The seijin and.. companions, Your Majesty," the chamberlain announced the three of them to the King and Bishop Staynair.
King Haarahld Arhmakh and Bishop Maikel Staynair faced the odd trio that had saved Cayleb's life from a group of assassins. "A seijin, indeed?" King Haarahld said musingly.
"Your Majesty," she bowed courteously. To her right, the young teenaged boy started to go automatically into a prostration, only to have his slightly-older sister yank him back up even as she dipped a bow (instead of a courtesy) and scowled slightly at the bishop.
"It is an honour to meet you," she continued smoothly, ignoring the teens' antics.
"I am told your name is... Hua?"
"Hua Mulan, your majesty," she said. Which went over much better than her real name. After all, introducing herself as 'Pei Shan-wei, Fallen Angel and Mother of Lies' would be a bit of a mouthful. If Langhorne weren't already dead she'd gladly have throttled the bastard. "These are Ping," she indicated the scowling girl, "and her brother, Mooshu." The two had been entirely accidental additions to her travels, but there was no way she could have stood by and done nothing. Although in a way it had potential - neither Ping nor Mooshu were under any illusions about the goodness of the nobility or the Church, and as soon as the two learned to curb their tongues better, Mulan would start introducing them slowly to the truth behind Safehold. Now if only Ping could avoid getting into trouble with the clergy.
"Your siblings?"
"No, merely fellow travelers."
"I'm Seijin Mulan's apprentice!" Ping burst out.
"You can't be her apprentice, you're a girl," Mooshu pointed out, scowling. "I'm her apprentice."
"So? Mulan's a girl. That means you can't be her apprentice." Ping smirked.
Hua Mulan took a deep breath and cut the two off before their long-standing argument could escalate. "Enough! Ping, Mooshu. Wait for me outside."
"But!" they chorused.
"Out!"
Dejectedly, the two teens trooped out.
"I apologize, your majesty, they are unused to formal audiences" Mulan said, torn between resignation and amusement. "Although I must admit it sets my mind at ease."
"At ease? Why so?" King Haarahld asked, schooling his features to squash the incipient amusement.
"Because we have all left our weapons outside, which means that the two armed guardsmen behind the screen - Sergeant Haarpar and Sergeant Gahrdaner, I believe - would have posed a considerable danger to them."
Haarahld, Staynair, and even the chamberlain, Pawel, reacted with quickly controlled shock, and the air grew tense. Pawel's hand was on the dagger at his hip, and he looked about an instant away from drawing, but Haarahld shook his head sharply. "No, Pawel." The tension subsided a bit as Haarahld scrutinized the absurdly tall Harchongese woman who had saved his son's life, claimed to be a seijin, and travelled with two squabbling Harchongese youngsters. She met his gaze squarely, evenly. Calmly.
King Haarahld had a chair brought over so that she might be seated. Seijin or otherwise, Hua Mulan was a mystery that Haarahld was looking forward to getting to the bottom of.