A/N: Get ready for a short chapter a-comin' up. I think it counts as ironic that one of the shortest chapter deals with the single longest span of time contained in a single bit.
But fear not! The climactical chapter will very soon follow, then an epilogue, and then… it's over? Weird. I never thought it really /would/ end.
And guess what? There's a ref to the city wherein I was born! Awww…
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
To Beka's relief, the Maru's small crew never saw the T'dalimar after Tyr left in the two weeks before the mission. To her chagrin, they were forced to dodge inquisitive Jaguars who had heard rumors of the human mediator and her Nietzschean bodyguard at El Dorado. Tyr's false identifications were skillfully designed; the Nietzschean hunters were able to track them only by accounts given by shopkeepers and passer-bys.
They stayed another day at Seneschal, shopping for supplies like fresh coffee, foodstuffs, and Sparky Cola. They left when Trance casually mentioned that a bunch of Nietzscheans had docked, supposedly looking for Tristan d'Anconia and Isolde Francon. Within the hour, they had slipped away to the quieter Phaiakian system, possessing a single inhabited planet, unimportant to empire-builders and major traders but peaceful and self-sufficient. There was a small orbital habitat, Skheria Island, for a few natives but mostly the small merchants who stayed within the sector. Beka happened upon a tiny shop where a broken-faced Umbrite sold real, freshly-made chocolate, grown and processed on the system's populated world. She wondered how long it would be before an enterprising businessperson discovered and exploited this rare diamond in the rough.
One day, Trance suggested that they leave Skheria Island in case the Jaguar traced them there. She seemed strangely urgent that the ambitious Nietzscheans not stumble upon this prosperous and safe little planet, so Beka conceded. Harper begged that they visit the world itself before they vacated the system, and although Beka generally hated the unpredictable weather, polluted and unstable environments, and limitations of life planetside, she agreed.
When they arrived, they left the city, and Beka thought she could see why Harper had been so eager to see the place. A wide, blue-grey ocean rolled endlessly under a cloudless sky and golden sun, and trees of all sorts spread their green canopies outside the city limits. She might've expected a sad wistfulness from her engineer, for the world was a striking recollection of Earth before the Fall, back when humanity was proud to call it home.
Instead, he was energetic and more talkative even than Trance the entire time. He climbed a tree with large, serrated leaves and exclaimed that he could see for miles. He teased Beka about her fear of heights as a space pilot, to which she replied that it wasn't the height she feared but that the gravity and the long way until the ground was what she didn't like. Trance picked over a dozen rainbow-hued flowers, and the pollen made Beka sneeze. After much persuading, Trance and Harper even convinced their captain to try a small, wild pear from what looked to be an abandoned orchard. She swore that if she contracted some kind of parasite from the fruit, she would never set foot on a planet again.
They slipped to Des Moines Drift, a community with a thriving order of Wayist monks and acolytes, where they were to receive the official request from Aricia's staff to bring supplies to her personal estate. Des Moines was well below the Jaguar Pride's radar and outside their sphere of influence as a place for the spiritually-minded, so they had a few days to review the list included in the request. They were general items—small munitions, fabrics, blank flexis, and others easily located and purchased without the rousing of local suspicion.
Beka asked any of the monks if they had received news of a group of Wayists providing relief to plague victims on a Dragan slave world. They informed her that although the Nietzscheans resented what they viewed as unnecessary pampering of their slaves, they tolerated the Wayist presence, so the human population would not be decimated—and therefore become useless as a labor pool. They assured her that the mission was proceeding peacefully and successfully but couldn't give her even an estimate as to when her crewmate would return.
Beka wished Rev were there so she could confide in him about her confused emotions: her alternate apprehension and desire to see Tyr again. He wouldn't condemn or judge her for falling for—and letting onboard—someone she barely knew, a Nietzschean at that. The thing about Rev, she realized, wasn't that he doled out advice like a talk-show therapist but rather that he guided her through the gamut of her own turmoil until she knew what was right for /her/.
She missed that, but she found herself growing even closer to her reduced crew. Trance especially was still mysterious, but everything important about her Beka felt she knew: her compassion, good-will, and love for all living things. She saw Harper bonding with the purple pixie as well and thought with a smile that opposites must truly attract. The girl's innocent and sweet nature would undoubtedly have a good effect on the emotional scars the young man carried with him.
Beka actually spotted a Jaguar Nietzschean showing a flexi with her picture on it to a Wayist monk, who fortunately feigned ignorance, the day she decided to depart from the drift. The final days before the extraction, they practiced their mission in the docking bays of Lexington Drift—a place with unpleasant memories of Bobby Jensen but also was notoriously hostile toward Nietzscheans. Jaguars would have to be very determined to venture onto Lexington in small numbers, and the entire system would know of their coming at least a day in advance if they brought a fleet.
Mostly her crew practiced the extraction itself, but when they interacted with drift inhabitants, Beka practiced Aricia. Part of her didn't like treating people like the unworthy dirt under her feet, but she had to admit that it was nice to hold a little power, especially over cowards who would steal the shirt off the back of a girl like Trance if they could. It also made her laugh—she wasn't rich or a powerful political figure, but if she acted like one, she was treated as one. That said, she ultimately decided that she would rather be a little guy and respected than a ruler affectionately described by her subjects and friends alike as the Demoness.
In stories, the day of the extraction would've dawned bright and clear or cloudy and drizzling, depending on the tale's end. On a drift, though, days never dawned; someone just turned up the lights. Beka liked that—not entrusting her mood to chance differences in the weather. She had forbidden Harper from drinking himself into a hangover and all of them from staying up too late… not that she had slept much, but at least her body was able to rest, even if her mind wasn't.
Harper was a little grumpy, but breakfast with a side of Sparky perked him right up. Beka's stomach belt jumpy, but she forced down a full meal of coffee, pancakes, and bacon. Trance seemed almost to vibrate with energy, though whether she was excited, nervous, or both, Beka couldn't tell.
When they boarded the Maru, Beka transferred command to Harper, then deftly manipulated the ship's computer banks, so no one would learn that he had only recently acquired command capabilities. As soon as they entered, Trance asked Beka if she could go check on her plants really fast. Beka shrugged and let her go look in on her babies before she joined them in the cockpit. Only a few minutes passed, and then Trance took her station the captain for the day.
Grimacing, Beka hid herself in the dank cargo pod, in a subtly-hidden enclosure usually reserved for smuggled goods. She hated to think that traces of Flash probably still remained on the walls. In almost complete darkness, Beka felt the jolt of the Maru detaching from the dock, then her engines come to life and lift the ship out the hangar. Harper handled her ship more than competently, but Beka could feel tiny lurches that bespoke less than perfectly expert handling that only a person who'd spent years on the ship would notice.
The slip route was rather long but well-traveled enough that a first-time slip pilot had a good chance of successfully negotiating it. Harper was surprisingly good at slip-piloting for someone who'd grown up and spent the majority of his life on a planet. Their first meeting was the first time he'd ever been more than two stories off the ground. Most people restricted to planets for the first decade plus of their lives never really got the feel for slip-piloting, but Harper had been intent to leave Earth for good, and that meant learning to live in space.
/Not that he comes close to the slipstream mastery of a Valentine/, she thought with a laugh. Then she felt the ship leave the slipstream and shift back into normal space. She couldn't recall her own first slip, but she did remember Harper's. Hearing about slipstream was never enough to prepare a person for that first slip. The skinny, blond kid's eyes were bulging, and after he shook himself back to life, had gulped and chuckled nervously that was they said was true—slipstream wasn't the only way to travel faster than light, just the only way.
Beka couldn't hear the port authority clear Harper to land, but she felt he slip slow down and stop, then the clamp of the dock on the Maru's hull. A timer had just started, one that would end with a reunion with Tyr and rendez-vous with the Duchess of the Damned… if everything went well.
But fear not! The climactical chapter will very soon follow, then an epilogue, and then… it's over? Weird. I never thought it really /would/ end.
And guess what? There's a ref to the city wherein I was born! Awww…
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
To Beka's relief, the Maru's small crew never saw the T'dalimar after Tyr left in the two weeks before the mission. To her chagrin, they were forced to dodge inquisitive Jaguars who had heard rumors of the human mediator and her Nietzschean bodyguard at El Dorado. Tyr's false identifications were skillfully designed; the Nietzschean hunters were able to track them only by accounts given by shopkeepers and passer-bys.
They stayed another day at Seneschal, shopping for supplies like fresh coffee, foodstuffs, and Sparky Cola. They left when Trance casually mentioned that a bunch of Nietzscheans had docked, supposedly looking for Tristan d'Anconia and Isolde Francon. Within the hour, they had slipped away to the quieter Phaiakian system, possessing a single inhabited planet, unimportant to empire-builders and major traders but peaceful and self-sufficient. There was a small orbital habitat, Skheria Island, for a few natives but mostly the small merchants who stayed within the sector. Beka happened upon a tiny shop where a broken-faced Umbrite sold real, freshly-made chocolate, grown and processed on the system's populated world. She wondered how long it would be before an enterprising businessperson discovered and exploited this rare diamond in the rough.
One day, Trance suggested that they leave Skheria Island in case the Jaguar traced them there. She seemed strangely urgent that the ambitious Nietzscheans not stumble upon this prosperous and safe little planet, so Beka conceded. Harper begged that they visit the world itself before they vacated the system, and although Beka generally hated the unpredictable weather, polluted and unstable environments, and limitations of life planetside, she agreed.
When they arrived, they left the city, and Beka thought she could see why Harper had been so eager to see the place. A wide, blue-grey ocean rolled endlessly under a cloudless sky and golden sun, and trees of all sorts spread their green canopies outside the city limits. She might've expected a sad wistfulness from her engineer, for the world was a striking recollection of Earth before the Fall, back when humanity was proud to call it home.
Instead, he was energetic and more talkative even than Trance the entire time. He climbed a tree with large, serrated leaves and exclaimed that he could see for miles. He teased Beka about her fear of heights as a space pilot, to which she replied that it wasn't the height she feared but that the gravity and the long way until the ground was what she didn't like. Trance picked over a dozen rainbow-hued flowers, and the pollen made Beka sneeze. After much persuading, Trance and Harper even convinced their captain to try a small, wild pear from what looked to be an abandoned orchard. She swore that if she contracted some kind of parasite from the fruit, she would never set foot on a planet again.
They slipped to Des Moines Drift, a community with a thriving order of Wayist monks and acolytes, where they were to receive the official request from Aricia's staff to bring supplies to her personal estate. Des Moines was well below the Jaguar Pride's radar and outside their sphere of influence as a place for the spiritually-minded, so they had a few days to review the list included in the request. They were general items—small munitions, fabrics, blank flexis, and others easily located and purchased without the rousing of local suspicion.
Beka asked any of the monks if they had received news of a group of Wayists providing relief to plague victims on a Dragan slave world. They informed her that although the Nietzscheans resented what they viewed as unnecessary pampering of their slaves, they tolerated the Wayist presence, so the human population would not be decimated—and therefore become useless as a labor pool. They assured her that the mission was proceeding peacefully and successfully but couldn't give her even an estimate as to when her crewmate would return.
Beka wished Rev were there so she could confide in him about her confused emotions: her alternate apprehension and desire to see Tyr again. He wouldn't condemn or judge her for falling for—and letting onboard—someone she barely knew, a Nietzschean at that. The thing about Rev, she realized, wasn't that he doled out advice like a talk-show therapist but rather that he guided her through the gamut of her own turmoil until she knew what was right for /her/.
She missed that, but she found herself growing even closer to her reduced crew. Trance especially was still mysterious, but everything important about her Beka felt she knew: her compassion, good-will, and love for all living things. She saw Harper bonding with the purple pixie as well and thought with a smile that opposites must truly attract. The girl's innocent and sweet nature would undoubtedly have a good effect on the emotional scars the young man carried with him.
Beka actually spotted a Jaguar Nietzschean showing a flexi with her picture on it to a Wayist monk, who fortunately feigned ignorance, the day she decided to depart from the drift. The final days before the extraction, they practiced their mission in the docking bays of Lexington Drift—a place with unpleasant memories of Bobby Jensen but also was notoriously hostile toward Nietzscheans. Jaguars would have to be very determined to venture onto Lexington in small numbers, and the entire system would know of their coming at least a day in advance if they brought a fleet.
Mostly her crew practiced the extraction itself, but when they interacted with drift inhabitants, Beka practiced Aricia. Part of her didn't like treating people like the unworthy dirt under her feet, but she had to admit that it was nice to hold a little power, especially over cowards who would steal the shirt off the back of a girl like Trance if they could. It also made her laugh—she wasn't rich or a powerful political figure, but if she acted like one, she was treated as one. That said, she ultimately decided that she would rather be a little guy and respected than a ruler affectionately described by her subjects and friends alike as the Demoness.
In stories, the day of the extraction would've dawned bright and clear or cloudy and drizzling, depending on the tale's end. On a drift, though, days never dawned; someone just turned up the lights. Beka liked that—not entrusting her mood to chance differences in the weather. She had forbidden Harper from drinking himself into a hangover and all of them from staying up too late… not that she had slept much, but at least her body was able to rest, even if her mind wasn't.
Harper was a little grumpy, but breakfast with a side of Sparky perked him right up. Beka's stomach belt jumpy, but she forced down a full meal of coffee, pancakes, and bacon. Trance seemed almost to vibrate with energy, though whether she was excited, nervous, or both, Beka couldn't tell.
When they boarded the Maru, Beka transferred command to Harper, then deftly manipulated the ship's computer banks, so no one would learn that he had only recently acquired command capabilities. As soon as they entered, Trance asked Beka if she could go check on her plants really fast. Beka shrugged and let her go look in on her babies before she joined them in the cockpit. Only a few minutes passed, and then Trance took her station the captain for the day.
Grimacing, Beka hid herself in the dank cargo pod, in a subtly-hidden enclosure usually reserved for smuggled goods. She hated to think that traces of Flash probably still remained on the walls. In almost complete darkness, Beka felt the jolt of the Maru detaching from the dock, then her engines come to life and lift the ship out the hangar. Harper handled her ship more than competently, but Beka could feel tiny lurches that bespoke less than perfectly expert handling that only a person who'd spent years on the ship would notice.
The slip route was rather long but well-traveled enough that a first-time slip pilot had a good chance of successfully negotiating it. Harper was surprisingly good at slip-piloting for someone who'd grown up and spent the majority of his life on a planet. Their first meeting was the first time he'd ever been more than two stories off the ground. Most people restricted to planets for the first decade plus of their lives never really got the feel for slip-piloting, but Harper had been intent to leave Earth for good, and that meant learning to live in space.
/Not that he comes close to the slipstream mastery of a Valentine/, she thought with a laugh. Then she felt the ship leave the slipstream and shift back into normal space. She couldn't recall her own first slip, but she did remember Harper's. Hearing about slipstream was never enough to prepare a person for that first slip. The skinny, blond kid's eyes were bulging, and after he shook himself back to life, had gulped and chuckled nervously that was they said was true—slipstream wasn't the only way to travel faster than light, just the only way.
Beka couldn't hear the port authority clear Harper to land, but she felt he slip slow down and stop, then the clamp of the dock on the Maru's hull. A timer had just started, one that would end with a reunion with Tyr and rendez-vous with the Duchess of the Damned… if everything went well.