A/N: Chap 2 review responses are in my forums as normal. Thanks all for reading. This is the last chapter before they reach land. I have additional notes at the bottom regarding some of the ideas touched on in this chapter.
Chapter Three: Not Quite the Pirates of Penzance
During one of her few college classes before the war, Taylor read Sartre. She didn't care for him, really. But she recalled his assertion that hell was other people. Sartre had no idea what he was talking about. Hell was an absence of toilet paper. Hell was being stuck on a leaky wooden boat with fifty unwashed men without tampons or showers or shampoo.
Not since she was a fifteen-year-old Birdcage fugitive had Taylor Hebert wanted to cut off her hair as badly as she did now. After almost two weeks without a good shampooing, it felt like she was wearing a filthy, oily, stinky mop on her head.
She managed sponge baths using water from her vaporator, though those did nothing for the body odor. But at the least she was able to scrub herself. But a little water in her hair wasn't enough to actually make it clean. She didn't even have access to a comb, so she had to use her fingers. Her split ends had become hydras.
Her flight suit was so dirty it could almost stand up and walk on its own. For the past two nights, she took the risk of removing and trying her best to sponge the interior lining down at night before sleeping. The narrow cabin door didn't have a lock, per se, but it did have a fairly sturdy wooden lever that would give her a minute or two to wake if one of the constantly horny men on the ship tried to break in. He'd get an eye-full of her in her worn, now almost transparent underclothes, but then he'd get an eye-full of Force Lightning to follow it.
Maybe. She wasn't too sure about using her powers so openly. The entire situation was both surreal and confusing.
When she first woke in the cramped bunk and saw the old human man sitting on a chest just a few feet away, she had the strangest, most insane hope that she was home again. She ignored the faintly rancid smell of the ship and the strong musk of a barely-washed male body in close proximity and just assumed that somehow, she had crashed back on Earth, despite all evidence to the contrary, and that she was heading back to Seattle.
That hope weakened when the man spoke in a language she'd never heard before. That hope grew sick when she saw the only light in the cabin came from a candle in a bronzed lantern. It died entirely when he showed her a map of a world that bore no relation to her own.
The one ray of light was that the Common Tongue came to her as easily as Spanish, Russian, Japanese or Chinese. That's why she was able to understand the reason Ser Barristan asked her to stay in her cabin.
That lasted about three days before she had to go onto the deck of the ship or risk going mad.
What she encountered was a mass of half-dressed men on the verge of scurvy who stared at her with a mixture of fear, distrust, and unadulterated lust. She just filed it away as yet more evidence that this wasn't some fevered dream or play she'd stumbled into.
Only her eyes and the stories of her lightsaber made them hold back.
She stayed by Barristan not for protection, but to try and avoid having to hurt any of the other men. She could make her way around a modern sailboat if she had to. But this boat was nothing more than a collection of wood, rope and sweaty men. Her power would not help her sail it if she had to kill the crew.
Barristan Selmy was the sole exception to the men on board. She learned over the course of their language lessons that he was the equivalent of a Templar knight. He's sworn off women and wealth in return for duty, and felt no regrets for the choice. As far as the Force could tell, he didn't view her as an object of pleasure but rather as an opportunity to do good. He felt a great, overarching guilt over something in his past, and so moved about only with a desire to atone for that past sin.
Even knowing the language, it was difficult for her to express how much she appreciated him. If she'd been found by anyone else, she doubted her situation would be as good.
None of that, though, answered her most burning question: What were humans doing 10,000 light years from earth?
"Blood samples from an injured sailor are genetically similar, but...not," Taylor dictated into her helmet. The battery was running on solar alone now, and that would be gone soon unless she could deploy the panels. The flash memory, though, would be protected even without power. "They're human, but of a completely different genetic stock. It's almost like they're near-human, more than baseline human. But...they're close enough I could have a child with one. Parallel evolution? It's...impossible."
Except that wasn't true. The humans of Earth were not the first humans to evolve. Though it seemed impossible, humans evolved in the Corusca galaxy millions of years before the humans of Earth. Was it possible that these were transplanted Coruscanti humans? But even then, how? The galactic civilization never managed to bridge the technological gap necessary to transverse galaxies. Even in hyperspace, it would have taken a hundred thousand years for the humans of the Coruscanti galaxy to reach the Milky Way!
The mystery confused her, but it also excited her. Because it meant she wasn't alone! Even if these people were so primitive she had to shit and piss in a pail and dump it overboard in the morning, they had enough metallurgy that she could probably build a primitive molecular forge to replace the one lost in her ship. She just needed materials, time, and a safe location. It would take a few years, but it was doable.
Surely it wouldn't be that hard? Not if men like Barristan Selmy were in charge of the world.
The door knocking brought her to her feet. She moved behind the door, being clad only in very filthy, salt-stained undies, and opened the door when she felt Barristan in the Force behind it. "Yes?"
"Taylor, dress yourself, lass," he said urgently through the door. "A black sail is on the horizon and gaining quickly."
"A black sail?"
"A pirate ship. They mean to board us."
Pirates. And Taylor was the only woman on the ship. She didn't need too much imagination to know what the pirates would try to do to her. "I'll get ready."
Fighting back a wince at the sticky, cold sweat in the lining of her flight suit, Taylor pulled it on regardless. After a second's hesitation, she pulled on her helmet as well. If nothing else, some sunlight might charge it enough she could use the targeting reticule.
When she was dressed, she left her cabin and went quickly to the decks. The sense she got from the crew was no longer lust, but fear. The men were prepared to fight, but they were not actual fighting men. Only Barristan moved with any semblance of calm. She walked beside him.
"You have training in war," he said without preamble.
"Yes."
"Any experience?"
"Yes."
"Rare, for a woman to be a warrior."
"Less rare, where I'm from," Taylor said. "Our weapons made things like a person's sex less important."
She had the faceplate of her helmet up to make breathing and speaking easier, since she had no intention of burning the last of her battery pressurizing her suit. Even so, she could see the ship bearing down at them. It felt almost like a race of turtles, though. The one pirate ship definitely had an advantage with its larger and more numerous sails, but even so they weren't flying up on them. It took minutes to notice any close of the distance between them.
So, she had the pleasure of watching for an hour as the pirate ship grew closer, while the sailors around her grew more and more panicked.
"Odd. Ironborn," Barristan said when the ship grew close enough that they could make out a gold squid on the black sail. "That's the Kraken of House Greyjoy. Didn't know they plundered this far from home."
"Will they win?" Taylor asked.
Barristan looked around the deck, and only in that moment did he let a hint of his contempt for the crew show. "Without question. Even if we outnumbered them, we'd lose. These men have already lost in their mind. The Ironborn are savages, but they fight well on water."
Though she questioned the wisdom of it, she decided to remove her personal blaster. "This is a weapon," she told him. "Only I can use it. Think of it as a very, very powerful bow and arrow. When they get closer, I'm going to blow out their hull and sink her."
Barristan's eyes widened only a moment. "That thing is small to do what you claim."
"Barristan, imagine you've lived your entire life with only stone tools. You fight with stone and work with stone. Then suddenly you see a knight in full armor, astride a horse, with long sword. It would look almost like magic to you, don't you think?"
"Perhaps. That is a thing that makes my sword look like stone tools?"
"Barristan, this is a legion of soldiers with swords and armor compared to your one stone tool. Unfortunately, it won't last forever. It requires a special type of ammunition that I can't get here. I have fifty shots, and then I'm out forever."
"Fifty? So many?"
"For a single battle? It's a lot, I suppose. For the rest of my life? It's going to be a long time before I can get home."
With that, she stood and walked toward the aft castle. The captain glared at her. "What are you doing here, witch?"
"Saving your ship," Taylor said bluntly. She pulled her face mask down and used her gauntlet to activate the combat targeting system. She reached into the accessory pouch of the holster and removed the extendable stock. As good as she was, the ship was rocking with heavy waves and the stock would help steady her.
The pirate ship grew closer and closer. She could see the crew of the ship now through the sight of her weapon—a collection of the ugliest, meanest-looking men she'd ever seen. And atop a forecastle on the large war ship stood the eager pirate captain himself.
Taylor un-safed the blaster and dialed the output to heavy discharge. Each shot would burn through three separate charges of Tibanna gas. She leaned over the railing of the smaller cog's aft castle to steady herself, set the targeting reticule in her helmet's HUD system on the pirate ship's battering ram. The pirate ship grew close enough that they were able to fire a few arrows. None hit the crew, but with them closing Taylor saw what looked like a catapult on the deck. That might be enough to take out the main mast, and if that happened they were done.
She exhaled, drew on the Force, and pulled the trigger. A single overpowered bolt of super-excited participles streaked between the two ships like a concentrated flash of red lightning. The steel-tipped battering ram of the pirate ship exploded. The impact sent the stunned captain to his knees and even knocked one of the pirates overboard. Taylor didn't give them time to recover, though. She fired a second time right into the smoking crater her first shot made. This shot blasted apart the prow of the ship entirely, and that was all it took.
The once smooth prow reverted from a knife slicing through water to a cup catching it, causing the ship to slow so quickly that men were thrown forward and the main mast cracked with a loud thunderous boom before collapsing forward. The main black sail began to unfurl and fall as the whole craft took on water and bowed forward from the mortal blow.
Taylor deactivated her weapons system, powered down her helmet and gauntlet, and safed her blaster. When she turned, it was to see the captain and the entire crew staring at her in open shock.
"What? You've never seen a woman hurt a man's pride before?"
Groleo looked positively confused for a moment before, finally, he accepted that he could laugh. He did so then, a bellowing, relieved laugh. The rest of the crew followed suit while Taylor removed her extendable stock and stored the weapon back in its holster.
"Let me know if any more pirates come by," she called over her shoulder, to the now raucous, relieved laughter of the crew.
At least now they weren't just looking at her as a quick fuck or a black-eyed witch anymore.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
That night, just a few days before reaching their destination, Taylor and Barristan sat in his cramped quarters eating beans and salted pork, with a thin crust of old bread. The meal was utterly devoid of flavor, much like most of their meals, but it at least was filling and let her preserve her emergency rations.
The two had not spoken since the pirate ship, but she knew he was watching her and working things out.
She decided to broach the unspoken topic to make it easier for him. "I'm a very good judge of character," she said into the silence. "Even if you hadn't been so helpful and generous to me, Barristan, I would trust you. I believe you are a good, honorable man. You deserve to know the truth, and you've more than earned the right to ask what you will."
Rather than speak immediately, he used his bread to sop up the rest of his meal and regarded her as chewed. He finished by swigging down his small wooden cup of ale. "I have more than a few questions," he admitted. "The problem is knowing how best to ask them. That weapon of yours...it truly looked like magic. As if you carried dragon's fire in your hand."
"It's a tool," Taylor said. "I made it myself, but others could have made it as well. It isn't magic but knowledge that makes it so powerful."
"You said this wasn't your land. What land are you from?"
"I'm not from any land on this world."
"World? You claim to be from heaven, then?"
Taylor found herself struggling to try and explain. "Barristan, do you know what stars are? The stars in the night sky?"
"No one knows for sure," the old knight said. "Some say they are the souls of the dear departed. Others that they are the tears of the Mother, shed for all the lost children in the world."
"That's...actually nice," Taylor admitted. "But wrong. Most stars in the sky are just like the sun. Huge balls of fire burning so bright that they can bring life to worlds like this."
"You know this how?"
"Because three weeks ago, I was flying a ship among them. A ship that could rise up through the air and leave a world entirely. There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on a beach, and many of them have worlds just like this one. I came from another world, that circled another star, so far away that the light I was born under won't reach this world for ten-thousand years."
Rather than argue, the old man just studied her. "That is...a hard tale to believe."
"I know. Harder yet because I didn't arrive here on purpose. I crashed, Barristan. My ship was damaged beyond repair and sank. I was at sea for several days before the storm hit. If you hadn't rescued me, I would have died."
"Will others come for you?"
"No, and in retrospect it was a pretty stupid thing for me to do. Others don't even know where I am. It's…" She ran her hands through her hair, only to wince at the oily strands. "What I wouldn't give for soap." She met the old man's gaze. "I'm very powerful, Barristan. If I had reason, I could kill every man on this ship with my bare hands. With my weapons in hand, I could kill twice as many easily. During the war on my world, I led hundreds of powerful individuals similar to myself, and even more soldiers, and held off an army of tens of thousand for six months. But that power won't get me home.
"What I need is materials, time and a safe place to work so that I can try to rebuild a means to return to my world. And in return, I could help your people a great deal. Medicines to cure illness; machines to ease your work. I just can't do it all on my own."
To his credit, Barristan neither scoffed nor dismissed her words. He considered them intently, weighing what he already knew about her. Finally, he asked, "Were there many women such as yourself on your world?"
Thinking of Alexandria, Taylor nodded. "Some of my people had extraordinary abilities that made physical size or strength less important. All their magic was different, but many were even more powerful than me. I know it's different here. Swords and steel armor are heavy, and men are typically stronger. I can fight because I have unique abilities and training. Without them, I'd be little match for a trained knight such as yourself."
"And now you appeal to an old man's pride," Barristan said with a wry smile. The smile faded as darker thoughts came to him. "I have been a Kingsguard most of my life. I've trained man and boy for thirty years, and given my loyalty to my kings without question. One king turned mad and committed such atrocities that his own people turned against him. One was a wastrel and drunkard too far gone in his cups and whores to realize he was a cuckhold to his wife's own brother; and the last an incestuous, petulant child who dismissed me like a cur."
He glanced then at the long sword in the corner. "My greatest failure was not saving my prince. Rhaegar was a good man. He had none of the madness of his father. But I failed him. I failed him, and his dearest wife Elia, and his kids. To my shame, I accepted service to his usurper. Robert was a great warrior in his youth, but he was unfit for the Iron Throne. He made a poor king, and married a viper who cuckolded him and delivered unto the throne a monster fully as bad as the mad king Robert overthrew. I have only one hope left for my life."
Blue eyes met hers. "The Mad King's daughter lives. Daenerys Targaryen. It is said she has hatched the first dragons the world has seen in a hundred years. I intend to go to her and pledge my service to her. Others support her claim as well. She is the rightful queen of the Seven Kingdoms. I think...I think she could use your help. And having the favor of a queen would give you all you need to accomplish your own goals, methinks."
Taylor's first instinct was to politely tell the man 'hell no.' Getting involved in a dynastic war for a medieval kingdom was far from her current goals. But she stilled that first instinct and instead decided she needed more information.
"Can you tell me more about the Seven Kingdoms? About how we came to be where we are here?"
"Aye, I can. But we'll need more ale first."
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Barristan drank himself to a deep slumber. Rather than take him to the room he shared with the ship's second officer, she just levitated him into the bottom bunk of the bed to sleep it off. Accompanied by his loud, rattling snore, Taylor settled down on the floor beside his chest. The waves were high that night, causing a rhythmic, noticeable rock that made the lantern sway back and forward.
After so long at sea, the motion no longer made her sick, but it was still difficult to rest. Instead, she closed her eyes and sank not into a healing trance, but a deep meditation. She needed guidance from the Force because she wasn't sure what the best course of action was. Barristan was a good man; of that she had no doubt. But after hearing his full story, she couldn't help but think he was driven by regret and hope, not by any legitimate knowledge. He planned to dedicate himself to a teenaged girl as his queen based on the fact she had dragons. But if what he said was true, she was the product of generations of incest with a family history of mental illness and no actual training or experience as a ruler.
The alternative, though…
Just from Taylor's experience on the ship, she knew this was not a world for women. Any more than 11th Century Europe was a place for women. Occasionally a strong woman made her mark on history, but in most cases Taylor could think of it was through inheritance, marriage, or seduction. History's few women warriors rarely ended happily. Yes, Boudica killed lots of Romans and even more Britains-slaughtering and torturing her way through three cities in vengeance for the horrific crimes committed against her and her family. But then she got herself, her daughters and all of her followers slaughtered by a numerically inferior but vastly better led, equipped and trained force. Cleopatra ended little better. Even the great queens of Europe, Elizabeth, Catherine and later Victoria did little to make the lives of ordinary women better.
She sank herself deeply into her meditation and let herself become one with the Force. She was not Jedi, nor Sith. She was Bendu. The Dark and the Light were just aspects of life. The goal was not to eschew the one or cling only to the other, but to find balance between. Grief when faced with death, anger when faced with wrong-doing. But always balanced by hope and mercy.
With balance came peace. With peace came…oh.
The Force around her flooded through her mind, tingling with such raw power she gasped from it. And throughout, like a sickening miasma, she felt the overwhelming taint of the Dark Side. As she opened herself even further to the Force, in a way she had not done so since landing, she felt the darkness of the world all around her. She'd felt nothing like it on Earth, but in her false memories of a Bendu master from a long-dead galaxy, she knew that what she felt was an echo of the Dark Side in this world's past. There were examples of such worlds in that long-lost galaxy that also became nexi of the Darkside; worlds like Korriban, Vjun or Exogol.
At some point in this world's history, powerful Dark Siders made their mark. It lingered still, ancient and wicked, and threw this world's Force presence sickeningly out of balance.
This is why I didn't stop you.
Dinah Alcott's voice whispered in the back of her mind, so weak she didn't know if it were her imagination, a Force-borne vision, or the young woman herself.
The darkness of this world will not be contained forever. Even if it takes centuries, a new Sith Empire will rise. That is why you are there. It has always been your role to save the world. Whether ours, or theirs.
I miss you so much, Taylor couldn't help but think.
I miss you too, sister.
The vision ended. Taylor opened her eyes and felt filthy from being inundated in so much Dark Side Force energy. It took another twenty minutes of meditation for her to not feel like she needed to scrub her skin raw because of it.
"Well, I guess that's that," she said to herself. "The best place to save the world is at the side of a queen with this world's equivalent of Hannibal's elephants. If those elephants could fly and breathe fire."
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Barristan's moan woke her.
Taylor had the presence of mind not to sit up in the top bunk since she'd undoubtedly hit her head again. As low as the clearance of the bottom bunk was, the top bunk was so close to the floor of the aft castle above that she hit her elbow when she turned to lay on her side.
She rolled out of the top bunk now and saw the old man holding his hands to the face and eminanting misery into the Force. "I'm too old to drink like that," he muttered.
"Lower your hands," Taylor said.
The man jumped and stared at her with bloodshot eyes. "You...you were in the room?"
"Barristan, you're the only man on this ship who's not a danger to my honor," she said with a dry smile.
"Oh, to be old," he moaned.
"Or worse yet, honorable," she said. "Move your hands, please."
"For what reason?"
"Barristan, if you want to suffer, I'll let you. But if not, move your hands. I'm a healer."
He dropped his hands and simply stared as she placed the palm of her left hand to his forehead and let the Force flow.
"By the Gods," the man whispered softly. "Do others in your world have such gifts?"
"A few, but healers like me were rare. You're just lucky."
"Lucky indeed."
She stood so he could climb out of the low bunk. He stood and stretched his back with a grunt and much popping of joints.
"So," Taylor said in the morning silence. "I thought about what we spoke of last night. I've never pledged myself to a queen-my people didn't believe in royalty. We elect our leaders. But if any one is worthy of your service, it seems I'd be hard pressed to find better. Would you let me join you when you seek her out?"
He smiled. She'd rarely seen him smile as he did then. "My lady, I would be honored." He offered his hand; she could sense the heavy meaning of the gesture. She accepted it in kind.
A/N: I can't remember where, but I remember an historian saying that if a modern person were to suddenly find themselves in 10th century Europe, they'd probably die. If they were a modern woman, they would die very, very badly. But man or woman, they would die. Life was hard, but even more so life had no value. The entire idea of individual life having value is a modern, western idea that never occurred to anyone before the late Renaissance and the rise of Humanism. History is replete with whole cities being razed, whole peoples being slaughtered, and bad things in general happening to everyone, good or bad. It was one of the things that Martin captured well-that life back then was just really, really bad for everyone, even the rich.
And Taylor, with her modern sensibilities has to confront that fact. So this chapter was mainly Taylor coming to grips with her new world. She will be encountering aspects of Planetos that are deeply offensive to her modern sensibilities, but which were just taken for granted by those around us.