Avrika had never known silence could be so deafening. Through most of her life, all she had known was noise. As an infant, it had been the sounds of water in the breeding pools or the cries of her siblings. As a toddler, it had been all that and the shouts and cries of many other children, the humming of the overhead lights, and the admonishments of their nurses. As a karth, well, everyone had been cried out by then, tears exhausted after the trauma of being suddenly and permanently separated from their mothers and the care of their nurses, replaced with cold and stern handlers as their formal education began.
Things hadn't gotten quieter after Avrika became a soldier. Basic training had been constant yelling, and a soldiering life meant the constant clamour of tools, machinery, weapons, and sharp voices. Even when she returned to the breeding pools to become a mother herself, there hadn't been quiet to the extent she was experiencing right now.
Avrika sat in a barely held together chair off to the side, against the wall of the legislative chamber of the Shromacci Imperium, the building in which the highest governing body – the Ravalda Imperium, met.
The room's few electric lights cast broad shadows and created the illusion that the high ceiling stretched up into infinity, as if it were a portal through which Heaven itself looked down and judged. Avrika wondered if the situation was as tense for the gods as it was for her.
The sounds of pages being flipped nearly startled her. It was the first sound anyone had made since the meeting had properly begun. The councillors sat behind desks arranged in a U-shape around the centre of the room. In the centre, clerks and other staff worked, taking minutes and other notes.
Avrika's eyes fell to Lord Hobber, her superior, commanding the Ministry of Trade. He showed intense interest in the literature he had been given. A catalogue it was apparently called.
Many of the other councillors looked at their own catalogues with mixed expressions. Confusion, curiosity, bewilderment, frustration, even anger. The latter certainly applied to Lord Glittermine, of the Ministry of Culture, who regarded his literature as if it were an epic poem describing illustrious inkling victories during the Great Turf War.
He looked up and glared accusingly at Dictatrix Octavia. "Is this some kind of sick joke?"
Octavia's eyes swivelled wearily to him. Her posture barely changed. "Lord Glittermine, as I said at the start, the purpose of this meeting was to open discussions on how best to use the resources we have just gained. Since we wouldn't know what exactly has been made available to us, our allies in Inkopolis have sent us this literature to help us decide."
Glittermine looked disgusted. "Allies indeed. Are you telling me that Octarian lives and resources were spent for these mere trinkets?"
Octavia's ability to maintain a stoic expression in a situation which had to be beyond frustrating never ceased to impress Avrika. She didn't flare up at Glittermine's criticism, but responded calmly and respectfully.
"Not trinkets, Lord Glittermine. As I said, these are merely examples of things we might be able to acquire with the resources we were given for –."
"Resources we've been promised but have never seen! I might not know much about economics but even I know that 'credit' as you call it, is an intangible thing."
"Not in this case," Lord Hobber interjected. "In this case, the credit is a fixed number, equivalent to the value of their currency. Think of currency as a pool of resources that can be exchanged for every other kind of resource. Food, materials, services, things like that. In the outer world, virtually every transaction – that is, trade, occurs with currency or credit."
"Then why not simply give us the same value in currency instead."
"Because withdrawing that much currency would attract too much attention, attention that would be noticed by other people besides the inklings and it is wiser that we be discreet, for now, than make ourselves too widely known to the greater world given our current situation."
"And I suppose the inklings told you that?"
Hobber's eyes narrowed and his tentacles curled slightly at the tips. "That was their advice, and in light of the report from the expeditionary force, I'm inclined to agree."
"Then your reading comprehension needs work, Lord Hobber, or perhaps, you have become a little too infatuated with your new inkling friends. The report I read was that we easily defeated the enemy we had been asked to help fight. Is that not correct, Lady of War?"
Gabralla Sever, Lady of War, looked up from her own copy of literature, something called a 'magazine'. "That is correct, Lord Glittermine; however, it is not as simple as that. As the report stated, there were a few complications and it was the inklings that dealt with those so effectively and the majority of the force sent were the deserters."
"Deserters, yes, but still Octarians. Octarians defeated, what, a thousand crabs with only a few casualties, and the help of a mere four inklings?"
"It was not just 'four', there were other irregulars –,"
"Regardless, we did the bulk of the fighting and were burdened with most of the sacrifice! This –", he picked up his catalogue, "– is nothing more than useless frivolity. A bunch of shiny beads!" He angrily tossed the catalogue onto the floor of the chamber. Avrika got up from her seat and hurried to retrieve it as he ranted on.
"We deserve more than this! We can't merely content ourselves with this sort of thing!"
Octavia opened her hands. "Well, the whole point of this meeting is to discuss what we want. So, what do you want, Lord Glittermine?"
"I want our land back! All the land on the surface, which is rightfully ours, it should be ours again! What have we been waiting a century of time and misery for but to take back everything that is ours?"
"And our inkling allies are trying to help us get it back," Hobber answered calmly. "But we cannot expect the Calachoran government to be so empathetic. What our actions have done is get the Calachoran people on our side, and that is arguably more important."
Avrika picked up the discarded catalogue, fretfully trying to straighten out the pages that had been crumpled as she slunk back to her seat.
"And how, exactly, is that more important when it's their government that has the power to give our land back?"
Sevram Sabbart, Lord of Education, interrupted. "It has to do with how their system works, Lord Glittermine. The inklings naturally create large social groups called shoals, and each of these shoals has a leader. If a shoal becomes large and influential enough, their leader can apply to become a matron, a position that grants them official power and authority. Is that not right, Ambassador?"
Avrika twitched at suddenly being addressed, feeling all eyes upon her. "Er, yes, My Lord, at least as I understand it. However, as it was explained to me, the easiest way to be accepted as a matron is to appeal to a matriarch, to serve under them, and through them gain representation for their shoal in the Assembly."
"And how are matriarchs chosen?" Octavia asked.
"Well… um, I believe it's similar to matrons, actually. If one becomes a leader among matrons, then they can apply to become a matriarch and represent all of those matrons and their shoals in the Assembly."
"And the monarch? Is she chosen in a similar way?"
"The monarch is elected by the members of the Assembly from one of their number. So only a member of the Assembly can become a monarch."
Lord Hobber sighed. "Pity we couldn't try to get one of our allies elected into the position. That would have sped things along nicely."
"Then remind me again what we did all this for," Glittermine demanded. "So far, this 'peaceful' route towards rescuing our dying people hasn't yielded anything except a bunch of imaginary resources and trinkets."
He slammed his fist on the desk. "If the inklings are so weak that they can't even defend themselves from something like this, what's to stop us from taking them all on right now and conquering them at last? Just as Lord Octavio said we should."
"The army is not ready for deployment," Sever, answered calmly. "Besides, we're still investigating the intelligence we found in the crab's headquarters. The methods they used to make their giant crab bioweapons had disturbing similarities to our own technology, which should have been top secret."
"Then why aren't you letting us handle it?" Lord Brath Stonefeller, rose from his seat, glaring intensely at Lady Sever. "Public Security's mandate is investigating such breaches. Considering how lax the army has been of late, we can hardly trust you to handle it yourselves."
Sever narrowed her eyes and her tentacles curled inwards. "If you feel the army is 'lax' then you're free to fight the crabs yourself next time."
"There is no need to fight the crabs! There never was! We've just ended up doing the inklings job for them! Aiding our enemies!"
"I disagree," Sever met Stonefeller's gaze unflinchingly. "The crabs deliberately conducted an incursion into an area which the Octarians in Inkopolis were frequently active, nearly resulting in the execution of our agent in Inkopolis. Our inklings allies dealt with them, but retribution came with the death of another Octarian, in quite a brutal fashion, I might add.
"Our allies only wanted to respond in a manner to put the crabs in their place, only to discover the true nature of the crab's operation, and thus they had to expand the scope of it and ask for our help. I think the crabs showing active hostility against us in such a way certainly implies they are a threat."
"Hardly," Stonefeller scoffed. "The crabs could not have known that the octoling they attacked was one of our agents. They likely thought them a deserter, like the rest, and so did not consider attacking them to be any kind of attack on the Octarian Empire."
"And how would the crabs know that the Octarins in Inkopolis were deserters? That has been kept secret in Inkopolis and only a very few inklings even know. So, if the crabs did know they were deserters, that still implies a security breach."
"Then allow Public Security to take over so that we can do our job and you can focus on figuring out how to attack our enemies! Your job!"
"Enough!"
Lady Octavia's harsh tone silenced the two and they looked away from each other bitterly.
"Lady Sever, it is part of Public Security's mandate. I therefore suggest you both cooperate and jointly work on figuring out whether or not the crabs have somehow copied our technology or if the similarities are just a coincidence. These are some of our most closely guarded military secrets, even if we have shut the program down. I suggest you also find a way to work with our allies and our agent on the other side. The last thing we need right now is a threat we don't know about. At least the inklings don't go about stealing our secrets."
"That we know of," Stonefeller grumbled. Octavia ignored him.
"If we want to step into the outside world again, we're going to have to change the way we think. There are people other than the inklings out there and we've forgotten that. The inklings have never been our only enemy, just the closest, and I will not let our nation fall because of an obsession with an old enemy. I suggest you all broaden your minds, or it will be the inklings bailing us out of danger next time."
The faces of Glittermine, Stonefeller, and several other members on the Loyalist side of the Ravalda twisted with revulsion at the very idea, but Avrika personally doubted Octavia's words actually sunk in. Even she was only starting to realise the true breadth of Octavio's folly in his obsession with the inklings. Even if they had succeeded in conquering Inkopolis, the crabs might have just invaded them immediately afterwards, resulting in their ultimate destruction. That had to be avoided at all costs.
Hours after the end of the Ravalda's session, Octavia brought together her or'ufala, a court of advisors, in a secure room within the Kraken's Den, the Octarian Military headquarters. The topics of these meetings meant that Avrika herself was frequently in attendance.
"I don't trust Public Security," Lady Sever was saying. "If anyone should have been able to detect or stop an intelligence leak, it should have been them. Besides, they're up to something."
"They're always up to something," Lord Sabbart replied dryly. The Lord of Education glared at a spot on the battered table, chin resting on his propped up hands. He was the leader of the Ravalda's Reformist faction, responsible for deposing Octavio in the first place and getting Octavia into the position of dictatrix.
"Why don't we leave that aside for now and focus on something else, like actually getting these peace talks moving along. The Loyalists aren't going to just sit back and wait for us."
Lord Hobber nodded. "We haven't had much contact from our allies in the past week. I imagine they're still dealing with the fallout of everything that happened."
Sever looked at one of her datapads. "According to our agent, the inklings are all still in a state of shock over what happened. Callie and Marie have officially been placed in protective custody and there is a great deal of public unrest going on as the situation is still very confused for them. It seems that our actions have ignited a realisation that our people still exist."
"They forgot about us?" Lady of Law, Juli Protor, asked incredulously.
"As a political entity, it seems so, but some of our people have risen to prominence in Inkopolis, so they haven't forgotten our species exists. Certainly, some of their war veterans haven't. Many of them are still alive and are… well, it seems they are taking a stance against peace efforts."
"They were bound to have their own 'Loyalists'," Sabbart said sourly. "But I'm amazed so many of their veterans are still alive."
Octavia folded her hands on the table and stared down its length. "Were it not for the terrible conditions we've been forced to live in, many of our own veterans would also still be alive. Inklings and Octolings have about the same lifespan – or we used to. Getting back on topic, why are Callie and Marie in… 'Protective Custody'?"
"Our agent says that the 'official' reason is to protect them from reprisal attacks from the… Grand Consortium." Sever struggled a little bit with the unfamiliar words.
"That's the union of crab nations," Hobber explained. "Apparently, shortly after our Great Turf War with the Inklings, the various crab nations, which were called 'Consortiums', finally stopped fighting each other and formed a Grand Consortium, uniting as a single country. Now, they're threatening the jellyfish nation, Perlugen, but the inklings call it Bellchora"
Sever scoffed. "If the inklings can't even stop this Consortium from forming a small army in their own capital, I have doubts about their ability to protect our allies. And… maybe they won't even try."
Avrika frowned. "You think they would allow them to come to harm, Ma'am?"
"If their opponents to peace have their way, I don't see why they wouldn't try to arrange that. Our agent did report that the Consortium considers the two of them to be mass murderers for organizing the slaughtering of so many 'innocent crabs'."
"The report did say they demanded Callie and Marie be handed over," Sabbart agreed. "But the report is a few days old now. Who knows what might have happened in the meantime."
"Callie and Marie are very popular figures in Calachora," Avrika countered. "Internationally as well, so I doubt Calachora would simply hand them over. Unless something has gone very wrong."
"Which we can't rule out," Octavia said. "They'd be better off under our protection."
"A fact I doubt Calachora would appreciate having pointed out to them," Sabbart said ruefully.
"Regardless, Betanuss, our priority is to try and get them freed. They're no good to us or themselves stuck where they are, and fancy catalogues are not going to keep the Loyalists occupied forever."
"I'll do my best, Ma'am." But Avrika wasn't feeling confident. Callie and Marie were the ones with power and influence in Inkopolis. Three and Four, as good as they were as warriors, couldn't do much other than fighting. Octavia was right, they needed Callie and Marie or they would be right back where they started, on the downward spiral to ruin and death.
"Maybe if I look into Callie's history I can find something," Lady Protor suggested. "She was an Octarian legate. That might count for something. Maybe I'll find something else useful."
Octavia leaned back in her chair and steepled her fingers, fixing everyone at the table with a firm stare that gave Avrika a small chill.
"I'm going to make something clear to all of you. Our desire for peace with the Inklings comes as the best possible option for our situation. We do it out of choice, not fear, and if we need to make that clear to Calachora as well, then I will not hesitate to do so."
—-
"Marsh, I need another pillow!"
"There are no more pillows!"
"Then grab one of those empty bags and stuff some of the linens in it."
"The dirty ones?"
"Until we can get another pillow, yes."
Grumbling, Marsh grabbed the pillow case and began stuffing used but still fairly clean linens into it.
Four couldn't help but smile as she watched Tephy accept the makeshift pillow and go back to the bed, placing it behind the other pillows supporting the bed's octoling occupant.
"Better?"
"Yes, thank you."
It was hard to believe that this was the same Tephy who had been one of the most blatant suck ups she had ever encountered, one who only helped others if it was to her own benefit.
Now look at her, helping the injured like this. Betanuss must have really lit a fire in her. She's even learning Octese.
Marsh too had changed. Someone who had previously always challenged authority and with a chip on his shoulder, was now willingly taking orders from Tephy. Not bad at all for a couple of misfits.
The octoling in the bed Tephy was attending stiffened when she saw Four approach and saluted with her one good arm. The action surprised Tephy, who jumped a bit when she noticed Four's presence.
Four pulsed a soothing blue. "At ease, trooper. I'm just checking on you."
The soldier relaxed and Four frowned at the depression in the sheets where one of the octoling's legs should have been, and the stump of her left arm, severed just above the elbow.
"How long until your vacation is over?"
"Doctor said it will be at least a month, Ma'am, but that's twice as fast they would have grown back in the domes."
Four smirked. "Well, maybe Tephy here can scare your limbs into growing back a little faster."
The octoling giggled and Four was glad to see her energetic despite being almost completely bed bound as her body worked hard to recover her lost limbs. Like so many of her fellow troopers.
And it's all my fault.
Marsh carried a large bundle of dirty linens out of the room and dumped them into the wheeled bin in the hallway, sighing. "Who'd have thought bedsheets could be so heavy."
"It should be the last load," Tephy told him, regaining her wits. "I'll make sure we get another pillow in here."
Marsh disappeared with the bin and Tephy made the final adjustments to the octoling's bed.
Four looked around the room. The apartment had been converted into a makeshift hospital room with five other occupied beds, each one with an octoling in some injured state, usually missing limbs, the consequence of fighting off an army of crabs.
The memory of that desperate night in the hardware store, holding out as best they could, praying for rescue as more and more of them fell to the relentless onslaught of frenzied little soldier crabs, hung over her like a spectre.
She and Tephy left the room together, turning the light off and shutting the door.
"What's wrong?" Tephy asked them as they walked down the hall to the elevator. Four winced, realising she'd allowed her troubles to show in her mantle.
"Just… you know, a lot of people hurt. You don't really think about it as much in the moment." Or about the people who didn't survive.
"They'll get better," she smiled. "Nobody had any permanent injuries. Heck, nobody even lost an eye. Pretty good considering what we went through."
Tephy had also been at the hardware store during the siege, where she'd done her best to act as a medic, her hands covered in ink and blood as she tended to whatever wounds she could manage. She'd saved lives that night.
They rode the elevator to the third floor then travelled to Tephy's apartment. Her roommate was already there, along with a couple other guests.
"Mia, you're back," Tephy remarked with faux indifference. "You must be hungry then."
Mia smirked, her eyes glimmering with mirth as her dark purple mantle burst into playful patterns of bright yellows and reds. "Natch'. Only reason I'd come back to your naggin' funnel is your cookin'."
Four's smile returned. It was hard to believe that the two had once despised each other to the point of exploitation.
She sat at the table next to Eight's sister, Vella, who was currently working on some electronic gizmo. The two were so visually similar it was easy to tell they were sisters.
"I brought a dessert," Vella said without taking her eyes off her work. "Hachiko insisted I do so."
Marsh entered the apartment right at that moment. "Homemade?"
"Yes. Hachiko made it."
"Great! Homemade is the best. My new mom makes homemade caviar cakes that are so good it makes you wish you were a barracuda, or whatever eats fish eggs."
He sat down on the other side of Vella. The octoling girl glanced sideways at him without lifting her head, then focused back to her work.
"I am sure I could bake something if I had time to learn. Too busy though."
"Cool, looking forward to it."
Vella said nothing further. Gangrin, who was leaning against the wall at the back of the room, shook his head and resumed looking out the balcony window.
Four asked Mia, "So, what's it like living in Xapheerell again?"
Mia pulsed grey. "S'alright, I guess. This apartment is way better than the dump I grew up in. Pretty sure it was a storage unit once. What about you, Marsh? Your new family put you up in the crow's nest?"
Like Mia, Tephy, and Gangrin, Marsh had been an orphan raised in one of the local temples. Marsh had been fortunate enough to be adopted by the captain of the ship he and Gangrin had been working on when they'd been taken hostage by the crab gangs.
Marsh flashed burgundy. "If you mean the house attic, then yeah, they did. Not so bad, actually. Got it all to myself, got my own window even. New family's nice too, but my oldest brother is kind of a hard case. Guess it's 'cause he's not used to being a captain yet." He frowned, his expression and display turning serious. "Lots of worries for him and Dad, for their crews and all the families."
Four frowned. "What? Don't tell me they're getting a hard time because of the whole hostage thing."
Marsh flashed red. "Nah, and it's not because we were delivering the golden eggs to the crabs either. Everyone's scared of the crab gangs. Some of 'em got away and hid, and everyone's scared of where they're going to pop out. A lot of the ships there employ crabs who came to Calachora to get away from the Consortium in the first place. None of them were surprised when they pulled something like this but, nobody knows what to do. Can't protect your family if you're out at sea making your living, and not all of them can bring their families out to sea with them. In fact, most of them can't."
Four flashed green, understanding. "So?"
"So, they've been trying to talk to their matrons and they've been trying to talk to Dad, since they all figure he knows more than anyone else, since he was there. Everyone wants to know the same thing: why did a couple of pop idols have to step in with their own personal army to save the city? What was the NSF or even IS doing?"
"IS was tryin' tah keep the crabs contained 'till the NSF could get off their cursed funnels and actually do somethin'!" Mia shouted. "And now that IS don' 'ave to worry 'bout the crabs no more, they've been 'elpin' tah clean 'ouse pretty good."
Four frowned a little. Mia's Xapheerell accent could be tough to understand when got riled.
Marsh pulsed grey. "Yeah, well, Scylla's going to be getting a visit from a bunch of angry and scared matrons pretty soon."
"I can't wait tah tell 'er," Mia grumbled.
Mia acted as the go-between for Scylla Sunreader, acting matron of Xapheerell Ward, and Work Detail, effectively the group that encompassed all octrolings in Inkopolis. Four was acting as a liaison with the former New Squidbeak Splatoon, encompassing Three, Marie, and Callie. It was these three groups working together that made the liberation of Xapheerell Ward possible and all of Inkopolis knew it. Of course they didn't know about the company of troops provided by the Octarian Empire.
"How has Scylla been doing?" Four asked.
"Been tryin' tah get taken on as a matron by Matriarch Danasta, but she got turned away right off. None of the matriarchs wanna' touch 'er."
"She's too hot, politically," Gangrin cut in, joining the conversation for the first time since Four's arrival. "They don't know which way things are going to go with how everyone's going to portray or handle the Liberation. The presence of Octarians in the city are a controversial issue and if the Assembly decides to blame everything on them, Callie, and Marie to avoid angering the Consortium."
"Shipload a' squit!" Mia shouted, half rising to her feet.
"Of course it is," Gangren replied calmly. "That's what most politics is, and no matriarch is going to want to go down because of it."
Mia growled. "Scylla's already got folks commin' tah her for 'elp. With all the Octarians movin' to Xapheerell, Pearl buyin' up property, and everyone afraid crabs are gonna' burst out of their bathtub drains to get 'em in their sleep, Xapheerell's gone from being the place everyone wanted tah stay away from tah the place everyone want's tah be."
Gangrin moved from his place by the window and joined them at the table. "So basically, nobody's sure if IS or the NSF can protect them from the crabs but everyone knows that the Octarians can."
"Basically. Scylla's got her own crew of fighters so she's not as worried, but they're used to fightin' the crabs." She frowned. "We still 'aven't figured out where all those little crabs came from though. We've checked everywhere around the Bloody Circle and 'aven't found a thing."
Four tapped her finger on the table, thinking. "We haven't figured out where those golden eggs were coming from either."
Marsh flashed green. "Seems like a pretty easy way to get caught the way they had us doing it. Why didn't they just carry the crates underwater to the wharf and then winch it up there?"
"That would be even more obvious," Gangrin argued. "More people who might see it too, as opposed to a ship in the middle of the bay early enough in the morning that the sun isn't even up. Nobody would see what we were actually doing unless they actually tried to figure it out. And since it's so out in the open, nobody would think it suspicious." His own expression said he didn't quite believe it himself, but honestly Four would have a hard time believing any theory.
"We're missing the big thing here," he went on. "Grizz Co. is the only company in Inkopolis that we know of that has golden eggs and nobody knows what they do with them. But since Grizz Co. is based right here in Inkopolis, they wouldn't need such a complex and obvious way to get the golden eggs to Wharf 12, which means that it has to be from a source outside inkopolis, maybe even outside Calachora."
Four grimaced. She hadn't thought about that. She probably shouldn't be worrying about this, this was an investigation meant for IS or the NSF, but she couldn't help but worry about it. If there were still remnants of the Consortium's undercover invasion force, then they'd be coming for them eventually. They had to try and get them first, and she couldn't bring herself to trust the government to do it, but she had little choice. Maybe they just needed a chance.
"All we can do is keep our eyes and ears open," Four said. "If they're going to try and attack us, they'll need reinforcements to do it. If we look out for that, maybe we can track them down. For right now, leave it to the authorities. We've got plenty of other things to keep us busy."
Gangrin sighed. "Does that mean you came with more purchase orders?"
Four smirked. "No, the Octarians are probably still drooling over all the stuff in the catalogues you found. Have they really just ordered cloth and stuff?"
"Yup, just textiles so far, material for making winter clothing I think."
"It's cold," Vella argued. "I don't know how people can stand going outside when it's so cold. We have no need for cold weather gear in the domes."
Four giggled. "People just aren't used to how sensible Octarians are, Vella."
Vella smirked. "Then we will have to teach you once peace is achieved."
"Yeah, lookin' forward to that."
The emergency call that Four received the next morning, however, would tell her that sensibility was the last thing on the mind of Inkoplis' denizens.
Author's Notes:
Callie and Marie aren't the only ones who had to deal with consequences from the Liberation. There are still plenty of Work Detail members who are dealing with injuries sustained during the battle. I felt it was important to show that these battles have consequences and how they affect people who aren't the main characters.
This chapter also introduces one of the main conflicts of the story, being the conflict between the Reformist and Loyalist factions of the Ravalda Imperium as well as another of our main characters from earlier in the series, Ambassador Avrika Betanuss.
