Chapter 5: Volcanic Occupation

It isn't until a day later that Artemis talks to Athie again, or at least a period of time which she would have called a day before they left Dresda. After a restless nap, Artemis visits the cockpit a number of times, both to see if the Opulentsia girl is there as well as to wonder if there's anything she needs to do during the jump. Luckily it looks like the ship's able to take care of itself, so she mostly just sits and tries to find out what she can about the various displays. After a little bit of fiddling, she begins to think she'll be able to read the sensors on her own if she needs to. And she might need to if Athie doesn't show herself anytime soon.

The Vagabond feels stifling, especially with nothing but the fluid lights playing outside of every window. Eventually, giving up on finding Athie, Artemis settles into the common room to reread her uncle's letter. Those ships he'd heard about. The letter was sent from a far remote world. Information takes months to get to Dresda from there, borne on the courier ships that carry cargoes of bytes. She wonders if the ones she'd seen were the same craft. They certainly could be, based on Terry's sparse description. Then again, so could a lot of things.

They'd destroyed the freighter without any hesitation. Anyone else that runs across them might be in just as much danger, depending on what the ships are actually after. Valuable goods probably, like most pirates, as that was the only explanation Artemis could come up with without letting her imagination wander too far. Extremely successful pirates, rich enough to buy a whole fleet…

"Yeah, well," Artemis snaps to the small huntress, in response to a question only she hears, "maybe they're pirates with a unique sense of style. It's got to get boring sticking to the whole spikes and bones deal."

She wants to tell her uncle what she'd seen and what she'd speculated about it. She wants to tell him that she and Athie might very well be fleeing for their lives. She wants to tell him who she'd left behind. (There's a slight pang of fear for her mother that quickly subsides when she acknowledges how powerless she is to do anything about her.) Artemis writes none of those things. A small fear of her own, or perhaps voiced by her diminutive doppelganger, makes her reconsider. There's no saying what the man might deduce from a stray detail, and she's not yet ready to mention that she and Athie had stolen-well, more like borrowed but that's not the point (and really it wasn't even her, it was all Athie's idea… and to be perfectly honest entirely Athie's work as well)-his Vagabond.

So she keeps it brief, thanking him for his birthday wishes, confirming recent medical events, and mentioning only that she was taking a trip off-planet and that his messages might take longer than usual to arrive as a result. She hopes she's injecting the correct amount of excitement into "recounting" the event. The emotion's there, to be sure; she'd be lying if she said she couldn't find an ounce of elation at the fulfillment of her desires, but it's… tangled up in other things. She's rattled of course at the manner in which they left Dresda, but also resentful at the way Athie kept her in the dark.

Athie could almost be blamed for the freighter's destruction. That stupid, fucking, unnecessary argument preoccupied the captain, probably distracted others on his ship. Artemis couldn't quite get angry at the Opulentsia for it though, as she couldn't exactly have predicted…

The cockpit doors slide open. A small noise, but enough of one to make Artemis twitch in her seat, startled as one caught guilty. Athie stops there, staring with a mix of disappointment and acceptance. At least her artificial eye probably couldn't see or interpret the electrochemical impulses in Artemis's brain.

"Is it too early to ask, 'Are we there yet?'"

Athie glowers, but doesn't leave. As she passes to take the other seat, Artemis can see that Athie's natural eye is bloodshot, fatigued. The Opulentsia sinks down in the chair and for a while she seems content to remain there in silence. The mood is tense, but Artemis finds herself welcoming this so long as it puts off the inevitable conversation. She tries to relax, keeps half her attention on Athie, and waits a while, biting back further quips that come to mind.

Finally Athie leans forward. She's finding it difficult to meet Artemis's eyes, staring at a point about half a meter to the left of Artemis's shin. "Names are important," Athie says at last.

Where is she going with this? Artemis can't find a reason; it couldn't be all this time leading up to this, but Athie's staring her down for a reaction. "More than sticks and stones?" Of course. Defaulting to stupid lines when lacking a real answer.

Athie considers it thoroughly though. She sifts through Artemis's flippant remark for some time before answering."Those maim the body," she replies, "but certain words may build or erode your very identity.

"Opulenstia is one name I possess. Not… a unique one, mind. Many billions share it. Multiple planets-full. I however, am not on those planets and thus such a name is one of the few tethers I retain to my home. I fully intend to remedy this soon, but it has been a reality for me for nearly the entirety of my life-an Opulenstia solely in name. Yet it remains something that affects me, does it not?"

"Seems like it causes more trouble than anything," Artemis says.

"You would not be incorrect in surmising that." Athie reaches to her face and puts a finger on the artificial eye as she finally looks up to Artemis. "There's a lot that becomes shackled to a name, associations which are not divorced from that name so easily. You want to think they are, but time and again such simple things as this eye-" She taps the apparatus. "-and a name time and again call to mind those far more entwined with machines than I, those who stubbornly refuse entry into 'mankind's greatest treaty.'

"There is the power of names. Mere labels they may be but people forget that labels are all we have. When every interaction is mediated through something other than… our thoughts themselves, there will always be space for a name to carry with it, or pull out of dusty recesses, all manner of baggage.

"It's not all bad, though," Athie says hastily. "Certain names, or more properly their connotations may be a source of… comfort, I want to say?"

Artemis had always thought that it sounded as if Athie were speaking out of a textbook, but at the moment it's particularly bad. However that last sentence penetrates the haze of semi-boredom. She knows the comfort a name can bring. She remembers when she'd finally discovered the name of the figurine that Uncle Terry had given her, read further of its history and meaning; she remembers the joy at feeling connected to a powerful figure of a people many times removed from even ancient civilization, surviving only in stories.

"...my name."

"Say again, Athie?" Get Artemis's attention and then it's gone again in a moment.

"My name. Is Athena. A name of wisdom, justice, art, and I would rather you-"

"War."

"What was that?"

"War," Artemis repeats. Her grin is so large almost to be painful. "Your name's one for war! Didn't you know?"

"Nothing so crass," Athie says.

"It's true," Artemis needles. It was sheer luck that Athena had also been a name that she happened across back when Artemis had researched her own. "But look, I still like Athie anyway. It's a term of a affection, sort of thing. Only reason I use it is because I love you."

"...What."

"I mean, not like that. But you know we're going to have to put up with each other until you get me home. Might as well try to be… nice about it, at least. Maybe it'll turn out you actually don't hate me." Artemis stands, arms outstretched. "Hug?"

"No."

The girl turns to the miniature Artemis and whispers, "She'll come around eventually."

"You wish to return to Dresda?" Athie asks, trying to turn the subject to something more practical. "What guarantee do we have that they won't still remain?" She doesn't need to clarify who "they" are.

Artemis shrugs. "Hang around a bit. Wait for news."

"Where? And for how long? What if there is no news?"

"It's not like they intend to wipe out all life on the planet… Right?" She hesitates. I was an off-handed comment, but...

"Artemis, I didn't spend the whole of today doing nothing. This ship's digital library, as limited as it is, should have had plenty of information on all models and modes of construction…"

"Doesn't it?"

"It… does. I'll admit the data appear, for the most part, to be immaculate on that matter. Except for those vessels in particular. The best I could tell, nothing at all of the sort has been known to be constructed; the curves, the segmentation, engine signatures, and especially the weapons they used to destroy the freighter are all unknown to the information we have. And I find it impossible to believe that anything of such a size as some of those were could have simply sprung out of nowhere with no records whatsoever."

"So you don't know what they are, or what they might want."

"N-no. I don't know."

"That's new. She admits it." Artemis smirks, but the smile is quickly lost to concern about the implication itself. "Okay so we don't know when or if I get to go back. What's your plan then?"

"My plan... is that I shan't interrupt my own for yours. I'm going to make directly for where I should be."

"Opulenstia worlds?" Artemis asks. A beat passes. "Wait, and you're forcing me to come with you? I didn't know I was important enough for a kidnapping."

"I thought you wanted to leave Dresda. Discover more excitement, or whatever it was."

"I wasn't ready…"

"Neither was I, but I intend to make the most of it that I may. What we possess is an opportunity."

An opportunity…

Artemis leaps to her feet, throwing a goofy salute Athie's way. "We'll seize it!"

"And doing so requires effort. There are many phase jumps to go and I had not yet completed the diagnostics. Minor systems most of them, but there is now particular urgency to them and you will assist me. Understood?"

Artemis brings her hand forward so she can slam the edge into her forehead a second time. "Yes, sir! Athie, sir!"

"...Okay. Sufficient for now."

"Uh… but wait. Athie? Where are we actually going? I mean right now. Where we'll be when the phase jump's over."

"Komm." The gaseous planet that Dresda orbits.

"Great choice. That gets us a whole lot of nowhere."

"I hadn't chosen anything. It was a test calculation I had been running, and nothing more. I simply had to use it at the time as nothing else was available quickly. It won't be but forty hours that we pass through, re-jump, and arrive at Esipov. There we should be able to replenish supplies. I expect we'll need it," Athie adds with distaste. "At least we should survive until then. From there, we should reach our sun and at that point a simple matter to make the jumps to Opulenstia space. Fewer than thirty days, with stops."

Happily, the subsequent forty hours transpire just about as smoothly as Athie had described. The girls sleep in shifts, but during their time awake together Athie puts Artemis through the tests and diagnostics of everything from the redundant water filtration systems to the cargo bay lifts. Artemis finds it difficult to stave off boredom as she is shown the purpose of a carbon regulator, and told the proper operating temperature of the upper starboard engine. Still, she feels as if she's learning. There are the occasional arguments, but those are to be expected when Athie's a bitch whom Artemis can provoke by doing absolutely nothing wrong at all. Nothing. At all.

When she's alone, Artemis goes through her uncle's room. She's been here numerous times before, and now is no different; here are the same carelessly discarded clothes and other semi-personal effects as her previous searches. She doesn't know what she's looking for this time; she supposes the motions are simply to find something to do.

They reach Komm. It's different, from this close up. A real titan of a planetary body, its scale truly apparent now rather than being lost as a distant fixture as before, two-dimensional, almost as if it had painted on the sky's canvas. As Athie predicted, the rations of cocoa, snack foods, and bland self-heating meals begins to run dry just as they complete their second jump into Esipov.

A geologically active world. Incredibly active. It's plates must be restless, spurred into action by churning magma which seems to want nothing more than to violently expunge itself onto the surface. Esipov practically has its own glow, does in fact shed its own light in places where even from orbit one can see large, barely cooling pools of molten rock. It's a place where human life only thrives by being incredibly stubborn about the entire situation.

Or at least, should be thriving. Admittedly, not much, as there is only a single settlement large enough for a port and like Dresda, it's not even an orbital dock. However as Athie cycles through the common frequencies to request landing clearance, it becomes doubtful that even that exists. It's some rapidly desperate twenty minutes before a man's voice comes back to them, and only a voice.

"Er, yeah, I can guide you in." He's barely speaking above a whisper. "But you'll, er, have to be quick about it."