A Letter Home

Std Encrypt V001aNc663

Dearest Mary,

I hope this letter finds you well. I apologize for the delay in writing, but this is the first opportunity I have to post.

How has James recovered from his fall? I hope Joanna has forgiven me for our last discussion. I did not mean to upset her so. Hug them both for me?

As you have probably guessed by now, I found birth on an Imperial Lekaf class vessel. It's a scout ship, so a little smaller than I'm used to. The crew is strange, even for humans.

The captain, a typical Charioteer has a galaxy wide cult following. My employer has direct ties with the Prince, not to mention his own army. The third, a noble, is quiet and gentle in contrast to the other two.

When I next speak to you in person, I will describe them in detail; although I suspect you will know them by name. They have many great and wondrous stories to tell. Some of which I suspect are exaggerated. So far in our travels, we have been without adventure and there is little to speak of.

Can you please do me a favor and let our benefactor know that I have taken charge of his precious item – he will know what that means.

I’m sending you the last of my available monies. My employer has yet to furnish me with my wages. This is likely an oversight as he is overly generous in person, but lacks available staff. I will remind him at my next opportunity.

Love,
Um.

Elibyrge Terminal X334ss21

Teddy’s New Rules

Session Seven: September 14-15, 2007

It’s beginning to feel normal. The stress. The sensation that something bad’s about to happen. The knowledge that the next flight won’t be uneventful; the next jump won’t be normal; the next planetfall won’t be quiet.

This is all going to end badly, when it finally ends. And by that time, my perception of ‘bad’ will probably have changed a great deal.

Unfriendly Relations

I was longing to be away from the Zuviev Estate. Waking up with my head about to drop off didn’t help. I’ll admit it was nice to wake up with Shui-Lin hovering over me, but given I’d just fallen off the couch after a very bad nightmare I wasn’t in any mood to appreciate the vision.

I have a vague recollection of words with her, possibly about the inappropriateness of my having spent the night, and I think I also spoke to some of Sava’s Death Dolls, but neither conversation really made much of an impact on me. I woke up a second time quite late in the day, still a bit light-headed and ravenously hungry.

There was an odd fellow in the dining room, sharing breakfast (and a hangover) with me. One of the Decados minor houses I think, though I couldn’t tell you his name. He had the same...leading...way of talking that Prince Hiram had.

After breakfast (it was my first meal of the day, I’m allowed to call it breakfast) I took the train back to Elibyrge and from there took our borrowed transport up to the station. Our man on the station was a bit surprised to see me in the flesh, and he seemed to assume that my ill-humour was a factor of my rank rather than a lingering hangover and a general disaffection with everything Decados. He’d been keeping an eye on outgoing shipping for me, and thanks to some bright spark in the engineering department they’d found the broadcast Oxana had managed to send out before she died. Her words “execute; execute” had been tight-beamed to a specific location near the jump gate, and the clerk confirmed that a ship had transited the gate a few moments later. So they had a few days head start on us, and the Pancreator only knew what they were off to ‘execute’.

I took the Embrace back to Zuviev and passed on the new intel to Sava, who was wrapping things up by that point. I stayed out at the ship, not really wanting to set foot back inside the estate if I could help it. Brother James joined me there, for another of his ‘talks’.

I really wish he’d just stop trying to understand me. We get along so much better when our personalities aren’t getting in the way of us doing our jobs.

Essentially, he wanted to know where my loyalties lay. Which is not a question a man like him should ever ask a man like me. James is literal, perfectly up-front, and very straight. He knows exactly how much loyalty he owes to each of his charges and he can rattle them off with perfect clarity. A guy like me has rather more flexible loyalties, and which one’s on top depends on the situation. So we had another one of those conversation where he asked me pointed questions and I tried to answer them to the best of my ability, which is never enough for James way of thinking. He ended up casting aspersions at my mother, implying that my absentee father would discard one son in favour of the other, and asserted that I was probably after Sava’s titles and lands.

And the really irritating thing is that it made me think about my mother’s role in all this. Damn him.

He’s right about one thing—I don’t know what her goals are. Never have. In fact, I’ve never asked, or even cared to. She does her thing and I do mine. And maybe she is angling for Yevgeny’s hand in marriage. More power to her, I say. She knows she won’t have her charms forever, and what better retirement can a courtesan hope for but to marry one of her old flames? If she wants him, I’ll stay out of it. If she tries to drag me into it though, I’m going to have to break a rule and disobey my mother.

Because there’s no way in all the dark stars I’ll have anything to do with disinheriting Sava. Especially not after everything Yevgeny’s done to him.

Welcoming Committee

The trip out to the Cadiz gate was tortuously slow. I kept expecting something to go wrong—for a ship to burst out and shoot at us, or for James to another of his little ‘chats’ with me. Everybody was sullen and brooding about the twins. They’re about our only topic of conversation these days. That their reach extends so far beyond their graves disturbs me.

We transited the gate to Manitou without event, and began the trip down to the planet. I was on the lookout for ships fitting the description of the one that had passed through the gate after the execute message, and lo and behold I found one, heading towards us for the gate. I started a friendly chat with them to see if they checked out, and although nothing they said was precisely wrong there was something not right about it. Thankfully, Sava was happy to follow my hunch. He had a chat with their captain, ostensibly to pass messages back to Cadiz, trying to get more info on who they were and what they up to. As they passed us, despite the speeds and risks involved, they took a pot-shot at us. Yeah, I was a bit gob-smacked. Thankfully the shields caught the blast and both ships continued on their courses, us for the planet, them for the gate.

Frantic messages got sent around. The Dean on Manitou was informed of the situation, and was asked to dig up any info about that ship. Thinking that they were headed through the gate, I tried to raise a ship just coming through it, in the hope of catching them before they engaged their engines for the planet, and maybe convincing them to re-transit and send a message to the Decados garrison.

What answered was a Vau. Apparently the look on my face was priceless.

Sava spoke to him (it?) and explained the situation. The Vau very kindly offered to stay on station at the gate and relay information to us. I guess he thought it sounded like fun. His sensor data was frankly astonishing—full ship schematics and crew numbers. What I wouldn’t give to get a hold of some of his tech. Ah well.

We finally made planetfall (after several iterations of the “why can’t we go any faster” conversation) and I headed straight for the Dean’s office while the others...I don’t know, whatever the heck it is they do on planet while I’m working. The Dean fell all over himself to help me out. That’s still taking some getting used to—they call up my service record and their eyes go wide. Anyway, the ship in question had left after taking on some very suspicious cargo, including a heap of Vau explosive devices.

That’s the sound of my brain going ‘doink’. Haven’t these people ever heard of prohibited exports? I know Manitou’s outré and neutral and weird and all that, but sheesh.

I commented that they were probably going to try blowing up the gate. The Dean’s eyes got a bit wider. I asked him if there were any Muster on planet I could borrow for the job. Thankfully, this was in fact the case. I was introduced to the Muster team, and their ugly little troop transport, and their very gung-ho sergeant (aren’t they all?).

Then came the fun of passing all this info on the the others.

“Blowing up a jump gate” are words nobody should ever have to hear, let alone repeat.

I really hate these guys.

Teddy’s New Rules

Session Six: July 21, 2007

So. This is Zuviev. I don’t know whether to feel vindicated or revolted. Both, most likely.

I grew up around Decados lordlings. They were all a bit funny in the head, but nothing quite like this. Of course, they were back woods boys, children of nobles who could never aspire beyond a knighthood and a tiny plot of land. Their influence spread little further than their own doors. Now the Zuvievs, they’re court nobles. Their name is known to the Prince. They move in another circle entirely. And it shows.

My mother never had a single bad thing to say about Yevgeny. She spoke of him lovingly, described him in superlatives and misty-eyed recollection. None of her clients escaped comparison with Yevgeny. She missed him, loved him still. All those years and she still loved him. So either she didn’t know him very well, or I don’t know my mother. Neither really sits well. She was good at reading people – had to be, in her line of work. So she had to have known at least some of what he was.

This is a man who kept a dead symbiot in his basement.

This is a man who raised his children in vats.

City of Delusion

The mood in the mansion settled into a kind of wary industriousness – the servants all had stuff to do for the impending visit of Prince Hiram, so Sava’s takeover was little more than a blip in their routine. Sava herself settled in the library to interview what were now her staff, and the priests had ensconced themselves in the chapel, so I was left at a loose end. I invented some make-work; smoothing things over with the Muster mercs on the grounds; getting a Charioteer bureaucrat on the station to monitor outgoing ships; and making sure Sava actually ate something. She wasn’t looking too bright, not that I blamed her. Shui-Lin and James didn’t surface, so I went off in search of them. I figured there was a good chance they were avoiding food and sleep, too. Like me, really.

Strolling up the hallway to the chapel I had a run-in with Lady Maya. I decided to be polite. She is Sava’s mother, after all. But rather than ignoring me as I’d hoped she would, she stopped. I was looking firmly at my boots. “Look at me,” she said, in a voice not unlike Oxana’s. And I did. She’s beautiful, like a porcelain doll – flawless skin and cold, cold eyes. She said something else, about wanting to see my face, then she spat on me and continued on. Well, I did help kill her kids. And it was a much more controlled reaction than I’d imagined.

Down in the chapel, James was deep in prayer, with Shui-Lin watching over him, looking tired and worried. In fact, she looked worse than Sava. I gave her a quiet telling-off for not eating and she started an argument about how she felt fine and had more important things to be doing. Honestly, these nobles just don’t have any sense. She relented in the end, and staggered off to eat dinner and put herself to bed, though not before telling me about the problem with the chapel. See, the twins had been making some alterations. There was scaffolding up over the stained glass window, and sheeting covering the glass itself, hiding whatever image was there. Shui-Lin didn’t want James to see that image when he finally came to himself. Basic revulsion won out over curiousity and I decided against going to have a peek. It was probably blasphemous, anyway. I had the servants paint it black, and headed off for bed myself.

Black Holes and Revelations

The following day we faced the not-too-palatable prospect of going through the Institute. I say unpalatable, but that was only my initial impression. Sava made it worse by commenting that she thought there might be symbiots down there. Pause for minor hysterics and a mad dash for the armoury in search of flamers.

Truth be told, I’d have been happier staying in the house. Even with the death dolls and Sava’s mother. Anything was preferable to the horrible possibility of running into another symbiot. And yes, I was terrified at the prospect. There’s no sense there; nothing you can scare into submission or reason with. Worse; they infect humans with their filth and turn us against ourselves. Time is insufficient distance from the horrors.

In any case, we went. Shui-Lin led us in a prayer, and then we descended to the sub-basement.

It both was and wasn’t what I expected. Cold and clean; surgically neat and stinking of disinfectant. The elevator doors opened onto a long corridor, one wall punctuated by doors, the other clear glass, terminating in an airlock door at the far end. Beyond the glass was a horror no less disturbing than symbiots, but at least somewhat more human.

Vats. Great glass tubes of viscous liquid, five of them empty. The other three…

Even now I can’t call it to mind without a shudder. I can list them dispassionately enough: a pre-born; a male child; a pre-pubescent girl. Floating in their tubes, asleep and dreaming. The family resemblance was unmistakable; these were Sava’s siblings. My siblings.

Sava seemed unsurprised, as though remembering her own childhood, and it occurred to me that she was probably grown in one of things. Like a prized show beast. No normal life there; no comforting arms, no little accidents; nothing that a child can learn and grow from. Raised in perfect isolation to be perfect specimens of the Zuviev bloodline. It makes me sick.

And then, of course, followed a terrible helplessness – I can’t do anything for those children. They’re stuck there. Bound to House and blood and the mad designs of their ‘parents’. They’ll turn into vicious little homunculi like Konstantin and Oxana, so far removed from human they’ve lost their humanity. It’s there in Sava, too; that distance and coldness. Just a little. Just enough.

Maya and Yevgeny are responsible for those atrocities, and to think that they could perpetrate them on their own children… Or perhaps they don’t even think of them as their children, given how little they’ve had to do with their upbringing. By the Gates, I want to hurt them.

Hoodoo

…kids in vats was just the beginning.

I stayed out in the hallway, ostensibly to keep an eye on the unchecked doors and to make sure nothing came down the lift to meet us. Really, I was sick with fear, and though I had my back to the glass wall and the vats beyond, my brain kept calling up images of them. I didn’t want to be there, and I didn’t want to see what new horrible revelations might be behind the other four doors.

The others went through the airlock into the vat room and poked around a bit. I wasn’t paying much attention, because to do that would have meant turning around and facing the vats again. The doors were much more innocuous.

They finally emerged, a little shakily I thought, and started going through the other four rooms. I stayed where I was, happy about being unable to see whatever was in the rooms. I was getting rough descriptions from Shui-Lin anyway. The first was a sort of operating theatre and the second, some kind of laboratory.

The third room elicited some confused noises from the others, and Sava called me over to have a look. I probably bitched a bit about being prised away from my nice safe spot. Inside was a bank of second-republic computer mainframes. Huge, sleek black things with slide-out keyboards and seductive curves. Alas, they wouldn’t let me play with them. Why call me in then? Honestly.

I returned to my relatively safe wall and proceeded to sulk. The others opened the last room. And by their reaction, they found what we were all hoping we wouldn’t find; a symbiot. No sooner had that word been used than Sava called me over again. I swore at her a bit. I really didn’t want to be in a room with a symbiot, dormant or not. She convinced me in the end of course, with an argument that went something along the lines of “come in here and look at this computer panel or I’ll be forced to do it myself and probably break something and let this thing out.” So, in I went.

Once the initial shock passed, it wasn’t even half as terrifying as the ones we’d encountered at Daishan. For one, it was dead, and securely locked behind plexiglass. Although ‘secure’ is possibly an ill-advised term where symbiots are concerned.

I got into the system and went through the files, learning that the symbiot had been there for nigh on thirty years. They’d brought it in dead and hooked it up to a formaldehyde system to keep it from decaying. Despite their best efforts though, the sample was finally succumbing to entropy, and they’d been searching for a stasis chamber so they could keep it indefinitely. Why, you ask? Well, turns out they’d been testing and examining the thing, getting DNA reads and studying its form. I can only assume so they could use whatever they discovered in their repulsive research. Happily, it didn’t look as though they’d taken any physical samples out to use in their research, so it was unlikely that their ‘children’ were contaminated.

But it did leave me with a dilemma. Brother James. I would have cheerfully passed on all this data to Sava and Shui-Lin. But James would probably shoot first and think later. And I didn’t want to give him any reason to think of Sava as tainted. So I deleted the memory core.

Everything went dark. I said ‘oops’, or something similar, and commented that whatever had happened could probably be fixed from the larger terminals. I was both worried about what those other databanks might contain, and eager to get my grubby little fingers on them. Before anybody could object, I was out the door.

Brother James stayed in the room with the symbiot. He was calling in a Brother Battle strike force. Which really didn’t bode well for Sava, his family, or his estate. I was having visions of guys in cassock superior declaring the whole estate tainted and burning it to the ground.

Anyway, a bit of fiddling got me access to the big databanks, and I was faced with a positively daunting list of files and research subjects. The big, shiny, not-to-be-ignored one was “Zuviev Apotheosis Project”. Feeling a bit ill, I activated it.

And the computer started talking. Well, I was impressed.

It launched into an overview about the project, which included words like ‘genetics’ that, in concert with the thing in the next room, made Zuviev look very bad. Now in my defence, I was not thinking very straight at this point, and I was also completely oblivious to the fact that Sava and Shui-Lin were standing right behind me. And I ran my mouth off, the way I always do when I’m stressed. I believe I said something along the lines of “looks like I’m going to have to delete this, too”.

Which is when Sava punched me. I was shocked more than anything. She very icily ordered me upstairs and told me to stay there until she came to get me. I guess I’m lucky she didn’t run me through.

Shui-Lin lectured me on the way back up to the ground floor. It boiled down to my inability to keep my fool mouth shut. Nothing new, really. I’m a bit irritated that she made me feel guilty about it, though.

Later, the Brothers Battle (two oddly timid young men who were stonkingly outranked by Brother James) arrived and vanished downstairs to cleanse the symbiot taint. Which wasn’t really a taint, given it was so very dead. And I’m appalled that they blew up the entire room, taking a lot of very expensive second-republic tech with it. Honestly, luddites.

I had it out with Sava a little after that, her chilly anger having warmed a bit by then. I think I explained myself well enough, or at least to her satisfaction – and for once I was really telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I left her with a brotherly embrace which I felt was reciprocated, though I could have done without the friendly arse-pat she gave me as I left.

Assassin

Late that afternoon found us standing politely behind Sava as she waited to greet Prince Hiram Decados. His shuttle, like the Brothers Battle before him, landed on the roof, which by now was feeling less than stable (the Brothers had not taken their landing softly). The Prince’s shuttle is a nice piece of kit – sleek and black, with just the merest hint of green. It put me in mind of one of those racing cats the traders bet on while waiting for their routes out of Pandemonium.

Prince Hiram himself is every bit the ‘thing’ you hear rumours of. You could call him human, but you’d be stretching the term to its utmost limit. Grossly obese and supported by a floating tray propelled along on mechanical legs… I could tell that Sava was impressed, though by what, I’m not sure. The size of his purse?

Lady Sava introduced herself, and apologised to the Prince for the presence of the Brothers Battle. The Prince didn’t seem concerned, and swapped pleasantries in that double-speaking language nobles use. Then Sava introduced her companions – I muttered some meaningless pleasantry and was irritated to note I’d slipped back into my normal accent, something the Prince seemed to find very amusing.

Sava led his highness off to the guest quarters so he could refresh himself before the party, and the rest of us slunk off to get dressed. Well, except for James, who vanished back downstairs to watch over the empty room and the no doubt very-sick-of-the-sight-of-him lower ranked Brothers Battle. I’m not really sure what he’s hoping to achieve by standing around outside that room. To me, it smacks of a man running away from something, and it makes me wonder what Oxana did to him.

The party preparations were reaching boiling point, and the eager types were already arriving when Sava summoned me to the chapel for a chat. Ominous-sounding, no? The chapel was still dimly-lit, but the cloths had been pulled away from the scaffolding and a warm breeze was wafting in through the shattered window. Bits of glass dusted the pews and the floor. Nice to see Sava getting her anger out on inanimate objects.

She said she’d had a talk with Prince Hiram. Seems His Highness was very graciously not going to have me killed for interfering in a vendetta. That cold feeling in my stomach? That was the realisation that I had, in fact, screwed up big time. Sava had called vendetta. Publicly. In front of a goodly number of Zuviev guards. And I’d not even paused. I’d kept shooting at Konstantin. Clearly yet another case of me acting before thinking. But back to the salient point – His Highness graciously not having me killed. You see, since I’d kept shooting after vendetta had been called, clearly I had to be the only other person legally allowed to participate in the vendetta: an assassin. Sava had a fancy scroll, already signed by Prince Hiram, which named me as a Mantis Assassin, all above-board (though back-dated).

Yeah. Kilroy and Mantis Assassin. The list just keeps getting worse.

I signed the paper. It’s not like I had much of a choice.

Little by little, I get closer to the Decados. It’s enough to give anybody nightmares.

Exo-Politics

The party. All the right people were there, of course. With Prince Hiram on offer, it’s not like they’d refuse.

Shui-Lin, in an uncharacteristic show of defiance (well, she’d like us to think it was uncharacteristic) wore one of her blood-stained dress robes. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t stand out. Brother James stayed downstairs guarding his precious empty room. I guess everybody’s entitled to a night off, but he could have chosen a better time to be sulking.

Sava was her usual glorious self, and I hovered near her most of the evening, in the misguided assumption that she might have needed protection. From what I’m not sure. She’s more than capable in combat, and she clearly had the Prince’s favour and so it was unlikely any of the other nobles would be out to get her. In the short term, anyway. Maybe it was just because she looked somehow lonely without her shadow.

There was violence of course, It was a proper Decados party, after all. One of the Prince’s Cossack guards accidentally-on-purpose bumped into a minor noble, and there was a duel in which the noble lost his life. Sava was put out, presumably because the prince hadn’t asked her first, and killed the Cossack in retaliation. Prince Hiram found the whole thing very amusing. Shui-Lin was less entertained by all this casual death, and took herself off to bed. I was in half a mind to leave with her, but I didn’t want to leave Sava on her own (stupid, I know).

A little later, I got taken off for a private meeting with the Prince. Terrified? Not quite. Apprehensive? Almost definitely. Prince Hiram has this genial, avuncular manner that makes you think he’s foolish and ineffectual, even though you know damn well he isn’t. It’s a neat trick. I may not like him, but I have to admit a grudging admiration for him.

He started off by saying he’d heard I was a Kilroy, and I admitted that, yes, some people called me that. He seemed to find that amusing. A lot of little things amuse the Prince. He touched briefly on the paper I’d signed, and was of course amused by my reaction – uncomfortable and irritated. I got the distinct impression that he knew damn well why I was with Sava (or perhaps that’s just me leaping to conclusions based on his way of speaking in hints).

We discussed the huge problem the twins had left behind them, that is the Charioteers getting a big hate on for the Decados, and how it could be fixed. Surprisingly, he agreed to my suggestion, which was that I’d provide a list of the missing Charioteers and their vessels, and that those vessels and their keys would be returned to the Guild. I named the bureaucrat on Cadiz station as the Factor. He’ll think all his birthdays have come at once. I don’t know what’ll happen to the Jakovian agents currently flying those ships, but they’re only peripherally complicit, and there’s been far too much death over this already.

The Prince left me with some final comments, delivered conspiratorially with the admonition not to tell Sava. Which is doubly peculiar, because he has to know I’d tell Sava anyway, so telling me not to is just a big red flag to make sure I tell her. Anyway, he wanted me to know that he was loyal to Alexius. Not to the throne, which is his usual line, but to Alexius himself. I could drive myself mad trying to figure out what his angle is in telling me that in that way, but I’m not going to give him the satisfaction.

Later, I had a moment of panic when I realised I’d been negotiating pretty high-level stuff on behalf of the Guild, something I really didn’t have the authority to do. Or at least, I didn’t have that authority a few months ago. I guess that’s just another ‘perk’ of being a Captain. When we finally hit Leagueheim I am going to have such a huge report to hand in. I just hope the Deans are in a good mood when I tell them.

The party sort of ground on after that, thankfully never reaching the heights of debauchery the Decados are famous for. I left before the end, happy to leave Sava with the few remaining party die-hards. I collected a bottle of vodka and was heading back to my room when I noticed that Shui-Lin’s light was still on, and presumably because I was a little bit drunk, I knocked, and she let me in.

We finished the bottle together, over now dimly-remembered conversation about religion and the spaces between the stars. For a priest, she holds her liquor well. I must have passed out on the couch at some point (and I really need to stop spending evenings in Shui-Lin’s room, because it’s bound to start rumours I don’t want to deny). That’s where I woke up, tangled under a blanket, desperately forcing myself to take stock of where I was, not where I thought I had been. The nightmare was a bad one, and it wasn’t letting go. I was back in that dingy little room near Elibyrge spaceport, waking to pain and terror, but it wasn’t the twins leering at me over their surgical tools.

It was Yevgeny and Sava.

Teddy’s New Rules

Session Five: June 23-24, 2007

You know, looking at myself in the mirror right now, I look a heck of a lot more like the upper-class wannabe I was when I first hopped that freighter to the Academy. The scruffy flightsuit’s gone, replaced with a suit of the kind Sava thinks looks good on me. I’m feeling more comfortable in my own skin. The doubts are still there, but they’re little background things. I’ve got better things to do than wallow. And, well… The new image suits me. Damn Sava’s good taste.

PTSD

I think we were all a bit shell-shocked after the run-in with the symbiots and the week-long decontamination. Rothwell was the only one with a grin on his face, but then he was sort of entitled to it. I let him do the piloting – I was still shaky from the Symbiot encounter.

We parted ways with Rothwell on Istakhr, and I have to admit that I was just a little bit sorry to see him go. For all his moaning and poor conversation, it was nice to have another Charioteer around. A competent one, that is. More on that later.

We all had jobs to do and set off on our separate paths – Sava and James to track down Freka, Shui-Lin to see her order, and me to dig up rumours. There was a lot of bad feeling towards the Decados, as they’d recalled their ambassador, shut down their embassy, and were no longer sending food. I ran into an old comrade from the Mendip, who was suitably in awe of my shiny new reputation (which I was still trying to get used to). He was stationed on a grain ship, the Spite Enpaulisch, whose captain I hoped could be convinced to take us incognito into Decados space. He was waiting for parts, and not having much luck with the engineers. I told him I’d see what I could do, and he agreed to ship us to Malignatius.

I caught up with the others at the main port, where there was ample evidence of our earlier dramatic departure – huge glassed craters showed where my guild had vented wrath at the Jakovians. I love my guild. Ship weaponry trumps surface-to-air missiles.

There was a pleasant pause for shopping; an afternoon spent in cheerful conversation with Shui-Lin, who was in a freer mood than normal and wore her smile near-constantly. She actually laughed at some of my jokes. Of course, her good humour with me didn’t last, and I was chiefly responsible for cocking it up.

Sava and James had found Freka and taken her to a safe-house (little more than a garage, really). I was sent off to fetch Shui-Lin and whatever healing supplies she might need, but not before a frank discussion with Sava about what I wanted done with Freka. She’d been responsible for a great many Charioteer deaths, and I’m not ashamed to say that revenge was foremost in my mind. I told Sava that I wanted her dead, and wouldn’t baulk at doing it myself if I had to (I was probably bluffing about that part, but I’ll never really know). Sava was okay with that, chiefly because he also seemed to want her dead.

Shui-Lin tended her charge with utmost compassion. I have to admire her ability to put aside personal opinion and just do her job. Eventually though, she had to admit that Freka’s wounds were beyond her healing abilities, and the lot of us shipped down to the Amalthean temple.

Freka didn’t last much longer. I was glad of being absolved of the need to kill her, and I would have been happy to forget the whole gruesome episode, but for Shui-Lin. Sava had told her about my wanting to kill Freka, and there was a roaring argument about who intended to do what when. I tried to explain that I would never had done anything to Freka while she was under Shui-Lin’s care, but she was having none of it and stormed off in high dudgeon. And just when we were getting along so well. It only got worse after that.

Weight, for throwing around

I wrote up my report to the Kilroys, adding in Freka’s uncomfortable revelations about the twin’s possible psychic abilities. The port master was happy to see me, in the manner of a man aching to be seen to be ‘helping out’ the better-connected. Which I’m not, but if he wants to think that, fine. He arranged for the Spite’s engine part to be delivered promptly, and I asked him to do what he could to support the Charioteers back at Stigmata.

The Spite’s captain was a gnarled old cyber-jockey who on first impression put me in mind of Captain Hamer. On closer inspection though, he had even fewer interpersonal skills and no gumption to speak of. So I started out being polite and deferring to the more senior rank, and in very short order ended up practically running his ship.

Shui-Lin remained bad-tempered, and her mood wasn’t improved by some not-so-gentle joking on mine and Sava’s part. The Spite consisted of a cargo contained at the rea, a bridge and quarters at the front, and a long gantry in between. An indifferently-lit, well-windowed gantry with faulty grav systems. I got slapped for my troubles. I deserved it, too. I should remember that women take a lot longer to get over things than men do.

We slipped through the gate to Malignatius without incident (discounting Sava’s current ‘little problem’ with jump gates, which I really don’t want to go into). The story got interesting as we started to pick up transmissions – a hymn being wide-broadcast, singing the praises of the celestial twins, who had rained holy fire on the unbelievers at Malignatius and ended the war with casual ease. All sung in proper Avestite church-Latin. I slapped on the brakes and ordered us back through the gate to Cadiz. I may have used the word ‘abomination’. That’s about when the captain locked himself in his cabin.

By the time we gated into Cadiz system I was running the bridge. Which was a little odd, to say the least. As we headed in towards the planet I stayed on the bridge (only a little to do with the fact that I was avoiding Shui-Lin’s righteous anger). We were picking up all sorts of transmissions about the twins – they’d quelled the resistance on Malignatius, and were several days ahead of us, back home on Cadiz and humbly accepting their accolades. It was all teeth-clenchingly irritating. Then the Decados flagship came through the jump gate.

Sava spoke to Prince Hiram, whose whole opinion on the matter boiled down to “I will look good no matter what happens, I’ll be congratulating somebody when I arrive at Zuviev Estate, and I don’t much care whether it’s the twins or you”. Which left a nasty deadline hanging over our heads. And a grudging respect for the man who runs House Decados.

In trying to get information about where Sava’s parents were, I sent messages to two Charioteer vessels heading in the planet. The first knew nothing. The second immediately changed course to intercept. At this point, I’m not sure who was stupider – me or them, but I’m the one who came out on top so I get to write the history.

We exited the Spite, sending a very relieved captain on his way and full burn back to the gate. Then I got to play chicken with starships. Which is as fun as it sounds, but only if you pull it off successfully. I came haring at the other ship at full-burn (which is a not inconsiderable speed in our little tug), then flipped her over when we hit weapons range and hit full burn in reverse, catching two missiles in our engine splash and trapping the other vessel in the tractor beam as we passed overhead. Textbook manoeuvre. They’ll probably name it after me.

We boarded pretty smoothly, with James taking care of the greeting squad and me talking the ‘captain’ into surrendering. The little shit was working for the Jakovians, who had given him the ship after killing the Charioteer captain. I relieved him of the stolen jump key and we trussed him up in the hold. We let him loose on Cadiz – deposited in a Muster sell for a set period to give us time to be well clear of him.

Just as an aside, I’d worked up a pretty big hate by this point. At the twins, mostly. They needed killing in my opinion. Badly. They’d brainwashed two units of Jakovians, almost slipped a symbiot infection past the quarantine, and been personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Charioteers and the theft of a similar number of jump keys. Nobody fucks with the guild. I never thought I’d take this stuff quite so personally. I mean, I’ve been loyal to the guild since I joined, but lately it’s been dawning on me that the buck stops with me. There’s nobody out here to give my problems to – that was abundantly clear at Stigmata garrison, with me and Rothwell the only captains in the vicinity. ‘Captain’ and ‘Kilroy’ means I have to fix the problem myself.

And hell yes, that’s ego. Shut up.

When all else fails, fake it

We settled in to a mediocre hotel near the Zuviev Estate and went to work gathering intel. That nearly got me arrested by local security, but I run a pretty good line in bullshit and they let me go, having been convinced I was undercover.

Shui-Lin, who was still a bit shitty with me but was at least deigning to speak to me again, picked up some interesting gossip from her mother superior – Sava’s father had left Zuviev for Leagueheim some time ago, after hearing that ‘somebody he cared about’ had fallen ill. If that’s my mother, I’m going to be very…something.

Anyway, the others decided they’d get into the estate as nobles attending the ‘do, while I got in with the security detail. It was easy enough to get hired by the Muster as roaming security, and I got partnered up with a young grunt who quickly developed a high opinion of my ability to get us posted inside the nice warm house out of the rain. With detours through the kitchens.

The others didn’t have it nearly so good, and a little after nightfall gunshots rang out and a general call to arms came through. Which I neatly sidestepped, to the mounting awe of my companion. I headed deeper into the house, called off the guards with a false call about bogies on the other side of the grounds, and opened a window for Sava and the others. I did apologise to my ‘partner’ for having to knock him unconscious and stuff him in a cupboard. I’m sure he understood. Heh.

I’d clearly used up all my luck though, because that’s when it started going pear-shaped. We were spotted, chased, trapped, and then ambushed by Konstantin’s men. Fortunately, Sava and James are very good at dealing with stuff like that, so Shui-Lin suggested we leave them to it and get after the twins, who’d run on ahead. Very odd to hear her advocate chasing the bad guy. Of course, she’d just been badly shot up by their ambush, so maybe she wasn’t feeling very charitable.

Halfway up the stairs to the roof, we were joined by security, who I managed to convince were on the same side as us (and we were still dressed like militia, so it wasn’t much of a stretch). We hit the roof and there were the twins, heating up a flyer for their getaway.

Two things stick in my head about that moment. The first was the very cold and unconcerned way Konstantin looked at me as I raised my gun and shot him. The second was the little grin on his face as he said “Looks like big brother’s all grown up”.

As if I needed another reason to be ashamed to be related to that.

I think he shot me at least once, because Shui-Lin patched me up later on, but I don’t really remember much beyond standing in the doorway and calmly pulling off round after round, first at Konstantin, and then when Sava closed with his brother, at Oxana.

She tried to get away in the flyer, and I remember moving out on to the roof, firing blaster bolts at the engines in some addle-headed desire to shoot it out of the sky. Sava ordered the men, his men now, to fire on it, and after some convincing they did. She avoided the first missile. The second one blew her to hell.

Then we were standing in the rain on a roof-top, with Sava in a pool of blood cradling Konstantin’s dead body, and James shaking off whatever Oxana had done to him. Shui-Lin was somewhere back in the stairwell, helping the security guards Sava and James had gone through on their way to the roof.

It felt good to take off the Muster militia gear and put my Captain’s insignia back on. But man, do I need a drink.

DSS Princess Anastasia

Heavily armed as a battleship, sleek as a dagger, black as deep space but for the emerald green mantis claws etched into its battle-steel flanks, the DSS Princess Anastasia is the flagship of Prince Hiram Decados himself. Few outside of Prince Hiram's own trusted inner circle of arch-advisors, cyber-heirophants and elite physicians have set foot upon the vessel; it's crew does not indulge in shore leave, and its marque is truly unique. It is even unknown if the Prince relies upon a Charioteer pilot...

CSV Spittein Paulisch

The Charioteer Star Vessel Spittein Paulisch is a bulk trader operating the run from Cadiz to Malignatius, and from there to Istakhr and Aylon. The last few months has seen the Paulisch concentrate on shipping within the Al Malik sphere of influence. The ship's captain, a wily old trader, felt that traversing the Decados interface was a dangerous game. After meeting Sava Zuviev Decados, his intuition has turned into downright bias.

The Royal Gwynneth Hotel

The Gwynneth, as its many long term customers and favourite winesops call it, is a hotel not far from the dusty streets of Samarkand's Grand Bazaar, on Istakhr. It caters to expatriate Hawkood nobility and retainers, or those of the merchant classes with pretensions to padded finery and velvet drapery. Sir Sava Zuviev Decados rented apartments for her entourage during their second stay on Istakhr, much to the staff's evident chagrin.