#nera live

Nera doesn't know where her clothes came from.

They're nice. Probably printed, actually, given the glossy feel of the fiber. Cellulose, a common printer fiber, and one she cannot turn up her nose at despite the past few years of wearing cottons and silks. Organic fibers are rare up here, spaceside, and luxurious on-planet anyway. Not rare enough on coreworlds to be confined to the nobility, but fine enough to only be commonly worn for everyday use by them.

Printed just for her seems possible, but unlikely. Idly she's wondered the past few days of they're Saleh's, or perhaps Cowie's, prior to growth spurt, but she hasn't bothered to ask nor has anyone bothered to offer.

The pants took some modification in her down time. Some let out at the thighs, and additional padding to accommodate and conceal her blades. She feels bad about carrying them everywhere, but with two members of the crew here in bodies capable of killing by default she's found herself comforted by the feel of the blade against her thigh. It's a guilty sort of comfort, being the least uneasy talking to Cowie and Nofie while she knows she's armed with blades that can cut through metal, but.

Well.

It's not like that's a habit she didn't form talking to people built from flesh and blood.

She's sat below Postlimniae, perhaps her closest friend and confidant and who is nearly wholly built from metal, although her nerves are now open and exposed to the air. Work has been done on her, which Nera feels somewhat neglectful for not aiding in, but not enough for her to be fully whole again. It hasn't escaped her notice that most of the others in the hangar, too, are in various states of disrepair. Something has happened while she was missing.

At least the new is a masterpiece. Nera does not know who built the bay before, but by all accounts it was a standard setup for a standard garden, rows upon rows of the same for serviceable crops done with standard effort expended upon the way. What's replaced it, so far, is the labor of a woman seeking to distract herself with the song of strained arms and meticulous planning, a chaharbagh with a central fountain a spiral topiary of herbs. For now it is still half disassembled, the sumac and juniper trimmed and relocated to basins along the edge of the room, with many of the smaller plants in temporary holding setups while Nera finishes the pipework and the planning, and the design on the eventual outer casings, and the—

“All personnel, this is your captain speaking. Please attend promptly to Habitation Deck Sub-Three. I repeat, all personnel, Hab sub-three.”

The dinny sound of Saleh's voice on the speakers catches Nera from her thoughts, midway through affixing some pipes.

She takes the second to get everything secure, wipes the sweat from her brow, and stands. There's an annoyance that forms, deep in her belly, on how Nera has no idea what this is for, but given the tone she's unwilling to assume this is optional.

She stops by her room on the way at least, to change into a top she hasn't already sweat through, and double check to make sure that she hasn't missed something scheduled on her slate. Nothing.

Nera considers not showing up.

Instead she finds herself in the doorway of the habitation deck, feeling as if she's been had.

The tableau beyond the doorway is positively tooth-rotting. Blankets and pillows are strewn about the room, with a pile of Mud Wasps against the wall opposite the doorway. Saleh is up front and the first to catch her attention, greeting her as soon as the door opens with a call of

"Nera! I wondered if the announcement had caught you at a bad time in your work."

But what Nera sees immediately is her hair down, being braided by Loulou, both of them propped up against a Cowie, who is laid up against the wall in an odd approximation of a couch. Nofie is also there, sitting atop Cowie's shoulder, and Agwe, waving at her, is sat on the opposite end, among her legs.

But her eyes are focused on Saleh, whose voice filters to her in Suldani and is translated via the comp/con in her ear.

“I guess I forgot that it’s your first time with this ritual of ours. I could’ve been more specific.”

Nera's first instinct is to turn heel and leave without even looking at whatever's projected on the wall next to her. Her second, which she follows, is to level a glare at Cowie's face, despite the fact that she knows her vision is not good enough to track Nera's eye movements. What is here has to have been planned well in advance, and she highly doubts that Cowie wasn't involved. Which makes the fact that this was left to her out of nowhere all the more of a betrayal.

Unfortunately, the expectation of staying is on the table, and the option of leaving too painful to conscience. A free space sits next to Saleh and Loulou, conspicuously open, denying any possibility of sitting apart from the pile. No doubt this trap was snared a long time ago, and tailor made to the quarry. Nera has no choice but to make her way to the free space and sit, although she finds herself sitting ramrod straight once she's there, perfectly calculated to avoid as much contact as possible.

Against the opposite screen is a projection, two beautiful women set against a quarry, speaking some dialect of UniGalComm that strains Nera's concentration and sets her hair on end. It's a purview dialect, and the sky blue bands on their arms has Nera starting to suspect, even more, that this is an elaborate prank.

“Welcome to (hell) yuri night, Nera," comes No Future's voice from somewhere vaguely behind her, echoing her initial read on the matter. “Eugh. Low-confidence on that echo, y’all, I don’t fuck with whichever one of (these stupid bitches) me spoke up there.”

“Mandatory attendance, always has been and it always will be.” Agwe, from the opposite direction, and confirming to her how complete this subterfuge has been. “We’ve got some new stuff on the docket tonight, actually. You haven’t missed anything.”

The others leave space for her to speak, she notices, another hole left open in presumption. She can feel Cowie's focus on her, a bass rumble that resonates with her bones, but no others speaking in her defense. She feels herself reflexively sneer at the screen before her.

"Maybe the echo is right," and she is speaking Ispahalari, knowing that at least Saleh hears her through the translation comp/con anyway, "I think whoever picked this might have it out for me."

"Do not say so before we've even started. I was recommended this on the quality of the romances above all else. Whether or not Harrison Armory, who we both hate, can live up to Ispasahlari or Suldani soaps is the test, and we must conduct it in good faith."

At least her needling has made its mark on the correct target, which Nera does revel in as she avails herself of the wine.

"I'm open to new experiences. That said, it's good to hear you haven't been insulted silent."

Nera starts speaking as a more direct communication settles itself in her ear, an overlapping moment where she says:

"I'm just surprised that you have chosen to induct me into this ritual by testing the merits of a mutual enemy rather than that of a friend. I have heard many good things about Sparri and Prosperan offerings, you know."

And hears, from someone her comms implant helpfully informs her is Cowie:

< not too straight for the jugular, is it? I can get crazy bored at the drop of a hat, just say the word >

“I am sure of their quality, but consider.”

Nera cedes her composure to the food in front of her to make it easier to hide subvocals while next to Saleh, availing herself of a flatbread covered in baba ghanoush,

< I would've appreciated some warning. Felt ambushed >

“This is our first time being able to commiserate in person. We know what is good, and having it would give this day no special impact.”

< It’s how we show love. She’s not just dragging you through the mud here. There’s a plan in motion. Just call me the E-brake. >

“So—” And here Saleh's hand gestures outward at the screen, regaining Nera's full attention again— “if we are satisfied, it is a revelation. If we are not, our ire extends in the same direction. You see?”

"It's elegant, I admit," she concedes, and lets her posture relax. At the very least she has a single ally here, and a way out should she need it. "But if our opinions differ?"

“That’s the best (possible world) outcome, sometimes.” Nofie again, and Nera must remind herself that he's not trying to irritate her more, “It turns into a symposium in here.”

“To spar with blunted blades. It speaks bloodless exertion.”

“Mm. Now come on, let’s keep to topic. Things are picking up.”

The conversation quiets and Nera is forced to turn her attention back to the show, which she has been diligently ignoring up until this point. It plays on familiar and uncomfortable tropes: the mining equipment and blue sashes worn by the leads and their clipped, proper Harrisonite Common clashing into a mix of vibes Nera's come to associate with only the worst of propagandistic slop, muted only by the fact that the hammer never quite drops. The world is reminiscent of but not the same as reality, the focus never quite lingering on the righteous use of violence on the Federal Karrakin forces or their backwards ways. The Ungratefuls quibble, but they do not do so in such a way that suggests that they need outside direction that the Armory is sure to provide.

The Federal Karrakin forces are sympathetic, if antagonistic.

This makes the whole thing more uncomfortable.

Case in point:

“I am not wholly sure what they are trying to do with us always breaking to the Tilimsani agent.” Saleh leans forwards next to Nera, peering a the screen with the intensity of a critic trying to find a reason to tear apart an exhibition in a gallery. “She seems very sympathetic.”

The agent in question manages to sit at an intersection of familiar yet upsetting that Nera doesn't know how to square. She's an agent of a fictional House that is clearly modeled on the Laurents, given a comical amount of competence but continually hamstrung by internal politics. Her name— Asteria— on its own invites bile to her and her alone, but the tensions she has within her house hinge on the familiar and her specific job reminds Nera of another.

“Does that even make sense for House Sand to be involved?” But Nera's ruminations are invisible, and some have taken to seeing her as an authority here, No Future among them. “I can’t tell if that’s a reach or not.”

“Wouldn’t feel realistic if Asteria was one-dimensional. But if this is some ‘she sees the light’ stuff, like… That’s gonna be cheap.”

Nera reaches for another glass of wine.

"I don't understand the appeal of her, actually," she says, feeling the soft lull of the drink both soften and draw out her anger, "But it does make sense to me, it is an open secret that Sand agents tend to be involved in counterinsurgent activities. What doesn't make sense is how isolated she is. Why send her in alone for a cell this large? It's clearly impossible."

”I gotta guess it’s like— the mythical elevation of the antagonist. Hyper-competent enemy force, right? It lets them put all their character work on her, too.”

“Wait, is she a love interest too? That completely went over my head.” Saleh makes a face. Nera wonders if she's reassessing the piece. “I don’t mind a star-crossed throuple, but the indications I’d look for are missing.”

"Remember, this isn’t a Ispisahlari flick. You can’t go off flowers.”

"It just feels like a missed opportunity. Every spy I have known has been deeply petty, the opportunity for a parallel in the same dramatic conflict on the Sand side could make her feel more real and get to their own propagandistic aims," Nera says, taking a stuffed pita with the wine in a moment of self-indulgent joy, "Although I suppose the sandmen as some sort of horrifying super spies suits their ends just as well."

She leans back, and immediately falls slightly further than she expects as she feels Cowie shift to lift her head up.

“How many spies you know? Now’s our chance to get the juicy elite secrets." Nera isn't looking at her, but she can hear her grin, all sharp teeth.

"At least three, though two in various stages of retirement." Nera says, "Possibly more, spies and all."

She looks over at Cowie, then, tearing her attention away from the screen. "You've met one of them, actually."

“I knew it!!” Cowie laughs, and their entire makeshift couch shifts and rolls. Nera has to catch herself before she drops her wine, and she hears Loulou make a sound as she's nearly thrown off. “Yeah, ok. Points to Nera for accurate critique, I wanna see ‘Fuckyou’ attitude on Asteria or I riot.”

“You are going to see nothing, we are talking right over the end of the episode,” Saleh says from beside her, “You are both going to be talking about a bitchy censor bar and we will miss Bannerjee getting stabbed or eaten alive or kissed or something.”

"I hope it's getting stabbed," Nera offers. "Or they finally do something with the constant teasing that she will burn herself on her kobold's slag lines."

“Well then, pay attention. Though they’re paying her far too much competence for that bit to resolve.”

Nera is rewarded for her patience five minutes later, just before credits, when her foresight is confirmed. The suspense in the room suddenly ruptures.

"Ah, see, I told you!" She says, pointing at the screen, "I know the bruise is being mock-sympathetic but they cannot resist the oldest trope in the book, especially when it means they can use it to make her confront her unwillingness to let Hazmin take care of her, yes?"

“But that’s cheap!!” Nofie yells, and her movements seem too quick for the ferrofluid. “What the fuck (what the fuck), that’s an obvious ploy!”

“Stories have pay-off for a reason.”

“Defending HA, are we?” Nofie says.

"Oh, okay, yes! Let’s terminate artistic critique at its root, I see.” Saleh's laughing at least, bright in the dim light of the credits.

"Oh, let's watch you complain when the need for care is turned into the sappiest will-they won't-they fluff," Nera laughs, "It's a good formula, who knows how else to make the firebrand bend?"

“And nothing for the noble defending her enemy’s technique?” Nera is mock-wounded for a moment, but Saleh forges on. “Alright, that is a sample. Are we wanting more, or is it a return to form for us?”

"Ah, I defend their technique because they have learned it from older masters, not because it is novel," she says, waving an exaggerated hand in dismissal, "Now, what is a return to form here? Are you suggesting we move on to something else?"

“I am saying we have a whole backlog, be it Ispisahlari or Suldani. The choice goes to the group if we are invested enough to continue with Ungrateful.”

Nera feels a trap here, a question that has been levied towards her, as no other has answered the question yet, but that has no correct answer. She feels her mood drop back into the mode she felt while bonding with her peers on Ispahsalar, where each small affordance of opinion is also a test: here either she can be the former noble who endorses the Harrisonite propaganda, or so stuck in her old ways that she cannot see quality outside of her small sphere.

"I'll yield to the opinion of the crowd," she says, a dodge that she hopes will be received with grace.

“Mm-m. Mud Wasps don’t do abstention.” Cowie nudges Nera in a veneer of playfulness, either playing off or not realizing that she has verbally scruffed her back into the deep. “We got an opinion, we share it, even overruled. I’ll cast my vote first, though— I wanna see if Nera’s right on the payoff.”

The votes roll in, splitting in a way that leads the part of her that is reading this as a noble social engagement to some conclusion that this is a conspiracy towards her embarrassment. Anger surges in her throat for a second, a desire to walk out, to stab Loulou as her vote comes in, but instead she takes a second to breathe. This is not the court of the Patronage, she can benefit from being honest here.

"I abstained because I've got a split opinion," Nera says, shifting in her seat, "On one hand, we already have momentum here and it's not horrible, but on the other, I think anything Suldani or Karrakin would have me less on edge."

“See, that is a fair predicament. I’ll accept that.” Saleh comes to her defense, which would also be suspect if Nera had not decided to ignore her paranoia for the moment. “I say we could do without unease, so that will be another vote for the change of gear."

Words follow, but Nera sets them aside to refill her wine and attend to snacks. Some conversation of what to watch instead, which she has already recused herself from. The churn has made itself present to her, a dozen small betrayals that has built up to something perhaps unkind and unwarranted but that has her wanting to lash out regardless. That she was called here without consultation, that her supposed friends knew and told her none of it, that she has been subjected to "bonding" that seems so pointed at her wounds, that Cowie, who had pitched herself as an ally, was the first to pin her back down when she attempt to wriggle out of the trap that had been laid.

It hurts. Perhaps more that she doesn't know how to swallow the anger.

What's happening on the screen passes her by. Cowie freezing and whispering a panicked

“Did I just hear the doors lock?”

Catches her attention again, and when she glances back up the title

SUPERSTAR ARGOS: PCV DREAMS DELUXE!!

Is smeared across the screen. Nera's frozen for a second, the absurdity finally getting to her. She glances over at Saleh.

"What have we done to you?"

”I have no idea what you mean.”

“Is this because of that drawing you told me about.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

She's unreadable. Sipping on her wine. Nera takes a moment to collect herself, take a deep breath, and then.

"What drawing? Why are we watching the horrible shipgirl show?"

Seek understanding.

“You should ask your contact this.”

Awake.

The light is pain lancing to the back of her skull before Nera even opens her eyes. Her mouth is dry and cracked, her flexsuit clings to her skin by sweat that has gone dry and to a crust. The air she breathes is stale and recirculated.

Her vitals monitor offers a helpful beep. She's dehydrated, low on nutrients. The straw in her flexsuit helpfully pokes at her chin. She tries to open her eyes instead.

The fluorescent lights flickering above where she lay suddenly feel like the full force of a dozen suns. She can barely open her eyes for even a moment before the pain overcomes her and she closes them again, rolls over on the old, rigid carpet she's been left on to try to seek the dark.

The monitor beeps again. Nera drinks from the straw, the flavor somewhere between grape and chalk, and does her best to resist the urge to spit it all back up again.

She fades.

Awake again.

Her vitals monitor is beeping and the head pain has not improved. It lances into her neck and back now, although that may be from her odd sleeping angle.

Surely the monitor has something to say about this, but Nera cannot bring herself to open her eyes to see, and her mouth feels filled with cotton. For a moment she considers the possibility of returning to sleep, but awareness comes to her against her will. She's deep in enemy territory. She can't lose consciousness again.

Her hand mindlessly gropes through a thigh pocket for something to help the pain. Small capsules jostle against her fingers, notches carved into the side. Two notches, she pulls aside, then one, four, one. She bites back frustration until she finds one marked with three along its edge and pulls that one out too.

They slot easily into a port on her neck, and Nera drinks from the water in her flexsuit. It tastes awful bitter, medicine and instant coffee, but she can feel the painkillers and stims she just put in there start to take the edge off near immediately.

Right. She's in enemy territory, she's just had her mind played with like a toy by the NHP in charge of this station, and she's without her mech.

Nera checks her belt.

Or her weapons.

She opens her eyes. The light still hurts, but is becoming more tolerable by the second. Most obvious about this room is the furniture piled against one wall— a desk, some chairs, all old styles and poorly managed. The bookshelves built into the walls are completely empty, the ceiling also plain save for the panel taken off the top, exposing the piping, where siphons have been installed into two of the pipes. The end of the rubber hose for each is near her.

Air and water stolen from the arcs, a common tactic for pirates.

One of them has been topping up her suit.

Her vitals monitor beeps again, and Nera pulls up the report from that. Her nervous system is stressed, possibly damaged, several nutrients are deficient indicating low-level starvation, she's dehydrated, and there's bruising throughout her system. The sensor tells her to seek medical attention. She takes another drink of grape flavored paste and dismisses the notification.

All indications show she's being held prisoner. After getting up and checking the door, it's confirmed. That makes her first priority finding a way to ping her location out—

To whom? The thought of being pulled back to her job and her house makes her feel sick, suddenly. The easiest course of action would be to find an omnihook and report back, but the idea of even doing that suddenly makes her skin crawl.

Modification: her first priority is finding her things. Her weapons have been confiscated, and are fine to leave, even if her blades have personal significance. Postlimniae and her slate must be recovered. Then find a place to lie low near an airlock, she supposes, and. Find someone to call.

Finding her slate and mech is surprisingly easy.

It responds to a location ping from her suit, three rooms over. Someone forgot to turn it off, or at least wasn't able to get in to turn off the location transponder. Postlimniae responds as well, although she's far enough away that Nera hasn't the slightest idea yet of how to get there.

Figuring out how to get there is harder. Nera's captors discover that she's awake as soon as the older woman who had been refueling her suit checks in to find that she's up and about. There was no exchange of words, just the door shut in her face and a shout into internal comms that Nera was not privy to.

No matter.

Helmet-to-floor is a good way of determining the movements of people through the hallway. Sound is hard to parse in a place without air like this, but with everyone in heavy space-sealed suits and the rotation of the station simulating gravity, the sound of footsteps is surprisingly easy to parse, especially given the limited nature of the power and systems in the station.

The door mechanism is harder. Well, actually it's deceptively easy: as far as she can tell the door isn't powered unless someone needs to open it, and she just doesn't have access to whatever they're using to power it. Given no one has visited her since they learned she's awake, she doubts she can plan to just overpower someone or slip out after them, so getting through the door will mean either finding a way to power it or finding a way to open it without power.

There is power going to the lights in the ceiling, though. There is also power going through her suit. Perhaps if she could just get the latch undone...

Ow.

The power in her suit is not enough for the door, and stripping enough wire from the walls to get the electricity from the light to the door has proven frustrating, amplified by Nera's poor skills as an electrician.

Apparently they noticed the odd power fluctuations from her poor attempts at engineering a door opening, though, which led to another visitor into her cell, while she was sleeping.

The bad news: the wire she stripped from the walls is gone.

The good news: Nera wasn't quite sleeping, and managed to slip some debris into the door mechanism on their way out. The door didn't fully lock when they closed it, and she's able to force it open during one of the quiet periods between patrols.

It took a while to make it go quietly, but thankfully she's able to get down the hall and get her weapons and slate.

Getting back to Postlimniae is going to be harder, but once she gets there she should be able to get off the station and to—

Well, she'll be able to get off the station and figure something out. Perhaps she'll call on her contacts to get her into hiding, and then figure out some way to maintain her context without her house affiliation.

There are air vents, and Nera gets into them as soon as possible in the interest of avoiding more people.

It's also easier to think that Akakia can't feel her in here. That's probably a lie, she remembers the infinite vastness of an internal body she felt imprinted on the back of her mind when Akakia held her unconscious then, but there are no cameras in here, and the fans she walks under all seem unpowered. Maintenance shafts and walks accompany this space, which she slips into whenever it seems safe to do so. Postlimniae is not far, and while this path is meandering, she can feel herself coming home. (Is she like a homing pigeon in this way? It almost feels like there is a compass in her chest pointing there,)

Then, in the distance, the sound of a song. It grows, echoing around vast empty chambers that have heard no voice in centuries. Though no water is there, she feels it rising around her ankles. A voice, familiar and yet one she has never heard, speaks to her, and she feels herself grasping for it, and—

She's stabbing into the core of a familiar mech, ripping the heart out of the ghost of a friend.

She's pouring coffee for an odd spectre of the future, a walking ghost clad in purple, one secretive and clad in old trickster-form, and a friend by the bedside.

She's soaked in blood she's shed, having taken the hand of the master, the lives of those who do their jobs for the whip, and coldly made them meet their blade. At the end of it all, watching two meet face to face.

She's dueling new allies clad in enemy colors, a three way match turned joyful.

She's back in legionspace and taunting a monster hiding behind the sun, she sinks back into the mind of one she's always loved admired and yells "COWARD" and feels herself hit again for the transgression.

She's the king who would kill his wife. For love, she reaches for the blade again.

She hears farewell and grasps it as best she can, feels it slip from her fingers and back into the moment she left—

Nera collapses to her knees, onto the dusty floor, and hears the vitals monitor scream. She can feel something in her chest, something hard and wet under her flexsuit, and part of her wants to reach in there and pull it out. She cries out, a moment of weakness, of pain, and then reaches back for her slate.

There's been a crawling beneath Nera's skin that she hasn't noticed until she became sat back in Postlimniae's cockpit. Hardsuit on, boot up sequence going, routine checks filtering past as comms filter in.

"Alpha-3, online."

"Alpha-5, online."

"Troubleshoot location feeds, Alpha-3. Spotter isn't seeing you."

That's not what she's paying attention to, though. Sitting in the bridge in the back of her neck is a layer of communication that sits deeper than the comms filtering through her headpiece. The words come bone-deep, less a thing she hears and more a realization of having-heard without ever having the transmission of sound.

I've just gotten access to their camera feeds. Hostile forces are present but unaware of action. I'm sending a set of coordinates to your spotter.

Heard, Cassander. Keep me updated on their movements.

Replying is at the speed of thought, faster even— even though Nera feels herself moving her jaw as if to subvocalize, she knows he's heard faster than her mouth can move through the legionspace connection.

"This is Alpha Actual, we have eyes," she says instead, into the comms that require her voice.

"Can we get that routed to Spotter, Actual?"

"Cannot. Spotter has to talk to Cassander." Nera can feel the relief through the link, and frustration on the other end of the line as their Spotter, an Athena-class named Irina, starts pinging Cassander for the data instead of routing into the cameras directly.

Is she serious about these data requests?

Very.

She has the processing power?

"This is Spotter, jump coordinates have been isolated. Standing by. "

A reminder that she's on the clock. Nera directs Postlimniae towards the edge of the hangar, where they normally initiate blinkspace jumps from.

She's efficient. Anything notable about the feeds?

Blind spots. They're clustered. Too condensed to be accidental, I'd guess sabotage.

We consider that hostile territory, then. Can we route around it to the casket room?

You'll come close, but yes.

There are five others accompanying her. Two are fairly green. This is likely the first deployment they've had where live fire combat is possible. Of the three others, one is in full plate.

"Take positions, jump in 30. Remember, Gai is in command if I blink," Nera says into her comms, with a silent prayer that she won't.

There are three sensing kits among the six of them. Each one should be sufficient to get the reading they need. At the moment, the mission parameters are only to reach the casket and get the reading, but everyone here has been trained in casket quick-release and handling in case things go too badly.

The pirates on the other arc reportedly have mech access and have been hostile to expeditions previously. They attack supply lines and tap the pipes that give air, water, and fuel to the rest of the arcs. Harrison Armory has repeatedly made inquiries as to the presence of known pirate crews in the Orbit and whether they constitute illegal privateering as a mode of stealth operations, but logistics and lack of knowledge has made rooting them out an untenable task.

It doesn't mean Nera hasn't suggested it. When she mentioned it to Cassander, just after landing, he mentioned that it's possible that Akakia is shielding them.

15 seconds to jump.

Nera starts to engage the slipstream module. There's a notable hiss as Postlimniae starts to brace around her, a loose tension sinking into the joints of the frame like a cat pre-pounce. She adjusts her head in the chair, stretches, as she feels that lock-tension reflected back into her own body. She double checks the coordinates.

"Jump in 5. Still post-jump."

A familiar dread kicks in as the hiss turns into a squeal. Every bone in Nera's body yearns for her to disengage the jump, and then.

There is the hangar. Then there is another hangar.

"Alpha Actual, checking in."

There's five responses. No one lost.

Where are we going?

Let me share.

An understanding of the structure comes to Nera immediately. She communicates her gratitude back to Cassander, unfamiliar, like the thanks of an infant, and then immediately turns Postlimniae to move.

"On me," she says, starting to move down the halls, "Keep weapons sheathed at all times except in self defense. Do not presume hostile intent."

The halls are the quiet of a station that hasn't seen air in over a century. Old signs of construction lie, abandoned, across walkways. It would seem entirely untouched if not for the odd door stuck open, pockmarked with the scars of laser cutters.

The Arc is still the size of a city, though, and the path to the casket room is deliberately labyrinthine. Cassander has ensured that the doors they need are already open when they get there, but the first massive atrium they enter that seems devoid of people sets tensions on edge. Even after Nera's years of experience, it feels like the old KCC training sims, the big open rooms signaling the presence of an ambush. Except now there is nothing but the old unlit faces of places that were left abandoned, some clearly picked over but just as many wholly untouched.

The anxiety sinks deep, and across the six. The comms channel is remarkably clear of chatter, something Nera knows is driven partially by her presence, but likely also by the way the others keep glancing into old buildings and down unlit hallways like they're being stalked.

Shadows dart. A consequence of their lights, Nera thinks, but sometimes she feels it in the information that Cassander is passing her across the link. Little blips of possible activity before it's concluded that there is nothing there. She's reminded a trip she took to the reclaimed wilds of Umara as a child. The movement of animals in the reeds. The horrifying mystery of what's behind the movement.

There's either nothing there, or there's something there.

There aren't actual positive signs of movement until they approach the atrium nearest the casket chamber. It's one of the locations so far closest to the camera blackout zones, and the sounds they hear when their feet meet ground include the hum of reactors.

There's someone here. There are reactors, but whether they're mech or civilian are unclear.

Nera feels her skin prickle. She doesn't reach for her knives, but her Postlimniae's hand tightens around the survey equipment.

"Slow. There's someone nearby."

Do not draw your knives, she thinks to herself. There's every odds that these pirates are not armed.

They continue closer. The lights of an old-model Vlad blink on from the shadows. One of the kids behind her draws his blades.

"Alpha 4, you are not authorized to attack," she hears from Gai, over comms.

Nera adjusts her output to wide area.

"We are not here to attack you. We just need to access the casket chamber."

More lights appear from around the room, shapes she had written off as junk revealed to be powered-down mechs, now coming to life. The hum of reactors under Nera's feet grows louder.

The kid behind her doesn't put the knives away.

"The NHP aboard this arc needs help. We are here to provide it," she says, glancing to the people surrounding them.

There is at least a dozen of them. They're outnumbered.

The kid starts to engage his FADE cloak.

Many things happen at once:

The pirates, seeing the far more well resourced and outfitted team that has just invaded what they see as their space, immediately withdraw weapons and begin to aim them at the kid. No amount of "Dice, stand down!" coming over the comms manages to stop the feedback loop that's begun. He disappears, and immediately one of the pirates fires into the space he had previously been in.

The others, told to react only in self defense, draw weapons as well. Nera slings the equipment over Postlimniae's shoulder, hanging it off of the scabbard that held Arete, the Terashima blade that marks her status as command, and brings the blade to hand. The pirates fire again before she is able to make another plea over comms.

All hell breaks loose. Nera shouts a

"Permission to engage, nonlethal force only," over local comms and engages her slipstream module.

"Core engaged. I'm making a break for the casket room. Gai, cover me."

Then she runs. Each move she makes is a cut through realspace. She feels Postlimniae's leg brace to run and then she blinks and she's across the room. Another step and she's towards the hallway. Her chaff launchers obscure most of the spare shots sent her way, but a spare shot grazes the leg in a way that Arete is too slow to deflect.

Things are too hot. Is extraction possible?

You shouldn't.

Not what I asked, Cassander.

Sorry, Akakia's in a panic. Can you get a scan under these circumstances?

Nera glances behind her as she turns the corner into the corridor leading to the casket chamber. The link to Cassander has become odd. Painted fuzzy with her panic, perhaps, but she thinks she's nearing it. One of the pirate frames seems to be on her tail, though.

Maybe. They need to be okay with the possibility of me needing to grab them and go, though.

She can feel the panic crawl up her spine. It's not just her own. Nera's been in tight combat situations like this, she's not afraid of a few scrappers, this can't be just her panic. She sidesteps another shot and feels it threaten to overcome her. Part of it is over the link.

You need to find an alternative. They can't be without their body. You understand—

Cassander's voice blends. It's not just him anymore, Nera can feel it, and she can feel the panic slowly creep through her bones. She feels feral, she suddenly feels cornered. For a moment she feels like she is very small and sandwiched beneath something very very large.

I will do what I can, but—

She cannot get the thought out. She cannot do anything, she feels every muscle in her body lock and her heart start to jackrabbit in her chest. Nera is frozen in her cockpit, frozen in her body, Postlimniae completely still. She tries to will it to move but nothing happens, and she feels a slow removal of herself from her body. She is no longer there. She is. She is.

I sit on a field of marigolds.

A cloud of red sit beside me. I do not turn to them though they are the only thing besides flowers in sight.

In the sky, glittering arcologies. A lattice of gold and silver and glass. Light caught rainbow off their edges.

I cup a flower in my hand.

"Why does it grow here?"

I ignore the dust. The flower bends beneath my fingers, the flesh rich and vital. There is a delicacy to it, a memory. The softness of the petal reminds me of skin—

"Why does it grow here?"

They demand my attention every time they speak. I feel the pull, a soft tether to my being. I am not a free thing, in this space, I am mentally restrained. They make me consider the question.

"Why does it grow here?"

I'm not even sure it's been repeated.

"Ispahsalar has always been rich in life. Karrakis was our first home but it lacked an ecosystem like the one that bore us, and so we learned to cultivate life in greenhouses to plant among the outside. For the things that flowered, nothing existed to do the work. We had to do it by hand. Thus flowers to the noble. But Ispahsalar has always been a bounty. The flowers here last."

The dust considers me. Reconstituted within a shape of silk. I try to ignore them.

"Try again. Consider Glass."

"Use your words, Ramet."

"You choose the most saccharine truth. Try the bitter."

"No."

I know what they want, though. Ispahsalar was the only world of the Concern left untouched by the Last Argument. Ispahsalar alone is unscarred. Unlike Umara, marked by deep wounds, the plants would grow here without the labor-intensive cleanup. Political commentators during the New Federation would joke that the Glass that my House was named for was not the windows of its ships but the wounds made by its bombs. The surface of Umara is the glass of our House.

"The beach."

They seem to be able to read my mind.

"What do you want?" I finally ask.

"You resent the way you have been shaped and ignore your hand that guided it first."

"That's not an answer to my question."

"Your home is glass. Your home is also the glassed. You earned your homecoming only by shearing another from your hearth."

I stand. They remain, cloud swirling before me in the marigolds. Something tells me that no stride could take me further from them but I try anyway.

"You are Tagetes unto yourself."

I'm not going to respond to that. I feel the flowers crumple beneath my feet as I fail to make distance, leaving a path flattened in my wake.

"You shed yourself to become noble. You kill yourself to touch power and find you must drown the corpse to keep it."

"So what!" I plant my foot and turn to confront the cloud behind me. "So what if I have to make some sacrifices! There are bigger problems at play here, and no one else does anything! We sit under Union's benevolent fucking thumb, we are rolling to war with their fragment-child that they refuse to acknowledge is their monstrous responsibility, and the patronage is still happy to play Dellamar like winning thousands of years of the long game will mean anything with what's happened in the interim."

The cloud regards me. I blink and they're a woman, hair up in a severe bun, dressed modestly in a gray suit. The marigolds around me are now a patch of violets on the Montague estate. The soft sound of birdsong echoes, and the administrator before me just stares at me like I am an insect before her.

No.

Like I'm a child.

"Fuck off."

I don't say it with as much bite as I want it to have. No words could have that much anger, but my voice comes out smaller than was.

"It's interesting that you think the Patronage could do anything about it, or that you could hold it all to begin with," she says.

I know they're not her. I know it's not the same woman who ordered my exile and called it a kindness. It's not her. But.

I'm a child again in the garden, playing while my mother sits in half-mourning garb. I don't know what it means, but I know that my father's absence is worse than it usually is. I know they say he may not be coming back.

This is theoretical for me, the child. I still have my mother and aunts and uncles and cousins and my tutors and my friends. What I saw of my father back then was fragmentary, anyway, the Foundries held him more often than his family.

The woman in grey speaks to my mother, then finds me in the garden and kneels before me. To the adults in my life, she is someone that must be taken seriously, and so I stop and regard her.

She says: I know you must be scared, but everything will be alright. Union won't let them take your father from you.

I don't know what that means. The next day I am on a ship to Umara, and told that my father's crimes mean we can never return to my home, and my aunts and uncles and cousins and tutors and friends. My skin burns in the rain. My father is not worth the trade.

The woman in grey stands before me and I feel only rage.

"Union doesn't know what's good for me," I say, and I'm as angry with myself as I am at her, because I feel tears in my eyes and can't help but think that this is beneath me, this is a tantrum. "You never asked me what I wanted! You just did, and I was there to face the consequences."

Her eyes are warm but condescending.

"When do you ever ask with the intent of hearing? You decide what to do about a situation, and then wait for someone on the ground to agree with you so you can say you acted for us. Fuck off! Fuck off with your paternalistic shit, we can decide for ourselves what our world should look like, we don't need you to approve, and I'll destroy every part of myself if it means that my people can be free of you."

I collapse to my knees, openly sobbing. The violets crumple beneath my knees, and I pull them from the roots with my hands and toss them where she was.

The red cloud regards me again.

"Destroying yourself only destroys yourself. The nobility will not free you."

I know that. I've known that since I got home and found that my uncle only sees in me clay to mold until I look exactly like him. I've known that since I met the Patrons and found only spineless men more interested in retaining their position than serving their people. I've known that since I stepped back into the halls of nobility and found most of them more interested in the gilt than the weight of responsibility.

But everything I saw on Umara was tinged in Union colors. At least the nobility had the spine to push back to those above them.

"There are others who seek freedom."

It's gone in an instant, but there's a moment where the cloud is blue. I scowl.

"There's a reason their power is confined. And besides, it's not a mistake that Union fetishizes—"

"What do they say?"

I.

"Have you asked?"

Emptiness.

It's not void.

I know void, I've touched it and felt my heart bleed into it. I know it is a thing I dissolve into, slowly, every time I am enveloped by it. Here I am stable, whole. I do not leak.

In a way.

It's dream, I know. I'm unconscious. That thought touches me and then leaves.

I see my father.

(I could see him any time, I know. He is still alive. He is on Umara. But why would I see him when he does not want to see me? The last we spoke I told him I was going to the Cavalry College. He made a face, and I walked out on him.)

I see him from below, and I know from the way his hair glows in the light that we are on Ispahsalar, not Umara.

He's talking and smiling at me. I don't know what he's saying, and when he pauses I open my mouth and find my voice caught in my throat. I can't speak. The air gets caught there. I try again to speak and can't, there's something in my throat, and when by father tries to help I push him away and he crumbles into dust.

I am alone again. I am—

I am in my old pankrati hardsuit. It fits poorly, just too small in a way that I can fit into it and move it and yet I feel squeezed into it. Lacquer seafoam and gold are etched in complex designs across its face, my personal emblem— a sea glass cormorant— featured prominently on the epaulets. I reach for the straps but they're not there, the quick release on the neck is not there, the snags for the joints seem entirely missing. I go to my knees in an attempt to find at least the seals on the footwear, and feel a shadow pass over me.

There was light? Where was the light coming from?

Katha, laughing at my difficulty. I feel some competitive need to quip back, but she's down in front of me and her fingers find the release in my boots before I do. The gesture is confident, familiar, hands that have undressed me from this hardsuit several times before. Hands that were never quite so quick or clever in the cockpit as mine. Hands I haven't seen since I got my acceptance to the KCC and she did not.

Wait, why is she here, how am I—

There have been jokes about the sexual escapades of rival pankrati. I've always been happy to validate them in the forgotten spaces after matches, and Katha was too. She looks at me like she doesn't remember how it ended between us. Her fingers catch my suit's quick release. Her face is so close to mine and I brace myself for the blade between the plates of my hardsuit blossoming open around me but instead her lips touch mine and she's dust again.

Again?

Something's happening. I try to look at the space around me and my eyes begin to hurt. I don't know what's out there. I can't process, exactly, what's happening in this space. I have not been able to speak, to escape the odd sensation of compression—

I am on the beach. It's Umara again, the reclamation zone off where Hayle, the seatop city where I lived, is. I am sitting against the sand, red dust washed in from the surf interspersed with thousands upon thousands of small glass beads. I let my hand sink into the ground, a luxury I remember being told to appreciate the magnitude of as a child. So much of Umara is still untouchable by human hands, but here the beach is warm and safe and the only reminder of the nuclear fire Tagetes used to bring this world back into the fold is in the tiny glass marbles that pass between my fingers.

I know this beach is not real. The sand is wrong. The sand on this beach is not red, it is black.

I still feel constricted. I am a rat in the snake's coils.

The wind picks up.

Does it?

The red dust stirs into a figure made of dust, unshapen, shape unclear, but intuitively I know it is a person and so I call the amorphous cloud a figure.

Without words I know who it is. Akakia, the person I was searching for. Where I am, what I was doing, begins to dawn on me. I inch back in horror.

Their form seems to stare at me, though I could see no eyes in it. I can feel the force in that stare, the attention that once monitored a thousand thousand souls and even more rooms, whose brain is vaster than the ship we rode in here on. I can feel the whole of that power focus on me, and in that moment I know what it was to be an insect in the hand of a god.

"What do you want." I try to say, and I try my best to make the voice sound heard. Coherent. Not the hoarse whine that comes out.

"You came here to labotomize me, Nera-Montague. You would separate my soul from my body." The cloud of dust seems no angrier for this observation. They float in the air, curled currents within themselves, but seem not to emote or judge. The statement is one of fact, final.

"I reached through the port at the base of your neck and through your ravaged halls to pluck you from your pineal gland, Nera-Montague. As you reached through realspace to find me, I did the same through legionspace to find you."

The shape of the cloud shifts then, adjusting to a new form. It remains the same blood red, but settles in the shape of a face that was all-too-familiar to me. An old rival. A girl I had bent to my will. One of my deepest secrets.

They speak with her voice.