Dead Star Dockyards

Donovan released a deep sigh before collapsing into a chair, trying his best to avoid engaging with a visibly distressed Diana before he was ready. Exhaustion was hitting him a lot harder than he had anticipated both mentally and physically.

"Donny?" He held up his pointer finger, asking her for a moment to gather himself. "I just want to know what happened out there. I was getting out of bed when I heard this big boom, and then there was shouting and yelling and I just couldn't figure out what was going on. Why is everyone so panicked?"

"Dragons." He didn't really know how to continue off of that word. "Well, maybe not a perfect image of a dragon, but it sure as shit felt like one."

". . . I don't understand."

"There is a mansion sized gigamonster that hunts house sized supermonsters soaring somewhere overhead. Probably more than one if I had to guess." Words were failing him here. This was something she really needed to see to understand. "Fucker dropped in supersonic on my kill once the clouds cleared, killed three men in the process. I don't even think it intended to do so."

". . . what?"

"A gargantuan beast with a wingspan measured in football fields dropped from the heavens faster than sound and killed three people by braking." Donovan decided to shave off some of the words and go straight for the most important bits. "The pressure wave turned their organs to mush, those in the less immediate surroundings just got knocked unconscious, two of which haven't woken up yet."

"One now." Seppard walked in the door just as Donovan finished, correcting his sentence while he caressed the side of his head. He was aided by his incredibly concerned wife into another of the chairs at the table before leaving to grab drinks.

"Glad to see you up, though I insist you continue resting until you get cleared." He was the closest individual to the dragon to not die immediately, though the wincing made it clear he wasn't in the best of states.

"I will, once I get a debrief. What happened?"

"Wait until Titanyana gets here. I want her account of what happened to corroborate mine, and I don't want to have to say anything twice."

"Where is she?" Diana wanted to look through the window behind her, but found the blinds closed.

"Seeing to the dead."

- - - - -

She almost didn't want to look at them. Almost.

In the end, she resolved herself to face the men who lost their lives today, right in front of her. They were the first casualties in their war to tame this beast called Nectar, and they would not be the last. Still, as their Queen she felt responsible for ensuring that she, if no one else, would remember their sacrifice. No matter how meaningless their deaths may have been, they were her people, and she felt obligated to provide them this much.

"Have we sent someone to notify their families?" Titanyana whispered to one of the men nearby, a survivor of the incident who got off with a concussion and a bleeding nose.

"They, um, didn't have any." The man's tail drooped, fully aware this was not a comforting answer to his fledgling monarch.

"No family?" This saddened her greatly. Even if the loss of a life could be devastating to a family, to not have someone mourn you was even worse. Mourning was done in memory of the dearly departed, a memory without which the life of a person could be brought into question. "Can you give me their names?"

"Myorje, Fisreo, and Doar."

She committed them to memory, not even bothering to come up with a spelling until she had a writing utensil in hand. They would be given to Donovan and honored in the Terran way. It irked her to think she might be using their deaths to further a political objective - however innocent and good intentioned the objective might be - but she needed to anchor her people to this land and Terran culture.

Titanyana closed her eyes and shook her head, appalled at her own thoughts. Why had such a position crossed her mind? It wasn't incorrect per se, she was certainly planning to honor them as Terrans would, yet she didn't believe they were being 'used'. Her intentions had been kind ones, meant to provide their souls some degree of respite without a family to carry their memory. Why did part of her view it as wrong?

"My Queen?" Evidently the casualty noticed her change in disposition. "Is something wrong?"

"Aside from the deceased? Nothing. I was simply wondering how their funeral will be handled."

"Are . . . are we not to follow tradition?"

"Who is to carry on their memory if they haven't a family?" Titanyana's hand subconsciously moved grasp the handle of a small dagger on her waist, the one Petunia presented alongside the box in which the royal crown was stored. It wasn't an aggressive gesture, he perfectly understood what it represented, but the symbolism of the object itself caused him to flinch. "Who is to forge their memory into something worth carrying?"

"I suppose we could find someone willing to assume the burden. We need only establish a foundry."

"No." Titanyana removed the dagger from it's sheath, briefly admiring the engravings and decorations strewn about its length before gently holding the flat of the blade to her cheek. "We have to move on from some of our ways if we are to integrate with the Terrans. Besides, we don't have the leeway to establish something like a foundry at the moment. Our resources are spread too thin."

"So what will you have us do for them?"

"Whatever they tell us to."

- - - - -

"I will begin by apologizing, Titanyana." Diana thought it odd to start an exposition with an apology, but she made no fuss. "I made many mistakes in handling this incident, among them shoving you to the floor in an attempt to conceal you."

". . . why?" Titanyana seemed to share her confusion, though the reason was probably different.

"Had I taken a brief moment to explain that there was danger, you might have been able to warn them in time. You are much faster, and can project your voice further with the use of Split. Those precious few seconds could have been the difference they needed."

Titanyana did not respond, an expression of guilt and confusion forming on her face.

"Shall I begin my account of the incident?" Donovan addressed the group but looked at Diana, the only person not a party to any element of the story.

"Uh, please."

"Very well. Last night, Titanyana and I shot and killed a beast likely responsible for the nighttime screeching you complained about. It managed to get to a point a few hundred meters from the forest line before collapsing, so the screening and harvesting party organized by Seppard cleared an area around the corpse and set up an early warning perimeter some distance into the forest itself during twilight. Upon daybreak, Titanyana and I walked over to join Seppard to inspect our kill and get an idea of the animal threat we may need to prepare ourselves for as colonization and exploitation efforts continue. The three of us came to the conclusion that while this predator was indeed incredibly dangerous and would likely be sure to kill a small group of people, it had no interest in hunting humans at the current time. Do the two of you agree on events up to this point?"

Two nodding heads, and already Diana was wondering if it was safe to live here.

"In that case, I will skip the events of Titanyana and I walking out to the forest and skip straight to the point I realized there was a danger. Titanyana and I were walking down from the forest and I noticed that the weather, which had previously been rainy and cloudy, had cleared up enough to become blue. At the point I recognized this, I knew there was a danger but didn't know why. In my haste to communicate this to those working on the carcass, I first pushed Titanyana to the ground in a bid to protect conceal her from airborne threats before running towards the clearing while shouting and waving my arms. One of the men noticed me, likely got confused, but ultimately told the others to follow my instruction.

Unfortunately, he and two others did not manage to get far enough away from the corpse before the . . . let's call it 'Thunderbird' for the purposes of this meeting, dropped down from the sky. I do not have concrete evidence, but I suspect it was approaching above, at, or just under the speed of sound given the lack of audible turbulence in the preceding moments and the magnitude of the pressure wave we were subjected to. I won't even begin to describe the size of the Thunderbird, you'd need to see it to understand, but it was big, far bigger than the monster we were getting worked up over."

"I wish I had stayed conscious to see it."

"No offense, Seppard, but I don't think you would be here if you were. It displayed general disinterest in the lot of you laying unconscious, but seemed mighty interested in me, who was crouched down in the grass staring at it. I can't imagine it would have ignored you writhing in pain at its feet."

"Duly noted."

"Speaking of, the Thunderbird and I had a bit of a staring contest. I can't for the life of me remember how long it lasted, but it resulted in it tearing off one of the corpse's limbs and tossing it towards me as well as some amused grumbling before it took off into the sky again."

Diana really wanted to interject somewhere, she had even started to speak at certain points, however there was so much dangerous and wrong with what Donovan was saying she couldn't figure out how to start. Supersonic dragons? A massive superpredator? A staring contest with said superpredator? How were any of them still alive?!

"Can you corroborate as much, Titanyana?"

"Yes . . . though I don't know if the Thunderbird was as amused as you imagine." Titanyana's ears had flattened, though Diana could not tell if this was due to Donovan's apology or the subject matter. "To me it appeared to be confused, or maybe even frightened."

"You don't need to stoke my ego, Titanyana. I recognize the mistakes I made and accept responsibility."

"No! I'm serious! I don't think its ever had something that small stand its ground before" Titanyana immediately perked up, ears and tail both coming alive as she shot out of her chair. "And stop apologizing! You didn't do anything wrong."

". . . the attitude of the Thunderbird towards my token resistance aside, I am absolutely responsible for the deaths of those three." Donovan didn't look like he wanted to reminisce about death staring him in the eyes, nor did Diana have any intention to ask about it.

"I don't think anybody will blame you for it, Donovan." Seppard joined Titanyana in her stance on blame.

"Whether they blame me or fate is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that there are things I could have done to stop this."

"Like what?" Diana found this a prime opportunity to slow down the conversation, which she was rapidly losing track of. "Donovan, I understand your desire to hold yourself to a greater standard, but you cannot do everything."

"I can't do everything, but I could have done something. To start, I should have trusted Titanyana to follow my orders immediately."

"You didn't have enough time to weigh your options." Diana gathered there was only a few seconds, maybe a minute, between Donovan realizing there was a danger and that danger manifesting, and it didn't sound like he had a way to communicate that danger until it was far too late. "I wouldn't even call it a mistake, just a misstep anyone could make."

"The point is that I shouldn't be making those 'missteps'. Additionally, this could have been avoided if I associated the safety of inclement weather with the implied danger of clear skies and issued an appropriate warning. The safety of the workers take priority over the investigation and harvest of the carcass."

"But if you didn't figure it out-"

"Then I need to get better at recognizing such dangers." Donovan shut her down before she could finish. He really wasn't going to budge on the matter of responsibility. "Look, the family of those who died are going to want a reason they died beyond random chance. They were working on my implicit orders, I could have done something to protect them, the onus is on me."

"Um, about that."

"Titanyana, we talked about this."

"What I have to say isn't about the responsibility you claim, though I still disagree with you. The men did not have a living family, at least not as far as we know." The mood, already quite dour, was sullied further by this information. "I know this probably isn't the time, but I was wondering how you would like to handle their remains."

Diana did not immediately respond, nor did Donovan or Seppard. The four of them merely sat in silence for a minute, half out of a feeling of discomfort around the question, half because they didn't know how they should respond. Dealing with the dead was a touchy subject after all, and while funerals could be expensive in terms of labor and material expenditure they couldn't exactly dump them in the ocean and be done with it. Closure was important, even for people who lacked family or friends who would be saddened to see them go.

"What do your people normally do?" Donovan was naturally the first to speak, Diana determining his motives for doing so to not be as much callous as they were efficient. He wanted to know what method would receive the least amount of resistance for the least amount of work, something like not needing a casket for a burial or cremation without gathering ashes. She would definitely be taking on this request.

"The traditional method is to cremate the deceased and mix some of their ashes into the metal of some tool or ornament forged by a smith. Those with multiple children may have multiple items forged and distributed among them, while those who died without children will have their item given to their spouse, sibling, or parent. Failing that, some extended family member would be granted the item, or a close friend may volunteer to carry the burden." Titanyana took a breath to calm herself, placing her dagger on the table. "This is one such item, the blade carries the ashes of my mother. The necklace I often wear was the item she requested for me, while the Split crystal inlaid in the pendant contains . . . never mind."

". . . I don't mean to kick you while you're down, but what about your father?" The poor girl had tears welling up in her eyes. Evidently she had not fully processed that which unfolded in her absence.

"The Strappers do not offer trinkets to their children - the crown is reforged every time there is a succession. The precious metals that make up the frame are melted down and some of their ashes are sprinkled into the mix, while the grandmasters inspect the gems to be reused and suggest additions or replacements in accordance with the character of the successor. The legacy of the line is handed down with this crown, as is the authority over the Nekh."

"I see." Even if now wasn't the time to fawn over the cultural peculiarities of the Nekh, Diana found herself giddy at the prospect. Diana couldn't recall a similar practice in Terran cultures, the closest probably being the crafting of tools from the remains of the dead.

"Wouldn't the ashes-"

"Donovan!" She didn't need to hear the rest of it, he was about to say something incredibly stupid. No doubt it would be correct on a technical level, metallurgy and related material sciences were part of his education on vessel design and armor theory, however the material facts of a ceremony based in spiritualism were irrelevant. So what if the ashes burned off, or weakened the metal, or whatever it was he wanted to say, the end state of the ashes weren't the point.

"No, it's fine." Titanyana shook her head. "We know the ashes don't usually mix with the metal, and that they tend to weaken the end product when they do. We also assume any ashes that are mixed into the crown end up burning off when it is smelted again. It is only a ceremony, an action to impart the memory of the person into something other carry around or use with some degree of frequency."

"Oh, good." Diana supposed she was thankful Titanyana and the Nekh were aware of this, if only for the sake of Donovan's image. She had to admit it ruined the mysticism a little though. "So why do you want our input?"

"As I said, the men do not have a family to carry the burden of their memory, and we don't exactly have the facilities or resources for a forge just yet. In addition to that, I had been wondering if this would be a good idea to shunt the tradition and somehow tie ourselves to yours. I think it would be a good idea to tie our people together, you know?"

"Aw." Diana felt her heart break a little bit. Even if the thought process and logic behind it was a little bit utilitarian for her tastes, Diana sensed the sincerity behind the proposition. She wanted to bring her people closer to Donovan and Diana, who had no people of their own, even if that meant breaking an incredibly important tradition their people held. "While I appreciate the sentiment, Titanyana, I feel obligated to tell you that we don't really have a single method of honoring the deceased."

Unfortunately, Diana had no such plans to break these traditions, especially not when there wasn't a clear way to proceed here. If there were any defining characteristics of Terran culture on an overall level, a funeral method was not among them. Even in places that were geographically proximate and culturally similar, there were still a variety of ways one might be sent off. There was entombment, burial (be it at sea, on land, or in space during the later years), mummification, cremation, terramation, embalming, and even consumption. She was sure she didn't even know all of the methods, some were likely so absurd they wouldn't register, so funerals were not on her list of things to utilize their precious cultural enforcement currency.

"O-oh. In that case, is there a method the two of you prefer?" Titanyana's limited enthusiasm seemed to have faded. "I-I just want to honor them as they should be. They died working to improve everyone's situation."

"We'll approve a forge for-"

"Cremation." Donovan cut Diana off in a similar manner to her interjection, albeit less aggressive. "You can give me the ashes."

"What are we going to do with them, Donny?" She suppressed her irritation. "Let them have their custom. We needn't change what we don't need changed."

"Titanyana wants her people to be remembered in a Terran way."

"So you're going to scatter their ashes in space?"

"What? No, I was going to add a Terran element to it." Sighing, he turned his attention away from her. "The essence of your funeral ritual is to impart the memories or spiritual body of the deceased into a household item, correct?"

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"And you know the ashes don't join with the metal?"

"That is correct."

"What if I told you I could make those ashes into something useful beyond ceremony?"

"Donovan, what are you on about?"

"If it is something your people have done, I would like to consider it." Titanyana ignored her, Diana's instruction to prioritize his attention backfiring somewhat.

"Ashes can be made into precious gems, such as diamonds." Titanyana's ears perked up, Diana herself growing interested in what he had to say. "I won't say making a diamond headed hammer or diamond bladed dagger will be a particularly effective use for them, but I imagine you wouldn't be opposed to such diamonds being inlaid in those items, would you?"