048: The Tools of Acquisition – Three
Flipping through something on her data pad, Guthan glanced up when Rhea and Malakh entered the situation room the Sudoxe had set up on Cazorini, saying, "Those videos we've put up are doing numbers. It's… well, it's something to preserve the memory of who Saint was for the fans, if nothing else. My thanks to Elytra for her assistance in that regard."
"She's just finishing up edits on what we're planning to release, but I'll be sure to let her know." Malakh told her.
Guthan let out a bitter laugh. "Would that it were the Shareholder actually responsible for all this, instead of… Well. What's that human saying? It is what it is?"
"That's the one." Rhea confirmed.
Husan shot a sad smile at Guthan, briefly placing a hand against her back. "It will take time, but the wound of this will heal."
"Yeah, but I'm not looking forward to the scars." Guthan told her, and Husan could only nod in resignation at that.
Taking a shuddering breath, she forced a smile as she turned to Rhea and asked, "Ready to surrender your genetic information?"
Shooting her a sympathetic smile of her own, Rhea replied, "Lead on."
While Husan brought Rhea over to a corner of the room where an assortment of medical equipment lay in wait, Malakh stepped up to the table in the middle of the room with Guthan, asking, "So what's the plan for the infiltration?"
Tapping away at her data pad for a moment, Guthan used it to send information to the table's display. A blueprint of the Aaur Niikaschlde Centre was in the middle of it all, surrounded by an assortment of official looking documentation.
"The auction is invite only, limited tickets, but thankfully we've got a contact who was able to score us one. They're not bound to any kind of identification, which is a good thing for us, because with our undercover attendee having changed, we'd be screwed otherwise." Guthan told her, shaking her head as she glared off into the distance briefly. She then pointed over at Rhea, saying, "As such, once Saela Monischlde flashes her ID and hands over her ticket, she'll be free to mingle among the crowd, all while bringing me in unseen."
Nodding along, Malakh asked, "So how are you pulling that off?"
Guthan sent another piece of information from her data pad to the table, this time showing a device that Malakh recognized as Zymeth stealth technology. "Managed to liberate a couple of these on a previous job, enough to figure out how they work so we can build our own if the originals break. It'll keep me hidden from sight, so I'll just have to avoid any scanners and whatever other security measures they have lying around."
"How about you give me the schematics for this, in return for these?" Malakh said before tapping the side of her Longan Unit in order to link it up to the table before her. A moment later, she sent over the files for the electronic masking measures she'd developed for their infiltration of the Bakiz Institute.
Leaning over the table to get a better look at them, a grin broke out across Guthan's features as her eyes darted over the schematics provided. "Oh, this will do a treat! I'm more than happy to share my own work." She swiped her fingers across the stealth device schematics, and Malakh received them on her Longan a moment later.
"I won't lie, if it weren't for the explosive countermeasures that prevent tampering with their gear, I was more than tempted to try and dissect the Kith cameras we have to figure out how they manage to stay off scanners as well as visuals, so this'll be a real life saver." Guthan told her.
"We backwards engineered it from the systems on our ship," Malakh told her, "Electronic masking is normally the only thing the Thalatte bother with when it comes to stealth, and that's more so their ships don't crash each others systems with the amount of output they have when in close formation."
Guthan scoffed at that. "Typical of them. Well, it'll make things easier for us, at the very least. We don't have Longan Units, but we do have subdermal communication devices that operate in a similar, neurological fashion. We've got them linked to our cameras too, so audiences can see what messages we send in character. We should probably have Rhea installed with one before we head down to the planet, just to make communication a little less conspicuous."
"That works for me, and if you've got it you can install it now," Rhea said as she leaned around the device Husan had hooked up to her arm, "I take it there's an out of character channel too?"
"Yes, which is very much not linked to the cameras." Husan said in a tone that spoke volumes.
"And while I have you here," Guthan said as she turned to Rhea, "I did want to touch on the in character interactions we'll be having over the course of the broadcast."
Nodding, Rhea said, "Fire away."
"As I'm sure you're aware by now," Guthan said as she glanced between the two of them, "Under normal circumstances, Averral tends to be a bit of a flirt. Chancellor Bathory would be all but impossible for her to resist. But given that you're Malakh's vedja, I don't want to make things awkward, so if you're not alright with that kind of behaviour, we can come up with a narrative reason for why Averral would lay off of Bathory."
At the word 'vedja', Malakh's heart seized, her eyes darting to Rhea without thought. It was only because she was so intimately familiar with the woman that Malakh caught the momentary confusion in her eyes, but Rhea had always been a better actor than her, because she smiled at Guthan without missing a beat, saying, "I appreciate the concern, but we're all professionals here. In character and out of character are very different things, so Averral is free to try her hand at all this!"
That got a laugh out of Guthan distracting enough that Malakh was able to school her expression into something that wouldn't telegraph the anxiety that was spooling around her heart.
"Somehow I have a feeling that she's not going to have much success, in that regard at least. Getting that ship, however, that's where she'll have to succeed."
"So why are you lot going after that thing?" Malakh asked, anything to drive the conversation to some other topic.
Enlarging one of the document images on the table, Guthan brought up a missive from the Avvisi system. "A regular of ours, a Necupole entrepreneur, wants to embarrass a rival. This rival spent a lot of time and money into getting that fighter converted into a powerhouse, and they're hoping to get a sizeable return on their investment. Having it swiped right from under their watch without a transaction to go along with it will be bad enough, but once our client is seen flying around with it, it'll be worse."
"How so?" Malakh frowned.
A smirk curled Guthan's lips as she said, "The Necupole's own laws working against them. They've got a very 'finders keepers' way of operating, so even though our client hired us to steal the ship, their hands are technically clean, so their rival will have no legal recourse to take the ship back, as our client can just say they got it from what they thought was a reputable source."
"What's to stop them from hiring someone else to get the ship back?" Rhea asked.
Husan laughed at that, saying, "Absolutely nothing! We've actually done that a couple of times now, gotten hired by one person to steal something, and then get hired by the person we stole from in order to steal it back. Those types of missions almost always end up a comedy."
"And if it isn't us, then there could be other Kith crews that might pick up the job," Guthan said with a shrug, "At the end of the day, they're all a bunch of rich idiots throwing their money around, and I am more than happy to snatch what I can from the air."
"Alright, that should be all that I need." Husan said as she ran some sort of device across Rhea's arm with a flourish, "The communicator is text only, and will appear in your line of sight without obstructing anything. It's easy enough to dig out once the mission's done. I'll have to see what your genetic code looks like before I can whip something up to hide it from Necupole scrutiny, but I'll be able to get it done well before the auction's set to take place."
"I'd honestly love to see the mechanics behind how you're doing that." Rhea said earnestly, and Husan grinned at that.
"Of course, I can forward you my documentation on the subject. My jumping off point was Lacertus research they've done based on speculations of how Bernetigan conversion techniques work."
Smiling fondly, Guthan leaned over to Malakh so she could whisper, "Doctors! All this biology stuff goes over my head. Give me machine precision any day."
"Yeah," Malakh said, forcing out a normal laugh, "Biology's something else."
When they'd first taken over the Pelekys, the four ex-slaves had each taken one of the officer's suits as their own. Or, that had been the intent, at least. Malakh still technically had her own private quarters, but it was now more of an office space than anything, as Rhea's room had almost immediately become their room.
And she'd be lying to herself if she didn't admit she was tempted to just camp out in her office for the night.
She was halfway to darting from the room when Rhea emerged from the bathroom, dressed down in some casual sleepwear and running a brush through her shower-damp hair, only to immediately stop when she caught sight of Malakh.
"Baby, what's wrong?"
"Nothing," came out of Malakh too quickly to prove anything but the opposite, and she grimaced at herself for it, "I didn't mean to- that's not- I'm not upset."
Rhea's arms hitched up for an instant, her entire body poised to surge forward, the instinct to reach out and hold Malakh to her so ingrained that she had to physically stop herself from doing so as Malakh continued with the pacing she'd caught her in the middle of. Instead, Rhea went and sat on the edge of the bed and said, "You only pace like that when you're mind's racing, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't think you're fine."
Malakh blinked at her in confusion, stopping mid step as if she hadn't even realized she'd been going back and forth across the room ever since Rhea had said she was going for a shower after returning to the Pelekys.
"Is it about that what Guthan called me? Your vedja?"
Hearing the word from Rhea's lips had Malakh's heart beating in triple time. Swallowing thickly around the emotions trying to bubble up out of her, she asked, "Do you know what a vedja is?"
"Just a very clinical, medical explanation of the concept," Rhea replied, her eyebrows pinched together in concern, her hands white knuckling the mattress with how hard she was restraining herself from rising and going to Malakh, "That it's a form of mating bond that some deorvirans develop with one another, anywhere from two individuals with up to a dozen recorded. While it is rare, it's not unheard of. But judging your reaction to it, there's a lot more to this that I'm missing."
Malakh couldn't help the watery laugh that burst out of her, her pacing starting up again as she shoved the heels of her palms into her eyes, trying to physically shove her tears back into their ducts. "Yeah, there's a lot more to it."
"Then I'd love some context." Rhea said gently.
Poetry crowded behind Malakh's teeth, sonnets and soliloquies from the eons before her people took to the stars. Tens of hundreds of thousand of millions of different types of media all singing the same hymn to what was, in some cases, the most sacred bond any deorviran could have. To condense all that down into an easy to digest explanation felt almost like sacrilege, but the thought of keeping Rhea in the dark about all of this was even more blasphemous, so Malakh took a steadying breath and began.
"From a biological standpoint, yeah, it's a mating bond, but it's not some surface level thing. To become vedja with someone… it's a compatibility so deeply, profoundly complete that it alters those who are linked by this bond on a fundamental level. Individuals who are vedja, they could go off and fuck other people, but the bond would literally prevent a pregnancy from resulting from such a coupling. Vedja are only able to breed with partners they share this bond with. But that's the modern, medical explanation of it all. Centuries before we had the equipment to really dig down to it on a granular level, it was a mystery we could only explain through myth. So much of our history, our entertainment, our religions have centred around the profundity of these bonds. To become vedja was to have the spirits themselves confirm that your relationship was divine. Wars have been fought, dynasties overthrown when such a bond sprung up between the wrong people, or a false bond was discovered between those trying to hold onto power. Even now that we know it's just biology, there's still people around in this day and age who will throw themselves into any scam claiming to be able to find those they could become vedja with."
Heart in her throat, Malakh risked a glance over at Rhea, and found her still sitting on the bed, eyes bright with unshed tears and a gentle smile on her face.
"We don't have the biological aspect to it, but we do have similar stories among my people," she told Malakh softly, "Of soulmates bound by forces greater than themselves. That kind of bond is something humans will go to great and stupid lengths to find."
"Sure, but it would be a choice for your people, wouldn't it?" Malakh's voice broke as she asked, "Not something your biology would decide for you?"
Rhea's shoulders sagged, and her smile melted into a frown as she answered with an ask of her own, "Is that what's upset you about this, that you didn't have a choice for how you feel about me?"
"No!" Burst out of Malakh before the words had left Rhea's lips, "Of course not! Vedja or not, I would have still chosen you! But thanks to my biology, I've taken the choice away from you, because I have." Malakh cut in when Rhea opened her mouth to argue the point, "This bond, it's not a one way street. All parties involved are altered by it, and I guess our biologies are close enough that your body responded to mine. I could smell it on you when it happened, and Guthan could smell it on us too. Any deorviran could."
Something half sob and half laugh cracked out of Rhea, and she wiped a hand across her eyes before saying, "For someone so smart, you can be really fucking stupid sometimes."
When Malakh only blinked in confusion at that, a smile broke across Rhea's features so wide that it squeezed more tears from her eyes. "You said it yourself, the bond isn't a one way street. And baby, if you think that I didn't choose you willingly, and with every fibre of my being, then I must be doing something wrong as your partner."
The fist of dread that had curled around Malakh's heart when Guthan had dropped the 'v' word finally loosened at that confession, forcing a cry of relief out of her. Before she could even consciously decide on it, she crossed the room in order to straddle Rhea's lap, her head falling against the other woman's shoulder while Rhea wrapped her arms around her and did the same.
"I'm sorry," Malakh sobbed after a moment, "I got too caught up in my head over all this."
Rhea squeezed her tighter briefly before saying, "Because it clearly matters to you. You think you're the only one who's ever freaked the fuck out about being in love with someone?"
Malakh let out a groan, hands fisting in the back of Rhea's shirt as she said, "No, it's literally a cliche. I'd be here all day if I tried listing media that deals with people losing their minds about becoming vedja! Ugh, that makes my needless freakout even worse now!"
"Hey, none of that," Rhea said, pulling them far enough apart so she could look Malakh in the eye, "It's important to you. And it's important to me. The amount of sleepless nights I had because you were the only thing on my mind? It's genuinely embarrassing."
"Well then we can both be embarrassed, because I lost so much sleep because of you too," Malakh smiled as she rested her forehead against Rhea's, "And I'm sorry that you had to find out about this through a stranger, that I wasn't brave enough to broach the subject when I felt the connection snap into place."
Rhea lifted a hand to cup Malakh's jaw, rubbing a thumb against her cheek. She hummed thoughtfully, then said, "It happened while we were waiting for Pryseia's signal while orbiting Iromay, didn't it?"
Malakh snorted out a whisper of a laugh, reaching a hand up to hold Rhea's in place while she turned her head enough to kiss her palm. "Yeah. We were just… pulling off panelling in the old captain's quarters, laughing about some dumb joke you'd said, and I looked at you and… that was that. My heart fell into your hands."
"And mine fell into yours." Rhea told her, her smile growing wider, "I almost proposed to you then and there, you know?"
"I certainly don't!" Malakh laughed, playfully shoving Rhea's shoulder, "Who's the idiot now? I would have said yes!"
Their laughter made sharing a kiss awkward, but they managed it anyway.
"And just so we're on the same page," Rhea said as she pulled away enough to speak after a moment, "Biology or not, wedding or not, I'm yours. Yours by very enthusiastic choice."
"Good, because I'm yours too." Malakh said, eyes darkening while her smile brightened, "But even though we've already been bonded, I think I'd like a wedding."
"Oh yeah?" Rhea teased, her tongue darting out to wet her lips, "What're you willing to do for it?"
Eyes locked on Rhea's lips, Malakh pushed her down against the bed, whispering, "Let me show you."