065: The Rock, Rolled – Two
After tossing and turning for hours on end, Pryseia gave up on sleep. Slipping out of her room, she made her way to the cargo hold, to where the last Storlayacas now stood in place beside the ones they'd already obtained.
Climbing up the access walkway, she leaned against the railing, the clack of metal on metal ringing out as her left hand made contact, then screeching slightly with the force of her grip.
More so than even the newly acquired Malra, this Storlayacas was a blinding white, as if it had been as leeched of colour as its pilot. At the thought of the woman lying unconscious in the medbay, an unsteady breath rattled out of Pryseia.
Staring up at the white Storlayacas now, Pryseia couldn't help but recall the first time she'd laid eyes on it, only a handful of hours ago. Dematting into that Hyttan ship, under enemy fire as they were, when she'd caught sight of it at the opposite end of the cargo hold, triumph had roared through her blood. The compulsion that had been clawing at the back of her mind ever since she'd first sat in the cockpit of Zaanlaa had swelled so powerfully within her that she could have cried, and only the imminent danger she was in had allowed her to remain in control of her faculties. And then when V'tala had turned to her, locking eyes despite the helmets obscuring them, a profound sense of completion had rushed through her so suddenly that it had left Pryseia lightheaded.
But then V'tala bent in supplication, recited her vow, and that sense of wholeness had turned to ash in Pryseia's throat.
Something had gone horribly wrong, a long awaited victory poisoned by some unseen hand. The compulsion that had, for a few brief, joyous moments, been swept away, once again gnawed at the corners of her soul, deeper and more painfully now than ever before.
Pryseia let out another unsteady breath, tipping forward slightly as her vision began to blur. Scrubbing her right hand across her eyes, she was shocked to find them wet with tears. A broken laugh cracked out of her, and she leaned her head against her arms on the railing and let herself cry.
The ache of it felt like she was in mourning.
She wasn't sure how long she stood there, quietly sobbing, but eventually her body had no more tears to give, so she turned and left.
Dematting back out from the cargo hold, she headed out of the armoury and through the mess hall, fully intent on going back to her room, but she stopped before the hall where their bedrooms lay. A muscle in her jaw ticked as she deliberated there for a moment, but she gave in to her sudden whim, and headed off to the right instead.
The lights in the medbay had been dimmed to a moonlight brightness, and in the soft glow V'tala looked as though she'd been chiselled from marble. Pryseia hesitated a moment before crossing the threshold and coming to her bedside.
Outside of her armour, there was a gauntness to V'tala's form that spoke to an extended period of inadequate care. Beneath the blanket, dressed in a simple patient gown, bone white as she was, she seemed almost skeletal, a far cry from the menace that had them at gunpoint only a few hours ago. On a readout above the bed was a list of all the supplements that she was receiving intravenously from the cuff around her right arm, in quantities that showed how badly her body needed them.
As she stared at her, Pryseia noticed a slight tremble skitter across V'tala's body, and when she touched her forearm briefly, she found it to be cooler than expected. Tapping one of the buttons that lay along the side of the bed, she kicked the mattress warmer up a few notches.
Pryseia stood there, barely blinking as she watched and waited for V'tala's shiver to subside. Staring at her like this, she felt a horrible, crushing wrongness wrapping its claws around her heart. As her hand rose unthinkingly to press against her chest, to try and quell this agony, she whispered, "What has befallen us?"
"You look like shit."
Pryseia blinked in surprise, shooting a glance at Rhea, who was currently in the middle of bringing their breakfast to the table.
"How long did you end up staying on the bridge last night?" Nevara asked as she brought the rest of the meal she and Rhea had prepared.
"Not long," Pryseia told them truthfully, "Sleep, however, did not come to me easily."
"I can give you something for that, if the same thing happens tonight," Rhea told her, as stern as she sounded worried, "I don't want you to try and suffer through it in silence."
Shooting her a long suffering smile, Pryseia told her, "I won't, have no fear. I know well that you could medicate me as easily as you could an unruly beast."
"Somebody's gotta take care of you if you won't." Rhea shot back, less of a joke than it sounded.
For decades under the Thalatte's control, Rhea had stitched Pryseia back together from injuries that should have landed her in a grave, nearly all of them acquired in protecting those who had been placed under her command. Pryseia had always pushed herself harder and farther than her limits allowed, always in the service of others, and Rhea had been there to pick up the pieces from the worst of it.
Pryseia didn't need a zymeth's telepathy to know what memories Rhea was treading down as she settled into the seat across from her, brow pinched in worry.
Giving a nod in recognition of this painful part of their shared history, Pryseia said, "Once we decide on our next steps forward, I'll take a nap. And come to you if I prove to be unable to do so."
"You'd better." Rhea threatened, her worried stare softening slightly.
They fell to silence as they tucked into their meal, the first in a while that hadn't been undercut with the ever-present threat of the Bernetigan as they were travelling through their space. Lighter though it was, there was an undercurrent of tension that all of them could feel.
Once the meal was done, Pryseia and Elytra had cleared things away and put the dishes in the washer, and then they'd all gone to the rec room, a nameless dread settling like a stone beneath Pryseia's ribs.
"So yesterday did not go as I thought it would." Malakh broached, her tail thwacking against the cushions of the couch from her regular spot, curled into Rhea's side.
"Double Hyttan ships, double Storlayacas," Viatrix said as her avatar bloomed onto the screen of the low table their seats surrounded, "And a pilot dragged from her time."
"Have you had any luck discovering what those terms used to describe her meant?" Nevara asked.
"Not beyond a literal, dictionary definition of the words themselves, which is very peculiar," Viatrix brought said entries up on the table, "Dregil means vassal, which makes sense, given how she swore her fealty and all that. And dlegh means oath, so again, the swearing. But when I try to dig into it on a cultural level, I'm actively blocked. Whatever these terms mean in the context of the Usgaisjan, they don't want other people to know."
"And that's suspicious." Nevara frowned.
Viatrix flickered on the display, her colours growing bolder as she said, "I'm going to keep digging, find out what it all means, but I'm going to be careful about it. The last thing we need is to cause some kind of diplomatic incident."
"Would you be able to look into the names and terms V'tala mentioned as well?" Rhea asked, "The Coalition, and… Churel and Basty, I believe?"
"I'll add it to the list. Hopefully these aren't under high level access as well." Viatrix said.
They lapsed into silence after that, a palpable nervous energy filling the room all of them avoiding each other's eye.
It was Elytra who eventually broke it, her voice coming out so small as she said, "Something went wrong, didn't it?"
Pryseia felt like she could have burst into tears at that, but she choked it down. They had more pressing matters to deal with.
"It feels like it." Malakh agreed, just as quiet, "For a second there, the compulsion went away, like it'd been fulfilled? But it's back now, and it feels..."
"Poisoned." Nevara said, sounding like she wanted to throw up, "What happened down there? I watched the recording of the broadcast, but I must be missing something."
A deep, rumbling snarl burbled in Malakh's lungs before she began, "We dematted aboard, popped in and out of cover while we made our way to where Lauter was standing in front of the Storlayacas. They were fucking around with the equipment in front of it, maybe thinking it could start the Storlayacas up or something? I've no idea, because what it did do was get V'tala out of stasis. And despite being suspended for a thousand Cycles, she walked out and shot him right between the eyes. The rest of the Briddbragnan's crew surrendered after that. Then V'tala swore herself to Pryseia, threatened us when she saw we were aliens, before passing out once her fucked up condition caught up to her."
"But there was something more," Elytra said, leaning forward so she could peer around Nevara to where Pryseia was sitting, "When she pledged herself to you, I felt it. Empathically felt it."
"Usgaisjan are telekinetic," Rhea mused, shooting Pryseia a look as well, "And now that you mention it, I did feel something when V'tala did that. I thought it was a stray shot getting too close or something, but if you're saying you felt a psionic force..."
Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Pryseia whispered, "I haven't a clue as to what she did, but it's as if something terrible has taken root within me."
"You've felt off ever since," Elytra said, tears in her eyes, "I thought it was just the stress of everything that's been happening. That's why you couldn't sleep, wasn't it?"
Pryseia could only nod in response.
"If that's the case, I'd like to scan you," Rhea said in a tone that brooked no argument, "Whatever's happened to you, it's clearly done you no favours, so if there's a way to undo it-"
"I'll take it," Pryseia replied, the thought of whatever was now shackled around her heart being undone had her almost delirious, "I'll take it."
The scan itself didn't take long, but combing over the results did.
Rhea had been locked onto her console for what felt like years, flicking through screens of data that Pryseia could only get the gist of, and so her eyes had drifted to the only other point of interest in the room.
V'tala still lay asleep, still gaunt and hollowed out looking, but thankfully she was no longer shivering. Still bleached permanently white by the stasis she'd been kept in for centuries, but it wasn't as sickly a white as she had been when Pryseia had last seen her. The intravenous was clearly doing her some good, at the very least.
Sitting next to Rhea as she waited for the other woman to go over her findings, exhausted from a stressful week and a sleepless night, Pryseia felt herself drifting, like her mind was pulling away from her body. Detached like this, from the crushing tumult of her emotions, Pryseia felt like she could finally see them through an objective lens.
The hurt was omnipresent, blindingly so, but like this she could see it for what it was: a sense of betrayal. Not a knife-in-the-back kind, but more like someone had misconstrued her words into something horrible. A kind deed being taken as an act of manipulation. Intent perverted, a wrong committed, and the weight of it felt ancient.
And pulled back like this, Pryseia could recognize that this hurt wasn't just coming from her, but from all of them. All of them, Storlayacas included.
The compulsion that had been hounding them for all this time, that incessant undercurrent to all their deeds since well before they fled Thalatte space, it was also a tether, connecting them on a level she could scarcely comprehend. Only now it felt like something had slammed a door shut on that connection, preventing her from accessing it, though she could still feel it scrabbling to get to her from the other side.
It felt as though she'd been given the deepest desire of her heart, held it in her hands for a few precious moments, before someone snatched it back and shattered it before her, all because they could. The sense of injustice had her blood roiling, because it wasn't just coming from her.
She could feel it through the entire tether of their compulsion.
So caught up in the depths of her own thoughts that she didn't register the soft, "Hey," that came from Rhea, starting slightly when the other woman touched her shoulder.
"Okay, you're really out of it," Rhea told her softly, looping a hand under her arm and helping her to stand, "You're having that nap now. I'm going to be a while longer sorting through all this, especially since I need to get more readings."
"How do you mean?" Pryseia asked, even as she was steered from the room.
"I've found a thread to pluck, and as with everything we've been getting up to for the last while, it leads back to the Storlayacas. I need a fresh scan off of them to corroborate some findings ." Rhea told her.
Pryseia didn't even have the energy to pretend to be shocked at that.
Before she knew it, they were stood in front of her door, Rhea's arm a comforting warmth around her shoulders.
"Straight to bed with you now," she told her, giving her a squeeze, "I'll let you know the moment I have results worth sharing, but like I said, it's gonna be a hot second before they come in."
"Understood," Pryseia acquiesced, "Straight to bed."
She was asleep before her head hit her pillow a few moments later, her dreams filled with the images of a lifetime in supplication, her will bent to creeds that were as meaningless to her as she was to them.
She'd remember none of it on waking, but a sense of hollow injustice would linger for a long time.
Leaning against the open cockpit while Rhea sat in Yarula's pilot seat, Malakh couldn't help but stare at the pure white Storlayacas that now stood in their cargo hold.
Everything had become so unexpectedly tangled when it and its pilot had landed unannounced in their lives. What should have been a momentous, joyous occasion now felt like a wake to a funeral she hadn't expected to be party to. The Storlayacas had been a disruptive force in their lives at every step of the way, but this was the first time it felt like a misstep instead of a surefooted charge in the right direction.
"Everybody's gapping out on me today!" Were the words that accompanied a gentle slap against her knee from Rhea.
"Sorry, what were you saying?" Malakh asked, finally registering that her wife had been talking to her for a while now.
Rhea sighed, reaching forward to tug Malakh into her lap. She went willingly, though she was careful to manoeuver the scanner she was holding so it wouldn't smack into either of them.
"I was saying that I've got what I need, and that I'm also worried out of my mind." Rhea repeated for her, carding a hand through her mane.
Malakh leaned into the touch, her contentment warring with the unease burbling within her.
"Me too," she said quietly, pressing herself more firmly against Rhea, "What are we going to do about all this?"
Rhea hummed out a humourless laugh. "Endure, as we always have. Figure things out as much as we can with the resources we can scrounge. Spend way too much time cooped up at our workstations because we lost track of the time with how wrapped up we got in our work. You know, the usual."
"At least it's all of our own volition this time, instead of because we've got bombs bolted to our skulls that'll blow if we don't do as we're told." Malakh pointed out, "And the food is infinitely better."
"You're telling me! Especially now that we've got fresh herbs? I'm never going back to nutrient paste again!"
"As if you won't distractedly suck down a tube of the stuff when you're in the middle of a project." Malakh teased.
Rhea shoved away from her in mock indignation at that, muttering, "Rude."
"Hey, I do the same thing," Malakh said as she looped a finger through Rhea's vedja necklace, pulling her back in, "Bad habits all around for the pair of us."
"Gotta get better at the ol' work/life balance, I guess." Rhea murmurer against Malakh's lips before they were otherwise occupied.
It wasn't long before Malakh pulled away, a fond smile on her face as she said, "But that's not going to happen any time soon. They way I can hear the gears turning in your brain, I know you're itching to see what these readings turn up."
"Yeah," Rhea sighed with a smile, resting her forehead against her wife's briefly, "The sooner we sort this bullshit out, the sooner we can move on to actually doing what we want with our lives. We have the Storlayacas, all of them now if Vi's hypothesis is correct, and the compulsion was gone for a second, before whatever V'tala did went down."
Malakh made a rumbling noise in her chest before saying, "Well, hopefully she wakes up soon, and we can ask her about that. Stasis notwithstanding, she looked rough."
"It's worse than you imagine. She must have a will of tungsten to have been up and threatening us as long as she was, cuz she was literally on the brink of death. Malnutrition, dehydration, exhaustion, injuries left untended. I have no idea what her people had her doing, but they didn't have her well being in mind at all." Rhea told her, expression growing dark as she recalled everything she'd found while tending to her patient.
Malakh swore under her breath at that. "They way they were referring to her like she was an object and not a person in that log Vi salvaged, I'm not surprised."
"Treating some of their own people like they're lesser is a trait endemic to every race in the galaxy, it seems," Rhea sighed, "We'll just have to treat her better than those who put her in this situation ever did."
"Like that'll be hard," Malakh scoffed, "She's one of us, after all. Bound by the Storlayacas."