135: Vestigial Pursuit – Two
V'tala woke to a sense of calm, and it was so at odds to the gnawing worry that had followed her into sleep that she shoved herself out of bed, marching out of her room before she could think to stop herself.
The trip to the medbay was brief, and when the door to it slid open, V'tala felt herself come up short. Pryseia was still in the bed she'd been recovering in, only now she was curled on her side, facing away from the door, the blanket that had been draped around her waist was now tugged up over her shoulders. She'd woken up, enough to change position at the very least, and that had some of the worry uncoiling from between V'tala's lungs.
Even in the slippers she'd hastily shoved into before leaving her room, V'tala's footsteps were almost silent as she made her way to Pryseia's side, finding the sleeping woman with one arm curled under her pillow, her mechanical one partially dangling over the side of the bed. Her face half pressed into the pillow, she was quietly snoring, eyelids flickering as her eyes darted in dreams, her expression pulled down in a slight frown.
Without thought, V'tala lay a hand against the side of Pryseia's face, her thumb brushing over the line that had formed between Pryseia's eyebrows. At the gesture, Pryseia relaxed, her face falling slack, and V'tala swallowed heavily.
Pryseia was dreaming.
Pryseia was alive.
V'tala stood there, her thumb gently brushing across Pryseia's brow, long enough for the uneasy rhythm of her heart to finally settle, and she pulled away with an aching reluctance. She wanted to stay there, to wait for Pryseia to awaken again, but Rhea had been insistent that she get some sleep. Given that the doctor was no longer in her medbay, V'tala could only hope that the woman was taking some of her own medicine.
When V'tala had refused to leave Pryseia's side hours before, trembling with her own lack of sleep, Rhea had hoisted her over her shoulder as if V'tala had weighed nothing, and with Rhea's human strength, that was no doubt truer to the case that V'tala wanted to admit. V'tala had tried to break free of her hold physically, and when that didn't work, she'd tried to use her telekinesis to get Rhea to let go of her. Pinned in place by her psionic abilities, Rhea had simply said her name, her voice exhausted and tearful, and at the sound of it, the fight had completely drained out of V'tala.
True to her promise before Pryseia slipped under back at the activity centre, Rhea had dealt with everything that had happened after the attack. The guards had assumed this was a murder, that they'd killed one of the mercenaries, and had been moments away from arresting people when Captain Tyeku projected the assassin's fading thoughts to everyone present, their status as an Enlightened holding weight that the Necupole couldn't ignore. Erkanschlde showed up not long after, and she spend the next handful of hours backing up whatever Rhea said.
V'tala didn't hear about that until later, as she and Malakh had moved Pryseia to another room, since the Necupole weren't allowing anyone to return to their ships. Rhea got that changed within the hour.
The celebration for the end of the tournament had been cut short, funds transferred directly to accounts rather than at the presentation ceremony as was the standard, those not involved in the altercation told to leave the planet. V'tala had the sneaking suspicion that the Necupole were more than happy to be rid of them, Lesser as most of them were and all.
Rhea and the others got Pryseia back to the Pelekys, and as soon as Rhea mended Pryseia with more than just her field tools, she was out of the ship, dealing with the rest of the Necupole bureaucratic bullshit, eventually getting them clearance to leave.
They made it out of the system without issue, all of them trying to find something to occupy themselves with while Pryseia was kept unconscious while she recovered. Nevara had all but shut down, piloting the ship while taking breaks long enough to tend to her physical needs, barely speaking more than a handful of words during the course of a day. Elytra had tried finishing her editing, but her heart wasn't in it, and so she instead spent her time sitting with Nevara and doing what she could to comfort her. Likewise, Malakh and Viatrix had been trying to go through the spoils of their plunder from the Dariyaschlde Institute, but beyond the initial upgrade packet they'd already put together, neither of them could focus enough to be productive. And while V'tala had sat vigil at Pryseia's bedside, Rhea had dealt with the Kith side of things, which had gone much smoother than it had with the Necupole, thankfully. All totalled, they'd spent nearly three days dealing with the Plutocracy's red tape, and Rhea had powered through it all on naps and stimulants.
After all of that, she didn't deserve to have V'tala fighting her, and so V'tala had slept, the first proper sleep she'd had since before the attack.
She'd been a constant presence in the medbay, helping Rhea get Pryseia cleaned and changed, acting as her nurse when Rhea needed it, promising to sleep in her own bed at night and then spending the entire sleep cycle in the medbay instead, propped up in a chair next to Pryseia's bed, jolting herself awake whenever she couldn't hear the other woman's breathing. She couldn't blame Rhea for hauling her out of there and shoving her into her room.
Allowing herself one last, lingering look at Pryseia, watching as she breathed, slow and deep in sleep, V'tala reluctantly stepped away, her gaze staying pinned on the sleeping woman as she made her way from the medbay.
Pryseia was alive.
And Rhea would be pissed if she caught V'tala in here again without a full night's sleep. Given everything that had happened, V'tala didn't want to add more worries to the woman's plate.
She was back in her room, back under her covers in minutes, and when sleep dragged her under this time, it did so not because she was too tired to resist it, but because the terror of feeling Pryseia slip away in her arms had been dispelled enough by seeing her alive and well that she could simply relax and allow herself to be swept away by her own dreams.
After another checkup in the morning, Rhea cut Pryseia loose from the medbay, and the pair of them made their way to the mess hall for breakfast. As soon as the door had opened, Elytra and Malakh were out of their chairs, Elytra tucking into Pryseia's shoulder in a fierce hug, while Malakh gripped Pryseia by the back of her neck and pressed their foreheads together, Rhea running a hand across Pryseia's back before moving to help Nevara and V'tala with breakfast.
Crushed between the two of them, Pryseia had said, "Vi, you have been uncharacteristically quiet as of late."
The colours of Viatrix's avatar were slightly muted when it appeared on the closest console to the three of them. "I... I just feel like it's my fault you got hurt. I was just paying attention to our ship, I didn't stop to think of extending my scanner range beyond that."
"And it's well that you didn't," Pryseia told her, "The Necupole would have doubtlessly taken a stray scan as a sign of corporate espionage, which may have led them to the discovery that you are more than just a basic VI."
"Or lead them to all the data we stole." Viatrix pointed out.
Giving her a small smile, Pryseia told her, "I care not for the data. Rather, my concerns lay only with you and your well being. I do not hold you responsible in any way for what happened to me. You did not send the assassin yourself, after all."
"I know. I just- you died." It came out of Viatrix raw and broken, "Your heart stopped beating for one minute and forty six seconds. You were covered in so much of your own blood when they brought you back to the ship. I don't- I can't handle the thought of you being gone."
"I yet remain among the living, and I've no desire to alter that arrangement any time soon," Pryseia told her, one hand around Elytra's shoulders and the other on the back of Malakh's neck, "We shall simply be more on guard in the future. This was an oversight more on my own part than it was yours."
Pulling back to look at Pryseia, stubborn tears caught on her eyelashes, Malakh said thickly, "I'm honestly pretty fucking sick of dealing with the Enlightened. Maybe we stick to other territories for a while now, yeah?"
"I raise my hand in favour of that," Elytra said with a wet laugh as she leaned back enough to scrub at her eyes with her sleeve, "The attitudes of these people sucks."
"I agree," Pryseia said, shooting them both a fond smile as she gently pushed them back towards the table, "They control less of the galaxy than they think they do. Plenty of space for us to ply our trade without interacting with them."
Nevara, V'tala, and Rhea brought platters of food over to the table then, and as soon as she put what she was carrying down, Nevara hooked an arm around Pryseia's neck and pulled her tightly against her, tucking her head down carefully against Pryseia's own, mindful of her horns. Pryseia returned the embrace, clinging to the back of her shirt and holding her in silence for a few moments. When they eventually parted, Nevara held Pryseia by the shoulders, her mandibles worrying together briefly before she whispered, "I thought we'd be free of this kind of danger once we escaped the Thalatte."
"Sadly the Thalatte don't seem to want to be free of us." Pryseia replied, just as quiet.
Nevara just heaved a sigh, briefly touching Pryseia's cheek before moving away to take her seat.
V'tala still stood by the table, motionless, her jaw clenched tight enough that Pryseia's own ached in sympathy. Shooting her a grateful smile, Pryseia pulled V'tala into a hug, one arm looping around her back, the other resting gently on the back of her head, just below her crest of horns. Letting out a harsh breath, V'tala looped her own arms around Pryseia's ribs, closing her eyes as she rested her head against the other woman's. Quite enough that only V'tala could hear it, Pryseia whispered, "Thank you."
V'tala could only nod in response.
They held each other until Pryseia's stomach rumbled loud enough that they all could hear it.
A surprised laugh breaking out of her, Pryseia leaned back, saying, "Forgive me, my appetite has made itself known."
A slight smile tugging at her lips, V'tala replied, "I can't possibly imagine why."
Quiet laughter broke out among the others at that, dissipating some of the lingering grief that choked the air. Pryseia and V'tala took their seats, and the six of them tucked into breakfast, their small family restored.
After breakfast they drifted to the rec room, their plans for the future scrambled due to everything that had happened over the course of the tournament.
"So we've got a scanner that can pick up Hyttan artifacts now," Malakh said from where she was seated on the floor and half tucked under the low table, bringing up a blueprint of her more aesthetically pleasing design of the Gheluc device, "Just a handheld one at the moment, because surrounded on all sides as we are by the now Hyttan construction of the Pelekys, I can't get any other readings. If this does work as intended, I shouldn't have an issue calibrating the ship's scanners to be able to pick up Hyttan readings at a longer distance, so long as I can find a way to block the scanner from picking the Pelekys itself. Unfortunately, it's not something I'd be able to do with the tools we have on hand. I'll need a dry dock to get this all sorted."
"Where have we ended up, precisely?" Pryseia asked from her seat on the couch, Nevara leaning against her, shoulder to shoulder.
The screen on the table was taken over by a map of the galaxy, the territories of each known race outlined as coloured blobs across it. In between Zymeth and Fuglaz territory, Viatrix's avatar popped up, looking brighter than it had before.
"We're here, roughly, once we hop out of subspace," Viatrix said, "There should be an uninhabited system nearby, a couple of rocky bodies and not much else around a white star."
Tilting her head in contemplation, Pryseia mused, "Perhaps we can leave the Pelekys in orbit and take the shuttle down? Distance, then, would hopefully allow the Pelekys to be less overwhelming to the scanner."
"I'd say take Vi's Hyttan drone along for the ride, so we can see about getting readings off a mobile target," Rhea suggested, before she let out a hum of displeasure and added, "Filming shouldn't be an issue - when I was talking with some quartermasters about this whole assassin business, they were figuring it was how widely known the Elstree Docklands Tournament is that had the Thalatte on our asses so quickly. A couple other crews have been targeted - thankfully no Kith have been killed yet - and every one of them had recently released footage of them at some easily recognizable or searchable location. No one's been attacked when their location can only be described as Buttfuck, Nowhere."
"So once I finish the edit, the release of it won't give us away," Elytra said on the floor across from Malakh, "Since the tournament's done and all, and we're nowhere near it anymore."
"Nondescript locations for future broadcasts, then," Pryseia said with a nod, "And videos with identifiable locations only released once we're gone from the area. A precaution we will do well to take until this assassin business is sorted."
"That will be sooner than later, if the intelligence reports the Kith have intercepted are to believed," Nevara said, leaning over to bring up what she was talking about on the table, "The Dolabra's fleet has withdrawn from the core. Flight projections don't have them returning to Thalatte space just yet, but they're no longer breathing down the Quanvengier's neck."
"Once we determine if the scanner works or not, what is the plan?" V'tala asked from where she was sat next to Rhea, "Just scan for random Hyttan artifacts and hope for the best?"
"I have been thinking of that," Malakh said, "Our whole intent with this endeavour is to try and find a way to narrow down when and where the Omega is going to emerge from wherever the Hyttan sent it to. Given that it somehow managed to make any Hyttan language unreadable, from their words to their programming, even if we were to get our hands on Hyttan code, we wouldn't be able to do anything with it, because we wouldn't know what any of it meant. Fucking around has only proven to get so far, as the research institutes who have been trying to glean for centuries can attest. What we need is someone who can guide us in the right direction. I think we should ask the Storlayacas."
"They are our only source of verifiable Hyttan information, even if we're stuck communicating on vibes alone," Rhea said, crossing her arms as she leaned back thoughtfully into the couch, "I still don't want us to be doing anything like that deeper communion that you and Castore did, however."
Malakh nodded at the look Rhea shot at her. "Agreed. We won't be much good to fight off a threat from the beyond if we end up dead before it shows up."
"So what will we ask? For a tracking signal?" V'tala directed at Malakh, who let out a bark of laughter.
"Wouldn't that be fucking ideal," she said, "I doubt we'll get anything that easy, but I'm hoping they can do something to lead us in the right direction. As is, with the way we're being actively blocked from understanding anything Hyttan, I don't even know where to begin looking for answers. Any kind of guidepost would be welcome at this point."
Tapping her fingers nervously against the table, Elytra said, "Not to steer the conversation sideways, but what you were saying earlier, about needing a dry dock… what are we going to do about the fact that our ship is Hyttan now? Someone's bound to figure it out eventually. Is this going to be a problem for us going forward?"
"Saying we've a Hyttan ship, to the general public at least, should only go over as being typical Kith fantasy, much like how we shall behave as though the Storlayacas are naught but Odazaen we've edited in post," Pryseia frowned, "But I do believe we should bring the matter before Glare. They have proven to be trustworthy in regards to the oddities of our operation thus far, and I hope that they would be able to advise us in regards to this matter as well, at least in so far as how or whether we should broach this topic with more among our Kith ranks beyond the Gorgon and her lot."
"Otherwise, we should just be careful in non-Kith affiliated dry docks. If luck favours us, we can find ones that won't scrutinize our ship too deeply, but it would be safer to assume any and all we encounter would be willing to sell us out for parts." Was Nevara's grim assessment.
"First, however, we need to see if this technology actually works before we implement it." Pryseia said, nudging Nevara, "If you would be so kind as to bring us to the closest planet outside of subspace, we can begin our field test of Malakh's device."
Nudging her back, her mandibles kicking up with her smile, Nevara said, "Aye aye, captain."