163: Jamming Down The Pedal – Two
It was an alleyway, or a corridor, perhaps. Dimly lit, not enough light to see the construction material of the walls beyond the imposing slabs of them, the light coming from a thin, luminescent strip set into the centre of the walkway itself. Caked with who knew what kind of grime, it offered little in the way of illumination.
The quiet, heavy thud of boots hitting the ground. It was a slow and measured beat, not the rushed patter of someone moving in a panic, but the steady tread of a person headed exactly where they wanted to be, precisely on time.
Turning around a far corner, Lochagos Stheno stepped into view, the pale amber light honeying the marble white of her armour. At the midpoint of the alleyway, she drew up to a halt, stepping off to the side so she could lean causally against the wall. The snarling, snake-wreathed visage of her helmet turned back and forth, scanning her surroundings, clearly waiting for something.
Something briefly shimmered beside her, like a mirage coming into view, and she turned to it with the calm of someone expecting a phenomenon like this.
The cloaking fully vanished, revealing Queen Kaizoku posted up against the wall next to her, in wait for who knew how long. Though she was a full head shorter than the other woman, Kaizoku's sheer presence more than made up for the difference in height. Her helmet was up, its blank face plate turning to Stheno as Kaizoku asked, "Was this amount of cloak and dagger quite necessary?"
Stheno twitched as a single, silent laugh rolled through her frame. "Given the information I have to share? Yes. More secure to pass it off in person than it would be to relay it over a network. It's not the type of data we want in the hands of our enemies, and besides, even you must admit there is some charm to this."
Kaizoku let out her own silent laugh, her head dipping briefly as she conceded the point. "I take it, then, it has something to do with our common enemy?"
"Doesn't it always?" Was Stheno's wry reply as she clicked open a compartment on one of the plates of her thigh armour. From this, she pulled out a small device, no bigger than a thumb, and held it out to Kaizoku. As she took it, slipping it safely away into a compartment on her own armour, Stheno continued, "The time and coordinates for the rendezvous are inside, along with the proper details for this little endeavour. It is a time sensitive matter, so I do suggest that you review the contents as soon as you're safely away in your ship."
"Be assured that I will." Kaizoku told her, "I take it there are-"
She cut herself off, both her and Stheno turning to the far end of the corridor, and to the sounds of footsteps echoing towards them. Multiple sets, heavy tread, the sort of walk that was meant to convey a threat before you caught sight of the person making all the noise.
"We can discuss it later, I suppose." Kaizoku said with a brief nod, lifting her mechanical arm and launching her hand upwards like a grappling hook, her form vanishing as she hauled herself away, her cloaking device reactivated.
Stheno stepped away from the wall herself, her own footsteps silence as she walked away, her own cloaking device obscuring her from view a moment later.
It wasn't long before two thalatte guards rounded the corner, the pair of them more invested in their conversation than they were with scanning their surroundings for a threat.
Not that they'd find one, however. Stheno and Kaizoku were long gone.
Plugging the device into a port along the edge of the table in their meeting room, Kaizoku and the rest of her crew watched as a star map filled the screen in the centre of the table, other information documents popping up across it. One of the documents was a picture of a denim blue lacertus dressed in a white business suit, bright teal markings across ger face.
"Zovo Heila," Chancellor Bathory read off the image, "Eccentric trillionaire and information broker. Has money enough that ghe trades in spectacle rather than cash, and when ghe's got something really worthwhile, ghe makes people race for it."
The Program's avatar appeared on the screen, zooming the star map in to a dense cluster of debris as it said, "Ghe operates out of this asteroid field, and has sent out invitations for a race to be held in about a Galactic Standard week's time. The prize is classified Thalatte naval documents."
Swiping across the screen, the Queen's Red Left Hand brought up a different document, this one with a watermark of a woman's snarling face, wreathed by snakes.
"Looks like Stheno and her lot saw your performance with that Hyttan flyer we discovered," she said, glancing over at General Grim, "They've got the invitation to get in, and we've got the ship and the pilot to win. The Gorgon wants to split the prize from this little race."
The General leaned back in her seat, arms crossed and mandibles clicking quietly together. There was a faint smirk on hr face as she said, "It has been quite some time since I've gotten the chance to engage in such an event. I'd have participated if there was nothing more than a cash prize, but information on the Thalatte does make the prospect sweeter."
Across the table from her, Madame Augury braced her hands against the table, tilting forward as she took a breath. The others watched her with wary curiosity, and after a few moments she said, "I can't seem to get anything in regards to how this race will help our mission, but I foresee nothing that would hinder it either."
"Having information of this calibre could only be to our benefit." The Knight of the Tomb pointed out.
Nodding at that, Kaizoku turned to Grim as she asked, "So be it. Set course for the rendezvous point that Stheno indicated in these files, and we can link up with the Gorgon to go over plans further. Having information on our enemies is well worth the risk of acquiring it."
With a nod of acknowledgement, Grim stood and left the room, Augury rising to follow while the Program's avatar vanished, along with the rest of what was displayed on the screen. As Bathory and the Hand left the room, all but shoulder to shoulder, Kaizoku plucked the storage device from the table.
Stepping up to her side, eyes locked on the other woman's, the Knight asked, "What sort of information do you think is up for grabs here?"
"The type that the Thalatte will be willing to kill over, I'm sure," Kaizoku said, returning her stare, "We will have to be on guard at our eventual destination."
"Don't worry," the Knight swore, stepping further into Kaizoku's space, "I will not allow anything to happen to you. To any of us."
Thankfully, getting the details about the race involved far fewer covert shenanigans than their fictional accounting of it had. Sat crowded together on one of the couches in the rec room, the crew of the Pelekys finished watching their latest short before they uploaded it.
"Can't believe it took us this long to learn about the actual proper filming studios they have back at the main fleet," Elytra said with a little huff, "All kinds of sets, all kinds of actors to work as extras. Here I was animating the scenery for settings we couldn't actually film in, when we've got these kinds of practical effects available to us!"
"Better late than never," Malakh said, leaning over Rhea to jostle her, "Besides, the stuff you've been animating is really good! That recreation of the Hyttan homeworld, as well as the Hyttan themselves? You banged that out so fast!"
Nudging into Elytra herself, Rhea added, "And don't try to sell yourself short by saying that the animation program did all the heavy lifting. I saw you building the models and rigging them all up, that wasn't a program doing that!"
"Okay." Elytra conceded, raising her hands, "I didn't do half bad."
"A fair assessment of your earlier work. Now? Your work is exceptional." Pryseia leaned over V'tala to grin at her, causing Elytra to huff again, though she could do nothing to wipe the pleased smile off her face.
From her perch wedged into the corner of the couch, Nevara asked, "We've a few days left in our journey to the meet up point outside of Zovo's asteroid field. What preparations can we accomplish in that time?"
From the opposite end of the couch, Elytra said, "The big one is going to be fabricating your thematically appropriate racing suit, but that's not going to take very long at all. We could probably film a little bit of the lead in stuff with just us, but we're going to have to wait to do the rest once we link back up with the Gorgon. There might be some little prop and set dressing stuff to fabricate, but I don't think we're going to need a lot in that regard."
"So we've got more waiting to do than tasks to accomplish," V'tala summed up before shooting Rhea a sly look, "Time enough to get back to my regular workout routine?"
"You wish, honey!" Rhea laughed, leaning over Malakh to poke her in the bicep, "I want you on the lighter weights for now, not the amount you were lifting before your psychic system was fried! You're still in recovery, and going hard will not help in that process at all!"
It was V'tala's turn to huff at that, Pryseia immediately moving a hand to card it through her hair in sympathy.
The screen in front of them flashed as the map of their eventual destination popped up, looking more like a still of static than it did anything that could be used for navigation.
Popping her avatar up alongside it, Viatrix said, "I've been having a look at this asteroid field through a handful of different sources, and the place is basically rock soup! A proper map is both impossible to make and would be utterly useless to you for the race, what with how in motion everything is here. Pilots are going to have to rely purely on their skill and instinct to get through this hot mess."
"Do you have casualty reports from previous races?" Nevara asked, and a moment later a spreadsheet appeared on the screen, partially covering the map.
"I did some tabulating on all the previous runs of it I could find - Thankfully, Zovo likes to broadcast and record these things for posterity, so getting copies wasn't hard at all. Without getting into the nitty gritty of the statistics, while less than half of the participants have walked away from these things alive, the surviving pilots were all very skilled, more so than those who didn't make it, and I can say with confidence that not even the winners of these races were as good as you." Viatrix told her, voice thick with pride.
Nevara just let out a quiet hum at that, but the smile behind her mandibles was telling.
Slapping her tail down across Nevara's lap, Pryseia said, "That Thalatte information is as good as ours, as I doubt that any of the pilots entering this particular go around will be on par with you either."
"Desist," Nevara said, trying for stern but coming out fond, "I needn't my ego to be enlarged to the point where I cannot even enter my own ship."
"Hey, if I have to endure getting praised, then so do you!" Elytra said, dramatically pointing across several people to aim at her, "Even without that Hyttan ship we have, you'd blast past the competition!"
Letting out a manic laugh as she wedged herself further into the couch, Malakh said, "I can't wait for this race! Even if there wasn't so tempting a prize, this thing is gonna be fun!"
"And given the harrowing experiences we've been subjected to as of late, a little R&R will do us some good." Pryseia said as she too settled deeper into the couch, "For now, however, we must find other means to entertain ourselves before dinner. Perhaps some time to game?"
"Oooh yeah, we found an interesting one while we were resupplying on the Quanvengier!" Elytra announced as V'tala (with Rhea monitoring her closely) drew over the controllers with her telekinesis, "It's not an online one, so Vi, you don't have to run and get your drone to play with us."
"Nice! Will I be able to kick your asses in this one?" She asked, her avatar spinning with excitement.
V'tala let out a quiet laugh as she said, "I'd like to see you try."
Later that night, after dinner, after V'tala had stopped Viatrix's every attempt to bring her down within the confines of a video game ("Literally how?!" Viatrix had shrieked, half pissed and half awed, "My reaction time is fast enough that I should have been able to wipe the floor with you!?" To which V'tala had only responded with a shrug and a smirk), after Rhea and Malakh had had each other for dessert, and after cleaning up from their lengthy session, Malakh lay sprawled across her wife, the steady beat of her heart drawing her into sleep.
It would have been successful, if it weren't for a faint grinding sound that Malakh's superior hearing could detect.
Here ears swivelled towards the sound first, registering it and cataloguing it, and before she leaned up Malakh knew what she was going to find - Rhea dragging her incisors across the ridges of her thumbnail, a nervous habit when her mind was elsewhere.
Despite Malakh leaning up, bracing herself upright by resting her crossed forearms on Rhea's chest, her vedja didn't clock her presence for a few seconds, dropping her hand guiltily and shooting her wife an apologetic grin.
"Sorry," came out of her whisper quiet, "I didn't mean to wake you."
Malakh shrugged lightly, her smile going fond as she said, "I wasn't fully under yet. But what has your mind churning so at this hour? Didn't I tire you out enough?"
Rhea's laugh was loud and warm, and she ran a hand through Malakh's mane as she said, "Don't worry baby, I'm hanging onto consciousness by a thread here, I just… I had a worry. And a thought."
"Alright then, what's the problem and what's your solution?" Malakh asked, giving Rhea her full attention.
Sighing hard enough to send her wife bobbing against her, Rhea said, "My sisters. They aren't the problem, but rather their dangerous focus against the Thalatte is. I don't want them to stop what they're doing, because they're saving lives, but still, they're throwing themselves into danger, and if I lost them now…"
The breath she drew in next rattled with the dread that this thought filled her with, but she continued, "Better gear would go a long way to ensuring their longevity, and what would be better than a ship that was Hyttan made?"
"Well, knowing what we know, and knowing what kind of gear we have available to us, there's really two solutions to that issue," Malakh said as she held up a pair of fingers, "Either we track them down a Hyttan ship of their own, or we find one of those conversion modules that Glare mentioned back when we let them know about the whole thing with the Omega and all."
Rhea reached up to press down one of Malakh's raised fingers, saying, "Adyt's as tightly intertwined with the Gorgon as Viatrix is with the Pelekys, she can't be transferred to another ship without it killing her, and there's no way the others would abandon her. No, we don't find them a new ship, we need to convert the Gorgon into Hyttan tech."
"Well then, that's what we'll have to do," Malakh said, shifting her hand so that she could intertwine it with Rhea's, "As soon as Nevara's had a chance to show off and win that information for us, we can set our Hyttan scanner to track down a conversion module."
"Don't you think we need to bring this up to the others? It took us weeks to find what we were looking for the last time." Rhea pointed out.
Rhea felt Malakh's quiet laugh rumble against her before her wife said, "Like the others would be against that idea. We bring it up to them tomorrow, and they're all gonna agree to it, just you wait and see. They may not have the blood tie like you do, but they still think of the Gorgon as family, and we'll go to any lengths for family."
"We really will, won't we?" Rhea's voice was thick with emotion, her eyes brightening with tears enough that her smile forced them out, "I have no idea how I ended up so lucky."
Scoffing lightly, separating their hands so she could use hers to wipe away her vedja's tears, Malakh said, "I mean, you kind of did endure around a century of slavery, so you were more than due for a little good luck. We all were, and that's why we'll fight so hard for what's ours."
"Stop, you're gonna get the water works really going!" Rhea's laugh was choked with a sob as she reached up to scrub at her own eyes. Malakh shifted her hand up to card it through Rhea's hair, stroking gently away until Rhea managed to wrangle her emotions under her control.
Rhea eventually dropped her hands with a sigh, and the two of them enjoyed the simple pleasure of just watching one another in peace before she said, "I love you so fucking much, you know that, right?"
"Considering I married you how many times at this point?" Malakh's beamed, "Yeah, I think I got the memo. I love you too."
Malakh pulled herself up higher on Rhea's chest, enough that she could simply lean over and draw her in to an unhurried kiss. Neither of them were long for the waking world, but for the few minutes they were able to keep sleep at bay, they savoured this intimacy between them, something that had been denied them for so very, very long.