OOC: Methinks that unregistered people should not clutter up our webstory.
OK, the following post as made by me and Mamajama; I'll post the Zidagar arrival shortly afterwards.
Angel's Lair
"I thank you for and gratefully accept the offer of the re-engineered Phase Beam technology. I will, of course, respect your wishes and not share it with any other Miranu," said Mamajama formally.
Then, leaning forward in her chair,
"But, don't forget, Saraine, I am Miranu. Our people are excellent engineers and hard-working farmers. We are traders, opportunists....and we are very practical people. If we are pushed to the wall, we might do terrible things, as we showed 30 years ago. The military and strategic mindset is still new to us, and we make mistakes. But, Saraine, the qualities you admire in me are Miranu qualities. You're still resenting Admiral Benden and the decisions that were made 30 years ago. But, I can tell you, he might make the same decision today, if he thought Miranu interests would be best served. At some point, you're going to have to make your peace with that. " Mamajama smiled. "Lecture ends."
Saraine was silent, thinking over her words.
Mamajama finished the fragrant tea, and then leaned forward.
"Saraine, I need a favor."
"Depends on the favor."
"Let me have an hour alone with Raven - no cameras or mikes, a locked room. If she wants to scream at me or fight with me, she can get it out of her system. This obsession with the unchangeable past has been eating at her guts long enough. Post a guard outside the door...but tell them not to come in unless one of us is screaming for their help."
"How do I know that you won't hurt her?"
The trim, dark haired Miranu woman smiled, a little sadly. "Raven is still, after all these years, my friend. She would like to be my conscience, judge, and executioner, too, but "conscience" and "friend" she still is. I will defend myself, but I would never hurt her."
Saraine leaned back, and closed his eyes to mull it over.
"You're right, she does deserve a chance to have it out with you. And it may be the only way that I can get my best engineer back on track. When do you want to meet with Raven?"
"How about now?"
Tollb
With some misgivings, Saraine led Mamajama to Raven's locked quarters. He signalled the two guards to stand ready, then unlocked the door, and MJ slipped in. Locking the door behind her, the guards heard Raven yell, "What are you doing here?"
There was a thud on the door, and a sound of breaking glass from within.
From then on, the guards heard only snatches of the "conversation."
"Raven, we need to ...."
"About WHAT, you bloody-handed murderer?!!"
Then there were more thuds and bumps against the door. Under the door, the guards could see that the room went dark.
"How COULD you...you have children of your own...."
"Would we have had peace for 30 years if I hadn't...WOULD WE? "
"you should have..."
"I couldn'tS"
"Why didn't you tell me...."
I couldn'tS following ordersS"
"That's the weakest piece of **** I ever heard!"
"...Nightmares, too."
"You deserve worse. I'll kill you myself..."
"Is that what you want? One more death? Will it bring anyone back? Do you want my life? Here, I've owed it to you many times, now take it."
Silence.
Finally, sobbing, wrenching, tearing open wailing; "I can't. I...can't."
"I know."
"I hate you."
"I know."
More crying, then; "...Missed you, too."
"What do you want me to do?"
"SWant you to know, to seeS what you've done."
After several minutes, the guards heard a knock at the door, and Mamajama and Raven saying, "Open UP!"
Saraine, who had been monitoring the hallway from his terminal, hurried down, in time to see two dissheveled women, barely standing, both bloodied and bruised. Raven sported a magnificent black eye in the making. Mamajama's lip was swollen and bleeding.
"Saraine, we need a shuttle and two space suits. We're going to go down to what's left of Veltes."
The ageing founder of the Seraphim thought for a moment, then nodded.
"I'll assume you know haw to operate a standard Crescent shuttle, then. Rasael's engineers are down there, trying to bring the big chunks of Azdgari itself into orbit; they can help if anything goes wrong."
Mamajama nodded, wiped the blood from her face, and turned in the direction of the shuttlebay.
Veltes
In the high-yield antimatter strike by Miranu Suicide Warships thirty years ago, the planet Azdgari had been shattered, it's toxic atmosphere vanishing as the planet splintered into radioactive fragments.
The three moons which orbited it, suddenly deprived of their parent body, degenerated into long elliptical orbits which would eventually escape the star's pull.
On Veltes the first thing Azdgari civilians would have seen would be the bright flash as Azdgari itself was destroyed, then raging tides and vulcanism as the loss of the orbital body affected the seas.
But only for a short while; as Veltes left the warmth of the sun, the seas had frozen, and the atmosphere soon afterwards; the moon was covered in a fine dusting of oxygen snow.
Mamajama and Raven were silent as they picked their way through the ruins of buildings, destroyed by tides or lava or desperate, rioting civilians.
Here and there lay the frozen bodies of Azdgari, dropped like dolls where they had finally succumbed to the cold.
For hours they rambled silently through the wreckage, moving by unspoken consent through the safer passageways.
Mamajama walked through the nightmare, wracked by pity and horror for the long-ago destruction of the Veltes Adzgari. Tears condensed inside the faceplate of her spacesuit, and the suit's environmental controls whirred into action. She could see Raven's helmet was also fogged up on the faceplate.
Mamajama activated the com unit.
"Raven, do you want to know that this hurts me? It does. If I had it to do over, I would question my judgement that my people's survival depended on these people's deaths. Perhaps it wasn't really an us. vs. them choice, and I only told myself that it was. Does that make you happier? I wouldn't so quickly accept such a mission. Did you want to know that I'll be haunted by these people the rest of my life?"
From Raven's com, came only the single word, "Yes."
"Can we go now?"
"Yes."
In silence, the two women walked back to the shuttle. Mamajama stopped once, and with effort in the clumsy suit, picked up a toy, a tiny, delicate Azdara model, lying by the mummified, snow-dusted body of a small Adzgari child. Then,they climbed in the shuttle, closed the hatch, cleared liftoff with Raessel's crew, and with the minimum of communication, left Veltes.
Back at the Angel's Lair, Saraine met the two at the docking bay. He looked questioningly at the tiny Azdara in Mamajama's hand.
"A souvenir?" he asked.
"A reminder, Mamajama replied.
---ETA until Drone complete: 3 posts
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(url="http://"http://www.geocities.com/shades_shipyard")Shade's Shipyard(/url), the source for your ship needs.
