Alex did not ask for directions when he left Eleya’s quarters.
He was too busy ruminating on that last line of questioning, and all the other details that she had divulged to him. He had just walked through the antechamber, past the Royal Guard who were all probably disgruntled with him anyway, and right out into the hall. The faux castle walls extended quite a distance from Eleya’s quarters. Overhead lights were replaced with subtle, faux-fire wall sconces, giving it a real medieval-with-modern-conveniences kind of motif.
They didn’t put signs on anything in the castle. There was no indication of what deck he was actually on or which corridor he had taken. So when he arrived at a T-intersection, with both directions ending in enormous wooden doors, it shook him out of that introspection about what had been said.
It was about then he realized he should have taken the elevator back down to whichever deck the restaurant was on.
He cursed himself and backtracked to what he was sure was the door to Eleya’s quarters - it was noticeably more ornate - and hammered on it like some kind of barbarian as the castle illusion was taken to its logical extreme here. It was just a door, with no visible access control except for a metal ring handle.
Alex gave it a try. Locked from the inside, apparently.
He didn’t believe, not for one damn second, that this area wasn’t crawling with security. There had to be sensor equipment, at the bare minimum. He assumed, here in the area around the Empress’ stateroom, he was being monitored down to the cellular level. Somebody knew he was here, what he had for breakfast, and that he was developing an ingrown hair under his footwrap.
So he’d play it like they were. He stepped away from the door, hands clasped behind his back, face pulled into an impassive, stony expression he had lifted from any number of Naval officers. With Carbon’s coaching about how his voice should sound in mind, Alex loaded up on confidence and a hint of annoyance... And then hit them with some nonsense. “I know you are there, Captain.”
It was a long shot, of course. They were probably perfectly happy to let him stand out in the hallway until he left of his own accord or broke something expensive. Maybe he would stand out here for a while anyway. Play chicken with going home until Carbon got worried and started looking for him, because he had exactly zero devices compatible with Tsla’o wireless systems on or in his person right now.
Which worked in his favor, if they thought this through. Carbon would go to Eleya first, as she was the one who was last meeting with him. Since Alex was her current project and best hope for reversing what she did to Carbon, she would be curious about why he walked out of her room and disappe-
The ring handle rotated and the thick wooden door swung open for him.
“Thank you.” He nodded to the mostly transparent form that stepped back to allow him access to the antechamber, the annoyance scrubbed from his voice as he actually appreciated them making the right decision by him. “I need the elevator.”
Some of this was probably un-Princely, but the people who were directing him towards that weren’t here so the Royal Guard got his best approximation. Which guard he was talking to was beyond him, but they did summon the elevator. Not the hidden one, the regular one.
That was less convenient, but it probably went to the same spot, or close enough. It would do. “Hey, do you know what deck the dining room we used earlier is on?” Ok, very un-Princely.
He was pretty sure the guard just stared at him. Hard to tell. There wasn’t any obvious reply until a wavery arm-shape reached up and touched the helmet, a heavily digitized voice replying. “Sixty-three.”
“Ah, that’s right. Thank you.” He stepped onto the lift and gave the guard a shallow bow before the doors closed behind him and he realized that almost nothing was labeled. There were twenty buttons in two columns, the top left currently lit up, plus a couple more off to the side with little pictographs that he could not immediately decipher.
He sighed and indulged his inner troublemaker, running his fingers down the lines until all possible stops were lit up and the lift started downward.
Alex didn’t have time to ponder where he was in the ship when the first stop occurred one deck down. The doors opened to more of the faux castle. Nope.
Then more castle.
And more castle.
Then another castle floor.
The next stop was several decks down, running without stopping for as long as all the other stops had taken. Deck 20, so said the sign on the wall across from the elevator. Eleya lived pretty close to the top deck. A little surprising, but the armor plate on a Hammerhead-class was supposed to be the best the Tsla’o made, with little expense spared in applying all their metallurgical knowhow.
Deck 28 was next, for reasons unclear. They had base ten everything so far. Even fingers and thumbs, though only four toes per foot. Odd, the little details.
Damn. She got him doing it, too.
The restaurant had been on deck 63. That sounded right. He had recognized the glyph for 3 while on the stairs down from the tram, which was on deck 65 along with their cabin. Sort of near the middle of the ship, as far as he could tell, which felt safest. He was not a combat expert but that put a lot of material around them.
Deck 35. Zero sign of anything in the hallway the doors opened to. Were these chosen at random, or were there actual important things near here that he simply did not know about?
Deck 40. Ok, five decks, that was normal. A nice long run after that to deck 50. He would settle for anything in the 60’s. He was not averse to walking, even though his legs were still very mad about the whole ‘standing on your toes’ thing. Deck 55. Perfect. Just five more.
Deck 60. Just like that. He hopped off and oriented himself towards the bow. As was common onboard, just the intersections of corridors were numbered, there was no indication where anything was until you got close to it. Sometimes not even then. Not even a hundred meters away he ran into a bulkhead. About the same distance from Eleya’s quarters to the one he’d found earlier.
Well shit, that was structural.
As he walked back the way he came, Alex took stock of his understanding of the ship. There was no Star Trek-like computer to ask questions to, sadly. Even if there was, everyone normally had a device that could interface with the networks onboard, so it was a pretty obvious design choice to not cover every inch of the ship in microphones and speakers. Door access panels were, overwhelmingly, just for door access. The big ones, about 30 centimeters to a side, were for cabins. Small ones, roughly hand-sized, were for everything else. You could use them like an intercom... to the other side of the door. They were not otherwise made for communication, and he was not about to hit the emergency button on one because he got lost.
Not yet, anyway.
So, get back on the elevator and hope the next floor down is more convenient, or try to find his way around from here by foot? There must be stairs or ladders somewhere nearby. They wouldn’t just have a stop here without access to something important. He’d check around a little bit first. It would be easy enough to get back to the elevator with the corridors being numbered.
Alex wandered, criss-crossing this section of the deck. He did find one set of stairs, but it only went up to the next deck. Not a lot of doors, either, mostly identified as electrical and communications closets. Interestingly, he had biometric access to both, and they were uniformly crammed full of things he did not understand and thus did not touch.
The real strange thing was, two junctions towards the port side, the corridor changed. It looked like it had been fully refit. The texture on the floorplate changed. Bolt patterns were different, the bulkheads had softer edges and the support ribs were smoothly arched. Most obviously, the color scheme on the walls shifted from the standard gray bulkhead and red support beam, to a muted brown and green.
It was more... natural. Less warship. Green was symbolic of renewal, or growth, which is why he and Carbon had green regalia. To symbolize their growth together.
It was recently done, too. As he walked down the hallway, curiosity gnawing at him for the first time in a while, that fact became clear. It was faint, but there was still that industrial smell of recently print-forged metal and just a hint of the rubbery deck plating off-gassing.
Air handling in the ship had been excellent so far, so they must have finished this just before setting out for Sol, if not on the way.
Now, as to why the walls were sporting all these changes, down here in what seemed to be the bowels of the ship, was up to his imagination for the moment. Alex got his answer quickly when he noticed the door markings were different and switched his visual translator on, confirming that these were ‘Civilian Quarters - Expanded’ which... raised its own questions. The cabin he shared with Carbon was simply labeled as a Cabin, but these were clearly new.
The panel was lit, indicating occupation. Maybe not right now, but it was claimed by someone. Alex earnestly thought about going back to the lift and heading up to Eleya’s quarters and just asking the Guard to direct him home. It felt like a cop out. Maybe he could try to see if the next stop on the elevator is deck 65. That’d be convenient. He should have done that in the first place instead of getting off at 60. That seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan.
It was a little grating, though. This ship was massive, and he’d only been on board for a few days, but it shouldn’t be this hard to get around. He could just ask the occupants, if they were in, where the nearest stairs down were. Or if there was a more conventional elevator nearby. His appearance would be unexpected but the Tsla’o had generally been nice, when they weren’t stabbing him or otherwise politically motivated. Was it even a reasonable hour to go ringing someone’s door? He checked the time in his Amp and did the math from when dinner had been to now, converting the Earth standard hours to minutes and shifting those over to the Tsla’o clock, leaving him with it being around half past 7PM ship time. Eight o'clock would probably be too late, so he’s good for now.
Whoever lived there in the cabin door he was standing in front of while he decided what to do next took the first step, the door beeping quietly and retracting into the wall.
“Ah sh- shoot. I’m-” He turned as the pocket door opened, starting to apologize before realizing he was talking in English and there was a very slim chance random civilians had translators. Then he realized he was addressing no one. The doorway, along with what looked like a pretty standard Tsla’o dining room and kitchen beyond it, appeared empty. “Hello? Akai?”
A tiny little Tsla’o child peeked out from around the door frame, not even a meter tall. They - Alex could not tell if it was a boy or girl at this point - had the same black-blue fur as Carbon and her aunt, bright blue eyes that seemed enormous and carried a healthy amount of distrust for the alien found standing in the hall.
Most importantly, the kid was so fuzzy. Must have been what Carbon looked like at that age, which was adorable.
Alex crouched down, closer to the kid’s level, with a careful smile and a little wave. He set a simple sentence into his translator and carefully spoke the phonetics it fed him to the child. “May I speak to your parents?”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
The kid shook their head no.
No he couldn’t speak to the parents or no there were no parents? He tried again. “An older sibling, or adult?”
Before he could finish the sentence another voice started up from somewhere within the cabin. “Adana, why are you not in bed? Are you-” There was an unmistakably aggravated sigh here, and rapid footsteps towards where Alex and - presumably - Adana, were talking.
“Oh, busted.” Alex said, more to himself than Adana, who he guessed is a boy based on the -na suffix on his name. That was not a hard rule in his experience, but there’d only been one exception so far.
“How many times have I told you not to play with the-” This older person, probably female if the translator was doing a good job, scooped Adana up from their hiding spot and rapidly transitioned from annoyed scolding to a strangled surprised noise as she spotted the Human crouched there, her ears and antenna rising up with alarm.
“Akai.” Alex said with a little wiggle of his fingers as he drew up to his full height, actually quite amused by the tonal whiplash. The newcomer was shorter than Carbon. Shorter than Sergeant Zenshen, for that matter, though they did share the same reddish fur. He wasn’t sure how old the Sergeant was, but she seemed young.
This called for a more complete sentence, and he didn’t even give a damn if it was suspicious for him to speak so clearly at this time. He had to look good for his subjects, right? Delicately picking through his words was probably not too offensive. “I apologize for the intrusion. I am very new to this ship and have lost my way, could you direct me to the nearest stairs to deck 65?”
Adana, already tired of being held like a sack of potatoes, wriggled out of her arms and padded away at high speed. He was wearing something like overalls in a pale shade of green, clearly made of a much lighter material than denim.
His captor, though, had a much more standard outfit as Carbon had explained it to him. The pants in a natural, uncolored fabric Alex hadn’t seen anyone else wear yet, and the daman in an absolutely retina-searing pink.
It was a little relieving to see someone else with fashion sense as bad as his own.
“Yes. Go to corridor zero, and head aft about two hundred meters.” It took her a second to get that out, eyes shifting from his face to what was visible of his formal regalia, then back up to his ear piercings, then back down at his outfit.
Alex got it. You know there’s royalty on board, but do you ever expect to see them? Or at least an alien dressed like one? Of course not. Particularly not wandering the ship this late in the evening. He had already cued up a reply in his translator, having assumed she’d have directions he understood. “Thank you very much, miss?”
“Haraya.”
“I am in your debt.” Alex hoped that turn of phrase wasn’t excessive as he closed his eyes and gave her what seemed like a reasonably deep bow. When he straightened back up, there were another half dozen Tsla’o behind her, including Adana, gawking at him. The range of heights said they were all kids and teens, so he’d let that slide. He would have let it slide if they were adults, but it was way more excusable from kids. “Thank you, have a good evening.”
“Yes, of course. To you as well.” She returned the bow, much deeper than his own, still visibly perplexed by this entire exchange.
He gave the peanut gallery a wave and a not too enthusiastic smile as he turned towards the central corridor. Alex made it about a step before he thought of something, stopping dead in his tracks before looking back, half of them leaning out the door to watch him wander off. “Please do not be too hard on Adana. Curiosity is a powerful trait.”
With any luck he wasn’t overstepping his bounds there, particularly since the kid prevented him from having to wander the ship hoping for the best, or go back to the Guard for help. Might not have been intentional, but the kid did right by him so he’d return the favor.
Alex didn’t look back after that, though the strange experience stuck with him as he made his way home. True to her word, there was another bank of elevators and stairs about two hundred meters down the central corridor. He would have found it eventually, after traversing an extra kilometer or two.
He took the lifts down to 65. They deposited him right next to the tram.
Alex got way more, and much longer, weird looks when he was the lone person in royal finery on the train. As it was later, there were less people using it, so it was an overall larger percentage doing it, too. Again, he wasn’t surprised. It was probably very strange to see.
He disembarked at Forward Station 3, and followed the path that had become somewhat familiar to him already back to their cabin. It had been about thirty minutes since he left Eleya’s, and as he leaned in for the retina scan, he was done for the day. Carbon’s cloak was hung up in the foyer, and he hung his beside it, the hem nearly resting on the ground. He set his boots beside it, because there was no garbage can to throw them into. There really wasn’t a good way to hang up an asymmetrical vest as the one Carbon had worn was nowhere to be seen. Probably have to be folded up and stored in a very specific way he’d get to learn.
The first thing that hit him as he entered the cabin proper was how warm it was. The compartment normally felt like it was kept around eighteen, but it was easily twenty five degrees now. It was also quite dark, the lights turned down to half. A delicate scent filled the warm air, floral with a hint of berries, and - because he could come up with no other word that fit - pink.
Honestly not what he’d expected to come home to, but he wasn’t complaining.
Carbon was laying on her stomach on the bed reading a book, naked by Human standards. Neya was straddling Carbon’s rump, tapping a fine iridescent powder from a tin onto her back. At least Neya was still partially clothed, black cloth wrapped about her hips.
“I do not know. It seems... needlessly complex.” Carbon looked up from the book as he closed the inner door, smiling with relief and giving him a little wave before returning to her conversation with Neya. “It requires equipment.”
Alex was very serious about not staring at anything as he took his vest off and hung the single shoulder over the back of a dining room chair, then doing the same with the belt that had the coattails and loincloth flap attached to it. He stretched his shoulders and neck before heading over. Definitely not staring, even though he knew neither one would care.
“A chair is not equipment, it is another type of furniture.” Neya said with a very matter of fact tone from her perch. She carefully picked one of the many grooming implements arranged around the bed and began to brush the powder into Carbon’s fur. “It is not as though you could fall very far, I just think it would be fun to try.”
“Try what?” Alex rearranged some of the grooming implements and moved a pillow to make room before easing himself onto the bed with a groan. His legs would never recover from this evening.
“This.” Carbon held the thin book out to him, fingers pressing the pages apart.
Alex raised an eyebrow at the sex act illustrated on the page, a rather athletic looking position that did require a chair. The translation of the text that accompanied it was riddled with words that weren’t in the database, but he got the gist of what was going on. “Tempest of the Night, huh. They look like they’re having a good time, but it does seem a bit precarious.”
“Thank you.” Carbon withdrew the book with a smile and a quiet laugh, flipping the page. “This looks much less dangerous.”
The sound of her laugh lifted his spirits as he shook his head, a sly smile barely hidden. “Whoa, hey. I didn’t say I wouldn’t want to give it a shot.”
That earned him a skeptical look that turned to annoyance as Neya wriggled with delight and tapped her fingers on Carbon’s back. “See?”
“Yes, I see...” Carbon huffed and closed the book, hiding it under crossed arms. She laid her head down, eyes closed and words pointed. “That I will have to keep you two separated so I do not find myself in the sickbay.”
“It’s not that bad.” Alex recognized the book when it was closed, one of the three Eleya had given him at the temple. ‘A gift to help you in the task that has been set before you.’ That made a bit more sense now... What the hell was in the other two volumes? “I’ve had plenty of first aid training, I bet I could take care of anything that comes up.”
Carbon’s eyes opened just enough for her displeasure to register clearly.
“But if you don’t want to, that’s fine.” He said as he leaned down to kiss her. She seemed to be completely covered in that iridescent powder and it was definitely the source of the fragrance, which carried over into a similar taste. “That stuff has a flavor, too? Interesting.”
“She believed that you might find it enjoyable.” Carbon tossed her head towards Neya, eyes again closed but voice softened. “Also that you may want to have a quiet evening after your meeting with Empress, though I do not think that is the exact ending to all of the preparation she insisted upon.”
“If you wished to complain, you should have done so before you agreed that it was a good idea.” Neya had finished brushing her and was packing all of her tools and tins back into a small bag.
“Indeed.” Carbon grumbled quietly at being sold out. “Since it has been mentioned, how did you fare with her? You seemed well enough when you returned.”
“She just wanted me to ‘listen’ at the dinner. See what folks were saying when they didn’t think I could hear. Actually positive, overall, which I will admit to being surprised at. Got some stereotypes being broken, and gave a few people some unexpected feelings.” He specifically neglected to mention their conversation about her. He would help Eleya if she started to act right, but he wasn’t going to dump every last bit of what was said on Carbon. It had to come from the source. Using him as an intermediary for what she’d said was taking the easy way out for her, and would cheapen it for Carbon. “Had an adventure on the way back, too.”
“Oh?” Her ears lifted with curiosity.
“Yeah, that’s why it took me so long. I’m not leaving the room without one of those communicators from now on, no matter what finery I’m expected to wear.” He laid back on the pile of pillows and stretched his legs out with a sharp grunt of pain. Broken forever, and he had just got them replaced a couple of months ago. “Met some kids, they were very helpful. Got me back on course. Super fuzzy, too. Unreasonably adorable.”
“Children? I did not know that there were any onboard.” Carbon’s eyes opened with concern at that sound he made. “Are you all right?”
“No, not really. We - Humans, don’t generally walk on our toes like that. You know what it looks like when I walk.” He was pretty sure she would have noticed by now at least. “There’s no support in those boots to rest the heel on, so it was all handled by muscles that are unaccustomed to that sort of use.”
“Alex.” She sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me this when we spent all that time standing after the dinner? Is that why you were sweating?”
“Yes, it was.” Well, guess that had been noticeable. “There was a line, and people kept showing up. I thought that standing was, you know, standard royal stuff. I didn’t want it to look like accommodations were being made because I’m Human.”
“That is very earnest of you, but there is no standard for introductory meetings like that. I thought you were nervous because you dislike formal gatherings, and you have a tendency to bounce your leg when you are anxious and sitting. It is somewhat...”
“Not befitting a royal?” He offered.
“Yes.” Carbon nodded once. “Thus you avoided doing so, which in retrospect you could not have known would have been an issue.”
Neya had been packing her grooming implements up into a bag as they talked, and once everything had been sealed back up in the little box she dismounted Carbon and went to return that to its home in the dresser. The pale, fluffy Tsla’o dragged a chair back to the bed and set it down by his feet, lifting one and resting his heel on her knee again, this time to unwrap his finery.
“H-hey. I can take care of that on my own.” He tried, with an unexpectedly feeble tug, to pull away from her grasp.
She stopped and glanced up at him, sliding his pants leg up to get to the top of the wrap. “Can you?” Neya asked, incredulous and smirking about it.
Carbon reached over and set a hand on his arm. “I know you prefer to handle your clothing on your own, but this is one of the tasks she has trained to do.”
“Alright. If she put it on, she can take it off.” He said it with a dismissive wave of his hand, well before he recalled that she had put on nearly everything he was wearing.
“Given that you seem physically miserable, perhaps you would allow her to massage your legs as well? She has extensive practice, as I used to train very intensively.” Carbon added helpfully.
Alex had never seen anyone jump onto a table with a step or two of build up before, so the idea she used to train a lot felt alarmingly real right now. “To help with recovery, right? I guess training is much what I did all evening. Sure.” Maybe he wouldn’t end up having charley horses all night.
Neya had moved on to his other foot wrap as Carbon squeezed his arm, exhaling a small sigh of relief as he accepted the assistance. “You will not regret it.”
“I hope not.” He laughed, relaxing a little bit. It didn’t make him a bad person to accept help. Not from Carbon, not from Neya. He knew, had been shown, that she was not there under duress of any sort even if he didn’t quite get it. Carbon legitimately loved him, and Neya... was at least curious about his existence and willing to put up with him.
There was something else weighing on him once he managed to talk himself out of that fear. “Hey... This is probably going to kill the mood even more, but I need to hear this from people I trust. Eleya told me some stuff about her past during our chat. It sounded like she was being honest but I don’t know with her. I feel like she’ll lie when it suits her, and bend the truth the rest of the time.”
Carbon grumbled quietly, but did not move her hand. “It is so. I have not been involved as much in her life as I could have been, but I will tell you what I know.”
“Thank you.” Where, exactly, would be the best place to start? Probably the worst place, intentionally this time around. Right to the linchpin. “What happened the day the Emperor was assassinated?”