Getting Neya to take care of things was just as easy as Carbon had said it would be. Literally just had to ask, and provide a little extra information when prompted. Setting her upon the tasks of figuring out what happened to his luggage and finding out if there were any books, texts, or any sort of media - preferably nonfiction, but if it was accurate then fiction would do - that were pertinent to his situation was trivial.
Neya did not seem particularly burdened by this extra work either, which put Alex at ease. After breakfast she departed with Carbon’s sigil broach tucked away in her shirt should she need to put a little oomph behind any particular task.
Alex verified they didn’t have anything to do for several hours, and went back to bed.
Carbon joined him.
“I admit, I am curious about your... modesty when Neya is here. You are not like that when it is just me.” She nestled up against him, taking advantage of the lack of Neya.
He had originally wanted to just take a nap, setting an alarm in his Amp and everything. Carbon following him changed the timeline for extra sleep a little bit. “I dunno, it’s just weird to have a stranger around. Doubly so when she’s already naked. Makes me self conscious. I know she’s not a stranger to you, but I only met her a couple of days ago.”
Carbon hummed into his neck before reaching up to pluck her phone off the headboard, screen lighting her up as she tapped around on it. She spoke quietly to herself in Tsla, picking one thing after the next.
He craned his neck over to see what she was doing - it looked a lot like she was digging through a translation dictionary.
“Ah. Hm. This is curious.” She continued tapping through to different words and scrolling through all the text attached to them. “Your idea of nudity and ours may not be the same.”
“Not wearing clothes is pretty straightforward.” It had seemed like it was until she said that, anyway.
“Yes, yes. For you - if I am interpreting these definitions correctly - it is the exposure of the body that carries more importance.” Carbon continued to study the little screen in her hands, going back over several pages that had distinct strings of characters that Alex could not read. “We have several kinds of bodily exposure. A state of undress, to us, does not seem to carry the right weight given how particular you are about it.”
Based on how casually Carbon and Neya treated their own nudity, that was clear enough. “Inclined to agree there. The fur probably has something to do with it, yeah?”
“Yes, it is always present, so it could be a constant that is just not thought about. There is a term for-” She stopped rather abruptly, looking away with a hum before she started again. “A humiliating form of fur loss. It is yet further distinct from your general purpose nudity. Do you suppose your view of it is a moral quandary?”
“I don’t know if it’s moral or a social thing... Likely formed by morals. I didn’t grow up in an environment where everybody was naked once they came home. I mean, you’ve seen how I dress. That’s how it is for me until I take a shower or go to bed. You don’t just go wandering around with your bits flapping in the breeze.” There was one aspect that was definitely social, though. “There’s a healthy dose of self consciousness in there, too.”
That caught her off guard, the gleam in her eyes from the screen darting up to look at him. “What do you have to be self conscious of? Is it your height?”
“No. What? If anything, my height is something I’ve been happy with for quite awhile.” That was not what he was expecting. The Tsla’o were all a very similar height, probably eight or ten centimeters of variance as far as he’d seen. Carbon seemed to be on the tall end of things for them, too. “Just high school again. Everybody talks shit in the locker room. I didn’t get too much trouble, but just hearing it all the time grated on me and I hated it, so now group nudity takes me back.”
“I do not like your high school.” Her eyes shifted back down to the screen with an exasperated huff.
“Yeah, same.” Alex shrugged. “So, there you go: probably social issues combined with personal issues. Easy.”
“As I consider my past experiences, it is not so different for us. We do not strip all our dress off when we close the door for the evening. We do take off the jacket or outermost layer, as you are well aware of, but at minimum the... Daman will stay on.” She clicked a button on the device in her hand and the screen turned off, the room dark once again. “I think you may have your view distorted. She had gone to bed when we returned last night, after all. A time when you would have been naked, yes?”
“Is that underwear? My translator’s off.” That was true, it was the middle of the night and an unreasonable amount of stuff has happened since then. “And yes, things were looking pretty clothes-free at the time, and I would not have jumped up to get dressed after those activities. Point taken.”
“Not quite underwear. You’ve seen what we would call underwear, back on the Kshlav’o. This is the wrapped layer. Suitable for around the home or formal wear, depending on the style. Easy enough to simply pull pants on over should one need to go out again.” Carbon reached up and put the phone away, snuggling herself back down against him. “Among citizens, daman ko is more popular. It looks traditional but is stitched to a garment so it is just pulled on like underwear.”
Formal wear, huh? “I get the feeling that I’m going to be familiar with this soon.”
Carbon laughed. “You will, though I do not expect you to have picked up how to wear it just yet.”
“First time for everything.” All this discussion of clothes was bringing up questions he’d had back in sickbay but wasn’t about to ask someone he didn’t know, or a doctor, about. “Hey, so... Remember the hospital gown thing? And the ankles thing?”
“Why did no one care about your nudity?” She asked, clearly remembering both of those things.
“Yup.”
“Mh. I believe you are right about it being the fur. We have our ‘hospital gown’ on all the time, and we lack the ‘bits flapping in the breeze’. Beyond that, taking advantage of the sick or injured, even leering at them, that is a moral issue.” She took advantage of the fact he was not currently sick or injured, sliding a leg along his and laying a wandering hand on his abdomen. “Even if they are an alien with shockingly stout limbs.”
“That’s right, Tsla’o keep everything internal.” That had been mentioned in passing in the primer, with no real details about what it had meant from a biology point of view. At the time he hadn’t expected to ever need that information. Things were perfectly straightforward with Carbon so far, so that was not likely to change even if his bosses would probably like to know more. “Even the guys?”
“Indeed. A curious difference between our peoples.” Carbon scooted herself up and kissed his neck. “But not an onerous one.”
“So I’ve noticed.” He laughed and curled an arm around her. “Picking up where we left off, I take it?”
The doorbell rang. Alex assumed it was a doorbell, it had that sort of chime that you could hear through a couple of walls in a normal house, which their cabin was clearly emulating.
They both heaved an annoyed sigh.
Alex untangled himself from Carbon, taking the job as he was closest to the edge of the bed. Pausing only to pull his pants and shirt back on as he walked out to the foyer, double checked that the interior door was secure, and hit the flashing green button on the exterior door controls. He turned on his audio translation, skipping visual for now. While he couldn’t read the display, he knew that the blue button opened the door and the orange one locked it.
The green button opened the video feed from the other side of the heavy door, Specialist Amalu standing way too close to the camera, gray fur only a shade darker than his gray fatigues, a familiar black bag slung over his shoulder. “Oh hey. Hang on, let me get the door.” Alex thumbed the button without a second thought.
“Sir, I have-” He launched into explaining what he was doing there before being interrupted by the door starting to roll open. “Ah, all right.”
“Thanks for bringing this by, I don’t actually have any other clothes on board.” Alex said, reaching out to take the bag just as soon as the door was open. He immediately began to pepper him with questions. “How are you doing, anyway? Dinner settle alright? Everybody on the security detail find something they liked?”
The Specialist, despite having dealt with Alex and his family the night before, had not been prepared for a barrage of inquiry that was so casual. He straightened up a little bit and answered everything. “Of course, sir. I am doing well, and have had no problems with the food from last night. I believe everyone did find something enjoyable, the fate cookies have been popular with everyone. I did not inquire for specifics, but if you would like I can-”
“No no, you’re good. Just wanted to make sure no one got left out.” He looped the strap of the bag over his shoulder and suppressed a sigh. There was probably no chance of having a normal conversation with Amalu, given that he was taking their rank difference seriously. Alex found himself unhappy with that thought, but put on a warm smile anyway, and carefully bowed to the Specialist. “I shouldn’t keep you further. Again, thank you for bringing this around, makes my day a lot easier.”
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“It is my duty, sir.” He gave a deep bow, silvery eyes twitching to check the surroundings, lowering his voice before continuing despite there being no one else around as far as Alex could tell. “Thank you for allowing us to be partake of dinner with your family. I- It has been a long time since I have had that experience.”
“Yeah, of course. Mom wouldn’t have heard otherwise.” Alex laughed and gave him an amicable smack on the shoulder as his words sank in. This guy was twenty. That was way too young to be saying things like that. Though, given the scope of the destruction on Schoen, there were probably kids who could say they’d simply never had dinner with their families for the same reason. “Take care of yourself, alright?”
“Yes, sir.” He had that same look from the night before, just barely keeping his shit together as he held a fist to his chest in a salute and bowed again before stepping back from the doorway and striding quickly down the hall.
Alex toggled the door, only returning to the cabin after the bolts had locked into place. He set the bag by the dresser and sat heavily on the edge of the bed.
“Bad news?” Carbon scooted over and slipped an arm around his waist as concern filled her voice.
“No.” He sighed and shrugged. “No bad news. Just Amalu being a good guy despite the fact I think his family is at least trapped on Schoen, if not all dead. The personal scope of the situation there is kind of starting to come into focus for me now.” The videos had made it clear that it was bad, but finding that every other person he met had these massive losses was disturbing.
Carbon sat up and set her hands on his shoulders, then pulled him back down to the mattress before laying over his chest. There was a dry playfulness to her voice when she spoke, not teasing him, but welcoming him to the club. “Some of the worst news, then? Realizations that weigh down the heart?”
Alex offered no resistance, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing hard enough to get a grunt out of her. “Yeah. I’ve watched this kid nearly cry twice in one day because we were kind to him, and that’s fucked up.” Rationally, he knew Carbon had lost family as well, probably more than she’d spoken of. She just didn’t seem to carry it so close to the surface, which made sense considering how focused on appearing strong for those around her she was.
“He is not much younger than you.”
“I know! That makes it worse. Like I get that I’m probably not supposed to be like, ‘hey every person that looks sad, welcome to the family’ because... One, that’s an unsustainable thing to try to do. And two, I’m guessing there’s some distance everyone is supposed to keep because I’m technically a royal now and they’re not.” That second one was more upsetting. He wanted friends. A little bit of that was a strange sense of desolation - he had only been on board for a few days, and he did have Carbon, and Neya by proxy, but that was it. Seventeen thousand souls aboard and he was on a first name basis with two of them, and one still called him by his title sometimes.
He’d also never been stabbed by a friend before, so having more of them around at least felt like it’d reduce the chances of that happening again.
“I am not ready for so large a family.” She hummed in agreement. “That gap between royal and commoner is not so great, though military personnel will find it particularly difficult to cross.”
They talked about that divide for some time, where Alex might find it more easy to cross, and how a lot of it sounded like networking and not having friends. Eventually he nodded off, finally getting the nap he’d been wanting.
The most remarkable thing was that he actually felt better after he woke up, despite the grating feeling of the Amp’s alarm sounding. It was just like any other alarm he’d had, but the beeping coming from inside his head was an unpleasant experience that usually left him disoriented as his still sleep fogged mind tried to figure out where that scratchy noise was coming from.
He woke up Carbon, who appeared to have trusted his ability to set an alarm, and they prepared for the meeting. A quick trip through the shower left him clean and smelling like Tsla’o soap, which he assumed would help make a good impression... and it was all they had right now anyway. Carbon had made the bed and was busy sorting his bag out, his haphazard repacking of items from several boxes leaving her vexed.
Still, there was plenty to choose from already - he went with what he perceived as also being Tsla’o friendly - those black work pants he’d gotten from Uncommon, and a t-shirt to match. Yes, it was from the Rust Bucket, Mars’ premier tourist trap bar. Yes, Carbon was annoyed by that, but relented when he pointed out that he would be wearing a jacket that was appropriate for his station, so none of the logos would be visible.
It was an easy trip down to the conference room - there was only one tram running the length of the ship, taking them from near the bow to somewhere further aft, a short walk to the conference room in a secured portion of the ship that they had to retina scan to enter.
"I'm just saying, I never submitted a scan. Somebody took it while I was out." Alex slumped into a tiny chair as best he could and fiddled with his external translator, the white device draped over his shoulders like he actually needed it. They had arrived at the conference room first, a long wooden table ending in what looked like a 3D hologram projector taking up most of space. Tapestries hung from the walls, these ones displaying a series of battles, ranging from melee weapons to propeller driven aircraft, unlike the purely decorative tapestries that Eleya’s room had used.
"If they performed a full body scan, which is standard procedure when a critical patient arrives in a surgical suite, it would contain all of that information." Carbon stood behind him, leaning on the back of his chair and resting her chin on his head. “It would be easy enough for someone with the appropriate clearance to use that to build out your access profile at the behest of the Empress.”
"Fine, that makes sense." It was annoying, more than anything. He needed access around here, but it would have been nice to be involved in the process and not have his retinal scan be in the machine as a little surprise.
Carbon leaned down to kiss his ear, straightening up suddenly as the door opened. She noticed that Alex wasn’t doing anything other than looking down the table, gave him a little pat on the shoulder and spoke to him in a low tone, “stand up when others enter.”
Alex pushed himself up out of the chair as two more Tsla’o who he didn’t think he recognized stepped into the room. They were both dressed in dark gray military tunics and wore shoulder mounted AI’s, antennae swept back into them. One was an older male, gray fur turning silver around the mouth and temple, and missing a chunk of one ear and probably half the antenna on the same side. Age and injury didn’t seem to have taken the edge off him as he evaluated Alex with a sharp gaze.
The younger one was probably a female, an almost brown shade of red, alert but relaxed. They wore the same battalion insignia but obviously different rank badges. Alex couldn’t read either of those, his Amp didn’t seem to be inclined to translate whatever symbols they used for that.
“Sir, ma’am.” The older one acknowledged them with a bow, then stepped up to Alex with his hand out.
It took Alex a second to realize what he was doing, unused to having a Tsla’o offer a handshake. He accepted a moment later, suddenly aware that he wasn’t sure how much pressure would be right. “Good to meet you...”
“Colonel Lhenan, sir. This is Sergeant Zhensen.”
He hadn’t met either of them before, that was a relief. “Colonel. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Likewise.” The Colonel broke off the handshake and sidestepped him to speak with Carbon.
“Prince Sorenson, correct?” Sergeant Zhensen said in lightly accented English as she walked up to him. She had a friendly sort of smirk on her face and what he could only describe as a very Human swagger to her step, hand thrust out in front of her.
One of them doing that was odd, both was damn weird. Carbon had said that they had more experience working with Humans, though, so this shouldn’t be a surprise. He shook her hand, of course. “Yes. Just recently... Still not used to the title.”
“Understandable, sir.” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “Do not mind the Colonel. While he is unsure what to make of your appointment, he is committed to the Empire.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” He looked over his shoulder, Carbon and the Colonel deep into a conversation already. “I’m trying not to rock the boat too much, but I’ve come to the conclusion it’s unavoidable that I will cause some trouble. I mean, more trouble.”
“Don’t worry, you’ve rocked the boat already. Among the military, his reaction is common. They trust that between the Princess and the Empress you have been thoroughly vetted, despite how unusual this is.” She leaned against the table with her arms crossed over her chest, entirely self possessed. “I myself am somewhat surprised we don’t hear about this kind of thing more often. Humans are a very outgoing lot, throwing themselves at anything that seems challenging.”
“I guess that’s something.” He rubbed the back of his neck and sat down. The Sergeant spoke English as well as anyone he’d ever met, most of the sibilant tones from Tsla tamped down. Now that she talked a bit more he recognized the accent as very faintly British. A bunch of big colonies had that going on, so the odds were pretty good. “You seem to be unusually well adapted to, y’know, Human custom.”
“The Colonel and I have worked with Humans extensively over the last year and a half, though I have spent more time among them... I am very comfortable with the idea that your kind are not what the rumors say.”
“Well, that’s good.” It was. If he wasn’t looking at an alien he’d be easily convinced he was talking to another Human right now. That ended up being kind of disconcerting, which was not what he’d been hoping for at all.
“It is.” She watched Carbon and the Colonel talk for a moment. “I’ve heard that you two were the first onto the artifact?”
“Yeah, we were.” Alex wasn’t sure how much he should be saying about that, but they were there to talk about the artifact so all of this would probably come up anyway. “Hell of a place.”
She nodded in agreement. “It looks very impressive.”
The hologram plate warmed up behind them and Carbon cursed under her breath at a datapad in her hands. Alex excused himself and rolled the chair down to her side, eyebrow cocked. “What’s up?”
“They were issued a new translator module.” She gestured to the Colonel, more specifically the simple machine interface perched on his shoulders.
“So? Is it bad, or what?” He didn’t get where Carbon was going with this, looking between her and the Colonel, who looked a little bit lost as well.
“See for yourself.” Carbon gestured at the display, a maze of microcircuitry displayed floating in the air, massive arrays of transistors and infinitesimally small capacitors.
This was even less enlightening to Alex, at first glance he had thought it looked like a map of a city, but that's not what you would find in a new translator. “Looks like... a processor?”
“It is, but it is not of Tsla’o origin.” She tapped on the control panel and scrolled through a file. “The design first appeared in the system three days ago. This was stolen from your translator.”
Ah. “The one that got stabbed?”
“Yes.” She growled.
The door opened, the ozone smell of cloaked armor filtering into the room as Eleya entered, only one guard wavering in behind her. Zhensen and Lhenan snapped to attention immediately, a hand clutched over their heart in salute. Alex leaned back in his chair and waved to his very favorite Empress.
Carbon turned slowly, eyes narrow. “Dearest aunt... Would you care to explain this?”