Chapter Four - The Paradoxical

The Paradoxical had enough room to house ten thousand people. Not well. They'd be crammed into boxes like wage slaves in a corpo home on Earth, only without the comfort of gravity.

The ship had started its life as the Paradise. A cruise ship the likes of which the solar system had never seen. It was meant to have a crew of two thousand, and room enough for five thousand passengers.

That was before it was stolen.

The ship had been taken near the start of the third intersystem war. It was being used as a non-combatant hospital ship. At least, that's what it claimed. In reality it had become a hidey-hole for some of the system's ultra-rich, a place where they could sit back and watch the explosions from afar.

The same ultra-rich failed to pay the Lunatics for some of their mercenary work.

Most of them were tossed out of an airlock before the cruise ship was flown out to the edge of the system.

The renamed Paradoxical had turned from a pleasure barge into the home of the angriest clowns in the solar system. The name fit.

The suspended infinity pools had been retrofitted into water purification systems. The multiple decks had been modified to hold dozens of turrets ripped out of derelict warships. Some of the larger ballrooms had been converted into missile silos, and the exterior was now covered in ablative armour and several hundred tons of garish paint.

The Paradoxical had enough guns on it to take on a full Mars patrol fleet and enough Warclowns to give a platoon of marines pause. Unlike a proper warship, the Paradoxical unloaded its power though stolen, misunderstood, and poorly installed tech. There was no predicting what it would fling at you next.

Fortunately, every fight the Paradoxical had been in had been against pirates and thugs that bit off more than they could chew.

It had still gained a rep.

Across the system, there were little people with poor posture and poor eyesight who spent too much time on the extra-net arguing about which ship could win in a fight. Massive warships like the Imperial Star Dreadnoughts were usually banned from those discussions. They weren't fair. The Paradoxical was a fan favourite of people who would be lucky to never see the warship.

Ivil found herself growing somewhat tense as she followed Snickers though increasingly mundane passages. They'd left the more open spaces some time ago and were now navigating through the maze of corridors deep within the ship.

She wasn't worried about being double-crossed. The Lunatics would have to do some truly monstrous things for her to start worrying about them.

She was, on the other hand, worried about being refused.

It wasn't something that happened often. But this was one of those rare moments where it was entirely possible.

"It's here," Snickers said as she grabbed onto a padded handle-bar on a corner and used it to flip around the intersection.

Ivil walked after her, the squad the brass had sent floating a few paces behind. As she turned the corner, she took in what was very clearly some sort of defensive station. Two Warclowns stood on either side of a heavily armoured bulkhead door. C-Classers, both.

Snickers talked to them with great big gestures, then pointed towards Ivil who was coming up behind her. "Yes, and she's literally right there, have you been huffing pigment?"

"The captain said she didn't want to be bothered," one of them said.

"The captain can lick my ass for all I care," Snickers snapped. "She blew off Laughcroft's head! I think she could take the two of you without blinking and I won't stand in her way when that happens."

"Is there a problem?" Ivil asked.

The bulkhead door behind the guard slammed open and both Warclowns jumped. A woman stood in the entranceway, looking entirely unamused. Her eyes locked onto Ivil's. "So, you're the reason I had to call general quarters. Do you have any idea how much trouble you've caused for me?"

"I can imagine," Ivil said. "Are you the captain?"

"I am. Come in. Leave your dogs behind."

Ivil half-turned towards Sonic Spectre and the other Imperial Valkyries. "Stay," she ordered simply before following the captain into what was clearly some sort of stateroom. There was a table up on the ceiling with chairs all around, but the lower part of the room was more of an office and bar.

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The captain walked up to her desk and pressed a button. The door shut. She turned, arms crossing as she floated slightly above the ground, anchored by something invisible.

Another C-classer, Ivil sensed. Probably one of the last onboard the ship, actually. She couldn't feel any B-classers nearby. It made some sense. The Lunatics were insistent on sharing the cores they had, rather than concentrating them into a few powerful people.

"So, you're here to see our oracle," the captain said.

"I am," Ivil replied. She walked over to the bar, then started looking through the bottles. She picked one off of a rack. Titanian bourbon, aged in imported French oak. She glanced over the cups and tumblers available. They were all soft plastic, designed to be squeezed and with tight openings. The sorts meant to be pressed against the neck of a bottle, filled with a lurch, then squeezed out into the drinker's mouth.

Ivil pushed them aside, then smiled as she found an old crystal tumbler in the back.

She popped the top off the bottle, then tipped it over the tumbler. The bourbon started to float away before she gave it a look and the alcohol experienced gravity for the first time as it splashed into her cup.

"Want a cup?" she asked.

"I'm good," the captain said. "That bottle is worth more than what I make in a year."

"You're paid?" Ivil asked.

"Not nearly enough. Why do you want to see the oracle?"

"That's between me and the oracle," Ivil said.

"She's a gossip."

Ivil considered it. "She won't be. Not about this."

The captain hummed. "Are you going to kill her?" she asked.

"If that's what I wanted to do, there would be easier ways to go about it," Ivil said. She swirled her cup around, then took a sip. It was decent.

"Alright. I'll have Claire come here. She's probably on her way already. Or hiding in an escape pod. Or she managed to sneak away a week ago, and no one found out about it until now."

Ivil shrugged. That would tell her a lot, if it was the case. And it was just one of the risks when dealing with people able to see into the future. "That's fine," She said.

There was a knock at the door.

The captain sighed. "Of course," she said before she reached back and pressed on the same button to open the door.

A woman floated into the room, flipped around on herself, then crashed into the drinks cabinet with a rattle of glass on glass. She reached out and grabbed onto something to steady herself, but that something was the bottle Ivil had put down.

The bottle, unable to stop her from flying away, was instead flung against the far wall where it shattered explosively, creating a cloud of bourbon and glass.

"Claire. I swear on all that honks, I will tan your ass," the captain snapped.

"I'm sorry!" Claire said. She managed to flip herself around enough so that one booted foot was able to touch the deck. Something clunked, and the young woman found herself rooted on the spot enough that she was able to right herself.

Claire the clairvoyant was younger than Ivil had expected. She had a mess of brown hair, far longer than was fashionable, and her full-face mask was a transparent oval, with only a few tabs on the side. It was Martian tech, Ivil recognized.

"I've been waiting for you to show up forever!" Claire said as she pointed straight at Ivil. "And now you're here! Did you bring it?"

"Bring what?" the captain asked.

"I did," Ivil said. She reached up and undid the front of her uniform, then fished out something small from an inner pocket. A core. It was no bigger than a marble, and yet in Ivil's vision it practically thrummed with power.

"Gimme!" Claire demanded. Her hands made grabbing gestures, though she didn't actually come closer.

"You know what I want already," Ivil said.

The clairvoyant sighed, then looked to the captain. "You should give us a minute," she said. "Or five, actually. And turn off the cameras and mics. Yes, even the ones no one knows about. Ivil will find them otherwise and then you'll need to replace them and a wall."

The captain crossed her arms. "I'm not sure I want to just leave," she said.

Claire rolled her eyes. "Come on! Trust me! This'll be great. I promise."

***