Chapter Sixty-One - Fascinated

There was something beautiful about listening to a professional talking about their passion. It was uncommon enough to find someone with enough expert knowledge on a subject that they were actually worth listening to, and it was rarer still that that person was willing to share their hard-earned knowledge.

It especially helped when said expert was cute as a button and made big sweeping gestures through the tiny cabin they were stuffed in as she explained the subject of her obsession.

"So, then the Earth Alliance needed a new standardised shuttle. The loss of that orbital factory meant that they couldn't produce the YT-series anymore, obviously. So they came up with the Amarillo shuttle system. It's such a mess. The design was meant to be highly reconfigurable, but only like, three configurations were properly tested, and none of those were the most popular models to be ordered."

Twenty-Six bounced forwards onto the edge of her seat, then gestured widely towards the rear of the shuttle they were still in. "It's the engines that are the problem! See, they came up with a whole new engine cooling system that's meant to be integrated with the rest of the ship's hull, no matter the configuration. There's actually supposed to be water pockets in the hull plating that are pumped through the ship, transferring heat."

She reached over and thumped the wall. "But hear that? Hollow! Because that system sucked. It was impossible to maintain without taking the entire ship apart. And remember how the ship's original design was meant to be customizable? That only worked if you have specific modules, and some of those weren't popular at all. So the end result was a thousand or so shuttles built with this cool idea that were terribly designed. The engines need that cooling because they just don't have normal cooling systems."

"So, I imagine that means that they're not nearly as efficient as they should be?" Aurora asked. "Or was a fix found?"

Twenty-Six grinned. "The fix was to replace the entire thruster pack. Honestly, it was kind of bad in a few other ways. A lot of them ended up around Saturn! That's why I know them well, we had to fix them all the time, and they'd melt if you tried to push them even a little."

"Fascinating," Ivil said.

Across from her, sitting on the rather uncomfortable crash seats reconfigured into normal benches for the majority of the trip, Pepper turned her attention onto Ivil. "You must know a lot of anecdotes like this. I think you mentioned that you were an astro archeologist?"

She hadn't, but it wasn't unreasonable to expect that it had come up at some point, so neither Aurora nor Twenty-Six seemed to notice the discrepancy. "Yes. I suppose I have a few. My main area of study is the third inter-system war."

Aurora glanced up and hummed. "That's relatively recent, isn't it? For archeology?"

"It is, I suppose," Ivil said. "But it's a good time for us to record what did happen. I actually made a study of the first and second inter-system wars. You truly have no idea how much information is simply missing."

"How's that?" Twenty-Six asked.

"People die. And generally, when someone dies, they take their memories and knowledge with them," Ivil said. "The first intersystem war is obscured by age and failing technology. Several of the most important battles of the war were... comparatively small."

"They were?" Twenty-Six asked.

"She's right," Aurora said. "There's a fantastic museum near Hellas. They have two of the ships from that war on display. An Earth warship and a Martian one."

"What models?" Twenty-Six asked.

"Most of the ships of the time were bespoke," Ivil said. "It was an era when mass manufacturing of warships wasn't yet perfected." She considered what Twenty-Six knew, which was probably a lot when it came to more or less modern mechanics and ships, but the first intersystem war was in no way a modern event. "The average ship of the time was either running on a purely ballistic thruster, without the modern engines that we have now, or they only had the first experimental generations of the engines we take for granted. Mars to Earth was a nine month trip, assuming both planets were optimally placed."

"Okay," Twenty-Six said. "So old-old tech. And that makes archeology hard?"

"It does. Sensors were primitive, ships were lost to the void, radiation wasn't solved. Shields didn't exist yet. It was barely a war, truly. Earth and Mars could barely reach each other without huge risk to their astronauts. I think, if I recall, that the entire war only included thirty-six ships, twenty from the Earth Alliance, sixteen from Mars."

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"That's it?" Twenty-Six asked.

Aurora made an amused noise. "And they were no bigger than this rustbucket of a shuttle either. Just enough to carry the fuel they'd need to make the trip and maybe a few nuclear weapons to fling at their enemy."

Ivil nodded. This was a nice distraction from the monotony of flight. She was actually enjoying herself having normal womanly discussions about military history and spaceship engineering.

Aurora patted her dress down, then stood. "I'm going to use the lady's room," she said.

"I'll go with you," Twenty-Six said. She unbuckled herself and stood, a hand reaching up with casual ease to grab onto one of the ceiling's handrails before she flipped over. She was clearly quite used to a no-G environment. "There's all sorts of creeps on flights like this, better not be alone."

Ivil withheld a smile. As if any creep could harm one of her companions on this trip without finding themselves tripping over their own feet and out into the void of space.

"You'll keep me safe?" Aurora asked with a teasing lilt to her voice.

Twenty-Six snorted. "Two's better than one, and I'm not weak, you know." She patted her bicep which her jumpsuit didn't exactly flatter.

"Ah, a well-armed tugboat, I see," Aurora stated.

"No! You can't join in on that too!" Twenty-Six whined. She went on a small rant, interspersed with plenty of begging as she and Aurora slipped out of the cabin.

Which left Ivil alone with Pepper Mint.

Ivil ensured that they wouldn't be overheard before turning her attention onto the young woman. "So, what did MINT say about me?" she asked.

There wasn't even a flash of fear or confusion on Pepper's face, her expression was as neutral as it had been before Ivil spoke. "Pardon me?"

"Martian Intelligence, what did they tell you before sending you on this mission?" Ivil asked. "Please, for both our sakes--but mostly yours--be truthful."

Pepper sat up a little straighter, but it was a faint thing, easily dismissed especially considering the lack of comfort in their cabin. "I don't know--"

"Don't," Ivil said. "Lying is uncouth, and I dislike it when it's done to me. Though... it does answer one question."

"And what question is that?" Pepper asked. Now she was deflecting, asking questions of her own, pressing the conversation on, encouraging Ivil to speak so that she wouldn't have to speak herself. Ivil acknowledged that she was well-trained, at least.

"About whether or not you know who I am," Ivil said. "If you did, you wouldn't be prevaricating."

"Very well," she said as she dropped the act. "Though what I was told was sparse. You're someone of some import who isn't an astroarcheologist but who knows enough to pass as one. You're important to Mars. You're an ally. You're currently attempting to... woo someone. I suspect it's Miss Sterlingworth as she is politically important. Though you also seem to have a strange... three-way relationship with the mechanic girl."

"She is kind of cute, no?" Ivil asked.

Pepper blinked. "I suppose? She has nice hair and seems... fit?"

That was a good enough answer, Ivil supposed. "Interesting that MINT would send someone here who doesn't know some of the most crucial information about their own mission. You'd think informing you would be important."

"You're not an agent of MINT, but are you one of ours?" Pepper asked.

"Hmm, what a loaded question. I don't work for MINT. MINT had worked for me, however," Ivil replied.

Pepper nodded. "You're definitely a Martian Valkyrie."

"Oh? What makes you think that?"

"You have several cores, a Martian accent, and you sit and move with the sort of precision that comes from long military service," Pepper said. "I'm making an assumption, however."

"It's a correct one, I suppose. I was one of Mars' very first Valkyries, you know? Around the time of the second inter system war, when that whole project really took off."

Pepper stared at Ivil. Then she really stared.

Ivil rarely felt herself being inspected so strongly by someone before, but in that moment she was definitely the centre of Pepper's attention. "Evelyn Ville. E... Ville. Oh..."

"Oh?" Ivil asked with a smile.

"Oh fuck."

Ivil smiled. "You're certainly cute enough for that, but I don't think we're quite ready to take things there."

***