Mal brought the frosted rim of the whisky glass in her hand to her lips. She let it hang there with a gentle sigh as a clock in the corner of the room caught her eyes. Her mysterious caller was late. She mused momentarily about how the ice cubes that jostled and clinked inside the cheap whiskey were no more than decoration. The bottle it had come from sat on the patch work of scrap metal that her erstwhile host had assured her was a table. Previously it had been stored in the void that hung upon the ship with a crushing lack of weight, leaving the liquid inside completely frozen until she had purchased it from the Mickey who ran the bar. Mal glanced out of the closest window holding off on her drink a bit longer as she searched for any incoming ship. The groaning and grinding of the Mabel’s Mercy as it circled around the nearby planet, served as a constant, grim reminder of that vast sea of stars. Of how unkind it could be to poor construction. The planet they circled was so sparsely populated it had only shown a string of numbers in place of a name when she glanced at it on her ship’s nav holo. And on her brief fly by she had seen nothing but sunblasted rocks and gravel. Makes one wonder what they’re doing out here, Mal thought.
Mal sighed again, makes me wonder what I’m doing out here. The warmth of her breath misted out as it hit the liquid in her glass disturbing a current of cold air that drafted down along her gilled blue-green throat as the first sips of what would be the third glass of her third bottle followed suit. The frigid burn of the brandy distracted her from thoughts of how and when the ship would fall apart. She looked around the room as she released the glass from her webbed fingers back on to the table. There was a telecast shining on the corner to the right of the bar and on the opposite side of the room from the table at which Mal sat. She couldn’t hear it but from the looks of the bulletins around the reporter it was no doubt more news from the warfront. Never real news she knew. Reporters had been banned from anything approaching military importance decades ago, and anything shown on telecast would be heavily filtered and half fiction besides.
The letter inviting her out here had been delivered on a very similar telecast and she was beginning to think it had been no more than a joke. It had certainly felt like one when she had received it. It had been a sentence long “Meet me at 11:30 stellar clock in Mabel's Mercy.” And then a stamp at the bottom giving her the stellar coordinates of where she was now sitting. She had initially planned to just ignore it as any sane person would. But she had found herself sitting here regardless.
Mal glanced up at the clock again. It was now 15 minutes past when her mysterious correspondent had said to be here. She sighed before taking another, longer draught of her whiskey deciding she would stay until the bottle had run out at least. Her schedule wasn’t exactly full anyway, she mused with a dour half-smile. Forced leave tended to empty out one’s day planner. She glanced at the other cloaked figure in the room, wondering not for the first time if he might be who she was supposed to meet. He shifted as she watched and a short reflective flash under their cloak discarded that notion. She had no clue what an Invoker would be doing here, but she doubted it had anything even tangentially to do with her. The two Grishaw at the bar were obviously here on break, chatting loudly and increasingly drunkenly over a pair of half frozen mugs as their stony hands slapped each other and the bar with vibrating intensity. And the bartender himself was meandering about his, polishing the already shined metal of the scrap tables the number of which promised a far higher volume of customers than Mal had any reason to believe could exist.
Finally the only door opened with a soft, sucking whine letting in a flow of chill air chased by a figure with small bits of frost flaking off their scalp. He was a Riddari like Mal, though shorter than her as the men of their species often were. There was a nervous edge to the glare he sent around the room, no doubt taking in the same array of details she just had. His eyes stopped on her and he made to walk towards her, his stride casting frost off his shoulders and onto the floor as he went. He was classically handsome to Riddari sensibilities, a well proportioned face flanked by pronounced ridges that formed his ears and scales of a lovely blue-green color that matched Mal’s own.
“You’re late.” Mal stated, taking her correspondent in at a glance. He was dressed well beneath the cheap windbreaker he wore. His clothes were memory fabric, expensive and very comfortable. She had often seen similar make in stores and on advertisements.The thought of buying herself a set had been a constant fantasy of hers for a while, though she could never quite justify the expense. His face looked familiar though she couldn’t think from where. “And you’re buying.” She nodded to the bottle of whiskey on the table.
“If that is all you require as an apology then I will count myself blessed.” His voice was familiar too. It’s cadence tickled at her like a song she could remember the rhythm of but not the words. Infuriating. He sat down gently into the chair opposite her as if afraid he might break it, a fear that was not entirely unreasonable given its construction.
“It’ll be a start.” Mal leaned back draining the rest of her glass before pouring herself a fourth. “So who are you?”
“A fascinating question when looked at philosophically, though I doubt you’re in the mood for the lengthy discussion surrounding what I could muster for an answer.” The bartender dropped off a glass for Mal’s new companion. They both stared him down plainly. The bartender smiled and bowed awkwardly as the glass chinked softly onto the tabletop before meandering away once more. Mal studied her companion from over the rim of her glass as he made every attempt to appear calm and in control. It wasn’t working. Whatever business he had for her had him on edge, more than on edge. He was stretched taut, as if about to snap.
“I assume your parents named you?” Mal asked as he moved to fill his glass.
“Reluctantly perhaps. Vikkar Brine.” He took a moment to gently swirl the whiskey in his glass before draining half of it. He set the glass down gently as he exhaled slowly, breath misting in the air. The half memories that had been nagging at her clicked, vid feeds of her brother were everywhere and there was a stint of time where she watched almost all of them. A short stint of time to be clear. Malia Brine leaned forward resting the weight of her arms onto the table, causing it to bend ever so slightly towards her with a reluctant groan.
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“So that would make you the brother I’ve never met then. Some hotshot doctor I’ve heard? One of your patients speaks very highly about you.” She flexed her mechanical fingers in mimicry of a mouth for emphasis. “She’s mute unfortunately but I can assure you of her appreciation.” The mouth nodded along happily for confirmation. “Could have gone with a different color, gray is a bit boring.”
“I voted for pink but there were a few too many Chairs in the room for that to have a chance.” Vikkar said with a strained smile. He leaned forward, glanced around the room for just long enough to verify that the bartender was well out of earshot. “That patient is actually why I called you here today. I never got to stay to see her wake up, but I’m told she made quite an oath when she did.”
Ah, Mal knew what this was about now.She had been burned so badly during her second mission that they had had to replace 47% of her total mass with metal. The machinery that had been put in her worked so far beyond any expectations she had of it that she had made some pretty extreme promises in her excitement. “She might remember saying a few words here and there.” The pain medications they had her on hadn’t helped keep her mouth shut unfortunately.
“She made a promise. I need to know if she meant it.” Vikkar’s eyes bored straight into her, tried to pin her into her chair, giving her no room to escape. She considered for a few seconds, watched as his knuckles started turning white from his grip on his glass. She had made a few promises after she got out of the pod they had kept her in. She could pretty well guess which one she meant, the only one she had requested be sent to him.
“Well when I made those promises, I was younger, I was on a lot of pain meds and it was different times Vikkar. I didn’t even know who you were at the time. I have responsibilities now and can’t just do what I want.” The disappointment was clear on his face, a heavy kind of gloom that seemed to drag his features downward. It was almost enough to make Mal feel bad for teasing him. “Yes I’m afraid that as emphatic as I was back then, I really can’t marry you Vikkar. Though I must say I’m flattered that you even remember that all these years later.” Mal chuckled into the back of her raised hand as she grinned across the table. Vikkar was staring daggers back at her, the gloom replaced by a taut, angry half-grin.
Vikkar coughed, pretending to clear his throat before replying. “My apologies. I was not in fact referring to your rather heartfelt, and I’m told, lengthy and repeated marriage proposals. I was referring to the promise of a favor. One favor to the doctor who had saved your life, no questions asked, no task refused.” Vikkar leaned in over the table once again, a little less on edge, or perhaps just hiding it better.
He was done with playing coy, a change she appreciated. “I never said no questions asked, but the promise was one favor no matter what. So what makes you so desperate you would rely on a promise made over a decade ago oh brother mine?” She leaned in close as well the distance between their faces shortening to an intimate length.
“Our sister.”
“Hm? I wasn’t aware I had one.”
“You do, our mother grew her by design in a lab back on Aegir.”
“And what’s wrong with that? Unless you think that subjecting another child to that woman is crime enough. Which I wouldn’t disagree with persay.”
Vikkar bulled right through her snide remarks. “They’re going to brainwash her, turn her into some kind of living computer then make her and a few others like her lead the Riddari.”
“That sounds dangerously close to treason. It also sounds completely crazy.”
“It’s all bankrolled by members of the Royal Seat. Hard to be treason when it’s a government project.”
“Then we’d be committing treason?”
“You said any task.”
Mal honestly thought she would feel more at the revelation. She knew that a year ago she wouldn’t just be calmly staring at him, considering the prospect of treason with complete dispassion. A year ago she had been a model soldier, she would have slammed him through the table in front of them. A year ago her team hadn’t been sent on a suicide mission. “I did, didn’t I.” This might be another one. She thought back to her dark room two days prior when she had received Vikkar’s message. To the bottles of alcohol littering the floor, surrounding a single chair in the middle like a crowd of kneeling penitents. To the rope that swung above it, inviting. Mal supposed she didn’t much mind the idea of a mission with no return. In fact she was warming to the idea rather quickly, a last act of defiance before the dark. “You have my interest, assuming you aren’t spinning fairy tales Vikkar.”
He didn’t reply except to pull out a beige folder and place it on the table in front of her. She flipped it open with a flick, revealing a thick stack of paper. The first sheet was some kind of mission statement about a project called the Ronunsr Initiative. “‘To lead the Consulate towards a brighter future we need to be led by the best and brightest. We can no longer rely on the whims of imperfect leadership in times such as these and to this end we have, through gene manipulation and careful raising, created the first of a new breed of ruler, the first of the Ronunsr.’ It’s not exactly subtle is it? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, it is led by our mother after all” Following were pictures of a who’s who of powerful Riddari meeting with Mrs. Brine followed by bank records showing hefty donations being sent to companies she owned. And just past that were pictures of children having… things installed where the spine met the skull. Past that was a bunch of numerical data sheets that she would have trouble making heads or tails of in a state of sobriety. “I hope you don’t expect me to understand this. We can’t all be geniuses oh brother mine.”
“Those pages cost me 6 billion credits, I know you didn’t ask but I’m honestly still shocked. They’re toxicology reports of the Ronunsr themselves, which functions as both hard proof they exist and shows that what they’re doing to them is completely inhumane. They monitor and control the major chemical centers in the brain in order to groom these kids into some kind of perfect ruler.” Vikkar swilled down the last of the bottle in front of them. “The very thought gives me nightmares,” he exhaled with a misty sigh.
Mal couldn’t blame him for that. “I’m convinced, for now. But! If we get where we’re going and it turns out you’ve lied to me.” She grabbed the bottom of the bottle, her fingers hitting the glass with a series of soft clicks, and squeezed until the glass gave in with a soft crack followed by a tittering rain of shard onto the table between them. “That’ll be your head.”