TEKI
He could only hope that the watersuit was really still in good condition. Attacking Sarah or whatever had taken her place through the window was a risk. If the material was bad enough, it might break into sharp shards that would rip the watersuit and probably him to shreds. If it was too good material, it might be as impenetrable as a solid wall.
As his longbody crashed through the window, he just hoped that this place had reached the Goldilocks zone of thriftiness.
He crashed against Sarah in a rain of hopefully rounded shards of glass. They both screamed.
“Teki?” Sarah shouted in confusion.
“Your father wants you to get in contact right the drought now!” he insisted, “and I am not going to let you go until you have done so.”
“Sheesh! He could have, like, told me? Not chucked drones and underpaid employees at me!” Sarah said.
“It’s not like you have a current ID or mailing address.” Teki said, “but let me establish a comm link!”
“Do I need to?” Sarah asked.
“You’d save my tail if you did!” Teki admitted.
“Okay, but I cannot promise grace,” she said, “there was little between us anyways, so he will understand.”
“Just get me through this. Please.” Teki said. He had no desire to suffer more for the whims of a spoiled rich kid.
“Okay…” Sarah meekly said. Then Teki initiated the comlink.
SKIPS-ONE-STEP
She felt the blood drip off her neck as Teki, that snake, metaphorically more so than literally, connected a session to her father. When the holographic projection initiated, she bristled. Darwin looked tired, frantic, probably drunk as well. Sarah felt the fear building up in her stomach, but Skips-One-Step forced it down.
“Sarah, what the fuck have you done? I have made sure that you stay with your future husband and you just run away?! Do you know how much explaining I had to do to the Sparrow family?! Do you even care?!” he screamed at her.
“You… what?!” Skips shouted in response: “Also, don’t call me Sarah, I am Skips-One-Step.”
“The Sparrow family approached me to arrange marriage between you recently, yes. It would be a great move towards gaining synergy with the conglomerate. And you said that you like Rush as well,” Darwin said.
Skips made an angry sound in the language of the Scorpions of Tsanh. “That just tells me how little you listened to me. That Rush was a thorn in my fucking side since I met him. If you want to force a marriage, there will be a murder. A bloody one! And your level 100 physique will not save you.”
For a second, his father looked at her in speechless shock. Then he said: “You unintegrated bitch think that you would succeed against me?!”
Skips nodded, trying to be calm: “Your theorycrafting journals are interesting. Especially as you seem to be quite blind to certain weaknesses.” This was not a total lie. She found his journals as she was once looking for something else in his office. But it also was ice-cold calculation. Appeal to his self-centeredness that would hopefully make him obsess about this build and not about her. She might have done so as a child to stop him from focussing on punishing her and returning to the much more pleasant indifference.
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“Tell me more, now!” he demanded.
Skips looked at him: “Will you cancel the integration of the desert planet Tsanh?”
Darwin replied icily: “I won’t. This is a company decision.”
Skips lost it: “Will you fuck off from trying to run my fucking life? Just fucking say that I fell off the avoiding-mountain! That I was poisoned by a Tiny-Bluish-Ultraviolet-Leaf-Moss! That the fucking skitterbugs got me! Or, heck, tell them the kinds of rumours that Cvetka heard. I don’t care! I will probably stay here anyways!”
Darwin roared: “I know what’s best for you, young lady!”
Skips shook her head: “No. You very much don’t. And the last time you did was when you wanted Ma to abort me.” She turned her head. “Teki, please be so kind and end the call.”
Skips then realised the blood streaming off her throat and then invoked the skill she got from the repository. The cut healed instantly.
Skips heard a gasp and turning her head saw Darwin gasp as the connection ceased.
Teki looked amazed as well: “What was that?”
Skips responded: “Injury Recovery on level 6. I had to downgrade my foundation skill to get it, but with cuts in that part of my anatomy… I wanted to be careful.”
Teki looked impressed: “How did you manage to get integrated at this low level of magic?”
Skips took a moment, collected her thoughts and breathed in: “Let me tell you about the system that already has integrated this planet.”
She sat in an open plan office, felt the headset on her head, checked her watch and wished that the shift would end faster. She was 20 minutes into her 15 hour shift and already wanted to leave. She documented the last call, then used the 6 seconds between calls for a sip of water and a breath. Then a new call came in:
“Hello. You reached Compliance. I am Jaaru. Do you have an existing ticket number?” she said in fake cheer.
The line was horrible. Bad enough that she hoped that the call would drop: “Hello. No existing ticket number. This is Teki speaking. I think that I am forced to do something that is against procedures.”
“Certainly, I understand. I will take this complaint anonymously. Can you tell me the exact situation?”
“Certainly. As the connection is not good out here on Tsanh, I would like you to confirm that you understood when I pause in my explanation, is that okay?” The voice sounded quite distorted, so it made sense.
“Gladly so.” Jaaru didn’t appreciate a call where her handling time was shot just from screaming over static, but she reminded herself that the last times QA tried to fault her for one of these calls, they gave up the evaluation, as they didn’t understand the other side.
“I am a planetary integration worker.” the voice explained.
“You work in the integration of planets to the System, yes?” she confirmed,
“Indeed. There is a planet, which is called Tsanh, that has been declared a valid target for integration.” the gurgly voice explained.
“Your current target planet is Tsanh, which is where you are currently stationed?” she asked.
“What? How do you…? Oh, yeah, I previously told you.” Teki continued: “But the planet already has an existing system,” he explained.
“So, the planet has an existing version of the system probably because it was integrated by a competitor?” she asked.
“Haa… not quite. It was not a competitor from the Imperium,” he explained.
“I might have a connection issue here. You say ‘not from the Imperium’. Are you referring to secessionist factions in the Imperium? Have they tried to integrate this planet?”
“No, that is not what I mean. I mean, a second Imperium. One that we previously had not encountered. One that uses its own system and has capacities to sabotage the integration.”
“You say that there is a second… Imperium? And it had laid claim on this planet before the company initiated integration?” she asked. Now, she was wide awake. Either someone went to the psych ward today or she had just encountered an event that was assumed to be impossible.
“Yes! You get it! I feel that their status as system users would mean that our Conduct Counts rules 2, 3 and 6 would apply, which would prevent integration.” Teki finally explained.
“Can you please send every proof of the existence of a second Imperium and a second System to me? You’d need to upload it on our server with the user name being the ticket number 23-42-16-99-21-E and the password being ‘upload’. Until then, please do your job normally. It is safest to assume that this has been a misunderstanding.”