THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

You give Bel a very stern look as you accept the handkerchief, but it's no good: you've got graphite and ink smudges all over, and probably on your face. After thoroughly ruining the fabric just to be a shit, you hand it back to Bel, smirking just the smallest fraction, you heave back up to your feet, hopping a bit on your good foot as the bad one drags, then catch your balance and head off to the kitchen. You have to keep looking back to believe she's actually following.

After washing, there's a complicated moment where too much happens at once: you step off the mat by the sink, she twines affectionately between your legs as she used to when you were little, and you're scrubbing your face dry with the dishtowel. On a good night you'd just stumble and hop. Tonight you go down hard, and she rockets out of the kitchen in a startled, spherical blur.

Oof. That knocked the wind clean out of your sails. You get most limbs back under yourself, hissing— you nicked your lip, everything's gone confusingly loud and sparkly, and of course something's bloody well torn itself up in your bad leg, it hurts like a whole pack of bastards.

She didn't know not to knock you about on your bad side. But, of course. Of course she wouldn't know. Last time she saw you was probably just before it got bit off.

 

You and Bel both start up, but you push Bel back down; you don't know Erskin well yet, but you don't have to be an expert on him to guess that he doesn't want his kismesis coming to his aid when he's genuinely vulnerable. You flush from the heat of pushing through fatigue -- your mutable body can process extra fatigue toxins, keeping you on your feet long past when most trolls your hemotype would hit the wall, but it burns energy like whoa -- and manage to get to him before he can try to stand. "Hold it, Cap, you messed something up, lemme look at it before you move around."

 

"Alright, alright, it's not— it's not a problem, are you alright? You look exhausted, you don't have to fuss." You go to sit up. You're not taking an inspection lying down on the bloody floor like some sort of gormless inchworm. "I just ripped a few connection points around the rim loose, see—it bleeds like anything but it really can wait, I've already got the gauze on."


((he's incised and drained the worst of the swelling at four or five points, then disinfected and taped the cuts up. it's probably already gone nastily swollen again, and bruisey. the rogue bioware he's infected with got supercharged by carmin's zapping and are now flat-out building themselves into a helmscolumn. we have reached peak body horror once again!))

 

"Mhm, you don't really need medical attention, the bandages are just for funsies, same as every other tough guy in the Fleet," you say distractedly as you undo his reasonably competent field dressing, absently gentle. When you see the mess underneath, you let out a low whistle. "Cap, this isn't the kind of shit that gets better on its own. You need real work done, and sooner rather than later."

 

You have a look and swallow, hard, as a revolted shudder goes up your spine. It's— yes, she's right. It's irreversible, your round with Carmin's finally pushed the rogue wire into full activation. Fuck, but you'd hoped.

You prod at the ghastly raised outline of a bioware tendril, and have to double over when it squirms and sets off an impulse burst, arriving in your brain as the sensation of swallowing a handful of wet paperclips.

"You and what army, Sergeant?" you joke, weakly. You scoot back so you can sit propped against the sink's counter and survey the mess. "My helmstechs aren't rated for taking a leg off at the hip socket and my medics aren't rated for getting all this shit out and frankly neither set are rated for the— the other way 'round, either, so there's no point in just hauling the lot of them to the operating theatre and fixing it by committee."

You drag your hands over your face, trying to focus past the pounding, panicky despair of a long-term assassination attempt finally catching up with you. "You're a, a battlefield physician, aren't you? How much experience do you have with— any of this. I'm sure you see your share of amputees."

 

"Enough to usefully contribute, but I can't handle it all myself, no. I'll have to do some research." You give him your best 'quit composing deathbed speeches, you're going to live' look. "We are going to handle it. I'll make Sal cooperate, too, I put the fear of me into him a couple times already and I think he's starting to get the idea. I'm thinking we might have to call up some old friends. In any case, Cap, you're not doomed," you conclude as you disinfect and re-bandage. "For now, my medical advice is come back to the table, make up with Itsy, and then get some good solid 'cupe sleep with me and Bel. We'll get started on fixing you up first thing in the evening."

 

You grab her wrist. "Sergeant, we're not bringing anyone in on this," you say, as calmly as you can. "I'm entirely prepared to believe your friends are lovely, wonderful, trustworthy people. But I cannot afford a third sabotaged operation, and there are a number of very unpleasant trolls out there that are getting very impatient Galley's disinclination to polish me off. They don't make the sort offers that can be refused."

You sound, of course, like every jumped-up paranoiac officer out there who has received a crumb of power and rocketed off into the insanity event horizon in assuming every other troll inthe universe wants to snatch it from them. Unfortunately, it isn't exactly paranoia when quite a lot of chaps are out to get you.

 

You finally speak up. "I'll take the fight to them, then. I wasn't sent here for incompetence. Pancho, what'll happen if he continues with the kind of treatment he's currently getting?"

"Oh, he'll die," she says easily. "Pretty sure Sal knows it, too. Slow, painful, humiliating death. You'd spend a good sweep bedridden before the end, too, so if that sounds fun...?"

 

"I just spent a week flat on my back, I can't say I'm looking forward to more of the same if it doesn't involve Kadros over there with his kit off," you say, trying to match her airy tone. "In any case your calculations are a little off, Sergeant, the minute one of these wiggly nippers gets past my hip it'll be punching all sorts of interesting new holes in my recreational areas, and then I get culled by a drone while shitting myself. Or, well, shitting myself to an even more profound degree than one usually shits at that particular juncture."

You allow her and her moirail to haul you off to sit at a table, though it puts your thinkpan on the fritz for a good while. You get your elbows on the tabletop and breathe slowly and carefully.

"The option Sal and I were, were— opting, for, ha, was to delay things as long as possible, then have the leg out at the socket and go for a fourwheel device or one of those arm-brace contraptions. And hope, of course, that that'd get all the seeds out. I suppose with all of them going off right now we'll get to see how far up they've, they've. Er, gotten. I was supposed to have a few more sweeps but it's, you know, rather hard to plan for accidents."

 

"I have to decide now," you point out: "Do I forbid you to ever again scold me for self-sacrificing heroics, or do I take the shit you previously gave me over it as license to chew you completely the hell out right now? In any case, nope, you don't get to die. We're saving you. Suck it up."

Pancho steals a spicy isopod won ton off your plate to add it to his. "Eat up, Cap, you'll need your strength. Bel doesn't get attached to very many people, but once he does, there's no detaching him. I guess you'll just have to live."

"There's also the fact that he's the only good Captain this Fleet has, as far as I know."

"That too. Yep. No choice, gotta save you."

 

"Oh, come off it, you're making it sound as if you've caught me woefully loading myself into the matter reclamators," you protest. "I have lasted this long, you know!" You nibble the isopod whatsit. "Urgh, this tastes like microwave, it's fizzing at me." Still, static-crackly or not, you haven't eaten since breakfast, and can straighten enough senses out to tell that it's warm and chewy. You finish the whole mess and a few nibbles of the tray, too, before you suss out that the texture's wrong.

"Listen," you say to Pancho, more seriously. "I can't be seen building up a power base, here. Bel's sterling service record and subversive politics, and presumably your own as well, are two very visible signs towards just that end. Combined with those specialist friends of yours you're thinking of dragging in and a breeding population of lusii? We've got the spitting image of a reprobate blood-traitor Captain and his disaffected reject crew preparing for insurrection. Our teeth are already filed down far enough, here, I don't need them bloody well yanked out at the root."

((the combination of bleary-addled enough to chew on a plastic tray, but also intently politicking, has got to look pretty weird))

 

"That's ridiculous," Pancho begins, but you cut her off with a shake of your head.

"It's not. He's right. But we still aren't going to let him die. It's lucky we have Whitey here."

She raises an eyebrow. "Go ahead, convince me Whitey's ever lucky."

"We're not rebels, we're criminals. Politics schmalitics, we're in bed with the mob."

"Oh, Bel, no."

"Sorry, but... if it's the way to save Erskin without getting the rest of us wiped out? Please consider Bel Yes."

 

You tilt your head consideringly. "Go on," you order. "You're not talking about piracy, are you? We're blatantly unequipped for that-- we might get hung for it off a good accusation and a weighted court, but it'd be a farce and everyone would know it."

 

"No, nothing active, but we were already heading in the direction of dipping our toes in black market stuff. The idea is to -- well, we've got a couple options here. We could just let it look like we're making some illegal money, let that be an explanation for your apparent coalition-building, and a handle they can steer you with; the reason you're such a threat is because you don't have a handle. But that falls apart the first time they give it a tug. Or we could genuinely go for it, and provide needed services for some of the higher-ups on the downlow; that gives us a handle on them. Either way, we don't fall in the 'rebel' bin, and we're a whole lot less threatening and more useful."

 

"Hhhm." You contemplate this for a bit, nibbling your food tray. It's not food but it is good for nibbling. "I like it," you decide. "We've got to draw a few limits— and anyway that'd look better, wouldn't it, I'm young and stupid, of course I'd be easing into things— but yes, let's go for it. I like it. It'll put a burr up Wavebane's nook, too, won't it, they couldn't come after me anymore without everyone reading it as one criminal conglomerate moving in on the other, I don't think. Right? I mean, everyone bloody well knows about their shipyards, it's not like they could keep sending agents over to dick us around in a virtuous manner, and if they actually want to point the legislacerators at us, any court they'd buy for that would be giggling all the way through the proceedings. Hell, probably most of the legislacerators, at that."

 

You give a crooked grin, glad he likes your idea, even while you kind of hate that such an idea is your best chance. "I guess it's probably up to me to deal with Whitey, at least until Murfey's back on his feet. Hm, we need to get Lainey's okay on this too, don't we? I mean, you're in charge, but it'd suck if she was seething. If I get Whitey out of her hair -- well, I was going to do that anyway."

"After you sleep," Pancho says.

"We sort of did."

"Not enough. Relax, Whitey's not going anywhere. He was keeping Itsy and the babies on his ship until he got paid, but I decided that was dumb and took them."

"Damn, now he'll be ornery."

"Nah, you just pay up without letting on that you knew, that's proof you're a straight shooter."

You sigh and shove your hair back. "Guess I need to get used to that sort of nonsense if we're going to be doing business with his type."

 

"What is his type?" you ask Pancho. "I've heard some number of rumors and reports on the mutant blighter, but you've spent a week living horns to heels. Can we use him? And for what?"

 

"He's... surprisingly un-twisty, for a dishonest type," you say thoughtfully. "Far as I can tell, he's pretty straightforwardly self-interested. Likes money and explosions. Doesn't trust anyone, but I didn't get the impression he's paranoid, he just likes to hedge his bets. Spoiled brat, thinks he's pretty -- okay, he is pretty, but not as pretty as he thinks he is -- and he gives orders to anyone in his field of view and expects things to happen. But when I was like, dude, I don't work for you, he just sort of waved it off. I guess... people who aren't useful to him aren't important, but he doesn't seem vengeful or sadistic about it."

"How's he treat his lusus?" Bel puts in.

"Dotes on the stupid thing. Thought it was funny when he tried to eat Itsy. Got all pearl-clutchy when Itsy pecked a scold on his head, but glared at me, not Itsy. Oh, and he told me he's got the actual lusus mutation, it's not just albinism or something."

Bel makes a face. "Yeah, that could get awkward."

 

"I say, I had no idea that sort of thing could happen to trolls," you muse, fascinated. "Is it communicable?"

You look back towards the other block, where Itsy is presumably bunkered. "Could we... could we use that?" You ask. "Does it go both ways, do you think? He certainly hauled off here quickly enough with intent to, to—" you make a vague, unhappy gesture, "—press his advantage. That's all changed now, though, hasn't it? Or. Or has it. I'm not keen to have another disgraceful little melt-down like before, once is sufficient unto a lifetime, I should think. "

 

You chew your lip, thinking. Before you come up with an answer, Bel speaks up; you shoot him a warning look, because this is delicate territory, but fortunately he's not poking Erskin's sore spots.

"How many helmsmen did he bring?" Bel says.

"Three. Well, three in the helmsblock, but there was another passenger cabin where his staff brought food in sometimes but no one came out; could've been a spare helmsman. Could've been another passenger, could've been a quadrant, I don't know."

"All three were taking shifts?"

"Yeah, one-hour shifts, asleep and awake. I guess the navigation's not tricky."

"Could be he just took the job seriously for the pay we offered him. But from what he's bragged to me over the sweeps, that's maximum speed. I'm thinking he was feeling some urgency about Erskin's health and safety."

"I don't know him well enough to read his moods, sorry." You push your chair back a little to let your lusus climb onto your lap. She begins licking your dinner tray intently. "Shouldn't be too hard to find out. Roll past him looking woebegone, see if he tries to feed you or something."