RavensDagger

  Chapter Fifty-One - Attracted to Success

  The human propensity to be attracted to success is well known, well doted, and generally regarded as something no one do anything about.

  Are you ahat people are approag you because you're richer, prettier, better-off, or more powerful than them? Suck it up.

  Ivil dealt with that kind of ive attention by punishing it in as public a ossible. This earned her a reputation that some thought was awful, but it also kept gold-diggers and lesser trouble-seekers at bay.

  With a suffit application of vengeful violehe same teique could be applied to politis and bureaucrats as well.

  Ivil wondered if, perhaps, she ought to teach this trick to Aurora. The Phobosian noblewoman was in her room onboard the Sappho, a room which she had transformed into a small office space. A few boxes were left just outside of the door, ripped open and abandoned as trash.

  She knocked on the doorframe while eyeing the boxes. "Aurora?"

  "Oh, Evelyn," Aurora said as she stood from a small seat. It still had pstic ed around its cushions, and a few pag peanuts stuck to the legs. "I'm gd to see you. What do you think of my... let's call them renovations?"

  Aurora spread her arms wide, enpassing the entire room.

  Uhe captain's , this space was small, tight. Still, it was much rger thaube-rooms one might expeboard a warship. The pirates that desighe Sappho built the ship for a small crew, and then filled it with unnecessary luxuries, such as elbow-room.

  "It's nice," Ivil said.

  Aurora had fitted a small unfolding desk on one side of the room, with a light bar fixed to the wall above it for additional crity. There was a new puter sitting on the desk, an unfolding ptop with a brick of a base to it, and of course, the chair, which seemed to have magic feet.

  A small shelf was fixed to the wall, with aic holding bar to keep the two books on it in pce. Actual paper books. Something of a strange luxury.

  "Why the office set-up?" Ivil asked.

  Aurora frowned. "I would have thought that obvious. If I'm going to have to sift through paperwork then I want to do it with some level of fort. It's enough of a pain to do already. Having good tools only help."

  "I suppose," Ivil said. She didn't do paperwork. The st time the MRS had demahat she file her taxes she'd found the director in charge of the anisation and teleported him into their pints department. Piece by piece. "Did you need help?"

  "Not really. Though, I'd appreciate it if yht the boxes out? I 't fit them in our trash receptacles and I... holy don't know what to do with them."

  "Sure," Ivil said. She'd disie it ter. "Where did you buy all of this?"

  "Online," Aurora said simply. "Driftwood has its own loet. It's... fairly reliable. I wouldn't sider it safe by any means, but I have a detly secure device to ect with, and a false identification to make purchases through."

  Ivil raised an eyebrow, then g the boxes. They were addressed to a Miss Aya Roara. "Aya Roara?" Ivil read.

  Aurora blushed prettily. "It's easy to remember."

  "Fair enough," Ivil said. Her gss house might have been impervious to stones, but there was no reason to test that today. "I'm happy to see you settling in. Looks like you're making the Sappho your home."

  "I suppose so," Aurora said delicately. "It's a nice ship, all told. I think it's han most of what we have avaible around Phobos."

  "Phobos has a navy, doesn't it?"

  Aurora snorted indelicately. "Yes, a navy. Some thirty-odd ships, eae three decades old at the you. They're old Martian surplus that Mars deemed unfit for their mothball fleet. Our personnel is det, however. Lots of former Martian citizens who purchased citizenship on Phobos for one reason or another and who wanted a tinued job in a naval force."

  "Ah, so Mars builds your ships and trains your crews," Ivil said.

  "Essentially. There has been a push to ge that, but it has run into budgetary issues."

  "How so?" Ivil asked.

  "Well, the current way of doing things is exceptionally inexpensive. We're buying old ships ai personnel with trainier than we could ever afford to give. New recruits are usually tied to a more experienced sailor and they just pick things up as they go. It's cheap. Building our own flotil, nevermind a full armada, would be expensive. We have shipyards, but they build luxury yachts. Not warships."

  Ivil here retty severe differeweewo in terms of build quality and such. Mostly owing to their purpose. She'd been onboard some older Martian warships whose interiors made eenth tury submarines look like paces.

  "I'd be curious to see the design philosophy that Phobos would bring to the table," Ivil said.

  Aurora hummed. "It wouldn't be pretty. Don't get me wrong, I love my homemoon, and I wish to see it prosper iure, but Phobos has too much money and not enough tradition. Corruption is a way of life there. We're used to it now, but it's still harmful. If we did make our own warships, they'd either e with os and gambling dens built in, or the graft and theft before produ would mean a ship made of cardboard and propaganda."

  Ivil leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms casually. "You know, that was a thing."

  "Ships made anda?" Aurora asked.

  "Cardboard," Ivil said.

  Aurora blinked. "No," she said. "That's not possible."

  "Oh, it is! Cardboard is... probably too simple a term for what was actually used. But it was definitely some sort of pressed material. It's very lightweight, after all, and be shaped and cut and glued with ease. With the right treatment it be airtight."

  "But radiation would cut right through," Aurora said.

  "Mhm," Ivil agreed. "It was ah fleet, from the tail end of the third intersystem war. It was actually more clever than you'd think. They had a surplus of cardboard and such, and they heir ships armoured and covered. So they used what they had. They specifically left the ses that are critical armoured properly, but something like a third of the hull was cardboard. The ship's frame was untouched, of course."

  "That must not have inspired much fideh the crews."

  "They were unpopur choices," Ivil agreed. "But it was the end of the war, ah needed ships fast. Shaping cardboard is faster than processing steel, cheaper, lighter. It made for surprisingly mobile craft, I think. Not that it mattered."

  Aurora hummed. "Mars must have loved it."

  "Oh yes, simple point-defence would scythe right through, and as you imagine, if they're cutting ba hull pting, they were doing the same with shielding and the like."

  She'd ehem, in any case. The ships used to crumple in iing ways. It was like high-velocity ami.

  "Ah, did you e here to talk about cardboard ships?" Aurora asked. "Not that it isn't an iing historical tidbit. I imagine you're full of those?"

  Ivil smiled. She was thankful for her cover as an astro archeologist. It meant that any moment where she fell into reminisce could just be pyed off as her thinking of her job. "I wao see how you were doing. We're at your destination, after all. A you seem to be settling in. I was worried that I'd find you pag up and ready to run."

  Aurora pursed her lips. "Afraid that I'd run off?"

  "A little."

  She sniffed. "No, you don't have to worry about that. Though if I did want to leave, I'd leave. I sidered it, even, but... the situation around Jupiter will be... very plex soon. So many fresh cores, so many peting is. Already, just looking over the Jovian i, I see rumours slipping around. This ship might be one of the safest pces I be."

  "I'm gd you think so," Ivil said. "And I agree. You have both a degree of anonymity to protect you, and of course myself."

  Aurora rolled her eyes, but she smiled heless. "I have been thinking about that date as well. It would be hard to fulfil my end of that agreement if I gallivanted off, wouldn't it?"

  "Oh, I suppose it would," Ivil said. "Have you thought about it more than that?"

  "I don't yet have a pn," she admitted. "But give me a few days. And maybe access to somewhere that isn't as skeevy as this station. I don't have great fiden the safety that be found on Driftwood."

  Ivil hat was uandable enough. She'd make sure that Aurora felt safe, then.

  Which might, perhaps, prove a little tricky.

  ***

  RavensDagger

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