RavensDagger

  Chapter Sixty-One - Fasated

  There was somethiiful about listening to a professional talking about their passion. It was unon enough to find someoh 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 sweepiures through the tiny they were stuffed in as she expihe subject of her obsession.

  "So, then the Earth Allianeeded a andardised shuttle. The loss of that orbital faeant that they couldn't produce the YT-series anymore, obviously. So they came up with the Amarillo shuttle system. It's subsp;a mess. The design was meant to be highly refigurable, but only like, three figurations were properly tested, and none of those were the most popur models to be ordered."

  Twenty-Six bounced forwards onto the edge of her seat, theured widely towards the rear of the shuttle they were still in. "It's the ehat are the problem! See, they came up with a whole new engine cooling system that's meant to be ied with the rest of the ship's hull, no matter the figuration. There's actually supposed to be water pockets in the hull pting that are pumped through the ship, transferri."

  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 inal design was meant to be izable? That only worked if you have specific modules, and some of those weren't popur at all. So the e was a thousand or so shuttles built with this cool idea that were terribly desighe engines hat cooling because they just don't have normal cooling systems."

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

  Twenty-Six grinned. "The fix was to repce the ehruster pack. Holy, 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."

  "Fasating," Ivil said.

  Across from her, sitting oher unfortable crash seats refigured into normal benches for the majority of the trip, Pepper turned her attention onto Ivil. "You must know a lot of aes like this. I think you mentiohat you were an astro archeologist?"

  She hadn't, but it wasn't unreasoo expect that it had e up at some point, so her 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."

  Aurnced up and hummed. "That's retively ret, 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 sed inter-system wars. You truly have no idea how muformation 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 teology. Several of the most important battles of the war were... paratively small."

  "They were?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "She's right," Aurora said. "There's a fantastic museum near Hels. They have two of the ships from that war on dispy. Ah 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 sidered what Twenty-Six knew, which robably a lot when it came to more or less modern meid ships, but the first intersystem war was in no way a moder. "The average ship of the time was either running on a purely ballistic thruster, without the modern ehat we have now, or they only had the first experimental geions of the engines we take franted. Mars to Earth was a nine month trip, assuming both ps were optimally pced."

  "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 did 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."

  "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 o make the trip and maybe a few nuclear ons to fling at their enemy."

  Ivil his was a nice distra 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 dy's room," she said.

  "I'll go with you," Twenty-Six said. She unbuckled herself and stood, a hand reag 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 enviro. "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 panions on this trip without finding themselves tripping over their ow 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 didly ftter.

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

  "No! You '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 .

  Which left Ivil aloh Pepper Mint.

  Ivil ehat they wouldn't be overheard before turnitention onto the young woman. "So, what did MINT say about me?" she asked.

  There wasn't even a fsh of fear or fusion on Pepper's face, her expression was as ral 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 sidering the ck of fort in their . "I don't know--"

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

  "And what question is that?" Pepper asked. Now she was defleg, asking questions of her own, pressing the versation on, encing Ivil to speak so that she wouldn't have to speak herself. Ivil aowledged 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 prevarig."

  "Very well," she said as she dropped the act. "Though what I was told arse. 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 retionship with the meic 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. "Iing that MINT would send someone here who doesn't know some of the most crucial information about their own mission. You'd think inf you would be important."

  "You're not a 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 at, and you sit and move with the sort of precision that es from long military service," Pepper said. "I'm making an assumption, however."

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

  Pepper stared at Ivil. Then she really stared.

  Ivil rarely felt herself being ied sly by someone before, but in that moment she was defihe tre 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."

  ***

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