RavensDagger

  Chapter Seventy-Four - Who Are You and What Do You Want?

  "'Ello!" the man oher side of the door said.

  He was wearing a suit pulled off of a dist rad a smile that was almost genuine. His hair was bed with his fingers and he wasn't standing level to the door, whily made sehis didn't seem like someone petent enough to care about being level.

  The mao the speaker was two heads taller, making him one of the few people that Ivil would have to look up to speak to. He had limbs that were lohan they ought to be, but Ivil couldn't sense any cores in him, hidden or otherwise. This was just a man that grew long.

  "Hello," Ivil said. "Who are you and what do you want?"

  "Ah, well, we're here for the after-party. We noticed that delegate Sterlingworth didn't pop out of her room, so we thought we'd do the neighbourly thing and e on over!"

  "Delegate Green," Aurora said as she walked up behind Ivil. "A pleasure to meet you again."

  The man—Delegate Green, Ivil supposed— nodded and tried a bow which made him shift in the air a little before he grabbed onto his zero-g travel drone. "o see you as well. I was w if you were going to pop over to any of the after-meetings?"

  "After-meetings?" Aurora asked.

  "You know, big meetings like today's are good and all, but all of the actual wets dht after!"

  Aurora didn't look like she khat. Whatever she was going to say was interrupted as a sed delegate flew over. An elderly woman apanied by a stone-faced guards man in a suit that was somehow crisper than Delegate Green's. "Ah, you've found her, Green," she said.

  "Delegate Gatea," Aurora said with a slight bow.

  "Mhm. Well, you going to invite us in?" the woman asked.

  "Ah..." Aur Ivil, then shrugged faintly and stepped back from the doorway. Ivil did likewise, letting the group in. She sighed aended her gravity geion to the lot of them. It would raise fewer questions than if she kept it limited to Aurora and herself.

  "Whoa, that's properly nice," Green said as he collected himself then bounced on the spot a couple of times.

  "Indeed," Aurora said while she gave Ivil a slight side-eye. "So, I assist you with anything?"

  "You get drinks out," Gatea said. She stomped over to the coud sat down onto it. Her guard took up positioo the door while sing the room. He had a gun in that jacket, and at least one core lio his eye, but Ivil dismissed him as a non-threat.

  "Give me just a moment, then," Aurora said. "I'll set some water to boil. There are softdrinks in the fridge there, if anyone wants any."

  "Don't mind if I do!" Green said as he wandered over. "I make a point of grabbin' every drink in these mini-fridges. Oh, and all of the towels and such too."

  'Which moon do you represely?" Ivil asked.

  "Saturn!" he said. "No one moon in particur, really. But if you have to ask, Hyperion."

  There was a slight shuffle, and Twenty-Six poked her head into the living room. She was ed up in a bill, as if she didn't dare un-tuck herself. "Oh! I thought I heard a familiar at," she said.

  Green blihen a wide smile appeared. "Ey! Delegate Sterlingworth, you didn't mention you had a Saturnian babe in yang."

  "You mean in my delegation team?" Aurora asked.

  "Yee," he said. "Where're you from, babe?" he asked.

  Ivil might have, under slightly different circumstances, detached Green's head and his body from each other, but Twenty-Six just smiled prettily, and she sehat it wasn't an insult to call her babe. "I'm from yer four se four," Twenty-Six said. "The ol' four-four, yee?"

  Ivil bliwenty-Six's at had ged. Not too much, she usually spoke with a 'spacer standard' at that had just a slight bit of a twang to it, but now it had ged a little more, beore easy-going and informal.

  "Yee, that's fantastic stuff. I'm from ol' Hyperion myself, but my brother here is from... what're you from?" he asked the tall man.

  "Layer three, se two," he replies with a surprisingly high-pitched voice.

  Aurora returned with some tea just then, or at least a warm kettle. "Five my ignorance, but yers? Ses?"

  "Oh, uh," Twenty-Six said. "Layers are the depth in the ring. The lower the yer, the closer to Saturions are quadrants around the p. But there are ten of them, so it's not really quadrant."

  "Ah, so it's a way to identify where you're from iion to Saturn."

  "Yee," Twenty-Six said with a nod. "There's a bit of, uh, casual racism that goes with it too, unfortunately. The outermost yers had it best, and the inner yers, one and two, have to deal with a lot more radiation and such so they tend to be a bit weirder."

  "We've beeier 'bout it," Green said. "Saturn's got this weird rep problem. Everyone knows we're the best engineers in the system, ahey insist on thinking we're all backwards hicks."

  "They're not mutually exclusive," Gatea said. She nodded her thanks to Aurora, then prepared her tea. "Ah, it's o work with gravity. You'll have to tell me how you got your hands on a localised geor like that."

  "I... know some people," Aurora replied without looking Ivil's way. "You mentioned earlier how after-meetings were on?"

  "Oh, of course. No one will air out their private grievances in an official meeting. Nor will actual deals be struck there. It's too open, too public," the old dy replied as she ked a spoon in her cup. "Now's the real time for deals to be made."

  "I see. And what kind of deals are y to make?" Aurora asked.

  The old woman huffed. "Isn't it obvious?"

  "If it was, I'm certain Aurora wouldn't have to ask," Ivil said.

  The woman huffed some more. "We're here to deal, Lady Sterlingworth. The main thrust of today's meeting was dispensing each moon's share of the cores. These two Saturnains already made it clear enough that they don't care much for their share."

  "That's irely true," Green said. "It's valuable, we just 't make best use of them ourselves."

  "Hmm, exactly. Gatea has little i as well. Our moon has a sword of Damocles above it. We're just waiting out the turies until we slip past the Roche limit and break up. Not so different from the position your Phobos was in before that Empress knocked you bato pce."

  "I see," Aurora said. "So you're not ied in your share of the cores either?"

  "Oh! Don't think that for a moment. We'd make good use of those. Our family, aended family, has bee quite rich ag like the st pit-stop to the ass-end of the sor system, but we'll never be a major influence. We keep our heads down and are happy with just being rid apart from all the rest."

  Ivil nodded. She wasn't too well versed iunian politics, but the Gatea family of une was somewhat known to her. They ran the failing moon as well as a few dozen stations iune's rings. They collected resources and acted as a waystation for deep-system exploration. They weren't too dissimir to Saturn in some ways. Plenty of natural resources, but nothing that others couldn't grab closer to home, and nothing to do with those resources themselves.

  They were retively rich, all things sidered. Not individually, but as a 'family.' Their nation was strictly socialist. Almost violently so. All gains were shared equally, and all hardship born the same way. The average unian was actually far more wealthy, dolr-for-dolr, than just about anyone else in the sor system.

  But they were also stu their little er uo leave without losing everything. It was the living embodiment of a sunk-cost world.

  More cores wouldn't help them. The wealth and favours earned from those cores, however....

  "I think we could work something out," Aurora said. "Phobos is... not the wealthiest, but this kind of iment would mean a lot to us."

  "Money is nice, favours are nicer," Gatea said.

  "Oh? We'd settle for money," Green replied. "But there are richer fish to drop this bait in front of. Just auing off all of the cores o a time would bring us a small fortune."

  "Not as much of a fortune as we could bring," Aurora said. "Not unless you io sell to Mars or Earth or one of their proxies?"

  "That would burn our bridges with the League," Green said. "But selling to individuals and corps? That's a little easier to swallow."

  Aurora shook her head. "What kind of favours would you trade for cores, then?"

  "Experts, medical facilities and supplies, some help putting pressure on the corps that are preventing us from f a prover," Green listed off casually. He might have been a hick, but the man wasn't stupid, Ivil realised.

  ***

  RavensDagger

  Fantastiews! I didn't have a heart attack today and I got to ride an ambunbsp;Less fantastiews, turns out that was some sort of stress attack... which is also not great for you overall. So, uh, yeah I might o take some time off or something? Idk, I just want to write, but the more 'successful' I bee at writing, the more non-writing stuff I have to take care of, and that stuff's stressful AF. Some of my stories are on TopWebFi!-amon Bun-Stray Cat Strut-Lever A-Dead Tired-Heart of Dorkness-SpeddonVoting makes Broccoli smile!

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