RavensDagger

  Interlude - At Your Service - Part One

  Sileinel Washer at the Gates slid into its ms with the measured grace of a maid slipping into a busy kit.

  The vessel was once a Martian pocket cruiser. Ohat may have been two geions ago, however. Now the Sileinel Washer at the Gates rideful ship of the Tech Maids of Mars.

  She was repainted in the austere bcks and greys and whites of the order. Red heraldry hung over her, like tapestries upon a mediaeval castle's walls. The ship, as most Martian vessels, was built vertically, a massive pilr that moved uhe power of huge engines bulging out of her rear.

  There were, Sonic Spectre suspected, few stock parts left on the venerable pocket cruiser. Young Miss Twenty-Six would have adored seeing her.

  The Sileinel Washer at the Gates had navigated the busy space around Driftwood station with care. Even now, she olitely speaking with the station, keeping a stant flow of information going while the officers on board tihe rites of stationbound unication. Other, smaller vessels were guided out of her path, and curious onlookers were tagged and addressed by Tech Maids ready and willing to spread the word of the ordo to any and all willing to listen.

  Finally, the vessel came to a stop. M arms moved from one of the rger piers on Driftwood and ected to her sides, and long airlock tubes were unfolded and locked into pce. These tubes were lined with windows, allowing Sonic Spectre to see the bck-clothed figures of the Adeptus Ancillia swiftly making their way towards the station proper.

  She moved away from the viewing window and into the lobby space where she would be able to better greet her siblings in maidcraft. This space wasirely private. There were onlookers and gawkers, many of them had started by btantly staring at her, then the ship moored just outside. None of them had approached her.

  That might have been her own fault. Sonic didn't want to be approached at the moment, and so she was making no effort to hide her many cores. Her entire body flicked and flickered, sometimes moving several timetres to the left ht, and her meical grasping appendages were pinly visible beh the hem of her maidly uniform. Even the least knowledgeable person would know that she had several cores when she was funting them so.

  The st airloto the lobby space opened, and the HomeGuard of the Adeptus Ancillia walked into Driftwood in lockstep. Seven men in suits with trailing tailcoats and rge pels. Masks covered their faces, with several hoses reag out over their shoulders into small packs on their lower backs, and they wore thick leather-like belts that had tabards dangling from them filled with a small panoply of tools. A person from the early tweh tury might have assumed that they were something like a meic cospying as a butler, and they wouldn't have beeirely incorrect.

  Six of the seven arrayed themselves in two rows leading into the airlock. The seventh came to stand before her. They all, at the same moment, folded an arm before their waist and a the small of their back, then they bowed at aing thirty degrees. "Greetings, Savant Sana Pendergast," they spoke in unison. Theech maid--the tebsp;butler if one wished to use the gender-specific terminology--in the lead spoke on his own. "I am Sentinel Arthur Hesk, Subtle of Ceremonies, Brother of the Order of the Home."

  "Greetings, Sentinel Hesk," Sonic said. "Are you to ese?"

  "At your leisure, my dy Savant," he replied smoothly. Or as smoothly as someone whose voice was ed by a mask could be.

  Soniodded, and accepted the Sentinel's arm whee to her. Teically, she didn't o accept his arm. Accepting it put her above the Sentinel, as per Ancillia protocol. In her role as a tech maid, that wasirely accurate, but in her role as a of the Empire of Mars it was entirely appropriate.

  She was straddling a strange li the moment.

  Previously her split roles were... simpler to digest. She was Sonic Spectre first. Valkyrie of Mars. She served the Martian navy from dawn to dusk. Her involvement with the Adeptus Ancillia was something she'd adopted when very young but not her calling or creed.

  The Adeptus Ancillia had helped her career though. Giving her access to better training and knowledge that would otherwise have been hard to gather. And so she returhe favour here and there. She kept to the s and rose through the ranks in the few spare moments she had when she was free of Valkyrie work.

  Those moments had bee rarer and more fleeting with time, but the order also treated her with more... deference.

  The order existed to serve those with Cores. She had cores. Enough to be a solid B-Csser. Enough to have left much of her humanity behind.

  If it wasn't for the Order and its teag, and even its direct assistaheransition from C to B-Csser might have been enough for her to lose herself.

  People didn't know it, because there were so feles around, but losing one's human form after gaining so many hundreds of cores was also likely to have one lose their human mind.

  Too many lost themselves. Not just the memory of their own physicality, but their very minds and perhaps their souls.

  The order had helped her keep her mind intact. She owed them much for it. It allowed her to be one of Mars' few B-css valkyries, one of a few hundred. She was nervous about approag the hallowed realms of the A-Css. The space where people turned from meical, Core-welding monsters into... whatever they damned well pleased.

  What would she bee, when she reached that level of mastery over reality itself?

  Having spent some time now in close proximity to the Empress of Mars herself, Sonic was... more flicted than she would be willing to ever admit.

  Ivil Antagonist was a monster. She was very human.

  Sonic was likely going to be talking about her soon enough. They reached the outer airlock of the ship. They opened with a hiss, ainel Hesk gestured her in.

  As the airlocks cycled she retred herself. Then they opened and Sonic found herself at the head of a procession.

  A hundred maids stood in two rows, stretg out ahead of her to the left and right. They wore the bcks and whites of the order, with a few visual differences in their cut and garb hinting at their stations aboard the ship. They stood in a grand lobby. A space carved out of the cruiser specifically to be ostentatious, to wow any guest ing aboard.

  A grand staircase swept upwards at the far end of a hall lined with Martiaohe room made no effort to disguise what it was, however. Maintenance panels sat in their pces, ducts ran across the ceiling, ly id wires hugged the walls, ea their pd colour coded for venience.

  "Greetings," the maids said as ohey curtsied in time with each other.

  Oood at the far end of the group. A tech maid in an eborate red dress, hood pulled low to hide her still-anic face. Six arms were folded before her, and poised.

  Sonic allowed her seo travel the room. It hummed. The ship was alive. She did make out chatter and whispers from the rooms adjoining this hall. Younger members of the ordo doing what they did best; spreading gossip. Well, some traditions were harder to squash than others, she supposed.

  Stepping up while still ging to Sentinel Hesk--though she led at the moment--she made her way down the procession of maids. Eae of them standing up to full attention as she crossed them until, finally, she stood before the Head Maid. "Greetings," Sonic Spectre said. "I am Savant Sana Pendergast, Keeper of Pristiworks, Sister of the Order of the Wet Mop. I have e to report. Might I have your permission to e aboard?"

  The face beh the cowl smiled. It was kindly ale. "Hello, sister. I am Dedicate Helen Kirknd, Voice of Pristine Homes, Sister of the Order of the Broom Cupboard. I wele you aboard the Sileinel Washer at the Gates. e! Let's have refreshments and a little chat. I'm certain you have some very juicy gossip to share."

  She didn't know the half of it, Sonic thought. "Let's, please," she replied.

  And so she was gently escorted into a room with several lounge chairs, maended pnts, a small library, and a warm kettle of tea. Most strikingly, however, the room was decorated by a single painting hung on the far wall.

  Six metres by ten, oil on vas. It was an image of one of the people the Adeptus Ancillia veed most. A mass of maery and anic parts, kilometres long. Arms like spiral gaxies and eyes enough to drive the sane mad. The person in the image was in the process of eating a fleet of the Earth Alliance.

  Sonic mused, for a moment, on the irony of rep about the Empress of Mars under a painting of the very same Empress ba the time before she'd taken on a more humble appearance.

  ***

  RavensDagger

  After much sideration and talking to my doctor who told me that I was far too stressed, I decided that if I was going to die from Stress-reted issues anyway, I might as well blow-torch both ends of the dle. YOLO, and so-on. Anyway, new fic idea:It's a cyberpunk fispired by Ghost iy and OutRun. The MC is the world's greatest assassin who dies and is reinated as a kitten. Their job is to mentor a bumbling idiot into being the greatest edgeruhat ever was. Cover is shitty AI stuff I spped together in under 20 mins!~ 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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