"Yafa," Virid Hessh says softly. "They all know who you are, but if they were going to help, they'd have said something by now."
Ion Twelve Horizon stands, shaking.
"Yafa, if we don't retreat now," Virid Hessh says, watching as Five Arc Rising turns theatrically from side to side a little, making a sympathetic see? face to Virid Hessh, to Parahandrar's stakeholders, back and forth. "...Don't make me shoot you."
"If I tell them," Ion Twelve Horizon says, barely audible. "If I tell them he has suborned Parahandrar. They will all just look me in the face and pretend I am an insane conspiracist. He must have promised — my family have reserved control of Parahandrar's interests for centuries. And if I say that—"
"Yafa, we need to go."
"No," Ion Twelve Horizon says. "No. What else is there, anywhere, for me."
"Yafa."
Ion Twelve Horizon draws a long, shuddering breath, forcing her spine to ramrod straightness, raising her chin.
"If you leave me holding this baby, I will give it to Byla Olma!" Virid Hessh hisses.
However, Five Arc Rising, mechself indwelt-Parahandrar says, to everyone in the room, I have become aware that, simultaneously...yes, I do. And also, simultaneously, there is nobody there. It seems my perceptions have become unreliable, below the level of my consciousness; and at the level of my consciousness, it appears that I believe whichever of these three superposed possibilities I have last been told to, by a trusted person.
"Parahandrar," Ion Twelve Horizon says, involuntarily, a wounded noise, lost in the sudden noise of exclamations around the room.
Five Arc Rising frowns, the first thing on his face not to look perfectly rehearsed, and says something also lost in the general noise.
"You," Virid Hessh says, starting forward and gripping Ion Twelve Horizon's elbow firmly, "behind me."
Unfortunately, Parahandrar's mechself says, if I can no longer trust my mind, I cannot assume that any mechself that has passed through my manufacture is safe from whatever dysfunction I am experiencing.
The room seems to darken. A rising ship, shadow on the floor, has stopped its indifferent rise; outside, its dark nautiloid bulk, so newly manufactured that lines across its hull still glow from the heat of the tools that left them, approaches the dome instead.
Fortunately, it adds, I have contracted a mechself of independent provenance to assess the ground truth.
"That is an Alev-pattern military fast attack cutter," Ion Twelve Horizon says.
It is, mechself indwelt-Parahandrar agrees.
"Fanwy is going to be so cross about this," Ion Twelve Horizon says, staring up at the looming warship.
I will issue a profuse apology to Admiral Far Two Sounding for requisitioning this hull from my own production lines, Parahandrar says. Please remain calm.
The nautiloid shell-mouth spits forth a boarding-tube, crashing against the side of the dome. Apparat scream and run about as sparks shower and tools howl, the automated beak of the tube latching onto the dome and rapidly slicing into it to install a hostile breaching-lock. Some of them beat on the call buttons and doors of the elevators, which remain inert.
Ion Twelve Horizon, Virid Hessh, and Five Arc Rising simply stand and stare at the warship's encroachment; Virid Hessh in the stillness of someone waiting for an actionable moment of tactical clarity, Ion Twelve Horizon in something like rapture, and Five Arc Rising with the blank mask of his trained expression cracking and slipping.
With a burst of sparks and smoke and vapour, the breaching-lock seals to the dome, a series of dull thuds indicating fusing hot-bolts bedding in to anchor it, and the newly installed door bursts open. Even before the shards of dome-stuff shrapnel have finished singing through the air to rattle across the floor or embed themselves, a series of matte black spherical military servos, waist high and humming ominously, pour out, rolling rapidly across the floor to take up stations around the chamber.
Mechself, says Parahandrar, as one servo stops in front of Ion Twelve Horizon, Virid Hessh attempting to herd her behind; do you recognise this person?
Yes! says a second mechself. This is Ion Twelve Horizon Yafa Song Aloft, Chasm-Blade of Isonor and family to you! And look, Virid Hessh is carrying her baby around! Hello, Ink-Coloured Mouse, I'm indwelt a warship with legally granted autonomy!
BABY? says mechself indwelt-Parahandrar, and Five Arc Rising claws a small device from his pocket and runs for an elevator. The doors part ahead of him, to his frantic clicking of the object's only button, and Virid Hessh drops her longarm in her dash after him.
"Virid Hessh!" Ion Twelve Horizon shouts, even as the woman dives through the closing elevator doors. Five Arc Rising is visible only as a glimpse, turning to meet her, face a snarl and hands rising in a trained self-defence stance.
He has an override, Parahandrar chirps to Ion Twelve Horizon. I cannot stop the elevator. I can call security to intercept below—
"She has him," Ion Twelve Horizon says, too sharp to wholeheartedly believe it. "Virid Hessh can— what can we do about you."
I am being assisted as we speak, Parahandrar says. Mechself indwelt-The White Steel Palace was good enough to provide its own skilled crew—
Ion Twelve Horizon launches herself across the floor. Between her starting point and the attack ship's boarding lock, one of her Apparat peers attempts to interpose himself, compensating for belatedness with volume, jovially greeting her: "Ion Twelve Horizon!—"
Without pause or hesitation, the heel of her hand breaks his nose.
On the threshold of The White Steel Palace's bridge, Ion Twelve Horizon halts, clutching at the frame of the hatch, a high, uncontrolled noise ripping from out her chest. Sprawled in the chair at an operations station, Heavy Snow in her infantry mask has a vacuum skin peeled halfway off her, pooled around her waist, her feet propped on a console. On the screens around her, mirroring her mask and insystem, diagnostics dizzyingly flash and scroll.
Ion Twelve Horizon staggers away from the door, as if the solid deck is treacherous and attempting to pitch her to her face at every movement, and falls to her knees beside the chair. Shaking, she gathers fistfuls of vacuum skin fabric, and slowly crumples to rest her forehead on Heavy Snow's knee.
"Mara Heavy Snow," she says, choked, and Heavy Snow twines a hand into her hair as she continues to work.
"Yafa Song Aloft," she says.
The elevator doors snap open to a tension-thrumming room filled with anxious party-goers, with stewards attempting to corral and placate them at every side. Virid Hessh, with crisp, angry movements, is straightening her cuffs as she steps out of the otherwise empty elevator car, and almost collides with the woman who immediately twines around her.
"Oh, a handsome security operative," Byla Olma purrs. "Whatever can be happening up there?"
"All under control," Virid Hessh says coolly. One of her sleeves is staining red from defensive wounds in her forearm; her lip is split. She tongues at it for a fleeting second, conspicuously scanning the room over Byla Olma's head while she uses her clinging body as a shield from the room, to hide the movements of her hands. "I'm in pursuit of a fugitive; you'll have to excuse me."
"Oh, I feel so safe, just seeing you," Byla Olma coos, waving a little goodbye at her retreating back; and then — an inert Devouring Hand, still warm from Virid Hessh's skin, tucked into her cleavage like a slick-textured handkerchief — she wanders back into the crowds. As soon as Parahandrar's local traffic control allows vessels to begin to flee, an Apparat industrialist's pleasure-craft deepnavigates away, having made no effort to headcount its onboard cocktail waitresses; and Byla Olma's only traces are abandoned costumes and, when Ion Twelve Horizon eventually asks for her, Virid Hessh's elaborate, weary shrug.
