Mech Pilot who is sought after by the network of living machines.
A slim, dark, angular stealth cutter brings new secret orders. Bea finds herself standing to attention in a secure briefing chamber, with just Morning and General de Winter and an expressionless person in a plain black civilian suit. They are never introduced, and do not speak; the hair on her neck stands on end.
"As the bottleneck to efficient access to the Splinter Fiefs, Wallachia 7 is becoming an ever more unavoidable battleground," the General says grimly. "The lab jockeys haven't made any progress on deriving the physics behind the Count's novel weapon systems, and we're no closer to identifying an effective conventional tactical doctrine against him. If we don't come up with results, we're only months away from the War Office conceding to political pressure and authorising an FTL-to-ground antiplanet strike."
It had to be coming, but — Bea's mouth swims in saliva, stomach churning. Extinction weaponry.
"I'd rather retire without a genocide on my conscience," de Winter says. "As of now, RED MANDIBLE will be exploring a number of unconventional avenues; the Consensus has responded to a diplomatic overture with a request to interview two of our pilots."
The Consensus? Bea's stomach twitches; she rides it out, then says in a quick, clipped voice: "Permission to speak, General?"
"Denied. The two of you depart for McLuhan's World at 1600; you're dismissed, pilots."
"This is a mistake," Bea mutters.
"Damned irregular," Anna-Maria says, in a way that might be agreement, if she wasn't talking at cross purposes.
"I mean that you're a human rights lawyer, and you've got the manners for diplomacy. You're the right choice for this, and I'm — not."
"I joined up instead of sitting the bar exam," the other pilot corrects her mildly. "And what you mean is, I have the right breeding for diplomacy. This is the People's Fleet — we don't count that here."
"And that's why you get invited to officers' poker night, Baronet."
Anna-Maria flexes her fine-boned hands, sighs, and sits silent for a while. "You're assuming that the Consensus didn't ask for us specifically," she says eventually. "You hear stories."
Oh, yes. Everyone heard stories about the Consensus.
"Besides, I'm glad you're here."
Bea's quick sideways glance meets Anna-Maria's own, and she has to hastily look away. "Well, maybe that's as good as an invitation to poker night," she says, just for something to say, nerves jangling.
"You don't have the face for it, Bea," Anna-Maria says softly.
The ambassador, lone permanently stationed human on McLuhan's World, is an exhausted stick-figure of a man, chain-smoking evil herbal cigarettes.
"Don't agree to anything," he says.
"General de Winter told us we're authorised to offer certain things on behalf—"
He coughs wetly. "I know," he says. "I told the War Office, and they've decided to ignore me, but I can still tell you. You're about to set foot in a geometrically perfect polyhedral chamber with, give or take, a million sides. Each side is an electromagnetic transceiver, and acting in concert, backed by incomprehensibly enormous computational power, they will monitor and manipulate the impulses in the entirety of your nervous system. The Machinic Consensus, or some entity within it, or peripheral agent of it, or perhaps just a backwater subsentient automated system set in motion by it — we'll never know — is going to cause you to hallucinate an entire diplomatic contact, while for all practical purposes reading your minds. They don't need anything from us. They don't have anything in common with us." He twitches a rapid, meaningless shrug of hunched shoulders, takes another drag. "The best advice I can give you, for your own personal sakes: don't agree to anything."
Bea takes a breath, lets it out, takes another. "Thanks," she says tightly.
The Consensus audience chamber, exquisitely purpose-built omnidirectional antenna for remote probing the human brain, is empty and silent and inert, dimly lit, until it suddenly isn't. The walls are still the same wherever Bea is looking at them, but in the corners of her vision the tiny facets assemble into writhing geometric stylisations of vines and knotwork and faceless long-haired women.
"Hello," the voice of the Consensus says, liquid and conversational. "Hello."
Bea swallows, hard. "Hello," she says.
"You would like an explanation of the mechanism of certain weapons systems."
For your own personal sakes—
"That's what the War Office of the People's Fleet would like," she says carefully.
There's a short silence, and then suddenly she can hear Anna-Maria talking to it (them?), mid-conversation: "—performance characteristics and observation data gathered by the Fleet. Which should certainly be enough for the Consensus to identify the machine in question. We've been authorised to offer—"
"Human offers are always fascinating," the Consensus interrupts her. "We could hypothetically offer this exchange: the data you ask for — and we keep you, Anna-Maria van der Fabriek."
"No," Bea says instantly, and Anna-Maria startles as if she's forgotten Bea is there. Maybe she had; it feels hard to think.
"Are you authorised to veto offers on Anna-Maria van der Fabriek's behalf?" the Consensus asks, and Bea reminds herself that it's futile and wrong to try to attribute human motive, and if the voice contains anything like the inflection of a human feeling — which she is probably imagining anyway — it's entirely fake, solely a tactic to elicit a response.
The machines are very probably almost certainly not maliciously laughing at her.
"Bea," Anna-Maria murmurs.
"What does that even mean, keep?" Bea hisses at her. Anna-Maria's expression is too soft, her eyes glassy; as if she's half-asleep, suggestible.
"I don't know," she says dreamily. "I haven't asked yet."
Yet.
"No," Bea tells her, and Anna-Maria, usually quick as a razor, visibly hesitates, then fixes her with earnest eyes and stage whispers as if she's tipsy.
"But you could have your revenge," she says.
Bea is surprised to discover that she can hate the Consensus more than she does the Butcher of Wallachia. "We are not out here to stomach things," she snarls, and grabs for Anna-Maria's hand.
The other pilot blinks at her owlishly, the corners of her mouth tugging upward. "It's an option—"
Bea looks down at the delicate fingers, and turns the hand over in both of hers. Runs the pad of her thumb over the blue shadow of veins, raises Anna-Maria's hand toward her lips—
—and mercilessly sinks teeth into her wrist. Anna-Maria yelps loudly, and shakes her head as if unexpectedly sprayed with water.
"No," Bea says, and pulls her along by the arm.
Stepping out of the Consensus audience chamber is like being hazed with a bucket of ice. Teeth chattering, Bea tows her by the arm — back past the still-smoking ambassador, out of the lone structure on McLuhan's World, all the way back aboard the black ops cutter, not stopping, not looking back at her.
"We're done and we're leaving," she snarls at the cutter's crew, and shuts herself firmly in her tiny, slant-angled guest cabin to seethe alone.
A file transmitted by the Machinic Consensus finds its way back to the Fleet before they do, unaccompanied by any further explanation, demand or request; it contains a detailed description of certain previously unknown scientific principles, including specifications for practically harnessing them.
"You bit me."
Bea's been trying very hard not to have this conversation, but here she is, brooding alone in the mech bay, and here's Anna-Maria, whom she didn't hear coming.
She shrugs stiffly.
Anna-Maria sounds perfectly normal about it. "It worked, obviously," she says lightly. "I'm just curious exactly what — what went through your mind before deciding to bite me."
"They showed us a briefing video of the audience chamber on the way there," Bea says. "So we know that we've got cameras in it, or they have and they share. So. Whatever I did to snap you out of it is going on file for ever—"
"So you bit me?"
"What," Bea says, with a surge of sullen irritability. "You want to even the score?" and goes cold and hot when Anna-Maria looks like she's very seriously contemplating it.
"If you don't mind," she says with solicitous courtesy, and what else can Bea do except haltingly hold her arm out? "Thank you," and she takes Bea's hand and treacherously uses it to reel her into a hug.
"Oh, you shit," Bea chokes into her shoulder.
"I think you saved my life back there," Anna-Maria says softly.
"Don't ever fucking do that again!"
"I certainly fucking hope not," the Baronet says primly, and gently bites her neck.
With thanks and/or apologies to @caffeinatedOtter:
The call connects and the blonde woman on the other end is speaking before the fritzy LR booth monitor can resolve her image. "Anna-Maria, what is this ghastly rumour I am hearing from Fabriana de Winter about your conduct at the Admiral's birthday?"
Anna-Maria van der Fabriek's face has been locked under the iron control of her training since before she swiped her pass to log into the long range comm room. By the time she'd stepped into the booth, closing the vacuum-panelled glass around her like a cape, her expression was a sculptor's marble mask. She starts to speak and finds, despite all that, despite two decades of habitus, her cheek wants to twitch with a smirk.
She makes a decision. "I don't know, mother. Aunt Fabbi was spreading gossip?" Her tone is as sweet as the sickening pudding wines from the Fabriek estate.
The Baroness Fabriek's voice, always high, begins its ascent. "'Spreading gossip'? Don't speak so of your betters, Anna-Maria-"
"You just called it a rumour, mother." It's almost too easy, these days. When she only had an aristocrat's playbook at hand, Morning could never have dared this sort of thing, but now she does it for the hell of it. The other pilots are the best kind of bad influence. They give her tools, to say nothing of the practice using them. Her face doesn't even flicker. "Rumours are the stuff of gossip, are they not, mother?"
"She told me you used a most unladylike word. In front of the General, no less!" The transmission resolution isn't great and the screen is old, squeezing the colourspace, but it looks like there's already a hint of pink in the Baroness' face.
Morning has known this call would be coming since her faux pas at the ball. It's been swinging towards her with the inevitability of planets, only briefly delayed by the mission to McLuhan's world. She's spent far more of her planned sleeping hours thinking about what to say than is healthy or wise. It's the callsign of the other pilot in the conversation, mother, or I apologised immediately, and the General assured me he was not offended, or just a desperate please give me a moment to explain.
Instead, blood fizzing, she says, "What word was that, mother? I spoke to the General at some length that evening, if I remember correctly." Exactly what a good baronet at a reception for the upper ranks should do.
"You know exactly what word I mean, young lady."
It's getting harder to hold the mask. Is this how Sierpinski feels, those rare moments where the cold spectre that haunts her relaxes its grip and she cracks one of those dreadful puns? Anna-Maria takes a breath, hoping that the camera in the booth is as bad as the screen and won't betray her to the Baroness. Does she dare let mother think she might have said more than one inappropriate word? "I've had rather a busy and confounding few weeks, mother, and it was a lovely evening. I said a great many things. Which one did you have in mind?"
No mistaking the colour in the Baroness' cheeks now, or the audible intake of breath. "You are being childish, Anna-Maria van der Fabriek. I expect better from you."
She's committed to it too hard to back out. Can she really get mother to say it out loud? "I'm sorry, mother, I really don't know what you're talking about." Did her voice just waver in her throat? She can feel her nails biting into her palms. Can't start second-guessing now. "What was this word that was apparently so heinous?"
"B-" For a moment Morning thinks the moment has slipped away, but the Baroness only catches herself to rally, "She told me you said-" And her throat closes on an outraged squeak.
"Yes, mother?" Morning lays it on thicker, tone as bright and earnest as she can make it.
"You said-" Come on, you old bag, say it.
"Yes?"
"…Bitch… less!"
Morning laughs, not the laugh she needs so desperately to let out right now, not the hoarse, coarse cackle chewing away at the underside of her heart, she has to save that, even now. Instead, she titters delicately, lifting the back of her fingers to her lips. "Oh, that. Mother, it's one of my wingmate's callsigns, nothing more than that. Standards are different in the military, the General didn't so much as bat an eyelid. Why, if anything-"
"Am I to understand," the Baroness interrupts with a fury Morning used to dread, "that you are piloting your silly little machine alongside a man who answers to Bitchless?"
"A woman, actually," says Morning. She says it easily, smoothly, snappily. Her mother's voice has lost all power, somehow, the 'bitchless' was the final thread snapping. Burning inside in a way she's never felt before outside of combat, she lets a lopsided grin slide onto her face with the precision of a laboratory technician performing millilitre titrations. "She bit me the other day."
"She- what?"
"Oh yes," says Morning. So easy. Why was this ever hard? "In the consensus audience chamber on McLuhan's World."
That was a misjudgement, she sees immediately. On the other end of the call, the Baroness changes targets in an instant. "Well I hope you are pursuing appropriate disciplinary action-"
And yet even there, Morning sees the way to regain the upper hand. "Oh no, it was critical for the success of the mission, and might even have saved my life to boot."
"Saved-" There, again, is the thin, tight noise of rage getting the better of Baroness Fabriek's larynx. "Anna-Maria van der Fabriek, you cannot allow these commoners to treat you like this. You must-"
"Don't worry, mother, I bit her back shortly afterwards." Morning's shaking as she fights back the gnawing laughter has to be visible on the other end of the call, right? She's doing her best but she was trained to lose demurely, not to win, especially where her mother in concerned.
Face a pink smudge on the screen, the Baroness audibly gasps. "Your father will hear of this!" The call cuts off.
Morning sags against the booth wall, gut convulsing. The sound she hears coming out of her throat is more crow than human. She has to slam her hand against the glass a couple of times. She's not afraid of the Baron, not if she can do that to her mother. For a wild moment she considers finding Sierpinski and… but it would take too long to explain everything, whatever Bitchless' background is she definitely doesn't know shit about aristocratic conversational bloodsports.
She'll have to save the story for later, when she's earned a little more of Bea's trust. And, well, when she's able to breathe again without cackling.
