awakener | OK THEN

OK THEN

The Awakener had some acquaintance with being suddenly abducted from a planet's surface and whisked off into space by shady and probably illegal personages, so he would have considered himself relatively prepared for this, but last time it had been a lot more personal and he'd been told what was up pretty much as soon as he was conscious. This was just kind of worrying.

It seemed like they were rebels, which was pretty much a thing that he could get behind, but you could never really be sure with border-raiding rebel factions. These ones didn't seem particularly hostile – not now that they were done razing the hivestructures of the unjust oppressor, anyway – but in his experience people who didn't seem particularly hostile frequently tended to become pretty fucking hostile if, for example, his dark glasses got knocked off, even if they did oppose the cruel and unjust caste system that made that a problem in the first place.

He tugged his hood over his head a little more and did his best to make himself relatively inconspicuous amongst the little throng of similarly kidnapped trolls while he tried to take a few deep calming breaths and stock of the situation, but unfortunately he couldn't come up with much better than "Shit, shit, shit, I am trapped on a spaceship with no way off and I am probably going to die."

It wasn't a very confidence inspiring summation of events. He'd dealt with worse and got out okay, but, well, there was a first time for everything.

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"Look, I don't want to tell anything to the wrong people any more than you do," he said. "But I don't have any secrets from other followers."

That wasn't strictly true, but he liked to think it was.

He sat forward again, leaning across the table a little to look at Starfall's pendants. "I don't know that one, though," he said, indicating the first one. "What is it?"

The brownblood seemed too irritated by the fact that Starfall's technique was doing anything close to working to speak for the moment, so it allowed her to smile a little and shift the pendants so the circular one was in front.

"Sign of the Summoner," she said. "Another lowblood who basically turned Alternia upside down in his day. He was a Sufferist, too. Big inspiration, that kind of thing." She gave the Awakener one last good look at it before lowering the pendants. "How did you find out about him? The Sufferer, I mean."

He raised his eyebrows appreciatively. The name was familiar – it had been mentioned in some of the forbidden seditious writings around the base he'd left behind a sweep ago, but he'd never read anything that had gone into much detail.

"I've heard of the Summoner," he said, "but not a lot. Maybe you can fill me in -" he glanced at the brownblood, and smiled slightly, "some time when I am the one asking the questions, I guess."

He paused at that question, though. "That's kind of a long story too, to be honest."

And that was true, but... he'd just said he didn't have any secrets. The idea of giving too much away in an interrogation room to people with military titles was inherently offputting, but it didn't actually seem like he was about to drop himself in any shit here with the more complete truth. And putting it off for too long would only make people suspicious.

"I'm his descendant, I guess you could say," he said, after a brief, contemplative silence, and braced himself. People didn't often believe him straight away, and when they did it usually wasn't without pointedly mentioning that they'd thought he'd be taller.

There was a moment of confused silence after that, like a baffled fog in the air, that seemed to pause all movement while everyone who hear the Awakener's comment tried to sort out there it fit with reality. The brownblood's eyebrow furrowed, in a mixture of alarm and disbelief. The guards at the door, and the wordless troll in the back corner looked up with sudden attention, where they have been passively idle before.

Starfall boggled for a long few moments, and then started laughing uproariously. The brownblood growled in his throat.

"Oh my god," she wheezed. "Oh my god, Derjun, you're such a stupid prick."

He withdrew from where he'd been leaning across the table with a noise of irritation. He was used to people expressing doubt, but usually it wasn't quite this derisive.

His own exasperated sigh was closer to a growl than he would have liked.

Timing dictated, he supposed, that now would be a good time to remove the shades – except that his ears twitched angrily at the same time as he yanked them off, jarring one arm of the glasses and making the entire gesture sort of clumsy and awkward rather than actually dramatic. Oh well. Hopefully nobody would notice.

"Right, okay, except I'm not actually joking," he said, raising his voice slightly, because that made him feel slightly better about not allowing himself to call anybody in the room a jackass out loud. He did permit himself a little bit of crimson glaring. "I'm called the Awakener," he added, in case anybody had missed the memo.

And yet the actual sight of his eyes didn't stop Starfall from laughing. Instead, upon catching a glance, her first reaction was to smack her hand over her own eyes with another chortle of laughing, convulsing slightly and recoiling away as if the sight was too much for her to handle. The brownblood seemed just as annoyed as the Awakener, though he evidently wasn't afraid to wear it plainly on his face, even as he stared at those crimson eyes with a hint of something resembling awe.

"No, look," Starfall tried, managing to calm herself down enough to speak. "I'm not...Derjun, he's legit, right? Your expression is telling me he's legit. Holy fuck what kind of mindreader are you?"

"You've made your point, Starfall," Derjun snarled. Starfall let out one last satisfied sigh and then looked back to the Awakener, grinning radiantly.

"You're really the guy, aren't you? How does shit like this even happen, seriously!" She reached out to offer him a scarred hand to shake. "Like you've probably already heard, I'm Starfall. This dumbass is Derjun - he doesn't have a title yet. Let me be the first one to officially welcome you to the Aerolith."

"Yeah," the Awakener said, "I am, actually, really the guy. It is basically my only area of expertise whatsoever, being really the guy, but – wait. Mindreader." He was obviously rather less than pleased to have been sat across from someone who could potentially have been rummaging through his head this entire time, for all he knew, but, argh, okay, what had he said, no secrets; he stopped himself from leaning away too much, as if that would even make a difference, and said, grudgingly, "I guess I shouldn't be surprised, you've got a lot of trolls to get through here, haven't you."

He pushed a hand over his face. Then he took a deep breath, let it out, and, having apparently dismissed some of his irritation, although not all of it, shook the hand Starfall was offering him.

"Thanks." He glanced around the room, as though that might let him look at the rest of the ship. Predictably it did not. "Aerolith," he repeated. "Huh. So are we on board that ridiculous battleship you guys were ripping the fuck out of Yasidra Six with, now? None of you exactly let me stop to take a look."

Derjun didn't look like he wanted to give any more confirmations about his abilities than had already been done, though he did offer an affirmative nod to the accusations of being a mindreader. It was possible he was still too ruffled to take the lead in the conversation. Starfall had no such qualms, regardless of how irritated the Awakener may have just looked.

"Yup," she said, taking back her hand, and looking very pleased with herself. "Biggest ship in our fleet. Not that it really belongs to us." She spoke with the confidence of someone who thought they knew a lot about the subject. "It was ripped straight from the Empress's personal escort swarm. Extremely expensive. Could probably blow up a few moons."

He nodded back to Derjun in what he hoped was at least a vaguely appeasing manner, because he didn't really want to blame him for having mind powers or anything, and sat back in his chair a little, folding the sunglasses in his hands.

"Shit, are you serious? An actual Imperial escort? How the hell did you manage that?"

Starfall leaned forward conspiratorially, as if she was letting him in on some kind of trade secret.

"Well, get this, this is the crazy part: the helmsman totally just made off with it. Broke free from procedure enough to take control of the vessel and just fucked off into space. He's actually the one piloting right now." She straightened up, expression almost devious as she looked over to the guards. "Speaking of which...someone should go inform our captains of our new visitor."

"Heh," the one who had been speaking to the Awakener in the hallway chuckled, "with pleasure." And with that, they slipped out of the door.

"Man, Aero is going to lose his shit," Starfall commented to the room. "Maybe even in a good way for once."

He glanced over at the door as the guards left, looking and feeling more optimistic about this entire business than he had done since he'd been brought on board. This might turn out to be the luckiest turn his life had taken in perigees. Perhaps he could even get them to give him a lift – a ship that actually worked, presumably already kitted out with sufficient fuel and supplies, could cut the rest of his journey down by more than half; he could be looking at just a few perigees rather than at least another sweep, and ...

... His smile wavered a little. Perhaps not.

He dismissed that line of thought and turned his attention back to the trolls sitting across from him.

"So, wait, you mean the guy got away and he's still ... you know, attached to the ship?"

The Awakener had met exactly one liberated helmsman before, one whose ship had crashed on a remote planet after being commandeered by bandits and who'd been cut out of the wreckage by a troll who'd since become her moirail, and what he'd seen hadn't given him the impression that anybody in that position would want to get back in afterwards.

For perhaps the first time in the entire conversation, Starfall's look of easy confidence faltered, reflecting a strain of worry and buried self doubt. Derjun immediately looked uncomfortable, the way one does when discussing someone's terminal illness, and tried to distract himself by staring at an interesting spot on the wall.

Starfall's lone eye wandered for a moment before blinking heavily, like shaking off a weight, and met the Awakener's gaze again.

"Well...right now, he is," she said, a little more cautiously than she'd spoken before. She brought up one of her scared arms, angling the bottom of her forearm to face him. "It's kind of complicated. See, look." She brushed a finger up the yellowed grey flesh. There was a line of veiny implants seemingly built into her skin.

She turned her head and shoulders, lifting up her hair to show the back of her neck. There was a series of larger and more obvious connection points trailing down her neck and spine.

"I was...am a helmsman too." She let her hair drop, and turned back around to face him. "We just make a point of doing things differently around here."

His eyes widened.

"Shit," he murmured – and then shook his head, apologetically. "Sorry," he said, "I didn't mean to – I just didn't know that was possible." He tried not to stare any more, but it was kind of difficult. "Shit. No wonder you guys are so organised. So, then, what, were you ... when you picked me up?"

A bit of her boldness returned at that, and she gave a casual shrug of the shoulder, as it to say that it wasn't anything big.

"Yeah. It can be kind of a pain in the ass captaining from the engine room, but we made due." She leaned forward onto the table a little. "Thing is, the Empire doesn't really see the value in trying to figure out how to do things like we do. It's generally a lot more convenient for them if we just stay put."

The Awakener nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, of course. Why even fucking bother with incredible technological advancements if you can't silence lowbloods at the same time, right, why try to –" he broke off, snapping his teeth together as if to physically shut himself up. There was a little pause, and then he went on, less harshly, "I guess if something works great for you there's no point even letting anybody consider trying to fix it." He sighed, and sat up a little. "I'm glad you guys are doing something about that. Maybe you can actually shake things up a bit. I mean, pretty much every other time I've hung out with rebels it's been like six trolls with a couple of gunships and a moonbase, but..."

And it's at that that her grin fully returns.

"It's taken a while, but at this point, I'd say that we're a match for almost any defense colony in the sector. We've actually been playing pretty cautious up till this point, building up resources and things like that. You kind of showed up at an interesting time though, we've never really done something on that scale before. We figured it was time to start breaking some shit."

She made a face, cracking her neck. "'Course we still wouldn't last a second against the spearhead but you gotta start somewhere."

He hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe one day. I mean, things are supposed to change soon." He spread his hands, and smiled. "That's what the scriptures say, anyway, and it looks like you're onto something here ... how many of you are there?"

Starfall smiled back, and then looked contemplative, like she was adding up numbers in her head. "I don't know - you'd have to ask higher up for the exact numbers. But I know we've got at least three other big warships like this, and bunch of destroyers to back them up. It varies. We've got some huge carrier for transport type shit too. Mostly we camp out in a solar system not far from here."

"That hardest part is like...keeping everything manned, I guess. Infantry is pretty small, I guess, but a lot of them are mostly psionics. We've got a lot of civvies too, doing stuff for us. Help keep things running, and we protect them, that sort of thing."

She thought for another moment.

"Daybreak is probably technically bigger than this ship, but it's also old as balls."

The Awakener was clearly impressed even if, if he was completely honest, he didn't know shit about this kind of thing beyond what he'd seen in movies, having completely skipped out on any kind of military training. It sounded good. It also sounded like they'd be completely fucked as soon as the Empire got enough of an idea of what they were doing to consider them an actual threat, but...

He hesitated. He wanted to say, things are going to change, I can feel it, the writings say so, but it was one thing to tell that to people who badly needed hope but weren't in any position to affect anything – these rebels, by the sound of it, were different. If they did turn out to be the kind of people who'd take what he had to say to heart, who'd believe him if he told them that there was a new future in the stars and he'd been hatched to bring the word ... it was tempting, but considering they were apparently already confident enough that they thought it was time to start breaking shit (he wasn't sure how he felt about that at all), it certainly didn't sound like they needed the inspiration or anything.

Instead he just nodded, and smiled, and said, "Nice. Damn. This ... will certainly be something to tell people about."

Starfall smiled, excited, as if having gained his approval was somehow an inspiration in itself. "Fuck yeah," is all she said for a moment, silent for a moment as if contemplating the possibilities, before something seemed to strike her.

"Haha, wait, shit. Spaceships are great and everything, but I've been totally omitting telling you about something that is probably way more relevant to your interests." She straightened up - this was something she evidently wanted to deliver to him correctly, like someone anticipating surprising someone. "Like I was saying, the Aerolith is a pretty fucking big deal around here lately. But it's not just because of the ship. It's who came with it."

"You've gotta know all about the scripture, right? How much do you remember about, say...the Psiioniic?"

For a moment he looked almost offended that she was even suggesting that he might remember any less about any of the scripture than basically everything (even if it had been a pretty long time since he'd read the whole thing), but then the potential implications of what she was saying sunk in, and he sat up a little straighter, his ears pricked forward.

"Wait, do you mean – shit, you said it was part of the Imperial escort swarm, didn't you?" He boggled unashamedly. "Are you saying..."

"Not him," she said, leaning forward with the intensity of what she was going to say. "Not yet. But his descendant."

She almost bounced in her seat.

"Can you believe it? You and the Psiioniic's descendant are on the same fucking ship!"

That was, apparently, even more of a surprise, going by look on his face.

It had honestly never occurred to him that any of the Sufferer's followers would even have descendants – not that it seemed improbable or anything, but the thought had never once crossed his mind.

"Oh my god," he said. "I – holy fuck, are you serious? This is ..." He trailed off, staring. He wasn't sure what it was, actually. He was having trouble working out whether he was excited or terrified.

"Extremely serious," she replied, beaming. "Apparently he was drafted into military service a sweep or two ago. Makes sense that he'd be the one to do something totally fucking unprecedented, right? The Empress must have known - she had like this entire ship tailored to him."

Edited 2012-07-08 23:32 (UTC)

"Oh my god," he said again, eloquently. "This must be – destiny or something? I need to meet him. Can I meet him? You have to let me meet him."

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