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Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

[Hirek tr'Aimne | Diplomatic Quarter, Dartha | Romulus] Attn: @Dumedion

The ambassador said merchant the way a man says a word he's rehearsed too many times to believe anymore, and the Reman honor guard traded a glance that said they didn't believe it either. No one on this planet would believe it. Starfleet's idea of subtlety was a coat cut a season out of Federation fashion and a briefcase full of trade concessions nobody asked for, and the fact that it was working at all said less about the disguise than about how tired everyone here had grown of pretending politics were anything but a knife with a bow tied round the handle.

Hirek stood two paces behind the Andorian diplomat's left shoulder for the better part of four hours, translating where translation wasn't strictly needed, correcting nothing, offering nothing, letting the woman walk herself in slow circles around a council that had learned distrust from experts. The Reman and Romuluan delegates watched all of it with the stillness of those who'd spent centuries being told to wait in the dark.

Tal'Aura was dead. What had lived inside her — what had used her hands to sign the treaties and her voice to swear the oaths while the war ground on beneath — wasn't so easily buried. Hirek had spent thirty years learning to read the seams in his own people's faces, the places where the mask didn't quite meet the skin, and he'd learned recently that some of those seams ran deeper than any training had prepared him for. The Infested wore whoever was useful and discarded whoever wasn't, no announcement, no warning.

Until they are found. All of them. Rooted out and burned down to the marrow.

And here he was, standing at a merchant's elbow while career diplomats congratulated themselves on the historic first steps of a government that didn't yet know what it would become.

He excused himself with the correct degree of deference — a murmured word to the aide, a nod to the diplomat that promised nothing and delivered less — and didn't look back to see if anyone questioned it. No one would. He'd filed the leave request with Stark: family, the islands, a debt of presence long overdue. Approved without comment. No one on the Theurgy begrudged a man wanting to know if his mother still drew breath. Because truth was never offered in Romulan communication.

The transport office sat three streets down from the consulate, between a shuttered apothecary and a noodle stall that had somehow outlasted two governments and a war. Hirek let his stride lengthen once he was clear of watching eyes. The air still smelled the way it always had — stone dust and cold rain, and underneath it something green trying to survive the concrete. He gave his name to the clerk, arranged for a private craft rather than the public lines and stood turning a credit chit over in his fingers while she worked.

Stay and finish it. Or go and start again.

It had been circling since the Triangle, since he'd watched his own service to Starfleet Intelligence curdle into something closer to belonging and hadn't decided whether to trust that or distrust himself for feeling it. The Tal Shi'ar were bleeding — not dead, they were never simply dead, but staggered and exposed in a way he hadn't seen in his lifetime. A man could spend that exposure wisely. Could go home and put his hands to the actual shape of Romulan freedom instead of playing translator for a Federation that thought a bow tie made a spy invisible.

Or he could go back to the Theurgy, to the slow grinding work of hunting parasites through the dark, and trust that saving the galaxy would save Romulus too, eventually, in its own time, on someone else's schedule.

He hadn't settled which coward's math he preferred.

The clerk slid the authorization across the counter, and he was reaching for it when he saw her.

Talia stood near the far wall in her flight suit. He hadn't clocked her as part of the escort roster until this moment, hadn't thought of her at all in the mental press of ambassadors and Infested and a planet trying to remember how to be whole — and that omission struck him as strange. They hadn't spoken since the Triangle. Since his quarters, and the silence that came after, whatever they'd called it that wasn't quite goodbye.

Every instinct said to cross the space and needle her the way he always had — Shadow, still alive, I see — fold this back into a shape they both knew how to hold. It would cost him nothing.

It would also cheapen what they'd survived, and he found he didn't have that in him today. He took the authorization, folded it once, and crossed the space — not toward her, just past.

"I'm going to the islands," he said, without breaking stride. "There's a seat on the transport, if you want it." He didn't wait for her answer. He kept walking and left the rest to her.

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #1 –
[Ens. Talia “Shadow” Al-Ibrahim | Diplomatic Quarter, Dartha | Romulus] Attn: @Ellen Fitz
 
[Earlier…]

They’d all been briefed on what to expect, and what had been expected of them in turn; Shadow, being who she was, had listened carefully, while others…well, it seemed no one could hold Via’s attention for very long. Duchess had spoken her piece; the gist of which had been simple enough to understand: be prepared to be constantly monitored, and act accordingly. It seemed easy enough in theory. After all, Talia and the other Wolves hadn’t come to talk, they’d come to make sure the people that wanted to talk got the chance to do so. The opposite delegation seemed to understand that well enough; no one had even acknowledged the pilots after they’d arrived, which presented a very specific problem – boredom.
 
Thirty minutes into the “talks”, Talia realized why Janus had sent her, DixieBee, and poor Beachhead: he knew it would bore him to tears. She couldn’t really begrudge him though, because if it had been her call, she would have done the same thing.

An hour in, Talia started to pace, then explore. The compound didn’t seem like the sort of building one utilized to greet off-world visitations, or diplomacy; to her eyes, it looked and felt like a museum, or a tomb, or perhaps both. Furnishings were sparse, the halls and corridors empty; the black lined marble (flecked with green) looked ancient, and every minor movement or sound above a whisper echoed off the surrounding stone. It felt like a prison,  or a maze; the few Romulans she passed gave her no attention at all, save for a glance and half-hearted smiles.

Yeah, time for some air.

It wasn’t long after that, Talia found a balcony.

The view was impressive. The city was vast, cut into the hills along the fork of a river, its towers a million shades of white, grey, and green in the sunlight. Beyond the high-rises, faint in the distance, the crags of mountains rose towards the clouds. A sea of grass surrounded the compound, meticulously manicured, dotted with trimmed hedges and small fruit trees centered around a fountain pool of dull silver, large enough to land a runabout in with room to spare.

The flags dominated the scenery; everywhere Talia looked, emerald fabric flapped in the light breeze. Banners hung from the domed caps of buildings. Icons rendered in stone, in metal, jutted proudly into the sky atop arches, landing platforms, industrial sectors and marketplaces: all styled in the same image of the great Imperial raptor. For several long moments, Talia raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sun’s glare and searched the skies, hoping to see a live one. Soon enough, she became so engrossed that she lost track of time.

“Looking for something specific,” a voice suddenly asked, and Shadow spun to face its owner: a Romulan male, clad in the uniform of the Empire’s navy. His hair was shorn, black, faded upon the sides; his face was clean, imperious – a life-long soldier’s appearance, one unable to keep the sneer from his lips or tone. “Perhaps I can assist,” he continued with a cold smile and a gentle shrug.

“Oh,” Talia swallowed, “uh…raptors?” Her index finger pointed up to the sky, which in hindsight, she realized, must have looked ridiculously idiotic.

The Romulan’s brow bounced with a smirk as he held his hands clasped before him. “You won’t see any here, I’m afraid. They tend to avoid the cities,” he paused to nod towards the distant mountain range, then fixed her with his cold, black eyes. “They prey upon the furred mammals of the wild, you see; vile, mangy creatures have no place in civilized society. Also, given the fact that none have been sighted in many a year, I fear you search in vain, little wolf,” he added pointedly, nodding to the sqaudron badge upon her armor.

The insult was so overt, so obvious, Talia wondered for a moment if he had meant it as a joke; the haughty curl of his lips and sheer arrogance in his tone said otherwise. For her part, she managed to keep from clenching her jaw but couldn’t stop her eyes from narrowing in irritation. “I see,” the pilot murmured, then moved to step around him back into the empty corridor, only for the Romulan to block her with a step.

“Forgive my manners,” he spoke in a tone that suggested the man couldn’t care less. “The niceties should always be observed; I am Sub-Commander J’arun, Xarl Squadron, of the Okhala Thrai.”

Talia shrugged, confused and repelled at the same time. She took a step back, then introduced herself in turn. “Have we met?”

J’arun ignored the question to snort as he turned away. “An ensign,” he sneered, then laughed mirthlessly as Shadow folded her arms across her armored chest. “As a matter of fact, we have – a matter of days ago. You recall an engagement with an Imperial carrier, surely,” the Romulan asked, then gestured to himself. “I led one of the squadrons.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Shadow’s eyes hardened at him.

“I see that you do,” J’arun’s face and tone lost any semblance of warmth – pretense or otherwise. “Take care to mind yourself during your stay, wont you? I do look forward to meeting you in the void again; I’d hate for you to miss such an educational experience.”

“Don’t fucking threaten me you – “

“Threaten,” J’arun interrupted with a heartless chuckle, “not at all, you simple creature; that was a warning. Call it a…diplomatic overture, if you like,” he sneered again, then slowly backed away. “This has been most amusing. Do pass along my compliments to your superiors, won’t you? You’ve made them very proud, no doubt.”

Talia waited in the open air for several minutes after he’d left, fuming, before she returned inside.

[An hour later…]

She hadn’t seen him coming.

There hadn’t been much else to do, given the limited access they’d been granted to the compound. Talia hadn’t wandered much after her run in with J’arun, either, and had no interest to go looking for him – mostly because she wasn’t entirely sure if she had enough self-control left to stop herself from doing something stupid to him. So, she’d worked out a circuit between rooms to patrol, posting up beside a door or leaning against a wall for a while, then moved on to the next.

Then Hirek blessed her with his flyby – which completely derailed Talia’s growing paranoia.

What the, her brain fired off as Shadow visibly flinched; her feet remained rooted as her head turned to follow him, brow creased in equal parts confusion and shock. “Hirek,” the pilot asked aloud after he had kept on walking without so much as a glance at her; she just stood there, blinking.

Go after him, idiot, something told her – and for the first time, perhaps – Talia listened. Her boots clicked off the marbled floor as she drew alongside him in half a dozen quick strides. Another dozen or so steps passed as she thought about what to say; there were obviously eyes on them, even though everyone they passed seemed to not pay them any heed at all. Talia wanted to hug him, to tell him…well – none of that seemed actionable at the moment, for obvious reasons. He’d barely acknowledged her, after all…

Still, he’d thought enough about her to warrant an invite, at least.

”I…,” Talia whispered as low as she could, trying to move her lips as little as possible. “I don’t know if I can. I want to, obviously, but I don’t know if I should,” she spoke quickly, a tell-tale symptom of unfiltered speech. “These assholes are watching everything we do, and I don’t want to cause you or your family trouble. It’s good to see you too, by the way – I thought you were gone already. What’s happened, and why are you walking so fast?”

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #2 –
[Hirek tr'Aimne | Diplomatic Quarter, Dartha | Romulus] Attn: @Dumedion

Hirek didn't glance toward the pair beneath the archway. He'd counted them within four paces of the door — along with the woman studying a fountain that required no study, the gardener who hadn't touched a plant in ten minutes, and the courier who had passed them twice going the same direction. In his grandfather's day the Tal Shiar would have used the courier once and burned him.

"Of course they're watching us," he said. "Why wouldn't they be?"

He kept the pace brisk, weaving them through a garden where sculpted hedges and ancient trees swallowed the noise of the compound. Continental stock, all of it, planted three centuries ago by someone who'd wanted the capital's taste on an island governor's grounds and pruned now by people who no longer knew how.

"This is the first time in our planet's history that we've had this many Federation members walking openly through Romulus. The government is in flux. The Citadel has been gutted." His jaw tightened. Rubble, and it still wasn't enough — but it was a start. "For the first time in living memory, Remans are walking the streets without chains or hiding in the shadows. And the people responsible for accelerating all of that—" He cast her a sidelong look. "—are us. Theurgy."

Her frustration sat on her openly, the way most things did. He'd told her once that she wasn't dense, only impulsive and hot-headed, and he'd meant it as praise, and she hadn't taken it that way.

"Only hours ago the Federation and the Empire were stumbling through a détente that nearly collapsed into war. Now everyone's asking the same question: what comes next." He shook his head. "If Intelligence weren't watching every move we made, Romulus wouldn't deserve to exist as an empire. We'd deserve to become a Klingon client state. Only lax, naïve dimwits stop spying on foreign powers at a moment like this."

There was no outrage in it. Governments survived this way or they didn't survive. He and his parents had made their reports weekly for three years, standing in a grey office in the capital describing which market they'd bought fish at, and the Tal Shiar clerk had written it down.

"As for me." He exhaled. "I don't know yet. The new government has petitioned me to represent their interests aboard Theurgy." He heard himself offering that and was startled at the ease of it. Everything else here was new. Perhaps truth could be. "My old position at the College has opened. They want me back — there'll be an influx of Reman students among the Romulans, and someone has to teach them. And my cousin informs me an open border means our ale sales increase, which means our competitors increase, and we haven't blended anything new in years. She'd like me to stay and see to it."

He shrugged. "Which is precisely why I'm going home."

The path narrowed, hemmed in by flowering vines climbing centuries-old stone. Uluma rock, hauled here for that same governor's vanity. He knew the grain of it by feel.

"I need to see what's left. Check on my family. Figure out where everyone stands." His eyes swept the garden ahead. "And with the Citadel mostly rubble and the Tal Shiar scattered—" another shrug, "—your being on my island won't create any damage my own actions haven't already caused."

They rounded the last bend toward the outer perimeter. Then, almost on cue — shouting erupted behind them. Voices. Running feet. A crash that pulled heads throughout the gardens toward the inner courtyards.

Hirek moved. His arm slipped around Talia's waist, pulling her against him as though they were another couple startled by the noise, and he pivoted them into the wall, shoulder against weathered stone. She didn't tense, or she tensed and let it go so fast he nearly missed it. His thumb found the hollow beneath a carved relief. A soft click, and the wall rotated.

"Move." He guided her through.

The wall swung shut behind them with barely a whisper, and the darkness took the garden with it. A narrow alley ran the length of the compound's exterior, smelling of wet stone and something fermenting badly. Hirek let out a slow breath and listened for several seconds before speaking again.

"I've been rushing because that diversion was timed. If I hadn't been in position when it came, we lost the window." He adjusted the strap of the satchel on his shoulder, then gestured back at the concealed wall. "So. From here, you have two options." He pointed down the alley toward the distant street. "Circle back to the main entrance, find a way inside, and invent a believable explanation for how you ended up outside the compound." A pause, and he didn't bother restraining the smile. "Or." He started walking the other way. "You come with me."

"I've hired private transport. Once we're aboard and clear, I'll notify the mission lead through a secure channel — exactly where you are, and that you're with me. No surprises. No one wondering whether you've been kidnapped." He looked over at her. "The choice is yours, Talia."

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #3 –
[Ens. Talia “Shadow” Al-Ibrahim | Diplomatic Quarter, Dartha | Romulus] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

She didn’t interrupt as they walked; between the effort required to match Hirek’s pace with significantly shorter legs while simultaneously maintaining the appearance of casual effortlessness – not to mention keeping her eyes moving at everyone and everything else – Talia listened and let her expression speak for itself.

He likely didn’t intend to, but to Talia’s ears, he sounded almost…academic; a teacher delivering a pointed explanation to a student’s half-thought-out question, when the answer itself should have been painfully obvious. Frustration bloomed, directly entirely at herself; the experience gap between them couldn’t have been more clearly defined in that moment – practically a lifetime of perspective and insight into a world and culture Talia was utterly ignorant of.

Shadow accepted it, processed it; filed it away. The soles of his flats slapped along the marble floor alongside the thumps of her boots while Hirek continued: he spoke of options that had become available, and the unspoken decision that would need to be made. She felt herself frown, entirely too close to a pout. They had already said their goodbyes, after a fashion, before the Triangle; somehow, the possibility of having to do that again filled her with a feeling too unfamiliar to be defined. That sensation alone, and the fact that it bloomed into existence in the first place, distracted the pilot enough to nearly roll an ankle - fortunately, the lapse went unnoticed, or if Hirek saw it, he made no comment.

Shadow didn’t fully understand what he meant by the Citadel or the Tal Shiar 'being scattered' and filed the question on her lips away for later; that didn’t explain what trouble he had caused, either, but she found it easier to simply trust that Hirek wouldn’t jeopardize his kin and home on a whim. A brief fount of relief crashed against the other feeling in her stomach.

Then there came the ruckus behind them, and Talia turned out of instinct; the next second, she was pulled aside without warning - then ushered into a passage in the rock – all of it in the time it took her heart to pound five times. She stood there, in the dark, dimly lit by the blue/white diodes of her exosuit, trying to breathe as quietly as possible in the few seconds before Hirek laid out her choices.

When he smiled, Shadow couldn’t stop one side of her lips from curling up in response, even as he walked away; she was a horrible liar – always had been – and even worse at storytelling. The odds of her making it back without looking blatantly suspicious were hilariously low. Why the hell should she go back anyway? To face death by sheer boredom?

The choice was made.

“Okay stop,” Talia whispered, then started after Hirek. “Please, just a moment,” she added, even quieter and quite serious as she drew closer. “Listen,” her hand reached out to him, to slow and turn him towards her. In the dark, she couldn’t help but notice how the dim light of the exosuit’s various arrays and electronics reflected in his eyes. She’d always struggled to hold his gaze before; now it wasn’t difficult at all. It was almost...

Talia managed to say his name, then her lips worked wordlessly, almost comically, for a moment, before the pilot shook visibly to regain some semblance of herself.  The words were there, but almost as soon as she started Talia realized that everything she wanted to tell him could wait until they had safely departed for the Isles. “S-sorry…it can wait,” Shadow sighed, frustrated and embarrassed at herself. “Lead the way. I’ll try not to slow you down,” was added after a step back, giving him room to move, then walked beside him down the dark tunnel, with only the sound of their steps along the wet stone between them – with the dull buzz of her armor – for several seconds.

“Don’t suppose you brought a cloak or change of clothes, did you,” Talia asked with a wave at herself with a humorless chuckle. “Perhaps something a bit more inconspicuous than an armored flightsuit?” 

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #4 –
[Hirek tr'Aimne | Hidden Passage beside the Diplomatic Quarter, Dartha | Romulus] Attn: @Dumedion

Hirek had expected questions. Suspicion, at least — a dozen sharp inquiries in that precise Federation manner where the words stayed polite, and the meaning was an interrogation all the same. He had expected her to challenge his assumptions, question the wisdom of bringing an entire compound to a state of controlled panic. What he had not expected was silence.

Not that Talia was incapable of it. She knew when to listen; she'd proven that on the island, in the simulation, after she'd finally stopped fighting long enough to let him plait her hair. But he had spent enough time reading her now to know the difference between her professional quiet and this. This was hesitation. The dim glow of her exosuit caught it as they moved — the brief tightening at her mouth, the flex and release of her fingers, the flicker of frustration when she nearly spoke and then swallowed it. Her hand had even started toward him before she caught it. Decades of watching for physical tells, most of them among people who would have killed him for noticing, and here the woman broadcast every one and still managed to hold the important thing back.

There was something almost amusing in that. Somewhere in the Federation an officer was surely lecturing a room about Romulans and their constitutional inability to say what they felt, and here was a human doing precisely the same — hiding the exposed piece, pretending it wasn't there until it stopped being dangerous. She had acquired the instinct without ever setting foot on Romulus.

He was, admittedly, disappointed. Not enough to regret anything. But he knew what she had nearly said, because he had nearly said something himself, and the more sensible part of him — the part that had kept him alive through three Tal Shiar regimes — was grateful neither of them had. A dark alley beside a turbulent compound, the government reshaping by the hour, was the worst conceivable place for that particular conversation. So when she finally broke the silence — an apology, a promise not to slow him down — he let it pass. For once he didn't push.

He looked over at her and chuckled, quiet, more amused than mocking. She asked about a cloak, then, or a change of clothes. The request was so perfectly practical after everything else that he nearly smiled. Of course. He stopped and reached for the knapsack across his shoulder.

"No cloak," he admitted, and rummaged briefly. "But I have something better."

It was likely not what she expected. A dress — deep purple, the fabric catching the blue light of the exosuit and shifting as it moved. Light as breath, woven from the silken fiber of a plant that grew only in the hedgerows of his islands. Not the sort of thing one purchased just anywhere, as there was not a lot of it available for purchase. The people of his islands cut and dyed the cloth themselves, and he’d taken part in the process more than once. This dress in particular, he'd packed it before leaving Theurgy for reasons he had not fully examined at the time. The same hands that blended the ale and pressed the flowers into her braid now offered her the dress, knowing that she had no concept of its value or origins.

He held it out. "Try this." His eyebrow lifted. "And before you ask — yes, I am aware that handing a Starfleet officer traditional Uluma cloth while fleeing a diplomatic compound is not the conventional solution. But I believe we left conventional behind us mere minutes after we first met."

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #5 –
[Ens. Talia "Shadow" Al-Ibrahim | Hidden Passage beneath the Diplomatic Quarter, Dartha | Romulus] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

And there it was — the unspoken thing — the tension between them that had existed from almost the first time they'd laid eyes on each other; something that had only grown despite her best efforts to deny it. Talia felt its weight in the air and in her chest, impossible to ignore simply due to the effort required to do so. The fact that Hirek hadn’t pushed the issue — hadn’t utilized his charming, innate ability to infuriate, confound and arouse all at once — didn’t help. Even as the tips of her ears and cheeks flushed with heat, thankfully unnoticed in the dark, Shadow held the feeling at arms length out of necessity.

She focused her attention everywhere else but him as he paused to dig around in the satchel; easing her heartrate down with a few measured breaths — to reign her emotions in even tighter. Still, her mind raced with the consequences of what she’d just chosen to do: if things went south during the talks, Talia wouldn’t be there. She’d left her post, without warning or cause, and potentially endangered the mission.

That realization proved sobering, and the result felt like a splash of ice-cold water. Almost instantly, Talia clamped that train of thought down, forced it aside from her mind; if, if, if…the choice was made. Whatever came from it after, she’d deal with it — after.

All of this occurred in the time it took Hirek to hand over a bundle of cloth. Not for the first time in her life (and certainly not the last), Talia wished she could just stop thinking so much. It was just so….exhausting.

Despite it all, her lips curled softly at Hirek's words as Talia examined his ‘solution’; despite the inability to truly feel the fabric through the gloves of her exosuit, it was almost weightless, and clearly made with care. Her eyes admired the color, how it shifted and moved, almost iridescent — like the feathers of a hummingbird on Earth, or the scales of the giant fish-predators they had hunted on the holodeck. She held the dress up, carefully, to avoid fouling it upon the wet stone.

Her smile grew into a genuine smile and a nod of agreement followed, as she carefully folded the garment back into a more manageable arrangement.

“We certainly did, didn’t we?” The dress wasn’t very practical, not at the moment anyway, but Talia sincerely hoped it fit her as beautifully as it looked. “Given our history, I wont promise anything,” she smiled at him, “but I’ll try to return it in one piece. Thank you.”

The temptation to voice all the questions in the world sprung to mind then, but she locked those down as well. What mattered was getting to the transport, to a place and time where those conversations could take place.

They walked. Hirek led by a pace, Talia a close step behind. She followed his movements while her attention surveyed their surroundings, noting how he stuck to the shadows, or near a wall, the minute pauses at a threshold or before a corner…always assessing. He made it look effortless, something naturally done without a shred of conscious effort; for her part, Talia couldn’t help but feel like a bumbling toddler in his shadow — a walking advertisement of fuckery-afoot for anyone and everyone to see. He’d clearly chosen his path carefully, though; Talia hadn’t seen a soul yet, even as they crossed across streets and ducked into other alleys, passed what looked like merchant stalls and closed shops.

Once they’d entered into a courtyard, the roof open to the sky, Talia realized how fast the daylight had faded; the buildings had grown tinted in gold and amber, the sky bruised purple. Night was approaching, which would only make her stand out more. Talia tapped out a command on her wrist PaDD in a quick series of muted tones, killing power to her flightsuit mid-stride; the lights vanished instantly, along with its artificial strength. She didn’t break stride however, and only arched a brow at his questioning look, a gesture that told him enough without either of them needing to speak: she could handle the added weight, so long as their destination wasnt too far off.

Suddenly, Hirek dipped into a passage Talia hadn’t noticed, pulling her once more into something like an embrace as he moved without warning. This time, she couldn’t help herself from uttering a surprised gasp — more an alarmed squeak than anything — even as his hand covered her mouth with urgency. He held her close, pressing them both into the wall, as Talia turned her head and alarm filled eyes back and up to him.

Then, she heard the approaching footsteps.

Talia held the bundled dress in one hand, close to her chest; the other hand drifted to the concealed combat blade sheathed within the armored section of her outer thigh, which opened with a soft mechanical click — to grip the hilt of the blade. Then she nodded her readiness to Hirek, body tensed like a coil, ready to follow his next move.

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #6 –
[Hirek tr'Aimne | Small Alley Just Shy of Transport Quarter, Dartha | Romulus] Attn: @Dumedion

The moment Talia's hand drifted toward the knife at her thigh, Hirek caught her wrist — not hard, just enough — and gave the smallest shake of his head. He kept his hand over hers on her thigh while his other hand came up over her ribs, and he pressed them both back into the recess of the passage, a space cut for one body and now holding two.

Footsteps. Two sets, unhurried. Citizens, not a patrol. The voices reached the mouth of the alley before the speakers did.

"...khre'vash," the first muttered. "Mnei t'Rihannsu saei rrhalla, mnei t'Rehmnau saei rrhalla, label thae, label thae, dosh."

HIire knew the universal translater would have issues with this dialect as it had been trained on Romulan standard and had not been given access to all the myriad of dialects that existed even within the capital. Likely, the translator whispered fragments against Talia's ear — rushing... Romulans... Remans... — and then most likely lost the thread entirely into a string of untranslated syllables. Hirek did not struggle to understand, however The dialect was western Dartha, near enough to his mother's dialect that the man's shorthand cost him nothing. Folding the sheet before the ink is dry, the fellow had said, or as close as the phrase carried — an old islander's grumble about work done too fast to hold. They stamp Romulan on one, Reman on the other, and call it settled.

The second voice snorted. "Dosh trhai. S'Shaenor tr'eiha, chulae tr'eiha, trhellhae tr'eiha."

The colonies will remember. Not a translation of the words so much as their spine — S'Shaenor was the deep frontier, and a Romulan who invoked it this way meant the old bloodlines out past the Neutral Zone who had never once done what Dartha told them. The colonies will remember they have pride. Every line will remember it remembers.

"Nnvei mnhei t'Rehmnau. Hru'hfirh Rihannsu, hru'hfirh Rehmnau, label thae — dosh."

The translator would've managed only ..respect..before giving up for good. Hirek, again, understood the meaning. No dignity in it — not for the Remans, not for us. Neither people were asked how the thing should begin. We were told we are one, and expected to applaud.

The first man clicked his tongue against his teeth, the sound every Romulan child learned meant *this ends badly*. "Aefvadh mnhei S'Shaenor sae'khora. Aefvadh mnhei t'Rehmnau eir'hinterr'hw' esta."

Wait until the colonies answer. Wait until every Reman who never bowed decides he still won't. And then, plainly, no idiom left to bury it in: "We have traded one civil war for another."

That last, the translator caught whole. It hung in the passage after the footsteps had gone.

Neither man had lowered his voice. Neither had imagined anyone listening — why would they, when they were only saying aloud what half the city had already thought and not yet dared to speak.

Hirek stayed still. One heartbeat, then another. He had spent decades teaching himself not to move on impulse, and the training held him now past the point of necessity — the voices had faded into the evening traffic, and still he waited, because nearly gone was not gone, and a man survived the difference. That his hands remained on her thigh, her ribs, that her back was still pressed against the wall, his own body shielding her from the world— he was aware of it. He was not in a particular hurry to correct it. He allowed himself the honesty of noticing that, and no more.

Only when the last echo had truly emptied did his hands leave her body. There was nowhere obvious to retreat to except a marginal space back considering the scant space in the alley, and for an instant neither of them moved. Then he shifted back that single pace and let what space there was to return.

"They were discussing the new government," he said quietly, once they were walking again. A faint, rueful thing crossed his face. "They voiced several concerns I happen to share. That reunification is being demanded rather than grown — that neither people was given the courtesy of learning to stand the sight of the other before being told they are now one." Another corner, another careful glance down it. "They expect the frontier colonies to refuse. And they suspect the loudest refusal won't come from the center of either society." He glanced at her. "It will come from the ones who have always lived at the edges of both."

A few more steps carried them out into broader streets, civilian traffic thickening beneath a violet sky, the landing beacons of the docking yards shimmering ahead.

Hirek slowed and nodded toward a row of public lavatories along the terminal wall. "There. You can change." His hand went into his jacket and came out with a flat data chit. "I still need the launch authentication codes." He looked toward the administrative office, figures moving behind lit windows. "A few minutes, no more."

Then he looked back at her, the dry humor returning to the corner of his mouth as his eyes drifted to the bundled dress. "And if you can manage it — try not to leave every Romulan in the terminal wondering why a Starfleet pilot is wearing one of the island provinces' finer cloths."

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #7 –
[Ens. Talia "Shadow" Al-Ibrahim | Small Alley Just Shy of Transport Quarter, Dartha | Romulus] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

Talia released the blade only after Hirek shook his head, then pushed them both deeper into the recessed section of wall. Dark brows flinched together as her dark eyes sought his: a questioning look, devoid of challenge. Though she felt the pressure of his hand through the exosuit (directly where her body still carried the blemishes of slowly healing bruises from the Triangle) there was no struggle against it. Her expression had been one of concern, then confusion; why had he moved so suddenly if no threat existed? Then the voices registered, and the pilot breathed out the tension from her body with a slow, quiet exhalation, head cocked minutely to focus on the translation.

When that proved next to useless, she returned the focus of her attention away from sound, back to sight. Soon enough, everything clicked; these weren’t soldiers hunting them — they were just a pair of average citizens, simply conversing as they walked. The revelation forced Talia to blink in recognition of what Hirek had done: he hadn’t only acted to protect just her, or himself — he’d protected them as well.

Protected them from herself, from Hirek; from the consequences of an altercation that didn’t need to happen, and from the dangerous knowledge of simply witnessing them.

Was that the life he had lived here? Was that the childhood he had endured? Talia couldn’t fathom such a reality; nor could she imagine herself surviving it, never mind thriving in it.

After they had passed, she held still, even after Hirek’s presence moved away; a heartbeat’s worth of hesitation, uncommented on. Once they started walking again and Hirek spoke of the pair’s conversation, the pilot realized another truth: that she truly was a stranger in a strange land. There was no certainty, not even in her own ability to recognize who was a threat and who wasn’t. Romulus was an onion, armored in deception, half-truths, and overt lies – yet it still held people just trying to live their lives. Had she stopped, for a moment, to consider the consequences those people would face from her own actions? Had anyone?

We traded one civil war for another, the man had said. Talia shook her head with a frown; that hadn’t been the objective. The goal was to prevent a war by eliminating the threat to everyone: the Infested. Had all that blood been spilt for nothing? Would it just continue? A never-ending cycle of violence, in a galaxy with room enough for everyone?

Hirek’s voice derailed that line of thought, directing her attention to the lavatories. Shadow nodded her understanding but didn’t feel particularly up to answering his dry humor with her trademark sass; not even a smirk.

I have no business being here, Talia’s eyes told him; I’m an outsider, without a fucking clue about what I’m supposed to be doing. It was worse than the holodeck, when she’d pretty much shown him just how young and foolish she really was, without a second’s pause of consideration.
 
It felt like a blindfold had been ripped away from her eyes. A blindfold built from assumption, prejudice, preconception, judgmental notions, moral deviations, ethical differences…of an entire people based entirely on secondhand, filtered information fed from the hands of… what? Starfleet professors? The Federation media? Had any of them even walked this world? Had Hirek felt like she had, walking the decks of the Theurgy? On the surface of Qo’noS? If he, by some miracle, ever walked the streets of Earth, would it be any different? Had Medusa felt the same?  Something tolerated but always held at arm’s length? Always painfully aware of how different they were? Politely welcomed but never understood?

Her eyes fell to the bundle of cloth; something he gave her freely, out of necessity perhaps, but without a second thought. Talia had never given him anything but suspicion and attitude in return, mostly.

“Be safe. Don’t take too long,” she whispered, then bit her lower lip as she turned to the door he had gestured to; not a far walk at all, the alley and street beyond clear of pedestrians facing her way. She closed the distance in twelve brisk strides, then vanished behind a vertical sliding door.

[Almost thirty minutes later…]

The dress had been too long, clearly measured for someone taller and more fully figured. Talia had been forced to improvise for it to fit somewhat properly: the trailing ends of fabric which were meant to flow freely over her shoulders were instead wrapped around her bust in a cross pattern, then tied behind the back. This left the garment riding high past her waistline, which in turn pulled the double slits higher, almost past the hips. The material itself proved to be far more sheer than the pilot could have seen in the dark, which presented another challenge; once the exosuit and compression underlayer had been removed, she’d debated whether to leave her underwear on, but the option quickly proved moot. Everything was branded with the ship’s name, or hull registration number, or both.

Which left nothing but tanned skin marred with faded bruises under Hirek’s gift.

Talia emerged from the lavatory, the sides of her hair hung loose over her ears, while the top section fell down her back in a loose rope; her best approximation of how he had braided it on the holodeck – but far less masterfully. In her wake, pulled by one arm, was a hover trolley she’d located and claimed along with a sealed tote (she’d found it in the supply closet, filled with jugs of cleansing solutions, presumably). Inside held the various sections of her exosuit, crammed in to fit, then stuffed with the remnants of the compression suit.

She’d sacrificed the latter for a pair of makeshift sandals; the soles were the double layered, compact skin of the suit – strips of which suited for laces which wrapped around her feet and ankles, up to her shins.
 
Her eyes found Hirek easily enough, then scanned everything else; there were even more people about than before – even a few Remans. No one seemed to bat an eye in their direction. She made her way towards him, trying her best to appear calm, but alert, just like everyone else.

The sandals squeaked with every step; Talia managed to pretend that she didn’t hear them.

“I know I took forever, I’m sorry, I needed shoes,” she explained quickly, quietly, apologetically. “I know how ridiculous they look and sound, I’ll get rid of them as soon as I can,” Talia promised, once they’d moved close together. She tried to ignore the way he looked at her by directing her attention everywhere else.

“We should go before someone notices the mess I made in there,” she added with an embarrassed wince. "I couldnt tell what all the buttons did until it was too late."

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #8 –
[Hirek tr'Aimne | Dartha Waterfront, Romulus] Attn: @Dumedion

The attendant at the transport quay had the expression of a man who'd discovered that there was much to be profitted in this time of uncertainty. Hirek watched him revise the rental agreement three separate times, each version adding another service charge written in increasingly elegant script, as though the calligraphy itself justified the theft.

"The political situation." The attendant spread his hands in explanation. "Insurance premiums have become... fluid."

"So have your ethics."

The attendant offered a patient smile. "My ethics remain entirely fixed."

"They've merely become more expensive."

Another smile, and this one Hirek respected. Older than the Republic, that expression. Every Romulan merchant grew into it eventually.

He understood the instinct because he'd been raised inside it. Governments fell. Markets panicked. Those with foresight profited while everyone else convened to discuss fairness, and his own family had ridden three recessions and two wars because they'd known the hour necessity turned to opportunity and had never once mistaken it for anything nobler.

He still had no intention of funding the man's grandchildren.

They settled, twenty minutes later, on a figure marginally above the original—dockside servicing and refueling folded in, the rental extended several days. The attendant looked wounded.

Hirek took that as confirmation the price had been fair as he turned to explore the docks further. The waterfront ran louder than the diplomatic quarter. Fishing craft nosed between polished civilian transports; merchants shouted across one another beneath awnings of emerald fabric gone translucent with age. Roasting grain somewhere. Salt off the harbor, and under it the sweet rot of fruit left to ferment on purpose, carried inland on a wind that had come a long way to arrive smelling like home.

His eyes widened slightly in delight when he recognized a food vendor, or rather her offerings An old woman worked a shallow bronze basin, turning glossy kernels with a wooden paddle over coals kept deliberately low. The scent reached him first—warm, sweet, threaded with ale and toasted earth—and for a moment he was nine years old, and the size of the world was the size of one island.

"Varethi?" she called.

He stopped.

The nuts were sherak, soaked days in weak ale until they took the sweetness without the fire, then roasted slow and dusted with ground mhoral, the bitter bean the mainland once fed to the dying. Aboard Theurgy he'd found the Federation's nearest approximation and tried it once. Cocoa. Recognizable, and diminished, and not worth a second attempt, not when he had mhoral at home.

He bought an oversized portion. The woman folded a broad varesh leaf into a cone with two movements of her hands and filled it past sense. Hirek tentatively plucked a steaming nut from the top of the cone and popped it into his mouth. It was still hot, almost painfully so, but the sticky sweet coating the nut would harden as it cooled and as a child he'd always burned his mouth with a desire to get the gooey ones. His mother had never stopped him though she'd likely thought him an idiot. The shell yielded with a small clean crack, the ale-sweetness giving way to roasted richness and then the slow bitter finish that made you reach for the next before you'd decided to.

He waited longer than he'd planned, but then again, he'd practically kidnapped the woman. Then he saw her, and the harbor pulled back half a step beneath the rhythm of the surf. The dress suited her. The other observation he caught at the threshold and kept behind his teeth: that whatever she carried under the flight suits and the combat rigging and the perpetual forward motion—the quiet thing, always there and rarely bothering to announce itself—the dress had simply stopped hiding it.

She'd solved the problem he hadn't thought to anticipate, too. Proper shoes for the streets. Her gear stowed somewhere out of sight. Resourceful. Predictable. Beautiful.

"You'll regret refusing these." He was already turning, trusting her to follow. "Fortunately, you no longer have the opportunity." He held the cone out for her study a moment, allowing her a moment to grab one if she wished, before he beckoned for her to follow.

She fell into step. He'd known she would.

"Sherak. From the varesh that grow along the southern coast. Soaked in ale before the roasting." He glanced sideways. "No. They won't intoxicate you. Not unless you eat a quantity that ought to concern your physician."

The transport waited apart from the rental craft crowding the dock. The attendant had wisely not questioned Hirek's request for the transport to be moved to a more discreet corner of the loading zone. Long, narrow, dark green, the hull swept back in curves that owed more to the sea than the sky. The canopy melted into the fuselage; short stabilizing fins lay folded flat against the flanks. Barely room behind the two seats for packs and an emergency kit. Elegant. Purpose-built. Romulan.

He laid a hand against the hull. "This design surprises most visitors." He cracked the passenger hatch and nodded out past the breakwater, to where the water lost its patience. "The islands sit beyond a stretch famous for its temper. Large swells. Storms that assemble in minutes." Two fingers tapped the plating. "When the sea insists, we let it pass over us. The whole craft seals. It flies through air or through several meters of seawater with equal willingness. Though it cannot handle great heights or great depths with equal enthusiasm."  He slid himself into the craft and held his hands up for her gear., allowing her the freedom to get inside the craft without getting caught up in the dress alongside manuvering her gear "Comfortable is perhaps generous for this style of craft, I will admit."

He tipped his head toward her seat. "Strap in before we lift. The ride can become energetic." He stowed his own satchel behind the cockpit, indicated the narrow compartment at her back. "Your gear goes there."

Then he folded into the pilot's chair, and the controls came up around him exactly where years of instinct expected them—nothing decorative that didn't also do work. He ran the startup. The engines answered low, a restrained animal sound.

"Two hours across, at moderated output." His hand rested light on the throttle. "The governor holds back full authority. Which is fortunate. Without it we'd arrive considerably sooner and in considerably fewer pieces."

He nodded at the sealed containers seated in their recesses. "Fruit juice. Electrolytes, trace minerals native to the islands. Off-worlders tend to describe the effect as calming." He caught the question before she could ask it. "There is no alcohol." He winked, feeling a boyish giddiness settling on him that he hadn't felt in years. He was going home. And for the first time in his lifetime, there was no Tal'Shiar agent looming over his shoulder waiting to condemn his family further. "That comes later," he drily commented nearly under his breath.

Systems green, the last diagnostic clearing itself, he finally permitted himself the thing he'd been carrying since the dock.

"You look good." His eyes went to the practical shoes and came back to the console. "The dress suits you." The corner of his mouth moved, not quite far enough to call a smile. "And solving the matter of footwear and stowage suggests...resilience. I neglected to plan that far ahead myself." Which was, from him, as near to I was impressed as he could muster.

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #9 –
[Ens. Talia "Shadow" Al-Ibrahim | Dartha Waterfront, Romulus] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

She'd prepared during every step toward him for a short list of possible responses — ranging from a dry look of disappointment to a dismissive chuckle at her expense. As usual, Hirek refused to react or respond in any way Talia could anticipate, which inexorably led to the near immediate reaction: an open mouthed state of wrong-footing, edged with confusion, with a sprinkle of embarrassed hesitation — aaaand a flash of self-directed irritation formed the cherry on top.

If only that...unpredictability...wasn't so damned attractive…

Well…if that was the case, you wouldn’t be here looking so dumb in the first place, the pilot sighed to herself.

She nearly flinched at the offering. Dark eyes narrowed at Hirek, then the food, then back again as he turned and walked away. A snap decision followed, sourced entirely from her body’s basic need to sustain itself; Talia’s hand darted out and plucked a dark, gooey kernel off the top just in time — then popped it into her mouth before she even knew what it was — or how close it was to the relative temperature of molten lava.

While Hirek divulged the facts about that particular mystery, Talia covered her mouth while she tried to hiss and pant as quietly as the crisis allowed, desperately trying to cool the painfully hot orb her tongue juggled from one side of her mouth to the other.

She managed to keep a somewhat calm demeanor at Hirek’s sideways glance, even stifled a laugh through the pain at the reassurance; in truth, Talia had moved beyond suspicion of such things after their encounter in the holodeck. Well, in even more truth, the pilot had moved on from a great deal since then — but that was a conversation for another time. Still, it was charming, sweet, and oddly funny to hear him address something Talia viewed now as one of her most embarrassingly petty assumptions; her hair swayed softly as she shook her head at the memory.

Then the flavor exploded in Talia’s mouth, powerful enough to take her completely by surprise. Her eyes rolled closed while she actually froze mid-step, almost all functional self-control nearly forgotten as the insanely powerful deliciousness currently dissolving in her mouth overwhelmed higher brain function.

Holy fuck — that’s amazing, Talia mouthed silently, blinked several times, then scampered to catch up with Hirek, which of course forced her to pass the merchant still making the damn things. It was all the pilot could do to resist the urge to waltz over to the stall and demand her own cone — fortunately, Hirek provided the necessary distraction, as they neared the transport.

Over the sounds, smells, wind and chatter of sea-birds, Talia forced her attention on him and away from the cone of delectable treats in his hand; her expression held in a mix of admiration and, indeed, surprise — as her eyes followed along the curves of the ship’s sleek, elegant hull. Compared to the few Romulan craft she’d witnessed thus far, it seemed familiar, but not: clearly inspired by water-craft, yet blended with the hawk-ish, bird-of-prey esthetic Romulan fighters and capital ships leaned into. The proportions spoke to pure speed — she guessed it was a torque heavy sprinter — built to race through the sky with wild abandon.

The corner of her lips pulled in a smirk as Talia realized she guessed wrong. At least I’m consistent, she thought, amused despite herself.

The tote was handed off; the assistance gratefully acknowledged with a murmured thanks. Even though the ship had been docked away from others, Talia was still leery of being overheard; it wouldn’t do to draw attention on the eve of a successful getaway, after all. She climbed in after the tote, leaving the hover-trolley for someone else to claim. Due to her stature, in comparison to Hirek, who stood head and shoulders above the pilot, Talia had room to pivot and kneel on the passenger seat to store the tote crammed full with her exosuit.

She couldn’t help but pause long enough to throw Hirek a lopsided smile, after his request for her to “strap in”, and the follow-up warning. Talia’s expression spoke for her, an amused ‘oh, really’; which Hirek duly ignored. For a heartbeat, she considered reminding him that of the two of them, she had likely flown in and subjected herself to more G’s than he could possibly imagine…but the temptation died almost as soon as it bloomed.

It was petty. Mean-spirited; he deserved better than that.

The gear was stored without further delay, which consisted of a grunt of effort as Talia turned the tote upright and slid it behind her seat and the bulkhead with a heavy thump. The pilot rotated herself around then, carefully mindful of the dress and the limited coverage of her legs, hips, and everything in between, as the ship powered up around them; the engine purred, distantly, like a caged feline — a far cry from the throaty, invasive hum of her precious Valkyrie — which left her doubting if it even truly moved at all.

As if on cue, Hirek chimed in with a vague disclosure on their estimated flight time, as well as another warning on the dangers posed to exceeding the governed speed setting; which only prompted a twitch of Talia’s brow with another amused nod — a ‘yeah, I can imagine’ look of amused agreement writ plain on her face — which he, in turn, apparently missed yet again.

She sampled the drink almost immediately, desperate to cool the stinging burn on her tongue and cheek — while also hoping it would help fight off the desire to grab another bite of those ridiculously blissful choco-ale-nut devils. Again, Hirek felt the need to reassure her about alcohol.

It wasn’t quite as funny the second time.

Talia sighed quietly and drank, soothing her mouth and irritation both as Hirek mumbled something under his breath; the words lost on her over the noise of fluid rushing down her throat in several lengthy gulps. She hadnt realized how thirsty she was — and the flavored drink was quite tasty, too — loads better than the replicated shakes and mixes used on the Theurgy. Her eyes caught his glance at her footwear, however, just over the rim of the drink container as she lowered it.

A hand smoothed a few loose strands of hair from her face as the pilot allowed herself a moment before responding, a few seconds consideration, at most.

The complement sounded sincere enough, albeit in a cautionary, professional mien; as if Hirek had casually noticed a colleague’s ensemble — something out of the norm, pleasantly but passionlessly impressed with their sudden ability to change appearance.

Idiot, Talia nearly snorted — irritated at the delivery, but amused and flattered at the attempt.

“It worked out — that’s what counts,” she offered with a half-smile. “And thanks,” her head dipped politely as her hands adjusted the restraint straps with a final tug, then moved to smooth the fabric in a drape across her crossed legs. “It really is beautiful. I love the fabric,” the smile bloomed in sincerity; an open, honest reply, offered in the same measured tones he had used for the compliment, and left whatever that meant for him to decipher — if he chose to at all.

Talia looked over the controls, then the canopy, to the darkened sky and sea. The last light of the day was slowly fading. She saw no sign of electronic navigation; no beacons, no bouys, no global positioning data — only hash marks displayed along the top border of the cockpit, each marked with a glyph or rune she couldn’t read.

Talia frowned, head tilted, as she realized what it was.

“Wait…are you navigating by dead reckoning,” the question blurted from her lips with a chuckle of amusement flavored with concern, “…into an active meteorological zone?” followed close behind, substantially more subdued as concern won out over amusement.

There were plenty of stories throughout the history of both naval and aeronautical studies that didn’t end well for even the most experienced crew when such ill-advised attempts were made. Talia didn’t feel the need to voice that, however; her hand leapt to Hirek’s upon the controls instead, while she waited for him to interpret the expression of mild-to-moderate alarm on her face.

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #10 –
[ Hirek tr'Aimne | Personal Transport | Inbound, Uluma Chain ] Attn: @Dumedion

He had been happy to answer the unspoken question about the fabric.

"Shaanel," he said. "Open enough to breathe in wet heat. Tight enough that spray beads and rolls off rather than soaking through. And the patterning is not decoration, whatever they tell you in the Dartha shops when they sell you an imitation at four times the price. Every family dyes at its own interval. A man raised properly can read your home reef off your sleeve at forty paces — very useful at festivals. Don't want to...hook up with a cousin."

Then she looked past him at the console, and her face changed. What arrived now was worry, stripped of the armor she usually wrapped it in. That was worth more attention than the question. Talia did not hesitate. She challenged, argued, improvised, and had survived a great deal by trusting her own instincts absolutely — so watching those instincts tell her something was wrong was considerably more interesting to him than the weather.

"Wait — are you navigating by dead reckoning?"

The laugh came first. The concern came in behind it and stayed, his pause connected directly to her hand atop his on the controls.

"Dead reckoning." He turned the phrase over. "Charming. Your people put the word dead at the front of a navigational term, and then express surprise when the passengers go pale." A glance sideways. "Every Federation text I have read accuses Romulans of morbidity. We have never once named a method of travel after a corpse." Hirek shook his head before she could complain of his teasing. "If you are asking whether I am flying on calculated position, heading, speed, conditions, and known reference points — rather than surrendering the question to a machine —" He studied her hand on his on the throttle housing. He did not move it. He did not mention it, either. "Yes. I am."

He let it sit. It was likely not the reassurance she'd been fishing for. He was not interested in supplying a comforting version in place of an accurate one.

"The instruments give me velocity, altitude, pressure, heading. I account for wind, current, temperature, and what these formations do to the weather sitting on top of them. The storms look unpredictable to people who do not live beneath them. And the same is true of the waves." His fingers moved on the trim — a correction so small the deck did not register it. "They are not. They have patterns. Complicated ones. Patterns that occasionally kill men arrogant enough to think they have finished learning them." He pulled his hand out from under hers just long enough to flip, letting their palms connect, his fingers sliding between hers. "Lucky for you I believe one never stops learning." The corner of his mouth moved. "I have made this crossing since before your grandmother was born. Not in some years — but the route has not changed. The currents are where I left them, and we have not employed weather modifications in some time, so the weather should hold as I remember as well. And then there is the fact that the islands have not wandered off."

He squeezed her hand, his lips pulling back in a full smile, one he hadn't felt the desire to show in some time, making the muscles in his face tug strangely as he overrode the instinct to hide the amusement behind wry humor. "While I've never gotten lost, I once arrived at my aunt's island rather than my own." No embarrassment in it whatsoever. If anything, enjoyment. "Same chain. The correction cost me forty minutes and a great deal of dignity. She was delighted. She informed me that if I wished to visit, I might simply have visited — rather than staging an elaborate navigational failure for the sake of my pride." A breath through the nose. "She has repeated this at every family gathering since."

Something escaped him that was very nearly a laugh. Then it wasn't when he remembered Talia's fears had been real.

"The greatest danger in navigation is not the absence of automation." His eyes flicked toward her. "It is confidence without understanding. The machine will tell you exactly where you are, with enormous conviction, until the moment it is wrong."

He'd learned that at eleven, on a reef that looked entirely flat from the surface, with an oyster hunter's fist knotted in his shirt hauling him out of a current he had not read. He did not say so. She had her own version of the lesson — he'd read it on her the first time they met, in the way she checked exits before she checked faces.

Across the churning water, a flash of lightning bolted across the sky. He watched her response. Hirek had spent sixty years excellent at the beginning of things. The approach, the wit, the practiced escalation, the graceful exit before anyone had to learn anything true about him. He had never once been good at whatever this was.

"Your concern is noted." A pause. Quieter: "And appreciated." Then he returned his attention to the water, pulled his hand from hers to check various instruments, and left the acknowledgment where it lay rather than explaining it into something smaller.

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #11 –
[Ens. Talia "Shadow" Al-Ibrahim | Personal Transport | Inbound, Uluma Chain] Attn: @Ellen Fitz 

Her mouth opened to correct him instantly — 'dead reckoning was a method of navigation, not travel' — something intended to be playful but most likely misinterpreted as attitude; but then Talia realized Hirek was only teasing her. It wasn’t anything overt, either, but something in the way he paused, the way his tone subtly shifted…the intuition was there and gone, too fast for her to analyze properly. Hirek continued on anyway, in his way: clarification first, followed by measured response.

Flying without navigational computation? Yes, I am — no, I don’t see a problem here, Talia’s mind paraphrased.

Again, Talia opened her mouth to interject, and again Hirek continued; although neither of them seemed willing or able to draw attention to the physical contact of her hand atop his, even as the pressure there eased in unconscious synchronization as the spike of alarmed concern left her. Hirek dominated her attention, and through it all, Talia recognized the calm control he exerted; she’d seen it before, in herself and from instructors. Anyone who had grown accustomed to operating a craft long enough to do so almost by muscle memory alone moved and talked like that.

Okay, wonderful. Crisis averted.

Talia exhaled, nodded her understanding, and while the prospect of deliberately flying into turbulent weather still sat uneasy — she recognized the fact that Hirek clearly knew what he was doing and had far more experience doing it than her. It was his home, his craft; she trusted his ability then and there far more than her own, regardless how she felt about it.

That alone was more than sufficient reassurance, and in typical fashion, Talia opened her mouth to say so yet again — only this time, with an additional apology prepped and ready to fly — but then Hirek’s hand flipped and held hers. She couldn’t stop herself from looking, to verify what she felt.

He squeezed; Talia’s eyes darted back to Hirek’s face. Her lips parted with an unexpected smile, an unconscious response to his own. It wasn’t the usual one he wore; the one he greeted people with, or the one he flashed like a bullfighter’s cape to disarm and deflect her. It wasn’t the playful, flirty grin, either: it was real — she knew it, without a doubt, without any idea how. That smile alone, something so small and so easily taken for granted, affected Talia in ways she could never have prepared for and had zero defense against. The story that accompanied it was cute, sweet, and funny; she wondered if he planned on visiting this Aunt during their trip — the thought caused her attention to slip, just for a moment — while she seared the image of that smile and the way it made her feel into memory.

Hirek brought her back; she met his eyes and smiled again, softer, with another nod of understanding — then broke the connection to watch the approaching storms. Even as the tension left her body, there was no denying the thing-that-must-remain-unnamed — as it reared up inside her yet again, threatening, wild, yearning to be released. Nothing so basic as lust, because lust was easy — she knew lust.

No, this was something else entirely.

Lightning flashed, and Talia’s lips thinned in response as she inhaled — not quite a frown, more of a resignation — before Hirek released her hand. The loss was noted, cataloged, grieved; all at once. Her eyes fell closed as her head fell back to rest, hands gripping the harness straps at her shoulders; a habitual movement, borne of restlessness during long flights locked in a cockpit alone. A deep breath followed.

“I appreciate you,” Talia whispered, “just…don’t be surprised if I scream when this thing hits the water,” a smile cracked, just enough to show the attempt at humor as she glanced side long at him. “That’s not an invitation for you to try to make me, by the way — not right now.”

Later though? Who knows, Talia hid her smile behind a curtain of black hair, but she doubted Hirek missed that one. She hoped he didn’t. With everything going on, all the burdens and pressures of the current situation that he faced…

Talia realized how badly she wanted to see that smile again; she wanted to give him something else to think about, if only for the limited time they had left — but most of all, she wanted them to enjoy each other’s company. Simple things. Honest things. Everything sex should be, and rarely was; the nameless thing.

A girl could always dream, right?

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #12 –
[ Hirek tr'Aimne | Private Transport, En Route to the Uuluma Islands | Romulus ] @Dumedion

The transport well cleared Dartha without incident but Romulus had never been a planet that rewarded confidence. The government had changed, the Citadel was rubble, the Tal Shiar had been scattered into cells and safehouses and whatever cousins would still open a door for them — and none of that had touched the instincts that had kept generations alive. Silence could mean safety. It could equally mean surveillance, or exhaustion, or that the person waiting to act had not yet decided how. Hirek kept one hand on the controls and the other near the auxiliary systems out of habit.

The weather had turned while they were in the capital. Cloud had stacked over the eastern sea in bruised layers, the lower edges torn apart by wind, and the rain came in sheets that whitened the canopy before the deflectors threw it aside. Below them the sea was already disappearing. He had flown through worse, which was not the same as saying this was survivable. He adjusted course by three degrees, watched the turbulence indicators climb, and did not complain. Nature and governments shared exactly one trait: neither cared how carefully a man had planned.

Talia's comment made him smirk, and he resisted the temptation to cause the transport to wobble just to tease her. Instead, he filled the transport with an anecdote of the last mission, not exactly his first with the Theurgy but assuredly the most intense. He delivered the play-by-play in a matter-of-fact voice, occasionally interjecting with asides meant to draw out a smile or a snort of playful annoyance, making light of the realities of his near death more than once.

The last mission had required him to work beside people who did not think like Romulans while standing on ground where everyone involved had sound reasons to distrust him. Then the Tal Shiar had taken him. There was no need to embellish what followed. The interrogation had been methodical, and the torture had been worse for being methodical — they knew enough of his history to make it personal, and they knew which parts of it were load-bearing. He had endured it because survival was a skill and because pain and defeat were both things he'd tasted before and wanted not to taste again.

What they had put inside him was his own work. He had designed the device decades earlier, for an entirely different reason, and wasn't it like the Tal'Shiar to twist something meant for good to deal out evil? He hadn't known it was there until Dr. Leux found it, and by then it had started. Then he had taken the remains of his own near-death, rewritten it, and put it into a Vulpinian corpsman. He had been back aboard barely long enough to change his uniform before the battle for the ship started, and had walked into it beside the Vulpinian he'd later save.

He noticed that now, with the storm shaking the airframe and the inertial systems catching the drop a half-second late, they were due for a rough ride in a few minutes, no matter his expert claims earlier. The transport dropped several meters. The inertial dampeners caught it. Below the break in the rain, black ridges of water rolled past like moving country.

Remembering her earlier concerns, Hirek continued to drawl out his thoughts, using his words and voice to distract her from the worsening weather. Or perhaps, they were just working to make her even more frustrated. Either way, he would know soon enough. Again he explained his position, now that he'd made it through the mission and was once more on his home turf. He could stay aboard Theurgy and go on hunting the Infested, on the reasoning that a parasite that had held a Praetor could hold the next one, and that everything his people were rebuilding was scaffolding over a hole nobody had filled. Or he could remain here while the Tal Shiar were still on their back foot, and put the last decade of his particular expertise into ensuring they never stood upright again.

They were now passing over a stretch of uninhabited islands, their reefs looked calm from above the surface and were nothing of the sort below it, and a diver who did not read the currents before descending was a diver who did not come up. He had built an entire character out of that principle. Assess, then commit. Know precisely what you are standing in before you stand in it.

He had already committed. He had done it somewhere back on the island, in a simulation, with her hair in his hands and no assessment performed whatsoever, and he had gone on descending ever since, and the honest part — the part he would take a spear through the chest before saying aloud — was that he had no intention of surfacing to check.

He checked the instruments, distracting himself from letting his thoughts go any further on that matter.

She had come through the same mission from a different seat, with different wounds, and he had learned long ago that what a person survived was rarely the same thing as what they carried out of it. Now that he'd passed the time regaling her with his side of the past few days, Hirek kept his eyes on the console a moment longer, then looked across at her.

"How did the last mission go for you?"

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #13 –
[Ens. Talia "Shadow" Al-Ibrahim | Private Transport, En Route to the Uuluma Islands | Romulus] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

There was no answer from him at first, and when one came there was little surprise when it took a path she hadn’t expected; so Talia had sat, and listened, and allowed Hirek’s voice and the shape of his mouth and the comfort in his eyes to distract her from what they were flying into.

It helped — truly — until it didn’t. The anxious knot in her gut refused to abate because the patterns and names were recognized for what they were: a rotational cumulonimbus system, a massive one; the main column stretched nearly 10 kilometers tall, easily. At its foot, the monster sucked in stratocumuli in all directions, devouring them, eating their energy to fuel its own. There was more than one term humans used to describe such a phenomenon on Earth, depending on which side of the planet one lived on: hurricane and typhoon.

…And they were flying straight into it, or, more accurately, beneath it.

Talia also knew that wasn’t what had rendered her speechless: Hirek had. If it had been easy to sit, listen, and absorb his account — delivered in calm measured tones as if he had spoken about nothing important at all — processing how it all made her feel proved extremely difficult. Even so, there was no attempt to hide it behind a carefully constructed mask; there was no time and zero preparation for that. All too late she realized, in that moment, that a part of her that had always been guarded finally slipped the leash, broke through its own battlements, and refused to follow all the rules so carefully maintained — and she didn’t waste a heartbeat fighting it.
 
She wanted him to see her: to see the concern, the worry, the anguish about what the Tal Shiar had done to him. Behind that, she wanted him to see the outrage, the anger, the desire for vengeance. Deeper still, she wanted him to see how much she valued him, how wrong she had been for everything before, and how sorry she was; if only she had known what he could have faced, what had been waiting for him before…

That didn’t matter — what she chose to do about it did.

Her hand reached out for his arm; the body moving on its own to communicate the words and emotions the voice couldn’t. She squeezed, pouring in everything she felt, everything her eyes carried, everything she wanted to say but didn’t possess the language for.

The moment passed; Hirek’s attention returned to the controls and the weather — out of necessity or something else? Talia couldn’t tell. The ship bounced again, nothing dramatic, but enough to break her mind free from the emotional soup, but her hand stayed where it was just above his elbow, nestled against the curve of bicep, like that was where it had always belonged.

‘How did the last mission go for you,’ he’d asked; Talia inhaled a breath, then chose how to respond. Truth deserved truth; trust deserved trust. There were a dozen reports he could read on the matter — she had written some herself and attended several review sessions to listen and read the others. Instinctually, her mind pulled that file up for recitation: almost an hour-by-hour account of the previous three days: what happened when, why, how. What mistakes had been made and what lessons had been learned. Her mind slammed the file closed though; she could do better than that.

He deserved better than that.

She told him what she felt instead; something no after-action-review contained — something no one knew, and likely never would, beyond the two of them. The words didn’t come easy, and didn’t come clean, which he almost certainly noticed; Talia pushed on, even as she watched him for reactions, and discovered that his patience and presence offered her a different kind of courage. He’d offered the gift of a space for her to simply be — to be heard and seen. She refused to waste something so precious.

The carrier scrap went first:

Talia spoke of how the sheer size and shape of the thing had inspired both awe and dread; how painfully powerless she’d felt losing Ghost, how the entire affair seemed to happen so fast in hindsight, but had felt the complete opposite at the time. The sheer agility and aggressiveness of their opponents had shocked her — how the simple fact that it had taken entirely too long for her to realize that they were, in fact, trying to kill her — had shaken her. But it had been the end, when she’d broken; seeing the wreckage on the deck — the fires — the bodies. She'd carry that around for a long time.

The convoy op followed, after a pause that lasted longer than it probably should have, due to a series of bumps and shimmies that forced her eyes closed.

When the ship settled, her eyes opened, and Talia told him how they’d found the colonists, devoid of escort and on the wrong side of any border — unaffiliated with anyone, with their only intention set on finding a new home. It had felt good to try to help; that was the Federation she believed in — the one she fought for, you see? But then everything went wrong in the form of a flying-electromagnetic-disruptor-wielding…mechanical squid, from the future, apparently; a drone, sent back in time to destroy its own creators.

A pause followed, broken with a brief chuckle; the math hurt her head and didn’t make sense no matter how hard she tried, so she asked him not to press the issue. In the end, the day was saved by the unlikely arrival of an antiquated vessel of the Vaharran Navy — which also nearly killed her too, by the way, when it came out of warp right on top of her — but enabled the civilian convoy the freedom to pursue their own ends. Yay, happy ending.

That part ended with a lopsided smile; a dash of humor sprinkled over near-death — just as Hirek had done. Lightning flashed abruptly, close enough to make Talia flinch; the thunder that followed was an audible assault, a rolling cacophony that silenced the rain for several seconds. In its wake, she let the moment draw out unintentionally; because so much had been said already about the Triangle — and so much had been left unsaid.

She didn’t describe the battle itself; anyone with eyes and a viewport had seen it. She didn’t bother with details of combat tactics, or how her coms had shorted out, again. All of that happened, and she’d talked about it ad nauseam.

She told him about the parts that hurt. The parts she hadn’t had time to let herself feel properly, never mind come to terms with. When the words left her lips, they began as little more than a whisper: how she couldn’t accurately account for how she’d survived, when others with far more experience and skill hadn’t. How hollow it felt after; her hands bloodied, conscience in tatters. How she’d puked her guts out almost immediately, and couldn’t stop her hands from shaking for hours after that. Nothing and no one could have prepared her for it, and that was no ones fault but her own; she should have known better. How the entire thing had been saved by the sheer stubbornness and courage of Klingons, and the last minute fortune of a stolen prototype fighter – whose pilot she owed a drink, but had not yet found the time to hunt down and properly thank.

“I owe Dr Leux one too,” she added quietly, and Talia left her account to linger in the space between them; even as she raised her hand to trace Hirek’s jawline with the back of her fingertips without conscious thought.

The craft almost instantly bucked, more violently than ever before, forcing her to snatch both hand and arm back to grip her harness with a surprised hiss of effort.
 
“Shit – sorry, didn’t mean to distract you!”

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #14 –
[ Hirek tr'Aimne | Private Transport, Inbound | Uuluma Chain, Romulus ] @Dumedion

"You didn't."

It was a lie, and he told it to the console, because the console was not currently the problem. But her fingers had traced his jaw, and the craft had bucked, and she'd pulled back apologizing. The gooseflesh had already gone down his neck to the shoulder by then. It was still there. The whole line of it had lit like a circuit closing, from a contact that could not have exceeded the weight of a wet leaf, and it was not obeying any instruction he gave it.

The dials, then. The dials were the argument he had left. Altitude, heading, rate of closure on the outer bands — and the barometric column falling faster than the descent accounted for, which he noted, and corrected for, and could not make himself care about in the way the number deserved. He drew breath to say something else, something dry enough to file the moment down to a size he could carry.

The transport went over.

Not a drop — a shear, taken low on the starboard flank. The horizon rolled up past the canopy and kept rolling until the sea hung overhead and the storm ran beneath it, and the harness bit into his shoulder hard enough to make him wince. Then a wave took them across the dorsal plating, all of it at once, several thousand tonnes of water arriving at a decision. The hull screamed. The engines came back howling in a register he hadn't heard out of this class in forty years.

His hands had the trim before the thought reached them. Full over, power fed against the roll, boot braced on the pedal rail. The craft came round the long way, groaning through the recovery, and settled upright with the deck plates still ringing in his teeth.

"That," he said, "was not the sea."

The second shudder came up through the drive shaft, and it came from behind him. He twisted against the straps, far enough to put his eyes past the aft coaming. Two hundred meters back, thirty low, running dark — beacons off, hull glow suppressed, riding the trough where clutter off the wave-faces would swallow the return whole.

It fired while he was watching. The projectile came slow. That was the entire craft of the thing: slow enough that the deflector geometry read it as debris and let it walk through the envelope unchallenged. It struck aft. External sensors folded down the right-hand column one after another, and the vibration coming up through the deck from the shaft had a frequency he disliked immediately and on principle.

He dropped back into the seat.

"They'll keep firing. The shields won't stop it." A third impact rang the frame as though answering him. "I don't know who they are, but I have a suspicion. Tal Shiar — what's left. The ones with no cell to report to and nowhere in particular to be." He glanced at her once. "They want me dead about as much as I want them dead."

The wave-tops came up through the rain, black and moving like country.

"Straps. Tight — tighter than you think is necessary." He was already trimming the nose down. "You're about to find out how deep this hull goes." Another round went past the canopy, close enough to see, slow enough to insult him. "They're better armed. Considerably. They bought it by cutting hull mass." He pushed the nose over and the sea came up to meet it. "This craft takes pressure. Theirs folds at a third of it. So either they follow us down and are crushed, or they stay up here and try to track us through sea and storm till when we surface again." The canopy sealed. The vents shut with the sound of a held breath. "Brace."

The water took them, and the storm went out like a lamp.

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #15 –
[Ens. Talia "Shadow" Al-Ibrahim | Private Transport, Inbound | Uuluma Chain, Romulus] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

She'd made the mistake of leaving the harness loose, yet again; it was a bad habit of unknown origin, something overlooked once too many times until it had become accepted as normal. The bruises earned during the three-day sequence of running engagements and dogfights that had just been discussed still hurt, and were all due to Talia’s solitary slip in an otherwise methodically — and this was not an exaggeration — perfected pre-flight routine.

There was no warning; no alarms, no flashing prompts, no damage reports she could decipher — the ship heaved, then the nose rose as it started to roll.

Talia met Hirek’s eyes for a split second, long enough to shoot a glare of ‘what-the-hell-are-you-doing’ at him; nothing more.

“Ah, shit — here we go,” she grunted, mostly to herself; arms and hands shot up to the roof of the canopy, legs braced instinctually. Years of training kicked in by muscle memory — Talia clenched her core, and held on for the ride. “Why cant we just have a normal day together?” That came out in a growl of effort as the roll continued, and everything fell from below at the mercy of gravity: her hair, with the hastily braided locks coming apart in a drape of black — the slitted hem of her dress, the front part anyway — her whole body, thanks to the loose harness — even her tits decided to flop free. “Fuck sakes,” was added in, during the struggle to situate, cover, and move everything out of her face at the same time with minimal success.

Fortunately, Hirek was too busy to notice; Talia shot him a look that turned into a double-take, eyes widened in shock, mid-roll, at a literal wall of blackness approaching at a speed her brain couldn’t quantify. The warning left her lips as something entirely too calm and rational for the situation, and really wasn’t much of a warning at all: “Um, wave.”

Somehow, she managed to point at it.

There wasn’t much else to do after that than hold on; the ship spun like a top, albeit in the slowest, most terrifying way imaginable. Talia’s eyes stayed open and her mouth stayed shut for most of it, due to how hard her teeth were clenched in equal parts fear and control; they darted to Hirek, the controls she had no hope of understanding, then to the storm and waves — in a repeating circuit.

Hirek recovered control gradually, with visible effort. ‘That was not the sea,’ he stated, then twisted around to look behind them.

“Huh,” Talia huffed as she threw her hair back out of her face, then followed his movement with a grunt of effort; it really sucked being smaller than everyone. While in possession of remarkably sharp vision and the situational awareness to track multiple targets at distance, as much as she strained against the harness, all she could see was the ass-end of the ship, streams of rain, and the worst flying conditions beyond that she’d ever witnessed.

Then the glow and flash of incoming fire registered, and with it, a hissed line of rapid-fire Arabic curses. “I cant see the bogey — can you shake it? Who the hell are they anyway?”

Hirek responded with what he knew and what he guessed, which was better than what Talia could manage; her eyes narrowed as they both turned back around. “No ones killing you today — certainly not the fucking Tal Shiar,” she promised; a hollow promise, perhaps, but she meant it all the same. “What can I do? I need to do something!”

He told her to tighten her straps, as the nose of the craft pitched down — towards the churning depths. Talia complied, post haste; tightening each individual harness with an audible screeched of protesting fabric.

‘You’re about to find out how deep this hull goes.’

“I’d really rather not — doesn’t this thing have weapons?” Talia’s eyes stayed fixated on the waves, growing larger by the second; she felt the blood drain from her face. “N-no — no way, this is insane, Hirek!”

‘They’re better armed. Considerably. They bought it by cutting hull mass —'

The nose pitched further, diving towards the rolling mass of water; Talia visibly squirmed in her harness, head shaking rapidly. “Nope — noooo, no-no-no,” she protested over the rest of Hirek’s explanation; everything that followed out of her mouth was a rapid deluge — a high pitched, incessant plea: “I don’t like this, I don’t like it, no! Please listen to me — we can evade and call for backup! DB is in a Valravyn, we’re less than a hundred kilometers out, she-could-be-here-in-minutes-and-vape-this-asshole-HIREK-PLEASE!”

The waves had become a textured tapestry of imminent death; crested with foam, rolling, blue-black in the near darkness. She could see the reflection of their running lights on the surface — a bullseye that grown exponentially. Amidst the panic that threatened to undo all her training and supposedly impenetrable will, Talia clenched her eyes shut. Her entire existence had fallen away, reduced to a terrified version of herself with only the capacity to drone the same words over and over; a pleading mantra.

“Please-don’t-do-this, please-don’t-do-this, please —"

‘Brace.’

Every muscle in her body was already locked rigid; arms crossed over her chest, straps clenched in fists. There wasn’t a scream; Talia’s jaw was locked beyond the capacity for speech — the sound that left her started as something in her chest, near the back of her throat: a growl that rose in pitch, in octaves, rapidly. By the time of impact, it had the same intensity and whine as the over-worked engines; a screeching whine — something produced when nails raked over chalkboard — nothing intended to be produced from human vocal cords.

The impact itself was a bone-jarring assault on every sense; a roar of protesting electronics, matter and energy. It was a traumatizing clash of physics. Talia felt herself bodily thrown forwards, then back. It knocked the wind from her; blood registered in her mouth — pain flared through her entire body. Red flickered in her vision, even though her eyes refused to open. Her chest rose and fell with great heaps of breath, and she had no hope of slowing it.

Something hissed — crackled; a power conduit? One eye opened to peak. Yes, something underneath her seat had shorted out, spewing sparks up at her bare legs.

Darkness surrounded.

Her gaze drifted to Hirek; his head was leaned back, body limp — unconscious. Talia disengaged her harness instantly, hands reached out to cradle his head. “Hirek,” she croaked — voice hoarse, dry, and painful. A gash bled freely from above the left brow; the same blood marked the console in front of him. She acted without hesitation and ripped a length of fabric from the hem of her dress, then quickly wrapped it over the wound.

“Hirek, wake up,” Talia insisted — as the ship drifted, deeper and deeper into the black. On instinct, one hand gripped the control stick, while the other forcefully — but purposefully — knuckled his sternum.

“Hirek — wake up! Wake up — come on, darling. Please!”

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #16 –
[ Hirek tr'Aimne | Private Transport, Submerged | Barrier Reef, Uuluma Chain | Romulus ] @Dumedion
He came back in pieces. Pressure first — the deep ache of it in his sinuses and behind the teeth, which told him where he was before his eyes did. Then sound: no rain, no wind, no engines. A tick of cooling metal. Something spitting. Then pain, arriving late and comprehensively, a hot line above the left brow and a bar of it across the collarbone where the harness had done its work.Then a hand on his sternum, grinding.

"—come on, darling. Please!"

Even with his eyes still closed, he could sense the darkness of the cockpit except for the emergency strip along the deck and the arterial red of the depth column and the myriad colors of the console monitors. He could also feel that Talia's face was very close to his. Three separate alarms were competing for his attention. Darling. He smiled before he did anything else.

"Darling." He tasted the word. "It took a blunt-force head injury to shake that one loose. Had I known the price, I'd have hit a console on purpose. Somewhere around the third day we met." He opened his eyes and caught sight of her face as it began doing something dangerous. "And the shouting. All that please don't do this, all that furious insistence on my continued existence—" he got his thumb under the blood coming into his eye again, cleared it, "—a less careful man might conclude you'd developed a fondness. A small one. Nothing to alarm the Diplomatic Corps."

She drew breath as if to answer, but he did not let her. He caught her elbow with one hand and her wrist with the other, drew her the short distance required, and set his mouth against hers — barely. Less than a kiss. The suggestion of one, the way spray touches skin before the wave arrives. Then he pulled back far enough to find her eyes in the red emergency light.

"I had no intention of dying tonight," he said. "I have considerably less intention of dying at the hands of the Tal Shiar."

The console chimed. Letting go of her wrist, he got his left hand onto the pitch control and found the craft answering, sluggish and heavy-nosed, still descending. The depth column read one hundred and ninety and climbing. Rated hull tolerance was three hundred and twelve. The descent slowed. Two hundred and four. Two hundred and six. Held. Then slowly tipped in the opposite direction as he angled the pitch to ascend again.

All this took seconds, during which he enjoyed holding her against his side, relishing the fact that even if it was for a brief time, she’d initiated a genuine touch of concern, and had not been doing so to garner anything from him in return. Except, of course, his consciousness.

"And no. We don't call DB." He turned his gaze back to hers, letting go of her elbow long enough to draw a finger along the seam of her lips, pulling it away to show her the remnants of her blood. "Consider what you would be transmitting. A Romulan national on personal leave, in a rented craft, with an unsanctioned Starfleet officer who has no clearance to be outside the diplomatic compound, no filed itinerary, and no explanation for how she left a diplomatic compound during the first official talks between the Federation and a government eleven days old." He glanced at her. "Whatever's happening to us tonight, that signal would be the greater weapon. Somebody would build a war out of it."

An incessant beeping caught his attention, and he sighed. Of course…

"Ah." He let go of her and turned. "Forgive me. I'd have preferred to linger in your arms basking in your attention. However,” he unceremoniously pushed her out of his lap back towards her seat, “there's a torpedo looking for us." He nodded toward her seat. "Sit — strap in—"

He returned his attention to the controls and quickly began evasive manuevers. The engines came up out of a near humming silence in,to a whine, and the black outside the canopy stopped being empty. Sensors gave him almost nothing: a smear of returns, a wall of noise where the storm was beating the water into froth sixty meters above them. Enough. Ahead, a reef tower rose out of the dark like a drowned cathedral — a column of coral and rock four hundred years old, mapped in his head before he could read.

He flew straight at it. The proximity alarm started shrieking at two hundred meters. At forty, he rolled the craft hard onto its flank and banked out, hull plating groaning, and behind them the torpedo went into the tower with its guidance still convinced. The shockwave shoved them sideways through the water like a hand.

"That," he said, correcting, "is what the reef is for."

He took them down into it. The Uuluma barrier ran ninety kilometers along the chain, and the inner labyrinth was a warren — towers, arches, collapsed galleries, channels that closed and opened with the season. He threaded it at speed on instruments that were spotty at best and on a memory of the place that was thirty years stale and still, apparently, load-bearing.

"Their targeting has to distinguish coral from hull. In this?" A channel narrowed and he put the craft through it on its side. "The storm is aerating the water column all the way down. Every return is noise. It buys us time — nothing more. This edge wears out, and then we are back in open sea, and they'll be waiting where the reef ends because that's where I'd wait." The channel opened into a gallery, and he cut across it.

He took a reading — position, drift, depth, the little the sensors would still admit to — ran the course in his head because the navigational computer had been part of the right-hand column that folded, and keyed a burst into the encrypted local band. Clan frequencies. Older than the Republic, and never once written down where the Tal Shiar could find them.

"I am also not an idiot, and I have no ambition to be a lone hero." Another gallery. He held the craft steady through it and set his jaw. With a subtle movement, he punched the SEND key. “If they aren’t jamming the immediate vicinity, we should have support here in a few minutes.” The transmission light died. "And my apologies — that told them precisely where we are."

The alarm went off again. He broke left through a coral arch as the second torpedo came through it behind him, and it detonated against the gallery wall a hundred meters back, and the reef came apart.

Not water this time. Mass. A slab of four-hundred-year-old coral the size of a shuttle came out of the dark on the concussion wave and took them across the dorsal plating, and the craft went end over end and slammed into the reef floor, and stopped. Hard. The engines cut themselves. Somewhere aft, plating shrieked and kept shrieking. Then everything went very quiet except for water finding its way in somewhere behind the bulkhead, patient as arithmetic. He got his eyes onto the readouts before the ringing stopped. Structural integrity: failing, slowly, in a way that would not stay slow. Power: minimal. Life support: yes, for now, on the reserve cell, and he did not look at the number long enough to let the figure become a sentence in his head. Depth: thirteen meters.

Thirteen. That, at least, was a gift. Because thirteen meters was nothing. Thirteen meters meant that if it came to it, he could flood the cabin deliberately, equalize, blow the canopy and take them out — and the island that this barrier hung off was a mile north-northeast, and a mile was a swim. Hard in the dark. Vicious in a storm, with the surface breaking apart and the current running the way it would be running tonight. But survivable, for someone raised in it. He had done longer at eleven, for a wager.

Then he looked at her, and the arithmetic changed. She had never freedived in her life. He knew that the way he knew the depth column: she had grown up in cockpits and corridors. Put her out there in a night sea running six-meter swell, with no rig and no training and no instinct for what the water was about to do next, and a mile stopped being a distance and became a verdict. He was not going to say that. He was, however, going to find another answer, because the one he had was not acceptable.

"Thirteen meters," he said instead. "And there's power for a while yet." He wiped his eye again. "My cousins keep the reef watch on a rotation and they have been waiting their entire lives for something interesting to happen on it." Aft, the bulkhead groaned and found a new note. He turned in his seat to face her fully, and the teasing had gone out of his voice. "Talia. Your exosuit." He nodded toward the tote wedged behind her seat. "Is it pressure-rated for water?"

He detached from his seat and opened a few compartments until he found what he was looking for: two devices shaped much like a torpedo, only they could be grasped with two hands and attached with a strap to the torso of the person operating them. Turning back to face her, body hunched over in an uncomfortable crouch thanks to the low ceiling, he held up one of the devices for her to see.

“This is a landing buoy. It takes readings when activated and automatically makes for the closest landmass to assist with rescue. If we have to flood the compartment and make a swim for it, this will make the difference between getting lost in this dark froth and being carried to shore.” He demonstrated where to activate it and how to operate it in quick succession before squatting next to her seat. “I’m not saying we flood the compartment right away; there is still the possibility that my cousins arrive in time to chase away those bastards and descend to tow us out.”

As if to argue with him, the transport groaned and shuddered as more hull buckled against the weight of the water and the failing shields. “But we may not have the luxury of deciding such things either as it may be the sea decides for us.”

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #17 –
[Ens. Talia "Shadow" Al-Ibrahim | Busted-Ass-Potato, Submerged | Barrier Reef, Uuluma Chain | Romulus] Attn: @Ellen Fitz 

Anger had overridden panic. It had always come easily for Talia; a fuel waiting just below the surface, born of a wound that would never heal because she had built her entire personality around surviving it. So, when Hirek’s lips curled into the smile he wore often – not the real one she had, in all honesty, loved instantly – there was a brief, initial flood of relief…

The Romulan ruined that as soon as he opened his mouth, of course; of all the times to tease her…

He’d seen it coming – the immediate physical and verbal assault – before Talia had finished drawing breath. He moved: his hands held her strikes at bay, then pulled her close...

Talia’s fists fell open almost instantly; her body tensed once in his grip – no more. There was no fight in her against him, not really, because that was where she wanted to be. Nose to nose with him, everything fell aside: the fear, the anger, the ship, the idiots still out there trying to kill them…he was alive, and he was close, so dangerously close…

Talia’s mind blanked, while her body betrayed everything she wished to conceal in ways he certainly noted but she had no hope of controlling: the way her torso tilted just so into his, the way her eyes fell, the way her lips subtly parted at the merest touch of his…but then he pulled away, and the moment shattered…

She looked at his finger, at her blood – then tongued the split in her lip involuntarily.

It took everything she had to maintain some semblance of mental acuity; while he took the opportunity to explain things that Talia already knew in a rational sense – even if she disagreed. There was no point arguing; the pilot focused on regaining control of herself – her emotional state, her physical readiness. Now was not the time to come apart; as she listened, his voice and reasoning helped to bring her back down – whether he had intended to or not – and in response, she couldn’t help one corner of her lip from lifting.
 
He’d figured her out, and even though he’d teased her about it…there it was; she should have felt embarrassed, or angry at herself...but no. Then and there, beyond the concern for their immediate survival, she discovered that she enjoyed the fact that he'd finally figured it out, in a type of relief. Talia’s mind reeled with the revelation, which left her there, held by his side, frozen with hesitation. A chime broke the spell, demanding her attention even though she couldn’t tell what it meant.

Pull yourself together – there isn’t time for this right now, her mind screamed, and Talia had already begun to separate herself from Hirek when he decided to push her away, back to her seat, due to an incoming torpedo.

“Go, go,” Talia urged, sinching her straps back down quickly; trying to locate the incoming ordinance in the darkness beyond, and failing. “I can’t see it,” she reported anyway, leaning into the evasive maneuvers on instinct. She did note, however, the enormous column of rock that Hirek had decided to fly straight at; a frown of concern spread as the whine of the engines increased in pitch, noting an increase in power.

“Uh, is there a reason you’re trying to kill us again? That’s a reef, Hirek –”

He banked, hard, so much like Talia would have done in a Valkyrie, under very different conditions; the effect was so similar though: the torpedo slammed into the pillar of rock in the next second, the shockwave hit a second after that. She felt her teeth click together as the ship was thrown aside, hard enough to make her grunt.

‘That is what the reef is for.’

Talia smirked again, knowingly; he was using it like she had used the wrecked and disabled remains of both Klingon and Romulan ships during the Triangle – as cover.

“You intend to draw them in here, I assume," she guessed, still searching the darkness she could see for threats. She had nothing else to contribute, and her assumption proved incorrect anyway – par for the course. Hirek had other intentions, which he explained in his particular habit: at the exact same moment as he did it.

“Support from who,” Talia managed to ask, equally confused and concerned; but before Hirek had a chance to respond, her world descended into a tumbling roar of protesting metal, shrieking engines, and gravitational forces. There was barely time to brace when it began, and no time for anything else while it happened. In the end, as the craft slowly, inexorably settled in the death-bed it had dug, Talia flinched as the systems slowly died with a final spray of sparks, leaving them in crimson lit darkness.
Trickling water filled the silence that followed, punctuated by the slow creaking of metal stressed beyond its limit, straining to hold the shape it had been beaten into. Talia’s attention darted to Hirek, who appeared to suffer no further injury, then up, towards the surface.

She couldn’t see it.

“How bad is it,” Talia whispered.

Hirek’s answer wasn’t as bad as she’d expected; that didn’t offer much comfort, either. The question about the exosuit earned a subtle exhalation – there was only one reason why he would ask such a thing, and Talia ran the risk analysis in her head before she even considered answering: she’d run simulated recovery training at TACCON school; every pilot had – with an older suit version, at ten meters, with her helm on – under completely controlled conditions. She had no idea how it would handle thirteen, with no helm, under a hurricane, in an active combat situation. Her eyes followed Hirek’s movements as he introduced the buoys, their function and operation, while the weight of the decision settled in her mind.

The ship wasn’t going to last much longer – that was evident, even to someone who had never stepped foot in one before; Talia couldn’t guess how long they had before the hull buckled altogether – and she wasn’t about to wait around to find out.

“Move,” she asked, after popping the harness quick release, then scrambled up to kneel on the seat to pull the tote free with a strained grunt of effort. “This will go quicker if you help.”

Once he had moved, Talia lowered the tote between their seats and opened it to pull the compression suit out; the legs went on easily enough after the dress had been hiked up – the top was ripped free from the strips that still held it to the bottoms – which was tugged on only after she had quickly and unashamedly pulled the dress off over her head. While the suit no longer squeezed against her body the way it was designed to, it still offered some protection against the more abrasive inner lining of the exosuit itself; even if most of her abdomen remained bare, it was better than trying to wear the dress.

Talia spoke as she ripped the makeshift shoes off her feet: “Legs, then boots - torso, arms then gloves,” she stated. “I’m not sure how it will handle the pressure, but it doesn’t matter. We can’t stay here. The suit has a built-in recovery mechanism that activates as soon as it detects liquid; auto-inflatables deploy on the chest, arms and thighs, along with the emergency beacon and IR strobe.” A pause, as she shifted position and shimmied into the leg section. “Which, if those assholes are still out there, will cause problems,” she sighed, then grunted as the leg section auto sized itself with a series of clicks. "But I'll deal with that when the time comes."

Water was pooling around Hirek’s feet as Talia pulled on the boots and stood, turning her back to him to feed her arms into the torso section and pulled in closed around herself. “Hold the back as I twist – on three; one, two, three.” Her body rotated in a snap left-to-right motion, which aligned torso locking mechanism to the lower faster than it took the engineered rigging to do itself; the two halves crunched together, and a slow grind of servos began as each sectional armor deployed into position.

The ship shuddered again, groaning louder than before; Talia’s eyes flicked to the canopy, just in time to witness several cracks splintering across the surface. One of them sprayed water in a hiss of pressure.

“Arms, now,” she demanded; they worked in rushed, but controlled urgency, together, for the next minute and a half. Talia didn’t have the words to say what she was thinking: that this probably wouldn’t end well for her – but there was still a chance, and to her, it was worth taking. That was the reason she’d come along in the first place – and because Hirek had invited her.  Once she was finally suited up, once again, the armor powered up with a tapped command and the interior of the ship lit in blue/white light and a low hum of grinding servos. Talia turned to face Hirek, and accepted the buoy he held out for her; the strap went around her chest, tightened, tested. She nodded her readiness to him, then raked a gloved hand through the tangled mess of hair.

“Listen,” a hand went to his. There really wasn’t much to say, but at the same time, there was; Talia hesitated for only a second, then let the words spill out, just in case: “The Diplomatic Corps…have a serious problem,” she told him, then smirked, despite everything. “...I think we both know that. To be continued,” was added with a shrug, then another nod as her eyes met his.

“Ready when you are, darling."

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #18 –
[ Hirek tr'Aimne | Private Transport, Submerged | Barrier Reef, Uuluma Chain | Romulus ] @Dumedion

Darling.

"Careful." He had one hand braced on the canopy frame as the deck shifted underfoot. "You say that where my cousins can hear it, and then it becomes a fact, and facts on Uuluma are load-bearing." Water had reached his ankles, cold enough through the soft flats to be...interesting. "You have no experience with a spoiled Romulan. We are given a name, and we build the rest of ourselves around it like a reef around a wreck. Say it again, and I might keep it." He leaned closer, lips nearly touching the skin of her forehead as he spoke. "I might even make you say it in front of people."

The bulkhead behind them groaned, found a new note, and held it. Hirek groaned along with it.

"Turn around."

He waited until she presented her back and the blue-white glow of the exosuit's spine array lit the flooded footwells, throwing the shadows of the seats up the canopy in long distorted shapes that moved when the ship settled. Her hair was still salt-damp at the ends from the spray that had come through the seal. He put two fingers on the housing at the base of her shoulder blade, felt for the seam, and swore at it quietly in a dialect she had no hope of parsing.

The emergency beacon was designed by people who assumed the wearer wanted to be found. Federation optimism, cast in duranium.

He got the access plate off with his thumbnail and lost the nail doing it. Beneath, the transmitter sat in a shock cradle rated for atmospheric ejection, and there was nothing about it his hands could break. He waded back two steps, hauled open the compartment under the seat rail — the one every craft of this class carried, because the sea taught Romulans early that a man may need to hit something and the tools nearest to hand were rarely a phaser — and came up with a wrench.

"You'll want to hold still. I've been told my percussive maintenance lacks finesse."

The first strike skidded. The second went where it was meant to. On the fourth, the cradle split and the wrench jumped, and he opened the heel of his hand along the broken edge of the housing. Green ran down his wrist and dripped into the rising water and vanished. He didn't stop.

"There is a version of tonight," he continued, conversationally, hammering, "in which we are both undressed, and nobody has to apologize afterward. No pride involved. No hull failure. I would like it noted, for the record, that I have twice now been in a position to look at you and twice been prevented by circumstance and by manners, which are the only two forces in the universe with worse timing than the Tal Shiar." Another strike. Something inside the housing gave up entirely. "Should we have a third occasion, I intend to be shameless and I invite you to join me in that."

The beacon's ready-light died. He fitted the plate back over the wound in her armor and pressed until it seated, and let his hand stay a moment longer than the work required, and then bent and put his mouth to the base of her neck, where the collar of the exosuit had not quite closed. Brief. Warm. He straightened before she could turn around, because he was not certain what his face was doing.

"I'm going to flood the compartment."

He waded aft. The water was at his knees now and rising in slow surges that matched some rhythm out in the dark, the sea leaning on the wreck and easing off and leaning again. The stern lockers had sprung in the impact and given up half their contents to the flood, which meant feeling for things by hand in freezing black water while the hull ticked and complained above him.

A blade — short, ugly, meant for parting fishing line and not much else. A flare pistol with four cartridges in the grip, dry. A medkit sealed in orange polymer that had cost his rental deposit and would be worth every credit within the hour. He stowed all three in the buoy strapped across his chest and sealed the compartment. The food packs went into hers. Six of them, wedged in tight, the seal thumbed shut.

"When you reach the beach, you run. Straight in, off the sand, into the trees." He worked the manual override on the hatch seal, and the mechanism answered with a shudder and a low grinding retraction that let the sea in properly, a black sheet folding across the deck plates and climbing his thighs. "The craft above us can read life signs. In this weather, through a broken water column, with the storm shredding every return they get, they will know we're alive and be unable to say precisely where. Tree cover and life signs in the jungle finish the job." Water at his waist. "Do not go far past the treeline. These islands are uninhabited by humanoids but are not, wholly, uninhabited, and that is not an accident of settlement patterns. Twenty meters in, then stop and wait for me."

He got himself upright in the narrowing space between the flood and the canopy, and made his breathing change. Long draw through the nose, held at the top until the chest ached and then a little past it. Slow release. Again, deeper. It was the pattern an oyster hunter had beaten into him at eleven with a fist in his shirt and no patience whatsoever. He caught her eyes over the rising black and held them.

"With me. Not fast. Fill from the belly, not the shoulders." Another draw, deliberate and visible, and he waited until he saw her chest move in the same slow rhythm before he went on. "The buoy will do the work. You will not need much air, but you will want it anyway, because your body is about to tell you a number of things that are not true." Water at his collarbone. Cold enough now to bite. "Do not hold your breath on the ascent. Let it out the whole way up, slowly. Thirteen meters is a short journey, and your lungs will still try to injure you if you insist on keeping everything you started with. Your ears will hurt. Ignore them."

The last pocket of air pressed into the top of the canopy, and the sound of the world reduced itself to his own pulse.

"Left grip arms it. Right thumb releases the drag." His voice came out thinner in the compressed air. "Don't fight the direction it takes you. It knows where the island is."

He reached across and took her hand, and closed his fingers hard, once. Then he let go, hit the release, and the sea came in all at once and took the cabin.

Green light. Silt boiling up off the deck. The canopy lifted away above them, tumbling slow, and the storm was a distant grey seizure somewhere overhead. He watched her arm the buoy — watched the blue bloom of it, the auto-inflatables snapping taut, the pull as it took her — and only then armed his own, and thumbed the drag half-open, and let her run ahead of him into the dark water while he followed a body-length behind and slightly beneath, close enough to reach her if the sea changed its mind.

Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Reply #19 –
[Ens. Talia "Shadow" Al-Ibrahim | Private Transport, Submerged | Barrier Reef, Uuluma Chain | Romulus] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

Hirek’s warning earned the softest of chuckles and a smile; small miracles, given the rapid deterioration of the situation. The hull groaned again, and the water had steadily risen, but Talia stood there anyway, trying and failing to find a way to deactivate the emergency beacon, gloved fingers tapping across one forearm-mounted PaDD. Her eyes rose to meet his after he'd pulled back. The pilot tilted her head up and to the side at him, lips still curled, despite everything going on around them.

Darling had slipped without remorse or regret — her feelings were what they were and there was nothing either of them could do for it. As pet names went, it was a rather generic term of affection, for humans at least; Talia had given Hirek another name since the first time they’d met. In her mind and heart, it would always hold more intimate value, but that was beside the point. She realized what he had done, and what he had said — by noting what remained unsaid.

“Mhm," she hummed, "I might do it anyway just to watch you squirm,” she teased back. “Just know that you'll always be Pretty-Eyes to me, and there’s nothing you can do about it — but if you’re so concerned about what I call you, in public or otherwise, then I wont use it again,” a pause to lift her chin, the smile spreading wider. “Unless you ask me to.”

A chime from her arm sounded; Talia swore at it.

“There’s no override for the beacon. I can’t disable it, which means as soon as I hit that water we’re fucked,” a hand raked the hair from her face, mind and mouth racing. “Listen, I’ll lure them away, and when your people arrive —”

‘Turn around.’

Talia’s mouth worked silently for a few heartbeats, then she surrendered, knowing what he was about to attempt; the curtain of damp, black hair pulled aside over the front of a shoulder mid-turn to expose her back and neck.

“Its just below the thruster assembly. The seal runs parallel to the spinal actuators, marked with hazard stripes. See it?”

She heard him hiss something, then felt the softest of clicks through the layers of the exosuit. She tried not to look at the darkness beyond the canopy, or the water climbing its way up her legs. A glance back at Hirek revealed the Romulan holding a wrench.

‘You’ll want to hold still. I’ve been told my percussive maintenance lacks finesse.’

Talia braced herself and nodded. “Careful, please,” she added. The first whack made her grimace, mostly due to the noise. By the third, her reaction reduced to blinks. By the sixth, she was ready to stop him before he inadvertently damaged something more vital — but the strikes hadnt slowed, and Hirek showed no signs of stopping as he spoke, until he finally succeeded.

A quick glance at the suit’s systems display confirmed it; the emergency beacon was offline.
Talia huffed a quiet chuckle of amusement, both for his dogged determination and commentary.

“Noted, and accepted,” she whispered, as Hirek’s lips pressed against the skin of her neck. A deep breath followed the brief contact, eyes closed of their own accord; nothing like enough, but more than she ever realized was needed. “I recall consent being an issue before; for the record — you have it, officially,” was added, thrown into the limited space between them to settle nowhere in particular; just another statement jettisoned in the moment in case there wasn’t another opportunity to do so.

He moved away to flood the compartment.

Talia readied herself mentally for what was to come, focused on Hirek’s voice. She didn’t argue, didn’t interrupt; there was no time, even if she wanted to — which she did. It didn’t matter. The fear, the anxiety, the absurd irony — all of it was pushed down and away, to be dealt with later, if there even was a later.

She forced herself to match Hirek’s breathing instead, as they rapidly ran out of air. Cold crept in through the suit and stung her face; both arms braced against the roof of the compartment as the water reached her neck and kept rising. He reached and squeezed her hand, she squeezed back. Enough air remained for one final, desperate breath...

Then the pressure rushed in with cold darkness.

Her hair was everywhere; noticeable by the shadows cast from the exosuit’s dim light — which seemed even brighter now in total darkness. The auto-inflatables activated almost instantly, followed quickly by the buoy; Talia felt herself pulled along, towards a grey mass — ears screaming in protest — eyes squeezed almost shut against the salty sting of the chilly water.

Hirek disappeared into the darkness somewhere behind.


[…Meanwhile, Agent Raja | Private Transport | In the storm above]

He was fairly certain the target had been neutralized, but the Tal Shiar didn’t deal in personal assumptions; they dealt in evidence.

The storm intensity had increased exponentially — dangerously — but that couldn’t be helped. The mission took priority, especially over his own personal safety. Being disposable came with the job.

His hands remained steady on the controls, circling back onto a wider track around the last reliable sensor return; the skid-flyer banked hard, buffetted by the wind, leaving contour trails of rain mixed with sea spray in its wake. Whoever the target really was — whatever he’d done to earn the organization’s ire — Raja hoped it was worth all the considerable inconvenience. He refused to think about his family; how he’d been forced to leave them suddenly, without warning, all due to a communique out of nowhere, from no one he could accurately identify.

All it mentioned was an activation codeword, the mission, and, of course, the consequences of failure: his wife and boys, to be specific.

Everything else was left for him to figure out.

Sensors were useless in the soup. Visual was almost as bad. A tap on the dash powered up the external flood lights — which revealed little more than pounding rain and rolling surf. Raja hauled back on the stick; the skif hovered in place, nearly on top of the transmission burst.

His eyes searched the waves, almost frantic:
 
Nothing.

A moment passed. Two. Sweat had broken out atop the bare flesh of his head; cold sweat — the stink of it filled his nostrils. His mind raced; trying to calculate how far he could make it before they found him, and killed him, after forcing him to watch his family die first.

A glimmer of light caught his attention; small, half obscured by the waves it moved through, barely above the surface. He swore, then pulled up the disruptor targeting on manual, trying to catch sight of it while keeping the skif stable at the same time.

It was a body; the outline motion blurred, at horrible resolution, but there was no mistaking it — foolishly lit up like a glowing beacon in the dark.

“Got you,” Raja breathed out in relief, then spun up the twin disruptors up as the targeting system locked in. Green flashed beyond the canopy — twin streaks of emerald fire punched into the storm-wracked sky — to chew into the frothing sea on each side of the target.

Another curse turned into a bitter string of them as the wind pushed the skif off-trim, forcing him to adjust wildly before he lost too much altitude. The engines screamed through it all, as the craft swung around in a steadily increasing arc, barely ten meters off the surf.

Lightning flashed all around, as he struggled to stay in the air. He wrenched the controls back out, only for a wave to crash into the bottom hull — tossing the entire craft up in a heave of violence. Raja opened the throttle to max, engine flare burned into the rain slicked air behind him. He climbed hard, to fifty meters, then leveled off and searched the sea for his prey.

It was gone; lost in the churning sea — or worse — eliminated with a lucky shot by some malicious trickery of fate. Time stretched out like a blade as Raja hovered, circled, rode the surf and braced against the storms fury, hunting the waves for any sign.

The minutes turned by — five, then ten…Raja felt his guts grow cold with dread. Sensor sweeps remained useless, filled with ghost pickups and negative returns. If he didn’t find the target soon, he’d be forced to withdraw…

Suddenly the system finally pinged an accurate return: the target had chewed up the distance while he’d fought the storm trying to reaquire —  it was now less than 200 meters from a solitary island barely a kilometer wide. He didn’t relish the idea of handling business in person, man to man. He swung the skif around to engage, turning into the wind.

“Just die already,” Raja pleaded, and squeezed the trigger again.
 

[…Meanwhile, Ens. Talia “Shadow” Al-Ibrahim | In the sea]

The waves were merciless; even with the inflatables, Talia couldn’t keep her head above the water longer than a few seconds. She’d swallowed more water than air, each breath reduced to a ragged wet gulp between hacking  coughs.

Powering off the exosuit was a dream — between the waves, wind, constant motion, complete lack of visibility and non-existent dexterity — it was impossible. She kept trying anyway, spinning uselessly behind the buoy as it dragged her along, with nothing holding but the strap across her chest.

The bastard shot at her again; twinned lines of emerald — close enough to flash-fry the sea into steam less than a meter away before the waves absorbed them. She reached for the buoy in desperation; knowing what she was about to do might very well kill her. It didn’t matter; the sea didn’t give her a choice — It swallowed her whole in the next instant, into a tumbling, uncontrollable, disorienting roll beneath the waves. She crashed, hard, into something painfully solid and sharp. Lines of pain registered on her face, through her knee and thigh, but most of all through her shoulder.

The buoy tugged her up, back to the surface. In the distance between flashes of lightning, emerald and orange fire bloomed and died. Light swayed in the rain before another wave took her sight. This one lasted far longer. Something had wrapped up around her limbs, dragging her down. Her lungs burned for oxygen, then screamed, and her back hit something hard enough to knock what little air they held out altogether…

She felt everything fade away, weightless, drifting into oblivion...

Moments or an eternity later Talia woke choking up water; she was laid out on her side in the wet sand, nudged by gentle waves crashing against her — deafened by the surf and the storm. Her armor was wrapped up in stinging weeds that clung to her limbs and trailed out behind her in a broken line of vegetation that lead back out into the waves.

She crawled; the movement sent pain searing through her whole body — shoulder dislocated, or broken — something sharp and spiny lanced through the meat of one thigh, lodged under the armor plating — half blind by blood and salt, face stinging and bleeding...

But she was alive.

Talia grit her teeth with a groan of effort; she got to her knees — then hauled herself up out of the surf. One PaDD was cracked, useless. The other still functioned. A tap killed power to her suit, and the lights died as a hand swept the salt-and-sand filled mop of hair away from her face.

She searched the darkened beach for Hirek, still coughing up fluid; that didn’t stop her from calling out his name. Another attempt followed — louder, longer...

Nothing — just an empty beach, rain, wind, and somewhere out there, some asshole trying to kill them.

Twenty meters in, then stop and wait for me.

One hand gripped the buoy, deactivated now that its function had been served. The other hovered over her thigh, over the object impaled through flesh and suit, as Talia hauled herself up and stumbled ashore. Running was a myth — every step was laced with agony — but she didn’t stop.

The tree-line took an eternity to reach.

Talia kept moving anyway.
 
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