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Interregnum 02-03 S2 / Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin
Last post by Ellen Fitz -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.
