Shadow of the Empire: Day 08

[aesmael]

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Not much to say at this point. Will have to increase the writing pace significantly to make the official targets but I think that's more "It would be nice" than "I have to". I am managing a rate about half that of the NaNoWriMo goal and for me that is significant. If I can keep it up this will signify a large step in my ability to produce story drafts.

As I had been learning with my work on A Library Fox, having a clearer idea of what I am doing as a scene in advance helps to work faster, where before I had often been working more sentence by sentence and often not knowing what happened that far ahead. I'm not actually sure if this is a change, and maybe I have just improved.

One thing I am disappointed about is how much some of the cast have been non-entities so far, particularly Algol. She was originally conceived as the starring character with a supporting cast but so far mostly Ferideh and Nawar have been featured, with a touch of Altair. I suspect this is because I am enjoying them more and that I have a less clear idea of who the other characters are or ways they might choose to be active. Will be trying to fix this both as I proceed and in revision, although this excerpt and the next are I think mainly committed to Nawar and Ferideh.

So here we go:

Their path would have given them some excellent views of outer moons on their way in, if anyone were relaxed enough to care. It was of no noticeable difference to the travel plan they would have been given ordinarily; it seemed the Algonthens were content to let traffic control function as it had been so long as they could interview captains to their political satisfaction.

At close traffic velocities they had an entire day to stew over the deviances there were from standard procedure. Primarily, Shula was being diverted from the spaceport used by the space corps to one much smaller and more isolated, which could mean nothing good. They themselves had been warned they would be placed under escort for evaluation immediately upon landing.

Nawar and Hanifah absorbed themselves in their work. Ferideh exercised herself into exhaustion. Algol and Altair consistently failed to complete any games between them. In the morning they woke and felt unrested, and the moon Shihab looming large in front of the planet called by the same name.

They had a brief look at Garrett's vessel, the IANS Potboiler, requested from Shula. Far enough it didn't look as impressive as it could, near enough for serious damage to be done, the ship was nearly on the far side of Zara's farthest settlement. Algol shivered, and thought she could feel Garrett watching them arrive across the gulf.

Technically their descent was unremarkable, falling over an expanding field of white, streaked with darker material, craters and cities. Shihab quickly turned into a world, and then they were landed.

It seemed a bare place, a few grey buildings on a field of grey and white, under a black sky, and left the impression it had been built by the Algonthens specifically to isolate and process incoming Zaran escorts and defenders. Algol wondered what it had been used for last month, or if the complex had stood empty, waiting for someone to find a use for it.

They had packed incompletely. Many of the comforts they had accumulated aboard the Shula could not be contained in the space and mass allotted to them, and when they stood outside their friend and home, waiting to be collected, they felt as if they had not entirely left. Parts of their extended selves left behind.

* * *

For Nawar that was particularly literal. Few of the attachments and augmentations she had acquired fit within the limits, and in the interests of coming out safely the other side of this inspection she had left behind much of what she would have especially preferred of herself. Not everything.

It felt like much longer than ten minutes before they were finally welcomed. Ferideh had wondered if they were trying to see if the crew would try something, and no one had a more convincing idea.

The detail sent to meet them seemed excessive, outnumbering them at least five to one.

"Oh come on," said Hanifah. "We haven't done anything yet."

"I wonder how many they would send if we had," said Ferideh.

Their captors were not amused. One by one they were led out away from the others and searched, their belongings rummaged through roughly. At Nawar they stopped.

"You were told no weapons." That was an angry face.

"We don't have any weapons! We left them behind, like we were told to."

"Then how do you explain this?" He shoved at her arm with the barrel of his weapon, another guard holding up a set of her working manipulators.

"These are my arms. These are my legs. These are my tools, this is how I work. If that rock you've been living under has left you too scared to deal with people, then fetch me a chair or I'm not going anywhere."

He backed off. She didn't care if he'd believed her or if he was just going along because she'd yelled hard enough.

They were passed through, their belongings held for now, forced into the back of a small van, driven to one of the distant skirting buildings, then forced back out again. Escorted inside as if the five of them might suddenly overpower any number of Algonthen guards. Nawar felt no such confidence, and Ferideh had promised not to try.

Through a maze of dull office corridors until they were dumped in a large and bare holding cell. There they were left a while as if they had not just been the focus of much attention, until it came time to stop pretending everyone was too busy to deal with them.

Algol was hauled out first, not returned when they came for Altair. Eventually they all ended up in a different location together, but in between was an interrogation that seemed mainly interested in their recent assignments. There were no questions about Shula, but plenty about trade routes they'd escorted, some others about what they hoped for when released. There was no question of the corps continuing to exist, of course.

It had been in the interest of both sides to give truthful answers, so truth was what was told. No clue if it was believed, but they'd shared what they had of travel and told a hope of settling down quietly and not being bothered.

Altair had faced additional questions on being a geometer, and harder questions when, under stress, she'd difficulty producing words. She returned with a bruise on her cheek, but said that had been stopped with a few calming sparks.

Every day for a week this was the texture of things. Questioned by different people, in different orders, but not on different topics. After the first day Altair was bound for questioning, but she had a pattern for the answers now so that was not a problem unless the manacles kept her fingers confined too long. By the end they were bored of being questioned.

* * *

One morning they were ushered out as a group, taken to an office which overlooked the dead cratered plains of Shihab. A man sat behind a desk and a moustache, looking important.

The Algonthens seemed to like keeping them waiting. They had to watch nearly a minute of paperwork shuffling before being presented with their anticlimax. Algonth, he said, had no further interest in them so long as they made no disruption. Since their previous line of work was most definitely out of the question, and they had expressed an interest in quietly settling, they would be assigned various villages and townships on Shihab in which to live and that would be that.

"I see," said Algol.

They were escorted back downstairs to the entrance, where a detail waited with their belongings. They were driven across the compound again - no sign of Shula - this time to a small transit station and waiting train which they were ushered aboard. It whisked them in its swift, quiet way under the surface to its connecting junction. There, they were split up, each with her own escort, taken to her own destination where she would be expected to make a quiet life for herself on pain of unspecified but presumably dire consequences.

And that was that.