Shadow of the Empire: Day 09

[aesmael]

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

Last night I committed a NaNoWriMo sin. After a couple of hours writing some scenes for Ferideh the story would be improved if these were Algol's scenes instead and rewrote. They ended up longer than before but I wrote much less in total than I'd intended to. Trying to be a bit more disciplined about it tonight.

I've been leaving out the formatting in the story so far, but forgot to call attention to this until now. It does mean some information is missing which will be present in the final version but I doubt that is anything pertinent to this particular story. And maybe I'm mistaken.

Word meter's been acting up, but the total currently is 5770 words. So here we go:

They watched her walk up the steps to the surface and did not follow. When she turned and looked back they were standing there still, no inclination shown to do anything, and when they were out of sight they were out of her life.

So this was it. They had disposed of her, they were going to leave her to her life. She had been delivered to an unremarkable town, its small bubble of sky tinted a familiar blue through which the darker blue disk of Shihab loomed. The buildings were low and small, snowy white or charcoal grey matched to matched to the landscape and punctuated by patches of green park and trees.

Algol hefted her bag and went looking for somewhere to stay.

* * *

Although they had ordered the space corps shut down, disbanded, the Algonthens had not interfered with member's accounts and Algol, apart from her comforts to pass the waiting times, had spent very little. Consequently she had now a sufficient reserve to keep herself unworried while she attempted to settle into her new location.

First, she found herself a hotel, one with a view of a park. She didn't often get to see views like that. Or she hadn't. She expected to be seeing a lot more of them from now on.

The next morning she ventured out in early morning artificial light to seek employment with the town council. She got a job easily enough, with, on hearing her explanation of her situation, some added angry sympathy.

When she asked, concerned, if there might be any problem, any consequences being risked, by her as a former officer of the space corps seeking work in government, she was told something which immediately aroused her interest: "Why should they," said her interviewer, "when they haven't shown any interest in us so far?"
The rest of the day she walked the town she had been dropped in, mingling, seeking a feel for the place she had been told to now call home. In the evening she returned to her room and accessed the terminal provided at the desk by the window, seeking information. She felt she could not trust the connections which had been installed in her head and avoided them.

She was puzzled by what she found. On her second evening she became alarmed, and the next day risked reaching out to Ferideh.

~ Where are you? ~

~ Buying apples, running errands. Why are you contacting me? We agreed not to do this. ~

~ Seemed important. You noticed there aren't many of them? ~

~ Yeah. Pretty quiet. ~

~ I don't think they're doing any sort of occupation. Not more than temporary, anyway. They didn't bring the numbers to actually rule us, just defeat us. ~

~ So, you think they're just going to drive us out of space and leave it at that? ~

~ Yep ~

The connection went dark for some moments, filled with rising fury from Ferideh.

~ They'll kill us. Cut us off from the universe, leave us to wither and die. Are you sure? ~

~ They didn't care about anything. Not Shula, not the space corps... there are only two things they've shown interest in: geometers and the spacelanes Zara has access to. I think as long as they've knocked us out of the sky and can keep us down here, that's all that matters to them. They don't care if we stagnate, if we choke on our isolation. ~

~ Suddenly I have an awful feeling in my stomach. ~

~ Yeah, me too. ~

~ So what now? Do we decry the state of things from the nearest rooftops? ~

~ Wouldn't have bothered calling you for that. Space corps' been forcibly dissolved. We've discharged our last obligation to them. I think now our greatest good is to oppose the Algonthens. So we're going back up. ~

~ Up? What can we do up there? ~

~ What can we do down here? They aren't even down here to do anything about, unless we could build some sort of giant cannon unnoticed. From the outside we have options. ~

~ Alright, you've got me. And now? ~

~ Now we get in touch with the others ~