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Save Point: The Evil Day

Aboard the Exploration Vessel 'Citadel'

There is a concussive burst like a inflated sunfish exploding in the heat, a weak over-pressure wave that rings in his ears, and Sethkill just has time to look up as Keselt abruptly appears in the corner and then falls down.

There is a sudden rush of blood to every one of his extremities as he goes from the stillness of lying down resting to trying to dash over to her as quickly as possible, and in his distraction he moves faster than even he can believe. In fact he's nearly at her as she hits the ground and and he notices the knife driven in just alongside her spine, rammed upward and inward from the small of her back, surprisingly pale red blood dribbling down the curve of her ass and thigh.

The blade is purple is poison and glares unwholesomely in the light, scattering it strangely .

The colour makes him think of his own severed arm, the pinch of powdered something like orme that Kilseth palmed, and he finally recognizes the stuff for what it is, now that he's seen it used in the way it was originally, back in a dark time in early prehistory where slavery and sacrifice briefly became the status quo, a normal way of life for several generations across the greater part of a continent, until the majority of blood imploded in on itself in a series of wars that wiped the slate clean. It's a time and a place no-one ever goes, even in simulations, except to make its remnants a fit target for destruction.

Kilseth has awoken something evil, a forgotten self-propagating meme of death, and it's a sad tribute to his past history that Sethkill is not even surprised.

All of this rushes through his mind in the instant as he grabs Keselt up, trying to support her staggered weight, trying to avoid placing pressure on the subtle knife, trying to get her across to the blanket draped across a casually careful slew of pillows that is their marriage bed.

Keselt is clutching something to her chest with one hand on the far side from where she's been stabbed, and it makes it harder to move her. As he half lifts, half drags her across the room it tumbles clumsily to the floor, landing leather cover open, dull brown scorch-marked embossing and raised corners, creasing ancient and priceless pages irreversibly beneath the weight, so they stick out sideways from underneath.

"...stole the book!" gasps Keselt proudly. "I saw my chance and I stole it back from him! I stole the book..."

He's just trying to decide whether or not it would be better or not to try and pull the dagger out immediately and stop any bleeding with the sheets when her eyes glaze over and she stops breathing completely. Her mouth lolls open vaguely. He checks and and there is no pressure of circulation as the pneuma push blood around her body.

He is faced with a terrible decision.

He could pick her up. He could run, he could snarl, he could howl for help. In seconds there would be someone else available to take away the burden of any decision and rational thought. They could call for help and heroic measures could be taken to keep her alive. There are tanks and sophisticated autodoc systems aboard the ship, just like the one Zair is keeping a watchful eye on with Cleo in, as her hair drifts and the cycling fluids restore her to life.

But the fact that this has happened at all means that it has already started, and this is about to become a night of long knives. Exactly this is why Kilseth dropped off Keselt on an island in the middle of nowhere, so he could buy time and deny whatever precisely it is he's doing.

And last of all, there is the knife. In ancient times, the taint of blades like this was believed to steal the very soul of its victims, but he knows better. The impurity in the metal, discovered accidentally as such things are by some early blacksmith, entangles with the magical ability of the target by blood contact, enhancing their abilities massively but burning them out in the process, destroying the nervous system and the brain. If orme is recreational, then this is hard addiction followed by death.

What made her the sethuress he loved is gone. Saving her body would not bring her back, and if she still existed she would probably curse him if he did.

He sits for three or four minutes and looks at her body, until he's certain she's totally dead and there's no way she could still be feeling anything. He can only hope that on the inside she has gone out in a blaze of epinephrine-style chemicals, like that time they played that game, what was it called, and he got swatted down by the monster.

There is no grace in her passing. She looks crumpled and in pain, with the knife still in her. He tries to close her eyes but they won't stay shut. There's a broad puddle of urine around her thighs, where her body has relaxed against its will into death, mixing in a range of pale water-colour shades with the blood still dribbling from the wound in her back as it is pulled open by the weight of her clumsy sprawl. There's just something so terribly sad about it.

He says nothing. He does not howl for help. He goes into the other room and searches through the contents of his workbench.

There are many things to be attended to, and he does not have much time.

The workbench is a simple arrangement, just a padded surface with some draws underneath where he can manipulate the logic and data crystals that are his engineering specialty, joining the ultrafine molecular processing structures to macroscopic wires and other light electronics to test and examine them. There's some cheap and easily available gear for conveniences sake, an adjustable lens for the fine work, an expendable display screen made out of a thin wafer of translucent datacrystal with the characteristic diagonally clipped edges that are more fashion statement than actual concession to the conveniences of tetragonal growth symmetry.

The least subtle tool here, the opposite of the knife, is a small hand-held cutter with a circular spinning blade on the end. He remembers that when he bought it, he was surprised to find out it was made by a medical supply company, and designed to cut something else entirely. But it works well enough for cutting through small slabs of crystal in the absence of a water-cooling system, to then examine the exposed surfaces, looking for characteristic defects.

It's really quite convenient.

He returns to the bed, optimistically hoping that this is just a awful and unpleasant nightmare, but Keselt is still there and still quite dead, still quite warm when he positions her and grasps the ends of her horns firmly to undertake the ritual.

The procedure he undertakes dates from that same ancient time when the subtle knife was first in play, although it may have been around with a different context long before that. The length of the sethura horns makes it tricky to pose the dead, especially on a smooth flat stone surface like the slab of an underground tomb, so how very tempting to the undertaker to chop off a section of the horns, down to just the right length, forming a nice stable tripod to hold the muzzle of the deceased firmly upward at a suitably noble angle. And how convenient in terms of payment, when so many sethura decorate the horns with gold and silver, or inlaid gems and encircling rings. And how thoughtful for the family, to have a memento of their loved one that they can place to dry on an uppermost shelf or handle easily without being disgusted or in any way disturbed, unlike that inconvenient jar of crematory ash that everyone's afraid they might knock over or spill, inhaling some of the deceased.

But for what he has in mind, he needs as much of the essential salts as possible, so he cuts through her horns neatly at the base, just above the skin. A substance resembling nothing so much as bone marrow oozes sluggishly out of the roots, which disturbs him. Mainly to soothe his own feelings he goes and gets a cryokit from the bathroom, shakes it up and applies the icy padded surface to the base of the severed horns to freeze-dry the surfaces, staunching them and more importantly preventing any more of the material from escaping.

How Keselt got here to begin with is of course the least of his concerns. When they found the book the first time he tried to read it, naturally, but languages change, parts of the writing and equations were less than legible and some of it he just plain didn't understand.

Because preventing proliferation of this very text is one of the self-imposed duties his family has taken upon himself since the time it was written, he didn't take a copy. Nor, Wolfmother help us, did he scan it and post it to the weave, which would have almost guaranteed copies of it being left around to be tripped over by dangerously clever persons like Phr^sk. He wasn't even aware that Kilseth knew he had it until it was stolen from them.

But he did have time to look at the pictures and read the most interesting surrounding text. The book explains how to do all sorts of unexpected things, using a series of techniques all of which ultimately revolve around a single and unexpectedly simple expression found printed in large symbols under each chapter header.

It's also something that might never be discovered ever again, because there's no way to reach this conclusion by simple logical steps. It evidently required a moment of pure insight into the way the world really works, whole and complete, and Kith-Rhiannon apparently considered the possibility that pages might be lost or burnt, torn out or eaten. From the formula it would be possible to reconstruct the whole, but not the other way around.

Some of the unexpected things shown in the illustrations include an entire set of tools made from the metal of the subtle knife, rather than the weapon it became. They are for embalming, apparently, based on the design, with a scalpel-like cutting implement, a small single-bladed saw with tiny sharpened teeth and a sort of scissor-like spreader.

The following illustration in the medical section shows the separation of the horns, much as he is doing now, using the the single-bladed saw. It doesn't seem to be essential that the saw is made of the same substance, it was just part of a matched set.

And as for the final illustration, well, he has his doubts but there is no uncertainty as to what it shows. He's not sure whether he has the skill get it to work, but he may be able to try it later once he's finished, assuming he's still alive.

When he picks up the book carefully, after he's finished and makes sure that none of the pages are folded in on themselves, he notes that it was open to the physics section, which is riddled with handy cheats for time and motion. The small diagrams, stick-figure sethura drawn in one single curved line like an unfolded paperclip with a triangular wedge for the head, show what he assumes is a method for a sort of short-range translocation, presumably accomplished by some sort of superposition exploit.

He wouldn't have thought such a thing to be possible for anything smaller than a citadel-class ship, but Keselt somehow must have managed it whilst wired on the feedback loop from the subtle knife. It's far more classy than the hopelessly overstretched portal aperture that he was able to open under the influence of orme, itself a poor attempt at duplicating in turn the brute force actions that his brother can undertake at will.

It seems she really was the best of us, he thinks to himself as he packs the horns into a small carrying case, and I really was the least.

He turns his back on Keselts empty remains and goes to the closet, searching around for the now-worn adventuring gear that he had on when this first started. Although it was originally supposed to be for a desert, he's gotten used to wearing it and draping the broad clothy cloak it comes with around himself in harsh conditions, or while sleeping next to a small fire.

The sword-spear straps its accustomed place across his back, a comforting weight. The war-staff and general bludgeoning object that is actually an energy weapon sits opposite to balance the weight, despite the fact that it wasn't really terribly useful the first time.

He considers taking the subtle knife with him, but finds that he can't bear the thought of even touching it. A weapon for creating wounds that cannot heal is the product of a sick mind, even if it was first made for the dead rather than the living.

The book goes in his pack. It doesn't really fit and it messes up his balance, but he will only be carrying it a short way so it doesn't really matter. He leans briefly back over his workbench to write a quick note, carefully casual, on a self-adhesive sticker resembling an extreme post-it note of the sort he'd normally attach to otherwise anonymous memory crystals, and then slaps it over the books leather cover so it obscures the title and symbol on the front.

He tries to consider whether there's anything else he can do here, but he's out of ideas and this can't be allowed to spill out into the hallways, at least not quite yet.

So, now for the hard part.

~*~

The twins are sleeping quietly in their room, slaked on mothers milk they'll never have the chance to drink again. Setris and Avrayel are still quite small, really, but they've already grown bigger since they were born. He's seen Keselt's pictures of them after they were first birthed, when they were still surrounded by the egg-like, permeable-membrane sac that the sethura equivalent of a placenta transforms into during the final stage of the pregnancy, and on the day they finally hatched, which he will be forever sorry he missed.

The sleep-inducing nature of sethuress-milk is a stroke of luck here, because it makes it easy to handle them even though they move about a little in their sleep. He makes sure their wraps are still fresh and clean, then searches around for the accessory that Keselt was given as a gift by the many envious female members of the crew.

It's a sort of backpack or carrying pouch, really, only whereas the normal design is for a single child, this has been made by connecting two of them together and reinforcing the strapping that holds it all together. It looks ridiculously like a really enormous brassiere for the biggest-titted sethuress in the world, which is the same joke the other sethuresses made when they presented it to her at the hatchday party. Zero today, yay!

With this, she would have been able to carry both Setris and Avrayel around together, either on her back for convenience or at her front so they could both suck on her nipples at the same time. They'd already prepared plenty of nutritional supplements and strength enhancements that would have eased the burden to her body from producing so much milk, in the absence of any real stored fat after her island journey, while carrying twice the usual weight.

She will not be using it now, so Sethkill intends to borrow it and take her place. Although the twins will not be getting anything to drink while he carries them about, he looks over the box of strength enhancers, then thoughtfully exceeds the recommended dose by a factor of about three, simply because this is contents of an entire bottle.

Past experience suggests that this is probably safe. He's taken lots of stuff and never really felt unwell from it up to about four times the suggested amount, at which point he once had the creepy experience of losing all sense of touch in his extremities. So three it is then.

Sethris and Avrayel are really just a little too small yet for the carrying pouch, which is why they've never gotten a chance to use it yet with their mother. However, the carrying straps are adjustable, and pulling them all the way in to compensate for his lack of tits after the twins are stowed securely inside leaves them both sleeping comfortably, with their muzzles up against his admittedly somewhat less than soft and friendly chest. They snuggle and grab at him with their tiny paws as they sleep, and he feels a sudden rush of emotion that he is hard-pressed to push down. There's just something about the way they smell, like Keselt, like family.

He hugs them gently, although he can't tell if they have even noticed, and carries them out through the side door. He won't risk even the smallest chance that they might see or scent what has happened to their mother. Each group of rooms aboard the ship is required to have at least two major exits for safety reasons, and despite many complaints about this in the past from various members of the crew, he's suddenly very glad of it.

~*~

It is reasonable to assume that Kilseths little bitches are probably sweeping the ship even now to try and find out how Keselt got away and where she went. However, they'll probably be trying to keep it quiet to cover their mistake, and the absence of any life signs to give away her position means it'll take them a while to find her. They'll probably start at the centre and work their way out, since securing all the exits would be far too visible.

He heads outward and upward, but not towards an exit.

At several locations around the ship, there are collection points where items can be dropped off and will then be automatically packaged and stored safely in the relevant cargo bays, using the most efficient possible packing arrangement and storing similar materials together. Mostly the objects being submitted are samples of every imaginable kind, anything that anyone might think worthy of being carried back with the ship, and these either get stored in stasis fields, or under the appropriate environmental conditions.

However, the system also functions as a mail service, and you can use it to send things home, provided that they have a suitably labelled address on them (check) and they do not comprise any sort of environmental hazard (also check). It's the same system used for baggage handling back at home, and self-deletes the details of items scanned for privacy reasons, once they have been confirmed safe and swept by a short burst of radiation.

Sethkill intends to mail the book to himself. It's a trick so old-school it's new school, which he read about once and promptly forgot. Because no-one just mails things anymore, after all. You can send almost every kind of message as data, and most real physical objects rate at least a tracked parcel delivery service of some kind.

The address on the camouflaging sticker is the main central storage library in the Great City, and to avoid any awkward questions regarding its provenance he has helpfully appended a classification sequence that will cause it to be filed under a misleading name at a very specific location in the deep long-term storage stacks.

He places the book in the collection slot as he passes and pulls down the cover to indicate that the item, unspecified, is ready to be packed and shipped. Setris frets a little bit at the relatively minor disturbance, and he rests a warm hand against her back until she is soothed and quiets down. Avrayel seems happy to be out on an adventure and is enjoying the repetitive motion of being carried about.

The book heads off one way while he goes the other. It will probably take a few minutes to reach its destination and then get dumped in a large bin somewhere, most probably inside an automated supply ship full of many other entirely random objects that will confound any and all attempts to look at it for sound legal reasons.

Sethkill finds that he is grinning in a most inappropriate manner as he heads for the general transport hanger on the upper deck, located in almost exactly the opposite position. It is time to recover his ride from long-term parking.

The general transport hangar holds a large number of exactly identical wedge-shaped ships supplied as a rental fleet to the Citadel Project, each an aggressive grey-black triangle with an unnecessarily rakish design that would let them get to where they're going far faster than the actual limits of safety and common sense would allow. They have a limited amount of built-in shielding incorporated as a tracery of fine blue filiaments through the outer layer of the hulls, which admittedly looks really cool when it's turned on, and basic camouflage capabilities that let them change color through a restricted range of basic shades to match their surroundings, with emphasis on the existing colour scheme.

They are also conveniently tagged, monitored and trackable at all times, to stop anyone from simply running off with one whenever they feel like it. Which is why Sethkill bought along one of the few private craft aboard the vessel, his very own built-from-scratch custom-made toy, the Sunjammer. He hasn't actually had occasion to use it yet, but it has full transit capability and could get him home if he needed it to, unlike the identical array of short-range 'planetary exploration vehicles' that litter the hangar.

The hangar control system uses a sort of belt driven conveyance mechanism that allows the currently unused ships to be picked up, slid off to the side behind the hangar walls, and then stacked up almost on top of one another or rotated sideways to keep them out of the way. His is somewhere at the back and even most of the hangar staff have probably forgotten it's there, but he requires no clearances whatsoever to request and launch it.

Watching entire ships get spun and moved about never gets old, but there's probably at least one person watching the hanger by now, so he ducks out into the area used by the mechanics, which like the ship storage is off to one side of the main space. The main control panel where you can request a ship and get it bought to you is right in the open near the entrance, and has large, easily operated controls for frequent public use. However, the mechanics have their own smaller control console in the work area. These emergency override push buttons are marked with pieces of loosely adhered tape, and there is a simple numeric touchpad.

Sethkill enters the call-sign for the Sunjammer, then hunkers down low in one of the recessed trenches in the floor that the mechanics use to manually inspect the undersides of the ships when the automated repair systems fail. Setris and Avrayel are starting to wake up, worried by the scent of mechanical things, and he really needs to get them out of here before they start to try and get his attention with their little barks and cries.

As the Sunjammer goes past he hits the override, just as soon as it's out of cover, tumbles it around its own axis and drops it down into the leftmost maintenance bay, none too smoothly. The old-fashioned landing gear tolerates his lack of machine-perfect dexterity, admittedly with a certain amount of bouncing and swaying. Using the ship itself as cover, he dashes for the main hatch and commands it to open the instant the instant he's in interface range.

The process takes longer than he'd like and as he waits for the hatch to finish opening, he sees movement on one of the walkways above that run along either side of the hanger. Well, too late now to worry about Setris or Avrayel yelling. He scrambles in through the partially opened hatch and hears something chime as it is deflected off the closing outer door, generating high-frequency resonances in the free-standing hull segment until it snaps closed and the vibration is suddenly damped.

He dumps Setris and Avrayel unceremoniously in the back seat, but there's really no time for subtlety here as he dashes forward to the main controls to get the Sunjammer up and off the ground as soon as possible. The upside is that he knows the ship is good to go, all pre-flight checks have already been completed automatically and the Sunjammer is probably faster than almost anything they might have here.

The downside is that they might be able to do something creative while he's still in the hangar. They'll never get the outer doors closed in time and they can't countermand his access to his own ship, but they might be able to trap him if they do something smart like launch everything else in front of him, or trip some of the emergency systems designed to prevent hull breaches in the event of a crash.

Either he's quicker thinking than they are, or his abrupt actions have caught them by surprise, because he's gone fully inertialess, lined up his array and is out of the hangar like a shot before anyone can do anything. They may in fact just have been too busy shooting at him.

Several other ships are visible taking off and giving chase on the outermost perimeter of his detection radius, but he has the decisive advantage and they are already falling behind. Until they can get something faster or more powerful into the air to give chase, he's out of reach.

As soon as the screen is completely clear, he executes several random course changes, then sets his approximate destination using the autopilot and stumbles back into the main seating area to check that Setris and Avrayel are alright. They've started in on the yelping and whining but it's a loud, healthy sort of sound and they seem to be pretty much unharmed by the out-of-control maneuvers that he pulled during the first couple of seconds while the inertial damping and phased array were still coming on line. He inspects them thoroughly and this seems to do a lot for the crying and barking, simply because they know they're being fussed over. Once he's certain they're unharmed, he uses the straps on the carrier to fasten them securely to the seats in case any further radical maneuvers are required.

He just hopes he can find who he's looking for, in the vastness of the entire ocean. He just hopes that Mariel is still wearing the talisman he gave her, the one he made using ground up claw clippings and filings from his horns mixed in resin. Although it disguises her own unique profile, it may still be enough to draw like to like, across the sea.

After a while, when it becomes apparent that no-one is pursuing, he joins his children in their howling and they cry out their grief together.