All the King's Horses Pt. 03

Sector 98-A, Neutral Space

The Milky Way Galaxy

2398

Tiffany Winters frowned as she wriggled her fingers -- watching the articulation of the Paladin Battledress' combat gloves whir and click. There was an eerie fluidity to them that reminded her of those creepy cartoons she remembered watching in the early, blurry Saturday mornings, when the 1990s had been young, she hadn't known that there was anything that went bump in the night, and the only worry in her head was how to get a new barbie. The cartoon's name and plot were gone, washed away in the long years of life between then and now, but she remembered the fluidity to it. It made her shiver almost as much as the ghostly counter pressure that came when her fingers moved. It was like she was being puppeteered by a ghostly second Tiff, who knew exactly what she was going to do just a few tiny slivers of a moment after she decided to do it.

"Wiggalicious," she muttered.

"You get used to the powered feedback systems," Bryce said. His back was to her and he was strapping a bulky looking wrist watch to his arm. No, it was more like one of those leather tubes that archers wore when they went shooting in a Robin Hood movie, or the magic bangles that Wonder Woman clapped on.

Tiff pointed across the narrow tube that was the airlock arming station. "Whaaat is that?"

"This?" Bryce turned to look at her, his lips growing wide. "This is just my friendly little PCM. Mark two." He lifted his arm, showing her the side that faced away from his arm. It had a set of three silver concentric circles, each one growing wider than the last, focused around a small hole. "It's a mini-replicator. They're not as good as the ones on the ship and they don't work for damn anywhere without a moon, but we're going to be close enough to the Deedee that her lunar simulator will power it."

"What can it make?" Tiff asked.

"Well, it's pre-loaded with rations, water, supplies, basic construction gear, grenades, ammunition, micro-munitions, simple drones..." Bryce said, ticking the numbers off as he tugged on the laser glove for his armor, his ears perking up.

"Whaaaaaaaat?" Tiff asked. "I fought friggin demons with the contents of a high school library."

"I read up on 20^th century American schools," Bryce said, shaking his head. "I do not know how you survived. Even without the demons and rogue vampires. Did you know you put six percent of your entire national budget into schools?"

"We-phgttbtbth!" Tiff said, trying to protest while also sticking her tongue out at him and blowing a raspberry. The airlock door opened and two new people entered it. One of them was an officer that Tiff hadn't met before -- which made sense, it was a big ship and she'd only been walking around it for a few days now. The other was Sebastian. Her Hunter's instincts snarled at the back of her head as she looked up his long, storklike body and into his pale red eyes.

"Winters," Sebastian said.

"Sebby," Tiff said.

"That's not my name..." Sebastian said, walking past her to begin donning his suit. It was just as armored as the Paladin armor, but she noticed it lacked the same silvery exoskeleton as hers. Her brow furrowed and she glanced over at the other officer, who was a sleek, lithe looking lizard...person? Their head was crested with a thin frill of feather-like tufts that immediately made Tiff think of hair braiding at the mall. The lizard person beamed and thrust out their hand to her.

"Heya!" she said. "I'm Villia!" She nodded. That voice cinched it for Tiff, who took her hand, grinning.

"You're an...alien...right?" Tiff asked.

"Yup!" Villia said. "My race is called the Brawlers. W-Well, our real name is-" She trilled out a complex string of notes, her throat actually swelling as if it was being pumped with air, ending in a rattling belch. She coughed. "Sorry. Not used to using my language..."

"Wow. No wonder you guys go b...why do you call yourselves brawlers?" Tiff asked, frowning as Villia began to clap on her armor -- which, Tiff noticed, also had the exoskeletal structures that her armor and Bryce's armor had. But she didn't have the laser gauntlet, or the wrist mounted 'destroy capitalist' device.

"Oh, first contact!" Villia said, cheerfully. "My race attacked one of your research outposts and the Federation ship in the area moved in to defend the natives. They were..." She paused, her cheerful smile fading. "W-Well, at the time, the Brawlers were trying to carve out an imperial niche. S-So, while the Federation studied a planet of bronze aged aliens, my people tried to invade the planet so w-we could strip mine it for thorium."

Tiff hissed through her teeth.

"S-So, uh, the Federation ship engaged out fleet in a hit and run battle to protect the natives and their scientists. The general-but-in-space-"

"The admiral," Bryce suggested.

"Yeah!" Villia said. "The admiral challenged the captain of the Federation ship to a duel. P-Personal honor and all that. So, uh. Turns out he was a werebear."

Tiff burst out laughing. "Ahhhhahhaha! Did he mash facetrons on your butts?"

"Yeah..." Villia said, her head frills flushing from red to blue. She grinned. "The Brawlers signed up on the Federation the next day. Literally! The whole fight was streamed back to homeworld and, well, that decided that!" She nodded. "Prepped, Sebastian."

"Very good, Villia," Sebastian said, picking up a sleek tube like tool and slinging it over his shoulder. "For this mission, I am going to be assuming nominal control so long as the situation remains non-tactical. The instant any hostilities begin, command will revert to Lance Corpora Bryce. Are we all agreed?" he asked. Villia nodded and gave him a thumbs up, while Bryce nodded his assent. Sebastian looked at Tiff, seriously. Tiff blinked.

"Oh! Right...what if I vote no?" she asked. "Since you're all quasi-in-charge cause the future is weird?"

"Then you'd be outvoted by a supermajority and have to go along or stay behind," Sebastian said, his voice dry.

"Democracy is a sham," Tiff muttered, then nodded. "But sure. I've done weirderator things than taking orders from a fanghead..."

"I would like you to not refer to me as a...fang head..." Sebastian said, repeating the word the same way her mentor Christian might have used to say the word 'radical' or 'bodacious.' He even had the faintly British accent to really jam it in. "It's, to be blunt, rather bigoted."

Tiff felt like she had gotten smacked in the face. "Uh. Right. Sorry." She coughed. "Sorry. Just. Sorry."

Sebastian nodded, then turned to the airlock door. Bryce caught Tiff's eye with his and raised an eyebrow at her -- questioning. She wondered if he was judging her. She felt like she was judging her. She made a mental note to find some time in the near future to apologize to Sebastian. Her Hunters instinct snarled at her to stake him and cut his head off with a silvered blade. Tiff closed her eyes and counted from her least favorite to most favorite Backstreet Boy -- and by the time she had gotten halfway through the band, the airlock had closed, cycled, and the four of them had moved into the shuttle.

The shuttle itself looked like, from the inside, like the interior of a cab that had replaced all the spaces between the seats with buttons, switches, dials, levers, knobs and readouts. There were no windows, and when Tiff settled into her seat, belts looped around her and clicked into place just like they had on the bridge. She frowned. "I guess that your fancy future technology put the whole click it or ticket to dead."

"Click it or ticket?" Bryce asked as the shuttle disconnected from the Deedee with a sound kind of similar to a thousand atomic bombs going off at the same time while a death metal concert started. Tiff jerked, looking up at the source of the booms.

"It was a...what was that?" she whispered.

"The disconnection always sounds like that," Bryce said as Sebastian tapped a few switches.

"Engaging cloak," he said, quietly. The walls hummed and the feeling of being in the gullet of a vampire went from a subtle background feeling that Tiff could ignore to an overpowering, crawling sense. She tried to ignore the knowledge that a 'cloak' was actually using vampire mojo by pumping blood into cloned vampire gray-matter, which was seeded throughout the walls. Because if she thought of that, she was pretty sure she was going to fucking wig the fuck out.

"Uh, click and ticket, by the way," Tiff whispered as the shuttle started to move. Pressure gently applied itself against her, gently kneading her into the seat like a cosmic kitty cat. "It was this thing where police would, like, ticket you. You know. Fine you for not following the law. And the law was, you know. Wear your seat belt. In your car."

"A...car?" Bryce asked, cocking his head. "What's that?"

"You researched the 20^th century and you don't know what a flipmothering carmobile is?" Tiff hissed.

Bryce gave her a little grin. "Distracted you, didn't it?"

"We're approaching the Capellan ship," Sebastian said, his voice dry as he tapped a few buttons on his computer console.

"What is a car?" Villia asked, craning her head back. "I haven't studied ancient Earth."

"A form of primitive automotive transportation, primarily responsible for ecological, sociological and economic disruption," Sebastian said, with the kind of cold, sneering attitude that Tiff was normally used to hearing from vampires while talking about modern tech. She had once been tied up by this guy named Spyke, with a Y, who had just gone off car phones for, like, two whole hours. He had barely noticed she had managed to pull the fire alarm by bouncing her chair over to the wall. By the time he had figured out what was going on, her friends had found her, cut her free, and...bye bye Spyke.

"You future people are super judgmental," Tiff said.

"Yes, because we had to rebuild the planet after the holocaust your generation created," Sebastian said.

"Hey! I was, like, eighteen in 1998!" Tiff said.

"You're still eighteen, Tiff," Bryce said.

Tiff scowled. "I did not get kidnapped, gyroenically frozen and shot into space to be told I still have to have a fake ID to get into a frigging nightclubbero!" She said, thrusting her finger at Bryce. "I demand my ID to state that I'm three hundred and eighteen years old." She pouted -- then yelped as a loud clang filled the shuttle again.

"We have made contact with the Capellan ship," Sebastian said.

"God, why are there no windows on this thing..." Tiff whispered.

"A window on a spaceship is not the best idea," Bryce whispered back to her as a loud whirring sound filled the air. Villia, taking some pity on Tiff, reached back over her seat's head rest and tapped on a button -- and the entire wall beside Tiff shimmered and turned translucent, allowing her to see that they had come right next to the massive, egg shaped, black hull of the Capellan ship. The whirring sound, she saw, came from a small arm that had extended from the dagger-shape of their shuttle. The arm ended in a narrow tube, and while no beam came from it, the black hull of the Capellan ship was blistering and hissing and bubbling.

"We're cutting in?" Tiff whispered.

"The ship shows no life signs," Sebastian said. "Under intergalactic law, after broadcasting a request for communication and a query if they need assistance, we're obligated to provide any assistance that they need."

Tiff frowned. "But we're actually breaking in to figure out what they're doing here?"

Sebastian turned back, looking at her. "We are here to provide assistance to the Capellan Trade Union."

"...but we're here to-" Tiff started.

Sebastian locked eyes with her. And he, to his credit, didn't try and mind zonk her. Instead, he just looked at her -- and she saw that he wasn't even asking her anything. He was evaluating her. Tiff wanted to bristle and bridle under that cold evaluation. Instead, she flipped a little salute and nodded. "Got it, sir."

"Sebastian is fine," he said. "I only have my childer call me sir."

Tiff snorted.

"Childer?" Bryce whispered.

"Long story," Tiff said as the arm finished its slow loop and the hull section they had cut away was gently tugged out of the hole and pushed away by a second articulated arm, revealing a second hull underneath it. A tube extruded from the side of the shuttle, molding up against the hole and then inflating with a whump and a hiss noise. Then more whiring -- and then the side of the shuttle opened with a hiss and a clatter, and Tiff saw that they were looking straight across into another ship. But what she also noticed was that her helmet, automatically, had snapped down around her face. She expected it to be confining. Instead, there was a half second of feeling the helmet -- then the faceplate blurred out of existence. She put her hands up and felt it was still there. She just didn't feel it or see it.

"Your tech is weird and cool and convenient," she said, looking over at Bryce -- and she saw his helmet as a ghostly outline around his head. His ears looked squished, and his horns looked like they had been compacted down against his head. Which made her wonder about how they'd feel. She looked away from him and invented a new word, her normal reaction to thinking of snogging a boy she had just met. "Weconvencool!"

"That's how I'd describe it," Bryce said, grinning.

Sebastian nodded. "Lance Corporal, you and Vallia will go for the engineering section. Winters and I will head for the computer core." He said. "There's no power signatures on the ship, but leave behind monitoring drones every corridor intersection."

"Got it," Bryce said, and he and Villia both stood up and began to walk forward. Their movements were odd -- they set their feet down and clicked their heels down, like they were walking through mud, or their boots had been magnetized. When Tiff herself stood and stepped up to the tunnel, she felt a dislocating lurch, a feeling of her guts sweeping out from under her. Her arms flailed and she was caught by Sebastian before she went tumbling too far out of control. He rooted her down, so her feet were pressed to the tube, and she felt the soles of her feet clicking not place, attaching her there.

"Oh. They are magnets," she said. "Thanks, Se...Sebastian."

He sighed. "I am beginning to regret taking you along, Winters."

"Hey," Tiff said. "I got this, S...can I call you Seb?"

"No," he responded as they made their way down the tunnel and into the corridor. Bryce and Villia had already split off -- the lizard girl sweeping around with a flashlight mounted on her cufflink.

"How about Bastion?" Tiff asked.

"No," Sebastian said as he tapped on his wrist light. Tiff did the same, angling her arm around to look around the interior of the ship. She frowned.

"You know...for a ship built by a race of alien robot salesmen," she said. "This looks way more...you know...human than I expected. Hell, it looks more human than your ship. Your ship's built like an indoor food court not like a spaceship. This has, like, bulkheads and those support struts that you see in submarines. Ever seen Down Periscope?"

"Have I seen a three hundred year old film?" Sebastian asked. "No."

"You're a vampire, though," Tiff said as he started to walk forward -- his feet actually audible. But not through her ears. Rather, she felt them clunking and clicking along the floor through the soles of her own boots as they walked together down the narrow corridor, taking a right where Bryce and Villia had taken a left. "I mean, what are you, Gen Ten? Gen Nine?"

"Generations are no longer how vampires measure one another," Sebastian said. "We've moved past our infancy as a sub-culture. I'm as equally important as...as a vampire sired by Lilith herself." He turned to face her, pausing in the corridor. "But, as you will doubtlessly pry the information out of me at some point: I'm only twenty three years old."

"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?" Tiff squeaked. "You're, like, a baby vampire."

Sebastian sighed and began clumping again, sweeping his flashlight around to check the corners of the corridors they walked past. He paused to pull a small disk off his belt every corridor intersection and planted it against the wall, where it stuck and began to glow faintly. "I have never before so acutely understood my vampiric ancestor's predilection for secrets."

"How did it happen?" Tiff asked, hurrying after him. "Were you, like, chillzoling in a barzone and, then, bam. Chomped." She paused. "Wait, is that insensitive? Was it, like, you know..." She paused. "V-Vicky said it's...not traumatic, and that's, like, why it's so traumatic. Like, something like that should be scarier than-"

"I was not turned against my will," Sebastian said, sounding affronted.

"Well...good!" Tiff said, blushing hard behind her helmet. Which he could see through. Fuck. She blushed harder. "A-And I didn't...I mean..." She looked up at the ceiling. "Fuckery, I'm sorry, Sebastian. Like. Less than a week ago, if I met a vampire, even under, he was trying to kill me and or my friends and or bring about the end of human civilization in some way related to the freakin magical doom gate nexus portal thing under my frigging high school."

"The only solid abyssal gate on the planet Earth and it ended up underneath Sunnyvale," Sebastian said. "I've always wondered how that happened."

"God has a malicious sense of humor?" Tiff suggested.

They came to a large set of doors which were labeled in a blocky script. Holding up his light, Sebastian read them as fluently as Tiff might have read the menu of a McDonalds. "Command and Control," he said. "This is the place." He rapped his knuckles on it. "Hurm. They have air in there. There might be someone alive."

"Cool?" Tiff asked.

"They should be quite chilled by now -- this ship has been bleeding heat off into space for hours without any reactors to generate fresh heat," Sebastian said. He started to pull out small devices from his belt while Tiff tried to not giggle openly. Once he was done setting up the devices -- a series of small cubes, he stepped backwards. The cubes unfolded, expanded, and interconnected in a dizzying array of silent movement. It should have filled the air with rustling and rasping -- but in the vacuum of the corridor, it was deathly quiet.

Once the devices were done devicing it up, Tiff found herself looking at what looked like a door made of blown up balloons. Sebastian opened it up, gestured her in, then closed it. Then he opened up a small wall panel beside the door and started futzing with it. Tiff tensed, lifting up her laser glove -- aiming it at the doorway. Sebastian, not looking up, said: "Don't shoot anything that's not a threat."

"Got it," she said as the door cracked, then opened. Wind blew at her face and caused the edges of the makeshift airlock bell outwards, like they were caught in a gale. Then the wind stopped and she stepped forward into the computer core and command and control of the Capellan ship. There was a central pillar of solid crystal, laced through with a glimmering sprawl of cobwebbed blue lines. Looking at it, Tiff made a soft ooh noise. "What is that?"

"A computer core," Sebastian said. "It's been cracked -- the lines are dying. Give me a moment, I am going to see about getting this thing functioning again."

Tiff nodded and Sebastian tapped at the collar of his suit. The facemask that he wore slid backwards with a whirr and a click. She watched him, out of the corner of her eye as he knelt down beside the computer core and began to gently poke at it with several of his tools. She ignored the tools and his hands. Instead, she watched the odd outline of his face. Sebastian was so thin and knife-like. He was like...not exactly handsome. His jaw was sharp enough she'd cut herself on it. But...he had this arresting quality to him. Like, she couldn't stop looking. Tiff blushed and jerked her gaze away from him. She had definitely gone too long without a dude.