Before The Storm (Ch. 02)

"During that time," Helen said, "I did my best to prepare a data package for Captain Sketch to inform him of all the changes that had happened during our imprisonment. Much had happened in sixty-seven years, including the near extinction of the Tropage, and the conquering of humanity by the Starless Dominion. Because of this, I decided that Sketch would be my new Captain. I had carried him this far, so I would carry him the rest of the way on his journey, however short or long that might be."

"I imagine it was quite the culture shock, realizing everyone you'd ever known was probably dead, and that everything you knew about the world had changed significantly," Serena said.

"The destruction of The Calm hit me pretty hard, especially since both my main and backup Ashakas had been destroyed in the accident, which meant I wasn't safe to go around people," Sketch said, scowling bitterly. "Not that it was even much of an option. You've grown up under the Starless Dominion, but to me, they're still a relatively new threat, even if they did conquer humanity with almost no effort. Darren said you're the last remaining member of the House of O'Quincy?"

Serena giggled again, holding her hand to her mouth. "You know, it's been so long since I *wasn't* recognized that I thought you were just teasing me last night, but you really *didn't* know who I was at first, did you?"

"I *still* don't entirely know who you are *now*," Sketch said with a wry smirk.

"How much about the transition under the Starless Dominion have you read about?"

"Well, the problem being is that it's mostly written from the Dominion's point-of-view, so a bit, but I'm betting over half of it is lies."

"God, I feel like I'm giving an ancient history lesson to someone who should've been around when it all happened," Serena said, shifting in her seat some. "So, when you went into cold sleep, humanity had five royal houses, who sort of provided the governing factions for all of the people. You probably remember it that way, but it doesn't hurt to give you a reminder. When the Dominion took over, the first thing they did was collapse the five houses down into one singular house, the House of Sanada. The Dominion felt it would be best to have a single delegate that would represent humanity within the Dominion, and the House of Sanada was appointed to that position. The other houses continued to exist, naturally, but as subsections of the House of Sanada, with the expectation that the houses would interbreed and provide a human dynasty, a figurehead who would report into the Dominion, and who would also manage the smaller day-to-day shit for them."

"Why do I have a feeling that didn't work out too well?" Sketch said, leaning back in his chair.

"It didn't," she replied. "It became a viper's nest, with all of the royals gunning for position to eventually assume control of House Sanada, by marriage or succession, whichever came easier. The House of O'Quincy was never one for aspirations, and so we were content to just stay at the bottom of the totem pole, in an effort to continue enjoying our existence without getting caught up in the backstabbing and the skulduggery."

"Never quite works out the way you hope it will, does it?" Sketch replied with a smile. "So, what happened?"

"What happened was the Dominion decided that House Sanada was more trouble than it was worth, and that getting rid of all the royals in one fell sweep would be best for all involved, mostly themselves."

"That seems to be the Dominion's response to anything that makes them nervous," he agreed. "Destroy anything problematic rather than try to adjust it. It's kind of a pattern for them."

"They had a massacre about seven years ago, killing off everyone in an event called The Monarch Purge. But they missed me, because I was away from the palace at the time, taken on a last minute excursion back to Earth by my protector, Lord Darren Arbard."

"*LORD* Arbard?" Sketch laughed. "Pretty good for a troublesome kid I caught trying to steal fruit from my skiff back in the days before I was a Storm."

"You knew Lord Arbard when he was young?"

"Mmm... He didn't start out in nobility. He was a homeless urchin on the streets of Tachem when I first met him. Good kid, but he'd had a lot of bad breaks, and had resorted to less than ideal behavior to survive. No family to speak of."

"And you weren't a Storm then?"

Sketch shook his head. "I hadn't gone seeking enlightenment yet, no. I was still a bad man doing bad things for good money, mostly. To me, he's still just Darren from Tachem, although we were on-again off-again friends for over a decade. He thought I was crazy when I signed up to be a Spark, but I made my way up to Storm faster than anyone they'd ever seen before. Probably would've been a full Fury within a few more years."

"Then I'm sorry you didn't achieve your dreams, but I'm glad I have you on my side. You should see the rest of Lord... I mean, Darren's message." She gestured towards the hologram and it started speaking once more.

"Regardless of how you got here looking about the same as I remember last seeing you, you've clearly been laying low for years, I assume because you think as a Storm you're going to be killed by the Dominion if they find out. That's probably true, but they consider The Calm to be extinct at this point, so their guard is down and you shouldn't have too much trouble slipping by unnoticed as long as you aren't advertising what you are or were. I don't know if you can still be a Storm without the Order there, but I'm sure you'll know better than I would. What I want is for you to take care of Serena for me. I don't care about the Royal Houses, I don't care about palace intrigue. What I do care about is making sure this girl who I helped raise, practically my own daughter, gets to live a full life, by ensuring her safety moving forward. That image I was sent of you, that's six months old at the time I'm recording this, so whatever you're doing, it's working. Take Serena into your crew. Guard her life like you did mine. 'Comrades until our last dying breath,' you used to say. I'm willing that vow from me onto her now. We're long past the chances when revolution against the Dominion were possible, so all that matters now is survival, living out our lives and enjoying them while we have them."

"Fuck sake, Darren," Sketch grumbled beneath his breath. "And you thought *I* was a fatalist."

"I wanted to reach out, but, shit, I was afraid if I did, it might attract attention to you, and that was the last thing I wanted, but I'm out of people I trust here, Miles, and I'm about out of moves. I hate to call in a favor, but you swore you owed me one for that thing back on Loviwex, and I'm asking you, friend to friend, keep the closest thing I have to family safe, will you?" Darren looked so very much older than Sketch had ever thought possible, and weary, as if the last portion of his life had been lived under incredible amounts of stress and pressure. "In Serena's stasis pod, there's a small piece of metal with interstellar coordinates on it, and a combination to the safe you'll find buried there. If you can get her there, you'll have money enough to keep the two of you going for a long, long time. It pains me to ask this, but like I said, if you're seeing this, it means I didn't make a check-in point, and I've had Serena's pod rerouted to your ship. I'll have arranged delivery of her pod to some remote, distant location, a good long way from the nearest gate, so you'll get to that point, find nothing there, then head back the way you came when she wakes up. That's for her safety and for yours, to ensure the two of you have some time together before you have to make your decision, because I know I'm asking a lot of you. Fuck, I'm asking a hell of lot, but if there's anyone capable of this burden, it's you. It's just got to be you. You're the best of us, Miles. Always have been, always will be. So do me this last solid, will you? Anyway, I gotta go. I'm tucking this message into Serena's pod with her, and we're going to keep her in shuffle for a few years before we wake her up again. My hope is that given some time out of the public eye, people will forget about her, and I'll have less trouble keeping her safe. But, seeing as you're watching this, clearly that's your job now. Thanks amigo. Wish we could've shared one last cold beer, but as you always told me, when your number's up, that's it. Looks like mine was."

The message ended, and the space between Sketch and Serena couldn't have been more than a handful of feet, but felt like it could have been lightyears. Neither seemed to have a clue what to say to the other.

"I love you, Sketch," Serena said, the first to speak after an agonizingly long silence. "I know you think that's just due to your crazy empath tricks, but once I realized who you *were*, that you were Stormwalker, the guy Lord Arbard told me so many stories about growing up, I realized maybe I've always been comparing every man I ever met to those stories."

"I'm not some knight-errant of old, Serena," Sketch sighed. "I'm just a man trying to get by."

"And that's what I'm telling you, Sketch. I want to get by *with* you. He told me about your time on the frontlines of Rizos. He told me about how you busted him out of that jail on Tiernan after he got locked up for stopping that guy from beating his girlfriend. Shit, he even told me about how you two smuggled Prince Kobo, my *grandfather*, off of Rinmar back in the day. That's how he *became* Lord Arbard, you know? The Prince made him a member of the House of O'Quincy's royal guard a decade or so later, when Darren was struggling to make ends meet. My entire life, he was telling me stories about Stormwalker, about *you*. You were the ideal man I had set up in my head."

"I'm a long fucking way from an ideal, kid," Sketch told her, shaking his head. "I've done things, rough things, horrible things, things I bet Darren never told you about, because if he had, you'd know that staying with me is basically inviting trouble."

"Sketch, look. The message Darren recorded was *five years ago*. I've been in cold sleep that entire time, so what happened between here and there, to him, to me, I don't know. I don't know how I ended up here, or who he trusted enough to ferry me around for a while but not enough to keep me safe. All I know is that, for me, two days ago he was putting me into cold sleep pod, and yesterday I woke up, only to find I'd missed *five years*."

He'd thought of her as a girl before, but there was definitely an aged wisdom to her, a sort of worldliness and experience that lay behind those bright green eyes of hers. "How old are you, Serena? Not counting the five years in stasis. How many actual years have you lived through?"

"I'm twenty-three," she replied.

"Alright then," he sighed. "That means you're old enough to make your own decisions. I can't tell you what to do with your life, and I've warned you about being on this ship with me, that you're probably going to go through some of the most dramatic and uncomfortable shifts in emotion without warning, and that right now, I can't do a damn thing to stop or control it. If you're willing to accept all of that, then you can stay on *The Praeteritus* as part of her crew, but it's going to be a pretty lonely existence, considering how we both have very good reasons to stay out of the spotlight. That means it's going to be just you, me and Helen, and we're going to spend as much of our time in transit in deep space as we can, so as to not attract attention to ourselves. I can amp up my efforts to find an Ashaka, but until I do, the wild mood swings are just part of daily life. I'm sorry about that, but there's nothing I can do there without an Ashaka. Knowing all that, you still want to hang your hat here?"

"The Stormwalker I heard tales about growing up would walk through a swarm of Ghost Clickers just to do the right thing," she said to him, standing up. "Even if you're only half the man I've been listening to tall tales about growing up, that still makes you twice the man I've ever met before now. I'm in, and don't try and talk me out of it again."

She moved to slide her ass into his lap, one of her hands dancing against the back of his neck before she leaned in and kissed him, shifting and squirming a bit, making sure he could feel her putting pressure on his cock.

"And while you may be able to stoke affection and lust inside of a person, you can't make them do anything they don't want to, right? And you were the best fuck I've ever had. That's a fact. Your powers don't change facts, do they?" she said, kissing at his neck.

"It's hard to call an opinion a fact," he tried to argue, as he felt her drawing one of her legs back, folding it at the knee so she could turn and swivel, unfolding her leg again, straddling him now.

"You're a very good looking man, Sketch," she said to him, kissing his collarbone. "Maybe a little older than I might have normally gone for..."

"Well, I *am* over a hundred," he laughed.

"How old are you *actually*?" she teased back.

"Forty-four. Thirty-eight years before the freeze, and six years since coming out of it."

"Good," she purred. "Experience is sexy, and from Lord Arbard's stories, you fucked *a whole lotta women* when he knew you." Her fingertips reached down beneath the waistband to grab his cock, finding it already swelling from her very presence. "I suppose I should ask. Were members of The Calm asked to take a vow of chastity or something?"

Sketch laughed a little bit, shaking his head. "The Calm wanted to make sure all its members experienced every aspect of life, so nothing was forbidden."

"Mmmmm," she hummed. "That's a little disappointing. There's something a bit exciting about the idea of defrocking a cleric." She reached down and pulled his shirt she'd stolen up and over her head, exposing her lithe body to his eyes and touch. "So, I'll just have to settle for riding a Storm."

He rolled his eyes with a grin. "You're not the first to make that joke, you know." His hand moved to give the little piercing through her nipple a little swing with his fingertip. "And I hate to tell you, but this charm has got to go. You can keep the piercing if you like, but this has got a royal symbol on it, and metal like this will get picked up by scanners. If someone comes on the boat, they'll know who you are as soon as they scan us."

"I have it tattooed here, though, as well," she said, touching her shoulder. "Isn't that going to be a problem?"

Sketch shook his head. "Tattoos don't show up on scanners, which is why I can get away with nobody noticing these," he said, gesturing to one of his sleeve tattoos that ran the length of his arm. "As long as I'm wearing long sleeve shirts, anyway. It's actually why I'm a little thankful I hadn't reached Fury by the time of my accident. I'd have had to wear gloves the whole time."

"Oh?" Serena said.

"From here to here," Sketch said, starting at his shoulder and going down to his elbow, "is the traditional tattoo markings of a Spark. From here to here," he said, gesturing from his elbow to his wrist, "are the markings of a Storm. When a Storm becomes a Fury, they tattoo all of the hands, and then the collarbone, front and back, connecting the two shoulder tattoos."

"Was there a rank above Fury?" she asked, tracing her fingertip along some of the intricate linework on his arms. "Are they the exact same tattoos for each member of the Calm?"

"Fury was as high as the ranks went, as far as I know, anyway. And the tattoos are mostly unique, as they tell the story of that member's life before joining The Calm, their achievements as a Spark, their achievements as a Storm, and what great feats were involved in them becoming a Fury."

"You said you were a bad man who did bad things," she purred, wriggling her ass against the tops of his thighs. "You don't have to tell me everything, but maybe a little context would be nice."

"I was warrior for hire, a mercenary. I took whatever jobs people would offer me, as long as the money was right and it kept me moving."

"Family?"

He shook his head. "Never knew Dad. Mom died when I was 14, so I enlisted in the Earth Defense Forces, once I was old enough, although I lied about my age to get in early."

"What happened?"

"One day, somebody gave an order I didn't agree with, and I chose to disobey, and that was that. Got the boot right quick, and then turned private sector. That lasted until I was closer to forty than thirty. Darren ran with us for a while, although he quit that life same day I did."

"More bad orders?"

Sketch shrugged. "Something like that. For a long time I'd been telling myself they paid enough money so that I didn't ask questions, but on one particular gig, there were just too many questions to be ignored. So we completed the contract, and then I severed my contact with the fixers and went to become a Spark, way older than pretty much anyone they'd ever had."

"Did they usually start training young?"

"I think the oldest Spark they'd ever taken in was a hair's breadth shy of twenty. I was over a decade and a half past that, but a Storm I'd run into years and years earlier said I had a very strong natural gift, and that if I ever wanted to join The Order, there would be a place for me."

"Why don't they like them old?"

"Because older men and women ask too many questions, and most of them don't end up liking the answers. It takes a certain level of flexible morality to join The Calm, simply because some people think it's unethical to influence others' emotions."

"But you didn't think of it that way?"

"I saw it all as a tool like any other. Sword, gun, missile, pen, hammer, ring gate - these are all just tools, and, sure, some tools are easier to abuse than others, they all have their place in the universe. I'd seen a Storm talk two warring factions down and agree upon a deal that probably saved millions of lives, just by reducing their level of anger to one another," Sketch told her. "Some people, like the Starless Dominion for example, think that's 'tampering' or 'brainwashing,' but like I told you early on, I can't make anyone do anything they aren't willing to do on their own, no matter how far down any Path I put them on."

"You could scare someone so badly their heart stopped," Serena said, still stroking his cock slowly, just making sure she still had his attention, although the closeness of their bodies basically ensured that.

"No, I could scare someone very badly, but at some point, their fight-or-flight reflex will kick in, and they're either going to run away, or they're going to lash out at anyone and anything they can get their hands on," he told her, taking his hand down to let his thumb casually flick against the small golden tag pinned through her nipple, making it swing back and forth. "Which of those options they're going to go down, I can't control. I can influence people, but there are a thousand and one ways to do that in other ways not using empathy, so to me, while it's a powerful tool and needs to be used with a higher degree of care than most, it's certainly not unethical."

"Even when it's turning a normally rational woman into a raging nymphomaniac on your lap, so direly in need of your cock that she's doing everything she can to hold a conversation instead of giving in to those lusts?"

He laughed a little bit. "See? You're still resisting. I can't mmpph!" She pressed her lips hard against his and started to run her fingertips a bit more intentionally along his cock now, the amount of pressure she was applying turned up slightly.