Nights and Days in Hive Acropolis Ch. 11

A day or two earlier, miles above, Sash is finding Rebeck's moping intolerable.

"I get it already!" she snaps at her. "You miss her! You've said it a hundred times. You can't concentrate at work, and even doing my sweet ass is no substitute. Fucking deal with it! We're going to Hive Prime tomorrow, and you know that anything might happen there. You have to be on your game, dumbass!"

"Yeah," Rebeck says listlessly. "I know you're right. I just ... never knew I could feel like this. This is awful."

"Okay. I am going to take pity on you. I am going to help you out. But first, you have to say it."

"Say what?"

"Admit it to me. You're in love with her."

Rebeck is quiet for a long time. "Vaia is ... a very promising slave."

"Damn it, drop that shit for a second. You don't have to tell her, if your precious system won't let you. Just admit it to me."

Rebeck throws up her hands. "Okay! Fine! You win!"

"Admit it!"

Rebeck sighs, closing her eyes. "I ... am starting to believe that it's possible that I might be beginning to fall for ... the dumb slut."

Sash laughs uproariously. "I'll take it!" She grabs Rebeck by the hand.

"Where are we going?"

"We're going to try to find her, of course."

"That's crazy! It's already late, and we're leaving early!"

"Shut up and get moving."

***

An hour later, the pair are sitting in the club where they met Vaia, drinking hive slime, feeling stupid.

"I'm sorry, babe," Sash shouts over the music. "I don't know what I was thinking."

"Why the fuck did you think she might just randomly be here?"

Sash just shrugs. "Who was thinking? There was a chance. You needed to do something other than just sit and mope, anyway."

Rebeck sips her drink. She has no idea what to do in a place like this when she's not on the prowl.

Sash says, "Isn't there a tracker on that collar you gave her?" The music's getting louder.

"Yeah," Rebeck shouts back. "No signal. The Van Saar compound must be EM-shielded."

Through the booming bass, Sash shouts, "What!?"

"I said— Never mind. Let's go outside."

***

When they can hear again, Sash says, "You've tried just calling her clan, right? They might put you through to her."

"Yeah, I tried. They won't accept my call."

"Well, fuck. Sorry, babe. Let's get back, huh? By the time we pack, it'll be about time to launch."

"Wait a second, Sash ... Hey! You!"

Rebeck has seen someone in Van Saar costume. She goes up to him and grabs his collar, only then noticing that he has three clan-brothers with him.

"Do you know Vaia? Vaia van Saar?"

"I don't know no one, you crazy bitch!"

"Tell me!" she shouts.

The guy's terrified, Sash can see, but his friends look like they're about to throw down.

She hastily interposes herself, separating Rebeck from her victim.

"Sorry guys! My friend is drunk off her tits. Bad break-up. Here's a hundred. Have a good night on me. No hard feelings, right?"

A hundred thalers buys a hell of a lot of drinks. And, even with a numbers advantage, it goes against the grain for Van Saars to get into a fist-fight with a Goliath.

"Yeah, sure. No hard feelings," says one of them, taking the chit.

They start to move off. "Keep your friend under control, yeah?"

"I do try."

Once they're round the corner, Sash turns around to find Rebeck sitting on the ground, leaning against a wall, looking miserable.

"I do try," she repeats to herself in a mutter.

"What am I gonna do, Sash?" Rebeck moans.

"First," says Sash, helping her up, "you are going to thank me for saving you from getting your head kicked in."

"Whatever. I could have taken them."

"Yeah right. You owe me 100 thalers. First time you ever owed me money, right?"

Rebeck grunts.

"Now we're going to go home. You're going to pull yourself together. Get plenty of sleep on the flight. Do your job perfectly while we're at Prime. When all that's done, and we're back home in Acropolis, we can tear the hive apart looking for your precious girlfriend."

"She's not my girlfriend, she's ..." Rebeck slurs tiredly.

"Shut up."

***

Sash is right though, Rebeck admits to herself later. She does feel a hell of a lot better after getting some sleep.

The flight out to Prime is uneventful. It is very odd to be able to find a Promethium-fuelled rocket-plane flight uneventful, let alone restful. For a large part of the super-sonic journey around Necromunda, they even leave the atmosphere entirely. But this is a flight Rebeck has made more than a dozen times by now.

Sash still enjoys the spectacular views of the planet's sky-scapes and surface, but they don't draw Rebeck's interest at the moment.

In addition to the Representative and her staff, the flight is shared with a number of other representatives to the republican council of deputies, and in some cases their assistants. These are delegates from other, poorer worlds who find it cheaper to reside in Hive Acropolis, traveling to Hive Prime when they are able to attend sessions in person.

While no other planet has anything like Necromunda's 86 delegates, there are still enough of them in total, over a hundred thousand, indeed, that not all representatives are able to attend all council sessions in person. Instead, there is a voluntary rotation, with the delegates having begun to form groups of common interest of whom at least one may always be in attendance. The remainder can attend remotely. It has occurred to Rebeck before that, if the Republic ever manages to absorb the entirety of what was once the Imperium, they will need an entire hive to house the whole council.

Rebeck has been awake for a while, but still in a very deep restful state as they make their final descent towards Hive Prime.

Or Hive Necromunda, as they are supposed to call it now, she remembers. Old rivalries. Once there had been real competition among the hives as to which was the largest, the richest, and the biggest draw to off-worlders. Even Acropolis has its myths of times when it was the planet's leading hive-city. Then Hive Prime outran the rest. So much so that, legend has it, it even wiped out its original name from its own records, and those of other hives, so 'Prime' was all they knew to call it.

Now, as the capital city of the Republic's capital world, it wants to be synonymous with the planet itself.

Rebeck stirs when they are 15 minutes out. This will be her last trip before her promotion to head of security. She knows very well that she's young for the job, but the Representative has her methods. She recruits sharply and cheaply, promotes fast, and operates a high turn-over. She might manage two years, maybe three, as head of security before Representative Pallas lets her go.

Assuming, that is, that she can keep her charge alive. Republican politics have taken over the Mid Hive, Upper Hive and Spires of Hive Necromunda almost completely. And, frequently and unpredictably, they can and have turned violent during the Republic's short and tumultuous existence so far. Assassinations, riots, bombings, protests, coups, invasion scares, the works. It all makes for a challenging security environment.

Representative Pallas is known as a 'mercenary' representative, and she carries that out to the letter. She represents her hive, certainly. But specifically, on any issue, she represents the interests of whichever coalition of factions within Hive Acropolis pays her the most. On issues that don't concern anyone in the hive that much, she opens herself up to offers from extra-planetary interests. Anyone investigating the record of her voting and speeches would no find no consistent political through-line in the slightest.

All this means that, at least, no one is that likely to target the Representative personally. She holds no political stance that could rile anyone up. In that respect, she's more at risk back at Acropolis, from anti-Republican radicals, for instance, who would see any representative, however buyable, as a symbol of the new post-Imperial order.

However, political violence in Hive Prime tends to be totally indiscriminate. Notionally, Pallas's security detail have to inform themselves not only about threats that might target their charge, but also the threats that might target anyone she is at the same session, meeting or associated social event with. Or — given how densely packed hives were, and the potential destructive power of weapons that might be deployed — that might target anyone within a significant radius of her. This task is completely unfeasible, but they do what they can.

Right now, there is probably no more cosmopolitan place in the human galaxy than the upper reaches of Hive Necromunda. The list of possible security problems is long. Mutants. Psykers. New technologies. Old technologies. Xeno technologies. Polymorphine. Bio-weapons. No one and nothing can ever be taken at face-value.

The Representative is very much a small fish in this ocean. Though they only tip-toe towards admitting it, her security team can't usefully do much more than stay alert and hope not to get caught up in anything too far beyond their understanding. Certainly, Rebeck would hate to be head of security for anyone actually trying to stay on top of this mess. The Governor. Or the President. If President Russ even needs security ...

They dock at a sub-section of an Upper-Hive spaceport. Most of the facility deals with orbital flights, but a small part of it is dedicated to the rather rare high-speed intra-planetary flights. Even among the aristocracy, most wealthy Necromundans travel between hives by much slower (and more luxurious) zep flights.

Deceleration is provided by warship-grade magnetic cannons that seize the rocket-plane and draw it into its place in the dock. The first sudden shock as the magnetics target them is terrifying, as always, but then all is surreally calm as they are levitated into position.

Rebeck blinks away the last of her sleepiness, gets up, checks her gear, and gets ready to be one of the first out of the plane.

The name and image of Vaia still keep popping up in her head from time to time, but the Van Saar girl is thousand of klicks away now, and she has her job to do. Yeah, Sash was right. Everything will be fine, and Vaia will be something to look forward to when she gets back ...

***

Rebeck is attending the Representative in person as the Partially-Automated Taxation and Reclamation sub-committee meeting wraps up.

This is the kind of role Rebeck used to fill all the time, so she has long since got used to letting the boring hubbub of the meeting work wash over her without trying to keep track of it. She also knows not to try to stay at a hair-trigger level, rather just maintaining a continual low-level of alertness all the time. A cogitator is a help with that.

Not that the work of council sessions and other political meetings is always boring, necessarily. It just is for Rebeck while in her security role. She's guarded the Representative through meetings where wars were declared and not even noticed, until catching up with the IBN vid news later.

She and the rest of the security detail escort the Representative back to the armoured air-car.

On this trip, Rebeck has mostly been shadowing the current head of security, an off-worlder called Joseman Cabochon. This mostly means accompanying him while he attends meetings with the heads of security of other delegates, and groups of delegates, while they review together the briefings provided by the council's security committee, by Presidential Security, the Governor's Planetary Security, the Adeptus Arbites, and more besides. They use this information to update their security protocols, and also collaborate to coordinate security measures to enable their employers to cut redundant security costs.

Rebeck had expected to be bored out of her mind, but she's finding it all fascinating. In order to learn about their security implications, she's learning so much, so fast about the current state of the galaxy, the situation on worlds throughout the Republic and beyond, and more besides.

The Republic is not, yet, as large as the Imperium was. Nor even close, if you discount worlds that have only indicated nominal acceptance of the Republic, without sending representatives or otherwise involving themselves with it, and more distant worlds that have not yet communicated with the Republic at all, which the Republic chooses to consider members, as it likes to consider itself the Imperium's natural heir.

The core of the Republic is around the warp corridor that runs, approximately, between Necromunda and Fenris, with Calastia at the halfway point between them. Even without the Astronomican, and even for some of the poorest Navigators, this warp route — one of the oldest and best-known to humanity — remains very navigable. While it also lays claim to the wealthy core worlds that surround the now-inaccessible Solar System, the clusters of stars around Fenris and Necromunda, traditionally dominated by the Space Wolves and that Hive World respectively, make up a major chunk of the Republic's active membership.

However, it still has ties and involvements in events throughout the galaxy, despite the difficulties in interstellar travel — and communications: the astropath system is barely functioning, traumatised by the absence of the Emperor. Lately, other Imperial successor states, less quick off the mark than the Republic, are beginning to consolidate. Tensions are rising rapidly with Ultramar.

Rebeck has also been getting more time than she's had before to get to know Joseman. He hails from a world whose name never manages to stick in Rebeck's mind. But it's a core world — one of those spatio-graphically closest to Terra that were colonised earliest.

The ancient provenance of his home-world is something Joseman seems quite proud of. Rebeck has responded in the usual enigmatic way that Necromundans do in such situations: no world's history goes back further than Necromunda's. Civilization on Necromunda is even older than that on Earth. It's just that, before humans arrived, it belonged to the spiders ...

Like most off-worlders, Joseman doesn't know what to make of that. He's heard it so many times that he seems to find it amusing rather than unnerving. Rebeck would never admit it, but she finds it a bit amusing too. So do her spiders.

From a family with a tradition of service in the arms of Imperial government, Joseman trained as an arbiter, but left that career after only a short time, being employed as personal security by one of his world's leading aristocratic families. As such, he then traveled as a bodyguard to the Solar System itself. He likes to jokingly complain about finding himself on Necromunda, the one human world where having been to 'Holy Terra' doesn't impress anyone.

When Earth fell, his lord was among those who escaped, becoming one of the refugee aristocrats who regrouped on Necromunda and played a major part in establishing it as a new emergency capital for the Imperium, and starting the process of reworking its power structures in the absence of even a comatose Emperor and, perhaps more importantly, with the lack of the core central bureaucracies that had been concentrated in the Solar System.

However, his noble boss had fallen victim to one of the purges of aristocratic delegates that had been orchestrated by President Russ, the Necromundans, and their associated republican allies.

Joseman doesn't seem bothered by it now. "At heart, I was always a republican," he jokes. "But, truthfully, in my time at Sol, I met many aristocrats. Asses, all of them. Good riddance."

He does not seem sure what he will do once his contract with the Representative is concluded. Part of him seems to feel obliged to return to his home-world and help smooth its relationship with the Republic. But Rebeck doubts he will find it easy to leave Necromunda behind. Few do. Most likely, there are people from every planet who like to imagine that the shit-hole they grew up in is the centre of the galaxy. For Necromundans, it's just a fact of life.

All in all, Rebeck is getting quite an education. It's demanding, but she finds she's enjoying it. Even the security meetings.

It would be an understatement to say that House Goliath is not the kind of environment that fosters intellectualism. Indeed, Rebeck, on the small side by Goliath standards, had gone out of her way in her youth not to broadcast her intelligence, not wanting to be bullied for being too clever as well as too short.

Of course, that tended to tip over into demeaning intelligence herself, and not fully recognising her own.

After leaving her House though, she adjusted. Fast. She remembers the tour that she and Sash made a point of making of the Lower Hive. Everyone in a hive wants to rise higher. Not everyone can. Some fall lower. The Houseless are especially vulnerable, and the pair decided they needed to get a first-hand idea of how bad things could get for them. In the Lower Hive, dangerous, grinding manual work that would kill you before you made 40 was about the best of it. Brothels full of mind-wiped whores weren't even the worst of it. The Underhive might be far more dangerous, but the Underhive was a lawless frontier: people could be free there, and sometimes even made fortunes. The Lower Hive held nothing but exploitation and suffering.

When they went back to Mid-Hive, their conclusion was simple. They had to be as smart as they were tough, and take every opportunity they got. Anything was better than being forced down into the Lower Hive.

And Spires and luxury hotels are certainly better! Rebeck thinks as the air-car returns them to the Representative's usual place of residence in Hive Necromunda.

Although, the rather run-down Hotel Acropolis barely qualifies as luxurious, Rebeck must admit. In fact, it's a disgrace to the standards of Upper Hive hospitality in the richest hive in the Republic.

But, as its name suggests, it's owned by well-to-do interests from Hive Acropolis, so the Representative is obliged to stay in a suite there.

The hotel is also currently hosting a conference for delegates opposed to the ongoing efforts of other representatives to eliminate the human slave trade within the Republic and beyond. That gave an idea of the calibre of people who find Hotel Acropolis suitable lodgings.

Once the Representative reaches her suite safely, Rebeck is off-duty. Between shadowing Joseman, acting as his deputy when he is off-duty, and some regular duties like today's, she's barely been off-duty enough to sleep.

Rebeck thinks it's a deliberate effort to run her through the mill as a final test before her promotion.

In her room, she immediately flops onto the bed. She'll just check her messages before she gets a few hours' sleep. Her cogitator lists them. Nothing important. Wait. There's one from ...

She gets up, suddenly energised.

There's one from Vaia!

She has to see this on a terminal.

The one in her hotel room is such junk. So outdated. She finds herself bashing it, in the Goliath style, to get it to work as she struggles to figure out how to get it to play nice with her high-end in-skull cogitator.

Finally, it plays.

It's a low-quality vid message, with a fair amount of static on it.

Vaia's face is smiling, but Rebeck instantly knows it's fake. The girl — her girl! — looks worn out and terrified.

"... I hate to do this to you, but I'm in trouble. I really hope this gets through to you ..."

***

When she's finished watching the message, Rebeck watches it again.

Then she bangs on the door to Sash's room, next door to hers.

Pissed off to be woken up, Sash stops complaining once she learns what's going on. Rebeck sits her down to watch Vaia's message, while she paces, glancing over Sash's shoulder at Vaia's worried face as the recording plays.