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The landing knocked the air from her lungs and Gaenna scrabbled across the tiles, desperate to grab the pistol that had skittered across the floor. Sarinia got there first, kneeling down to pick up the laser weapon, then pointed it at her mother's frightened face.
"Stop, Sarinia!" Gaenna begged between panted breaths, holding up her hands defensively. "Listen to me..."
"I think I first wished you dead when I was nine," Sarinia said, her lip curling up into a wry smile. "That was the first time you whipped me, for waking you too early in the morning. Do you remember, mother?"
Gaenna swallowed and reluctantly shook her head.
"Ah, I don't blame you for not remembering," Sarinia said with a amiable shrug. "What's one beating in 120 years of torment?" She leaned forward and added, "But just to clarify, this has nothing to do with over a century of abuse... after all that's just the game of succession, isn't it, mother? A matriarch tortures her daughters, they torment each other, and everyone picks on the youngest... then the cycle continues with the next matriarch."
"Sarinia... I'm sorry..." Gaenna muttered, doing her best to sound sincere.
Her daughter giggled, genuinely amused. "That was pathetic! Don't bother apologising, I know you enjoyed brutalising all of us... after all, that was your right as matriarch. As I said, I couldn't care less about that... it was expected."
"What then?" Gaenna asked, nursing her wounded hand and looking at her daughter in confusion.
The smile suddenly disappeared from Sarinia's face. "Did you think I wouldn't find out about your deal with Edraele? Baen'thelas restoring your youth... your hope of immortality? For 120 years I've been patiently waiting for you to die, mother. Did you think I was going to just stand by and let you rule forever?"
Gaenna gasped, her face showing real fear now. "Wait, Sarinia... I can explain!"
Her daughter calmly put down the laser pistol and drew a carving knife from the block in the kitchen. "No explanations are needed, mother. It's time you fulfilled your part in the game of succession..."
With a shriek of terror, Gaenna lurched to her feet and tried to run for the door. Sarinia ran after her and kicked out her legs, making the older woman crash to the floor. She leapt on top of her and with a manic gleam in her eyes plunged the knife into her mother's chest.
"Just fucking die, you vicious old hag!" she screamed.
A gout of blue blood splashed across Sarinia's face as Gaenna gasped in agony. The House Baelora matriarch tried to block the slashing blade, but Sarinia was younger, stronger, and quicker, making it easy for her to overpower her mother. The knife rose and fell, Sarinia stabbing her again and again in a brutal frenzy, fulfilling her century-long fondest wish.
By the time Sarinia's rage had been quelled, she was doused from head to toe in sticky blood. She panted for breath over her mother's lacerated corpse, then rose to her feet on shaky legs. Tossing aside the blood-drenched knife, she staggered into her mother's office and sat behind her desk. A swipe across the runic interface opened up the comms system and she navigated to the files stored in the computer in her quarters.
Copying everything she'd learned at Genthalas into the message, she attached the four images she'd selected of the matriarchs and Baen'thelas. Addressing the message to every noble daughter in the Maliri Protectorate, Sarinia looked directly at the holo-camera and began to record.
"This is Matriarch Sarinia Baelora," she said with a ghastly smile, blood slowly dripping from her face. "See you at the next Council meeting, Matriarchs..."
- COMMENTS
Anonymousabout 2 months agoThe Invictus is back with a vengeance. After being sliced open and discarded as having no value.
It's actually part Progenitor ship with the black metal equipment from daddy's ship. Interesting.
I can actually feel Dana's excitement. Great acting ... err I mean great writing. 👍🏽
Cheers 🥃
Anonymousabout 2 months agoIf someone else has responded sorry for the repeat
Definition of armrest
: a support for the arm
Its anything that the arm rests on.
like in a movie theater the place where you set your arms is the armrest. same deal as in a car. a lot of front seats have folding armrests. again the term is used in airplanes also. The arms on chairs (Like the one he is sitting in) are called armrests.
Just my thoughts on it,
Raven
Anonymous3 months agoWarning, this is a piddley Word Nazi correction: when John was a tad bit tense on page 21 of this chapter (#126) he grabs his armrests, arm wrest is a position in arm wrestling. I tried to check for a British variation, but no luck, this was an honest boo-boo. TSM is an awesome story, thank you Tefler!
Anonymous3 months ago...as is most of the structural skeleton inside(if I remember correctly, when they lengthened the ship they added some supports made of crystal alyssium to save time and add strength...). Then there is an outer skin of armor plating that is crystal- alyssium. That way the armor takes the brunt of the damage without compromising the hull integrity.
Anonymous4 months ago""I need Dana to test this for me, but I reckon twenty-shaped Crystal Alyssium should be strong enough to prevent the hull from crumpling like tinfoil."
"You want to twenty-shape the entire hull?!" John balked, staring at her in shock."
This has been bothering me for a long while now, since the upgrade to the Invictus that increased its size by ~50% (which would about double the displacement) so many chapters ago. The Invictus has Crystal Alyssium armor plating, but that isn't structural. We know this by the ease in which damaged armor plating gets stripped off and replaced. It is clearly simply armor plating pinned in place over the outside of the ship. It would not be load bearing or provide any structural support, that isn't the job it is in place to do. It is there to protect the structure of the ship from being damaged, done by taking that damage on itself instead if need be, or in the best case simply shrugging it off. There have been many mentions of the structural beams being titanium, which is the stock T-Fed ship construction material. Replacing the titanium structural members with Crystal Alyssium beams should have been done long ago.
And now I believe this is the first time we've had any mention of the hull. Now we're hearing that there is a hull which is apparently also titanium? I thought when the armor plating was removed this opened up the ship so that things like gun mounts could have their weapons swapped out? That indicated that there was no hull per se... But now apparently there is, and it is now the hull which is structural and not all of those massive titanium beams that they needed to pin together in order to carry out the size upgrade, and which Dana needed to straighten and otherwise repair in order to undo the ship being cut in half.
