Private Log: Phoebe Langer
24 Oct 2022Lily Flemmon
Phoebe Langer. Hell, she’s… she’s a spitfire. I can hardly keep up with her, honestly… but then again, there are a lot of ways she can’t keep up with me. It’s all friendly competition, no worries there… That and fiery nights. It’s wonderful, but… we need to communicate better. We don’t even know each other that well… yet. I’ll be seeing her tomorrow morning, up real early to get wild for an hour and sleep for a few more together. I gotta ask about her. Before Phoenix gets worried about me. They and Mags are totally supportive of me pursuing this, by the way- it’s filled a desire of mine that neither of them ever could.—-
“Phoebs, I love everything we do together, but… hey. We both have lives outside of this, and… I just…” Lily hangs her head as she sits on the edge of the bed, closing her eyes to hold back a few gentle tears.
“Lily, I… wanna get to know ye. I’ve been thinking ‘bout it. You and I ‘ave been neck-and-neck and at each other’s throats in this bloody fantastic, tantalizing… Romance. Yeah, that’s what it is. But I can tell there’s so much more to ye, and to be honest… There's a lot more to me too. Pirates are the most human o’ humans, and I can tell that ye actually fockin’ get that. When I met ye in the warehouse, I’d no idea you knew it. I was expectin’ another shitty fling that left me feelin’ half-satisfied an’ half-disrespected an’ maybe even a wee bit violated, but even before we were in ye bedroom I actually felt like you respected and were all sensitive to all my little needs an’ desires, I… I still canny believe it, there’s got to be a catch, no?”
Lily is… Shaking. She can’t believe this either, it’s too wonderful. She’s too emotional to speak, overwhelmed with how seen she is by a woman she never would have expected it from, how valued she is, how… loved she is. She struggles to find words to say, she just looks up at Phoebe, tears in her eyes, still quivering with emotion. And then the words just tumble out, something out of the mayhem of memories that make up her first year of college. The words aren’t Galactic English, but there’s nothing in that language that could express how she felt so well as what comes out of her lips.
“See you, Phoebs? Yer a wee scone.”
(Scots, roughly: “Look at you, Phoebe, you’re a sweetheart.”)
Phoebe’s eyes widen in shock. “Well, I dinnae where that came from, ye speak Scots?”
“I do? I… maybe a little? It’s fuzzy. Took two semesters of it, I think.”
Phoebe tries to listen, but she can't. She remembers her dad, how he was so wonderful to her, and how he would always call her the same thing - “wee scone” - when he comforted her. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she looked down and shut them tightly.
“...Phoebe?” Lily sees her look away.
“Da… wasnae a pirate, an’ I wasnae one neither when he was still around. Me maw worked for the Feds back when I was real wee an’ she an’ Da split up. He told me when I got older that he couldnae spend his life with her once he found out what she was involved with, what she let happen, when she could ‘ave stopped it. I was there when she spilled, I just didn’t understand what I saw.”
“Phoebs… you don’ have to tell me.” Lily reaches out to comfort her, but suddenly Phoebe gets off the bed and stands up, grabbing at the air in frustration.
“I want to tell ye. Maybe I need to, even. Because me da was killed in a PDB raid on the second night. He tried to stop her. He made a paper trail in the process. And he was gunned down by a Hudson-lovin’ junkie of a pig high off his fuckin’ privilege. And I woulda been dead too if I hadn’ bolted, stolen a ship, and got the hell off that planet!”
“So that’s why-”
“That’s why I started stealin’ more shit, yea. But why I kept doin’ it? ‘Cause the things me maw helped start are probably still happenin’.”
Lily’s eyes narrow. She knows there’s crucial intel for something significant in this woman’s head. And she also knows that this woman is so much more than the intel she has. This is a woman that she… that she loves. “What… things?” The question slips out before she can hold it back.
“Some kind o’ weapon. Was supposed to fuck targets up in their ‘eads, an’ Da only found out when Maw came home one night and wasn’t quite herself, and had bruises on her knuckles and kept clenching her fists. Da asked what was up, and she spilled a lil. Said she’d gotten a bit splashed during a test firing. That he shoulda seen the test target. And then she said it. She said the target- she said ‘he’ an’ my da froze stiff- was suddenly flailing around the containment room, punched the glass so hard his hand exploded, and then he smashed his ‘ead against the glass and it cracked an’ the injuries killed ‘im. And she was smiling about it. And that’s when he took me and we left.”
“That’s… a hell of a fuckin’ story. I wish I could say I can’t believe it’s true… thing is, I fuckin’ can. I think I know what this weapon is.”
“Ye fuckin’ what? ‘Scuse me?”
“You don’ wanna know what it’s done. How many people it’s killed.”
“I fuckin’ do.”
“Promise me you won’t get involved. Because it’s gotten too big now. You and I? We can’t help. We ain’t got the right skill sets.”
“Do I look like I can promise that? ‘Cause I can’t. I fuckin can’t. Just tell me. Let me at least try.”
“...Fine. Do you think you could be a saboteur? Then there might be something you could do.”
“Lily, that’s basically my MO. Steal shit, break shit, and get out alive. Selling shit is just how I kept it going.”
“Good. The weapon is called the MARS device. It’s killed thousands already, and I knew a handful of its victims personally. It uses Thargoid tech somehow, and it definitely fucks with people’s heads. Which means it can get past firewalls by making people go nuts and use their access codes irresponsibly. Not to mention the group that’s developing it, EMBER, is incredibly good at hacking even without the superweapon. The only thing you could do is pretend like you wanna finish what your mom started, and gain their trust, and when they start freaking out about Titan Contractors threatening to ruin everything, that’s when you betray them. Steal a little, break a lot, and get out alive. EMBER is a group of corrupt Federal Navy officers who worked on the project until it was formally cancelled, then they kept working on it secretly. And I’d bet Hudson still supports it behind closed doors. If you can handle that… you just might be able to make a tiny difference.”
“Shite.” Phoebe sat down on the bed again. “How do you know all this?”
“I was an ambassador to Titan Contractors for a while. They were getting small doses of the weapon’s effects, and weird things were happening to the crew morale aboard their carrier. I still get their briefings to allied Commanders just in case there’s something I can do to help. And there’s been nothing for months that I could even scratch. You, however… I can’t deny that you have a chance.”
“Well, Lily, darling… I won’t do anything about it just yet. It’s too risky to dive right into. Especially when I have people like you who care about me.”
Lily sighs and lets herself fall backwards from sitting on the bed to laying on it. “I was worried you were gonna go for it. I can’t lose you. I mean, maybe I could, but I don’t wanna ever find out, yeah?”
Phoebe twists around and crawls into bed, playing with Lily’s hair and gazing into her eyes, both of them tearing up slightly, before suddenly looking away, staring at nothing. “Ugh, it feels like we’re up at 0200.”
“That’s because we are up at 0200. Closer to 0230 now, but still.”
The two of them giggle a bit as they start to crash, and they exchange a few soft kisses before trying something more passionate, but the mood isn’t right for passion. They’re too tired, and they’re just in the mood for being gentle.
So they wrap themselves up in the blankets and each others’ arms, and for the first time, they share a night together without things getting remotely steamy.
----
Author's note: It's been a while since I've involved or referenced anything relating to TITAN Contractors, because nothing really seemed to fit without throwing a monkey wrench into the chaos Radiumio already has to manage and write. But recently Rad seems to have ramped up the suspense and drama significantly while I've dialed back a bit, and this reference to the wonderfully written lore of TITAN Contractors just fit really well. I have no plans for it to affect that lore, because that would mean killing off Phoebe. If she were to actually attempt to sabotage EMBER she'd wind up dead.