It Begins Again, Pt. 2
26 Jan 2022User319792
When I came to, I was on the deck of Napoleon's cockpit and the man in the black suit looked to be busying himself with paperwork on his end of the holofac. I can only assume Coral dragged me aboard and made the call over to him. I'd been avoiding his messages since the end of my post-promotion leave. Having followed the trail left by the Winking Cat burglar, I'd ended up with a new Imperial Courier and I wasn't sure what to do- I don't have any intention of selling it and but neither does it seem like a good idea to bring it over to York Fortress. The man in the black suit looked toward me and noticed I had rejoined the living.
"How many times are you gonna ignore me before you get the message?"
His eyebrows were furrowed and pinching toward the bridge of his nose, his nostrils were slightly flared, and the faintest hint of a smile was quivering at the corner of his mouth. He was upset but not enough to make a big deal of it.
"So Coral's your new probation officer?"
He rolled his eyes and his breath caught in his throat.
"You're lucky she was smart enough to just come back here and get you on her own. She tracked you down to GR8MINDS herself."
I hadn't expected her. I suppose I hadn't expected anyone to come for me, for that matter. When I made the promotion to King, the suits seemed to make it clear that I was little more than the token figure of their bond with the Empire. I leave my Imperial Gutamaya vessels in York Fortress in exchange for whatever is required of the organization and, likewise, whatever the organization requests.
"So she tracks me down and then clubs me in the back of the head to keep me from avoiding you, is your deal with her?"
The man in the black suit tucked his head into his chin, looking away and pursing his lips. He hiccuped.
"... something like that, yes."
I squinted. I hadn't expected him to be so honest about it, either. Something was up.
"I picked up a Fleet Carrier for us to use, by the way, and I've been looking into this situation with the Empire and the ACT inve-"
"Yes, we were aware of your intent to provide yourself with a mobile docking platform, Cadence, and we're glad you made the decision to do so. We're less thrilled by the fact that you went AWOL immediately following your promotion-leave. That's not something we can generally abide, Cadence."
I squinted at him, sucking my teeth. So Coral can just investigate basically anything she wants and go anywhere she wants but I can't just ignore them whenever I feel like it.
"So Coral can just investigate basically anything she wants and go anywhere she wants but I can't just ignore you and the suits whenever I feel like it?"
He lowered his head and scratched his eyebrow. His lips were tucked into the side of his face and he was squinting at the lower portion of his holofac sensor.
"Cadence, how much do you remember about your meeting with Coral?"
I remembered seeing her and smiling and then waking up with him on the holofac screen.
"Coral was put through re-alignment, Cadence."
I wrinkled my eyebrows and looked away. I remembered the term from during our training. Coral said something about it being the same thing as serial sequestration, which also didn't mean anything to me, and the man in the black suit picked her up and lifted her outside of the cockpit of Empathy's Destitution before continuing with his holofac conversation with another of the suits.
"I don't know what that means."
He lowered his head and his hand came up to his forehead, scratching it slightly.
"Its a punishment exclusive to people raised within the organization, Cadence. They poison you and then manipulate your perception until you get your head straight."
That still meant absolutely nothing to me.
"That means absolutely nothing to me."
"Cadence, they put people in a dark room and mess with their heads. They break a person's mind and then they leave the person to rebuild it for themself. It's meant to isolate people within the organization when they begin to exhibit signs of externally-influenced behaviors and ideas about their place in the organization that don't abide by their actual place in the organization."
I did not know that was something the suits did. They all just seemed like squares and jerks. That seemed outright diabolical. I knew Coral had come from one of the training facilities the organization had been sponsoring, but we'd never spoken about it beyond the random questions I'd had of her, here and there. The man in the black suit was generally mum about it, redirecting my attention to whatever training exercise he'd had in mind for the day. I knew that, being from the Cubeo 3, I was a bit of a strange one to the rest of the trainees but none of them had ever made the difference into anything worth talking about- I was far from the only Imperial citizen taken in for training by the suits.
"So all this consortium stuff is real? I thought it was just for the recruiting pitch we recorded."
The man in the black suit looked at me and squinted, biting his lip. He sat like that for a good fifteen seconds before he started,
"Cadence, when you asked her to lie to the suit in Chelomey, it set off a chain reaction and we've had to make some decisions that I'm not particularly happy with."
I looked away. I knew it was a big deal but its not like I asked her to murder anyone.
"So what now?"
"You'd mentioned you were looking into the situation with the Emp-"
He stopped as Coral's face popped onto our holofac screens. She was docked on Nain Incorporated and she looked at me with little more than the warm, open stare she usually had when seeing me.
"How's your face?"
I squinted at her and sucked my teeth again.
"It was a cheap shot. You couldn't take me if you tried."
She rolled her eyes and looked at the man in the black suit,
"Did you tell her about me elbowing her in the face when she was unconscious?"
I squinted at her, again, and looked away. I did not know that she'd done that.
"Coral, stop it. Cadence, I'd like you to station yourself in Caspatsuria for the time being and begin making inroads with the minor factions in the region. Our man in Chelomey has mentioned that you haven't been back for a while for your usual pledges of allegiance to Princess Aisling."
I'd figured I'd steer clear of Cubeo for a while, with the whole Prismatic Imperium and Aisling's Angels conflict about to break out, and I mentioned it to the man in the black suit before letting him know I'd begin again with my services shortly. He lowered his chin to his neck, pursing his lips before glancing at Coral then downward. Coral swallowed and looked away.
"That's,... honorable of you Cadence, but I guarantee that won't be a problem. I'm sure they can find a way to work it out amongst themselves without involving us in their territorial scrum. I'd like you to spend some time figuring out who and what happens to be in the region, with the Empire, Federation, and Alliance all tucked into that area, ok?"
Coral looked at me and squinted. I looked back and her and sucked my teeth again, still tasting blood.
"I'm gonna be doing a tour on behalf of Nain Incorporated but I can be there before the end of next week, if that's ok."
He nodded his head, saying it would be fine and looked over to Coral.
"And what are you doing, Coral?"
Coral looked at me, tilting her head slightly, before looking back over to the man in the black suit,
"I found some cables documenting the locations of tourist beacons and I wanted to do an information collection mission to see if I could get a better grasp on the historical contingencies of the relationships of the powers,"
The man in the black suit raised his eyebrows and looked away, nodding as she continued,
"Did Cadence tell you about how she was telling people in Terra Mater that we had access to this Omega Grid and that Denton was secretly imprisoning The Emperor?"
The man in the black suit had been watching me closely as she spoke and, when she mentioned my conversations with the pilots of Terra Mater, he looked away and his eyes began to shimmer. I looked at Coral and squinted again, shaking my head. Filthy rat. The man in the black suit slowly began working his mouth, with sounds coming from it that might have been words but weren't. Coral looked over at him and began chuckling as he finally managed to croak out a garbled question,
"Why would you think that our communications system wasn't just a slight modification of the Pilot's Federation's own system?"
Why would I think that our communication's system wasn't the same modification of the Pilot's Federation system that the Empire was using?
"Isn't that what the Omega Grid system is?"
Coral immediately stopped laughing, looking at me like she was more proud of me than she'd ever been over the years of our training and working together. From the look in his eyes, as they slowly trailed away, his head slowly following in the same direction, I began to gather that our communication system was not, in fact, the same thing as the Omega Grid.
"Why are we even working for them if we don't get the fancy toys they get?"
Coral's eyes slowly trailed away from me and upward, her head raising toward the top of her holofac sensors with a smile growing from the corners of her lips. The man in the black suit had frozen with his head tilted at an awkward angle, his eyes wide open. We three sat for a short moment, they frozen in their reverie and me still trying to figure out what was going on, and the man in the black suit broke the silence as he turned his head and eyes toward me in what looked like shock mixed with a little bit of fear,
"You told them Senator Patreus has The Emperor imprisoned?"