In 45 Decibels of Silence We Sat
13 Feb 2022User319792
I returned to my quarters as we began the jump back from Kruger 60 to Kuk. I made the decision to strip Robert of his command and, after Captain Dorothy Green assumed command of the Nain Incorporated bridge crew, I made sure she and the rest of the crew were clear on the matter of addressing what they would presume to be their responsibility of overseeing my "drinking problem" and my "tendency for reckless flight on or near" my own fleet carrier. As he marched from the carrier's quarterdeck to the flight deck, boarding the Orca that would take him to Kepler Gateway, he mumbled something about my recklessness interfering with his ability to conduct his mission. I thought it weird, considering his mission was to ensure that my fleet carrier ran smoothly, and best I could tell the Nain Incorporated was in tip-top shape, all damages being repaired by the crew in short order and all jumps conducted without issue. I let it slide but made sure the new captain knew I wouldn't tolerate such insolence from my own crew. Coral and the man in the black suit had been receiving briefing after briefing from the rest of the suits in Imperial space and our eyes met as I entered. His face was brimstone. He extended his hand toward me and, in it, he held a piece of paper signed by the suit in Achenar. The organization had been issued an Imperial dictate commanding me to report to Fortress York. I looked at the man in the black suit. Coral avoided our gaze and mumbled something under her breath. I glared at her and shook the paper.
"I said, you'd been trading in Stopover, at Darkwater station, right around the time the news hit GALNET about The Emperor's rescue. What are the chances the Empire's already made a decision about our potential involvement with the Torquatus Conspiracy?"
We both looked at the man in the black suit and he held his head in both his hands. I'd asked him if I should head over to Summerland, before the trip to Kruger 60, to see if we could find anything out about what happened and he shook off the question immediately. Our involvement, or rather our lack thereof, turned what the organization had hoped to be a great honor into a possible massacre, he said. The last thing we needed was to have ourselves seen returning to the scene of the crime on a sanitation mission to try to clear ourselves of involvement, or lack thereof, he said. Prepare to defend yourself, if need be, he said. The Imperial dictate had been issued while I was in Kruger 60.
"What choice have we got, Coral? We have too many people on our Imperial staff to just brush off any possible accusations and we know far too little about whether or not we just spent the last year erecting a bulwark against Torquatus' opponents to just ignore an Imperial dictate levied upon the entirety of the organization."
Coral looked away from the two of us and I remembered being chewed out by a Prismatic Imperium staffer in Cubeo, for having "dared return after revoking my pledge" to The Empress, when paying off an old Reckless Flying violation.
"Coral, don't go back to Cubeo."
She looked at me, startled.
"What? Why not?"
I debated whether or not to tell her, fighting down a private laugh. The man in the black suit turned to Coral,
"No, she's right. Princess Aisling's statements on the safety of The Emperor carried a lot of weight," I squinted at the man in the black suit as he chewed through his next few words, "and as much as Cadence loves her, we have no way of knowing whether or not the stunt you two pulled has left us in bad shape, and what shape happens to be the malformed. You hadn't been delivering your pledges since being promoted to King and, lo and behold, the organization's cementing of its position, along with your... shall I say less than advisable public assessments of our position within the Imperial fold, might have aroused even more suspicions among the various Imperial factions into which we'd been penetrating."
I looked away from them both. I felt a knot form in my left shoulder and my mouth began to water. It was sour with a bit of iron from a cut on my lip I'd gotten after crashing onto Nain Incorporated's flight deck on the way back from Kepler Gateway before relieving Robert.
"There's no way The Empress' people would suspect me of anything that would be disloyal or dishonest to her."
Coral looked at me and squinted, the corner of her mouth flinching ever so slightly for the briefest of moments. She looked at the man in the black suit, who looked back at her, and then they both looked down. My quarters were quiet for the next day-and-a-half as they alternated between pacing and sitting, pouring over reports coming in from our agents stationed in Imperial space. The man in the black suit asked me various questions about my trading runs in Imperial space and whether or not I'd shared any of that information, to which I could only shrug. Our agents in Federation, Alliance, and Independent space were scrambling to see if any of their connections had collected any Imperial intelligence that might suggest our work in Imperial space had been linked to, or at least believed to have been linked to, the Torquatus Conspiracy and those wells had run dry.
I finally departed in Euclid toward Fortress York and decided to make a stop in Summerland, in spite of what Coral and the man in the black suit had expressed. Darkwater Inc. was being subjected to punitive attacks by the Summerland Patron's Party and when I asked the flight control tower at Henry O'Hare's Hangar about it, he did little more than tilt his head, lower his eyebrows, and viciously tear open his invisible box. It was tense. My flight suit felt 3 sizes too small from the moment I docked and I launched, egressing to ICZ HW-W c1-17 and calling Nain Incorporated over immediately. I docked and immediately made for my quarters, ignoring Captain Green's request for my presence in the transit out-chopper. I told the man in the black suit and Coral about the current events transpiring in Summerland and they nodded in silence. We sat in silence, our eyes never meeting, and we waited.