Her name was Heather Pt.5
25 Nov 2017Gmanharmon
Part 4The vision in front of me was unmistakable. Clad in a silk and lace negligée, a painite necklace, and little else, Princess Aisling Duval looked at me with glazed, droopy eyes. A strange sight, seeing such effects of impairment on a person with a reputation as a teetotaler and a vocal anti-slavery activist.
Her blue hair was remarkably frizzy and unkempt, with loose strands hanging to and fro, swaying in the static charge of the nearby diagnostic panels. Against the harsh blue light of the monitors, her pale skin seemed argyric, a silver sheen conveying the appearance of some plated statuary. Indeed, while standing on her tip-toes to avoid feeling the frigid deck plates against her bare feet, her posture and bearing remained regal, toned calf muscles accentuating her long, shapely legs. Even as a happily married man, I cannot deny the fact that the Princess is beautiful.
“Denton, what’s going on?” she mumbled softly, rubbing sleep from her eyes. In her drug-induced stupor, Aisling thought I was Senator Denton Patreus, her rumored lover. I bore no resemblance to him, but I felt an opportunity arise. I take my hand off the revolver and return to the flight stick.
“Yes, dearest,” I replied, doing my best to mimic the Senator’s voice. It must have worked, because I felt her presence at my side. The lightest touch of her hand on my shoulder caused me to look in her direction. She was staring out at the blackness of space, as I navigated the panels in front of me to try and make sense of where I was, and whose ship this once belonged to. “Looks like you had fun.” It was a shot in the dark.
“I don’t remember...” she mumbled again. The sedative fog was still thick enough to impair speech and thought. “You were talking to the Emperor while I went to the washroom. But I don’t know how I got here...”
“You don’t remember hitting your head after you tripped? We were very concerned for you.” A reflexive, but lethargic, motion of her arm off my shoulder, and to the back of her head, feeling underneath the bed of blue.
“I don’t feel anything,” Aisling replied, drawing her arm down. I took her hand in my own and feigned checking for blood. Her skin was quite soft, not unlike Heather’s, and I could feel her give me a gentle squeeze before she withdrew her hand and clasped herself. “It’s very cold. I’m going to my room to warm up.”
“Let me find a place to land, my dear, and I’ll be right with you.” I watched Duval walk away through the door, disappearing to the crew’s quarters.
Better make this quick, I told myself, browsing the navigation panel and choosing a nearby rocky moon to land the Python. For all I know, she may have a distress beacon or some other communication device with her. As I slewed the Python around in supercruise, the moon started expanding towards me as the time to arrival ticked lower, looking very much like a freshly-unearthed potato with its lumpy surface pockmarked with craters from meteorite strikes.
I learned that the Python was a patrol craft from the Imperial Navy’s auxiliary, leased to the Kamadhenu Chapterhouse of Inquisition for an indefinite amount of time. Her name was Outrageous Fortune, helmed by one Earl Henri Gower Tremaine.
All those fancy names and titles, and he pissed his pants as soon as he got bested, I thought to myself, reading Tremaine’s identity badge. I thought Inquisitors were supposed to be hot shit, what with being in the Emperor’s headquarters and all.
The giant space potato grew larger in the window, and I began entry interface. New information appeared on the glass displaying altitude, azimuth, specific gravity, and a horizon line, as I flew down at a forty-degree angle. The ship’s navigational computer was compensating for entry interface, slowing to 2.5 kilometers per second before dropping out of supercruise and beginning the glide in. I looked around at the surface below me, listening to the Python creak and shimmy as it moved through the glide stage, completing at a distance of seven kilometers from the surface.
It took a couple of minutes to find a suitable spot to land, finally touching down in a cloud of dust kicked up by the downward thrusters. With a jolt and hiss of hydraulics, the Python steadied itself, and the engines spooled down and went offline. I cracked my knuckles, stretched my arms skyward, then checked GalNet for any information on current events.
The outpost at Gorramacor was included in a footnote in local news, but only reported as suffering superficial damages and a temporary loss of life support systems due to an industrial accident. I frowned, having seen the outpost be blown apart with my own two eyes, and dismissed the article as Imperial yellow journalism. Another headline caught my eye: the real Senator Patreus was currently embroiled in political scandal, as it was revealed that Hengist Duval’s murderer was seen charging from Patreus’ retinue and sinking a blade into the former Emperor several times before being disintegrated by a member of the royal Guard. The news was less than a week old, but the killer’s name was revealed to be Brendan Paul Darius, and was a civilian employee on the Senator’s payroll. Little else was being reported, but wild speculation was flung about, as is wont to happen in the opening days of a major event. I moved to the copilot’s seat and took control of the communications array, using an old-fashioned burst transmitter to deliver a message to Holliday in the Los Angeles.
MESSAGE START
HOLLIDAY—RELAY INFO POP & INTEL MONKEYS RE EMPERORS KILLER.
BRENDAN PAUL DARIUS. OURS?
PRINCESS AISLING IN MY SHIP. BARGAINING CHIP?
NO NEWS RE HEATHER. PLAN IN THE WORKS FOR IMP HOMEWORLD.
TELL POP ANACONDA SHOOTS BEAUTIFUL.
GRAYSON
STOP STOP STOPI bursted the message through an encrypted EM network pipe, thousand-year-old communications technology that was rarely monitored by either Federal or Imperial listening posts anymore, now solely the realm of amateur radio enthusiasts and tech-school students passing each other test answers. Unfortunately, I would have to wait almost a week for a reply using this method.
Satisfied with everything, I got out of the copilot’s chair, extinguished the exterior lights and cockpit instrumentation, leaving the red combat light burning, then retired to Tremaine’s bunk and went straight to his safe. The combination turned out to be the right one, and the magnetic lock clicked open while the door hissed, its contents hermetically sealed. Inside was a spare blaster and power pack, letters of marque from the Chapterhouse, the deed to the Outrageous Fortune from the Imperial Auxiliary, several syringes in a small pile by a glass medicine vial, and some kind of ancient device. I removed the device and examined it; it was made of some kind of cheap plastic, contained a hidden flip-up portion containing a lens and light array, packed with a paper box labeled Polaroid Instant Film. I turned the device around and found a small window, which I looked through and realized was a viewfinder. It was an old personal camera, unlike the sophisticated cameras within our modern dataslates or the million-credit news drones half the size of a Sidewinder. A poster of the Emperor’s likeness hung on the far bulkhead, making a perfect muse. I looked through the viewfinder, couldn’t find any advanced functions like zoom or aperture adjustments, squared up the poster in the center of the viewfinder, and pressed the shutter button.
The bulb flashed, throwing a brilliant white light around the room, then I heard the camera whirring and saw it spit out a piece of paper from the front. I took the paper and turned it over, seeing nothing but a brown square in a white border, until I noticed the faintest outline of the poster start to slowly appear. It took more than a minute for the picture to get clearer, and there were plenty of artifacts left over from the development processes, but it was a satisfactory result. At that moment, I heard a noise at the door. I spun around and Aisling was standing there.
“What was that bright light?” she asked. I held up the camera and took her picture with it. The dazzling light of the flash-bulb caused her to place her arm over her eyes. “Denton! What—” The camera spit out another photograph and I handed it to the princess, once she regained her sight. The face staring back at her was unflattering, eyes wide as dinner plates, hair wild and crazy. “Oh, I look horrible!” she exclaimed further. “Get that thing away from me!”
I laughed as she tried to reach for the Polaroid, as I call it, as if it was the machine that caused her good looks to falter and not whatever episode she had just been through. She took a step forward to grab for the Polaroid, but caught the edge of the bunk and fell onto me. I stretched out on the bunk as the princess stretched for the camera, as I finally placed it on the shelf out of her reach. The struggle stopped, and we lay on the bunk in silence.
The light on the overhead was harsh, but I could see Aisling’s features just fine. Her eyes were very droopy and she began slurring her words.
“I’m very tired, all of a sudden...” She rolled off me and onto the mattress, while I got up and straightened out my clothing. “So sleepy...”
“Don’t you want to wrestle a bit before bed?” I said with a smirk, but only heard a loud snore in reply. She really was out. I placed a hand on her cheek, then pushed her shoulder, but Aisling was completely unconscious. A thought popped into my head; I looked at the Polaroid, then the safe, focusing on the syringes, then back to Aisling.
The gears started turning, and a smile crossed my lips. If she wants Denton, I thought, then I’m going to giver her exactly what she wants. I took off my compression shirt, threw it aside, and grabbed the Polaroid.
“Let’s get to work.”