Strange, animated symbols form on Samael as he sits cross-legged in the center of the ancient Tnuctipin control system. They flow down his body, then onto the dais of control panels, which begin to light up and arc streamers of plasma from point to point - looking quite a bit like the ring of cold plasma that normally girdles the Dark Horse, although at the moment it appears in the form of a twisted chain.
The telescope shows Urgo-hem at extreme magnification, the black surface covered in its kaleidoscope of geometric figures. The bridge is quiet, save for the strumming of Katie's guitar.
Wanting to 'feel part of the process', Tasha plopped herself right down beside Samael to watch the whole thing. From where she's at she can get a good look at the symbols, details, and with her keen Vartan vision the viewscreen itself, all without being in anyone's way. Possibly, also without being terribly useful to any process. This doesn't bother her too much, after all she just spent the last few days in dialogue with godlike beings and (depening on how one might view the situation) either a day or a lifetime as a male version of herself. It's been a long, long week.
And now our hard work is about to pay off, thinks Tasha, hopes Tasha. It would be a sad day indeed if it was all for naught, or worse, a trap of some sort. That is assuming Urgo-hem didn't blast them out of existence to the tune of a trumpet.
Slowly, as ancient systems wake up, Tasha can feel something change. It's subtle, and not close.. it must be the Horse itself. Along with this feeling comes something else: the periscope views show the plasma 'chain' distorting now as well, the links separating and extending forward and back.
"Something's happening," Hakeber reports quietly.
Tasha frowns at this, but not out of any displeasure. The young woman simply isn't sure what to make of what's happening, lacking in any frame of reference to compare it to. Tnuctipin technology is considered extremely advanced and complex even by their contemporaries, the ancient hunter's intelligence matched only by their predatory nature. All she can do is watch, flicking her gaze between Samael, the panel, and the viewscreen.
The glowing symbols no long stay within the confines of the control system. They start moving along the inner hull, even glowing through the projected matter that makes up the interior. The external views show seams and other features on the outer hull begin to glow as well, while the plasma continues to stretch and distort, beginning to take on shapes as well.
From her position near the 'floor' of the command dome, Tasha can see through the transparent walls of the dolphin tanks. One of the glowing symbols attaches itself to Kaa's bulbous forehead.
"Does anyone want to take a guess at what's happening?" Tasha asks. Her own guess skirts the line of vague generalization so much it's only a step or two from 'something' or else 'things are happening'. She can't read the symbolic language at all, though she suspects it may be a Dark language. The plasma structures are a complete mystery, but given the purpose of the Dark Horse -- or Dagger of Eibon -- a weapon seems to her a safe assumption. When one of the floating symbols sticks to kaa, she turns to stare at him consideringly.
"It's a magic circle," Aaron offers up. The structures forming outside do resemble something like that, just in three dimensions and with moving parts. There are arcs and circles and more complicated diagrams full of moving, changing symbols now.
Kaa doesn't noticeably react to the symbol, or show any awareness of there being one. But then one forms on Gabriel's forehead too, and another on Hakeber's.
"I bet the mages would lose their robes over just a glimpse of this," Tasha remarks, slipping a bare secret in her awe at the situation. She narrows her eyes to peer at Kaa's symbol up until another one attaches, then another. Her head darts to follow the changes, avian-like, but she can no more understand the language now as she could minutes ago. After a few seconds it strikes her that she may be the only one to notice the changes, although she suspects Samael and perhaps Hakeber can as well.
"You've got something on your forehead, Tasha," Gabriel points out. "It looks like a tri-armed spiral.."
"We've all got one," Hakeber notes, gesturing back to the parts of the bridge that Tasha can't see. Presumably everyone in the crew is marked. Maybe even the Jotoki and the cats.
Tasha tilts her head, eyes canting upward. "Maybe I'm a Library unit," she jokes, wondering as she has since this started what it all means. She then turns to peer at the other symbols marking her crew, trying to tease out some meaning from their basic shape.
The symbols keep changing. Sometimes looking like the letter or symbols of a language, then becoming jumbles of geometry or breaking down into almost fractal forms. Rings of symbols begin to fill the space above the control system, turning and twisting and sprouting sub-rings and circles of their own.
"Maybe I should ask Liza to tutor me in ancient Tnuctipin-Dark symbolic magical abstract language." Just looking at it begins to give Tasha a headache, and with no understanding on the horizon she turns her attention back to the large structure: The shape of the rapidly changing plasma structures.
As bizarre as the glowing cage surrounding the ship appears.. it does look purposeful. And soon it's visible through the hull itself, somehow, as lines of light begin to connect to the inner structure - and to the symbols on the crew. Only Samael remains unconnected, but as he's the apparent source of the symbols that probably doesn't matter. It's even possible to see the Horse now, also surrounded by a vision-twisting structure that must be extending into higher dimensions as well.
It all makes Tasha squint. Keen Vartan vision doesn't include higher dimensionality, and while she's stared at expressions of higher dimensions -- other dimensions, other times, other wordlines and other variations in bredth, time, depth -- they never seem to get any easier to look at, she just becomes more practiced in enduring the experience. "I wonder what Urgo-hem's thinking right now." She suspects the thought process prceeds along a similiar line to the classic Terran summation: 'oh shit'.
As if in reply, a higher, flute-like sound is heard and felt throughout the ship: the voice of Tatha-hem, offering it's own Trumpet of sorts. Is isn't just overwhelming blast.. it seems more like music. It's brief, followed by silence. And then Katie begins playing her guitar again, and this time she sings.
Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing "Hallelujah"
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelu-oo-oo-jah
Kaa begins to move slightly, and it's possible to see the stars move through the nearly transparent hull now as the Dark Horse reorients itself. "I see the c-course," Kaa says. "Straight through.. straight through Urgo-hem's singularity.."
Tasha isn't exactly sure why she started to cry at that moment. Maybe it was what she'd been through to reach this point, two lifetimes, three gods and a dead world. Maybe was relief at the edge of success, simple exhaution. But, what she'd like to believe was that it was at the beauty of the moment. In truth, the answer is a little bit of each. She wipes at her eyes with the back of her arm, blinking rapidly.
"Gabriel, there's somewhere I would like to be going." The hybrid woman pulls in a breath, nodding slowly. "Please see to it?"
"Everyone brace for.. just brace yourselves," Gabriel announces. "You know what to do, Kaa. Be lucky."
The Dark Horse does not submerge into the Maelstrom as expected. It just begins accelerating.
And Katie keeps singing, as if using her voice as an anchor to normality.
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelu-oo-oo-jah
"And make sure Urgo-hem isn't," Tasha adds, with a hint of viciousness. She reaches to brace herself on whatever is nearby, which mainly means Samael and the console.
Once, Tasha was taught that one of the most devastating weapons is a mere rock. Accelerated to high fractions of C, a little rock can wreak havok on all that is material. So it is with electromagnetic waves and other things beside. Throw something hard enough, give it the right energy. It's a truisim as at home in the universe as her backwater home, with just the rock and the throw changing -- and sometimes not even that.
The universe outside begins to distort. First everything becomes more blue, but then the stars compress, peeling away from the view ahead, where a bright point seems to rest just ahead of the ship, where the symbols and diagrams come to a point.
The young hybrid recognizes the effect real space acceleration when she sees it, and suspects like kinetic weaponry they've accelerated to a high fraction of C. The red and blue shift of light as it's subject to the doppler effect, the apparent compresion of the universe. There are mysteries in being near C she doesn't fully comprehend, ways in which time and their relation to the outside world changes -- changes more, given their relationship to the outside world is already nebulous with the Horse's habit of warping and encapsulating reality.
"Time to impact?" Grabriel asks. Moka chatters and clicks, and replies with, "Uncert-t-tain, Captain. Time dilation is increasing.." The universe outside has wrapped itself around the Dark Horse's midriff, a bright band to replace the altered plasma ring.
Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelu-oo-oo-jah
Other streaks begin to appear ahead - silver liquid threads, where the focused bowshock is cutting through to the Maelstrom.
And so Tasha wonders at that. Is it really a trick of the literal and figurative light that the universe seems to dive in to that plasma ring? Is it coincidence, or design? The Tnuctipin were so close to Sifran brilliance as to be a threat, their capbility is beyond her comprehension. And if that weren't enough, Tatha-hem brings things past comprehension and farther still, to a realm and rules beyond.
Tasha isn't sure what to say, so she says nothing. Katherine's music seems to summerize the situation well in an unspoken way. Although the hybrid can't always understand the references behind Terra song, there does often seem to be a kind of universal cord that speaks to her. Such is the case now, as they streak like arrow through heaven.
You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelu-oo-oo-jah
And then everything stops. Every moment seems to happen simultaneously, a chaos that's impossible to grasp. And there's pain. Tasha feels as if she's being pulled apart.. and would be, along with everyone else, if they weren't all connected. Their combined will holding their souls together. And somewhere in it and behind it and through it - Urgo-hem's horrible voice and presence, barely being held back by Tatha-hem's song.
As the darkness of the Ogdru-hem presses in, trying to crush them, Katie's voice rings out. Except it's really all of their voices this time, pushing back:
Maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelu-oo-oo-jah
The pressure breaks, shatters.. and the fragments buffet them in a sense that isn't physical at all. It makes reality blur at the edges instead, shaking the barriers that keep them all separate.
In this broken space, a space of breaking, the ragged edge of the dagger, Tasha feels the song remains appropriate. Remains, in essence, what each of them think. In a world where gods are real, in the end they found they had ultimately turned to each other. Where, then, can Urgo-hem turn? For all his might, he remains a slave, alone. A single will, shackled.
What then is a lonely song without heart and soul, to a chorus of uplifted souls in unison of purpose?
Not much.
Not enough.
I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelu-oo-oo-jah
In the more familiar darkness that falls upon them, Tasha glimpses something just beyond it. Something so dark that it shines. And then, for now, she's gone.
Consciousness returns with a massive headache. One that seems to spread throughout Tasha's entire body. There's a horrible groan, which she eventually realizes is coming from her, even though it's echoed around her as well.
Although hardly a stranger to waking up with a groan, Tasha's returning conciousness quickly decides this is on a level beyond previous experience -- and that includes blowing herself up. As more returns to her, she remembers danger as well, which spurs her to rise all the faster in a scrambled effort. A life time aboard ship has nothing good to say about sleeping during a crisis. She stirs.
Moving fast is not an option. It makes her head swim more than usual.. and leads to a very wet coughing fit. She knows she's coughing up blood. It's also running from her nose, and ears and eyes.
And so Tasha drops right back down with a boneless thud, the unique feeling of resting on the edge of death's razor passing briefly through her mind as it has before. There's more coughing as she tries to clear her lungs, her body fighting the urge to give in to sleep. More recollection returns: A mission, an an action during that mission. Results. Uncertainty. Pain. The timelime is a jumble, but she knows they're inter-related, that there's danger. She must recover, and then she must act, that much is clear.
Something buzzes through the ringing in her ears. Someone is talking to her.
Tasha wishes, in a moment of mangled clarity, that people would stop talking in symbolic nonsense. It really is quite vexing, the endless variation of language. It makes her work harder, and now it makes listening harder, and soon it will make talking harder. She tells the buzz so, rudely.
And so Tasha finds herself being lifted up, and carried by someone.. to somewhere.
Isn't that always the way of things? Tasha thinks she's always being carried by someone, somewhere, try as she might to be self-sufficent, to do it on her own, to involve no one that could be hurt by her travels. Yet she knows how small she is, how big the universe and its gods. And then there's the place beyond gods, making even such august beings seem small. She's tried very hard to stand at their level, to make a difference. She even considered their power and gifts, but the cost! She lets the universe know how she feels as she's sweapt along.
Eventually she's put onto something comfortable - well, as comfortable as can be given that everything hurts. Then there's a cool touch at her neck.. and the pain and consciousness go away for a bit. When she wakes up again, she can hear properly, and even open her eyes without worrying about having to look through a red film.
As waking up goes, it's decidedly on the better side of things. It's certainly better than before, whenever and where-ever before was. Had been. Been twice? No, only once. Her twin worlds end at a point, less converging so much as one abruptly terminates to join the other, which she remains along. There's more, she knows, as she walks along her timeline to the here-and-now. Dire events. A journey, and a cutting secret. She wonders at who it was meant to cut -- was it another being, or herself?
A length, Tasha thinks it must have been both.
The lights are dim in the Med-Bay, and every bed is occupied. The tall, lanky figure of Jonas is moving about.. along with Rock and Rainbow, the Jotoki not restricted to the floor, since there's ample support structures overhead for them to swing from. Something chimes behind Tasha's head, and that brings Jonas over to her bed. "Can you hear me, Tasha?" the Belter asks.
Tasha's eyes creak open, and she tracks the dark skinned man as he approches. She considers nodding, then talking, wondering which will hurt less. She goes with nodding.
It doesn't hurt that much. Nor does it when the man shines a little light into Tasha's eyes. "Good. You've suffered decompression effects - basically a lot of surface hemorrhaging, which includes your lungs. The good news is I and the Phins are pretty much immune to such things. The better news is that this is a spaceship, with a spaceship med-bay, which is well equipped for dealing with exactly this issue. You're all going to be fine."
Tasha's muzzle splits in to a smile. She smiles for what seems like a long time, until it occurs her to wonder, and then to ask. "W-whhh-y ... " She tries again. "W-why, no ... No ... No atmosphere?" Atmophere being another things spaceships typically have, and its sudden lack is alarming.
"Oh, nothing happened to the atmosphere," Jonas says. "I'm pretty sure it was a gravitational effect of some sort. Things were pretty strange. But Moka and Kaa have figured out where we are and synchronized our clocks. We lost about three months relative time. The Acheron-B system is.. uh.. gone."
"Two ... down." The young woman exhales. Her fogged up mind doesn't quiet remember how long she's been out here, but three months is still a long time and there's been more time spent traveling beside. Still, two Ogdru-hem are no longer functional in this universe -- and she suspects Urgo-hem is gone for good. She has ideas about that, but complex ideas are for later. Instead she gives her doctor a rather shaky thumbs up. "I-I guess-s we can sell the data for Ach-eron B-b as 'don't b-bother'."
"Well, Acheron-A is also useless for data," Jonas notes. "The carbon worlds might be mined, but who knows what messing with that system will cause. And no ship can reach it though the minefield."
Tasha waves it all off with a hand. "T-they'll get their info, and we'll get our m-money. And we ... keep ... going." She then squints, head tilting. "How is everyone ... Uh ... " She taps her head, indicatively, indicating injury beyond the conventional physical.
"Dr. Sen and the Lapis are still sedated," Jonas says. "Body mass makes a difference, and they suffered a bit more damage. Lacci has been released, and Shojo is physically recovered as well. I expect the Karnors to wake up soon."
"The Jotoki do not appear to have suffered any ill effects," the doctor adds.
"How are they ... mentally?" Tasha tries, wondering how out of it she must be to not be able to get her questions across. Pretty out of it, she decides. "Lacci ... is ... She's ... "
"Oh, and the kittens are fine. It isn't clear that non-sapients were affected at all," Jonas says. "Lacci seems subdued, but that's normal after such a trauma. I gave her some anxiety meds to be safe."
"Good, that's good ... " Tasha is then left to decide what to do, having asked her immediate questions. Rest and relaxation seem like a good idea, but she finds that she isn't ready for that yet. Despite her injury and weariness, she feels ansty. Reaching out, she begins to push herself up.
Jonas helps her to sit up. "You probably shouldn't try to eat anything yet, and avoid alcohol."
Alcohol had been on Tasha's mind, but there's always later. Unless there isn't, of course. She gets up with the help of Jonas, then swings her legs over the edge and uses his help to rise further. Once on her feet she stands shakily, quickly gaining her footing. "Jonas, thank you for looking after everyone. You've done a good job. Maybe it wasn't what you signed up for, but you've done very well."
"It's been very interesting, certainly," Jonas notes with a grin. "I could write a book about it. Would sell well as fiction."
"Maybe some day you can," the young woman conceeds with a grin of her own. She sucks in a deep breath, lets go of Jonas's arm, and then straightens. "I think I'll walk around the ship a little, see that everything is okay. Call me if anything changes here."
"Of course, be careful, especially if you feel dizzy," the doctor advises.
"If I do, I'll call you from the floor," Tasha promises. She takes a step forward, sees that she doesn't need to make the call immediately, then takes another. With walking appearing to be more reliable all the time, she starts moving, heading out. "And good job again, Jonas. Keep it up." And with that she's out.
Once out into the main corridor, Tasha is met by Samael, who is just standing there. "You are recovered?" he asks.
Tasha looks herself over, then brushes her shoulders off with exagerated care. "Yeah, pretty much," she answers, looking back, grinning, and just generally happy she and everyone else are still alive. That, at least for now, her task is done. "Ones less Ogdru-hem, right? Take that, Old Ones."
"One of the important ones, too," Samael says. Then he offers his elbow, in case Tasha wants help walking.
Oh why not, thinks the hybrid, who accepts the elbow. Walking may be fine, but she still feels like falling over in to a heap and then just staying there until she's not allowed to anymore. She hooks her arm in and sees if Samael is about to lead her anywhere. "So Urgo-hem was important?"
"Big and active," Samael notes. "And talkative. K'thogga-hem was big, but silent for the most part. Passive. There are waiters, and their are watchers, and their are doers."
He then asks, "Where do you want to go? The bridge?"
"I guess Urgo-hem is just done now." It makes Tasha grin a little more, the thought of success. When she took up this job, she never knew what success would look like or even how to achieve it. Now they're two in, with one of those two destroyed by their own hand -- albiet wielding an incomprehensible weapon. Well, she supposes you take what you can get at this level of affairs. It's not like she was going to step outside and punch or stab Urgo-hem to death, assuming death is even a state she could punch and or stab it to. "The bridge sounds great. So, I think we must have attack its soul? Did we just eliminate its soul on this reality and untether it from here, or was it something more?"
"I wasn't aware of anything that was happening," Samael notes, and helps Tasha towards the bridge. "I have no memory of anything that happened from the time I was connected to the control system to the time I was released from it."
"The ship activated unknown functionality, there were symbols, the rings changed, then we accelerated tovery close to C, I think." Tasha begins moving, expkaining as she goes. "Then we hit the Maelstrom and ... Well, there was silver light. Then we hit Urgo-hem and ... I'm not sure what happened, actually." She starts to shrug, but then thinks better of it. "I remember it vaguely, I know I heard singing, Urgo-hem, Tatha-hem, but it's jumbled. Maybe that's exactly how it was. Jumbled. All-together. I don't think I could have realized that if I hadn't traveled so much, seen places a little like it, but I think that's what it was. Jumbled. Together."
"You may have broken the causality barrier on impact," Samael suggests. "Nobody knows what that would be like."
"I think I have an idea about it now." The young woman chalks it up as another impossibe, unknowable thing she now knows, right along side having lived two seperate lives. She thinks it all might have been too much for her if she'd had a say about it before it happened. As it is, here at the end of experiences that have been forced on her, she has no choice but to accept them. They are done, and over, and she is still here. A little voice in her head reminds her broken causality might actually lack a before and after, possibly even a when entirely, but from her perspective it's solidly in the past. The Tasha Past. "You're probably better off not remembering any of it, it wasn't pleasant at all. I think there even--"
And then Tasha staggers to a halt, frowning deeply. That wasn't all of it. There was more. There was something beyond, but what? Darkness, but there's always darkness at the end of these sorts of things, mostly of the unconciousness kind. No, not that darkness, and not the darkness between the stars. Someting deeper, she remembers. Darker. So dark ...
"It shines," Tasha hisses, hackles raising. "So dark it shines."
"What's that?" Samael asks, pausing so as not to lose Tasha.
"It was there, beyond all of it! In the dark. The empty place. 'Beware the empty places.' But, I don't know why." The young woman's fingers wiggle at her side, graspingly. "The Null was there, god of the Waymakers! There and shining in the dark."
"Oh.. then Urgo-hem is completely gone," Samael says. "Erased from all existence."
"Nnn," goes Tasha, which suddenly reminds her of Hakeber. She hopes her friend's okay in a flash of worry between the seams of stark fear. Her laugh is nervous after that, which also reminds her of Hakeber. "W-well, um ... Don't mess with us, right?"
"Erasing things tends to get the Null's attention," Samael points out. "Which could be good, since it eats the Ogdoad if it catches them gardening. But bad if it disapproves of our activities."
The demon then continues taking Tasha to the bridge.
"We're still here, so, that's probably good, right?" Tasha follows along. It is probably good, isn't it? She wonders. "Can we ... still be here if we don't exist? I mean we do still remember Urgo-hem, and it was erased from ... everywhere, I guess? But not us. That probably means the worldline before it is intact, or else we, um ... It would mean everyone on the ship is now a bit seperate from reality. Maybe we have more than one, now, but ... Um, I guess I'm already like that? And was, after T'throgga-hem attacked us?"
"Urgo-hem can't be erased from time without erasing the Ogdoad too, which.. well, you can imagine the consequences if they never influenced this reality," Samael says. "I don't think the Null is in the habit of deleting universes. That's sort of the opposite of it what it wants."
"It's a positive quality," Tasha agrees, the facecious remark helping to stave off another nervous laughter. What a time to not be able to drink! "W-well, well, um, we'll just have to work it out as we go, then. I wasn't expecting to run in to the Null so soon. As gods go, it's, um, well, it's kind of on a whole other level, you know?"
"It is fundamental," Samael says, and they finally arrive at the bridge. Nobody has had a chance to clean up the blood yet, it seems. But sloshing sounds indicate at least one of the dolphins is on duty.
"'It's not your ship until you've bled on it,'" Tasha quotes. She thinks it was Eyeshine -- no, it was definitely Blackwings. Sentiments that include blood and pain were always ehr favorite, the lense by which she viewed the world, both as a means to an end and as an end itself. "Ahoy down there, Phin!"
"Tasha!" Moka replies. "How are the c-crew?"
"Alive and recovering, Moka!" Tasha directs Samael to the railing, which she promptly uses to support herself, leaning over. "How are you, Moka-moka?"
"Fine!" Moka replies. "It was very disturbing when everyone fell over and had blood leaking from all over, however."
"I try to keep falling over in a blood mess to minimum, but I can't really promise anything." Tasha bites her lip, jokes will only go so far and shield her from so much. She frowns, and adds, "I, um, wish that hadn't happened actually. Nobody knew what the ship would do once it began its attack. I'm glad some of you were able to avoid the worst part, though."
"It is all very hazy to me, beyond achieving relativistic velocity," Moka notes. "The rest was not something I could comprehend, aside from the pain part."
"I had a hard time too," Tasha commiserates, and it's true. Whatever edge her experiences and changed nature give her, they certainly weren't enough for any form of understanding. Perhaps, she thinks, where they went is beyond conventional understanding. It is a place where understanding hasn't been built yet, a more fundamental place upon which so much else rests. She thinks that might explain while everything felt like it happened at once. At such a level, mortality doesn't seem to function very well. It reminds her of something old Sir Heraphel once told her. "Well, whatever it was, old Urgo is now dead-o. Unless we still need to chart more of the region, we can look forward to a bit of R&R."
"There is a rubble system, Acheron-D, but I can agree to some rest and relaxation before further investigations," the Phon says. "New Calafia, We-Made-It and Susurrus Station are relatively close."
"Any recommendations? I haven't been to any of them myself." Something then occurs to Tasha, something she had always wanted to do but didn't want to risk her dignity doing, and it would have been a distraction. Yet, now that they've won and they're alive, some celebration is in order. A little gesture. Besides, it always looked fun.
Tasha ducks, then wiggles under the railing. She grabs the side and slides off the edge, then drops!
Right in to the water.
Moka ratchets a bit in alarm, until she realizes Tasha didn't just fall in by accident. "New Calafia is a Terran colony with lots of Phins.. and lots of beaches," Moka notes. "We-Made-It is also a colony world with.. interesting landscapes. Susurrus is a Khattan trade station catering to all species."
Tasha quickly decides maybe she should have waited a little longer before risking drowning on her own ship, but then laughs as she surfaces. She splashes the water, but soon has to hold on to something to avoud unnecessary sinking. That something is Moka, who happens to be closest. She rests her chin on her hands, which rest on Moka. "I don't think I'm ready for more Khattan living just yet. New Calafia sounds like the best choice unless you can convince me those landscapes are worth it."
"Well, the surface of the planet is a giant, winding canyon system miles deep," Moka explains. "You need special environment gear, since it is hot enough to melt lead at the bottom. The colony itself is on a single high plateau in the habitable zone. It's also famous for being one of Terra's first extrasolar colonies before the Aldersen drive was developed. It was scouted by robotic probes and colonized by a sleeper ship."
"It sounds very historic." Historic does interest Tasha, but is it what she needs right now? More importantly, is it what her crew needs? She doubts it, and that answers that. "I'd like to see it some time, but I think everyone needs a little more than lava filled pits and history right now. I think we've all been through enough metaphorical pits and actual history lately. Won't you be glad to swim in real water in a real ocean?"
"Oh yes," Moka claims, and bobs a bit.. which means Tasha gets bobbed as well. "The sex is much better in a warm ocean."
"Is it?" Tasha inquires, having to hold on or risk sinking. Really risk sinking, since she isn't exactly sure she has the strength to surface again. Well, Moka would probably save her, how else would she get a vacation? "As a bird, I never really considered sex in water. I'm part a lot of things, but not fi-shy-y-y-y-y."
"I don't know if non-dolphins would enjoy it," Moka claims. "Some oceans are just more sensual. And it is really clear water. And there are mermaids."
"I feel that way about air, and especially storms. You know, Moka, I miss flowing air and the smell of rain. The sharp scent of lightning. Spacecraft are a wonder, but they never seem to manage to replicate our worlds, do they?" Tasha settles her back down, kicking slowly to help keep herself up. She doesn't think a single part of herself is designed to be underwater. Most sentients have paddle-like feet; not Vartans. Wings aren't a lot of use unless you can master that peculiar art of wing-paddling, but she didn't grow up near bodies of water. Her vision doesn't quite work either. Yet despite it all, it still seems relaxing somehow. Wasn't it the dolphin-goddess who said life begins in the ocean? Even Vartans. "Calafia it is then. We can surprise the crew when they're done groaning."