The return to Outpost Caltrop was direct, with no stops. And they hadn't bothered to pick up any new cargo, given the isolated nature of the worlds they'd visited. Tasha learns that Egypt's actual profession isn't as a spy, but as an emo-tech (or possibly an 'emotic') - an Eeee that travels and has her emotions and memories condensed and extracted(!) to be packaged for fumitor use. In this case, her goal was to extract the sense of awe at seen the ocean of one world transfer to the other. The downside is that Egypt never remembers the events. It might also explain her odd behavior.
Not-Parsu kept to herself much as the original did. Gabriel began referring to her as Miss Cauliflower, which was some sort of Terran vegetable related to broccoli. There was time to work on the Grunt suit a bit more with Lacci, and sit in on the planning session for the voyage to the anomaly in the galactic halo that had the Seeders so excited.
Moka and Kaa would have long conversations in Primal Delphin that could cause headaches in anyone who lingered too long, and Shojo and Jonas figured out how to isolate the cargo hold from the ship's artificial gravity for more freefall training (and games). Upon their approach to Caltrop, the dark shape of the Bakumaru stood out against the gaudy Sifran bauble of an outpost. The Confederates were back.
"Hi, Bakumaru," Tasha greets the display -- or possibly window -- of the ship. Given the lightyears-advanced nature of the vessel such that even other ancients find its technology perplexing, the exact nature of the forward viewer remains vague. It's probably some sort of window, but who really can say for sure? Not her, she's certain. "Looks like our big squishy ship friend and its small squeaky crew are back. I wonder if they'll be sending anyone on the expedition?" She's standing behind Gabriel, idly rubbing his head.
"Probably the baby, unless that Eeee.. uh.. I want to say Dr. Cappuccino.. you know, the one from the party?" Gabriel notes. "He might be with them."
"I kind of forgot their names while I was struggling not to drown in scoholar-talk. Hake-bear isn't intimidating, but when she's surrounded by scholars and they all turn to you for a clever opinion ... I've never wanted to run away from skinny brainiacs before." Gabriel gets hugged on, or possibly hidden behind. "We'll have time to re-remember them soon. We will have to stock up on coffee, tea, and alcohol, though."
"And fish," Kaa chimes in from the piloting tank. He cannot make a chime sound though, unless dolphins have very rude sounding chimes. Soon the Confederate battleship is lost around the curve of the main spire as Dark Horse settles into its usual spot.
"Annnd back again.Lets go terrorize the big bauble some more, team. This might be your last chance for shore leave in quite a while, so you should tka ethe opportunity to try and enjoy yourselves -- after your work is done!" Tasha straightens. After all, that applies to her as well.
"I volunteer for booze shopping duty," Hakeber says quickly. "I know how to pick good cheap stuff, if we need to stockpile!"
"We'd better give her an escort," Tasha tells Gabriel before mock-whispering loudly to him, " ... AKA regulator, overseer, account." She pats his shoulder, then turns and stretches as she meanders towards the aft of the bridge. "I suppose I should do something, too. I'm going to have to talk to them all, aren't I? About things. Long things. With graphs. Charts are okay, but not graphs." Her head shakes; the horror. "I should also think about accomidations and reshaping the lounge, or at least making it a bearable place to listen to galactic trivi-ology."
"We've got mail," Katherine sing-songs, bringing up her comm display. "The bats want to see you, Tasha. Also Mr. Invention has already been getting the supplies we'll need for the next voyage."
"He's scary-efficent, isn't he? Well, looks like more time off for some people -- and less for me." Which is something, considering Tasha doesn't actually do a lot of work when not engaging in high-stress negotiations, low-stress-but-boring negotiations, negotiations that lack a proper descriptor in the rules and langauges of real space, studying, team building, and the rare fight, much of which happen only intermitantly. "Tell them I'll be over soon. Tell Liza I'll need her to get ready."
"Have you remembered to hand out your business cards during your tour?" Mr. Invention asks Tasha once she and Liza arrive at the office. There's a strong coffee-and-donuts smell, but it's difficult to picture the big Karnor with a cruller in hand. Miss Necessity offers a cup and donut to Tasha though. "Did you enjoy it?" is what the woman asks.
Two things occur to Tasha as she listens to Mr. Invention, followed by a alarming third. 1) It still surprises her she actually owns a business, 2) sometimes it doesn't feel like she owns a business, but that the business owns her, and finally 3) she hopes she seems like she's paying attention because she's afraid her employee will be displeased with her, and that employee is the proper but immensely intimidating Mr. Invention. "Uh," she begins, fumbling around for the cards, " ... yes, I have them right here." She has to put her maple bar aside and juggle her coffee, but she shows the man the cards. "You wnat me to hand them out on the ship and during our trip to the Halo?"
"I has assumed you'd been networking with the locals during your stops," Mr. Invention notes. "But.. aside from We-Made-It I suppose everyone you met already knew how to contact us."
Tasha flattens her ears; she had not remembered. It had always struck her as weird and a bit rude to hand people cards with her name on them, like yelling, "Be sure you remember me!" and "Buy my stuff!" except the card somehow makes it acceptable, even classy. The world continues to mystify her, but at least she takes comfort in feeling less Khattan. "Iiiii sort of thought we stood out enough to not need reminders." She puts the cards away, then picks up her coffee -- she does not hide behind it. "I did take the time to meet many of the locals and I think I made a good impression on them and our clients."
"Ah, that should suffice," the Karnor agrees, and gives Tasha a not. "Word of mouth is still valuable in this connected Galactic society, especially for discreet services."
"And we are very usual, even for Galactics. I haven't seen another group like ours outside the Seeders, and they're very specialized." Tasha nods along with Mr. I, nodding with his agreeing with her makes her feel better about everything more convinced of her own story. "By the way, Liza might be tending to one or more of our guests now and then, would you mind helping her prepare for their individual needs? I feel like they might have special tastes, and at least one of them isn't a Galactic species I even recognize -- and not a mezzode!"
"Human, Eeee.. and Dr. Amuntaton," Miss Necessity notes. "Except for the last, the other should be familiar. They aren't too old to need real assistance. But there are spaces for some extra, and we don't have the names and species for them yet."
"I'm least familiar with Celestials," Liza notes. "But I've spent time with scientists, and while they are odd, they are at least all odd in the same ways."
"What's Dr. Amuntaton listed as, he's Vartan right?" Tasha remmebers the doctor amidst all the talk, both because he singled her out for her opinions and because he was the only other not-mezzode there. It's a rare day she finds herself with another oddball, after all. "And I didn't know there were unnamed others. That's ominous. Well, the whole thing is ominious, but, now it's more so."
"Graduate students," Mr. Invention explains. "It's usually a lottery, or some other contest, to see who can earn a spot on the expedition. They could be anyone, but I would expect them to be Terran or Confederate. I don't know who or what Dr. Amuntaton would bring, if anyone."
"I hope it's someone like Dr. Monkey's assistant back on Praxxa-got-eatenous. She was cute." The hybrid wags her tail at the memory; maybe if they'd had more time. Also, if she hadn't been a man afterward. That would have been awkward, she decides, but then again she could have--
Tasha makes a strangled noise, something between clearing her throat and coughing, pretending to have had a problem with her donut. She takes a long sip of coffee and then wheezes, "Ehhh, well, variety is fun, right? So what about Dr. Amun?"
"No medical conditions that he's made us aware of, or special needs," Mr. Invention reports. "He's got a beak, so probably eats like a Vartan. You're already prepared for that. Although I suspect he may be vegetarian."
"Another of the universe's inexplicable things." If Tasha hadn't been an omnivore before, exposure to Karnor-culture would have quickly fixed that. As it stands, sometimes she wonders if she can make vegatables a meat, somehow. The science must exist somewhere, surely. "We'll prepare either way. I'll probably need to be prepared to talk to him about galactic cultures, since he seemed interested in what I had to say about them. I'll make sure to set some time aside for him if he wants it. Um." She looks around, then rubs her nose. "I think that's everything? I need to swing by the Maru and seem important again."
"That hypership is a big part of why we came out here," Mr. Invention agrees. "As the passengers arrive, I will have more information on any entourages they have dragged along. Were they any problems with your two passengers?"
"Well, the Eeee was some sort of living recorder, so she wasn't the weird spy we suspected she was. I mean, she could be, but she isn't. Probably. You know how spies are." Tasha's head shakes. They all know, by now. "I feel a bit bad I didn't try and get to know Miss Brocolli more. I thought it was cute how she guarded her charge, but I'm not sure she felt what I assumed she did. I still have a lot to learn about Celestials. The Brocolli we have right now isn't the original and will probably vanish after departing, but she seems very ... capable. They weren't a problem though, just interesting. Did they file any complaints?"
"No, but we did receive a message from Ms. Inconspicuous about discounts for repeat customers," Mr. Invention reports. "Otherwise things have been a bit slow. Which is partly due to making sure we wouldn't have any conflicts with the upcoming expedition."
Tasha smiles at that. "I don't mind having her again; she's entertaing at least and seeing Aaron carry her fumi-frogator is worth whatever headaches he might cause. If she becomes a regular customer, I don't see why not." She nods again, then checks the wall display for station time. "I'd better get going. Liza, do you want to stay here and plan, or come with me? Boarding is like getting eaten, you like that right?"
"The Confederates are least likely to believe the cover story about my origins, and probably have the means to learn the truth," Liza says. "I will stay and catch up with Nessy, and go over the supplies that Mr. Invention has arranged."
"I think they're on to me, too, but they're too polite to say so. They've seen the special data, anyway, so at least their higher ups are playing our game for now." Tasha drops her coffee and the napkin she had her donut (now demolished) on in to the recycler, then dusts her hands off. "Alright, off I go. Save me if I get kidnapped or something, you know the drill. Be back, uh, later!"
And off she goes.
It never made sense to Tasha that ships would have 'bowels', as the popular term used to mean the parts below the waterline. For airships the 'bowels' were wherever the ships 'head' was located. Who came up with these designations? However, it was quite possible that Bakumaru did have real bowels. But Tasha wasn't led to those, but to the 'pouch' - which was actually the hangar. The hangar with nipples.
The 30-meter long 'baby' had been weaned and done some flight training, but wasn't quite ready to make the run to the Primus System. But she was ready to start flying.
"So you're going into the big flat, where the void demons dwell," Iria notes to Tasha as they observe the toddler. "Nice and flat, good for the little girl to stretch herself without banging into anything."
Having a living ship you can talk to seemed like a great idea to Tasha, who often talks and relates to her various vehicles even when they're fully inanimate objects. To Tasha, vessels and even places and things have a kind of spirit, which is a common belief amongst Vartans. Now that nearly everything seems to talk to her, she's found herself less focused on the spiritual sense of things so much as the actual, literally spoken dialogue they generate, but still the communication goes on in one form or another. On the other hand, a living ship also has all the elss desirable iving components to deal with, making her feel the desire for a living vessel may have been a partly 'rass is greener' afair. She considers this for a moment as she stares out at the bay.
"Void demons?" Tasha certainly has a lot of demons in her life, she realizes, and possibly inside as well -- the sheer variety of demons gets added to her list of things to think about. "Well, we're definitely going out. With all that flat space using non-reals travel should be nice and easy, though maybe not challenging if it's anything like flying in clear skies. We're not sure what's out there, though; no one is. So, you want her to come with us?"
"Oh, the void is full of stuff," Iria says. "Rogue planets, brown and black dwarfs.. you'd be amazed at how much gets literally flung out of the galactic disc. But yes, it's time she spent some time away from her mother, got some experience, and earned a name."
"Oh, so a coming of age ritual?" Tasha had something like that, but it was more about becoming a real sailor and not just a airship imp who liked to chew on rigging. "Will you be asigning her a pilot or caretaker, then? I don't think we have anyone qualified."
"You'll be taking Dr. Karaktinio I believe," Iria says. "He's tended to toddlers before. Plus she will probably help keep him sane for the journey."
"Is he likely to go insane?" This is a real concern for Tasha and a bit close to home, given how close to insanity she's gotten (or still is, or actually is, depending on who you ask). "We'll be a long way from help, but we can probably sedate him?"
"It's.. the void can affect people," Iria explains. "We call them void demons, but they're hallucinations, depression.. lots of psychological stress. Nobody has really figured it out, since so few venture where it's really flat. Except the deepblazers, and they're usually borderline insane to start, so know how to deal with it better."
"People say that about me, too," Tasha muses, reaching to rub her chin but then deciding maybe she shouldn't be emulating a terrifying demon god -- or at least she should be emulating the one she still owes a favor to. It's only fair, after all. "Well, we'll keep an eye on everyone and keep a stock of species-specific medications. We can always stuff someone in a tank if they lose it. Erm, at least until we run out of tanks."
"Aren't your tanks full of dolphins?" Iria asks. "You'll also need a nipple."
"We have medical tanks, you know boring hard cold material ones. I've been in many myself." Tasha knocks on her head, expressing the toughness of her corpus. She then looks down for some reason. "You want my ship to have ... a nipple?" She can only wonder what Tatha-hem will think of that.
"Preferably inside a bay large enough for the baby," Iria explains. "It's more for her emotional security in a strange place, it won't provide any nutrients. Even weaned, kids still take time to outgrow the urge to suck on things. Oh.. sorry, pacifier is what I meant. It just looks like a nipple."
"I see." Well, Tasha does like children and the thought of being able to sit with a small baby spaceship while also sitting next to the Melchior is a distinctly soothing idea. She smiles, spreading her hands. "Well, how can I say no? I'll make sure to spend some time with her myself. Clearing enough space will be a bit tricky, we're not exactly a starliner or mass hauler and we have a lot of supplies to take on, even expeditional items. You know how scientists think every single spinning do-dad and whirly-bit just has to come along for absolutely important readings, with food and water and shelter being less important."
"The key is to fatten them up first," Iria claims and winks at Tasha. "And your crew. Before a long voyage, have a feast. Just don't get drunk. I've heard the void can make a hangover last forever."
"Yeah their brain is probably full of knowledge. Do you think I could eat it and skip my lectures? Probably not." Tasha's mock disappointment is only so mock. Studying is decidedly not what she envisioned when picturing herself where she is now. "Hrrm, and yeah Hakeber's mostlikely to end up drunk forever, and she's like a tiny log when she's out cold. I swear her Mass increases somehow. Um. Right, big dinner, light on the alcohol. I'll have the lounge reworked for it; I was planning to rework it anyway, to have a place where people can relax and not, uh, go crazy."
"A lounge? That sounds quite civilized," Iria notes. "Baku only has the orgy chamber."
Tasha squints at this, uncertain if she's being teased. She also wonders if they have one, and decides it's probably either the dolphin's pool or her bed. Or Hake's. There are many options, in other words. "Yeeeeah, we have a lounge. I designed it myself based on mostly Terran and Khattan styles, it has tables and we'll have a piano soon. Katie was a professional singer before, and a few of us can play. There's a bar and boothes for private discussions. I'll probably add more booths and tables, maybe change the style to be less intimate and more ... crazy-buffering."
"The void demons do their worst to those who are isolated," Iria claims. "So having a room where you can all be together should avoid that."
Tasha considers this, realizing most of the times when she's confronted demons -- be they literal or metaphorical -- has been while she was alone, and she's pretty okay. Right? Right. "I hope so. I mean, I can handle it, but not everyone has my vast experience." She tilts her muzzle up a bit, proudly. "We'll keep an eye on everyone, too. Some of our crew are new to long voyages, so we're used to keeping an eye on people."
"I'll ask Darksight to bring the girl over to your Dark Horse later, once you've gotten things prepared," Iria says. "He has void experience, of course, so can fill you in on what to expect."
"It'll be nice to see him again. We have a little bit in common, after all." Tasha drops her head and looks around the hangar again, waving when she thinks she caught the nanscent starship's eye. "Someone once told me to be careful of empty places, so I guess I ought to be extra careful this time."
"Empty places could fill up with anything at all," Iria says. "You could drown in an empty place if you are unwary." She then gives Tasha a little tap on her forehead, which sends her drifting slightly in the freefall environment of the ship. "Mostly, they get filled up with whatever is in our heads."
Tasha's wings fan out instinctly at the change in air flow, which only serves to unabalnce her further. She hooks a hand on to a railing analogue to steady herself, then free-floats once again by letting go. "Well, depending on who you ask there's either a lot in my head or nothing at all, so I'm either safe or doomed," she insists, wagging her tail -- and so she has to arrest her movement once again.
"You should practice more in freefall," Iria points out with a smile. "Maybe build some mechanical hands for your hooves?"
"What, and look like an Aquilan?" Tasha scoffs with mock affrontation. "I'll have you know I am a proud dog-headed Vartan, not some unbirdly feather-butted bird." She folders her arms, which causes her to tilt, but she maintains it for extra mock emphasis. "But, you know, maybe I'll consider that or practice. Maybe."
"Promise to practice, and I won't tell my captain how un-birdly he apparently is," Iria says, and reaches out a hand to Tasha. "Come on, I'll tell you where the best feasting is to be had on this barbaric bauble of bygone.. boastfulness? The alliteration got away from me there at the end."
Tasha's ears perk. "Yeah, please don't tell him that. I'll practice -- and maybe see about those feet. I've been thinking about adding a reaction-mass system to one of my space suits, anyway." The hand is accepted and Tasha allows herself to be carried along. "Trying to bribe me with food, too? That speaks to my dog-head, and so it's very acceptable. And don't knock the Sifra -- you never know if they're still out there watching!"