Post by Charlotte on Jan 13, 2019 13:00:34 GMT -5
KELDABE, MANDALORE
Holos
“How did you stand this?” Sadhric breathed through his teeth. “Let alone enjoy it.”
He was speaking to Maltez Buffton, but Buffton wasn’t there. Nor was he projecting into the Buffton’s prison. It was merely a thought, voiced.
Like Buffton before him, The Mechanic sported ceremonial armor. Unlike Buffton’s, his was as subtle as he could make it, a mix of dark layers and unburnished coppery plates that could have passed instead as an elaborate suit. What the layers would never pass for was beskar’gam. That was by particular design. Even so, Sadhric would be the best-armored figure at the gathering.
He stood alone in a circular war room in the Aud, surrounded by holos. He’d forgone the offer of a Hapan escort for the journey north, and waived the presence of formal bodyguards. Instead, he wanted some independent allies at his side for this, and for protection he opted to operate to his habits—for good or ill. Somehow, some way, he had to hold on to the methods that had kept him alive through disasters that gouged others out of the flesh of life by the thousands, by the millions, by the billions. In this case, he already had eyes on the desert-edge site of Yen Amidi’s gathering.
Holos showed him the vast plain, empty of people for now. Large, open adobe shells, arranged in a rough circle, would soon house the outland clans for what he’d had described to him as everything from solstice festival to strategy meeting to court of justice between the rough and ready groups.
Holos also showed him faces. Yen Amidi, whom he’d met and (he’d been surprised to discover) liked immediately. Her weathered mercenary face, followed in real time, was stern as she scolded a handful of her grand-nieces and grand-nephews; her actual words were lost, as all the holos were muted. She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to pull together her group for the gathering—rarely seemed in a hurry, period—but, then, she did this every year she was not at war or on a hunt. Another holo showed the scaley Ger face of Jegoth Ordis; he was relaxed, too, and had also shown no signs of getting ready to head north with the fifty clanmembers who would probably join him. For those clan heads, the gathering was just a thing that happened to mark the end of the year.
For Sadhric, it was a rare chance to secure the support of a fleet of more obscure clans if he could, before they dispersed again to the stars for the gods only knew how long. Yen Amidi had coaxed their leaders into suggesting they might attend (never promising as much, he’d noticed), and by so doing had ensured that he himself would make it a point to be there. And be there in person. Even liking the old merc as he did, his own predictability in response had his hackles up.
Yet he refused to arrive in full armor, with stone-faced Hapans flanking him, and gunships on patrol. The Witchdoctor wasn’t going to hover overhead, casting its cold shadow across sparring rings, cheering crowds, marksmanship contests and footraces. He had to be far more subtle than that, and he already had the eyes.
The faces in the other holos were clan notables, famous warriors, those known offworld as well as locally. Sadhric memorized names and any information he could scrape together—which, maddeningly, was pretty thin for the vast majority of them.
One non-Mandal face in the multitude belonged to a xenoarchaeologist who had apparently met with Kel’dan, and then briefly with Ja’eeth, and had somehow or other followed a trail of acquaintances from south to north. Sadhric had heard of Jujanaj Azair, and didn’t think much of him.
With a sigh, he flicked through a holo full of security advice about the site from one of the regional patrols, then dismissed it.
Sitting off to his left was what he really wanted to be doing.
A single large holo hovered, displaying shapes that seemed to swirl into being with the fractal perfection of crystal growth, of plants and blossoms. The shapes were symbols, their motions a dance of comprehension—partial, always.
The tatters of The Mechanic’s resources were slowly digesting the data of the greatest Map he’d ever made.
They were doing it without him.
He stood weighed down by armor, committing to memory the lives, the triumphs and grievances, of people he had no business trying to shape or rule, alone surrounded by thousands, millions, billions, trillions spiraling outward in the greater galaxy. Alone, doing work he for which he was wholly unsuited. Alone. And there, within a yard, ignored, was the thing he’d been made to do.
He glanced at the holo. He knew what was hinted at by those curls, those twists. He knew what the numbers meant, but didn’t have time right then to delve into their content. Backward and forward, that universe was being discovered without him.
With a sigh, Sadhric looked away. By chance, his gaze fell on the face of Jegoth Ordis.
Jegoth Ordis stared back at him.
It startled Sadhric for a second, and he looked away. To find that Yen Amidi, too, stared at him. Through the holo, across space.
So did Jujanaj Azair, the strange vine-entangled face aimed at him directly, the eyes following him as he took a surprised step back.
Face after face was locked on his. Eyes meeting his, impossibly, unmistakably, even though his Lenses.
The Mechanic turned in a circle, shocked, not so alone as he supposed.
They watched him, all those eyes, steady and neutral, as he met them again and again.
How—
Holos
“How did you stand this?” Sadhric breathed through his teeth. “Let alone enjoy it.”
He was speaking to Maltez Buffton, but Buffton wasn’t there. Nor was he projecting into the Buffton’s prison. It was merely a thought, voiced.
Like Buffton before him, The Mechanic sported ceremonial armor. Unlike Buffton’s, his was as subtle as he could make it, a mix of dark layers and unburnished coppery plates that could have passed instead as an elaborate suit. What the layers would never pass for was beskar’gam. That was by particular design. Even so, Sadhric would be the best-armored figure at the gathering.
He stood alone in a circular war room in the Aud, surrounded by holos. He’d forgone the offer of a Hapan escort for the journey north, and waived the presence of formal bodyguards. Instead, he wanted some independent allies at his side for this, and for protection he opted to operate to his habits—for good or ill. Somehow, some way, he had to hold on to the methods that had kept him alive through disasters that gouged others out of the flesh of life by the thousands, by the millions, by the billions. In this case, he already had eyes on the desert-edge site of Yen Amidi’s gathering.
Holos showed him the vast plain, empty of people for now. Large, open adobe shells, arranged in a rough circle, would soon house the outland clans for what he’d had described to him as everything from solstice festival to strategy meeting to court of justice between the rough and ready groups.
Holos also showed him faces. Yen Amidi, whom he’d met and (he’d been surprised to discover) liked immediately. Her weathered mercenary face, followed in real time, was stern as she scolded a handful of her grand-nieces and grand-nephews; her actual words were lost, as all the holos were muted. She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to pull together her group for the gathering—rarely seemed in a hurry, period—but, then, she did this every year she was not at war or on a hunt. Another holo showed the scaley Ger face of Jegoth Ordis; he was relaxed, too, and had also shown no signs of getting ready to head north with the fifty clanmembers who would probably join him. For those clan heads, the gathering was just a thing that happened to mark the end of the year.
For Sadhric, it was a rare chance to secure the support of a fleet of more obscure clans if he could, before they dispersed again to the stars for the gods only knew how long. Yen Amidi had coaxed their leaders into suggesting they might attend (never promising as much, he’d noticed), and by so doing had ensured that he himself would make it a point to be there. And be there in person. Even liking the old merc as he did, his own predictability in response had his hackles up.
Yet he refused to arrive in full armor, with stone-faced Hapans flanking him, and gunships on patrol. The Witchdoctor wasn’t going to hover overhead, casting its cold shadow across sparring rings, cheering crowds, marksmanship contests and footraces. He had to be far more subtle than that, and he already had the eyes.
The faces in the other holos were clan notables, famous warriors, those known offworld as well as locally. Sadhric memorized names and any information he could scrape together—which, maddeningly, was pretty thin for the vast majority of them.
One non-Mandal face in the multitude belonged to a xenoarchaeologist who had apparently met with Kel’dan, and then briefly with Ja’eeth, and had somehow or other followed a trail of acquaintances from south to north. Sadhric had heard of Jujanaj Azair, and didn’t think much of him.
With a sigh, he flicked through a holo full of security advice about the site from one of the regional patrols, then dismissed it.
Sitting off to his left was what he really wanted to be doing.
A single large holo hovered, displaying shapes that seemed to swirl into being with the fractal perfection of crystal growth, of plants and blossoms. The shapes were symbols, their motions a dance of comprehension—partial, always.
The tatters of The Mechanic’s resources were slowly digesting the data of the greatest Map he’d ever made.
They were doing it without him.
He stood weighed down by armor, committing to memory the lives, the triumphs and grievances, of people he had no business trying to shape or rule, alone surrounded by thousands, millions, billions, trillions spiraling outward in the greater galaxy. Alone, doing work he for which he was wholly unsuited. Alone. And there, within a yard, ignored, was the thing he’d been made to do.
He glanced at the holo. He knew what was hinted at by those curls, those twists. He knew what the numbers meant, but didn’t have time right then to delve into their content. Backward and forward, that universe was being discovered without him.
With a sigh, Sadhric looked away. By chance, his gaze fell on the face of Jegoth Ordis.
Jegoth Ordis stared back at him.
It startled Sadhric for a second, and he looked away. To find that Yen Amidi, too, stared at him. Through the holo, across space.
So did Jujanaj Azair, the strange vine-entangled face aimed at him directly, the eyes following him as he took a surprised step back.
Face after face was locked on his. Eyes meeting his, impossibly, unmistakably, even though his Lenses.
The Mechanic turned in a circle, shocked, not so alone as he supposed.
They watched him, all those eyes, steady and neutral, as he met them again and again.
How—