fermata

[isthisart]

Linya sees Dr. Cheung onto a ship other than the Ariel, which agrees to tote him to Komarr very, very slowly, knocking him out for each jump and having someone look after him when he comes around green in the gills. It's not going to be a fun trip for him, but it's better than trying to collaborate with a multi-week conversational turnaround time. It's pricey - the ship has nonperishable cargo with no deadline at its destination and already employs a medtech, but still - but she thinks it's worth it.

Her business on Earth concluded, she examines the list of tourist attractions she didn't get around to, determines that none of them are worth sticking around for, and gets on a much faster vessel and goes all the way home. The first thing she does when there is go looking for whichever of the Count or Countess is easiest to find.

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

"In fact, he was so upset that after calling his boss and getting permission to do whatever he wanted with me, he threw me in the sub-basement with the super-soldier prototype, who was down there being starved as a punishment for nearly murdering one of Ryoval's customers. I'm sure they thought the creature would eat me or something. Instead we made friends. They were calling him 'Seven' - I named him Asterion, recruited him to the Dendarii, and started crawling around in all the ductwork we could jointly access, trying to find a way out of there. Before we managed that, we found the lab where Ryoval keeps—kept—his library of tissue samples, the gene bank from which he concocts his creations. All lined up neatly in three enormous walk-in freezers, completely unattended, because it was the dark of night and all the security arrangements were aimed at preventing people from coming in the door to the lab as opposed to crawling out of a pillar. We turned on the heat sterilization cycle on the freezers with all the samples still inside, then booked it back down the pillar and escaped out the sub-basement's vehicle entrance after a little more noodling around looking for things to pick the lock with."

[isthisart]

Linya giggles.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes, I'm very pleased with myself about that one. After that, we found our way back to the Ariel and departed in short order, pausing along the way only long enough to listen to Ryoval nearly asphyxiate on his own rage and then make a deal with Fell to let that quaddie musician come along with us. She had a nice few days with Thorne before splitting off and starting her journey back to quaddiespace. And that is the story of why Baron Ryoval wants Admiral Naismith dead in the vilest possible way."

[isthisart]

"I am afraid I probably can't call him off by being haut at him."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I doubt it, yeah. If you get within spitting distance he'll probably try to collect a gene sample so he can run off fifty clones of you for unsavoury purposes."

[isthisart]

"Eugh."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes, that is my feeling also."

[isthisart]

Pet, pet. "So now you have an ineptly cobbled together friendly super-soldier. How super is he?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Reasonably super. Incredible strength, speed, reflexes - he pays heavy metabolic tax on it all, of course. Eats like four men, fights like five."

[isthisart]

"Well, that seems like a reasonable tradeoff from a hiring perspective, if not the very frontier of engineering efficiency."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Could you do better?" he half-jokes. "Should I ask Asterion to release a gene sample so you can give him hautish little siblings who'll eat like three men, fight like ten, and live past twenty-five?"

[isthisart]

"Do you want your very own super-soldier project, Miles? For your birthday?"

[thisvorlunatic]

He giggles. "No, thank you."

[isthisart]

"I imagine I could improve on his genome, but I doubt I could perfect it, anyway - when I was studying I already strongly expected that I'd be doing half-haut children, not elaborate cutting-edge research and development, so that was where I focused. I am thoroughly qualified to work on Little Aral Adri and would need to study up considerably to do super-soldiers."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I imagine the inter-species aspect would complicate matters, too."

[isthisart]

"Yes. It's an exaggeration to say that haut never touch animal genetics - some take it up as a hobby and there is a popular toy project with designer butterflies that some of my acquaintances did when I was nine, that sort of thing - but it's definitely not a focus."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Designer butterflies?"

[isthisart]

"Butterflies are fun! I didn't do the project, but I critiqued color schemes when the deadline hit and everyone showed theirs off."

[thisvorlunatic]

"That sounds terribly charming."

[isthisart]

"They were very pretty. Do you want to see?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Sure."

[isthisart]

Linya puts her pen display where he'll be able to see it from his position of dubious mobility and calls up a series of photographs of extremely elaborate and lovely butterflies in every color combination that could be reasonably described as appealing.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Ooh. I like those swirly grey ones," he says.

[isthisart]

"They were generally considered to be a bit understated, but they did make very cute caterpillars - I don't have pictures of the caterpillars, unfortunately. Some of the girls were very guarded about letting the competition look while their work was in progress."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I think I like them because they're understated. It doesn't make them any less beautiful, but in that whole colourful swarm they'd stand out very strikingly."