Chapter Text
Her adopted identity as an interastral hitchhiker might be a sham, but Stelle genuinely does enjoy the travel aspects of being a Stellaron Hunter. Kafka fostered a great love of fine dining in her, though she doesn’t think she’s quite as hedonistic; whenever she’s in a new locale, she always scouts out the local street food first. Elio knows this and allows her a lot of flexibility in her scripts to simply explore what she wants, only marking what she absolutely cannot do in the process.
Case in point: there’s nothing that says she can’t spend her downtime helping Tingyun clear out a storeroom, even after Tingyun said she’d done more than enough to repay the favour of helping her find lodgings. Tingyun’s a great source of gossip about happenings on the Luofu, and helping her like this helps sell the hitchhiker persona too, which is always a bonus. “So you haul mostly industrial materials,” she concludes after Tingyun’s lengthy explanation of her work. “That must take you to interesting places.”
“You bet!” Tingyun beams, hand on her hip and her feather duster in the air. “I was the youngest ever to make Amicassador across the entire Alliance, I’ll have you know! The Whistling Flames Guild will forever be my pride and joy. We’ve come such a long way.”
“Nifty.” Stelle sets aside a crate thrice her body weight—one of the benefits of being manufactured, she supposes. “What’s the farthest you’ve gone?”
“Oooh, now you’re asking the hard questions.” Tingyun taps her chin. “At the time? Probably Pier Point. There had been a case of some folks from the Building Materials Logistics Department harassing some of my people in auctions, so this little lady[1] went to resolve the issue herself.”
Stelle already knows all this, of course. She picked Tingyun for her infiltration into the Luofu specifically because Tingyun’s track record includes butting heads (and winning!) with the IPC. Still, she asks, wide-eyed: “Did you manage to resolve it?”
Tingyun laughs, a melodious glass harmonica in the echoing storeroom. “Oh, my dear benefactor, have faith in me! Yes, I did. They stopped harassing my Guild members, we reached a mutual agreement, and I received a job offer from Taravan Keene himself—though nothing could have convinced me to take it.” She shakes her head with a smile. “Ah, and I even got to enjoy Pier Point while I was at it! It’s lovely if you’re there on business.”
The Stellaron Hunters did go to Pier Point, two years ago, because Arita from the Traditional Projects Department somehow got a hold of the Ianseri-IV papers and was looking into resurrecting the fabled Dongfang Qixing. The resulting incident was so big they gave it a name—the Pier Point Incursion. It was the second biggest heist of Stellarons they’d ever captured, after Ianseri-IV itself; Stelle, still a fresh face at the time, remembers the taste of the dust in the vents much more vividly than anything else. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Ah, the fine dining there!” Tingyun puts her hands on her cheeks, squishing a contented smile. She’s kinda cute, though not Stelle’s usual type. “Have you ever had foie gras, benefactor? Real foie gras, not the kind from an Omnisynth?”
Yes. Lots of it. Kafka has a thing for overpriced charcuterie. “No, but tell me more.”
Tingyun settles into another story of some restaurant she was treated to while on Pier Point while Stelle moves crates and lets her mind wander. Should she abridge a story for Tingyun, make it palatable and silly? Ask if she’s ever been to Binafi-X, or better yet the Ianseri system?
Or maybe Tingyun will ask about a planet that the Stellaron Hunters have left their mark on, and Stelle will smile sweetly and lie as she’s lied so many times before. It's a small wonder the IPC still don't have her real name—her hands are bloody, maybe bloodier than any of the others. Leave it to the living weapon, she supposes. Blade prefers quiet fieldwork where he can and a quiet slaughter when he can't; Silver Wolf technically has more kills under her belt than the rest of them combined thanks to Golcondar and Inupeis, by her hands remain physically clean; Firefly refuses to do the math to separate her career in the Iron Cavalry from her career in the Stellaron Hunters; and Kafka is only ruthless if it doesn't send her coat to the dry cleaners in the process.
Stelle has no such inhibitions. She only wears cottons that can survive the washing machine and pisses off Elio whenever she needs to run it twice in a day. Black clothes don’t typically stain much, anyhow.
“Ah, the food was good, but nothing was so tasty as that poor IPC employee’s expression!” Tingyun giggles. “The Luofu strale was very strong at the time—I think it must have been thousands of credits—so I didn't even need to be honest about my net worth, but I did, and that was funnier.”
Scrounging a smile, Stelle leans across the crate she's just set down. “Seems like you've had quite the adventures.”
“Oh of course, of course.” Something dangerous skitters across Tingyun’s expression—the shadow of a cloud, come and gone in a moment. “But that's enough about me and Pier Point’s culinary choices. Let me treat you to the finest food that the Luofu has to offer, dearest benefactor.”
Tingyun takes her to an extremely upscale restaurant in East Starskiff Haven, or at least what feels like one. The walls are decorated in gold dragons and phoenixes, complete with terrifying red eyes and animatronic whiskers. “I usually only take prospective business partners or first dates here,” she whispers conspiratorially to Stelle as the waiter leads them to a private room.
“Which one do I fall into?” Stelle shoots back.
She gets a cheeky grin in response. “Neither, dearest benefactor, you're in a league of your own.”
Suddenly Stelle feels wildly underdressed for the occasion. This is what Kafka would call a dressing-up day, necessitating picking clothes and hiding weapons underneath. The waiter seats them on opposite ends of a table meant to seat ten, separated by the ocean of a glass turntable. Tea is brought and poured for them, each delicate porcelain cup dotted with tiny golden petals. “The Luofu’s own tea chrysanthemums,” Tingyun comments blithely, plucking a sliver of rock sugar from a tiny saucer and letting it drop into her tea. “Here, it’s better sweetened.”
She sets the saucer on the turntable, and swipes at it. Instead of rotating the turntable, the saucer simply sinks into the glass, rising again on Stelle’s side. Tingyun laughs gently at what must be Stelle’s shocked expression. “A miniaturized version of the same technology that makes delves possible. It’s why I like this place.”
Clearly Stelle is wildly out of her element here, even with a few years of infiltrating galas with the Stellaron Hunters under her belt. Tingyun orders for the both of them, bringing forth a mouthwatering display of the Luofu’s finest dishes[2]: steaming-hot crabs wrapped in twine upon a bed of ginger slices, a flayed fish drenched in a bubbling sweet-and-sour sauce, a meatball half the size of Stelle’s head. Yet another waiter arrives with two delicate cups—complete with matching lid and spoon!—and unveils a blossoming chrysanthemum made of tofu floating in some sort of broth.
Tingyun beams at her. “Well?” She clicks her chopsticks together. “Please, benefactor, eat!”
“This is so fancy,” Stelle blurts, unable to help herself. She kinda feels like she has to yell across the room for Tingyun to hear her. “I mean, who serves soup in a cup with a matching spoon?”
Again, Tingyun laughs, gentle and tinkling like wind chimes. “Oh, that’s just a,” and the next word she says makes Stelle’s Synaesthesia Beacon do a funny flip that might be interpreted as error, word untranslatable. She soundlessly uncaps her soup cup with delicately manicured fingers“The silken tofu is shredded by knife a thousand times over. Chef Zhang is a rare talent with the knife.”
She goes on to describe each dish, and Stelle nods blankly and helps herself to some when the plates apparate before her. Elio’s notes on Tingyun had been ominous, at best: Do not get attached to Tingyun. There will come a day when you cannot trust her anymore. You will know when that is. Tingyun’s charm is so easily disarming, her smiles genuine and her tone pleasant. No wonder she’s been so successful as a businesswoman.
“Which one do you want to try next?” she asks, and Stelle forces herself to look at the colourful spread before her. It’s a little overwhelming—there’s no way Tingyun expects the two of them to finish this all, and she’d prefer not to scare Tingyun off now by devouring the whole spread. She’s sure she could do it. It looks so good. “Here, have some more fish. I’ll peel a crab for you.”
“You really don’t have to,” Stelle protests, but Tingyun has already begun. “I can’t pay you back for all this.”
“Oh, don’t you worry your little head about that, benefactor!” Tingyun delicately scoops a shred of roe out of the shell, laying it on a plate. “This little lady has the coffers to afford a nice lunch like this once in a while. Besides, the restaurant owners are my clients, so they’re willing to give me a little discount here and there. If you really must repay me, tell me about your aspirations here on the Luofu.”
Not what she’d expected. “I’m sorry?”
“Where do you want to explore? What do you want to eat? How long do you intend to stay?” Tingyun flushes prettily. “Ah, I’m sorry, that’s a lot of questions. But I really am curious, Estelle, your life must have taken you to some of the same locales as my life has taken me. There’s so much out there in the cosmos. So why the Luofu this time?”
Shit. There’s a Stellaron on your planet-class starship is probably not the right answer. “I dunno, it seemed like the right call at the time. Before you picked me up, the last place where I stayed for an extended period was planet Adina, but it got boring real fast.”
Recognition flickers in Tingyun’s painted smile. “A lot of Xianzhou diaspora there, no?”
There could be a whole Xianzhou hidden in that planet and Stelle wouldn’t care. “I figured I’d want to see the source of it. Then someone on Ampic-Oniaz directed me to you, and I guess the stars aligned.” She can throw on the charm as well; Tingyun’s face tints pinker than before. “I just want to see what the Luofu has to offer. So far it doesn’t seem like a tourist trap the way some of the other place I’ve been are. I like it here.”
“That’s good to hear.” Tingyun sets the dish of shredded crab meat and roe on the turntable. It reappears before Stelle glistening with golden oil. “To be honest, I wanted to bring you here to ask if you’d be willing to join me.”
Stelle snaps up to look at her. Tingyun almost looks embarrassed. “No pressure! It was a silly thought, please, disregard.”
“No, I get it.” They have similar tastes while travelling, and Tingyun’s job brings her across the cosmos the same way Stelle’s job does for her. “I’m honoured, I really am. But I don’t think I’d make a very good merchant.” This is laying on the pity points a little thick, but she adds, “I’m supposed to inherit the family business someday. I’m just… enjoying my time before I have to, that’s all.”
Tingyun nods. “I understand.” She looks at her hands, covered in crab roe. “My parents were both military personnel—starskiff pilots, like the Madams of the Sky-Faring Commission. They’d wanted me to be like them too. It took a long time for them to realize that this was what made me happy. Working with people, striking up contracts and partnerships… It wasn’t at all the life they thought I’d have, much less the life they thought I’d want, but it is my life now.”
Shaking her head, she wipes her hands off on a delicate napkin and clicks her chopsticks together again. “But that’s neither here nor there. Eat, benefactor, or else you’ll be taking all of this back with you as leftovers!”
“That’s no fair,” Stelle complains, but smiles as Tingyun sends her another luxurious dish from the other side of the table.
The leftovers are delicious, but they’re not on-the-go food and thus make an inconvenient late dinner. Stelle picks up a sticky rice roll[3] from a corner store and heads back to Stargazer Navalia much later in the night, long after Tingyun has walked her back to the Petrichor Inn with three (three!) takeout boxes in a stack.
The artificial atmosphere carries the faint scent of osmanthus honey on the breeze. From somewhere else, the laughter and bustle of restaurants and families settling in for the night fades away. Stelle shrugs her hood over her head and sticks to the shadows of shipping crates, even with Silver Wolf’s standard cloaking on. Stargazer Navalia is empty save a handful of patrolling Cloud Knights at this hour, but even they focus on big areas, clearings and open spaces. All that Stelle has to avoid to traverse the smaller nooks and crannies is the security cameras, and with each successive one she passes by, she learns her routes a little better.
It’ll make a good place to stage their little event, to scare the Preceptors into submission a little. There are three Stellaron sirens scattered throughout the shipyards. She finds a vantage point far enough away from all three, and steels herself to let the Stellaron bubble up out of her throat. The air vibrates around her, but the sirens don’t start screaming. Perfect.
She climbs up onto a shipping crate and sits down. The view isn’t great—back to a wall and high stacks of more crates all around—but she can still see the artificial skybox from here, the real cosmos mapped out against the ceiling of the delve. The girls are probably still on the base ship, preparing for whatever mission Elio is sending them on next; Kafka and Blade must be on their way towards the Luofu of their own volition now, depending on the mileage and performance of whatever they rented from Bones. She should text Kafka.
The air beside her shimmers in frost, and she only gets a brief moment’s recognition before March 7th manifests beside her. Today she’s wearing a Xianzhou style pleated miniskirt in ice blue brocade, with matching veil and flowers. “Ooh, what are you eating?”
“Sticky rice roll.” Stelle rolls back the plastic wrap and takes another bite. “Want a taste?”
March shakes her head. “Dan Heng let me have a taste of his dinner and it instantly ruined my appetite.” Her skirt’s too short for her to sit cross-legged, so she sits on her knees instead, smoothing the hems over her safety shorts. “How was your not-date with Tingyun?”
“I’m not sure if it wasn’t a date, honestly. But it was cool. We ate really fancy food at a really fancy restaurant.” Shame the tofu soup was super bland. The pickles in the sticky rice are really packing flavour to make up for it. “How’s Dan Heng?”
“The Preceptors agreed to let him go tomorrow.” March throws a glance at her. “I hope you’ve figured out where you want to set up your distraction.”
“Right here.” Stelle pats the shipping crate they’re sitting on—gently, so it doesn’t echo over to the patrols. “I found the perfect alleyway for it. Tingyun took me around to check on a lot of her cargo, so I got a good look at the surroundings.” She points across the wall. “You came from that way, right? It’s closer to Azure Pearl Terrace, so if the Preceptors freak out, they can take him and run back.”
“I wouldn’t have thought of that,” March marvels. Her fingers dance restlessly along the edge of her skirt. “Should I head back and tell Dan Heng?”
Stelle shrugs. “You could. I’m gonna stay here and finish this.”
The pretty pink of March’s lips twists, conflicted. “Then I’ll stay with you a little longer.” She unfolds her legs out from beneath herself, apparently abandoning whatever notion she had of being ladylike. “Do you like it here? On the Luofu, I mean.”
Again with these questions. She can afford to be a little bit more honest with March, though—March knows her as herself, after all. “It’s nice. I don’t think it’ll ever be a permanent home or anything, but as a tourist I like it. Also helps that people are generally not trying to kill me.”
March hums. “If I weren’t a Memokeeper, maybe I’d see the appeal of living here.” She gestures up at the artificial skyline. “But the delves aren’t infinite. And I’d hate to live forever in a box.”
Instantly, Stelle thinks of Dan Heng’s tiny cell. She thinks of Tingyun saying they wanted me to be like them, too. She thinks, inexplicably, of the Stellaron Hunters, and her fate that diverts her path from theirs. “I’d hate it, too.”
Stargazer Navalia ushers in its deep night with the sound of Ingenium whirring and crickets chirping. March slips away eventually, but there Stelle stays, holding her half-eaten rice roll and watching the night sky shift. She knows little of the stars and their positions; she tries to map them anyway. That should be the Vastat system, where Kafka gets her clothes tailored, and that’s New Londinium, so if she connects the dots and traces outwards…
Where the Ianseri system ought to be is just emptiness—a little too backwater, even for the mighty Xianzhou. “So it’s not a real map of the night sky after all,” she murmurs, finger falling.
She doesn’t stay long after that, only to wrap the remnants of her rice roll up and shove it back in her pocket. There’s still work to be done, after all.