Work Text:
"Hey, you’re that academic, right?" Several yards away, the captain gave her most winning smile, her worst French accent, "Je m'appelle Captain Hawthorne, of the Unreliable. Our good man’s been lookin’ for you. By the by, what’s your area of study?"
Agog, Chaney dropped his mesh pan into the runoff, eyes wild. The only path to safety was the muddy ditch to his right, down which trundled this noisy offworlder, her lumbering automech, and the unmistakable blue vestments of– Void! Halcyon vanished behind the sluice wall to his left, casting his camp in ominous shadows. That grate nearly looked big enough for him to squirm his reedy frame through. Could be, if he got around the pillars…
The priest laid a firm hand on his captain’s shoulder, "Allow me to proceed from here. We have a rather private matter to discuss." A meaningful glance, a blaze of what she could only imagine must be scientific inquiry burned in his eyes. It wasn’t in his nature to ask permission, and she trusted him enough not to curtail his enthusiasm overmuch.
Captain Hawthorne shrugged "Certainly, Vicar. I’ll let y’all to your chat." She turned to her mechanical companion and rapped on his chassis, "Let’s give these eggheads some space, SAM. Maybe dry out my boots."
"Good news, customer! Now you too can enhance your SAM unit with the superior sanitation of a regulation-grade flamethrower nozzle!"
"No, no, that won’t be necessary. But maybe we can look for one, if you’d like? Hate for you to set fire to the ship, though. Anyway," She took a small ratchet from her pack. "I know I’m no Parvati, but let me at that there, you took quite a hit from those rapts."
She took SAM’s uncharacteristic silence as acquiescence, and the automech stilled.
The men behind her were arguing philosophy, certainly Bakonu’s journal wasn’t that interesting, and surely the vicar couldn’t have much room to argue if he couldn’t speak the language to begin with. Suppose it wouldn’t stop him, though. Captain Hawthorne knelt and busied herself in removing a panel on its arm. His arm? She contemplated if maybe that was a conversation she should have had sooner. Tech’s a long way in the past few decades, and SAM units probably didn’t have feelings, as it were, but she’d hate to have been offending it this whole time. "Hey, SAM? I’m sorry I never asked earlier."
Chaney screamed. Vicar DeSoto chuckled.
"You sent me out on a merry chase, and you honestly thought I wouldn’t come to collect?" The vicar hoisted Chaney against the support beam by his bloody lapels, "I intend to make you pay for every second wasted, every day I spent tending to the flock of that insipid settlement." Another strike landed in the conman’s stomach.
She was up in a flash, tools discarded and forgotten. Chaney blubbered to himself, hands up in feeble defense of his broken nose as he bled on them both.
"And now you’re trying to spin me another fairy tale, Scylla?" He spat, "You’ve mistaken me for a fool for the final time."
"Put him down, Vicar." She tried to put herself in the path of his raised fist.
Instead, he backhanded Chaney, streaming a bloody arc. "I’ll be just a minute, Captain. After all, pugilism is the only language this beast can comprehend." Something in his sneer froze her to the core. She steeled herself against it, noted the warm blood splattered on her cheek.
"Now." She tentatively put her hand around his arm and whispered. "This isn’t how we handle things on my ship."
Chaney took this as an inopportune time to throw in his two bits, "Y-you should listen to your boss, Vicar Max, she, uh," A glare stifled his inelegant defense.
"Quiet." Captain Hawthorne hissed.
The vicar’s eyes narrowed, chin tilted in defiance, "Is that a threat?"
"Ain’t decided yet. Reckon you could blow holes in one or two more SubLight folks, maybe a Byzantine for good measure, before I did, though." SAM loomed over her shoulder, incandescent light glinted across the bubbles of a full acid tank.
"Alright, alright," Chaney abruptly landed in a heap on his knees, choking. Vicar DeSoto turned his ire to the captain, "Let’s hash this out like civilized individuals. What would you have me do?"
Acting belligerent was an easy habit to fall into. "The way I see it, dusting some guy in Catherine’s town isn’t gonna do us any favors, least of all if we do it for petty reasons."
It was the vicar’s turn to sputter, "Petty! I merely seek recompense for the toil I’ve endured, at the advice of this," He punctuated his irritation with a kick to Chaney’s midsection, "Idiot, and you think me petty? Am I not owed a modicum of recompense?" The abused man groaned and swayed onto his side.
"Makin’ him suffer in kind isn’t gonna change it," She said flatly. "And I don’t want to have to answer to Catherine for it anyhow" She willed Chaney to get up, go, flee, never breaking eye contact with the vicar. "Besides, I don’t figure you can call him an idiot if his line worked on you."
"Captain, it appears I was wrong about you." Vicar DeSoto’s face contorted into a deep, hateful frown. His fury grew white-hot, etched into every line of his face, every word laced with bile. "While I can admire the efficiency of a dedicated leader, I must have imagined you had the capacity for more than micromanagement."
"Wouldn’t have to if you’d manage your damned self, would I? And here you are, ornerier than a mama sprat, and I ain’t even come to exterminate you, just have a chat about the way you’re handling things."
His face grew fully red and he measured his words carefully, "My discipline is not in question, though I’ve been given cause to wonder about your leadership abilities under duress. Discerning friend from foe is a vital skill in any combat scenario."
Void, did he have to lecture in the middle of an argument? It was one time! She pushed onward. "Oh, is that how you really feel? Do keep in mind that I’m your ticket off this sulfuric cesspit, and not to mention that we patched you up real good afterward." Chaney had stumbled against the rock face, limping into town, "But if you’d like to stay, maybe Mr. Sanjar could put you to work in that abandoned mission? Bit outside the walls for my tastes, personally, but there’s hope. Could be the Iconoclasts would put you up for a few days on your way back into civilization, if you’d avoid picking fights with the locals." Just a bit longer.
The vicar had enough of her rambling, "Architect damn you, that bucket of bolts you call a ship, and this vile planet. And when the Board catches wind of your collaboration with Phineas Welles it won’t be a moment too soon. What I would do in a heartbeat-" A scuttling of pebbles distracted her. His green eyes caught hers, flickering up the path to Fallbrook. Shit . Understanding dawned, and his expression twisted again. He shoved the captain into the brook and he turned in pursuit of his quarry.
Reginald Chaney creeped from the mouth of the cave, lurched, and fell into another coughing fit. He hastily spat out a bloody mass and took heed of the thundering footfalls that bore the furious vicar closer to enacting his revenge. As Chaney scrambled to his feet, so too did the captain, cursing herself and sprinting up the culvert after her crew, and bade her automechanical companion remain behind.
Captain Hawthorne watched as Chaney rounded a boulder out of sight, seeking the street into Fallbrook, and the safety of numbers, with Vicar DeSoto on his heels. She considered the half-starved man lucky, in a fashion: his lighter, slimmer frame lacked the energy it needed to burst through a crowd, but he could weave between tourists and thugs alike if he grew desperate.
The captain gasped as she tore a path onto dry land, praying she caught up to the priest in time, or that his aged knees gave out. Either way, really. May as well imagine other dubious scenarios, such as winning the lottery, or even less likely, that the vicar would come to his senses. Flashing lights ahead focused her attention to the miraculously shrinking distance between them.
A chance encounter with an autoloader proved to the captain’s advantage. While the vicar had to recalculate his route through the throng of drunken Byzantines-- not the first group, judging by the spilled drinks littering her path-- the captain closed the gap, cut over a railing, and lunged with all her might at the vicar’s back.
She landed, catching him by the middle, and hoped she hadn’t broken anything of his on the way into a patch of fungus. The captain, for her efforts, caught a boot to her thigh and an angry elbow as he rounded on her. The appendage grazed her chin, but she followed that momentum, shouldered him down into the dirt with a grunt, and pinned his arm with a knee, setting adrift another cloud of spores. So much for the skill of a reputable fifth-back.
Vicar DeSoto wore much the same expression as Chaney had when they’d first met, though his quickly soured. He wouldn’t admit defeat here, not with Chaney so close. "How fucking dare you. The absolute indignity of it all--" His arm drew back.
An electronic hum whirred to life at his chest. "Safety’s off." He felt Captain Hawthorne’s pistol now, pressed into his sternum, almost gently. He scoffed. "Max, please, you have to stop this."
He sneered, "I am not unreasonable, Captain, allow me to finish what I came here to do and we can be on our way. How is this not agreeable to you?"
Her pitch rose, "You thought I’d let you do it?" She caught herself. "That we’d steal intel off of Groundbreaker, you could just ever-so-politely request we mosey on over to some illegal backwoods planet, and I’d let you pummel some ex-con within an inch of his life? That I’d stand not twenty feet away and watch?" Her breath hitched and he saw that her arms shook.
"Yes, Captain. I did." His voice dripped malice, but he forced it level to appease her, focused on relaxing under her, so as to avoid agitating her further, leaned away from the weapon, and its six corrosive rounds per pull, where he could.
They drew a crowd now. She raved, "I can’t believe you! You advertised yourself as the sole adult when you petitioned to join this crew-- my crew! And I’m, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have teased you so, I couldn’t bear the thought of you killing him, that you’d give up years of peace for this senseless violence." Tears stung her eyes. She reconsidered showing weakness and firmed her grip. A shimmer from the illuminated median glimmered across the barrel. "I trusted you!"
He sighed. "It’s inexcusable." Nothing in his baleful countenance indicated remorse.
She relaxed slightly, "Then you’ll let him go?"
Vicar DeSoto met her eyes.
"… Max?" A tear landed on her forearm. "Please, you’ve worked so hard. Don’t let this consume you."
"As much as you're loathe to admit it, you were aware of this outcome when you agreed to ferry me here." He exhaled, and continued as with a scolded child. "Let me put it in a way you could understand. I have done worse than I’m about to do to Chaney, and you have directly witnessed my capacity in this regard. That it does not favor you in this precise moment, rather than in our altercations against marauders and automechanicals alike," He shrugged beneath her to the best of his ability, "Is not my concern."
"Void take your book and your lies." She whispered. Her hesitation to put him down had been noted, she knew. They had both shown their true colors, and Captain Hawthorne didn’t have the nerve to murder a crewman to prevent him killing someone else.
He could taste his victory. "Astutely put. The heat death of the universe does indeed come for us all. Will there be anything else, Captain?"
She couldn’t look at him. She’d tarnished her reputation as a ship’s captain, about ruined whatever relationship with SubLight she could salvage, and made a fool of herself on the street. Dazed and defeated, Captain Hawthorne carefully shifted her weight off the vicar’s dominant arm. His body tensed. He didn’t waste a moment to line up the next blow.
He snarled. She twitched. The pistol fired six corrosive rounds.