Chapter Text
Pelna loved figuring out secrets. It was one of the best things about being a scout – putting together puzzles and learning the crucial pieces of information that could save his fellow glaives, or the Crownsguard holding the lines, or the people just trying to live their lives as the tides of war swept over them. He might not be able to liberate whole towns himself, or smash through the enemy lines to allow advances and retreats, but he could find things no one else could, and that saved lives, too.
He was horrible at keeping them, though. As soon as the right people so much as looked at him the right way, he was spilling his guts. He was great with following procedures to keep his work information secure, helped out with cybersecurity all the time, and could keep opsec, as much as he hated it sometimes, especially over the dinner table, because he knew how important it was. It helped that his friends in Insomnia were almost all in the Kingsglaive, and those who weren’t, mainly parents from his kids’ schools and clubs, were generally closely connected enough to it that a simple “It’s classified” or even “It’s for work” shut down most lines of questions without him actually having to work at it. But things like who was fighting among their friends, or what he was trying to get for Amani for their anniversary? He was clear as glass.
Thankfully, MTs didn’t care too much about secrets, so he was safe here. Well, as safe as anyone could be actually within an enemy base, climbing through the pipes above the hallways in one of the dreadnaughts tethered to the base’s central control tower. It wasn’t as bad as it sounded, really. MTs didn’t generally look up, and though the occasional human crewmember might, the Kingsglaive's black uniforms really did help, as did, surprisingly, the metal masks. A whole patch of matte black was suspicious on a ship made of grey metal, but slightly shiny black broken up by glints of silver metal just looked like odd shadows amid the pipes.
Getting in had been the most dangerous part. Niff security was actually pretty good, and they kept their bases brightly lit, day and night. It’s not like they needed to heat their barracks, or feed their soldiers, so they could afford the cost. The MTs didn’t sleep either, as far as Pelna could tell, so they could afford to patrol them regularly. But that was also their downfall; MTs didn't have spontaneous parties to play cards or wander the camp with insomnia during the night, they didn’t have that human randomness. That meant if you learned this base's patrol patterns, you could be pretty confident in your windows of freedom to move.
At least usually. This particular base seemed to have more human activity than most, which was doubly concerning because he had had no information whatsoever about this base even being here. It was hard to see, true, tucked away between two small cliffs on the edge of Duscae and kept mostly dark, with only the nearest perimeter openly patrolled by MTs. Pelna had only noticed it for two reasons: first because he’d had a bead on the MT command signal and gone on a slight detour to trace it down, bending his orders just a bit, and then, once he’d gotten in the area, he’d been lucky enough with timing to see the airship drop out of the sky in the shadows of sunset. At that point, he’d sent a one-way, narrow-beam report back to base giving his location and what he’d seen, and exercised his senior prerogative to go off-orders. Nyx had been the senior officer on base, and he trusted Pelna implicitly, so Pelna hadn’t been too worried about getting permission.
He was glad he’d checked it out. He’d almost gone to get backup first, but something was clearly going down right now. In addition to the airship that he had seen land, two more airships, one bearing the familiar SAF command paint, and the other with a scheme he had only seen once before in a photograph from another scout, long dead, had come in under the cover of dusk as he’d approached the base. That was a lot, especially for such a tiny base. He’d written down his observations and gone closer.
Pelna was used to dealing with MTs, especially at night. If you didn’t have time to learn a particular platoon's patterns (generally the most reliable method for sneaking around them), you could try and guess which one of the more common patterns they might be using based on which batch they looked like they were from and the local terrain, but Pelna liked safe risks, thank you very much. There was a reason he was still a scout after almost a decade in the specialty. He preferred to rely on tracing the command signals.
Lucis hadn’t been able to break the Niff codes fully yet, but they were close. It was the one area the Crownsguard and the Kingsglaive worked together the most on, and they could just almost keep up with the ever-shifting systems and could sometimes even recognize certain common commands, just because they tended to be simple and repetitive. The MTs were mostly autonomous in fights, but they needed to be pointed in certain directions. Just monitoring where the commands were going and when helped give the basic shape of troop movements, speed, and agitation level, though, even if they didn't know exactly what was being said. Pelna was constantly refining his technique, which was more of an art than a science and required a familiarity with the existing MT patterns and an ability to adapt to changes very quickly - as you didn’t have much time to analyze or move after being lucky enough to catch a signal - and thus was very finicky and almost impossible to actually teach to the rookies to the extent that they could use it even half as well as he did, or a quarter as well as the other scout officers.
His other advantage for night-time MT dodging was something they’d figured out about five years ago – the MTs used heat-vision, especially at night. That was why their aim was sometimes clumsy, but they could find enemies with such regularity. As such, the best way to disrupt their ability to see him was to vary his silhouette to match a local animal as much as possible, or just break up his silhouette. They’d found a dye that did a fantastic job and used it on their leather straps to disrupt the information the MTs got back. They were pretty dumb, and so if it didn’t seem to probably be a person or to be charging them, they ignored it.
So Pelna had been able to sneak up to the outer perimeter of the base, and had planned to keep a good exterior watch to learn the detailed patterns, and try and figure out if the base extended into the cliffs themselves as well, or if it was as small as it seemed. Then, as if by providence, a storm had swept in as the sun set fully, and he’d been able to use the rain as extra cover to get even closer, and the lightning flashes to cover his warps from human eyes as he made it to the airships themselves, where most of the activity seemed to be focused.
The SAF ships had been fairly standard – covered with MT pods and a few officers wandering around without much urgency between the engines, the bridge, and the cluster of officer’s quarters around the bridge. The pods had been mostly full, and the patterns of the MTs inside didn’t quite match those he’d seen patrolling the base or each other, so it was a fair guess they were either reinforcements or were getting orders from this meeting to head somewhere with the other ships. That left the mystery ship, which is where he was now.
Thankfully his assessment of the SAF ships had been rather brief. It was about three hours after sunset now, and it was an even toss-up if the meetings were still ongoing, or had stopped for the night. He just really hoped they didn’t take off with him on board. He had another three hours before people should start to get worried back at base, and another nine before they’d actually send someone to check on his location. Knowing Nyx, it would probably be more like six, honestly, unless they got tied up by another attack. Pelna might be able to send off a location ping and manage to keep it undetected, but he couldn't send anything more than that and he didn’t want to risk it if he didn’t have to.
The layout of the mystery ship was…odd. It had a few MT pods along the belly, where they could be dispatched in the dropships, but not nearly as many as he’d expect, and then there were a few full banks of pods up near the many offices, industrial-looking processing tanks, and odd, sealed rooms the rest of the ship was filled with. Pelna was getting ready to check one of the sealed rooms right now, just waiting for this patrol to pass. Thankfully, the MTs were still fairly predictable once he learned their timing on this ship, which was much faster than he’d expect with this low of a number. And while the humans were less predictable, he was starting to get a feel for their patterns as well.
Yep. There they went. The pair of MTs plodded along on their route, pace steady and heads facing forward. They weren’t looking for intruders specifically, just keeping up a presence, maybe. And as soon as they passed, like clockwork, a door opened and someone in a white coat poked their head out the door, saw the MTs had passed, and scurried across the way to another room. MTs made people uncomfortable, even Niffs, and they avoided them if possible. The MTs weren’t exactly quiet as the stomped down the corridor, so people knew they were there. Ergo, people listened for MTs to pass, and then moved around, if they could.
Pelna gave it another minute just to give timid souls a chance, then swung down and shoved a snake scope under the door, through the rubber flap that apparently lined the inside. Everything seemed dark, but he’d give it a second of movement. He glanced either way down the hallway, then fed the snake in further. Still dark, but the camera was adjusting. He twisted it back and forth, but everything seemed still, even in the dimmer light.
It was tempting to swing back up to the rafters to wait out the next patrol, but the snake was pretty obvious from this side. Better to push on. Pelna shoved his flexible lockpick in behind the combination dial, lifted it forward and picked the lock quickly with the ease of long practice. He eased the door open slowly, making sure there didn’t appear to be any other security measures, and not seeing any, swung it open just enough to give him the space to dart inside. He closed the door softly behind him, twisting the handle just enough so the door looked closed but the lock didn’t engage in case he had to make a quick exit, before turning to survey the room, clicking on his buttonhole-torch.
In the stark shadows of his light, the room still looked still as the grave. The center was dominated by several rows of tables, and there was all sorts of equipment shoved up against the walls, and one MT tank in the very back that nearly gave him a heart attack before he realized it was empty. He scooped up his snake and returned it to his inner pocket before making a circuit of the room, trying to figure out what it was used for.
His first thought had been medical, because some of the equipment and trays looked familiar, and this being a hospital ship would make a sort of sense. The people in white coats, the extra space for humans, and the meet-up here would all fit, but…this didn’t look right. It looked more like the morgue under the Perry - the glaive HQ - than it did a surgical room, first of all. There were no attachments for oxygen that he could see here, and the beds were plain metal and rather crowded into the room. Not to mention that while he’d seen his share of white-coated lab workers, he hadn’t actually seen wounded people in the hallway, either being rushed to operations or just wandering around after getting slings or whatever they needed. He’d never seen a hospital so quiet.
There were desks piled high with papers and computers behind each table, which also seemed odd if this was a hospital ship. Shouldn’t this sort of thing be taken with doctors wherever the patients had gone? It just felt wrong. He glanced over the papers, which seemed to be a mix of medical and circuit diagrams, and took pictures of what he could see without disrupting things too much, then swiped a random assortment of data sticks from across all the desks – nothing that was plugged in, just things that might conceivably be missed. He carefully moved papers aside to see if there was anything underneath the piles that could be useful, but it was hard to tell what was important, so he just took as many pictures as he could in the harsh light of his button-torch. He took a few more of the room as well, just in case, then went back to the piles, trying to keep things in order as much as possible while still getting a good look at things.
When he heard the metallic footsteps of the MTs coming back through, he ghosted up to the door and snuck the snake back through, just enough so that it was still in the shadow of the doorway but could see the corridor. It was the same number of MTs, coming from the same direction, so he probably hadn’t tripped any alarms, which was a relief. He waited out the usual post-patrol scurry, asking the Rogue to keep them from coming his way – he really had been in Insomnia too long – and heaving an exaggerated but silent sigh when they chose the door next to him. He debated seeing if he could hear anything through the wall, but he had a feeling the discussions would be too technical for his rather colloquial grasp of Nifltunga. Instead, he eased open the door and hauled himself back up in the pipes.
He checked out another unused room in the next hallway, which seemed to be more of the same. Was this a lab ship? One of Besithia’s division? Tidemother’s whims, this could be very very good or bad. Who knew what tech was guarding this place, or what his modified MTs could do. On the other hand, how else would they know? Should he try to plant a recording device close to the bridge? But how would they ever recover it? This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. He could put a tracker on it, but all he had was older models, and this ship especially might be able to detect it, which would make his exit very hot and any data it might give off very suspect.
No, best thing to do would be to keep taking pictures, and then get out of here while it was still dark, so he’d be alive to get them to people who could figure out what to do with them.
The next corridor he chose to spy on was closer to the bridge, and seemed much more active. Rather than just white-coated scientists, however, there appeared to be military officers going between the rooms here, one even hauling in a tray loaded with steaming carafes of what was presumably coffee. A late-night meeting, then? Maybe the purpose of this whole meet-up? Pelna felt frozen by the activity below, but he had to listen to this somehow, didn’t he? Or at least get eyes on who was in the room? He crept closer to the hub of activity, grateful for the heavy-duty pipes this science vessel apparently required.
He was sizing up the rooms on either side of the meeting one and weighing the risks when a junior officer who had just left the room – Pelna could hear a few words in Nifltunga from within, including what sounded like the word for the Glaives, maybe? as he walked through the doorway – tripped and dropped the tray of empty carafes he had been removing, making a terrific crash. The door to the meeting room slammed back open to shouts of alarm, and the terrifying figure of General Glauca stormed through the doorway. Pelna froze as the general passed underneath him and surveyed the scene before turning back to the meeting room.
“It was merely an accident, no need to be alarmed,” he intoned, strolling back toward the door. Pelna didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even release his breath until the door was safely closed behind Glauca. He didn’t even care that he hadn’t heard what was happening in the room, all he cared about was not dying at the moment. As soon as the hallway seemed emptier, he snuck back down a different hallway. There was no way he was getting anywhere near that room and making it out alive. He’d seen the way Glauca seemed to be able to predict where glavies would move and be, the way he cut swathes through their ranks and those of the Guard whenever he joined the battle. They’d theorized that maybe he could sense magic, even eat it with the way he tanked their stronger moves. The mages had worked themselves into exhaustion coming up with more and more devastating attacks just to herd him off the battlefield, not even to kill him, just to block or delay him. Nothing they did worked. Pelna could not engage.
He waited out two more MT patrols and a junior officer having a panic attack – Pelna could relate – before he felt comfortable enough to start exploring again. He found an impressive room down a hallway three corridors over from the meeting room, one that seemed to be deserted. It was a tempting target. While the principal lab with its wide windows allowing observers to watch from the hallway screamed “trap”, Pelna might be able to get into the office connected to it, which would be more useful to him anyway. He steeled his nerves. This would be his last attempt, and then he would work on getting out of here. A lab ship’s layout and location, this base’s existence, and Glauca’s presence were gems enough. He’d more than justified this little jaunt even if this room yielded nothing. He just had to survive long enough to report back.
After three more patrols had passed by, the hallway still seemed deserted, so Pelna risked it and dropped down and jimmied open the door. It seemed to be more important than the labs, in that it had several more numbers on the combination dial and a fingerprint option, but the lock was still as vulnerable to picking and the fingerprint option was thwarted by some quick magnet work. He’d had more difficulty picking the Captain’s office open when he’d lost his keys a few months back, which had earned him a disconcerted look, a disgruntled “I’m glad you’re not Furia,” and a week off of KP during their next deployment.
The office was a gold-mine. Pelna snapped pictures of the posters, folders after folder of diagrams and neat notes. After much debate, he swiped a data stick that had fallen under the table, figuring it was less likely to be missed and thus start a complete overhaul of any military data he managed to find. He longed, almost physically, to be able to download information from any of the dark computers lining the wall opposite the lab (visible through another set of wide windows, which was slightly terrifying), but his respect for the Niff cybersecurity was stout. Maybe if he could take one with him they could eventually get some information, but he wasn’t going to try to touch one still hooked into the system. Even if he lucked out and someone was still logged in and just the monitor was dark, the light would be visible from the hallway if he tried it. No. No, it was too risky.
Speaking of light…he turned his button torch off just before the next MT patrol came through. He waited out of habit for any signs of human movement after the patrol, but the hallway still seemed deserted, thankfully, and so he turned it back on. He risked a few photos of the lab itself while the coast was clearer, then got back to work, spreading things out on the floor where he could duck under the windows and limit the glow of his “come-shoot-me” light, which was unfortunately necessary for his photography efforts.
He was reluctant to put everything away for the next patrol, rather than just turning off the light, because he didn’t want to take the time to get everything out again, but he could hear Miel – the oldest glaive for the majority of Pelna’s time here, who had finally died last year – chiding him about sloppy work, so he shuffled everything back where it should be before the next patrol came. Still hearing Miel’s voice echoing in his mind, he resolved to wait the full minute before he moved to turn his light back on again. Before he even got to thirty seconds, he heard a new set of footsteps, heavier than the MTs, and in no particular rush, all but covering up the light footsteps of a regular human walking with them. He inched his way back under the table as quietly as he could, and drew his blade, hoping he could warp past them if they opened the door.
Instead, the movement continued past his door. Pelna craned his neck around to watch through the reflection in one of the monitors what was happening in the hallway, heart in his throat and yet somehow beating loudly enough he could hear it. Char it, he wasn’t a rookie! He’d had his share of near misses and looking death in the face. Why was he so terrified now?
In the reflection of the screen, General Glauca walked along the bank of windows, Verstael Besithia himself at his side, and Pelna couldn’t have been more frozen if the Glacian herself had kissed him. They stopped by the main lab, Besithia casually entering his combination and using some sort of ID card to open the door as he chatted with the terror beside him. They flicked on the light, and Pelna let himself relax just a hair. With the bright lights of the lab and the office so dark, the window between them would be more like a one-way mirror, concealing Pelna from casual view. He still wasn’t going to stand up or anything, or look directly at them, but it was at least some protection. Unless Glauca really could sense magic.
“Get up on the table, you know the drill,” Besithia commanded, gesturing airily and not even bothering to watch Glauca obey as he gathered up some sort of equipment out of Pelna’s field of vision. Glacua sat on the table, looking incongruously like nothing more than one of Pelna’s kids at the pediatrician, complete with absently kicking his legs. “Have you had any particular problems lately?”
“No.” Even the voice was terrifying.
“Good, good. Let me hook you up and we’ll see if we need to top you up.” Besithia sounded bored more than anything, and Pelna wished he dared take a picture. They’d never believe this, he thought hysterically. “There we go. Now disengage and reengage the armor; you know the drill.”
Glauca didn’t reply, just obeyed. Rather than removing the armor piece by piece, it almost seemed to melt into him as he rolled his shoulders. He grunted softly, almost as if in pain. Pelna only absently processed that, though. It looked like…it couldn’t be…
“Does it hurt more than usual? It’s not a good sign if your body is rejecting it after all this time, you know.”
“Just the usual. I’ve been fighting a lot recently, both as Glauca and as Drautos, and I’m just tired. It happens. It’ll get better once I have a chance to rest.”
It was. Underneath the armor, General Glauca was a clone of the Captain.