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“That’s the one you spoke of, yes? Whose arms are bare?” Lirune wisped her fingers across the deck to a small huddle of variously sized humans, amongst other huddles of equally shapely folk from beyond the void.
“Hm?” Vadric followed her eyeline, meeting at the breakwater that was the short but wide frame of Meds, his occasional drinking companion. He fretted for a moment that they hadn't yet had time to catch up - with conversation or drink - since his Faithless had come to Tantalus. One for the growing list, he reasoned. “That is ‘Meds’. She is a formidable warrior, both in form and in function.”
“Yes… yes, I can see that.” Lirune took a sip from the fluted, stately glass she’d been handed. The contents tasted vile, then sweet, then vile again. “Illuminate me, what are those markings across her shoulders? A pattern, of some sort? A code?”
Vadric, humanly, shrugged. “You would have to ask her yourself.”
“Ask…” Lirune shook her head, and then her sword-hand. “No, no, she- they, any of them, have no idea who I am. I barely speak their words yet, not like you can. I will remain where I stand.”
Vadric, to Lirune’s fractured but retained internal logic, was her commander, in the broadest sense of the word. In the days before her breakage from the Faith Eternal, that position would have belonged to the High Cleric and the Lord Cardinal both, and in general the difference between them was an inclined plane. Vadric, then, was her commander in the same way that a comrade might suggest you betterments - they were level, or at least at a balance, right up until their group of rebels had made their expedition through the strange, Outsider’s gate, and arrived in a place beyond the void where the customs were fastidious, the language was opaque, and there was hardly a sword to be spotted or a whetstone to be borrowed. That is all to say, where her conrade had found a way to adapt to his surroundings whenever they arrived, changed, Lirune was not like water in the same way. She gripped the glass flute a little tighter, and he raised his eyebrow.
“Come. They are friends of mine, and I am certain they could become yours too. I will translate where you falter; otherwise, you will never get any practice, will you?”
She tapped the glass with one hand, the pommel of her modified (but still inquisitorial) blade with the other. A sip for courage, and after the cringing sensation, she spoke. “You make a convincing argument.”
-
Vadric’s expedition had only been in the cluster for a few weeks, and already Meds had grown tired of them. They were on the right side of things - that being, the same side as her - but besides the man himself, dogma recognised dogma. Even in their escape from the Advari Faith, the ‘Faithless’ still retained this air of hopeful idiocy, the same sort of shit that had gotten her planet ruined and her people burned during the Frontier War. Even if the faith they had in their heart of hearts was directed elsewhere, to something all around more productive than their old God, Meds was the first to question whether such faith was needed at all for Vadric’s ironically named “Faithless” movement. Faith in anything was a lit fuse. Of course, Meds kept all of these arguments internal and directed at herself, until the bruise-faced warrior woman who clung to Vadric’s arm like a daughter came aboard her ship, threw a wooden sword at her, and demanded a fight.
“I am most familiar,” Lirune said after another roaring swing, “with a… killing edge.”
“Real swords, you mean?”
“Indeed.” Lirune mumbled. “With which, I would have cut you down already.”
“Yeah, but I don't generally run into a fight without a gun. Or a taser. I don't think sword beats taser.” The two wooden blades booked against each other, Lirune’s height exerting pressure and not much else. Meds, she was certain, had the greater strength between them.
Lirune pulled back, twirling the wooden blade in an elegant swing around her wrist, before resetting. “What is this ‘taser’ you speak of?”
“It's a gun that shoots electricity.”
Lirune paused, not escaping her swordly stance, but raising an eyebrow high. A common gesture. “That sounds… advanced.”
“It's really not, all you need is a battery, wire, and some prongs.”
“And this can defeat even the mightiest human warriors?”
What they don't tell you about a taser shot is that the spikes pierce your skin, and if you don't get properly treated after the fact, they leave scars. The two shots across Meds’ back ached, momentarily, and if she were closer to the event she may have felt a phantom locking in her joints.
“I would say so, yeah,” she scoffed, before making her first aggressive move of the fight, flying forwards shoulder first. Her wooden rod crashed against Lirune’s blade and swung round, tapping her shoulder. “Gotcha,” she smirked too.
“Likewise,” Lirune returned, as her own blade poked at Meds’ ribs. “You are a doctor, yes? Then I say you shall know my strike is greater.”
“Do you always swing to kill?” they still stood, rigid and closely tangled. Her opponent’s face turned dark, for a moment, before she pulled herself away, swinging the blade into a sheathing position without such a leather hand to catch it.
“Once.” She nodded. “Or rather, I only swung when necessary.”
Meds huffed, the mock scrape-with-death more exhausting than she’d expected. “Which was the same thing, I assume.”
Lirune nodded. And then, her face curled into a wide smirk, “Regardless! You have been bested. I suspect you are the greatest warrior humanity has to offer, yes?”
Meds returned the nod, after a moment of consideration for the potentially dangerous diplomatic implications of such a statement.
“Hahah!” Lirune spewed, more like a pirate of the old, sea-faring kind than the noble former-warrior of the faith she had come to expect. “Yes, yes! This is glorious. I am now satisfied, you Outsiders are no threat to us.”
“No threat, huh…”
“On the battlefield of the land or the stars, if it comes to it, we children of Imyndarica could defeat your mightiest, and bring you to ruin! Hah!”
“Is that so?” Meds glowered, bothered more than she would’ve liked. “And if I had a gun?”
“... Surely such a match-up would grant me a holy Lancet, no?”
Meds walked up to the Guin’s wall, typing in a code that was more for the symbolism than any actual protection, before hitting the panel with her fist, a locker opening up. She pulled two pistols - cheap, made for mercenaries and scoundrels and the Navy once before them - and chucked one to Lirune, who caught it, bemused.
“And this is…”
“I assume a ‘Lancet’ is a type of ranged weapon?”
“... You would be right to assume that, yes.”
“This is our version of a Lancet, then. It's called the LS-15B EM, it holds 8 bullets that it propels through a short electromagnetic track at the pull of the trigger. It's currently not loaded-” Meds warned as Lirune, of course, glanced down the barrel. Though she wasn't sure Lirune knew what a barrel is - she had no clue how this “Lancet” she talked about worked.
“And what shall we do with these?” Lirune was turning the pistol over in her hands, like it was made of gemstones and filigree.
Meds measured a rough line with her finger, between the flat wall of the rover pit and the Wildcat itself. “We will march ten paces from… here,” she pointed at the rough centre line. “We start back to back, and I’ll set a random beeper. When the sound goes off, we draw our guns. Whoever draws first, wins.”
Lirune scoffed. “And how will we know that for sure?”
“There are cameras pointing down to the bay. And I assure you,” she levied a smirk. “You’ll know.”
Lirune looked at the weapon planted in her hand like it was a dirty handkerchief. She swung it like a sword - enough power behind her swings to knock someone out with the end of the hilt - before smiling. “Yes. This will do well.”
“If I win, you owe me a drink.”
“I have none of your human currency. I do not think I would be able to fulfil that request.”
“Alright, then…” Meds pondered, holstering her own pistol. “If I win. We’ll drink together tonight.”
“And my prize for victory would be?”
She swung the pistol at the floor - never towards Lirune, but still in a lazy holding pattern. “We go out for a drink regardless. And I’ll let you use a taser on me. Just to prove a point.”
Lirune squinted her eyes, and patted her holster. “You would let me use a weapon of mass destruction?”
Meds laughed. “Something like that, yeah.”
Lirune didn't need more convincing, as she followed Meds’ explanation of dueling rules. Meds thumbed a button, and a metronome she used for exercise became their makeshift ticker.
“When you hear a loud beep, turn and pull the trigger. Got it?”
“This sound shall be what, exactly?”
“You’ll know it when you hear it.”
Back to back, shoulder blades almost touching, Meds could feel the height difference immensely. Yet, Lirune was a lean kind of strong. Meds could tackle her. Take her, even. She placed a hand on her holster, and buried any other thought.
They took a step at the first noise. The second came quick, and they were diverging fast. The lights of the rover bay beamed down in yellow light, and Meds could hear nothing but the modulated breathing of her dueling rival. Even her own lungs drowned in the sound, and her airflow was like a bellows, she had always been told. She tapped the back of her gun.
Then came the loud beep.
Meds had been counting anyhow, and spun on her heel, coming around the whole one-eighty degree in one motion, gun out, arm forward, shooting position made, target sighted - still turning - and click . Her gun refused to fire, but she had won regardless. Lirune was hard side on to her, the pistol loosely in the webbing of her hands.
“I win,” Meds smirked.
-
“Yet I will still posit that I won our match.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Meds put her full weight against the bar, Lirune had asked for the most colourful drink they had, for the novelty of it, and had swallowed the whole glass. Her drinking companion had picked something hoppy and intoxicating just from the smell, drowning a few cubes of ice.
“Your weapons of battle are advanced, I will admit. Perhaps advanced enough to win our shared war.” She continued slurping the straw, even if nothing remained.
“Maybe,” Meds leaned further over her drink. She looked down her glass like it was for spying. “God, I miss Komusār .”
Lirune spluttered. “What was that word? That did not sound familiar.”
“It wouldn't be,” Meds smirked into her hand. “It's a spirit. Alcohol. Good alcohol, to me. Ersatz whisky like this just can't compare to something made with no fakery in its creation, its very soul.” And yet, she slipped her golden liquid again regardless. “A friend reintroduced it to me, on the Expedition. Is that a dirty word, for you? Sorry, I should have asked.”
Lirune shook her head, suddenly noble. “Your ‘expedition’, the Avalon, is what directly lead to my freedom from the Faith. It is a blessed word, if anything.”
“Is that so?”
“This friend, though. Was it that Croft man, the one on your ship?”
“Oh, no, absolutely not,” Meds laughed, and her nose and cheeks looked a shade closer to orange than her usual skin tone. “No, it was a different friend. Captain Maalsuwda.” She took another sip, and frowned into the rim. “I miss him. I know his husbands do, too.”
“You mention… what was that word. The thing he had many of?”
“Husbands?” Lirune nodded. “Yeah, his whole unit is… their own kind of crazy. Four husbands, five children between them, more aunts and uncles than you can count,” Meds whistled through her teeth. “I’m thankful.”
“For…?”
“Not having as big a family as him,” she laughed at an angle. “Less people to worry about you.”
“Husband, though. I still don't believe I understand this word. Is it like ‘father’?”
“Ah, well… in a sense, maybe? But not everyone has kids, and not every father is biologically related to their kids, but is still their dad.” Meds nodded, like she thought this was making all sense. “Husband would be the name for a man in a committed relationship. Brought together by ceremony, sometimes anyways.”
“Huh.” Lirune took a sip. She repeated a word in Advari, with many fluid vowels. Meds gave her the look of someone who’d seen a ghost, or heard it in the other room. “It means husband, in a sense. But also a woman-husband.”
“Oh, so, a partner?”
“Yes! I think.” Lirune sipped again from the empty glass, and didn't ask for another despite wanting it. “The way you describe it is… somewhat foreign to me. But I believe I had a ‘partner’ once.”
Meds leant a little close, glass catching the light. “Oh?”
“It is not a particularly happy story, nor a long one, I must warn.”
“When are they ever? Relationships are messy. Advari ones… well, from what Vadric told me, they make ours look like a cakewalk. I’m all ears for messiness, I love me some drama that I’m completely detached from,” she grinned, and Lirune didn't feel like returning the favour.
“She was killed by the Lord Cardinal’s forces. Before the Faithless were formed. She…” Lirune leant inwards, her back curving. “She gave her life to make me change.”
Meds stopped, immediately. “Oh.”
“I should have been there, at the time. But we were parted, and in that short time, her spirit was taken from her living ashes. I think she would have loved to come with us, to see Sulaednbrae, and if things went particularly well, we may have… one day conjugated. At least I hope in my heart that she felt the same way. I guess I’ll never know, now.”
Lirune turned the glass to her lip, realising the rim had not been just for decorating but was actually a sweet crystalline confection. It softened the wound of talking about her, and made it easier to swallow. Her body, her ashes, were 4000 ‘lightyears’ distant. But something, the whisper of her, remained in Lirune’s chest.
“I’m… I'm so sorry.” Meds said, and patted Lirune on the shoulder, before returning the gesture. “God, I’m a terrible therapist. Maybe the worst person you could've told, if you wanted advice.”
Lirune waved it off. “I don't even know what a ‘therapist’ is or does. I haven't…” she swirled the dregs in her wide glass. “I couldn't speak about her for a long time. Vadric knows, and he has been personable about it. But in a sense, telling a near-stranger makes her loss sting even less. If the entire world is allowed to know my pain, then the pain starts looking very small in the face of the world.” She turned to Meds. “You understand?”
The warrior woman turned away, back to her own drink, lost in thought perhaps? She opened her mouth once, then twice, then closed her lips around her glass and finished her whisky.
“Bartender, two more please. On the rocks.”
The man nodded, and two glugging bottles opened their throats to two waiting glasses, full of plentiful ice. Meds sat back down, and smiled.
“You are going to consume double of that beverage? I believe you have drunk much already.”
“No. We are going to consume double of it. Here,” she passed one glass to Lirune, before holding it outwards, towards the Advari. “What shall we toast to?”
“... What is that?”
“The drink or the gesture?”
Lirune motioned to the waiting glass, and in one motion Meds hit the butt of her glass against the rim of Lirune’s waiting one.
“Fine, to… to pressing on, no matter the damage. Cheers,” she said without cheer, and tipped her head back to let the liquid run. Lirune followed, the bizarre ritual making little sense but regardless seeming important. The amber liquid inside the glasses burnt like adhesive or chemical paint, and threatened to strip the skin from Lirune’s throat. She coughed loudly, and Meds patted her back.
“Careful! It's strong stuff.”
Lirune spluttered through it, before taking another quick swig.
“Oh- okay. Do whatever you need to get through it,” she said with a laugh. “And don't worry, Vadric can't hold his drink either. This makes you no less formidable.”
“In that case, I must beat him in this test of skill.” Throat still raw, Lirune copied the gesture she had seen Meds make. “Bartender! Two more!” she shouted.
“Oh, I can tell we’re gonna be fast friends, Lirune.”
“If we are to be friends,” Lirune swirled, wanting her words to be right but struggling regardless, across language, space, and time, “please, call me Aranai.”
Meds smiled into her glass, but perhaps the former inquisitor imagined it. Her powers of deduction had only weakened in the intervening months.
“Whatever you say, Aranai Lirune.”
-
“I see those wounds, now.” Aranai mumbled, brushing carefully with the joint of her finger, “Of the mighty taser.”
“That’s because the bastards who shot me didn't patch it up until after I was out of my cell. Took ‘em three days, and by then…” Meds couldn't reach them herself, so she leant back upon her hands, and let the literal alien in her bed look as long as she liked.
Aranai chuffed. “What is a warrior without scars?”
Meds glanced back at her, short strand stragglers dipping in the low light of her cabin. “A warrior who never loses.”
“A terrible warrior, then. One who never loses has obviously never been in a fight.”
“So you say.” She pressed her fingers into the mattress, and kinda wanted a cigarette.
“May I ask a personal question?”
Meds scoffed. Which she often did, but it became oddly more common around this Advari woman. “Ask away?”
“This markings… are they scars too?”
She twisted her neck to see Aranai’s gentle fingers glide over her hexagonal tattoos. She smirked, fond memories filtering through. “Ah. They’re something I got in the Navy.”
“Na-vy?”
“Centran armed forces. All of us marines got a hexagon for each successful mission we went on.” Aranai’s fingertips brushed across a few stamps nearer her neck, and an involuntary shiver came down her. “I just… kept adding to it after I left. It felt right to. Come to think of it, I have a few more hexagons to add since my last visit.”
“So I see.” Aranai said, quiet, perhaps lost in a wholly foreign world inside that head of hers. But, after a moment, she sat up, and planted a kiss on her shoulder, not too close, but the air in her breath was cool. Meds always made her room warmer than the rest of the ship - she was used to sleeping in the heat that radiated off of the desert, pleasantly humidified by dotted atmospheric-capture farms. She was naked, though not in the ways that mattered. Many a man had seen her in bed like this, whether she paid or not. Aranai may have been the first woman, but…
She pushed off the bed, reaching to pick up her clothes from the floor.
“... Ah.”
“I’m…” Meds patted her clothes, just to stall a bit longer. “I’m sorry. I can't do this.”
The Advari rested her cheek against her shoulder, in a lean that couldn't have been comfortable if she wasn't so slender. “Do you think this is my first short-term entanglement?”
“Oh…” She looked down at her jacket again, not finding the bed sheets or those sparkling golden eyes. “I hadn't wanted to assume… I know how fundamentalist sorts can be.” She buried her idea of a half-expected marriage proposal arriving at her groggy doorstep.
Lirune scoffed. “Understandable, but naïve. Even when my faith wasn't so shakeable, I couldn't deny myself the touch of another. The Faith allows it, in its own way. Vadric’s love for the Empress, for example. The institution knew, and allowed it, right until it became a thunderously annoying problem for them.”
“You know… so many odd words.”
“Do I?” The Advari smirked, and then looked away. “Regardless. I am unharmed. You needn’t worry.”
She passed a strange vest that was definitely not hers over to the woman who still sat in her bed. “I’ve got to go.” Meds nodded, back to the door. “You don't need to rush out, but…”
“I understand. Go, then.” Aranai said, but it wasn't a threat. It was an allowance.
“This was fun.”
Aranai’s eyes were on her screen window, the digital image of some sunny orange day on Maiala bleeding in. “It was.”
Meds knocked her knuckle against the lintel of the door, nodded once, and stepped out the room, as underdressed as she ever would be outside her own room. She slipped her sleeveless jacket over herself as the door closed behind her.
Meds wrung her hands, varyingly, before moving to pinch her nose. She had once been so sure in who she was; that certainty, of course, had been robbed from her during the Expedition. She didn't… hate the idea of being a Unioner, not anymore. In the same way, she didn't hate the idea of liking women; but she had tried doing so before. She had tried so, so hard. She saw a box that needed filling and she fit herself into it just so that her assistant would stay by her side back in the clinic. Just so Cass wouldn't top herself, though that had hardly worked. The fact that Lirune… Aranai, had even caught her eye came as a betrayal and a reality she couldn't ignore all at once. Maybe then, only one question lingered; “is it women, or is it just her?”
Meds’ face ran hot red, even in the cold of the corridor outside.