The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

The Greenfield Family.

Paula is heading back to school for the first time since the incident at the party, and it seems like the entire school has heard about what happened. Buried under an avalanche of unsolicited support from all sides, as well as some attention of the less savory variety, it may be more than Paula can handle.

Meanwhile, Rick and Keiko are each separately forced to confront their failings as parents, to ask themselves the question of whether they bear some responsibility for what happened to Paula. And most importantly, is this incident going to change anything about their extra-marital distractions? Or are they going to give in to temptation and fall right back into old habits?

https://storiesonline.net/n/52852/the-gr...-family/22

Princess of the Void.

Narika sits in her amber-lit cabin, her boots on the table taking up most of her frame. Dantia’s on her command deck, sitting on a throne much like Sykora’s, though without the many orthopedic cushions that the Black Pike’s monarch has added to support her growing brood. Wenzai watches warily from her desktop terminal’s camera, secreted away in her guest cabin aboard the Pike. Off-screen, Tikani’s sitting with the children, shushing them and holding them close. Corska Ondai has found some sort of closet-sized communication room separated from the Cloudsprint, barely large enough for herself and a ring-geared exo union escort. She chews intently on one of Baroness Konia’s expensive appetizers.

All these women’s faces are captured in a honeycomb of glass hexes across the central screen of the Black Pike’s bridge. At their center, larger than the rest, sits Marquess Shoskia, her smile as brittle and saccharine as sugar spun glass. She isn’t in her airy solar, not on this call—her background is a firmament yacht, its windows tinted to hide the starscape she’s within from any would-be triangulation.

“Majesty,” she says, without preamble. “My time under your rule has come to an end.”

Sykora exchanges a wry look up at Grant, who stands by her throne’s arm rest, his head out of their connection’s frame. “That’s what you think, is it?”

“It’s what I know,” Shoskia says. “It’s what I’m telling you. I am separating myself from your sector, Sykora of the Black Pike. Your foolish xenophiliac misrule I will brook no longer. I declare myself a member of Void Princess Dantia’s coterie.”

Dantia glances up from a studious examination of her nails at the sound of her name.

“Then I declare your holdings on Qarnaq seized,” Sykora says. “And your claim to Ximik dissolved. You are a traitor to the sector and a conspiracist. I have a shuttle full of evidence of your treachery.”

“Do what you will to that sad little Ximik backwater,” Shoskia says. “I have no care for it. But as far as Qarnaq… will you tell her, Narika, or shall I?”

Narika tilts her head. “How about you continue, Marquess.”

The Unfortunate Truth pt II.

“Very well.” Shoskia’s eyes gleam with a huntress’s satisfaction. “Your sister has invested in my company. I am a representative of Narika’s interest on Qarnaq.” She lays a hand on her chest. “And as that representative, with the partnership of several exo-clan baronesses, it is my intention to bring protestation to your world, effective—”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Narika says.

Shoskia lets out an uncomprehending half-laugh. “Majesty.”

“Yes?”

“What, um. You are in jest, yes?”

“I have no interest in backing a play for Qarnaq under your leadership,” Narika says. “You have moved brashly and indelicately. The baronesses who would gladly have followed you into protestation will look at you as a wildcard. They will fear Sykora’s retribution, which you have given her ample legal clearance to inflict.”

“But Majesty. Not if you stand in my corner.”

“I am aware,” Narika says. “I choose not to.”

“You’ve seen my operation on Qarnaq. Haven’t you?”

“I have.”

“I’ve laid it at your feet.”

“I’ll let it lie,” Narika says. “It is no remarkable thing. And I suppose now is the time I ought to tell you.” She swings her boots off her table. “I do not like you, Marquess.”

“But—I—Dantia, then.” Shoskia scrambles to preserve the falling-away shards of her imperiousness. “I am to be a member of your court now, yes? If Narika lacks the horns, surely you are eager. The protestation might need a certain reorienting, but you are as august a personage as any. They’d line up behind us.”

Dantia frowns. “About that.” She’s scrutinizing a tablet handed to her by her majordomo, its edge just visible at the bottom of the frame. “This exo shipment you delivered to me.”

“That’s right. The first of many, if—”

“Have you done your due diligence on it, Marquess?”

“Of… of course.” Shoskia’s voice quavers with confused dread. “Of course we have. We run our checks tendaily.”

Dantia holds her tablet up. “Then I wonder how you didn’t catch this.”

“Catch…” Shoskia’s voice dwindles to nothing.

“It’s contaminated.” Dantia briefly types something offscreen and the readout she was examining broadcasts itself onto the command deck holoprojector. An entry is highlighted on it in angry red. Grant sees the color reflect on every conferencer’s face. “Look at these acetylene quantities your refinery’s let into the mix. If my privateers swept with this exo, their engines might blow.”

“Hellfire. These numbers.” Vicious satisfaction animates Wenzai’s eyes as they race across the readout. “This is rookie-level shit, Marquess.”

“No. No, that’s not—We run our checks tendaily. That’s not possible.” Shoskia’s rapidly scrolling through her own copy of the transmitted document. “Something must be off with, with your instruments, or with the shipment. You must send someone to Ximik refinery, Majesty. An inspector, or a—”

“I will not dispatch my inspectors into Princess Margrave Sykora’s territory without her permission, Shoskia,” Dantia says. “Something wrong with the shipment, you say? You sent the shipment.”

Grant’s eye is drawn by a tin-mic creaking sound as Corska Ondai sits back in her seat, her expression entirely blank. He recognizes the escort she’s brought into the call with her. That’s Aokan of Lilek.

“No.” Marquess Shoskia’s lip trembles. “No, Majesty, I—I have hectocycles of experience running these operations. Surely you can’t—you wouldn’t—not to him. Have you all gone mad?”

“What wouldn’t I do?” Dantia’s long braid drapes past her shoulder. She toys with it idly. “Not to who?”

“He is a fucking alien,” Shoskia snaps. “A male and an alien and a—a pleasure toy the Princess got so cock-shocked by she handed him the keys to the fucking sector, and you’re all willing to sit back while he bulldozes our Empire? While his wife slaves herself to his wze’kaenae and wheedles his freedom from the Empress? Generation upon generation of our foremothers and this stupid slut thinks he can—”

“That is enough, I think,” Sykora says. “Marquess Shoskia, by my authority and the authority of Empress Zithra XIX, you are under arrest for conspiracy, corporate malfeasance, and high treason.” She looks to the other princesses on the call. “Will anyone move to countermand me?”

A tense and leaden silence. Then Narika shakes her head. Dantia shrugs. Shoskia stares wordlessly.

Grant leans in, so that his face is visible in Sykora’s frame.

“You see it now, don’t you, Marquess?” he says quietly. “The unfortunate truth.”

A rapid alchemical reaction catalyzes on Shoskia’s face, from shock to fear to rage. “Fuck you, Maekyonite,” she says. “And fuck your authority, Princess. You are treasonous and foolish and more loyal to your catamite than to your Empress. I can only pray these misguided Void Princesses will see you for the serpent you are, before your venom reaches the Empire’s heart.”

Her image flickers and vanishes, leaving open space where it sat.

“The Marquess has disconnected the call, Majesty,” an ensign calls out from the bridge below.

“Your crew are masters of the obvious.” Dantia’s teeth gleam in her unkind smile. “This concludes our business, Black Pike.”

“Not quite,” Sykora says. “I’ll bet you a score of interceptors that Shoskia is sweeping into the Cloud Gate no-woman’s-land. It behooves us all to coordinate on our search for her. She’ll be vengeful.”

“Of that, I have no doubt,” Dantia says. “But I also have no doubt where that vengeance will be pointed. I have done what you demanded and I wash my hands of you, with relief. You can clean up your own goddamn mess. May the frontier repay you in kind for your conduct within its reaches.”

Another hex goes dark.

Sykora scoffs into the vacant place Dantia left. “Such a dramatic woman.”

Narika chuckles. “One feels sympathy for her mirror, the amount of lines she surely practices into it.”

“She kinda sounds like you two to me,” Grant says.

“That’s because you’re insufferable,” Sykora says.

Narika rests her chin on her ring-encrusted palm. “I can’t imagine a frontier force as farcically run as hers would be much help, anyway.”

“Probably not.” Sykora sighs and tents her hands on her belly. “You, however, have a level of competence, bare and baseline as it is.”

“Your courtesy is as unimpeachable as ever, sister.”

“I’ll expect you to share your sweep sensor data with me.”

“We can talk about that.” Narika rubs her chin. “And discuss what you will trade me for it.”

“You abetted this woman,” Sykora snaps. “I’ll trade you my lenience.”

“We can talk,” Narika repeats.

https://www.scribblehub.com/read/1419041...r/2248512/
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/120617...ruth-pt-ii

EDIT: Added a link to the first unfortunate truth.