PrincessColumbia

  What followed in the next few days was a nightmare, not in the sense that there was the terrifying repy of her greatest fears or an endless series of jumpscares, but in the gray slog of soul-crushing drudgery that feels like there’s no real end in sight.

  While the modified Goldrush was to be underway in less than a day after Diane’s call back to her station, the ship designed to be an asteroid miner and cargo hauler was slower than the Dragon’s Daughter and would take a full two days to get to the former sver’s den. That left the care and feeding, quite literally, of the former sves to Diane and Russe and it was...depressing.

  To begin with was the quartering of the women and girls. As soon as they could they cleared every section that still held former sves of any possible traps or other gatchas, followed by Russe breaking the lockouts on the sve cuffs and dropping the restraining doors. This at least allowed the dies freedom of movement, and a few of them volunteered to help Diane (they were wary of Russe, understandably) in her tasks, but then they discovered that one of the svers brought bedbugs aboard the station. Not even space-bedbugs or some at least slightly interesting alien critter that earned the name bedbug...but actual, Earth-origin, bog-standard, completely uninteresting, pesticide-resistant-for-six-centuries bedbugs. The gen-pop sections of the station were clean of them (automated cleaning protocols were useful for that, at least), and the sve’s quarters were kept free of the nasty little things, but there were notes in the Consortium’s doctor’s logs that indicated there was an outbreak among the crew quarters. Thankfully, the officer’s quarters were spared, but this meant they couldn’t simply disperse the former sves to the more private and personally securable bunks until every room could be heat treated (a process that took a half hour minimum and required each cabin be sealed, all atmosphere removed, and the internal temperature of the room rocketed up to 200-degrees F for a minimum of half an hour).

  Further complicating things was the discovery that the ‘clothing’ inventory for the women and girls consisted of nothing but mass-produced underwear and what could be charitably called “slut wear” that was clearly intended to be a sort of costume library for ‘dispying’ the ‘goods’ to prospective buyers. The idea was floated to raid the crew quarters for clothes...but that brought them back to the heat treatment problem.

  Then there was food. The sve’s ‘food’ was packets of nutrient paste that, upon opening one to see if it was any good, had Diane cpping her hands to her Morvuck-sensitive nose so hard she nearly gave herself a bck eye. She was disgusted further when she learned that, no, this ‘nutrient paste’ had not turned, it was still perfectly ‘edible.’ Calorically deficient and only barely providing the required nutrients for most humanoid standard life, but arguably edible. Russe had, in a rather disgusted tone, informed Diane that this particur type of nutrient paste was intended for long-term space voyages where the crew spent their time in a sort of hibernation status, not cryonically frozen (that was still a problematic process that had too small a survivability rate, even in this sci-fi future of the game’s setting), but biological processes dropped to an absolute minimum, brain functions locked in a coma-like dream state, and the nutrient paste fed to the body via a feeding tube.

  On the whole it was a little too close to home for Diane, who now had uncomfortable associations with the stink of the nutrient paste with what was going into her body IRL.

  Once the broke into the sver’s food store things looked better. The station’s food supplies were hardly ideal for their current situation; there was enough food for the svers to st 30 days before a resupply ship needed to be called in, and what would st the full crew the month would only stretch for the entire former sve popution for four days...but as they were anticipating the arrival of the Goldrush in half that time, it was deemed ‘not a problem’ and the nutrient paste was shoved back in the cargo hold it was found in and promptly forgotten about.

  The friends Kymberlynn had asked about were, thankfully, still among the ‘inventory’ of minors on the station, and Diane was more than happy to let the group of them up into Ops to talk with their friend until one of the officers meeting rooms could be cleared for that purpose. Apparently Norma had given Kymberlynn her own room right next to Norma’s, and the first night after Diane had cleared out the svers was a ‘sleepover’ to celebrate where some bed rolls were dragged into the meeting room, snack-like foods were dug out of storage (including some popcorn, which had earned Diane’s pce as ‘hero and savior’ among the former sve girls when she cooked it up for them ‘old-school’ over a gas fme in one of the galleys with a lidded pot and the closest thing she could find to butter to top it with). Back on the Matron’s Aerie, Kymberlynn invited Cynthy to her quarters to participate in the sleepover via video call and the connection was kept open all night, even if it did jam up the comms array for both stations.

  Diane hadn’t regretted her choice to allow that in the slightest, but the warm feeling of satisfaction that rivalled even the victory over the svers when she checked in on the girls and saw them all fast asleep (even the pair back on the station that had joined via video connection) just solidified for her that the rest of the gaxy could go hang for a few hours.

  Once the Goldrush arrived, all the ex-sves were loaded up onto the ship and Diane ordered that they be given access to viewscreens as the Dragon’s Daughter and the Goldrush were moved to a safe distance as Russe remotely accessed the station’s systems and set the station’s core to catastrophically overload.

  Could she have had the station scrapped and salvaged? Yes.

  Was destroying the potential resource instead of trying to eke out something of worth from it more valuable than twenty vault stations’ worth of credits? When she watched the video feed from her captain’s chair on the bridge of the Dragon’s Daughter of the women and girls who’d been held prisoner there clutching each other for support and crying their eyes out in relief, she decided it was.

  A surprise was waiting for her when she got back.

  A new shipping ne hadn’t been established direct from Mortan just yet, so every two weeks a somewhat beefier courier ship than your average cargo hauler arrived with a fresh shipment (thankfully still being paid by the good women of Mortan, even with the bounty credit influx she was due for this little excursion she wouldn’t be able to afford the fees for the bi-weekly transport by herself, and her station wasn’t yet self-sufficient in the gactic economy to cover the cost), and said courier ship was docked at the Cargo 2 airlock as the Goldrush and Dragon’s Daughter approached. In addition, there was a new ship that she didn’t recognize docked on the station’s single docking bay as well.

  Once docking procedures for the two victoriously returning ships was completed, she found not just Norma and Katrina waiting for her, but Leki and Koar as well.

  Leki smiled indulgently as she reached out to csp wrists with Diane. Unsure why the dark-haired woman didn’t just offer a handshake, Diane returned the gesture tentatively. “Our ship only undocked a few hours ago and Norma has been filling us in.” Norma’s grin was nearly proprietary as Diane cast her a skeptical gnce while Leki gushed, “Good work! For someone with no real-world battle training you did remarkably well.”

  Diane blushed and muttered, “...I just pyed a lot of video games,” as Leki released her arm. This was, of course, strictly true. She spent the vast majority of her time in video game environments, a good deal of which required knowledge of fighting in a realistic environment.

  Koar stepped in and performed the same gesture, “Those games must have been something else! Talk about living up to the name of ‘Matron’s Daughter’! Katrina showed us the footage from the sver’s security cams, where did you learn to fight close-quarters like that?”

  Matching Koar’s grip strength, Diane more confidently grinned back and said, “Doom.”

  Both Morvuck’s and Norma’s faces were painted with confusion as Russe joined them, “Who’s pying Doom? Can we go in on a coop? And are we talking holographic, old-school VR, or full-on vintage keyboard and screen interface?”

  Diane chuckled and allowed a little of her predatory grin out as she said, “Choose your weapon, I’ll rip’n’tear ‘til it’s done. And are you afraid of a little PvP?”

  Still lost but now reassured that Diane wasn’t wishing some odd curse upon them, the Morvucks rexed their stance and Koar smiled, releasing Diane’s wrist, “Oh, the game is named ‘Doom’...”

  Katrina chimed in, “‘Doom,’ originally created on Earth in the year 1993 for the then common computers with a single processor and limited internal storage with a keyboard and limited color pallet dispy. A robust modding community and low cost of entry as well as being able to propagate via the early forms of a global network secured its pce in the global culture. The original game engine was eventually open-sourced and shortly thereafter the phrase, ‘But will it run Doom?’ entered the cultural lexicon as a test to see if a device with internal storage and processing could be considered a full computer or peripheral device. The game has since been re-released as technology has progressed every 30 to 50 years, with the previous game engine open-sourced prior to the new version’s release, thus perpetuating the game’s popurity as humanity has taken its pce in the gactic community.”

  Koar grinned, “This game is comparable to what you did on that ship?!”

  Diane and Russe gnced at each other, then back to the Morvuck women with a nod, “Yeah, I’d say so,” said Diane.

  “If you turn the ‘gibbing’ sliders up to 100, maybe,” Russe scoffed pyfully.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought we were pying, ‘Doom,’ not ‘babies first shooter,’” Diane ribbed back.

  Norma chuckled, “Well, it’s good to see you two bonded during all this.”

  They began chatting about their respective business as they made their way to the tether between the docking bay and the station, “We’ll be setting up shop wherever you guys can take us,” Leki said to the question of when they’d be officially settling in, “But we’d recommend the industrial deck for our workshop. We sometimes have to deal with chemicals and materials that wouldn’t be good mix with the life support biomes you have up on the main deck.”

  Katrina interjected at this point, “Your proposed workshop is for custom parts for ships and stations, correct?” At Leki’s nod, she continued, “I might suggest this location, then,” she brought up a see-through holographic model of the life space of the station, zooming in on one of the lot squares near the ‘cliff’ that separated the main deck from the industrial deck. “While significantly distant from the living habs and separated from the main living spaces by the station divider, it’s still fairly close to the future location of the station’s own bs, convenient access to the station’s drydock and scrapping infrastructure, and nearby access to three of the future docking bay tethers.”

  Seeing that both Leki and Koar were nodding appreciatively, Diane said, “Katrina, once you get the specifications from them, go ahead and get started on whatever they need.”

  The hologram gave her little pyful salute, “On it, boss,” and derezzed as they started down the tether, Norma’s teams apparent and quite busy as they were helping the former sves onto the station.

  Koar blew a whistle through her teeth, “Reminds me of a few too many refuge assignments from our days in the service.”

  As Leki nodded solemnly, Diane found she didn’t have a response to that.

  Norma and her people had set up a series of stations with several lines to operate in parallel for each station. At the first station each woman or girl was assigned someone to guide them through the process and be a helping hand until they got through the entire line. At the next station was some standing desks with holographic terminals to do a form of intake, getting the vital information from the women and girls. Up next was some curtained off booths that allowed some volunteers with a limited amount of medical training to conduct some exams that would ensure there was nothing immediately wrong with the girls and their physical condition matched their health records recovered from the sver’s computers. While still in the booths, they were given clothing that seemed to be the impromptu style of the station, a pair of pants, a t-shirt, a light jacket, socks, and shoes. From there they were given kits that appeared to be several sets of clothes, a hygiene kit, and (to Diane’s surprise) a mini-tab.

  It did, she realized on reflection, make sense. If the point was to restore their independence and autonomy, then access to communications, reading material, and a pce to have ones thoughts be private only made sense. She made a mental note to ask Katrina to make sure the mini-tabs did just that.

  Beyond that seemed to be an impromptu ‘outdoor’ diner, several rows of picnic tables having been manufactured and set up next to several stations where food that was suited to the several species of females they’d rescued was arrayed. The women and girls were given the chance to eat as much as they wanted (within the constraints of the medical software’s guidelines) and the opportunity to socialize. Once finished, the former sves were offered a volunteer to guide them to their quarters. A few refused, wanting to flex their ability to say ‘no’ in case the entire thing was too good to be true. Most took the volunteers up on the offer, and most of the volunteers were women and girls, she’d noticed...and a few of the volunteers were even a few of the ex-sves she’d seen as part of this same process (much less expertly managed) before she left to chase the svers down.

  Diane was taken completely off guard when an unfamiliar voice shouted, “Commander!” She turned to see a face that was slightly familiar wearing the usual attire for the people aboard her station, but she was unable to pce it as the girl it belonged to ran at her and leapt, wrapping her arms around Diane’s neck and shoulders and squeezing tight. Diane staggered and wrapped her arms around the girl as she realized betedly that this was Kymberlynn. She hadn’t immediately recognized the girl as a former sve because she’d colored her hair bright purple, evidently since the long-distance overnight call/sleepover since Diane didn’t remember noticing purple hair during the times she’d checked in on the conference room. She also realized she hadn’t shed out in a defensive reaction because she was reacting to her scenting ability, which was only picking up body odor and the scent of someone who was happy. I didn’t even know I knew what ‘happy’ smelled like...

  She chuckled as she held the girl up against her in a return hug, “Ah, hello...” she said tentatively.

  “Thank you!” sobbed the girl. She had her head over Diane’s shoulder, so she couldn’t see Kymberlynn’s face, but would bet that she’d start to feel a damp spot if they stayed like they were for too long.

  “For what?” Diane asked with genuine confusion.

  “You saved my friends!” she renewed her squeezing hug, apparently so much emotion trapped in her body she couldn’t express it any other way, “I was the oldest and always protected them by volunteering when...” the girl shuddered, “I was so afraid they’d have to...”

  Diane’s feeling of right-ness swelled up inside her again as she closed her eyes and returned the hug, “I would do it again a thousand times, no thanks required.” Kymberlynn rexed her hug, allowing Diane to gently set her on her feet. “And I thought you were afraid of me, what changed?” she asked as she smiled down at the girl.

  She let out a ‘glrk’ as the teen lunged forward and squeezed her torso in another hug, “You saved my friends!”

  She couldn’t help but smile as Cynthy ran up to join them from a cluster of former-sve girls at one of the picnic tables...who saw what was going on and Diane was suddenly surrounded by a small swarm of teenagers (and a couple of tweens), all of them trying to, apparently, smother her from a group hug. The effort was stymied by the fact that Diane was over a foot taller than the tallest of the girls.

  She mock-gred at the three other women who were being ignored by the gaggle of teens, “You’re not helping.”

  Norma just shook her head with a wide, impish grin as Leki and Koar couldn’t stop ughing with bright, delighted expressions on their faces.

  Several hours ter, Diane was sharing from her personal stash of jiantin tonic mix with Leki and Koar as the Goldrush was finally emptied of ex-sves and undocked to return to the drydock to remove the modifications that made the cargo spaces passenger friendly. They’d need that cargo space for actual materials and in the game of mining for survival in deep space, every inch mattered.

  “So,” said Koar conversationally, “Norma told us about the...incident in the shower.”

  Diane frowned as she stared off into space over her mug, “Norma is a dirty snitch.”

  Leki smiled indulgently and Koar snickered, “The mom-friend always is the worst snitch. But it means she cares about you.” She took a sip of her tonic and set the mug down between her hands, “Anything you wanna talk about? You can think of us like the sisters you never knew you had, if it helps.”

  Diane smiled weakly at the shorter Morvuck, “The problem being, of course, if I didn’t know I have sisters, I don’t’ know what that means, now do I?”

  Leki chuckled quietly as she took another sip. Koar snickered again, “You got me there.” She gnced at her wristwatch and frowned as her jaw opened wide and exposed her fangs in a yawn that had more in common with a rattlesnake than a human, “Oh, triad, I didn’t realize how long we’d been awake. It’s oh-six-hundred Longwood time, we’ve been up all night for us.”

  Diane did her best to hide her disquiet at the reptilian dispy that she knew must match how she looked when she was tired...which god was she ever tired! Her fatigue coupled with the stark reminder that she wasn’t a human in that moment had her gut quaking again. “Gotta love that space-g, am I right?” she quipped, keeping her voice light.

  The two other women gulped down their drink and stood, moving as a unit they must have been when they were in the military, “We’re going to hit the rack,” said Leki as she reached across the table and squeezed Diane’s shoulder companionably, “The Captain...that is, Rokyo wanted me to make sure you knew she wanted to hear from you. Give her a call when you can free up your comms, she’s the kind who’ll want to hear from you day or night, promise.”

  Diane felt her own yawn coming on and, since she was around other Morvish women, didn’t feel so insecure about it as she might have around her human friends. She let her jaw open in a huge yawn, her spine feeling like it was shivering as she felt the muscles in her jaw flex her fangs, “I...yeah, sure. I’ll make sure to call.”

  Leki nodded and, with one st companionable squeeze of her shoulder, stepped away to join Koar as they made their way back to the tether and maneuvered their way through the processing stations, which were being disassembled by Norma’s teams of workers. Within moments they disappeared down the hallway, likely headed back to their ship to sleep until they could get permanent apartments in one of the habs.

  “Ma’am?” she was broken out of her thoughts...or the silent hum of her sleepy mind in lieu of thoughts, by an apologetic voice. She looked up to see one of the volunteers, one of the original station squatters that she’d never gotten a chance to interact with before, standing next to her with a bus bin full of dishes, “Were you done with that mug?”

  Diane looked down and realized that she’d almost finished her drink without realizing it. Okay, bedtime, I think. “Yeah, sorry, a little tired.”

  The woman smiled, “Well, you’ve been a little busy.”

  Diane snorted in amusement as she tossed back the st of the dregs from the mug and handed it over to the woman, who smiled a quiet ‘thanks’ and scurried off to gather more dishes from the impromptu welcoming area.

  She realized that she’d zoned out long enough that most of the take-down had already been finished and the workers were, as slowly as possible, making their way to the table she was sitting at. Chuckling at herself and realizing that, for the first time in days, she had nothing to do next that wasn’t already being done by someone else, she made her way to her private quarters. It took longer than she liked to make the walk, but she opted to do so because she was afraid she’d fall asleep in the car if she took one of the transports.

  The entrance to the ‘station officer’s hab’ was like pretty much every other hab on the station, just higher up the outside ‘skin’ of the living space. As the station was literally hers, she had the equivalent of a penthouse suite, occupying half the top level of the upper-most hab on the station. The lift stopped before she really zoned out and waited with the patience of a computer as she willed herself to exit the car.

  She gnced down the hall at the doors to the empty quarters on the opposite side of the hab from her own. She’d offered them to Norma when the other woman hadn’t moved out of the tiny little apartment she’d been living in since before Diane arrived, but the mayor stubbornly insisted that she stay in the habs with the rest of her people. While admirable, Diane didn’t know what she was going to do with the other hab. She’d offer it to Russe, but he was just as likely to turn it down to stay near Norma.

  She turned back to her private quarters and yawned as she pulled her suit jacket off her shoulders. She realized that the hanger for this suit was still on the Dragon’s Daughter, then shrugged. Katrina would likely have her stuff offloaded and returned to the proper pces or Norma’s frightening efficiency would do the job, she was sure. Groaning from tiredness, she draped the jacket over a nearby chair and crossed the room she was using as a living room and started down the hall.

  She made it as far as her private office, a room she rarely used, and paused in thought. Russe said the way I fight is how Morvuck women fight. Her mind went to the moment her shower was interrupted by Norma, the same feeling of shame and self-loathing blurring her thoughts with an emotion she couldn’t source. Leki said Rokyo wanted me to call her, and Koar said it’s morning in the city where Koar lives.

  She fshed back to the moment Rokyo held her as she bawled her eyes out over the fact that she could never have what her heart was yearning for more than she could ever remember wanting anything.

  She opened her private office door and made her way behind the desk. “Ops,” she directed to the air.

  “Ops here, commander, what can we do for you?”

  Diane’s brow pinched in concern, “Cynthy? Shouldn’t you be taking time off to help Kimberlynn or something?”

  “Kymmi’s asleep,” Diane could hear the smile in the teen’s voice as she casually used an apparent nickname, “Doctor’s orders. Well, med program’s orders, anyway.”

  Still gotta get a doctor, she grumbled to herself, “Ah, well, again, thank you for your help with her. I presented a...less than favorable face for a rescuer.”

  Cynthy’s giggle was a bright note in the otherwise dark office, “I don’t think it was all fear, boss dy.”

  “Not sure what you mean,” she sighed, “Cynthy, I’m going to need the comms array for a long-range two-way video call to Mortan for a personal call. Can you set up the rey for me?”

  “Probably gonna need to tap the Indep Rey Network for something that long range if you want it live. Should I transfer some of your bounty credits to the station’s blockchain so we can pay the comms toll?”

  Diane frowned, “...how much are we talking here, cost wise?”

  “Drop in the bucket, boss. You earned a lot of credits, saw the totals come in when Norma submitted the receipts.”

  “...yeah, okay. And did Russe give you access to my personal account and the station’s blockchain?”

  There was a guilty pause, “...yeah...?”

  She suppressed a snicker, “Tell Russe that I said to treat my accounts and blockchains like he treats his, please.”

  “...right, boss dy. I’ll get that link set up now. Patching it to your quarters, I’m guessing?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “On it.”

  “Thanks, Cynthy.”

  She pulled the chair out and sat down, waking the holoconsole at the same time. Her personal preferences for a tactile keyboard loaded in a moment ter and she logged onto the station’s comms and saw that Cynthy’s gift with communications had already patched her system into the comms array with priority access. The rey status was still reading ‘stand by,’ so she keyed in the network address for Rokyo and settled in to wait.

  Sagging into her chair, finally, Diane found her eyelids starting to flutter closed, the stress of the st...how many days has it been since this started? Eight? Nine? ...nearly two weeks finally catching up to her. I don’t know how people outside the wall consider this to be a rexing, entertaining experience. It’s supposed to be a game, but I’ve been... Exactly what she’d been experiencing she couldn’t put into words just yet. Something about it was too raw, too close to something bright and awful and painful in the ndscape of her mind and she had somehow lost the map.

  “Diane?” came the familiar voice of an older Morvuck that her mind was starting to connect with comfort and wisdom.

  Diane forced her eyes open and saw that Rokyo had accepted the rey connection while she’d apparently almost fallen asleep, “Oh, sorry, the st few days have been...” rather than continue, she just sighed and sagged back into her desk chair.

  Rokyo, who always seemed to have the tiniest of smiles to Diane, allowed that smile to spread into a warm grin. “I’ll say, if the messages I got from Leki and Koar are anything to go by,” she lifted a tablet to read directly from it, “Rescuing a shipment of sves numbering in the hundreds? Leading an expedition to hunt down the svers’ den?” the tablet made a chime and Rokyo’s eyebrows went up. She tapped on the screen and her smile blossomed even brighter, “And successfully eliminating the entire sver organization?” she lowered the tablet and turned the warm smile to Diane, “I must say, I’m impressed! Not many women your age are capable of pulling a win like that off. I told you that you were going to be a legend; you’re well on your way already!”

  Diane squirmed uncomfortably at the praise, “I just...I couldn’t not do something about it...”

  Rokyo leaned on her elbows, “Don’t sell yourself short, kiddo. It would have been easier to just send the svers on their way, maybe request the help of a bigger power in the gaxy or sent a tip into the bounty hunter’s guild, but you took them in your teeth and didn’t let go until they were dead. That’s a good Morvuck trait, you do your people proud!”

  Diane smiled wanly, “I...guess. That...” she sighed, leaning forward on her elbows as well, not quite mirroring Rokyo, “That’s kinda why I called. I don’t...I don’t know the first thing about being Morvuck. I...” she turned bright red and her eyes dropped to the desk in front of her, feeling genuinely ashamed of what she was about to say, “I guess I think of myself as human. When I was...being Morvuck it...”

  When she trailed off, Rokyo waited a couple of beats before sighing, “I’m guessing you were terrified of yourself?”

  Diane nodded, still downcast and red from shame she was surprised to feel. It was also disconcertingly familiar, reminiscent of when she’d been trying to find out what the effects of puberty were on men. It was something she’d have no way of knowing for sure but somehow had the feeling she was doing something wrong and that everyone else was doing whatever it was better than she was.

  “Oh, hun, I’m so sorry!” Rokyo was genuinely distressed, “If I thought for one moment that this was your first hunt I’d have tried to get Leki and Koar there sooner. Your first time out without knowing what your body’s doing or the sensation and emotions you’ll be experiencing can be frightening to someone who grew up Morvuck. If your upbringing at the hands of that...woman was as neglectful of your true nature as it was for everything else, then you probably had no idea what you were experiencing.”

  “Well, I knew how to fight at least. Plenty of gaming experience.”

  Rokyo chuckled, “But games aren’t real life, and it didn’t prepare you for what you’re experiencing now, right?”

  It was so easy to think that the Morvuck woman on the screen was talking about her...feelings, the strange ones she’d been almost crippled by since logging into the game that it left her feeling a little gob smacked, “...yeah. I...it’s like it felt...right, even though it...shouldn’t...have? Like, I’m not...I wasn’t raised as a Morvuck woman, I’ve never experienced anything as a Morvuck woman, but here I am, somehow an example of Morvish femininity. On Earth I’d be...” she swallowed, her eyes burning and losing the internal battle to separate her feelings and emotions about the ‘Morvuck’ part from the ‘woman’ part, “I’d be a monster.”

  Rokyo was silent for a moment, clearly contempting what she might say to Diane. Finally she said, “It can be...hard to let go of the things that we’re taught growing up when we realize those things are wrong. And sometimes ‘wrong’ can mean either ‘incorrect’ or ‘morally and ethically bankrupt.’ But it’s what we knew for a long time, it was a foundation for us when we needed it, and to find out we’ve built part of our lives on a bad foundation? It can be scary on its own, even if it didn’t have a bunch of other stuff on top of it that can be frightening even without that challenge. I suppose...It’d be like if you’d never heard of a period before you had your first one...” she trailed off briefly, “...you did at least know about periods before you had your first one, right?”

  Diane turned bright red, not expecting this particur turn of conversation, “...yes?” she squeeked out. She had, in college learned about periods and what they were all about when she’d been researching her own puberty and what she might have missed growing up. The knowledge had at least prepared her for the first time she woke up with blood in her panties in-game.

  That entire morning was one she wished she could forget.

  Rokyo smiled, “Oh, good! I don’t have to go burning down the Terran embassy for neglecting the First Found Daughter’s education about her basic monthly cycles.”

  The hyperbolic (she hoped) threat helped to ground her enough that she was able to chuckle, appreciating the humor at least.

  “But back to what you’ve been going through...tell me about this hunt you were on, and tell me what you were feeling when it happened.”

  Diane offered an retelling of the events, and the retelling didn’t go like she expected; Rokyo interrupted her frequently, asking for details about what Diane’s body did during certain points of the ‘hunt.’ The older woman couldn’t have cared less about the weapons used or Diane’s tactics, but instead about what drove her to make certain choices.

  When the singing came up... “Oh, you’re a Commander?!” Rokyo chirped brightly.

  “I...guess. I knew I was from before I cimed the station, but it didn’t really mean anything until I had the station, if that makes any sense?”

  That was apparently enough of an expnation for the NPC to accept it as given. Diane kept expining what she was feeling, including her reactions to the nutrient paste and dealing with the mercs.

  “Oh, very good! I agree with your choice, of course. You don’t want to be an ally to someone who’s willing to do business with sentient traffickers; and using their own greed to get them out of your way and take the traffickers off your hands? Inspired, really!”

  Diane blushed and moved on to the ‘sleepover’ for the group of girls, tangenting briefly to describe the hug-attack on the industrial deck. Rokyo cooed and ‘aww’d’ at all the appropriate parts and Diane found herself smiling at the memories.

  “Cherish those moments, they don’t happen nearly as often as they should and they’re so easy to forget when you’re facing challenges.”

  Before she was done, she somehow found herself circling back to both the moment in the shower with Norma where she felt ugly and duplicitous and the follow-up moment after she’d cleared the sver’s den and was naked in her bunk on her ship. “...and I just...don’t understand. I don’t...I mean, I know objectively that I’m...” she turned beat red, “Attractive. I mean, I’m not anything like the standards for beauty for women...Earth women, I mean...but I know that, logically, there are people out there that would find me attractive. I just...don’t feel it, usually. I think that time I saw myself in the mirror...and I was so tired I actually thought for a moment that I looked,” she cleared her throat, allowing herself to have some vulnerability, “I looked sexy.”

  Rokyo’s smile was warm and matronly, “Oh, sweetheart, you are a gorgeous young woman! I may not be in the market and you’re a couple decades too young for me, but even my spinsterly, military veteran ass can recognize someone who’s as lovely as you. Surely you saw how women were eyeing you up when you were here?”

  Diane turned red again, “...I guess. I just thought it was because I was a Lost or the Matron’s Daughter or something.”

  Rokyo chuckled, “Both those titles carry a certain...cachet, true, but not enough to account for the way you turned heads. Though, I suppose you might not know to look for it if you were raised the way your caretaker did.”

  The oblique mention of Tiffany broke through the embarrassment and the self-loathing and shame came roaring back, and she felt her eyes stinging with tears again.

  The older woman nodded sadly, “Yes, I thought so. Your caretaker really did a number on you, didn’t she?”

  Diane sighed and slumped back in her chair, closing her eyes as though that could block out the memories. “Yeah, she did.”

  She didn’t open her eyes again when Rokyo continued, but the older woman didn’t seem to need her to, “Diane, love, you aren’t the person that woman made you out to be. Just the fact that you made it through everything she did to you and became someone worthy of being a Matron’s Daughter shows how brightly the real you shines through.” The corners of Diane’s mouth twitched upward, the tension easing from her as the older Morvuck reassured her, “You can’t forget the things she did to you, sadly. If only we could cut out those things in our past that hurt us the most and still be who we are...but you can rise above them and be better than those who try to tear you down.”

  Diane wanted to respond with a nod or a vocalization of some kind, but found herself feeling so pleasant and rexed for the first time in a while and just let the other woman talk.

  “The humans have a saying, ‘Better living is the best revenge.’ Just be the best ‘you’ that you can be. Be Diane Somni’els, Commander, Matron’s Daughter, First Found Daughter of Mortan, and Syer of Svers,” Diane felt her mouth actually curling into a smile at the new title the older woman just made up, “You’ll make it through this, my girl...and I think you’re about asleep. Katrina?”

  Diane realized, distantly, that she was just about asleep.

  “Yes?” there was a bloom of blue light that made it through her eyelids, indicating that the digital assistant had rezzed in.

  “I doubt that chair is good for sleeping, can you get her to bed?”

  “I’ll have Norma and Russe move her, she trusts them by now and probably won’t wake her.”

  “Perfect, let her know that...”

  And Diane was asleep.

  PrincessColumbia

  I started this story arc with Diane having a conversation with her mother and ended it with Diane having a conversation with Rokyo. There's surely nothing significant about that...

  [colpse]