El

There were several things that one expected upon stepping onto a starship-- particularly one with such a prodigious reputation as Vinteuil's Phrase. Its archaic title, bold and euphonious, was perfectly suited to the most agile starship outside of the Martian Reserves. The giant loomed over the docks, which was a panorama of moving boxes, each equipped with a maintenance team and a beaming money-juggler primed to sell their wears. They hung off the dripping carbocomposite scaffolding and its sparking wires in white jumpsuits, the easiest to bleach, seeming pale spectres fleeing from the ship, which had presumably finished refueling. That ship, it was rusty copper and at least three decks high, designed such that the intricacy of its construction, those masterful inner workings, were apparent in the pipes and gears that crawled and gyrated over its surface-- some for show, some glittering with the autosensory software that characterized most new technological wonders.

In any case, there were several things one expected as they swayed unsteadily on the moving platform drifting ever-so-gently toward the polished deck of such a ship.

It most certainly was not, as one was clanking up the gang-ramp that whirred and unfurled to greet the platform, to be accosted by a ruddy boy with more tattoos than he knew what to do with and overlarge clothes that one look at his brute's own face would tell anyone with half a lick of common sense secreted a blaster, Europan ecstacy, and more. Much less to have that boy flush redder and apologize profusely, swearing all the while, that he hadn't been expecting you so early. To have him lead you through winding, low-grade tech halls that, rather than glittering with the pulsing blue plasmon-ganglia that characterized most starships of the day, were the lackluster sheen of dumpy old cyberoptics.

The last place in the galaxy one, in this case a very unlucky Georgie Grey, expected to end up was a sort of communal lavatory, thankfully empty save for the hissing and steam emitting from one stall. Perched at the lip of its base was a foot, too long and veined and pale to hold any of the sensual imagery that misted skin held in old films-- though it was undoubtedly feminine. The boy, pressing boldly on though cringing in expectation of a scolding, tapped loudly at the side of the stall, the noise of it ricocheting in the very white, very smooth place, past Georgie's hapless expression and the usual, phlegmatic cast of Coronach's.

There was a pause, and then: "Gods and faeries, can you boys leave me in peace for five minutes-- I'm trying to wean you pups and yet here I am, wet and balmy as an Antropeden spring-season, and pounding you are at the bloody--."

"Our guest are here, El!" piped the boy.

There was another pause, and then a sigh. "Standing there, I suppose. And the dark one looking all smug she's caught me out of sorts, cursing up a storm-- twas not always-- ah, but no even then I suppose I'd gotten the habit of throwing about those sweet, enticing obscenities, like something from a hacker-fucked-- Ah, but where are my manners?" There was the shhhhtup of a sprayhead being choked, and the pattering of droplets on the pseudo-plastic of the stall ceased. What seemed like a second later-- certainly much earlier than poor gawking Georgie had quite been prepared for, and out stepped this infamous El, the object of all the intern's daydreams for the past fortnight, in nothing more than a towel.

She was a woman slim of features, which lent her average build a deceptively small appearance. Her hair was cropped short in haphazard sweeps, already drying at all angles. But what caught the eye, what arrested all one's attention, was that variegated face-- people ever said that the soul was in the eyes. But Georgie Grey fast came to understand that the workings of a countenance, of a mask, were so much more holistic than that-- the eyes were the refuge of simpler minds, the last shutters to be latched in skin pockmarked with tiny, soulful hints. Either way, El's eyes, for lack of better imagery, promised a small godhood too complicated to fake. They were twinkling, swirling, layered worlds, they were layer upon layer of stars and dreams and galaxies couched in the bitterness of space yet to be filled-- a queer, yawning void which had come to grasp ages hence, in the primordial soup of existence, the laws of entropy and of complexity-- those queerest brothers, the tyrant Death and the faithful Life!

She was a homely sort of woman. Too much honesty in too small a face.

"I see you're still wallowing in self-pity," she huffed at Coronach.

Coronach did not respond. It seemed even this overbearing influence couldn't wriggle under her skin, though how the eccentrics contrasted-- the ghostly investigator greasy with shadows, and that dripping dwarf with a grin to light the room. What was more, she was turning that grin on Georgie-- or, rather, turning it up at the towering intern.

"My most sanguine pleasure to meet you," she piped, thrusting out a hand which Georgie found herself obliged to take and pray to the quarks her hand wasn't crushed. To her surprise, the woman kept her shake rather short and delicate-- something which likely had a lot to do with the fact she was having trouble keeping the towel up. Nevertheless, she seemed to find the time to remark: "I like this one; a humble spirit she has. Like she's checking off all your faults in your head but would never say a word."

Georgie blushed. But fortunately no one was watching because El had pivoted back on her heel to cross her arms over a chest that, by that time, her meagre towel was rather threatening to divest itself of and cock a brow at the roughneck youth whom had led them in. "Well?" She snapped impatiently, with what Georgie fancied was a maternal tone. "Are you boys going to show our new hands to their barracks, or no?! Honestly, how is anyone to take you for my sons when you waste so much time gawking about?!"

"Y--yes Mam!" he blurted, saluting, and Georgie caught a whisper of a boyish grin flickering over his stubbled chin, just before he turned back to them and bowed in a gesture so outdated and ludicrous the intern began to wonder if she hadn't tumbled into a dream. "Right this way, please."

Feet slapping wetly against the floor as she returned to the stall, El glanced back and winked as she called: "Oh, and Gimp, do watch out for the dark one-- she's a real demirep; has been ever since we schooled together at the institute!"

Coronach didn't react, but the stem of her lolli suddenly snapped, clattering on the tile.

Georgie turned and forced herself to keep walking before she was sucked into the madness. She was, however, beginning to feel deceived. Surely this was a haux; this couldn't be the famed, lone starpilot the Martian Air Fleet had been trying to get their hands on since her skills had first debued in a series of terrorist attacks she happened to be conducting her business in the midst of, ten years prior. No one had said she would be a woman with an archaic and foul tongue, or that her crew would consist entirely of youths who looked fresh out of juvenile rehabilitation centers, or--.

--Or that anyone could possibly be stranger than Coronach, for that matter.