E. P. Beaumont

It’s said that life Aboard-Ships is monotonous, and I only wish that it were so.

When Martisset yr Astok and Karisalay whose clan-name I don’t know refused to sit at table with myself and the Immortal — a diplomatic incident in the making — the Immortal departed as well.

I remained, because the grubber-captain, the female, has told us pointedly that “it’s not that kind of ship,” and her crew are not servants. Had we also retired, there would have been no supper.
Her brother, the night-shift, reminds me of a grubber I knew at the Academy, a handsome fellow …

… on whom I will not think, because it ended in embarrassment.

The night-captain has a fine singing voice; I hear drums, and a chorus of voices, with his raised among them. A fine figure of a man, mid-thirties, with a multiplicity of braids bound back in a bundle, ultramarine glow of the communication rig glowing like a line drawing of an ancient helmet on the planes of his cheekbones, the angle of his jaw.

A charming smile that flashes bright teeth —

But it is not that kind of ship, and I know better than to ask.

***

Character interview with the interstellar diplomat Iric Desnaray yr Astok, from NaNo 2013, Inside the Jump. Weekend Writing Warriors offers eight-sentence excerpts from a variety of writers; see the other excerpts here.

Temn’s airship was piloted by AIs keyed to his nervous system; should anyone assassinate him, the ship would self-destruct. The food was delicious, and the fittings gorgeous.

I didn’t want to live like a grubber.

So Ship’s fare does not excite nostalgia, only a remembrance of that earnest dread of failure that I felt through all seven years of the Academy. Temn was still stinging from the refusal of Martisset the Elder. Not that multiple approaches weren’t made, from the time that Martisset returned from his tour of duty (that one being made by Temn’s parents) up until the very last, just before Martisset the Younger turned archaeologist.

Temn plays a long game, shall we say. I have been entertained by it, these fifty years.

***

Character interview with the interstellar diplomat Iric Desnaray yr Astok, from NaNo 2013, Inside the Jump. Weekend Writing Warriors offers eight-sentence excerpts from a variety of writers; see the other excerpts here.

Temn’s niece Martisset will be extended the offer once more;  I think that he has an odd partiality to her, in spite of her past refusal of his projects.

Clever, if she meant to take power. Each time he offers her more, because her adamant refusal means that she has will, and if that will not be opposed to his but combined, great things can be accomplished.

I see her cold closed face, aloof as the ice and much its color, and I think of the fanatics of the Sacred Conspiracy. I do not think that he will succeed. She will carry the banner of her own notions unto death, in the teeth of opposition and for the sheer joy of it. Hers is not the face of a scholar but a warrior — unlike that silent lieutenant of hers, the stocky dark woman with the bland expression, who stands at a very great distance from anything contemporary. Now that is a scholar, be she historian or archaeologist, for I recognize her look, that thousand-yard stare into the dead past, because it speaks what my face would, if it still spoke the same language as mortals.

***

Character interview with the Immortal of T-7, from NaNo 2013, Inside the Jump. Weekend Writing Warriors offers eight-sentence excerpts from a variety of writers; see the other excerpts here.

Today as always I wear the mask of state, and the armor with its leads to my life-support and data machinery. The AIs feed me information from the world and keep this body from overrunning me. Yes, there are days I hate it. My chain of state is an armory of drugs, and some of the leads are permanently implanted needles. At this point, my endocrine system is run by the AIs, and the immune system likewise. What I began with was overrun years ago.

The process is out of control, the techs told me.

They are summoned to the castle, and they attend on me in shifts and then are never heard from again.

***

Character interview with the Immortal of T-7, from NaNo 2013, Inside the Jump. Weekend Writing Warriors offers eight-sentence excerpts from a variety of writers; see the other excerpts here.

From the perspective of centuries, past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, and things have thus far worked out in my favor. I have had good advisers over the centuries, and Iric Desnaray yr Astok reminds me of them. Not entirely to be trusted, but no one is. I should say, the least unsatisfactory of the choices. Temn is formidable. I should like to make his acquaintance in person one of these days, after we conclude the business of the Outposts. 

Thus far he has expressed no interest in the Great Secret, but that’s only a matter of time.

The past is the best predictor of the future, and they’ve always asked.

***

Character interview with the Immortal of T-7, from NaNo 2013, Inside the Jump. Weekend Writing Warriors offers eight-sentence excerpts from a variety of writers; see the other excerpts here.

I ask Iric Desnaray yr Astok about the Ship’s Avatar, both to indulge my curiosity and to see how he will react.

He shrugs. “Oh, the Ships are run by AIs,” he says, “and they can’t go down into atmosphere — much too big — so there are these things they send instead, androids of a sort. I hear that the Ships can make illusions aboard, holos and such.” 

He notices my interrogative silence and continues. “Oh, those Sarronny grubbers are a superstitious lot. Won’t say the number seven, won’t walk on the grass, probably think the Ship’s Avatar is a ghost.”

I am not sure I share his sanguine outlook.

***

Character interview with the Immortal of T-7, from NaNo 2013, Inside the Jump. Weekend Writing Warriors offers eight-sentence excerpts from a variety of writers; see the other excerpts here.

The sea is bright tonight, under the Greater Moon. Somewhere on the shores of the Inland Sea, the Sarronny grubbers are dancing and the cadets watching them in fascination. The Great Council are considering the evidence our agents have submitted to them. Martisset the Elder, in retirement on the Greater Island, no doubt is composing poems to the Moons, or perhaps to the stars.

I am standing in the deep shadow of the villa, on the side where no lights reach the sea. Overhead stretches the Road of the Stars, the trace of the galaxy into whose heart we look. 

So many worlds, so many possibilities: an empire spanning the stars — that would be something to aspire to, and then to wish for it as well a seemly duration. All things perish and all things pass away, but it will be millennia before that happens, if we set the foundations firmly; behind the picket-line of the Outposts, a rich prize awaits us.

***

The question is “One last moment, in great detail.” From character interview with Temn, the villain-in-chief of Inside the Jump (NaNo 2013). Weekend Writing Warriors offers eight-sentence excerpts from a variety of writers; see the other excerpts here.