I'm Something From Nothing

[Neology]

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Doom was in the air, invisible to the naked eye. It was less subtle in other places; Lidah had the material evidence to prove it. Algae farms choked with gray and violet slime. A frankly ridiculous bill for air filters. It was only a matter of time now, weeks or months. She’d made plans that weighed on her soul, plans that stretched far beyond the orderly heart of her empire – those parts which Vance had tended so carefully in her absence. No, she would need her full reach for this. The most vicious gangs, every dealer, addict, and whore. The order was simple: incinerate the dead immediately. It wouldn't stop the Archeri, but perhaps it would slow them. The Basilisk had made the plague’s transformative nature plain, new horrors with echoes of the old. She surely would never be free from Taris. The nightmares had become steadily worse, each sleep cycle after the tank. Yet for all the bad, at least now she could go home. Lidah stared up at the Eye’s bight facade and smiled beneath her breath mask. The door opened for the chip on her spine and sealed behind her with expensive hydraulic finality. In many ways, the Blind Eye Hotel & Casino was built more like a space station than a planet-side installation. It was empty now, or nearly so. The droid workers remained, turning slowly toward her with eerie synchronization. Lidah unhooked her paper mask from one pointed ear, finger drawing a stark line of blood across that cheek. ”That can’t be it.” She turned in place, hating the sight of the place so emptied out. Her senses licked out, ran abruptly into something fiercely locked down. A glance in the corresponding direction revealed a flicker of movement; Yarlocc’s ash blonde hair, darker under the dim greenish lights. Lidah slid into his booth, turning his bottle around for inspection. She made a disgusted noise. ”I pay better than this, don’t I?” Her fingers left bloody black smudges on the glass. Finally noticing, she stuffed her hands into her coat pockets. ”I suppose it’ll all have to be thrown out anyway. So, go hog wild. Enjoy the pricey shit.” The bruised, bleeding nailbeds didn’t hurt. Her head did, pounding beneath a waxy feverish sheen. Lidah wanted her bath, the tub upstairs that was almost big enough to swim in. Creature comforts and things less tangible still. ”You left before I woke up, you know, but I wanted to thank you. For the tank prep.” She had pulled the medbay video logs, just glad that it hadn’t been Vance. Fast forwarded all the way through to the end, when she’d shattered the tank. Not her brightest moment, not to mention strange. Some flaw in the glass from manufacturing – she shouldn’t have been able to break it.

[Stephen]

Janus smiled at her insistence. “Yeah, but I am going to be here awhile, so might as well not burn down the good stuff in my first day.” He took another tug from his bottle. “and besides, this garbage reminds of home a bit.” Home, such as it was. Years of near neglect on the streets, years of painful humiliation, years of lies. The perfect memories for the few days before you die. Janus finished the bottle with a grimace and sat it down tilted slightly on it's base. He snapped as he let go and the bottle wobbled in a merry little circular dance. Eventually it stabilized, rotating in place for a half turn. “So what would you recommend then?” He finally spoke again?

Before he could get up and search she thanked him. It felt impossibly alien through no fault of her own. “It's a” He stammered, “It was the right call I think. When you went down, that left me and the kids. I don't know if Vance has hard calls in his playbook and I don't know Ioan well so I took charge.” No one had challenged his orders when he started barking at least, sign of a tight run ship I suppose. “After we were on the ship, I figured I was still best suited.” he made a vague gesture toward Lidah. “At least I was the least worst suited.” She had seemed calm during the mission, apart from the entry of her unwelcome assistant, but she seemed less so now. Janus projected himself on her, his unease at waiting, his fear. His guilt. He didn't understand how she kept it together, lord knew he wasn't.

He grabbed a rust red bottle from behind the bar at her insistence and returned to the table. “So, you are probably going to have a fight on your hand before long. Any idea what happens after?” It felt right to ask about the somewhat distant future. They had all spent enough time thinking about the near future. There was an edge of defiant fatalism around the eye's circles. Janus had been to enough war camps to know a bad sign like that. Janus would never get there, but there was solace enough in the horizon to think about for a moment or two.

[Neology]

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”Hmm.” Lidah blew out a slow breath. Home. One of the really big four letter words – what did it mean for Janus? Not just a homeworld, the indifferent place where one was born. Corellia meant more to him than Arkania did to her, certainly if he was getting nostalgic about it. In a darker mood, she might have been envious of that connection. Except … He’d probably never see it again. Depending on how sick he got, and whether or not the invasion came here. All signs indicated that it would. She watched him hesitate, reordering his thoughts. Ten long years of acquaintance had taught her that they were far too much alike under the hood. Idealistic pessimists, always taking on too much. It made them decent friends and terrible anything-elses. If anyone in Lidah’s inner circle chose to turn their coat, she thought that Janus would be by far the most dangerous. ”I think Vance will have it in him someday. Maybe not right now, but ...” She shrugged. A note of pride colored her voice, lifted one corner of her mouth. As irritated as Vance could make her at times, she was glad he’d stood up to her at the Basilisk. For his sake, he’d become a much stronger person in the last few years. ”And Io’an is disgustingly talented.” Lidah was sure they would have done their best and, hopefully, arrived at more or less the same end. Least worst. She snorted and rubbed the back of her hand across her lips. ”Nevertheless, they would have found the task most unsettling, I think. Maybe been too slow.” Her gaze traveled up the contour of Yarloc’s face. The burns had mostly healed, though not entirely without trace. Without exaggeration, he had set himself on fire just because he thought he needed to after Edgepoint. A little crazy, but whatever happened, Lidah knew she could trust him to react. ”Ottegan blood mead. And get two glasses!” Lidah slipped out of her jacket and rolled it up to lean her head against the back of the booth. Janus returned shortly and poured generous portions into thick glass tumblers. The drink was red and silty with a powerful spicy-sweet aroma. ”I … Have been trying not to worry about that, actually. Without much success.” It seemed a little mad, to make extensive plans for a future that might not come. Over preparing had always been in her nature but, on the other hand, things had never seemed quite this dire. Even during the war, the bad things had most often been happening to other people. ”There’s a few choice holdings that I’m of a mind to try for. The personnel we’ve had to evacuate – while insignificant verses the Archeri – may give us a temporary edge on the usual suspects when we reel them back in. “And what about you? Will you go home?”