Scene: Margiold Station promenade
Jill wore her new softsuit over her new clothes as she and Celestia left the armory carrying their shopping bags. Celestia saw that Jill was still in a foul mood and chose to distract her with a question that was on her own mind. "Jill, regarding the armour that failed, would the problem have been caused by interference with your powers?"
Jill calmed down enough to answer. "Yes. Whatever it's made out of reacts to different types of energy. That's how they change the size of these things, and I think it is meant to solidify when it takes damage. It was reacting to my nanofield in strange ways, but I got it under control.
"I hope you have," Celestia said. "The last thing you want to deal with on the battlefield is a haunted suit of armour that decides it does not want you to wear it anymore."
Jill chuckled, and then wondered if Celestia was serious. "Haha, yeah. Is that a common thing where you are from?"
Celestia shook her head. "No. Cursed items are rather rare and are usually discarded or destroyed when they are found."
Jill took a few moments to accept that answer. "You weren't joking."
Scene: Food court
"Wait. Something smells weird." A smell in the air stole Jill's attention. She did not recognize precisely what it was, nor would she have been able to, but she did recognize it as a flavor. Past the next arch they came to a number of flimsy-looking chairs and tables set outside a series of booths. Jill smiled. "They have a food court! I'm hungry. Let's get something."
The two women walked toward the booths and looked at the signs, none of which they could read. Those that were in recognizable languages had unrecognizable words.
Jill turned to Celestia. "Do you have any idea what any of this stuff is?"
"No," Celestia answered simply.
Jill headed to one of the booths. "Well, something over here smells good and I'm probably hungry enough to eat it."
In short time they had each ordered some exotic food and sat down to taste it. Jill's dish was a bowl of some kind of chewy grain in a thin bitter sauce, covered with a layer of sour and sugary orange-colored slime that was topped by a small square purple wafer that combined the texture of a cracker with a flavor resembling grapefruit. This was junk food here, but it was the best meal she had eaten since before the invasion.
Jill put down her spoon after a few bites. "Wow... this is not real. This is a dream."
Celestia smiled and snickered knowingly, being familiar with that feeling.
Jill continued. "The last time I went shopping was a ten day trip by hovercraft to trade a bag of beanseed to another survivor camp for a bag of cornseed. Then it was ten days back. This... this food, these clothes, the ship, this place, it's all too good to be true."
Celestia nodded and explained that she had a similar reaction. "For some time I imagined that this must be a dream or an illusion produced by my interrogators, but over time--"
Jill almost dropped her spoon in shock. "Interrogators?"
Celestia calmly deflected. "It is in the past. In any case, after a week of waking up to a new life that is far too detailed and novel to be a product of my mind or that of anyone on my world, I concluded that it must be real."
Jill nodded. "Yeah, this is way too much to be a normal hallucination." Celestia's eyes opened with surprise as she recognized the implications of Jill being so familiar with hallucinations as to describe one as normal, but she quickly regained her composure and returned to a calm smile. Jill continued. "So it'll take me about a week to get used to this, whatever this is."
Celestia smiled at her. "It seems that you are settling in already."
Jill was not ready to agree. "I dunno. I dunno if I can trust this Mick guy. Do you trust him?"
Celestia had no choice. "I owe him my life, and he has a plan for the future."
"And he's my ride home, but..." Jill sighed. "My real home is gone. It's not coming back. If we have all of this here, I don't know if I want to go back."
"Perhaps we are both in a better place than we were," Celestia calmly observed. She took a sip of her drink.
Jill was starting to become agitated. "If Mick is so rich, he could bring us all here and build us a new home. Get us off our dead world, and we won't have to worry about the Lizards coming back unless they figure out how to follow him. What he's offering us is cheap for him. It's nothing."
Celestia thought that Jill’s idea might be possible. "Alex was able to change the nature of her contract. You may be able to renegotiate."
Jill imagined the ways that could go wrong. "I dunno if he'd like that. He might throw me back."
Celestia suggested that Jill increase her bargaining power. "You could first make yourself indispensable to him by winning a position in the tournament."
Jill sipped her drink and put it down. That would not be a nice thing to do, but it would be worth it. "I'll think about it."
They had by then finished their food. Celestia was getting tired, but she was not showing it. "Are you ready to return to the ship?"
Jill had a second thought. "First, let's head back to the clothing store."
Celestia looked down at their four bags. "Is there something you forgot to purchase?"
Jill leaned forward and smiled. She had a plan. "We are going to get something for you."
Celestia was not comfortable with that. "I was not given authorization to spend--"
Jill interrupted her. "C'mon, you can't wear that armor all the time." She knocked on Celestia's shoulder plate.
"Yes, I can." Celestia insisted.
Jill sat back and provided a reason. "Think of this. Mick is rich. He won't mind if you spend a little of his money on a nice dress for yourself. If he flips out about it, that'll tell us a lot about him, what kind of person he is."
Celestia finished Jill’s thought. "… to know how to approach him to bargain with him." She began to admire the plan.
Jill pressed Celestia further. "C'mon. Get one nice thing and see how he reacts. Maybe he'll like it."
Celestia declined. "You would have me commit a breach of trust."
Jill didn't see it that way, or how it could be seen that way. "Didn't he send us here to get clothes? Two women with his credit card, infinite balance, 'buy what you want' was what he said? He would expect you to get something."
Celestia sat silently, looking downward.
Jill continued. "And what would it cost compared to that armor he had you get?"
"It would be insignificant," Celestia admitted.
Jill leaned forward again. "C'mon. Let's go."
Celestia considered things deeply. It would also be in her interests to see how Mick would react. It had been apparent to her that Mick had designs on her that had nothing to do with the tournament or mercenary work. He had spent extra time teaching her about the operations of the household, the ship, and the society he came from. He was training her as a companion, a living partner, a wife. She had no other options to make a living for herself. If Mick were the type of person to be angered by small slights, it would be better to learn this while she still had the time to find and develop new options. She raised her head. "Very well."
Scene: Clothing store
Celestia quickly went to the shop's selection of luxury items and flipped through the dresses until she found a good-looking green dress in her size. She brought it to the salesman before Jill had finished navigating with her bags through the racks to catch up to her.
The salesman was taken aback by her efficiency. "Will this be all?" he asked with surprise in his voice.
"Yes." Celestia was quick and to the point as she handed over Mick's credit chip.
Jill encouraged her to wear it. "Are you going to try it on?"
Celestia calmly refused. "I know my measurements."
Jill was disappointed. "Oh, c'mon! Let's see how you look in it."
Celestia calmly repeated her refusal. "Not today."
Jill teased her. "Are you sure you're a girl?"
Celestia ignored the insult and walked out with the dress.
Scene: Marigold Station, hangar bay
Aided by a moving walkway running down the center of the hangar bay, Celestia and Jill carried their shopping backs back to Mick's ship. Alex's ship and a variety of others were parked nearby in an orderly fashion on the sides of the bay.
The rear ramp of Mick's ship was down. The porters that had loaded Celestia's new armor onto the ship had forgotten to raise it, or did not know how. The station's security should have been good enough that nothing would be missing from the ship.
Scene: Mick's ship, cargo bay
The cargo bay took up the rear half of the lower level of Mick's ship. The sides were lined with shelves, boxes, and refrigerable containers. At the far end, an airlock door blocked the way toward the ship's instrument room that lay underneath the bridge.
Looking out of place, a rectangular metal sarcophagus must have been the crate holding Celestia's new armor, left there by the station's porters. On the top of the shining flat metal was the yellow logo of an arms company, a shield with crossed swords. Celestia glanced at it with a bit of apprehension and carried on.
The circular stairway unflattened itself and descended from the upper level as the two women reached it. The bottom of the stairway attached itself to a small platform on the floor that was surrounded by a marked square with reflectors in the corners to discourage anyone from accidentally leaving anything in the way of the stairs.
The collapsible stairway could descend in full and then be used as an elevator, but there would not have been enough room on it for two people. It was best to keep it in the form of stairs. The two women began climbing.
Scene: Mick's ship, second floor
The two women climbed up to the second floor, pulling their bags up through the relatively small gap in the floor. The stairs led to a simple hallway with the door to the bridge at the end of the hall. Doors on either side led to sleeping quarters while a hatch on the roof was one side of the airlock before the dorsal hatch.
Celestia brought Jill to the crew's quarters on the right and began poking the nearby computer interface to unlock the door. "We will be sleeping in here."
Scene: Mick's ship, crew's quarters
"Here we are," Celestia said. "Pick a bunk."
The bunks were three padded beds hanging off the side of what was not the wall, but a tall flat structure that was large enough to cover the wall and extend out several feet from it. The bunks were arranged as three corners of a rectangle, with an upper and lower bunk on one side and a third bunk below a wide blank panel where a fourth bunk might have been.
Each bunk was held up by a support arm that extended out from the inside of structure through the space at the bottom of a partially open panel. It seemed that the beds were designed to retract into the structure when not in use. Footholds formed a simple ladder to the upper bunk. There was a computer display panel near each bunk, embedded into the structure.
Jill dropped her bags in the middle of the room and walked toward one of the bunks. Celestia placed the bags she was carrying next to the bags Jill had dropped. Jill briefly examined one of the bunks and turned back to Celestia. "I'm not tired."
Celestia excused herself from Jill's company. "Do what you need to make yourself comfortable. I will check on a few things around the ship."
"Okay." Jill did not consider the option of asking to come along until after Celestia had already left the room. Alone, she looked around. She touched the bunk's padding. It felt hard.
Jill removed her softsuit. She had sweated into the clothes that she had worn under it. She left the suit on the floor with her bags of clothing. She climbed into an open bunk and lay in it, testing it. She closed her eyes, wondering if this was all a dream.
She opened her eyes and saw her younger sister Anna looking over her, her young face filled with pleasure and compassion. Jill looked up at Anna with surprise and confusion as the smiling girl stepped toward her bunk. For one thing, very few people had survived the Lizards, and she doubted that Anna was one of them. Moreover, Anna had not aged at all. Furthermore, Anna had never boarded the ship.
Finally, what Anna said was completely out of her character. "Now is your best chance. You can kill them both and take the ship. You can control everything." Anna smiled widely.
Jill cautiously raised a hand to touch Anna on the cheek. At the moment of contact, Anna disappeared.
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