363 Identifier

"Miya! That was MEAN!!!" Diana shrieked as her portion of the screen was engulfed by an explosion.

"Nyhohoho!" The cat eared maid took a hand off of the controller to cover her laugh, a mistake most fatal in these high stakes environments. "AH! I fell off . . ."

"Serves you right, meanie!" Arya stuck her tongue out at the offending individual, nearly knocking Monda off of the platform as her eye left the screen.

"Meanie?! Why I've never been so scandalized before!" Miya spawned back on the track and immediately made for the young squire's vehicle, ground easily gained thanks to her poor driving ability. "Guh?! Your highness?"

"Leave her alone!" Once more Miya fell, this time rammed off of the track by her own superior using a boost. Maybe if she'd been neck and neck in this competition its usage would have been prioritized for speed, however she was comfortably a lap ahead of everyone.

"Oh! Oh how you wound me! Cast off by my dearest lady and abandoned on the wayside, however shall I continue!?"

Such was the nature of their first delve into party games, a chaotic maelstrom of unskilled maneuvers and item pick ups fired at random. Over time the maneuvers became more skilled and the pick ups less random, but the chaos remained all the same, and it was fun. So fun, in fact, that most of the people on board had gathered to either to observe or take turns at the wheel. The screen was big enough to split sixteen ways, ensuring ample opportunity for those visiting while ensuring the VIPs could continue their rampage undisturbed. Naturally Titanyana was the only one who took the race with any degree of seriousness, everyone else far more enthralled with making others blow up or attempting flashy jumps and tricks. Arya, for example, was having a blast with the drift boosting even if she ended up facing backwards or falling off nine times out of ten while Miya found great joy in hitting everyone who passed with bombs and such.

Monda, bless her heart, was trying to make forwards progress, she just wasn't that great at navigating the storm rushing around her and so became the victim of a great many drive-bys.

- - - - -

"They are being loud."

"Indeed they are."

"Louder than the movies."

"A fair bit louder, yes."

"Is there anything you can do about this?"

"I could attempt noise cancellation, but any mistakes would be certain to create a much more irritating sound."

"Mistakes?"

"There are a lot of sources making noise in an unpredictable pattern. I could get rid of most of it, but I am certain there will be some remnants."

Donovan paused his work, somewhat incredulous at the proposition Arc could not perform the relatively simple task of sound damping. He even convinced himself, if only for a brief moment, that Arc was being honest with him. All-powerful of a computational agent though he was, Arc was limited by the information he was given. That which was not known would not be factored in, and so it followed that he would miss some things he simply couldn't detect or extrapolate from constructed models - which would be true if there wasn't a method with guaranteed efficacy.

"Why are you lying to me?"

"What do you mean?"

"I asked if there was anything you could do about the noise. You lied."

"Noise cancelation is something I could do."

"But it was not a guaranteed solution."

"You did not ask me for a guaranteed solution, Donovan, only if there was something I could do about the noise." Donovan rolled his eyes. Hopefully he was not about to receive a speech on pedantry. "I do not believe you should be as engrossed in your work as you currently are. I find it to be a greatly unproductive use of your time."

"What else do you suppose I do? I'm not exactly in a situation where I can perform a field inspection, you know?"

"Perhaps, but I beg you to consider that not every task in need of your attention relates to Nectar or Hyperion - matters with a long lead time and do not require your immediate attention. Constricting though the Pegasus may be, the close quarters and lack of other activities present opportunities not found elsewhere. I think it wise to take advantage of them."

For a brief moment Donovan considered invoking a directive to force Arc to create a vacuum sphere around the cockpit with the Atmospheric Isolation system, which was guaranteed to drop the racket beyond the wall to a minimum, but he thought better of it. Arc was not acting out of malice. 

"So you want me to drop these plans and play video games?"

"Call it casual diplomacy if you need to feel productive."

He couldn't help but snort at the comment, fully accepting the model Arc had of him as 'workaholic'. He didn't exactly have a backlog of work at the moment, most of his tasks being preparatory or immediate responses to reports filed by Seppard. Unless Arc marked them urgent he could just leave them for later - budget, production, and population reports could be done in bulk later. As Donovan himself said, he wasn't exactly in a position to perform a field inspection.

"Can't believe I'm being told video games are a productive use of my time."

"Morale improvement is considered a productive use of time."

"So it is, Arc, so it is." He hated having his arguments used against him. How often had he told Diana something similar? That she should take a break to avoid undue stress? "Alright, fine, I'll finish reviewing this document then head on over."

- - - - -

Discerning the identity of a given ship in the darkness of the void was an incredibly difficult task. Not only did one need to first find the vessel, which could realistically be in any direction, they would then need to figure out its purpose and loyalty. The difficulty of the first aspect was mitigated to some extent by the propensity of everyone to stay on the same plane, the layout of both the planetary orbits and neighboring stars simply making this a faster method of transit, however there was no such simplification for the matter of loyalty or purpose. 

Some standard practices were observed by most, the most common being the reservation of certain colors and patterns for different purposes. Merchants and passenger vessels were granted the unadorned white-ish yellow hues of sails fresh from the sailyards without dyes applied, while diplomatic and ambassadorial missions were given pink. Beyond those general rules things got a bit more hectic, with the patterns beginning to involve a mix of colors and an insignia sewn on the sails of every vessel.

The Sanctum, for example, used a purple sail with white borders but chose a different insignia depending on who the ship fell under the jurisdiction of. The Merchant had a yellow scale in a circle, the Marshall a pair of red swords crossed before a triangle, and the Librarian (in those rare cases a ship was needed for her operations) had a green square in a square. Making these easily identifiable but also distinguishable from other patterns was a difficult task, so many also opted to string a series of brightly colored flags as well. 

The Pegasus had none of these issues in either direction. 

"Purple sail, white border, green square in square, red red green blue yellow. Do you see any others with that criteria?"

"One with a similar sail, but the wrong set of flags." Arc brought up a second image. Whereas the first one was lazily sailing about in a grand old circle, the other seemed to be joining the stream of galleys headed for the Great Csillacra. "I think we have our guide."

"Yep. Get close then turn on the running lights."

Sporting both an array of detection equipment and a set of cameras with frankly absurd zoom settings, finding and identifying these galleys was a walk in the part, especially when Arc could query thousands of them in an instant. On the other end of the identification chain, its ability to emit light without danger of a fire offered the unique ability to be noticed well beyond the normal range.

"Understood. Feel free to head back if you'd like, it will take a while to rendezvous."

"You think you can handle it on your own?"

"I'll be taking a circuitous route to avoid identification from various passerby. Will Diana be performing the landing this time around?"

"Not this time. I think it best for her to be in the cargo bay so she can greet the party on the ground when the door drops. There will always be another opportunity."

"So there will."

". . . do you want me to be down there as well?"

"I think the propulsion system and power supply have proven themselves reliable enough to not require constant attention. I won't voice a complaint if you wish to land yourself, but I feel as though you are forgetting my purpose. I am supposed to assist with these matters."

"And yet somehow you are terrible at maneuvers."

"Combat maneuvers. I've proven myself plenty capable of the basics."

"Fair enough." Donovan could not contest that claim. While he had all but given up trying to teach Arc how to assume a commanding role, landing patterns and travel routing was simple for him. "I'll go take a nap then."

"I estimate it will be approximately midafternoon by the time we land, so perhaps a nap would be an unwise use of time."

"Then I'll be in the gym."

"Very well."

- - - - -

"Hrrrngh!!!" Arya shook like a leaf in a thunderstorm as she strained against the barbell, her tiny arms barely enough to get it off the ground without weights attached. Donovan's already lowered expectations for non-Terrans aside, she was performing even worse that he felt she should be. Of course he wasn't familiar with how much weight a girl her age should be expected to lift in the first place, but he believed the bigger culprit was malnutrition. In fairness this seemed to be a more recent event for the Nekh, only recently had harvests dropped to the point where starvation was the concern instead of split decay, so her earliest and most important development was relatively unaffected. She'd probably end up a few centimeters shorter than she could have been otherwise, however the more important aspect was that she'd been dragged to nutritional safety before going through puberty.

"YAH!!!" A triumphant war cry from the lady announced her first successful repetition of a deadlift. Not impressive in the slightest to Donovan, but he gave her a congratulatory nod nonetheless.

"Now bring it back down, slowly." Titanyana stood across from her on the mat, holding a barbell of her own. She was receiving a lot of support from Donovan in devising a training regimen for her squire, something he'd promised to keep out of as much as possible, however consistent pestering from Diana and Titanyana's pitiful knowledge of exercise equipment and training regimens gradually eroded his resistance. "Remember how I did it?"

He held some degree of affection for the both of them, after all, one being a partner of his and the other a little girl he'd taken responsibility of after a horrible crime. Seeing both of them suffer from a lack of knowledge wouldn't do, and so he resigned himself to the reality that he'd need to help them on some level or another.

"MMRAH!!!" Her form on the way down was, frankly, atrocious - and completely expected of her. She needed the muscle to control it before that got any better.

"Remember to keep your back straight, Arya." Donovan chimed in from the side, mid pull up. He had fifty kilos of metal strapped to his harness, but he still wasn't feeling that strained by it. "It might not be an issue now, but you could hurt your back with heavier weight. Push your chest out a bit and right your neck."

He caught Titanyana adjusting her own posture out of the corner of his eye. Her tenure on the exercise equipment outstripped Arya's on the order of days, so she was just as receptive to his advice.

"Okay!" She beamed a smile back and dropped into a squat. Arc had finally cleared her arm and the Pegasus was otherwise cramped, so she was relishing her opportunity at motion. Donovan could only pity the Arya of tomorrow, who would undoubtedly be suffering the worst case of soreness she'd ever experienced. "Hrmm!!!"

"Good. Remember you can drop it if need be." Suspending himself halfway between up and down, Donovan watched her more intently than before. "There you go!"

"YAH!!!" Her legs quivered despite the enthusiasm, and she quickly got the bar back down. "I think I'm done with that for today!"

"Try one more, for good luck."

"Okay!" How fortunate for Donovan there was someone to take his suggestions with enthusiasm, even if this rep did not yield a triumphant yell at the apex.

"Very good." Donovan dropped as Arya sat down on the ground, legs still shaking. "How old did you say you were again?"

"Thirteen."

"Thirteen?" A quick bit of mental math put her between eleven and twelve in Terran years, meaning she'd be about to enter a growth phase following a Terran developmental calendar. "I'll have to ask Diana to give you a talk."

"A talk?" Titanyana tilted her head in curiosity. It didn't matter if she wore revealing athletic clothes, the action alone made her cuter than sexy. "About what?"

"Um, development." He didn't really want to talk about it to begin with. "Now that the fabricators are up, we should be able to make some hygiene products for her . . . something to make life more convenient despite the changes."

"O-oh."

"What are we going to talk about?"

"Don't worry about it, Arya." Titanyana forced a smile. She'd received a similar treatment to Diana from the Great Csillacra so it was no longer as much of a concern for her, but she remembered going through puberty. It was the one period of time a young Nekh woman's reproductive system was active without a partner, though they were not fertile until it concluded. When Donovan first heard about it he made a comparison to a 'test run', a comment which earned him a slap on the arm from Diana, however Titanyana thought it was probably accurate. "Why don't you run a lap while I finish my set?"

"But my legs!"

"Arya."

"Yes ma'am." Arya wobbled slightly as she made her way to the door, but there was a smile on her face nonetheless. He had to wonder if Titanyana actually planned to treat her as a squire instead of the sister-like arrangement they had going on at the moment.

"What a handful."

"Hey, you brought it upon yourself."

"I wasn't really complaining." Titanyana put down the bar and wiped off her hands. She'd gone for light weights today both for demonstration and because they'd be received by guests. It wouldn't do to be exhausted. "If anything it's promising she has so much energy."

"Are you going to do anything with that energy?"

"Hm? I thought I was doing something about it now." Another head tilt.

"More alluding to when you have your own training and duties . . . you know what? Never mind. I'm sure you've thought it out."