Chapter 295 – Separation

After the meeting’s conclusion, Emily allows the crew’s head healer to give her magic network a full inspection to satisfy his concern before sending him away and sealing the door behind him as Silvia clears the training room, returning it to its default settings.

“You can take the squadron I assigned to you before,” Silvia says, wrapping her arms around Emily’s waist from behind and resting her cheek on her shoulder. “Five ships should ensure a smooth journey, though you should order the pilots to remain on board when you arrive at an appropriate station, just in case.”

“Wow, sending me off so soon?” Emily replies, the mixture of physical contact and the vampire’s drifting gaze, tracing the length of her neck and jaw but never quite meeting her eyes, spawning more muddied feelings she can’t quite decode just yet. “Are you sick of my presence already?”

“Never, darling,” Silvia purrs, leaning in to kiss the corner of her jaw before releasing her hold and pulling away, letting her nails rake over the bare flesh at Emily’s sides as she does. “But as much as I’d love to invite you to spar once again, you should be off before we jump to lightspeed. The faster you claim Yorn’s bounty, the sooner you can return. Besides, I know you lost most of your toys in that fight, and it won’t be quite as much fun without them.”

Emily turns to flash her partner a playful grin as she wraps herself in spatial mana.

“You’ll regret giving me more time to prepare, you know? Don’t you know a mechanic’s most dangerous when they’ve had time to tailor their creations to you?”

“Oh, I look forward to it.”

Emily Blinks out of The Mothership, pulling herself back into her temporary quarters within McCloud and Slippy’s ship. She strolls through the ship towards the bridge, taking the time to compartmentalise the bundled emotions in her chest and designate them to a single core in her cortex to unravel, not suppressing them, but allowing herself reprieve from their influence.

“Welcome back, Vice-Captain,” Slippy beams the moment she approaches, turning back to look at her with a cheeky grin. “You’re really going up in the crew!”

“Only been here for one job, and already seducing our new leader,” McCloud joins in, shaking his head disapprovingly. “Should we be worried? What are your intentions with our poor, innocent Captain?”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about,” Emily responds with an emotionless stare before using a wave of machina to connect to the other ships in their squadron: “Set course for Xeroph 3a. We’re going to claim the bounty on Yorn and Perinith’s heads.”

“Oh, come on!” the synth pilots cry in sync, both turning back to their controls to follow her command despite their exaggerated complaints.

“You addressed the crew arm in arm!” Slippy starts.

“We know something’s going on there!” McCloud adds.

“We won’t tell,” they finish together. “Promise!”

Emily turns to leave, ignoring their act.

“I’ll be in my Factory if you need me for anything actually important. I’ll leave an entrance open in my quarters.”

***

A short while into their journey out of Xeroph 5, Emily’s part way through fabricating her new arm when Silvia calls her. The image of the video feed shows the vampire lounging on her bed in loose silver silks, holding a glass of crimson liquid a touch too dark to be anything but blood.

“Miss me already?” Emily asks with a raised brow, holding her Terminal up with a blanket of charge as she cuts the panels for her new forearm from a reinforced alloy blend containing several fragments of the world-eater’s bones.

“Of course I do,” Silvia responds without hesitation. “Unlike some people, I lack for meaningful entertainment when there isn’t another who can match me present.”

“I’m sure there are crafts you could take up to fill your time. Do talismans and pills not interest you?”

“Please. As much as your work fascinates me, I think we both know creation isn’t my forte. I certainly don’t mind watching though.”

Emily glances up from the metal in her grasp to meet the vampire’s intent stare.

“You could always visit The Mothership’s workshops.”

“Oh, but that wouldn’t satisfy me the same,” Silvia purrs.

Emily looks back to her work, setting aside the finished pieces and wrapping the remaining, unused metal in Forgemaster’s threads of fire and metal mana to reforge it into a smaller ingot for future use.

“What about Elwaine and Rotwin? Can you not ask them to spar?”

“The elf is a bore and wouldn’t even consider agreeing, and the hound… well, he’s poorly suited to being my match. Not only is he far slower and only a touch stronger than I, but he draws too much blood for it to ever be a fair fight. His speciality lies in leadership and enhancement of his pack, and as much as I enjoy a challenge, I’d rather not frequently send too many of our crewmates to the med bay.”

“Mmmm,” Emily hums, preparing a blend of powdered spatial crystals to begin carving the storage arrays for her arm. “Hipaepha would have your head for it.”

“That he would,” Silvia chuckles. “Have you run into any trouble since leaving us?”

“Not so far. We’ve had to skirt a few FAF patrols investigating the trouble we caused, but Harriet is helping my pilots stay ahead, so we haven’t had to face any of them.”

“Good, good. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but please make sure you don’t get flagged as deserting Crimson-Blade ships. I’ve already had one call with FAF command to explain our mass-abandonment of our posts, and I’d rather not have another.”

“They’ve contacted you already? What story did you give them?”

“The truth, of course,” the vampire intones innocently, drawing Emily’s unimpressed gaze back to her as she takes a slow sip from her drink, intentionally dragging the action out before licking the stain from her lips and flashing her fangs. “Yorn saw the recent attack on Perinith and his fleet as a direct threat to our crew and ordered a regroup, on the way to which he was ambushed and tragically killed by a mysterious unknown force.”

“Ah, of course, the truth.”

Silvia breaks out into laughter at Emily’s deadpan tone.

“At least you have that believable story you wanted, right?”

“Sure, if it’s believable that Mensacus and I would be able to best Yorn alone.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself, darling. You did plenty in our fight, and I daresay that if you’d been willing to invest more of your time crystals, you’d have been able to create a trap that guaranteed his death before he knew what hit him.”

“Yeah, if I were both lucky and willing to make a loss on his bounty. You may have said that they were worth five thousand credits each, but I’ve been scanning the BlackNet to try and find somewhere to buy more, and the supply is so limited that I’ve only found one source, three galaxies over, selling three for four times that.”

“They’re a well-guarded resource.” Silvia shrugs. “My estimate was based on… outdated information from decades back. You should ask Elwaine if you’re truly interested in purchasing more. Their contacts are likely your best bet.”

“We’ll see,” Emily responded, finally picking up her engraving knife and using a temporary arm of metal mana to hold the first outer panel for carving in place. “Anyway, you mentioned having several ideas as to how I could solve my mental demon problem. Care to enlighten me?”

“I could, but I believe that’s something we’d best handle in person, and not when you’re in the midst of an individual assignment.”

“I… suppose that’s reasonable.”

Silvia can hear the reluctance in her tone and smiles at her fondly.

“Though, it couldn’t hurt for me to gain a better understanding of the issues we’re dealing with and your existing attempts to combat them.” She can see the faint smile tugging at Emily’s lips despite her bowed head never straying from her work. “You said you used a potion to try and unseal your emotional vault, and it had some effect but not as much as you intended, correct?”

Emily nods.

“What did it contain?”

“A variety of ingredients from my own blood and my son’s concentrated malice to the venom of a magical breed of desert scorpion, but those were of lesser importance. The brew was based around concentrating and enhancing the effects of salvianross, a magical herb and a natural deliriant.”

“So… you poisoned your mind to try and fix it?”

“Poison and medicine are two sides of the same coin. I use a vapourised dose of the plant in my favourite calming tea to aid the repair of the mental scar that experience left, and it's anything but harmful.”

“I’m aware of the relationship between poisons and healing, but I’d still argue against enhancing a magical deliriant so casually. They’re-”

“Insidious in nature? Oh, I’m aware. The plant was well-known among the tribe that grew it for driving mages to madness.”

“Right.” Silvia sighs, aware she’s fighting a losing battle. “Well, what exactly was the mental scar it left, if you don’t mind sharing, and how is its repair going?”

“It’s…” Emily hesitates, her hands pausing for a moment before continuing to trace runes and balancing geometries across the metal sheet in her grip, relaxing into the repetitive motions and the cold touch of metal. “On the night my birth parents died, I hid while some weak magical beasts tore them apart and feasted on their corpses. To keep myself from focusing on that, I did the only thing I could think of in the moment and began to count time passing. Repeating that night multiplied those counts, and all those voices remained even after the effects of the potion passed. They’re almost all gone now. The worst of them faded during our fight with Yorn, and only three returned after. They should be silent by the time I return to the main fleet.”

“Good. Focus on that for now, and we’ll continue this conversation when you return,” Silvia says, her tone soft and understanding. “You haven’t spoken to anyone about this before, have you?”

“I’ve mentioned bits and pieces in passing, especially to my apprentices and children, but no, I’ve never recounted my experience in full,” Emily admits, feeling an odd sense of aching emptiness in her chest.

“I thought so. Well, I’m sorry for your loss, darling. That sounds like a horrifying experience no child should ever have to suffer.”

“Thank you,” Emily responds, falling into companionable silence as a small, blooming bud of warmth soothes the cold ache at her core.

***

With Harriet’s aid and several detours, Emily’s squadron manages to make it out of Xeroph 5 and into Xeroph 3a without having to face any FAF forces. 3a is a large, unclaimed, starless field of shattered planets and asteroids spanning hundreds of lightyears and separating Xerophs 5 and 3. They head without delay towards the coordinates of the largest trading hub in the sector, having to slow from their top cruise speed to weave through the scattered chunks of rock and ice filling the area.

Harriet picks up on and warns the squadron’s pilots of several groups lurking around the border with Xeroph 5, clearly looking to pick off any heading to and from the ongoing conflict. However, while they manage to avoid most of them, a single group of three ships moves to intercept as they take a circuitous route around them, and Slippy sends Harriet to alert her mistress.

“So, they have better sensor arrays than us?” Emily asks her familiar as she does her final adjustments on the mounting point holding her new arm in place. “I guess we’re getting an upgrade then. Ah well, I needed a chance to test this thing out: I’m unsure as to how I feel about the artificial muscle fibres. They’re strong, but a little limiting in flexibility still.”

Harriet buzzes in agreement, flowing into the limb and feeling out its structure. It’s similar to her arm’s last iteration, looking almost identical externally, but as opposed to the old complex internal cable system, it’s now filled with alchemically-made synthetic muscles. They have a base made from the world-eater serpent’s tendons, with a multitude of metals fused to give them more strength and compatibility with Emily’s main affinities. They were the most time-consuming part of the arm’s construction, with the bonding process alone taking several days, and each individual strand of muscle covered in minuscule runes carved by hand.

Emily Blinks out onto the ship’s bridge, appearing behind McCloud and Slippy with a barely-noticeable twist of space.

“No new armour yet?” McCloud questions the moment he notices her presence, turning his head to take her in.

She has a new set of heavily-armoured boots, but the rest of her outfit consists only of lightly-enchanted cloth.

“No, I’m yet to get started on it. My new arm has taken nearly all of my time so far, but that’s next on my list, and I have a few ideas ready to try,” Emily responds with a shake of her head, glancing at the pilots’ readouts before pointing to a densely-packed cluster of asteroids not far ahead. “Bring us to a stop there. I’m going to pay our tail a little visit before they try to pull us out of cruise speed.”

“Understood,” the pilots respond, McCloud relaying her command to the rest of the squadron as Slippy glances back to take in her new limb.

“What about your mechanical army?” the distracted synth asks as Emily sends Harriet out to linger in their path and mark her targets for her. “It gonna take a while to rebuild?”

“I have a few production lines reconstituting the scraps I recovered, but yes, time will be needed to recover my losses, especially those of my specialised units. I burned far too many of my birds to deal with Perinith.”

The ship drops to sub-lightspeed with a shudder, and McCloud uses a skilled hand to bring them in towards the asteroids Emily marked, slipping through a narrow gap to get behind them and bringing the ship to a complete halt. They all watch the ships chasing them enter their unenhanced sensor range, and the synths both share a glance before taking on savage grins.

“Happy hunting!” they cheer in chorus as Emily tunnels her way through space and vanishes from the ship.

She appears in the open vacuum with her feet resting on an asteroid’s surface and turns her head towards Harriet, spotting three speeding blurs rapidly getting closer. She draws her left arm back, flooding it with machina and activating one of the many overlapping arrays layered into its muscles. Sparks dance across her metal skin, and Emily drives her fist forward with a harsh crack, sending a bolt of force and charge tearing towards the enemy ships the moment they try to pass her.

Her attack slams into their shields, shattering one of them and cracking the others, forcing them all to drop their speed to avoid dashing themselves against the debris filling the vacuum.

Emily shakes her arm out, feeling her mana flowing into it to refill the drained enchantment along with several points where the synthetic muscles have tightened from the sudden output.

“Hmmm, acceptable, but I’ll need to adjust the burst force metrics and possibly rework the joints to better account for high-strain loads…” she mutters to herself, not even bothering to put up a shield as several hardpoints turn to target her.

Harriet slips into the shieldless ship and quickly locates their sensor arrays, and Emily pulls on space again before the hapless pirates can even fire, sealing their fates.