Fic: Spin Recovery. (PG)
Nov. 12th, 2007 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalAuthor's Note: I'm rather happy at how this bit turned out. Especially the last section, where I figured out a slightly deeper motivation for Captain Blake's eventual actions than just sheer pettiness.
It was late afternoon when he returned home, to discover that Mother and Bethany were both out, Mother on business and Bethany with her friends. That suited Rufus just fine, for it allowed him to hole up in his suite with the comconsole to consult the manor's communication records.
“Computer, command: List incoming comm records for Brushtail, Ru Ofanius, starting seven years ago until present time,” he ordered, after sitting down in front of the comsole's display screen. The manor's central computer system, having already done an automatic voice check when he spoke, obediently brought up the records of all the calls he'd made to home after flying off in the White Knight. At first they were fairly frequent, perhaps one or two a month. He could mark just when they began to grow more sparse, and brought up the first communication he'd made back home after the Blue Horizon massacre. It was, predictably, quite disjointed, with him looking shell shocked and speaking haltingly to Bethany and Mother. But they both appeared relieved that he was safe, even after he tried to describe what had happened.
But you didn't tell them the truth, did you old man? he chided himself. As with the review board, he had told them that he'd been running to get help for the liner that he had abandoned to Mavra Chan. And like the review board they had accepted the explanation, knowing how little chance one fighter would have against a fully armed pirate galleon. All perfectly reasonable, except that the truth was that he had cut and run like a coward, leaving over four hundred innocents to face slaughter at the hands of the sadistic and greedy pirate lord.
“Next communication,” he ordered the comsole. In this message he was positively cheerful, letting Mother know that the review board had exonerated him. She didn't make any mention of the slight slurring of his speech, only asking when he might come home, and not displaying any disappointment when he answered he didn't know.
After that, the number of messages he sent home dropped to perhaps once every two or three months, then the next year once every four or five. The conversations with Mother became quite terse, as he defended himself against her questions about the expenses he was running up, ostensibly for maintenance of his fighter, in truth to support his growing drug habit. Rufus felt himself gradually sink lower into his seat as he listened to himself spout bald-faced and obvious lies to his mother and Bethany, over and over again. They had to have realized I was lying early on, yet the money kept coming, at least for a while. Had they been deliberately blind, hoping he'd pull himself out of the well he insisted on flinging himself into?
The last message in the record, made about a year and half after Mother had finally frozen his access to the House accounts, was perhaps the worst. It began with him making a call to wish Bethany a happy twenty-third birthday. Which would have been a pleasant surprise if it wasn't for the fact that she was twenty-four when he made the call, he was two months late anyway and it was plainly obvious from his widely dilated eyes and slurred speech that he was stoned out of his mind on a combination of Juno and alcohol. The call ended in a three way screaming match between himself, Bethany and Mother, which ended in his mother cutting off the comm shortly after Bethany ran off sobbing, while he screamed drunken obscenities at them both.
After the screen went blank he felt like he wanted nothing more than to pray for the Holy Den Mother to intervene and open up the earth beneath his chair, so he could be swallowed up and not have to look his family in the eye when they returned. I don't remember ever making that call, he thought. Maybe that was mercy. If he had remembered after sobering up, he would have surely either have ended things by opening his wrists with a cutter or taking a walk out the airlock without a spacesuit.
A quiet cough behind him brought him out of his reverie and he said softly, “Hello, Mother.”
“Hello, Ru Ofanius. How did you know it was me?” she asked, sitting down in the chair beside him.
He sighed and turned to face her. “One of the servants wouldn't have entered with the door closed and I don't think Bethany could have watched that last one without making a sound. How much did you see?”
“All of it,” she answered, looking grim. “Quite the show. As memorable as the first time I viewed it.”
“Quite,” he said. After a moment he added. “So why didn't you send a team of assassins after me, after I made poor Beth run off crying like that? I wouldn't have blamed you for trying, if only to preserve the dignity and honor of the House.”
This actually made her smile, if only slightly. “Well, for one thing, vulgar vid entertainments aside there is no such thing as a Vulpine Assassination Bureau. For another, even after that, Bethany would have never have forgiven me.” Her smile dropped. “Though I don't think she has forgiven me yet for not letting her go after you, to try and physically drag you home.”
“Why didn't you let her?”
“If she had found you, would you have returned voluntarily?”
“Probably not. What if she just forced me to?”
“Then I would have faced the possibility of you returning here in a far worse condition than you were in the day before. Resentful and drunk and addicted and dishonored.”
“A stain on the House,” he concluded.
“Yes,” she answered.
“And if I had died out there, in the Cold and Dark, what then?”
“Then you would have been dead. We would have mourned and then moved on.”
Rufus nodded. “Your honesty is refreshing at least.” Not to mention a cut to the bone. I do not remember her being so cold before. How bad have things been here, with myself gone away and not supporting the House?
“If we’re to rebuild what has been destroyed, Ru, would you prefer to start with lies?”
He shook his head. “No, no more lies. I’ve spewed them from my mouth like they were poison and I am sick to death of them.”
“That pleases me, Ru Ofanius. That said, could you please explain this?” She tapped in an override code into the comsole and he his sister’s personal comm records appear on the screen. She entered one more command and then they were both watching as his brother called Bethany, speaking eloquently and persuading her to part with the funds he required to repair Rufus’ fighter.
“That’s… a complicated subject,” Rufus said carefully, once it had ended.
“Whoever that Vulpine was, he couldn’t have been you, Ru Ofanius. Short of a miracle by the Holy Den Mother there’s simply no way you could look so healthy, compared to your previous calls, or how you look now. Neither was it a computer generated image, I had it checked for that. So who is it?”
“My twin brother,” Rufus said simply. Before she could protest at the absurdity of this, he held up his hand. “That is not a lie. That person that Bethany spoke was me, down to the genetic level, but he was not me, in that we’ve had wildly different lives.”
“I was awake when I birthed you, Ru Ofanius. I think I would have noticed if you had a twin,” she noted dryly.
“I can’t argue with that. Nor, unfortunately, can I offer any truth to my assertions. The only one who could is unlikely to be willing to speak for me right now.”
“Who is this person?”
Rufus frowned. “Captain Leeza Blake. She’s a human naval officer in the United Systems Forces.”
His mother made an annoyed snort. “Humans. What were you doing, that you met your impossible identical twin, found yourself involved with the Terran military and then ended up getting your arm lopped off?”
“You’d have to hear it from her lips, Mother. If you heard it from mine, you’d only think I was indulging in my drugs again. If you’re serious about it though, you may have to set some diplomatic pressure against her. The situation we were involved in had some… interesting implications for the long term politics of the Galactic Sapiens Alliance.”
Just how closely did the humans intend to guard the secret of the re-discovery of the Varn Dominion, he wondered. More to the point, how closely should he keep it himself? Certainly it was going to have repercussions in Vulpine politics once the word got out. Given the horrors that his people had suffered towards the end of the Dominion War, he couldn’t blame some of them if they chose to react as xenophobically as the humans seemed inclined to. From what little I saw of the Galapagos, they seemed like honorable people, never mind their origins. Certainly the Varn themselves, or himself rather, pose no threat to us now.
“You’re speaking in riddles again, Ru Ofanius,” his mother noted. “What troubles you so much that you can’t speak to me openly about it? Are the politics of the situation that fraught?”
“More so than you can rightly imagine, Mother,” he said, opening his hand in apology. “I beg you to try and contact Captain Blake, or someone higher in the human intelligence organizations, before asking me about it further though. In the end this may have to be brought up to the Council of Lords to be resolved fully.”
She gave him a sharp look. “You’re perfectly serious, aren’t you, Son?
He bowed his head to her. “In this matter, deadly serious. My arm was a small price, compared to the stakes involved.”
“I see.” She stood up, gesturing for him to join her. “Come along, dinner will be in a few minutes. We will speak more upon this later.”
“Yes, Mother.”
TBC
It was late afternoon when he returned home, to discover that Mother and Bethany were both out, Mother on business and Bethany with her friends. That suited Rufus just fine, for it allowed him to hole up in his suite with the comconsole to consult the manor's communication records.
“Computer, command: List incoming comm records for Brushtail, Ru Ofanius, starting seven years ago until present time,” he ordered, after sitting down in front of the comsole's display screen. The manor's central computer system, having already done an automatic voice check when he spoke, obediently brought up the records of all the calls he'd made to home after flying off in the White Knight. At first they were fairly frequent, perhaps one or two a month. He could mark just when they began to grow more sparse, and brought up the first communication he'd made back home after the Blue Horizon massacre. It was, predictably, quite disjointed, with him looking shell shocked and speaking haltingly to Bethany and Mother. But they both appeared relieved that he was safe, even after he tried to describe what had happened.
But you didn't tell them the truth, did you old man? he chided himself. As with the review board, he had told them that he'd been running to get help for the liner that he had abandoned to Mavra Chan. And like the review board they had accepted the explanation, knowing how little chance one fighter would have against a fully armed pirate galleon. All perfectly reasonable, except that the truth was that he had cut and run like a coward, leaving over four hundred innocents to face slaughter at the hands of the sadistic and greedy pirate lord.
“Next communication,” he ordered the comsole. In this message he was positively cheerful, letting Mother know that the review board had exonerated him. She didn't make any mention of the slight slurring of his speech, only asking when he might come home, and not displaying any disappointment when he answered he didn't know.
After that, the number of messages he sent home dropped to perhaps once every two or three months, then the next year once every four or five. The conversations with Mother became quite terse, as he defended himself against her questions about the expenses he was running up, ostensibly for maintenance of his fighter, in truth to support his growing drug habit. Rufus felt himself gradually sink lower into his seat as he listened to himself spout bald-faced and obvious lies to his mother and Bethany, over and over again. They had to have realized I was lying early on, yet the money kept coming, at least for a while. Had they been deliberately blind, hoping he'd pull himself out of the well he insisted on flinging himself into?
The last message in the record, made about a year and half after Mother had finally frozen his access to the House accounts, was perhaps the worst. It began with him making a call to wish Bethany a happy twenty-third birthday. Which would have been a pleasant surprise if it wasn't for the fact that she was twenty-four when he made the call, he was two months late anyway and it was plainly obvious from his widely dilated eyes and slurred speech that he was stoned out of his mind on a combination of Juno and alcohol. The call ended in a three way screaming match between himself, Bethany and Mother, which ended in his mother cutting off the comm shortly after Bethany ran off sobbing, while he screamed drunken obscenities at them both.
After the screen went blank he felt like he wanted nothing more than to pray for the Holy Den Mother to intervene and open up the earth beneath his chair, so he could be swallowed up and not have to look his family in the eye when they returned. I don't remember ever making that call, he thought. Maybe that was mercy. If he had remembered after sobering up, he would have surely either have ended things by opening his wrists with a cutter or taking a walk out the airlock without a spacesuit.
A quiet cough behind him brought him out of his reverie and he said softly, “Hello, Mother.”
“Hello, Ru Ofanius. How did you know it was me?” she asked, sitting down in the chair beside him.
He sighed and turned to face her. “One of the servants wouldn't have entered with the door closed and I don't think Bethany could have watched that last one without making a sound. How much did you see?”
“All of it,” she answered, looking grim. “Quite the show. As memorable as the first time I viewed it.”
“Quite,” he said. After a moment he added. “So why didn't you send a team of assassins after me, after I made poor Beth run off crying like that? I wouldn't have blamed you for trying, if only to preserve the dignity and honor of the House.”
This actually made her smile, if only slightly. “Well, for one thing, vulgar vid entertainments aside there is no such thing as a Vulpine Assassination Bureau. For another, even after that, Bethany would have never have forgiven me.” Her smile dropped. “Though I don't think she has forgiven me yet for not letting her go after you, to try and physically drag you home.”
“Why didn't you let her?”
“If she had found you, would you have returned voluntarily?”
“Probably not. What if she just forced me to?”
“Then I would have faced the possibility of you returning here in a far worse condition than you were in the day before. Resentful and drunk and addicted and dishonored.”
“A stain on the House,” he concluded.
“Yes,” she answered.
“And if I had died out there, in the Cold and Dark, what then?”
“Then you would have been dead. We would have mourned and then moved on.”
Rufus nodded. “Your honesty is refreshing at least.” Not to mention a cut to the bone. I do not remember her being so cold before. How bad have things been here, with myself gone away and not supporting the House?
“If we’re to rebuild what has been destroyed, Ru, would you prefer to start with lies?”
He shook his head. “No, no more lies. I’ve spewed them from my mouth like they were poison and I am sick to death of them.”
“That pleases me, Ru Ofanius. That said, could you please explain this?” She tapped in an override code into the comsole and he his sister’s personal comm records appear on the screen. She entered one more command and then they were both watching as his brother called Bethany, speaking eloquently and persuading her to part with the funds he required to repair Rufus’ fighter.
“That’s… a complicated subject,” Rufus said carefully, once it had ended.
“Whoever that Vulpine was, he couldn’t have been you, Ru Ofanius. Short of a miracle by the Holy Den Mother there’s simply no way you could look so healthy, compared to your previous calls, or how you look now. Neither was it a computer generated image, I had it checked for that. So who is it?”
“My twin brother,” Rufus said simply. Before she could protest at the absurdity of this, he held up his hand. “That is not a lie. That person that Bethany spoke was me, down to the genetic level, but he was not me, in that we’ve had wildly different lives.”
“I was awake when I birthed you, Ru Ofanius. I think I would have noticed if you had a twin,” she noted dryly.
“I can’t argue with that. Nor, unfortunately, can I offer any truth to my assertions. The only one who could is unlikely to be willing to speak for me right now.”
“Who is this person?”
Rufus frowned. “Captain Leeza Blake. She’s a human naval officer in the United Systems Forces.”
His mother made an annoyed snort. “Humans. What were you doing, that you met your impossible identical twin, found yourself involved with the Terran military and then ended up getting your arm lopped off?”
“You’d have to hear it from her lips, Mother. If you heard it from mine, you’d only think I was indulging in my drugs again. If you’re serious about it though, you may have to set some diplomatic pressure against her. The situation we were involved in had some… interesting implications for the long term politics of the Galactic Sapiens Alliance.”
Just how closely did the humans intend to guard the secret of the re-discovery of the Varn Dominion, he wondered. More to the point, how closely should he keep it himself? Certainly it was going to have repercussions in Vulpine politics once the word got out. Given the horrors that his people had suffered towards the end of the Dominion War, he couldn’t blame some of them if they chose to react as xenophobically as the humans seemed inclined to. From what little I saw of the Galapagos, they seemed like honorable people, never mind their origins. Certainly the Varn themselves, or himself rather, pose no threat to us now.
“You’re speaking in riddles again, Ru Ofanius,” his mother noted. “What troubles you so much that you can’t speak to me openly about it? Are the politics of the situation that fraught?”
“More so than you can rightly imagine, Mother,” he said, opening his hand in apology. “I beg you to try and contact Captain Blake, or someone higher in the human intelligence organizations, before asking me about it further though. In the end this may have to be brought up to the Council of Lords to be resolved fully.”
She gave him a sharp look. “You’re perfectly serious, aren’t you, Son?
He bowed his head to her. “In this matter, deadly serious. My arm was a small price, compared to the stakes involved.”
“I see.” She stood up, gesturing for him to join her. “Come along, dinner will be in a few minutes. We will speak more upon this later.”
“Yes, Mother.”
TBC
