Fic: The Summer Intern (cont.)

[jeriendhal]

Disturbed by her conversation with Officer Greycoat, Nan retreated upstairs to her dorm room. Her dinner sat like lead in the bottom of her stomach when she'd finished eating and the tea had gone cold. After that she spent an hour trying to post an e-mail to her family about what had happened between her and the First One, then deleted the third draft in frustration.

The door opened and Nez stuck her head in, waving cautiously. "Hey, roomie," she greeted. "Heard you've been having a lousy evening."

"Who told you that?" Nan replied irritably. Bad enough to have been chewed out by the First One. She hadn't considered the possibility someone might have heard it, perhaps another ferin that had been hanging around nearby in the trees, listening through the open windows.

The door opened fully, revealing Lady Brushtail. "From me," she said, a cheerful smile on her face.

Nan eeped and shot to her feet, trying to automatically curtsey until she realized she wasn't wearing a skirt. "Lady Brushtail!" she exclaimed.

The orange furred noblevixen winced. "Ugh, please, we're not on Vulpine Prime. Just call me Meribeth. I'm only Lady Brushtail to my House's servants. Anyway, I got the story directly from Uncle Teri, who was going off on one of his "I'm still mad about this but I'm feeling guilty because I chewed someone out unfairly" rants that he does. Which means if you come back tomorrow he'll probably forgive you after he stomps around the room for a bit."

"I think I'll just stay out of his way," Nan said glumly.

"It was that bad?" Nez asked sympathetically.

"It wasn't that he yelled at me, it was that it was over nothing," she said to Nez. "All I did was tell him about the interview I'd set up for him."

Meribeth wrinkled her nose. "Did you discuss it with him before you committed him to doing it?"

"Well no," she admitted. "But he'd been complaining about the bad press that was coming out about the Furrows' murder and I thought it would be best..." Nan's voice trailed off as she realized what she was saying. "I told. A ferin. What to do. Without asking first," she said slowly. Then she closed her eyes and began to slowly beat her head against the top of her desk.

"Oh, bismallah," Nez said, sounding appalled. "I thought they started teaching you not to do that in cub school inside Vulpine space."

"They do," Nan replied, rubbing her aching temples. "And I'm the First One's intern. Of all the ferin to make such a stupid mistake with of course it would be him."

"The Holy Den Mother is infallible, the rest of us just have to make do," Meribeth told her, patting her shoulder. "Look, Uncle Teri has a lousy temper and a mouth like a waste recycler, but he's really a good guy. He can deal with stupid mistakes just so long as you don't stare at him all doe-eyed because he's the First One."

"I suppose." She leaned back in her chair as Nez offered Meribeth the other chair and sat cross-legged on her bed. "It wouldn't have been half so bad if that creepy CP officer hadn't shown up right after I got back here."

"What, the fellow Greycoat you told me about earlier?" Nez asked.

"Yes. He wanted me to go behind the First One's back and try and slip him information, because he thinks the First One is secretly trying to hide the buck everyone is looking for. I wish I'd told him where he could stuff his tail."

Meribeth frowned. "Is this the same Greycoat that interned under Uncle Teri a few years back?"

Nan nodded. "There was some big argument between them about a month after Greycoat started and he left the internship. I don't really know all the details, but it sounded pretty messy."

"Neither do I," Meribeth admitted. "I mean I heard about it, but Uncle Teri says it's a closed subject. Well, he used stronger language than that, but you get the idea."

"I wish I knew what was really going on," Nan said in frustration. "Officer Greycoat has some kind of definite prejudice against ferin. But if he does, how could he have ever been accepted into the internship program in the first place?"

"Is there any way you can find that out?" Nez asked. "You have access to the learning centre records after all. Don't they run the internship program?"

"Well yes, but it's not like I'd have access to an individual student's files. I was just permitted to look at the reports they submitted." Nan blinked, remembering Greycoat's talking to her about her security clearance. "Or, maybe I do."

"What kind of access level do you have?" Meribeth asked. When Nan told her, she let out an annoyed snort. "I don't get that kind of access until I take up the Countessship, which I'd just as soon wait a while on, thanks. What you've got is equal to Uncle Teri's, and his access is just below that of one of the Ten. If there's anything in the records about what Greycoat did here, you can look at it."

"You might be right. I wonder what's there?" Nan spun around in her station chair and keyed her password into the local intranet.

Nez cleared her throat. "As an internist myself, I should probably tell you what you're doing is seriously unethical by medical profession standards."

Nan glanced back at her. "You want me to stop?"

"God no, I'm as curious as you are."

Meribeth chuckled. "If anyone asks, just tell them I was threatening you with my noble status to have you shipped off to a re-education centre if you didn't give in."

Nez shook her head. "You couldn't actually do that."

"Well not to her specifically. She's not a citizen of my father' domain. That and Da would be annoyed at me passing out judgments without asking him first."

"Ha ha," Nez said flatly. "That's not very funny."

"She's not joking," Nan said absentmindedly, ignoring Nez's appalled look as she ran a search through the planetary Civil Protection database and linked into the investigation files for the murder of the Furrows. She found the list of investigating officers and clicked on the link for Greycoat's personnel file, then his personal biography and security background. She began reading and then said, "Oh, that explains a lot. He's one of those Greycoats."

"Seriously?" Meribeth said, leaning over her shoulder to read the screen. "Goddess bless, you're right."

"What's a those Greycoats?" Nez demanded.

"They're a high noble family, dating back to the pre-Subjugation period," Meribeth explained. "Legend has it that a pair of brothers were born about thirty or forty years before the Varn Dominion came to Vulpine Prime. Supposedly they invented heavier than air flight like Humanity did, just before the Dominion came calling. One of them flew so high he was caught by a Varn scout ship, then proceeded to either screw up the First Contact or sell out Vulpine Prime outright to them."

"More likely sold us out," Nan said, picking up the thread. "Because we have records of their family serving the Dominion loyally as pilots in their navy for a thousand years, almost up to the start of the Twenty Years War. Then Mad Marty came along and redeemed them."

"Mad Marty?" Nez asked.

"Marturari Greycoat," Meribeth continued. "He was a son of the Hidden Countess who was picked up by the Varn on some false charge and sent for re-education at some remote facility. Except that beyond the usual brainwashing they did some experiments on the subjects there. He spent about five years there before his family could rescue him. There are first hand accounts from the period that state he was having visions of the Holy Den Mother and precognitive dreams. He became something of a religious figure, re-igniting worship of the Mother and strengthening our resolve to fight when the War started."

"So he was a holy man?" Nez asked.

"Not exactly," Nan said. "By the time the war was over, it had been determined that he'd been the subject of a Varn psionics project, which accounts for the precognition. The bits about him talking with the Holy Den Mother were just a result of him going nuts from the experiments that were inflicted on him. His family kept him sequestered after the war at any rate, out of embarrassment I guess."

"So what's this have to do with Officer Greycoat? He's certainly not a noble lunatic."

"Well, they do have a reputation being untrustworthy nutcases, which accounts for Officer Greycoat's history. It seems that Lord Timony Greycoat, son of the Countess Amelia Greycoat and her husband consort, emancipated himself at age fifteen, divorced his parents, renounced his noble title and became a junior activist for the Vulpine Democratic Movement and an advocate for ferin rights outside Vulpine space."

Nez blinked. "That doesn't sound like him at all, especially with him making those tree monkey cracks."

Meribeth nodded, reaching over to touch a claw ot the screen and bring up an essay. "Yeah, get this. "The ferin are only ennobled by their suffering, possessing a quiet dignity that shames they slaveholders that bind them in the power tanks and lead them as pets on leashes. One only need to look at the example of the First One himself, who rose from the depths of a pirate's assassin to become their leader, and who's own nobility is unquestioned now.""

"Oh, dear," Nan murmured. "If he thought that about the First One when he first came here..."

Nez rubbed her claws through her head fur. "So he was idealistic enough to give up a Farmer Noble title and all the money and power that came with it, even to the point of trying to overthrow the system and fighting a lost cause to support ferin rights outside of Vulpine space, and then..."

"He meets First One in the flesh, who is about as noble as his space rat namesake," Meribeth finished. She shook her head. "Talk about crashing and burning. I mean, Nan, what did you think of Uncle Teri when you first met him?"

"Um, I thought he was a rude, lazy little bastard," Nan admitted. She shrugged uncomfortably. "No offense."

"No, no. I'm with you on that one," Meribeth agreed. "He's family, but even I can't stand the little snot sometimes."

"So what are you going to do now?" Nez asked Nan.

She rubbed her temples again. "Go back to the tree house tomorrow like Meribeth suggested and let the First One apologize at me so I can get back to work."

"What about Officer Greycoat?"

"Him, I'm going to tread very carefully around."

Comments

[mjkj.livejournal.com]

Wow, great one...

I like the references to your other stories :)

Ah, poor Greycoat deifying Teri until the reality hits...

...turning him around into the opposite

And nice having Meribeth here :D

mjkj

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I really loved taking the Greycoat Brothers and Marty's story and twisting them both around in the history books. :)