Persephone Astrid's YarrJournal

“Eugh!” Persephone Astrid gargled abruptly, jerking upright from where she lay in an open-topped tub of warm translucent pink medical goop. The goop sloshed over the edges of the tub, splashed onto the white tile floor of the resuscitation room, and oozed down the sides of the tub in thick ropy strands. In one hasty motion she yanked out the plastic ventilation tube which extended a shocking distance down her esophagus, and spat out a mouthful of old clotted saliva and antiseptic gel. Still coughing and fighting back a gag reflex, she tried to clear her eyes with her gel-covered hands, which left almost as much of the gel still in her eyes as before. Uncrossing her eyes (removing the breathing tube had been a very disconcerting sensation) she squinted through almond-shaped brown eyes at her surroundings.

Clone bay, she thought peering around the lavatory-sized room at the numerous machines whose incomprehensible readouts monitored her health. I must have died, I guess. Persephone gripped the edges of the tub and pulled herself to a sitting position, momentarily entangling herself in the electrode wires which were attached to her arms and torso with DermaBond. Carelessly she peeled away the flimsy sensors and threw them aside, which caused the monitors around her to all panic in unison in a cacophony of shrill sirens, whistles, and beeps.

Gritting her teeth, Persephone disentangled herself from the other tubes which handled her clone body’s bio waste, and delicately set the free ends outside the tub, taking care not to make a mess. They never mentioned this part in the Federal Navy Academy, she mused ruefully, wrinkling her nose in disgust. Naked, covered in pink goo, as shaky as a newborn fawn, and freshly disentangled from the intrusive medical machinery, she had no dignity left to lose. Thus she didn’t even attempt to cover her nakedness when the on-duty lab tech entered the cramped room through a sliding door and switched off the still-shrieking medical monitors.

“Welcome to Evati,” the tech said matter-of-factly in a well-practiced cadence. “In case you haven’t guessed already, you’ve died. Welcome back.” He spared a sardonic smile that hinted of bored amusement at the plight of the capsuleer. He recited this welcoming mantra three or four times every shift, and more often in times of war. He didn’t wait for Persephone to reply before he busied himself, opening a steel wall cabinet and looking inside. It was not for the capsuleer’s modesty that he averted his gaze. Her inert body had lain in this particular vat for nearly a month, waiting for her mind to jump into it. As one of the four technicians assigned to this block of clone bays, he’d adjusted the monitors and changed the tubes frequently. As a result of this, he was actually far more familiar with Persephone’s current body than Persephone was.

“You look like you take size small, am I right?” Without looking over his shoulder at Persephone, he asked. He knew the answer to that question already, but asked regardless. This was part of the act, to pretend that the pilot was just now arriving and that her unoccupied body hadn’t been laying here waiting for this occasion. It made the transition easier.

Persephone tried to assume a nonchalant pose in the tub of goo as she considered the technician. He was easily a head taller than herself. (Who isn’t? she thought snarkily.) The tech wore conservative steel-framed round eyeglasses which contrasted starkly with his spiky white-frosted black hair. His white medical coat hung on his spare frame like a ship’s sail, and wrinkles on the backside of the coat indicated that he spent a lot of time sitting in a chair, probably waiting for clone bodies to spasm into wakefulness.

“Small?” she asked, rasping a bit. Persephone cleared her throat and was startled at how much phlegm and other material the action produced. Indelicately, she spat it into a nearby basin which seemed to be there for that purpose. “Oh, I get it. Small, yes.” Persephone realized that she could not remember dying, and she frowned as her mind raced, trying to fill in the missing chunk of her life.

“The disorientation is normal,” the technician said, turning around with a plastic wrapped bundle and two folded towels in his hands. He nudged the cabinet shut with his elbow and set the bundle and towels within Persephone’s reach. He sat down on a small padded stool which faced the foot of the tub and leaned back against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. “What can I tell you?” he asked casually. Clearly, Persephone could see, he’d done this many time before and found nothing at all awkward about the setting. She decided to follow his lead. No matter what else happened, her day could not become any weirder than it already was.

“Well Leyton,” Persephone said, reading the tech’s name tag: Leyton St. Genevieve. “Can you tell me how I got here? My last memory is that I was in my Tristan warping in on a Rifter, then the next thing I know, bam, I’m here.” She took one of the folded towels and wiped her face and neck. The air in the room felt deliciously cool and dry on her skin.

“The copy process is like that,” Leyton said with elaborate patience. “The short-term memory locus is lost about one time in three. It’s normal.” He withdrew a PDA from his coat pocket and tapped the screen a few times. Rapidly changing screens of data and images flickered across his glasses, then he looked up.

“You lost,” he said simply, stating the obvious. “The Rifter was a decoy, and three more ships warped in on top of you after you exited warp. Anyway, the entire engagement was recorded, and a copy of the file is in your inbox already. You can review it at your leisure. You don’t need me to recite the details to you, I suspect.”

“No, I suppose not,” Persephone replied with a frown, standing up in the tub and continuing to wipe the clingy goo from her body. The towel had quickly become covered with the stuff. “Thank you, though.” She opened the transparent plastic packet and found a loose robe and plastic sandals inside.

“The shower is through this door and to the right,” Leyton explained without giving himself leave, as he stood and opened the only door in the chamber. “You can’t miss it. Feel free to take your time getting cleaned up and just shout if you need anything, or if you feel unwell. Don’t worry, the shower room is monitored for audio only so nobody will be peeping. You’ll find a change of clothes and toiletries in there too. Take what you need, since it’s already paid for.” He nodded once politely and adjusted his spectacles with a fingertip, then walked out the open doorway, going past the door to the shower and back to his monitoring console.

“Thank you,” Persephone replied quickly as Leyton left. He waved once over his shoulder, then disappeared around a corner in the small corridor.

“Not much for small talk,” she muttered.

Thirty minutes later:

Seated atop a bar stool at the appropriately-named Fighting and Drinking Pub, Persephone hunched over a tablet-sized PDA and frowned at the readout. An acrylic mug of a smooth pale ale sat in a ring of condensation by her elbow. Having showered and washed the last of the goop from her hair (not to mention other more awkward places) she felt human again. The clothing she’d found in the shower room at the medical center was stylishly Gallentean, which meant that she would be appropriately dressed if a gymnastics meet were to suddenly break out at the pub.

Persephone replayed the captured video of her demise again and again, analyzing her defeat from every available angle. No matter which point of view she selected, the video always ended the same way. Four foes sifted through the wreckage of her Tristan, the Well Hello There, and her broken body drifted at the center of a nearby cloud of ice crystals and broken metal fragments.

“Not got that solo kill yet, ‘ave ya?” asked Hap from behind the bar. He stood easily, comfortable in his establishment as he wiped the bar with an old towel. Hap dressed in soft pensioner’s clothes, but the permanent dark red veins in his arctic blue eyes told a different story. He’d opened his eyes in the vacuum of space and had lived to tell the tale. His brown hair was shot through with streaks of grey, like a predator’s summer coat giving way to winter.

Persephone frowned and turned the tablet around, letting Hap see it more clearly. She sucked her breath through her teeth in frustration. “No, not yet,” she said, taking a pull from her ale.

Hap tapped the screen on the tablet and flashed through Persephone’s previous twenty engagements, shaking his head with wry amusement. He snorted softly, like a punctuation mark, and turned the tablet around again.

“I don’t think you’re going to,” he said matter-of-factly. “Not like this anyhow.”

“I’m not quitting,” Persephone replied quickly, leaning forward. “You know that.”

“Didn’t say you should,” Hap said slowly, retrieving another mug from the shelf above the bar. As he talked, he drew a dark-colored brew for himself. “Look at the engagements that I’ve highlighted, tell me what you see,” he said, letting Persephone stumble towards the conclusion he’d already drawn from the data.

“They’re all fleet actions,” she said, scanning the list. “They’re all combat victories, and in every one of them I got the tackle.”

“Go on.”

“And in every one of these, I didn’t fire a shot,” she continued.

Hap nodded and sipped his drink.

“And I survived all of them?”

“So what do you think?” Hap asked.

Persephone quailed and set her own drink down heavily.

“You’re not suggesting. . .”

“I’m not suggesting, I’m insisting,” Hap said firmly, pressing his palms into the bar and letting his weight rest on his straightened arms. He leaned forward. “To Hell with guns. What have guns ever done for you, anyway? It’s not like the ships you shoot at ever go and do you the courtesy of dying, you know.”

Persephone blushed from her cheeks all the way to her collarbones.

“Seriously,” Hap continued without pausing. “You’ll be amazed what you can do with the CPU cycles and powergrid you free up when you stop fitting guns. Go faster, stack on more armor, get some ECM going or something. Just stop trying to shoot at shit, for the love of God. It’s not working and you know it.”

“I don’t know,” Persephone said slowly. “This is weird.”

“There’s nothing weird about it,” Hap said, allowing a trace of harshness to come into his tone. “Fleet tackler is a perfectly valid–and essential–combat role. The facts are, one: you’re aces when you’re with a fleet. Two: you stink when you’re alone. You’re no Hera Darkthorn and you’re never going to be, not at this rate. And three: sooner or later you’re going to roll the dice in your capsule and come up snake eyes.” Hap leaned close to Persephone’s face and held her gaze with his bloody eyes. “Some day, maybe someday soon, the neural scanner’s not going to get a very good look at your thinker before you become frozen meat, and you’re going to be dead.”

Only able to stand that stare for a moment, Persephone quickly looked down at the bar, then to her PDA. In the reflection on the screen she could see Hap stand up straight again and turn away. She looked up.

“I’ll think about it,” she said to his back.

Hap turned around and nodded. Surprisingly to Persephone, his expression had already softened. It was as if she’d only imagined his stern lecture. “Good girl,” he said, smiling. “I’m nowhere near ready to retire, you know. I want you coming here and drinking my ale for a long time to come” He spread his hands. “I enjoy our little chats.”

Persephone laughed into her hand, letting all the tension melt away. She rolled her head around once, brushing her shoulders with the tips of her bobbed hairdo. It felt good.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll have to run this past Mynxee, you know.”

“Tell her it was my idea,” Hap said impishly. “Be sure to tell me what she says to that.”

Persephone gathered her PDA and stood up, then pushed her bar stool under the bar.

“Oh, I will,” she said with a smile.