This wasn’t how Leta would’ve preferred to spend her day, but what choice did she have? The Dionysian needed more med supplies, the captain needed more treatment for his shoulder wound, and she had to help him, of course, before he helped Ren. The circumstances brought her to an infuriating scenario: spending the afternoon with Fiearius.

Leta hadn’t seen much of the captain in the past few weeks — with no complaint from her, of course. While she’d been researching the TTD Baltimore and tending to a few sickly patients (a nasty bout of flu had swept through the crew deck), apparently he’d been busy himself. The ship made several stops on small outer-span planets, and the rumor was Fiearius had picked up a few jobs for decent money. What those jobs were, Leta purposely did not ask. She didn’t want to know.
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Javier had only been aboard the Dionysian for ten months, and yes, he was only a lowly deckhand, but he’d never heard the crew complain quite like this.

In a corner of the cargo bay, the nineteen-year-old sat cross-legged atop a crate, his sketchbook propped up on his knees. He was nearly finished laying down the lines of an aerial view of the Dionysian. It wasn’t his best work, but he rather liked how the drawing was turning out. The Dionysian may have been outdated and antiquated, but she was still crafted of clean smooth lines. As an artist (was he an artist? He didn’t think he was, but Niki had called him one before), he certainly appreciated that. In his eyes, she was perfect.
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Once the Dionysian had landed on Dune, it hadn’t taken much time for Fiearius to dig up information about this guy that Leta wanted to meet so badly. After Leta, Cy and Corra left the ship, he’d gone to the bridge and loaded up the Society database with the intention of only skimming through Arnett Casner’s profile, perhaps confirming Leta’s report on his employment status. He’d ended up reading the whole record. What he found was horrifying enough that it made him wish he’d done so sooner. Ideally, before the doctor, his brother and his best gunhand left to find the guy.

Arnett Casner was a 2nd Division Solutions Agent, Internal Affairs, Vescent.  On one hand, he mostly did the lighter work: he fed the outspoken Anti-Society dissenters into the prison ship system. As a 2nd Division Agent, he didn’t have the execution powers of their 1st Division colleagues. On the other hand, Fiearius had never met one that didn’t want that power. Continue reading →

Early mornings on the Dionysian were Fiearius’ favorite time of day. Admittedly, he was rarely awake for them, but on those occasions when he found himself out of his quarters before the rest of the crew started stumbling about, he reveled in the the quiet peace. It reminded him of the days when it was just him and his little brother aboard the great monster of a spaceship. Before everything became … messy.

On this particular morning, he was settled into a seat in the mess hall which was predictably vacant. Sooner or later, the first semblances of life would start shuffling in for breakfast, but until then, Fiearius was free to lean back, prop his legs atop a table and scribble away in his notebook of logic puzzles to pass the time. No one needed his attention. No one wanted to ask him anything. No one was around to pester him about their own personal dramas. He could just sit alone as the stars flew by the window and breathe easy for a few hours.

Or perhaps not. Continue reading →

The Crystal Lounge was sleek, clean, and crowded. Music poured from the speakers, and the room was dark, with black walls and violet lights. Leta wasn’t particularly enthralled with the decor, however. She was much more captivated with her third whiskey sour and the flowing conversation. The more she drew from the former, the more she drove the latter.

“So that’s why I went into emergency medicine,” she explained to Cyrus, the words spilling from her lips with an unsteady lilt. He listened closely, his glassy eyes reflecting the neon lights overhead as he took another long drink, the ice clinking merrily in his glass. Inwardly, she couldn’t recall how they’d gotten on this personal topic. Actually, it was becoming blurry how they ended up here at all. Continue reading →

[October 1859 – 1.5 years ago]
The study room in the library was quiet and nearly empty, but Ren couldn’t concentrate. As it happened, his textbook on administrative law was probably the worst reading of his academic career, and his attention was fading in and out like a poorly-tuned radio.

It didn’t help that she was sitting across from him.

So it wasn’t the best date idea he’d ever come up with, he thought, as he looked up and frowned at Leta, who was buried in a book herself. No, meeting to study together wasn’t exactly the stuff of epic romance, but he had the sense she didn’t really mind. Continue reading →

It was a scene from a nightmare. One second Cyrus was sitting beside her, drink in hand, and the next, his face went ashen, his eyes slid back and he fell from the barstool with a horrible thud on the floor.

Instantly, Corra screamed his name, and before she could think, Leta dropped to her knees beside his body on the floor, her hand jumping to the pulse on his neck.

“His drink,” Leta breathed in realization. “Something in his drink — ” Continue reading →

The narrow, dirty streets of Genesi were just as miserable as Cyrus remembered. They were supposed to meet Grice in the eastern district, which meant a long walk through the slums first. Children on front porches stared avidly as they passed — and a group of men smoking on the streetcorner whistled and called to Corra and Leta  — but the walk was mostly uneventful.

Still, Cyrus could not help but feel tense. He’d never done this without his brother.

“So,” said Corra, breaking the uneasy silence. “We have a plan here or…are we just winging it?” She caught his eye and added hastily, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that…” Continue reading →

“You might wanna ease up a bit on the throttle,” Fiearius warned, his tone surprisingly calm given the wide-eyed expression of repressed horror on his face.

“The what?” Cyrus barked, trying to maintain calm himself. He was clutching the handles of the main manual navigation system, hunched over in the pilot’s chair and staring out the window at the oncoming planet as if it were the mouth of a beast that was about to swallow him.

And it might as well have been, for how prepared Cyrus felt. After a horribly unsuccessful last job with Goddorra, the ship was approaching a crisis: an injured captain, low fuel reserves, no money; not to mention, no medical supplies to heal that injury. Heading to Archeti was a desperate move, but at least they had a move at all. Continue reading →

The engine was in stable working order. For now. Cyrus stepped back from the churning metallic bane of his existence and sighed. He couldn’t even count the number of times he’d had to fiddle with bits and pieces of this monstrosity just to keep the damn ship afloat. Every other day, something was breaking. No matter how many times he cobbled pieces together, it just couldn’t function properly for much longer than 48 hours straight. Continue reading →