PrincessColumbia

  Dinner arrived at the commander’s table shortly after, Diane noticing that the crew had likely broken out her private stash of Morvish foods and beverages to provide the meal. She couldn’t have named half the foods, though from the other Morvuck’s reactions, it was some choice food indeed. The taste matched their reactions, and conversation quieted as everyone dug in.

  Eventually, enough food and drink had been consumed for conversation to resume. Caitlynn wound up regaling them with a description of one of her most recent missions, “People tend to look at the Merchant Marines and think, ‘Oh, I’m just guarding a cargo container? How boring!’ But they forget the history of shipping and how sometimes the flow of goods and services can alter the destiny of an entire pnet! So then ter they’ll think a merchant caravan is easy pickings for some quick loot drops and so they’ll stage an ambush or try to py pirates...and that’s where we come in.”

  Diane found herself practically enraptured with nearly every word her fellow pyer said. Caitlynn was obviously well read, though had a bit of a disdain for the purely academic if Diane was reading between the lines correctly. Her grasp of in-game politics far outstripped Diane’s by a wide stretch, and it sounded like Caitlynn had been pying long enough that Diane suspected she’d been part of the public beta for the game.

  “So, what happened?!” Sani seemed just as taken with Caitlynn as Diane, though more in the, ‘this person is a human that sounds as cool as my childhood heroes so also is even cooler,’ factor than Diane’s obviously hormonally driven reaction.

  Caitlyn smiled across the space in front of Diane at the younger Morvuck, “I studied what had happened when raiders tried to do the same thing as the bandits on the old Silk Road.” She noted the uncomprehending looks on the faces of most of the people at the table, “The Silk Road was a trade route in ancient times on pre-space-age Earth. It went from a superpower on one end of Earth’s rgest continent to a collection of smaller kingdoms on the other side of the continent and cut through some pretty dangerous and uninhabited areas of Earth.”

  “Ah,” interjected Leki, “A fancy name for the trade route, like the Terra, Erzadi, Ts’kolkush route is called, ‘The Diamond Chain.’”

  Diane had never heard of this ‘Diamond Chain’ before, but clearly Caitlynn had, “Exactly! So this idiot just assumed his Commander’s Ability would trump anything else on the battlefield, so he decided one little trade caravan was open season. I used the oldest merchant trick in the book to beat him.”

  “What’s that?” asked Diane, just as invested as Sani by this point.

  “I paid off someone with a bigger gun.” Caitlynn could spin a story, that was for sure. She had just answered a question with a statement so vague as to not actually answer the question at all.

  “You paid protection money?” asked Koar.

  Caitlynn shrugged, “Not really. The st time I dealt with this asshole he called my Commander’s Ability worthless. He’s one of those types of Commanders that thinks you only win if you have the bigger gun,” she rolled her eyes, “Naturally his ability is weapon’s based, where mine is utilitarian. So I dug a little on the current power pyers in the area and paid one of ‘em a visit. I offered to appraise the entire vault of Warlord Arokesh, and if I found something that had exceptional value, then to consider the amount of increase to his bottom-line payment for protection while flying through his space.”

  Now Diane was confused, “Hold on...what is your Commander’s Ability? You’ve never said, exactly.”

  Caitlynn grinned broadly, “It’s a form of psychometry. I can tell you the exact market value and history of an object just by touching it.”

  Diane’s eyebrows went up, “That must be invaluable for the merchant marines.”

  “Oh, like you wouldn’t believe!” Caitlynn gushed.

  “Arokesh,” interrupted Russe, “I remember hearing about them. Good people, if a little ruthless. I heard they overturned a few dictatorships in the area and are in the process of reforming the governments so the noble csses are a thing of the past. Aren’t they from one of the enby races?”

  The merchant marine captain smiled as she took a sip of her drink, an “old” Earth-style soft drink, “Yeah, but he prefers masculine pronouns and terms.” Russe nodded sagely at that.

  Diane heard the three teens next to her whispering furiously back and forth and she turned and nudged Sani, “Hey, what’s with the hushed conference?”

  Kymberlynn blushed, “I...didn’t understand what a Commander’s Ability was.”

  Diane’s mouth quirked up, “Ah, yeah, they’re a little...obscure. Most people only really notice that Commanders can’t be killed.”

  Leki sat forward, “That’s a good point, should we be worried that there’s a Commander operating as a pirate captain out there?”

  Caitlynn snickered, “Not anymore. Turned out the warlord I made the offer to had a couple of artefacts from two nearby worlds that were worth an entire space-fleet’s weight in gold. When the dim-bulb pirate wannabe moved to attack, I kept him on my tail...all the way into the warlord’s space. The so-called ‘pirate’ had his entire fleet blown out from under him. And he doesn’t even have a base or a station, so he’ll be respawning without even the clothes in his bunk.”

  Sani made a confused noise, “What’s ‘respawning’?”

  Caitlynn turned to Diane, apparently just as much at a loss of how to expin a meta-gaming concept to an NPC. Fortunately for both of them, the station’s resident subject matter expert spoke up. “When a Commander ‘dies,’ their body usually disappears,” expined Russe, “Even from a locked and sealed room. Sometime ter, they just...reappear somewhere in the gaxy. Sometimes they’ll reappear in the same pce every time, like a room on a ship. Other times it’s back on their home pnet. The Commanders are calling that ‘respawning.’”

  Kymberlynn seemed to want to ask another question but was hesitant. After the second time her mouth bobbed open in an apparent false start, Sani nudged her and she finally spat out, “Have you ever respawned?”

  Caitlynn grimaced, “Yeah, once. Not an experience I want to repeat. Waking up in my quarters aboard my ship was fine, but getting shot mafia style on my own bridge was not, and then I had to do a Die Hard run to take my ship back.”

  Kaor chuckled, “What’s a Die Hard run? I mean, evocative name, but you humans seem to give everything short names with implied meanings that only one of you,” she nodded at Diane, “Or people raised among you know the full meanings of.”

  Diane grinned at her friend, happy to be the one with more cultural knowledge for once. “Die Hard is a series of movies that predate World War Three. I only saw the first...two? Three?” She shrugged and continued, “The theme is the protagonist finds themselves alone against a group of people who have taken over a building or an airport or even a city and they need to establish a resource network, gather supplies and weapons, and take out the invaders using sneak attacks and guerril tactics. Not exactly ‘realistic...’”

  Caitlynn snorted, “Three was a bit of a joke, honestly.”

  “...but still a lot of fun. Since you like pying Doom you’ll probably love watching Die Hard.”

  Kaor’s grin turned up a notch, “Sounds like a movie night, girl’s night in!”

  Cynthy spoke up for the first time in a while, “How does your Commander’s Ability work? Do you just touch stuff and kinda...know?”

  The ship captain grinned, “Not quite. Now, since you’re not a Commander you may not be able to see it, but...” she reached out to an empty spot on the table and tapped it with a fingertip. Diane saw a callout appear above the table, as though holographically projected. She noted that none of the others at the table seemed to see the callout, all looking at the spot that Caitlynn touched.

  Naturally, Russe was the first to notice Diane seeing something the rest were not. “What are you seeing?” he asked.

  Diane smiled and thought for a moment on how to describe it, “It’s...about right here,” she leaned forward and held her hands out with her thumbs and forefingers extended, framing the callout. She gnced up and saw Leki blushing slightly and very carefully looking only at Diane’s hands and Koar was looking at the ceiling and holding in a chuckle. She realized she’d just given them a bit of a glimpse down the front of her dress and her face heated as she straightened up and tried to subtly tug her dress’ neckline up a little. “It’s got a callout line connecting the dialog like so,” she traced the line with her fingertip from the dialog to the table, “And it has writing on it, but I can’t make it out. It looks all pixeted to me.”

  “That’s because I haven’t given you permissions to view it,” said Caitlynn as she reached out and tapped the dialog. Suddenly Diane could read the text, the pixetion resolving to form words describing the table, a precise market value in several currencies used in the gaxy (not much) and the history of the table…which was pretty much just a couple notes about having been fabricated aboard her station and a time stamp.

  “You’re a Commander, Diane?” asked Leki. Diane looked up and saw the other Morvuck was leaning forward, elbows resting on the table with a pinched expression that Diane suspected was concern.

  She turned to Russe, “You didn’t…?”

  He shrugged, “It never came up, and didn’t seem like it was my thing to share, so…”

  “What’s your Commander’s Ability?!” came an excited teenage voice. Diane turned to see Sani looking at her with an expression that tipped over into hero worship.

  Woah, dial back the intensity, kid! “It’s…not that big a deal. It’s a lot like Caitlynn’s, mostly utilitarian. To date I’ve only adjusted some lights and unlocked a door with it.”

  The warm chuckle that Did Things to Diane bubbled out of the other pyer. “Oh, now you have me curious! I must know what your ability is.”

  Diane shrank back in her seat a little, “I…sing.”

  Russe and Norma had experienced her Commander’s Ability before, of course, so their affectionate smirks were not unexpected. The intrigued looks from everyone else were also predictable.

  Caitlynn, to Diane’s mortification, was the one to ask, “How about a song, then? I showed you mine, after all,” she said with a saucy wink.

  All Diane could think of in that moment was the full mess hall with all the crew and staff that had assembled for dinner. Sure, there were plenty of members of the crew on duty or enjoying meals with their families in their own habs, but there were enough people to fill the building to capacity and include a line that likely led all the way back to Ops. It wasn’t unusual for the staff of the mess hall to have to keep the building operating until 9 or 10 at night.

  And they’d all see her singing...hear her singing.

  She supposed that she had begun panicking, that was the only expnation for having completely zoned out enough that Russe was able to surprise her by gently putting a hand on her shoulder and saying quietly into her ear, “Hey, it’s okay.” At her startle, he grabbed one of her hands and started gently squeezing, simir to how he’d calmed her on the Dragon’s Daughter, “You don’t have to, but just remember that someday you’re going to need to use your Ability in combat. With the attention you’re getting it’s pretty much inevitable. You can say no, and nobody can make you...but you’re going to have to get used to it sometime...why not now?”

  Diane closed her eyes to block out the dining crowd...none of whom were actually paying that much attention to her, despite what her subconscious fears were telling her. Nobody was catcalling or jeering her and, based on how she’d sounded the st two times she’d sung in front of others, nobody would. At worst, she’d forget the lyrics, and after the st time she’d spaced all the musical everything except for the single most embarrassing song she could imagine, took measures to keep that from happening. She turned to him and gave him a grateful nod.

  Russe smiled and stood, offering his hand to help her up. She took it demurely and Caitlynn, not willing to be upstaged, leapt from her chair to pull Diane’s out from behind her. Once she was standing and clearly there of her own volition, Russe let go and stepped back in the direction of his chair, “What’s your song pick, something about being a happy homemaker while your husband is out working to bring home the~ow!” he ughed as she slugged him in the arm.

  She sniffed at him with an air of disdain, “I’ll have you know I’ve been practicing.”

  Norma and Russe gave each other surprised looks as Russe and Caitlynn took their seats. Diane set about ignoring them as she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and released it to center herself. I’m performing for one person, and she’s already positively disposed toward me. Even if I do horribly, it’s just one person. The room may seem full, but it’s not really full of people, it’s not really a room, and I’m not really here.

  To her mild but pleased surprise, she slipped into the mode of being able to see the process threads beneath the yer of virtual reality. She took a moment to ‘gnce around’ to see the other processes and caught sight of Caitlynn’s presence in the same server memory space, right next to hers in the cluster of glowing lines.

  My God, she’s beautiful... Diane almost mentally gasped.

  Realizing she was distracted; she pulled her awareness back into her virtual body and inhaled...

  “I, I will be king...”

  As soon as she sang the first sylble, a piano could be heard, pying in a minor key.

  “And you, you will be queen”

  She heard a snicker from the Morvuck side of the table and knew that was Koar, who never wasted time ranting about how one of the earliest Terran expeditions to Mortan had a male linguist who insisted on transting the titles of ancient Morvish rulers into ‘king and queen’ pairings. He’d gotten into serious trouble and apparently never worked in the field again, though by the time the scandal died down the women of Mortan had tched onto the idea and would refer to influential and dominant women as ‘king,’ especially if they were publicly ‘out’ as progenitors.

  “And nothing will drive them away”

  She opened her eyes and looked around, noticing that more than just her table mates were watching her, she’d attracted quite an audience from the staff and crew tables as well. I’m going to have to deal with this all the rest of the time I’m in the game; Russe was right, I’ve got to get used to it.

  “We can be heroes, just for one day”

  “We can beat them, just for one day”

  A drum kit started pying rhythm along with the piano and Diane took a breath, having reached the end of the verse, and let her gaze go unfocussed as she tried ‘pushing’ with her intentions for the song. Unlike the st time she broke out into song, she had no specific goal in mind other than to perform. She was banking on her ability to control the computer to help her out with that.

  “And you, you can be mean”

  Her dress suddenly turned from bck to red and gained a longer skirt with a floor-to-hip length slit up the side and her arms were covered in red opera gloves. The gss wall seemed to disappear and the ke on the station turned into an ocean, stretching off into the horizon that hadn’t existed moments before.

  “And I, I'll drink all the time”

  Katrina rezzed in already sitting in a chair she’d produced holographically, staring meaningfully in pointed amusement. The corner of Diane’s mouth turned up as she slipped a wink to the hologram, I am coopting her holoemiters, after all.

  “'Cause we're lovers, and that’s a fact”

  The ‘beach’ started shifting, as though the tides were eroding them far faster than they should be. A wall seemed to fade into view, as though being lit from afar, stretching from the water and off into the distance ‘innd.’ It looked not unlike the video she’d seen of the American wall where it dropped into the Gulf of Mexico. She’d never actually been to the wall in person, only flying over it on her one mission south of the border. She recalled the bck line looking like an ugly scar on the ndscape with a quarter-mile of no-man’s-nd on either side. Even as she had the thought, she realized she could make out a simir empty stretch of nd some ways off, as though they were in an outdoor restaurant in some mythical location and time where building that close to the Wall was even remotely a good idea.

  “Yes, we're lovers, and that is that”

  The ceiling disappeared, though only over the dining area proper. The doors to the kitchen and side entrances remained, capped with what looked like weather protection cornices using architectural styling from a century ago. She ignored the susurration from her audience that came as a reaction to the sudden apparent loss of shelter.

  “Though nothing will keep us together”

  The ‘story’ of the strange setting started being told, booming explosions lighting up the sky distantly, far enough away that the thunderous sound was barely audible as background sound. The Commander’s Table was suddenly on a boardwalk, one end of the wooden structure stretching off into the ocean. Diane began moving a bit, trusting the holography to keep her from smacking into the actual gss wall hidden behind the illusion.

  “We could steal time, just for one day”

  Ships started cutting through the water in the distance, barely discernable as warships. The sky lightened enough from the evening twilight to a pre-dawn illumination and battle debris could be seen washed up on the shore. No bodies, that level of realism would be singurly off-putting to a dinner crowd.

  “We can be heroes, forever and ever”

  Badging appeared on her dress, for all the world looking like the rank and identification pins for some non-existent military, like her dress could be some sort of official uniform. A gasp came from the table as Caitlynn’s outfit suddenly changed color to a deep berry blue. On her jacket’s pels was badging that wasn’t quite entirely unlike Diane’s.

  A massive airship of some variety, painted red, flew by with a crest boldly dispyed on the underbelly that matched the badging on Diane’s dress. It was flying to engage a sea-born vessel painted blue, the logo on one of Caitlynn’s badges visible on the hull. Apparently, we’re from opposite sides of a war...a little on the nose, but okay.

  “What d'you say?”

  Diane reached out to offer her hand to Caitlynn, letting herself slip into the role of a femme fatale in a wartime drama. She pulled her date close, and Caitlynn seemed to take the hint and put her hand on Diane’s hip and they danced briefly. Their inexpert movements were nonetheless perfectly fitting with the dream-like setting. Two officers in opposing militaries taking a moment on the battlefield to cim a hint of romance.

  As the piano started shifting from the bridge to a crescendo leading into the next verse, Diane released Caitlynn’s hand and trotted down the boardwalk and expressively spinning on her toes, arms out until she was facing her audience.

  “I,” she belted out, “I will be king…”

  She raised her hand like she was beckoning Caitlynn closer.

  “And you, you will be queen,”

  The other pyer was radiating amused enjoyment, pying along. She stepped in close to Diane, taking her hand again.

  “Though nothing will drive them away…”

  “We can be heroes, just for one day,”

  She pulled Caitlyn close again.

  “We can be us, just for one day.”

  Her hand went to the other woman’s shoulder as she looked down into her eyes. The piano went nearly silent as she started on the next line,

  “I, I remember…Standing by the wall…”

  For just a moment, with the narration of the song and the illusion of the holographic environment and the closeness of their bodies, Diane completely forgot about everything else. She was a strong, powerful woman who was allowing herself to be putty in this other woman’s arms. In that moment she might have sworn to remain by Caitlynn’s side forever is she just asked.

  “And the guns…shot above our heads…”

  The report of distant canon fire came from the pseudo-historical battle that raged around them at a far enough remove that it barely sounded louder than distant timpani.

  “And we kissed…” She found herself bringing her face closer to Caitlynn’s, their lips so close they were brushing as Diane sang out, “Like nothing could fall!”

  She abruptly pulled away, her own heart hammering at how close she’d come to…kissing…

  “And the shame…was on the other side!”

  She was powering out the lyrics now, her voice crying like a valkyrie across the fictional battle.

  “We can beat them forever and ever…We can be heroes, just for one day”

  In that moment, Diane wanted to be the hero. She wanted to wash the stain of all her sins from her and make herself worthy of the woman who had the confidence and power to make her feel like she belonged to her.

  “We can be heroes, just for one day”

  It would take The Second or Jesus themselves to pardon her sins. She’d never be worthy of this woman, if she ever even had the chance, and it was tearing her heart apart as she sang out.

  “We can be heroes,” A tear escaped the corner of her eye as she looked down at the boardwalk at Caitlynn’s feet, unable to really expin what brought the tear about, “Just for one day”

  As the final sylble and musical note faded to silence, the building faded back into existence; the distant ocean horizon repced with the far closer opposite wall of the station. The cloud tempered sky swept away to be repced by the semitransparent dome and support pylons. The two warring armies disappeared, as did their respective opposing colorations on Diane and Caitlynn’s clothing. In moments, the mess hall returned to the freshly renovated cquered wood paneled interior.

  Diane returned to her seat, a slightly awed Caitlynn once again holding her seat for her. She brushed her minidress under her backside and let herself be scooted close to the table, carefully avoiding the stares of her tablemates as the staff and crew in the rest of the dining room appuded the unexpected show.

  “Practicing, huh?” said Russe after a moment.

  Diane turned to see him grinning at her. She took a deep breath to steady the emotions roiling through her in the aftermath of the song, “Yes, practicing. I didn’t want to choke the way I did the st time I used the ability, so I’ve been looking for good soloist songs in the music library. I’ve been working on my singing in my quarters, usually at night.”

  Norma’s smile was bright, “So what was all…that?”

  Diane shook her head and shrugged, “Dunno…I just pushed for something that fit the themes of the song. I think the algorithms got a little creative, that was…almost dream-like.”

  Katrina spoke up from her spot near the end of the table, “It was. I intercepted the holographic environment and passed it through a generative filter to make it more abstract than it was initially going for. Instead of being a dark period piece from Earth’s st world war, you got a fuzzy dream sequence in the style of a music holo.”

  Given the nightmares that some of the veterans still had about World War 3, Diane was grateful for Katrina’s intercession.

  Further conversation was interrupted as a furiously whispered conference took pce among the three teenage girls and Sani, apparently deciding she was the spokeswoman for the group, stood and rounded Diane’s chair to stand next to Caitlynn’s chair with her hands on her hips. “Well, since it’s obvious Diane likes you…like, a lot if all…that…” she waved airily at nothing in particur, “Was even a small taste of it, we give you permission to date our commander. Just don’t break her heart or I’ll eat yours.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Diane sighed with affectionate exasperation, “So good you’re giving us permission to date.”