[OPEN to civilians] mod plot | sacking of olympus: merchants' voyage

[unplug]

CHARACTERS ▶ Civilians aboard the Dowager
LOCATION ▶ The Gates of Olympus, at least to start with
SUMMARY ▶ Entry text features several backtag-friendly hooks that summarize 48 hours of travel and the arrival to Olympus. Feel free to start your own threads! Two more threadstarters will be added: 1) the 'sacrifice' thread, as the RNG was completed tonight (6/15/15) and Kitty was selected; and 2) the debate among crew and passengers of the Dowager about what to do before the Zion Defense Grid arrives.
WARNINGS ▶ PG-13 to R for non-graphic descriptions of violence
NOTES ▶ This is the civilian part of the Sacking of Olympus plot.

▶ Sacking of Olympus Part I

Travel Time ◀

[It's only a two-day journey, and these civvie hauls are very different from any Zion Defense Grid mission. To the taste of most people, it is considerably more pleasant. Sure, the Dowager is small, but you get used to close quarters in Zion. The crew is small and accustomed to their diversity of roles; passengers only have to share rooms if they're cheaping out, and it's not hard to find a bit of engine crawlspace or a crate serviceable to sit on in the supply hold, if you desperately want privacy.

For those who mind company less, Bullet sits them down to dinner both nights, pretends not to notice Old Man Willow tipping moonshine into every willing cup, asks lots of questions but not the kind that would bother most people, obviously just looking for an opportunity to tell stories. She's shipped out to Olympus seven times in the past year, thinks it's gonna make her rich. She warns Anya that Antiochian kids are going to be the real bastards for discipline, but somehow the Irkallans are the most beaten-up to look at, will fall quiet at the faintest sharpening of a word. Perhaps misunderstanding, she gets into telling Stephen all about the beautiful boys that came into Olympus last month, before inquiring savvily with Benji about the cost of a custom crew tattoo, you know, like a logo, and she's already got some good ideas, not noticing her pilot Xerxes making throat-cutty-no-no motions behind her.

Bullet doesn't prod Bloom and Driver too much, but she ends up asking Kitty how old she is and if she prefers blonds or brunettes, so. that's. weird. she doesn't even drink.

The best part is probably the food. For one thing, it's not the infamous ZDG protein slop; for another, Bullet has no objections to Willow asking Kitty for advice or a helping hand in the narrow galley. He explains that they take a quarter of their fees from produce and food supplies. The time passes quickly, and after the first day, even Xerxes, Willow, and the taciturn gearhead Quartz start to get to talking too, about the constellation of farm lights in Kosala, vegan silk, pirate gore, and of course-- Olympus.]

Final Destination ◀

[Most of the subterranean human civilizations of Earth are like Zion, fortified holes in the ground, like massive burrows that bear little resemblence to the cities of old.

Not Olympus. This section of sewer system had run through miles of intermingled granite and limestone, which no doubt would have been converted to a mine at some point in the impending decades. That is, you know, if humankind hadn't suddenly and spectacularly lost the war. Olympus is a city in the old style, taking advantage of the massive series of inter-linked caverns that ancient sewer engineers had created long ago. Neighborhoods consist of squat, simple, but strong buildings bricked out of coarsely hewn stones, its boulevards in concentric circles emanating from a central square. Mines and processing factories are cordoned off into neat industrial sections, like wedges of a pie between the newer residential areas. There's no farmland and every boulevard is lit as artificially as the next human settlement, but it had its austere, nostalgic loveliness.

Had.

From the city's open gates, the Dowager passengers can see that the light rising from the city is too orange for electric lamp-light. Something's very wrong. Of course, there had been signs earlier: no response to the hails on the comms. Then the wreckage. If the bulbous, black drones scattered below her front lights aren't telltale sign enough, there are also broken APUs, damaged barricade tech, an exploded transport there, and a couple human corpses so thoroughly dusted over they're almost indistinguishable from the ruined metal.

You'll have to be at a port side window, to be the first one to notice the blood-red sign REAPER painted on an upturned chassis, right before Bullet gives the order.] Turn off the goddamn lights! [She hisses, her voice already bitten back with restraint, despite that nothing functional seems to be within range of auditory detection, and these drones don't look as efficient for the hunt as Sentinels.] We're going cold, now. Xerxes, take us--

--On it, ma'am. [And at the same time the ubiquitous mumble of the engines abruptly cuts down to near-silent, the Dowager's lights go out.

Except for the eerie firelight glowing through the bridge viewport, and the faint swarm of insectoid silhouettes high above the city skyline. The pilot ducks the Dowager down behind a mound of rubble still bristling with sparking electrical wire, in hopes the guttering remains will provide cover and disguise their residual heat signature. At first, those in the bow might think the fritz of electronics outside is throwing static into Xerxes' comms console, but it's not too long before the educated tech can tell: there's something jamming their signals.]

Comments

[cestrumnocturnum]

Benji turns a look past her shoulder, uncertain. "Soon," is all she has on her offer, steering her attention back down on the woman laid up on the crates.

Maybe her floaty dystopic drapery of clothing has pockets. Except it's all blood spattered and torn, or sliced to expose her arm and much of her torso, so it might get thrown out. Benji's execute decision involves kidnapping one of William's hands for the purposes of pressing the beads into his palm for safekeeping. "Make sure she has these back when she's awake," she says, a slight hesitation bracketing the word 'awake' -- she is, awake, but not awake.

"I'll see if I can find someone to hook her into an IV. Is there anything else I can get? You?"

[boffing]

William is not entirely himself, probably, because it takes him a rather long few seconds in silence of introspection before he thinks to say. "Yes," his eyes snapping back into focus on Benji's face. Gratefully. "Water, I think. You should have some too if you haven't." As medical facts go, this is a good one to know. You ought to drink water, if and when possible. "I should--

"Oh I'll come with you," William adds, realizing. "I need to wash my hands." They've been on about that. Minimizing risk of infection. It seems like an awfully long-term concern right now, and it slides out of his thoughts every time the ship gives a little jump or rattle (as it does now) (constantly) (and there she goes again) but the doctor had been adamant.

William gets up. Casts around briefly to figure out what to do with his bandage roll, and winds up looking hopefully toward her flowy dystopian drapery. He has the more regular, boring dystopian pants-and-shirt, and his pockets, fairly numerous though they are, are full by now. Absurdly, it's this riddle of where to install the remaining medical supplies?? that finally brings out the question: "Have you thought we should have stayed the fuck home."

[cestrumnocturnum]

Really she thinks someone ought to stay with the lady, but William needs to wash his hands and that sounds sensible enough. Benji takes the bandages from him -- exchange for the bracelet, maybe -- and makes sure it won't unravel.

There's a sharpness in glance towards that question, a crooked half-smile, wry and rueful both. "Do you know the terrible thing?" she responds, voice pitched a little quieter. "This is the first time in a long time I've felt like I am home.

"Not that I want bad things to happen, just that, you know, bad things always do. And I'm used to being among them."

[boffing]

The bracelet's small beads click together when William decides, after a brief flutter about whether or not to wash it too, to wear it instead. It'll be safe there. Won't fall out when he goes scrambling around his pockets in search of more gauze or tape or whatever else he has going on. Realizing she's keeping her voice down, he ducks his head slightly and squares his shoulder up near hers, falls into step. He'll probably go back to his patient once his hands are washed, but until then, it's nice to have a breather.

"It is bloody terrible," he says, after a long moment. "But I think it means you're the right w--person for the job.

"Fucking disaster zone born and bred, eh?" William's cocks a brow, even as he stops just short of body-checking a man bringing in a child with blood smudged all over her forehead. He can't tell if the blood is hers or not. "Was it as big as this, the last cluster you got out of from your Matrix?"

[cestrumnocturnum]

She should probably correct that. More. The trip ups over pronouns. No one's paying attention, anyway, but that's equally why she doesn't. Her hand alights on William's elbow when he steps out of the way of someone's personal hell, and keeps it there companionably, like reassurance for. Either of them.

"Not every day. But I remember triage, like this, the first time I was old enough to help. They'd draw red crosses on the foreheads of the people who couldn't be saved."

They were still alive when it happened, if hanging on by a thread. Benji had wondered if they'd understood. "When I left, things were quiet. Not in a good way. We weren't winning."

[boffing]

"Christ. Red crosses." That's an image that starts him looking back over his shoulder for the woman he was bandaging a moment, needlessly.

But all in all, William allows himself to be steered with no protest. The opposite of protest. He's easily steered, even though he knows the way, to the narrow lavator with its greenish-hued lights and its incomprehensibly long garbage chute and peculiarly large sink. Now he knows why the garbage chute and the size of the sink big, he supposes. It hasn't clogged in all of this, and people have been pouring down everything from bits of skin to accidental jewelry, burnt-off hair, whatever residue's been collecting at the bottoms of the sinks.

He thinks to ask: "Who was 'we?'"

William turns on the faucet before realizing he doesn't know where to get cups or anything.

[cestrumnocturnum]

"The Ferrymen."

Benji is thinking the same, and she touches William's back -- brb -- to go solve that problem while he washes gore off his hands. It's absurdly difficult, but eventually, she finds where someone's dragged out much of the kitchenware store from the Dowager's supplies, and returns with two canteens, which seems sensible. She goes about filling one, trying not to think about the run off that's washed down this sink before.

Talks about home, instead. "Or, you know. People generally, like me. Who were like me. We had superpowers," she finally clarifies, without euphemism, which always sounds silly, anymore, like she believed a stupider dream than most people. "The design of things made it less and less legal for us to exist freely. There were battles, sometimes."

[boffing]

By then, William's hands are squeaky clean, white as fishbelly. He dries them off on a square of recycled paper, which I'm just going to go ahead and assume we have in a roll, okay, I know it's not the most environmentally friendly thing but it can't possibly be the least, either. It's more sanitary than reusing any rags around.

He smiles at her gratefully before accepting his cup. It's a throwback to a culture long dead, that he bobs his head and lifts it slightly in thanks, before turning to hold it under the running faucet. It fills quickly enough, and then he's moving out of her way. "We had people like you in my world," he answers. "Uh, I mean. Well all the kinds of people you are, I guess. People helping refugees, and people who've got powers.

"People who fought." A beat. "I guess you're only two for three now." He takes a measured sip of water, like he doesn't really want to, but he's the one who came up with this bright idea anyway so he must.