a bit Edgar-focused, for a Shale episode, but I’ve been digging up lore while writing in this setting. and I wanted to link the two time periods better. also I decided he’s fine with either name for reasons you will find out when I finish writing that one
contains: young living weapon, nonhuman (canine) whumpee, found family, and references to slavery being both legal and encouraged in this setting
•••
The floor of the new training room is a different metal, with a trail of mats the Captain hops awkwardly across to get to the back of the room. To his armour. “Rowan, are you serious?”
The centaur, the very tall centaur who looks like the stars outside Shale’s wind—outside Captain Edgar’s window, shrugs. “Gold conducts mana, and you told me I was going to give Shale a magic lesson while you painted, Yan.”
The Captain sits down, organizes his armour, and puts the colourful metal buckets in order. Keeps them on the big mat. “Sure, and you were so distracted by me willingly asking about magic that you forgot how I stack my armour.”
Magic lesson. The Weapon broke a trainer, and its new one is a centaur bigger than any it’s ever dealt with. All the centaurs on this ship are big.
“Heavies are bigger than standards,” it says. “More expensive, too, so we’re only really found on agricultural planets and astral mining ships. And I’ll be fine, seedling.”
“Look—” he touches the floor with his bare hand, and it feels nothing. No thoughts, no magic, just the nothing of being in an empty room. The blank, empty sense of the Captain spreading to it. “If something happens, you’ll be okay.”
“I—” it doesn’t lick its muzzle. Nods. Keeps its shoulders straight. “The Weapon will defer to your judgement, Captain. Sir.”
“I get what you mean, Captain Astrum, that is definitely uncanny, sir.” It thacks its hoof on the floor. “Fuck, now you’ve got me doing it.”
It looks at the Captain. Steps up to him when he gestures for it to.
A hand lands on top of its head, and the calm silence settles in. “Kid, take a breath. What’s he feeling?”
Pulling away, stepping back onto the floor, it says, “Anger, frustration.”
“And who’s that pointed at?” Rowan asks. “Find the line between you and me, Shale. Tell me five things you can see.”
The Captain is wearing loose, white pants stained with blue and yellow and red and black. It can see purple stripes all the way down his arms and on his chest, not just the ones on his face.
Five things. Five things. Captain Edgar is one thing, but he’s important.
“Kid,” he says. “Five things is to get you remembering who you are, not a summarized report.”
Oh.
It looks at Rowan’s thoughts while he explains what it’s actually meant to do.
The tangled mess of thorns isn’t a wall, or a snare. It’s a tangle, closing in on the things underneath. What’s hiding?
The vines weave tighter—
Silence.
Silence.
The Captain takes his hand off the floor.
“Yep,” Rowan says stiffly, “that’s some concentrated mana. Now, can I show you how to ask for information, or do you want to try something else?”
“Ask?”
He taps at its shields, curious and open. Wanting to know if it’s watching what he’s doing.
All it is is reaching out, offering a thought, carefully watching the edges of someone’s… someoneness and wandering under the cover of the first trees. The first few landmarks of another’s mind.
But some are water, and some are metal, and some are echoed sound. How does it know how far to wander?
‘Who is Captain Astrum? Why did Rowan talk to Edgar the way The Weapon does?’
“Captain Astrum the Sixteenth,” Rowan says quietly, “was the man who owned this ship before him. Captain Astrum the Seventeenth is Ianuarius.”
Yan, he calls Edgar.
Names can be collected. Why does Captain Edgar have so many names?
He doesn’t have to manually scrape off the paint, but stripping red and black and gold off the purplish grey metal is more satisfying. Like the weeks he spent recycling almost all his grandfather’s sets of armour. Stripping swirling, starry patterns away.
Ianuarius sighs. Dips his brush into the right shade of blue.
They serve a better purpose now. The pain they bring is temporary: a gateway to freedom instead of a preview of what’s to come.
And he took a break.
His pirate phase was spraypainted armour and the freedom to kill slavers. Painted like a snake and pretending to be someone else for a change. The next time he sees Picea, he’s buying them a—
Oh. They have a bank account. Fae are legally sapient, now. There’s six? Eight? He keeps forgetting the number. It’s been five most his life.
They still don’t trust the law, but to be fair, they’re a freeborn pirate whose prey is slaver ships, and he doesn’t trust the law much either.
“Captain!” Shale squints at a cup, and it launches into the ceiling. Chattering its teeth at the thing, it tries again, and again, and again, until Rowan tells it to take a breath.
“Magic’s tricky, kid,” Ianuarius says. “Throwing it’s better than what I can do.”
“But I’m—” it looks down at the floor, staring through its paws. “But The Weapon is better than this, sir. It’s supposed to be competent, and—” its voice cracks— “failure is not competence.”
“Not knowing your own strength isn’t failure,” Rowan says gently. “That’s normal enough, and maybe the way I do things isn’t the way that works for you. That’s okay, seedling. We can figure it out. Do you want to try gardening? I heard you like the gardens.”
“Or we can paint,” he says, when it stares blankly. “You can paint with me.” It’s not like he’s doing much more than waiting for paint to dry, doodling blue flowers on the wall.
It paints in blue. The same blue, trying to copy him.
Rowan sits down next to Shale, and picks green. Not the pre-mixed green, but a carefully chosen shade that reminds him of the gardens. “What’s your favourite colour, Shale?”
It tips its head. “Why would a weapon need a favourite colour?”
“Same reason an asteroid miner does,” he sighs. “To remember the world has good things in it, too. To get to the next day.
“The first time I saw green,” he says softly, “real, living green, I was with the Captain.”
Ianuarius closes his eyes.
“I was almost sixty, then, around his age, when he was sick of—” trying to fix the centaur ration issue but the website was still broken and he just wanted to give up and cry but they needed him— “just dealing with the most frustrating thing,” he says softly. It’s such an understatement.
“So I marched right up to him and gave him a solution he didn’t want to hear.”
Shale takes in a sharp breath, claws scraping on the floor. He doesn’t open his eyes to look at it. He doesn’t want to see it scared of him.
He can’t see it scared of him.
“It was the only option—” it was a thing they’d been doing in secret for decades— “and he hated it. So he went to the gardens, and brought me with him.”
“And I agreed with you,” he whispers. “I lied down in the grass, staring up at a rowan tree, and I told you you were right.”
“He listened,” Rowan says. “I thought he’d kill me for it, but he listened. Lying in the green, kid, and there was so much green.”
“Purple,” it says.
“Hm?”
“Captain Edgar has purple stripes,” it says, tapping its nose to his cheek. The paint on his armour is dry enough to cover in white flowers, now.
“I like his purple. Because it’s his,” it says. Hesitates. “Do you like purple, sir?”
He shakes his head, mouth dry. His hands are steady while he paints, though, and that’s what matters.
“The blanket you gave me is purple, and the bracelet beads, and—” it keeps talking.
Purple is a genemod burned into his bloodline. Purple is a history he only learned about because his grandfather died, forcing him to end his studies and meet horrors he was only vaguely aware of.
It is the hair he dyes black and the stripes that still make the old crew flinch, if they’re tired. The main colour in Captain Astrum XVI’s armour, and the old enforcer uniforms.
But it’s good, to the kid. Purple is safety and comfort.
alien puppy!! (a Shale POV version that continues to bedtime)
contains: living weapon whumpee, rescued whumpee, nonhuman (canine) whumpee, young whumpee, telepathic whumpee, fear, (referenced) shock collar, human caretaker, and caretaker new master
•••
The alien in the weapon’s quarters is scary. New. They feel… empty, like if it looked away, it’d forget they ever existed at all.
Might be a mind-wall, but mind-walls usually let something out, and it’s never seen a mind-wall it couldn’t crack. It’s good enough to scare some of the testers (and handlers) into punishing it.
“Orders?” it asks, when the inspection seems to run too long. Flinches.
Yesterday, it was shocked for speaking out of turn.
Its new handler (Empty-handler) doesn’t seem to care, just orders it to eat and gives it a new command. “Heel?” it asks, because it sounds like what heel is. They accept it.
They get it cleaned up—its fur is soft, now, didn’t know its fur could be that soft—and tested by Gabriel, who is not a sir but a Dr.
Named by Gabriel, who doesn’t ask Empty-handler for permission, but is granted it anyway. She barely tests it, but it can’t say that to a tester. Maybe it’s a behaviour test. Maybe it has something to do with the ‘blood sample’ she takes. But, either way, it gets to know it passed with a sticker on its new sticker-chart.
There’s probably a file too, but it isn’t allowed to read those.
“Heel,” they say. “Now, we don’t have a free room for you, and I’m not keeping you in the brig, so you’re staying in my room. The Captain’s quarters. It’s too big for me—big enough to fit Atlanteans for accessibility reasons, but we’ll need to see the quartermaster for supplies.”
The ‘quartermaster’ is a familiar alien. One of the tentacle ones. Large and purple-black, with one eye in the centre of her face, and the tentacles dangling from her head have gold undersides. Like Empty-handler’s fur, only… not.
“Captain Edgar.” She telepaths surprised-pleased. And— ‘Stay out of my mind, little dog. It’s rude to pry.’
No shock?
No shock. It presses a hand to its neck when no one is looking, hoping there isn’t a camera. No collar, Captain Edgar still has it in his pocket, so hopefully he’ll forget about it.
The weapon is shown a room with stuff. Pillows and blankets and clothes that are too big for it, but it doesn’t matter.
Weapons don’t need clothes. The scaly ones that walk like it don’t need clothes either.
It puts on multiple clothes that don’t have enough arm-holes and are too big. The Quartermaster promises to ‘tailor’ the clothes to fit it.
“Pick what you need, and put it in here,” Captain Edgar says, pointing at a cart. “Then, we’ll bring it to the room and get you settled.”
It picks a basic cushion and blanket. He sighs, putting two extra blankets—one heavy, and one fluffy—and a couple extra pillows in the cart.
“Sir, with all due respect, the weapon doesn’t need—”
He ignores it, adding eight things it doesn’t recognise and a piece of rope to the cart.
“Anything you don’t claim is getting sold, Shale. And it’s good to have extras.”
Slowly, reluctantly, it adds an interesting blanket to the cart when he isn’t looking. Puts a similar, less interesting (but softer) blanket in too. If he takes one away, it’ll still have good blankets.
They go up to his room.
The bed is a large pillow. There’s even a smaller pillow on the floor. “Dandelion, my dog, used to sleep there, or curled up at the foot of my bed.
“You’re welcome to sleep in either spot, and we can set up a nest if that’s more comfortable.”
Either spot. Either spot, and one of those spots is on a handler’s bed. It’s never even seen a handler’s bed. It looks….
Its new bed isn’t a vaguely fluff-stuffed sack with a thin blanket on top. It’s a real pillow, rectangular, with a nice soft border around it. With its new blankets…. The weapon suppresses a buzz, keeping itself as still and calm as possible.
Letting its new handler know it likes the bed will make him use it as leverage.
Across from the beds, there’s a fabric hanging over the wall. Covering it completely. It doesn’t know why.
“Your dog, sir?”
He shows it a picture. “Non-sapient companion from my ancestral planet, Earth. Er… non-thinking. Less intelligent.”
“Like me.”
“Your file says otherwise,” Captain Edgar says. It must, since it’s been corrected for thinking too much. “You can crack mental shielding?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll get you set up with lessons from Hex about telepathing appropriately. Cracking shields is, according to what I’ve heard, painful, so you shouldn’t do it unless….”
According to what he’s heard, it thinks, with no small amount of horror. Not experienced, heard. It hasn’t experienced it either, but it’s strong. It can’t even see his mind-walls.
How much stronger than it is he?
How much stronger than it is he?
“Now, would you rather go to bed now, or after a proper tour of the ship?”
If the tour—can he hear it think? It can hear simple thoughts, even if they aren’t telepathed, but it’s strong. If it can’t hear that, he—
Is still waiting for an answer. “The ship.”
Wrong answer. If the tour takes too long, it might not get enough time to sleep.
But it’s too late to say no, so it just follows him. It likes the cafeteria the most, which has nothing to do with the non-ration food Captain Edgar gives it. The bone looks like one of the things it didn’t recognise before.
The gym is nice too. All the stars in the window……….
How long has it been since it’s seen the sky? It can’t remember if it’s ever seen it, struggled with the words until Captain Edgar….
“—Shale?”
It jumps. “Sorry, sir, I—”
“Hey, easy,” he murmurs, scratching its head. Running his hand through its fur. “Do you want to keep stargazing, or do you want to play for a bit now that the tour is over?”
“Play.” It’s the safe choice, even if it doesn’t know what it is. Choosing a punishment makes it hurt less. It—
Pulling at the rope with its teeth, it thrashes its head to get Captain Edgar to let go. Draws a touch-sight illusion of his hands dropping the rope—
He twists it out of its mouth while it’s distracted. While it’s expecting him to be confused.
And they do it again. And again. And again. And again, until it learns he isn’t distracted by illusions and starts winning the rope.
“I don’t think I can tire you out before the day-cycle,” he pants.
Its legs are sore. Its jaw hurts. But if its new handler isn’t done with training, it’ll work until it collapses. It says nothing.
“You win, Shale. Playtime’s over, we’re going to sleep.”
It manages to get halfway to the Captain’s quarters before tripping over itself. Before Captain Edgar picks it up and carries it, clearly fed up with its struggles.
Gently, he sets it down on the half-sized bed at the foot of his bed. Pushes aside the fabric to reveal a window filled with stars. “There you go,” he murmurs. “Today was a lot, wasn’t it? Now you should to sleep, and I’m going to check your file to see if there’s anything I missed about getting you to sleep—”
“The weapon has no sleep command,” it says. “Would you like to—”
“No. Not happening. There is nothing I want less than to have to give you permission to sleep every night, kid.” He drapes a soft blanket over it. “You like stars, don’t you?”
“I do, sir,” it says. It feels wrong to say, but he already knows, so it isn’t revealing anything this handler couldn’t already use against it.
The soft blanket, the one draped over it, is covered in stars.
Shale waits for Captain Edgar to fall asleep, and waits another couple minutes just to be sure. His mind is as silent asleep as it is awake.
Curling up, tucking its snout into its fur so its speech is muffled, pulling its mind-wall up as high as it goes, it chokes a tiny, quiet, “Thank you.”
contains: child living weapon, canine living weapon, panic attack, bathing/washing, a muzzle, conditioning/deconditioning, vomit mention, parental captain, and all the soft I could fit
•••
The Wea— Shale sits on the floor in front of the Quartermaster. Tips its head.
‘It’s just a harness. I just need to make sure it fits—it shouldn’t hurt,’ she telepaths at it. “Put your head here, please. Good, thank you. Mid-arms through here…. Yes. Good.”
Mana adjusts the straps around it instead of arms. Over its shoulders and around its stomach. The material is soft, padded. Not heavy: it’s a comforting weight, like the calm-blanket Captain Edgar gave it.
“Kid, run down the hall until you reach storage, then walk back,” he says.
The run is slower than it’s used to, but the harness stays on, and it’s a forgettable weight. The storage room is big, but the distance to it isn’t much. It’s back pretty quickly.
“Status report.”
“I—The Wea—” it flicks its tail, irritated. “The weight of the harness reduces its—my speed, though not significantly. The arm slots have ample room, and the storage will likely make me more effective. I do not have any complaints about the material,” it reports.
Does not stare at Captain Edgar and listen to Quartermaster’s surface-thoughts to get a sense for how he’s feeling.
I do not have any complaints. The words, its words, imply it might complain about other things. Hint at the Weapon’s….
The words are tainted with insubordination and rebellion. It cannot revoke the words.
It cannot unspeak them.
“That’s good, Shale. If that changes, I’d like you to mention it.”
“Kid, stand down.” Edgar lunges for it— “Weapon, stand down.”
He grabs the handle on its harness with a mud-slick hand, dropping to hold Shale properly. Pries its mouth open with some effort.
Tracker’s tail is bleeding. The venomous barb wasn’t punctured, and the Weapon restrained it so she couldn’t sting it.
“Are you okay?”
“The Wea—The Weapon did not intend to— It—it—” it ducks its head, eyes clamped shut, taking choking, gasping breaths that consume its body.
Trembles, little scales fading in and out of existence, and he can barely pick out the words— “disobedient—will not happen again—it’s sorry—will make sure to comply—sorry—”
He leans on its side, breathing deeply and audibly. “Breathe. Breathe, kid. It’s just a bite. You’ll be okay. Tracker will be okay.
“Tracker will be okay, and we’ll learn why this happened so we can work on fixing it. Not yet, but once you’re calm.”
Eventually, eventually, its breathing settles. It still trembles, watching him, but he gives it a peanut butter bite, and it seems to understand he won’t punish it, even if the fear is still there.
“Do you want to lay down for a bit, or wash the mud off?”
“The bath, sir.”
It stiffens before leaning into his touch. Presses the top of its soapy head into his chest while he rubs shampoo into the fur on its neck. Buzzes, softly.
Dr Gabriel can’t touch its neck without it closing its eyes and tensing, but Shale lets out the tiniest whine when his hands move down to its shoulders.
By the time it’s ready to be rinsed and dried, it’s less on edge. Doesn’t flinch when he trips over the ramp and curses himself for putting it there.
Shale eyes the small metal cage in the Captain’s hands from its place on his bed. “What is it, sir?”
“A muzzle. You said running reminds you of chasing people down, right? That it’s hard to tell the difference?”
It does. It hasn’t run in weeks, and suggested a tether in case it sees someone else run.
“It’s soft, on the inside, and it’s got four little screws you can put in to suppress your magic, in case you get overwhelmed or triggered by people’s thoughts. They go in this pocket on your harness, but I’ll carry spares just in case.”
He puts it on.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now take it off,” he says.
It reaches up, with shaking hands, and undoes the buckle. Hesitates. Does not get hit. Does not get shocked. Does not get whipped.
Hesitates, looking at Captain Edgar.
Slowly, carefully, it removes the muzzle. Gives it back to the Captain. Gets a reward.
Gets a reward.
“Sir, why is the muzzle removable?”
“I want you to think before biting,” he says, fluffing the fur on its chin. “I want you to use it as a tool to remember biting is not your first option, and I want you to be able to remove it if you rethink it and decide biting is the right choice.”
It places its head onto his lap. “The Weapon may not be able to—”
“We’ll work on it. Good job, kid.”
It does not buzz loudly at that. It is perfectly dignified and professional and the vents make weird noises sometimes.
He brings it to the cafeteria, and gives it a big bowl with peanut butter on top. And a turkey neck. And is something it has to work on, rather than choking down the whole thing at once.
Which is good, because it likes tasting things. Its fur is shinier, it’s gained some weight, and it’s….
It hasn’t jumped up to the Captain’s bed without permission, but it could. He wouldn’t hurt it, and there aren’t any thoughts in his head: he means what he says.
In the beginning, he said it could sleep on his bed.
They go out to the hall. He puts its muzzle on. “Go run five laps between here, the garden, and the gym.”
“The Weapon can run sixty-five, sir.” It would vomit on the final lap and collapse from exhaustion, but it could. It has run that much before.
“Ten,” he says firmly. “If you remove your muzzle, stop. If you get tired, stop. If you get thirsty, there’s a water bottle—”
“In my harness, sir. I am aware, you showed me. It even has a straw!”
“Yeah, kid. You can stick it through, if you want, but I’d prefer if you stop to drink.”
The muzzle is…. The ability to remove it makes it less effective, but it doesn’t tell him that. Just runs, snapping at people who seem to be running away, but the muzzle doesn’t let it do anything more.
By the fourth lap, it’s aware of the urge to bite, and by the fifth, manages to stop itself from snapping at two different people.
Shale crashes into its Captain, and presses its head into his leg. “No causalties.” it reports, shoving the straw in its mouth and taking a long sip. “Thirty-one attempts. The muzzle is functional, sir.”
“Good job, kid. I love you,” he says. It would do anything to hear that. Ten laps is nothing, fifty laps is nothing, seventy laps is nothing, compared to the way his voice goes soft and special and just for it.
“Thank you, Captain.”
They play tug-war to help it feel successful. Like it caught something, the Captain says, but it doesn’t really care about the reason.
It gets to play tug-war.
It gets to win tug-war, and get told it’s strong and crafty and good.
Play makes it buzz. Play makes it buzz loudly, bobbing its head in anticipation.
The Captain could ask it to do anything, to push itself past its limits until it’s sick and wheezing and pathetic, and it would do it for play and affirmations and gentle hands. It tells him.
“I know, kid. I’m sorry.”
It brushes against his leg. “I love you too, sir.”
Naming an evil organization is a thing I had to do
contains: whumpee rescue, living weapon whump, nonhuman (canine + alien) whumpee, young whumpee, dehumanized whumpee, shock collar, caretaker new master, and blunt caretaker + doctor caretaker
•••
Captain Edgar finds XenoTek’s weapon in a cell. A filthy, cramped cell.
It scrambles away from him, tucking itself into a corner, hiding under a thin blanket on a sorry excuse for a bed. A long snout pokes out, and one eye stares at him, tracking him.
Small. The weapon is small.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says gently, taking a protein ration out of his pocket. Its nose twitches before he can struggle the wrapper open.
The weapon sits like a dog. Right in front of him. Stares.
From here, he can see it’s thin, maybe too thin, and definitely an alien, but not one of the Five Sapients. Probably a new one, screwed over by a lack of tech or magic at first contact.
He’s never seen it before, so it must be a new species.
A dog, or close enough, with a long snout, dusty grey fur, and a tail that might be the length of its body. It wears a collar, and a pair of brown shorts. It’s filthy. Just like the cell.
“Orders?” it asks, when he’s been quiet for too long. Flinches, ducking its head like it shouldn’t have talked.
“Eat,” he says, and watches its long mid-arms peel the wrapper carefully before it practically inhales the ration. “Now, with me.”
“Heel?”
“Sure.” It walks on fours. It looks like a bi-quad, but it’s been trained to walk on fours.
The halls are silent. Dead guards aren’t known for being loud.
“This is my ship,” he says, watching it give a little jolt when it steps through. “Our janitor gets pissed when we drag outside’s mess inside, so we’re going to the showers.”
A blue slime nicknamed ‘Stabby’ for convenience, the janitor is not against arming their fleet of cleaner bots.
Stabby is also not against giving the cleaner bots a target. His ankles learned that the hard way, and it’s only fair to spare the weapon from that.
He sets up the ramp at the pet washing station. Doesn’t think about how the last one to use it was Dandelion, Edgar’s golden retriever, who died in her sleep.
The weapon is bigger than she was, but still reasonably dog-sized.
“Can you take that off?” He asks, when only the shock collar is left. It stiffens, pressing all of its hands to the floor. Tips its head down.
Its fluffy tail curls around its legs.
“Sorry, sir, but I—the weapon is not allowed to touch it,” it chokes. “The collar may only be removed by a handler for maintenance, and then it is replaced with the spare.”
“Fine.” He reaches for its neck, and undoes the clasp. It’s easy, anyone with hands or mana could remove it. Shoving it in his pocket, he ruffles the fur on its neck.
“Come on, up you get.”
It hesitates, slowly lifting a mid-hand before pressing it back against its chest and scrambling up the ramp. Sits still, and doesn’t make a sound while he works. While he reveals the mossy greens speckled over dark fur: a pattern buried under months of dust and neglect.
It doesn’t shake the water out of its fur. Lets him towel dry it without making any noise at all.
The only bit of protest he hears is a soft whine when he pulls Dandelion’s hood over its ears to protect it from the blow dryer. He pulls it off. “Hey. It’ll be loud,” he tries. “Would you rather listen to a loud noise or wear the hood?”
No answer, but its eyes flick over to the hood.
“You have my permisson to speak freely, Weapon.”
“The hood, sir.”
His earpiece beeps. It’s Tracker. “Hex tried to telepath you again,” she says. Of course xe did. “We found a file you might want to look at.” Of course they did.
“Send it over. I’m in the ship: found a sapient, but no weapon.”
“New species, right? Great mana, which means—” she pauses. Sighs. “Right. Sorry. Forgot you’re null.”
Most humans are. Makes magical healing impossible, but illusions don’t trick him, so it’s a fair trade. When humanity joined, as the Third Sapient, they had to invent categories beneath low mana: neutral mana, and null mana.
Great mana, to a null, just means to be careful of flying objects. Null mana, to a great, means an inability to read emotions and, according to Hex, a disturbingly hollow feeling.
To him, it just means having everyone try and explain a sense-that-isn’t-a-sense-it’s-an-energy-flow he doesn’t have.
And, again, being immune to magic.
Being immune to direct magic.
He sighs. The not-dog maybe-weapon is a great. It looks up at him, nervously, and he tells it to walk with him again.
To the medbay.
“That’s a rock,” Dr. Gabriel says. She’s right. It is a rock.
He sighs, pressing his hand to the layered, moss-covered surface of the rock. Not a illusion. That much is clear.
It also didn’t leave his sight. At all. So it must still be here. Where the rock is.
“Come on,” he grumbles. “If you stop being a rock, I’ll hold your hand.”
Reaching into a drawer, Gabriel pulls out a sticker sheet. “Look,” she says. “See these? You can have one if you let me look, okay?
“And, every time you do well, you’ll get to pick a new sticker to put on this chart—” she pulls out an empty sticker chart.
The rock gets covered in fur. It slowly turns back into a curled up creature, who pokes its long snout out. “What’s a sticker, sir?”
“Doctor,” she corrects, “call me ‘Doctor’ or ‘Gabriel’, not ‘sir’. This is a sticker. Pick one, and we’ll stick it to the chart right here. Can I have your name or would you prefer to write it yourself?”
“The weapon has no name sir—er, doctor.” It still points at a sticker. A sparkly purple star.
“I’ll call you ‘Shale’ until you pick something else, then.”
It looks at him. He shrugs. “It’s your name, not mine. Makes no difference to me if you pick ‘Shale’ over ‘Weapon,’ so you might as well try something new.”
The exam is going well enough, so he pulls up the file Hex sent him—luckily, telepathing a file isn’t possible, so xe sent it the normal way—and works his way through it.
Even if he’s generous, reading it as if Shale is an actual dog, it’s cruel. Inhumane. A working dog should be able to trust its handler.
According to the tests, it’s equivalent to a drake four year old, so a human ten year old.
Shale is ten.
There are no vaccination records for Shale—or, as the files call it, ‘Project Werewolf.’ As a species—specimen?—with Grand mana, vaccines aren’t strictly needed. Healing spells work well enough.
But, to protect humans, they’ll need to come up with vaccines that are safe for it. Which takes time.
“Sir, the wea—” it pauses. “The tests are done. I have been deemed acceptable.”
A quick glance at the chart reveals a new sticker. The medical file Gabriel sent says it’s malnourished and has some electrical burns from the shock collar being used incorrectly.
contains: living weapon, conditioned whumpee, shock collar, rescued whumpee, training tapes, retraining, flashback/panic attack, unreliable narrator, parental caretaker, and some warm comfort
•••
Shale’s training tapes are classified, and while Edgar does outrank Gabriel, he’s not dumb enough to ignore her reccomendations.
He’s not dumb enough to watch the tapes she barred him from.
Shale, a tiny, fuzzy thing at that age, whining, because the captive bound in front of it screamed, and it doesn’t want to see them in pain.
Chasing down those who escape, killing, but having to be shocked into torturing. Into interrogating.
Slowly learning to cause pain to avoid feeling it.
Slowly learning its emotions aren’t wanted.
Slowly learning—
His communicator buzzes. He breathes, taking a slow, damp breath before answering.
All of that, and there’s still so much he hasn’t watched.
All of that, and he hasn’t touched the tapes Gabriel barred him from.
Shale sits across from Hex, the atlantean with yellow-orange skin and purple-black on the inside of xyr arms.
Yesterday, xe looked different, but xe’s still the same person.
‘Now, can you reach for my mind?’ The question is telepathed, and it tries to do the same.
It tries.
It reaches, squeezing xyr shields, feeling them resist, feeling the prickly feeling of mental defenses that inevitably crack and crumble under the weight of its power.
“—Stop.”
It doesn’t. It knows what to do, it knows not to listen to its targets, it—
Isn’t listening to its instructor.
It isn’t listening to its instructor.
It stops.
Seconds too late, minutes too late, it stops. Ducks its head. Senses xem leave.
Xe’ll come back. With tools.
Its collar is gone, but there are other ways to make it listen.
Maybe the collar will come back, worse than before.
It isn’t trembling.
It isn’t trembling.
It can’t tremble, it’s a weapon, the Weapon, and weapons don’t tremble. It cost too much to be discarded, and—
The trembly-feeling comes out in little pinecone spikes on its underside, and it lays flat to hide them.
There aren’t any minds around, but there will be, there will be, and it’ll hurt.
The Weapon curls up on the floor, and imagines the comforting touch of the Captain’s hand combing through its fur. Imagines a bracelet being slid onto its wrist. Imagines being picked up, body pressed against him while its tail drags limply along the floor.
Imagines being placed on something soft. Imagines gentle words. Imagines…….
When nothing happens for an hour, it lifts its head.
It’s on a Handler’s bed, the Captain’s bed, and its his hand combing through its fur. It’s whining. It stops whining.
“The Weapon did not intend to abandon its training, it—”
“I carried you, kid,” he says softly. “Hex called me. Mana burn can heal, and you can always try again.”
He holds out a snack in his hand, and it takes it.
Hums a quiet song to it, until it curls up around him and falls asleep.
Edgar sighs. Removes the magic suppressant from its wrist. He’ll have to supervise training from now on. The kid trusts him, which means he’ll have to delegate more until it learns to trust other people. Or ask Gabriel to watch it.
When it wakes up, he brings it to the kitchens, gets a small unpainted cup, and smears peanut butter on the sides. Fills it with whipped cream, tops with blueberries, and hands it to Shale.
A pup cup.
“Thank you, sir.”
It licks the metal surface clean, sticking its nose all the way in to get the last bits out.
The cup is still attached to its snout when it looks up, and it awkwardly pulls it off. Licks its muzzle to clean it.
A long, nervous pause. “The Weapon was informed it could ask for food outside of mealtimes. May the Weapon…?”
contains: young tortured whumpee, gore, slavery, alien whump, caretaker new master, a caretaker inheriting whumpees from a whumper, and mild eugenicist thinking? I. in the form of family angst?
•••
A cell.
The broken thing is in a cell.
The young, bleeding thing taking wheezing breaths in their sleep is an orc.
Their primary right eye is a bloody socket.
Their secondary arms are broken, their blue skin is covered in lash marks, and the collection of horrific tools hangs from the wall.
Captain Ianuarius Astrum curses his grandfather. Curses his own bloodline all the way back to the unmodded people who never even left earth, and curses himself for being so fucking naïve.
He’ll dye his hair black. Tattoo over his stripes. Change his name. Remove every damn trace of his ancestry from his life, because being nobody is better than being related to someone who’d do this.
They don’t wake up. It’s night, their species is nocturnal, but they don’t wake up.
With numb, trembling hands, he takes his new keys and unlocks the shackles. Stays with Gabriel while she treats their wounds. They wake up.
Of course they wake up, making soft sounds and curling up and mumbling something that sounds like “Please.”
If his grandfather wasn’t dead and buried, he’d murder him with his bare hands. The man who taught him old family recipes bought sapients.
The man who showed him how to sail the stars tortured this kid until all they could feel was pain.
The centaur quarters aren’t as bad. Iron chains, but no major injuries.
“Where…?” A dusty pink centaur asks, voice hoarse. He doesn’t want to think about why it’s hoarse.
“Dead,” he says softly. “A countergrav malfunction that killed most of command.”
Sabotage, he thinks, but doesn’t say.
Astral ore refining ships, especially ones like C Class Designation 1187 E635 4872, The Stars Endeavor, don’t need many in command. Just enough to keep the unofficials in line.
“You’re nuller than iron,” a midnight-purple centaur says. Stiffens, when he tips his head.
There are fourty-five keys. Fourty-five keys, three of which are used here. He fumbles with them and curses and hands them to the first centaur to deal with before following the map to a different room. Finding more people. Repeating the same damn process with different keys.
One of the centaurs follows him. Midnight.
“Keys,” they say, at the fourth person in the sixth room, when his hands tremble too badly to use them.
He sits on the floor. Rips off his helmet.
His hair, undyed, is wretchedly purple. The same heritable purple gene his great-something grandmother bought, the wonky one no one bothered to get fixed, that affects all the keratin down to his nails.
Astarum purple. From the Astral Ores Mining Company, which created the surnames Astrum and Aurum and Stara.
The exact same purple as his grandfather, who tattoed himself with blue-pink stripes and got a heritable mod for the gene.
Ianuarius Edgar Astrum—Captain Astrum, his newly-inherited title a bucket of sand under his skin—sets his forehead onto his armoured knees, and lets out heaving, choking sobs.
“Astrum—”
“Edgar.” He stands up. “And I have to keep—”
He doesn’t. The keys are physical. Anyone can use them, but only legal sapients can make purchases. He lets Midnight free the rest and buys mass-produced blankets and supplies for his crew.
He calls Mel. They’re nearby, and can help modify the ship.
The orc flinches when they see him. Edgar breathes. He breathes. Humans are null, and orcs have bad eyesight.
“Easy, easy, breathe.”
“M’sorry, Captain. Sir,” they mumble. “I should’ve listened—”
An awful, painful sound claws its way out of his throat. “It won’t happen again. I don’t care what you do, if anyone hurts you, they answer to me. I’ll deal with them, kid.
just a short one, for now! comments & rambles help me write this series, since I don’t have as many ideas for it
contains: living weapon, rescued whumpee, young canine whumpee, and as much softness as I can fit
•••
Shale looks at the stars. There’s so many of them, up here, and it can sit out of the way of the blinking lights and switches and dials.
The blinking lights are like stars too, but….
Looking back at the stars, it notices a trail of blue and red lights blinking. Tips its head.
“That’s a ship.”
It startles off the counter. Claws scrabbling at it, it tries to get back up, but only manages to pull a tangle of blanket and pillow down.
“Here,” they say, pulling the blanket free. Two of their—he’s one of the tentacle ones—two of his arms have lines on them, and are longer than the others.
‘They’re stretchmarks,’ he telepaths. ‘From healing spells, so they’d grow back faster.’
“My name is Mango.”
“The Weapon has been given the name Shale,” it says, picking up the pillow with its secondary arms and hopping back up. Is it permitted to share its name?
It isn’t sure, but this is Captain Edgar’s ship, and everyone on it belongs to him.
If he allows it to have a name, no one can revoke it.
“Ships are required to have a specific set of lights, so they’re easier to spot. Even if the radio doesn’t work, or if the ship’s crew is all humans, you should be able to spot it.”
“Human, sir?”
“Like the Captain, or Doctor Gabriel. They don’t have a drop of mana, so they can’t scan for life or be seen on life scans. They’re immune to it.”
It will never be strong enough to crack open Captain Edgar’s mind, but he will never be able to read its. Ever.
It looks back at the stars. Edg—Captain Edgar brought it a fluffy blanket, cleared a spot no one was using, and let it watch the stars instead of making it stand at his side while he works.
Why? It isn’t training, it’s the opposite of a punishment, and it isn’t like it’s a test. He doesn’t—
“Kid?”
It looks up.
“Did you have fun stargazing?”
“The Wea—I learned about ship light regulations, sir.”
Edgar looks at the kid. Looks at Mango. Looks back at the kid. “That’s nice. Now, do you want to visit the garden or the gym?”
Visible hesitation. He forgot the garden during the tour, but Shale might like the plants. And the little critters that are necessary to maintain the environment. It’s more like a giant terrarium or a little wildlife area than a garden, really.
“What is a garden, sir?”
“It’s a place full of plants. On this ship, it’s like a little forest. Might be a nice way to get you used to being on-planet.”
Opening the door, he watches it sniff at the air. It tips its head, buzzing like a beehive.
Plants. The kid has never seen plants before. Has never seen moss. Has never heard birdsong.
It digs its claws into the dirt, stretches, stops at every plant just to look at it, and stares at a moss covered rock for a long moment.
It runs. He doesn’t try to keep up, just watches it race past him, running in loops until it crawls back, panting heavily, and sinks its body into the mud at his feet.
“I’m going to read, kid. You aren’t on a time limit, and you can visit this place whenever you want.” Mel fixed the issue with its profile (the one where he and Dr Gabriel both made one) so its tag is functional, and its keycard is low priority.
It curls up on his lap while he reads.
His lap ends up covered in mud.
It gets a nice, warm bath to get all the mud out. Leans into the touch, just slightly, while he works the soap into its fur.
Accepts the peanut butter bites he offers it before lunch.
I just wanted to write how they met. also vent my feelings about being woken up by a smoke alarm this morning. this one might be a bit rough. I’m still tired but. want.
contains: interrupted sleep (+ sci-fi time system), pirates, cyanide pill (technically), sci-fi fae, miscommunication, caretaker new master (technically), unwanted touch (brief), and references to/implications of slavery being common & legally enforced
•••
Captain Astrum XVII hates pirates. Hates them. The damn boarding party is lead by an atlantean in black armour and a Pandoran orck in grey.
Boarding his ship is more than suicidal.
But they weren’t dumb enough to board the Redemption, no. They boarded the Lucifer, a B-class ship running an errand.
They boarded the Lucifer at twenty-three standard hours, waking him with screeching red sirens. He went to bed at three. Humans need more than FOUR HOURS OF SLEEP.
“Good morning!” The pirate says, cheerfully. The lights flicker on to full brightness. There’s something wrong with their armour. “Now, are you going to hand us your commanding officer and your cargo, or are we doing this the hard way?”
Every member of his crew reacts by refusing to surrender their captain.
Refusing to surrender him.
Perigrine lunges for them, metal talons prying at their armour. “Fuck you,” xe snarls, swatting a Pandoran orck with an armoured wing. “Some random fucking pirate latches onto our ship and you—”
There’s something wrong with the atlantean.
“I’m only here for your commanding officers,” they say. “The rest of you are free to make your own choices.”
Ianuarius sets his shoulders. Right.
Fine.
Fine.
Gritting his teeth, accidentally cracking open the too-sweet poison capsule, he sighs. Hits his chestplate with a sharp clang. His crew stands down. Perigrine still lashes xyr tail at the pirates. “I’m King-Captain Astrum.”
The pirate Captain stiffens, and one of their arms reacts first. It’s always the same one.
Their armour is wrong. There’s no chest seam or port. Atlanteans get overlapping chestpieces, to put food and water through, and if they don’t, they have a feeding tube, but there isn’t a port for it. The only way for them to eat would be to remove the chestplate.
No atlantean would wear armour like that.
“You’re not an atlantean,” he realizes. “You aren’t a legal sapient, and you boarded my ship to kill me.” They don’t answer. “Am I wrong?”
Someone in the boarding crew curses loudly.
The Redemption warps into comm range, and the Pandoran orck curses louder.
“Let my crew go.” The Captain’s voice is hard, growling. “I’ll stay behind. But let them go, or I’ll detonate the bombs we planted on your ship.”
“Mom—”
“I’ll go with ‘em,” Hawthorn says. “Might as well give them a better bargaining chip.”
“Fine.” Ianuarius waits for—the orck—their kid to deactivate Hawthorn’s chip. “You stay, they leave, we struggle to disarm the bombs for a couple hours in case you’re lying.”
He waits with the other captain until their ship disappears into the void.
They don’t speak, staring blankly into space.
Without their armour, they’re a faerie in very good condition. Better than he’s ever seen. Their exoskeleton is pearlescent white, and the unarmoured skin is a deep, shiny red. The ‘arm’ that always reacted first was their trunk, wrapped around in such a way as to stick out the right way.
Their antennae aren’t cropped, their main arms were hidden inside the armour, their smaller mid-arms are intact, and their wings are perfectly healthy. Useless, compared to a male’s, but they’re several times larger than one.
He touches their left wing, lightly, and it twitches. “Sorry,” he says. “You’re healthy: maybe a little underweight, but that could be a supply issue.”
King-Captain Astrum removes his helmet, peels off his gloves, and examines them. Muttering quietly while their upper armour just sits there.
Yes, their trunk is longer than it should be. It was magically extended to suit their disguise. They don’t want to hear about how weird it is to still have their smaller set of arms.
His fingertips brush over their wing. Wings aren’t intimate, for fae, but touching them without setting proper terms is…. They’re still delicate. Still sensitive.
It’s rude.
“Sorry.” He unlocks their restraints. “You’re healthy: maybe a little underweight, but that could be a supply issue.”
Their wings buzz. Getting rid of that lingering feeling.
“You’re freeborn,” he says, “aren’t you?”
They nod. “Yessir.” It’s a habit they broke so many out of.
They forgot to put a clause in there, where the King-Captain would never go after their people. They forgot.
Their name is gone, though. They made a deal with Theo, that if they got captured, their name would stay with her. For safekeeping.
They liked that name, whatever it was.
“Atlanteans have different armour,” he says, letting them put it back on. “It fits you well enough, but it’s not the best metal, and I’d rather you have something you can properly move in than something that hides your species. But we’ll try both.”
“What?”
“Right. I’m going to be honest with you, Captain. I need a pirate to do what I can’t, and I’d rather ally with someone willing to sacrifice themself to save their crew than someone looking to make a quick buck.”
They take a transport with him. C-class ships are far larger than their B-class one, and even they have public transit. The Judgement is large enough to be self-sufficient if adequately supplied, but any sort of blight is enough to compromise that.
There’s a reason they’re classed as semi-independent.
“So you want me to do your dirtywork,” they say. Being a King’s pet pirate might work in the short term, but it’d be so easy for him to betray them.
“I want you to hunt down slavers, and I want to suggest ones you might be able to kill. I want to get you better armour, better weapons, and transfer you members of my crew who don’t want to stay with me.”
“Do what you can’t,” they say, thinking it over.
King-Captain Astrum runs a hand through his hair. “Yes. I have to be polite to slavers at the markets. You have to hunt them on their ships.”
“But I can’t go to the markets, and you can’t kill them without risking your crew.”
The forge is a massive industrial operation, through the window, but they end up in a simple room.
“I can’t make a binding deal, with you, so I won’t ask you to bind yourself to that agreement through someone else. But… think about it.”
Ianuarius measures the faerie Captain, inspects the armour, and ask where they got the metal from.
“A scrapped ship. My…. My daughter’s armour is better quality. I— She’s more hot tempered, and I wanted to protect her.” He drops a metal ingot into their hands. “That’s….”
“Astral gold,” he says. An alloy of gold and thaumir, but only Astrums and Aurums can make thaumir alloys properly. It’s part of how he makes enough money to run the ship.
High quality thaumir alloys are expensive, and his family has a monopoly.
The mining operations were scaled down, but the simple, consistent form of income is good for them. Well, that, and some of the crew wanted to return to mining when given better conditions.
He sketches out two options. One adapted to suit the Captain’s species, the other based on atlanteans.
They workshop it—the mismatched limbs are difficult to balance, and they’re insistent on the disguise. It needs to be able to fool Ianuarius, so they’ll look convincing enough even if they can’t pull up an illusion.
They’re good in a forge. Of course they are. They worked poor-quality materials into decent armour.
Of course, since their arrangement is highly illegal, they’re working with thaumir-sodium, and coating the inside in astral gold. Cheaper. More believable, and will stop their magic cutting out if they touch a null in a fight.
“King-Captain—”
“Edgar.” Not his business name. “I’d like you to promise to use my middle name or something else. Connecting our agreement to me, is….”
They nibble on their antennae with their trunk, and it takes a while for him to get that they’re grooming their face. It takes him a bit longer to understand that it’s a nervous behaviour.
“Picea,” they breathe. “That’s…. Fuck, I need to comm my daughter and tell her I’m okay.”
“Alright. If you have a forge at home, you can continue working on it. I’ll get you some more metal.”
He can hear their daughter’s furious shouting on the comm while he works on filling a crate. Captain-elect Prometheus, apparently. They sigh. “She melted her comm again. Could you…?”
Astral iron deflects magic, like water off a beetle’s waxy shell. He adds it in.
