Talk:Space Princesses
Aurora Citrine Alloces Ovsol-Klystron
About my name
Aurora Citrine Alloces Ovsol-Klystron
What does this tell you about myself? Like all nobility - yes, I can be addressed as Nari but I am also Captain - my name is multipart and meaningful.
Aurora is my given name. That which shines brightly.
Citrine is a reference to the golden-yellow eyes I had even as a newborn.
Alloces is derived from the family of my father, an intellectual from beyond the Great Wall.
Ovsol is my noble prefix, and it is noble indeed. I hardly need to clarify that every title granted during a reign of an Emperor shares the same prefix and every Emperor's prefix is unique. But I can see you don't recognize mine. Is it one of those unusual ones that break this rule, such as those given to the survivors of the Siege of Bataria? Say it out loud. 'Ovsol'. 'Of Sol'. Sol, the star around which humans originated and all but abandoned in the Exodus. Comprehension dawns, I'm sure.
And finally Klystron is my surname. Would you recognize any Klystrons, you ask? Doubtful, unless you go into the history books and find the Galtz-Sonika Affair. We have been one of the House Obscura for a long, long time.
My Story
When I was 11, my parents vanished. The ship they were one dissapeared mid-jump with everyone onboard. An event rare enough to make some minor headlines, but not so rare as to be unheard of. At a stroke I was alone, the last Ovsol-Klystron. I had relatives, an aunt and grandparents, but they were on my father's side - beyond the Great Wall. While I did spend a third of a T-year on the far side of the Great Wall after my parent's dissapearance, this was not to be my home. I was instead sent to school in Luxor, capital of a hundred worlds as an Emperor's Ward where I stayed for the next five years. I have little to say about that time; I made few contacts and fewer friends. I will grant that it was an education, if nothing else. By age 16 it was clear that without a House or a patron I was faced with several choices; join the Fleet as an ensign and hope to one day claw my way up to some small rank, be a petty bureaucrat for a position that needed a title but little else, join the debutante scene and hope to snag someone with rank or money, join the clergy or simply flee back to the far side of the Great Wall.
I chose none of these.
The Klystrons had some wealth stashed away; savings and survivor's pension. That, plus my small stipend I recieved as a Ward was enough for the down payment on a (frankly usurious) mortagage; by age 17 I was the owner and sole proprietor of a cargo ship older than myself, the 413 Rampant Phoenix (a certain subset of Imperial shipping concerns have shockingly limited creativity). Hardly uncommon - many ships are owned by individuals, even if many more are owned by Houses or large commercian firms - but mine was a rare case indeed. As a noble, I could rightfully call myself not just Shipmaster, but Captain. A minor distinction, but an important one in a very specific way - as Captain I could bid on various shipment contracts for the Fleet, even ones to the front lines. These were, of course, the most profitable and I was up to my eyeballs in debt. All was well for five years, just me and as few crew as I could manage moving all manner of military supplies from reaction gasses to flowtanks to livestock to garrison troops (I paid out of pocket to have my ship cleaned after transporting livestock. I paid out of pocket to have my ship cleaned twice after transporting garritroops - never again!).
It was on the eve of the 108th Gran Plemora, that greatest of all celebrations - save only coronations themselves - that marks the once-a-decade creation of another wormhole seed by the Star Forge when my life changed forever. I was transporting a shipment of interface fighters to Ultima Thule, passenger cabins taken up by Monsignor Santagio - an unusual priest who made regular trips through the sector and had found my unflinching atheism a challenge - and the sisters Lasalle - the two Fleet officers in charge of the interface fighters and who were a study in contrasts and sibling rivalries - when the message came through. Princess Zarya had been on an inspection tour and was returning to the capital for the Gran Plemora when reavers stuck her ship. We were onboard the only ship less than a day's travel away.
The rest is, as they say, history.
I had never expected to actually go to the Gran Plemora, but there I was. My beat up transport limping into a parking orbit, portside cargo shell still torn open from where I'd rammed the reaver across its engine deck, surrounded by gleaming, gold-skinned ships of the Guard - a Crown Yacht, the princess having paid me honor for her rescue.
What comes next is legend.
The Great Wall
It should not come as a surprise that an entity such as the Phoenix Empire has its eras of strength and eras of weakness. It was during one of the latter - the 7th century - that raiders from beyond the Great Rift were striking with unprecedented range into the Empire, tying up a disproportionate amount of the Fleet to stymie with what were, in truth, pinpricks. All this changed with the ascension of Emperor Khartu the Younger; the 72nd Gran Plemora was a decidedly military affair. Khartu the Younger stunned many of the assembled nobles when he announced where the new wormhole was to go; directly from the star system of Reunion - the heart of the Fleet itself and a single wormhole transit from Luxor - to the very edge of Imperial space in the system that became known as Bastion, to be a bastion of civilization against the darkness beyond the Rift. Aggressive raids across the Rift were coupled with massive static constructions, eventually erecting a wall of blast-cannons and hyperdetectors stretching across a hundred lights.
Khartu the Younger never saw this come to completion, of course - he died under 'mysterious circumstances' less than two decades after coming to power. It is likely however that if those who arranged these mysterious circumstances had been forewarned the identity of emperor who would come after him, they would have wished Khartu the Younger a long reign. I speak, of course, of Martianis the Crusader, the 'Mad Emperor' who launched a half-dozen crusades against the heretic and deviant and most importantly, those who were not paying all their due taxes to the Throne. Dozens of Great House Domains that had become all but independent by the late 6th century found themselves very much Imperial possessions by the end of the 7th.
For his part, Martianis (who was completely sane his entire life) died peacefully in bed after a half-century in power. His successor was Empress Oxianne who spent her reign reconsolidating the Empire and putting it on a course for the golden age of today. As for those beyond the Great Wall? The Rifters were able to evade the defenses, for a time, but eventually it became more trouble (often lethally) than any possible wealth. And so they found other amusements.
Today the route from Reunion to Bastion is still under Fleet authority, with a bare handful of ships passing daily. The Great Wall sector is poor and Riftspace is even poorer (or so it is believed, anyhow . . .) and the Empire has seen fit to leave the Great Wall as a permanent border, its massive automated fortifications cold and silent. On this side is Civilization, on the far side is genetic deviance, faithlessness and anarchy. For their part, the Rifters trade some and smuggle some into the Empire
The Rifters and I
My father was my primary caregiver. He was also a Rifter. My mother called me 'her little rifter'. Growing up on the edge of Imperial space and cocooned by a loving family I had no idea what this would mean in the future. School as an Emperor's Ward was difficult. I had attitudes and opinions and habits that weren't even frontier, some were downright foreign. Alien. My first fumbling attempts to fit in with the others were failures and I soon learned that I would be left more alone if I were weird and antisocial instead of trying to be a good little Ward. I paid just enough attention in the various classes for social graces to avoid administrative opprobium.
Departing school and striking out on my own was liberating in ways that I cannot even describe. No longer was I 'that Rifter'; I was simply another cog in the Empire's vast economy, albeit one with unusual looks and an archaic noble name. But so long as the cargo I carried or the payments I owed arrived on time, no-one saw fit to complain. I managed to return to my distant family several times, each time returning a little bit richer than I would be otherwise thanks to what I admit were less than entirely legitimate cargoes.
Now? I am to be a courtier, and not just any but a favorite of the Emperor. Among the many, many things I am expected to do is dress up for balls. I have barely worn anything save shipsuits for the past five years. Rifter shipsuits.
The Sisters Lasalle
Sometimes one will be going about their business and from the blue the mind will be for a moment arrested by a queer thought: have I seen this before? What an eerie sensation! Our ancestors gave that moment a name, Déjà vu. It comes from the ancient French, meaning literally already seen. Our noble name LaSalle is of that language too. Fitting, for I imagine that my twin daughters - so alike that you could tell them apart only by the color of the ribbons they wear in their hair - inspire that sense of Déjà vu, in the people they meet.
The thunder in my ears, the flicker of blackness at the edges of my vision.
In my chair I am naked against space, stars all around. Not even the comfort of a planet below. The stars race crazily in my vision, like windblown snow
My sister, my family, they wonder how I can do this. Proper little Tahminah, why does she fly a dragoon of all things? Such a low class of fighting.
There is no up, there is no down. There is only infinity. I am suspended between two points in the void. My ship and the enemy.
To take into battle only yourself and your rude mechanical servants. To fight in atmosphere, without even the honour of seeing your opponent. Almost helpless against the large vessels of the enemy. An outmoded form of war, not fit for true noble spacers. A dragoon delta. Too small to be a space ship, too big to have even the primitive pomp of a lightweight. Hybrid troops. The worst of all things
I am not alone. No one else was foolish or qualified enough to come out here with me. Around me are my weapons, automated combat systems slaved to my fighter. One is ahead, two are behind. Fire reaches out from the reaver craft ahead. The lead drone dodges frantically then explodes. It dies to get me close. I jink, right, jink left, jammers filling space with electronic ghosts, decoys trailing away. DSM leave the racks and spiral ahead. I pour in behind them, angling my ship for the shot on pirate's forward turret.
They don't understand. They don't understand the feel of a fighter under you. Of knowing your life and your death are in your own hands. They wonder how good little Tahminah can do this. They should ask why she does anything.
I squeeze the firing stud. The fighter vibrates to the beat of the guns. "Enemy point defence destroyed! Phoenix, You're clear!"
This is only part of my life where I am truly in control.
Cavalry and Dragoon ships
In space combat there are really types of combat ship. The ships of the line, cavalry ships and dragoon ships. Ships of the line are the ones people are most familiar with, the large battleships of the empire's main fleets of war. They are fierce fighters but suffer when they are asked to fight against raiders and pirates, or when they are not arranged in the proper formation, when asked to scout or to protect commerce, to hunt down bandits or raiders.
For these tasks the Empire calls upon Cavalry and Dragoon ships.
There is no higher honour than to serve upon a ship of the Imperial Cavalry. Riding through the space lanes, defeating raiders from beyond the wall, guarding merchants and in battle attacking enemy ships before they can deploy into line, the cavalry are an independent and flexible arm. There is no higher honor than to serve among the Empire's cavalry, and no finer fighting force among the stars.
Dragoons are a second type of rapid response, one far less well regarded. They are small STL battlecraft, ostire in their quarters and amenities, carried by larger ships into system to be dropped and fight. Often used for internal security policing, but also to rapidly deploy forces to hold a defensive line, Dragoons have a rather bad reputation, often being the dumping ground for the worst crews, worst quality supplies and worst transports. They are a strange hybrid breed, with the glamour of neither starships nor atmospheric fighters. Rather they are court in between, doing work from holding defenses to carrying out ground strikes, from ICBM interception to boarding work and customs patrols.
Lieutenant William de Brightstar
Princess Aleida Saegusa Macbeth Phoenicia-zel-Zarya, 8th Princess of the Phoenix Empire
"Ultima Thule Sector. Fewer than five reaver related incidents annually on average for over seventy years. Then, a significant rise over a period of three years starting six years ago. Repositioning the Imperial 8th Fleet home base in response to the threat was your proposal. I'd thought for a while that you were just creating a bit of busywork to polish up the veneer on your job, Admiral, but it seems you are more sophisticated than I originally suspected. Was I already hated enough for plots against my life to start by the time I was a girl of fourteen?"
The princess inspected the pistol, working its action and even peering, childlike, down the end of the barrel before removing the magazine and leaving a single bullet in the chamber.
Admiral de Newerth did not reply immediately, mouth hidden behind gloved hands and ample beard. Then he said, "the clerics fill our lives with storied lies and meaningless trivialities. But hidden within the Book are fundamental, undeniable truths. I hold your position and my service to it in the greatest honor, your highness. But though you may not know, there is a curse that flows within your blood. Your very existence is-"
"-a mistake," Aleida sighed. "You mean that I am the 'Tin Princess'. Because I was not born from the womb of my mother."
"So you knew..."
"Oh please. Nothing makes us nobility seal lips like potential scandal but you should have stopped treating me like an idiot by this point."
"I suppose that is true."
"I would never have taken you for a zealot, Admiral," the princess continued, putting the gun on the table between them. "It's disappointing."
"It's never a comforting thing, to be hated. My affairs are in order, your highness, and this time you have been lucky. But how long will that last?"
"Are you worried about me? You shouldn't be. I am a very lucky person. For example..." she leaned close. "Isn't it quite lucky that someone moved the VI carrier squadron's independently contracted shipment of interface fighters upschedule by two weeks?"
The admiral's eyes widened. "Impossible. You couldn't possibly have-"
"Let me tell you something, de Newerth. As a general thing, I don't mind being hated, feared or loved at all. However, for those things to happen because of a circumstance of birth is quite different from through one's actions or ideas. One of those I do find comforting while the other is objectionable. Unfortunately, our language has a single word for it without distinction."
The princess stood up and picked up the gun.
"However, even the church has taught me at least one thing, and that is that nothing of value comes without earning it. So those things I will earn. I promise that, by the end, what exactly I am will be a question bequeathed only to academics. I'm sorry, admiral," she said, raising the pistol beyond his reach. "I know it's rather rude of me, but I do need the practice and I trust your affairs are in order."