LIGHTNOVELONLINE 218 Magazine
Cold.
That was the first sensation Donovan registered as he stirred from his slumber. His sheets were still warm, they just weren't as warm as usual. This upset him a little bit, even if the reason for it was justified. Diana was currently sleeping with Titanyana, an attempt to console the newly orphaned queen and make sure she didn't do something drastic, like suicide.
"Is everything alright with Diana and Titanyana?" Donovan's sleep had not been disturbed by Arc so he could safely assume that there hadn't been any problems, he just wanted to be sure of that assumption.
"I have not noticed any issues."
"So then everything has gone well?"
"I wouldn't say that. Titanyana still appears to be largely unresponsive, though I believe Diana has handled the situation well."
Donovan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. So long as she was making progress, he could go without a Diana shaped pillow to hold at night. He could go without it every other night of course, he just didn't want to if he didn't have to. Among a great many other things her scent was quite relaxing, which he felt gave him better sleep.
"Time check?"
"Five o one, approximately seven hours until the demonstration of arms is scheduled to start. I will need your assistance in the final phases of the set-up. Perhaps you could arrive an hour early?"
"Whatever you need buddy." Donovan rolled out of bed, peeling off his underwear as he reached for the towel on the bedside table. "Do you think I will have to resort to force? I really need Titanyana to see this."
"Do you believe you would be able to defeat her?"
"All I need is a good hold on her, nobody here has any static strength."
"I understand that, but you need to get that hold first. Do you think you can manage that?" Donovan didn't respond. Truth be told, he wasn't quite sure if he could pull it off. Titanyana was fast, faster than he could really keep track of. "If you cannot guarantee that you will succeed, I must insist that you refrain from making an attempt. I cannot tell what she may do in her panic."
"I'm going to go take a bath. There is a long day ahead of me, and for the sake of Diana's lungs I should probably be making myself presentable. I can't have her screaming at me all day."
"So you've decided to ignore me?"
"I've decided that showing Titanyana that I can keep her people safe will do more for her current state than any slumber party. Who gives a shit if I lose a finger or two? We can always reattach them."
"The concern here is your life, Donovan."
"Nah, she wouldn't hurt me that bad."
"How can you be so sure?" Donovan picked up his neatly folded dress uniform, boots, and parade cap before heading out the door. "Donovan! How can you be certain!?"
- - - - -
Warm.
The heat, while comfortable, startled Titanyana ever so slightly. She was not used to the feeling, nobody had slept with her in bed since she was a small child. She didn't do anything to push it away though, Diana felt very nice to snuggle . . . or maybe it felt nice to be snuggled by her? Titanyana was not the one doing the embracing here, her face resting a few inches away from Diana's chest. The urge to push her head forward into silk-covered mounds was growing, but Titanyana kept herself under control.
"Good morning Titanyana." A gentle voice cooed into her ears. "Did you sleep well?"
Titanyana was pulled closer by Diana, smothering her slightly in the embrace as one of her hands stroked the back of Titanyana's head. This was possibly the most relaxed that Titanyana had been since her experience with Donovan during the party. Excluding that event, the most recent time was probably in the days before her mother's death. Ever since then, ever since she had realized the severity of her people's plight, she had been incredibly stressed out. Who wouldn't be? Who could possibly handle the strain of knowing they are their people's last hope?
"Do you think you will be able to get out of bed today?" Diana let up on her embrace, Titanyana semi-reluctantly pulling away.
"Mm."
Titanyana had an answer to her question, one of those people was laying right in front of her. Diana was dealing with the same issue she was, and her situation was far worse. Despite that, Titanyana could tell that Diana was not stressed in the slightest. Right now, she could actually feel it.
There was no tension in her body. Diana's actions, her words, her breathing, just everything about her was relaxed and calm. She could become tense at times, Titanyana had seen it happen whenever Diana was 'working', yet that tension rarely ever persisted into her down time. Certainly she had broken down once when she was reminded of home, but Titanyana could hardly hold that against her.
Titanyana still had a home to go back to.
Well, she wouldn't have it for much longer at this rate, but she still had it. Titanyana supposed that made her lucky, in a way. If everything went as smoothly as Donovan promised, her home would still live. Her people would migrate. Their numbers would drop precipitously, but she would still have her people, her home. Nekh culture and tradition would, hopefully, persist.
". . . I'm scared."
"I know you are. I am too. There isn't anything you can do about it. Just remember that Donovan and I will do everything in our power to help you. I hope you can find comfort in that." Titanyana pushed into Diana, silently asking for another hug.
"You're scared too? You don't seem like it."
"Hmhmhm! I guess I've done a good job of hiding it then." Diana took a deep breath before continuing. "Titanyana, I'm sure I've told you before, but Donovan and I are alone. We do not, we cannot, trust anybody. Not the Holifanians, not the Arboreal Maiden, not even Gretts. We know next to nothing of this universe's norms, its geography, its power structures. We cannot use split, and we have no military with which to protect ourselves. We are vulnerable, and we are well aware of how disastrous a single misstep could be. I am terrified."
"How do you deal with it then?" Titanyana could faintly feel a quiver in Diana's breathing.
"Isn't it obvious? I have Donovan." Diana squeezed Titanyana harder. "As long as he is with me, I don't feel like everything will turn out alright."
Titanyana remained limp under the pressure, it wasn't anywhere close to making her uncomfortable. If anything, it was welcome.
"We are taking a risk with you Titanyana. We have no guarantee that your people will accept us and our authority. There is every possibility that we could be betrayed but we have decided to trust you."
"Why?"
"Because we are in the same boat. Both of our species are in an existential struggle, one that largely presents us with the same problems, so it seems logical to assume that we will get farther by working together. We already have a plan and the means to resolve the issues in the future, you have the people to bring those plans and resolutions to fruition. Hopefully the experience of going through these tribulations will bind our races together for centuries to come."
Titanyana's ears flattened, embarrassed. She was struggling to come to the very obvious fact that her people really didn't have a plan. The only thing that really worked was sending her out to find help, and even that wasn't much of a plan. Truly, the fact that Titanyana had managed to find someone willing to accept them was heavily dependent on chance, it would have inevitably happened if she asked enough people. The fact that those people had the means to get a numerically significant number of them to safety was solely up to luck. The fact that these people were willing to integrate them into their society as equals instead as part of a subject strata?
Well, Titanyana had to wonder if Donovan and Diana were even real.
"Bind our races . . . " Titanyana couldn't help her mind from wandering. "What do you mean by that?"
"Hm? Oh, I want our people to mingle on every level. I want our cultures to merge, traditions develop, and people depend on each other. I even think that some intermarriage would be beneficial, though I would like for a sizable population of pure-blooded Terrans to be grown first. I think I can handle sharing Donovan though."
"!!!"
"Oh! That reminds me. Titanyana, is there a betrothed awaiting you back home? If not, I would like for you to consider taking Donovan on as your spouse. I think that should solve the potential issues of disloyalty and rebelliousness in the early years. Your people do recognize the authority of the monarch as dynastic, yes?"
"Huh?!" Titanyana's tail was trying to puff up underneath the bedsheets. "W-what?"
"Hmm, maybe this conversation should be saved for a later date. I am curious about the Donovan question though. Thoughts?"
"A-a-a-a-hahha-a, uh, I-I wouldn't be o-o-opposed to it, necessarily. . ."
knock knock knock
"You two up yet?"
"Donny?" "D-Donovan?!"
"I'm going to take that as a yes. The two of you need to be ready to go in about two hours. Titanyana, if you aren't out of bed in thirty minutes, I am coming in there to carry you out myself."
"Don't you think that's a little bit mean?"
"Mean? I'm not doing it out of any sense of ill-will, Diana. She needs to get up and get moving. She needs to see what we are capable of."
- - - - -
Donovan took a seat on the couch of his war room, the 'office' with the 3D projector, with complete disregard for the status of his clothing. It was a formal uniform, sure, but he couldn't be bothered to care. They already weren't being cared for properly by the staff, so trying to maintain a completely wrinkle free appearance was impossible. It wasn't like the staff were being lazy with his clothes either, they just didn't have the proper tools to handle it. There were no rolling steam irons here, and none of them felt comfortable trying to iron out the wrinkles on such an expensive fabric.
His initial reaction to that was, of course, one of mild confusion. His uniform, primarily made of polyesters, hardly counted as an expensive piece. It couldn't be given how many of them were issued on the government dime. However upon a bit of introspection he determined that . . . maybe it was actually pretty valuable after all? Maybe? It was the last example of that style of clothing, if only for now. Surely that gave it some form of intrinsic value, right?
Valuable or not, there was no changing the fact that wrinkles were going to appear - it didn't matter how perfect of a stature he maintained or how careful he was to maintain the smoothness of the uniform.
"Arc, please provide an image of the construction at present. Highlight elements where progress has been made over the past week in red, incomplete elements in blue, and complete elements in green."
A slowly rotating box appeared in the air over the table before him. At the moment it was primarily lines, barely more than a frame, but Arc assured him it was fully capable of the basic functions expected of it. It could move, it could fire its guns, and it could tow the shipyard currently constructing it. The only 'solid' parts of the model, the elements which clearly weren't structural supports or wires, were dedicated to those functions.
At present, the largest of those elements stretched across an appreciable portion of the Pegasus' 'top'. It wasn't an armor plate, though it was armored, it was the forward magazine. All of the ammunition for the two forward Blunderbusses would be stored on the outside thirds, the rounds for the forward and central Triple Hundreds would find a home in what spaced remained along the centerline.
It wasn't an optimal combat design by any stretch of the imagination, such a large blind spot to the 'bottom rear' and sides of the Pegasus would never fly for a ship of this size, but it wasn't supposed to engage in combat. The Pegasus' design was more comparable to a luxury liner, though it lacked the luxury. It had weapons, it delegated a great deal of internal space to weaponry, but they weren't the focus.
This was a ship Donovan and Diana expected to live in for an appreciable amount of time should anything go wrong. It would have medical facilities, storage, a recreational space, and a sizable living quarters for them and their children. The guns were there for defense, the primary weapon was its ability to run away. Hell, given that they were dealing with wooden ships the lasers should be more than enough. The only reason they had decided against them was because the side-effects were a bit too inhumane to justify.
There was no water in space, obviously, so if anything caught on fire the crew of the ship would either burn alive or suffocate. Both of these were known to be terrible ways to die. So while shooting a cloud of one to five pound spheres of steel was considerably less efficient on the production and combat side of things, it was far more humane. It seemed reasonable to assume that if you got hit by a steel ball going Mach 2, you were probably going to experience reasonably quick death.
"Everything is progressing smoothly. My projections put the Pegasus' completion at 41 days from present."
Donovan knew all about how well it was going. Every night he got a report on what had been installed or completed. Every morning he got a list of items or modules that were slated for installation. More often than not, the night-time report had more entries than the list he received in the morning. Arc had probably gotten into the habit of underestimating his construction capabilities. That wasn't great, but it was certainly preferable to the alternative, which was overestimating.
It felt nice to see that they were ahead of schedule, but Donovan still wanted it to go faster. Even now he saw the portion of red on the model growing, updates on the cables and structural elements that were being installed. In comparison to the 'by hand' processes he had witnessed during his trip to the dockyards around Luna, this pace was practically light speed. It wasn't instant, it still took time to move objects out of the foundry or fabricator and to their place of installation, but pieces were installed almost as fast as they were made available.
Donovan jolted a bit as another massive piece appeared on the model, obscuring the portion of the ship he was inspecting and surprising him in the process.
"I guess the second upper magazine is in place then?"
"Yes. Given how dangerous I have judged external stowage of the ammunition to be, I have expedited the construction of the ammunition stowage. The magazines are also an integral part of the weapon's loading system, so finishing them this early on was unavoidable if we wanted to provide a demonstration."
"Ah, right. Magazine autoloader. Have you done a test to make sure it works? It would be pretty embarrassing to have a mechanical component failure in the middle of the demonstration."
"I have run it forward and backwards under full and partial loads. No fatigue, slipping, or failure risk was detected by the monitoring nanobots. I will continue to monitor it during the show, but I do not believe that any faults will present themselves."
tap-tap
A quiet knocking on the door interrupted their conversation, Arc immediately shutting down the projector so as to keep the status of the Pegasus a secret.
"Who's there?"
"I-it's me." A nervous voice filtered through the slightly opened door. Titanyana had managed to drag herself out of bed. "M-may I come in?"
"Be my guest." Titanyana almost tip-toed inside the room, like she was hiding from someone. "What are you here for?"
"W-what do I have to do today? I know you said it was a weapon demonstration. . ."
"Hm? Arc and I have already taken care of all the preparations. You don't need to do anything."
"N-no, not for preparation. I meant, like, in the actual demonstration. Will I have to use the weapon? I-I mean, I'm just better at fighting than you, so I thought that you needed me there to use it. . ."
Donovan closed his eyes and inhaled slowly. He felt tempted to pinch the bridge of his nose, however he decided against it. The room was dark, but she would still be able to see that part.
"Titanyana, I don't need you to do anything in front of the people we have invited. This demonstration is, in a way, a showcase of my skills. What I want you to do is watch. I need you to be paying attention to what I'm doing. A very big part of why we are doing this is to show you what it is I can do. Diana and I want you to be confident in our abilities to protect your people, and this is the perfect opportunity to show it."
"U-um. Really?"
"Really." Donovan could sense some apprehension and confusion coming from her. Given how much time there was between now and when they had to leave, perhaps it would be better to give her a teaser, something to make her confident in Donovan's assertions and keep her interested in the performance. "You know what? Come here, take a seat."
