Dead Star Dockyards

"Welcome back, milord." Merndil was greeted by a politely bowing woman as he walked through the front door. "I trust you are unharmed?"

"Ah, good evening Satie. I have been fine."

"Wonderful. May I be permitted to ask how you have fared during my absence?"

"Of course. I'll be honest, I spent most of the time bored out of my mind. Without being able to attend parties, there hasn't been much to do."

Satie tilted her head. "If I am remembering the schedule correctly, today should not be a school day. If you have not been at a party, where were you?"

"I think it should be obvious. Who do you know is someone I can absolutely trust to not attempt an assassination in your absence?"

"Lady Diana?"

"Indeed. She invited me to an arms demonstration today. I apologize if it technically violated our contract, however I could not help myself. She made it abundantly clear that Lord Strauss would not be performing another one, and that this would be my only chance to see what they were capable of."

"Oh?" Satie appeared genuinely intrigued by this. "What was your impression."

"If ever you believe that I may be about to do something which may offend them, do everything in your power to stop me." Merndil smiled, but his tone was ice cold. "I do not exactly know what their weapons are or how they operate, you should be aware that they possess the capability to eliminate us from beyond what we are capable of seeing. You should also keep in mind that they may do it in such a rapid and violent manner that you will be unable to stop it."

"O-oh?" Satie did not know Merndil to be a liar, and he tended to avoid hyperbole when speaking in a serious manner. "Really?"

"Yes. In fact, I was given something of a souvenir. Take a look." Merndil removed the cloth covering the face of the steel plate, the cloth covering his face. "How long do you think it took for them to make this?"

Satie's first reaction to the plate was shock. Understandable given what little she understood, however she very quickly switched to intrigue. "How beautiful. . ." Part of Merndil wanted to act flattered - Satie was complementing his face - but he knew that she was looking at the engraving itself.

"Would, hmm. I can't imagine that something this intricate was completed in less than an hour. Given the fact that they do not appear to be artisans themselves, a day perhaps?"

"How about a few seconds?"

"Seconds?"

"Mhm. In the time it would take for you to tidy up my bed in the morning, they had already engraved my face and separated it from a larger steel plate."

". . . steel?" Satie looked at the plate with intrigue. "May I?"

"So long as you don't hurt yourself." Understanding what would happen next, Merndil handed his countenance over to Satie. After the Marshall's display, he had no concerns. Satie politely accepted it, taking some time to examine it closer. Once she had confirmed something, she unceremoniously tossed it in the air. Merndil's attention was not focused on the plate, but rather her hands, which had drawn a pair of incredibly thin stilettos from two of the hundred or so folds in her dress. 

ta-tang

The plate barely deviated from its parabolic trajectory, merely spinning in a slightly different direction, while Satie stood in a post-strike position on the opposite side. She was frowning, displeased with her own performance. The stilettos, which she attempted to return to her dress, were bent beyond the point of usability. Those impossibly thin stabbing implements she still insisted were knives wouldn't have been able to pierce that plate if the Marshall had been wielding them. 

"Satisfied?"

". . . yes." Satie ashamedly picked the plate up, inspecting the two miniscule indentations with a hint of defeat. "I'm sorry for defacing your present."

"Hm? You hit it on the back, didn't you? I plan on hanging it up against a wall, so nobody will be seeing it anyways." Merndil smiled at his maid and bodyguard, the anti-assassin assigned to him practically since birth. "So, what were my father's thoughts about Len's situation?"

"Generally supportive, though he asked me to remind you of how little help he could provide should the situation escalate. He also mentioned the possibility of directly addressing Rishtahn with regards to his poor behavior in a public setting."

"Wonderful. How was Linalee?"

"Excited. She is currently undergoing a degree of training in House Eraora's methods, however she clearly expressed her anticipation to join you next year."

"So, grandpa has made his move . . . I only pray he doesn't take it too far." Merndil's interaction with his mother's side of the family had been surprisingly limited. He had met them, but he could hardly say that he had 'met' them. He knew the stories that surrounded them, the facades they wore were not their real personalities. "What do you think the chances are that she will like Diana?"

"Pardon?"

"I was thinking about roping her in to the relationship I share with those two. Call me impulsive if you feel it to be an apt description, but after the events of today I feel the possibility of an engagement between Donovan and Linalee may be for the better."

". . . truly?" Merndil nodded. "Well, I believe that Princess Linalee and Lady Diana will get along together perfectly fine, but I doubt that she will so readily agree to marriage. There is a considerable age gap between the two, no?"

"Yes, yes, I suppose that is true. I myself can hardly imagine that little tomboy settling down enough to even consider a marriage proposal. Honestly, she idolizes Rash way too much."

"Would you rather she idolize you?"

". . . no. No, I don't think I could live with the weight of disappointing her. I'm ashamed to say it, but I just can't present myself honestly to her." Merndil sighed, covering the plate and setting it down on a table. "She looks too much like mother."

". . ."

". . ."

". . ."

". . . any other news?"

"Yes. I noticed that Lord Hlapven was arriving just as I left the Empire's docking region. I did not speak to him, however I believe that it may prove prudent to pay him a visit."

"Hm. As much as I would love to take the initiative on this matter, the fact remains that his trip was a personal one. I will wait for his missive to summon him, whenever he decides that he is ready."

"Of course, milord."

- - - - -

The Arboreal Maiden looked around the dimly lit room at all of the grim and contemplative faces that filled the seats beneath her. She understood their attitude, in fact she considered herself among their number when it came to a few of the revelations she had come to. Donovan had revealed to all present just how terrifying he was, and she knew that the Blunderbuss was a band-aid weapon to fight an 'enemy' his predecessors hadn't even considered fighting. What these people, majority bureaucrat rather than warrior, didn't know was that this display could be considered tame.

"What . . ?" One of the men attempted to ask a question, but he couldn't form the words. He wasn't alone.

". . . should we confiscate it?"

"You would have better luck killing a star." The Captain, one of a select few who had managed to keep their wits about them, shot down the proposal before that idea could fester in the minds of others. 

". . . but we can kill a star?"

"Which is exactly why I said you would have better luck doing so." The man, confronted with the de facto expert on that subject matter, could only drop the point. "I don't even think the Oberlux could handle it."

Some murmurs of disbelief emerged from the crowd. The Oberlux was heralded as the most powerful ship to sail the Void Sea, literally an extension of the Great Csillacra. To insinuate that it might lose to something, especially something that small, was akin to saying that the Sanctum was no longer the center of the galaxy.

"What he means to say is that the Oberlux will never be able to catch or destroy that ship, not that it would lose to it in a fight. I am sure we can all agree that admitting you are unable to catch something is not the same as saying that it is able to harm you." The Marshall chimed in with his interpretation of the Captain's words. "I know size tends to count for little, but there is still a significant difference in mass there. Not even Donovan can ignore something like that."

The Arboreal Maiden narrowed her eyes. What the Marshall had suggested was a dangerous belief to have. He was half right, Donovan couldn't ignore the size advantage the Oberlux possessed. However that didn't mean he was incapable of incapacitating it. She needed to snip this misconception in the bud.

"I would not be so certain about that, Marshall."

"My Lady!?" None below had expected her to participate in the conversation, only observe. She knew everything, after all. "You mean to say-"

"Do not interpret meaning in my words when you so clearly fail to understand your own. While there is some truth in the statement that size cannot be ignored, have you ever needed to break the back of a monster many times your size?" She paused to let the point sink in. "Have you ever needed to break the back of an opponent your own size?"

"No, my Lady."

"Then what leads you to believe that Donovan will need to snap the Oberlux in half in order to claim victory?" The Arboreal Maiden allowed those inside the room who happened to agree with the Marshall a moment more to think. "Is it because he had done the same to every ship he aimed his weapon at? Is that it?"

A series of embarrassed nods could be seen throughout the room. 

"While the Oberlux may be a powerful threat on the battlefield, those who operate it are still vulnerable. Tell me Captain, do you believe the bark of the Great Csillacra will protect you from his attacks?"

"Given what I saw happen to that very same bark due to some of the 'shot' bouncing off," those in the room remembered the splintering they saw before them but a few hours ago, "I cannot say I would be confident in the safety of my crew."

"And therein lies the point. Donovan does not need to destroy the Oberlux, he only needs to incapacitate that which operate it. Though it may be part of the Great Csillacra, it holds no control over the Oberlux when detached, and thus they are vital. If you wish to make a comparison, then you may think of the crew as the head of the Oberlux."

"He only needs to sever the head if he wishes to claim victory. . ."

"That is correct." The Arboreal Maiden nodded. "From this point forward, all of you are to forget everything you know about anything when it comes to the Terrans. The tools and tactics they have at their disposal are so far removed from what we consider the norm that to insinuate you may even be able to approach a level of relevant understanding is laughable when compared to the amount of time you have had to learn from them. This goes double for you, Marshall. You are a capable commander, but I feel you are too immersed in the current ways of doing things to truly grasp the importance of what Donovan has to offer."

The room once more felt silent, each and every individual silently coming to terms with the fact that they were amateurs once more. 

"I will teach you what I know of their ways. Though I have borne witness to their thousands of years of development and history, I cannot say that I truly grasp their, Donovan's, method of combat. What little I do know runs contrary to everything you have been taught, among those concepts being the idea of 'range'."

"As in the range of a weapon?"

"In a way. A more accurate way of describing it would be the range at which one can reliably expect to see, track, and hit a target. This may have been obvious from his mention of linear distance, but he has a method of measuring that distance. From that, he is capable of determining the probability of a hit. From that, he is capable of determining the probability of a kill.

Make no mistake, the weapons you saw today were nothing more than half-measures. His kind fought not with ships of wood, but ships of steel, and therefore did not have any weapons he viewed as suitable for dealing with such 'weak' targets at those long ranges. There exists another weapon aboard that ship which could threaten even the Great Csillacra, one capable of scarring the faces of planets, one capable of erasing cities from maps. We are simply not worth the cost of using it."

The Arboreal Maiden's emphasis on 'we' implied that she counted herself among that number, which she did.

"I'm sorry, my Lady, but I refuse to believe that-"

"Believe it or not, it is the truth. As a matter of fact, that weapon is arguably one of the least destructive options available. Tell me, what would you do if I said that he theoretically possessed the ability to destroy planets? Not render them unlivable, but to crack them open and spill their innards across the void? What would you do if I said that at the flick of a finger he could set the surface of a planet on fire and erase the prospects of life ever returning? What if I said he could make a weapon that eats everything around it, turning everything into a copy of itself, spreading like a wave across a planet until it is nothing but a mass of grey goo? Hm?"

The Arboreal Maiden referred to the variety of True Weapons of Mass Destruction (TWMD) that had been built and utilized in a limited capacity over the course of Terran history. 

The first was essentially just a larger railgun, a mass driver of colossal proportions, that would accelerate a rod fast enough to break through to the inner mantle. From that point, there were a variety of options. The most popular being the use of an antimatter bomb to cause a collapse of the crust and create a vacuum in the mantle. A smaller version which only carried a thermonuclear weapon was fired at one of Saturn's moons which carried a Skinnik sub computer.

The second was merely the concept of a nuclear holocaust. The surface saturation of a planet with high yield atomic weaponry to turn the surface of the planet into a sea of cobalt and glass.

The third was, in a manner of speaking, Skinnik itself. It could also be interpreted as Arc, though she firmly believed there to be a substantial difference between it and Skinnik.

"From this point forward it would be more accurate for you to believe that they are closer to being capable of everything rather than nothing."