Chapter Seventeen

"How the hell did that happen?" Sketch asked the tall blonde standing next to him. "The Weaponeer is typically one of the oldest members of the order."

"That was the problem the order was having," Charlotte said. "They knew they needed to not have any one singular person handling all the duties of the most key aspects, so they sent out a dozen trainees for all of them - the Weaponeer, the Keeper of the Lore, the Archivist, the Toolmaster, the Keeper of the Grievances... all of them were meant to have a dozen people taking on that role, a sort of twelve apostles for each position. I'm supposed to be the twelfth Weaponeer Apostle, but I don't think any of the others survived, meaning it's just me."

"I can understand that," he told her. "But the role of Weaponeer involves a lot of specific skills and materials and tools. Is...is that what all this is?"

"Yep, you got me," she said with a smile. "I'm using the name Endy Wachita just in case they have a membership list of the Order from somewhere. I've only been out of deep freeze for about a month this time around. I was expecting to get to Breench, pick up some stuff I needed, get it loaded into my crates for storage and then go back in the icebox, but I think running into you is a sign."

Before he knew it, her lips were pressed hard against his, her head tilting his head upward, as she had a couple of inches on him. "I thought you were long since dead, Charlotte," he said to her. "Hells, up until recently, I thought basically I was the only living member of the Order. If you don't need to stay on Breench, then I'd rather you be travelling with us."

"We still need to head to Breench, but if you'll have me, Miles, I'm not going anywhere," she said, running her fingers through his onyx shaded hair. "And we can pick up right where we left off. I haven't had a good fuck in decades," she added with a giggle.

"Well, I'm okay with that, but you're gonna want to know some things first, because there's other people in the picture," he said, feeling her other hand on his back.

"Getting familiar with our guest, are you, Sketch?" Serena's voice said behind him, in a tone that split the middle between amused and annoyed. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Serena had entered the shuttle bay, still mostly covered up and her face slightly smudged with grease, trying to keep the disguise up until they'd established whether or not Endy Wachita was friend or foe. "Do I need to have our muscle up here to have her pried off you?"

"Man, how do I even begin to start explaining this... to either of you..." Sketch said with a soft laugh.

"I saw him first," Serena said as Sketch and Charlotte pulled a bit apart.

"I sincerely doubt that," Charlotte laughed.

"Princess Serena O'Quincy, I'd like you to meet Charlotte Whitehall, Weaponeer of the Order of The Calm," Sketch said. "Now each of you have a secret about the other, so everyone can just bring the temperature down a notch."

"I thought you'd lost contact with all other members of the Order," Serena said to them.

"I had," he replied. "This was just a random chance encounter."

As they moved to load the boxes into a more secure portion of the cargo bay, Sketch took time to explain a little bit of each of their particular backstories to each other. Serena was shocked to find someone who'd spent almost as much time in cold storage as she had, and Charlotte was surprised that a member of the royal families who had somehow survived the purge.

While he could sense a bit of rivalry between the two women, they also seemed to be managing to get along without causing too much of a fuss for either one of them. "What's a Weaponeer do, Miles?" Serena asked him within earshot of Charlotte. "Something to do with guns or something?"

"You haven't shown her your Kazshi, Miles?" Charlotte asked with a soft laugh.

"I actually don't have a pair currently, Charlotte," Miles admitted with a bit of sadness. "I lost them along with my Ashaka during the long-cryo accident. But you're a Weaponeer. So you can help me craft a new pair."

"She didn't ask about it, so I didn't think to bring it up," he said. "The Kazshi were the weapons of the Storms and the Furies, but they weren't designed to be flashy or cruel. They were very elegant, precision weapons, designed for combat in deep space that wouldn't risk ship breach. That's the problem with slug throwers - they always run the danger of ripping a hole in the ship and immediately exposing everyone to the black. That was part of the reason pirates had such an easy time in the early days of humanity exploring the stars. Even the threat of hull breach was enough to scare most people into submission. And so, the Order set out to devise something that would help deal with these threats. That was the Kazshi."

Charlotte reached down to her waist and pushed aside a small flap of cloth to reach down and pulled loose two small grips with looked like metal hooks or knuckle guards curving to make them look like a pair of capital Ds. She moved to hold one in each hand and then flipped off the safeties and turned them on, a polite vibrating hum filling the air. The cool silver of the knuckle guards bloomed with a dark blue glow, heavily saturated pulsing light that flickered and sizzled with dangerous, wicked energy. The energy bellowed into a semi-sphere shape that almost resembled an old-time boxing glove with a spike or blade sticking off the end of it. She turned her hands to show the Kazshi cutting lines through the air, as Sketch grabbed an empty package that had held snacks in it not so long ago. He casually tossed it in her direction, and she whipped her left hand to bring the point of the blade through it, slicing the package in half, leaving its inner cryolining melted in its wake

"They're for refined, delicate work. Or for quick, dangerous combat done at top speeds where the danger of depressurization looms large," Charlotte said as she made the blades disappear, rehooking them on the belt loop on her belt. Sketch could still see Serena staring at the hilts affixed to Charlotte's waist, and he realized, she had probably seen similar weapons when she was very young, and had dismissed them as myth or something that she made up. "And they're very customizable. Some people prefer simple single bands. Others like a longer blade. I've seen some make them into claws. Some want whole semi-spheres covered in spike blades. The appearance, style and approach of each Storm or Fury's Kazshi can often provide a little bit of insight as to what kind of personality that Calm has. I remember Miles used to have these deep forest green with long, elegant blades about the length of his forearm - it was a very unique Kazshi that I was always very taken aback by."

"When I was building my Kazshi, I spent a good amount of time experimenting around with the core fundamental lessons about them, and also using some exotic materials for parts of them, once I found out what was needed," Sketch said. "But the power source always has to be a Primek crystal, and as far as I know, the only mine that contained Primek crystals was blown into oblivion by the Starless Dominion, but even the planet with the desolation is entirely off-limits and patrolled by Y'bari ships nonstop, so I never even considered going and building another."

Charlotte grinned, tapping one of the boxes to her right. "I have about five hundred Primek crystals of various sizes, shades, colors and voracities, so if you'd like to build a new pair, I can fill in whatever missing bits you have."

Sketch felt his face start to brighten a bit. "If you're pulling my leg, Charlotte, I'll throw you out an airlock with no regrets."

"No regrets?"

"Okay, maybe a few regrets but--"

"I'm not pulling your leg, Miles," Charlotte said as she unlocked the heavy crate, and then started to unlatch it. She lifted the top and then pulled a drawstring to loosen up a velvet bag contained within the heavy metallic box. When the bag opened, a plethora of Primek crystals lit up his eyes with a renewed sense of hope. "Do you have the other--"

"I've been gathering them for years," Sketch said quickly. "I know we're not supposed to reuse a Primek crystal unless absolutely necessary, but I kept hoping I'd stumble across the remnants of a Kazshi somewhere, and even if I couldn't have a whole pair of them, even a single one would've made me feel... a bit more whole."

"Why don't you start looking through the bag then and see if there's a crystal that speaks to you," Charlotte said, "while I'm getting the forge set up, and can get you a core housing started. Do you want me to provide all the parts or I guess what do you need?"

"I have the emitters, their housing, the battery system, the agitator, but I don't have a crystal housing and a core housing," Sketch said, trying to downplay the enthusiasm in his voice. "I've been slowly allowing myself to dream and hope about this on and off for years, but I always considered it something of a pipe dream. Still, it was a very... I've been thinking about this a long time, Charlotte, so I'd like to get started as soon as we can."

"Wait, if you didn't have an Ashaka, where did you get one? There's no Toolmaster, and I can't imagine you being able to pick up the pieces at a local scrapyard."

"I, uh, I scavenged one from the tomb of a Fury."

"You're... you're not supposed to do that, Miles," Charlotte said, her eyes widening a little. "But, I guess if there wasn't any other option..."

"There wasn't."

"Then I suppose that it's not too horrible a thing, considering how you must've been without it."

"I had to spend years in virtual isolation, just me and the ship's AI."

"And that's why I got so sexually and emotionally attached to him, right from the start," Serena said. "Well, that's part of it." She giggled, rubbing her hand against Sketch's back. "I also grew up hearing stories about his exploits, and the longer I've been with him, the more it seems like they're all true, and the further I fell in love with him."

"And you brought the Y'bari into your fold because...?" Charlotte asked.

"Because as much as I love Sketch, he needs someone to look out for his safety, to protect him."

Charlotte tilted her head in surprise. "Okay, have you slipped in your old age, or are you downplaying your skills, Miles?"

Sketch smirked a little bit. "I may have just not gone out of my way to advertise my abilities but I've been honest that I was a soldier of fortune before I joined up. They just haven't seen me have to actually use those skills in any practical application." He kept rifling through the bag as he glanced over at Serena. "You know that box I asked you never to touch in my room? Could you go and bring it to me while I'm finding the crystal?"

"Is that what all that junk is that you wouldn't let me throw out?"

Sketch scowled a little bit. "I've told you time and time again it's not junk, and given about three hours, I'll show you exactly why not."

Serena grinned, pointing at the hilts on Charlotte's waist. "Yours better be twice as cool as hers are."

Charlotte opened the crate and set up her portion of the forge. "I don't doubt it'll be a lot better than mine," the woman said. "Storm Walker always had one of the most impressive Kazshi pairs, and if he's had several years working towards one, I imagine it's going to be quite the spectacle."

Sketch laughed throatily as Serena headed out. "You have no idea, Charlotte..." As Serena ran to get the next box, he started looking through the giant bag of Primek crystals, and there truly were a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colors and types, and he ran through all the options in his mind, considering what colors and ferocity of projections they would create.

"Don't pick something obvious, Miles," Charlotte said he kept sifting through them. "I want you to truly startle me."

"Oh, don't worry," Sketch replied. "I think I'm going to truly blow your mind." He plucked a stone made of orange, yellow and tiny streaks of red from the bag and held it up. "This one."

"Are you sure, Storm Walker?" Charlotte said, adding a bit more seriousness to her tone. "That's a dulcite, and it you may very well shatter it trying to split it successfully."

Miles looked at her with a smirk, rolling his eyes a little. "Really?"

"I had to ask, Miles, you know that." She moved to start laying out the individual components he would need before the ship's shuttle bay alarm flashed. "You expecting other people?" She immediately grabbed a blanket and tossed it over the collection of gear she'd laid out, as Imogen came walking around the corner with a man on her arm.

"My apologies, Captain, I did not expect you to still be... loitering about in our shuttle bay," Imogen said as Charlotte pulled her cloak back over her head, trying to keep her presence and her possessions out of the limelight.

The young man she had with her waved a hand in as non-threatening a way as he possibly could, trying to be all smiles and discretion. "No need to hide things from me, friends, I understand that a ship like this might sometimes deal in less-than-legal trade, and we are just as unhappy about the Starless Dominion's oversight as you are," Barintelden said to them. He was dressed in his best fineries, clothing that certainly cost nearly as much as the shuttle arriving to pick him up, but he looked incredibly uncomfortable in it, as though it was thrust upon him, or he'd been trying to impress Imogen with his appearance, something she couldn't seem to have cared less about. "And I know my father's job is to make sure nothing too dangerous gets in and out, but my father also might not look too favorably upon my visit here with Imogen, and so if you are able to provide my discretion, I can most certainly provide yours in turn. Should you make your departure in the next five to six hours, you should be able to depart without him taking note of you or your cargo, but much longer than that, and I am afraid I can no longer shield you from his watchful eye."

"Well, thank you kindly, young man," Sketch said to him, giving the most polite smile he could bring to his face. "We will make sure we don't hang around too long. I doubt they're looking for us, but getting caught up in their searches sounds like a bunch of hassle I'd rather not get tangled up in, so no need for us to spent much longer than we need to. How long before your brother's back, Immy?"

She shrugged slightly. "You did not specify he needed to be quick and there is quite the salvage yard here, so you will likely want to call him and give him a window." She moved to wrap her arms tenderly around Bartintelden's frame, holding the young man tightly before giving him a tender kiss. "Thank you very much for the privilege and pleasure of your company. I hope we will have the joy of encountering each other again at some point."

"You are a delight, Imogen, and any time you find yourself near our little settlement, I would be delighted to avail myself of your company," the young man said as his shuttle landed off to one side. "Many happy travels."

The fop was aboard his shuttle and the tiny ship was departing from their landing bay and not until it was fully out of sight could Sketch feel himself breathe again. "Nice kid," Sketch said. "If all your clients are like that, you're going to be a real asset to have around."

"Not if you're going to cause me to keep cancelling appointments," the young woman sighed. "Although I suppose this one wouldn't be your fault. Shall I call Loz and let him know he needs to circle back as soon as possible?"

"Not as soon as possible, but within the next few hours. I don't want to leave right after your visitor did, because that makes us look suspicious if anyone's following him."

"No one's--"

"There was a secondary shuttle that moved in pursuit of the first one after it left, Captain," Helen said to them.

"You were spying on my guests?" Imogen asked, a hint of offense in her voice, as Serena returned to the shuttle bay with a small box of Sketch's things.

"Did I miss something?" the princess asked with a slight laugh. She and Imogen still hadn't reached a balance between the two of them, and so they were still chafing at each other here and there.

"I was looking after your safety, which is a thing it seems that you might have gotten a tad rusty at," Sketch chuckled at Immy before looking over at Serena, making it clear he wasn't speaking just to her. "All of you. Don't worry. It's not a thing I allow myself to sleep on. Do we know what they're searching for, Helen?"

"Reports of 'a religious extremist,' so I would imagine it's our new passenger they're looking for, but I suppose it could also be you, Captain, even if we haven't heard any reports of Storms showing up on the bounty boards," the ship's AI said to them. "That said, it's entirely possible it's a fishing expedition."

"What do you mean by that, Helen?" Serena asked. "They're hunting for trout?"

"It's a figure of speech. Sometimes they like to rattle the cages just a bit, see if anyone panics and gives them reason to poke into them," Sketch answered for her. "They might not have anything that's causing suspicion, but if they say they have something, sometimes people will run."

"You used to call it 'beating the grass for snakes,' if my memory serves," Charlotte said to him with a smile, taking the tarp back off her things. "Well, we should finish getting your Kazshi crafted while we wait."

"Agreed," Sketch said, taking the box from Serena's hands. "Thanks. I've been thinking about this for a long time indeed."

For much of the next two hours, Sketch worked to incorporate pieces that Charlotte handed him with the seemingly random gear, attaching one piece to another, working on a pair of the handle grips that had been given to him from Charlotte to start with, odd bars of dark grey metal, with ports on either end, although those were the first things Sketch replaced.

"What the hell, Miles?" the blonde woman asked him. "Those were perfectly good Rakinion emitters! At least give them back to me so I can put them on another base."

"Happily," Sketch said, pushing the two ports across the workspace to her. "Rakinion's are fine if you want something standard and assembly-line, but they aren't good if you want a unique shape, or if you want something that's going to be able to withstand some heavy usage. They're showy blades meant for people who are hoping they'll only be used to scare people off, never practically. Does that sound like me?"

"No, you always used to have something almost custom built. I know, because I remember asking you about the optics and you said the lenses are the most commonly neglected pieces of the Kazshi, which is why you treated them with the utmost importance. That's why I have my own customs as well."

"Then why are you asking about me peeling the bog-standards off?"

"I just figured you'd use them temporarily."

"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right the first time." He set the gem aside, laying it out on the piece of velvet that Charlotte had put out for them to work in. "Splitter?"

"You know if it cracks, the stone will be trashed and..."

"Charlotte, I realize you're the Weaponeer, but do you know how many times I tampered with my previous set of Kazshi?" She was about to answer when he cut her off. "Too many times. I was always constantly tweaking, tampering and tinkering with it."

"Do that too much and they say you'll go blind," Imogen teased, her eyes just as engrossed with his work as Serena's and Charlotte's.

He ignored them as he took the splitter from Charlotte's hand. He set the fiery looking gemstone down on a small silverish dish and then turned the splitter on, a tiny little laser cutter, as he slowly sliced the stone down the middle, it splitting evenly into two halves, not a crack visible on the flat surface in the center of either.

After waiting for the stones to cool, he picked one up and then grabbed the shaping blanket, helping him sand and shave at the stone until half was a nice clean semi-sphere, setting it down before picking up the other half and giving it the same treatment. Once they were in identical shape, he took the crystal housings from Charlotte and loaded them in, before placing them into the core housings. After that, the rest of the process seemed to come together quickly, connecting the crystals to the agitators and the batteries before putting everything into the main housing.

And then he started checking and rechecking everything, until the point where Serena looked up at Charlotte, who simply smiled and reached over, placing a hand on Sketch's shoulder. "Either it works or it doesn't, Miles. No need to freak out."

"You're not the one who's been without these for half a decade," the older Storm said, realizing his hands were shaking a little. But she was right - either they worked or they didn't.

He closed up the crystal housing, then checked the leads from the batteries to the agitators, and made one final check on the optics on the emitters before closing the whole thing up. He picked them up in his hands and stepped more into the center of the shuttle bay, holding them at his sides.

As soon as he flicked the switches, and heard that familiar low bass rumbling purr, a much lower pitch than Charlotte's, a very pleased smile crossed his face, as the Kazshi sprung to life in his hands.

While many Storms had gone for simple blades and most simple claws or spikes, Storm Walker's Kazshi was an elegant shaped, a curved D guard at the front of the knuckles, but with a long outwardly curved blade running along the length of his forearm. The projected blade was a brilliant golden-orange, like a tropical sunset, with streaks of red and white shocking along the surface of it, like lighting. He tapped one underside against the other, and a smattering of sparks and crackles hissed from the surfaces of them, much as they were supposed to, but the blades held their shape

"Fucking hells, Miles, you have been thinking about this a long time," Charlotte said with a whistle of appreciation. "The shape reminds me a bit--"

"Of Fury Tension's curved scythes? I certainly hope so. He was my combat teacher when it came to Kazshi, and I spent a lot of time learning how to be dangerous without necessarily being deadly," he said, stretching his arms to whip the blades through the air, hearing the space slice open in their wake, a slight contrail of light left in their wake for half a moment.

"What do you mean by that?" Imogen said, which startled Sketch, as he'd forgotten she was even there, and now he realized he was going to have to trust her with his secret, like it or not.

"The Storms have nearly been on the edge of extinction for your entire lifetime, Immy," Sketch said with a bit of sadness as he kicked upwards in the air and snapped his foot through it before bringing the blade down behind it. "We were peacekeepers, mostly. Even those of us who'd been plucked from the spoils of war."

"Those days are behind us now, Miles," Charlotte said to him.

"And why does she keep calling you that?" Imogen asked.

"Sketch is the name I use to keep myself from being discovered by the Starless Dominion, Immy. My real name is Miles Walker; I'm a Storm from the Order of the Calm."

"That's... that can't be right," the young woman said. "If that's true, name the three ranks."

"Spark, Storm and Fury."

"Anyone could know that," Imogen said in a tone quite unlike her. "If you're a Storm, you can induce a deep sense of peace in me, yes?"

"Of course but--"

"Do it."

"Can I ask--"

"Now!"

Sketch flipped off the blades and moved to set them back down on the table before he tapped into the Ashaka and then started reaching for Imogen's mind. She was rattled, but not for reasons he could truly understand. But his time with the new Ashaka had given him a sense of confidence, and within moments, a deep sense of complacency was flowing over Imogen's mind.

"There, you see?"

"I..." Imogen started and then stopped. "Yes, I see. I'm... I'm just surprised... I have something for the two of you, then, given to me by someone who didn't make it off the Yokixola. They said if I ever met a member of Order of the Calm, I should give it to them."

They were all startled from the moment by the approach alarm, letting them know that Loz was returning with the shuttle. Charlotte packed up her things as Miles placed his hand on Imogen's hand. "I'm starting to wonder if the fates had a plan for all of us all along after all..."