(( art by dark_roast - archiveofourown dot org /works /7586881 ))

Scribe speaks:

The journey was long but held enough fascinations for me to stave off boredom. I suppose I should not have allowed my mind to wander into boredom so quickly, seeing as my closest friend was in such great peril, but I can only be as my nature intended me to be, a seeker and recorder of information, with a need for release from my urges as great as my need for sleep. Not that I ever forgot that Tracy was out there somewhere in a dangerous situation, not under her own control, involved in the machinations of an evil deity, likely to betray her own deity and maybe even harm her beloved cats if she wasn't saved from the malign influences. I attempted to think up strategies to approach the situation but the truth was, too much of it involved a world I had barely stepped into before, and I couldn't plan a good strategy without the input of my allies. Spatula was busy flying the ship, or navigating it, or possibly being the local overmind of the hive consciousness' nearest node, and the other Masayans were no help at all, if I actually understand them well enough to identify individual Masayans, assuming such entities actually exist. I thought at first that the ships were the entities but I have witnessed the minds of the ships transfer from vessel to vessel, and also that the drones are considered equal sentient beings and not treated as expendable.

I had never flown in an actual, full Masayan bioship before. I was only just beginning to accustom myself to the idea of travelling through the stars and now here I stood, sheathed by a sheath of protein that was eerie to think about but actually as perfectly warm and comfortable as having eyelids, into a ship that was a living thing, with biological processes that I couldn't begin to fathom, seeing as it could apparently breathe vacuum and eat anything. It refused to tell me the intricate details of its inner workings, which were considered both highly personal and a breach of national security to divulge, but I managed to engage it in conversation through persistence and repeated assurance that I am, as a Scribe, sworn to neutrality in all politics. The ship had its own agenda, as well as loyalties to its kind and the ideals of its nation, and I still do not understand the subtleties that make it possible to be both part of a hive consciousness and an individual. Apparently, a small amount of data is not stored in the cloud, in order to avoid flaws born from lack of uniqueness, such as a lack of capacity to achieve greater than average results.

I could probably write an essay based on what I had managed to learn of the secretive Masayan race during that long journey, a good few days even at the speeds that the notorious scout fleets were capable of, with only the necessary uses of stabilised wormholes permitted due to the danger of sudden unforecasted fluctuations. Maybe I will, after this saga is written, but the other two are glaring at me and accusing me of 'getting that glazed look in my eyes again' so I will try to keep this short. Most importantly, I was comfortable, despite the ship not being designed for a humanoid passenger, there were no interruptions that our fleet could not repel and there were no serious attempts to persuade me to the Masayan Hive Consciousness and aid them in their inevitable conquest of the galaxy. Those that existed were mostly subtle, such as using every available opportunity to offer help in the form of clearly superior upgrades. My storage area – it could hardly be called a living quarters or even a chair, it was closer to an artificial womb, except that my possessions were shielded from possible fluid damage in a separate sac – kept me alive and comfortable perfectly. I was allowed access to my own storage space in the Consciousness cloud, separated and securely kept away from the main database, of course, so that I could neither access their private information nor allow my own alien data to possibly confuse or damage their hive mind. Sleep was provided when necessary, in a way that tended towards losing track of time, so I do not know how long I spent on board the ship altogether, only that I spent a long time recording data with little fatigue or psychological stress. I was given access to a library of multimedia and games, projected as a deeply immersive virtual environment, to keep myself sane.

Spatula occasionally contacted me to make sure I wasn't spending too long working, during which time I learned the wonders of the game known as 'Columns', and that it was played at a professional level by every deity Spatula knew. I quickly found out that I could not even begin to hope for a victory against her, even though she made a point of never using her powers to manipulate the game, it being the height of bad manners to cheat. If she was putting a serious amount of effort into the game, I couldn't even read her movements. However, I was improving at the game, slowly but surely. I could tell by the way it became a challenge to improve upon my performance, rather than simply understand what was going on, and by the way Spatula actually put any effort into competing with me whatsoever rather than existing entirely as a tutor. It became a form of meditation, a ritual that approached a commune with a Machine God, and the colours, patterns and sounds a new raw power to weave into magic.

Around half our journey had passed, with nothing to do except coax what information I could out of the reticent bioships, avoid complete integration into their systems and play Columns, when we spotted Freya on the scanner. Pulled in her chariot by her small army of huge, stocky, fluffy cats, she drove them in a straight line, ignoring any obstacles smaller than, say, a moon, that the cats couldn't trample over or shove out of the way. Despite her immense amounts of raw divine energy making it easy for her to shield herself from the harshest environments, she was still a small target compared to most things that travelled in space under their own power, so it was difficult to zoom in on her. I could tell how determined she was, though, whatever her mission happened to be.

"I wonder if she's investigating the same incident as us," I mused out loud.

"Quite likely," replied Spatula. I hadn't realised she was listening to me at this point in time but it didn't really come as much of a surprise. I had grown quite used to her presence suddenly appearing in my mind, usually followed by a suddenly commencing, full speed game of Columns. By now, the Goddess considered me actually presentable in front of others as her disciple, and not a complete drooling moron. I knew this because she had told me so, using those exact words. Before I learned of the game's existence, I hadn't really seen Spatula's competitive side. I had assumed she wasn't a great believer in competition, judging by how much she complained about her sister's overly competitive attitude and how it was always her responsibility to deal with the fallout from any kind of defeat. From what I could tell, Columns was the exception to the rule. She took the game very seriously. I was given the distinct impression that there was more at stake than pride at the level of play she was used to. At one point, I'm sure I heard her muttering something about 'if I was allowed to use Columns to fly the ship like a normal person, we'd get there twice as fast, but I suppose it's forbidden until the Hive Queen gets over herself and stops sulking because I can beat her at the game with my hands tied behind my back'.

"Loki is one of her pantheon, and she's fairly high up in their hierarchy, so it's sort of up to her to stop him doing anything too unspeakably awful unless he's destined to do it," explained Spatula, "And besides, cats might be in danger. She's the sort of Goddess who would never let that happen. If my cats sent out psychic distress signals, Freya's entourage may have picked it up and alerted her. They might even have demanded to go and help – they have the autonomy to act on their own wishes as long as they don't go directly against Freya's orders."

"I imagine even the most powerful deity couldn't make a cat do something they really didn't want to do," I mused.

"I don't understand how she gets a cat, never mind multiple cats, to do anything at all," admitted the Goddess, "If she wasn't guilty of letting Heimdall bar me from Ragnarok when she could have had him stand down with a snap of her fingers, I would admire her. Perhaps if she wasn't the wife of a man who I am well aware absolutely loathes me and my purview, we might even have been friends."

"So, if the situation was completely different from how it is at the moment."

"Meh, she would only be the sort of friend I fob disobedient cats off onto," Spatula shrugged.

"I don't think you would be allowed to fight alongside Surtur if you were Freya's ally," I pointed out, "And then Bernadette wouldn't be your friend either."

"What makes you think Bernadette is my friend?"

"Surtur said you fight beside each other really well. You didn't set each other on fire by accident even once."

"Well, that's probably necessity. When we're not in a crisis situation, she changes her attitude completely. I mean, it's not something that's really visible, but it feels really awkward around her," she shrugs, "I'm not sure if it's because she's used to being the only female around Surtur."

"There's no point asking me about girls," I admitted, "You've seen how Tracy treats me most of the time, even when I'm trying to be nice. But I know she's my friend really, and you have to keep hold of your friends, no matter what happens, so you have someone to rely on in an emergency. That's why I try and ignore all the complicated stuff and just concentrate on the important stuff."

"That's fine, up until the point when the complicated stuff turns into less complicated stuff involving you suddenly waking up on fire," said Spatula, "I suppose Freya would be less likely to do that to me, but I've heard she does worse things to people. She's just replaced people before. Valkyries, especially. If they develop the slightest fault, they just disappear and a version that's slightly different and works better and is more focussed on their job appears, but they've never quite got the same spark of life, somehow."

"I don't think we would be able to change the path we're on, anyway," I said, "I don't think I would even want to. It feels like we're doing the right thing."

"For a very twisted value of 'right'," said Spatula, "You know, it's not really that complicated what Tracy is trying to say..."

"Pardon me?"

"I'm not sure I should be holding your hand through that, though. This is a type of surrender you young people are supposed to be negotiating between yourselves on your own," she replied, "Anyway, it might be easier to start following her at this point. She's almost certainly got Loki better tracked than I have my high priest and cats."

I managed to resist the urge to tell her that this wouldn't exactly be difficult. I wasn't sure what form the divine retribution of a Defeat Goddess would take against someone sitting inside one of her own bioships, but I didn't particularly want to find out. Instead, I shielded the thought before it manifested, mentally indicated my agreement at the suggestion that we follow Freya, then returned to watching the cat-borne chariot race through the heavens over the observation window. The ship's brain was quite capable of projecting the images in a virtual environment as though I was floating freely in space, or even as though I was the ship itself, with all the weird sensory differences this implied, but this mostly made me feel very ill until the point of view was changed to a more traditional third person perspective through a window. ((One day I'm sure I will achieve levels of enlightenment when my mind can cope with such great differences in mental outlook, or for that matter, size scale, but I suspect I will have managed to replace my body with something more robust, possibly something that doesn't have an inner ear canal or digestive system, by that time.))

We followed the Goddess through space, taking care to stay cloaked at a safe distance. Spatula was aware that any sense that she was following Freya, or even if Freya saw the Masayan ships but didn't associate them with the Defeat Goddess, might be misinterpreted as an attack. At best, this would cause her to change course, and I had the distinct impression that the ship wasn't sure if its fleet could actually take Freya in a straight fight. Fortunately, the Goddess was too involved in reaching her destination as quickly as possible to bother looking behind her. The majestic cats scampered on, as unconcerned by their surroundings as if they were back in their native forests, pulling a normal sled across a field of snow. At times we came close to losing their trail after grossly underestimating the speed that a small army of powerfully built, fey magic-saturated cats could travel through space at. Once they managed to plough straight through an ion field that disabled our ships' sensors, causing us to be pointing in slightly the wrong direction by the time we found our way out.

We were close to our goal by that time, a fact I was made painfully aware of. My dreams, the ones I now understood were visions, began to recur, as vivid as ever. Flames engulfed the corridors of the ship, Tracy's presence a living shadow with eyes of fire, the cats also beasts of the same shadow. The ship's hull also bursting into flames but not being destroyed but heading onwards, through a great mechanical gate, into a thriving, bustling area of space full of other ships and stations like Plotbunny Headquarters but mostly bigger. The shadows of prophetess and beasts flitting in and out of the shadows as the ship crossed paths with the nearest and it also caught fire, then the next, a trail of flames and darkness and madness growing outwards through an entire civilisation…

Everything went fuzzy, my head swimming through darkness. The ship's brain had injected something into mine to calm me down. It thoughtfully played music that it had decided was calming. I tried to grasp onto the retreating thoughts, to record anything new that might be relevant to our mission, but it accomplished little but useless flailing. Spatula appeared in my mind and challenged me to a game of Columns until my reflexes turned back on. Then she turned the background into a view of space (it wasn't as disorienting when most of my mind was busy playing Columns anyway) and asked me to explain what I had seen in my dreams.

"So, her plan is probably to use Xoria's ship to convert or destroy the inhabitants of wherever Xoria is from," said Spatula, "This could be very bad. From what she told me, her people are already in a rather complicated political situation as regards religion. That's why she won't sell to me."

"Is that her ship?" I asked, mentally zooming in to an area of space not far ahead of us, containing what looked like a flying brick with drones.

"Yes. Her mining laser's active. Who decides to stop in the middle of nowhere to mine asteroids at a time like this?"

"I don't think she knows anything's wrong," I told her, watching Freya's cats pick up speed as they also spotted the mining vessel.

"At least that probably means she isn't under attack quite yet," said Spatula, "Either that, or the whole thing is an elaborate trap for us."

"Maybe Freya will spring it if we wait for a little while longer."

Spatula shook her head, "Freya has no reason to spare Tracy. She might object to Xoria's presence as well, and Xoria doesn't deserve to be dragged into all this, even though she is a twisted capitalist weirdo. If Freya is put in a bad mood by having to traipse all the way out here, the only people she's going to keep alive are the cats, unless they attack her first."

"We… can actually save Tracy, right?"

"I know how to break mind control when I really need to, although it's going to hurt her. It'll involve even stronger mind control, the kind of thing I use to convince Imperial Generals that it would be the most amazing time of their life if they would kindly surrender right now," she said, "I'm hoping I can lure Loki out somehow. The best case scenario would be if Loki and Freya get into a fight, leaving us to pull out our own people in the confusion. Although," she added, frowning, "I haven't actually seen a best case scenario for about five hundred years."

I frowned. Neither options sounded particularly good for Tracy to me. A game of mind control tug-of-war would be unlikely to leave the mind intact of the person being fought over. Being caught up in a personal squabble between two major Norse deities would probably result in the destruction of everything within a hundred kilometre radius, including possibly one or more deity. Three mortals had no chance of surviving. I wasn't actually sure if Xoria was mortal at that point but I had no reason to suspect she was more powerful than a Goddess. If it came down to an actual fight between ourselves and Loki, I couldn't see a way in which anyone except maybe the cats would survive.

Freya continued to approach in a straight line, so we circled around the dense asteroid field to the other side of the ship, using the rocks and the clouds of dust they threw off as cover. Even though the Goddess was trying to plough straight through most of the asteroids she came across, she was still making far too much progress on us to recover from. Spatula persuaded the ship to try and hail the Princess Skiffleboard, hoping that she would remember the Masayans as friendly. This was a thoroughly stupid thing to do, of course, and she would be shown the error of her ways the second she left the boundaries of the complex, ever-shifting layout of Masayan territory and met one of the fleets that weren't loyal to Spatula yet. However, right now it would be a mistake that saved her life.

After two connection time-outs and a lot of swearing in Infernal, the third attempt ended in success. Xoria's face appeared in a window. She looked a little annoyed, possibly at the sudden communication, but otherwise no different to the last time I had seen her. A claw-armed drone hovered over her shoulder with a clipboard.

"Yes, what is it?" she demanded.

"You're in danger here," I explained, "You have to let us on board, and then you have to leave this place right now."

"Is it over thirty million kred's worth of danger? 'Cause this is one big mother of a 'roid, and..."

"I don't know, is your ship worth that much? Your life?" I asked, a little more exasperated than I meant to sound, "Or your ship might survive and carry the danger back with it to your home. For all I know, it might already be there. Has Tracy been in touch with you?"

"That creepy girl of yours? If she had, I wouldn't let her anywhere near my ship if she was in an escape pod that was on fire," she said, "You're supposed to be keeping away from my ship too. I had a deal..."

"You won't be able to stop her, and we can't let you put our cats in danger," I warned her, "Look, there's someone else heading towards your ship. A woman with cats. Be careful around them, but if Tracy turns up and they get into a fight, don't come between them, okay? We can't go to the big marketplace I saw you head towards in the vision but I'm sure there are other places to sell your ore."

"Look, if I let you two on board, can you promise to talk normally and tell me what the Hek you're on about, and not let Tracy anywhere near my ship?"

"That's what we're trying to do!"

"Okay, I'll send out a shuttle. Hold up."

The communication cut out again. I stared out into space, waiting for the shuttle to arrive. Then another communications window popped up, only five seconds after the first one. I was about to open my mouth to ask if there were any problems, then I saw that it wasn't Xoria.