Vesper Thrace
short sharp shock
DEEP SPACE
Aboard the Sirenjack
Mutiny +3 hours
It was quiet. The ship was all but powered down, its navigation systems on standby, engines cooling. The crew had been sectioned into groups. Many hands, after all, made light work (of cleaning up the aftermath of a mutiny). Locking down security systems. Accounting for weapons. Deck-by-deck sweeps for stragglers. All sorts of things. The worst task, in Vesper Thrace's opinion, she had saved for herself. As the rest of the crew -- the ones who had stood with Vesper and
Aboard the Sirenjack
Mutiny +3 hours
Tavi Corvask
against the duplicitous, cowardly Captain Xiralan -- dispersed to their assigned tasks, she waited, watched until they were alone on the command deck. When it was just she and Tavi, she sighed and stripped off her jacket, tossing it over the CIC rostrum."Wish it hadn't come to this," she said with enough aggressive nonchalance that Tavi must have known it was covering a deep and festering wound.
She crouched next to a corpse, began to slowly pick through its pockets. Anything that would identify the body as a member of this crew was removed. Keycards, patches, notes. Credit chits, of course, because why not be a grave robber as well as a mutineer? Vesper wanted to vomit. She straightened at last, stood up, then -- after a sniffling breath -- bent over and seized the corpse by the lapels of its flightsuit and began to drag it toward the exit of the bridge.
"Don't help me," she all-but snarled at Tavi, before he'd even had a chance to offer.
This was her chore. This was her penance.
Right or wrong, mutiny was a sin. A curse that one had to carry. The captaincy had landed -- perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly, definitely improbably -- on her slight shoulders. The curse was hers to bear now. The tragedy of the thing was that she had done it for the body she was dragging as much as for the ones who lived, going about their tasks belowdecks. Vesper dragged and dragged, until she was outside the airlock. She touched the controls so that it slid open and bent again. Already a dull ache had formed in her back, but she muscled through, dragging the body into the airlock. She crouched and awkwardly folded the crewman's arms over his chest. "That will have to do," she muttered. "Mother of the Void take mercy on you, sailor."
Vesper stepped out of the airlock, pushed the button to cycle it. The corpse whisked out into the black. The airlock cycled again. She turned and walked back toward the bridge, trying to ignore the ache in her back and the ache in her chest.