Private Jetsam

[Vesper Thrace]

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 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.

___________________________________________________________________

Tavi Corvask​

 

[Tavi Corvask]

Vesper Thrace

In the time that Vesper and Tavi worked together it always surprised him just how... sensitive she could be. Not in a bad way, not in the way most men would use the word sensitive as if to imply a woman was hysterical, emotional and unfit for command. It was different here. Vesper was rough around the edges, straight-laced and formidable.

Great qualities to have in a Captain, but at the same time she could be remarkably sentimental and concerned about those she decided to care about.

He could intuit her mood at this point and as such gave her a wide berth. Letting her feel the full swing of what she needed to feel.

Didn't try to help. Just walked with her, while lighting up a cigarette and watching her work through the paces. "We did what we had to. Would have been better to save more, but they picked their side." Tavi reached out, grabbing Vesper by the shoulder and risking getting hit in the face for the effort, but did it anyway.

"Hey, we did the right thing, for the betterment of the ship. He only thought of himself and would have sold us all out to dry if he thought he could get away with it."

 

[Vesper Thrace]

"Maybe we did," said Vesper curtly as she heaved another body to a halt outside the airlock, then straightened to cycle it open. "Maybe we didn't." She took a moment to lean against the bulkhead. Not winded, just aching at the small of her back. She snapped her fingers impatiently at the cigarette until he handed it over and she took a deep drag, making the embers glow. "Maybe fuck yourself."

She handed the cigarette back, still a lungfull of sweet t'bacc smoke, and leaned over to drag the corpse into the airlock, exhaling the silvery tendrils. "Void Mother's mercy," Vesper said, waving vaguely with her hand before stepping out again. She slapped the button, and the corpse was whooshed out into the vacuum.

"What we did -- maybe don't have a crew after this next stop." She shrugged her coiled body, an exaggerated movement. "Hang around garbage and you start to smell, yeah? What it does to someone who hang around a mutineer? A traitor? What am I supposed to do, explain? Provide context? That's why maybe fuck yourself."

She shook her head. Reputations were earned over years and wrecked in seconds. "Anyway, it's my word against his. Everyone will see I had something to gain and I gained it. Sirenjack, my new ship. Wages of sin. Bastard Xiralan. Maybe should have killed him after all. Maybe should have recorded his -- " Her hands waved irritably at the lack of a suitably unpleasant adjectives to describe his treachery " -- fuckery, put it on a business card to hand out at ports."

Grim. Angry.

Sad.

She knelt at the next body. "Maybe you take over. Blame me for the mutiny. Say you put me off at the next port as a courtesy. Or say I escaped the brig. Why wasn't it you, anyway?"

___________________________________________________________________

Tavi Corvask​