Chapter Text
The bridge of the Ascendant is beautiful. Its commander wouldn’t tolerate anything else. Carvings ornament the real wood around the consoles and the arms of the command chair. The decking is polished and gleaming. Gold glitters in detailing along the edges of the tactical arch and the command chair and the plush smaller seat next to it. The style is eccentric, a hodgepodge of different Earth cultures and times; Han Dynasty China rubs shoulders with Napoleonic Europe. It feels like a throne room, all eyes drawn to the occupant of the center seat.
She is tall, a big woman with broad shoulders, her long dark hair swept up in an elaborate style reminiscent of Old Earth Chinese court dramas. She’s dressed in white, a tight, square shouldered jacket with gold epaulets on the shoulders, another echo of Old Earth’s sailing ships, the impaled Earth of the Terran Empire on the left side over her heart. The right is heavy with medals, decorations. A swept-hilt rapier hangs at her waist on her right side; a dagger on her left, and her hands are gloved. Her face is round, coming to a sharp point of a chin; her mouth, brilliantly red even in the low light of the nightshift, is tight at the corners with dissatisfaction, and her dark eyes are cold and watchful. There is a pettish cruelty in her face, a sharp thoughtfulness with no humor or tolerance in it, and as she stares at the datapad in her gloved hands, the frown between her eyebrows tightens into menace.
“I want it,” she says to the tiny old woman next to her, so small and richly dressed she looks like a doll. “That she has it—she who doesn’t know anything , this pampered complacent fool who’s been handed everything—I want it. I could do so much with it.”
“I could do so much with it,” says the tiny old woman, gently. “For all of us.”
The first woman’s eyes drop, a silent apology. “Yes, grandmother. But—”
The old woman reaches to pat her hand. “I won’t break your toy, little one. Never fear.”
“We have suffered so much,” says the first woman, fierce, and her eyes flick around the bridge. The black-clad crew there don’t meet them, flinching under her gaze. “Even these people don’t know. Don’t understand what it was like under the Alliance, because they ran away. ” The cruel edge in her voice jerks shoulders rigid across the bridge, fear a visible ripple. They’re accustomed to her moods; they know what that tone means. A few eyes flick starboard, to where the body of the last man to challenge her authority hangs in stasis. She admires it briefly when it catches her eye, like a piece of art. “How our people had everything taken from us. They were comfortable.” Her gaze goes back to the padd in her hands. “And so were they. So smug in their interference. Well, their meddling has damaged us enough. Let’s see how they like being on the other end of it.” She puts the padd aside, as if it doesn’t matter to her; the diagram of a ship glows there. Armistice Class and Controlled Information catch the light a moment before it powers off.
“What about her?” Grandmother asks. She tilts her padd so her granddaughter can see it, the golden brown curve of a face, dark eyes, dark hair swept up in a tight knot. “What will you do with her, then? This is not the record of a fool.”
First Admiral Diane Chester of the Resurgent Terran Empire leans back in the command chair of her flagship and steeples her elegantly white-gloved fingers, and in the dimness her smile is like a bloody curve. “Her? Fool or not, she had better hope I find her useful.”