SERVICE LOG: STEWARD, P.
Designation: So Much for Subtlety – Domestic & Ceremonial Services Division
Dates: 002 to 020 1106
002 to 003-1106 – Drinax
The New Year at the Floating Palace is an exercise in seeing how many feasts can be shoehorned into a 48-hour period before the attendees collapse or the kitchen staff revolt. His Majesty King Oleb, a man who regards moderation as a vulgar rumour, held court in the High Hall of Revel. Our recent knighthoods meant my employers were obliged to attend; I shadowed discreetly, ensuring Master Erik in particular avoided culinary catastrophes such as picking up the lobster forks during the soup course.
After a respectable recovery period, the party sallied forth to investigate anomalous emissions reported by our Greystar Collective allies. Their source turned out to be located in one of Drinax’s more enthusiastically bombed craters — a place where the atmosphere is a toxic stew and the ground is largely composed of jagged commentary about the Aslan nuclear temperament. My employers donned full hazard gear and ventured in; I remained behind, my tailoring not being rated for gamma bursts.
They returned having battled a Sindalian deathbot and retrieved some dubiously valuable decor in the form of a laser-armed table: a vulgar Sindalian fashion which I am gratified to report is rarely encountered in the better households of the region. I have since learned that such devices were the height of fashion for a certain class of noble who enjoyed placing the consommé and the cavalry sabres in equal proximity. Ours was gleefully repaired: I fear that my employers’ neophile enthusiasm for all things robotic reflects poorly on the level of refined taste shown in their association with me. It now resides aboard ship, roaming the cargo hold enthusiastically, where it spends its leisure hours asking me over radio communications — in a voice of eager menace — whether each passing crew member is – and here I quote directly – “Friend or Shoot?” I am beginning to suspect its highly liberal targeting parameters include anyone carrying a soup spoon.
The vault also yielded holographic data storage devices and references to a hidden Sindalian emergency bunker on Oghma, an icy world filled to its frozen brim with murderous, cosplaying Vikings. Naturally.
Courtly Diversions
Back at the Palace, Master Timaeus communed with Prince Kasiyl beside a water garden. From what I know of the Prince, they were perhaps comparing notes on being handsome, displaced, and wrongfully accused. Lady Hil of Oghma took Lady Penelope aside to discuss court dress, political allies, and the strategic deployment of charm. Ship assignments were shuffled, a Ship’s Boat was sold, and six new Vespexers were hired — three gunners, one pilot, one marine, and an astrogator. They seem promising in the way that uncut gemstones are promising: theoretically valuable, but likely to injure the hand that carelessly handles them.
Miss Vi and Captain “Tug” Wilson were dispatched on a grander, more rigorous recruitment sweep; I look forward to seeing which raw materials they deliver for polishing. Basemath Mondrane was sent to the Torpol Cluster to collect intelligence, no doubt with a far more comfortable travel wardrobe than mine.
014-1106 – Pourne
The Phlebotomist was laid up alongside the Lady Luck, stripped of crew. The Mercifuge and the So Much for Subtlety jumped to Pourne with speculative cargo, which was sold at gratifying profit: Miss Deanna presumably has repulsively incriminating holographs of every Broker in the Trojan Reach in flagrante delicto. Pourne is a world of poisonous air, domed cities, and interior design that could most charitably be described as “authoritarian chic.” The SMFS was abandoned to the tender mercies of the starport’s shipyard engineers for extensive refit, at a cost sufficient to have purchased a modest moon. And yet I believe that not one centime, not one pfennig, is to be spent on soft furnishings or fresh floor lacquer. I have officially noted my disapproval in the relevant documentation (Cf. this log).
020-1106 – Pourne
Captain Halet Tovrim of the Pourne Bureau of Investigation approached us, a man bearing a weray look that bespoke an inter-departmental quarrel. The rival agency, Starport Security, was keeping an alien ship in sealed isolation, this secrecy fuelling public rumours of imminent invasion by forces broadly held in the popular imagination to be, almost certainly, multi-headed squid. Tovrim requested our assistance.
The plan: infiltrate the hangar disguised as cleaning staff. This fell to me. I produced uniforms that were functionally mundane yet bore asymmetric mirror stitching of such refined subtlety that only the most accomplished eye could detect the deliberate “flaw.” Naturally, I chose a flaw no human eye could ever detect. One must not allow oneself to sink to the level of barbarity.
Our people, gratifyingly appropriately clad, bluffed their way in, located the alien craft, and discovered a bone fragment inside its peculiar controls. Dr Parsifal von Edelsburg – not a man I should describe as being of excessively jovial temperament (as great a complement as I am capable of) – identified it as belonging to a Hiver — a welcome reassurance, given their vast distance from here, although from my knowledge of Hiver proclivities, that does not preclude some very long game indeed being in play. Captain Tovrim was grateful, and the Drinaxian reputation on Pourne rose from “Suspicious” to “Neutral”, although if they had better data on King Oleb’s taste in garmentry they may have stuck to their guns and retained their distaste.
Addendum
Our lowport contact, Loadmaster Arret Karn, reported three mercenary patrol craft had recently passed rimward toward Paal and Tech World. Whether this is coincidence or impending doom remains to be seen.
Also, I am now on first name terms with the deathbot-table. The name in question is, predictably, “Table.” I am not sure that my employers are wholly aware of just how many sideboard-themed executions I have prevented occurring among the crew in the last 48 hours.
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