:: [Reception_Locus] = Keeper_Raven :: ::[Local_Shareworks]=xx-EIDOLON_WRAITH -- ::

[Enkidu]

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Sender Ident: Initiate Khan, Nesrin.
Subject: Twenty two hour leave-of-absence request.
Recipient: Keeper Raven, Sapphire.
CC: None.

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You route through the message terminal, unenthused at the organisational bedlam the Omega deployment has cast into the Battlegroup’s never-steady, oft-ambiguous chain of command, which, if the Nera-links read true, is steadily disintegrating around your ears. Between ambassadorial screaming, plaintive maintenance requests and grovelling logistical chiefs, your exhausted eyes flicker. Whoever thought that the illustrious job of saving the human race would be somewhere between jail time and a secretarial position at an adult daycare centre. Humph.

Cranking up the blue light settings in your monitor, you steel yourself for the next file. Come on Raven. Survive. There’s funner ways to slaughter yourself than paperwork.

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Madam Raven. Keeper.




As you’ve deduced already, Ma’am, I’m requesting twenty two hours, from the acceptance of this communiqué, to be sliced off my ouroboros cycle. Conditional is my free, undocumented utilisation of the X-shuttle marked Zero Quebec Oscar Hotel as a personal transport during my leave. If the vessel returns damaged after this duration, I will fund damages and submit to court marshal. If I violate my compact, I will submit to a court marshal. If I have not returned within twelve days, assume operative demise.

After vessel return, I request an all-up isolation hangar decontamination for Zero Quebec Oscar Hotel and radiographs to be placed within the gear bays and lower superstructure. The environment in which the shuttle will be operating is extremely hostile to Terrene hardware, and Terran pilots. I don't want my docking locks to give a deck rating brain cancer.

Secondly, enlist a pen-pusher to conduct this crap for you. With due respect, Keeper, you are going to die if you and Curator continue to directly process the individual concerns of several thousand people. Auxesia is vast, Keeper, and your child can breathe without you.
Delegate. Or cull us. Either will work.

I'm anticipating you have all the calculable questions my request was destined to evoke. So be it. I will answer as capably as I am able, Keeper.

I would strongly encourage you to approve my request, Keeper. Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.
I have no frigging choice.

Flight Initiate Nesrin Ezra Elhertani Khan.

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Jesus christ - she was curt enough to curdle milk. What exactly did you to her?

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THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)

Information | Recruitment | Message Dump |
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(Links pending redevelopment).

[Kauket]

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:::INCOMING TRANSMISSION:::

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» COMM-ID: Keeper Raven
» ENCRYPTION: EXTREME
» LOCATION: Eidolon Wraith, Omega-3
» SUBJECT:Twenty two hour leave-of-absence request.

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»STARTING MESSAGE«

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Hm.

What are you even doing? And why? I promise, this will stay between you and I.

I can tell you that you're right about a few things, that if you're going somewhere, you wouldn't want any of our technology or trackers on you, as you'd get a less than warming welcome, and that I really do need someone to deal with paperwork for me, but it would still require me to voice out my opinion upon the topic at hand. As for the tracking request; Yes. Accepted. I'll cleanse it as soon as you depart.

Concerning radioactivity - well - that's fine, as by protocol all vessels are gone through a scanning process before making an entry on any station or vessel.

If you are going to planning to go somewhere, I urge you to take an uplink communicator implant chip. Simply insert the nanite-chip into a communicator you do not need (as it will completely repurpose it and make it more limited), and the automated materials should convert and fucnction as a communication device to our relays. The chip is easy to hide due to how small it is and should avoid conventional scanners, though it's based off experimental Gammuian technology provided by ERI. Should you run into trouble, I can always call out Zeta Wing to come fish you out. I don't like leaving people behind.

Regards,
S. Raven

[[ENDING TRANSMISSION]]

[Enkidu]

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Sender Ident: Initiate Khan, Nesrin.
Subject: Twenty two hour leave-of-absence request.
Recipient: Keeper Raven, Sapphire.
CC: None.

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She hesitates. If her bitterness has been one smooth, sulking rhythm then its finally hit a comma. You can see it in her mouth, the sudden, defensive flash of teeth. Like a bear growling down an oncoming truck.

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Yes. I suppose this is above and beyond the call of pen pushers.

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Her eyes fluctuate between the camera and the desk. Camera and desk, camera and desk. A traitor’s eyes. A hostage’s eyes. If you couldn’t seen behind her you’d wonder if there was a gun pressed against the base of her neck, its barrel nuzzling the taught, polymer muscle fibres covering her spine, armouring her vitals. No. A gun wouldn’t do anything to her. You’d need a really big stick to crack this vase.

Yet here she is, all hardened, seven foot of her, shattering like a diamond in a press.

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You’re not surprised, are you? It was obvious. The radiation hardening… It’s taking me, Raven. It’s pulling my strings and my mouth flaps up and down and my chords sing, the sounds that come out, they’re not mine, Raven. They’re not mine. I haven’t heard my own voice for so long I’m starting to forget what me sounds like. It’s been two years, no. It feels like two years. I was in a coma, Raven. It burrowed into my brain and rewired me like a carpenter hewing at a tree and now I no longer resemble the thing I once was. I’m a chair, Raven. I’m a horse, a frigging horse for it to ride around on, for it to pat, feed, whisper nothingness to. I’m a pet and a pair of legs, and it finds moments like this - these, where I want to shoot out the brains it stole from me - somewhere between adorable and pitiful. It won’t let me do it, Raven. I have a pistol clenched in my hands, Raven. It let me load it. It let me cock it. It’s ready to fire, Raven. If I pulled the trigger, I’d bore a nice round hole into the deck plates and scare the crap out of the compartment below. It’d even let me shoot somebody else with it. I could go on a killing spree just to thwart it, just to demonstrate it hasn’t yet broken me and what a terrible horse I am, and friggin’… it’ll let me. But I just try to raise my arm…

We’re going to Gammu, Raven. It’s going to drag me across the entire sector and it won’t tell me why, yet. Yet. I’m going to damn well find out why, unless it wipes my mind, and it’s entirely possible it might. But the urgency… It’s never done this before. Usually, it…he, changes me in little ways. Small deceptions. Tweaks to my sanity. He’ll sneak an idea into my mind, and then stick it there until I act on it, or it becomes an obsession. He’ll take his time to convince me that his objectives are mine, that his thoughts are mine, that everything that is him belongs to me. He lies because it makes for a good horse. Now, he’s doing the opposite. He’s not hiding in the back of my brain, he’s invented it. I am a product, Raven! I am two years old and forty five and two-hundred-and-Allah-knows at the same time. I am not a human being! I am not even a mockery of a human being! I am a server bank with a thin patina of flesh to make me look pretty, that playacts being Nezzy Khan. She’s just a program on the thing, that wears my face… that even now is lying to you, compromising you….

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She’s screaming, flecked mouthed and flare eyed, screaming in the abject, writhing fear of not being alive. You’ve never seen her lose it. Never stuck around the Eidolon’s medical bays when the Battlegroup was young. Why would you? You had a fleet to run, no time to check on the madwoman in the attic.

Except she isn’t mad. Her fear is very, very sane.

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For all I know he’s arranged this conversation. It’s entirely possible he wants you to be sympathetic to me so he can manipulate you. So your guard will go down. No, that’s illogical… no. Yes. Don’t trust anything, Raven. Beyond everyone, don’t trust me.

Never have you seen more earnest eyes - and then the death stare cracks.

The beacon… I don’t know if they can detect it or not. I assume so since it’s their own tech and the ERI gismos are probably last gen in comparison to whatever they’ll be running scans on me with. Christ and Allah, irrespective as to if they monitor my transmissions we’re going to have to trust the AI in my head doesn’t tell the Prime the communicator exists. It shouldn’t do, it wants to win their trust… but that’s assuming it doesn’t just have me dump it out of the airlock as soon as I’m off ship. No. I’ll hang onto it. Thank you.

I’m not worth it, Raven. If I come back, it won’t be because Zeta charged into the valley of death after me. It’ll be because He has gained something - and I know he wants me here, together, working for you. Not on Gammu. Not in the Edge Worlds. Here.

Which means whatever he’s shuttling me off to Gammu for is going to have some repercussion for us. Maybe.

He wants to help you as much as I.

Flight Initiate Nesrin Ezra Elhertani Khan.

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THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)

Information | Recruitment | Message Dump |
Feedback | Diplomatic channel

(Links pending redevelopment).

[Kauket]

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:::INCOMING TRANSMISSION:::

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» COMM-ID: Keeper Raven
» ENCRYPTION: EXTREME
» LOCATION: Eidolon Wraith, Omega 3, Zeta Medical Bay
» SUBJECT: Leave.

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»STARTING MESSAGE«

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Hm.

I firstly apologise for the delay in response, I had medical issues, which may still go on, so don’t expect immediate reaction from me.

Second of all, I never trusted anyone or anything, but rather put faith. I wouldn’t say you’ve earned my full faith - I suppose this is the chance for both of you to shine. I really don’t know how or what to perceive this situation as, but, as long as you speak of your own idea and will, you are still essentially yourself. Even programs can corrupt or change, update, whatever.


If there’s anything I learned, back in my older days, I used to despise Artificial lifeforms, thinking that they were just useless entities that were just expendable resources - not deserving of life because they skipped the process of natural evolution. But I saw that there’s more to it, asking myself if their existence was even worth caring for, I soon found the answer to this. They’re still like us, capable of learning, of feeling, of changing, and of reasoning. In a sense, we’re all calculations too. I wouldn’t dare say that you are Human but I wouldn’t say you’re not, program or not.

Manipulation or not, there’s still room to learn. All I need is reassurance that you’re with me, not against me. I’m pulling out the Zeta Squadron offer, as we probably should focus on the task at hand in the fleet. You know the risks of going.

As for the communicator? They may be able to detect the technology, but no one said it had to be the untouched originals. I can only wish you luck on this venture. Both of you.

Regards,
S. Raven

[[ENDING TRANSMISSION]]

[Enkidu]

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Sender Ident: Initiate Khan, Nesrin.
Subject: Twenty two hour leave-of-absence request.
Recipient: Keeper Raven, Sapphire.
CC: None.

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Nesrin straightens, stiffens like she's being pulled by a steel cord bonded between her feet and neck, slides her heels together and salutes, fist sealed against her breast, glaring at some uncertain, indefinite space with a warrior's crying eyes.

Come and get us. Come and take us.

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Cogito ergo doleo, sings the mezzo to the fiddle.

Thank you for not shooting the sick horse. Even if the sick horse can't shoot herself.

I'll do right by you, Keeper. I'll do right by us. If I come back, It'll be because that is where the cosmos has called me. Oh, and don't wish it luck. He's had enough bloody luck to outlast the death of matter.

You kept the faith. I'll keep mine in return.

I wish you a swift recovery.... keeper.

Flight Initiate Nesrin Ezra Elhertani Khan.

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THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)

Information | Recruitment | Message Dump |
Feedback | Diplomatic channel

(Links pending redevelopment).