Chương 270: Volume 2 - Intermission 84.2 - Grand Viewing Gala I

Remedial Field Reporting — Session 1 Transcript Instructor: Staff Sergeant Colm Evard, Scout Corps, 16 years active service Attendees: 23 Marines, various Roles and Squads Evard: "Alright. Settle down, everyone. Find a seat, stop standing around like you're waiting for someone to tell you this is a mistake. It's not a mistake. You're all here on purpose and for very good reasons." [Silence. Approximately eleven seconds.]"Nobody? Not one of you?"

"We did really well and this is a surprise party…?" somebody offered carefully, earning a few chuckles.

"No. Not even close," Evard replied coldly.

"I'll just show you instead." [Display system activating.]"During the Tauron 6 engagement, your Company Leader put out an urgent request for field identification—specifically, what was firing from the UHF's own lines into the Stellar Republic formations and causing mass casualty.

"A Battlefield-changing result, frankly.

"But Command needed to know what was producing it, because when something causes that level of damage and nobody in the chain can account for it, that is a problem regardless of which direction the bodies are falling." [Pause.]"You were all in positions to observe. You all filed verbal reports. I had an AI reconstruct what you described. What I'm about to show you is what the AI built. Based on your reports. Which you filed on the Battlefield. Under your own names.

In direct response to your Company Leader's request. In the Battlefield-wide Command Channel.

"Private Wachter—quoting directly: ' Friendly unit, appeared to be carrying some kind of rotating multi-barrel energy weapon, possibly experimental, very large, maybe gatling-type, hard to tell from distance, was causing significant damage to enemy formations.'

"The AI built this:" [Stifled laughter, one audible groan.]"A four-hundred-kg Ultra-Heavy in custom experimental armour carrying a gatling laser roughly the size of a ground vehicle. Based directly on your report.

"Corporal Nessa—' a friendly shooter, must be very tall for the angles they're hitting, unusual weapon profile, some kind of long rifle with gatling function but different, glowing components, might be an energy lance or something, possibly modified or prototype equipment, was hitting targets at extreme range.'

"The AI gave us a two-and-a-half meter tall juggernaut carrying what it labelled 'unidentified gatling energy lance, extreme range capability.' [Quieter laughter now.]"I have sixteen more of these.

"A Marine with twin heavy ordnance launchers because someone said 'big guns, both hands, firing fast.'

"One the AI labelled 'classification indeterminate, possible Ace-class, recommend immediate command escalation,' because someone said 'automatic aiming at several dozen targets, really hard to track.'

"Your CO needed a straight answer and got twenty-three descriptions of twenty-three different weapons systems, four of which he was forced to escalate to senior Command for potential System-abuse flagging." [Display changes.]" This is what was actually there." [Silence.]"Recruit Thea McKay. Scout-Sniper. Alpha Squad. Light-type armour—Spectre-class. Standard Laser-variant Gram.

"That's it.

"No prototype equipment. No gatling laser. A basic-ass Gram. In light armour.

"The two-star Crysium MVP half your reports described as a probable Ace-class asset in experimental heavy armour." [A voice, quietly: "... She's tiny."]"She is, in fact, not very large. Correct. And yet, here we are, regardless." [Pause.]"Listen, Marines: The words ' I don't know' are not a failure. They are information.

'Friendly combatant, light armour, standard rifle pattern, producing disproportionate results, could not confirm further details' is worth ten times more to your CO than 'possible experimental Ace-class heavy weapons platform, classification unknown.'

"One tells your CO what you saw. The other tells your CO what you hallucinated—and will get people killed.

"Now… Open to page one, let's get started." [Shortened Excerpt from "Transcript — Tauron 6: Remedial Field Reporting, Session 1", UHF MC Internal Training Records, PFC 943] PoV: Veyra Lindra Sylarion When the invitations had arrived at the Sylarion estate, both Veyra and Orvyn had been utterly stunned. After all, they were merely a Minor Legacy—still building their name, still working their way into the UHF's history one careful step at a time. But the crest on the invitation had been unmistakable.

The Masters' family crest—over-the-top and colourful in exactly the way that represented their Legacy perfectly—had been impossible to misread as anything other than an official invitation to the Grand Viewing Gala at the main Masters seat on Vespera Prime itself. In previous years, they'd received invitations to these types of Galas as well, of course, but they had only ever been included as filler—padding out the guest count to make the important guests look more important than they truly were, nothing more.

This year was very different, however, and both of them had understood the why immediately, without needing to say it out loud: Corvus.

"Being part of the Galas has been invaluable for the Legacy, even as mere padding," Orvyn had immediately said, voicing what Veyra had already been thinking.

"We'll attend, same as every year. We just have to figure out who goes to which one…" That following conversation had eventually led to Veyra standing where she was now—her finest evening gown on, kept in the black and blue of their Legacy, the Sylarion family crest serving as a clasp at the front of her chest—about to walk through the grand front gates of the Masters estate. For once.

She and Orvyn had usually been quietly directed to one of the side entrances in any Galas they had attended thus far, so as not to get in the way of the Legacies that actually mattered arriving through the front. Not that they had ever attended the Masters' main estate before either, of course.

This particular Gala had a lot of firsts attached to it—and the reason for it wasn't hard to identify for the same reason it hadn't been hard to identify why they had been included as main-line guests for this event: The Masters' own child was part of the Drive.

So of course they had rolled out everything they had for this one, including invitations to the main estate on their home planet, rather than one of the myriad other side-estates the Masters had on other planets—which they frivolously and abundantly used for all sorts of events throughout the years. Merely approaching the front gate of the main estate told Veyra everything she needed to know about how the Masters felt about the difference between guests who mattered and guests who didn't.

The front gates were a statement piece in themselves. They were tall—taller than they needed to be by any practical measure, which was entirely the point, she had no doubt—wrought from what Veyra recognised as Fortixium-reinforced black durasteel, the metal carrying that faint, characteristic sheen that T1 System Materials all had, just slightly too perfect to be anything mundane.

The Masters' crest had been worked into the metalwork at the centre of each gate in painstaking detail, the crimson, purple and gold of it catching the light from the flanking pillars, which were themselves topped with anti-grav suspended orbs of what she was fairly certain was molten Ignium—the liquid material shifting slowly inside each containment field, casting a warm, deep amber glow across the stone pathway that bled into red at the edges. The staff at the gate receiving her were similarly immaculate.

Two of them, positioned on either side, in deep black and purple livery trimmed with gold piping, who checked her invitation with a practiced efficiency that managed to feel both thorough and completely unobtrusive at the same time. Just a small, precisely calibrated incline of the head and a gestured welcome through the main path.

'We are going to have to have a very serious conversation with our own staff when I get home,' she thought, and filed it under things to discuss with Orvyn after they were both back home from their respective Galas.

The path from the gate to the main entrance was lined with countless hedgerows—tall and dense, clearly imported from Terra itself, shaped with a precision that suggested either an extraordinary amount of skilled labour or a very good automated maintenance system, and knowing the Masters, very likely both. They had been neatly trimmed into clean geometric forms, all hard angles and flat faces.

Between them, at regular intervals, anti-grav emitters held suspended spheres of molten metal aloft at head height—Masters crimson in colour, the liquid surface shifting and rolling slowly inside the containment field, throwing warm, unsteady light across the path. The effect was unsettling in the best possible way, Veyra could not deny.

The main doors of the ballroom were Fortixium-banded once again—she recognised the faint iridescent quality of the T1 Material along the reinforced edges of the doorframe immediately. They caught the molten light and held it differently to everything around it. It wasn't even purely decorative, technically speaking. Fortixium was a structural material, one of the harder T1 classifications as Veyra knew from her own experience inside the Corps.

It was not, as she also noted, something that was generally used for aesthetics by just about anyone. She was met by two more staff members at the doors. Same colours, same stillness, same precisely calibrated acknowledgement as she approached. One of them had already moved to open the door before she had fully reached the top step, the timing so clean that she briefly wondered if it had been calculated by an estate-bound AI.

The entrance hall beyond was tall enough that the upper reaches sat in deliberate shadow, the ceiling lost somewhere above the reach of the light sources below, leaving nothing but black emptiness above them—like the void between the stars. More anti-grav emitters lit up the area, these ones holding larger formations—no longer single spheres but semi-loose clusters of them, gold this time rather than crimson, drifting in slow rotation around a central point like something orbital in miniature.

The floor was black stone, polished to a depth that reflected the gold light from above and made the whole room feel like it existed inside itself, the reflections folding back on each other in a way that took a moment of adjusting to stop being disorienting. Staff moved through the hall in ones and twos, directing guests with nothing more than a gesture or a quietly spoken word, their presence registering just enough to be useful and no more.

Veyra watched as two of them redirected a small group of guests toward the correct ballroom without any of those guests seeming to notice that they had been redirected at all. It was, she thought, an almost aggressive display of professional competence, made all the more pointed by how completely invisible it was intended to be.

'We will absolutely be revisiting the staff training. In detail. Very soon…' The main ballroom, when she finally reached it, stopped her for just a moment in the doorway. It was enormous —genuinely, functionally enormous in a way that the word didn't quite cover.

The Masters' colours dominated everything here as well: Deep purple in the draping that ran from the upper walls, crimson in the long table arrangements along the sides, gold in every accent and trim and fixture, black in the floor and the structural columns that rose at intervals through the space and disappeared into a ceiling that was, Veyra slowly realised, entirely transparent —not glass but something far, far clearer than it.

It didn't catch the light at all, so that the ceiling simply ceased and the sky above Vespera Prime continued directly overhead, stars visible even through the ambient light of the room below.' More Fortixium framing on the columns here as well,' she noted somewhat absent-mindedly, growing almost numb to the wealth on display by sheer overstimulation. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The faint undertone of it was unmistakable, and it explained how the columns managed to look both load-bearing and decorative at the same time. She moved further into the room and began the quiet, careful work of reading the other guests—the ones that had arrived already and those that still trickled in. It was a lot harder than she'd hoped. The UHF had been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about the current Drive.

No personnel lists, no public squad rosters, nothing that would have let her do this work in advance rather than on the floor. She and Orvyn had been reasonably certain that Corvus was aboard the Sovereign, which was why Veyra was here for the Sovereign-specific Assessment Gala while Orvyn had taken the Eonon-specific one in the second ballroom on the other side of the estate.

But reasonable certainty and actual confirmation were two different things, and without the UHF's usual flow of public information, she was working largely from observation and educated inference rather than anything solid.' Not my favourite way to operate, but I'll just have to make it work, won't I?'

She picked out a Harrowe representative near the far end of the room—the steel-grey and white of their formal wear was distinctive enough to read at distance, and the particular way the older man holding their family crest brooch stood suggested someone accustomed to being the most significant presence in a room and was quietly recalibrating to find that he wasn't in this place.'

A Vantis daughter,'she thought, as she spotted the young woman in the group near the Ignium-lit refreshment display—the warm red-orange glow of the suspended spheres catching the particular shade of green that Vantis formalwear tended toward.' Possibly two of them. Sisters perhaps? They're close enough in height and colouring that it suggests family rather than coincidence…'

Beyond them, harder to place—a small group whose formal wear was understated enough to be either very new money or very old money that had stopped needing to prove itself, and she genuinely couldn't tell which from here. She accepted a glass from a passing staff member who had appeared beside her at precisely the right moment and vanished again before she'd fully registered the approach, and continued looking.

She spotted the Halverson crest on an older woman near the east-side windows—' Minor Legacy, eastern Rim affiliation,'she recalled,' not likely to have anyone aboard the Sovereign based on their usual recruitment grounds…' And then, finally, she spotted someone she recognised immediately and without any doubt—someone who also happened to matter quite a lot in terms of the Drive as a whole. It wasn't particularly difficult, of course.

Raymond Oleaven Masters was not a subtle figure by any measure, and the Patriarch of the Masters Legacy had precisely no interest in being subtle at a Gala he had hosted specifically to place himself at the centre of UHF Marine Corps information. The Thal was not a man you somehow managed to simply miss.

He was coming down the central staircase as she spotted him—the grand, sweeping set of stairs at the ballroom's far end that she suspected had been designed with exactly this kind of entrance in mind—and the sheer scale of him hit her before anything else did. Veyra had met him many times before, of course, albeit from a distance. But it was something else entirely to see him up-close like this, walking down towards the very same place she was standing in right now.

He was close to three meters of man even without the armour, and the armour pushed that well past the mark. Super-Heavy-type, head to toe, every plate of it kept in the Masters' colours—deep crimson and royal purple across the primary surfaces, black at the joints and the recessed sections, gold trim running the lines of the pauldrons and the chest plate. The helmet was off, held loosely at his side in one massive, gauntleted hand, which was the only concession to sociability the armour allowed.

It was ceremonial in the way that only genuinely old or handcrafted equipment ever managed to be—worn, rather than pristine, in a way that suggested a lifetime of real use that had somehow made it more imposing rather than less. An heirloom, as far as Veyra knew. His grandfather's, one of the few pieces of true Ace Equipment the Sector Cluster had ever seen bestowed.

He himself had not matched that particular history—none could, really—but he had built his own record thoroughly enough that wearing the armour didn't look presumptuous in the least.

His hair was Masters-golden, catching the Ignium light of the room in a way that was entirely coordinated, no doubt, his face angular and strong in the particular way of someone who had spent the better part of their life on frontlines rather than behind desks—jaw sharp, the lines of his face settled into an expression of open, easy warmth that Veyra suspected could switch registers very quickly if the situation required it. Ruggedly handsome in a way that was almost irritating in its completeness.

It was a face that worked equally well delivering a tide-breaking charge into an enemy formation and holding court at the centre of a Gala full of Legacy Patriarchs and Matriarchs. His footsteps, however, were strangely quiet. Almost disconcertingly so, for something that size moving down a stone staircase in full Super-Heavy-type armour—some function of the armour itself, she assumed, dampening the impact that would otherwise have announced every step he took.

What the footsteps lacked, however, his voice made up for entirely. His laughter reached her before he'd cleared the bottom of the stairs—boisterous, genuine and easily carrying. He was already in conversation with someone near the base of the staircase before he even got there, one gauntleted hand raised in greeting.' A radiant figure,'Veyra thought, taking a sip of her drink—letting the ice-cold beverage chill the heat of her feeling out of place,' in the most literally-figurative sense of the word.'

"Always the center of attention, isn't he?" came a soft voice and a quiet chuckle right beside her. Veyra almost flinched at the sound. Only decades of combat experience kept her from actually doing it.

'I haven't even started Deteriorating yet… How in the Emperor's golden name did she get here without me noticing?!' She turned her head with exactly the level of measured composure the moment called for, until her eyes found the woman who had somehow simply appeared at her side. The woman's long hair was black—the true, lightless black of the void between stars—falling in a perfectly composed line that framed facial features so soft and pale they could have been carved from polished Terran marble.

A faint scar sat beneath her left eye, old and perfectly clean. Her makeup was immaculat e—a distinct shade of violet worked into it, so understated in its application that most people in the room would likely never consciously register it was even there. Work that only meant something if you knew enough to look for it—and Veyra did. Her eyes went wide at the picture, as realization cascaded down her entire body. She dropped into a low curtsy before she'd consciously decided to.

"Thal Sen, my sincerest apologies, I did not—""Veyra, dearest." The interruption came gently, the softness of the woman's voice never shifting even slightly in tone or warmth.

"None of that, yes?" It landed like a slap across the face anyway. Veyra straightened up, her hands perfectly still through an act of will, and found she had absolutely nothing to say. Cold sweat was already tracing a line down her back.

'What does she want from me…?'

"We are both here to gather some more information for our youths, are we not?" the woman continued, her tone like they were merely old friends catching up.

"No need for any of this ' Thal' business here, I would say. Come—let us mingle and make you some friends. You are going to need them." She didn't wait for a reply. The Sen Matriarch moved through the ballroom with quiet, unhurried purpose, her footsteps completely inaudible even to Veyra's substantial Perception at this distance, which was close enough that it absolutely should not have been possible. Veyra gathered herself quickly, then followed.

It was a thoroughly strange feeling, walking beside the Sen Matriarch like it was simply something that happened.' I can't believe this is happening,'she thought.' I hope Orvyn is having an easier time of it…' Before they'd gotten far, Veyra's mind finally caught up with what had actually been said.

"What did you mean with—' you are going to need them,' exactly?" she asked, keeping her voice careful.

"Tha—Madam Sen?" The woman turned briefly, and somehow—Veyra genuinely could not account for when it had happened—there was a fan in her hand, violet, black and silver, held up to hide her mouth with the kind of practiced ease that made it look like a natural extension of her arm.

"You will find out soon enough, dear," she said simply.

"Do not worry—it is good news." Then she turned back and kept walking, a quiet, melodic chuckle drifting back in her wake.

'She knows something about Corvus,' Veyra thought immediately, her eyes widening slightly. Then she almost stopped walking entirely at the sheer stupidity of the thought.

'She's a Sen! Of course she knows something. What is wrong with you, Veyra… Get your head in the game or you'll embarrass yourself!' Madam Sen moved through the ballroom like she'd choreographed the entire room in advance and was simply walking the steps she'd already planned.

She brought them to a small group gathered near one of the tall windows towards the west-end of the ballroom, four people in conversation with the animated, slightly distracted energy of people waiting for something to happen and filling the time pleasantly in the interim. Madam Sen stepped into the group's periphery, said nothing, and waited exactly long enough for one of them to notice her. The conversation stopped dead.

The reactions moved through the group in a brief, nearly identical sequence—a widening of eyes, a straightening of posture, the particular kind of stillness that hit people when they suddenly became very aware of exactly who was looking at them. One of the women immediately started to incline into something that was heading toward a curtsy before Madam Sen raised the fan slightly." Please," she said, soft, warm and entirely final. They stopped.

"I merely wanted to introduce someone," she continued, as though the previous five seconds hadn't happened, and turned just slightly toward Veyra.

"Veyra Lindra Sylarion. She is quite worth knowing for the future, I would say." And that was that. Four sets of eyes moved to Veyra with a quality behind them that she recognised immediately—the quiet, rapid calculation of people who had just been told, by the Sen Matriarch herself, that the woman standing next to her was worth their attention. She kept her expression as composed as she could manage and let the moment land.

The four introduced themselves in short order—Patrik Esh Dunne and Serel Oliver Auvray, both men, both Minor Legacy Patriarchs with the particular bearing of people who had been doing this kind of event for long enough to be comfortable in it; and Isa Evani Mourne and Calla Wellin Veth, the two women, Minor Legacy Matriarchs both, Isa with the slightly sharper eyes of someone who had been watching the room carefully all evening and Calla with a warmth that seemed genuine enough to be disarming.

The conversation found its footing quickly, settling into Assessment speculation with the easy energy of people who shared a common interest and were happy to discuss it openly.

"The UHF has been unusually quiet this cycle," Patrik said, swirling his glass slowly.

"Normally we'd have at least some sense of the top performers by now. A name here, a result there, Squad designations on the side. This time— nothing. Completely locked down."

"Which tells you something in itself, doesn't it," Serel replied.

"They don't go quiet unless they have a reason to. Something in this Drive is worth being secretive over."

"Or someone," Isa said. That landed with a small, knowing pause that moved through the group—eyes darting towards Madam Sen ever so briefly.' Please… As if such low-level gossip could get a Sen to reveal her information. What, exactly, are these people meant to help me with here?' Veyra wondered to herself, smiling amicably at the ongoing conversation.

"The Sovereign's Drive specifically," Calla added, her tone carefully neutral in the way that suggested it wasn't neutral at all.

"The Eonon results have been slightly less guarded. Not much, but definitely enough to notice the difference. Whatever they're sitting on, it's aboard the Sovereign, guaranteed."

"My contacts in the Navy couldn't even get a basic squad list off that ship," Patrik said, with a slight shake of his head that suggested this had personally offended him.

"Not even which Roles had been filled in the top squads. Completely dry. It's insane."

"Mine either," Serel agreed.

"I haven't seen a lockdown like this since the Carthane Drive, and that was a security situation, not a personnel one."

"Well," Veyra said, keeping her voice easy, "we'll know something in a few minutes regardless, won't we?" Patrik asked after Orvyn almost immediately afterwards, apparently they had met before and Veyra answered without breaking stride.

"He sends his regards," she said with a smile.

"He's attending the Eonon-specific reveal this evening. We felt it made more sense to divide our attention."

"Sensible," Calla said, with an approving nod.

"We nearly did the same—Drevan wanted to cover both, but I told him one of us had to actually be present at home this week." A small, warm laugh.

"He lost that argument."

"Does he often?" Isa asked, with a slight smile.

"More than he'd like to admit," Calla replied with a chuckle. Patrik's wife had apparently made the same calculation as Drevan, and lost by the opposite outcome—he was here alone as well, he said, though in his case it had been his own choice.

"She finds these evenings exhausting," he offered, without apparent offense.

"I find them… useful. We've reached an understanding." Serel said nothing about his own spouse, which Veyra noted and filed away without comment. The question of the specifics came to her in turn, naturally enough, and she answered it the same way she'd answered Patrik earlier—amicably.

"Orvyn has always been the better one for scouting out the competition," she said, with a small smile.

"We decided it made more sense for him to attend the Eonon-specific reveal. Different ship, different Recruits—someone needed to cover it, and he was the right choice for it. I swear, he has an eye for that sort of thing." Isa's eyes moved to her briefly with something that might have been appreciation.

Calla asked whether their children were aboard either ship, and Veyra answered that question too—Corvus being on the Sovereign—and the small talk moved on in the way small talk did when everyone involved was reasonably skilled at it—surfaces maintained, information exchanged in careful, calibrated amounts, nothing given away that wasn't intended to be. Madam Sen said nothing throughout. She didn't need to.

When she eventually drew Veyra away from the group with nothing more than a slight shift in body language, Veyra excused herself and followed without being asked, the same as before. They were halfway to wherever the next destination was when Madam Sen spoke, her voice low enough that it was clearly meant only for her."

'Always better at scouting out the competition,'" she repeated, in a tone that suggested she was turning the phrase over appreciatively. The fan moved slightly.

"Well handled, Veyra." Veyra kept her gaze forward.

"I only meant that he—""You meant exactly what you said," Madam Sen replied, the quiet amusement in her voice entirely audible.

"'I am better at the diplomacy and the hidden daggers than he is, and we both know it, so we put him where his strengths are useful and mine were needed here instead.' All of that, in one sentence, to four people who will now remember it." The fan closed slightly.

"Very aptly done." Veyra said nothing. She was fairly certain that was the correct response, because Madam Sen simply continued moving without saying anything extra—but it was hard to tell nevertheless. The evening continued in much the same fashion—another cluster of Minor Legacies, another smooth introduction, another round of carefully composed faces trying not to visibly react to being personally presented to someone by the Sen Matriarch.

Veyra managed each one, she thought, reasonably well: The conversations flowed, names were exchanged, the right impressions were made in the right directions. The rapid acceleration of the Sylarion Legacy's standing across the room was, naturally, not lost on her. Every introduction added another thread, another face that would now associate the Sylarion name with the woman who had arrived on Thal Sen's arm, so to speak.

It was more ground gained in a single evening than she and Orvyn had managed in the past two or three decades combined. Which was exactly what made her thoroughly uneasy. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was being positioned for something specific —guided toward particular people, particular conversations, in a particular order that made sense to someone even if it didn't fully make sense to her yet.

Madam Sen was not the kind of woman who did anything without a reason, and the reason here remained just slightly out of reach, no matter how many times Veyra turned it over while keeping her expression pleasantly composed. She just couldn't quite put her finger on it yet, and that scared her deeply…