[1]
"Good morning, assholes." Commander Richelieu sang as he spun his own be-hind into the Captain's chair. Situated at the center of the room, the Captain's chair belonged to the ranking officer on deck, and Commander Richelieu thought it fit his figure just nicely.
"Cameras up boys. Let's run a Rapid Diagnostic and then give me what I paid for."
He meant that "paid for" bit quite literally. Ever since the word had gotten out that some Gaian fighting tournament was going to be hosted on the ship, there had been a bidding war between the commanders for deck duty during the fight-- a bidding war Richelieu had won. The way he saw it, the gold he'd paid wasn't just to bribe the ship's scheduling secretary. It was an investment. The Star-Claw had some of the best surveillance and analytic programs you could jam into an airship. All that power was now at his fingertips, and he intended to use it to capture as much information about the Gaian fighters as possible. After all if they were powerful, and of course amenable to having aStar-Claw Commander as a patron, it would be well worth the price he'd paid.
Also he got a high definition front-row seat to a Gaian tournament fight, and he'd heard they got pretty brutal. And it was showtime.
Arrayed in front of him was a half-moon of officers all sitting on a slightly lowered fore-deck, each turned away from him and toward a computer terminal. One of the officers-- front left, the skinny one with the bald head, spun in his seat.
"Diagnostic's done sir, system's clean."
"Commander." Richelieu hated when they felt the need to spin around and look at him to tell him something.
"What?"
"Not sir. Commander. I'm not a fucking musketeer, I'm the commanding officer on the bridge, so call me Commander."
"but you never-" his voice was quickly drowned out by the sounds of life pouring in through the bridge speakers as, before Richelieu's eyes, a vivid, moving picture of theStar-Claw's packed Public Level appeared. The Public Level was a glittering playground of vice and savagery inside the belly of the Leviathan-Class airship. Sometimes, it was hard to take in exactly how massive the Star-Claw really was, but knowing it had the veritable town-sized Public Level, replete with gambling halls, brothels, restaurants, gladiator fields, racetracks, and bars helped to make it all seem like a single place, a single community, instead of the fifty-odd money-vacuum businesses that comprised it.
And since it had landed here in Gaia's biggest Commerce district a month ago, it had been pulling a lot of gold.
"Excellent, lets get a look at our arena, fools."
Richelieu appreciated the tournament's chosen arena. As the massive screen before him, situated right on the front wall like his own personal theater, showed him a quick succession of shots from overhead, to street view, to theClaw-Mark bar itself, he admired the tournament's administrators. The sports bar was a clever choice of venue. The Star-Claw had fighting fields the tournament could have used, but that would have made this fight just another distraction hosted by the ship. However by featuring the ship's biggest and most popular establishment, they could present it as the tournament featuring theStar-Claw, instead of the other way around. You had to respect that sort of on-point maneuvering.
Suddenly, a tall, black figure passed in front of the screen. It would have stood out even in a crowd, tall as it was, but the area had been cleared of people. If they wanted to watch the fight, spectators were welcomed to park their behinds down and catch it on one of the thousands of public televisions at every restaurant table, bar wall and street corner you could find.
"What the hell is this, nobody bothers to tell me this guy's walking in!? No analysis? No nothing?" Richelieu yelled.
"Sorry Commander, but that's not a 'guy'. There's no heat signature. He's like...a..."
"Like a machine." another officer, an engineer, said. He was staring down at his computer terminal like a good lad, but in its reflection Richelieu saw that he had on the facial expression of someone whohad just been sucker-punched. The commander raised his brow, and turned to another officer.
"Well? Is it?"
"I'm dialing up the infra-red...yeah, no there's heat in there. Just not a lot. Could be biological, could be some hot piece of machinery. Hmm...yeah, the more I look the more he seems like he's just machine. Some kind of really big android. But...is that a beating heart?"
On the video feed, it wasn't so easy to make out what his shape was beyond humanoid. He was covered in a draping black cloak and wore a loose hood which hung well past where a man's eyes would be. Well, really a man's eyes would have been somewhere near the figure's chest, but on its face there was only a dull red light coming from beneath its hood. Through the fabric, it was obvious that it had at least one eye, and that eye was glowing.
The figure's black boots clapped against the bar's floor. Somehow even the cheerful neon lights and flickering bar-signs reflected ominously off the satin sheen of the thing's cloak. It stepped into the center of the room, its back to the entrance, and stopped. There it stood, unerringly still.