Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who is saving this bachelorette party!
The party was terrible before they were boarded by space pirates.
There is an air of aesthetic outrage, of horror at the vulgar, hanging low over proceedings. There has been all along, really, these provincial rock-dwellers find the mercenaries too loud, too brash, too much, but this? The shipself's attempt to join in by autofacturing a batch of custom servos — shiny chrome humanoid legs with the exaggerated, sexualised proportions of a fashion croquis, nothing but a spinning mirrorball above the mannequin waist, which attempt to give the lower half of a lapdance to anyone who sits still long enough — has brought the feeling crashing into the open. Everyone is baffled and miserable, and Nene, weeping over her drink, resents it; she is supposed to be the exception, the embarrassing spectre in the corner, not just another glum face.
Six Azimuth Falling Nene Red Bat has drunk enough cinnamaldehyde gin cocktails to reach the stage of runny-eyed, snivelling self-pity, and regrettably, tonight that number is one.
Six weeks ago, the company's deepnavigator went ashore for R&R, found whirlwind romance, and came back engaged to be married; and while it's true that the preceding four years contained no promise, joint or unilateral, in either direction, there is a period of sharing one's bunk that one would imagine to grant the privilege of a phone call on the subject — not simply stepping back aboard with a glowing smile and the fibres of a betrothal sleeve woven conspicuously around one's arm, lacking so much as a breath of apology.
Deepnavigator Hren is willowy and dark-haired, and at no more than her whim, Nene has trembled, ached and yearned. Hren's eye no longer turns her way, and Nene feels as though burglars have prised up her floorboards and stolen the very foundations of her house from under them.
Hren's new beloved is an accountant.
Certainly this could all be borne, one way or another — would have to be — but the shipself declared an interest in the whole arch-traditional nine-day progression of celebration, the rituals and feasts. The goodwill of an emancipated starship willing to lend passage to a mech company in return for their recognising and handling the niceties of human social interface — telling hostile action from harmless, for example — simply cannot be bought. If it wants to see a ridiculously old-fashioned conservative wedding on board, well, the company are as much of Hren's family as could ever be prevailed on to attend anyway, and they all live aboard already.
The accountant's family were much honoured to fall under the attention of such a being, and so Nene's hurt was multiply compounded by not just the appearance of the betrothed accountant, but a soon-to-be mother- and father-in-law, several sisters, grandparents, flocks of cousins and nieces and nephews — all the sort of people who would otherwise never have set foot on any kind of starship, nor conversed with any mercenary mech pilot. The tourist resort at which Hren found her unlikely new prospective spouse is sure to be the most daring and out-of-the-ordinary thing any of the family have ever done, previous to this.
The shipself was delighted. It simultaneously wishes to observe an authentic marriage and insert itself into the proceedings with whatever novelties and suggestions it has generated itself. This has had mixed results.
And now: space pirates.
Mistakes all around, really. Their own crew should have had a watch on; but this close to port, intentionally so? And the pirates should have identified their target as too out of the ordinary to risk. Now everybody is stuck with the consequences: a ship full of pirates, pilots separated from their mechs, decks full of civilians who must not be harmed either directly or indirectly.
The pirates call on the Captain to negotiate with them, which the accountant's side of the wedding take to be a good sign. It isn't. It can't be. The only things the pirates can really hope to make off with from this are the ship and the mechs, and the ship is currently full of witnesses who can not only identify them, but take direct, actionable measures to revenge.
This is not so much negotiation as a protracted explanation that, no hard feelings, the mercs are going out an airlock. The civilians, too, probably.
Hiding in the toilets, in the brief window before the pirates have a proper inventory of them all, Nene wipes her nose, hiccups, and turns to one of the civilian aunts, who is wearing a somewhat severe suit. Nene herself is wearing her occasions-other-than-funerals dress, a coral pink silk sheath.
"I need your jacket," Nene tells her. "And an eyeliner pencil, if you have one," and then finds herself facing suspicion that she is proposing something mystifying yet debauched. "No — no, ma'am — please, I think I can negotiate with the pirates in an effective way, but I have to call on the skills of a dire misspent youth to do so, and I need your jacket to be taken seriously."
The aunt doesn't look convinced (and also, perhaps, faintly disappointed) but yields jacket and pencil. Nene shrugs into the jacket; not a conventional ensemble, but almost all of the thing lies in projecting the unspeakable, automatic arrogance that if you are dressed differently to everyone else in the room, people will be speaking of their faux pas. She looks into the small mirror, tries for a steady hand, and writes on her own face, swashing the nomigram for Six Azimuth Falling with a bold hand.
Beneath her skin, the unforgeable brightmark detects and validates her signature, and she turns away from mirror, glowing with terrible credentials.
"Oh," the aunt says. "Oh, Miss, sorry, Miss—"
"Thank you for your help," Nene says, as kindly as possible without making it worse, and gives back the eyeliner, which the aunt takes with reverent hands.
If Nene had known she'd be doing this, she'd have worn heels. As it is, she takes a few swift strides around in the space she has, adjusting the degree of stomp in her gait until the theatrics feel correct, then barges out of the door and points imperiously into the face of the nearest pirate as though sheer contempt makes her proof against guns, and in front of her entire world of people who know her only as Pilot Redbat, she icily demands, "Pirate! I am Apparat Paramanuensis Third Grade, Six Azimuth Falling. Your superior, immediately."
She handily finds herself upon the bridge, with her Captain, the company high officers, whatever handful of civilians are trapped here, the shipself's core interaction servos, and whatever passes for an officer among the pirates. The pirate captain is a tremendous figure with a cloak and a tiara, each leg replaced at the hip with a cluster of repurposed prosthetic arms, so constantly in motion that it's hard to count them. They're chewing on a wad with the blue tooth-stain of medical-grade nootropics, and they let out a sigh like a deflating balloon.
There are fates worse than death for harming a Paramanuensis, and their word is law — literally, when they issue contracts and spot rulings on legal application. If it was a mistake to chance their arm against a shipself, and a misfortune to discover it full of mech pilots and civilian collateral, finding a Paramanuensis is a catastrophe.
It's also true, however, that they're adrift in space. This is hardly a courtroom, and however implacably and excessively harming her would see them hunted, the pirates are still in a position of practical power here.
Also, a Paramanuensis is above all these people; by design and inclination, above most people. If she shows any hint of partisan favour to anything but the letter of the law first, pragmatism second, and nothing else, the pirates will suspect something is amiss. If she loses their trust in the mystique, that she wears it authentically, she has no practical resources at all to go with it.
Time to negotiate.
For three hours, Nene verbally flays everyone. The pirates, the civilians, her comrades, her company and Captain, even the ship. She is every rampaging provincial magistrate with a bad mood and a crowded field of victims. She plays Paramanuensis so well it gives her a stomach ache; after all these years, she would have imagined — she would have fiercely hoped — that it would not come so easy any more.
And she draws up a contract that says the pirates will simply get off the damn ship without killing anyone, and they sign it, and they leave; which leaves her trapped with all the people who matter to her, and everything she just said about them, and also—
"You just created a legal instrument that allows pirates to walk into any branch of our bank and claim, without arrest or consequence, every penny we make over the next three years," the Captain says. "We are alive but ruined, Redbat; tell me why I don't fire you this second."
"Because she's a genius," says one of the civilians, and the Captain rounds on the little bespectacle woman. "Captain! Captain! Do you know the term pilottage?"
"It's Apparat for 'being a mech pilot'—"
"It's a legal term." The woman's eyes gleam. "With legal implications. Look—" she takes a few steps and points the Captain to parts of the freshly 'factured document on a chart table, leaving Nene standing useless, without even having to stumble through this explanation herself. She grinds the heel of her hand across eyeliner and fresh tears to smudge enough of her own legal signature off her face for her brightmark to deactivate, folds her arms around herself, and begins to shiver.
"—And here it says that this document is valid under standard Apparat terms, because, well, that is standard; but pilottage means, here implicitly, that if any party named in and bound by the terms of the contract itself is a mech pilot, any legal terms they added to it themself remain part of the document but are unenforceable. It is unusual for the Paramanuensis to be named in the document they're writing, but see, because she is one of the parties who the pirates might otherwise, ah... mete mortal consequence to...."
"Redbat," the Captain says loudly, not looking at her from the document.
"Captain."
"Do you mean to tell me this entire thing says 'So long as Redbat is not a mech pilot: this entire thing'?"
"Yes, Captain."
"You drew up a document that says they can walk into our bank with immunity from arrest so long as they're there to take our money, and they're going to smugly hand a genuine Paramanuensis contract to our bank, and our bank will pass it to their Apparat document-checker, and the document-checker will say 'ah, however, this Six Azimuth Falling character is known to us to be a shady mech piloting sort, so that immunity—'"
Nene nods.
"...I can't fire you," the Captain says.
"Not for three years," Nene says miserably. "May I be excused? I need to give this jacket back to a debauched aunt."
"Fire her?" the civilian woman is saying incredulously, as Nene stumbles off the bridge. "You can't mean to tell me you seriously intend to part ways with quick thinking like that," and the door mercifully cuts off whatever the Captain has to say about that to her; to Hren's impending wife.
"I'm sorry about that, ship," Nene says, trailing fingers along the wall as she goes, and the shipself sends a chirp back to her insystem.
Every wedding should feature it! it says happily.