Hosch-Twelve speaks with the Captain, and although the two of them are the only ones to ever know the precise words exchanged, everybody knows, practically immediately, that Hosch-Twelve asked him if she could somehow neither honour nor back down from her own issued challenge, simply default on it; and that the Captain inevitably said that, technically, yes.
The considerable weight of the technicality sees the officer come stiffly to Two Marks to demand, in dubious grace, how such a duel will work.
"Record of your own petty expenses are kept by the company," Two Marks says, seated in the long-unused workstation cubbyhole she has claimed as her work office, with the impenetrable equinamity of a daughter of a large and demanding family. "I keep my own; I will ask the Captain to allow me access to those records pertaining to you, and instruct shipself to allow you access to my own. I can provide copies of Form Number Three, the spot audit paperwork. Such work is normally done at the accountant's own pace, though with the obvious deadline of statutory tax filing. Given your unfamiliarity with taxation code, I would not dream of applying undue time pressure. Simply prepare the spot audit form, detailing whether the expenses records have been correctly tallied according to their taxation exemption status."
Hosch-Twelve looks back at her with a haunted dread. "And how will that determine the victor?"
"A correctly prepared audit form will be counted substantially as though it is a hit with an injurious weapon," Two Marks says, eyes dark and gleaming. "Any incorrect preparation will be counted as a miss. Naturally, I shall ask the Captain to find a neutral accountant to judge the correctness of our preparations—"
"I think we can assume you'll hit," Hosch-Twelve says, tone dry and sour. "So, then; I miss and lose, or we both hit, and so draw."
The accountant inclines her head.
Hosch-Twelve grits her teeth, nods, and firms the set of her shoulders. "Very well," she says.
Two Marks looks at her a few seconds longer, then reaches aside for a weighty hardbound book, which she holds out between both of her hands. "I feel sure," she says, "that with our positions reversed, you would generously show me which end of a splintergun to point away from myself."
"Comprehensive Apparat Taxation Code, Seventh Concordat Core, Revision 764, plus Annexes A–F, with Commentary," Hosch-Twelve reads from the cover, and looks between Two Marks' professionally pleasant face and the book several times, bends sideways to examine its thickness, and finally, gingerly, takes it. "Befucked."
"Is there any other matter?"
"No," Hosch-Twelve says, staring down at the cover of the book, and turns to go. "Thank you," she adds in a way that's more embarrassed at her own belatedness than it is begrudging, and hefts the book at little, to demonstrate the focus of her gratitude.
"Hm," Two Marks says, dauntingly noncommittal.
The Captain tells the shipself to quietly pass along warning to Hren, some hours before they leave port, which she is complicatedly grateful for, even if only for the forearmed assistance in maintaining a professional face. She docks the deepnavigational interface cables to her skull studs, strokes away the dim ache at the nape of her neck which is only tension at remembered pain, takes a surreptitiously deep breath.
"Deepnavigator," he says, nodding curtly to her across the bridge. "You have our course."
"Captain," she acknowledges in a voice which does not shake, which does not contain the plaintive wail of leaving Nene an extra time, an extra step behind.
Through the deepnavigational para-wiring, the shipself offers a secret, unique rapport; peculiar to the trade, the synaesthesic insystemic sensorium allows a communion with shipselves which nobody else knows. Perceptions and proprioceptions hijacked, Hren experiences herself as a perfect, smooth, tiny sphere; the shipself's love is scented of rosewater, warms her absent tongue like a gentle quantity of spice, presses uniformly from every direction like the weight of a quilt, a hug.
The shipself blankets its passengers in protective artificial sleep, and easily trusts Hren with the great shipdrive, the smooth and controlled deepward push, into the counterintuitive pseudofluid flows; together they begin feeling out the prevailing shapes and movements, and sliding the ship along toward their destination.
After what feels like an eternity of stumbling mechanical triangulation on an unfamiliar chirp-beacon, Nene's mech wing shallow their captured prize at a minor orbital, and surrender gratefully to the clutches of the port authority's lone gunship. They are hastily conveyed from cursory questioning to the orbital's medical clinic, mechs sent to the orbital's drydock for repair. Irradiated, dehydrated, and jaundiced, medsick and deepsick, the five succumb to rest and treatment, having dragged out, thick-tongued, a promise that as soon as possible they will be allowed to signal their ship.
Instead, they're roused by the general excitement of a major and unheralded arrival: a Second Concordat ship bearing freshly patched war-scars.
"Redbat!" howls Very Roll from a porthole, everyone's insystemics offlined to avoid connectome degradation during treatment. "Redbat, it's the Goatfish!"
The head medic sees the five of them form up, brave-faced and ready to march out, and eye-rollingly checks them only long enough to weigh their limbs down with fresh gel leaves, knowing them unstoppable. They are slower than usual, true, but mighty; revenged and victorious mech pilots.
Pilots! their shipself greets them at the airlock, sublining exultation, and then: Only five?
"Only five," Nene confirms bleakly, leaning heavily against the open lock's rim. "Shaking Leaf, bright and instant — we'll drink to him, once I've made account to the Captain," and then, as conveyance-servos scoot them around the ship, "shipself, please — where are we going?"
Everybody's in one of my old gaming halls, the shipself chirps. For a duel!
"A duel?"
Not unheard-of. Not entirely. But not generally the kind of thing to happen among a comparatively small crew, tight-run; there are entirely better recourses.
It's very exciting! the shipself says. The Captain had to forbid everyone from betting on it!
"What." Nene presses her cool wrist to her aching forehead.
The betting was hurting Hosch-Twelve's feelings, the shipself says.
"Hosch-Twelve," Nene says faintly, then presses her eyes tightly shut. "Oh, no. No?"
The shipself sublines a cheery series of mojigrams suggesting fighting and victory.
At opposite ends of a somewhat excessively large table, Hosch-Twelve and Two Marks face each other. Each has a Form Number Three in front of them; Hosch-Twelve's is visibly heavily annotated. Two Marks' is face down. Hosch-Twelve has a number of books in front of her, most prickling with bookmarks, and a glass and jug of water. Two Marks has a single mechanical pencil.
Hosch-Twelve, on her feet, jug half emptied, is pacing a little with small, jerky, agitated steps. Two Marks' lent book is cradled, open, in one hand — with some effort; she is hoarsely and with some vehemence quoting a Section 18, B, III. She appears as if sleep has been considerably lacking.
Two Marks listens, politely attentive and with a professional face of no discernible opinion, as Hosch-Twelve rants for several more minutes, breaks off to drain and refill another glass of water, and continues for several minutes again. Finally, the officer slams the book closed, puts in on the table, and leans heavily, one hand each side of her annotated paperwork.
"And so, finally," she says, "all except one of your receipts is in order, except for—" she rummages among her effects for a second, throws her hands up. "I made mention of it at the time! You know the one! Which you have marked as Category C, when it should rightly be Category D. Which is a warning, but not an audit failure, for a commercial entity of your service-sector class." She aims a glare along the length of the table, which might be triumphant if not for its exhaustion. "Ha!"
"That was, may I say, a remarkable exposition of Section 18 from a lay person," Two Marks says politely. "Concise and digestible. I commend Officer Hosch-Twelve for her quick study of it."
Hosch-Twelve looks pleased for a second or so, before terrible suspicion dawns.
The Captain, off to the table's side, with a voice connection open to the refereeing accountant, makes a noise through his teeth.
"Third party expert says you didn't read the Section preamble closely," he says. "Our accountant's a trader in sole person; Section 18 doesn't apply at all, in which case Categories C and D are considered interchangeable, with the Commentary indicating a non-binding preference for all applicable to be marked D."
Hosch Twelve frantically grabs the book back up and begins leafing.
"And yours?" the Captain says, arching a brow at Two Marks.
"Of course, Captain," Two Marks says, and picks up her mechanical pencil, lightly taps twice to extend some writing point, and turns over her entirely blank, fresh Form Number Three. At the top of it, taking up some third of the page, is a dense mass of boxes which can be marked to indicate various information which may or may not be valid in combination, or change the entire interpretation of the rest of the form, or void it entirely; she neatly places a mark in a single box, writes a single word alongside, and moves the pencil to the bottom of the form, where she effortlessly swashes her Nene-designed nomigram. Setting down the pencil, she pushes the form along the table, toward the Captain, who steps forward to pick it up.
He looks at it and clears his throat. "There's a box marked," he says, for the benefit of the referee, the entire room hanging on his words. Hosch-Twelve looks sick. "That box is labelled Exempt, and next to it is the label for reason, by which Glass Chiming Verdant has written—"
"Pilottage," Hosch-Twelve mouths along with him, and she stares at her hands, planted on the table, visibly taking in the full extent to which she's been put into place by a master of her art, as the room bursts with roars and whistles.
Through the happy uproar, Hren shoulders, tear-streaked, clutching Nene into her side as the pilot staggers the last of the way to the table, startling Two Marks to her feet; and they press together, Nene curling herself as small as possible, cradled between them.