Homestar Saga

Chapter 141: Publicity Stunt

"Do you ever miss the old days?"

Captain Mims responded with a questioning grunt. He'd been keeping his temper in check, but Yvian could see he was still on edge. He stared into the distance, awaiting the approach of the next batch of refugees.

Yvian was a little on edge herself. Admiral Ender Zhukov had decided Reba was unlikely to launch another attack so soon after the reveal of the Queenships. He'd taken the opportunity to retrieve the formerly enslaved pixens that had been stranded in Oluken space.

The Oluken had removed their slave implants and wiped the memory of the horrors they'd experienced under the devices. The medically induced amnesia would lessen their trauma, but couldn't erase it completely. That meant there were just over a million half panicked pixens being pulled out of cryo with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a vague feeling of existential terror. They would need reassurance, so small teams of Lissa's pixen assistants would be meeting them instead of just Peacekeeper units. Lissa had drafted Mims and Yvian to help. They'd met one ship already. It had... not gone well.

"You know," Yvian pressed. "When we were just privateers. Doing missions and killing bad guys." She folded her arms, yearning for simpler times. "Just the three of us against the void."

Mims answered with another grunt.

"Everything's so much more..." Yvian let out a breath. "Complicated... now. And we've got all these people depending on us and I don't feel like we're even doing that much." She crossed her arms. "Just meetings."

"You are both too valuable to risk," Kilroy pointed out. "After the incident at Brilend Prime, this unit has been instructed not to allow you to put yourselves in harm's way."

"But that's what we do," Yvian reminded him. "We put ourselves in harm's way. We fight and we take risks and we get things done."

"Negative," said Kilroy. "You are no longer expendable."

"We're going to have to do something about that." Captain Mims glared at the horizon. Yvian nodded agreement, squinting against the glare of the Homestar. They were standing on one of the landing areas in City 29. She'd only been there once before, but the crystal structures were laid out with the same geometric perfection as City 43. Crystalline shapes formed buildings that steadily increased in height unit they reached the center of the city, where a great spire reached kilometers into the sky. It shined and sparkled, a beauty that caught her breath and set her imagination aflame.

City 29 was visually identical to City 43, but Yvian could feel the difference. There was a presence here, but it was a vague, sleepy thing. Yvian didn't feel watched as she did in the other city. She didn't feel Shard's sorrow either. City 29's soul was more like Skygem's, and had only seemed mildly interested in the arrival of so many sapients.

"Anyway, I just... I dunno." Yvian gave a shrug. "I just liked it better before."

Mims was silent for a moment. Then he asked, "Do you remember after Milvari? When we went our separate ways?"

"Yeah." How could she forget? "Me and Lissa tried to be space traders while you went back to doing what you do." Yvian had lost a fortune in a very short amount of time.

"Right." The Captain gave a nod. "I went back to doing what I do. Taking missions. Killing folk. It was empty." His gaze was distant. "I mean, it was always empty. But this time... after being with you two, I could feel how empty it was. Meaningless. I killed bad people. I helped regular folk from time to time. But it didn't matter. I didn't care. I was alone."

The human closed his eyes. When he opened them again, there was a... softness. It was an alien expression on the human Yvian had come to know. "When Lissa commed me, I felt hope. It's... not something I was used to."