For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “18) prompt: a step too far.”

In the same world/ship as Evolution and All Green Dots. Short version: Alae is the ceremonial Queen on a generation ship; Eka is her partner.

“Trepp, Alae, it smells like stale piss.” They had both been on edge lately, vibrating with the tension of the ship, with the political maneuverings that threatened both of them, feeling crammed in even Alae’s larger cubic and not spending any hour aside from work apart. The perfume had been the cracked cog that had thrown them out of working order. “Do you own a scent that can’t be smelled in the next star system?”

It was a step too far, enough to send Alae storming out into the corridors, alone and without a weapon, stomping through the ship like a force of nature, ready to rip the panels off anyone who got in her way.

Jol Ruinson was the hapless fool who crossed her path first, a hydrologist from the upper port quadrant. “Alae, your Majesty,” he oozed. He always oozed, like he was half-liquid himself. “Have you come to recant your refusal? Have you seen the light?”

“Hardly,” she snapped. “Jol, I will marry you when the void is safe to breathe, when the ship stops moving, when our water falls from blue skies. I’ll marry you when myths are true, and not before.”

She could tell the moment the words were out of her mouth that it was too much, too far. She had been turning him down (and a half-dozen others) since she moved out of the crèche, but she had always been polite. Today…

“Your perfume smells like piss, your Majesty,” he snarled, one hand going for her hair and the other, holding a taser she hadn’t noticed, for her ribs.

She didn’t lose consciousness until he dragged her until the dark.

And for Eseme’s prompt wanting to see a rescue in this setting:

“You have got to be treppin’ kidding me,” Eka shouted, her voice echoing off the corridors. “It’s a finite space, a ship. How can you not find. One. Woman. In. A. Spaceship?”

The police squirmed uncomfortably under her barrage. “Engineer,” one of them began, another quickly interrupting, “Princess.” She turned to the third, waiting to see how he’d address her.

“Eka,” he said quietly. “There are seven hundred fifty thousand people on this ship, and the cubic to match. We are doing everything we can to find Alae.”

She stared at him levelly for a moment, then, reluctantly, nodded. Everything we can. “All right,” she agreed quietly, “but, perhaps, you’re not doing everything I can.”

It only took a few minutes to convince the beleaguered officers to go along with her plan, and another half hour to set up the scanners to do what she wanted. The planners of the Zimmer had taken great pains to limit surveillance to the large public-gathering sites, valuing privacy where personal space was inherently limited. But the life-support systems were fine-tuned, able to deflect the smallest variations. Eka doubted anyone had used the system to track their lover’s perfume before. It took the scanners fifteen minutes to isolate the trail.

The supply corridor had been blocked off in a remodel two generations past, the only access a panel that had been unscrewed. In the space behind – half the size of Eka’s apartment – Alae and her captor lay, dimly lit by the standby lights. The engineer princess dove forward, heedless of weapons, to gather her Queen in her arms.

“I told you,” she murmured, “your perfume was a bit strong.”

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far

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