Kestrel Kestrel - Chapter One
Thursday, 10 October 2024 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keaaluTitle (chapter): Kestrel Kestrel (1)
Series: Terrahawks
Notes: Where Kate recieves an unexpected (unwanted) gift, and gets food poisoning.
At least, that's what everyone ASSUMES it is...
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When Captain Kate Kestrel, international music icon and Terrahawks pilot, finally escaped the stage where she’d been performing and made it back to her dressing room, it was to find her helper zeroid number 55 perched next to the mirror, resplendent in one of her wigs, complete with a scattering of shimmery crystals and a big floppy silk daisy.
His smile lit up when he saw her. “Welcome back, Miss Kate!”
“Good to see you too, Five-five,” she said, laughing. “Man, if it’s not 101 ‘borrowing’ my hats every time he gets the opportunity… I’m beginning to think the pair of you are plotting together to steal my wardrobe.”
The zeroid canted cheekily over to one side. “Well Miss Kestrel, we’re not in cahoots, but to tell you the truth I do think this suits.”
“All right, fine. You do look kinda cute. You can keep it – for now.” She grinned and patted him on the head, and he chirped a happy acknowledgement. “How’s it been in the real world while I’ve been on stage? Our friends on Mars keeping their distance since we saw them off this morning?” She threw her arms up over her head in a stretch, and yawned.
“I think that must be the case – we’ve not heard a word from the guys up in space.”
Kate hesitated, arms still over her head. “Nothing at all?” She narrowed her eyes just a touch and gave him a long comically-suspicious look. “I’m not actually sure if that makes me feel better or worse. What’s Zelda cooking up now.”
55’s optics crossed in confusion. “I don’t have the data to make-”
“It was rhetorical,” she interrupted, with a fond smile. “I know you’d tell me if you heard anything. Honestly I think I’d happily put money on Zelda not knowing what Zelda’s up to, most days.”
“Her family is a little chaotic,” 55 agreed, carefully. “As well as the times when they’re just plain psychotic.”
“At least chaos means we can usually see them coming, right?”
“Right!”
“Now. Speaking of cooking… What did catering leave me.” Kate found the team had left her supper in the warmer at the end of the worktop. After fetching it out, she sagged into her chair by the mirror, and for a while just stared at the covered bowl, wondering if she had the oomph to actually eat it.
It had been a long day.
And it was only going to get longer.
Finally managing to eat the bulk of the bland stir-fry, Kate piled up her empty dishes and turned to the door, to find there was already a parcel on the table where she usually left her washing up. Looking rather beaten up, with one corner squashed right in, decorative paper peeked out through a tear in the exterior brown wrapping. A wrinkled label stuck to the top, written in untidy, meandering block capitals, said ‘Kate Kestral, Anderberr Records.’
“Huh. Where’d this come from?” she wondered, using her phone to turn the parcel, unwilling to touch it directly. “The mailman sure wasn’t gentle with it.”
“While you were performing, Joe dropped it in. Said maybe we should put it straight in the bin.” 55 spotted her expression and reviewed what he’d just said. “Er-… not actually dropped it.”
“I don’t think he coulda made it look worse if he had, to be fair.” She folded her arms and scrutinised it. “What do you make of it?”
“A mystery gift! I can see why you’re wary, but security scanned it and found nothing scary.”
“Hmm.” Kate pursed her lips. “I don’t know. Something just feels… off. Don’t you think?”
55 perked over in the opposite direction, confused. “Sorry, ma’am. I don’t understand.”
The sound of tuneless whistling from the corridor announced the presence of tonight’s security guard, the ridiculously tall and skinny Joe Fletcher, doing his rounds. Just the person.
“Joe?” Kate leaned out of the door and beckoned him back. “Where’d this come from?”
The security guard slouched into the doorframe, arms folded. “It was dropped at the goods desk by your… liaison? That Dapples guy. He said he was given it by one of the interns at your head office.” He released a hand to tick off each individual person in the chain; “They apparently said they were given it by a bike courier, who’d picked it up from a parcel dropoff point. The collection message said it was from ‘your greatest fan’.”
Kate quirked a brow and gave the guard a hard look. “A gift from my greatest fan, who can’t even spell my name right?”
Joe put both hands up, defensively. “Hey I wasn’t gonna question him that hard. If he said that’s where it came from, who am I to challenge him? ’Sides, the guy is tough enough to get a straight sentence out of at the best of times, and I had other duties to attend.” He peered at the battered paper. “I’m not an idiot. I did scan it – twice – before I brought it round. Nothing showed up. It’s inert. Looked like a little model of something, although it mighta got damaged in transit? So it’s not even some weirdo sending you his used underwear.”
“…again.” She sighed. “All right. Thanks Joe.” She patted his shoulder and let him go back to his rounds. She waited until the sounds of his whistling had completely faded before exhaling a long steadying breath and approaching the box. “What do you reckon? If Stew delivered it, and Joe scanned it and said it was all inert… I guess maybe it is okay, after all?”
55 scrutinised it as well. “If it’s from a fan then it could be well-meant. It's not the strangest of things you've been sent,” the zeroid offered, at last.
“That is fair,” she agreed, warily. “One of the perils of being famous. It brings out the weirdoes who think they’re entitled to a relationship with you.” She dug her phone out of her pocket. “Is the scan still in the system? I’d like a look myself. Just to be sure.”
The zeroid considered it for a moment, optics scrolling. “I’ve sent it to your phone.”
The results popped up on the screen. An enhanced x-ray, colour coded: ceramic, plastics, minerals. Apart from some scrunched up paper, nothing organic. A lot of empty space, too – not even filled with bubble wrap. Joe was right; it did look like some sort of ornament? Although what the heck it was meant to be left her stumped. A… fat boomerang?
“You don’t have to open it? They’ll never know?” 55 reminded, as his human pored over the scan. “If you want to get rid of it, you could just ask Joe.”
“Ye-eah.” Kate sighed her annoyance. “But I guess now I’m curious.” She glanced up from below hooded brows. “And curiosity killed the cat, not the Kate. Right?”
“Um. If you say so?” The zeroid’s scrolling optics took on a more confused pattern.
“All right. You ready?” Kate laced her fingers and stretched them, as though warming up for her piano. “Let’s do this. Then we can get rid of it.” She pressed her very fingertips to the exterior and lifted it, gingerly; it was a lot lighter than she’d expected. She gave it a tiny jiggle and something slid around inside, with the soft jingle of damaged crockery. “Thaaat doesn’t sound so good.”
55 watched her carry it over to the counter in front of the mirror, so he could see better. “No truer word spoken. I agree with you both that it sounds like it’s broken.” He directed his laser at the tape holding it closed, and working carefully, delicately burned through enough of it that Kate could easily unpeel the rest.
“And the mystery prize is…” Kate intoned, dramatically, opening the top flaps of the box and peering inside. “Yup. Broken in transit. Probably when someone decided to use it as a soccer ball.” She plucked a tissue out of the box on her desk, and using it to protect her fingers, gingerly picked up the uninvited gift. “I guess someone thinks they’re funny.”
She balanced the ornament on the top of the box; a crude little caricature of a bird, in unglazed pale beige ceramic, that with a lot of imagination (and a lot of squinting) could have been someone’s attempt at an Ancient Egyptian falcon. The paintjob wasn’t much better – it looked like they’d used a floor mop, not a brush. The whole absurd effect was made complete by the wad of purple doll’s hair stuck on its head.
And it was definitely broken. The tail had snapped off completely, and dirty grey-black sand trickled out from a big crack across the body.
55 was still waiting for the punchline. “Ma’am?”
“It’s a kestrel,” she drawled. “At a guess, a Kate Kestrel.”
55 made a little disappointed noise. “Don’t wanna be rude about something handmade, but I really don’t think it’s much good, I’m afraid.”
Kate patted him on the head. “Oh, I don’t think too many hours were dedicated to making this, little buddy. All for the sake of a cheap joke.” She picked the object up and stowed it back in its box – and her fingertips came away sticky. “Ugh. Man. The paint’s not even dry!” She glared at it, wiping her fingers against the tissue, but it just smeared it out worse. “Gah.”
The black stain took a lot of scrubbing to finally get it off her fingertips. When she re-emerged from the bathroom, 55 had shed the wig, and was looking at her very seriously. “Miss Kate? Are you all right? You heart rate is up, like you’ve had a fright.”
She thought about it for a few seconds, and realised that her pulse was up, a little, and she could feel a bad-tempered adrenaline kicking in. “More cross than anything, I think. I guess that stupid joke annoyed me more than I thought.” She took a long deep breath to ground herself, and planted herself heavily in the chair by the mirror. Why had it annoyed her so much, anyway? “Fine, so it was harmless – this time. What if next time it isn’t? The record label is meant to have a whole office full of people dealing with this sort of thing, stopping stupid garbage getting to me – and instead, they deliver it right to my dressing room?”
No, this really wasn’t good enough. She studied her phone for several long seconds before picking it up and dialling out.
Stew Dapples sounded unfairly chirpy for near-midnight. “Hi yeah, Miss Kestrel, hi! Hi! Great to hear you, how did it go? I heard amazing things! You smashed it tonight, I mean totally smashed it!”
“Uh- thanks. Listen, Stew? About that parcel you delivered-” she started, but he interrupted before she was finished.
“What parcel? Ow.”
Kate suddenly felt cold fingers draw all the way up the back of her neck. “The… one the intern gave you? To deliver to me?”
“When was that, Miss Kestrel?”
“…tonight? While I was on stage?”
“Oh my god, do I have a stalker? Yikes! Like, no, that totally wasn’t me. Why would someone even be pretending to be little old me? Ow, stop biting.”
She wanted to give him a shake and demand to know why he thought he had the stalker. “You didn’t come back while I was on stage?”
“I wanted to! Like I totally absolutely wanted to stay and watch the concert, but my mum’s cousin’s husband’s best friend’s boyfriend got in a car crash with some idiot who totally ran a red light, and I’ve had to go look after their dog while they went to hospital, it was totally crazy, man, and their dog doesn’t even like me. You know? It won’t stop biting me! I mean-”
Kate hung up on him, and couldn’t even bring herself to feel bad about it. She felt cold all over.
Leaving 55 chirping anxiously behind her, she made her way down the corridor towards security – trying to look casual, but she could still feel her heartbeat. It was only a stupid badly-made gag-gift, she reminded herself.
So why had it left her feeling so off-balance.
At the security station, Joe had his feet up and was noisily eating a Noodle!Pot, not watching a single one of the visual feeds.
“Joe? Can I look at your camera footage?”
He jumped and almost fell off his chair, spilling sauce across the desk, before looking guiltily back at her. “Miss Kestrel-” He choked on a mouthful of noodles.
She put her hands up, placatory. “I won’t tell if you let me see the video.”
“Right. Right!” He used a pile of important-looking papers in an attempt to wipe up the worst of the mess. “Help yourself.”
Kate leaned over the keyboard and called up the rough time she wanted, then skimmed through until the parcel arrived. The desk was already busy, agents and couriers and suppliers all jostling for space, the queue stretching out of the door. Two desk agents were trying to juggle the crowd, with Joe and one other security guard helping keep people moving.
‘Stew’ arrived with his delivery at the peak of the rush. Or at least, someone who looked enough like Stew to fool most people at first glance; the floppy multicoloured hair, the same style and colour of clothing that he’d been wearing earlier, big sunglasses even indoors, waving his identity lanyard and excitedly gesticulating. But it obviously wasn’t Stew – and after dropping off the parcel and having an enthusiastic interaction with the security guard (who was obviously trying to get rid of him), the man had quietly slipped away without interacting with anyone else. Which was not how Stew behaved, in the slightest.
“So uh, what’s the deal?” Joe tried gently to steer her away from the controls without making it too obvious he was doing it. “What exactly are you looking for?”
Unimpressed, Kate pressed a foot against the chair’s wheeled base and scooted it away. “That wasn’t Stew who delivered the parcel.”
“What?” It took Joe a second to recover his balance, arms whirling. “Naw, of course it was. Who else could it have been?” He trundled himself back to the desk and leaned closer to the screen, squinting at it. Then straightened up just a little, and rolled the footage forwards and backwards a couple of times. “Well, shit.” He’d already paled. “Who the hell is that.”
Kate gave him a hard look. “I’ll expect your report tomorrow, shall I? Oh, and that parcel needs getting rid of. It’s under the worktop in my dressing room. I can at least trust you to do that, right?”
“Uh.” Joe had the decency to look horrified at his slip-up. “Right.” He covered his mouth with his hand. “Shit. Yeah, I’ll look into it right away… Are you all right?”
“Luckily for you, yes. A bit jumpy, but it was just a stupid ornament – this time…”
Kate’s transport was already outside, when she finally left the premises, and she instantly felt better for seeing him – Hudson, the self-aware Rolls Royce, dressed in a muted shade of dark pewter. She knew at least she could trust him to do his job properly.
“Good evening, ma’am,” he purred, popping a door open for her. “I trust you had a good evening.”
“Well, it started out that way. The show went amazingly well.” She sagged onto one of the soft leather seats. “The less said about the last part the better.”
“Oh, I am terribly sorry. Five-five implied it had all gone well.”
“Well, it had, when you asked,” 55 defended himself, securing himself to his perch before the vehicle pulled smoothly out and away. “Not my fault the situation changed fast.”
“And you couldn’t find half a second to update me?”
“Guys, please. Let’s not fight over it.” Kate massaged her temples. Hudson’s soundproofing shut out most of the hubbub of the city, but it felt weirdly stifling at the same time, like someone had their hands over her ears, in a way she’d not noticed before. The concert had been loud, she told herself; perhaps she was just getting old. “You don’t mind if I take a nap, do you? It’s been a long day and I’m absolutely dead on my feet.”
Hudson inclined the seat for her, a little. “Please do, ma’am. I’ll try to keep passage smooth, for you.”
55 kept watch while Kate succumbed to a doze. “I’m a little worried,” he said, once he was satisfied she was asleep. “She doesn’t seem well. Her heart’s really racing – can’t you tell?”
“Yes, her biosigns are quite off,” Hudson agreed, carefully. “A little feverish too. I’ll call ahead and get the autodoctor ready for our arrival.” After a few seconds, he added; “The doctor suggests perhaps she has food poisoning? What did she eat?”
55 accessed the catering company’s records. “Looks like seafood stir-fry? Cook followed correct instruction. Met all required standards for safe meal production.”
“That’s as may be, but the doctor says poorly-prepared seafood is routinely linked to sickness.”
“But catering there is normally good!” 55 protested. “We never saw anything wrong with the food.”
Reassuringly, the autodoc didn’t find anything specifically wrong, and just advocated plenty of fluid, electrolytes, and sleep… but Kate couldn’t quite shake the sense of free-floating anxiety – and neither, it seemed, could 55, who stayed close to her all night, quietly keeping watch. (She wasn’t sure if he sensed something the doctor had missed, or she’d just upset him with her own fretting.)
She still felt… off… the following morning. Not really sick, but not right, either. (It didn’t feel quite like food poisoning, but it could easily have been any of dozens of other common viruses. Right?) Much as she trusted her little mechanical guardians, getting back to Hawknest, where she could sleep whatever this was off in comfort, with other actual humans around for company, felt like a priority.
55 pointed out that he didn’t think she should be flying – and Hudson and the autodoc concurred, leaving her feeling slightly like her robotic colleagues were ganging up on her – but she just wanted to get home.
Really, really just wanted to get home.
It was hard to focus on much else, right now, actually. Damn. That stupid ornament had really shaken her up. And she still hadn’t actually told anyone else about it. She resolved to do so as soon as she got out and away.
55 followed her all the way to the hangar. “I’ll advise Hawknest that you’re on your way.” His words followed her out onto the launch pad. “But I wish you’d change your mind and just stay.”
“I know, Five-five. I know you’ve all been doing your best to take care of me, and I really appreciate it, but… I need to be with people, right now. Human people, who understand what it means to be sick, when you need a little…” She wafted her hands. “…warmth and chicken soup. You understand that, don’t you?”
He looked a little crestfallen, but gave a single rolling nod. “Travel safe, Miss Kate.”
The small aircraft waiting on the pad was just a runabout, really – a neat little sporty thing, quick and comfortable and convenient for getting from A to B, when no-one could justify using Hawkwing. (Not to mention, handily small and difficult for the enemy to track, too.) But she loved flying it, all the same – built to her personal specifications, it was sensitive and immediately responsive and felt a little like a winged extension of her own body.
Kate launched into a gloriously clear, intensely blue sky, and for an instant her heart soared. Yes; this was precisely where she needed to be.
Climbing steadily, she briefly felt like one with her ship; the powerful jet engine at her back, cool air racing over the fuselage and dancing off in vortices at the wingtips. The ground fell away beneath, untethered, unrestrained. Free.
She drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, imagining all the leftover stress blowing away with her contrails.
It didn’t last.
The sun beat down, unimpeded by clouds. Her aircraft’s compact size meant today it felt stuffy and constricted and far too hot, like all the ventilation had failed, even though she could feel a cool breeze coming from the ducts. The higher she climbed, the more lightheaded she felt, as though gravity itself was losing its grip on her.
Thousands of feet above the desert and her head was spinning.
This was really not good.
Her shoulders ached. Her sternum ached. Her back ached. Her hands felt stiff, unable to manipulate the craft’s delicate controls. Her boots felt several sizes too small. She could even feel the heavy thumps of her heart in her chest, beating excessively fast, like she was running out of oxygen.
And she felt far too damn hot. Sick and suffocated.
Her urgent call to Hawknest was answered quickly. “I don’t want to call this a ten-ninety, guys,” Kate said, “but I’m really not feeling great. I’m only halfway to you, at best, but I’m gonna have to land.”
“All right, Kate,” Captain Falconer soothed. “Get down safely. We have your signal and we know exactly where you are. We’ll come out for you. It’ll be no problem for either Hawkeye or myself to fly your ship back to base.”
“I shoulda listened to Five-five.” Kate tried to loosen her collar with trembling fingers. “He said I didn’t look good, but I went anyway…”
“Kate. Please. Focus on landing safely. If you still want to indulge in self-recrimination, let’s wait until you’re back on base, shall we?”
“Ten-ten. See you soon, Mary.”
Kate’s landing was possibly not her smoothest, skidding the jet over the shingly ground, uprooting vegetation and leaving two long pale streaks across the desert. But aside from a few dings to the fuselage, she was down in one successful piece. And no-one should have any difficulty finding her, not with those big accusatory arrows on the dirt thrust in her direction. Look at this overconfident idiot, chancing her skill at flying when she should be resting and recovering.
The sun blazed down on the craft’s canopy. Feeling like she was trapped in a greenhouse, she threw it open, and was rewarded with a waft of hotter, drier, even less comfortable air. Her head swam.
She needed water. Needed shade. Needed to find somewhere cool and flat that she couldn’t fall off, to sit and wait this out. She scrambled unsteadily out of the cockpit, slipped down off the fuselage and landed hard on her knees. (Compared to everything else, it didn’t even hurt.)
There were cliffs, not too far away. Perhaps there’d be a cave? If nothing else, maybe there’d be an overhang. Or even just a good enough angle to cast a little bit of shadow. Somewhere to get out of this furnace.
Kate set off in a lurching stagger. Her feet burned, as though she’d broken every single bone in both. She fumbled with her boots but couldn’t quite get her fingers closed on the laces. It felt like the sun’s intense heat was stabbing her with a thousand needles – all over her scalp, down her spine, the backs of her arms. She exclaimed in pain and tore off her wig, and threw it down behind her.
Oh god what was happening.
The air shimmered. She could see the heat rising, roiling in swirling blinding columns. Her head throbbed, her heart echoing in her ears. Where was she going? Shade, shade. Half-blind, she tripped her way into a dark patch – a scrubby little bush, which grabbed onto her clothing with a thousand little thorny fingers. It didn’t feel remotely cooler in the sparse shade.
Come on, Kate. You can do this. Get to the cliffs. It’s not much further!
She hurled herself forwards, tearing free of the plant’s embrace, but a sharp pain at the base of her spine forced her down onto her knees. The sensation of a million needles spread down her chest, over her hips.
It felt rather like her clothing had caught fire, although she was fairly sure it hadn’t.
Had it?
She couldn’t hear through her own heartbeat.
Couldn’t breathe, hot air scorching her lungs. She struggled to draw in air but it felt like her diaphragm had plunged all the way down into her hips – and there was no oxygen in it, anyway.
Suffocating, burning up in the desert, all because she hadn’t taken her friends’ advice and thought she was safe to fly home.
Hello there, hubris. Good to meet you.
Overwhelmed by the pain and heat and inability to breathe, Kate felt her hands skid out from beneath her the second she tried to push herself upright, tumbling her down to the ground, but she’d already passed out by the time the harsh sand impacted her face.
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Crossposted to AO3 and ff.net/.
Series: Terrahawks
Notes: Where Kate recieves an unexpected (unwanted) gift, and gets food poisoning.
At least, that's what everyone ASSUMES it is...
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When Captain Kate Kestrel, international music icon and Terrahawks pilot, finally escaped the stage where she’d been performing and made it back to her dressing room, it was to find her helper zeroid number 55 perched next to the mirror, resplendent in one of her wigs, complete with a scattering of shimmery crystals and a big floppy silk daisy.
His smile lit up when he saw her. “Welcome back, Miss Kate!”
“Good to see you too, Five-five,” she said, laughing. “Man, if it’s not 101 ‘borrowing’ my hats every time he gets the opportunity… I’m beginning to think the pair of you are plotting together to steal my wardrobe.”
The zeroid canted cheekily over to one side. “Well Miss Kestrel, we’re not in cahoots, but to tell you the truth I do think this suits.”
“All right, fine. You do look kinda cute. You can keep it – for now.” She grinned and patted him on the head, and he chirped a happy acknowledgement. “How’s it been in the real world while I’ve been on stage? Our friends on Mars keeping their distance since we saw them off this morning?” She threw her arms up over her head in a stretch, and yawned.
“I think that must be the case – we’ve not heard a word from the guys up in space.”
Kate hesitated, arms still over her head. “Nothing at all?” She narrowed her eyes just a touch and gave him a long comically-suspicious look. “I’m not actually sure if that makes me feel better or worse. What’s Zelda cooking up now.”
55’s optics crossed in confusion. “I don’t have the data to make-”
“It was rhetorical,” she interrupted, with a fond smile. “I know you’d tell me if you heard anything. Honestly I think I’d happily put money on Zelda not knowing what Zelda’s up to, most days.”
“Her family is a little chaotic,” 55 agreed, carefully. “As well as the times when they’re just plain psychotic.”
“At least chaos means we can usually see them coming, right?”
“Right!”
“Now. Speaking of cooking… What did catering leave me.” Kate found the team had left her supper in the warmer at the end of the worktop. After fetching it out, she sagged into her chair by the mirror, and for a while just stared at the covered bowl, wondering if she had the oomph to actually eat it.
It had been a long day.
And it was only going to get longer.
Finally managing to eat the bulk of the bland stir-fry, Kate piled up her empty dishes and turned to the door, to find there was already a parcel on the table where she usually left her washing up. Looking rather beaten up, with one corner squashed right in, decorative paper peeked out through a tear in the exterior brown wrapping. A wrinkled label stuck to the top, written in untidy, meandering block capitals, said ‘Kate Kestral, Anderberr Records.’
“Huh. Where’d this come from?” she wondered, using her phone to turn the parcel, unwilling to touch it directly. “The mailman sure wasn’t gentle with it.”
“While you were performing, Joe dropped it in. Said maybe we should put it straight in the bin.” 55 spotted her expression and reviewed what he’d just said. “Er-… not actually dropped it.”
“I don’t think he coulda made it look worse if he had, to be fair.” She folded her arms and scrutinised it. “What do you make of it?”
“A mystery gift! I can see why you’re wary, but security scanned it and found nothing scary.”
“Hmm.” Kate pursed her lips. “I don’t know. Something just feels… off. Don’t you think?”
55 perked over in the opposite direction, confused. “Sorry, ma’am. I don’t understand.”
The sound of tuneless whistling from the corridor announced the presence of tonight’s security guard, the ridiculously tall and skinny Joe Fletcher, doing his rounds. Just the person.
“Joe?” Kate leaned out of the door and beckoned him back. “Where’d this come from?”
The security guard slouched into the doorframe, arms folded. “It was dropped at the goods desk by your… liaison? That Dapples guy. He said he was given it by one of the interns at your head office.” He released a hand to tick off each individual person in the chain; “They apparently said they were given it by a bike courier, who’d picked it up from a parcel dropoff point. The collection message said it was from ‘your greatest fan’.”
Kate quirked a brow and gave the guard a hard look. “A gift from my greatest fan, who can’t even spell my name right?”
Joe put both hands up, defensively. “Hey I wasn’t gonna question him that hard. If he said that’s where it came from, who am I to challenge him? ’Sides, the guy is tough enough to get a straight sentence out of at the best of times, and I had other duties to attend.” He peered at the battered paper. “I’m not an idiot. I did scan it – twice – before I brought it round. Nothing showed up. It’s inert. Looked like a little model of something, although it mighta got damaged in transit? So it’s not even some weirdo sending you his used underwear.”
“…again.” She sighed. “All right. Thanks Joe.” She patted his shoulder and let him go back to his rounds. She waited until the sounds of his whistling had completely faded before exhaling a long steadying breath and approaching the box. “What do you reckon? If Stew delivered it, and Joe scanned it and said it was all inert… I guess maybe it is okay, after all?”
55 scrutinised it as well. “If it’s from a fan then it could be well-meant. It's not the strangest of things you've been sent,” the zeroid offered, at last.
“That is fair,” she agreed, warily. “One of the perils of being famous. It brings out the weirdoes who think they’re entitled to a relationship with you.” She dug her phone out of her pocket. “Is the scan still in the system? I’d like a look myself. Just to be sure.”
The zeroid considered it for a moment, optics scrolling. “I’ve sent it to your phone.”
The results popped up on the screen. An enhanced x-ray, colour coded: ceramic, plastics, minerals. Apart from some scrunched up paper, nothing organic. A lot of empty space, too – not even filled with bubble wrap. Joe was right; it did look like some sort of ornament? Although what the heck it was meant to be left her stumped. A… fat boomerang?
“You don’t have to open it? They’ll never know?” 55 reminded, as his human pored over the scan. “If you want to get rid of it, you could just ask Joe.”
“Ye-eah.” Kate sighed her annoyance. “But I guess now I’m curious.” She glanced up from below hooded brows. “And curiosity killed the cat, not the Kate. Right?”
“Um. If you say so?” The zeroid’s scrolling optics took on a more confused pattern.
“All right. You ready?” Kate laced her fingers and stretched them, as though warming up for her piano. “Let’s do this. Then we can get rid of it.” She pressed her very fingertips to the exterior and lifted it, gingerly; it was a lot lighter than she’d expected. She gave it a tiny jiggle and something slid around inside, with the soft jingle of damaged crockery. “Thaaat doesn’t sound so good.”
55 watched her carry it over to the counter in front of the mirror, so he could see better. “No truer word spoken. I agree with you both that it sounds like it’s broken.” He directed his laser at the tape holding it closed, and working carefully, delicately burned through enough of it that Kate could easily unpeel the rest.
“And the mystery prize is…” Kate intoned, dramatically, opening the top flaps of the box and peering inside. “Yup. Broken in transit. Probably when someone decided to use it as a soccer ball.” She plucked a tissue out of the box on her desk, and using it to protect her fingers, gingerly picked up the uninvited gift. “I guess someone thinks they’re funny.”
She balanced the ornament on the top of the box; a crude little caricature of a bird, in unglazed pale beige ceramic, that with a lot of imagination (and a lot of squinting) could have been someone’s attempt at an Ancient Egyptian falcon. The paintjob wasn’t much better – it looked like they’d used a floor mop, not a brush. The whole absurd effect was made complete by the wad of purple doll’s hair stuck on its head.
And it was definitely broken. The tail had snapped off completely, and dirty grey-black sand trickled out from a big crack across the body.
55 was still waiting for the punchline. “Ma’am?”
“It’s a kestrel,” she drawled. “At a guess, a Kate Kestrel.”
55 made a little disappointed noise. “Don’t wanna be rude about something handmade, but I really don’t think it’s much good, I’m afraid.”
Kate patted him on the head. “Oh, I don’t think too many hours were dedicated to making this, little buddy. All for the sake of a cheap joke.” She picked the object up and stowed it back in its box – and her fingertips came away sticky. “Ugh. Man. The paint’s not even dry!” She glared at it, wiping her fingers against the tissue, but it just smeared it out worse. “Gah.”
The black stain took a lot of scrubbing to finally get it off her fingertips. When she re-emerged from the bathroom, 55 had shed the wig, and was looking at her very seriously. “Miss Kate? Are you all right? You heart rate is up, like you’ve had a fright.”
She thought about it for a few seconds, and realised that her pulse was up, a little, and she could feel a bad-tempered adrenaline kicking in. “More cross than anything, I think. I guess that stupid joke annoyed me more than I thought.” She took a long deep breath to ground herself, and planted herself heavily in the chair by the mirror. Why had it annoyed her so much, anyway? “Fine, so it was harmless – this time. What if next time it isn’t? The record label is meant to have a whole office full of people dealing with this sort of thing, stopping stupid garbage getting to me – and instead, they deliver it right to my dressing room?”
No, this really wasn’t good enough. She studied her phone for several long seconds before picking it up and dialling out.
Stew Dapples sounded unfairly chirpy for near-midnight. “Hi yeah, Miss Kestrel, hi! Hi! Great to hear you, how did it go? I heard amazing things! You smashed it tonight, I mean totally smashed it!”
“Uh- thanks. Listen, Stew? About that parcel you delivered-” she started, but he interrupted before she was finished.
“What parcel? Ow.”
Kate suddenly felt cold fingers draw all the way up the back of her neck. “The… one the intern gave you? To deliver to me?”
“When was that, Miss Kestrel?”
“…tonight? While I was on stage?”
“Oh my god, do I have a stalker? Yikes! Like, no, that totally wasn’t me. Why would someone even be pretending to be little old me? Ow, stop biting.”
She wanted to give him a shake and demand to know why he thought he had the stalker. “You didn’t come back while I was on stage?”
“I wanted to! Like I totally absolutely wanted to stay and watch the concert, but my mum’s cousin’s husband’s best friend’s boyfriend got in a car crash with some idiot who totally ran a red light, and I’ve had to go look after their dog while they went to hospital, it was totally crazy, man, and their dog doesn’t even like me. You know? It won’t stop biting me! I mean-”
Kate hung up on him, and couldn’t even bring herself to feel bad about it. She felt cold all over.
Leaving 55 chirping anxiously behind her, she made her way down the corridor towards security – trying to look casual, but she could still feel her heartbeat. It was only a stupid badly-made gag-gift, she reminded herself.
So why had it left her feeling so off-balance.
At the security station, Joe had his feet up and was noisily eating a Noodle!Pot, not watching a single one of the visual feeds.
“Joe? Can I look at your camera footage?”
He jumped and almost fell off his chair, spilling sauce across the desk, before looking guiltily back at her. “Miss Kestrel-” He choked on a mouthful of noodles.
She put her hands up, placatory. “I won’t tell if you let me see the video.”
“Right. Right!” He used a pile of important-looking papers in an attempt to wipe up the worst of the mess. “Help yourself.”
Kate leaned over the keyboard and called up the rough time she wanted, then skimmed through until the parcel arrived. The desk was already busy, agents and couriers and suppliers all jostling for space, the queue stretching out of the door. Two desk agents were trying to juggle the crowd, with Joe and one other security guard helping keep people moving.
‘Stew’ arrived with his delivery at the peak of the rush. Or at least, someone who looked enough like Stew to fool most people at first glance; the floppy multicoloured hair, the same style and colour of clothing that he’d been wearing earlier, big sunglasses even indoors, waving his identity lanyard and excitedly gesticulating. But it obviously wasn’t Stew – and after dropping off the parcel and having an enthusiastic interaction with the security guard (who was obviously trying to get rid of him), the man had quietly slipped away without interacting with anyone else. Which was not how Stew behaved, in the slightest.
“So uh, what’s the deal?” Joe tried gently to steer her away from the controls without making it too obvious he was doing it. “What exactly are you looking for?”
Unimpressed, Kate pressed a foot against the chair’s wheeled base and scooted it away. “That wasn’t Stew who delivered the parcel.”
“What?” It took Joe a second to recover his balance, arms whirling. “Naw, of course it was. Who else could it have been?” He trundled himself back to the desk and leaned closer to the screen, squinting at it. Then straightened up just a little, and rolled the footage forwards and backwards a couple of times. “Well, shit.” He’d already paled. “Who the hell is that.”
Kate gave him a hard look. “I’ll expect your report tomorrow, shall I? Oh, and that parcel needs getting rid of. It’s under the worktop in my dressing room. I can at least trust you to do that, right?”
“Uh.” Joe had the decency to look horrified at his slip-up. “Right.” He covered his mouth with his hand. “Shit. Yeah, I’ll look into it right away… Are you all right?”
“Luckily for you, yes. A bit jumpy, but it was just a stupid ornament – this time…”
Kate’s transport was already outside, when she finally left the premises, and she instantly felt better for seeing him – Hudson, the self-aware Rolls Royce, dressed in a muted shade of dark pewter. She knew at least she could trust him to do his job properly.
“Good evening, ma’am,” he purred, popping a door open for her. “I trust you had a good evening.”
“Well, it started out that way. The show went amazingly well.” She sagged onto one of the soft leather seats. “The less said about the last part the better.”
“Oh, I am terribly sorry. Five-five implied it had all gone well.”
“Well, it had, when you asked,” 55 defended himself, securing himself to his perch before the vehicle pulled smoothly out and away. “Not my fault the situation changed fast.”
“And you couldn’t find half a second to update me?”
“Guys, please. Let’s not fight over it.” Kate massaged her temples. Hudson’s soundproofing shut out most of the hubbub of the city, but it felt weirdly stifling at the same time, like someone had their hands over her ears, in a way she’d not noticed before. The concert had been loud, she told herself; perhaps she was just getting old. “You don’t mind if I take a nap, do you? It’s been a long day and I’m absolutely dead on my feet.”
Hudson inclined the seat for her, a little. “Please do, ma’am. I’ll try to keep passage smooth, for you.”
55 kept watch while Kate succumbed to a doze. “I’m a little worried,” he said, once he was satisfied she was asleep. “She doesn’t seem well. Her heart’s really racing – can’t you tell?”
“Yes, her biosigns are quite off,” Hudson agreed, carefully. “A little feverish too. I’ll call ahead and get the autodoctor ready for our arrival.” After a few seconds, he added; “The doctor suggests perhaps she has food poisoning? What did she eat?”
55 accessed the catering company’s records. “Looks like seafood stir-fry? Cook followed correct instruction. Met all required standards for safe meal production.”
“That’s as may be, but the doctor says poorly-prepared seafood is routinely linked to sickness.”
“But catering there is normally good!” 55 protested. “We never saw anything wrong with the food.”
Reassuringly, the autodoc didn’t find anything specifically wrong, and just advocated plenty of fluid, electrolytes, and sleep… but Kate couldn’t quite shake the sense of free-floating anxiety – and neither, it seemed, could 55, who stayed close to her all night, quietly keeping watch. (She wasn’t sure if he sensed something the doctor had missed, or she’d just upset him with her own fretting.)
She still felt… off… the following morning. Not really sick, but not right, either. (It didn’t feel quite like food poisoning, but it could easily have been any of dozens of other common viruses. Right?) Much as she trusted her little mechanical guardians, getting back to Hawknest, where she could sleep whatever this was off in comfort, with other actual humans around for company, felt like a priority.
55 pointed out that he didn’t think she should be flying – and Hudson and the autodoc concurred, leaving her feeling slightly like her robotic colleagues were ganging up on her – but she just wanted to get home.
Really, really just wanted to get home.
It was hard to focus on much else, right now, actually. Damn. That stupid ornament had really shaken her up. And she still hadn’t actually told anyone else about it. She resolved to do so as soon as she got out and away.
55 followed her all the way to the hangar. “I’ll advise Hawknest that you’re on your way.” His words followed her out onto the launch pad. “But I wish you’d change your mind and just stay.”
“I know, Five-five. I know you’ve all been doing your best to take care of me, and I really appreciate it, but… I need to be with people, right now. Human people, who understand what it means to be sick, when you need a little…” She wafted her hands. “…warmth and chicken soup. You understand that, don’t you?”
He looked a little crestfallen, but gave a single rolling nod. “Travel safe, Miss Kate.”
The small aircraft waiting on the pad was just a runabout, really – a neat little sporty thing, quick and comfortable and convenient for getting from A to B, when no-one could justify using Hawkwing. (Not to mention, handily small and difficult for the enemy to track, too.) But she loved flying it, all the same – built to her personal specifications, it was sensitive and immediately responsive and felt a little like a winged extension of her own body.
Kate launched into a gloriously clear, intensely blue sky, and for an instant her heart soared. Yes; this was precisely where she needed to be.
Climbing steadily, she briefly felt like one with her ship; the powerful jet engine at her back, cool air racing over the fuselage and dancing off in vortices at the wingtips. The ground fell away beneath, untethered, unrestrained. Free.
She drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, imagining all the leftover stress blowing away with her contrails.
It didn’t last.
The sun beat down, unimpeded by clouds. Her aircraft’s compact size meant today it felt stuffy and constricted and far too hot, like all the ventilation had failed, even though she could feel a cool breeze coming from the ducts. The higher she climbed, the more lightheaded she felt, as though gravity itself was losing its grip on her.
Thousands of feet above the desert and her head was spinning.
This was really not good.
Her shoulders ached. Her sternum ached. Her back ached. Her hands felt stiff, unable to manipulate the craft’s delicate controls. Her boots felt several sizes too small. She could even feel the heavy thumps of her heart in her chest, beating excessively fast, like she was running out of oxygen.
And she felt far too damn hot. Sick and suffocated.
Her urgent call to Hawknest was answered quickly. “I don’t want to call this a ten-ninety, guys,” Kate said, “but I’m really not feeling great. I’m only halfway to you, at best, but I’m gonna have to land.”
“All right, Kate,” Captain Falconer soothed. “Get down safely. We have your signal and we know exactly where you are. We’ll come out for you. It’ll be no problem for either Hawkeye or myself to fly your ship back to base.”
“I shoulda listened to Five-five.” Kate tried to loosen her collar with trembling fingers. “He said I didn’t look good, but I went anyway…”
“Kate. Please. Focus on landing safely. If you still want to indulge in self-recrimination, let’s wait until you’re back on base, shall we?”
“Ten-ten. See you soon, Mary.”
Kate’s landing was possibly not her smoothest, skidding the jet over the shingly ground, uprooting vegetation and leaving two long pale streaks across the desert. But aside from a few dings to the fuselage, she was down in one successful piece. And no-one should have any difficulty finding her, not with those big accusatory arrows on the dirt thrust in her direction. Look at this overconfident idiot, chancing her skill at flying when she should be resting and recovering.
The sun blazed down on the craft’s canopy. Feeling like she was trapped in a greenhouse, she threw it open, and was rewarded with a waft of hotter, drier, even less comfortable air. Her head swam.
She needed water. Needed shade. Needed to find somewhere cool and flat that she couldn’t fall off, to sit and wait this out. She scrambled unsteadily out of the cockpit, slipped down off the fuselage and landed hard on her knees. (Compared to everything else, it didn’t even hurt.)
There were cliffs, not too far away. Perhaps there’d be a cave? If nothing else, maybe there’d be an overhang. Or even just a good enough angle to cast a little bit of shadow. Somewhere to get out of this furnace.
Kate set off in a lurching stagger. Her feet burned, as though she’d broken every single bone in both. She fumbled with her boots but couldn’t quite get her fingers closed on the laces. It felt like the sun’s intense heat was stabbing her with a thousand needles – all over her scalp, down her spine, the backs of her arms. She exclaimed in pain and tore off her wig, and threw it down behind her.
Oh god what was happening.
The air shimmered. She could see the heat rising, roiling in swirling blinding columns. Her head throbbed, her heart echoing in her ears. Where was she going? Shade, shade. Half-blind, she tripped her way into a dark patch – a scrubby little bush, which grabbed onto her clothing with a thousand little thorny fingers. It didn’t feel remotely cooler in the sparse shade.
Come on, Kate. You can do this. Get to the cliffs. It’s not much further!
She hurled herself forwards, tearing free of the plant’s embrace, but a sharp pain at the base of her spine forced her down onto her knees. The sensation of a million needles spread down her chest, over her hips.
It felt rather like her clothing had caught fire, although she was fairly sure it hadn’t.
Had it?
She couldn’t hear through her own heartbeat.
Couldn’t breathe, hot air scorching her lungs. She struggled to draw in air but it felt like her diaphragm had plunged all the way down into her hips – and there was no oxygen in it, anyway.
Suffocating, burning up in the desert, all because she hadn’t taken her friends’ advice and thought she was safe to fly home.
Hello there, hubris. Good to meet you.
Overwhelmed by the pain and heat and inability to breathe, Kate felt her hands skid out from beneath her the second she tried to push herself upright, tumbling her down to the ground, but she’d already passed out by the time the harsh sand impacted her face.
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Crossposted to AO3 and ff.net/.