"So, how does-" I started as I finished buckling myself into the seat.
And that was when Jenny whooped and yanked back on the lever that dominated the center of the bullet shaped cockpit and the entire machine we were in dropped like an elevator in a horror movie. My stomach crawled up my throat -- and then Jenny whooped again and slammed down on a button and several mecha-legs kicked me in the ass so hard that I started to see stars. My face glued itself against my bones and my back mashed against the chair as I saw, through the forward screen, that the planet that Carousel orbited was shooting towards us.
We hit the atmosphere and flames licked along the window as Jenny hummed what sounded suspiciously like Tchaikovsky to herself, with the cannons being played by whatever infernal engine was propelling the spaceship.
I had been really excited to fly a spaceship to the ball. Like, that's just an extremely cool as hell space thing to do: Spaceship to a Regency era ball. Rad. Fucking cool, even. But I was significantly less excited now that I learned spaceships were...so...freaking loud! And
scary
. The flames continued to wash along the cockpit window and soon, everything was obscured by the rush of smoke and fire and clouds. Then the clouds broke and the whole spaceship shuddered and the acceleration shifted from behind to below as wings creaked to either side of me.
We were soaring now, above endless verdant forests and vast glittering lakes and soaring mountains.
"Pfffussies!" Jenny said, shaking her head.
"Huh?" I asked.
"They're sending up 'slow decent' flares," she said, pointing ahead.
Ahead, I could see several bright, flashing red flares exploding above a smallish looking villa built atop a plateau that rose out of the forest like a delicious cake of civilization. It was coming straight for us like several trains made of spikes. I clutched onto my restraint webbing, gulping slightly. "Jenny, uh, remember what Marci said?"
"Yeah, I'm not accelerating, I'm
decelerating
," Jenny said. "...oh, oops."
She touched a button and the wind roaring past changed tone and volume as the wings I could just barely see out of the side windows kicked up their flaps. Jenny hummed 'da da na na na' to herself as the villa grew closer and closer and closer -- and then she yanked back on the stick and sent us into a corkscrewing twist, whipping around the plateau and jamming my eyes back into their sockets so hard that I almost got a serious case of terminal eyesplosion. The rattling and roaring got louder...and then my head jerked forward as the wheels struck the landing field and the roaring came even louder-
And, at last...
Peace.
Silence.
I sagged in my seat as Jenny leaned back in her seat, her eyes sparkling. "Hah! I still almost beat my best time!" She said.
"Jenny, when I get home, I am going to wring your neck and Marciline will help me," I said, my voice a tight grumble.
Jenny snorted. "Hey, listen, you beat the rush. That means I should technically get a bonus, young miss!" She started to shrug out of her restraints and stood, turning and sauntering over to the airlock door, which she swung open. I unhooked my own restraints and started to get to some wobbly semblance of my feet as I heard a gruff, male voice barking out.
"Messenger! Of course it's you, you bloody defective, half-cracked, bugged arse piece of malformed programmin'!" The voice had a thick Scottish brogue. "Are you tryin' to kill yourself and your young Missus?"
"No!" Jenny sounded offended. "I just like going fast."
"Ack!" I came up and found that a tall, imposing looking Steward was standing out there. Unlike Marci, who had changed her gender (apparently, Stewards were normally unboxed as Mark), this fellow had been as cis as a cisbot could be. He even had a bristling mustache that had had clearly purchased at some expense. "So, this is young Mistress Lancaster, eh?" He nodded. "I am Marcus Steward of the Haverbrook Abby, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to this piece of Burgundy that I hold stewardship over. I see you are dressed to impress, young Miss." He nodded.
And...
I wanted to
explode
.
Because I was so...
freaking
pretty.
I was dressed in the gorgeous dress that Beatrice had sewn up for me, and it wasn't even rumpled by the passage down -- and I held my skirts just
so
and stepped to the airlock, smiling cheerfully at Marcus Steward. "It is my pleasure to see you again, Marcus," I said. "And I hope I come off better now than last time I came down here, uh...f-foxing, was it?"
"Aye, that it is," he said, guardedly.
"I...am sorry about that..." I blushed.
"Well. It was a holographic fox," he said, nodding. "And it is a popular sport among these circles." He held out an arm and I took it and he helped me off the ship and onto the landing field and I beamed as I looked around myself. This place felt so very Earthlike...and yet, the extra moons in the sky and the four winged bird with six eyes on its belly kinda did help to underline that if I
was
on Earth, it was one of the really cool places. Like Disneyland or Jurassic Park. The actual villa that I had seen was the aforementioned Haverbrook Abby.
It wasn't
actually
an Abby. Like, according to Georgette, in the olden days, in the long long ago, in the murky time before now, the British had, like, decided to stop being Catholic because fuck the Pope, then they'd going: "Hey, wow, look at all those nice Abbeys and churches you got there, wow, real nice, too bad FUCK THE POPE!" then stole them and gave them to their richy rich fucksticks. Which I was really conflicted. On the one hand, the closest to Catholicism I had ever gotten was watching The Life of Brain, and I was not a huge fan of the religionocity in general...but on the other
hand,
every atheist I've ever met on the internet was a huge edgy shitlord who hated trans people.
I guess the real Catholicism was the friends we met along the way?
Yeah, sure.
Anywho, all those Abbeys were now fancy homes for British aristos. And the name had stuck! Hence why a house built by robots a bunch of millions of light years away from home specifically for dancing and swirling and generally having a good time was called Haverbrook Abby.
...it didn't even fucking look like an Abby. It looked like an elegant manor house, sweeping out in two direction, with glittering glass windows that were each huge and tall and shimmering under the gentle light of the Burgundy sun, which was beginning to dip towards the horizon. The sky itself was shading towards brilliant reds and crimsons, and I could see the contrails in the distance -- ships coming down from orbit to join in on the festivities. I bit my lip, hard, and stood up a bit taller. Jenny waved after me and I tried to square my shoulders and put on a brave face.
Marci and Georgette hadn't wanted me to go once it had become clear that the ordered Maria wouldn't arrive quite in time for the ball. I was
supposed
to be here with a personal maid...but I had said I could totes bagotes handle it. And I could! I could do this. I squared my shoulder, while Marcus Steward led me to Haverbrook Abby. Once we were within the shadows of the manor proper, I could hear the faint sounds of clattering dishes from the kitchen and the distant strains of a gentle song. The ball was going to begin with dancing, then dinner, then various parlor games...bridge and whist and other stuff that wasn't Risk or Monopoly, meaning I couldn't just take over Australia and cackle.
Which, like...that was how
I
played board games. If the game didn't let me take over Australia, then what was even the point?
The doors opened and I stepped inside and felt deeply tiny in my dress, surrounded by all this finery. The entire place was decorated with portraits and paintings, and the walls were done in a kind of lovely warm butterscotch color that, when lit by holographic candles, looked like burnished gold. Arriving first suddenly felt like a terrible idea. I started forward, clutching my skirts, and for once, swishing around in skirts didn't feel faintly euphoric. It just felt...you know...scary. I came to the end of the entrance hall and found that the master of ceremonies, a machine of serious disposition and fine coat, was standing before a podium.
And...
There was another human. Two, actually. One of them was the second blondest man I'd ever seen -- since, well, I'd seen myself before the girljuice had started flowing through my veins. He was tall and coldly beautiful, like a glacier made of smug. Next to him was a girl who was fiddling with her skirts, fidgeting and squirming. She had russet red hair -- but her facial features had the same sharp edges as the boy, so...I pegged them as both being brother and sister. The brother looked like he was maybe ten years older than the sister, though. He looked down his nose at me and then smirked. "Fitzland," he said, his voice utterly poshlandia. I racked my brain for the various nobles that Georgette and Marci had drilled me on. He was wearing cufflinks with lions on them, blond...that meant he was...
"Hello Corny," I said, grinning at him. "Hows it hanging?"
Cornelius Smythe (of the Alpha Centauri Smythes, you know!) pursed his lips. "Well enough. You're going to Lucy now?"
"Yuppers," I said, nodding. "Lucy! Or, if that's too long for you, you can call me...Lu..." I trailed off, realizing how incredibly dumb that sounded, but being unable to stop it. Now, the sentence was careening through the air, the audio equivalent of a train that had hit a penny and leaped from the track and was now plunging towards a baby carriage.
The girl giggled and snorted, her eyes meeting mine for a moment before she looked down a ther face.
