Upon Vestia: Chapter Twenty-One

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Luka made a face. "gross. Computer, regular clothes please." She looked relieved as the gown disappeared and she was just in her usual cargo pants and vest. "Who should we go annoy then?"

"The Aketi? Hewitt's people?" James frowned. "They're not even magical. They're like, the opposite of magical. They have nothing to do with the Guild!" He shifted from foot to foot anxiously. He needed so many more answers than they had right now.

Luka frowned. "Maybe we should get everyone together, the whole ship." She suggested. this sounded like it was important.

"Yeah," James agreed, "That's a good idea. Vestia, can you call a meeting?"

"Okay," Vestia said, "I'll tell everyone to meet in Meeting Room #2, and I'll tell everyone to go there as they return." She did that.

"All right, I guess we should head to this meeting room then," James said.

Web nodded.

Matt rose and offered a hand to his twin.

Web rolled his eyes. "I'm not a complete invalid yet Mattias."

Matt shook his head. "Come on."

Luka headed for the meeting room.

James followed the others, keeping an eye on Web in case he fell or something.

~~
Tala was waxing her hooves when Vestia gave her the announcement. She hastily reapplied her rubber treads to her hooves and headed for the meeting room.

~~
Ethan left something Very Important he was doing in the library and headed that way too.

~~
As the rest of Vestia's crew returned to the ship, Vestia told them about the meeting and where to go.

Amity headed for the meeting, stopping past Hewitt's room to collect him as his programming told him that 1: this was important and everyone meant everyone and 2: Hewitt didn't usually give a damn about what other people asked him to do.

Hewitt grumbled but came along mostly out of curiosity.

Everyone else returned to Vestia and headed for the meeting.

Starr and Armin were the last two to return, since she had tried to see Merith on the way, they soon joined everyone else in the meeting room, leaving only the kids with their nanny out since she wasn't officially crew and the kids too young

Eventually everyone would get themselves seated at the meeting table.

"Please explain the nature of this meeting!" Tala said.

Kay, who had been paying attention to what the inquisitor said explained what had postponed the trial.
An Aketi outpost had been attacked.

Matt shoved Web till he explained his vision as well. He didn't look very happy about it.

Asher frowned. "Web's vision, and the timing of it, would suggest that it might well be a warning about the Family. In which case, it may mean the Family's attack on the Guild might be happening soon."

"And the Family attacked an Aketi research base. I know they've targeted groups of people before for petty reasons, but the aketi have some powerful tech, so it seems suspicious," Ethan said.

Asher nodded. "I hope the Guild do that press release soon. It would help us immensely in our planning." He looked to Hewitt, "I'm sorry about this senseless attack on your people."

Hewitt looked thoughtful. "What would they want with Aketi technology? These magic sorts seem to shun technology in favor of their magic, I can't see them suddenly deciding they want FTL drives or computers or something."

Esk looked thoughtful.

Hewitt shrugged to Asher. "I doubt I knew any of them personally." He sounded remarkably detatched from the whole thing.

"Anamcara..." Esk muttered.

"What?" Matt asked.

"The guild, all the guild are Anamcara right? And what is their one weakness? Aside from overinflated egos and a sense of self importance?"

"Medical scanners and anti-magic technology" Dawn answered with a frown, glancing around at the others.

Asher looked slightly puzzled by Hewitt's detachment, but decided it was probably a species thing. He nodded thoughtfully, yes, medical scanners were a very effective weapon against the anamcara. "I'm sure the aketi have excellent scanner tech. If they had a wide-range scanner or something powerful and portable, it could prove very useful for the Family, and dangerous for the Guild."

Tala swished her tail. "A wide-range scanner would be most excellent to incapacitate the defense force of this city! The Guild of Scribes would be a most trivial to conquer!" She sniffed the air, "We must abandon this place, or else expect to defend it alone!"

Dawn frowned and nodded, looking down at her hands "It will not be safe here."

Esk nodded. "It's a good plan. Disable all the anamcara, set off the inari followers to mop up all the rest, then just walk in and take over."

Kay shuddered. [But we have an advantage here, we know what they're planning.]

"True, problem is, how do we counter it?" Esk asked.

Hewitt looked thoughtful. "This isn't my area of expertise... but you could potentially jam the incoming signal... "

Mourn clapped his hands. "Dampening field!" He declared. "Would need masts across whole city though."

"Non combatants need to be evacuated." Luka frowned.

"How do you start to evacuate an entire city?" Matt asked.

"That's not our problem." Esk countered.

"Of course it's our problem, the guild will just sit there all oh we're powerful, they can't get in blah blah blah." Luka glared at Esk. "If we just run away a lot of people will die!"

"A lot of people we don't know or care about, who don't give a shit about us either. The Guild gave them asylum, they put their trust in them to keep them safe. It's the Guild's responsibility." Esk's tone remained flat and level.

Matt shook his head. "We should prepare ourselves, if the guild decide not to do anything, then we can intervene. Until then, Esk's right, they aren't our responsibility."

Kay glared at Matt. He was right of course, but still.

"If we run, we'll be running straight into the Family's forces." Luka pointed out.

"Then we fight!" Mourn declared.

Armin looked worried. "How do we fight the Family?" Even he was having trouble staying optimistic.

Mourn tapped his head. "We smarter."

"Well first of all, the Family aren't the only ones with scanner technology," Asher said. "There are several engineers on this ship who might be able to design something better, based on what we already have."

"We also have control of all the dakkon daggers from both universes, don't we?" Ethan asked, remembering Heny's rather dramatic death in the other universe. "That power transfer could be dangerous, but I'm sure there are workarounds."

"Yes, if we can find a way to prevent people from being killed or tainted by evil magic, we could certainly make use of so many daggers," agreed Tala.

"There must be some way to connect a dagger to a Mana Crystal," Asher said, "So it could charge the crystal directly instead of channeling power into the person wielding the dagger."

Starr nodded and looked at the others "That really shouldn't be hard to do, just have the gem on the dagger to charge it directly, then have it removable to put a new one in as needed."

Asher actually smiled at Starr's words. Oh yes, Starr was brilliant with magic and could probably make the daggers work just fine.

Ellie grinned like a maniac. "And then all you need to do is set up the mana crystal to power an anti-magic field, and you can wreck anamcara while you're wrecking Keepers! You could do that, right Starr?"

Starr nodded then shook her head "The crystals could be used to power just about anything, including and electronic dampening field."

(Sorry I had a migraine)

Mourn clapped his hands. "I work on dampening field!"

"The guild must have access to more of that metal..." Esk mused. "How many daggers have we got? In the hands of people immune to magic, there's less risk of accidental transfer."

"What about the kids?" Matt asked. "We have to get them outta here. If the Family's planning a full assault, everyone who can't fight needs to get outa here." He glanced to Thalia.

"I'm not leaving." She glared back.

Matt shook his head.

Web looked thoughtful. "I could take them somewhere temporarily, but how would we know you were all safe and it was time to return?"

"Somewhere with phone signal?" Luka suggested. "Or internet? We could send a message."

Kay frowned. [The guild won't let anyone just leave, there's their oath thing.] He pointed out.

Web nodded. "I'll speak to someone about it."

Kay chewed his lip. He really hoped the guild would announce something soon.

(*Hugs* Darned migraines. Hope you're feeling a bit better at least, those things suck.)

"I'll help you, Mourn. I'm not an engineer, but I can cut and print parts, and build things," Asher said. He nodded at the idea of taking the kids to safety. No way did he want the star dragons, or any of the others, but especially not the star dragons, to fall into the Family's hands.

"Could Matt just teleport to you and the kids when it's safe for you to come back? Guided by Fate and all that?" James asked Web.

Starr nodded, she wanted the kids out of there and in a safe place too "Or you could take my ship with the kids, it has boosted communications" She said softly. It would be hard to say goodbye to them, even if it was for their safety.

"I'll help you with the dampening fields" Rigel said, looking over to Mourn.

"Me too" Shane said. He wanted to help too.

"We really should get one of the leaders here in on this meeting at this point, since it's becoming how to protect the guild as well as ourselves." Dawn said

"maybe? It depends where we are, where they are... how many people we need to get safe... " Matt frowned, counting on his fingers. "I mean, i could send a message that it's safe to come back but.. getting back might be a problem. Same with getting out..."

"We can take two, perhaps three people with each step, but it's exhausting and any more than that and it becomes potentially extremely dangerous." Web explained.

"The other magic users can do portals right?" Matt looked worried. "Problem with a ship Starr, is avoiding the Family."

"We also can't teleport directly into the guild without setting off their security again." Web pointed out. "I would sooner not endure that again, it wasn't pleasant."

"If enough of you can sort out a portal out, we could come pick you up when it's safe... or when we can be bothered. " Esk shrugged. he looked to Mourn. "I can help with the generator."

"We still need to figure out WHERE to send the kids." Matt pointed out.

[Somewhere safe, easy enough to defend and capable of supporting a couple of dozen people indefinitely...] Kay chewed his lip.

"Home." Web suggested.

Kay frowned. [The compound?]

Web nodded. "It's fortified, with a little work we should be able to get the generators and the gardens up and running. There's plenty of fish and animals to hunt, plants to forage and self sustaining power. "

"But you'd be in the middle of Imperium space!" Matt protested.

Esk smirked. "What better place to hide a bunch of aliens? Who'd think to look for them there?"

Web nodded. "It's isolated enough that nobody would bother us, the only problem is getting out again."

"They don't search outgoing vessels..." Luka mused. "only those crossing into Imperium space. If you could get a ship close enough..."

Mourn looked thoughtful. "Fox lady magic thingie."

"What?" Matt stared at the felid.

"the thing that summon portal, maybe possible make something similar? go somewhere else? Make meeting place?" Mourn shrugged, it was a thought anyway. he didn't really know magic. "Or take portal making person with... Make portal back again, meet you somewhere. Space station or planet. Pick up."

"If we make a portal that can be reopened, we'll need to be able and willing to destroy it quickly if it looks like the Family are going to get their hands on it," Asher said grimly. "I think we need to decide on a place where we can meet to check in, or if that's too much of a risk to the civilians at the place we choose, then it might just be best for us to go into the Imperium and pick everyone up once it's safe to do so. I don't think we can count on having access to a portal when this is over."

Kay nodded grimly.

Matt sighed. "yeah... Probably better to have no way they can track them. Just in case."

"I hate to bring it up, but what happens if you don't come for us?" Web asked tentatively.

Matt grimaced, lowering his head. "I don't want to think about that."

Web nodded grimly. "I'll do all I can to keep them safe."

"I know you will." Matt forced a smile.

Web stood up. "I'll speak to the guild about getting permission to leave, before there's a panic and everyone else tries to evacuate. And i'll see if I can get you a meeting with the Guild's leaders to discuss fortifications. "

Mourn found some paper and started scribbling down ideas.

"If we don't come, find a way to get news. If there's somewhere safer than the Imperium, take the children there, somehow," Asher knew the shapeshifters could take satare shape once they were older, but eventually someone would figure out they were aliens and start to distrust them. "Thank you, Web."

"Dawn is correct, we must speak to the Guild leaders," Tala said. "When the press is released, some shall go speak to them!"