The absence of light. The sound of silence. The smell of someone missing.
A creak of metal. A shimmer of light. And suddenly everything changed. Upon the turn of a switch.
"These are your quarters, Sire", a young voice. An old face appeared out of the darkness. "HMS Neptune..." A sigh of relief. Head shaking of disbelief. "This is the Thunderer, Sire." Captain Edward Neville gave no response. A fresco of the Egyptian god Osiris was lit in the front. He walked towards it and knocked over a few specific points several times with his hand. Out of a pocket, he extracted a bottle opener, and started using it to crumble off the thin mortar from the very bottom centre, right beneath Osiris' feet. It revealed the interior alloy wall, which had a welded crack. It was in the records, but only he, out of all aboard, remembered it -- the HMS Thunderer used to be called HMS Neptune. Or, at least most of it, until what had left of the Neptune after a battle was recycled to spare resources. Half of the captain's quarters was among those parts.
Captain Neville caressed the crack, as if it was an old wound. The young officer was confused.
"This will be unnecessary", the captain suddenly uttered. "All of this", he circumscribed the space with a finger, referring to all the trophies that had belonged to the former captain. He regally walked back towards the exit, as smug as his 76 year old spine allowed. Bypassing the harpsichord which was in the middle of the room, the tips of his fingers slid over the keyboard cover, drawing three furrows in the thin layer of dust. About to turn the lights off, a puzzling ghostly thought, which he himself didn't quite understand, suddenly stopped him. "Wait! Leave this here", he pointed at the instrument. "The Neptune will rule the cold ocean once again. And as before, she will do as I play!"
There was life again in the captain's quarters. Captain Neville turned off the lights and went out. Time was passing by and captains were changing, but the marine Neptune and the heavenly Thunderer were immortal. They triumphantly marched out of the underworld again, from beneath the feet of so indifferently passive an Osiris.
"Watching the news again?", she said from the anteroom while she was taking off her red shoes with high heels. Her name was Elizabeth Bosworth, also known as Lisbeth Boss, Lisbeth B and VirginiaSmiley18. It was 8:30 AM and she had just returned home. Her home was on Gran Canaria, and it was made up of the anteroom, a bedroom and a bathroom. As was hinted, she wasn't living alone.
"These dishes have been standing there since yesterday!", she complained as soon as she walked into the bedroom, which contained a small kitchen besides the two beds, a lot of wrinkled and scattered clothes, and some very cramped furniture, including an old 3D TV. She took off her red coat. "I sweat and toil for us the whole night, and you can't even wash a bit of dishes!? How can you be watching the news every time I see you!? All the channels have been reporting about the same things since Monday!" There was a short interval of silence that Elizabeth didn't expect. "Mom?", she said with worry starting to encroach. Anne, her mother, was 66 and born on Leeds.
"Dad died", Anne finally spoke back. Another, longer and more awkward pause. "Why are you sad? You only knew him for 15 minutes." "It wasn't just one time."
Elizabeth originally intended to finally remove that so uncomfortable of a push-up bra, but in the moment she forgot about it, and instead sat on the bed next to her mother. "Captain George Hall, they reported. Went down with his ship... I can't remember what the ship was called."
Elizabeth thought to hug her mother, but she decided it would be inappropriate before she had taken a bath, having in mind who she had been hugging during the night. Saying nothing, she went to wash the dishes herself. "Apparently they celebrate him as a hero now, all of Bretonia." The running water was interfering with Anne's voice. "Could you please listen to me, dear? It is important." Elizabeth closed the tap and leaned onto the sink, looking her mother in the eyes. "You know I was selling myself for money at the time, so I could survive. And for years, you have been doing the same, having my... mileage, in mind. Well, these days are over."
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "You are the daughter of a hero, do you realize? Illegitimate, but still! It doesn't matter, as long as you advertise it well. The door of success is open to you. If you join the Armed Forces today, you will be a commander tomorrow! Thanks to your family relations and... the skills of your profession, if things still work the same way. Seduce some rich admiral to marry... maybe... I think Steiner was the name of the one dad saved. Use the sentiment!"
Elizabeth was getting nervous. Used to a daily routine, she was not prepared for such serious talk, and especially not such radical and sudden changes. "Maybe start a business after the war is over... A... an arms factory? Or not, they won't need new weapons after the war..."
Elizabeth wanted to confront her mother with words, but none were coming, and in this moment the idea had just conquered her. "It's all very risky, you know. We don't know how it will end. You can d... be shot down. Or you can continue living in this pile of..."
The tears in Anne's eyes were reflecting the light. "Listen to me, Lis! The ladder is at your grasp! Climb it! Climb it now, Gran Canaria is going to become a mess soon!"
Elizabeth stood motionless for a moment, and then awkwardly turned in silence and continued washing dishes. Her hand was shivering slightly.
Next day she applied for immigration into the Kingdom of Bretonia. Her mother stayed because it was preferable for Elizabeth to be related to a hero rather than a former bar wench.
Her sleeves were green, Elizabeth remembered. Everything else around was green, too. The song of birds was bothering her in studying. The times were idyllic enough for that to bother her. She was in the tourism studies at the local college, and preparing for an exam outside, sitting on the grass, in the shade beneath a tree. It was an exam that she would not pass.
Because the housing prices were so much lower on Gran Canaria than on Leeds, due to both the vastness of available space and the lower GDP per capita on Gran Canaria, a planet on the frontier of the civilized world, Elizabeth's mother was able to buy a whole house for the money she earned by selling her apartment on Leeds. She turned it into an inn, though no more than a den for the local drunkards and idlers. It was still a significant source of income, and it allowed Elizabeth to cover the costs of her studies. It was intended that she helps her mother run and improve the place after she has graduated the tourism course in which she had enrolled, and eventually takes it over.
Then the Corsairs bombarded the planet from orbit. The inn wasn't hit directly, but it did burn down in the fire that had spread. Ironically, them two settled on Gran Canaria because they had predicted there would be war in Leeds. When it happened, Elizabeth was studying in the nature, but her mother was in the inn, desperately trying to save it, with the fire brigade overwhelmed by the sudden wave of emergencies. Anne received burns, and had to be hospitalized. The insurance company was bankrupt by such a disaster, and Elizabeth only received a disproportionately insignificant amount of money. It allowed her to buy the small apartment in which they currently lived. In order to survive and to pay for her mother's care, she worked as a waitress at day and dropped out of college. At night, she sold herself to men who would pay. Both were exactly what her mother did back on Leeds when she was young, and it was how she met Hall. Her greatest fear was that her daughter would do the same.
Hall cared for his reputation and he had means to silence those who would smear it, so Elizabeth, his illegitimate daughter, and Anne, a former prostitute, didn't even think of asking him for help to resettle in Bretonia. But now when he was dead, his reputation was open for exploitation. Dead men don't need their jewellery.
At the moment, Elizabeth was waiting in a queue on Planet Cambridge. It was an immigration queue. She was holding a swathe of documents. That which proved her genetic lineage to Hall was the most important to her.
"Elizabeth Bosworth!", the clerk exclaimed after yawning. It woke her up from the reverie.
The clerk was a rather impatient man, and he was most displeased with the time in which it took the younger woman to step up to the desk.
''Right. How can I help? he asked when she stood up. ''I'd like to apply for citizenship'' she said simply, looking at the older man. ''That right? You'll need to fill out forms 68-B, 772-A...'' ''I'm applying by right of birth...here are my forms.'' She said, cutting the irate man off mid sentence. ''Hmm..'' he said taking them and looking them over, carefully checking to see if everything was in order, double checking to make sure and triple checking just out of spite. ''Seems to be that you have the right indeed. Linage clearly proven..albeit in an unusual manner...we don't normally accept biological reports from outside of Bretonia but this has been done by the University of Cambridge...hmm....very well.'' He produced another form, copied a few things from her own forms before binding them all together and stamping them. ''You'll need to get a birth certificate and a passport printed and signed by either a Lawyer or a Justice of the peace. Do you intend on having your name changed?'' ''Yes, I do'' she replied ''Very well you will require a lawyer for that.'' Citizenship was one of the miserable tasks the clerk had to preform, simply because he was responsible for finding the lawyers and justices of the peace she would go and see. After a few moments he had filled out the various request forms and stamped them again before giving everything back to her. ''Take these to the University of Cambridge school of Law, head to floor 86, room 265-B. You will find a Lawyer there, give these to him and he will do the rest. Do not take them anywhere else or you will be required to come back here and get new forms and goodness knows how long that's going to take. Do you understand?'' ''Yes, thank you'' she said without really meaning it.
She had an unusual liking for bureaucracy. Was it the sound of the well oiled machine? The intriguing complexity by which the system functions? Or the brilliant way to disguise the intrigues of someone inside? Or on the other side, the better side, rather. Yes, Elizabeth did what she did for a living, but that was out of necessity and tradition. In free time, she liked to learn. And dream about being on that better side of the system.
There was a name tag on the lawyer's office door. His surname was Steiner. Elizabeth found it very familiar, and hoped that he could bring her closer to the man who her father had saved. She didn't enter at once, she had to fix her hair first. And remember to look innocent, lost, vulnerable and necessarily in need of help.
"E-excuse me, may I come in?", she said as she opened the door, with an intentional stutter, and eyes of a sad dog.
The man looked up from his desk towards the door, a young girl entering his office surprised him slightly, probably a student who was lost by the looks of things. ''Yes?'' he replied with a mixture of confusion and curiosity. ''Professor Harkland marks the Law 411 papers, he's three doors down if your looking for him,''
Elizabeth wanted to still appear clueless, but she didn't want to be moved around by bureaucracy. A rightful claim is what she had, and she decided that she would get it.
To buy time and think on what to say next, Elizabeth closed the door for a short moment, as if in naivety, but then appeared in front of Steiner again.
"I am here to change my name. Professor Hartman, room 411?"
"Yes. I think so... It is my first time here." What she wanted to get is either that the lawyer asks her for the new surname, or that this starts a conversation, which could allow her to subtly invade his mind. What she didn't want is a disrespectful silence, but that was what she got, as the lawyer was currently busy examining the documents she had given him.
"Did you really think I was a student?" She was a woman of 35. The lawyer's awareness that he had given her a compliment was what could start a crack in the bureaucratic wall that separated them, she thought.
But all this planning had made her blind to the obvious. She didn't have to say anything. The proof that she was the daughter of the man who had given his life for the lawyer's suspected relative was among the documents.
He turned one of the pages over, reading as he spoke to her ''I don't get very many people coming in here who aren't students'' he said simply. The Document she had given was all proper, everything had been signed, dated and approved. There was nothing wrong with it, the only thing he noted was missing was her desired name change. She had a biological lineage among the paper work, something he avoided reading since the doctors had already approved it as legitimate. ''Fine. Everything here is good'' he said signing the approval ''Now, what would you like your last name to be?''
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