FFM 2025 14: Whatever

Catching up continues! This one’s, unsurprisingly, continuation to FFM 2025 13: Reasons Why, featuring time skips and switching POVs!

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Steirdrar found himself deployed on a mission on the day he was planning on looking up Agent Ket for a rematch. Fortunately, it was with Hisa’s crew and should not take too long. A simple combination of a supply run and sabotage.

He was already well aware that people knew he had interacted with Agent Ket — the gossipers made it sound like she was a loner, all work and no play, by choice — and so he did not bother with covering his message. He simply left it written on a piece of paper on the table.

To Beyari Ket:

I’m afraid we will have to postpone our rematch. I was deployed on a mission (HSAS-3251) and, assuming everything goes well, will be back within one Standard Week. I will look you up when I’m back and in sparring condition.

Best regards,

Steirdrar Urrang

Steirdrar heard snickers and murmurs about formality behind his back before he had even left the office, the nosiest not having bothered with any kind of discretion in their hunger for more gossip material. Whatever. Maybe this would give people something other than his past actions to talk about.

“Who’s this Beyari Ket I’ve been hearin’ about?” Hisa asked in lieu of greeting when Steirdrar met the Kolton at the hangars.

Steirdrar raised an eyebrow, not stopping as they headed towards the Twilight Sky.

Hisa rolled their eyes. “Everyone’s talkin’ about you hangin’ out with ‘er. Stuff like sparrin’ and goin’ to ‘er ship and stayin’ there for a good while.”

Steirdrar huffed. “We did spar, yes, and she offered to let me use her shower since it was much closer than the communal showers.”

“Must’ve been a long shower then, if people are gossipin’ so hard.”

“We talked too.”

“About what?”

“About if she already knew I’m a Bloodletter.”

“Oh… What’d she say?”

Steirdrar walked up the ramp before he answered, “She figured it out from me bringing up my background. Our Eskel-Zai comrades had been informed that a Bloodletter who wasn’t at the massacre on Thyrif had defected after I was extracted. Apparently, her android partner also read my file and concluded I had managed to dodge all the atrocities that would’ve pissed an AIRF Eskel-Zai off.”

Hisa frowned. “Why’s the massacre on Thyrif relevant?”

“The IR tried an experimental weapon and killed a majority of four major Eskel-Zai clans right into their homes. The Eskel-Zai who survived either miraculously or by not being on Thyrif called for cherava adan relatanaia fera — retribution for lost kin — against those who took part in that.” Steirdrar sighed. “Those of us who weren’t there got lucky; last I heard, the IRS still hasn’t recovered all body parts of any Enforcer present on Thyrif who the Eskel-Zai have gotten their hands on.”

Hisa’s jaw dropped. “Wha- Seriously? Why??”

“Cherava adan relatanaia fera is, at its core, an act of ‘eye for an eye’. Some Eskel-Zai who were massacred were never fully recovered; body parts and even armorplates were vaporized.”

“What’s this talk about body parts?” Yaar-Mala piped up from the other end of the corridor.

“I was just informing Hisa about the massacre on Thyrif and the survivors’ response to it,” Steirdrar responded without missing a beat.

“Ah, is this about that Eskel-Zai you’ve been hanging out with?”

Had Steirdrar not owed his life to the cheeky man many times over, he would have unleashed a snide response. “Yes. Hisa asked about her and I told him what she knew about me.”

“That you weren’t on Thyrif? Yeah, you’re one hell of a lucky guy for that.” Yaar-Mala leaned his side against the wall. “Spacers like to tell stories about the found body parts. All these dissect-“

“I don’t wanna hear more,” Hisa interrupted loudly. “Why don’t you go tell Li we’re ready to go?”

“Boo.” Yaar-Mala pushed himself off the wall nevertheless and headed to the ladders that led to the cockpit. He tilted his head upwards and shouted, “Li, we’re good to go!”

Steirdrar rolled his eyes.

“Got it!” Li shouted back down the same ladders.

Steirdrar once again suppressed the urge to comment that such behavior would have gotten you demoted literally anywhere else than in the AIRF. Or maybe it would even here if you angered the right person. Whatever.

~~~

Beyari almost rolled her eyes at the gossip surrounding her. War was raging on yet people still found it in themselves to care about something as petty as gossiping.

Whatever. Let them keep talking if they notice she had other business than just the report on latest batch of AIRF-targeting bounty postings in the intelligence department.

Snickers heralded her arrival in the office. Beyari looked around, noting that the people snickering — and some who were not — were looking at her, with or without pretending not to look at her.

Commander Urrang’s desk was unoccupied but had a paper on it. Beyari glanced at it while passing by, noticing her name written on it. She paused to read the message intended for her — and the jeers written in various colors that were aimed at Commander Urrang — and looked around. People were watching in near-silence, poorly stifled snickers and hum of fans filling the air.

She felt petty. She grabbed the paper, pulled one of her own from one of her pouches and wrote,

Steirdrar Urrang,

Some of your coworkers are what we Eskel-Zai call lut’ortana’te. You might want to reconsider leaving a message in a mutable format at their mercy next time. I won’t retaliate to what happened to your message to me beyond mentioning it to General Porti this time as to not cause you unforeseen trouble while you are out on the field. I’ll fill you in on what happened next time we meet.

Best regards,

Beyari Ket

Beyari looked around the room again, this time seeing everyone pretend to be focusing on something else. Good. She did not have time for nonsense, after all, not when General Porti was waiting for her.

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Vocabulary addendum: lut’ortana’te: Lit. Never-met-brain, an idiom that means “an idiot so unthinking they have never encountered a brain, not even their own (which one would think they would have encountered by inhabiting the same body)”