21-2

After the most humiliating thirty minutes of her life, she’d finally been allowed through the checkpoint, and onto the large ship waiting in the second hangar.

Rinet had never been particularly interested in zeppelins, but she knew a fancy one when she saw it – and the CNS Middleground was fancy indeed.

It was a modern split-bag design; four smaller bags in a rough ‘rectangle’ with the body built around it, rather than a single large one over the body. The engines were integrated into the rear main body, hidden so well that it took Rinet a few seconds to locate them, and the entire ship was done up in the signature Chival grey and silver. The only splash of colour was the name on the… bow? On whatever the front of the ship was called, painted on in a violet so pale it almost looked white at first glance.

Not only was the Middleground fancy, it was also huge. It towered over Rinet when she entered the hangar; at least as wide and tall as a large house, and more than double the length. Walking up the lowered gangplank made her feel as if she was entering the belly of some huge beast from a story.

Inside, she’d been led by another squire through a large loading bay and up to the operations room where she now sat, just in time to be introduced to Ceit as they began their observation. And after that, Rinet had no trouble declaring herself completely and utterly out of her depth.

She wasn’t completely ignorant, of course. She knew all too well that there was a lot of scary shit out there – the files referred to people capable of creating and manipulating ghostlight as ‘variant individuals’, which Rinet personally thought sounded stupid. She knew the basics of how it functioned and what they could do; or, she’d thought she did before the morgue. Seston and Tierron had been terrifying, but put enough bullets in them and they went down, at least temporarily. Auclair, though… whatever he was, it was completely outside her knowledge base.

But even with that rudimentary knowledge, sitting with Khoura, Coleridge and Barrach as they observed the girl with hammer had left her just completely lost. Terms and phrases and names were all thrown around, Khoura and Barrach had their little back-and-forths about ‘seers’ and ‘authority’, and Rinet had just… sat there, watching the image shift and change. She’d done her best to take notes, make observations, but there was only so much that could be done with her limited vocabulary.

To be perfectly honest, she wasn’t entirely sure why she was there. Khoura hadn’t called on her, didn’t seem to expect any sort of contribution or insight. For a liason, she didn’t seem to be doing much liasing.

She sat there as Khoura and Barrach reviewed the events of the previous evening, Coleridge occasionally chiming in with a correction or a detail. Barrach’s responses had only become more flippant and unhelpful as these ‘reviews’ had gone on, as had their posture. Currently, they were leaning back in their chair, one leg loosely crossed over the other and hands behind their head. Their purple floral-print dress was short enough to ride up, but thankfully the ruffles within helped avoid any awkwardness (if not any rudeness).