“Do you finally understand now?” Inlightened Taiko called down to the cluster of smaller craft tacking behind the Right Here Chloe. Taiko pointed to a young woman hunched over a blistering hand with Lichtenstein marks trailing up her arm. “Stay! Off! This! Ship!” he enunciated.

“You cannot allow mere workmen aboard a Holy Vessel and yet deny the nobility of Ribe access!” some suicidally overconfident female Elder or Priestess or both in the same ship yelled.

“Tell the Chloe!” Taiko yelled back. “I’m not allowing or denying anybody!”

He seemed to be especially enjoying himself, so Justin left him to it. His heart had nearly stopped the first time some foolhardy Young-Master-type had leaped some eighty-odd feet through the air to. . not land on the Chloe’s deck. Because a smaller purple bolt from the Investiture point had interrupted him mid-flight, bouncing him back into the water near his start as a limp, briefly smoking lump.

Justin didn’t think the brat had been killed, but by then he was all in favor of a more Darwinian approach, and had stopped caring.

He’d also taken Sol’s far from subtle ‘hint’ to heart and had Tzo circle the wallowing, broken Soaring Sunfisher while he and Taiko memorized everything they could about everyone aboard. Or nearby. Just in case, because Deus Vult took on a whole new dictionary of meanings when a god was prone to getting all chatty cathy in your head with his divine DMs.

His heart had also nearly stopped the second time some foolhardy not-so-young Master Shipwright type had insisted on climbing aboard, asserting that the Chloe would accept him, and also refusing to allow any of his workers to take the risk first.

Justin’s counterpoint that he was blatantly contradicting himself was met with dismissive waves from Pei and Taiko as the latter pushed the rope-and-plank ladder over the gunwale. A few heartbeats later, Pei was rolling over the bulwark to stand up with his arms outstretched in proof.

“See! Safe as a babe in his big sister’s arms,” he’d said, then paused and looked around while Justin blinked. “When did she get this big -” he began, before turning and giving Justin another yet another unnerved look. Justin had given him a gallic whatchagonnado? shrug in return; Pei had mastered himself and turned to lean over the gunwale. “Bunta!” he’d said. “Get the winners up, the rest back to work!”

“Aye, Master Pei,” Bunta’s voice had drifted up. “You heard the boss; get aboard, you four.”

And of course the same events had been repeated in sequence as the Ling Fei ship approached. This time, the interloper had been the Young Mistress with the now-scorched arm, who had danced across the water ahead of Ougo’s skiff and reached out to the ladder before he could arrive. And gotten zapped for her troubles as well, if not quite as hard.

Ougo had stolidly obeyed Tzo and climbed safely up without hesitation, followed by his company of one hundred and eight guards in rotation after rotation of the skiff. Justin had given Tzo an astonished look, which the Advocate had answered by detailing the likely tabling of the six squads of eighteen troops apiece, as they spread out across the decks.

He anticipated staggered six-hour shifts, with two squads patrolling at a time; four troops each per hull’s end, with four more skulking around in stealth between them, the third and fourth squads on alert reserve, and the fifth and sixth either training, on support duty, or sleeping.

And now, according to Pei, they were about halfway back to the Riben bay proper. Justin was off to show Tzo, Ougo, two of his Leads - Sergeants to his English language centers, and several Senior guards aka Corporals likewise - their quarters. Or rather investigate them with the guards, because he still hadn’t been anywhere other than the mainmast and the wheelhouse himself.

“Gentlemen and ladies,” Justin said, as they approached the “as far as I know – and I am effectively one-hundred-percent confident - there are no Demons on board. However, as with the weather decks you see around you, spaces inside the Chloe have been warped and expanded.”

“So - like a Shrine, but neither consecrated, nor unhabited?” Tzo asked.

“Not consecrated to the Stars, I believe, no; and not habited,” Justin said. “But I thought it prudent to warn you about it.”

“Thank you, Prominence;” Ougo answered for them.

Justin nodded, turned, and opened the double doors to the Chloe’s main-hull Security Quarters, revealing a large, empty standby room, at least thirty feet on a side. Unlit Sunwood tile lanterns with frosted glass dotted the ceiling and walls, and the Leads followed the Seniors in, climbing up on their clasped hands to set them afire with their hands and prayers - the Riben equivalent of lighters.

The side doors led to hallways, maybe eighty-foot long, with what Justin had intended to be offices, briefing and interview rooms, and so on along their length; the back door to an even larger recreation room. The side doors from there opened into two more hallways, these shorter and bracketing armories between them as they T-squared into another connected hallway of doors.

Justin watched a female Senior open one of those to reveal a pair of empty connected rooms, each with another door in their right-hand walls. They were roughly five hundred square feet in total, with a large, box-walled and -ceilinged veranda almost as wide on their far side.

“Ah, here are the quarters,” he said. He’d made it a particular point in his mental designs to have these match top-end standard cruise ship suites in their fundamentals. He stepped in and opened the door in the first room. Sinks, cabinets, bidet-toilets, shower, good.

“Is that a four-person bath?” the Senior said, looking through the other room’s door.

“Should be, yeah,” Justin said.

“I though this were supposed to be the guard’s barracks, Prominence, not passenger suites?” she said.

“No,” Justin said, “these are the barracks. Equipment and training and storage and the like should be on the other side of the hall.”

“There’s personal utilities like this for each squad’s room?” asked a Lead, disbelievingly. Justin looked around. Yes, you could fit three triple-decker bunks in each room and have space left over, especially with the veranda increasing that.

“There’s personal utilities like this for each of these four-person rooms,” Justin corrected, and the Lead made hrk snork kscht wut? noises.

Justin was getting an uneasy feeling. If even just half of that hall’s doors led to suites like this, and they were doubled again to port, the sizes weren’t matching up to his estimates. This was too much, too big. Based on his original layout for a swanky live-aboard luxury cruiser, with detailed venues set at nicely exclusive sizes, plus room for The Plan and its synergistically supporting elements, he’d set a minimum of 150K in his scribbling. But not an upper cap, anticipating messysary alterations and negotiations later.

This was looking. . .more than double that. A lot more than that. More than an order of magnitude more than that.

He squished down a bubble of mad laughter. Maybe, between his modifications and the addition of the Shrine section, just maybe, he’d hit the jackpot. MOAR!

“Where’s this platform on the hull?” the Senior asked, examining the walled and roofed veranda and the open sea beyond its railing. “I don’t remember seeing it.”

“It should be one of those little rectangular slot portholes from that side,” Justin said absently, running some new calculations through the back of his mind. He pointed at a small wooden flap sticking out of the center of the ceiling’s edge. “If everything’s working the way it’s supposed to, which seems to be so, you ought to be able to shoot or throw things through it accurately from anywhere on this side, and only need to avoid incoming fire from a patch right there the same size as the porthole. The enchantments will compensate. That’s why you can feel the air from outside across the whole inside.”

“Oh, Stars preserve us. . .” the Senior muttered, looking dazed. “This is going to be the worst duty ever. We’re going to get decimated.”

“Button that up, Niri!” the Sergeant barked. “Sorry, sir; I’ll see that she’s -”

“Because any duty that starts out this ridiculously well is doomed to a tragic failure of a resolution?” Justin interrupted him, grinning at the Senior.

“. . .er. . .yes, prominence. . . .” Niri admitted quietly, flushing.

“I’ve never served, but I’ve represented military and police clients in my previous career as an advocate,” Justin told them both. “I’m familiar with the humor. Lead, I know better than to interfere with your authority, but I will also say - on the record - that I feel flattered that Senior Niri is willing to joke around in front of me. And yes, the barracks are supposed to be this good. The Chloe’s intended to have visitors, but very few guests, and there are some levels of professionalism you can’t buy. You have to earn them. Same reason why my quarters and yours share the same kitchens and stores, across all three hulls.”

The Lead and Senior exchanged indeciperable looks.

“Anyhoo, anyhaw,” Justin said, “I need to go talk to Tzo and Ougo, so I’ll leave you to it.” The Lead moved out of his way as he returned to the hallway.

If the Right Here Chloe’s that big – high-rise big, skyscraper big!? - no, the displacement doesn’t seem to have changed – but that wouldn’t matter? - no, dammit, calm down. If the beans are here, they should be in the starboard stores or processing. And I always intended to reveal the Magic Fountain quickly; magical amplifier or not, it’s still more useful as an immediate cash or credit income source, helping to preserve my Earth wealth reserves, than it would be as a higher-priced exclusive secret.

He double-checked his mental list:

• Security situated and on duty defense grid activated nyahahaha!

• Beans status

• Fountain status, capacity, and value

• Fountain income

• Automation capacity

• Beans transfer and basic housewares

• Portraitists and printing

• Daigos and Master Kaji?

• Dinner

  • Hokyukko barrier capacity because muahahaha! could it work?

    • Pei - Chloe’s paperwork, displacement, weight, loadbearing, etc.

  • the politics

  • Advice?

  • Communications

  • what can I do for you, Taiko?

  • Celestial Court

  • Geopolitics

  • Existing entertainment, attractions, investors

It’s been less than half a day, he thought. What else? Oh, right; lunch. Lunch should be in there somewhere. Ooh, are ‘spiky eels’ edible? Automation capacity would be nice to know, but it can wait if necessary. Portraitists and printing too. Move Pei up to main list ahead of barrier questions, add Tzo to entry because Nuti had those documents. Care and feeding of guards! Check stores, add to Item 1. Guards will probably have housewares coming – also Item 1 - and can cook for themselves if necessary.

Anything else? Yes - copy communications to Item 1, check with Tzo, clarify with Ougo.

Looks good. Let’s go collect those excellent gentlemen.

 

# # #

 

As Taiko, Tzo, and Justin followed Lead Norodo down the promenade to the starboard hull, Ougo bringing up the rear, Justin could practically feel the last man’s studious gaze on his back. He hadn’t the vaguest idea what the guard Captain was thinking. Ougo could be measuring Justin’s head for anything from a noose to a crown.

Justin being Justin, he seized the conversational bull by the horns as they stepped onto the Right’s weather deck. “Anything you’d like to ask, Ougo?” he said.

“Are you trying to seduce my troops?” Ougo answered, even more bluntly ignoring both title and name.

“No, just earn their best performance,” Justin said. “You’ve noticed the sails, the ropes, adjusting themselves? That was part of the. . .package. The deal with Book Smarts­ - oh, right, you weren’t here for that. The Right Here Chloe is – huh.”

He paused to look around. “Yeah, that works,” he said. “Can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. . . .”

“Three words, three hulls?” Taiko said. “The Right -” he pointed down, “- the Here -” he pointed behind and above them, “- and the Chloe?” He pointed straight back.

“Exactly,” Justin said, gesturing them all forward again.

“I thought that was your plan beginning from the stacks,” Taiko said as they approached the halfdeck cabin doors, where Norodo was waiting.

“No, before the other ‘left’,” Justin said. “I decided on the name long before then. But that’s for another time. Where was I – oh, sorry, Ougo. I apologize for getting off track. Some portion of the Chloe’s necessary services and chores have been automated with skilled enchantments. But I don’t want to trust my honor, let alone my life, to that sort of thing. And while I don’t want your troops to sacrifice themselves for either of those, I do want them to do the best they can to secure them.

“One of the things I learned from professional security in my previous career was of the three fastest ways for clients to raise their standing with them, good racks and good grub were second and third. Hence the upper tier housing and the shared kitchen and stores. So for the foreseeable future, I’ll be eating what your troops eat and living like they do. That’s all there is to it.”

“Good speech,” Ougu said curtly. “Can’t fault your reasoning.”

Tzo cleared his throat and when Ougo turned his head, Tzo gave him a look.

Ougo’s already military posture stiffened further and he ducked his head. “Yes, Advocate,” he said.

“Great, good talk, wasting daylight,” Justin said, gripping the notches of the halfdeck cabin's center sliding doors. “Let’s open this up and have a look!”