this is where it starts
May. 17th, 2018 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aaaaaaaagh_skyThree days in a row, it had been raining.
Ellen wasn't really used to rain even now. Nineteen years of indoor living had given way to topside life in which rain tended to fall in nasty, heavy, brief spasms, and about half of it was heavily acidic anyway. Things were different in Philly; a hundred and fifty miles of separation could work wonders. The rain here was almost all water, and it fell easily and steadily, and it left the sky gray as the inside of a badly-lit helmet, and it had been falling for days on end while the Scribes and the robots tested every single system on the Bernard C. Webber-
(That was the name on the front end of the ship, anyway. One of the Scribes had suggested giving it a name out of Brotherhood history, or knightly legend, or something suitably mythic. Ellen didn't know ships, or the naming of ships, but... the name had survived intact for at least two hundred years. It seemed like a bad idea to go changing it now.)
(Prydwen sounded weird anyway.)
But it had been raining three days in a row, and looked like it would rain a fourth, when the Citadel made radio contact.
"Paladin 101, this is Senior Paladin Tristan... Star Paladin Tristan now. Your handling of the Philly operation to date has been evaluated and found outstanding, so I know this may come as something of a surprise to you. Allow me to be the first to congratulate you on your new assignment- I hope that ship in your last three reports is up to the task..."
Ellen wasn't really used to rain even now. Nineteen years of indoor living had given way to topside life in which rain tended to fall in nasty, heavy, brief spasms, and about half of it was heavily acidic anyway. Things were different in Philly; a hundred and fifty miles of separation could work wonders. The rain here was almost all water, and it fell easily and steadily, and it left the sky gray as the inside of a badly-lit helmet, and it had been falling for days on end while the Scribes and the robots tested every single system on the Bernard C. Webber-
(That was the name on the front end of the ship, anyway. One of the Scribes had suggested giving it a name out of Brotherhood history, or knightly legend, or something suitably mythic. Ellen didn't know ships, or the naming of ships, but... the name had survived intact for at least two hundred years. It seemed like a bad idea to go changing it now.)
(Prydwen sounded weird anyway.)
But it had been raining three days in a row, and looked like it would rain a fourth, when the Citadel made radio contact.
"Paladin 101, this is Senior Paladin Tristan... Star Paladin Tristan now. Your handling of the Philly operation to date has been evaluated and found outstanding, so I know this may come as something of a surprise to you. Allow me to be the first to congratulate you on your new assignment- I hope that ship in your last three reports is up to the task..."