The Worst Kind of Surprise Party

[all_too_familiar]

There is a man. He's meditating, and floating several inches off of the ground. This is fairly normal for him - at least he's not floating various furniture this time. Just himself. He doesn't feel like exerting himself any further. It's been a long day.

He realizes it's going to be a lot longer when he's no longer in his room.

"I hate surprises," he sighs, and he opens his eyes to look at his new surroundings. He's still floating, and surprisingly calm.

Comments

[all_too_familiar]

"Do you have any interesting stories? I would assume so, with the -" handwave, "obvious training and observation skills."

[unmarred]

"Mm. D'you want the seven-century version or the two-decade version?"

[all_too_familiar]

"History lesson, why not. Seven-century version."

[unmarred]

"Right, so. After humanity discovered wormhole jump technology, we started colonizing every half-habitable rock in sight. Well and good. Then, with one of those half-habitable rocks half-colonized - a planet called Barrayar - we discovered that wormholes sometimes spontaneously collapse. Barrayar was cut off. The fifty thousand initial colonists had to make do with a partially terraformed planet and a haphazard collection of technology that they soon lost the infrastructure to maintain. Over the next six hundred years, they scraped together a more or less functional society. Then somebody found a new wormhole route to Barrayar, from a planet called Komarr. Among Komarr's other connections was the eight-planet Cetagandan Empire, which liked the look of Barrayar for a ninth. They bribed the Komarrans to let their warships through, and conquered Barrayar. Occupied them for a good twenty years before the Barrayarans threw them out with a combination of galactic aid and sheer stubbornness, whereupon the Barrayarans immediately conquered Komarr because what else are you going to fucking do."

[all_too_familiar]

Revan raises an eyebrow.

"... Barrayar doesn't sound like it had any useful infrastructure. The only planet it connected to was Komarr. I doubt it had any useful resources - why would they even want it?"

[unmarred]

"They weren't interested in explaining themselves. The official excuse was inappropriately ambitious generals. Inappropriate ambition did play a part, I think - you conquer the territory, maybe you get a piece, and Barrayar looked like easy pickings."

[all_too_familiar]

Someone looks unimpressed.

"Good for Barrayar for tossing them out. And conquering Komarr was a smart move, I approve."

[unmarred]

"Yeah. It was a clean job, too, hardly any casualties, right up until some bloodthirsty fuckwit on the Barrayaran side decided to kill two hundred Komarran civilians for reasons that remain lost to history because the admiral in charge personally executed him as soon as the news broke."

[all_too_familiar]

"You know, a few years ago I would have argued that he should have interrogated the idiot responsible for that first. But now I can't fault the person responsible and wish I'd done it with a similar situation. How badly did the backlash hit the admiral?"

[unmarred]

"Badly. For a long time the only galactic reputation he had was as the person who was in charge when the Solstice Massacre went down. His name is still a curse on Komarr. They went from grudging cooperation to seething rebellion in a day. And when the admiral's son was about six years old, one of the most prominent rebels faked his death and ran off to have the kid secretly cloned, with an eye to an eventual substitution so his indoctrinated impersonator-assassin could murder the admiral in as personally upsetting a way as possible."

Pause.

"Needless to say, this did not work out quite the way he planned."

[all_too_familiar]

Revan sighs. "Of course it didn't, because it was a stupid plan. You were the major victim of it?"

[unmarred]

"Well, arguably. And he very nearly pulled it off. It's just that in the course of studying the family I was supposed to infiltrate, I noticed that they were all vastly more likeable people than the asshole who had hold of my leash."

[all_too_familiar]

He tilts this head. Meditation's kind of being ignored, sorry meditation. He'll get to you later, really. "... And you slipped the leash?"

[unmarred]

"Shot him," Mark says succinctly.

[all_too_familiar]

"That was very brave," observes Revan.

[unmarred]

"Eh, I guess."

[all_too_familiar]

Nod. "And then you were summoned by the murder cult?"

[unmarred]

"Spent a while roaming the galaxy playing surreal pranks on the Barrayaran intelligence agents who were following me, first."

[all_too_familiar]

... Revan cracks up. "Surreal pranks? Such as?"

[unmarred]

"Break into hotel room, completely cover bed in neat rows of dried beans, leave without a trace."

[all_too_familiar]

Yep. The proper response to this is cracking up.

"That," he snorts, "is hilarious."

[unmarred]

"Thank you. I try."

[all_too_familiar]

Revan smiles.

"So. Do you want to hear my history before the murder cult?"

[unmarred]

"Go for it."

[all_too_familiar]

"Well," he says, floating to sit on the ground because obviously meditation is just not happening, "there's a bit of galactic history before we can get into mine, as well. I'm sure you've heard me mention something called the Force and likely pinned it down as some strange psuedo-religion magic thing?"