Chapter Text
Juza took a long drag on his pipe, exhaling a thick cloud of white smoke that slowly rose to the top of the cabin. Here, in the darkest corner of the vast eternities that comprised the Teyvat starsystem, the airspace was free from the usual traffic that crowded interstellar travel. He leaned back in his chair, staring idly at the vast expanse beyond the viewport. There was something he couldn't quite place his finger on about this quadrant: maybe it was the miles of starspace without a single body, the distant twinkling of Mondstadt, or the fact that most of this quadrant was yet to be mapped. There was something strange about the unknown that had always fascinated him.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
But what sure as hell enraptured him, he thought, wasn't the peace and quiet. It was hard to get any of that on the Alcor. Behind him, the navigational table had begun to spin its wheels, emitting several loud shrieks that could have easily been mistaken for Furong's drunken bellows.
Huixing, swiveling around in her seat, was at the navi-table within two seconds of the alert. Tapping on the glass surface, she began muttering to herself—some strange phrases, Juza managed to catch, about serpents and greatwurms—before slamming a fist on the table with a bang.
Juza started, fumbling his pipe and scattering tobacco all over the cabin floor. "Aw, look what you—"
"Wait! Wait. Come over here, look at this."
Grumbling to himself, Juza slowly rose from his chair, dusting himself off. The captain would have his head if he didn't sweep that up, he thought to himself—he'd been through much worse for much less—but as he moved to the far side of the navi-table, Juza would very quickly forget that thought. They looked at each other, incredulous, then back at the dark shape staring up at them.
"Should we—"
"Yeah."
Beidou was sure of three things.
One: no meal was complete without a stiff drink.
Two: if one was to have an incomplete meal, then it better have had some meat on its bones.
And three: that she had been on the hunt for this planet for too damn long.
Beidou had heard stories of Liyue before. Some idyllic, mythical technicolor dream-world filled to the brim with Mora, but also obsessed with hierarchy, bureaucracy, and order. Distasteful. She had already had enough trouble with interplanetary authorities, and she would not, by the Archons, stroll willingly into a planet-turned-police-bureau. But Beidou was getting paid a lot of scratch to find the place, so it's not like she could turn it down. Not without the crew staging a mutiny.
When Juza burst through the door to her bedchamber, barely able to keep his sentences in order—Captain, we found something—waving a map around furiously—a year and half we've been looking for this fucking thing!—Beidou had to stare at him blankly for almost two minutes before he could spit out something coherent.
"We found it," Juza began again, breathlessly, "the damn planet—we found it, it's right there on the radar!"
Beidou took the map and, clear as day, saw the outline of some distinct object about three units away. She blinked, feeling a grin turn up the corners of her mouth. "This—"
"That's gotta be it, right?" Juza gestured excitedly, tapping on the map one, two, three times. "There's nothing else out here, hasn't been anything else out here for at least the last month, and we've scoured every other inch of this godforsaken quadrant—"
"What? We found it?" a voice rose up from the hold. Moments later, Sea Drake rushed in, stumbling slightly and almost falling over himself in his haste. "Let me see, let me see!" Behind him, more crewmates perked up inquisitively. Sea Drake, taking one look at the map, began to whoop and holler, dancing around Beidou's quarters in celebration.
The commotion was growing louder now as more and more crewmates appeared at the door, piling into Beidou's quarters—we found it? Let me through, I gotta see this!—and crowding around the map, chattering animatedly. Beidou elbowed through them, making her way to the front of the room.
"All right, all right," Beidou protested, "enough!"
The volume in the room dwindled to a whisper as Beidou took a step onto her bed, clearing her throat. Not much of a podium, but it'd have to do.
"Listen up, you lot. We've been out here for longer than we can remember, sure"—she glanced at Furong—"and there's a chance this is what we're looking for. We're going to land, get whatever the hell we came for, and we're going to get out—is that clear?"
Nods and whispers of affirmation. There was an unspoken understanding among them that Liyue wasn't especially welcoming of their kind, and that overstaying their welcome would only invite disaster.
"And when we're done, we get to get out of this blasted quadrant and get paid; is that good enough for all of you?"
Cheers this time as the crew began to holler, spirits lifted by the discovery. Beidou thought for a moment that this is what she lived for; the rest of it, like the possibility of plunder, was only secondary. Annoyance quickly took over that warmth as the room came back down to earth.
"Now for the first and last time—get the hell out of my quarters, and don't let me ever see you in here again!"
Huixing wasn't sure what she expected, but it certainly wasn't this. She had told him that there was no way the anomaly was a planet—it was much too small—but Juza had run out the door with the map before she could get the last word out. Men, she remembered thinking to herself, were always jumping to conclusions.
But with the object so clearly in view, Beidou and the rest of the crew were quickly disillusioned. This was not Liyue, land of Mora; it was some sort of massive ship, and nothing like they'd ever seen before. Ugly, gnarled roots had visibly overtaken its copper exterior, punching holes in the craft to make room for new life—foliage, wickedly violet in color, hid its finer details behind a sinister veil. The enormous ship was more overgrowth than metal, but something deep inside, almost like a voice, called out to Beidou. A cry for help.
"See if you can establish a communications link with that ship," Beidou said, putting a hand on Xu's shoulder, "if someone's alive in there, we've got to know."
Xu exhaled, scowling at the control panel. "There's no one alive in there, Captain, that ship looks like it's been abandoned for decades—"
Beidou shot Xu a glare that let the navigator know exactly how she felt about that sentiment. Remember your place, it said.
"Okay, fine."
A few bells and whistles later, Xu leaned forward to speak into the intercom. "This is the Alcor. Is anybody alive in there?"
Silence.
"This is the Alcor. What's the name of your ship? Is anybody alive in there?"
A crackle of static, but still nothing.
Xu wheeled away from the communications panel with a sigh, looking back at Beidou in exasperation. "No one's in there."
But the nagging voice kept eating away at the back of Beidou's brain. She squinted with her good eye through the viewport, trying to ascertain something, anything, more about the craft, but the voice continued to stubbornly call out to her.
"Okay. We'll dock there." She pointed to an open platform on the deck of the ship.
Groans of protest from the crew. Sea Drake stepped forward. "You heard it yourself, Captain, nobody responded—"
"I don't want to hear it!" Beidou snapped, "Whoever wants to run their mouth next will get tossed out of the airlock."
Sea Drake stepped back into line, looking down at the floor meekly.
"Juza, Furong—you're with me. The rest of you, make sure nothing comes out of or goes in there that doesn't look like one of us."
"Captain," Juza began cautiously, fixing his wrist guards, "is everything okay?"
Beidou sighed, buckling the straps on her belt. "You two need to trust me—something or someone's in there. Can you do that for me?"
Furong and Juza looked at each other, then back at Beidou. "Always, captain," Furong replied. Juza beamed in affirmation.
Beidou slid her helmet on, her voice coming out of the radio now. She put one hand on the airlock controls, readying the lever. "Watch yourselves."
The cabin quickly depressurized as the warm air rushed out into the vacuum of space. What lay beyond was an amethyst tangle of roots and vines, strangling what was left of the once-glorious Jade Chamber.