Thread: The Order (Supple Nail & Zombies Galore)

Auria took a deep breath to steady her nerves and tried to calm her body's motion, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet the way she always did when she was scared or nervous. There was a slight tremor through the shuttle craft as the docking web disengaged, the distant feeling of something massive and intractable lumbering along as the burners rumbled to life and pushed the craft away from the launching tower. There was the slightest delay between when the thrusters ignited and when the inertial compensator field kicked in and Auria wobbled, taking a step backwards to steady herself. She took another deep breath. Her entire life had been leading up to this moment. Since she was a girl she had dreamed of the stars, of a life of adventure and exploration. To see the sights the spacers talked of in her father's shop, to feel the pull of a foreign star's gravity, to discover the great secrets the cosmos still had to offer, that was a price worth any labor. But Hadrian IV wasn't a planet of spacers or explorers. It was a backwater of farmers and miners. Simple folk bound to the surface as intractably as if they were chained there. There was no navigator's guild to offer a route off world, no military garrison to recruit a young hopeful. And so Auria had taken a longer shot. The Baelish Order was more exclusive than the navy of any of the galactic regional princes, more demanding than even the grand steersman's college. With as much galactic scope as many small stellar nations they had their pick of candidates. Auria had studied hard, trained her body to taut perfection, memorized the catechisms and axioms. At least, the ones available to outsiders. The rumors of the Order's grand secrets and high designs were as entrancing to young Auria as the call of space. She had studied and worked, traveled to learned tutors on the far reaches of her planet and competed with other hopefuls as fiercely as any warrior. And when the selection process had begun she was shocked by how far she still had left to go. She was tested and tested and tested. Memory, logic, recitation. Flexibility, strength, endurance. Some tests had seemed pointless. Some had seemed odd. Some of the most difficult tests had seemed like the examiners were more interested in Auria's capacity to follow orders under pressure than to perform the actual test. Some had seemed designed to see just what she would submit to without dropping out of the running. During her physical examination they had taken measurements that seemed so odd and specific she didn't know why anyone would need them.The size and shapeliness of her breasts, the ratio of her hips to her waist, the thinness of her arms and slenderness of her neck. They had even done a scan to confirm that she was still a maiden. She blushed at the thought. Even the instructions that she had been given seemed odd. She was told to strip and dress herself in a garment provided, a flimsy robe so short that it left her legs exposed to the thigh, slit in the front and on the sides to show more than it concealed, precarious enough that sudden movement could cause it to slip from her shoulders and expose her modesty. She had been disobedient then, her shyness overcoming her, and had kept on her underclothing beneath the robe. The plunging neckline that would normally have exposed the inner slopes of her breasts instead revealed her chemise. Ah, but that all paled in comparison to the ecstasy of knowing that she had been chosen. Nervousness warred with elation in her mind and she found herself rocking again. There was another jar as the unmanned shuttle docked with what could only be the Order cruiser. Auria's breath caught in her throat and she quickly assumed the stance that she had been instructed to, feet shoulder width part, hands folded behind her back, chin down and eyes focused on a spot on the floor in front of her. Her nostrils flared in the rush scent and sound as the airlock hissed open.