Chapter Text
“Okay, okay. Shit. Fuck, fucking shit. This is fine.” Tubbo pulls back from the fried and sparking console. “We can just go manual, can’t we? Yeah, we can go manual.”
He turns towards the door and yells, “Tommy, we’re going manual!”
From the engine room, Tommy screams back, “Can’t go manual, moron, the carburetor’s fucked!” His voice is muffled but still clearly pissed. Which he can fuck off about. Tubbo doesn’t care if he’s stressed. It’s not like Tubbo’s the one who got the Antarctic military taking potshots at their vessel.
“What the hell do we even have a carburetor for?! We’re a goddamn V2-13!” Tubbo yells, but he’s already moving on to one of the attached paraconsoles. If Tommy says they can’t go manual, they can’t go manual. Ugh.
Thankfully, the paraconsoles are slightly more useful than the main console. They give a string of data in a Sun-facing dialect of Endspeak that Tubbo decodes almost as quickly as it prints itself out.
Matriarch console soul corruption, soul wet-dead. Primary servile console pearl corruption, pearl wet-dead. Secondary servile console pearl corruption, pearl burned. Tertiary servile console pearl corruption, pearl wet-dead. Release?
Endspeak, as a whole, is almost as much of a religion as it is a language. Endspeak programming is almost more so. It’s structured in a language difficult to translate, contextualized in a religion few adhere to, and recorded in a way where you have to know and understand both quickly or the data will be lost. Endspeak programming tells you everything once.
It doesn’t repeat itself, and it’s a difficult language, which is why no one outside of End-regulated systems and spies will touch it with a ten-foot pole. It’s also why the entire data-holding room in their vessel costs less than a single dataholder. Fuck, all of it combined is cheaper than original Nook installs, and those things are ancient.
No one messes with Endspeak unless they speak it, and of the people who speak it, very few ever leave their systems. Tubbo can count on two digits how many people he’s even heard of that left.
Tubbo doesn’t mind Endspeak programming. He catches and translates the important part, at least, even if he’ll never be anything close to fluent.
In Ground Avian programming, which is what he translates everything technical when he isn’t thinking about it, it’s: Anterior plugin data accessible. Access data?
Ground Avian is a self-oriented hierarchical data structure that, unlike Endspeak programming, actually communicates in a standardized technical format. Its core language is an offshoot of Standard Avian that developed on Ne’edra’s desert colonies. The programming language came mostly out of a desire to be better and to fuck with Standard Avian programming equipment back during their civil war. Since the two are so similar, Avian military machines took Ground Avian programming in without even the slightest beep of something wrong. Because most technology can only run so many operations at once, and because Ground Avian programming was designed to run them all, the trackers and dataholders and calibrated weapons quickly overran and broke down when the programming operated it to an explosive technical death.
Today, Ground Avian is really only useful for beating the dead horse that is the remains of the Standard Avian military or for running machines that need to be constantly operating at full capacity. Like certain medical devices, or, more notoriously, Las Nevadas’ Casino Houses.
Ground Avian programming isn’t the only technical language Tubbo knows fluently, but it is the one he knows best. It’s the one he writes all his own code in, and he keeps his notes written half in its core language and half in English, with Enderwrit scrawled in-between the margins.
Anterior plugin data accessible. Access data? is a good sign. It means at least one of the paraconsoles has something in it, some information it accessed before their navigator exploded in Tommy’s hands and shot them somewhere in the dead space around the Antarctic’s primary star system.
With any luck, it’s a perfect solution to all of Tubbo’s problems. A way to get the Antarctic’s military off their backs, a way to get their vessel to stop groaning dangerously whenever an interior door opens, a way to kill Tommy and hide his body — he is genuinely willing to take anything at this point.
“Gimmie,” Tubbo says to the paraconsole in Standard Common, because while he can halfway understand Endspeak and Endspeak programming well enough he doesn’t have the vocal folds to make the warbling or screeching noises needed to speak it.
The data the paraconsole retches is useful in that it tells Tubbo exactly where, how, and when he should surrender to the Antarctic Empire.
…Killing Tommy and hiding the body it is, then.
The back half of their vessel is fucked. The front half is, too, but the back went from being a fixer-upper to absolutely irreparable in seconds. There’s no fixing what isn’t there, and the holes that pierced through the storage areas and living rooms ripped the entire backside off.
Tubbo’s seen more damage on a vessel that survived, but not one that escaped. Not on a vessel that got out.
“What the hell did you even do to piss off the Empire this badly?" he hisses.
It’s a fair question. Quackity tried to publicly execute one of the Royal Family over a power grab once and the government stopped putting bounties on his head after, like, a year. Tubbo’s pretty sure he still attends their governmental conventions, and even if it’s just to fuck with them they still let him in.
It’s been at least two years since Tommy joined the crew. If his words were even remotely true, then he’d been on his own for at least three years before that.
Tommy winces. The distress beacon he finished setting up beeps in his hands.
“Look,” he starts, and a Tommy that bothers to explain himself is never a good sign, “I may have fucked up a teeny tiny little bit a long time ago. I can admit that, I’m humble. Humble men admit their mistakes. . . . But I didn’t actually mean to cross out a name in their book of heirs, okay?”
Tubbo inhales at the realization.
“Tommy. You assassinated the prince.”
At Tommy’s silence, Tubbo balks. “You actually did, holy shit. Tommy."
Nine years ago, the Antarctic Empire’s ruler’s (or, co-ruler’s? Tubbo was never in their political scene long enough to find out) children went missing. It had been over every open broadcast signal in every single system for months, and coverage had only increased when one of the two children was found alive, with proof of the second child’s death. The Antarctic Empire has bounties the size of entire systems’ estates just for information on the killer. Tubbo knows a few people who were set up for life after they shared information about the model of gun that was probably used.
Jesus Christ, Tommy kidnapped and murdered an heir. Not that Tubbo’s in a place to judge, but Jesus.
Tommy winces harder.
Hang on . . .
Tubbo narrows his eyes.
“Wait,” he says slowly, “You can’t aim for shit.”
“Yes I can!” Tommy insists, “I am the best shooter in the world, everyone knows I’m the best. Men cower before me and bitches love me.”
“When we met you tried to shoot me in the head and you hit me in the foot.” When Tommy goes to protest, Tubbo raises a hand. “From six feet away.”
“Mememe,” Tommy says, “I’m Tubbo and I talk about feet. I’m a wrongun and I’m just jealous because TommyInnit is so awesome and cool.”
“You are about to get me killed,” Tubbo bemoans over the beeping of the distress beacon, “I hate it here. You can’t even shoot for shit. You don’t even know how to program. Why the hell did I agree to let you come with me?”
Well, Tubbo knows why. It’s because being a teenager on the run from freaky weird adults was a common experience in a shady Netherian gift shop two-and-a-half years ago, or at least common enough that both Tommy and Tubbo ran headfirst into each other and tried to kill each other for about an hour. Then they’d decided to work together to get the hell out of dodge, and cobbled together the most jury-rigged vessel that system had ever seen.
Tubbo doesn’t know that he regrets it, even if Tommy was running from the fucking Antarctic Empire for murder and didn’t tell him. Tubbo told Tommy why he was on the run.
Though, Tubbo wonders how Tommy managed to actually kill the prince, with how bad he is at violence. Maybe he outsourced it to someone else? He can think of a few mercenaries off the top of his head that would take the job with enough payment, but not many that wouldn’t sell out their buyer with the fat stack the Antarctic Empire has been offering.
Tommy looks to the ceiling and asks, “Tubbo, why is that the part that’s confusing? What the Hell is wrong with you? If I killed the prince I would have been seven. Not that I wasn’t a big man at seven. Lots of murderous ability at that age. But still.”
Tubbo waves him off.
“That’s normal,” he says, “I killed loads of people when I was seven.”
“You,” Tommy says, placing a hand on Tubbo’s shoulder, “You concern me. Genuinely. Seek help.”
“Hmm,” Tubbo says, ignoring that he’s probably going to need help when the Antarctic Empire shows up, “No.”
Tommy rolls his eyes.
“Okay, so you didn’t kill the prince. Why are they trying to kill us?" Tubbo asks.
“I—well, I don’t think they are,” Tommy says, “I think they’re just incredibly stupid and small-minded. Not like us, Tubbo. We have big brains, just like the people want.”
“Ladies love large frontal lobes,” Tubbo agrees mindlessly, “Wait, what do you mean they aren’t trying to kill us? They ripped our vessel in half. What the hell are they trying to do?”
“Well,” Tommy says, “They probably want me to join them. Considering the bloodline, and all that.”
Nuh-uh. Used in secular Elytrian programming to express opposition. Translation of English to Standard Common: no direct translation found. Closest approximation is Negatory. Common loanword translation is English No.
No fucking way.
“Nope,” Tubbo says firmly, “Nope. You are not about to tell me you’re royalty. That’s not happening. I forbade it.”
“Forbid,” Tommy says, once in Trade Common and twice in Standard. Tubbo appreciates the sentiment and is also going to kill Tommy anyway.
Tubbo glares, “No, forbade, because I already told you it wasn’t allowed. No royalty on the ship.”
Tommy glares back, “Aye, fuck you. It’s only royalty if I accept the position, which I didn’t."
“I am going to kill you,” Tubbo promises, despite agreeing with the sentiment, “It will be slow.”
The distress beacon beeps, then beeps again. Three more times in rapid succession, and the sequence repeats. Tommy got the beacon from the Nether, specifically the Wastes’ Moon, where the piglin population programs alert devices in a language Tubbo never had the time to learn.
The programming is done in Piglin Trade, which is almost a completely different language than Piglin Common and Piglin Standard Common. The grammar is barely similar and thus disqualified from total separation, but if you learn one you won’t understand the other. Tubbo knows Piglin Standard well enough to get by if the people around him are willing to let him be incredibly informal (note: most piglins outside tourist groups are not), but Tommy probably knows more Piglin Trade than he does.
What he does know is the counting system for Piglin Trade is done in sound length by twos, threes, and fives. Two three, two three, two three. Vessel approaching, Tubbo imagines, or something similar. SOS. RIP.
“They’re here,” Tubbo says, less because the distress beacon stopped beeping and more because of the loud sound of dragging metal their vessel makes as it attaches to a larger one.
“Yeah,” Tommy says, looking down at the beacon, “Shit.”