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  He blinked at her, then managed a smile. “And the hero worship?”

  “We’ll talk about that later. Can you stand up?”

  It took a few tries, but he managed to stand and, after bending back and forth a few times, was even able to walk somewhat normally.

  Ekatya brushed off his uniform and straightened his jacket, then did the same for herself. When they were presentable, she slid the door open and they walked back into the room. No one noticed.

  The data, once Bellows managed to break the encryption and parse through it all, did indeed provide evidence that Frank was buying favors from three members of the task force. Sholokhov was pleased.

  So was Ekatya. For the next year, she grew to depend heavily on Ensign Bellows, whose competence was now twice as valuable because she trusted him. It changed everything, having someone in this building she could depend on.

  When her ship was finally finished, she took Bellows with her. It was a smart, sensible staffing decision—and one she would come to regret.

  CHAPTER 15:

  The gift

  Alsea, present day

  Ekatya was in her chair on the bridge of the Caphenon, looking at the readout on Lieutenant Candini’s panel right below her and wondering why it made so little sense. They had already crashed on Alsea; how could it be saying that they were currently in orbit over Whitemoon? And what was that obnoxious banging sound? Was something else on her ship falling apart?

  “Lieutenant Candini, stop that noise,” she said.

  “I’m not doing it,” Candini said without looking around.

  “Yes, you are,” Ekatya insisted, and woke up.

  She shook her head, momentarily suspended between the dream and reality. Judging by the light coming through the cloth walls of their cabin, it was just past dawn.

  Someone knocked, five short raps on the corner log at the far end of the room.

  Ekatya glanced at Lhyn, who was facing her and dead to the world. She had not slept this well for weeks, not until they had arrived on Alsea. If their visitor woke her with this infernal banging, Ekatya was going to boot them into orbit.

  She pushed aside the covers, grabbed her shin-length robe off the foot of the bed, and held down the switch that controlled the cloth wall on her side. Her bare feet made little noise on the tiled floor as she walked to the other end of the room and peered through the newly made opening.

  Andira was leaning against the corner log, dressed more warmly than usual in a long-sleeved shirt belted at the waist and long pants tucked into black boots. Her smile was bright.

  “Good morning! Ready to start your day?”

  “Shh!” Ekatya stepped out onto the deck. “Lhyn is still sleeping. As I would be, if you hadn’t woken me up. This had better be good; I’m on vacation.”

  “Really? Me, too. Isn’t it gorgeous today? We should go out and enjoy it.”

  She held her robe closed at the neck, sealing out the surprisingly cool air. “Why aren’t you in bed with Salomen, like a normal newlywed?”

  “A what?”

  “A newly bonded person. Which you are. Which is why you should be in bed.”

  “You think we can only join in the mornings?”

  With a quiet groan, Ekatya said, “I need a shannel before this conversation.”

  Andira laughed. “You need shannel twenty times a day. Go have a cup and then get dressed. Full coverage. You’ll need it where we’re going.”

  “Which is where, exactly?”

  “It’s a surprise.” She lifted a hand, forestalling the next protest. “Let me say this. I’m here to take you to something that quite a few people have worked on for many moons now, and I guarantee it will make you smile. And I think you need a happy surprise, so please wake up and come with me.”

  Ekatya covered a yawn with her hand. “A happy surprise sounds nice, but did it have to be this early?”

  “This is when the air is calm.” Andira walked over to one of the deck chairs and sat down. “I’ll be here when you’re ready. Don’t wake Lhyn, and don’t dawdle.”

  “For the love of…” Ekatya spun on her heel and walked back inside, smiling despite herself at Andira’s eagerness.

  Lhyn slept on, oblivious to their guest. She did not wake up at the whoosh of the shannel dispenser, nor when Ekatya moved around the room, getting dressed and brushing her teeth. But when Ekatya leaned over to kiss her temple, her eyelids fluttered open.

  “Going somewhere?” she asked in a gravelly voice.

  “Somewhere, yes. I don’t know where. Andira isn’t telling.”

  “Oh. Well, if you’re with Andira, you’re safe.”

  Ekatya had to appreciate that faith. “Don’t get into trouble while I’m gone.”

  “I won’t.” Lhyn closed her eyes again, and Ekatya wondered if she would even remember this conversation.

  “Sleep well,” she whispered, and tiptoed out.

  Andira was standing at the top stair, looking at her wristcom. “Not bad for a spoiled ship captain.”

  “Says the spoiled Lancer who rents out an entire island for her bonding break. Now tell me why you woke me at the crack of dawn.”

  “Not yet. It would ruin the surprise.” Andira bounced down the steps and set off toward the trail that led to the bridge.

  Ekatya hustled after her. “You do know I hate surprises, right?”

  “You won’t hate this one.”

  “I’m up too early, my tyree is still sleeping, I’m being annoyed by a friend who thinks testing my patience is a good idea, and I don’t know where I’m going.”

  “To the landing pad.” They walked into the gloom beneath the trees and followed the pale path of the trail as it wound between the dark trunks.

  “You’re enjoying this too much.”

  Andira stopped and turned, her expression suddenly solemn. “What I want is for you to enjoy this. Those stories you’ve been telling—I had no idea how hard it had been for you. And you haven’t let go. I see you guarding Lhyn even though she’s perfectly safe here.”

  Despite the flush infusing her cheeks, Ekatya refused to look away.

  “As your host, it’s my job to make certain you’re benefiting from this bonding break. You’re relaxing, yes, but you’re not relaxed. I’m hoping to speed up that process.” Andira reached out to grip her shoulder. “Does that help?”

  Ekatya inhaled deeply, the cool, moist scent of early morning in the forest filling her nostrils and clearing her head. “Yes. It helps.” She patted the hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go see your surprise.”

  The bright smile returned. “Speedy.”

  Their footsteps made no noise on the spongy path, with its covering of decayed leaves and bits of bark. Ekatya looked around with more interest, noting the difference in light and the many delicate, floral scents in the air.

  “It doesn’t smell this good at mornmeal,” she said. “And I hardly smell anything but ocean by midmeal.”

  “It’s the tropics. Once the sun gets past a certain point, everything closes up and saves itself for the cooler temperatures at night.”

  The flowers lining the path did seem to be more open than she remembered. “There’s a desert planet in the Protectorate,” she said as they skirted around the massive trunk of a tree. “It never had a large population, and now it’s mostly settled by miners, but no one does anything during the day. They have a saying that the day is a cruel spouse, wearing you out with her demands, while the night welcomes you with the gentle arms of a lover.”

  Andira glanced over, her eyes crinkled in amusement. “That seems to say more about the culture than the environment.”

  “Now you sound like Lhyn.”

  “I’d take that as an honor. I enjoyed her story last night. She’s never spoken of her family before. Seven siblings!”

  Ekatya
could well imagine how astonishing such a large family would be to the Alseans, whose near-perfect natural reproductive control had kept their population small for millennia. “Allendohan is a relatively new planet in terms of settlement. It was only terraformed a few generations ago, so big families are still the norm. Leaving is not.”

  “It did sound as if she defied a few expectations. Not that any of us were surprised. But does she never want to return?”

  “She asked you, then. After I went to bed last night?”

  “She was sitting out on your deck when Salomen and I came back from a…late swim.”

  “Right. You weren’t swimming.”

  “That wasn’t a euphemism. It just wasn’t a complete description of our activities.” Andira’s smirk shifted into something more serious. “The three of us had a very nice talk. And she is welcome to make her home here for the rest of her life, as are you. I would love nothing more.”

  Though she had never doubted what the answer would be, Ekatya still felt a profound sense of relief. Andira’s permission had been the only missing piece. “Thank you,” she said. “You don’t know what that means to her yet. But she needed it so much.”

  “That was obvious.” Andira stopped again. “I won’t ask until she’s ready, but Salomen and I both wondered. She has a home and a large family, yet this is where she wants to be.”

  For Andira, who was only now creating a family of her own, Lhyn’s priorities must have seemed baffling.

  “A lot of that has to do with the story she needs to tell you. But even before that, Lhyn didn’t often go back. Her home culture is still young enough that xenoanthropology isn’t a valued vocation. At all.”

  “Ah, I see. And for her, it’s a life calling.”

  Ekatya nodded. “She couldn’t study for it on Allendohan, and when she did go back, she couldn’t talk about it because no one really cared. They listened for the sake of being polite, but…”

  “Passion has no patience for politeness.”

  “Exactly. She always felt like she was playing a role. She loves her family, but they don’t know who she is.”

  “How is that possible? Her words match her emotions. Even a sonsales can read her.”

  “But you listen.”

  “And her family doesn’t?” Andira frowned. “Lhyn is unique. Were she Alsean, she would rarely need a front. It would take willful ignorance to not know who she is.”

  “Or the kind of blindness that comes with a large family competing for attention.” She and Lhyn had often discussed this, given their nearly opposite upbringings. As an orphaned child raised by her grandparents, Ekatya had never had to compete. She had not imagined that being raised with siblings and both parents could be worse, in some ways, than being raised with neither. But when she took personal leave during their time in Gov Dome, it was not Allendohan they went to. They visited her grandparents instead.

  “She wants you to be her family, Andira. You and Salomen and Colonel Micah and the Opahs. This bonding break…it’s doing more for her than I can tell you.”

  Andira watched her with a gaze so steady that Ekatya found it difficult to hold. She suspected she was revealing more than she meant to.

  “I’m glad,” Andira said at last. “Let’s see what it can do for you now.”

  “It’s already been educational,” Ekatya said lightly as they resumed their walk. “Listening to Shikal’s story about giving birth to Nikin—I think that fried some of my neurons.” She saw Andira smile out of the corner of her eye and added, “Hearing about him breast-feeding his son fried most of the rest.”

  Now Andira laughed. “Lhyn’s neurons seemed to be functioning quite well.”

  “That’s because she gets distracted by her need for details and facts. Sometimes I think she never stops long enough to sit back and marvel at how…different you are.”

  “Hm. I thought you were going to say ‘advanced.’ Or perhaps ‘inspiring.’ Or—” She easily blocked Ekatya’s half-hearted punch. “No?”

  “I was trying to find a more diplomatic word than ‘annoying,’ but if you insist…”

  They spent the remainder of the walk teasing each other, and Ekatya’s spirits rose with every step. When they emerged from the dim forest, she was dazzled by the shifting flashes of morning sunlight on the water. It was a relief to look at the bridge, which reflected the sun in only a few places on its railings as it stretched across to the main island. At the other end, the state transport still took up most of the landing pad, but what made her breath catch was the smaller craft crouching in front of it.

  The shining white fighter had curved blue and gold markings on its wings and a shield of the same colors on the side, anchored with the black silhouette of a temple and edged with a single word in Alsean script. Though Ekatya had not yet learned to read Alsean, she recognized the name of the city they had left three days ago.

  She also recognized the two-seater fighter model. After all, she had left it here on Alsea, along with every other fighter assigned to the Caphenon.

  But when she had left them, they were not white. And they did not fly.

  “Great galaxies, look at that.” She sped up her pace, leading Andira onto the bridge. A flock of sailtails launched off the railings, complaining loudly about their rest being disturbed, but she hardly noticed in her excitement. “You took off the hullskin?”

  “We did. Chief Kameha said there was no other way to make them flightworthy.”

  “But that means you rebuilt them from the landing gear up.”

  Given its semi-organic and cybernetic nature, hullskin could not simply be peeled off a craft and replaced with new external material. It was similar to peeling the skin off an animal—feasible, but only if the survival of the animal was not a desired outcome. The fighters had to be completely taken apart and rebuilt, including all new framing, which was why the Protectorate had decided to build new shuttles for the Alsean atmosphere. It was more cost-effective than rebuilding existing designs.

  “How long did that take?” Ekatya stared avidly at the sleek fighter.

  “More than a cycle to finish all sixty. We’ve been training our pilots on them since we had the first ten done. This one is part of a unit based at Whitemoon, brought over this morning just for you. We thought you might enjoy, er, taking it up for a twirl, I believe is the phrase.”

  Ekatya chuckled. “Taking it up for a spin.”

  “What is the difference?”

  “Not much, now that you mention it. How did you train your pilots on a craft no Alseans knew how to fly?”

  “Remember Tesseron? The pilot who flew with Candini to Port Calerna?”

  “Oh, yes. He made quite an impression on her. She wanted to recruit him into Fleet. He learned enough from that flight to train other pilots?”

  “He’s our best, and the only one with any prior experience, but we had some long-distance assistance. Chief Kameha asked your Lieutenant Candini to help us.”

  “She’s not my lieutenant.” The flash of bitterness was familiar but felt less sharp this morning.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  She shook her head. “I know, and you didn’t. How did Candini help?”

  Andira accepted the redirect without comment. “She provided training modules for the flight simulators on the Caphenon and then offered some extremely valuable live flying quantum com time. We had all of our pilots in the theater at Blacksun Base, watching Candini in her fighter and asking a blizzard of questions. I watched the vid afterward. Our pilots thought she was a gift from Fahla, and Candini didn’t disabuse them of the notion.”

  Ekatya had to laugh. “No, she wouldn’t.”

  They were nearing the end of the bridge, and every step closer made the rebuilt fighter look that much more beautiful. She had appreciated the aesthetics of this model before, but the gleaming white exterior and A
lsean artistry gave the craft an entirely new look.

  “I think I’m jealous,” she said. “I have thirty more of these on the Phoenix and thirty of the single-seaters, but not one of them makes me want to run my hands over it.”

  “You can’t have this one. But you can take it up for a twirl.”

  “Spin.”

  “I prefer twirl.”

  “Of course you do.”

  They stepped off the bridge and strode toward the fighter, now a few meters away. A figure moved out from its shadow and into the light, standing straight and thumping his fists against his sternum in the salute for the Lancer. Ekatya had only seen him once, nearly two stellar years ago, but she remembered his enthusiasm and the way his happy, toothy smile had stood out against his dark skin.

  “Lead Guard Tesseron, well met,” she said, holding up her palm.

  He met her palm touch with that same toothy smile. “Well met, Captain Serrado! And it’s First Pilot Tesseron now.”

  “Then congratulations. I’m certain that was a well-deserved promotion, especially considering what I’ve just been hearing about training up a whole new group of fighter pilots.”

  He ducked his head. “Thank you again. I keep wondering when I’ll wake up from the dream, but somehow I keep finding myself flying these.”

  “Are you ready to let someone else fly it?” Andira asked.

  “If that someone is Captain Serrado, then yes.” His smile grew, and Ekatya had the feeling that she would somehow be doing him a favor by piloting this fighter.

  Andira turned to her. “There you are, a flight pass from our expert. I hope you still remember how to buckle the restraint harness.”

  “I will get you for that,” Ekatya said. “In fact, maybe you should come with me and I’ll show you a thing or two about why those harnesses are necessary.”

  “Of course I’m coming with you. Surely you didn’t think I went to all this trouble just to stand here and wave while you had all the fun?”

  Caught short, Ekatya stared at her. “How long have you been planning this?”