Alsea Rising: The Seventh Star (Chronicles of Alsea Book 10)

by Fletcher DeLancey

  “Lancer Tal handles me to my complete satisfaction,” Ekatya said with a straight face.

  Tal pressed her knuckles against her mouth and exhaled slowly, trying not to laugh.

  After a brief silence, a low chuckle issued from the com. “You might not be quite as upright as I thought. Congratulations, Admiral. Farewell and good hunting.”

  The display went blank.

  Ekatya’s eyes met hers. Her lips twitched, her cheeks reddened—and then a snort escaped. Leaning against the table, she dropped her head back and let out a bellow of laughter.

  “Did you hear it?” she gasped. “I finally got him!”

  Tal crossed over and leaned next to her. At this proximity, it was like being bathed in glee. “If I hadn’t watched you do it, I would never have believed you’d say that to him.”

  “I couldn’t resist.” She was winding down, sporadic chortles shaking her body. “I think Alsean honesty is rubbing off on me.”

  “To the betterment of all,” Tal teased. “Is it my imagination, or did he give you the equivalent of a blessing?”

  “It’s not your imagination. That was quite a finish, considering that he started out ready to tear me apart for lying. And he claims he gamed the whole thing? Dokshin! An Alsean fleet was cycles away when he saved my command. He couldn’t possibly have known we’d end up with five captured ships.”

  Tal thought back to Sholokhov’s first offer and shook her head. “No, but I don’t think he was lying. He wanted to promote you to rear admiral and keep you on the Phoenix until you retired. That would have guaranteed your influence here while we built our fleet. He made a calculated guess that by the time we had two or three smaller ships plus the Caphenon—”

  “You’d poach me for the position.” The cloud of mirth had dissipated.

  “I tried to poach you three cycles ago. His assumption was well-founded.”

  “And Lhyn lives here, so I’d never go anywhere else. If I’m tied to Alsea anyway, why wouldn’t I work for you rather than the Protectorate once it became an option? Hades, he did plan this. I took a different route than he expected, but I ended up in the same place.” Merriment sparkled around her again.

  “What are you thinking?”

  She spread her hands. “All that planning and manipulation, just to put me here. What I am going to do? Make you more honorable than you already are?”

  “Well, if anyone could . . .”

  “He outsmarted himself.” Grinning, Ekatya pushed off the table and turned to face her. “Director I Know More Than You gave me everything I ever wanted and got nothing out of it. But he doesn’t know that. He’ll never realize that he could have gotten the same results without losing me to Alsea.”

  “Let’s not tell him,” Tal suggested.

  “Oh, no. Never. For once in my life, I know more than he does.” She glowed with satisfaction.

  “You’re a holcat in the curing shed windowsill,” Tal said with a laugh. “I believe we left a celebration in progress across the hall. Shall we give our congratulations to Lanaril and Vellmar?”

  Ekatya started for the door. “Twenty cinteks says Lhyn and Salomen are giving advice on where they should go for their bonding break.”

  “No bet.”

  “Still stinging from losing the last one?”

  “It was one hundred cinteks!”

  “So much for warrior courage.”

  Tal stopped, an appropriate response on the tip of her tongue, but forgot it when Ekatya turned and held out a hand.

  She was breathtaking in her new uniform and full cape, yet even those paled next to the beauty of her easy, free smile.

  “Are you coming?” she asked.

  Tal clasped her hand. “Lead the way.”

  Epilogue

  Sixteen moons later

  “I’m glad the forecast was right.” Tal gestured toward her office windows, dry for the first time in nearly a moon. She had prepared herself for disappointment, knowing the ship launch could be delayed, but the sky was blue with billowing white clouds and no sign of the relentless autumn rains.

  “Me too. I wasn’t looking forward to walking across the park while trying to keep Little Chunk dry.” Micah tenderly rearranged the blanket around his daughter, who slept in her basket next to the sofa.

  Alejandra thwacked his leg. “You’d better stop calling her that before she starts learning words.”

  “It’s a compliment! She’s in the ninety-fifth percentile for her age. You’re going to grow up to be a big, strong warrior,” he crooned to the sleeping infant. “Just like two-thirds of your parents.”

  At four moons past weaning, Micah’s body had completed its reversion. The broadened hips enabling birth were slim once more, and he had rebuilt the masculine musculature sacrificed to the energy demands of gestation and lactation. Best of all, to Tal’s thinking, his breasts were fully reabsorbed. She had threatened to push him out the nearest window if he made one more smug comment about his being larger than hers.

  Beside her, Salomen set down her shannel and reached for the plate of pastries on the low table. “Alejandra, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t your daughter also have the option of being a scholar?”

  “Yes, but it’s astonishing how a certain member of the household discounts that. Not to mention any other caste she might challenge.”

  “She threw a block hard enough to bruise me where it hit.” Micah proudly pointed to his forehead, where a minuscule red mark remained. “That’s a warrior in the making.”

  “Or a scholar with a temper,” Lhyn added from her chair at the head of their little group.

  Alejandra lifted her cup in a salute. “She may not have my genes, but by Fahla, she has my temper.”

  “Environmental versus genetic influence is such a fascinating field of study here.” Lhyn leaned over the arm of her chair, bringing their heads closer together. “Did you read the article in Scholar’s Moon correlating empathic ability with shared character traits between parents, children, and siblings?”

  “Yes! The day it came out. What did you think of the methodology?”

  “Well, they’re gone,” Salomen remarked as the two scholars lost themselves in discussion. “I hope you weren’t planning to talk to your bondmate for the next hantick.”

  “Fortunately, I have other things to keep me occupied.” Micah captured a pastry. “And others to speak with. Though I do wish Vellmar and Lanaril were here.”

  “Fianna said her mothers threatened dire consequences unless she brought Lanaril to Pollonius for their thirty-fifth anniversary,” Salomen said. “They’ve hardly seen her since the bonding break.”

  “How is that working out?”

  “There’s some cultural adjustment.” Tal smiled, remembering Lanaril’s exasperation on their last call. “Our Lead Templar is still getting used to the fact that she bonded into a warrior family.”

  “So am I,” Salomen said dryly.

  Tal mimed a blade to the heart, making Micah laugh.

  “How much longer?” he asked.

  She picked up the control for the vidscreen and activated it. “Twenty ticks,” she said, watching the countdown scroll in the upper right corner.

  “Is Ekatya talking to you now?”

  “Corozen,” Salomen remonstrated. “Don’t make light of it.”

  Her tyree knew better than anyone how difficult that day had been—the day Tal told Ekatya she could not ride her ship into orbit.

  While the builders had included as much redundancy as they could, the margin of error was small. If any calculation turned out to be wrong, or too many boosters or slings failed before the ship reached escape altitude, it would crash back to Alsea with little to no time for pod ejections. The risk was too high, and the need too small, for any crew other than a pilot and backup.

  Ekatya’s reaction shocked them all. She had unleashed an instant and blazing anger, demanding to know why she couldn’t lead from the front like a proper Alsean warrior. The logical
explanation only inflamed her more. She accused Tal of hypocrisy and made a vicious comparison to “the last two supervisors who tried to clip my wings” before slamming the front door behind her and vanishing into the woods of Hol-Tyree.

  “I didn’t know it was that serious,” Micah said. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “It was serious,” Salomen confirmed. “I sent Lhyn to take care of her while I tracked down Ekatya.”

  “Did she survive you tracking her down?”

  “Barely.”

  “Salomen was a mountzar in full roar,” Tal added. “I was surprised we didn’t have a summer windstorm.”

  “Of course she was. She’s more than your divine tyree now. She’s your guardian. Alejandra isn’t even Alsean, and you should have seen her when someone or something upset me.”

  “You got upset?” This was news to her.

  “Oh, believe me.” Alejandra had interrupted her discussion with Lhyn. “He did. But warriors hate to admit that they’re subject to hormonal influences like anyone else.” She cast a knowing look at Tal. “You’re in your second quarter. The fetal growth is putting a greater load on your system, which affects your brain chemistry. Small things can hit you emotionally like big ones. Big things can hit like a star going nova.”

  “It was a big thing,” Tal conceded. Knowing that Micah had felt the same way put her at greater ease.

  “Salomen is affected as well,” Micah said. “She’s under the influence of a chemical directive to protect her mate and the mother of her child. Didn’t Healer Wellernal tell you to expect it?”

  “He did,” Salomen answered for her. “But it’s one thing to hear and read about it. It’s something else to experience the need to shake someone I love until her teeth rattle.”

  “In retrospect, we should have done it the other way around,” Lhyn said. “I should have talked to Ekatya while Salomen consoled Andira.”

  “I didn’t need consoling. I was merely—”

  “Understandably distraught,” Salomen interrupted. “Tyrina, we’re among family. Corozen and Alejandra have been through this.”

  Tal hesitated. It was not in her nature to admit weakness, but if Micah could . . .

  “I don’t agree that you should have done it the other way around,” she said, nodding toward Lhyn. “You helped me understand Ekatya’s reaction. I thought it was a self-evident risk assessment that our only admiral could not be on that ship. Not when she had no skill to lend the launch. She’s a warrior and a leader; of course she would agree with that.”

  “But when it comes to the crash of the Caphenon, Ekatya is not rational,” Lhyn told Micah and Alejandra. “It’s an open wound for her. She’s never forgotten the crew members who died in that crash.”

  “She needed to honor them.” Micah understood immediately. “A debt owed to the dead was stronger than a theoretical risk. Being told she could not honor it overwhelmed her rational thinking.”

  “Right! Deep down, she thought riding her ship up would close the wound. Because it would close the circle. The captain goes down with the ship, the admiral goes up with it.”

  “I wasn’t very rational either,” Salomen said. “But perhaps that was necessary. Ekatya was too angry to realize how damaging her words were, but I was ten times angrier.”

  That might be an understatement, Tal thought. Listening to Lhyn’s patient, logical explanation while sensing Salomen’s wrath had been an exercise in contrasts. She had felt sorry for Ekatya, knowing what was bearing down on her.

  “That alone tells you how deep it went,” Alejandra said. “Ekatya is usually very aware of her words.”

  “I believe it worked out for the best.” Salomen reached for Tal’s hand. “There’s a freedom in knowing that your loved ones have seen you at your worst and still love you just the same. Ekatya has always been a little more careful than the rest of us. Now she knows it’s not necessary.”

  “It made a difference,” Lhyn agreed. “And she’s content with the compromise. She can accompany her ship back to orbit—”

  “And get the best view of all,” Tal finished. “I’m envious.”

  “There’s still risk involved. You are not allowed.” Salomen rested her free hand on Tal’s stomach.

  “Guardian is right,” Tal told Micah in an aggrieved tone. “I’m not allowed to do anything anymore.”

  “Get used to it,” he said sympathetically. “I kicked against it the first moon or so, but it was like kicking a stone wall. Salomen will be even more immovable than Alejandra was.”

  “You heard Healer Wellernal. I have a biological imperative, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

  “You’re gleeful about using it,” Tal muttered, but could not stop her smile. Most of her complaints were for show and Salomen knew it. In truth, having such a ferocious protector settled something deep inside, a primal need for safety while she carried their child.

  “Have you chosen a name yet?” Alejandra asked.

  Salomen glanced at Tal. “We have. Once we decided in favor of traditional rather than modern, there was no question.” She rubbed Tal’s stomach, an unconscious gesture that had become commonplace. “He’ll know one grandfather and be named after the other.”

  “You’re naming him Andorin.” Micah’s approval washed over them in a wave of warmth. “Your father would be proud.”

  “I know.” Tal tried to wipe her eye without anyone noticing. Damn these hormones! “He’d be proud of us all, I think.”

  The next few ticks flew by in a discussion of social changes, until the countdown reached one tick and Tal turned up the volume on the broadcast.

  Alejandra leaned into Micah, positioning herself sideways on the sofa. “At last we get to learn what you named your other baby.”

  Lhyn snickered. “You’re not too far off with that.”

  The program opened with rousing music and the somewhat unnecessary identification of Alsea’s two most popular news personalities.

  “Good morning and welcome to the big event!” the first said jovially.

  “This is a day we’ve looked forward to for a long time now,” added the second. “But we know you don’t want to waste time looking at our lovely faces, so without further delay, here is the scene at the launch site.”

  The view shifted to one from a vidcam flying high above the ship. From the engine cradle forward, it was hidden beneath an immense fabric cover, while a forest of scaffolding surrounded it on all sides. As the announcers explained, the scaffolding had been used first to elevate the ship enough to pass the slings beneath it, then to house the fusion boosters to which the slings were attached.

  “Let’s talk to someone who knows a bit more about it,” the second announcer said. “Admiral Serrado?”

  Ekatya’s smiling face appeared in a view Tal recognized as coming from her quantum com. “I’m just the shuttle pilot,” she said. “You want to speak with Chief Kameha”—she pointed to her right—“or Prime Builder Eroles, standing behind us.”

  “Just the shuttle pilot?” the announcer repeated in disbelieving tones. “Did you get demoted?”

  Tal winced.

  “Hardly. I have the best seat in the house. Chief, show them what we’re looking at.”

  The view shifted once again. A vidcam inside the shuttle now showed Ekatya and Kameha sitting in the cockpit while Eroles leaned against Kameha’s seat, peering eagerly forward. Beyond them, the scene through their windshield was a close view of the ship’s engine cradle as the shuttle hovered above it.

  Eroles turned to face the cam. “The vidcams out there aren’t allowed within two lengths of the ship,” she said. “We can’t take the chance of anything interfering with a booster. Admiral Serrado speaks the truth; this is the best view on the planet.”

  “What is the concern with a vidcam hitting a booster?” asked the first announcer.

  “We’re lifting a massively heavy object into orbit using one sling every twenty strides. That’s forty slings and eighty fusion boosters,
each pair carrying a different load. The center of the ship weighs more than the nose or tail,” Eroles explained. “The boosters attached to the outer slings can’t be operating at the same power level as those attached to the center slings. If they did . . .” She held a hand level to the floor, then tilted it upward, her bracelets sliding down her wrist. “We’d end up with the nose rising faster than the center, or the tail rising faster, or any equally bad combination.”

  Kameha turned around in his seat. “The calculations involved in establishing power needs made even my brain hurt, and I usually eat those kinds of equations for mornmeal.”

  “My brain hurts merely imagining it,” the announcer joked. “But what I’m hearing is that this is a very delicate operation, and anything could throw it off balance.”

  “Oh, yes.” Eroles nodded. “Every booster needs to provide the correct amount of thrust for that specific point on the ship. Not only that, but the power requirements change as we gain altitude. We had to write a computer program to run the boosters due to the number of adjustments that must be made every piptick.” She rested a hand on Kameha’s shoulder. “Chief Kameha will be watching the program and making manual adjustments if any of our calculations were wrong. Or if anything untoward occurs, such as a booster or sling failure. We’re using more than we need, but any failure will still mean redistributing the weight.”

  Ekatya looked over her shoulder. “Now do you see why I’m the pilot? The best part of being admiral is delegating the high-stress jobs. I don’t need any more silver strands in my hair.”

  Kameha scoffed. “How many do you have now, three?”

  “Five. All from dealing with you when you were my chief engineer.”

  “They’re good,” Alejandra remarked as the announcers chuckled and asked another question. “Eroles is competence personified. Ekatya and Kameha make it look like they’ve worked together forever and nothing is too much for them.”