Lhyn’s expression cleared. “But I was right.”
“You were right about this, too. Even if you weren’t, I wouldn’t have laughed, not after my nipple education. And I’d never have told anyone. You know that.”
“Yes, but look at what I do. Keeping secrets until the lid is lifted is part of my job. It’s a hard habit to break. You don’t tell me everything, either.”
“Because I can’t.”
“And neither can I.”
Ekatya was just about to argue that a theory did not qualify as a classified military secret when Lhyn sighed and added, “I almost told you in the bathroom. On Lancer Tal’s transport, when you were talking about how you couldn’t understand her behavior. We were interrupted by Colonel Micah before I could get up my nerve.”
Get up her nerve?
“Since we’re not empathic and you can’t read my emotions,” Ekatya said, “let me make something verbally clear. I think you’re the most brilliant scientist I’ve ever met, and even if I tease you sometimes, it doesn’t mean I don’t take you seriously. I never want you to have to work up the nerve to tell me one of your theories.”
It was funny how someone with Lhyn’s confidence in her expertise could turn so shy when someone else pointed it out.
“Thank you. I’d tell you that you’re brilliant as well, but the fact that any of this still exists right now is already proof of that.” Lhyn gestured out the window.
“Let’s hope it stays that way.” Ekatya reached for her hand, needing the contact. “So now that you’re finally here, how are you enjoying Alsean hospitality?”
“Oh my stars, have you seen this place? It’s incredible. I could have stayed in my shower for an hour.”
“Me too, except that I had company in mine.”
“You what?” Lhyn stifled a grin. “You poor thing. I can only imagine how much you enjoyed that.”
“Yes, and I thought I’d figured out how to make it easier by imagining it was you rubbing that scrubby thing on my skin instead of some Alsean assistant healer. It would have helped if she’d been brisk and impersonal about it, but it was practically a sexual experience. So I closed my eyes and thought about you.”
“And she was touching you, so she had direct empathic contact…”
“Exactly.”
Lhyn gave up and laughed outright. “You probably gave her a thrill. She’ll have something to talk about on her next break, that’s for sure.”
“Great, then the entire healing center can gossip about the alien captain who can’t keep her desires to herself.” Ekatya had a sudden thought. “Can you imagine actually being able to feel it when your lover is attracted to someone else? How do they ever keep affairs a secret around here?”
“They seem to, somehow. I’m not quite sure how, but they definitely have affairs.”
“Let me guess, you learned this from watching questionable broadcasts?”
“Hey, don’t be disrespecting my work. I’ll have you know it takes years of training to be able to watch that kind of programming and separate fact from fantasy.”
“Uh-huh. So while I’m pushing mountains of forms and filings around my office, you’re lying on a couch eating Telsarian cream puffs and watching Alseans have sex.”
“You chose your career, Captain. Don’t be complaining about it now just because you’re jealous of mine.” They smiled at each other before Lhyn added, “Besides, they don’t call it sex. They call it joining.”
“Joining? How…descriptive.”
“Actually, I’m reconsidering my entire conception of their sexual practices now that I know they’re empathic. They have another practice called Sharing, with a capital S, which they consider hugely important. Sometimes it’s a part of sex, and sometimes it’s done without any sexual connotations whatsoever. Until now I thought it was just a ritual to celebrate particular types of intimacy and familial connection, but now I think it might be a specific kind of empathic connection.” She looked at Ekatya more closely and chuckled. “Your eyes are glazed over.”
“An empathic connection during sex?” Ekatya shook off the visual images and refocused on her lover. “Sorry, I was just imagining.”
“I could tell.”
“Don’t tell me you’re not thinking the same thing.”
“That would be something, wouldn’t it? And now here we are, with two broken bones between us. Not only do we not get an empathic connection, we can’t even get a physical one. It’s enough to make me believe in interventionist Seeders, because only some asshole entity would find this amusing.”
“At least we had one night. Besides, I wasn’t supposed to see you or even talk to you again for two more months. As far as I’m concerned, this is a gift.”
Lhyn’s eyes went soft. “For a Fleeter, you say the nicest things.”
“For a Fleeter? Thanks. We’re not all crusty stiffnecks, you know.”
“There’s nothing stiff about your neck.” Lhyn stood up, leaned over, and nuzzled the body part in question. “Plus, it smells fantastic,” she breathed.
“So do you.” Ekatya was grateful she had two functioning arms and put them to good use for the next several minutes. Part of her still needed proof that Lhyn was all right, and holding this precious body went a long way toward convincing her psyche. But eventually she felt Lhyn shift, so she dropped one last kiss on her jaw and let her go. “You’re not comfortable.”
Lhyn sat again, still holding her hand. “No, but it’s hard to step away. I keep thinking about those hours I spent pinned to the floor in your quarters, wondering if you made it. I didn’t know how long I’d been passed out, but it didn’t seem promising that I couldn’t hear a thing. At least the power was still on, so I could see, and I’m sorry to say that your entire art collection hit the floor. Those beautiful figurines from the Galay Empire… But the funny thing is that the statue I bought you on Molocoor landed right in front of me, and it didn’t break. I kept staring at it and thinking, ‘She put it in a place of honor. It meant that much to her.’”
“Of course it did. You gave it to me.”
“I know, but ten months is a long time. Especially when we didn’t have that much time before. I’m not that great at keeping up my belief when I don’t have any reassurances. But staring at that statue, just a few inches away…I thought that if I didn’t make it, or you didn’t, at least I knew that what we had was real.”
Ekatya squeezed her hand. “It’s real enough that when I was lying in that field watching the rescue operation, all I could think about was whether you’d be one of the fatalities, and how I could possibly go on if you were.”
Lhyn gave her a watery smile and they sat in silence for a few minutes, lost in their thoughts. At last Lhyn drew her hand away and straightened in the chair. “Ekatya…” she said hesitantly. “I have a question, but I don’t want to seem like a callous idiot.”
“I can hardly think of two words less likely to describe you. What is it?”
“Okay, well…I’m really sorry about your fatalities and I know they’re hurting you, but…how did you get through that battle with only three? Actually, with none at all? You didn’t lose anyone until you crashed.”
And that was what made her so special, Ekatya thought. Nobody else she knew would pose such a question to her at such a time, if ever. But Lhyn’s need to learn and understand superseded everything else, and because of that, it never felt abrasive or intrusive. It was just…Lhyn.
“The first destroyer never even knew we were there,” she said. “We blew it to atoms before it got off a single shot, so my odds were considerably better than you think. That second destroyer gave us a lot of trouble, though.” She remembered the damage reports streaming across her board and shook her head. “Not to mention the orbital invader, because by the time we got to it, we were already pretty chewed up. The invaders don’t have nearly the weaponry that the destroyers do, but you don’t need a lot of weaponry to tear apart a ship with spotty shields and half its we
apons bays offline. As for the rest, that was the Pulsar ship design showing its merits. It certainly lived up to its billing.”
“Which was?”
“That it would result in either very low fatalities, or a catastrophic loss.”
Lhyn’s eyes widened. “That doesn’t sound like a great bet.”
“I just proved that it was. Look at it this way: If the Pulsar design worked, it would protect everyone inside the battle hull, while the inner and outer hulls took all the damage. And that’s exactly what happened. Any damage that was enough to breach the battle hull would have to be so catastrophic that the ship itself would probably blow. Our inner and outer hulls were beat to shreds, but the battle hull held. Plus, the shock dampers meant that no matter what the rest of the ship was getting hit with, nothing behind the battle hull would feel the full shock. So very few people were thrown around, and almost no one was hit by flying debris. Those are the two main killers in ship-to-ship battle, and the Pulsar design practically eliminates them.”
“Now that you mention it, it was a pretty smooth ride,” Lhyn said thoughtfully. “I mean, I could hear that we were being hit, but it wasn’t until near the end that I could feel it.”
“Exactly. The triple hulls, the sacrificial decks, and the shock dampers all made sure that most of the physical impact didn’t reach us. Until we crashed, that is.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t quite as smooth a ride.”
“Can I ask a question now?”
“Of course.”
“What exactly did you mean about the Alseans having an open culture when it comes to sex?”
Lhyn laughed. “You lasted much longer than I expected before asking that one.”
Shifting her good leg into a more comfortable position, Ekatya said, “Well, if I can’t have sex, at least I can hear about somebody else having it.”
Chapter 18
Search for the searchers
It took Modro and Paraska a hantick and forty to reach the assigned coordinates of the lost cargo transport and another three hanticks of meticulous coordinated flight along a search grid, before Paraska came on the radio to point out the broken trees.
“You think they went into that?” Modro asked incredulously. “In a cargo transport? That canyon’s barely wide enough for me. I’m probably going to find them wedged in.”
“Maybe,” Paraska said. Her cargo transport was right off his wing, hovering so close they could almost have opened their doors and shouted at each other. “Still doesn’t explain the lack of contact.”
“They might have blown out their electronics,” Modro reasoned as he lined up the nose of his craft with the slot canyon.
“They must have blown out everything. Because I’m still getting zero readings on my thermal scanner.”
“It’s a steep canyon; you might need to be directly over them before the scanner can pick up the heat signature. All right, give me a few ticks. This is going to be tight.”
He pulled up even with the broken trees, then began a slow and careful descent into the canyon. Fortunately, the sunlight was coming from the right angle, lighting up the sharp edges of rocks that reached out for him.
“Yarnolio was insane,” he muttered, tapping the control just a hair to move away from the left wall. “He should have dropped someone in on a cable.”
“They were probably here right after sunrise. This canyon would have been dark as night. Maybe he didn’t realize how tight it was.”
Modro was watching his altimeter shift into double digits and continue spooling down. The canyon didn’t seem to be getting any narrower, though. He might actually be able to land.
At twenty-five vertical paces his hand jerked on the control, the sudden stop rattling through his body. “Paraska.”
“I’m here. What do you see?”
“This is definitely where that chunk of alien ship landed. There’s a big area of smashed brush, and it’s not from the transport. But…whatever landed here seems to have left.”
“Speak again? Did you say it left?”
Modro tapped the vidcam switch and began recording. The video, embedded with his coordinates and transport number, would be uploaded in real time to an orbital relay and sent from there to Whitesun Base. Paraska would be able to view it directly from his transmission. “I’m looking at a landing site taking up half the width of this canyon and what appear to be thruster marks reaching all the way to the canyon walls. There’s a trail leading upcanyon from the landing site. A big trail; I’m seeing entire small trees that were crushed. And there’s another trail leading toward me. Switching to the rear vidcam.” He tapped another control. “Confirmed, the trail continues downcanyon. Whatever made this was very large and very heavy. Activating landing cam now.”
Another tap brought up the vidcam on the transport’s underside. He blinked, not understanding what he was seeing.
The exhaust from his thrusters was stirring up what looked like dead leaves, except this was the wrong season for them, and these leaves were mostly white and gray.
White, like the exterior shell of a cargo transport. And gray, like pieces of a metal alloy frame.
“Oh, shekking Mother,” he cried in horror.
“Modro? What is it?”
“I think I found them.”
Chapter 19
Cultural exchange
By the time Tal left the State House, the sun was halfway to the horizon and she could not believe she’d spent an entire day immersed in meetings. There was a Fahla-damned alien ship sitting in a field to the northwest and twelve live aliens plus three dead ones in Blacksun Healing Center, and it was just the height of irony that those two items would not be the most important ones on her list. Though of course they were; everything she’d done today was in the service of Alsea’s future with these Gaians and what their knowledge could bring. But right now, as she flew her personal transport to the healing center, she felt a bit like a pre-Rite child just released from a day of boring classes.
She settled on the dark bricks of the landing pad, powered down the engines, and rested her head on the back of the seat, soaking up the silence. The ten ticks she’d spent flying here were the only moments of solitude she’d had all day, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to end them. The privacy shield kept her windows opaque from the outside, so she knew her Guards couldn’t see her moment of weakness. But just knowing they were out there waiting made it impossible for her to relax.
With a sigh, she popped the latch and stepped out, acknowledging the salutes Gehrain and the others crisply offered. Micah was there as well, having arrived half a hantick earlier to assess the health status of the aliens and act as liaison.
“Give me some good news, Micah, I need it,” she said as they began walking.
“Then Fahla is smiling on you, because it’s all good. The two critical cases, Lieutenant Hmongyon and Trooper Mauji Mauji, have been upgraded to stable and recovering. Everyone else, including the weapons officer who had to be carried out, now wants to know how much longer they have to stay and when they can either get back to their ship, or get out to explore Alsea. I’ll leave it to you to guess who asked for the latter.”
Tal cracked the first smile she’d managed since midmeal. “Our knowledge-hungry Principal Anthropologist, Lhyn Rivers.”
“Well guessed.”
“That must be difficult for Captain Serrado.”
“Because she wants to keep her people together?”
She looked over at him in surprise. “That’s right, I didn’t have time to tell you. They’re bondmates. But I get the feeling they don’t want anyone else in their crew to know.”
“I…see,” he said, and she knew his brain had just accelerated to the speed of light. “Well. That does put a different spin on things.”
“It’s why the captain sent her commander to Blacksun in the first transport. Whether her bondmate was found alive or dead, she didn’t want him there to witness her reaction. She knew she would come apart either w
ay.”
He shook his head. “What a strange culture. I cannot imagine living among a race who can keep their bondings secret.”
“There’s more.”
He looked down at her expectantly, and she stopped, sending her Guards out of hearing range with a wave of her hand.
“Micah, they’re tyrees.”
His eyebrows nearly crawled off his forehead. “What? You said their entire race is sonsales!”
“That’s what they tell me. But there’s no denying it, not when those two relax around each other. The odd thing is that I don’t believe they know it. Perhaps there’s no recognition in their culture for a tyree bond, but I’m certain they have one.”
“Sonsales aliens capable of a tyree bond,” he murmured. “This is certainly a day of wonders.”
“True words. But I’m not confident that the Alsean public is ready for that concept.”
“That a gift straight from the hand of Fahla has been given to aliens as well? Yes, I can see why you might be concerned. Have you told anyone else?”
“No one. This is in the strictest confidence.”
“Understood.”
She waved her Guards in and resumed walking.
“Lieutenant Candini knows of their bonded status,” she added as an afterthought. “Commander Baldassar does not.”
“Imagine your second-in-command being unaware of such a critical fact,” he said.
“Perhaps the Gaians don’t see bond status as being a critical fact.” She’d wondered about that.
“If that’s the case, then they’re a stranger species than I thought.”
Healer Wellernal was waiting for them just inside the entry arch, reader card in hand, and insisted on describing the medical procedures for all twelve Gaians while Tal listened with half an ear. She wasn’t overly concerned how the Gaians had been restored to health, only that they were. However, his mention of their anatomical differences earned her full attention.
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