“Security should establish a presence above and below them,” Cox said.
“No.” Rahel’s soft voice was surprisingly vehement. “They’re empathic, and I don’t know what their range is. Security officers will be broadcasting wariness at best, aggression and fear at worst. This Resilere needs to feel safe. It’s staying with me of its own free will. It can leave just as easily, and I can’t stop it.”
“Set up security at the chase entrances on decks eight and ten,” Ekatya ordered. “If necessary, you can run in from there.”
“Captain, that’s not close enough to be effective.”
“It will have to be.” She looked at Zeppy and Kenji, both of whom had pushed back their chairs in preparation for a quick exit. “We’ll meet at the chase access nearest brace shaft J on deck eight. Dismissed.”
26
Courage
Commander Cox accompanied Ekatya to her quarters to pick up Lhyn.
“I notice Sayana flouted the order to travel in pairs,” he said as they stood in the lift. “Not to mention the one about staying out of chases and brace shafts.”
Ekatya nodded. “One of the hardest things she’s having to adjust to is the idea of working on a team. She spent her career relying on herself.”
“It’s going to get her in trouble if she doesn’t adapt.”
“I have faith in her. She’s already made great strides. We can’t expect her to be a perfect Fleet officer in one patrol.” She glanced over. “Still want her in your section?”
“Are you kidding? My entire section spent three days chasing ghosts and she’s in there talking to one. I want a dozen like her. But I’ll need a migraine prescription while she and I hammer out a working relationship.”
Ekatya couldn’t help laughing. “Sounds like you’re prepared.”
Lhyn was waiting for them, wearing comfortable clothing and carrying a backpack. “Do you have the mineral blocks?” she said by way of greeting.
Ekatya held out a small sack. “Compliments of Dr. Wells. Is there room in there for Kenji’s gear?”
Lhyn stowed the sack. “I’ve got room for everything. Let’s go.”
“Dr. Rivers?”
She looked at Cox as if she hadn’t noticed him before now. “Yes?”
“I don’t like heights. It would probably take two shuttles and some unbreakable cables to drag me to the edge of a cliff. You’re very brave.”
He had surprised a smile out of her. “Thank you, Commander. I might be asking you to repeat that about five minutes from now.”
“I’ll repeat it as many times as you need,” he said, raising himself twenty points in Ekatya’s estimation.
On deck eight, Kenji was standing next to Zeppy outside the chase entrance, a pack in his hands. “Oh, you’ve already got one,” he said. “I should have known.”
Cox went over to his three security officers while Lhyn stashed a pile of gear in her pack and exclaimed over its quality.
“I knew the military was getting all the good stuff!” she said.
Kenji offered a crooked grin. “There have to be some compensations for not having a cushy academic chair.”
“Cushy, ha.” She shouldered the pack. “I’m about to face my worst fear, and it’s not even the brain-sucking alien.”
“If Commander Cox says you’re brave, you can publish it. His record is impeccable.” Ekatya leaned over and spoke directly into Lhyn’s ear. “I still think you’re the most courageous person I’ve ever known.”
Lhyn jerked back and stared at her. “Everyone, please look somewhere else,” she said, and pulled Ekatya into a passionate kiss.
It was six kinds of inappropriate. Ekatya didn’t care. She gave as good as she got, trying to convey a book’s worth of words and feelings into one gesture.
Lhyn abruptly pushed her away and turned to Zeppy before Ekatya had quite recovered. “I’m ready,” she announced.
Zeppy opened the chase door and stepped in. Lhyn looked into the dark, narrow entrance, took a deep breath, and walked in after him. Ekatya brought up the rear.
They progressed in silence until the first ramp over a pipe. “Watch your step,” Zeppy said. “And your head.”
“Got it, thanks.” Lhyn ducked as she stepped onto the ramp. “Why are the chases so narrow?”
“Space limitations. Thank your lucky stars you’re on a Pulsar-class ship. On some of the smaller ships, you can’t even walk upright in the chases. You have to crawl on your hands and knees.”
Lhyn shuddered. “Nightmare. I’m amazed Fleet can attract anyone into operations if that’s the sales pitch. ‘Join operations! Learn to repair broken power junctions on your hands and knees!’ Doesn’t have much romantic appeal.”
“Well, when you put it that way, it doesn’t. Fortunately, my sales pitch was different. It was more like ‘Join Fleet, go into operations, earn a high rank and good pay fiddling around with the things you love.’ I could have stayed home and worked in my mother’s machine repair shop.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I wanted to see the galaxy. She thought I was insane. But here I am, a commander and section chief. I think I made the right choice.”
“I think you did, too,” Ekatya said.
“She has to say that,” Lhyn confided.
“I know,” Zeppy said in the same low tone. “She’s pretty good about saying the right things.”
“She can hear you.” Ekatya smiled to hear Lhyn snicker. So far, so good.
Or at least she thought so until they reached a T-junction and Lhyn stopped right in the middle of it.
“Shippers.” She dropped her head back and closed her eyes. “It goes on forever.”
“It goes on for another thirty meters,” Zeppy said. “Then it’s a left turn and ten more meters and you’re at the brace shaft door.”
“Do you need a hug?” Ekatya asked quietly.
“No! Don’t touch me.” She licked her lips, shook her head, and opened her eyes. “Sorry. I need all the space I can get.”
“I think you’ll feel better in the brace shaft,” Zeppy said.
She let out a harsh laugh. “Right, in the center of the ship. At the farthest possible point from any exit or window. I’ll feel much better there.” She hitched the pack higher on her shoulders and pointed with her chin. “Lead the way.”
Ekatya hated being this helpless. There was nothing she could do except follow along behind and hope Lhyn’s strength held out.
When they reached the brace shaft door, she was careful to stand an arm’s length away from Lhyn while she called Rahel. “We’re in position. Can I send Lhyn in?”
“Yes. Hopefully I’ve told it I’m expecting friendly company.”
She could wish for something better than “hopefully,” but it was all they had.
“Captain. If it goes after her, it will have to kill me first. I promise you that.”
That helped more than she would have expected. “A promise from an Alsean warrior,” she said. “I know the worth of that. Thank you, First Guard. She’s coming in.”
“What did she say?” Lhyn asked.
“Go slow and trust her.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s not a promise.”
“She said she’ll take care of you.”
“Uh-huh. Still not a promise, but I don’t have time to wiggle it out of you. Commander?”
Zeppy opened the door and stepped as far to the side as he could in the tight confines. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.” Lhyn went through the door without another word or look at Ekatya. It slid shut behind her, leaving them in the humming solitude of the chase.
27
Brace shaft J
Rahel was aware of Lhyn well before the brace shaft door opened one deck above. The chases might be an emotional dead zone, but they didn’t block the broadcasts of people inside them. Heavy dread rumbled into the shaft space, shot through with bolts of terror. The Resilere flattened itself and went back into camouflage m
ode, wary and watchful.
She could not let Lhyn come down yet, but how to say that without making her even more afraid?
“Rahel?”
“Right below you. Lhyn, stop a moment and breathe.” She envisioned giving Lhyn a warmron, hoping that would help her project the right emotions. Affection, protection . . . friend, no threat.
“You make it sound so easy. There’s not enough air in here for that.”
“Yes, there is. Lean out on the rail and look up. See the ceiling?”
“Yes,” Lhyn said after a pause.
“Now look down.”
“Whoa. That’s a long way.”
“Longer than most of the corridors you walk through. This is just a big, airy corridor standing on end.”
The terror lessened, hovered, then suddenly shrank into discomfort.
“Commander Cox would really hate this view,” Lhyn said.
Rahel didn’t understand the comment, but it didn’t matter when the Resilere was puffing itself out again, its wariness decreasing.
“Come on down,” she said.
Lhyn’s soft-soled boots appeared on the ladder. Her long legs seemed to take up half the space between decks before her body cleared the ladder opening. She stopped four rungs from the landing and scanned the wall, looking for the Resilere.
“Oh,” she whispered. “You’re trying to be invisible again. My stars, look at you.”
Lhyn was a true scholar, Rahel thought. Her remaining fear diminished the moment she laid eyes on the Resilere, and it was responding, its skin losing the colors that matched it to the wall and control pad.
“Is it okay with me?”
“It’s happier now that you’re feeling more at ease. Just keep your movements smooth and slow.”
“Smooth and slow, like good foreplay.”
Rahel clamped her jaw shut, but a snicker escaped. “We’re not recording this yet, are we?”
“Are you kidding? This has all been recorded from the moment you called Ekatya.” She descended to the landing, slowly freed herself from her pack, and removed a portable cam from it. Then she went back up a few rungs to attach the cam to the wall above and to the side of the Resilere.
It ruffled its skin into a bumpy texture.
“Still all right,” Rahel said to her now-frozen friend. “It’s curious about what you’re doing.”
Relief wafted down as Lhyn activated the cam. “Then we have something in common.” She joined Rahel by the railing and pulled a boxy piece of equipment from her pack. “Frequency analyzer,” she said, powering it on. The main display showed a confusing series of waves and spikes, while numbers appeared on several smaller screens below.
She laid a pad next to the analyzer and activated the virtual display, then set it to show the feeds from the two security cams plus the one she had placed. A second pad went next to the first, its virtual display transparent until she said, “Dr. Lhyn Rivers, Resilere miin first contact. We’re aboard the SPF Phoenix, brace shaft J, deck nine. Date today.”
Her words appeared on the virtual screen, along with the day’s date in Common reckoning.
“Good,” Lhyn murmured, and pulled a small sack from her pack. Settling on her knees next to Rahel, she said, “Commander Kenji, are you getting the feeds?”
Rahel watched the question spell itself out as Kenji spoke in her ear.
“Three visual, one audio, plus the output from the analyzer and your dictation. We’re running.”
“We have the video as well.” That was Captain Serrado. “It looks nice and calm in there.”
The Resilere had let its skin go smooth again. Now a wave of lights flashed across it, and Rahel was—
Looking up at her mother, who was bent over a block of metal and inspecting it for flaws. “It’s going to be a sculpture of a mother and child,” she said. She was so tall and strong, and Rahel wanted to grow up to look just like her—
She blinked. “That definitely was not reflecting my own emotions back. I think it wants to know if you’re my mother.”
Her words appeared on the dictation pad, but Lhyn’s eyes were glued to the analyzer. “Incredible. That’s not an emotion, it’s a complex question.” She looked back at the Resilere, a cloud of joyous awe rising from her. “It shows that they view family relationships as important, and this one is actively seeking to understand our relationship. And yes, they do use sound. A low frequency we’re not capable of hearing.”
“I saw it too,” Kenji said. “I’m isolating it now and pulling it to a separate record.”
“Thank you, Commander. If you can take care of the audio records, I’ll be glad to not have to worry about it.”
“Consider it done.”
“How can it be communicating questions through emotions?” Rahel asked.
“I have no idea. This is truly alien. What was the memory you experienced?”
Rahel described it, trying not to be embarrassed by the knowledge that Serrado and half the section chiefs were listening in on this.
“I think you have the right interpretation,” Lhyn said. “It’s significant that you saw that memory from the point of view of yourself as a small child. Can you tell it we’re friends?”
“I can try.” She recalled the memory of Lhyn giving her a warmron in the middle of a crowded corridor. That she had done it in such a public place, so counter to Alsean taboo, had given the gesture an even deeper meaning that she now pushed out, hoping it would somehow translate. Not of the body but of the heart. Not family. Friend.
She had barely finished the projection when the Resilere flashed excitedly and Rahel was—
Watching a brown-haired, brown-eyed boy sit up on the empty bricked street of the Whitesun bayfront and flash her a bloody smile. “We should go before musclehead there wakes up,” he said, then stood and brushed himself off. As they walked through the nighttime sounds of the docks, he offered, “My name is Mouse.”
The hum of the brace shaft returned, grounding her in the here and now, and she could not see the Resilere clearly for the tears in her eyes.
“What happened?” Lhyn asked gently.
“It, um.” She rubbed her eyes dry. “It understands the concept of friends.”
“I’m sorry, Rahel. But I have to ask what that memory was.”
She cleared her throat. “The first time I met my best childhood friend. The person who taught me what friendship truly was. I was fifteen, he was seventeen, and I’d just saved him from a beating by two bullies twice his size.”
Lhyn picked up her hand and squeezed it, keeping her sympathy unspoken and off the record. “So, one of the most momentous meetings in your life.”
She squeezed back and smiled. “One of them.”
Lhyn ducked her head, an embarrassed pleasure coming through their skin contact. “It used Mouse before, didn’t it? Or your mind did, when the Resilere asked if you were all right.”
“Yes, but this was much more powerful. It was like living the moment all over again. We were right next to the docks, and I could hear the ships pulling at their moorings.”
“Emphasis,” Lhyn mused. “Or perhaps the first was your mind’s interpretation of a question, while this was an actual projection by the Resilere. If they can project the way Alseans can, that might affect the strength of the memory.”
That made sense. It also made Rahel dread what other memories this exercise might conjure up. There were things she didn’t particularly want to share with half the senior officers of this ship.
As if she had heard the thought, Lhyn produced a mineral block from the small sack beside her. “Shall we try something a little less emotionally loaded? Let’s see if we can communicate the concept of food. Which has the added benefit of giving it a reason to stay with us. I’d like it to associate us with good things, not just an absence of bad things.”
Rahel accepted the palm-sized gray cube and considered how best to do this. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to hold it out.”
�
�Get it as near as you can.” Lhyn pointed to the floor directly beneath the Resilere.
Rahel pushed herself to her hands and knees, crept forward, and stretched out her arm to place the cube.
The Resilere ruffled up its skin, two arms slipping partway down the wall before retracting.
“Curiosity?” Lhyn asked.
Rahel nodded as she sat back. “And no fear.”
“I think they use body language as well as the other forms. Rumpled skin seems to be a bit like us raising our eyebrows.”
They waited, but the Resilere showed no further sign of interest.
“I guess that would have been too easy.” Lhyn extracted two wrapped bars from her pack and offered one to Rahel. “Sweet bars. Maybe eating will make it easier to convey the picture. What emotion would that be? Satiation?”
“Or a kind of assuaging, if we were really hungry.” Rahel unwrapped her bar and took a bite. “Yum. It’ll help that you brought my favorite flavor.”
“They didn’t give me my degree for being stupid, you know.” Lhyn waggled her eyebrows and bit into her bar with a smirk.
“That’s probably the penultimate word I’d associate with you.” Rahel would never say out loud what she was sensing: that Lhyn had lost the last vestiges of her discomfort, too caught up in the thrill of discovery.
“Right, then I have to ask. What’s the last word?”
“Short.”
Lhyn covered her mouth. “You almost got crumbs blown in your face.”
“I’m glad your parents raised you properly. All right, let me focus.” She held the next bite in her mouth, concentrating on the contrast between the sweet and tart flavors. Then she tried to project the enjoyment, the satisfaction, the sense of fulfilling a need.
“Bioluminescence,” Lhyn said, but Rahel didn’t hear her next words. She was—
Walking into a tavern in her filthy uniform, exhausted and wanting nothing more than a plate of fanten. Two plates, if she could get them. She hadn’t eaten since before dawn and would devour her own boots if she didn’t get food soon.
Resilience Page 21
