Resilience

by Fletcher DeLancey

  Though Rahel didn’t move, her demeanor seemed much less guarded. “Thank you. Lhyn said the same thing, but it helps to hear it from you.”

  “She wouldn’t lie to make you feel better.”

  “I don’t think she knows how to lie. But you’re my oath holder here. Your opinion is the one that matters.”

  Fleet training hadn’t prepared her for this, she thought ruefully. “My opinion is that your performance today was above any reasonable expectations. You showed exemplary courage and selflessness, and you saved lives while working as an integral member of the crew. I think we can count your first patrol an unqualified success.”

  Rahel stared, her amber eyes wide with surprise. Then her forehead ridges crinkled. “Selflessness?”

  “It couldn’t have been easy, sharing those memories with so many of us.”

  She sympathized as Rahel broke eye contact. Had she been forced to reveal such private memories to half the section chiefs in her early career, she’d have put in for a transfer right afterward. Rahel didn’t have that option.

  “The chiefs will keep it confidential,” she promised. “It won’t go beyond those of us who were on the link.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’ll forget.”

  “No. But you’ve earned their respect. And mine.”

  Rahel looked up, startled once again. “Thank you, Captain. I didn’t expect that.” She sank back against her pillows, visibly more at ease. “Lhyn said when she and Commander Jalta write up their articles, they’ll strip out the emotional truth and hide it under a pile of polysyllabic scientific words.”

  “That sounds like her. Trust a linguist to say exactly what she wants to.”

  “What she did took more courage than what I did.”

  An obvious diversion, but also an honest belief. That Rahel had honored Lhyn’s courage on an open com link went a long way in Ekatya’s estimation. “She was impressive, wasn’t she? Thank you for helping her. You’re a good friend to her.”

  “She’s been a good friend to me.” She hesitated. “I’ve been thinking about what happened. It feels like one of Fahla’s jokes that you asked me to keep her safe, and in the end, she helped save me.”

  “I’m not enjoying the irony,” Ekatya said flatly. “Our security was breached, and I have to apologize for that. Commander Cox is conducting a full investigation. As soon as we know exactly what happened, I’ll share it with you. But I’m appalled. We’ve been telling you that you’re part of a greater whole, yet we failed you. That shouldn’t have happened. I’ll take steps to make sure it never happens again.”

  “You feel guilty.” Rahel tilted her head, reading her. “Captain, you shouldn’t—” She stopped with a wince. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “I’m still getting used to being transparent.” To a subordinate, she didn’t add. She had just about come to terms with Andira and Salomen seeing through her, and to a lesser extent, Lanaril. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get there with a crew member. “I appreciate that you don’t blame me, but the fact is, I’m responsible. That’s my job.”

  Rahel made no answer, her brows drawing together as she thought. “I’ve never had real backup before,” she said slowly. “The last time I was injured on duty, I was alone in the middle of a forest. I tied a tourniquet around my leg and drove myself to the nearest healing center. They said if I’d been ten minutes later, I would have died.” She gestured at the treatment room. “I don’t think having a team means no one ever makes a mistake. I think it means your team is there for you when you need them.”

  Ekatya looked at her new officer, who had just taught her a lesson, and wondered how the Hades she was supposed to respond to that. At last she held out her forearm and said, “I’m glad to have you, First Guard.”

  Rahel lit up as she accepted the Alsean warrior gesture. “I’m glad to be here. Well, not here . . .”

  They both chuckled, and the atmosphere suddenly seemed lighter.

  “Do you know what else is different about having a team?” Rahel asked. “When I was in that healing center getting my leg fixed, no one came to see me. No one knew I was there. But Lhyn’s been here twice already. Roris brought the whole weapons team, and they’re each buying me a drink in the Blue Rocket when I get out. Commander Jalta came by with Commander Zeppy. And Commander Shigeo brought me that.” She pointed to her bedside table, which housed a bonsai that looked like an ancient, gnarled pine tree. “I’ve never seen anything like it. He told me how it’s done and offered to teach me, so I’m going to learn. I want to make a tree like that for Salomen.”

  Ekatya walked around the bed to examine the bonsai more closely. “Beautiful. What a perfect idea for Salomen.” She held up the colorful socks that were lying next to the bonsai. “Is there some meaning?”

  She had never seen Rahel look playful before. “It’s a joke. Between me and Katsu—um, Commander Lokomorra. He says they’re to keep my feet warm while I’m in here.”

  “With lips,” Ekatya drawled. “I’m not sure if I want to know the joke or not.”

  Rahel’s smile was positively wicked. “You might, but he wouldn’t.”

  Ekatya laughed as she returned the socks to their resting place. “Now I’m sure I want to know. I’m also sure you won’t tell me.” She turned to the display on the far wall, currently showing a feed from the Resilere tanks. “They’re cute, aren’t they?”

  “Cute? They’re adorable. I want to hold a double handful of them.”

  “Judging by how many people are watching this feed, half the crew agrees with you. Commander Kenji says it’s more popular than the latest movie package.” She watched a baby Resilere swim into view, settle onto a mineral block, and begin sparkling with bioluminescence. “Quite a journey from terrifying monster to crew mascot.”

  “Lhyn said something like that. She said people respond well to babies of most species, and this is a special case because we saved them.”

  “She told me it helps that they’re tiny and sparkly.”

  Rahel chuckled and then grimaced. “I keep forgetting it hurts to laugh.”

  The Resilere hatchlings were a safe, non-humorous topic, enabling Ekatya to spend a few minutes in simple conversation until a nurse came and shooed her out.

  One down, one to go, she thought as she jogged up the stairs. She’d count herself lucky if the second visit was only twice as difficult as the first.

  On the second floor of the medbay, Ekatya found the chief surgeon’s office door firmly shut. She rang the chime and waited.

  “I thought I told—oh,” Dr. Wells said as the door finished sliding open. “Captain. What can I do for you?”

  Ekatya shouldered past her and stopped in the center of the room. “You can keep your promise. You said you’d tell me a story when it was all over.”

  Wells gestured toward her desk. “It’s not over, I still have to finish—”

  “Phoenix,” Ekatya interrupted. “Log Chief Surgeon Wells off duty effective immediately, captain’s authorization.” She smiled at the dumbfounded doctor. “There. Now it’s over.”

  The expected irritation washed over Wells’s face. “That was high-handed and uncalled for.”

  “I might give you high-handed. But it was definitely called for. Two shifts is already too long.” She opened the bag she had brought with her and thunked a bottle onto the cluttered desk. “Iceflame, as promised.” Two short glasses joined the bottle. “I was planning to go to your quarters, but you weren’t there.”

  “Captain, I can’t. Rahel’s wound was filthy; she needs regular checks for infection—”

  “For which you have highly trained nursing staff. One of whom was just checking her.” Ekatya plopped into a guest chair and waved a hand down her body. “See the civilian clothing? I’m not on duty, and we’re friends. Call me Ekatya.”

  That was the winning move, she noted with some satisfaction. After several seconds of stunned silence, Wells drifted over, taking off her u
niform jacket as she walked. It was tossed into her chair, and the two carved wooden sticks holding her hair twist in place clattered onto the desk. She brushed her fingers through her loose hair and sat in the other guest chair.

  “Pour me a drink,” she said.

  Iceflame was two liquors, one hot and one cold, which never stayed blended for long. Ekatya shook the bottle vigorously, mixing the red and clear liquors, and poured two shots.

  Wells held hers aloft. “My name,” she said solemnly, “is Alejandra.”

  “It’s a beautiful name. I’m happy to use it.” They tapped their glasses together.

  Iceflame was cold going in and hot going down. Ekatya closed her eyes, savoring the burn. “Oh, I needed that,” she muttered.

  “It’s been a sewage sump of a week,” Alejandra agreed.

  “And then some. But it ended well.”

  “If you call nearly losing Rahel ending well, then yes, I’ll give you that.”

  “We have two tanks full of happy Resilere who show no sign of wanting to go anywhere else. My ship is out of quarantine. The Tutnuken isn’t our problem anymore. I was able to schedule Murray’s memorial without worrying about creating an alien buffet. Lhyn and Kade Jalta are going out of their minds with the data we’ve collected. And Rahel is downstairs, awake and talking, with a new pair of lip socks that made her very happy.”

  “Lip socks?”

  “A gift from Lokomorra. They’re already such good friends that they have inside jokes with each other. She’s had quite the parade of visitors, I hear.”

  Alejandra’s expression hardened. She capped and shook the bottle, poured two new shots, and said, “Ask.”

  “Ask what?”

  “Don’t play innocent.”

  Ekatya leaned back, resting the glass on her thigh. “Why haven’t you spoken to her?”

  Alejandra drained the shot and stared at her glass. She opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head, and poured another shot. It followed the first without fanfare.

  Ekatya was impressed. Two shots in a row should have had her coughing.

  She lifted her own glass to her lips just as Alejandra said, “I had a child.”

  Spluttering, Ekatya hurriedly set the glass down and pressed her sleeve against her mouth. “Give a little warning next time.”

  Looking cheerier, Alejandra shook the bottle and refilled both glasses. “Fair warning, then. I had a son. His name was Josue. He died before his third birthday.” She raised her glass and waited.

  Ekatya’s mind was racing. She had thoroughly vetted the candidates for chief surgeon and knew Alejandra’s Fleet record backward and forward. It included her short-lived marriage, but there was not one iota of information regarding a child.

  Which meant she had never wanted anyone in Fleet to know.

  “To Josue,” she said simply, and tapped their glasses together.

  Alejandra’s eyes reddened. She tossed back the drink, rubbed her eyes, and said, “Damn, that burns.”

  “I should think so, that’s your fourth one.” Ekatya let her have the excuse. “Tell me about Josue.”

  It was a horrifying, tragic story, and her heart hurt by the time it was finished. But it filled in a few blanks about what drove Alejandra in her work.

  “It’s a recently terraformed planet,” Alejandra said, staring into the bottom of her glass. “Like Lhyn’s. I was raised with the belief that our greatest calling in life was to stabilize our community. For me, that meant two things—improving our crops, and having children. I was pregnant before my eighteenth birthday.”

  Lhyn had told Ekatya about the pressure she lived under on her own planet. As a healthy young woman with a genius intellect, she had been expected to pass on her genes, ideally to a whole basket of children. But where she had fled those expectations, Alejandra had embraced them.

  “I should have waited a few years. My body wasn’t ready. Josue was delivered surgically.” Alejandra looked up with a smile so humorless that Ekatya suppressed a shiver. “There were complications. Isn’t that a perfect word? So clean, and it covers so much devastation. The damage to my uterus—”

  When it became clear that she would not finish the sentence, Ekatya silently filled their glasses. “Irrevocable?” she asked.

  Alejandra threw back the shot and closed her eyes as she swallowed. “He was my one chance. You want to hear the irony? I know how to prevent it now.” She set the glass on her desk. “I don’t often get the opportunity to deliver a baby. But I’ll tell you this. No woman under my care will ever have that happen to her.”

  “I’m so sorry for your losses.” For once, Ekatya found herself wishing for an empathic connection. The words were so inadequate.

  “Thank you. I’m . . .” Alejandra glanced out the window, then met her eyes. “I’m glad you know.”

  “I’m honored that you told me.”

  “It’s easier the second time. And you’re wondering what this has to do with not talking to Rahel.”

  “I wasn’t going to press.”

  “There’s a first,” she said with a hint of her usual sarcasm. “That awful day during Rahel’s second week with us—the day I realized what a shitty job I was doing as the first Fleet doctor to care for an Alsean—that was when I found I could stop her signaling loop by touching her. The way I used to touch Josue. He’d snuggle on my lap and I’d run my fingers over his face and through his hair, and it would put him to sleep in two minutes.” She slid lower in the chair, a far cry from the straight-backed posture she normally kept on duty. “She knew. She thought I had a daughter.”

  “So you told her.”

  “I needed her to trust me. She thought she was all alone, fighting prejudice and expectations and I—” She heaved a great sigh. “I didn’t do her any favors by losing my temper the day she was bullied. She hid her symptoms because she didn’t trust me not to use them against her. Yes, I told her about Josue. And it worked. It worked perfectly.”

  When she went silent, Ekatya picked up the bottle and raised her eyebrows. At the nod, she shook and poured two more shots. “I’m sensing a ‘but’ coming.”

  Alejandra gave a derisive laugh. “A big one.” She downed her shot and coughed. “I’ve had two lives, Ekatya.” She paused. “That sounded strange. I’ve never said your name before.”

  “I’m still getting used to Alejandra.”

  “I’m still getting used to hearing it from you.”

  “I have to say, Wells is easier.”

  This time, her laugh was real. “You can call me Wells if it’s better for your poor, overtaxed brain.”

  “There’s no need to be insulting about it.” Ekatya drained her glass and thunked it back to the desk. “I like Wells,” she decided. “But I reserve the right to use either.”

  “Fair enough, if I get to call you Serrado when I feel like it.”

  “Whichever you prefer,” Ekatya said magnanimously.

  “Then we’re agreed.” She looked at her glass. “I think I’m drunk.”

  “I think we both are. You said you had two lives.”

  Alejandra set the glass next to hers. “Two very separate lives. My name was the dividing line. Remember when I met Lhyn and she asked if I went by Aleja?”

  “Mm-hm. You said never, because you were honoring your grandmother—wait. That grandmother? The one who taught you herbalism?”

  She nodded. “I was Aleja until she died and I lost Josue. When I registered into the medical program, I became Alejandra. I wanted her strength. Her dignity. Probably fell short on the dignity part.”

  “I think you’re very dignified,” Ekatya said. “When you’re not yelling at me.”

  “I only yell at people when they deserve it.” Alejandra lifted a finger. “You hardly ever do.”

  Ekatya choked on her laughter. “Thanks. That’s a compliment, coming from you.”

  Alejandra chuckled with her before the brief moment of humor faded. “I left my old life behind with my old name. It worked just fi
ne for my entire Fleet career, right up until a few weeks ago.”

  “Telling Rahel ripped it open,” Ekatya guessed.

  “Wide open. When I lost Josue . . . it broke me. It broke my heart and I couldn’t live that way, so I buried that dead piece of my heart with him. I’ve lived without it all this time. I never imagined it could come back. I never wanted it back.”

  “Because if you had it back, you could be hurt that way again.”

  “How the fuck did you know that? It took me until today to figure that out!”

  Ekatya shrugged. “Psychology is part of the job, remember?”

  “That’s truly annoying.” She ran a hand down her face and slumped even further into the chair. “Rahel got into my heart.”

  “She does that, I’ve heard.”

  “Where?”

  “I met her mother at the oath ceremony. She said Rahel collected adoptive parents all over Whitesun after she ran away. She’s still close to them, especially Sharro. Then she managed to get the Lead Templar of Blacksun invested in her. Lanaril told me she walked in planning to stabilize Rahel and hand her off to a mental healer. Ten minutes later, she knew she wouldn’t let anyone else take that case.”

  “So I’m the latest in a long line. I’ll bet none of them ran away.”

  Ekatya said nothing, waiting for the rest to come out.

  “She did the unforgivable last night. She told me the truth.” Alejandra looked up with an expression that said she was expecting judgment, then gave a tiny nod and continued. “We ended up in a new position, with her head in my lap. Stars above, it was so familiar. I let it feel good—and then she summarily informed me that I have maternal feelings for her.”

  Rahel, Ekatya decided, was missing a basic sense of self-preservation.

  “I couldn’t believe she said that. It was like a slap in the face. I was furious. So I lashed out, and then I walked out.”

  “Alsean honesty does take some getting used to,” Ekatya said diplomatically.

  “Voice of experience?”

  “Oh, yes. It drove me crazy in the beginning, but I’ve come to appreciate it. Most of the time,” she amended. “I don’t have to be anything but me with Andira or Salomen. They won’t let me be anything but me.”