“I try to be great under any and all circumstances, but I’m still a work in progress. Thank you for being kind to me yet again.”
“It’s not kindness when it’s true.”
Her ears burned. She hoped she wasn’t blushing, but she had no idea how to respond. The conversation lulled into an awkward silence for a few seconds, and she wracked her brain for something to say.
She was dredging up a lame question about what kind of products Mesahle Flight built when he abruptly spun around and started digging through a pile of…well, most of it resembled rubble.
He triumphantly produced a spindly, sage-green plant in a cracked terra cotta pot. “Houseplant! One survived.”
She groaned, but it was tinged with laughter. “That’s a cactus! You can’t seriously expect me to be older than a cactus. This is in no way whatsoever a reasonable comparison.”
“Fine, fine, fair enough.” He shrugged and set the plant down on the concrete. “I’d ask if you want to come inside for a cool drink, but the inside looks worse than the outside. Also, the refrigeration unit is broken, so there aren’t any cool drinks.”
“Thank you, but I need to run. A thousand duties back home and all. It sucks how the Rasu trashed your place, but I know you’ll rebuild it one day soon, even better than it was before.”
“I will.” He picked up a grease-soaked dishrag from atop the stack of boxes beside him and started fiddling with it. “When things calm down a little—if they ever do—feel free to break into some databases and hunt me down again. We’ll grab a bite to eat somewhere. As friends?”
Her smile felt warm and real on her lips. “As friends. I’d like that very much.”
34
* * *
ROMANE
IDCC
Milky Way Galaxy
Connova Interstellar Testing Facility
Kennedy had just finished up a status conference comm with Miriam, Fleet Admiral Bastian (that was still weird) and Devon Reynolds when Noah appeared in the doorway of the Connova Interstellar testing lab lugging a bulky, meter-high stack of Reor slabs.
She wasn’t at all certain he could see around them, so she moved out of his way, then giggled as he staggered across the room and gingerly slid them onto one of the workbenches with a grunt. “Ask, and ye shall receive.”
“Wonderful!” She hugged him from behind, burying her face in the crease of his neck. His skin was warm and clean, and he smelled of crisp aftershave and the maple syrup from breakfast. “You’re my hero.”
“I know I am.” He twisted around and kissed her lightly. “Now, dare I ask why you wanted twenty kilos of Reor so desperately? I mean, you were mumbling about it in your sleep last night, but in the absence of complete sentences I confess I did not get the gist of this particular desire of yours.”
“Sorry. Did I mumble anything else important?”
“Only some stuff about how terribly much you loved me, and how swoon-worthy I was, and how you were the luckiest woman in the world to have met me on Messium all those years ago.”
“Uh-huh. I bet I mumbled every bit of that.”
He tucked his hair behind one ear, sending her heart pitter-pattering as madly as it had on the day she met him. “You did.”
She rolled her eyes playfully, but despite her best efforts to stay lighthearted, the unrelenting pressure of work reasserted itself to dampen her mood. “Fine, I accept your statement, if only because it’s all true, but now we need to focus.”
“Okay. Still don’t know what we’re focusing on.”
She began pacing around the workbench holding the Reor slabs. “The Imperium double shielding is unwieldy and expensive. Half of our ships can’t support it, either because it would interfere with their core functionality or because the ship’s design won’t accommodate the power generation required to run it. It works for the big command ships and cruisers, which, yes, is a huge relief, but it’s not a viable solution for the fleets at large.”
“We’ve known this for a couple of weeks now, though. Besides, I thought you were working with Special Projects to increase the thrust potential on the combat-class engines, so more ships can outrun the Rasu.”
“I am. And we’re making good progress on it. But a heavy frigate or a carrier is never going to be fast enough to outrun the Rasu. For a lot of vessels, we need a backup plan.”
He arched an eyebrow at the tall stack of slabs he’d deposited on the workbench. “And developing that backup plan involves Reor?”
“Yes! Well, it involves kyoseil. There’s no technological reason why we can’t do the same thing the Asterions are doing: blending kyoseil into the adiamene to create those amazing adaptive hulls.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Did you ask their permission?”
“The Asterions? Hey, we gave them the recipe for adiamene free of charge. I think turn-about is completely fair play.”
“True….” He grimaced while playing with the top slab on the stack.
“You’ve turned into quite the upstanding citizen, haven’t you?”
“Didn’t have a choice. Who’s going to raise our kids if we go to prison?”
His words knocked her back for a second. The answer was ‘her parents,’ but she also knew that wasn’t the point. She told herself everything she did was performed with an eye toward Braelyn and Jonas’ future. Except sometimes, when the science and the engineering started running wild, it did become about invention, achievement and being not only the first, but the best. She needed to be careful to keep that in check.
She sighed, deflating a little. “Yes, I talked to Advisor Ridani this morning. He shared all the tech specs on their work with me and wished me luck.”
“Excellent. So, my beautiful genius, how do we do it?”
“Ha! No pressure. Well…” she studied the stack of Reor slabs “…first we have to get the kyoseil out of its armor. According to Ridani, this simply involves sending a specific resonance wave function. So let’s set up one of the slabs and give it a shot.”
Noah frowned dubiously. “Don’t we have people for this sort of thing?”
“Be careful, lest you start sounding like your dad.”
He clutched at his chest. “Oh, you wound me. My heart.”
She laughed. “Yes, we have people, but I try to be the person who first-runs a crazy idea. We have to keep being the innovators. We can’t get lazy.”
He leaned in and touched his nose to hers. “No one with two children under the age of six will ever be considered lazy.”
“One day they’ll be twenty.”
“Yes, and then we’ll have to go rescue them off some besieged planet or other.”
“No. No, no, no, do not put ideas into their heads.”
“I don’t think I have to, though we should consider keeping them far away from Marlee for the next decade or two. Back to the matter at hand: we’re not lazy, and we’re the innovators. Let’s do this thing.”
He retrieved a clean containment box from the storage room and situated it on one of the empty lab tables, then they carefully secured a Reor slab inside. She set up a wave emitter opposite it, tuning it per Advisor Ridani’s instructions.
Noah grinned at her over the top of the containment box. “You know what this reminds me of? Us jury-rigging up a QEC and a waveguide shield to figure out how to get around the Kats’ comm block on Messium.”
“See? We are the innovators.”
“Yeah. I just remember how cute you were, with dirt smudges on your face and your curls all tanged. Even then, I knew I was in trouble.”
She stared at him for a minute. “I love you. Thank you for damning the torpedoes and accompanying me on this crazy life adventure.”
“You are most welcome, Blondie.”
As wonderful as basking in his praise was, her gaze insisted on drifting to the emitter. “Here goes.” She hit the transmit button.
The Reor slab sat peacefully—and solidly—inside the containment box.
“How l
ong is it supposed to take?”
“A couple of seconds. Maybe as long as twenty or thirty.”
They waited.
Finally she gave up and double-checked the settings on the emitter. “Everything is exactly right. The Reor is supposed to loosen up around the fibers to allow us to tease out the pure kyoseil. Or possibly the kyoseil melts the Reor surrounding it, with the same result. But we’re getting zero response. Nothing.”
Noah winced. “So we comm Ridani again?”
“I hate to do that. I know they are so busy over there, same as us. But on the other hand, what if it’s a dumb oversight on my part? Or a translation error, or merely a subtle difference in the way they conduct experiments that neither of us realized would be an issue? Okay, I’ll comm him.”
35
* * *
MIRAI
Omoikane Initiative
Dashiel walked into Nika’s office wearing a speculative smile. The world had stopped being on fire long enough for her to claim a small room at the Initiative as her own personal space, and she was already regularly using it as a refuge from the madness.
She was coming around her desk to greet him when she noticed the enticing expression and stopped short. “What is it?”
He leaned against the desk and crossed his arms over his chest, then took a moment to enjoy the view. She looked gorgeous, as always, in a cream wrap-around dress and a jade necklace. Her hair was growing longer every day, too—more similar to how it used to be before the psyche-wipe.
“I just learned the most fascinating tidbit of information about kyoseil.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
“I’m serious. This could be huge, though I haven’t figured out how yet. I don’t even understand precisely what’s happening. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes.”
“So do tell.”
“Kyoseil only responds to us. To Asterions.”
“What do you mean by ‘responds’?”
“In this case, I mean shedding its Reor armor or adjusting the configuration of adiamene. Basically, responding to resonance wave functions in any manner. Kennedy Rossi wanted to try her hand at making adiaK, so I passed on all the details of the process we’d developed. Only it didn’t work for her. So I took a quick trip over to Concord this morning.
“When I was in the room—when I set the frequency parameters and sent the wave myself—the Reor let loose of the kyoseil fibers exactly how it does here in our labs. So I left the premises, and she tried again. No response.”
Nika stared at him, gleaming eyes growing wide. “That’s….”
“A revolutionary discovery? Possibly, yes.”
“I mean, we know it’s intelligent. Sentient. We’ve speculated that it made the choice to bond with us all those millennia ago to create something greater than either form of life could achieve individually. But this would imply…and it was Concord’s Reor, correct? The sample had never been in proximity to an Asterion before?”
“Correct.”
The office wasn’t large enough for her to pace much, so she made do with striding back and forth behind her chair. “Okay, I suppose this makes sense. It’s all interconnected, right? While it’s difficult to conceive of in practice, there’s no scientific reason to believe their Reor isn’t already aware of us.”
“Are you auditioning for my job?”
“Stars, no.” She smiled. “But I always listen when you talk.”
“Oh.” He…was he blushing? His cheeks felt warm with pride. “I’m glad. I realize I can wander off into the weeds sometimes.”
“Nah.” She fisted her hand at her chin. “What about Alex? She and the Reor have a kind of…relationship of sorts. She has a slab that allows her to read data stored in any other slab and, well, not read our thoughts, per se, but read certain things about us. She was able to see the giant hole in my mind where most of my memories should be.”
The casual way she referenced her lost memories gave him some measure of comfort. He knew their absence still bothered her, but she was making progress. He’d like to think he was helping a little. “Interesting. How did she react to learning of their absence?”
“Oh, fine. Alex doesn’t tend to get upset about much of anything unless it’s in her way. Anyway, I’m curious whether the kyoseil will trigger for her.”
“She and Caleb are checking out the Ourankeli system, aren’t they? It will be a few days before she can visit the lab and try it out.”
“Right. I had forgotten. It won’t make much of a practical difference, anyway, if it does respond to her, though I would like to know. It might tell us something regarding what’s at work here. Not sure what, but something.” She sank against the desk beside him, letting their shoulders touch. “The ceraffin, the Plexes, now this? What is kyoseil, truly? What is it to us?”
“I can’t say, but I have a distinct need to find out. Damn, I wish Magnus Forchelle was alive. I’m starting to suspect the files he kept around only began to scratch the surface of what he knew about kyoseil.”
She fell silent, and he leaned in to kiss her ear. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that I wish this godsdamned war wasn’t taking up so much of our time and mental bandwidth, because we need to find these answers.”
He noted the glib, breezy tone of her voice. He’d known her for almost four thousand years, and very little slipped past him. He shifted around to look her in the eye. “I agree. But what are you really thinking?”
Her throat worked. “It’s nothing.”
“And now it’s quickly becoming something. Tell me.”
She sighed. “I just had the thought that Steven—your ancestor, Steven Olivaw—might have known the answers as well. He and Forchelle were colleagues, even friends. They must have worked together on the early kyoseil research.”
Hearing the name still grated on his nerves; he hated the man for willingly giving up endless millennia at Nika’s side. But it was long in the past, and he was his own person, not some ghost of a long-dead ancestor, so he worked to remove any acrimony from his voice. “And you think those answers are buried somewhere in my programming?”
“No, I don’t. An R&R wipes out all historical information, and there were a lot of R&Rs between him and you. It was merely a fleeting, silly thought.” She brought a hand to his cheek. “And it doesn’t matter, because you’ll figure it out. I have faith. And for now, the most important thing we’ve learned is that kyoseil does respond and adapt specifically for us. It wants to help us save ourselves.”
36
* * *
CONCORD HQ
CINT
Malcolm wandered the bright corridors of HQ in a daze. His thoughts were parsecs away, fixated on the events on Pandora, and several times he barely managed to return the salute of a passing officer who recognized him despite his civilian attire.
Her eyes no longer shone jade, but silver. In truth, that rebuke had cut more deeply than her most vindictive words. Her altering their color simply because he’d fancied the jade had marked the beginning of their relationship fifteen years ago; did her reverting them mark the end of it now?
He’d lingered near her shop for almost two hours after their confrontation. Curious neighbors had soon arrived, followed by serious-looking men he assumed were local law enforcement. The two bodies were carted off, and everyone dispersed. She never emerged from the shop. Vanished, again.
He looked up to find himself standing at the entrance to CINT. Without stopping to second-guess his actions, he walked in and asked to see Director Navick.
Richard greeted him warmly as he showed Malcolm into his office. “It is so good to have you back safe and sound. I can’t imagine what an ordeal you faced in captivity, but the important thing is, you’re alive.”
“Thank you.” He settled uneasily into one of the guest chairs. “About that.”
Richard hesitated halfway around his desk. “If you’re here about Mia, let me say that I
took no pleasure in—”
“No. I mean, I am here about her, sort of, but not in the way you’re implying. If I thought I could pressure the powers that be into reducing or dropping the charges, I’d frankly try. But I realize it’s out of your hands and up to the justice system now.”
“Actually, I’ve put a plea deal on the table for her. The terms are…perhaps not ideal, but they’re the best any of us could hope for. Crucially, the deal will keep her out of prison.”
He exhaled in relief. “This is wonderful news. Does she know?”
“She does. I haven’t spoken to her directly, but we’ve had back-channel communications regarding how to move forward. I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to make it work.”
Malcolm sank deeper into the chair. “I see. I would talk to her about it, but we’re…”
“You broke my heart, dammit! You broke my world. You broke me—and there’s no unbreaking any of it now.” She wiped blood off her lips. “Leave.”
“…not on the best terms at the moment.”
Richard looked appropriately sympathetic. “I’m sorry to hear it. Your apparent death hit her quite hard—but this wasn’t a surprise. Your return…I would have expected it to bring her joy, but I suppose life is sometimes complicated.”
“You can say that again.”
“I take it this means you’ve spoken with her—maybe even seen her. I won’t put you in an untenable position by asking you to tell me where she is. As I said, I hope to have the matter resolved soon.”
“I appreciate it.” He fidgeted in the chair, trying to work out how to broach the topic banging away at the forefront of his mind. He counted Richard as a friend, but not necessarily a close one. And some topics were, if not off-limits, certainly not suitable for casual conversation.
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