Date Point 10y4m6d AV
Mrwrki Station, Uncharted System, Deep Space
Lewis
“Now THAT…” Kirk declared. “Looks impressive.”
Lewis patted its chassis happily. “That it does! Too bad it doesn’t work.”
”…Congratulations?”
“Yeah, now I understand some of that footage you managed to get from Capitol Station.” Lewis laughed. “How did you get that, anyway?”
“It was not difficult. Most of it was human propaganda footage, put out by your own government. It is meant to be seen.”
Lewis considered the implications of that.
“No shit?”
“No shit indeed.” Kirk agreed. “I managed to secure some of the station’s security footage through a contact, too.”
“Must be a fucking talented contact.”
“She is, yes… so what is this?”
Lewis considered it. “It was meant to be power armor.” he said.
“You don’t say?” Kirk asked. It was hard to see what else a humanoid metallic frame layered in armour plates and technology could be. “You mean it is not a novelty pizza oven?”
Lewis grumbled something and pushed the suit over by its forehead. It shook the deck as it crashed down, and Kirk took a dainty step back to keep his feet out of the way of the components that skittered across the floor. “Probably better at that than at being a working suit of armor, that’s for damn sure.”
“What were the problems?” Kirk asked, stooping to pick up the suit’s helmet and examine it.
“Problem one? Turns out the human body’s fucking strong anyway.”
“You don’t say?” Kirk repeated, setting down the helmet again and folding his arms. “Fancy that.”
“Shut up. I mean that even nonhuman-tech actuators and stuff can’t match us for all three of precision, speed and power. It’s… laggy. Problem two: power storage and generation. Needs a lot of both. The more I put on, the bigger and heavier the suit needed to be, which meant it needed more of both. And so on.”
“Both of those sound like surmountable challenges, with time.” Kirk opined.
“Yeah, but then we run into the problem of mass.” Lewis gritted his teeth. “See, what am I making here? If it’s a suit of armor designed for a man to wear then the man needs to be the one doing the actual moving around, right? The suit can assist him all it likes, but if he starts to tip over and needs to correct himself, then the difference between his mass and the suit’s… Nobody’s got that kind of core strength dude. Especially not with the latency problem.”
“And if the suit is in control, then the human operator is more like a pilot, and could in theory be replaced outright.” Kirk finished for him.
“You got it.” Lewis nodded. “And it turns out that in order for the mass problem to not be there, the human operator needs to go entirely. Which means I’m making a humanoid drone. Which is… cool, but what happens if somebody hacks the drone? Like those Hierarchy fucks? Hell, if I got it to work then what happens if somebody hacks the armor?”
“Assuming you could harden it against being hacked…” Kirk mused. “Could the latency problem be fixed?”
Lewis hissed through his teeth. “I… doubt it.” he said finally. “‘Cause there’s basically… like, option one: the suit responds to muscle movements. You move your arm, it senses you moving your arm, it moves its arm. Right?”
“I follow.”
“Well, okay, watch this shit.” Lewis took a step back and then swirled his arms vigorously in front of his face. To Kirk’s eyes, they were a blur. “Okay? And that’s fucking SLOW. I’m not all that fast, dude. Now let’s say I want this thing to be fast enough that even fuckin’ Ip Man could do his shit while wearing it?”
Kirk folded his legs up underneath him and sat down. This brought his eye level down to the point where he was only slightly above Lewis. “Yes…?”
“Not. Fucking. Happening. No way, no how, nuh-uh nope. Not if the suit’s reacting to the movement after it’s already begun. And that’s the kind of speed it needs to move at, so… boom goes Option One. Option two: brain scan.”
“Brain scan.”
“Yu-huh. Shove, like, an EEG or some alien spacemagic equivalent in there. Well, what happens if there’s nervejam and the dude gets a headache or worse? What happens if he’s knocked around a bit and gets kinda confused? What if he’s unconscious and his buddies need to move him? Shit, what happens if the pads come un-stuck or the sensor becomes misaligned? And that’s assuming we can even isolate individual signals like that which… I mean, I don’t think anyone’s ever gonna know the human brain that well. Too many problems for my money.”
“And Option Three?”
“JARVIS.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s how Tony Stark did it.” Lewis said. “Loaded an AI into the suit that figured out what he was about to want to do. Problem there? Tony Stark is fiction, man, and so are AIs like that. I may as well be talking about… uh, about scribing a fucking rune on the damn thing and casting a Golem spell. You may as well try and fly a spaceship by doing a tarot reading.”
He snapped his fingers at a couple of servant drones, then waved a finger at the failed power armor. “Recycle that.”
“It would not really have been much use against the Hierarchy anyway.” Kirk told him, as the drones flitted in and began to remove doomed pieces of prototype . “They are not a physical foe we can meet in battle.”
“Gotta learn how to walk before you can run, my man. This was just me proving to myself that I knew everything I needed to make complicated shit before I moved on to the real projects.”
“Your point is taken, but I am from a species that is born knowing how to gallop.” Kirk pointed out. “What is your ‘real project’ going to be?”
“Dunno yet.”
”…We have been here this long, and you have no idea?”
Lewis just made a semi-amused harrumph and threw himself into his thinking chair. “You’ve put a… a fucking huge problem in front of me, Kirk.” he said. “And I can sit here and absorb, like, biology and physics and mechanical engineering and quantum whateverthefuckery all day, but if it’s all for the sake of Earth, then I need to know what Earth needs.”
“Like…” he spun the chair around and called up the Capitol Station footage. “Look at these motherfuckers! Where the fuck did that come from? Human special forces in space? Wearing a functioning armored EVA suit? And these dudes look like your average roid-jockey’s wet dream, so some shit’s been going down on Earth, man, and I don’t know the half of it. How am I supposed to help my people if I don’t even know what we’re up to?”
Kirk’s head bobbed slowly down and then up. “I had hoped to remain out of contact a little while longer, until we were properly up and running.” he confessed. “But you make a compelling case and… we were buzzed last night.”
“Buzzed? By what?”
“A scout ship. Long-range. Our sensors did not get a very clear look at it before it warped out again, but they did narrow down the options, one of which is very worrying.”
“Worrying how?”
Kirk shook his mane, which Lewis understood as being something akin to an uncomfortable shrug. “One of the possibilities was a ship that I have placed on our security watch-list.” he explained. “It is called the ‘Negotiable Curiosity’ and it was very deliberately named. Its owner has a reputation for being able to dig up any mystery. He is… tenacious.”
“Hierarchy?”
“Everybeing is Hierarchy, if they have implants.” Kirk pointed out. “But I would be surprised if he was not out here on their orders, yes. Though, I doubt if he knows of them.”
“That settles it then.” Lewis decided. “I’m phoning home.”
Kirk made an amused sound through his nose. “I thought I was the ET?”
“Neither of us are on Earth right now, bro.”
“I shall turn off the outbound message locks on the FTL relay.” Kirk levered himself up onto his feet, they exchanged a fist-bump, and he left Lewis alone with his thoughts, which were already whirling with the letters he was going to need to write.
Lewis took a deep breath, and decided to do his yoga first. Always best to approach these things with a clear head.
Hopefully he’d think of a better introduction than “To whom it may concern…”
Date Point 10y4m6d AV
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Earth
Regaari
Xiù seemed… smaller than the last time Regaari had seen her.
When her family admitted Ayma, Regaari, Baseball, Warhorse and Stainless into their house, it was a stark reminder that humans were not all muscular, lean, predatory warriors. The young male was large, yes, but there was a roundness to his largeness that suggested a source other than physical conditioning and hard training. Her parents were lean, yes, but it was the leanness of increasing age and fragility. Both looked grey and tired.
It took a little coaxing and calling for Xiù to finally emerge, but when she did she picked her way downstairs as if walking to an execution rather than a reunion.
It didn’t help that Ayma said nothing and just stared at her. Nobody spoke, no sounds were audible except the creak of the steps, the rustle of clothing and a car accelerating down the road outside.
There were times when etiquette between Gaoian females became so tangled and complicated that even male Gaoians, who were perhaps the best-placed beings in the galaxy to have an insight into it, had trouble keeping up. A moment like that happened now.
Ayma spoke first, and she used the tone of a mother about to give a scolding. “Sister.”
Xiù swallowed and glanced up the stairs, perhaps considering the option to flee, but she looked back to Ayma and responded with an inflection that implied… not defiance, but not submission either. A standing of her ground. Her Gaori really had improved from when Regaari had first met her. “Mother.”
The silence stretched until it was vibrating and Regaari was desperate to snap at both of them when, at once, the two females ran out of resolve and collided – gently in Xiù’s case and unreservedly in Ayma’s – in a solid hug that saw both of them sink to their knees. Gaoian and Human body language rarely aligned so perfectly.
Everyone looked away, giving them what privacy they could, and Warhorse had the presence of mind and good manners to shut down the translator. That left only Regaari able to understand what they were saying to each other, and he made a point of not listening.
Eventually, Xiù exhumed her face from the fur of Ayma’s shoulder and aimed a weak smile his way. “It’s good to see you again, Regaari.” she managed.
Unable to quite summon any words, Regaari settled for ducking his head vigorously. Xiù pulled back from Ayma, gave her a curious look, Ayma nodded, and Xiù stood to give Regaari a huge but controlled hug. After a few tentative seconds, he returned it.
She looked around. “Could we… have some privacy please?”
While Xiù’s family promptly nodded and left the room, Warhorse and Baseball were more reluctant. “This room’s not been properly sanitized, miss…” Burgess said.
“Please, guys.” Regaari turned to them. “We won’t take the excursion suits off, and I trust Xiù to shout if we need help.”
Both men turned to Stainless, who pursed his lips, thinking.
“We’re not goin’ further than the far side of that door.” he declared, pointing to it.
“Deal.” Xiù agreed. “Thank you.”
Xiù stood as they left the room, then sank down on the couch as if she was suddenly exhausted.
As soon as the door clicked shut, Ayma laid into her.
“What were you thinking?!” she demanded.
“Me? What are you thinking right now?” Fatigue gone, Xiù shot to her feet. “I ran away to protect you! To give you the chance to get on with your lives! And this is how you repay that? You come here?! Don’t you know that every breath on this planet could kill you?! Don’t you care?”
“Sisters stick together, Shoo, you know that!” Ayma yipped.
“NO!” Xiù spun away, clawed at her hair and gathered her composure. In a much quieter voice, she carried on. “Sisters care for one another. Sisters protect one another, Ayma. And you’re standing exactly where you shouldn’t be because you just don’t seem to understand that I don’t want you to get hurt. Not- not for me. I’m not worth that.”
“Triymin thought you were.” Ayma pointed out.
“Triymin is dead.” Xiù stumbled over the word. “I’m not worth that. I’m not.”
“Well we’re not dead.” Ayma pointed out. “And… I think you are worth coming here for.”
“Why?” Xiù sat down again. “I’m nobody special, Ayma. I’m just… I’m just me. I wanted to be an actress. Lots of girls want to be an actress. I did ballet, I had a room full of… of shit that I didn’t need…” She spat the word in English rather than Gaori. “I was normal. I can’t handle being anything else.”
Regaari laid a paw on Ayma’s shoulder. “Tell her.”
”…We had a cub.” Ayma said, getting his drift. “A female. We called her Shoo.”
Xiù sighed and rubbed her face. “I… I’m delighted. Really I am.” she said. “But… Um, I know that you don’t do family the same way that humans do. I know that little…” She smiled “Little Shoo will grow up in the commune, just like you both did, and Myun and – How is Myun, anyway?”
“Wealthy and quite happy to be a human fangirl.” Regaari said. “She and I have a cub too. Or rather, she’s expecting one.”
Xiù sat back, stunned. “God. She’s old enough to have a cub now… her first?”
“Indeed.” Regaari duck-nodded.
“With you?”
Regaari duck-nodded again. “A male, probably, if the antenatal scans are accurate.”
Xiù’s face moved in a complicated way as she tried to smile and frown at the same time. “…I just don’t understand you.” She told them, quietly. “You have a cub together, she’s safe on Gao, and instead of being there for her you come here to this – this deathworld? You should be with the people you care about!”
“We are with the people we care about!” Ayma keened, stepping forward and delicately taking Xiù’s hand between two of her paws. “Don’t you see? It’s not about what you’re worth, it’s about…” she changed vocal gears, picking a word in English. “Family!”
“My family are outside.” Xiù said.
“Your family,” Ayma corrected her “-are the people who care about you. And as our species proves, that’s not a matter of genetics. Here we are, Shoo: Here’s your family, right here in this room.”
“And we know you care about us too.” Regaari said. “You don’t want us to be hurt. But we don’t want you to be hurt either, and right now…it’s obvious that you are hurting.”
Xiù blinked at them, then looked away, and down. She grimaced at herself and snapped her head back to blink back tears.
“Shoo?”
“O… WŎ wánquán míngbai Ie…”
“Shoo?”
Xiù sat forward and let out a long breath. “I had… somebody came to see me, a few days ago. He said things that made me so angry that I broke his nose.”
Ayma and Regaari inclined their ears in mutual confusion, not sure where she was going.
Xiù didn’t seem to notice. “I know why I was so mad at him now. It’s because he was right. I’m not home, am I? This really isn’t home any more. And I’ve been hurting myself trying to pretend that it is.”
“So… where is home? Gao?” Ayma asked.
Xiù shook her head. “No… No. I’m sorry Ayma. I’m so sorry for running away, but it’s not. It can’t be, I won’t endanger Gao like that, or any other world. I won’t endanger you like that.”
Ayma moved her head softly in agreement. “I know. That’s why we came here. I wanted to tell you that I forgive you for running. I… You were right.”
Very gently, Xiù sat back, took a deep breath, and let her hands fall onto her lap. “…Oh, I needed to hear that.”
“So… where is home?” Regaari asked her.
She looked at him, opened her mouth to say something, then plainly reconsidered and lapsed into thoughtful silence, staring at some distant point far away beyond the carpet. Regaari gave her a few seconds, and then verbally prodded her. “Shoo?”
”…I’m not sure.” Xiù said, shaking herself out of whatever trance she had been in. “But… but I think I have a good idea where to start looking.”
Date Point 10y4m6d AV
North Clearwater County, Minnesota, USA, Earth
Julian Etsicitty
After carefully filing the drift of legal correspondence in a heap on the coffee table, the three of them had been able to fit around the kitchen island on the bar stools. Julian sat at one end with Allison next to him, and Jenkins and his sophisticated state-of-the-art phone complete with holographic projector sat at the other.
“So… pretty much since Scotch Creek released the first wave of warp and kinetic tech to the public, the second space race has been a whole thing.” Jenkins told them. “You’ve got Hephaestus LLC up on Ceres, Red Bull driving their sales by sponsoring everything that flies higher than a football, BAE and Lockheed-Martin vying for the military contracts, Virgin’s space tourism and starkisser flights… and Byron Group.”
He swiped through a few items on the phone and then grinned as it delivered a shimmering, transparent rendering of what was clearly a spaceship. “Most of what the Group’s up to is applying space tech to people’s lives down here on Earth. Forcefield solar power, stasis fridges, sanitation fields…holographic phones and TVs…” he gestured to the phone with a smile and a shrug. “Doesn’t hurt that the Group makes the best warp engines and jump drives, too.”
When Allison and Julian just waited patiently and listened, he cleared his throat and forged ahead.
“What that buys is the cash for what Mister Byron calls ’moon laser projects.’ He’s got big dreams: Human colonies, interstellar low-latency communications, interplanetary trade by jump array instead of freighter… you name it. Stuff that needs a big investment. Top of the list are colonization and trade.”
“So you need explorers and market surveyors.” Allison observed.
“You got it. Folks who can find us worlds to live on, tell us what we’re going to have to do to live on them safely without killing all the locals. Folks who can talk with the locals and maybe find out what they’ve got that we want, and what we can pay them. Hence, the Byron Group Exploration Vessels. This here is EV-Ten, ’Creature of Habit.’ The most recent one.”
“Sleek.” Julian commented. It really was. The ship was clearly nothing but functional, but it was functional in the same way as a good knife – the sheer unyielding utility of its form was beautiful in its own right.
“Moon laser shit again. Mister Byron reckons the human ’brand’ is gonna be about the aesthetics of function. Got to impress the customer, he says.” Jenkins’ tone suggested that he had disagreements there. “Anyway… the thing is, about half of the ships in the EV program never came back. We’ve mostly figured out what got ‘em, but if we can crew them with people who know what it’s like out there… Starwise people, you know? Like streetwise, but for-”
“We get it.” Allison told him. Julian suppressed a smile. She was entertaining when she got prickly.
“Right… Well. That’d be you guys. Xiù Chang too, if you can talk her into it.”
“Can’t you ask her yourself?” Allison asked.
Jenkins cleared his throat awkwardly. “She, uh… wasn’t receptive to the idea.”
Allison sat back. “Oh. My. God. Xiù broke your nose!”
”…Yeah.”
Julian and Allison frowned at one another.
“We like Xiù and we trust her opinion.” Julian told him. “If she got pissed at you, that’s kind of a deal breaker.”
“That’s a pity, because the Byron Group’s prepared to take on your legal SNAFU, win it, and install a caretaker to keep this place in working order while you’re gone.”
Allison stood up. “And now I see why she broke your nose!” she snapped, and span away.
Julian just folded his arms and glared. “You’d hold that over us?”
Jenkins raised both hands. “No! No! Nothing like holding it over you! I didn’t come here to threaten. I’m just sayin’….you’ve got what we need, and we’re willing to pay for it.”
Allison turned and frowned at him, and Jenkins lowered his hands. “The offer’s honest. I promise.” He said.
Allison looked to Julian.
Julian briefly considered tossing Jenkins out on his ear… but the offer of legal assistance was far too good to waste, and there was still the unresolved question of how, exactly, they were planning to get into space and with whom…
“Give us a day or two to think about it.” he suggested.
“Sure. Here.” Jenkins pulled a business card from his inside jacket pocket. “Take your time.”
He laid it on the table and stood. “Hey… look, whatever you decide, good luck.”
Julian stood, shook his hand, and escorted him to the door.
Once the screen door had finished wailing itself closed, he took a moment to take stock of his situation.
“I say go for it.” he told Allison, turning to face her.
“Xiù broke his nose.” she repeated.
“He’s just one guy. There’ve gotta be others working for Byron.” Julian shrugged. “And… I mean, Xiù’s great but she’d be the first to say her head’s not completely in the right place sometimes.”
“Julian!”
“Remember that time she turned down Lewis by saying she wasn’t looking to ’mate’ with anyone?”
Allison blinked. “She…Uh… Okay. Point.”
“Look why don’t you call her?” Julian suggested. “My phone still needs to charge and I think she’d like to hear from you anyway.”
Allison nodded. If there was a touch of nervousness in the way she did so, Julian decided not to comment. He wasn’t quite sure where Allison and Xiù stood with one another – they hadn’t really had a lot of time to discuss things since their night of… well, since he’d been their waiter. Their shirtless, eye-candy, objectified waiter…
He sat on a bar stool again, and tried to turn his thoughts to housework instead.
Date Point 10y4m6d AV
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Earth
Regaari
Regaari had ridden in plenty of motorcades before, during his time attached to Mother-Supreme Giymuy. He wasn’t quite sure about riding sideways in a “limousine” – something that Warhorse and Baseball had quietly waxed enthusiastic about for some reason – but he had to admit that it was nice to be sitting opposite the protectors, rather than crammed in between the door and their muscles.
This particular motorcade didn’t have far to go, as apparently the distance between the Chang family’s house in Strathcona and Vancouver City Hall was not great, but it looked set to be a tense, quiet and despondent journey. Mother Ayma wasn’t happy. Not happy at all. Seething, in fact, to the point that her claws were wearing small frayed gouges in the upholstery.
Regaari and Warhorse had figured out a gesture between them which was to mean “please turn the translator off and give us some privacy.” He used it now, and Warhorse promptly nodded and obeyed. The audioscape of the limo changed ever-so-subtly as the targeted white noise that the device used to cancel and overlay speech from each listener’s perspective shut down.
Regaari steeled himself, and spoke to Ayma.
“You’re troubled.” he said.
“My Sister is plainly miserable, Regaari.” Ayma said, so fast that it was almost a snap at him.
Regaari made a little growling noise that denoted understanding and/or agreement. “You’re right, that was inane of me. What I’m wondering is what else is going on in your head besides concern for Shoo.”
“What else should be?” Ayma retorted.
Regaari tucked his right leg up under himself so as to turn slightly in the seat and face her. “What about all of your other Sisters?” he asked.
Ayma hung her head and flicked an ear, irritated. “Must you use your analyst’s brain on me?” she asked.
“I can no sooner stop being a Whitecrest than you can stop being a Mother.” Regaari replied, evenly. “I know my reasons for coming here. To forge strategic ties, to advance the interests of my Clan and by extension all Gaoians. It’s my good fortune that I can achieve those things by helping my good friend and… I admit, indulging my curiosity about Earth into the bargain. But I do have to wonder what your reasons were for coming here. You’re the one who suggested it after all. Not to be crass, but what did you hope to achieve?”
Ayma looked out of the window for a moment before replying. “Maybe I’m just a mother looking out for a wounded cub.” she mused. “Is that… shallow?”
“No, not at all.” Regaari told her. “You wouldn’t be Ayma if you didn’t care. But Shoo’s not a cub: She was an adult before we ever met her, and as I recall she saved both our lives. She’s spent more years surviving on her own than she spent with us, and she has become good at it.”
Ayma ducked her head. “She did, didn’t she? She no longer has that childish turn of phrase.”
“Did your cub grow up, Mother Ayma?”
Ayma chittered. “She did!” she agreed. “She truly did. And…It pains me to let my cubs go, but I’m glad. I think she’ll be okay.”
“I think so too.”
Ayma relaxed, and turned her attention out the window again, watching the crowd of people holding signs welcoming them to Earth. “Yes. She will.”
Date Point 10y4m6d AV North Clearwater County, Minnesota, USA, Earth
Allison Buehler
It was funny how heavy a phone could be. Most of the time it was an unconsidered thing, just a part of life on Earth that would sit in Allison’s handbag or pocket – and thank God fashion had finally got its head around the idea that women wanted pockets that were more than decorative – to be ignored it until needed, at which point it would be fished out, used and returned, unheeded.
It was like an extension of her own body in that regard. And just like an arm or leg, the weight of it only ever became apparent when it had become numb. Or, in this case, when she was staring at the phone working up the courage to hit “call”.
There was, as far as she could tell, no good reason for this. Xiù was a friend, good fun. She and Allison had hit it off pretty much the second she came aboard, and that bit of fun with Julian serving drinks while they watched Mulan…
Well, that had all been good fun. Very good fun. Exciting, even.
And…that was the problem. It had been exciting: not just the thrill of pushing the limits in her relationship with Julian, but…well. They could have pushed the boat out in private, but they’d chosen to invite Xiù in. Allison had chosen to invite Xiù in. Into something she wouldn’t normally have shared with anybody, into her sex life and into her relationship with her boyfriend.
And she had thoroughly enjoyed it. She’d enjoyed watching Xiù sneak glances at Julian, and not in a smug ‘yeah, bitch, look what I got’ sense, but in…
It rang.
She stared at Xiù’s name and the video call request in dumb surprise for three rings before her thumb swiped at the green call-accept icon automatically and her voice went into autopilot.
“Hey babe!”
Xiù waved at her from the other end. She looked… peaceful. Happy, even. It was a nice change. “Hey!”
“You’re looking good! Home agreeing with you, huh?”
“Well, uh…” Xiù turned the phone around and gave her a good look at a room completely empty of furniture or decoration. “That’s complicated.”
”…Wow. they threw all your stuff out?” Allison asked, scandalized.
“Oh! No, I did.” Xiù turned the phone back around again.
“You did?”
“Yeah!”
”…Why?”
Xiù shrugged, as if it was no great thing. “It… just didn’t feel like my stuff any more.” she explained.
“None of it?”
“Just some clothes.” Xiù looked around the empty space she’d made for herself. “Is that strange?”
“Maybe?” Allison asked. “I mean, you were huge on getting home, and the first thing you do is throw out all your stuff?”
Xiù made an awkward noise and tidied up an errant wisp of hair. “I just… it feels more like my place now that it’s a blank canvas.” she said. “Have you been following the news?”
“Nuh. Why, did something happen?”
“Wow, okay… uh… Ayma and Regaari.”
Allison frowned. “They’re on the news?”
“They, uh… they came here.” Xiù said it with forced lightness.
”…As in…” Allison took a heartbeat to get her head around what she’d just been told. “They visited you? Here on Earth?”
“Right here in my parents’ front room. Yeah.” Xiù had a nervous laugh in her voice at that. The camera jolted as she shrugged. “And, uh, apparently they’re going to go visit some US national park and then fly over to England and the King’s going to give Regaari a medal.”
“A medal? What for?”
“For… um… so there was this other thing in the news that we missed. Apparently the Hunters hit this big space station that’s meant to be, like, the biggest and most important in the Dominion.”
“Why am I only hearing about this now?” Allison sat forward.
“Because we were in hospital I guess. And, um, I was too busy trying to…” Xiù gestured to the room around her. “You know, trying to settle in up here and get back in shape that I guess I just forgot to check up on the last, uh, ten years of world history. There’s… a lot of it.”
“Wow, yeah. You missed the best part of a decade, didn’t ya? When you think about how much happened in, like, the sixties or the forties or whatever…” Allison agreed.
“You missed five years too.” Xiù pointed out. “Did you know there’s a city in the asteroid belt now? And another one on the planet Cimbrean?”
“I knew there were small colonies…” Allison said. “Cities?”
“Yeah… It’s… kinda scary. When I left…I mean, aliens were just a silly story when I left and all of this would have been on TV.”
“And now you’re fluent in an alien language and could probably get a job in one of those cities.” Allison said. “Wow. Mindfuck.”
“Yeah… Anyway, uh… Regaari was on that station. With Mother Giymuy. She… didn’t make it.”
“Oh, baby, I’m sorry…” Allison moved the phone closer to her face, as if a little more digital proximity might make all the difference in comfort.
Xiù smiled for her. “It’s… it’s okay. She was very old even when I first met her, and Regaari told me the Hunters didn’t get her. I’ll miss her, but…”
Allison just nodded, and they had a moment of mutual silence before Xiù perked up again. “Oh! Okay, you know those soldiers who pulled us off the lifeboat?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, they went to that station to save people! Sergeant Arés, the one who treated me, he’s friends with Regaari! Apparently they fought together in that battle. My Regaari!”
“Wow. Small galaxy.”
“More like a really small group of guys in that job.” Xiù suggested. “Anyway, apparently the British want to give Regaari a medal.”
“And Ayma?”
Xiù laughed. “I don’t know if she wanted to scold me or check if I was okay. Both I guess? But it’s…”
Allison let her think, and after a thoughtful scratch at her eyebrow, Xiù turned back to the camera. “I guess I owe you an apology.” she said.
“What for?”
“For being so…” Xiù hunted for the right word “So down these last couple of weeks. It’s just… weird, being back here.”
Allison scooted back on the bed and folded her legs. “Not like you imagined?”
Xiù shook her head. “No. Mom’s trying to act like nothing really happened, like she’s not sixty now. Wei doesn’t know how to talk with me and I don’t know how to talk with him and Papa’s…he’s kind of… sad all the time. Like, I’ll catch him looking at me and then he’ll look away and I think I can see tears.”
Allison chose her words carefully. “D’you think that’s likely to get better?” she asked.
Xiù made a coarse noise in her throat and snarled something in Gaori. It was a good language for snarling in, like an angrier version of Mandarin as spoken by a mouthful of sharp teeth.
“Say again?” Allison asked her.
“I said… well. I said no. No I don’t. You want to hear the kind of work offers I’ve been getting?”
“Do tell?”
Xiù shook her head, smiling grimly. “Five publishers who want to ghost-write my story, some asshole from the Byron Group, and an actual porn studio!”
Allison’s mouth opened in outrage. “You’re shitting me.”
“Nuh. I think that guy was just trying his luck, though. Like, he didn’t expect me to say yes, but if by some miracle I did…”
“Did you break the porn guy’s nose too?”
Xiù went red. “How did-?”
“That Byron Group asshole showed up down here too.”
“I should have known he would…” Xiù kneaded her forehead. “D’you tell him to go away?”
“Can’t. He literally made Julian an offer that he can’t refuse… or if he does refuse, he’s crazy.”
“That good?”
“There’s this whole legal… thing with Julian’s grampa’s place. He could lose the house if it goes against him, and this place is real important to him.”
Xiù sighed. “So if you sign a deal with them, Byron Group sorts it all out?” she asked. “That kind of manipulation is why I hit that guy.”
“Manipulation it might be.” Allison agreed. “But it sounded like everyone’s gonna get what they want.”
“Do I get to hit him again?”
Allison covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. Xiù was teasing, she knew: a sure sign that for all the ups and downs of discussing the things she’d learned, she was in a good mood. “Okay, so what was it lifted your spirits?” she asked.
“Just… I guess I cleared my head out. Figured out what’s really mine in there. Like my room.”
“I hope there’s more in there than you left in your room!”
Xiù made a silent laugh through her nose. “There is.” she promised. “Look, can I come down there? Right now? I’ve… things are clear right now, and I want to act while they still are. Is that okay?”
“You know you can!” Allison told her.
“You don’t mind? I mean, just you and Julian in a little place in the woods… it sounds romantic.”
“Hey.” Allison sat forward. “There’s no way you’d make it less romantic, I promise.” she winked. “It’ll be… intimate.”
Xiù laughed, going slightly red across her nose and cheeks. Her fingertip ran absent-mindedly through the hair at her temple. “Well, when you put it like that…”
“Mm-hmm, just you, me, a gorgeous guy…and, oh my God, he has the hugest TV and there’s nobody around for miles, so we could crank the volume right up.”
Xiù giggled. “Mm. I do like to get loud…” she mused. Her phone jolted as she stood up. “I’d better book a flight and… well, let my parents know where I’m going.” she said. “Uh… See you soon?”
Allison nodded, clearing her throat to try and cure a sudden and unaccountable case of dry mouth. “…Sure.” she agreed. “You, uh, send us the… details. You know.”
“Will do. Sure. Um… ‘bye for now.”
Allison waved to the screen: Xiù smiled and ended the call. The instant the phone went dark, Allison tossed it lightly aside onto the blankets then let out a long and shaky breath. “Okay…”
She let herself fall backwards and put her hands over her eyes, thinking. “Wow.”
Julian called from the kitchen. “You okay?”
Allison peeled her hands apart and directed an embarrassed grimace at the ceiling. “Yeah! Yeah. She’s, uh… She’s coming down here!”
“So soon?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, if you wanna shower, the hot water should be full.” Julian suggested, appearing in the doorway. “Help work that stressful day off?”
A hot shower sounded like simultaneously the best idea and the worst idea right now, but a lot more of the former. Allison kicked her legs out and sprang up off the bed. “You make a compelling argument.” she smiled, and kissed him on the cheek. “Just through here?”
“Yup.”
Allison slid past him, grabbed her flight bag from where Julian had left it on the couch. “What are you gonna do?” she asked.
He just waved a hand helplessly at all the legal paperwork.
Allison sighed. “…Right. You, uh… have fun, I guess.”
The shower turned out to be amazing. She found a setting that felt almost like she was getting a massage from a wire brush and worked all the tension and travel grime out of her scalp and her shoulders, leaned forward and let decadently hot water steam and cascade down her back and legs. A different setting swirled and pulsed pleasantly across her chest and tummy, and the final setting just soaked, allowing her to employ an exfoliating scrub and get herself feeling properly clean for the first time since they’d been landed on the planet Aru.
Aru…
She killed the shower and gave herself the bare minimum of a drying-off, squeezing the excess water out of her hair and swiping it from her arms and legs with her hands. She combed her hair back, grabbed a pair of clean black panties from her luggage and wriggled into them.
Draping a hand towel around her shoulders completed the image. She studied herself in the mirror. Blonde hair slicked back and gone dark from the wetness, long limbs beaded with droplets, a lingering wet sheen on an abdomen that had only slightly suffered from not being able to do her usual regimen of crunches, and just enough breast visible behind the towel.
Perfect.
She unlocked the door. “Hey, Etsicitty?” she asked, stepping out into the living room.
He looked up. “Yea-? …Woah.“
There was nothing like making him speechless, and she deployed her best dark smile. “Come here.”
He was up and sliding an arm around her waist in a second. “Yes ma’am!”
“Oh yeah.” she laughed and congratulated herself as she felt him kiss and nibble the side of her neck and gently push her back towards the bedroom. “Good boy.”