Date Point 10y4m3w5d AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, the Far Reaches
Martina Kovač
“Where are we going?”
The direct route from HMS Sharman to the little clutch of buildings that the Lads owned on Demeter Way passed close enough to Martina’s apartment in Parkside – an expensive address, but worth it – to make it easy for her to make a quick home visit and change out of mess dress, which was very welcome indeed. A hoodie and jeans were the infinitely more comfortable choice.
It had been an entertaining night full of sorrow and colour, with emotional highs and lows for everyone but especially for the actual combat team, who after all had been mourning three fallen brothers all over again.
After the Sunset ceremony had come a round of speeches, awards, and promotions. Murray had become a Colour Sergeant, Firth had finally made Master Sergeant, and then had come the medals, which were almost certainly what was eating at Warhorse.
It was easy to forget that Arés. a guy she admired in several senses of the word, was actually a couple of years younger than her, and equally less experienced. Martina had made Technical Sergeant first time, an accomplishment she was quite proud of, but the sheer maths of promotion meant that she was still a few years more seasoned an airman than he was, and sometimes that fact became very visible.
He’d been solemn professionalism during the ceremony, stoney-faced stoicism itself while remembering the fallen, glowed with controlled pride as his buddies received their new ranks and their own medals, but when the moment had come for LtCol Miller to present him with his Silver Star, he had accepted it with…
Not with bad grace. That, after all, would have been unacceptable. He’d accepted it formally, properly and composedly… but with the definite air of a man who felt ill-at-ease.
The Dining Out had followed. Protocol called it the height of bad form to attend without a date, and so of course he’d asked Martina. She of course had accepted, and had then sat back to watch him endure a lion’s share of all the good-natured ribbing and camaraderie that were inevitable at such events.
Baseball had earned his share too, of course. Nobody had the faintest idea how Murray had snuck a pink bowler hat into the mess, let alone how he’d successfully smuggled it onto Burgess’ head without the huge man noticing, but when the uniform violation had been noted and “punished” with an enormous measure of the traditional punitive punch ‘Grog’, the laughter had been punishingly loud.
It had got even louder when Murray had taken a bow. That was an infraction itself of course, and Murray had smirked his way to the punch bowl, but the hat was already doing the rounds, migrating from head to head and eventually finding a home atop the silver-haired scalp of Admiral Knight, who had accepted his “punishment” with stately humour.
Adam had made the mistake of protesting when the hat had been dropped on his head and he’d not even had the chance to snatch it off before a violation was called. THAT had earned him an upgrade from mere booze, to a stunt for the amusement of everyone present, and after some theatrical deliberations, Miller had challenged him to lift a fully laden table over his head without spilling any drinks.
Adam had almost managed it. One treacherous glass of port had been his downfall.
Now it was well into the darkest hours of the night. The party had ended, the nightly rains had faded and she had been walking alongside him as they sobered up with a stroll through the cool, clean-smelling streets when a thought had apparently crashed into his brain and set him enthusiastically plotting to walk, in his words: “Somewhere. You’ll see where. It’s important.”
“Yeah, but where?”
“You’ll see,” he repeated. “I just wanna change first.”
“Like I can blame you.” Mess Dress was the worst.
“Shoulda kept that hat though. It looked pretty good on you.”
“I think Firth’s date went home wearing it. Who was she, anyway?”
“She’s one’a the regulars at Rooney’s. Uh… Freya? I think that’s her name. Guess she and Firth have got somethin’ going on there.”
“Figures she’d be named after a Norse goddess. That was… a lot of woman. In, uh, the best way.” Martina wasn’t being unkind – Freya, or whatever her name was, was Firth’s feminine equal in terms of height and physique. The word ‘statuesque’ would have fallen hopelessly short, unless the statue in question was Lady Liberty.
Adam chuckled. “She had a go with Sikes first. Apparently he was too gentle for her.”
“Jesus.”
“She made a move at me first!” Adam looked equal parts proud and embarrassed.
“You didn’t go for it?”
“Should I have?”
“Could be good for you.”
He stopped. “You really think so?”
“You’re not really ready for anything serious right now, are you?”
Adam shrugged, spread his hands and made a long mumbling noise that succinctly, though not eloquently, expressed a tangled knot of confused thoughts. Martina smiled, knowing she’d hit the nail straight on. “Thought so,” she said.
“It’s not that I don’t want serious…” Adam elucidated. “I just… I’m a really shitty boyfriend.”
“The way I hear it, she cheated on you.” Martina pointed out.
“Yeah. Because I was a shitty boyfriend.”
“It sounds like you almost forgive her.”
He shrugged. “I do.”
“…You really feel that responsible?”
Adam didn’t reply, but she noticed the way that he fiddled absently with the box in his pocket, the one that contained his newly-awarded medal for valor.
She let him think as they walked to his apartment, up the stairs and through his front door, where he carefully set the medal on his coffee table and vanished into the bedroom to get the hell out of the hated mess dress.
It had been quite an impressive citation: That Staff Sergeant Arés had, without hesitation or fear, advanced under enemy fire to retrieve a wounded man in an environment where nervejam was being used. That he had voluntarily served as a decoy to lure hostile forces into an ambush, that after the destruction of his weapon he had repeatedly exposed himself to fire to keep his comrades supplied with ammunition and that he had rescued the crew of a downed Firebird under heavy fire and without cover, placing his own body between the wounded pilot and the enemy.
Martina had personally dug a Hunter bullet out of his midsuit armor scales. Arés had claimed to be unaware that he’d been hit.
And he’d looked so fucking perfect while receiving it, too. Uniform aligned and worn to millimeter precision, every button polished, lapels sharp enough to slice through a phone book. Public Affairs had been taking pictures, and something would have to go badly wrong for that material not to find its way into the Air Force Magazine, the propaganda, and who knew where else.
After all, there was no way the whole “Beef Brothers” thing was going to just be left to die. Not when both of them had just earned serious decorations.
In public image Staff Sergeant Arés was a hero, a poster boy, the picture of Exosolar military perfection. In private Adam himself was a very different creature, as evidenced by the fact that he emerged from the bedroom wearing long baggy gym shorts, a muscle T that Martina could have turned into two dresses, and his bare feet. He grabbed his light hiking bag from where it lived by the door and didn’t even bother with his sandals.
“So where are we going?” Martina insisted.
“Up Memorial Hill,” he replied, throwing the light bag easily around one shoulder.
“The cemetery? …We’re visiting your friend.”
“It’s important, Marty.”
She touched his arm reassuringly. “I know.”
Memorial Hill was the highest terrain for miles around, and the south end of town skirted its base. Cemeteries were an unfortunate necessity of any settlement, but Folctha had hoped not to need one for at least another five years.
In practice, it had needed one much too soon after being founded, to bury a teenage girl. Her murder had pushed Arés into the military in pursuit of answers and understanding. The awful thought that went along with that, and it was one that Martina felt horrible about and so internally glared at until it shut up and went quiet, was that the human race as a whole would be worse off if that girl was still alive.
It was a gentle stroll by any human’s standards. Memorial Hill was no deathworld escarpment, but a gentle huge bulge in the landscape, and well outside of the range of either of Folctha’s gravity generators. Any moderately fit human would have sprang up it and Martina and Adam were exceptionally fit humans. The loose dirt and gravel path with its few wooden steps just made the ascent even more trivial.
They chatted about the terraforming program as they walked, and about how some of the locals were, against the odds, actually adapting to the upheavals in their ecosystem. The Cimbrean Tea plant in particular seemed to actually be spreading back into Terran biomes, and was being enthusiastically seized on by the Reclamation scientists as a source of clues as to how they might save more of the natives from extinction.
Of course, the resurgence of the plant was also creating problems. When chewed, the young stems were a potent psychedelic, which the Thing had consistently declined to ban on the grounds that the plant was ubiquitous, that policing its use would have been prohibitively expensive, and that it was likely to be extinct before long anyway.
In the meantime, harsh fines had been agreed on for anybody trying to smuggle it back to Earth, a urine test had been developed, all military personnel on the planet were forbidden from touching the stuff, and however many of the civilians were using it were doing so in private.
Adam paused within sight of the summit. “…Somebody’s up there.”
“You mean there’s some other idiot who’s dumb enough to be out here at oh-fuck-thirty in the God-knows-when?” Martina peered up the hill. Cimbrean’s moons – extensive deliberations and motions in the Thing had yet to furnish them with appropriate names – were small but they had higher albedos than Luna, and their combined brightness was surprising. Late in the night, after the nocturnal rains had cleared, at least one of them was usually good enough to see by.
Tonight was a double full moon, which meant there was even a hint of dusky blue in the night sky, and sure enough it was pretty easy to make out a dark figure seated against a tree near the large grey memorial stone at the very top of the hill.
“How many people are buried up here?” Martina asked.
“Just seven…”
Adam shrugged massively and resumed his trip up the path. Martina followed, del iberately scuffing her feet in the gravel. “Just seven?” she asked, louder than before.
The figure under the tree heard her. They turned their head, then planted a hand on the floor and stood up, dusting off their backside with one hand while hastily finishing a bottle of something with the other.
Once upright, she was obviously a woman. Not even the most effeminate man had a silhouette like that.
Adam stopped in his tracks. “…Ava?”
Martina had only briefly met Ava Rìos once, during a movie night with the guys while she and Adam were still dating (one that Burgess had excused himself from on pretence of a headache) but she was memorable.
“Uh… hey.”
“What are you-? I thought you were on Earth?” Adam asked.
“I was, uh… gonna make it a surprise.” Ava spread her hands. “…I’m back!” She offered a pathetic smile.
Adam didn’t seem to know what to say. “Back?”
“It’s, uh… look, it’s a long story and, you’re- I mean… Hi.” She turned to Martina. “Uh…Kovač, right?”
Honestly slightly touched at being remembered, Martina nodded. “We didn’t mean to interrupt-” she began.
“No, it’s… I’ve paid my… Uh… Dinner at Dad’s sometime soon Adam? Is that okay?”
“Ava, what-?” Adam begun, but she picked up a bag, gave him a strange, strained, stressed smile and a rather warmer and more genuine one for Martina, and retreated down the other path back toward the middle of town.
“Text me!” she called, and fled.
Adam was left standing there like a dog that wasn’t sure if it had been tripped over or kicked.
“…The fuck?” he asked.
Martina watched her go. “I think we interrupted something.”
“What do I do, do I-?”
“You let her go, big guy.”
Adam cast a final glance down the path as Ava turned the corner and vanished from sight at a brisk ’getting-the-fuck-out-of-Dodge’ walk, and deflated via a long nasal exhalation. He looked strangely angry with himself. “…Shit.”
Martina inclined her head, trying to guess at his thoughts, and then decided that with Warhorse by far and away the best approach was usually the direct one. “Okay, something’s been eating at you all night. You’ve been putting off telling me the whole way here, now fucking spill it.”
“Agh, it’s… two things.”
Adam produced the little case with his new medal in it. He set it down carefully on top of the memorial stone.
The stone was a ten-tonne bluestone monolith, mostly rough cut except for a flattened patch on the front surface facing town, into which was engraved the words ’Sacred to the memory of a child of Earth, and to all who shine with her among the stars.’
The top was beginning to smooth off as well. People sat on the memorial stone, they picnicked on it. It was a spectacular view, and in the dark Folctha was a maze of orange lights below. Adam parked his own butt down atop it and flipped the case open.
Martina frowned at the little metal star and its red-white-and-blue ribbon. “Dude, you were awarded the third-highest medal for valor an American can receive, and it’s bringing you down?”
“Three of my buddies died, Marty.”
She took a deep breath, nodded, and sat next to him. “And you signed up to protect people.”
“’That Others May Live.’ I chose PJ because of that motto. I chose SOR ‘cause I figured it was the best way to live up to that motto. And now here I am, I’m sitting on the memorial to my dead friend, holding a medal I earned on a mission where three of my buddies were killed, and the ex-girlfriend whose life I ruined to even get here just ran away down the hill.”
“And,” he continued “Hell! She’s saved more lives than I have!”
“How d’you figure that?”
“She patched up that Delta dude, Coombes, down in Egypt long before I got there. He’d have died before I even arrived without her, and she did so good a job that all I had to do was fuckin’…tidy up.”
“What about Major Jackson?” Martina pointed out.
“She saved us. We’d all be dead if she hadn’a taken that hit for us.”
“Dude, I pulled a bullet out of your suit that woulda killed her except you took it,” Martina pointed out. “So you saved her too. And don’t forget Regaari, or all the other ETs that NOVA HOUND got off that station.”
“Yeah, well.. That’s the other half of it.”
“What?”
“I mean, yeah, I’m… glad of those. They stop me from feeling like a complete fuckin’ fraud, right? But… I guess when I signed up, the people I was thinkin’ of when I thought about saving lives were the ones I care about. The ones close to me.” He stared at the medal. “An’ that makes me feel selfish, an’…I don’t really know what valor is, but I kinda feel like maybe selfish ain’t part of it.”
“That’s not selfish.”
“Isn’t it? Dude!” He waved a hand down the hill in the direction Ava had gone. “She’s living proof.”
Martina looked up at the moons for a second and hastily assembled her words. “Tough love time, big guy,” she said. “Listen up.”
He straightened and paid attention.
“You’re drunk, you’re grieving, and you just ran into a girl it’s pretty fucking obvious you still love. Am I right?”
“I ain’t goin’ back to her,” he said, defensively.
“Good.” On an impulse, Martina leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I want you all to myself.”
He blinked at her. “I, uh… Shit, Marty, I’m crazy about you. But, uh…”
“You’re not ready. Dude, I know. You’re still hung up on her and, yeah, I reckon you’d be a fucking awful boyfriend anyway. Just…” she took his hand, “…take it from somebody who cares about you enough to give you the unvarnished truth, okay? You’re not a fraud. They don’t give medals like this one for hard work.”
“…You really think so?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
After a thoughtful moment, he sighed and relaxed. “I’ll… take your word on it.”
Martina chuckled. “Outstanding,” she teased. “As for the rest of it… look, I’m pretty crazy about you too, and we’ve got time to be patient. Get your head sorted out, figure out how to not suck at relationships, and we’ll take a shot at it when you’re ready, okay?”
“…Can do.”
Date Point: 10y5m4d AV
The Box, Omaha, Nebraska, USA, Earth
Xiù Chang
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!”
Xiù couldn’t resist beaming to herself at the awkward but delighted look on Julian’s face. Considering how short-notice the party planning had been, the BGEV team had really pulled through on throwing him something pretty special.
They were great people, all of them. Maybe it was supposed to be a counterbalance to the aloof Assessors, who would rip into their day every so often and do their absolute best to ruin it, but the actual tutors, educators, organisers and everybody else responsible for getting Xiù, Julian and Allison mission-ready were genuinely lovely, and had enthusiastically agreed to throw Julian – a man they had known for not even two weeks – a birthday party so enthusiastic it was like he was their oldest and dearest friend.
His present from the team was a frankly huge charitable donation in his name, to the organisation of his choice. Their allowance on personal belongings was too tight for lavishing him with anything more physical, but Julian’s jaw dropped on seeing the sum being donated on his behalf.
It was a great end to what had been an excellent day: Xiù’s first in the flight simulator.
Piloting a starship, she had learned, was no easy task. At first it had been easy enough – a simple enough introduction to the basics of pitch, yaw and roll, but of course spaceships had acceleration as well. Not only in the Y axis along the line of the ship’s primary engines, but also in the X axis (left and right from Xiù’s perspective) and Z (up and down).
Fooling around with these basic controls should have been easy, and in some ways they were.
In others…
Xiù had quickly found that the simulation didn’t have a top speed. Nor did it have a “stop” button. Every joule of kinetic energy she added in one direction needed to eventually be perfectly applied again in the opposite direction and cancelled out, which swiftly got confusing when the same applied to any rotation on the ship.
She’d tried to listen to her instructors and apply a light touch, but light touches built up over several seconds, and she always seemed to overcorrect by applying the maneuvering thrusters for a little too long. Inevitably, she’d found herself tumbling and disoriented and eventually she’d had to shut her eyes to banish the rising nausea.
They’d actually congratulated her on holding out as long as she did. All things considered, it had been fun but frustrating.
These being the early days of their training and to help them ease into life in The Box, for now they were still being allowed a day off per week which Xiù and Allison had used in acquiring their present for Julian.
Xiù had questioned Allison’s plan of buying him another tomahawk considering that he already had two, but Allison had insisted. “Trust me,” she’d said, “I’ve been planning this for a while.”
Bereft of better ideas and inclined to trust Allison’s judgement in all matters Julian anyway, Xiù had gone along with it. What Allison had found, it turned out, was a cutlery company in Omaha who’d invested heavily in some of the latest and most impressive-sounding manufacturing technology.
Xiù wasn’t sure how slow-cool SuperG field-suspension forging went, nor what Ceres Method fullerene-steel was, but the result apparently was exceptional. Certainly the man who’d sold them the finished product had been sorry to see it go: Julian was equally happy to see it arrive.
He tested its edge by intricately slicing up a post-it note, spun it in his hand and declared the balance superb, enthused at length about pretty much every aspect of it before finally returning to the real world long enough to remember to thank his girlfriends for the superb gift.
“It was all Allison,” Xiù confessed as they hugged. “I just chipped in.”
He kissed her. “It’s a great gift anyway. Thank you.”
“You don’t mind having three of those?”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t mind having thirty.”
Doctor Ericsson clapped him on the shoulder. “Too bad we can’t party all night,” he declared, apologetically. “But the three of you are still starting at six tomorrow.”
“Spoilsport,” Allison joked, but took both Julian and Xiù’s arms.
They wended their way back to the Box, the girls exchanging wry expressions as Julian geeked out over his new tool. He stashed it safely in one of the armory lockers in the Box’s decontamination room, and relaxed on the couch as Xiù took the first shower. She always did in the evenings, on the grounds that her hair needed the longest to dry.
It was still a little awkward, not having any privacy to dispose of her clothes in the laundry hamper on one side of the room and walk right across it to enter the shower on the other side of the room, but it was less and less of a plunge with every passing day. She noticed the way Julian checked her out as she passed him, but she could hardly complain about that. Not without being a hypocrite, anyway.
It helped that it was a good shower. Temperature settings to the degree celsius, pressure selection before it was even turned on… all she had to do was tap out her preferences and hit start, and a second later her perfect shower started up. No warmup, no early trickle, just nought to sixty in one smooth second.
Somebody on the BGEV team really understood the importance of a good shower.
The evening shower was, by agreement, hers to luxuriate in. Julian seemed to view the shower as a temporary inconvenience – he spun through it and scrubbed up as quickly as he could, all business and drive. Allison meanwhile needed a good soak in the morning to help wake up while her two light-sleeping paramours got breakfast ready, but her evening shower was more businesslike.
Pretty soon they were all clean, and they granted themselves a half hour to unwind before bed. Julian spent it reading, while Xiù sat next to him on the couch and watched an episode of The Legend of Korra with Allison, who was lying across both their laps. She wasn’t quite sure why they’d settled on cartoons as their go-to for entertainment, but they just seemed to work – something quick and harmless to switch the brain off before, after half an hour, they dragged Julian away from his book, bade each other goodnight, climbed into their bunks and turned out the lights.
Some dreams are more lucid than others. Tonight’s is very lucid indeed – Xiù knows it’s a dream within seconds of finding herself standing in front of the grand doors of the female commune in Wi Kao city.
Being aware of the dream and influencing it are different things though. Xiù knows that the commune isn’t on Earth, and it’s certainly not in Yosemite park. But it is in the dream world, and she wonders what connection her subconscious is drawing between those two different and distant places.
She sits down on the rock – THE rock, the kissing rock – to begin pondering that connection, when she jolted awake in response to an unexpected sound.
Sleeping lightly had become an important skill in space. Not that she’d ever had to rely on it, but Xiù had known in her bones that the one time a human was ever really vulnerable was at night, asleep. As a matter of survival, therefore, any noise out of place was enough to wake her.
The noise in question was a creak, and Julian giving a surprised grunt and whispering something. “…Al?”
Allison’s reply was barely audible. “I’m lonely. Move over, birthday boy.”
“‘Kay…”
There was a rustling of blankets and a couple of satisfied noises as, presumably, Allison wriggled into bed alongside him. There really wasn’t a lot of room for two on the bunks, so they must have been pressed right up against each other.
Xiù smiled to herself and fell asleep again.
She woke up to the sound of more sotto voce conversation below.
“Mmm… did you smuggle a candy bar out of the party, or are you just glad I’m here?”
”Gimme a break, it’s been a couple’a weeks since we last…” Julian grumbled, then gasped. ”Al!”
Allison laughed quietly. There was a soft cloth sound, like she was rhythmically and slowly moving her hand. “Mmmhmm, that feels nice.”
”Allison! Xiù’s a light sleeper!”
”So be quiet…”
Xiù heard her twist in bed and turn over. There was a prolonged rustling, a deep-voiced “Mmm” from Allison and Julian produced another, louder gasp.
”Are you crazy?! She’s going to- Agh, God.”
“She can watch if she likes, I don’t care.”
“But-!”
“Shhh… Quiet, baby. Just lie back and enjoy your birthday present…”
“Oh fffuck… Yes, ma’am.”
Allison chuckled softly. “Good boy.” She made another hedonistic “mmm”, and this one was underpinned by a kind of wet mouth sound. Almost like she was licking or sucking on somethi-
Oh.
Oh.
Xiù’s hazy, sleepy, warm oblivious daze evaporated as she finally got her head around what they were doing. Between the sound of her own suddenly pounding pulse and the heat of what was probably the most powerful blush she’d ever worn, it became difficult for her to keep listening, but listen she did. She lay there afraid to move in case they stopped, and paid rapt attention to all of it, every slick noise and feminine purr as Julian did his best – which wasn’t very good – not to gasp, moan or whisper little words of praise.
Eventually, he failed completely. His breath had been catching for a minute or two, and Xiù shut her eyes and chewed frantically on her lip as he gasped heavily three times, his breathing stopped completely for a few seconds, and when it finally came back, it did so as a guttural ’aaugh! and several deep, shuddering, cleansing gulps of air.
She clearly heard Allison swallow and shush him loudly, trying and failing to laugh in a whisper.
It was too absurd: Xiù couldn’t stop herself from giggling along with her.
They both immediately went still and quiet, and when he tentatively spoke, Julian’s tone of voice even sounded like his eyes were screwed shut, mortified. “…Ssshit. You heard that, didn’t you?”
Xiù rolled over and poked her head over the edge of her bunk to give them an apologetic smile. “All of it. Sorry.”
She got a glimpse of everything that Julian had to offer before he was able to flinch and cover himself. Allison hastily snatched a hand out of her underwear, looking much more embarrassed than her earlier bravado had suggested. She cleared her throat, and hurriedly wiped something off the corner of her mouth. “Uh… sorry….I-I just, uh…” she stammered.
“It’s okay.” Xiù promised.
Allison and Julian glanced at each other, both clearly embarrassed and a bit ashamed. Some kind of rapid, nervous conversation that seemed to consist entirely of raising their eyebrows and biting their lips passed between them, then Julian made a ’snrrk’ noise and shook his head, Allison giggled, and the two of them finally relaxed.
“…You’re sure?” Julian asked.
“Guys, I love you. You don’t have to be celibate, really.” Xiù promised. “Anyway, um… that sounded really hot.”
“It was.” Allison winked like one of the devil’s own courtesans. Julian cleared his throat and slid past her to make the walk of shame to the toilet. Both girls watched him go.
As soon as the door closed behind him, Allison stood up and hugged her.
“You’re sure you don’t mind?” She asked.
Xiù rolled her eyes and sighed. “Shǎguā…” she said, lovingly. “Al, I was getting worried about you guys. I don’t want to stop you from anything.”
“Shag wha?”
“It’s like…It’s an affectionate way of…It means ’stupid melon’.” Xiù smiled.
“‘Dummy’?”
“Yeah.” Xiù giggled again. “Stop worrying about it, dummy. I’m not your mom.”
Allison laughed. “Okay. Okay…Thanks.”
“Come on, we’re gonna be stuck together in a room like this for like two years.” Xiù pointed out. “They’re right, we’ve got to get used to everything. This one’s easy next to the shower.”
“Yeah?”
Xiù glanced at the restroom door and lowered her voice even further, feeling her blush start up again. “I uh… I really enjoyed listening to it.” She confessed.
Allison grinned. “You wanna try it sometime?”
“Uh, um…” Xiù shook her head and gulped, blushing fiercely. “I-I’m, I’m, I, um, I’m not…”
“Ready.” Allison finished for her and nodded, though Xiù thought she detected… disappointment? Sadness? …behind the understanding and sympathy. “Okay. Well, when you are, let me know. ‘Kay?”
“…If I ever am.” Xiù promised.
To her surprise, Allison kissed her. As first kisses went, it wasn’t much at all – little more than an arguably chaste taste of her lips – but it was a real, tender and unforced physical gesture of affection. The kind of kiss that Xiù had seen her give Julian in passing, as a kind of natural romantic punctuation to daily life.
“You will be,” she promised, and stooped to climb back into Julian’s bunk. “G’night, babe.”
“…’Night.” Xiù echoed. She rolled back onto her back, then onto her right side, and snuggled up into her blankets feeling strangely warm and at peace on the inside.
She didn’t hear Julian make the return trip from the restroom – she’d already smiled herself to sleep.
Date Point: 10y6m AV
Yavun Marketplace, City of Wi Kao, Planet Gao.
Myun
Sister Shoo had once mentioned that human pregnancies lasted three-quarters of an Earth year, and with a bit of research Myun had learned that an Earth year was a fifth longer than a Gaoian one.
Myun had never been terribly fond of mathematics, but figuring out that these two facts made human gestation nearly twice as long as a Gaoian’s had been simple enough.
Given that she was already feeling constantly tired and hungry and was yipped at by cautious Mothers whenever she walked at anything faster than a careful shuffle, Myun was beginning to wonder how a human of all things could endure becoming so limited? They were so agile and strong and solid, to lose all of that even temporarily must be infuriating.
She was already resolved to be very picky with her males. If she was going to have to endure this kind of inconvenience every time she mated, then she was ”damned” if she was going to do so for anything less than a supreme specimen.
As for the humans… well, that was a mystery. One that had set Ayma to chittering when Myun had mentioned it. “You’ll see,” she had promised. “It’s rewarding, I promise.”
Myun remained skeptical.
There was one good thing about bearing a cub, though – she smelled pregnant, which meant that the males weren’t constantly trying to seduce her. They were still treating her nicely and giving her all the respect that a Female was due of course, but they were also being more genuine, more… themselves. They weren’t trying to impress, and a few of them even earned themselves an upgrade into Myun’s private ‘maybe’ list – the one for if Mother Ayma turned out to be right.
They gave her a respectful berth on the street as she headed for the market. Females had their needs paid for by male contributions to the communes of course, but while that covered the bare essentials, any female who wanted some luxuries or spending money had to earn it. Myun’s usual revenue stream was combat training – several of the more military-minded Clans like Whitecrest and One-Fang were enthusiastic about cubs that Myun had taught Gung Fu while they were young – apparently the ingrained instincts and techniques she instilled in them gave them quite an edge in their Trials.
She spent that money on more of the same. She was completely aware that she had only a few years left in which to properly learn things before she reached the long stretch of a Gaoian’s mature life, when the brain settled down from its cubbish phase of learning everything and new pathways forged themselves more slowly and with much greater difficulty.
To that end she studied – as best she could considering she was relying on imported human data purchased via a trader with contacts on Cimbrean – every human martial art she could get her paws on, from Shoo’s Gung Fu to so-called “HEMA” that seemed to require wearing a quarter-tonne of metal.
She’d pared that down to the essentials, and incorporated it – especially the swordfighting techniques – into her fusion blade drills.
She’d also spent three months’ income on having a human style sword made, and had promptly downgraded the merchant who’d taken her order to the “no way” list after he’d given her a very strange look.
It was taller than she was from hilt to tip, and looked like it should have been about as wieldy as a bus. In practice, the long handle provided so much leverage that the weapon would have been an agile whirl of deadly steel had the Guard-Mother, Fara, not insisted that it must be blunt and purely decorative.
Myun hadn’t been happy, but she knew how to pick her fights nowadays. She’d surreptitiously had the handle of her official weapon lengthened and took solace in knowing that in the infinitely unlikely scenario that she ever did have to fight with it for real, she’d be the deadliest Sister ever to defend a commune.
Today’s project was a gentler pursuit – she was doing the heavy lifting for Mother Esu. As Myun’s adult coat had come in she’d been inwardly quite pleased to discover that she was a “brownie” – a clear sign that her Sire was from a labor clan such as the Stonebacks or the Ironclaws. Between that genetic advantage and a lifetime of sewing weights into her clothing, Myun was strong in a way that females rarely were nowadays. Strong enough to put plenty of males in their place when she wanted to, even if she was frustratingly under strict orders from Mother Ayma not to strain herself during her pregnancy.
Mother Yulna, as always, had made her feel better. “You’re guarding a cub in there, Myun,” she had cautioned, immediately putting it into perspective for her. Yulna was going to be an excellent Mother-Supreme.
She swayed around a cargo drone that was thrumming gently down the street and then stepped into a doorway as the communicator clipped to her ear buzzed gently and played a call tone at just the right volume that she could hear it loud and clear, but nobody else could.
This one was a custom tone: Her cub’s sire.
She tapped it, and it projected a semi-transparent holographic ‘screen’ in front of her eyes. “Regaari? Hello! Is this a social call, or business?”
Uncharacteristically, Regaari sounded stressed. “I’m afraid it’s business, Myun. I have a bit of a problem I need your help with…”
“You’re the Whitecrest,” she pointed out. She extended a claw and thoughtfully picked a scrap of her lunch out of her teeth. “Aren’t you the problem-solver?”
“Indeed, which is why I’ve called you. I have a feeling you wouldn’t object to the idea of relocating to Cimbrean…”
“…You’re not wrong.” Myun straightened up and pricked up her ears, thoroughly interested.
“Good, because… tell me, have you heard of the Racing Thunder?”