Date Point: March 11y3m3w AV
Uncharted Class 12 Deathworld, Near 3Kpc Arm
Vemik Sky-Thinker
The Singer was pregnant.
Vemik hadn’t been surprised at the announcement: She had completely neglected her duties for nearly three days after he and his father had returned from claiming the heart of one of the destroying beasts, and they had been three very pleasant days indeed. Exhausting, too.
Naturally, they were both delighted. Nervous, but delighted. The rest of the tribe however seemed even happier still: The child of the Singer and the Sky-Thinker? And a winter child no less? Conceived after hunting the greatest beast anybody had ever even heard of?
Vemik almost felt sorry for his unborn son or daughter. The burden of the whole tribe’s hopes and faith rested on tiny shoulders that hadn’t yet even emerged into the frigid air.
As winters went, however, the high forest was a great improvement on the lowlands where the old village had stood. Up here the very ground was warm. It was imperceptible outside of the huts, but inside was a different matter. Even now, in the darkest heart of the winter moons, the floor of Vemik’s hut was warm enough to sleep on even without a werne fur. With the pelt and a blanket…and with a warm body held close against his own…
It was all too difficult to get up and get to work. Warm floor or not, the air still bit.
The Singer’s wasn’t the only new pregnancy. Vemet had returned from that same hunt with just as much prestige, and Vemik was looking forward to a new half-brother or sister…
Yan had it that a village was never truly established until the second child to be conceived there was born.
As for the hunt itself… well, the mountain seemed pleased with the offering they had brought, but it was plainly an evil thing. It was as hard as rock, the dried fluids that encrusted its tubes stank, the birds wouldn’t go anywhere near it and it sat on the altar looking grim and untouchable.
But that was how the monster had been. When Vemik and his father had stumbled into its path during their hunt they had stood frozen, convinced that they were about to suffer instant burning death…
Only for it to stand still and ignore them, even when they fled into the trees.
They had watched it for two hands of days before finally deciding that it wasn’t moving.
They had needed another eight days to finally dare to let it see them again, after marking themselves as warriors did before a deadly fight.
They had needed another four days to dare to touch it.
Clambering all over its armored hide had finally persuaded them that it was… if not dead then at least dormant somehow. Maybe hibernating? Either way, it was vulnerable.
Vemet had broken six stone axes trying to get past the scales on its back, and had sliced his hand quite badly on the sixth attempt. He’d spent most of that time grumping at Vemik about not joining in.
Vemik, however, had been doing what he did best—he had thought. Not about the sky, this time, but about the object in front of him.
The thing looked like a creature. His evaluation from its tracks that it had much in common with a Skithral had been not far off the mark… but closer inspection melted away that impression.
Creatures were not made of rock, or… whatever the substance of the destroyer’s hide was. And yes, Werne had sharp blades on their faces, but those blades were of horn. These were blades of stone, and blades of stone were made by people.
He had suspected he was dealing with the tools of some foe ever since he had recovered the wreckage of the death-birds from the destroyed village. He had known it when he crept under the destroyer’s body and found markings there.
The Singer used markings. He had seen the way she would scratch the black dust off a burned stick onto the side of her pots, or the way she would prepare her dancing space by scratching little designs in the ground. They helped her remember what was in the pot, or what step came next in her dance, what note came next in her song. Those markings told her things, like private words that only she understood.
He found markings on the underside of the destroyer, too. Complex, dense ones that were utterly impenetrable to him, but still… they meant something, to somebody. Such a thing would never appear on the body of a beast.
So while his father had clanged and cursed and battered uselessly away at the destroyer’s armored back, Vemik had found where the markings were densest, and had poked, prodded and pulled on the things he found there.
First an armor plate had fallen away once he realized that the things at its corners held it in place.
Then a piece of hardened skin had slid aside.
The third step had been the most tricky. The thing he found looked like a man was meant to grip it, but the space around it was too narrow for fingers. He had spent some time threading werne-gut cord through the spaces instead to create something he could grip.
And then he had pulled, and things had slid until they stopped. Then he had twisted, and things had twisted until they stopped. Finally, he had needed to push until his handhold was flush with the surface again… and the monster’s chest had split open downwards and sideways, exposing its innards. Now Vemik knew beyond doubt that he was dealing with a tool of some sort—the idea that a beast might just spill its guts if you pressed and poked it in the right place was… insane.
But on inspecting the interior he had grown less certain again.
Everything looked strangely organic. There were coils and tubes and fluids just as one might find in the chest of a dead Werne. Something was pulsing, or at least some of the thicker arteries—strange and transparent and dark blue—were twitching is if the thing had a pulse.
But… a pulse was a heart, and a heart was life. Remove the heart, remove the life. Whether or not the thing was a tool or beast, whether it was asleep, dormant or merely unattended was irrelevant. Remove the heart…
He had traced the pulsing tubes back to their source, then used the death-bird wing that he still kept in place of a knife and hacked deep into the thing’s innards until he was covered in its dark, oily, foul-smelling blood and until finally something gave and a box the size of his torso fell out of it into the leaf-litter. With Vemet’s help he had severed it from the last of its tubes and they had dragged it away from the spreading blueish puddle of foulness that was steadily leaking out of the destroyer.
It had sagged, sank, then collapsed to the ground as they were still trying to figure out how to return their prize to the village.
After that, getting the heart back up the mountain had come down to muscle power and time.
After all that he’d been almost as exhausted as on the day of his ritual of manhood. Having the energy to father a child had come as a pleasant surprise. He’d spent three days in bed.
He would have liked to use that excuse now.
“Get up, sleepy-tail.”
Vemik grunted and tried to snuggle into the furs some more. The Singer trilled softly and tickled him exactly where he was most vulnerable to it, and he was upright with a yelp before his brain had even caught up. Her hands were freezing.
“…You are evil,” he accused as he rubbed his arms and threw on his winter cloak.
“Women have been waking their sleeping men since the gods were young,” she replied, and shot him a mischievous but fond look even though she was obviously feeling the cold. “We know all the tricks.”
Vemik rolled his eyes then put a hand on the side of her face and they touched their foreheads affectionately together. “And men have been teaching women to relax now and then for even longer,” he retorted. “You’re carrying a child, remember? You should rest in the warm.”
She shrugged him off. “I’m not frail, Sky-thinker,” she grumbled. “I have things to do!”
“Not before you eat properly,” he asserted. “I want you warm and full of hot food before you do anything.”
“Gods! Fine! Fine…” she cursed slightly and burrowed back in under the furs again. She returned Vemik’s loving smile with an expression that was equal parts irritation and gratitude and snuggled down, blowing on her hands as he let himself out to get food for both of them.
The village was cooking communally, as was always necessary in the winter. For the rest of the year food was plentiful enough that people could look after themselves, but after the first frost fell, everybody gave their food to the whole tribe, to be handed out fairly by the old women.
It meant that winter meals were generally the same thing every day, but they were warm and filling. They were doing surprisingly well considering that they had relocated at the wrong end of the year.
Yan, however, was definitely losing some fat. He was still huge and strong, but his waist was looking narrower than usual. He was standing in line for his share of the food, hopping from one foot to the other to stay warm.
“You’re up late,” he grunted as Vemik joined him. “You know she can only carry one baby at a time, don’t you?”
“There were falling stars last night,” Vemik explained. “Lots of them!”
Yan just harrumphed and pulled his fur cloak tighter. He’d always hated the winter, and he scowled at the small cloud his breath made as if it had personally offended him. “Unless any of them land near here and make things warmer…” he muttered.
Vemik sighed. He doubted he’d ever fathom why Yan was so disinterested in the sheer wonder of things. How could motes of light falling from the sky fail to pique his curiosity?
“Don’t you ever wonder about anything, Yan?”
“About the sky? We have enough trouble down here.”
“But… Yan, what if our troubles came from the sky?”
Yan scoffed. “Listen to me, sky-thinker,” he said tersely. “Whatever the sky is and whatever lives there, I promise you that it’s not interested in us.”
BGEV-11 ’Misfit’, Uncharted System, Near 3Kpc Arm
Julian Etsicitty
“Now that’s interesting…”
Xiù and Allison paused in their Gung Fu practice. ”What?”
Julian sat back. “I just finished comparing the BEST data to that star chart you found,” he said. “It looks like there might still be a whole twelve temperate worlds in this neck of the woods.”
“Twelve?” Allison asked. The girls joined him to look over his shoulder at his tablet.
“That’s still way more than we can do in one mission…” Xiù said.
“That’s good though, right?” Julian asked. He started to program another search on the data they’d recovered from the Dominion archives, trying to pin down planetary classes. “We’ll get back with a fuckin’ treasure trove.”
The girls didn’t reply to that, but after a second Xiù touched his shoulder.
“You should have gone to bed an hour ago,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, I just wanted to do this first,” he replied.
“Can’t it wait? You’ll have all week to work on this.”
Julian shook his head. “I wanna get it done.”
“Julian.” Allison flicked his ear, which managed to properly break his concentration. “Go the fuck to sleep, dummy.”
He turned around and realized they were both wearing the same impatient expression, right down to the same folded arms. And he was feeling tired…
“…Yes ma’am.”
Allison snorted and Xiù gave him a “good boy”, and he put his work aside for the night, climbed wearily into his bunk and fell asleep quicker than he’d expected.
And then he was woken up.
The hab was dark, usually a sign that its only occupant was the sleeping one, but he heard a soft feminine grunt of exertion next to his head as one of the girls climbed into his bunk with him.
“…Xiù?”
“Sorry.” she slid into place next to him and cuddled up tight.
He put his arms around her. “Are you okay?”
She kissed him and ran her hand up his torso, under his shirt.
“….Mm… right…”
She wriggled out of her pants, helped him wriggle out of his, guided his hands onto her b reasts…
Sex with Xiù was a very different thing to sex with Allison. Allison tended to be vigorous and outspoken, and she usually led the charge. She liked to talk dirty, use her nails, leave hickeys.
He was always gentler with Xiù. Slower. Usually that seemed to be the right call.
This time, she made a frustrated noise. “Harder.”
He did as he was told and picked up the pace a little. This did not seem to satisfy.
“Rrrr… Wǒ nǎ cóng bōlí zuò de harder!”
“…Are you sure?”
She sighed, stopped, and then pushed him off her and lay there sorting out her hair while Julian tried to figure out just what the hell was going on in her head.
Eventually she got her hair in order and glared at the ceiling for a second then rolled over to challenge him. “You’re too… nice with me!” she explained.
“I thought you like nice!”
“I um… Yes? But there’s nice and there’s nice, and I…” she pressed her palms to her temples. “…Aargh, words!”
“This is that whole ’yes sir’ thing again, isn’t it,” Julian guessed.
“No, that’s…” she sighed, and hauled herself out of the bunk. “I don’t even know what I want.”
“Bǎobèi…”
She sighed again, turned and gave him a forgiving kiss. “Let me… think,” she said.
“I…Okay. Uh, I’m…gonna take a shower.” Julian cleared his throat and climbed out of the bunk too.
He made it a cold one and scrubbed his face hard as he thought.
The idea he was wrestling with in his head was crystal clear. He knew exactly what Xiù thought she wanted, and the problem was that he was entirely certain that she didn’t really know what she was asking.
Well, no. The problem was that he didn’t know how to tell her she didn’t really know what she was asking.
Well… no. The problem was that he was almost certain that she didn’t really know what she was asking, that he didn’t know how to tell her, and he was shit-scared that she’d be afraid of him afterwards.
Was that right? It seemed right.
He had a clear vision of the scar on Xiù’s throat and turned down the shower another degree.
That was a thought that scared him more than any other.
Date Point: April 11y4m1w AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Lieutenant Kieran Mears
Letter for notes,
RE: Miss Ava Magdalena Ríos
This young lady attended today in the company of her new therapy dog, Hannah. She has a history of PTSD following several personal tragedies and her involvement in Operation EMPTY BELL. She has special access to DEEP RELIC and incidental knowledge of SACRED STRANGER.
Today she is considerably improved. She states that although she still suffers from flashbacks and suicidal ideations, she already feels that Hannah’s support is helping her to manage them. She states that her symptoms are at their worst on “down days” and that she has had good days where she has noticed after the fact that she was exposed to one of her triggers without responding.
Her sleep has become somewhat more restless again, but she reports that her dreams are now merely “vivid and strange” rather than being nightmares and that Hannah’s presence is helping immensely. She declined sleep medication as she feels that her paroxetine is working well and she feels confident that with Hannah’s help she is on the road to recovery.
We agreed to continue unchanged for now, and I will see her again in two months or on a crisis basis.
-Lt. K Mears Counsellor, HMS Sharman
Date Point: April 11y4m1w AV
Mrwrki Station, Erebor System, Deep Space
Kirk
The ‘Tolkien geeks’ faction had finally won the quiet but strangely passionate war to name the system. Kirk could see why—He’d read ’The Hobbit’ after the decision was made, and been quite taken with the description of the dwarven city under the Lonely Mountain. Naming the system for a fictional isolated bastion of unlimited wealth was genuinely apt.
Instead of endless rivers of gold, however, this Erebor was producing a steady progression of increasingly sophisticated automated colonization probes.
“CIC-33 go for main engine start.”
The facility’s staff had expanded, too. NASA and ESA had been invited to send experts as the increasingly complex project hit ever stranger obstacles
Lewis, to his delight, had been quietly allowed to sidle away to the edge of the project where he now served as its conscience, ideas engine and general source of raw creative energy. It was a role that suited him perfectly—the maximum of involvement coupled with the minimum of actual responsibility. He was an advisor to the future of the human race.
“I got a good feeling about this one,” he confided, as the latest version of the Colony-In-A-Can boosted out of Mrwrki’s launch facility.
Kirk looked down at him. “Based on what?”
“Lotta things came together this last week, dude. Might be we just launched the first ever gen-yoo-ine Von Neumann probe.”
Kirk studied the command center’s enormous forward screen with interest as CIC-33 arced gently out onto a course that carried it toward the system’s asteroid belt. “I admit, I thought it would take longer.”
“Well, I mean… it ain’t quite as simple as getting the dang thing to just nom an asteroid and then spit out copy of itself. It’s gotta survey, gather, refine, smelt… hell, we had to teach the fuckin’ thing how to enrich Uranium.” Lewis shook his head. “Man, when I started this? I was just thinking it’d like AARGHM NAM NAM a big-ass rock, poop out a baby probe and there we go.”
“Reality is more… detailed, I take it.”
“Shit yeah. The process is, like, it builds the tools that build the tools that build the tools. Lotta ways for that to go wrong… but I think we maybe got it now.”
The ensuing weeks proved him right. Every time Kirk checked in with the control room, the CIC probe had flitted to some other spot in the asteroid belt to hunt down the next item in its shopping list of required materials, and was spinning them into a surprisingly fragile gossamer web in space that enfolded a volume of several hundred cubic meters. The structure was little more than a lattice for holding machinery in place and allowing power to flow between the new devices that the probe added on to it.
But it worked. It provided power and cooling, kept them from drifting apart and made short work of processing the raw materials that an increasingly large army of mining drones brought in. As the structure grew, the CIC probe spent less time roaming afield and more time parked in the middle of its “nest”, being fed refined metals and excreting the components for its child.
And the whole process was unfolding without a single human command. No hand on the joystick, no code updates on the fly. The whole point was to see that it could do all of this on its own.
The day that CIC-33a booted up and shook hands with its parent was a party for the whole station.
Two weeks later, CIC-33b and CIC-33aa came online more or less simultaneously, and Lt. Col. Nadeau celebrated their success by ordering the four probes to self-destruct.
The nuclear explosions that reduced them to atoms may as well have been fireworks.
But now the truly difficult work began: It was time for the probes to build terrestrial colonies.
Date Point: April 11y4m2w AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Martina Kovač
“You… what, not at all?”
“Nope.”
“Not one?”
“Nuh-uh.”
This earned ‘Horse a faintly disbelieving stare. Since being introduced to the possibilities of picking up girls in a bar he’d rapidly gone full man-slut. This was… known. Marty was even okay with it. Hell, it was probably a good thing for him! The poor big lump was so hormonally stimulated that she could have written several papers on his bloodworks alone.
Thus his confession that he had somehow gone a month between girls was weirdly shocking. As was his… he’d actually turned down some new chick last night who’d been coming on to him so hard she may as well have had runway lights and a man with a couple of marshalling wands between her knees.
“You really went a whole month?”
“Come on, when did I have time?” Adam asked. “Between the Cherries, the Gaoians and my fuckin’ degree…”
Marty nodded understanding. Today was a Lads barbecue, the first they’d been able to throw since February. The whole SOR had been buzzing like a hive for weeks and even though things had stabilized they were still hectic.
An honest-to-God relaxed day was a welcome and almost forgotten pleasure, but the thought of ’Horse passing on a chance to get laid was just… bizarro world.
She glanced over at the barbecue, where Vandenberg was teaching Parata and Thurrsto the correct way to light charcoal, having learned that Parata’s preferred method involved a lot of lighter fluid and no small amount of personal danger.
The “Cherries” had arrived big, and were getting bigger fast. Barney had gone from “beefy” to “ripped”, Irish’s barrel chest was becoming more and more pronounced, and Parata, while doomed to at best be only as huge as Murray, couldn’t stop glancing into whatever reflective surfaces happened to be nearby. The three of them plus Lieutenant Costello had collectively put on more than a Martina Kovač worth of mass just since arriving.
Firth had even been heard to admit that they were “doing okay”, well out of their earshot.
“Okay, but you had your chance last night…” she said to Adam.
“…Di’n’t feel right…”
That earned him a frown. “Why not?”
He cleared his throat.“…Just didn’t.”
“Well, why the fuck not?”
‘Horse didn’t get the chance to reply. He was still making incoherent grumbly noises and avoiding her gaze when an SUV pulled up outside the Dog House gym in a cloud of honking, yelling and the clattering of car doors.
A hundred and fifty pounds of irate woman stormed right through the middle of the SOR’s barbecue with some truly hypnotic bounce in her skirt, shirt and earrings, advancing on Adam with a furious expression as though he’d stepped on her dog.
“Uh…” Adam had a brief, involuntary and entirely ludicrous moment of looking like he wanted to run for the hills, but it passed. “Hi. Katie. Hi.”
At least he was getting better at remembering names.
“Oh so, what, you just thought you’d throw a party without me, is that it?”
There were Rules among the Lads (and Martina was an honorary Lad) for dealing with these situations. Give it a minute or two (or five. Or ten.) so the unfortunate man in question could squirm, then bail him out. She went and got a couple of fresh beers from the crate full of ice, shot Baseball an ’I’ve got this’ grin, and returned once she judged Adam had been appropriately hung out to dry for just long enough.
“Here ya go,” she said, and handed him his drink.
’Katie’ rounded on her like the wrath of a spiteful goddess. “And who is this bitch?!”
Wow.
Adam… no, not Adam, Warhorse seemed to gain several inches and about a hundred pounds as he straightened out of his habitual approachable stoop. He took one step forward to crowd Katie’s personal space, and Katie took three backwards to try and escape.
“You do not,” he growled, “talk to Technical Sergeant Kovač that way.”
There should have been a roll of thunder and the sky should have darkened or something. To judge from Katie’s reaction, it may as well have. Every ounce of her bluster and self-important anger evaporated in an instant and she turned to Martina to immediately try and stammer an apology.
“Hey, uh, sorry, I was just uh…”
“No.” Adam took another step forward, getting into her personal space again. “Go away. Now.”
Okay. So he was fucking terrifying when he was legitimately angry.
Katie squeaked and fled, and Adam aimed a laser death glare at her until her car was gone. As soon as it was he glanced at Marty and then hesitated when he saw her expression. He stopped moving entirely for a second, then spun away and stormed toward the back door of his apartment building.
Marty kicked herself, relaxed her white-knuckle grip on her beer bottle and willed her pulse down. Even standing nearby, the second-hand fallout of witnessing what Katie had found directed at her had been intense, but still…
That anger had been for her. On her behalf. She hadn’t meant to look so shocked, but the flash of pain she’d seen in his eyes before he got the hell away from her had been…
She had a non-verbal eye contact conversation that lasted for less than a second with both Burgess and Firth, then followed Adam into the building. Rather than heading upstairs to his top-floor pad, she headed downstairs instead, into the “special” part of the gym, the one just for Adam and his closest.
She stopped behind the red lights that marked the end of the safe zone. Just in the few seconds since he’d come in here, Adam had cranked the gravity all the way up, thrown his shirt and sandals off, and was giving his specially-built punching bag an absolutely crushing working-over. He bounced around like a welterweight boxer and punched and kicked it so fast, so hard, and with such intense focus he didn’t notice her waiting on the sideline.
She let him get it out of his system. It took a worryingly long time.
It was an education. This wasn’t some stupid macho peacock posturing, this was genuinely a serious rage like she’d not actually witnessed before. She knew of the kinds of headspace that the Lads could get into, but to actually see it, to watch him methodically beat a fury she could scarcely understand into the wildly-swinging bag…that was something else entirely.
It gave her an immediate appreciation of just what they’d been hiding from her, what Adam had been hiding from her and why. Especially when the violence finally ended with him leaning heavily on the now blood-stained bag, giving it one last half-hearted body-blow and muttering “*Pinche idiota!*” to himself.
He stopped short when he finally turned away from the bag and saw her watching. Suddenly self-conscious, he thumped over to the gravity controls, deactivated the field, and stood awkwardly still except for the heaving of his chest and for his hand nervously scratching the back of his head.
“…Sorry.”
How was it possible for a man who’d just delivered such demolishing force to something, who was standing there all dripping sweat and bulging muscles and toughened, bloody knuckles and shins to look so vulnerable? It was…heartbreaking.
“…Ah, hell,” she said, strode over to him, and kissed him.
He stood confused for a moment, equal parts shocked and surprised. But only for a moment. Two huge arms, each bigger around than her bust line, folded around her and gently crushed her body into his. He returned the kiss not just fiercely, but with a profound sense of relief.
It drove all the important conversation right out of her head. That could all happen later.
Much later.
Date Point: April 11y4m2w AV
Commune of Females, Wi Kao City, Gao
Mother-Supreme Yulna
“And Regaari is leading them?”
Ayma duck-nodded. She was one of the few true friends Yulna had left since her somewhat involuntary ascension, and all the more precious because the essential nature of their relationship hadn’t changed. They were peers, Sisters and, in private, equals. Yulna took every chance she got to have a quiet talk with her old friend. Those talks kept her ’grounded’, as a human would have said.
Besides. The Wi Kao commune was home, and always would be. The official residence of the Mother-Supreme was grand and entirely fit for purpose, of course… but Yulna was a Mother. She needed to be surrounded by cubs and Sisters and Mothers. Their absence felt utterly wrong.
Ayma had once said that she appreciated and admired Yulna’s uncompromising candor. She seemed to view it as her duty to provide that service in reverse now that Yulna was arguably the most powerful Gaoian alive.
“Oh yes. Sister Myun thinks they have all slimmed down and gained some muscle already. Though, she did share something strange.”
Yulna sighed, though there was a chitter hidden in it. “Ayma, something strange describes this whole notion of Clan Whitecrest sending some of its best Brothers to train with the humans.”
“And the humans seem to have persuaded them to run on four-paw.” Ayma’s ears moved at strange angles, an odd melange of delight, confusion, derision and intrigue. “Can you imagine?”
“A Whitecrest running four-pawed? Surely not.”
“The Sisters at the Folctha commune were quite scandalized by it.” Ayma snorted. “Myun thinks they’re being silly.”
“Well, she would…” Yulna muttered darkly.
“What makes you say that?” Ayma asked. Of course, she and Yulna had met on the colony transport after Myun was already a few years old, and Yulna had never shared the details.
“Well, you must have noticed how, ah, big she is nowadays?” Yulna asked.
“She’s like a female version of that throwback Daar,” Ayma duck-nodded.
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Oh? Oh! Oh, that explains *everything!*”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“…Wait. how do you know who her sire-?” Ayma stopped and her ears pricked up. “No! You?! And Daar?”
“It was a moment of weakness!” Yulna defended herself. “He can be… strangely charming.”
“Well yes, he can, but…” Ayma shook herself. “No, never mind. I did too. I just didn’t think you would… never mind.”
“Well, if the humans can persuade Whitecrests to run four-pawed, we’d better keep them far away from the Longears!” Yulna joked.
Ayma made a hesitant noise. “I know Regaari. Anybody who persuaded him to drop his dignity like that will have given him excellent reasons. He didn’t even run four-pawed when he detected that trap on the station where we lost poor Triymin.”
As ever, she wilted slightly when she mentioned that name, and as ever Yulna suppressed a raising of her hackles. The way the Dominion had neglected that poor little Sister had induced even Mother Giymuy to leave angry claw-marks in the furniture, and Giymuy had otherwise been the very picture of composure.
“Why would he have…?” Yulna asked.
“Well…running that way is faster,” Ayma conceded. “And easier. But they are so used to not doing it.”
“So the humans don’t care about being civilized, they only care about performance?”
“They care deeply about civilization. Just… not when lives are at stake. But sometimes even then.” Ayma wobbled her head in a Gaoian shrug.
“That sounds complicated.”
“Humans are complicated people. You remember how Sister Shoo was, and I’ve come to learn that she is…” Ayma paused and picked her words with care. “…reasonably straightforward, by human standards.”
“How is she? I keep meaning to send her a message but I never know what to say.”
“She’s quite famous on Earth now, apparently. I don’t think I understand the idea of being romantically committed to two people at once, especially when one of them is another female, but… well, she wouldn’t be Sister Shoo if she wasn’t a little strange. She seems happy, though.”
“That’s good. She had enough sadness for a lifetime while she was with us.”
They snacked on some dry-roasted Nava larvae for a while and thought.
“…What do you suppose will come of this Whitecrest training?” Ayma asked eventually.
“Personally, I approve,” Yulna admitted. She could be unguarded around Ayma. “Any opportunity that strengthens Gao is to be seized, I think. Learning from the deathworlders, even an alliance with them? I think that can only benefit us.”
“So long as that alliance strengthens us more than it weakens our position with the Dominion.”
Yulna gave her a keen look. “It’s not like you to care for the Dominion.”
Ayma flicked an ear, irritably. “I don’t. The Dominion made us a thousand promises it never intended to keep, if it was ever able to keep them at all,” she said. “And three times now, the humans have done what they couldn’t. The Dominion’s fleetmasters even reached out to Earth to help them in the most recent Alliance skirmishes.”
“Yes.”
“So the official policy of the Clan of Females on cross-species training with the humans is…?”
“Officially, we don’t have one,” Yulna said, flatly. “Unofficially…”
Ayma chittered. “Unofficially, it will be fashionable to speak admiringly of Whitecrests and to talk about how strong and healthy the cubs they sire tend to be.”
“Do you think you can encourage such a fashion?” Yulna asked.
Ayma chittered again, set down her drink and sat forward.
“Mother-supreme, I can even be sincere,” she said.
Date Point: April 11y4m2w AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Martina Kovač
The comparative cool woke Martina up, eventually. There was no longer a huge, hot and heavy body next to her, which had been so comforting the night before, and now it was gone.
She blinked and sat up, checked the time. Too early for him to have gone for his morning PT. So where-?
Her brain finally decided to check in with her nose, and her mouth began to water instantly. That was definitely the smell of breakfast, and God was it welcome. They’d kinda… skipped the barbecue yesterday.
The sinful and completely inappropriate thought crossed her mind that she’d eaten plenty of meat anyway last night, and she burst out laughing.
Adam’s face appeared in the doorway, covered in a happy but confused smile. “Y’a’ight?”
She flapped a hand at him and got her giggling under control. “Ahhh… just,” she cleared her throat and massaged her smile down a bit. “…just happy.”
He beamed. “Wait there,” he said, and vanished.
Martina fluffed up the pillows behind her and sat back to try and review things in a slightly more sober light.
Okay. So. Amazing sex aside, where did their relationship stand? Had last night been pure intensity and hormones and general stress-relief, or were they both ready for something serious? That was question one. She suspected, or hoped, the latter but that was going to depend on Adam as well.
Question two was, if they were going to get serious then what were the rules? They were going to need rules. The Lads, and especially Adam, lived on rules, or else their limitless energies would swiftly ruin everything they did. Without clear boundaries, their personalities quickly became overwhelming.
Last night had proved that, too. Overwhelming indeed…
She realised that she was chewing on a fingernail and got her train of thought back on track.
So.. what were the rules? And could there be too many? A relationship needed some spontaneity after all, even if it was just spontaneously zoning out on the couch with some bad TV.
And-
No, wait. She was falling into the exact trap she wanted him to avoid. She was planning fifty thousand steps ahead and she hadn’t even had breakfast yet. With an effort of will she calmed her thoughts, snuggled back into the bedding with a sigh and bit her lip as she reviewed some of the highlights of last night.
She was basking and happy when Adam appeared with two trays, one much more heavily laden than the other. His huge bed groaned as he sat down beside her, though thankfully the mattress was amazing and kept her from rolling into him.
“So what are you having?” Martina asked him with a grin as he handed her the smaller tray. It was a ludicrous question but she was still kinda… high. And ravenous.
“Just some bacon and waffles,” he replied, missing the joke. “I’ll have dessert later…”
Marty rolled her eyes privately, then attacked her breakfast with vigor. She had an active night on an empty stomach to recover from.
Somehow he managed to finish before she did despite having a much larger pile of food to get through, and he went on a supply run to grab coffee as she polished off the meal. He’d judged it pretty damn well in fact—when she put her fork down she felt replete, but not stuffed.
“So,” she said as he sat down.
“So?”
“So… You and me, huh?”
Adam stopped pouring the coffee. “Uh… yeah?” Marty knew that look. It was the look of a guy who was high on a run of good luck and clearly thought he was out of his league, and was suddenly nervous that the bubble would pop.
“It’s about damn time,” she told him with a grin, and he relaxed and finished the caffeine ritual with a smile.
“Yeah. I just… I dunno. I’m sorry it took me so long to get my shit sorted out.”
“You reckon you have?”
“Enough to try,” he said. “I mean… I just know my dumb ass is gonna fuck up somehow somewhen, but…”
Marty kissed his cheek “We’ll take it a step at a time. And trust me, I’ll fuck up sometimes too, that’s just how relationships go.”
“…Okay.” He was visibly making an effort not to vibrate happily. “But…promise me something? Let me know when I’m fuckin’ up? I…I wanna learn.”
“I wanna learn too. I’m not some magic relationship wizard, ‘Horse. We’ll just take things as they come and try not to overthink things and… just enjoy ourselves. Okay? Crawl, walk, run.”
“Like last night?” He was wearing an incredibly smug expression, one she’d not seen before. It was playful and just the right kind of possessive.
“Oh yeah. A lot like last night.” Marty was feeling pretty damn smug too. “Did you learn?”
He nodded happily then snuggled close, kissed her below her ear and whispered. “I’m always ready to learn more…”
He was incorrigible, and so easy to read. And a quick study, too—she loved that spot. But Marty was only human. “Not now, Romeo. I need some rest. And a hot shower.”
He chuckled ruefully and gathered the trays. “Aww. Well, get showered. I’ll clean up and-”
“And wait for me to finish!” she warned with a laugh, and vanished into the bathroom before he could summon a retort.
Plans and fuckups and everything else aside, somehow she just knew that they were going to work.
Date Point: May 11y5m2w AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Lieutenant Kieran Mears
Letter for notes,
RE: MSgt Christian Firth
Master Sergeant Firth continues to struggle with his violent impulses and expresses guilt over his thoughts. He has described in vivid detail one particular incident involving a young, officious Airman First Class at the 946th’s Military Personnel Flight, on a typically bureaucratic issue involving awards and official records. He recalls imagining an incredibly detailed act of torture and murder all while nodding politely and working towards a resolution of his records issue. To his delight the Airman did resolve the complaint, along with another problem Firth was unaware of, and this triggered a sudden and profound feeling of guilt about his thoughts. He states this type of incident seems to be the kind which “really bum [him] out.” He reports that, later on, he bought lunch for “the silly kid” and ended the encounter on a positive note, even if “the little shit seemed kinda ‘scared of [him].”
Sergeant Firth is a tricky case, as are many of his profession. His violent ideations are, put bluntly, things a reasonable man would consider sadistic and unwarranted even in the context of a warrior coping with trauma and the demands of his profession. In my personal experience I have never encountered a man with a stronger penchant for violence. His raw physicality makes him an intimidating man, so much so that I find it difficult to maintain professional objectivity.
However, this is balanced by two important factors. He is possessed of supreme self-discipline which manifests in virtually every aspect of his personality. He keeps a detailed log of his training, for example, which includes every single exercise or activity he’s ever done since early high school. He is working in his spare time with Sergeant Arés to develop a better training app for his use and the team by extension, and though he desribes himself as “a pretty shit programmer” he is learning with the aid of Sergeant Sikes. Like all the HEAT operators he takes to a hobby with a seemingly borderline obsession, and this seems to be a largely positive force in their lives.
The second factor is his deep, and at first surprising, well of empathy. Once he shows concern for anyone or anything it becomes difficult to contrast his almost doting and protective personality with his darker side. This again is a psychiatric pattern common in men like him but in no other case have I seen it developed to such extremes. He expresses unreserved and effectively absolute affection and love for his team, for Bozo, for Major Powell (though this, obviously, has an aspect of enforced emotional distance), he feels he’s “warming up” to the Gaoians and the “cherries,” and he even expressed a fondness for myself, though I have politely encouraged him to retain a detached relationship with me.
I believe him to be a stable and reliable edge case personality. On paper his personality battery is filled with contradicting extremes, but his self-discipline is key. All personal development should be focused on strengthening and rewarding that discipline. This is especially key as he is one to downplay many of his more admirable qualities and may be prone to self-loathing. Firth is a man who needs companionship and a sense of belonging.
I shall see him again in six months, or very probably sooner; he is not comfortable sharing his most violent ideations with anyone but me.
-Lt. K Mears Counsellor, HMS Sharman