Date Point: 13y2d AV
Starship Negotiable Curiosity, departing planet Aru, Elder Space
Vakno
“That was not Zane.”
“Sure as shit looked like him, Sister. Tall black dude, scary expression, metal arm.”
“You must be able to see in the dark better than I can…” Vakno grumbled. She was surprised to find herself grieving, and was covering for it with irritability.
“…It was dark in there? Whatever. How the fuck was that not Zane? I met the guy before… Though, uh, he didn’t try an’ shoot at me that time.”
“Did he sound like Zane to you?”
Dog’s hands were still shaking, she noticed. He was disguising it well by fidgeting with things, but the human was plainly badly rattled.
“…Guess he didn’t. Dude sounded like a Reggae album last time I met him.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“All like ‘one love’ and stuff.” Dog cleared his throat. “Sound familiar? For real though, what the shit was that about?”
They had abandoned Dog’s shuttle. It was a cheap Dominion stock model anyway, but the infamous ’flying brick’ had got them back to the Negotiable Curiosity in decent time and the human was now piloting Bedu’s ship into orbit to rendezvous with his own vessel.
“He was always…violent,” Vakno ventured. “What was your interest in him?”
“I work for a human corporate conglomerate. Hephaestus,” Wagner replied. “Our boy there was a link in a smuggling chain that managed to get a sample of something called Cruezzir past Cimbrean border control. You heard of it?”
Vakno rose above the impulse to be sarcastic and settled for simply saying “I have. And I know that it interacts in impressive ways with human biology.”
“Mm.” Wagner nodded. “Hephaestus want to know where he got hold of the stuff. So they sent me to track him down.”
“I’m glad they had the sense to send somebody who knows how to fight.”
A black laugh exploded out of Dog ‘s mouth. “Hah! Oh, shit, sister! You think that was fighting?”
“You shot at him.”
“So did that Bedu fella.” Dog paused. “Hey, I’m…Sorry about him. You were friends?”
“No.”
“…Oh.”
There was a long, awkward pause during which the searing hot blue of Aru’s sky faded to starry black and Wagner injected the Negotiable Curiosity onto a rendezvous orbit with a distant sensor contact.
“..I do regret his loss, however,” Vakno conceded, eventually. “You… don’t know how to fight?”
“I know which end of a gun is the angry one…” Dog shrugged. “That wasn’t fighting. That was running away and makin’ a lot of noise to try and force him to keep his head down.”
“You had Nervejam grenades.”
“Yuh. In case of Hunters.” Dog shook his head and ran a hand over the grey and silver stubble that passed for his hair. “Never thought I’d use them on another human, fuck.”
“I…am not entirely certain that was a human,” Vakno ventured.
“Sure as shit looked like a human, sister.”
“But it didn’t behave like the human it looked like,” Vakno pointed out. “You said yourself, our assailant did not sound like Zane.”
Dog frowned thoughtfully. A moving star up ahead was quickly resolving itself into an elderly but well-maintained light bulk transport. They swept up its sunward flank and Vakno made out two different liveries on its hull–the faded and battered stamp of Yrvrk Shipyards and a newer, clearer icon she didn’t recognize: the silhouette of a muscular human raising a hammer high above an anvil.
“Out of interest, Mister Wagner…” she asked, carefully. “Would you happen to have any neural implants?”
Dog shook his head. “Used to. Hephaestus paid me a big bonus to get the dang thing taken out ASAP,” he grumbled. “Never did figure out why…you think it has something to do with Dread there goin’ Rambo on our asses?”
“I suspected there was a…hazard involved,” Vakno told him. Dog’s hands swiped through the control fields one last time, Negotiable Curiosity shook hands with the freighter’s systems, and the two ships began the process of docking.
“Suspected?”
“Yes,” Vakno nodded. “Now, I know for certain.”
Date Point: 13y1w AV
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, Earth
Allison Buehler
Allison’s memory of Taylor Hamlin was a skinny boy with untamed straw blond hair and a quick smile. After seventeen years, she was expecting him to have changed and he had…for the better. He had the same hair and the same smile, but he’d piled on six inches in height and fifty pounds in weight. Really, only his personality had changed: the old Taylor would have met her in a huge and enthusiastic hug.
Then again…Allison would have liked to believe that she’d have done the same. Reality had a way of proving people wrong about themselves.
He stood on the doorstep and smiled at her warily, she stood next to the car and watched him warily, and it took a shove in the butt from Xiù to get her moving.
At least she was able to speak first. “…Hey.”
“Hi.”
“Been a long time…”
“Yeah…You, uh. Doing well for yourself.”
She laughed and nodded. “Yeah. Guess I am…so are you from what I hear, Doctor Hamlin.”
Taylor cleared his throat. “Well… I had a son to look after. I…”
He paused, thought about what he’d just said, and then sighed and shook his head at himself. “Jesus, Allison, I’m sorry about him. I had no idea he’d—”
“It’s…” Allison balked at saying ’okay’ on the grounds that it patently wasn’t. The only place on Earth where she’d felt comfortable and at peace was a pile of ash under a deeper pile of snow at this point. That didn’t leave a lot of room for ’okay.’
“…You didn’t do it,” she said instead, then got the hell away from that subject for the moment. “Uh…Guess you recognize Xiù and Julian.”
“Yeah!” Taylor grabbed the opportunity to be a friendly host, and met them both with a friendly handshake and more than a hint of relief. “It’s a pleasure.”
“Nice to meet you,” Julian told him. He was being polite, Allison knew—in fact he’d spent most of the flight over on Byron’s private jet rumbling ominously about Taylor’s obvious deficiencies as a parent, but Allison really couldn’t blame him. That house had been even more important to him than it was to her.
It was out of his system now, though, and Taylor’s obvious mortification was taking the edge off.
“I…guess you’d better come in.”
“Thank you,” Xiù of course could be nice to anybody and mean it, though the effect was spoiled by a crash and heavy footfalls inside the house as Taylor welcomed them inside. A door slammed upstairs and a voluptuous woman with pearlescent purple hair shot Taylor a desperate look from the bottom of the stairs.
“He just ran up there…” she explained. Taylor scowled and stormed to the stairs.
”ALEX! You either get your ass back down here, or God help me I’ll take you back to jail myself you little shit!”
The change in his attitude was impressive, and it made his wife wince.
“Jesus…he wouldn’t even be out on bond if you hadn’t agreed to it,” he grumbled after a second.
Mrs. Hamlin looked like she was fighting back tears. “I’m so sorry about this, I—”
Allison thawed out a little and shook her head. “It’s…uh, you’re Amanda?”
“Uh, yeah. Sorry, this is just—” Amanda sighed hugely, then offered a hand. Allison gave it her firmest shake, which after two years of engineering work on a spaceship was pretty damn firm.
“Is it okay if I go up there?” she asked.
Taylor and Amanda looked at each other.
“I…” Taylor began, then gave up. “…guess it can’t hurt.”
“His room’s the one on the right, with the poster on the door,” Amanda supplied.
Allison nodded. “Right…uh…”
She turned to Julian and Xiù who both made identical gestures of encouragement and managed to communicate without words that they’d hold down the fort downstairs. It sometimes amazed her how much they could say to each other without speaking, nowadays.
She thanked them with a smile, and trudged the subjective five miles up the stairs, running over a million different conversations in her head.
In the end, she settled for knocking gently on his door.
“…I think your dad might be serious,” she ventured.
There was no reply.
“…Look. I don’t know how this is gonna go. I don’t really know why I came here, even.”
The silence changed in a way that was hard to define. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking.
“Maybe we’ll only speak this once. Maybe we’ll figure something out,” she continued. “Maybe we’ll both go away hating each other. But… I don’t know. Let’s just talk. Please.”
There was a thump, a click, and the door was opened by…herself.
A male, teenage herself wearing an ankle tag, sure. But the cheekbones, the freckles, the nordic hair, were all straight out of the mirror. Only the eyes were different—he had Taylor’s eyes, behind the redness.
And she had no idea what to say.
Date Point: 13y1w AV Scotch Creek, British Columbia, Canada, Earth
Adam Arés
Sometimes, being the biggest dude ever had its upsides.
It didn’t always seem that way. Sure, being basically the best physical specimen humanity had ever produced in literally every category worth measuring was a huge ego boost. Adam would have been lying to himself if he’d pretended at modesty there…But it all came with a price.
Prices like travel, as Rebar and Starfall had discovered when they tried to fly home two years prior only to learn that they were already far too heavy for safety’s sake. And while both men were easily among the strongest and most athletic people ever, and out-massed any power athlete competing, they just weren’t in the same league as the Beef Brothers.
Fortunately, military airlift was a thing. And rental trucks were a thing. And in British Columbia, cheap, huge old pickups with stupidly souped-up suspension and full-size crew cabs were a thing, too. So, Adam got his road trip after all.
They’d bought the truck off a farmer growing “hemp” in the rural areas around Scotch Creek, and the conversation had been the same dreary kind of thing Adam was growing all too used to.
“Christ, boy! You’re huge!”
Adam sighed inwardly but Major Jackson had taught him never to let that show. Instead he reminded himself how good it felt to have his ego stroked and dropped right into character as ’Left Beef.’
“Yup!” He grinned, bouncing in place on his sandaled toes. The decking creaked ominously, which was always enough to make him actually enjoy the role-playing.
Farmer…Joe? Maybe? Whatever his name was he shook his head disbelievingly. “I saw you on the talk show but, I mean…video don’t do you justice. Christ.”
Adam beamed, “And we’re even bigger since then!” He bounced again and drawled with his goofiest, friendliest grin, “That’s why we want the truck. You sure the suspension’s good?”
Farmer Joe gave the two a closer look and nodded warily. “Yeah…I mean, it’ll handle the weight, and the seat’s are the really good commercial ones, but…are you really that heavy?”
Adam rolled his eyes internally but nodded happily. After all, the gawping, giggling disbelief that people aimed at him was pretty high on his list of Dumb Macho Things He Was Absurdly Proud Of But Tried Not To Be an Ass About. He’d written that down, too. His little book had all sorts of weird lists like that, which Marty teased him about endlessly. That was okay; he liked the teasing. That was in a list, too.
So he flexed his arm, because that was what people expected and he did enjoy the praise and attention, and of course Farmer Joe-Bob or whatever reached up to feel that bicep exactly like a six-year-old kid would have. And then, as people always did when they found themselves gripping an arm as thick as their torso and as hard as asphalt, he got all awkward.
“Woah. That’s just…I mean, uh, damn, it’s not a, like, trick or—”
Adam’s grin got wider. “Yup, it’s all true, just like we said on the interview. We’re in perfect health, too.” He waited then grinned, “And yeah, everything important works just fine, don’t it Marty?”
Marty’s slow troll grin should have been illegal, especially the way she ran an arched eyebrow up and down his body. “I’m still recovering,” she drawled. Adam had foreseen her quip and known he’d be embarrassed, so there was nothing he could do to stop his cheeks from reddening…but he really did enjoy her teasing.
As planned, Marty’s smirk embarrassed Farmer Joe enough to persuade him to move on. He quickly glanced at the ground and coughed awkwardly into his fist. “…you fellahs got the cash?”
Because of course, a man farming “hemp” wouldn’t trust bank accounts. Even if the stuff was perfectly legal to grow in Canada nowadays, some old habits died hard.
Adam held up a thick envelope filled with plastic Canadian cash. “Yup, right here. You got the title?”
He handed it over and watched Farmer Joe count the pile suspiciously, three times. When he finally nodded and handed over the title, Adam inspected and signed it with equal wariness. Job done, they shook hands carefully and Marty hopped into the driver’s seat, put it in neutral, and Adam pushed the truck backwards out of the barn with one hand and not even a grunt of effort, as easily as someone might push an empty shopping cart. He was maybe showing off a little for everyone’s fun but Farmer Joe only boggled at that for a moment, because ‘Base came jogging easily up the gravel road from the other end of the farmstead with four of those five-gallon “jerry cans” slung over his back and a huge, empty duffel bag in either hand.
Adam couldn’t blame Farmer Joe. A tall, midnight-black colossus practically sprinting down the road in nothing but his running shorts must have been an impressive sight in rural Canada. Adam always thought ‘Right Beef’ really was the superior slab, anyway. But ‘Base kept placing second in the internet polls…and Adam was hugely stronger and he knew it, too. And faster. On the one level he was slightly embarrassed about that, but on another level…
More Dumb Macho Things for the List.
“Yo, Marty! We know what we need yet?”
She popped the hood and performed a quick, inscrutable inspection. Nothing worked: When she climbed into the cab and turned the key neither the engine nor the lights even flickered, and she climbed back out sighing.
“Pretty much everything,” she reported. “Including a battery.”
“I told’ya it’s been sitting dead for years,” Farmer said defensively.
“Yeah, don’t worry,” Marty soothed him. “It’s about what I expected. We’ll fix i t up.”
“You need a ride down to the gas station?”
“Nah,” Base grinned hugely. “I got this.”
“I’ll wash and detail the truck,” Marty promised.
Adam nodded. “And I’ll, uh… You got any chores you need doing?”
He was still having trouble adjusting to a life without nonstop exercise. He’d trained hardcore every single day of his life since he was fifteen and it really was hard to go without. It was as important to him as breathing and eating, and he badly needed the slightly euphoric rush it gave him.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t be useful, though, so he spent the next few hours helping Joe out around the farm while the other two did their thing. He worked up a pretty good sweat doing so, too. They didn’t talk much, but Adam found himself liking the guy anyway; Joe knew how to work hard and smart, and between them they got a few big jobs squared away before John finally returned. He particularly enjoyed breaking up a tree stump. The look on Farmer Joe’s face when Adam got the damn thing wedged open and then literally tore it in half with his bare hands was priceless.
As it turned out the guy’s name actually was Joe, too. Adam really had to get better with names.
John was an even bigger tightwad than Adam and had insisted on running the nearly twenty mile round trip to the cheapest gas station in the area. He’d brought the duffel bags too, since they needed more than a few supplies to get the long-dormant truck running; neither of the Beef Brothers knew much about cars, so Marty was in charge there and she’d drawn up a long shopping list, which ‘Base had happily fulfilled.
Advanced battery tech finally made hypercharging a practical reality, and tax relief combined with recycling credits and substantial adopter incentives meant that the traditional internal combustion engine was an increasingly endangered species in American auto culture, kept alive only by purists and practical sorts who could keep an old vehicle running for decades. Among environmentally and financially conscious sorts, electric was far ahead and the gap was widening every day. Farmer Joe had obviously been an early adopter.
All of which explained why John was shaking his head ruefully as he arrived. “Twelve bucks a gallon,” he reported with a pained expression. Adam hissed through his teeth but Marty shrugged it off.
“It’ll still work out way cheaper than buying an electric truck woulda,” she promised.
Adam trusted her judgement implicitly. Marty’s day job involved handling supply problems infinitely more complex than merely keeping a truck fuelled and on the road. She would have figured out their fuel budget to the dime, and built in a safety margin.
John just shrugged enormously and dug through his duffel bags, then handed over a plastic shopping bag full of motor oil, windshield washer fluid and Slim Jims, and went ‘round the other side of the truck to fuel it.
Twenty messy minutes later, the truck was ready to run, Marty was cleaning the oil off her hands, Adam and John had loaded all their luggage into the bed, and the time had finally come to test the suspension.
Adam climbed into the driver’s seat.
There was a loud creak, but the cab didn’t list too much and it balanced itself out with another metallic groan when Baseball climbed in on the passenger side. Clearly the suspension wasn’t as good as the trucks the SOR used but it held up okay even if Marty did report that the vehicle was sitting noticeably lower.
It barely wobbled when she clambered into the back seat.
Farmer Joe spent the whole show leaning against his barn and watching with his mouth agape. He seemed more surprised than anyone that it held up, and if there was a hint of relief on his face when Adam cranked the engine and roared it into life, none of them bothered to comment.
This truck was Adam’s first and maybe last vehicle, and just for a moment he felt a pang of regret that internal combustion was on its way out. That grumbling beast under the hood felt and sounded good, like there was something alive in this critter that the whining, humming drivetrains of an electric truck just couldn’t measure up against.
It sure drove differently. His first few yards of reversing were jerky and violent as he got used to the power curve and aimed them down the farm track. Farmer Joe jogged up the track to wish them well, invite them back for a visit on their return trip…
“And I’ll have lots of work to do, if you’re willing!”
Adam grinned in reply, settled himself in comfortably, and psyched himself up for the trip.
“Y’guys ready?” he asked. “Marty gets first song!”
Marty already had her phone out and synched up to the truck’s Bluetooth, but she didn’t start the music just yet.
“Aren’t you boys forgetting something?” she asked.
Adam turned around. She grinned at him from behind a pair of chrome-framed pilot’s sunglasses.
“Shit, yeah,” he agreed, and plucked his pair from where he’d hung them on his shirt’s neck seam. Baseball chuckled and fished his pair out of his pocket, and Adam looked back to Marty for approval. “Better?”
”Much better,” she agreed, and started the music
The Beef Brothers exchanged a high five, waved farewell to Farmer Joe-Bob-Jim Whatever, and Adam set about putting a lot of road between them and Scotch Creek.
They had two whole months of leave. He intended to use every second to its fullest, spend it on food and singing along badly to loud music, and seeing things he’d never seen before…
And maybe, just maybe, those two months would be enough time to work up the courage he needed…
Date Point: 13y1w2d AV
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, Earth
Julian Etsicitty
Xiù was still gamely making small-talk with Amanda Hamlin, but Julian and Taylor had fallen into a strange kind of silence that was almost comfortable. Beer and a couch had a way of doing that. Julian just couldn’t hang around with a guy until well after sundown and not feel a little kinship with him.
The fact was, he’d wound up forgiving the Hamlins pretty quickly. It was obvious that they were good people dealing with a damn difficult kid. He’d spent the whole trip over betting they were going to find a couple of deadbeat bleeding-hearts who were more interested in being their son’s best friend than actually parenting him.
Reality wasn’t so easy. Taylor Hamlin seemed like a good dad saddled with a shitty kid and that was the whole shape of it. He was blaming himself top to bottom for Alex’s crime, and that was all the proof Julian needed—if he’d tried to wriggle out of it or disavow responsibility, he’d have felt vindicated. As it was, their sincere contrition was making him like them.
Still…their son had burned down his grampa’s house. That was going to take more than a beer and a chat to paper over. He tried not to be chilly, but the fact was that he’d have just about killed to get out of that house, and it was clear that Taylor knew it.
When Allison finally came back downstairs with her coat folded over her arm, it was a genuine relief. Everybody stood up.
”…Nǐ hái hǎo ma?” Xiù scowled at herself as she realized she’d got her languages mixed up again, but Allison had picked up enough Chinese by now that she just shrugged expressively. Julian knew that shrug: it was a ‘no’ with some clauses and exceptions.
“I dunno,” she said. “I think there’s some bridges just can’t be mended…I’m sorry, I think we should go. I…Taylor, we’ll stay in touch?”
Taylor nodded. “Sure.”
They were outside and back in the car so quick that Julian was left with his head spinning, despite his musing about wanting to get the hell out of there. It sure seemed to take their driver by surprise, and he was still scrambling to stuff a Manga into the glove compartment as they piled in.
The Hamlins watched them pull away and Allison drew a line under the whole surreal incident by covering her face with her hands and breathing out between them in a long and complicated way.
“I have…no idea what that accomplished or why we even did it,” she admitted at last.
“Closure?” Xiù suggested. “I think you probably needed to speak with him…”
“Yeah, great. Now I don’t need to suspect that my son hates me, I know it for a fact.”
There was a hurt silence, and she sat up straight. “God, I’m sorry babe. It’s not—”
Xiù took her hand. “It’s okay.”
“…I really hate this planet. You know that?”
“I think this planet hates you too,” Julian ventured to joke. For a second, Allison stared blankly at the back of the seat in front of her and he worried he’d got it wrong, but then she cracked a small smile and gave him a look that was full of sad gratitude.
“Maybe,” she agreed. “…What happens next?”
“Think you and I both need to put the past behind us,” Julian suggested. “I gotta let go of the house, you’ve gotta let go of Alex…”
Xiù fiddled with one of her rings and nodded. “And I let go of my family a long time ago.”
Allison looked at her. “You did?”
Xiù nodded again, but didn’t say anything else.
They were almost back to the airport by the time any of them spoke again. Allison shifted in her seat uncomfortably.
“Makes me think…” she mused.
Julian inclined his head at her. “What?”
“Well, here we’re putting the past behind us but we’re working with Dan to preserve the People’s heritage and culture,” she explained. “I’m just wondering…”
It was Xiù’s turn to nudge her. “Wondering what?”
“I wonder if we can teach them about this.”
Xiù shook her head. “They already know that one,” she said. “They left their old village, remember?”
“I guess…”
“Trust me on this,” Xiù told her, and rubbed her back. “The People know all about leaving things behind…”
Date Point: 13y1w2d AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Near 3Kpc Arm
The Singer
Sickness was always a danger whenever tribes met. There was always a new one, but now…now the tribes were so close. They had united behind Yan and Vemik and the magic of steel, and they had followed high into the mountains where the air felt weak and cold, and where the wind bit like a yshek. The camps had been moved closer together as the People huddled together for warmth and comfort.
That huddling had allowed sickness to sweep through them all like wind through the fallen leaves. Shivering-sickness, sweating-sickness. Sickness that a healthy man or woman could sweat through for a night or two, and be well on the third…
But some lives were frailer than others. And the smallest bodies were the heaviest.
There was nothing she could have done. She’d sang every song she knew, danced every dance she’d ever been taught. She’d given the child root-milk and eased her pain with ketta sap…and in the end, the only thing she could do for her own daughter was to hold her as she shivered her last and went to sleep forever.
Children died. It was a fact of life, she knew that. But she still felt like some cold and malicious god had reached into her chest with claws of bile and torn out a piece of her heart.
And the worst part was, that Vemik didn’t know. He was scouting ahead with his father, looking for a way through the mountain passes that the Tribes could all follow without having to abandon their equipment. They had precious little to spare anyway. He would come home to find his daughter dead, and still the tribes would rely on him to be their sky-thinker. She doubted if he would have the chance to properly grieve.
Then again, she doubted if she would either. It seemed impossible that she could give voice to all her pain.
She tried. She swaddled the tiny body in rawhide and took it to a sacred place where numbing cold water formed a vivid blue pool under the nose of a river of ice. A place where sky and earth and water touched, and where birds circled endlessly on the wind, hunting for the skittish furry things that darted about among the purple mountain grasses.
She placed her child on the open rocks where the birds would see her, and she tried to sing…but the words sulked in her chest and refused to come out. She tried to dance, but her body wouldn’t move. So she sat, and watched, and wished until the sun touched the edge of the world.
And in the end, she didn’t sing at all.
She stood, and turned, and walked away with a heart full of emptiness, and a soul full of doubts.
Date Point: 13y1w3d AV
Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, United States
Daar
In the end, the Earth herself finally achieved something that no Human ever had: she managed to humble Daar.
It wasn’t a feeling he was used to; not even his total defeat by Murray had managed to actually humble him. Humiliate and educate him, yes, but after that Daar had trained, and learned, and taught, and got better. He liked doing all those things and so did SOR! Over time all that ‘Back-hard training and study paid off, and now their sparring sessions were fun because it wasn’t obvious who might win or how the fight might go. Progress!
His record with Murray at the moment was three wins, ten losses. Not where Daar wanted it, but with more practice…Firth was pretty much impossible, though. One day, maybe, Daar might just about manage to trip that scary motherfucker, and he knew that when it happened he’d be too excited to talk.
But as impressive as all that was, no matter how much he trained, and improved, and learned, and grew beyond anything he or the whole of the Gao had ever dreamed could be…there just wasn’t much of anything Daar’s supreme body could do against an Earthling fungus. He’d let his many and impressive physical achievements cloud his judgement and ‘Mother Nature’ was a harsh instructor. He’d complained about the stupidly expensive portable biofield, and the antibiotics, and the full-time med tech assigned to him…and then a tiny little cut was all it took to knock him down like a runt cub who refused his milk. His lesson in humility had damn near killed him, and come closer still to costing him a paw. Earth held its Deathworld classification for a reason and had slapped him hard the moment his hubris had let him forget it.
After that, nobody was as fastidiously clean as Daar.
He noticed afterwards, though, that the Humans were to a lesser degree ‘in the same boat’ as him. Cleanliness and disease control were bred into every single tiny little facet of their daily lives, so much so they didn’t even notice unless it was pointed out. They kept those soft, dexterous paws of theirs immaculately clean. They regularly washed their mouths with antiseptics and kept their oily skin scrubbed free of all dirt, and if anyone failed to do so, their fellows complained loudly. They even covered their noses and mouths at the first hint of a cough or sneeze.
At first, it had seemed weird how they complained so loudly of their own body odor. It wasn’t more pungent than other scents they were routinely wallowing in, so why the difference? Same with the covering; not doing so was actually rude! Maybe it was a group psychology thing, some built-in attempt to keep everyone clean. He’d initially written it off as another case of ’Humans are weird,’ but Earth was a constant education in the intricacies of bacterial filth and hungry fungi.
And their cooking! It was an elaborate sanitary dance from start to finish. The ‘Americans’ even had full-time professional ‘meat inspectors’ which Daar thought was a super good idea. Maybe import that to Cimbrean for their Naxas operations? After all, there was now the possibility of Human cross-contamination, and the Gao were drawing ever closer to Earth…
Honestly, the engineering school and the blowing-up of all the things was an almost secondary experience. The real learning opportunity was how Humans dealt with Earth, and Daar realized he’d need to write extensively about it for Highmountain.
Well…dictate, anyway. There wasn’t time for writing.
Not that it mattered: Those notes would be classified for the moment anyway, at least until they figured out how to deal with their Brother-Clan. He still wasn’t completely solid with Brother Tyal, either. What had once been the healthy respect of a Brother for his Champion had been replaced with…subservient awe. Not good, though Daar understood that feeling all too well; he’d come dangerously close to wallowing in it when he’d first joined the SOR.
But a Champion could not afford that kind of indulgence, and so the only thing he could think to do was push through his fear, and the uncertainty, and the unknown. Daar was on Earth to learn as the Humans learned, and maybe teach them a little of the Stoneback Way, too.
And, hell. Maybe Daar wouldn’t ever be as completely good as a Human, but in Great Father Fyu’s name it wouldn’t be for a lack of trying. He would find out just what his limits were, push them as hard as he could, and the Clan would take notes.
And then, they would breed the next generation. If they survived what was coming.
But all that was ahead of Daar. Right now he had an exam to study for, so he curled up around his most favoritest blanket after his nightly clean-up routine, cracked open his book, and broke out his highlighter and pens. He had a bet with Sikes and had to score above a ninety, or he would be stuck doing the SOR’s laundry for a whole month.
Motivation didn’t come any more motivating than a pile of ranger shorts.
He stopped contemplating his paw, and returned to his studies.