Trans-Canada Highway 1, Little Shuswap Lake, British Columbia, Canada, Earth.
Adam Arés
“Trending Watch now, and drivers near Scotch Creek are tweeting pictures of…”
“…Two stupid motherfuckers carrying a busted-ass truck along the freeway,” ‘Base finished, with an irritated grunt.
Adam shrugged. Privately, he was glad of the exercise even if it wasn’t up to his full standard. They’d carried heavier and more difficult stuff over the years than hoisting up the back end of a truck and carrying it down nice flat pavement, but the axle had busted two miles from the next off-ramp, and they didn’t want to pay for a tow truck.
They didn’t have any Crude with them but a little overexertion wasn’t all that big of a deal, so they took turns holding the rear of the truck off the ground and jogging with the weight of it on their arms like the world’s heaviest wheelbarrow. They’d chugged one of Adam’s “juggernog” energy drinks, roughed up their hands and dug their fingers into the frame, and set to it with Marty in the driving seat.
It was wonderfully exhausting, but even the Beef Bros had their limits, so it was a profound relief when Marty finally sang out the words they’d been waiting for. “Off ramp!”
“Fuckin’ finally…”
They said it simultaneously, then shared a wry grin.
The truck’s live axles precluded simply pushing it up the slope since the rear one had snapped somehow when Marty of all people had jumped into the cargo bed to fetch a snack after pulling over.
She’d spent ten minutes scowling red-faced in the front seat and promising unlimited pain for whichever man was foolish enough to tease her about it before finally agreeing that there was a funny side. Adam knew he should probably stop giggling about it at some point, but that was easier said than done, especially when she glared at him and blushed all over again.
That broken axle was a particularly interesting challenge. It meant the rear couldn’t bear its own weight in any productive way, which meant that one of the Bros had to lift it. Nor could they just lift and push it from behind. That was perfectly doable on flat ground, but not up a hill. Sure, both of them were so heavy they needed a pallet scale to weigh themselves, but even that didn’t stack up against the truck. Its mass could simply tip them over and roll over the top.
And of course the off-ramp was a steep hill with a hairpin bend at the bottom. And long, too. The only thing they could do was pick up the truck and carry it as best they could, with Adam in the front because he was stronger and heavier and could pull the whole weight of it backwards, and John in the rear because he was taller and had longer limbs.
Marty hopped out and packed on as many of their bags as she could carry, which wasn’t half bad. She wasn’t big, but she’d been fit and strong even before going on the Warhorse Fitness Plan. Still, her contribution didn’t make a huge difference but Adam wasn’t about to tell her that. She probably needed to feel like part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
It took them about ten minutes to carry it up the ramp and the rest of the way to the Race Trac gas station—a mile away, naturally—and by the time they were finished, they were both gasping for air and wobbly on their feet, utterly drenched in sweat, and bleeding slightly from their hands.
The truck’s front axle gave out the second Adam put it down.
Marty was last up, red-faced and exhausted under a slightly-too-heavy pile of luggage that she tipped gratefully into the truck’s bed before leaning heavily on the tailgate and gulping for air.
“Good…good training,” she managed.
Adam huffed in reply with a weary grin, and slid down to sit on his ass against the truck’s wheel.
After a brief rest, Marty took it on herself to go into the station and arrange things while the Bros recovered. No point in them stinking up the place and knocking stuff over.
It was kinda peaceful outside. Sure, there was the susurrus of traffic from the freeway but in the age of widespread electric drive trains that was way quieter. The occasional old diesel big-rig that came storming through was almost a literal dinosaur from the roar of its engine. Adam shared a fist-bump with John and rested his head back to listen and drink it in while energy seeped back into their muscles.
The radio in the truck was still on the hour-long news roundup which he ignored right up until the presenter’s calm and professional tones changed, quite suddenly.
“Uh…we have, uh, breaking news right now. Breaking news coming from, uh, Omaha where we’re getting a confirmed report of a large explosion, a bomb of some kind gone off. Emergency services are responding to a possible terrorist incident at the Byron Group Advanced Aerospace Assembly Facility…Don’t have a lot more detail than that right now, but it looks like there may be an active shooter situation there…”
“Shit!”
“What’s in Omaha?” Base asked.
“The Triple-A-F? That’s where Misfit is. Shit, I hope they’re okay…”
“Ah, mother*fuck*er…”
Marty returned with beef jerky and Gatorade, and called Farmer Joe while they made short work of it.
“He’s got a pickup that can handle you two,” she reasoned, putting her phone away. “And a flatbed so we can haul this wreck back.”
“He’s cool with it?”
“I think he’ll take any chance to eyeball you two doin’ your thing, if I’m honest…” She teased, and gave Adam her best filthy grin. Usually it never failed to work. This time however It faltered when she saw his troubled expression. “Somethin’ the matter?”
“News on the radio. Terrorist attack in Omaha. Sounds like it was targeting Misfit…”
“Oh, hell,” she deflated instantly. “Well, they’ve got good security…”
“Yeah…”
She squatted down next to him. “You can’t be there, big guy. Ain’t no sense driving yourself crazy over it.”
“I know.” He tried to keep the sullen, angry quality out of his voice and knew he was failing. He counted the Misfit trio as friends. He just couldn’t pull three people out of an escape pod and hang out with them as kind of a multi-date thing and not think of them that way.
Friends in danger and not being able to do anything about it was Adam’s private definition of hell. It took him right back to all the futility and loss he’d felt watching the news from San Diego, or watching Powell and his men swoop in just seconds too late to save Sara. It was the very scenario he’d devoted his life to never, ever allowing again.
Marty caught the look in his eye and ran a thumb on his cheek. “Hey. You okay?”
He got a concerned knock on the arm from ‘Base, too, and between them they helped him shrug it off. “…Yeah.”
Both of them were instantly dragged into an enormous Adam crush-hug which ended seconds later when Marty desperately tapped out on his arm.
”Air!” she complained.
“Agh, shit.” He let her go and grimaced apologetically. “Sorry.”
“Just ‘cause we’re in Canada doesn’t mean you have to apologize about everything,” she smirked.
Adam chuckled ruefully, and Marty used that opportunity to get everyone on task. She was good like that. “We should get cleaned up a little before Joe shows up. The clerk said there’s a hose in the back, and we can learn more when we get back to Cimbrean, okay?”
“…Right.” Adam heaved himself upright. “Jesus, who in the fuck would bomb those guys?”
Date Point: 13y2m AV
Omaha, Nebraska, USA, Earth
Moses Byron
“They call themselves the Alien Protection Army.”
Moses tried not to be an angry person. He worked off his stress with a couple rounds of golf every week, he watched his diet, he eschewed alcohol…
Today was testing those principles to their limit. If Mister Williams wasn’t such a stabilizing influence, he might well have finally broken his own rule and reached for a bottle.
“Alien pro—?” He waved his hand vaguely skyward. “Last time I checked, we’re the ones imprisoned with the Hunters threatening to eat every blessed one of us! What in the Sam Hill do they think the ETs need protecting from us for?!”
Williams indicated his ignorance without resorting to anything so crass as a shrug. They weren’t at the company headquarters—that had been evacuated for the time being—but rather were meeting in Williams’ apartment, a spacious studio that gave no sign of having ever been lived in. Even the man’s collection of old blurays was sorted by genre and in alphabetical order.
The only sign that the place was inhabited by a human being at all was the socks. Williams had been ironing them and folding them into neat square parcels when the bomb had gone off, and he’d cleared them away upon welcoming Moses to his home with an embarrassed apology about ’the mess.’
“They were on your radar?” Moses asked him, investigating WIlliams’ notes on the terrorist group.
“They were, yes. They’re blamed for a shooting on Cimbrean. Somebody tried to plant a bomb at the spaceport construction site and shot a fourteen-year-old girl when she got in the way. Pretty much everybody blames that on APA, but they deny it.” Williams shrugged. “Me, I don’t see why they’d deny it.”
Moses grunted. “Bad press?”
“Worse than packing a cargo van with ANFO, blowing up the gate of a research facility and then shooting up the place?” Williams shook his head. “Groups like this don’t care about bad press or good press, they just want press. To them, killing seventeen people is how you get the world to pay attention.”
“And it works,” Moses sighed.
“Oh yes. Their manifesto’s trending on all the social media. They’ve successfully spread their message to millions.”
“And it only cost us seventeen friends and colleagues…” Moses commented, bitterly. “Any news on Ericsson?”
Williams consulted his phone “Still in surgery, as of the last update.”
“Clara?”
“Kevin’s with her. He says she’s a wreck.”
“Well, her dad is a damn hero,” Moses said. “Whether he pulls through or not, she can be proud of him…the crew?”
“Hammond evacuated them to Chicago, and they’re taking the next scheduled jump to Cimbrean.”
Moses raised his eyebrows, genuinely surprised. “Didn’t they object? Can’t imagine them wanting to leave Clara at a time like this…”
“Oh, they objected alright. I told them to shut up and get on the damn helicopter, pardon my French.”
“Well done…And thank the Lord they weren’t on-site at the time.”
WIlliams nodded and swiped through a few things on his tablet before handing it to Moses. “The good news is, Misfit came through it practically unscathed.”
“I thought your first report said they shot her up?”
“They did,” Williams said. “But space debris hits at speeds anywhere up to twenty times as fast as a rifle bullet, and Misfit is designed to handle several such strikes per mission.”
“…Give the team their due, they built a great ship,” Moses commented. “What can we do to avoid a repeat?”
“Training,” Williams replied promptly. “The checkpoint had appropriate equipment in place to protect against an attack like this, but the guards didn’t trigger the pop-up roadblock when the van refused to stop. I’m already drafting my letter to the security team leaders. We can’t afford to be nice, if a vehicle crosses the red line then it needs to be stopped then and there. And if the driver tries to sue us, Exhibit A will be the big warning signs, and we won’t need an Exhibit B.”
“Right…” Moses sighed, put the tablet down and rubbed his face. “Seventeen, though. Seventeen of our people. Eighteen, if Ericsson doesn’t pull through. That’s seventeen families I have to visit, look them in the eye, tell them I’m sorry for their loss. Isn’t there more we can do than remind our gate guards to actually do what they’re trained for?”
“You’re asking the wrong man, Mister Byron. I can plan for bombs, active shooters, corporate espionage…I can’t change minds.”
“In the short term, then?”
Williams tugged on his jacket to tidy it up as he considered the question for a moment. “I would suggest relocating Misfit,” he said. “Cimbrean, maybe. Just like its crew. Perhaps we could rent a hangar on Armstrong Station?”
“That could work,” Moses mused. “Spin it to Hephaestus as a chance to earn some good publicity.”
“Also, potentially, an opportunity for them to get a good look at Misfit and copy our proprietary technology,” Williams reminded him. “There’s also Chiune Station. It shouldn’t be too hard to have a hangar facility built there. A Jump Array too, if you want. In the long run that would be cheaper and less risky than renting from Hephaestus.”
“Or it could make us look insular and hamper the public visibility of the exploration program.”
“That would be outside my purview, Mister Byron.”
“…No way we can do both? Eat our cake and still have it?”
Williams again managed his neat trick of conveying everything a shrug would have without actually shrugging. “Purely from the point of view of security, our own facility at Chiune Station is by far the superior choice,” he said. “You’d have to ask Kevin for an opinion on the politics.”
“Kevin’s not here, and we need a decision now…Chiune it is,” Moses declared.
“I’ll make the arrangements. It’s probably best if you stay here until we have an all-clear, Mister Byron. You’re welcome to make yourself at home.”
“I’ll try to leave it as I found it,” Moses promised, wondering if he’d promised more than he could deliver, there. He wouldn’t be surprised if Williams’ coffee cups were identical and all faced the same way inside their cupboard. “Oh, and…?”
“Yes, Mister Byron?”
“I recall that Senator Bailey was very grateful after that business with the Iranians last year. Ask Rachael to see how much he can do for us about these APA people.” Moses smiled, slimly. “Could be that support for shutting them down would go all the way to the top.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
“And keep me informed on how our misfit trio are doing. I can’t imagine they feel very welcome on Cimbrean right now…”
Date Point: 13y2m AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Xiù Chang
“Holy crap.” Hammond stopped short and blinked at the mountain of human muscle who was lurking in the arrivals area wearing a huge pair of mirrored aviators and a nuclear green Hawaiian shirt so sinfully ugly it should have been illegal. “They build that guy in a fuckin’ dry dock?”
Julian found his grin again. “Fuck yeah they did,” he commented, and waved enthusiastically. “Hey! Righteous!”
Xiù had forgotten just how immense Righteous really was, and how scary. When he straightened himself out from his slouch, the crowd did a faithful re-enactment of Moses and the Red Sea.
“You know that guy?” Hammond asked.
“Know him? He could probably teach even you a thing or two about personal protection,” Julian told him candidly. “He’s HEAT.”
The truly alarming thing about Firth, though, was how he could move so quietly and quickly when he wanted to. Xiù had studied ballet and gymnastics in her youth and for all his titanic mass, Firth had all the poise and self-control of even the most thistle-down light ballerina.
And the ears of a cat. “I like teachin’ too,” he grinned. “Howyadoin’ buddeh!?” He scooped the three right off their feet and into an enormous hug. It was like a bear playing with his stuffed toys. The aviators somehow came off during the maneuver and, as always, once they were gone his fearsome demeanor softened considerably.
“Been better, been worse,” Allison managed to tell him despite the crushing mass of his arms. He put them down carefully and listened intently.
“No shit. Heard about the bomb. Figgered I’d help y’all with the press.” He shot a particularly murderous scowl towards a latina woman with a dog at her side who was standing by the doors. Astonishingly, the reporter stood her ground with her hands planted firmly on her hips, and Firth issued a grunt that might even have been grudging respect.
“Woah, hold on. I’m not s’posed to let you three out of my sight,” Hammond pointed out.
“Well then introductions are in order,” Xiù declared. “Jason Hammond, this is Firth.”
“Howdy.” Firth favored him with a cool but respectful nod.
“Hammond’s our firearms and tactics instructor,” Allison elaborated. “Former SWAT.”
“Ah, that’s good.” Firth proffered his gigantic mitt and wrapped it almost completely around Hammond’s own like a vice, though as ever he was unfailingly polite. “Nicetameetcha. Lookin’ after them, are ya? I’ve been ordered ‘ta escort all y’all to somewhere secure. Literally just a few minutes ago, in fact. We’ve got a nice safe space we can stash ‘ya in until y’all get shit figgered out…”
Hammond caught Julian’s eye, then relented at his confident nod. “…My thanks.”
“Ordered?” Xiù asked.
“Yuh. FTLcomm runs on a ten minute cycle so that message beat ‘ya by about fifteen. Anyway, ‘yer welcome to inspect the buildin’ when we get there, and all that. We built it like a bomb shelter and it’s got three egress paths even from the top floor.”
“Who the hell do we know who can order the SOR around?” Allison mused, hoisting her bag and following.
Firth shrugged expansively. “Hey man, I don’t do politics. That’s an occifer thing,” he said with a sly grin. “But I ‘spose there’s people lookin’ after you three. That can’t be bad, right? Ava, get that shit outta my face.”
“Wasn’t even aiming it at you, big guy,” ’Ava’ told him, while Hammond put himself between her camera and the three of them.
“Fuckin’…whatever. Ain’t’cha got someone else to torment? Why not Daar? He’s pretty.”
“I go where the news is.” She shot the trio an almost-apologetic smile. “I know now’s a bad time. But you’ll need to make a statement at some point so I’ve got my card here if—”
Firth rolled his eyes, picked her up, spun her a perfunctory one-eighty and put her down again with a firm shove in the back to get her out of the way. “Run along now.” He nodded down respectfully at the dog, who’d rushed to defend her master with a growl. “Good dog, too. Now git.”
Hammond quite smartly bundled the trio out of sight and towards…
How he knew where to go was a mystery, but before long they were in a comically large white pickup with another gigantic man at the wheel, the luggage was loaded as if out of nowhere, and Firth piled in the front seat.
Xiù’s head was reeling from the rapidity of it all, and it didn’t help that even Hammond seemed to be surfing on the edge of being overwhelmed. Right before they took off, the biggest Gaoian she had ever seen threw the last and largest piece of luggage on-board, then hopped into the pickup’s bed and crouched defensively over their pile, his ears and nose twitching in all directions at once.
“Y’all didn’t meet Titan last time, didja?” Firth asked, indicating the other human, a handsome Japanese man built to a scale that only Firth could make look small.
“Titan,” Xiù managed. “Good name. Suits you.”
“Thanks. Exhibit C there is Daar. Say hello, Daar.”
The immense Gaoian in the back chittered way down in the deep bass, and spoke in accented but fluent English. “Hello, Daar!” His voice was so deep it was almost infrasonic, but he shifted to Gaori as soon as the truck was moving. [“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Sister Shoo.”]
Xiu didn’t have time to react properly before Hammond decided the time had come to reassert some control of the situation. “Where are we going?” he asked, prompting all three of the enormous detail to nod approvingly.
“Headin’ to the barracks, just for now.” That was Daar in the back, speaking through the open rear window.
“Why a gaoian?”
“Because he’s a mean sumbitch and he’s got a great nose. Also, he happened to be handy,” Firth answered.
“And the barracks?”
“Safest place on Cimbrean,” Titan replied. “Well away from any roads, it’s sheltered by hills, the base itself is controlled access, and the rest of HEAT are living there right now, mostly.”
“We’re supposed to relocate to Chiune Station, the Byron group’s facility out—” Hammond began.
“We know it. We’ll sort it out. Need to secure the line of communication out there first. The Marines are doing that as we speak. Um…”
“Can I?” That was Daar.
Firth nodded.
“Well…let’s just say you three are really important to a buncha people, Human and Gao. It was, uh, made very clear to me that if you weren’t the most safest possible humans until you’re gone, I’d never mate with anyone ever again. So, y’know. I’m a good boy.”
“A dire threat.” Allison snarked.
“No really. The direst,” Xiù told her.
Daar seemed to be in on the joke and chittered along with them. [“Yeah, well. Cousin Regaari can fill you in on the rest.”]
Xiù twisted to face him. [“Cousin Regaari? Wait, you’re not the Daar? The Champion?”]
Titan and Righteous rolled their eyes while Daar preened the biggest preen. “Yeah!”
There were moments in Xiù’s life when she felt like she’d just gone plunging off the end of a pier or something, when the sheer weirdness of everything that had happened to her smacked her full in the face. First human given technical status as a member of a whole different sapient species. First human to negotiate an interstellar treaty. First human to set foot on the planet Mars.
Mostly that was just her life. She took it in stride. But sometimes, when she realized that she was being bodyguarded by literal supersoldiers and the closest thing Gaoians had to royalty…that was when the full impact landed on her.
Thank God for Julian and Allison and their sixth sense for when she needed grounding again. Allison’s hand snuck into hers. Daar noticed and keened softly, like every male did when a female was upset. The way he keened, though…
“Are you related to Myun?” Xiù asked him, “Do you know her?”
“Yeah! She’s one of my cubs, isn’t she awesome!?”
“That explains everything,” Julian muttered under his breath.
“Don’t it?” Daar agreed, radiating ’proud dad.’ “She even taught me a thing or two…that she learned from you, she says,” he added, indicating Xiù.
The sensation of being overwhelmed wasn’t unfamiliar, but this time it was actually kind of…pleasant. Xiù treated him to a weary smile, and Daar chittered the Gaoian equivalent of a chuckle before turning away to let her be.
“…You okay, bǎobèi?” Julian asked.
“Just…off-balance.”
“Fuckin’ tell me about it,” Allison agreed.
It was a short trip to the base, and yet more enormous men were waiting at the gate to wave them through. A quick flicker in the corner of Xiù’s eye turned out unmistakably to be a Whitecrest of all things, ducking behind a discreet feature of the urban terrain right behind them; they’d had overwatch from the moment they’d arrived, apparently. The security presence grew much more obvious when they arrived at the barracks, and from there the four of them were quickly bustled upstairs through the gym and right into the common room.
Hammond never let them out of his sight, and he gave the room a thorough sweep before unwinding by a hair. “Jeez. I knew this program was getting support from folks in high places, but this is somethin’ else entirely,” he managed.
There was the gentle sound of lots of enormous men coming to a respectful posture as a new man, still huge by any reasonable standard but smaller than the rest by far, wandered comfortably into the room with his hands behind his back.
He treated them to a crisp expression that was almost warm and welcoming, even though his face had an essentially indelible stoniness to it. He looked like a man who probably would have smiled a lot but knew that his face wasn’t built for it.
“You have no fookin’ idea how high,” he said. “Welcome to HMS Sharman. Think it’s about time you’re owed an explanation.”
Date Point: 13y2m AV
Commune of Females, Wi Kao City, Gao
Ayma
“But Sister Shoo is unharmed?”
“My Brothers on Cimbrean say that she and her romantic partners are under tight guard there.” Champion Genshi allowed a rare moment of small expressiveness to show through—honest relief. To Ayma’s knowledge the Whitecrest champion had never met Shoo, but her almost revered status among the Females was a cause for concern in every Clan.
Besides, Ayma privately suspected that Genshi had an eye on Regaari to potentially succeed him. And Regaari, ’bless’ him, would have taken it hard indeed if any harm had come to Shoo. He had never quite forgiven himself for letting her slip away unnoticed all those years ago.
“Thank you, Champion,” she favored Genshi with a warm pricking-up of her ears. “I know the Mother-Supreme will be relieved.”
Genshi’s image on her communicator duck-nodded respectfully. “And, I suspect, so are you. Hmm?” He observed, showing off his roguish streak. “We remain at your disposal.”
He was good, Ayma reflected. He’d hit exactly the right note between reaffirming his Clan’s continuing fealty to the Females without straying into obsequiousness. But then again, all Champions were good at playing that particular game.
“We appreciate it,” she told him. “I should give Yulna the good news.”
“Please pass on my regards to Sister Myun.”
Ayma chittered, waved and closed the call.
She fluffed up her fur as she stood up. It was winter in Wi Kao, and she was wearing it thicker than normal. Looking sleek and streamlined was for the summer: Nobody could pull off shivering.
Yulna was seated by the ornamental fountains, holding forth on some political matter with a delegation of Mothers and more senior Sisters from the commune at Kan Wo. The role of Mother-Supreme suited her, in a reluctant way: She didn’t want the job, so she was doing it as well as she possibly could and always with that uncompromising Yulna forthrightness.
“…So let them become Clanless,” she was replying as Ayma got close enough to hear. “I admire your compassion for them, but there comes a point where Mothers must step aside and let young males take control of their own lives for better or worse. Our role is to raise them as cubs, not to direct their lives as adults.”
“It’s just…frustrating to see them waste their potential,” one of the visiting Mothers commented.
“It’s theirs to waste,” Yulna told her. “The most you can do is give them a good start in life. If they choose to squander that…” she gestured expressively. “…Or they may surprise you. Sometimes a Mother’s fears are unfounded.”
Ayma sensed an appropriate moment to interject. “Mother-Supreme.”
Yulna glanced up, duck-nodded, and stood. “I’m sorry. I wish I could give you more of my time.”
“The voice of experience,” Ayma teased her as they walked away.
“My own cub grew up to become Myun,” Yulna pointed out, aiming a sly look at her bodyguard. “The ’hopeless xenophile,’ as I recall you describing her.”
“That wasn’t fair of me,” Ayma grumbled. Yulna chittered softly and groomed the fur of her neck, casting aside decorum for a second to treat her like an old friend.
“What news?” she asked, becoming more serious.
“A terrorist attack on Earth. Targeted at Sister Shoo and her…” Ayma picked the right word with care. “…circle.”
“Her lovers,” Yulna corrected in characteristically unflinching fashion.
“Not just them. This Byron Group she works for. Her colleagues.”
“Ah…” Yulna duck-nodded, and glanced backwards to be sure that Myun wasn’t within earshot. “She’s unharmed?”
“Would I be so composed if she wasn’t?” Ayma asked. Yulna chittered again and unwound a fraction.
“No, you would go sprinting back to Earth again I’m sure. On four paws, no doubt.”
“Once was enough,” Ayma shuddered. “It’s a beautiful world, but I had a retroactive histology test some time later. It’s lucky for me that I didn’t drop my field to take in the view like Regaari did.”
“You would have suffered?”
“…Briefly, yes.” Ayma shook out her fur uncomfortably. “Apparently some Gaoians can have particularly severe reactions…and I’m in the most allergic group. Especially to the grass pollens and something called ’Ragweed’.”
“That really was uncharacteristically foolish of you, Ayma.”
Ayma duck-nodded, chastened. “I don’t think I appreciated how foolish until the humans assigned two dedicated medics to us. No, I won’t return to Earth. Fortunately, I don’t need to: Shoo has been moved to Cimbrean.”
“And she is continuing with this plan to uplift a stone-age species?” Yulna asked, stopping.
“She seems to feel there is no alternative.”
“…Then I am going to Cimbrean.”
Ayma stood up completely straight from pure surprise. “Yulna, is that—?”
“She’s a Sister, Ayma. My Sister, and she is doing something that will require guidance,” Yulna asserted fiercely, and then softened. “Besides. I miss her.”
Ayma scrutinized her old friend’s expression for a second. “…There’s something you’re not telling me,” she decided.
“Many things,” Yulna agreed. “Most of which are only, hm, dark suspicions. Shall we just say that I had already been considering a visit to Cimbrean for some time? Now that Shoo is there, I think the time has come to…what was the phrase? ’Strike while the Iron is hot,’ yes?”
“We use too many human phrases,” grumbled Ayma. “What happened to ‘pounce when the moment is right?’”
“It’s still there. But the world changes, Ayma. We change with it, or we get left behind…” Yulna chittered again. “Besides, I quite like the imagery.”
“Yes. Your first mating contract was with a foundry worker as I recall.”
Yulna didn’t even look remotely contrite. “He smelled strong and hard-working,” she said. “An impression he lived up to for that whole week, too.”
“And he left you with a permanent passion for metal?”
“Strength. And healthy, strong-willed cubs.”
Ayma glanced back at Myun again, who noticed and tilted her head slightly. “You have those in abundance…But Yulna, why? Why you personally, I mean? Can’t you send a delegation?”
“I told you. I miss my Sister.”
“That can’t be your only reason.”
“No,” Yulna conceded. “It isn’t. But Stoneback and Whitecrest are progressively leaving us more and more in the dark about their doings, and that I cannot accept. Especially not from Stoneback. I think it’s time that Champion Daar needs to be reminded of our old contract.”
Ayma duck-nodded. “That’s why you’re taking Myun along, then.”
“Not his and mine,” Yulna corrected her. “The old contract.”
“…You think the Stonebacks are shirking their duties? That’s…” Ayma glanced around to be absolutely sure nobody was listening. “…That’s quite an accusation.”
“It isn’t an accusation,” Yulna said. “Not yet. But when I mention my concerns to Champion Daar, I want to be able to smell him.”
“Stonebacks don’t lie.”
“And Stonebacks protect the Females,” Yulna retorted. “I wonder…if those duties ever were to come into conflict, which would they put first?”
She turned and swept regally toward the commune, dragging Ayma and Myun in her wake like fresh snow behind a car. “I intend to find out.”