The Rules

Capitaine Elienne Desorlay rummaged around in the paper bag.  I’m sure there was one more … aha!  Triumphantly, she pulled out the last peshorky, still slightly warm, if a little soggy as the spicy meat began to seep through the crisp pastry. 

About to bite into it, she paused as her conscience stirred.  You don't eat in front of your partner. That's the rules. “Want half?” she asked.

“It’s all yours,” Lieutenant Charles Etay said with a faint smile, his accent making it sound as if he was trying to keep the words in his mouth even as he spoke, reluctant to give even that much of himself away.

“You sure?”  she asked suspiciously.  Turning down a peshorky, even a rapidly-cooling one, was grounds for a diagnosis of insanity in Elienne’s book.

“Sure,” Etay said mildly, not turning from his scrutiny of the street through the windshield of their Unmarked Surveillance Vehicle.

Elienne studied his profile with growing unease. “You’re not … you’re not a vegetarian, are you?” It would explain why he’s so damn skinny, at least.  Although skinny was perhaps the wrong word, she had to admit.  Still, my Robert would make two of him. A man should have some meat on his bones.

The corner of Etay’s mouth that Elienne could see twitched up slightly. “No,” he said, “I’m not a vegetarian.”

“On a diet?” More understandable, if still reprehensible.

“Not that either,” Etay assured her.

“Then …?”  Shit. He’s dying of something. That’s why they’ve stuck him with me, last year’s fair-haired boy of the Supreme Court Investigative Division parked in Crimes-Against-Persons with a partner two years out from retirement. Shit, that’s the last thing I need, just when I’m about to get Jules out of the house and off to college and have an easy few years run through to the pension. A dying partner. Shit!  “Are you …. ?”

Etay turned to look at her with his usual unreadable expression.  Elienne had tried over the past few days to work out if Etay regarded the world through eyes narrowed in scrutiny or by a perpetual amusement. Even money each way. “I’m not sick either,” he said. “I’m just not hungry. This case…”

“Ah.”  She bit into the peshorky with a clear conscience and a sense of relief, and added another item to her mental list titled Charles Etay: The Partner’s Manual.

It now read Plays handball; probably irons his underwear; doesn’t seem to know how pretty he is; possibly too 'sensitive' for the job.

The handball she’d learnt about from the office grapevine, the underwear was, she felt, a logical conclusion given the man had turned up for a stake-out in a suit rather than the comfortable sweats most plain-clothes investigators would choose, he made the jacket and open-collared shirt look as formal as a uniform.

And it was clear to Elienne that Etay was at least partially oblivious to his own good fortune in the looks department from the fact that he’d gotten through the first few days of their partnership without acting like a con.  In her long experience, men – and women, for that matter - who knew they’d fallen out of the pretty tree and hit every branch on the way down tended to carry themselves with an awareness of their superiority to the fat-assed, pug-nosed, gap-toothed rest of the world. Not Charlie. Not yet, anyway.

“Yeah, it’s a shit of a case,” Elienne said. Leshinna Grattotte, aged six.  “Kids … that’s the worst.”

“You seen a lot of them?” Etay asked, his husky voice even softer than it usually was.

“A few.” She licked the last of the juice from her fingers. “One’s too many. They stick with you.  Especially if you see the bodies.”

“This one’s missing, not dead.”

“Don’t go setting your heart on that, Charlie,” Elienne advised. “I did that, the first time. Then we found him, poor little boy. You go setting your heart on finding them alive, they won’t ever leave you alone.”

Etay looked out the window, the glass showing Elienne his eyes only in a shadowed reflection. For a moment she thought he was too young and green to know the rules of the USV, give and get, and he wasn’t going to speak.

Then he took a shallow breath. “The one that stuck with me was a live one,” he said. Unwritten rules. Truth for truth. “Bodies, well, you see them. The worst thing that’s ever going to happen to them is already over. One night patrol my partner and me got a call, woman screaming in an alley. We got there, she was on the ground, he was on top of her. My partner was putting him in the patrol and I was trying to tell her it was going to be all right, she was safe now." Etay paused and traced one finger over the window beside him.  "She couldn't work out whether to hang on to me for comfort or cower away. I could tell it was all tangled up in her head, that nothing was safe for her anymore.  I wonder about her, you know. How she's doing. If it got untangled for her, or not."

“Probably not,” Elienne said.

"Probably not," Etay agreed.

Elienne crumpled up the bag and tossed it over into the back seat, and let silence return to the USV. Etay was good with silence, that was something else for the manual and a point in his favour. Elienne let it stretch and stretch to see when he'd break it, but in the end she was the one to speak first. 

"So who did you shit on to get stuck with me?" she asked.

 Points for honesty, she thought, when Etay didn't try and pretend he was thrilled to be stuck in CAP with a partner who'd been stuck at the same rank for twenty years.  "The FIO," he said simply. 

"Shit." Elienne slumped in her seat. "So you're a dumb son-of-a-bitch, then."

He laughed, nothing more than a puff of air. "Guess I am. Or a stubborn one, anyway."

"Yeah?"

Etay shrugged slightly. "Cold case. Cloning station sabotage. Ran places nobody expected, FIO agent in the place at the time. We got warned off and I didn't listen."

"Yeah, well, I got two years to pension, so they warn you again, you be fucking smarter, all right?"

"Yes, ma'am." It might have been sarcastic. It might have been sincere. Elienne couldn't tell.

"Where are you from, anyway?" she asked. "Don't recognise the accent."

Etay kept his gaze on the street. "Caldari Prime, a dozen generations ago, if that's what you're asking."

"I'm old, but I'm not blind. I could see that. Where'd you grow up?"

"One world over," Etay said.  

"Ah, so that explains it. Luminaire boy, huh? Big city manners and big city style?"

He turned to face her for the first time. "I grew up on a farm."

"Oh well that - "

She bit the words off as Etay gave her the first unmistakeable smile she'd had from him. "That explains a lot? Yeah, it does."

Elienne snorted. "Yeah, farmboy, I guess it does."

  

He turned back to the window. "So where did you - he's moving. There he is. He's moving."

"I see him."  Average-height-average-build-brown-hair. "Hold on, hold on, he's heading for his car - "

Etay thumbed his comm. "SCIDCEN, this is USV 4-3, our target is moving. Request activation of monitor."

Elienne watched as Mr Average lifted the driver's side door of his 'car and slid in. "They have him?" she asked. "Charlie? They sending the feed?"

"No." Etay pressed the buttons to start the USV. "Feed's down."

"Again? Ah, baise moi, the fucking budget! Get across, cut him off - "

"No," Etay said again as the USV engine warmed up with a faint, ear-tickling whine and he sent it out into the stream of traffic.

"No? Then what?"

Etay pulled out into the traffic as Mr. Average reached his vehicle. "We're going to follow this son-of-a-bitch."

"Oh, no." Elienne shook her head. "A sniffer's one thing. If we fucking lose him - "

"If he's got her somewhere else what are the chances of him telling us once he's in custody?" Etay let a couple of cars pull in between them and their target. "We're going to follow him and see where he goes and if we're lucky he'll lead us to the girl."

Shit. "The girl's - "

"Probably dead, I know. I'd like her family to have something to bury, though, wouldn't you?"

"Fuck!" Two years off pension.  

But you backed your partner, that was the rules. 

Elienne leaned back in her seat as Etay punched a priority code into the Traffic Control System and sent the USV weaving through the traffic and thumbed her comm-link. "SCIDCEN, be advised, USV 4-3 in pursuit of suspect in green late-model Rosseche landcar licence Q-R-45-I-9-K-K-316, headed west on Rue D'Avourge, request traffic control monitoring, do not approach, repeat, do not approach the vehicle."  She clicked the comm off and braced herself against the dash as Etay took a corner hard and fast. "If this comes back on us you better know I'll be spending my impoverished old age with you, farmboy. Me and my husband and probably several of my damn kids with their useless degrees in art history and similar shit. I hope you realise th - watch it!"

Etay disengaged the feed from the TCS and sent the USV onto the wrong side of the road, the engine's whine rising to a shrill buzz as the old vehicle shivered in protest.  They shot past on-coming traffic as 'cars to the left and right swerved crazily, the TCS trying to track and compensate for their now 'rogue' vehicle. As Etay wrenched the USV back over the divider Elienne pressed a hand over her heart and tried to decide whether to look at the road ahead, the vehicle they were following, or Etay's calm profile.

She picked option B and saw their target turn into a smaller, less busy thoroughfare. "Charlie..."

"See him." Etay followed, slowing to leave a greater distance between the two 'cars.

They were a block or so back when the vehicle ahead came to a stop. As Mr Average got out and headed into the nearest building, Etay brought their own 'car to a halt. Elienne slid out of the door as the engine stopped, checking her mag-pistol automatically with one hand as she thumbed the comm again with the other. "USV 4-3 on foot in pursuit, request traffic monitoring of the area, maintain distance."

Etay was out of the vehicle after her but he overtook her easily before they reached the door of the rundown apartment block. Elienne wheezed as he tried to open it. Fucking teenagers and their damn athletic hobbies. The handle didn't move and Etay took a step back and kicked it hard by the lock.  Pressed fibreboard showered them both with dust as the lock tore free.

The door opened directly onto stairs. Etay headed up, Elienne panting behind him, and then stopped, hand raised. She stopped as well and in the silence could hear footfalls above them.

Etay caught her gaze, and jerked his chin upwards. She nodded. Go ahead. 

By the time she reached the third floor he was out of sight. She toiled upwards grimly, cursing silently, checking each floor for the sight of his blonde head above the residents coming and going.

He was there on the tenth floor, standing outside a door, his own gun in his hand.

Elienne paused long enough to tell a couple of curious bystanders to Go inside, right now!  and joined Etay at the door.

He put his finger to his lips and bent his head listening.

The voices inside were audible to Elienne was well. One deeper, adult, the other the piping treble of a child.

Talking.

Alive.

Elienne allowed herself one second of a relief so intense she could taste it like sweet honey on her tongue. Alive.

Then she let it go. Not home yet. Not yet.

Kid to the left, him to the right ...

She caught Etay's eye and nodded, lifting her gun. He took a step back, braced himself, and kicked.

The door banged open and Elienne followed it so fast the rebound caught her hard on the shoulder. Etay was right behind her, both of them shouting SCID, on the floor, on the floor!

For a minute Mr Average didn't move. Elienne could hear a child crying off to her left and felt her finger tighten on the trigger for the first time in more than forty years. 

Etay pushed past her, holstering his gun, and grabbed Mr Average by one arm, spinning him around and slamming him face down on the floor. Elienne tracked him down with the muzzle of her pistol, vision narrowed to his face in a sea of black.

"The kid," Etay said. "Elienne. Capitaine Desorlay. The kid."

Her sight came back and the buzzing in her ears faded. "Yeah."

Etay fished a Perpetrator Restraining Device from his pocket and hooked it around Mr Average's wrists as Elienne holstered her pistol and turned to look around the room. It was small and filthy, stinking of shit and garbage and stale sweat but it held the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

Leshinna Grattotte, aged six.

She made a quick call on her comm as she moved cautiously towards the child. Backup needed - medics - immediate, tenth floor.

"Hey there, cherie," she said, crouching down beside the bed where the little girl lay. "We're from SCID and we're here to take you back to your mama and papa, okay?"

The little girl nodded, tears leaking from her eyes.     

"I'm going to pick you up, okay, cherie?" When Leshinna nodded again, Elienne gathered her up and settled her on one hip, rising carefully to her feet. She felt warm liquid soaking through her shirt and wished she could believe that it was because Leshinna had wet herself.  The child was shivering. "Charlie, give me your jacket."

He slipped it off and draped it around the little girl's shoulders.  "Take her downstairs," he said to Elienne. "Send the backup up to bring this guy down."

"Yeah," Elienne said. "Wouldn't want him to have a slip and fall on the stairs."

As Elienne turned to the door, Etay yanked Mr Average to his feet. "You," he said, "are obliged to answer any questions put to you by authorised agents of the SCID. Anything you say without the presence of legal representation will be recorded and may be used in evidence at your trial - are you listening to me?"

Elienne glanced back.

Mr Average was staring at Leshinna. "Don't forget me, okay, cherie?" he said. "I'll see you again soon."

Later, when she was turning it into a story in her head, taming it so it was something she could share with Robert over a cognac after dinner, Elienne would tell herself that she'd been frightened by what she'd seen in Etay's eyes, or that there'd been something terrible in his expression. But the truth was, the truth that would stay in that little stinking windowless room that Elienne would never allow herself to visit again even in memory, the truth was she had no warning.

Nothing in Etay's face changed. He was looking at Elienne with his perpetual, maybe-amused, unreadable expression, and then there was a blur of movement and blood and Mr Average was on the ground, groaning.

Elienne looked down at him, and then at Etay, who was regarding the man whimpering on the floor mildly and steadily, unbuttoning the cuff of his left sleeve and staring to roll it up with careful, precise folds.

Later, Elienne would tell herself that it was a moment of decision. That she made a choice, for good or ill, that it was a turning point in her sense of herself and her definition of the job. 

That would be part of the story.  It wasn't part of the truth that would stay in that room.

Elienne turned and walked out the door with the girl without making any choice at all. It wasn't until she was three storeys down that her mind began to work again, and as soon as it did she knew she'd made a mistake.

Broken the unwritten rules. Left her partner out on his own, in a room with an arrestee. Anything could happen.

Someone could get hurt.

Someone was going to.

Her partner was going to step over a line there was no coming back from and she was walking away from him, step by step.

And, fuck, there's every chance it'll come out and I can bend over, put my head between my knees and kiss my pension goodbye.

Elienne hated herself a little for the thought. Hated herself a little more for keeping on climbing down those ten flights of stairs.

The medics met her halfway down.  When they tried to take Leshinna from her the little girl cried and clung, and so they let Elienne go on carrying her all the way down and out the front door and into the waiting medical transport.

SCID officers passed them on the way, heading up. Elienne gathered herself enough to tell them she'd left Etay with arrest in progress, leaving as much wriggle room as she could, leaving out the PRD and the fact that Mr Average had been down and bleeding when she'd left.

  

Leshinna didn't let go of her until they'd reached the hospital where the girl's parents were waiting. Elienne relinquished her, waved off colleagues who wanted to know What happened, how did you know?

Where's Etay?

She found herself a seat in the waiting room and settled into it, taking stock of her aching knees and sore feet to avoid thinking about anything else. Fuck the SCID health plan, anyway.  Need anything more expensive than a filling, like those fancy implants for an old woman's joints they're always advertising on the holo, and you're on your fucking own.  

When a trolley was rushed past her with a flurry of medtechs around it Elienne refused to look up.

A pair of shoes, good leather with thin, impractical soles, intruded into her field of vision, paused, and then came over beside her as the owner of the shoes settled into the chair next to her.

"Kid?" Etay asked.

"Okay," Elienne said. "Docs said she was drugged. Could be she won't remember much."

"That'd be nice."

"Yeah."  She looked sidewise at him, determined not to ask.  

Etay looked back at her with the same imperturbable expression he'd worn for three days. "So," he said mildly. "There’s something I have to tell you. And you’re not going to like it.”

Shit. Oh, shit. There had to be a way to keep it quiet. Save them both, well, save herself, Etay being beyond saving in anything more than the most strictly careerist sense of the word. Shit. Shit. "What?"

"Hmm?"

"What is it that you have to tell me?"

"Oh, right."  He gave her the second smile she'd got from him, sunny and warm.  "I'm sorry, Elienne. I know it's not something you want to hear from your partner, but ..."

"But?"

“I am a vegetarian.”

She stared at him, mouth ajar.

"And on a diet. Have to make weight for the departmental handball championships, you know." 

Elienne realised her mouth was open, closed it, opened it again to say: "You ...?"

"But I don't mind if you eat meat," Etay said. "It's a personal decision. So don't feel you shouldn't - "

Elienne took a deep breath. "And the suspect?"

"Oh, him." Etay shrugged slightly. "They're putting a stabilizer in his arm. Gluing up some cuts."

"But he's not ... dead?"

Etay shook his head. "Nope. So what do you think?"

"What do I think? About ...?"

"About me being a vegetarian. Do you want to put in for a new partner? I won't be offended."

"You..."

Elienne found herself laughing, tears running down her cheeks, tried to stop as a medtech glared at her and felt her breath hitch treacherously close to a sob.

"I know it seems funny," Etay said. "Choosing not to eat meat. But when you look at the scientific evidence - "

Elienne gasped for breathe, slapped Etay's arm, and shook her head. "You fils de putain de merde!"

"Now, come on," Etay said. "it's just a personal preference - "

"Oh, shut up," Elienne said. "You nearly give me a heart attack on your third day on the job, and you want to talk about vegetables?"

"Well, see, there's another reason to stop eating meat.  The effect on your arteries is - "

Elienne slapped his arm again and Etay subsided, smiling slightly.

"I," she said firmly, "am not going to give up peshorkies. And you, farmboy, are going to buy me a drink. A big one. Big enough to fucking swim in, in fact. That's what the rules say. "

"They do?"

"You better fucking believe it, partner," Elienne said. "You better fucking believe they do."

Filling The Plate

The shrip leaves are sweet, a little sharp.


They come from Gallente Prime, originally. Now they're grown all over the cluster, in herb gardens, window boxes, small pots on kitchen benches under grow-lights.


There's a tea you can make from them, drunk hot or cold.  Refreshing, and according to some, good for the digestion.


Cia's not making tea, though.  Not today.


The knife, made in Lirsautton, or so the man in the very expensive store on the Crystal Boulevard swore,slices sharply though the tender green leaves until Cia has a little pile of thin threads stacked up neatly at the end of the board, smelling like the kind of candy you get wrapped in chocolate at the end of a meal. On Gallente Prime, people say, even the weeds taste sweet.


The shrip goes into the bowl on the counter, where the bright green of the leaves makes a cheerful contrast with the pale orange of the ceramic. The bowl comes from a moon in Hror, made by someone who lived their whole life inside the arched domes of a mining colony, crafted from the sludge cast off as a by-product of the refining process, fired in a kiln built at the side of the furnaces, sold to traders for a little extra cash.


Cia picks up the rimpon and weighs it in her hand. Perfectly ripe, it was picked on Matar at the exact moment for it to be hurried into space to be on a stall in the Rens Bazaar, heavy with juice, just as a podder's hand reached for it. The knife parts the thick rind easily, although it takes some concentration to cut out the segments of the fruit without tearing their delicate membrane. She spoils two, almost certainly on purpose, and has to eat them then and there, the tart flavor making her mouth pucker as she tips the rest into the bowl. Rimpon without sugar to sweeten it is an acquired taste.  Raw, unadulterated, it's a shock to tastebuds trained on sweeter fruit, much like the culture of those who grow it.


Next, the kharzot. Its skin is far tougher than the rimpon's, appropriate, maybe, in a fruit that's supposed to come from the heart of the tough-skinned Amarr Empire, from Oris, some say. Most people don't think it's a fruit at all, the kharzot. It's green and mild and much more like a vegetable that doesn't need cooking than a fruit, even if it does grow on a tree.


The kharzot flesh is creamy and soft and wants to make itself into a smooth mash.  Cia uses the utmost care to flick the single large stone from the center of the halved fruit and then scoop out the flesh whole.  Delicately, she cuts it into cubes, and carefully scrapes it into the bowl to join the rimpon and the shrip. Some smear on the board, no matter how careful she is. Amarr fruit, too tough to get at without a very sharp knife and a great deal of care, so fragile on the inside it all but dissolves in your hands.


Finally, the negilippi, from the same system as the shrip, and almost the same shade of green. Bite into one of these mistaking it for a shrip leaf, though, and there's a surprise in store. Even cutting them releases an pungent aroma that makes Cia's eyes water, although she's careful not to wipe them with her fingers until she's finished cutting the negilippi into thin strands and washed her hands, washed them twice. A few tears fall into the bowl as she tips the negilippi in.  A few tears always add salt to any dish with negilippi.  There's even a saying about it: negilippi is the only thing that makes Caldari cry.


The fish beneath the grill sizzles, swimming in its own juice. In fact, it's the closest thing to swimming this particular fish has ever done, vat-grown, tube-bred as it is. Its ancestors roamed oceans, a thousand oceans on a thousand worlds, before their genetic structure was taken apart and analysed for viability, durability, speed of growth, nutritional value, flavor, tenderness, and profitability. Now this fish and millions of its identical siblings race to maturity in tanks no bigger than themselves, brains attenuated to the absolute minimum required to sustain the functions of life. Culled, gutted, sliced into steaks and flash-frozen, it's a cut above protein bars, but it still takes some doing to turn station-raised fish into anything approaching a tasty meal.


Cia sets the fish on the plates, and tosses her ingredients together in the bowl, very carefully.  They have to mix, but not mingle, combine, but not blend.


It takes patience, and a careful hand. Most cooks wouldn't try. You can live on bland, tasteless vat-fish and never go hungry, you can take a tablet for your Vitamin C and drink a pop-shake for Vitamin B and beta-carotene. Or sprinkle just shrip or just negilippi, let the kharzot turn into mash and spread it over the fish, or squeeze the rimpon into juice.


None of those are as good, though, that's the thing. It takes all four, together, not beaten into one but delicately intermingled, to bring out the best in each. The shrip sweetening the rimpon, the negilippi and the rimpon adding a sharp edge of flavour to the kharzot, the kharzot restraining the sweet and tart and sour in the rest.


It would be edible with three, or two, or even one, without a doubt, and there will always be those who settle for sustenance rather than spend the time and effort creating the full dish.


Cia shakes her head at the thought, surveying the meal in front of her with satisfaction.


Life is too short not to fill your plate.

The Worst of It

You can hold onto to pain, like it's a physical thing, like a lover's body in your arms, if you want to.

Hold it close, so close you can't see anything else, can't hear or feel or taste or smell anything but dark red inside your eyelids, the stuttering beat of your own heart, the ache and the sting and the sour tang of your own stale mouth.

It's not easy, though. The mind wants to slip away, trick itself into believing there's something else but the pain. The body gets tired of shaking and shivering and purging itself. The pain itself tries to escape you, to slip away into the dark so it can creep back and ambush you when your guard is down.

Nerila wrestled with the pain, clutched on to it, pinned it down and clung to it.    Fuck you, you're not getting away from me. 


You're mine.


There were voices, sometimes. The door opened occasionally. They brought her food, which she couldn't have stomached even if she'd been able to spare the attention. They cleaned her, not ungently.

They went away, and locked the door.

Each time the door opened Nerila felt her heart sink. The visits measured out the passage of time.

Time was her enemy. Time weakened the pain, or weakened her grip on it, Nerila wasn't sure which.

Time heals all wounds. 


Lies.

She fought harder, pulling the shreds of the pain closer to her as they dissolved in her grip, fell into them like fog, seeing nothing but the red haze of them, hearing nothing, feeling nothing but the ache in her bones and the roiling of her gut.

You can hold onto pain, like it's a lover in your arms, if you want to.

For a while.

"They tell me you're through the worst of it."


A familiar voice. A friend, or at least an ally, once, in the brief while Nerila'd been able to fool herself into thinking she was the sort of person who had friends or allies. 

The worst of it.

Matter of opinion.

"Nerila," Invelen said. "I know you can hear me."

Nerila rolled over and opened her eyes.  The ceiling of the brig was clear and sharp above her, as the lumps in the cot she lay on. She reached for the pain, stretched for it, tried to grasp it ...

Gone.

Her arms were empty.


"Yeah," she said. "Yeah. I can hear you."

Fish or Swords: The Parieur's Tale

I am as old as the River.

Always and never changing, ancient as the hills and born with each rain.

I am as young as the River, rushing from spring to sea in a short half-handful of days.

There have been times when I didn't remember how old I was, or remembered only in dreams, the dim sense of having been a mother, a father, a soldier girl, a farmer's son.

A coin falling through air, through water, though fire.

Fortune's coin, landing one side up or the other, fish or swords.

Sometimes, spinning on the edge.

Fortune's coin, Fortune's choice.

Only we never called her Fortune, then.

Long past, those. This time, last time, so many times, the dreams started early, came clearer, became waking knowledge and living memory.

I am as old as the River.

Not like the strangers, the incomers, born with their selves as hard and changeless as a stone. Drop a stone in the River and it falls. The water cannot enter it. Eventually, the River eats it.

No more stone.

We are not like that. We come from the River and go back to it. Dip a bucket from the spring, from the flood, from the delta, and see the difference. Tip them back and try to find them.

I am not who I was. I will not be who I am.

I will always be of the River.

I am not who I was when I met her last.

I was old, then. I was old when I took her mother's hand and placed it in her father's and said the words to make them husband and wife. I was older when they brought their first child, squirming, squalling bundle of a thing that she was, to Fortune of the Waters to have her feet dipped in the river so the River would know her.

I was older still when she was one of the children sitting in the rows in church, not fidgeting like the others, watching the parieurs as if she could watch hard enough to understand.

You know that game children play? They hop and skip and try to avoid putting their feet on the gaps between the cobbles.  Toss a coin and chase after it, fish or swords on the cobbles, dancing from stone to stone.

When she was a child, it was as if her whole life was that game. A world of cracks, and every step a careful effort to avoid them.

And then I was young again, too young to remember, too young to care, for a while.

When I began to dream, and to remember, she was already gone.

Gone to the stars, gone to live forever, gone from the River the parieurs said.

You cannot leave the River. I could have told them.

Did, once or twice.

So when her sister came, and stood beside my grave and told me - told me that solemn-eyed child had grown to stand on the threshold, but not to cross it, told me she was wasting and pale and soon to die, and asked me to do something I had never done in all the years I'd lived, asked me to leave the world and the sky and go with her ...

I remember, what it was like, the Stranger's Curse leeching the strength from me, through the short dark days of winter as my birthday approached, sleep that brought no rest, and no air, no air, never enough air.

Feeling the child kicking beneath my heart and knowing it was a race for that child, to be born before his mother died.

So I thought that was why I should go, for that serious child, nearly and never to be a woman, dying as I had died and would die again.

And then I saw her.

Heredity runs strong in that family, our family.

I see faces all the time in the street that I think I know, until I realize, the ones I know are long, long mouldering in the grave.

And I saw her there, pale as I remembered, trying to breathe, and trying to breathe, and trying again to breathe.

Shiovana de Grace, who everyone called 'the doctor's elder daughter' just as they called me the younger one.

I saw her sicken and I nursed her as she gasped, and bled, and wept. And when they carried her for the last time to Fortune of the Waters it was only the knowledge of the child I already carried that kept me from lying down beside her and never getting up.

I am as old as the River, and I have died many times, and done many things.

Once, I cursed a people, and their children. I said I spoke for the River, but I did it for myself.

I was old, and I was proud, and I was afraid to see strangers coming to our world, strangers with their own ways and their own faith.  I looked at them and I saw our own faith - our belief, but to me, more important, our churches and the power of us in the church - I saw that it would fade.

And I remembered stories even older than I was, of a plant that they said no pregnant woman should touch, because it would steal the soul of the child within her, so it could never grow to be old. Old old stories from times long past, perhaps.

We did not have the spaceships and the weapons they had, the strangers, but we were not stupid, or ignorant. You don't raise your children and breed your livestock and plant your crops at the mercy of the River without understanding hereditary weaknesses, and cross-breeding, and recessive traits.

I went into the forest and I found that plant and I brought back the seeds and I said that the incomers were cursed, that we would be saved from them, if only we showed our faith. Showed our faith by planting a seed of this plant, that would be the breath of faith to us, the tyndedhanah, at every house, every cross road, every garden.

And they did.  And just as I said would happen, the strangers were cursed.

And how they praised me then, the other parieurs!

They say that each time you go down the River you're given the lessons to learn that you failed the last time.

I have fought for breath and not been able to get it, bled and ached and wished for one more year, or month, or day, of life, time and time and time over since I took it on myself to say that children who hadn't even been born should die, simply because I was afraid they wouldn't bow to me.

And changed nothing.

I thought the reason I came here was for her.  To see her through the last days of her short life, give her what comfort I could, as someone who had gone down the River the same way.

But I did not see myself in that bed. Not the doctor's younger daughter, no.

I saw Shiovana.

I am as old as the River. I thought there was nothing in this world I hadn't seen.

And perhaps there isn't. It was a woman from another world, after all, arms as grey as the river's cold autumn waters, a woman who calls a child of my city 'sister', who spoke Fortune's words back to me and said they'd come from my mouth.

Perhaps the medics are right, and I am ... sick. With something that should be treated, should be stopped. But I don't think there'd be much chance for me to smell Caldari tobacco if she hadn't come looking for an answer for her sister, for the answer I couldn't find for mine. An answer that could work for all the stranger's children on our world.

She swore to me, leaning against a headstone that bore my name, that she would not lose her sister. And I left my world and my sky.

We have sat by the same sickbed, she and I, a hundred years apart, watched the same face with the same hope, and fear, and grief.

Waited for the coin to fall.

Fish or swords.

There was nothing I could give her, Shiovana, not life, not hope, not a moment's ease. Not the last thing she asked of me, to live long enough to bear the child she had so hoped for herself.

I am as old as the River, and I have seen the coin fall a thousand times.  And never once have I been able to take it up again and hope to do better.

Until now.

Fish or swords.

Perks

Being a pilot had its perks.

And not living in barracks is definitely one of them, Jack Madison thought.

No more spending money he didn't have on cheap motel rooms with badly-sprung mattresses, or sneaking into the motor pool with a blanket in the search for a little privacy.

Owning your own ship, there's something to be said for it. 


Of course, the 'captain's quarters' on the Lucky Dip weren't exactly up to the standards of the Cluster's finest hotels, either.

But then, ships have things hotels don't, Jack thought as he let Sella tow him by the hand through the corridors.

And the girl does like her engines.


Sella pushed open the engine room door, hauled Jack inside and kicked it closed behind them. "Get 'em off, soldier," she said, dragging her own shirt off over her head. "I hae ta get back to work before fourteen hundred, those hobbies will nae strip and recondition themsel's, will they?"

Jack grinned, following suit. "Sometimes, love, I'm not sure we're even speaking the same language."

"Oh, are ye no, then?" Sella hoisted herself up onto the top of the warp-core housing and patted the place beside her. "Sure about that, are ye? Or nay?"

"Sure about one thing, love," Jack said, joining her.

Sella pushed him down onto his back. "Aye, an wha's tha, then?"

He grinned. "Sure I don't much care."

"Tha's wha I like in a pilot, soldier," Sella said, leaning over him until her red hair brushed his face. "A good grasp on essentials."

"Like this?"

She laughed, gasped, laughed again. "Tha's a start, soldier. Tha's definitely a start."

Yes, Jack thought, being a pilot certainly has its perks.

Conversations on the Fortune's Fist: Seventeen

"L-looks l-like y-y ... b-bit of tr-trouble, Alpassi."

Helmi laced her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling of the brig.

"On y-y feet when I speak t-to y-y!" Fisk snapped.

The tone grabbed hold of ingrained reflexes and yanked. Helmi found herself on her feet, back straight, without thinking about it.

Sir! was on her lips, but she managed to bite it back, made herself slouch.  "Not my boss anymore, Sarge. Need to stop acting like it."

He gave her a cold, level stare through the grill. "Y-y not y-y b-boss either, Alpassi. St-stop acting like y-y are."

"Yeah, well." She met his gaze unflinchingly.  "If I was I wouldn't be in here, would I?"

Fisk sighed. "Y-y ... really. Went t-too far. This t-time."

"I did? Fuck that. And fuck the XO, and fuck you while I'm at it. She's standing outside that door with a medic and the ship locked down so no-one can get on to help and she left Pilot in there for fuck knows how long because she didn't have the guts to open the door." Helmi hit the grill with the flat of her hand, hard enough to bounce it. "Pilot could've died, Sarge, would have, if there weren't some people with sense in her corporation."

"Y-y always ... d-did have. A fl-flair for the ... dr-dramatic."

"I saw her." Helmi hit the grill again.

Fisk shook his head. "So the ex-ex-XO wouldn't open a d-door, so y-y p-p-p ... held a g-g-gun on her?"

"No. I was going to melt out the locking circuits."

"Bullshit."  Fisk took a step closer to the grill and hooked his fingers through it. Helmi knew that he was more than capable of ripping it clear out of its housing. "Lockdown means t-tapes, Alpassi."

"So, tapes. Then you know I didn't point it at the XO."

He flexed his fingers, made the grill groan in protest. "Y-y m-m .... could just fool P-p with th-that. She d-doesn't know pr-pr ... training. N-n m-m, though. Y-y had your r-right foot p-p ... straight at her. Ready."

Helmi glared at him. "Well. She opened the fucking door for Atamahara and Invelen. Didn't she."

"Y-y are in a d-deep p-p ... d-ditch. Of shit, Alpassi."

"So talk to the XO." Helmi hooked her fingers through the grill by his, almost close enough to touch. "Talk to Pilot, make it right. They'll listen to you."

"Don't know that I should," Fisk said. "This t-time."

"Fuck you! Fuck you, Sarge, I did exactly what I was supposed to! Exactly what you knew I'd do when you wanted me in this job!"

"I n-n ... d-didn't. Want y-y to g-g-go waving your ... sidearm. At the - "

Helmi pulled herself right up to the grill. "You fucking picked me to try out for this job because you knew I'd do it if it came down to it, and don't you fucking lie to me, Sarge. Who else wiped those mails out of my box, huh, while I was nothing more than patterns in the buffer waiting to be woken up? Yeah, that's right. You cleaned out my files but you couldn't get at my mother's.  I know, Sarge. I read what I wrote."

He looked at her. "Alpassi. Hel. N-n ... d-didn't want y-y to know."

"Well, I do."  She let go of the grill and stepped back.

"Kn-know it wasn't y-y. Was the ... chip. N-n ... y-y ... fault.  P-p ... chose. Y-y anyway, d-didn't I?"

"You didn't pick me anyway, Sarge. You picked me because.  I killed you to keep her safe, and that's what you wanted, wasn't it? The TCMCs can make you believe things but they can't make you act against your nature.  You wanted me in this job because you know what I'll do."

"And wh-what's that?"

"Anything."  She gave him a level stare. "So get me the fuck out of here so I can do it."

"Alpassi. Hel. I n-n ... wanted ..."

"Well, neither did fucking I. But we've got it, don't we? So fuck off out of my face and sort this shit the fuck out!"

Fisk looked at her a moment longer while she held her breath before he nodded, and turned for the door.

It wasn't until his footsteps had faded down the hall that Helmi realized.

First order I ever gave him.


She closed her eyes.

Well, shit, Alpassi. 


It's not like you didn't know. 

Looks

The two of them looked nothing alike.

Oh, a vague similarity in coloring, maybe, until a closer look showed that Helmi's hair was fairer, without the wiry kink that always showed in Fisk's no matter how close he cropped it.

Any passing resemblance ended there. Helmi might have been tall for a woman, but Fisk could see straight over the top of her head without trying. She was lean, wiry, stronger than she looked. He was stronger than he looked too, thanks to some of the most expensive custom upgrades in the Cluster, but broad enough across the shoulders to break up a bar fight just by getting to his feet.  She might make half his weight, if she was soaking wet and he was wearing the clone that didn't have tempered metal instead of bone, and today he was wearing the body that could twist a man's head off. Helmi knew that if she'd told him why he should come he'd have jumpcloned down, been there right away in the clone that's just a standard body, that can lift as much as a strong man can and no more. That can talk in complete sentences.

Pilot needs to see the Fisk she knows, though. Stammer and all.

They walked in step, two very different figures with the same posture and gait. Straight backs, not too stiff. Ready to salute if an officer passes.  Ready, too, for something worse, if it came.

His eyes were blue to her grey, but both their gazes scanned the hangar in the same pattern, noting everything that moves, each patch of cover, sightlines and vantage points.

They both had scars.

His were more obvious.

Hers just might be deeper.

Neither of them said a word aloud, as they strode side-by-side across the hangar deck, but there was a conversation going on all the same.  Helmi preferred her implanted comm for privacy's sake. Fisk used his by necessity: some things can't wait five minutes for him to force a sentence out.

What do the doctors say? he asked, voice coming to her mind as intimate as a lover's whisper.

Helmi snorted aloud, replied silently. Fucked if I know. I'm not in the need-to-know loop on that. Try the XO.


Did. I'm not CTO, not even crew. You know what she's like.


Helmi did indeed know what Luisa Kamajeck was like. Well, shit. 


He glanced at her. You said to get back here. Fast. Why?


You'll see, when you talk to Pilot.


Fuck that, Alpassi. What's going on?


Doc's gone, Sarge. Chief's dead.  Pilot's sick.


Sick?


Real fucking sick. You'll see.


They stopped at the door to the secure container that held Pilot's hab-unit. Helmi punched keys, put her hand on the scanner, led the way inside.

The climate changed to crisp winter as they stepped over the threshold. Helmi could see her breath as she strode up the path to the front door. 


Knocking would have been manners, normally. But with things as they were  ... making Pilot come to the door would be worse than cruel.

Helmi pushed the door open and stepped inside, feeling Fisk as close behind her as a memory. "Pilot? You there?"

"Helmi? In here."

Helmi followed the voice to the living room. "Got a visitor for you, Pilot."

Pilot was lying on the couch, stockinged feet hanging over the edge, her dark uniform a stark contrast to the cream cushions and the porcelain perfection of her makeup. Pretty as a picture, if I hadn't seen the blisters that makeup covers when she hit the alarm at two this morning because she couldn't stop vomiting long enough to make an ordinary comm call to medical.


Pilot shook her head, carefully. Helmi could see even that slight movement start a trickle of  blood where her collar touched her neck.  Spirits.  Doctors better fix this, and soon, or I'm going to start interpreting 'Personal Protection' a little more fucking broadly. "I don't think so, today, Helmi."

"Yeah, I think so, though, Pilot," Helmi said.  "Sarge. Get in here."

Like always, he moved quietly, for such a big man. Helmi only knew he was in the room when Pilot's face changed.

Looked from Pilot to Fisk and saw something else she didn't want to see.

Well, shit, Helmi. It's not like you didn't know.


"I'll leave the two of you to visit," she said, not expecting an answer, not getting one.

Fisk moved aside for her as she headed for the door, the only sign he even knew she was still in the room.

Helmi'd long since calculated the spot in the garden that kept her close enough for an emergency and far enough away to respect Pilot's privacy.  She went to stand in it now, hearing the murmur of voices inside, a familiar halting baritone, Pilot's slight Gallente slur, two voices more familiar to her now than her own mother's.

None of the words were distinguishable, and Helmi was careful not to strain to make them out.

Not like I didn't know.

Not like I lost him, to either of them.  


Never was mine, was he?  And not like I wanted him to be.


Not how most women would count it, that was certain.  No fucking roses and lingering looks and dancing under a holographic fucking moon.


He'd broken her ribs. She'd broken his nose, twice.

Neither Pilot nor that hauler he's taken up with can say that.


They had parts of him Helmi'd never wanted.

She had things neither of them were smart enough to know mattered.

She had a sparring partner who'd kill her if she made a mistake, an NCO first through every door they'd taken together.

And one more thing no podder'd understand.

Small room, cheap furnishings, because the hotel manager knows that the teams for the Haadoken Summit take full advantage of the unofficial licence they get for the night following the last day of the competition.


People hollering and running in the halls. Laughter, somewhere.  


Four Home Guard team members who just lost to Ishukone again and think maybe a SuVe cadet is just the thing to make them feel like they're at least tougher than someone.


Four Home Guard plus one. Last man down to Ishukone today, half his face purple from the blow that put him on the mat, the one eye that isn't swollen shut blue and cold and steady as the barrel of the gun he's pointing at his team-mates.  


Helmi's shirt's torn. She's more than a little drunk.  


She's more than a little scared.


The four guys are between her and the door and they aren't moving.


"Cadet! Secure their weapons. Move!"


First time he'd looked at her.

First order he'd given her.

First time she'd realized there was a way to shove fear and shame and everything else down into a box inside her and do her job just as cool and calm as a man who could make Ishukone Watch break a sweat.

Not something a podder would understand, sure as sure not something a sweet-faced Vherokior hauler pilot or a sentimental Gallente could ever comprehend.

Never was roses and moonlight, for me and the Sarge. 


Never will be.


He'd broken her ribs. She'd broken his nose, twice.

He might kill her, if she made a mistake.

She had killed him, when someone else had.

They looked nothing alike, except maybe a vague similarity in coloring.

Helmi glanced down at herself, pretty blue shirt hiding the body-armor and the gun.


But me and him both know that looks ...

Looks are deceiving.