Oxygen

Charlie wasn’t the only one in the class. It’s a thing, cops studying law through night school. The ones who don’t try it, talk about it, and the ones who don’t talk about it at least think about it, think about all those hours spent in courtrooms watching lawyers screw up their perfectly good case and knowing they could do it so much better if they just had the chance.

I’ve taught enough of them to know the type, and besides, I’ve dated a cop or two in my life. Well, or three or four, really.

Look, I have a type, all right? Is that a crime? 

Anyway.

Charlie wasn’t the only cop in my first year Introduction to Trial Practice class, but he was the only one to stick it out.  Sharp enough in class, middling marks on assignments, which was understandable once I knew he had a couple of small kids at home. He was quick enough to tell me about them, too, not so much making excuses as politely letting me know he was off the market, or off the market where I did my window-shopping, at least.

Like I said, I have a type. 

He got through first term, and it was somewhere in the middle of Criminal Law Theory that I started to notice a few things about Charlie that didn’t fit so well with the law-school-at-night-cop that I had him pegged as. For one thing, he didn’t live on station. I saw him a couple of times after class going into the Interbus hub, and not the system shuttle either, the inter-system exchange. Now, I ask you, what law enforcement official has the disposal income to commute intersystem for a night class – even if most of it is by correspondence?  

I would have assumed he was on the take, but Charlie – he didn’t seem the type. Not that you can tell, always, but his suits had the shiny patches of long wear on the elbows and ass, and when he brought food to class it was sandwiches, not takeaway. So I figured that whoever was the other parent of those kids he carried pictures of on his datapad had money, and plenty of it.

Cia, he said she was. Not my wife or my partner, just her name, but the way he said it – you know how it is with some guys, they fall hard and that’s it, mortal lock, for life. He said her name like it was code for oxygen. Not that he talked about her much, or about anything much. Just kept himself to himself, did the work, came to class, let something slip sometimes in the chit-chat during break.

Kept coming, too, term after term, plodding through the work, Advanced Criminal Practice, Interjurisdictional Procedure, Principles of Evidentiary Admissibility … scraping through, sometimes barely, but by enough for his name to wind up on the list of students who’d accumulated enough points to graduate and maybe get into a real law school somewhere, or at least get something to hang on their wall, a nice holoscroll with their name and the course on it.

Charles Etay, Certificate of Legal Studies, his would say.

We have a proper graduation ceremony for them. It’s just about the only thing about the school that is proper, truth be told. Not that the students aren’t smart, some of them anyway, or the teachers dedicated – for this salary, let me tell you, you’re either dedicated or too crap to get a job elsewhere and we have a mix of the two – but we’re not exactly Pator Tech, or the Republic University.  

We’re affordable, is what we are, when you get right down to it, and we run our classes at hours that let people with jobs get to them.

But we have a proper graduation, so the students who’ve managed to stick it out can show off to their uncles and aunts and the rest of their clan or culturally-appropriate extended family grouping. Even hire a good hall, up on C Deck, with a view over the station undock and the students from first year catering studies circulating with food and drink afterwards.

I was glad for Charlie that he’d gotten through, even if I was a little sad to see him go.  Face like that brightened the scenery in any classroom, after all.  Certainly brightened the scenery in the hall as all the soon-to-be graduates milled around in their ceremonial robes or best clothes or some combination of the two, too nervous to stand still and craning their necks to see where their family and friends were sitting so they’d look in the right direction when the visiting dignitary of the day handed over the scroll.

It always makes me tear up a little, yeah I’m a sentimental old fool, I know, seeing them all together like that, not the best and brightest youth of the Republic but the ones who didn’t quite make the cut or came back here as adults or didn’t get their shit together and get serious about education until after formal schooling was done, but not giving up, no. Studying nights, working days, two jobs some of them, scraping together tuition by skipping meals, all to get here, today, bare-chested Brutor men and fur-trimmed Sebbies, a Vherry girl with a feather headdress and another in a shimmering nano-mesh that had to be the most expensive piece of clothing she owned for all the pattern kept glitching on the shoulders.  

And Charlie, in his well-cut, well-mended Gallente suit.

I always check especially to see where the students are looking out into the audience, because there’s always one or maybe two who aren’t looking, who know there’s no-one there to cheer for them.  I make a special fuss for them myself, all the teachers do, when they cross the floor.

So I was looking to see who had someone to look for, and that’s why I was looking at Charlie when it happened.

At first, I just figured we’d scored a bigger wig than the usual bigwig for the ceremony, when the security guys came in.  They had that look, not casual muscle or rent-a-guards, that serious professional look that goes with a career looking out for someone whose life is worth a lot and whose death would do more than leave a family grieving.  Out of the corner of my eye I could see people turning to look, staring, curious about who exactly this was all for.

But I was looking at Charlie, and he wasn’t even the slightest bit curious. He relaxed, and gave that almost-not-quite-a-smile of his, like it was exactly what he’d been hoping to see.

It still took me a minute to work it out.  I think it was how large the group was that came in next that threw me, too many of them too close in age and too different in heritage to be a family group. No, it was an entourage, and so I was still thinking V.I.P. when I picked out the handful who moved oblivious through the rest of them, knowing that people would get out of the way and move the furniture and damn well cut a door in the wall if it was necessary.

Two Caldari were the ones I marked out first, maybe husband and wife, the man looking a bit vague and distracted, the woman looking around with sharp interest and a grin.  And then a Gallie woman, a little kid on one hip and the other hand steering a determinedly-independent toddler along.  

When she looked our way and smiled with recognition, the coin dropped.  Charlie’s Cia had money, all right, she had the kind of money that makes you need round-the-clock protection by professionals, and why he was working at all in that case, let along working and doing night-school, was beyond me, if he didn’t need the salary and he had a woman who looked like that at home.

She gave him a puzzled look, not angry though, and when he replied with one of those Gallente shrugs she just laughed, and shrugged herself, and kept on steering the toddler – her son, their son – towards the seating.  Charlie watched them as if everything had come right with the world when she entered the room, with his world anyway, and I tell you, if a man like that had ever looked like that at the sight of me crossing a room …

But there you go.

I looked back at Charlie’s woman, partly because I couldn’t look at him looking at her like that much longer without starting to hate her and myself as well, right as she turned to take her seat.

And I saw the glint of jewels and metal on the back of her neck.

Charlie’s Cia was a caspuleer.

The V.I.P. came in around then, in another little bustle of security, noticeably smaller than the one surrounding Charlie’s family, and no fucking wonder is it, given who or what was in that family.  I got busy lining all my students up and making sure they were in the right order so Harbuko Ardreas didn’t get Nia Reyspander’s certificate, and then the first one was off and across the floor and you wouldn’t think it would be possible but I did forget about Charlie and his capsuleer for a while, in all the cheering and whistling and hooting and stamping for each student. One Brutor woman turned and did a few steps of an impromptu war dance on her way back across the stage and got a standing ovation from the whole audience, and then every student had to get a standing ovation, even the tiny old Vherokior man who was so embarrassed by it he fled back to his seat at a sprint.  Even the V.I.P., one of the higher-up academics from a real university, got into the spirit and yelled and clapped like the rest of us as the students, my students at least until the ceremony was over, took their holoscrolls with as much pride as if they were graduate degrees from Pator or Caille.

And why shouldn’t they, after all?  I’d bet a year’s meager salary that there wasn’t a student anywhere in the Cluster who worked harder, all things taken into account, than mine.

When the registrar called out Charles Etay I looked back at his capsuleer, I couldn’t help it.  

She was staring at him crossing the stage like he had suddenly turned bright purple or taken off all his clothes or something, and then as he got about halfway there her face lit up with – I don’t know, exactly. Happiness, yes, but something else.

Comprehension. And, I could have sworn, relief.

And then she was on her feet, before he even had the scroll in his hand, smiling and clapping with tears streaming down her face, and that was the cue for everyone else to be on their feet too, so Charlie got his certificate in the middle of so much hollering and applause I doubt he could even hear what the V.I.P. said to him.  

He took the holoscroll and made his way off the stage, past where I was standing, and by the time he had, his capsuleer had scrambled out of her row and come running down the side of the hall – causing, I have no doubt, a certain amount of professional consternation among the hard-eyed men and women on her security team.  She was still crying and smiling at the same time as she threw herself at him, arms around his neck.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I head her ask. “I would have – ”

Then she pulled back and looked at him, and maybe she heard the words that had come out of her mouth or maybe there was something she saw in his face, because she stopped herself right there.

They looked at each other for a moment, one of those looks when there’s no-one else in the room even if you’re in the middle of a crowd, not that I know from personal experience but I’ve seen it happen, once or twice.

Then she put her arms back around him, and said his name.

Like it was code for oxygen. 

Flash Flood

((co-written with Stitcher))

Helmi Alpassi knew that she'd originally been tapped to train into Pilot Roth's personal security detail because Sarge had known she could keep her head when it mattered.

Had known it from the first moment they met, after all.

And if there ever was a moment not to panic, Alpassi, this is fucking it.

"Pilot, Lieutenant Etay," she said calmly, "if you'd come to the front of the house with me now, the shuttle is on approach."

Charles Etay was carrying one of the babies in a safety-capsule. Amieta Invelen had the other. Helmi couldn't tell which was which and really didn't give a shit, so long as the total number of babies equalled two and they were each in the most expensive and sophisticated piece of protective child-transport equipment available in the Cluster. Helmi had picked those capsules herself, after a lot of research.

Finding out they were tested by dropping them out of a second story window with an actual child in them had sealed the deal.

Still, she would have preferred them to be carried by her people, would have preferred all the civilians to be hoisted up and hauled at speed to the assembly point, really.

If speed had been an issue, Pilot's feet wouldn't have touched the ground. But the shuttle won't be here for another three minutes anyway.

And Pilot was prone to panic. Helmi knew that part of her job description was making sure Pilot felt safe, as well as was safe.

So she let Etay carry one of the twins. And she didn't take Pilot's elbow to hurry her along, even when Pilot paused and said something about flowers and the nursery.

"I'll make sure they're packed," Invelen said reassuringly, and Pilot started moving again. Helmi scanned the sky, looking for spikey sansha shapes, saw none, saw ...

The sky.

It was wrong in a gut-wrenching way, the familiar off-black interstellar dust clouds of New Eden as seen from Debreth at sunset shifted towards an ugly yellow-green, like a gathering storm of forces Helmi didn't want to guess at. The Intel suddenly went from an intellectual threat to a real and immediate one. Adrenaline pulsed her implants to a higher pitch, burning copper on her tongue.

And on the horizon, burning rain. Five stars, moving as stars shouldn't, glowing like a banked furnace in the fading light as they twisted and writhed, shedding speed. Almost hidden behind the wind, the banging of the air as it raged  impotently against this supersonic violation swept across the valley, echoing like a distant battle.

Nothing so clean and wholesome as thunder and lightning rode on the winds of this storm.

And the floods it brought were not the kind Debreth was build to withstand.

Implants on her retinas read the friendly, so that's fucking something IFF broadcasts from the falling constellation as it shed the last of its speed in one low looping bank over the river and swept in towards the estate.

A surface-to-orbit shuttle painted in the livery of Re-Awakened Technologies Inc settled in the wide avenue as three of the remaining ships – angular Caldari gunships bristling with weapons - screamed overhead, their hulls bearing a blue starburst on bare gunmetal. The fifth, much larger ship settled in to a relative stop above the Roth estate and the grounds thrummed with the subsonic rumbling of immense graviton pads keeping the staging platform aloft. A percussive blast rattled the windows as explosive bolts blew along its flanks and four humanoid giants, armoured and massive, dropped from the flanks of the the thirty meters to the ground and landed in a blast of pneumatic gas. Within a second their guns and sensors were tracking the skies as they fanned out, covering the grounds.

Only a moment behind them were the ropes, ten of them, and before those ropes had even finished uncoiling to the ground, the first of the troopers was on it, her arrestor hook buzzing harshly as it slowed her descent. She hit the ground and rolled, moving aside with only a heartbeat to spare before the next trooper, and the next after him hit the deck, rolled and bustled to cover, each claiming three drones from the swarm that swept from the dropship's bays. Almost-white painted ceramic hardsuits, each with that blue starburst splash and a mirrored visor covering the face, Kaalakiota assault rifles. Airtight, nanite-proof, damn near bulletproof, but still light and clean-lined enough to allow the soldiers to move with grace and ease in Debreth's low gravity.

The flurry of activity swept towards the little knot of people on the lawn, parted around them, and left them untouched, except for the wind whipping their hair.

One of the troopers, the first one out, jogged towards them, heading unerringly for Pilot Roth. No rank insignia, Helmi noted, just a blue sunburst, and the words Hakatain Dynasty Holdings and A. Sihayha. I.D. confirmation spooled across her retinas and Helmi stopped the instinctive reach for her sidearm before it was more than a flicker of muscles as Captain Hakatain's personal bodyguard tapped the side of her helmet to clear the faceshield, saw a corresponding flicker in the other woman's eyes.

"Captain Roth," the woman said. "Chief Aato Sihahya. Captain Hakatain sends his regards."

Pilot - surreally, given the circumstances - extended her hand and said with a smile, "I'm very pleased to meet you. I hope you had a safe trip?"

"Safe enough, ma'am," Sihahya said, returning the handshake with a gauntlet that could probably have crushed Pilot's hand flat if she wanted. "With your permission, we'll see to the defence of your estate and the town in your absence."

"With my ... " Pilot's voice trailed off, and Helmi suppressed a sigh. One day she'll learn that she's in charge.

Her mouth was open to translate Pilot-speak into marine, one more part of her job, Pilot Roth appreciates your offer and certainly extends all the permissions you need to carry out the protection of the Roth property and surrounding area, when Pilot surprised her.

"Thank you," Pilot Roth said, quietly but clearly. "That would be appreciated. Please do anything you feel required."

One day turns out to be today, Helmi thought, as Sihahya saluted and re-opaqued her visor with a brief nod to Helmi. Either the the Ancestors are with us, or the world is about to end.

Or both.

"Pilot, we need to be getting you on the shuttle," she said. Invelen was already moving. Helmi herded Pilot and Etay up the ramp as armoured forms set up defensive positions around them, mostly missing the flower-beds.

One baby started wailing, then the other. Pilot tried to comfort them as Invelen secured the capsules but the twins refused to be consoled and their piercing screams were a counterpoint to the rumble of the shuttle engines as it lifted off. Helmi linked her optical implants into the shuttle's external cameras and watched as two of Hakatain's gunships escorted the shuttle into high atmosphere, then stalled into a graceful backwards dive towards Debreth again as the shuttle raced towards its rendezvous with the Feather.

As the gunships shrank to invisibility against the blue-green globe below them, Helmi let the connection fade. Spirits watch over you, she wished the men and women they were leaving behind.

And Ancestors sharpen your aim.

Conversations on the Utopian Ideal: Twenty Eight.

((co-written with Silver Night))

Captain Silver Night waited at the foot of the docking umbilical, watching the small woman - the word came to mind unbidden - waddle towards him. Ciarente should, of course, have taken a passenger transport platform rather than walk the length of the hangar, and he knew his crew would have offered her one at the security checkpoint. Knew, too, exactly what she would have said, the same response she gave when he offered to take her place in the labs at HQ or overseeing a production line. Relax, Silver. I'm pregnant, not crippled.

Reaching him, a little breathless, she smiled. "Hello, Silver. How are you?"

"I'm well, Cia. How are you?" He started towards the ship. "Shall we?"

Tired, he thought an honest answer to his question would have been, judging from the blue shadows beneath her eyes and the pinched look to her face that the warm smile couldn't quite hide. But -

"Fat," Ciarente said instead, with a laugh, and then nearly overbalanced as the umbilical sloped upwards. Silver offered his arm, and Ciarente tucked her hand through the crook of his elbow, leaning on him lightly. "Ooops. Fat and with a centre of gravity that changes daily. I find it hard to believe that there's still more pregnant for me to get, but they assure me it'll happen."

"Well, you're most of the way there, from what I understand." They crossed the airlock threshold and Silver hesitated, considering the distance to his office. " I think ... " Security station, no, medical staging, no, non-com break-room .... "I think this should be suitable.

Ciarente, of course, had an apologetic smile for the non-commissioned officers who accurately read their Captain's expression as a suggestion that elsewhere would be a better place for them to be at the moment. And if she walked the length of the ship and went into premature labour she would no doubt apologise to medical for the inconvenience.

Sinking awkwardly into a chair, Ciarente smiled and said as if she could read his mind, "I'm not going to suddenly have the babies on B deck just from walking to your office, Silver."

"Shall we not take the risk, nevertheless?" he said.

Ciarente laughed. " All right. It's your ship, after all." She folded her hands over the swell of her stomach. "And I admit, although I'll deny it in public, my ankles are starting to complain a bit at the extra weight."

"Not so very much longer," Silver said. "And there's nothing wrong with taking it easy, when you can. Tea?"

"Yes," Ciarente said. "Yes, tea, thank you. And yes, time's been passing. It's ... getting to be time for me to think about names, perhaps."

"Oh?" Silver poured for both of them.

Ciarente picked up her cup and spoke to it, rather than to him. "Verin told me it's traditional, Caldari tradition, to chose an ancestor's name. It's not so different, where I come from. A grandparent, a great-grandparent. Someone you want to remember, maybe."

"I suppose it is somewhat common in many places," Silver said.

"Camille," Ciarente said with fond exasperation, "Camille thinks I should name my daughter Camieta. But I ... I've been thinking more about boy's names."

Silver sipped his tea. "Oh? Like what?"

"People it's important to remember. Important to family." Ciarente picked up her cup again, and put it back down, tapping the rim gently with one finger. "I haven't talked to Ami about it yet, Silver. I don't want to ... blunder in, I suppose."

"Blunder in?" Silver asked. "I'm afraid you're going to have to tell me a little more than that, Cia."

Ciarente looked down at her stomach and told it in a whisper, "I thought, perhaps, well, I wouldn't, of course, I know reminders can be painful, but I got the idea, and it seemed like the right thing, and I ..."

"Cia?" Silver prompted gently when she stopped.

"I was thinking about Jan," Ciarente said quietly, and then hastened to add, "But of course, not if, I haven't even mentioned it to Ami, it's a stupid idea, isn't it, I - "

"Cia," Silver said. "I don't think it's a stupid idea at all. Yes, reminders can hurt, but it's also good to remember."

"You think?" she asked hopefully.

"I think he would have been honoured, Cia," Silver said. "It would have made him very happy, I think. Having a niece and nephew."

"All right," Ciarente said, and smiled. "I'll talk to Ami."

Silver nodded, and sipped his tea. "Speaking of Ami. She and I discussed things, yesterday."

"Oh," Ciarente said, and went quite still. "Silver, are we - how secure are we, here?"

"Secure," he assured her.

"All right," Ciarente said quietly.

"I think Amieta is right," Silver told her. "A great deal has changed."

"Yes," Ciarente said. "That's what she said to me, and I suppose she is right, it has. I ... I just need to know that you're sure, I guess. That it's the right decision, for you. Not because of me, or what Ami said, or ... but that it's what you want."

"I'm sure, Cia."

"I don't want to put you in a position where ... I don't want it to be just because I'm ... a mess, about things."

Silver realized with alarm that Ciarente's eyes were filling with tears. Hastily, he offered her a handkerchief. "That isn't it at all, Cia. I would like ... to be able to have holos on my desk and spend holidays together without worrying about being seen."

Ciarente gave him a watery smile. "Like normal people? I know. I've felt that way, too, sometimes. But ... we're not, Silver. Are we?"

"Maybe a little at a time."

"Yes." She rested her hands on her stomach again. "It would be nice. Not to have to wait until my children are old enough to be able to keep secrets, to tell them who you - oh!"

"Cia?" Silver rose to his feet, making the comm connection to Medical with a thought. "Are you all right? Cia?"

"Give me your hand," Ciarente said urgently. "Quickly!"

"Do you need medical?" Silver asked, leaning over to offer her his hand.

Ciarente shook her head, taking his hand in hers and pressing it firmly against her stomach. "No. Wait. Just wait - there!"

Silver felt a vibration against the palm of his hand, faint but unmistakable.

"Did you feel that?" Ciarente asked softly.

"Yes," Silver said as softly, and felt the movement again, as if in response to his voice.

Ciarente's fingers tightened over his. "That's my daughter, on the top there," she said. "They can hear us, you know. I guess we sound like - when you're swimming underwater and people are talking by the pool, I suppose. But they can hear us." She smiled at him, tears sparkling on her eyelashes. "Say something to her."

"What ... " Silver cleared his throat. "What should I say?"

"Tell her hello," Ciarente said gently, and when he hesitated: "It's all right. Go on. Tell your - "

He saw her lips start to shape the word and forestalled her. "Don't - " say that. An automatic, reflex response. Never say it, not aloud, no matter where, no matter when. Never say it.

"Of course," Ciarente said, the ghost of a sigh. "I'm sorry."

Her smile was apologetic, but Silver thought he could see sadness there as well. He looked at his hand, both of Ciarente's now folded over it, felt the quiver in her skin that told of a new life moving, growing, listening to his voice. All three of them, he thought. Right here beneath my hand.

He would bury who he was and who he cared about behind an alias, behind a million secrets and a thousand locked doors, if that was what was best for them.

Or shout it from the hangar gantries, if that was.

Or say -

"Hello," Silver said hesitantly. "Camieta. Jan. Or whoever you're going to be. I'm - " He paused, and Ciarente squeezed his fingers. Silver took a deep breath. "I'm your uncle. Most people call me Silver. Most people do. But my name ... my name is Val."

Entirely True

Avolier Girane paused at the gate to the DeGrace house, straightening his tie and smoothing a palm over his hair. Of course it was impossible to imagine Lorraine DeGrace, or Lorraine Roth as she is now, living anywhere other than the DeGrace's ancient house on the broad terraces above the river, but the restrictions on private vehicles in the old part of town did mean that guests were forced into a closer encounter with the public transport system than a councillor like Girane was used to.

Satisfied that he was at least presentable, Girane made his way up the path between the manicured shrubs. The door opened as he approached, and he recognised one of Lorraine's sons, the polite one, Michel or Marc I think, doing duty as a doorman, offering to take Girane's coat with a smile that made his resemblance to his father all the more marked.

And there was the father himself,  topping up another guest's glass with a wink and a laugh, Lorraine DeGrace's folly they used to say, until Jorion Roth, spacer, became Jorion Roth, capsuleer.

"Bon soir, Avol, you're well?" Jorion draped an arm around Girane's shoulders and drew him further into the room. "I'm glad you could make it tonight, I'd hate to get sent back upstairs without a chance to see you. Pesellian's well? He's not here tonight?"

Jorion's smile was, as always, infectiously warm. Pesellian always said it never reached the man's blue eyes, but Pese's always been jealous of every man better looking than he is, which is why he refused to come tonight and left me to make his excuses. Girane paused, vaguely aware that though the thought was entirely true, it didn't quite feel like the entire truth, and then realised Jorion was waiting for a reply. "I couldn't drag him away from the lab, I'm afraid."

"Ah, scientists, eh? My eldest, Cia, she's the same." Jorian gestured toward the back of the room, where a plump girl was moving among the guests with a tray of canapés. "Lorraine had to drag her down here by the ear, or close to it. She's been accepted to the Ecole de Physique, you know, we couldn't be more proud, but a girl her age needs more in her life than the books, non?"

Girane nodded agreement and took a glass from a tray offered to him by a younger girl, one with a far stronger resemblance to Lorraine. And there was Lorraine DeGrace Roth herself, her eyes and smile as bright as the gemstones around her neck, pausing to kiss her husband's cheek before extending one slender hand to Girane.

"Avol," she said fondly. "Such a pleasure.  Is that darling man of yours brewing up some sort of elixir of eternal youth in his laboratory? Because I swear you look younger every time I see you.  Therese has gotten you a drink?  And - Cia, don't stand there dreaming while Avol is hungry."

With a murmured apology, the older Roth daughter held out her tray, wearing an echo of her mother's bright smile. "M'ser Girane, how nice to see you again."

Girane contemplated the potential damage to his waistline in each pasty-wrapped parcel on her tray, but Lorraine's cook was famous in society circles, and rightly so, and he couldn't resist. The girl smiled again, and began to turn, and Girane hastily cast about for a topic of conversation that would delay her and the tray she carried.  "Jorion said you're studying to be a physicist?"

"Oui, M'ser," she said, politely but a little distantly. "Perhaps less useful than Dr Aurelim's work on tuber yields, but it interests me."

"Oh, you know Pese's latest?" Girane discreetly took another pastry.

"Great potential, perhaps not here but in places with more marginal conditions," Cia said, almost the exact words from Pese's Science Merit Citation, and entirely true, although with no mention of the military applications, not the entire truth. The girl gave him another bright, Lorraine-DeGrace-smile, and said,  "You must be very proud of him, M'ser. Please, do try the ones on the left. They're cheese, quite delicious."

"Oh, well, if you insist." She was right: they were quite delicious. He said so, and Cia's smile broadened, genuine warmth in her eyes for the first time, as if she'd been somewhere else until them and briefly stepped inside herself. Fortune, she's almost pretty, Girane thought with surprise, and then, "Did you make them?"

Cia nodded, flushing a little, and lowered her voice to say confidingly, "The secret is the - "


A loud curse behind her made them both turn. Doetre Tumame, past and most say future mayor, was hopping on one foot, swearing, the crumpled child's model of a sharp-edged space ship on the floor an eloquent explanation.

"You stupid cow!" a shrill voice declared. The owner of the voice, a small girl with startlingly ginger hair, glared up at Tumame. "You ruined it! Why don't you look where you're going, you - "

"Camille," Lorraine DeGrace said, and cast a laughing glance around the room. Children, the glance said, inviting complicity from all the parents there,  what can you do?

""Well, she should!" the girl said furiously. "That took me and Cia ages and - "

"Then you should have taken better care of it, cherie," Lorraine said. "Now pick it up and take it to your room."

"Not until she says sorry!"

Lorraine lost her smile. "Camille! That is not an appropriate tone to use. If you are looking to be -"

Whatever Lorraine thought Camille was looking to be was lost as the tray Cia had been holding hit the floor with a crash. She stared down at it and then looked up with a bright smile. "Fortune," she said. "I'm so sorry, everyone, I really am a butterfingers."


"Oh, Cia," Lorraine said with a disappointed sigh.

The girl flushed a dull red and bent to gather up the spilled food, murmuring apologies.

Jorian put a hand on his wife's shoulder and said genially, "Well, I think Cia has announced it's time to move into the dining room, everyone.  Mayor Tumame, let me offer you my arm, I trust Camille's Drake hasn't caused permanent injury? They are quite a sturdy little ship, we pilots call them flying bricks for a reason."

The tension in the room lifted as the guests followed Jorian and Tumame towards the dining room.  As the staff set out a first course of delicate white fish and lemon butter, even the former mayor forgot her injury.

Girane would not even have remembered Jorion and Lorraine's youngest and least well-behaved child, except, leaving the house full of excellent food and better wine, he heard a child's voice from the shadows beneath the hedge at the front of the property.

"I don't care, Cia! I am running away and you can't stop me!"

The eldest daughter's voice sounded somehow softer and warmer in the darkness. "But I will be lonely when you've gone, cherie. And sad, without you."

"You're going away anyway, to college!" Camille said sullenly.

I am eavesdropping, Girane thought, with a faint, guilty thrill. Still, it's always useful to know what one can about a family like the DeGraces.  As a councillor, it's almost my duty to.

As  a justification, it had the benefit of being entirely true.  Girane stepped further into the shadows as Cia said gravely, "Only a little way away. And I have to, to get a good job so I can get a house of my own."

"Of your own?" Camille asked. "With just, like, you?"

"Mmm. There might be room for one more, cherie. If you wanted."

"We could be running away together!" the child said excitedly.

A faint rustle of clothing. "We could. If you weren't running away now, that is."

"Oh." A small foot scuffed gravel.  "Maybe I could wait, for you. If you didn't take very long."

There was a smile in Cia's voice as she said, "I promise I'll be as quick as I can, how about that?"

"Okay. I guess I can wait, if you're quick. Ow, don't squeeze, Cia!"


The girl laughed quietly. "I can't help it, you're too squeezable.  Hey, since you're not running away, do you want to help me fix your ship?"

"It's too smashed," Camille said sadly. "That stupid lady has big feet! She should watch where they go!"

"Yes, she should," Cia agreed. "But I bet it isn't too smashed. I bet we could fix it, with maybe some replacement bits."

Camille sighed. "Then it won't be the same, with new bits."

"No, it'll be like a real spaceship. They get fixed all the time, you know," Cia said. "And new parts get put on them when they're too broken."

"Really?" Camille asked.

"Uh-huh.  So your ship will be even more real, if it's been fixed up after a collision."

Camille said hotly, "Mama should have made the stupid lady 'pologise, not me, Cia! That wasn't fair! It was on the table and everything, she knocked it down with her big fat backside, I saw!"

Girane had to stifle a laugh, thinking Tumame is rather broad in the beam, as Cia said quietly, "Well, maybe Mama didn't see."


"She should have been on my side anyway! She's my mama!"

"Mama can't help being Mama, Cami. Don't be mean about her. And I'm on your side, hmm? How about that?"

"Okay. Cia?"

"Yes, cherie?"

"Can we go and fix my ship now?"

Girane stepped back out of sight hastily as feet scuffed and bodies moved in the shadows. "If you've finished running away."

"I have," Camille said, as the two sisters joined hands and started back to the house.

Then as they passed the shadows where Girane stood, she added thoughtfully, "Well.  For now, anyway."

Perhaps it was that carefully considered qualification that stuck like a grass seed on Dry Day to Avolier Girane's memory.  Certainly, when he heard that Jorion Roth had fallen victim to some sort of cloning accident, he wondered first, not about the man's beautiful now-widow but about the eldest and the youngest of his children.  When the Roth family left Debreth, suddenly and completely between one day and the next,  Girane found himself thinking For now without quite knowing why he did.

And when, some time after that, Ciarente Roth called upon the town council to explain that sometimes Air Traffic Control regulations were made to be broken, Mayor Avolier Girane surprised his fellow councillors almost as much as he surprised himself when he found himself agreeing with her.

She was a DeGrace, he explained to them later, even if this pilot fellow she wanted them to recognise as a hero was Caldari. There had always been DeGraces in Debreth, even back before the first of the nine bridges had been built.  Humouring her, especially now she was a capsuleer pilot and richer than Fortune's right hand, was an entirely prudent thing to do. 

Eventually he won their agreement.  Fines were cancelled, a statue commissioned, a public holiday gazetted.


After all, what he had said was entirely true.

And in the end, Girane thought to himself, standing on First Bridge on the first Debreth annual holiday to celebrate capsuleer pilots, watching Ciarente Roth watch Captain Night make a gracious speech thanking Debreth for the honour, in the end ...

No-one knows the entire truth, in the end, except perhaps Fortune.

Who keeps her own counsel. 

Even, he thought, joining in the general applause, even  from capsuleers.

Conversations on the Fortune's Firefly: Twenty Six

The instruments were laid out on the tray.

The needles and the knives.

Cia tried not look at them, but they were there, glinting in the corner of her eye.

"Are you ready, Captain Roth?" Dr Sanik asked.

No. No. Never, not ever.

"Yes," Cia said. She looked away from the tray and sat down on the examination table. "I'm ready. I think."

Metal clinked against metal. "This will only take a few moments."

"Thank you, doctor," Cia said politely. Something cold touched the skin behind her ear and she was -

falling away as fast as she can from

                                                               needles and

                  knives

and -

"Captain Roth."

Dr Sanik was on the other side of the room.

No, Cia realized. I'm on the other side of the room. Crouched in the corner, back pressed to the wall.

"Captain Night said you wanted this procedure," Dr Sanik said.

Want. Wrong word.

"I have to have it," Cia told her knees. "I have to."

Metal clinked on metal again. Cia stole a glance at Dr Sanik and saw her hands empty, the needles and the knives on the tray. "Did he explain to you that it is nothing like - the surgery you had before?"

"Yes. He said - " Cia closed her eyes and tried to make Silver's voice real, tried to make it sound as if he were there and not the other side of the cluster. A fairly minor operation, Cia. Very safe. "He said it was safe."

"It is safe," Dr Sanik said.

Cia nodded, and told her knees "I know."

"We can give you something to make it easier. A mild sedative, if you want."

"I want - " Not to have to do this. "To have -" Silver here, really here, not just a memory of a voice. "I could, if -" Ami were here, holding my hand.

"Captain Roth," Dr Sanik said. "I understand that you may feel some anxiety. I did, after all, perform the reconstructive surgery, after the ... incident."

"I know," Cia said. "I am sorry about that. I mean, I'm sorry about the - the fuss I made. I know, I knew, you weren't ... I did know. It was just the -"

              Needles

                                                                 and the

                           knives

                                                                                   and the dark.

"I understand from Captain Night there are some time constraints," Dr Sanik said.

"Yes." Cia took a deep breath, and forced herself to get up. The room spun, and then steadied. "Yes, there are. I can't afford to - I'll need to be sharp, later. I don't think, a sedative, I don't think it's a good idea."

"Then if you'll take a seat?" Dr Sanik indicated the examination table again. "We can begin."

It was a long way across the room to the table. Cia took a step, then another, keeping her gaze away from the tray, from what it held.

The last time Dr Sanik had held a scalpel and touched its blade to her scalp, Cia had held tight to Ami's cool metal hand, held on even in the dark, through the needles and the knives, until it was over.

Cia opened her mouth to say Wait, wait until Ami gets here, I'll be all right when Ami gets here.

Closed it again. If Ami was here, it wouldn't be necessary.

She heard metal scratch against metal, felt the cool touch of it on her skin. Someone was whimpering. Cia was too frightened to open her eyes to see who it was. Please, no, she thought, please, stop. Please.

The words stayed unspoken in her throat.

For family, you do anything.

Go anywhere.

Even into the dark.

Not Quite The End of The Universe

The station smelt.

Even in the hangar, Cia could taste the tang in the air: oil and grease, metal glowing under the heat of welding torches, something unrecognizable cooking at a food stall nearby.

Out in the corridors, the smells were stronger. A sickly blend of perfumes drifting from a gaggle of girls clattering and chattering past with their gazes sliding over the off-shift deckhands and dockhands slouching towards the bars and clubs on Recreation Row; a warm wave of fetid stench from the waste-cans as they were dragged through the access alleys; the thick simmer of spices poured over food protein to give it some illusion of flavor.

There was no reason the station cyclers should be weaker in Syndicate than in Heimatar. No reason at all, Cia told herself.

The station still smelt.

She swallowed hard and tried to ignore it. "Anything, M'ser Burke?"

Tanith Burke, dressed in a faded jacket with the shoulder patch that marked him as a Mordu's veteran, shook his head. "Couldn't find anyone who said they'd seen her."

"But that's just Mordu's Legion, isn't it?" Cia asked. "I mean, Ami was with the, the ... 'Bunnies'. Did you ask them?"

"It's not," Burke said, "Quite so simple."

"That's not a good enough answer, M'ser Burke." Cia turned on her heel so fast her head spun and she had to stop for a moment.

"Maybe we should go back to the hangar," Helmi said quietly.

"I'm not going anywhere until we find - " A gust of air carried the smell of sweat and onions and beer from a couple wandering past with their arms entwined and Cia stopped, gagging.

"They're not going to be faster with watching over you at the same time," Helmi said.

"You mean I'm in the way," Cia said. "Am I in the way, M'ser Burke?"

"I wouldn't put it precisely that way," Burke said.

"Well, how would you put it?" Cia felt her eyes sting with tears and blinked hard. "She's my sister, M'ser Burke, my sister and I can't just sit around and - " A sob escaped, despite her best efforts, and she covered her face with her hands.

"Perhaps you should get some rest," Burke suggested. "We are professionals, Captain Roth. Do you know the old saying about the man who buys a dog and barks himself?"

Wiping her eyes, Cia shook her head. "But I think I take your point. I'm sorry, Tanith. I didn't mean to shout at you."

"I'm sure it's been a very trying time for you," Burke said noncomittally.

Cia sighed. "Do you think you'll find her soon?"

"We know she's on this station," Burke said. "But things aren't quite as straightforward here as you might be used to. People are very wary of strangers, especially strangers asking questions." He offered his arm, and when Cia took it, tactfully turned her in the direction of the hangars. "It may take some time to build up the neccessary contacts and trust."

"How much time?"

"I won't mislead you, Captain. Months, rather than weeks."

"Oh."

They walked in silence a moment, and then Burke cleared his throat. "Of course, there is an alternative."

"Oh?"

"You could hire the local knowledge. In the person of a local operative, of some description. Of course, that would mean expanding the group of people aware of the situation, by one, at least."

"Oh," Cia said. "I don't want to ... but, months?"

"At least, Captain."

"Oh." She looked up at him. "Do you think that's what I should do? Hire someone?"

"I do," Burke said.

"Oh. Then, will you find someone for me to hire?"

They reached the hangar entrance and Burke stopped. "I'll look into it, Captain."

"Quickly, please," Cia said, having to blink back tears again. "I don't ... I don't like it here." She made herself smile, made her voice light. "It smells terrible. Like ..." Welded metal and cheap perfume, bulk spices and liquor and sweat. "Like the end of the universe."

One of Burke's eyebrows went up at that. "Sydnicate is not quite the end of the universe, Captain," he said. "There is still Solitude. And the Outer Ring."

"Well," Cia said. "We'd better hurry, then. I don't think - " She bit her lip. "I don't think it's a good idea."

To let her get any further away.

Conversations In Debreth: Twenty Five

Mathilde Leclerke ran the cloth over the already-spotless kitchen bench one more time and folded it into precise quarters. Easy to keep house when the house has no-one in it, she thought with a glance at the couches never-sat-on by the fireplace-never-lit. Change the flowers, dust ... open and close windows.

Not that it should be anything to complain about, not for a woman of her age. A nice quiet life with no crying babies and no toddlers smearing honey on the walls, no adolescent boys tramping mud through the house, no dinner parties for twenty at an hour's notice.

Most housekeepers would envy her, Mathilde knew. I'd have envied myself, fifteen years ago.

Never thought I'd miss cleaning M'selle Camille's handprints off every surface less than three foot off the ground.

She sighed. Can't hold on to your own forever, let alone the others.

What was it her own Maman had said? First they make your arms ache. Later they make your heart ache.

And she was old enough to know better, too.

Still, it would be nice to -

As her thought had bespoke Fortune herself, the front door banged open.

"Ami!" It was M'selle Roth's voice, Captain Roth as she was now. "Ami? I'm home." Rapid footsteps in the hall, and then the girl herself appeared at the door.

"Ami? Mathilde, where's Ami?"

"M'selle Invelen is not here," Mathilde said.

"Did she go out?" Ciarente asked. She crossed briskly to the chiller and opened it. "She'll be hungry when she gets back, Ami's always - ugh, Mathilde. Something's gone off in here."

"No, M'selle," Mathilde said.

Ciarente began to pull things off the shelves, sniffing them cautiously. "Well, something smells terrible."

"I am quite sure I would not let anything spoil," Mathilde said. "But I meant, no, M'selle Invelen has not gone out. She has not been here."

"Oh." Ciarente paused, and then said brightly, "She's probably stopped in to see Alain on her way from the shuttle. She'll be here soon. I wonder if she'd like some - oh, this is it." She held a bowl out at arm's length, grimacing. "The vichyssoise. Ugh, it stinks."

Mathilde took the bowl. "Made fresh this morning, M'selle."

"I don't think so, Mathilde. Get rid of it, please, it's turning my stomach."

The only odors Mathilde could identify were onion and chicken, but she turned to pour the soup away. "You are expecting M'selle Invelen today? She did not call."

"I'm sure she'll be here soon," Ciarente said. "Do we have enough eggs? Ami does like Pierre's omelettes."

"More than enough, M'selle," Mathilde said. "Even for M'selle Invelen."

"Good." Ciarente took a handful of mushrooms from their storage bin and then put them back with a sigh. "Fortune, I'm tired. More jumps this week than I like to think about."

Mathilde studied Ciarente a moment. "Would you like some tea, while you wait for M'selle Invelen?"

"Coffee, I think," Ciarente said. "It's been a long few days."

"I think we may be out of coffee," Mathilde said.

"Well, tea then. Thank you." Ciarente pulled a stool over to the counter and sat down with a sigh. "It is good to be home, Mathilde. I miss this place, you know."

"We miss you also, M'selle, and M'selle Camille." Mathilde set the kettle to boil and took clump of ginger from the root cupboard.

Ciarente looked out the window at the garden. "I've all but missed summer this year. You're well? And Pierre?"

Mathilde grated the ginger and tipped it into the teapot with a handful of lemon rind. "We are both well, yes. A little creaky, these days." She poured hot water into the pot. "And M'selle Camille? And yourself?"

"Oh, Cami's Cami, as always," Ciarente said. "And I'm fine. That tea smells lovely."

"I thought you would like it," Mathilde said, pouring a mug and setting it on the counter by the pilot. "You do look a little tired."

Ciarente wrinkled her nose and sipped the tea. "Ah, worries, you know how it is? But things will be fine, now." She turned on her stool at the sound of the door opening again. "Ami?"

"No, Captain Roth." It was a man who answered, and when he came into the room Mathilde recognised M'ser Tanith Burke from the times he'd visited to check on the security arrangements. "I'm afraid not. It seems now that Commander Invelen changed shuttles on station."

"Well, of course," Ciarente said. "Interbus doesn't do planetary runs."

"No, Captain Roth," M'ser Burke said. "Changed to a different interbus line. With a ticket to Reblier."

Ciarente set her mug down with a click. "I'm afraid you're mistaken, Tanith. Amieta wouldn't buy a ticket for Reblier when she was coming down planet."

There was a little silence in the room. M'ser Burke looked at Mathilde and she made her face expressionless. She'd had decades to practice that, in this household.

"Well," Ciarente said decisively. "When she gets here, she'll be hungry." She stood up. "I think I might make a cake, Mathilde. Do we have any candied oranges? I think with a vanilla base that might be quite nice for a warm evening."

"Captain Roth," M'ser Burke said. "Commander Invelen has, we are almost certain, left the system."

Ciarente opened a cupboard energetically. "That can't be right, Tanith. It simply can't."

"If we move quickly, we may pick up her trail in Reblier," M'ser Burke said.

"She's on her way here right now." Ciarente took the flour down and set it on the counter with a thump that raised a little white cloud from the bag.

Mathilde looked at M'ser Burke, and then reached out to put her hand over Ciarente's. "I think you should listen to M'ser Burke, M'selle."

"I would like," Ciarente said a little shrilly, "to make a cake for my sister."

"I know," Mathilde said.

"So when she gets here, she'll have something to eat." Ciarente's fingers tightened on the bag until her knuckles were white.

"M'selle. If she were here, right now, what would she tell you to do?"

Ciarente stared at the flour. "She - she ... "

"M'selle."

Ciarente let go of the flour suddenly and put her hands over her face. "She said ... stop hiding, she said. Before. Stop hiding, and do something about it."

M'ser Burke cleared his throat. "The shuttle off-world ..."

"Yes." Ciarente lowered her hands, tears tracking lines through the dusting of flour on her cheeks. "The shuttle. I will tell the crew to prep the Firefly."

Mathilde picked up the cloth from the counter and began to wipe Ciarente's face, just as she had so many times before.  Baby, toddler, child ...

There had been a time when she had had a solution for any problem Ciarente could bring to her. Long past, now, that time. 


Long past.

Mathilde dusted away the last of the flour.

"Bring M'selle Invelen back to visit," she said. "Pierre will make her as many omelettes as she likes. D'accord?"

Ciarente sniffled, and nodded. "I will." She hugged Mathilde quickly, and then turned to M'ser Burke. "We should hurry, I suppose."

They went out together, Ciarente looking very small and young beside M'ser Burke.

But not so young, anymore.

Mathilde sighed, and began to clean up the flour. When they are little, they make your arms ache.

But she is not so little, anymore.

The Hope Of His Heart

It's a story told a thousand ways on a thousand worlds.

Micha Krenshaw's Folklore Compendium records seven different versions in the system of Luminaire alone, and another forty in Crux. His students, and their students, have heard it told in Domain, in Heimatar, in Solitude, in Syndicate.  Different, each time.

And the same.

A girl, or a boy, it doesn't matter which, but human, that's the point of the story. A human girl, a human boy.

A door in the hill, or a gap in the hedge, or a mirror that reflects more than the face of those who look into it, or a pool of water, or a grove of trees. Whichever it may be, or something else entirely, it's always a gate - a gate from this world to another.

From the human, to the ... not.

Sometimes the human boy or the human girl finds a way through the door or the gap or the mirror.

Sometimes something else finds its way out.


They're always beautiful. More beautiful than humanly possible.

Because they're not human, that's the point of the story.

They stay a night, or two. Perhaps they come back, if it pleases them.  Only if it pleases them, though. It's for mortals to take care of the feelings of those around them.

Those from beyond the hedge or beneath the hill or behind the mirror take their pleasure and their leave.

Sometimes there's a child. A human woman left with broken heart and swelling belly, a human man woken by a midnight knock at the door nine months later to find a squalling bundle on the doorstep.

A changeling child, a half-breed, to raise and love but not to keep.

Not that the human mother or father weeping by the cradle need any reminder. They're beautiful, the ones from beyond, more beautiful than humanly possible, and even the sight of them condemns a human man or woman to pine forever, that glamor forever between them and the deed of their hand, between them and the hope of their heart.

It is possible to make them stay. Stay for a time, at least. Find the animal skin they shucked to take a more human form and hide it, or slip a rope woven from a single hair around their neck, or mark their forehead with a holy symbol in oil, or ash, or blood.  Lay cold iron on them.

Put a gold band on their finger.

They will stay human then, live and love in human form, at least until they search out their skin or pick apart the rope with a thorn from a rosebush planted by the light of the first full moon of spring, or gather  dew on the last day of the year three years in a row to wash away the mark.  And they will, always. That is one thing the stories all agree on.

They will love you, and stay with you, if you compel them, but they will never stop trying to be free.

Charles Etay watches the girl in his kitchen as she whisks a sauce and tastes it, pulls a face and adds salt. She is playing at being normal, here in his tiny apartment.  She's good at it, too.

The neighbors have no idea she's a pod-pilot and Charlie suspects they wouldn't believe him if he tried to tell them the truth. That nice young Cia Roth? Never!


She is playing at belonging in his world, with more success than he has when he's a visitor to hers.

And tomorrow, or the next day, she will leave. Return to her home between the stars.  Come back, as and when she choses, or summon him to her side.

He will wait, for the knock at the door, for the call, for the Interbus ticket in an envelope or the sight of her at the end of the street as he turns the corner for home.  He will wait, until the time comes when she stops calling, stops coming.

And then he will still wait.

It's a story told  a thousand ways on a thousand worlds.

It always ends the same.

This Is Who She Is.

The patient was holographic and the wounds were computer generated to test her abilities, but Nerila's focus didn't waver.

This is what I do.

"How are you feeling?" Pilot asked.

Nerila blinked sweat out of her eyes, staring into the surgical field, and considered a dozen answers to that question.  Busy came to mind, as did none of your fucking business. 

She concentrated and pressed down with the holographically-generated retractor, sliding the illusory forceps past it and into the computer-generator incision and deciding on, "Fine. I'm fine."

A light flashed at the edge of her vision, the computer's warning that she's using too much pressure with her left hand.  Correcting made her fingers shake and she had to pause. 

This is what I care about.

Footsteps behind her told Nerila that Pilot had come into the room. "Maybe you should take a break."

"A real surgery would go for a lot longer than this."  The tremor in her left hand stopped and she moved the holographic liver aside and looked for the bleed beneath.

This is who I am.

"But you're still recovering."

There. Nerila clamped the leaking vein. "That's the point," she explained to Pilot. "The chip is still learning what it needs to compensate for. I have to push it to its limits."

It took her a little longer than it should have to tie off the bleeder but the scrolling counter told  her that she was still well within her margins. As Pilot pulled a stool over to the other side of the table and sat down, Nerila started to put her holographic patient back together, guts, muscles, skin.

"I need to talk to you, Nerila," Pilot said.

Nerila kept her eyes on the hologram. "So talk."

"About your son."

The light flashed, a low tone sounded. "Fortune fuck."  Her left hand shaking too badly to keep its grip, Nerila only just managed to get her right thumb on the forceps before they disappeared inside the 'patient'. Pilot reached out to help and Nerila snapped "Not sterile!" as if it mattered, as if it was real.

"Sorry," Pilot murmured.

Nerila  shook her hand out, made a fist, shook it again, and took a deep breath. "It's fine." When she took hold of the forceps again her grip was light and steady. "Go on."

"It's time for him to leave medical."

"Okay."

"He needs ... " Pilot hesitated. "He needs to be with someone. I mean, he needs ... care. Maybe if you ... well.  There's a family, I found. The mother is crew, here. They're both Gallente, like you, like Mitch.  They have two little girls already and they'd love to take care of ... your son."

Nerila closed the last of the incision. "Okay."

"But not just temporarily," Pilot said. "Manina - that's her name - she said it would be too hard. To love him and know she might have to give him back to you." She pauses again. "Nerila. They want to adopt him."

"Okay," Nerila said. The holographic patient shimmered and faded and she looked at the readout. Still a little slow there, but not so bad, all things considered.


"There's papers to sign."

"Got them there?"

Pilot blinked, looking taken aback. "Um. Yes."

Nerila held out her steady right hand, and after a moment's hesitation Pilot took out her datapad, tapped on it for a moment and handed it over.

"If you want to take some time to think - "

Nerila pressed her thumb to the screen and then signed her name. The datapad registered her thumbprint and recorded her signature, beeped once. She handed it back to Pilot. "There. Anything else?"

Pilot shook her head, eyes sad. "No. That's all."

"Then I need to get back to work."

Pilot took it as the dismissal it was meant to be. Her footsteps were still fading down the corridor when Nerila called up the next program on her list. Twenty-two year old made with penetrating wound upper thoracic ...


Cut. Clean. Mend.


This is what I do. This is what I care about.


This is who I am. 


Without thinking about it she got up from her stool and turned away from the patient bleeding out his computer-generated blood on her table.  Her feet carried Nerila down the hall and to the left, third door, through the decontamination lock.

This is not what I want to do.

Her legs moved without any instruction from her, under someone else's control, someone who could imagine there being anything more important than a bleeding patient on the table.


That someone could not possibly be her. It's the chip, Nerila thought, as the blast of antiseptic air died down and the doors to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit opened for her. Dr Sanik and Captain Night lied. It is a mind-control chip.


The chip walked her across the room to the incubator, lifted her hands to open the plexiglass lid, reached in to the baby inside.  So much bigger already than the one other time she'd seen him, most of the tubes gone, only a few wires left connecting him to the monitors by the incubator, and his eyes following her movements now, no longer blank and blind.

This is not what I care about.

He fussed as the chip used her hands to pick him up, and Nerila heard her voice crooning soft soothing nonsense as her good right hand held him securely against her shoulder, her less-reliable left detaching the wires that led to the monitors.

Not only should she not be doing this, not when there's a patient, even an illusory one, open on her table, she doesn't have the right to. She signed the papers. He's somebody else's son.

Someone else is his mother.

Not Nerila.

This is not who I want to be.


The baby's head was soft and downy against Nerila's neck as the chip made her pick up a blanket from the chair by the incubator and tuck it around him, then turn to the door.  Her feet carried her across the room, through the door, down the hall.  Someone called out to her but the chip wouldn't let her stop, kept her moving out past the entrance to medical and into the main hangar.

She turned towards the exit and saw security heading her way, turned the other way and saw three medtechs hurrying after her. The chip sent her forward, diagonally across the hangar, to the huge secure container that housed Pilot's hab unit.

Nerila reached it seconds before security and the medtechs reached her. They were talking to her but the chip wouldn't let her hear, wouldn't let her hear anything but the pounding of her own heart and the little grumbling sounds of the baby breathing.

"Pilot," she said to the marine on duty at the door. "Pilot."

That was all the chip would let her say.

One of the medtechs reached out for the baby and the baby started squalling.  Nerila's arms tightened around him, her body curled forward to shelter him, her head bowed over his.  Her voice whispered "Don't cry, sweetling, don't cry, don't cry."  Hands touched her and she crouched away. "Don't cry. Hush, don't cry." They were all around her now and the chip had no more instructions except Hold on and keep safe and don't let go.


Then space around her and another voice. "Nerila."

"Don't cry," she whispered to the baby, who was grumpy now with bemusement at the hot salty rain falling on his face. "Don't cry, please don't cry, don't cry."

"Nerila," Pilot said again, her hand gentle on Nerila's arm.  Nerila raised her head to see Pilot swimming in a blurry haze, crouching beside her on the deck.

"Something's gone wrong," she told Pilot.

"I know," Pilot said quietly.

"This isn't me," Nerila explained. "It's the chip. It isn't me!"

"It's okay, Nerila," Pilot said. "It's okay."

Nerila shook her head. "No. It's not okay. It's not okay! I - "

This is not who I want to be.


This is not what I want to do.


This is not what I want to care about.


"Nerila?" Pilot prompted softly.

"I can't - " she blurted. "I can't - " I can't let go. "This isn't who I am!"

Pilot's arms were around her and her son, holding them both, holding them together, and her voice was very gentle. "Yes it is, Nerila. This is who you are."

Nerila looked down at the baby in her arms and he looked back at her with his father's brown eyes.

She took a deep breath and held it until her lungs burned for air.

Exhaled.

Numb

It's an arm.

It's her arm, in fact.

It doesn't feel like it, lying on the covers of the bed, numb and immobile. Nerila reaches over with her right hand and takes hold of it, the lump of insensate flesh that she knows, intellectually, belongs to her.

She lifts it up and lets it drop.

Nothing.

Not that she expects anything.  Just about everybody on the medical staff remembers when she was CMO Janianial and it didn't take too many orders in her new, slurring, voice before someone put her patient records in her hands.

Hand.

In the hand that works, still.

Her mind works. That's in the file, but Nerila doesn't need the file to tell her that. She was running through cognitive tests before they took her off the ventilator, checking the areas she came up short again and again as the fog of post-anesthesia diminished until she could say to herself Okay, honey, you're all still here.

Her mind works.

Her brain, not so much. That's in the file, but it's something else she doesn't need to read to know. Her left hand, her left leg, useless; the right side of her face numb and slack.  You don't need to be a doctor to know what that means, and Nerila's a doctor.

The file has all the details. How long she was technically, clinically, dead for and just what parts of her brain are actually dead, now.

She knows what that means, even as her former staff are talking about therapy and rehabilitation.

Nerila's a doctor and she knows there's only so much functionality you can get back.

I was a doctor.  She makes herself say it, silently, over and over. It'll sink in, soon. It won't hurt so much. Or maybe she'll just go numb the way her left hand is numb, and she won't feel the bruising impact of those words. I was a doctor.

Nerila's looking at the ceiling saying those words to herself when they come in, the three of them. Not medical staff, she can tell from the way they stop just inside the door. Not family, because hers is disowned or dead. Not friends, because she's a  fucking junkie and junkies don't have friends. 

She wants to tell them to Fuck off, whoever they are, but pushing words out of her slackly lopsided mouth takes more effort than it's usually worth, these days.

"Nerila?" It's Pilot's voice, the soft Gallente slur of it and the hesitancy equally familiar.  Footsteps come to the left side of the bed, and Nerila turns her head in time to see Pilot gently take her left hand. Saying Don't bother, I can't feel it would take about five minutes, so Nerila lifts her right hand instead, waggles the fingers at Pilot in a silent It's this one that works gesture.

Pilot takes that hand as well. "Nerila, Dr Sanik is here to talk to you."

Sanik. Nerila knows Sanik, not in a have a drink together way but in the way that really matters, as far as the doctor Sanik is and Nerila used to be is concerned: she's read  Sanik's meticulous case notes and she's seen the tiny, immaculate incisions left on Pilot's scalp by Sanik's surgery.

Nerila has always believed that you can tell a lot about someone by the way they cut.

Sanik comes to the bed, the other side to Pilot. The third visitor joins Pilot and Nerila recognizes him as well, Invelen's boss, former Sansha or current Sansha depending on who you listened to, Mr Happy Chip himself, Captain Silver Night.

Naqam Heavy BioIndustries.

It's not numb, the place she's been battering with I used to be a doctor.  There's a flicker of hope there as  Captain Night comes to stand behind Pilot and Dr Sanik starts to talk.  Nerila can't crush that hope, although she tries, as Dr Sanik uses words like neural bridging and repair and functionality, as Pilot's face goes pale and paler. Trans-Cranial Micro-Controller, Dr Sanik says finally, the word that's been in the air since she started talking.

Pilot's Sansha friends want to put chips in my head.

The thought holds not even a tinge of apprehension when it's set beside And I could be able to use both my hands again.

"Do you understand, Nerila?" Pilot asks quietly. "It's not, it isn't, what, not like, it ..."

The hands holding hers are cold and sweaty and shaking. Captain Night says something Nerila can't hear, not more than a word, maybe two, and Pilot nods and swallows and falls silent.

"Dr Janianial," Captain Night says, "As Ms Roth was saying, there will be no behavioral control component to this T.C.M.C. No perceptual distortion, or personality modification. It will be purely a therapeutic device designed to replicate neurological functions that are currently impaired, and it will be locked against any tampering. You have my word on that."

There's something Nerila needs to ask, not about Captain Night's promises because right at that moment being a True Slave would be a fair trade for being able to get up off this bed and pick up a scalpel and do the one thing, the only single thing ever, that she's always been absolutely, unquestionably good at.  The question she needs to ask is a different one, but heaving it up off her tongue is heavy lifting, the words sliding around her mouth.

Pilot tries to help, Fortune fuck her, she always tries to help. "Your son, Nerila, Dr Sanik can help him too. It's more complicated, but he could - "

Nerila shakes her head. I don't care about the brat.  Do what you want to it. 

"It's your choice, of course, Nerila, as his mother. If you don't want, well. But Dr Sanik says - "

"Shut. Up." The words are slurred but clear enough to make Pilot blink, her wide blue eyes showing hurt, and Nerila knows she's being unfair.

Fuck fair. Fair isn't that bastard Mitch sweet-talking me into bed and knocking me up, fair isn't Pilot's bitch friend deciding she knows what's best for me, fair isn't seven months of vomiting and backaches that ends with the brat trying to kill me.  


Fair can go fuck itself.


The words come out eventually. "How much. Fuction?"

"With therapy and rehabilitation, you could be looking at close to one hundred percent," Dr Sanik says.

"And your son, too," Pilot said.

Close to one hundred percent. 

There's a lot that can fall into that gap that close describes.  The fine motor control that can slip an ace out of a deck of cards, for one thing. Or keep a scalpel steady.

But close is better than this. Close is a chance.  

"Yes," Nerila says. It sounds more like esh, even to her, but Dr Sanik nods.

"There is a team on standby," Sanik says. "We can start as soon as you're prepped for the surgery."

"And your son, Nerila?" Pilot asks.

"Don't care," Nerila says.

"You don't mean that. He's - "

"I. Don't. Care." Her right hand answers her will, pulls free of Pilot's grip. Her left lies limp, and Nerila closes her eyes against the sight.

Pilot, though, Pilot doesn't quit things when she thinks she's right.  "Well, medically, though, Nerila. What would you say, as a doctor? Do you want to see his ... chart, is that what it's called?"

"No." She's seen the brat's chart. Seen the brat, too, wheeled down the hall to the N.I.C.U. they have set up for it, by med-techs who couldn't imagine she wouldn't want to and who couldn't understand her attempts to protest.  Hooked up to wires and monitors and feeding tubes and oxy-mix.

No, Nerila doesn't want to see the chart. No, she doesn't want to hold the baby. No, she doesn't want to make the decision.

"Nerila?"


Pilot's not going to leave this alone, Nerila can tell.  She's going to sit there holding the hand that doesn't feel like mine asking me to make a choice about the baby that doesn't either until she hears what she needs to.


Fine.

"Yes," Nerila says. Esh.

The answer makes Pilot smile, happy, and let go of Nerila's hand so the techs can start prepping her for surgery.

That makes it the right answer, as far as Nerila's concerned.

As far as the brat's concerned ... ?

She can't find it in her to care.

An Excellent Day

Lieutenant Charles Etay carefully wiped the last of the beard-suppressant cream from his neck and dropped the towelette in the waste-chute.

The spotted glass of the unbreakable but not unrustable mirror showed him a grey version of himself, pocked with brown.  Charlie smoothed his hair and made a note to tell Eli in his next message that, at least in the Lustrevik Local Lease hotel, he was no longer too pretty to be a policeman.

He hoped Eli had enjoyed the orange he'd given her as a part-bribe, part-apology for leaving her to cover their caseload alone while he was on the other side of the Cluster.

Of course she enjoyed it, he thought as he took the single step that took him out of the 'fresher. It's an orange.


He had to step up onto the bed to make enough room to close the 'fresher door, and he had to bend double as he did so to avoid cracking his head on the roof of the room. The mirror in the 'fresher was the only one, and it wasn't big enough to show him more than half his face at a time, but from what he could see when he looked down at himself the mattress had done a better job of pressing his shirt and suit over night than it had of giving him a decent night's sleep. His shoes were as polished as paper towelette and water could make them, and his nails were clean.


Good as it gets, given the circumstances.


He could have afforded a better room, even a better hotel.  Selling the second of the two oranges from his carefully nurtured tree, or tree-let, really, had netted him enough for a return Interbus ticket to Heimatar and a fair bit left over, but a more expensive room would have meant fewer nights here.

It would be another year before he had two more oranges to trade and to sell: Charlie intended to make the most of things while he was here.

Perhaps it wouldn't be too much longer.  The Caldari podder who said she wasn't a pilot,  Amieta Invelen, had said she'd talk to the pilot he was interested in. Her sister, although Charlie knew every relative Ciarente Roth had and none of them were Caldari.  

No promises, Amieta'd said. But I'll see what I can do. Get it over with, see what I can do to get you off the station as quickly as possible.


And promised him a rimpon, as well. If things work out okay.

As respectable as he could make himself, Lieutenant Charles Etay tucked what was left of his meager bankroll in an inside pocket, locked the flimsy door behind him, and headed down the corridor towards the docks.

A possible end to his investigation, and fruit as well.

There was every chance it was going to be an excellent day.

Conversations On The Fortune's Firefly: Eighteen

"Should you be doing that?"

Nerila finished fitting the new filter into the scrubber-drone and flicked the power switch before she looked up. Pilot stood watching her, arms tightly folded across her stomach and an upright line of worry between her blue eyes.

"I'm not sick," Nerila pointed out, setting the drone down and getting to her feet. "And it's not exactly heavy lifting, is it?"

"I guess not," Pilot said, her voice softer than usual.

The scrubber ran industriously into the nearest wall and stuck there, whining.   Nerila sighed, and nudged it in the right direction with her foot. "Can we maybe take this conversation as read, Pilot? I have to herd these little fuckers all the way around to Section C before shift change."

Pilot watched the drone as it found a smudge of grease on the floor and started polishing it away, the low note of its engine changing tone to a happier-sounding hum. "As read?"

"Yeah, you know. You're going to ask me if I've changed my mind, I'm going to tell you I haven't, you're going to ask me to wait another day and since you're the one the marines at the security checkpoint answer to, I'm going to let you pretend you're not keeping me locked up here and say, okay, Pilot, one more day. Right?"

"Oh."  The blue eyes showed hurt now, as well as worry, and Nerila looked away and then forced herself to look back. It's not like I care if her feelings are hurt, is it?  

"So let's not, and say we did, all right?"  Another scrubber got itself struck on lip of the section seal, and Nerila dislodged it with her toe and then started down the corridor after it, at the ambling pace she'd found kept her just about in sync with the drones.

Pilot turned and fell into step beside her. Shit.  Nerila glanced down at her, about to say Fuck off already, and swallowed it back as the shift in light showed her for the first time how dark the shadows beneath Pilot's eyes had gotten.

She opened her mouth to ask, How are you feeling? or You not sleeping well? or Let's make an appointment for you, Pilot.  Swallowed all those back as well.


It's not like I care, is it?


"It's not what I was going to say, anyway," Pilot said quietly.  "It's, you know. Dr Iorthan said, with the dates and everything."

"I thought that was your plan," Nerila said.  "One more day, Nerila, one more -  for another six months, maybe?"

"No," Pilot said, softly but firmly.

"No? You're so fucking sure you know what I ought to be doing, isn't it?" Nerila kicked one of the drones forward harder than necessary and Pilot winced as it bounced off a wall with an indignant bleep. "Changed your mind?"

"No," Pilot said again, the same quiet certainty in her voice. "But if you're not going to change yours, not much I can do, really, is there?"  She looked up at Nerila. "You don't really think I'd keep you locked up for the rest of the time, do you, like some sort of ... breeding stock?"

Well, no, Nerila had to admit, if only to herself. I didn't really think she would.

"It's not what I'd do," Pilot went on. "'And not what I think you'd do, if things were ... different. But whatever you chose, you know I'll do what I can to make it easy on you. Right?"

"So I can make the appointment?" Nerila asked. "Security will let me out of the hangar?"

"Oh, you don't need to go anywhere," Pilot said. "I checked with Dr Iorthan and there's no reason you can't have the termination in medical here."

"Right," Nerila said.

"We could go now, if you want," Pilot went on.  She stooped to coax one of the little scrubber drones forward to keep up with the others.

"I can't go now," Nerila said immediately. "I have to get this done."

"Later, then. After shift change," Pilot suggested, straightening again.

Nerila shook her head. "Medical runs main-and-alterday shifts like everybody else. Night shift's no time for elective procedures."

"Mmmhmm," Pilot said. "Then I should get security to escort you around to station medical after all. Straight after shift-change suit you?"

"Sure," Nerila said. "But, you know, there's no need to put security to the trouble. I can go up to medical tomorrow, maybe."

"Tomorrow?"


Nerila shrugged. "A day's not going to make any real difference, is it?"

Pilot nudged one of the drones with her foot. "It isn't?"

"Nah."  Nerila took another clean filter from her belt pack and knelt down as a scrubber dashed over to her, beeping piteously.  "Just a day, after all."

"Sure," Pilot said. She knelt down beside Nerila and picked up the drone, holding it for Nerila to change the filter. "Just a day."

"That's right." The filter snapped in neatly and Pilot let the scrubber go. Nerila watched it race off to join the others as they polished their way along the corridor, leaving the floor pale and clean behind them.


She turned to meet Pilot's level gaze. "Just a day, Pilot. That's all."

"Sure," Pilot said again.  She got to her feet and held out her hand. "Not like it makes any real difference."

Nerila hesitated, and then put her hand in Pilot's, her own long, square-tipped fingers a dark contrast to Pilot's pale, clone-soft skin.  Soft or not, Nerila thought, as Pilot pulled her to her feet, stronger than you'd expect.


"Thanks," she muttered, taking her hand back.

Pilot smiled a little. "You're welcome, Nerila," she said softly.  "You're welcome."

The Undersea

There is an ocean that never sees the sun.

It has no shore, this silent sea. No river feeds it, no rain falls on it.

Its waters are black, and not just because they roil sluggishly in endless night. Black and cold and as thick and salty as blood.

Every child on every world knows this ocean, feels it lapping beneath their bed in the deepest hours of the night. Every adult remembers it, feels its water in the cold sweat that beads their skin when they start awake from dreams too unbearable to recall.

Nightmares crawl out of that ocean. Fears slink into it. No light can illuminate it.

Older than time, it will drown the strongest swimmer and freeze the fiercest heart.

Speak its name and its waters will fill your mouth and throat and chest until you drown.

The Undersea, they call it in the city of nine bridges, the city that knows as well or better than any other that the tides of the blood need the greater tides of the ocean.  The Undersea, that never ebbs or flows, deeper than death, darker than grief.

It has been a long time since anyone believed the Undersea to be anything more than a picture on the wall of a church, more than a tale that children use to scare each other.

Even so, it has never been quite forgotten.

You can hear the echo of its waters beneath the voices of the children as they sing their skipping rhymes on the bridges of Debreth. Once, twice, thrice lost, count, count, count the cost, still water, black water, see it take the river's daughter.  


Beneath their feet the river rushes on, tumbling as fast through the city as the blood through their veins.  

They laugh in the sunshine, secure in the knowledge that they are in the river and the river is in them, and all rivers flow to the sea.

But no river flows to the Undersea.

Its waters, black and cold and salty as tears, have no shore.

It is the only ocean that never sees the sun.