Chapter 12 #2
The sketch showed two figures dancing, one tall and angular, one small and delicate. Me and Jalina, rendered in confident charcoal strokes. The space station exhibition, weeks ago. The moment before everything became complicated.
"I had a blueprint for my life," Jalina said softly. "Design colonies across new worlds. Establish humanity among the stars. Eventually return to Earth and teach the next generation of architects how to build homes in impossible places."
"A logical plan."
"A plan that's now completely impossible." She closed the notebook. "Liberty is scattered across a galaxy I can't navigate. Earth might as well be a myth. Everything I'd mapped for my future doesn't exist anymore."
My chest tightened. This was goodbye. She was telling me she couldn't stay, couldn't build a life on Mothership when her entire species was lost and suffering.
"But blueprints change," Jalina continued. "Buildings evolve during construction. The best designs adapt to conditions you didn't anticipate. You taught me that."
"I did?"
"Every time you took my sketches and made them structurally sound.
Every time you found a way to implement ideas I thought were impossible.
" Finally, she looked at me. Her brown eyes were still tired, still sad, but something else shone through.
Determination. "I'm saying I want to redesign my blueprint. With you in it."
The words didn't process immediately. My mind, so good with spatial calculations and systems integration, stumbled over the emotional mathematics.
"I don't know if I'll ever see Earth again," Jalina said. "I don't know if we'll find all the Liberty survivors. I don't even know if I'll stop feeling guilty about being happy while others suffer. But I know I don't want to face any future without you."
"Jalina—"
"I love you." She said it quickly, like ripping off a bandage.
"I've loved you for weeks. Maybe since you first trusted me to sketch courtyard angles while you ran calculations.
Maybe since you defended my designs to the council.
Maybe since you volunteered for a suicide mission into hostile territory just to support me.
" She laughed shakily. "I'm terrified to say it because everything's so uncertain.
But I'm more terrified of not saying it. "
The tightness in my chest transformed into something else. Something vast and overwhelming that I couldn't name because I'd never felt it before.
"I love you," I said. The words came out rough, unpracticed. "I've never loved anyone. Never imagined I would. Work was enough—designing systems, optimizing spaces, solving mathematical puzzles. Then you looked at my sterile blueprints and saw what was missing. I saw what I couldn't see alone."
"Zor'go—"
"You make me better. Not just at design. At everything." I moved closer, closing the distance she'd maintained for three days. "I don't need certainty about the future. I only need you in it."
Jalina's eyes filled with tears, but she was smiling. That luminous expression that transformed her entire face.
"Then we'll design certainty together," she whispered. "One day at a time."
I kissed her.
It was our first real kiss, not the tentative brush of lips after the exhibition, but something deeper.
Desperate and tender and full of promises I didn't know how to articulate.
She tasted like hope and salt and the charcoal she was always smudging across her hands.
Her small body fit against mine like she'd been designed for exactly this purpose.
When we broke apart, both breathing hard, her smile widened.
"This is very unprofessional," she said.
"Completely inappropriate for a work site."
"We should probably stop."
"We absolutely should not stop."
I lifted her, carefully, always careful with human fragility, and she wrapped her legs around my waist, her mouth finding mine again. We stumbled backward until my shoulders hit a support beam. Jalina's hands tangled in my hair, pulling me closer despite the impossible height difference.
"Here?" I managed when she started pulling at my uniform collar. "In an unfinished construction zone?"
"We're literally building our future," she said against my throat. "Seems appropriate."
Logic failed me. So did restraint.
I set her down long enough to strip off her jacket, her shirt, watching her skin pebble in the cool air. She was so small, barely reached my chest even standing on the reinforced flooring, but her expression held no uncertainty. Just hunger and trust and something that looked like joy.
"I won't break," she said, reading my hesitation. "I promise."
"You might."
"Then be careful." Her hands found my uniform fasteners, pulling with determination. "But don't be too careful."
The logistics should have been impossible. Zandovian and human physiology weren't designed for compatibility. But Jalina was brilliant at spatial problem-solving, and I'd spent my entire career optimizing complex systems.
We figured it out.
I took her against the support beam first, standing, her legs wrapped around my hips, my hands supporting her weight while she moved against me with breathless abandon.
Then later, on my uniform jacket spread across the floor, slow and reverent, mapping every sound she made like I was memorizing a blueprint.
She was so small beneath me. So warm. So perfectly responsive to every touch.
"I love you," she gasped. Not once but repeatedly, like the words were essential communication. "I love you, I love you—"
"I love you," I answered, my voice breaking on the admission. "Always. Whatever comes."
Afterward, we lay tangled together in the empty space that would become our memorial garden. Jalina's head rested on my chest, her breathing slowly evening out. My markings still flickered with residual sensation, the crystalline patterns shimmering across silver-gray skin.
"We should probably put our clothes back on before construction crews arrive," Jalina said drowsily.
"They don't start for another four hours."
"Four hours. We could do this again."
"Several times, potentially."
She laughed, the sound muffled against my skin. Then quieter: "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For understanding. For not forcing me to choose between honoring my past and building my future." She tilted her head to look up at me. "For volunteering for a suicide mission."
"It wasn't suicide. Vaxon's risk assessment calculated seventy-three percent survival probability."
"That's a suicide mission by Zandovian standards."
"By human standards it's apparently Tuesday."
She laughed again, and I felt the vibration through my entire body. This, having her here, warm and happy and mine, felt more right than any structure I'd ever designed. More perfect than any optimization calculation.
Home wasn't a place. Wasn't even a ship traveling through impossible distances. Home was this: Jalina Chauncy in my arms, sketching futures I couldn't visualize alone.
My comm unit chimed. I considered ignoring it, but Jalina was already reaching for her scattered clothes.
"Answer it," she said. "Could be important."
I pulled up the display. Captain Tor'van's face appeared, his expression grim.
"Zor'go. Report to the bridge immediately. We've detected another Liberty signal, this one's different. Stronger. And it's coming from inside the Mothership."