Chapter 8
Emerald Isle
The sprawling shipyard of this station was peaceful, at least from Fia’s vantage point on The Argent’s loading ramp.
After a few days “on the job”, she had gotten comfortable helping with maintenance work, stashing contraband, and finding the fascinating places people stored tracking beacons.
While it was going smoothly, it was still overwhelming to take in.
The relative calm of this dockyard was a welcome reprieve.
The hum of engines and circulation fans filled the air with a constant low rumble, occasionally peppered with the distant chatter from pedestrians down on the dockyard.
It reminded her of how it felt to float in her observation tank, or the “diving bell” as the humans on the Fleet had called it.
In there, the world was quiet, detached.
That was where she could be what she was bred and trained for: a sharp-eyed observer and guardian.
And now I have none to watch over.
Watching the station’s denizens from her perch on the loading ramp was a far cry from her time spent watching her squadron, but it sated an unmet need.
And the people here were fascinating to watch.
All seemed overly-busy, fast walkers, but ones that frequently stopped to pet the plethora of cats that patrolled the streets.
Earlier that morning, Davik had told her all about this place: Hepler Station. The locals called it the “Emerald Isle”, and Fia had done her best to follow as he happily recounted the origin story.
The way his face lit up when he told her how the green-tinged tube system that illuminated the roads came to be was infectious.
The xenon gas itself glows a bright blue on its own, but he said that the residents hated the sterile, intense light.
So they painted the tubes yellow with hazard paint.
It diffused the harsh glare to a soft green. And the tradition stuck.
The way his voice took on this tone of awe and pride when talking about the locals, their lore, their history.
He had been recovering from unloading the cargo, still flushed in the face while he waxed poetic, and it made her resonate with the same pride he was recounting.
Pride for people like him, people just struggling to get by under the heel of the Federation.
This system, Tau Ceti, had grown so much since she had slept.
Before, it was just uninhabited planets and scouting drones searching for terraforming candidates.
Centuries had passed, and yet everything still felt eerily familiar.
The technology was similar, the datastream frequencies different, but nothing was markedly more advanced.
It made the detachment from the world she had left behind hurt even more. As if everything had stagnated. Or worse: degraded. Her people were bound and subjugated, and the humans were not faring any better.
As she sat alone on the dock of the cargo bay, watching the green glow of the station slowly flicker in front of her, she pulled up her inquiry on the datapad in her lap. For the eighth time tonight, her query had found nothing of use.
She had been fruitlessly searching for a sign of anyone in her squadron.
By name, by callsign, by any records of the ship they had set out with.
Nothing. It had been days of nothing. Without specialized equipment, her ability to trace datastreams was limited.
She snuggled the warm blanket she had brought out with her tighter around her shoulders and clutched the datapad delicately as she sat cross-legged on the cold metal floor, her back straight.
Maybe I am being too specific. I need context on what’s happened since I slept.
The datapad lit with her touch, and she surged her focus into the datastreams to query something straightforward, something simple: What was the fate of the Sovereign?
The Sovereign, the spiritual core of the Fleet.
Their only hope for re-establishing a true Icthian colony anew, to birth a generation born truly free from Sol.
The terrifying, beautiful, ancient, and enlightened matriarch.
A living biological archive and spiritual cornerstone that carried in her very body the history and soul of Bhrella.
Fia’s query struck an encyclopedic entry, The Final Days of the Icthian Incursion. Its first line read:
“The dissenting Chancellors of the Seven Systems and the Icthian Sovereign were killed in the bombing of the ambassadorial summit. The century-long battle for Earth ended with a full surrender on February 5th, 2998.”
The scent of coffee wafted to her before she realized she wasn’t alone. Davik was striding down the ramp with two mugs in his hands and a wide smile on his face.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the tears for her lost Sovereign had finally stopped.
Her stomach still ached from the violent, sullen, shoulder-shuddering sobs, but the wave of despair had waned.
She was strangely grateful for feeling so distant from the Chorus.
For once, she could mourn in peace with no need to stifle her melancholy.
She had known that something horrible had happened. The death of the Sovereign was a likely outcome. Her people were at war when she slept, after all. If it had not been the Federation who killed her, it would have been the sheer peril of age on such an ancient being.
This pain was something Fia still needed to deal with, and doing so with company was not optimal. She steeled herself and pretended to be engrossed in her datapad as Davik walked up.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked. His sleepy voice creaked a little, a unique quirk in his speech that she had grown fond of.
“Hello, stranger,” she murmured, shrugging the blanket off her shoulders and emerging from her bundled cocoon. “What brings you here at this hour?”
“Eh, brain won’t shut off. So,” he held up his cup of coffee towards her. “Figured, might as well stay up. Saw you active on the comms and made an educated guess that you might also need a mug.”
He handed the drink to her. Ample cream and sugar, just the way she had learned she liked it. Discovered with his help, of course. He had put her through a sampler of options to figure out exactly how she preferred her coffee, which was apparently a very important facet of human civilian culture.
“The view here is perfect. Sit?” she asked, fluffing the blanket so it lay on the ramp picnic-style. She sat with her back against the cargo bay doors, facing the thoroughfare of the station beyond the docks.
“Best seat in the house, for me?” he gasped, touching his hand to his chest. “I am honored, Madame Leucifia.”
She rolled her eyes at the title, but broke into a smile, regardless. It was a welcome distraction.
As he settled down beside her, they spent a few moments in comfortable silence. He sipped his coffee, and she nursed hers. She was watching the blurry green-lit figures wandering about, but she found her gaze frequently flicking to his hands as he palmed his mug.
Little scarred lines traced his knuckles. They intersected thin valleys near his joints that showed an inlay of titanium from augmentation. He had surprisingly well-kept claws for a human. All the ones she had known had a terrible habit of gnawing on theirs, but his looked tidy and neat.
She still remembered the warmth of his body the night he rescued her. Would that she could just take that warm palm of his and press it against her chest. There was a cold ache in her ribs that she was certain his heat would solve.
It was a shameful thought, but she wanted to return to the liminal night before she even knew what year it was. Before she had realized how wrong everything had gone. When she was lost, aching, but enjoying this bright beacon of a man bringing her food and water and fussing over her vitals.
Is that what my squadron felt when I worried about them? It’s quite nice to be on the other side of it.
“Are those … ears?” she asked, pointing at his feet. She had roused from her musing enough to realize he had an animalistic decoration on his shoes, and it pulled her out of her silence with a laugh.
“Ah, yeah. Bunny slippers.” He flexed his feet to make the ears bounce. “It was a joke gift from my brother, but the joke’s on him. They are incredibly comfy.” He smiled proudly, and Fia felt herself matching the expression.
“So, what’s keeping you up so late? Important space-pirate business?
” he asked, his brows waggling in jest. “You still haven’t revealed to me how your little party trick works, and I’m starting to worry we kidnapped a mystical princess of the Rim who can see into the future, or something.
Oh! Do you know the winning lottery numbers? !”
Her laugh was bright and mirthful, but she shook her head.
“The party trick is nothing that fascinating. Biological, not mythological.” She pulled the datapad from beside her and set it back in her lap, brushing her palm on the screen and summoning a flurry of data readouts.
“How about this? I will tell you the secret of my party trick, and you will answer a curiosity of my own. Deal?”
Davik rolled his eyes and made a dismissive huffing noise.
“Easiest deal I’ll ever make. You already know I’m a strapping, roguish criminal that gets jumpy and has extremely bad aim with a wrench.
That is my darkest secret.” He took a loud sip of his coffee and tipped his head at her. “The deal is struck. Lay it on me.”
“Roguish?” she asked, cocking her brow and giving him a once-over.
“Okay, maybe not quite roguish. But, c’mon. Indulge me. What’s the secret?”
“Well,” she began, gesturing at the datapad.
“There are some waves of light that humans can’t see without special lenses or equipment.
Ultraviolet, infrared. You are familiar, yes?
” she asked, and he nodded in response. “The frequencies used for transmissions, for datastreams and data storage, they are the same.”