Chapter 24
Double Standards
Fia wasn’t prone to indulging in alcohol to excess, but she was familiar with what a hangover felt like. This was much, much worse. It was as if she had clapped her head in a vice, filled it with metal bearings, and spun around an electromagnet until her sinuses were bruised.
Even the whisper of her own breath was grating on her senses.
Though Davik’s quiet breathing next to her was not.
The low rumble of his chest rising and falling was a welcome rhythm to sink into.
She wasn’t sure how they fit in this snug bed, but their legs were tangled together, his face nestled into the crook of her neck.
If only she could just stay like this forever. Minus the headache.
But this was worth the pain. Even with the soreness, she had wanted to push everything much further.
To properly indulge in being alone in a bed together.
She hadn’t done more than drag him into her arms for a heavy, heated exchange of kisses and gasped words before the med scanner sent off alarm bells and alerts about her blood pressure.
Davik, far more rational than she, had suggested they stow their passions until she was more recovered. Despite her protests, she felt much better this morning than she had the night before.
When things were calm, she would have to take him out for a proper night of courting and affection.
Even as she thought of how awful it would be to interrupt this moment of tenderness, she reached out towards her datapad to do what was expected of her. What needed to be done.
Quietly and quickly, she sent her message to Theos. No details on exactly what she had found, just an urgent message that they needed to meet. That would have to suffice for now. She had done her duty, and now she would rest.
“What do you mean he’s waiting for us?” Carissa asked from across the dining table. “Like, meeting him at the station?”
Fia shook her head. The movement made the ache blossom anew in her skull, but it was a manageable distraction. “No, he has a shuttle poised to meet us along our route. Is that … a bad thing?”
“You can vouch for them?” she asked, looking between Fia and Davik.
“What C is trying to say is that ship-to-shuttle dockings outside a station are risky. They leave you vulnerable. You have to slow to a crawl and drop shields. Picking up ‘stranded shuttles’ is how you get your ship hijacked. Plus, she hasn’t met Theos officially yet, so…”
“Well, I can confirm his identity and affiliation, and I think the only risk posed is that he is a medic who may chastise you for not drinking water,” Fia said, chuckling lightly.
It was a nervous noise. There was something on the tip of her tongue, and she feared how Carissa might react to it.
This was a pivotal moment, and one she could not navigate while balancing duplicity.
She had to put all her cards on the table, to borrow a phrase from Davik.
“I do not know how much comfort it will bring, but you have been sharing a ship with a Sovereign Fleet officer for the last few months with no issue. He is far less of a hazard than I.”
Both Davik and Carissa shared a glance.
“Christ, you’re finally dropping the vague implications?” she said with an exasperated sigh. “Took you long enough. You think I don’t know when someone is walking around my ship with a concealed weapon?”
Fia stared straight at the table, feeling her cheeks flush in a mix of relief and abject horror. She was much, much worse at stealth and subterfuge than she had realized.
“Plus,” she continued. “You’re a horrible liar, you’ve messed up your cover story timeline at least ten times, and you handle firearms like a soldier, not a thug.
Plus, the way you do a perimeter sweep in the cargo bay when we close up shop isn’t subtle.
I can smell the army stink on a motherfucker a mile away. ”
“I heard pregnancy gives you a super-nose. Didn’t know it lets you sniff out intergalactic military training,” Davik said with a snort.
“Don’t need super senses with you two. You’re both as subtle as a sledgehammer. Have you two finally knocked boots, or are you going to annoy me with this will-they won’t-they shtick for another trimester?”
Fia was embarrassed, but Davik looked mortified. Even with his deep skin tone, she could see a cherry-red blush flaring in his cheeks and along the tops of his ears.
If she hadn’t been recovering, she likely would have knocked his boots clean off the night before. Or however the phrase went.
How long did the medical scanner say I needed to avoid intense physical activity?
“Look, this is serious!” Davik protested, avoiding Carissa’s question as best he could. “Are you on board with working with Theos?”
“I won’t be waving any rebel flags, but I’m sympathetic enough to hear this guy out.
TCIP is in the same mess we’re in with the Feds.
They won’t judge our dirty laundry, and vice versa.
Plus, he gave me a decent gun,” Carissa said as she pulled out the gift in question to examine it, a hefty plasma-based handgun with a boxy barrel and an ornate mother-of-pearl handle.
“I can appreciate hospitality like that. Though I’m now seeing that it may have been less of a kind gesture and more of a slow conscription.”
“A possibility I did not consider until now,” Fia murmured, looking down at the table, drifting her fingers in a circle as she gathered her thoughts.
The embarrassment of her failed duplicity still stung, but her ego would recover. Eventually. Seeing Davik flushed and shy did wonders for her mood, and it tempered the tense worry that had been building in her chest.
“Things in this system are dire. I did not wish to drag you all into the middle of it, but it is something I cannot walk away from.”
She felt the warmth of Davik’s hand gently squeezing her thigh beneath the table. Not a greedy, insistent touch. A gentle, sweet thing. It still sent a throb up towards her core, regardless. Bringing her focus back to actually hear his words was a struggle.
“Bullshit. There’s always the option to walk away,” Carissa muttered, still examining her pistol.
“Not that I’m the beacon of peace. But there is a world where we give them the intel and call it there.
That’s all you owe TCIP, that’s all that was on the books for this job.
I think after a hundred-plus years on ice, you can consider your people served and take the chance to retire. ”
“It does not feel like an obligation, but it feels wrong to betray my Fleet. Even if they are long gone. This is what I was made for. To protect my people, to fight for our home. I have never considered walking away.”
“That does kinda lend credence to that whole hive mind thing, Fi,” Davik murmured.
Fia did her best to make her smile not look as weary as it felt. “That is just what a fight for survival is. I could have left if that was what I truly wanted.” She idly swept a crumb off the table as she spoke, keeping her hands busy to diffuse the swell of anxiety that was making her gills flare.
I want him, though.
“Others left the Fleet, it was not uncommon. You have seen the Icthians that live happily with the Pactbind. Their ancestors made a decision and left to live alongside the Federation’s strictures.
Some even turned and fought against us. If ever there was a better example that we are not one unified mind, that should be it. ”
“Eh, it’s the path of least resistance. I get it. It’s how I ended up serving a tour with the Sol Forces. It’s how his brother did, too,” Carissa said, giving her new and beloved Carubo-9 one last glance before holstering it.
“Well, not that this is a democratic ship or anything, but I vote we offer TCIP a hand with this,” Davik said. “I saw the stuff she pulled out of that station, C. It’s gruesome.”
Carissa crossed her arms over her chest, looking at her intently. “What’s your bead on it?”
Fia dragged up the footage she had cleaned up from the buffer, scrubbing the playback to show the room with the pale Icthian strapped to the table, obscured by metal implements and a drape of sterile fabric.
She slid the datapad across the table to Carissa wordlessly. Davik’s hand still rested on her thigh, a grounding touch that kept the spike of dread at bay from seeing the image again. At least for a moment.
“Shit…” Carissa breathed as she played through the video, grimacing as she watched the probe sink into the victim’s skull. “Do you have any idea what this is? Is this some sort of medical trial? I thought the guy was just a prisoner.”
“KurelTec are testing something they call a ‘mnemograph’. It is a probe that they insert into the brain to pull out memory imprints, physically. Painfully. But I do not know what they are seeking. All I know is their findings are sent to General Eklea of the Sol Forces. Despite this station being a privately owned facility that has no public ties with the Federation.”
Carissa adjusted her posture, her arms crossed as she stared fixedly at the table and not at the images on the screen.
“That doesn’t make any sense. The Fed ain’t saints, but they are also up their own ass and proud of their strictures.
And they have strictures aplenty that forbid torture and experimentation. ”
“Hell,” she continued, shaking her head.
“They bar most human trials for new drugs, and they don’t even let us live out a regular prison sentence because they think it’s too ‘inhumane’.
We get stuck with meds from the Terran days and shoved into cryo instead.
This doesn’t … I don’t know. It doesn’t track. ”
Humane treatment is likely limited to those they consider human enough to earn the right.
Fia sighed deeply, shaking her head as she quelled the urge to voice her indignation. “I have theories about why they are doing this. But Theos may know more.”
“That’s who we’ve got this sketchy docking date with?”
“If you agree to it. It is your ship, and your risk.”
The creak of the shuttle seals meshing with the ship was a grating, spine-tingling noise that set Fia’s nerves on edge. The air pressure differentials made the airlocks squeal, and there was an unsettling noise of metal scraping that Davik assured her was entirely normal.
Maybe this would be the moment The Argent finally split in twain.
When the shuttle doors opened, Theos was waiting at the threshold.
Unlike the casual attire he had worn in the back room of the Vesper, he stood wearing a dark blue and white-trimmed medic uniform.
The bright orange and red markings along his dark gray scales shone a bit more vibrantly against the navy coloration of his outfit.
While it lacked the colors of her Fleet, it resembled a trauma response uniform she had seen medics wear in the past.
It was painful, and it was familiar. The shadows of her past and her present were colliding. Rather literally, judging by the scrapes where the two airlocks had meshed together.
“Skila t’eta, Almenes,” Fia said, a somber greeting in this context. “Carissa, this is Theos.”
Theos slicked back his dense and plentiful crown of tendrils before he offered a deep bow, and Carissa offered a half-bow in kind.
“Wish we were meeting in less fucked-up circumstances,” Carissa said with a sigh. “I like working with folks who drop off gift bags with ammunition in them.”
“Maybe we can do some more business together after this,” Theos said, cracking into a smile as he spoke. “It would be nice to have experienced smugglers working with TCIP that aren’t quick to shoot unknown Icthians they meet in the middle of the ink.”
“Eh, the night is young. I still reserve the right to plink holes in visitors,” Carissa retorted, patting the handgun she had been coddling earlier.
“With the gun I gave you? Coldhearted.”
“Damn right,” she said with a wink.
“Ah, Davik!” Theos boomed as he walked up to Davik, scooping him up in a bear hug.
The sight of his poor head poking out from between Theos’ swollen arms was enough to make Fia forget, briefly, that this moment rode on the heels of extremely bleak news.
“You really did it? You made the bell!? God damn, well done!”
My little engineer should be proud.
“Th-Thank you—” Davik croaked before being released back to his feet.
“Come on, let’s go sit down. I’m not talking treason in the shuttle bay,” Carissa said as she headed off towards the mess hall.
“Alright,” Theos said, giving Davik one last thudding clap on the shoulder. “If left to my own devices, we’d be chasing pleasantries all day. Let’s talk shop.”