Chapter 31
Wasted Potential
Two days remained until she would stand before her Sovereign again. Two days left of delicious indulgence before a sea of unknowns. Two nights of heated tangles with her brown-eyed engineer and his surprisingly deft hands.
Davik had made a decree that she could not go to bed without at least one great, back-arching, carnal exchange of touch and tongue and teasing. And she was exceedingly happy to oblige.
Much to her chagrin, he had to keep his deft hands busy tending to the engine bay for the day.
Carissa was at her usual post in the cockpit, keeping them at a blazing pace towards their rendezvous at the edge of the system.
Theos, being the only one with any sense of a healthy sleep schedule, was resting.
That just left Fia and her commander in the mess hall, looking over his reports. It was surprisingly comfortable to be back at this work. Debriefing with him as she had in the days with her full squadron.
Though now they were not twenty. They were just two.
“The issue is that the Council is now cowering,” Vek hissed between gritted teeth. “In the wake of my capture, The Sovereign has decided the best path forward is to abandon the mission to spark a revolution here. And the Council is offering no resistance.”
Fia furrowed her brow, surveying the notes with her own sprouting worry. “I can understand their hesitancy. We have failed in open war against the Federation once before. The Council always favors certainty over speculation, and with how many we have lost—”
Vek interrupted with a tense click of his tongue.
“All it would do is ensure Sol is successful in our defeat. We will wither without a home, without spawning pools to bring true, new life. All that would remain of us would be the brutish tribes on the Rim, and the cursed clone-borne Icthians that Sol obliges to produce. Until the day they inevitably choose to stop ‘allowing’ new generations. It will be a slow, quiet death.”
“And you’d prefer a fiery one?” Fia muttered with a wry chuckle. Apparently, Davik’s habit of attempting to lighten the mood had rubbed off on her.
The commander did not return her attempt at levity.
“At least then we would die on our own terms.”
Fia dropped her gaze to the cup of coffee in her webbed palms, turning it slowly.
As she watched the dark brew ripple, her mind wandered to the man who had introduced her to the drink.
If the Fleet joined in, if they plunged Tau Ceti into bloody conflict with the Federation, he would be caught in the middle of it.
And without that conflict, her people would be lost. Her oath was to her Fleet, her Sovereign.
But sparking a new war would mean bloodshed for what little remained of them, too.
It was a complex situation that she did not have the stomach to consider at the moment.
Not while she could still feel the warmth of Davik’s hands lingering on her skin from their languid, beautiful morning together.
“Is there a path forward that strikes a balance? Where we continue to support TCIP, harden their defenses from obscurity, and aid them in a gradual reclamation of this system?” she asked.
“Years ago, perhaps. But no longer. The Sovereign has put forward a resolution not just to undermine my efforts here, but to divert entirely from any course that would bring Sol to justice,” he snarled.
“And what is her plan?” she asked, feeling a flare of sudden excitement that reflected in bright lights along her tendrils.
Rel Parovek had her utmost respect, but Fia did not always agree with his tactics. And maybe, just maybe, there was a compromise that he was too headstrong to admit.
Vek’s claws creaked against the glass screen held in his hand. She could sense the bloom of his thinly held rage in the Chorus between them as he spoke.
“It is of little concern to you. You are my last remaining officer. You need to focus on the success of your squadron’s mission. It has never erred since you slept. We will claim Tau Ceti, and we will not let our fear lead us astray.”
It was a strange thing to see him so defensive. Fia realized that perhaps her own unspoken drive to shelter Davik from war could be felt in the Chorus, that she had insulted her commander with her hesitance.
She tamped down the sudden, overwhelming, and complex cocktail of longing for him as best she could. Longing, and the fear of trampling their precious, burgeoning relationship with the harsh reality of her duty.
“If you are going to silence yourself like this, Leucifia, you might as well don that wretched Pactbind and be the meek thing that the Federation wants us all to be.”
“Composing myself is not silencing myself, Commander,” she snarled in reply, her own tendrils flickering in a frustrated show of concentration. “I just … I have not been around an unbound Icthian in months. I am adapting.”
He rose to his full height above her, the shared song of his emotions rising to a cacophony of disappointment, powerful self-assured strength, and the thinnest undertone of fear and remembered pain.
“This is not new. You have always done this amid discord. You can resonate in the Chorus with such intensity, but you’re too concerned that it may influence others.
As if that is not its fundamental purpose.
” He turned to leave the room, looking back at her with a disappointed glance that stung more than the anger she had expected. “You are wasting a rare gift.”
“Fia, you’re killing me. You aren’t hungry?
Since when?” Davik said, giving a soft nudge at her shoulder as she picked mindlessly at the bowl of colorful vegetables interspersed with tiny cubes of crunchy bread.
“If it’s no good, you can tell me. I will be heartbroken, but I’d rather make you something you like. ”
It was just the two of them at the table, enjoying dinner together. Or, at least, he was enjoying his.
“No, that is not it. My mind is just elsewhere,” she sighed, rubbing her forehead with her free hand.
“Mind clueing me in?” he asked, reaching forward to snag one of the little cubes out of her bowl and popping it into his mouth. He had told her what they were called, but she could not spare the brainpower to add to her vocabulary. They would remain cubed bread for the night.
“Vek—” she paused, cursing in Teelish under her breath before bubbling into a quick laugh. “You have me saying it now. My commander. He wants the Fleet to come out of hiding, to openly join the resistance here in Tau Ceti.”
Davik shrugged, stealing another cube as he did so.
“Why is that bothering you? We’ve talked about this, Fi.
If you get pulled into doing some soldier-y things, we’ll make it work.
We’ll have lengthy video comms where I entice you with my rippling muscles, and you come home to me with your tales of valiant battle, and then ravage me over a sprawling tapestry that depicts your victories. ”
He grinned wide enough that she could see his fresh scars puckering where the new pink skin had formed. The scars were on the opposite side from his dimple, and it made her heart sink.
He wouldn’t have those scars if I had not crashed into his life.
If it were just a battle of local TCIP militants against the embedded Sol Forces, she would not be as conflicted.
But this would not be a small civil uprising.
The Fleet would be a player in the conflict.
And Davik did not know how fundamentally that changed the paradigm.
That it would grow from a revolution to a fully-fledged war.
And there was no way to express to him how war would affect him. How the blood and fear carried in the waves, how it leaves a scent that permeates the waters — the skies — all around you. That it changes you, no matter your side, even if you were a peaceful soul abstaining from battle.
“And what would you do while you wait for me to return to ravage you, hm?” she asked, leaning into an easier line of thought.
“Well, if you manage to knock the Federation down a peg, I would set my sights on settling planetside.” Davik pulled up a datapad, shuffling through his personal files to bring up a scribbled page of notes.
“Eobos isn’t perfect, but she’s habitable and breathable.
I could build a compound, a little plot with solar arrays, some bio-organic agriculture tents, make a few residential plots for friends and family to visit and maybe even settle down, have a little community… ” he trailed off with a wistful sigh.
“I see you have given this ample thought,” she intoned, a brow-ridge raised as she flicked her eyes over the extensive notes, plans, and diagrams he had put together.
“I thought you were looking for a quiet life on a station somewhere. I believe the words you used were ‘cheap rent, good food, decent ventilation’? Not that I do not adore your ambition. I am just surprised. And charmed.”
“Well,” he rubbed the back of his head, smiling sheepishly.
“Maybe you’re a bad influence on me. But if a little struggle in the short-term means people like you and me can have a real life where we can live with a sun above and wind on our skin?
I think I can wiggle out of my comfort zone for that. ”
The image of Davik lounging in a sunbeam, his hair fluttering in a breeze in a real planet-formed atmosphere, seared into her mind like a white-hot brand.
It burned so intently that for a second, the reality of the fraught and terrible road of pain and sacrifice both their people would need to take to bring him there fell by the wayside.
For a fleeting moment, she let herself imagine that life. With him.