Chapter 38
Minor Sedition
Being surrounded almost entirely by people speaking her native language was more jarring than she had expected.
There was an odd comfort in having to focus enough to translate intentionally what someone was saying.
On the ship and out on the stations, she could tune it out and let the words flow over her like meaningless noise.
Back in the Fleet flagship, though, it was constant information that could not be ignored.
The words spoken, the Chorus unspoken, the drumming of hands on consoles, the whooshing noise of the transport carousels, and the incessant beeping from her wrist-mounted comms band all combined to grate at her senses.
The handheld datapads were much more to her preference. She could set them down, throw them against the wall, or ignore them. One could not ignore the buzzing, flashing screen that kept screeching “Report to Medical Atrium!” when it was attached to the wrist. She sighed, and then obliged.
Her checkup went smoothly. She was chastised for not consuming enough protein, for not maintaining proper skin moisture and systemic hydration, and for not sleeping enough.
It was news she found irritating from the medic.
Not that the medic was grating, just that she missed being scolded by Davik for the same things.
He was always so insistent, but she was also keenly aware that the budget for food did not include a nearly two-meter-tall Icthian with a wildly voracious metabolism.
Despite that, he always saved a little extra for her.
An extra bowl of rice, beans, sometimes even rehydrated fruit when they had lucked out at a station with reasonable prices.
Now, she had scheduled meals four times daily in the canteen.
The tastes and spices were blandly familiar, but the food was prescriptive.
Supplemented with minerals, paired with carbohydrates that had a slow release to keep her senses sharp.
Adequate protein to replace atrophied muscles.
Ample hydration with electrolytes. No tea, no home-made biscuits, no tiny smiley face carved on her toast.
At least she knew he wouldn’t be struggling for the basics anymore. She didn’t have a perfect grasp of the inflation and exchange rate of the palladium that the Fleet had paid them, but it would be enough to buy them some stability.
It was a stability she could never have given him if he had stayed with her.
Maybe in thirty years, TCIP would have gently weakened the Sol stranglehold enough that Davik could easily visit the other systems. Maybe even touch down on a planet. Even though he would be at the end of his life, that might be worth it. Even without her.
She stilled the shaking of her hands and cleaned up her tray in the canteen.
She was still considered off-duty and in a re-acclimation period, but that didn’t mean her schedule was free of responsibility.
Debriefings, reintegration into the Icthian security systems, more debriefings, setting her up in proper accommodations, even more debriefings, furnishing her uniforms, on and on.
By the fourth debrief of the day, she was dying for a cup of coffee. A luxury not afforded by the Fleet. Stimulants were for action, not for leisure. She could even feel the urge to pop a stimbead and lamented that she hadn’t tried to smuggle some aboard. Unless she had done so accidentally.
She was due for one more task today: a debrief with her commander. But there was enough time for her to swing by her new quarters to rifle through her things, just to be sure.
Wedged between a tin of skin emollient and some fuzzy socks was a cylinder of stimbeads. On the side of the cylinder, there was a piece of tape where “Fi’s SpeedyBites” was scrawled in Davik’s bold handwriting, flanked with little lightning bolts.
She felt her shoulders drop as she held the container in her palm. He had put his touch on so many areas of her life. She hadn’t realized how much brighter the world had been with little vestiges of him all around.
It was simpler than that, though. She just missed him. She missed him, and every little messy bit of affection that he stamped all over her life.
This is so much harder than I imagined it would be.
Evidently, her commander was also enduring as much acclimation chaos and spectacle as she was. He was incredibly late for their meeting. She waited in his relatively sparse office, just a desk and some scattered interfaces attached to what she assumed were equally sparse personal quarters.
It was a rare room on the flagship with opaque walls and a locking door. A luxury of sorts, one of the many features adopted once the Fleet had learned human military tactics and the need for confidentiality.
Time ticked on. She sat in the chair, spinning in it slowly and fiddling with her comms pad to make it fit comfortably. She had been teasing a stimbead between her molars, tempted to pop one just to pass the time, before the door finally opened.
“I hope you were not waiting long.”
The resonant voice of Rel Parovek brought her back into focus, and she cheeked the bead quickly.
“A bit, but I’m welcoming the pause in my incredibly packed schedule. I tried to tell them I don’t think it’s critical for me to know every mechanical failure in the last two centuries, but, alas…” she shrugged, sighing softly.
While it might be a touch overwhelming to be back on a ship where everyone spoke Teelish, it was infinitely easier to communicate one-on-one. English was always her most stilted language to speak in. Though she did like the quirks of it.
Especially certain words. Especially short, breathy words, being said through heady, heated gasps, on the tongue of a man who was uttering them in veneration.
“Did you also get poked, prodded, and worried over at the medical atrium?” Vek asked, sinking into his chair behind the desk and snickering softly.
She nodded and stretched her arms above her head. “I got a full lecture. When did we start nitpicking hydration levels?”
“Not long after we retreated to Tau Ceti. We had lost so many that we began implementing intense retention policies. It’s led to significantly improved health outcomes if the statistics are true, but it is taxing.
” He rubbed his clawed fingers against his temples, and Fia noticed a disheartened twinge in his voice.
“We will implement every policy to forestall the inevitable, other than rise to fight for our survival.”
“Well, we are Icthian. We clung to a dying rock until it all but turned to dust beneath our feet. Waiting until it is too late seems to be our general approach.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t have to be,” he murmured, his shoulders drooping.
It was odd to see him showing so much vulnerability. Before, they had exchanges of intel and squadron maneuvers. Occasional discussions of tactics. But it had never grown to camaraderie.
Additionally, she had assaulted him. She saved him, strangled him, and then they all got together and shared some fantastic soup. Maybe this had fast-tracked them to some sense of familiarity. She should save, throttle, and then feed people more often.
The image of Davik with her hand at his neck, panting and squirming, was an unwelcome intrusion at this moment.
Against her stern concentration, a pang throbbed in her chest and between her legs.
She pulled at her wrist-comm to fuss with as a distraction as she furiously shunted the thrill of guilt and arousal from seeping into the Chorus around her.
“Well,” she continued. “I have been through eight demonstrations of our failures and losses in Tau Ceti, as of my latest debrief with the archivist. After all that, I understand their lack of confidence. What is the hopeful path you are chewing on?”
Vek gritted his teeth, a coil of defeated angst trickling into the air. “We can still abandon this useless exodus. We are fleeing a habitable world for an unknown one. There has to be a way to talk sense into the council.”
“Habitable world? That frigid rock, Eobos? It’s still far from perfect.”
“Correct. The terraforming there is not yet complete, and it is decades from having an ideal climate. But, you know what that means, yes?”
He waited for her reply, his purple eyes wide with an excited gleam. When she failed to answer, he rolled them back derisively.
“It means Sol has yet to litter its orbit with their cursed defense arrays. They have no foothold, here. No true one, yet.”
“Even without orbital defenses, capturing and defending it would be costly.” She looked up from her fidgeting, sitting upright. “And now we know the depths to which the Federation will stoop. If they take any prisoners, they will be probed with the mnemograph for intel, just as you were.”
She hit a nerve. His tendrils flared with an angry burst of color, and she felt her world grow dark at the edges. The invasion of her perception was unwelcome, but she swallowed back her impulse to retaliate. She knew she had overstepped.
“And if we flee, then Sol will never pay for what they have done.”
Her vision narrowed to just a small pinprick where the only image she could perceive was of his teeth, sharp and bared.
She focused on her breathing, inhaling slowly to regain her composure in the deathly silent room.
As she inhaled, she could smell the stale, dusty aroma of the office.
She could feel the chair’s cold frame beneath her.
She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears.
Square your feet. Find your foundation. Breathe.
He relented, and the world returned to her, her senses swimming back to her control.
“I’m … I should not have done that. You did not deserve that.” He flexed his palms on the desk, a movement of grounding not dissimilar to what she had done herself. “I’ve barely slept ever since. I keep thinking I’m going to close my eyes and wake up back in that room.”
The cylinder of stimbeads made a gentle clinking noise as she unsheathed it from her pocket.
“Try one of these. And don’t tell the medics.”
She set a bead in his outstretched hand and mimed popping it between her teeth. He held the small marble between his claws and looked at her with a cocked brow-ridge.
“What is this…?”
“It’s like a cold plunge after a long rest. Just try it. And again, I really must insist. Do not tell the medics. They’ll have my hide.”
He popped the offered bead, and she watched with a satisfied grin as he shivered. A flare of purple fluttered along his tendrils. His pupils dilated and then snapped into focused slits.
“Oh … that is dangerous,” he exhaled, and then broke into a sharp-toothed smile. “I can’t believe you rejoined the Fleet, knowing you’d have to give these up.”
“There were far more important things that I left behind.”
“Ah, yes, your companion,” he murmured, rubbing his own neck as he spoke, perhaps remembering that this was the man she had nearly slit his throat for. “I was surprised you didn’t have him stay. You wouldn’t be the only one with a consort aboard.”
Fia popped her own stimbead to quell the heat she felt rising to the surface of her skin. The cool focus gave her a sense of control, and she sent her frustration into her hands, gritting her claws into the fabric of the armrests.
“It would have been cruel to take him from here. He has family, friends. I could not force him to make that choice.”
“Is that why your voice before the council was an impotent whimper?” He crossed his arms as he gave her a derisive once-over. “You have always been quiet, yes, but you always rose to the occasion when needed. And yet, you cowered. Where did your spark go, Sentu?”
“I could not bring myself to choose which path of suffering we would walk. But it didn’t matter. My singular voice would not have tilted the scales in your favor, Commander.”
He raised a brow-ridge, his irritated scowl melting into a smirk.
“You underestimate yourself. I saw the way you quelled the squadron into sharp attention when they were reckless, how you snuffed out fear in the recruits and filled them with your own zeal. You can tilt the scales. But only if what is at stake means something to you.”
“That was far beyond my meager influence of a squadron. The will of the Sovereign and the Council is caution. Anything that does not fit in their maw with perfect palatability is spat out and replaced with the path of least resistance.”
His tendrils flickered with a frustrated glow, a growing thread of irritability echoing between the two of them.
“And that is not the way it should be, Leucifia.” He steepled his fingers together and stared straight at her.
“She alone led us into this war and then refused to take the necessary measures to win it. And now, with her dying breath, she will drag us to a strange world, with no promise that we will even find a habitable planet there. And when she dies, she will take all of Bhrella’s knowledge stowed within her to her grave. ”
Fia let out a soft gasp. She had been loose with her tongue, but outright denunciation of the Sovereign herself was something that felt almost sacrosanct. Especially coming from him.
“Careful, Commander. I share your sentiment, but that is a dangerous strand to pull. Without her, our Fleet would have—”
“You think I do not know the importance of my own clade?” he interrupted. “My sister slumbers, awaiting her day of ascension. A day that will never come to pass. Because her mother has chosen to die a coward.”
Fia nodded. “And how much of this concern have you brought to the Sovereign herself?”
He bristled slightly, a grim smile tugging at the edge of his lips.
“All of it. Loudly. Frequently. But she is not swayed. She has only allowed us to stay in this system for as long as it takes to recall and extricate the rest of our forces.” A coil of excitement bubbled in the Chorus, and he tilted his head towards her to capture her wandering gaze.
“But we can still do something. If you will help me.”
Fia felt her stomach turn. “I will admit, I didn’t think discussing sedition with the son of the Sovereign was the trajectory of this debrief.”
“Sedition is a strong word. I have a simple request. One that would be objectionable to make known.” He held his hands out, palms up.
An oddly human gesture. “I will obey my orders to gather the remaining Fleet forces in this system. What I ask of you is time. Delays, missed transmissions, incorrect coordinates. I just need to find the right opportunity to present itself to force the Council to overturn the decision.”
“That I can do,” Fia murmured.
She would do anything to stay in Tau Ceti a little longer. Even knowing that this was a fruitless venture. But while she remained on this side of the galaxy, she could still see Davik’s ship as it traveled on her datastreams.
It was a small comfort, and one she would embrace as long as she could.