Chapter 9
*** MARINA ***
Thirty days. Not ideal, but not a refusal. Marina would take it.
Boradrith delivered the terms with the measured precision of a king who'd made his decision and wasn't interested in feedback.
Thirty days to demonstrate that the alliance could work.
Benchmarks: a successful food exchange, a joint scientific project, a formal diplomatic framework.
Council oversight at every stage. Khrelan watching everything.
"Do you accept these terms?" Boradrith asked.
"I accept them. With one condition: I need to send a message to my crew on Ceylara. They need to know we're safe, and they need to start preparing a food shipment from the Vulcana's stores."
"Granted. Toren will arrange communication access."
Marina nodded, she'd negotiate details later. The important thing was the yes, even a conditional one. She'd spent her career turning conditional yeses into unconditional ones. This was familiar territory.
* * *
She spent the first three days working like she hadn't worked since graduate school.
The food exchange was the most straightforward benchmark.
The Vulcana carried emergency stores: protein concentrates, dehydrated grains and vitamin supplements.
Not gourmet by any standard, but nutritionally dense and compatible with Weredragon physiology, as Dr. Vasquez had confirmed through analysis of the biological data Patel had been collecting since they landed on Ceylara.
Marina coordinated with Rowan via the Colony's communication array, walking him through the logistics of packaging and transport.
"You want me to load grain onto an alien cargo vessel," Rowan said, his face filling the relay screen with an expression of strained patience.
"I want you to load grain onto a Weredragon transport that Toren will fly here. It's not complicated."
"It's an alien ship, Marina. I don't know the weight limits, the load distribution requirements, or whether the cargo hold has environmental controls. If the grain gets too hot, it degrades. If it gets too cold, it crystallizes. I need specifications."
"I'll get you specifications."
"You'll get me specifications from a species that measures weight in units I've never heard of and that builds cargo holds out of volcanic glass."
"Rowan. You fabricated a titanium coupling from scratch on an alien planet with tools you improvised from spare parts. You can figure out how to load bags of grain onto a ship."
He sighed. It was the sigh of a man who knew she was right and resented it. "Send me the specs. And tell the prince his ship better have ventilation, or I'm holding him personally responsible for every bag of spoiled grain."
The joint scientific project was Patel's domain, and Patel was operating at a level of productivity that bordered on mania.
She and Melessra had established a permanent joint workstation in the research caverns, their collaboration expanding daily.
The two atmospheric variables they'd identified during Marina's first night were just the beginning.
Patel's Earth data kept revealing blind spots in Melessra's models, and Melessra's local observations kept revealing gaps in Patel's assumptions.
Each correction produced new questions, and each question produced new data, and the revised collapse model grew more detailed and more frightening with every iteration.
"The preliminary numbers are bad," Patel reported to Marina on the second day, her voice carrying the flat affect of a scientist delivering news she wished she could undeliver.
"The collapse window is narrower than either team estimated independently.
I don't want to give you specifics until we've verified the cross-referenced data, but Marina; it's not decades, it's cycles. "
"How many cycles?"
"I'll have a number in two days. You're not going to like it."
"I already don't like it."
The diplomatic framework was Marina's job, and it was the hardest part.
She sat in her quarters for hours, drafting and redrafting a formal alliance proposal on her data tablet.
The document needed to accomplish something that most diplomats spent years attempting.
It needed to establish trust between two species that had never met, define mutual obligations that were enforceable without a shared legal system, and address the fundamental power imbalance between a planet of nine billion and a Colony of twenty thousand without making either side feel exploited or patronized.
Every section raised questions she couldn't answer alone.
Sovereignty protections: how do you guarantee independence to a civilization that's going to need your food to survive?
Technology exchange: what's the line between sharing and dependency?
Personnel exchange: who goes where, for how long, under whose authority?
Resource allocation: who decides how much grain to send when your own population has needs too?
She was on her seventh draft, staring at section four's resource exchange terms and wanting to throw the data tablet at the wall, when there was a knock at her door.
* * *
Athena stood in the corridor with two cups of something steaming and an expression Marina recognized. It was the expression her sister wore when she'd been thinking about something for too long and had decided to stop thinking and start talking.
"Drink this," Athena said, pushing a cup into Marina's hands. "It's some kind of Dobromian tea. Melessra recommended it. She said it helps with focus."
"I don't need help with focus. I need help with section four of the alliance proposal."
"You need help with a lot of things, but we'll start with the tea." Athena sat on the sleeping platform and looked at her sister with the directness that only siblings could deploy. "How are you holding up?"
"Fine."
"Try again."
Marina took a sip of the tea. It tasted like warm stone and something faintly sweet, and it was better than anything she'd expected from a drink recommended by an alien scientist. "I'm exhausted, I'm in over my head, and I'm writing a document that could determine the future of two species, and I keep getting distracted by the way Toren's scales look in bioluminescent light. Is that honest enough?"
"Getting there." Athena's mouth twitched. "Peter told me about your conversation before we left Ceylara."
"Of course he did."
"He's worried about you. So am I, but for different reasons. Peter's worried you'll get hurt. I'm worried you'll get so focused on not getting hurt that you'll miss the thing that's actually happening."
"What's actually happening?"
"You're falling in love with an alien prince on a dying planet, and instead of dealing with that, you're writing a sixty-page diplomatic framework at three in the morning."
"The framework is important."
"The framework is a distraction. A useful one, and one that needs to exist, but right now you're using it to avoid the part that scares you.
" Athena leaned forward. "Marina. You like him.
He likes you. The universe threw you together on a rock in space, and instead of just experiencing it, you're drafting subsection 4. 3 of an alliance proposal."
"Subsection 4.7, actually."
"My point stands."
Marina set the tea down. Her sister was right, and the rightness was annoying in the way that Athena's rightness always was. It was delivered without diplomacy, impossible to argue with, and exactly what she needed to hear.
"I don't know how to do this," Marina admitted.
"I know how to run a science team and draft proposals and present data to hostile audiences.
I don't know how to fall in love with someone from a different species on a planet where the suns are dying, while also trying to save both our civilizations. "
"Nobody knows how to do that. That's what makes it interesting.
" Athena stood. "Finish the proposal. It matters.
But after you finish it, go find Toren and have an actual conversation that isn't about atmospheric data or food shipments.
Talk to him about something that doesn't have a section number. "
"Like what?"
"Like the whale movie. Like why he learned English from a children's book. Like what his favorite color is. I don't care. Something human." Athena paused at the door. "Or something Weredragon. Whatever the equivalent is."
She left. Marina stared at the data tablet, at the seventh draft, and she thought about Toren's collection of human artifacts laid out on a rock on Ceylara, and she thought about the way he'd said "it was the only one I had" about the children's book.
She'd finish section 4.7 first. Then she'd go find him.
* * *
She found Toren in the deep caverns, two levels below the inhabited sections of the Colony.
He was sitting on a ledge overlooking an underground lake she hadn't known existed.
The water was still and black, and the bioluminescent organisms on the cavern ceiling reflected off its surface like inverted stars.
It was the most beautiful thing she'd seen on Dobromia, and she'd seen the waterfalls.
"How did you know I'd be here?" he asked.
"Auren told me. He also told me to tell you that your brooding is, and I quote, 'dramatic even by royal standards.'"
"I'm not brooding. I'm thinking."
"You're sitting alone in a cave staring at water in the dark. That's the dictionary definition of brooding."
He smiled. She sat beside him on the ledge, close enough that his scales almost touched her arm. The cavern was cool, and quiet, and private in a way that the rest of the Colony wasn't.
"The council session didn't go the way I wanted," he said.
"It went better than I expected. Thirty days and benchmarks is a reasonable framework. Khrelan's involvement actually helps, If he signs off on the alliance, nobody can call it naive."
"Khrelan called me compromised in front of the full council."