Chapter 13 #2
Toren flew the transport which was a modified Weredragon cargo vessel loaded with grain from the Vulcana's stores, plus seeds that Patel had selected for compatibility with Dobromian growing conditions.
Marina coordinated the distribution from the Colony's main storage caverns, working alongside Goruth's agricultural team and a newly formed human-Weredragon logistics crew that communicated in a mix of English, Dobromian, and hand gestures that were somehow more effective than either language alone.
The grain went to the outer settlement refugees first. Marina had insisted on this, and Boradrith had agreed without argument.
The people who'd lost their surface homes needed it most. Goruth's team distributed the food with the efficient care of people who understood what hunger looked like and who weren't going to let protocol slow down the feeding.
Marina stood in the storage cavern and watched bags of Earth grain being carried through tunnels carved from alien stone, handed to families from another world, and she thought about Toren's words on Ceylara.
They were the words that had made her see something she'd missed about her own species.
Your first instinct is to set up a table and feed everyone. Including the aliens.
He'd been right. This was what humans did. They fed people, they shared what they had and it wasn't strategic. It wasn't even conscious. It was the thing you did when someone was hungry and you had food.
A Weredragon woman approached Marina during the distribution.
She was carrying a dragonling, maybe two cycles old, small enough to fit in the crook of one arm, with pale blue scales and enormous dark eyes that tracked everything with the intense curiosity of the very young.
The woman held out a bundle wrapped in cloth.
"From the outer settlements," she said. Her English was accented but clear she'd been learning.
"We heard what you did. The alliance, the food.
My family was in the third settlement evacuated during the earthquake.
Your people helped carry my mother, who cannot fly anymore.
" She pressed the bundle into Marina's hands. "A gift. From those who were carried."
Marina unwrapped the cloth. Inside was a necklace.
It was a thin cord strung with tiny volcanic glass beads, each one a different color, each one carved with the geometric patterns she was learning to read as Weredragon storytelling.
The beads were warm, like everything made from Dobromian glass, and they caught the bioluminescent light and scattered it in miniature rainbows.
"It tells the story of the settlement," the woman explained.
"Each bead is a generation. My grandmother made the first one.
I made the last." She touched the final bead which was a deep amber, the color of the Colony's bioluminescent morning light.
"This one is for the new chapter. The one that begins with you. "
Marina's throat was tight. She put the necklace on. The beads sat against her collarbone, warm and light, and the dragonling in the woman's arms reached for them with tiny claws that stopped just short of touching.
"Thank you," Marina said. "I'll take care of it."
"Take care of us," the woman replied. "That matters more."
She walked away. The dragonling looked back at Marina over its mother's shoulder with those enormous dark eyes, and Marina thought about the lavender-scaled child who'd asked Boradrith if anyone could fix the suns, and she thought about the promise implicit in every bead on the necklace; that the story continued, that new chapters were possible, that the people who made the beads believed in a future worth decorating.
* * *
Melessra found her after the distribution was complete. The green-scaled scientist was holding a data tablet and wearing the expression of someone who'd received news that was important and terrible in equal measure.
"The revised collapse model is finished," Melessra said. "Patel and I finalized it this morning."
"And?"
"The collapse window has narrowed. Our combined data puts the secondary sun's failure at twelve to eighteen cycles. Six to nine years in your terms."
Marina absorbed this. Less than a decade before the second sun collapsed and Dobromia's surface became uninhabitable.
The timeline made everything urgent. The food shipments, the technology exchange, the scientific collaboration, all of it.
This wasn't a long-term project anymore. It was a countdown.
"The alliance isn't just beneficial," Marina said slowly. "It's essential. Without Earth's support, Dobromia doesn't survive the collapse."
"And without Dobromia's geothermal energy technology, Earth's deep-ocean settlements don't advance past their current limitations.
The dependency runs both ways. That's what makes it sustainable.
" Melessra looked at her with an expression that had evolved considerably from the cool skepticism of their first meeting at three in the morning.
"You were right. Both species become smarter together. "
"The data proves it."
"The data always proves it. People just need time to believe it." Melessra paused. "I believed it at three in the morning on your first night, when you sat down at my console and started correcting my baseline calculations."
"I suggested alternative parameters."
"You corrected them and you were right." Melessra's amber eyes held something that looked, on a Weredragon face, remarkably like affection. "I'm glad you came to my cavern, Marina Livingstone."
"I'm glad you let me stay."
"I didn't let you. You sat down before I could object. Scientists from your planet are apparently as stubborn as scientists from mine."
"It's a universal constant."
Melessra almost smiled with the Weredragon version, which was more of a softening around the eyes than a movement of the mouth.
Then she turned and walked away, data tablet in hand, already thinking about the next problem.
The collapse model was finished, but the work it demanded was just beginning.
Marina touched the necklace at her throat.
The beads were warm against her skin. Twelve to eighteen cycles.
Six to nine years. A countdown that would define everything which included every shipment, every collaboration, every diplomatic negotiation, every moment of shared work between two species learning to survive together.
She wasn't afraid. Fear was a luxury she'd traded for purpose a long time ago. What she felt was something closer to resolve; the bone-deep determination of a woman who'd been given a problem she couldn't solve alone and who'd found the people she could solve it with.
The bond hummed in her chest. Somewhere in the Colony, Toren was unloading the last of the grain shipment.
She could feel him through the connection.
He was tired and satisfied, his joy a warm undercurrent beneath the physical exhaustion.
He'd carried grain the same way he'd carried Peter, without complaint, without showmanship, because the work needed doing and he was there to do it.
She loved him for that. For the simplicity of it. For the prince who carried things.
Marina Livingstone stood in a storage cavern inside a volcano on a planet with dying suns, wearing a necklace made by strangers who believed in her, and she got back to work.
There was always work to do.
* * *
The volunteers settled into the Colony over the next two days in ways that surprised Marina and delighted Auren, who appointed himself the unofficial welcoming committee.
Garcia set up a translation station in the relay room within hours of arriving.
She'd been teaching herself Dobromian from the transmissions, and now, surrounded by native speakers, she dove into the language with the obsessive focus of someone who'd found her calling.
By the second day, three young Weredragons had started learning English in return, and the relay room had become an unofficial language school where Garcia held court with a data tablet in one hand and a cup of Dobromian tea in the other, correcting pronunciation with the cheerful ruthlessness of a born teacher.
"Your 'th' sound doesn't exist in Dobromian," she told a young warrior named Korvax, who was attempting to say "the" and producing something closer to "ze." "Try putting your tongue between your teeth."
"That seems dangerous," Korvax replied in careful English. "Weredragon teeth are sharp."
"Then be careful."
"You are a terrifying instructor."
"Thank you. Again, 'the.'"
Sorenson disappeared into the Colony's food preparation facilities and emerged six hours later carrying a plate of cave moss risotto that she'd developed by treating the moss's starch component like arborio rice and using the mineral-rich geothermal spring water as a cooking medium.
The result was extraordinary. It was warm, savory and complex, with a depth of flavor that neither Earth cooking nor Dobromian cooking could have produced alone.
"Fusion cuisine," Sorenson announced, presenting it in the communal hall with quiet pride. "Two planets, one dish."