Catalyst

  “Me too. But I want to feel this strange forever.” Lhyn straightened, keeping her arms around Ekatya’s waist. “I’m thinking about cancelling my keynote speech at the Anthropology Consortium meeting.”

  “Lhyn, no. You can’t. You’ve planned that since they asked you last year. It’s too important.”

  “I know, but the idea of leaving you again…”

  “Just for two weeks. We survived forty-two days; fourteen will be easy compared to that.”

  Lhyn shook her head. “Not two weeks. I’ll give the keynote, but I’m not staying for the whole meeting. Four extra days of missing you? No. The travel time will be bad enough.”

  Ekatya smoothed a hand over Lhyn’s hair, for once out of its braid and flowing over her shoulders in a thick mass of silver-streaked chestnut. “If I were a good person, I’d try to talk you out of that.”

  “Oh, good, I’m finally having an effect on you. You’re loosening your morals.”

  “Finally? You’ve had an effect on me since the day you walked into my conference room.”

  They collected Lhyn’s bag, went straight to Ekatya’s quarters, and spent most of that day relearning every millimeter of each other’s bodies. The lovemaking was explosive at first, reminiscent of how it had been after their Sharings with Andira, when their bodies buzzed with the lingering effects and every sense seemed heightened. Ekatya could not get enough of Lhyn, frightening herself at times with how little control she had and how easy it would be to hurt her. But Lhyn was equally passionate, brushing aside any concerns and repeating, “Please, please don’t hold back. I need it all.”

  It took them an hour to burn off the pent-up need and settle into a more leisurely pace, and hours more before sheer exhaustion finally dropped them into a deep, healing sleep. Ekatya was shocked when she checked her chronometer immediately after waking and realized she had slept for ten hours straight. Beside her, Lhyn stirred and mumbled, “Maybe now I can finally concentrate.”

  Ekatya laughed and kissed her. “Only you can make me laugh before I’ve even had my coffee.”

  “That’s on my résumé,” Lhyn said. “Right below ‘can make the stern, proper Captain Serrado act like a wild woman on leave.’ I’m very proud of my accomplishments.”

  “I don’t know that I’m so proper anymore.”

  Lhyn’s understanding shone in her eyes. “Maybe you’re learning that you don’t always have to be.”

  In the officers’ mess, they ran into Dr. Wells, who looked at Ekatya and smiled in a way she never had before. “This must be Dr. Rivers,” she said. “I heard about your arrival yesterday. You made quite an impression on the ground crew.”

  “Just Lhyn, please. I’m not Dr. Rivers when I’m not working.”

  “Oh, I envy you that. I’m Dr. Wells twenty-four hours a day, it seems. But please call me Alejandra.”

  While Ekatya was getting over the surprise of Wells offering Lhyn a first-name acquaintance within one minute, Lhyn was already digging into the lingual aspect. “Do you shorten that to Aleja? I have a colleague with the x variant of that name, and she goes by Alexa.”

  “Never,” Wells said. “It was my paternal grandmother’s name, and I want to honor it. She was a magnificent lady. Tell me, is Terrahan your native language?”

  “It is,” Lhyn said in a surprised tone. “How did you know?”

  Wells turned that new smile on Ekatya again. “Something Captain Serrado said once. It makes more sense now.”

  “I chose to keep my Terrahan language chip,” Ekatya explained. “When I had to have the Halaaman one installed, I gave up High Alsean instead.” And she had been very glad to get it back. She hadn’t wanted Halaama in her head for an hour longer than necessary.

  Lhyn looked suddenly pale, though she explained it away as a need for food—they hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before. Once alone, however, she leaned across the table. “I knew you kept Terrahan. I dreamed it.”

  “When?”

  “A few days after our first quantum com call. Maybe five days later? Four?”

  “Five,” Ekatya said, her stomach constricting as a memory slammed into her. “Lhyn, I saw you. Right before Dr. Wells put me under, I saw you standing next to her, and I told you I couldn’t give Terrahan up. I thought it was a hallucination from the anesthetic.”

  “It’s changing,” Lhyn whispered in awe. “Or maybe growing.”

  “Into what?”

  “I don’t know. We need to talk to Andira about it.”

  Five days later, Ekatya’s personal quantum com quota refreshed and she called Andira. She had planned to bring Lhyn in on the conversation a little later, but that idea died a quick death when she learned that Andira was badly burned and unconscious in Blacksun Healing Center. She was prepared to throw every inspector off her ship and burn her engines all the way to Alsea, but Colonel Micah dissuaded her with a revelation that rocked her back in her seat.

  Tyrees. She was Andira’s first tyree. It explained so much about the way she missed her. Colonel Micah had called it a partial tyree bond and intimated that Andira had suffered after their departure from Alsea—he said she should have been under the care of a healer. Ekatya thought about how hard her separation from Lhyn had been, even knowing that it was temporary, and could not imagine how Andira must have felt. Andira, who had the empathic strength she and Lhyn lacked and who had probably experienced their symptoms times a factor of ten. And in all of their calls since then, she had never said a word.

  “You idiot,” she murmured when she ended the call. “Andira, what were you thinking?”

  A week passed before Andira called her back, waking her in the middle of the night. Ekatya left Lhyn sleeping and carefully closed the bedroom door before sitting at her desk to accept the call. She had half a mind to dress Andira down both for her idiot self-sacrifice and her stubborn silence on the topic. Then Andira was apologizing for not checking the time converter and all Ekatya could think was how wonderful she looked, healthy and happy, because she had finally found her own tyree.

  How could she bring up her situation with Lhyn after that? It would make Andira worry and probably feel guilty, and Ekatya could not do that to her now. Not when she had just healed from horrific burns, not the day after she had finally joined and Shared with the woman she loved, not while she was already worrying about Herot Opah and an assassination attempt.

  She would tell her on their next call, when—hopefully—things were resolved on Alsea.

  “Why am I always keeping secrets for someone else?” Andira asked at one point.

  “Because sometimes that’s what you have to do for the people you care about,” Ekatya answered. The irony nearly blinded her.

  CHAPTER 34:

  The right thing

  Within one hour of Admiral Tsao’s confirmation that the Phoenix had been cleared for active service and Ekatya now reported to her, Ekatya cashed in five days of her personal leave and boarded a shuttle with Lhyn. They were in Gov Dome two days later. Lhyn went to their apartment to pack up a few last things and make final arrangements to terminate their residency, while Ekatya—pointedly wearing civilian clothing—walked into the Presidential Palace. She had an appointment to keep.

  Sholokhov watched her enter his office with a small smile, his blue eyes shadowed beneath his bushy eyebrows. “This is not a pleasure I expected, Captain. To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  She sat in one of his guest chairs, taking up a very familiar position. But this was the last time she would ever have to do it.

  “I’m here to ask you to do the right thing.”

  “Oh, this should be good.” He crossed his arms on his desk and leaned forward. “Tell me, what does the ever-righteous Captain Serrado think is the right thing?”

  “Signing this.” She pushed her pad across the desk, already set to the official request that sh
e had filled out.

  He glanced at it, then did a near double take and examined it more closely. “You must be joking.”

  “I do occasionally joke. But I’ve never once done it in this office.”

  “Why would I sign this?”

  “Because you sent him to his death.”

  “Captain Serrado,” he sighed, “let me explain something to you. You command a ship with a crew of one thousand, two hundred and sixty-four. Part of your job entails developing a protective relationship with your crew, and I must admit you are admirably skilled in that regard. I am never in doubt that you protect your own.” He sat back in his chair. “I protect my own as well, but my crew is somewhat larger than yours. I’m responsible for the security of the Protectorate. Hundreds of billions of people. I think in numbers you can’t even comprehend. I have to. So where you are emotionally shackled by the death of a single member of your crew, I look at the numbers and see that this single death helped to save billions of lives on Nylak.”

  “Don’t pretend that you care about the Nylakians. You just wanted to take down Elin Frank.”

  “You’re right,” he said cheerfully. “Nylak is not a member of the Protectorate and therefore not my responsibility. I don’t care about them.” He leaned forward again. “But you do.”

  She clenched her fists in her lap and reminded herself that she had come here for a purpose. Keeping her tone even, she said, “So now you’re telling me that you sacrificed Ensign Bellows for my benefit?”

  “Don’t be intentionally obtuse; it’s not worthy of you. I’m telling you that I sacrificed him to the cause of keeping Protectorate weapons out of the hands of those who have no business holding them. Frank wouldn’t have stopped with the Lexihari system. That success, and the wealth it brought him, would have fueled more of the same. He would have destabilized systems right and left, causing incalculable damage and danger to the Protectorate. And its representatives,” he added. “After all, it was a Protectorate weapon that killed Ensign Bellows.”

  “I agree that Elin Frank needed to be taken down,” she said. “But you didn’t need to use Ensign Bellows to do it. You had other options. It was your choice not to use them.”

  He glanced down at the pad. “And you believe I should feel guilt for his loss, and that signing this request will…unburden me? I think you might be confusing your own sense of guilt for mine.”

  “It won’t unburden anyone, least of all me. But it might bring some measure of comfort to two people who have lost their son for reasons they don’t understand.”

  “Those two people groomed their son for Fleet. They understood exactly what the risks were.”

  “Of course they did,” she said sarcastically. “That’s why they used their connections to get him stationed here, out of all possible danger.”

  “And who took him out of here, hm? Not me.”

  That hit too close to home. Her fingernails dug into her palms as she said, “Director Sholokhov, signing that form will cost you nothing. But it will help a pair of grieving parents. I have done everything you asked of me for a year and a half and never asked one thing in return. I am asking you for this.”

  He tilted his head, looking down his nose at her. “Now that argument bears some weight. It’s true that you were far more diligent and faithful than I expected, given what I knew of you at the start.” He picked up the pad and began to read.

  As the seconds ticked past, she consciously unclenched her fists and forced herself to relax. He was taking it seriously; that was a good sign. She just needed to keep her temper in check.

  She was gazing at the flowering tree in full bloom outside his window when he set the pad down with a decisive click and said, “No.”

  It took three full seconds to get her throat unstuck. “Why? What objection can you possibly have?”

  “I read your final report, Captain. It was very detailed; I had an excellent picture of exactly what happened on that mission. What you’re asking for has very specific guidelines, and Ensign Bellows simply does not satisfy them. He didn’t sacrifice himself. He made a mistake. He is responsible…”

  She didn’t hear the rest of it. The roar in her ears made it impossible. His words had torn the door off the room where she had shoved sixteen months of anger, plus the last month of rage. She stood up so abruptly that the heavy chair rocked on its legs.

  “You do not get to blame him for his own death!” she shouted.

  He stopped, his mouth open in surprise while she planted her hands on his desk and leaned over so that she was nearly nose to nose with him.

  “He made a mistake because he was inexperienced,” she spat. “And I told you that. I told you he was not a good choice. You had other options, but you didn’t even consider them because this was never about Bellows; it was about you proving your power over me. It was about you proving a point that you didn’t need to, because I conceded it the very first time I sat in that chair!” She pointed behind her. “I told you that first day that we were on the same side. Have I done anything to disprove that?”

  He didn’t answer, apparently still stunned by her effrontery.

  “You should have told me about Frank. You made a strategic error by keeping me in the dark. If I’d known what to look for, I wouldn’t have needed to take Ensign Bellows with me. We could have linked in with him on the ship. He could have viewed that code in real time while we looked at it on the planet. He would still have seen the encryption, still have done what you needed him to do, but from the safety of the ship. He didn’t need to be there. But you were so bent on putting me down one last time that you never even considered that I might know my job better than you!”

  “Don’t you speak to me in that—”

  “I will speak to you in the tone you have earned by your childish actions,” she snapped. “I know you don’t give a tiny ant’s ass about Bellows. It’s all numbers to you. So let me put this in terms you can understand. He was a resource, an extremely valuable resource. He was a genius-level data jacker—and one hundred percent loyal to the Protectorate. You could have used him as a resource until you retired, and your successor could have used him for two more decades after. You threw that away, denied yourself access to his talent, all out of spite. It was immature and unworthy, and it cost you decades of potential use. Now you tell me: Is that the fault of Ensign Bellows?”

  There was no sound in the room but her labored breathing as she tried to get her rage under control.

  Sholokhov looked up at her with an unreadable expression. At last he said, “You are one of a kind, Captain Serrado.”

  She pushed off his desk and crossed her arms over her chest. “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I can’t recall the last time someone spoke to me that way, except for a certain captain almost eighteen months ago. And that was tame compared to this.” He picked up the pad without breaking their eye contact. “I still don’t find your brand of honesty as enjoyable as you seem to think I should, but I’ve come to realize that there is value in it.” Holding up the pad, he added, “You know that Ensign Bellows does not satisfy the criteria. Speaking honestly, he doesn’t deserve this.”

  She held her tongue, knowing there was more to come.

  He set the pad on his desk and drummed his fingers beside it. “But you do,” he said, and pressed his thumb to the pad.

  She watched in astonishment as he picked up a pad pen and signed his name next to the thumbprint. When he handed the pad to her, she could barely find her voice.

  “Thank you,” she said faintly.

  “Don’t thank me. This isn’t a favor. It’s payment for services rendered. You’re right, Captain—you never asked for anything until now. I consider us even.”

  Horrified by the tears that were pricking at the backs of her eyes, she bowed her head and said, “Understood.”

  She had her hand on the antiq
ue brass door handle when he spoke again.

  “Captain Serrado.”

  Her shoulders tensed as she waited for the hated You’re dismissed, Captain. But if he needed the final victory, she would give it to him.

  “Regardless of how you see the result of this mission, the fact remains that you saved another planet. And this time, you did it under orders. Take the win and leave the rest behind.”

  Though he had been unable to resist a final dig about Alsea, the rest almost sounded like well-meaning advice. She turned to face him, nodded once, and quietly closed the door behind her.

  After picking up her clothing bag from Sholokhov’s aide, Ekatya changed in one of the many private toilets sprinkled throughout the Presidential Palace. Then she found the nearest matter printer and held her signed form up to the scanner. Within two minutes she was walking toward the exit with a slim black box in her jacket pocket.

  In another twenty minutes, she stood on the porch of a large white house just far enough from the center of Gov Dome to be outside the best neighborhoods. It was still more than she could have afforded even on an admiral’s salary.

  She pressed the visitor button and waited, her heart beating uncomfortably fast. It seemed to take a year for the door to open.

  “Captain Serrado.” Ensign Bellows’s father stared at her with the depths of grief shadowing his eyes. His wife was a silent presence behind his shoulder. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  She almost smiled, recognizing the well-bred manners she had seen so often in Ensign Bellows. The greeting was nearly the same as Sholokhov’s, but what a difference in meaning and intent.

  “I came to bring you something that belongs to your son,” she said.

  His wife stepped around him. “Fleet already sent us the only part of our son you could bring back. And his possessions. Did they miss something?”

  “No. This didn’t belong to him until now.” She looked from one to the other. “I know you haven’t been told much about how he died. And I’m afraid I can’t add much to it, because everything is classified…for now. I’m hoping it will become public knowledge later. But I think you should know that your son gave his life for a purpose. Fleet has recognized that.”