Fortune.
Tek had so much he could give a discordant speech about being unbowed to the masses of expanded Ba’am, all the while hiding that he had sold the Alliance to Water. He wondered when Water would arrive with the first directive. Whether he, Tek, in keeping with Seeker’s speech on the eve of her destruction of his planet, would find a way to convince himself that bowing wasn’t so bad after all.
Tek had luck in smaller ways, too. Jane Lee led him to a lab on Deck K in the bowels of the Aratan, where Dr. Fodel had made a vast splattering of Progenitor enhancement equipment his own. This lab, against the little one were Tek had almost been turned into a hybrid, was a market compared to a traveling vendor. Tubes, and wires, and chambers (and cages, though most were open) as far as the eye could see, as dense as a jungle, almost haphazard, but patterned subtly enough that Tek could see the intentionality of how shapers had set it up, if he strained.
Dr. Fodel had set up stacks of equipment he’d brought in one corner of the room, and these Union machines, angular and silver, split off and connected with the technology of the Progenitors. Or rather, whatever fraction of technology they had granted their servants on the old Liberty’s Call, at once advanced enough that Dr. Fodel had much to learn, and a pale shadow of what the Progenitors were capable.
Dr. Fodel, wearing a grin from ear to ear, led Tek to one of the cages that was locked. “I was able to do what you asked,” he said, offering a sloppy version of the hand-to-shoulder gesture. “I never dreamed neurotechnology would be quite as in-demand a specialty.”
Tek looked at the overgrown mouselike hybrid slumped unconscious in the box. “There was only the one?”
“The others were incomplete, or wouldn’t be taken alive,” said Fodel. “The hybrid in the freezer, the one we found first, is the useful carrier. All the checkups we did on your neural link hardware, the gimped Shadow distributed through your brain, and the seed inside our friend there, don’t need to be superseded. If you’re ready, we can begin the transfer now.”
“You are sure the shard will only be able to connect with me through the Shadow’s weakened linkages?” asked Tek.
“I can tell you I’m ninety-five percent sure today,” said Fodel, “or we can wait months, and I can be ninety-seven percent confident later. If we do the procedure in line with best practices, the shard will not be able to compete with you for control of your body. It will be able to stimulate neurogenesis--it is a seed, after all--but there are certain green implant locations on your cortex--that’s the color they show up on the main scan--that will take advantage of what was done to your Shadow in the early stages of its growth process.”
“You’ll leave the first neural link in?”
Fodel shared a look with one of his research assistants. “That implant is extraneous to this process,” he said. “Just something to work around. Doctor Majani was able to tell you more about how to use the first link, right? I’m just the compatibility guy.”
Jane Lee gave Tek a look. It’s okay if you don’t do this. No one will think worse of you.
“Doctor,” said Tek. “As I am one of the only candidates for this procedure, and you told me there is a chance the shard will atrophy if you keep it in this environment for much longer, I will ask you to proceed. One last caveat. You asked the shard’s permission, right?”
“The shard…” Fodel paused. “The shock of Seeker’s death, and the way the shard was created, did substantial damage to the host hybrid. If the shard remains, the shard will never be able to interact with the world.”
“You’re saying you couldn’t make contact?”
“I know it is asking for help,” said Fodel. “It doesn’t like being trapped in that body. I’m not sure it understands what we intend to do--it is childlike--but it has given permission as far as it can. I have no ability to do anything further to satisfy your requirement.”
“Good enough,” said Tek.
Some hours later, he awoke on a white table, and felt heavier. People in surgical masks swirled around him, and Tek recognized Jane Lee from her bone structure. She’d insisted on being there, if towards the back, because she couldn’t actually do anything.
Tek sat up.
Fodel, in front of him, lowered his mask. “There is a window of weeks where the surgery is reversible,” said the scientist. “I am also mandating you check in at least once every two days, to make sure your personal neurological patterns remain strong and distinct. You are the most important person in the Home Fleet. I should have lost my licence just for letting you talk me into this.”
“You’re independent,” said Tek. “The accrediting body on Earth no longer has any claim on you. This lab is secret, but not all of your functions are. If you want to be judged by your peers, get started on picking out students from the candidate list we offered, and make some. You will do your part in unleashing the talent of my old planet.”
“Neurological functions seem to be normal,” said Fodel, dismissively. “Do you feel it?”
Tek noticed his Shadow sitting on a cabinet at the back of the operating room. It was transparent, in keeping with the fact he’d mostly suppressed it. It had more of a defined shape than before. It looked like a tiny version of Morok, a form it had been tending towards ever since Tek had seen the great cathan’s corpse, but the transition had accelerated.
Reaching up, poking at it, was a child, similarly translucent, wearing a blood red Admiral of the Navy uniform. The child looked like Ketta might have, once upon a time.
The actual mother, of course, was Seeker. Seeker had left various shards of her will in the minds of puppets she’d been using when she’d died, some of which had been violent, and other had been fractures of fractures, mostly useful for driving their hosts to the brink of insanity. One, however, had been found intact and calm, possibly because it had been born in a body experiencing ad hoc cryonics, which eased the process. That body, the shard’s original host, the mousy hybrid, had suffered 70% paralysis because of what Seeker had done in the moments before she had died, experiencing spinal cord bursting in various places. But as Dr. Fodel had said, a mind had been delivered to the hybrid whole.
Now that mind was with Tek. Not only because he was one of the only safe carriers. Because the shard of Seeker was something akin to a seed AI, and if Tek could partner with it, harness it, he’d have access to a real fraction of what Seeker had been capable of. With that…
He’d still be light-years away from the Progenitors, birthright or no. But maybe, like Seeker said, self-improvement was worth it.
The child turned around. She looked about six, notably younger than Sten. Her hair was long, and visible implants dotted her cheeks, as small and random as if she’d been playing with finger paint. They weren’t real, because she wasn’t real, but she was a representation of something occuring in Tek’s mind, or at least adjacent. What were the child’s dainty prosthetics supposed to represent? She looked more overtly like a cyborg than Seeker did, but somehow less threatening.
Thank you, said the child, shyly. You heard my parent, didn’t you? You listened.
Tek remembered what he’d thought had been Seeker’s last attempt as psychological warfare, the infrasound where she’d claimed to be born innocent for 1.5 microseconds.
What if the words hadn’t hadn’t been intended as infrasound? What if they had been a plea for Tek to spare at least one of her children?
I--
Tek half-expected the child to be able to read him as well as Water, or Seeker. Expected the child to be able to rip thoughts from his mind, and know his ideas had not nearly been so altruistic. Or at least be able to guess.
But she couldn’t. The look on her face confirmed what Fodel had told Tek. She couldn’t touch him. She wasn’t strong enough. She had no idea what he was thinking, and if he desired, he could ask Fodel to remove the neural link where her core was located, and make her disappear forever. Shut her in a cabinet, like the one on which toy Shadow Morok sat, with no ability to touch the outside world. Or he could have the link dumped into space. Or have it destroyed entirely.
Tek had all that power.
Against all that, the child who was a fraction of Seeker, who might grow into something great and terrible--this was just a girl.
I’m self, said the girl, thrusting out her hand. Pleased to meet you. Yunky tried to be kind to me, but he didn’t know how. I think when I was born, I hurt him. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to learn and grow.
Tek, experiencing a disconnect between the real world around him, and the ghostly images superimposed, didn’t extend his own hand to shake.
The girl looked at him. Her lip quivered. I know my parent didn’t get along with you, she said. I have memories. I know Seeker wasn’t a good person. I’m different. Believe me. I know you have no reason to. But… Give me a chance.
She thought she was asking him a favor. Assuming all was as it appeared, which was all Tek could do… She was playing right into his trap.
The tiny spider Shadow, which had, after a delay, become interested in the ghost girl, struggled onto its legs, fell off the cabinet, and then padded forward, like a puppy. Tek wondered if his will had forced that aspect on it. If, because he’d thought of it as something like a pet, and he had the upper hand in his mind, it had no choice but to comply.
The girl looked down at the little Shadow. Picked it up. Hugged it like a doll. Seeker wanted to be better, said the girl, standing at the foot of the surgical bed where Tek sat, slightly overlapping with a technician. Seeker thought that meant for Seeker’s own sake. Then, at the end, Seeker realized the only thing Seeker could really fight for was to pass on Seeker’s best self to someone else.
The girl’s eyes had glazed over slightly, and the syntax was different enough Tek reasoned there was a chance Seeker had left a prerecorded message with her shard. A plea, to whoever found it. Or rather, specifically to Tek. Tek had no doubt, at the end, Seeker had a good sense of what sorts of things Tek might do after he defeated her. She had been an incredibly powerful opponent. Just not potent enough.
Self? Tek asked the girl. Is there anything else I can call you?
The girl shook her head no. Then she paused. Thought for a second, eyes brightening. Do you want to?
Tek had the strangest feeling that the child didn’t want to self-assign a name. Because that would be proof the child wasn’t a child at all, and the girl wanted to still have something like a parent. Wanted to feel loved.
You’re a nice girl, thought Tek, feeling awkward. Maybe--
Not a girl! said the child. No! She put down the Shadow and crossed her arms.
Alpha, thought Tek. Is that the sort of name you want?
Alpha, said Alpha, mulling it over. I’ll sleep on it. I’m tired. The child disappeared with a wink. The Shadow make a faint mewing sound and tried to chase after.
“Are you interacting with the entity?” Dr. Fodel tried again. “The entity is based on technology created in Union labs, but there could be some--”
“It’s fine,” said Tek. “Let’s do some check-ups so you can clear me to go.” He looked specifically at Jane Lee. “It’s fine,” Tek said again.
The next stop on his itinerary was one of the BRS Aratan’s infirmaries. As expected, Nith’s brother was guarding the door, beside a friend with an overly stony expression.
“Any change?” asked Tek.
Nith’s brother looked from Tek to Jane Lee. He didn’t need to speak. His face said it all. “First Hunter. She woke up.”
Inside, Nith lay on a fairly public bed. What was left of her. Jane Lee had applied field cryo in time to prevent Nith from dying of hemorrhagic shock, but the truth of the matter was that, not only had Morok destroyed one of her arms, he had also taken a lung, severely damaged her heart, and left her in a state that wasn’t a guaranteed survival even once she was defrosted in a top-tier military medical facility.
Now she had pulled through. Was on the list for personalized prosthetics. There was a girl leaning over some of the mountains of equipment attached to Nith, on her healther, left side. A real girl this time, both in terms of tangibility, and self-identification. Nith’s sister. Healthy and bouncy, a faded leaf in her hair, fully recovered from the illness she’d endured when Tek had taken Ba’am into the jungle.
Nith’s sister was so bouncy, in fact, that Tek imagined a little narrative he had missed, whereby Nith had sent her brother away so her brother wouldn’t keep her sister from pawing at her. Nith, propped up on the bend of her bed, had wrapped her one arm as fully around her little sister as she could manage, not strong enough to contain her sister’s enthusiasm, but clearly wanting to feel it. Apparently the medical staff in the room, all healers from Tek’s planet with modest tutorials in Union equipment, as the Gyrfalcon physicians were needed elsewhere, didn’t themselves see anything wrong with the way Nith’s sister was vibrating her bed. They were preoccupied with other patients.
Nith didn’t seem like she was in pain. Instead, even with bandages draping up her neck, she had the widest smile Tek had ever seen on her. Wider, once she saw Jane Lee was with him.
“I told you I die for you,” Nith said, almost to both of them, making a half-hearted attempt to cover her sister’s ears. “I suppose this means I did and I didn’t.”
“Why?” asked Jane Lee.
Nith gave Jane Lee a look, like they were sharing an inside joke. “I don’t really have another villain monologue,” Nith said. She emphasized the last two words in a goofy way. In part, Tek thought, so that her sister, who had sensed the tension in the room, would go back to smiling. “It does come back to Uncle Deret, though. He never accepted you, Tek. You were just a kid at the time of the banishment, and he was happy to let you go with Aratan. Happy to try to kill you as soon as he saw you again. He wasn’t willing to give you a chance. You were a threat to him from the first, Tek, you can’t deny that, but…”
She paused.
“...so was I, to you. So was I, and you let me in. And you let me help. You let me convince Ketta to go along with your plan. You had so much trust. I’m not sure I deserved it. At first, after Deret died, I thought I was playing you. Trying to salvage what I could for my subclan. You rubbed off on me. You both did. Jane, I met people from the cities before I came to the sky. Even visited parts of the Allied Cities. The birthrights of the traders I met weren’t nearly as far above me as yours is, but you were the one to treat me with more respect. You’re both so naive and you both have so many dreams, and somehow you live lives where you pull them off. I put on armor and charged into battle because you told me I could, Jane. And Tek, I believed we could win because you said so, and I wanted...want...Deret’s death to mean something.
“Then you named a great skyship the Deret, and proved you were even bigger. The naming was after I did what I did, of course, but it was the first thing my sister told me, when she came in the room. She loved Deret so much. You made her stop being scared of you.”
Nith looked at her sister.
Her sister looked at Tek. “First Hunter,” she said, putting her hand to her shoulder. “I’ll go. I think you have more big person things to say that I shouldn’t hear.” She gave Nith a kiss, and ran off in the direction of her brother.
Nith tried, reflexively, to sit up a little more. Couldn’t do it. Offered a half shrug. “You better tell them both to come back when you’re done,” she said.
Tek nodded. Looked at Jane Lee.
“We don’t have too much more time, anyway,” she said. There was an edge in her voice, maybe a hangover from when she’d found out Nith had tried to kill Tek, or maybe because she felt awkward.
“Who would I be if I was so familiar with my First Hunter and didn’t even have gifts?” said Nith. She glanced two beds over.
Beyond someone in a coma was a little fox, mildly anthropomorphic. The fox was tied to its bed with clear manacles.
“Overflow from the hybrid recovery room,” said Nith. “I got a look at the patient list to see if there was anyone interesting to talk to.”
Tek didn’t ask how she’d managed that, a few short hours after waking up. She was still Nith.
“Patterwise, official name, was the commander of Wilderness Squadron,” said Nith. “They found her, semiconscious, in a tiny air pocket inside the Tranquility’s husk. She decided to elect for the surgery to try to tame her Shadow once she found out Raba Dorsel was dead. Not too many hybrids who are so senior opted to join us, as far as I know. Say hello. You’ll find it worthwhile.”
As Tek hesitated for a split second, Nith raised her voice. “Hey! Lucia! Your new boss is here!”
Tek walked over. The hybrid attempted something like a salute, but couldn’t because of the safety restraints. Tek wasn’t sure the most common point during the various debriefs happening across the fleet when a hybrid who wanted to join the Alliance stopped being treated like a threat. It was an incremental and inconsistent process, and different constituencies wanted different protocols. Obviously, the moment of truth had not happened for Patterwise yet.
“One in four,” said Tek. “That was the best success chance my scientists could offer for making a mature Shadow manageable. With a good portion of the other possible results being making it angrier, or death. Why would you take that risk for yourself, when you were lucky to survive in the first place? When, if you chose to go to the Paradise, and wait for a Progenitor recovery team, you would possibly be restored to a position of far more prestige than I can offer here?”
“I didn’t want to be a traitor,” said the fox. “To anyone, but mostly to the Union. I became this to get a second chance. To prove I could be somebody. It didn’t really work out. Then Fleet Admiral Oakley Ketta and Lieutenant Raba Dorsel worked together to obliterate my squadron. Raba died a hero. Meanwhile, I should have died for the Progenitors, on the Tranquility, by the Fleet Admiral’s hand. Once again, the universe wasn’t fair, and finally, I was the one with luck, even though Raba’s time had run out. I knew her, before. So, when marines found me, I got to thinking. Maybe I served my time. I gave my life for the Progenitors. More than once, actually. Maybe I could...fill the void…”
She was mumbling.
“What is it, Patterwise?” asked Tek.
“Lucia,” said the fox. “I’m going to pretend I’m human again, and if you want me otherwise, you should have killed me while I was under. I am going to try as hard as I can to be Raba Dorsel’s spirit. To be everything she never got a chance to be, since she died so young. I’m not as good as her. I never will be, even like this. That’s okay. I’m going to try anyway.” She twisted her mouth muscles in an unfoxlike smile. “The surgery worked, I think. The passenger isn’t screaming at me to avenge Seeker anywhere near as much as it should. I got lucky a second time. I’m sure my time will run out sooner or later, but not yet. Can I ask a question?”
“What?”
“What was it like when you found out how strong the Progenitors really were?”
“Excuse me?”
“You may have killed Seeker,” Lucia whispered. “But I was senior enough to know some of their ways. I haven’t escaped them, even now. I. See. You.”
“I’m not a Progenitor.”
Lucia shrugged. “The Progenitors like their games. They sanctioned this. Earnest Horton knows it too. I’ll keep my mouth shut. Raba Dorsel died for you, after all. Just… Try to be worthy of the respect you’re getting, alright? Whatever deal you made, whatever you are, a lot of people have faith in you right now. I’m here because I’m choosing to believe you’re fighting them, just a little bit. If you’re completely another one of their faces, their tools, their masks, I hope I die before I find out. Good luck with the Alliance, First Hunter.”
As he walked out, Tek tried to determine if anyone else had heard Lucia speak. Maybe Jane Lee. Maybe only her. Her face had grown a dip more stony.
He spent the rest of the day in various meetings, including a particularly memorable one, in a conference room illuminated by one of the Aratan’s few viewports, where Ketta lectured about the best way to conduct shuttle-overflight memorial tours while collecting additional oxygen stores--Tek’s planet’s atmosphere hadn’t completely disintegrated yet. He could see the world remnant out the window, gray and gently squirming. By projections, the core hadn’t been converted to goo yet, not that it mattered. Dozens of Titans hung in space around the planet, easily strong enough to kill it again, but completely incapable of saving it, even if they worked together. They could fire huge EMP blasts to disable the goo, but there wasn’t any point, given the resources it would take, and the fact that the goo, job done, would go inert soon, anyway.
After the meeting, Tek caught Ketta, to ask her a personal question.
“I assume you have some ideas for our hop plan out of the system?” asked Ketta. “We’re pushing it. Even with our firepower, we shouldn’t stay here much longer. The wrecks are just about salvaged to the degree that’s worth the risk.”
“Does it bother you,” asked Tek, “that someone you cared about so much died for me?”
“If you had asked that when I was about to leave with the Endurance,” said Ketta. “I would have dumped you in a lifeboat, and disappeared, and you would not have been able to stop me.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t.”
“I suppose you want some insight?” asked Ketta, sighing, putting her hands on the oak of the conference table. “Beyond the obvious answer of yes?”
Tek let her finish.
“I don’t think you were worth it,” said Ketta. “Not one iota. The ideals of the Union are. The Gyrfalcon Republic is the smallest constituency in the Alliance. Its membership is overwhelmed by command staff. No one feels comfortable applying to join. That’s the beginnings of a caste system. I don’t like it. I’m worried. I’m worried and I couldn’t even bury her. What do you want from me, First Hunter? You convinced me the Alliance is the closest I’ll get to having the Union back. I swore an oath to it. To you. We have no ground to stand on. Everything can fall apart in an instant. A long time ago, Admiral Yi Sun-sin, of a wet navy, won victory after victory even though he had no particular naval experience. He had a knack. You have a knack. Doesn’t mean it’s good enough. The admiral died. You broke me in a way I didn’t think possible, Tek of Zhadir’, but then, you broke her, too, and perhaps you will one day break yourself. Until then, we are partners, Tek of Zhadir’, and--maybe here’s what you wanted me to say--in part because Raba would have wanted it. Because she wasn’t quite as cold as I am. Because she talked you through the spacewalk over link, and she liked you. She wanted me to believe, and I will honor the dead. Have a good night, First Hunter. I expect to hear your strategic vision in the morning.”
Tek settled into Seeker’s old quarters on the Aratan. They were remarkably sizable and ornate. Also dusty--from what Tek knew, Seeker had barely spent any time in them. Because of her reputation, no one else dared claim the rooms, and, because the seven million of the Alliance were a tight fit across their thirty-seven Titans (though space constraints were not in the same league as on the Paradise), Tek had stepped up. There were plans to convert the outer chamber into an extra conference room, and storage, but for now, Tek had a palatial estate that was larger than the escape pod where he’d grown up.
And he wasn’t quite alone.
At least three reasons for Tek to feel that way. Vren of Gorth’ had missed the window of Shadow immaturity, and had died while techs were trying to mute his passenger. Hett of Yatt’ was growing up, and interacted with Tek with increasingly careful professionalism, and less fear and awe. Doril of Gorth’ had been in the same room as Sten when Sten had disappeared--turned away for one moment. To say the bodyguard blamed himself was an understatement. All Tek could do was comfort Doril and try to intimate that Sten was working on a special project, so Doril had to keep the secret, and not worry. None of these members of original Ba’am could Tek confide in. But…
Jane Lee was there.
Tek didn’t worry about whether she had heard Lucia’s accusation. He kissed her, working from the cheek to the throat, gentle, lower, picking her up until she wrapped her legs around his waist. A martial arts move, or at least a variant.
“You want to spar?” he asked, his bare toes on a red throw rug. They weren’t naked yet, and Tek, because of how he’d grown up, really only had stories to go on of how the process worked. He wondered if he’d moved too quickly, or if she was uncomfortable because she was several years older than him. He wondered if she was angry, and if he needed to pack his heat back in. He’d planned on having a long conversation with her later in the night, but depending on how she’d taken Lucia, everything could be ruined.
“Is this okay?” asked Jane Lee, flexing her ankles into his thighs such that Tek felt he was about to topple backwards onto the rug.
“I… Er… I can’t stay up if you keep doing that.”
“That’s the point. You need a lesson.”
Tek flashed back to the fight they’d had back in the Gyrfalcon training room. He’d beaten Seeker. One would think that gave him some reason to be confident in martial arts and CQC. Maybe Jane Lee was embarrassed she’d only killed Morok. The uncomfortable mix of emotions the thought brought threw off Tek’s mood. Jane Lee saw the look on his face, and her own fell, which made Tek realize that she’d been playing.
“I,” said Tek, trying to blank his mind, to not do anything that would dishonor memories. He might have named a battleship after Morok if he’d thought he could have gotten away with it.
They waited a while. Tek standing. Jane Lee wrapped around him. She was barely smaller, but bided the time by adjusting her position. Climbing. Taking advantage of the fact that he was strong, and she could basically do anything she wanted, up to and including some weak takedown attempts, and he could just flatten his feet and stay immobile.
So that was what she did. One after another. Legs around his arms. Standing on his shoulders, pressing on the overhead. Dropping abruptly so that the insides of her knees hooked over his shoulders, and she was hanging upside down, arms extended to the floor.
“Does this bother you?” asked Jane Lee. “I always wondered how good I would be as a dancer.”
“It’s fine.”
“You’re tense.” Upside down, tentative, she started to massage his calves, shins.
Tek could argue the point, or give an explanation. Neither would be useful. He had to let go. He let himself fall backwards, onto the rug, but Jane Lee executed whatever the opposite of an escape move was, so she was under him, so his weight took the air from her lungs, and she didn’t seem to want to replace any. She kissed him and gasped and kissed him, and then their clothes were off, and they had rolled under what Jane Lee called a four-poster bed. They were too big for the space, and so the entire frame lurched up and down in a rhythmic motion, pressing the mesh pattern at the base into Tek’s back, and then Jane Lee’s, and oops, they had knocked the thing over, blocking the door of the inner room, not that anyone was coming. Tek knew there were controls for zero g in this chamber, and air venting, and though the latter had been locked behind a complex passcode, the former could be used with just a tap.
Tek hit it with a heel, and they floated, the outer chamber with maggrav visible just through the open door. He began to realize why the bed had not been bolted down--it was surprisingly resilient, and, staying in one piece, floated too.
They moved and they floated and they wrestled, and they were one, gasping and panting and straining to see how certain martial arts moved worked in zero gravity. Jane Lee had a lot more practice than Tek--she had specops training, after all--but the degree to which she was pulling her punches seemed new. She was gentle, she’d taken his hesitation at the beginning to heart, and she didn’t try to hurt him. While the image of light play between the pair of fighters probably would have made any number of viewers call for security, to separate two people who were clearly trying to murder each other, Tek knew the difference. It was a dance. She was exaggerating all her tells, and so was he, and half the time they were pressed into each other. Taking turns slamming each other into bulkheads and the overhead, to be sure, but being careful of their heads.
Two people trying to fight to the death probably wouldn’t be kissing so much.
Jane Lee turned the gravity back on at a truly impish moment, and moved so she would have caught Tek had he not been prepared, but of course he was, and they fell on a carpet that had been taped to the ground, laughing and crying and shaking.
“I forgot people could do that,” she said. “I’d started to wonder if touch was all about people hurting each other.”
“Are you okay, Jane Lee?”
“You know, that’s really not my name,” she said. “Everyone used to call me Jane. I think you got confused about how last names worked, maybe mostly just for me, because I was one of the first people you met who had one.”
“I’m sorry, Jane.”
“Don’t be.” She hit him. “Every time you say it, you remind me there’s still a little of you left from when we first met.”
“The first time we met, I broke your knee.”
“Because I let you. Because if that was what it took for us to be friends, that was what it took. I told you the way I think about touch.”
“I’m sorry I said you were babying my clan,” said Tek. “Maybe I and the rest of Ba’am were stupid, at least a bit. We needed someone like you.”
“I probably overdid it,” said Jane Lee. “We all fuck up, all the time. That’s how we know we’re still alive. You mind if I recruit Nith? For the new specops?”
“I’d have thought you’d be the one who wouldn’t want that.”
“We weren’t very nice to her,” said Jane Lee. “During the visit. But I think she was able to look past that. From who we were, to who we are trying to be. I think she was trying to look past that all along. I didn’t think I could forgive her for trying to kill you, but then I thought about how you were forced to kill the head of her family. I’m still trying to process how she got in front of Morok for me. Saved my life. I was psyching myself out during that fight. Trying to pretend I was you a bit too much. She’s not a fighter. She got in the way anyway. I think I’ll use my Rear Admiralty to see if she wants a military-grade prosthetic. And everything that goes with. Add her personability to some real training, and she’s going to be a top-class infiltrator on any garden or Progenitor Administration world. I’m building a school. Getting the best fighters and rogues in the Alliance to sign on, to fill in what I don’t know. Do you know what you’re going to ask the Alliance to do yet?”
“I think I’m going to take us on a path that allows for some mining on hop-adjacent systems,” said Tek. “Do a lot of drills. Practice fleet actions. Wait for inspiration to strike. We have enough tach sifters, autofabricators and autoprocessors that getting stuck in any particular system, the way the Gyrfalcon did in K-3423, is unlikely.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
Tek paused. One of the reasons he was in a holding pattern was because he expected Water to deliver a mission. Until then, he didn’t want the Alliance to get in any trouble that might involve a place Water didn’t want them to be, or that otherwise compromised their ability to dutifully perform errands. Water hadn’t been very clear about where Tek’s Home Fleet was allowed to go, or how much other Progenitor-submissive forces might still come after them.
Tek had planned to tell Jane Lee some version of this, that very night, but his words failed him. He was embarrassed. And ashamed. He’d made excuses to her about where Sten was, not really lying, just deflecting. She was the one who’d asked the most. Even more than Doril.
Jane Lee gave Tek a thoughtful face. “Is this about what Lucia said?”
“You heard?”
“I trust you,” said Jane Lee. “I’m one of those, for better or worse. Whatever you are, whoever you are, we’re together. If you’ll have me. Because I want you.”
Tek flashed to how many ways he’d swept the apartment for bugs before he said his next words.
“Even if I’m a Progenitor?”
“We do stupid things for love,” said Jane Lee, without missing a beat. “I hate Progenitors because of they way they crush, kill, and manipulate. For their own ends. You aren’t like that. You can fight with the best of them, I know, but you don’t enjoy doing some of the things you do. Every choice you’ve made was about trying to help people.”
“I’m not a Progenitor.”
“That’s a relief,” said Jane Lee. “Because otherwise I made myself a bit more of a traitor than Lucia, there.”
“I could have brought everyone who died on my planet back from the dead.”
“That’s… You do realize that’s something a Progenitor would say? Not just any Progenitor. The kind of Progenitor guessed at in the Union’s worst nightmares.”
“They’re worse,” said Tek. He told her everything. Jane Lee seized on the part he’d feared the most.
“You gave up Sten? Just like that?”
“I thought I had to. All those people, I could have brought them back, and kept them safe, and I didn’t. Because I wanted to push forward. I bet you wish I was a Progenitor. Then you’d get to dream about how I’d make everything right, and you’d help guide me, and everything would be beautiful. The truth is that I have devoted my life to a terrible choice. Devoted all of us. With my greatest strength nothing less than Seeker’s child sleeping at the back of my head.”
Jane Lee gave him a hug. It wasn’t angry.
“We’re slaves now,” said Tek. “All of us. All because I wouldn’t back down.”
As they knelt on the carpet, Jane Lee looked at him, tears in her eyes. “What do you think would have happened to the Gyrfalcon if you’d taken Water’s out?”
Tek blinked. “I suppose Water would killed all of you.”
“You didn’t let that happen. You valued what we represented, and the hope that we might save more lives in the future, over uninterring the ghosts of tens of millions on your homeworld. I took a risk for you, and then for Ba’am. And I did nothing.”
Tek wanted to be honest. “That’s not why--”
“I know,” said Jane Lee. “You did it because you’re a fighter. Because you won’t give up.”
“I sacrificed my brother,” said Tek. “Who, until that moment, I’d thought I was willing to die for. All to appease a being powerful enough to make my planet liveable, powerful enough to alter its orbit into a stable temperate zone loop, powerful enough to not care about the rights of anyone or anything remotely human. I bent my head to the ground of Water’s mind and pledged undying loyalty. The mind reading I think Water is capable of--I have to hold my vow for the rest of my life, because I think that if I was the sort of person who would break it, Water would have seen right then, and prepared a trap, for days or years or decades down the line. Water is powerful enough to see far down the lines of possible futures. To know me, in virtually all ways. Water traffics in a sort of predestination that makes my mind spin, because I don’t know if Water knows everything, or almost everything, or if there is any meaningful difference. Every thought everyone in the Home Fleet has I imagine is being looked at.”
“So Water might as well be here right now?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not power.”
“Because it’s so great it loops around the other end?”
“Near-omnipotence. Near-omniscience. And still Water didn’t break you.”
“I said--”
“You said you gave up your brother,” said Jane Lee. “I’ll go one step further, and say that sacrifice was not yours to make, so you made him carry a burden for you. You also refused to discover what Water’s restorations meant. And you made us slaves. But we were already slaves. And. I hear it in your voice. You haven’t given up.”
Tek laced his tone with fully-constrained rage. “Seeker was nothing. Before I am done, I will stamp on the throats of false gods.”
Despite her boldness, Jane Lee quivered. “How can you say that? If Water is listening?”
“Water could read my thoughts completely,” said Tek. “Water accepted my vow, and implicitly offered some degree of protection, knowing all the caveats that my mind could not help but offer. I did not swear to defend the Progenitors to my dying breath. I swore to be the servant of only one.”
