“Rachel has—had—a gen-mark that it took a scanner to pick up, so she could fit in with the other cadets when HR Solutions sent her to the Star Service Academy.” Cabanne Romanova's husky voice had gone dispassionate now. The Matushka, in spades, Maddy thought! And of course, it was accurate to speak about Rachel Kane in the past tense ... just as it would be to speak about Mum that way. Mum, and Linc, and Maddy's brothers. But for the life of her, the girl still couldn't force herself to do so. Not even in her thoughts, because for all the tears she'd shed today she still didn't quite believe they were dead. Not really.
Granma was still talking. “They'll spray it on your skin, Harbie. On your forehead, and it'll bond itself there like an old-fashioned tattoo. Except that this tattoo sets off peace officers’ scanners, and leaves a data trail. Not only will everyone who sees you know from your face that you've had a run-in with the occupation forces; they will know where you go, and when, from that point on. Now, suppose you tell me how you think you can lead a secret resistance movement after that happens?"
“We're leaving,” Mara Ling announced, grabbing the older woman's first pause. “Come on, Harbie!"
Did they have time, now? Maddy wondered exactly how far they must walk, after they'd taken the lift down to the lobby of this building and gone outside into the street. Should Granma and Granfer offer the other couple a place to sleep for the night? And would that occur to them, even; since restrictions on private citizens’ activities were so very new to these leaders of Narsai?
They weren't a new concept to Maddy, though. Humans living on Kesra had always been closely watched, and held to certain limits. Even Humans surnamed Fralick, despite all that her first home-world had owed to her father's family.
The militia leaders left. Maddy heard her grandparents speaking to each other in softer tones, and she stopped trying to decipher their words. She was feeling tired now, and ready (she thought) for another try at falling asleep ... she lay down, snuggled her head into her pillow, and pulled the covers close about her neck. She was drifting off, so close to sleep that she could feel a comforting touch from her stepfather's mind (impossible though she knew that to be), when something outside briefly overrode her window's ability to screen out unwanted nighttime light.
Overrode it so drastically that the flash penetrated the girl's closed eyelids, and brought her back to sitting position. She swung her feet to the floor, and in two steps was keying the window to show her what was happening beyond it. As she squinted, and tried to see but could make out nothing, she heard the trill of an incoming commlink. Someone answered, because the trilling stopped. A masculine voice (Granfer's, of course) murmured, rose in both pitch and volume, and then went silent.
“Madeleine!” Granma's voice preceded her through the girl's bedroom door. “Get up. Put your robe on, and your coat over it. We've got ten minutes’ warning, and that's only because of you."
“What?” It all came together then. Maddy didn't really need anyone to tell her the answer to her question, or to all the others she didn't have time to ask.
“Harbie and Mara got caught,” Granma told her, nevertheless. “And either Farren lied to us when he made that curfew announcement, or the Commonwealth knows about the militia. Because the enforcement patrol floodlighted them from above and shot them down in the middle of the street, before they could make it from our apartment to theirs! And now the building they came out of, ours, is coming down. With us still inside it, if we don't get out before the deadline that Farren just commed to your Granfer."
* * *
Chapter 10
“Did you get to see the surface, when you were here before?” Rachel Kane asked her husband, as she and Dan Archer waited tensely in their minuscule quarters and watched as the planet called Mistworld grew in their viewscreen. For once all three infants were asleep, simultaneously ... no, not “for once.” Something about being on board this ship, with Mistworld natives constantly nearby, had a definite soothing influence on human babies. Including on this trio who'd been removed from their mother's body at three months’ gestation, to save her life as well as theirs, and then brought to term in three separate artificial wombs at MinTar Medical. Rachel, gen though she was (and therefore artificially gestated herself), sometimes wondered whether or not that had hurt them. Being split up, long before their “births,” after starting their lives inside the same womb—hers, that was made of flesh.
But of course the doctors at MinTar Medical had zero experience with multiple pregnancies. Or almost none, since Narsatian women routinely had the extras selected out when more than one embryo turned up on a prenatal scan. So co-gestating the Archer/Kane triplets hadn't occurred to their physicians, and it only occurred to Rachel long after she might reasonably have suggested it.
Motherhood! As a girl growing up, she'd never considered the possibility it might one day become part of her life. For gens, bearing and caring for children of their own never was. No wonder she so often thought about something important far too late, and no wonder this role did to her what nothing that the Star Service Academy, her climb up the chain of command, or her years as a starship's XO had managed. It made her feel stupid. And helpless, and sometimes just plain incompetent.
Yet she couldn't, even on the worst days or in the middle of the worst nights, be sorry she'd kept them after inadvertently conceiving. For everything that giving them life might have cost her, she'd already been repaid a hundredfold. First and foremost, by forcing her to claim freedom as—if not her own birthright—theirs. By obliging her to run away from her owners at HR Solutions, almost incidentally deserting from her Star Service assignment, and winding up in the haven that Dan's foster family provided on Narsai.
She had a life now. One that was her own, to conduct as she saw fit. By her own choice she had a husband, children, and ... on screen, now, before her eyes ... a new world that all five of them would soon call home.
“No,” Dan said, in answer to her question. “None of us did, actually, hon. The diplomats who came in when we left got to do that. George Fralick, and the team he led."
“Oh.” Odd that she'd never asked him about it before, but they'd been through so many upheavals during the past half-year. What started on board the Archangel as a casual affair between the ship's XO and its chief engineer, had turned into a great deal more because of an unsanctioned pregnancy—one caused by a medic's carelessness (or lack of experience with an unfamiliar task) in prepping a female gen for egg harvest. The way they'd come to care for each other, both during the resulting crises and after them, struck her now as an unqualified miracle. But while it was happening, she simply didn't know any better. She was qualified to command a starship, and did her job (including the parts of it that required her to lead other Humans) with extraordinary skill; but she didn't know the first and least things about forming an ongoing personal relationship. Especially a romantic one.
“It wasn't fair, of course,” Dan continued, putting his arm around her as they sat on the edge of their berth (for lack of a better place to perch) and went on staring at the screen. “The Matushka made the peace, and then her damn husband got the credit for it! And no one but the Matushka could have done it, you know. Because she had Linc to help her communicate with the Misties, and because she had the guts it took to look beyond what they'd done to her troops. To her own kids, even."
“I can't imagine it!” Rachel agreed, with a shudder. “Especially not since I've got kids of my own. But if she hadn't, there'd be no Human colony on Mistworld now. Would there?” No refuge awaiting Rachel, Dan, and their babies. No advocates to intervene on behalf of the poorer Outworlds, in that spectacular arrival at Narsai six months ago. No wild card to challenge the Inner Worlds’ power to dominate the whole Commonwealth. So no matter what its surface might be like, Rachel loved her new home already.
“Nope. Y'know, hon, the only thing I'm really sorry about in all this—other than the people who died when Captain Giandrea took on the Rebel fleet, and
lost—is the Matushka having to leave Maddy on Narsai. I wonder what happened to that kid? So that she not only disappeared, but Linc couldn't locate her by finding her thoughts?” Dan shook his head, on which red hair was both receding and silvering now. He'd married late, for a Human man, because his background—that of a mine-slave who wasn't “owned” in a legal sense, but might as well have been, by the natives on Sestus 4—gave him none of the necessary resources. Not until he'd already spent more than two decades clawing his way up from ordinary star sailor to Star Service officer. Not until he'd become chief engineer on the Archangel, foster son to Fleet Admiral Romanova and her second husband, and—after the Star Service discharged all such “scramblers,” officers who started their careers as ordinaries—captain and co-owner of the interstellar freighter Triad. Which he'd lost, and his partners along with it, protecting Rachel when HR Solutions dispatched a corporate marshal to bring her back to Terra.
He wasn't sorry. Rachel knew that for sure, without having to ask him the question directly. She also knew that if she ever did ask it, he would be deeply insulted.
“Linc, or any of Maddy's brothers.” Rachel nodded, and then rested her head against her husband's shoulder. “But they're all certain she's not dead. So someday she'll be able to join us, Dan. Or her mother will be able to go back to Narsai, and be with her again there."
“Yeah. But for now the Matushka's got to live with not knowing what's happening to her daughter, on a planet that was about to come under military occupation when we left it. And this is the same daughter whose first thirteen years she missed almost completely, because that bastard Fralick wouldn't let her near the kid except for visits the Kesran Family Court insisted on.” The arm around Rachel tightened warmly, and sought at least as much comfort as it gave. “I think that stinks. I always did think so. Even before I had kids of my own, and understood—as much as anyone else ever can—how she must have felt. How she must feel again, now."
The cabin's commlink came softly to life. Very softly, because they'd set it to skip the announcement chime and go directly to the incoming message. That minimized the chance it would wake the babies, and it would remain a one-way transmission until someone saw fit to answer.
Why had the Mistworld colonists, the original ones who were anything else but Human, needed a comm system aboard their ship? Rachel wondered that, with a detached and unfocused part of her mind, as she listened to the familiar voice. That of the Matushka herself, who'd just been their topic of discussion. “Dan? Rachel? Are you ready for set-down?” the former fleet admiral asked. “We're not going to bother establishing orbit, Ewan tells me. We'll just head straight in to the place where this ship has its berth, and disembark there."
“Ship's got antigravs, but we should still secure the babies. And ourselves, too, since this time around we're passengers. Don't you think?” Dan took his arm from his wife's shoulders, and then looked at her expectantly. Thinking of her, in this moment, as the person she'd been when he met her. A colleague; a fellow starship officer.
Dammit all, I still am that person! Rachel nodded, and answered him crisply. “Yes. We should. Let's get to it!” They were coming in fast, considerably faster than a comparably sized and equipped Commonwealth ship could have managed safely. But the vessel carrying them now was an alien one ... not just alien, but ancient, too.
Incredible. Like everything else about the new life toward which it was so swiftly carrying them.
* * * *
Catherine Romanova settled into what on a Commonwealth starship was called a “jump seat,” a temporary perch for a guest on the vessel's bridge. The SHIP had two in its command center, and she and her husband rated them for the landing. She and Linc would soon set foot, at last, on the world whose true nature they had been the first to discern. She should be thrilled, and the surface parts of her being certainly were. But on the levels where others couldn't see or hear her (not even Mistworlders, unless she chose to allow it), all she could think was: I don't want to be here. I want to turn around and go back to Narsai, as fast as this thing can take me!
I know, answered the one person from whom she wasn't shielding her thoughts and feelings. Katy, I know. Of course you want to be with Maddy, instead of here.
Especially with Maddy. But I'm worried about Mum and Dad too, Linc. And Johnnie and his family ... and that stupid Harbie ... ! And everyone else, for that matter. I couldn't always live there, but Narsai's never been anything else except my home. Gods, I don't want to be away from it at a time like this! With the familiar-regardless-of-species atmosphere of a starship's bridge surrounding her, she sat without tasks of her own to perform and soaked up comfort from her husband's nearness. Always before, when I had to be gone, I knew they were safe. Even Maddy always was, with George on Kesra! The only time I had my loved ones in harm's way, before now, was the last time we were here.
Funny how we don't think about each other when we say things like that, isn't it? Linc's silent chuckle, communicating itself to Katy, made her lips join his in curving into a rueful smile. Love, it wouldn't be easy to come back here even if we were doing it with everything okay back home! Your sons died here. All three of them. And afterward their father blamed you. Not to mention grabbing the glory for the peace you and I made. But you honestly don't care about that part, do you?
Why do you find that so surprising? Katy sent back, with a smile that was all her own now. You certainly don't give a rat's ass about it! And we both know that, my darling.
Uh-huh. True.
She could hear his laughter, although it remained soundless. And, unaccountably, she discovered that she felt a great deal better now. Centered enough (without a command mantle to do that for her, as it always had in the old days!) so that she could turn her full attention outward now. Could watch the viewscreen (another ubiquitous feature of starships’ bridges—and even of their civilian equivalents, freighters’ control rooms), listen to the occasional word or phrase that the SHIP's crew spoke out loud, and wait with anticipation now untainted by worry for her first clear sight of Mistworld's surface.
* * * *
The SHIP set down on a plateau, a southern hemisphere steppe that reminded Katy of Narsai's far north. Like parts of Russia, her farthest identifiable ancestors’ land, on Terra where she'd attended the Star Service Academy. But the SHIP didn't exactly “set down,” as would a Star Service vessel with planetary landing capabilities. Instead it sank through the ground, and came to rest far below Mistworld's surface.
“How did you do that, Ewan?” Romanova spoke to her firstborn as soon as she knew he had his command secured in its berth. “As far as I could tell, we didn't even burn the grass when we passed right through it! Not to mention how many meters of dirt and rock?"
“I'm Ishi now, Admiral Romanova. ‘Matushka,’ if you'll let me call you that. I've gotten to know you well enough so that I'm really not comfortable being formal, but obviously I can't call you ‘Mum’ like Ewan.” The SHIP's young captain turned toward her as she unstrapped from her jump seat, and as he left his command chair. “Don't worry. He's fine. But you may not hear from him for awhile, because he could hardly wait to get back to the part of this planet that's ‘home’ to him."
“Can I assume that Marcus and Bryce felt the same way?” She hadn't anticipated this. She hadn't allowed herself to anticipate anything specifically, of course; but having her recovered sons vanish the moment after arrival came as a huge and decidedly unpleasant surprise.
“Yes. Along with every other Mistie, native or adopted, that we had on board.” Sanibello gave her a gentle smile, one that she realized she'd never seen on his face before. Every other time that face had smiled at her, Ewan's will had been driving its muscles. “They like the nickname you Narsatians gave them, by the way. I'm hoping I can call you ‘Matushka.’ To your face, like Dan does it! Not behind your back, like the rest of the Star Service."
Katy shook herself, deliberately. She glanced at Linc, and then had to reach for him wit
h her thoughts because his body wasn't there any longer. She found him already off the bridge, on his way to help Dan and Rachel get their babies ready to disembark. “I've always liked my nickname, too, you know!” she told Ishi Sanibello, with a grin that (to her intense relief) she didn't have to force. “Of course you can use it. You, and anyone else who finds it more comfortable than just plain ‘Katy.’”
“Good. I'm glad you feel that way, Matushka.” Sanibello, ignoring the post-touchdown activity going on around them because it could proceed without direction from him, offered her his arm. “Come with me, and I'll give you your first real look at Mistworld. You wanted to know how we got down into this berth, without disturbing the surface? I wish I could really explain that! But I can't. The SHIP can do some crazy things when it's got Misties driving it. Like a couple of minutes ago, while I still had Ewan sharing my skin."
“But you're glad he's gone now. Aren't you?” She was no natural telepath, and neither was this young man. She couldn't touch his thoughts, and he couldn't access hers. Yet he had an expressive face, and she'd had decades of practice at guessing (no, make that divining) what young officers were thinking.
“Yes.” He didn't even consider trying to deny it, his pleasure at being alone inside his body.
One of the lifts was already connected to an aperture leading to the surface, and the deck chief was holding that lift for them. Making sure that the captain and his guest could disembark first, and meet whoever was waiting up there to greet them ... Katy caught her breath, amazed.
No one waited on the grassy steppe. The lift let them off on a platform, one superbly camouflaged for blending in with the windblown, pale orange blades that grew to a uniform height of just over two meters. Tall enough so that a fully grown Human, even a good-sized male, couldn't stand with his head above it unless he had a platform like this one beneath his feet. All Katy's eyes could see, no matter what direction she chose to look in, was grass and more grass. Unbroken to the horizon in three directions; ending, in the fourth (toward the south, she quickly decided), in a line of cliffs that gleamed under the light of Mistworld's sun. “The end of a continent-sized glacier?” she asked, and then wondered how she could expect Sanibello to follow her thoughts.
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