by Aer-ki Jyr
They’d brought with them four Essence tankers and deposited all of their cargo into this Temple, as per their agreement with the Neofan to supply the power to move the Zak’de’ron out of this galaxy to an undisclosed location. Also per that agreement, all of the Zak’de’ron would leave together as Star Force watched, with no stragglers allowed. Once they left, the handover of the galaxy would be complete and the mysterious dragons would be left to memory in the Milky Way.
“Best vacation I’ve ever had,” Kara said, taking another slurp of the Star Force beverage simply known as ‘Teal,’ which was a combination of vitamins, sugar, electrolytes, and a light protein mix. All together it looked its name and tasted vaguely similar to mint chocolate. “It’s hard to imagine this day is actually occurring. I hope it’s not some giant ruse.”
“If it is Azoro will find out,” Paul said, leaning back on his elevated chair with his arms behind his head as he watched the train of ships coming down from the glot further up in orbit that was continually decreasing in size. “Hopefully along with a few other things.”
“Why didn’t you have him snoop around before…or did he?”
“He did on his own before we officially met, but he didn’t know what to look for the way we do. Plus, if they’re not thinking it he can’t find it. I imagine their thoughts right now are focused on what lies ahead, so it should be easy pickings.”
“Assuming the Neofan or the Bond of Resistance can’t detect him.”
“According to him, the Saiolum powers are very rare. And those that have them behave a certain way…and he hasn’t picked up on any such behavior in our records.”
“Do you have to scroll through for him?”
“I did until I built an interface. Now I can open up a crack and he can access a very small portion of my mind…and through that he can surf our database. Not very efficient, but he can manage it without me having to watch him.”
Kara frowned. “What part of your mind does he have control of?”
“Telepathic tissue.”
“Huh. Makes sense,” Kara said, taking another sip just before the large ship 82 miles in front of them disappeared. “And you just let him look everywhere?”
“98% of our records. The secret stuff he doesn’t get to look at unless I’m thinking about it.”
“How’d he react to that?”
“He’s fine with it. Relationships have to be built with time and earned trust. They don’t just snap into existence, even if that person is inside your head.”
“He’s being very well behaved,” Kara said suspiciously.
“He’s been imprisoned in the Saiolum for so long, he’s just happy to have any interaction.”
“Do you trust him?” Kara asked, knowing Azoro was off peeking into the dragons and not hanging out with Paul right now…which was actually the first time she’d been free to speak with him about it.
“We have an understanding about that,” Paul said, tossing a rectangular chip into his mouth with perfect aim and crunching it in two bites. “He’s good at analysis, and so am I, so he’s seen me run the numbers on such…unpleasant situations. He knows what will happen if he tries to go darkside, and it ends up with him being isolated in the Saiolum again.”
“What about when we give him a new body?”
“By the time we’re knowledgeable enough to do that, we’ll be caught up enough that he won’t be a significant threat. Not when there’ll be millions of us and one of him, no matter how strong he is.”
“It still worries me.”
“I know,” Paul admitted. “I don’t like being helpless right now if he wanted to take control, but my lack of skill is kind of a blessing, because in order for him to do that permanently he’d fry me so much it would kill me and he’d be back to being Tom Hanks without a Wilson.”
“And when you get stronger?”
“He can’t fight in my body as well as I can. If he took control you could kick my ass easily. The Saiolum offers a lot of nifty tricks, but firepower isn’t one of them.”
“As far as he’s told you,” she noted.
“It’s going well,” Paul said flatly. “Never say never, but I think we’ve found a legitimate ally.”
“I’d feel better if it worked both ways and you could see his thoughts too.”
“Oh it does,” Paul said, crunching another cherry-flavored chip. “When I let him drive, I get to look over his shoulder, and into his memories a bit.”
Kara half sat up and looked at him from behind her wide sunglasses. “Oh really?”
“I can’t have conversations with you about him without him knowing, you know? Don’t want to be rude to the demi-god.”
“Well he’s on recess right now, so spill everything you couldn’t say before.”
“He thinks you’re hot.”
“What?”
“His words, not mine…although I had to translate. His language is quite bizarre. Worse than Mandarin and Nichita combined. I can only understand a bit of it, so a lot of his memories of conversations are unintelligible…”
“Define ‘hot,” Kara interjected.
“He likes the way you glisten when you sweat, especially out here.”
“You’re making that up.”
Paul raised two fingers together and tapped his forehead in a mock salute. “Scouts honor. He keeps urging me to mate with you in the hopes of producing another Jinx…although I think he also does that because he knows I won’t. Sarcasm is something I can’t read in him yet, but there is a base logic to his argument.”
“Is it him that thinks I’m hot or you?” Kara challenged.
“I can’t think of a single Archon female that isn’t hot,” Paul replied. “Can you name a male?”
“You got me there,” she said, laying back down and returning her view to the next ship on approach as a semi-gross thought occurred to her. “Do you get to read his sexuality too?”
“Well, without a body he doesn’t really have an active one, but when he’s in mine…it gets weird, especially around you. More than the others, or maybe that’s just because you’ve made yourself my ball and chain.”
Kara casually tilted her glass to the side and threw her drink on him, but Paul caught it midair with his Lachka and redirected it into the sand on the other side of him.
“And that’s why we don’t marry,” he scoffed.
“Have you ever wondered what it would be like if we tried?”
“Obviously you have. How’d it end?”
“Other than some sex and sharing quarters, I don’t see the difference. Back before I was an Archon I had always imagined marrying someone who would be closer to me than anyone else, but the bonds I have with other Archons I’ve never met are deeper than most married couples. And you…ha…well you I doubt I could get closer to.”
“I’m closer with Jason, actually.”
“That only reinforces my point. We’re all so nearly identical we just click without any effort. You and your battlemeld twin especially. You’re both males, so that’s a bit of commonality I can’t share. As for being physical, frankly it seems stupid whenever I run it through my head. Most of it anyway. And when I walk through crowds of…I don’t even know what to call them now. Civilians doesn’t sound right.”
“Commoners?”
“Accurate but doesn’t have the right ring to it. But when I do walk amongst them and see their body language, I remember what it used to be like back before I was trained. It’s hard to think I still carry those memories after all these years, but I do.”
“As do I. They matter because of our personal development early is so rapid and extensive. A lot more happens than people realize in your first 20 years.”
“I put myself back there, on the dates I had. The first time I got laid. When I got dumped and my heart broken…and it all seems so comical now. As if you can’t engage in such activities unless you’re as dumb as a rock.”
Paul laughed. “I hadn’t put that much thought into it, but I
don’t disagree. Sex and mating instincts are based around tricking you into reproducing when that’s not really what you want to do, so if you’re going to fall for the idiot trap, you kinda have to live the part.”
“And I can’t be an idiot now. I lost that ability a long time ago.”
“What about in your dreams?”
“I used to, but ever since my siphon opened up I don’t dream anymore.”
Now it was Paul that frowned. “That’s not a good sign.”
Kara waved him off. “I know, but if I slow down and rest I might go Furyan and end up Godzilla-sized or something worse. Assuming I’m as active as you guys are without being Saiyan, and I’m not sure if even any second gen qualifies in that department. Are we going to check on that at some point?”
“At some point,” Paul echoed. “Right now we’re just trying to kick off the training wheels. The more we learn before you guys try and dive in the better it is for you. But let’s go back to your inability to date.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Do you have a crush on me?” Paul said sarcastically.
“Always have,” Kara said unembarrassingly. “It mostly faded, but a little bit remains. How about you?”
“If I had someone ahead of me I might be able to, but I can’t have that euphoria, even a little bit, without analyzing the value of the target. My imagination got too refined to allow me to fill in all the unknowns with good stuff to boost the score.”
“That is how crushes work, don’t they?”
“I think so. Can’t say I’ve had the ability to self-analyze one in recent memory, but Azoro does have one on you.”
“Do you know what he looks like yet? Either his real body or one of the fabricated ones?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Kara rolled over on her side to look at him. “Yes I do.”
“Okay…” Paul said, sending her a mental image.
Kara gagged, covering her mouth with her hand. “No…”
“Yes,” Paul said.
“They’re aquatic?”
“Amphibian actually. Those tentacles double as walking legs.”
“How can he think I’m attractive then?”
“They bioluminesce during mating rituals, and the way the sunlight reflects off your sweat…”
“You’re right, I don’t want to know…”
“Plus he’s also seeing you through my eyes, so it’s probably a mix of the two.”
“Tell me honestly…do I look like I’m 12 years old?”
“No. Why?”
“I’ve been told so before.”
“Probably by someone who isn’t familiar with Archons or other really fit girls. They assume you’re supposed to have large breasts, I’d guess?”
“And wide hips.”
“And that bothered you?”
“A bit, though at the time I was dealing with the unseen itch of my siphon.”
“Why?”
“Guess it’s a ranking thing. The more in shape you are the hotter you’re supposed to look, so when I got told I looked like a kid…”
“It meant the newb outranked you.”
“Exactly.”
“If you let yourself think like that, other people’s opinions replace reality and you’re judged on a scale that isn’t accurate and one you can’t control.”
“I know, I know. Basic sexuality training they get in the maturia…except we missed that because there wasn’t any maturia back in the day.”
“There’s gotta be something else.”
“Feel free to poke around and look,” she offered.
“Me or Azoro?”
Kara half puked again at the thought of a tentacle poking up between her legs…
“Don’t ever say that again.”
“Why so sensitive? You’ve seen and experienced grosser stuff.”
“You tell me,” she said, rolling out of her beach chair onto her naked toes in the hot sand for a step before climbing onto Paul’s chair and half laying on his slightly blue body to make the skin to skin contact to bypass her Ikrid. She put her face into the crook of his neck, having to adjust a bit to match up with his much larger Furyan body. “Strip me down and tell me what you find before Azoro gets back,” she said, waving at the Zak’de’ron ship just now beginning to enter the portal. She couldn’t help herself, the irony was too great.
“Don’t vaporize me if I hit a soft spot.”
“My siphon is closed and won’t open unless I tell it to. Poke around freely.”
Paul did as requested, diving into her mind that opened up to him in most areas, but he had to dig in others to get through subconscious barriers. Although the truth wasn’t hard for him to find. Kara was just blocking it from herself.
“I sense a conclusion in you,” she said, staring up at the sky that was partially eclipsed by his chin.
“You want the truth or a lie?”
“Dumb question.”
“Not really, because you’ve been lying to yourself for a long time.”
Kara pulled up onto her elbow, then slid on top of him until she was sitting on his abs and looking down at his own sunglasses, which she casually pulled off his face and tossed to the side so she could look into his green-ringed eyes. “Explain.”
Paul tapped on her wrist jewel twice. “You didn’t earn your way like the rest of the second gen, let alone the first class. You got a cheat…a badly needed one for Star Force, but it always left you wondering how you’d measure up on your own, and you never had a chance to find out. Because of your new powers and skills you became a trailblazer, but not one of us. You were on our level, above it even, yet still below us. You didn’t go through basic training with us. We were never teammates or competition. Your own class you broke with because the Zak’de’ron split you apart from them. Ever since you haven’t been able to measure yourself accurately, never knowing if it was you or the Vorch’nas. And when your siphon opened up it made things worse, partially because you don’t know why it opened up and if it had to do with the genetic alterations the Vorch’nas made in you.”
“And that’s related to my sexuality how?”
“I think you got blindsided by that comment. Nice grab, by the way, with the Grand Admiral. Didn’t realize you were so…inventive.”
“He needed the push, and the opportunity. And we needed another Grand Admiral.”
“All true, but you saw someone with potential. Potential before it was fully manifested. A raw assessment from someone worthy…and he deemed you less than a lot of the girls who were far less skilled because of your slim frame, and it caught you off guard, reinforcing old doubts. It said you were unworthy, despite his admiration of your Archon status and skills. The fact that he found anything lacking, even the smallest tidbit, reopened a wound you had hidden from yourself, and are still hiding from.”
“And?” she said, her voice cracking ever so slightly.
“The majority of your life you’ve had to walk a solitary path, even amongst many other people. In some ways that’s worse, because isolation has advantages of its own. But you had to be part of a team without being on par with your teammates. You’ve felt like a cheater ever since that jewel was forced on your arm. And what’s worse is you can’t even take it off. You’re forced to be a cheater, and you hate it.”
A single tear dropped from Kara’s face onto Paul’s bare chest, but she didn’t move a muscle.
“What else?”
“You’ve been clinging to me because I’m ahead of you in a lot of ways, but I’m also slightly deviant from the other trailblazers. Not much, but you see it as a kinship, especially now that I’ve got Force powers and the others don’t. Your crush on me is because you see me as a measuring rod you can use to better assess yourself. One loner to help define the other. A crush is always an assessment of superiority. Something the other has that is greater than your own…or greater than everyone else in competition. You feel a need to be with them, not because they a
re attractive, but because you lack something and you need them for it. And what you need most, is for someone to tell you, honestly, that you’re worthy and it has nothing to do with that damn jewel.”
Kara cried, in bursts, letting out something she’d been holding in so long she didn’t realize how strong it was, and buried her face in Paul’s chest so she didn’t have to look at him, but he was still inside and wouldn’t let go, even when she tried to reflexively push him out. His Furyan Ikrid was too strong for her to resist now.
“We care about the truth, and when other people are saying the opposite of what we think the truth is we have to consider they might be at least partially right. That’s why toxic people have an effect unless we know ourselves so well that their lies and exaggerations are dead on arrival. If we have even the slightest doubt, our loyalty to the truth requires us to analyze any deviation. Even one about a 12 year old body. And you’re not alone in this. I have to constantly wonder if I could have saved someone, or tens of thousands of people, if I had gone on one more mission. Pushed one hour harder in combat. Did one more simulation. Nobody is as good at me in naval, though several have come close, and not all are Archons. But I don’t have a true peer, let alone a superior to measure myself against. And what I do has consequences, so I am always doubting whether a rest break means I betrayed a planet. Do you have those doubts?”
“Never,” Kara said, still sobbing.
“Because you look to me and the others ahead of you for calibration. You fight and do well, but you know others can replace you in most ways. Because we fight as a team. But when I do my thing, no one can keep up. So there is no team at the tippy top. When you got your Vorch’nas you were at the tippy top, and then again with your siphon, though you had a non-Archon master to teach you, and that helped, but in comparison to me and the others you were far beyond us and you couldn’t pattern off of us. You were alone, amongst many peers that were never full peers.”
4
Kara tried to wall off her emotions so she could analyze better, but Paul wouldn’t let her. She needed to bleed this out, and now, and he let her know that without using words…rather saving those for the important points.