The heart of the Rhyssa felt different in flight without all the cargo segments attached around it like the sections of an orange. The ship felt lighter beneath Cadan's boots, if it were really possible to feel that. It felt more like a passenger ship, and there were even a few viewports open to show the stars.
Cadan stood staring out of one, not even really seeing the stars as she tried to hope that pod mother Many Be Her Segments And Vast Her Abdomen For The Strength Of Her Descendants would be able to help them.
The stars shifted as they blinked, setting them on their way. Cadan could faintly feel the hum of the engine through the floors as it strained to recharge for the next blink. Sophi found her soon after that, no longer needed at the helm for any piloting. Her hair was pulled back in a simple tail today, black strands smooth and strong beneath Cadan's fingers. Sophi was fully dressed, shirt buttoned up to her throat despite the warmth of the ship. Cadan's jumpsuit was unzipped further, just for the air. Sophi did not say anything, made no pass at her, and Cadan was glad of it. She had never been further from the mood to have sex. She didn't know if she could handle Sophi's innuendo today.
Sophi leaned closer to Cadan, and Cadan wrapped her arms around her. She always felt so good to hold. Sophi relaxed in her embrace, leaning back against her trustingly. Cadan nuzzled her hair and squeezed her tight, like a child clinging to their favorite dolly for comfort.
"Could the blatta really have made it all the way back to its pod mother?" Cadan asked quietly. "'Quarto's on the other side of Nidum, this time of year."
"The standard blatta worker can survive about a week in the vacuum, sealed inside vir carapace," Sophi answered just as softly. "If the worker got scared, ve will be with the pod mother now, even if it took a few blinks to get to the other side of the star." She gently petted Cadan's hand, teasing over the scars between her knuckles, then moving farther down her arm to brush across the defense implant scars. She'd never asked about the pockmarks. Sophi was sharp, so she probably knew what they were, but Cadan could not confirm it. It was not her secret to tell. She'd taken the modifications for the defense and service of her king, and what good did they do her now? The children had been taken, and she was so powerless. All she could do was wait, just hope the pod mother could give them any lead.
Sophi broke through Cadan's thoughts. "How much do you know about the blink? How much blink theory and mathematics have you studied?" She was obviously trying to distract Cadan, and Cadan was almost painfully grateful for it. It did her no good to dwell on what she could not do; a distraction would be welcome.
"Not much," Cadan admitted. It had always made her head spin to try and understand it. Others understood it, and it worked to get ships from place to place. That was all she needed to know. "I'm not much of a scholar. I've always been better with my hands."
The words were out of her mouth before she realized how Sophi would inevitably take them. She clenched her jaw, braced for it, but Sophi did not suggest any sexual uses for Cadan's or her own hands. She just hummed a soft note, as though communicating contentment with the anoloids.
"I'm not very good at the mathematics myself," Sophi admitted. "I can plot a course that will get me where I'm going eventually, but nowhere near as quickly and efficiently as Kriikisiii. It takes me ages to figure out the interactions between gravity masses and momentum and volume and everything else—and of course if you get it the tiniest bit wrong the blattas will just say they can't. Complicated as they are, the mathematical formulas are easier to understand than the physics of blink."
Sophi shook her head, glancing back at Cadan from the corner of her eye as she continued. "As far as anyone can tell, the blattas have always had blink. It was for predator avoidance, at first. Their entire civilization is built on it now, all across the galaxy. It's come a long way," she mused, "but it started with predator avoidance. The instinct is still there. The blatta who was in that shuttle will be back with the pod mother, I'm sure of it."
Cadan gently kissed Sophi's temple, thanking her for the reassurance, as the Rhyssa blinked again. There was a tiny moment of discomfort with the entire ship groaning as the artificial gravity adjusted to planetary gravity, and the ship was pulled into a slingshot to gain momentum. The viewport Cadan was looking out only barely showed a tiny sliver of the planet they were falling toward.
Sophi lifted Cadan's hand and pressed a kiss of her own to it before settling it back around her waist.
"If the pod mother knows the shuttle was taken, why wouldn't she have told us?" Cadan asked. It seemed unfair, disloyal. She was as much a citizen of Nidum as anyone, descended from the same colonization wave. She should have contacted Magnus immediately.
"Because you did not ask," Sophi answered. "She would not imagine you cared about this piece of information, of all that comes through her nest."
Cadan held Sophi in the faint light of the planet's glow, squeezed her tight, and hoped she was right.
*~*~*
Cadan had never visited a pod mother's nest before. She'd never had cause to. The teardrop-shaped nest of Many Be Her Segments And Vast Her Abdomen For The Strength Of Her Descendants orbited Quarto, and was nearly large enough to be a planetoid itself. It had standard ports for docking, and the Rhyssa used one. The blattas aboard swarmed out as soon as the connection was made, a teeming mass chittering excitedly as they piled out the door.
Seeing them all move in concert like that was eerie, and the silence they left behind moreso. Cadan had never been on a ship without blattas quietly chirring and rustling in the corners before.
"She calls to them," Sophi explained. "They've been so long without a true pod mother. At the first smell of one, they're gone—even though she isn't the one who birthed them."
Sophi handed Cadan a pair of dark-vision glasses, then put a pair on herself. The blond-haired ship's doctor was standing around to see them off, and handed a ventilator to both Sophi and Cadan. The anoloid bruiser accompanying them, Klirii, did not have one.
"Take a breath from your ventilator once a minute or so," Sophi instructed as she hooked hers to her belt "This shouldn't take long. Let me do the talking."
"Right." Cadan nodded. Sophi handed her a basic communication panel, so she'd be able to read along during the conversation.
"Thank you, Dr. Hanne," Sophi said, gingerly accepting a small cryostasis case from the quiet doctor. She led the way through the shielded airlock and into the pod mother's nest.
The scent hit Cadan first when she stepped through. Blatta gum-wax, stronger than she'd ever smelled, and she had to fight the instinct to grab Sophi and pull her back to the safety of the Rhyssa. A human ship that smelled of gum-wax meant it was falling apart and the blattas were repairing atmosphere leaks the only way they could.
The nest was built of the stuff. It was faint gray in Cadan's dark-vision glasses and buffed to a shine. The nest—the part near the ports, at least—was clearly designed with human needs in mind, high enough that even Cadan did not have to worry about bumping her head. The width of the hallways suggested the blattas were used to larger anoloid visitors, too.
The atmosphere inside the nest was warm and humid, but the gasses were not balanced for humans. Nothing inherently fatal, but the oxygen was far too low. Cadan could already feel a slight strain in her lungs, and again, it took all she had not grab Sophi and take her back to the safety of her ship. They were safe, as long as their ventilators lasted. Cadan took a deep breath of well-oxygenated air from hers and hurried to catch up with Sophi and Klirii.
Cadan was familiar with blatta workers, the standard ones you saw everywhere. They were between a little under to a little over knee-high when they were carrying their thorax upright, were covered in shiny black chitin, and waved their frond-antenna everywhere as they smelled everything. She was even familiar with the sleek, swimming morphs adapted to the Tritean acid environment. Cadan had known they came in more morphs, but she had never actually seen them before. Each type had a different role in the nest, and Cadan stopped herself from craning her neck around to stare at them all. There were larger workers cleaning the nest, smaller workers stationed at intersections directing traffic, and big, heavy-armored ones guarding various doorways. Cadan had no idea what the plump, swollen-looking blattas might be for, until she saw one slowly deflating as ve extruded fresh gum-wax, which two standard workers shaped to make a new wall in the nest.
Cadan fixed her eyes firmly on Sophi's back and tried not to gag.
Sophi's eyes were narrowed in a small smile when she looked back. "Biology and technology. Why draw a line?" Her voice seemed thinner in the different atmosphere. "Why bother with invention when you can breed new morphs instead?"
"I like lines," Cadan answered, and her own voice sounded very strange. Sophi laughed and took Cadan's hand, keeping her close. She did not know if Sophi's fingertips brushing the scars between her knuckles was intentional, if it was supposed to say something about Cadan and technology. That wasn't the same, anyway. Cadan's modifications and combat tech were separate from her. Tied into her body, but still separate.
Sophi seemed to know where she was going. She took a breath from her ventilator, pausing, before leading Cadan around a corner.
"Watch out for the gravity gradient in the heart of the nest. It's probably best for you to sit back in the audience portion with Klirii while I talk with the pod mother," she said. "You can send me a message if you think I'm forgetting something?"
Cadan nodded and followed Sophi deeper into the nest.
It was one thing to know pod mothers were huge, to see images of them. It was another entirely to see one.
Many Be Her Segments And Vast Her Abdomen For The Strength Of Her Descendants was enormous. Slow pulses ran down her reclining body. She seemed to be as long as three shuttles end to end, if Cadan had to estimate, and another two tall. Cadan could not begin to guess her girth. She could feel the slipperiness of the gravity gradient as she stepped into the room, the gravity lightening as they approached the pod mother.
Sophi caught Cadan's attention, gesturing her to the side with a sharp turn of her eyes. There was human-style seating formed of gum-wax, interspersed with spaces large enough for anoloids to bask. Cadan sat down, and Klirii curled up at her side. The seat was smooth and oddly warm to the touch, and Cadan tried very hard not to think of the blatta who must have extruded it.
The pod mother filled Cadan's eyes. She had black chitin segments down her body like any blatta, but she had grown a great deal beyond them. They were far apart down her abdomen, separated by swaths of matte yellow-beige skin, stretched tight. Her abdomen was decorated with neat geometric patterns of paler dots. It took Cadan a moment to realize the little black dots moving all over her were blatta workers, morphs no larger than a handspan.
Cadan did not recognize the pod mother's head until Sophi approached it. Her head and thorax were larger than the other blattas'—they would have to be to allow her to eat enough to support her bulk—but still tiny against the size of her body. Together, they were hardly any bigger than Klirii. The pod mother was immobile under her own power, even living in light gravity. Her limbs were insignificant compared to the size of her abdomen. Not that she needed to move, with a nest full of workers to tend her every need. A few workers brought her a translation panel to type with Sophi.
Cadan's lungs strained, and she finally remembered to take a breath from her ventilator and look down at her translation panel.
Sophi and the pod mother traded precise greetings and pleasantries for much longer than Cadan would have had patience for, or thought prudent, considering the importance of their mission. She was at the point of typing a message to Sophi to get on with it when Sophi finally questioned the possibility of a solitary blatta worker contracted to the Royal Palace blinking home.
The pod mother replied that yes, this had occurred. Cadan's breath caught, her fingers clenching tight on the translation panel—but Sophi did not follow up. She instead began praising the pod mother's size and the strength, size, and design of her nest, as well as the loyalty of her descendants. Cadan hissed impatiently under her breath, but a warning rumble from Klirii steadied her. Sophi was the one who knew how to deal with a pod mother. Cadan got along well enough with blatta workers, since they were generally happy to do any well-explained task within their abilities, but a pod mother was a different creature entirely.
The pod mother answered with praise of her own. "Reports from workers of ship sound label 'Rhyssa' = compiled and reviewed. Human sound label 'Sophi' = mindful of workers' needs, respectful. Crew of ship sound label 'Rhyssa' = respectful of workers. Ship sound label 'Rhyssa' = good habitat for workers. Workers = happy, healthy, strong. Pod mother 'Many Be Her Segments And Vast Her Abdomen For The Strength Of Her Descendants' and her nest will assist the human 'Sophi.'"
"Human 'Sophi' = humble and grateful," Sophi typed back. "Human 'Sophi' will speak with the solitary worker contracted to the Royal Palace who blinked home."
The pod mother clicked a quick pattern, which every blatta within hearing echoed. "The worker is summoned," she answered.
The worker came running quickly, skittering along the wall and finishing just in front of Sophi and the pod mother. Ve had a translation panel clutched tight in vir second set of limbs.
"Blatta worker will give information to human sound label 'Sophi,'" ve typed.
It was probably best that Sophi was the one doing the questioning. Cadan knew how to speak to blatta workers, but she would definitely have forgotten herself and offended or frightened this one. She needed, desperately, to know that the children were all right.
Sophi asked careful questions, and the blatta answered in massive swaths of blink mathematics. Kriikisiii would probably be able to understand it. From what little Cadan could gather, the blatta had followed Devin's instructions to blink, heading toward Tserere. A larger ship had blinked around the shuttle and blinked away with them inside. Being within another pod's blink was frightening and ve went home.
Sophi asked details about the ship that had taken the shuttle, about the blink, if the worker had managed to see anything about the exterior of the ship that had taken them or if ve had blinked too far away in vir escape. Cadan could tell she was trying to get all the details she could beyond the basic blink data, but she did not ask the most obvious question.
"Ask vir how the children reacted when their shuttle was engulfed!" Cadan finally sent to Sophi. If Devin had recognized anything, maybe the blatta's memory of his reaction would give them a hint.
"Immature human pod siblings sound label 'Erica and Kofi' reaction = fear scent, loud, high-pitched shriek and demand of explanation. Immature human sound label 'Devin' reaction = strong fear scent, confusion. Stated lack of understanding paired with verbal reassurance of protection of immature pod siblings sound label 'Erica and Kofi.'"
Breathing deep from her ventilator did not ease the strain in Cadan's lungs this time. Devin, always so brave and responsible, reassuring the twins even though he was terrified himself. He must have known they were being kidnapped. He had not recognized anything, though, or he'd have told the twins. Or maybe he hadn't had time to recognize anything before the blatta got scared.
Cadan just had to hope the numbers the blatta had provided would give them some sort of a lead. She couldn't understand them herself. Sophi thanked the blatta for the help, and ve dropped flat and went scuttling away again.
"Human 'Sophi' = satisfied with the answers received?" the pod mother asked.
"Agree," Sophi answered, typing into the translation panel. "Human 'Sophi' will now negotiate with pod mother 'Many Be Her Segments And Vast Her Abdomen For The Strength Of Her Descendants' regarding the transfer of a pod of workers to the ship 'Rhyssa.'"
"Human 'Sophi' will accept contracted workers," the pod mother answered. "No pod of workers will be transferred."
Sophi opened the small cryostasis case she'd brought with her, and every blatta in the place froze. Antennas unfurled from where they had been curled tight against the pod mother's head. They were huge and feathery, quivering in the air.
"Human 'Sophi' will offer choice of one of three untouched fertile eggs, from three different star systems, in exchange," Sophi typed, her eyes narrowing in a smile. She knew she'd won. What was on Cadan's translation pad quickly moved outside her understanding again as Sophi transferred the genealogies of the three eggs she was offering. They were from very far away, not closely related to any of the lineages already in Nidum, and beyond valuable for it. The pod mother summoned three workers, who picked up the eggs and spread out with them in front of her. Her huge antennas waved over each of them in turn. They were tiny compared to her, glistening, porcelain-white eggs that would each easily fit in one of Cadan's cupped hands. The pod mother accepted one, and the little worker morphs who crawled all over her body carefully took it and carried it down her abdomen. They found a spot near the end of one of the patterns of paler dots, and settled into place—clinging on tight and holding the egg against the pod mother's stretched, yellow-beige skin.
They were eggs. All of those dots were mates she'd taken—fused with to become a genetic chimera. Each of those fertile eggs could have been hatched into pod mothers with proper care, but in contact with her body, they attached to her circulatory system and instead developed into a set of male gonads. The pod mother could choose which to use as genetic material for her eggs.
Sophi settled the remaining two fertile eggs back into the case, and accepted a third from a pair of workers. The pod mother transferred the genealogy of the egg—her egg—and Sophi closed it into the case with the others.
Sophi was instructed to approach, and the pod mother rubbed her head briefly against Sophi's hair. It reminded Cadan of simplistic documentaries she'd watched in school—"the pod mother sends her young daughter out into the universe"—marking her first with her own pheromones, then sending a pod of workers with her. The pod mother sent out a chittered order, and within moments, a pod of blatta workers swarmed into the room to surround Sophi. Sophi nodded as she looked them over. There seemed to be as many as she had come with, or near enough. She startled slightly and bent down toward something Cadan could not see, plucking one of the smallest blatta morphs off the leg of her pants. Ve curled up briefly in her hand, then ran up her arm to cling to her shoulder instead.
"Pod mother 'Sophi' does not require body attendant workers," Sophi typed to the pod mother. "This one will be unhappy with no tasks to perform if ve comes with her." She gently picked vir off her shoulder and held vir out to the pod mother. The pod mother reached out one of her limbs, and the little worker only hesitated for an instant before leaping onto her and skittering back up her body.
Sophi and the pod mother exchanged a few more pleasantries, and then their audience was over. Sophi made her way back toward Cadan and Klirii, taking a few deep breaths in a row from her ventilator. Only when Cadan stood to join her did she realize why—her head spun a bit until she took a few breaths from her own. The atmosphere was starting to get to her more than she'd realized. Sophi reached out a hand to steady Cadan's shoulder and braced her other hand on Klirii's back. Klirii would have been too short for Cadan to do so comfortably, but she was just the right height for Sophi. They walked together back toward the Rhyssa, surrounded by excitedly chittering blattas.
"Kriikisiii will already be working on the blink data the worker who was with the royal children gave us." Sophi smiled up at Cadan, voice still high and strange in the nest's atmosphere. "We know how they were taken, and the first step of where. That's a lead!"
Cadan reached up to squeeze Sophi's hand, pressing it tighter against her shoulder, and hoped.
*~*~*
Dr. Hanne was waiting when Sophi returned from the pod mother's nest with a new pod of blatta workers. Sie accepted the cryostasis case and ventilators back, and quickly assessed everyone's states. Sophi allowed her eyes to be checked and her pulse taken as the blatta workers swarmed out to explore the ship, but Cadan stepped back from Dr. Hanne with a low growl of warning when sie tried to check her. Cadan was wavering slightly on her feet, but steadying quickly now she was back to breathing air intended for humans. From what Sophi could tell, Cadan had no modifications beyond her combat tech and whatever made her untrackable—nothing she would have had to worry about a doctor finding during a quick check.
Sophi sighed. "Let it go." Let Cadan keep her distance if it made her feel better. Dr. Hanne huffed, pink cheeks reddening in irritation, but turned to check that Klirii's tongue was the proper purple-blue rather than insisting. Sophi took the dark-vision glasses from Cadan and put them and her own away.
"I always need a shower after visiting a pod mother's nest." Sophi fanned the collar of her shirt, looking up at Cadan. The humidity, along with the scent of gum wax, always made her feel sticky. "Join me?"
"Don't want to deal with this," Cadan snarled, making to push past Sophi with her jaw set.
"No, I meant an actual shower!" Sophi caught Cadan's arm. Cadan allowed that to stop her, even as her big muscles flexed under Sophi's hand. "Just a shower, with soap and water to get clean. I can keep my hands to myself." Usually, when they met, Cadan was all simmering heat, hungry eyes, and deliberate touches. Sophi was more than willing to take advantage of that, to flirt and needle Cadan into her quarters where they could both take their pleasure. She'd never seen Cadan like this before, wound tight and afraid. Sophi wouldn't mind easing that tension out of her, but she could tell sex was the last thing on Cadan's mind.
Cadan gave Sophi a long, measuring look before she nodded to accept the offer. She was silent as Sophi led the way to her quarters. Sophi sent Cadan into the shower first, and tucked a cap over her hair. She wouldn't be able to wash it for a few days, until the new pod of blatta workers were used to her scent as their pod mother and she didn't need pod mother Many Be Her Segments And Vast Her Abdomen For The Strength Of Her Descendants' pheromones on her anymore.
In the shower, Cadan had the quickly refiltered warm water pounding down on her broad shoulders. The water ran in rivulets across her light-brown skin, down the muscles of her arms and chest, the strong column of her back, the softness over the muscles of her belly and thighs, the fall of her breasts. She had much more breast than Sophi did, but it was dwarfed by the size of the rest of her. Cadan's body was so solid, power through her core.
Sophi admired for a moment, before she saw how Cadan's eyes had gone all desperate again. Getting caught up in her thoughts was not doing her any favors, or the royal children any good. There was nothing they could do until Kriikisiii had interpreted the blink data and the new blatta workers had familiarized themselves with the Rhyssa.
Cadan stood like a wall in the shower, but when Sophi slipped into the stall with her, she automatically made space. They knew their way around each other so well. Sophi wet herself and shut off the water flow, setting the shower to stay warm and humid. She handed the body wash to Cadan, who immediately soaped her big hands and began rubbing them over Sophi, scrubbing her clean. Cadan was businesslike, but Sophi was still allowed to enjoy. She did her best not to moan and push into it the way she normally would when Cadan washed her chest, teasing over her nipples more as though she was used to doing it than because she expected Sophi to respond.
"Now you've seen a pod mother," Sophi started, gently moving Cadan's hand from her chest. "You've walked in her nest and seen her with your own eyes—or the dark-vision glasses, but it's the same."
"I have," Cadan answered, after a too-long pause. She visibly pulled herself back to be present, to see and speak with Sophi. Maybe Sophi was greedy to always want to keep her, but she was not letting go. "Where did you get fertile blatta eggs?" Cadan asked.
Sophi rested one soapy hand on the center of Cadan's chest to balance herself as she raised a foot to scrub between her own toes. "Human Sophi equals trader of many rare goods," she answered. Maybe it wasn't as funny as Sophi had hoped, because Cadan just shrugged. Sophi turned the water back on to rinse. Cadan bent down to duck her head briefly under the spray and washed her own short curly hair, with products Sophi always made sure to have on hand for her. Sophi's own hair needed different care, but Cadan never questioned why they were there. Cadan worked the thick conditioner in roughly with her fingertips, and Sophi shut the water off again to begin soaping Cadan.
"I wonder what it must have been like… first contact with the blattas." Sophi started with Cadan's shoulders, muscles tight and not yielding under her brief massage as she spread the body wash. Cadan was far too tense. She needed a distraction, a better direction in which to think, and talking Sophi could do. "I wonder if any species turn the blattas away?" Cadan and Sophi's distant ancestors had accepted the offer, so of course it made sense to them to contract with the blattas. Humanity only met other species who had accepted, and there were plenty of those. "The blattas come to your star system, teach you how to adapt your own technology to make ships that can blink, teach the mathematics, provide all the workers, and take your species into the stars—wherever you want to go. Why? What do they get for their time and effort?"
"What?" Cadan asked, brow furrowing as she really started to pay attention and engage with the topic. This bit, they did not teach in schools. They taught the way things were, not theories on why they might be that way.
Sophi grinned.
"The blattas domesticate yet another species of workers to serve them." Sophi watched the shocked surprise cross Cadan's face.
"No," Cadan refuted sharply. "We have working contracts with the blattas, nothing more."
"Think it through," Sophi challenged. "An individual blatta worker is simple. Ve follows orders, but vir imagination is limited. In the natural course of things, the pod mother is needed for coordinating, and there's only so much she can do. But humans, and anoloids, and all the others—we gather resources on our own. The blattas seek us out, train us up, spread us through the galaxy, and take a tithe of everything we produce in exchange for the blink. How are we not domesticated?"
Cadan grunted and turned the water back on, briskly rinsing herself off. "If you were right, and you're wrong," she argued, "what would you do? Have humanity turn its back on the blattas and leave us all stranded on individual dirtballs, chained to planets with the stars nothing but a dream? You use the blink too. You have as many blattas on your ship as anyone."
"I never said it was a bad thing to be domesticated," Sophi answered. She reached up, gently wiping away a bit of soap Cadan had missed on her neck. "It's just interesting to think of. How much do you suppose space travel has changed us, whether or not we're domesticated? Or any species. I think the anoloids must be calmer. Siiki's studied these things. She says the common cause of death for dominant anoloids on the nestworld was fighting each other. They rarely fight seriously anymore, and never to the death."
"How might the blattas themselves have changed?" Cadan answered, moving aside to let Sophi have some of the water. Sophi leaned against her, turning the flow down to light so they could soak for a while in the warmth with water just barely settling to bead on their skin. Cadan's arm came around Sophi, sturdy fingers closing around her hip to hold her close, soft skin against skin. It was not the fire they would normally have shared, but it was nice.
"I wonder that too," Sophi mused, trying to keep Cadan here, keep her in the moment and not worrying about things she couldn't change. "I've never heard of a pod mother landing on a planet; they wouldn't survive the gravity. They're a true space-borne race, now. I have to wonder what they looked and behaved like on the world they came from."
"Hm, no way to know," Cadan answered, and turned the water off. They toweled off and Sophi made Cadan sit down so she could work defining product through her short curls. Her hair would have been fine with just the conditioner Cadan had put in it, and she'd absentmindedly get engine grease or some other grunge from taking bits of the ship apart in her hair soon enough, but for a moment, Sophi could have her curls all pretty. It was meditative to tease each one out and rub the gel through it from root to tip, and Cadan relaxed a little with every light tug on her scalp. Sophi liked this kind of closeness, and Cadan seemed to like it too. She petted Sophi's hip through the towel she wore wrapped around her body. Cadan's towel covered less of her, looped just around her hips.
"Devin's a good kid," Cadan said quietly. Sophi's distraction had not worked long; she was back to the royal children. "He's steady, responsible, and so smart—but he's just a kid. He must have been so scared when the shuttle was engulfed. I would be, and I'm..." Cadan flexed her scarred hands and needed no more explanation than the reminder of her combat tech. She was always armed. "Even without the little ones to look after."
"To engulf another ship with the blink, even one as small as a shuttle, is almost impossible." Sophi shook her head. "I'm not sure even Kriikisiii has that kind of precision." It would have been far easier to use grapplers to pull the shuttle in, or to bump them out of their route and pick them up while they tried to recalculate—but the children would have had a chance to send out a distress signal then. This way, engulfed into a shielded space, they'd have disappeared without a trace if it weren't for the blatta.
Cadan sat back with a sharp gasp, eyes wide when they met Sophi's. "Precision. Someone knew his route." Her face twisted into a snarl. "Someone told." Her growl sent a shiver of fear down Sophi's spine. Cadan did not seem to notice. She pushed Sophi briskly out of the way and charged out of the washroom.
"...a lead with the blatta they had with them." Cadan was talking quickly into her communicator—the one that didn't seem to be registered or logged by any of the networks it obviously used. She paced back and forth across Sophi's room, throwing various items of her clothes onto the bed, presumably intending to put them on when she was done talking. "They were engulfed, Magnus. You'll know the precision that takes more than I do, but it shouldn't have been possible. Someone must have known their route and told, it's the only way. There's a rat on your end, flush them out! We're tracking the ship that took them, soon as we get the blink mathematics interpreted. I'll tell you more when I know more."
Cadan threw her communicator down and began shoving her clean clothes on. "When will Kriikisiii have our information?" she asked.
"Shouldn't be long," Sophi assured her.
"It's already been too long," Cadan grumbled, and left to pace the hallways instead of Sophi's room.