After new evidence was provided by a pair of Ceebees left for dead by their lord commander in his ill-fated escape from Justice, a missive from Centerpoint waived the necessity for Quelian to recuse himself. The Ceebee lieutenants testified in the circular court at the crown of Justice, raising their voices to speak over the temporary air circulators brought in to work around the damage. A Ceebee agent in the Hab had handed off a biobomb packet to Lanniq. That agent had then fled Vivik for greener Ceebee pastures in the Webward Pearls or farther still. Lanniq was left to plant the packet on the surface of the Hab during one of his training flights. Upon detonation, it had opened a hole in Justice, and the microorganisms hadn’t been stopped before they wreaked havoc on the facilities of the Arcade. Every plastic surface had been consumed by the corrosion Triz had seen from the wrenchworks wallport. In Justice, too, there had once been circles of plastiprint benches in the spectator ring. Now, most of the gathered crowd stood. But they stood solemnly, and proudly, to listen as the ashen-faced Ceebees recited their confessions.
A sedate pallor hung over the hearings, absent of the usual theatrics from the Advocates. Four civilians and two Fleet officers had been killed by the Ceebee plot. And then there was Lanniq.
The crowds did not boo or jeer when the Ceebees explained the placement of undetonated missiles in the destroyed Arcology at Hedgehome, as an insurance technique against the expected Fleet reprisal. Only a few angry murmurs cut through as the junior Ceebee officer demonstrated the advanced techniques used to falsify the firing solution Casne had allegedly programmed. Finally, the Ceebee’s Advocate instructed them to demonstrate the final component in their confession: the backdoor exploit into Fleet personnel files the Ceebees used to find the best candidates to cause mayhem to the Fleet.
Lanniq had been one such candidate, of course. Originally targeted for his wife’s position in Counterintelligence, they’d been able to wield his stray Ceebee nephew as a lever against him. The boy’s life in exchange for Rocan’s freedom and Casne’s honor: a trade he had chosen, however painfully, to make.
And of course, Casne Vivik Veling herself had been a gold mine of a find for them: not only was her father the only high-ranking civilian tribune in the nearest several systems, but they also shared an unstable family psych profile to boot. Casne and Quelian sat, mirror images of stone-faced statues, as the Ceebee witnesses and Justice questioners dissected their relationship. Of course, Casne wasn’t the only one who had been affected; two more earlier Interior Watch investigations were set to be reopened immediately based on the new evidence at hand as well.
“Thorough,” noted Quelian, who looked odd to Triz in his red Justice robes rather than a stained jumpsuit. She wasn’t sure whether he meant the Ceebees’ work or that of the questioners. He didn’t look at his daughter, who sat just inside the ring of spectators. But her hard, dark eyes bored holes through the fabric over his heart. Triz, forced to watch from the distance of the spectator circle, opened and closed a valve clip from the Tiresh that she still needed to fix, to make her hands forget they weren’t holding Casne’s. She checked the back of the gallery from time to time, too, but Kalo never did manage to put in an appearance. In fact, Triz hadn’t seen him since she deposited him at the medical bay. As if she wasn’t worried enough already.
Earlier, in private, the Ceebees had testified about Lanniq, and provided details on the location of his family to be passed on to those in the Fleet who could do something about the situation. His Ceebee nephew was still alive, they swore. The Fleet assured Casne that the young man would be retrieved and returned to his family in due course; that Lanniq had not died for nothing. That loyalty to family over Fleet was not an offense to be paid out in the boy’s blood. Triz had heard about that part of the deal only in passing, a few terse words between Casne and her father on the way into the hearing. For now, in public, they kept to the matter at hand, and finally, the three tribunes voted unanimously to void the charges against Casne. Beside Triz, Veling burst into tears, and the other quadparents were unable to contain a gleeful whoop. Casne looked up at the three quadparents, a half-grin splitting her face as the Fleet tribune told her to go join them. She didn’t wait for the guard to open the gate around the spectators’ ring, but leaped it with a one-handed boost and flung herself into her mother’s waiting arms. Triz’s face warmed watching them and she turned to go, to let Casne and her family celebrate together.
But Veling caught her sleeve before she could retreat. “Where do you think you’re going? This family has a lot of celebrating to catch up on.”
Now the warm flush in Triz’s cheeks felt close to superheating. Too bad she didn’t have a deft mechanic around to manually input some coolant. “I should let you have some time to yourselves,” she protested, tugging her arm free of Veling’s grasp.
“‘To ourselves’ is supposed to include you, woman, so stop trying to wriggle out of it. You’re not a guttergirl anymore, and we’re not a churnpit you have to escape from before it crushes you.”
“Aren’t we?” said Casne, and picked Triz up in a black hole of a hug. The sensation was not unlike struggling for air in the vented Tiresh cockpit, except warmer and with a much stronger sense of up and down. “Tea at Mirede’s. Come on.”
“Our treat!” Veling insisted.
The crowd thinned around them, and they started picking their way toward the nearest entrance. But Casne stopped and looked over her shoulder at the empty dais. Triz’s hand found her waist, and Casne turned back to her with a small, taut smile. “I’ll tell you what, Mama,” she said. “You and Dad and Damu go on ahead. We’ll meet you there in a little while.”
Veling’s hands stretched out to squeeze one of Casne’s shoulders and one of Triz’s. “We’re a family, you know that, don’t you? All of us, and you. Nantha too. Whatever he does or says. With or without him.”
“I know it,” said Casne, and Veling let them go. It was only after they’d parted way from the others that Casne leaned in to Triz’s ear and said, “And I’m going to do a better job of making sure you know it.”
By the time they arrived in the wrenchworks, Casne looked a bit more rumpled in her dress greens than would have passed Fleet codes, and Triz was sweating. She combed her hair back into her braid with one finger and looked around the works. “Quelian? You down here?”
A moment of silence, and Triz thought she’d guessed wrong. Before she could turn back to Casne, a balding head poked out of the office door. “What do you want?”
Casne’s strength and solidity behind her shoulder made her feel brave: not the superficial sort of brave that warded off problems with a cutting quip, but something more enduring. She could understand, briefly and piercingly, how much it must have hurt when Quelian had that pillar pulled out from under the ceiling of his life plans. It didn’t excuse what he’d done or who he’d become in the meantime. But she understood it. She understood it to an uncomfortable extent. “Quelian,” Triz said, “come up to Mirede’s and have tea and dinner with your family before you lose them.” An indrawn breath from Casne behind her and Triz quickly amended: “Before you lose us.”
Quelian huffed something like a laugh as he emerged from the office and crammed his discarded Justice wrap into a half-open locker. His jumpsuit was relatively clean, the sleeves still rolled down. “I lost the lot of you the day this one sailed off to the academy.”
“That’s the way you cast it for yourself. So you came out the tragic hero of the wrenchworks.” Casne spoke levelly, but Triz could feel the tension as each word snapped short between her teeth. “Poor Quelian. No one else understands how hard he has it. Me hitting the eject button out of here as a traitor, which, of course, made Mama and Dad and Damu collaborators.” Her hand found Triz’s waist and tightened. “And Triz here to take the place you’d made for me. You could never quite figure out whether or not you were glad of that. If the wound didn’t heal right, Quelian, it’s because you never stopped picking at it.”
Quelian didn’t answer, just crossed the works to one of the Skimmers. “We’re behind as it is. The Fleet’s penny-pinchers aren’t going to give two shits if the Hab’s had a hole blown in the side of it when it comes to pay.” He paused with a tension spanner raised halfway to the Skimmer’s hull. “I’d need another sure hand with a laser drill to help me catch up in time.”
That was an offer of her job back, if she wasn’t mistaken, in Quelian’s oblique way. Probably the most effort at an apology she’d see. She wasn’t sure it was enough of one. But it was somewhere to start. And life on the Hab wouldn’t be the same without her job. “Come uphab,” she said. “Everyone will be waiting.”
“I will,” Quelian said, and worked the spanner into position. “Just need to get an hour of work done. Get a batch of plastisteel curing. Keep things moving along.”
“I’d like you to be there, Baba,” Casne said, and the spanner froze for just a moment.
Then Quelian nodded. The spanner moved again. “I will,” he said, and this time his voice was thick.
Triz put her hand on Casne’s shoulder, and they moved back toward the lift. There was no hasty embrace this time, only Casne leaning her head to the side to rest it atop Triz’s as the lift mechanism whirred gently outside. Maybe Quelian would come and maybe he wouldn’t. Up to him, now. And up to them not to let him spoil the day in any case. There would be time to work over the engine of that relationship. And to consign it to the recycler if necessary, too. Triz could still work in the wrenchworks without having to particularly enjoy sharing it with Quelian. But she hoped that wouldn’t be the case.
The lift exhaled them onto the lowest level of the Arcade, and Triz wished Mirede’s tearoom lay just a little closer to the lift depot because it seemed like everyone on the Hab wanted to stop to greet Casne and congratulate her along the way. They were close enough to the tearoom doors for Triz to peep inside when they were waylaid once more—but this time, the would-be accoster grabbed both of their sleeves to spin them around.
“Kalo!” Casne exclaimed, and shoved his shoulder. “Where were you earlier? It’s not like you to wait to show up till all the drama’s over.”
“All due congratulations to my favorite ex-convict. It’s good to see you on the right side of Justice.” He pressed a kiss to Casne’s lips, then pulled back with a grin. “But I had a date that couldn’t be missed. With the technosurgeon.” He waved the fingers of his left hand, then further demonstrated their restored function by making a gesture that would have gotten him roughed up in at least three Habs and possibly arrested in another. “Happy to report all systems are back online. Which reminds me, now I’m able to do this . . .” He locked his fingers around Triz’s wrist and pulled her in close. “Triz Rydoine Cierrond. By the authority of Admiral Savelian Dustald-4 Edantha—”
“What?”
“—I hereby and thusly bestow upon thou the Doing Great Stuff Commendation for Valor Under Extremely Terrible Circumstances.” He pinned a small silver medal to the breast pocket of her jacket. When he let it drop down onto the coarse fabric, it didn’t quite manage to conceal a large grease stain. Kalo nodded in satisfaction as Triz canted her head forward to peer at it.
“It’s the Alchemy Medal,” said Casne, leaning forward for a better look. “That’s the second-highest civilian commendation the Fleet gives out.”
“Really?” Triz tapped the metal with one fingernail, liking the little ping it made. “Shitting stars. What does someone have to do to get the highest one?”
Kalo turned to Casne. “Afraid I haven’t got anything for you. You know the Admiral’s insisting on pinning one on you himself, the whole ceremony deal. Dress blacks. Speeches. Drummers, probably.” He cackled. “Oh gods! I bet they’ll make you do the Fleet Prayer in front of everyone.”
A strained noise escaped from Casne. “Can’t I just do another unplanned space swim instead? It would probably be more fun.”
“Hey, I’m going to have to be there too. We’ll suffer side by side. And speaking of fun.” Kalo jerked a shoulder at the tearoom. “I think you’ve got a party waiting for its guest of honor in there.”
“I know!” Casne straightened up from another inspection of Triz’s medal. “We just keep getting delayed by the worst kinds of people. Are you joining us?”
“Me? Oh, no, I’ll get out of the way. Just let me borrow Triz for a minute, will you?”
Casne raised her eyebrows, but shrugged and stepped away. “As long as I see you soon.”
Triz pursed her lips. Now she stood alone with Kalo, her back against the tearoom wall and no place to hide except behind a sarcastic comment. “I feel like if you’re going to ask about borrowing me, I should be the first person you put the question to?”
“But I’m not borrowing you from yourself. You’re still here, aren’t you? It’s only Cas that I’m depriving of your company for my own selfish purposes.” He sidled around beside her, leaning against the hastily painted metal that constituted Mirede’s storefront until proper repairs were finished. She recognized what he was doing: offering an escape route besides the one through him. “You know how Vivik is sort of a shipping hub? Scooper dumps and big freighters come through here all the time.”
She couldn’t quite contain an eye-roll. “Wow, Kalo, is it really? Do you think maybe that’s why I spend so much time neck-deep in Scoopers and lugs in the wrenchworks?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and kept talking, ignoring her. “Apparently there’s been a little pirate traffic in some of the Outward lanes lately. Fleet’s signing pilots over to operate out of Sidorrey and run escorts where they’re needed.”
“Sidorrey’s not far from here,” Triz observed. Her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth and turned the S of “Sidorrey” into a sticky “guh”. Picking off the occasional pirate would be a safer docket than clearing out the remainder of the Ceebee nests pocketed across the Confederated worlds. “Is that what you’re—I mean, is that what you want to do?”
“What I want is to keep flying.” Kalo’s fingers drummed on his thigh. “Don’t know if they’ll take a recruit who’s got a history of turning his fighter into a shrapnel collector, and even if they did, it would be half a dozen cycles before the paperwork even gets pushed through. And if the Fleet flushes out another Ceebee cache, I’d go back in. That’s not something I can just walk away from. No one should.” He hastily added, “And I won’t put in for it at all if it’s not something you’re interested in. I just thought, things being what they are . . . I’m not asking you to form a gon with me, or with me and Casne and Nan, or at all. But if you wanted to take a test flight on what it would be like . . .”
Triz’s stomach roiled with confusion. “That would put you farther from Casne. And if you’re not stationed with a whale, you won’t get to Centerpoint to see Nantha as often, either.”
“That’s not—” He exhaled noisily. “Gods of Issam, do I have to write it down for you? Casne and Nan too, they’re some of my best friends and I love them dearly. Sometimes I’m half-sure they even like me. But I wanted, uh. Not just them. A partner. A gon doesn’t work when it’s two people and a diagonal line. You know?”
“No! Why would you—” She felt his arm stiffen against hers. Her mind flicked through a stack of discarded images: the night when Casne introduced them and the stab of relief she’d felt when he first smiled at her to show off those crooked teeth. Ribbondancing in the nullgrav disco and screaming with laughter like giddy children. Kalo’s greasy boots on the sofa in her rooms, and his stupid hair falling across his stupid face while he slept. Watching that ‘port footage of dying Fleet ships and their terrible fight afterward. The ugly words she’d said and never got around to apologizing for. Maybe she was more Quelian’s daughter than either of them had ever managed to believe.
No, she had time.
She would find a way yet. “I mean. I think so. Maybe. Yes.”
His eyebrows curved upward in confusion. “So . . . I should . . .”
“Put in for the transfer.” She put her hand in his. The same size as Casne’s, but cooler to the touch. Familiar and strange. “Yes. Shit. I’m going to have to get used to seeing your face around, I guess.”
“Talk to the technosurgeon,” he suggested, “they might be able to get you some anti-nausea drugs that’ll help.” He shoved her shoulder, making her double-step away from the wall. “Now go party before the next shitting tragedy takes a bite out of this Hab.”
She leaned toward him. If she kissed him now, the wave function would collapse, and this would all come apart. “I’ll see you later?”
“I know where you live,” he said, and those words held so much weight she could’ve pinned it to her chest in place of her medal and worn it just as proudly.
Triz’s alarm buzzed. “Off,” she said thickly, but of course, she’d programmed the wallport alarm to answer only to her proffered fob and not her voice, to make sure she actually got out of bed. It wasn’t as if she even had a job to get up for anymore—oh. Right. She sat up.
The bed in her rooms was absolutely not big enough for three, though that was how many people it had held tangled together in the comfortable closeness of half-sleep (and before that, not-sleep) for the night. “I should get up,” Casne muttered without moving. She occupied the sliver of mattress between Triz and the floor; one of her arms hung over the side. Maybe Triz should apply for something bigger than the pairhome. Well, she didn’t have to worry about that today.
“Don’t you know we’re on leave?” Kalo sprawled on the other side of her, legs twisted into well-kicked sheets. “Or don’t you care? Some things are sacred.” He put a pillow over his head. “Which reminds me. Triz, go shut up your alarm.”
“You should be grateful.” Triz slithered out between their two bodies and slid to the foot of the bed, where she stretched her cramped shoulders. “It’s telling me to get up and fix a shitload of Light Attack Craft today.”
A hand slid around her waist and between her thighs. She spread her legs wider. Shitting alarm. “Just don’t stay at work too long,” said Kalo into the skin of her back. “We’ll be here. Alone. Bored. Too lazy to get up. Practically wasting away.”
“You’ll be fine.” With a pang of regret, Triz stood and tossed the wadded-up sheets back down on him. He sputtered and flopped back down. “I hear you’ve got two functional hands now.”
“I should get up,” Casne said again, as if trying to convince herself of this.
Triz leaned over to kiss Cas’ forehead. “The Hero of Golros gets to lie abed as long as she shitting wants.” Casne’s nose wrinkled into a smile; Triz pressed a warm, wet kiss to her lips where they parted. Then she straightened up and stretched. She really did have to go to work. Yesterday’s jumpsuit lay on the floor; she pulled it up her legs and suggested, “And if you need more room in bed, just shove Kalo on the floor.”
“You’re a cruel woman!” he called after her as she staggered sleepily toward the bathroom. “In fact, I plan to stay here in bed all day plotting my revenge.”
“As long as you’re both here,” she said, and closed the door between them before she could embarrass either of them more with overfondness.