I dream about when I finally get to talk to you. I keep trying to figure out when to do it, when I can explain it to the captain. She’ll be angry at first, I know that. But then when she sees you—when she sees you, surely she’ll forgive me, because I know she misses you too, she told me that.
The control panel says you’ll be viable soon. The little red bead has turned amber and now it’s getting yellower and yellower. When it turns green I can touch the button that lets you come out.
I need to finish all of this up. I meant to record so many more of these, but I couldn’t get the time.
There’s so much to talk about still. All the time we served together, even the things you and I said we would never talk to each other about again like the training sergeant, but now I’ll have to, because you won’t know anything of what happened to us when we were soldiers.
And then all the things I’ve learned since then, and all the important things about warball strategy and what to do. I learned so much on TwiceFar and since then even more. I was going to tell you who everyone was and what the stories were that you shared. Like the time Gio let you steal the plum wine and we got drunk and threw up in the sink and then he didn’t make us clean it up because we looked so miserable. Or the time I tried to pierce your ear and we spoiled your dress uniform because you bled all over it the next day. Or those two Yonti girls from TwiceFar who said they’d message us and then never did.
I thought I’d make you a bunch of tapes, that I’d record everything you needed to know, but every time I start, all my thoughts get confused and all I can think about is missing you and wishing you were here with me.
And you will be, but maybe not you. Probably not you.
Look, whoever you are, you’re still part of me. You should be Thorn, because you’d like him. Everyone likes him. Liked him. That can be you. Please be you.
“Like it or not,” Niko said to Dabry in solo conference in her room, “this might be our best chance. We can try it, then seek out Pet as a backup plan. Or try it, and it works, and we can go tell them that we’re safe.”
He moved fully into the room, taking a chair and folding his upper arms, leaning back in order to think. “Maybe something that we should put in front of everyone to see what sort of ideas pop up.”
“That would be a fine suggestion,” Niko said, “if I trusted everyone that we had aboard.”
He waved a hand. “No, no, I didn’t mean Jezli and Roxana.”
“Nor did I.”
He stopped and stared at her. “You still don’t trust Milly.”
“I think she’s opportunistic.”
“I think all of us are opportunistic and probably it’s a very good survival trait,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to teach Atlanta to be more opportunistic, in fact.”
“I worry that someone has paid her to watch us.”
It was the first time she had raised this question, but she could tell from the look in his eyes that it was not one that was new to him. “You agree.”
“She arrived at a very convenient time,” he said, “and I was so glad to find someone that could fill in for Whenlove that I didn’t ask a lot of questions, nor did you. At that point though, did we have any reason to suspect anything? We were just a restaurant. Who infiltrates an eating establishment?”
“There’s always the question of the Holy Hive Mind,” she said. “You and I both know that they wouldn’t mind picking us up again. Taklibia still pings me at intervals, and I’m sure that’s them keeping tabs. If nothing else, we’re an inspirational example that they would rather not have exist out here, encouraging other members of their troops to get out while they can.”
He considered her words, then shook his head. “If that were her game, I think it would have been one that she moved on from already. All they need to do is prove that you do not think of yourself as an artist in the way that they think of it, and they can make a very good case for pulling you and the rest of us in.”
“Sky Momma bless bureaucracy and all its hairsplitting,” she said. “We built our escape ladder out of those shredded hairs.”
“And we need to be careful that we have truly escaped and are not just thinking ourselves momentarily secure when that is not the case. What if, for example, the Hive Mind ever got someone in charge of the army that truly knew how to use the bureaucracy? Someone with the cunning and recklessness to play the game?” He folded his arms.
“So Milly isn’t from them, at any rate, because whatever it is she’s here for, she hasn’t moved on it yet,” she said. “Who, then? Maybe the Empress? We still do not know why she sent us Atlanta and then claimed it was a random chance and a test for someone who she has never identified. Someone who I doubt really exists.”
“Wouldn’t she pay more attention to the girl, then?”
Niko shrugged. “Perhaps? But I would think that an agent of the Empress would be both exceedingly subtle and incredibly skilled. You didn’t see Milly in that fight. I’d bet on her against almost any knife fighter that I know and I give her even odds against Gio.”
“You said that, but it seems hard to believe,” he said. “You were fighting against untrained pirates, and opponents like that can sometimes make someone seem even better than they are.”
Niko rolled her eyes. “I know what I saw, Sergeant.”
“But I haven’t seen it in any of the warball matches. Nor have you been able to point to any moment there either.”
“You’re not fighting for your life in warball. You have the ability to hold back and make people think that you are not as good as you really are.” Niko was a little amused by Dabry’s insistence because the implication that he might be mistaken about Milly’s level of ability clearly touched him in a sore spot. He was very proud of his skill at judging the various levels of recruits, had always been, and usually it was justified.
But if Milly were a spy, she was well trained and adept at eluding such observation. Niko would continue to keep an eye on her.
“It still doesn’t mean that we can’t consult everyone,” Dabry pointed out. “We can listen to the ideas that everyone presents and read them according to the origin. Even Jezli and Roxana may have something valuable to contribute there.”
Niko nodded, although a little reluctantly.
“What is it about Jezli Farren, sir?” Dabry probed, as delicately as finishing the final touch on a plate.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
He paused. “I’m not sure how to really describe it. You’re cautious about her, but it’s not the sort of caution that comes from fear. But anything that comes from her seems to be just a little suspect. And yet you seem to like talking with her well enough.”
“That is because I am a pleasant and convivial conversationalist,” Niko said.
He eyed her. “Very well, sir. Shall I gather up the others?”
Again they were in motion, and Skidoo liked that. It had been interesting enough at TwiceFar, where people came and went, but it was a different and highly satisfactory thing to be the people that were coming and wenting.
She curled a tentacle around the Thing’s doorway, feeling the texture of it, tasting it. No one but she knew some of the subtle features of You Sexy Thing. You could tell where you were by the taste of things, for example. Probably Talon had some sense of that, but the boy refused to speak with her.
That was sad.
Milly said, “Are you coming in, or spending the whole trip standing there in the doorway?”
Skidoo hadn’t seen her coiled in a contemplation couch near the observing window the Thing had provided them. She released the doorway and entered, curling onto the couch next to Milly, and began to groom her.
Milly was restless at first, but then relaxed as her feathers smoothed. She leaned into Skidoo, letting her weight rest in a companionable way, and said, “I don’t know what to make of Jezli Farren. I like her—I want to like her, at least, but then I see how the captain acts around her.”
“The captain is being unsettled,” Skidoo agreed. “But is that being a bad thing? Sometimes it is being a good being unsettled.”
“Not for Niko,” Milly said. “I’ve learned that, at least. She likes things to be stable. Predictable.”
There was tension filling her body again. Skidoo said, “There is being a problem between you and the captain?”
Milly preened her own feathers back into place, thinking. She could be honest with Skidoo, she thought. At least about this. She said, “I wasn’t stable. She doesn’t trust me now.” She shook her head sorrowfully. “Worse, nor does Gio. I don’t know about the sergeant, he keeps things so close to his chest. Atlanta doesn’t know enough to know what to think, and Lassite never liked me in the first place. Talon may never come back from whatever place it is he’s gone in his mind, and it’s not a place that allows for friends.” She stared out the window, then said with forced lightness, “What about you?”
Skidoo considered. Her tentacle was coiled around Milly’s arm and she could feel the tightness in the light bones, so delicately formed. Milly had tried to bargain with the pirates for her life, not for the group’s. Milly had betrayed them, to some ways of thinking. She said, “Is you being thinking you would being doing it the same way, if it is being happening again?”
“No,” Milly said with certainty in her voice. “Next time, I trust Niko. I didn’t get us out of that. What got us out of that was … well, not her precisely, but what she does. How everyone acts around her. I don’t know how to describe it.”
Although Skidoo also lacked the words, she knew what Milly was trying to convey. “She is being the captain,” Skidoo said. She reached up to Milly’s face, turning it to let their eyes meet. “And I am being trusting you to being learning. Being growing. Being more Milly.”
Milly leaned forward so their foreheads bumped, a comforting solidity. Skidoo could feel the tension lessening in her body at the reassurance. Milly needed what every being needed. To be told she was perceived and loved for what she was. And Skidoo could provide that.
There was a trembling thought somewhere deep inside. What would happen when she could no longer give that?