THE HUMANS PHINEAS and Lovely made it back to Earth thanks to Infinity. They carried considerable information describing the disasters that had hit them. They interviewed extensively. They had to explain that everyone else from the shuttle was dead or staying aboard Eternity. Earth officials were welcome to clean up the mess, but no military. They carried a message from Eternity that Mrs. Elizabeth Brown would be staying aboard permanently, and no parole officers were welcome either. Human visitors were welcome after the investigative team finished its work. Also, that Earth would need a new ambassador, since Adrian Casserly-Berry had been gravely injured and was still recovering, and their second ambassador had died without ever reaching the station.
Under the cover of night, Xan Morgan also returned to Earth, where he and his brother poured their grandmother’s ashes and all her cigarette ashes under the porch and then drank beer all night while they searched her records for their family’s documents. The next day, a lawyer and a notary arrived, and Xan made Phineas his executor and transferred his inheritance to him.
Phineas surprised him with the arrival of a personal shopper, bringing Xan a new wardrobe to take to his new home so he could trash that shitty army shirt. But Xan kept Cal’s coat, which was strangely free of bloodstains after the trip on Stephanie. They got it patched, and Xan reminded himself not to ask Stephanie where the blood had gone.
Adrian Casserly-Berry did survive his adventure with the Phantasmagore, the Silence member, and the broken drone. He remembers almost none of it. That was a mercy.
Their tedious day had Devanshi and Member 2331 unable to find any good information on the location of Mrs. Brown. When they tried to appeal to the Sundry, they found the insects sequestered angrily inside their nests.
Devanshi then learned that there had been a riot in the ossuary, a space battle between three shuttles and a mech, two Gneiss performing forbidden rituals that enraged their whole population, a new human host for the station, and a new drug threat to her people, all while she had been just looking for information while lugging around a wet bag of injured human.
Devanshi retired. That was it. She’d had it.
She made close friends with Silence Member 2331 and learned how to program drones. Mrs. Brown and Eternity were thrilled with her innovations. They also worked on studying the human body and began developing bionic prosthetics for anatomy, starting with an eye for Adrian.
Adrian had become, if not a friend, at least a pleasant, quiet companion. It was surprising what tasting the power of one of the strongest minds in the galaxy and finding oneself lacking will do to an ego. Devanshi actually found herself becoming fond of the wet bag. He mostly read books and watched media from all the sentients. He stayed away from murder mysteries.
Devanshi enhanced her drone and named it Fenris.
When her engineering skills advanced past broken drones and broken humans, she delivered herself to the security team again, not as another grunt, but as an electronics expert specializing in drones to better communicate with Eternity. They, and Mrs. Brown, welcomed her. Mrs. Brown arranged for a group of Earth prosthetics dealers to come aboard and sample her wares.
One day, Mallory Viridian came to her, asking for a drone to help her. She’d had a new case land on her doorstep involving another human shuttle and a missing boy, and the Sundry and Eternity refused to get involved.
“That is our specialty,” Devanshi said, and got to work on Fenris 2.