Sean transited from the meeting with Anyon back to Cylian’s office on Serena. Since she had left Kaviti’s team she had been reassigned to another unit in the main judiciary building, one separated by several floors from Kaviti. She gave Sean long enough to anchor himself, then they transferred to her apartment.
Cylian’s living quarters were surprisingly warm and feminine for such an aloof person. Sean did not know what to say about being there, and Cylian did not give him much of a chance. She handed him a language headset and bid him a good night.
Sean transited back to the loft and was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. The next morning, he took his time over breakfast, then had a long shower and dressed in jeans and an unironed knit shirt. As he hung the tailored outfit back in his closet, he stroked the sleeve, thinking back to the night in Insgar’s compound—the dinner with Elenya and her parents and the love strong enough to defy planetary opposition. Or so Sean had thought.
He made himself another cup of coffee and drank it on the balcony. It was late afternoon Earth time, and the trees danced to an incoming summer storm. He returned inside, washed out the pot and his mug, then packed a bag.
As he prepared to transit back to Cylian’s apartment, Dillon blasted into his consciousness.
During the aliens’ first assault, Sean had developed an ability to communicate with Dillon by thought alone. It took them the better part of a year to get where they could control the process to a certain extent. But it never grew easy for either of them. Many within the transit community doubted they could do it at all, for the process had never been accomplished by anyone else. And now the emotions resulting from their unraveled relationships left them unable to do it at all.
Or so Sean had assumed.
Which magnified the shock of Dillon contacting him. The communication was fragmented but still carried the unmistakable sense of achievement.
. . . You there?
Sean leaned his head against the balcony door and concentrated as hard as he possibly could. The process required him to bond directly with the point in his gut where the transit force originated. He fashioned a terse reply, wrapped the energy around it, and sent back his own thought-bomb. Talk to me.
Dillon’s message was tattered and unraveled around the edges.
Where are you?
Dillon’s response was just out of reach. It felt to Sean like he was trying to hear his brother over the howl of a mental hurricane.
He put everything he could into clamping a message into place, then shot out, Say again.
Aldwyn. Outer rim . . . Ask Cylian.
Sean asked because otherwise he wouldn’t sleep nights. Are you in danger?
Dillon managed to add a chuckle to his frayed response. No idea. Need gold.
How much?
There was a long pause, then, Call it fifty pounds. Coins.
One of the remarkable oddities of the planets occupied by humans was the scarcity of certain elements. Gold was among them. More than half the planets had none at all. A hundred and nineteen systems, and gold remained one of the most precious commodities. It formed a language all its own.
Sean asked, When and where?
There was another pause. My arrival point. Cylian knows. Ten hours.
Sean both fashioned the response and spoke the words aloud. “On my way.”