When Saren entered the cabin, short of breath and pale as death, Nihlus thought he might soon find himself with not one, but two sick people on his hands. Agitated with that special flavor of frustration parents exhibit when they’re prevented from reaching their children, Elethea tried to shuffle her legs over the edge of the bed and get up the second time in as many minutes, cried in pain and threw herself back on the pillow, cursing in her gibberish dream-speak.
Continue reading Common Interest
In the early hours of the morning, Elthe awoke and insisted to use the bathroom and take a shower on her own. She would not be dissuaded. Saren had zero authority over her and all he could do was pace in front of the bathroom door, waiting for the inevitable bump when she could no longer keep herself upright. It didn’t come, but she collapsed in his arms as soon as she reemerged.
They set her up in the cabin, then. Tiny as it was, the cot there was still more comfortable than the hoverbed; plus, that way they could use the rest of the ship without disturbing her. Saren needed to make a call from the conferencing projector in the commons. A call he dreaded but could no longer postpone. The anxiety made him irritable and disagreeable: bitchy, as Nihlus would surely put it if not for the child on board. But their last night’s encounter pacified him unproportionally and he grinned like an idiot all morning, even when Saren asked him to stay in the cockpit for an hour, playing games or whatever he did in his free time when the gym was unavailable.
Continue reading Out of Options
They sat in the cockpit with the lights turned down. A sparse scattering of lonesome stars blinked through the hazy glow of the nebula. At sublight, Nihlus thought, they could travel for ten years before the starscape changed in any perceptible way. It was always comforting to remember the vastness and utter disinterest of space. Their ship was but a speck of dust; the two of them, a couple of moderately complex molecules in it; and their many concerns and duties and memories and feelings were nothing. Nothing at all.
Continue reading Before the Storm
Saren was soon assured it was true. Elthe’s own omnitool couldn’t make sense of her voice commands any more than he and Nihlus. The dark suspicions about the origin of her aphasia kept his gut in a constant twist but he had to remain clear-headed. Asking about it directly would only retraumatize her. And he couldn’t ask about her mission directly either with Nihlus within earshot. He hated that he’d been forced to involve either of them. And the child too. Damn child, and damn Elthe for having one!
Calm down. You’re better than that.
Continue reading Mental Encryption
Nihlus almost had an out of body experience watching Saren approach with the kid.
He walked at his fastest pace, taking long strides and his long black robes—the same attire he had worn to the embassy reception last night, a lifetime ago—billowed behind him like smoke from a raging fire. The large bag strapped over his shoulder bounced off his hip. In the cold Citadel morning light, his face seemed even paler and harsher than usual, grim and tired, with browplates set low and murder in his eyes.
The kid looked impossibly small and frail next to him. Even running, she could barely keep up. With one tiny hand she gripped Saren’s index talon, and with the other, some vaguely familiar, pointed object that looked like anything but a child’s toy. Her eyes, dark and huge on her little face, hungrily drank in the surroundings, staring everywhere, at everything, the people, the ships, the terminals and benches, like she had never been in a starport before.
Continue reading The Reunion
Five standard hours later, Saren was beginning to tire from pacing through the lifeless rooms of his Citadel apartment. It had dawned soon after Nihlus had left, but Saren had been unable to focus on his usual daily paperwork. It took all his willpower to not check his omni every minute. By the calculations he had made earlier, the trip to the rendezvous point should have taken no more than two standard hours. Assuming Nihlus wouldn’t wait until he was back at the Citadel to report, he was still on Cyone. Fighting? Negotiating with those lunatics? Captured, or worse?
Saren hated being in the dark.
Continue reading The Wait