Chapter 21: Repercussions
Shepard
Shepard had to admit to a certain grim anticipation as the Normandy swung back around Turan once more, aerobreaking into the transit lanes and coming in to dock on Bastion once again. It was November 14, by the Mindoir calendar, and she was pleased with her progress since leaving home a week ago.
Commander Bailey of B-Sec sent a heavy detachment of guards—all humans and turians, she noted, at a glance—to give her, Kasumi, and their prisoner a moving wall of bodies and armor to stand between them and any trouble. One of the B-Sec guards, a turian with blue-and-white markings that indicated he claimed distant affiliation with the Vakarians, grinned briefly at her, and commented, "Commander Bailey sends his regards, ma'am. Said to say he always appreciates a head's-up before you drop a shitstorm on his head."
She chuckled, and they moved out. The first signs of trouble were the reporters. Emily Wong was there, of course, and the every-present Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani. But yes, there were the asari reporters and the volus reporters and a couple of humans with station logos from various colony affiliate stations, the New York Times, the Washington Post, a couple of turians. . . Ah, the Council's fabled security at work again, she thought, dourly. Good thing all I told them was I had evidence to present in relation to the attack on the Spectre base. Otherwise, we could double the number of news crews. "Keep us moving," she said to the guards. "I'll take questions afterwards, but no freebies today."
Reaching the Council chambers, she pushed Pidna Tol to the center of the room, and gestured for Kasumi to set up their presentation. "Councilors," she said, with a smile, putting her hands behind her, parade-rest. "I appreciate your taking time out of your business to hear the evidence that we have to present today. First, let me introduce to you Pidna Tol, a volus spy, smuggler, and sometime assassin." She could wield words like a scalpel, but for the moment, a mallet seemed a better choice. "She has opted to turn state's evidence in some matters of conspiracy and malfeasance relating to the recent attack on the Spectres, and, in exchange for certain protections, is prepared to testify as to how financial backing for the attacks was filtered through a human organization, known as the Adam and Eve Coalition, but actually originated from asari and volus hands."
The volus councilor was already on his feet, trying to object. Councilor Anderson, representing the Systems Alliance, had taken an inopportune moment to take a sip of water, and was now coughing. The asari councilor leaned forward, either genuinely shocked, or putting on a pretty good simulation. The turian councilor leaned back, frowning. Shepard went on, "We have a variety of documentation with us to show you as well, including banking and routing numbers, fee transactions, letters, communiqués, and schedules, all of which will show the smuggling of azure dust, weaponization of the same, use for brainwashing of human subjects on illegal colonies funded by this same group of backers, all moving towards a goal of undermining the current relative stability of Council space, in particular by targeting the current warm relations between the Systems Alliance and certain of its partners."
She grinned now, showing all her teeth, doing so deliberately. It was not a friendly human grin. It was a turian expression, a challenge. All right, you bastards. You've mocked and demeaned my testimony before, derided it as baseless and without evidence. Let's see how you like being buried in documentation this time.
The volus councilor made an immediate motion, "We request that the reporters be cleared from the gallery. All in favor?"
"Aye," the asari councilor replied, touching a button in front of her.
"In the interests of galactic stability, I must agree," the salarian councilor agreed.
The turian councilor shook his head. "Nay."
"Nay," said Anderson, strongly.
"Negative," said Emissary. "Information must be provided to all, otherwise, there can be no true consensus."
The rachni proto-queen chattered, and her asari interpreter's eyes went blank for a moment. "You shall not silence this song. All voices will be heard."
Urdnot Wreav, Wrex's brother, was the krogan councilor. "Let's hear it, Shepard," he growled.
"Commander Shepard has an impressive history of being right. And shutting out the press now will only lead to rumors and leaks," the quarian councilor added.
All in all, the motion was shouted down, 7-3. Shepard could almost see Anderson rubbing his hands together under the table.
"Kasumi, let's name some names, shall we?" she murmured to her security chief.
"Today's going to be one of the good days," the little Asian woman murmured, and queued up the first slide in their presentation. The one with all the names of the matriarchs and volus CEOs and corporations. The slide they absolutely wanted everyone to see, before the press really did get thrown out of the gallery.
The room went ballistic.
Dara
The past week had settled into a new routine, a new configuration. With her dad home every night, three nights a week were dedicated to visiting at Rellus's house, for dinner and sparring practice. Dara hurt for the first week, which probably had something to do with adding running to her morning activities, as well, and then, much to her surprise, got past it. Her dad muttered something about young people not appreciating how lucky they were, when she mentioned it, too.
Three nights a week there, and three nights a week on base, at home. She'd finish her homework, if any remained, after dinner, play the piano for an hour or two, check to see if Rel had left her any messages, respond to those, and then opened a new, self-imposed lesson. It wasn't for school; she'd talked Dr. Solus into giving her a course in multi-species first aid. It was apparently based on the C-Sec/B-Sec first responders' training guide, and it was very slow going. But at least there were practical sorts of quizzes every couple of pages, and lots of anatomical drawings to help her make sense of everything.
As with every other set of young people in the galaxy, she and Rellus had quickly figured out that, while rules were rules, some rules were enforced differently, by different parents. On the occasions when Rellus came to her father's house, they'd immediately noticed that 'fifteen minutes' was not really that long, somehow. Rel simply got in the habit of closing the door for about five minutes, and just sitting and talking with her, perched on the edge of her bed, and then standing back up again and opening it again himself.
"Why close it at all, then?" she asked him quietly, over a datapad at lunch one day, when no one else could hear them.
"Making a point," he muttered back. "I'll respect his discomfort, but I'm not about to give up our damn rights. We had to sit through those negotiations, same as he did. We're obeying the rules, paying for the privileges. I won't give them up." He grinned at her, but she'd been startled by the hint of steel in his deep-set blue eyes, a sign of the unbending core at his heart. It was all part of him, though, and she was enjoying learning what made him tick.
The first night of sparring at Allardus and Solanna's house, she was sure her father had started to like Rellus, but she didn't want to ask, didn't want to push, and simply stayed quiet on the ride home up to the base. On subsequent evenings, the two young people quickly began to see patterns in the various authority figures' behaviors. Solanna always opened the door on them, rather than knocking, as Allardus or even her father did. Her father knocked early; Allardus usually knocked late, sometimes allowing them to open the door themselves, on time, which always got them a pleased smile and a comment about a good demonstration of responsibility.
Rel's younger siblings had a tendency to think it was funny to stand outside the door, too. Rellus dealt with that fairly forthrightly, opening it on them a couple of times, and scowling down at them until they scattered, giggling. All in all, they didn't have much of a chance to do much of anything the first week, and that was, Dara admitted, probably part of the point. It was as much a feeling-out period as anything, a chance for both families to adjust. She understood that, but it was still annoying.
By Thursday morning, she'd gotten in the habit of running with her father, and that morning, since they'd stayed overnight in Kasumi's empty house, rather than taking the long drive back to the base in the dark, their route intersected with Rellus' for two kilometers. It was an accident, but a happy one. She was breathing too hard to do more than wave, though. She hadn't done much running in the past six months, since her old school had put that sort of exercise on hold as the sultry spring/summer heat had settled in around Lufkin, and she was regretting it.
Her dad pulled up short, probably to let her rest, but put his foot up on a bench to rub at one of his legs. Rel looked down in some interest. "Arthritis from the scarring, sir?" he said, politely.
"Don't have to call me sir, son. Makes me feel about eighty." Her dad stretched his leg carefully. "Landed on it bad last night at sparring. It's not so much arthritis, but yeah, the muscles and the tendons were never entirely happy how they healed."
"What happened?" Dara asked. "I don't remember you getting that one."
"Was when you were about five," he told her. "I'd just left N7 and had finished up my Quantico training. Had my first assignment with the Rangers, and, like a dumbass, came out of cover, totally forgetting that I wasn't wearing armor anymore." He snorted. "I think we told you I broke my leg, sweetie. Your mom didn't want you freaking out over your daddy getting shot."
"Law enforcement personnel don't wear armor on Earth?" Rellus sounded horrified.
"Flack jackets and personal shields only in most jurisdictions," her father told him, nodding. "Riot police and SWAT units and the boys in bomb disposal get armor and the heavy kinetic shielding, but your average patrolman and detectives don't. It's a bit of a psychological game. If we wear heavy armor, it looks like we're afraid of people. We have to look fearless, like there's nothing they can do to hurt us, and it. . . well, it works." He grinned. "On humans, anyway. Most of the time. In the Rangers, we had to wear cowboy boots and hats, and a certain 'western' look, overall. I stuck with jeans and a clean shirt, myself. There's a certain amount of tradition to it; not really a uniform, but it carries some of the same mystique. You use what people already have in their heads, and it does a hell of a lot of your work for you." He turned to Dara. "Caught your breath?"
"Sort of." Not really.
"Okay, then let's go. Your boy here is going to put both of us in our graves, though."
Rellus laughed, and limited himself to their pace for the rest of where their routes overlapped, and then took off at his proper speed once he had to turn back for his own home. "Showoff!" Dara found the breath to call after him, and he turned back, grinned and waved, before speeding off into the distance.
Friday night was the first time her dad let her spar against the various turians, and it was hard. They were all so much taller than she was, and though they were letting her get in close so that she could learn, she couldn't see any way to get in on them if they didn't let her. She'd even gotten to spar with Rel, and that had been fun, though he'd teased her relentlessly the entire time for being short. The third time she'd hit the ground, she saw he'd left an ankle close to her, though, and reached out and hooked a foot around it, trying to sweep him down. It didn't work; he was too solidly planted, but she got good marks for trying, anyway.
Rellus had delayed their closed-door time until after sparring, though, which was a little unusual, and took her upstairs. His father just sort of grinned and took the sand-clock out of his wife's hand, saying that he'd take care of the timing. With the door securely fastened behind them, Rellus whispered in her ear, "No sounds. We hear better than humans do, remember? No noise."
She nodded once, and then he started lightly biting along her shoulders, even a couple of light nips to her throat, pressing her back into the wall beside the door, bracing one of his hands against the wood to keep it closed, and it was really hard to remember at that point that she wasn't supposed to even gasp. He was growling a little, a soft rumble deep in his chest. Distantly, she remembered him telling her how close adrenaline and the other chemicals were in his brain, and realized that he must have wanted to do this every night after sparring practice. "Sorry I'm so short," she whispered, teasing.
"I can fix that," he muttered back, lifting her, sliding her back further up against the wall, and returning to what he'd been doing.
Fifteen minutes had surely never gone by that fast before in her life. Finally, Rel set her down, put his hands flat on the wall behind her, and pushed himself away, eyes gone distant and a little predatory. "See you in the morning?" he asked.
"Can we go?" she asked. The contract, in its multiple sections, still somewhat bewildered her.
"Yeah. So long as we go with other people. Figured Eli and Kella might want to go swimming."
"Do you know how to swim?" she asked, a little alarmed. Her dad had told her about the candidate trials, and the problems almost all the turians except for Lantar had had with the pool section.
"Might be a good time to learn," he replied, then leaned in close to her ear. "Eli said they might just stay on their side of the lake if we stayed on ours." When he pulled away, she could see he was grinning.
"Okay!" she replied, reaching for the doorknob. "Then I'll see you at eight."
She still wasn't quite sure if her father was angry with her or not, but he just nodded when she told him the plans for the next morning including riding and swimming . . . with a group. . . followed by rifle and pistol practice. He only commented, "Pistols, huh?"
"Yeah, the range-master has a couple of revolvers light enough for me to practice with. They're fun, but I know they're not very useful anymore."
"Useful is a funny word, sweetie. A revolver will still kill an unarmored person just as dead as anyone else. That scar on my knee? Revolver bullet. But yeah, not too many revolvers currently manufactured with mass effect fields wrapping around the bullets as they exit the barrel, or whatever other happy creations the folks at Ariake or Hahne-Kedar have come up with lately. Have a good night. Sweet dreams." He ruffled her hair, and that was all.
She really was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The next morning, however, when she got up, her dad had the extranet turned on at breakfast on the main vid screen in the house, a fairly significant change from the routine. "Dara," he said. "You're going to want to watch this. This is pretty important."
Dara sat down, and watched as Commander Shepard, Kasumi, and a . . . little volus in a suit, stood in front of the Council, and started explaining how an asari woman named Lina Vasir, in conjunction with the little volus, had smuggled azure dust, taken money from a consortium of asari matriarchs and volus corporations, and had become financial backers for the AEC. The people who had taken her, personally, captive, and forced her into a dark cave, just over two months ago now. Dara pressed her hands flat on the coffee table, wondering why they were shaking.
The Councilors were firing questions at the Commander left and right. Sometimes they questioned the little volus, who always had an answer, complete and prompt and apparently, verifiable. "Some of the Councilors look really scared, Dad," she said, after a few minutes.
"They should be," he said, still standing up, arms folded across his chest. "Shepard's named thirty asari matriarchs and two dozen volus banks and corporations now, all of which have ties to the highest offices in their governments. You're watching two governments about to collapse, honey. And we're doing it almost without a shot." He paused. "Well, without shots that anyone's seeing, anyway."
Her omnitool buzzed on her wrist. It was Kella, with a quick text: I can't believe Matriarch Alliara is involved in this! My mom has always liked her policies!
It buzzed again, this time, Rellus: Are you watching? The Hierarchy is going to have to do something to the volus. It's bad for a client state to do something so dishonorable, and so against our interests.
"Why would they do this, Dad?" she finally asked.
He shrugged, sitting down. "We don't have all the answers yet, honey. We're still working on a lot of this stuff. Personally, I've always heard that the volus in general have had it in for humans for a long time. Jealousy, in the main. We kind of popped on the galactic scene late and got a Council seat ahead of them."
"But everyone's on the Council now, Dad."
"Yeah, but the first four races have a certain prestige. Add to that the fact that we—through Shepard—and the turian-human fleet turned back the Reapers, and we're starting to look a little more formidable, more threatening. They've been protected by the turians for a long time, largely because they provided something useful to the turians. What if the turians decide they don't need the volus anymore? Wouldn't that be scary for them?"
"But why wouldn't they still need them? They created the galactic economy, do most of the trade negotiations. . ." she stopped, realizing she was more or less reciting information out of her textbooks.
"Volus control of galactic trade has come at a high cost, honey. They like their tariffs and their protections, and while some of their corporations and banks have good reputations, a lot of them are known to be corrupt." He sat down, and he was using his explaining voice, where he spaced out the words carefully, and let everything sink in. "What if you could have all the benefits of free trade with a large population and a heavily regulated banking industry at your disposal without . . . quite as much corruption?" Her dad grinned. "I'm not saying humans are perfect, hon. We've got our fair share of dirty dealers. But wouldn't it look attractive, profitable, and maybe just a little threatening, too, depending on where you stood?"
"I guess," she said, after a minute's consideration.
The next two hours went on more or less in the same vein. Eventually, the hearing ended, and the information was distributed to all the Councilors and their offices, apparently, and then it was just the reporters talking to each other, endlessly wrangling about the implications and the likely next steps by each of the member states of the Council, and on and on and on. Dara switched it off after a while.
Then there was a knock at the door; and it was Rellus with Elijah and Kella in tow, ready for a belated morning ride. They all talked about the news reports for the first half-hour; Kella in particular seemed almost chastened by the news reports. "I've met Matriarch Alliara. I mean, I was only ten at the time, but I've met her. She just. . . seemed so nice. So kind," the girl said.
Eventually, they got to the lake, and put the issues behind them. There were far more interesting things to do and talk about than galactic politics, after all, and for the moment, in the warm light of a Mindoir morning, it seemed like none of the wrangling of the Council were all that real, or could have any effect on them. At least, not today.
When Dara started to pull off her shirt, she got a startled look from Rellus. "Mellis . . . the contract says your clothes have to stay on. Which is, I have to say, the oddest, most gender-biased clause in the damn document—oh."
Kella started to laugh, and Rellus flicked her talons at her in a 'be quiet' sort of way as Dara turned to face him, flipping one thumb under the strap of her swimsuit, which she'd worn under her clothing. "You said swimming, I came prepared for swimming," Dara told him, grinning, and then proceeded to strip off her pants, as well.
"Did you bring your extra one for me?" Kella asked.
"I still don't think it's going to fit you," Dara told her, dubiously. "We're not, well, really built the same." She got it out and tossed it in the asari girl's direction, though, before turning back to look at Rellus. "I won't peek as you change," she told him, sticking her tongue out in his general direction. "I'm sure it's against the contract."
Rellus started to chuckle, a little reluctantly. "Ah. . . Dara?"
"Yeah?"
"Turians don't really. . . well, we rarely swim, for starters. And second, when we do, there isn't any special clothing involved."
"You just jump in wearing your street clothes? That's stupid . . . oh." Dara knew she was blushing again as Rellus started pulling off his shirt, and could hear Eli starting to laugh behind her. "Let me guess. Perfectly allowed by the contract?"
"Yeah. Did I mention there's a really peculiar gender-bias to the human clauses?" His voice was muffled by the shirt.
"I'll, ah, go get in the water then," she said, and headed there, quickly, half-wondering if it was going to explode in a cloud of steam when her red face dunked under the waves. She had already had a good long look through her anatomy charts from her first aid course, and knew that for male turians, the phallus was held internally when not in use; dual protection from Palaven's intense solar radiation and from injury caused by blows. Hence the lack of social strictures about being unclothed; she should have realized that, but the habits of her own socialization and upbringing created expectations.
The water was shockingly cold, of course; it was runoff from the snow-packed mountains high above, and none of them could take more than a few minutes at a time without needing to pop back out onto the warmer sand of the shore, although Kella had the easiest time swimming, since asari had a moderately aquatic background. The asari girl and Eli drifted off after a while, finding a different section of shore, not far away—certainly within earshot, but not so close that they were all tripping over each other.
Dara was surprised by just how hard it was for turians to swim. "We're pretty specifically adapted for walking and running on land," Rellus told her, ruefully, as he simply put his feet down at the bottom, standing chest-deep in the water after another failed attempt. "Very well adapted, mind you. But not too many of our original prey species climbed up trees to flee us or swam through rivers to hide."
"Well, maybe we could just start with something like backstroke," she suggested. "You wouldn't see where you were going as well, but that way, your chest wouldn't catch the water as much."
"Or," he said, reaching over and pulling her closer in the water, "We could just enjoy the water for a bit, and then go warm up on shore." And when he'd pulled her in so close that he could lift her up, he bent his knees and dunked both of them. She came back up, dripping and spluttering, and splashed him back.
Elijah
He sat on the warm sand of the shore, letting the shivers from the cold water fade, as Kella splashed back out again herself, coming over to sit down next to him. "You really seem sad about Matriarch Alliara," Eli said after a moment. "You met her?"
"Yeah, when I was ten," Kella said, tipping her head back and closing her eyes as she basked in the sun. "My mom used to do a lot of work for her, so she was really upset this morning. I remember going to the Matriarch's house on Thessia, in between a couple of my mom's missions. There was a line of people outside, just waiting to see her, and inside, it was so quiet, like a temple. It had that kind of respectful hush to it, you know?"
"So, when you were ten," Eli said, after a moment. "That was. . . "
"Oh, that was eighteen years ago," Kella said, vaguely, opening her eyes and finding a stick to draw in the sand with. "I was really little then, about the same developmental stage as. . . well, as Rellus' youngest brother."
Elijah blinked. "I'm never going to get used to that," he said, rolling over to lay on his stomach on the sand. "You look the same age as me."
"I am," she protested. "Well, sort of. On paper, yeah, I was born in 2163, sure, but Eli, asari age very slowly! I couldn't walk until I was two. Can you imagine a human mother carrying a baby around for two years?"
He started scribbling numbers in the sand. Kella watched him, and he knew she was frowning a little. "So," Eli said after a moment, "When I'm eighteen, you'll be, what, thirty-two?"
"Yes," she said, and her voice suddenly softened, and looked sad. "But I'll only look about sixteen at that point, from a human perspective, Eli."
"So, when I'm twenty-eight, you'll be forty-two. . ." He wasn't really liking where the numbers were taking him. He liked Kella. They'd been hanging out for weeks now, and he wanted life as it was, right now, to keep going on and on.
"And will finally have my adult appearance, yes." Kella tipped her head to the side. "I got a fairly good idea of this from that simulation the other day. Did it not make sense to you then?"
"I didn't really do the math," Elijah told her. "I knew you were upset, but you get over stuff really fast, so I never know how upset you actually are." It was true, too; it made dealing with her, paying attention, a little tricky. "So, for at least ten years there. . . ."
"Probably longer," she told him, calmly. "I don't imagine that in a year or two, you'll really have much interest in me. I'll have become too young for you."
Eli stared at her in shock. "Kella! How can you say things like that?"
"Because it's true," she told him. "Most of my friends growing up before I came here were asari, so I didn't really realize it, but just because I don't like something, doesn't make it not true." She smiled at him, and he couldn't believe that she was smiling. "If it makes you feel better, I promise that when I turn thirty-eight, and you're twenty-four, I'll look you up and see if you still miss me."
He gave her a look. "Don't laugh. It's not funny."
"Oh, but it is, Eli. It's okay. It really is. Nothing lasts forever. Asari know this, more than anyone else in the galaxy." She just looked so. . . calm. Almost content.
"That's a terrible way to look at things." He frowned, unable to keep from picking at it. There had to be a way to make things right, but he just couldn't figure out what it was. Here she was, saying he was going to hurt her, wind up ignoring her, and she was okay with it? It didn't make any sense. She shouldn't be so calm. She should be mad.
Kella leaned closer to him. "I think the trick for everyone is to make the most of what they have, while they have it. I don't think about the future that much, Eli. It was interesting to live in the future in that simulation for a while, but it's not a place that interests me very much. I live right here. Today. Maybe tomorrow. The day after? That can take care of itself."
He started to protest again, and then realized that Kella was staring at him, looking patient. "I was supposed to do something?" he ventured.
"Yes, you idiot. You were supposed to kiss me," she said, flopping back onto the sand. "I made a great big speech, and you totally ruined it." Kella waved a hand at him.
"Well, how was I supposed to know that?" Eli asked her, reasonably, and leaned over to kiss her now.
"Oh, no, no. Totally ruined the moment. You can't have one now." There was a brief pause. "Okay, maybe one."
Rellus
On shore again, Rellus grabbed his clothes, then shrugged. "Yeah, dry clothes, wet body. Have I mentioned that the contract is really stupid in places?" He pulled the clothing on, making a face. "You going to be warm enough, mellis?" The swimsuit, while it covered everything that humans deemed necessary, looked wholly inadequate for thermal regulation. It did, he admitted to himself, set off her alien curves very nicely, and drew his eyes unerringly to her waist, her alien legs. So odd to see them bare, the lack of the spur structure so evident.
"In the sun, sure. I'll dry out pretty quickly." She squeezed water out of her hair as she spoke.
"Yeah, but in the sun, you burn." He pulled her into the shade of one of the inarie trees, another Mindoir native. This tree looked like a weeping willow in form, but again, had almost absurdly beautiful flowers dripping from it in the spring, pale peach buds the size and shape of magnolia blooms. Its canopy of weighted, fragrant limbs was almost like a tent, though it whispered and rustled in every breeze. Rellus sat down, leaning his back against the tree trunk, and pulled her down, so that her back rested against his chest.
"Nice," she said, after a long moment. "I still like the allora meadow better, though."
"That's because it's our place," he told her, leaning forward to bite her shoulder lightly. Then he leaned forward a bit, and touched a bruise on her leg; it was a dark blue-purple splotch, fading to brown at the edges, and showed lividly against her pale, soft skin. "That's from sparring?" he asked, his voice a little disbelieving.
"Yeah. That was when I mistimed a kick and clashed shins with you last night."
He reminded himself, again, to be careful when they were sparring. It was hard shifting from full-contact with his father and Garrus to a lighter mode with her, but obviously, he needed to exert some care. "Humans seem so damn fragile sometimes."
"Oh, I bet you bruised someplace, too." She turned around to face him. He had his knees in the air, feet pulled in, flat on the ground; any other position would grind his spurs into the ground; she was sitting between his knees, and until now, her back had been against his chest. Playfully, she ran her hands along his shins, looking for bruises and contusions. Then her fingers slipped around to the back of his calves, and he reached down, quickly capturing her hands.
"Careful here," he told her, and put her hands on the spurs themselves, inhaling a little. "Avoid the tips; they're sharp. Plus, you know, poison."
"First-aid course says it's a mild neurotoxin. Causes numbness and potential paralysis at the wound site, unless it's close to the heart, in which case it can cause arrest," she said, smiling. "See? I've been doing my homework."
"Yeah, but that's in turians. No idea what it'd do to a human, and I don't want to find out the hard way." He sighed a little. "But lower than the tips, light stroking feels nice. One way our females flirt with males is to let their spurs rub up against ours. Spurs are for fighting and for showing. . . readiness, I guess you could say. Calling attention to them is kind of a way of saying the female finds you attractive."
"I can't do that for you," she said, and her lips turned down a little.
He reached out and cupped her chin with one hand. "You can't be turian for me, and I can't be human for you. Not even a little."
"I wouldn't want you to," she told him, sounding surprised. "Rellus, what's wrong?"
He looked down, then back up again. "I, ah, got a few things from Dr. Solus the other day. Epi-tabs for both of us, to avoid anaphylactic shock."
"Yeah? Good idea. My first aid book mentions that a lot, especially for blood or . . . fluid contact with open tissue. . . ." Dara's voice trailed off, and he could see that pink blush sweep over her face again.
"Yeah." He turned her around, and pulled her back to him again, so they could talk without eye contact. He'd noticed that she got more comfortable talking about such things when she didn't have to look up. It gave him the uneasy feeling that they were somehow fibbing, but with the physical contact, it mitigated the unease a bit. "Not that we'll probably be doing any of that for a while."
"By the contract."
"Yes. Well, sort of." He poked her shoulder with one finger. "Following it to the letter shows our personal honor, our integrity, mellis. Since your father obviously questions mine, I don't mind making a point of it for him." Rellus actually rather resented having his honor questioned, but was trying, hard, to remember that humans were naturally suspicious. He thought about it a moment, and then amended his statement, "Okay, I mind, but I'm dealing with it."
"What makes you think he questions your honor?" She turned towards him, somewhat indignantly.
"Other than the fact that I strongly suspect he's watching us today?" Rellus' tone was tart.
Dara lurched upright, looking around, very startled. "What?"
"I heard other hoof-beats in the area about an hour ago. Plenty of time for him to set up with a scope someplace and watch to make sure we're adhering to the contractual obligations."
She inched away, and looked around. "Are you sure?"
"No, but you are aware of what your father does for a living, right?" His tone was very dry.
"Well, for most of my life, he's been a cop." She shrugged a little, and then moved back closer to him, much to his relief. "I know he was in N7 before, but he never talks about that."
"Uncle Garrus told me your dad specializes in infiltration, ambush, and close-quarter killing. Quietly. Usually with that knife we saw him using in the practice drills that one time."
That made her stiffen a little, but he didn't think she was mad at him. It was more like she was processing. "Okay," she said, slowly. "So, why did getting the medications from Dr. Solus make you upset about not being able to be human for me?"
Damn. But, she deserved honesty. Rellus sighed. "Dr. Solus also gave me a bunch of diagrams and some. . . instructional vids. After our. . . closed-door time last night, after you went home, I looked through them."
Dara blinked, turning back around to face him. Now she wants eye-contact? "Wow. Instructional like. . . ?"
"Yeah." He watched as she blushed again, bright pink. To be honest, he could feel a blue flush tightening his throat at the moment, himself. "To be honest there are chapters on the crystal that I wouldn't watch," he added.
Dara cleared her throat. "Like what?"
Oh, mellis, there are things I will not tell you. Just reading some of the chapter headings was bad enough. "There was a subchapter on krogan males and human females . . . ."
"I don't want to know!" she squeaked, cringing, and he couldn't blame her a bit.
"Neither do I!" he replied, starting to laugh a bit.
Dara peeked up, smiling at him. "So. . . there was a problem with the, um, with the human-turian stuff?" she ventured.
Problem? Yes and no. If you'd been still be in arm's reach, personal honor would have been thrown to the side, more than likely. Just the thought of doing any of that with her made his body tighten a bit, but there had been a number of warnings in the vids that Uncle Garrus' mere words had not been able to convey. "Kind of," Rellus told her, reluctantly. "Mostly, now that I've watched it, I'm kind of afraid I'm going to scare you away. Not that we'll be able, to, well. . . you know, for a while, but, eventually. . . ."
She moved closer, and put her arms around him. "You stopped up in the meadow," she reminded him. Yeah, and I still don't know how I did.
"If I didn't find that scary, why would I find anything else scary?" Dara asked, reasonably enough.
He sighed. "Okay, how far did you get with the turian anatomy and physiology chapters in your first aid course?"
"About halfway. It's. . . really slow going."
"Right. Let me try to explain."
There were some notable differences between turians and humans. Turian females went into estrus once every three to four months; as a result, turian males needed to be able to respond to their mate's cycle quickly and vigorously. In an adult male, the refractory period between ejaculations might be only a couple of minutes; in a young male, like Rellus, the time period between release and readiness might be even shorter. Endurance, the ability to keep at the task until the estrus cycle ceased or the ovum was fertilized, had also been selected for, over millions of years of evolution.
Rellus coughed a little at that point. "Kind of why fifteen minutes behind a closed door is. . . really not helpful," he commented, looking away. Even a first release was not necessarily a relief.
Dara was still blushing, but she managed to get her face and voice under control enough to admit, "Okay, that's . . . different, and not really what I expected. But it's not running-away-screaming scary, so what else?"
Spirits, why is it so hard talking to humans about this? It is simply because they get so embarrassed? "The closer I, ah, get, the more my crest will flare. The mandibles extend to allow harder biting. The vids commented that humans can find it. . . excessively alien-looking," he told her, wincing.
She reached up and touched his face, before stroking along his fringe, reassuring with touch, and he half-closed his eyes in relief. No rejection yet, anyway. "Looks pretty wild to me anyway, but I like it, so. . ." Dara shrugged. "What else?"
He cleared his throat. "During mating, the self-defense reflexes are very strong; it's one of the most vulnerable positions a turian can be in. Back in the cave and nest days, when we fought for mates, it was very possible for another male to smell your mate's estrus, and attack while you were mating."
"Wait, you can smell that?"
He looked at her, puzzled. "Yeah. I know humans don't have a great sense of smell, but you're saying that you can't?"
"No!" She paused. "So you can smell when I. . ."
"I haven't got a good read on humans, or you in particular yet. Your smell changes from day to day, a bit." Dara simply stared at him, her mouth hanging open slightly. "But, ah, when I'm biting you, you really change." And when she did, she smelled, really, really good, if the truth be told. "It's just hormone levels." Rellus started to laugh. "That bothers you more than the thought of me looking. . . bestial?"
Dara squirmed. "Yeah, okay, a little. It's like mind-reading, only. . . okay, it's not. I don't know why it bothers me! Just. . . move on."
He stopped chuckling, and took a deep breath before continuing to explain, doggedly, "So, for self-protection, the spurs extend further, the poison vesicles fill, and basically every part of the body is ready, not for fight or flight, but for fight and. . . fornicate, basically." Rellus cleared his throat again. "The vids commented that sometimes, if a human female finds it all too alien, too frightening, they start to struggle. . . which triggers the predator-prey reflexes, which just makes everything worse. I might not be able to stop myself from using a control-bite on you. I might draw blood." Rellus grimaced, unsure and uncertain. The hell of it was, the thought of using a control-bite on her wasn't actually a bad one. It was exciting. It was something one did with a mate. It just might be out of place for a human one. "It suddenly just sounds a lot more complicated than I thought it would be," he finally finished.
Dara sighed, and leaned in closer to him, putting her head on his chest. "Rel. . . I trust you. I know you'd never hurt me on purpose."
"Not on purpose, no, but I've never, and you've never, and—"
She rose up to her knees, and very carefully planted a kiss against his cheek. He could barely feel it when she didn't use teeth, but could sense a light pressure there, before she slipped back down to nibble on his neck. "So, we go slow. We already have to go slowly."
"I'm definitely seeing the wisdom of the contract, yeah." Although, with her so gently biting his neck right now, it was harder to see that. "A hundred and ten days of boot camp are going to be. . . less than fun, though."
"What? I thought you said it was eleven weeks." She pulled back a little.
"Eleven galactic weeks. Ten days a week." He sighed. "I leave mid-winter. July third, on the Mindoir calendar." It was spring now, of course; November 14, in Mindoir's odd adaptation of the Terran calendar system, or Novenus 26, back on Palaven.
"I don't want to think about that right now," Dara told him, firmly. "It's a weekend. You're not thinking about it, either."
He laughed. "Yes, ma'am."
"I'm not going anywhere," she told him, adding another quick, hard bite, before pulling back to look up at him almost defiantly. "So stop worrying about something that won't be an issue for months and months and bite me back already, because we've only got a little more time before we have to leave and go to the shooting range."
After a moment, he was only too eager to comply.
Shepard
The Normandy headed back into Mindoir's system after a two-week absence; a week to find the information they'd collected, and a week to deal with the Council and its backlash. It was November 20 now, a Saturday, and Shepard kicked back in her chair in her quarters, listening to the latest extranet news stories with a hint of a smile on her face. It was not every day that she was responsible for the fall of a government, directly or indirectly; Pidna Tol's testimony at Bastion had shaken the volus confederacy to its core. And the asari colonies were trembling a bit, as well.
Councilor Anderson had been a bit upset with her, for not having gone through him, and through Earth, before presenting her evidence. "I've told you before, I'm not the personal property of Earth anymore, Anderson. You're a good friend, and I hope you can accept that," Shepard had told him in the embassy after the initial hearing.
He'd sighed. "We could have prepped everything a little better. As it was, everyone was taken off-balance."
"That's exactly what I wanted, Anderson. I didn't want to give anyone to get their alibis in order. I have twenty-five dead turians, not to mention a dead hanar and a dead asari, in the ground on Mindoir." Shepard tried to keep her seething to a minimum. Anderson didn't deserve her anger. "Not to mention the degradation of the rest of my crew. They attacked the Spectres, and the Spectres are an extension of the Council—the very Council they want to use to play their little political games. I'm done with games, and I wanted to let them know that, in a very clear and very public way."
"Oh, I think they got the message," he told her, shaking his head. "Now, I've got a few meetings to go to, to try to keep the galactic economy from completely collapsing. Everything has repercussions, Shepard. Let's hope yours don't create tidal waves."
Massive numbers of people had, over the past week, removed their money from volus banks. The Turian Hierarchy had, in a rare move, taken a large percentage of the capital it had in place throughout volus space, and had redirected it to other venues, citing concerns with the ethical behavior of the volus banking industries. Yeah, if you can't be sure your own funds won't be used to kill your own people, that is a problem, isn't it? There were even rumors coming out of the court of the turian Imperator, that the client state status of the volus might be revoked, if all the guilty parties were not turned over to the Council for prosecution.
A dozen financial institutions in Terran space were the direct beneficiaries of these large-scale fund transfers. On the one hand, the various governments that did business with the volus didn't want the confederacy to collapse, because it would destabilize their own, interdependent economies; on the other hand, they had very little choice but to impose some form of sanctions.
In other words, when the scheme began to come to light, it backfired spectacularly. The Turian Hierachy and the Systems Alliance, already having the largest combined fleet in Council space, were now feeling their way towards an economic alliance, as well. The Systems Alliance had come out of the Reaper war with a booming economy and a brand-new economic partnership with its own client race, the geth, after all. The quarians were locked in a sort of double-triangle economic alliance at the moment, themselves; as the geth slowly evacuated from the quarian homeworld, they remained, oddly enough, trade partners with their quarian creators; raw materials flowed from the new geth planets to rebuild, or at least alter structures on the homeworld to more organic standards. The quarians also sent techs and goods to the turians and the humans, mostly for use in building Bastion, which was. . . again. . . a turian-human designed station, largely funded by those same two species. Those four races started to form an economic bloc, protecting their homeworlds and colonies from the disruption of the volus market implosion.
The hanar, the drell, the elcor, and the rachni were insular, and largely isolated from the chaos. The salarian colonies were badly hit, however; they were heavily invested and integrated into the asari and volus economies, so the Hierarchy and the Alliance, working together, offered the salarian dalatresses an assistance package and some very reasonable terms.
Inside the volus confederation, their citizens were protesting outside of major corporations, their parliaments, everywhere, forcing a vote of no-confidence. Most of them were seeing their retirement savings dwindle down to nothing as their stock market crashed, and they had visible targets within their own people to blame. Even volus CEOs whose companies had contributed funds or information to the scheme, were, reportedly, afraid to emerge from their barricaded boardrooms.
The rumblings from within asari space were also ominous, although they made for less spectacular vid footage than the hordes of little volus marching around outside various corporate headquarters. All of the matriarchs named in Lina Vasir's financial data as contributors had gone into 'seclusion.' Shepard chuckled a little under her breath. Hiding might be more accurate. And from the looks of the message she'd just received from Samarra, the justicar would be very busy finding their hiding places over the next year or so. The note ended: "Should you need my assistance in finding the daughter of Tela Vasir, please do not hesitate to ask."
Hopefully not necessary. With Gris and Sings-to-Sky on hand, not to mention Ylara, I think we've got the biotic situation covered, if we need it to be. Samarra's got enough in hand, trying to move her people into an adaptive frame of mind. Hell, she needs to get herself into that kind of a mental state, and that's not easy with six hundred-some years of habit engrained into her.
Shepard felt the shudder in the deckplates as they began their final, decelerating turn around Mindoir itself, and knew they'd be coming in for a landing shortly.
She picked up her seabag, and headed for decontamination. While standing under the lights and sprays with Kasumi, Gabriella Daniels, and Ken Donnelly, she relaxed, closing her eyes for a moment, letting the stress of the past weeks wash off of her with any residual bacteria.
Dimly, she was aware of a whispered, heated argument going on, but decided that it probably didn't concern her. Ken and Gabby almost always had some technical debate going on.
"Excuse me, Commander?" That was Gabby.
Shepard opened her eyes. "Yes?"
"I have a . . . well, it's sort of a delicate question for you."
That's another phrase that never exactly bodes well, Shepard thought, her heart sinking just a bit. "Fire away," she replied, straightening up.
"You've allowed turians on board who were married couples before. You don't see that as a problem? You know, the old Terran military standard of fraternization and all that?" Gabby's voice was a little high-pitched, and she appeared a little nervous.
Several things all clicked into place in Shepard's mind all at the same time, prompted by Kasumi's very quiet chuckle. Kasumi always said they'd make a great couple, not that they'd ever realize it. The azure dust experience, maybe? Yes. Well, maybe something good came out of that insanity. Even if it's only one thing, it makes it a little less unbearable. The thoughts took only seconds to crystallize.
Out loud, Shepard replied, "I've long since taken a more turian stance on crew interactions in many ways, Daniels. The old military standard was 'no romantic interests between those in the same command structure, and no more than two grades of rank between them.' Doesn't work out well when people start out married, and then one of them gets promoted faster, and the Terran military had a bad habit of separating families when a little proper logistics would've kept them together and made the unit stronger as a result. In the case of say, two humans who are not line officers, and who, say, might be engineering staff?" Shepard suppressed her grin as they both shuffled slightly, "I say, if you're thinking of making your status public or thinking of asking for permission to make it more. . . formal. . . that you should probably go ahead." She let her grin show. "This ship was never Alliance military. All I ask is that you never let the personal interfere with the professional. That's the turian standard, and if you want their privileges, live up to their standards. If you can't manage that, then you're off my ship. Simple enough?"
They both beamed at her, relaxing visibly. "I don't see that bein' a problem, Commander," Ken told her, and then the decontamination cycle finally came to an end, and the airlock hatch hissed open, showing a gray, overcast sky outside, and the first breeze brought a taste of rain on its breath.
Kasumi waited until the pair was out of earshot to mutter, "It's about damn time. Pity it took being out of their head on azure dust to make them realize it."
"I didn't want to ask," Shepard said, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder again. "Give me the good gossip, Kasumi. I know you hear everything." She grinned at her security chief.
"The way Gabby tells it, about all she can remember is that Ken protected her through the whole experience. Nice to know that even when most of the higher brain functions get suspended, there's still a little self down at the bottom. The subconscious self, the real person, is still down there, and she knows as a result that he's probably the most decent man she knows."
Yeah, but what does that say about the cultists? Shepard didn't want to ruin the good mood with questions like that, so she stayed silent as they headed for the groundcar that would take them deeper into the base.
She entered her quarters, glancing at the clock, and realized, with some relish, that she still had an hour before the twins would be back from daycare. "Anyone home?" Shepard called, tossing her seabag on the floor by the door.
"I'm in the office," Garrus called back.
She strode around the corner, and gave him a one-armed hug from behind, where he sat at his terminal, planting a quick kiss behind a mandible. "Sorry I'm late," she told him. "Little did I know the Council would refuse to let me leave until all their analysts had run third-level search patterns over all the data."
"No problem. Been holding down the fort for you while you were gone." He reached over to the left side of the desk, and picked up an old-fashioned, heavy paper envelope. "This showed up while you were gone."
"Honest-to-goodness physical mail?" she said, surprised. "Must have cost a damn fortune to send." She examined it; the address was to the Vakarian family, care of the Roland B. Shepard Memorial Biodiversity Area Research Center, Mindoir. It was hand-written, at that. "What the hell?" Shepard muttered. "Who knows our location, and why is this so. . . analog?" It was mysterious enough to make her start to suspect an answer related to espionage or something along those lines.
Frowning, she opened it, and removed a heavy card from inside the envelope. Reading it, she started to laugh, reluctantly. "Garrus, you cheater, you read this already, didn't you?"
"Yes," he replied, unrepentantly. "I figured you needed the laugh, though."
It was a hand-written wedding invitation, in the oldest and most formal human style, inviting Garrus and Lilitu Vakarian to the nuptial celebration of Miranda Lawson and Kaidan Alenko, to be held in a month's time on Bekenstein. After five years of being tasked with hunting down the last remnants of Cerberus, alternately at each others' throats or inseparable, the pair was finally going to tie the knot, apparently. Shepard knew that you could never really tell where lightning would strike, but the pair had seemed. . . odd, at first. Miranda's cold superiority and ruthless streak, matched up with Kaidan's boy-scout honorability and stiffness?
But seeing the pair together a year ago had dispelled some of that concern. Miranda had always, in Jacob's words, needed a better man. Someone with patience, someone with self-discipline. Someone who could care about her for her, not for her biotics or her abilities. Alenko had learned that patience, over time, and could have cared less about her upgrades. They balanced each other, held each other in check. Miranda gave Kaidan more drive; he showed that vulnerability didn't have to cost her.
That all being said, Lilitu still had no intention of attending their wedding. She still hadn't quite forgotten some of the nastier things Alenko had said after her return from the dead. "Yeah, I think we can safely skip that one," Shepard said, tossing the invitation back on the desk.
"We should probably get them a gift."
"What do you get for the biotic couple who has everything?" she asked. "New implants?"
Garrus thought about it, then supplied, solemnly, "A toaster. Everyone needs one."
Shepard sat down in a nearby chair with a weary sigh. "So, talk to me. Anything new I need to know about?"
Garrus shook his head. "Ran into several dead ends over the Ilda'Kesh-Haliat issue. Not even Argus is having luck getting into their files, which really says something about the extra services that facility must provide."
"Yeah. Somewhat illegal? Slightly unethical?"
"They do seem to do an inordinate amount of business with people who suddenly disappear," he agreed, dryly. "The most we've been able to obtain is a summary file, not the full medical charts themselves. The summary notes the following," Garrus said, and began to read from his terminal screen, "Epidermal bleaching and then addition of melanin, removal of the scalp tentacle structures, transplantation of follicles, several prescriptions for anti-rejection drugs, and work done on the larynx."
"So, she's not blue anymore, but there's no way to tell what shade she is now?"
"Anything from a white with a blue overtone from the blood vessels underneath to brown. Mordin says melanin is only used in humans. He also notes that it would be impossible to dye her blood corpuscles any other shade, not least because they'd be constantly replenished by her spleen."
"Interesting. And the follicles?"
"Could be human or quarian, apparently."
"Quarians have hair under those suits?"
"Who knew, right?" He grinned. "The anti-rejection meds would be to keep the melanin and the. . . hair follicles . . . I suppose. . . from being rejected and flushed out of the body. The melanin will have to keep being re-injected, so there are prescriptions for that, as well. Mordin's saying she might look a little blotchy between treatments, depending on the skin tone she aimed for."
Shepard frowned to herself. "Work on the larynx, too. So her voice has been altered. Why would she do that? Most people keep voice identification locks on their really sensitive files. But then again, it explains why we were able to hack into her systems so easily, since that safeguard wasn't in place." She rocked back in the chair. "I get the feeling there's something else?"
"Oh yes," he said. "There's a pretty obscure note at the end of the summary, stating that a procedure undertaken in infancy was reversed successfully. The doctors sound quite self-congratulatory." He shook his head. "Not helpful in the least, I know."
"Eh, it's a start. We're looking for someone between 1.5 meters and 1.8 meters in height, who could look human, or could look quarian, and who might just be piebald. Hell, she might even be wearing an envirosuit at this point to stay undercover. We've at least ruled out that she made herself look turian, elcor, volus, salarian, or batarian, so, that just leaves what, 20 billion humans spread across the galaxy to go through."
"So, we're narrowing it down, then? Progress." His voice was dry.
Shepard replied ruefully. "So much for my grand idea, eh?" She sighed. "It's a good bet, wherever she is, is where that mini-Reaper is now, too. Find one, and we'll find the other."
"She'll need access to her prescriptions to keep her current appearance."
"Were there any others?"
"A few. Unusual hormone combinations. Mordin wasn't sure what they were, other than asari, and no asari doctor we've contacted has been able to explain them, either. They're all commonly found in the asari body, but the combinations and concentrations are. . . off."
"Trackable?"
"Barely. I've got people working on it, trying to correlate it with her filed flight plans. It's slow going."
She sighed, stretched, and then smiled at him. "I've been thinking. . . ."
"Always dangerous."
She hooked a foot under his closest spur, just under the ankle, getting his attention. "I was thinking," she repeated, "that you were right about us needing a vacation."
He grinned. "Now you're talking."
"I checked with Earth. They wouldn't let us bring the kids. Center for Disease and Epidemiology thinks they'd be a hazard, since they could. . . their words, not mine, 'contribute to the passage of diseases between species.'"
Garrus stared at her. "Most human diseases, they can't catch; their temperature is too high for bacteria that humans pass around to stick with them, since they cook the bacteria. Likewise, turian bacteria find them unappealing because their temperature is too low."
"I know. They mostly catch whatever version of the Skyllian Flu is going around, and asari and batarian crap, because their core temperature is comparable, and the protein structures of the cells are just close enough. I've caught stuff from them; you've never caught anything from them. . . . damnit . . . but hey, if the CDE won't let them on-planet, there's plenty of other places we can go."
"Macedyn is nice," he suggested, idly. "Deep blue impact crater seas, surrounded by rings of red mountains. The biggest waterfalls in the galaxy, as one crater drains into the next, lower one. Drier than Palaven, a little less hot. Hot springs."
"And the three of you can eat the food," she commented. "I'd have to bring rations, but hey, maybe the hotels there are branching out for the levo-species tourist trade." She paused. "Demeter's nice, too. Peaceful. First human extrasolar colony."
"Largely agrarian though, isn't it?"
"There might be a slight smell of manure everywhere we go, but absolutely nothing ever happens there. Which is about what I want out of a vacation."
"Total, complete, mind-numbing boredom?"
"Yes."
"Well, we'll put it on the list, then." He paused. "Shanxi?"
"Oh, no, no, no." She wagged a finger at him. "First, the kids aren't old enough to really appreciate the historical value of the place where mom and dad's people first met up and started butting heads. . . "
Garrus guffawed.
"And second, if you and I and our hybrid kids go to the site of the First Contact War, it'll be a media blitz. No way."
"It was just a suggestion," he said, mildly, still grinning.
Sam
It was a Saturday afternoon; Dara was off at the rifle range, and Sam was allowing her a little freedom to do so. He was in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee, and watching the extranet coverage of the most recent riots on the volus homeworld, Irune, when there was a knock at the door. He headed to the entryway and opened it, blinking as Kasumi smiled up at him from the doorstep, travelbag still over her shoulder. "Hello there, Sam. Did you miss me?" she inquired.
"Hey! Come on in, we're just getting to the good part," he told her, taking her bag from her hand, and honestly not really knowing quite what to do with it, or with her, here on his doorstep.
She walked in, kicking off her shoes almost automatically, taking another inch off her already diminutive frame. "What good part?" she asked, as he closed the door behind her.
"You were a busy girl while you were gone," he told her, dryly. "Now it looks like the volus protestors have located the bunker-boardroom of Radni Tal, CEO of Colonial Expeditions, LLC.," Sam added, grinning. "It also seems that they've discovered the grand tradition of the Molotov cocktail, although I hate to think what's in those bottles, considering that they're in an ammonia atmosphere. . ."
They stood side-by-side for a moment, watching the protestors trying to break down the reinforced hatch of the boardroom-bunker, which was located in the basement of a skyscraper on Irune. The protestors threw their flaming bottles at corporate security forces, which weren't authorized for deadly force, and simply had old-fashioned riot shields and kinetic shielding. "Sucks to be CE security today," Sam commented, with a certain empathy as one bottle shattered on a shield, flaming debris and liquid spreading everywhere.
"Looks like the protestors figured out that the door has a certain level of hardening to it," Kasumi noted, a little clinically, watching the figures on the screen.
"Yep." Sam folded his arms across his chest. "On the other hand, it looks like they got a mining laser from somewhere. Think anyone there actually knows how to set it up, let alone use it?"
They paused. On the screen, a blue-white laser flickered into life, and the hatch began to glow, white-hot, in the small area on which the laser was focused. "I'd say that's a yes," Kasumi told him, reaching over to turn off the screen. "You didn't, however, answer my question."
"Oh, didn't I?" he replied, mildly, looking down at her.
"Yes. Did you miss me?" Her lips still smiled, but he noted just a hint of worry in her eyes.
"Actually, yeah. I did." Very carefully, he put his hands to her face, cupping her chin, and lowered his head to kiss her. It felt strange—god, it felt downright wrong—kissing a woman other than Sarah. But nice; very nice. Soft, yielding lips, opening under his for the first time in far too damn long. Soft hands, sliding up under his shirt, along his ribs. He lifted his head, breathing a little hard, and said, hoarsely, "I had all sorts of plans for dropping by your place when you got back, asking you to dinner, that sort of thing."
"Sometimes, I like plans," she told him, smiling. "Sometimes, I like breaking them."
He was a little hazy on how they made it to his bedroom. Hazier still on exactly when all the clothing had come off. But very, very clear on how good her body felt under his, how good her skin tasted and smelled. And very clear indeed on how mutual their pleasure was.
Some time later, he awakened from his light doze, finding fingers tracing the length of his spine again. He reached back, captured the hand, and pulled her arm around him, drawing her up against his back as he did. "Did you talk to Dara about, ah, seeing me?" she asked, after a moment. "I don't want it to be a surprise for her."
"Mmm. Yeah, I talked to her," Sam replied after a moment. "Asked her if she'd mind me seeing you, socially." He turned his head on the pillow slightly. "You see, at the time, I was figuring the social would come before the nekkid."
Kasumi's laughter was like smoke in the dim afternoon light in the bedroom. It filled the room, rubbing up against the walls, against his skin. "And?" she prompted.
"She said she liked you. Didn't mind me seeing you. And, little smart-mouth that she is, told me if I planned on getting you a wedding-knife, if you please, that it should be a bowie knife, to match mine, but a li'l shorter."
Her laughter filled the room again, and Sam smiled to himself. "I'm going to go take a shower, if that's all right with you," she told him, unwinding herself from where she curled against his back, and tripping off to the bathroom.
Alone again, listening to the sound of water running in the shower, Sam looked down at his hands, spread his fingers wide. After a moment, he carefully removed his wedding band, putting it safely away in the top drawer of his nightstand. He could see where it had been, of course; not just an indentation in the flesh, but a paler band of skin, protected from light for years. A ghost ring, a reminder. It would take time to fade. It would be months before he'd stop himself from wondering where it was, or how he'd lost it, probably.
But he had time. And it was the right time, too.