“I am aware. I calculated them anyway. It is my function.”
Tavia giggles. Cetus’s markings pulse with warm amusement. Outside, lightning arcs across alien skies.
Inside, we start making chocolate cake like a family.
And for the first time in nine years, I’m not planning my escape route.
I’m planning to stay for dessert.
6
Frosting Friction
Cetus
Thechocolatecakesitscooling on the counter, filling the residential pod with rich Earth-sweet scent. Tavia’s scraping the last bits of batter from the bowl with single-minded focus, her yellow markings pulsing contentedly.
The cake should have my attention. Or the atmospheric readings that need monitoring. Anything except the woman three meters away, reorganizing my kitchen with the kind of easy competence that makes heat spread across my shoulders.
Seventy-three thousand credits.
Predatory lending.
Collectors with advanced shielding arriving in three to four days.
She told me everything an hour ago—trusted me with the truth that’s been eating at her since she arrived. Now she’s trying to pretend everything’s fine, humming quietly while she washes mixing bowls, but I can see the tension in her shoulders. The way her hands pause fractionally before each movement, like she’s bracing for impact.
My marking patterns shift before I can control them—protective colors I haven’t displayed since Seraphina was sick. Since I last had someone I needed to shield from the universe’s cruelty.
Wait.
When did I start thinking of Dove as someone I need to protect?
“Papa!” Tavia’s voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. “The bowl’s clean now. Can we make frosting while the cake cools?”
“The cake requires adequate cooling time before frosting application—”
“Which is why we should make the frosting now!” She’s already pulling ingredients from storage with the determined efficiency of a trained negotiator. “Dove can teach us! She said Earth frosting is different from nutritional coating.”
“Everything is different from your nutritional coating, small person,” Pickles observes through the kitchen speakers. “The Captain’s baking skills represent a significant improvement over the Terraforming Specialist’s previous culinary methodologies.”
“I prepare nutritionally complete meals.”
“You prepare edible sustenance,” Dove corrects, but she’s smiling. “There’s a difference between fuel and food.”
“The distinction seems arbitrary.”
“The distinction,” Tavia announces with the authority of an eight-year-old who’s discovered chocolate, “is that one makes you happy and one keeps you alive.”
Dove’s laugh is warm and genuine, and heat blooms across my chest in response—automatic, undeniable, beyond my control.
“Your small person is wise beyond her years,” Dove says.
“She’s been spending too much time with Pickles.”
“I neither confirm nor deny providing philosophical guidance to the small person,” Pickles responds. “However, I note that buttercream frosting preparation would benefit from close instructional proximity. I have prepared—”
“Do NOT say you’ve prepared slides,” Dove interrupts.
