“A complete blast!” His father couldn’t stop grinning.
“I hope you don’t mean that literally and a chunk of the Moon is missing.” His mother gave them a teasing smile.
“The chunk missing is on the dark side so you won’t see it,” Jace told her and made his way over to Gehenna, who was hovering awkwardly in the corner. He grabbed one of her tentacles and slung it over his shoulder even as he embraced as many of the other tentacles as he could get his arms around. How are you doing, Gehenna? I missed you.
The AI froze for a moment as she hadn’t expected him to embrace her. But then she got into it with enthusiasm, winding her tentacles all around him until he was practically hidden by them.
I missed you too! Though your mom is really cool, she said softly. But you’re my favorite.
You, too, he told her.
When they broke apart, his parents were looking on with rather bemused expressions. Jace cleared his throat. Gehenna straightened her tentacles. His father shook his head and sighed.
“What? Haven’t you ever hugged an alien cleaning bot before? You don’t know what you’re missing out on,” Jace told his parents as he strode past them to the pilot’s chair. “Gehenna, can you get my mom a seat and help her strap in?”
Of course, Jace! Gehenna sounded more chipper than ever. The hug had done them both good.
He sat down in the pilot’s chair and it automatically turned around to face the front of the ship. The whine of the gangway coming up was mixed with sounds of his mother speaking to Gehenna as they got her harness on. Then there was a soft bing. It was over his comm. A private channel. Jace answered it.
“Jace,” Khoth’s deep voice came over the comm and Jace immediately relaxed hearing it.
“Hey, ah, what’s up? You have a good talk with your mom?” Jace asked, trying to sound light and unconcerned even as he really wanted to ask if Khoth was in the brig.
There was a momentary silence, which had Jace’s heart plummeting into his feet and a rush of anxiety going through him.
“It was… instructive,” Khoth finally said. “I wanted to alert you that I will be arriving at the Osiris in the next quarter cycle.”
Jace’s heart rebounded into his head and then lodged in his throat. Khoth sounded stressed. Was he coming to the Osiris to break it to Jace that he was leaving? To tell Jace that he regretted saving him and now was being punished for it? That the nascent friendship between them was a lie?
Jace’s gaze slid to the two recordings. Maybe he should have watched them.
“Well, that’s good. I’m looking forward to, ah, seeing you. You feel the same?” Jace winced at his last questions.
Needy, Jace! You sound needy! Jace chastised himself.
There was another pause and then, he hoped he wasn’t imagining it, but Khoth’s voice was a little softer as he said, “Yes.” Then he added those dreaded words, “We must talk, Jace.”
Plans
Khoth stepped out of the drop ship and into one of the hangar bays of the Osiris. It was large and well-lit. Far larger than the Ashaton’s main hangar bay and this was only one of the Osiris’. One of many.
The gangway retracted and the ship that had brought him was retreating back out into space. None of his people were on the Ashaton and the pilot had not been known to him. The cold, formality between them had been usual for Thaf’ell interactions, but something in his Xi had curdled from it. As he saw the ship leave, he felt a sense of relief as if he had thrown off some great weight.
“Isn’t this amazing?!” Thammah’s voice was burbling with excitement from behind him.
He turned around. He had thought he was alone, but she had been in the Kryptoria II just a ship’s length away. He lost some of his rigid posture and found himself smiling faintly.
She jogged over to him from her ship. He saw then that the Exarch was also in this bay, but it was being repaired by robots that crawled over its surface. There were bright bursts and sparks from a robot that was injecting material into the Exarch’s damaged skin. Others were climbing up the gangway with new parts. Thammah stepped between him and his ship. Seeing where his attention was she glanced over and nodded.
“Exarch will be better than new! But I think you should just upgrade entirely,” she told him.
“I am proficient with the Exarch’s controls and its own peculiarities. I should lose that if I were to upgrade,” he answered.
Her lips twitched. “Really? Because that answer hardly sounds logical.”
“Not in the least. It is a proven fact that people work more efficiently with systems they are familiar with and–”
“You’d learn the new system and become proficient in it,” she pointed out. “Besides I think the Osiris can mimic any of your old ship’s quirks if you really can’t be without them. Though that would make you sentimental, I believed.”
