“What a Seeder-sucking asshead.” Lhyn couldn’t keep silent. “And I thought he was smart.”

  Ekatya held back a smile, both at Lhyn’s ire and Sholokhov’s error. He was judging Andira by his own measure. It would never occur to him that her refusal was based on anything other than political calculation.

  “She’s a world leader who already negotiated an advantageous treaty with the Protectorate. You may think I’m naive, but you can’t possibly think she is. Even if she did value my career at such a stratospheric level, the Council wouldn’t. Whatever she told you she’d trade for, she meant it.”

  “A Pulsar-class ship,” he said scornfully. “Ridiculous.”

  “Why? The Phoenix is already out there.”

  “Under Protectorate ownership and control! We don’t hand over billion-credit assets.”

  “But that number includes costs that don’t apply, doesn’t it? Research and development, for a ship you can replace without any further investment in design. Repairs and maintenance that you won’t be performing. Weaponry and supplies you won’t have to stock. Strip it down to what you’re actually trading, and that number loses a zero or two. Besides,” she added, “you know they’re working on raising the Caphenon. Once they get that in orbit, you won’t have anything to offer. They’ll have their very own Pulsar-class ship.”

  “The Caphenon will have the same hull plating as their fighters. It won’t be able to enter base space.”

  “Why would they care if it goes into base space? They’re not the Voloth, searching for new territory and resources. They’re not even us, trying to expand our influence. All they want is to protect themselves. They don’t need to leave their system to do that.”

  He stared at her.

  “Did that not occur to you?” she asked.

  “How long until they raise that ship? Best estimate.”

  Great galaxies, it really hadn’t. How could he overlook something so obvious?

  Then again, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. If there was one thing Sholokhov would not expect, it was an adversary who didn’t seek power.

  “Two years. Three at the outside.”

  He drummed his fingers on the armrests, staring at an invisible point over her shoulder. “Faulty intelligence,” he murmured.

  Though soft, his tone was so menacing that Ekatya suppressed a shiver. Someone would surely be punished for this failure.

  His unsettling light eyes refocused on her. “Thank you for your input, Captain. I need to get back to Gov Dome. But first, I agree with your conjecture about the pirates. They’re not pirates at all.”

  “What do you think they are?”

  “Ex-military mercenaries if we’re lucky. Active military if we’re not. My strong suspicion is the Voloth. They’re planning something; I just can’t think what they’d do with iceboxes. You’ve received the latest update on their movements?”

  “Increasing activity, nothing that can be traced to a specific intent,” she said. “No invasion groups.”

  “No, they learned their lesson with that. You won’t have to deal with orbital invaders.” Though he did not move a muscle, he suddenly seemed sharper. “I have more recent intel. A heavy cruiser is taking on supplies and preparing to leave Voloth space in three weeks.”

  Which would put it in Alsean space in six weeks, right on schedule. “I don’t suppose this new intel will result in reinforcements.”

  “A single heavy cruiser is not cause for alarm, given your presence.”

  “And if it brings friends? You know the Voloth won’t send just one. They’ll want to outgun us.”

  “My intel is of one heavy cruiser and its accompanying destroyers,” he repeated. “That is the data informing deployment decisions. That and your reputation. I did tell you that you and the Alseans were victims of your own success.”

  “I think he tried to get reinforcements,” Lhyn said. “But he hit the wall of political idiocy.”

  And he would never admit that he didn’t fully control the situation. This was his version of friendly advice.

  “If I were you, I’d keep my eyes open,” Sholokhov added, confirming her guess. “Alsea is almost finished with that space elevator, isn’t it?”

  37

  Peace in war

  It was a paradox, Micah thought, that the moon in which Alsea prepared for battle was one of the best moons of his life.

  Fahla did love her ironies.

  Ekatya brought the Phoenix back from Tlahana Station fully restocked with dummy missiles and shield breakers, enabling a new and more serious round of war games. The initial game had shown them what did and didn’t work; now they relentlessly practiced strategies and honed their skills.

  During this final push, the Phoenix never left orbit. For a glorious moon, Micah saw Alejandra nearly every day. Candini flew to the ship three days out of four with an empty seat in her Serrado fighter that she graciously lent him. The nature of her duties meant she was not there long, making it relatively simple for Alejandra to schedule her work breaks in conjunction with Micah’s presence on the ship. When he couldn’t go there, Alejandra would fly down in a shuttle for a precious day of leave.

  The very air of the State House was tense, the staff scurrying around as if slowing to a walk might endanger the battle’s outcome. Tal worked from dawn to dusk in her office, at Blacksun Base, or out in the park, practicing with the divine tyrees. Salomen became adept at finding the bridge of any ship in the battle group.

  Micah rarely had time for more than a passing word with either of them. He and Gehrain were setting up protection for the divine tyrees, who would be dangerously exposed should the Voloth send modified fighters to Blacksun. When Gehrain had that sufficiently in hand, Micah left him to the smaller details and lent his expertise to the emergency shelter plan.

  Citywide evacuations were not planned. They should not be necessary, due to their much improved defenses and the improbability of another attempted invasion. In addition, past experience had shown that such large-scale evacuations caused an entirely different set of issues, including fatalities. If the worst occurred, the temple bells would ring to alert residents to seek shelter.

  Micah’s task lay in a different type of evacuation. Wanting to prepare for any eventuality, Tal had ordered a plan to shelter a small population from orbital bombardment. It was a war crime to devastate cities from orbit, one Ekatya said the Voloth had never committed.

  Neither Tal nor Micah found that of any great comfort.

  In the event of the unthinkable, they would need to protect their government and a cross section of Alseans chosen for their ability to reestablish Alsean civilization. The Caphenon was their largest shelter, shielded and equipped to feed more than a thousand. Even more secure was the war room level of Blacksun Base, their original hardened shelter before the Caphenon crashed. Other bunkers and shelters abounded within the cities.

  Those selected for the plan called Alsea Ascendant would be escorted when the time came. Even as a hypothetical exercise, the decisions of who would live and who would be left to die wore down his soul.

  All around him were the stresses of impending warfare. Their tactics were risky, their strategies based largely on conjecture and Tal’s instincts, and the consequences of failure could shatter Alsea.

  None of it mattered when he held Alejandra in his arms.

  For most of his life, he had been faithful to the memory of Realta. Casual joinings never touched his heart, and working with Tal made it impossible to forget. She would smile a certain way, or raise an eyebrow, or speak in a particular tone of voice, and he would see Realta shining through her daughter. It wasn’t that he couldn’t move past his ancient loss. It was that he had no wish to.

  When he and Alejandra conducted their Rite of Knowing, his heart opened wide in a single night. Every hantick they spent together anchored the truth more firmly: Fahla had given him a second love as great as the first. Yet it was different, and the differences were glorious.

  Realta had never been free to openly love him. Alejandra had no such restrictions. She did indeed love like she fought, with a passion and intensity that left him breathless, and she had made it immediately clear that she did not intend to hide him. On their first visit to Blacksun Temple, he had kept his distance, old habit making him cautious. She had allowed that only for the length of time it took to light the oil bowls. When she slipped her arm around his waist, openly advertising their relationship, he felt as if the light streaming through the roof was solely for them.

  What surprised him most was the ease of it. His relationship with Realta had been tumultuous, stressed by their youth and the fact that her bondmate was his best friend. She had a great heart and a bottomless depth of love to give, yet remained a scholar who did not fully comprehend or value the warrior way of thinking. He had never realized what a barrier that created until Alejandra slipped into his life with no barrier at all. She was a different sort of scholar, one who understood warriors and worked in a warrior world. It made their communication nearly effortless.

  He thought of that one day after mornmeal, when Alejandra sat at the dining table in her State House suite with a drawing pad in one hand, a pencil in the other, and a cup of shannel at her elbow. It was a peaceful moment of a well-earned day off, and had it been Realta sitting there, he would never have spoken what was on his mind.

  “Do you think it’s enough?”

  She looked up. “Do I think what is enough?”

  “Everything. Our preparations. Ekatya’s preparations. Yours. You’ve battled the Voloth before. In space, I mean. Will it be enough?”

  “All I saw of those battles were the bodies that came into my medbay. Are my preparations enough? Yes. But that’s not what you’re asking.”

  She set down her pencil and turned the pad to face him. Using fine lines and shading, she had drawn what she saw: the window of the dining area, looking onto a sweeping view of the State Park and Blacksun’s skyline beyond. In the foreground, drawn with more detail than the rest, was the bud vase on the sill with its tiny bouquet of flowers.

  “This is what we’re all fighting for,” she said. “Keeping this from harm. I fight on the individual scale, one body at a time. You and Tal and Ekatya, you’re all fighting on a global scale. You’ve told me what Tal did during the Battle of Alsea. I’ve read Ekatya’s service record. You want my opinion? I think the Voloth are fools to come back and get their heads handed to them a third time.”

  No, she was not Realta, he thought as she rose from her chair and slipped around the table. With a dancer’s grace, she straddled his lap and crossed her wrists behind his neck.

  “I want to draw you,” she said.

  “Which part of me?”

  “Well . . .” Her eyebrows lifted suggestively. “Your face, of course.”

  “Oh. I was hoping I’d need to be naked.”

  “It’s best if you are.”

  “For your creative urges?”

  “For the urges that come after those.”

  Laughing, he tried to kiss her but couldn’t keep his lips in the right shape. “You’d get kissed more often if you didn’t keep making me smile.”

  “That’s not an incentive to stop. I love your smile.” Hers dimmed, though, and he sensed a serious conversation approaching.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I’ve decided to accept the job.”

  In the moon and a half since telling him of Prime Scholar Yaserka’s offer, she had not mentioned it again. He had been afraid to ask, fearing disappointment. Now his heart soared.

  “That cannot have been an easy decision,” he said.

  She gave him a look of gratitude. “No, but these simulations have tipped me over the edge. I’m done with this part of my life. I’ll get through this battle, and that will give Ekatya a good long time to find my replacement before she’ll need another war-ready chief surgeon. I hate to leave her there, but you were right. She wouldn’t want me to stay just for her.”

  “And Rahel?”

  Her lips thinned. “Rahel is . . . making plans for her own future. We’ve talked about it, and we’re supporting each other in the paths we’ve chosen.”

  While the truth of that was in their skin contact, a world of unspoken meaning ran beneath her words.

  He did not press her. When she wanted him to know, she would tell him.

  “I’ll be living in Blacksun by next moon, if all goes well.” She leaned against the table, her hands at his waist. “I don’t want you to feel pressured by this. Nothing has to change. I plan to find a house somewhere close, so I can walk over and see you.”

  “That must be a fine salary Yaserka is offering. Houses close to the State Park are handsomely priced.”

  “It’s a very fine salary.” A disbelieving smile crossed her face. “I don’t think I’ll be budgeting for my next set of paintbrushes.”

  Her happiness, even as cautious as it was, released his own elation. “Yaserka is an arrogant ass, but he’s also a skilled politician. He knows what you’re worth. You’ll be a credit to his caste and a gift to Alsea.” He tucked a lock of hair behind her shoulder. “I don’t feel pressured. I feel blessed. Do you think one rack of oil bowls will be enough to thank Fahla? Perhaps I should light two.”

  She caught his hand and kissed it. “Light as many as you want. I’ll help. This is all my dreams but one, and I’ve made my peace with that one.”

  “Josue.”

  She nodded.

  “I know that you would never, could never replace him,” he said carefully. “But if you’re leaving Fleet and setting up a new life on Alsea . . . is there any reason you couldn’t include a family in that life?”

  “Well, I was hoping for a family of two at some point.” She squeezed his hand.

  “As do I. But I’m referring to a child.”

  Shock jolted through her touch. “What?”

  “Being a mother is as much a part of your heart as being a healer. If you had the opportunity, is that something you would consider?”

  “I don’t—are you talking about adoption?”

  “I’m talking about us. Having our own child.”

  “I can’t. You know that. Even if I still had a uterus, I’d be past the age of child bearing.”

  “But I’m not.”

  She scrambled off his lap with none of her earlier grace. “You’re Alsean,” she blurted. “My sainted Shippers, I never—” A vehement string of foreign words followed.

  “I’m Alsean,” he agreed.

  “Micah, you’re my age.”

  What did that matter? “It’s true that most of us bear children earlier, but I couldn’t with Realta, and there was no one else until you. I’m still capable. You didn’t know that?”

  “I’m not studying for obstetrics! Or pediatrics! Making peace with that loss doesn’t mean I want to torture myself with—no. No, no, you can’t say that like it’s—you can’t—” She bent her head, clasping it with both hands, then whirled and marched to the window.

  Quietly, he collected their dishes and carried them to the kitchen. He poured out the now-cool shannel and scraped the plates, stacked everything on the cart, pushed it into the corridor, and activated the call signal. State House staff would pick it up within five ticks.

  When he rejoined her, Alejandra had not moved. She stared out the window, radiating such tension that the walls were virtually visible around her body. His touch, and the emotional disclosure it enabled, would not be welcome.

  “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he said. “It was never my intention.”

  “Hurt me?” She let out a harsh laugh. “Hurt me. More like shred my heart. Why would you bring that up?”

  “You said you had all your dreams but one. I thought—”

  “We’re not compatible,” she snapped. “Your healers tested it when it became a potential issue with the Voloth settlers. Even if implantation were possible, the gametes won’t combine. I’m happy for you that you can still have children. By all means, go out and have them. But it won’t be with me.”

  “I don’t want to do it without you.”

  “Then I’m sorry.”

  He caught her wrist as she turned away and winced at the searing pain beneath her skin. “Alejandra.”

  “Let me go.”

  “Please listen.”

  She pulled with all her strength. “Let me go or so help me, I will—”

  “Alseans use a surrogate.”

  Her arm went slack. She didn’t speak or look at him, but she wasn’t trying to run.

  He let his hand slide past her limp fingers. “When one bondmate is not capable, the couple choose a surrogate and begin the creation ceremony together. All three of them work to create life. They’re all involved.”

  Her only response was to wrap her arms around her waist and stare at the floor.

  “You grieve because you had only one opportunity,” he said softly. “That’s no longer true. I wanted you to know that you have a choice.”

  Without turning her head, she gave a single nod.

  Then she went straight out the door.

  38

  Battle prep

  Rahel suspected she shouldn’t enjoy this as much as she did. There was so much at stake, both for Alsea and the Fleet battle group assigned to protect it. The intelligence regarding a Voloth attack was now plentiful and incontrovertible, according to Captain Serrado. They were on their way. The only questions remaining were how many ships would come and when they would arrive. People on all sides would die, possibly thousands of them. She herself would be at great risk.

  Yet she had never felt so alive.