THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 2 — SWORD OF DREAMS
Chapter 9: Pride
“Love is like nothing else. Without water, it will not wilt. Without food, it will not die. It will languish alone within us, awaiting its chance to bloom. Sounds like a virus to me.”
– Gruth Rommik, Lyran engineer (232 PA)
Xen’s team kept largely to themselves during the long twenty-day journey from Tynerion to Prianus. Enu-Io — dubbed Big Blue by Gripper — and Phillip were quiet by nature and spent most of their time secluded in their bunks or in the mess, reading through datadexes.
Gruth prowled the Blue Phoenix with his brown tail curled. If possible, the Lyran engineer was even more unpleasant in space than he had been on the ground. Gruth complained about everything. The Blue Phoenix was too small and the air reeked of chemicals. He was allergic to Maeve’s feathers. What did the fairy even do on the ship? Duaal’s flying was too rough and Gripper’s repairs made the whole Blue Phoenix ring like a bell. Everything that Enu-Io read was juvenile, unproven drivel. Every meal that Phillip prepared tasted like a dry sponge.
Enu-Io endured his colleague’s complaints in stoic silence, but Gruth’s abuse often drove Phillip nearly to tears. Panna did her best to soothe the Lyran. Gruth made it perfectly and loudly clear that he didn’t appreciate her attempts to play psychologist, but Panna stubbornly argued her case each time until Gruth threatened to shove her out an airlock. After each shouting match, he always seemed to feel a little better.
When Panna wasn’t busy fighting with Gruth — despite the ever-rising volume of their arguments, she never showed any sign of being particularly upset by them — she avoided Maeve. Every time the Arcadian came into a room, Panna made some excuse to leave. Whenever Maeve could catch Panna’s eye, the human paled and hurried off without explanation.
True to his word, Xen spent most of his time indulging his near-endless curiosity about Duaal and Gripper. But rather than speak to the two oddities himself, Xen preferred to question Xia about them. She didn’t mind answering, though Duaal chafed at the inattention and Gripper was frantic.
A week out from Tynerion, Xen was still fascinated. When the crew and their passengers gathered for dinner one evening — an artificial construct of time in the endless dark of space — the Ixthian steepled his fingers and looked over them at Xia.
“I don’t know what’s waiting for us on Prianus, but this trip has already more than paid for itself,” he said.
“Maybe for you, professor,” Gruth growled. He pointed with his snout across the table at Enu-Io. “I’m getting tired of smelling this one every damned day. Can’t he bunk with someone else?”
“If you were Dailon, you would find my scent irresistible,” Enu-Io answered smoothly.
“Don’t pay attention to Gruth,” Panna said with a nod. “He’s just grumpy because he’s astrophobic.”
Gruth laid his ears back flat on his skull and snarled at Panna.
“The only space that frightens me is the empty one inside your skull!” he snarled.
“Get a hold of yourself, Gruth,” Xen said. He looked annoyed. “Panna’s as intelligent as you are and twice as dedicated a student, but she lacks your mechanical expertise. I need you two to work together.”
“It’s fine, Professor Xen,” Panna said. “We’re not that fragile.”
Gruth grumbled something under his breath, but his ears pricked back up to their normal elevation. Phillip, who had held his breath through the entire exchange, finally exhaled and continued eating.
Maeve looked over at Duaal, who appeared unperturbed by the argument. Did he not care or was he simply used to fights? Maeve supposed that the exchange had been shorter and more productive than most of the squabbles between herself and the mage.
All of that bile, all of that spite, and what did Maeve accomplish by any of it? She had only wanted to die, but Xartasia laughed at her pain and said that the fall of Arcadia was not her doing.
Maeve rubbed her fingers over the worn, chipped edge of the dinner table. She was condemned either way. Was Maeve the genocidal villain who brought the Devourers to Arcadia? There was no punishment enough for such a monster.
Or was she just a foolish, self-absorbed girl? If so, then she had tormented Duaal and put the rest of the Blue Phoenix crew in terrible danger for nothing. How could she ever make up for that?
She didn’t even have the money to make amends to Tiberius for what she had done anymore.
Even as Xartasia forgave Maeve one terrible injustice — if it was even in the older princess’ authority to forgive — she found herself entangled in another. The depressing thought made Maeve crave a needle of White to wipe away the pain. But no money meant no chems… Maeve wanted to cleanse herself of the drugs, and being too poor to pay for them certainly helped the process along.
Maeve rubbed her temple hard against a sudden ache in her skull and felt eyes on her. When she raised her attention from the tabletop, Panna looked away.
“Gruth’s rudeness aside, this ship has been an endless source of curiosities,” Xen said, continuing the prior conversation. “Xia told me about your unique education, Duaal.”
The young mage took an interest for the first time all day. He sat up straight in his seat. “Oh, she did?”
“I would be fascinated to see what you can do. How many spells do you know? What exactly can they do?”
“Mostly fire and lightning spells,” Duaal told Xen. “Gavriel was an expert killer. That’s… most of what we did. I know a few other charms, though. How to inflict pain by stimulating the nerves and a nice little push spell.”
He demonstrated with a couple of words in Arcadian — “Anaa’ma vanii!” — and the still air swirled around him. It ruffled Duaal’s hair and set the napkins on the nearby table flying. Panna laughed in delight and applauded while Gruth snarled and snatched at his napkin with his claws.
“Very impressive,” Xen said with a grin. “And your teacher used to cast these spells through you, correct? How did he do that?”
“I don’t know,” Duaal answered. “It was horrible, if that helps.”
Xen’s shiny silver brow furrowed. “Can you elaborate?”
Duaal shifted uncomfortably on the couch. The attention was apparently not as pleasant as he had hoped. Xia cleared her throat and curled her antennae toward Xen.
“That was all years ago now. Duaal was very young and probably doesn’t recall very much,” she said.
Xen nodded in understanding and turned his attention toward Gripper. The Arboran stood at the counter beside the cooktop, poking a serving spoon uncertainly at the thick stew. Phillip had almost managed to make it taste as though it was made of meat instead of brown protein paste.
“And an actual alien, a species I’ve never seen before,” Xen said. “Simply amazing.”
Gripper looked up, spoon dripping brown protein sludge onto the counter. He dropped it back into the stew and took a couple of large somatoes from the refrigerator. “Yeah, I thought so, too. We had no idea there were people living on other planets either. If I ever get home, I’m not sure anyone will believe all this.”
“There’s been no discovery like you in centuries,” Xen said. “Study of your physiology and genetics would tell us a great deal about your species and your planet.”
“Really? It would?” Gripper asked. He sat down next to Maeve. “Like what?”
“An examination of your lungs might reveal differences in your native atmosphere. Obviously, it’s close enough to CWA standard that you can breathe. But how close? And your bones will be quite telling about the gravity of your homeworld…”
“My bones? You want to look at my bones?” Gripper looked around the room, searching for help.
Xia came to his rescue. She touched Xen’s elbow gently. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“Thank you!” Gripper said.
“I took several samples when he came on board,” Xia told Xen. “I’ve still got his complete redprint on file.”
Xen smiled. “You do? May I take a look?”
“Now?” Gripper objected. “But we’re still having dinner!”
“I’m done eating anyway,” said Xia.
Xen offered his elbow and she took it. Panna jumped up.
“Mind a little company?” she asked. “I’m curious, too.”
Xen beckoned over his shoulder. “Come along, then.”
Enu-Io and Gruth looked at each other, then followed Panna as she chased after her teacher, leaving Phillip alone with the Blue Phoenix crew. He noticed everyone looking at him and held up his hands.
“I’m just a geologist,” he said. “But I made pudding for dessert. Anyone else want some?”
“She spends all day with Shorts!”
The engine room was almost as large as the mess, but with far less space to move around. It was full of machinery, canisters, pipes, ducting, dials and controls. In the center loomed the bulky engines themselves, massive cylindrical constructs of fibersteel, copper and ceramic. They thrummed loudly, providing a mechanical backbeat to a symphony of grinding, buzzing, clunking and clanking.
A wide workbench filled the remaining space. Pieces of a half-disassembled device lay scattered across the top. It was as long as Maeve’s arm and twice as wide, full of circuit boards and alternating green and red wires. Maeve looked around for somewhere to sit, but the room was crowded and Gripper was pacing, so she stood awkwardly in the doorway.
“Xia has not seen Xen in years,” Maeve said. She had to shout to make herself heard over the engines. “They were close friends once, and her desire to spend time with him is easy to understand.”
“But they were… you know… together,” Gripper groaned. He clutched a huge wrench to his chest as he paced. “What if… what if he’s trying to get Silver to fall for him again?”
“I doubt that.”
“But what if he is?”
Gripper stopped pacing and threw his wrench to the floor. It rang off the fibersteel mesh and made them both wince. Maeve picked at an orange stain on the doorframe for a long moment, trying to figure out what to tell her anguished friend.
“Your challenge remains the same in either case,” she answered at last.
Gripper looked down at Maeve. “My challenge?”
“Xia does not know your affections. You must show her,” Maeve told him. “Orthain courted me for a year.”
“A year?”
“Two hundred and eighty-eight days of gifts and songs, dancing under the pale starlight. And we shared our oathsongs under Aes’ bright eye.”
“I don’t think I can dance,” Gripper said unhappily. He looked down at his huge, calloused feet. “I can’t sing, either.”
“It is the spirit of the thing, the chase. If Xia does not know your heart, then you must show it to her!”
Why hadn’t Maeve thought of it before now, every time Gripper watched Xia with his huge, love-struck eyes? The pain of her own losses had blinded her to hope.
The Arboran was nodding as he thought about what Maeve said. He picked his wrench back up and cradled it in his claws.
“You’re right, Smoke,” Gripper said. “I’m a catch, right? I’m… I don’t know… exotic?”
“You are,” Maeve agreed. “Xen will find it difficult to compete.”
“Yeah. Yeah!”
Gripper grinned and, contrary to his earlier protestations, spun in a pirouette. The mechanic brandished his wrench and turned his attention back to his messy workbench. He grabbed a large datadex and a bent stylus, talking to himself as he got to work, designing… something.
Despite the noise and heat of the engine room, Maeve lingered. She had no other pressing duties right then and it was nice to see Gripper happy. Her friend hadn’t been happy since Professor Xen set foot on the Blue Phoenix.
Maeve only wished it was so simple to improve Tiberius’ spirits. Nothing had been right with him since Stray. Since Kessa and flying illegally away from Axis.
I did not see it. I was too involved within myself, Maeve thought. Everything always came back to that, it seemed.
When Maeve first brought Kessa to the ship, Tiberius protected her. He was a Prian cop and would have done anything to help Kessa and her baby. But now Kessa and her family were gone, leaving Tiberius alone with his shame.
Superluminal flying was boring, but Tiberius was convinced that it was good practice. At the end of the second long week, Duaal sat at the controls in the Blue Phoenix’s cockpit, occasionally checking the instruments. The only change was the numbers ticking slowly by on the taximeter.
Duaal leaned back in the copilot’s chair, worn by years of just this kind of practice until no one else could sit in it comfortably. But it wasn’t comfortable for Duaal now, either. He closed his eyes and rubbed them uselessly.
It was another headache, the second one this week. The pain was an almost tangible thing — a hard ball of tight, knotted brain matter between Duaal’s temples. It pressed at the back of his eyes and made his nose burn acidly, like it was bleeding, but there was no trace of red. The pain was almost enough to make Duaal scream, but it never lasted for long. Just a few seconds — maybe a minute — and then it always vanished.
Thank God. The last thing Duaal wanted was to go shrieking around the Phoenix for everyone to hear.
And the pain was fading even now, leaving as mysteriously as it had come. Duaal supposed he should talk to Xia, but he didn’t want her or anyone else to think him weak. He could handle it.
The headaches had started about six months ago, just a week after Gharib. The first time, the pain had been so sudden and so shocking in its intensity that Duaal had screamed. And then kept screaming until his throat was raw. But he had been alone in the Blue Phoenix that night, while everyone else was off visiting Maeve at the hospital. Only Orphia had heard Duaal. She had clawed and screeched behind the door to Tiberius’ room for a half hour after it was all over.
Duaal glanced sidelong at the hawk, perched on the back of Tiberius’ shredded chair. She glared straight ahead with clouded black eyes, oblivious — or uncaring — of Duaal’s suspicion.
“There aren’t as many stars in the sky there, but the air up in the mountains is so thin and clear that they glow like fire. They look so close that you swear you could reach up and touch them. I’ve been to twenty-seven worlds and none of them have a sky quite like Prianus.”
Tiberius was talking about his homeworld again. It wasn’t the first time Duaal heard about the wonder of the Prian skies. The perfect, endless black. The diamond-glittering stars. Polar auroras like the bridal veils of old heathen gods.
“Some of the highest mountains in the entire galaxy are back on Prianus,” Tiberius said. “Mount Vessan is over fifteen miles high. There’s so little air up at the top that most atmospheric ships can’t make the flight.”
Duaal listened, but his eyes kept drifting shut. “Sounds… big.”
“The Spiral Falls are in the Oak District, where I used to work. Have I told you about them?” Tiberius asked. He didn’t wait for the answer, which was yes. “It’s the cinder cone of an ancient volcano. One of the glacial melt rivers cuts waterfalls in a spiral all around the mountain.”
Duaal’s boots thumped to the floorplates as he turned to look at Tiberius.
“If you love the wonders of Prianus so much, why aren’t you more excited to go back?” he asked. “You’ve been raw about it ever since Xia told us about it on Axis.”
But a monotone beeping forestalled Tiberius’ answer. He sat up and glared at a round yellow light that blinked on one of the control panels. The discolored label read vpA pressure.
“Damn!” Tiberius said. “Did Gripper check the carbon filters?”
“Maybe he forgot to,” Duaal answered. “He’s been working on something for the last few days. I have no idea what.”
“Maeve!” Tiberius bellowed.
He stomped out of the cockpit in search of his first mate. Duaal sat alone amidst the controls of the Blue Phoenix, wondering why Tiberius was yelling for Maeve instead of the engineer. Sometimes it was a miracle anything got done on the Blue Phoenix.
Maeve made her way aft, toward the engine room. Panna stood in the fibersteel corridor, looking over Phillip’s shoulder and pointing to something on his datadex.
“Is that close enough to cause any problems with the densitometers?” she asked.
“Not unless there’s a groundquake,” Phillip told her. “But then, you’re going to have a lot more to worry about from rockfalls than instrumentation failures.”
“That’s reassuring,” Panna said with a laugh.
Even in the dim, dingy light of the narrow hallway, her blonde hair shone like polished gold. The girl was irritatingly pretty, with a delicate, heart-shaped face and wide emerald eyes. Panna heard footsteps and turned those green eyes on Maeve’s gray ones. The human’s jaw clenched and she hurried through the nearest open door. Phillip blinked in surprise, waved shyly and then followed Panna to finish their conversation.
Maeve stood in the suddenly empty passageway for a moment, shaking her head, and then headed down the hall to the engine room.
The Arcadian held her wings out awkwardly behind her to prevent them from dragging along the stained floor or tangling in the bundles of wire hanging from the ceiling. The ship’s mechanic sat on a stool at one end of the workbench, perched on the too-small seat like an owl in a treetop. He didn’t seem to notice Maeve’s entrance or hear her calling his name.
“Gripper?”
He started and jumped up to his feet. “Smoke! There you are. Come look!”
Gripper held out what seemed to be a small computer monitor attached to a metal cone stuffed with a jumble of circuit boards all wired together. Maeve had absolutely no idea what she was looking at, but Gripper appeared quite pleased with himself.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not at all.”
“This here is part of Silver’s polytomograph,” Gripper told her, pointing to the conical section of the device. He carefully pulled aside some of the wires so that Maeve could see the disk-shaped battery inside. “I’ve got a smaller power supply in here and a screen up on top.”
“I still do not understand.”
“It’s portable now!” Gripper announced, brandishing his new creation. “I just need to put on backing and a handle on the bottom. Then it’s done!”
“Is it a gift for Xia?” Maeve asked. “A token of your affections for her?”
“Of course! Do you think she’ll like it?”
“I have no idea,” Maeve answered. “But Tiberius requested that I speak to you. Is there time now?”
“Uh, sure. I guess so.”
Gripper looked down at the polytomograph in his huge hands. He was eager to get back to work, but Maeve gingerly pushed the partially disassembled electronics aside and sat up on the edge of his workbench.
“Is Claws mad at me?” Gripper asked.
“The captain is often angry,” Maeve said. “Tiberius knows that he is a difficult man, so he asked me to speak to you. He claims to have told you to look after the carbon processing.”
“I did!”
“There is a system warning on his controls.”
Gripper slapped one huge hand against his forehead. “Right! I didn’t load the new filters. The transducting is still empty. Great Green, I’m sorry. I can’t believe I forgot about that!”
“You have been distracted lately.”
“I have not!”
Maeve arched her black brows at him. Gripper sighed.
“Maybe a little. But you have to admit, it’s going to be worth it!” With a grin, he held up the polytomograph again. “I’ll go load the filters, and then finish the backing. I can give it to Silver tomorrow!”
“I hope she likes it as well as you do,” Maeve said.
It wasn’t the sort of gift she had in mind to court Xia, but who knew what sorts of things coreworlder women enjoyed?
Xia leaned over Xen’s shoulder. Gripper’s redprint was displayed on the computer screen, filling the monitor with a densely packed map of code. Xen pointed to one of the sectors. Even after two weeks of looking at the Arboran’s genetics, taking advantage of every free moment that he could find, Xen was still just as excited as a first-year student.
“Look at that!” he said.
“At what?” Xia asked, squinting. “That’s not an active sector. It’s all just spacer code.”
Active sectors coded for actual proteins and physical structures, but they made up only part of a genetic strand, and not the largest part. The working sectors were all separated from one another by long segments of dead spacer code, which represented nothing that ever manifested in the organism’s growth. Medical doctors had no reason to study the useless junk code, but archeogeneticists did a great deal of their work with it.
“This line here is right out of a human redprint,” Xen told Xia. He underlined a short string of characters with a silvery finger. “Amazing!”
“That’s a pretty small section, Xen. We share more in common with bees than Gripper does with humans. It could be random.”
“It could,” Xen agreed with a shrug. “But it’s worth looking at.”
“You spent a year staring at the redprint for the Vanoran wolf. All it told you was what we already knew,” Xia said. “Where did you even get that, anyway? Wolves went extinct on Axis two centuries ago.”
“The Axials built up an extensive genebank during their expansionist period, when they colonized Cyrus and Tynerion. Most of the bank is still intact on Tynerion.” Xen winked at Xia and touched a sly finger to the side of his nose. “And I’ll have you know that I won an impressive grant for that analysis.”
Xia scoffed. “For a reminder that all wolves in the galaxy are related to the Lyrans? Everyone knows that. They must have been looking for a charity case that semester.”
She ruffled Xen’s short white hair.
“I’m not a charity case,” Xen said primly, but he was smirking. “I am a brilliant archeologist and geneticist. I’m head of my department at a prestigious Tynerion college. In any case, that’s not what I wrote about.”
“Vostra Nor isn’t that prestigious. What did you write about?”
“If you hadn’t gone off to play pioneer on Koji, I would have asked you to go to the award dinner with me,” Xen said. “The dean read the synopsis there. What I proposed was not that the Vanoran wolves were just related to Lyrans and other lupines, but are actually their primary ancestor.”
Xia blinked and her eyes whirled orange in disbelief.
“The primary ancestor?” she asked. “You mean… you mean that all other wolf species are descended from the Axial breed? How could that be?”
“Axis has a long and complex history,” Xen answered. “They’ve been through five dark ages, Xia. And those are just the ones we know about. It’s entirely possible that this is Axis’ second or third generation of space travel.”
Xia stroked one of Xen’s long, delicately arched antennae.
“Alright,” she said. “I suppose you are a little brilliant.”
“A little.” Xen glanced at a clock in the corner of the medbay. “We can pick this up after dinner tonight, my dear, but now I need to lend my brilliance to my students for a few hours. We’ll be on Prianus in just four more days and I need them to be ready.”
“You don’t even know what they’ve found in those mountains,” Xia reminded him.
“All the more reason I need my team ready to handle anything. God only knows what the Prian team has found and how they’ve treated it.”
“It doesn’t sound like you have much faith in the locals.”
“With all my respect to Captain Myles, I doubt the Prians would have asked for help from Tynerion if they could handle the find on their own. The colleges of Prianus are hardly the highest centers of learning in the galaxy.”
Xia raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t say that too loudly. Prians are a proud race.”
“Perhaps. But pride is the enemy of good scholarship,” Xen said philosophically.
Xia swatted the back of his head. “You’re going to get yourself shot on Prianus talking like that.”
“The Prian police are legendary in their stoic attention to duty. I expect to be well protected.” Xen stood and stretched. He gave Xia a speculative look. “I know it’s been a while since college, my dear. Medicine was always your love, but you used to have an interest in archeology.”
“I catch up on the journals when I have a chance,” Xia said with a shrug. Archeology had been a hobby. She always meant to volunteer for a student dig, but medical studies ate up too much of her time. “I’m a little surprised that I missed your thesis, actually.”
Xen’s eyes darkened. “It was published while you were a pirate prisoner. I can get you a copy, if you like.”
“I would enjoy that,” Xia answered. “Do you still want to see what that sector of Gripper’s redprint looks like? I can sequence it, if you like.”
“I’d like that very much, my dear.”
“Right over here.” Xia gestured Xen over to another counter, this one lined with a number of different imagers. She stopped, frowning. “Wait, what happened to my polytomograph?”
She stared at one of the machines. The side panel was gone and bare wires spilled out onto the countertop like intestines from an evisceration. With an effort, Xia turned the polytomograph up onto its side and peered inside. The case was a heavy box of heusion alloy, but little more. It was empty.
“Does this sort of thing happen often?” Xen asked curiously.
Xia sighed and replaced the polytomograph on the counter. It wobbled. There was something underneath, something that had been wedged behind that machine, but rolled free when she moved the polytomograph. It was a strangely disproportionate screwdriver, with a small, slender head and a huge, claw-scarred handle.
“Does that belong to your mechanic?” Xen asked.
Xia turned away and strode out into the close fibersteel corridor. “Gripper!”
Her furious shout echoed through the Blue Phoenix.
“Where’s Xia?” Duaal asked later that evening. “I thought she was on dish duty tonight.”
Gripper winced. He stood over the sink, scrubbing the dinner dishes. The green fur covering his forearms was dark and matted with water.
“Um… I gave her a present,” he sighed.
“Must have been some present.”
Duaal laughed and left Gripper alone with the dishes.
The day before the Blue Phoenix was scheduled to land on Prianus, Tiberius called Maeve up to the cockpit again.
“Gripper intended only to–” she began, trying to stave off any argument.
“I need you to go talk to Panna,” Tiberius said.
“Why is that?”
“Do you have to question every order?” Duaal asked, sitting next to the captain.
“I am not questioning the validity, simply the purpose,” Maeve said. She hated the angry tightness in her own voice. She had come ready to avoid a fight, but she found herself drawn into one anyway. Why did Duaal have to attack her at every turn?
And why did she always fight back?
“I want you two — and anyone else Panna thinks necessary — to double-check their equipment,” Tiberius told Maeve. “It’s been a long flight and they need to make sure nothing’s shifted or settled. It’s all got to be secure for the landing.”
Maeve nodded. Professor Xen was still busy with Xia, much to Gripper’s chagrin, and Panna seemed to handle most of the logistical details of the archeologist’s mission.
“I will speak with her, if I can,” Maeve said.
“If you can?” Tiberius furrowed his lined brow.
“Panna dislikes me. She avoids me as though I might somehow infect her,” Maeve said bitterly.
“You’re imagining things.”
“No. Maeve’s right on this one,” Duaal said. “Panna hates being in the same room as her.”
It stung no less coming from Duaal’s mouth. Maeve thrust her hands into the pockets of her patched spacer’s pants.
Tiberius frowned. “Do you want me to talk to her?”
“No!” Maeve said it far more sharply than she had intended and flicked her wings in irritation. “I have few enough duties on this ship and I will do them.”
After a short search, Maeve found Panna climbing the stairs leading down into the cargo bay. Maeve stood at the top, blocking Panna’s way. The pretty human girl stopped mid-step, approaching Maeve no closer.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a flat, breathless voice.
“Tiberius sent me to help you ensure that all of your team’s gear is secured. It has been in this hold for some time, unchecked. It would be a pity for your provisions to make most of the journey intact, only to break in tomorrow’s landing.”
“I… I’m sure it’s just fine.”
“It is better to check.” Maeve tried to sound pleasant. “There is nothing else happening today. We can finish the task quickly.”
Panna wouldn’t look her in the eye. “Sure. There’s a lot of heavy stuff and chemicals. I’ll check it myself. You don’t need to help. I can call Enu-Io.”
Maeve’s whole body went hot and prickly with a sudden fury. She spread her wings and fanned her feathers in a white halo. She stomped down the stairs, boots ringing loudly on the fibersteel, and stood face-to-face with Panna. The human was only barely taller than Maeve.
“My wings make me no more foolish or clumsy than you are,” she shouted. Panna winced. “Dislike me and my kind all you wish, but you and I have jobs to do! Let us finish them and then I will leave you alone once more to loathe me in solitude.”
Panna recoiled as though struck. Her face went pale and her mouth worked for a long moment without managing any words. At last, Panna nodded and climbed unsteadily back down into the Blue Phoenix cargo bay.
Maeve followed her and over the next hour, they checked each of the archeologists’ crates. A few had shifted under their orange nets, but Maeve and Panna muscled each one back into position and tightened the straps.
Panna sheepishly pointed out a half-dozen cases of solvents, slides and chemicals. All of the plastic containers were intact, but the pressure fluctuations on the ship had cracked three of the glass ones. Maeve held them delicately while Panna wound the fractured glass in an epoxy-coated tape packed for just such an occasion.
They worked in near silence. Panna spoke only when she had to. Maeve was content with her victory, such as it was, and when they were done working, she left Panna alone in the cargo bay.
