MIA II

(Starspeak)

Nai woke up three days after the battle.

Half her family was waiting for her.

She tried leaping up from her hospital bed the moment she realized she was conscious.

A heavy hand caught on her chest, pushing her back down. Nai's grabbed at the hand on reflex, but it didn't budge. She forced herself to stop and take stock of where she was.

"Easy there."

The sound of that voice was beloved. The hand pushing her back was Tasser's. Nerin was right next to him. Caleb was—

"Where's Caleb?" Nai frowned.

"Way to skip to the hardest question," Tasser said. He sounded like he was trying to joke, but his voice was mirthless.

"Where—" Nai started.

"You're aboard the Siegfried," Nerin explained. "You've been badly injured. Don't move."

If anyone else tried telling her that, she'd ignore them. But when her sister gave a medical opinion, Nai listened. Reluctantly, she let Tasser push her back into the bed.

"What happened?" she asked. "I can tell I was out for a while. But, the robot? The Black Knight. What happened?"

"I've got a shard with all our footage from the battle," Tasser said, handing her a small black chip laden with psionics. "But the short version…we lost."

"Casualties?" Nai asked.

"Our people? No fatalities. Somehow. One person still missing," Tasser said. "A whole mess of civilians died though. Serral and Peudra have spent the last two days extricating us from this mess."

Nerin busied herself by beginning more medical examination now that Nai was awake. Nai barely reacted even as her sister started poking and prodding.

"Are we getting blamed?"

"No," Tasser said. "Our Dogs did a lot of intervening. They saved a lot of lives, and there's plenty of people who're vouching that we tried to help…Nora called in some Vorak military personnel too. They did some after-action investigation too."

"Vorak military got to investigate us in battle?" Nai snorted. "Bet they leapt at that opportunity…"

"Yep. But their findings still corroborated us," Tasser said. "The Vorak military dissected every single thing we did looking for anything to pin on us big-bad Coalition folks. And they still didn't find any fault with us. Crazy right?"

Nai laughed only to immediately flinch.

"Oh— oh, that hurts…"

"You've got a lot of broken bones," Nerin said. "Aarti took a look at you earlier, but she couldn't really help until you're awake. Should I call her?"

"What about Jean—" Nai started, but then she remembered the events on the station. "Yeah. Call Aarti."

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Once one of the immature Puppies, Aarti had arguably wound up the most mature of them. When time had come to subject themselves to actual combat training rather than the excuse for tutelage Win had given them…Aarti had bowed out.

It felt good to be ready for a fight. Every last one of the abductees knew what real fear was, and for the oldest among them, they wanted nothing more than to destroy whatever might threaten their vulnerable flock. Being ready for a fight was one of the few things that could reassure the most primal corners of their brains.

So, it was exceedingly difficult to admit when that role wasn't 'you'.

Complicating matters even more was the fact that Aarti was actually decent in a fight. But it took a huge toll on her, far exceeding what anyone would consider normal, even for the abductees.

Her reaction to danger and the chaos of battle was bad enough that she hadn't slept since tangling with the Black Knight. And she'd only dipped into that fight for a few minutes.

Then again, the Black Knight was certainly scary enough, maybe her reaction was the normal one.

Still, the more she pivoted away from a combat role, the more she'd taken up other responsibilities. Including medical ones. Like Donnie, she was M1 and E2, but she exceeded him in both categories. Strictly speaking, her Adeptry was superior to his in every way. She, along with a handful of Flotilla Adepts, had polished their patching skills to the point where they could actually close other people's wounds in addition to their own.

As always, the patches were a temporary fix, and patching other people lasted even less time. But repeatedly applied, two people's patching was better than one, and it could shrink recovery time by as much as half if the right person was helping.

Aarti was definitely one of the right people.

"You're making me want to dig for the good Hindi swears," Aarti marveled. "Because looking at these bones and [hot, damn] just doesn't feel like it does this justice."

"I know six languages, and out of all of 'em English expletives are the best," Tasser said.

"That's only because you have no pride in your homeworld," Nai pointed out.

"[Damn] right," Tasser snorted.

Aarti smiled too, but her focus was on pushing her cascade through Nai's shoulder and bicep. Nai was carefully keeping her own cascade's touch as light as possible so as not to brush away Aarti's. Pushing a cascade through living flesh was already tough enough. No need to make it harder.

<Two fractures,> Aarti said, psionically highlighting the breaks in Nai's skeleton. <On my mark or yours?>

<Yours,> Nai said.

Even the tiny motion of moving their mouths to talk might introduce micro-errors in the patchwork. So they didn't.

<Dissolve on two, patch on three,> Aarti decided. <Five. Four. Three. Two…>

Nai dissolved the hasty work she'd done to hold her skeleton together, relying on Aarti and Tasser's hands to keep the fractures set for the single second delay for…

<…one!>

Aarti and Nai both attempted to materialize exotic material, cementing the broken bones together. Materializing inside someone else's body was devilishly hard. It was only by relying on almost an hour's worth of preparation and the assistance of Nai's own cascade that Aarti could even materialize a couple grams.

But when it came to patching bones, even a gram or two of extra material could help. Even if it came from a different Adept, with a different perspective, it was like adding carbon to iron to get steel. A little bit went a long way.

"You should get Nora to look at this," Aarti said. "She's better at this than me."

"No."

Nai's words were plain and final.

Aarti nodded reluctantly. "Let me at least ask? Or see if Roxanne came here too?"

"She didn't," a new voice in the doorway said. "Roxy s-stayed back on Archo."

Michelle was poking her head in.

"Horns?" Aarti asked, confused by the girl's appearance.

"E-external augs," Michelle said. "My body tries to materialize them no matter what, and it's a lot better for me if they're o-outside of my head."

"Still lingering neurological symptoms?" Nerin asked. "If you're here for a check-up, we'd need to wait for the Jack to return . My good intracranial scanner isn't aboard the Siegfried right now."

"N-no. Here to let you know there's a war council in a few m-minutes," Michelle said.

"Oh, that." Nerin glanced at her sister who was fighting off the temptation to haul herself toward attending such a meeting. <Captain Serral, can this war council happen in my infirmary? Nai's awake, but I don't want her moving yet.>

<Done,> he said.

Tasser put his hand on Nai's shoulder, preemptively offering some comfort.

"Before this place becomes the war room, you need to know about Caleb…"

"Yeah, where is he?" Nai asked.

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Said war council involved roughly half the Flotilla's seniormost personnel and a significant portion of the Missions' leadership too.

Serral and Nora were the main players. Backing them up were Nai, Tasser, Ike, Ben, Sid, and Madeline for the Flotilla, with Michelle and Ken subtly forming a small cluster of Mission representatives.

There were a number of topics in dire need of coverage, but one of them quickly distinguished itself from the rest. The absence of Caleb in the room practically shouted.

"Chasing HUNGRY and getting Caleb back has to be the number one priority," Madeline insisted.

"You're dating him. I'm not sure you're objective on that count," Ike said.

"What, you eager for his job the second he's gone?" Madeline scoffed.

Ike just eyed her.

"I know you're in a bad space right now," he said carefully, "so, I'm going to let that pass."

A fraction of Madeline's anger softened.

"…Sorry," she said. "I know I'm biased, but I think everyone would be about Caleb. Why are we even talking about this?"

"Because plans already existed," Serral said simply. "Caleb helped make most of them."

"The next thing on our flight plan was to put the Siegfried in drydock for a week or two," Madeline said. "That isn't getting in the way of grabbing our toughest fighters, piling into the Jack, and running that [robo-bitch] down," Madeline said.

"That's actually not far off from what Caleb actually had planned," Nora observed. "But with what we had planned, we weren't thinking of going after HUNGRY first."

Madeline glared at Nora.

"Then what?"

Nora grimaced.

"The Black Knight," Serral clarified.

All the Flotilla members save Serral gaped at him. Even the non-Flotilla members looked surprised.

"Don't get me wrong," Nai said slowly, "tall, dark, and ugly is very near the top of my hit list right now, but why is it taking a higher priority than HUNGRY?"

"You want to field this one?" Serral asked, turning to Nora.

"No," she said frankly. "But I suppose I have to; the Black Knight is the only one we can track."

"Jordan gave you his pearl," Madeline frowned. "Why can't we track my boyfriend?"

"The thing letting me track Caleb is gone," Nora said lamely. "I don't know what happened to it."

"What do you mean it's gone?" Nai hissed. She'd held her tongue so far, but only because she was still catching up with the news of Caleb's disappearance. But even half-lying down in a hospital bed, her anger didn't seem the slightest bit less threatening.

"Jordan gave me the construct, I was pinging it while I chased down HUNGRY and Caleb. The tunnel caved in, and when I came to, the construct was gone from my mind," Nora recounted. "I don't know what happened to it."

"That isn't how psionics work, and you know it," Nai accused.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"I don't know how it happened," Nora said, "only that it did, and that it limits our options."

Nai glared at Nora. She couldn't be the only person in the room suspecting the girl's account. Was Nora the kind of person who'd intentionally destroy the pearl and sabotage Caleb's rescue? Nai's instinct said probably not. But then those same instincts had, years ago, said 'she probably won't paralyze me and try and drag Caleb back into Vorak clutches'.

"We could still go after HUNGRY," Madeline insisted. "It and Caleb are either still on Rava, or they took a ship. And there can't be any airspace in the system more closely monitored than this moon. Not right now."

"No, there's a whole planet's worth of airspace not far away that would make the emergency measures here look like school picture day," Sid chipped in.

"True. That aside, we actually do think we know that HUNGRY took Caleb off world. We think we even know which ship they were on."

Serral tapped into the ship's psionic-hologram system and projected a flight path that originated from a very strange looking dark spot just outside the colony canopy.

Ken let out a low whistle.

"[You guys have all the toys…]"

"[We invented them,]" Ben said smugly.

Serral gave a small click in his throat, calling their attention back.

"That tunnel Nora chased down ultimately connected to an old mass driver for when the colony's underground was first being excavated. The bore's gone unused for decades now, but a ship came screaming out within an hour of seismic disturbance."

"Okay, but this is only furthering Madeline's point," Sid said. "If we're confident Caleb is on that ship, why are we even thinking of prioritizing the Black Knight?"

"Because Caleb and I sat down, put our heads together, and workshopped strategy for the immediate timeframe," Nora said. "The top of the agenda was killing SPARK. In context? That means hunting down the Black Knight."

"And we're just supposed to take your word for it?" Madeline scoffed.

"Caleb told me about some of it," Tasser said, almost reluctant.

Nai frowned.

"He talked to me about it a little, but it didn't seem like a firm decision had been made," she said.

"We had," Nora said. "The Black Knight business blindsided us timing-wise, but the basic plan was exactly what you described. Build a crew of our best, radically change our MO, and take as aggressive action as possible to track down SPARK and kill him."

"Why SPARK?" Nai asked. "By all indications, CENSOR has the information we really need."

Nora grimaced.

"Three reasons—all Caleb's—firstly, CENSOR does have the information we need. She's better informed, better supplied, and overall just harder to kill. SPARK has more of a history of exploiting people that we can exploit in turn. Basically? SPARK's the feasible target. Secondly, even if SPARK doesn't have all the same privileges and authority that CENSOR does, he definitely still has information we want. Information that will likely help when CENSOR's turn comes. Thirdly…because I said so."

At least, those were the words Nora spoke aloud. Psionically, on the most secure channels that Nora had once helped develop alongside Caleb and Nai, Nora added <Thirdly, because we're pretty sure if we go after SPARK, we're going to 'incidentally' get some help.>

Nai glared at her. The implication of switching to those psionics then…she couldn't possibly think someone had ears inside the Flotilla's ships, could she?

Nora paced while she talked, explaining the broad strokes of her and Caleb's rough draft to assassinate a robot. She paced a little too close to Nai as she silently explained the actual third reason.

Teal flames sparked angrily between them.

Everyone in the room froze.

"Don't touch me," Nai said, voice icy.

Nora blinked, comprehending slowly.

"…Sorry," she said. "I won't. I wasn't thinking about that."

She backed away, keeping her hands behind her.

Nai glared at Nora.

"I think it's a mistake," she said. "We don't even know why Caleb was taken."

"Exactly," Tasser said quietly, squeezing Nai's shoulder. "We don't know enough to take the risk."

Nai almost recoiled from Tasser, realizing that he disagreed with her.

"We can't know Caleb isn't already dead," Tasser said. "And if he is? Then you know I'm going to be first in line to ruin the responsible party, no matter how long it takes. But in the meantime? We do as Caleb planned."

"Serral, you know I say this with all due respect," Madeline began, "but Caleb is the leader of the Flotilla. This whole thing doesn't work without him."

"I agree," Ike said. "Mostly."

Nods went around. Even Michelle looked like she agreed.

"You're wrong," Tasser said simply.

"Why, because you've known Caleb longer than us?" Ike asked.

"Because this isn't a game," Tasser said, taking care to look at Nai and Madeline specifically. "The Flotilla isn't some kids' club where we all get a vote, or we just all do what we feel like. And we don't just fall apart the second Caleb's not around. We have rules and structure. And like it or not, Caleb and Nora made a plan. And that plan included guidelines for if either of them died."

"Caleb's not dead," Madeline insisted.

No one argued that point. Nobody would take Caleb's death harsher right now, not right after her brother.

"Maybe not, but for the purposes of leading this Flotilla? He's completely incapacitated," Nora said.

Nai glared at her.

"…You and Caleb really wrote down detailed strategy?"

"You guys blocked out six hours in our schedules," Nora said. "You really thought we'd spend the whole time barking at each other?"

Punctuating the statement, she shared the rough draft of the plan she and Caleb had drawn up for going after SPARK.

"[Oh, hell no,]" Madeline said, looking at the command structure.

Caleb had been marked to lead the venture, but in his absence, Nora was the default leader.

"You can barely fight!" she complained. "How are you supposed to lead us on a mission like this?"

"Yeah," Ben added. "It wouldn't be some open-ended 'possible' hostilities deal. Violence is explicitly intended and expected."

Nai noticed Tasser's attention on Nora. They'd talked, she realized. He sent something psionic to her. Short words.

"First of all, I can fight," Nora said. "But I'm not stupid enough to think I would be an ideal commander in a tactical situation. I might dictate strategy, but I'm more than willing to defer to Nai's expertise in battle."

"What good is deferring if you're still dictating strategy?" Ike asked, half-mocking, half genuinely confused.

"Tactics versus strategy," Nai elaborated. "Tactics is how you fight a battle. Strategy is how you plan the war. She's saying she'll pick the battles, but I'll actually command them."

"Still have to pull your weight in a fight," Madeline grumbled.

"I have a winning spar record against everyone across the Missions save Siobhan and Mack," Nora said. "If that's not good enough…"

Madeline wanted to argue. Siobhan and Mack were on a short list of people she couldn't beat either.

"I'm just saying, you don't have a winning record against me. Or Nai," Madeline griped. It was a hollow complaint though.

"It just feels wrong," Ike said. "Shelving Caleb like this?"

"I actually ag-gree," Michelle said. "Caleb's done a lot to help everyone. Sure, it w-would be nice to act like he's just another missing person's case. B-but he's not."

"I share the feeling as well," Serral said. "But everyone in this room is in this room because you're leadership in some form. We can't make decisions just based on how we feel."

"[Damn it!]" Nai hissed, and she half-pumped her arm like she was going to punch the gurney's railing She arrested the movement short of actual impact, but everyone on her half of the room gave a start anyway. Except Tasser. His hand didn't even twitch on her shoulder. "They're right."

"Come on, you can't be serious," Sid said.

"We can't just leave Caleb," Madeline said, voice icy.

Nai looked at her specifically.

"Put it this way: Caleb got taken, and we all want to see the one responsible suffer. I trust Caleb more than anyone else to make them suffer."

Tasser pointed satisfyingly at Nai. See?

"Is there anyone who thinks they could do a better job of getting Caleb back than Caleb himself can?" he added.

No one could refute that.

"…Fine," Nai said. "The Black Knight first—but don't think I'm done about Jordan's pearl being 'gone'."

She glared at Nora accusingly.

"Maybe Jordan can explain," Nora suggested.

"Yeah, speaking of her, where is she?" Madeline frowned.

"That will require moving venues," Serral explained. "Nai, I assume you'll be staying here for now?"

"Yeah," she said, turning to Michelle and Ken. "You two are about to see some super classified tech. Keep your yaps shut, or you'll answer to me."

They both nodded, trying their best not to seem nervous.

"Madeline," Nai said, as they were filing out.

The girl hung back a moment.

"Yeah?"

"When you're done, come back here," Nai instructed. "We're going to talk."

The tension in Nai's face matched Madeline's own. They both loved Caleb in very different ways, and yet their reactions to his capture might have been virtually identical.

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The Flotilla's key personnel were easy to misread.

Caleb was the leader, and Nai was their ace-in-the-hole. Neither, though, was the Flotilla's most important individual.

That was Jordan.

Caleb's psionics had opened up all new possibilities, but it was Jordan's whose stood the chance to break old rules instead. Her superlocator was a marvel. Of the handful of superconstructs, hers was the only one whose function Caleb hadn't been able to reproduce in any capacity, even in theory.

The superlocator was oddly named and impossible to wrap your head around unless you had exactly Jordan's advanced and personal understanding of spacetime.

Of course, if you didn't have a head, it turned out to be just barely, a teeny-tiny bit easier.

Inside the heart of the Siegfried was a sensitive compartmented information facility. It was a single room, just smaller than a bank vault. And it held the most valuable piece of technology in the cosmos.

A machine-reproduction of Jordan's psionic masterpiece.

"<You read us?>" Serral asked.

The machine at the heart of the vault hummed.

"<Loud and clear,>" Jordan reported from more than twenty light-minutes away.

Zero communication delay. It was the holy grail of logistics and information advantage.

"<Status?>"

"<The Famine is parked in a high orbit around Igoyungit,>" Jordan reported.

Madeline frowned, looking at Tasser.

'Famine?' she mouthed.

"The [black horse] for the Black Knight," he explained.

"Famine's the horseman, though," Madelin frowned. "Not the horse."

"[If you're talking about horsemen of the apocalypse, famine might not be any of them. 'Death' is the only rider that gets named. The others just had colored horses and symbols,]" Nora said.

"<So it's a mixed metaphor, sue me,>" Jordan chimed in. Her voice was always more expressive and emotional over psionics. "<Can we focus?>"

"<Yes, sorry,>" Nora said. "<You're sure it's the same ship?>"

"<Yeah, we're sure. It doesn't match any known hull configurations, and what hull profile it's been showing? It's been changing. We think the outer hull has some modular plating or some kind of flexible adjustable shell. If we were any other ship, with any other scopes, we'd have to be ten times closer to detect the change in morphology.>"

"<What I'm hearing sounds like a very suspicious ship. How do we know it's actually the same ship?>" Serral asked.

"<You mean besides my pearl on board?>" Jordan asked. "<The reactor sig matches too.>"

Serral grunted in satisfaction. Infrared scans of a reactor were ordinarily useless for confirming an ID save for at ultra-close range. Except…when the Black Knight had fled, the Jack had gotten a hot read on the ship from a range of less than five miles.

"<I realize that you definitely know more about it than I do,>" Nora said. "<But with the pearl you gave me for Caleb, I could only track it by broadcasting a signal through it and intercepting it on the bounce back. Are you having to actively psionically broadcast to track this pearl?>"

"<No,>" Jordan said.

She didn't elaborate.

"<You said it's in high orbit around Igoyoungit,>" Serral said. "<What altitude specifically? Is it verging—>"

"<It's within ten clicks of quarantined airspace,>" Jordan said. "<But that's the bad news. We're pretty sure it's invisible to scopes that aren't ours, so…>"

Serral grimaced.

"<So you alerted enforcement just in case. It's going to move soon Jordan. Have Fenno widen the scopes to detect any movement from quarantine-enforcement. The Black Knight took that flight path to see if anyone was pursuing it.>"

He turned to everyone else present.

"This situation is going to keep evolving fast. Nora? If a crew is going to hunt down the Black Knight, it needs to be assembled now: the Flotilla is taking off as quickly as possible."

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