FSE

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The Shinsayasa Vineyard reminded Strong Soul of Airgidbaille so badly that she had to keep from looking over the hill to find her cottage. Every so often, she'd catch her eyes wandering, trying to spot S'cree on the wing or one of Marcus' elk wandering through the forest at the edge of the vineyard proper.

The four of them sat on an open porch overlooking the acres of vines, the table in front of them set with some of the delicacies of the world, including some of the estate's famous wine. Strong Soul hadn't come up with a good excuse not to try it, but she limited herself to the glass that was in front of her. Surprisingly, it was much sweeter than she was expecting, and it didn't have the harsh after-bite that the mead always did. She found she actually enjoyed it, even if she had to be careful of its effects.

Night Star was doing perfectly in keeping her and First Spark isolated from the rest of the Mrr'tani minds on the planet, but she could still feel them there, outside the shield of Night Star's void, and it seemed that the more there were, the more she could feel them crying out for a connection, something that would let them out of their small minds and into what she knew was the comforting home of their linked consciousness. It was the same with her when she couldn't tie them together. The longing to reach out and touch them was so strong that it was difficult to pay attention to anything else.

Fortunately, Micah was one of the consciousnesses that she could feel despite the void, one that pierced through the wall and she could still communicate with just as strongly as her companions. It was his mind that she leaned on, the cold logic that let her push aside the intense loneliness that drove her to distraction. She could feel the same thoughts from First Spark sitting next to her, and the comforting presence of someone so analytical was comforting to them both.

"Jason tells me that you're one of Marcus' Mrr'tani?" Mick asked from across the table.

Strong Soul found him just as jovial as she was expecting, and though he ran the estate as the human master, it was clear from the way that his Mrr'tani treated him, with respect and deference, that he wasn't one to mistreat anyone. The fact that he had Marcus' confidence was enough for Strong Soul to trust him all the more.

"I was. He freed me to find my own way," she answered.

"Of course. You were the one he called Meriah, weren't you?"

"That's right," Strong Soul answered, a hint of suspicion creeping into her voice.

"He spoke of you quite often whenever we would visit. He's always been proud of you, you know."

Strong Soul smiled softly and she could feel her cheeks heating while her tail swayed behind her. She never tired of hearing that her father was proud, but she still wasn't good at taking praise.

"Don't let me make you uncomfortable, miss," Mick chided, draining the rest of the wine from his goblet.

A Mrr'tanou manservant walked out the door onto the porch bearing the afternoon meal, a plate of meats and cheeses for the group. The scent when he lifted the cover on the platter had Strong Soul's mouth watering before she even reached for a plate.

"All of this is grown here. The wine, the cheese, the meat, even the grain for the bread. It's something Marcus has always enjoyed, you must try it," Mick offered, passing a loaf of crusty and savory-smelling bread.

Strong Soul helped herself to a modest pile of food and sat back, watching the rest of them. Stargazer, as she predicted, took only a small portion while Night Star piled it on his plate. She could feel his hunger across their link, the effort of keeping them all shielded taking more energy than he was used to. First Spark paid careful attention to how much Strong Soul was taking and matched her plate to her mentor's.

"Shinsayasa is lovely," Strong Soul said when she was settled again. "It reminds me of Airgidbaille."

"Marcus says the same thing every time. I keep trying to talk him into just moving, but he says he loves Silverwell too much. He's taken with his domed city."

"He prefers to be out of the way of the well-traveled lanes, from what I recall," Night Star said, finally entering the conversation.

"Yes, well, I understand that sentiment," Mick said, a dark tone in his voice. "The Allied Planets keep getting closer and closer. Someone once said that the only purpose of government was to get into a man's business, and I can't tell you a time that they had a longer nose than the do now. We've got tariffs and taxes and all manner of payments. It's a wonder that some of us ever turn a profit out here."

"Seems they're always looking for ways to make people pay for something," Night Star answered, sipping his wine slowly.

"Yeah, just this last cycle, we had three cruisers turning our spaceport upside down, something about some escaped Mrr'tani probably coming here." Mick scoffed, "Hell, only ones that ever come here are you. Granted the last time you didn't have an entourage. You girls aren't escaped fugitives are you?"

He didn't wait for them to answer before laughing and Strong Soul tasted the edge of his mind how much he thought the idea was ludicrous. Behind her, she felt Stargazer's mind flex and tighten, and she knew that if she were to turn around and look, she'd find his body ready for anything.

"I don't remember the Alliance taking that much of an interest in a runaway before," Night Star remarked.

"Apparently, it ain't your normal runaways," Mick said. "Seems they incited a mutiny on a cruiser, darn near blew it in half when they sabotaged the sail nodes. Almost ran it into a grav wave."

Strong Soul lowered her eyes to the glass in front of her and said nothing.

"Obviously, the one they're looking for is on the cruiser."

"Nope, they say that there's an escaped Mother out there, and she's the one that caused it, all on another ship and everything."

Strong Soul fought the urge to turn and look at Night Star, focusing instead on her wine. The quick beating of her heart in her chest tugged at the tight control she'd been exercising since they landed. The burst of stress in her mind was answered calmly by a small wave of curiosity, the barest touch of Micah's mind calming her. She relaxed just the slightest bit of her control, enough to let him inside, so that he could experience the moment with her. While the action satisfied the AI's curiosity, it also let her retreat a bit further into his ordered mind to regain control.

"You think that one Mother did that?" Night Star asked quietly.

"Who knows?" Mick answered, shrugging. "Don't know all that much about it, do we? Never been a Mother around to ask."

Night Star only nodded, then finished off his own drink to begin making more headway on his snacks.

"So when's the next shipment, Mick?" He asked finally, his mouth half-full with one of the crusty rolls.

"Oh, we'll have another cruiser coming with some basic supplies in another couple cycles. Other than that, it's just you and whenever you get Marcus to send me more of his stuff."

"We only have two more stops before we're back at Silverwell. I don't think we're going to have to rearrange our schedule this next time like we did, so we should be back fairly soon."

Strong Soul looked over at him when she felt a gentle nudge of his foot under the table against hers. He caught her eye with a smile and she saw his eyes quickly flick to her plate and back with a touch of urgency against the link. She answered with a caress of her mind and took the last few bites off her plate while he continued.

"Should I tell Marcus that you need anything in particular?" he asked Mick.

While there was nothing different about the tone of his voice, Strong Soul felt a growing anxiety beneath his calm exterior. She wanted to ask about it, wondering exactly what it was, she squashed her curiosity before it started. First Spark's hand on her shoulder told her that the other girl felt it, too. She answered the touch with a subtle nod and set her plate down on the table.

A subtle touch from Micah at the front of her mind brought her to full alertness. Something was happening around the ship, and Micah didn't want to risk her control over herself to outright show her what it was, but she knew the others could feel it, too.

"Just let him know that I'm fully behind his new business endeavor, and if he can send me the documents he's been talking about, I'm happy to go all in with him. You just bring them out the next time you come by, if it's not going to be too long."

Mick held Night Star's eyes for a moment and then stood up.

"But you have other planets you have to get to, don't you?" he asked, his previous good cheer not having been interrupted at all. "I shouldn't keep you, seeing as how you're already pretty late on your run."

"Nothing we can't catch up on, sure," Night Star said, standing with him. The rest of the Mrr'tani did the same, instinctively moving closer together as they did. "But I'm sure Kroyavska is eagerly awaiting their stuff."

Strong Soul stepped even closer to Night Star and slowly slid her hand into his, seeking only the contact with him. She felt his hand tighten around hers and she smiled.

"Then I won't keep you. From what I hear, the folks on Kroyavska will skin you and leave you out for the near-bears." Mick chuckled and walked with them to the door of the plantation. A car was waiting, the driver standing with the door open.

"Give my love to Susan, and hurry back, okay?"

Night Star nodded and Strong Soul noticed the emphasis on the word 'hurry.'

Together, the four of them climbed into the back of the car and secured themselves as it started off towards the spaceport.

"Tell Micah to be ready when we get there, love," Night Star said quietly to Strong Soul.

She nodded as she felt him lightening his void upon her and she opened her link fully with Micah. To her relief, none of the others seemed affected at all. They still remained, as hungry as ever, in the back of her mind, but there was no connection beyond the very basic feelings.

With the full connection open, she closed her eyes and sank fully into the artificial consciousness, letting Micah show her what he needed. With her eyes shut, she could see and feel through the ship's various sensors and while there was nothing immediately wrong with the ship, the scanners told a different story.

"There's an allied cruiser coming over the horizon," she said to the others in the car. "It wasn't there when we arrived, so it must have come out of hyper after we began our descent."

"How long until it's over the spaceport?" Stargazer asked.

"Four hours," Strong Soul answered.

"Coincidence?" Night Star asked.

"You felt the way Mick changed," Strong Soul said. "I think he knew they were coming. Would he turn us in?"

"No. Mick is a reconstructionist," Night Star answered. "He's one of the ones in the council, along with Marcus, who think that the Mrr'tani should be given their home back and sent along their way."

"Then why is it here?" Strong Soul asked.

The answer came clear as day to her mind as Micah scrolled a communications log before her mind's eye.

"Someone sent a transmission offplanet five minutes after the Pride landed," she said aloud to the others.

"That means that they're not just using trackers looking for you, love," Night Star said. "They know the Pride has something to do with this."

"We know they at least suspect," Stargazer clarified.

"Knowing and suspecting are pretty much the same when it comes to the Alliance, Stargazer. You know that, especially where the Mrr'tani are concerned."

"What does that mean?" First Spark asked quietly.

"They don't care if we actually had anything to do with the cruiser," Night Star answered. "They don't even have to be sure to make us all go away. If we give them the chance, they'll impound the ship and ship us all out to their most unpleasant work camp. Most of us are free, but that doesn't mean that we have any kind of rights that they don't want to give us."

While Night Star was explaining, Strong Soul was busy with her link to Micah. With only a thought, she began working her way through the procedure to ignite and idle the engines, test the thrusters, and all the other little things that needed to be done before the Pride could lift off. There wasn't anything that needed to be done physically except be on board when the ship took off, and she wanted to ensure that they didn't waste time when that was the case.

"About three minutes, love," Night Star said, looking out the window.

"Micah has the ramp down waiting for us. We'll be out of atmo and on our way with an hour to spare."

"What about the cruiser?" Stargazer asked.

"They'll probably see us, but they won't be able to do anything about it," Strong Soul answered, watching Micah's calculations scrolling through her mind's eye.

"How about backup at the gate?" Stargazer asked.

"We're not going through the gate," Night Star answered, his voice hard. "If they know that they're looking for our ship, then we can't exactly just hop through. Besides, if that's the case, then it's not going to matter how quickly we get to the next stop. We're not finishing this run."

"We don't know that they're looking for the Pride," Stargazer said, "not for sure."

"Well, in that case, we'll look like smugglers, making a run for it. It won't give them much pause. That's a relatively common thing out here."

Stargazer nodded and turned to the door of the car as the spaceport loomed in front of them. Seconds later, the car was stopped in front of their gate. Fortunately, the Pride was a cargo hauler primarily and not a passenger vessel, so it was assigned one of the more open-access cargo pads for landing. Had they been forced to use the passenger terminal, they would have been subject to much more scrutiny. As it was, since the same four Mrr'tani who arrived were the same ones leaving, there was no additional security.

The Pride sat on the pad with its ramp down and door open invitingly, and Strong Soul felt Micah's happiness at seeing the four of them on the sensors. They climbed out of the car and trotted across the textured plastisteel surface of the pad. Night Star was the first up the ramp, followed by Strong Soul and First Spark, and as soon as Stargazer's feet were on the ramp, it started to rise. They all knew their places for ascent and they settled into them. Night Star in the left-hand pilots seat, Strong Soul next to him, leaving Stargazer at the navigator's console behind Strong Soul and First Spark at the auxiliary station behind Night Star. Everyone in their seat and strapped in, Micah began the ascent, releasing his control when Night Star's hands touched the controls.

Blue sky gave way to black stars as they rocketed off the planet's surface, and merely thirty minutes after they'd left Shinsayasa, they were again in space, heading full-speed for some arbitrary point that Micah calculated to have the best chance of a wave intersection, somewhere away from the main jump gate.

"Incoming transmission from the Allied cruiser," Micah announced.

"Let's hear it," Night Star responded.

"Outbound cargo freighter," a stern voice said over the speakers, "you are instructed to heave to for boarding and inspection. If you do not comply, you will be fired upon."

"Micah?" Night Star said.

"The vessel registers as a Falcon class, standard configuration. Small, interplanetary interdiction craft. They are changing course for fastest-time intercept to most likely course to the jump gate."

"Can they fire on us on our current course?" Strong Soul asked.

"We are outside their powered missile envelope, and out of range of all known Allied energy weapons," Micah answered.

"Ignore the transmission, Micah, and continue our course."

"Acknowledged," Micah answered. "There is a second transmission. Tight-beam laser burst only from the planet. Origination Shinsayasa."

"Put it on," Night Star said.

"Jason," Mick's voice said as his image appeared on the monitors. "Tell Marcus I'm sorry. I don't know who it was down here that told the Alliance about you, but they know. You're going to have to lay low. Marcus trusted me, and I let him down. But don't worry, we'll make sure that they get tied up down here for a long time. You'll have a good, long head start. I meant what I said, give my love to Susan, and you take care of your girls."

The message ended and Mick's face faded off the screen.

"What's going to happen to him?" Strong Soul asked.

"He'll probably have to put up with a great deal of bureaucracy for a while, but Mick's a council member. They're not going to risk upsetting the council balance, so at the most, he might be fined. But don't worry, he'll be fine. It's us that I'm worried about. There's not many places we can go."

"I know one where we can get supplies," Stargazer said, tapping the computer screen. "Paradiso Four."

"You're not serious," Night Star said. "You want to take these two to the Tortuga of the Stars?"

"It is unknown to the Alliance, and the residents never wish to attract undue attention," Stargazer said. "And they have no stake in any of the affairs between the Mrr'tani and the humans."

"No one even knows where it is," Night Star said.

"Steven had the coordinates in his personal file," Stargazer said, his grin somewhat frightening when Strong Soul turned around to look at him. "I kept them on hand in case they wound up being useful."

"That doesn't surprise me, Stargazer. All right, put them in. We'll risk it."

Stargazer nodded and tapped in a series of coordinates. Micah's link flared with his customary curiosity at being fed coordinates he had never visited before.

"Here we go, then," Night Star said, taking his hands off the controls once again. "Micah, get set for jump. She's all yours."

"Acknowledged. Standing by for jump in thirty nine seconds."

Strong Soul had only time to take a breath before the customary silence drifted over her mind and those around her, and the walls between the Pride's occupants dropped. The joining was becoming easy the more they did it, and Strong Soul let herself relax into the multiplicity of minds. She could feel every bit of fear and anxiety about what lay ahead, but even through it all, there was the great comfort of the four minds around her, Night Star's endless optimism, Micah's inerrant logic, Stargazer's calm pragmatism and First Spark's seemingly unending excitement and curiosity. She realized that having them all so close was finally normal and she could hardly remember a time without it being the case.

The stars shifted outside the windows and the void of hyper filled the viewscreens, the multi-colored waves making their way through the darkness.

"Jump complete. Estimate wave formation in approximately four hours. Estimated arrival at Paradiso Four in three days relative."

"Thank you, Micah," Strong Soul said as the walls came back up and Night Star released his hold on their minds. Then she turned to First Spark. "Sounds like we have time for some practice."

"Come on, then," First Spark said, standing up and heading for the door, her happiness evident on her face. "I think I've almost got the hang of that bow."

With a smile to Night Star, Strong Soul turned and headed out the door behind First Spark.