The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

The Greenfield Family.

A couple of family reunions are happening now. First, Lily is finally ready to come home and face the family. But before she does, Keiko needs to come and have a long overdue heart-to-heart with Sota about their past.

And then, Kenneth has finally been invited to come back home too. Little does he suspect the surprise that's waiting for him there.

https://storiesonline.net/n/52852/the-gr...-family/43

Princess of the Void.

“Okay.” Grant pulls up a chair and sits, to get on the level of the standing Taiikari women. “What’s up, Brigadier?”

“Majesty,” Hyax says, and then hitches like a frozen loading screen, mouth partway open.

Sykora’s tail meanders into Grant’s lap. He takes its tuft in his hand and squeezes tight.

Brigadier Sourpuss.

Another fragment unpacks itself from whatever snarl is entangling their Brigadier. “I have.” Hyax gets caught again. She drops onto her haunches, crouched and staring at the ground.

“Whatever it is, we can figure it out,” Grant says, as in his catastrophizing mind worlds burn and ships explode.

“Please just a moment, Majesty.” Hyax stands again. “I have betrayed your trust and the trust of the Empress. I’ve disclosed the truth of Compound Seventy. I am prepared for whatever punishment you deem appropriate.”

Sykora’s tail departs Grant’s hand. She crosses the few steps of carpet to her Brigadier with the care of a woman atop a thinly frozen ocean, takes the back of Hyax’s head light in her hand, and brings them forehead to forehead. “Who, Hyax?” she whispers. “Who knows this now?”

Hyax’s composure breaks, and for the first time in the decacycles he has known her, Grant witnesses his friend cry. “Please,” she sobs. “Please spare them, Sykora. We could inject them and flash them. It might not be too late. Do what you must to me. Let me pay the price for them. Just spare them.”

“I will do everything I can to preserve them, Hyax.” Sykora keeps her voice soft even as her tail straightens in shock at this display of emotion. “I swear to you on my children. But you must tell me who.”

“Ipqen.” Hyax says it like it’s being ripped from her chest. “And Ruaq. And if they come to harm because of me I’ll be torn apart, Majesty. I’ll—I don’t—I’m such a fucking fool and I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry—”

Sykora keeps hold of Hyax as the Brigadier wilts back into her weeping, and sinks with her to the floor. Her tail winds around Hyax’s and pulls it into a tight coil around them both. C’mere, she mouths to Grant over the head buried in her chest. Grant slithers from his seat and joins them on the knitted rug.

“Can I say what I think?” He puts his hand on its anchor-spot, the curve of Sykora’s back just above her tail’s root.

“If it’s what I think you think, then yes,” Sykora says. “Please.”

“Of all the servants aboard this vessel, Ipqen deserves to know this,” he says. “If I’ve earned that kind of trust, she has. Even if she’s not family.”

Sykora releases a held breath of relief, and nods. “An injection and mindwipe is an option, but if we try it and it fails, we lose her forever. It’s not exactly the ideal way of giving her the truth. But she deserves it, and she doesn’t have the mindset to keep her loyalty to us without it.”

Unlike Ajax, she doesn’t say, but he knows that’s the sorrowful addendum at the end.

“I can stand Jax giving me the silent treatment,” he says. Her little hand squeezing his leg confirms the subtext he read. “I mean, it fucking sucks, but the guy’s a Taiikari and a marine. He’ll keep for a while. Ipqen—she saved the Pike. And she got a hole shot through her over it. The more we let her in, the surer I am she’ll stay.”

“How’d they take it, Hyax?” Sykora asks.

“I don’t—I’m not sure. I was occupied with vomiting and panicking.”

Sykora rolls her eyes affectionately toward Grant. “Never mind that. Do you trust them?”

“I do, Majesty.” That from Hyax sounds surer than anything else she’s said in this soup of sadness.

“Well, that’s settled, then,” Sykora says, with a conscious injection of blasé cheer. “If you think all’s well then surely it is, Brigadier Majesty-You-Mustn’t.”

This wins them a tearstained chuckle from the puddle of Hyax on their floor.

“Brigadier Sourpuss,” Grant adds. “That’s still your name in my phone, y’know. Day two on the Pike, Kora put it there.”

“My lovely husband is confabulating,” Sykora says. “If a mind as treacherous as his can hold the secret surely your big sexy fishwives can. You should marry them to be sure. I need them monitored.”

Hyax’s eyes have slowed from a flood to a trickle. “If you command me I will. I’ll keep watch on them as long as I live.”

“I was being funny, Brigadier,” Sykora says. “Or attempting it. But that does have the sort of yearning romanticism tinged with morose duty that makes you such a poetical catch. And we do need to keep watch on them, as assured as I am of their allegiance. They’re in the circle of trust, now. I can’t promote them yet—especially not if word spreads that they’re boffing the Brigadier—but they’re in the circle of trust. And as the annexation continues I’ll want their counsel. Ipqen was clear-eyed during her own world’s uplift.”

“I’m sure they’ll assent, Majesty.” Hyax’s customary stiff upper lip has returned and her sitting posture is back in its stubborn squareness, though her tail is still looped with Sykora’s. “Their loyalty is as fierce as ours, I have found. But it’s to concepts, I think, above people. They have less patience for their leaders’ shortcomings. I find myself, uh… striving.”

“That does sound familiar,” Sykora says. “Another way the Eqtorans are more like Maekyonites than we are. That and their ability to make some supremely straitlaced women rather hornchoked.”

“That is not what happened, Majesty.” Hyax vehemently shakes her head. “I’m sure of it.”

Sykora grins. “Come now, Brigadier. It’s all right. I can hardly seal the cliff we both dwell in.”

“No, Majesty, I—I’m malfunctioning. There’s been a Loyalty Misalignment.” The way those words come out, they sound capitalized, like she’s declaring some officially designated disorder. “Even if I’m spared punishment, I need re-ed. The Empress’ place in my hierarchy.” She swallows her gorge. “It’s been compromised.”

And Waian’s words come back unbidden. Her fierce stare into Grant’s eyes. She’s not ready to hear this. But it’s you.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/120617...r-sourpuss
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