ReDawn (Skyward, #2.2)

“Fairly openly,” I said. “It’s definitely nothing to be embarrassed about. It can depend on your family culture, but most families are thrilled by mate-pairings, because they welcome children.”

“None of us are thinking about children,” Jorgen said, quickly.

“Can you imagine?” FM said.

I didn’t understand. “Because you’re at war? You were all born during the war, weren’t you?” Unless I drastically misunderstood human aging patterns, they would have had to be.

“Because we’re too young,” FM said. “And we’re pilots on the front lines. Not a life conducive to raising kids. A lot of our parents were pilots, but most of us had at least one parent who wasn’t flying.”

“Wait,” I said. “You’re raised by your parents?”

The humans all looked at me like this was a very stupid question. “Yes,” Kimmalyn said. “Who were you raised by?”

“My grandparents,” I said. “We’re encouraged to find a mate-pair young, so we can have children while our parents are still young and healthy enough to raise the children. Parents have to work to support their families. They don’t have time or energy for childcare. Besides, we only have two of them, when there are at least four grandparents involved, so the odds of one of them being able to care for the children is so much higher than with parents.”

“Huh,” Sadie said. “I guess that does make sense when you put it that way.”

I was trying to picture how human parents must handle having babies while—to use FM’s example—still of age to fly in the air force. That sounded like a terrible system.

    “Okay,” Jorgen said. “I think the lesson here is that none of us want to talk about relationships or plan to have children in the near future, except maybe Alanik.”

“I’m not going to have a child,” I said. “I’m not in a mate-pair. But it doesn’t bother me to say so. It’s not shameful in my culture either way.”

“Well, I feel shameful,” Nedd said. “Everyone is coupled up but me! FM has a boyfriend, and Arturo is basically engaged—”

“I am not,” Arturo said.

“And Jorgen and Spensa—”

“Shut up, Nedd—” Jorgen said.

“Kimmalyn, do you have a boyfriend?”

Kimmalyn looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Um, no.”

“But seriously, it’s bad enough that I have to hang around while Arturo and Bryn are making kissy faces at each other—”

“You won’t have to do that anymore, trust me,” Arturo said.

“What?” Nedd said. “Why?”

“Because we broke up.”

Now everyone stared at Arturo. He usually had a confident air about him, but now he withered a bit.

Okay. Humans definitely got unreasonably embarrassed about relationships. It was amazing their species managed to survive.

“Seriously?” Nedd asked. He seemed much more concerned now. “When did that happen?”

“A few days ago. She wrote me a letter. But I thought we established that none of us wanted to talk about relationships. Can we please change the subject?”

    “Stars, please,” Jorgen said.

“The question is,” FM said, “do we think Rig’s help with the platform will be beneficial enough that we’re willing to ask him to risk a military trial with the rest of us?”

“If it was a military trial, we’d be cleared,” Jorgen said. “Because Cobb is our military leader, and he told us to go. It would have to be a civil trial for us to be convicted, and they can’t try us civilly because all we did was disobey orders, which isn’t a violation of civilian law.”

“And we stole starships,” Kimmalyn reminded him.

“Which are military property!” Jorgen said. “Also should be tried by the DDF. No defection, no grand larceny.”

Everyone looked skeptical, including Jorgen, but if it helped him feel better I didn’t see any harm in leaving him to his faulty logic.

“You disobeyed your mother,” Nedd said. “What do you think she’s going to do to you for that?”

“I don’t know,” Jorgen said. “But at least the rest of you are off the hook there.”

“I’d like my ship,” I said. “Otherwise we’ll have one fewer pilot in the air. If we brought it here with Rig, could he finish reassembling it?” After my last experience in a human vessel, I’d take my own ship back as long as it flew.

“I bet he’d do it,” FM said. “He felt really bad that he’d dismantled it and then you needed it.”

“I think the biggest question,” Arturo said, “is what are our other options?”

    Everyone was quiet.

“Okay,” Jorgen said. “The rest of us will stay here and see if we can find a place where the platform is built to interface with the taynix.”

“Interface with them?” I asked.

“If this platform has hypercomm or hyperdrive technology, it will probably have taynix boxes,” FM said. “Like the one in the broken Superiority ship.”

“We’ll look for the boxes while you’re gone,” Jorgen said, “and then Rig can help us figure it out when he gets here.”

I hoped we wouldn’t be gone long enough for them to do much searching. Going to get Rig and my ship should be an in-and-out kind of mission.

But these things rarely worked out that simply.

“All right,” I said. “Are we ready?”

FM scritched Gill on the head. “Let me take us,” she said. “Gill needs the practice.”

I was a bit leery of jetting around the universe at the whims of a slug, but the humans seemed certain this would work. Besides, I’d wanted to learn the secrets to hyperdrive technology. This was my chance to see one in action.

“Okay,” I said. FM stood beside me and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Scud, I hope he’s not in the shower or something,” she said.

“Or in a meeting with Command,” Jorgen said.

“Or that. Gill,” FM said. “Take me to Drape.”

“Drape!” the slug trilled cheerfully.

    It took all my concentration not to fight the pull of the negative realm as I was sucked into it by a force completely out of my control.





Fourteen


I was unprepared for how it would feel to hover in the negative realm while the eyes fixed their penetrating stares elsewhere. Normally I had their full attention, but this time I was beneath their notice. It was a relief to hide, but it also felt a little insulting.