On the day of a stakeholder meeting, Parahandrar's superorbital space teems with craft shallowing from deepnavigation. Passenger docking tiers are filled with private ships. Mechself indwelt-shipyard handles the additional traffic, as it always does, with perfect aplomb.
Among all the incoming ships, and the usual flow of outgoing, one additional small craft landing at a obscure service dock is easily overlooked by human observers. After all, even for those there are, the ultimate fallback is mechself indwelt-Parahandrar, managing its own local traffic control, perfectly aware of each ship, its identity and source and destination, current vector, status, crew and cargo manifest, and whether it is behaving correctly. If Parahandrar sees no problem, it is inconceivably unlikely there is one.
"Either everything is working in our favour," Virid Hessh says, inside the ship, "or we are about to open the airlock onto a flood of security servos. If I am about to die, I would like you both to know that I will resent it immensely." She doesn't sound resentful; she sounds calm, sleekly confident. Almost content, to be in the midst of danger.
"Virid Hessh enjoys the sound of Virid Hessh's own voice so much that she'll die complaining," Byla Olma says to Ion Twelve Horizon. In contrast, the closer they have come to Parahandrar, the sharper her tone has become, and the less personally Virid Hessh has seemed to take it.
Ion Twelve Horizon says nothing, and grinds her teeth.
The most serious disagreement has been over the baby, who is strapped in a carrier against Ion Twelve Horizon's chest. Byla Olma insisted they should find somewhere, someone, to leave the baby.
"No," Ion Twelve Horizon answered, fists clenched.
Byla Olma had begun to argue with her, as if she were Virid Hessh, and Virid Hessh had, just that once, broken whatever kayfabe of ceaseless bickering overlays whatever other thing the two have between them, and took Byla Olma's arm with perfect calm.
"You can't ask her to do that," Virid Hessh had said, matter-of-fact, and when Byla Olma had opened her mouth to keep arguing, cryptically added, "Vendredi."
Byla Olma had closed her mouth, looking as pleased about it as if she were knowingly trapping a live and infurated wasp inside it. She said nothing else on the subject. All of them know that, in a question of pure physical safety, Byla Olma is unreservedly correct.
"I will exit the airlock," Virid Hessh says, alert and restless on the balls of her feet. She checks over a compact splintergun with automatic ease, barely looking as her hands roam it. "You will count five. If I do not call the all-clear phrase, or if I call the wrong phrase, or if you hear or see anything untoward: mechself, immediately attempt to seal the ship and leave, understand?"
I understand, Virid Hessh, mechself indwelt-ship says.
"Count, Song Aloft," Virid Hessh says, and darts out of the airlock, a swift lunging shape of muscle and intent. The lock closes after her as, on the ship's external sensors, they can see her rapidly skip from cover to cover, rolling easily across the floor where crossing a possible shooter's lines of sight is unavoidable.
"Three," Ion Twelve Horizon is saying grimly, by the time Virid Hessh matter-of-factly utters, "Three-One Slipping," and tucks away her splintergun for the time being; "all clear."
Byla Olma instantly stops Ion Twelve Horizon's impatient step forward with a raised hand. "I go next, sweetness," she says. "If you were setting a trap, wouldn't you tell them to wait for the woman behind Virid Hessh?"
"I will count five," Ion Twelve Horizon says, folding her arms around her baby.
Byla Olma takes a deep breath, and as she lets the air trickle back out of her, the tension goes out of her, too. She visibly adjusts herself, straightening her shoulders, holding herself stiff and sullen, and marches herself out of the ship, an impersonator's caricature of Ion Twelve Horizon's posture.
Nobody tries to kill her.
Ion Twelve Horizon forgets to count, simply remains where she is until she can manage to unfurl her fists and stalk out, awkward with the glaring awareness of her own rigid frame.
"Well, we're not immediately discovered," Virid Hessh says, almost cheerfully, when she approaches. "So from here, we enter the axial subsurface corridor, go three kilometers straight before us, and reach a security nexus beneath the surface-viewing plateau. From there, I make some adjustments; we ascend the plateau's service corridors, almost another kilometer; Byla Olma takes the lead and secures the safety of our entry into the populated spaces of Parahandrar; and we enter the meeting atop the plateau, which begins in two hours."
"I do hope," Byla Olma murmurs, "that the meeting itself unfolds as you've predicted."
"Virid Hessh knows the contingencies, if it does not," Ion Twelve Horizon says, not looking at either of them.
"We haven't discussed that," Byla Olma says, arching a brow at Virid Hessh.
"Those are not up for discussion," Virid Hessh says lightly, runs her thumb under the strap holding a military-grade longarm across her back, and smiles at Byla Olma's displeased moue.
"Unnecessary," Ion Twelve Horizon says, louder and darker than her usual voice. "This is Parahandrar. Parahandrar is mine; I am Parahandrar's. I am back, and there will be the consequences of my return."
The baby adds an emphatic noise, and lunges against her in its straps.
Virid Hessh and Byla Olma silently lock eyes, and after a few moments, Virid Hessh goes to quietly, warily open the doors that take them to the axial corridor.
Heavy Snow is deep in a discussion with her student, considering the question whether there is a significant ethical difference in flirting with your crew if one is a mechself who is, or is not, actually at all humansexual; when a series of notices are chirped into her insystem.
"Oh," she says. "I'm sorry, mechself; I think I must cut our lesson short. I believe it is time for our agreement."
What will you do, on the surface of Parahandrar? the mechself says, and sublines so many mojigrams of concern that it takes Heavy Snow several seconds to wade through them. In its ship's airlock, she shrugs into a protective vacuum skin which she took, days ago, from an emergency shelter cubicle in a corridor near the thin-aired surface, and seals her military mask atop it instead of its own helmet.
"Another ship just docked," she says.
Within her mask, she visualises the comparative positions of the mountain-spire to which, near its peak, her student is docked; and, a long way below her and far across human-hostile mechanical terrain, the service dock at which Ion Twelve Horizon's crew has disembarked and are already leaving. Ahead of her, her student opens the outer door of the airlock, and she stands for a moment over the longest drop, the widest vista, she has ever witnessed. Parahandrar is below, and all about her, plunging a dizzying mountain's height to its nominal surface level, and stretching out to its own round horizon. She spreads her arms a little, and the vacuum skin's capelike winglets stiffen from fabric drape to sudden rigidity, servolike suspensors whining to life.
"I intend to visit it," she adds, and swan dives into the sky from the airlock's lip.
