Tears spring up in my eyes, but I hold myself with great ceremony, angling my body in reply. White wave ebbs, his memory dearer than a diamond in a bed of sand. Brown bird watches, her wings stilled. Her song is silent until he returns.

Did I get the gestures right? For an interminable moment, he studies me. Perhaps I am rusty, and my body language offered other meanings, nonsensical ones, and he doesn’t know how to respond to my gibberish.

“You have an Ithtorian spirit,” he says at last. “That was well-done. You make me feel at home, Sirantha.”

How odd. I would’ve said he has a human soul. Perhaps between us, between his long exile and the alien chip in my head, we’ve met somewhere in the middle.

I manage a smile, though my eyes are stinging. “I’m glad. Because you always had the knack of that for me, even in a frozen cave on the Teresengi Basin.”

I will not cry, I tell myself fiercely. I will not.

“I remember. You were never afraid of me, at least not after the first few moments. I will do my best to make you proud.”

“I’m not going to say good-bye to you; but if it wouldn’t bother you, I’d like a hug.” Sometimes I can’t help being human. He’s been around us long enough that he should be used to our ways, even if he doesn’t share the comfort in our customs.

“As would I, Sirantha.”

Granted permission, I wind my arms around him and lay my cheek against the hard shell of his thorax. His limbs go around me in turn, and I feel his claws against my back. With one sharp movement, he could eviscerate me. His mandible rests against the top of my head for a long moment.

A human would offer warmth. I could listen to his heartbeat. Still, this is Vel, and there’s solace in his proximity. I don’t know how long we stand there, but I ease back first.

His final wa gains shadings of some significance I can’t name. There are no partings. White wave flows away. Brown bird is faithful to the sky. Where sea and sky cross, we meet again.

It’s a riddle, but the answer gives me a shiver of foreboding. The horizon, the door that isn’t a door. Is he saying we’ll meet again in death?

Sorrow has driven out any eloquence I might offer in answer. My wa is bare, a skeletal thing. My elbows won’t do as I’ve asked, and I suspect I said something slightly impolite. He doesn’t seem to mind.

Though these are my quarters, I flee first. He won’t follow me. I won’t see him again before he ships out. I’ll be in med bay, sedated for minor surgery. It’s time to get that third experimental implant. That’s good; maybe it can take the edge off my inward ache. And maybe when I wake, I’ll be resigned to being the Conglomerate’s secret weapon, resigned to less humanity, more technology.

I touch my comm. “Doc? No more excuses on my end. If you and Evelyn are ready, I’m on my way.”

CHAPTER 30

I wish I could say this is the first time I’ve awakened to too-bright lights and people peering into my face, but clearly, I’ve led that sort of life. It happened all too frequently on Perlas, generally in the middle of my sleep cycle.

Doc’s voice comes from beyond my peripheral vision. “Patient is conscious, responding appropriately to stimuli.”

“Vitals good.” That’s Evelyn.

Apparently, whatever they did to me, it was a success. My head still feels heavy, but I’m not aware of any pain. That’s a plus.

“Jax? Can you hear me?” March is kneeling beside me, his face pulled into an anxious frown.

“Yeah.” My voice comes out hoarse.

“How do you feel?”

I manage a joke. “Like I just fell out of the sky off a Skimmer.”

“Good. That’s good.” He glances at Doc. “Can I take her out of here?”

“She may have questions,” Evelyn says.

Do I? My brain isn’t firing at full capacity right now. Oh wait, yes, I do have one. “Did you do anything to the nanites?”

Evelyn fields that one. “Yes, we . . . upgraded them, you might say. They’re now configured to perform routine maintenance on the tech you have installed. That includes both your language chip and the prototype regulator we just installed. Your healing trances should be a thing of the past, as is your risk of burnout.”

“Anything else I need to know?”

Doc makes a show of beaming some instructions to March’s handheld. “Just this.”

“So I’m discharged, then?”

“You might want to give yourself a few moments to—”

But March is already swinging me into his arms. “I’ll take care of her, Doc.”

Maybe it’s just my general wooziness, but I like the sound of that. He carries me out of med bay, ignoring the half-articulated protests of scientists who doubtless want to poke and prod me some more. This behavior seems oddly unlike him, reckless, but then he taps his communicator.

“Constance, monitor Jax’s life signs. Make sure she’s not in any distress.”

Ah, there’s our fail-safe—and the cautious commander I know and love. He takes me back to our quarters and eases me gently into our bunk. Mildly disappointed, I expect him to leave me in Constance’s “care,” which is more palatable than staying in med bay. I spent enough time in there when I was recovering from catatonia.

Instead, he changes the setting, and our berth becomes a double. March lies down beside me, despite the fact that it’s nowhere near the start of our sleep cycle. Propped on his elbow, he gazes at me in silence until I start to feel uneasy.

“You have bad news,” I guess. “I’m permanently brain-damaged.”

Still silent, he shakes his head.

“What, then? Don’t you have work to do?”

“There’s always something I could do, but right now, what I want, more than anything, is to be with you.”

My heart, sore from losing Vel, swells inside me. Sometimes the man knows exactly what to say. It stands to reason, given that he’s a mind reader and all. I curl into him, shivering at his warmth, and with a soft sigh, I tuck my head against his chest. The back has a residual soreness, so I’m guessing that’s where they implanted the regulator.

“Good answer.”

“It’s the only answer.” He hesitates. “Jax, I want you to know, this isn’t my choice, any of it. I don’t want this.”

I answer gravely, “I know. Wishing I’d said yes back on New Terra, when you offered to become a homesteader?”

His hands skim down my spine, fingers playing each vertebra until I murmur in pleasure. “Not really. That life would’ve strangled you, so I’d have lost you anyway.”

“Anyway,” I repeat, “what are you talking about?”

Foreboding prickles over me, starting at the incision site. His heart races against me, indicating stress or arousal or both. I lift my face, studying his expression.

His eyes close. “I can’t be both your lover and your commander, Jax. Not with so much at stake. I want you—no, I need you on my ship—but I can’t multitask like that. I can’t risk making bad decisions because I’m terrified of losing you.”

“You have to consider the welfare of the whole crew.” Maybe I’m dumb as a rock, but I didn’t see this coming. I should have. “I can’t be your primary concern.”

“Exactly. We’ll have separate quarters on the Triumph, and I expect you to behave professionally at all times. We can’t let our history interfere with our mission.”

So that’s it? I’m “history”?

Intellectually, I understand the merit of what he’s saying. Emotionally, I want to scream and hit him in the head. How am I supposed to jack in with him, jump after jump, knowing there will be no more contact between us? Mary curse the Morgut and this war.

I don’t know how I sound so calm. “You’re saying this is our last night together.”

“For now. Until this is done.”

“What then? You put me on a shelf until you can afford me again, then expect to pick up where we left off, as soon as it’s convenient?”

He flinches, but a wounded soldier isn’t afraid to attack. “Isn’t that what you wanted to do when you were afraid you were dying?”

“Are you punishing me for that?”

“No,” he says wearily. “Strategically, I must do this. It will damage morale if your shipmates think you occupy a position higher than one granted by rank, by virtue of sleeping in my bed. They’ll try to use you. Worse, some will try to supplant you, wanting that influence themselves. You have to trust me, Jax. I know how people think.”

I suppose he would, privy to their innermost thoughts. One by one, I am losing everybody dear to me. Right now, I just want to see him bleed because all I know is that he’s leaving me again. There’s always a good reason for it, and I am fragging tired of loving a hero who always does the right thing. Except when he doesn’t—and I have to fix him. My heart sizzles in my chest, and I lash out.

“By your statement, you can’t show such favor to anyone aboard, so you have to be celibate. Do you think I’m going to act like a vestal virgin, too?”

His jaw clenches. I have that much satisfaction. At least I know he’s hurting, too; that gives me back some sense of control over the situation. “It will kill me inside if you turn to someone else, but I have no right to forbid it, as long as that person is equal to you in rank.”

“No,” I say quietly. “You don’t. Commander.”

“We must leave it there. I cannot prevent you from looking elsewhere, and I’ll not beg, either. Once this war is done, we’ll see.”

He says “once,” as if we’re guaranteed a victory, as if it’s assured both of us will walk away. Right now I have no certainty of either, but that’s why he’s the commander, and I’m just a combat jumper. The soldiers will need his strength and his faith. My anger trickles away like water through curled fingers; I can’t hold it.

I ask this of him more than is comfortable for me, but I need to hear it one last time before we set it aside for weapons and destruction. “Say you love me?”

His long fingers trail down my cheeks, shaping the sharp line, along the curve of my chin, and up to the swell of my lips. The warmth lingers like a phantom kiss. Tears slip from the corners of my eyes.

“More than the blood in my veins. More than the heart in my body.”

I laugh softly, unsteadily. “A simple ‘yes’ would have sufficed.”

“Nothing is simple between us. It never has been.”

Oh, truer words were never spoken. “If we have only tonight . . .” I shift against him, my leg curling over his.

“I just want to be with you,” he whispers. “One last night. But I didn’t think—”

“It’s only a bit tender at the base of my skull. You weren’t planning on messing about back there, were you?”

His laughter cascades in luscious reverberation, his chest to mine. “Hardly.”