Project Terra Nova Firma Base Ship, Deyer Orbit, Anoat System
The “party” was only hours away now. One of Khelk's little peons had brought by some stupid dress that it was “absolutely essential” she wear. Dress codes in space, ridiculous! This bloated, stupid party was just another excuse for people like Khelk to get together and pat each other on the backs for the hard work that other people had accomplished.
How many millions of “little people” was this fleet built on? How many thousands of pages of research and experimentation results had their handful of “experts” culled from to make their grand presentations? It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. The Fleet is not Command. The Fleet isn't even the Crew. The Fleet is every drop of blood and sweat, every cry of pain and exertion, every burnt-out hope and lingering fear that ever went into it.
Amarata didn't understand much, but whatever else she was, she was Ryn, so she understood that. The Fleet . . . the family, the circle: it endures. Khelk just wanted another title, another accolade. Amarata had been wrong about her. That voice to command emperors, that presence to stop a room cold, it wasn't who she was; it was a tool for her avarice. Amarata wished she'd seen it sooner, but Amarata never sees it sooner. She never gets to understand people from the start.
“Greetings, Amarata.”
It was not a pleasant greeting. It was also not an expected greeting. She looked up from the view of passing floor tiles and stumbled to a stop. “Uhh, hi, Norax.” Sparky the hovering mouse droid banged into her heels, his shock probe scraping the side of her foot. “Boop it, Sparky, watch where you're going!” Looking back to the Shard scientist, she offered a weak “Sorry. He's been a little fidgety lately.”
“Your droid is no concern of mine,” Norax said in that same bland and decidedly not pleasant tone.
“Oh . . . okay.” Why did Norax have to be such a jerk all of the time? “I guess you're just here for the . . . uhh, ceremony, then?”
“Yes. Khelk asked me to investigate an anomaly in the scalabale AI data core. She implied that extraneous factors had caused the chief designer to compromise the integrity of the work.”
“Eff,” Amarata whispered, feeling Khelk's latest barb.
“Fascinating,” Norax said, and somehow he made the word even more bland, even less pleasant. “It is truly astounding that this vessel functions at all,” Norax continued, looking down the corridor as if seeing into eternity. “The madness of the project administration to attempt a conversion on this scale, and with such unqualified project leads . . .”
Amarata was fighting back tears now, just trying to make the ground stop boiling beneath her feet. “I have to . . . I have to go,” she managed to squeeze out, unable to look at the shell that held truly the least kind person she had ever met.
“Of course,” Norax said, dismissing her from its presence.
Sparky started chirping away as Amarata led him past, and his excited rambling gave her just enough to turn back around and regard the situation. The little MSF droid had parked himself squarely in front of Norax, extending a photoreceptor probe to regard the gargantuan humanoid form.
“What is the meaning of this?” Norax asked, impatient.
Amarata smiled despite herself, understanding just enough of the squeaky droidspeak to know what was coming next. With a battle cry that sounded like a thousand rats fleeing a sinking ship, Sparky stabbed his shock probe into Norax's leg and flooded it with electricity.
Norax's head pivoted to Amarata. “You're droid has shorted out my leg servos!” Now he wasn't so bland, and now he definitely wasn't pleasant.
Amarata's smile turned into a toothy grin, and she walked over and scooped Sparky up in one arm. “You know, the next time you go kicking a poor, defenseless little droid, make sure it can't learn to kick back.” Then she pushed Norax over and strolled away, every lingering doubt and hidden dread banished from her thoughts.
* * *
All of the bolts were bolted, all of the nuts were tightened. They were in the home stretch now.
The Jules, the Coalition's Verne-class Terraformer, had recently returned with its support fleet from Confederation space. It sounded like everything had gone well with the Moons of Rearqu, but the Confederation wanted to tackle their Ambria project alone, for one reason or another. The commander of that Coalition operation, Captain Reese, had just been welcomed aboard for the festivities.
The band of fancy-pants officials from Minntooine had been here for a few days, and Khelk had taken most of that time off from her official duties to show them around the completed-but-nameless terraforming command ship. They were all here now, keeping mostly to themselves, pretending to admire the view of Deyer through the massive magcon field of the docking-bay-turned-dining-hall.
The Ryn Fleet had been invited, too. While their largish group was still dominated by members of the species, there were quite a few non-Ryn in the mix. They seemed to be taking the event somewhat seriously, judging by the low-end formal attire most of them were wearing. In the Ryn Fleet, these kinds of things just didn't happen. Parties? Sure, but not fancy parties. That they hadn't come in farmer's coveralls to protest was a good sign in itself.
There were officials from each of the terraformed worlds, leaders of the early colonies that would pave the way for more refugees-turned-citizens. Even the Gestalt Colonies had sent a token delegation to feign gratitude for the reshaping of Deyer. The Jules, even now, was blasting life into the uplifted continents of the watery world, turning a salt-soaked wasteland into a new cradle of civilization.
The Alliance was gone by now, along with most of the Confederation's project members, but a select few had been asked to stay for the festivities, and most had accepted the invitation. Chief among them were Doctor Linne, Doctor Surhum, and Eff.
It was just “Eff”, not E4-2F, and it had been that way for a while now. There were still whispers, and jokes, and weird glances. Amarata didn't care anymore. They didn't understand. None of them understood. Maybe they couldn't. Maybe she was just too different from them. Probably, though, they just didn't care to understand. But he was staying, that was good, and she was out of boops to give on the subject.
It was amazing where her mind would go when she gave it the space it needed! Standing there, on the edge of the magcon field with a stuffy party slogging on behind her and all of Deyer stretched out in front of her, this was the most room she could imagine at the moment. It was really quite beautiful, watching the lone Verne terraformer work in the middle-distance, nestled between a pair of brand new Colonial shipyards, which had only just laid the keels for two more of the incredible vessels.
Amarata's mind latched on to that, to the sheer scale of this new project, this fleet of terraforming ships and support craft. Between the Cornucopias, the Vernes, and this command ship, the commitment of resources and expertise was truly staggering. She hadn't heard of any non-military Coalition project of this scale since . . . ever.
“Aah, Captain Amarata, there you are.” The greeting sounded kind and genuine . . . as best Amarata could tell. Given their history together, however, that was a lie, and this was a scheme with Amarata as an unwitting pawn. Regardless, Khelk was still technically her superior, and she'd been preparing for a week as best she could to face this excruciatingly social event, so she turned toward the sound of the Mon Calamari's voice and tried her best not to look horrified.
“Hello, Khelk,” she managed to get out without cracking. There was a human man standing with her, wearing a Coalition military uniform.
“Come, come,” Khelk said, waving Amarata away from the field and back toward the center of the massive room, toward the noise and the movement and the politeness of it all. “I wanted you to meet Captain Reese,” she continued, gesturing to the man. He gave a slight nod and a thin smile to the civilian captain. “Captain Reece commands the Jules, and was in overall command of the Coalition's test mission in the Rearqu System.”
“Oh . . .” Amarata said absently, not sure why she should care. “Oh!” she added, finally looking the man in the face. He had a series of long scars running down his face and neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his uniform. They were whiter than his natural skin tone, having the effect of being inconspicuous at a glance but transfixing once noticed. “That pattern's from a plasma vent,” she noted, intrigued, “but even a minor baffle failure would have expelled enough material to vaporize any organic matter it touched.” It didn't seem to make sense . . . a puzzle to solve. Well that was something, at least. “Surviving an accident like that would have required massive reconstructive surgery, and even then, the scarring would have . . . oh.” She glanced at his eyes and he was staring right back into hers.
Amarata had walked right up to the man and started tracing one of the scars with her finger. “Oh gods, I'm sorry.” She pulled back immediately, looking away in shame, head bowed, trying to make herself small. “I'm so sorry; I didn't . . . I couldn't see the . . .” She could hear the waves crashing in her ears, the flood of panic and self-loathing that was coming to drown her. He's a person, Amarata! You can't do that to him!
An eerily light chuckle in a ragged, unfamiliar voice broke through the deafening sound of her coming doom. It rose like a sea wall against her inner dread. “'Eccentric', huh, Khelk? 'Eccentric'?”
“I'm sorry, Captain Reese,” Khelk said gravely. “I never imagined Amarata . . .” She seemed genuinely at a loss.
“You got all of that from the pattern of my scars?” the voice asked.
Amarata ventured a peek at the man, happened to catch sight of Khelk's horror-stricken face first.
“Yeah, I see why you picked her, Khelk . . . and now, I see why the Powers-That-Be approved my transfer, too.” He was just . . . standing there. He had the faintest tinge of a smile, looking kindly back at the still-shaken Amarata. “I was Chief Engineer of an old Onyxian VicStar during the Imperial invasion, before the ceasefire. Battle went south, we lost the bridge, had an engine explode, reactor destabilized. Four thousand lives on the line, I had to get it under control. I had to. You know what that's like.”
It wasn't a question. It definitely, definitely should have been a question, but it wasn't. Amarata nodded without even realizing it.
Reese grinned big, but this was a sour, sad sort of grin. The kind of thing Amarata shouldn't have been able to pick up on, but she did. She saw right through it. “The Cooperative gave me a promotion for . . . oh, 'bravery, sacrifice, exemplary command under unfathomable circumstance' . . . they had a whole list. Anyway, I dragged out the recovery time, passed up every command opportunity that opened until I got something less . . . bloody.” He paused for a moment, nodded his head in that self-reflective sort of way Amarata knew all too well. All signs of even his fake smile were gone now. “I saved thirty-two hundred lives that day, but I cooked seven hundred and eighty six of my men alive to do it; emergency bypass, selectively sealed blast doors, evacuated the exhaust heat through a main corridor and right out into space.
“I'm through with war, Amarata. I'm through with it. This command, this opportunity . . . I transferred to the Ryn Defense Force. Went through an hour ago. This is the last time I'll wear this uniform.” He paused for a second and, misty-eyed, his smile was back, warm. Big. Honest. “Well, we're going to make worlds together.”
Amarata was stunned. Just . . . stunned. Not afraid. Not horrified. Not ashamed. Just stunned. And then . . . “Wait a minute; the mission's over. The project's finished. I'm going back to Glee Anselm.”
Captain Reese kept smiling, and now Khelk was doing the same. Wasn't Khelk doing the same? It was so hard to tell with Mon Calamari . . .
A familiar sound caught Amarata's attention and she turned around to see Eff rolling over, his two Confederation companions in tow. “Hey, hi, hello . . . what's going on here?”
“We're here for . . . moral support,” Eff said, coming to a stop only an arm's reach away.
Amarata shook her head, not understanding. “Moral sup . . . I don't . . . wait!” There was something she had missed. “You said Khelk picked me . . .” Amarata trailed off as she spun back to Khelk and saw another new addition to their circle, stepping in beside the Mon Calamari.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Khelk shouted into the room, “could I have your attention please!”
Amarata should have been trying to figure out why Khelk wasn't using the big stage and podium that had been set up on the far end of the room. After all, loud announcements are what stages and podiums are for. But she wasn't. She wasn't thinking much of anything at all. She was just staring at . . .
“I present to you Elder Ruto, Keeper of the Ryn Fleets.”
The newest addition to the gathering, the elderly leader of the Ryn nation, smiled warmly at Amarata. “Captain Amarata,” Elder Ruto said softly, though her voice was amplified throughout the entire room. “You, you more than anyone, have done such great work here. Your ingenuity, your tenacity, your . . . perseverance, have brought this project further down the Long Road than any of us dared hope.”
“Down the Long Road . . .” Amarata whispered to herself, repeating the words, the single line, the essence of all Ryn culture and heritage. What was happening here? None of this made any sense.
“You are truly a gift, and I dare not squander your tremendous potential.”
A gift? Amarata the Ryn was a gift? No. No, this couldn't be happening. This could not possibly ever ever be happening.
“It is for that reason that I have requested, and the Admiralty Board of the Ryn Fleets has confirmed, your promotion to the rank of Admiral.”
The sound that came out of Amarata sounded more like the death gasp of some tiny animal than any form of humanoid communication.
Before she could even process her disbelief, all boop broke loose. There were cheers. There were streamers. There were disco balls. All over the place, members of the Ryn Fleets were tearing off breakaway formal wear to reveal what might best be described as “party gear”.
This was an all-out, boops-to-the-wall Ryn Party, and it was too much. It was all entirely too much.
And she loved it.
“In your capacity as an Admiral of the Ryn Fleets,” Elder Ruto continued, her voice still soft but artificially amplified to be heard over the ruckus all around, “you are to take operational command of the Coalition terraforming fleet.”
“What?” She got it out this time, followed quickly by a: “No!” And they said she's the crazy one. “I can't handle that! There's no way I can handle that!”
“I have been appointed Coalition High Commissioner for Terraforming,” Khelk said. “A title that will, unfortunately, largely ruin my running collection of titles, as it will require me to step down from most of their offices.” Khelk smiled broadly, too broadly, the kind of broadly that meant she was making sure Amarata knew she was smiling. “The fleet is yours to command, but the mission is mine to assign. My office will manage logistical support and diplomatic services, leaving you to do what you do best; innovate, troubleshoot, succeed.”
“And I'll be your military liaison,” Captain Resse said, nodding curtly. “Command of the fleet's escort is a separate position; my sole concern will be the safe operation of the fleet in accordance with Coalition law.”
Eff rolled forward the little bit permitted by the space still between them. “And I will be here, in the agreed upon capacity, to ensure that the Coalition does not overstep its bounds in the use of this vessel; however, Admiral, with you in command I anticipate my presence to be completely redundant in that regard.”
“We're here for you, Amarata,” Khelk said kindly. “We've always been here for you, even when you couldn't see it.”
Even through the overwhelming shock and terror, even with the blood rushing in her ears and the shaking in her knees, the tears blurring her vision and her heart hammering against her rib cage, she smiled. Right on the brink, her mad brain still made the connection: they'd set Norax up for her!
“Thank you. Thank you all so much . . .”
“Now,” Elder Ruto said, clasping her hands together in front of herself. “Excuse me, excuse me?” She was speaking to the whole room again. “If I could have your attention please?”
There was a smattering of “boos” and such, a few half-comprehensible objections, but the guests quieted down, the disco balls stopped spinning, and Elder Ruto once again had the room's attention.
“I do so hate to interrupt your celebrations, but there remains one last piece of business to which we must attend. This vessel, on which we now stand, and for which we are, in part, gathered today, does not have a name. Admiral Amarata: it is the tradition of some cultures among the Coalition, that on such momentous occasions as this, newly promoted members of the Fleet are entrusted to name a vessel worthy of their station. In the spirit of the Coalition, I intend to borrow from that tradition today. If your friends are not in error, I believe you have in mind a name worthy of this ship?”
Amarata burst into laughter. She couldn't control herself, the moment was just So Much. She grabbed Eff's arm for support, trying to calm herself, trying to fight back the tears and the gasps for air and the laughter and the shaking knees and the sound of hurricanes in her ears. It was too much, too much, all of every bit of too much!
“Varekai,” she whispered between gasps. And then, in a rare moment of clarity, after forcing herself to stand back up but still leaning on Eff for support, she added: “It means 'Wherever' in the Ryn language. It's the name of a legendary Ryn, the greatest of any version of our greatest tales. And it's who we are.
“The Coalition: wherever the need, there we are.”
The “party” was only hours away now. One of Khelk's little peons had brought by some stupid dress that it was “absolutely essential” she wear. Dress codes in space, ridiculous! This bloated, stupid party was just another excuse for people like Khelk to get together and pat each other on the backs for the hard work that other people had accomplished.
How many millions of “little people” was this fleet built on? How many thousands of pages of research and experimentation results had their handful of “experts” culled from to make their grand presentations? It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. The Fleet is not Command. The Fleet isn't even the Crew. The Fleet is every drop of blood and sweat, every cry of pain and exertion, every burnt-out hope and lingering fear that ever went into it.
Amarata didn't understand much, but whatever else she was, she was Ryn, so she understood that. The Fleet . . . the family, the circle: it endures. Khelk just wanted another title, another accolade. Amarata had been wrong about her. That voice to command emperors, that presence to stop a room cold, it wasn't who she was; it was a tool for her avarice. Amarata wished she'd seen it sooner, but Amarata never sees it sooner. She never gets to understand people from the start.
“Greetings, Amarata.”
It was not a pleasant greeting. It was also not an expected greeting. She looked up from the view of passing floor tiles and stumbled to a stop. “Uhh, hi, Norax.” Sparky the hovering mouse droid banged into her heels, his shock probe scraping the side of her foot. “Boop it, Sparky, watch where you're going!” Looking back to the Shard scientist, she offered a weak “Sorry. He's been a little fidgety lately.”
“Your droid is no concern of mine,” Norax said in that same bland and decidedly not pleasant tone.
“Oh . . . okay.” Why did Norax have to be such a jerk all of the time? “I guess you're just here for the . . . uhh, ceremony, then?”
“Yes. Khelk asked me to investigate an anomaly in the scalabale AI data core. She implied that extraneous factors had caused the chief designer to compromise the integrity of the work.”
“Eff,” Amarata whispered, feeling Khelk's latest barb.
“Fascinating,” Norax said, and somehow he made the word even more bland, even less pleasant. “It is truly astounding that this vessel functions at all,” Norax continued, looking down the corridor as if seeing into eternity. “The madness of the project administration to attempt a conversion on this scale, and with such unqualified project leads . . .”
Amarata was fighting back tears now, just trying to make the ground stop boiling beneath her feet. “I have to . . . I have to go,” she managed to squeeze out, unable to look at the shell that held truly the least kind person she had ever met.
“Of course,” Norax said, dismissing her from its presence.
Sparky started chirping away as Amarata led him past, and his excited rambling gave her just enough to turn back around and regard the situation. The little MSF droid had parked himself squarely in front of Norax, extending a photoreceptor probe to regard the gargantuan humanoid form.
“What is the meaning of this?” Norax asked, impatient.
Amarata smiled despite herself, understanding just enough of the squeaky droidspeak to know what was coming next. With a battle cry that sounded like a thousand rats fleeing a sinking ship, Sparky stabbed his shock probe into Norax's leg and flooded it with electricity.
Norax's head pivoted to Amarata. “You're droid has shorted out my leg servos!” Now he wasn't so bland, and now he definitely wasn't pleasant.
Amarata's smile turned into a toothy grin, and she walked over and scooped Sparky up in one arm. “You know, the next time you go kicking a poor, defenseless little droid, make sure it can't learn to kick back.” Then she pushed Norax over and strolled away, every lingering doubt and hidden dread banished from her thoughts.
* * *
All of the bolts were bolted, all of the nuts were tightened. They were in the home stretch now.
The Jules, the Coalition's Verne-class Terraformer, had recently returned with its support fleet from Confederation space. It sounded like everything had gone well with the Moons of Rearqu, but the Confederation wanted to tackle their Ambria project alone, for one reason or another. The commander of that Coalition operation, Captain Reese, had just been welcomed aboard for the festivities.
The band of fancy-pants officials from Minntooine had been here for a few days, and Khelk had taken most of that time off from her official duties to show them around the completed-but-nameless terraforming command ship. They were all here now, keeping mostly to themselves, pretending to admire the view of Deyer through the massive magcon field of the docking-bay-turned-dining-hall.
The Ryn Fleet had been invited, too. While their largish group was still dominated by members of the species, there were quite a few non-Ryn in the mix. They seemed to be taking the event somewhat seriously, judging by the low-end formal attire most of them were wearing. In the Ryn Fleet, these kinds of things just didn't happen. Parties? Sure, but not fancy parties. That they hadn't come in farmer's coveralls to protest was a good sign in itself.
There were officials from each of the terraformed worlds, leaders of the early colonies that would pave the way for more refugees-turned-citizens. Even the Gestalt Colonies had sent a token delegation to feign gratitude for the reshaping of Deyer. The Jules, even now, was blasting life into the uplifted continents of the watery world, turning a salt-soaked wasteland into a new cradle of civilization.
The Alliance was gone by now, along with most of the Confederation's project members, but a select few had been asked to stay for the festivities, and most had accepted the invitation. Chief among them were Doctor Linne, Doctor Surhum, and Eff.
It was just “Eff”, not E4-2F, and it had been that way for a while now. There were still whispers, and jokes, and weird glances. Amarata didn't care anymore. They didn't understand. None of them understood. Maybe they couldn't. Maybe she was just too different from them. Probably, though, they just didn't care to understand. But he was staying, that was good, and she was out of boops to give on the subject.
It was amazing where her mind would go when she gave it the space it needed! Standing there, on the edge of the magcon field with a stuffy party slogging on behind her and all of Deyer stretched out in front of her, this was the most room she could imagine at the moment. It was really quite beautiful, watching the lone Verne terraformer work in the middle-distance, nestled between a pair of brand new Colonial shipyards, which had only just laid the keels for two more of the incredible vessels.
Amarata's mind latched on to that, to the sheer scale of this new project, this fleet of terraforming ships and support craft. Between the Cornucopias, the Vernes, and this command ship, the commitment of resources and expertise was truly staggering. She hadn't heard of any non-military Coalition project of this scale since . . . ever.
“Aah, Captain Amarata, there you are.” The greeting sounded kind and genuine . . . as best Amarata could tell. Given their history together, however, that was a lie, and this was a scheme with Amarata as an unwitting pawn. Regardless, Khelk was still technically her superior, and she'd been preparing for a week as best she could to face this excruciatingly social event, so she turned toward the sound of the Mon Calamari's voice and tried her best not to look horrified.
“Hello, Khelk,” she managed to get out without cracking. There was a human man standing with her, wearing a Coalition military uniform.
“Come, come,” Khelk said, waving Amarata away from the field and back toward the center of the massive room, toward the noise and the movement and the politeness of it all. “I wanted you to meet Captain Reese,” she continued, gesturing to the man. He gave a slight nod and a thin smile to the civilian captain. “Captain Reece commands the Jules, and was in overall command of the Coalition's test mission in the Rearqu System.”
“Oh . . .” Amarata said absently, not sure why she should care. “Oh!” she added, finally looking the man in the face. He had a series of long scars running down his face and neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his uniform. They were whiter than his natural skin tone, having the effect of being inconspicuous at a glance but transfixing once noticed. “That pattern's from a plasma vent,” she noted, intrigued, “but even a minor baffle failure would have expelled enough material to vaporize any organic matter it touched.” It didn't seem to make sense . . . a puzzle to solve. Well that was something, at least. “Surviving an accident like that would have required massive reconstructive surgery, and even then, the scarring would have . . . oh.” She glanced at his eyes and he was staring right back into hers.
Amarata had walked right up to the man and started tracing one of the scars with her finger. “Oh gods, I'm sorry.” She pulled back immediately, looking away in shame, head bowed, trying to make herself small. “I'm so sorry; I didn't . . . I couldn't see the . . .” She could hear the waves crashing in her ears, the flood of panic and self-loathing that was coming to drown her. He's a person, Amarata! You can't do that to him!
An eerily light chuckle in a ragged, unfamiliar voice broke through the deafening sound of her coming doom. It rose like a sea wall against her inner dread. “'Eccentric', huh, Khelk? 'Eccentric'?”
“I'm sorry, Captain Reese,” Khelk said gravely. “I never imagined Amarata . . .” She seemed genuinely at a loss.
“You got all of that from the pattern of my scars?” the voice asked.
Amarata ventured a peek at the man, happened to catch sight of Khelk's horror-stricken face first.
“Yeah, I see why you picked her, Khelk . . . and now, I see why the Powers-That-Be approved my transfer, too.” He was just . . . standing there. He had the faintest tinge of a smile, looking kindly back at the still-shaken Amarata. “I was Chief Engineer of an old Onyxian VicStar during the Imperial invasion, before the ceasefire. Battle went south, we lost the bridge, had an engine explode, reactor destabilized. Four thousand lives on the line, I had to get it under control. I had to. You know what that's like.”
It wasn't a question. It definitely, definitely should have been a question, but it wasn't. Amarata nodded without even realizing it.
Reese grinned big, but this was a sour, sad sort of grin. The kind of thing Amarata shouldn't have been able to pick up on, but she did. She saw right through it. “The Cooperative gave me a promotion for . . . oh, 'bravery, sacrifice, exemplary command under unfathomable circumstance' . . . they had a whole list. Anyway, I dragged out the recovery time, passed up every command opportunity that opened until I got something less . . . bloody.” He paused for a moment, nodded his head in that self-reflective sort of way Amarata knew all too well. All signs of even his fake smile were gone now. “I saved thirty-two hundred lives that day, but I cooked seven hundred and eighty six of my men alive to do it; emergency bypass, selectively sealed blast doors, evacuated the exhaust heat through a main corridor and right out into space.
“I'm through with war, Amarata. I'm through with it. This command, this opportunity . . . I transferred to the Ryn Defense Force. Went through an hour ago. This is the last time I'll wear this uniform.” He paused for a second and, misty-eyed, his smile was back, warm. Big. Honest. “Well, we're going to make worlds together.”
Amarata was stunned. Just . . . stunned. Not afraid. Not horrified. Not ashamed. Just stunned. And then . . . “Wait a minute; the mission's over. The project's finished. I'm going back to Glee Anselm.”
Captain Reese kept smiling, and now Khelk was doing the same. Wasn't Khelk doing the same? It was so hard to tell with Mon Calamari . . .
A familiar sound caught Amarata's attention and she turned around to see Eff rolling over, his two Confederation companions in tow. “Hey, hi, hello . . . what's going on here?”
“We're here for . . . moral support,” Eff said, coming to a stop only an arm's reach away.
Amarata shook her head, not understanding. “Moral sup . . . I don't . . . wait!” There was something she had missed. “You said Khelk picked me . . .” Amarata trailed off as she spun back to Khelk and saw another new addition to their circle, stepping in beside the Mon Calamari.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Khelk shouted into the room, “could I have your attention please!”
Amarata should have been trying to figure out why Khelk wasn't using the big stage and podium that had been set up on the far end of the room. After all, loud announcements are what stages and podiums are for. But she wasn't. She wasn't thinking much of anything at all. She was just staring at . . .
“I present to you Elder Ruto, Keeper of the Ryn Fleets.”
The newest addition to the gathering, the elderly leader of the Ryn nation, smiled warmly at Amarata. “Captain Amarata,” Elder Ruto said softly, though her voice was amplified throughout the entire room. “You, you more than anyone, have done such great work here. Your ingenuity, your tenacity, your . . . perseverance, have brought this project further down the Long Road than any of us dared hope.”
“Down the Long Road . . .” Amarata whispered to herself, repeating the words, the single line, the essence of all Ryn culture and heritage. What was happening here? None of this made any sense.
“You are truly a gift, and I dare not squander your tremendous potential.”
A gift? Amarata the Ryn was a gift? No. No, this couldn't be happening. This could not possibly ever ever be happening.
“It is for that reason that I have requested, and the Admiralty Board of the Ryn Fleets has confirmed, your promotion to the rank of Admiral.”
The sound that came out of Amarata sounded more like the death gasp of some tiny animal than any form of humanoid communication.
Before she could even process her disbelief, all boop broke loose. There were cheers. There were streamers. There were disco balls. All over the place, members of the Ryn Fleets were tearing off breakaway formal wear to reveal what might best be described as “party gear”.
This was an all-out, boops-to-the-wall Ryn Party, and it was too much. It was all entirely too much.
And she loved it.
“In your capacity as an Admiral of the Ryn Fleets,” Elder Ruto continued, her voice still soft but artificially amplified to be heard over the ruckus all around, “you are to take operational command of the Coalition terraforming fleet.”
“What?” She got it out this time, followed quickly by a: “No!” And they said she's the crazy one. “I can't handle that! There's no way I can handle that!”
“I have been appointed Coalition High Commissioner for Terraforming,” Khelk said. “A title that will, unfortunately, largely ruin my running collection of titles, as it will require me to step down from most of their offices.” Khelk smiled broadly, too broadly, the kind of broadly that meant she was making sure Amarata knew she was smiling. “The fleet is yours to command, but the mission is mine to assign. My office will manage logistical support and diplomatic services, leaving you to do what you do best; innovate, troubleshoot, succeed.”
“And I'll be your military liaison,” Captain Resse said, nodding curtly. “Command of the fleet's escort is a separate position; my sole concern will be the safe operation of the fleet in accordance with Coalition law.”
Eff rolled forward the little bit permitted by the space still between them. “And I will be here, in the agreed upon capacity, to ensure that the Coalition does not overstep its bounds in the use of this vessel; however, Admiral, with you in command I anticipate my presence to be completely redundant in that regard.”
“We're here for you, Amarata,” Khelk said kindly. “We've always been here for you, even when you couldn't see it.”
Even through the overwhelming shock and terror, even with the blood rushing in her ears and the shaking in her knees, the tears blurring her vision and her heart hammering against her rib cage, she smiled. Right on the brink, her mad brain still made the connection: they'd set Norax up for her!
“Thank you. Thank you all so much . . .”
“Now,” Elder Ruto said, clasping her hands together in front of herself. “Excuse me, excuse me?” She was speaking to the whole room again. “If I could have your attention please?”
There was a smattering of “boos” and such, a few half-comprehensible objections, but the guests quieted down, the disco balls stopped spinning, and Elder Ruto once again had the room's attention.
“I do so hate to interrupt your celebrations, but there remains one last piece of business to which we must attend. This vessel, on which we now stand, and for which we are, in part, gathered today, does not have a name. Admiral Amarata: it is the tradition of some cultures among the Coalition, that on such momentous occasions as this, newly promoted members of the Fleet are entrusted to name a vessel worthy of their station. In the spirit of the Coalition, I intend to borrow from that tradition today. If your friends are not in error, I believe you have in mind a name worthy of this ship?”
Amarata burst into laughter. She couldn't control herself, the moment was just So Much. She grabbed Eff's arm for support, trying to calm herself, trying to fight back the tears and the gasps for air and the laughter and the shaking knees and the sound of hurricanes in her ears. It was too much, too much, all of every bit of too much!
“Varekai,” she whispered between gasps. And then, in a rare moment of clarity, after forcing herself to stand back up but still leaning on Eff for support, she added: “It means 'Wherever' in the Ryn language. It's the name of a legendary Ryn, the greatest of any version of our greatest tales. And it's who we are.
“The Coalition: wherever the need, there we are.”
End