New Ivehar was so similar to all of the other systems we’d passed through that it wasn’t until Stellina knocked on the door of my cabin to tell me we were almost there that I even realized we were there. If it weren’t for the vague echo of the long-since gone Emissary ship, it was just like any other frontier outpost: a collection of rocks and gas orbiting a red dwarf star. Even the signs of habitation were bland: a single enormous dome dug into the ice and rock of a boring ice moon around the largest of three gas giants. 

It also didn’t help that, as we closed into docking range with the New Ivehar colony, I was almost totally engrossed. I’d had a bit of a breakthrough with learning Democratic Emissarine, as I finally wrapped my head around one of the more common, but also more complex, of the four past tenses. As soon as that happened, I’d gone into full special interest mode, spending the next five hours translating the first chapter and a half of Remrion’s Ring. It made for an interesting read. The first twenty pages consisted entirely of the protagonist, the twenty-something heir to a wealthy family, wandering the corridors of their parents’ yacht and having internal monologues about why he felt dissatisfied with their life. 

Anyway, when Stellina said that we were about to dock with New Ivehar, I shut the book and stowed it away in my bag with all of my sketchbooks and the other things. Getting off of the bed was a bit of a challenge because of my joints, albeit one made easy by using my wings to lighten the burden. After changing out of my pajamas, I attached the Ariel, slung the pack over my shoulder, and shuffled out into the hallways of the Lance of Croatoan.

The good news about being on board a Collective cruiser for the duration of the trip was that it was less cramped, and I could have actual private time. The bad news was that there were tons of people around, and getting from place to place took walks long enough to make my joints flare up.

Everyone who wasn’t needed for the docking procedure, about thirty people in total, was already crowding around the sealed airlock that passed into the umbilicus. The room was a cacophony of sights and sounds and smells. As soon as I passed through the door, I froze in place and shut my eyes. Carefully moving both antennae independently, I searched for one familiar scent, the unique combination of oils and pheromones and chemicals belonging to one Miriam Hewitt. 

She was in the far corner, and in about thirty seconds so was I. She was in a chair, with an empty neighbor. Unfortunately, sitting would necessitate standing back up later, a price I couldn’t afford to pay. Instead I crouched against the wall, propped up on my lower arms and with my elytra spread for balance.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” Miri said, shooting a quick glance back at me. Then she did a double-take, gasping softly as it actually registered what I was wearing.

“Like the new look?”

“Um, I’d say so,” she said, trying to sound unimpressed. “It looks nice on you. Very confident.”

The thing about Emissary clothing is that, as a species where genderfluidity is the default, they were absolute masters of gender-neutral outfits. As far as my research could tell me, there was absolutely no distinction whatsoever between masculine and feminine clothing. This meant that, if I wanted to squeeze some kind of satisfaction out of my increased gender confidence, I was going to have to go back to basics. The basics were a skirt. A blue one. With flowers. Also a shirt with a collar a few inches too low-cut to be mistaken for a men’s; not that the cut mattered all that much on a perfectly smooth chestplate of solid black-and-purple carapace.

“Thanks.”

“Where’d you get it? Did you pack it from Earth?” Miri asked, occasionally stealing quick glances at me over her shoulder.

“Nah. Had Arana make it at the polyfac.”

“Arana? Who’s… Oh. Why do you always call your parents by their first names?”

I sighed. “Because I have two moms. There’s literally no other convenient way to distinguish which one I’m talking about.”

“I guess that makes about as much sense as anything,” she said, going back to being curled around her Ariel. 

That got me curious, so I took a step forward and leaned over her. “What are you up to?”

I caught a glimpse of what I was fairly sure was the Ariel’s e-reader before she hurriedly tabbed over to an internet window. “Doing research,” she said.

“About what?”

“New Ivehar. Why it was founded, any interesting things that have happened here, stuff like that.”

I could smell embarrassment on her again, but, having learned my lesson, decided not to press it. “Anything interesting.”

She shook her head. “It’s pretty dire. The founder was convinced that the ice here was full of valuable hydrocarbons, which it isn’t. Reading between the lines, the colony only survived this long because it’s a good tax haven and a convenient refueling spot.”

“That would explain why the Emissaries would stop here, I guess,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess it would.”

Just then, the room was filled with a heavy clunk-hisss, the familiar sound of a starship docking, which was confirmed a second later by a voice over the intercom. The crewmembers around us started lining up in a more-or-less orderly fashion to go through customs. Part of me wanted to keep talking, but the other part reminded me that I was the only reason all these people were here, so it would be best if I got ready as well.

“I should go, and, like, talk to Commander Carver and my parents and stuff,” I said, my antennae twitching toward the door. 

“You should,” Miri said. I started walking away, only to get interrupted. “I’m being serious, by the way, you do look good in a skirt. Maybe I can tell you about color coordination sometime.”

I froze for a little bit, having to stop for a moment to suppress the urge to tell her that I thought she was beautiful and to beg for her to take me back. She was just being friendly. It was girl-to-not-quite-a-girl talk, nothing more. With a long, slow breath, I let the stress out of my shell, then kept walking.

New Ivehar was just as unpleasant to be in as Fade Bjatri, but in a totally different way. It was cleaner, and the greater isolation meant that the people living there were allowed more freedom to decorate the hallways of the compound with sculpted metal and clusters of mechanical equipment. Unfortunately, the passageways were also cramped, the ice surrounding the compound making the air within cold enough to turn breath into mist. The architecture had clearly been subcontracted out to Tim Burton with how many odd angles and slightly off-kilter irregularities there were in the walls, and worst of all, the lighting was dim enough to create shadows everywhere and give everything a reddish cast. There was a mechanical smell in the air, wet and bitter and oily, which made me wish there was a way to cover my antennae. Even the people were off-putting, slouching from one place to the next, with scarred faces and calloused hands, smelling like resentment and fear. Something was deeply wrong with New Ivehar; the only question was what. 

We didn’t make it to the place in the core of the colony structure marked “Administration” before we were intercepted. There were eight of them, outnumbering us (“us” being me, both of my parents, Commander Carver, and two marines), and they were all completely identical. They were arthropods, quadrupedal, with bodies so spindly that it looked like they shouldn’t have been able to hold themselves up. Their dull green carapaces were covered in a layer of prickly fuzz that concealed their exact shapes. The most distinctive part was probably the face; it was big and flat and leaf-shaped, like a kind of upside-down triangle with huge black eyes.

“Visitors?” said one of them. “From the Collective, by your accoutrements.” The voices, also identical, were a high and musical chittering, which even my Ariel took a half-second to translate into subtitles. “I am Qalin, they/them, governor of New Ivehar,” said another one. “I welcome the esteemed Collective to my little corner of space,” they all said in unison.

To say that this display creeped me the hell out would be a massive understatement. I wanted to call a priest. Or just run away.

“Right, yes, Qalin!” said Carver. “We were here just a few months ago, aboard the Lance of Croatoan?”

The eight beings in front of us all narrowed their eyes simultaneously for a moment, until they suddenly relaxed. “Ah, we remember you very well. It took a moment to percolate the memory. What brings you here once more?”

“It’s some personal business, actually,” said Carver, folding her arms. “You know, us Collective types and our hearts of gold and relaxed discipline, all of that. We’ll need to talk about it in private, of course.”

One of the aliens responded, “That can certainly be done.” At the same time, three others turned in perfect unison to look at me. The pheromones hit me like a wave; arthropods were less subtle about their scents than mammals and even reptiles. Because I’d never seen a member of this species before, I couldn’t quite figure out what that pheromone meant, emotionally; but either way, I didn’t like it.

“What are you looking at me for?” I said, cringing away from them. 

“Are you an Emissary? Emissaries are a rare sight in this part of space,” they said. One of them looked over to Carver. “This Emissary is the cause for your coming here, are they not?”

Carver glanced to me, then to Arana, then to one of the aliens. “I’ll explain when we’re alone.”

“As you so please,” an entirely different alien said, before all eight turned and walked off at once, one gesturing for us to follow.

As we descended deeper and deeper into the bowels of New Ivehar, I circled around the back of the group and found my way next to Arana. “What the hell was all that about? Who’s Qalin?”

“Hmm? Oh, right. You’ve never met a Coeval before. It can be a little unsettling at first, but you’ll get used to it.”

“Coeval?” I asked, glancing ahead at the eight creatures leading us. “Wait, I’ve heard that name before. Are they Coeval?”

“They’re a Coeval,” she said, emphasis on the “a”. “About two hundred bodies, networked together into a single collective consciousness, partially through radio waves and partially through means nobody’s actually been able to understand yet.”

“So… all of them are Qalin?”

Arana nodded. “And several dozen others throughout the colony. Carver explained that Qalin, being capable of so many separate actions at once, is basically the entire government of the colony in one being.”

“Well that’s a hell of a shortcut to autocracy,” I muttered. “Just make the entire bureaucracy out of yourself.”

“Mmm. Just one more reason to get the information we need and then get out of here.”

We arrived at the Administration center to find, indeed, thirty or forty more completely identical of Qalin’s bodies, working busily away at computer terminals, doing spreadsheets and communicating across the station with non-Qalin officials, and all those other things that governments do. We were deep under the surface of the ice, which meant that the administration center was somehow even colder than the upper areas, but Qalin didn’t seem to mind. I sure did, but I wasn’t in charge of the air conditioning here. 

We were left in a foyer of the administration hall while Qalin diverted their attention, muttering something about urgent transmissions. After a few minutes wait, Commander Carver was finally allowed to explain our situation to Qalin. She, thankfully, left out our exact reasons for needing to find the Emissary ship, but the basics were all there. Qalin, with all the information from the colony’s scanners and their own vast access to the colony’s rumors, must have known something about the Emissary ship. Or at least, that was the thought.

“Commander Carver, I am sorrowful to say that no ship of Emissaries has passed through our system in recent times; your request of information cannot be fulfilled.”

Carver reared about a foot of her body off of the floor, her eyes narrowing. “Qalin, we were there. I talked to some of those Emissaries. I’m fairly sure I saw you talking to some of those Emissaries as well.”

This was starting to get interesting, so I turned my antennae toward Qalin’s nearest few bodies and paid the closest attention I could. Their pheromones were still an enigma to me, but I felt that if I focused hard enough that I could latch on to what they were feeling. I started stimming for focus: opening and closing my elytra, softly clicking my mandibles, and running my fingers up and down the smooth crystal of the Waterspindle around my neck.

“Is it not possible that you have made some mistake? Perhaps you remember a station different from mine?” Qalin said through a different body. Then, three at once repeated, “No ship of Emissaries has come this way in quite some time. That is all there is to say.”

Arana furrowed her brow. “Carver, is there something going on here that you haven’t told us?”

“Look, if the Emissaries told you to keep it a secret, you really don’t have to worry about us,” said Stellina. “We’re doing this all for Cathy, for an actual Emissary! There’s no way we could be with the Order.”

“I’ve told you everything,” Carver said, folding her arms. “Ask Qalin what’s going on. Stellina is right, you know, you don’t need to protect the Emissary ship from us.”

The adults rapidly broke down into arguing with each other and with Qalin. Their pheromone signature was foreign, yet also strangely familiar, which sounded contradictory until I realized it was fairly similar to how I smelled, us both being arthropods. There were obvious signatures of wires pulled taut and sour milk, undertones of perfect synchronized disdain and trilling, screeching music. So Qalin didn’t exactly like us; anyone could have guessed that. But there was something more, a subtle strain of ash and rich meat, something that I couldn’t quite file as any one emotion. I only knew of one way to get a better look at someone’s emotions; and that was to poke said emotions with a stick. 

“Qalin?” I said, my voice shrill with nerves. 

One of their bodies broke away from the general argument, leaving three others to continue it. “What is it you wish to hear?”

“Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake? They might not have given away that they were Emissaries… but you’re sure that nobody who looked like me has been around here, about eight months ago?”

Qalin’s eyes narrowed, and the one body let out a constrained, throaty growl. “Carelessness is not my way, girl. I would not make such a paltry mistake.”

I glanced over at Arana, still busy entreating with one of Qalin’s other bodies. “That’s the Tigress of Telemachus Cloud, you know. She really doesn’t mess around, and neither should you.”

At the mention of my mother’s title, which thankfully she didn’t overhear me using, Qalin flinched. Four of their bodies, from all over the room, suddenly turned from what they’d been doing to give me a harsh glare, mandibles pulled back in a move a bit like a human sneer. I’d gotten to them, and the pheromones emanating from all of their bodies told a story all on their own. 

Qalin’s anxiety had spiked when I mentioned who my mother was, the odor of sharp knives, bitter medicine, and the anticipation before your test results come in. It could have been the worry of an innocent bug, but I wouldn’t put money on it. But that wasn’t what hit me the most. When they looked at me, specifically, apart from all the others, the scent of disdain faded slightly, and was replaced by the ashy thread. And I knew now what that feeling was: it was grasping hands and locked gates, soft cloth sacks and the clinking of metal on plastic. In other words, it was greed. Qalin wanted something from me, and me specifically, and chances were that they’d do anything to get it. 

I couldn’t stay in administration for very long after that, not with the uncertainty about what Qalin wanted standing right over my shoulder. I mumbled an excuse about wanting to get some movement and fresh air and retreated from the area, ending up wandering aimlessly through the lower levels of New Ivehar. Everything hurt after that much walking, especially my knee joints. My broken arm, even tamed with painkillers, was suddenly alive with itching and pain that jittered like electricity. The cold was bad enough that some of my extremities were numb to the pain, and holy crap was the layout confusing. If it weren’t for the map on my Ariel, I probably would have gotten myself lost.

Suddenly, my antennae perked up, homing in on a familiar scent. It was Miri, and she must have been close by. Which made no sense; what reason could she have for being all the way down here where it was cold and awful? I followed the scent trail, around corners and through half-open doorways, until I was interrupted by the feeling of a Miri running face-first into my chest. 

“Ow! What the—Cathy?”

“What are you doing down here?”

Miri rubbed at her nose, saying, “I could ask you the same question.”

“I’m just… walking. And I’m down here because this is where Administration is, and I was just there with my parents and Carver.”

Miri pressed her lips together. “That would do it. But, Cathy, I think there’s something suspicious going on here.”

“Yeah, exactly, me too,” I said. “We were just talking with the colonial governor or whatever, and they’re claiming that there was no Emissary ship. I was pretty sure I could smell them lying.”

Miri’s eyes widened a fraction. “You can do that? That’s… actually kind of cool.”

“I can if I focus,” I said with a shrug. “Wait, then what made you suspicious?”

“W-well, uhh, it’s a funny story,” she said, suddenly losing her ability to maintain eye contact. “I was messing around with my Ariel, trying to see how it does transmissions, and I stumbled across this hidden frequency. It wasn’t encoded, but it also wasn’t available to talk about it. They were talking about… something; it was all in code-talk, but it didn’t sound very good.”

Part of me wanted to tell her about how Qalin wanted me for something, but the other part decided to keep it under wraps. She didn’t need to know. “So what should we do?”

“I was… well, I was pulling a Quinn and trying to see if there were any doors marked ‘Do Not Enter’ that I could enter,” Miri admitted. “But I’m not very good at being sneaky. By the way, do you have any idea who this ‘Qalin’ person is? I keep hearing the name, but it doesn’t make—”

“Oh, that’s easy. It’s a hive mind thing. Two hundred bodies, one mind.”

Miri made an odd face. “Ah. That would explain a lot. Maybe we should tell your parents about this?”

“Sure,” I said, already walking. Whatever was going on, I got the feeling that we were going to have to move quickly.

If only my parents understood that little wrinkle. “Look, we’re feeling it too,” said Stellina, “but for right now we don’t know anything about the situation. Kiddo, your mother is doing everything she can to sort this out, but we can’t risk an international incident.”

We were taking an elevator back to the upper floors of the colony, the perfect place to reveal secrets. “I’m just… scared, is all,” I said, leaning against the back wall. “I’m scared that this is some kind of trap, or that the Order is involved somehow. If they were willing to destroy New Malagasy to find me, I doubt they’ll stop just because I escaped once.”

“I know it’s scary, kiddo,” she said. “It’s going to be scary for a long time, and to be honest… it might never stop being scary. And that’s just how it feels from where I’m standing, I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like having a target on your back all the time.” She put a hand on my shoulder. “But we’re doing everything we can to keep you safe, okay?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I get it.”

“Parents always do,” said Miri. “It’s what they’re made for.”

There was a ding, and the elevator doors slid open. Stellina stepped out onto the landing, and I moved to follow, but Miri stayed exactly where she was. 

“This is our stop, isn’t it?” Stellina said. “With all the lunch places?”

“Actually, I saw this cool, um, insect… supply place, a couple of floors up. So this isn’t my stop.”

I knew damn well that insect supply places weren’t a thing, and gave Miri a look. She replied with a look of her own, a raised eyebrow that meant that she wanted to talk. It was a look she hadn’t given me since we broke up. “Oh, really?” I said. “Maybe they have some shell polish, I’ve been meaning to pick some up. See you, Stellina!”

She shrugged, letting the elevator door close behind her. “Stay safe, you two.”

The doors clicked shut, and Miri pressed the lowest button on the elevator wall. 

“‘Insect supply place,’ was that the best you could come up with? Why would you even need to go to an insect supply place?”

“I’m not good at lying, alright,” Miri said, staring up at the floor number display. “Haven’t had much reason to practice.”

“Fair enough,” I said, looking at a really interesting spot of dirt on the floor.

“Do you want to…” Miri hesitated, coiling that lock of hair around her finger. “...investigate the suspicious hive mind aliens. Together? With me?”

“Any time you ask.”

SaffronDragon

One of the reviews pointed out that Miri hasn't been kicking very much ass since the early chapters, and it just so happened that I had this part planned out already, so I guess it's time to get some Miri action in. And if you want to see some more of that Miri-being-awesome over the next couple of chapters, you can click the link below to join my Patreon, where you can read the next few chapters early for as little as $3 a month, which will also give you access to my exclusive discord. Higher tiers also unlock added benefits like a series of exclusive short stories and voting rights on various polls. If not, that's fine, I'll see you in two weeks for Chapter 33: Some New Hope, Maybe