38 - I'm Going

Alissa crossed her arms with a flounce and Mariush could well imagine the lower lip thrust out.  “I’m going and that’s that!” she said, shrilly.

“It is truly dangerous, even in Mom and Terence will be risking his life—“

“Like my daddy.  That’s all right.  I still go talk to him in code, you know.  And my mommy.  I have the codes that will get you into Station and into Glass Mountain and I’m not just giving things away for free.  It sounds exciting even if Terry’s tried to tell me it’s dull and boring.  I’m going.” The hand on top of her crossed arms clenched into a fist.

“I am concerned for you as you are concerned about Homa.  You wouldn’t put her into danger would you?”

“No!” Alissa snapped.  “It’s you who won’t let me stash her away in code but say she has to stay in a fragile, squishy pink body that has to breathe and eat and piss and all kinds of other messy and uncontrollable things… By the way, don’t you dare try and offer my people help.  We’d all be offended.  We don’t NEED your help and would never come begging.”

“That’s not what we mean when we offer—“ Mariush drew herself up.  “That’s a side issue, child and we’ll get back to it in a moment.  “It will be dangerous.  If Terence cannot get into Station and make the base open up then you’ll be stuck inside Mom with only the Catchers and FireDrakes for you to get back.  You could run out of air before you got back.”

Alissa snorted like a much older woman.  “In Mom?  She’d just make more air. Give her enough water and she can make more air… and the whole moon is covered in kilometres of water.”

The child has a point.  Mom IS, indeed, meant to function and keep her frail passengers safe in all kinds of extreme conditions.  Terence told me that she kept them safe inside a whirlwind.

“It sounds exciting and you need me to get into Station. I’m going.”

**

“Da… I don’t have anything to do!  It’s all that Xanadu man and the Hippifrei siwion.” Hara, next to Kyrus, nodded in agreement as he continued.  “We did a lot when it was straight out bombing war.  Now there’s nothing for us to do!”

Children.  His Radiance suppressed the feed from Ilax and Dukir that was feeding him information from the invasive farms that Prime was setting up, dropping it even further back in his attention while he looked at his boy and Haraklez.

“Son.  What makes you think that warriors spend their whole lives doing things?  Most of war is sitting around and waiting.” He turned to Hara as the boy began to sputter.  “And, young lady, I thought you wanted more time for your research?”

“Well, I did… I do… but there’s so much, so many different problems to solve and Dag’s gone back to raising the next chick flock with Yasna and I’m by myself…”

“Take what time you need, my daughter by marriage,” Kyrus said quietly.  “Things are not deathly urgent for your part of this war right now, through your own efforts.  You’ve gotten yourself some time to do more research, and development of all the things we might need very quickly.”

He turned back to his son.  “Kyrus.  You have enormous amounts of work ahead of you.  The cuddle flock are all proving to be wild about flight and the wilder birds and the ones we counted as ‘undomesticable’ are all reacting to them flying in a way that we would be fools not to pursue.  Your job will be to continue training our safe warbirds and finding out if we can train our older birds, work with them, using the bait of letting them fly.”

“Da, what good are warbirds now, anyway?” Kyrus looked almost frantic.  “What good are warriors who can swing a sword? Or mander one?  When we’re fighting someone who can just drop things on us from orbit until we can’t keep up?”

“We are working to change that, son.  We don’t know if we will be able to bring the conflict down to the planetary level…” He paused.  “Just listen to me.  Twenty years ago we weren’t worried about ‘on planet’ or ‘off planet’ or whether everyone could read.  We were worried about the destruction of society caused by two men or two women loving and marrying each other.”

Kyrus felt himself blushing.  “Da…ah…”

His Radiance cut him off with a slash of his hand.  “We’re in a war and you two have your place to keep.  I won’t have you in the front lines all the time, you have to take a back seat some of the time.  Armies aren’t made up of champions.  Armies work together and right now you both have your jobs.  Thank you for asking me if they are enough… I’ll see what else I can find for you to do in your spare time.”  He smiled.  “If you have any.”

Kyrus looked at Hara and then at his father.  “I… We aren’t asking because we want to puff ourselves up…”

“You asked because you were worried you weren’t doing enough.” His father nodded.  “That’s part of learning how to be a leader.” His smile grew impish.  “If you like I could set you both to looking after our guest?”

“Oh, um… I’d better get back to the flight barns… I just remembered… I forgot…” Kyrus hurried out.

“I’ll be too busy,” Hara said abruptly.  “We haven’t even had time to have much sex.”

It was her father-by-marriage’s turn to blush.  “You Milar, just blurting such things out…” She smiled at him, pulled down her veil to kiss his cheek just above his.

“It’s all right Stepapa.”