"This is Talira.Elder Zolareth's granddaughter."
"I'm fifteen.Not a baby."She turned back to Sloane."Can I see your ship after the storm?Is it Meridian-class?"
"Yes."Sloane's voice shifted — the alert focus of a scientist finding an unexpected variable."How do you know about Meridian-class ships?"
"Settlement archive.Seventeen years of The Imperium’s technical registers."Her nodes pulsed."Your ship has a different power signature than standard.I felt it come online from here so we used some of the old sensors to scan it.The harmonic ratio is wrong."
"The harmonic ratio is wrong because the reactor is running on a Soltharran storm crystal."First time since she’d been born that I managed to shock the young one into silence.The quiet didn’t last long.
Talira's nodes blazed so bright the light glimmered in Sloane’s hair."You put one of our crystals in a corporate reactor?In a ship from The Imperium?"
"She extracted it from the second cliff face," I said."During an active discharge event."
Talira stared at Sloane with an expression that had moved well past interest to borderline hero worship.
"Can I help analyze the interface data after the storm?Crystal-to-synthetic-system interaction has never been documented?—"
"I'd like that," Sloane said.Warm.Genuine."The crystal is communicating with the ship's systems in ways I don't understand yet."
Talira's face was incandescent."The ship is waking up?"
"Yes.It’s already awake."
"She'll want a name soon.All the old ships have names."
I watched Sloane's happiness move through my chest like the Hearth's pulse.
She is going to love this place.Not hope.Fact.
The Hearth firehad burned low when I saw Sloane's expression change.
We were sitting at one of the inner circle tables, plates of food between us that she had been eating with the slightly distracted attention of someone fueling a machine rather than tasting a meal.Talira was next to her, collecting information she had no business having.
Sloane went still.Her gaze lifted.Searched.Locked with mine.
I felt them too.
"My crew."Her shoulders slumped in relief.
A shadow separated from the Hearth's south wall.Rythan.His dark, storm-bronze skin absorbed in the firelight.Cobalt blue nodes ran deep and quiet and steady as his eyes catalogued everything in a room.
He stopped at our table and looked at Sloane.His gaze lingered on the marks covering her flesh before he turned to me.
“Commander, all ten pods have been located.Six of the females will arrive in the next few minutes.The others are too far to make the trip before the storm arrives.They are being taken to safety in the caves until the storm passes.”
“All ten?Are they hurt?”Sloane leaned toward him.
Rythan shrugged."All ten are safe."His voice was low and unhurried and entirely certain."Two have minor injuries from the pod landing.The others are unharmed."
"Thank you."
Rythan looked at my mate for a long moment, then inclined his head once, briefly.He withdrew, back to the shadows, back to the edges of the room.Alone.Unnoticed.
Sloane watched him go."Your warriors found all of them."Almost to herself.
"I told you they would."
She looked at me.The firelight moved across her face in warm amber.She had never looked more beautiful.