The airships were scheduled to leave early in the morning. The recruits were busy packing up camp in preparation. It was strange to see a place that had become so comfortable transition so quickly. The thick canvas tents were disassembled and packed away, leaving patches of packed black earth in the gently glowing grasses. The glitz ranges and mess halls and storage sections had all been converted to an empty field, and all the squadron’s supplies had been neatly packaged up and loaded into the large cargo holds of the gently hovering airships.
Though Jack had seen them before—both the one that picked them up right after the portal and occasionally others as they floated high above Izutis—he was still in awe. Orvalys had postulated earlier that the slightly lesser gravity in Tinaria as well as an abundance of glitz as a fuel source is what had probably made the ships a logical choice for transportation. To Jack, they still seemed like they should be much too heavy to float around like they did. In the smaller flyers, it wasn’t as noticeable, though they were similarly uncanny, the power of the thrust seemed to make a little more sense on that kind of scale. In these bigger ships, it just seemed much more illogical.
“Earth brain,” Jack said out loud. It was something he had probably told himself a hundred thousand times in Nymia when something didn’t seem to make sense. “Earth brain trying to understand.”
“What Earth?” a voice said from behind him. He turned quickly to see Ki standing there. She had done her best to replicate the sounds he had made, but the word sounded incredibly foreign coming out of her mouth.
“Ah,” Jack fumbled for a moment. He was still surprised any time she spoke in her broken English. He always forgot how quickly she had picked it up just by listening and that was probably because it was pretty ridiculous of her to be able to do so. “It is where Orf and I are from,” he said in Yarvan. His mastery of it was a little further along than hers of English. He had been getting lessons straight from Orv, who was pretty much a walking encyclopedia that could answer every question he had, as well as cater the lessons specifically to him. Combining that with the full immersion among the other Yarvan recruits, he had progressed rapidly.
“You village name Earth?” She asked in English.
Jack tried Yarvan again. “Uh, yes our village is named that.”
Ki nodded and continued in English. “You never say me you village name. Why?”
“Very far away,” Jack said insisting on continuing in Yarvan. “We don’t like to talk about it.”
He had heard Orvalys use a similar excuse earlier. Pretending to be uncomfortable about something was one of the best ways to stop people from asking about it, just like putting an embarrassing detail in a lie to make it more likely it’ll be believed.
“Don’t like?” Ki pressed. “What mean don’t like?”
Jack hesitated a moment. “Do not like,” he explained in English. “It means not good. Onikam yondas.”
“Onikan yondas?” Ki repeated. “You think bad to talk?”
“Va,” Jack said, nodding. “It’s bad for us to talk about.”
Ki nodded knowingly. “Many thing bad talk about here.”
Jack switched back over to speaking Yarvan. “What do you mean?” He asked quietly.
“I mean exactly what I told you,” Ki said, finally switching languages as well and keeping her voice low. “You were referring to something that happened to you and Orf weren’t you—something that happened in your village Earth that you don’t want to talk about?”
“Well—”
Ki interrupted. “I assume you agree there are quite a few things that wouldn’t be prudent to talk about in the open yes?”
“Um, Sure,” Jack said.
Ki nodded and looked down as if deciding something to herself. After a moment she looked back up. “Well, why don’t you find me a little later and we can discuss.” It seemed like she was trying to communicate more than what she had actually said out loud, but before Jack could answer she had already turned and walked away.
Huh, he thought to himself. I might not like whatever that’s going to end up being.
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“Were you speaking Tinarian?” Orvalys asked. He had just appeared at Jack’s elbow.
“Yarvan,” Jack said quickly.
“You’re getting pretty good at it,” Orvalys said, and then switching to Tinarian he asked, “But how is the important language coming along?”
Jack forced out the awkward syllables, “I practice very much morning to night."
Orvalys winced at the pronunciations. “Still have quite a bit of work in front of us there.”
Jack almost told him about Ki’s weird comments, but something stopped him. “You’re right,” he said instead. “Let’s double our lessons.”
“If you think it’ll work,” Orvalys said, “I don’t mean to make you feel insecure. It really is one of the most difficult languages I’ve come across, objectively speaking.”
The sound of a horn interrupted them as it blared out across the camp.
“I guess it’s time,” the homunculus said, and then he switched back to English. “Only a few more days until we can find out what’s going on over the mountains.”
“Yeah.” Jack put on a smile. It felt a little fake. "Anyway, I better go grab my pack.” As he walked away he wondered if it had been convincing at all. Orvalys didn’t feel like the kind of… person you could hide things from—not for very long anyway.
I’ll tell him, I will. There’s no debate there. I should probably just figure out what’s going on with her before I worry him about it. He’d appreciate that right?
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General Pyrn’s indigo eyes were usually warm. They had been that way as long as Jal Genys could remember. Today they were filled with a quiet fire the like of which she had never before seen, not in battle—not in the midst of death and destruction. It had been an hour or so since he had been notified of her sister’s death, and Genys didn’t know what she had expected to see in the General—concern, pain, pity even.
She decided the fire was somehow much more comforting.
“My position has been compromised,” was all she said. Her voice was deceptively steady. It wouldn’t do to cry, not even here alone with Pyrn—Jayn deserved that much. “Nevertheless,” she continued. “I feel the most prudent course of action would be to continue on with the investigation in Ullulia.”
Pyrn looked away and nodded. She couldn’t tell if it was in answer to her words or a recognition of something deeper. A moment passed before he spoke to the floor. “I doubt that even a direct command from your High General would do much to sway your resolve?”
“I—I would of course follow any direct orders General,” Genys stammered. “If that’s what’s being asked I would—”
“It’s not,” Pyrn said, cutting her off and looking up at her. The fire was still there, but some of the concern she had expected was beginning to manifest. “No order of the kind will come from me. Besides, your mission is already Senate-sanctioned. I just wish we knew more about who or what could be behind this. What worries me most is how powerful that someone or something could be.”
“Powerful enough to kill and get away with it,” Genys said.
“Jayn will not go unavenged, mark my words,” Pyrn said firmly. “An extremely exhaustive investigation is underway. But at this point there are still so many unknowns, I would feel much more confident if you requested a postponement—remain in the safety of the city until I could accompany your squadron.”
Genys let out something between a laugh and a scoff. “The High General of the Republic Militia showing up in Yarvan Ullulia, right on the Thori border—the entire Republic would hear about it within the week.”
“Sooner I’m afraid,” Pyrn said. “And if the murder was truly the result of some powerful local entity, my place would be here to weed it out.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Genys said. For some reason talking about it as an objective security matter made it easier to address—at least for now. “Of all the potential culprits, I find it unlikely the result of locally organized crime. Whoever shot that glitzer at me had been trained. I’ve also considered someone affiliated with the Hindle border disputes, but those were resolved years ago, and mostly peacefully.”
“And even they lacked training to the degree you describe,” Pyrn added. “I’ve been thinking on that as well.”
Genys nodded before looking up at Pyrn. “How likely is it—”
“Extremely unlikely,” Pyrn said abruptly but quietly. “But that’s what you’re going to find out. I hesitate to send you out to investigate a potential rebellion if that rebellion ended up having the means to infiltrate Izutis and assassinate a family member of a Militia Commander, but for whatever reason, I find it unlikely even if they existed they’d make that move.”
“I feel that as well,” Genys said. “Something is… off about it. I know we’ve been pushing to send a vetted investigation to Ullulia since reports of the Shadow first came in. Potential Thori Compact infringement is reason enough to call for the mission. I just worry—” The two made eye contact for a moment before there was the piercing sound of a horn from outside. The mutual gaze broke, but not before something was communicated between them—something important that they both knew the other knew and couldn’t say out loud.
“It’s time,” Genys said. She readjusted her decorative armor and threw her hand up to the general, not in the way of a casual hello, but the formal Tinarian salute. Pyrn accepted it.
“I’ll be writing,” he said. “If anything goes even slightly sideways, I’ll follow you with a thousand troops.”
Genys nodded and pushed the flap of the tent. As she walked through the canvas corridor, all she could think about was the one thing they hadn’t said to each other—the one thing neither of them would ever be caught saying out loud. She even worried thinking it, because if her sister wasn’t killed by organized crime, a disgruntled Hindler, or a Yarvan extremist, there was another obvious, possible but sacrilegious answer—
someone within the Republic Senate itself.