Holding Pattern

I had a feeling Jordan would want to chase Kemon with us. Because of her sister.

Especially when I shared that the abduction ships were grouped in quartets. That her sister had been absent from her ship was easily explained by the second girls’ ship in the quartet Kemon must have found.

We knew Kemon had taken at least two of the ships proper, and who knows how many abductees he’d managed to grab from the asteroid Jordan described.

And who knows why?

But we were an hour away from the Beacon now, and almost a day ahead of the rendezvous window I’d messaged Dustin about.

We’d enjoyed a day of easy flying and unwinding. But with sleep and time came one of the most crucial steps one could take to come out of the next crisis alive: figure out what went wrong with this one.

“I want to listen in,” Jordan said. She looked resolute.

“We’re going to be talking about the aliens we shot,” I said. “You didn’t shoot anyone.”

“You said it’s for learning. I want to learn.”

Yeah, she was determined to go after her sister alright.

“Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you?” I asked. “No one’s said you aren’t going to Archo.”

“Work with me both ways,” she huffed, fudging the idiom. “I’m coming here in Starspeak trying to be reasonable about all this. I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to ask questions. I just want to listen. Doctor Dyn and [Mister] Shinshay are watching the kids. I just want to sit in the corner and try to learn something.”

“…Serral would have to be okay with it,” I said.

“”

<‘Audit’? Odd choice of words.>

“”

<…Fine. Tell Caleb to get up here already.>

I rolled my eyes. Captain knew I’d heard.

We left the kids taking turns doing more medical checks with Dyn and Nerin, with Shinshay helping occupy whoever’s turn was up. A few of them spied us slipping up the ladder, and I got the distinct impression the youngsters were going out of their way to behave. Jordan and I weren’t that much older than them, but the kids seemed like they were quietly aware of how responsible we felt for them, just by virtue of being the oldest.

I should ask directly. If that was the case, there was no reason not to communicate directly about it. I wanted them to know how much I appreciated the cooperation.

The flight operations deck was one of the smallest, beaten by only the pilot’s deck immediately above it. On a bigger ship, you might have called it something like ‘the bridge’, and I probably had once or twice. There were a number of consoles, radios, and workstations ringing the deck, each one with a dedicated crash chair.

We’d yet to need the Jack’s high-G accommodations, so the crash chairs were little more than just swiveling, cushy lounge seating. But they could swivel, so we all got to face each other while we got settled.

Everyone but Nai was carrying a small notepad and a pen, and as I noted the pads she materialized her own. I did the same, copying the psionic notes I’d made immediately after escaping Cammo-Caddo.

Preparations were lazy, and everyone was taking their time chattering about our flashy getaway.

“Well, I got us in the air with the grav assist on the ground, but the local air control didn’t like it when I broke trajectory and set down at the dam,” Weith said. “Anyone going to come after us for it?”

“Well, we probably left some people alive who heard we claimed ‘Coalition’,” Serral said. “So the truth is probably the last thing any of the pirates or their local authorities will think.”

“Isn’t that a bit funny?” Fenno asks. “The thing you’d complain about with a rocket launch like that is contaminating the reservoir or dumping radiation outside curtains. But the ones you’d complain to would be those same local authorities…who’re chummy with the pirates holding children captive.”

“Wait, really?” I asked. I knew the Jack used fusion engines…of some kind. “Did we poison a reservoir with rocket exhaust?”

“We didn’t, but someone probably has,” Weith snorted. “The Jack has one-hundred percent exotic byproducts. These engines cost a fortune, but every plasma particle that comes out of our exhaust stops existing if it spends more than three seconds at a temperature colder than our engine chambers. We kick up dust and leave nothing behind. There isn’t a landing site in the known cosmos we aren’t graded for.”

“Alright, hush,” Serral said. “Shop talk later. Who’s going first?”

Deg raised his hand, and Serral called his name—omitting his rank, interestingly. We were keeping a pretty casual ship…

“What did we do wrong, Deg?”

“Reconnaissance,” the Farnata said. “We should have used more time to scout all areas involved.”

“That was the first thing we did,” Tasser pointed out. “Everything spiraled out from Fenno and I getting made.”

“Exactly,” Deg said. “We rushed into the most exposed form of surveillance there is, and that necessitated putting multiple crew members in high-risk situations with no redundancies. Not only that: we were slow scanning the river-landing’s surroundings when the psionic contact came in, we let ourselves be blindsided by a field-vacuum of all things, and even if we didn’t suffer a scratch, we exposed ourselves to huge amounts of risk in lieu of time to prepare.”

There was no recrimination, no guilty glances amongst us, none of what he’d said was unexpected.

“I had all those points but one,” Serral said. “Everyone else?”

Everyone present turned their attention to their notepad, crossing off the concerns Deg had raised.

Even I had ‘low preparation, high risk’ on my list, and I was an idiot when it came to proper military tactics.

“Corrections?” Serral asked.

That we weren’t so unified about. There was a reason we’d dove headfirst into such a mess: we’d had little choice. No one seemed to have any good ideas about how we could have acquired better information.

“…Refine our orbital surveillance,” I said. “We could use psionics to design something and use the fabricator to make ourselves a temporary satellite to leave in orbit while we touchdown.”

It was a terrible idea. Technically possible, but not at all feasible given how much work it would require.

“We don’t have the resources,” Serral clicked. “But at least someone said something…Alright, ignoring the obvious intelligence problems on the front end, keep going down the list.”

“Tactically, we made the right call putting all our support on Caleb and Nerin,” Nai said. “Dyn and I didn’t need the help.”

Murmurs went around, and everyone but me crossed out something similar.

I hadn’t thought to write down what we’d done right…

We went around the room, each crew member outlining everything wrong with our tactics and what we should have done instead. Most of my list was quickly brought up by other Fenno, Deg, and especially Tasser. But one thing sat unaddressed on my list, and I suspected Tasser’s too. We were saving it, I suspected.

“…We swallowed a second hook we didn’t have to,” Nai decided.

Everyone checked their lists, but she’d been vague.

“…The second meeting,” Serral acknowledged.

Nai nodded. “We could have refused or ignored whoever purported themselves to be Mak. We knew they were playing us and played along when we didn’t have to. We could have exposed ourselves to minimal risk by assaulting the dam on its own.”

“We didn’t know there were Humans in both locations,” Fenno pointed out.

“But we could have found out quick,” Nai said. “They were in contact with each other. Assaulting both locations one after the other, even on a similar timetable of just a few hours, would have allowed us to exert full force at both locations. We should have set up to keep an eye from afar on the auto-factory, rolled through the dam and pivoted to hit any secondary locations immediately afterward.”

“They would have moved Jordan and Elaine,” Tasser said. “They were being kept deep underground, and those tunnels stretched far enough there had to be a secondary entrance we never identified.”

“What even were those tunnels?” I asked.

“At a guess?” Serral said. “Part of a deep soil monitoring station from when the planet was still being terraformed. It was near the dam, so the original colonists might have tracked changes in the soil’s erosion and water motion.”

“Not like we could have learned about something like that from the colony records,” Nai said. “We were right to worry about local corruption. Splitting ourselves between the two targets could have turned out much worse if they’d called local authorities beforehand.”

“I understand why it would have been safer for us,” Deg said. “But if we hit the targets one at a time, we never would have seen all six Humans.”

“…No, Nai’s right,” I said, writing a new entry on my list. ‘Don’t destroy psionics’. “Because we shouldn’t have [nuked] their psionics. I think it’s more valuable to leave their communication up so we can listen in, than to prevent it outright. We could have tracked wherever they moved Jordan and Elaine. They could run, but not fast enough to get away.”

Serral crossed out that point. He was the only one.

“Agreed,” he said. “Our psionic advantage is significant. With Caleb present, it’s overwhelming. We can afford to subvert instead of destroying. Preventing their telepathy would only be valuable leveling the field, but we don’t want the psionic field leveled. It favors us.”

The crew grimaced except for Nai and Tasser. The two of them were more enthusiastic about coming up with new psionics than the rest.

“I’m through my list,” Nai said, and hers was the longest out of anyone’s. “Who else still has points to cover?”

“We do,” Tasser and I both said.

Nai gave an amused snort.

“Coalescence?” she asked, pointing between us.

“Yeah, but not any lingering linkage, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I said.

Tasser leaned forward. “Caleb figured out how to link with non-Adepts. And while Coalesced, all participants can access the skills and Adeptry of other participants,” he said.

Everyone but Jordan, Nai, and I leaned forward at that. They’d all heard when we first debriefed, but this would be the first details.

Tasser was, arguably speaking, the first Casti Adept.

Well, not really Adept. His connection to my powers vanished the second our Coalescence ended.

Still, he’d experienced something no other Casti alive or dead had.

“What was it like?” Weith grinned. “Spinning matter out of nothing?”

Tasser looked at his own hand, and I thought I knew what was going through his head.

“…Completely ordinary,” he said. “Like it was something I’d been doing for months.”

I smiled. Months. Not years. Once I’d realized the powers were mine and not just Daniel’s, not a single day had gone by that I hadn’t used them. In fact, there hadn’t been a minute they hadn’t been in reach until experiencing the field-vacuum.

“Funny thing is, I don’t think it’s the most memorable part of the experience,” he said somberly. He caught my gaze and I knew exactly what he meant.

“…We can poke at it later,” I said. “For now, are you thinking the same thing I am? Tactically speaking?”

Tasser nodded. “We already knew Coalescence was a trump card because it let Nai’s skills be in two places at once, but this was the first time with only Caleb’s Adeptry involved.”

“And?”

“And Caleb has a pitifully low mass limit,” Tasser said. “Jordan, do you know your Adept ratings?”

“…No,” she said, glancing between me and Serral for permission to talk.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“She’s also got no idea what Coalescence even is,” I pointed out. “You’re just being cruel, roping her into the conversation.”

“What’s the most mass you can bring out?” Nai asked. “A rough guess.”

“…Mmm…[fifty…sixty kilograms?]” she said.

Nai snorted.

“For the everyone in this room that doesn’t speak English, that’s more than double Caleb’s,” Tasser said. “Still L1, probably. But more than double.”

“Laugh it up,” I said. “Me against any human Adept out there, I don’t care what their ratings are, my money’s on me.”

“Conflict of interest, that’s called,” Deg smiled.

“What conflict?” I asked right back.

“Tasser…” Serral interrupted. “What’s your point?”

“His point is that Coalescence is still a trump card even if you pretend there’s no Adeptry in the equation,” I said.

“…Explain,” the Captain said.

“One might expect…” Tasser began, “that Caleb’s mass limit split amongst three people would ‘thin the supply’—so to speak—and diminish the value of sharing something like that. And, to be fair, it was spread thin…”

“But?” Serral prompted.

“But it didn’t matter,” Tasser said. “We never had to fight over who was using the mass at any one time. As soon as any of us needed it, we all knew. Every one of us was following the same tempo, with zero missteps. Before that day, Nerin had only ever seen drills. Not to say she wasn’t trained well; she handled herself well up to the point we got desperate. But once we were Coalesced, all three of us handled ourselves flawlessly. Nerin and Caleb haven’t seen as much combat as me, but they got to benefit from my experience. Caleb is downright unflappable, so Nerin and I were too. Even seemingly less relevant parts of Nerin’s experiences, like keeping sweat out of her eyes during surgery, were still usable for us. I can’t even begin to describe the advantage of putting our heads together like that.”

“This is a tactical reflection,” Serral said. “It’s good to remind ourselves of what we did right, but I’m waiting for what we could have done better.”

“He’s saying we could have Coalesced more of us and sooner,” I said. “I was ruminating on the theory of how and why it’s possible since talking to the Beacon, and I should have brought it up on the front end.”

“It shouldn’t be our last resort,” Tasser pressed. “Coalescence is the kind of trump card that lets you win on turn one.”

“…Exactly how many people do you think you can link?” Serral asked me.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “And I’d be awfully leery to try adding more than one at a time. Tasser’s right, the strengths are impossible to overstate. But there’s downsides too, and I doubt we’ve seen all of them.”

Serral shifted his gaze between Nai, Tasser, and I, gauging our reactions.

“Hey, we can ask Nerin too,” I said. “Literally wouldn’t take more than a thought.”

“We can look into the possibilities of Coalescence more,” Serral conceded, writing it on his pad.

Trading notes with the class left us all with some things to improve the next time we found ourselves under the gun.

As the meeting broke up, Jordan caught my attention. She’d materialized for herself a small pad to take notes with.

“What’s the most important thing to learn to stay alive?” she asked.

“You already said it,” I said. “Want to learn.”

·····

Jordan had materialized a chessboard and was explaining the rules to Shinshay, with the youngsters trying to get Fenno’s attention.

Nai and I found ourselves alone while Serral hollered at the Beacon station on the radio about making sure our gravity field was properly counterbalanced.

Tasser and Nerin were probably going to join us shortly. We’d taken over a table in the mess playing games of huru. Nai had me in a pickle, and she knew it.

I was down to two walls left, while she had four.

Part of me wanted to improvise something psionic and brute force all the possible permutations, but I was distracted.

“What’s got you so contemplative?” Nai asked.

Couldn’t get a thing past her.

“Just thinking about Coalescence,” I said.

“What in particular?”

“It’s different with three people than just two,” I admitted. “Just the two of us, and we get lost trying to tell which of us is which. Comparing one ‘me’ to one ‘you’, it’s too easy to slip into the person’s perspective by accident. But with more people in the mix who aren’t ‘me’, it’s easier to keep track of who’s whom and where everyone’s thoughts are coming from.”

“Sounds like you get quite a clear picture of who’s involved,” Nai said. Her face fell for a moment. “You might know my sister better than I do right now.”

“Nah,” I said. “I learned a lot about her, but it doesn’t compare to a whole lifetime.”

“Not what I meant,” she smiled. “But thank you for the vote of confidence.”

She stared at me expectantly. I hadn’t really given her an answer.

“It’s not what I gleaned about Tasser or Nerin that’s got me so ‘contemplative’, as you put it,” I admitted. “It’s what they gleaned about me.”

“You got to see yourself the way someone else does,” Nai followed. “And just what did you find looking through someone else’s eyes?”

I couldn’t quite bring myself to answer that.

“…Wait, really?” she said. “You didn’t know how much you impressed them? Us? Everyone?”

“I never really thought of myself as someone impressive,” I said. “And I don’t just say that to be humble. Which, of course, I am.”

I added that last part almost as a matter of habit.

Nai just grinned.

“You say shit like that because you don’t believe it. You brag about being humble because it’s something you want to be, but you’re too humble to actually want the credit for actually being humble. So, you’re the kind of person who’ll brag about the truth, just so people won’t start thinking it’s the truth…” she said. “You remind me of me. Putting in so much work on…what? Prestige?”

“You say all that in Speropi just to spare my ego?” I asked.

“Maybe.”

I rolled my eyes, pretending to focus on the game.

“Come on, level with me,” she said.

“Not even an hour ago, you said your money would be on you against any other human Adept,” she said. “What happened to that confidence?”

“It’s not confidence in myself, I guess,” I said. “It’s confidence in the people who’ve helped and taught me.”

“You think anyone else in your situation would manage to do more with the things you’ve been given,” Nai deduced.

“See, when you put it like that, I can start to agree I’m being unreasonable. I don’t know why I feel this way, but I can’t help it. Coalescing with Tasser and Nerin has me all self-conscious. I know they weren’t trying to flatter me, but I can’t shake the feeling that they must be.”

“What exactly did they notice about you?” she asked. “What’s the specific part of yourself they showed you?”

“I didn’t realize the depths of my own commitment,” I admitted. “[I’ve got that dog in me], turns out. I won’t give up. Ever. I’m going to make it back to Earth if it kills me. I’ve never been so certain about anything in my life, and I didn’t even realize how certain I was. I don’t know how to feel about learning that kind of thing about myself.”

“Because it’s one thing to be resolved in your own mind, but when two of your friends get their own peek into your soul, and they concur…that gives you pause,” Nai followed.

“I feel like I must be the most deluded person alive,” I said. “My delusions are so powerful they’ve caught Tasser and your sister. My own brain has them thinking I’m fearless.”

“No, they’ve been inside your head. They know exactly how afraid you are. The impressive part of it is how you managed to keep going anyway,” Nai said. “I realized that even before we Coalesced. You stared me, me right in the eyes and dared me to immolate you.”

“That feels lame,” I said. “Bravery isn’t really bravery unless you’re actually afraid?”

“It’s true, isn’t it? Persevering isn’t impressive if life’s all sunshine and feasting.”

“Well, I don’t know how much that really applies to me,” I grumbled.

“Do Humans have a saying like ‘humility is great, but too much becomes prideful’? Something like that?” Nai said, placing down one of her walls and officially ruining my chances of winning the game. “Seems to me you just never learned to take a compliment.”

“…Yeah, that’s definitely true,” I said.

“Does it bother you to think of yourself as good?” she asked.

“Yes? Because only egomaniacs think really highly of themselves,” I said. “It would be great to have perfect judgement about myself, but that’s not really how ‘good’ and ‘bad’ works. So, given the choice between two imperfect assumptions, I’m going to assume I’m a little worse than I might really be. That way, I never stop trying to do better.”

“Well, at least you know you’re not the worst,” she said. “The rest will have to wait.”

She pointed over my shoulder at Serral, beckoning us to come down the ladder.

“[Saved by the bell,]” I muttered.

Nai and I started towards the ladders.

“Hey Jordan,” I called. “You might want to come with for this part.”

“What about us?” Logan asked. All the kids peeled their attention away from Fenno. He even asked in Starspeak.

“…Yeah. But you have to stay close and don’t touch anything.”

We’d been graciously lent one of the few landing pads on the Beacon station, so we actually got to enjoy gravity while we were waiting for Dustin & company’s arrival. But…

“Dustin’s running late?” I asked.

“About twelve hours,” Serral confirmed. “And the station techs think they’re going to miss the window.”

“[Sucks to be them],” I grimaced. “Anywhere they want us in particular?”

“They still rigged up a lounge with instruments,” Serral said. “They’re still trying to hunt for the right reading.”

The last time we’d visited a Beacon station, its occupants had been overwhelmed with questions about psionics and what exactly I’d done to wake their Beacon back up. We had few answers though, and after four months now, we were pretty sure the Beacon’s next conscious period was imminent.

Every Beacon in the cosmos had been subjected to renewed study in the last four months, trying to contact the entities dwelling within them. Most had failed so far. But there were dozens of Beacon pairs. We’d heard of one or two successes.

Even if the Beacons weren’t conscious most of the time, they retained at least some form of awareness, even across vast stretches of space. Nai had a hunch that, since the Beacons were Adept, they had some form of tactile cascade that spread through space itself rather than solid materials.

It would certainly explain how the Beacon seemed to know I was coming.

Serral led us into a room lined with comfy couches and chairs, only for all manner of scientific box and bulky instrument shoved into every spare corner.

“Hurry!” one of the techs asked, faltering when she saw so many of us. “There’s-oh…no, never mind. Everyone take a chair.”

I waved off another tech trying to attach some kind of electrode to Jessie.

“Ignore the children,” I demanded. “If you’re desperate for readings, put them on me.”

“We only have a few moments,” the tech said.

“Not even that long,” I commented. I could feel something tugging on my superconnector. From the outside. “Anyone else feel that?”

The kids glanced at me, wearing a few scared expressions. This was a bit mean. I hadn’t explained much to them.

I tried not to hold my superconnector too tightly as I felt a mind like a leviathan wake up under my feet.

·····

I and seven other people were standing in a blank white void yet again.

Checking the other abductees didn’t reveal anything alarming. That was good. I supposed the Beacons knew what they were doing psionically.

“Hey, not-Titus,” I said. “This still you, or am I talking to your other half?”

“Bit of both,” a disembodied voice said.

To my surprise, none of the kids jumped in surprise at the floating avatar of Titus appearing in front of us.

“How’ve you been?” I asked.

“Entertained,” he grinned. They grinned? Last time had been weird, but we’d been pressed for time so I hadn’t felt it much.

“Psionics treating you well?”

“Oh yeah!” the Beacon exclaimed. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff we’ve been thinking about. Kinda hard to remember it all like this…but it’s only my second time getting to talk with people.”

“What—who—I…” Nai sputtered, the most panicked out of all of us.

Oh that was surprising. Me, six Cammo-Caddo abductees, plus one more made seven. I hadn’t realized Nai was sucked in with us.

“You’re the Beacon,” she recognized, talking to Titus. She frowned at her own words. “What language am I speaking? I…wait…”

“You’re speaking thought,” I said. “Or maybe you’re borrowing English from the rest of us right now. Just roll with it. There’ll always be time for questions later.”

“Why does the Beacon sound like a human?” Alan asked.

“…Who is that?” Jordan followed up.

“The face is one of the abductees who died,” I said. “The Beacons learned about what happened to us because they stumbled across our minds. It’s really complicated, but we can help each other out.”

“You should have said more than ‘Beacons are alive and sentient’,” Jordan said.

“Sapient, technically,” I said. “But sorry. I thought we’d have more time to go over things. None of us were sure exactly when the Beacon would wake up.”

“I got excited,” not-Titus said eagerly. “I could hear Caleb getting closer, so I tried to wake up. But I'm awake now, and we can go as slow as we like. There’s plenty of time.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“There is? You know how much time we’ve got?”

“Yeah!” the Beacon grinned. “I did the math and everything! I’m awake for at least seven hours. What should we do first?”