Ley held out an arm. “Lady Ella, let’s walk, and you can tell me what you want to do first.” He didn’t look pale but had medium purple skin. Five fingers like mine. His blond curls were yellower than Farley’s, and messy.

“Are you sure you’re up to this, Ley? After you needed healing—”

He laughed and pulled my hand onto his forearm. “Pirad healed me completely! In this low gravity, I’ll live to be older than my grandparents ever dreamed! Do you mind if we use telepathy?”

“Not at all!”

I decided I wanted to see a demonstration of a ship engine, showing the differences in Pirad’s new design that let Zheien travel without misery. Too worried to concentrate on it, but my frown of concentration my sisters teased me about would cover up for our serious talk.

The yellow sand kind of crunched and crumbled under my feet. Low gravity, there’s a learning curve to walking, and I kept stumbling. When I tried to move my foot, I floated up about six inches in an awkward hop! This is harder than I remember!

Oh, we had enough missions to Alb Seer to visit Fhiah, I got used to it fast. I think it’s harder for Earthans because you’ve never traveled.

I have those memories of all that travel, and I got used to it!

Your body has to develop muscles and that takes time, even for a Thordes. We just practiced a lot, Han, Tis and I! We can help you, too! This is my brother Han, he’s our biome tech.

A small Thordes man, very thin, bowed at the waist like an Elshar and came up. Staggered. He had short, silver hair that didn’t curl much.

“Novas, Han, let me carry you!” The next one scooped him up. “I’m glad we’re leaving DS! Lady Ella, I’m Patamir, their cousin. I’m the biome engineer. Tis, walk on her other side. I’m taking Han to a bed--

“I don’t want to miss the festival! Do you think they’d loan us a cael?”

A boy led one to them. I didn’t hear what he said, but they all smiled. The boy walked by the cael and seemed to enjoy where they went. Towards a big group of musicians and couples demonstrating dances. One group was Thordes. They headed for them.

But Tis took my other arm and I had a much easier time. “Lady Ella, I am Tis, Pilot Of Thorde. I think we never met. You remember Ley and Pat, don’t you?”

I served with them three years before Pat died, and four when we lost Ley. “Yeah, I did. Happy times. Good to meet y’all!” But I did know Han and Tis, from Diplomatics. Memories kept coming, once I started thinking about it. They got hurt on Sigan Mas.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Han went home after you came, and trained as a healer. Our healer forced a regen on him and he was much healthier. But, Pirad didn’t agree that he has health for it. After a few months, he’ll look at him again. Some of his healing’s gradual. My family’s living in Thorde Elshar Zheiea in Parseus. We have a lot of server instructors, and they want to help Elshar Zheiea. When Pas is ready, they’ll come here to Rainbow to work.” His mind pointed at those Thordes musicians. “We have a city that’s Parseus, behind Esta Faho. It looks like just a purple building but our houses are underground. We made a sky like at home and holos of our herb fields. But, soon the plants will be big enough on our farms above ground to smell like home. Then, we’ll move our houses above ground and use the space to store our herbs, pigments, and artworks until we can trade or use them.” As he thought of specific things, I remembered trades Farley talked about, that he added to that treaty. Tis brought his cousin, a diplomat, and he made notes. He ported away to the blue Diplomat’s House in Esta Faho!

We joined a crowd around the engine. They had it suspended in a containment, and I expected it to somehow be bigger! Zheien ships are the size of a compact car, if it was round and flattened like a saucer. Not so flattened that a man can’t stand upright in the middle.

I watched the lady talking about the parts of the engine and how containments make it work. But, I listened to Ley, and his purple eyes had the serious look. We came to Esta Faho every respite, because we worried about Farley. Gravity’s the same as here, so it was easier than home. When you’re Thordes and you travel too much, you get sick every respite. Our healer warned me not to come home again, two years ago.

We traveled with Farley and went home with him. My healer wasn’t very happy with me, but we expected to die every mission anyway. But, Berto asked me to watch Farley at home.

On missions, he did everything right. I’m his aide, but I earned independent diplomat in my Challenge. When Beni knew he couldn’t give Farley independent, he asked me if I would serve on his Team, and of course, I wanted to stay with him! He’s my dearest friend. Beni felt he had the skills for independent work, but not the health, so I became his diplomat-in-aid. Berto got advice from Akras, the Treaty Assignment Spec as to where to send us. My friends have unusual skills for their titles, so they used their very strong telepathy to listen while on missions.

Old habits are hard, so we heard a lot of things on Esta Faho, from Elshar council members who aren’t here. Mican, the Par Vu Council member, ruled over all of the Elshars in Rahn Estar as well as those on the 14 worlds of Par Vu, at first. Then he appointed his brother Micansen to rule the Elshars on Esta Faho. But Mican caused all the troubles in Rahn Estar and particularly, Esta Faho. His cousin Oparnen argues a lot with Micansen, but a lot of the Elshars don’t know Oparnen as well because he came after the Panic.

We also knew that just before the Elshar Panic—you know about that?

I nodded and showed him what I knew. Not much, just that a lot of Elshars left Elshar Mashai when they had the fuel, to escape Eriganh’s attack on D’gharr, a world with a huge ship-building facility.

It was a lot worse than that. On January 9th, Kajarian rogues hit the Hubs. We were on Elshar Mashai trying to do maints in Prov Nine. The Hub kept going down and the council blamed us. Without progs we had to do a lot of it by hand. Biome techs tried to make it worse, but we had backups disguised as spoiled biomes and no data was lost. I had to stay with Farley, in the Diplomats House. When any diplomat works a treaty, he has to stay there. I didn’t like leaving our other members on the ship alone.