Chapter Twelve

The Difference Between Can and Should

Nellie carried the two coffees into her and Lucy’s apartment on the Rest with more than a bit of anxiety. It was time to deal with something that she had been putting off for way longer than was good for either of them.

It was time to have a serious talk with Paren.

She could still remember the first time they met, with the young hellion being forced to get onto the Bly to avoid getting in trouble for theft. In retrospect, the signs of intelligence were there, but how could she have known exactly how intelligent the girl was? How could anyone?

After everything that had happened between Nellie dropping the girl off and when she rescued her from a prison detail, Paren had earned a bit of leeway.

The problem was that Nellie never stopped giving her that leeway, and saying things were going in a worrying direction was putting it mildly.

There should have been a talk like this much sooner, but there had been the blockade, Lucy vanishing, and then invading forces…

A guilty part of Nellie pointed out that she could have made the time if she wanted to.

Sighing, she placed the two coffees down at the small table and swapped out the other chair for one Paren could use. She hesitated and then got some snacks out of the small cupboard next to the bed and put them out on the table as well.

Her stomach twisted again as the door chime went.

“Okay, relax, you can do this,” Nellie whispered to herself.

“Do what?” Paren called through the door.

Fucking nanite-boosted hearing!

Paren popped herself down on the stool, grabbed the cup of HyperDrive, and took a sip. “So, what’s up?”

Nellie did her best not to fidget as she tried to remember how she planned to start. She had spent hours practicing on the way back, just for her mind to go completely blank when faced with actually doing it.

“Nellie, what’s wrong?” Paren leaned forward, frowning as she reached out to take Nellie’s hand. “Is it Lucy? Did she do something?”

“No, Paren,” Nellie smiled as much as she could to try and reassure her adopted daughter, only to feel her eyes tear up.

“Something is wrong,” Paren insisted. “Tell me. I’ll fix it. Whatever it is, I’ll fix it.”

“We need to talk about something,” Nellie said quickly before she could lose her nerve. “Something about you.”

“Me?” Paren looked confused. “What did I do?”

“Nothing,” Nellie said. “Or… well, it’s more about what you could do.”

“Confused,” Paren pointed to herself as she said the word. “Try again?”

That made Nellie laugh, and the tightness in her chest released a little.

“Paren, I’ve been getting worried about you lately. Since Carl Edwards, mainly.” Nellie said.

“Oh!” Paren relaxed. “Don’t worry, I won’t get pregnant unless I want to. Which I do not, to be clear.”

“That’s–that’s good to know.” Nellie mentally added a new worry to her personal list of Paren-related issues. She hadn’t even considered Paren getting pregnant. “Look, can I just explain, and then you can tell me what you think.”

“Sure,” Paren grabbed her coffee, looking over the top of it as she sipped. It made her look younger than she was. Oh, boy.

“Paren, you are the most intelligent person I have ever met,” Nellie started. “So intelligent that I can’t even understand half of what you do. It might as well be magic, as far as I am concerned. But even so, you are doing some things that are kind of stupid.”

“Like what?” Paren glared.

“Like how you ignore how much you scare people sometimes. Like how you treated Carl—”

“I already said I was sorry about that!” Paren snapped.

“I know, but this isn’t really about the Carl thing, but what’s behind it.” Nellie took another deep breath. “You never consider if you should do something, just if you can do it or not.”

“What?” Paren frowned.

“You figured out how to make dead bodies into living flesh for you to use,” Nellie replied. “Did you consider, even for a moment, that people would be horrified by that?”

“Only because they don’t understand it,” Paren said quickly. “If they could only understand it…”

“They would still be horrified,” Nellie said flatly. “Because they were people. People someone loved. People someone out there is missing right now.”

“They don’t even know,” Paren said, but she had winced slightly at Nellie’s words.

“Does that make it better?” Nellie asked. “If someone did that to someone you cared about…”

“I’d fucking kill them,” Paren glared. “No one would even dare.”

“So, if all those people who loved the ones you recycled into living flesh turn up, wanting to kill you for what you did, what then?” Nellie asked.

“Do you think they will?” Paren asked.

“No, but even if they did, they’d never get near you. We both know that.” Nellie said. “But if they did?”

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“I’d kill them?” Paren asked.

“And eventually, more and more would turn up,” Nellie said. “Do you plan to kill the entire galaxy? Because that is where that path ends.”

“A bit melodramatic, don’t you think?” Paren chuckled.

“Yes, but to make a larger point,” Nellie said as calmly as possible. “You figured out how to do something and never thought if you should do it or not.”

“There were enemies,” Paren growled. “Fuck ‘em. I’ll turn them into more HiveShips and more and more until no one even fucking DARES to raise a hand against anyone I care about.”

Nellie blinked a couple of times, uncomfortably aware of how closely that comment matched things Nellie herself had thought. Was she this worrying to others? Was Salem sitting up at night worrying what Nellie would do next?

That was a chilling thought.

“So you want to use fear to make everyone leave us alone?” Nellie asked.

“Duh,” Paren said, but nodded. “Why not?”

“Because when people are afraid, they are more dangerous, not less,” Nellie said simply. “Always.”

“Huh,” Paren thought it over. “I guess I didn’t really think of that.”

“We are getting a little off-topic here,” Nellie rubbed her forehead and leaned back. “I wanted to talk about how you seem to ignore people’s feelings, not a long-term strategy to protect the Imperium.”

“You did?” Paren looked shocked. “What does any of that have to do with this?”

“Look, you keep doing this thing where you don’t seem to care about hurting people.” Nellie gave up and was blunt. “That scares me.”

“I don’t!” Paren stopped and looked away. “Okay, maybe…” Her eyes started to go back and forth as she looked over something only she could see. “Well, I suppose…Well, shit.”

“Can you at least tell me why?” Nellie asked.

“No,” Paren said, her face losing expression as she closed herself off.

“Paren,” Nellie said quietly.

“You won’t like it, and then…”

“And then?” Nellie asked.

“I don’t want you to hate me,” Paren said, barely speaking.

“I will never hate you,” Nellie growled. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Can you stop calling me stupid?” Paren snapped back.

“Not if you won’t even tell me what you are thinking!” Nellie replied, hoping an argument would make Paren open up a little.

“I’m thinking that I am so fucking scared and overwhelmed that it’s easier not to think about it!” Paren yelled. “I’m thinking that all that ever happens is people attack us! I’m thinking that maybe if I am such a monster that not one fucking person in this galaxy sleeps at night, then maybe they will leave me the fuck alone!”

Bingo!

“Or maybe they will be so scared that they all gang up on us and wipe us out!” Nellie said.

“I can just run,” Paren shrugged.

“We can’t run,” Nellie replied flatly. “People rely on us now.”

“If I ran, they’d leave you alone,” Paren offered.

“If you think I’m not attacking anyone who threatens you, then you really are delusional,” Nellie smiled grimly. “No one attacks my family.”

They both sat in silence for a few minutes.

“Can or Should, huh?” Paren asked. “Why?”

“Why what?” Nellie asked.

“Why now? I’ve been just doing my own thing up until now, so why talk to me now?” Paren asked. “I did the Carl stuff and the ship stuff weeks ago. So why now?”

“The ship eating was last week, Paren,” Nellie replied.

“Right, so why now?” Paren asked. “What’s changed? Did I do something else?”

“No, but…” Nellie paused.

This conversation was supposed to be her leading Paren towards a better sense of right and wrong, or at least legal and war crime.

It was not going as planned.

“You wanted me to be honest, so be honest back,” Paren said, crossing her arms challengingly.

“Honestly? I need to be able to rely on you,” Nellie gave up and just said it bluntly. “You’ve always been the one I could rely on to get us anything we needed. I know you are barely grown, and I shouldn’t lean on you so much, but I do. I need you to stop being a runaway teenager and step up.”

Paren gaped.

“All this mad scientist thing is impressive. Beyond impressive, really.” Nellie admitted. “I think you might actually be the smartest person ever to live, and you are my daughter. I’m in no way prepared for that.” She took a sip of cold HyperDrive and went on, “The thing is, when do you stop making horrors and actually start being the daughter I can trust not to terrify anyone within three star systems? It’s not fair, and it’s not right, but I need you to at least start to grow up and be mature. I need you to care if you hurt others, and care if your creatures are terrifying, and care if people are going to attack us out of sheer terror.” Nellie held up her hand to forestall any comment, “I know, I scare people sometimes. I do. I send asteroids through jump points and worse. But only when I have to. When can and should both line up and agree.”

“You mean that? Really?” Paren asked.

“Yes, I really do,” Nellie said seriously. “One day, you will be a fully grown woman, and I don’t want to have to worry that you are going to get people trying to kill you because you can’t accept that other people have a right not to be afraid or to be anything more than spare parts for your next project.” She took Paren’s hands in hers, “You are my daughter, but more than that, you are the best thing in my life. I just need to know you can be more than a terror. I wish you had more time to grow up peacefully and be left alone to develop. Maybe, now, we can get that. Maybe.”

“Okay,” Paren said quietly. “I promise. I’ll try.”

“Thank you,” Nellie said. “I’m sorry if I sounded harsh.”

“I just want you to know,” Paren said quickly. “It’s not that I don’t care about hurting others. It’s just that I couldn’t. You know? I had to try and fix things.”

“Well, from now on, let everyone else help, too, okay?” Nellie asked. “We can do things together. It’s what we do, right?”

They talked for a long time after that, and Nellie really did feel better in the end. A lot of what Paren had done was the same kind of knee-jerk reaction that Nellie had been doing. It was just that Paren’s reactions had a lot more to work with.

Nellie used fleets of ships and people. Paren just had a lot more options.

The general impression was that Paren had leaned pretty hard into the ‘scary’ aspect of things early on and kind of enjoyed it.

At that point, she just kind of got stuck in that way of thinking.

Hopefully, things would start to get better for both of them now. Paren certainly seemed willing to give it a try. It was a great start.

If she was completely honest with herself, Nellie was pretty sure that there would still be a lot of ‘scary’ things coming out of Paren’s lab, but it was the first step.

A well-timed one, as it turned out, as she needed Paren to return to her old base on Planet Home and start to establish a bit of a colony there. The new people from the Sagacity were not up to much yet, but no one wanted that many new people running around the station.

It was a gesture of trust on Nellie’s part to hand their care over to Paren, and she was reasonably sure that would not be something that came back to bite her in the ass. She would be taking the new researcher with her as well.

Leah and Robot would most likely want to go down to the planet with her again. Robot would want more rocks, and Leah wanted to explore.

Hopefully, they could avoid being interrupted by an invasion this time.

Nellie’s implant pinged before Paren had been gone for five minutes.

“Salem, what’s up?” Nellie asked.

“The official contact person from the Silicates has arrived,” Salem replied quickly, “And we have detected weapons fire on the far side of the Confed jump points.”

“Dispatch the Liberties and the SongBirds to our side of the jumps, just in case,” Nellie replied. “I’ll try to keep the meeting with the Silicate Representative short. At least, for now.”

“Will do,” Salem answered. “I take it Paren and her new charges will be headed to Planet Home soon?”

“Almost immediately, yes,” Nellie said, quickly changing into her more official-looking suit. It was the same one she used for the Sagacity. It was growing on her. “Anything else?”

“Always,” Salem laughed. “But nothing urgent at the moment.”

“Right, then I better go meet the Silicates,” Nellie checked her hair in the mirror, a pointless exercise given it responded to her will rather than atmospheric conditions. She had lost her human hair years ago. “Let’s hope it will be a simple meeting.”