Sobon found her­self ac­tu­al­ly com­fort­ed, in a strange way, when the first "fa­vors" of the Base Com­man­der in­volved what should have, by rights, been me­nial tasks--if, that is, there was an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in place that turned out peo­ple with good knowl­edge of in­scrip­tions, which this world def­i­nite­ly did not have. Rather than ask­ing her to de­sign de­fens­es, churn out weapons, or ex­plain the deep na­ture of the cos­mos... Com­man­der Rai asked Sobon to han­dle "a few main­te­nance tasks."

A flawed en­er­gy con­duit. Glitchy pri­va­cy wards. A wa­ter heater, of all things, whose out­put wasn't prop­erly con­trolled. A med­ical di­ag­nos­tic tool that had been dam­aged. A num­ber of train­ing items that were worn past their us­able life­time. A launch plat­form for pa­trollers, which was es­sen­tial­ly an aether cat­a­pult that also briefly keyed open a sec­tion of the de­fens­es. A cleans­ing sta­tion that re­moved dirt and grime--but which, Sobon's friend­ly guide sug­gest­ed, had been trashed in the night some­time af­ter it had stripped rather ex­pen­sive dyes from a no­ble­woman's dress.

Most of the qi that Sobon en­coun­tered, she could read and un­der­stand even if she couldn't have made them from scratch--or wouldn't have done the same way, at the very least. It felt good to be us­ing Sobon's aether tech train­ing, even with the need to walk it through the Ri'lef notes on qi and qi in­scrip­tions. While very lit­tle of Sobon's ac­tu­al job as a Ma­rine was cre­at­ing or even main­tain­ing aether scripts, they were re­quired to un­der­stand aether scripts in­tu­itive­ly, de­tect any flaw in a run­ning pat­tern, and if nec­es­sary, in­sert their own spir­it into a dam­aged ma­trix in or­der to pre­vent the worst pos­si­ble out­comes.

As Sobon fixed one of the last of the small bits, her mind went back to the troop car­ri­er that had al­most sur­vived the end of the Rapi­er, and the Ma­rine--Sobon chose not to dwell on her name or face--who had sac­ri­ficed her own body to tele­port the boat clos­er to home. It was a raw wound, still, and not the first. It was just one of a great many things in life that re­mind­ed Sobon that best ef­forts were not enough, not with­out strat­e­gy, sup­plies, and as­sis­tance.

And how much of that did Sobon have? When pit­ted against a world-span­ning em­pire with the great­est war­riors on the plan­et? Here in a mil­i­tary base--one that might be his en­e­my some­day, but for now was friend­ly--some part of Sobon's mind fi­nal­ly re­laxed and be­gan rolling for­ward. Sobon's knowl­edge was valu­able, and the Djang would have en­e­mies. The base that Sobon had set up was too close to the bor­ders of the Em­pire, though, far too close to be used as a mil­i­tary stag­ing point. By the time Sobon had gath­ered any sig­nif­i­cant force, she would be on their radar.

What Sobon had seen of the world at large, though, pro­vid­ed con­text, if per­haps not in the ways the lo­cals--or pos­si­bly the Ri'lef--would have liked. Star­beasts were, some­how, a glob­al phe­nom­e­non--and yet the Coro­na was the source of all of them. That meant that the world was spa­tial­ly linked to­geth­er. In the back of her mind, Sobon be­gan putting to­geth­er a plan, and col­lect­ing ques­tions for the Ri'lef--but didn't send them, not from here.

In the end, Sobon oc­cu­pied a full day, and two nights rest, on the "few main­te­nance tasks" that Com­man­der Rai had se­lect­ed. In that time, Ki'el had im­proved great­ly, al­though she and Sobon didn't have any pri­vate space, noth­ing that ei­ther of them felt com­fort­able dis­cussing more than her health in. Dur­ing her free evenings, Sobon also did some re­pairs to her ri­fle rods and mod­i­fied her flight kit, as well as re­pair­ing the bar­ri­er blade rod that she had used to block a strike. She did her best not to work on ei­ther when she sensed any­one around, though that might still have been too lax, if they had stealth spe­cial­ists here; still, Sobon was con­cerned about hav­ing them ready should there be any need.

The fol­low­ing morn­ing, Sobon was es­cort­ed again to Com­man­der Rai, but not in her of­fice. In­stead, Sobon was brought to the oth­er end of the base, to a naval dry dock where a... Sobon would call it a mid­sized war­ship, was in for re­pairs. That might have been too cyn­i­cal, or per­haps too gen­er­ous; the naval ves­sel could sup­port dozens, and it had mas­sive plates in­side and out­side full of qi scripts. From what Sobon could see, there were per­haps three or four to­tal in­scrip­tion­ists do­ing the ac­tu­al work of main­tain­ing those scripts, and they looked ex­haust­ed. Sobon imag­ined that, mil­i­tary pri­or­i­ties be­ing what they were, they had nev­er had a mo­ment to spare in their du­ties.

Sobon glanced side­long at Com­man­der Rai as she came up along­side her; even hav­ing been in­vit­ed in, Sobon knew what she was be­ing shown. The girl­ish woman was stand­ing in front of a set of boards on which the script schemat­ics were laid out, though at a glance, some of them were miss­ing. It was an ex­haus­tive plan, Sobon thought as she let her at­ten­tion drift to the ver­i­ta­ble wall of blue­prints.

An ex­haus­tive plan whose ma­jor flaw, at least as far as Sobon could see, was lack of a ded­i­cat­ed pow­er plant.

"I be­lieve you see it," was the first thing that Com­man­der Rai Su Anin ac­tu­al­ly said, most like­ly be­cause she sensed Sobon's anx­i­ety as she stud­ied the scripts. "And I imag­ine you're won­der­ing if I ful­ly un­der­stood your tech­nique. I imag­ine that I know what it does, but no, I didn't un­der­stand it, and I still do not. And I do rec­og­nize that you won't will­ing­ly share the de­tails, es­pe­cial­ly not for as small a price as pass­ing freely through our ter­ri­to­ry." The woman took a deep breath, and fi­nal­ly turned to look at Sobon. "Un­der very dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, I might have tried a num­ber of tricks. In­stead, with the hopes that we may work again in the fu­ture, I will sim­ply re­quest an­oth­er fa­vor, one I hope will be sim­pler, and less... ob­jec­tion­able."

Sobon met her eyes, find­ing the Com­man­der was her­self at least a bit ner­vous, in spite of her much, much high­er qi lev­els. That was good, in Sobon's es­ti­ma­tion--it meant she wasn't ex­pect­ing to solve her prob­lems with brute force. "I ap­pre­ci­ate your for­ber­ance."

Sobon's choice of words must have been odd, be­cause the woman was mo­men­tar­i­ly sur­prised, but cov­ered it with a smirk. "Don't ap­pre­ci­ate it yet. I'm hop­ing that you can help us solve one par­tic­u­lar prob­lem with this de­sign. Here." She tapped a fin­ger in the mid­dle of one of the script sheets.

In Sobon's first re­view of the doc­u­ment, she's as­sumed it was a main en­er­gy dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter. And func­tion­al­ly, it was. The scripts were com­plex, and took some re­view­ing, but it was all set up to take en­er­gy from a num­ber of sources, com­bine them sta­bly, and then redi­rect them to a few out­put chan­nels ac­cord­ing to cer­tain log­ic, some of which was clear­ly miss­ing. Not miss­ing from the de­sign, ex­act­ly--there were notes sug­gest­ing that they were on oth­er doc­u­ments, which were not pre­sent.

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"Some of what you are see­ing should in the­o­ry be tight­ly con­trolled se­crets," Commander Rai said, "and they most cer­tain­ly would be, if they were work­ing prop­er­ly. I have it on the high­est au­thor­i­ty that dif­fer­ent lev­els of qi can be com­bined us­ing this de­sign, tak­ing only as much from our sailors as they can give, but eas­ing the strain on our great­est war­riors. And yet..." Com­man­der Rai made a face, which end­ed up look­ing like a pout on her child­ish fea­tures. "And yet, in spite of every­thing we have set up to pre­vent ex­act­ly this prob­lem, every ad­di­tion­al source or qi in­creas­es the strain on the great­est war­rior. I have been at the cen­ter of this for­ma­tion be­fore, and I have felt it my­self. It is like..."

Sobon was al­ready trac­ing the de­sign in her mind. "I imag­ine it is like feel­ing every­one else's qi be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed through your own body, and war­ring with you for con­trol over the ship. A dan­ger­ous and un­pleas­ant feel­ing, even when it is your own al­lies."

There was a mo­ment of si­lence, as Sobon ex­am­ined the sheets of pa­per. There were two main prob­lems here--one was ex­plain­ing what she knew in a way that wouldn't give the lo­cals any greater in­sight into qi than they al­ready had. And the oth­er... was try­ing to fig­ure out a way to ac­tu­al­ly fix the de­sign, giv­en the qi in­scrip­tions that Sobon knew. It wasn't ac­tu­al­ly a triv­ial prob­lem, not giv­en how the sys­tem was orig­i­nal­ly de­signed.

"You are right, of course. I am be­gin­ning to think that I have un­der­es­ti­mat­ed you, Lady Shi­va."

"Alas­si, please," Sobon cor­rect­ed idly. "Some of my knowl­edge is greater than my­self, Com­man­der Rai. And I do not in­tend to give away such se­crets, not for any price. What I can tell you is that your de­sign is fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed." Sobon con­sid­ered two or three dif­fer­ent ways of ex­plain­ing, frown­ing heav­i­ly, be­fore fi­nal­ly try­ing some­thing much sim­pler. "Your de­sign com­bines pow­er and con­trol in a way that makes the prob­lem in­evitable. Qi is both pow­er and con­trol, but they can be sep­a­rat­ed. It would be eas­i­est if it were done from the very be­gin­ning. Pa­per."

Al­though Com­man­der Rai could have eas­i­ly passed the task to an­oth­er, a quick touch of her qi made a table, pa­per, and some­thing like a pen­cil ap­pear from her space ring. Sobon sketched out the con­cep­tu­al ba­sics, a num­ber of lines and log­i­cal con­nec­tions be­tween them, and tried to phrase what she was about to say next very care­ful­ly.

"I trust at your lev­el, Base Com­man­der, you un­der­stand that qi na­tures, while they try to repli­cate nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na, are very much per­son­al to the user. They are cre­at­ed, not nat­ur­al them­selves."

"A strange way to say the ob­vi­ous, but yes."

"Then it should be pos­si­ble to cre­ate ar­ti­fi­cial qi na­tures."

"It has been done. Forg­ing qi, for in­stance, was ar­ti­fi­cial­ly made."

Sobon nod­ded. "The ide­al way to sep­a­rate pow­er and in­tent is to cre­ate and use some oth­er form of qi, call it Com­mand Qi, to com­mand the ship, while all oth­er qi pressed into the chan­nels is con­vert­ed to en­er­gy, and all com­mand and con­trol is stripped from it. Com­mand Qi would have, for ex­am­ple, lay­ers of au­thor­i­ty, such that the high­est ranked of­fi­cer is al­ways in com­mand, even over the great­est strength of qi, should you have an ex­em­plary cap­tain but a stronger war­rior aboard. And it should rec­og­nize spe­cial­ists, so that a gun­ner or sailor can com­mand their scripts with only per­mis­sion from above, and not re­quir­ing ac­tive per­mis­sion."

"Com­mand qi..." Some­thing in Com­man­der Rai's voice was sud­den­ly very alive. Sobon looked up from her pa­per to see the girl, and she did still look like a teenag­er to Sobon's eyes, with such a deeply ex­pres­sive look on her face that she looked pos­sessed. Sud­den­ly, the face that nor­mal­ly seemed like a po­lite mask worn by some­one shal­low and naïve looked more like an adult face strain­ing to push through a ny­lon bed­sheet, dis­tort­ing the mask and re­veal­ing that some­thing was al­ways fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong un­der­neath.

[ And this is the prob­lem with look­ing for­ev­er young, ] Sobon groused to Alas­si, who was suit­ably dis­turbed her­self. [ Youth is the time be­fore you're done grow­ing. Peo­ple are al­ways sup­posed to look their age, or at least, they should look close. That face would look nor­mal on an adult. ]

[ I'm not sure it would look nor­mal on any­thing, ] Alas­si re­turned, dis­gust­ed.

In re­turn, Sobon framed up a men­tal pic­ture of an adult ver­sion of the Com­man­der with the same look on her face. It was an in­tense look even then, and if Sobon pre­tend­ed that she had been wear­ing a po­lite mask pri­or, she could imag­ine that drop­ping the façade would still be some­what dis­turb­ing. But it was, fun­da­men­tal­ly, a per­son re­con­sid­er­ing decades of ex­pe­ri­ence. It was a look that fun­da­men­tal­ly didn't be­long on a child's face, but on an adult, it was mere­ly rare, and per­haps sur­pris­ing.

"I see," said Com­man­der Rai af­ter a long mo­ment of con­tem­pla­tion. For whichev­er rea­son, her face didn't re­lax back into a child's, al­though it did smooth some­what. "In truth, Lady Alas­si, I was not pre­pared for an an­swer so... en­light­en­ing. Com­mand qi would be an an­swer to a great many dif­fi­cul­ties, would it not? Its use here is sim­ply a per­fect en­cap­su­la­tion of the con­cept." She swept her arms, sum­mon­ing a num­ber of swords into the space be­fore her, and con­cen­trat­ed. Sobon could see that the blades them­selves could float or move--and Com­man­der Rai was try­ing to iso­late the very con­cept of com­mand­ing the swords to do her bid­ding, to cre­ate a pure Com­mand Qi.

Sobon stepped back, tak­ing his in­com­plete sketch of the com­mand rings, as sud­den­ly the Base Com­man­der found a way to touch those swords with this new, in­com­plete form of qi, and then in­ex­pert­ly and hap­haz­ard­ly swung them around, do­ing dam­age to sev­er­al of the blue­prints and far more of the walls and floors. But with each sec­ond that passed, with each swing of a blade, her form and tech­nique im­proved.

There was a lot that Sobon want­ed to say. About com­mand, and how it was dif­fer­ent from dom­i­na­tion. But she held her tongue; she per­haps had al­ready said too much. In truth, Com­mand Qi as a con­cept was close to raw aether--pu­ri­fied of all oth­er con­cerns, re­spon­sive to will, but also, if done prop­er­ly, it would pass in­for­ma­tion back up the chain of com­mand. If Sobon were to give odds, though, she didn't ex­pect any­one on this plan­et to get the con­cept right, least of all an im­pe­r­i­al mil­i­tary that was al­ready dom­i­nat­ing much of the world. She imag­ined it would quick­ly be­come cor­rupt­ed, no mat­ter what she said.

The less she at­tached her­self to the dis­as­ter that came from this, the bet­ter.

Still, Com­man­der Rai's in­tent look was sat­is­fied, when her swords stopped swing­ing. "Com­mand. Right. Pow­er and in­tent, sep­a­rat­ed. This is..." She shook her head. "This is a greater gift than some lit­tle fa­vor, Lady Shi­va. I feel that I owe you some­thing sub­stan­tial, now. With this..."

Sobon could feel the woman's Sap­phire Qi ex­tend­ing out from her body, across the en­tire mil­i­tary base. Al­though there were oth­er qi sources near enough in strength to con­test hers, Sobon imag­ined that like any spe­cial na­ture of qi--once she fig­ured out how to use it--Com­mand Qi would ex­ert even more force than usu­al when used cor­rect­ly. Sobon watched it flow, care­ful­ly hid­ing her con­cern.

Af­ter a few mo­ments, how­ev­er, the girl re­tract­ed her qi, and Sobon didn't sense any­thing gone ter­ri­bly wrong. Sobon raised her eyes, but Com­man­der Rai's face had cleared, and now showed a much clear­er and younger look on her face again, if one that still showed traces of hid­den mal­ice, and deep­er thoughts that didn't be­long on a child.

"Yes, this is a great gift. Your debts are now ful­ly dis­charged, and I be­lieve I owe you at least a few things. Shall we start with din­ner, tonight? Your dis­ci­ple is, of course, in­vit­ed."