“Give me some credit at least.”
Kira released herself from the floor and crawled across the wall to the desk. There, she pulled the pot close and laid her hands on the trunk. The bark was rough against her palms, and it smelled fresh and green, sea air wafting over cut grass.
Falconi said, “Are you just going to hang there, or—”
“Shh.”
Concentrating, Kira sent the Soft Blade burrowing into the tree, with but one thought, one directive guiding it: heal. Bark creaked and split, and tiny black threads swarmed across the surface of the tree. Kira felt the plant’s internal structures, the layers of bark (inner and outer), the rings, the hard core of heartwood, every narrow branch, and the sprouting base of every fragile, silver-backed leaf.
“Hey,” said Falconi, getting to his feet.
“Wait,” said Kira, hoping the suit could do what she was asking of it.
Across the olive tree, broken branches returned to their rightful place, lifting and straightening until standing to proud effect. The cut-grass smell intensified as sap wept from along the trunk. Crumpled leaves flattened and the holes in them closed up and, where missing, new blades budded and burst forth—silver daggers bright with new life.
At last the changes slowed and stopped, and Kira felt satisfied the damage to the tree was repaired. The Soft Blade could have continued—it wanted to continue—but then the directive would have shifted from heal to grow, and that seemed to her greedy, foolish. An unwise tempting of fate.
So she recalled the suit.
“There,” she said, and lifted her hands. The tree stood whole and healthy, as before. An aura of energy seemed to emanate from it: life newly born and burnished to a high sheen.
Kira felt overcome with a sense of wonder at what the xeno was capable of. At what she was capable of. She’d managed to heal a living thing—to reshape flesh (of a sort) and to give comfort instead of pain, to create instead of destroy. Unbidden, a laugh escaped her. A weight seemed to lift from her shoulders, as if the thrust had dropped to half a g or less.
This was a gift: a precious ability pregnant with potential. With it she could have done so much on Weyland, in the gardens of the colony. With it she could have helped her father with his Midnight Constellations, or on Adrasteia, she could have helped the spread of green across the moon’s rocky crust.
Life, and all that meant. Triumph and gratitude filled her eyes with tears, and she smiled through them, happy.
A similar wonder gentled Falconi’s expression. “How did you learn to do that?” He touched a leaf with the tip of a finger, as if unable to believe.
“I stopped being so afraid.”
“Thank you,” he said, and never had Kira heard him sound so earnest.
“You’re … you’re welcome.”
Then Falconi leaned forward, put his hands on either side of her face, and—before Kira quite knew what was happening—kissed her.
He tasted different than Alan. Saltier, and she could feel the sharp tips of his stubble scraping against the skin around her lips.
Shocked, Kira froze, uncertain of how to react. The Soft Blade formed rows of dull spikes across her arms and chest, but like her, they remained held in position, neither advancing nor retracting.
Falconi broke the kiss, and Kira struggled to regain herself. Her heart was racing, and the temperature in the cabin seemed to have shot up. “What was that?” she said. Her voice rasped more than she liked.
“Sorry,” said Falconi, seeming somewhat abashed. It was an attitude she wasn’t used to seeing from him. “Guess I got carried away.”
“Uh-huh.” She licked her lips without meaning to and then berated herself for it. Dammit.
A sly grin crossed his face. “I don’t normally make a habit of hitting on crew or passengers. Unprofessional. Bad for business.”
Kira’s heart was pounding even harder. “That so.”
“Yes it is.…” He drained the last of the rotgut from the pouch. “Still friends?”
“Are we friends?” Kira said in a challenging tone. She cocked her head.
Falconi regarded her for a moment, as if debating. “Anyone I’d trust to watch my back in a firefight is a friend of mine. As far as I’m concerned, yeah, we’re friends. Unless you feel differently.”
“No,” said Kira, pausing just as long as he had. “We’re friends.”
A sharp gleam reappeared in his eyes. “Well, I’m glad to have that cleared up. Again, my apologies. The drink got the better of me. You have my word it won’t happen again.”
“That’s … Fine. Good.”
“I’d better put this into stasis,” he said, reaching for the bonsai. “And then I should get myself into cryo before we heat up the Wallfish too much. And you, what are you going to do?”
“The usual,” she said. “I think I’m just going to hole up in my cabin this time, if that’s okay.”
He nodded. “See you starside, Kira.”
“You too, Salvo.”
3.
Back in her cabin, Kira washed her face with a damp towel and then hung floating in front of the sink while she looked at herself in the mirror. Even though she hadn’t initiated the kiss, she still felt guilty about it. She’d never even looked at another man—not in that way—while she and Alan were together. Falconi’s sudden forwardness had more than caught her by surprise; it had forced her to consider what she was going to do in the future, if she had a future.
The worst thing was, the kiss had felt good.
Alan … Alan had been dead for over nine months. Not for her, not with all the time she’d spent in hibernation, but for the rest of the universe, that was the reality. It was a hard truth to swallow.
Did she even like Falconi? Kira had to think about that one for a while. In the end she decided she did. He was attractive in a rather solid, dark, hairy way. But that didn’t mean anything in and of itself. She was in no shape to be getting in a relationship with anyone, much less the captain of the ship. That way always led to trouble.
It was selfish, but Kira was glad Gregorovich hadn’t been around to see the awkwardness. He would have made endless fun of her and Falconi in his own weird way.
Perhaps it would be best to talk with Falconi again, make it very clear that nothing else was going to happen between them. Hell, he was just lucky that the Soft Blade hadn’t overreacted out of a misplaced urge to protect her.… He’d been either very brave or very foolish.
“You did well,” she whispered, looking down at the Soft Blade. And Kira thought, just for an instant, that she felt a sense of pride from the xeno. But it was a fleeting thing that might as well have been a figment of her imagination.
“Morven,” she said. “Is Falconi still out of cryo?”
“No, Ms. Navárez,” said the pseudo-intelligence. “He just received his first round of injections. He is no longer able to communicate.”
Kira made a dissatisfied sound. Fine. It probably wasn’t necessary to talk to him again, but if it were, she could always do so when they reached their destination.
The idea wasn’t to fly all the way to the rendezvous point Tschetter’s Jellies had proposed. Rather, the Wallfish would drop out of FTL some distance away but still close enough to send a warning in time to keep the Knot of Minds from being ambushed and, in doing so, perhaps forestall an even greater catastrophe than the current war between humans and Jellies. Then, the requirements of honor and duty satisfied, they could head back to settled space.