02
I awoke breathing through feathers, my arms trapped in the folds of the hammock and the undefined bulk of a three-meter sentry-serpent. All I could do was growl, 'Get your bloody tail out of my face you Neb-blasted feather-rug.'
Somewhere in the darkness, Siss gave a low, menacing hiss, tightened her claws so I could feel them and twitched her tail off my face.
I don't know the physiology of sentry-serpents, but I suspect they're cold-blooded, since I don't overheat when she wraps herself around me when I'm asleep which was now her habit. She sleeps with Cin as well - waiting until the sleep machine puts us under deep enough to avoid any objection on our part. I doubt she's that needy for companionship, so I think it's just for warmth.
The sleep machine had turned itself off, so it was nearly time to get up. But not yet. I lay dozing and mentally going over my plans for the next watch when the feather tail swept back over my face. I had to growl again, 'Get it out of my face or I'll bite it off.'
She swept if off again, with another low hiss. The first time may've been an accident of sleep, the second time was deliberate. It was already clear that Siss found annoying Cin and me humorous, and she could be very humorous when she was in the mood.
I had to accept that Siss was telepathic. And given her uncanny ability to understand the thoughts and emotions of creatures so dissimilar to her - as we no doubt were - and her ability to communicate with hisses, growls, barks and body language, I had also come to accept that she was very intelligent as well. How she employed her intelligence in her daily life as a sentry-serpent, I don't know, but within half a dozen rounds she had entwined herself into our little society, acting in subtle ways as the link between Cin and I. And in not so subtle ways as well. Whenever we sat together, she draped herself over our laps so we could easily preen her feathers. I drew the line on this activity at mealtimes - I wasn't about to include the stray feather in my meal. But otherwise, whenever Cin and I would be sitting around, after our meal, or out on the edge of the island, Siss was with us as well, making herself available for preening and interjecting a bark, or a hiss into our conversation whenever she felt like commenting. She was a very sarcastic sentry-serpent. Still, as a native, she instinctively kept an eye skywards and would growl a warning whenever she spied a distant dragon, so her presence was welcomed when we were out and about.
Her tail brushed over my face again. 'That's it!' I muttered, struggling to get an arm clear of the hammock and sentry-serpent.
She swung her tail off and shifted herself about, so that her long toothy snout was on my chest. She opened an eye just a slit to give me a dark look and a menacingly growl. Her idea of a joke.
Now I was breathing sentry-serpent breath, and that motivated me even more. I wiggled out of the folds of the hammock and her clutch, and lifted her off me, ignored her threatening hisses, and swung out of the hammock. She gave me one last dark look, and wrapped herself around the empty hammock and pretended to go back to sleep.
It had been six Unity Standard days since we arrived on Tumbleweed Island. Cin was keeping count because she'd not abandoned hope of contacting the theoretical rescue boat from the Starry Shore. I had, and so I was living the timeless Pela life. In those six days we'd gotten the radar and radio transmitters up and running, and had sealed the gaping hole in the bow with a quilt work of welded patches. It didn't look pretty, but I was fairly confident they'd hold once we were in space. We had begun the process of pulling and examining the landing jets to see what ones could be repositioned to replace the main engine and steering motors. They were secured to the inner hull of the gig, and had to be reached by pulling up the deck of the main and control compartments, exposing the landing jets' mounting fixtures, as well as the maze of fuel lines, cables, and deck fixtures stored under the deck.
'Morning, Cin,' I said, stepping carefully through the tangle of pipes, cables and fixture boxes to the small square of open deck.
She glanced up from where she was using a power wrench on an engine mount and said, 'Morning. Five more minutes and I'll have this one out and I can get us something to eat.'
'Oh, I can do that. Just tell me what button to punch.'
She brushed some strands of hair off her sweating forehead, paused, and said, 'If you're willing to go to all the trouble of pushing a button, you can choose the entree, Litang.'
'Right. And I'll make cha.'
I was making synth-cha these days. Being the pessimist, I was afraid my supply of real cha wouldn't last through our stay in the Pela, so I'd donated enough leaves to its sample-chamber so that it could analyze and capture enough of the unique chemicals to allow it to produce a passable imitation of the real cha.
Cin had continued to explore the possibilities of the gig's galley. She was collecting samples of leaves, flowers, and I suspect beetles and butterflies as well, and introducing them to the galley's sample-chamber. Expensive synth-galleys can create a wide range of specific organic molecules to produce complex flavors. The gig's galley, however, was not of that caliber, but it could store complex molecules from introduced organic matter, and then use and recycle them - thus Cin's botanical quest. Not only was our food growing ever tastier, but she had programed the dishes into the galley's memory so they were just a button away. Many chefs would have kept those special recipes secret.
I silently watched Cin finish unbolting the engine while the synth-galley filled two mugs with its best version of cha and began to print out our entrees.
We seemed to have settled the workings of our little society in the rain while wearing only our magnetic boots. Cin was in charge. I was alive and employed to facilitate the continuation of Cin's Honor Mission. It worked for me. Cin could be in charge for all I cared. I'm a retired ship's captain these days. Cin's mission to short-circuit the rebellion and mine to save Min, Tenry and Vynnia from death at the hands of Vinden and the Empress - and to return to the Unity - were so closely parallel that the differences wouldn't matter until very late in the game. I was confident that not only was my involvement critical to both of our missions, but that I could, in the end, convince Cin to compromise enough to make it just one plan.
She saw my fate as a separate issue. I didn't think she could kill me in cold blood, so as long as I could avoid a red hot crisis, I'd likely be fine, or so I told myself. I knew, however, I'd have to avoid being too nice to her, since she saw any overt effort of friendship or affection as an attempt to subvert her intention of killing me. (A fairly accurate assessment.) But, being a very Unity Standard fellow, this meant that I had to avoid her company as much as possible. And not only because of my Unity Standardness, but because we might be in love. Not that either of us would admit it, even to ourselves. There were too many obstacles. She had to decide not to kill me, and I had to accept her as she was, not just her cheerful, laughing side, but that wide streak of cruelty as well. Being castaways together, working together, even if apart, and getting along comfortably together when we were together (within our rules) were already eroding away those obstacles, at least for me. She was often carefree and pleasant to be around, and while she could also turn cool and sarcastic, (especially when she realized she was being carefree and happy around me) I found her to be, on the whole, a very nice person. But then, love is blind. Still, we got along very comfortably.
To keep life comfortable, we worked separately during our common watch, getting together only for the meals, and for an occasional break for synth-cha. Over the meal we'd confer on our progress and plan our next project. I let her determine what, if any, idle conversation we engaged in. She didn't say much about herself, but when we'd be sitting on the edge of the island watching the Pela drift by - including, distant dots which the glasses showed to be large dragons in a variety of colors and shapes - we'd often drift into talking about our shared history; our various encounters on Calissant, Lontria, Despar and on Redoubt Island, filling in missing parts of our shared narrative or our points of view on shared incidents.
Every so often she'd ask something about what I'd done during the decade she'd been stored in the sleeper pod awaiting her Honor Mission. With the exception of revealing Botts's sentient machine nature or my knowledge that M'Risha Drea, the managing director of Jardinn Exports was also the Abbess of St Bleyth's Amdia Abby and my grandmother, I could tell the plain truth. Which is to say that I was lucky and had exceptional experts inboard that pulled us through some iffy orbits. I spun my yarn about our encounter with the Falcon Rock drift hawks off the Kryver Reef and even dared to relate my kidnapping and rescue from Vinden's zep compound, though I carefully emphasized Kie's hacking skills and the weakness in the plant's security system in regard to robotic activity, that enabled them to use our legal robot as an avatar to exploit this weakness.
'And you have to remember, Cin, it was a one shot deal, we didn't need to cover up our breakthrough once I'd been freed.'
She gave me a dark look. Professional jealousy.
'Don't look at me like that, I was the one who got the dart in the back of my neck and was being held prisoner,' I protested. 'I take no credit for it at all. I was just lucky that I've some pretty resourceful people aboard my ship.'
'You can't beat luck,' she muttered darkly.
'But it does run out.'
'It has,' she said, quietly, but left it at that.
She didn't offer anything about her past life and I didn't press her. I'd spent enough time with Grandmama to know that she wouldn't talk about her past life as an assassin of St Bleyth. I didn't really want to know.