Tiamat’s Wrath

Every place had the dream of what it could become.

Dreams were fragile things to build with.

And through the first part of it, and then again on and off all the time he’d been gone, he’d had the sense that none of it was really happening. Or that it was, but not to him. He’d become someone else. Being a prisoner had driven him a little crazy for a while, and he still wasn’t right. Not really. But every day he woke up on the Roci with Naomi beside him and Alex in the pilot’s chair, he felt a little closer to sane. His soul a little bit nearer, in a wide and metaphorical sense.

“My dad used to say something when he’d been traveling,” Holden said as the autodoc finished its run.

“Which one?”

“Father Caesar. He used to say that when you went too far too fast, your soul took some time catching up to you.”

That was the thing about hubris. It only became clear in retrospect.

Worse than that, she was coming to a place where she enjoyed the intensity. She had never been under more stress in her life, except maybe once, back on Ilus. Everyone had been going blind, and there were neurotoxin-covered slugs crawling up out of the ground, and alien artifacts coming to life, and people murdering each other over political issues and personal pride. Everything had depended on her talent and the sharpness of her mind. And now it did again. And part of her loved it like it was sugar. Probably not a healthy part.

The Roci was an old ship now. She’d never be state of the art again. But like old tools, well used and well cared for, she’d become something more than plating and wires, conduits and storage and sensor arrays. Old Rokku had said that after fifty years flying, a ship had a soul. It had seemed like a cute superstition when she was young. It seemed obvious now.

“Looks like you fucked your ship pretty good?”

“It’ll give you lazy fuckers something to do,” Jillian said, the way Bobbie would have. Same inflection and all. It seemed right in a way Alex couldn’t quite describe that the girl had paid so much attention to how Bobbie ran things. Even when they were gone, the next generation up would keep echoes of them.

she’d lied. That was interesting. She’d told him what he wanted to hear, and it wasn’t even because she wanted to protect him or keep him safe. It was just easier. She understood now why adults lied to children. It wasn’t love. It was exhaustion. And she was like them now. They’d eaten her.

She had been awake until the small hours of the morning, watching old movies and entertainment feeds that she’d seen before. Trying to squeeze comfort out of them because they were familiar. Knowing what was going to happen before it happened made the stories feel very safe. Not at all like her real life.

vast, beautiful sphere with so few people on it. Cities with universities full of students who’d never known a different sky. She doubted she’d ever see it again, and so she watched and told herself to remember. There were so many last times that passed unrecognized. Knowing in the moment what was ending and wouldn’t come again was precious.