You Must (Not) Let Go

Part 11

The bed was warm, soft linens cradling Bastila’s naked body as gently as a cloud. Somewhere nearby, leaves were rustling quietly, trees creaking as their boughs bent lazily in the wind. Sunlight streamed through the window, drawing her out of the depths of sleep. She stretched, feeling around with her hand. The bed was empty. Cold, grey dread gripped her. Had it all been a dream? Had she imagined everything that had happened in a fit of loneliness and despera—

The door clicked open. A warm weight settled on top of her, just to the side, where she could flip them off easily if she felt boxed in. Soft lips pressed against her own, rousing Bastila fully from her dreamlike state.

“Hey,” Sera said softly, dropping her head for seconds. She smelled of flour and yeast and freshly cracked seeds.

Bastila pulled away. “Am I going to have to chain you to my bed to stop you from disappearing on me again?” she said dryly.

Sera grinned. “Is that a promise or a threat?” Her hand meandered beneath the bedspread, finding Bastila’s skin. “Mmm, naked wife…”

“Dearest, you…,” Bastila said, a little breathless under the skillful dexterity of Sera’s fingers, “You left me all alone just like this. There was absolutely nothing stopping you…”

“Biggest regret of my life, babe,” Sera said. She sucked at the skin of Bastila’s neck, dipping the tips of her fingers into the warmth between her legs. “Has anyone ever told you just how good you taste?”

“Yes, but I’m not opposed to hearing it again.” She wrapped her legs around Sera’s waist. Sera’s fingers slipped into her, deep and firm. Bastila gasped, rocking her hips to meet the rhythm of her wife’s hand.

A heavy fist banged on the door. “Breakfast soon,” Mr Xak’kis yelled through the thick timber. “I don’t want it getting cold because you two were too busy fucking each other.”

“Has no one this side of the galactic core ever heard of privacy?” Bastila muttered.

Sera let out a short laugh. “Actually, this morning, I didn’t mean to not wake up with you, you know. But I got press ganged on the way back from going to pee and forced into helping with these little seed roll things by our delightful host out there.”

“Now, why didn’t you lead with that?”

“I got distracted,” Sera said, leaning down with a smile, her breath brushing Bastila’s lips.

“And don’t act like you don’t understand me!” the door yelled. “Your chance to play dumb sailed yesterday.”

Sera sighed. “Alright, we’ll be there in a minute,” she called. “Asshole,” she finished under her breath.

“Dammit all to hell.” Bastila shifted wistfully against Sera’s fingers still buried deep inside her. “Has anyone said anything about Ran? And the ship?”

“Not yet. Not that I’ve seen much of anyone besides Mr Charming.” Sera shrugged. “She mighta just dropped down on another continent but how we would know is beyond me.”

“Hmm.” Bastila played with the collar of Sera’s t-shirt. The bright light of day was creeping steadily across the room. “I suppose we should go meet with the others.”

“Hmm.” Sera pulled her fingers out of Bastila’s cunt. “Shame.” She brought them to her lips, the evidence of Bastila’s arousal glistening in the sunlight. Without breaking Bastila’s gaze, Sera licked the moisture from her skin, tongue curling around each knuckle, flicking at the junction between her fingers.

“On the other hand,” Bastila said, slipping her hand around the back of Sera’s neck, “I’m sure an extra minute or two won’t hurt them.”

~~~

It was closer to thirty by the time they entered the dining hall, hand in hand, skin aglow from the fastest shower in the history of sentient-kind. Mr Xak’kis was stabbing at his breakfast, glaring at Sera with a world’s worth of violence and death in his eyes. Fuck it. It’s been forever since we’ve seen each other. What did they expect? She smiled at him placidly, causing the man’s utensils to shake on his claws in impotent rage.

“Oh, hey. Morning, guys,” Mission said, mopping up some pale yellow chunks coated in a red sauce with a piece of roll. “Didn’t think we’d see you this early what with the stress of yesterday and all.” Her eyes flicked to the shriveled meat of Sera’s eye socket, there and then away, almost too quick for anyone to notice.

Insects crawled through Sera’s flesh, the scooped out hole of her eye burning like a beacon. She forced herself to be normal. It was all in her head, she reminded herself. Nobody was actually looking at her.

“Well, we wouldn’t want to miss out on the gracious hospitality of our hosts,” Bastila said mildly, guiding Sera to a shared seat with a hand at her waist.

“They’ve got more of the brown stuff in the back,” Zaalbar said, gesturing at Sera with a steaming jug before pouring himself a generous mugful of suspicious-smelling liquid.

Mr Xak’kis shook his fork at Sera. “No drinks for latecomers!”

Sera hooked an empty mug, eye not leaving Mr Xak’kis’s as she filled it to the brim and took a sip. She gagged.

Zaalbar lowered the mug from his mouth with a satisfied sigh. “Too hot?”

“No, uh…” She worked her tongue against the inside of her mouth. A flavour she could only describe as ‘cooked sand’ pervaded her senses. Mr Xak’kis rattled his head quills at her. She took another sip, covering her mouth as she swallowed. It was distinctly brown.

“So,” she heard Mission whisper to Bastila, voice full of mischief. At least the yellow chunks were effective at cleansing her palette. “How was the wedding night?”

“Mission, we’ve had sex before.”

“You were complaining just last night that this was the end of your peace and quiet,” Zaalbar added.

“Aw, come on, you guys…” Mission whined. “I was ribbing the newlyweds.” She slapped at the table, emphasizing each word. “It’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“In Rwookrrorro we give them gifts of food.”

Mr Ressais entered from the kitchen, his foreclaw tapping a rhythm against the hard upper sole of his shoe as he wiped his hands dry on a dishcloth. He stopped by Mr Xak’kis’s seat, removing empty dishes with a delicate pair of tongs. His free hand brushed lightly against Mr Xak’kis’s shoulder, casually, as if by mere happenstance of him standing there.

“Dareel ate most of his breakfast today.” His voice was low. Not the full privacy of a whisper but pitched for Mr Xak’kis’s ears only. Sera dipped her head, focusing on polishing off her cooling breakfast. “His infection seems to mostly be cleared up. Where have these others got to?”

“Wandered off to the lake for Werradi, I think. He took a packed lunch with him. The other one slipped out before I awoke. I think he can’t stand to be around any of us.”

“Hmm. And up and left us with an untranslatable problem again,” Mr Ressais grumbled. Sera wasn’t certain, but it felt, from the shift in Mr Ressais’s rhythms and easing of the cadence of Mr Xak’kis’s speech, that they were speaking in Mr Xak’kis’s native tongue.

Mr Xak’kis rattled his quills. “What can you expect from a man used to the world bending itself around his will?”

“Mm-hmm… Ow!” Sera jumped at the sharp pain in her side, spinning around to stare at Bastila, startled.

“You’re daydreaming,” Bastila teased, waving a stolen piece of roll in front of Sera’s face.

A helpless grin spread across her face. “I wasn’t… Stop stealing the food out of my mouth, woman!” She grabbed for the roll.

Bastila snatched it away, letting it dance in the air just microns out of reach of Sera’s hand. “You’ll never grow up to be big and strong if you don’t eat everything put in front of you.” She swooped the roll down, stuffing its soft, fluffy mass into Sera’s mouth.

“Aurhh om, ai aing ig ang fwong,” Sera protested.

“Darling, don’t speak with your mouth full.”

Zaalbar burst out laughing, his deep rumbles vibrating through the thick timber of the table. “I’m glad losing the ship hasn’t killed your ability to have fun.”

The mood in the room shifted immediately. Sera felt Bastila’s loose relaxation freezing into tension in her arms. Zaalbar slapped his hands over his mouth, eyes wide. Mission kicked him under the table.

Sera chewed and swallowed the roll, gently kissing the pads of each of Bastila’s fingers. “I’m guessing none of you have any idea where she might have went?”

“Uh, not really,” Mission said slowly. Her face twisted with regret. “I’m not even really sure when Ran left the hall. I didn’t think we had to keep an eye on her.”

Zaalbar inched his hands down. “We didn’t find anything when we went out to get the shuttle early this morning. By her tracks, I’m not sure she even stopped to wipe the mud from her boots before going up the ship’s ramp.”

“I—” Bastila swallowed. “She approached me last night on our way to bed. After you left us,” she said with a nod to Zaalbar. “I brushed her off. I didn’t think she was going to…”

Sera squeezed Bastila closer. “Nobody could have known what Aleran was going to do. We can’t be responsible for other people’s decisions. Uh… This shuttle. How big are we talking?”

Mission shrugged. “It’s just a rich guy’s shuttle for bringing him caviar without needing to come into dock.”

“It’s a small service craft with barely enough room for one,” Bastila said softly. “It can’t carry even two of us, let alone all four. And that doesn’t even begin to account for all the supplies we lost.”

“Hmm…” Sera kicked her heel against the upright of the strangely backwards chair. “How does it bring supplies in? Is there a compartment under the pilot’s chair or a space in front of the engine block?”

“Not under the pilot’s chair.” The tension in Bastila’s shoulders unknitted itself as her gaze turned inwards. Sera allowed herself a small smile. “I’m not altogether certain, to be honest. I had a plan… Well, we considered hauling one of the supply crates via the tow clamp. But I can’t imagine Lipiers Marte accepting his champagne and caviar banging around through the depths of space held only by a single tow clamp. It doesn’t exactly scream luxury.”

“You mind if we go take a look? You said you brought the shuttle around the back?” she said, turning to Zaalbar.

“We put it down just on the other side of the river. We thought we’d make it easier for you than, you know, having to travel that way so early in the morning.”

She gave Zaalbar a smile. “Thanks,” she mouthed.

Mr Xak’kis swiped a dramatic claw at all of them. “And no making free with my kitchen either!”

Sera made a face at him. “That’s not even what we were talking about.”

“Yeah, it’s been kinda hit or miss getting anything done this morning,” Mission said, heading for the door. “You should have been here when we were trying to ask for their cart thing. Who knew not sharing a common tongue would be such a pain in the butt.”

It was a beautiful day outside. Hot but there was a fresh breeze blowing off the river, water sparkling like diamonds in the sun. Sera filled her lungs with clean, country air. It was good to be outside again.

The other three were already making their way across the low foot bridge spanning the river. Sera hurried to catch up, getting her first proper look of the craft her beloved had swooped to her rescue in. It was a classy brushed-metal dark grey box, taller and wider than it was deep with two square blocks for the windscreen. The engines sat on top like an afterthought, two slender tubes canted slightly forward held to the horizontal edges by bulbous protrusions.

“It looks like a fridge.”

Bastila scowled while Zaalbar chuckled and Mission hummed thoughtfully. “It does not.”

Sera frowned at her and waved a hand at the craft’s unbending lines. “It’s fucking—”

“Did you want to help me figure this out or not?” Bastila yanked the shuttle’s door open.

“Hmph!” Sera walked around the side of the fridge-like shuttle, peering over Bastila’s bent-over form into the cockpit. It was even smaller on the inside than it looked on the outside, the equipment panels and navigational controls organised in a neat, compacted manner. Sera supposed that some might find the neat setup beautiful, a marvel of engineering brilliance to fit so much complex machinery into such a small space. For her, it just seemed claustrophobic.

“The emergency rations and my toolbox are still here, at least.” Bastila fiddled under the pilot’s seat. “Not that I honestly thought Ran would raid the shuttle but I didn’t expect her to steal the ship either. I don’t see any controls for extra storage down here.”

“Well, it would help…” Sera felt around the rear of the cockpit, finding what she was looking for in a pocket in the back of the seat. “If you would read the manual!”

Bastila pushed herself off the pilot’s seat with a huff. “I don’t need to read the manual. I’ve been flying this thing for months!” She made a grab for the datapad.

Sera jerked it away. “For instance!” She opened the manual to a random page. “You would know that the J-45B can be used to steer all compatible spacecraft in the Delta range, improving their speed and manoeuverability.”

“We already know that. We knew it the instant we tried to take a corner in that thing!”

“Hey, guys,” Mission said. “I know you’re still, like, catching up and stuff but could you, like, find out if we can modify this thing? Or are we gonna have to stick ourselves to the side of the shuttle?”

Sera nodded, chastised. “Right.” Bastila made another attempt for the manual. Sera jerked it back. “Finders keepers.”

Bastila smacked her on the ass.

Mission thumped her head against the body of the shuttle, letting out a loud, long-suffering sigh.

“Right! Yes. Okay, uh…” Sera scrolled through the manual, easing herself up onto the pilot’s seat. “Um. Okay. It looks like for cargo it’s got this multi-connector with… Huh. Apparently, there’s three different connector standards depending on which part of the galaxy you’re in, with fifty-three major sub-variants from different shipping companies. This,” she slapped the back of the cockpit, “has three appropriately sized rings and the… Teeth, suction, things,” she attempted to demonstrate what she meant with her hands, “will work with forty-nine of fifty-three of the variants. Um.”

She stopped. Bastila was smiling at her, like she was the most adorable thing in the galaxy. Sera felt a blush touching her cheeks, Bastila’s steady gaze undoing her self-possession.

“Um.”She swung her legs happily. “Okay.” She skimmed through several pages, then back up to the main index and back down again to the relevant chapter. “Okay, health and safety stipulates that any passenger car connected to the main propulsion unit, that’s this, needs to be provided with its own environmental cycling unit, as the MPU’s oxygen cycler is not sufficient for any space over eight cubic meters in volume. I see no reason why we couldn’t just rely on the MPU’s cycler piped into a passenger compartment and make sure we only do short stops. So we can pick up fresh air along the way. Or maybe pipe it directly into a set of connected helmets ducted into the ceiling.”

“So… Better than sticking ourselves to the side of the ship?” Mission said doubtfully.

“Well, there’s a hatch in the back,” Sera said. “So, you could talk to the pilot at least. Or play cards.”

“Why can’t we use the ship you came in?” Zaalbar said.

Bastila and Mission looked at each other, then back at Sera.

Sera blinked. “It crashed.”

“Alright,” Bastila said. “What about asking our delightful hosts for help? They must have something of use.”

“Oh, I don’t know, judging by that cart thing of theirs,” Mission said with a grimace. “I don’t think they have anything that was made this century!”

A thought pinged off the inside of Sera’s head. “We need to go back where I came from.”

They all looked at her.

“Is that safe?” Zaalbar said eventually.

“They just found me, they didn’t… The planet, they don’t have any food there. All the nutrients and minerals have been used and converted into waste products and they don’t have any way to process any of it back into something useful.”

A glimmer of hope sparked in Bastila’s eyes. “Do you think they would be willing to help if we sent them a message?”

“They don’t have any communications or ships or…” Sera covered her face and sighed. “There’s a reason I’m here, okay, instead of a place with running water and takeout and star ports. I found the closest thing that looked like civilisation and went. They don’t have any reliable way off-planet and they don’t have anywhere to go if they did. I very highly doubt anyone’s manning the comm stations if any of them are even still working. However!” she said, as the hope died and their shoulders drooped. “They do have plenty of parts, if crappy ones, and they do have the tools and expertise to fix machinery, if not to the level of a proper ship’s mechanic. And, more importantly than that! They are as lost and abandoned in this galaxy as we are, adrift in the darkness where no one can reach them. Should we not reach out to them and see if we can not, together, untangle this knot and get everyone home?”

“Well, I don’t see how anyone can argue with that,” Bastila said.

~~~

“What do you think about all this? Do you really think it can work?”

Bastila caught the green sapling as it swung for her face, released only moments prior from Mission’s grasp. They were trudging through humid forest, midday sun streaming through dappled leaves overhead, following the directions of Mr Xak’kis and his so-called captor, Mr Ressais, painfully won after a good half hour of Sera waving her arms about to get her point across. The trees were eerily silent, only the occasional sound of the wind rustling their boughs to interrupt the quietude. She searched for the hill they’d been pointed towards. Its flat-topped crest was difficult to spot through the dense leaves, its silhouette becoming indistinct the further they traversed up the slope. The little plastic compass that they’d been given said they were heading in the right direction.

Zaalbar shrugged. “Don’t see why not.” He loped easily through the untamed knot of trees and vegetation, navigating the treacherous underbrush as though he’d been living there his entire life. “All we have to do is get the navigational data out of Sera’s ship and go ask for help. Doesn’t seem all that complicated to me.”

“I suppose.” She glanced ahead. Sera and Mission were discussing something rather enthusiastically. Some holo-drama, it sounded like. She looked… okay. There was sweat on Sera’s brow and she was panting, just a little. Whether that was from the hike or from something more serious, Bastila couldn’t tell.

“Ah!”

Bastila’s heart jumped into her throat. “What!”

Sera pulled herself out of the bushes she’d disappeared into, a limp, brown thing clutched in her hands. “I found my pants.”

Bastila looked at the tattered, filthy rags, every scrap of colour leached from the fabric by intense exposure to the sun and replaced by an immovable miasma of grease and dirt. Sera followed her gaze, then looked back up at Bastila.

“I wondered where they got to.” She held the bundle a moment longer, then let it drop from her fingers.

“Well, I’m glad you found them,” Zaalbar said.

“Come on…” Mission bounced up and down on her heels like she had springs coiled in her shoes. “It’s nearly lunchtime…”

Sera booted the foul thing back into its bush.

Zaalbar lifted his head and sniffed the air. “Do you smell that?”

“Uh, it depends,” Sera said, brushing her hands off guiltily. “What are you smelling?”

Zaalbar wandered this way and that, his nose twitching furiously. Then he marched into the trees with determined certainty. They scurried after him, hurrying to keep up with his long-legged stride in the thick greenery.

He led them into a clearing, artificial in its origins. The ground and trees were black, right up the trunks above any of their heads. A broken path of destruction led through the treetops down the hillside, a huddled clump of trees at the edge of the clearing bunched and pushed over, their unlucky, final member uprooted and flat on the ground, its bark planed off its upper face. A great chunk had been scooped from the earth, enterprising seedlings pushing their way through the demise of their older siblings. A burnt pile lay at the end of the hollow, a torn, ashy ball of metal and plasteel.

Sera rubbed a sheepish hand over the shaved sides of her head. “Didn’t think it’d look as bad in broad daylight!”

The full import of Sera’s words seeped into Bastila’s brain. Her throat closed up, the blackness of the scorch marks, the sheer, mangled compression of the vehicle knifing into her brain.

“Hey.” A warm pair of arms closed around her. “I got out just fine. Whatever happened is past tense now. Look at me.” Sera cupped her cheek and forced her gaze gently away from the crash. “It looks bad because it crumpled and not me. Nothing bad can happen to me now.”

Bastila made herself exhale. She wound her arms around Sera’s waist, burying her head in her wife’s neck. “You know, you really are going to be the death of me.”

Sera stroked her back soothingly. “I’m so sorry, baby. I promise I’m never going to put you through any of that ever again.” She let out a small laugh. “I am never going to step outside ever again if I can help it.”

Bastila met her eye and smiled. “You better not.”

“Whoa! This thing still works!”

She looked around Sera. Mission was poking into the depths of the ruined craft with a big stick, standing at a distance and leaning delicately over the sooty halo spreading from the opening. Her arm snugly around Sera’s waist, Bastila walked over to see what they had found. The end of Mission’s stick stabbed into a thick, noxious layer of charred residue, blended to a drying, homogenous sludge from the nighttime rains. Bastila squinted. Beneath the crumbling carbon, bright points of light blinked on a heavy rectangular shape.

“See?” Sera murmured, pressing a kiss to Bastila’s cheek. “I told you it’d all work out.”

~~~

One never thought about how heavy a hyperdrive was until one found oneself pushing one of the blasted things downhill through rocky, uneven forest. Mission collapsed dramatically against the hard, rectangular sides of the wretched metal brick.

“That’s it! I’m out! Tell my family that I love them!”

Bastila caught Sera as she was about to fall, lowering both of them to a comfortable seating position side by side on a convenient stump. Sera gave her a grateful wink, sweat running in rivulets down the contours of her smile.

Zaalbar straightened. He was barely breathing heavily. “You guys can just walk. I can—”

They all waved his offer off vociferously, Mission lobbing a handful of dry leaves at his head.

“You sure we have to drag this thing all the way back?” Sera said, digging in the pack on Bastila’s back.

“We can’t get the shuttle in close enough with all the trees,” Bastila said after a moment.

Sera grunted her response. She tossed the plainly wrapped ration bars that their hosts had graciously provided to Mission and Zaalbar, opening Bastila’s portion and placing it on her knee.

Mission tore the packaging of her bar open. “So, how are we going to get this thing all the way back to the shuttle, anyway?”

“Grease it up and let it slide down the hill?” Sera was tapping something out on the datapad from the shuttle, her own ration bar hanging loosely from her mouth.

Bastila peeked at the screen. “What are you doing?”

Sera quirked an eyebrow. “Taking notes?” she said, her mouth full. She fixed Bastila with a fierce look. “You didn’t have a shitty, fucked up hyperdrive to follow back to its origin. How did you find me?”

Bastila felt herself blushing. “We… I used our bond. It led me straight to you.”

“Oh!” A matching pink blush spread across Sera’s cheeks. Then made a face as the full implication sank in. “You mean, I…”

“I know…”

Sera sighed expressively and took a large bite of her ration bar.

“We could always use the river, couldn’t we?” Zaalbar said. “It flows that way, right?”

“Just chuck it in and watch it sink like a stone. Ha!” Mission nibbled at the edges of her bar. “These taste weird.”

“That bark from the tree behind you is really good if you… What?”

“It isn’t all that bad along the riverbank,” Bastila said, ignoring Sera. “Once we’re down this hill, it should be… mostly smooth going after that.”

“If we get to the base of the hill, there should be a, uh, base. We can get some barrels and lash them to the whole…” Sera gestured vaguely to the plasteel siding they were using as a sled. “And just float the hyperdrive all the way back to the B & B. Simple as that!”

Mission pulled the ration bar out of her mouth with a pop. “There are more people here?”

“Ah, no. It was very abandoned when I went in there.” Sera scrubbed a hand over the top of her head. “But it must have barrels, right? Every base has barrels!”

“Heck, yeah, I want to take a chance on the mystery base barrels!” Mission said, struggling to lift herself from her flopped position.

They bundled down the hill, their snapping of twigs and crunching of leaves the only sound in the eerily still forest. The trees thinned somewhat. Bastila caught a glimpse of an antenna tower off to their left, choked with vines but clearly not of natural origin against the bright blue sky.

The bridge was a touch upstream from where they emerged from the trees, a broad, crumbling slab of concrete lying low over gently flowing water leading to a monstrous mound built into the earth. A great door sat in the wall of the mound, a stylised pattern of primary colours stretching across its bulk. At some point in the past, a massive blast had struck the door, scoring the coloured surface. Twigs and leaves jutted awkwardly from the base of the door, as though the previous inhabitant hadn’t bothered to clear the threshold before shutting the door.

“What the hell?”

Sera was standing hunch-shouldered before the door, occasionally kicking at the solid concrete as if to make certain it was real. Her gaze was turned inwards. There was an odd, lost look on her face.

“This was supposed to be open,” she muttered.

“Sweetheart?”

Sera jumped, a too familiar flicker of guilt and panic in her eye. Bastila’s heart sank.

“Darling, are you alright?”

Sera gave a nervous grin. “Yeah, I’m…” She shook her head. “I was, uh… I was just thinking about when I got here,” she said with a little difficulty.

Bastila couldn’t stop herself from frowning worriedly. “Mmhm.”

Sera’s smile turned more natural, the tension bleeding from her face. “When I got here, I thought there was no one. That I’d spoiled my only chance of ever getting back to you. It was a bit dramatic.”

“I want you to be honest with me, Sera,” Bastila said. “I want to be able to share your burdens with you as an equal and as your partner, and not be left hanging when something is tearing you apart, and I have no clue how to help you. That’s why I married you,” she growled.

“I know,” Sera said seriously. “I don’t mean to not share things with you. It’s just, sometimes I find it difficult to put into words what I’m feeling and I don’t always know why. And it makes it harder when I don’t know if any of my memories before three— five years ago are real.”

“Well…” Bastila let out a breath, all this honesty making her feel oddly drained. “I’m glad we could finally have this talk. Now.” She coughed delicately. “Shall we get going so Zaalbar can stop pretending to lift this stupid door by hand?”

Sera turned, taking in the pantomime of busyness being acted out behind her. Mission had taken upon herself the role of self-important site surveyor, while the fur on Zaalbar’s face was slowly standing on end as he attempted to lift what had to be at least two shuttles' worth of weight.

“Hey, Zaalbar! You’re gonna put your back out, man! Help me take a picture, so we can go bother the locals to open it for us.”

~~~

Mr Xak’kis and Mr Ressais peered at the datapad Sera held aloft like it was an alien artifact from the farthest reaches of space.

She tapped the image of the closed door, with Mission for scale. “CLOSED,” she said slowly, sounding out each syllable with exaggerated care.

“Now, why would anyone do that?” Mr Xak’kis muttered.

“Do you know anything about this?” Mr Ressais said to someone behind them.

Weillith ambled over, a fishing rod in one truncated hand, and an empty fishing basket in the other, the pungent smell of bait rising from the little clay cup sitting hollowly at the bottom of the basket. He looked at the image and grunted. “Must be that pervert in his cave. I’ll swing by and open it back up.”

Zaalbar’s stomach grumbled loudly. “I’m going to find lunch,” he announced.

He went to do that, Mission following after him and slinging an arm around his torso. Mr Ressais and Mr Xak’kis went back to what they had been doing, which seemed to involve a lot of sawdust and paint thinners.

“Now what?” Bastila said quietly.

“Well…” Sera shrugged. “I guess we’ll just have to push the fucking hyperdrive?” The day hadn’t gone the way she’d thought it would. “Or maybe we can make, like, a raft out of logs. Although, now I’m having visions of logs floating in seven different directions down the river and our precious hyperdrive slowly but inexorably sinking beneath the waves.”

“Darling, that isn’t going to do anything about the fact that we only have space for one person on the shuttle,” Bastila said urgently. “How are we going to get everyone off-planet when we can’t even ferry a single extra person?”

Sera rubbed the back of her head, staring blindly at the patterns in the white plastered walls. “I was hoping to get that radio tower at the mound up and running,” she said finally.

Bastila’s eyes squeezed shut, the muscles of her face tense with stress and frustration.

“Damn that woman. Why couldn’t she have waited until we got home to have her hissy fit. Did she have to pick our wedding day, of all things?”

Sera pulled her close, feeling Bastila return the embrace, their heads resting against each other. “We knew, from the day we got together, that things wouldn’t always go our way,” Sera said softly, Bastila’s heart beating next to her own. “We’ll find a way to make it work.”

~~~

The shuttle shone silver against the clear blue sky as it descended from the heavens, the arc-welder glow of the main thrusters making Sera blink. The down draft of several tonnes of metal and ionic polymer cells held aloft buffeted the small crowd witnessing the final radio test. Sera took a step back, away from the swirling dust.

“What a startling thing,” Weillith muttered. The much larger man seemed unbothered by the force of the artificial wind.

“Almost makes you wonder what a society can build when it doesn’t devote every ounce of its wealth and intellect to military might,” Mr Ressais said next to him, the tone of his whistle sounding a little wry to Sera’s ear.

The other man just grunted sourly in response.

The shuttle set itself down and hissed as it equalised its pressure with the outside air. Bastila hopped from the pilot’s seat, looking debonair with the collar of her shirt undone and stray strands of her hair floating loose from their tie. Sera felt a smile tugging at her lips, her heart beating a little quicker at the sight.

She lifted the canvas bag at her side to her shoulder, stifling a groan at the weight. Bastila accepted her own bag of supplies from Zaalbar, her face marked by lines of weariness. She didn’t seem fazed by the load on her shoulder at all.

“Ready to go?” Sera said, surreptitiously shifting the bag, so it didn’t feel so much like it was compressing her spine.

The tension in Bastila’s face relaxed into a smile. “Yes, finally.” She reached for Sera’s hand. Sera met her halfway, winding their fingers around each other.

“Have fun!” Mission slapped Sera sharply on the shoulder. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” She punctuated each word with a successive, cheerful slap.

“You mean, like that time at the trade convention,” Zaalbar said thoughtfully, “when Guild Association Head Drellis was giving their speech and you set fire—”

“Aaaagh!” Mission jumped at Zaalbar, slamming a hand over his mouth.

They hiked into the forest, just the two of them, exploring the land, reacquainting themselves with each other and how they were together. No one disturbed their peace. They bathed in the water and made love under the open sky, the sun warming their skin. At night, they talked of all the things they'd missed, all the things they hoped for, staying up until they fell asleep in each other's arms. Sera showed Bastila the river where the moss grew thick and the water flowed like crystal over the smooth brown rocks. Bastila fed Sera foraged mushrooms roasted on an open fire and drew pictures in the clouds and in the stars.

Far too soon, their packs grew light. They turned towards home, such as it was, soaking in the deep green stillness around them and the clean, fresh air, tarrying as long as they could spare before the metal sheeted roof of the inn inevitably came into view.

~~~

Bastila adjusted the control dials, double-checking their values against the table in the shuttle manual one final time. The cockpit’s safety harness hung loosely about her shoulders, its heavy metal clasp occasionally swinging against her legs. There was a solid thump on the hull as Mission secured the crate of dirt that Sera had insisted she take along to the rear of the ship.

“If any of those old assholes start acting weird, you come straight back here, okay?” Sera said.

“Mm.” Bastila checked the dials again. She knew she was just delaying now, holding back the inevitable under the guise of seeking out increasingly irrelevant discrepancies.

“Hey.” Sera caught hold of the harness and pulled herself into the cockpit, pressing her mouth against Bastila’s. Bastila relaxed into the kiss, letting it steal her away from the moment and her anxieties.

Sera pulled away slowly, staying within the intimacy of Bastila’s personal space. She clicked the harness softly shut, running her hands over Bastila’s body to ensure she was securely and comfortably held.

“I’ve made a note and set an alarm on my datapad,” she said, adjusting the length of a strap. “I won’t forget. I’ll be by the radio every night waiting for your call. Okay?”

The harness wrapped her body in a firm and soothing grip that only Sera knew how to rig. “Okay.” She pressed the button to close the cockpit door.

Sera watched her through the ever-narrowing gap. “I love you. Come back to me soon.”

~~~

Bastila jerked forward as she exited hyperspace, the shuttle’s proximity sensors jangling an atonal chorus with the warnings sounding within her own head. The safety harness caught her, the expertly tightened straps keeping her from cracking her head open on the viewport. She quieted the alarms. A thick field of debris and indeterminate detritus swam in the void not a metre from her face. In the distance, a greasy splodge hung suspended in a broken ray of sunlight, the misshapen lump orbiting it clearing a meagre ring about its equator; a planet and its satellite, by the readings from the gravitational sensors. No communications came from the planet, save for some muddied local traffic.

“Right.” Bastila readjusted her grip around the control yoke. “Right.”

She eased the yoke forward, twitching the thrusters with the lightest possible touch, every shred of attention on the field surrounding her.

“Dammit, this is going to take forever.”

Her back and chest were drenched with sweat by the time she slipped into the planet’s atmosphere, finally, agonising hours that felt like days since she dropped abruptly from hyperspace. The planet appeared to be mostly empty, frozen fields of dirty ice creeping over equally dirty tundra, broken sporadically by rotting industrial machinery and the bones of long abandoned homes.

An inky column of black smoke stained the wind, tracing a line back to a crumbling bonfire contained within a loose ring of buildings. Bastila manoeuvred the shuttle upwind and set it down gently on the uneven ground.

She flicked the radio on. “Uh. I’m here all safe and sound, and I’ll talk to you later, I suppose. I see what you mean about getting into the system,” she added suddenly. “Anyway, I’m about to go into the village. Talk to you tonight. Love you.” She blew a kiss into the transmitter on instinct and set the message to repeat until received. Pulling the box of rations from under her seat, she hopped from the shuttle and physically recoiled from the smell. A noxious mixture of fire and garbage and dying vegetation hung like a palpable entity in the icy air. Bastila covered her mouth and nose, fumbling for the scarf about her neck. The fine fabric was no match for a proper environmental mask sealed against her skin, but it helped.

Locking the shuttle securely and stashing keys in the inner pocket of her jacket, she set out for the settlement, flakes of ash raining from the sky. Her breath puffed out before her as she walked. Bastila pulled her collar higher, grateful for the layers Sera had advised she wear. Some distance from any of the nearest buildings, a group of small children were playing in what Bastila supposed had once been a cluster of bushes. Or rather, one of the children was huddled under the safety of the bushes while the other two yelled expletives at each other at the top of their young voices.

“Excuse me,” Bastila said, raising her voice to be heard over the racket. “I need to speak to an adult. Am I going the right way?”

The children whipped around to stare at her.

“Go away, smelly pest, we don’t want any more of you here!” one of the little arguers shrieked, the ribbons in her fur vibrating with childish ferocity.

“I call dibs!” the child hiding under the bush declared suddenly.

The other two gasped in mortally offended shock. “What!” “You can’t do that!”

The child scrambled out from the bush and seized Bastila’s wrist. “You were too slow! She’s my prize now!”

Bastila closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Excuse me…”

The little ribboned arguer stamped a tiny foot, turning an interesting purple beneath her downy fur. “That isn’t fair! What about the rest of us? Are you just going to let the rest of us starve just because you never learned to share?”

The other little girl grabbed Bastila's other wrist and began to tug, digging her heels into the frozen dirt and letting her body hang like a corpse off Bastila’s arm. “Exactly! She’s big enough for all our families if you cut her up in the right places!”

“Excuse me,” Bastila said firmly.

“Your daddy doesn't even love you enough to share a cup of gravy with you!” the first child threw at her ribboned friend, oblivious to Bastila’s objections. “Why should I share anything with you when he’s just going to carve you up for the pot anyway!”

“My daddy does too love me! In fact, he was just telling me this morning that he’s going to take you from your parents, and he’s going to make a big roast, and he’s going to save the best piece just for me!”

“Look, nobody is going to be eating anybody, alright?” Bastila said, snatching her hands back. She took a deep breath and blew it out. There was more than one quivering lip and teary eye before her. She sighed. “I’m going to give you something to fill your tummies,” she said, drawing one of the little energy pellets from the ration box for them to see, “and then you’re going to show me where the adults are, is that alright?”

“Don’t take it, Nica! She’s trying to poison you!” the first child said, glaring fiercely at Bastila.

“I’m not trying to—! Alright, look. I’m going to split it into four, and then we’re each going to have a piece. And then whatever will happen to you will happen to me as well. Right?”

The pellet split easily into four misshapen quarters, each tiny piece resting on Bastila’s palm enough to sustain an athletic individual exerting themselves in all manner of ludicrous ways for close to two days. The little girls took their portions and then waited, squinting suspiciously at Bastila until she tipped the broken pellet into her mouth. The clay-like paste tasted of nothing and did nothing, not expanding to a greater quantity as it hit the acid in her stomach nor fizzing chemically within her, but she felt full. Almost too full, considering the generous lunch Sera had packed for her trip.

The children gingerly followed suit, pulling overly dramatic faces as they swallowed.

Bastila quirked an eyebrow at them. “Satisfied?”

They nodded, looking vaguely dissatisfied that nothing more dramatic had happened.

“Well then, shall we—”

“Evi! Nica! Where have you girls run off to? We’ve been looking everywhere—” The speaker, an older woman of the same species as the children, stocky with a solid, unforgiving demeanour, stopped short. She looked from Bastila to the children, a mask of careful blankness slipping over her face as she eyed the distance between them.

Bastila raised her hands. “My name is Bastila Shan.” The other woman’s eyes narrowed at that. “Please gather all of your people together. I have an important proposition for them.”

The second little arguer tugged on the woman’s dress. “She gave us something.”

“Did she now, lamb?”

“I had some myself as well!” Bastila protested.

“No doubt.” The woman looked her over, taking in her features and her unfaded clothing, almost unnaturally bright against the drab ice and dirt. “We don’t have your Sera Khan here. And I’m sure none of us know where to find her.”

“I know. She’s with me.” Bastila let some steel enter her voice. “She is safe and warm where I will allow no harm to come to her.”

“Is that so?” the other woman said, with mild surprise.

“Please,” Bastila said. “I have a ship, but it only seats one. If you and your people help me modify it, I will transport all of you to a more verdant land.”

“Hmm.” Abruptly, she spun on her heel and marched sharply away. “Well, hurry up then,” she called to Bastila, standing stunned on the frozen earth. “We don’t have all day.”

~~~

“You must be fucking joking!”

Bastila covered her eyes. They had been at this for over an hour already. The large shed they had all crammed into stank with the scent of too many bodies in too close proximity. The children had been banished, slinking away from the gaze of a hard-eyed man. The older woman, Anasha she’d introduced herself as, sat beneath the light of a swinging fluorescent light fixture sifting her hand through the rich, dark earth Sera had requested delivered specifically to her, an unreadable mixture of emotions playing out on her face.

“Do you think I don’t recognise a ploy when I see one? Do you think I’m going to go anywhere with this one,” a thick finger thrust in her direction, trembling with every drop of the hard-eyed man’s rage, “in an unsafe, unsealed box while that fucking brat lurks in wait from above?”

“It’s designed for it,” Bastila snapped tersely. “I know the specifications. I understand how they work. It’s what the shuttle’s designed to do!”

“Now, Alen,” a stout man said, the cheery glow of inebriation about his cheeks. “I’m sure our young guest means absolutely no harm whatsoever.”

“You shut up!”

“Don’t you lump my boy in with those ruffians, Alen Kova,” a woman, dishwashing gloves clutched in her hands, dry cracks spidering through the skin of her knuckles, said fiercely. “You’ll see. He’ll knock that felon off his perch, just like he told me, and bring them all home. He’ll do his mother proud.”

“You shut up too!”

A headache was pressing against the edges of Bastila’s skull. “There is plenty of space for everyone. No one is going to get left behind.” She should have brought a pain tablet from the ship.

Anasha’s hand froze. “You don’t mean to bring those animals with us?”

Bastila scowled as she realised the closest pain tablet was rocketing blindly through the middle of nowhere, trying to crash-land with the galactic core. “Yes, I don’t care! We’ll make as many trips as we have to.”

The other woman’s brows drew together, gaze burning into Bastila.

“But that doesn’t answer the question about my pie tins!”

~~~

Sera’s laugh burst from the transceiver, the warm, golden sound, distorted and crushed by the weak signal, threading itself Bastila’s heart.

“And did you?” The smile in Sera’s voice lifted the weight from Bastila’s shoulders as if it had never been there. It was astonishing, really. “Answer her pie tins?”

Bastila felt a starry-eyed blush unravelling her indignation. “I told her we can dangle them off the side of the shuttle for all I care.” She had almost forgotten what it was like. Not working alone. “Honestly, I would haul the entire damnable village if it would get them to cooperate.”

Sera let out a soft laugh, the quiet rustling in the background painting an image of her settling in for the night in Bastila’s mind. She itched to be there, pulling Sera’s body closer as they snuggled deeper under the covers.

“Anyway,” she continued, fighting with herself to not flick the ignition switch and fly to Sera’s side, shuttle adjustments be damned, “a Mr Bikova is emptying one of his methane tanks for a passenger compartment. I’m not entirely certain we have the materials to transport living beings without turning them into paste, but it’s a start. Uh, there was some discussion about how to bring food, but there was some kind of meteor shower over the village? It caused rather an uproar and it became impossible to continue. I did manage to distribute a portion of the rations to some of the ladies, although I am not certain they understood or trusted what they were.”

“Hmm, the meteor showers, yes… I forgot about that. I hope that doesn’t put a wrinkle in things. Dammit, where are my notes?”

“Your notes on meteor showers?”

“I, shit, I’ve forgotten where they are. Never mind, we’ll wing it. They’ll respect you more than me anyway.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, darling.”

“Neither have I. Don’t worry, It’ll come back to me if it’s important.”

Bastila rolled her eyes. “Hmm.”

“Gimme a break. It’s close to midnight.”

“Says the woman who used to insist on doing the bookkeeping in the middle of the night.”

“That was before I hit thirty. I have a different outlook on life now.”

This pulled a laugh from deep within Bastila, cascading into the tiny shuttle. “I’ve missed this,” she said, when she was able to talk again.

“Me too. So,” Sera cleared her throat, dropping her voice down to a sultry purr, “what are you wearing?”

Bastila let out a noise she wouldn’t admit to making in public. “Smooth, darling. Very smooth.”

“Hey, I’ve got two years to catch upon! Besides,” Sera said, “I want you. I always do.”

Bastila melted into her seat. “You charmer.” She flicked the shuttle’s solar screens on and unfastened the top of her jacket, sliding the tips of her fingers inside. “Are you certain you won’t be disturbed?”

She heard rustling on the other end, Sera’s voice becoming briefly muffled as though cloth were being passed over her face. “The door’s unlocked in case I fall and hit my head, but nobody is going to keep us apart. It’s just the two of us, baby.”

Bastila chuckled, tracing the curve of her breasts. “Eager, aren’t we?”

“I told you, I’ve got two years to catch up on and I mean to make the most of it. You don’t know how much I’ve ached to hear your voice as you come.”

Bastila inhaled sharply. “You would wait to say that just when I’d convinced myself not to fly home, wouldn’t you,” she muttered, a throb settling between her legs. “Dammit.” She tore at the fastening of her trousers, desire making her clumsy, “Dammit all. I want your fingers inside me.” She thrust her hand into her underwear, groaning as she delved into her slick wetness.

Sera grunted as arousal rippled across space to hit her between the legs. “Fuck, I’ve missed how quickly you get turned on.” For a moment, she was still, only the heaviness of her breath echoing over the radio. “Tell me what it’s like. Tell me what you’re feeling, baby.”

“I’m touching myself and imagining that it’s you.” Bastila pushed two fingers into herself, squeezing her breast with the other hand. She wriggled, trying to find a better angle, her trousers getting in the way. “It’s not enough. I wish you’d hold me down and fuck me.”

Sera hissed. “How? Tell me how I’m going to fuck you.”

“With the strap on. I need your hands free. To touch my breasts. It’s not the same when I do it.” She pinched her nipple sharply, imagining Sera drawing aside her hair and kissing the back of her neck, her hand gently caressing Bastila’s throat. A flood of arousal spilled over her hand, making it difficult to find the friction she needed so badly. An excited shiver ran low through her stomach. The familiarity in the way it tingled up her spine told her that it was an echo of Sera, masturbating to Bastila's words across lightyears. Bastila gasped. “I wish I could kiss you. I was too long without having you near me, and the few days we’ve been together again weren’t enough to erase the scars that it left.”

The tingle spiked, coursing through her veins like molten silver. Bastila hung on the edge for a moment, muscles quivering with potential energy, savouring the intensity of her wife’s bliss. Then she let herself slip, tumbling down into ecstasy.

She stilled her hand when she was sated, breathing heavily into the static air of the cockpit. Sera’s breath sang in harmony with hers, filtering over the radio, filling the chasm of space between them.

Bastila pulled her fingers from within herself. “Ah.”

She cast about for something to wipe her hand on. “Uh.”

“Hmm, the joys of sex,” Sera said quite dryly, obviously dealing with her own stickiness.

Bastila snorted out a laugh.

“Wait a second, I made a note about this.” There was a rustling on the other end.

“Do I even want to know?” She considered just using the fabric of her trousers, to hang with it, then recalled the only laundry detergent in their possession was safeguarded by the maniac rifling through her datapad lightyears away.

“What? It’s in case I forget. Alright, there should be some wet wipes in the left glove compartment. I put some extra snacks in there as well, in case you get hungry in the cold.”

“I don’t really need a note to be able to find wet wipes in my own shuttle,” Bastila said, opening the indicated glove compartment with her other hand. There was a neat stack of carefully wrapped energy bars and tubes of seed paste next to a tightly rolled blanket and the pack of wipes, turned on its side to make better use of the tiny compartment’s volume. The blanket was silky soft against her skin as she retrieved the pack of wipes.

“Got you there quicker, didn’t I?” Sera inhaled sharply. “Hnn, I just got a mental image of you wiping your body down with one of those things…”

“You know, sometimes I wonder how your mind works,” Bastila said, cleaning herself off. A picture popped into her mind, Sera lit by flickering firelight, skin turned the colour of burnt honey, a thin sheen of sweat glistening on her body as she ran a soft white wipe over her naked limbs, tracing her every dip and curve. “Alright. I see your point.”

“Dammit, why didn’t we wire this thing for video!”

“The things you don’t think of until you don’t have them…”

“Babe, if you’re not home soon, I am reinventing aerospace engineering from scratch!”

~~~

“No, no. You just sit there and take a lot off. Let us take care of it.”

Sera thumped back into the bench with a huff.

“Least Bastila would let me do stuff,” she muttered.

The verandah was completely empty. Behind her, a storm of activity was being cooked up in the dining hall. She huffed again.

She ran her hand along the bench Zaalbar had made. The finish was rough, the fresh and clean timber awaiting its final polish and stain once the other chairs were done. There were meals to be made, beds to prepare, a landing spot to be cleared, they needed to make sure there was enough clean water, not just river water, for everyone to use, linens to find, cutlery to drag out of storage…

A menu had already been drawn up by Mr Xak'kis and Mr Ressais in between banging the dining hall into shape and checking their food stores. The beds were in storage and had already been checked, waiting only for retrieval later by Mission and Zaalbar when the first of the guests began to arrive, as were the linens, the cutlery and the crockery.

She checked her datapad. A note dated to before Bastila left detailed quite fully the plan to set the shuttle down on the concrete surface outside the entrance to the mound, with calculations of its size and estimated weight capacity, as well as a rough diagram of where and how those with mobility issues would get to the inn. The river water had been tested and was safe to consume.

Sera glared at the lifeless forest, the trees making music in the wind. “Dammit.”

~~~

“Get it inside! Quickly!”

Bastila jammed her shoulder into the corner of the tank and ran with all her might. Alen Kova and a few other men dropped their tools to join her, balls of black flame raining down around them as they pushed the fruits of their labour through churning mud to the cover of the barn. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the rest of their group rushing to save their equipment from the bombardment. A thud jolted through her shoulder. Her vision turned black as they crossed the threshold of the barn, the burning hiss of falling garbage a deafening roar on the metal sheeting roof. She stumbled and caught herself against the tank as it came to a stop, blinking until she could see again. Something dripped through her hair and into her collar.

“Damnation!”

Bastila looked up at the tank. Coolant ran freely down the metal siding, the severed lines of their jury-rigged thermal regulation system bleeding uselessly into the mangled corpse of a smouldering projectile. Countless hours of work pissing away to nothing in a dying fire.

“I am going to strangle that boy with his own intestines when I get my hands on him.”

Bastila cast an eye towards the man muttering darkly behind her, lips pressed tightly together. She swiped the coolant from her brow. Another minute further from completion, another minute not spent at Sera’s side, doubled and tripled every time they had to run inside, redo work already done when they could be pressing forth with other tasks. She pulled the scarf from her neck and threw it to the ground.

“Don’t worry,” another man said to him softly. “They’ll not know the fire and judgment that will fall upon them once we get this contraption up and running.”

Bastila brushed past them, the rest of their conversation cut off by the slamming of the fire escape door.

~~~

Bastila pressed the corner of her scarf into her puffy eyes, tucking the still-cool material into her collar as she walked into the kitchen of Lina Svita’s house. The room was a clatter of people and steaming food preparation.

“Decided to join us, have you? Thought you were too good for women’s work,” Anasha said snidely, not bothering to turn to face her.

Bastila sighed. “That’s simply silly. Who would do everything at home if not Sera and I?” she said, too emotionally drained to fight back.

The older woman huffed, mollified. Or maybe not.

“Go on then,” she said, pointing Bastila towards a table with a flick of her knife. “Help with the dumplings, if you’re so committed to workplace equality.”

Bastila looked at the table, barely more than a stool really, surrounded by the littlest girls in a mess of flour. Definitely not happy then. She sighed again and made a spot for herself in the group, folding her legs beneath her to bring herself closer to their level. Her neighbour scowled at her over a split lip, the little would-be cannibal from her arrival, her skin purpling under her fur. Bastila offered her a kind smile, a tendril of helpless worry curling in her gut, and grasped a handful of pallid dough. It slid oddly over her fingers, grainy and chemical, clinging to her skin and leaving behind a strange, chalky residue. Her eyes darted to where the older ladies were preparing the broth, searching until she spotted the little pile of ration pellets, cut open and ready to be mixed into the food. Just enough to carry everyone through the day. The tension within her unravelled untidily. She tore chunks of dough from her clump to settle herself, awkwardly rolling them into misshapen spheres. She had to get more sleep soon before she lost her mind entirely.

A girl came by, a large, empty tray under her arm. The younger of Lina Svita’s daughters, Bastila thought. She cast a critical over the contents of the table. “You’ll want to hurry up if you want to be ready for supper,” she warned them.

“I confess, I feel responsible,” Bastila offered. “I’m not used to making a dumpling without a filling. I feel all fingers and thumbs.”

The girl frowned as though she didn’t know what to do with that. She began collecting up the dumplings, not meeting Bastila’s eye. “You’re friends with that outsider, right?”

“She’s my wife. We were married recently,” Bastila said, still feeling the urge to blush happily at the thought.

The girl ignored this, moving the dumplings to her tray with short, jerky motions. “There was a boy she was friends with. Up there. Did she say anything…”

“Inabi.”

The girl looked guiltily over her shoulder. An older girl stared down at her unblinking, eyebrows raised. The girl collected her tray silently and slunk away.

“I was only trying to…” Bastila heard her say.

The older girl threw an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. “I know. But you can't talk about him like that here.”

“It’s those animals that are the cause of that.”

Bastila turned away from the tiny domestic scene. Anasha was gazing at her significantly.

“An interesting perspective,” Bastila said, finally. “One could rather say that you are the one keeping those children apart. You and the other adults. Unless effort has been made to reach out to the boys on the planet’s moon without my knowledge?”

“You would know more about that than I, getting to enjoy those little darlings’ peaceful overtures day in and day out.”

Bastila felt blood rushing to her skull. “Those boys are still deserving of our compassion,” she said, with considerable difficulty. “It doesn’t make it magically more moral if it had been stated by someone perfectly and dispassionately removed from the situation or community!”

“They wallow in the worst traits of the fathers. And they have built nothing but destruction and shame,” the older woman said, a surprising wobble in her voice. “And their selfishness has robbed their neighbours of their future.”

Bastila paused. “That does not automatically strip them of their rights as individuals,” she said, making her voice gentler. “What kind of community are we creating if we were willing to condemn a person to be punished eternally for the slightest infraction?”

The shutters came down on Anasha’s face. “Maybe on another world. Such things have no meaning here.”

“Now, now, Anasha,” a solid, masculine presence said, settling down heavily next to Bastila. Kyani Shuko gave Bastila a jovial wink, his cheeks a bright, shiny red like New Year’s candy beneath his fur. There was a not overpowering, but definitely distinct scent of alcohol about him. “You’re scaring the children.”

The little table of workers gave him a collection of rolled eyes and polite smiles, the little cannibal giving him an especially withering glare.

Anasha sniffed disdainfully. “I am going no such thing, you sot.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about. Never touched a drop in my life,” he said playfully, taking a long drink from a tall glass of clear liquid.

Anasha scoffed and turned away without dignifying that with a response.

“Can’t let life get you down,” Shuko said, chuckling into his glass. “Find yourself wandering about your underthings otherwise.”

“A fine non-alcoholic beverage certainly helps with that,” Bastila said with a smile.

The man laughed. “Precisely so. Thin line between man and the total collapse of civilisation.” His laugh took on a somewhat manic edge. He downed the rest of his glass, the liquid seeming to stick in his throat as he struggled to swallow. The scent of alcohol began to smell distinctly like terror. “This shuttle,” he said, dropping his voice down so low Bastila could barely hear him. “Its modifications. It’s a sure thing? There’ll be enough when we get there? We aren’t simply fooling ourselves?”

“It is a sure thing,” Bastila said, doing her damnedest to infuse her words with more certainty than she felt.

Shuko clutched reflexively at his glass. “Good. Good.”

~~~

Sera thumped the corner of the box rhythmically against the concrete column, each thud vibrating up her spine from her butt to the base of her skull. Four days late. Bastila was supposed to be back in her arms already.

She inhaled deeply. The fact that the must and the damp of the old base no longer registered probably meant that she'd spent far too long sitting there balancing on the damn box, but one could only take so much fresh air and sunshine. She needed to be closer to the tower, anyway. Intellectually, she was aware that the radio worked just as well back at the dining hall. They had specifically set it up that way. Nor would her constant monitoring make Bastila’s evening call come any quicker. But her brain was a liar and a fink and not to be trusted.

The corner of the box slipped. The cold concrete connected with her shoulders, then the back of her head. Her ass slid from under her, pulling her to the floor and driving her chin into her chest, catching the very tip of her tongue tightly between her teeth.

Sera growled. She kicked at the box to get it away from her, banging it into the radio table.

“Is that all you are good for? Tearing everything apart?”

Sera looked up. Seiliu, of all people, was peering down the length of his nose at her like a judgmental wraith. He looked thinner, if that was even possible, his tattered scarf not adequately covering the torn and bleeding plumage on his chest.

“And is that all you’re good for? Standing around like an asshole rather than helping a girl up?”

“You have invited an infestation upon us,” he said, not helping at all. “A plague of suffering to envelop our entire world.”

“I don’t know if I would call it that,” she said, grunting as she rolled onto her knees and clambered up. The concrete was just as bad coming up as it was coming down.

“You dare open this place up to the unwashed, the unsanctified! You would bring others into our solitary confinement!”

Sera pinned the old man with a flat stare. “I don’t see how you get to have an opinion about that. Since you decided you didn’t need to be around when we were making that decision.” Her voice slipped to a more normal register. “Do you know how hard it is to explain abstract concepts with hand signals? I’ve been prancing around like an idiot for weeks!”

Seiliu’s body stilled. He drew himself up to his full height. “I will not allow you to divert the conversation with your façade of japery. We should not be allowed into the company of others. And the fact that you think that this so-called invitation is anything other than pure selfishness is further proof that you are either an imbecile or the worst lowlife that ever crawled out of the rank depths.”

Sera felt a vein throb in her temple. “No, running away from an argument without talking it through with my girlfriend was selfish.”

“Is that all you can bring yourself to care about?” he said, cutting her off. “Your earthly relationships?” He thinned his nostrils contemptuously at her. “Are you such an animal you abandon every shred of morality and right-feeling the instant your ability to fraternize is threatened?”

“Yes!” she exploded. “I want to be happy and spend time with my friends and my loved ones! I want to live!”

“Hey!” Mission’s voice echoed coldly against the vaulted concrete ceiling. “Guess who made weird cake today! Oh.” Mission lowered the laden cake tin from above her head, glancing between them. She smiled awkwardly up at Seiliu. “Hello!” she said, enunciating the word loudly and slowly, pairing it with an exaggerated wave.

“He can understand you,” Sera said, feeling her heart thud angrily in her chest. An odd mix of emotions was playing out across Seiliu’s features.

“Oh, good.” She lifted a slice to the old man’s face. “Cake?”

Seiliu recoiled, peering down at the dark, sticky cube with dignified horror. “No, thank you.”

“You can go like this,” Sera shook her head side to side to demonstrate, “to say no.”

He hesitated, then shook his head rapidly.

Sera's eye roamed over the vast expanse of creamy white icing, the surface covered in swirling raked lines like a mad man’s meditation garden. “Are you sure you made enough?”

“Nah, don’t worry. This is just the first tin.”

“Oh, my…”

The radio buzzed. Sera flicked on the receiver with a smile, all of the day’s troubles falling from her shoulders. “Hey there, beautiful. We’ve got some company to talk to you today.”

Mission rolled her eyes, but leaned forward agreeably. Seiliu looked like he wanted to self-combust.

Silence. Cold stole through Sera’s stomach. “Galactic Star shuttle, this is home base. Please respond.”

Still nothing.

Mission bent over the radio to get a better look. “You sure she’s not just got her mic off?”

Sera adjusted the dials. “It’s not the shuttle.” A shameful amount of relief flooded through her. She scanned her datapad for the transponder codes listed in the manual. “It’s the ship.”

The transmission stopped. Then started again, on and off in a repeating pattern. A distress signal.

Sera picked up the microphone. “I’m calling Bastila in.”

“This ship,” Seiliu said, disapproval lacing his voice. “This is the craft that abandoned you, is it not?”

“Starting to think you actually did just drag me into your cave to eat me.” She sighed and decided not to be an asshole. “It’s general good practice not to ignore distress calls, in case next time it’s you that’s being ignored.”

Mission stared at Sera, every trace of good humour scrubbed clean from her face.

“Mission?” Sera said carefully. “I’m going to answer the call.”

The young woman looked at her for a long moment, then silently nodded.

~~~

Bastila fell more than stepped from the shuttle cockpit. Immediately, she was enveloped in the warmth of Sera’s arms, letting her just for a moment forget everything but her immediate reality. She sighed and returned the embrace, squeezing Sera tight.

“You smell like the inside of a shoe,” Sera whispered softly into her ear.

Bastila laughed and then groaned, her groan turning into a growl as she buried her head in Sera’s neck. Distantly, she registered Mission and Zaalbar standing at a respectful distance with a smattering of locals, holding welcome signs with hopeful faces.

Sera kissed her hair. “There’s a hot shower waiting for you while we set up. Uh. Um.” Bastila could feel her stretching to peer inside the shuttle. “Babe, where are our guests?”

Bastila sighed and pulled back reluctantly, running a hand over her tired eyes. “They are… Alright, we come to the departure morning, right? Mrs Bogina and Mrs Yurov were to help with the elderly and the more sickly of the very youngest children and the younger Mrs Mova on the trip and help get everyone get settled in. Then this morning, first Andrian starts saying that his mother should be on the trip, because he gave us the compartment tank. Then Arav Riaky said that if Andrian’s mother got to go, he should get to go. Then Arav Atov started saying that he didn’t trust Yeniil’s welding joints. Then Dara and the elder Mr Mova said that if Arav Atov wasn’t going to go, then they weren’t going to go and...” Bastila grabbed Sera’s bemused face firmly between both of her hands, ignoring Mission’s disappointed boo. “Geothermal scans say that there are hot springs on one of the northern continents. When all of this is done, we are going.”

Sera laughed and nodded agreeably. “Yeah, alright.” She laughed again. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

It took several days and multiple shifts to get… not as far as Sera would have fled in a similar situation.

“Weird place to pick.”

Sera walked back and forth at the base of the ramp into The Galactic Star while the others searched the ship, examining the scenery as she stretched her legs. Pocked clouds boiled a lurid green and yellow in the sky over black, jagged rock and dark mud as far as the eye could see. Although, she admitted to herself, perhaps they weren’t seeing the planet at its best. A fresh wind beat at her face and swirled around her legs.

“Well, there is no sign of her inside, that’s for certain,” Bastila said, descending the ramp. “The radio is off. She must have activated it remotely.”

Sera made a noise of agreement. “There are tracks heading off in two different directions,” she said, indicating them. “Can’t see return tracks though.”

Bastila pulled a thick work jacket out of the carryall she’d brought from the ship. “How’d she manage that then?”

Sera raised her hands into the air. “Maybe she learned to astral project. Maybe she reproduced asexually.”

Bastila rolled her eyes.

“They might not both be her,” Mission said reasonably. “It could be that a third party is the cause of the distress signal.”

“That does make more sense.” Sera zipped up her own jacket. She shifted her shoulders to settle it. Had she really lost that much weight?

“Well…” Bastila squawked as a fat blob of rain hit her square in the eye. She yanked her hood up with a scowl. “We only have two radios, so we might as well split up and find her.”

~~~

Sera wiped the raindrops from her datapad screen. Hundred and forty steps, good pace, over medium rocky terrain heading… She checked the compass in her jacket. Twenty-seven point three five degrees. No significant landmarks. “And the authorities let you go?”

Zaalbar made a thoughtful noise. “The damage looked worse than it actually was. The fire was mostly contained to the guildmaster’s toupee, anyway.”

“Ah.” Sera’s eye traced the tracks they were following, deepening into a sudden patch of mud before disappearing, muddy tracked, into a dark cavity opening in the rocks.

They rushed forward. Sera trained her light on the hole. She clicked her radio on. “Honey, I think we found something. Tracks go down into some kind of crack in the rocks.” Sera blinked. The black pit swirled menacingly at her.

The radio crackled. “Do you have a confirmed sighting of her?”

“No, uhh…” She swallowed and focused. “It looks like the passage takes a turn a ways down. Not sure if it leads back out to the surface.”

“Alright, we will keep following our trail. Let us know if you find anything.”

“Sure thing.” Sera shut off her radio, her hand closing around the rope on her shoulder convulsively.

“We can always wait until the others are finished with their trail,” Zaalbar said.

“I don’t like the way this weather’s going.” Rivulets of water were already trickling around the sole of her shoe. Sera slapped her cheeks to steel herself. “Uh. Shit. You better take the radio in case anything happens. I’ll tug three times if I need to be hauled up.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Zaalbar said, helping her anchor the rope properly to the rocks.

She stepped into the passage. It was wider than it looked from the outside, the stone ceiling rising deceptively just past the lip of the cave, allowing you to think that you could almost stand, safely and comfortably, as you wandered deeper into the treacherous maw, the always out of reach hope that you would find a spacious cavern or convenient exit beyond one more crevice, just one more crack to squeeze through. It is a cave. It does not have any intent, nor does it have the ability to plot. A protrusion poked Sera in the small of her back.

“Fuck!” She swatted furiously at the back of her jacket. “Fuck.”

The surface was beyond sight now. Sera felt the phantom grip of a vice tightening about her ribcage. She took a deep, slow breath. Shoulda kept the radio, least then I could have had Bastila in my ear to distract me. No, if something happened, there’d be no way for Zaalbar to get help to get me out of here. She focused on the rocks as she continued down, keeping her movements steady and even. No panicking. They were purple, she noted under the light of her torch, rather than the pitch black she had taken them for, a rich and glistening colour invigorated by the thin film of water chasing her to the bottom of the cave. A ribbon of quartz swam through the surface, stark white against the purple. They would look a lot prettier if they were more than a centimetre away from my face! No. No panicking. Shut up!

The light of her torch hit cloth. Sera increased her pace, being careful to keep her rope line untangled and free of jagged rocks. Aleran was prone on the floor of the cave, filth and pooling water gathering at her knees. Her head and torso, up to her right shoulder blade, disappeared into a fissure in the cave wall, her left hand braced uselessly against the opening. For a second, Sera thought they had come all this way only to retrieve a corpse. Then Aleran’s torso moved as she inhaled very slowly.

“Zaalbar!” she yelled towards the surface. “I’ve found her!”

“Got it!” echoed down.

Sera took a deep breath and stuck her head in the fissure. Aleran’s eyes were closed as though she were meditating. Her arm was stretched out in front of her.

“Hey.” Sera slapped the other woman’s cheeks to rouse her. “Hey! We’re here to get you out of here.”

Aleran started and shot Sera a filthy look, not turning her head. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was hoarse and weak.

“Who the fuck else did you think was going to come?” Sera assessed the situation. Aleran’s skin was pale and clammy, her eyes ringed by dark circles. Her lips were cracked as though she hadn’t drunk anything in days and lines of dried blood covered her chin where she’d scraped it ineffectually against the immovable rock. Her cranial horns were jammed tight in the unevenness of the fissure, pincering her head from above.

Sera whipped her head out of the hole.

“Hey, Zaalbar!” she called, after a breath. “Would you radio Bastila and get her to bring the chisel, no, the coping saw, the hydraulic jack, and the anti-inflammatory spray? And a bottle of whiskey!” she added. “That’s for me!”

Zaalbar yowled his assent. Sera stared at the black void of the hole.

“Okay.” Sera shook her hands out. “Okay, okay, okay.”

She climbed back down next to Aleran.

“We’re gonna do what we can to get you out,” Sera said, soaking a cloth with the water from her canteen. “I’m not comfortable trying to cut the rock, so we’re gonna trim your horns and get you out that way.” She held the cloth to Aleran’s mouth, keeping her own cheek glued to the lowest spot on the fissure floor she could find.

Aleran sucked the water from the cloth. Sera refilled it.

“Did you come here to gloat, you traitor?” Aleran spat, now that she could. “To laugh at the ruins of the Jedi Order?”

“You know, I am very claustrophobic. There are other places I could be.” Sera broke off a piece of ration bar and fed it to Aleran.

Aleran grumbled noisily as she chewed.

Sera fed her another piece. The rocks were biting into her cheek, causing the conviction that she had hallucinated her all of her escape and rescue and that out there in reality her head was trapped in a slowly descending metal press to bounce incessantly around the inside of her brain.

“So, why did you come down here, anyway?” she said loudly to drown out the thoughts.

Aleran made a face. “To be yelled at by a murderous Sith Lord, apparently.”

Sera let out a choked breath. “I’m sorry. I usually don’t go into spaces this small, and the irregularity of the rock face is getting to me. Talking helps.”

Aleran scoffed. “Do you really expect me to believe that you’re claustrophobic?”

“Why the hell wouldn’t I be? You wouldn’t think that a Jedi Knight would abandon civilians to die in the wilderness either, and yet here we are. Miracles,” Sera said, “abound.”

“How dare you—!”

“Shit, fuck.” They were the only ones out here. “I didn’t want to get into this down in the hole.” Back home, it would be different. But out here… “Forget I said anything! What did you think of the speedball final? Bastila said the Hurricanes didn’t pull their weight in the second half.” Ostracising someone was as good as abandoning them on a deserted planet.

Aleran stared at her as if she’d grown a second head. “You can’t expect me to simply ignore what you just said. If you don’t have the fortitude to stand by your words, you shouldn’t have let them leave your mouth, you coward!”

“I know how this ends,” Sera said. “We start arguing down in the hole, next thing one of us is being murdered by the other, and then nobody gets out of here. No.”

“How typical. I should expect a wretch such as you to try and wriggle out of a situation of your own making.”

Sera thumped her head into the rocks. “Just play along, would you?” she muttered. “So, what did you think of the final?” she said, louder.

Aleran sniffed. “I don’t pay attention to such things.”

Sera ground her teeth together. From above, she heard Zaalbar’s roar bouncing off the passage walls. “This is why you have trouble getting laid,” she said, pushing herself out of the hole.

The pooling rainwater was up to her ankles now. A duffel bag was bouncing gently downwards, its progress slowed by the rope tied to its handle. Sera climbed a short way up to meet it, freeing it from the jagged ledge it got caught on and giving the guide rope a short tug.

“Got it!” It was a little eerie, yelling up at something she couldn’t see. Had it gotten darker since she was down there?

“Do you want me to come down?” Bastila’s voice echoed oddly off the rocks. “I don’t mind taking over if you aren’t feeling alright.”

Sera blinked. For a second, everything around her was flat, pitch black.

“Nah. I wanna get out of here as soon as possible.”

She opened the bag. The asked-for tools and a lone pack of gum were wrapped in a cushion of towels to protect them from the rough journey down. She took the jack out of the bag and used it to brace the opening to the hole. She took the coping saw in hand and placed the anti-inflammatory spray in her front pocket. The gum she ripped open and shoved wholesale into her mouth.

“Please excuse the chewing sounds,” she said through a mouthful of gum as she squeezed back into the hole. This was going to be closer than she thought. She unhooked the blade of the saw, threading it carefully through the outer ring of Aleran’s horns.

Aleran scowled. “Is that really necessary?”

“It’s to muffle the screams when I finally lose it. I might need to jiggle your head a bit to see if it’ll come loose, is that okay?”

“Fine.”

Sera twisted, trying to find a good angle for her arm. “Tell me if anything hurts.” She started sawing. A fine dusting of bone snowed gently down on Aleran’s head. The woman winced occasionally, but said nothing. Sweat bead on Sera’s lip, the muscles in a line down her neck, over the joint of her shoulder down to her wrist, aching oddly from the awkwardness of the exertion. The pins and needles in Sera’s feet grew sharper. She bit down on the gum, chewing in time to the beat of her heart to drum out the noise of her own pain. The tip of the horn fell free. Sera unhooked the blade and moved onto the next one.

“So,” she said gently. “What were you doing down here? You didn’t get around to telling me.”

Sera thought Aleran reddened in the harsh light of her torch. “Can’t handle a little close quarters, can we?”

“You know, I’ve changed my mind. We need to amputate here.” Sera poked a finger into Aleran’s neck.

Aleran huffed. For a long minute of silent sawing, that was all Sera thought she was going to get out of her.

“I was seeking a new crystal for my lightsaber,” she said, a touch reluctantly it seemed. “It is unseemly for a Jedi to be without one.”

“Huh.” Sera’s hand stilled. “How were you thinking of powering it?” she said, when she couldn’t think of anything else.

Aleran turned scarlet. “I don’t need your input on what I was doing!”

“I was just trying to make conversation.”

“What do you know about lightsaber design?”

Sera stared at her. Aleran only got redder.

“Alright then,” Sera said, moving past it with difficulty, “did you at least get what you came here for?”

Aleran’s lips thinned into a tight line. “Are you making fun of me?”

Sera slumped against the floor. “Please. I’m trying.”

Aleran studied at Sera’s face for a long time, then turned her gaze back on the blackness on which her head was locked. “My horns became trapped before I could reach what I sought. I was unable to complete my quest.”

Sera peered into the depths of the cave. The formlessness took shape, dark greys separating themselves into geological features. A faint glimmer of blue stood amongst them, a crystalline outcropping not three metres from where they lay. Inexorably out of reach. She frowned. “I’m sorry.”

“Why would you care?” Aleran demanded, her teeth flashing in the darkness. “You have thrown away everything the Jedi Order ever gave you!”

“Yeah, well, aren’t you lucky you caught me when I was feeling sentimental,” Sera said, wiping at her eye. “The others are going to be angry with you,” she continued. “Don’t be surprised if they watch you more closely than usual.”

“So, that is how it is to be? I am to be your prisoner now?” Aleran said, coldly.

“You know, that’s not really up to me. There.” The last fragment of horn tumbled to the rocky floor. Sera felt like she’d run a marathon. “You might have trouble standing,” she said, guiding Aleran’s head out, her hand between the other woman’s scalp and the jagged passage. “Don’t try anything too fancy until you’ve had a chance to recover.”

“Don’t tell me what I already know. I have trained more thoroughly than you have to gain mastery over my body.”

“Sure, sure.” Sera steadied the other woman as she staggered up, taking the bulk of her weight on her shoulder. She secured them both safely to the rope line and gave it three quick tugs, making sure to hold on to Aleran. “Coming up!”

She felt herself lift off the ground like a kitten picked up by the scruff of her neck. Sera scrambled to get her feet under her, supporting and guiding Aleran up from behind. The sweat coating her torso and face froze in the icy air of the passage. All she could smell was the rank stench of Aleran’s several day old body odour.

Aleran flinched. “That was my head.”

“Sorry.” Sera shifted, trying to account for the woman’s larger frame. The passage felt tighter with the two of them together. Sera took a deep breath, regretted it, and elected to stick to the chewing gum, folding it over with her tongue after each bite to force herself to concentrate.

A light bounced off the rocks above them. “We can hear you!” Bastila’s voice said. “You aren’t too far from the top now!”

“Thank you!” Thank fuck.

“You’re squeezing me,” Aleran said.

“Right.” Sera tried to find a grip that wouldn’t crush the woman’s torso while also not thumping her head against the rocks.

They reached the bend in the passage. Sera contorted both of them to fit round, her fingers getting mashed against the wet rocks during the long, arduous process. A sharp stinging radiating from the outer shell of her left ear told her that she’d sacrificed a chunk of her skin to the hunger of the cave. She was going to need a long shower after all of this. And a nap.

“Stop letting me fall.”

“You know,” Sera said, after a deep breath, “I get seizures when I’m over stressed.”

“What!” Bastila’s voice thundered. “You, what!”

Sera nearly lost her grip. “What do you mean, I what?”

“The—!” A handful of muddy sand pelted down on Sera’s head. “Why don’t I know about these seizures?”

“You do,” Sera said, less certain now. Aleran was looking at her over her shoulder.

“How, sweetheart? How would I know this?”

Sera felt heat rising up from her collar. “We talked about all sorts of things, remember? The day you rescued me. Look, can we talk about this when we get out of here? I did tell you that I have a memory problem.”

The sound of Bastila’s careful intake of breath spoke volumes.

Sera’s face felt like a boiled lobster now. “Why do you think I’ve been carrying a datapad around with me, taking meticulous notes? For my health?”

“Darling, I’m very sorry, but you do all manner of strange things that I cannot comprehend.”

Sera let out a frustrated growl.

Aleran made a noise that could have been a sigh or a snigger.

Zaalbar’s long arm reached in and hauled them the rest of the way. Sera felt the blessed raindrops of the open air on her face, followed by a reproving thump on the head from Zaalbar. Then she was pulled away from Aleran into Bastila’s arms.

Bastila cupped Sera’s cheek in her hand. “When? How long?”

“Two years ago. It’s better now that I’m eating regularly and the datapad helps a lot. Baby, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to keep anything from you.”

Bastila let out a shuddering breath. “You are never going down into a cave ever again.”

Sera laughed and kissed the palm of Bastila’s hand. “I never intend to!”

Mission thumped the retrieved duffel bag with Sera’s tools to the ground. She strode up to Aleran and stared her in the face. The other woman, easily twice Mission’s size, squirmed.

“I don’t like being left behind,” Mission said, firmly. Not waiting for a response, she picked up the bag and the rope and headed back to the ship.

~~~

The privacy of their belongings lay in ruins. Sera stared into the tiny area that Bastila had chosen as her room. Every cupboard and drawer had been pulled open, their contents tossed to the floor and rifled roughly through. The bed was in disarray, the pillows torn from their cases and thrown aside, the mattress askew on its frame as if it had been lifted up and dropped down without a care for where it landed.

Bastila whipped around to face Aleran. She was trembling with emotion. “Who gave you the right to come into our room?”

There was a small, metallic glint on the floor. Sera stepped carefully over a tangled pile of her underwear and a shirt of that she’d last seen Bastila wear the one time they had been on holiday together, bending down to retrieve the item. It was a small metal tube, part of a set, meant to fit over the delicate fingertip of its owner, curved and sharpened at the end to ever so gently scratch the skin. Sera searched for its companions, lying almost flat to reach under the bed. She gathered them all, placing each one carefully into the little wooden box made especially to hold them.

Aleran mumbled something indistinct.

Bastila leaned forward. “I’m sorry?”

A ragged corner showed pale where the fall from the cupboard had taken a chip out of the wood. Sera worried the corner with her thumb, thinking of a way she could fix it and realising she didn’t know how.

“You wouldn’t tell me where your lightsaber was.” Aleran’s voice was too loud. She wasn’t looking Bastila in the eye. “I had to search for it myself.”

“So, because you didn’t believe me, you went looking for it in our sex toys?” Bastila threw the shoebox at Aleran.

The box bounced off her quickly raised arm. The contents scattered to the floor. Their modest collection of dildos lay discarded like common trash. Each one had been torn roughly down the centre.

“It was hard! It felt as though you were hiding something in there!”

“It is supposed to be hard! That is how you feel it inside of you!”

Sera picked up a length of rich red silicone. She ran her fingers over the tattered edges and crevices where bacteria would fester, no matter how hard she cleaned.

Sera felt a sting deep in her chest. “We got this when we first fell in love with each other.”

Every drop of colour drained from Aleran’s face. She muttered something only the floor could hear and scuttled bow-shouldered from the room.

Bastila glared after her, her entire body rigid with tension. Sera pulled her to the bed, wrapping her arms tightly around her wife. The tension shook into grief. Bastila sobbed, hot, furious tears painting the skin of Sera’s neck.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Sera kissed the top of her head, running her fingers into Bastila’s hair. “We’ll make new memories.”

~~~

The trip back was subdued. Sera moved them to the room behind the cockpit, where the door had a much more substantial lock. Mission chose the solitude of flying the shuttle, reporting in only to give status updates. Aleran avoided them all, scurrying out of the room when they encountered her. Zaalbar alone kept the flow of conversation going, saying more words in that short trip than he probably had in his entire life.

Sera was exhausted by the time they trudged back into the dining hall, feeling like they’d burned up several weeks of their lives, only to wind up exactly where they’d started. It was noisier than usual within, all the old buggers chattering away like they were arguing over cards.

Mr Xak’kis spotted her. “Oh! Come quick! You have a visitor.”

For a moment, she thought he meant Seiliu, who was there again, for some reason. Then she noticed sitting next to him, looking bewildered and absolutely shocking in this amount of sunlight, was Mitri.

*****

Done! Thank god! This might be awful and I might want to edit it later, but we can move onto Part 12 now.