Checklist

It would be several weeks to make the jump from the council system to Earth. Given the circumstances, Dustin didn’t want to risk trying to find new routes; instead, he opted to give Sammie the order to fly through as many systems as they could find along the way that could be considered friendly. That meant Rabyth, Vex’ess, Feliax or Velca colony systems, or those that he had helped out in the past. It was a balancing act between taking a route that delayed their arrival, and taking the faster paths which potentially could lead to them entering systems that wouldn’t keep them safe from any Durathisian warships.

The first day was a rush - meetings, discussions, settling Linne and Veil’k into their quarters (after discussion, the pair had opted to share a berth much to Emely’s delight), and plotting a suitable flightpath for Sammie and Sola to follow. Alongside the meetings, there was a constant stream of information coming in from the envoys that were opting to take a stand against what Dustin was privately thinking of as the Durathisian coup.

Not all the envoys that Emely had spoken with were as loyal to the idea of the council as they might have appeared; a side effect of evolving on worlds with limited conflict or experience of being conquered, the Feliax opined when Dustin asked. “Humans were fighting practically to the day the l’Adra arrived. Feliax have been plotting against other prides for our entire history. Rabyth nearly starved their species to extinction multiple times. Most of us on board come from planets that have had their share of hostile activity - but not all worlds are like that, sir.”

Fortunately, while several envoys and their associated species were taking the path of least resistance, a sizable number remained who were offering what support they could, even if that was just a matter of sharing intelligence at the current time. It certainly gave the crew of the Solar Ascent plenty to talk about while their ship flew on through the weave.

On the dawn of the third day, Dustin woke alone in the ambassadorial bedchamber and stretched. His lovers had risen early; not unusual given he’d been up late the previous evening talking with Yril’k about potential scenarios in the event they ran into hostile Durathisians. Walking through to his ready room, he was glad he’d fallen asleep in his clothes as he found Aricia sitting at the table with Trea’k, the pair of insectoid women leaning in and looking at a tablet together.

Noticing Dustin’s presence, the butterfly woman stood, wings fluttering to lift her slightly backward from her chair as she did so. “Apologies, Dustin. I had intended to leave before you awoke - Trea’k and I have an appointment for later today and I wanted to see if she would mind moving it so that I could take some photographs while we are passing through the next system. Then we got talking, and she asked to see my recent images and…”

Dustin gestured for the woman to relax. “It’s fine, Aricia, really. You and Trea’k carry on - I’m going to have some breakfast and then head out anyway. There’s some things I want to do today, so don’t mind me.”

As he ate his plate of bacon and eggs (an automat breakfast, rather than one Naera had cooked for once), Dustin watched the pair flick through Aricia’s image collection with a smile while he debated his plans for the day. There had been a number of things he’d wanted to look into that had been building for some time. Aricia was technically one of those things - he was concerned that Emely might try and recruit the flighty Lieviran woman the same way she had Naera, but so far it seemed like the redhead was obeying his orders there.

While on the subject of Naera, the Caenii shortstack’s behaviour outside of the bedroom had been worrying enough that he’d made a note to talk to her to see if something was wrong. As far as the harem was concerned, she was fine - joking with the others, and certainly giving every indication that she was happy about her relationships. It was just her professional life that she seemed somehow off about, which for a woman who essentially lived for her job and her lovers was worrying.

Then there was Defia… Dustin drummed his fingers on his knee and wondered if he should just outright ask Bleu and Trea’k what was going on there. They seemed to be at the core of whatever the rogue Fractal was going through, although he’d seen her interacting with a number of his other lovers to the point he was pretty sure there was a larger group working with her on whatever it was. He just wished they’d keep him looped in.

So, those three women all had different reasons he needed to give them his attention. There was also Rye, they’d not finished the bathroom tiling yet due to everything that had gone on, Emely who definitely needed a reward for her hard work, Meli and Trea’k who deserved some pampering given their condition, Sammie who while she was handling things at the moment would definitely need some good downtime whenever he could prise her out of the pilot’s chair on the flight back to Earth… Thankfully Bleu at least didn’t need any more from him than his usual love and consideration.

Leaning back in his chair and finishing the mug of mocha he’d gotten to go with his breakfast, Dustin pondered for a moment on how his life had led to the point that he was trying to plan out how best to support not just one woman but multiple, then shook his head. He was glad of all his lovers and friends, and thankfully the trip back to Earth would hopefully give him enough downtime to properly catch up with all of them and tick off his long list of things that needed looking into.

Setting the mug down before clearing away his tray, he debated where to start. Aricia and Trea’k were right there, but Dustin didn’t want to interrupt them again, not when the Lieviran was so happy about something involving the new technology that she was still struggling to master on board Sola. That also ruled out any discussion of Defia - he’d want to quiz both his Vex’ess and Queri partners about the rogue Fractal at the same time if at all possible. Tiling the bathroom would be a welcome distraction, but he knew Rye was hyper-focused on making sure they were ready for attack at the moment, overhauling anything that could be looked at safely during weave transit, and reviewing everything else during the long flights between jump points.

That left Emely, who was still in the middle of working, Meli who as his second in command was currently running things which was what give Dustin the time to spend checking off his todo list, Sammie who was flying and thus not available, or Naera. Taking a moment to say his goodbyes to Trea’k and Aricia, Dustin left the ready room and headed for the galley.

To Dustin’s surprise when he arrived in the galley, the Caenii chef was nowhere to be found. Her team, a mixed bunch of humans who she’d hand picked from a call for volunteers and then trained into a serious workforce, were busy with the task of getting ready for the lunch rush when he arrived but did manage to let him know that their leader had checked in with them that morning before leaving them to it. “Captain, if you don’t mind me asking, would you talk to her?” One of the cooks working a ladle in a giant vat of soup asked over her shoulder, frowning before sprinkling red powder from a spice rack into the dish and adding “Chef’s not been herself of late. We’re glad she trusts us to handle everything, but the kitchen isn’t the same without her here, and she’s been leaving us on our own more and more often recently.”

That rang alarm bells for Dustin, and after thanking the team for their hard work he practically sprinted for the elevator. “Sola, locate Naera please.” He said as the doors opened. A moment later, the ship’s AI informed him that the Caenii woman was in her quarters - and so he took the ride back up, before walking down the corridors to a room far closer to where he’d started the day than the galley had been.

Pausing outside the entrance to the plant woman’s chambers, Dustin debated the best way to handle things before giving up and tapping on the communication panel. “Naera? It’s me. Can I come in?” He was worried she wouldn’t answer for a moment, before the door slid open and a wall of heat and mist rolled out into the corridor.

“Come in quick before you let all the air out, Dustin.” Naera’s voice called sadly from further inside. Stepping in, Dustin’s eyes took a moment to acclimatize to the light before he could fully appreciate the interior of Naera’s quarters, starting with what he was standing on.

Rye had worked her magic on the environmental systems, that much was apparent. The ground underfoot wasn’t the usual deckplate or the carpet elsewhere on this floor - instead, Dustin’s boots had stepped onto a mat of moss. Naera’s usual footwear stood to one side, and as he pondered the oddity of a moss-based welcome mat his lover called out again. “Take your shoes off before you come any further in; maybe your socks too? You don’t want to track mud out into the ship.”

Doing as he was told, Dustin stepped off the mossy welcome spot a moment later onto a floor that he promptly sank slightly into. It wasn’t muddy beyond the surface where the moisture in the air made it so, the whole room was so humid, but rather it felt like the compost his grandparents had once used to plant flowers in window-boxes back on Earth. With the ground now soft under his bare feet and his eyes acclimatized, Dustin was able to see further into the room - or rather, he wasn’t.

Vines filled the space around him; green tendrils covered almost every inch of wall. The reason he’d needed to acclimatize his eyes to the light wasn’t because it was particularly dark or bright - rather, it was the light of the rainforest floor, filtered by a thousand leaves on it’s way down. Bright flowers grew in between thick vine strands as he delicately picked his way deeper, sticking to a winding path that appeared to have been left between the door and where the bed and desk would be if this was a normal cabin.

Rounding a particularly thick vine, Dustin found Naera at last. The Caenii woman was curled up on her bed, one arm draped over the edge with her fingertips buried in the dirt floor of her room as she stared towards him. “Hey Dustin” she said, and her voice was so flat that it tore at his heart.