Chapter 21

TWENTY-ONE

" S o I just…touch it?" Theo eyed the shard sitting in its holder on the comms console of the Jitendra with more than a little trepidation. Zed couldn't blame him for his hesitation—everyone who'd tried communicating with the resonance always passed out or screamed the first time. Or both.

He really hoped Gleams and the rest of them had managed to mitigate the volume issue.

"Just touch it," Zed confirmed. "Keep your mind open and don't fight it when you start to hear stuff. Stay calm."

"Stay calm. Right," Theo muttered. He wiped his hand on his pants and held his fingers out above the shard, flexing, like he was psyching himself up for the touch.

"For Christ's sake, just touch it, Theo."

"Shut up, Felix."

Zed sighed at Flick. "Not helping."

"What?" Flick asked innocently.

Zed made sure his expression very clearly explained the what , then turned back to Theo, smoothing his features. "I get it. Inviting this sort of communication can be intimidating. There's no lying, no subterfuge. Not saying you're a liar," he clarified, holding up a hand, "just that everyone has private thoughts that we don't share. Knowing that someone is going to see those private things…" He glanced at Flick. "It's unsettling."

In the week since the explosion of the Magdalene— which Central and the AEF ruled regrettable but unavoidable—things had calmed considerably. Focus had turned from ensuring peace among the races of the galaxy to facilitating communication with the resonance. After the success of Flick's arm and the fact that it had allowed him to speak with the crystalline aliens, they had graciously donated shards to humanity, the stin and the ashushk to deploy as needed. They were still negotiating who was going to oversee that distribution—Zed was hoping it wouldn't be him. No doubt communication would still prove challenging, but it was a start. Baby steps.

Kind of like what he and Flick were doing now, with this added layer of connection afforded by Flick's arm and the shard in Zed's neck. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that their connection no longer had any layers around it. Not while they were touching, anyway. With every bit of contact, their mental link solidified. It still unnerved Flick and sometimes, it was too much for Zed too. Especially when they made love. But he meant what he'd said—he already knew all Flick's secrets. And loved him because of them.

Theo muttered something under his breath. Before Zed could say anything else, the ambassador pressed his fingertips to the shard, his entire body tense and still.

"Breathe," Zed said.

After a few more seconds, Theo relaxed. "Okay, this isn't so bad. They said hi. Or greetings. Or…is it always this vague?"

"Your brain will get better at interpreting it." Zed almost always heard communication with the resonance in words now, rather than nebulous thoughts—unless the concepts they were trying to share were so far outside his experience that his mind couldn't put a shape to them.

Theo removed his fingers from the shard and shook them, as if he was trying to get feeling back into the digits after a shock. "It's a bit disconcerting."

"Tell me about it," Flick mumbled.

"But you're all right, otherwise?" Ness asked, stepping forward with her wallet out before remembering that she wasn't the lead medical personnel on this boat. She tucked it back in her pocket with a rueful grin and settled against Elias's side once more. Since the incident with the Magdalene , their on-again, off-again relationship seemed to be stuck permanently in the on position. Elias had been incredibly attentive and Nessa's edges had softened. She certainly sought out contact with him more often—Zed had even caught them holding hands.

He wanted to poke them for being too cute and sweet for words, but he figured they'd just insist it was payback for the saccharine looks he and Flick had shared since reuniting. Besides, he and Elias weren't quite back to even, yet. They'd get there, he was pretty sure, but it wasn't easy to forget what Elias had said or that he'd all but abandoned Zed when he needed support.

Time would help, something Elias understood too.

"Hey! I made a corkscrew!" Flick held up the finger on his new arm that now sprouted the tool.

"Great. When we need to open an emergency bottle of wine, we'll know just who to call," Elias said with a smirk.

"He has also made a screwdriver," Qek reported, proud clicks coloring her voice.

Amelia O'Day nudged Zed's elbow and held out a wallet. "Emissary, if you have a minute, we can work out the distribution schedule for the other shards."

Zed bit back a groan. He wanted to be done. He longed for the simplicity of his job aboard the Chaos , with day-to-day tasks that didn't have the weight of the galaxy making them unwieldy and all but impossible. He would never have passed up this opportunity to meet the resonance or help negotiate their inclusion in the galactic community, but he couldn't do this indefinitely.

Flick insinuated himself between Amelia and Zed, slipping his right arm around Zed's elbow. Immediately, their link settled into place—not a snap, more a quiet inevitability. " Care, concern, protection" floated into Zed's mind, making him smile.

"Y'all have these shards now. You don't need Zed." Flick waved his crystalline arm at the shard on the console.

Amelia's lips pressed into a thin line. "But?—"

"Asking him to coordinate supply distribution is like asking a lieutenant colonel to rip out an engine's guts," Flick said, tossing a grin in Theo's direction. Zed remembered that Theo had held that rank on retirement. "You just don't do it, unless you really need the help."

"And we don't." Theo leveled a mock glare at Flick. "You need to get in touch more than once a year."

"Yes, sir."

"Smart-ass."

Zed let the rest of the good-natured ribbing flow over and around him. With Flick healthy and the stress diminished to little more than a bad memory, the crew of the Chaos had settled nicely into friendship with Theo. Part of him wished they could adopt a new crew member—a thought he cut off as soon as it appeared in his brain.

"Heard that." Flick's mental touch was smug and content.

You know what, if that sort of truth made his lover happy, Zed would own it. Saying goodbye to Theo wasn't going to be easy—he'd proven solid, reliable and a good friend. But Zed was just as happy that their future didn't revolve around the Jitendra or its crew or whatever Central wanted.

No, his future was wrapped up in the man beside him, and Zed needed to be sure that Flick knew that.

He whispered his thoughts across their link. "Let's go home."