Talis wakes up with a smile. Her eyes are finally back after yesterday’s skirmish, and it's finally time for her to put her war plans in action. She had an hour before Valyrie is scheduled to arrive, which means she most likely has two hours free before the idiot bothers to show up.

Talis deactivates the artificial gravity ward beneath her soft bed. The memory foam reforms, pushing her upward, and Talis burns red to fly out of her covers. She floats to her bathroom and sees that her maids have already drawn a bath for her. After a quick shower she submerges in the scalding hot water and checks through her schedule for the day.

Valyrie is her first meeting, but by no means her most important. After giving the woman her uniform and her orders for entrance into the Upward military academy, she’ll be heading to the core to check over her various ventures. Growing actual coffee on this station could be a game changer for the system itself, not to mention how their economy would improve with her gifts to Strategic HQ for a new ship yard. The station had an outsized military presence in her opinion, leveraging that for the purposes of arming allies and vassals in the system would turn Stellaris-9 into a power the palpacy could not ignore.

By flaring a bit of her red Talis brings the water to a boil, and she sinks down until her chin is beneath the surface. Part of her wants to stay here forever, but the station needs her. Strategic HQ has called a council of the four governors, likely over the brooding war with the Sacred. She has no doubt that the backend of her day will be dedicated to parsing warnings of the ship's viability to see what's worthy of her fear and what's just an exaggeration. The sacred were always in some war or another. The inquisitors destroyed a station at least once a year, but Stellaris hadn’t had an inquisition in her lifetime, and it was statistically impossible that it would.

After only half an hour of soaking, Talis finally leaves her boiling tub. The day waits for no one after all. She returns to her bedroom, where one of her maids has laid out today’s clothes. She’ll be amongst the people today, so she’ll eschew the militaristic governor wear for something more casual. A long and flowy tired skirt and a simple buttoned blouse are all she needs for today. She leaves her ceremonial sword leaning against her bedroom desk. She has no plan to intimidate her citizens. In fact, she feels like it will be easier to blend in if her face were partially covered. Most people aren’t as stupid as Valyrie. She puts a cartwheel hat on top of her flowing blond hair, and she is out for the day.

Before Talis can decide on jewelry and accessories, a knock comes from her door. Talis frowns not at the impertinence but with worry. Her majordomo never disrupted her before breakfast, and none of the staff would dare interrupt her morning over trivial matters. Talis strolls to the door and opens it.

Her majordomo greets her with a slight bow. He is also one of her experiments. The former nil had served her uncle, her father, and her grandfather. He was a reliable fountain of wisdom and trusted with household affairs and intimate secrets. Talis is ashamed to admit that out of curiosity, she wondered what would happen if the man’s collar was removed. Was he merely playing the long game this entire time, or did he have a genuine love for this family? When given that choice, the man had expressed that he planned on serving until he died. He had no family and nothing to go back to from before he was imprisoned. The Vorns had been his only concern for a lifetime.

Talis knew Tristen was a Vorn as much as anyone. It was still embarrassing that she had taken so long to realize that the kind old man who raised her in her mother’s stead was truly her only family on this station.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, miss, but your nil, Valyrie, is here. I think she is deserving of your attention.”

“Oh dear.” A thousand thoughts run through Talis’ accelerated mind. She had Valyrie’s collar and bomb removed shortly after their meeting yesterday. She had not removed the somatic controls implanted in the girl's nervous system, as it would be prohibitively expensive to do that for all nils, and it would serve as a backup system if Valyrie ever truly betrayed Talis’ trust. Talis was still worried about what such a volatile nil would do with even the slightest freedom. Was the murderous insanity of Valyrie’s twin inherent in the woman, or would she overcome her innate disadvantages like her majordomo had?

Talis lets her majordomo escort her to her private sitting room. One of the many rooms in the mansion she had yet to use as there just weren’t that many people Talis had any intention of inviting into her home. She adored her office and bedroom but she had yet to throw a soiree and her coronation to governor had been handled completely by her aunt. Talis had no idea how to throw a party though she knew it would be expected of her eventually.

The sitting room is, of course, pristine despite its disuse. The person within is anything but. Talis scowls, something that she’s sure will be a habit when around Valyrie. The woman is draped across the armrest of a wooden chair and is drooling onto the carpet. She’s burning red, but her eyes are completely unfocused, and she smells like human refuse. She’s in no state to be inducted into flight school today.

“Tristan. I apologize for the inconvenience, but could you please have a bath drawn in the third-floor guestroom? Also, please have that room readied for Valyrie. I won’t let this woman out of my sight again for a while.”

“Understood, miss. It will be done shortly.”

Talis nods to Tristan, and once the man has closed the door behind him, she strolls up to the headache in human form, drags the body upright, and slaps the woman in the face. Talis isn’t burning any aura so slapping a red is like slapping a wall, but it gets the damn point across.

“Huh?” Valyire says, gaze unfocused, a giggle rising up her throat. “Tally. Why you slap me, dude?”

Talis simmers in her anger. “I am not your dude. I am your governor. Governor Vorn to you. Not Tally. Now you uncooth swine, what drugs are you on? Are you drunk or is this benetoxin or worse?”

“All of em,” the infuriating woman giggles, “Me and Rhen threw a rager last night. Had to celebrate the collar coming off. Shit still hurts though,” the woman said rubbing her neck. Valyrie hiccups. “Oh man. I don’t feel that good.”

Valyrie throws herself to the otherside of the chair and to Talis' abject horror, vomits onto Talis’ carpet. Valyrie pauses to finish getting the last of her sick out of her throat then has the audacity to wave a lazy thumbs up in Talis’ direction. She wants to scream.

At that moment, her majordomo reenters the room. He sees the crime Valyrie has committed and frowns, thankfully affirming Talis' disgust at this whole situation.

“Tristan. I truly don’t mean to be a bother, but this can never get out. Could you discreetly carry Valyrie to the guestroom?”

“Of course, miss. I’ll have someone trusted clean up the carpet as well.” Tristan says, gliding over to Valyrie. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes Valyrie’s mouth. She doesn’t resist Tristan’s manhandling. Her head just sways left and right in the low gravity.

Tristan picks up Valyrie in a princess carry. At least the daft woman wasn’t wearing her uniform or that absurd green dress from yesterday. At a distance, the staff would just see Tristan carrying an unfamiliar sleeping citizen to her guest room. Roomers might spread about Talis’ sexual proclivities, but anyone who was important already knew she suffered from same sex attraction. It would be much worse for her reputation if they had learned Talis hung out in the company of druggies. She was extremely thankful to Tristan for securing Valyrie in a secluded room and contacting Talis immediately.

Talis is forced to wait in this room smelling of Valyrie’s stink for five minutes before she’s certain staff won’t make a connection between her trip to the third floor and the sleeping woman Tristan just carries up there. On her way, floating up the stairs, Tristan nods to her coming down. He’ll leave the rest to Talis while he informs the staff to avoid the upper floors for the next few hours.

The room Valyrie’s in is relatively lavish, all the furniture imported from the triplet cities where they have the space to grow actual wood. There’s no artificial gravity ward installed in this room so all the furniture is bolted down. Tristan has laid Valyrie on the canopy bed in the center of the room. The girl is groaning to herself. Talis flies over to Valyrie. Her clothes are a mix of alcohol and sweat.

Well let's get this over with. Talis thinks. Talis burns orange and begins the arduous process of undressing a half-awake person. Valyrie nods in agreement when Talis explains that the woman needs to take a bath, but still she flails her limbs like a petulant child while Talis pries the clothes off. Talis puts them in a bin and burns them.

Valyrie is…muscular. Broad shoulders, thick legs, visible ab muscles. Her bust is also quite developed. Talis burns red. She leaves the woman in her undergarmaths as it would just be improper to do anything more. She carries the woman to the waiting tub and places her into the water. The artificial gravity ward kicks in and submerges the woman in the calm waters herself. The water changes color, the detritus on Valyrie being rather thick.

Despite all that effort, the woman does not react much. Whatever Valyrie’s on, she’s not tolerating it very well. Valyrie sways left and right in the water, still burning red but somehow going through hot flashes? The water is getting as hot as the woman’s improved body temperature. Still, Valyrie looks better than she did mere moments earlier.

“Why did you have to be nice?” Valyrie groans in her half-stupor. Talis blinks. What does Valyrie mean by that? Talis has always been nice. Do people not think she’s nice? She’s definitely strict and holds those around her to a high standard, but even when they fail, like Valyrie seems adept at, Talis is rather nice, right? Especially in comparison to her father.

The drugs must be hurting Valyrie’s cognitive abilities. She hopes the woman will recover from this quickly. She has places to be today. Talis sticks by Valyrie while the woman shivers in her bath. She strokes the woman’s hair which slows Valyrie’s breath.

“You idiot. What am I going to do with you?”

“Took too much,” Valyrie says.

Talis rolls her eyes. “Of course you did.”

The woman attempts to shake her head, but it just falls halfway through the attempt. “No,” Valyrie says. “Took way too much.”

Oh. Well, that’s concerning. Is the woman dying? Can’t she just burn green and heal herself of whatever this drug is doing, but wait. Hmmn. Talis remembers her friend Penelope mentioned drugs that increased in intensity when burning higher auras. Soma was a drug that Talis had been trying to eliminate for the last few months because of the increased addiction that came with burning. Nils using it were causing accidents at work and committing crimes to feed their addiction. Despite her police force getting lavish bonuses for every pound of the drug confiscated, it still had not left the streets. It was a terrible drug that took hundreds of her citizens' lives each year and ruined as many households. There was no way Valyrie was a Soma head, though. Was she?

Talis puts a hand on Valyrie’s forehead and the other on the base of her neck. The woman’s head was freezing cold now, while her neck was barely at room temperature. All while the water was approaching boiling temperatures. She wasn’t a trained doctor, but that heat discrepancy didn’t seem normal. There was no way this woman was dying in her bathtub, right?

“Valyrie. What do you need from me?” Talis slaps the woman, but Valyrie is floating in her bathtub. “Valyrie? Valyrie!” Talis slaps her again, and Valyrie does not respond in the slightest. The woman is dying in her bathtub, and Talis has no idea what to do.

She needs to call someone and there’s only one person she could call who might keep this a secret. Penelope. Talis rushes out of the bathroom. Wait should she take Valyrie out of the bathtub first? She had no idea if the water is helping or hurting the woman. Well if Valyrie’s body is cooling down, maybe the water will help regulate her body temperature? Ugh. She hates being clueless.

Talis burns yellow just to cross a few meters of floorspace to the landline next to the bed. Never has she been more grateful for her father’s installation of fiber throughout the station. She inserts the receiver of the phone into one of her neck’s dbus ports, checks her HUD for Penelope’s number, and dials for her friend. Still burning yellow.

—

“Mistress. Miss Veyra is here.” Talis pauses trying to get Valyrie to drink a glass of water. The woman lifts a shaky hand towards the glass but it collapses over its own weight. The woman breathes heavily over that little expenditure of effort. Talis considers leaving the glass with the woman anyway but she doesn’t have time to figure out how to get Valyrie to hold it. Penelope is here.

Talis leaves the glass on a table and flies towards the bedroom door. Penelope smiles at Talis once she opens it. Penelope is a short and stout woman with a round face and a button nose, almost like a teddy bear. Her hairspray-soaked perm jiggles up and down with each bob of her head, not even fraying in the absence of gravity like Talis’. Talis returns the greeting and nods to Tristan.

“Hope I’m not too late,” Penelope says, lifting a purse stuffed with various pill bottles and medication.

“No. You’re a lifesaver,” Talis says. “Hopefully literally, I don’t know what's wrong.”

Well, let me see. Penelope flares red and floats towards the open bathroom. The woman does not have the aura control that Talis does. The short and stout woman is content to remain an orange for the rest of her life. Penelope has never had an interest in anything but partying. Talis quickly asks Tristan for more towels and a change of clothing for Valyrie, then chases after Penelope.

“Oh, she’s a big one,” Penelope says.

Talis rounds the door behind her, seeing Penelope loom over Valyrie. Penelope places a hand on Valyrie’s temple and pulls it back quickly, like she had been bitten. “My god. She’s freezing. This is a soma overdose if I’ve ever seen one, and she’s deep into it. I’m not sure how she’s still alive.”

“Can you help her?” Talia asks, “I did what I could, but I have no idea if I helped or hurt.”

“I can help. “The moment you told me she was a nil, I suspected it was soma and packed noacaltone. You know how nils are. Soma is a cheap and long high. They can barely function without this stuff.”

Penelope digs through her purse and brings out something that looks like an inhaler. Talis flies upward to watch her friend work. Penelope tilts Valyrie’s head back and puffs the inhaler twice. Valyrie caughes intensely after each puff, but that’s the most animated the woman’s been in the last half hour. Either these are her death throes or Penelope’s magic is working.

“Damn it.” The woman says.

“What?” Talis' heart sinks, shocking her. She genuinely doesn’t want Valyrie to die, but now that she’s fretted over the woman for so long, it's deeper than not wanting one of her pawns off the board. She doesn’t want this person to die.

“Look at her eyes,” Penelope says, lifting an eyelid. Valyrie’s pupils are wide as disks, and her eyes are rapidly going left and right. “Her brain is melting. Too much cognitive activity up there. Noacaltone blocks the neuro receptors involved in Soma’s high, so all that drug can do is what it was originally designed to do. It speeds up the woman’s thoughts. This wouldn’t normally be a problem, but the woman probably also took a stimulant or overloaded her HUD with something resource-intensive. Did this idiot want to die?” Penelope asks, but Talis has no answer. Her friend just scowls.

“Her brain is literally melting from the energy draw. She’ll either die from aphasia in the wrong places or from a lack of salts.”

“Salts?” Talis stupidly asks?

“Yes. Salts. Potassium, sodium, and the like. It doesn’t matter. We need to knock her out and cool her down. Can you do that?”

Talis burns blue and hits the woman on the neck. Valyrie drops her red with a jolt and a splash. For a moment, Talis thinks she’s accidentally killed Valyrie, but her eyes are still rapidly going back and forth, just slower.

“Crap that won’t be enough.” Talis starts to hear the beginnings of panic in Penelope’s voice. “We’re way too late to get her to a hospital. Uh. Lift her out of the tub. Cool her down on the floor.”

Talis does it. Taking the woman into a princess carry and places her body down on the floor, carefully despite Penelope’s urges for her to hurry.

Its then that Talis notices how much Valyrie’s shaking. Water particulates spray off her body like a drying dog.

“Do you have a mage? We need a cooling ward. Quick.”

Talis shakes her head. “No. Just household staff. My uncle took everyone of slight capability with him. Tristan has put feelers out.”

“Okay,” Penelope huffs, “Talis, you really need to have a mage in your employ at all times. Usually, at least two and a doctor nearby for good measure. Hire a nil if you need to. Something is better than nothing. Shit. Shit. She’s going. Ugh. I’m going to speak. I have no idea what else to do.”

“Alright then,” Talis says with a heavy sigh. She goes blue and closes the room door. Penelope was not a silent speaker at all. Talis was pretty pissed that this whole room was going to need to be remodeled thanks to Valyrie’s idiocy.

“Be ready to catch me when I pass out. I don’t want a concussion. Ophiuchus.” Penelope says, inviting her god into her. Gravity comes with it.

It's shameful to admit that Talis stumbles. The initial burst of power from an untrained speaker is always dangerous. It is generally illegal to do it outside of an authorized building. This mansion was designed to survive a siege, though. The walls hold, the furniture does not. The canopy bed cracks and tilts as a leg explodes, everything not nailed down is expelled outward from Penelope, and then downward under the sudden gravity. Talis hears a bone crack in Valyrie’s chest, and blood dribbles down the auraless woman’s mouth.

Penelope doesn’t say a word. She’s struggling to hold her god in for more than a few seconds, but thats all she needs. She inhales, and the room drops below freezing.

Talis flares her aura to keep the goosebumps away, she can see her breath hovering in the air. She flies down next to Valyrie and puts a hand on the woman’s head, she’s getting cold, but only down to a healthy body heat. Talis checks the eyes, they’re slowing to a stop. Valyrie’s body is shutting down.

Penelope exhales her god, but the cold remains. She coughs out a burst of red aura, a mere sliver of the heat she’s absorbed. Penelope tilts over and Talis catches her just as the gravity starts to dissipate. She gently lifts her friend and places her safely on the tilted bed.

Behind her, an idiot stirs. Talis floats over to Valyrie, arms crossed and the deepest scowl she can manage on her face. The woman wakes with a burst of red covering her body.

“Burn green.” Talis commands. The woman lifts her head in a daze. “Oh. It’s you.” Valyrie says, letting her head drop. Despite the woman’s seeming desire to fail every one of Talis’ expectations, Valyrie does eventually go green. Talis glares anyway. Valyrie tilts her head to the other side of her body, opting to stare at a wall instead of her savior. “I’m sorry,” the woman murmurs. Talis smiles at that. Thankfully, the idiot doesn’t see it.

—

It’s another five minutes until Valyrie’s able to sit up. Ten until Penelope stirs with a headache. She takes one of the medicines she brought along with some tea, personally brought in by Tristan. Once Penelope’s voice is back, she spends the next ten minutes chewing Valyrie out on her soma use. Talis can still hardly believe it. Valyrie was a functioning–well, functioning based on her survival record as an expendable–soma addict. That would be a collarable offense were she still a nil. As she is now, Talis would be in her right to toss the woman in one of the unconverted prisons. This was going to throw a major wrench in her plans to make the woman a stalwart example of what nils could be.

Talis spares no language, berating Valyrie for the next fifteen minutes. She is firmly late for her next appointment, but she doesn’t care. She will hammer this lesson into this idiot.

“I’m sorry,” Valyrie says again. As validating as it is to see the woman finally looking contrite, it's hard to believe that Valyrie is actually going to take any of her words to heart. The woman leans against her bed, still expelling the remnants of that poison with green aura and looking up past the canopy. “I needed something to cope after Penny’s death, all the things the military makes me do, I just need to turn my brain off once in a while. I can’t go without it. It’s just who I am, Tal.”

“Don’t call me Tal. I am Governor Vorn, you idiot. And you should have told me you were a goddamn addict yesterday.”

“Would you have taken off my collar if I did?”

“This isn’t about me you daft piece of shit. You nearly died on my couch, and you may have ruined any hopes we have of improving lives for the nils, for your family. What happens if your eventual detractors find out about this? I warned you, Valyrie. I fucking warned you. You must be twice as good. Twice!”

“I can still do it,” Valyrie whispers. The way she's talking Talis is worried that the woman is about to fade back into a soma-induced trance. “I’m a fuckup but I’m a functioning fuckup. Let me try. Please.”

“Promise me you’ll never do another drug ever again. Not even the slightest sip of alcohol. If you promise me, then I will do my best to forget this event ever happened. Otherwise, we are done, Valyrie. You go home and I go back to being my father.”

The woman chuckles at that. “Maybe that would make things easier for me. You’re too nice, Vorn. You weren’t supposed to be nice.”

“Fuck you Valyrie. I’ve always been nice, which is why I’m bothering to offer you this choice. Do not make me ask again.”

The damn woman takes the time to think. “I don’t know if I can stop the soma, Talis. I can try, but I’ll just be back on it when the memories start hurting too much. I got to numb my mind. It’s who I am. It’s who I’ve been turned into.”

Talis flies forward and grips both sides of Valyrie’s dense head in her hands. “You’re mind is what I want from you. I don’t want it numb. Are you so addicted to your own misery that you would choose to be anything less than brilliant? That you would choose to leave your family and all the hundred thousand nils as second-class citizens while you enjoy unearned freedom in a soma den? Is that your dream for the future, Valyrie? Really?”

“No. It’s not,” Valyrie says, “and that’s why I got to take the Soma.”

Talis turns around, hands behind her back, a vein threatening to pop on her forehead. “What are you hiding from me, Valyrie?” Talis says. “What am I failing to understand here?

“I understand you lost your sister. I understand grief. I lost my parents. I can understand you resenting your situation, you’re brilliant and powerful, a blue amongst reds and left to rot in the expendable corpse, I can understand being overlooked and unappreciated. I can even understand the actions you were forced to take as an expendable. The military makes monsters of us all, and in this world we live in, humanity isn’t allowed to coast on morality. Whether you were a nil or second-circle, refugees and civilian casualties would stain your record eventually. I understand all the pain and suffering; maybe I haven’t suffered to your degree, but I can understand being paralyzed by it. What I can’t understand is your refusal to change your circumstances. You’re inability to spend every waking moment improving this blasted Collective so that the people who come after you don’t have to go through the same miseries. What the hell do you want out of life, Valyrie? What the fuck am I missing?”

“Hate,” the inane woman has the audacity to say. “You’re missing hate.”

Talis floats back to loom over the woman. She takes Valyrie by the chin and raises it. “So you hate me, is that it? You hate the woman who spent this morning saving your life? You hate me because I’m the child of the man who executed your sister, even though I hate that same man? Fine.”

Talis smiles, moving down until her nose nearly touches Valyrie, “I’ll give you an outlet for that hate. A formal duel between me and you at the end of the semester. I’ll write my will. If you kill me, you will have everything I own, up to and including the governorship of this blasted station. You can use any weapon, any color, any technique, any Voice, but you will fight me to the death, you idiot, and you will burn all of your hatred then and there.

“Once that deul is over whether you kill me or I subdue you, you will dedicate your fucking life to this station and its people. I am done. I do not care how miserable you are. I do not care about your meager trauma. I do not care about the generational wounds you’ve carried with you like battle scars. From this moment on, your life belongs to this station, and you will live like it. You will not ingest soma, you will not debase yourself in the eyes of your soon to be lesser, you will live and suffer and fucking succeed. Am I clear?”

“Yes,” Valyrie says. “You’re clear.”

—

Talis kicks Valyrie out of her office with her uniform and orders to give to the flight school staff. The woman will be late for her orientation and will be punished for her tardiness, but Valyrie will suffer through any punishment without complaint. If she fails to do that, the duel is off, and Talis skins her alive.

Talis is burning blue on her way to her first meeting at the burgeoning coffee farm in the core. She emits steam during her flight there. She should be walking leisurely in her gravboots. This was supposed to be a peaceful morning but that blasted woman has ruined everything. Talis does her best to take a deep breath, but her blue is powered by her anger and will not release the fuel easily.

Talis arrives an hour late to the core. It's stacks and stacks of green. All the food in the station outside of a few redundancies each wing out of concerns for cost and variety. The core crops are anything that can feed hundreds of people with minimal water expenditure and nitrogenation. They get plenty of sunlight here, but it is all reflected through glass meant to replicate Earth’s atmosphere. Talis feels her aura drain despite being in an effective greenhouse.

Her venture is on one of the bottom floors where merchants are allowed to rent space. Not that many do. Interstellar merchants rarely come to Stellaris-9, even less now that she has the Gloom Bazaar up and running and paying the appropriate tides to Freestar. The merchants here are all farming crops for the station, as the sunlight and industry are perfect for mass growing.

Coffee is a questionable venture. She doesn’t fully believe they can pull it off, as on Earth, she believes it required the help of an extinct animal whose genetics were never preserved. They still have the genetic sequence for the beans, but the drink just tastes foul without natural interventions. Not that growing the beans is the easy part of the whole process.

Two mages, the Koffee brothers–yes, the zealots changed their last names to show their dedication to a virtually extinct drink–wait for her on the outcroppings of the small plot of land she bought for them. She had called ahead that she would be on her way, but it was a nice gesture for the two to actually wait for the streak of blue rage to drop down.

The Koffee brothers are a…colorful duo. Dave Koffee is a short and stout man with a large nose who always wears a red cap. Chris Koffee is taller and skinnier with the same nose and a blue hat that covers his lush hair in contrast to his brother’s baldness.

“Governor Voss, we are so glad you were able to come.” Dave says, “We have a lot to show you.”

Talis nods to the man and his brother and allows them to escort her into an enclosure where they grow the beans. “I’m glad to read the reports. You’ve overcome quite a few hurdles in getting these beans to grow. Your report on accelerating maturation time from five years to two may have far-reaching consequences if the Collective allows us to lock down the intellectual property. I would love your walkthrough, though.”

“Of course,” Dave beams with the compliment, “but first. We have a sample for you to try.”

Talis tilts her head, “Already? It’s only been a few months.”

Dave nods, not hiding his smile. Chris hands her a cup of swirling midnight black liquid. Talis instinctively frowns. It smells fine, but it looks like bubbling tar. “We’ve been working on another strain that harvests around the same time that corn does. It's a much weaker flavor and takes quite a bit of space to grow. We’ve needed to allocate a ten by ten meter plot just for a single plant with a yield of maybe a couple of cups, but we are working on the yield problem.”

Talis takes a sip and scowls. That cup is foul. “Is it supposed to be so bitter?” Talis asks, making the very unladylike motion of trying to wring the liquid off her tongue with the roof of her mouth.

“It’s an acquired taste, but once acquired, it can be quite addictive.”

Talis frowns at that. “Addictive?”

Dave gulps at the disgust inherent in Talis’ words. She has a newfound hatred of addictions. “I mean that it’s so delicious that you’ll want to drink it every morning, not that you’ll be compelled to. It’s no more addictive than tea leaves. Please try it again. The subsequent sips are where the magic happens.”

Talis does so, and to her surprise, there’s a sort of pleasant aftertaste lingering on her tongue this time. It doesn’t linger long, even while her senses are enhanced while she burns blue. She takes another sip. She would love this if it were a bit sweeter.

“Could you make this more sweet?”

“That’s one of our additional proposals. We’d also like to introduce sugarcane here. Then everyone could have their coffee to their desired level of sweetness. If you are interested, we’ll tell you more in the office.”

Talis takes another sip. “Tell me.”

—

The coffee was a rather soothing drink, able to partially extinguish the utter despise she has for Valyrie right now. The proof was that Talis had started walking to her next meeting rather than burning blue and terrifying every bystander with her speed. She doubted that she broke mach speed when she left the mansion this morning but she couldn’t remember much about the trip.

Yes, the coffee had put her in a rather good mood. Dave had not. It turns out coffee and sugar cane were both space-intensive crops. The strain Dave had successfully cultivated, the one that could be harvested as often as corn, yielded a single kilogram of beans over the three harvests they could allow each year, and it took up about a thousand times more space. It was prohibitively expensive to acquire so much station space, not to mention that doing so would increase food prices across the board. She had just finished telling Valyrie that she wasn’t her father, so cutting vouchers was absolutely unacceptable.

The farms would need to be built off-site. Acquiring a sizeable moonshard, constructing a functional greenhouse, and providing security and tuggers to it was an enormous expenditure. Enough to buy several heavy cruisers approaching a battleship’s cost even. It would put a major dent in her coffers that even the profits from the Bazaar would take several years to recoup. If she did this, she would be poor. She wouldn’t be able to make any major moves for years.

On the other hand, she could wait two to three years for the current strains of genetically engineered plants to mature and see if any of them were viable. Dave had warned her before she had brought the brothers to this station that it would take several rounds of testing to get the higher-yield plants to the point where they could thrive in space. That they had a working strain at all was a miracle and, frankly, an accident from their hobbyist experiments. So she could either go all in now and recover in five years, or be cautious and hope that the brothers were brilliant enough to get it right in the first round.

Talis didn’t really need a battleship. She had a light cruiser and would soon have a captain for it. Valyrie would need to earn her own fleet either through plunder or trust from the upper brass. Talis had absolutely no plans to just gift the woman everything she needed. That wouldn’t make her point at all.

She would sleep on it. And maybe talk about the issue with Penelope. The woman would be bored out of her mind, but outside of Tristan, Penelope was the only one she could freely talk through her ideas with. Her aunt and uncle were supportive of her work here, but in the way you support a toddler who wants to be a professional artist. As long as she didn’t get herself killed, they would politely clap while declining any missives for aid.

There were other friends besides Penelope, but in truth, she didn’t know them that well. They were friends only through Penelope, and it felt wrong asking a stranger for advice on how to spend billions of credits. Most of them would just think her musings were the bragging of a wealthy heiress.

Maybe Valyrie? Talis tries to put that thought in a bag and kick it off the station. They were, at best, co-workers, but usually and officially, they were mortal enemies waiting for the right date and time. Talis had no idea if saving Valyrie had inured Talis to the girl or just fueled the immense amount of hate in the woman. Valyrie was a blue through and through after all.

Talis arrives in the Upward Wing and is promptly let through by a few soldiers at the gate. The Upward and Downward Wings were entirely owned by the military, with the Upward Wing hosting Strategic HQ and training facilities while their fleet was mostly stored below. Every wing had some amount of hangers and a not insignificant number of the fleet for rapid deployment, but the military was designed to occupy the most independent and easiest to detach parts of the station.

Valyrie is here somewhere. Since the place isn’t on fire, Talis assumes the woman is behaving herself. Talis heads to a giant brick in the middle of the wing where Strategic HQ makes plans for the next fifty wars. Only one of which Stellaris will likely directly participate in.

Despite the sheer number of apocalypses decimating human society and technology, we were rather durable. Human expansion across the system meant there were now tens of billions of people to cause trouble, and it seemed every one of them wanted a piece of Stellaris-9. Talis is let through the double airlocks of the Brick without having to show a hint of identification. Intelligence knows who she is and where she’s coming from. She’s grateful that they’re politically neutral, or Talis’ ulcer around Valyrie’s addiction coming to light might double in size.

The governor of the West Wing waves to her politely as Talis enters a meeting room full of the most influential members of society and several admirals whom she only barely holds in the instinct to salute. She’s not a captain currently; for her sake, she needs to act like a governor. She takes a seat across from the West Wing governor, who is a huge man who would be an admiral in his own right had he not retired before she was born. He’s an indigo Talis immensely respects as he seems to be the only one on this council who actually recognizes Talis’ competence in her role and tolerates her ambition.

He was the one who gently took Talis aside to talk through her mistake of disseminating her plans to elevate nils before they had any sort of evidence behind them. Talis was just throwing out feelers, but a council meeting with this den of snakes was not the time and place to be discussing new ideas. Decisions were made long before ass made contact with seat in this council room. These meetings were a formality and a tally of which proposal had the most backroom deals.

Which is why Talis was so infuriated by this early council meeting. She had no idea why strategic hq had called it, but from the faces of her fellow council members, they did. To her right, the governor of the North wing eventually sits down. The North wing handles power generation and is currently the center of technology. The old indigo scowls at Talis as she sits down. Talis was not well-liked by the woman before she had become governor. Talis remembers Dame Marlow calling her a “rambunctious little shit” during a not so clandestine meeting between the woman and her late father. Relations were not at all improved by Talis’ requests to contact Dr. Xu.

Dame Marlow had gone through great lengths convincing Strategic HQ that Dr. Xu’s signal was worth investigating and that the experiments described within the communication could only have been created by a mage with an extremely high Resolve. Dame Marlow has plans on using Dr. Xu’s talent to revolutionize power generation and oxygenation. The vast majority of the Helium mined in the system went into electrolysis, turning ice into oxygen, which was just converted by humans into carbon dioxide, in an absolute waste of resources. Dr. Xu helping Freestar solve that problem would cement the aging woman’s scientific legacy.

Dr. Xu’s original proposal for curing the virus is what Talis cares about. A cure could resecure humanity’s place on Earth. Talis would purchase ten battleships at scarcity prices for a chance at that. It wouldn’t matter if it impoverished her. That was the Earth given back to humanity. As a governor, she was obligated to make such noble sacrifices.

“Good afternoon, governors and admirals.” A mage she can’t remember the name of says with a bow. “I apologize for the urgency with which Intelligence has called this meeting, but frankly, this matter cannot wait. So I will go straight to the point. The Sacred have delivered missives of extermination to every civilization with more than ten thousand citizens. We are being culled. Silence’s Hymn, a Sacred colony ship located around Triton, has been tasked with destroying this station. They are so confident that they have given us a date, a time, and the number of ships they will bring. By the end of the year, their battleships will be at our doorstep, and we will be destroyed. The purpose of this meeting is to evaluate evacuation plans.”

The room erupts in an uproar. Apparently Talis wasn’t the only one kept in the dark.