Touchstone 1 - Stray

shrugged. “But not overwhelm. First Squad not scared. Save panic for when First Squad is.”
    This made Lohn laugh. “Worse philosophies, I suppose.”
    “One night Muina, most scared ever,” I said. “Been walk eleven days, sick eat bad fruit. Sleep on hill under mat made leaves. Something big walk up to me. Foot came down mat, right next head. Sniff me. Lay there listen to it. Then it go away. Lots panic. Watch very deadly Setari toast bugs easier.”
    They both shut up at that one, then Lohn slung an arm around my shoulders and squeezed tight. “You’ve a way of putting things in perspective. But you’ll let us know if there’s anything troubling you?”
    “Sure.” Since I’d succeeded in putting second level monitoring into perspective for myself as well, I thought about other things I could ask them, then said: “What Eighth Squad like?”
    “Ah, you’re due to do enhancement testing with them tomorrow, right? Well, Kanato’s solid, very level-headed. Eighth is one of the ‘big punch’ squads, so we can expect some exciting damage to the test areas, I’d bet.”
    “Have decided long-term what do with me?”
    “Too early. There’s a lot of debate, and some competing interests. They won’t have you actively working with the younger squads for quite a while, since having a talent set so increased and then reverting it might have a negative impact on them. In theory we’re too old and wise to have our heads turned as badly.” He laughed. “I gather Seventh Squad is not very happy with Eighth for being selected to test with you.”
    I drew my knees up to my chin. “Cloning legal Tare?” I asked carefully, and felt the depth of their silence.
    “Cloning will not reproduce a talent set,” Mara said eventually. “Kolar tried it not long ago, and although there’s some pattern similarity, it seems that there’s more to talents than simple genetics. Since they haven’t found a way to make clones with an adequate lifespan, there’s a ban on human cloning here.”
    But there’d obviously been ‘a lot of debate’ about quite a few things.
    “Be really good way make me want be anywhere but here,” I said softly. “That good thing to add today’s report.” And then, because I hated making First Squad feel bad, I added: “Six billion people my planet. Bet Cass not only one enhance skill. Hope they look harder for natural gate, get chance show First Squad my home.”
    Mara put a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll do that. Besides, the real solution’s the Pillars, not increasing our ability to kill Ionoth. You can be sure we’ll be throwing all our resources into taking advantage of the stroke of luck your visit home brought.”
    It isn’t necessarily an endless war. It’s good to remember that.
    Monday, February 18
    Eighth Squad
    It’s a weird feeling to have a group of strangers all eager for me to show up. Or really eager to try out what their powers are like enhanced, anyway.
    Eighth Squad is one of the Setari teams ‘stacked’ with high impact talents instead of being more all-round. They’re not usually used for spaces that require close fighting: there’s apparently some spaces where you don’t want to go in and make things explode because parts of the spaces explode right back. Memories of oil refineries, perhaps. And there’s some Ionoth that you have to kill by hitting them because it’s a bad idea using psionics on them.
    Eighth’s captain is Ro Kanato. He tracked me down about half an hour before I was due to meet them, to introduce himself, show me the way to a new test room, and double-check my preferences for people grabbing hold of me. He kept making references to the rules which had been set up regarding my ‘handling’. I’d love to be able to read these rules, and the reports and things filed about me, but though I’ve access to the public parts of the interface, there’s an awfully large amount of the KOTIS network which I can’t look at. I’d like to be able to look up more information about the rotations I’m assigned to before going into them. Although maybe that would be a bad idea and give me nightmares. Hard to tell.
    Kanato is about my height, with long black hair which he catches up in a ponytail, and he comes across as unfussed with a mild-mannered efficiency that turns mountains into molehills. I kept wondering where I’d heard his voice until I recognised it as the person who’d first spoken to Ruuel from Fourth when we returned from