Touchstone 1 - Stray

angry his mouth was a flat line as he said: “If anything approaches us, no matter what it looks like, warn us immediately. We can’t judge by appearances here.”
    I felt a prize twit, of course, and could only nod and try really hard not to screw up any more on the mission. Which took another hour of tense maze-trekking and by the time we finally got back to KOTIS everyone looked like they had stress headaches.
    “Another increase in population,” Mara said, after the scan had cleared us of stickies. “I’m starting to reconsider the proposals to double-team.”
    “Dealing with swoops on top of that?” Lohn pulled a face. “I’ll pass.”
    “The trade-off is too great,” Maze agreed, sounding terribly tired. He gave me a worn smile. “You made a big difference to that space’s difficulty. If it wasn’t for the population increase, we would have easily set a record completion pace.”
    “And you claim to disapprove of the pace records,” Lohn said, heading to the showers.
    “Lunch with me?” Zee said as we followed him, and I knew I was in for a talk well before we were sitting in a quiet corner of the canteen.
    “Are kittens evil?” I asked, as soon as I’d swallowed enough of some yellowy mashed stuff (which tasted a lot better than it looked) to no longer feel painfully hungry.
    “I’ve not read any reports featuring them,” she said. “But there are Ionoth which can disguise their shape, and Ionoth with appearances entirely innocuous and intentions which are not. The problem with that one was that we did not detect it. There’s very few things that can get anywhere near as close as that to someone with Combat Sight without notice, threat or not.” She reached over and rapped the back of my knuckles with her spoon. “And petting the thing was entirely idiotic.” But she smiled at me, and shook her head to take the sting out of the words. “He was angry at himself, not you. Just be sure to be more sensible in future.”
    I nodded, still cringing internally. There was no way I was going to upset everyone like that again if I could help it. I watched her eat, not missing the shadows under her eyes, and finally managed to ask: “What happen third senior Setari squad?”
    “A kadara.” She said the word so softly I could barely hear her. “One which broke into real-space three years ago. We lost nine, most from the senior squads. They renumbered us all afterwards. The original First Squad captain, Helese, was Maze’s wife. He’s been very hard on himself ever since.”
    “Very sad guy,” I said, and could only promise myself to not be entirely idiotic in future.
    Wednesday, February 20
    Third Squad
    Third was a difficult squad to test with. Not because of any attitude, but because they had such a range of talents, which required three test environments to get through. I’d been a little nervous about working with their squad captain, Taarel – the spectacular one with the unlikely hair – just because I’d taken the impression she was really intense about Maze. But she was totally professional, so either it was my imagination or she’s not a petty sort.
    But before Taarel there was Eeli. After breakfast I’d gone up to the roof because I’d figured it was around time for dawn, and on Tare dawn lasts a really long time and is well worth watching. I was sitting through a lesson on Taren geography, keeping an eye on the horizon, when a girl a year or maybe even two years younger than me arrived. Eeli Bata, according to the interface, looking like a string bean in her Setari uniform.
    “Sorry to interrupt you,” she started out, her voice high and enthusiastic. “I thought I’d introduce myself since we’re working with you today. I’m Eeli. I’m the path finder in Third Squad. I’ve really been looking forward to this. We all want to see how far you can take us.”
    This was definitely a different sort of Setari. “Hello.”
    “I can show you the way to the test room, when you’re ready,” she continued. “Why are you up here on the roof? Are you not used to being inside buildings? Is this much like your world?”
    Eeli is what Nenna would be if Nenna had uber psychic powers. She’d sometimes stop asking questions in the hopes I would remember them all to answer them, but then new questions would bubble up and she’d be off again. I wanted to see if she would act like that once the training session started, and was pleased that, though she shut right up and did