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What Has Gone Before


The cycle was almost done.

Mere moments now until he found if his mad scheme had borne fruit.

No, Jen Sin yos’Phelium corrected himself; his scheme was no less mad than the problem to which it was a solution. Together, they represented a complete, balanced equation; perfectly serviceable, if not precisely elegant.

The unit pinged. The hood lifted.

The man lying on the pallet frowned, tensed, and opened his eyes.

“It worked,” he said, and Jen Sin nearly wept, hearing the dazed wonder in that deep voice.

He stepped forward and offered a hand.

“Good waking to you, Brother.”

Dark eyes found his face, mobile eyebrows lifted.

“Gods, we’re a matched pair,” he murmured, and took the offered support in a firm grip.


The first part of the scheme had worked, but now they ran against time. It would not do to be discovered.

“Brother,” Jen Sin said, as the other settled his jacket over straight shoulders, “do you know what must be done?”

A sharp gaze raked his face.

“I know. And I agree. There is no other way. I will go with Lantis. The pilot is no less a risk than the ship.”

“Yes,” Jen Sin said, for that had been the plan he had made, which of course the other knew as his own.

“So—” The other extended his hands, and paused, his eye caught by the glitter of the gaudy ring.

“Here—” He had it off and pressed it into Jen Sin’s hand. “If I’m to have left it as earnest, there had best be no traces in the debris.”

Jen Sin took a hard breath, and slipped the ring into an inner pocket of his jacket. “I will…keep it safe,” he said.

The other laughed then, or perhaps not, and gathered him into an embrace. Jen Sin held him tight, doubt rising with the tears.

“No.” The other set him back. Already his face was different, his eyes already shadowed by new and solitary thoughts.

“Brother, you have taken the sterner duty.” He raised his hand to Jen Sin’s hair, stroking the beads nestled there. “Be as careful as you may.”

He turned on his heel then, and left the cubicle, on his way to the repair shed, and their poor, compromised Lantis.


Emergency repairs at Tinsori Light. Left my ring in earnest. The keeper’s a cantra-grubbing pirate, but the ship should hold air to Lytaxin. Send one of ours and eight cantra to redeem my pledge. In fact, send two…

The coded message was away, informing Delm Korval that neither ship nor pilot would ever return home.

On Tinsori Light, Jen Sin stood behind Lorith in the light keeper’s tower, his hand on her shoulder, his eyes on the screen.

Lantis was framed there, a piece of sanity against the mad dance of pink and blue grit. Patiently, she awaited the ack from the first relay.

It came.

Jen Sin held his breath.

There was a brief, intense flare of energy.

When it had faded, there was no ship to be seen, only a drifting band of debris, slowly spreading out to mix with the ambient grit.


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Framed