The System Seas

Chapter 24: Misfits

As her people had been fighting off the crabs, Aethe’s senses had been feeding her information related to how the crabs approached, fought, and retreated. It was, she explained, exactly the kind of thing an Escort Scout was supposed to do. The idea was that she’d learn things by seeing, and feed them to a team that could use those insights.The commander hadn’t wanted any part of it.

Marco did. He listened as she explained that the crabs were lazy. He paid attention while she told him that they weren’t at all smart, to the point of perhaps not being conventionally conscious. That they were almost impossible to kill in the numbers they approached with, but that the elves were almost perfectly suited to dealing with the problem, if they weren’t psychologically aligned in a way that made them ignore the only person with the answers.

Marco thought.

If the commander wouldn’t listen to Aethe, Marco was pretty sure he’d have a better chance of getting the message through. They were peers, after all. There was probably ten or twenty levels of power difference between them, but they were both commanders and that apparently counted for something. The older elvish man still resisted, but when Marco made it clear his team’s help was dependent on the man listening, the commander caved.

“I can’t believe he listened.” Aethe shook her head. “He would have never listened to me. Not in a lifetime.”

“I’m sorry about that. But at least they are now. You think they can cut the channel in time?”

“Absolutely. Just watch them work.”

The elves were moving forward as a group to the treeline, the most injured of them being at least healed up enough to walk now. When they got close, the commander paused, set, and fired a beam through the trees. It ripped a hole straight through, reducing every tree it hit to dust until it was finally absorbed by the endless trees beyond. They kept working, cutting a beam-wide path all the way back to the beach, then turning around to make a return trip, carving the channel wider in the process.

“How many shots are they going to do?” Elisa gawked at the destruction that had already been wrought. “And why aren’t the trees growing back?”

“They only grow back during a wave, and only once the crabs have passed them,” Aethe explained. “The space will stay open until then. As for how many shots they’ll do, I think we’ve just about come to the end of them. See there? They’re running. They wouldn’t do that if they hadn’t seen something.”

The commander came to them, out of breath and trailed by the other elves.

“They come,” he said.

“Got it. You have magic power left?” Marco asked.

“By the time they make it here, yes.”

“Then tell us what to do. Because I honestly didn’t think that part through.”heless.”

“And Aethe doesn’t deserve that?”

“It’s not like that, Marcos,” Aethe spoke up. “I don’t have a family.”

“I’m so sorry, Aethe.” Elisa put her hand on her shoulder. “How did you lose them?”

“It’s not like that either. I’m an orphan of sorts. A ward of the government. It’s part of why I’m here. That kind of care creates a debt.”

“One you’ve now repaid. I’d say forty years is long enough.” The commander smiled. “Aethe, I should have listened to you earlier. I know this was your plan, and it was your plan that saved us. It still took someone else saying it for me to listen. If you go home, it will be more of the same. And it will never stop.”

“Your people are really that inflexible?” Riv rolled his eyes. “She’s great. Really great. This is the only way things can go?”

“It’s who we are. I’m changed. Believe that.” The commander nodded at Aethe, who nodded sharply back in a startled sort of way. “But it took a long time. She can’t fight that fight with everyone her whole life. So I have a favor to ask.”

“Take Aethe with us?” Marco said. “Easy answer. Absolutely. But it’s good for us only if it’s good for her. Aethe?”

“It will be difficult. I don’t fit with other elves. That doesn’t mean I fit with humans. I’m likely still odd. By human standards, I mean.”

“Oh, that’s just fine,” Elisa said. “That’s sort of our thing.”