The grey-green sprawl of the Elysium Valley was giving way to the foothills, and the road was transitioning from a sleep-inducing straightaway to white-knuckle curves. Nikolai could hear the plastic barrels rattling against each other, and probably against the guys in back, even over the noise of the road, which was not exactly well-maintained. Every so often he would miss a pothole until it was too late, and his jaw still ached a little from the one they’d hit on the way out that had nearly sent them off the road.

“Can’t believe we fuckin’ pulled this off,” Keeler said, shivering in the passenger seat. They were running without the heater, and the night was cold even with summer approaching — the lowlands were already seeing a thaw, but there was usually a lining of frost come morning even there.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Nikolai replied, grinning. He had no idea where the line came from, but he’d heard Cass say it once, and he had to admit it had sounded pretty badass. He’d always wanted an excuse to say it, and this seemed like a good time. Their mission had been entirely successful from the jump: they’d secured the truck without any issues, made it out without being stopped by anyone, and driven all the way down to the ag depot outside Woolman where Harriman said they still had loads of pre-revolt stuff stored.

And they’d found exactly what they needed, not just the industrial herbicide but other things they’d need too — chemical-protection respirators, protective gear to keep the shit off of them, sprayers that could sling the stuff a dozen yards or more. Just in case that wasn’t enough, and Nikolai had a feeling it wouldn’t be, they’d also secured a half-dozen leaf-blowers — with a little kludging, it stood to reason they’d throw a lot more weedkiller than the little sprayers would. He couldn’t want to get his hands on one of those puppies and hose one of the fuckers down properly.

Yeah, he thought. This is where we turn things around. Just like the movies. Shit, they’d probably want to make a movie about this, wouldn’t they? He wondered who they’d get to play him, or if he could just play himself. He was a pretty good actor, he figured, and then he’d get to double dip on the big actor bucks and the rights to the story. A big feel-good propaganda victory like this, they wouldn’t just trust to a computer — like the slogan said, Too Real For the Algorithm!

“How long you think it’s going to take for the weeds to spot the setup once we get it finished?”

“Not long,” Nikolai said. “They move fast, so we’ll have to be ready.” None of the guards believed that the convicts would welcome them back with open arms after they commandeered the truck, even if it was for the war effort, so they’d swiped enough rations to last a week and enough tools and supply to put together a fake hidey-hole they’d let leak heat like a sieve. They had a spot picked out and everything, a side tunnel of the mine that had been separated from the main branch by the quakes and cave-ins — big enough to park the truck in, close enough for the convicts to see it work, but not so close that they’d find them before the weeds did.

What a stars-damned perfect plan, Nikolai thought. The weeds wouldn’t know what hit ’em. He squinted at the light playing off the rocky slope ahead of him as he steered the truck around the bend, then glanced at his watch to confirm what his gut told him. It was only 3 AM — the sun couldn’t be coming up yet. “The fuck is that…?”

“What?” Keeler leaned forward. “I can’t see shit out there, gimme the specs.”

“Not while I’m fuckin’ driving,” Nikolai spat back. “It’s a light, indirect, just over there.” He pointed with one hand as he straightened the truck out. Now it was even more obvious, and Keeler made a noise of acknowledgment.

“Okay, I see it now,” he said. “The fuck is that?”

“No idea,” Nikolai said. It was a weird light, a dark violet that barely felt like a light at all when he gave it a quick look without the specs. “I don’t like it, though.”

“Yeah, me either. Maybe pull over and we check it out on foot?”

“Yeah, good thinking,” Nikolai said, spying a place just ahead where the truck wouldn’t get stuck if he pulled off to the side. “Man, what the fuck is that? Get the guys ready, and load up one of those sprayers, just in case.”

After a bit of cursing and fumbling, one of the sprayers was attached to a tank, and they headed out on foot, crunching their way through the snow and slush at the side of the road. Even without the specs, the eerie glow on the mountain was bright enough to navigate by, like cityglow or a full moon night — they threw long, strange shadows behind them as they walked that gave Nikolai the creeps. What he saw when they rounded the next corner was worse.

It was just one limb of the weed ship, but it was enough to know what was going on. It was hovering at the end of the steephead valley the mine’s main entrance was in, its underside glowing in that just-barely-visible violet. Nikolai kicked himself mentally for not recognizing it before. The light was dim enough that, at a distance, he couldn’t make out any details, but he thought he saw shapes moving, and they weren’t moving like terrans moved.

“Get down!” he hissed, dragging Keeler into the dead and frozen bushes by the side of the road. The others followed. “Fuck, they must have hit the place right after we left!”

“Lucky we didn’t delay a day,” Harriman mumbled.

“Hey fuck you,” McCloskey snarled, “I didn’t know!”

“Shut up!” Nikolai whispered.

“We gotta get in there and fuck the weeds up!” Keeler said. “Gimme that sprayer, Harriman!”

“Are you nuts?” Realizing how cowardly it made him sound, Nikolai quickly added, “that’s shit tactics, man. We’ve got to try to take the ship while they’re all down in the mine!”

“Shit, that’s a good point,” McCloskey said, nodding. “We don’t know how many of those things are on one of those.”

“So, what, you wanna take the ship and just let the weeds have a go at everyone else?” In the lambent glow of the alien ship, Nikolai could see Keeler’s eyebrows knitting — he probably had a few people he cared about in there, convicts who hadn’t stabbed him in the back yet. It was understandable, but if he didn’t get a handle on this situation soon, shit was going to go south in a hurry.

“Alright,” he said, holding up a hand. “There’s six of us. We send four to the ship, alright? One of the leaf blowers with ’em. Two of us take the other two leaf blowers, and we set up at the entrance to the mine, we make some noise, and when they all come charging up out of there, we can hose ’em right down!” He didn’t like breaking people off from the ship, which was the actually important thing here, but he needed Keeler on his side more.

“They’re gonna button up tight once they realize what’s happening,” Keeler muttered, glancing back at the mine. “They’re not all gonna come up, so once we get the ship, we go in hard.”

“I can get behind that,” Nikolai said, nodding. “Come on, fuck freezing our asses off in a ditch here, we’ve got work to do.”

“Staaaaars!” Nell moaned as she bucked against her restraints — but Andoa’s vines were far too tight for her to escape, and all she did was inflame her desire even more, which was exactly what the Captain wanted. Stop that, stop that! Nell told herself. You’re playing into eir hands with that! With a shuddering breath, she mastered the impulse to grind, reminding herself that it wouldn’t give her any relief.

“Still fighting?” Andoa purred. The room, same as it ever was, was mostly unlit save for the area around Nell, and Andoa was making good use of the shadow as e slipped in and out to tease her. “My my, aren’t we feisty today?”

“Fuuuuuck oooooff,” Nell whimpered, allowing herself a glance at the timer. Two segments left, and the outer circle almost gone. One segment left. Just one segment. She could do this. She bore down on her lip and squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to ignore the heat in her loins, the sharp electricity behind her navel, the sweaty tingling of every inch of skin she had. Her hair was plastered to her scalp, and her toes just barely brushed the floor. Her arms, bound behind her back, desperately twitched as she involuntarily tried to touch herself.

“Such a naughty mouth on such a sweet girl,” Andoa said, chuckling as eir vines teased at Nell’s lips. “No biting, flower,” e purred as she tapped Nell’s cheek. Without thinking, Nell opened her mouth, and the vines slid inside to play with her tongue.

“Aaaaah,” she whimpered around them, her back arching as she shuddered. Just one segment. Just one more and we’re done. Just one more. It was a mantra she repeated to herself as the vines caressed her, as more vines slid around her body to tease her elsewhere. One nippled sang out in pain as a vine pinched it, while the other quivered as a feathery frond brushed past it. Without thinking, she bucked against the vines slithering around her hips and thighs again, and her need banked higher and higher.

“So eager, so fierce,” Andoa purred. “So lovely like this. Oh, if only your tender little body could take it, I’d keep you this way all the time.” Nell almost wept; if it wasn’t for the Class-N leashing her, the words alone would have made her come as they rolled through her. It was so much, it was too much. She couldn’t bear it, and her mouth was open — all she’d have to do was to let out a cry in the pattern Andoa had taught her, and she’d get the relief she needed.

No! Nell thought, clamping down on her vocal cords. Just one more. Just one more. Almost there. Almost there! She didn’t dare look. Every second would be like an eternity if she let herself follow the sweep of the outer ring as it oh-so-slowly disappeared. She wouldn’t let em win again. This time, this game, she was going to win. And then, everything was going to change.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” e said, eir voice a whisper in her ear. “Tied up like a little ornament that I carry around with me to show off? And oh, I do love to show you off. My good girl. My Nell.”

Just one more. All of eir vines tightened, a pressure that threatened to rip the signal to stop from her, but Nell held fast.

“A good little floret.” E was silent for a long moment, then sighed. “Ah, what might have been. Open your eyes, petal.” There was a gentle pressure on Nell’s cheek as Andoa’s vines retreated from her mouth, and when she opened her eyes she saw the Captain cradling her head in one enormous hand, eir thumb resting delicately on her cheek. With a featherlight touch, e directed Nell’s gaze away from emself (and oh, how Nell whimpered) to the wall, to the timer — the timer, the outer ring blinking slowly, the inner track empty.

“I… I did it?” Nell said, her voice weak.

“You did. Are you ready?” The familiar needle rose back up and stung her, and as the last of Andoa’s vines slipped free and she fell limply into eir arms, she felt the orgasm coursing through her powerful as ever. She whimpered and moaned and cried out as Andoa’s mossy body surrounded her in a powerful hug. Tears streamed down her face as she felt herself wash away, as she lost herself to the storm of relief inside her. “Good girl. Good girl, Nell. Oh, how I’m going to miss this.”

She made no response, had no response to make. Even as Andoa stood, carrying her out into the misty, mossy common area of eir hab, she simply lay there, the echoes of ecstasy rushing from her fingertips to her heart and back again. The rushing of water as the tub filled slowly brought her back, as did the straw held to her lips. “Drink, little one,” Andoa said, and she did, and it was sweet and sour and good.

“I…hey,” she mumbled, a drunken smile finally making its way to her face. “Told you…. didn’t I?”

“You did,” Andoa said, smiling. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” Nell nodded, and let Andoa run through the bath routine that she was well used to after the last few weeks, letting eir vines do most of the work, responding to taps and directions when she needed to, and relaxing in the warm water as her tired body finally began to relax after yet another ordeal.

“So… got a proposal for you,” Nell said as Andoa pulled her out of the water and began to towel her off. She was just able to stand on her own, though her legs were still very wobbly. “Double or nothing.”

“Double or nothing?” Andoa said, one of the fronds that served as eir eyebrows lifting just a bit. It really was amazing, Nell thought, how much effort e put into seeming terran. Not amazing. Creepy. Well. Creepy and amazing.

“We go again, same rules, but I’m not just playing for me this time — I’m playing for me and Cass.”

Andoa chuckled and began to towel off Nell’s hair. “What a cute idea, but no.”

“What do you mean, no?” Nell said, reaching up and trying to bat the towel away, without much success.

“Well, for one thing, the committee voted to allow Cass to remain independent,” the Captain said, “so you don’t need to go making any heroic gestures like that. Very heroic, though. I do approve.”

“Alright, fine,” Nell said, as Andoa draped the towel around her shoulders. “How about this — we play for bigger stakes: same rules, but instead, we’re playing for everyone. The right to go back down to the planet.”

“Flower,” Andoa said, “I know you enjoyed yourself, but I can’t possibly take a wager like that.” E ruffled Nell’s hair with a vine gently. “It would be deeply irresponsible of me to endanger you all just for my enjoyment.”

“It’s not– but I– look, don’t you want to do more of this?!” Nell cried.

“Nothing would make me happier,” Andoa replied, “but you’re not my floret anymore, remember? You won. You have your freedom. I’ll compile some clothes for you, and you can head down to the Office of Terran Adaptation and Assistance for Solstice, and they’ll set you up with a hab of your own. If there’s one good thing that came of all this silly hiding, it’s that it gave us time to set up enough habs for all of you!”

“You’re not…you’re not going to take any more bets?” Nell’s heart felt like it had been cored out, a cold chill coming over her that had nothing to do with having just stepped from a hot bath. There had to be a way around this. There had to be a way to get Andoa back into the game! “But…”

“No buts, little one,” Andoa said, standing up to eir full height. “I am the Captain, you know, and that’s an awful lot of work I’ve been having to put off here and there that I really should be catching up on, now that I don’t have you to look after.”

Nell felt like she was sleepwalking. Andoa guided her out into the common room, offered her clothes that she mechanically put on instead of letting em dress her, and took the bag of personal effects that e held out to her. “But, isn’t there–?”

“Shhhh.” Andoa knelt down again, reaching out to stroke Nell’s hair. “You’re a tough, brave, independent sophont, remember? You’ll do just fine on your own. Hab, go ahead and unlock the front door and open it.”

“You got it!” the hab chirped, and the door slid open. For the first time in weeks, Nell saw the outside world without being tied up and trapped inside Andoa’s chest, and she stared for a long moment at it before turning back to em.

“Go on,” Andoa said. “Your tablet will show you how to get where you need to go.”

“But I–“ Nell’s mouth had gone dry, her hands were slick with sweat, and her heart was pounding in her chest. What’s wrong with me? she thought. Take what you can get! Go! Get out before e changes eir mind! “I don’t–”

“You don’t what, flower?” Andoa said, eir voice perfectly innocent.

Nell forced down a rough, painful swallow, gritted her teeth, and turned. She made it three steps before she stopped and turned back. “But what if–“ She didn’t know how to finish it. She didn’t know what she wanted to say, or do. Her plans had fallen completely apart, and she was left with nothing. “Can we…still talk about….about theory? Because… you’re still getting it wrong.”

“Am I?” Andoa laughed. “Nell, I would love to continue discussing communist theory with you. I’m looking forward to getting into the historical context of Maoism! We’ll chat over the network, okay? I’ll look you up, so don’t worry about it. I promise I won’t forget.”

“O-okay,” Nell said. Somehow, she didn’t feel any better, but she made herself turn and take another step, and then another. She made it to the threshold this time before she stopped. She could see out into the ship now, a world nine kilometers long, the far side of the ring sprawling above in the sky beyond the sunline. It yawned wide and impossibly deep, and it was just a single ship — she knew there were others, thousands of others, millions of others, ships this size and ships far larger, spreading across the cosmos in a wave of revolution.

And it was a revolution — it was the death of capital, albeit not how Marx or Lenin or any other terran had envisioned it. Where the Affini went, they left plenty and peace in their wake, and all they demanded was the right to administer it to ensure it didn’t fall apart the moment they left. Somehow, a species of giant alien plants was the perfect revolutionary vanguard for a slightly off-kilter revolution.

And it worked. That was the most baffling thing, the thing not accounted for, the thing she couldn’t point to theory and disprove. They hadn’t independently developed Marxist analysis and Leninist theory, they’d simply done what came naturally to them. They spread across the universe, dismantling exploitation and oppression. And it worked.

“Nell, is everything alright?” Andoa hadn’t moved, was watching her from the common room, the mist ever-so-slightly blurring eir form. Eir six eyes were amber points of light in the dim shadows.

“I–“ Her voice caught, and she swallowed again before turning. “I don’t…I can’t…”

“Petal,” e purred. “What do you want?”

Eir voice slipped over her skin like the tenderest caress as the thought bubbled up from deep inside: You. Nell squeezed her eyes shut as they began to tear up. No, no, that’s impossible. I don’t want this! But then why couldn’t she make herself leave? Why couldn’t she run to the freedom she supposedly wanted so badly?

“Come here, little one,” Andoa said, opening eir arms wide. Nell dropped her bag at her feet and began to shuffle back inside, tears now streaming down her face as she buried it in her hands. “Little one, shhh, shhh, why are you crying?” E took Nell into eir arms and held her tightly.

“I don’t wanna go,” she mumbled through tears and sobs. “I don’t– I don’t want it to be over!” Why? Why would I want more of this?!

“Well, there is one solution to that problem,” Andoa said, with the same sort of hungry edge in eir voice as e got during playtime when Nell lost herself in sensation. Nell looked up at em, the question joining the tears in her eyes, and Andoa let a wide grin show on eir face. “Ask.”

“Ask…?”

“To be my pet,” Andoa added, stroking her hair slowly. “To be my fourth floret.”

“B-but I…” Nell almost choked on the horror welling up inside her. I can’t do that, can’t I? But she absolutely could, and she knew it, and it terrified her. She could, so easily, let those words out of her, and she might not even regret them. She realized, now, that she’d misunderstood the game in its entirety. She was never competing with Andoa over individual orgasms, or beating some meaningless timer — it was all for this moment. This was the game. She could still win this. All she had to do was say–

“Please,” she heard herself whisper, as she stared up into those six beautiful eyes.

Andoa made a pleased sound deep in eir chest as Nell began to panic. “That was very nice, petal, but I need more. I need to know you mean it. I need you to beg.”

“Please!” Nell cried out before she could stop herself. “I don’t want it to stop, I don’t want to go away, please!” Oh stars, she thought, what am I doing?!

“Please…what?” Andoa purred, eir eyes flashing. They were enjoying this, it was obvious. E always got the same look whenever Nell tapped out during playtime — and for some reason, seeing Andoa happy was like a ray of joy that cut through her panic. It gave her the strength to do what came next.

Don’t, don’t say it! You don’t have to say it! Nell told herself, but the stillness in her heart, the soothing warmth of Andoa’s presence, spoke far, far louder. “Please let me be your floret!” she said, the tears starting up again.

“Oh, my precious little Nell,” Andoa said, squeezing Nell tightly. “You have no idea how much it pleases me to hear you say that.” There it came again, that burst of passive joy that reflected Andoa’s own, and Nell felt herself smiling despite herself, despite the rapidly diminishing voice inside pleading with her to take it back.

She didn’t really want this, did she? She didn’t want to be pampered, cared for, loved, intellectually engaged in philosophical debate, and then fucked senseless for hours by an alien plant twice her size with an encyclopedic knowledge of bondage techniques gleaned from across the stars. She didn’t want that to be every day of her life for the rest of her life. Did she?

What about her free will? What about the implant Andoa would put inside her? What about the freedom Andoa would strip from her? Even if she walked away, she would still have the revolution, still have the struggle, still have work she could meaningfully do, couldn’t she? But all those thoughts were dashed like waves on a seawall against a single thought, a thought that overturned all the worry and the frustration and the anger, a thought that made everything make sense again.

What good is freedom, she thought, if it doesn’t come with em?

Andoa had read Nell like a book from the very beginning, had seen every inch of her and had known exactly how to tame her. She should have seen it then, should have known there was no point in fighting — but then, her Captain liked that she fought, even if she never stood a chance of victory. She would have to keep fighting, then, just a little, just for fun. It would make em so happy. The warm smile on her face as she looked up into her Captain’s eyes must have been like a thousand-foot-tall neon sign to em, because e smiled and laughed. “Ah, there we go,” e said. “Hello there, my floret.”

“H-hi,” she whispered back, her cheeks warming. Stars, was it going to feel like this all the time?

“No more confusion, no more heartache?” She shook her head — there were tears still running down her cheeks, but they weren’t the bad kind, not anymore, not the way her heart was swelling and singing with love. “Good. Good girl.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, closing her eyes and leaning into her Captain’s chest. One hand closed tenderly around a fistful of moss, soft and feathery. She had never been more comfortable in her life than in this moment.

“Nell, my love, the pleasure was all mine.”

There was something different about the air that afternoon, and Cass couldn’t quite pinpoint it. The poetic part of her mind (or, at least, the part of her mind that acted as a warehouse for all the poetry she’d memorized), naturally, attributed it to the cloud of the wardship having lifted and her freedom being assured. The Sword of Damocles was gone — she was Cass Hope, independent sophont again. The worst she had to worry about were “wellness checks,” and considering she lived with the Affini who would be “conducting” them, she wasn’t terribly concerned.

She’d given thought to moving out, of course, but had decided against it, firstly because she was done making major changes in her life for a while — it was enough that she was having to get used to the idea of the Tillandsia being her home for the foreseeable future — and secondly because having Tsuga around made it less likely she’d be bothered by some other Affini when out and about. Her knee now fully healed, she was still having to get used to the idea of the sky being a place she could walk to.

Case in point — the cluster of habitats she was approaching now was about two-thirds of the way around the ring Tsuga and the rest of the Welcoming Committee lived on, in what had been thick forest not two weeks before but was now something on the order of a charming little village, if one designed with Affini aesthetics firmly in mind. Everything was colorful, and seemed as if it had grown into its shape naturally over years, all connected by paths and a commons made up of smooth stones, mosses, and tough little flowers that didn’t mind the occasional footstep.

And there were terrans everywhere. It was the most terrans Cass had seen in one place weeks, and maybe for some time before that — spread out as they were, in groups here and there across the commons, it was entirely possible they numbered more than the usual population of Bulwark. There were Affini too, of course, some engaged in conversation with one or more terrans, but they were keeping a relatively low profile. As low a profile as one could keep when one was a 3-plus meter walking plant, anyway.

“Well, I’m glad to see everyone seems to be settling in well,” Tsuga said as she took in the scene. “I’ve had updates, of course, but I haven’t had the chance to make it out here myself.”

“It’s… a lot,” Cass said, sweeping her gaze across the curving horizon. There were clear sites where more habs were going up, little satellite villages stitched together like the rest of the ring, a mesh of homes and places of work.

“Certainly nicer than where I found you, yes?” Tsuga said, smiling down at her.

“In terms of creature comforts, I suppose I can’t deny that,” Cass admitted. She picked out one structure, larger than the others, and checked her tablet. “I think that’s it.”

“I think you may well be right. Shall we?”

“No time like the present.” Yet at the same time, Cass couldn’t help but feel apprehensive as she approached. She’d felt the odd little tickle in her stomach the entire way here, and now it was only getting worse, spreading out and crawling over her skin like a million little ants. Calm down, she told herself. This is nothing new. You did this for over twenty years. It’s like riding a bicycle.

The interior of the communal space was large, open, and airy — there was even a breeze inside that felt as natural as the one outside, never mind that both were very much not natural. The floor was some kind of carpet that stayed firm as one walked on it, but clearly gave enough to be comfortable when one sat down on it, judging from how many people were seated in a rough circle in the middle of the space.

Everyone looked back at her — well, at Tsuga, anyway — and the tickling in Cass’s stomach became a clenched fist. “Hey,” one man called, “this is an official meeting of the People’s Provisional Government of Solstice, you can’t just come in here!”

“Yeah, come on,” someone else added, “we told you about this.”

“Oh?” Tsuga said. “I’m sorry, no one informed me.”

“She’s alright,” Cass said, raising her voice so everyone could hear. “She’s with me.” There was a moment of silence, during which every eye in the room turned on her instead of on the enormous Affini next to her. Not again not again not again. She squelched the voice of panic and added, as confidently as she could, “Sorry I’m late.” It was the sort of thing they’d want to hear.

It only took seconds for her to be swarmed by a crowd all shouting from sheer excitement, pushing up against her, all touching to make sure she was real. She felt rather than heard the blood pounding in her ears. Run, just run, don’t try to do this anymore. Again, she squelched that selfish voice, raised two fingers to her lips, braced herself, and whistled loudly. Even through the cacophony of voices she felt the whistle like two icepicks, one in each eardrum.

Still, it had the desired effect — everyone calmed down, backed off, gave her space. She took a deep breath, steadied herself, and said, “What’s the situation?” She heard it, in bits and bobs, from one mouth or another as people began to settle back in. There were people there from as far west as Featherstone and as far east as Beacon. Between populations scattering or consolidating in backup shelters, there was little sense of individual outposts or settlements when it came to how or when one arrived on the Tillandsia. The population was thoroughly intermixed, and all roughly within walking distance thus far.

It was an understandable impulse to try to rebuild the Provisional Government in conditions like those, but it left Cass feeling uneasy. The status quo had worked — democratic confederalism had worked — and it troubled her to see the same centralizing tendency spring right back up again. She would need to hook up with the Pan-Elysian Anarchist Confederation and work with them to fight back against the statist coalition. First, though, she had a responsibility to the people under her command, and she finally found someone from Bulwark in the crowd.

“He did what?” She stared at Forsythe, not quite believing what she was hearing.

“I know,” he said, running a hand through his messy mop of brown hair. “Broke my glasses, damn near broke my jaw I think. Feeling better now, at least, and I got these compiled,” he added, touching the pristine pair of specs on his face. “Better than the originals, honestly, and they’ve got this cool heads-up—”

“Forsythe, please stay on topic. What happened next?” If Nikolai had snapped like that, it wasn’t a good sign. His politics had never been great, but he’d shown real signs of improvement over the years at Bulwark — if he hadn’t, Cass wouldn’t have let him stay there, no matter his and Nell’s extremely rocky relationship.

“I couldn’t tell you,” he said, shrugging. “I got picked up at Twin Creeks like most of us, and he wasn’t there so I assume he made it out.”

“Oh, he made it out alright,” a tired voice said from behind Cass, thick with irritation. “Then we had to deal with his ass.”

Cass spun around. “Maggie?!” And there she was, grey-hair and crows-feet and all. Raeburn laughed and held out her arms, and Cass didn’t hesitate. The hug was tight and warm and just as comforting as Cass remembered it. There was no room in her for her voice, for words, but the hug said everything she needed to in that moment. As it always did, comfort turned to the oppressive need to fidget, to move, and Raeburn clearly felt it in her, breaking the hug before Cass could ask. “How…when did you get here?” she finally said.

“Just a couple days ago,” she said. “They came down on us all at once, bottled up every entrance to the mine — and then some jokers got the bright idea to try to gas the plants with herbicide. Oh, that got ’em mad,” she said, laughing ruefully. “I woke up with a big shaggy wet mess of swamp standing over me, explaining that he was going to give me a shot to fix my cancer. A shot, singular,” she added, grinning. “And I didn’t believe it, but I woke up the next morning feeling like a trillion bucks. I can actually breathe again!”

“They’re pretty good at that sort of thing, yeah,” Cass said. She couldn’t help but smile — when Raeburn had first gotten sick and had to retire from service at Bulwark, it had gutted Cass. She’d lost one of her few remaining friends from before the revolution and one of her best allies in the aftermath. “God, it’s good to see you,” she added in a whisper. Mashallah. Thank you for this, she thought to herself.

“Good to see you too,” she said. “We heard a lot from Forsythe here. About you being up for domestication.”

“I heard from Aletheia, yeah,” Forsythe said. “Before she went radio silent.”

“She’s high as a kite,” Cass said. “For surgery. The implant. But I’m fine,” she said firmly. “They were looking at making me go through with it too, but we talked them down.”

“Who’s we?” Raeburn said, raising an eyebrow. “Nell?”

“No, she’s with the Captain,” Cass said. “I meant Tsuga, here–“ She turned to look, but there was no sign of the Affini, and Cass felt her stomach plunge. Where did she go?! Even in the midst of dozens of terrans, she suddenly felt paradoxically lonely.

“Wait, wait, you had an Affini arguing against domestication?” Forsythe said, laughing uncertainly. “Sheesh, only you, Cass, only you could pull that off!”

“I’ve only been here a few days, but I’m inclined to agree,” Raeburn said. “They absolutely will not stop the hard sell.”

“Most of them are like that, yes. Tsuga is different.” Mostly. Cass was firmly ignoring that she knew full well that Tsuga did want to domesticate her, and was merely respecting her desire to not be domesticated. “The point is, I’m no longer at risk, and I want to get back to work.” Strictly speaking, a lie — she was terrified of it, but she was far more frightened of the alternative. So much had already happened because of her, because of her mistakes, and she couldn’t let anything else go wrong. “So, let’s get to work. Where are we caucusing?”

Hours, long tense hours filled with debate, with negotiation, with arguments, did nothing to improve either Cass’s mood or the outlook for the nascent government. Apparently, for all that everyone had pulled together after the Pillar of Fire and made things work in a distributed fashion, a good portion of the population of Solstice was entirely happy to go right back to statism — never mind that the lot of them were trapped on an alien starship in orbit around the planet they were ostensibly governing, powerless to effect any change whatsoever to the Affini program of environmental remediation and domestication.

And the Affini were domesticating them, that much was clear simply from anecdotal reports. How many, Cass couldn’t be sure, but she heard from multiple quarters of prisoners taken and not seen since, and it was all she could do to assure them that no, the rumors were not true, and they weren’t being eaten or anything like that. It felt odd, almost as if she were defending the Affini, but better that they know the true shape of their enemy than fight against the shadows concocted by their imaginations.

Cass made her goodbyes to her fellow anarchists, had another hug from Raeburn that was at once far too long and not nearly long enough, and then made her way around checking in with others from Bulwark before she filtered out of the communal space sometime well after dark. The sunline had dimmed to a dull glow, providing enough light to see but not enough to dazzle, and Cass’s eyes slowly adjusted as she made her way down the path.

“Ah, there you are.” Cass jumped — what she’d taken for a tree beside the path was actually Tsuga. Even now, Cass couldn’t quite make her out, just her shifting silhouette. “Did you have a productive day?”

“Not as productive as I’d like.” She squinted up at Tsuga, walking around her to try to force her brain to recognize her. “People are making a lot of the same old mistakes. It’s frustrating. How come you’re still here? I figured you’d have left hours ago.”

“I could hardly just leave you here,” she replied. “I know you’re independent, and I know you know how to find your way back to the hab on your own, but I thought you might get worried if I wasn’t here when you came looking. Besides,” she added, waving what Cass could now just barely make out as a tablet, “it was a good opportunity to get work done for the Welcoming Committee, and there’s plenty of that to go around.”

“…fair enough,” Cass said. “Sounds like you had a better day than I did.”

“Well, I got to meet a lot of very nice terrans, and I got to answer a lot of questions — which, by the way, I was able to do in no small part thanks to the discussions we’ve had, so thank you for that.”

Cass shrugged. “Let’s go. I’m tired.” Now that she wasn’t up to her eyes in forced socializing, arguing, and wrangling of votes, the fatigue was beginning to set in. I’m not as young as I used to be, she thought. Time was I could do this all night.

“Would you like me to carry you? Or…perhaps that should wait until we’re a little ways down the road?” Tsuga said, her soft chuckle a rolling sound that lifted Cass’s heart. “I know you have a reputation to maintain.”

“Maybe in a little while,” Cass said, starting out. The night enfolded then, the soft glow of the moss lining the path illuminating it in a gentle green that made it easy for them to find their way. “You organize yourselves autonomously,” she said after a moment.

“Yes,” Tsuga replied, easily keeping pace with Cass, each of her slow steps a soft thump beside her. “We choose where we wish to apply ourselves, and how we wish to contribute to the Compact’s common task.”

“But you have your bureaucracy. It’s everywhere.”

“The Compact is very large. Without bureaucracy, we’d never be able to organize things on a scale like that. Besides, it’s fun,” she added in a lighthearted tone.

“Yes, but–“ She paused to collect her thoughts, and the world slowly turned around her. The ship’s interior really was beautiful at night, the not-quite-stars of the far side of the ring glittering behind the dim sunline. “How do you keep the bureaucracy from eating everything? How do you keep corruption out? The possibilities for abuse must be enormous.”

“I suppose,” Tsuga said, “but it’s not really a problem. At least, not that I’m aware of, and I’ve been around long enough and experienced a broad enough perspective of the Compact that, if it were an issue, I don’t think I could have missed it up to now.”

“Okay, but you’re somehow coexisting as a largely anarchist society with something that only emerges out of a state’s need to govern in a top-down manner. Systems like that always engender authoritarianism. I just don’t see how it can work.”

Tsuga shrugged; Cass’s eyes had adjusted enough by now that she could see her vines rippling as she did so. “It does work. And, alas, comparative sociologistics has never been a strong interest of mine, so I only have my own understanding to draw upon, but…I think it works because we want it to, because it helps us do what matters most.”

“Find florets, you mean?” Cass said dryly.

“Help xenosophont life,” Tsuga said, “and yes, find florets. The two go together quite well, you know,” she added with a smile. Cass felt the corner of her mouth quirk in response. Tsuga’s smile had become weirdly infectious.

“Yeah, I guess from your perspective it does,” Cass admitted. “It’s just… it’s so frustrating to look at you, and see a society that’s so close to what I’ve been fighting for all my life — and let’s leave out the domestication and the florets and your two-class system and everything, just for the sake of argument, and focus on the structure of how you govern–” Her voice caught, and she swallowed back what might have been the beginning of tears. “For you to just appear one day, it’s like watching a dream come true and be strangled at the same time. Does that make sense?”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t.”

“You’ve done it all,” Cass went on. “You’ve figured out all the problems, you’ve built a fucking bureaucracy inside anarchism and it hasn’t taken over your society, a society that’s been around longer than we have as a species, and– and you just appear and it’s there and…and everything I’ve ever done just feels so meaningless.” She would not cry. She absolutely would not.

“I’m very sorry that we’ve made you feel that way. But look on the bright side — you get to live in that society now. We may not be exactly what you were striving for, but we’re close. You said so yourself.”

“Yeah, leaving off domestication and the fact that I’ll never be seen as your equal,” Cass said. “Look, how would you feel if you’d been spending your entire life working towards something, something everyone said was impossible, even dangerous, but then someone else out of nowhere turned up having already done it, having solved every possible problem with it. You get what I’m saying, don’t you?”

“I think perhaps I do, a little,” Tsuga said. “And, again, I’m sorry. But your life up to now isn’t meaningless just because we exist.”

“Bullshit,” Cass muttered as she slowed her pace, then came to a stop. Tsuga paused, and turned to look down at her. “It’s– Tsuga, I’ve hurt so many people. I’ve killed people for this, because…because I was trying to make a better world, and because they were part of the machine that kept hurting everyone. Even them! I don’t– how am I supposed to square that with you?” Her eyes burned, but she was not going to cry.

“Cass…” Tsuga knelt down and, after a brief hesitation to give her a chance to flinch away, rested one of her enormous hands on Cass’s shoulder. It was a comfortable weight, and she leaned into it. “There’s often moments like this early on in the domestication of a new xeno species. It can be hard to make the adjustment, and there’s always the urge to compare before to after. But, please listen, what you did in the wild does not have to reflect on who you are or who you have to be now.”

Cass sniffled and nodded. The Captain had said pretty much the same thing at the wardship meeting. “I just…after everything I did, I wanted it to mean something.”

“It did,” Tsuga said softly. “You were doing what you thought was best, not for you but for everyone — and you were a lot closer to the mark than most of your species,” she added, her smile returning. Cass could barely force herself to look at it, but she felt it nevertheless. She had no reply, but simply leaned into Tsuga’s touch, firm and unyielding. After a long moment, Tsuga spoke again. “I do have something for you that might cheer you up a little, if you’re interested.”

“Yeah?” Cass whispered, wiping at her eyes. She had absolutely not been crying. “Like what?” She watched as a vine slithered its way out of Tsuga’s body, a bud on its tip unfurling into a vibrant indigo-blue flower. “…what’s that?” she said, staring.

“When I filed that Notice of Intent to Domesticate, I realized that I was lacking a number of important grafts for terran care, so I went and had that taken care of. This flower’s pollen carries a Class-A xenodrug — wait,” she said, lifting her other hand to give Cass pause. “I know, I remember what happened the last time you were given a xenodrug from this Class, but this is a different one.”

“And you think it won’t make me want to crawl out of my skin?” Cass said, staring wide-eyed at the flower, almost terrified to breathe.

“Xenodrug classes are very broad, Cass. Class-A contains tens of thousands of xenodrugs that influence tactile sensory experience. We’re still early on in your species domestication, so only a few are really in use, but I spoke at length with Arvense and together we found one that, we think, will work better for you. It won’t amplify your sense of touch quite the way the one you tried before did. It will modulate it instead, and it should keep you from experiencing that kind of overload. And, just in case?” Another vine, this one needle-tipped, slithered out. “This is the counteragent. I also have a Class-E injector ready to go, in case you experience another panic attack.”

Cass’s gaze switched from the flower to the needle-tipped thorn, then back up to Tsuga. “You had all that put in…for me?”

“It wasn’t anything strenuous,” Tsuga said, laughing. The sound wrapped around Cass like a warm breeze. “Just a simple graft. And…well, if the committee voted for you to be immediately domesticated, I thought– I wanted to be able to give you something that might help you feel better about it. To not feel like it’s such a horrible thing. A gift. I didn’t bring it up before because I wanted it to be a surprise.”

Cass looked back at the flower. The interior was filled with silvery stamens, like little gilded strands of saffron. “I don’t–“ Words left her, and she could only seize her lip in frustration as her stomach flip-flopped. What was she supposed to feel? What was she supposed to say?

“If you don’t want it, I understand,” Tsuga said, slowly withdrawing the flower. The world seemed to slow to a crawl for Cass as conflicting thoughts did battle in her head. Tensions had been rising all day between two camps inside her, one the rigid leader and revolutionary her people needed, the other simply tired and hurting and lashing out. The guilt was overpowering on both sides — she was a failure, and she knew it. The only question was the response.

I’m a coward if I take the flower, she thought. It was a cheap way out, an easy lie, and besides, she didn’t deserve to feel good, not when she’d fucked up so bad, not when she still had so much work to do. There were statists to oppose, and the Affini to find a way to escape from, domestications to stop or reverse, and so many more equally critical tasks. All the weight in the world was collecting on her shoulders, and she would just have to grit her teeth and bear it, because no one else would — or at least, no one else would do it right.

But I can’t keep doing this. She’d borne this weight for decades, and what had it gotten her? Scars, lost friends, and precious little else. She couldn’t let herself believe that everything she’d ever done, every part of the fight, had been meaningless, but the specter of the thought loomed over her, ready to push its way into her mind at any moment. She didn’t know how to live with the pressure, the pain, the purpose — but even worse, she didn’t know how to live without it.

She wasn’t sure when she made the decision, or how she came to it, but she felt her hands dart out just before the blossom slipped out of reach. She felt them seize the vine and pull it back towards her, and she felt the velvety petals against her face as she pressed her nose into it and inhaled deeply. It came with a rich, paradoxically savory scent, somewhere between cinnamon and rosemary, maybe with a hint of smokiness. Just as quickly as the scent invaded her, so too did the rush of euphoria. The weight of her worries seemed so distant, so easy to lose track of. She took another deep breath before Tsuga pulled the vine away.

“I think that’s enough,” she said softly, her smile lighting up the world in a way the sunline never could. “Let’s see how that works for you.”

“Okay,” Cass said, her head already starting to swim. Tsuga was right — it wasn’t the same high at all. As her arms fell slowly back to her sides, as if through molasses, she felt as if she were leaving afterimages of herself behind. When she spoke, the words rippled through her insides like she were a pond and her voice a stone thrown into it. “Oh…wow,” she murmured, nearly losing her balance even with Tsuga’s hand against her.

“I think now is a good time to carry you,” she said, scooping Cass up into her arms. It wasn’t only the words that rippled, Cass realized, but everything. Every shift of Tsuga’s bark against her set her skin rippling. She clenched for just a moment, fearing that the sensation would become overwhelming, but it never did — it was as if she felt every touch with all of her, not merely the searing, stinging point of contact.

“Uh huh,” she mumbled, her head lolling back against Tsuga’s chest. “This… this is nice.” She licked her lips and shivered as if her whole body had been gently brushed with something soft and wet. “Aahh…”

“It seems to be working well,” Tsuga purred. “Good.” Tsuga’s voice thrummed through her, and she became an echo chamber for it. Her words rumbled up and down her body, rippling all the way and leaving Cass wrung out and loose as if she’d spent hours receiving full-body massage. She began to nuzzle gently into Tsuga, and thought part of her distantly wondered what in the world she was doing, the rest of her knew at a gut level that she wanted more — and Tsuga read the signs perfectly. A vine gently descended, and ever so cautiously began to stroke her hair. Cass let out a soft noise as she felt the tingling, rippling shimmer spread over her body.

“More,” she finally managed to whimper, and as if she’d been waiting for the opportunity, Tsuga indulged her. Vines slipped in from every direction almost the instant she spoke, coiling, squeezing, touching, stroking, caressing every inch of skin they could find. If each touch was a stone thrown into still waters, this was a torrential rainstorm, a thousand thousand pinpricks setting ripples against ripples. It was so much, it was too much, wasn’t it? Deep inside, Cass steeled herself against the pain she knew had to be coming, as she’d done so many times before…

…and nothing happened. Nothing, save the marvelous sensation of being touched. She let out a cry that would have humiliated her if she were sober, tears not of stress or panic or frustration but of joy streaming down her face. She was being touched in all the way she hated, all the ways that had always hurt — and now they didn’t hurt at all. She could feel the warm joy of contact with another, the swishing and rippling sensations of pleasure, but no pain, never pain. Is this what it’s always like for others? she wondered as Tsuga continued to play with her, the gentle rocking of her stride only barely registering. She didn’t know where she was or where she was going; she only knew she was in Tsuga’s arms, could see that warm smile and those beautiful, shining eyes, golden-green and enormous. Is she…

…entrancing me again? They had been outside a moment ago, hadn’t they? When had they gotten back to the hab, back to the couch, and when had Tsuga laid her out across her lap like this, face down and pressed against one strangely soft thigh. She felt Tsuga’s hand come down on her back, a long and slow stroking motion that left her in ecstasy. “Good girl,” Tsuga rumbled, and it affected her no less.

“Did… you…?” Her body was a wobbly mass of terran, a perfectly relaxed gelatin mold of a human being. It felt incredible, but it made it difficult to speak. She could scarcely get her mouth around the words, still swimming in the soft tides of euphoria.

“I thought you might not want to be moaning like that in public,” Tsuga said, stroking Cass’s hair with a vine. Cass bit her lip and shivered; the head-high had diminished somewhat, but the body high was still going strong and she was still well beyond sober. “So I put you under, just a little. I take it you like this?” Cass nodded, and the texture of Tsuga’s thighs was bliss. “Good, good. I don’t think you can know how happy that makes me.”

“Nnn…no… domes… domestica…”

“Don’t worry,” Tsuga said, laughing, and it was like Cass had been struck by lightning, her whole body seizing up for a split second. “I’m not trying to somehow trick you into domestication. It’s just a kindness for a friend.” Another long, slow stroke of her hand, and Cass let out a delighted whimper. “I’m here, and you’re safe, and that’s all that matters. Just enjoy yourself for now. If you feel like you want to sleep, sleep. We’ll talk about it in the morning, when you’re sober, okay?”

“O…kay.” Anything more was beyond her, but right now, that didn’t matter. Tsuga was here, and Cass was safe.

That was all that mattered.