Origin Complex (Steel Frame, Book 2) by Andrew Skinner

Origin Complex (Steel Frame, Book 2) by Andrew Skinner

Author:Andrew Skinner [Skinner, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-11-22T16:00:00+00:00


MONARCH and its reivers give me space, but I’m not sure it helps. It’s impossible not to feel exposed.

Moon averts her eyes as well, but this will go faster if I have someone to lean on. Together, she and VALOR help me out of the plating first, then soft armour just behind. I don’t need any help with the under-layers, and I say as much. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a reiver blush.

Moon gives me space, but VALOR holds nearby, and I’m not chasing it away. There’s comfort in having it close, something to buffer me from MONARCH. Besides, there’s nothing it hasn’t seen before.

The clothing is soft and well-made, warm enough for the brisk conditions inside the dome, yet slightly too light. I’d prefer something that felt a little more like armour.

“This isn’t how I imagined it,” I mutter, hugging myself.

VALOR watches me. “First contact?” There’s a glimmer of amusement. “No, I suppose it wouldn’t be. How did you imagine it?”

“Well, for one, it wouldn’t have been me.”

“Your ego’s not that swollen.”

I stick my tongue out. “Several thousand analysts in Sigurd’s employment—thousands, tens of thousands more with our competitors, even if they’ll call them something different. Maybe just as many with the Greys. Millions, once you’re past the specialists—people who’d just trip over something in the dark. Count them all together, and there’s no reason I’d be the one to do it.” I smother a shiver. “Haven’t thought about it for years, actually. It’s all you think about when they’re training you, running through first-contact protocols, reading and re-reading the data recovered from the Babylonian.”

The first, and only other time on record, that a human being reached out to something other.

And it reached back.

“Let’s hope this goes better than that,” mutters VALOR.

“No one knows what really happened to them. There’s an argument as to whether that was contact at all.”

“But either way, this isn’t what you were imagining.”

“No. I’d always pictured ship-to-ship. One vessel to another, standing out in the vacuum, trading careful whispers across the edge.” I pick at the seam of my sleeve, simple and delicate. “Anything but this.”

VALOR holds with me, but it seems I’ll have to do this on my own.

I turn, square myself up, and face the place where one of them is waiting for me.

“Thank you.”

That earns me a glance—the closest VALOR comes to showing surprise. “What for?”

“Being here.” It almost chokes me. “Looking after me.”

“I’m trying my best, analyst Bin’Syan. But you keep making it difficult.” VALOR uses that swagger-voice again, solid and reassuring, as if there was no universe in which anything could be the matter. There’s a swell of warmth, energy inside that heart-chamber, close enough to touch but just out of reach. A moment feeling my heart beat, in time with that other place that is anything but; a little star, pulsating.

Call, and I will answer.

I reach for VALOR, pull its head to mine. Forehead plating, cold enough that it stings against my brow. Thank you.

We part, and share one last glance.



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