“I can’t believe anybody wears these things,” Qinisa complained for the third time since they’d left their transport. In Sora’s voice—Cora’s voice, Terra reminded herself—it was jarring and strange, all the words spoken in the wrong intonation. But Father wouldn’t be able to tell, not quickly enough in any case. “I can walk on six legs or swim in an ocean when I shapeshift, but I can’t walk in these heels. How the hell’s that fair?”

​

“It’s in the hips,” Abrashoff said to Qinisa from Terra’s other side, matter of fact. 

​

“How do you know that?” Terra asked, not sure if she should be impressed or intensely curious. The captain shot her a brief, small smile, blue eyes sparkling for a second. He was in his dress uniform, though they’d opted to put not-Cora in a slinky navy-blue dress and rather high heels for Father, to see what would happen. Qinisa had seemed game until he’d tried to walk in the getup. 

​

“I should have taken Father up on that stylist, but I like a dramatic entrance,” she said, rearranging one of her own curls fussily and admiring her entourage as they approached Thorne Manor. The rented Sirius groundcar couldn’t get close enough to drop them off at the door; the line of black business district cars, gleaming and problematically enormous and carrying the creme-de-la-creme of Sirius Base, was backed up all the way to the boulevard. 

​

“You don’t think he’s going to kiss me or something,” Qinisa asked, as if this idea had only just occurred to him.

 

“Don’t worry, Corporal,” Abrashoff said in an undertone. “I have my sidearm. I’ll protect your virtue.”

​

“Great,” Qinisa drawled. “Let me know where you find it.”

​

“Play nice, boys,” Terra reminded them, getting nervous as she saw the ornate frontage of Thorne Manor come into their eye line as they turned the easy, rounded corner of the district. She adjusted her dress, her stomach clenched tight and cold, as with an icy claw; she hadn’t been back here in years. The false painted sky and its eternal twilight; the fake cobblestone streets and the golden glow of false windows; the lampposts with their sullen orange LEDs; the pillars and ersatz bricks; the dream of an ancient European town on Earth—and the horrors and sorrows that played out in the sovereign manors on the other sides of those stately frontages.

​

Father had hired extra help for the evening; there were men in aubergine and golden livery opening car doors, helping ladies with their trains, taking invitations and sending runners with announcements and orders. Terra was tempted to steal down the steps below the frontage, to find and enter by the barren service entrance, as she had once done with her nannies and as a wayward teenager. All the service modules were connected at the bottom, extending downward off the base for several stories, and they formed an excellent labyrinthe in which to hide—even Father didn’t know his way around them.

​

When their little party made it to the front steps to the main doors, all false marble and gleaming imported mahogany, Terra walked right past a lesser member of the Oswine family and his date, only pausing to give Qinisa a chance to catch up—stairs were a new peril in the heels—before she showed the surprised doorman her invitation and its secure confirmation hash. 

​

He glanced at it, then back at her quickly, scanning the invitation to be sure it was real.

​

“Ms. Thorne,” he said, a little breathless. “We were expecting you earlier today to meet your stylist.” His eyes took in not-Cora, as well as Abrashoff. “I see you have one more guest than expected.”

​

“I invited him,” Terra said as if this were no big deal, though she immediately worried about the livelihood of the doorman when he had to deliver the news. 

​

“Captain Abrashoff of the ERS Medusa,” the captain volunteered in a confident voice. “Dr. Thorne has spoken so highly of her father—I very much wanted to meet him.”

​

The doorman maintained his manners admirably. “I’m sure Mr. Thorne will be honored you graced his little party with your presence, Captain,” he said, looking again at not-Cora. “And this is the lieutenant commander, I trust?”

​

Qinisa seemed keen not to give the game away, or maybe he was getting nervous, but either way, he kept quiet, just standing there prettily and letting that speak for itself. 

​

“As requested,” Terra told the doorman, urging him with her eyes. He plainly had instructions, had plainly been told to tell Father that “Sora” was here, the moment she arrived. The whole thing made Terra sick to her stomach. Where was Adelaide? Did she know about any of this? How was Terra going to stop her from getting hurt? 

​

“Do you mind waiting here for a moment, Ms. Thorne?” the doorman asked, some meaningful communication in his eye. “I’d like to inform him that you’re here. He and your sister are on the grand staircase.”

​

Grateful to him, Terra nodded and swallowed as he turned away and slipped into the frontage door, which masked the airlock of the foyer module in the manor proper. Once she was locked inside, she might as well be on a separate starbase.

​

“Don’t lock your knees,” Abrashoff whispered to Qinisa behind her. “You’re swaying.”

​

“When’s the most ladylike moment to go for the buffet, d’you think?” Qinisa asked back. “You officers learn that in finishing school?”

​

Terra was too nervous to tell them to knock it off; if anything, the banter was helping to calm her down, if only marginally. She shot them a warning look to gird their loins, and they both straightened, Abrashoff nodding to her, but she couldn’t interpret his look. 

​

The doorman returned, even more out of breath than before, eyes dodging again to not-Cora before fixing on Terra.

​

“He’s expecting you. He’s very pleased—he asked me to tell you that.” He paused. “Truly—I’ve never seen him this pleased, and I’ve worked here many times over the years.”

​

There was a sudden, unbidden explosion of warmth, joy and pride in Terra’s stomach, before the bottom fell out and she remembered she hadn’t brought him what he wanted. It would all be over soon; his disappointment and anger would erupt, and she’d again be a failure, unworthy, ungrateful.

​

Still, she practically floated into the open airlock on the wave of her father’s approbation, the door so ornately decorated, its true purpose hidden cleverly from view. Nothing had changed, not in the long coatroom, where liveried men took the synthetic silk wraps and faux fur coats gently from off the shoulders of the Committee wives and daughters, tucked away the tacky sequined shrugs and the secondhand suit jackets of the tycoons’ nubile young arm candy. 

​

The doorman led Terra’s group past all of this quickly, as if on instructions from Father to get them into the main foyer as soon as possible. Terra wanted to imagine he was excited to see her, but Nanny Bertram’s letter kept tumbling around in her mind. He wants to see Cora.

​

“Go, go,” the doorman urged the two footmen on either side of the double doors into the main foyer. They opened the doors quickly, and Terra heard a booming voice announce them.

​

“Ms. Terra Thorne and her guests, Captain Patton Abrashoff and Lieutenant-Commander Sora Kuromoto!”

​

Keen, shark-like eyes turned and fell upon them—men of the Committee, tycoons, businessmen and women, the titans of Sirius, glancing off Terra and then falling on Qinisa—Cora—no doubt on Sora, as they thought her to be, whoever she really was. There was recognition in the room, anticipation, like spectators at a blood sport, thick and hot and waiting for the next turn.

​

Terra’s eyes were immediately caught by the main staircase, though, and the figures of her father and sister. Father had placed himself at the great landing where the two mirroring sides of the staircase spiraled away in twin sweeping helixes. He wore a suit of white synthetic silk, his mustache and beard dark and immaculate, eyes flickering and silver, not a day older than the last time she’d seen him. He paid good Versa to make sure of it.

“Sissy!!!” Adelaide squealed beside him, and Terra’s throat filled with joy. Adelaide wore a Torelli dress of glittering silver, and in her arms she held a purring mass of teal fur.

​

“Honored guests,” Father said to everyone, voice brimming with pride. “My daughter is come home at last.”

~*~

Dr. Thorne ran for her sister before Patton could do anything to stop her, though he wasn’t sure what he could do at this point. The crowd—definitely mafia, organized crime, the business leaders of Sirius and most of the powerful people the station could provide—had fixed their eyes on Qinisa beside him while clapping eerily. Qinisa, poor man, now seemed incredibly nervous under the spotlight of that much attention; he had the fantastic shapeshifting power to be an amazing spy, but he was a shockingly simple and honest man at heart, and he found it difficult to pretend to be someone he wasn’t.

​

Mr. Thorne had his gray eyes fixed on Qinisa, never straying once while he strode down the stairs with some drama, dreamlike, as if he had played this moment over and over in his mind, and his attention was entirely arrested. Patton knew the man was seeing Sora, the original Sora, whoever she was, and everyone in this crowd was seeing her too. Hunger burned in their eyes—hunger and revenge—but not in Thorne’s. 

​

They were glittering, and it was only as the man got closer that Patton realized that the light was glinting off unshed tears. As Thorne and his daughter came close to passing on the stairs, he stopped her with an arm, taking his eyes off Sora for a moment, long enough to embrace Dr. Thorne for several seconds. He said something to her, so quiet that much of the room couldn’t hear, but Patton fixed his eyes on Montgomery Thorne’s lips, trying to read them. He definitely caught, You brought her back to me, before Thorne let his daughter go and continued his trek across the enormous foyer to the person he clearly believed to be Sora.

​

The man had to be older than Patton, at least sixty, but he was terrifyingly well-preserved, looking Patton’s junior by fifteen years. There was a faint, vaguely cruel wrinkle on one side of his mouth, almost imperceptible, no smile lines at the corners of his eyes.

​

He made it to “Sora,” immediately cupping her face on either side with both hands to survey her. Qinisa was evidently so taken aback by his current situation that he’d bestowed on Cora’s face a blank, doe-eyed expression, one good enough to carry the moment in whatever twisted romance Montgomery Thorne had crafted for the occasion, in his own mind or otherwise. 

​

“There you are,” Thorne breathed. “She did such an amazing job—you’re absolutely perfect. Just the way I remember you. Possibly better for the waiting.”

​

Thorne placed one hand on the back of her head and kissed her then, like a man taking a long-promised drink of water in the desert. Qinisa dodged panicked eyes in Patton’s direction, but miraculously, he didn’t pull away; it gave Patton time to process the tableau, look for clues, and tamp down on his own sudden desire to get his people the fuck out of here, as the horror of the situation started to hit him in ever-larger waves. It was only the memory of what Qinisa could do and the protection afforded by his own uniform—and his desire to get to the bottom of this, for Cora’s sake, if not for Dr. Thorne’s—that stayed him, kept him rooted in place. 

​

Thorne pulled out of the kiss at last, then whispered in Sora’s ear, just loud enough that Patton could hear.

“I’ve made sure Kourik Oswine is here, love,” he said. “See? I did promise I’d deliver him eventually. How shall we proceed?”

​

Qinisa’s mouth was still slightly ajar, and now he was on the spot. “Uh—Kourik Oswine. That’s amazing.” 

This was plainly convincing enough for the moment—Thorne was riding too high to notice any hesitation. He placed an arm around her waist with practiced ease, as if this were not the first time they had fit together at a party, two pieces in a puzzle. He turned to Patton with the eyes of a contented house cat after a large meal, complacent and happy, extending a hand graciously.

​

“Captain Abrashoff,” he said, smiling, full of surface charm. “I hear you’ve been looking after my girls. You’re very welcome to our home.” He glanced at Qinisa, who had a thousand-yard stare right now, eyes fixed on something past Patton on the far wall. “I hope you won’t mind if I keep Sora past curfew tonight. I admit, I don’t know how outings work for service members.”

​

Patton shook Thorne’s hand, already wishing for a shower. 

​

“That’s up to her,” Patton said, unable to keep a little darkness out of his tone.

​

Thorne kissed Qinisa on the ear; the poor man visibly fought the twitch of a wince.

​

“Oh, I know what her choice will be—isn’t that right, darling?” He turned to her, voice dropping to a whisper again. “I missed you so damn much—you have no idea what things have been like here without you. I wish you had at least written to me.”

​

“I… I missed you… too,” Qinisa whispered, now completely out of his depth. “Montgomery.”

​

Thorne stopped, his face changing, freezing. Patton’s stomach dropped, and his hand twitched towards his sidearm. His field of vision seemed to narrow, tightening on Thorne and Qinisa, and everything became sharp, cold, focused. Where was Dr. Thorne? She had ushered her sister somewhere, off to a safe distance, before the inevitable blow-up. 

​

In a sudden motion, Thorne pushed Qinisa from him a couple inches, then caught him again by the upper arm, pulling him back in close with a vice-like grip, drawing their faces together.

​

“What did you call me?” His eyes searched Sora’s face, flickering over her features quickly, as if sensing some sort of wrongness—something even Patton couldn’t detect. After all, Patton knew Cora, and this man was looking for Sora. What little piece of ineffable Sora-ness was Cora, or Qinisa’s facsimile of her, missing to a trained eye? Or perhaps Thorne could simply detect Qinisa under the disguise, could feel the unease and awkwardness and the fervent wish to be anywhere else. 

​

“Sorry,” Qinisa said, voice dropping a little into the next octave down, batting Cora's eyelashes in a way Patton found nauseating. “My apologies. Master?”

​

Patton winced. Well—that was the dressing gong for the party if he’d ever heard one.

​

Thorne's face had frozen with rejection and rage, and he raised his other hand; Patton worried he might strike Qinisa across the face, but instead the man just snapped his fingers, impressively loud.

​

There was a sudden frisson in the air, a tautness of expectation, before a rush and mass of activity broke over them like a wave, with a kind of exhalation, a collective sigh of relief. Patton’s hand fell to his sidearm and he backed away, already noticing Qinisa’s skin beginning to glow.

​

Thugs burst out of the crowd, enormous enforcers with cybernetic arms and rifles, going for Qinisa. 

​

“You know where to take her,” Thorne said to his enforcers, his voice hard. “Sora obviously has some recollecting to do—if she’s Sora at all, and not some abomination programmed by my wastrel of a daughter.”

​

Patton got over his shock that they would do this in front of him very quickly, as he heard the airlock of the manor’s main module slam shut, and still others around the perimeter of the foyer began to close as well, their workings cleverly hidden by curtains and mantles and hangings. 

​

“Sorry you’re caught in the middle of this, Captain,” Thorne told him, eyes like stone. “A little medicine, a hospital bed, and a knot on the head won’t spoil your week, I hope.”

​

Patton said nothing. As a younger man, he’d have sworn, vowed to make the bastard regret this, but why give anything away? Why give him anything to work with? 

​

Just as the thugs closed on Qinisa, he burst into a corona of white light, making them stumble backwards with Thorne, shielding their eyes. Patton had to do so as well, half-blinded with it, sparkles across his vision like a sheet of stars. 

​

A few seconds later, there was a tremendous animal roar, and a giant black bear stood on powerful hind legs where Sora had been before. It was the largest bear Patton had ever seen or heard of, its claws gleaming with steel, and it smacked one of the nearest thugs away with the enormous swipe of one powerful paw.

​

They scattered, the crowd screaming and running, but Qinisa pursued, pawing another enforcer into a champagne fountain.

​

Thorne whirled back to the staircase, to the place where his eldest daughter had been. 

​

"You little fool!" he shouted, as two smaller enforcers pulled him off to safety. "You’re worse than a traitor—you can’t even get betraying me right! What have you done?!" He turned back, eyes fixed on bear-Qinisa, stunned and dismayed, even as his enormous thugs conveyed Thorn from the room. Patton could practically see it in Thorne’s expression: the victory of the gain and the crushing defeat of loss, all crashing over him at once, the soaring high followed so quickly by the debilitating low. He’d held some deep desire within his grasp, and it had flown through them like so much liquid water.

​

Once the entire room had descended into chaos, and airlocks were opening again in the panic of stampede, Qinisa fell onto all four paws and lumbered past Patton, tossing his fuzzy bear head.

​

“Well done,” Patton told him, looking around for Dr. Thorne. “Where do you—hey. Hey! Qinisa!”

​

Qinisa was very much not listening to him, ambling over to the long buffet table, fixing quickly on a huge platter of meatballs in some sort of red sauce. He began shoveling them into his mouth with both paws, using them like gigantic trowels.

​

Patton just shook his head, leaving Qinisa to handle himself, before he spotted Dr. Thorne gazing at him from behind the decorative balustrade of the ruinously expensive grand staircase. She stood, waving him over hurriedly now that she had the opportunity, and—after a moment’s hesitation, glancing at Qinisa mowing his way methodically through the buffet—Patton trotted up the stairs, hand still on his sidearm.

​

“Come on!” she urged him. “I’ve got to go to my father’s study. I can’t miss this opportunity, not while he’s holed up in his safe room.”

​

“I’ll watch your back and get us an exit,” Patton assured her. “Lead the way.”

​

Behind them, he heard another snuffling roar from Qinisa, warning someone away from him—or maybe the meatballs—before Patton and Dr. Thorne disappeared further into the manor.

~*~

Patton stood over Qinisa in the door of the small lavatory in their transport off-base, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, wondering where at this point Qinisa could be keeping this much material to throw it up so violently.

​

“Hey—everything okay back there?” the pilot called, taking a moment away from concentrating on the hyperspace pathway to check on the absolutely belligerent sounds of retching coming from the back of his transport.

​

“Just a little too much champagne for my friend here,” Patton called. He was fairly certain Qinisa had stuck his enormous bear snout into the champagne fountain before he’d escaped from Thorne Manor. “Get it all out, Corporal. You’re going to be okay.”

​

“It’s not champagne,” Qinisa insisted. “We’ve got a volume problem here.” He seemed like he wanted to elaborate, before he heaved again. Patton buried a sigh, increasingly tired of this damn day.

​

“Guys—he has contracts for the Machine Sector!” Dr. Thorne called, brimming with excitement now.

​

“You’re supposed to be looking for information about Cora,” Patton reminded her. 

​

“Right. Looking.” Dr. Thorne sounded not the least bit chastened as she sorted through data storage and various work tablets stolen from Thorne’s study. “This looks like a model from 2152….”

​

“Great, that’s the target year,” Patton encouraged her over his shoulder, before looking back at Qinisa. “Need some water?”

​

“Not… more… volume….” Qinisa gasped after the last vicious bout, hitting the flush and sitting back against the close wall of the lavatory, his face clammy and sweating. “You know how many calories it takes to turn into a three-meter-tall grizzly bear with steel claws?”

​

Patton considered. “Well. How many calories are there in three-hundred Republic Meatballs in barbeque sauce?”

​

Qinisa chuffed once in tired amusement, eyes fluttering shut. “That might be the last of… wait. Jinxed myself.”

He leaned back over the facilities and was at it again.

​

“You did a good job, Corporal,” Patton told him between bouts. “I’ll come check on you in a few minutes. You’ll be alright.”

​

“Sure. Once I’m done draining meatballs out of my left leg, or wherever the hell I’m keeping ‘em,” Qinisa agreed, apparently also in the dark about how his shapeshifter metabolism worked.

​

“Captain—I think I found something,” Dr. Thorne said in a curiously dead voice. Patton approached her spot, where Dr. Thorne had spread bits of expensive personal civilian tech around the booth and table of the little transport, under its warm hanging light. He didn’t touch the tablet, but he waited patiently for her to relay what she’d found at a safe distance.

​

“Go ahead. Everything alright?” he asked, as if simply offering support, his clasped hands hiding his agitation.

​

Dr. Thorne looked up from the tablet. “I found a file—transferred from a data broker. It’s the activation phrase.”

​

“The what?” Patton asked, feeling as though she were having a conversation slightly past him. 

​

Dr. Thorne began gathering things together. “I have to verify—I’ll tell you for sure back on the ship. But he might be responsible for me activating Cora, instead of the Star Navy.”

​

Which means someone in SNI sold it, Patton immediately put together, but said nothing out loud, not wanting to give the transport pilot any specific information, just in case.

​

“Good work,” Patton said in an undertone, tamping down on his emotions for the moment—he wasn’t even sure what this meant, not yet. But he knew of someone who might be able to shed some light on matters for him.  “Let’s get back to Earth and regroup.”