"Did they leave anything behind?" Sci still had a blank expression, but his voice had an edge to it. He had known that the team had left for Jerusalem, but he was hoping they'd left some information behind them.
Reth chuckled. "Yes, actually, they did. She's with Iris."
Sci blinked slowly once or twice. "She? Agent Blade?"
"Well, no, actually. Apparently..."
As she disembarked, Nat remembered to make a note in her records. Standard transit time from Terra to Coruscant might be four days, three hours, and five minutes, but apparently the cartographers cleared for such concerns at the New Republic's center had charted a different route back, one that made use of some natural phenomena. Also, the Major had apparently done something very inadvisable to the ship's engines. Reading David Weber again, she thought. The upshot of those factors was that the trip back from the capital took about a standard day.
Sylvana, Arrek, Emily, and Bethany were just leaving the _Gaia_--having been delayed by Sylvana's reawakening from self-inflicted sedation--just in time to hear "She's what?" Sci's voice was not raised, but it was cold. Very, very cold.
"I want to see her," Sci continued.
"Major, do you think..." The other voice, one Bethany recognized as the leader of the Mendellian Armed Forces, General Reth Gilkrad Nivag, was cut off.
"Yes. Where is Iris? ...Thank you." Footsteps faded as General Nivag appeared in one of the doorways.
Emily waved to him. "Is Sci all right?"
"I don't know," said Nivag, looking slightly worried, which was rare for the prepetually happy General. "I just told him about..."
Nat rocketed away as fast as her droid wheels could carry her. Not for the first time, she cursed the bad circumstances which had led to the discontinuation of Industrial Automaton's droid-mounted repulsor-rocketry in the R2-line.
Times like this I wish I could fly, she thought.
"Iris?" Iris Sewallei looked up from her busy work to see Major Scifantasy standing in the doorway. She knew the Major, of course, but he was usually very busy, and he'd been away recently. What brought him here?
"Hello, Major. This is an unexpected pleasure."
"Not yet. I understand that Becki left something in your care?" Iris gestured to the bundle on the table in front of her. "May I...?" She nodded.
Sci slowly walked over and regarded the week-old baby. As Becki had already observed to Iris, this baby was singularly beautiful, and right now she was smiling contentedly.
It was a shame that only Iris Sewallei saw what happened next, mainly because she was at the time unaware of the event's significance. Major Scifantasy, who had not so much as smirked in days, sat down, with tears in his eyes, and smiled a deep wonder-filled smile. "She's very beautiful."
"Yes, she is."
He took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. "I really needed that, Iris."
"I can only imagine."
"It was all so much. I was beginning to wonder why I even kept going, if all it brought was pain and death. Was it worth it? Then I see something like this, and I remember the millions of people like her in the world, and it all makes sense again. I do this because it needs to be done, for their sakes. And because either I'll do it, or someone I trust less than myself will do it."
Iris' brain reeled at the import of what he was saying. But she stopped thinking about it; the issue was apparently settled, and he was still talking.
"You know, with the team back on the hunt, I suddenly have some extra free time. I still need to talk with Thayer--" Iris's eyes darkened for a moment, but cleared quickly--"but I shouldn't be too busy for at least the next day or two. I suddenly thought of a great way to spend the time..."
Nat finally arrived at the nursery; the stairs had been hard for a droid to navigate in a hurry, and Sci had clearly been running at top speed.
She silently looked in to see one of the truly oddest sights she could think of. The Major was sitting in a chair, eye-to-eye with a infant human female on a table. He was making "goo" noises at her, while she simply smiled. The Major had a face-splitting grin, and there was a quality to his voice--happiness--she hadn't heard in days. Suddenly Iris Sewallei walked up, blocking Nat's sightline. "This is how you do it, Major," she said. "Hold the baby like this, and the bottle like this..."
"Oh, I see," said the Major.
If Nat were human, she mused, her response would be to turn away from the door with a contented sigh. She wasn't human, but what the hell. She did it anyway.