“You don’t understand,” Cygnus told Senator Ursa frankly. “Andra is every bit as powerful as I am. Nearly all of my concentration is taken simply keeping her balanced.”

“How did we not know of this powerful psion?” Ursa questioned. He was not particularly unreasonable, but he was somewhat fixated on details he didn’t actually need to have. He had hired Cygnus originally, but with the invasion being what it was, Cygnus ended the contract. He couldn’t be distracted playing bodyguard to a politician when his talents were badly needed somewhere else. “She came in with the Edge people, didn’t she?”

The ship trembled. Normally, such a quake meant that they were under attack. This time, it meant something very different.

Ursa cursed and grabbed for the wall.

Cygnus closed his eyes, and focused on the turbulent orange ocean, where he cradled his syzygy’s broken mind.

Andra was asleep, but as she often was since her return, she was having a nightmare.

(You’re asleep,) he told her, sending cool green vines through her dream, of crystal bodies screaming into her thoughts, until silver blossoms bloomed through the waves of panicked orange. (You’re safe. You’re in my quarters.)

(Cyg?)

(Yes. Are you awake now?)

She was. He felt her open her eyes, the brush of eyelashes on his cheek even though there were a dozen decks and fourteen thousand human minds between them. He pressed a glimmer of red between them, shining with gold at the heart, and felt her smile.

All at once, she was gone completely, only the faintest thread of their connection, hard-won and fought for, lingering to let him know that she was alive and safe.

“What was that?”

Ursa hadn’t been on the ship since Andra’s return. He didn’t know that these tremors were progress. That in the first days, everything not nailed down lifted off the floor. Mind-storms blasted through the rooms, and the ship, one of the mightiest still flying, was nearly ripped apart.

In desperation, Cygnus and Andra wove their minds together during one of her clear moments, when she could think and her clever mechanical knowledge offered a solution.

She needed a ground and he was, for once, the stable one between them. He was able to share the strain as they painstakingly shored up her shattered control.

Broken things could be mended, like an old ship that never should have been able to fly but for the love and grit of one dedicated mechanic from an Edge Asteroid Base. Andra was determined in everything she did.

And before she was anything else, she was a survivor.

(Cygnus, Andra’s with me.)

It was Indus, Cyg’s right hand and second in command. Since they discovered Andra’s tendency to vanish completely, Indus took to keeping an eye on her whenever she was outside Cyg’s quarters. This was a reassurance to all of them, as Andra found the presence of such an open mind calming.

Indus rarely thought something he didn’t immediately say, and was spectacularly terrible at hiding his thoughts. He was also completely loyal to Cygnus, and no one else.

So he made sure to be around when Andra wanted to get out of the rooms, and he checked in with Cygnus if she was having one of her ‘blank’ spells.

(Where are you?)

(Down in the hanger. At that poor old project ship.)

Of course. Andra’s hobby would always be tinkering, and the focus helped to restore her control.

(I will join you when I’m done here.)

“So, she says she found some way to disrupt the attacks?”

Ursa was, sensibly, focused on the war. He watched Cygnus with measured caution, but never tried to hide his thoughts behind inane exercises.

“Yes,” Cygnus said, and poured himself a glass of water. When he offered one to Ursa, the Senator shook his head. “They are beings of crystal, and they can be disrupted by sonic weapons.”

“Those aren’t much good against the kind of ships they use. We tried it in the early days.”

(Cyg, we’re coming to you. Andra wants to talk to Ursa.)

That was… not ideal, but it was her right, and she was the one with first-hand knowledge. Memories could be corrupted.

(Alright.)

A minute later, the door slid open, and Andra stepped in. She was clad in one of his shirts, and her own engineering pants.

Her smile was otherworldly, but her eyes were resolute.

“We’re the answer,” she said, joining the conversation as if she had always been a part of it. Most likely, she was, at least partly. They still weren’t entirely sure what thoughts were hers and which she was picking up from the people around her. Laced together as they were, it was Cyg’s thoughts she most often shared. “Psionics.Telepaths particularly.”

“How so?” Ursa asked, not entirely sure how to respond to her sudden entrance. “We have been employing our psions as effectively as possible, but there aren’t enough to go around.”

“We’ve been fighting ships, and losing because they can build more faster than we can destroy them,” Andra said, and smiled a terrible, poisonous smile that shimmered in Cyg’s mind, noxious red-purple. “So now, we’re going to target Queens, instead.”