Blood Star Base was a fully functional city. Mobile, powered by great engines that carried it through pace to wherever it needed to be, the psionic base was home to many of the greatest psions to ever live. The Blood Stars were notoriously insular. They had to be. Everyone on their base was psionic. Many had the most common aspect, telepathy. There were very few secrets in a place where thoughts were shared as freely as air.

For Cygnus, it was a relief. Blood Star Base had been his home since almost before his earliest memories. Back then, some wandering Blood Star found a starving child on the streets, felt the strength of his mind, and carried him up into the stars.

Psionics belonged with their own kind, after all. They all needed training, and the less common abilities were difficult to train without the right sort of setup.

Even the more common, telepathy and telekenisis among them, needed a light touch. A small child throwing a tantrum was one thing. It was a very different matter when that child could throw a table across the room with their mind.

Cygnus, of course, had been in a different class, but that came of having, in some measure, every psionic ability currently on record, including the teleportation that was long thought to be a legend. Now, as he walked off their little transport, he took a breath and smiled. Blood Star Base always smelled faintly of incense from the meditation chambers. Classes of new students flitted here and there, guided by their teachers, and older psionics drifted past in twos and threes. For anyone else, the room would seem oddly quiet, but to Cygnus, it was filled with voices. On Blood Star Base, telepathy was as common as spoken speech.

It was good to be home.

Beside him, Andra seemed to be trying to see everything at once. Her mind glittered with curiosity and mirrored his own quiet joy to be home. Deeper under the joy was the crippling grief for her own home, and the knowledge that he would never see it anywhere but her memories. Cygnus sank into the sadness and shot it through with silver glimmers to catch her attention.

(Welcome to Blood Star Base,) he murmured into her mind. They had talked about the base before, and she had seen it in his memories, but it was good to see it in person. (We have meetings later, but for now, we can go right up to our rooms.)

(Our?) the word shimmered warm orange-gold between them. (Is that how it is?)

(If you want,) he replied, and took her hand. She laughed softly. (There are plenty of empty rooms if you want your own space.)

(You’re not getting rid of me that easily. Better be ready for my projects all over the place.)

(I don’t mind.)

As they passed through the main hall, Cygnus paused here and there to trade light mind-touches here and there, a psionic’s greeting between friends. He didn’t have many close friends, or indeed more than three, counting Andra, but Blood Star fostered easy companionship between everybody, and there was a general sense of fondness when one of their own returned home. They were curious about Andra, but the simple explanation that she was his syzygy, brought an excitement he didn’t expect.

Apparently, they had been worried about him for some time, and more so when his mysterious new Edge girl vanished completely and he went on a roaring rampage of revenge against the invading aliens.

He couldn’t exactly blame them for being worried. If he had been in his right mind at the time, he probably would have been worried too.

It wasn’t until they made it up to his rooms, now theirs that they encountered one of the very few psi-null people of the base.

Cassiopeia had been the head cook for all of Blood Star Base for as long as Cygnus could remember, and she had barely changed in all that time. Sure, there was a little more grey at her temples now, and a few more wrinkles, but she stood straight and proud as always. She had been one of the first to take him under his wing when he first arrived at the base as a child, and was as close to a mother as he could remember having.

She also, as it happened, already adored Andra. Ever the determined force of nature, Peia had heard about his rampage, and Andra’s escape, and immediately shipped herself straight to the Human Flagship, marched her way into the kitchen, and got to work.

“Hello sweetling,” she said to Andra, and opened her arms for a hug. “Welcome to Blood Star.”

“Hi Peia,” Andra said. She rarely touched people anymore, but it took a stout soul to refuse one of Peia’s hugs. Cygnus smiled to see two of his three nearest and dearest so fond of each other. “We just got in. How did you get here so fast?”

“Oh I hear all the gossip,” Peia said cheerfully, stood on her toes to kiss Cygnus’s cheek, he bent so she could reach, and ushered them for the table. “One of the benefits of being psi-null. Everyone worries that I’ll be left out.”

“You love it,” Cygnus murmured to her, and she waved a hand at him. “You didn’t have to make all this.”

“Bite your tongue. As if I’m letting my boy come home to anything but a good, home-cooked meal.”

Peia showed her love by feeding people. Cygnus was long used to it, and secretly enjoyed the habit.

“We’re not staying long,” Andra said quietly when they were seated and eating. “There’s been a development. It may take all of Blood Star to face it.”

“The precogs have ben in a tizzy for the last week,” Peia said more seriously. “But no one can get anything clear. Everything’s in motion.”

“I got something clear,” Cygnus told her grimly. “The fleet is already mobilizing, but without us, they don’t stand a chance.”

“That serious?”

“That serious.”

Peia was quiet for a while and nodded once, definitively.

“Alright,” she said, and pushed herself to her feet. “You two eat and wash. I’ll see about getting everyone to the main hall in two hours, and we’ll see what we can do about the serious that brought you all the way home from the front lines.”