Page 50 of Music of the Ocean

Indigo watched the screen go black. The silence in the chamber lasted several seconds before Callie snorted and clapped her hands. “By all the gods, you backed them down!”

Saxby let out a slow breath and turned to Indigo. He opened his mouth, started to say something, and stopped. He hung in the water, then pressed his palms flat against the table. The membrane between his fingers shimmered faintly, then curled as he balled his hands into fists.

Callie dropped down next to him and propped her chin on her hands. “Sit. And eat, please. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

Saxby drifted into a seat, then reached for another orb. He hurriedly ate it, then grabbed another and stuffed it whole into his mouth.

Indigo stood motionless at the wall, bioluminescence fading as he absorbed the stillness of the room. The tactical display faded to a slow, pulsing blue. He turned and regarded Saxby with an unreadable expression, then nodded in acknowledgment.

“The Federation will not return,” Indigo said. “At least, not while the Fleet Admiral is alive.”

Callie laughed. “Not if they have any sense, they won’t. And even if they do, the city is ready for them.”

Saxby made a vague sound of agreement. He wiped the remnants of blue from his chin, then slumped against the table, his head down and arms sprawled. He stayed like that, motionless.

Callie looked at Indigo. “You know the first days are always the worst. He’ll need rest soon.”

Indigo nodded as a sense of unease grew within him. It was not only exhaustion that had settled over Saxby, but a kind of hollowness. It was as if the struggle to maintain composure before the Federation, and the aftermath of their decision, had drained him of what little reserve of energy he had left.

The blue pigment still stained the corners of Saxby’s lips, and his gills fluttered unevenly along the sides of his neck. He had not looked this fragile even when he’d first arrived.

The fact that a species sent spaceships to the stars but failed to protect their own from the simplest of molecular rewiring was absurd. Which was the whole point of this, was it not?

He felt a stab of anger on his Saxby’s behalf as he reflected on the consequences of the transmission. They had gambled by revealing themselves to the Federation. The confrontation with authority. The uncertain mercy of that distant admiral.

It had been a vortex of uncertainty and risk, and Saxby had been at the epicenter, forced to improvise every word, every emotion. Indigo admired Saxby’s resolve, but he also saw the cracks beneath the veneer of composure.

Saxby had played the part impeccably, but now the aftermath was settling over him like a weighty shroud.

He dimmed his bioluminescence to a gentle, reassuring glow. He knew Saxby would not want to be pitied. But Indigo also understood that, in this moment, Saxby’s greatest need was not for independence but for acceptance. Help. Guidance. Indigo would provide that happily.

He could see Callie watching them both, her gaze flickering between Saxby’s bowed head and Indigo’s rigid stance. Her empathy was obvious. She had always been quick to sense distress in others, and now she cast a look of challenge at Indigo, as if to ask what he intended to do next.

Indigo swam to Saxby’s side and rested his hand on Saxby’s slumped shoulder. It was a touch meant to anchor, not restrain. He braced himself to be rejected, but the moment Saxby felt the contact, he shuddered and inhaled sharply, as if Indigo had reached him across a chasm.

“Come,” Indigo said.

Saxby straightened, then let Indigo guide him back through the corridors. Callie gathered the uneaten orbs and stowed them in a pouch at her belt. She waved as they left.

The swim back to their quarters was quiet. Indigo’s hand remained on Saxby’s shoulder, steadying him each time he drifted or faltered. Once inside their chamber, Indigo helped Saxby to the sleeping alcove.

Saxby tumbled onto the mesh, eyes already closing. He didn’t speak as Indigo settled next to him, a tentacle gently wrapping around Saxby’s wrist. The wall display powered down, leaving the room awash in darkness.

Indigo gazed at the wavering interplay of lights along the curved ceiling above. He did not move, did not even flex his limbs as he listened to the gentle pulse of Saxby’s breathing beside him.

The city’s entire network of sentience and memory that guarded this place had settled into a new equilibrium, one that thrummed with quiet relief.

They had contained the crisis, but the residue of adrenaline and echo of threats lingered in the neural net. The only noise was the faint, almost imperceptible churn of the city’s life support, the water here cycling in complex patterns that both cooled and oxygenated.

Indigo’s thoughts returned, again and again, to the confrontation. He had replayed every syllable, every flicker of facial expression in the Fleet Admiral’s transmission, every microtwitch of Saxby’s hands and gills.

He did not regret a single decision he had made. Indigo had entered that exchange armed with the certainty that he would do, say, or improvise anything necessary to protect what was his, even if it meant revealing more of himself to the Federation than he would have ever allowed in years past.

Still, as he lay there, he felt the afterimage of the day’s tension crackling along his neural filaments, a kind of phantom heat that would not easily dissipate.

Would the Federation really leave them alone? He hoped they did. And there might be some measure of respect mixed with the fear and confusion this time.

Fleet Admiral Soulsop, in her last moments on the screen, had looked not only angry, but almost impressed. Not that it mattered. Indigo would defend this planet as he always had.