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Kuen hid his grin as Gaspare talked to Emele. “He wants to what?” Gaspare asked.

“You heard me, Gaspare. I’m not repeating myself,” Emele snapped.

“When?” Gaspare asked.

“After spring planting, so he’s not in the way,” Emele said.

“He’ll be in the way no matter when he comes, except during winter,” Fiera muttered from where she was lacing up her work boots.

“Yes, but at least he’s not coming in the middle of the sheer madness that is spring planting,” Kuen said.

“All right. I suppose my husband and I can be ready for him then,” Gaspare said. “Em, give our father my comm code so he can call ahead and give me at least a little warning as to when he’s about to land so I know. That way I can have food waiting.”

“I will,” Emele said. Kuen could see her expression softening. “Gaspare, he’s – he’s different. I don’t know what changed him, but he’s definitely not the same man as he was six years ago.”

“That’s a relief,” Gaspare said. “Thanks for the heads up, Em.”

“He actually asked me to tell you,” Emele said. “I’ll let you know what else is going on, if I can find out. I know there’s more, but you know him and his secrets.”

Gaspare snickered. “Father will carry his secrets to the grave with him, if it makes him happy, Em. But I appreciate it.” Emele waved and the call ended. Gaspare stood and stretched. He turned and found the other three watching. “I know you heard.”

“Of course we did. Emele is many things,” Fiera said. “Quiet isn’t among them.”

“Da, who’s coming after spring planting?” Pascal asked from where the children were playing.

“Your grandfather,” Gaspare said. “I haven’t spoken to him since before your daddy and I got married. There were some – some bad things that happened and we got very angry with each other. It sounds like he’s coming to say he’s sorry.”

“Is he a bad man?” Elian asked from where she worked on one of the new puzzle toys Keoni had made for her for Himostava.

“No,” Gaspare said.

“No,” Kuen said at the same time.

Daniel grinned. “He’s a good man, just not very good at telling people how he feels in an appropriate way.”

“Oh,” Elian said. “He needs better words.”

“Yes, yes he does,” Gaspare said ruefully.

Kuen choked back a laugh at his friend’s expression. “Gaspare, we’re going to check the greenhouse,” he said, indicating himself and Fiera. “Eli still needs his medicine. Neven came by this morning while you were sweeping the paths. He says Eli should be able to come down tomorrow.”

“I’ll bet that made Eli feel better,” Gaspare said.

“Eli was upset he couldn’t come down today, but Nev wanted him in bed one more day just to be safe,” Phelix said with a laugh. “I promised him I’d bring him one of his new puzzles though, so if you want to take one up to him when you dose him, he’d appreciate it.”

“Sounds good. Maybe I’ll tell Eli a story or two while I’m up there,” Gaspare said.

“Good idea,” Phelix said. Kuen recognized the same thing Phelix did – Gaspare’s need to be away from everyone for a few minutes while he processed the fact that his father, a man who’d brutally cut him off six years earlier, would be arriving on their doorstep in the spring. Kuen knew Gaspare was still very broken about his father’s rejection and seeing Fabrice Benoit again might cause some issues.

As soon as they were in the greenhouse, Fiera looked up at him. “Do we need to have Thea on standby for when Fabrice Benoit arrives on our doorstep?”

“Observant as always,” Kuen said, grimacing. “I’d say yes. Gaspare never really got over what that vapor brained slag pile did to him and right now I don’t know if he believes that he’s coming to apologize or make things worse. Em delivered the message, and she says there’s a change, but I don’t know that she believes it either.”

“People do change, Kuen.” This was said softly, thoughtfully. Kuen’s gaze focused on his tiny wife’s face. She was staring into nothingness, a sign she was thinking deeply. “Look at my da. He was all but a monster last time we saw him. He was a mass murderer, tried to kill you, even threatened to kill me and I’m his favorite. Starfire, look what he did to those men and women when he found them on Zebrore. Look at what he’s doing for our girls. He’s raising them just as he would have raised me and Flicks, with the love and care I knew before he turned hard. Is it so hard to believe that, given a reason to change, Fabrice Benoit couldn’t do the same?”

“What reason did he have?” Kuen asked. Then he remembered what Daniel had told him. “The picture of Pascal and Gael he was shown.”

Fiera nodded. “Daniel also said Fabrice was talking to his antero family members. I’ll bet you a thousand credits the man didn’t even realize they were antero to begin with.”

“That’s a sucker bet. As against antero couples as he was? He’d probably just chalk their being together up as some odd family quirk and leave it at that,” Kuen said. “If I recall my lessons on family dynamics correctly, it was Esmerie’s older brother and an uncle of hers who were antero. I don’t remember the names, but it would be one of those two he’s talking to.”

“I don’t care about their names, Kuen,” Fiera said. “What matters is he started talking to these men instead of turning against them as he did Gaspare. He opened himself up to learning something new. I’ve been told again and again once you reach a certain age you stop wanting to expand your knowledge of the universe. My parents never did. Starfire, ma still takes classes when she can. That woman probably has more level two and three certs than any person I know. I think she’s even got a few level one certs too. Fabrice Benoit isn’t much younger than my ma and certainly has more time on his hands than she does. He’s showing them all that an old, retired soldier can still be relevant. That’s going to scare a lot of people. They don’t want men like him to be relevant. They want to forget them, to put them on a shelf and point to them as relics of some lost era or something.”

“Yes, but look at Seaton. She’s only in her fifties and is proving to be as much a thorn in the sides of the other members of the High Command as Fabrice Benoit is,” Kuen said.

“Yes, but it’s expected of the young,” Fiera said. “Make no mistake, Seaton’s young compared to the others. I mean, I don’t know how old Leone is but I’m sure he’s at least in his seventies or eighties. I can’t see them putting another as young as Seaton in.”

“We can ask Daniel when we go in, if you’re really curious,” Kuen said.

“I’d like to know,” Fiera said. “I know Aceves was in her nineties. Mercado is pushing her first century. Dartle should be about the same. Claasen is a decade past his first century mark. Fabrice Benoit should have had another thirty to forty years in the High Command but after the mess with Gaspare, they forced him out.”

“He probably started drinking because Em and Dori turned against him too at that point,” Kuen said. “Daniel told us about the point Gaspare was cut off was when those two openly started distancing themselves from him.”

“See, that longevity is one of the problems. These career officers who have been High Admirals for so long have lost touch not only with the people they command but also with the people they’re supposed to be serving,” Fiera said. “I think that’s why the High Command just gives in to the Assembly. It’s easier than challenging them, easier than thinking for themselves. They’ve grown so used to the idea of following orders that they’re blind to anything else, even if they think they’re the ones giving them.”

“I swear, my phoenix, that knack of yours,” Kuen said, shaking his head. “You have once again pointed out what no one else has seen, yet it makes perfect sense when you look at the High Command as a whole.”

“No one sees it because no one’s looking for it,” Fiera said. “I’m an outsider seeing it from a different point of view, that’s all.”

“Fiera Rezouac, there have been civilian and military experts alike trying to solve the problem with the High Command for close on to fifty years,” Kuen said. “None of them have been able to. You have at least identified what that problem is.”

Fiera’s cheeks turned as red as her hair. “There’s others who’ve probably figured it out, but haven’t said anything,” she muttered. “Not like you can criticize the CAF High Command in the Core without running into serious repercussions.”

“True,” Kuen said. “Yet you’d think out here in the Colonies someone would have noticed something. Yet all they’ve ever done is complain. No one’s ever pointed out the obvious.”

“Kuen, how many times have we overlooked something because it was the most obvious thing in the universe?” Fiera asked with an exasperated sigh.

“Far too many times to count,” Kuen said.

“So why would it be any different for someone else? I’m not that special, but I suppose I do have the habit of saying what people don’t usually expect me to,” Fiera said. She turned to the seedlings. “We’re supposed to be in here doing a job. Let’s get to it It’s not so warm yet that I want to be out here for much longer even in the greenhouse.”

“All right,” Kuen said. He could see that she was growing uncomfortable with the compliments. She usually did. He never understood why she didn’t appreciate compliments. He’d seen her stop conversations cold as the Blue Butterfly when the compliments flew too thick and fast for her comfort.

“Kuen, do you believe the people we surround ourselves with shape us into who we become?” Fiera asked, carefully pouring a measured amount of water and nutrients into the corn.

“Of course I do. There is a reason I still struggle sometimes to understand you and your family, my phoenix,” Kuen said. “I was raised by the military. I have no real concept of family. Yet here I am, settled in the middle of one of the biggest families I’ve ever met, and I have some very high expectations set on me that I am always afraid I’ll never meet. But your mother is a wonder and does a great deal to make me feel like one day I’ll be worthy of the love you give me.”

“Kuen Rezouac, you have been worthy of that love from the day I first said I love you to you,” Fiera said, looking up from her work.

“You can tell me that until the stars die, my phoenix. I will still struggle to believe it because for me love came with a price tag all my life. Affection – what little I got – always meant I had to perform better than anyone else, work harder than everyone, prove I was the best. That was how I was rewarded at the Academy,” Kuen said softly. There was real pain in his voice and Fiera stopped what she was doing to listen. “Gaspare and Nafisa understood that, and yet they required little of me other than my companionship. We guarded each others’ backs on missions and the trust we built up turned us into what passed for a family in the CAF. Then, to me at least, Nafisa betrayed that trust, and I was forced to sever my ties with her in the most brutal way the CAF could find. I distanced myself from Gaspare for a few months, did I ever tell you that?”

“No, you didn’t,” Fiera said.

Kuen nodded, not turning to look at her. “I retreated into myself. I took on solo missions, or missions with other teams so I didn’t have to work with him. I didn’t want to find myself in the unenviable position of having to kill him too. Then he cornered me one day and told me I was being an idiot.” He turned his head and she saw the bitter smile. “I was, and I admitted I’d missed him. We started spending time together again, along with a couple of others that had always been on the fringes of our little group. I always wondered if Gaspare had feelings for me that went beyond what was strictly allowed by the CAF, and only after he and Phelix got together did he admit to me that early on he did. I think Nafisa’s death changed both of us because he told me after that incident, he lost those feelings.”

“I am glad you two had each other, though. I shudder to think of the kind of brute you’d have been without Gaspare to knock some sense into your thick skull,” she said, teasing him a little.

Kuen snorted and went back to work. Fiera did the same. The two focused on the plants and soon everything was checked, watered, and fed. Kuen slipped up behind Fiera and wrapped his hand around hers – her fingers still barely fit across the breadth of his palm and up onto the first knuckle of his fingers – and she looked up into his deep grey eyes. “I am more grateful every day that you slapped me that night,” he said, smiling mischievously at her. “I would never have gotten to know Fiera Rezouac if you hadn’t, and I am more in love with the woman I married than I ever thought I could be.” He pulled her close and kissed her.

She returned the kiss with the same enthusiasm. “I love you, you vapor brained giant,” she told him when they came up for air.

Kuen chuckled and brushed his hand over her short-cropped hair. “There are times where I miss your long hair,” he said.

“I don’t. Can you imagine the nightmare it would be to take care of it out here?” she asked with a laugh. “Come on. Let’s get back inside. I want to make sure the littles aren’t driving Flicks insane.”

“I want to check on Gaspare,” Kuen said.

They went back inside. Phelix was buried under a pile of squirming children. “Twint, some help would be greatly appreciated,” he called, laughing.

“You go up, I’ll take care of this,” Fiera told Kuen. She waded into the pile and started tickling children while Kuen slipped upstairs.

Kuen found Gaspare sitting with Eli. “Is everything okay? I heard Phelix calling for help,” Gaspare said.

“Your other children have him pinned,” Kuen said. “Fury is handling it.”

“Ah, okay,” Gaspare said. “Eli and I were having story time and I wasn’t sure if I needed to go rescue him.”

“No, Fury will manage,” Kuen said. They heard Elian’s squeals. “It seems she’s resorting to tickling.”

“No fair,” Eli said with a scowl. “I want to play with Aunt Fury.”

“I know you do, Eli,” Gaspare said, patting his son’s blanket covered leg. “But your Uncle Neven says wait one more day and then you can go down. We don’t want you getting sick again, do we?”

“No,” Eli said with a great sigh. The squeals and laughter grew louder, and Eli scowled even more. “Not fair.”

“We’ll tell them that it’s not fair,” Kuen said.

“Okay,” Eli said. He yawned and settled down for a nap.

Kuen and Gaspare came down when the tickling storm subsided. “Eli is very discouraged right now,” Gaspare said with a ghost of a smile. “He wanted to come down and play with the others when he heard all the mad giggling.”

“Sorry,” Phelix said. “I got swarmed and needed Fury’s help to get unburied. We resorted to dirty tactics.”

“Did it have to be tickling?” Gaspare asked with a grin.

“Of course,” Phelix said.

“You utilize your resources when you’re outnumbered,” Fiera added.

“It was clearly in self-defense,” Phelix finished for her.

“There is no arguing with them when they go into twin mode,” Kuen said with a small laugh.

Kuen saw the flicker of pain on his wife’s face. He could only imagine the kind of mischief his own daughters were causing their grandfather, and if it was bothering him that he wasn’t there to see it he could only imagine how it was making her feel. She grinned down at the children. “Who’s ready for a snack?” she asked.

“Snack,” Gael said. “Dried fruit please?”

“Yes please,” Elian said.

“I want some too,” Pascal said.

“Then dried fruit it is,” Fiera said. They got the children settled with a snack. Daniel even helped by portioning out the fruit under Kuen’s watchful eye.

“How are the plants?” Gaspare asked while the children ate.

“Everything looks good. I’m just hoping your information proves right, Daniel,” Fiera said. “We still haven’t heard back from Uncle Lanre yet.” The comm went off. Fiera went over and answered the incessant chime. It was her uncle. “We were just talking about you, Uncle Lanre.”

“Fury, yer ma said you had someone who told you how to fix what the Core did to us. Tell them they’re a frakkin’ genius. That notion t’put the silicone inhibitor in works like a dream. I’ve tried it on five different yield types and it all works. Sorus can finally meet its obligations without fear,” Lanre said, beaming.

“Starfire, that’s great news, Uncle Lanre. The question is how expensive is that silicone inhibitor going to be for those of us who don’t have much to work with?” Fiera asked.

“Don’t you worry about that. Yer ma and I, and some of the other bigger farmers, are already workin’ on gettin’ it out t’all of you. We’re not lettin’ anyone start out at a disadvantage,” Lanre said. “We’re also gettin’ word out to other farmin’ worlds – quietly, through indirect channels – so they know how to fix their soils if they were hit hard like we were. I’m tellin’ them to test it first, make sure they were all hit with the same stuff we were. But by the time this is all over no farmin’ world out here in the Colonies is goin’ t’be at risk of losin’ another little t’the ISRS.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Uncle Lanre,” Fiera said. “That’s a relief to us for sure.”

“Nickel will deliver what you need soon as he can. Make sure t’mix it in with the rest of the soil treatments I’m sendin’ out two days before you plant yer crops,” Lanre said. “Then don’t be afraid t’plant what you need to. It’ll grow up proper.”

“Thanks Uncle Lanre,” Fiera said.

“Thank you for findin’ interestin’ friends,” Lanre said, winking at her. He ended the call.

“Did I hear that right?” Phelix asked, going over and putting his hand on her shoulder. “The method Daniel gave us to fix the soil works?”

“It does, and Uncle Lanre and ma are making sure everyone’s got what they need to clear up the problem,” Fiera said. “We’ll have a decent yield for the first time in years.”

Kuen saw some of the tension leave Phelix’s body. “That is better news than we’ve had in a long time,” Phelix said.

“I know,” Fiera said softly. “Now if only da makes good on his promise to bring my girls home during spring planting it’ll be the best one we’ve ever had.”

“He will. Da never breaks his promises to you,” Phelix said.

“Not yet he hasn’t, but this one might be too hard even for him,” Fiera said.

“I don’t believe it,” Phelix said. “Da always found a way, no matter how hard the situation was. He’ll do it again. You’ll see, Fury.”

“Thanks Flicks,” Fiera said, smiling at her twin.

“Will we get to meet grandda?” Pascal asked.

“He might say hello, but he did some bad things and there are lots of people who want to put him in a long time out,” Phelix said carefully. “So he has to hide from them.”

“Oh,” Pascal said. “But he’s still going to bring Nafi and Lao back, right?”

“He said he would,” Fiera said. “And your grandda is very good at doing what he promises.” She showed Pascal the bracelet on her wrist. “See this? Even though lots of people wanted to put him in a permanent time out, he managed to get this to me when I married your Uncle Kuen. He promised me, when he told me about them when I was a little like you, that if I wanted them for my wedding day he’d see that I had a pair.”

“Unca Kuen has one too,” Pascal said.

“That’s right. Your grandda kept his promise,” Fiera said. “He’ll bring Nafi and Lao home too. Just wait and see.” Kuen put a hand on Fiera’s shoulder. “He’s never broken a promise to you yet,” he said softly. Fiera shook her head. “Then we’ll look for the twins at spring planting, like he said.”