The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

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The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

Mamorien Offline

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RE: The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

#100

04-03-2026, 04:19 PM

The Greenfield Family.

icehead Wrote:It's Paula's big date tonight. Will this be her big recovery after the Justin incident? Will Lance be the good guy she needs?

And even if he is, what will that mean for her new relationship with Zander? Can she maintain a healthy relationship with a guy like Lance without losing what she and her brother have found with each other?

https://storiesonline.net/n/52852/the-gr...-family/24

Princess of the Void.

Quote:
Perfect.
How such a big bully gave me three perfect children I’ll never know.”

“They are perfect,” he says, and picks her up from the silk. “Everything is fucking perfect. Life is perfect.”

“You’re perfect,” she says.

“You’re perfect.” He bridal-carries her out of the bed and toward the shower.

“You.”

“You.”

“Okay.” She kicks her legs into a slouchy cross. “Carry your perfect Princess to the shower, servant.”

“I was already doing that.”

“Faster.”

They laugh and jabber on and she feigns further outrage as the shower warms up and the steam rises. And Grant knows it’s true: everything’s perfect. And the tiny bruise on his joy, the shadow on its edge that is Maekyon, that’s not something he has to worry about. Not for a few more decacycles of contentment, anyway. And he tells himself he isn’t afraid anymore. And today he believes it.

Aagi stares with bloodshot eyes at the terminal screen. He takes off his anticomps and stares some more. There’s something wrong. There has to be. He double checks. Then he triple checks. Then he spends an hour of growing panic checking again and again, finding stealthsat footage and sitting in drymouthed disbelief at what he sees.

As his shift ends he staggers from his observatory office like the living dead. Surta, the other member of the skeleton crew, strolls round the sterile station corner and nearly drops her tea. She rushes to his side. “Aagi. Gods of the fucking Firmament, brother. What’s going on?”

Aagi slumps against a wall and sits on the floor, ignoring the grit he’s getting on the seat of his technician uniform. He holds up a printout. “Here,” he says. “Right here is where they came back into realspace. We have to—we need to send a flyer. It has to be unmanned. Has to be. But it—even then I don’t know how it’s fucking possible, but it has every hallmark. It can’t be happening, but it’s happening.”

“What? What’s happening?” Surta’s trembling fingers unfold the printout. “Aagi, what is—”

She freezes. That same panicky disbelief spreads across her face.

“Get word to the station hangar,” Aagi says. “And boot up the extrasystem array. We have to tell the Pike. Surta.”

He takes her shoulder and shakes her halfway out of her fugue.

“They need to know,” he says. “Maekyon’s discovered the sweep.”
Thank you so much for reading Volume 5: Qarnaq. As a reminder, Princess of the Void will be going on spring break for approximately a month.

I will see you folks later in the spring for Volume 6: Earth.