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“My husband is extremely physically fit, is he not?” Beatrice said, her antennas twitching as she clapped her hands together. “Admire him!”

“I am,” Amy crooned, watching as the rapier in Lou’s hand clattered and sparked against the rapier held by the combat servitor. “Thank you for convincing him to get his shirt off.” Her voice was a soft croon in Bea’s ear and Bea giggled.

“My deception was most effective. I began by seeding the cloud layers overhead with biological particulates to reduce precipitation, so the suns would shine more brightly. This created a heat wave, which I then capitalized on. Then, I told Louis, that he should not get his shirt messy. And thus...”

Lou sprang backwards with a grunt, the servitor’s blade sweeping through where he had been. Grinning, he thrust at the hovering robot – which danced backwards. As he moved, his skin glistened under the light of two sons as Amy bit her lip. “Holllly shit, he has an eight pack, holy shit...”

“I have an eight pack...” GF muttered under his breath.

“Yeah, he worked for it, though,” Amy whispered. “Holy shit.” She fanned herself. “Hollly shit, Bea, is he taken?”

Bea blinked at her, then made a tiny chirring hiss noise. “Yes! Lou is mine!”

Amy looked back at Lou. “Yo, Lou, you mono?”

Lou didn’t risk glancing away from the servitor. It had been two days since he and his wife had consummated their relationship and he was feeling paranoid. Hence, the practice. His sword flicked out, knocked the enemy’s point away from his midsection, then he pirouetted, leaped, and landed behind the servitor. He turned and thrust and the tip of his blade plunged into the back of the fragile robot. He grunted, hard, as he placed his palm against the hilt, then drove forward, the rapier crackling and sparking as it emerged. Here, it’s advanced tricks became visible: From a distance, it merely looked like a fencing weapon from a more elegant age, before mankind fought wars with drones and antimatter.

When pressure was applied so, the inline UPF emitter pulsed from the hilt to the tip, creating a coruscating shockwave of coherent, quasi-real force that ripped outwards in a cyclone of destructive violence. The servitor flew to pieces and Lou lifted his crackling, smoking blade up, then swept it down, smiling at his onlooking audience.

“What was that!?” Bea exclaimed.

“To answer your questions in order of importance,” Lou said. “Yes. Extremely.” He looked square at Amy, who looked deeply guilty. She looked away, and Lou’s expression softened. He sheathed his rapier on his belt, stretching his arms – not noticing that this movement brought Amy’s head snapping back. Bea gaped as she saw his muscles at play under his skin – then reached up, covering Amy’s eyes with her free arm.

“Hey-” Amy hissed.

“You heard my husband, extremely monogamous,” Bea said. “And so, only I can watch his ... abs...” She shivered, her antennas springing to full extension. “Those ... y-you must stretch more, my husband Lou, you may have tight muscles! And, thus, must ... lift ... arms...”

Lou chuckled, lowering his arms as he grinned at Bea. “So...” He said, his finger scratching under his chin. “My rapier’s loaded with a unified physics field emitter – it’s based off the grand unified theory that gave us agrav and stabdrives and the like.” He looked down at the rapier, sighing. “It’s a shame...”

“What?” Bea asked, blinking her eyes rapidly. “Does it require you to put on a shirt?”

“No, you...” Lou chuckled. “People, before the theory was found, were hoping that it’d make faster than light travel possible – or that antigravity would make space travel cheaper. Both had big drawbacks. Antigravity will kill you faster than being shot without some very specific preparations and faster than light travel seems to involve flying straight into a sun at top speeds, and nothing we have can match it and the Shavanti have asked us to please not.”

Bea nodded. “The Shavanti are aliens that live in the photosphere of stars,” she whispered. “They are the only one of the Six Uncontacted who are within the bubble of explored solar systems. Lou told me, two nights ago, while holding me after our post coital bliss. I had orgasmed very hard. The Shavanti are counted among the Uncontacted because they only proclaim things, they don’t accept any messages from humanity.” She smiled at Amy, who smiled back at her, despite the fact Amy knew all of that.

“Exactly!” Lou said, his cheeks heating. “Um, you don’t ... have to mention the post coital bliss...”

“Yes she does,” Amy said. “It’s the law.”

Bea’s antennas twitched. “Which law? You are an AnCom, you do not have laws.”

“Yes we do!” Amy said, grinning. “And one of those laws is bros before hoes. Listen!” She cut Lou off. “You have a super fucking hot wife, and you’re just the hottest man on the planet, no offense Godfucker.”

“No, I’ve given up even trying to argue with that,” GF said, cheerfully. “I’m accepting my position as beta cuck.”

“So, I may JUST have to watch-” Amy paused as Bea, giggling to herself, covered her eyes again. “ ... I may just have to imagine you naked and thrusting. But by my progenitor, I will not foresake the most sacred of all the sisterly codes: That of telling about boys we’re banging during sleepovers.”

Lou blushed, hard and opened his mouth.

“Ah! No arguments!” Amy said.

Bea bit her lip. “She ... does speak quite forcefully, my husband Lou. I believe that we shall have to hew to this tradition of bros before hoes.”

Lou sighed, slowly. “Very well. I surrender to your traditions, Amy.”

“Eee!” Amy clapped her hands. “Okay, tell me, does he use tongue? If he doesn’t, he dies.”

“He used his tongue for-” Bea’s antennas snapped to full extension.

“Can it NOT be while I’m right here!?” Lou exclaimed.

Bea nodded. “We shall commune later,” she said, quietly. “Now, demonstrate more of your martial puissance, Lou!”

Lou chuckled, slightly. He was rather glad, in a high minded and low minded way, that Beatrice was clearly so very excited to see him show off. The baser part of him was just ... aggressively pleased that he pleased her on such a physical scale. Not merely his arts in the bedroom, but his ... whole of him. He had been put onto puberty blockers when he had first began to transition from Alexandrietta to Louis, and so he had never developed breasts. Testosterone had sculpted him more than estrogen, but he had taken more after his mother despite it. Sleek. Lithe. Not the broad shouldered bullish might of his father. A tiny part of him had worried that ... he wouldn’t quite be seen as manly. That he’d always be seen as the feminine transmasc pseudoqueen of the Neopolitan Star Kingdom.

Seeing Beatrice drool over his abs from the nearby grassy hill had eradicated that thought with a searing purity

The more high minded part of him, though, was just pleased to have an excuse for this practicing. Without neural augmentation and muscular enhancement that AnComs and Federals (to a lesser extent) and Plurals and even the Upkin used, the Neopolitans needed their own edge. And so, they had their craft, in terms of weapon tech and armor and force emitters ... and they had their training...

And they had their souls. Lou didn’t like to articulate it out loud because ... unlike his shaky relationship with the syncretic faith of the Star Kingdom, which he could talk about with some measure of distance, the underlying combat doctrine of the Neopolitans, that of Elan ... spoke to him. It meant something to him.

But it was the idea that ... a human that fought for something could do things that no one thought possible. It was an idea born out by the implausible heroism of a thousand wars across the blood soaked sweep of Earth history. Even in the grime and mud of the Western Front, even when machine gun and barbed wire and bloody minded elites had seen fit to grind the last great era of nobility into the muck, there had been gallantry and bravery and heroism to stir the soul. He could remember the soft words of Marc, holding a sword in his hands.

We don’t forget the Maxim Gun, lad. We don’t take stupid risks. We simply refuse to blink.

And so ... Lou had been practicing.

Because he was growing increasingly convinced that someone was planning to kill him and Beatrice. The clues had come with the second wave of ambassadors. The lighthugger had carried envoys from the Upkin and the Plurality, but both of them had required a delicate extra week of time being decanted. The reason for the Upkin’s delay was simple: There was no way to quickly thaw a sentient blue whale, and there was no way to quickly move said blue whale and its life support and mobility harness from space to Charon. In fact, they had settled on digging out a mini-ocean in the neighboring dome for him.

The Plurality was more complex because each Plural was unique – even more so than the AnComs. AnComs were about doing whatever. Plurals, like the Upkin, like the Neopolitans, like the Federals, were about doing something very specific. They pushed themselves. Not purely biologically or through cybernetics, but mentally. They were the people who had invented cortical stacks, and invented splicing, and taken the parts of the Meme War that hadn’t been labeled as a crime against humanity, and they had experimented from there.

The Plural ambassador was several different minds wedded together in an intricate dance of memory and interrelationships. And if any of them were thawed at the wrong time, in the wrong order, with the wrong neural connections, the entire personality would collapse and ... from what Lou had read ... begin to wildly dissociate.

But while the new additions to the domes had been made, and while his wife had studied human books, Lou had begun to notice something ... wrong. It was something so subtle that he had thought it was nothing but paranoia at first, but the more he had watched the autonomous drones at their work and the decanted serviles from the Federated ship, the more he was certain that there was more construction going on than was happening. More drones, more building material, more nanofabs, all of them working ... without showing as much work as he’d have expected.

He could have chalked it up to inefficiency, to shoddy design. After all, a great deal of the work was Federal in nature, and...

Well.

He had his opinions on their methodology.

The inefficiency could be covering anything from extra construction, concealed from his view ... or movement of agents. The serviles had been all checked by AnCom security and his father’s guard, but the Federals were good at concealing their supersoldiers among their servile castes. And right on cue, a servile came walking towards them, dressed in the flint gray uniform, with the golden badge sewn to their chest. They bowed, then said: “There shall be a lunch at the Manor House in thirty minutes, and you are cordially invited, by the order of Admiral Bosch.”

“Do you want to do this one or should I?” GF asked.

“I have been ordered to resist being-” the servile said, but Amy, who had stood up casually, tackled him. Soon, the servile was trussed up and Amy had a large hypo in her hands.

“Don’t worry, you can go once I ... slam this in your ... neck!” Amy said.

“What are you doing!?” Lou exclaimed, stepping forward, his eyes wide. But before he could say anything, Amy plunged the needle into the serviles spine and the pasty skinned, vat grown clone, gasped. His eyes widened and Amy withdrew the needle, beaming at Lou.

“It’s full of medinano, it’ll be growing the parts of the brain the Feds keep underdeveloped – mostly based around introspection and free will,” she said.

“Serviles are part of the UPH treaty!” Lou exclaimed. “They were grandfathered in at the end of the...” He trailed off as the servile started to sit up, blinking slowly. He looked around, then down at his hands, then at Amy.

“W-What ... have you...” he whispered.

“Come on, you’re free. GF here can take you to where we’ve been stashing the others,” Amy said, cheerfully. “Oh! You’ll need to take a name.” She took the servile and led him off, while Lou gaped in horror – and then put his hands over his face. Okay. He had gotten used to the fact that his wife was a hive mind several hundred million years old. But he was still struggling with AnComs and their utterly cavalier attitude towards the foundation of the United Polities. Beatrice walked up to him and took his arm.

“Lou, I remain perplexed,” she said. “About AnComs and Federals and the United Human Polities.”

Lou sighed. “Oh boy.” He took her arm and started to walk with her, pausing only to pick up his shirt. Bea snatched it from his hands and then tore it into two halves.

“I have done this by accident!” she exclaimed. “I am quite clumsy!”

Lou watched as the two halves of his shirt tattered to the ground. He looked at Bea, who’s antennas twitched.

“That was a deception I am sorry!” She put her upper hands over her face while her lower arm remained locked around his. “I like watching you without a shirt on!”

Lou couldn’t help but laugh. He shook his head, slowly. “You are learning bad habits from those two AnComs. Imagine! The queen of the Star Kingdom, being so crass! So uncouth!” He leaned in close, whispering in her ear. “What a scandal.”

“I enjoy the idea of being a scandal...” She murmured. “And- HITLER DID WHAT!?”

The outburst caused Lou to almost stumble. “I ... excuse me?”

“One of my subunits is reading every piece of human media that I have access too, with a focus on generalized histories!” She said, her eyes widening. “It says that Hitler killed eleven million human beings? And ... their uniforms look exactly like Federals? And ... are many references to that eugenics- and ... sterilization at force? More murders? That ... I ... I...” She trembled. “I am ... GOING to give that Colonel Admiral Akin Bosch a piece of ... I ... That...” She hissed, her antennas rubbing together. “That that that that-” She trailed off into more hissing, her body actually ... quivering from her head to her toes.

Lou put his hands on her shoulders. “My wife, please. Focus. Calm down. There is a happy ending – Hitler gets defeated and then he shoots himself in the head and spend the next five centuries being the worst villain the human race has ever known.” He smiled. “If you want, later, we can get a video game and you can kill him yourself.” He sighed, a bit annoyed at the fact he knew that. GF and Amy had both gone on extended, lengthy rants about the artistic quality of many such ... video games. It had all seemed very crass. But ... he’d sit through anything if it’d make Bea feel better.

“I shall! What is a video game?” Beatrice asked. “Is it like a movie?”

“Yes, kind of,” Lou said, chuckling. “So.” he sighed. “To understand the UHP, you have to understand the Meme War...”

Bea nodded and they began to walk. They stepped under swaying trees. The dappled double shadows of leaves cast by twin suns slipped along his skin like cool fingers – and Lou kept his senses peeled. The further they were from the construction work, though, the safer they would be if there were house assassins worked in among the crowd.

“The Meme War was an outgrowth of an invention. Human psychology works with certain underlying patterns that spread across a spectrum of possibilities and within those possibilities, there are visual, audio, and textual stimulus that can make anyone believe anything. Now, for most of human history, our understanding and application of that stimuli was ... well, rudimentary. We could try to convince one another using rhetoric and evidence, but it often didn’t work, or it backfired. That changed with the invention of the first memetic weapons. By combining cutting edge understanding and the first artificial intelligence, humans were able to make ideas so effective that they were literally infectious.” He snapped his finger. “Look at one of them and they’d change how you think, what you think, even what you are.”

Bea frowned, slightly. “That ... sounds ... bad.”

“It was!” Lou said, seriously. “The first were used as a kind of super-powered advertising copy. Companies were struggling to keep old style capitalism working in a world with nanofabrication – so now, they were able to make products that sold themselves by being literally visually addictive. People fought back. Governments used them to instill loyalty. Ecofascists pulled out the big guns first: Memes that ... killed people. The worst was the Doomwave – a ... song...” He shook his head. “It would instill an unshakable idea in everyone who heard it that humanity was going to destroy the Earth and...” He sighed. “Well. It wasn’t pretty.”

Bea drew closer to him, then pressed her nose against his neck. “I almost wish you to stop, I do not want to hear more. But ... go on. Tell me more. But ... hold me while you do it. Pl-” She didn’t even finish the please before Lou drew her into his arms, her light body feeling delicate and soft, even as she trembled in his grip, her wings buzzing.

“It got worse before it got better. Memes were weaponized across the solar system. Some drove people to kill. Some, to terrorism. Some...” He shook his head, not wanting to mention the autophagia, the aresolized murderous psychopathy and worse. He skipped forward. “Only three polities were immune. The AnComs, the Federated States and the Star Kingdom. The Star Kingdom because we...” he chuckled. “We actually had an order of blind, deaf and dyslexic knights, the Paladin Memorium. They would work in teams of three, and if any saw a meme that was being introduced to a Star Kingdom settlement, it was impossible that all three would be overcome, since a meme has to use a specific vector...” He shook his head. “They gave their lives and sanity to keep us safe, and they’re why we had a huge upswing in popularity. People fled to Venus for security. The Feds and the AnComs had their own ways to be safe: AnComs because they were off the grid, and the Feds because they shot anyone who got close to the Red Wall of Mars.”

Bea nuzzled him gently. “Who won?”

“We did,” Lou said. “The Neopolitans, under Queen Marie Benoit II, allied with the AnCom Union, started to take down everyone who was using memetics. It was bloody and it was horrible. In the end, the solar system was safe for free thought again.” He sighed. “And then it was agreed that nothing like that would ever happen again.”

“Wait, it was an alliance between the AnComs and the Star Kingdom? How did the Federated States get involved?”

“To be honest? By the time the dust had settled and the solar system was being rebuilt ... I...” He sighed. “I want you to understand: Millions if not billions of people at the time had been traumatized on a level that’s hard for us modern people to even understand. They’re called the Empty Generation, because they were ... hollow. Millions had lost their memories, millions more had had them altered to fit new things, millions had been displaced, had to flee, millions were dead, or had to live with the things they’d done while being ... hit...” He shook his head. “So ... we should have ripped the Feds out then and there. But they’d secured Mars and Mercury. With Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, they had access to enough solar energy to mass produce antimatter. Within ten years, they had the most fortified state in the SOL system and ... no one wanted to deal with it.”

Bea blushed. “It is hard to even imagine...” She shook her head. “So, the Federated States were given a seat in the UHP?”

“The founding took decades,” Lou said, nodding. “And it, uh, nearly fell apart. Then...” He paused. “Well, uh...” He blushed, then smiled. “You may not believe it. But you’re why there’s a UHP at all. The first images of ... you ... arrived during a conference. There’s actual footage of the Federal Ambassador and an AnCom political scientist named Chomsky Sucks...” He trailed off, not wanting to bring out the woman’s full name of Chomsky Sucks Dicks In Hell For Failing To Destroy Neo-liberalism Before It was Too Late. He rallied. “See, they were literally seconds away from punching each other. Then the footage was piped to the screen of your attack on Alpha Centauri. They signed the charter within seconds.”

Bea looked down, her antennas twitching. “I have mixed and complicated feelings about this!”

Lou smiled, then kissed her forehead. “So, the Feds joining involved a lot of shitty compromises that have kept bad things around. And ... maybe now that the war is over, we can try to fix it.” He nodded.

“Yes...” Bea said. “Wait, what about the Plurality? And the Upkin of which you have mentioned?”

“They’re a...” Lou lifted his head. He pushed Bea behind himself, swinging her around as he stood up, drawing his rapier with his other hand.

“Lou?” Bea asked.

But Lou was sure. He glared into the shadows of the trees around them. “Bea, stay behind me,” he said, flatly.

“E-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t-l-y d-o-n-e...”

The warbling, tortured, electronic voice that came from the shadows all around him sent a thrill of fear ... and recognition down Lou’s spine. His eyes widened and he realized that he had completely mistaken things. The Federals hadn’t been doing anything sneaky. They weren’t building anything secret.

“Epoch,” he whispered.

“What is going-” Bea hissed.

Humanoid figures – moving like jerky marionettes mastered by a lunatic – started to step out. They were serviles, but they had been cored out, their eyes empty sockets filled with glittering latticeworks of machines. Crablike metallic fixtures were attached to the backs of their heads, but the machinery at work inside of them had already began to transfigure their hands into curved, bladed claws. Glittering metal, dripping with their blood, pushed from between knuckles, and emerging from palms.

“Lou, what are they?”

“Tell herrrr my sweet prince...” One of the serviles spoke, drooling from around lips, teeth already glittering with metal. Lou forced his revulsion back – it was an intimidation tactic.

“It’s Epoch ... an assassin from the Plurality,” Lou said, frowning. “And I’ve fought it before.”

He spun and dragged Bea down as Epoch itself uncoiled from behind him, leaping past the tree that they had been standing beside. Splinters filled the air as writhing tentacles of segmented metal crashed into bark, while whirring buzz-saw blades slashed at his head. But Lou and Bea were already diving away, Lou knew better than staying close to Epoch’s main body. He came to his feet, one hand gripping Bea’s hand, his other holding his rapier up, the point sparking and cracking and deadly. Epoch landed in the grass, digging in whirring tentacles. The center of its body was a single, small egg shape, just barely big enough to hold a brain and some requisite organs. Everything else was segmented tentacles, each articulated and flexible enough to tie themselves in knot, with a strength to splinter steel.

“You remembered!” Epoch spoke from its main body and each of the spliced serviles. “E-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t.”

“You are aware of this being?” Bea asked.

“Yes, I’ll explain in-”

Violence.

Epoch lashed out with one of his tentacles and there was no time for anything but the honed reflexes of a lifetime of training. With his left hand occupied in holding Beatrice behind him, Lou focused entirely upon his form and the darting thrust of his rapier. The tip sparked and flashed, each impact point between blade and tentacle bursting with a hiss of fundamental particles – pulsed through his blade with tiny flexes of his fingers against the hilt. There was a million subtle variations in grip and stance that altered how the unified field emitter in his sword created and manipulated energy fields. There was a limit to how much the small UFE could pump out, and there was no way that he could get close enough to discharge all of it into Epoch at once.

And so, he knocked the tentacles backwards again and again, his brow furrowed and his jaw clenched. Epoch hissed and sprang backwards, several of his tentacles smoking, his buzz-saw blades growling and grinding. Lou stepped backwards as he saw one of the spliced puppets that Epoch had created shambling towards him.

He brought his rapier up, about to transfix the walking puppet of meat – and then stayed his hand.

The servile, eyeless and vacant, reached out with a clawed fingered hand towards him – and Lou could only see the bright eyed, newly restored person that GF and Amy had created when they had kidnapped the servile. The treaty between the Federated States and the UHP as a whole stipulated that serviles were an allowed semi-slave caste, vat grown workers for the Federals to use as they pleased. It was the same clause that disallowed the Neopolitans to prevent the Plurality from experimenting with radical new forms of ego-sculpting, or the AnCom union to interfere in the autocratic kingship of the Neopolitans.

And yet...

Lou stepped back again, pushing Bea backwards with ease. She was so very light, it was easy to move her about. He still nearly felt the sweep of the servile’s claws as Epoch chattered with mechanical laughter.

“Lou! Left!”

Lou flicked his gaze away. Two more serviles, lurching towards him and Bea from the left. He leaped backwards, putting the tree between them and the serviles, but that only bought him a fraction of a second. And so, Lou thrust his blade into the tree and shouted. “DUCK!”

Beatrice ducked low and Lou turned aside, then tightened his grip on the hilt.

The UFE emitter in the hilt discharged its entire battery into the tree.

The tree exploded.

Most of the fragments flew away, shotgunning towards Epoch and his servile puppets – but a few, by sheer chaotic chance, peppered Lou’s body. Several stuck into his arm and shoulder, trembling as they sprouted from his skin like porcupine quills, blood welling and dripping down his arm. He marshaled the agony and looked past the smoking tree, to see that the shockwave had knocked the serviles over. They were trying to stand, but most looked entirely incapacitated – their motor functions were too degraded by Epoch’s puppetry.

Epoch, being a mass of metal and synthetic materials, all tentacles and buzz-saws and cameras, wasn’t even smoking.

“Ha ha ha. How chivalric...” Epoch began to walk forward as Lou stood before Bea, trying to ignore the stinging pain from the splinters peppering his arm. “Your blade’s charge rate leaves you defenseless. My prior taught you better t-h-a-n t-h-a-a-a-a-a-”

Epoch’s blades whirred as he reared upwards. Lou lifted his blade upwards – but then Epoch froze.

“My ... husband...” Bea whispered, her voice trembling. “You have made him release his circulatory fluid.” Her wings buzzed. Her antennas twitched. And Lou could hear the rumbling sound. The shaking of the forest floor. The crashing of the trees.

And quite suddenly, he felt extremely foolish.

Epoch turned – just in time for the Terror Talon to sprint into him at nearly sixty KPH. Trees splintered in the immense biomechanical warmachine’s wake, and Epoch smashed into the ground and dragged as the Talon mashed against it – Lou saw it wasn’t even using its weapon systems. It had a rocketvore that was designed to take out tanks, but the vore simply spat and slathered slime in a kind of impotent rage. The Talon didn’t even swing its massive bladed arms – it simply smashed against Epoch again and again and again with a blind fury as, behind Lou, Bea trembled from her head to her antennas.

Epoch’s tentacles swung around and then the buzz-saws cut into the Talon, which let out a bellowing screech. Blood spurted in every direction – blood and powdered chitin. Lou winced, and heard Bea keen out in shock, her eyes widening as she fell to her side, trembling. The Talon stumbled backwards, looking confused – and then Epoch slithered up its sides, swung around onto it’s back like an acrobatic squid, and then slammed three tentacles into the stumpy neck of the immense biomech. The blades screamed – and Bea screamed, at almost the same pitch.

“NO!” Lou shouted, not sure why Beatrice was reacting this way. The Bug War had killed literally billions of her subunits, and she had never mentioned feeling pain before. But he knew he had to do something, even if his hilt was half charged.

He sprinted forward, pain forgotten, and ducked beneath a thrashing bladed arm. He skidded on his knees, came up underneath the Talon, and then sprang up. His rapier flashed and the rocketvore split open along its guts. “Sorry!” He exclaimed – but he had no time to be gentle. The symbiotic creatures that lived within the rocketvore tumbled out like the loops of a pig’s intestines, connected to one another by a ribinous mass of cartilage that almost reminded Lou of the feed strip of an solid slug machine gun.

He snatched an entire belt free, hissing as he felt sizzling droplets of acid burn along his hand.

And then, in the madness and the terror, something so strange happened that it caused him to stop. For ... one of the ammo-beasts contained in the cartilage was bumping its bladed nose against his thumb. Gently. It rubbed against him, and he swore that the tiny, beady eye it used to track targets while in flight was looking up at him with ... love.