he said.
Kira digested that, wariness making her cautious. She didn't like the fact the Tuann had been after her—and here Himoto was, admitting he was trying to curry their favor.
"Kind of you to take time out of your schedule for little old me," Kira said, testing him.
"I looked for you when you left."
She flinched and looked away. She didn't want to dredge up the past. There were too many demons there.
"Get to the point, Himoto," Kira said, forcing steel into her voice. She wasn't the broken mess of before. She wouldn't crumple at the first push by someone she once knew.
"I'd like you to sit down and talk to the Tuann."
"No."
His sigh was long and he shook his head slightly. "You always have to do things the hard way."
"It's the only way I know to be." Kira didn't let herself feel bad about that fact. Maybe once, before she'd rebuilt herself from the ground up, but now, she embraced all her jagged edges.
"If that's it, I have a ship to repair," she said, starting by him.
"Do you want to be responsible for starting another war?" he asked, his words flat and emotionless.
Kira gave him a sharp look, a banked fury burning at her core. "Don't."
He didn't listen, his expression calm. "Because that's what will happen if you don't listen."
Kira hesitated. He was serious.
Seeing something in her face he continued, "Running isn't going to save you this time. Your ship's modifications might protect you from us, but it won't do anything against them."
"What do you know about my ship?" Kira barked.
"Parts from a Tsavitee cruiser in your engine, a new power source none of my engineers can explain and a drive capable of at least three times the speed your ship is classed for. To say nothing of the weapons and defenses it shouldn't have," Himoto said, almost admiringly. "Jin does good work."
"Not just Jin," Kira corrected. She'd done as much on the ship as he had, teaching herself along the way. They'd created something that was much more than it appeared. She was proud of everything they’d done, even if most would never know the full extent of its capabilities.
He gave a small nod of acknowledgment to her words. "Those upgrades won't even give the Tuann pause. All they need is for you to get a little distance from the station and then one well-placed shot would have you dead in the water. They'd be able to board with little effort. Then you won’t have any control."
It wouldn't be as easy as that. Himoto had named several of the modifications, but not all. The fact he'd been able to name any was more disturbing than she had words for. It meant someone in Himoto's command had been keeping an eye on them, making a note of their purchases. She thought she'd left all that behind when she left Centcom.
The reason they probably didn't know about the rest was because they weren't kits. They were pieces and parts Kira and Jin had re-purposed or adapted from Tsavitee ships. There'd be no other way Himoto would know about their activities unless he had eyes in the ship, something she knew he didn't have.
"What do they want?" Kira asked in frustration. She found it hard to believe the Tuann would go through all this, threaten war, over her saving two kids.
He hesitated, indecisive.
"Himoto," Kira warned, not in the mood for his normal cloak and dagger games.
His eyes were piercing when they met hers. "They claim you're Tuann."
Kira's lips parted. Part of her felt frozen, like this was happening to someone else. Another part—the part she thought dead—felt a wild fluttering of hope, the thought of not being alone, of not being the only freak out there, taking wing. She firmly squashed it.
Even if by some odd, unlikely coincidence she did turn out to be Tuann, it didn't mean she was no longer alone. It just meant her freakishness now had a name.
She'd learned many hard lessons about the peril of letting hope run away with you. It was the ultimate liar, an illusion turning smart people into fools, sundering their hearts from their chests when hope inevitably crashed them against the rocky shore.
She didn't know these people, and couldn't even begin to guess their reasons for lying, but she hadn't survived this long by believing everything someone told her.
Jin drifted out of the shadows, his metal exterior gleaming dully. His presence returned her equilibrium, reminding her she was by no means on her