Lindsay straightened and Brendan glanced toward the door at the sound of knuckles against the wood.

“That’ll be them,” Brendan murmured, then leaned back in his chair with a quiet but heartfelt sigh.  Lindsay smiled down at him and kissed his cheek.

“Probably.”  She headed for the door as he reached for his tolerably hot mug of tea.  She swung the red wood door open and let the pair inside with a wry smile.

Ezra glanced between them with a brow arched quizzically.  “Were we interrupting?”

“Only a little,” Lindsay said.  “Come in.  How’s your arm, Alana?”

The former soldier gave her cousin a narrow-eyed look, glancing down at her sling and then back to Lindsay.  “A mess, but getting better,” Alana said after a moment.  “Rachel was right, I should have had it done a long time ago.  The waiting only made everything worse.”  She slumped into an empty chair at the table, wincing slightly as her arm bumped against the edge of the table.  Brendan lifted a brow slightly at the way Ezra’s hand grazed Alana’s upper back as he passed on his way to the kettle.

Guess you don’t actually believe something’s happening until you see it for yourself.  He glanced at Ezra, his gaze still holding a question.

Ezra just looked back at him, snorted softly, then poured two mugs of tea.

“Disbelief doesn’t become you, Cho,” Alana said.

“It’s not disbelief.  It’s wonderment.”  Brendan turned to her, cradling his mug between his palms.  “When did this happen?”

“My arm?  Almost as soon as we got back.”

“Not that.”

Lindsay let out an exasperated sigh.  “Brendan!”

Alana snorted.  “Let him be, Lindsay.  I know what he’s asking and the answer’s the same.”

“How many—”

“People know?”  Alana smiled a tiny, faint smile. “Only the families.  No one else quite gives a damn, I think.”

“Now that’s not true,” Ezra said as he brought the mugs over to the table, setting one down in front of her.  “Folks care.”

She made a soft noise.  “D’Arcy Morguase doesn’t count.  He’ll just use us against each other.  All the women in the Commonwealth who were hoping to somehow land the brightest doctor of the age don’t count, either.”

Ezra chuckled at that and leaned down to kiss her.  Brendan just sat and stared.

No wonder he talked about her the way he did on the run…how long ago did this actually start?  When…no.  Doesn’t matter.  Down that path lies madness anyway.

“Anything I can help with, Lindsay?”  Ezra asked as he straightened again.

“You could come stir this,” she said, pointing to a pot of sauce she’d gotten started on the stove.  She grinned at the surprised look he shot her.  “Don’t ask me if you can help if you don’t want to be put to work, Ezra.”

“Right, right.”  He joined her at the stove, smiling ruefully.  “I should know better, right?”

“Absolutely.”  Lindsay’s gaze drifted to the pair at the table for a moment and she smiled before she turned back to the stove.

Brendan shook his head slightly and winced at the pain that shot through the back of his skull.  Alana’s eyes were on him as she lifted her mug to her lips and sipped the tea slowly.

“What?” he asked.

“Just trying to figure out how to say what needs saying,” Alana said quietly, eyes momentarily distant.

He frowned.  “You’ve never had trouble saying something before.  Just spit it out.”

“Most things that I say aren’t quite this important.”  She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, then sat up a little straighter.  “Chinaisa and the Compact have been saying things,” she said at last.  “That when the Foundation purportedly sent strike teams into their facilities a few weeks ago, they stole materiel.”

“Materiel,” he echoed, stomach sinking as he stared at her.  “Did they say…?”

“What kind?  No.  Absolutely not.  But I think they know that we’re more than fully aware of what they’re saying we took and they’re demanding it back.”

It was like being plunged into an ice-covered lake.  Brendan sucked in a sharp breath and felt Lindsay’s stab of alarm even before he heard the spatula in her hand clatter against the stovetop.

“Alana—”

“Ezra and I thought we should be the ones to tell you,” Alana said, looking past Brendan and toward Lindsay.  “Before anyone else did.  There’s no way to bow to their threats—no way we’re going to.”

“Materiel,” Lindsay whispered hoarsely.  “You’re human beings.”

“That’s what Ezra said, too.”  Alana shook her head. “To them, we’re cogs in the machine.  I’m sure they’d demand your parents back, too, if they thought they could get away with it.  They haven’t named what was taken because they’re trying to hide it—but they know we’re well aware of what they’re getting at.”

“But no one else is,” Ezra said, half turning from the stove.  “At least, that’s what we’re thinking.”

“Does the Council—”

“They must,” Alana said.  “I can’t imagine how they wouldn’t know.  The threats are all over the newsnets and the talking heads can’t get enough of all of it.  They’re trying to make us out as the aggressors when it comes to the death of the Whispers.”

“But we had nothing to do with that,” Lindsay said quietly.

“Of course,” Alana said.  “But that’s not what some people back in NeCom space are going to want to believe.  Then there are a whole slew of people who will use that desire to their advantage and suddenly we’ll be the villain of the tale even as the Wanderers and our other supporters scream against the storm that we weren’t responsible.  The damage will be done and we’ll have already lost.”

“We can’t let that—”

“There won’t be any letting, Lindsay.”  Alana’s expression was hard, voice cold.  “It will happen.  We will be the pariah again, just like the Psychean Guard was the terrifying boogeyman in all the back rooms of government.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Lindsay said softly.

“It might as well have been,” Alana said.  “Because that was the end result in every way that mattered.”

Lindsay began to say something, stopping as Brendan got up, his chair scraping across the slate floor.  He went to her and took her by the hands, led her back over to the table.

“Calm down,” he murmured quietly as she sat down and he crouched in front of her.  “Arguing about it isn’t going to change the reality of the situation—Chinasia and the Compact have thrown down a gauntlet.  We have to respond carefully or else the colony could be in a whole lot of trouble.”

“Trouble,” she echoed.  “When haven’t we been facing some kind of trouble?  We’ve pretended for so long that there was nothing that could hurt the colony because we were so far away from the bright center of everything, but we were only fooling ourselves, weren’t we?”

“The Marshals have done a fair job of making sure we wouldn’t be caught totally unawares,” Ezra pointed out from his position at the stove.

Alana nodded in agreement.  “That’s true.  We’re far better prepared than most pacifist worlds would be.  I imagine that part of the reason our enemies back in New Earth space are restless and casting aspersions—and starting to move—are because they see signs of us getting ready to defend ourselves.  They’re hoping they can discourage any and all sympathy and aid that we might be able to call on.”

“All because they want our resources?”  Lindsay knuckled her eyes and swore softly under her breath.  “Bloody…sometimes I think that our species deserves to go extinct.”

Brendan winced.  “Don’t say that, Lin.  Not everyone’s like that.”

“I know,” she said with a quiet sigh.  “But sometimes…”

She never finished the thought.  The sound of a knock at the door interrupted them.  Brendan straightened up from his crouch slowly, wincing again as the world slowly spun around him.

“You all right, Brendan?”  Ezra asked.

“I’m fine.  Just get a little dizzy, still.”  Brendan crossed the kitchen to the back door, swinging it wide to see Rachel standing on the stoop.  He grinned.  “Rachel.”

She smiled back.  “Hello, Brendan.  You look better.  Is Lindsay here?”

“Over here, Aunt Rachel,” she called from behind him.  “What’s the matter?”

There was a strange look on Rachel’s face, Brendan realized as he studied her.

“What’s going on?” he asked as he touched her elbow.

His world went white.