Taera actually chuckled, a dry, sound. “Well, she did use her swarm to affect your repairs. Quite brilliantly, I thought.”

  I looked at her, surprised. “She what? I thought she just… I don’t know, applied some kind of technomancer field. Aligned the magitech.”

  Taera laughed, a genuine sound of amusement. “David, you are a magnificent warrior and a surprisingly decent man, but you are an absolute child when it comes to the arcane arts of engineering. Yes, she used drones. Very, very small ones. She has a special gift that allows her to control millions of microscopic drones. It’s a bit like those mythical pre-Collapse nanites, but they don’t have any expert systems; she directs the whole swarm directly, with her mind. It’s an utterly terrifying and magnificent ability. I was really impressed. That ability could scare the hell out of the uneducated and make her stupidly rich even when she was just Tin. Didn’t you notice her using it during her training? Did you think she just magically turned an entire Sargasso field’s worth of scrap into a huge fleet of drones overnight using a wrench and a hopeful prayer?”

  I shook my head, flushing a little with embarrassment. “I didn’t really think about the ‘how’. I’m not a tech. I just see the results. I was there to provide pressure, to try and threaten her control, not analyze her methodology.”

  She looked at me closely, her featureless face somehow conveying a penetrating intensity. “Are you willing to tell me how you got your secret achievement? The trigger might be important.”

  I nodded slowly. Oddly enough, I did trust this taer. Her meddling was always in service of a larger, usually survivable, picture. “Yes. She told me that she couldn’t be force bonded anymore. That the option was gone. And bing! Secret achievement.” I looked at the alert on my bracelet again and read it aloud, my voice flat. “This achievement is for preventing the Force Key from being forcefully or unethically bonded, shutting down a potentially galaxy-wide fate chain. The Game of War congratulates you for holding the line against the destruction of a significant section of this universe.”

  A small, knowing smile seemed to play around where her mouth would be. “Well, there goes one of my more potent leverage sticks, even if it wasn’t enough to give me a benchmark completion. Pity.”

  “I’m not sure how it happened, though,” I admitted, frustration creeping into my voice. “I didn’t do anything.”

  She leaned forward from her perch on the tub and poked me squarely in the forehead with one slender, pale fingertip. The touch was cool and dry. “Apparently you didn’t learn much from your last great mistake, David. You are still arrogant and, in this particular matter, profoundly stupid.”

  I glared, stung. “What do you mean? Ignorant, I will freely accept. I don’t understand the first thing about Maenad bonds beyond church propaganda. But arrogant and stupid?”

  “Did she talk about your aura? Its effect on her?”

  I nodded slowly, the memory of our conversation in the gym vivid and unsettling. “She said it was… initiating things. That it was strong.”

  “You already true bonded her, dummy,” Taera said, her tone implying this was the most obvious thing in the universe. “You probably did it the first time you meshed your aura with hers during her training, and it just got stronger with every interaction. I mean, look at the evidence. Her rapid advancement. Her physical changes aligning more with your species ideal. The way she calms in your presence. The way you’re drawn to protect her. Hell, the way you just burst in here in a panic because you thought I was in danger and by extension, she was in danger. That’s not just professional concern. That’s the bond. The hard part—the aural synchronization—is already done.”

  The stool felt like it was falling out from under me. “We are already… bonded?”

  “Aurally? Spiritually? Yes. Absolutely,” she affirmed. “That means that a forced bond is now impossible. It would just be physical assault instead of assault and psychic domination. You probably want to forgo the final step, the full essence transfer, until you get your little necrotic problem taken care of, though… a full joining would likely flood her with the corruption, even if the bond itself boosts you enough to finally cure yourself.”

  I stared at her, my mind reeling. “The bond would… boost me? What?”

  She nodded, settling back. “I don’t understand the Maenad bond perfectly—it’s half biological imperative, half spiritual contract, and all classified—but I was around when the church first developed the template. She has a Forces affinity. Let me explain this very, very slowly, so even a Paladin can understand…” Her tone was wry but not unkind. “Forces can influence, manipulate, and transform ANY energy essence, including necrotic or life. That’s a large part of what scares Fleet Command so much. It’s not just about her fixing machines.”

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  I just nodded, feeling utterly out of my depth.

  “She probably already HAS some kind of energy enhancement or manipulation trait. I know for a damned fact she has a remote force trait of unprecedented fidelity.”

  “Right…” I said, waiting for the axe to fall.

  She sighed, as if explaining basic arithmetic to a particularly slow child. “Do the math, David. ‘Remote’ is not just ‘control at a distance’. With her level of fine control, her Triage trait for diagnosis, and her Forces affinity for execution, she could, with proper training, identify, isolate, and apply—and potentially identify, isolate, and utilize—ANY trait linked to an energy essence affinity. It should work on any willing target. And with enough willpower and power, she could probably do it to an unwilling target, too. She could loan you her Energy Expansion trait. You could loan her your Purify trait. In the middle of a fight.”

  “Wait, what?” The implications were staggering, an avalanche of tactical and ethical nightmares.

  She laughed, but it was a cold, sharp sound. “I told you forces affinity terrifies Fleet. It’s why the Technomancers were so utterly unstoppable. With the right training and classes, especially paired with high Spiritual affinity, a Forces user can become a universal buffer, debuffer, and trait librarian. And if you give her a full bond? That exchange becomes seamless, permanent, and doesn’t require constant energy expenditure to maintain a remote link. You’d share a pool of traits, a shared arsenal of capabilities.”

  She leaned forward again, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “That’s what made the three Technomancers so terrible. They weren’t all tech affinity, and not all of them had necrotic affinity. But every one of them had high Forces affinity. They could swap traits and affinities around between themselves and their minions constantly during a fight. One minute a drone has a simple laser, the next it’s firing purified holy light you loaned it. One minute a lich is throwing curses, the next it’s using a borrowed regeneration trait to repair its army. People always talk about the Technomancer army like it was a vast horde, but the horde was just the delivery system. The real weapon was the trio at the center. One Lich, one Droner, one Spiritualist. Just three individuals, and they bid fair to conquer all of human-controlled space.”

  Her smooth face turned toward a viewscreen showing the star-dusted blackness of space. “In the end, they weren’t taken down by a grand fleet, or an army of gold-core paladins, or a duel of epic magic. The Technologist was removed by a strong, undetectable poison in his morning coffee. The Spiritualist was blown out of a suddenly, mysteriously faulty airlock during a routine transfer. The Lich got caught by a collapsing rift when some anonymous, smartass saboteur pulled the control core while he was inside it, meditating and building his power. Assassins. Dirty, rotten, pragmatic killers took out the greatest existential threat humanity has ever seen. The villains who singlehandedly tore apart the Old Empire were killed by the oldest, simplest weapons: treachery and a knife in the dark.”

  A cold knot settled in my stomach. “That’s a hell of a speech. I may be a paladin, but even I am well aware that assassination has won more wars than valiant warriors have. I’m sworn to uphold the right, not ignore reality.” I met her blank gaze. “So what’s needed to complete this bond? This ‘final step’? So I know how to absolutely avoid it and not accidentally infect her.”

  “Essence transfer,” she said simply.

  I frowned. “I’m not sure I understand the mechanism. I can’t just… heal her? Or channel energy to her?”

  She shook her head, a slow, deliberate movement. “Think older school, David. Much older. How does a man, a normal man, traditionally transfer his vital ‘essence’ to a woman?”

  The penny dropped with a deafening clang. Heat flooded my face. “Oh.”

  She laughed, a bright, amused sound. “Yeah. Oh. That’s what I meant about you already doing the hard part. You two have extremely compatible auras, clearly, but she can’t be force bonded anymore… not even by you. If you complete the bond, it will be anything but forced. It will be, by its very nature, consensual and mutual.”

  I blushed, feeling like a raw recruit again. “Right. Okay. I guess I have worn out your open door policy for one night?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. This has been extremely useful intelligence for both of us. Although I do need to get dry and head to bed. Tomorrow’s debrief will be a circus.” She stood up, tightening the towel around her. “I just need you to remember something before you go…”

  “What’s that?” I asked, rising from the stool.

  Her voice lost all its warmth, becoming as hard and cold as the ship’s hull. “Both you and Gabrielle, if fully bonded and allowed to advance, have the potential to become a force terrible enough to make the Technomancer Trio look like schoolyard bullies. Alternatively, you could make the Chaos Lords, Corrupters, and Lich Kings of the universe run for their extended, unnatural lives for a very long time. She’s on my ship, under my protection, for a reason. The hope is for the latter. But if you deviate, and drag her down into the darkness with you…” She let the sentence hang in the steamy air for a long, chilling moment. “…just remember that someone out there still knows how to make an absolutely killer cup of coffee.”

  I nodded slowly, understanding the threat for exactly what it was: not malice, but the coldest, most brutal calculus of survival. It was the law of the universe. Create a weapon powerful enough to save it, and you must also retain the means to destroy that weapon should it ever turn.

  Without another word, I turned and headed out of her quarters, the weight of my new achievement feeling heavier than any armor, and the path ahead darker and more complicated than any necrotic rift.