I programed the entry pad three days before they arrived.
I kept going back. Checking the light over the house floor, the way it caught the wood of the tables. Moving one of the Prenellian pieces from the corner table to the one nearest the window, then back again. A small woven figure, river grass and copper thread. I left the kitchen for Darna. The equipment was installed, the surfaces done, and the cold storage running. But I did not arrange a single shelf. That was hers.
Jep sent word when they cleared the portal. I was at the dock when the transport came in.
Darna was first off the ramp. She had a bag over one shoulder and her hair pinned up. It reminded me of when she baked in her kitchen back home.
She saw me and crossed the dock in four steps, laughing and crying at the same time, then threw her arms around me and held on.
I hugged her back.
“Oh, look at you,” she said, stepping back, keeping her hands on my arms. Then she hugged me quickly again.
Jep came down the ramp slower. He held a case in each hand, looking side to side, eyes squinted and a stern look on his face. He set the cases down and gripped my hand with both of his.
"Captain," he said.
"Jep."
He nodded once.
I took them up to the third level first, the residential area. I showed them their apartment, two rooms and a sitting space, with a window that looked out over the corridor. Darna walked through it with her hands clasped in front of her, not touching anything, just looking. Jep checked the door locks. He checked them twice.
"The corridor has a GP post at each end," I told him. "Level three is merchants and families. It’s not always quiet, but it’s safe."
He nodded. Still calculating.
Darna turned from the window. "Tori. This is too much."
"It isn't."
"It is."
"Then let it be too much," I said. "Let’s go see the restaurant."
The house floor held ten tables. I kept the lighting low, adjustable. I knew Darna would want to change it. The two side alcoves, two tables each, curtained off from the main floor. Private, for dinners that happened on a Capitol Ship when people needed walls. Darna moved through the space, her eyes going to corners, to the placement of the tables, already building it in her mind.
She picked up the woven figure from the corner table. Turned it over in her hands.
"Prenellian," she said.
"There are a few pieces. If you want them. If you don't, I'll find somewhere else for them."
She set it back down carefully. "I want them."
Jep, measuring the distance between tables with his eyes, did not say anything. He just looked and calculated.
I took them through to the kitchen.
Darna stopped in the doorway.
The kitchen was larger than anything she had before. Cold storage along the back wall. Two prep surfaces, one for her side and one for Jep's, though they would have to decide which. A full bread station near the east wall with the proofing drawer she mentioned once, years ago in passing.
She walked the perimeter. She did not say anything for a long time.
Then she saw the alcove.
It was off the south side of the kitchen, half-hidden behind the cold storage turn. A table, handmade. The carpenter was a man on level three whose family lived on the Leviathan for three generations. I met with him twice to get the dimensions right and the wood grain the way I wanted it. A bench on one side, three chairs on the other. Space enough for staff dinners, and for the people working in the kitchen who needed somewhere to sit that was theirs.
Darna put her hand on the surface of the table.
She didn't move for a moment.
"Tori."
"For kitchen dinners," I said. "And for family."
She turned around. Her eyes were full, a tear escaping down the side of her cheek. She crossed the kitchen and put her hand flat on my chest, looking up at my face.
“Thank you. The table, the restaurant.” She paused a moment. “For everything. Thank you.”
She hugged me again.
“It’s the least I can do. You and Jep have always been there for me. During the worst times.”
She smiled, patted my chest, and sat down at the table. I sat down next to her.
"I saw your mother before we left," she said. "She is well looked after. She knows she is loved."
I covered her hand with mine. "I know."
We sat like that for a moment. Then Jep said, from the doorway, "The bread station is good." Darna laughed, pulled back, and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist.
We sat in the kitchen alcove while I told them what I could about the ship. The rhythms of it, the level structure, where the markets were, who ran what on their floor. Jep asked precise questions and I gave precise answers. Darna listened with her chin in her hand, already somewhere else in her mind, already arranging the house floor.
I mentioned the new addition to my crew. A Cherndan. The first I brought on. The first, honestly, that came through selection in years. She was young, capable. Twice as good to get this far on an all-Prenellian team.
Darna looked at me.
"What is her name?" she asked.
"Ensign Flerat."
She nodded slowly. "And she is good."
"She is."
Darna nodded. Jep refilled my cup without being asked.
When I got up to go, Darna stood and looked at the kitchen door.
"I want to cook," she said. "Before we open. I want to cook a meal in there."
"Then do it."
"Will you stay?"
"Yes, I'll stay."
She smiled. Then she went through to the kitchen, opening drawers, learning locations.
Jep sat across from me and looked at the table.
"Thank you," he said.
I nodded.
Jep glanced at Darna in the kitchen. Then he looked at his hands on the table.
"There was a man," he said. "From one of her old cases. Fifteen years back. She put him away and his whole network with him. We thought that was the end of it."
"It never is," I said.
"No." He was quiet a moment. "He got out eight months ago. We didn't know. Started asking questions in the neighborhood. Subtle at first. Then not."
"Why didn't she contact me?"
Jep looked at me. "You know why."
I did.
"She wanted to handle it herself. But she forgets we are not that young anymore," he said. "I wasn't going to wait for her to remember."
He looked over at Darna in the kitchen. She found a pan and was running her hand along the bottom of it, checking the weight. The lines around his eyes softened.
"She doesn't know how much I know," he said. "About those years. She told you the stories. She never told me all of them." He paused. "I didn't need the stories. I just needed to know when to make the call."
He looked back at his hands.
"Thank you for answering."
I nodded again.
I sat there longer than I meant to. The sound and sight of Darna in the kitchen, the soft percussion of pots and drawers. Her humming something I half-recognized from years ago.
Jep watched Darna. Quiet. Steady.
I was thirty-four years old. I had a ship, a crew, and a posting on the most defended vessel in the galaxy. I did what I set out to do, most of it. They were here now and they were safe, and Darna was already in the kitchen cooking.
There was more. I knew it the way I knew how to fly a closed space corridor. I felt it approaching, from a distance. A certainty.
From the kitchen, Darna started to sing.
I did not move for a long time.