“Hi,” she says, as Koda turns to her with a smile. “Welcome back.”

“Well, look who the dog dragged in,” Koda teases gently, returning the smile as she reaches down to give Asi’s ears a good scratch. Asimov all but turns into jelly, and for the first time, Kirsten finds herself not minding so much that her dog has obviously fallen head over heels in love with this woman.

Much to Asi’s dismay, Koda all too soon retires her hand from scratching duty and lifts it to the doorknob instead. “Let’s get in out of the cold, shall we?”

A blast of warmth and light hits them all as the door swings open and the group steps inside. Asi immediately claims his place in front of the fireplace and begins to attack the large soupbone Maggie had left for him earlier. With a sigh of satisfaction, Koda places her heavy pack on the kitchen table and gestures for her brother to do the same. Then she turns her smile back to the young scientist. “Doctor King, this is my brother, Tacoma. Tacoma, this is Doctor Kirsten King.”

With a grin so identical to his sister’s that they could be—and should be—twins, Tacoma holds out a massive hand that gently engulfs Kirsten’s much smaller one. “A pleasure to meet you, Ma’am.”

Kirsten utters a sardonic chuckle. “I’d like to think I’m a little young for the ‘Ma’am’ stage, Mr. Rivers, but it’s a pleasure to meet you as well.”

“Tell you what. You call me Tacoma, and I’ll drop the Ma’am, alright? Ma’am?”

Charmed, Kirsten’s grin flashes just briefly as she releases Tacoma’s hand. “It’s a deal. Tacoma.”

With a respectful incline of his head, Tacoma takes a short step back and looks around. “Nice digs.”

“Colonel’s quarters.” Koda’s succinct response tells it all. “And don’t get too used to them. You’ll be bunking with Manny.”

“Figures,” Tacoma replies, smirking. “The regs say that canon fodder like me isn’t adapted to the rarified air of this place.” The twinkle in his deep, black eyes lets Kirsten know the joke is old and well loved.

Rummaging through the litter on the table, Koda pulls the food sack her mother had given her. “Let me just split this stuff up.”

Tacoma holds up a hand. “No, it’s alright, tanski. I’m gonna have to get re-used to military chow sooner or later. For the sake of my belly, it’s just as well that it be sooner. You keep it.”

Unheeding, she pulls out two thick slices of frybread wrapped in wax paper, a packet of meat filling, and hands both over to her brother. “Give one of them to Manny. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

“Appreciate it?” Tacoma exclaims, grinning. “He’ll just about have an….” His face turning an even deeper reddish hue, he nearly bites his tongue and gives Kirsten a positively hangdog look. “Um…sorry, Ma’am.”

Frozen to the spot, Kirsten shoots her gaze from Tacoma’s mortified look to Dakota. The mirth swimming in those striking eyes almost causes her to lose it and she bites down on the inside of her cheeks hard enough to draw blood just to keep herself from braying laughter like some demented donkey. The slight pain clears her head, and she manages what she hopes passes for a dignified nod. “It’s quite alright, Tacoma. If that food tastes as good as it looks, I can understand the reaction.”

Tacoma’s sense of relief is almost palpable as he humbly receives his sister’s food offering and stuffs it into his military pack.

Unable to help herself, Dakota laughs, grabs her brother’s arm and, with the barest ghost of a wink to the onlooking Kirsten, drags Tacoma out of the house and into the dark of the South Dakota night.

3

An hour or so later, Koda slips quietly into the house. The interior is perfectly dark, save for the sliver of light that slices through the partially opened door to the room Kirsten is using as her office. Silent as a shadow, Koda tracks the light, and peers into the office. Kirsten is sitting at the desk, her head propped up on one closed fist. Her glasses reflect the light from her computer; a light that washes over her face in a seasickness victim’s greenish pallor.

As if sensing Dakota’s presence, Kirsten blinks, then slowly turns her head away from the scrolling lines of formula painting themselves across the display before her. Her welcoming smile is wan and, drawn by that, Koda crosses the threshold and into the room, coming to stand beside the desk.

“Hey.”

“Hey. Did you get your brother settled in?”

Dakota smirks. “Oh yeah, he’s settled in alright. When I left, he was busy regaling them with a bunch of ‘flyboy’ jokes he learned in the army.”

Kirsten winces.

“Nah. He served with a bunch of them in the wars. It’s like old home week there right about now.”

“He’s a nice man.”

“Tacoma? He’s alright.” Dakota’s smile is fond, and it warms something deep inside Kirsten upon seeing it.

“Is he your only sibling?”

“If only,” Dakota replies, laughing softly. “No, I’m one of ten. Tacoma’s the oldest. I’m third in line. I also have an older sister, Virginia.”

“Tacoma, Virginia, Dakota….”

“…Washington, Houston, Phoenix, Montana, Carolina, Dallas, and Orlando. My mother’s a geography nut.”

“You don’t say.” Kirsten’s tone is dry as dust, but her eyes twinkle in a way that is quite attractive to Dakota.

“Oh, I do. Very much so.” There is a brief pause. “What about you? Any brothers or sisters?”

A veil drops down over Kirsten’s eyes, leaching out the vibrant green and leaving a muddy brown behind. Koda holds up a hand, even as she takes a step back, fully intending to end the conversation. “No, it’s alright. I’ll…see you tomorrow. Good night.”

“I was an only child,” Kirsten spits out rapidly, her words as staccato as machine gun fire. She looks on, feeling what can only be relief as Dakota stops her retreat and levels her an unreadable, but not unfriendly, look. “They wanted a big family, but my father had a run-in with an Iraqi landmine and, well….”

“Damn,” Koda softly replies.

“Yeah. He was in the hospital for awhile, but things were basically okay after that. I was pretty much spoiled rotten.” She gives up a wry smile. “As if you didn’t know that already.”

Koda manages, by the skin of her teeth, to remain silent and stone-faced.

Kirsten flushes a little and turns away. The soft, low timbre of Dakota’s voice draws her back.

“You’re gonna be alright.”

The expression on Kirsten’s face gives Koda a glimpse of the young woman’s childhood more clearly than any photograph ever could. The naked, aching need for acceptance and reassurance pulls her in like a fish on a line. Her feet pad noiselessly across the floor, and the shoulder suddenly beneath her hand seems as fragile and complex as a bird’s broken wing.

At the touch, Kirsten breathes in, a soft hiss of air between clenched teeth. The gentle grip burns like a brand, soothes like a balm, engendering a paradox of calm and disquiet.

But it’s not disquiet you’re feeling, is it.

Shut up.

It’s time to buck it up and call a spade a spade, little K.

Shut. Up.

You can’t live this new life you’re trying to forge for yourself with your head buried in the sand, Kirsten. Examine your feelings. Face up to them. And then maybe you’ll actually start living instead of just existing. Think about it.

The voice fades into nothingness, and Kirsten only realizes her eyes have closed once she opens them. Koda is looking down at her, an odd mix of concern and compassion drawing itself over her arresting features. Kirsten manages to conjure up a bit of a smile, which Koda returns, as if it is the most natural thing in the world.

Examine your feelings. Face up to them.

The voice is pushed away by the sound of her own. “Thank you.”

Dakota’s eyebrows lift. “For?”

Kirsten lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Being here, I guess. I sometimes forget what it’s like to have a normal conversation with another human being. Asi is my life, but….he doesn’t do the talking thing real well.”

Laughing, Koda releases Kirsten’s shoulder and steps back, providing some needed distance between them both. “Give him a little time. You might be surprised at what he has to say.”

Kirsten shoots her an odd look. “If you say so.”

“I say so,” Koda returns, grinning. And again, the barest ghost of a wink. “See you tomorrow. Sleep well.”

“I’ll definitely try. You too.”

“Thanks. Night.”

Once the door is closed again, and Kirsten is alone, she pulls out the feeling of Dakota’s simple touch, wrapping it around her like a warm winter coat. Her eyes slip closed again, and she crosses the boundary between wakefulness and sleep without ever being aware of the change.

4

In her dream, Koda wanders the Paha Sapa, the Black Hills sacred to her people from the time before time. Its cliffs rise up about her like shadow solidified in stone, their ramparts folded and refolded along the rockface, ledges jutting out at odd angles. Some of those folds mark caves that lead back into the heart of the earth; some shelter springs no deeper than a sheen of sweat on a summer day, others wells whose depths reach down beyond measure. It is the place where the Lakota came forth from the womb of Ina Maka herself, ascending into the light of the Sun for the first time as a human species and a nation. She goes here, paradoxically in a form older yet, one that pads without sound on four feet over the sharply ridged basalt that forms the canyon floor. To her left a bobcat moves like silk over the fissured volcanic rock, her wide paws scarcely touching the surface. The cat’s ears and vibrissae stand stiffly forward, interrogating the night air for sign of prey or menace. On her right paces a cougar, gold-silver in the moonlight, the depths of his eyes spangled with reflected stars.

A fourth goes with them, a smaller being with nimble, clever hands and the black half-mask of a bandit. The cats she knows. Even in her dream, Koda is aware of the bobcat’s human form lying warm beside her under the down comforter. The mountain lion, lean muscles rippling like river water under his fur, is the spirit of her warrior brother, Tacoma. As she puzzles over the fourth, scudding clouds blot out the moon and stars, and thunder rolls down, echoing from cliff to promontory and back like the pounding of the great drum of the Sun Dance. She and the other creatures who accompany her scramble for higher ground, leaping now from ledge to ledge, the unknown fourth keeping pace with the rest. Lightning splits the sky above, and thunder again and again about them until the whole world shakes with it. It splits the shelf where the four have taken refuge, sending it plummeting away from the rockface and them with it, and they are falling, falling into the night, into the unformed world from which they came forth at Ina Maka’s summoning, plunging headlong down and down . . ..

“What the hell?”

Somehow the words penetrate the cacophony of thunder and falling rock. Koda is vaguely aware of Maggie as she rolls over and reaches across her for the switch of the bedside lamp. “Sorry,” she adds as the too-bright light stabs at Koda’s eyes and she sits up, half-caught still in her dream.

“What—?”

“Somebody at the door.” Maggie slips from beneath the comforter and into the robe she has left folded over the back of a chair. From the bedside table she takes her pilot’s sidearm and slides a round into the chamber with a metallic chunk. “Be right back.”

Koda reaches for her own shirt as Maggie closes the door softly behind her. Her mind snaps sharply back into the present as she pads barefoot after the other woman. Pounding on the door at 4:30 in the morning can mean nothing but trouble. A blast of chill air from the open door raises goosebumps on her bare legs as she steps into the entryway. Directly across the hall from her, Asimov stands at guard in the living room door, tail erect. Kirsten holds his ruff with one hand and her .45 in the other. Despite the shadows about her eyes, her gaze is sharp and brittle as obsidian.

Koda flashes her a grin, an acknowledgement of one member of the hunting pack to another. Kirsten bares her teeth slightly in return just as Maggie draws the visitor on the doorstep into the foyer and shuts the door behind him. Bundled to the eyes and further masked by the cloud of his own breath, he snaps a salute at Maggie, then, looking past her shoulder, another at Koda and Kirsten. Maggie herself smiles as she turns to find her unexpected backup behind her. “Go on, Corporal,” she says evenly. ‘Dr. Rivers and Dr. King have a stake in this, too.”

“Yes’m,” he says, averting his eyes carefully from Koda’s bare legs and Kirsten’s neat figure, which is covered but is not hidden by her form-fitting thermals. He appears to be addressing the hall tree with its array of hats and jackets. “The General’s compliments Ma’am. There will be a meeting of all staff and senior officers at Wing Headquarters at oh-five-hundred. A number of small forces appear to be moving north from Peterson at Colorado Springs and from the Space Wing at Warren. Threat assessment and response to be discussed.” The trooper salutes yet again. “Ma’am.”