Nix had always pictured the Grand Stellar Library as a planet-wide edifice of data stores and ancient artifacts, carefully organized so that researchers would be able to find the information they sought with a minimal amount of work. In theory that was exactly what they found when the Goldrunner arrived at the General Patrons port. In practice the Library started showing off its unexpected quirks immediately.

“Why is it hollow?” Nix ask as she and Ayli disembarked into a docking ring which orbited the surface of a sphere which seemed to have no interior and exterior that was more of a latticework of domed biosphere than a proper planetary surface.

“You can blame the archives for that,” Ayli said. “Each one is kept in a strictly regulated environment in terms of gravity, temperature, humidity, all that stuff. It was easier to build the Knowing Center – those bio domes down there – and once they had enough of them they didn’t need the rest of the planet.”

“But, wait, that doesn’t make sense,” Nix said. “The orbital dynamics alone would be easier to deal with if the original mass was here. Not to mention all the resources you can get for free from a planetary body like magnetospheres and so on.”

“Oh, they’re getting their free resources out of the planets core still,” Ayli said. “You can’t see the Solar Ring from here, but it collects all the energy the Library needs and then some.”

“That doesn’t make sense either!” Nix said. She wasn’t a Stellar Architectural specialist but she was familiar enough with the relative masses of habitable planets and stars to know that you couldn’t put a ring around one from the materials you found in the other. Or at least she was pretty sure you couldn’t? Maybe if you pounded it really thin? 

“There’s not a lot about this place that makes sense,” Ayli said. “They call it a Library, but honestly it’s more of a museum or a zoo. The data stores are ridiculously extensive but copies of them can be found all over the place. What the ‘Library’ really specializes in is artifact collection and storage.”

“That does sound like a museum,” Nix said. “The question is, will it be a museum we can use.”

“For a price? Almost certainly. For a price than any three systems put together could afford? Eh, it’ll depend,” Ayli said.

“On what?” Nix asked, curious how Ayli knew so much about the library. Ayli had said that she was a historian, but Nix sensed a more personal connection than mere academic interest would provide.

“If we can find a trail in the Public Archives, we shouldn’t have to pay too much for access to the artifacts that would confirm what we need to know. If we find something and it leads us to the Restricted Archives, or worse, the Private ones, we might as well start searching the galaxy at random, otherwise Ravas’ temple could be built from solid Phrik and we’d still wind up in debt until the heat death of the universe.”

Nix smiled. She kind of liked the idea of wandering the galaxy at random with Ayli looking for lost treasure. She also liked eating and being able to maintain the ship though, so treating their current endeavor like an actual job was lamentably rather important.

“We’re not waiting for Sali are we?” Ayli asked when the droid driven shuttle pulled up. “She’s still sulking in her room, right?”

Sali had not been especially pleased when she’d woken up from her gel packet induced healing slumber. The nine hour nap had done her just as much good as Nix had predicted it would – wounds healed, strength reinvigorated, all that and yet it had not improved her mood.

“She’s not sulking,” Nix said, getting into the shuttle and making room for Ayli to join her. “She’s evaluating.”

“Evaluating what? How much of a bounty she’d have to claim on us for all this to be worth it to her?” Ayli said as she slid into the shuttle’s other seat behind the droid pilot. 

With the passengers collected, the droid indicated the fare payment terminal which Nix dropped a credit stick in. She was sure it wasn’t particularly traceable given that she’d pilfered it from Sali’s fortress before they left, and Sali was much too smart to allow her moves to be tracked by any kind of automated system. Nix just wished Sali would apply that intelligence to accepting that her current situation was exactly where she needed to be.

“She knows I’m right. She knows she’s not going back to Calerpris. She just doesn’t know what to do instead yet,” Nix said and felt the shuttle push off and begin the descent down to what had felt like it was the most useful biodome they were allowed to visit.

“She sounded pretty certain she was going back this morning when I brought her breakfast to her,” Ayli said. 

“Of course she did. When have you ever heard Saliandris say anything that would indicate she’d ever once been wrong about something? That’s not how you can tell that she’s changed her thinking about her ‘enforced vacation’ though.”

“What’s her tell for that?”

“We’re not tied up in the hold while she pilots the ship back to her fortress,” Nix said.

“She hasn’t had time for that. We’ve kept her locked up in her room for the last two days,” Ayli said. “Haven’t we?”

“No. Her door’s not locked. She could have come out and joined us any time she wanted to,” Nix said. “Which is why she hasn’t.”

“Ah, right, because if she came out and did anything but overthrow us, she’d be admitting the vacation suited her.”

“I have no illusions how a two on one fight would go. Not if the one was Sali. Given that the one is Sali though, I also know she has nothing to gain by taking us back to Calerpris. She doesn’t need money – she’s got plenty scattered in accounts around the galaxy. She doesn’t need a position of authority – people listen to everything she says even if they’ve only just met her. And as for that fortress of hers? That was far more of a prison than the Goldrunner ever could be.”

“So you’re thinking when she calms down, she thank you for this?”

“I’m expecting she’ll decide to trust me again something after the last star in the galaxy burns down to a cold dark lump of iron. That’s not all that important though. How she feels me about me doesn’t change what she needs.” 

Nix wasn’t quite sure why she was so certain of that. She could have called it ‘intuition’, but most people didn’t seem to have the same guiding clarity when it came to their intuitive guesses. 

It had been that same sense of clarity which had led to her abandoning Sali in the first place, and had caused her to maroon her ex-captain and his crew on a backwater planet off the known hyperspace lanes. She’d later learned that the captain and his crew were ex-Imperials who’d been contacted to form a ‘Storm Trooper Recruitment’ team – also known as a kidnapping squad to bring kids to one of the Re-Education Centers which the New Republic hadn’t discovered in order to “train up a new generation of Storm Troopers for the Empire’s glorious return!”

Nix hadn’t known any of that when she’d set the hyperdrive to melt down and take the sublight engines with it, she’s only been certain that the next trip the crew took was wrong and that she couldn’t let it happen.

So she hadn’t, and as an indirect result, the New Republic had stumbled on the hidden Storm Trooper brainwashing camp’s location when they investigated the missing ship’s last known hyperspace location and trajectory.

Her motivation with Sali was far more benign and her intuition seemed to appreciate that based on the calm she felt when speaking about what she’d done.

Or maybe that was just being with Ayli?

Somehow, talking when her wife was around was significantly easier.

“Sorry again for springing this one you,” Nix said, the thought of losing Ayli’s trust by failing to include her in potentially deadly decisions lapping back up from the sea of her anxieties.

“I was the one who suggested we go to Calerpris. I’m taking you getting us out of there in one piece as a minor miracle at least,” Ayli said.

“It wasn’t that hard,” Nix said. “And it didn’t have to include Sali. We didn’t even really have a debt to her to pay off.”

“We didn’t,” Ayli agreed with a nod. “But you wanted to do the right thing.”

“Or at least what I thought was the right thing,” Nix said.

“It probably was, and doing the right thing is important. Important and dangerous. Which makes you brave, and, to be honest, that’s terrifying.”

“Why?”

“Because brave people don’t last. But what they do does.”

“What do you mean?” Nix asked, feeling like she was standing at a long seal door and on the other side of it were parts of Ayli which Ayli barely even revealed to herself.

“I’ve seen a lot of people die doing the right thing,” Ayli said. “It’s easy to hate that. You can spend days screaming your head off and crying your eyes out and that doesn’t do anything to bring them back. When you’re done screaming and crying though, what they did is there waiting for you. The consequences they gave they lives for. You wouldn’t think anything would be worth that, but there are. People, sometimes even places, sometimes even just an idea. I try to remember that every day, but I’m not that good at it.”

Which wasn’t true in the slightest, though Nix could feel the anxiety and pain that lay under Ayli’s words nearly ripping through her flesh.

“I don’t think anyone is,” Nix said. “I think it’s something we always need to work at. If we choose do so at all.”

“Just…” Ayli paused, either searching for words, or unsure of the ones she had. “Just before you do anything too brave, remember you’ve got something to live for too, okay?”

Nix wasn’t surprised when Ayli leaned over to kiss her but the wave of emotion that crashed around her as they embraced was more intense than she’d imagined it would be.

She melted into Ayli’s arms and reached up to trail a gentle caress down Ayli’s lekku only pulling her hand back at the last moment when she remembered exactly how sensitive Ayli’s head tails were and how far away their bed was.

“I’ll always be happy to run away with you,” Nix said which earned her a smirk from Ayli.

Before she could kiss the smirk away, the droid pilot’s automated announcement system chirped to life.

“Arrival at destination: Beldain Geological Dome imminent. Please make ready to depart,” the droid said.

“Beldain Geological? Wait. How did you know to come here?” Ayli asked.

“It seemed like a place that will either have what we need or be able to suggest who we should talk to,” Nix said. “Why? Should we not have come here?”

Nix knew the environment was compatible with their physiology and that the Dome was one of the “Open Access” areas where members who were paying patrons were allowed to enter and do basic research. She’d checked on all that before she’d settled on coming to the Library in the first place. 

Ayli knew something else about the place though and buried her face in her right hand.

“No. It’s okay. It’s just…” she started to say as the shuttle arrived and its door swung open.

Outside some of the Dome’s staff was waiting for them. Nix knew that was how new arrivals were commonly greeted. What she hadn’t expected was for there to be a moment of pleasantly surprised silence as they stepped out of the shuttle followed by her wife being scooped up and lifted off her feet into a bear hug by a walking, talking, bear.