Kali (or The Needle and the Skull)

Helenne suggested.

Chrys bit her lip in concern. 

Chrys’s color rose, She placed her hand up to cover her bare throat.  Hendrikson when it went down in ’33, and finding his resting place does still matter to me after all these years.>

Helenne nodded. 

Chrys smiled at a chance to show she wasn’t completely ignorant of cybernetics. 

Helenne replied. 

The younger woman smiled shyly,  then looked up at someone who almost looked like their man before answering,

“Technology,” Chrys muttered audibly. 

Helenne replied, averting her eyes shyly now.

Chrys grinned.  It looked like a special friend, perhaps.  Chrys had never heard her assistant mention anything about her personal life.  But now wasn’t the time to pry.

she griped.  The hallway crowd was beginning to thin as people headed to their sessions. A subchannel convention datastream projected a starting notice onto the bottom of their vision. 

Helenne began.

Chrys shook her head, Euros Balan.  It’s been forty years and most of it should be open files by now, anyway.>

she placed her hand firmly over her throat.  Euros Balan gets us the last two stops of the Hendrikson.  And my brother’s diary mentions them finding traces of the Saratoga.  You know the Saratoga wreck is the best chance of finding the coordinates where the Kali was ditched in interstellar space after Dhalman's Folly, and the Kali should still have a full Plague-free data set of Imperial knowledge.>

“A lot of maybes,” Helenne said out loud.

“But we’re trading it for a useless skull,” Chrys retorted, through gritted teeth.  “Now, where is he?”

Helenne pointed to a thin bald man in a shimmering blue overcoat who was rushing toward them, motioning with the wave of his bony hand.

“Sorry, I’m late,” Partraen Jessik began, smiling.  “It’s just that the city of Meldensen has so much more to offer than another convention of my peers.”

“I should be so jaded,” Chrys replied, bringing her hand down from her throat, offering it to the approaching man in greeting.  “You should try getting to go to conventions from a public posting.  They’re pretty free with travel onworld, but even Nokara needs department head approval.  And if I wanted to travel out system, it would take two years – standard – to get the paperwork through the system.”

Jessik vigorously shook Chrys’s hand and replied, “That’s one of the advantages of my position at the Kaini Institute.  I’ve been to conferences on Farris, Nachen and I’m scheduled to travel to the PUMA conference on Morris next year.”

“I’ve never left the system, except one trip to Garissa for a conference a quarter century ago,” Chrys replied, frowning.  “And this is my post-grad researcher, Helenne Bartum, who’s never been outsystem at all,” she continued.

Helenne shook Jessik’s hand firmly.  “It’s only my second trip to Nokara,” she admitted.

“Well, hope you’re enjoying it.” Jessik’s perfunctory reply and smile were forced.

“Do you have it?” he asked, turning back to Chrys.

“Actually, Helenne found the information and verified it,” Chrys replied.  she continued subvocally on a channel directed at Jessik.

Academian Jessik scanned the nearly deserted hallway.  “I have it,” he replied, biting his lip.  he continued,

Chrys smiled.  “I’ve saved up some money over the last half century, and I’m working on some private sponsorship.  If nothing else, it will be an adventure.  What about you?  Digging an eighty meter long skull out of a mountain bog?  Hard to justify that to the Projects Committee.”

“The K’targ skull was converted into a flying palace by Baroness Eleya Kannaddel after she received it as a gift from Crown Prince Rogar Kamarov in 4580 when he decided to renovate the Spring Palace.  It has great cultural and historical significance,” Jessik insisted.

Helenne noted privately to Chrys.