Kevin was bored out of his mind and trying very hard not to look like it.
The Mexico City pad was all sun and stone and distant city noise, the type 12 sitting quiet behind him with its ramp up and its systems on low idle. He and Y’kem were parked on a low concrete barrier near the security gate, boots dangling, full dress uniforms sharp enough to cut.
“We could wait on the shuttle,” Y’kem said.
“And miss being seen?” Kevin said. “No way. We are the flight team. Somebody might recognize us.”
Nobody had yet, but it was early.
Back home, Boston was a big deal. Half a million people, capital of the New England Alliance, important city by anyone’s scoreboard in the Americas. Mexico City was a metro area of ten million. More people here than in the whole Alliance put together.
A Boston kid could feel pretty small in a place like this.
Y’kem flicked him a sideways look. “You just want Mall to hear that people recognized you.”
“Also true,” Kevin said, trying not to dwell on the part where he was one boy in a city of ten million, hoping someone cared who he was.
He could feel the last week in orbit still in his bones. Six neural loads a day, thirty minutes plugged in, an hour off, then four more hours in the sims. He had slept on the flight down, sort of, but his brain still itched from all the new wiring.
At least today had a simple job. Stand where people needed him to stand. Let rich people’s tailors poke at him. Be visible for Theresa.
“They are late,” Y’kem said.
“They are rich,” Kevin said. “Late is their birthright.”
“Aren’t you rich, too?”
“Yeah, but they are Rodriguez rich,” Kevin said. “That is sort of like Matt rich.”
As if on cue, a midnight blue SUV eased around the curve up from the city. It slid through the security checkpoint like it owned the place, then stopped in the shade near the barrier.
Juana was out of the passenger side before the driver had fully parked, floaty skirt, solid boots, and that same sharp grin he remembered from Boston.
“Took you long enough, Wood,” she called.
Kevin hopped off the barrier. “Pretty sure you were the one who said eleven thirty.”
“It is eleven thirty,” she said. “Rodriguez time.”
Kevin was pretty sure Y’kem had just filed that next to Filipino time in his mental dictionary.
Marcus climbed out after her, sleeves rolled, looking exactly like the guy who had stolen Alex’s notes twice and blamed Kevin once.
“Good to see you, man,” Marcus said, pulling Kevin into a back thump. “Alex says you have been in space getting your brain scrambled.”
“Loaded,” Kevin said. “Loaded, not scrambled.”
Juana hugged him too, quick and fierce. She still smelled like good soap and hot air and something floral that did not exist in Missouri, much less space or Boston.
Y’kem slid off the barrier, straightened his jacket, and came forward with the polite awkwardness of someone meeting his friend’s other life.
“Hi,” he said. “Y’kem T’all. Kevin’s flight partner. V’ren, if that was not obvious.”
Juana shook his hand without blinking. “Juana Rodriguez. This idiot’s boss for the afternoon.”
“Marcus,” Marcus said, shaking too. “Her twin, full day older.”
“Twenty minutes,” Juana said. “You came out before midnight, I came after. That makes you technically first, not smarter.”
“A whole day in my heart,” Marcus told Kevin.
Kevin grinned. “He has been saying that since Boston.”
“Because it is true,” Marcus said.
Juana stepped back and looked Kevin and Y’kem up and down. Full dress uniform. Flight insignia. V’ren crest on Y’kem’s collar.
“You really showed up in full kit,” she said.
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “We are the flight team. People might recognize us.”
Marcus snorted. “You want them to recognize you.”
Kevin shrugged. No point denying it. “We were also told to,” he added.
Juana folded her arms. Older-sister weight settled in behind her eyes.
“No,” she said. “This afternoon you are not the flight team. You are Theresa’s brothers. If some boy showed up for one of your sisters and made it about his uniform, how would you feel?”
Kevin’s mouth opened, then shut again. He thought about his girls back home, the birthdays he had missed, the tiny town parades, the soccer games. Thought about some idiot showing up in a fancy jacket and acting like the whole day was about him.
“I would want to punch him,” he admitted.
“Exactly,” Juana said. “Good, lesson learned. Mom is a PR person and used to be part of Matt’s team. Right now you are here for Theresa. Like family. Before it is over, if we do our job right you will be adopted into the family, even you,” she said, poking the all too handsome Y’kem, the first V’ren she had seen in person.
Y’kem nodded. “That is fair,” he said. “We can be recognized another day.”
“See, trainable,” she said, and did not add cute. “Get in the car. We have work to do.”
The shop was nowhere near a mall.
They wound through older streets into a quiet lane, stopped in front of a tall wooden door with iron hardware polished by generations. Inside, a shaded courtyard, then a cool, bright workshop that smelled like leather and wool and hot steam.
No neon. No racks of cheap shirts. Boots lined one wall. Jackets waited on carved hangers. Hats were being shaped by hand in a glassed off corner.
“This is where they made mine,” Juana said. “Matt sang Wonderful Tonight at my Quince. My father cried more over the boots.”
“You looked good,” Marcus said. “You still do not shut up about it.”
“Because he promised he would come back for Theresa’s,” Juana said. “So today everything has to be right. Including these two.”
The tailor and bootmaker did their measuring dance, tape round necks and feet, quick questions about how much dancing, how much standing, how much running around after Theresa when she tried to bolt.
“What is this crest?” one man asked, finger touching a pin on Y’kem’s collar.
“That is the sigil of House T’all.”
“You are a noble? The ones that Marmaduke raised from near oblivion?”
“Yes,” Y’kem said cautiously.
Kevin stood on the little platform while they checked his arches and stride, then slid his feet into a narrow pair of tan boots that felt like they might actually survive a stampede.
“Walk,” Juana said.
He did. The heel shifted his balance just enough to make him pay attention.
“Good weird or bad weird?” she asked.
“Good weird,” he said.
“Keep those,” she said. “Medium trouble.”
Y’kem took longer. The bootmaker studied his feet, listening carefully as Y’kem explained the slight difference in spread.
“We do not crush you,” the man said. “We want you to come back.”
Third pair hit the mark. Dark brown, solid, a little more room across the front. When Y’kem took a few steps, the boots made him look like someone you would ask directions from and then obey.
“These feel like I should carry something sharp,” he said.
“That is the correct look,” Juana said.
Shirts were quick. White for Kevin, pale yellow for Y’kem, fitted clean across shoulders and chest. The tailor tutted once when Kevin tried to roll his own cuffs and took over, leaving neat folds.
Hats were the next problem.
The old hat maker measured their heads with a clicking metal band, then picked two felt blanks from the shelf. For Kevin, he shaped a warm brown cattleman style, steamed and coaxed into the right lines, then passed it to his helper to finish stitching while he sorted through the blanks for just the right one for the other boy.
When the first hat was finished, he set it on Kevin’s head. It shaded his eyes just enough to make him look older in the mirror. Juana nodded in approval.
“For you,” the hat maker told Y’kem, “we listen to the ears.”
He marked the brim of the open crown hat, then cut clean notches so the hat could sit low without bending Y’kem’s ear tips. When Y’kem put it on, it dropped into place like it had always been his.
“You look like you own half the valley,” Kevin said.
“I own a bunk and a flight bag,” Y’kem said, “but I will pretend.”
“Tell Matthew that this one got customization free of charge,” the owner said, coming over to Y’kem and fitting a pair of silver cufflinks that had just been lasered from a pair of palladium blanks. He quietly plucked the hat off for final stitching and slipped a customized bolo over the young man’s neck. “A gift from my house to yours,” he said, cinching the bolo, which like the cufflinks bore the House T’all sigil.
Juana watched them both and knew the green one would own a room full of young tias without even trying.
“Theresa is going to cry you have put this much effort into her Quince,” she said.
“We are here for her,” Kevin said. “Promise.”
“I know,” Juana said. “Alex would kill you otherwise, to say nothing of Matt.”
Both boys winced as that hit home. They knew he, or maybe Angelina on his behalf, had stage managed this to teach them just what they needed to know and understand.
Everything went into garment bags and hat boxes. The uniforms went back on. The cowboy gear became cargo.
“You can change on the shuttle,” Juana said as they walked back out into the heat. “Just before you fly in. That way you do not sweat through everything and my mother does not murder me for wrinkled clothes.”
“Smart,” Kevin said.
“Obviously,” she said. “Do not forget the jackets. It will still be warm before the sun sets, but after it does the hacienda sits almost a thousand meters higher than the city.”
They were back at the pad before sixteen hundred, uniforms still sharp, new gear over their shoulders. The type 12 sat quiet where it had been all day, ramp down now that the pad guard knew who they were.
Inside, the command module had turned into a small crisis hub.
Screens floated over the central table, showing the Yucatán in layers. Temperature bands, rainfall, clinic markers, new red points that had not been there when Kevin woke up that morning. Someone had pulled data straight out of the ship and the Mexican health nets and stitched it together.
T’mari sat in the middle of it, jacket off, white shirt sleeves rolled, hair pulled back tight. There was an empty coffee mug turned sideways near her elbow.
She turned at the sound of their boots.
Her eyes flicked over uniforms, bags, hat boxes, then came back to their faces.
“You look too clean,” she said. “Juana did not throw you into traffic?”
“She threatened to,” Kevin said. “We behaved.”
“She has strong opinions,” Y’kem added. “It was educational.”
T’mari’s mouth tugged. “Good. Now prepare for more education.”
She hesitated just long enough for Kevin to know she was changing mental gears.
“Come here,” she said, the ramp sealing them in as they crossed the threshold. “What do you know about the Yucatán?”
“It is where we are going in two days,” Y’kem said.
“It is the Maya heartland, its largest city is Mérida, and it became one of the biggest logistics hubs in the world after the Panama Canal was destroyed,” Kevin said.
“This blew up early this morning,” T’mari said. “V’ren medical was asked to step in late last night and they were on the ground there by first light. Matt has been managing the situation since before dawn, which is why we were slightly delayed leaving Colorado. There is a new strain of malaria that has been getting progressively worse since late winter when things started to warm up there. Local clinics are over capacity. They have nets, they have some meds, they do not have enough of anything.”
She tapped two points on the map. Lines drew themselves between them.
“The ship has supplies, better tests, drones we can use as relays. We can stage out of here and two coastal sites. We started planning how to help about twelve hours ago. You two are going to play a part in that. After the party tonight, the pair of you are going to get special T-26 training and be part of the delivery crew. You are ready for this, so it is not just optics.”
Kevin swallowed.
“I have flown with both of you and trust your instincts and judgement. Thankfully there are no murder bears here,” T’mari said. “I need pilots who can hold a low route when the weather is changing and the ground is questionable and the data is messy. W’ren told me you are very good at picking through the noise. That is high praise.”
Kevin looked at the red cluster again. At the little clinic icons. At the terrain lines. He reached out, manipulated the display, entered a query, and gave a long low whistle at the size of the operation. Typed in a few more commands to see traffic patterns to and from the ships.
“Only eight trips for us?”
“Matt wants you fresh for the second stage,” T’mari said. “You two will solo backseat a T-48 while J’orel and Q’raz pilot. MJ and Rita will hold the second seats for them, but you two will be on your own at comms and navigation.”
The red cluster stayed where it was, blinking quietly. T’mari watched the pattern he had pulled.
“That is some impressive data work. Matt is going to want you to walk him through your logic tree,” she said, saving the sequence as a macro.
“Okay,” Kevin said, both worried and more than a little proud.
“Good. I wanted to read you two in on the situation before we leave,” she said. “Executive washroom is loaded out, so we will change before we lift.”
She went back to her screens. They headed for the washroom module, bags over shoulders.
They changed just before departure.
The executive washroom had better lighting than most hotel rooms Kevin had been in. They wriggled out of uniforms and into fresh shirts and boots. Hats went on last. Kevin took a minute to get the angle right. Y’kem’s brim settled neatly around the cutouts for his ear tips.
“You look ridiculous,” Kevin said.
“So do you,” Y’kem said. “That means it is working.”
When they stepped back into the command module, T’mari turned one more time.
She did not laugh. She smiled, slow and real.
“All right,” she said. “Now you look like trouble with good intentions.”
Kevin tipped his hat. “Your cowboys reporting for escort duty.”
“Your pilots,” Y’kem corrected, a little formal, a little proud.
“Both,” T’mari said.
She slung her tablet, gave a last order to the aides at the side consoles, and walked down the ramp between them.
They fell in without talking about it, one on each side, half a step back. Boots solid on metal, hats catching the low sun as they walked toward the waiting ground car that would take them up to the hacienda and Theresa’s night.
From the Rodriguez balcony later, it would look simple. A V’ren woman in a plain white shirt, flanked by two boys in new boots and serious hats, walking out of a V’ren shuttle toward an old stone house.
Not kids tagging along.
Her pilots.
Her cowboy knights, Kevin thought, and this time it felt like exactly the right job title.
