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Episode 2

The Third Passenger Becky Chambers

Hello. I am Uzochi Ryouta. You probably know my name in other contexts, but for the time being, think of me in my current state: an Eratosi refugee aboard the Vela. We are en route to Khayyam, which has opened their door to us when others would not. In my time here, I have seen many faces, and heard many stories. Depending on where you are in our solar system, you may not have crossed paths with a refugee from the outer worlds. We are abstracts, statistics. In these videos, I hope to give us a face. Our troubles may seem distant to you, but we felt the same on Eratos—until our home could no longer keep us alive. The demise of our sun is inevitable. We will all be refugees soon. It is my hope that by sharing our lives with you, we—as a cooperative system—can prevent these stories from becoming yours, too.

• • •

Owning a ship was a luxury Asala could not afford—but renting a nice one? Yes. In a lot of ways, it was the most logical choice. Given the sensitive nature of her work, booking passage aboard a crowded cruiser was asking for trouble. A high-end small craft charter, on the other hand, would guarantee her privacy, and its staff wouldn’t ask questions about the contents of her luggage. A dock attendant flipping open a case of live ammo in a public boarding line wasn’t ideal.

That was the practical justification. The other side of the coin was that Asala simply liked to travel in comfort. She liked having a ship to herself. She liked being able to send in a rider of what she wanted to have aboard. She liked the automated nav systems that didn’t require her to so much as glance at the pilot’s chair. She could kick up her heels, sit back, and let technology do the work. Being in transit was about as close to a vacation as she ever got.

There had been a time in her life when she’d traveled the way most people did—stiff-legged and miserable, shoved into cramped shared quarters on a one-way journey that took months to complete. Fuel was expensive and physics was free, so the most economical way to get a lot of people from here to there was to depend heavily on gravity assists, which meant waiting years for the planets to align themselves in a way that facilitated a slingshot. Missed your flight? No problem, there’d be another in eight years. Sure, it was possible for high-end craft to zip around in a fraction of the time, choosing whatever launch date they pleased, but who had access to that kind of extravagance?

Asala did. Or, more accurately: her employers did.

Kestrel Interplanetary was her charter of choice, and its proprietor met her at the spaceport. “Kima Asala, always such a pleasure,” he said with a little bow. His mustache was expertly coiffed, as usual.

“Nice to see you, Tibor,” she said. “Thank you for taking care of this on such short notice.”

“For you? Of course.”

“I hope the security squad didn’t give you too much trouble.” There was an aspect to this trip Asala hated already, and it had required a full fine-toothed comb-through of the vessel before she’d been allowed to board, plus a few technical alterations. Overkill, but then, this was a government job, and government people never felt useful unless they invented ways to make everything twice as much bother.

“No trouble,” Tibor said. “A bit on the humorless side, but—well, that’s military for you. No offense, of course.”

“None taken.” She nodded at the coppery quick-shot craft waiting in dock before them. “Is this me?”

“This is you.”

Asala smiled. What a gorgeous machine. The solitary flight wing was teardrop-shaped—the point designed for cutting through clouds, the curve topped with a generous crust of fusion engines. Jutting out from the heart of the teardrop was the passenger sphere, framed within the thin wing like the pit of a perfect fruit. Out in space, the flight wing would swivel around, swinging the engines in whatever direction they were needed without moving the sphere. But in the spaceport, the wing hung vertically, tip to floor, its polished hull gleaming in the light of the overhead lamps. Asala was sure Tibor had angled them before her arrival, for effect. The ship looked like an earring, a pendant, something you might hang in your window to catch the sun.

“New?” Asala said.

“It is,” Tibor said, smiling proudly at his craft. “The Sky Shard Model 6, fresh out of the shipyards. I got three in last week, and I am giving the best of them to you. It’s called the Altair.”

Asala looked at him sideways. “What makes this one the best?”

His eyes twinkled. “It’s the one I’m giving to you.” He gestured forward as Asala laughed. “Come, I believe you’ll be very happy with the interior.”

Down the gangway they went, then through the airlock and into the sphere. Asala felt a bit of the knot in her neck let go as she surveyed the main deck. The style was unmistakably Khayyami, tan and gold and swimming blue, but the decor had been dialed down from its usual level of ostentatiousness. Simplicity was in the spotlight here, simplicity and openness. Modern furniture with graceful curves, their heavy floor bolts cleverly hidden behind twists of leg. Geometric art that inspired solace. Lights too bright to allow for any secret corners, but not so glaring as to be industrial. There was no clutter to be found, be it in object or color, no item that didn’t have a purpose. It was a tasteful space, a just-so space. Exactly the way Asala liked it.

Tibor beamed with the justified smugness of a man who knew his customer. “Four decks. Bedrooms up top, living space and work center in here, kitchen and two rec rooms below—one for exercise, one for entertainment—and then the tech deck, which you won’t need to worry about.”

“And the comm output frequencies?” Asala asked. Anything above thirty-seven made her hearing implants hiss. “Are they—”

“Thirty-six-point-two, precisely,” Tibor said.

Asala gave him a satisfied nod. She looked over her surroundings, and for one fanciful moment, she allowed herself to pretend that this was like any other trip, that this space was solely hers, that everything would stay as she liked it, that she’d have three whole weeks to sit and think in this spacefaring suite. She pretended—

There was a thud from the direction of the airlock. A muffled curse followed, and then: a second thud.

Asala closed her eyes and took a breath. It had been a nice thought while it lasted.

Niko stumbled onto the ship, dragging an absurd amount of luggage with them. Their cheeks had a faint glow of sweat, and their expression was exhaustingly eager. “Am I late? Wow, nice,” they said, looking around. They considered. “A little empty, but nice.”

Asala turned with the politest look she could muster. “Tibor, this is Niko av Ekrem.”

Tibor bowed respectfully, but not before Asala caught him giving the sweaty kid the subtlest of up-and-downs. “It’s an honor to have a member of the president’s family aboard one of my ships,” he said. “If it’s not too impertinent, may I inquire after your mother’s health? I saw in the news—”

Niko rolled their eyes with a smile. “She’s fine,” they said. “Just a cold, honestly. Gossip channels always make things out worse than they are.”

“Ah, that’s a relief,” Tibor said. “It may be gauche to say this, but of your father’s partners, I’ve always very much admired—”

Asala tuned out the obvious buttering-up, and remained fixated on the luggage. “What is all of that?”

Niko shrugged, surveying their varied duffels and sacks. “Clothes, gear—”

“What gear?”

“Computer stuff. I won’t be of much help without the right tools. Don’t worry, I already logged the mass with the nav desk. I promise I haven’t screwed up our trajectory.”

Asala glanced at Tibor, and he checked his handheld. “Yes, all your passengers’ belongings have been logged and adjusted for,” he said. “You’re well within our recommended parameters.”

“See?” Niko said. “I’m—” They paused. “Wait, what other passengers? Who else—”

Asala had registered the approach of footsteps several moments before, but that detail apparently hadn’t landed with Niko. A woman entered the room, clad in the sort of loose-fitting clothes and sun-blocking hood that any Khayyami might wear when stepping offworld at midday. Her luggage was as practical as Asala’s own.

“This is my colleague Chessa,” Asala said. “Our trajectory will be taking her to a rendezvous point on the way to . . . our destination.” Hypatia, her subconscious supplied, kicking and shouting at the idea. She shoved it back down. She’d deal with it later.

Niko looked confused but friendly. “Nice to meet you,” they said.

The third passenger nodded, but said nothing.

“Well then,” Tibor said. “If you’re all assembled, and if you don’t need anything further, the ship is yours. Kima Asala, if you would . . . ?”

Asala pressed her thumb to Tibor’s handheld. Anything that happened to the ship now meant her ass. Well, Ekrem’s ass. He was the one footing the bill.

Tibor said his goodbyes, and the airlock slid shut with a definitive thunk. Assured of their privacy, the third passenger removed her hood. Niko jumped. Actually jumped. For all their overstuffed luggage, this was one eventuality they clearly hadn’t anticipated.

General Cynwrig looked odd out of uniform, like a tiger without her stripes. She was imposing all the same: broad shoulders, scarred jaw, white hair cut practically short. “Agent Asala,” she said. Her voice communicated nothing, but her eyes said everything. She hated this arrangement every bit as much as her protector did.

“General,” Asala said with a nod.

Niko looked as if they’d swallowed a mouthful of nails. Their easy eagerness vanished, and after a second or two of gaping, they blurted out: “But you’re on the Marauder.”

“Am I?” the general said as she removed her gloves. “What a relief.”

Asala waited for the general to provide her own context for joining them, but Cynwrig merely folded her gloves and placed them in her pocket. Fine. “We’re taking her to Gandesian space on our way to Hypatia. A transport will pick her up at their border, and you and I will go from there.”

“But why?” Niko said.

“I have intelligence that the attempts on my life have not ended,” Cynwrig said. She said the words with a matter-of-factness appropriate for talking about the weather, or what she’d had for breakfast. “Considering the egregious breach of security discovered aboard my own vessel, both my advisers and your father”—she said this last like a peeved partner—“thought it best for me to take a more deceptive route home. Under the radar, as it were.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you in advance,” Asala said to Niko. She wasn’t sorry in the slightest, but it was the thing to say to your employer’s kid, especially when they were still standing there staring like an idiot. “We couldn’t risk word getting out.”

Niko turned their head to her, looking for all the world like someone who’d just found themself in crosshairs. “I wouldn’t have said anything.”

Asala sighed impatiently. Gods below, if the kid was this jumpy before they even left spacedock, she was going to lock them and their precious gear in their room for the rest of the trip. “I’m not saying you would’ve said anything. It was covert. Classified. Need-to-know. You know what these words mean, right?”

Niko glared, but they relaxed a touch. “I’m not stupid. I get it.”

A silence descended among the three, heavy and unpleasant. “Well,” the general said at last. She shouldered her bag and headed for the sleeping deck. “Should be a lovely trip.”

“Where’s the bathroom?” Niko asked.

“You’ll have one in your quarters,” Asala said.

“Are there any . . .” They looked hesitantly toward the lift the general had headed for. “On other decks?”

Asala hadn’t requested any alcohol aboard her ship—some luxuries just made her feel guilty—but in that moment, she deeply, profoundly wanted a drink. “I imagine there’s one down by the kitchen.”

Niko hurried downstairs looking green, leaving their bags in a disastrous heap.

Asala stood alone in a beautiful room on a beautiful spaceship, staring at an ugly pile of useless luggage, listening to the shufflings of other humans existing nearby. She wanted to punch Ekrem right in his stupid, smiling face.

• • •

My people’ve been in sugar since settlement days. Uh, industrial sugar, mind—we outers need cement and resin more than we need cake. We’re all harvesters—me, my partners, our kids, my brothers. My great-grandma right up until she died five years ago—or four? Doesn’t matter. We just took to it, I guess. Sugar’s what we do.

People watching this might not know what we harvest sugar from.

Oh, right. There’s this plant, we call it the sweetblood tree. It’s not really a tree like inners get, with leaves and such. It’s this huge fleshy pillar with a rigid skin. They’re carnivorous—not enough sunlight for much photosynthesis, so they have these long root systems that seek out burrowing things—ice mice, mostly—snare ’em, and suck ‘em dry. Not very nice, but that’s nature. Anyway, sweetblood trees only grow in these valleys off the coast of the Glacial Sea. I used to love going out there on sapping days. It’s the quietest place you’ll ever set foot in. Kincats don’t like anything but tundra for hunting ground, and wollmuls can’t eat anything there, so there’s no big animals at all. You can make camp anywhere you want, no need for guns or hot fencing. Just you and the trees and the stars above. Best place in the world.

You had to stop harvesting when the freeze started?

Well, not at first we didn’t. It was cold, sure, but I mean—it’s Eratos. We’re used to cold. We thought we could just, y’know, throw on an extra woolly and be okay. Bring a few extra heaters. But yeah, every harvest we went on, it got colder and colder. A lot of people quit, but we kept at it. The last one we went on, though . . . I mean, it was cold. Just dead cold. We called it early and got inside our tents—huddled around the heaters, right—and all of a sudden, there’s this sound. This big, loud pop.

Like a gun?

No—well, kind of. Louder. Weirder. Freaked us right out. I figured maybe a tree fell, but about half an hour later, there it was again. Pop. And then another, and another. The trees were exploding, see. It got so cold that night that the sap froze solid, and when it reached a certain point, the plant just bust apart. Just like that—bang. The airships, they’re not meant for sleeping in, but we all got in the flight cabin as quick as we could and spent the night there.

Why?

Sweetblood trees are dense. They’re heavy. And now you’ve got these frozen hunks of them popping off at random. It was like someone throwing rocks at you. We figured we’d be safer under a hull than in a tent. I mean, we had kids with us.

And that was the last time you went out there?

Yeah. I think we were the last ones to stop.

• • •

Niko wondered—they genuinely wondered—if there was a way they could avoid leaving their room until Cynwrig was off the ship. Two weeks to the rendezvous. It was doable? They had a bathroom. They had water. They had . . . no food. They had no food at all in their quarters, and it had been four hours since the Altair had left dock, and their stomach had finally calmed down enough to be hungry. They put it off for as long as they could, trying to concentrate on their work. They’d set up a bunch of gear on the floor—they weren’t about to use the workstation downstairs with her lurking around—and for a while, the soothing logic of code and numbers kept their mind off their ever-insistent stomach. It was after they realized that they hadn’t done anything but think about birthday noodles for an indeterminate amount of time that they surrendered to biology. Fine. They’d have to go eat.

The kitchen—or really, the dining room, because there wasn’t anything you could do real cooking on—was an ovular space, its walls bathed in a warm white glow. There were a few paintings, the kind you’d get in a hotel: pretty, inoffensive, and meaningless. Aside from the meal station set into the wall at the side of the room, there was nothing in there besides a long, rounded table and a generous supply of floor cushions. To their relief, Asala was the only other person present.

The mercenary sat at the table, a full plate of dinner before her, legs crisscrossed on a cushion, posture perfect as she read something on her handheld. Niko wondered if Asala ever slumped, if she ever spent days clad in holey pajamas, complete with snack crumbs and unwashed hair. Somehow, they doubted it.

Asala ate calmly, giving only a slight glance up as Niko entered. “You know how to use a meal station?” she asked, scooping up her next mouthful in a fold of flatbread.

“Of course,” Niko said, a little annoyed at the assumption that they might not, a little more annoyed because they understood where the assumption came from. Growing up in their father’s family, meals were something someone else usually made for you. They approached the appliance set into the wall and accessed the menu panel. The selection was standard Khayyami fare: spicy grain stews and colorful pan-fries, nuts and vegetables and every animal worth domesticating.

“Is it working?” Asala asked.

“Yeah,” Niko said. “Was it not?”

“Bit of lag in the response time, only for a second. I noticed it with the temperature controls in my room, too.”

They shrugged. “Seems to be fine.” Niko scrolled to the end of the menu, then back up, then down again, sure they’d missed something. They looked to Asala. “Is there no dessert?”

“Do you usually have dessert for dinner?”

Again, a spike of annoyance. “No, I just meant—did they forget to give us some?”

Asala swallowed a bite of something green and leafy. “There’s fruit,” she said.

Niko sighed quietly and turned back to the meal station. No, they weren’t planning on having dessert for dinner—they weren’t a fucking infant—but gods, after the day this had been, they really could have gone for a nice milky custard or a bowl of cloud soup with plenty of syrup. Oh well. They selected rednut stew and waited as the meal station got going with a soft whir. Behind the wall, a shelf-stable bag of premade food was being hydrated, heated, unpacked, and attractively plated. “Is there any hot sauce?” they asked.

Asala gestured at an array of condiment packs on the table. “Plenty of bread left too,” she said.

The meal station chimed, and Niko retrieved their plate from the drawer. They sat across from Asala, their heart speeding up a notch. They felt like they were five years old, meeting their much older siblings on family trips, hoping desperately that they’d think Niko was cool. But Niko wasn’t five years old. They were a grown-ass adult, and they were cool, and they could do this. They would make Asala like them. They would—

Niko’s heart sped up faster, and their desire to converse died with it. General Cynwrig had entered the room. She’d changed since boarding the ship, abandoning her nondescript Khayyami clothing for what could only be described as Gandesian military casual—sharp angles and block colors, not a thread wasted on sentiment. The pistol on her hip remained, no cloak to cover it now.

“What did you need belowdecks?” Asala asked. The question was direct, but there was no accusation behind it. A curious inquiry, nothing more. Niko wondered how Asala had known where the general had come from, then remembered the elegant implants resting in her ear canals. Did they reveal more than ears alone would, or was Asala just that dialed into her surroundings?

“I did a sweep of the storage compartments,” Cynwrig said, “as well as the engine room. Then I smelled food.” She began her own skim through the menu panel.

“A security squad went over the ship before any of us came aboard, and it’s been fitted with the signal scramblers you requested,” Asala said. “Everything checked out. Systems, food, water, everything. We’re safe. Nobody can track us, even if they wanted to.”

“Mmm. So said my security team when we boarded my Marauder, and we all know how that turned out.” Cynwrig made a selection, and the meal station got to work. “Not a mistake they’ll be making again.”

“What happened to them?” Niko managed nervously. Gods, were they dead?

Cynwrig threw Niko a look over her shoulder, a silent scoff. “They were demoted,” she said. What else? her tone added. She flicked through the menu. “No dessert?”

Niko caught a twinge of irritation crossing Asala’s face. “There’s fruit,” she said.

“Pity,” Cynwrig said. She retrieved her plate and strode to the head of the table. She took her seat in one economical motion and then looked at Niko. “Would you pass me the bread?”

Niko’s stomach flipped over, and a shaking anxiety filled them. Cynwrig was the embodiment of everything they were against, everything that was wrong with their solar system. How many times had they and their friends railed about her over late-night drinks? How many times had they denounced her, turned away in disgust from her face on the news? And now here she was, just sitting here, asking them to literally break bread together. What the fuck.

“Niko.” Asala was looking right at them. “You okay?”

Niko passed the basket to Cynwrig. “Sorry,” Niko said. “I’m—sorry. Tired.”

Cynwrig gave Niko an understanding look that made them even more nervous. “I have to say,” she said as she tucked into her meal. “I was surprised to see nothing but Khayyami cuisine on the menu. I thought for sure we’d be having salt crab the whole way there.” A Hypatian staple. Or a stereotype, depending.

Asala chewed her food slowly. “I haven’t had that in a long time.”

“No? How long?”

“Thirty-four years.”

“I see,” the general said. “Yes, I can understand how you might prefer the Khayyami palate after that long.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“My mistake. You don’t favor one over the other, then?”

Niko caught the real question laced beneath, and judging by the brief pause Asala made in chewing, she did as well. She looked at Cynwrig for a moment, then returned to her plate and took a sip of water. “I go where I am beckoned. I eat what I am given.”

The general laughed and wagged a finger in Asala’s direction. “Well done,” she said. She turned to Niko, who had no idea what the joke was. “She’s quoting Eyahue. ‘I go where I am beckoned, I eat what I am given, I sing the harmony and am lost no more.’”

Niko, on the other hand, was definitely lost. “Who’s Eyahue?”

“A Gandesian poet,” Asala said.

“One of our most famous,” Cynwrig said. “Much too passive for my taste.” She turned to Niko again. “The salt, please.”

Niko couldn’t do this. They couldn’t sit here chatting about poetry over the dinner table like they were all good pals while people were out there dying. And yet, they passed the fucking salt.

“So what is taking you back to Hypatia after all this time?” Cynwrig asked Asala. “I know you’re not out here just for me.”

“Humanitarian talks,” Asala said smoothly. She nodded at Niko. “They’re representing Khayyami relief efforts on the government’s behalf. I’m along as protective escort.”

Niko thought it would’ve been nice if this cover story had been discussed with them ahead of time, but oh well. “That’s right,” they said.

“Ah,” Cynwrig said. She studied Niko. “A budding diplomat. Your father must be proud.”

Niko forced a smile even as their stomach churned. “I hope so.”

“Tell me,” she said. “What does a diplomat do with all that computer gear?”

“What?” Niko felt the floor drop out from under them.

Cynwrig gestured toward the upper decks. “I saw your luggage when I came aboard. Hardware cases, it seemed. Or am I mistaken?”

The general stared at them from one side. Asala did the same from the other. “It’s a hobby,” Niko said.

“A hobby,” the general repeated.

Niko looked at Asala. Her face was cool as ever, but her stare shouted do not fuck this up loud and clear. “Have to have something to do for three weeks, right?” Niko said.

Cynwrig considered them. “Well, if you’re good with computers, perhaps you could take a look at the communications hub in my quarters. There’s some kind of minor malfunction with it.”

Asala looked up. “You too?”

The general raised her eyebrows. “Is there a problem I should know about?”

Niko shook their head. “Asala experienced a response lag with some of the interface panels. That’s usually due to a combo of faulty wiring and ex-atmo radiation. I can take a look at it.”

Cynwrig nodded, but her eyes had gone a touch harder, the look of a woman used to knives at her back. “And what else do you plan to do while we’re here, aside from your . . . hobby?”

Research for our mission was the answer, but Niko couldn’t . . . well, maybe they could. A rebellious impulse bubbled up, born out of the disgust they’d been trying to smother. Cynwrig had asked the question, after all. Might as well tell the truth. “Do you know who Uzochi Ryouta is?” What did I say about not fucking this up, Asala’s unblinking glare said.

“Of course,” Cynwrig said. She smirked as she chewed.

“She released this video series on one of the free-public channels,” Niko said. “About the Eratosi refugees.” They glanced at Asala, who had stopped eating. “I thought that since we’re on our way to talk about relief efforts, it might be a good way for me to better understand what they’re going through.”

“You’re going to Hypatia, are you not?”

“Yes.” Niko’s hands felt shaky, but in their head, their friends cheered them on. They looked Cynwrig dead in the eye. “But refugees are refugees. I figure all people suffer in pretty much the same way.”

Cynwrig did something truly disturbing: she smiled at Niko. An acid smile. A mocking smile. She took one more bite and stood. “If you’ll both excuse me,” she said. “I think I’ll finish my meal in my quarters.” Asala didn’t move. Her eyes watched Cynwrig exit the room, remained on the hallway until the lift took off, then swung hard back to Niko.

“What the hell was that?” she said.

“What the hell is this?” Niko said, gesturing around. “Why is she here?”

“We went over this already.”

“It was rhetorical! This is . . . this is ridiculous. How can you stand being here with her?”

Asala looked at the thick hull shielding them from the vacuum outside. “Where else would I go?”

“But—” Niko closed their eyes and shook their head. “What she’s doing to your people. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand being around her. How can you?”

“It’s my job,” Asala said.

Niko stared at her. So neutral, so poised. When their father had come to them with this job and told them who they’d be accompanying, Niko had been elated. They’d expected danger, yes, and discomfort, sure, but not . . . not this. “What is wrong with you?” they blurted out. “Those people on her Marauder—”

“Keep it down.”

“You shoved them back in the hold. You looked—you looked annoyed by them.”

Asala squinted. “Has this been bothering you since then?”

“Yes! They’re your people. They’re dying. You made the same trip they—”

“Do not.” Asala’s voice was as sharp as the crack of a bullet. “Do not tell me what I did.”

Niko wet their lips. “Why don’t you care about them?”

Asala took the last of her bread and cleaned the sauce from her plate until it shined. “Are you armed, Niko?”

Niko was taken aback. “What?”

“Are you armed?”

“No, of course not. Why would I be armed?”

Asala began to clean up her spot. “You just shared a meal with two people who are.” The general’s pistol had been impossible to miss, but Niko hadn’t noticed a weapon on Asala, and they couldn’t see one now. Asala gathered her dishes and left the table. “In the future, that’s the kind of situation in which it pays not to piss anyone off.”

• • •

Would you say your name and position here for the camera?

My name is Apirka Amin, and I’m the ship’s captain.

Captain Amin, what are some of the biggest challenges you and your crew are dealing with right now?

Well, for starters, this is a ship designed for eight hundred people, not two thousand. The Khayyami government didn’t expect so many when they sent us out here.

You’ve done your best with the space you have.

That was all the Blue Hats. They came in and put up the privacy dividers in the cargo holds, and gave us the sleeping mats and whatnot. And the lavs.

Yes, the pop-up lavatories. We’re all well acquainted with them.

They’re god-awful.

I’d have to agree.

The ship has a sewage system, but again—

It’s built for eight hundred.

Right.

The Blue Hat volunteers provided the rations and basic hygiene items, too, right?

Yeah. They were pretty organized. I wish it had stayed that way.

What’s gone wrong?

The kinds of things you’d expect from people crammed into too little space and no way to shut a door on someone you don’t like. There have been thefts. Fights. The volunteer patrols are on it, but . . . it’s hard. And people are getting sick. Can’t sneeze in the cargo holds without hitting all your neighbors.

But the ship’s systems are stable?

. . . Sure.

That was a long pause you took there.

They’re stable. Nothing for the passengers to worry about. We’re safe.

I understand.

• • •

The Altair had been in transit for almost a week, and given that nobody had killed anyone else yet, Asala was starting to think the trip might go quietly. The general continued to run her daily security checks, and if that made her feel better, fine. Niko alternated between trying to sweep their outburst at dinner under the rug with a profound amount of sucking up, and hiding from the general in their room, where they were busy doing whatever a person did with computers. As for Asala, she was attempting, as best she could with the company, to spend her interplanetary flight the way she always spent interplanetary flights: sitting in her quarters and reading. She was failing at it, despite the comfortable lounge chair, despite the simulated candles she’d switched on, despite the little plate of pickled fruit and the refreshment tin she had at hand. She tried new books, old books, fresh ideas and familiar friends. Nothing stuck. She couldn’t concentrate, and when she found she’d read the same stanza three times over without properly processing it, she tossed her handheld aside and rubbed her face with her palms. She knew why she couldn’t read, and she was spitting mad over it.

Damn Ekrem, and damn his kid. Damn that photo they’d shoved in her face.

Asala knew why none of her books would stick. She was thinking about one particular set of books, one she desperately wanted and would never see again. The Wonders of Eramen, all six volumes. It was a used set, and had likely been bought cheap, but there was no collection in the galaxy more precious to Asala. She remembered the worn covers, the feel of the mock paper. Most of all, she remembered the inscription inside the first volume: To my little sister, on her birthday, with love from Dayo. The words sister and her were written in slightly different ink on neatly cut rectangles of glued paper, which Dayo had covered the original misnomers with a year or so after the gift had been given, after an important conversation had been had. Dayo hadn’t told Asala she’d altered the inscription. She’d just done it, leaving it for Asala to find on her own. Dayo had been like that, always performing quiet kindnesses without expectation of praise.

And yet Asala had abandoned her, and the books, and everyone else besides. It didn’t matter that she’d been a child, that larger hands and stronger wills had placed her on that ship. There’d been a time when she felt like they’d thrown her away, but no. No, she’d abandoned them. In both body and mind, she had.

She stood up and began to pace. Damn Ekrem, and damn his kid. This was a line of thinking she’d stopped beating herself with long ago, and had worked so hard to bury. And yet here she was, headed to Hypatia in search of ghosts.

She could be alive, a voice in her head whispered. She was alive ten years ago. She could be, still.

She tried to shove the thought aside, but Niko had planted it in fertile ground, and its roots had dug deep. The intensity of it frightened her. There was nothing more dangerous than hope.

If she’s alive, you have to try, the voice said. Even if it’s only a chance. You have to try. For her.

There was no arguing that.

She paced until her feet were tired, and after a few minutes of sitting back down, she realized the rest of her was tired too. She washed up, folded her clothes, and got into bed. She stared into the dark for a long time, indulging in old memories and letting the pain of them sit with her. Hypatia was going to hurt. Might was well get ready for that.

Her mind drifted, then quieted, then let her go altogether.

Her rest began softly, but it ended with a shriek—a metallic shriek pouring out of every speaker and straight into Asala’s brain, erasing the immediately forgotten dream she’d been lost in, preventing any waking thoughts from gaining legs. Both hands shot up to her ears, and she dialed her implants all the way down as quickly as she could. Silence reigned. Her mind regrouped. She took a breath, shook her head, looked around.

What the hell was going on?

She ran across the room to the ship systems panel. The panel was frozen. She tapped and she tapped. She slapped her palm against its frame. A flicker. Then nothing.

She threw on some clothes, and shoved her feet into her boots. Presumably, the sound was still blaring, but she left her implants off. She opened her door and almost ran into the general, who was shouting something. She had her gun drawn.

“I can’t hear you,” Asala said, pointing at her ears. “Speak slowly.”

I said, Cynwrig’s lips read, what the hell is going on?

“I don’t know.” Asala looked around, trying to assess whether they needed to head for an escape pod. Everything else about the ship seemed fine. She didn’t think they’d hit anything. She couldn’t smell anything burning, couldn’t feel any change in air pressure. “Is that sound still—”

Yes! The general looked furious.

Asala hurried to Niko’s quarters and opened the door without a knock. Niko sat on the floor, in the middle of their nest of computers and wires, a blanket wrapped around their head as they typed furiously. They were in a panic, and looked as if they, too, had been ripped out of bed. They said something as the other two entered the room, too harried for Asala to make it out. Sorry and fix were the only words she caught.

“What’s wrong?” Asala shouted. She had no idea how loud her voice needed to be to get over the shriek, so she went full bore. “Is there danger?”

Niko shook their head vigorously, continuing to type and babble. A minute, Asala caught, and later, shit.

After a moment, Niko and the general both sighed and slumped. Asala took that as a cue to turn her implants back on. She did so gingerly, dialing them up just a touch at first. The sound had stopped. She turned them back to full, and looked hard at Niko. “What was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” Cynwrig said.

“I mean—I do, I’m just—I’m not sure—” Niko looked bewildered, and the blanket dropped from around their ears. Their hair was sticking straight up on one side, and they still had pillow lines pressed deep into one round cheek.

Asala sighed and crossed her arms. “Niko. What was that?” She kept her voice calm, hoping the kid would calm down too.

Niko took a breath. “Some kind of malfunction in the comms system,” they said, their professionalism making a show at last. “Like a . . . a feedback loop, I guess. I think it’s related to the response lag, but I don’t know how yet.” That particular glitch hadn’t gone away since they’d left Khayyam, and Niko’s attempts to fix it hadn’t been fruitful. They glanced nervously at the general. “I disabled the whole comms system until I can figure it out. But it’s just a glitch. Some kind of sloppy code. I don’t know. It’s nothing dangerous.”

“How do you know?” the general said. “How can you say that, if you don’t know what it is?”

“General—” Asala started.

Cynwrig stormed back out. “I’m going to run a diagnostic on the scramblers,” she said. She’d already done four of those since Khayyam.

Asala rubbed the bridge of her nose. “What time is it?”

“Um”—Niko fumbled for their handheld—“three-oh-four.”

Gods. She walked over to the systems panel on Niko’s wall and tapped the screen. It leapt into action, just as it was supposed to. “Go back to sleep,” she said. “In the morning, I want you to do a—” She had no idea what the proper terms were, which wasn’t ideal when giving directions. “Can you check everything out, see if you can get to the bottom of it?”

Niko nodded, their mussed hair bobbing absurdly. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Asala said. A comms system malfunction. She could feel the adrenaline bleeding out of her, but a hum of concern remained. “Okay.”

Without another word, she returned to her room, pulled off her boots, and crawled back into bed. Blanket tugged to her chin, she lay in the dark, thinking about the lags, the glitches, the panel freezes. She thought about the general, prowling the corridors again and again. She thought about Dayo, and where she might be.

She did not fall back asleep.

• • •

This is kind of hard to talk about.

That’s all right. Take your time.

Sorry. The camera’s making me self-conscious.

We can point it elsewhere, if you want.

No. People should see, right?

Yes, I think they should.

Okay. Okay.

How did you get frostbite?

I wasn’t the only one. There was this freak blizzard. Our housing block got buried, and everything got knocked out. Heaters, comms, everything.

How long were you there?

Five days. Two for the snow to stop, three more for them to dig us an exit.

And you went without heat for that long.

Real heat, yeah. We started burning stuff. Piled whatever we could find that would burn into old water drums, and kept it going as best we could. The smoke got terrible. I think there was some plast in there. Or some kind of paint, I don’t know. Made everybody’s eyes hurt. Some kids started choking, and then people were passing out, so we had to stop. We . . . Sorry.

Take your time.

I shouldn’t complain about . . . about this. I made it out. Not everybody did. It’s just two legs and a nose. Could be worse, right?

There’s a woman down on deck twelve, she’s been melting down scrap metal and making prosthetic digits out of them. Have you heard of her?

What? No. Where?

Deck twelve. I don’t know if she could do whole limbs, but perhaps a nose?

That would be great. I’m tired of grossing people out.

You don’t gross me out.

Thanks.

• • •

Niko set one foot through the doorway to the rec room and froze. A video was playing on-screen, and one of the six reclining chairs before it was occupied by the general’s unmistakable silhouette. In the ten days since they’d left Khayyam, Niko had become masterful at being wherever Cynwrig wasn’t, and there was a brief, hopeful moment when they thought they might be able to slip right back out of the room. But no, too late—the general had already craned her head their way. Shit.

“Sorry,” Niko managed. “I didn’t know someone was in here.”

They started to leave, but the general spoke. “Join me,” she said easily.

Niko’s brain upended itself. “Um—”

Cynwrig turned back toward the screen. “I’d like to get to know my ally’s progeny better,” she said. “And you’ve been avoiding me.”

Niko stood stupidly in the doorway. On-screen, some sort of caper was unfolding in a lavish room. One of the heavily made-up characters had experienced some misfortune, and was pulling faces in a display so over-the-top it was almost grotesque. The hell was she watching? “I—”

Cynwrig sighed. “First lesson, little diplomat.” There was a smirk in her voice. “When a planetary leader invites you to join them, you join them. Even if you can’t stand their company.”

What else could they do? Niko went in, their insides tying themselves in knots. They took a seat beside Cynwrig, sitting stiffly. They folded their hands, then crossed their arms, then shifted their weight. All their limbs felt wrong. They couldn’t find a place to put them.

Beside them, the martial ruler of Gan-De sat comfortably watching a slapstick comedy, ankle resting on the opposite knee, a box of something edible in her lap. She laughed at the theatrical goings-on—the most subdued of chuckles, but heartfelt all the same.

Niko tried to get their thoughts in order. Surreal didn’t begin to cut it. “What is this?” they said, watching the screen. They didn’t speak whatever Gandesian dialect this was in, but even if they had, they weren’t sure the imagery would make any more sense. A man in an ornate sequined bird suit had entered the scene now, for some reason. “Two and Six,” Cynwrig said, laughing at the bird man. “It’s a classic morality pageant, very old. See, the two carrying the treasure chest are criminals—you can tell from the branding across their faces. They’re trying to escape with the treasure, but the queen—she’s a witch—has summoned the Six Aspects of Order to thwart them.”

“And the bird is . . . ?”

“An avatar of Wisdom. It’s making them solve riddles or else it’ll peck out their eyes.”

“So . . . the criminals outsmart the Aspects?”

“Of course not. The criminals are clowns. Stock characters. They’re punished for their stupidity, and they die at the end.” She laughed again as the face-pulling criminals gave some bumbling answer to a question.

“And that’s . . . funny.”

“It’s hilarious,” the general said. “Although, I wouldn’t recommend this particular adaptation. It’s not very good.”

“Then why are you watching it?”

“I’ll show you in a minute.” She picked up the box in her lap. The edges were dented from travel. “Vanilla puff?”

Niko stared. No. This was poison. This was a trick. And yet . . . gods damn it, it had been over a week. An awful, stressful week on a ship without so much as a spoonful of empty sugar to be found. They took a vanilla puff. If they were playing diplomat, they’d play diplomat. “Thank you,” they said. They sat back, took a bite, and managed not to moan. Wow, they’d needed that.

“Do you know why she doesn’t eat sweets?” Cynwrig asked.

“No,” Niko said, taking another bite. They let the filling spread across their tongue, not wanting to neglect a single taste bud.

“Strange. But then, I have no idea if patties have a taste for sweet things, do you?”

Niko swallowed. The heavy sugar coated their teeth, something cloying and chemical leaving an odd aftertaste. How dare she. How dare she assume that Niko’d be fine with talk like that when Asala wasn’t in the room. They set the sweet down on a side table, resisting the urge to eat the rest. “I don’t know about Hypatian food, no.”

Cynwrig gave another short chuckle and went back to watching her movie. “Ah, here,” she said, leaning forward. She pointed at the screen. “Watch the background. There’ll be a boy who comes in . . . now.”

Niko looked. “The . . . the one in the white feathers?”

“No, the one in the red.”

Niko saw the boy she meant, baby-faced and floppy-curled. They watched as the feathered boy did leaping somersaults as the bird man spoke, and . . . that was it. The boy was gone, a background dancer without a line.

“My grandson,” Cynwrig explained. “Fifteen, and desperate to be an actor.” She took another puff for herself. “My son’s son. Had him much too young, he and the mother. My daughter waited until she was in her thirties, smart girl. Her boy just turned two—biggest cheeks I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s . . . nice.”

Cynwrig fell back into silence again, watching the movie. “What were you after, before you knew I was in this room?”

“I needed a break,” Niko said. “I still can’t figure out what’s wrong with the comms.” The shriek had returned at random intervals, plus a varied assortment of other problems. The ship’s systems shouldn’t have been that hard to tease out, but the general’s patched-on scramblers had made everything a clusterfuck.

“And what were you going to watch? Your refugee videos?”

“Maybe.” Yes.

“Emotionally flogging yourself isn’t a break.” The general nodded at the screen. “I remember this one night during the Siege of Halien.” That reference, Niko knew—a particularly long and bloody stretch during the Gandesian Civil War. “My regiment had established camp in a former school—bombed out, of course, but it still had part of a roof, and it was the rainy season, so you see the appeal. Everyone’s clothes were wet, and we all smelled like sweat and old blood. We were sick and exhausted. Food was running out. And then, one of the soldiers found a projector and a video drive in what was left of an old classroom. Those of us who couldn’t sleep watched movies all night—kid stuff, but it was fun. We laughed at those puppets like we’d never seen a movie before. It took us away for a while. We all needed that.” She cracked her knuckles. “Granted, half of us died in the morning when the enemy bombed our encampment, but we’d had a laugh beforehand, at least.”

Niko had no idea how to respond to that.

“War,” Cynwrig said, “is math. How many dead, how many miles, how many bullets you have left. We—me, you, our stalwart protector here—we are all at war. Only, our enemy isn’t something we can outgun or outfox. It’s time. Time is our enemy, and resources are the only weapon we have.” She nodded at the screen. “Everyone who made this fluff, they’re Gandesian sons and daughters. They have people who love watching them, even if only for a few seconds. Ours is a beautiful world, full of beautiful people. And yes, it’s going to die, just like the rest. But for now, we have water. We have food. We have a greater distance from the enemy than the rest of you, and that means we will solve this.”

“How?” Niko said. “How are you going to solve it?”

Cynwrig shrugged. “That’s a job for scientists, not me. My job is to make sure there are Gandesians left to see whatever plans are made all the way through. To make sure our people and our culture survives this.” She looked sideways at Niko. “And that means we need to keep what we have.”

“You have more than enough. You have a whole planet.”

“Do you know what a planet is? It’s not as big as you think. When it’s used up, it’s used up. Have you seen our reports? Have you done the math?” She stretched her legs. “I’m going to assume you don’t have children, but pretend for a moment you do. Say that there’s a famine, and you have just enough left to feed your family. Now say another family knocks on your door, and they have children of their own. They say, ‘Please, please give us your food, or we will starve.’ Who do you feed? The strangers at your door or the family in your home?”

“That’s not—”

“And now say,” Cynwrig continued, “that you see those strangers approaching, and you know that people just like them stole your neighbors’ food. Raided their pantry.”

“Bullshit,” Niko said. They didn’t care about playing diplomat anymore. They wanted to throw up the two bites of puff they’d eaten. They couldn’t stomach this one.

Cynwrig laughed. “Is it?” she said indulgently, as if she were speaking to one of her grandkids.

“It is,” Niko said. “You have no evidence that the outer citizens would cause you harm. None at all. They just need help. They’re desperate.”

“Precisely. Do you know what desperate people are capable of? Have you ever seen desperation, Niko av Ekrem? Because I have. I have, and those were my own people. People who were of my own culture, who spoke my own language, who told the same stories. And none of that stopped them—stopped us—from butchering each other.” She sighed. “There has been peace on Gan-De for twelve years. It was hard won, and is hard kept. I will not see that work undone.”

“They’re people,” Niko said. “People like the woman upstairs who saved your life, and is protecting you now. And they’re dying. They’re dying by the shipload on that doorstep you mentioned.”

“Don’t talk about death as if you know what it means,” the general said. “And don’t talk about people as if we’re all the same.” She gestured at the screen. “You don’t even get the jokes. How can I imagine that you and I see the world anything alike?”

Niko had had enough. They left the puff where it lay, and walked toward the door.

“Why are you on this ship?” the general asked, not taking her eyes off the screen.

Niko stopped. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not a fool, child. If you were a diplomat, you’d be on a government-issued cruiser with a staff at your disposal, not an untraceable quick-shot with a sniper and no one else.” She smiled over her shoulder. “What are you two after on Hypatia?”

Niko inhaled. “We are going,” they said, “to discuss humanitarian relief efforts.”

The general laughed and returned to her movie.

Niko nearly ran back to their room, palms sweating. “Fuck,” they whispered. They went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on their face. So much for a break.

They looked at themself in the mirror, drops of water running down their cheeks. Where had that water come from? Bought in blocks from the outer planets? Ripped molecule by molecule from their hemorrhaging sun? Was there still enough water aboard the Vela, wherever it had gone? Was there food? Was there air? Niko returned to their makeshift workstation, diving in with a fury. If the people of the outer planets didn’t get a break, neither did they.

• • •

I used to sell batteries, both home-sized and industrial. Do you know much about batteries?

I do, yes, but the people watching this might not.

Okay, real simple: batteries discharge their energy faster in the cold than they do in warm temperatures. They’ll hold their charge longer, but that doesn’t matter too much once you start using it. So, you need to get warm, which means you’re cranking up the heater, which means you’re pulling more from your home’s batteries. But the batteries are kicking out juice faster, so if you’re not keeping a constant eye on them—which most people don’t; they’ve got better things to do—they’ll run dry. So you can’t run your heater for as long as you need to, which means you’re getting colder, which means you’re trying to crank up the heater, which means . . . you see?

I do.

Yeah, you know. I bet your batteries were performing like shit too.

The heater in my lab stopped working. We had to evacuate.

That’s the other part of it. The more you run a machine, the faster it’s going to break down. So it wasn’t just that the cold was getting worse. It’s that the cold borked the machines that were supposed to keep us warm. Honestly, that’s the most hilarious thing about this ship.

What is?

There’s so many people crammed in here. Folks are passing out because it’s way too fucking hot.

• • •

Shouting. That was the last thing Asala wanted to hear, but there it was, clear as day, a pair of voices skirmishing down the hall. With a weary sigh, Asala set down her handheld, put on her shoes, and followed the sound of the fight.

She entered Niko’s quarters. Its primary occupant was on their feet, doing their best to hold their own against Cynwrig, who . . . well, had staged and won a bloody coup against a long-standing planetary government. Niko was screwed here.

“I don’t care whose brat you are,” Cynwrig spat. “This is an act of aggression, and as soon as I am off this—”

“I didn’t do what you’re saying!” Niko shot back, their voice trembling and angry. “I’m trying to fix it.”

“Oh, I’m sure. I’m sure. Let’s take a look at your precious computers and we’ll see what—”

“Okay,” Asala said. She stepped forward with her palms up. “Everybody needs to—”

“This little shit,” Cynwrig said, “shut down the scramblers—”

“They’re the problem!” Niko cried. “They’re what’s causing all the—”

“—and tried to access my personal files.”

Asala looked right at Niko. “Is that true?”

“No.” The kid looked like they were at their wit’s end. “The scramblers are not compatible with this ship’s core systems. The way they were jury-rigged onto this ship—it wasn’t designed for that. I’ve been trying to patch it, and I had to reboot the scramblers—it only took a sec. At most, we were trackable for three minutes.”

“That’s hardly a sec.” Asala frowned.

Niko threw up their hands. “Nobody even knows we’re out here, and they don’t know what to look for, so even if somebody were scanning this exact spot in space at this exact time, they wouldn’t know who we were or where we were going. It was fine.”

“It was a breach of the security protocol I laid out before setting foot on this ship,” Cynwrig said. “I’ve discharged soldiers far more competent than you for much less than that.”

“Yeah, I bet you have,” Niko said.

“Enough,” Asala said. “Niko. Her files?”

“I didn’t.” Niko sighed. “I wrote a—”

“I got a hacking alert,” Cynwrig said, shaking her handheld in Asala’s direction. “Local origin point.”

“Can I finish? I wrote a program that would seek out the specific problem areas on the ship. Things where devices or concurrently running programs weren’t playing nicely with each other. It must’ve tried to assess your handheld. Yours, too, probably,” they said to Asala.

Asala hadn’t gotten a hacking alert, but then, she doubted her handheld’s security programs were as robust as Cynwrig’s. She was quiet a moment. “They’re your ally’s family,” Asala said lightly.

“That doesn’t excuse them,” Cynwrig said. She had less of a purchase on the situation now, and it looked to only be making her angrier.

“I’m not saying it does. I’m saying this is a kid on their first field trip”—she saw Niko bristle at that—“and from the level of ass-kissing I’ve experienced, they’re just trying to do a good job. If the Khayyami government wanted your files, they would’ve got them on Khayyam. They wouldn’t have waited for you to be on a sealed ship with a grand total of two possible culprits. Especially since you’d be likely to space one of them, and that means a fifty percent chance of spacing the president’s kid. Ekrem is a lot of things, but he’s not an idiot.” She stuck her thumbs in her pockets. “Niko, please apologize to the High General of Gan-De for breaking her security protocols.”

Niko looked betrayed. “I—”

“I know I said please, but it’s not a request.”

Niko sighed. “General, I was just trying to help. I’m sorry. I should have checked with you—”

“And me.”

“—and Agent Asala first.” Their mouth twitched. “I didn’t mean to cause you any offense or distress. I’m sorry.”

The fire was dying in the general’s eyes, but the embers still glowed. She huffed and left the room.

Asala waited until she heard the thunk of Cynwrig’s door. “I think that means we’re not going to war, at least.”

Niko sat down on the edge of their bed, their limbs hanging limp. They looked exhausted. Had they been sleeping? The glitches in the ship were a pain, yes, but hardly worth Niko wrecking themself over. Was this all in an effort to impress?

Asala leaned against the wall. “What were you really trying to do?” she asked. “And don’t bullshit me.”

Niko exhaled. “The scramblers honestly are the problem.” They ran their hand through their floppy hair. “But . . . I did hack her handheld.”

“Why the fuck—” Asala caught herself launching into a shout of her own, and put on the brakes. “Why the fuck would you do that?” she hissed.

“Because she”—Niko pointed hard at the door—“has been on my ass about what we’re actually doing out here, and I don’t know if she’s just being paranoid or if she knows something. If she knows why we’re really here, then she knows about the Vela falling off the map. And she is not the person who should have that particular chip in her pocket.”

Asala said nothing for a few moments. “And?”

“And what?”

“Did you find anything?”

“Are you . . . are you not mad about this?”

“Of course I’m fucking mad about this. But you did it, so . . . ?”

“No,” Niko said sourly. “Her stuff is so encrypted I couldn’t untangle it.” They gestured at their gear. “Not with this. I could’ve done it back home.”

Asala drummed her fingers on her arm and considered. The kid was nervous, and annoying, and was assuredly going to make a roaring mess of something at some point during this job. But hacking the general’s files—even a failed hack—took guts, and their reasoning showed political savvy, if not the wisdom to wield it. “That was both pretty smart and very stupid,” she finally said.

“Those can’t be true at the same time,” Niko said.

“In this line of work, there’s a lot of crossover.” Asala let out a mighty sigh. “We have two more days until we drop her off. Do you think you can avoid causing a diplomatic crisis between now and then? Just read a book, or something? Like a normal person?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” Asala started toward the door, then looked back at Niko, their eyes bloodshot from staring at screens, browbeaten and yelled at and wanting so badly to save the world. She closed her eyes and chose her words carefully. “I care, Niko.”

Niko looked up. “What?”

“I care. Of course I care. About—” She gestured vaguely toward the window, toward everything unfolding on worlds beyond. “You don’t know what it’s like. You think this is all some big heroic quest. Some moral-of-the-story. You need to get over that shit right now. It’s different when you know their faces. When it’s not just people who are dying, it’s your mom and your dad and your friends, it’s everybody on your street, it’s your language teacher who stayed after school to help you pass your quizzes, it’s the lady who used to sell you fireworks whose name you never bothered to learn. It’s everyone you ever met, and there is no hope for any of them. That’s what we’re going up against here. That’s what you are going to find on Hypatia. They’re not looking for a savior. They don’t want a savior, and they don’t want a new home. What they want is the life they had before everything went to hell. They want the people they lost. And they can’t have that, so they deal however best they can.” She met Niko’s gaze. Theirs was wide; hers was steady. “Do you get that?”

Niko nodded. “I think so,” they said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t. I don’t need pity.”

“No, I meant sorry for saying that you don’t care. That was . . . that wasn’t okay.”

“It wasn’t.”

“That was an asshole thing to say.”

Asala accepted with a nod. She waved her hand over the computer stuff on the floor. “Clean this shit up. Read a book. Don’t hack any more government officials.”

• • •

Can you tell me what this line is for?

There’s a doctor who’s set up shop in one of the supply closets.

And how long have you been in line?

What time is it?

A little after ten.

Three hours, then. And here I thought if I got here early . . .

You’re not seriously ill, right? Because if you are, I’m sure these people will let you—

No, no, I’ve just been crying. I’m pregnant.

Ah.

And I need to not be.

Would you like me to turn the camera off? I won’t use this if you don’t want me to.

No, it’s fine. It’s just . . . I always wanted to. But not here, not without knowing where I’ll end up or if it’ll be okay there. I can’t do that to a kid.

Would you like some company?

What?

I can wait with you, if you’d like.

Yeah. I’d like that.

• • •

Niko watched out the window of their quarters as the Gandesian transport pulled away from the Altair. Cynwrig was gone, on her way back to her grandkids and her total disregard for human life. Niko hadn’t said goodbye, obviously. They were sure nobody had wanted that.

They flopped back on their bed and closed their eyes. They were relieved, yes, but it didn’t feel good, because they’d failed, too. Asala was below decks switching off the scramblers now—the two of them didn’t warrant that level of defense, and they both were looking forward to carrying out the rest of their journey without random screeches and freezing menus. Not that the glitches would continue, now that Cynwrig was gone. But Asala didn’t know that.

Niko fell asleep, only to be awoken an hour later by an incoming message on their handheld. Ansible line, and encrypted. Niko rubbed their eyes and sighed. So easy with the scramblers off.

Reports received. Please acknowledge when you receive this message.

Acknowledged.

There you are. You okay?

Yeah, no need to worry. Neither of them know anything.

That’s good, but we were worried about you, too. This wasn’t the plan, but that bait-and-switch with her ship happened too fast to get word to you.

I tried to hack a hole in the scrambler net, but it screwed things up all over the ship.

Scramblers will do that.

I knew she’d freak out if they went down. But I should’ve done it sooner. It was just a dicey situation here.

We understand.

She’s gone now. I’m sorry. I didn’t get anything.

That wasn’t your job in the first place. You showed initiative by trying. We’ll get another opportunity.

What should I do next?

Hang tight for a while. We need to re-strategize. Contact us once you’ve reached Hypatia. Keep us informed on your findings.

Will do.

And be careful with your partner there. She’s not stupid.

I know.

There was a knock on Niko’s door. “Come in.”

The door slid open. “You can stop hiding now,” Asala said. “Unless you’re scared of me, too.” She looked them over. “Were you asleep?”

“Yeah—I mean, no. I mean—kind of.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s cool. I was basically awake anyway.”

Asala paused. “I was going to have lunch,” she said. She weighed something. She made a decision. “Do you want to join me?”

Niko smiled and shoved their handheld in a pocket. “I’d love to.”

• • •

What’s your name?

Melis.

And how old are you?

Five.

Melis, why is your family on this ship?

Because our planet . . . our planet is too cold.

Were you cold there?

Yeah.

Me too. Why is our planet too cold?

Our sun is also too cold.

That’s basically right. Our sun is unstable, and it’s not putting out the amount of heat we need to keep our planets habitable. Do you know what “habitable” means?

Yeah.

How do you feel about going to live on another planet?

Mmm . . . I don’t know.

Are you excited? Are you scared?

I’m mad.

You’re mad. Why are you mad?

I didn’t want to leave our house.

Was it a good house?

Not as good as Anan’s house, but I didn’t live there. This ship smells bad and it’s loud.

Who’s Anan?

My friend from skiing class. She has the same boots as me except mine are blue.

I see. Is Anan here as well?

No, she went—she went on another one.

Another ship?

Yeah. She’s gonna meet me at Khaya.

Khayyam.

Yeah.

Where’s Anan now?

Her ship, they’re at Gan-De. Mom says it’s okay, their ship is just taking a break, and—and then we can meet—then we can meet there.

I hope you can.