“Okay,” said Grace. “Done what?”
“Oh, right,” said Hope. “I don’t mean the reactor thing. I mean the Navy thing.”
“The what?” said Grace.
“The Navy,” said Hope. “When they came. Here, into our home. To take me. To take me away, for what I’ve done. You became me, so they’d find someone different. Someone strong.”
Grace looked at the other woman, turning about in the space of her cabin, the walls dark where their suit lights didn’t push the black far enough away. “The way I see it,” she said, because she didn’t want to get close, and didn’t need this woman leaning on her, “is that you’re strong enough already. We’d all be dead without you.”
“Maybe,” said Hope. “Maybe we’d be dead without you, because they’d have taken me away, and the captain would have sailed off, and the Tyche would have exploded.” She sighed. “I don’t know. We’ve got a lot of fixing to do before she’ll fly again.”
“That’s for tomorrow,” said Grace. “You should be sleeping.”
“Can’t sleep,” said Hope. “Too tired. Too wired.”
“You’re welcome,” said Grace. “For the Navy thing.” She wanted to say anytime, but didn’t, because she didn’t want to lie. Not to Hope. You’ve just got to walk away. You don’t have to like them. But you shouldn’t break them either.
“Can you…” Hope trailed off.
“Can I what?” said Grace.
“Teach me,” said Hope. “How to talk to them like you do.”
“I don’t know if you want to be me,” said Grace. “I don’t think you want that at all.”
“No, no,” said Hope. “Of course not. I just … want to sound the part.”
Grace thought about that. A little advice wouldn’t hurt her. Return the favor, a small thank-you because she was living and breathing now. “Okay,” she said. “You need to learn to swear.”
“I don’t,” said Hope, “like talking like that.”
“It’s not about what you like,” said Grace. “None of us do what we like. Not if we want to survive.”
“But—”
“Anyway,” said Grace. “I think you’re probably good as you are. Just go grab Kohl.”
“Kohl doesn’t like me very much,” said Hope. “He’s right, you know. I don’t know why you like me.”
“I don’t know either,” said Grace, turning away. Walking back into the dark of Tyche.
Don’t get attached.
She felt it might have been too late. Which meant it was time to go.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nate wanted to scratch his nose, but the helmet made that tricky. He walked the cold dark of Tyche. No lights, except from his suit. No gravity, which meant his walking was a huge pain in the ass. Magboots only went so far. Technology made them predictive, gave them a more natural cadence for the way feet contacted the ground. Didn’t matter — it still felt like walking through a mire, muddy water sucking at his feet with each step. He didn’t like zero G. It made it hard to move, to balance, to get his bearings. This whole job felt like that. He was tossed about, adrift, and his ship — his home — was open to hard vacuum.
He made it to the flight deck. There was emergency power here, dim red floor lighting casting tall shadows. Ice rimed the walls, a little more of an atmosphere’s memory clinging to the ship. El was working on the console, trying to coax navigation, schematics, anything from the system. Tyche wanted to help, the holo flickering to life for brief seconds of time before scattering into random lines and signal noise. She was wearing her Old Empire flight suit, the black of the material making her look like a living shadow as she worked on the ship.
“How goes it?” he said.
El turned, and the illusion of living shadow was banished as her visor faced him, lit from within. Tired. “Systems aren’t good, Cap,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“You should get some rest,” she said, a little concern mirrored between them.
“I can sleep when I’m dead,” he said. “I’m not ready to be dead yet.”
“We just need some power,” she said. “A teaspoon of it, get the RADAR and LIDAR back up. Then we could see what was going on around us. I think we’re okay. We weren’t near any of those floating rocks when … when the Ravana … so. But I can’t be sure.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Let’s worry about what we can control.”
“I’ve got the next jumps plotted,” she said. “That’s good, right?”
“I hear a ’but’ in there somewhere, El,” said Nate. “You’re preparing me for bad news.”
“It’s the Tyche,” said El. “She’s hurt pretty bad. The superstructure took a knock in the blast.” Her hands moved in the air in front of her, making a twisting motion. “It’s only a little bit, a tiny shimmy in the middle of her. We can fly her. Probably as high as four, maybe five Gs of thrust. I reckon I can land her, exactly once. She won’t take off again. Not unless we land in a shipyard.”
“Can we jump?” said Nate.
“I would have led with that,” she said. “If we couldn’t, I mean.” She sighed, the noise a hiss over the comm. “Hope’s done her best. We’ll have power back soon. Drives will come online. Kohl’s welding the hull closed, so we don’t vent air. But we’ll need to shore up somewhere. A week. To get her to fly true.”
“A week?” said Nate. “You’re just trying to get that shore leave, aren’t you?”
“You read my mind,” she said, offering him a faded smile. “Piña Colada. I could use a Piña Colada.”
“It’s on me,” said Nate. “El? You’re doing great.”
“I wish I could do more,” she said, trailing a hand over her console. “But our ship’s hurt, Nate.”
“We’ll get her better,” said Nate. “She kept us alive. Now it’s our turn.”
A whoop sounded over the comm, Hope’s voice stressed with joy and too many stims. “Fuck yeah,” she said. The way she said fuck reminded Nate of an audition he’d done what felt like a lifetime ago. He’d been trying to do a stage play in his local town, the community pulling together with their kids for a little old-world fun. He’d been offered a script, a part to read. Before he’d got there, Logan Harasymowicz — a bigger kid, but not a stupid one — had tried a few lines out. The words had tumbled from him with pauses in all the wrong places, stilted, like it was a language he didn’t know. Like he was sounding the words out. That’s how Hope said fuck — like she was reading it from a book.
El looked at Nate for a second. “She’s trying to learn to swear,” she offered.
“Why?” said Nate.
“Reasons,” said El.
There was a bright flash, the flicker of lights, so bright after days of darkness that Nate saw stars. He had to blink them away. The flight deck came to life in fits and starts, El’s console beaming bright with bright primary colors, the holo between the acceleration couches running through a diagnostic. A cascade of lights ran up the walls, and Nate could feel a low hum through his feet as something inside the Tyche woke, yawned, and stretched.
“We’ve got power,” said Hope over the comm. “Reactor’s giving me some error codes but nothing that can’t be accounted for by way of it not being in her old ship.”
“Thank God,” said Nate. “I can have a shower.”