by Erin Bowman
“Whatever,” the man had grumbled. “Just be back for second shift. That’s in three hours.”
Now lunch hour, Amber was surprised at the syncopated thump-thwack she heard as she approached the gym, followed by a heartbeat that became audible as she pushed inside. It was steady and calm, barely elevated. Coen was in the far corner of the gym, throwing his fists into a punching bag.
He paused at the sound of the doors clicking shut behind Amber, arms hanging at his sides. He’d ditched his shirt—it lay draped over a nearby bench—and the tattoo of an octopus on his torso glistened as though it were truly submerged in water.
“You want company?” she called. Her voice echoed in the cold space. Interlocking rubber tiles covered what she assumed was a concrete floor, and racks of dumbbells, scuffed-up benches, and weight equipment lined the walls where mirrors reflected the room back to her like an endless kaleidoscope.
Coen shrugged. “An opponent with more brains than a punching bag wouldn’t be bad.”
Amber jerked her head at the boxing ring and they both ducked beneath the ropes. She got into a ready stance, and lost spectacularly. Even with her enhanced hearing and eyesight, she couldn’t manage to block Coen’s blows fast enough. He was stronger, faster, more at ease in his host body, and each time she hunched over, gasping for air, he’d fall back, kindly letting her catch her breath.
Again? he’d ask when she straightened.
Again, she’d respond, because for some delirious reason, Amber believed this might be the time she’d beat him.
They spoke mentally as they went. He told her about the flux drive and the test jump Naree had let him witness. She told him about her gig at the infirmary, which seemed inconsequential given what he’d just shared. By the end of the sparring session, Amber had broken her nose (Coen helped her reset it) and she was sporting multiple bruises. Within the next few hours, she imagined they’d disappear entirely. She was never going to get used to this advanced healing stuff.
“Well, that was embarrassing,” she said, wiping sweat from her eyes with the crook of her elbow.
“You clocked me that one time.” Coen touched his jaw gingerly.
“One time. Pretty pathetic.”
“No, you did good. Way better than Thea when she started training.”
“Can’t she hear that?”
“Sure, but she won’t argue with me. It’s the truth.”
“I’ve got a few years of defense classes in me,” Amber admitted. “It’s like all those skills got amplified after I was infected.”
“Same, so I completely understand.” Coen ducked from beneath the ropes and pulled on his shirt. It clung to him like a wet rag.
“Will Thea care that we were training?”
“Why would she care?”
Amber shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re not exactly horrible to look at, and you just danced around a ring with me for an hour, half naked.”
“I’m not interested, Amber. Sorry if that’s blunt, but it’s the truth.”
“I’m not interested in you, either,” she said quickly. “Not like that.” God, she was blushing. Why was she blushing if she didn’t care?
“So why would Thea mind if we sparred?”
“She wouldn’t.”
“Exactly. And for what it’s worth, she’s telling me right now she doesn’t. She says the only thing we’ve made her feel envious about is that she doesn’t have access to a gym of her own.”
Amber forced a smile and followed Coen out of the ring. The gym was crowded now, lunch hour well behind them. Paradox employees were scattered throughout, running on treadmills or lifting weights. Nova was at a pull-up bar, floating up and down as though there was no gravity working against her.
“Isn’t it awful, knowing everything about each other?” Amber asked Coen.
“It isn’t easy,” he admitted. “But it’s not awful. I know when she’s upset. I know what she wants. I can feel what she needs before she has to say a single word.”
Nova dropped from the pull-up bar, panting. Amber wondered briefly what it would be like to know exactly what the pilot was thinking.
“I could argue that knowing everything Thea wants takes the work out of the relationship,” she said to Coen. “Relationship experts say the strongest couples are the people who listen, who support each other, who really work at it every day.”
“Oh, it’s still work. Having someone in your head constantly doesn’t mean you don’t argue. If anything, you do it more, because you can’t hide anything.” Coen’s gaze flicked across the gym, finding Nova, who Amber was still watching. He smiled like he’d just read Amber’s mind, which he couldn’t have. Amber wasn’t Thea. “Look, it’s a blessing to not know everything. I love what I have with Thea. Truly. But I wonder sometimes what it would have been like to fall in love with her naturally—with all the awkwardness and jitters and second-guessing.”
“You’re in love with her?”
“Yeah. I guess I am.” He smiled crookedly and for a moment he was elsewhere, Thea surely whispering something into his mind. Then his eyes slid back to Amber. “What I’m saying is falling the old-fashioned way is its own kind of special. So if there’s something you’re after, Amber, you should just be honest.”
She tore her sights from the pull-up bar. “Honest?”
“With yourself. With her.” Coen jerked his head toward Nova.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But Amber did. Her heart was thrumming like a jackhammer between her ribs.
“Right. Sure.” Coen laughed loudly. He had a beautiful laugh. Then he punched Amber playfully in the arm and said, “You’re going to be late for work, you know.”
Amber glanced at the clock. If she wanted a shower, it was going to be the speediest one she’d ever taken. She bolted from the gym.
The days bled into each other.
Nova stayed busy by working out twice a day and following Lawson around the hangar between meals, helping her switch out corrarium reactors for AltCor ones. An off-planet test was scheduled for tomorrow with one of the already updated ships, but Sol and Naree were so confident it would work that they already had Lawson’s crew working on the rest of the fleet. This morning, Nova was assisting with the updates.
And Amber . . . Well, Nova couldn’t quite say what Amber was up to. She didn’t speak to the medic anymore, and the only time Nova saw her was from afar in the gym, sparring with Coen. The two hosts barely spoke a word to each other, she’d realized, and yet she’d catch them smiling, laughing.
Nova recognized the ugly feeling in her stomach as jealousy. She wanted that sort of connection with someone—was tired of being left out, of not being enough.
At the Academy, it was her eyesight.
With this contagion, it was her age.
Crouched inside an AeroCo Python, Nova gripped the metal casing that held the corrarium reactor in place and yanked. She’d loosened the bolts, but the casing refused to lift free.
When she first began helping Lawson, she’d wondered if it was even worth installing the drives on such small fighters. Paradox didn’t need all their ships to jump individually. Ideally, they only needed one battleship to make a jump—the same battleship that would carry all the smaller fighters. But Sol had insisted they get the drives installed wherever possible. They’d be testing things before the summit, but not extensively. If anything went wrong—and it certainly could, given the amount of energy needed to jump an entire battleship—Sol wanted every fighter to have flux drive capabilities as a backup.
“Come on, you piece of . . .” Nova tugged at the casing, and the metal finally lurched free, the sharp edge slicing across her bicep. Pain blossomed. “Son of a . . . !” She clapped a hand over her arm and jumped from the Python.
“You all right?” Lawson called.
“Just a cut. Where are the medkits?”
Lawson’s face paled. “Someone from the infirmary came to collect them this morning. Something about updat
ing all the contents, making sure nothing’s expired.”
“Guess I’m headed to the infirmary, then.”
“You need a hand? You’re not light-headed or anything, are you?”
Nova lifted her palm. Blood pooled up quickly. “Nah, I feel okay, but this definitely needs a Seckin. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Lawson nodded and Nova ducked beneath the Python’s wing, making quickly for the exit. Back inside Paradox, she took the elevator down to SubLevel1, and by the time she reached the infirmary, she was feeling a little light-headed.
“Hello?” she said, staggering inside. Medkits were strewn out across the beds, contents emptied out and organized into various piles. She moved to the nearest bed, eyeing the organized contents. There were no Seckin bandages, only standard gauze dressing. That would have to do. Nova grabbed one only to fumble it, dropping it on the floor. She stared at the item now between her feet, fearing that if she bent over to retrieve it, she might actually pass out.
“Can I help you?” Drawn by the commotion, a medic had appeared from a storage closet. And not just any medic. Amber. So this was where she’d been spending her time.
“Hey, Doc. Long time no see.” Nova tried to keep her voice light. The last thing she wanted was to seem desperate.
“I see you every day in the gym.”
“Yeah, but you never say hi.”
“You told me to train with Coen, Nova. You agreed it was safest if I stayed away, so I’ve been doing that. Besides, saying hi works both ways. You could have said hi to me.” The medic gave Nova a once-over, her gaze skimming from boots to brow. “Did you need something?”
Nova pulled her hand away from the wound, showing the ragged cut that ran across her bicep. Without pressure, it started to well with fresh blood. “I was installing new reactors on the Pythons and got cut on some scrap metal. Was told all the medkits are up here for some reason and not all of us can heal in the blink of an eye, unfortunately.”
“Sit,” Amber said dryly, pointing to the one empty bed. Nova sat—she felt phenomenally better sitting—and watched the other girl rummage around in the cabinets. When she returned, it was with a Seckin.
As Amber bent to apply it to Nova’s arm, her hair slid from behind her ear, falling like a curtain around her face. Her lips pinched into a pout with focus. Nova wondered what it would be like to kiss her. As soon as the thought entered her mind, she couldn’t think about anything else. Amber smoothed the bandage in place with the palm of her hand, and Nova’s whole body clenched as she blew out a breath.
“That hurt?”
“No. It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Amber inspected the rest of Nova’s arm, looking for any cuts the bandage might not have covered. Even wearing medical gloves, her touch was personal, soft and delicate. When she’d helped Nova around on Kanna7, guiding her from the bed or assisting her in PT, her grip had always been firm, a necessity. This was different. This made Nova consider how Amber had never really touched her before, not truly.
“All set,” Amber, stepping back. The personal moment was gone. The air between them formal. “Guess I’ll see you across the gym tomorrow and talk to you again next time you’re injured.” Her fair skin was ashen beneath the infirmary lights, her expression bitter.
“You look like hell, Amber,” Nova said. “Maybe you shouldn’t train so hard with Coen. He’s too rough with you.”
“I think it’s been going just fine, so your opinion doesn’t really matter.”
“He’s with Thea. You know that, right?”
“Of course I know that. What the hell is your problem? Ever since I said that us sparring might be dangerous, you’ve been avoiding me, and then when we do talk, you’re a jerk. I took that injection for you on Kanna7. I saved your ass and this is how you thank me?”
“You did that because it was the only way out, not because you actually cared about me.”
“Of course I cared! I watched over you when you were in that coma, and then after, and . . . I felt personally responsible for you, Nova.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t ask for that. I never wanted your pity. I can take care of myself fine.”
Nova shouldn’t have come here. She should have bandaged her arm with a rag. Anything but appearing weak and needy in front of this girl.
She swung her legs off the bed and stood.
Amber didn’t back away. Instead, she looked Nova square in the eye and said, “I still care about you. That’s why I’ve been training with Coen; because you asked me to. I’m trying to respect that request.”
Nova was breathing hard. Centimeters separated her nose from Amber’s. The medic’s lips were back in that pinched pout. Again, Nova wanted to kiss her.
“Every time I watch you guys, I want it to be me,” she said. “Every time he makes you laugh or smile, or pins you to the mat, I wish I were the one doing it.”
“Nova,” Amber said softly.
“That’s all.” Nova took a step back. “Now you know.”
She left before she could say anything else foolish.
The morning of the off-planet AltCor-powered flux drive test, Coen was restless. He’d slept poorly and woken well before dawn, the digital window on his wall still displaying an indigo sky.
What if it doesn’t work?
We can’t think like that, Thea said.
We can’t be realistic?
He could sense her sighing. She was in her cell—like always—only this was supposed to be one of the few hours she had to herself. Fifty-five light-years between them, and their days and nights still managed to mostly line up. She went to bed before him, giving him a few hours of privacy each night, and she spent her mornings alone. Except for today. Because he was awake early, fretting.
It worked in the small-scale test underground, she said. It will likely work off-planet, too.
But if it doesn’t—
If it doesn’t, you can still jump once, and the element of surprise might be all you need. Surround Xenia. Hold Burke and the Radicals in place until Union backup forces can arrive.
And what about you, Thea? What good is jumping to you if I can’t jump back out once I have you again?
It was quiet a moment. Coen pressed a hand on his chest, wishing the pressure on his heart would stop. All the healing abilities in the world and he still couldn’t will away his anxieties.
Getting me doesn’t matter, Thea said.
What the hell are you talking about? You matter more than anything.
That’s just the bond talking. What about your family?
They matter, too, of course. But I meant it the other day—when I was talking to Amber. I meant it when I said I love you. I don’t know if it’s this connection between us that makes me feel that way, but I know that this bonded version of me is just as real as the version that was merely a host, just as real as the me that wasn’t a host. This version of me knows what I feel.
But if the bond was gone?
It was, Coen said, recalling the cold sense of dread and helplessness that had descended over him on Halo. It was gone for six fucking weeks, and I never felt differently about you. All I wanted was you back. Us. This shared . . . whatever it is.
She was quiet, but she understood. She didn’t have to say it for him to know. They sat in silence for the next hour, their hearts beating in unison until it was time.
As promised, Sol had arranged a window for an off-planet test. Coen would watch a feed remotely from Paradox, along with Nova, Amber, Naree, and half her workers. The visuals were projected onto a wall of the crowded lab, currently showing a split-screen picture. In one, Sol was displayed aboard a mid-sized battleship that was large enough to jump Paradox’s fleet of four dozen fighters directly to Xenia. The second screen depicted a view through the ship’s windshield, a star field outside Casey’s atmosphere.
“Nervous?” Naree asked.
“Incredibly.”
“Don’t be. It worked during our small-scale test. There’s no reason
it shouldn’t work again now.”
“Your daughter said the same exact thing.”
Naree smiled, but her nervousness still showed in the corners of her eyes.
“Destination is plotted, along with subsequent jumps,” Sol said via the feed. “Reactor powered and ready. Naree, do you read me?”
“Loud and clear.”
“All right. Here goes nothing.” He reached for something on the dashboard. There was a muted click followed by a hum that shook the visuals. Then the feed hung, like a lag in playback before returning to normal.
Sol’s smile was so large it made his narrow eyes feel less threatening. “Confirming we are currently outside Casey’s southern hemisphere.” The side of the screen that had previously shown stars was now filled with ice caps and oceans. “Here comes the real test. Drive will be ready in . . . thirty seconds.”
“It was only a few seconds in the lab,” Coen whispered to Naree.
“Bigger object to transfer, longer recharging time. But thirty seconds is still incredible.”
Coen’s knees bounced. The lab had fallen silent, the tension palpable. Something touched Coen’s shoulder and he flinched. Naree. He reached across his body and squeezed her hand back. He sat there, eyes glued on the screen, knowing Naree was holding his hand as much as she was holding Thea’s, that this was their greatest hope. Not just to stop the Radicals or keep Psychrobacter achli contained, but to reach Thea as well.
Deep breath, Thea told him.
Sol said, “AltCor reactor charged. Jumping home in three, two, one.”
Another flicker of the feed, then updated visuals. Sol jumping from his seat, his hands in his hair. A view of the Inansi Desert below the ship. The lab erupted in cheers. Someone was hugging Coen. But he simply sat there, staring in awe, watching as Sol made three more jumps in three minutes.
It works, Thea. It works.
Everyone was in the mess hall, celebrating. Sol had a rule about drinks only being served after dinner, but he’d gone to Bev with Naree to pick up a massive shipment of AltCor so the fleet could be fueled for the trade summit, and Paradox’s crew had taken matters into their own hands. By the time Amber entered the mess in the late afternoon, half the crowd was already drunk.