by Amie Kaufman
ID 448fx29/WUC
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To: BOLL, Syra; McCALL, Winifred
From: MASON, Ezra
Incept: 18:15, 08/19/75
Subject: Pilot candidates
Captain, thanks for the email. Understand re the scheduling, and no problem.
I’ve looked up these candidates, and for the most part they’re so unsuitable that they’d be a danger to themselves and each other. I’m a rookie myself, and under other circumstances I wouldn’t even be on active duty, let alone training anyone.
I’m not trying to be difficult, but I can’t get these people ready in the time we have. There has to be a better option. Can we discuss? I’ll come to you.
MASON, Ezra
Air Wing Leader/UTA Liaison (Acting), 2nd Lieutenant
ID UTN-966-330ad
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To: MASON, Ezra; McCALL, Winifred
From: BOLL, Syra
Incept: 19:01, 08/19/75
Subject: Re: Pilot candidates
Lieutenant Mason, I’m aware you’re not an ideal choice for training instructor. I am sure you will not be offended to hear me say that, frankly, I am not confident in this plan either. However, you are the only option available, and I therefore expect you to commence training immediately.
To be clear: This is not a suggestion or a question. It is an order.
BOLL, Syra
Captain (Acting)
ID 448fx29/WUC
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To: BOLL, Syra; McCALL, Winifred
From: MASON, Ezra
Incept: 21:22, 08/19/75
Subject: Re: Re: Pilot candidates
Thanks for clarifying that, Captain. A few concerns:
Urban Ruelas can’t start for a week. He was in the atrium during the Heimdall takeover and the med team refuses to release him, even for this.
Rob Maier started crying when I found him and told him. The guy has PTSD. We can’t put him in a cockpit.
Bea French says she refuses, and I quote, “to take orders from a guy my son’s age, who should be thinking about acne cream, not nuclear missiles.”
I’m not trying to be difficult. Here are a few suggested substitutes:
Catherine Ramos from catering doesn’t have formal experience, but she used to fly gliders with her father on leave, and I think she’ll pick it up quickly enough. (I’m aware we are scraping the bottom of the barrel here.)
Mtongo Dari was on the UTA flight deck crew and was training in his spare time to get his commercial pilot’s license for after he left the service. He doesn’t have a lot of experience, but some is better than none.
Niklas Malikov from Heimdall doesn’t have the twenty hours of experience, but he piloted the Boop without screwing it up, and we’re going to need gunners in the Chimeras. He’s got what it takes to pull the trigger.
Please confirm these choices are okay.
MASON, Ezra
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To: MASON, Ezra; McCALL, Winifred
From: BOLL, Syra
Incept: 23:43, 08/19/75
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Pilot candidates
Substitute Ramos and Dari for Ruelas and Maier. Tell French to come and see me in person if she wants to ***** about her assignments.
Under no circumstances are you to enlist Niklas Malikov. He is a convicted felon and was an illegal resident of Heimdall Station. His family’s collective criminal convictions outnumber the residents of this ship, and his cousin arrived here covered in lanima slime. He is not to be trusted—the House of Knives allies with no one, and given an option, he may trade us to BeiTech for a chance at survival.
BOLL, Syra
Captain (Acting)
ID 448fx29/WUC
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To: MASON, Ezra; BOLL, Syra
From: McCALL, Winifred
Incept: 23:49, 08/19/75
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pilot candidates
Captain, I’ll take it from here. Ez, I’m in the mess. Come grab a bite, and we’ll make a plan of attack. Literally and figuratively.
McCALL, Winifred
Head of Security (Acting)
ID 001/UTA/Transfer
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RADIO TRANSMISSION: TRANSPORT MAO—CHANNEL 001
PARTICIPANTS:
Syra Boll, Captain
Winifred McCall, Head of Security
DATE: 08/20/75
TIMESTAMP: 14:03
McCALL, W: Captain, this is McCall, do you read, over?
McCALL, W: Winifred McCall calling Captain Boll, do you read, over?
BOLL, S: No, who taught you to do it like that?
BOLL, S: Christ, don’t just jam it in there. You’ve got to warm it up first.
McCALL, W: …Did I call at a bad time?
BOLL, S: Winifred, sorry, I’m— Look, just set it aside and I’ll deal with it in a minute. Yes…just put it with the others. Thank you, Ensign.
BOLL, S: Sorry, Fred, I’m here.
McCALL, W: My god, I was having flashbacks to high school for a minute there…
BOLL, S: …What?
McCALL, W: Never mind.
McCALL, W: You on the bridge? Everything five by five?
BOLL, S: Not really. We’re trying to optimize the enviro systems to deal with the overload of two thousand extra people aboard. We’re at least two weeks out from Kerenza and it’s already moist in here.
McCALL, W: Funny you should mention enviro control.
BOLL, S: I presume not ha-ha funny?
McCALL, W: Ah, that’d be a negative, Captain.
BOLL, S: Wonderful. What’s wrong now?
McCALL, W: You know the two BeiTech goons Donnelly captured on Heimdall? DJ and Moxy?
BOLL, S: Mantis.
McCALL, W: Mantis, right. Garver locked them down in the brig?
BOLL, S: I remember. And I don’t have time for twenty questions, Fred, so if they’ve somehow broken through half a foot of reinforced plasteel and are roaming the ship—
McCALL, W: No, no, they’re right where Garver left them.
BOLL, S: Then what’s the problem?
McCALL, W: They’re dead, boss.
BOLL, S: Wha—dead?
BOLL, S: Jesus, Fred, what the hell happened?
McCALL, W: Enviro control failure by the look. O2 supply to the brig cut out some time in the night. Bateman came to give them chow this morning and found them X-ed.
BOLL, S: …They suffocated?
McCALL, W: Looks like. But the med teams are run off their feet on triage, so it’s not like we can do autopsies.
BOLL, S: Garver was talking about flushing them out an airlock. And there’s no shortage of Heimdall staffers who’d have a grudge against the team that invaded their home. Do we suspect foul play?
McCALL, W: Door was sealed. No sign of forced entry or electronic tampering. But I’ll keep my ear to the ground.
BOLL, S: …Yes. Do that, please.
McCALL, W: With your permission, I’m gonna flush the bodies and try to refit this brig as habitation. Christ knows we need the room.
McCALL, W: We’ll disable the door locks before we let anyone else sleep in here, of course.
BOLL, S: …No, dammit, if you run it through the main feed, you’l
l cook the whole board.
BOLL, S: Look, just don’t touch it. I’ll be there in thirty seconds.
BOLL, S: I’m sorry, what?
BOLL, S: Yes, yes, thank you, Lieutenant. That will be fine.
McCALL, W: Roger that, boss. McCall out.
It’s incredibly hard to find a quiet spot on the Mao, what with thirty-four hundred people crammed in where only a thousand belong. Still, Hanna Donnelly’s managed it with the same ingenuity that saw her best the late, unlamented Travis Falk at his own game. She’s back inside the Betty Boop, the little shuttle that brought her, Nik, Ella and Mr. Biggles II across to the Mao.
The Boop’s owner is one Kate Armstrong, an ice miner evacuated from the Heimdall’s entertainment center, where she was celebrating Terra Day with a heavy drinking session when the occupation kicked off. Armstrong has no idea her shuttle ever made it out and hasn’t come to call dibs on it, so Hanna has it all to her lonesome. She’s sitting in the pilot’s seat behind the tinted windshield, feet on the dashboard, gazing at a thousand yards of nothing at all. She’s in the battered maintenance jumpsuit she kept on underneath Russo’s tac armor, blond hair in a messy braid, a smear of blood still visible behind her ear—there’s not enough water for showers.
Nik Malikov must have had a heads-up from his cousin Ella, because he doesn’t look surprised when he climbs in through the hatch to find her there. Donnelly turns her head just enough to register his identity in her peripheral vision, then turns her gaze ahead once more. He settles into the copilot’s seat and reaches across to settle his hand over hers, weaving their fingers together, squeezing gently.
She doesn’t respond.
“How you holding up, Highness?” His voice is scratchy with tiredness.
She simply shakes her head, though she doesn’t withdraw her hand.
“I know,” he murmurs. “But we’re here. We’re still going. We’re aliv—” He screeches to a halt, biting off the last fraction of “alive,” and you can practically see the wince—the very reason they’re having this talk is that her father isn’t—but Donnelly doesn’t seem to notice.
“How’s Ella?” she whispers.
“Holding up. The med systems here are a lot less than she needs, but she’s stable. Her lungs have always been pretty bad. And there’s no wheelchairs aboard, so she’s not mobile. But once they’re done with the emergency cases, they can try and help her a little more.”
She nods. “Chief Grant?”
“Okay too. Out of surgery.”
She sighs with relief. “Do you know how long it’ll be until he’s out of recovery? They won’t let me in on a damn thing now that he’s not there to push them for it.”
His tone indicates he is proceeding with extreme caution. “Well, maybe that’s okay, Highness.”
“No it’s ****ing not,” she snaps.
“…We did it, Hanna.” His voice is gentle. “We made it out. We’re here, and so are a lot of other people.”
“And what use is that?” Her voice is sharp, and she doesn’t bother to moderate it. “We’ve got a jumped-up security chief who’s used to arresting brawlers and shoplifters, we’ve got a ****ing scientist in charge of our lives and our safety, we’ve got exactly one trained fighter pilot, and he was only conscripted on the Alexander—”
“Hanna.” Though his voice is soft, he silences her, and her head drops, fingers twisting and tensing beneath his. “They survived this long,” he points out. “They fought their way through a lot, the way I’m hearing it.”
“Don’t you want to be a part of what happens next?” She turns in her seat, snatching her hand back so she can finally face him. “We fought our way through hell, too. Aren’t you ****ed off they’re not asking you to help, or what you think? They’re treating us like kids. Like what we did was nothing.”
He has a tired smile for that. “You know what I did. Ella knows. Chief Grant knows. I wasn’t expecting any more than that. What did you think would happen?”
“I didn’t think! I didn’t think this far ahead, I never—” She cuts herself off, lips pressed together in a thin line as she works for control.
“It’s okay to rest a little,” he ventures.
“I don’t know how you can say that,” she snaps. “I can’t just sit back. I’m not like you.”
He blinks, mouth opening a fraction, then snapping shut again as his jaw tenses. The words hang between them, echoing in the silence.
I’m not like you.
In this moment, maybe they’re both realizing it could be true. That despite everything they’ve been through, they barely know one another. That they don’t have the first reason to think they’d fit together at all, outside a crisis. That just a few days ago, he was her occasional dealer, and she was dating Jackson Merrick, who’s now dead in the ruins of Heimdall.
“You know what I realized?” She curls in on herself, staring out the windshield again.
“What’s that?” He’s trying for that gentle tone, but the work of it’s visible.
“I realized we haven’t even kissed yet,” she whispers.
“Okay, now that’s just plain insulting, because I clearly—”
His brow wrinkles.
“…Oh.”
“Yes,” she murmurs.
Because they haven’t. They’ve each kissed a version of the other—a version that’s now dead, sealed forever in a parallel universe. But these versions? The ones they’ve known for half a year of teasing and sneaky deals and allegedly broken arms and guerrilla warfare fights for their lives? These versions never have. The moment that sealed them together was with other versions of themselves. These two have never made that silent promise.
“Never too late to fix that,” he tries, summoning a ghost of his old smile, dimples showing. “I like that you said ‘yet.’ ”
“Nik…,” she whispers, and the dimples die.
Minutes pass in perfect silence.
“I should go,” he says eventually.
When she doesn’t answer, he pushes to his feet. Reaching down, he rests his hand on her shoulder, lifts it a little higher to smooth back the wisps of hair escaping her braid. But she doesn’t respond, and so he turns and climbs out the hatch, leaving her to her solitude once more.
She curls over farther as the hatch seals behind him, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving in silent sobs.
Of all the things you put on your packing list when you’re planning an invasion fleet, a plumber isn’t near the top.
For an occupation fleet, sure. But the BeiTech forces that attacked Kerenza IV were only ever meant to be here a week or two. The plan was to drop their latest bioweapon to pacify the populace, then roll in the pounders. With the site secure, the ground forces would hand over an appropriately subdued colony to their own mining experts and have an easy way to bring people in and out as required.
Instead, with the Magellan busted, they’re still here seven months later, and nobody in their ranks is qualified to deal with Kerenza’s plumbing. This is a particular problem because the pipes keep freezing, notably because someone on this planet (not naming any names) bombed the **** out of it and messed up the infrastructure but good.
All of this is a long way of saying that Bruno Way—a Kerenzan plumbing apprentice prior to the invasion—gets to move around a lot. And that’s handy, because for his side job, he’s a part-time member of a local resistance cell.
Right now he’s in the pharmacy facility at the medical center, dealing with a bunch of sinks that keep regurgitating whatever’s been washed down them. This is more than the usual amount of nasty, because a lot of what’s being washed down right now is medical waste. He’s making a slow job of it, though, stopping frequently to rummage in his tool cart, continually glancing over his shoulder at the door. He’s a
wiry teenager with a mop of dark curls—currently wet with melted snow—a permanently perky attitude and the kind of swagger that dares you to comment on the fact that he’s not as tall as he’d like to be.
He’s been stalling over this job for seventeen minutes when his nonefforts are rewarded. A BeiTech pounder opens the door to admit Asha Grant.
Way and Grant were in the same class their final year of high school. They went their separate ways once they graduated, but they got back in touch after the **** got bombed out of their planet. As you do.
Grant crouches in front of the cabinets next to Way, pulling open a drawer and sorting through the supplies there, consulting a list in one hand. Pharmacy work is pretty much the same wherever you are—some places you have machines to mix compounds for you, some places you do it by hand. As supplies run low on Kerenza, the medical staff are mostly cobbling together work-arounds on the fly. Grant was a pharmacy intern when the invasion took place, and though by now she’s doing everything from cleanup to nursing assistance, they also still need her where she’s actually trained to be.
Grant doesn’t look up, doesn’t acknowledge that her old school friend is there, even when he risks reaching down to squeeze her shoulder for a moment.
What she does do, however, is speak, almost inaudibly. “Bruno, you won’t ****ing believe what’s happened.”
“I heard about the mine. It’s awful, but we got a whole wee—”
“No, it’s not that, I…”
Her voice cracks a little, and Way looks at her with concern. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she whispers. “But there’s a guy I know on the BeiTech crew. I saw him yesterday. I used to know this guy back home.”
“What?” He’s frozen in place, but after a moment he makes himself move, sifting through the tools laid out on his cart at a snail’s pace. The cart’s his constant companion—the sight of him wheeling it about the colony is commonplace these days, and he’s virtually invisible doing it. And yet it seems he can’t concentrate enough to find what he wants just now. “Did he recognize you?”