Separated Starlight (NightPiercer Book 2)

by Merry Ravenell

  Keenan would be along soon enough to retrieve her husk.

  A different rhythm drew her head off her knees. Rainer ducked and dodged through the lingering stragglers, the long tails of his dress coat whipping around his knees, and his leather boots making strange, slick noises on the polished floor. He ducked and spun around one last body, sprinted, and dropped to his knees, sliding the remaining distance towards her. He caught himself with one hand on the wall before he slammed into it.

  Not comprehending, she asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “The test is over.”

  “I was expecting Crèche.” She reached out. Her fingers brushed along his coat, feeling the embroidered flame and hammer. “Are you Rainer, or are you a bad Crèche hallucination?”

  “Some would say I am a bad hallucination.”

  “Why are you here? Leave me alone. Go torture someone else. You had ten hours, and it didn’t kill me. It just killed Lil.” He’d pushed her out of his life weeks ago. He could take his sense of responsibility and stuff it back with all his other dangerous feral thoughts. He didn’t owe her anything, and she just wanted to sit on this cold floor until she dropped dead or Crèche took her away to do it in a quiet corner.

  He had her wrist in his hand and looked at his antique wristwatch. Thirty seconds later, he said, “You very much need to go to Medical.”

  “If I am going anywhere, it is the shower. Just put me under the water, if you please.”

  “How about you be quiet now. You are clearly out of your mind.” He shifted, shoving—at least, it felt like he was shoving—his wrists and forearms around her and lifting her as if she weighed nothing.

  Her head flopped back over his bicep and she got a nice look at the dizzyingly high ceiling. “You can’t carry me all the way to Medical.”

  He jostled her slightly to flop her head against his chest. “Challenge accepted.”

  She didn’t remember passing out. But her brain did its best to go into low-power mode and drift along while the stench of burning and fire and algae permeated her nostrils.

  She came around in Medical. A needle was in her arm, draining two different fluids into her. Rainer stood nearby, tucked against the wall between her bed and Dietrich’s.

  “Where’s Clint?” she asked immediately, trying to sit up. “Where’s Jeremy?”

  “Probably surgery.”

  “Will they save them?” Jeremy only had a broken bone… but that could be devastating. Clint, Clint—

  And Lil. Pieces of Lil…

  Rainer’s eyes reflected the complex math of the question. “I don’t know.”

  Marcus glared at her from his bed almost directly across from her. Lachesis looked back at Rainer. “Did I bleed on your dress uniform?”

  “It will wash out.”

  “Why did you come get me?”

  “Aside from the fact Medical didn’t?”

  “That should tell you something.”

  “I’m not very good at listening, and apparently you aren’t either. Because I’m your husband.”

  “We aren’t married.”

  “Care to wager on that?”

  “I got a message three weeks ago I couldn’t contact you anymore even after Bennett admitted—”

  “…that there had been a misunderstanding.” Rainer cut her off before she could call the First Officer a lying sack of shit.

  “I mutinied.” She grabbed his uniform. “It was my last chance, and I threw it away.”

  “I know exactly what you did,” he said, pulling her hand off him and holding it instead.

  She lowered her voice. “After Bennett, now I’ve failed, Tsu and Keenan are going to—”

  “I resolved Bennett,” he whispered.

  She pushed away from him, heart rate rising again, and now that she was apparently hydrated, tears wetting her hours-dry eyes. Anguish threatened to make her words into howls. How could he tell her he resolved Bennett? “I read his notice. You cut off contact. That’s a resolution, I guess, but it doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

  Rainer pulled her against his chest and whispered, “It was the best I could negotiate.”

  She pulled away and said, bitterly, “The best you could do? Better to make me look like an idiot who left her comm on a table than an idiot who followed the wrong dick into the wrong quarters and is such an idiot she even got confused about the species of said dick?”

  Her crewmates were listening. Dietrich, behind Rainer, eyed her like he’d really like it if she’d just shut up, please.

  Rainer said, matter-of-factly, “You’re practical enough to know that yes, the former is the better of those two options. We’ll discuss the details in private.”

  “What delusion are you living in? It’s over. You saw what I did. I’m over. Even these fluids are a waste.” She clamped her hand over the wrap holding one of the big needles in her arm.

  Rainer grabbed her. “Lachesis—stop—stop it.”

  She snarled at him, sending monitors off as he wrestled her wrists. “Back off.”

  “Stop,” he commanded.

  “Still fighting,” Marcus said from his bed. It wasn’t a compliment or nice tone of voice. “You just don’t know when to quit.”

  “If I’d quit, you’d be dead,” she spat at him. “How utterly incompetent do you have to be to let a moonlet hit a ship?”

  “Good question. Why didn’t you notice it earlier?”

  “I gave you thirty-six minutes worth of warning.”

  “You should have seen it hours earlier,” he snarled. “Hours. Not when we were already on fire and compromised and I had to gamble you were wrong about it since how did you not see a moonlet earlier?”

  It cut right down to the quick. Right into her bones. Four sets of eyes stared at her, blank except for the reflection of the strange nightmare they’d all just shared.

  “It’s your fault Lil is dead,” he snarled at her. “And Clint is going to die, and probably Jeremy too. They should take you out into the Biomes and bury you, but they can’t even do that because you’re full of meds you don’t deserve.”

  “Shut up,” Belle told Marcus. “Just shut up.”

  “They should have just euthanized you weeks ago,” Marcus hissed.

  Belle flung her pillow at Marcus. Her voice cracked. “Shut up! At least the first question out of her mouth was where’s Clint!”

  A nurse came by to chastise them both and tell them to be quiet.

  Rainer yanked her against him, crushing her in his grip. “I am so sorry. I had to do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “I designed the test.”

  “I know.”

  “No. I designed your test.” He held her so tightly she couldn’t breathe, his cheek against her smelly hair. “I had to do it. And I didn’t see anything I didn’t already know was inside you. And I am so sorry. I will never be able to atone for what I did to you, and what I’ve put you through.”

  Tears dripped down her cheeks onto his forearm, but she just saw Marcus staring at her, eyes full of hatred and disgust.

  Medical had refused to take the implant out or the band off her arm. But she had gotten a very stern talking-to about resting until further notice, and some blah-blah about further cardiac damage, and she needed to keep her heart rate under control so the implant would stop zapping her.

  Rainer spoke in a low tone as he escorted her back down to her level. “You need to stay in the bunks until the results are announced. We shouldn’t see each other between now and then.”

  She nodded, numb and exhausted.

  “Then will you come home?”

  “You mean move back in with you?”

  “We have two bedrooms. I can sleep in the other one if you don’t want to share a bed.”

  Sharing a bed? They had a bigger problem. “We aren’t staying married.”

  “Because of Aptitude?” he asked, meaning because I did this to you.

  “No, because Keenan is going to divorce us. I
f you had gone easy on me I’d have divorced you and probably drop-kicked you halfway back to Earth.”

  “But you smell angry,” he said.

  “I’m not angry with you. I’m angry at myself.” Should she have noticed the moonlet sooner? It’d come in at such a shallow angle, almost right behind the ship. She wasn’t a Telemetry expert. Lil had had the CPU cycles.

  Or was that all just excuses? Maybe. And none of it changed the bald-assed truth: she’d flat out revolted. Her crew hadn’t seen the problem and swapped to her side. They’d just decided arguing with her was a waste of time.

  She sighed, anger cresting and breaking. “Do you know what happened to Clint?”

  “No.”

  “Are you lying to me?”

  “No.” He pressed his palm to the panel of her bunk door. It bzzt bzzt’d at him. “Right. There’s still that.”

  She used her own palm. The door slid open.

  Her three bunkmates were there, and unfolded from their bunks to give her very, very sober looks. Looks that said who are you, what are you, we don’t care enough to know, please go away.

  She made eye contact with each of them. “I’ll only be here until results are announced.”

  “Good,” Petey said, tone flat. “That would be best.”

  Rainer propelled her towards her bunk. They all continued to watch her, and strangely, Rainer. He helped her up onto the bunk and squeezed her thigh gently before turning away.

  As he passed Jevon, he seized the man by the collar and yanked him forward off his bunk, dragging him on his knees until the human managed to gather his feet under him.

  Marie and Petey squealed in terror.

  Rainer yanked him close, fist twisting Jevon’s uniform into a noose. “Listen to me very carefully.”

  “Yes—yes, sir,” Jevon squeaked.

  “Rainer!” she exclaimed. “They haven’t done anything!”

  “Exactly. They haven’t done anything.” Rainer pulled Jevon closer. “Now, for the next few days, you need to do the bare minimum expected of bunkmates of any seniority and age and make sure she doesn’t die. If I find out you let her die,” Rainer growled, “I will be very angry.”

  Jevon began to pant from sheer terror.

  Rainer grinned, wild and feral. “I know exactly what you are thinking. I can smell it. So you keep that in mind and consider how much angrier I will be.”

  “You—you can’t threaten us like that,” Marie said, voice small and shaky.

  Rainer dropped Jevon. “The Captain believed the three of you could be trusted to recognize and help a much younger crewmate on the brink of Exodus Syndrome. That’s why Lachesis was assigned to this bunk. But you three deliberately excluded her. That’s dereliction of duty for an officer.”

  Jevon rubbed his throat.

  “But go ahead,” Rainer told Jevon. “Go tell Bennett or Keenan. I guarantee they will be more interested in why I’ve taken a harsh hand with the three of you than how harsh my hand was.”

  He turned and strode out of the bunk. “Go to sleep, Lachesis, and keep your heart rate down. We’ll speak in a few days.”

  Her bunkmates clustered together like a bunch of terrified puppies.

  She, however, just went to sleep.

  No Victory

  “I thought it would take longer,” she said.

  It didn’t seem right that it had taken two days for news of Clint’s death to reach her, but only three days for the results to be decided.

  Clint’s death stuck between her ribs like a knife.

  Jeremy, though, had survived. She didn’t know the details beyond they’d been able (and willing) to repair his tibia. He’d need months of rehab and never recover fully, but he was Operations. He didn’t need two perfectly sound legs.

  Everyone else had just needed stitches, glue, a shower, a stiff drink, and to sleep it off.

  Rainer watched her reflection in the mirror. “Wear your hair down.”

  She smoothed her plain, unmarked uniform. Everyone else would have bars, stripes, emblems of rank. Rainer looked very handsome in his dress uniform, his officer boots polished to a shine, and the precious green sash reflecting the strange colors of his eyes, and the old white gloves clutched in his left hand.

  She touched her hair. “I’m going to fail. I shouldn’t.”

  “You’re still my wife.”

  “You seem very confident in that,” she said, although she’d gotten the message the previous evening that she had regained direct message privileges to Rainer. Nobody had come to take her away, and nobody from Crèche had contacted her.

  Rainer cracked a humorless smile. “It won’t benefit her to go back to that well. It will make her seem like she can’t make up her mind.”

  They hadn’t spoken much in the three days since Aptitude. She’d slept most of it, and just come up here a few hours earlier to get changed for the ceremony. There was nothing now. No more tests, no commission, no friends, no place on the ship. Just Rainer.

  “Do you know what my result was?” she asked.

  “I recused myself from those deliberations. I also recused myself from Marcus’ deliberations.”

  “But you know how everyone else did.”

  “I do. Wear your hair down. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Are you going to hack off your hair in penance?”

  “…no.”

  “Then wear it down.”

  “Rainer, wait,” she said.

  He glanced at her.

  “Why did the vats explode?”

  “You know I can’t tell you.”

  Bullshit. “The scenario wasn’t the low flow and pressure. That was just the symptom of something we missed. The problem was brewing before we even arrived.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “I have to go in there and face my crew. Let me have some answers.”

  Rainer pulled one pin loose from her hair, then the next. He pulled his fingers through the thick locks, then presented her with the two pins. “This is the hardest part of the test: there are no answers.”

  A large crowd had already gathered in the square. The doors to the hearing room had been folded open, leaving the council table exposed, but the stage had been pulled out, where all the other officers were seated. She tried to twist her arm out of Rainer’s grip as they walked down the aisle to the front row, but Rainer clenched his elbow around her wrist, and placed his gloved hand over hers.

  There were two empty chairs draped in black, tasseled blankets and neatly-folded uniforms for Clint and Lil.

  Rainer marched her up to the front of the line with the rest of her crew. He guided her into the last spot by Belle. Then he walked up the stairs with grave composure and took his place next to Keenan. He tugged his right glove into place and rested his hands on his knees, mimicking the postures of the other senior officers.

  “How are you feeling?” Lachesis asked Belle while Captain Tsu briefly conferred with Bennett.

  “Better, thanks,” she said in reply. “You heard about Clint?”

  She nodded.

  Belle whispered, “You gave him a chance. We’d all have been dead. Marcus would have gotten us killed.”

  “Maybe,” Lachesis said. “I don’t know anymore.”

  Belle shrugged. “I made my choices. So did you. That’s the point, isn’t it?”

  Captain Tsu stepped forward, and the large crowd quieted. People lined the walkways two stories up, and as many people as could be packed into the level were here, straining for words, and everyone else watching the video feed from their quarters or wherever they happened to be.

  Tsu tucked his hands behind his back. “The Command Aptitude test is meant to push the best and brightest of NightPiercer to their absolute limits and to find answers to the most difficult questions we face. Sometimes, the answers come at great cost.”

  Lachesis hung her head while Tsu described the lost Lieutenants Clint and Lil, and who they had
been to the crew, their families, and what had been lost, and how they were all diminished for it.

  Tsu paused for his words to be absorbed, then continued. “Every Command officer’s final, and ultimate, duty, is to safeguard the whole ship and the whole crew. That means we often must do very grim math. This is the last of civilization, and we are responsible for it. But,” he raised one gloved hand, “we also must remember it is civilization, and that means we are stewards, not mindless defenders.”

  Lachesis closed her eyes as the knife twisted deeper.

  Tsu’s voice became grave. “As the ship knows, Commander Rainer’s wife, Lachesis, previously of Ark, was on the crew. The Commander helped develop the scenario, which we can all agree was brutal and without quarter. He has not voiced to anyone his thoughts on her or Marcus’ performances, he did not participate in those deliberations, abstained from that voting, and sits here not knowing the other officers’ thoughts on either person.”

  Mumbles and shuffles.

  Tsu gestured for quiet. “Everyone on crew, please stand.”

  As one, they stood, with Jeremy wobbling a bit and leaning heavily on his cane.

  Tsu nodded towards Marcus. “Marcus, you were crew commander. Do you accept complete and total responsibility for your actions?”

  “Yes, sir,” Marcus said.

  “Do you accept complete and total responsibility for the actions of your crew?”

  “Until the moment they ceased to be my crew,” Marcus said.

  Tsu turned to her next. “Lachesis, do you accept complete and total responsibility for your actions once you mutinied?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lachesis said.

  “Do you accept complete and total responsibility for the actions of your crew?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you regret your actions?”

  Oh, so she got a third question. How nice. “No, sir. I do not.”

  “Even with this ship looking on,” Tsu said, his tone disapproving, fine-edged steel. “This is your chance to apologize and to tell the ship you’ve had time to reflect and regret.”