Stilted small talk continued for a long time. It only made things worse. Scarier. When they ran out of things to say, they unstrapped and led each other through the too-black dark to the bathroom and back. They sat on the bed and drank water. After, they strapped back in, and within a few minutes Yi succumbed to sleep, snoring softly. Chrystal followed him into a place full of unease and drowsiness, her dreams troubled with images of being tied to the outside of a spaceship.
Lights and sound all came on at once, startling Chrystal awake. “The High Sweet Home has been captured and is going to be moved beyond the Ring of Darkness. This process will take some time. Civilian inhabitants should prepare to be moved.” The same message played three times in a row. The lights stayed on.
Yi was the first to get the restraints off and stand up. He’d gone pale white. “There’s no way for that to be true. We don’t have engines.”
“We have some,” Chrystal said.
“Enough to avoid an asteroid,” Yi replied. “Slowly. Not enough to get beyond the Ring in less than a year to two. I have no idea if the station can move that far that fast without breaking up, even if it gets towed.”
The others all stared at him.
“We need to pack fast and put on psuits after that. Then we should strap back in.” Everything about him screamed calm-within-an-emergency and demanded that they obey. The vehemence of it startled her.
“Really?” Katherine combed her long hair out with her fingers. “If we need both the acceleration couch and the psuits, we might as well be dead.”
“Do you want to find out?” Jason asked.
Yi didn’t even bother to join the argument. He simply gathered up everyone’s suits and handed them around.
“I’m going to check on the animals.” Katherine took her suit from Yi and put it on the bed. “Just through the bubble. Not by going there.” And then she was gone. Chrystal threw her suit down and followed, the others all doing the same, as if some invisible glue held everyone close together against the dangers that lurked outside of their little nest.
Chrystal caught up to Katherine first, standing body to body, touching, looking through the clear glass part of the habitat bubble. The lights in the rotating habitat hadn’t come on, but the same light that surrounded them illuminated the meadows dimly, as if it were almost night out there. Katherine squinted. “I don’t see them,” she said.
“Most of them are in the barn,” Chrystal reminded her.
Jason and Yi came up from behind, all four now standing close and peering out the window. Jason pointed. “Is that Sugar?”
Sure enough, almost straight on, they spotted the top of Sugar’s head and the long line of her back undulating as she trotted across the meadow. She disappeared into some trees.
“Fabulous,” Katherine whispered, relaxing so much that Chrystal could feel it.
“All right then,” Yi said. “Back to the suits.”
There was some grumbling, but Katherine followed meekly enough and they were back in their bedroom soon.
Chrystal took her suit, almost too tired to put it on. The High Sweet Home was the biggest station that had chosen an orbit as close to the Ring as they were, but distances in space were vast. They were no closer to the Ring than brilliant Lym was to cold and half-terraformed and brutally mined Mammot.
Yi had to be wrong about the speed and danger. Or maybe the announcer had it wrong. Yi was, after all, almost always right.
“You know what I hate about being strapped in?” she said.
Jason took the bait. “What?”
“We can’t hold each other while we’re all strapped to the bed.”
Katherine gave her a soft but frightened look and slipped her shoes off so that she could don the suit.
Chrystal had been afraid since the first siren went off, but now the fear had become so desperate it threatened to undo her. Even the simple and practiced movements of donning her psuit were hard to remember and even harder to perform.
Strapping in seemed harder too, everything tight and stretched. Nothing about using the bed as an acceleration couch for four felt comfortable.
They waited.
And waited.
No further announcement, nothing. Chrystal could turn her head inside her helmet, but she couldn’t see the others. They should put a mirror on the ceiling in case this ever happened again. The thought made her giggle a little.
More time passed.
“Maybe we should get up,” Jason said.
“No,” Yi responded. Silence fell again, the rhythms of each other’s breathing matching except for Jason, who always breathed fast.
The lights flashed and went out.
A force slammed them hard against the bed, slammed Chrystal’s body into her suit, sent the back of her head questing for a way through the helmet. She felt pain, but then it stopped. Creaks and scratches sounded in her ear, soft and muffled because of the soundproofing in her helmet.
A loud thump sounded like something had hit the outside of the habitat just above her.
Everything shuddered, the bed, the floor, every part of her body, her bones.
Her heart raced.
The suit detected her fear and fed her drugs. She didn’t want them, but they came in through a needle and she couldn’t refuse the gentle warmth that stole her caring and then her awareness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHARLIE
Charlie loved flying in the dark. The dimmed instrument panel and an equally dimmed picture from his heads-up display outlined the buildings and streets below him.
He glanced at his silent passenger. “You’re not sure what you think of Nona either, are you?”
The tongat didn’t answer him.
He pulled into his uncle’s driveway and parked in the space Manny always left available for him. He and Manny had worked together the previous fall to build a shed for Cricket, with strong walls, running water, and two windows just at the right height for her to look out without standing on her hind legs. He led her in, washed the dust from her water dish and filled it, and gave her a pat before he closed the door on her. Manny and his family had stretched pretty far to allow the tongat on their premises; she wasn’t allowed in the house. “I’m sorry girl,” he murmured. “I’ll come out and see you soon.”
Laughter and the smells of cooked grains and cold spice salads and bread warm from the oven almost overwhelmed him as he entered the kitchen. Manny waved. “Hello, Charlie! We tried to wait, but the kids got hungry.”
Manny was a bear of a man with a red bushy beard and red hair that fell in rings below his shoulders. His wide grin seemed to envelop his whole body as he waved Charlie in.
Charlie pulled a chair up to join the meal already in progress. They were family of six: two men, two women, and two children. Manny sat at the head of the table and Amara held down the other end. On the sides, Pi and Bonnie were each joined by one small child. Laughter and teasing filled the entire room. A life Charlie admired and couldn’t imagine, all at once.
He helped himself to a plate of salad and bread right from the kitchen. Bonnie made room for him to pull up a chair between her and Manny, and Charlie ate with his plate balanced precariously on the corner of the table. Between bites, the children pestered him for stories of wild animals.
After the kids were tucked away in their rooms with homework, the adults converged back over the now-clean table and poured a round of red wine. Manny’s face had transformed from benevolent parent to the face he took to town council meetings after something had gone wrong. “We have news from near the Ring. Came in today. The ice pirates destroyed High Sweet Home.”
Charlie replayed the words in his head twice before they really sank in. He tried to remember what he knew about the High Sweet Home. It was big. It was—had been—owned by religious ascetics dedicated to creating designer animals and foods. They financed their science by running a docking hub for ships needing repairs and allowing military missions. It might be the most effective def
ense base the Glittering shared in such a far orbit. “How?” he asked.
“Surely they had defenses,” Bonnie stated, her voice flat and shocked.
Manny nodded. “Good ones. They were overrun. There’s video—I’ll send you links. I don’t want to play it where the kids can walk in on us.”
“That bad?” Amara said needlessly.
“Why would they do that?” Charlie mused. “Why hurt a station?”
“Ships from the High Sweet Home intercepted two pirate ships on the wrong side of the line. Standard defense of the Ring stuff. We’ve been doing it longer than any of us have been alive. We lost one ship and they lost two.”
“Isn’t that normal?” Pi asked. “I mean, we fight each other every few years way out there.” Pi was a big man with a soft voice, almost as big as Manny with half the hair, all of it dark. He ran the repair docks at the spaceport for a living.
“Something’s changed,” Manny said, his face a study in scowling contemplation. “One theory is that it’s retaliation for winning so many of these fights.”
“Taking a station seems like an overreaction to losing a ship.” Charlie reached for the bottle and poured more wine. “How long ago?”
Manny squinted at his slate. “About a week. We’re just getting the news down here.” He sounded bitter about that.
“Where are the pirates now?”
Manny shrugged. “Looting? They appear to be dragging the station out beyond the Ring.”
“They’re dragging a whole station out there?” Pi asked. “A whole station? Or just part?”
“A whole station,” Manny said. “Whatever they didn’t destroy. You should all watch the video. It’s pretty brutal, but when they could have obliterated the station, they didn’t. They pulled back.”
An awkward silence fell for a moment, and then Charlie asked, “Do you think they’re a threat to us?”
“They’ve always been a threat.” Bonnie frowned and twisted her hair in her fingers.
Amara passed around a bowl of nuts. “Not an immediate one. I suppose it’s still not immediate. But I’m worried.” She took a long sip of her wine and set the empty glass on the table. “Deeply worried.”
Charlie agreed with her. Amara was wicked smart and quiet, and he’d learned to listen when she talked. “Any idea what they want?” he asked.
“Revenge?” Pi offered.
“Sunshine,” Bonnie suggested.
Manny frowned. “If they just wanted simple revenge, they’d have crippled the High Sweet Home, but they wouldn’t have taken it.”
Charlie agreed. The ice pirates were more machine than human, and he had no idea how to read their intentions.
One of the children came in to ask a question, which stopped the discussion. The rest of the night had an awkward, frightened feel to it, the energy so sour Charlie went out to the guesthouse early, taking Cricket with him.
As they approached the falls, Charlie turned toward Nona. “Maybe you should stand up. It’s easy enough to keep your balance, and you’ll catch a better first glimpse of the falls that way.”
She smiled and complied, the wind of their passage sending her multicolored hair streaming behind her. She had a jewel in her cheek which caught the sunlight and winked bright. He expected that it would be less distracting on a ship where the light was controlled. She had fewer decorations than most spacers, but there was the jewel and part of what was probably a dragon tattooed on her neck, and colorful lacework tats on her wrists. He had expected her to be pretty, and she was, in a slightly ethereal way.
They flew just above a river of water from the falls. Nona pointed at a jumping fish and squealed at a huge waterbird. Each time she saw a new animal she tried to remember its name. He found himself rooting for her to get each one right.
Even though Ollicle Falls wasn’t Charlie’s favorite place, he had to admit his trouble was with the crowds and not the falls. A shining stream of water plunged from a high, mossy cliff, hit two perfectly rounded rocks bigger than Manny’s house, split into two streams, and came back together in a way that almost looked like a heart before it fell into a perfectly round pool. Bright blue and yellow flowers festooned the cliff and lined the pool. He piloted the skimmer around three tall trees and hung in the air above the parking lot. “What do you think?”
Her smile filled her whole face, and seemed to seep out from her into the small space they shared, touching him and the tongat. “I’ve never seen so much water.”
“Do you want to go down?”
“Can I?”
“There’s a path down from here. I can let you off so you can walk to the base of the falls. They have a platform with a rail that lets you get close to the pool at the bottom.”
“Oh yes, please. I’d love to touch it.”
He laughed. “You might not be able to get that close. But it will touch you.”
She looked puzzled.
“You’ll see,” he said. “I can’t go. I’ve got Cricket to keep.”
“I can manage.” She turned to him, her eyes bright with the wonder of the falls. “It’s so big.”
He parked where he could watch her. The path from the restaurant at the edge of the parking lot to the bottom of the falls could be slick.
She was probably safe enough, but Manny had told him she could buy at least half of Manna Springs. Not that she showed it. In fact, when Amara had asked him about her the night before, the first word out of his mouth had been “sad.” He’d added “curious” and “interesting” and left off “beautiful.” Even though she seemed completely enchanted by the falls, he thought “sad” still fit.
He felt sad himself this morning, like some ghost of the disturbing conversation he’d had with Manny had stuck to him. It made being here at the falls bittersweet, like he was watching something he could lose. There hadn’t been any direct threat against Lym except the offhand comment from the smuggler boy, but he felt threatened nonetheless.
Nona wore a green shirt that blended with the spring background. He squinted until he found her, checked her progress, and noted that she had made it further downhill than he’d expected.
He’d expected to hate everything about her.
He turned toward Cricket and scratched her nose. “I’m going to watch the station get attacked.”
The tongat regarded him calmly. She was used to him talking to her.
He thumbed on the biggest screen the skimmer had, a ten-inch affair in the back of the driver’s seat, meant for passengers.
Cricket rested her nose on his shoulder, cuddling in a way she only did when they were alone.
He narrated for no good reason other than that it helped him make sense of the news. “We’re going to see the ice pirates in action, and we may not like it.”
The tongat nosed his neck, perhaps reacting to his apprehension.
The High Sweet Home floated in space, the station ablaze with light. True to its multiple purposes, the station looked hybrid. “See that? The right is all warships and cargo ships and—well, and ships anyway. The middle is all bright and full of places people live and grow things. It’s the brightest station we have.”
Cricket snorted.
He noticed that he was saying “we” about the stations. “The far side is where they’re building things—new ships and even a small new station, I think. I’ll have to look that up.” Or not.
One hand roamed Cricket’s coarse coat, and she made a contented sound between a whine and a purr.
On the screen, ships streamed away from the High Sweet Home.
One by one, the ships died. They changed shape or imploded or they simply drifted apart, becoming pieces of ships. He tried to see what killed them. Space created different visuals than the bright light of Lym, and this video had been taken by an approaching ship that was still pretty far out.
Something bigger than the station crossed his screen, something so dark he could only make out its outline by what it blocked. “There’s the station killer,” he t
old Cricket. “It’s a big, bad thing.” The tiny screen made it look small, but the Next ship must be bigger than any he’d ever seen. It had to be. His chest grew tight and Cricket wriggled closer to him, almost as if she wanted to merge into him. He really did need to get her another tongat.
He paused the playback and glanced down, spotting Nona at the base of the falls. He wished he’d gone with her. Surely it would have been more pleasant than watching the video. She’d be pretty with her face and hair full of spray-diamonds.
“Back to it, Cricket.” He didn’t want to tell the machine to play, but he forced himself to give the command. So many things started happening on the screen at once that he could barely follow them all. “There go the lights from the station. Maybe on purpose? And there’s a ton of ships coming off the big one, or at least a lot of little lights. And now they’re going off and it’s all dark but we know people are targeting each other and shooting and dying.”
Cricket leaned into him and put her head on his shoulder.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NONA
Nona stood in front of the waterfall, the noise and rush of it singing in her bones. The air smelled of water, a hundred times more potent and cleaner than working in the greenhouses on the station. Droplets of spray wet her face and hands and clothes. A cool breeze touched her cheeks and fluffed the edges of her hair. She picked out the sweet scent of spring flowers. Even the crushed grass beneath her feet had its own smell. A small white butterfly danced around her for a few moments and moved on.
Life surrounded her, an infinite habitat bubble. She lifted her arms toward the falls and flung them wide.
She stood there forever and a moment, as if the flow of time didn’t matter and couldn’t matter in the face of such a thing as a waterfall.
The sky had stunned her. The water overtook her, dizzied her, enchanted her. “Thank you, dad,” she whispered.
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