Separated Starlight (NightPiercer Book 2)

by Merry Ravenell

  “The problem, husband, is you don’t get to unilaterally jaunt off to your demise without the courtesy of informing me. What was your plan, to just get on a shuttle and not come back for dinner?”

  “No,” he said, although his expression said he’d considered it.

  She turned on Tsu. “You didn’t bring me here to watch the latest round in the Feral Circus. I’ve seen LightBearer’s current position. He needs an expert pilot in the other seat and a navigator he can trust once he’s on the other side.”

  “It is strictly volunteer,” Tsu said.

  “I volunteer.”

  “No,” Rainer snarled.

  “You knew I’d insist on coming,” she said. “And you aren’t going to get there without me flying with you.”

  “Juan is a very good pilot.”

  “He isn’t me.”

  “You are not fit to fly, and you don’t even have a Critical Clearance. You’ve gotten a rubber stamp and everyone else looking the other way.”

  “And you think I shouldn’t have accepted it and taken Aptitude?” she asked, settling back and aggravated. “And how would that have worked out for me if I’d taken the easy way out?”

  “There’s a difference between the easy way out and risking your life to prove a point.”

  “As far as I can tell, my life’s not worth much.”

  “That is not true,” Rainer said fiercely.

  She rolled her eyes and looked at Tsu. Rainer opened his mouth, she held up a hand to silence him. He growled.

  Tsu said, “It’s the fate of civilization, Commander. You unilaterally decided to volunteer without consulting your wife. She gets to unilaterally decide if she’s going.”

  Graves from Telemetry laughed. “That’ll teach him to make an end-run around the spouse. Pretty sure I’ve never seen Rainer trip over his own feet more than in the past four months.”

  Forrest said, “He’s got four of them, and they’re all left feet.”

  “You rubber stamped her through,” Rainer snarled at Forrest.

  Forrest’s expression melted into sharp and vicious. “Thank you for the twenty-two gauge needles.”

  Keenan told Lachesis, “Rainer has spent the past three weeks trying to convince an Ark navigator to go in your spot. They have refused.”

  “I hate to agree with Rainer, but he’s right. Sending Lachesis is a massive liability,” Bennett said.

  That sealed it. She’d be alone on NightPiercer with Bennett? Hell no. “I did not become a navigator to sit back and watch everyone die.”

  Rainer’s calm turned into ice. “LightBearer’s resources are exceedingly limited. You don’t need to be on the ship to compute courses for it.”

  She shifted her shoulders a bit, ignoring his anger. “Except I do, because I need up-to-the-minute information, and I don’t have a sandbox of LightBearer.”

  “I can get an image of it and bring it to you.”

  It was hard to be angry at him when he was so… dumb. “It won’t fit on a datachip. You have to core-dump all the embedded AI systems. Remember why Tech mothballed the system so that only you have a limited copy in your sandbox?”

  “And that would be assuming that the core image isn’t damaged or corrupted due to chiplet failure,” Harkins from Tech added. “Which we can’t possibly know. They report minimum thirteen percent chiplet loss in the main core.”

  “I was going to core-dump it into a specifically rigged-shuttle and hand-fly the skeleton back here,” Rainer said to Tsu. “We can use one of the shuttles to virtualize the core and—”

  She waved her hand to cut him off before Harkins strangled him. “Captain, that’s going to take months and we have no way to test it for accuracy. I’m going.”

  “No.” Rainer’s cool calm fractured.

  “Let me tell you what scares me, Rainer,” she said. “What scares me is the idea that I will be sitting in the wardroom having a lovely meal while I watch LightBearer plunge into Jupiter and know that I decided to stay where it was safe and risk nothing. And thousands of people and animals and genetic material are gone, lost forever, lost to all of us, and I was the person who could have prevented it. I was willing to die to protect you, you think I won’t put my life on the line to save LightBearer?”

  “You are my wife. My duty is to keep you safe as best I can,” Rainer said.

  Keenan sighed. “No, it’s not. Your duty is to get her pregnant. If you can succeed in doing that I’ll be happy to marry her off to someone else to raise the pup, given I barely trust you to do that at this point.”

  Rainer barred his teeth. Bennett barely suppressed his smirk.

  “You aren’t winning my confidence,” Keenan told Rainer.

  Lachesis placed a hand on the table, recapturing her husband’s attention, and tried to ignore Bennett. “You know I’m afraid of my life never having mattered. I’m a cull. My life already doesn’t matter.”

  “Stop saying that!” Rainer shouted, surging out of his chair. “Gaia’s ass, stop saying that! You are not a cull. You passed Aptitude with honors!”

  She raised her eyes to his, her skin crawling with fear and desire as Keenan’s veiled gaze studied Rainer, and Bennett seemed to tick off every small detail like they were acting according to plan. “And it means exactly nothing. I’m right back to being your pet guppy. Let me go to that ship and die like a goddamn feral she-wolf deserves to, or get your ass to painting our wall with a nice castle. I want a tower with flowering vines.”

  Bennett, expression sly, said, “Rainer’s right, Lachesis. You still have AGRS, and LightBearer’s resources are probably limited. You’re very valuable here.”

  “Oh really? How so? Enlighten me as to all the important work I’m doing while sitting on my ass.”

  “Good question. You haven’t succumbed to Exodus Syndrome yet,” Bennett said. “I wonder what you’ve been doing to keep that mind of yours entertained.”

  “It’s certainly not riding your cock into the sunset, no matter what rumors you like to stir with it.”

  Graves coughed.

  “Enough.” Tsu stood, but bent at the hips so his fingertips touched the table. “We can’t watch forty percent of civilization perish. We also can’t forget our primary mandate remains to ensure NightPiercer’s survival. I believe that sending a small team to evaluate and see if any aid can be rendered is our moral obligation.

  “I also believe that if Lachesis is willing to go, then the team needs her. She is going with you, Commander, and you will ensure she and the rest of your team return safely.”

  Rainer’s fingers dug into the back of his chair. His jaw clenched so hard his neck visibly quivered.

  The scent of the air was a mixture of fury, doubt, annoyance, concern, and other things, but absolutely no one challenged Tsu.

  Tsu nodded. “Forrest, include for Lachesis everything she may need, and prepare documentation for their Medical.”

  “If you send her, she gets a new heart,” Rainer demanded. “She’s done everything you’ve asked of her and more.”

  “She doesn’t need a new heart yet, Commander,” Forrest said.

  “At the rate she’s going, she will!”

  Tsu said, “Fine, fine. Forrest, take one of Rainer’s livers and adapt it into a cultured heart for Lachesis.”

  “One of?” she asked Rainer. “How many livers do you have?”

  “Two hearts, three livers, six sets of retinas and corneas, two whole globes, a blank spinal column, several yards of skin, nerve fiber, and vascular tissue,” Rainer said. “They could probably build a few more of me.”

  “But why would they want to?” she teased.

  Rainer rolled his eyes in her general direction, unwilling to be mollified. “I’m told I have a charming personality and am pleasant enough to look at.”

  “There are these things called polite lies. Like you don’t actually tell someone their baby is hideous.”

  “Social niceties? I’ve heard of them. I do tell people when th
eir babies are hideous though.”

  “You know you shouldn’t, right?”

  “I don’t enjoy lying.”

  “You like pissing people off more?”

  “Yes.”

  Tsu took a deep breath and nodded to himself, like he’d just then made his final decision. “Lachesis, Rainer is taking a team of six Engineers and one Tech to LightBearer. Everyone is a volunteer, and everyone brings very necessary and overlapping skills. He’s going to need an Operations person to be on the bridge and coordinate with LightBearer.”

  She risked a sideways glance at Bennett. The First Officer’s expression was unreadable. Being Operations had always been in the cards. She’d passed the test. It’d force Bennett to never bother her again, at least not with his balls, but it’d give the XO an infinite number of ways to make her life difficult.

  Fuck. A life of mid-level management shoveling everyone else’s crap.

  “Unfortunately,” Tsu elaborated, “we don’t have an Operations member with the necessary overlapping skills. You’ve passed Operations, you passed Aptitude, you are a qualified pilot, and you have a set of skills that will overlap with the mission.”

  “I’ve already volunteered, sir, you don’t have to convince me.” Unless Tsu just needed to work it out for himself.

  “I’m not convincing you. I’m issuing a Captain’s warrant to commission you into service and call your Dying Art into active duty,” Tsu said, tone grim. “You’re going to spend the next three weeks pulling double shifts on the bridge having a crash course in bridge procedures, and we’re going to try to get you to where you can pull a dogwatch as XO.”

  She sat up very straight.

  “Three weeks is no time to be experienced on the bridge,” Bennett interrupted her thoughts. “But we can beat the shiny off you, as Rainer would say. You already have the poise of a command officer when you get pushed into it. You’ll have to pass the rest off as being unfamiliar with LightBearer’s bridge.”

  “What are you doing?” Rainer asked Tsu.

  “Taking your pet guppy for myself.” Tsu pressed his thumb into his tablet.

  Behind him, the screen flickered to life with her headshot and high-level details: name, age, parents, generation, Dying Art, height, weight, the usual.

  Bennett and Keenan also pressed their thumbs into their tablets.

  The three command officers triggered biometric scans. The screen smoothed and updated.

  >> NEW BRIDGE OFFICER RECOGNIZED : WARRANT OFFICER LACHESIS <<

  >> COMMAND DESIGNATION : NAVIGATOR <<

  >> HELM CLEARANCE : CHIEF PILOT <<

  >> REPORTS TO: TSU [CAPTAIN] <<

  >> RECORD: ACTIVE <<

  Tsu said, “Warrant Officer Lachesis, we’d welcome you to the table, but you need to report to the QuarterMaster for uniform fitting.”

  “Oh dear,” she breathed.

  Second Place Dies First

  She flung down her satchel and glared at her husband.

  Bonus of the upgrade: she’d gotten a satchel. A nice one.

  Rainer glared at her, his large tablet on his lap, stylus in one hand, but instead of artwork, there were duty rosters and fabrication schedules on the big screen.

  “Your plan was what? Kiss me goodbye and just not come back from your shift?” she demanded, voice acidic.

  “I hadn’t gotten that far. It doesn’t change my duty is to keep you safe.”

  “Hello, fate of civilization.” She waved her hands at the door.

  He shoved his tablet to the side and stood. “You think I’m going to be mollified they’re taking one of my livers and turning it into a heart for you? It makes me angrier. They’re just stitching and glueing you together, pumping you full of meds, and just to keep you going!”

  “You talk out both sides of your mouth and your ass. It’s the fate of civilization.”

  “And the only reason you’re coming is because you’re afraid to be alone on this ship with Bennett.”

  “That’s insulting,” she fumed. “My being afraid of Bennett is just so much more important than LightBearer. Who, I, I will remind you, have been working to save for the past three years while NightPiercer sat here with your thumbs up your asses pretending to be snotty assholes when in reality you just didn’t want to admit you’d mothballed a Dying Art.”

  “You realized you’d be alone with Bennett,” he said. “It frightened you.”

  “Sure. And now it’s fraternization.”

  Rainer rubbed the tattoo on his neck, expression murderous. “It won’t stop him. You think I know how to pull strings? Trust me, he taught me he’s the master of the winds on this ship and I’m a fucking novice.”

  “All the more reason. But since you didn’t tell me about the deal you struck with him, it couldn’t factor into my thoughts.”

  He dropped his hand back to his side. “Are you afraid of me? Yes or no. Zero or one.”

  She wanted to say no, but that wasn’t true. “Yes.”

  He closed his eyes, jaw and posture tight. His fingers curled into fists, relaxed, curled again. “You know I’d never hurt you.”

  “Bullshit. You promised me no more games, but what the hell was that stunt you just tried to pull? You think that didn’t hurt?”

  “You know it has nothing to do with your competency. It’s a dangerous flight there and back to a ship that could fall into terminal orbit at any moment.”

  “And that’s exactly why the mission needs me. Sometimes I think your idea of ‘keeping me safe’ is you trying to keep me clear of your antics, because life with you has never been what I’d call safe.”

  “We don’t know how much radiation there’s going to be.”

  “And you are functionally sterile and you’ve vowed to not have pups unless we have a planet to put them on, so I don’t see the problem.”

  “Crèche still has my frozen. It’s proven worthless, but you could still try. It might work with you.”

  “Do you even hear yourself? You don’t get to change the narrative every which way to make it happen so that I don’t come with you. You can’t get around the fact you need me. You got what you wanted, didn’t you? You wanted a Navigator for this ship. Now you’ve gotten one. It worked out beautifully for you, didn’t it?”

  He inhaled and growled to himself.

  She walked up to him and touched the scar on his neck, then dug her fingernails into him. “You got what you wanted, Rainer. This worked out better than you could ever have dreamed. Are you angry now because Gaia wants such a high price, you ungrateful wolf? Don’t pray to a goddess that hates us. She might just listen.”

  He grabbed her hips in both hands, slid them up her spine, broad and warm. “So you believe now?”

  “I believe you got what you wanted and are angry about it.”

  “Will you at least acknowledge that the chance we’ll have to emergency evacuate you from LightBearer because of your heart isn’t zero? Will you at least do that?”

  “No, because we both know there won’t be an evacuation at all.” The crossing was twelve hours. Rainer’s re-purposed liver wouldn’t be ready for six months at the earliest. Even if she survived an emergency evacuation back to NightPiercer, she’d be dead months before her heart was ready.

  “Which is why I’m not taking you there to die,” he said, eyes very bright and almost wild. “I won’t. I refuse.”

  “I could have divorced you and be riding Bennett’s cock all the way back to Earth, and I’d still volunteer for this mission. The Luna fought at her Alpha’s side when the pack was in mortal danger. Do you think Hade’s mate sat around and sipped tea while he built NightPiercer?”

  Rainer’s expression turned haunted. He looked at the rug under their feet. The scent rising off him suddenly shifted to nightmare, then disappeared, followed by a strange wash of total confusion. “So are we going to stop arguing that you are my mate?”

  “I can barely trust you to be my husband,” she said. “Sometimes I think you want me t
o admit I’m your mate just so you know I’ll give you my unwavering support for every batshit crazy thing you propose.”

  “That is not true.”

  “You seem pretty damn determined to get me to admit I’m the other half of your soul. Maybe Bennett was right: you just want to win.”

  “I’m trying my damndest to protect you.”

  “And you’re really bad at it. The next time you say but I need to protect my wife just stop and do the exact opposite of what you were going to do.”

  He grumbled under his breath, counting to about twenty.

  “And you don’t know the Jovian system like I do,” she added, grinding it in deeper. “No one on the three ships knows it like I do. I’m also a damn good pilot.”

  Rainer folded his arms across his chest and leveled her with his best I-am-the-Commander expression. “You are also medically fragile and extremely inexperienced in your stripes.”

  “What, no congratulations, Lachesis, you’re an officer? From feral cull to bridge officer in tallboots?” She couldn’t even laugh at how insane her life had become.

  “I have spent the past few months getting you back into your den, and now just as you’ve settled in, you’re determined to leave it.”

  “You are being medieval.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, my feral brain says my place is at your side. Now maybe that’s because you’re my mate. Maybe it’s because I know a slightly off-his-rocker Alpha when I see one, and someone’s going to have to bite through your throat.”

  “Now you’re just arousing me.”

  “Excellent. The argument is settled.” She pulled her bun out and shook out her hair, ignoring Rainer’s very obvious reaction. “I guess we’ll have to bring soap, because I’m not cutting off my hair for LightBearer.”

  “Certainly not,” he said, voice husky.

  She coiled her hair around her shoulder, twisting the red length along her forearm.

  He changed the subject. “So, Navigator, what color did you choose for your dress uniform?”

  “Violet.”