Separated Starlight (NightPiercer Book 2)

by Merry Ravenell

  Out of line was humiliating her in front of the entire bridge. Out of line was calling twelve thousand meters meaningless.

  She scratched her neck, raking at the skin over her tattoo. Maybe humans could put up with that better. Maybe more docile wolves didn’t mind it so much.

  Rainer returned with the rest of the crew, filthy and grouchy and rattled.

  “Why the hell does this bunk smell like someone’s soul died in it?” Rainer demanded instantly, his tone grating.

  She presented herself to him. “Captain Ersu banished me from the bridge.”

  “What?” Frustration and anger boiled into his scent. “Are you sure?”

  “He detailed every possible way I am a failure and embarrassment and fraud.” She still shook with anger.

  “Why?”

  “Because I argued with him about the moonlet. He laid into me, I got a lecture about how I’m worthless and incompetent, and to get off his bridge. So now everything is fucked because that asshole—”

  “Stop,” he cut her off. The rest of the crew, minus Simone and Kos, shifted nervously around him, doubtful. “Did you really pick a fight with the Captain after he dismissed me from the conversation?”

  “There was an argument before what you heard, and then yes, I argued it wasn’t fine and he blamed me, so I defended myself.”

  “You argued with the Captain?”

  “Over a damn moonlet! He blamed me for it. Said I screwed up, but I didn’t. I never got the data.”

  Rainer rubbed his chin.

  “What?” she asked tartly. “I didn’t screw this up. He’s the Captain that doesn’t care that his ship is screaming in pain or shaking. He was never prepared to listen to anything I had to say.”

  The rest of the crew looked at her from behind Rainer, skeptical and not hiding their doubt. Twelve thousand meters, a moonlet, and this was even a conversation? Did everyone become an idiot once they got their second stripe?

  Rainer turned towards the crew. “Step back for a second.”

  They headed towards the back of the room, where they clustered, watching but silent.

  Rainer came close to her, sliding his body against hers, and put an arm around her waist.

  “I didn’t fuck this up,” she whispered to him. “Ersu is making me take the fall for it. I don’t want a repeat of Bennett. I’m not hanging for another asshole officer!”

  “Stop,” he said in a low tone. “It’s not me you have to convince. It’s them, and I can’t do it for you. You’ve been kicked off the bridge when we need you the most.”

  “By an idiot.”

  He caressed her cheek. When she pulled away, he held her tighter. “And that idiot wears stripes. I know what I’m going to tell Ersu, but right now your crew needs you to stand before them.”

  “Wait, you sent a man to Medical and were ready to leave this ship to die, and I got mouthy with a Captain about to let a moonlet hit the ship and you are going to feed me to my own crew?” She snorted in disgust.

  His lips twisted. “I was enforcing discipline, you were challenging it. I’m Third Officer, you’re a barely-minted bridge officer. Getting dismissed is not a minor infraction, and your fellow crew need to see it addressed plainly.”

  She breathed out, frustrated and pissed. She couldn’t spend her entire life hiding under Rainer’s ruff, and she didn’t want to live any life where anyone said she got special treatment because she was Rainer’s Wife.

  This was still bullshit. There shouldn’t have been any conversation about a moonlet. Ersu had been angry about ending the test, but then he hadn’t wanted to move his wobbly ship to dodge a moonlet? He sure as hell hadn’t had a problem flying it when it was howling in pain!

  Rainer released her, stepped back, and took up a seat on the farthest trunk at the foot of Juan’s bunk. “Juan, deal with this.”

  “Sir?” Juan asked him, looking between them.

  “You just had an officer get disciplined by the Captain. Determine what happened, and how out of line she was,” Rainer said, brows raised. “Everyone stays. Everyone listens.”

  She shifted her weight, aggravated.

  “You don’t want to do it?” Juan asked.

  Rainer pulled one ankle over one knee and clasped it with both hands. “Your rank is approximately equal to hers, minus the command upgrade. So you can lead the inquiry into her conduct. I know it’s your first time dealing with a fellow officer, but I’d prefer to sit on her side as her husband.”

  She turned her attention to Juan.

  Juan, reluctantly, stepped in front of her, and asked, “What happened?”

  Ersu’s tirade was burned syllable for syllable in her brain, but she reduced it to the basics. “He detailed the multitude of ways I am incompetent, unsatisfactory, and a terrible officer. Then told me to get off his bridge. So I did.”

  “So how did you miss this moonlet? This is the second time a moonlet has caught you unawares.”

  “The second—” she started to say, then got cold. “You mean Command Aptitude?”

  Juan nodded.

  Confusion strangled her, then the wave of bitter, crushing doubt, and for a second she was back in the box, begging Marcus, and then Clint was dead, and Lil, and…

  “Lachesis,” Juan said firmly.

  “I didn’t have the data.” She hesitated to say Bob simply hadn’t sent it. Should she have realized it wasn’t there? Sudden doubt gnawed at her like everyone’s gaze bore into her, seeking answers and explanations. Her confidence faltered. “The Jovian system changes regularly, but it generates a lot of data to shove onto a chip, so Bob and I had an agreement where he’d only send over data if he detected changes so I could update my models.”

  “And you have never gotten an orbital system update?” Juan asked.

  “Not since we arrived.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Of course I’m sure. I use that data all the time to calculate our exit window.” Although, maybe she’d missed it? She was so tired and cold all the time, so stressed, everything was strange, and there was so much data to keep track of, and nothing was really set up for the work they were doing.

  A tense, uncomfortable silence followed while Juan took a few minutes to figure out his next step. Finally, he said, “Show me the datachips Telemetry’s sent you.”

  Since her tablets weren’t hooked up into the network, and there was too much data for her tablet to store, Telemetry had been sending her chips. There was at least one for each day they’d been there. She got them out of their bag and arrayed them on the top of Rainer’s bed.

  Juan nodded. “Jess, check the serial numbers.”

  Jess had been tasked with tracking all their inventory, both what they’d brought with them and what LightBearer had given them to work with. Everything had a serial number, right down to replacement organs. Ersu probably knew how many leaves were on each individual tree in each Biome.

  Jess checked through each chip, then said, “All accounted for.”

  Of course they were. She kept her expression flat.

  Juan sucked in a breath. “Right. Cheshire, your turn. Examine each chip to see if there’s orbital data on them.”

  Cheshire stepped forward with his own tablet. “I have no idea what I’m looking for, so give me a minute.”

  “Should we go do something else?” Xav whispered to Juan as Cheshire began shoving chips into his tablet.

  “No,” Juan said, glancing at Rainer, who merely watched the proceedings. “No one leaves until we figure out where we stand on this.”

  Where they stood? They stood on a decaying ship led by a Captain who picked stupid fights and a command staff that acted like they were unwelcome guests, and this was stupid. She seethed, the scent of fury rising off her skin, and Xav gave her a nervous look and tip-toed away. Her heart flip-flopped and pounded, sending the implant to work, followed by the familiar cold sting of medication.

  “This is nice and neat,” Cheshire said, mostly to himself. �
�Well-organized data structures are sexy as hell. Nothing like a well-sorted petabyte of text.”

  Raw Telemetry data looked like a hot mess, but it usually came neatly packaged.

  When Cheshire was done, he placed the last chip back in her bag. “No orbital system data. No object data. No near-object data.”

  Just like she’d said. Juan could hurry this along any time now. He was working a bit too hard to finding someone, anyone else, besides Ersu to blame for this.

  “You sure?” Juan asked. “That didn’t take long.”

  Cheshire smirked. “I don’t know anything about Telemetry data, but I know what albedo is. So I just wrote a script to look for files that contain albedo data, because that’s only going to be in orbital data. There’s no albedo data for anything less than a couple hundred meters across.”

  Juan asked, “So if you needed to tell Captain Ersu his Telemetry officer didn’t send our officer orbital data, would you?”

  “I’m not sure it’s his Telemetry officer he should blame, but I know our Warrant Officer didn’t make a mistake.”

  Jess said, “Ersu’s had it out for her from the moment she got here.”

  Juan glared at Jess. “That’s for Lake to bring up with her senior officer, who is Commander Rainer. This isn’t the first time she’s had bad judgement. The incident when she got to NightPiercer. Commander Bennett and her comm. She was up for euthanasia and that doesn’t just happen. Now this. It just doesn’t end with her. It’s always something.”

  The hell! Had Juan not heard anything that had been said? She hadn’t screwed up, she’d tried to prevent a catastrophe. The fact that they were all still here to have this stupid argument was dumb luck. Juan had helped get her out of that iso-pod, and he was here throwing her to the pack? He knew there was more going on than just… whatever everyone else wanted to believe.

  Jimmiez folded his arms. “So he dismisses her instead of telling her to go cool off?”

  Juan retorted to Jimenez. “Every single time it’s full-scale all-officers-involved problems with her.”

  Silence.

  She bit down on her tongue so she didn’t snarl at Juan.

  Rainer finally spoke. “Fair observation. Why?”

  “Why what?” Juan asked.

  “You’ve noticed a pattern of negative behavior in a fellow officer. What’s the cause?”

  Lachesis raised a brow. What was her husband about?

  “Why?” Juan asked.

  “It doesn’t appear to be a one-off thing,” Rainer said. “So if you’re going to break the pattern, what are the underlying factors?”

  Juan shrugged. “Bad judgement, pride, feral tendencies. She thinks a bit too much of herself and is used to being able to squirm out of bad situations.”

  “Squirm?!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t squirm my way out of that iso-pod. I didn’t squirm my way into that box, and I sure as hell didn’t connive my way onto NightPiercer or the damn bridge or into this uniform. I don’t squirm.”

  “Then you constantly need rescue,” Juan retorted.

  “Rescue!” she exclaimed.

  Rainer held up a hand to silence her, and asked Juan. “So what would you do?”

  “Write it up as a disciplinary issue, refer her for more training, maybe Therapy. And probably force her to cut off her hair. She needs to come down a peg or two. She needs perspective.”

  She snarled, but managed to not choke out the string of rage and profanities that bubbled in the back of her throat. Xav crept behind his bunk and Jess side-stepped away from her. Juan kept his attention on Rainer.

  Rainer waited to see if Juan added anything, but Juan just nodded, so Rainer shrugged, although he didn’t smell pleased. “Lachesis, the inquiry has rendered its verdict. Your fellow officer has decided you mishandled the situation, and made a difficult situation worse for your crew and the ship as a whole. The opinion is you need further training and Therapy, and your hair shaven.”

  An unexpected crush of grief and anguish rushed over her, followed by a wave of fury, then another wave of crushing grief that left her empty. How could he just… he’d… no. No. This wasn’t right. “You gutless coward! You could have bitten me in two yourself instead of having him do it! You think I’m going to be less angry with you?”

  Rainer stood and dusted off his hands. “I’m going to go find Captain Ersu. While I’m doing that, Juan, I have a follow-up assignment for you.”

  How dare he ignore her like she wasn’t even there! Like she was a bad dog or a little puppy that was just getting ignored by the adults until she stopped yapping. The inside of her skin itched and scratched as the fury tried to gnaw its way out. Her implant zapped her, and cold needled into her arm, and her vision dimmed around the edges, tinged with red.

  The human stepped forward, one careful eye on her. “Sir.”

  Rainer straightened one of his sleeves. “It’s a senior officer thought puzzle. When a junior officer with zero history of disciplinary problems suddenly has a string of peculiar personal and public conflicts with command staff, why aren’t you asking the command staff what the hell is going on?”

  Juan’s spine jerked as if Rainer had hit him.

  Now Rainer turned his attention to her. “I am going to go find Ersu and discuss this with him.”

  “Wait a second. If I got it wrong, why didn’t you say so?” Juan demanded.

  Rainer headed for the door. “Because your stripes mean you get to decide right and wrong.”

  The door slid closed behind him.

  Confused, she sank down on the edge of her bed, torn between anguish and bewilderment. Her implant burned her heart, and her arm was cold and raw from a stream of medication pumping into her system.

  Jess scuffed her toe on the floor. “Well. This is awkward.”

  She turned around so no one would see her face, although there’d be no privacy from the wolves. She picked up her chimera tablets, sat down on her bunk facing the wall—the classic posture of I’m not here—and found some data to analyze.

  Her husband had just pulled a move right out of Tsu’s strategy book.

  “Lake,” Jess said.

  “Um, I think you should leave her alone,” Xav said in a small voice from his bunk.

  “Come on, Lake, nobody here really blames you. We’re glad you didn’t just roll over for him,” Jess said to her back, not being rude enough to come around and intrude in Lachesis’ line-of-sight.

  Ersu might have been an asshole, but Juan’s words still stung. She’d spent years evading attention on Ark (only for Crèche to notice it anyway), and on NightPiercer she didn’t seem to stay out of trouble.

  Juan snorted. “Ersu is an asshole, but we also need Lake on the bridge. She’s always picking the wrong fights and getting into bad spots. We saw where that temper leads in Aptitude.”

  She flinched. Aptitude still hurt like a raw wound, Bennett hurt like a raw wound, being a cull still stung, not knowing what to say to her family and all those unsent letters still stung, Rainer still hurt like a thousand confusing cuts.

  Zap zap zap.

  “She didn’t pick a fight in Aptitude. That’s not fair,” Jimmiez said.

  Jess stomped one foot. “The boss literally ripped someone’s head off in his scenario and only two people came out alive. Lake didn’t have to kill anyone and six of them came out alive.”

  “We need her on the bridge, end of story,” Juan said.

  Lachesis wiped at the tear that hit her tablet. Damn, she was not going to cry, and she was not going to sniffle. How many people got to listen to their own funeral, or what people really thought of them? She had a front-row seat.

  Cheshire, sitting on the top bunk he shared with Simone, sighed. She eyed him from the corner of her vision, and for a second their eyes made contact. The Tech-turned-wrench-turner sighed again. “Drop it, guys. We’re all worn out, and this place is a shitshow. Someone’s gonna say something they’ll regret once we’re back home.”

  Hopefully R
ainer was having a similarly honest and productive argument with Ersu about his ship that howled in agony every time it moved.

  -1 * -1 = 1

  Rainer returned very late, sometime around the start of the dogwatch. She hadn’t been asleep. Her throat felt stuffed full of cotton, and her chest ached. Her implant had seared her heart again, and the river of drugs pumped into her arm had left it sore. How many weeks, or months, or even years, had Juan’s little lesson in command cost her?

  Juan sat up as the door opened. Nobody else had been asleep either. “Commander.”

  “Go back to sleep,” Rainer’s voice said in the darkness.

  “We’re kind of awake,” Jess muttered.

  “Well, I’m back. Go to sleep.”

  “Where are Simone and Kos?” Jimenez asked. “They’re not back yet.”

  “Still crawling in the hull.”

  Her skin flushed and her heart started to thud hard as Rainer walked over to their shared bunk.

  Then his weight moved on her bunk’s edge as he knelt, brushing his hand along the side of her face, caressing the small strands of her hair.

  She growled and smacked his hand away.

  “Lachesis,” he whispered her name, pushed his hand over her shoulder, his scent translating as need in a way she’d never smelled before.

  In human form, he lifted the blankets just enough to slide in behind her, curling his strong, naked body around hers. He buried his face in her neck. He inhaled, kissed her neck lightly, breathed out, and pulled her firmly into the cradle of his shape with a hand over her hip.

  His hand moved over her belly, fingers splayed, and his scent thick in her nose. Then his hand moved upwards to rest over her heart. He kissed her neck again and sighed.

  Without a thought, she reached up and placed her hand over his, pressing her fingers between his. Anger melted away. Should she enjoy his scent this much? Nothing else seemed warm or safe in this cold damp, even though neither of them were safe.

  At least she was here, and not on NightPiercer.