by Kayla Olson
“Were you successful in convincing him not to flood our station with Vonn’s team?” Leo says, a mix of playful and pointed he’s somehow mastered over the years.
“Good on that front,” I say. For now, I want to add. I don’t feel successful so much as that I simply postponed an inevitable disaster. I only hope my lies have bought us enough time to prove ourselves, if it comes down to defending our worth and right to have a say in our own futures: that we are as capable as any of our parents were at running the station, at keeping ourselves alive. That this may have started as a station full of science experts, but life ran its course and it’s become so much more than that—it’s become our home.
I want, desperately, for our home to stay a home. Our home to stay ours.
“What’s this look?” Leo asks when I don’t offer anything else. “What’s wrong?”
We’re stopped now, in the middle of a corridor that overlooks one of the common areas. Leo deserves to know the details of that call, probably needs to know, in order for us to pull off the fact that I just led Shapiro to believe my mother is alive and well and it’s business-as-usual up here, save for some extended quarantine and a hard hit to the lieutenants who used to run Control.
Once I try to put it into words, though, it doesn’t sound like I’ve done us any favors.
It sounds shameful. Slippery and shameful. Would my mother have done what I did? Would she find it dishonorable that I lied about her death—my own mother’s death!—to her faithful colleague, who knew her well enough to call her by her first name? Who cared enough to sneak luxuries into the shipments for her?
“Just relieved that part is over,” I tell him, forcing a tight-lipped smile. “Everything’s fine.”
Because I had to say something. Because I can’t handle a lecture from Leo right now.
I’ll tell him later, when I’m not fresh off the call and another failed round of lab work and have figured out how to say it in a way that sounds like I’ve helped us—which, despite everything, I still believe I have—instead of backing us into a corner. It’s a matter of how I choose to frame it, is all.
Leo glances back at me, clearly concerned. “Are you sure you’re o—”
He’s cut off by a commotion down on the mezzanine. I peer over the railing and see Akello Regulus step between Mikko Sørensen and a girl, a girl who is fierce and flailing, practically eclipsed by Akello’s intimidating frame. He towers over Mikko, too, but that doesn’t stop Mikko from trying to get around him at the girl—Cameron Cade, I see, when she darts away from his furious hands, grasping at her shirt like he wants to rip it right off.
“Hey!” Leo calls over the balcony. “Hey.”
His voice is loud in my ear but is swallowed up by the noise. Leo runs to the nearest staircase, takes the steps two at a time, and plants himself in the middle of the fray. I follow, fast as I can.
Two guys drag Mikko backward by his elbows into the small crowd that’s gathered, stunned, because how are they supposed to not watch? Akello relaxes, just a little, but it’s a mistake—Cameron slips out from behind him, beelines toward Mikko, and drives her fist dead center into his face. Blood rushes out, even onto her hand, and she shakes it off.
“Everybody stop,” Leo bellows, and this time, now that we are right in the thick of things, a sudden and forceful silence falls all around us. It is a still, silent freeze.
I take the first step, purposefully meeting eyes with Cameron, then Mikko, and back again. Cameron’s always been passionate to a fault, for better or worse: she feels everything and she feels it deeply. If you get in her way—watch out. As for Mikko, he’s an explosion waiting to happen, more agitated and volatile by the day. This collision won’t end well, not on its own. I make myself like a lion, starved and stalking its prey. Teeth are necessary in this case. This isn’t a Yuki and Grace situation—this is claws out, blood spilled. This is something I need to put a stop to now.
Mikko glares at Cameron, then shifts his heavy stare to me. I glare right back. At least he’s not struggling against the guys who hold him in place anymore.
“What did you do to her, Mikko? What’s going on?”
“What did I do?” His eyebrows shoot so high up they practically jump off his face. “She nearly gives me a brain injury by breaking my nose, and it’s what did I do? Why don’t you ask Cameron what she’s hiding underneath her shirt? Why don’t you ask what she broke into my place and stole from me?”
“Please,” Cameron hisses. “I didn’t break in and you know it.”
“You went into my dad’s room, even though I clearly said that was off-limits—”
“You shouldn’t invite half the station over to parties if you don’t want people all up in your place.”
“I wasn’t the one who invited you, and you know it.”
“It isn’t like you kicked me out when I showed up, though, is it?”
“Are you saying this is my fault? You steal my dad’s razor blades and—”
“Just be happy I didn’t use them on your face,” Cameron spits.
“Enough! Enough with this.” Blood crashes through my veins, and it’s a struggle to not be ruled by it, caught up in the same wild fury. “Hand them over now,” I order Cameron.
She glares at me, unflinching.
I step closer. Cameron has a few inches on me and is clearly relishing the fact that it makes her look like the dominant one between us. Eye to eye, voice low and even, I start again. “Hand. Them. Over.”
“Yeah,” she says with a half laugh. “And you’re going to make me . . . how?”
It’s a good question, one I hope she can’t tell I don’t know the answer to just yet.
“Don’t push me, Cameron.” I hold firm, stay steady, try not to let the panic I’m starting to feel show. I honestly don’t know how I’ll make her cooperate. Even if it works out this time, what will I do next time, for a future incident? What if it were Akello towering over me? What then? He could crush me. This could all spiral, and quickly.
Her glare finally falters, just for a second. She reaches inside her shirt and pulls out two thin silver blades, their sharp edges tucked into thin, protective sleeves.
“Thank you,” Mikko says, shooting a pointed glare at Cameron. He reaches for the blades, but I push his hand away.
“Don’t thank me,” I say. “These aren’t going back to you, either.”
“But they were my father’s—they were one of his personal items—”
That explains why they were in his cabin in the first place, I guess, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s against policy to keep blades outside of Medical and the labs. “I’m sorry,” I say. And I am. I wouldn’t want anyone else confiscating my mother’s things. I get it. “I wish I could turn them back over to you, but even under normal circumstances, these really shouldn’t have been in your cabin in the first place.”
Like when Heath and I discovered Yuki and Grace inside SSL—that they had access to top-secret entry codes—a wave of unsettledness washes over me. If these blades were in Mikko’s cabin, what else is hiding out where it shouldn’t be?
No one’s ever used a blade against anyone else in the history of our station, as far as I know.
Then again, we’re living in a season of firsts these days.
“So that’s it?” Mikko says, pressing his forearm against his still-bleeding nose. “She steals my father’s things, rams her fist into my face, and on top of that, you’re not going to give the blades back? Real fair, Lindley.”
Leo steps in, grabs the neck of Mikko’s shirt. “It’s Commander, Mikko, and don’t forget it. You’re on probation, both of you.” Cameron rolls her eyes, but Leo doesn’t let it faze him. “Any more incidents like this—from anyone—there will be privileges lost for everyone on board. Got it?”
“Fine, whatever.” Mikko shakes Leo off.
“Yeah,” Cameron says, no longer meeting any of our eyes. “Whatever.”
No one moves after that, and no
one says a word. The silence is so thick it could explode at any second. Leo and I wind through the crowd, make our exit. One foot after the other after the other after the other.
As soon as we’re out of the lions’ den, I split off from Leo, turning down an empty corridor.
“Lindley!” Leo calls after me. It’s just us now. “Lindley, slow down!”
But I can’t, I can’t, the blood is crashing around inside me again, carrying me faster than I want to go. I’m not sure where I’m headed, I just want to get away. Even from Leo.
He picks up his pace, catches up with me. I walk faster.
Eventually, when I don’t slow down and don’t say a word, he gives up.
“Never seen you run away from something before, Linds,” he calls from where I left him behind. It’s almost enough to make me stop. “You’re not alone in this, okay? We’ll get through it.”
“Not running away,” I reply, eyes trained straight ahead. “Just running.”
Because here, on the station, there is no away.
23
STARDUST
WHEN I WAS younger, and my mother still told me bedtime stories, I always imagined stardust like this: sparkles made of glittering gold, the tail of a shooting star, never fading, full of bright-burning magic. She’d tell stories of being back on Earth, of sitting in the backyard with her father, cold nights spent wrapped up in warm blankets, eyes wide and locked on the sky. The meteor showers were incredible, she said. Like fireworks, only even more wondrous, because no human had set them in motion.
I don’t remember how old I was when I first learned that shooting stars are not, in fact, actual stars. Rather, they are stone and mineral, catching fire once they enter Earth’s atmosphere, not inherently bright or blazing. They’re glorified rocks.
It never bothered my mother that what she’d seen from Earth was, in fact, only an illusion. The change in perspective makes things more beautiful, she insisted. Even a glorified rock can be beautiful given the right circumstances.
In all the ways we were similar, this was not one of them. I saw her point, sure. But for me, the change in perspective worked the other way. Shooting stars were not magical, or made of gold, or glitter, or embers, or sparks. They were rocks in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dust, and only dust.
I inherited so much from her, a thousand things that make me feel the smallest bit capable of filling up the void she left when she died. But this thing with Cameron and Mikko—how quickly things could have spiraled out of my control, and what then?—I feel shaken by it. Unnerved.
What if I’ve inherited a thousand things from my mother, who was gold and glitter in her own way, but I’m missing the one crucial thing that will determine whether I can pull this off?
What then?
24
A GASH IN THE GALAXY
NATALIN’S WAITING OUTSIDE my door when I get home a while later, arms crossed. Angry.
No surprise there. I blew off our meeting and didn’t bother to let her know.
“You were supposed to meet me half an hour ago,” she says, blocking me when I try to slip past her. “What, you’ve got nothing to say?”
“Can we not talk about this in the corridor?”
“At this point, I’m about to tell the entire blasted station about this food crisis, Lindley. I hope someone overhears! They deserve to know the truth, and they deserve to know who’s doing everything they can to keep us alive.”
And everyone who’s not, her narrowed eyes say.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Nat. I accepted a slightly delayed shipment that will be better for us in the long run—”
“How slightly delayed are we talking about here?”
“A couple of days,” I say. “It’s not like I declined their help altogether.”
“Well, you may as well have,” she shoots back.
“That isn’t fair and you know it.” I meet her glare, hold it. “Now step. Aside. I’m not talking about this unless we’re behind closed doors.”
For a fraction of a second, I fear I will have to physically remove her if I want to access my entry panel. Finally, though, she shifts. I open the door, gesture inside. “After you.”
I walk straight over to the window, stand with my toes right up to the edge of it. Incredible, how we’ve come this far: that humanity has made incomprehensible advancements in space exploration, yet humanity itself never seems to change. For better or worse, we remain passionate, and disagreeable, and prone to making innumerable mistakes. Has anyone in history ever wanted blame placed upon her head like a crown of fire?
“Look, Lindley, I know you’re probably only suffering a major guilt complex about opting to deprive our station of a quicker shipment, but I never expected you to no-show our meeting. That isn’t like you. It isn’t something I expect—”
“We will work. Something. Out.” My breath fogs the glass. “And you can stop being so melodramatic. While you’re at it, you can also stop with the accusations.”
“It would help if you weren’t so worthy of them.”
I turn, look her dead in the eye. “It would help if you weren’t so quick to panic. If you could have just a tiny bit of faith that I’m doing what I think is best for us. You think I want to starve? You really think I want to walk around this ship and see our people wasting away? You really think I would choose to look them in the eye while that happens if I didn’t think the direction we’re headed in is the best one?” I should stop, I really should. I can’t. “We don’t have to eat things we like. We just have to eat. We can do that, mostly, for a little while longer. So in the meantime, I need you to do your job—and quit telling me how to do mine.”
“‘Mostly,’” she says. “‘For a little while longer.’ Do you hear yourself? What does it matter if we have enough to eat for ninety percent of the time we need it, if it’s not going to be enough to last?”
I knew those words were a mistake the second they slipped out. I knew she’d latch on to them, throw them back at me.
“We can make it work—”
“I ran the numbers again, twice, and we’d barely have enough to last until the first date they offered us. We need another delivery or we’re basically dead.”
Her words hang in the air, linger just long enough before crashing to the ground. Different perspectives aside, in this moment we are coming from the exact same place: terror.
“I’ll figure it out,” I say, too sharply. Alone, I want to add. She doesn’t move, just stands there like she’s grown deep roots through my floor. “I need some space, Nat.”
Finally she turns, heads for the door. “Unless you can get back on a call and fix this,” she says before she leaves, no fight left in her voice, “you should start with the water. Find a way to get more of it, and we might have a chance.”
I spend the entire next hour at my window, alone except for the queen of clubs. She is the best sort of company, the silent sort who can’t judge the ideas I toss around: she doesn’t expect too much, and she doesn’t expect too little. That’s the problem with people—all their expectations, all their expectations for good reason. Queens on cards have no stake in staying alive. Queens on cards cannot die. If someone were to burn or shred or otherwise destroy them, they wouldn’t care because they cannot think or see or feel.
But our station is not occupied by cards. Our station is full of living, breathing people, who I care desperately about despite—because of!—all the messy complications that come along with blood and soul and heart.
Unless you can get back on a call and fix this plays on a loop in my head. Fix this, fix this, fix this. It would be so easy—in theory. So easy to head up to Control, press my finger to a button, and tell him I was wrong.
I hate being wrong.
I could spin it with the truth, though—that after taking a closer look at our supplies, we can’t make the delayed option work after all. But what then? What about Vonn, what his intervention could mean for us down the
line? If I was too optimistic before on the food front, maybe I’m being too paranoid about what could happen to us later. My gut twists at the thought of asking for his help—but is that worry worth people’s lives? Is my pride worth people starving?
I have to admit it isn’t.
I close my eyes, count to ten. Steady my nerves. This is the right decision, I tell myself. This is the only decision, now that I know what I know. I only wish we had better choices.
Control is deserted when I arrive, which is a relief. It’s hard enough to face the mistake I’ve made on my own—it would be worse to have to do it in front of everyone else. I take a seat on the stool, roll over to the message-system section of the control board. Before I can think twice, I put in a call, press video this time. Better not to leave myself any openings—with a video call, there’s no chance I’ll sabotage my own good intentions with more lies. Once Shapiro sees my face, he’ll see I’m not my mother. With that lie unraveled, the rest will fall out easily.
They will, anyway, if Shapiro ever actually picks up. Five rings go unanswered, then ten. At eleven, the message on screen blinks from INITIATING VIDEO CALL to THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE. At twenty, it says FAILURE TO CONNECT, TRY AGAIN LATER.
Well. This is . . . not ideal.
I try again with audio-only—perhaps there’s just a satellite issue of some sort making the video option unavailable? Twenty rings pass, with the same basic messages. No luck—and no missed calls, no voice mails on the log. Nothing at all to assure me this outage is due to regularly scheduled maintenance, or any other reason that implies it will be up and running again soon. I’m definitely using the right system—last time I put in a call, Shapiro picked up on the very first ring. I’m fairly certain it’s not a problem on our end, since we were able to initiate this new call, too, and it only failed when it couldn’t get through to Nashville. I could be wrong, of course. I’m not a systems expert—and it’s not like Zesi has experience with this, either.
It could be anything, I realize, with a wave of dread. Hopefully it’s just a simple system failure, something that will be functional within the day, and not something much more severe. They’re far enough inland from most natural disasters—one of the primary reasons they relocated space headquarters from Texas and Florida decades ago—but they’re not immune to strong floods, or tornadoes. If not a natural disaster, perhaps the virus wasn’t quite as contained as they believed it to be—perhaps they let down their guard too early in the name of getting a shipment up to us; perhaps it flared up and hit them hard.
