Author: Erin Klitzke

“There is definitely one nice thing about going down to the surface,” Hunter said as she counted the sample carriers lined up along one of the long counters in the main lab. “It’s really nice to see natural sunlight in a natural environment.”

“Define natural,” Ilya countered as he settled in at one of the tables, checking on the last batch of samples he’d been working with before their sojourn planetside. Their assistants scattered, heading to their own tasks while leaving the two senior scientists to their work. “That environment down there has been modified from its base state. They introduced terrestrial species before either of us were born and thus altered the overall biome.”

“It’s about as close to natural as we’re going to get anytime soon, Ilya,” Hunter said, suppressing the suddenly strong urge to roll her eyes. “You’re in rare form today, you know that?”

“Yes, well.” He sifted through some data on his screen. “I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Yes,” he said, tone precise. His back stayed to her as he focused on some cultures that he’d been working with for weeks—one of his pet research projects beyond the more general scope of their work on the station. While she and Ilya weren’t partners in research by any stretch of the imagination, they’d worked in the same lab together ever since Hunter had come to the station four years earlier. She leaned against the counter for a few seconds, watching him settle in and start to tinker with his equipment. She waited for him to say more, but after a few seconds of watching his back, she realized that he wasn’t going to volunteer anything else.

“Maybe you should get that checked,” she finally teased. “If you didn’t skip your physical—”

“Do not start, Hunter.”

The ice in his tone startled her. Her brow arched, but she decided perhaps it was better not to press. “All right,” she said mildly. “I’ll let it go.”

“As you should,” he said, finally looking away from his equipment. “Shall we get started now, or wait until tomorrow?”

“That’s up to you,” she said. “If you have work to do with your project, it can wait until morning. That way we can start fresh.”

“Well, I did not plan to be here all night to get started,” Ilya said, shaking his head. “At this point, we would be here until well past dinner.”

“Then we wait?”

“I think so, yes.” Ilya frowned, eyeing the carriers.

Her gaze strayed to the sample containers again. “Do you really think there’s going to be any kind of major change in those samples from the last round? There really hasn’t been anything all that remarkable in any of the other ones that fall into the same category.”

Ilya glanced at her for a second and shrugged. “Who knows at this point. How did that old meme go? ‘Life finds a way.’” He shook his head as he turned back to his equipment. “But I do not think so, Hunter. Not this time. We have gotten lucky before but at some point, luck will run out. It is an eternal truth.”

“You are oddly philosophical today.”

“I am philosophical every day,” Ilya said without looking at her. “Today it is just earlier and I have not been drinking yet. See me tonight and I will be in rare form I think.”

Hunter smiled faintly. “Thanks, but I have other plans.”

“Oh.” Now Ilya did turn to look at her again, his gaze tracking her as she crossed the main lab to her workspace. “Am I to imagine that you are finally getting back to living or do your plans involve wine and a book?”

“I’ll let you figure that out yourself,” she said as she opened one of the refrigeration units and started checking Petri dishes. She had a dozen cultures she was monitoring in this batch alone, hoping that they’d yield something more than just standard fare—more importantly, something that could and would help someone, somewhere beyond knowing what was making something living sick.

Ilya sighed. “Hunter, please. You are my friend, I am worried about you. It has been years since you lost that fiancé of yours. I did not know him, but all that I know about that family tells me that he would not want your world to stop because he was gone. That man is dead but you are not. If you are to honor him, you must live.”

The muscles of her back and shoulders knotted for a second, more painful than the usual old residual ache. Breath came ragged and she braced herself against the edge of the countertop, letting its beveled black edge dig into the meat of her palms. That tactile sensation was almost enough to drown out the rest, to push the strain and pain away, to let her breathe normally again. “I know, Ilya,” she rasped. “It’s been a long time. I know what he’d want.”

“Then you should do what David Lésarte would want you do. I cannot imagine that would mean being alone. This is a man whose death sparked a war. That is a man worth honoring.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

“Good,” he said. “Now if you do not want to come drinking tonight, perhaps you will tomorrow. Yes?”

“Yeah,” she said, squeezing stinging eyes shut. “Yeah, sure, Ilya. Tomorrow night. Not tonight.”

“All right, then. Good.” The sound of a stirring rod rang quietly against a beaker. His voice was quieter, gentler when it came again. “I am sorry if I brought up old pain.”

“It’s all right,” she said, scrubbing her hand over her eyes. Focus, Hunter. Focus. “Sometimes, it just hits different.”

“I suppose it would,” Ilya said. “Apologies.”

“Thanks, Ilya.” She sucked in a deep breath, settling and steadying through the act and through sheer force of will. “But really, don’t worry about it. You’re right. I shouldn’t let it do that to me like that. It’s been a long time. It’s just sometimes the grief is too much.”

“You loved him a long time,” Ilya said. “All of your adult life, you said?”

“Yeah,” she said, her attention drifting back to Petri dishes, to work, forcing the pain back into the place where she kept it under lock and key, down in the depths of her soul. “We met in undergrad. It was like magic.” Just breathe. “I knew what I was getting into when I fell in love with him, though. With that name, some kind of service was expected. I didn’t just expect what it would cost.”

“He would not want you to suffer, I think.”

“No,” she whispered, eyes unfocusing. “No, he wouldn’t.” Another breath. Her eyes focused again. Work to do. Don’t get distracted. “Anything interesting in that last batch?”

“Not so far,” he said. “What about yours?”

“Well, that remains to be seen,” she said, peering at the cultures, setting aside two from the batch to check under magnification. The others didn’t seem to have anything remarkable going on yet. “Not much in the cultures yet.”

“Ah, well.” She could hear him tinkering with something and the scraping of his pencil against paper, the usual sounds of his work. “Perhaps it is good that we wait until tomorrow with the new samples, then.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, then smiled a little, shaking her head. “It’s amazing. They tell you that all of your work is going to be amazing and will change the world but only a few folks’ll tell you how much of it is tedium and waiting and no changes.”

“No one would do the science if they mentioned that part,” Ilya said simply. “Not everything can be a breakthrough. The world would be too exciting no one would know what to think anymore.”

She laughed out loud. “True that.”

“Yes, well.” She could sense the hint of a wry smile in Ilya’s voice. “I still would not mind finding something exciting.”

“Me neither,” she admitted. “Something more than the phage.”

“If it proves any more useful, we will have to name it.”

“Let’s not count our chickens yet,” Hunter said, grinning over her shoulder at him. “Science first. Credit later.”

Ilya smirked at her. “But hopefully not too later.”

“Right. Hopefully not.”

“Keep scowling like that and you’re going to scare the half of the security team that isn’t already sure you’re going to kill them if they step out of line.”

“I’m not going to kill anyone that doesn’t deserve to die,” Kari Yamazaki muttered, continuing to scowl at the screen in front of her. “I might beat the snot out of one or two of them in the ring, though.”

“I can hear them quaking in their boots from here.” There was a certain sort of practiced inelegance to the way John Wakefield fell into the chair next to her in security operations, something that suggested far more refinement than his overall appearance suggested. There was almost a laconic grace to the man, whose roots—at least on the surface—were nothing if not humble. “What’s got you all knotted up?”

“Nothing that important,” she growled, her gaze flicking up to meet his. He’d know she was lying. He always did. “What are you doing here? I thought you were on arco seven today.”

“I swapped shifts with Ramirez,” he said. The light of the various cams and screens set in the wall in above them reflected off his face, the shifts in light and shadow highlighting cheekbones and jaw as familiar to her as her own reflection. “He’s got a family thing later, so I took his night shift.”

“His night shift.”

His sigh was just shy of explosive. For a second, he looked away. “I know, Kari. I know. But how could I tell him no? It’s his abeula’s eightieth birthday and the whole family’s going to be on the call to celebrate. One night isn’t going to kill either of us.”

She glowered for a moment as she turned back to the smaller screen in font of her, the one where images and words told a tale she hadn’t wanted to know. John’s brows knit as he leaned toward her.

“Kari.”

“I’m fine,” she said, too quickly. It was a lie and he’d know it instantly—they’d been together for too long for him to think anything otherwise. All she could hope for was that he’d think that something else was bothering her, not what actuallywas.

“News from the front lines?” he guessed, pointing at the screen. “Because that’s the look you’ve got right now. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it’s not the best news, either.”

“None of it’s good news anymore.” She leaned back, glancing at him, holding his gaze for a few seconds. He stared back, that same blue-eyed stare that she’d fallen in love with lightyears away back on Earth. They’d been younger then, caution a foreign concept to a pair of Marines thrown together on the same post. “But let me tell you, there’s not a second that I’m not glad that I’m not there.”

“It’s getting worse, then.”

“I’m not sure how you’re not already aware of that,” she said, glancing back to the screen again. “It’s not hard to figure it out.”

“It is when you try to actively avoid news from back home,” John murmured. “It just seems safer that way, Kari. I don’t worry about shit I can’t change anymore and that’s a big barrel of shit I can’t change.”

She sighed. “I guess that’s probably a good way to look at it. I just—I just can’t look away, you know? Eventually I’ll end up back there. At least, that’s what I figure—until General Morrison gets over the bullshit.”

“Or retires,” John said. “But that day might not come. You might get your out before he calls it quits.”

“Bold of you to assume I’ll take my out.”

His brows went up. “You wouldn’t?”

“You haven’t.”

John shrugged. He watched the wall in front of them, stared up at the screens showing various views of the arcologies, of unguarded entry doors, of the hangar bays. “I have my reasons.”

“It can’t be that you like it out here.”

One corner of his mouth lifted into a smirk. “Oh, it can’t, huh?”

She looked at him sidelong, her brow furrowing. “Wait, you do?”

“Why not?” he shrugged again. “Come on. You know me. It’s not like there’s much back home for me now, not since the Narrows got blown up.”

Kari winced. Early in the war—nearly six years ago, now—the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to Staten Island had been blown up in retaliation for a UAS strike. John’s parents had been part of the first wave of first responders that had showed up to help in the aftermath, only to be killed when a section of the bridge that had been spared in the initial attack collapsed beneath them. It had meant hundreds more dead in what had already been a mass casualty event, and many of that batch had been first responders like John Wakefield Sr. and Beth Henebry. She still wasn’t sure that he’d made it back for the funeral—it was something they didn’t talk about, something that was still a raw wound in his soul. “I guess.”

“So I stay here,” he said. “It’s not like they’ll ever ask me to come back.”

They never talked about whatever he’d done to get himself exiled out there to Skypoint. About half of the security contingent didn’t, while it was an open secret for the other half. John was part of the former, she was part of the latter—her incident with General Morrison’s spawn was practically legend now, an example of how not to school a superior’s ego-tripping child. She maintained that it was worth it, though, even if it had gotten her reassigned to Skypoint—a punishment detail, to be certain, for someone whose career up until that point had been on a meteoric rise.

“Well, not like it matters anyway,” she sighed. “Even if either of us wanted to take our outs, we’d be trapped in a stop-loss nightmare until the war ended.”

“Has that been happening?”

This time, it was Kari that shrugged, tucking black hair back behind one ear. “That’s what the rumor mill’s saying. I haven’t heard anything one hundred percent credible either way, but I’ve been hearing too much for me to think that it’s not happening at all. They’re desperate for folks to keep up the fight.”

“They should be, I guess,” John muttered, standing up and starting to pace. “Especially when you begin to consider the ridiculousness of all of it. There’s no reason any of this should have been going on for as long as it has.”

An argument started to rise on her tongue but she ruthlessly suppressed it. It wasn’t worth the argument that would ensue, especially when she was already miffed that he’d swapped his shift today for Ramirez’s shift tonight.

Just simmer down. He didn’t know you were going to try to cook him dinner and just have a quiet night in. You can’t be mad that he’s broken plans that you hadn’t even made yet.

“It just seems like such a waste,” she said softly. “None of it makes sense anymore.”

“I don’t know if war ever really did,” John admitted, stopping on the other side of the console. He braced his hands against its edge and stared down at her, expression softening for a second. “It wasn’t anyone you knew, was it?”

She managed a smile and shook her head. “No. Not on any recent casualty lists, anyway. Hell. The last big one that would’ve had any kind of significant impact was Hunter and…well.”

He smiled a crooked smile. “Yeah, we know how that turned out. Does it still bother you?”

“That they told us she was dead when she wasn’t? Yeah. Yeah, it really does. Sometimes it makes me wonder what they were actually planning to do with her after that happened—if they were planning on doing anything.”

John shook his head slightly. “Something tells me that she wasn’t in any kind of state after that to be asked or told to do anything. Whatever her last mission was, whatever actually happened, that was the end of it. It was going to be years before she could do anything like what she used to. That’s not something that the powers at be were going to wait for, war or not.”

“It all sounds logical when you say it,” Kari said. “But then I ask myself when intelligence ever really employed thought processes like that. Seems like never.”

“I think you’re just paranoid.”

That, at least, made her smile. “Can’t have that,” she said, grinning up at him. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

John, at least, had the grace to blush.

Staring down at the nasty gash that ran along the meat of Caolán Furyk’s arm, Jacob Ricard’s brows knit. The wound wasn’t quite as jagged as he would have expected from the ethologist’s initial description of the incident that had caused it, but after so many years on the station, he’d grown used to mishaps not always seeming to match up to the story attached to them. “How did this happen, again? One of the big cats?”

“One of the medium cats,” Caolán corrected. “I was in the enclosure when I probably shouldn’t have been, but sometimes timing is everything and I hate to break their routines.”

Jacob shook his head, starting to clean the wound. Caolán hissed but to his credit, didn’t jerk away. Of course, this had happened once or twice before, and Jacob had never known the other man to shy away from what needed doing. “What startled them?”

“I suppose I did,” Caolán admitted. They were alone in the treatment room, one of several in the station’s expansive medical center. While there weren’t necessarily too many individuals on the station at a given time—usually just the scientists, support staff, and security teams—there were enough mishaps on the station that it demanded a full medical suite. While his tenure as chief of medical operations on the station had been relatively quiet, Jacob knew from his predecessor’s stories that there were reasons for the expansiveness of the medical center’s equipment—in no small part dating back to the days when it was the only consistently staffed medical center in the surrounding sector. “Tacita came in and we were talking about the war back on Earth. I don’t know. I started getting agitated and that probably upset the cats.”

He had the feeling there was more to the story than Caolán was telling, but he wasn’t inclined to press. If Caolán wanted to keep more of the details to himself, that was fine. He had a sneaking suspicion that if it was relevant or important, the scientists would have shared it with him. “Is it all that bad still?”

“The war? Define bad.”

Jacob shrugged with one shoulder. “I suppose it’s relative, isn’t it? Depends on which side you’re on, if you’re on any. I don’t know. I guess I don’t think about it that much.” He tried not to, at least. It was easier that way, to leave Earth in the past, to not think about the war that had been going on for as long as he’d been at Skypoint—and seemed as if it would go on longer still, barring any sort of miracle or intervention. “It just seems too awful to contemplate and it’s been going on for so long. It’s almost like a disease—you wonder if it’s simply become endemic, that we’ve somehow become inured to its existence, numb to the suffering and the death.”

“That is—ow—remarkably philosophical.” Caolán rubbed at his temple, as if trying to ward off a distant headache. “I suppose we have that luxury, being out here.”

“Such as it is. Two of those warring governments are still keeping the lights on.”

“I try not to think about how much UAS and the Russian Consortium might be contributing to our continued existence there,” Caolán admitted. “Gods know that Cambria and Arcanis are likely footing most of the bill and enjoying the tax offsets and benefits of government partnerships.”

“Probably,” Jacob agreed. “Then UAS gets to use the place as a dumping ground for problem children.”

“Most of them don’t seem that problematic,” Caolán said. “At least not since Yamazaki showed up.”

“Well, I didn’t say they were actual problems.” Jacob grinned and shook his head. “Just that the UAS viewed them as problem children.”

“There’s a story there.”

“One for another time. What is going on back home?”

“‘Home’ is a relative term,” Caolán said. “Back on Earth, though, it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Tacita was telling me about some kind of attack on one of the remembrance ceremonies in London. A couple hundred people died. They’re alleging terrorists but if you ask me, I doubt it was. For all that Britain’s trying to stay neutral in all of this mess, there’s still a target on everyone’s back there. If it was actually terrorists, they were being backed by someone.”

“One of the warring sides,” Jacob said. “Which one?”

“Definitely one of the warring sides, but the second question I don’t have a clear answer for.” Caolán sighed, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling. “It all just seems so damn pointless sometimes. They’re just making things worse back there when they should be making it better.”

“It’s long past the point of no return,” Jacob whispered, shaking his head as he shucked his first set of gloves and yanked on new. “I don’t know why they bother.”

“Geopolitics are a bitch,” Caolán said. “And these governments are just clinging to continued relevancy for as long as they can. How long do you think it’ll be before colony worlds and stations start being the seats of power—or for those states, worse yet, start to declare independence?”

“Right now, most of them can’t survive without support from Earth.”

“Think about what you just said, Jacob. Right now, they can’t. But someday? Probably sooner than any of them think. I mean, in part, isn’t that what this war is about? One government overstepping on a colony world and that colony world and its sponsor government flipping its shit? Wasn’t that the ultimate inciting incident, before the assassinations, before the retaliatory bombings? One mission of mercy gets blown out of the sky above a colony world in alleged crisis and all of a sudden everyone’s at each other’s throats. And what was the source of the crisis?”

“Disease,” Jacob whispered, glad that Caolán wasn’t looking at him. His hands were trembling beyond his control. If Caolán had been looking, he would have noticed, would have asked. That wasn’t like Jacob, not at all. “Disease fueled by a famine that didn’t have to happen.”

“Exactly. You said it—it didn’t have to happen.”

Jacob took a slow, deep breath and stood up. “I forgot the local. Give me a second.”

He’d started to walk away by the time Caolán finally looked at him, been able to hide how badly his hands were getting. Getting the local anesthetic was a good excuse to step away, to try to master himself again.

It didn’t need to happen.

The whole war hadn’t needed to happen. Without one choice made on a colony world. No. Not on the colony world.

One choice made on Earth by a government who sponsored that world and withheld resources to force compliance when local governments said no to something. It didn’t matter what. The tactic was far older than space exploration, dating back thousands of years into Earth’s history.

When locals did something the central government didn’t like, the central government would take steps to squash any attempt to resist. It was a story as old as history, as old as government.

It made him sick to his stomach.

“You okay?” Caolán asked.

For a split second, Jacob thought that maybe, just maybe, his friend had seen his hands shaking, or that there had been some other outward sign of how much the discussion was getting to him for reasons that he wasn’t about to discuss. He suppressed a sigh and shook his head. “Just something about the whole mess is upsetting, that’s all. You know how it is.”

“Mm. Yeah, I guess we’ve had that discussion before, haven’t we?” Caolán sighed. “It just makes me so damn mad, Jacob. But I know you’re the same way.”

“Well, we both agree that none of this bullshit needed to happen,” he admitted. The shaking in his hands had eased enough that he felt safe with the vial and syringe, turning to head back to where Caolán sat, waiting. “I think most of us in our circle here on the station do.”

“Would that it was more than just our circle,” Caolán said, watching the doctor as Jacob settled back into his spot again to start administering the local that would precede stitches. “It’s just so much sometimes. I envy you the ability to not think about it.”

“I just focus on other things,” Jacob said. “I guess it’s easier for me because it is just me. I don’t have anyone left back there.”

“But you are from there.”

“So are most of us,” he said. “It’s just that some of us never want to go back.”

“That I can’t blame you for.” Caolán sighed and shook his head. “It’s been years since I was there. I miss Ireland, though. I think I always will even if it’s not home anymore.”

“Your family had an estate there, didn’t they?”

“We still do—I still do. I get a modest sum from the government for allowing them to use it for tourism purposes. Seems some things don’t change even while the world’s tearing itself apart, hm?” Caolán smiled faintly. “I use some of it to fund my research.”

Jacob didn’t ask where the rest went—something about his friend’s tone told him that Caolán wasn’t interested in providing an answer. The Irishman had his secrets and Jacob was more than willing to respect his desire to keep them.

He had secrets of his own, after all, and didn’t have any desire for anyone to try to plumb them.

“I suppose that’s something, then,” Jacob said. “Considering how I’ve heard some of the others complaining about grant money and the like.”

“Well, that’s a big fat mess, isn’t it?” Caolán offered up a rueful smile. “Gods know most of that’s going into tech that’ll do one of two things—clearly kill people or clearly save them. I think you’re in the right line of work for that latter one. A lot of the folks here seem to be. Then there’s the ones like me who fight that eternal battle to demonstrate, yes, my research is relevant to the continued existence of the homosphere.”

Jacob snorted. “That was a pretty good impression of Dr. Blow-Hard.”

“At some point, Partridge is going to get his balls in such a twist that no one on the medical staff will be able to retrieve them,” Caolán said. “Until he gets his ultimate comeuppance, I’ll just have to settle for mocking him. He’s a pain my ass and is constantly trying to get my research budget and access cut.”

“He’s still doing that?”

“Yeah,” Caolán said, then sighed. “He’s just one of those, I guess.”

“When did that feud actually start?”

“Graduate school.”

Jacob winced. “That long?”

“Let’s just say that we met at an academic conference that went much better for me than it did for him. He’s never forgiven or forgotten that one.” He shook his head. “Research is cutthroat.”

“True story,” Jacob murmured, finishing with the local and starting on the sutures. “I think I made the right choice when I opted for medicine rather than something like genetics or biochemistry.”

“You probably did,” Caolán said. “But you were never going to go into one of those fields, were you? This seems like your calling. Doing what you do.”

Jacob smiled, nodding. “You’re right. It was all I ever really wanted, I think, way back when I was a kid. I wanted to help people and this…medicine seemed like the best way to do it. Even if it was a small thing, it’d let me help people. Sometimes the small things are important.”

“Usually, the small things are a lot more important than we realize.” Caolán watched him work, holding still with the occasional wince as Jacob closed up the wound. “You’ve got a kind heart, Jacob. Kinder than I think the world might deserve.”

He smiled wryly. “Some folks would say that’ll get me into trouble. Maybe even killed.”

“Good thing you’re here, then,” Caolán said. “Out of the way enough that nothing usually happens anymore and it’s easy to be overlooked and forgotten when the trouble really does start.”

“Yeah,” Jacob said. “It’s a good thing.”

It was a mottled, blue and green marble of a world with wisps of white clouds chasing gray. There was a night side with no cities to mark it, a terminus from light to dark with only the thinnest edge of graying twilight. She’d seen it from above often enough that it likely should have lost its magic by now, but somehow it still held some strange allure. It was probably because Earth had so long ago lost the innocence and purity suggested by the view of this faraway world, orbiting a star that was not Sol, and here she was, watching it, studying it, lightyears away from the world that had given birth to humanity.

There was a strange surreality to that knowledge, especially when one knew that perhaps it wasn’t originally meant to be this way, but there she was anyway.

A light flashed on the console in front of her and she glanced over, away from the curving viewport at the front of the shuttle, then toggled her comm. “Skypoint station, this is shuttle six. I have the beacon. Permission to land?”

“Granted, six,” the bored-sounding tech at control answered, voice a bit scratchy over the comm. There was a solar storm and it’d been kicking out enough radiation to play havoc with transmission quality all day. “Bay three.”

“Copy, control. Thank you.”

“Stay on your present heading, Dr. Drake. Maintain course and speed. Thank you.” The comm clicked off. For a second, she closed her eyes.

“What is our ETA, Hunter?” Ilya asked from the cockpit hatch, his familiar, thickly accented voice bringing her out of any nascent daydreams. It was probably a good thing.

She glanced at the board. “Ten minutes,” she said. “Not likely to change, either,” she added, surveying the space around the station. “No traffic today.”

“There usually is not,” the scientist from the Russian Consortium observed, following her gaze. “It is likely better that way.”

“Probably right,” she said, watching the slow, lazy spin of the station’s cylinders. At its present orientation, Skypoint was giving them an impressive view of three of the arcology pods—desert, savannah, and semi-aquatic number one, if her guess was on target. It was hard to see this far out, the distance a touch too vast to read the exterior markings, but the color of the light from the viewports on those arcologies seemed right.

Ilya watched her and shook his head. “I have known you for these four years, Hunter, and you somehow always seem to look at the station like she is your lover. The planet, too. I never understood.”

“I don’t know why,” she said, anticipating the question as Ilya sank into the empty co-pilot’s seat. “I guess all of it just hasn’t lost its magic yet.”

“Hm.” There was some bare trace of humor in his grunt and Hunter had to smile, glancing sidelong at him. She could see the faintest beginnings of a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. “For your sake, then, perhaps I hope it never does lose that magic you say it has.”

“You don’t see it?”

“I am too pragmatic, I think,” Ilya said, leaning back. “I see my work. Our work. I know what it means.” His gaze strayed, though, toward the planet they were leaving, still visible even as their ship sailed toward the station. “I do sometimes wonder, though. What was it like for the early ones, the cosmonauts? Did they look down in wonder even as they already knew—did they already know—that someday there would be nothing left?”

“That’s a little morbid.”

“Aye, perhaps,” he allowed. “But you cannot deny that it is true.”

On that, he was certainly right. It was the unspoken assumption behind the work they were doing at Skypoint, the studies they were running. Earth was past the point of no return—or if it wasn’t, it would soon be there, despite best efforts that had come too late. It would not continue to support humanity or any terrestrial species for too much longer, a fact that had been recognized in the decades before either Hunter or Ilya had been born. That was why research outposts like Skypoint existed, why humanity had started the process of colonization on at least a dozen worlds already. They were a vastly preferable option to the O’Neill stations that had cropped up during her parents’ childhoods.

Most of the time, she tried not to think about what it all might mean, or how much time humanity’s homeworld—because Earth was still their homeworld, the seat of power and governance—might have left.  She suspected the time might be shorter than any of them wanted to contemplate. The deeper she got into research, into her science and that of her colleagues, the bleaker and bleaker things seemed back home by comparison.

“No, I can’t,” she sighed. “But it’s still morbid.”

“I do not think you have known me to be anything but,” Ilya observed with a straight face, then smiled. “At least we have this. And our work.”

“Aye,” she whispered. “That we do. The samples are secure?”

“Of course. And our escort is restless and the assistants are playing cards. They wanted to know how much time they had.”

“And you decided escape was preferable to answering their question promptly.”

Ilya grinned. “You know me so well.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, staring out the viewport. “Too much time in the lab together, I guess.”

“Indeed. Do you expect to find anything different in these samples?”

“Well, there hasn’t been anything different in the past three batches from this area,” she said. “I’ve been going over the old datasets. I doubt there’s anything but who knows. It’s been a while since they ran a survey.”

“Mm. Before both of our times.”

“Seems to be how it goes,” she said, then shrugged. “If there’s nothing odd or particularly intriguing, the area gets put at the bottom of the list until we cycle back through again. That’s just how it goes.”

“The phage from zone C-972 has been proving useful at Carom, I heard.”

Her brow furrowed. She knew what he was talking about—something they’d found on a survey nine months earlier, in a different area they’d surveyed. “From who?”

“I have a friend at Cosmo-Twenty,” Ilya said. “They are working with it to help the terraforming process. Said it has been eating a toxic sludge and turning it into potable water.”

“Well, that’s good. Been a minute since we got something practicable out of this.”

“Proving our continued relevance,” Ilya said. “There are worse things.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “There sure as hell are.”

“So every so often, it is something exciting.”

“That’s true.” She touched a control, bringing the nose of the shuttle up slightly relative to the station. Six had a bad stabilizer, but there hadn’t been time to repair it before they’d needed it for the survey, and it wasn’t mission-critical to have it fixed as long as the pilot was experienced enough. She fit the bill in that regard. Ilya watched her, shaking his head slightly.

“It amazes me still.”

“What does?” she asked, her brow furrowing for the barest moment.

“Somehow, while doing all of those other things that you did before you came to the station, you found time to learn to fly.”

“These don’t take all that much,” she lied. “These shuttles are easy, especially when the station can do most of the hard landing work. Autopilot does a lot. If you want to learn, it’s mostly a few simulations and some practice.”

“You seem much better at this than a few simulations and some practice, Hunter. Do not play games with me. I have known you long enough to see through them.”

One corner of her mouth twitched into a smile. “I guess you have, haven’t you?”

“Yes.” He watched her for a few seconds more as her fingers tapped a few more controls, making slight corrections. “How is Dr. Ricard? I do not know why you spend so much time with him now that you are recovered.”

“Well, he’s wicked smart and easy to talk to,” she said without looking at Ilya. The station loomed large above them, now, the planet below now out of their line of sight through the viewport, though back in the cabin, the assistant scientists, techs, and their security escort would be able to get a stellar view through the starboard and aft ports. “He and I have collaborated on research. You should try it some time.”

“Mm,” Ilya grunted. “I do not think so. He is not my type of researcher.”

She snorted, swallowing a laugh. “Really.”

“Yes.” He didn’t seem inclined to elaborate and glancing over at him for a second, she saw that he was just shy of brooding, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed against his chest. “And he does not seem very fun.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I am a scientist, Hunter. I have used my powers of observation to determine this.”

That only made her grin grow. He scowled at her.

“You think this is funny.”

“I absolutely do,” she said. “One hundred percent. You don’t know him at all.”

“No, he does not seem like very much fun. Why would I want to? I only like fun people.”

“You like me.”

“I do,” he agreed. “But you do clearly know how to have fun. Dr. Ricard? No. No, he does not. When he drinks, he drinks alone. He does not share, he does not talk, he simply sits and stares at the glass as if holds the very secrets of the universe. And then he drinks and says nothing. Does not smile. Nothing.”

“I wasn’t aware that you’d ever seen him drink.”

“Not often. Never since you came here.”

She smiled faintly and shook her head. “Well, despite your assessment and observations, I can assure you that he is, in fact, actually fun.”

“I do not believe you but I will accept that you, at least, think he is fun. I, however, do not think so. But you have not answered my question.”

“He’s fine,” she said. “You would know that if you bothered to show up for your physical.”

Ilya railed off a string of expletives in Russian so potent they’d have stripped the paint off the bulkhead if they’d been a solvent. “That bastard. Did he put you up to that?”

“No, he just kind of sideways mentioned that not everyone is as good with keeping up the routine things as they should be. That’s all.”

“Mm,” Ilya said. “I see.”

“Are you going to complain about that now?”

“Should I?”

“I don’t know,” she said, slanting a look and a wry grin in his direction. “Half the time I’m not sure why you do half the things you do.”

“Ah, well. That is all part of my charm, Dr. Drake. All part of my charm.”

Her follow-up smart-aleck remark was cut off by a transmission from station control.

“Shuttle six, we have you on beacon. Cut thrusters and set auto.”

Hunter reached for the boards, starting to tap controls, changing the system over from manual to autopilot. “Copy, Control. Do you have my frequency?”

“We have your beacon. Stand by for computer landing.”

“Copy, Control. Thank you.”

There was no response beyond the shuttle shivering slightly as the station’s auto-landing system took control over its navigation. She leaned back, wincing slightly at the sound of things rattling a little back in the cabin, casting another look toward Ilya. “Sometimes, I think I wish they’d let us just land the damn things ourselves.”

“Do you think it would go more smoothly that way?”

“At least half the time.”

He made a noncommitmental noise and shrugged. She hadn’t really expected anything other than that, not really. Her gaze drifted back to the viewport and the station, which now eclipsed the view of anything else. She could see workers in the bay they were approaching and exhaled quietly.

“You do not like this part,” Ilya said. “I have seen you. You get all tense.”

“Yeah, I know,” she whispered. “You never asked why, though.”

“I always thought that if you wanted to share it, you would.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe someday, Ilya.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed.

There was a loud clank on the hull.  She winced, muscles tensing further, growing worse when there was a second clank.

The shuttle shivered.

Then, after what felt like a lifetime, the shuttle settled against the metal deck with a creak and a groan of station gravity asserting itself on the old craft.

“There, you see?” Ilya smiled as he stood up. “All is as it should be. Come. Let us get off this creaking death trap. We have work to do.”

“Yeah,” she whispered even as he stepped out of the cockpit. “I guess we do.”

Brace yourselves for something that’s…both me and very much not me at the same time?

Skypoint is a science fiction concept.  A space station in orbit of a terrestrial world.  Arcologies where scientists study varying Earth-based environments.  A joint venture between two corporations and two governments based back on a tattered, dying Earth.

Capable soldiers who angered the wrong people.  Scientists trying to unravel the mysteries of how Earth’s life can survive the death of its homeworld.  Competing corporate and government interests.  People who are officially dead without being actually dead.

A cracked test tube.  A mutagenic pathogen.

A race to survive.  A struggle to learn the truth.

Welcome to research station ARC-9472, designated Skypoint.

Just some background fragments dating to the beginning of the First Preytax War in my Epsilon series.  These may or may not become part of an online project nibbling at the edges of my brain.

“UN sources today confirmed that contact has been lost with the expeditionary forces outpost at Beta Centauri. The outpost had a staff of approximately ten thousand, largely comprised of volunteer forces from around the globe. Also on-station was a large contingent of the Stellar Marines assigned to the defense of the mid-ring. The official announcement of the outpost’s loss is expected within the next few hours.

“The loss of the outpost comes on the heels of the announcement regarding the loss of contact with four heavy interstellars heading for worlds in the mid and outer ring. These ships were carrying everything from cargo to passengers, settlers heading for colonies and scientific and exploratory expedition groups preparing to travel even further beyond the homosphere. The loss of the Archimedes, the Babbage, the Al-Razi, and the Hawking was confirmed by the Office of Interstellar Expeditions and all members of crew and all passengers are considered to be missing and presumed lost as of yesterday, March 15, at 0500 hours Greenwich Mean, for purposes of legal and estate proceedings. Approximately seven thousand individuals were believed to be aboard the four vessels, though the official passenger and crew lists have not been published at this time.

“We will provide further updates as they become available.

“This has been Melissa Tolrei, AEComm News.”

“As of 2100 hours on March 17, all contact with forces and personnel stationed at Morales Station at Beta Centauri V was lost. Attempts to raise them have been unsuccessful. As such, as of 2100 hours March 17, 2111, it is the sad duty of the Office of Interstellar Expeditions, jointly with the Allied Earth Interstellar Navy and the Allied Earth Interstellar Marines, to declare the forces and personnel stationed at Morales to be missing in action, presumed deceased.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and other loved ones of the forces and personnel.

“A list of known individuals assigned to the station and ships known to have been docked there at the time of loss of contact will be posted shortly.”

– Joint release by the Office of Interstellar Expeditions, Allied Earth Interstellar Navy, and Allied Earth Interstellar Marines, 19 March, 2111.

“Sources today have said that all contact has been lost with the outpost and SolCorp-backed colony on Io. Last known contact with either the colony or the outpost came last night at approximately seven o’clock Greenwich Mean when a standard data-dump arrived from the SolCorp colony. There were no indications of trouble at the time, according to sources familiar with the situation.

“AEComm has reached out to the Allied Earth Interstellar Armed Forces and the Office of Interstellar Expeditions for more information. We will provide updates as they become available.

“This is the second loss of contact of installations in the Sol system in the last week and the third such loss of contact in the last twenty days. Of these, only the loss of Morales Station at Beta Centauri has been confirmed at this time, though there has been no further information on that situation since the official confirmation of its loss. A listing of those believed lost at Morales and the passengers and crew of the interstellars Myazaki and Reyes, which were confirmed to be on-station at Morales at the time of the outpost’s loss, is available for download at this time. This brings the total number of individuals declared missing and presumed lost by the Office of Interstellar Expeditions to 15,533 individuals across lost ships and outposts. This includes lost personnel of the Interstellar Navy and Interstellar Marines that were stationed aboard ships and at Morales Station.

“This has been Melissa Tolrei, AEComm News.”