“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.”
