Chapter Two
Ilyan
Mom had checked my bag once, which was already more attention than anything I owned usually received before seven in the morning. She stood over it with one hand holding a cup of coffee and the other pulling shirts apart just far enough to confirm I had packed something besides Frame magazines and chargers. "Four shirts for six weeks," she said eventually, not quite accusing me but getting close. Her dark hair was already pinned for work, though several strands had escaped around her temples while she slept, and she was wearing the same black trousers she wore whenever she expected to go directly from our apartment into a newsroom and remain there until she forgot what time meant. "There are laundry facilities aboard the ship, right?"
"That was my understanding when I packed four shirts."
"Ilyan, I asked a normal question. You don't have to make every answer sound like somebody challenged you to a duel."
"I wasn't."
"You were halfway there." She lifted the fourth shirt, frowned at it, then put it back exactly where I had packed it. "Fine. Four shirts."
Topper sat beside the bag with both front feet on the edge, watching the inspection with the solemnity of a witness at trial. His damaged rear leg clicked whenever he adjusted himself on the kitchen table. I had already packed his charging dock, two replacement actuators, a basic repair kit, and enough spare fasteners that Mom had looked at the weight allowance twice before deciding she did not care enough to ask. He leaned toward the open bag. I pushed his head back gently with two fingers. "You're not climbing in there."
Topper stared up at me.
"No."
He chirped once, which I chose to interpret as acceptance because the alternative involved an argument with something whose entire contribution would consist of increasingly judgmental noises.
The apartment felt strange with Mom in it this early. She existed here, obviously. Her coats hung near the door, her coffee occupied half a cabinet, her work shoes appeared in places designed specifically for shoes and places that absolutely were not. But most mornings I woke after she had gone, and most nights I heard her come in sometime after I had stopped pretending to be awake. Having her stand in the kitchen while artificial sunrise spread across Caelum made the room feel temporarily borrowed from another version of our lives.
The door chimed at 06:41.
Mom stopped with the coffee halfway to her mouth.
I looked toward the entry.
Neither of us needed to check who it was.
Dad did not have a key anymore.
Mom set her cup down before opening the door. There was nothing dramatic in the movement. Nobody stiffened. Nobody prepared for battle. They had been divorced too long for that. The edges had worn off years ago, leaving something flatter and stranger behind.
Dad stood outside in a dark work jacket with a folded paper bag tucked under one arm and my old blue duffel hanging from the other. He looked past Mom and saw me near the kitchen table. "You packed already."
"I told you I packed yesterday."
"You tell me a lot of things."
Mom moved aside enough to let him enter. "Shoes."
Dad looked down at his shoes, then at her. "I'm not staying."
"You're standing on the clean floor."
He held her gaze for a moment, exhaled through his nose, and stepped out of them without another word.
I smiled.
Dad pointed at me with the paper bag. "You have absolutely no position in this discussion."
"I haven't said anything."
"You were about to."
"That isn't legally actionable."
"You've been spending too much time with your sister."
He entered the kitchen like someone who knew the shape of the apartment without quite belonging to it anymore. His eyes flicked toward the cabinet where the mugs used to be, paused when he found bowls instead, then moved to the next cabinet without comment. Mom saw him do it. So did I. Nobody helped him.
He eventually found a mug.
"You moved these again."
"They've been there for two years."
Dad looked at the mug, then at her. "That seems unlikely."
"It isn't."
"Did you want coffee?" I asked.
Dad looked toward the pot.
Mom said, "There's enough."
There was a tiny pause before he poured some. Not because she had forbidden him. Because he still waited half a second before taking things from a kitchen that used to be his.
The two photographs on the shelf behind him caught the morning light differently. One had Mom standing between Talia and me at the botanical park. The other had Dad with both of us under a real sky during a trip whose details I had mostly lost. Different frames. Different years. No picture containing all four of us. Dad crossed in front of them without looking.
"I brought your shirts," he said, setting the paper bag beside my travel case.
I stared at him. "More shirts?"
"The ones you left at my place."
"I left those there because I wear them there."
"You're going away for six weeks."
"I own other shirts."
Dad opened the bag and started removing them. "This one is yours."
"I know."
"This one too."
"I recognize my own clothes."
Mom picked up her coffee again. "He already packed four."
Dad looked toward the open bag. "Four?"
"That was also my reaction."
"I have laundry access," I said.
They ignored me with the efficiency of people who had once spent years practicing together.
Dad picked up one of the shirts from my bag and frowned. "This one barely fits."
"It fits."
"The sleeves are short."
"That's because my arms are attached to me."
Mom closed her eyes.
Dad stared at me. "I understood the concept."
"You looked confused."
"Ilyan," Mom said, and this time my name had enough warning inside it that I stopped smiling.
Dad folded the extra shirts and placed them beside the bag instead of inside it. "Take two. Leave two."
"That is an absurd compromise."
"It's clothing, not a territorial dispute."
"You're the one dividing it."
Mom gave a short laugh into her coffee before she could stop herself.
Dad looked at her.
For a moment there was something almost familiar in both their expressions, the ghost of an old argument that had probably happened when I was too young to remember it.
Then it disappeared.
Mom checked the time on her wrist. "We need to leave in eighteen minutes."
Dad glanced at his own display. "I thought boarding closed at seven forty."
"It does."
"Then we have thirty."
"We have eighteen if I want to arrive without sprinting through central transit."
"You always leave too early."
"You always arrive during final boarding."
"I arrive before the doors close."
"That is not the same thing."
Dad drank his coffee.
Mom looked at him.
I looked between them.
Topper made a small chirping noise from the table.
"Topper has the correct response," I said.
Mom pointed toward me without looking away from Dad. "Do not recruit the frog."
"He volunteered."
Dad took another drink and muttered, "Smartest one here."
Mom heard him.
She did not answer.
That was more uncomfortable than if she had.
I zipped my bag before either of them could reopen it. Dad reached automatically for one strap, and I moved the case away. "You already contributed shirts. Your work here is complete."
"The strap is twisted."
"It's fine."
"It isn't."
"Dad."
"Ilyan, it takes three seconds."
He took the bag anyway, untwisted the strap, tightened one buckle, loosened another, then handed it back like he had corrected a structural failure. I stared at him. "You know there will be engineers aboard Black Star."
"I'm counting on it."
"You don't trust me to operate a bag."
"I trust you to operate it. I don't trust you to notice you're operating it badly."
Mom set her empty cup in the sink. "You two can continue whatever this is on the train."
Dad glanced toward her. "Are we taking the same train?"
Mom paused.
The question should not have mattered.
It did.
"I assumed you were coming to the gate."
"I am."
"Then yes."
Dad nodded once. "All right."
He had driven here.
She had assumed he would come with us.
Neither had actually spoken about it.
That was how most things involving both my parents worked now. Separate conversations reached the same destination and everybody acted surprised when they discovered someone else had also arrived.
Topper jumped from the table onto the counter and from the counter into my arms with enough confidence that I nearly dropped him. His damaged leg clicked against my wrist. "Ship."
"Soon."
"Frame."
"Hopefully."
His brighter eye flickered.
"Cool."
Dad looked at him. "At least somebody has realistic priorities."
Mom picked up her coat. "That robot is half your influence."
Dad opened his mouth.
She added, "The bad half."
He smiled despite himself. "You kept the other half?"
Mom slipped the coat on without answering.
That silence stayed with us all the way into the elevator.
The three of us almost never went anywhere together anymore. There had been birthdays, school ceremonies, Talia's graduation from pilot training, one terrible dinner after she received her Federation assignment, and a few medical appointments when I was younger. Every time, the same small logistical problems appeared. Who stood where. Who paid. Which transit route we used. Whether Dad came back to Mom's apartment afterward or peeled away toward his own district. Nothing serious enough to discuss. Nothing small enough not to notice.
Dad carried my bag in the elevator despite the fact that I had taken it back from him twice. Mom stood on my other side looking through the news on her wrist, though I could tell from the way her thumb stopped moving that she had stopped reading. Topper hung from the front of my jacket, his feet hooked into the fabric while the elevator descended.
Dad looked toward Mom's wrist. "Anything from Alecto?"
Her eyes lifted.
I looked at both of them.
Dad immediately knew he had said something he had not meant to say in front of me.
Mom's voice became very neutral. "Not this morning."
"What about yesterday?"
"She said she was fine."
"That wasn't what I asked."
Mom shut off the display. "Darius."
He looked toward the floor.
I stared at him. "What happened?"
"Nothing."
"You just asked like something happened."
Dad adjusted his grip on my bag. "Talia's unit schedule changed. That's all."
"Why?"
"Because military units change schedules."
"That sounded like the answer adults give when they don't want to answer."
Mom's mouth tightened. "Because it is the answer we have."
That was different.
I looked toward her.
She looked back.
"If there were something you needed to know, Talia would tell you."
"You know that's not true."
Mom's expression shifted.
Not much.
Enough.
The elevator doors opened.
She stepped out first.
Dad followed.
I stayed inside half a second longer before Topper tightened his grip against my jacket and the door warning sounded.
Caelum's morning traffic had already thickened by the time we reached the transit level. Office workers streamed under high white arches while students moved in less organized clusters between platforms. Cafés were open. News displays cycled through reconstruction statistics, market reports, weather schedules, and another casualty update from Helios. Nobody slowed for that one.
Black Star appeared on a wall display above the central concourse.
A dark silhouette surrounded by construction lights.
STRATEGIC INFRASTRUCTURE SAFETY ZONE — CIVILIAN TRAFFIC RESTRICTIONS REMAIN IN EFFECT.
Dad looked at it.
Only for a moment.
Then away.
I had spent most of my life learning the difference between Dad glancing at something and Dad pretending he had not.
"You've seen it before," I said.
His eyes stayed on the platform numbers. "Everybody in Caelum has seen it."
"That wasn't what I meant."
"I know."
Mom stepped onto the moving walkway ahead of us. "Ilyan."
"What?"
"Today would be an excellent day to discover that not every question requires immediate satisfaction."
"That sounds like something people say when they know the answer."
Dad muttered, "He really is yours."
Mom turned her head. "He is also yours."
"I'm beginning to see the legal weaknesses in that arrangement."
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Mom did too.
It lasted perhaps two seconds.
That made it stranger than if nobody had laughed at all.
We found seats together on the central-axis train. Mom sat beside me. Dad sat opposite, my bag between his shoes. Nobody had chosen the arrangement consciously, but it left them facing each other over me while Caelum changed outside the windows. Residential towers gave way to commercial districts, then warehouses, maintenance zones and the enormous interior structures leading toward the colony's central axis.
Topper stood on my thighs with both front feet against the glass. His damaged leg clicked whenever the train shifted.
Mom's wrist buzzed.
She ignored it.
A minute later it buzzed again.
Her jaw tightened.
Dad noticed. "You can answer it."
"I know."
"That wasn't criticism."
"I know that too."
"It sounded like you thought it was."
Mom finally looked across at him. "You still explain yourself before anybody accuses you."
Dad stared back.
I looked toward the window.
That conversation had roots older than me.
He rubbed one thumb along the seam of his work jacket. "I wasn't explaining myself."
Mom's mouth moved slightly. "Of course not."
Topper chirped.
I lowered my head toward him. "Do not involve yourself."
He looked up at me.
Dad leaned back against the seat and changed the subject with all the grace of an emergency decompression. "Did you pack his charger?"
"Yes," I said.
"I wasn't asking you."
Mom looked at him. "Ilyan packed it."
"That means we're relying on Ilyan."
"I am sitting right here."
Dad's mouth twitched. "Exactly."
The train left the stronger rotational section of Caelum. My body gradually became lighter against the seat as we moved toward the axis. Topper's rear feet lifted first. He scratched at my trousers until I wrapped an arm around him.
Dad watched the colony skeleton becoming more visible outside. "You'll get used to microgravity fast."
"I know how microgravity works."
"That wasn't what I said."
"I've been in transfer hubs."
"A transfer hub isn't living aboard a ship. You'll wake up and forget something isn't secured. Everybody does it once."
Mom glanced across at him. "You did."
Dad looked back at her. "Once."
"You lost an entire bag."
"The closure failed."
"You forgot to close it."
"The closure cannot fail if it was never engaged."
I laughed.
Dad frowned. "That is technically true."
Mom looked toward me. "This is why I divorced him."
The sentence landed so casually that for a moment I thought I had imagined it.
Dad's eyebrows rose.
Mom took another sip from the coffee she had brought onto the train.
I stared at her.
She looked innocent.
Dad finally laughed under his breath. "There were other items on the list."
"Several."
"Some were disputed."
"Not successfully."
Neither sounded angry.
That somehow made the divorce feel more real than if they had.
I looked down at Topper.
He was watching the window.
Dad caught me looking away and said, softer, "Your mother was right about the bag."
Mom looked across at him.
"I know," she said.
No apology followed.
None was needed.
The central station was crowded with students, freight crews, military personnel, construction workers and families saying goodbye beneath the silver signage of the Directorate residency program. The gravity here was weak enough that luggage wheels barely mattered. Magnetic tracks guided heavier cases along the floor while overhead rails ran through the waiting area for anyone who lost patience with walking.
Dad carried my bag again.
I stopped trying to take it from him.
The other four residency students were already there.
I recognized Naomi Calder first, mostly because her name appeared on academic boards often enough that half the advanced programs in Caelum knew it. She was fifteen, dark brown skin a shade deeper than mine, tightly coiled hair gathered into a knot, and a small enamel Earth pin fastened beside her academy collar. She stood beside a woman wearing a green-and-white Earth Restoration Directorate jacket while both of them argued quietly over the weight of Naomi's travel case.
"I'm not taking the second filtration kit," Naomi said. Her tone was carefully patient in the way people became patient when they were already losing patience. "They have filtration equipment aboard."
Her mother tightened one strap anyway. "Their equipment isn't yours."
"That is generally how laboratories work."
"You know what I mean."
"I know exactly what you mean. That doesn't make the case lighter."
Her mother gave her a look.
Naomi sighed and left the kit inside.
The boy sitting on a brightly painted suitcase several meters away noticed me next. His curly black hair escaped from beneath a knitted cap, and somebody much younger had drawn stars, animals and what might have been a ship across almost every available section of his luggage.
He looked at Topper.
Then at me.
Then back at Topper.
"You brought a frog."
"Robot."
"That did not reduce my interest."
Topper stared at him.
The boy leaned forward with both elbows on his knees. "Does he bite?"
"No."
Topper chirped.
The boy smiled. "That sounded dishonest."
"His name is Topper."
"I'm Rafi Mercer." He offered one hand toward the robot, stopped before touching him, then looked at me instead. "Is he friendly?"
"Selectively."
"Good. I distrust universal friendliness."
Dad set my bag beside me. "You're going to get along terribly."
Rafi's father laughed from behind him. He wore an old freight-worker jacket while two younger girls moved around his legs trying to add another drawing to Rafi's case.
Rafi looked toward my parents. His eyes passed from Mom to Dad, then briefly toward the space between them. He was polite enough not to ask anything.
Most people eventually learned not to.
The third student looked as though she had read every regulation in the residency packet and corrected punctuation in the margins. Anya Venn stood beside a white case that matched the Directorate size recommendation almost perfectly. Her straight black hair fell to her shoulders, and both adults with her wore tailored business clothes expensive enough that I stopped trying to guess what they did.
Rafi caught her looking toward his luggage. "My sisters decorated it."
Anya's eyes returned to her tablet. "I gathered that."
"You looked concerned."
"I was assessing whether the markings would interfere with baggage identification."
"They improve it."
"They obscure the original identification."
"That's how improvement works."
Anya finally looked at him. "That is almost certainly not how improvement works."
Rafi smiled like he had won something.
The fourth student, Jun Aras, stood farther from the noise. He was sixteen, broad-shouldered without looking like he tried to be, with dark hair cut short around his ears. His academy jacket had been repaired neatly at one cuff instead of replaced. A woman in medical scrubs was checking something inside his bag while a man beside her tried to hand him another paper food container.
"Dad, there is food aboard the shuttle."
"There is government food aboard the shuttle."
"That remains food."
"That sentence is exactly why I'm giving you this."
Jun looked at his mother.
She smiled without helping.
He accepted the container.
Mom had started watching everyone.
I knew that look.
"Do not interview them."
"I am standing quietly."
"You're profiling everybody."
"That is not the same thing."
"It is when you do it."
Dad looked toward Naomi's mother. "Earth Restoration Directorate."
Mom glanced at him. "Senior reclamation division."
"You know her?"
"I know of her."
Dad looked toward Anya's parents. "Corporate."
Mom followed his eyes. "Legal and computational systems, I think."
I stared at both of them. "This is deeply weird."
Dad gave me a puzzled look. "We're making conversation."
"You are collaboratively investigating strangers."
Mom folded her arms. "You say that as if your entire personality isn't looking at systems you're not supposed to understand."
"That is completely different."
Dad smiled. "It is genetically different."
Mom looked toward him.
He realized what he had said.
The smile faded.
I pretended I had not noticed.
The program coordinator arrived before the moment could become anything.
Dr. Elise Marr was somewhere in her thirties, with sandy hair cut above the collar of a gray Directorate coat and three tablets stacked under one arm. She wore civilian shoes, not military boots, and looked like someone who had been awake long enough to consider caffeine a medical requirement.
"Students, over here, please." She waited until the five of us had gathered with our luggage. "I'm Dr. Marr, residency coordinator and primary liaison for the next six weeks. Before Mr. Mercer asks, yes, the shuttle has food."
Rafi slowly lowered his raised hand.
His younger sister laughed so hard she nearly fell over in the weak gravity.
Dr. Marr continued. "Black Star is an active military carrier undergoing final commissioning. It is not a school campus, no matter how many educational modules the Directorate attaches to it. Your clearances open the areas you are authorized to enter. They do not open command spaces, weapons sections, military operations, engineering cores, active Frame bays, or restricted laboratories. A locked door is not a challenge, a mystery, or an invitation to become creative."
Dad looked at me.
I kept facing forward. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"I can feel it."
Mom murmured, "So can everyone else."
Dr. Marr looked directly at us.
I decided silence had value after all.
Security took longer because of Topper.
I passed through first without issue. Dad handed him over afterward so I could carry him through the secondary scanner. The security officer turned the handheld unit beneath Topper's belly, and the robot stiffened when the scanner passed near his damaged leg.
"Danger," Topper said.
The officer stopped.
Rafi immediately started laughing behind me.
"It's fine," I said, switching off Topper's warning response. "He doesn't like diagnostic signals."
The officer looked at Topper.
Topper looked back.
"Danger," he repeated, quieter.
Dad covered his mouth.
Mom turned away because she was smiling.
The officer finally waved us through.
Boarding began ten minutes later.
Anya went first. Her parents embraced her briefly, one after the other rather than together, then stepped back while she rolled her case through the gate. Jun's mother hugged him hard enough that he had to shift his bag out of the way, while his father used the opportunity to put yet another food container into an outer pocket. Naomi's mother held both her shoulders and said something low enough that the rest of us could not hear. Naomi nodded, then hugged her with both arms before taking her case.
Rafi's goodbye took longer. His younger sisters hit him almost simultaneously. One wrapped herself around his waist while the other started crying before she reached him. The joking vanished from his face so quickly that I almost felt rude seeing it happen. He crouched and held both of them while his father looked toward the ceiling and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck.
Then Dr. Marr called my name.
Mom reached me first.
Her hug surprised me mostly because she rarely initiated them without a reason. Topper ended up trapped awkwardly between us until I shifted him against my side. Mom's hand rested on the back of my head for several seconds. "You have my contact."
"I've always had your contact."
"I know. Use it if you need it."
"I will."
"Do not say that because it ends the conversation faster."
"I'm not."
She pulled back just far enough to look at me. There were a hundred things she could have said. She chose none of them. "All right."
Dad stood a step behind her.
For one strange second it looked like they might both remain there, waiting for the other to decide who went next.
Mom moved aside.
Dad put a hand behind my neck and pulled me against his shoulder hard enough that my forehead hit his collarbone.
"Ow."
"You're fine."
"That hurt."
"You'll recover."
His hand stayed there longer than the joke required.
When he released me, he immediately adjusted the strap on my bag.
I slapped his hand away. "You have to stop doing that."
"It was twisted."
"It was not."
"It was beginning to twist."
"That isn't a thing."
"It is absolutely a thing."
Mom stood beside him with her arms folded. "Darius."
"I'm done."
"You said that twenty minutes ago."
"I meant it differently then."
I looked between them.
For the first time that morning they were standing close enough to resemble the old photographs that did not exist anymore.
Not touching.
Not looking at each other.
Both looking at me.
Topper shifted against my chest.
"Come back," he said.
Dad looked at him.
Mom's expression changed.
I rubbed the dent between Topper's eyes. "You're coming with me."
Topper looked toward my parents.
Then back at me.
"Come back."
Something tightened in my throat unexpectedly.
I made a face at him. "Your timing is terrible."
Dr. Marr was waiting beyond the barrier.
Mom touched two fingers briefly to the side of my face. Dad stepped back half a second later, as though he had almost done the same thing and changed his mind.
"Call Talia," Mom said.
"She'll call him before he has time," Dad replied.
Mom looked toward him. "Probably."
Dad looked at me. "Do what people tell you aboard the ship."
"That is hypocritical advice."
"It is advice born from experience."
Mom added, "And if you don't understand something, ask before touching it."
Dad nodded. "Especially if it's blue."
I smiled. "You two finally agree on something."
Both of them answered at the same time.
"That wasn't funny," Mom said.
"It was a little funny," Dad said.
They looked at each other.
I laughed.
Then I crossed the gate.
The barrier closed behind me.
Mom raised one hand.
Dad did too.
They were still standing several centimeters apart when the moving crowd passed between us.
I looked back once more after I should have stopped.
Mom had turned toward Dad and was saying something I could not hear.
He answered.
Neither looked angry.
Neither looked married.
Then the station curved away and they disappeared.
The first shuttle carried us toward Caelum's central axis slowly enough that gravity faded in stages. At first I only felt lighter against the seat. Then Topper's back feet stopped resting against my thigh. His body began rising until the restraint caught him beneath the chest.
He looked down at himself.
I tried not to laugh.
His damaged rear leg moved uselessly through empty air.
"Bad," he said.
"That is exactly how you described my hair this morning."
Topper looked at me.
"Consequences."
Rafi leaned across the aisle. "I would pay an irresponsible amount of money for him."
"No."
"I haven't named a number."
"You could name all the numbers."
"That feels mathematically unfair."
Anya looked over the top of her tablet. "There are infinitely many numbers."
Rafi pointed toward her. "See? She understands my negotiating position."
"She just destroyed your negotiating position."
Rafi considered that. "I liked my interpretation better."
The shuttle cabin had two rows of seats facing each other. Naomi sat opposite me beside Jun. Anya had chosen the position nearest Dr. Marr, which I suspected was less about obedience and more about being able to see whatever technical information appeared first. Rafi had tried buckling his snack bag into an empty seat until a crew member made him move it.
When the restraints released near the axial transfer hub, Rafi pushed away too hard.
He crossed the cabin faster than he expected.
Jun caught his upper arm before he hit the opposite wall.
Rafi rotated slowly in Jun's grip. "I had that."
"You absolutely did not."
"I was testing reaction time."
"Mine?"
"Apparently."
Jun pushed him toward a handrail. "Excellent. Test complete."
Rafi hooked an arm around the rail and grinned. "You're going to be useful."
Jun's expression barely changed. "That is exactly what everyone wants to hear from someone they met forty minutes ago."
Topper floated when I released his restraint.
His four legs spread immediately.
Nothing happened.
He rotated sideways.
One eye became brighter.
I caught him before his head reached the ceiling.
"Mobility issue?" Rafi asked.
Topper stared at him.
"Bad," he said.
Rafi nearly folded himself around the rail laughing.
The transfer shuttle was different from Caelum's internal craft. The couches reclined deeper. Restraints crossed more of the body. Emergency masks were built into the headrests, and every loose object had a tether point. Topper went into a soft travel harness against my chest because the crew had apparently never been asked to secure a robotic frog.
He looked offended by the arrangement.
I enjoyed that more than I should have.
The shuttle separated from Caelum.
Acceleration pressed me into the couch.
For a while the windows showed nothing but pieces of the colony's exterior: armored shell, docking structures, communications towers, maintenance platforms and the enormous support systems hidden behind the world I had grown up inside.
Then Caelum fell away.
Black Star came into view.
Nobody talked.
The public images had not lied.
They had simply failed to communicate scale.
A six-hundred-meter ship fit easily inside a photograph. That made the photograph dishonest.
Black Star occupied the darkness ahead of us like a district of a city somebody had cut loose and given engines. Its long armored spine stretched beyond the construction platforms surrounding it. Finished sections were matte navy so dark they became almost black when sunlight left them. Other areas remained exposed behind scaffolding, revealing graphite structure, primer-white armor sections, temporary covers and service lines running across the hull.
Work lights burned over it in scattered constellations.
Construction tugs moved around the carrier.
At first I mistook one for a maintenance drone.
Then the shuttle drew closer and I saw the cockpit.
Exterior Frame cradles occupied part of the carrier section. Several gray-and-blue Bastions stood secured against them while workers moved around their bodies on tether lines. Eighteen-meter Frames looked small against Black Star.
Rafi had stopped talking.
I looked toward him.
His mouth was slightly open.
"Are you okay?"
He did not look away from the window. "I've decided I forgive the government for the food."
"That didn't take much."
"You are seeing the same ship I am."
Anya had lowered her tablet completely. Naomi pressed one hand against the edge of the window. Jun leaned across his restraints to see farther forward.
Black Star continued growing.
The shuttle passed along its stern.
Part of the propulsion system remained exposed for commissioning work. Huge transfer trunks disappeared from the drive section into the armored body of the carrier while auxiliary thruster assemblies surrounded the main engines.
I leaned closer to Naomi's window.
She glanced at me. "Its really cool right ."
"Yea especially the particle transfer system?"
"You see a classified military ship and you're more excited about the transfer system ."
"Are you not?"
"I promise you the least of my worries is the plumbing system."
"Particle transfer."
"So dangerous plumbing."
I looked at her.
Naomi smiled.
"You and Rafi are going to be terrible."
"I've known him for less than an hour."
"Exactly. It's spreading already."
Black Star rotated across the window as the shuttle aligned with its assigned bay.
The carrier openings came into view next.
Actual Frame bays.
Not thirty-six little boxes on a diagram.
Hangars deep enough to swallow multiple Bastions at once, lined with maintenance gantries, launch equipment, storage systems and enormous pressure doors.
My heart kicked harder.
Topper's head rose beneath my chin.
"Frame."
"Yeah."
His brighter eye reflected the hangar lights.
"Cool."
"Extremely buddie."
The shuttle crossed the outer containment field.
Stars disappeared behind Black Star's structure.
Vibration changed through the hull.
The docking cradle caught us with four heavy impacts, each one coming through my seat.
Rafi tightened his hands around the restraints. "That felt expensive."
Dr. Marr unfastened herself when the pressure indicator turned green. "Everything aboard this ship is expensive. Try not to test the statement personally."
"That warning feels aimed."
"It is."
The inner hatch opened.
Black Star smelled unlike Caelum.
Fresh paint. Heated metal. Lubricant. New polymer. Electrical insulation. Filtered air stripped of the layered smells of millions of people.
It smelled unfinished.
I liked it immediately.
A Federation lieutenant waited beyond the transfer lock with two security personnel and a civilian technician in a gray Directorate shirt. The lieutenant looked as if someone had ironed him along with the uniform.
"Residency group?"
"Five students," Dr. Marr said.
His eyes moved across us.
Then stopped on Topper.
I shifted the frog higher against my chest.
The lieutenant looked toward the manifest.
Back toward Topper.
I decided not to help.
Dr. Marr said, "The companion unit is approved."
The lieutenant looked faintly disappointed that the universe contained paperwork capable of permitting this.
Safety orientation began before we were twenty meters from the shuttle.
Emergency routes marked in red.
Medical in green.
General transit in white.
Engineering in blue.
I took a picture of the blue guide line.
Dad received it with the caption:
THEY MADE ENGINEERING BLUE.
His response arrived less than a minute later.
I withdrew my permission.
I smiled.
There was no message from Mom.
I did not expect one yet.
That was normal.
Black Star's passageways were wider than I had imagined, but nothing aboard felt wasted. Handrails recessed into both walls. Magnetic guide strips ran beneath the floor. Pressure doors divided sections at intervals. Equipment lockers disappeared behind armored panels. Some sections looked complete enough for a recruitment advertisement. Others ended abruptly behind construction barriers where structural ribs and bundled systems remained exposed.
Rafi stopped at the first unfinished section.
"That support frame is beautiful."
Anya looked toward him. "That is a deeply strange sentence."
"You looked excited by a network diagram before we even got here."
"We have not seen a network diagram."
"You will."
"And when I do, I will react with dignity."
Rafi leaned toward me. "She is absolutely going to make a noise."
"I can hear you."
"That was intentional."
Dr. Marr pointed down the passage. "Mercer."
"I'm moving."
"You have been stationary for twenty seconds."
"I was appreciating federal craftsmanship."
"You can appreciate it while walking."
Rafi reluctantly followed.
Our assigned rooms sat in a civilian research habitation section near the center of the ship. Five doors lined one side of the passage.
CALDER, N.
MERCER, R.
VENN, A.
ARAS, J.
Then mine.
CORVEN, I.
I touched my wrist to the panel.
The door opened.
The room was small enough that I could stand near the middle and reach almost everything without moving much: bunk built into one wall, desk beneath a narrow display, storage compartments, emergency mask, fold-down wash unit and enough restraint points to keep everything attached when the ship stopped pretending the floor mattered.
I put Topper on the bed.
He bounced.
His damaged leg clicked against the mattress.
"Home?"
"Temporary."
Topper looked around.
"Home?"
"Six weeks."
He lowered himself onto the blanket as if that answered nothing.
Rafi appeared in my doorway before I had finished unpacking. "Your room is exactly the same size as mine."
"I'm devastated."
"I thought mine might be defective."
"How would that help?"
"Maybe yours would be bigger and I could file a complaint."
"That is not how defects work."
"That sounds like something people with larger rooms say."
Dr. Marr's voice came from outside. "You have six minutes before orientation resumes."
Rafi looked over his shoulder. "Do we get six actual minutes or military six minutes?"
Dr. Marr appeared in the doorway. "Five minutes and forty-three seconds now."
He left immediately.
I set Topper's charger beside the desk.
He climbed off the bed to follow me.
"No."
He stopped.
"You stay."
Topper stared.
"Ship tour."
He took another step.
"No."
His damaged leg clicked.
"Do not make me secure you to the charger."
Topper slowly turned back toward the bed.
That victory felt suspiciously easy.
The research decks were where Black Star became dangerous to my ability to follow instructions.
Materials laboratories.
Environmental test chambers.
Isolated computing rooms.
Simulation compartments.
Restricted observation galleries.
Every window seemed designed specifically to contain something I wanted to stop and look at.
Dr. Marr walked too quickly.
At one observation panel, I stopped anyway.
A particle-storage section occupied most of the compartment below us. The central reserve vessel itself disappeared behind shielding, but the transfer system surrounding it remained exposed during construction. Heavy containment trunks divided outward through isolation valves before disappearing into armored sections of the ship.
I counted the primary lines.
Then counted them again.
Six.
The public system diagrams showed four.
"Corven."
I leaned closer.
Six.
"Ilyan."
Dr. Marr had walked back.
I pointed through the glass. "There are six primary trunks."
Anya stopped beside me.
Naomi turned around.
Dr. Marr looked through the panel. "Correct."
"The public diagram has four."
"The public diagram is simplified."
"What do the other two feed?"
Dr. Marr looked at me.
I waited.
Her expression barely changed. "Restricted loads."
"What kind?"
"Restricted."
"That describes the information, not the load."
Rafi arrived behind us. "He has you there."
Dr. Marr turned toward him. "No, he doesn't."
A civilian technician following our group laughed under his breath.
His badge read VARO SETH.
Dr. Marr looked toward him.
He raised both hands. "I contributed nothing."
"You encouraged him by existing."
"That seems unfair."
I looked at Varo. "What do the two lines feed?"
He glanced toward Dr. Marr.
Then toward me.
"I enjoy continued employment."
"That's disappointing."
"You'll discover adulthood contains a lot of that."
Dr. Marr resumed walking.
I looked through the glass once more before following.
Six lines.
Two going somewhere the public diagrams did not admit existed.
My day improved immediately.
Environmental systems belonged to Naomi.
Medical belonged to Jun.
Computational systems belonged to Anya.
Materials belonged to Rafi.
Watching each of them change when something reached the part of the world they actually cared about was more interesting than I expected.
Naomi had been relatively quiet until Lieutenant Seris opened Black Star's environmental-control display. Then she stepped forward before the explanation had properly started. "You're only running seventeen percent biological oxygen recovery."
Seris looked at her badge. "Calder?"
"Yes."
"You read the commissioning brief."
"I read the public commissioning brief. It says intended biological recovery is over thirty."
"Under full configuration."
"The agricultural decks aren't finished."
"No."
"So seventeen is current."
"It is."
Naomi frowned at the network. "That's low for a carrier designed to operate without regular support."
Seris smiled slightly. "We are also still attached to one of the largest colonies in near-Earth space."
"For now."
Something in Naomi's tone made Seris look at her more carefully.
Then she enlarged the unfinished agricultural sections and started explaining.
Naomi moved closer.
I watched her for a while.
She eventually noticed. "What?"
"Nothing."
"That was definitely something."
"I was remembering you insulting my habitat model."
"I did not insult it."
"You called the assumptions terrible."
"They were."
"You could have softened it."
"You agreed with me."
"That is unrelated."
Naomi smiled. "You are going to be irritating for six weeks."
"That seems reciprocal."
Rafi passed behind us. "I support whatever this becomes."
Neither of us answered him.
Jun changed on the medical deck in a quieter way.
He did not rush forward.
He simply started asking better questions than the rest of us knew how to ask.
"How many trauma theaters?"
"Two primary, six surgical."
"Independent pressure?"
"Yes."
"Radiation treatment?"
"Two dedicated rooms here, secondary facilities near engineering."
"Frame extraction?"
The medical officer's expression changed.
She opened another compartment.
Heavy cutting tools lined one wall.
Not medical instruments.
Powered spreaders.
Armor saws.
Emergency cutters large enough to open a cockpit around somebody who could not be moved safely.
Jun looked at them for several seconds.
Nobody joked.
Then the officer closed the cabinet and continued.
Anya got her turn in the systems laboratory.
A three-dimensional map of Black Star's information network rose above the central table, thousands of connections spreading through the carrier: navigation, sensors, communications, maintenance, fire control, damage response, local processors, command redundancies, security.
Anya forgot to look bored.
"Why preserve this much central convergence if local sections can operate independently?" she asked, enlarging a cluster before the specialist had even finished the introduction. "If the ship expects network severance during combat, this layer becomes an unnecessary concentration of failure."
"It also allows command coordination."
"You could distribute that."
"You could distribute everything."
"Yes."
The specialist smiled. "Then you spend more resources making every section capable of replacing every other section."
"That is a resource problem, not a systems problem."
"On a warship, those are often the same problem."
Anya stared at the network.
Rafi leaned toward me. "There's the noise."
"What noise?"
"The one she was definitely going to make when she saw a network diagram."
"I have made no noise," Anya said without looking at us.
"You're vibrating internally."
She finally turned her head. "Please find another hobby."
"I did. Structural materials."
The materials laboratory made Rafi almost unrecognizable.
He stopped talking.
A damaged section of Frame armor sat inside a reinforced cradle in the center of the room, taller than any of us. A particle-edge strike had cut into one side, leaving a deep black scar through the outer armor while torn composite material showed beneath.
Rafi approached the safety line.
His expression sharpened.
"What hit it?"
"Particle Blade."
He crouched.
The engineer changed the lighting angle.
Rafi studied the damage for nearly half a minute. "There was something underneath this before the blade."
The engineer's eyebrows rose.
Rafi pointed without crossing the line. "That split is moving the wrong direction. Blade comes through here, but this layer is already separating outward. Ballistic hit?"
"Earlier impact."
"So the blade opened the weakness."
"Yes."
Rafi looked genuinely pleased.
Then he remembered himself. "Can I touch it?"
The engineer laughed.
Rafi became normal again.
Lunch happened late enough that everybody had stopped pretending hunger was irrelevant.
The cafeteria disappointed Rafi instantly.
"This is far too normal."
Naomi opened a soup container. "You wanted terrible food?"
"I wanted military food. There is mythology involved."
Anya examined her tray. "The mythology is mostly created by people complaining."
"That is how the best mythology works."
Jun opened one of the containers his father had forced into his bag.
The smell reached all of us.
Rafi stopped talking.
Jun looked around the table.
"You can have some."
Rafi reached across immediately.
Jun moved the container away. "Use a plate."
"You offered."
"I did not offer unrestricted access."
"You have become bureaucratic."
"I've known you six hours."
"That is enough time to develop trust."
"It was enough time to prevent it."
Naomi laughed into her soup.
Even Anya smiled.
Jun divided the food between us anyway.
Rafi took one bite and leaned back with his eyes closed. "Your father may be the greatest man alive."
"He would find that concerning."
"I want him to adopt me."
"No."
"You answered too quickly."
"He already has children."
"There is always room for expansion."
Anya looked toward him. "That is not how families work."
Rafi pointed his fork at her. "You say that with suspicious confidence."
For some reason that made the table go quieter.
Not completely.
Just enough.
Anya looked down at her food.
Rafi caught it immediately. "Sorry."
She glanced up.
There was no performance in his face.
She shrugged. "It was a stupid joke."
"Most of mine are."
"That one was statistically below average."
Rafi smiled faintly. "There she is."
The conversation moved somewhere else.
I thought about my parents standing at the gate.
Mom on one side.
Dad on the other.
Both there because I was leaving.
Neither going home to the same place afterward.
I ate another piece of Jun's father's cooking.
Nobody asked what I was thinking.
I liked that.
The observation gallery came near the end of the day.
Earth filled almost half the glass.
No classroom display had ever prepared me for how much space the planet occupied when there was nothing around it trying to make it smaller. Blue oceans. White storms. Green and brown land breaking between cloud systems. The line of night crossing one side while city lights began appearing beneath darkness.
Naomi reached the glass first.
Her fingers touched the Earth pin at her collar.
Nobody spoke for a while.
Even Rafi understood that much.
Caelum hung farther away beside the planet, a silver artificial world against black space.
I raised my thumb.
The colony disappeared behind it.
"Don't."
Naomi's voice was quiet.
I lowered my hand.
She was still looking at Caelum.
"Don't cover it."
"I wasn't doing anything."
"I know."
Her fingers remained against the little Earth pin.
I put my hand into my pocket.
"Okay."
We stood there until Dr. Marr should have moved us along.
She did not.
When I returned to my room, Topper sat on the desk beside his charger rather than on it.
The indicator showed eighty-seven percent.
I stared at him.
He stared back.
"You were supposed to charge."
Topper shifted one foot.
"Enough."
"That is not enough."
He looked toward the doorway.
Rafi appeared a second later.
"I knew I heard him."
"You did not hear anything."
"I have instincts."
"You followed me."
"That is one form of instinct."
Rafi walked into the room without being invited, saw Topper, and immediately sat on the edge of my bed. "Do you think he likes me?"
"No."
Topper looked toward him.
Rafi waited.
Topper said nothing.
"That felt personal."
Naomi appeared behind him. "Dr. Marr sent tomorrow's schedule."
Anya stood farther down the passage.
Jun came behind her carrying another food container.
I looked at them. "Why are all of you here?"
Rafi leaned backward onto my bed. "Your room is the social center now."
"No one decided that."
"That is how the best governments begin."
Naomi looked at him. "Please never govern anything."
"I would be incredible."
"You would collapse food distribution within a week."
"I would prioritize morale."
"You would eat the reserves."
"Morale."
Anya walked into the room, looked around once, and took my desk chair.
I stared at her.
She looked back. "You weren't using it."
"I live here."
"That is not the same thing."
Jun sat near the doorway with one knee raised. "Tomorrow's rotations are posted."
I opened the schedule.
Environmental systems.
Medical.
Computational systems.
Materials.
Then near the bottom:
ADVANCED PARTICLE SYSTEMS — RESTRICTED OBSERVATION.
I read it twice.
Naomi noticed.
"You're doing the face."
"What face?"
"The one you did at the six trunks."
"There is no face."
"There absolutely is," Rafi said from my bed. "It's very specific. You stop blinking."
"I blink."
"You blink less."
Anya looked toward me. "He is correct."
"That might be the most offensive part of this conversation."
Jun opened the food container.
Everybody stopped paying attention to me.
The smell filled the room.
Rafi sat up. "Your father sent more?"
"My mother packed this one."
"I amend my earlier statement. I would die for both your parents."
Jun handed him a plate. "They would still find that upsetting."
We ate in my room.
Nobody had decided to stay.
They simply did.
Rafi occupied my bed like he had inherited it. Naomi leaned against the wall beside the desk. Anya remained in my chair. Jun sat on the floor near the door, eating slowly while the rest of us stole from the container his mother had packed. Topper eventually climbed into the middle of the room and settled beneath the edge of my bed where he could watch everyone.
Rafi tried to lure him closer with a piece of food.
"He doesn't eat," I said.
"I know."
"Then what are you doing?"
"Building trust."
"With meat?"
"Historically effective."
Topper stared at the offered piece.
Rafi moved it closer.
Topper backed away.
Naomi laughed.
Rafi looked wounded. "He rejected me."
Anya folded her arms. "A strong beginning."
"I thought you were supposed to be emotionally reserved."
"I never said that."
"You implied it."
"You assumed it."
"That doesn't make your case any better."
Their argument continued.
My wrist display buzzed.
Dad.
YOUR MOTHER SAYS YOU DOCKED.
I looked at the message.
Then another appeared.
HOW IS THE SHIP?
I typed:
Big. Engineering is blue. You were right about loose objects.
His answer came almost immediately.
I AM ALWAYS RIGHT EVENTUALLY.
I smiled.
There was no message from Mom.
I knew she knew I had arrived.
Dad had just proved it.
The thought was oddly perfect.
They were divorced, lived in different homes, barely coordinated anything without making it strange, and apparently still passed information about me between them in whatever quiet system remained after everything else ended.
I put the display down.
Outside the room, Black Star hummed beneath us.
Pumps.
Cooling.
Ventilation.
Power running through structure.
Machinery somewhere beyond the walls.
I put my palm against the desk and felt the vibration through the surface.
Rafi noticed. "What are you doing?"
"Listening."
"With your hand?"
"You can feel it."
He put his own hand against the bed frame.
Naomi copied him against the wall.
Anya looked at all three of us like we had become stupid collectively.
Then, after several seconds, she rested two fingers against the desk.
Jun smiled.
Nobody mentioned that.
An announcement moved through the overhead speakers. "Construction shift transition begins at twenty-two hundred. Temporary access restrictions are now in effect on Decks Twelve through Nineteen, Thirty-One, and Forty-Seven through Fifty-Two. Authorized personnel only."
I opened the ship map.
Deck Forty-Seven sat near tomorrow's restricted particle-systems observation.
My eyes moved back to the schedule.
Six transfer trunks.
Two restricted loads.
Rafi saw where I was looking and groaned. "There's the face again."
"I'm reading."
"You are planning."
"I am literally sitting still."
"That has never prevented planning."
Naomi leaned closer to my display. "He has a point."
"You met me today."
"And yet."
Anya folded her arms. "You asked what the restricted trunks fed before Dr. Marr had finished answering why there were six."
"That is called curiosity."
"That is what people call it immediately before trespassing."
"I am not going to trespass."
Rafi looked toward Naomi.
Naomi looked toward Anya.
Jun kept eating.
I stared at all of them.
"This is ridiculous."
Topper raised his head from beneath the bed.
"Danger."
The room went silent.
Then Rafi collapsed backward laughing so hard he almost dropped his plate.
I pointed at Topper. "You are supposed to be on my side."
He chirped.
Black Star's low vibration continued beneath us while conversation filled the room again, voices overlapping until I stopped being able to tell which argument belonged to which person.
That morning I had left an apartment where my mother kept one picture of us and my father existed in another frame from another year. I had watched them stand beside each other long enough to remember that they had once known how.
Now Rafi was lying across my bed, Naomi was reading over my shoulder, Anya had stolen my chair, Jun's parents had somehow fed all of us from another part of Caelum, and Topper had decided the entire room was dangerous.
Tomorrow afternoon I would see Black Star's restricted particle systems.
Somewhere deeper in the carrier, six transfer trunks disappeared through armor where every public diagram showed only four.
I fell asleep thinking about where the other two went.