Sorry in advance for the possible date inconsistencies between the chapters. I’m gonna sort this out at the final edit.
Katrina — The "Pine Island" — 28 September 2190
Four ready doses of Spark. A third of the opal mushroom supply. Two dried fish the size of my forearm. A jar of hardtack. A flask of water, a manual desalinator. A fully charged power pack for the Svyatogor.
If there's anyone left to save in McMurdo, I have to try. My brother is free and surrounded by friends, but there is no place for me on this ship.
Redemption? Some things are beyond it; I'm doing what I must.
I hope I can lower the lifeboat on my own.
On the way from the galley to the boat deck, I nearly choked on a thick cloud of booze fumes. Heading toward me, holding onto each other, was a trio: a girl with a kilo of jewelry all over her body and two Orderlies—one short and brown-skinned, the other a lanky short-haired blond. They didn't try to attack, however; instead, they asked if the ship was really underway or if the deck was shaking beneath their feet just from a hangover. I asked if they had families in Seven Winds, but the guys turned out to be from Outland, while their companion, with a ragged storm cloud instead of hair, merely shrugged.
"Then you're lucky," I said. "Where have you been hanging out for over twenty-four hours?"
"Uh... Secret!" the blond playfully wagged a finger at me.
"Go to the presidential suite and wake up Deshar," I replied. "He'll tell you everything."
"Deshar? In the presidential?" the girl raised an eyebrow.
"Come on, Farah, I'm dying to see this!" said the shorter kid.
"Ivan, we have new arrivals," I told Vassilevsky over the radio, briefly reporting their number and condition. "I didn't notice any weapons on them, but that doesn't mean they don't have any."
"Kat, can we meet and have a talk?"
"Negative," I replied, turning off the radio.
I'd probably never see Ivan again, and it deepened my sadness. His soothing, encouraging presence was the only reason I hadn't broken down in front of Heldrich and my brother. He seemed to truly care what was happening to me.
Hoping not to run into anyone else on the way, I continued on. Each leg felt ten kilograms heavier. Leaving hurt, and staying was impossible.
The bright blue sky with rare thin clouds and the peaceful sea shimmering in the sunlight. The weather was perfect for a voyage and looked nothing like my mood.
Bay Seven at last. The pod sat in its cradle like a sealed capsule, faded red, no portholes. I climbed in, dragged my bag after me, and sealed the hatch. The click of it locking felt louder than it should have.
Inside: twenty reclined seats, a crash harness, and a long-dead panel of controls. I found the release lever exactly where the maintenance log said it would be—red, spring-loaded, behind a safety flap.
I flipped the flap and pulled the lever—in vain. No hiss of hydraulics, no click of disengaging clamps, not even a shudder.
I pulled it again. Harder, like brute force could make up for whatever I didn't understand about the mechanism.
The pod was still.
I found the manual override panel below the main console—a cracked plastic cover over three toggles and a keypad, half the labels worn away to gray plastic. I flipped them all anyway.
The pod lurched.
Metal shrieked against metal, like the whole cradle was fighting to let go and only half succeeding.
I was thrown sideways against the harness as the pod tilted, nose down, still gripped by something at the stern.
Through the hull I could hear it now—one clamp released, the other jammed, holding the boat half out of its cradle at a steep, sickening angle, swinging gently with the roll of the ship.
"No, no, no—"
I was talking to the boat like it could hear me, like reason had ever worked on machines built before my parents were born. If it let go now, I'd drop onto steel, not onto sea.
I unbuckled, braced myself against the tilted floor, and crawled to the aft porthole—the one true window in the whole pod, no bigger than my hand.
Through it I could see the jammed clamp: a thick mechanical claw, corroded at the hinge, gripping the pod's stern strut and refusing to let go.
Fifty years of salt air did that to metal, and, of course, nobody gave a damn.
I had a manual release rod in the emergency kit under the seat—I remembered that much. A meter of hollow steel meant to be fed through an access port and used to physically force the clamp open from inside the housing.
My hands were shaking as I found it. Or maybe it was the pod, still swinging. Behind me, through the sealed hatch, muffled by a meter of hull, I heard footsteps.
Someone running along the boat deck. Someone who had definitely heard the grinding.
Ivan's voice, distant, alarmed, calling my name.
Orca's son… There was no going back. I had maybe twenty seconds.
I jammed the rod into the access port and threw my whole weight against it. I forgot, though, that I still weighed almost nothing.
The rod skidded off the hinge and I went down hard against the tilted floor, the metal clattering out of my hands and rolling somewhere I couldn't reach without unclipping myself from the one handhold keeping me from sliding into the porthole wall.
A month ago I could have forced that clamp with one arm. Now the pain shot through my shoulder despite the wound being already closed.
The footsteps outside had stopped: he was right outside the hatch now.
"Kat," said Ivan's voice, muffled but close. "You've forgotten something."
"What's that?" I replied.
"Your medical kit from Mirny."
"Let it be yours, okay? Now go away. Please."
"Negative. There's a drone circling the ship, Winter."
I went still. Could this be a lie to trick me into staying?
"Came in low about ten minutes ago, made two passes over the stern, and it's still up there. You'd know that," he said, "if you hadn't turned off your radio. Maybe, right now, it's taking aim."
My hand found the edge of the porthole. I didn't look through it. I didn't need to—I could hear it now, underneath the wind, a thin mechanical whine circling somewhere above the boat deck.
A boat wedged half out of its cradle, swinging, obviously containing a living body. Easiest target.
"You're not sneaking off this deck unnoticed," Ivan told me. "Whatever you were planning—they saw you."
I pressed my forehead against the cold metal wall of the pod and closed my eyes.
"The clamp's jammed," I groaned. "I can't force it. I don't have the strength."
A long breath on the other side of the hull. And then:
"Please, open."
I reached for the interior release without letting myself think about it further. I had to admit that I secretly wanted to see him, to feel his gentle, controlled strength. To feel saner.
The hatch cracked open with a hiss of equalizing pressure, and cold sea air rushed in, salt and metallic tang. Ivan was already there, one hand braced against the frame, the other reaching in before the hatch had even finished swinging.
"Easy. Easy—"
He got an arm under me, careful around the wound, and I hated how much I needed it—how the moment his hand found my ribs, the strength I'd been faking for the last ten minutes just left me.
I sagged into him, and he took the weight without comment, like he'd been expecting to. Above us, the drone was circling wider now, looking like a small black fly.
Ivan glanced up, and his expression changed.
"Kat—move."
"What?"
He grabbed me around the waist and hauled me sideways.
The drone dropped. For one second it seemed to hang motionless against the blue sky.
Then it came down fast. The pod's faded-red hull filled my entire field of vision.
"Down!"
Ivan threw me beneath the gunwale.
Then the drone struck with a violent metallic crack, followed by a deep, hollow boom that I felt through the deck.
The nose of the lifeboat disappeared in a cloud of splintered insulation and fragments of old composite. The pod lurched violently against its remaining clamp, then tore free.
Something slammed into the deck beside us. The lifeboat dropped. For a heartbeat it hung there, broken and smoking, caught between the ship and the sea.
Then the last restraint snapped, and the pod fell away. It hit the water nose-first and vanished behind a wall of white spray. I stared over the gunwale, unable to breathe. Ivan kept one arm locked around me, holding me down as fragments rattled across the deck.
He pulled me farther from the edge, pinning me against the steel bulwark. His grip on my jacket was so tight his knuckles were white, and I could feel him shaking from the shock.
We'd never been so close, the thought flashed through my mind.
"You almost got yourself killed," he snapped, his voice rough and stripped of its usual calm authority. Angry as hell.
"The drone hit it—" I murmured.
"Because you were sitting in a trapped tin can like a target in a shooting gallery!" Ivan roared over the wind, shoving a hand through his damp hair. "What the hell were you thinking, Katrina? A solo run to McMurdo in a jammed pod?"
"I had to try!" I shouted back, the adrenaline finally giving way to frustration. "My brother doesn't want me here! I'm an alien on this ship, Ivan! At least in McMurdo I could have saved someone!"
"With what? The medicine in your bag?" He stepped closer, towering over me, his eyes dark with anger and something painfully vulnerable. "If that drone was half a second faster, the cure would be at the bottom of the ocean. And you'd be dead just like Antero."
The name hit me like a physical blow. I turned my face away toward the cold spray coming off the hull.
"I’ve seen Antero's body," I whispered, the fight suddenly draining out of me. "I know."
I wished I had given poor Pathfinder a proper burial. But this was not the behavior The Lost Kids had been expecting from their leader1.
"Then stop acting like you're eager to join him," Ivan said, his tone dropping from a yell to a half-whisper that cut deeper than any shout. "We need a physician, Kat. Not another martyr."
"Sandy can—"
"She's been a henchwoman of Heldrich for years. You want us to trust her with Winston's life? With mine?"
The white-hot sunshine hurt my eyes, and inside, everything felt scraped bare. "Winston doesn't even look at me, Ivan. He doesn't want me in his life. For a reason."
"He's damaged like you, Katrina," Ivan said in a low voice. His hand on my shoulder relaxed a bit, his thumb brushing against the heavy fabric of my coat as if reassuring himself I was still there. "He'll have to learn that survival isn't pretty. But he can't learn anything from a sister who snuck off to feed herself to the fish."
I sucked in a painful breath, the guilt swirling like a snake in my chest, and noticed the tight strain on his face. He was both mad at my recklessness and terrified of what almost happened.
Ivan unclipped the heavy thermos from his belt and pressed it into my hands. The warmth of the metal radiated right through my gloves.
"Now drink," he said, his voice returning to that steady anchor I'd grown so foolishly dependent on. "You're still on duty."
I couldn't remember anything that had ever tasted better. Maybe the meal Randy and I had enjoyed at Von Bellingshausen came close.
"Randy," he said, the name cutting in like a thrown knife. "You risk your neck, you almost blow yourself to pieces... Is this really about the cure, Kat? Or—"
"It's not like that—"
"Then tell me what it is," Ivan cut in softer, releasing his grip on my shoulder completely, so that I wouldn't feel cornered. "Because it looks like you're ready to die for him."
I sipped the tea.
"I was ready to die for my brother, too."
He took the thermos for a moment and swallowed a mouthful himself.
"Ivan, Randy's not my lover."
And why on Earth was I explaining myself?
Slowly, he took my hands and lingered, as if asking for my permission. I almost hated it—so unlike him.
For a moment I let myself weigh it—the cold, the drone, the thousand reasons this was a mistake. Then I stopped counting them. I broke the distance, leaning in and kissing him—greedily, as if we were going to die in a second.
Who knew when? At least, I would go happy.
He answered me with sudden fervor. His teeth caught my lip. Ah, yes. This was really happening.
In a second or two, his hands were in my hair, on my face, on my waist.
And then—his radio. Winston.
Ivan kept one arm around me as he answered. Then he led me to the upper bridge, leaving me with the tea and warning me against stepping out in the open air. Winston's drone-trap was there and ready for its next prey.
He was going to release me from duty at nightfall. More tea. Another hug. Another kiss. Some people talk about butterflies in their chest. Mine felt like a pack of dragons. With larger wings, and closer to the sky. And the fall… The fall could be lethal.
Ivan — The "Pine Island" — 28 September 2190
"You didn't kill him when I ordered you to, but you did it after a delay. Why?" Winston asked, nodding toward Heldrich's body, thoroughly covered with a thick gunmetal gray curtain.
"To keep him from driving us completely apart. Anyone could see the scoundrel was getting an absolute kick out of it. Even in chains."
"You'd better admit you gave in to your emotions."
"I admit it. Which doesn't change what I said. Don't you want to ask how your sister is doing?"
"I don't have a sister anymore. Ivan, there are things you don't do under any circumstances. Not even for family."
"She's tried to escape, Winston. She almost became drone bait."
"And she would have deserved her end just as much as Heldrich," said the Martian, staring at a wall.
"Have you lost your damn mind?" I snapped. "She was trying to save you, you idiot. You can ask Danielle—she peered into her memory. As usual, without permission."
"So I take it you've already asked?"
"I know enough. Back in the holds, I told you about my old man, remember? Anyone would have preferred a bullet to the back of the head over..."
"What do you want from me? Nobody is punishing Kat or executing her. Let her live her life and do whatever she wants. Just far away from me."
"They say guys' brains mature later than girls'. But to be this far gone..." I spat. "Your resentment's like a knife between her shoulder blades."
"You say it because none of your Winged Sun pals died to her rabid dogs," Winston said, his voice devoid of life. "It's not hatred. It's principles."
"Principles? Or just a coward's shield so you don't have to look her in the eye?"
Winston clenched his fists but remained silent.
"Listen to me very carefully, Winston, and stop playing the martyr," I said. "Today, Katrina ran because she believed she was the curse destroying you. She was ready to perish just to give you peace."
The Martian pilot folded his arms, his green eyes burning into me.
"She's ashamed, and it's only natural," he said.
"If she runs away again and gets killed, you won't be a hero standing on his principles." I turned toward the door. "You'll be a brother who chose his pride over his sister's life. And trust me, no amount of righteousness will ever help you carry this burden."
I went to find Deshar and the Outland boys—Roman and Peter. They were to douse Heldrich's curtain-wrapped corpse in fish oil, load it into an operating lifeboat, set it ablaze, and release it into the ocean. My job was to keep watch for danger from the air. My conscience wouldn't let me simply throw a fallen enemy to the crabs, no matter how fast and safe it might be.
It was almost a pity I couldn't have a drink before my watch. But those young rascals had almost certainly stumbled upon the very cache of top-shelf booze I had only supposed to exist. Fishing that information out of them was worth the effort.
Katrina — The "Pine Island" — 28 September 2190
When it started getting dark, I watched from above as the burning boat drifted farther away. Judging by the roaring flames, the guys had clearly used more than just fish oil; then again, extra fuel wasn't hard to come by, even on a nuclear-powered vessel.
Deshar's voice rose from the deck: Make it to Valhalla, old man! The Outland boys roared. The girls must have stayed away from the dangerous open deck.
Heldrich wasn't old at all. But it didn't matter.
I kept watching the flames flickering in the gathering darkness. Their heat seemed to be reaching me. Just an illusion.
A few hours ago, I'd been inside another boat, determined to leave everything behind—Winston, Danielle, this ship. Ivan.
There were other boats, and there might even be one whose mechanism worked; otherwise the Orderlies couldn't have escaped the ship.
I could still leave, but I didn't want to. It wasn't because of the omnipresent "birds" and "bats" of Geryon, or because the sea would kill me.
Ivan was the one keeping me anchored to this ship. And, for the first time in forever, I wanted to be somewhere for a reason other than survival.