“Let me guess, you’re a Polarian,” I snapped.
She smirked.“Not even close.My dad preferred to be, uh, unaffiliated.”
I studied her.That was an interesting word choice.Most of the people who claimed to be unaffiliated operated outside the law.Did that mean her family was?—
Lacy scattered my thoughts when she stood and stared out at the vastness of space.I turned my chair at an angle so I could watch her.
“When we were little,” she said, “I was seven and Layla was six, our ship was on a job at the edges of what had been Polarian space.Layla discovered that fact years later.All I remember was a lot of time in space anda lotof stars.”
“Layla couldn’t sleep, so she slipped out of our room.We had the run of the ship.”Her mouth curved into a gentle smile.“The only places we weren’t allowed to go by ourselves were the engine room and the cargo hold.”
Having been in both cargo holds and engine rooms, I thought the prohibition made sense.Still, I couldn’t imagine raising a child on a ship.I’d grown up planetside.I’d had a very generic upbringing—my mom was a teacher and my father was a mailman.As close as they and anyone else in our family had come to space, until the moment I’d joined the space corps, had been the delivery of an occasional package from a distant planet.“That sounds like an interesting childhood,” I said.Unspoken was the part where I didn’t understand what that had to do with anything.
“Layla loved the stars.Loved learning their names, loved identifying them.So, she wandered out to one of the big windows to watch the stars.She saw something that night.Something no one else did.Ever since then, she’s been convinced that she saw theQueen of Stars.”
I waited for her to laugh, to let me in on the joke.“You’re kidding.”
She faced me fully, her expression perfectly serious.“No.She’s held onto that belief for more than twenty years.It’s her, I don’t know, passion project.Her obsession.”
Her ticket to the psych ward, but I didn’t say that.“Do you believe her?”
She shoved her hands into her pockets and sighed.“I don’tnotbelieve her.Space is vast.It would be easy to overlook a ship that got lost.”
“It didn’t exist,” I countered.“It was a government coverup.”
Her eyes widened.“You’re a conspiracy theorist?”
I scoffed.“No.I’m a realist.There was no ship.There was never a ship.”
Turning back to the stars, Lacy said, “That night she drew a picture of a ship.It looked like a typical five-year-old’s work.Unsteady lines, wonky perspective.When my parents asked her about the ship, she said it was theQueen of Stars.”
“Let me guess, your parents had told that as a bedtime story.”
Lacy shook her head.“No.Layla and I had never heard of the ship.”She looked toward me and sent me a gentle smile.“Telling little kids about ships that disappear into space, never to be seen again, isn’t really conducive to getting them to sleep through the night.”
I blanched.Even as an adult, as a member of the space corps, I didn’t like to think about ships getting lost in space.
“My mom called up all the information she could find on the missing ship.One of the stories included an image.”She paused, letting the tension build.“My sister’s drawing was a damn good representation of the ship for her age.”
“So your parents believed her?”
“They did.Until there were no records of the ship on our sensors.According to all our systems, we had been all alone out there.My dad decided to focus on the payday from delivering our cargo and that was that.”
“But your sister still believes?”
Lacy nodded.“Yep.Nothing anyone said, or did, convinced her otherwise.She’s determined to be the one to find it.”
“And the chip is what?”I had a good idea, but needed to hear her say it out loud.
She swallowed hard.“As far as I can tell, the chip is the record of all her research.Everything she’s collected until a few days ago when she didn’t make the check-in for her fail-safe.”
I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around what Lacy had just told me.Such determined belief in a ghost ship—in animaginaryship—really was an obsession.“So she’s out here looking for theQueen of Stars?”
“Apparently.”Lacy sounded annoyed, but I didn’t think it was directed at me.“Usually she stays on my dad’s ship and visits libraries and museums for her research while he’s in port.I didn’t expect her to be out here.Especially not alone.”
“Why not?”So far Lacy had proven herself adept—more than adept—at surviving on her own.If her sister was anything like her...
“I think I’ve mentioned that Layla is more likely to be found in a book than in an engine room.”
