CHAPTER1
“Reverse thrusters to eighty percent. Approaching soft and easy. You picking anything up?”
Kat’s tinny voice drifted through the comms. It was ratcheted up to her most insufferable tone: professional chirp with a chance of meltdown. She didn’t like this mission, and she was going to do a great job of hiding that from Sonya by speaking an octave above her usual terse tone.
Sonya scanned the readout on the panel in front of her and shook her head. “Negative,” she replied. “You sure we have the right co-ordinates?”
A momentary silence passed. “I mean, I don’t know what to tell you. They were uploaded while we were still docked at the orbital. I didn’t, like, do them on the back of an envelope or anything.”
This was also very Kat. Sarcasm meant to obscure her disapproval.
Sonya chuckled. “Thanks, Kat. Appreciate the sarcasm.”
“Anytime,” Kat came back. “Plenty more where that came from.”
Sonya tapped the tiny red dot at the center of her screen. The spot where they weresupposedto have landed. The spot where there was supposed to be a ship, roughly twice their size. A spot where she could see nothing but rock and sand.
“What the hell is going on here?” she muttered.
The sound of the thrusters grew as Kat reduced speed further. A moment later the shuttle settled on the surface.
Sonya smiled. “You do that like you’re putting a baby into a cradle,” she said into her mic.
“Don’t know how any other way,” Kat replied, but she was already moving on to other things. “You want me to log the no-show, fire up, and head back?” she asked, as if the two sentences were one.
Sonya furrowed her brow and shook her head. “We can’t just do that,” she said. “They have to be on the planetsomewhere. We can’t just give up without even trying to find them.”
A silence passed. “Due respect, cap, I’m not sure what all wecando. Circumference twice the size of earth? We’ll burn through our whole fuel load before we get a quarter ways around.”
Kat’s dismissiveness poked a finger of irritation in Sonya’s guts.
“They’repeople, Kat. Same crew as us. We might not know them all too well, but they deserve more than us just blowing this mission off.”
It would have been nice, Sonya thought, to just foroncehash these arguments out before a crucial point in the mission. But that wasn’t how Kat operated. She was all in on chain-of-command and rank-and-file and keeping her opinion to herself when everyone was watching.
She waited until the shit hit the fan to offer her misgivings.
Kat’s silence was longer this time. She was getting irritated, Sonya could tell. She chewed on her lip, waiting for Kat’s reply.
“Nobody’s blowing anything off,” Kat finally said. “We were sent with one directive. Visually inspect the coordinates of their last known signal. We have done so. No one is here.”
“Wow,” Sonya replied, voice low. “That’s harsh.”
“Protocols say…”
“I know the protocols, thanks,” Sonya snapped, more abruptly than she’d wanted. “I know the protocols,” she said again, softening her tone. “Nobody back up top’s going to blame me for getting out and poking around. It’s not like we’re burning anything just sitting here.”
“Poking around?” Kat asked. A hint of panic crept into her voice.
Sonya would have been lying if she said it didn’t thrill her a little bit. While Kat was all low-risk and protocols, fly-the-ship-and-don’t-ask-questions, Sonya was a known—and proud—shit disturber.
She liked to look under rocks.
“I’m going to put on a suit and step out.”
Silence again. Then, “Uh… captain, I donotthink that’s a good idea.”
“Yeah,” Sonya said, sighing. “How did I know you were going to say that?” Kat was about to mount a serious legal case. She could tell because Kat was using “Captain” and not “Cap.”
