Chapter One
Allie pushed her rationsfrom one side of the plate to the other. She’d call it food, only it wasn’t actually “food” as the human race defined it. This was more of a metallic-tasting mush that sank into her stomach and threatened to make it rebel at irregular times.
Normally she would have gone in search of some company when she felt this shitty. Shank would smile and gather her up in his arms before kissing her until she forgot her own name. They’d grab for each other, sweating and hot and twisting into the sheets until they had to collapse in laughter and untangle their limbs. His long black hair would fan out over the white pillow, and he would watch her with his dark eyes.
Allie had grown up on a farm, and long hair tended to drag in the manure pile when you shoveled, and get caught in machinery. Being practical, she’d always kept her brown hair cut short, and made fun of the fussing required for long hair, but Chankoowashtay “Shank” Lacroix made her realize it could be damn sexy.
If she had one ounce of good sense, she’d go find him.
Instead she sat alone. For a hypersexual, pansexual social woman, she was doing far too much of that lately.
Lieutenant Haslet came into the room and looked around for a second before she went to the distributor. After getting her ration, she headed over to the table. She waited a second for any protests before she sat across from Allie. When Allie had first come on the ship, Haslet and Corporal Jacqs Glebov had scared the snot out of her. They were physically intimidating, and worse, they were walking reminders of how the war could chew a person up and spit them back out. Jacqs had offended everyone and generally made everyone else as miserable as him...at least at first. Lieutenant Haslet had never engaged anyone at all.
Allie had lived in terror of turning into one of them. She’d always been gregarious, and she’d seen this future where she either transformed into a complete asshole or some shadow of herself. Or she could have taken the captain’s path and just stayed drunk all the time. People who’d been to the front weren’t exactly walking advertisements for mental health. However, before she’d had to face any of that, the war had ended. She’d done her basic training and a few months on a listening post, and now she would never again face off against batface aliens.
“Corporal,” Haslet offered as she put her food down.
Allie watched the mush slowly seep around the edges of the spoon when she tried to trap it against the plastic side of the tray.
“So any plans for the future now that the war is over?” Haslet asked. Allie watched her large hands perform a balancing act with a half-full spoon. Playing with the food did seem healthier than trying to eat it.
She shrugged. “I haven’t been released from duty yet.”
“True,” Haslet agreed. “But everyone has some sort of plan.”
“Jacqs didn’t,” Allie said. The words slipped out, but even if she hadn’t meant to conjure the memory of their missing crew, she knew it was true. Jacqs had lived in the present and made fun of the rest of them for having plans and dreams for the future.
Maybe living in the moment had made it possible for him to give up his berth on the ship so they could evacuate more children out of the path of the coming batfaces. Maybe he could make that decision because he’d never had any hope for anything better. Maybe she just didn’t understand him or his decision. Until she’d watched Jacqs walk off the ship to surrender to the enemy, she would have called him the least self-sacrificing man she’d ever met. Before coming on theCandiru, Allie had always believed she understood people. Always. Now she suspected she’d just been too young to recognize her own stupidity. Despite her youth, she felt so ancient that one good wind would turn her to dust and scatter her atoms across the stars.
“They made their choice,” Haslet said. She didn’t need to definethey. Since the ship had dropped off their load of refugees, every conversation on theCandiruhad centered on Jacqs Glebov and his partner in sacrifice, Commander Zeke Waters. The heroes.
Now that the batfaces had taken control of that part of the border, they were lost behind enemy lines. The war might be over and the various planets surrendered, but Allie couldn’t stop herself from obsessing over the what-ifs. What if she’d done the same? What if she’d refused to take off from the planet without them? What if she’d had a magic wand she could wave to force the world to be fair?
But Jacqs had told her to stay and navigate the ship. After almost two months, she still felt guilty for sitting in the mess eating reconstituted rations when they were out there.
Hopefully, they were out there and not lying dead in the mud of some alien world.
“We chose to leave them,” Allie said slowly. She knew where this conversation was going, but she couldn’t escape repeating the old words. It was as if she were some kid picking at the edges of a scab, utterly unable to stop even when the bleeding started. The fact that Allie’s latest lover was among those explaining the choicelessness of the whole mess wasn’t improving her love life.
Haslet put her spoon down and studied her for an uncomfortably long time. “We chose to follow orders and save those kids.” Haslet gave herthatlook—the one that made Allie feel like twenty-three wasn’t old enough to argue with people who had lived nearly twice as many years. Intelligence and common sense had nothing to do with age on a fucking calendar.
Allie snorted. “Our orders were to escort theOrsk. Where were they? Where was the transport ship that should have lifted everyone?” She snapped her mouth closed before more unchecked anger could roll out of her mouth.
Haslet shifted in her seat and dropped her gaze to the table. She wasn’t a talker. Allie knew the woman was trying to help, to patch up some of the emotional wounds they all carried. Right now Allie didn’t want healing. She wanted to hurt and pay for having left her crew behind. She stood before her brain had even decided what to do.
“I’ll see you later.” Allie picked up her tray and headed over to the recycler. She was wasting food, and this part of the universe was suddenly long on refugees and short on food. Still, if she ate now, she’d just be recycling it into a bathroom toilet along with an abundance of stomach acid. Haslet watched her go with weariness in her gaze. Everyone on theCandirulooked weary these days.
The ship felt empty without humanity shoved into every corner.
Two weeks they’d ridden heavy with crying kids and complaining refugees and overflowing toilets. Now hollow corridors mocked Allie. Echoes of whispers from the dead and missing seemed to chase her down the halls.
The view of space and all its wheeling stars could never give her the same feeling of freedom and distance that she got from the sight of a horizon and the sun shining in a blue sky. The ship had always felt claustrophobic. But now it felt huge, like if she dropped something, the sound would ricochet forever. It was too big.
“Allie?”
She turned, and Shank stood there, his hands shoved into his pockets.
“Hey.” She tried to smile.
