Voller doesn’t respond, and Kane gives me a warning look as we move to either side of him.
“Kyle?” I try again, his first name awkward in my mouth. I know it, of course, but that doesn’t mean he’s ever been anything but Voller to me.
And that seems to move him. His head shakes back and forth, the movement almost entirely lost in his helmet. “Please, TL,” he says in disgust.
The knot of tension in my gut eases a little, leaving behind anger. “Then what the hell is wrong with you?”
He gestures to the panel in front of him. “I went to pull the black box,” he says, his voice still sounding fainter than usual. “And it… the central computer woke up and asked me if I wanted to run another diagnostic.”
I look to Kane because I don’t get it.
“It’s an automatic query, as long as there’s enough reserve power,” Kane says. “When you bring a ship back online, even one as small as the LINA, safety regulations require a diagnostic to ensure everything’s in working order before you cycle up the engines, reengage the environmentals. Otherwise, you can cause further damage.”
“Okay,” I say slowly.
But Kane’s attention is focused on Voller and the screen. “It also requires one when you voluntarily shut down.” Kane’s voice holds an odd note, one of both disbelief and uncertainty.
Voller turns toward Kane suddenly, his hand gripping the darkened control board in front of him. “Exactly! You see it?” He gestures to the screen, which is still flashing abbreviations and notations, seemingly random numbers and letters, none of which I can make heads or tails of. Another way in which I’m not a “real” captain, I realize with chagrin. My Verux team lead training never extended far beyond the bare minimum for daily and emergency operations—managing others, not taking over for them. There were contingencies and cross-training in place, in the event of the loss of a team member, but nothing to the level of detail that would let me understand what they’re talking about now.
Kane nods slowly at Voller. “Affirmative.”
I bite back my impatience and embarrassment at my own ignorance to speak up. “Sorry. You’re going to have to explain it to me.”
Voller lifts his hands in an exasperated gesture. “There was no accident! No explosion, no catastrophic engine failure, no nothing!”
Once again, I shift my gaze to Kane. “The last diagnostic,” he says, his gaze still focused on the symbols in front of him on the panel. He points to the first column. “The one the computer is using for comparison was run twenty-one years ago. Shortly afterCitiFutura lost contact with theAurora.” Now, he looks at me, his expression taut with unhappiness.
“I don’t—” I begin.
Voller makes a frustrated noise. “Someone brought theAuroraout here, way the fuck off course, and then they shut down the engines and the environmentals, everything. This wasn’t an accident or an emergency—there’s no time for an automatic diagnostic when something’s blowing up.”
I blink at him, trying to wrap my head around what he’s saying.
“Claire,” Kane says finally. “It was intentional. Someone beached theAurora,effectively murdering everyone on board.”
9
NOW
“Bullshit,” Reed says, jerking me back to the present.
It takes me a moment to adjust, to find myself back at the table with Reed and Max in the common room at the Tower. Instead of on that darkened bridge with Kane’s face, pale and strained behind the faceplate of his helmet. I blink rapidly, the pain of loss striking hard and anew, as if I was just there in that moment. As if I might be able to reach out and still touch Kane.
“Those were highly respected senior officers on that bridge crew, with years of loyal service,” Reed continues. “You can’t seriously expect us to believe any of this, especially onyoursay-so.”
The word of an obsolete, out-of-work—and obviously unstable—commweb maintenance team leader. He doesn’t say that.
He doesn’t have to.
“It doesn’t matter if you believe it,” I say tightly. “That doesn’t change the truth.”
“Before, you said you didn’t know how theAuroraended up off course. Just that that was where you found it,” Reed says. “So, are you lying now or were you lying—”
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” I say, my grip on my temper slipping. “You’d have questions that I don’t have the answers to. There wasn’t any point in bringing it up.” My goal, back then, when I first entered the Tower, was simply to be left alone. But things are different now.
Max clears his throat, looking uncomfortable. “It’s a very serious accusation, Claire.”
Mutiny, he means. But it was murder, too.
