“Is that champagne?” Kane asks in disbelief.
“Where did you get that?” I demand at the same time.
“In one of the rooms. Don’t worry, boss,” he cuts me off before I can speak. “It was sealed. Who’s joining me?” He squints at the wet label. “For a thirty-year-old drink?” He lifts the bottle in a mock toast. “To the start of our high life!”
He puts the bottle to his lips and tilts his head back for a large swallow but comes up sputtering and coughing a second later. “That’s rank,” he manages, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. But he’s grinning.
To my surprise, Lourdes moves past me and reaches for the bottle. She struggles to remove her helmet one-handed until Voller helps her. She takes a tentative sip, followed by a grimace. “Disgusting.”
But she extends the bottle to me and Kane with an expectant look.
Kane holds his hand up. “No thanks, I prefer my stomach lining intact.”
It feels, though, less like a shared drink and more like a pact, a promise that we are all in this together. Oh, what the hell.
I remove my helmet, taking a first tentative breath on board theAurora. The air is still icy cold and vaguely metallic-smelling. I grab the bottle from Lourdes, who beams at me.
“To fame and fortune, bitches,” I say with a sigh, lifting the bottle as Voller crows in delight.
“And getting everyone home safely,” Lourdes adds.
“That, too.” She means theAuroradead, I know, but when I lift that bottle, I’m making my promise to the living.
14
2.5 hours on theAurora, 69 hours until commweb range
“Hey, who took the last fish-and-chips packet?” Voller demands from behind me, rummaging through the crates of supplies from the LINA, near the entrance to the bridge.
I swivel to face him in the captain’s ultra-comfortable chair. It’s a lushly padded and gorgeously appointed leather creation, one I’m still uneasy about claiming, especially given the proximity of Captain Gerard’s remains. “Can we focus, please?”
“But I’m hungry,” he says.
I roll my eyes and face forward again.
After all the work and stress of getting over here and getting underway, the actual start of the journey on theAurorahas been smooth. Effortless. Mind-numbingly uninteresting.
So effortless, in fact, that I catch Lourdes yawning in her seat on the bridge, her chin propped in her hand on the as-yet-useless communications board.
Kane is occupying himself by going over theAurora’s specs and systems, with some input from Nysus. Who is busy watching the finished but unaired episodes ofDoing It Dunleavy Stylethat he managed to recover from one of the newly charged-up tablets, giggling to himself in delight.
Space travel is boring. As a commweb maintenance team, we’re used to it. A boring day is a good day. Boring is what we strive for. When things are exciting, someone is usually about to die in some new and horrible way.
But there’s such a thing as being a little too relaxed. I think, particularly in this circumstance, there’s value in being just that extra bit cautious. A little more vigilant.
“Look, TL, if we didn’t blow up in the first hour, statisticallyspeaking, we’re probably not going to,” Voller says, coming back around to his seat, packet in hand. He drops into his chair and tears into the packet with his teeth.
“That cannot possibly be true,” I say, thinking of all the twenty-year-old systems being worked to their maximum after a deep freeze of decades.
“Back me up, chief,” Voller says, turning toward Kane.
Kane looks up from the panel where he’s working. “It islesslikely,” he allows reluctantly.
“See? Hard part’s over,” Voller says through a mouthful. “It’s time to celebrate.”
I wince inwardly. I’m not a particularly superstitious team leader, not like some who refuse to fly without their various good luck charms—my first TL actually rattled with all the various tokens he wore on a chain around his neck—but still.
Kane’s gaze meets mine for a brief second in what, under other circumstances, might have been a moment of mutual exasperation with Voller, but then he drops his eyes back to his work, as if I’m not there.
