“Why does it look… weird?” Lourdes traces the outline of the ship on the screen, the rounded bottom, the pointed ends, the tiny dark buttons of portholes along the one visible side.
Recognition clangs a sudden and discordant note inside me.No. It can’t be.
“I’ve never seen a passenger vessel like this,” Lourdes says. “Are those smokestacks on top? For what? And the decks are open at either end. That can’t be right. That would mean huge glass enclosures. No one does that. It would be too risky.”
Chills race along my skin, and my left ear is once more buzzing and crackling. Lourdes is right. No one does that…anymore. To be fair, as far as I know, they only did it once.
Next to me, Kane goes still. “Does that look to you like—”
“Yeah,” I say, but it comes out too close to an awed whisper. I try again. “Yes, it does.”
Voller lifts himself partially out of his chair for a closer look. “No. No way.” He glances back at us in disbelief.
“What?” Lourdes asks.
Kane clears his throat, but the words come out sounding rough anyway. “They wanted it to evoke nostalgia. To make people feel more comfortable by reminding passengers of something familiar. The design was intended to mimic a leisure vessel, a cruise ship for the ocean on Earth. Back when you could do that.” He pauses. “My dad and my uncle… they worked for CitiFutura back then, before Verux acquired the company. They did some of the plumbing on this ship. And the other one, the sister vessel, I can’t remember what it was called.”
“TheCassiopeia,” I say softly.
Kane nods. “That’s it. They decommissioned it… after.”
“But what—” Lourdes begins.
“It was destroyed. Blown up!” Voller says, arguing with everyone and no one and just the fact of the ship’s existence. He jabs a finger toward the screen. “Catastrophic engine failure. CitiFutura was rushing to hit the launch date, and someone fucked up. CF went down for that mistake.”
“Chat room rumors, unfounded speculation,” Nysus says over the intercom, with the preoccupied air that said he was digging in his downloaded Forum threads for more information. “In the aftermath of the disappearance, search and rescue ships found metal fragments on their projected course that might have been part of the hull. Or not. CitiFutura filed for a total loss, but there was no proof. Everyone had theories back then, and then the lawsuits started.”
“What lawsuits?” Lourdes almost shouts. “What are you guys talking about?”
I tear my gaze away from the mystery made reality currently floating on the monitors in front of me and look to Lourdes.
She lifts her hands in exasperation, a mute demand for explanation. It seems impossible that she wouldn’t know, but then I realize she was probably a toddler when all of this was going on.
“That”—I point to the screen—“is theAurora. The first—and only—luxury space cruiser. Every possible amenity you can imagine. Gold faucets.” That’s always the detail that sticks in my head.
“Real wood floors, coffee from actual beans, meat that was once alive,” Voller adds, sounding both awed and bitter.
“Twenty years ago, five hundred passengers and a hundred and fifty crew left on a maiden voyage for a tour of the solar system,” I say. “It was supposed to take a year. But theAuroradisappeared six months in. All souls presumed lost.”
“One of the biggest space disasters in human history and high on the list of unsolvable mysteries,” Nysus adds, sounding a little too excited. Every nerd has his day.
Lourdes’s gaze flicks back and forth between the image of theAuroraon the monitor and me. “Until now,” she murmurs.
“Yeah. Until now,” I say.
“Holy shit,” she whispers, consciously or unconsciously echoing Voller. “Where’s it been this whole time?” she asks in a more normal voice.
“No idea,” I say, folding my arms across my chest as if that would help slow my galloping heart.TheAurora. Here. “This is hell and gone from where they last checked in. I don’t think they were even supposed to be out this far.”
“Because no one is,” Voller mutters, but not quite as sullenly as before.
Lourdes’s fingers fly over her control panels and the images on the monitors shimmer, blurring out of focus for a moment before they return, slightly larger than before.
“Sorry, cameras weren’t meant to zoom that far. This is the best I can do,” Lourdes says. “But look, definitely no signs of an explosion. At least not from this view.”
She’s right. The starboard side of the ship appears as shiny and pristine as it did in the departure videos that the news outlets showed over and over again after the departure—and then again after the disappearance.
I watched those videos in the group home, riveted and already plotting my way into those stars. If I’d been a few years older, I would have begged, borrowed, and blackmailed my way onto that ship’s crew. For weeks after the departure, I’d dreamed of future cruises, future chances.
