If she went back to Sol-Arc, she would have a salary. A good one. Level four pay would cover her living unit on Nova with plenty left over. She would have more prestigious accounts and the reputation that came with them. She would have stability and structure and a clear path forward, and she would neverhave to worry about whether the station’s water system would blow out, or if the spaceport’s energy grid would fail, or if someone sabotaged her oven.
She would also have Beenan, or some other soulless upper-level manager. A cold office in Nova. Colleagues who passed her in hallways but wouldn’t remember her name. She would have sterile hallways and the knowledge that her promotion had come not because Sol-Arc valued her, but because a client had forced their hand.
She would not find out if what was happening between Rasker and her was real, and she would not have Moone’s Landing.
Holly looked around the living unit that she’d made into her own. Her plants on the windowsills, green and thriving under the dome’s light and her doting care. The clothes she’d found that matched her style and made her happy. The dog lying on the couch, looking up at her as if she were the center of his world.
She would not have the lounge, where she had learned to bake and where Harry left his tea on the counter like a standing invitation. Words could not describe how much she’d miss the garden, where Mish knelt in the dirt and talked about her children with the resigned affection of someone who loved fourteen children who were fully capable of murdering anyone they considered a threat. And then there was Alyce’s steady presence, and Sam’s shoulder clap, and the way Orba and Sula always seemed to know what she needed before she did. All of those things had begun to feel essential.
Holly sat back down. Bean shifted close again and rested his small jaw on her thigh. She ran her fingers over his velvet ears. No matter what happened, or where she went, she was keeping him. But thinking about leaving him alone all day while she worked in Sol-Arc’s offices made her heart ache. No one had petson Nova. There wasn’t even a place where people could take care of him while she worked.
The truth was, level four didn’t feel like what it used to feel like. Two months ago, she would have wept at this message. She would have gratefully accepted, walked back into that office and swallowed every other compromise because the alternative was nothing.
But the alternative was not nothing anymore. The alternative was this. A failing outpost on a small moon in deep space, held together by wonderful, stubborn people and the sheer force of Holly’s refusal to let it collapse.
The alternative was terrifying in a completely different way.
If she stayed, there was no predictable income. No safety net. No guarantee that Moone’s Landing would survive in the long run, let alone become the success it once was. She would be betting everything on a place that was one bad inspection away from being condemned, and on her own ability to prevent that, which was far from proven. She would be walking away from twelve years of career for a crumbling space station and an elderly dog who slept twenty hours a day.
Bean let out a long, rumbling sigh.
“Easy for you to say,” Holly muttered.
She spent the rest of the afternoon doing exactly nothing about the message. She took Bean for his walk. She checked on the lounge, where Harry had left a fresh pot of tea and a note that read:New blend. Calming properties. Does it need more reishi?
While in there, she baked a batch of scones from Rasker’s recipe files, but forgot to add the raisins. She quit halfway through reviewing the latest supply order, asnothingwas sticking in her brain. Her thoughts kept drifting back to the unexpected choice that had just dropped in her lap.
By evening, the apartment was quiet and the light from the dome had shifted to its softer nighttime cycle. Holly sat on thecouch with her d-pad, pretending to read the station accounts, then picked up her wrist comm instead.
Her mother answered on the second chime.
“Holly.” Mirth’s voice was warm. “How are you?”
“I’m fine.” Holly leaned her head back against the cushion. “How are you and Dad?”
“Oh, we’re good. I’m finishing a piece with a colleague on the cognitive effect of low gravity and your father is on a ceramics streak, so he’s in his studio. The kitchen table is covered in bowls that he swears are functional, but they look like they should hang on a wall.” A pause. “You don’t sound fine, Hol.”
Holly closed her eyes. She told her mother about Beenan’s message. The promotion. The waived program. The deadline. She told her all of it, plainly and without editorializing.
Her mother listened. Mirth Moone was, by training and by temperament, a listener who made silence feel like a held hand. She did not interrupt. She did not make small noises of agreement or sympathy. She just listened, and the quality of her listening was so complete that Holly could feel it through the comm, across all those light years of frigid space.
When Holly finished, there was a long pause. Her mother chose her words with the precision of a jeweler setting a stone.
“That’s a significant offer,” Mirth said. “They’re acknowledging they were wrong. That doesn’t happen often at a company like Sol-Arc.”
“I know.” Holly opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. “It’s everything I wanted. A few months ago, I would have said yes before he finished the sentence.”
“And now?”
Holly was quiet.
“Let me ask you something,” her mother said. “And I want you to answer honestly, even if the answer scares you.”
“Okay.”
“If Beenan had called to tell you that your position had been eliminated, what would you have felt?”
“Relief.” It was true. There would be no more choice. Nothing to weigh.
