The nurse grimaced. “Got it. Never mind.” With a wave of sympathy, they kept walking.
Nothing to do about Halyon’s disease, after all. Not on a space station where the artificially generated air somehow poisoned a select few. It was like asthma, but instead of avoiding triggers, those affected breathed it in day in and day out, and prayed the attacks weren’t debilitating enough that they would stop breathing for good.
Life expectancy for Halyon’s disease was thirty-five years old.
Celise was thirty.
“I bought the ship,” Torian said, setting her jaw, “so we can fly to Rhymarra.” It was past time to talk about the theoretical; now, Torian was ready to pluck her sister off of Colony 13… but she couldn’t exactly drag her kicking and screaming.
But it was an age-old argument. As expected, Celise’s gray eyes flashed. She fumbled for the water, lowered the handkerchief—no blood this time, but Torian noticed how quickly she folded it from view—and took a quick drink. Her voice was rasping. “Don’t start withthatbullshit again.”
It prickled Torian’s soul. “It’s not bullshit.”
“It is,” Celise hissed. She drank more water, swallowed a few times, and drew a shallow breath to compose herself. That attack was relatively quick, but she was still clearly pained by it. Herthroat had been raw since she was a kid. “Rhymarra won’t even let you land. Amelia said that, didn’t she?”
“Hang on. I thought you didn’t trust Amelia. Now you’re using her as supporting evidence in your argument?” Torian’s cheeks warmed at the mention of Amelia.
Celise glared, her expression far too vitriolic for a doctor—butexactlyright for a patronizing older sister. “Amelia is an established captain of the Fleet, with routes to every other space station colony. You don’t think she’striedto smuggle things to Rhymarra and back? If anyone could figure out how to land on that fucking planet, it’s her.”
Funny. That was exactly what Amelia had said.
Not that Torian was willing to admit it. “Amelia didn’t have time to fly to Rhymarra. She didn’t say it couldn’t be done.”
“You’re lying,” Celise replied, her voice hoarse. “Don’t fuck with me, Torian. Your left eyebrow twitches when you lie, and you won’t look at me.”
Torian pulled her gaze back to her sister. “I’m serious. Amelia is always busy—”
“She wouldn’t make the time for you? You were her girlfriend, weren’t you?”
“No,” Torian retorted, feeling hot all over now.
Celise coughed again. “You said youkissed—”
“Onekiss! And then she demoted me, so clearly there’s nothing there.” That was something even Torian couldn’t unpack right now—maybe ever.Amelia Perroskwas untouchable, cold as space and hot as the sun, and Torian had been lucky to get close without being burned. All that was over now.
“Sure,” Celise said, disbelieving.
Torian scowled. “I’m ascrapon Amelia’s ship. Or, was. Now I have my own starship, and I’m flying to Rhymarra. And when I come back, we’re moving there.”
A bot slid through a pair of doors, pushing a hover-cart toward them. On the cart were stacks of boxes: supplies for Celise’s clinic.Their conversation died as the bot beeped twice, holding out a datapad.
Celise signed, stood perfectly still while the bot scanned her face, then offered the bag of gold and silver bars. Torian wondered again at Celise’s income—she only seemed to keep enough money to survive, and sometimes not even that much.
The clinic was her life, lately.
It made an irritating kind of sense, considering her own lifespan.
At least I’ll have helped,Celise said one night when one of Torian’s Fleet contracts had finished, and she had a few days before the next one started, when they drank and chatted well into the night in the dark recesses of their family apartment.That’s something, right?
Yeah. It’s something,Torian had replied, but she’d felt hollow inside.
“Thank you,” Celise said to the bot, which was a flat courtesy considering the bot didn’t have deeper intelligence. It was programmed to retrieve supplies and collect payment, nothing more. But Torian couldn’t blame her when it was floating there.
Torian silently helped her load the supplies into their backpacks. It’d have been easier to use a pushcart, but that was justaskingto be robbed on the way back home. She tried to take Celise’s portion, too, but her sister snapped, “I’m not dead yet,” and shouldered her pack, leading the way out of the medical depot.
Torian followed, but clearly their conversation wasn’t over. The second they were in the narrow corridor beyond the depot, Celise started up again. “Even if you get to Rhymarra, how the hell are you going to convince the university to let you test?”
“Every colony citizen is allowed to test for citizenship. Rhymarra wants the best and brightest—”
