A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2)(86)

Her question was answered immediately. Pepper was sitting on the floor beside the mek brewer, empty mug still in one hand, staring at her scrib in the other. Her face was taut and pale.

‘Tak, could you keep an eye on the counter, please?’ Sidra whispered. Tak obliged.

Sidra stepped close and crouched down. Pepper looked up at her with . . . with . . . Sidra didn’t know what to make of the expression on her face. Hope and pain and shock, all twisted together.

Without a word, Pepper handed Sidra the scrib. Sidra read it, line by line, quick as she could. She looked sharply to Pepper as she reached the end. ‘Have you told Blue yet?’

Pepper shook her head. ‘His scrib’s turned off,’ she said quietly. ‘He does that sometimes when he’s painting.’

Sidra reached out the kit’s hand. ‘Come on. Let’s go get him.’





JANE, AGE 19


The ceiling looked the same as it had four hours before. Jane pulled her blanket up to her chin. She had longed for her bed during the three days and nights out in the scrapyard, but now that she had it, sleep was a long way off.

‘Water tanks are full,’ she breathed into the dark. ‘Taps and filters are clear. Hatch and window seals are . . . sealed. Artigrav nets – well, we’ll find out, won’t we—’

She touched thumbtip to each finger on her left hand as she went through every system on the ship over and over, index to middle to ring to pinky, then back the way she came. The words leaving her mouth barely moved the air around her lips. She didn’t want to disturb Laurian – who was asleep, snoring softly in his bed. Good for him. At least one of them would be going into lift-off with a decent night of rest.

‘Life support systems are go. Control room panels are go. Hatch – no, dammit, you already said hatch, start again, start again.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Water tanks are full. Taps and filters are clear . . .’

She’d been forgetting things, or if not forgetting things entirely, doing them in the wrong order, or getting confused on things that should’ve been easy. Her head ached all the time, and her thoughts ran thick as fuel. ‘You’re just tired,’ she reassured herself, pausing the count on her fingers. ‘You’re just tired.’

She startled as Laurian rolled over in his sleep. She’d known for nearly a year that she’d be sharing this space with him, but knowing that and doing it were two very different things. He made sounds she wasn’t used to. He stood and sat in places that had always been empty. Part of her was glad to hear someone else breathing again. Part of her wanted him gone.

She continued her count again and again, until Owl appeared some hours later, turning on the screen beside Jane’s bed as dimly as she could. ‘Hey,’ Owl whispered.

‘Is it time?’ Jane whispered back. Laurian continued to breathe deep on the other side of the room.

Owl nodded. ‘Sun’s coming up.’

They’d decided on leaving in the morning, rather than the moment Jane and Laurian got back to the shuttle (as Jane had initially wanted). A night launch would’ve been crazy bright, and though there had never been any indication that anyone was watching, there was no need to call more attention to themselves than needed. A little ship heading spaceward was obvious enough without lighting up the sky.

There would be no breakfast that morning. The thought made both heart and stomach sink, but in some ways, having an empty belly was good. Apparently some people got spacesick – especially if the artigrav nets didn’t hold, which was really anybody’s guess at this point – and wasting food was out of the question. They could eat once they got out there. They’d have dinner in space.

Jane hugged her blanket to herself, the same blanket she’d crawled sobbing under her first night there, the same blanket that had covered her every day since. She got up, holding the ragged cloth around her like a cloak. She walked out to the living room, every step a chore. She walked to the hatch and looked through the window into the airlock. She knew what it looked like outside. She knew it like she knew her own face, her own skin.

‘Owl, can you let me outside?’

Owl opened the hatch. Jane stepped through the airlock, then out. Rocks pressed roughly into her bare feet. The sun was bleeding orange, the dark blue above fading lighter. The air was cold and sharp. She breathed deep, the last breath of unfiltered air she’d have for a while. She looked out, out to the piles of scrap, out to the makeshift paths she’d walked in the spaces between. She had worked for nine years to get out of that place. Nine years where she thought of nothing but leaving, but now . . . now she dug her toes into the dirt, trying to hold on. She looked up at the fading stars. She knew the scrapyard. She knew this shitty planet. Up there . . . that was something else altogether. She dug her toes in harder, pulled the blanket closer.

‘I know,’ Owl said, speaking through the vox on the hull. ‘I’m scared, too.’

Jane took a step back, still looking up, and pressed her palm against the hull. ‘I never said thank you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know to say thank you then.’

‘What do you mean?’

Jane thought back to that first night – a voice calling out in the dark, reaching farther and faster than the dogs and Mothers. A voice that brought her home. ‘I wouldn’t have made it without you,’ Jane said, pressing her palm harder.