Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(36)

I left the diagnostics running and went to dinner, feeling sweaty, exhausted, and exhilarated all at once. I’d finished two days ahead of schedule.

Take that, bottom of the class.

After dinner, since I was done with my to-do list, I sat down in front of the data console and absently said, “Hey, Nadim? Are you tied in to this device?”

“Of course,” he said. “I provide it with power.”

“Yeah, I mean . . . can you read the data on it?”

“I can, but I don’t normally. It is for your use, organized in human structures.”

“Okay. Mind if I poke around a little in past records?”

“I don’t mind. The recordings are there to help you. There is nothing in there forbidden to you.”

Digging around in the data proved to be fun. I was no Conde, but I’d rehabbed enough times to understand how to find the stuff people buried in their data sets. Which was how I unearthed the coded personal journal of one Marko Dunajski. Recording our thoughts was encouraged “for posterity” but not mandatory, which was good, because I was pretty sure I didn’t want to have my thoughts out there for anyone to see.

I figured Marko’s entry would be gold from the beginning, because he looked grumpy. “I’m going to record, please ignore me,” he said, which I thought was a strange way to start, until I heard Nadim’s voice on the recording say, “Of course, Marko.” Marko chugged more coffee and set the cup aside. Rubbed his face like he might scrape his features off.

“I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought.” His tone surprised me. When he had me on the recruitment trail, he’d seemed so confident that I figured these would play like propaganda films. Instead I had Marko, uncut and unkempt. “Okay, let me start again. When I was chosen as an Honor, it was the happiest day of my life. I thought I was prepared. Before getting on the shuttle, I read all the previous Honor biographies and interviews with people who were alone on space stations, and I watched vids about the first settlers on Mars. I understood that we’re partners with our Leviathan in training during the Tour. But once the fanfare and celebration stops, it’s . . . a sobering responsibility. How does it make sense that somebody like me has been sent on a mission like this? I’m not a scientist. I am a musician.”

Somebody like me. The words caught my attention and tugged because I’d been wondering the same thing.

“What we’ve seen out here, it’s marvelous. Unbelievable. So many civilizations that no longer exist, because they’ve destroyed themselves. Nadim doesn’t say it, but I think the reason they show these places to us is to explain why they take such an interest in humans. We’re here now. We exist. And we were going to destroy ourselves when they first met us and end up another cautionary tale on the Tour. I suspect the Leviathan couldn’t stand to see it happen again. He says that the two who made contact were on their own, responding because they couldn’t ignore the cries of the wounded in the dark. That has a certain . . . beauty.” Marko’s voice changed. Grew darker and rougher. “And I’m sure Nadim believes the story. But I’m not sure I do any longer. There are things that don’t make sense out here. Things he avoids talking about, or can’t tell us. There are mysteries in the dark too.”

So, like me, Marko wasn’t all sunshine and flowers. He had an edge I’d never suspected. Good. It made me like him better. And his words put me more on my guard too. Mysteries in the dark.

“Still, for all that . . . This is going to sound stupid, but I’m just talking to myself, aren’t I? There are people who study the stars their whole lives and never get to soar among them. I can’t help feeling that I didn’t deserve this chance, but I intend to make the most of this experience. I’m going to learn everything I can and make my family proud. And maybe . . . maybe I will go on the Journey, if the Leviathan give me a chance. Solve the real mysteries. Finally explain once and for all what the Leviathan want from us . . . or want us to learn from them.”

Maybe it wasn’t meant for me at all, but that message arrowed straight into my heart. Make my family proud, he’d said, and I realized that I desperately wanted that. My family and I, we were like passengers on trains heading in the same direction but on parallel tracks. I loved my mother and Kiz. Maybe we’d never be like a regular family, but if I could make them proud of me, of something I accomplished—that would be . . . good.

But I also had to take Marko’s doubts seriously. I’d come on board thinking about Valenzuela and his incoherent warning; Nadim had soothed that jitter out of me, but this made me think, again, about what we weren’t being told. What mysteries the Leviathan kept.

“The thing is,” Marko continued, “I’m not sure I’ll be chosen. Nadim seems to need more interaction than he gets from me. Certainly he’s not getting it from Chao-Xing. It helps when I play for him. The Leviathan are musical from their core; I think that’s one thing that fascinates them about us, our ability to summon up our own songs, even though we aren’t born from the same culture. Even though we can’t hear what they do. I like Nadim, but I feel we’re not . . . not a good fit. He has just one more try at finding someone who fits with him before he goes out into the black. I hope—I hope someone next year works. If they don’t, he’ll either be matched for a long time with someone who isn’t on his frequency, or he’ll be alone out there. I don’t like to imagine that.”