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I don’t like the guy, but I get the pessimism. At times in the past—especially after Gus was killed—I’ve felt the same way.
Shit, I’ve been thinking about him a lot. I can’t imagine that’s a good sign.
“You have no reason to be afraid, though,” Ravik continues. “Ikaray can’t travel very far through transdimensional space, and she’s small enough to be undetectable on Second House scans. In fact, we’re safer here than we are on Jaya.”
Anxiety roils in my gut. I don’t like the sound of that either. Mai and Reza will be on Jaya, along with Bekah, Zandro, Ondari, even fucking Soval who I don’t like that much…
“They’re going to be fine,” I say. “Actually—do you mind if I step out while you get systems prepped? I just want to go check in with my boss.”
Ravik narrows his eyes and opens his mouth, but Malix cuts him off.
“We won’t leave without you,” Malix says.
I blow out a breath and make my way back outside, and it’s only then that I realize how claustrophobic it felt in that tiny littlezephtan. I’ve lived on Jaya this whole time, but it always felt like being hauled around by a nice old lady; with Ikaray, it seems like we’re letting a monster swallow us, then trusting it to carry us through vacuum.
Is it too late to back out?
I head across the grass toward Jaya and the smallerzephtan,which will stay with everyone else. Mai is sitting outside of the hatch and taking apart a rifle—something she always does when she’s nervous, even if she would never admit it. I don’t know where her Lyran boyfriend is, but he’s never far away, so I have to assume we aren’t alone.
Her eyes meet mine as I approach, and she puts her hands down on the gun like she’s trying to steady herself—or to hide that she’s engaging in a nervous tic.
“Morales,” she acknowledges.
“Hey,” I say. “I was just…well, we’re leaving soon.”
She raises her fine black eyebrows, her dark eyes discerning. There’s a streak of silver in her chin-length hair that shines like a blade.
“Need to debrief?” she asks.
“Less debriefing, more talking,” I say. “If that’s okay?”
Her expression softens—as much as it can, anyway—and she puts down the rifle pieces she still held in her hands.
“Sure,” she says. “Let’s walk.”
Mai stands up and steps over the bench she was sitting on, then we walk together around the edge of Jaya’s hull. There’s a huge lake at her tail, her oaken dorsal fin dipping into the crystal clear water. We can’t stay here long—Second House forces could be lurking nearby—but it’s a nice reprieve to hang out somewhere that isn’t likely to host deadly alien devices.
“What’s on your mind, soldier?” Mai asks, her hands clasped behind her. “Nervous about the mission?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Actually…I’ve been thinking about Gus a lot.”
She stops in her tracks, staring out at the lake. There are distant, lush mountains beyond it, covered in a thick layer of foliage. I wonder what it would be like to swim across this lake and steal into the woods, never to be seen again.
“What’s making you think about him?” she says. “Not to be callous, but it’s been five years.”
“Prefacing something with ‘not to be callous’ doesn’t stop it from being callous,” I snort.
“Well, you knew what you were getting into,” she drawls. “Tell me, Frankie—what’s going on here?”
“I just feel like I’m…betraying him somehow, I guess,” I say. I swallow hard, willing myself not to cry. I’m tough these days, but it took time to build that up, especially when it came to a subject this sore. “I’m about to head out with a crew of aliens. I won’t be around any of my own kind. And Malix…his people killed the man I loved, Mai.”
I rarely use her first name, and it seems to hit her hard, because her hand is suddenly squeezing my shoulder.
This is why she took me under her wing, raising me up in the ICO ranks as a protege—because we have one horrible thing in common.
Her brother was killed in the first mass slaughter during the Lyran Civil War; my boyfriend was killed in the same attack.
And usually I’m over it, but maybe not so much as I thought.
