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“The Crescent Rim…” Morwong pondered.
Caligher had heard before that it was a beautiful place, so far out in the darkness that their sun looked more like the large, bright star of a nearby system. The light that washed over the landmark was wan and cold. A glittering city rested within its inner curve.
“There is one small problem with finding it,” cautioned Morwong.
“There is?” Lucca asked.
“There are three locations called the Crescent Rim,” he said.There were?That was news to Caligher. He listened to Morwong with a suspicious ear. “All three near the Outskirts, which makes the task of pinpointing it a real challenge.”
“What?” Lucca asked.
Her hope was diminishing already. This was life and death for her. It was life and death to Caligher in the opposite way. She wanted to go. He firmly wanted her to stay. He was a little too far gone for his desires to matter—but that didn’t stop him from perking up at the news of an obstacle in Lucca’s path.
He didn’t want her to leave because he was selfish. Simply selfish. Once she realized there was no going home, she’d have little choice but to come out with it. And once she came out with it—
“Cal, your tail is reallywagging,” said Lucca with affectionate wonder.
The fire in him died down by a few degrees. “It is?”
Morwong burst out in rambunctious laughter. “My friend, when you hear bad news for Lucca, at least pretend to be torn up about it.”
Stiffening, he made a cursory attempt to control himself. The spark was going too strong, so he tried holding his tail still.
Thatmade it swing harder. Caligher was a mess and he didn’t know why anyone would willingly choose his company, and now his emotions had gone from despondent to relieved to hopeless in a span of heartbeats.
So he settled for sitting directly on the offending appendage.
“Sorry,” he grunted.
Despite his best efforts not to envision tearing down Lucca’s cargo door, his brain had furnished at least five plans—each of them disturbingly elaborate.
Cutting her gravity first sounded oddly appealing. Lucca perpetually kept it on, and he wanted to know what she would do without it. He shut his eyes and rubbed between his brows, wishing he could shut his whole self off.
“You could always mute yourself,” suggested Morwong.
Lucca chuckled. “Why bother? I can see his room growing shinier.” Her voice smoothed over, warming with invitation. “Hey, Cal, I think your ship looks really cute with its new wing.”
His room grew blinding. Lucca murmured a self-satisfied, “See?”
He stiffened.
Morwong pushed the conversation back on track. “Let’s see. The Crescent Rim is a different place depending on who you ask. Some say it was once a normal moon until they detonated it to get to the core underneath, and now it’s a cluster of floating pieces. Quite a lovely, dangerous site—totally uninhabitable.”
“Hm, no. The thing I passed was whole—and definitely inhabited,” said Lucca.
“Yes, I can see that from this picture. But the other two—one’s a lush rogue asteroid that started in theHeart, but now it’s on a path to nowhere. The other is Ternetzi-made. An outpost hewed in the shape of a crescent moon with a glittering city inside the rim. Both are quite spectacular.”
“The one I’m thinking of is the latter,” said Lucca.
There was reluctance in Morwong’s voice as he said, “Unfortunately, there is one… tiny… problem.”
“What’s the problem?” Caligher snapped. Why was he being dramatic about this?
“Both are inhabited by fanatics who take exception to the other group using the name,The Crescent Rim. Hilarious until you get involved—because each group is focused on repopulating their own site at the expense of the other…” he explained in too many words. He was being wordy and difficult.
Caligher retreated to his baby-naming exercise, tuning Morwong out. He liked the name Mola. Short, simple. Worked for either gender. Would she like it? Maybe she had better names in mind.
Did Lucca even want children? Imagining her pregnant wasnothelping his self-control.
