“Yes, I’m here,” said Kira, quickly.
“Orso found the drop shuttle. It and the hydro cracker seem to be functional.”
Thule! “Good!”
“Now, here’s what is going to happen,” said Tschetter. “Once he finishes refueling the shuttle—which should be in … seven minutes—Orso is going to collect Samson, Reisner, and Yarrek. This will require two separate trips. They will then rendezvous with you in orbit. The shuttle will return under its own power to the base, and you, Ms. Navárez, will give the order to Ando and leave on the Valkyrie. Are we clear?”
Kira scowled. Why did the major always irritate her so? “What about the cryo tube I mentioned? Is it there at the base?”
“Badly damaged.”
Kira winced. The suit must have hit the tube when it emerged. “Understood. Then you and Iska—”
“We’re staying.”
A strange sense of affinity came over Kira. She didn’t like the major—not one bit—but she couldn’t help but admire the woman’s toughness. “Why you? Shouldn’t—”
“No,” said Tschetter. “If you’re attacked, you need people who can fight. I broke my leg during the landing. I wouldn’t be any good. As for the corporal, he volunteered. He’ll make the trip on foot to the base over the next few days, and when he gets there, he’ll fly out to bring me in.”
“… I’m sorry,” said Kira.
“Don’t be,” said Tschetter, stern. “Can’t change what is. In any case, we need observers here in case the aliens return. I’m Fleet Intelligence; I’m the one best suited for the job.”
“Of course,” said Kira. “By the way, if you dig around in Seppo’s workstation at HQ, you might find some seed packs. I don’t know if you can get anything to grow, but—”
“We’ll check,” said Tschetter. Then, in a slightly softer tone, “I appreciate the thought, even if you’re a real pain in the ass sometimes, Navárez.”
“Yeah, well, takes one to know one.” Kira scuffed her palm against the edge of the console, watching how the surface of the suit flexed and stretched. She wondered: If she were in Tschetter’s position, would she have the courage to make the same decision?
“We’ll let you know when the shuttle launches. Tschetter out.”
3.
“Display off,” said Kira.
She studied her reflection in the glass, a dim, ghostly double. It was her first time getting a good look at herself since the xeno had emerged.
She almost didn’t recognize herself. Instead of the normal, expected shape of her head, she saw the outline of her skull, bare and hairless and black beneath the layered fibers. Her eyes were hollow, and there were lines on either side of her mouth that reminded her of her mother.
She leaned closer. Where the suit faded into her skin, it formed a finely detailed fractal, the sight of which struck a strange chord in her, as if she’d seen it before. The sense of déjà vu was so strong, for a moment she felt as if she were in another place and another time, and she had to shake herself and move back.
Kira thought she looked ghoulish—a corpse risen from the grave to haunt the living. Loathing filled her, and she averted her gaze, not wanting to see the evidence of the xeno’s effects. She was glad Alan had never seen her like this; how could he have liked or loved her? She imagined a look of disgust on his face, and it matched her own.
For a moment, tears filled her eyes, but Kira blinked them back, angry.
She put on the brimmed cap she’d dug out of a locker and turned up the collar of the jumpsuit to hide as much of the xeno as possible. Then: “Display on. Start recording.” The screen lit up, and a yellow light appeared next to the camera in the bezel.
“Hi, Mom. Dad. Isthah … I don’t know when you’ll see this. I don’t know if you ever will, but I hope you do. Things haven’t gone too well here. I can’t tell you the details, not without getting you in trouble with the League, but Alan is dead. Also, Fizel and Yugo and Ivanova and Seppo.”
Kira had to look away for a moment before she could continue. “My shuttle is damaged, and I don’t know if I’m going to make it back to Sixty-One Cygni, so if I don’t: Mom, Dad, I have you listed as my beneficiaries. You’ll find the info attached to this message.
“Also, I know this might sound strange, but I need you to trust me. You have to prepare. You have to really prepare. There’s a storm coming, and it’s going to be a bad one. Worse than ’thirty-seven.” They’d understand. The joke had always been that only the apocalypse could be worse than the storm that year. “Last thing: I don’t want the three of you to get depressed because of me. Especially you, Mom. I know you. Stop it. Don’t just stay at home moping. That goes for all of you. Get out. Smile. Live. For my sake, as well as your own. Please, promise me that you will.”
Kira paused and then nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry for putting you through this. I wish I’d returned home to see you before this trip.… Love you.”
She tapped the Stop button.
For a few minutes, she sat and did nothing, just stared at the blank screen. Then she forced herself to record a message for Sam, Alan’s brother. Since she couldn’t tell the truth about the xeno, she blamed his death on an accident at the base.
By the end, Kira found herself crying again. She didn’t try to stop the tears. So much had happened in the past few days, it was a relief to let go, if only for a short while.
On her finger, she felt a phantom weight where the ring Alan had given her should have been. Its absence only worsened the flow of tears.
Her turmoil left the fibers restless beneath the jumpsuit, bead-like bumps forming along her arms and legs and across her upper back. She snarled and slapped the back of her hand, and the beads subsided.
Once she regained her composure, she made similar recordings for the rest of her dead teammates. She didn’t know their families—she didn’t even know if some of them had families—but Kira still felt it was necessary. She owed it to them. They’d been her friends … and she’d killed them.
The last recording was no easier than the first. Afterward, Kira had Ando send the messages, and then she closed her eyes, drained, exhausted. She could feel the suit’s presence in her mind—a subtle pressure that had appeared sometime during their escape from the Extenuating Circumstances—but she sensed no hint of thought or intent from it. Still, she had no doubt: the xeno was aware. And it was watching.
…
A burst of static sounded in the speakers.
Kira started and realized she must have nodded off. A voice was speaking: Orso. “—do you read? Over. Repeat, do you read, Navárez? Over.”
“I hear you,” she said. “Over.”
“We’re just refueling the drop shuttle. We’ll be blasting off this forsaken rock soon as our tanks are full. Rendezvous with the Valkyrie in fourteen minutes.”
“I’ll be ready,” she said.
“Roger that. Over.”
The time passed quickly. Kira watched through the shuttle’s rear-facing cameras as a shining dot rose from the surface of Adrasteia and arced toward the Valkyrie. As it neared, the familiar shape of the drop shuttle came into view.
“I can see them,” she reported. “No signs of trouble.”
“That’s good,” said Tschetter.
The drop shuttle came up alongside the Valkyrie, and the two vessels fired their RCS thrusters as they gently mated, airlock to airlock. A faint shudder passed through the Valkyrie’s frame.
“Docking maneuver successfully completed,” said Ando. He sounded entirely too cheery for Kira’s taste.