“Her lab was still active out on Eratos, including her family—”
“All right, I get it.” It was always about the celebrities. “But what do you want me to do? If they went missing in space, they could be anywhere. Get an astrophysicist to run some trajectories from their last known reporting location.”
“I already know where they went missing. Their last report was that they had to put in for emergency repairs at Hypatia.”
Asala went cold. “No.”
Ekrem didn’t seem to hear her. “They were going to do a flyby of Hypatia to pick up enough momentum to skip them past Gan-De and all the way to Khayyam. But instead they had to make a stop. Now, I’ve been conferring with orbital piloting experts about this—it’s not a lost cause, not yet. In a couple weeks the seventeen-year dead stretch ends again, and we’ll get our few-month chance when it’s possible to jump orbits from Hypatia and easily hit Gan-De. So if they were able to get their repairs done on the ground, they could potentially make it to Gan-De without it taking years and years, and then from Gan-De, the Inner Ring is a lot more accessible. Maybe not in time for primary run-offs, but they’d still arrive before . . .”
The seventeen-year planetary cycle. Ekrem talked like it was a distant academic truth. To him, it was.
To Asala, it had been the promise of an eternity alone, when almost thirty-four years ago her clan had scraped and bribed to get her a dirty berth on a ship to Gan-De. Curled alone in her bunk, with faceless, desperate masses of humanity crammed in around her, knowing that thanks to the practicalities of orbital mechanics it would be seventeen years before anyone could follow . . . seventeen years. A lifetime. And by then nobody could have followed her anyway, because Gan-De had long decided it had had enough of Hypatian refugees.
As far as Asala knew, everyone in her clan was dead. By the time she could afford to send a message back, the only reply had been echoing silence, and that was an answer all on its own. Hypatia had been a harsh place even before the creeping cold had turned dire, whole towns freezing to death in the night when the weather snapped wrong.
Desperate Hypatians still ran from their withering planet every seventeen years, unwilling to die by staying in place. But with Gan-De closed, for many it meant replacing a cold death on the planet with an even colder one in space, the refugees’ ragtag scrap ships disintegrating while their unlucky passengers begged for a sliver of room in an overcrowded orbital refugee camp. If they got in, they won the right to die more gradually.
And now this upcoming opening would be the last time anyone ever fled Hypatia. The cold reality of the temperature projections spelled that out in black and white. Nobody on Khayyam talked of it—any whisper of Hypatia’s impending demise, and expressions turned uncomfortable, eyes darting away. Ekrem would probably still blithely reassure everyone he could send a souped-up rescue ship until long after there was no one left to rescue. All while Khayyam’s corporations kept cheerfully harvesting the sun’s hydrogen, because the damage was done, so it wasn’t making a difference anymore, was it? Besides, they needed that hydrogen, for water manufacturing, for fusion power . . .
Ekrem was still talking. “. . . And I’m going to send my kid with you. My youngest, do you remember them? Not that I don’t trust you, of course”—he laughed nervously—“but Niko could use some real-world experience. Their apprenticeship’s been with a data analysis team over at Domestic Intelligence, and they’re raring to get some fieldwork.” He stepped over to the wall and tapped an interface panel. “Send Niko in, would you?”
“Ekrem, you’re not hearing me.” Asala tried to keep her voice even. “I said—”
She didn’t get the chance to finish before a twentysomething kid whisked into the room, so eagerly they must’ve been waiting just outside the door. Niko’s round face beamed beneath a haircut that strove for the latest in androgynous layered-shag fashion, and they stood with the ramrod straightness of someone concentrating far too hard on how to make a good impression.
“Niko!” crowed the president. “You remember Asala? I think you met her when you were just crawling, or something like that. Remember, Asala?”
Asala didn’t. Ekrem often talked like this, as if they’d been at each other’s family gatherings every solstice and festival, instead of a grunt and an officer who’d bred some respect long ago in a different life. But she nodded anyway.
“It’s nice to meet you, Asala. Again,” Niko said, breaking into an even broader smile. “I can’t tell you how excited I am to work with—”
“Ekrem.” Asala raised her voice to break in. “Ekrem, listen to me. I said no. I’m not doing it. Find someone else to track down your missing ship.”
Ekrem’s face went long and surprised, like she’d just told him she was planning to vote for his opponent.
“But what about the Vela?” Niko blurted. “You must want to save the refugees; you’re from Hypa—”
“Good day,” Asala said, with an iciness that could have rivaled her homeworld. It might not be strictly polite to walk out on the president of Khayyam and his youngest child, but it was better than strangling said child, which probably would have gotten her in even more trouble than if she’d punched the leader of Gan-De earlier.
She was not going back to Hypatia.
• • •
Niko had never imagined getting anywhere near General Cynwrig during her stay on Khayyam. Other than maybe as part of a protest, if such a thing wouldn’t have spun Father right out of his orbit. Or, well, the occasional fantasy about hacking Cynwrig’s computers into answering every command with dancing pink ponies and statistics about refugees.
How anyone could ignore the situation on the Outer Ring was beyond Niko. And how the general could be so heartless—there was plenty of room on Gan-De! Not like Niko’s own home planet couldn’t do loads better too, but few refugees could make it this far in-system on their own. The distance conveniently allowed educated Khayyami to wash their hands of all those deaths, and all with disgusting gentility. But Gan-De was worse: so many countless Hypatian refugees at their door, stuck in orbit or in transit, in camps, and yet “Gan-De for Gandesians” was still somehow going strong.
It made Niko furious.
Yet here they were, trotting willingly toward the guest quarters of none other than General Cynwrig herself. Because that was where Asala was. Asala, whom Niko had managed to offend the very first time they’d opened their mouth.
You should have known better. She’s diaspora; it’s probably painful! You should have been more sensitive!
The Gandesian and Khayyami guards at the door to the general’s suite took a bloodscan before questioning Niko closely about their purpose and whether Asala was expecting them. Then one guard went inside, presumably to check with Asala, but Niko wasn’t worried. People rarely refused the president’s youngest child a meeting, even if they wanted to.
And Asala’s face when Niko was ushered in showed she’d really, really wanted to.
Oh dear. How to turn this around?
At least General Cynwrig herself wasn’t present—she must be in the inner rooms to the suite, with Asala alone in the anteroom as her bodyguard. Thank heavens.
“I told your father no,” Asala said flatly as soon as the guards had gone back into the hall and the door had shut behind them. “There’s nothing to discuss.”
“I think there is, though,” Niko pressed. “I know you probably feel like someone else can just go instead, but you didn’t hear Father when he was briefing me—he says there’s no one as good as you. You could be the difference between those poor people dying or—”
“That’s not my problem.” Asala turned away.
“If it’s not you, I don’t go either!” Niko accidentally said it too loud, and pressed their lips