Niya
There’s absolutely no room at all in this transport raft. Not for passengers, that is. There’s plenty of room for cargo, but even though the cargo was unloaded yesterday and Aeryen wants to explore every inch of the ship, he has to stop now, since we have to be secured in our seats for the flight.
Aeryen is sitting right next to Joston. I have to remind myself to breathe, since the sight of the two of them together is heartbreaking. Aeryen’s real father rejected him and he’s never going to have a substitute. This is the closest he’ll ever come. I want him to enjoy the experience.
And to enjoy his time with Joston.
Joston taps on Aeryen’s helmet and leans over toward him. He’s turned off the open channel and I hear Aeryen turn off his as well. A moment later, the channels are open again. My heart’s racing.
“Marinax transport three, requesting permission for takeoff,” Aeryen says in his best grown-up voice.
Joston isn’t really going to let Aeryen handle the departure, is he?
Then I see Joston nodding as the controller gives the all clear—and I watch as Joston’s hands move with deft swiftness over the controls. It’s obvious that he doesn’t just know what he’s doing, he loves it.
As we get set for the liftoff, he shows Aeryen something, and Aeryen says, “Really?”
“Really,” Joston says, taking his hands from the controls.
I take a very deep breath and before I have a chance to protest or build up my trepidation into out-and-out terror, we’re in the air and doing a wobbly off-center loop, courtesy of Aeryen, who’s laughing so hard I can’t help but laugh too, even if my laughter is tinged with horror.
But everything is okay.
“Good work,” Joston says. “You’ll be able to do that yourself next time.”
“Yes!” says Aeryen, raising his fists in the air.
Joston takes over the controls, my horror level recedes a few degrees, and I enjoy the ride, which, as I suspected it would be, is twice as fast as it might be.
I think about how Joston said we were going to go slow last night. But last night is over. It’s today and he’s back to his speed-addicted self.
And jollying along his new ally in all things fast: my son, Aeryen.
I wonder what Chlo will say when I tell her what I have in mind. But I stop myself from wondering more. Because so far, Aeryen hasn’t suspected a thing.
It’s beautiful here in Engra’s upper atmosphere, and as we break through to the other side, the starlight dazzles me. Even though I’m a flight controller, I’ve never been off Engra.
“Wow!” says Aeryen. Then he says it again about a hundred times, echoing what I’m thinking and feeling. Wow. My spirit soars with the transport raft and I stop myself from the tears I feel forming in the back of my eyes.
This is just today, I tell myself. A moment. Nothing more. Like everything, it will end.
Luckily, Aeryen is so mesmerized by the panorama of the cosmos and the stunning form of the Marinax, a magnificent Orquen-class stator, that he forgets that he wanted to dock the raft.
As we approach the ship, all formalities are dropped.
“Joston Lynar, reporting for duty, you bastards,” he says to whoever’s on duty at the Marinax docking bay.
“Nightbird here,” says my friend Chlo. “No need to mention duty, Joston. No one here thinks you know anything about that subject.”
“The hell I do,” says Joston, who swerves away from the landing bay just as it comes into our line of sight, flips the raft over, and makes two terrifying turns around the Marinax. Whether he’s showing off or if this is his usual modus operandi, I’m not sure, but these antics are giving Aeryen the best day he’s ever had, even if I myself feel like puking.
A moment later we glide just a little too quickly into the landing bay and stop just a little too abruptly.
“Wow!” says Aeryen for the zillionth time. “Can we do that again?”
“No!” I say before Joston has a chance to say anything else.
“You’re wanted in the engine room, you fool,” says Chlo. “Now.”
“But we were going to see the ship!” says Aeryen.
We climb out of the transport raft, pull off our helmets, and I can’t stop myself. I do cry. Because right here in front of me is my friend Chlo Nightbird, her mop of orange hair its usual mess, and she’s looking even more wonderful than she did the last time I saw her, the day she was exiled all those years ago.
“Chlo!” I say, and she’s crying too.
“Females,” Joston says, nodding to Aeryen.
“They’re impossible!” Aeryen says, and Chlo and I both start laughing.
“This can’t be Aeryen,” Chlo says.
“You’re Chlo?” Aeryen says, his eyes open way hugely wide. He’s heard a lot about Chlo, but he was a newborn the last time he saw her. “The Chlo who delivered me?”
Joston
“I’m that very Chlo,” says Nightbird to Aeryen, who’s staring at everything around him like he’s just found the Lost City of Zarmas and has made not just his place in intergalactic history, but his fortune as well.
“But you can’t be,” says Aeryen. “She’s been exiled,” he says in a whisper. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”
“Well, we’re here on the Marinax,” says Chlo, “so we’re not officially on Engra. I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to orbit.”
“This is Joston Lynar,” Aeryen says, introducing me to Chlo, who I’ve known for months.
“It is indeed,” Chlo says. “Are you two getting along?”
“He let me fly the raft!”
I wink at Chlo, who gets the message.
“How was that?” she says.
“I’m going to be a pilot!” says Aeryen.
Then I notice that Chlo and Niya have been holding hands since we got off the raft, that both of them are teary-eyed, and also I have to get to the engine room, so it’s time for my exit.
“Gotta go,” I say. “Aymee’s yelling for me.”
“I’m coming too!” says Aeryen, who is apparently in charge. If we go to the helm, will he take over from Zavl’yn? Probably.
“Aeryen,” says Niya. “You should stay here with us. Joston has to work.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “Aeryen can help.”
“You promised not to lie,” Aeryen says to me, his dead-serious persona rising to the fore.
“Actually, I didn’t,” I say. “You’re the one running the experiment.”
“What’s this all about?” says Chlo.
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” I say. “Right now, we have to get to the engine room. Ready, Cadet Redmor?”
“Ready, sir!” says Aeryen, already comfortable in his new role as commander-in-training.
He rushes off, down the wrong corridor, and I have to race after him, corral him, and take us on the right path to the engine room. There, Aymee, who looks like she’s going to deliver her and Nik’s baby in about ten seconds, is pointing at Cyrs, who’s shaking his head.
But he stops shaking it when he sees me.
“There’s your guy,” Cyrs says. “The only one who’d be crazy enough to listen to you.”
“Thanks for the praise,” I say to Cyrs, our cranky galaxy jumper. He’s working on the ship, but only so he can get to his destination. We picked him up on Gadnon—what a fucking hellish place, so hellish that it extinguished every thought of sex I’d had before we landed—and I expect he’s about to depart the Marinax. In fact, I thought he was going to get off here on Engra, but so far he hasn’t said a thing about it.
“Oh, Joston,” says Aymee. She puts her hand under her abdomen and sits down. “Thanks for coming back early.”
“I’m having lunch,” says Cyrs, who galumphs away.
“I brought help,” I say to Aymee. “Cadet Aeryen Redmor, meet Aymee Desryx, chief engineer of the Marinax.”
“Cadet Redmor,” Aymee says, and they shake hands. “What do you know about trafence boards?”
For the first time since I met him yesterday, the overconfident Aeryen looks like he’s met his match.
“I—” Aeryen considers the question with great care, frowns a bit, and then his face lights up. “Joston will show me!”
“That’s my boy,” I say.
Unthinking. Stupid. Careless.
After today, I’ll never see this kid again. But he’s so wrapped up in the excitement of being on the Marinax and having flown the raft, that he doesn’t even notice what I’ve said.
But Aymee did. I’m sure of it.
“Come on,” I say to Aeryen. “We have work to do.”
“Be careful,” Aymee says to me as I crouch down to inspect the trafence boards. Aymee would do this herself, but crouching has been out of the question for her for a couple of months now.
I look back up at Aymee for a moment before I get to work. She’s seen Aeryen’s wrists. I’m sure of it. As I look away, I think she may have winced. But Aymee’s not the wincing type. I must have imagined that.
“Be extra careful,” she says, and we both know she’s not referring to the trafence boards.