“CYRA.” TEKA RAISED AN eyebrow at me outside the ship’s little bathroom when I got up for my shift. I was dressed only in underwear and my sweater from the day before. I avoided her eyes as I searched the ship’s storage room for a spare mechanic’s uniform. We were all running out of clothes. Hopefully they would provide for us on Ogra.
Teka cleared her throat. She was leaning against the wall, arms folded, a plain black eye patch covering her missing eye.
“I don’t have to worry about little Kereseth-Noavek spawn running around someday, do I?” She yawned. “Because I really don’t want to.”
“No,” I said with a snort. “Like I’d take that risk.”
“Never?” She frowned a little. “There’s this thing called ‘contraception,’ you know.”
I shook my head. “Nothing is certain.”
The little mocking expression she always wore when she was looking at me faded, leaving her serious.
“My currentgift,” I explained, holding up a hand to show her the shadows that curled around my knuckles, stinging me, “is an instrument of torture. You think I would risk inflicting that torture on something growing inside me? Even if it’s a very limited risk?” I shook my head. “No.”
She nodded. “That’s very decent of you.”
I added, “It’s not like . . . that is the only thing you can do with someone, anyway.”
She brought her hands up to her face, groaning.
“I did not want any information that specific!” she said, voice muffled.
“Then don’t ask probing questions, genius.”
I found a mechanic’s jumpsuit buried under a stack of towels, and stood to hold it up to my body. The legs were too long, so I would have to roll them, but it would have to do. I dove back into the pile to look for underwear.
“How long until we get to Ogra?” I said. “Because we’re going to run out of food pretty soon, you know.”
“Food and toilet paper. The recycled water is starting to smell weird, too,” Teka agreed. “I think we’ll make it, without too much snacking. A few days.”
“This ship’s upgrades are pretty brilliant,” I said. I found a pair of too-big underwear wedged into a corner of one of the shelves, and clutched the ball of clothes to my chest as pain burned across my back. “You did them all?”
“Jorek helped,” she said. Her face fell a little. “Not sure where he is right now. He was supposed to send a message from Voa once he made sure his mother was safe.”
I didn’t know Jorek well, just that he was a more virtuous soul than his father had been and was, apparently, a renegade. So I didn’t try to reassure her. My words would have been empty.
“We’ll find out about a lot of things when we get to Ogra,” I said. “Jorek’s status, among them.”
“Yeah.” Teka shrugged. “Get to the nav deck, Noavek, your break is over.”
The next few days passed in a haze. I spent most of the time sleeping, tucked in the galley near the sink, or sitting up in the first officer’s chair while Akos took his shift. Our surroundings seemed designed to drive us all mad, they yielded so little of interest. The sky was dark and, without stars, planets, or drifting ships to break it up, completely flat. I often had to check the nav map to make sure we hadn’t stalled.
I shared most of my waking time—when not in the captain’s chair—with Teka, trying to distract myself from my currentgift. She taught me a game she usually played with multicolored stones, though we used handfuls of beans from the galley and drew dots on them, to tell them apart. We spent most of the time arguing over which beans were which, but I came to see that bickering was a sign of friendship with Teka, and mostly didn’t mind it, as long as no one stormed out. Akos sometimes joined us before going to sleep, sitting too close to me and tucking his nose into my hair when he thought Teka wouldn’t notice. She always did.
My nights I spent huddled together with Akos, when I could, and finding new places to kiss. Our first fumbles at intimacy had been full of awkward laughter and uncomfortable squirming—I was learning to touch another person, as well as to touch him, in particular, and it was difficult to learn everything at once. But we were both happy to practice. Despite his constant nightmares—he didn’t wake screaming, but he often woke with a start, a sheen of sweat on his brow—and my lingering grief for the brother who had been twisted into a monster, we found snatches of happiness together, built largely on ignoring everything around us. It worked well.
It worked well, that was, until Ogra came into view.
“Why,” Teka said, staring at the black hole of a planet we were headed toward, “would anyone ever settle here?”
Akos laughed. “You could say the same about Thuvhe.”
“Don’t call it that when we land,” I said, cocking an eyebrow. “It’s ‘Urek’ or nothing.”
“Right.”
Urek meant “empty,” but said with reverence, not like an insult. Empty, to us, meant possibility; it meant freedom.
Ogra had come into sight as a small, dark gap in the stars ahead, and then the gap had turned into a hole, like a stray ember burned through fabric. And now it loomed darkly above the nav deck, devouring every fragment of light in its vicinity. I wondered how the first settlers had even known it was a planet. It looked more like a yawn.
“I take it it’s not an easy landing,” Akos said.
“No.” Teka laughed. “No, it’s not. The only way to get through it without getting ripped to shreds is to completely disable the ship’s power and free-fall. Then I have to reactivate the ship’s power before we all liquify on impact.” She brought her hands together with a smack. “So we all need to strap in and say a prayer, or whatever makes you feel lucky.”
Akos looked paler than usual. I laughed.
Sifa came up behind us, clutching a book to her stomach. There were few books aboard the ship—what use would they have had?—but those she had been able to rummage, she had brought to Eijeh one by one, along with his food. Akos didn’t ask about him, and neither did I. I assumed his status was unchanged, and that the worst parts of my brother lived on in him. I needed no further updates.
“Luck,” Sifa said, “is simply a construct to make people believe they are in control of some aspect of their destinies.”
Teka appeared to consider this, but Akos just rolled his eyes.
“Or maybe it’s just a word for what fate looks like to the rest of us,” I said to her. I was the only one willing to argue with Sifa—Teka was too reverent, and Akos, too dismissive. “You’ve forgotten what it’s like to stare at the future from this angle instead of your own.”
Sifa smirked at me. She smirked at me often. “Perhaps you are correct.”
“Everybody strap in,” Teka said. “Oracle, I need you in the first officer’s chair. You know the most about flying.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Currentgifts go haywire on Ogra,” Teka said to me. “We’re not sure how yours will do, so you sit in the back. Keep the Kereseth boys in line.”
Sifa had escorted Eijeh to a landing seat already. He was strapped in and staring at the floor. I sighed, and made my way down to the main deck. Akos and I sat across from Eijeh, and I pulled the straps across my chest and lap. Akos fumbled with his own, but I didn’t help him—he knew how to do it, he just needed to practice.
I watched Teka and Sifa as they prepared for landing, poking buttons and flicking switches. It seemed routine for Teka. That was reassuring, at least. I didn’t want to free-fall through a hostile atmosphere with a captain who was panicking.
“Here we go!” Teka shouted, and with only that warning, all the lights in the ship switched off. The engine stopped its whirring and humming. Dark atmosphere struck the nav window like a wave of Pithar rain, and for a few long moments I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything. I wanted to scream.
Ogra’s gravity caught us, and it was worse, much worse than feeling nothing. My stomach and my body felt suddenly separate, one floating up and the other pulling hard to the ground. The craft shuddered, metal plates squeaking against their screws, the steps to the nav deck rattling. My teeth clacked together. It was still too dark to see anything, even the currentshadows that twisted around my arms.
Next to me, Akos let out a litany of curses under his breath, in three languages. I couldn’t speak. My flesh weighed too heavily on my bones.
A slamming sound, then, and the engine whirred again. Before the lights turned on, though, the planet lit up beneath us. It was still dark—neither sun nor currentstream could possibly penetrate Ogra’s atmosphere—but it was dotted with light, veined with it. The ship’s control panel glowed, and the horrible, heavy falling sensation disappeared as the ship moved forward instead of down, down, down.
And then, hot and sharp and strong: pain.