Chapter 96

Chapter Ninety-Six

Wind shook the trees in the twilight gray. The branches quivered rather than shaking, and the trunks didn’t sway at all, at least not enough that Connor could see them move. That might explain the whispery scratching that apparently stood in for the rattle of leaves.

Boots thudded against the top of the airlock ramp, bringing him around.

Vicente dabbed his bare chest with a towel, his muscles rippling beneath his coppery skin. “Water still tastes funny, Boss.”

Connor exhaled until his lungs were clear of the foul air. “I’ll check the shower head filters.”

Clomp-clomp-clomp.

The ramp shook under the heavy weapons expert’s weight. “Almost cool out here, huh?”

“A storm’s coming.”

“Yeah.” The big man adjusted his cargo shorts, which he proudly told everyone were fashioned after the ancient Mexican flag: right leg green, crotch white, left leg red.

“You know something I don’t?”

“Nah.” Vicente settled next to Connor, eyes locked on the wet towel. “What you did out there, standing up to her: That was big.”

“Everyone gets a last hurrah.”

Vicente snorted, then when Connor didn’t smile stopped. “She fire you, Boss?”

“Sort of. She won’t be picking up my option.”

“Now isn’t that something.”

“I think it was inevitable. Ever since things started going bad—”

“You mean all that money she wasted before that Litvinenko mission?”

“Well, the doctor dying, for sure.”

“Wouldn’t’ve been a thing if she hadn’t blown all that money and left us without options.”

“We needed repairs and resupply.” And, Connor thought, I signed off on the spend, too. That makes it partly my fault.

“Sure. But she overpaid like I’ve never seen. Then we get stuck with this.”

“I had a good run.”

The big man rolled his shoulders. “I kinda liked being a Devil, y’know? It was nice being unique. People respected it.”

Connor didn’t have the heart to mention the devil patch Selen had taken.

Someone cleared their throat at the top of the ramp—feminine and soft.

He turned, saw Elise standing just inside the airlock, head bowed. She’d cleaned up as well. Water beads dangled from the ends of her hair.

She waved for him to come up, then disappeared into the airlock.

More good news, Connor thought. He gently punched the big man in the shoulder. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Sure, Boss.”

Elise was in the cargo bay, head down. “The recovery process failed.”

“Failed?” Connor hated being right. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. Everything was going well, but when I checked on the progress after I showered, the process had just…died. And it deleted all the work.”

“That’s crazy.” But it also sounded like what Gregor and Lem had said.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, it shouldn’t even be possible.”

“Can you re-start?”

“I already did. But that’s a lot of time and processing power gone to waste.”

“What was it Gregor told me once? ‘The power otherwise goes unused, so use it.’

She chuckled, but she didn’t look up at Connor. “I’m sorry she died.”

“Martienne?”

“Your pilot, right?”

“She was special.”

“Our pilot was used to big ships. Not so much a good pilot as careful.”

Connor tried to imagine piloting the large ship the archaeologists had come in on. “I’m surprised you brought that thing into atmosphere.”

“We didn’t have room for a decent shuttle, and Dr. Chong wasn’t about lose time to multiple shuttle runs down to the planet.”

“That took some skill to land.”

The archaeologist finally relaxed a little. “Any landing you can walk away from…”

“Right.” Connor shoved his hands in his pockets. “I need to clean up now that everyone’s had a chance to.”

“Oh…” She moved out of the center of the walkway.

He held a hand up. “I didn’t mean you had to move. But I had a question.”

“A-All right.”

“Before those bugs attacked, I called for you. You didn’t show up.”

“Did you?”

“Everyone else heard me, and they were in helmets.”

“Don’t those have radios?”

“I didn’t use the radio.” Or at least he couldn’t remember using it. “Where were you?”

“I’d gone off to get the feel of the gun. I qualified on it, but—”

“You can’t go wandering off alone. That puts everyone else in danger.”

“O-Okay.” Her shoulders sank. “I can show you.”

“What?”

“Your helmets have an integrated combat system, right? I’ve seen the HUDs—the heads-up displays?”

“They do.”

“I can pull that data down and show you where I was.”

“I can’t help with that.”

“Your corrupt profile. I know. I don’t need it. Any helmet will do.”

“I know this is going to sound morbid, but the situation is desperate. I can clean up and repair Martienne’s armor. A few adjustments, and it should fit you.”

Elise blushed. “It didn’t do her much good.”

“It saved my life more than once. It’s worth the trouble.”

She winced.

He did his best to shrink in on himself, remove any threat. “Just think about it.”

“I will.”

The passageways were empty, but a few people had the hatches to their cabins open. Kalpana stopped drying her hair long enough to nod at him as he passed. The Moon twins waved.

In the bathroom, he set his toiletries down on a shelf and disassembled the shower heads, checking the filters. They could use some cleaning but weren’t fouled. He would run disinfectant through the pipes while everyone slept.

Just as he stepped under the hot water, the bathroom door opened.

A moment later, Selen knocked on the door, her form obvious through the frosted glass. “Can we talk?”

Connor let the water run for a bit, then shut it off. “Sure.”

“What do you want to do about Martienne’s…body?” The catch in Selen’s voice made her sound vulnerable.

This was the captain he’d signed on with years ago.

He lathered up. “Burial?”

Selen was quiet until he turned the water on again. “I was thinking we could have a ceremony in orbit.”

“Okay.” He had to shout to be heard over the water, which did taste funny.

When he was done, she handed his towel to him. It felt awkward, her in her little sleeping outfit, him in nothing. The power dynamic was so twisted now he didn’t know what to expect, but she stepped back and kept her eyes locked on his.

Then she squeezed them shut and wiped away a tear. “We can’t keep losing people.”

“I know.” He’d said that for a while now.

“They’re my family, but this job…we leave, and we fail the dead.”

He pulled his shorts on and thought about Toshiko. “That’s the sunk cost fallacy.”

“It’s not. I’m worried about the team, both now and the future.”

“But you’re arguing over staying the course because changing direction would concede defeat. That’s sunk cost rationalizing.”

Selen poked him in the chest with a finger, then pressed her hand against him. “Don’t do this, Connor. Don’t make me the problem. Think it through. Everything that’s gone wrong—it’s Mosiah and Drew and Elise.”

The bathroom door opened, and Aubriella shuffled a few steps, then saw the two of them. “Oh! Sorry, ma’am!” She hurried out.

Connor pulled his T-shirt on. “Selen, I warned you to do some repair work with the team. You didn’t, and now you’ve got problems.”

“Because you turned them against—”

“I didn’t. Or if you want to say I did, then undo that. Whatever.” He threw his towel over his shoulder and gathered his things. “The point is, it’s your responsibility to salvage what you can. If you don’t, you won’t have a team to throw away on this pointless mission.”

He squeezed past her, sandals flapping on the floor.

Maybe he’d put a dagger in the heart of his career. So long as it saved the team, he didn’t care.