In the distance, she heard the heavy bulkhead creaking as it lurched closed. She wondered if it would hold; as far as she knew they had never used it before.
“Nine.”
There was a comforting thunk as the bulkhead locked into place, and she took a breath.
“Eight.”
She realized, belatedly, that along with her infirmary, the gymnasium was on the wrong side of the bulkhead as well. It was going to be a very long trip back.
“Seven.”
So many missions she had been part of, in her years with the Corps. So many causes, so many battles.
“Six.”
So many missed opportunities. So many mistakes.
“Five.”
But not this time. This time … they had been soon enough.
“Four.”
This time, they were right.
“Three.”
She thought of Meg, her daughter, her beautiful young woman, and what she looked like with the sun silvering her wild, dark curls. She thought of Greg, still mostly a boy, and the twinkle in his eyes when he was trying not to laugh.
“Two.”
She thought of Tom, her husband, her soul mate, who watched her leave time after time and still waited for her, patient and constant and full of love. Sometimes she missed him more than life.
This time, when she got home, maybe she’d stay a little longer.
One.
Volhynia
Another round, please,” Elena said to the bartender.
The man’s expression did not change, but she thought he looked at her a moment longer than necessary. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him. She knew what he was thinking; she was thinking it herself: They’ve had too much to drink already.
Her eyes caught a familiar face in the mirror behind the bar, and she turned, singling out Jessica. Her friend was in her element: surrounded by rowdy, cheerful strangers, red curls bouncing as she laughed and joked with the crowd. Jess thrived as the center of attention. Elena wished she had more of Jess’s confidence, wondering again why she had agreed to spend her meager shore leave in a crowded place where her dearest wish was to be ignored.
Because it was better than staying home.
She had to admit that Jessica had done her research. Volhynia’s capital city of Novanadyr was crowded with tourist traps, but Byko’s, despite the crowd and the noise level, had an air of sophistication. The bar served not just the flavored beers so often favored by tourists, but also a wide variety of subtler brews the colony did not export. Indeed, there were a number of local patrons, and even one man in a PSI uniform, drinking quietly at a corner of the bar, as serene as if he were the only customer in the place.
There were plenty in the crowd who were loud and stupid at this hour, but the atmosphere seemed upbeat, the music was bluesy and seductive, and the smell of fresh hops filled the air. Elena had spent interminable evenings in environments far less inviting, but the environment hadn’t put the knots in her neck. No, it was not the fault of the bar that her nerves were so frayed.
Sitting here, amid the amiable chaos, she found herself wondering for a fleeting moment if she shouldn’t have taken Danny up on his invitation to spend the evening with him instead. He had broached the subject just that morning, approaching her nervously after breakfast, palpably relieved when she had agreed to listen.
“There’s this scientists’ bar,” he told her. “Eggheads and weak drinks. Quiet, they say, although they’ll rip you off like everywhere else in the Fifth Sector.” She had laughed at that, and almost said yes. But she did turn him down, albeit gently and with some regret. Now she thought he would at least have been someone she knew.
The locals, of course, had come out in force when Galileo had taken up orbit. Jessica hadn’t warned her, but Elena realized she had been foolish not to figure out for herself what would happen. Volhynia was a well-populated colony world—there were nearly four thousand in Novanadyr alone—but there was nothing like new blood.
They knew we’d be here, Elena thought irritably. And they’re hunting us like wildebeest.
Not that it didn’t go both ways. Most Corps starships had downtime every twenty days, sometimes more often, but Galileo’s crew had been six weeks without formal shore leave. Ordinarily they encountered something to shake up their fine-tuned routine—diplomatic crisis, terraformer malfunction, crop failure—but the Fifth Sector was largely prosperous and free of conflict. Six weeks of peace, it turned out, was mind-numbingly dull. Elena could not blame her crewmates for seeking out something—anything—that was new. Had she been a different sort of person she might have enjoyed this place with her friends, instead of wishing herself away from them, wandering her starship’s wide, empty halls.
She slipped a finger behind her ear to query her comm for the time: 2350. Too early and too late. At midnight the city’s power grid would be shut down for almost a full hour as the nearby neutron star swept the planet with an electromagnetic pulse. She would never make it to the spaceport in time, and she doubted the dispatcher would take kindly to her loitering until the lights came back on. Her eyes swept the crowd again, and she wondered if the dispatcher was open to bribes.
She had almost resolved to head for the spaceport and plead her case when she heard a step behind her. She closed her eyes, mustered a polite smile, and turned.
He was taller than she was, with straw-yellow hair and an indisputably nice smile, and he bore a heart-wrenching resemblance to Danny. Damn Jessica—what had she been thinking, sending this one over? She wasn’t usually so oblivious.
“Can I help you with the drinks?” the man asked.
He had a nice voice, a little dark and grainy, with that broad accent they spoke with here. He was handsome, friendly, not entirely pie-eyed—and he left her cold. As she looked at him, thinking of what to say, she realized she was done pretending to have fun.
The regret in the smile she gave him was genuine. “You’re very kind,” she said, willing all the flip sarcasm out of her voice. “Actually, you can take them back to the table for me. I’m afraid I’m not staying.”
This news took a moment to penetrate. “You sure?” he said, still genial, still easygoing. “Your friend, there, she seems to think you could use some fun and games. Doesn’t have to, you know, be anything.”
He was nice, this one. Under different circumstances, with more time … he would still look like Danny. “My friend,” she told him, “has a good heart and a deaf ear. If you think of it, please tell her to enjoy herself without being concerned for me.”
He flashed her that smile again. “If you change your mind …” he offered, then moved away, and she turned back to the bar to settle the tab. She was struggling to remember how much one was supposed to tip in Novanadyr when a voice came from the corner of the bar.
“You were very kind to him,” said the man in the PSI uniform.
He had not moved since they had arrived, seated comfortably on his own, nursing something served in a small, smoke-colored glass. He was dressed in black from head