46.0

Okay,” Ravi said. He could barely squeeze the words out. “I guess we know what happened, so we have to hope there were survivors somehow and that Chandra or Bohr can pick them up. Our beacons are on, so there’s still a decent chance of—”

“Stop,” Boz snapped. “Just . . . stop.”

“I’m serious. We could—”

The laughter in his helmet was bitter.

“No one could have survived whatever that was, and you know it. You know it, Ravi. That bitch-dragon, Fafnir? She won. She fried Archie. It’s all gone. All of it.”

The lump in his throat made speaking difficult.

“Bohr and Chandra are still out there.”

“So? How long before their lifeboats get here, even assuming they’re prepared to risk it? Twenty hours? Thirty? And how much air do we have? You’re the engineer, cuz. Do the math.”

Ravi stared at the unmoving stars, knowing Boz was right. Unwilling to admit it, even to himself.

“Yeah, well. I’m not giving up just yet. You never know.”

“News flash, Ravi. You’re a midshipman. You’re not a real officer. Enough with trying to keep up morale. Let’s just face facts and admit that we’re sarded.”

Coming from Boz, the words stung. The truth of them stung. He choked back a sob—whether of anger or fear or frustration, he was too spun around to tell.

“No point giving up until we have to,” Lisette said quietly. Her voice gentled its way through Ravi’s helmet—and Boz’s too, he guessed. “We should play this through till the end. By the book.”

“You mean the delayed-rescue protocol?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s not like we’ve got anything better to do, is it?” Boz said. She sounded more like her usual self. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to go out on a real high.”

Ravi smiled despite himself.

People had been stranded in space, like, forever. Practices had evolved, primarily the use of drugs to lower heartrate and oxygen consumption. It would buy a little extra time. But even then, it wouldn’t be enough, not with Bohr and Chandra being so far away. It was not a coincidence that those same drugs, when the time came, would bring about a merciful, pain-free end.

“Better get on with it,” Lisette said. Her voice was determinedly cheerful. “See you in a few hours. Or not.”

“Maybe someone will find us one day,” Boz said. “In a couple of billion years.”

“In a totally different galaxy,” Ravi said, smiling. He pulled back a tab on the left sleeve of his suit.

“We’ll be famous,” Boz said. “A totally unknown lifeform, never before seen.”

Ravi reached past the tab and pressed down on the contact hiding beneath it.

“Rav?”

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t mean what I said about you not being a real officer. You’re . . . you’re the best. You know that, right?”

Tears pricked the corners of his eyes.

“Ditto.”

There was a small sting at the base of his spine.

“The stars look funny,” Lisette said. “I think they’re singing to us.”

“They’re beautiful,” Boz said dreamily. “I didn’t know they could hold hands.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Ravi began to say.

But he’d already forgotten why he’d started talking in the first place.

Some part of him understood that he was spaced out, that the drugs lowering his body temperature and slowing his breathing to save oxygen were playing tricks on his mind. The stars were not dancing and changing colors and burning oh so brightly in patterns no one had ever seen before. The running lights on Boz’s EMU were not pounding out dance music, and Lisette was not, was definitely not, flipping cartwheels across the Milky Way.

But it sure looked like it.

Was this what torpor was like? Was this why his dad had never learned to fly right? Why, after every guilty verdict, he’d march defiantly out of the ombudsman’s courtroom, whistling snatches of half-remembered songs? Because torpor was this much fun?

Someone was giggling inside his helmet.

Criminals on Archimedes did not get to sit around like Homeworld convicts, eating and drinking and breathing precious resources. They spent their captivity as close to death as possible, consuming as little as possible, with just enough consciousness to think about what they had done.

But if it was like this, why would you ever want to leave?

It wasn’t, though. He knew that. Had seen it. Dad would come back, after a week, or two, or thirty sols, and he would be . . . different. Hollowed out. Meaner. He’d bounce back after a couple of sols but never quite as high as before he’d fallen. Maybe, in the end, he’d been happy to get mulched. He’d whacked a lieutenant, a lieutenant, for Archie’s sake, with a chain. Knocked the man to the deck after being on the wrong end of one condescending insult too many. He was already rated Dead Weight. But mother and son were still shocked when the ombudsman refused to commute it.

The giggling in his helmet had stopped. Some weakling was crying instead.

The dancing stars were vanishing, one by one at first, and then by tens and twenties, eaten by an angry white dragon. It roared and screamed across the universe, the tattoos on its scaled body rippling with fury. It was turning on him now, opening one of its many mouths. He would be a very small dessert after so many suns. The thought made the person living inside his helmet laugh hysterically.

One of the tattoos steadied for a moment, allowing him to read it:

isv-1-lb-03

Which made no sense at all. It was the last thing he saw before the dragon swallowed him whole.