Greyson's Doom
Author: Tracy Cooper-Posey
Date: 2016-05-11 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Romance; Space Opera; Science Fiction Romance
Description: The AI declares Greyson is going to die and he must train his replacement. Captain Greyson Durant has been in the job for three months, the youngest captain to ever lead the Endurance, when he is assigned to mentor the even younger Emmaline Victore, who resents the disruption to her life and Grey, too…but the longevity of the Endurance depends on them finding a way to work together. Greyson’s Doom is the first book in a new, suspenseful and imaginative science fiction romance series by award-winning SFR author Tracy Cooper-Posey, set aboard the closed-system marathon-class vessel Endurance, a

Table of Contents

Title Page

About Greyson’s Doom

Praise for Tracy Cooper-Posey’s Science Fiction Romance

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

The next book in The Endurance series

About the Author

Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey

Copyright Information

About Greyson’s Doom

The AI declares Greyson is going to die and he must train his replacement.

Captain Greyson Durant has been in the job for three months, the youngest captain to ever lead the Endurance, when he is assigned to mentor the even younger Emmaline Victore, who resents the disruption to her life and Grey, too…but the longevity of the Endurance depends on them finding a way to work together.

Greyson’s Doom is the first book in a new, suspenseful and imaginative science fiction romance series by award-winning SFR author Tracy Cooper-Posey, set aboard the closed-system marathon-class vessel Endurance, a generation ship a thousand years from its destination. If you like the smart, romantic SF of authors like Linnea Sinclair and Anna Hackett, you will love Greyson’s Doom.

Dive into this thought-provoking new romance series today!
__

This book is part of the Endurance SFR series:

Book 0.5 5,001
Book 1.0 Greyson’s Doom
…and more to come!

A Science Fiction Romance Novel.

Praise for Tracy Cooper-Posey’s
Science Fiction Romance

I can't wait to see where this new world takes us!

I know Tracy is a great writer but I was not much into science fiction. Well, now I am!!

You come away from reading this book wishing it were real so that you could be traveling amongst the stars yourself.

The world building is spot on, and the different worlds described are so vivid and lush, it's like you're right there.

Like all of this author’s books, you can't go wrong. Amazing Author. Amazing Read.

The moment you start reading, you get sucked into the story and will not be able to put the book away that easily.

I'm not a huge sci-fi fan but now Tracy Cooper-Posey might have just turned me on to this genre.

Chapter One

Endurance Year 210

In the three months Grey had been captain of the Endurance, he had never seen Yuli genuinely upset, until now.

His chief of staff sat carefully in the empty seat next to Grey, moving like he’d taken a blow between the legs. It pulled Grey’s attention away from the game. The Dream Hawks were losing three-zero, anyway.

A scream went up, the siren blew and people pummeled on the side of the tank in ferocious delight.

Make that four-zero.

Grey looked at Yuli expectantly. The older man would spit it out sooner or later.

Yuli took his time. He stared at Grey, his gaze flickering over him as if he was measuring him up. It had been a while since Yuli had given him that assessing glance.

“What is it?” Grey asked. He kept his voice down. Everyone in the chairs around them were Bridge people—yet something that made Yuli look like he did was probably best kept between the two of them.

Yuli shook his head. “I…there was a message. From the head of Accouchement.”

Grey was delighted. “You’ve been assigned a child?” he asked. “But that’s wonderful!” At the same time, he was puzzled, too. Why did Yuli look as though this was a death sentence? He was only eighty. He had at least another forty years of active life. That was plenty of time to rear a child to Emergence.

Yuli shook his head. “The Vocation division.”

“You’ve been asked to mentor someone? It’s still good news,” Greyson pointed out.

“Not me, Captain,” Yuli said, his voice low. “You.”

Grey had wagered with Paulie Duke, his chief aide, on the outcome of the game and now the Hawks were being thrashed by the Bullets, the three bottles of classic Palatine cabernet he’d wagered were at sharp risk. Despite that, the outcome of the game and the game itself lost all its allure, between one heartbeat and the next.

Grey stared at Yuli. “Me?” he repeated. “But…that’s…impossible.”

Yuli shook his head, a small movement designed not to draw the attention of anyone around them. “I checked. That’s why the Accouchement Master spoke to me directly. He confirmed it. You’ve been assigned to mentor your replacement.”

Grey’s heart started to hammer. “There has to be a mistake,” he said, trying to keep his voice down. “I’ve had the job for three months.” He looked around. Everyone was still watching the game. “There’s only one captain on the Endurance, Yuli. If I’ve been assigned a child to mentor, it means the AI—the algorithms—think I’m going to need a replacement somewhere within six to ten years.”

“I’ve been through all this with the Master,” Yuli said quietly.

“No, you don’t get it!” Grey hissed furiously. “If you are asked to mentor a child, it merely means there is a replacement needed for personnel on the Bridge. It could be anyone. But there’s only one of me. If I have to train a replacement, it means I’m going to die in the next decade!”

Yuli nodded. There was a calmness about his lined features and faded blue eyes that said he had already accepted this.

But Grey wasn’t ready to accept it at all. “I’m twenty-two years old, Yuli! You’re telling me I’m going to die before I’m thirty-two?”

“You know how it works, sir,” Yuli said gently. “It’s based on sociology and statistics. Mistakes can be made.”

“When was the last time you remember a mistake like that being made? When was the last time a profession was overstaffed?”

Silence.

Grey could feel sweat prickling his back and his neck yet he was icy cold and his fingers were chilled. “Who is it?” he made himself ask. “Who is to be my doom-bringer?”

Yuli sighed. “Emmaline Victore.”

Grey searched through all the children he knew of about the right age. “Odd. I don’t know which child she is. I thought I had met all of them at least once.”

“You have,” Yuli said dryly. “She is the daughter of Anat Vicario and Jakub Emmetore. They’re both engineers.”

It still didn’t provide a memory of the girl. “Capitol district?” he asked, trying to narrow it down.

“Esquiline, actually,” Yuli replied. “Anat Vicario is a master.”

Grey shrugged. “There are dozens of masters in Engineering.”

“There are over a thousand engineers,” Yuli pointed out. “But Anat Vicario is one of the better ones, apparently. Anyway, I can have files pulled up, a profile of the girl—”

“Wait.” The mention of the Esquilino district had stirred a memory, an older one from when he had been a child himself. “Dark brown hair. Blue eyes. Skinny. She wears her hair in pigtails most of the time.” Grey had seen the child in the Aventine, her hand in her father’s as they shopped. Her father was a very big man, both in width and height. Grey recalled a pair of very large, dark blue eyes in a fragile face, eyes wide with fear, before she had ducked behind her father for shelter.

“That does sound like her,” Yuli said in agreement.

“She is to be our next captain?” Grey said, astonished. He wanted to protest once more that a mistake had been made. The child he remembered was so shy she couldn’t meet the eyes of another child. She was to be the supreme leader of the Endurance?

But he was bound by his own logic. The AIs that controlled quickening, accouchement and vocational assignments had not made a major mistake as far back as Grey could remember, which was only twenty-two years. Although even Yuli could not remember an error in assignments and he was considerably older.

It meant Emmaline Victore was to be the next captain and Grey’s own captaincy would become one of the shortest in the history of the Endurance.

Grey turned back to face the tank and pretended to watch the dismal game, his mind circling around the unpalatable fact of an early death, trying to adjust to it and failing miserably.

* * * * *

Emmie didn’t hear her parents’ suddenly loud voices at first. She was putting the final touches to a recipe for a different sort of silk, a softer kind. She was impatient to get it done and printed so she could see how it felt against her fingers. Already, her mind was conjuring up garment ideas that would work better with a softer silk. Shirts. Underwear…it was the most intriguing possibility even though it wasn’t something she could discuss even with her father. A scarf for her hair, perhaps. If the color was just right her mother could use it on the few occasions when she wore something other than her work clothes.

Her father’s hand on Emmie’s shoulder was unexpected and made her jump. She looked up, her heart racing.

“You didn’t even hear us, did you, Emmie-hun?” Jakub’s smile said he wasn’t upset about it, just amused.

She frowned, thinking back. “Sort of,” she confessed. “I was busy, sorry.”

“Take a break for a moment, Emm. Come on. We have news.”

“And chocolate,” her mother called out from the main room.

“I guess,” Emmie said with a small sigh.

“What were you doing, anyway?” Jakub asked curiously, dropping his voice so her mother wouldn’t hear. He didn’t look at the screen, even though she had it in privacy mode. It didn’t even occur to her he would try to look. He never had.

Because he had never tried to look, Emmie told him the truth. “A pattern variation on silk. I think it might actually work, this time.”

He glanced over his shoulder toward the door. He was a big man—big in size, height and also in heart. Despite that, her mother had him completely under her thumb. Emmie knew it as thoroughly as he did.

“As far as your mother gets to know, you’ve been working on the trigonometry problems due tomorrow, okay?” he told her softly.

“Okay.”

“Which you’re going to do first thing tomorrow morning, okay?”

She grinned. “Okay,” she repeated. Both of them knew she could finish them before breakfast if she really wanted to. She just didn’t really want to, most times. It was boring.

“Come on. Your mother is bursting to tell you.” He held out his hand.

Emmie let him pull her out of the chair and take her out to the main room.

She had always lived here, ever since she could remember. It was one of the bigger apartments in the better section of the Esquiline district. Her mother had explained that because of her job as a master engineer and because they had her, Emmie, they had been assigned bigger living quarters. Also because they had Emmie, the bigger quarters didn’t stir the resentment of others who lived in more cramped conditions. Emmie avoided mentioning the number of rooms they had when such conversations arose, which wasn’t often. There were only three other children around her age in the Esquiline and she didn’t get to meet them very often. Besides, they probably lived in bigger quarters, too.

The room was comfortable, with soft couches and muted, warm colors on the walls and fascia. The only bright light was over the counter where her mother was stirring mugs of hot chocolate. She looked up and smiled at Emmie and pushed two of the cups toward them.

Anat Vicario was a tall woman, slender and with red hair that Emmie had noticed had lost its burnished sheen in the last few years. There were wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, too. But her eyes were sharp with intelligence and had never changed.

Emmie sipped. Chocolate was a very rare treat. “What’s the occasion?” she asked.

Her mother glanced at Jakub, a soft smile just lifting the corners of her mouth. “Do you want to tell her?”

Emmie turned to look at him.

He was smiling, too. “You’ve been assigned a mentor, Emm.”

“Really? Already?” She put her cup down, barely noticing where she placed it. She had been waiting for this moment for nearly a year now, wondering what profession would be hers. All her research had told her professions were assigned according to skills and talents and inclinations, which had left her confused. She was good at everything she tried. All her assignments and projects had been less than challenging, unlike Yosef Reuter, one of the other children in the district, who struggled with everything. He was destined to be a basic engineer. Everyone could see it without the AI assignment to confirm it.

But when it came to her, Emmie couldn’t predict where she would end up. It wasn’t as though she was good with numbers and terrible at text, which would narrow the field.

Too, everything she had read about profession assignments emphasized that aptitude and temperament also affected the assignment.

It was where she usually gave up trying to predict what her assignment would be, because her inclination was toward something that wasn’t a profession. So how would the AI resolve that? Was it smart enough to know what was in her mind and heart? Sometimes it seemed that way. It had been smart enough to give her Jakub and Anat as parents. She couldn’t imagine growing up with anyone else.

Emmie had gotten to the point where she refused to think about it anymore. The Second Assessment phase was six months away and assignments were usually made after the assessment, so she had deliberately put the subject aside whenever it rose in her thoughts.

Now the assignment had been made and earlier than expected.

“I thought assignments didn’t happen until the end of my fourteenth year, after the Second Assessments are done,” she said.

“Apparently those are just guidelines,” her mother said. “I asked them about that, too. The AI can assign mentors at any time and it sometimes happens a bit early if the child is a clear fit.”

“I’m a clear fit for something?” Emmie asked, astonished. “Who is my mentor?”

Anat’s smile lit up her face. She glanced at Jakub again, glowing with some emotion Emmie couldn’t quite identify. It was as if a whole slew of feelings were welling up inside her mother, all of them showing on her face, which was unusual enough to make Emmie’s heart squeeze in surprise.

“You’ve been assigned to Captain Durant,” her mother said softly.

Emmie stared at her, trying to understand. “The Captain?” She repeated it blankly. Had she misheard? Maybe she didn’t understand exactly what it meant. Maybe it worked differently if the captain of the ship was the mentor. Maybe it didn’t mean what it seemed to, because that was impossible, that meant—

“You’re going to be captain of the ship one day, Emm,” Jakub said, behind her. His voice was thick with feeling. Emmie had no problem identifying that one. Pride. She didn’t even have to look at him to make sure.

She strung her fingers together and squeezed them. “Captain…” she repeated, tasting it. “It doesn’t make sense,” she added slowly.

“Of course it does!” Anat replied firmly. “You’re smarter than us. You skip through your lessons—don’t think I don’t know you dash them off at the last possible moment because you’re busy doing other things. You see big patterns, Emmie. You see the shape of something that isn’t there yet, like you did with the jacket you made for me, the one all my friends were asking about. You think just anyone could have done that?”

Emmie stared at her, surprised at her fierceness. “But…being Captain…that means talking to people. Telling them what to do.”

“It’s just a tiny part of the job, honey,” Jakub said quickly. “Your mother is right. It’s a systems thing. You can see the whole shape of things in your head, as if you were floating up near the roof and looking down.”

“So can Ma,” Emmie said shortly. “She’s not the captain, though.”

“For good reason,” Anat said shortly. “I’m only good with electronics and circuits.”

“You make furniture,” Emmie pointed out. “That’s patterns.”

“It’s making something from a pattern someone else has thought up,” Anat said gently. “It’s not the same thing. You see the shape of anything, especially people.”

Emmie shrank into herself. “I don’t,” she said quickly. “I can’t talk to them the way Da does.”

“Honey, don’t you understand? This is the best news ever,” Jakub said. “You’re going to be the captain. You couldn’t ask for a better job.”

Emmie swallowed and looked at her mother. “Can I ask for a different one?”

Anat laughed. “There’s only one captain, Emmie.”

“I don’t want to be the captain.” As soon as she said it, it all came together in her mind, laid out clearly. Perhaps this was even what her mother meant about seeing everything. She didn’t know about that. This, though, she understood. The captain spent his time directing the whole ship. Deciding on policy and future direction. Resolving major issues that divided the Endurance—like the issue over how many tankball teams were too many, which the previous captain, Romilda Kermode, had considered and then agreed one more team would be allowed on a trial basis. That issue had been causing fights to break out on the ship until Captain Kermode had made her decision and announced it in front of everyone at the arena in the Aventine, while people screamed and argued with each other.

Once she had made her announcement, peace had returned almost at once.

Emmie tried to imagine standing in front of a hostile crowd like that, with the peace of the ship hinging on what she said, aloud and for others to obey….

Her mind blanked out.

“I won’t do it,” she said softly.

“Emm, I don’t think you understand—” Jakub began.

“No! I don’t want to be captain!” Emmie wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly chilled. “Tell them to get someone else.” She hurried away, heading for her room, before either of them tried to talk her out of it, because this time, they couldn’t.

She would not do it. She couldn’t. It was that simple.

“Emmaline!” Anat called out, with the iron in her voice that told Emmie she’d better listen.

She stopped at the door and half-turned to show she was paying attention.

“Think about it for a few days,” Anat said gently. “Let yourself get used to the idea. You’re supposed to meet with Captain Durant next week, so you can get to know each other. After, we can talk.”

Emmie gripped the edge of the door, digging her fingers in. “He’ll hate me,” she said heavily.

“You’re being dramatic,” Jakub chided her.

She looked at him, surprised. “No, I’m not,” she said slowly. “Captain Durant just got the job a few months ago, when Captain Kermode died. She was nearly a hundred and twenty when she died and everyone knew her time was coming. Captain Durant is not much older than me and now he’s been assigned to train his replacement. You really think he’s going to like training someone when it means he’ll be dead in a few years’ time?”

Both of them looked surprised, as if they were considering this for the first time.

Emmie went back to her room and pulled up the screen once more. Silk was a safe subject to think about. She even had a color in mind. The dark blue the same as the painting her father had finished yesterday. The blue of a sky no one on the Endurance had ever seen. She could even design a garment and print it, if it wasn’t very big. Perhaps she would wear it when she met Captain Durant next week.

…and realized she was back to thinking about the captain, anyway.

What was going to happen to him? Did he know, already? Was it hovering over him like a black cloud?

Oh, how he would resent her!

Chapter Two

Grey wanted his first mentor meeting to be held in his private wing, where the girl could be put at ease. Yuli, though, argued the Bridge was the only appropriate place for such a meeting. “The entire ship is aware of the assignment by now,” Yuli pointed out. “The meeting is far more significant than a small child meeting the Captain in private. The symbolism must be upheld.”

Grey couldn’t argue with him. In the last four days since the news had erupted, the Forum had been thick with speculation on what it all meant. There were very few people insensitive enough to wonder aloud how he was going to die. Instead, there was a nuance and implication to every message posted there that told him it was exactly what everyone was wondering. Some were probably rubbing their hands with glee over the idea. Others, thankfully, were as disturbed by the prospect as he was.

The majority of people were naturally concerned about how the quick evolution of captains would affect the good running of the ship. The question bothered Grey, too. Why had he even been assigned as captain, if he was going to vacate the chair barely a decade into the job, potentially with projects half completed?

However, the ways of the AI were often mysterious, until hindsight provided the surprising answers. He had to trust there was good reasoning behind this scandal-making assignment. The AI could only work for the betterment of the ship.

So he should, too.

Reluctantly, he agreed to the first meeting being held on the Bridge, with the full array of aides and Yuli in attendance. The meeting would be recorded and posted on the Forum for everyone to see. After all, Yuli had also argued, everyone had to see the new captain formally accepting the role to understand the role was being preserved with due attention.

It wasn’t how Grey had met Captain Kermode. She had already been chair-bound when he was assigned to be mentored by her and they had drunk tea in her private quarters. He had poured because she couldn’t get up and the teapot was too heavy to lift from a seated position.

She had made him feel comfortable, not once reminding him he had been assigned because it was expected she would be dead in a few years’ time. But then, she had been well over her century mark and everything about his assignment and her training had felt perfectly natural.

Everything about this hand-over was wrong, awkward and resentment-generating. It had unsettled the ship, so holding the first meeting in public would help soothe some of those strong feelings.

Grey wore the formal black uniform, which he hated with a passion, because it scratched his neck and was tight through the shoulders and chest. Taking a full breath was impossible.

He sat in the equally uncomfortable big chair and waited, while beyond the open doors to the bridge he could hear people approaching, their footsteps echoing in the pristine white corridor beyond.

Paulie shifted on his feet and cleared his throat and Yuli glared at him from his position just behind Grey’s chair.

The big group of people entered the bridge, everyone looking around with wide eyes, just as the tourists did. Grey scanned them, looking for the girl.

There. She was half-hidden behind the adults in front of her. Even so, she was surprisingly tall. She was holding the hand of the big man next to her. Grey recognized him from his public profile on the Forum. This was her father, Jakub Emmetore.

Grey looked back at Emmaline. She was also looking around the big, trapezoid room. Three of the walls were covered in dashboards and static screens. The fourth and smallest wall, facing the chair, was one big screen.

There was only the one chair. The ship’s history said the Bridge crew had all stood, except for the captain. It had been a long time since anyone had needed to actively monitor the progress of the Endurance from the Bridge itself, so even the captain’s chair tended to gather dust, now.

Grey guessed Emmaline was looking around the room and feeling the same sense of disappointment he had felt when he’d first toured the Bridge. It was a museum, preserving a time when the Endurance had needed steering through a star system. A symbol, in fact.

Her attention turned to him. Dark blue eyes studied him. It was a hard, assessing gaze. Then she realized he was looking at her. Her gaze dropped. She took a half-step sideways, which put the red-headed woman in front of her, hiding her from Grey’s gaze.

The group came to a halt in front of him. There were six adults, ranged around the girl protectively.

Yuli stepped forward. “Welcome to the Bridge of the Endurance,” he intoned in his deep, projecting voice. “This is Captain Durant. Which of you is Emmaline?” It was a formal question. There was only one child in the group.

The adults shifted on their feet. There was a soft whisper. Then the big man, Emmetore, lifted his arm, leading the girl and making her step forward. He let her arm go. Then she staggered another half-step forward. Someone had pushed her.

Grey studied her curiously. Even he had not been able to access her personal profile on the Forum, where children were given one hundred percent iron-clad privacy. He had not been able to find a single public image of her. Her parents had kept her sheltered and somewhat isolated. Other children led far more public lives, the adored minors of an entire ship of five thousand people who collectively and vicariously enjoyed watching them grow up.

On this day, right now, there were only six hundred and three children on the ship. The number did not vary much. Grey had checked historical statistics on the numbers of children late last night, when sleep wouldn’t come. The AI that controlled procreation quickened children at just the right rate to keep the population stable.

Grey studied Emmaline Victore curiously. She was a slender girl, already well into puberty, with the long hair he remembered from the few times he had seen her in the Aventine with her father, many years before. The pigtails were gone. Her hair hung down her back, a rich brown river.

She was wearing…he wasn’t sure what to call what she was wearing, except to say she wasn’t wearing trousers like everyone else. He could actually see her legs, from the knee down. The slender ankles disappeared inside work boots, while the flesh between her ankle and knee was bare. The garment covering her down to her knees was a soft tubular shape, in a blue that matched her eyes almost exactly. It looked like a modern version of clothes he had seen from ancient history footage, from old Terra. A skirt? The name came to him and seemed right. He would have to look it up, later.

The outlandish clothing was at odds with the formality of this moment. It was rebellious.

Her chin was pointed and thrust forward as she looked at him directly.

“I am pleased to meet you, Emmaline,” he told her.

“Captain,” she acknowledged. She had an air of containment and control which he usually only found in much older people. It was intriguing, because everything else about her said she was ready to bolt at the first alarm. She was tense, all her senses alert.

But still she stood and looked him in the eye. She had courage, then.

“I see you brought friends with you. I’m glad.”

“They are my parents’ friends,” she said. “My friends weren’t given permission to come to the bridge.”

And a complaint, right on the heels of the defiant look in the eyes.

The rank of aides alongside him reacted. He could feel their disapproval.

So could she. Her shoulders curved in and her gaze dropped to the ground. She glanced back over her shoulder toward her father. He shook his head a little, silently telling her to stay where she was.

Grey put his elbow on the arm of the chair and his chin on his fist, his intrigue growing. “I don’t think your friends would have helped you feel any better about this meeting, had they been allowed to attend.”

Her chin came up again, just enough for her to look at him from under her clear brow. Her eyes narrowed. “You were given tea and there…there wasn’t all these people.” She pushed out the words, getting them out. Her courage was starting to fail, the stress of a public reception and glaring attention taking their toll.

The mention of tea told him she had done her homework. She had researched him. Ah, well, he was an adult now. His life was a matter of public record.

He sat up. “Everyone, leave us. Emmaline, please stay.”

“Sir?” Yuli asked with stiff formality.

“You, too,” Grey said gently.

“You must let the parents stay,” Yuli murmured.

Grey sighed. “Very well.”

Yuli murmured to the parents, then turned and shepherded everyone out of the room in front of him and shut the doors.

Anat and Jakub stayed behind the girl, who was hugging herself as if she was cold. It might have something to do with the skirt-thing she was wearing, which seemed insubstantial. He suspected, though, her chill came from another source.

“Would it make you feel happier if I arranged for tea to be served?” he asked her.

She considered for a moment. “No,” she said at last.

He pressed his fingers together. “There is no one here to listen to what you say, now. My chief of staff has halted the recording of this meeting. You can speak freely, Emmaline. You don’t want to be here and I would like to know why.”

She stayed in the frozen posture, one hand cupping her shoulder, the other held in a fist against the other arm. “I don’t want to be captain,” she said flatly.

Surprise touched him. Everyone wanted to be the captain. The children he had played with growing up had acted out stories they made up about life on the Bridge and argued over who got to sit in the chair. At ten years of age, the fantasy of being captain had been as glamour-filled and wildly improbable to him as it had been to any of his friends. “Why do you not want to be the captain?” he asked curiously.

She almost shrugged. It was a tiny movement. “If you knew what you know now about being the captain, when you were first assigned to Captain Kermode, would you have wanted it?”

Her parents both looked aghast. She had moved far beyond the realms of politeness in their estimation.

Grey hid his admiration. For a fourteen year old to understand the difference between the glamour and the reality was a rare thing. Perhaps, behind her shyness and her defiance, the girl had potential, after all. “No, I wouldn’t have wanted the job, if I had known then what I know now, although that is because I would have thought I couldn’t possibly do it. That is what mentoring is for.”

“Do you…mind?” she asked, sounding just as curious as he did.

Her father frowned, puzzled, while her mother shifted, watching her daughter with growing horror.

Grey, though, knew exactly what she was asking. In the last five days since the news had broken and spread across the ship like wildfire, this girl was the first to ask him directly how he felt about being told he would die before he reached thirty-two.

“I mind,” he replied truthfully. “But there’s nothing I can do about it and the captain’s chair must be filled by the most suitable candidate, so the ship can move on smoothly.”

“That’s all you care about?”

“Emmie,” her father breathed. He was well beyond appalled now. His face was red and he was sweating.

“I must consider the ship first, above all,” Grey told her. “That’s my job.”

“It stinks,” she said flatly.

“It does.”

“All of it,” she added. She took a tiny step forward. “You’re the captain. Can’t you tell them to find someone else to train?”

He almost laughed at the idea. “It doesn’t work like that,” he replied. “My priority is the safekeeping of the ship and the people on it. It is Master Baki Hart’s job to tell us what we should all do to contribute to the welfare of the ship.”

“It’s his AI that tells us.” Emmaline used a dry, adult tone. “The one they tell me has never been wrong, not once.”

“Not in a very long time, no. AIs learn from their mistakes and grow. But you know this.”

“Yet the AIs can’t predict the winner of the next tank game at all,” she added.

The laugh caught him by surprise. It came from his belly, deep and jolly. He pulled himself together. “Do you know how the tank games are built?” he asked her. “I mean, how the gravity surges that affect the behavior of the ball are designed?”

She shrugged. “The only fair way is for the surges to be generated randomly, so no one knows what will happen next.”

“Random,” he repeated. “In other words, chance. Tankball games are games of chance. Even the most skillful team can be decimated by chance surges that give the other team a break.”

She was frowning. Her arms loosened and her hands fell to her sides. “So we’re both victims of bad luck?” she asked.

He was startled. Again. That hadn’t been what he meant, although he could see why she would draw that analogy. “You can think of it as luck if you want,” he told her. “I prefer to think there is a meaning in this we do not yet understand.” He straightened up again. “My chief of Staff, Yuli, will arrange a training schedule and syllabus, to be fitted in around your formal education. Next time, we will meet in my private office, not here. There will be tea,” he added.

She didn’t smile.

“You will work harder in the next six years than anyone else you know. You will also get all the help and support you need. The resources of the Bridge are yours to call on when you need them…and you will need them before you’re through. I can promise you, Emmaline, when you reach your Emergence day, you will know as thoroughly as I did that you are ready to sit in this chair.”

Her gaze dropped.

“You have a lot to absorb. I remember how it felt,” he told her. “Go home, now. Rest, talk with your parents and friends. You can also speak directly to me whenever you want. Yuli has sent my personal code to your apartment…and to your parents, too.” He nodded at the two standing behind her. They looked dazed and very uncomfortable. Grey wasn’t the only adult in the room caught flat-footed by the girl’s questions. It made him feel a tiny bit better.

As Emmaline led them off the Bridge, Grey sat back in the chair and let himself more deeply absorb her on-point question. Did he mind? Yes, absolutely, with every shred of his being, he minded. If he let himself think about it for too long, he wanted to scream aloud his resentment and fury.

But while he had been speaking with her, the blind near-panic had checked for just a moment. It was something he had said to her, about putting the ship first….

Ah, there it was. He grasped the idea and let it form fully in his mind.

He was one of the very few people on the Endurance who ever got advance warning about their impending death. If he must die young, at least he had a decade in which to do something useful, to make the death more than meaningless. As captain, he was in a position to do exactly that. He could bring forward the long-term projects he and Romilda had talked about in the days leading to her death, when she had been vocally regretting all she had not been able to do.

Yes, that was it. He would die with nothing left undone.

No regrets. None.

Training Emmaline Victore to be one of the best captains the Endurance had ever seen would fit nicely with his ambition.

Now, all he had to do was make Emmaline see it that way, too.

Chapter Three

Six months later.

Grey looked around the edge of the screen as Yuli came in and lifted a brow.

“No, no sign of her,” Yuli replied.

Grey dismissed the screen. He hadn’t been getting anything concrete done, anyway. “That makes it six straight months now.”

Yuli crossed his arms. “You still believe she’s the one? Sir,” he added.

“Relax, Yuli,” Grey told him. “We’re alone in the room.”

“I’m quite relaxed, thank you. The girl has failed to attend a single appointment in six months. Not only do I question her suitability for a job she clearly feels is beneath her, I also have to wonder at your own insistence. How long are you going to let a slip of a child dangle the Captain of the ship about at the end of her string?”

“Look at this,” Grey said and pulled up the screen again. He picked the file he wanted and opened it and waved Yuli toward the screen curtain.

Yuli stepped around the display to look at it from the right side. He tilted his head, studying it.

“Her Second Phase Assessment scores,” Grey said. “Have you ever seen scores like those?”

“Yours were better,” Yuli said shortly.

“Barely and in some areas, hers outrank mine by light years. I’m starting to understand why the AI thought she was a good choice.”

“I don’t believe I was disputing her intellectual qualities,” Yuli said stiffly. “She’s making a mockery of the Bridge and the Captain,” he growled. “Sir,” he added again.

“Only in your own mind,” Grey said calmly. “But you’re right. I think the time has come. Have the car brought to the Bridge, will you?”

“You’re not…going to her?” Yuli was horrified. “Sir, she’ll think she’ll have won!”

“This is not a tank game, Yuli.”

“That’s what you think,” Yuli said darkly.

* * * * *

The car Yuli had brought to the Bridge entrance was one of the enclosed ones that hid the occupants. Grey dismissed it and asked for the open-topped car he preferred. He liked to be able to see out.

“But everyone will see it is you!” Yuli protested.

“Everyone knows the car, anyway,” Grey replied. “They’ll figure out what I’m doing fast enough. There’s no point in hiding.”

Reluctance making him move like a stiff puppet, Yuli had the open car brought to the entrance while Grey stood waiting just behind the guards, who stood at rigid attention the entire ten minutes it took for the car to arrive. Then they had another argument when Grey insisted on driving himself. Grey insisted and Yuli, finally remembering the watching guards, gave up with a sigh.

He steered the car onto the Artery and let the auto-pilot take over with a sense of relief. He liked being able to look around as he travelled the Artery. It was a way to get a snapshot of the entire ship, especially when he travelled all the way to the Palatine. He never failed to see something interesting or thought-provoking on the way.

The Artery was raised over the Aventine, where there was too much foot traffic and commercial business to compete with the high-speed laneway safely. The Capitol, just beyond the Aventine, always made him uncomfortable with its wall neighborhoods and morose workers. But on the other side of the Capitol was the Field of Mars, where industry was the defining activity. Ship systems, businesses, engineering and more. This district was one of the few that slept when the rest of the ship did. All the other districts except the Palatine were both commercial and residential and there was something happening in them at any hour of the day or night. Grey liked watching the little banks of busy-ness pass by.

The Esquiline District was the biggest area of the ship. The largest portion of the ship’s five thousand people lived here, most of them packed into compact, comfortable modular apartments. Some even had garden plots around them.

Thanks to the Forum, everyone on the ship could learn about anyone else’s life with a few swipes of their screen, if they so desired. Equilinos, more than any other district, did desire to know all about their neighbors, at all times, across the whole district. It was a tightly-laced community and Grey knew as well as Yuli did his arrival at Emmaline’s apartment would be noted and discussed carefully, as they considered the meanings and ramifications from all angles.

It was no wonder Emmaline’s parents kept her so carefully enclosed.

He had grown up in the Aventine, almost carefree and with complete freedom, because everyone had known who he was and kept a benevolent eye upon him and the other children, when they played out among the lanes and shops and markets. It was a completely different atmosphere to this one of sharp speculation. Even though no one appeared to take any notice of him as he parked the car just off the Artery and wove his way between the buildings to where Emmaline’s apartment was located, he could feel their gazes following him.

There was no garden around the apartment. The walls were an odd choice of color, a dark purple that looked warm and deep in the lowering light of the afternoon. Then he remembered the files he had been studying. Jakub Emmetore was an artist in his spare time. It would have been him who had chosen this muted, pleasant color.

The unit had rounded corners and a low flat roof, that allowed it to be stacked if the room was needed, although it sat by itself between a pile of smaller single-occupant apartments and the wall of the ship itself, the majestic curve sweeping up into the roof far overhead.

Grey rapped on the apartment door. He could have used the car to announce his arrival, except it would have given Emmaline a few minutes’ notice while he walked to the apartment and he didn’t want to give her the time to leave apartment before he got there.

The door opened, revealing the short woman who had been standing behind Emmaline during the first, disastrous meeting on the Bridge, six months before. Grey barely recognized her. He tried not to stare.

“Captain Durant,” she said, sounding as surprised as he felt. She clutched the edge of the door. “No one warned me…”

“I said I would castrate anyone if they did warn you. Is Emmaline home?”

“Emmie? She’s in her room…I don’t understand.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Grey said. “Can I come in?”

She stepped aside and the garment she was wearing swished around her knees. It was another skirt, completely unlike the one Emmaline had been wearing. This one was made of a fabric that gleamed dully, underneath a pattern of small colors and shapes that repeated itself across the fabric. There seemed to be an excessive amount of material, especially around the hem, that had no discernible purpose and would therefore be a complete waste of energy. Yet he found the shift of the fabric around her legs enhancing.

He looked away as he stepped into the main room of the apartment. It was a standard living quarters, with the maintenance and food preparation area in one corner. In the opposite corner were built comfortable benches. A flat working or eating surface could be raised or lowered as needed, yet Grey had never stepped into an apartment where the tabletop had been put away. Most households left the table up almost permanently.

The walls of this apartment showed the same odd choice in colors that one would think would steal away the available light with their dark hues and visually diminish the size of the room. The room did seem somewhat smaller. It also felt warmer and far more welcoming than the unadorned quarters some people chose to live with.

“Would you like to sit down, Captain, while I get Emmie?” Anat asked.

“Call me Greyson,” Grey told her. “It might help Emmaline feel more at ease if we dispense with the titles.”

Anat Vicario pressed her lips together. They were colored or enhanced in the way some women seemed to like and her hair, he realized, was a deep, rich red. There was no gray in it as there had been on the Bridge. “Very well…Greyson. I’ll fetch Emmie.” She brushed her hands down the sides of the skirt as she moved toward one of the interior doors. The skirt, Grey realized, was drawn in around her waist.

He rested on one of the stools mounted in front of the preparation area counter to wait.

Emmaline trailed into the room behind her mother, her gaze sharp as it settled on Grey. There was no surprise there. “Captain Durant,” she acknowledged. She was wearing a skirt, too. Hers skimmed her hips and thighs, outlining them just as conventional trousers would have, yet there was a difference Grey couldn’t pin down. All he knew was that skirts were decidedly different and worth more study. Why had women ever stopped wearing them?

It was a question for another time.

While her mother moved around the counter into the preparation area, Emmaline stopped halfway between the stools and the table, in the open area in the middle of the room. She crossed her arms, hugging herself.

“Emmaline, you’ve missed several appointments, including today’s,” Grey began.

“That’s not possible,” her mother said quickly. “She has attended every single training session on the Bridge.”

Something shifted in the girl’s face and her gaze flickered toward the floor, then back up to look him in the eye. It was a challenge.

“Where did you go?” he asked curiously. “The Aventine? It’s easy to get lost and not be noticed there.”

Her gaze moved away from him and he knew he was right.

“Why?” he asked.

“You know why.”

“Pretend I don’t and explain it to me.”

She shook her head.

“So, mute defiance is the way it will go, then? That’s a disappointment.”

Her gaze met his. He’d startled her.

“If you will not even speak about this, then we have a bigger problem than I thought,” he added.

“Big enough to give up on me?” she asked curiously.

“Emmie!” her mother breathed, sounding shocked.

Grey almost smiled at her relentless quest to find a way out of what she saw as a predicament not of her choosing. “There is no way to change what has been decided,” he told her as gently as he could. “All that is left is for you to find a way to live with it.”

“I don’t want to be the captain,” she shot back. “Live with that.”

“I don’t get to live with it,” he reminded her. “I get to die and you must run the ship for me when I’m gone.”

She flinched and her shoulders curved in defensively. Her gaze moved back to the floor.

“Emmie, have you really been skipping your appointments on the Bridge?” Anat asked.

Grey held up his hand quickly, motioning for silence. He studied Emmaline, the in-drawn and defensive lines of her posture.

“I don’t blame you,” he said, watching her carefully.

Her chin did not lift. Instead, her gaze flickered up to glance at him from under her brow. Verification. She wanted to know if he really meant it.

“That’s why you stayed away, isn’t it? You believe I blame you for all of this, that your assignment is the trigger.”

Her chin lifted a little. Her gaze finally met his and held. “Don’t you?”

“How could I hold you responsible? You had no more say in this than I did.”

She licked her lips. “You…don’t like having to train me.”

“I don’t like that I’ve been assigned as mentor now, at my age, Emmaline. I have no feelings about you personally, though. I don’t know you.”

“You would train me even though you don’t like it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because the Endurance must go on and if I train you properly, you will become a good captain, which will ensure the ship’s survival. I don’t know you, but I do know you’re smart enough to understand.”

She considered it for a moment. “Did Captain Kermode’s training make you think that way?”

“You mean, did they mentally condition me to make me put the ship first?”

“Yes.”

“The training is just training, Emmaline. You’ll learn about the history of the ship, command decisions, ceremonial duties, how work is completed on the Bridge and how policy shapes the long-term future of the Endurance. It’s just schoolwork, only more refined and focused. No one will force you to think in ways that aren’t already embedded in your personality and mind. That’s why the AI chose you.”

“But I don’t feel like that!” she cried.

Grey got to his feet. “Neither did I when I first met Captain Kermode. I thought they had made a mistake, too.”

Her blue eyes widened. “But you went, anyway?”

“I wanted to learn as much as I could before they figured out their mistake and kicked me off the Bridge. Of course I went to my training.” He nodded at Emmaline’s mother, who had wisely remained silent. “Tomorrow at fifteen hundred, Emmaline. I will have hot chocolate prepared and waiting.”

Her lips parted. “How did you know I like hot chocolate?”

He smiled. Mentioning the dried ring on the counter would be too prosaic. He had been guessing, anyway. The remains of hot chocolate on the counter could have been left by any one of them in the apartment. “It must be a captain thing,” he told her. “I like hot chocolate, too.”

He walked back to the car, wondering if he had planted enough barbs to coax her into turning up tomorrow. He would have to shift meetings and appointments and more to free up the time, yet if she actually arrived on the Bridge and stayed in the room more than thirty seconds, then it would be worth it.

On the way back to the car, he noticed other women wearing skirts, some of them long and brushing their ankles, others shorter and far more…enticing. No one in the other districts wore anything other than trousers.

The Esquiline district had always been a world unto itself. The wearing of costumes from history was just one more piece of evidence supporting their insular attitudes.

Emmaline would have to learn to think on a bigger scale, beyond the borders of her district, if she was to be a successful captain…and if she turned up for training tomorrow.

For the first time, Grey let himself wonder what he should do if her refusal to accept training continued.

Everything hinged on tomorrow.

Chapter Four

When the door opened shortly before four, Grey held his breath, waiting for her to step through.

Yuli entered with an apologetic pout of his lips and a shake of his head.

Grey sat back with a heavy sigh.

“We really should deal with the monthly energy overview,” Yuli said. “If you insist on waiting for her, you could look at the projections while you’re waiting.”

“Yes, why not?” Grey said. It would mask his growing disappointment and would also put off having to think about what he should do about his missing protégé. He brought up the screen.

Yuli tapped his way through the screens to bring up the data.

“I thought you said there would be hot chocolate?”

Grey looked up, surprised. He hadn’t heard the door open, yet Emmaline was standing just inside the doorway. She was wearing something…it was a shirt and a skirt all in one, except the shirt didn’t have a collar or sleeves, or any sort of opening he could see.

The hem of the skirt stopped just below her knees. This time her ankles didn’t disappear inside work boots. The shoes she wore were slimmer and abbreviated, so the top of her feet were visible.

Yuli cleared his throat, his gaze moving from Emmaline’s head to her unconventional feet. “Indeed….” he breathed.

“There is hot chocolate,” Grey made himself say. He reached behind him and snagged the handle of the insulated pot and put it on the table in front of him. He dismissed the screen, too.

Yuli glanced at him, looking for guidance.

“Thank you, Yuli, that will be all, for now,” Grey told him.

Yuli nodded and stepped around Emmaline. The door shut behind him, leaving them alone.

“You’re late,” Grey pointed out.

“I’m here,” she replied. “I nearly didn’t come.”

“Why did you?”

She took another step into the room. Just as she had on the Bridge, she gave every appearance of someone looking for an excuse to bolt. Grey wouldn’t give her one. Moving slowly, he poured a mug of the chocolate and pushed it toward her. “This is earth-grown chocolate,” he said, speaking casually. “From the Palatine.”

“I’ve heard about Palatine chocolate,” she said, coming closer. She didn’t reach for the mug. “I’ve heard there are all sorts of impurities and contaminations from the earth the chocolate is grown in.”

“That’s a myth,” Grey assured her. “The chocolate grows on trees. The trees grow in the ground. The chocolate never touches dirt. Try it. It’s very good.”

She put her hand behind her back. “I came here to ask you something.”

“That’s why I am your mentor,” he said gravely. “To answer your questions.”

“I just have the one.”

“Go on.”

“Do you like what you’re doing?”

He blinked. “Like?” he asked blankly, mentally scrambling to reorient himself. “What does that have to do with it?”

“A lot,” she said firmly. “I like making clothes. Not just clothes. Everything. I lay awake at night and all these ideas come into my mind. Things to wear. Things to use. The rooms we live in. Colors. When I make things I’ve thought up, it makes me happy.”

“Does it?”

She nodded. “So happy, I forget where I am.”

Grey drew in a slow breath and let it out. What an idyllic life she had. “I don’t think anyone likes their job the way you like making things,” he confessed.

“Then why would I want to do a job that doesn’t make me happy?” she asked.

It was a good question. He reached for the other mug and poured himself a cup of the thick, dark brown liquid and sipped. It was every bit as delicious as he remembered. It also gave him a chance to consider his answer.

“I don’t like everything I must do in a day,” he told her honestly. “But I do like the results.”

It was her turn to look surprised. “What results?”

He cast about, looking for a short, succinct answer, although there really wasn’t a fast response—not one that would keep her in this room. “Look at this,” he said and pulled up the screen again. He pulled up the monitor array and displayed the multiple channels across the screen.

Emmaline frowned and moved around the table to look at the screen from his side. “Palatine,” she said, pointing at the top of the screen where a small meadow showed streams of sunlight and a butterfly crossing it. There were people sitting on the grass there, heads close together as they talked. “Aventine,” she said. There were five frames showing aspects of the Aventine, with stalls and market squares, residential clusters and more.

“The Meadow, the Esquiline, the Capitol, the Bridge,” Emmaline said, correctly identifying the other views. “What is this one?” She leaned forward, frowning.

“That is the outside of the ship and the star field beyond,” he told her.

Her mouth dropped open. “The outside?” she breathed. “I’ve never seen it before. The star field…it’s not moving. I thought the ship was moving?”

“The Endurance moves and so do the stars, only astronomical distances are so immense, you need months to see a shift in the stars. But as captain, you would get to monitor that progress. The Endurance is heading for…did they teach you that in school?”

She shook her head. “Somewhere a long way away, that we’ll never get to see.”

“On old Terra, the place where the Endurance will eventually reach is called The Beehive. We could call it anything we want, though, because it will be ours. Not Terra’s.”

She was still frowning. “There are no results there,” she said, indicating the screen and its multiple frame array. “Just images of people on the ship and a place we’ll never get to.”

“Exactly. Look at them again, Emmaline. What do you see?”

She shrugged. “People. As I said.”

“Describe them. Are they angry? Happy? Sad?”

She studied the screen, considering the question.

Grey picked up the mug of hot chocolate and held it out to her. “Here,” he said softly.

She took it without looking, all her attention on the screen. “They’re not anything,” she said. “They’re….just busy.”

“Yes. Busy. Absorbed. Occupied. Occasionally, they laugh and chat with others. Sometimes they get angry with neighbors and arguments break out…especially if a Capitol team wins in the tank. Life goes on all while the Endurance travels through space toward Destination. That is the result of my work.”

She looked at him and gave a sound that was close to a laugh of disbelief. “But that’s what always happens,” she said. “How is that a result?”

“Think about what would happen if I didn’t do my job,” he said.

She sipped the hot chocolate, frowning her way through to an answer. “I don’t know what you do,” she said slowly. “I thought I did. Now I’m not so sure. Because I don’t know what you do, I don’t know what would happen if you didn’t do it.”

“What is the most visible thing you’ve seen a captain do?” he prompted.

“Captain Kermode allowed a third Esquilino tank team,” she said promptly.

“Why was it so visible?”

“Everyone was really upset about whether we should get another team or not.”

“What do you think would have happened if Captain Kermode had not made a decision, or made a decision that was wrong?” It was a wild over-simplification, but it would get the point across.

Emmaline grimaced. “Fights. Bad ones.”

“Exactly. Now, imagine everything that happens on the Endurance that goes on without people really noticing coming to a halt. Air purification, for example.”

“Don’t engineers take care of that?”

“At my direction. There are decisions about the air purification systems that they are not qualified to make that I must decide for them and for the good of the ship. Then there are the hours everyone must work.”

“But everyone works six hours a day. Work for six, sleep for six, leisure and living for twelve. That has never changed.”

“Do you know how many times I have interest groups and individuals petition me to change those hours?”

She glanced at him thoughtfully. “A lot?” she guessed.

“A lot,” he agreed. “Some decisions are decisions to not change things. Every decision is made with the good of the ship in mind. An engineer can fix a function of the ship and when machinery or system begins to operate properly once more, they achieve a sense of satisfaction at the result. You get pleasure and satisfaction from touching and holding something you made. I get satisfaction from life going on smoothly and without major upheavals.” He waved toward the screen once more.

“Your results are no results,” she said slowly.

“Yes, that’s one way of phrasing it,” he agreed. “But to keep the ship functioning smoothly takes all my creativity and energy.”

“You don’t have an avocation?” she asked, startled.

“I don’t have time for one. I don’t work just six hours in a day, Emmaline. Running the ship takes all my time. If I didn’t like it, if I didn’t get satisfaction from doing my job, I wouldn’t do it. No one would. But there are rewards. No results is a reward. Knowing the ship will continue on to Destination because I am shepherding it properly…that is another.”

She considered him, her eyes narrowed.

“When Captain Kermode gave me charge of the ship, there were five thousand people aboard, all of them functioning, healthy and working toward the longevity of the Endurance. So far, the state continues,” Grey told her, “and it pleases me.”

Emmaline put the empty mug on the table next to his. “People aren’t wearing what you made, though.”

So, she had made all the skirts and dresses he had seen in the district. He was beginning to understand her resistance. “No, people do not wear things I have made,” he said. “But the garments you have made will be turned into the recyclers to have their energy reclaimed in a few days or weeks or months, while what I have made, what I continue to make, will endure for centuries.”

She was looking at the floor once more. This time it wasn’t to avoid his gaze. She was thinking hard. Her shoulders were straight, her back upright.

“We’re caretakers, Emmaline,” he added. “It’s a task that requires long-term thinking, the most creative problem solving a person will ever face, an appreciation for complex systems, including the human systems that drive life on the ship. It’s the most complex and complicated job on the ship and one you are uniquely fitted to fulfill. There is no one else who can do it.”

“Except you,” she replied. She glanced at the screen once more. “Could I…may I come back tomorrow to see the star field again?”

“It won’t have changed. Although you can access the exterior views whenever you want. I’ll have the clearance added to your profile, so you can look at the views from home. Before you come back tomorrow, I want you to find out what the Manger is and how to identify it.”

“The Manger?” She was frowning again. “That’s…something in the star field?”

“Something in the Beehive.”

“Why is it called the Beehive?”

“You can find out for yourself. Come and tell me tomorrow and I’ll tell you if you’re right.”

She walked out of the room, her head down, already trying to guess her way to an answer. She didn’t say goodbye.

Grey didn’t mind at all.

* * * * *

Emmaline found him in the bullpen, as Paulie walked him through a presentation on a revised layout for the Away End markets in The Aventine. It was only mid-morning and she was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. She slapped the table in front of him. “Asellus Borealis and Asellus Australis. They’re the two Manger stars. And the Beehive has thousands of others. That’s why it’s called the Beehive.”

“Very good,” Grey told her. “And how far away is the Beehive from the Endurance?”

Her mouth opened. Then she shut it.

“Come back and tell me when you know,” he said and turned back to the display and nodded at Paulie, who grinned and started talking again.

* * * * *

It took two days. She arrived as Grey was leaving for his private quarters for the night. The rest of the Bridge was dim and empty and she was escorted by one of the gate guards. She looked tired but triumphant. She stopped in front of him in the middle of the corridor.

“Five hundred and twenty-three light years,” she said.

“What is that in parsecs?”

“Ha! A hundred and sixty, almost a hundred and sixty-one.”

“And what did you learn while you were figuring it out?”

Her glee faded. “Everything is so…big, out there.”

“We’re in the middle of nothing,” he added.

“And we’re so small.”

He nodded. “What is the smallest object we know about?”

“Atoms,” she said instantly.

“No. There are seven types of sub-atomic particles that current science knows of. One of them impacts how life is shaped on the Endurance.” He nodded to her and looked at the guard. “Escort her all the way home.” He stepped around them and continued on down the corridor to his quarters.

“Come and find you when I figure it out?” she called.

“I’ll have chocolate!” he promised, over his shoulder.

* * * * *

She was wearing a skirt that seemed to be made of several layers, the ones underneath made of light, floating fabric that lifted the heavier top layer so the whole garment stood out around her calves. It was odd and pretty and charming and Grey made himself not smile at her appearance, because Emmaline was not smiling. He went on eating his meal.

She slid onto the bench opposite him. She still looked tired. “Light,” she said softly. “Light is what holds quarks together.”

“And why is light critical to the Endurance?” he asked.

“It defines us.” She let out a deep breath. “We’re still eight hundred light years away from Destination. Everything we do is shaped by Destination and how far away it is.”

“Well done,” he told her softly. “But you need to get more sleep, Emmaline. You can’t keep up this pace for five more years.”

“You do.”

He shook his head. “I sleep more than you do, I guarantee it. I also walk a lot. It helps me think,” he added, “so it’s not the waste of time I just know you’re going to say it is.”

She subsided. “I can walk, I suppose.”

“You use the trolleys to get here, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“Get off at the Near end of the Capitol and walk the rest of the way.” He reached behind him and punched in the preset. “There are Bridge guards all through the Aventine and everyone there knows who you are, anyway.”

A mug dropped into the dispenser and filled swiftly. He put it in front of her and she sniffed.

“It’s printed. I’m sure you won’t mind the lack of contaminants,” he told her.

She wrinkled her nose. “I liked the real stuff,” she said softly. “Besides, they have to ferment the beans once they pick them and fermentation kills off just about everything, anyway.”

“I see you’ve been doing more than reading about Destination.”

“I was curious,” she confessed and drank.

He took another bite of his rapidly cooling stew. “Did you learn why there are so few cocoa bushes and why chocolate is so hard to get, when you were reading?”

Her brow furrowed. “That’s something else you have to worry about?”

“Worry? No. But I had to learn why I didn’t have to worry about it.”

She drained the cup and put it back on the table and got to her feet. “Find out, right?” She headed for the door.

“Good morning, Emmaline!” he called out to her as the door shut.

Chapter Five

Twelve weeks later.

Emmie always insisted a guard escort her through the Bridge to wherever the captain happened to be when she arrived, even though the captain had told her several weeks ago she was free to move around the Bridge area without a companion and that she actually should work her way through the Bridge from port to starboard.

The nautical references had given her another ten hours of reading and research through the never-ending annals of old Terra ships and customs, to naval culture and exploration, to maritime law, mutiny and rebellion and the culture and psychology of micro-communities…to the fragile peace and law-abiding balance of life on the Endurance. How easily all of it could slip into chaos and disaster had kept her awake for three nights.

His casual questions and references were making life interesting at the moment, although she insisted on the escort every time she came to the Bridge because she still had not fully decided she was going to accept her fate as the next captain of the Endurance. For the same reason, he stayed “the captain” in her mind and when she spoke, even though he had suggested several times she call him Grey as his inner staff did.

Today, the captain was back in his private office, the place she most frequently found him. He was sitting in his chair. This one was not tall and ornate like the one on the Bridge, yet he was still sitting with his elbow on the arm and his chin on his fist, scowling at nothing.

She hesitated in the doorway. All his aides were at hand—Yuli, Leanne Bachman, Joeri Geels, Paulie—and they looked just as grave. There was no screen showing anything to give her a hint about what was upsetting them, either. She wondered if she should back out and leave.

The captain waved her in, sitting up. “Emmie,” he said. “You figured out why the ship doesn’t lose water already?”

She shook her head. “You don’t have to worry about chocolate production because it’s a luxury and people trade for commodities, first. Besides, it grows in an artificial microcosm, which limits its production.”

“That took you four weeks,” he pointed out. “Not bad.”

Yuli raised his brow. “Economic theory in four weeks? It’s a bit slow.”

“I had to sleep. The Captain insists on it,” Emmie said defensively.

“Yuli was being ironic,” the captain replied.

“Should I come back later?” she asked. “You were all looking worried when I came in.”

The captain glanced at Yuli, who shrugged. Then he looked at her. “There have been one hundred and twenty-three mentor assignments in the last three days.”

“One hundred and twenty-three?” She breathed it out. “Are there even that many fourteen year olds on the ship?” Then she remembered the breakdown of age groups she had seen a few days ago. “No, there are about forty people for each year of age.”

“The assignments include thirteen year olds and twelve year olds,” the captain replied. “All clustered within three days of each other, while normally, assignments are handed out after the child’s Second Phase assessment, so they’re spread across the year.” He rubbed at his temples.

“I presume someone asked the AI what it was doing?” she asked.

Yuli snorted. “We got the same damn answer as always. ‘Statistical predictive analysis only shows what should be done, not why.’”

“Patterns repeating,” she said slowly. “They see a pattern repeat coming up. What’s the pattern? What do they think is going to repeat?”

She looked at everyone, who looked blankly back at her, except for the captain, who was frowning. “Something in our history,” he said slowly and looked up at Yuli.

Yuli sat down suddenly and heavily and let out a heavy, gusty sigh.

“Something you remember?” the captain said softly.

“Not directly, although they were still talking about it when I first started working on the bridge,” Yuli said, sounding tired. “A plague. It killed a lot of people.”

“And no one remembers?” Emmie asked, shocked. “How could something like that be forgotten by anyone? Why haven’t I ever been told about it?”

“History is a voluntary subject, remember, Emmie,” the captain said. “Only people like you and me care enough to look backward.” He looked at her steadily. She recalled what he had also said that day. We are the only non-specialists on the ship, Emmie. We must know a little about everything in order to make the best decisions. That includes knowing the ship’s history and the history of humans. Everyone else will know their own subject deeply while the vast sum of human knowledge passes them by.

“It might not be plague that is coming,” she said. “There are any number of disasters that could hit the ship and there have only been one hundred and twenty-three assignments.”

“That’s the maximum that could be assigned. Any child younger than twelve isn’t ready intellectually to begin training in a profession,” Yuli replied. “Nor can their aptitudes be determined at younger ages.”

“Even the older ones could be mis-assigned,” Paulie said. “It’s not an exact science.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Leanne said, with a shrug. “As long as they get them into the right profession, the professionals themselves will refine their specialty as the child is trained.”

Shock froze Emmie to the spot. She could feel her jaw loosen and her lips part and couldn’t get them to close again. Her first, her very first reaction was a sense of betrayal.

She had been lied to. All these weeks, when she had begun to think she was somehow different, that she had been chosen because she was unique, she had been absorbing the lie. Believing it.

Then anger swamped her. How could she have been so stupid…so gullible? How could she not have questioned this, when she had spent weeks asking questions about everything else? She had even spent two nights, damn it, reading about the energy cost of printers versus manual production and the impact on the economy if it was forced back to primary production methods, worried that her continual printing of garments for women in the district would somehow drain the ship resources.

How had she missed asking the blazingly obvious question? She was not unique. No one was. Not truly unique—her dip into basic biology had taught her that much. If she was not unique, then surely there were others who could do the essential, all-encompassing work of a captain?

Emmie got herself back under control. No one had noticed her reaction. No one was paying her any attention at all. Normally it bothered her but not today. Now she understood exactly how she fit into the Bridge hierarchy. She was a supernumery. A non-essential.

It meant she was replaceable by any half-way competent human, who could be trained just as she was to fill their assigned role.

She slipped out of the room and hurried down the passage.

“Emmie!” It was the captain, from behind her.

“You should go back to your emergency.”

“It’s not an emergency. Not yet. Will you wait for a minute? It’s important.”

“I doubt it!” She halted, anyway, to let him catch up with her.

He smiled at her. He had a nice smile and should do more smiling. Most of the time he scowled. “You were the only one in the room who thought of patterns and looking back into history to find an answer. Do you still have doubts you’re perfect for this job, Emmie?”

“I could do the job,” Emmie told him. “I know that now. Give me enough time and training and reading and I could do it. So could someone else!”

He shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

“Am I? You’re telling me that out of the thousands of people on the ship and the hundreds of children, I am so unique not one other person has even the potential to learn how to do your job?”

“How would I know?” he asked. “The Accouchement Master is the one who understands these things.”

“Perhaps you should find out, then,” she said tartly. “Or maybe I will.” She turned and hurried away, before she said too much.

“Tell me what you find out!” he called after her. It was something he said nearly every time she left the Bridge.

Oh, I will absolutely let you know, she whispered to herself.

* * * * *

Normally, Emmie dressed to please herself. She liked the freedom of movement skirts and dresses gave her. This time, though, because it was a Master she was speaking to and because she was doing it in person, she dressed up in her best trousers and shirt.

She was nervous as she presented herself to the aide in the genetics complex tucked into the corner of the Aventine district. Her request to speak to Master Baki Hart was treated with deference, which told her they knew exactly who she was. Of course they did, they were the ones who had assigned her to the captain.

Master Hart waved her to a chair in the lounge itself, instead of showing her to his office, which told her she might be able to demand his attention, although he would limit the time she got by ensuring he could leave as soon as time was up, instead of trying to eject her from his office.

He was a small man, with close set eyes and a high domed head that was nearly completely bald. He was fit and energetic, middle-aged and tanned. Her research revealed he lived in the Palatine and his house had a lake next to it. He looked as though he used it a lot.

“You are Emmaline Victore,” he said. “It is a pleasure to meet you. What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to ask you about my assignment to the captain. You can talk to me about that, can’t you?”

“Probably not in any way you might understand,” he replied flatly. “But your assignment to the captain does give you certain privileges. What do you want to know?”

“I have done a lot of reading about genetics and gene expression and psychology in the last two weeks—”

“You’ve been busy. Just one of those subjects is the study of a lifetime for most people,” he replied. His tone was condescending.

“I learn just enough to be able to understand and form answers,” she replied. It was something she had heard the captain say. It stopped Master Hart from smiling, too. “You have spectrums of aptitude and skills profiled for every profession on the Endurance.”

“That is correct. It is a primary tool for choosing assignments.”

“The AI doesn’t pick, then?”

“The AI draws our attention to suitable candidates with the spectrums dictated for each profession.” He sounded stiff and formal now.

“But it tells you who you need assignments for, doesn’t it? You don’t do that. The AI uses statistics to decide that this year, fifty new engineers are needed, or a dozen farmers or a new captain.”

“It is an assessment involving the most complex data anywhere on the ship,” Hart replied. “It is well beyond human computational range. But we do personally assess the candidates for those positions and make the best selection possible.”

“There was more than one candidate for the captain’s role, wasn’t there?”

He got to his feet. “That information is never shared with the public.”

“I’m not the public. Not anymore. I’m in this. I have a right to know.”

“Really?” he asked curiously. “What right would that be, Ms. Victore?”

“You just finished saying you personally assess candidates and make the final selection. How do you know you’re not wrong? How do you know you haven’t made a mistake? You’re human.”

Faint red painted his tanned cheeks. “I am a highly trained professional. Of course I don’t make mistakes.”

“I wasn’t the only one who could be captain. Why did you pick me?”

“Does it matter?” he asked. “You were the best and most suitable candidate. The decision is made.”

“But I don’t want the job! Doesn’t that count?”

He was backing away. He glanced over his shoulder as she got to her feet, looking for escape. “We all are assigned to the best fit for our personalities, Ms. Victore.”

“I don’t want it! That makes me a terrible fit!”

He turned and hurried away, behind the glass doors, his steps quick and short. He didn’t look back.

Emmie watched him go. “Damn,” she muttered to herself. How could she make people listen to her if they could just walk away whenever they wanted?

Because she was in the Aventine, she walked through the district to the trolley station on the border with the Capitol, thinking hard. On the way through the market, she swapped the bracelet she had made for a cup of soup and an orange and sat on one of the public benches to eat it.

It was later than she thought, because the buskers and entertainers were already setting up their little areas where they would work for the evening, attracting audiences and applause. The bigger the audience, the louder the applause, the greater the tribute would be at the end. Sometimes the very best entertainers, the ones who became so popular they could command their own venues, would attract patrons who would support them while they worked solely on their avocation…which became their vocation, because they gave up their assigned profession in order to entertain.

It didn’t happen very often. Most people had an avocation that didn’t lend itself to entertaining others. Avocations were always creative. Her mother made furniture. Her father painted…and he was good enough that sometimes he could swap a painting for food or other goods, too. But he mostly painted for himself and he loved doing it.

Emmie made clothes and other things, playing with recipes and colors and materials…she didn’t know what the avocation could be called. She did know it would never entertain people. Making clothes was never going to give her an escape out of this mess.

She heard the captain’s voice in her memory. The garments you have made will be turned into the recyclers to have their energy reclaimed in a few days or weeks or months, while what I have made, what I continue to make, will endure for centuries.

Emmie was starting to understand the essential difference in their individual passions with depressing clarity.

She finished her orange as the first of the entertainers, a writer, stood on his box and began to narrate a new story. There were only a couple of people standing in front of him, while across the square more than a dozen people stood waiting for a singer to finish setting up his equipment.

She looked from the larger audience to the tiny one.

Both entertainers were being listened to.

Emmie almost swallowed a piece of orange whole. She choked it back, as ideas cannoned off each other, moving faster and faster.

Then she went home, to shut herself in her room and think. While the entire ship speculated about the rash of new mentor assignments and what it all meant, she made her plans.

Chapter Six

Seven weeks later.

Emmie didn’t return to the bridge after their rushed conversation in the corridor and Grey knew something had happened in the meeting he had missed. Whatever it was, it had made her stay away. Missing such vital information was a bad error. Not being able to fix it was worse.

How could he train her if she insisted on staying away?

Now it was loosely and generally agreed upon inside the Bridge that the rash of mentor assignments presaged a disaster within the next ten to fifteen years, his own early death had become just another statistic. It was even more vital his replacement be be well-trained and ready before the disaster occurred. Someone had to hold the ship together when it happened and that someone had to be strong and prepared.

Except Emmie refused to come to the Bridge. He even sent a car to pick her up, although the driver had returned empty handed, unwilling to physically drag a child into the car when she clearly did not want to leave, not when her neighbors stood in a defense layer between her and the driver, protecting her.

Esquilinos….

His job was demanding enough that his worry over Emmie and her training tended to slip to the back of his mind more often than not. There was time, yet, he kept telling himself.

And there was always another problem to solve. Today’s problem was the anonymous critic called Pericles. He had popped up on The Forum several weeks before, criticizing everything from weather schedules to tank game rules, to Bridge decision and announcements. Yuli had only drawn Grey’s attention to his diatribes two weeks ago, when it was clear Pericles was attracting mass attention.

“The only issue I have with him is that most of what he says is right,” Grey said morosely. “The weather patterns do cause traffic issues on shift changes. We’ve talked about changing them—hell, Kermode was talking about changing them before she died. The engineers do wear their boots everywhere and it leaves dirt everywhere, too. The coffee lately has been horrible and if we’d paid attention to the farmers complaining about the poor soil, three years ago, we wouldn’t have the issue now. Everything he says is spot on and right.”

“It doesn’t mean he gets to make fools of us,” Yuli said.

“It’s not just the Bridge he’s firing at,” Grey pointed out. “He’s just as happy to pull the pegs out from under engineers and the sciences…he’s even critiqued the singers in the Aventine and the woman with the orange hair does sound as though she’s singing underwater.”

“I can find out who he is,” Yuli said. “We can keep an eye on him. See where he’s getting his information from.”

“It’s all public information,” Grey said. “We can’t shut him down and we can’t try to learn who he is. Free speech is guaranteed. People must have a way to vent their feelings. If he wants to do it from behind a mask and a sword, that’s his mistake. No one will take him seriously if he thinks he has to hide his real identity. Let him speak.”

But the traffic had continued to build and now Pericles had exhorted everyone to come and hear him speak in the Aventine this evening.

“They’ll go just to find out who he is,” Yuli pointed out.

“They’ll stay to hear what he says,” Paulie added.

“We don’t touch him, we don’t shut him down,” Grey told them. “Is that clear? Even if he’s a Caver.”

“Especially if he’s a Caver,” Yuli added, making them all laugh. There hadn’t been a serious Caver appear among the population for a long time. The belief that the Endurance didn’t really exist, that the space they were flying through didn’t exist and the inside of the ship was a large cave on Terra—or a sealed building somewhere else, or an asteroid circling old Sol that had been sealed to protect them from the toxic elements and criminals outside—tended to re-emerge on a regular basis. The obvious argument against it—that the Palatine clearly revolved on a central axis, refuting the cave theory—was glossed over by the believers. But Cavers were fun when they were most insistent and they entertained everyone with their delusions.

At the appointed hour they gathered around the screen to watch. Everyone had a glass of their favorite beverage in hand and Grey wolfed down a plate of something Yuli had scrounged, too hungry to find out what it was first. It was hot and solid and that was all he cared about.

“There has got to be five hundred people squeezed into the square,” someone observed.

“And look at the traffic meter on the feed,” Paulie added. “Most of the ship is watching.”

“Wonderful,” Yuli said dryly.

“I’d be happier if his mission was to make people laugh,” Grey added. “But people like him because he makes them think. It’s contrary and it’s intriguing.”

“There, coming out from behind the stall,” Leanne said, pointing.

The crowd parted, letting Pericles through. He was a short man, wearing a mask and a white, formless cloth costume Greyson recognized from history books. It left his calves bare and his feet were wrapped in thonged sandals.

“Greek,” Yuli murmured. Then he rolled his eyes. “Pericles,” he repeated with a groan.

“What of it?” Paulie demanded.

“Pericles is considered to be one of history’s greatest orators and statesmen,” Grey said. “He also led Greece to war.” But he said it absently, most of his attention on the screen. There was something familiar….

He focused in on the calves, the slender ankles. “Oh, hell and damnation,” he muttered, resting his forehead on his fingers.

Everyone looked at him.

“It’s Emmie,” he told Yuli.

Yuli whirled to look at the screen again, then back at him. “What do we do?” he asked sharply. “Shut her down?”

She was climbing up onto a small platform, which put her head above everyone there.

“We can’t,” Grey said shortly. “Just because it’s Emmie doesn’t change anything. She’s as entitled to have her say as anyone else.”

“She’s a child!” Leanne protested.

“She’s nearly sixteen and well into her third phase,” Yuli said. “At that age, a child can speak for themselves.”

On the screen, Emmie lifted her arms for silence, even though she already had the attention of everyone there.

“I will talk to you tonight about human fallibility and the danger in which such human weaknesses puts everyone on the Endurance.” Her voice rolled out over the audience, strong and determined, with just a hint of nervous shaking in it.

The audience murmured to themselves, either startled into it by her subject or by the fact that she was a woman under the male tunic and mask.

Grey sighed. “Now I know what she learned when she interviewed the Accouchement Master,” he told Yuli softly.

Yuli tore his gaze away from the screen to look at him. “Just say the word. We can create an emergency, something to send everyone back home.”

Grey shook his head. “Let her go for a moment. She might yet alienate them.”

“If she talks the way she writes, there’s not much danger of that,” Yuli warned.

On the screen, she was speaking once more. “We place such faith in our computers and artificial intelligences. We have to. They supply functions and processing we cannot possibly recreate ourselves. The survival of the Endurance requires we fulfill other functions instead. Engineers to maintain the ship. Farmers to grow the small amount of food we cannot print ourselves. Scientists to push the horizon of human knowledge with each succeeding generation. Without these roles, we would become savages, our mission to reach Destination forgotten.”

Her voice was growing stronger. No one was hissing or booing. Her confidence was building. Grey settled back to watch and absorb. He already knew what she was going to say.

“Because we rely so heavily upon the power of technology, it becomes frightening to question how reliable that digital assistance is to us. Life would be unbearable without it, so we lean upon it, are grateful for it and forget that even computers can make errors. After all, not a single AI has ever been able to predict who will win the next tank game.”

The laughter that rose was loud.

Even Grey found himself smiling.

“You all have work you do each day. How many of you have ever questioned if that work is the best and most suitable job you could be doing on the Endurance?” And she paused, letting them consider.

“No…she isn’t…sir, is she about to say what I think?” Yuli asked softly.

Grey nodded.

The audience around Emmie was stirring. Shifting. Heads were coming together as they whispered.

“Consider this, friends!” Emmie shouted, over the top of the murmurs. “Consider that computers are the ones who decide how many engineers are needed each year…yet it is humans who decide who will be those engineers!” She paused again. “Humans decide!” she repeated. “Flawed, biased and weak humans get to decide what you will do for nearly a century of your life.” Again, the pause for emphasis. “What if those humans were wrong?”

Now the murmur in the square turned into a babble that would drown her out if she didn’t have some sort of voice projector on her.

Instead, Emmie held up her hands for silence. After a very long thirty seconds, she got it. “Consider well, friends. I will return in two weeks’ time and talk about the future. Your future. Find me on the Forum.”

She stepped off the box and walked through the crowd, which parted for her like the air itself.

“She didn’t kill us,” Yuli said, sounding breathless.

“No, she’s smarter than that,” Grey said, watching her make her way back to the stall where she had emerged from. “She’s planting the seed. For two weeks everyone will talk about this and think it over. The more pro-active ones will ask questions, maybe look into it themselves. She’ll drop more hints on the Forum. By the time she gets to reveal who she is and why she’s saying what she’s saying, everyone will be ready to accept what she says.”

“That’s why she’s using a mask,” Leanne murmured. “She’d have a harder time of it if they knew she was still a minor.”

Grey stayed silent. He remembered how Emmie had spun close to panic at the thought of dealing with people and of speaking in public. He suspected the mask was more of a prop for her courage than a shield to hide behind. So was the name and the costume. While she was Pericles, orator and statesman, she couldn’t be afraid of her own shadow.

He had to admire her sheer, raw courage. More and more he was certain Emmie was exactly the right person for the captain’s chair. Now, if he could only convince her of that, then train her to become the best she could be!

But that night, when he read Pericles’ diatribe about the lack of Bridge response to the insane rash of mentor assignments in the last few months, his admiration evaporated.

What was he going to do with her?

* * * * *

Two days after speaking in the Aventine , Emmie returned to the Bridge. She was let into the shielded areas without question, just as she always had been, even though she fully expected guns to be pointed at her.

She asked for an escort to the captain’s office and got it, also just as usual. The guard who escorted her was a stranger and didn’t talk to her, which didn’t help her nervousness.

When she got in the door, Yuli threw up his hands. “You!” he roared. “I should have you strung up in the same square and your backside paddled for the whole ship to see!”

His outrage made her feel better. “It has to be said. I’m saying it the only way I can.”

“From behind a mask! It’s…weak!” Yuli shot back.

“It’s prudent. I need to keep distance between me and the Bridge when I’m Pericles.”

The captain, who had been watching Yuli roar at her, dropped his fist from under his chin. “You don’t intend to take the mask off?”

“Of course not!” The idea was horrifying for more than strategic reasons.

“Everyone will guess who you are,” Yuli raged.

“Perhaps. As long as I keep the mask on and don’t acknowledge my real identity, it doesn’t matter,” she replied, as calmly as she could, although this direct confrontation was tying her middle up in tight, hard knots that made her feel nauseous.

“Why, Emmie?” the captain asked. “Why do it at all?”

“Because I don’t want the job,” she replied.

“Then why are you here?” Yuli demanded, throwing out his hands.

“Because I’m the only one who can do it, for now.”

“Even if you get your way and they change how the mentoring is decided, it’s still going to be too late,” the captain said. His very pale eyes were steady on her face. “We need every single year of training we can get to prepare you for this. Even if you succeed and we started training new candidates, in ten years’ time, when whatever happens that is to happen to me, you will be the only one ready.”

“I know.” She said it as steadily as she could. “You hate it and so do I. Pericles is the only one who gets to say it out loud, though.”

“Then you’re going to insist on this silly charade?” Yuli asked.

“Of course she is,” the captain said. “And we’re going to let her, for as long as she turns up for every single training session asked of her.”

Yuli looked triumphant. “Yes. Good. Yes, indeed.”

Emmie let out a breath that shook. They had settled for exactly the terms she had been planning on offering and they had made the offer themselves. She had found the leverage she needed.

She wouldn’t feel nearly as helpless about this now they both had each other over a barrel.

* * * * *

Two weeks later, Pericles returned to the Aventine square and this time, there was nearly a thousand people squeezed into every last spare inch of space in the square, plus more standing on top of the nearest building units, stalls and benches. They were crammed in there.

While Yuli seethed about privileged information, Pericles walked her audience through the processes that went into deciding what profession a child would be assigned to. It was researched, nuanced and persuasive. Grey could feel his own physical reactions to her reasoning and oratory. The doubt she was sowing. The questions she was planting.

Yuli fumed throughout the presentation. “This is madness! You should shut her up in a room in the Bridge and feed her through the crack under the door.”

“Listen to her,” Grey urged him. “She’s leading, Yuli. She doesn’t realize what she’s doing and if she did, she’d never put on the mask again. Yet she’s influencing them, leading them where she wants them to go.”

“It’s not where we want them to go!” Yuli cried.

“It’s the best training she could get and she’s doing it for herself, out there among the people who count, the ones who can really make a difference.”

“We decide policy,” Yuli said mulishly.

“We set policy that is the will of the people,” Grey corrected him. “She is directing their will. Let her do it. Let her learn how hard it is to really change peoples’ minds.”

“There will be a mutiny come out of this,” Yuli said darkly.

“No, I don’t think so,” Grey said, watching her on the screen. “And if there is, we’ll suppress it the usual way and she’ll learn a lesson and never repeat that error again. Everything is fixable, Yuli. You taught me that.”

Chapter Seven

Everything is fixable, except time. Time became Grey’s greatest enemy. The days piled up more rapidly than he thought was possible, one day melding into the next.

Emmie abided by their agreement and never failed to arrive at the Bridge at her appointed hour. She would sit just behind him as he went about his day, absorbing the minutia of his work and occasionally asking questions. Many of the questions he would redirect into research projects that would introduce her to yet another area of knowledge that would help her in the future.

But gradually her questions grew more pointed and specific, dealing with personalities and why Grey had responded in the way he had to the people he dealt with all day.

Sometimes he had to sit and think about what he had done to provide the answers she needed and the review helped him, too, forcing him to vocalize what had become second nature to him. At those times, he would send the others from the room and they would tease out the reasoning and logic between them.

She still insisted on wearing her outrageously rebellious clothing. Grey was noticing more and more skirts and dresses and decorative garments on the streets and corridors of the ship, too. Emmie’s influence over what she called “fashion” was more persuasive than Pericles’ influence over policy.

When Emmie was not at home with her general studies, or on the Bridge, learning her work, she took on the role of Pericles, debating Bridge decisions, ship policies and driving public debate in a way that had not happened in Grey’s memory or Yuli’s either. She generated churn—causing many people to question decisions and policy, which was exactly what they should be doing—although real, lasting change was far more difficult to achieve in a stable, never-changing society. Inertia was on the Bridge’s side.

However, Emmie insisted on trying. Pericles wrote endlessly on her Forum and appeared in the Aventine every month or so, to cajole and convince, despite the resistance she faced.

“They’re comfortable. You’re never going to get them to change while they have comfortable lives untroubled by anything greater than a bargaining dispute,” Grey pointed out.

“Maybe the ship needs greater troubles,” Emmie shot back.

“Those times are coming,” Grey reminded her, which always served to send her back into introspective and moody silence.

* * * * *

Three years later.

Grey rarely accepted invitations from the Dream Hawks to attend their games, even though the entire ship knew they were his favored team. Most of the time he refused the many invitations because he simply didn’t have the time. But he also didn’t like to show too much open favoritism, even if he did sit in his quarters and swear every time they lost.

He only attended the Hawks and Blues game because Yuli had nearly physically hauled him out of his chair and sent him here with instructions not to return until the morning. The warm and enthusiastic reception he got from the Hawks manager, Deyfloss, added to his guilt. He had a lot to do. He should be back in his office taking care of business, not being sociable in the high tier box at a tankball game.

But it did feel good to just sit for a moment and not think.

At the end of the first quarter, the Hawks were actually ahead by a single goal and the fervor and excitement in the arena was almost tangible, as everyone left their seats to grab refreshments and catch up with neighbors and friends they may have spotted on the other side of the tank.

Grey looked around the high rise seating, to see who he knew at the game. He didn’t need to move from the Managers’ box, where food and drink was delivered to them.

The tank of a tankball game was twenty meters high and the seats rose up on all four sides of the transparent tank walls. The level of seats at the top were the most eagerly sought because that was where the goal boxes were. It was also where the lightest gravity layer was and where the most acrobatic and dramatic sequences of the game tended to occur.

Down at the bottom of the tank, where gravity was at two gees, action was necessarily slower. A team did everything it could to keep the ball in the upper layers, where it could be more easily manipulated and thrown.

The audience didn’t like sitting at the bottom levels, either. Many people swore the two gees seeped beyond the tank walls and settled over the audience, making it harder to breathe and painful to sit for too long. Grey didn’t believe the technology that made tankball games possible, which had been invented before the Endurance had left old Terra, could be that imprecise. It was over-worked imaginations making people believe the extra gravity was bleeding through the walls. Suggestion was a powerful force.

For that reason, the seats at the bottom of the tank were usually the last to be filled and often went empty. Tonight, the game was particularly well attended. Even so, there were groups of empty chairs in the first two rows. The fifteen minute interval also drew people out onto the concourse beyond the chairs, too.

There were five people sitting in a tightly bunched group in the first row, heads together and talking very intently. One of them had gotten to his feet and shuffled closer so they could talk better, which hid most of the group from Grey’s sight. It was unusual for such a concentrated discussion to happen at a tankball game, especially in the seats themselves. There were often deals and agreements reached out on the concourse, during the half-time interval. They happened in the corners, out of the way of foot traffic, or in the private boxes.

There were two people sitting in the second row. The woman looked familiar yet Grey couldn’t place her. She was an attractive older woman. Then he recognized her.

Anat Vicario.

It meant the man next to her was Jakub Emmetore. He had changed so much Grey had not realized who he was. His hair was gray all over and shorn short, as if he had given up on the thick waves he had once sported. He was still tall, although he had lost a lot of the muscle that had powered his big frame. His shoulders were frail under the jacket.

Grey studied him. As the man was only in his sixties, his appearance was a concern.

He watched as the group shifted and reformed as one of the members who had been sitting moved between them and climbed the stairs to the concourse level and left. The man who had been standing sat in the vacated seat and now Grey could see everyone who was there.

He wasn’t surprised to see one of them was Emmie. It did surprise him she was the one sitting in the middle, apparently the driving force of the conversation. As she spoke, her hands lifted, shaping and emphasizing whatever it was she was talking about.

Given the company, Grey suspected she was in her Pericles role, only without the mask.

The man on her left was Claus Darrell, a spare man with a neat, fussy appearance and a tight moustache. Darrell coordinated and managed the stalls in the main square of the Aventine. Because he was in charge of assignments of space in the busiest and most popular market, he had considerable influence over others. The market he controlled was the one where Pericles most often made her personal appearances. It explained why he was sitting with Emmie and her parents.

There was another child of about Emmie’s age sitting with her—a boy with longish hair. Grey didn’t recognize him. From casual comments Emmie had made he suspected the boy was Yosef Reuter, also from the Esquiline and in Emmie’s opinion, not terrible smart. He was watching her now with large eyes, his devotion plain in his happy little smile.

The woman beside Yosef was the most interesting of the group. Grey recognized her immediately even though they had never met in person. Penka Bugarelli was tall and slender. Her Forum profile said she was forty-eight. From where Grey was sitting, looking down upon her, she looked much younger and very attractive.

She was wearing one of Emmie’s outrageous outfits. It was a longer version of the dresses Grey had started to see everywhere, the fabric glowing with a dull gleam that spoke of silk or satin, one of the fabrics that served no discernible purpose except to look good. The dress wrapped around Bugarelli’s middle, making her waist seem small. The front of the dress was a vee shape that seemed to deliberately draw his gaze to her breasts. He could actually see the dip between them, over the top of it. The view from up here was shocking.

Was this the way women were going to continue to dress in the future? The provocative fashion seemed to have been designed with nothing but decoration in mind. Trousers and shirts and jackets and the more specialized garments everyone had worn for decades all had a use, a reason for being worn. Usually, the clothing someone wore was related to their profession.

Engineers wore pants and shirts and jackets with lots of pockets and places to store tools. Scientists wore protective gear, depending on what work they were engaged in, or simple pants and shirt for more intellectual pursuits. Everyone on the ship wore aprons or coats when involved in messier work. Clothing was useful, an adjunct to the tools and equipment of one’s profession.

Ornamental clothing was an oxymoron.

Yet Grey couldn’t help but be pleased by Penka Bugarelli’s appearance. The reason he knew there were so many more dresses and skirts being worn on the ship was because he constantly noticed them, sometimes for a minute or more as he watched a woman moving in the garment, the way it swung around her legs….

He frowned. If fashion became a distraction, he would have to open a discussion on the Bridge about controlling its distribution, or restrict when it was worn.

But it wasn’t the reason he didn’t like that Penka Bugarelli was a part of the conversation grouped around Emmie, down in the bottom row where no one liked to go. Bugarelli was supposedly an engineer, working in the Meadows, yet she lived in the Palatine in a big house that had been given to her many years ago by a medic who said he wanted to live in the district where he worked and had taken a wall apartment in the Capitol.

There had been many rumors about Bugarelli over the years. She had influence that didn’t match her profession and status, which meant there was much more going on in her life that no one could see. Grey’s formal reports on the criminals and bootleggers on the ship had circled Bugarelli as possibly being one of the more active of the criminal class. As bootleggers and radicals stimulated the free trade market and kept more law-abiding citizens on their toes mentally and physically, they were allowed to continue their activities, unaware they were being carefully monitored. If anyone grew too strong or powerful, steps were taken to limit their activities.

No one had ever been able to confirm Bugarelli was a part of that base network. She was careful never to let anyone see her directly involved in anything illegal. The only proof was the indirect fact that she had more influence on the ship than a mere engineer should have. She knew and was intimate with all the powerful names on board.

And now she was sitting with Emmie and the Aventine’s busiest market manager.

Grey watched the group talk. The man who had left returned, as many others were. The interval was nearly over. He couldn’t identify the returning man because he didn’t see his face at all.

As the two teams emerged into the tank and were sealed in and took up starting positions, Emmie looked up at Grey and lifted her hand in greeting. She had known he was there all along.

He beckoned her with a flick of his fingers and turned his attention to the game.

It took her several minutes to make her way out to the concourse and up to his level. The guards at the door to the box would know her and let her in without challenge. Grey heard Deyfloss greet her at the back where the table of beverages stood. Emmie answered him, her voice low.

Grey turned to look at her as she sank into the chair beside him. It was Deyfloss’ chair. Deyfloss spent most of the game standing at the back of the box, talking to the team coach via the closed channel.

As the game started, Emmie crossed her legs and sat back in the chair. She was wearing shoes with heels. They were nothing like the shoes and boots most often seen on the ship. Grey leaned forward to look at them more closely. “What in Terra’s name are you wearing?” he asked.

“They’re called stilettos,” she said, turning her heel so the shoe was more fully revealed. The shoe itself, unlike working boots and shoes, left the top of her foot revealed, right down to just above her toes, he suspected. Everything, including her ankle, was on display. “I saw a picture,” she said. “It took me a month to get a workable pattern.”

The groundman for the Hawks, Santis, grabbed the ball by one of its handles and went into his trademark whole-body spin, whipping the ball around him, moving it into a sharp elliptic, before releasing it to let it rocket through the layers toward the top. The crowd roared their approval and Emmie looked up sharply, to see what was happening.

Like most groundmen, Santis was heavily muscled and powerful, his body trained and formed to work in the heavy gravity and to fling the ball up high as he had just done. This was Santis’ second year in the league and he was a crowd favorite—especially with the women.

But Grey found his attention coming back to Emmie’s shoes. It was the heel he had to look at. Work boots often had heels. His own shoes had heels. They were flat, low things that helped raise the foot and relieve some of the aches and tension that came from constantly standing. Emmie’s shoe heels were long and spindly and nearly the length of his palm. “How do you walk in them?” he asked curiously.

“It took a bit of practice,” she admitted, her eyes on the game. “But now I barely notice.”

“Does it hurt?”

“The first pair hurt like crazy. Then I researched more in the old Terra archives. There are all sorts of ways to make them more comfortable. This is my fourth pair. Penka asked me to make her a pair, too.” She clapped as one of the Hawks top men pushed the ball toward the goal, tumbling in the near-zero gravity in a slow spin to avoid the Blues guard.

“I noticed you were keeping some interesting company down there,” Grey said. “I thought I should warn you.”

“About Penka?” Emmie shook her head a little. “She’s trying to bribe the Hawks coach, to get him to lose the game, did you know?”

Tankball bribery wasn’t anything new. Usually, the coaches and players were too interested in winning to accept bribes.

There was a soft, collective groan as the Blues topman grabbed the ball as it hurtled past him, letting it take him along and fending off the Hawks player with an elbow. They both arrowed toward the Blues end of the tank while the Blues supporters in the audience screamed approval.

“You said she was trying to bribe the coach,” Grey said. “Does that mean she failed?”

“She doesn’t know I know she wanted the dress I made her to help convince the coach it will be worthwhile doing what she asks.” She grinned and there was a touch of wickedness in her expression. “She’s failing because she doesn’t know he doesn’t like women. She didn’t do her homework.”

“She doesn’t have all the Bridge resources at her disposal as you do, you mean,” Grey corrected her.

Emmie’s smile broadened. “Exactly.”

“So why does she want to spend her time with a privileged nineteen year old?” Grey asked her.

Emmie stopped smiling. “She’s spending time with Pericles,” she said softly. “She thinks Pericles is of the same mind as her.”

“Aren’t you?”

Emmie pressed her lips together. “She doesn’t understand the difference between dissension and healthy debate. She doesn’t know how to work within the available systems.”

“Then you know what she is. Good.”

“I suspected. You just confirmed it, thank you.”

Grey rolled his eyes. “Keep your shields up around her, Emmie. As you just said, she works outside the normal systems. That makes her unaccountable and what she does nearly untraceable.”

“When it comes to Penka Bulgarelli, you and I are in rare agreement,” she replied.

“Then why are you keeping her company, Emmie? What do you hope to achieve with her?”

“A lot of people listen to her,” Emmie said. “A lot of people look to her for guidance on how to think and act and Penka agrees with me about the mentoring system—”

Grey groaned. “Hell, Emmie, it’s been nearly six years and you’re still flogging that dead horse?”

“It’s wrong,” she said flatly. “It’s demoralizing and a demoralized ship is a dangerous one. You taught me that.”

“The only way to ensure the longevity of the ship is to make sure all the crucial functions are properly filled. That can only be done by assigning the correct number of people to each essential role.”

“Free competition would make sure the people who got the job want it. They would be enthusiastic and complete their work more efficiently and be happy. Morale would improve immediately.”

“Then everyone would chose to be artists and entertainers and scientists,” he shot back, with growing irritation. “Who would do the essential ship maintenance? No one would choose to be an engineer.”

“They would, if there was nothing else they could be chosen for. The professions could pick and choose the best from among any number of candidates. People would be chosen for the work they’re good at…it’s the same end result, only people would be free to choose.”

“If it’s the end result, why go through the upheaval of competitions and disappointment? The man who becomes an engineer because he cannot fill any other role would still resent his work.”

“More than he does now?” she asked sweetly. “When he thinks he has no choice in the matter? At least, if he tries for what he wants and fails, he can settle, knowing he had the option.”

Grey sighed. “You would really prefer to spend your days making pretty, useless things, Emmie?” he asked.

“After six years of training with you, Greyson Durant, I am more convinced than ever that self-determination would do more to maintain the fragile balance on the Endurance than all the tank games, festivals and creative distractions you could possibly wave in front of them.”

She got to her feet and Grey had to lift his chin to look at her. When had she gotten so tall? The shoes, of course, added extra height. Even so, she would still stand level with his shoulder and he was taller than a lot of men on the ship.

Curious, he stood, too, to measure. Yes, her head was very nearly level with his, thanks to the shoes.

The dress she was wearing tonight wasn’t nearly as provocative as the one she had created for Penka Bulgarelli. It didn’t dip at the front to nearly the same depth. There was a thin belt of the same material as the dress around her waist, pulling it in. The skirt hugged her hips, down to just above her knees, then flared out, so that when she walked, it fluttered, drawing attention to itself.

The top of it looked almost the same as a perfectly normal shirt. Except now he was paying attention, he realized the fabric was semi-transparent. Between the little abstract figures repeated all over the fabric, he could see beneath the dress. There was another layer underneath, a more skimpy layer with only two little straps going over her shoulders, that clung to her all the way down to where the excess material of the flaring skirt hid everything.

With a jolt, he realized he was staring at her and tore his gaze away hurriedly.

Emmie was watching the game and hadn’t noticed. The ball was in the bottom level and Santis was moving toward it using the wading stride the groundmen did when they tried to move fast in all that gravity. His arms swung powerfully as he raced to beat the Blues player to grab the ball, which settled with a heavy thud right up against the wall.

Then the ball turned white. Zero gravity.

The crowd went wild. A zero gravity ball was a bonus, when it was in the bottom layer.

Santis dove for the ball, grabbed the handle and whipped it out of the Blues player’s grasping fingers. He pushed himself up off the floor with his other hand, his back and shoulders working hard, then swung it in a powerful underarm throw, straight up into the air.

The ball rose like a rocket, propelling through the layers without resistance because it weighed nothing. As it reached the lighter layers it started moving faster. When it crossed the face of the goal, the Hawks’ lead man flipped himself around in the light atmosphere and kicked at the ball with both feet as it passed. It was perfectly timed.

The ball skidded sideways, ricocheting off his feet. It was still white, still weightless and shot across the two body lengths between the player and the goal mouth and dropped in.

The siren blared and the crowd went mad, banging on the tank walls and screaming.

Santis bowed and they screamed even more loudly.

Grey laughed. “The hero of the hour.” But his gaze was pulled back to Emmie.

She was watching him, a small frown between her brows. “You’re not going to do anything about Bulgarelli bribing the coach, are you?”

Grey sighed. Work never ended, even here. “If she wasn’t wasting her time trying to bribe tankgame people, she would be trying to bribe people who have an influence on life on the Endurance. She failed, anyway.”

“Next time, she won’t.”

“No one can counter the luck of the ball.” He nodded to where Santis was still accepting his accolades. “If the ball had been black, he would never have been able to throw it high enough for the goal. No one can anticipate chance, Emmie, so why not let Bulgarelli use up all her energy trying?”

“Where does it end, though?” Emmie demanded. “People like Bulgarelli…they will always find a way to work things for themselves. They’ll always find the weakness.”

“Exactly.”

Emmie’s mouth parted. Then she closed it and looked around quickly for eavesdroppers. “That’s why you let them go unchecked. You want them to find the weaknesses, so they can be strengthened.”

Grey lifted his shoulders in a tiny shrug. “Unchecked and closely watched. The balance really is fragile.” He nodded down toward the bottom row of seats. “You should go back to your parents. Yosef is starting to look unhappy.”

“Good night, Greyson.” She turned and walked back to the door into the box. Everyone watched her go, he noticed, including Defloss, who openly ogled her rear view and the fluttering hem of her skirt.

Grey made himself sit down once more. His irritation didn’t lift even when the Hawks won two-zero, forty minutes later. He reminded himself once more he didn’t like coming to the games.

His dislike had nothing to do with the fact that one of the first people to greet Santis as he emerged from the tank at the end of the game was Emmie, whom he swept up into a hard hug, her slender figure tiny next to his huge frame.

Chapter Eight

A year later.

An Emergence party was traditional and expected, Emmie’s father explained over dinner a few weeks before her twentieth birthday. Just because it was traditional and expected, Emmie could feel her resistance kicking in.

Yuli commented on her distraction dryly. “Paulie would be able to pay more attention to this than you are right now. You like statistical analysis, Emmaline. What’s gnawing at you?”

She spent more time these days working alongside Yuli than she did with Greyson. Yuli was more directly involved in getting things done on the Bridge. In the last year or so, more and more of his work had shifted over to Emmie. Even though no one said anything, Yuli had been starting to miss things. Not large things and so far, nothing important. Yet Emmie found herself going over his work afterward, double-checking. She also volunteered to complete tasks whenever Yuli would give them to her.

So when he growled about her lack of attention, she knew she would not be able to pass it off easily because being distracted was not something she normally allowed for herself. She told him about the Emergence party and her reluctance to comply with everyone’s expectations.

“You never have liked being told what to do,” Yuli pointed out. “In two weeks’ time you’ll be able to tell everyone to go to hell and do exactly what you please, so take a deep breath and wait it out.”

“I don’t want a party, Yuli. It’s a stupid thing. Everyone knows me. Everyone knows how old I am and when my birthday is. I don’t need to trumpet to the entire ship I’m an adult now. They know it as well as I do.”

“The party isn’t for you, you silly child. You haven’t figured that out yet?” Yuli glared at her.

She wasn’t fooled by the ferocious expression or his condescension. He would rather die than admit he liked her. He thought he was fooling everyone when he growled at her in this way.

She stared at him, her brain working. “It’s for my parents….” she said slowly.

“They have cared for you and sacrificed many things to raise you to adulthood. You may be surprised to know they have come to care for you deeply in that time. Most children are surprised to discover their parents love them. I still don’t know why.”

“Why they’re surprised?”

“Why a parent could love any child. Most of them are insufferable,” he replied sharply. “Your parents and your entire community have supported your rearing and now they must symbolize their severance. It makes it easier for them if they celebrate it instead of getting upset about it. I, on the other hand, will become quite drunk and make a spectacle of myself because I will be the only one truly celebrating finally getting you off my hands.”

She grinned. “You know it isn’t going to happen straight away.”

“Celebrating its imminent arrival will be quite sufficient, thank you,” he replied and tapped the screen generator. “Now, if I can have your undivided attention, please…?”

So Emmie tried to help her parents and the vast team of neighbors and Esquilinos who wanted to help plan and arrange her Emergence party and learned Yuli was more correct than even he had realized. She was waved away and told to make herself a pretty dress for the evening, they had the arrangements well in hand. At first, she thought everyone was doing it for her. When she caught her father crying over her baby pictures as he selected them for the array that would play throughout the evening, she understood that everyone was working so damn hard on the arrangements because it was a form of catharsis.

She had kissed her father on top of his bald and shining head and left him alone to pick the pictures.

Claus Darrell offered the market square as a venue and it ended up being the only place large enough to contain everyone who was expected to attend. The lights were lowered, party lights strung, music played and refreshment tables were added throughout the square. Most of the stalls stayed open, too, happy to take advantage of the influx of people.

The dais in the corner of the square was where her parents completed the simple ceremony. While everyone watched, they both hugged her and her father handed her the oversized plastic circle that represented the chip in her wrist. At midnight, the native coding in the real chip in her wrist would be swapped out for basic adult functions and all the restrictions and safeguards of childhood stripped away.

Her mother openly wept and hugged her a second time and once more, Emmie was glad Yuli had baited her into agreeing to the party.

After the ceremony was over, the party really began. Yuli, as promised, was working hard on becoming completely sodden, which involved standing at the beverage table and scowling at everyone who came near. It wasn’t until she saw him talking to her father, their heads together, that she realized her parents were not the only ones who needed catharsis that night.

There were many people she had not seen for years who came to congratulate her and wish her well. Yosef Reuter, wearing the complicated clothing of a mechanical systems engineer, tried to kiss her. She turned her chin so his lips pressed against her cheek, instead.

Mithat Santis stood waiting on the other side of the square. She could see his big shoulders from where she stood at the foot of dais. He was half-a-head higher than anyone else and he was watching her with a smile on his face. He wouldn’t come over to her. Instead, he would wait there until she was ready to speak to him. Unlike many people in her life, Mithy was undemanding and easy to be with. He understood what it was like to be known by everyone. He never took it personally if she asked for time alone and space to breathe. In fact, sometimes he would stay with her just to fend people off.

But there were more people waiting to speak to her. They weren’t standing in line. They were glancing toward her to see if it was appropriate to approach.

That was when Greyson swept in. He really did seem to sweep, too. People tended to step aside when he moved among them, startled to find the captain so physically close to them. He was nearly as tall as Yuli, without any of Yuli’s insubstantial slenderness, which made him physically imposing. He took up space the same way Mithy Santis did, even though no one’s shoulders were as big as Mithy’s. Except, Greyson was wearing the formal Captain’s uniform, black with braid and gilt and symbols. It helped with the impression of grandeur.

Greyson came right up to her and smiled. “You can finally tell me to go to hell, if you want. How does it feel?”

“At the moment? Stifling,” she admitted. “I had no idea how many people on the ship I actually know, until tonight.”

He didn’t look around. “Need space?” he asked softly.

“Yes! My feet are hurting, too. And no nasty comments about my shoes, thank you. I happen to like them.”

“Even though they hurt your feet?” He shook his head and glanced around, then gripped her elbow gently. “Over here,” he said. “We can make it look as though it is official business and no one will bother you for a few moments.”

Thankfully, she settled on the bench next to him and turned to face him so others would be discouraged from interrupting them. “I’ll have to go back soon,” she warned him.

“And I have to get back to my office.” He grimaced. “Besides, I don’t want to get between you and Santis. I don’t want him angry with me for any reason.”

“Thank you for coming to the party,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were pulling away from business to do it.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course I wouldn’t miss your Emergence party.” He took a breath and let it out and she realized that much like Mithy and her, there were only certain people Greyson trusted enough to fully relax in their company and she was one of them. “So…you’re now officially an adult,” he said. “In the next few days we should talk about how it changes things.”

“Why does it have to change anything at all?” she asked.

“When I came of age, Captain Kermode made me her second in command, above even the Chief of Staff.”

“I couldn’t do that to Yuli,” Emmie said quickly.

Greyson studied her, his pale eyes steady. “You’re already doing most of his job, Emmaline. He knows that. So do I and everyone else on the Bridge. We’d only be formalizing what is already fact.”

Something invisible squeezed her chest and made her throat ache. Her eyes stung with tears. “Can’t we pretend he’s fine? Just for a while longer?”

Greyson’s gaze flickered away from her, then came back. “How is your father, these days?”

Then she really did begin to cry. It caught her by surprise and she sat with her hands in her lap, her shoulders shaking, as the large, dark cloud that had been hovering over the apartment for months finally descended. Her vision blurred. “My…my mother always said she would move back to the Capitol after I emerged, only now she won’t. She says she wants to stay with my father. And he’s so…g…grateful! I didn’t know how much he loved her….”

“Damn, I’m sorry, Emma,” Grey said gently. “I shouldn’t have asked tonight of all nights. Here. Shh, you’re ruining your makeup….” His hand settled on her arm and drew her closer. “Everyone is looking,” he whispered in warning. “They’re wondering if I’m being mean to you, I think.”

Emmie hid her face against his shoulder, her cheek rubbing against the coarse fabric of his uniform. His shoulder was firm under her head and his fingers settled in her hair, stroking softly. “He really is ill, then?” he asked softly. “I thought it might just be a reaction to you leaving.”

She could hear his voice echoing in his chest. It was a deep rumble that was startling…and very male.

“My father won’t consult with a medic,” she whispered. “No one knows for certain, only…just look at him, Grey! My mother knows. That’s why she won’t leave.”

Greyson took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. “Yuli only has a few weeks left, Emmie. It’s not fair and on top of your father…. But it’s something you should know. We have to prepare.”

She closed her eyes, letting it sink in.

“Besides,” Greyson added, “it will be good for you to learn how to handle this sort of change-over now, so you’re ready for it, later.”

Horror made her sit up and look at him, her wet cheeks and her upset thrust aside by the black reminder. She covered her mouth to hold in her protest.

How long was it since she had consciously reminded herself that Greyson was mentoring her to be his replacement because his death had been predicted? Tonight marked her emergence. Now she was theoretically and legally capable of stepping into his role with minimal transition errors, how soon would his doom catch up with him?

Now she was an adult, his fate could arrive as soon as tomorrow.

“No…” she breathed.

Grey gave her a small smile. “I’m doing nothing but upset you. That’s what I was afraid of. That’s why I said I had to go back to the office. I wanted to avoid this tonight of all nights.”

“Grey, it’s just statistics! Averages! And they could be wrong. They could be wrong!”

“That’s what I have been telling myself for the last six years.” His smile faded.

Impulse made her reach for him. She gripped the fabric of the uniform and squeezed it in her fist. “Make me captain. Right now. Today. Tomorrow. If you voluntarily step down, then you can avoid it.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. It’s not the office itself that is the statistical average. It’s me. The person.”

She squeezed harder. “There has to be something you can do!” Her voice shook.

“There is. I’ve been doing it for six years. I’ve trained the most gifted and skilled captain I can. When you take over, Emma, you’ll be one of the best captains this ship has ever seen. If the AI was right about you, then it’s probably right about me, too.”

Gently, he loosened her fingers and held her hand. “It might be years, yet,” he said calmly. “And until it happens, whatever it is, then I intend to continue to lead, to make sure you’re handed a well-founded ship and a city that can thrive under your guidance.”

“I still don’t want the job,” she whispered. Her throat was too tight to speak normally.

He smiled and this time there was warmth in his eyes. “I don’t particularly want you to have to take it, either. But you are absolutely the right person for the role, Emma. The last six years have taught me that, if nothing else.”

He had lovely eyes. She had noticed before. Now in the dim light, with her vision newly cleared by tears, it was as if she was seeing them for the first time. In combination with the sharp line of his jaw, it was an arresting combination. The direct way he had of looking at her and the inflexible jawline both spoke of a strength that had nothing to do with muscle power.

“They were right about you, too,” she replied.

He leaned a little closer. “Do me a favor? Will you tell Yuli that, constantly? Even after all this time he still thinks I’m wet behind the ears.”

But she barely heard him for the roaring in her ears and the thudding of her heart. His lean toward her had stolen her breath, evaporated it out of her lungs as though she had been exposed to vacuum. She couldn’t breathe in more air. Her lungs were locked.

For one shining beat of a moment she had thought he was going to kiss her. Never mind that they were two of the most well-known people on the ship, sitting in full sight of hundreds of witnesses. She forgot for the moment that Mithy kept speaking of finding an apartment together and might be one of the hundreds watching them right now. It all faded away as her heart stopped, her lungs seized and her thoughts suspended in a sea of possibility.

The idea of Grey kissing her did not seem ridiculous at all. It seemed…natural.

His eyes met hers and locked. She recognized the look in his eyes. The knowledge.

Emotion fizzed in her veins, then everything grew still and expectant once more.

She didn’t dare take the kiss that hovered there, that they had mutually and silently agreed upon. There was six years of opposition between them, too.

But she yearned for it in a way that Mithy’s kisses had never moved her.

Abruptly, Grey pushed himself to his feet, almost as if he was tearing himself away. He stood with his back to her, looking down at the ground.

Emmie remembered to breathe. She was trembling.

“I must go back to the office,” he said. His voice was lower than usual. “Enjoy your party, Emma.”

Emma. No one had ever shortened her name in that way. In the last few minutes, he had called her Emma at least twice.

“Thank you,” she made herself say politely.

He walked away, back through the party-goers, without looking back at her. She knew he didn’t look back, because she watched his broad back moving away from her until she couldn’t see him anymore.

Chapter Nine

For the first time in his adult life, Grey seriously considered staying away from the administrative section of the Bridge. He fussed over his morning meal, read reports at the table and dragged his heels getting dressed, trying to delay the moment he stepped out the door and walked down the corridor to the office wing.

Then he actually stood at the door, just far enough inside it that it didn’t open and debated with himself, face to face with more than just the door.

He didn’t want to look her in the eye, that was the problem. He didn’t want to see the same awareness in her eyes as he had seen last night.

So he turned and planted himself in his chair at the table and brought up the reports again. He could work from here just as easily. He sent a curt note to Yuli to tell him where he was and not to disturb him, then buried himself in minutiae. For the first time ever he was grateful for the infinite detail and endless problems he faced most days.

On the second day, though, he could no longer duck the more formal duties of his job. Yuli reached out across the Forum, using his private channel. “There’s an arbitration matter that needs your attention on the Bridge.”

“Arbitration is for mediators. You don’t need me.”

“Master Spartak Frost is the complainant,” Yuli replied, his voice sounding small and distracted. Grey could see him in his mind, reading two screens at once and waving aides to where he wanted them to go, all while telling Grey the bad news.

Grey sighed. All the senior masters had a right to have any disputes settled by the captain. Most of them managed to keep their arguments civilized and contained within their professions. Master Spartak Frost was the most senior coder on the ship, in charge of every other code writer, of which there were only a few dozen. Coders were an odd lot to begin with. They thought in symbols and systems and socially, they were often inept. They were too smart. Which was why squabbles seemed to break out among them on a regular basis. Frost, as clumsy with simple humans as the rest of them, couldn’t seem to resolve arguments himself and instead took full advantage of Grey’s services as a mediator every time someone disagreed with him.

It was tiresome, although if he settled the issues he could exert some control over the wayward coders.

“I’ll be in the Bridge in ten minutes,” he told Yuli and went to retrieve the uniform from the corner where he had tossed it after the party, two nights ago.

Frost was waiting on the Bridge when he got there, along with Yuli and Leanne Bachman. Both Yuli and Leanne wore rigidly controlled, neutral expressions.

The stranger in the room was very strange and the cause of Yuli and Leanne’s odd stiffness. Grey looked her up and down as he settled into his chair.

The woman had to be Makara Arts, the youngest coder to be granted senior classification in the history of the ship. While most of the coders looked quite normal, their intelligence hidden behind plain countenances, brilliance blazed from Makara’s blue eyes and alert expression. She seemed to be absorbing information out of the atmosphere itself, reading more into a single gesture than most people would absorb about another human through hours of intense conversation.

Grey had the uncomfortable sensation she was sizing him up and finding him utterly lacking. He resisted the impulse to tug his jacket into place and looked her over once more.

She was dressed…he didn’t know how she was dressed. He could barely make sense of the details. Whatever it was she was wearing, it was a dress of some sort because there were not separate sections for each leg. The hem brushed the ground. Peeking underneath the hem were bare toes. Her toenails were painted bright chartreuse green.

If the dress had been made of normal fabric, or even made of the shiny, gleaming and rich concoctions Emmaline invented, then he would have said it was figure-hugging from hem to shoulders. Except there wasn’t really any fabric there. The entire figure-encasing sheath was made of strings of fine fabric…or perhaps it was string of some sort, draped from one side of the dress to the center, then over to the other side of the dress. There were gaps between the strings, so Makara’s creamy flesh was visible, save for a band of matching fabric at crotch level and at breast level, that just barely covered the critical areas.

She was staring at him, her head tilted to one side. He realized she had been waiting for his gaze to lift to her face and could feel his cheeks heating.

Master Frost shifted from foot to foot impatiently. “There, you see what I mean?” he cried, waving toward Makara Arts. “No one can concentrate on their work when she insists on parading around in that…that!”

Grey hid his smile. The outfit was outrageous, it was true. But now he was over the shock of it. “It is more normal for professionals to wear the clothing of their status, at least while at work,” he pointed out.

Makara smiled. “Engineers, perhaps. Maintenance and manual labor. What clothes do I need? I talk to a computer all day long.”

True. “I believe Master Frost is protesting over the distraction your clothing creates.”

“Self-expression is my right as a member of the Endurance,” she shot back.

“I believe the founders were referring to artistic endeavors,” Grey replied.

“Creativity knows no boundaries of expression, yes? I am creatively representing my gender and appreciation of the female form. I have no issues with anyone else enjoying my artistic outlet.”

Grey nearly smiled again. He just held it in. He was, indeed, enjoying the results of her creative expression. The dress—what there was of it—made the most of a splendid figure. She was long in the leg and willowy and he even liked the way her thick, dark brown hair curled over one shoulder and lay against the flesh there, almost asking to be picked up and bent around his finger.

He realized where his thoughts were taking him and closed the mental doors in his mind. He leaned on his elbow and considered the two coders, one furious, the other slim and graceful and very self-aware. He looked at her blue eyes again. “I have no issue with creative expression no matter its form and yours is most delightful,” he told her.

Frost spluttered indignantly. Makara just smiled.

“However, your form of expression is impacting negatively on the work of your colleagues. Interfering with the peace and property of people aboard the Endurance is a civil crime. We all live within an enclosed and limited space and must be cautious about how our actions affect others. You are causing mental distress during work hours. Would you agree, Master Frost?”

“Yes! Yes, yes, mental distress. Exactly,” Frost agreed eagerly.

Makara’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t force me to wear trousers,” she replied.

“I’m not insisting on trousers. But you must have in your wardrobe more conservative outfits than this one, yes?”

Makara looked sulky and much younger than she had a moment ago.

“Outfits that still allow you the artistic expression you crave and your statement of womanhood, yet do not disturb the peace of those you work with?” he added.

“Yes,” she said shortly.

“You can continue to experiment as freely as you wish after your day’s work is completed, of course,” he added. He got to his feet. “I consider this matter to be satisfactorily dealt with. Are you both in agreement?”

Frost nodded. “Yes, thank you,” he added, sounding deeply relieved.

Grey looked directly at Makara, expecting her answer.

“Yes,” she said at last.

* * * * *

He went straight back to his private quarters afterward and left a message for Yuli that he was not to be disturbed any further that day. He stripped the grubby uniform off with impatient movements and bathed more thoroughly than usual, using all the shower cycles, letting the water pummel him into a more relaxed state.

Then he poured an expensive glass of dirt-grown Palatine red, settled back in the comfortable chair, sipped and closed his eyes.

When the door alarm sounded he groaned loudly. He didn’t open his eyes. “Who is it?” he demanded.

“Sir, it’s your day guard, Stewart, sir. I have senior coder Makara Arts with me. She says you wanted to see her.”

Grey sat up. All the tension he had finally managed to wash away was back, twisting his gut and making his heart race. “Enter,” he said, getting to his feet. He felt clumsy, as if his feet were on the wrong limbs.

The door opened. Grey saw the guard, Stewart, stepping away from the door as Makara Arts entered. She was wearing one of the long white lab coats that had been the uniform of scientists for time out of mind. It was properly buttoned. Her shoes were the slender kind Emmaline had re-invented, although the heels were flat and the color a conservative grey.

She stepped in far enough for the door to shut behind her. Her hair was lying over her shoulder again and her eyes were still blue. “I thought you might want to approve my apparel, captain.”

“It looks fine to me,” he said as evenly as he could.

“It’s what is under the coat you should approve.” She unbuttoned the coat, taking her time over the five buttons. When she reached the third, he could see no other garments lay beneath. By the time she unfastened the last, he was standing in front of her, his entire body throbbing.

She dropped the coat at her feet. “Do I pass?” she whispered.

“With flying colors,” he murmured, drawing her to him.

Chapter Ten

When Greyson Durant returned to normal duties on the Bridge after a record-setting three day absence, everyone knew where he had been and who he had been with. Yuli, who was usually above idle gossip, pulled Emmie aside on the morning of the third day to give her the raw facts.

She listened, her heart twisting in a harsh shift. “Why are you telling me this, Yuli?” she demanded. “It’s none of our business who he cares to spend his personal time with.”

“If you were purely Bridge personnel, I would agree with you,” Yuli replied.

“But that’s all I really am. My status as his protégé doesn’t change anything. It’s still none of my business.”

Yuli looked down at his immaculate fingernails. “You forget. I was at your Emergence party, Emmie.”

She pressed her lips together. “I did forget,” she agreed as evenly as she could. “It still doesn’t make any difference.”

“There are facts, then there is gossip, then there is speculation.” Yuli straightened up. “I wanted you to have the facts. It will give you some perspective when you hear the speculation.”

“What speculation?” she demanded, puzzled.

“I don’t like gossip and speculation, so I will not indulge,” Yuli said stiffly and walked away.

Later that day, she finally understood. An image of Makara Arts was up on someone’s screen as she passed by and she found herself anchored behind the desk, staring at the screen. It was a full head to toe 3D image, one of the circular images the guards used to identify people on the ship when they needed a visual comparison. Emmie had been scanned for hers every year since she could stand on her own feet. Now she was an adult, the scan would only be done once every five years.

She stared at Makara Arts as the image turned. The scale along the side of the image told her the coder was almost the same height as her. She had small breasts and slightly bigger hips, brown hair that swung down just under her shoulder blades and blue eyes.

Emmie realized she had pulled all her own hair into one hand and was holding it back, hiding it behind her neck. Worse, everyone was looking at her. Leanne had an awkward expression in her eyes. Paulie wore a grimace.

Emmie cleared her throat. “Carry on,” she said sharply.

Everyone turned back to what they were doing and Emmie hurried out of the bullpen, her heart thundering.

When Grey appeared the next morning, Emmie found a dozen reasons to stay in her office, until he was safely in his. She buried herself in the work, for the first time grateful there was so much to do.

Around mid-morning, Yuli came in with coffee and put it on her desk. He patted her hand, yet said nothing.

Sooner or later, she would have to look Grey in the eye. Emmie knew putting it off would make it harder and harder to bring herself to it. She stayed at her desk until she heard Grey’s voice in the bullpen. Her heart leapt hard and pattered on unsteadily. She forced herself to move out into the open area beyond her office.

Grey was talking to Joeri. She watched him leaning over the younger man, pointing to something on his desk and then up at the display. Emmie waited.

Finally, Grey turned to head back to his office, which put him almost exactly in front of her. He drew in a sharp breath. She could hear it because the entire office area had fallen unnaturally still and silent. Everyone was watching them.

Grey’s gaze flickered sideways as he took in their audience. Then he looked at her once more. “Good, you’re here,” he said shortly. “There are a few things I need to go over. Yuli, could you and Emmaline step into my office, please?”

Emmie followed Yuli into the big room. Grey had moved ahead of both of them and was already settling behind his big desk. She heard the door shut behind her and glanced at Grey expectantly. Now the first moment of awkward acknowledge was over, it was easier to look at him directly.

His gaze met hers once more, then moved away again. He spoke to Yuli. “Thank you for covering for the last three days. Both of you. I needed the time. But while I was gone, the quarterly energy reports were compiled and I just finished going over them. I wanted to talk to you about them.” He ran his finger over the desk and the display sprang up.

Emmie studied him through the display. He was going to pretend nothing had happened. Makara Arts would remain an unspoken part of his so-called private life, an off-limits topic.

She wanted to be unhappy about that. She wanted to be furious he was using Makara as a shield to deflect her…if that was actually what he was doing. Maybe she had imagined that single moment. She had laid awake the last three nights wondering if she had over-interpreted the potential. Maybe she had been the only one to feel what she had felt and she was projecting hope onto Grey. He might be as unaware as he appeared and Makara showing up in his life at this moment was simply a coincidence.

It was doubt that created a trickle of relief in her. If everything was to be shoved into the “not to be discussed” file, then she would never find out how foolish she was being and her idiocy would not be revealed to Grey.

Emmie was suddenly thankful Grey was avoiding the whole messy issue. She would join his conspiracy of silence and be glad of it.

* * * * *

Captain Durant and senior coder Makara Arts became an almost permanent couple. They were seen together at tankgames, public events and occasionally, just the two of them on private outings.

The Forum speculated heavily about the pair and Emmie found herself skimming the subject lines and sometimes dipping into the gossip, despite her determination to let Grey live his life however he wanted to.

Makara, she swiftly learned, was one of the brilliant intellects the ship seemed to develop at least once a generation. She was the youngest person to ever achieve senior coder status, a classification that often eluded coders their entire lives. The more Emmie read about how truly talented Makara was, the more she thought that perhaps Grey had found the perfect partner.

She told herself she was glad for him. There was a dark cloud somewhere ahead of Grey. He deserved whatever happiness he could find.

Emmie let her job take over her life, instead. Yuli was ailing and the days he couldn’t come to the Bridge occurred more frequently. No one said anything, even though everyone understood. She could see it in their eyes. Also without discussion, everyone started to come to her for decisions Yuli had once made.

Emmie had just celebrated her twenty-first birthday when Yuli died. He was found in his quarters, still in bed, curled up on his side with a hand under his cheek.

“He died the way we all hope to go,” Grey said, his eyes dark with sorrow. “Peacefully in his bed, while sleeping, with no pain and no regrets. Yuli lived a long and industrious life and he served the Endurance well. He will be remembered.”

For weeks after his death, people in the Forum continued to talk about Yuli and dig up archival notes and images. Every time another snippet surfaced, Emmie was reminded of how much she missed him.

But the work remained and she buried herself even more deeply into the intricacies of keeping the Endurance running on an even keel and the people aboard happy and unaware of the delicate, critical balance of peace and contentment that was fought for and won, every single day.

Shortly after Yuli died, Emmie moved into his quarters at the Bridge end of the Aventine. They were spacious and empty and would reduce her daily commute to the Bridge down to a few minutes. It was a decision everyone seemed to accept as perfectly sensible.

Not long after, Grey made Emmie his official Chief of Staff. On her next rare visit back home, her father and mother celebrated with mugs of hot chocolate. Her mother had to hold her father’s cup for him and wiped his mouth afterward. The glowing happiness and pride in her father’s eyes stopped Emmie from saying anything. He was at peace.

Like Yuli, her father slipped away during the night, between one breath and the other. Her mother stayed by his side and ensured there was no pain and afterward, she clung to Emmie and wept against her shoulder. They were the only tears her mother had ever shed, that Emmie was aware of.

Life went on, each day rolling furiously into the next one. Emmie’s twenty-second birthday arrived almost without her noticing. She would have let the moment pass unmentioned by anyone, except that Grey came into her office and put a steaming mug of hot chocolate on her desk.

“Happy birthday, Emma.”

She sniffed and smiled. “Palatine chocolate. You’re spoiling me.”

“I don’t think it’s possible.” He motioned to the chair in the corner where her staff sat to talk things over.

“Please, yes,” she said quickly and he sank down into the chair with a sigh. “You sound tired,” she added. Her heart sped up a little. Any symptom, any irregularity in Grey’s normally healthy state always started up the old terror. Was this to be his doom? Was he to die of some simple, overlooked health issue? Whenever Grey seemed tired or stressed, she worked twice as hard to eliminate the cause, to bring his life back to a more even tenor.

“The game went into overtime last night. It would have looked bad if I’d left before it was over. I would have been happy to go home at half-time and sleep, instead.” He grimaced. “I’m getting old.”

Emmie smiled. “You’re only thirty. When you’re over the century mark you can talk about getting old. Not before.”

“Thirty isn’t something I ever expected to reach,” he said, his voice low. “I have to make all the old man jokes now, just in case.”

This time her heart actually squeezed. She sought for something to say, sifting through the current range of problems sitting on her desk. Work was safe. Work was always there, the reliable retreat.

“You’re twenty-two now,” Grey said. “It’s the age I was when I first sat in the Captain’s chair.”

The air whooshed out of her lungs. “Don’t….” she breathed. If he didn’t speak of it, then she could safely pretend she was destined to be his Chief of Staff forever.

For a single moment his gaze met hers. It was rare for him to look at her so steadily. It reminded her of her Emergence and the moment that she was now absolutely sure had been purely a product of her overworked imagination. The searing, heated look in his eyes hadn’t really been there at all.

But he was looking at her now just as she remembered him looking, that night.

His gaze moved away from her eyes, dropping down. Down to her lips.

She could hear her heart, thundering in her mind and her ears. Her body came alive. Every single nerve ending tingled.

“I sometimes think there’s too much we don’t talk about.” His voice was low and rough.

“I sometimes wonder if there’s as much to talk about as I think there is.” It was raw truth, the closest she had ever come to revealing how she really felt.

There was pain in his eyes. “It’s better this way.”

She closed her eyes, deliberately looking away. Trembling started up in her middle and rapidly spread out along her limbs. It felt as though she had stepped back from a precipice.

“How is Makara?” she made herself ask, reaching for the mug of hot chocolate.

Silence.

She looked up. He was just watching her. The pain was still there. “I’m sorry, Emma. For all of it.”

Emmie blinked, as her eyes ached with the onset of tears. She wouldn’t cry in front of him. She would not. That would be the worst humiliation of all. “It’s not your fault.” Her voice wobbled.

“You should find someone to love. Someone you can be happy with, for a long, long time.”

A single tear escaped her control, betraying her.

Grey pushed himself to his feet, surging up from the chair as if he couldn’t remain sitting in it a moment longer. “Enjoy the chocolate.”

He shut the door, rather than let the computer do it, so no one got a glimpse of her sitting at her desk, weeping like an idiot.

Emmie gave up any pretense of a normal life and threw herself into the work. She arrived early and sometimes didn’t go home until she caught herself falling asleep at her desk. Then she would get a guard to walk her home, not for protection, not in the peaceful Bridge end of the Aventine, but because she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t fall asleep on the way home. She would drop onto her bed and sleep for a few hours, before hurrying back. There were always more challenges, more problems to deal with and she accepted them all with gratitude for the distraction.

When the call from Master Baki Hart, the Accouchement master, came through several months later, Emmie was surprised. Since her disastrous interview with him all those years ago, Master Hart tended to avoid her whenever he could. He would talk to Grey first, or Leanne if Grey couldn’t spare the time. Emmie was leaning more and more upon Leanne for assistance with more mundane work and she was carefully farming more responsibility in her direction, trying out her management skills. Even in the far recesses of her mind, Emmie could barely bring herself to acknowledge she was testing Leanne as a possible Chief of Staff for the day when Emmie sat in the captain’s chair.

Master Hart’s little pinched face looked more squeezed than usual, when Emmie accepted the call. His smile was perfunctory. “A most pleasant morning, Ms. Victore.”

“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “What can I do for you this morning, Master Hart?”

He sighed. “This is a courtesy call, given your status on the ship, Ms. Victore. Usually this is handled via normal channels.”

“What is?”

“The AI that assigns parents has issued a new certificate.”

Emmie stared at him. “I don’t understand,” she said flatly.

“Yes, I’m quite sure this will be confusing for you. But we have checked the data and it is correct.”

“What is correct?”

“You’ve been assigned a child, Ms. Victore.”

It felt like she had been kicked in the belly by a particularly heavy foot. She gasped. “But that’s…that’s ridiculous! I’m barely twenty-two years old.”

Hart was nodding in false sympathy. She could tell he wanted to finish the call as swiftly as possible, so she could react where he didn’t have to see it. “That is one reason why we thoroughly checked the data, Ms. Victore.”

She drew in a breath that shook. “There was another reason for checking?”

Hart was still nodding. “Indeed. The selected father is…unusual.”

There was a roaring in her head, muffling noise. She knew. She already knew. “Who is the proposed father?” Her lips barely cooperated.

“Captain Durant,” Hart said with a grimace.

Chapter Eleven

Grey didn’t just look tired. He looked baffled and utterly defeated as he sat in the narrow visitor’s chair opposite Baki Hart. His hair was ruffled from where he kept running his fingers through it and the fine lines around his eyes Emmie had only recently noticed seemed deeper than usual.

She stayed silent as she had been since they had been ushered into Hart’s office. Grey was saying exactly what she would have said and Hart wasn’t hearing him. If the Accouchement Master wasn’t hearing the captain of the ship, then it was unlikely he would listen to her.

Grey leaned forward, as if he was trying to underline what he was saying. “You don’t seem to be listening, Master Hart,” he said, his voice controlled and even, as it was whenever he was riding herd on his emotions. “We can’t have a child. Emmaline is my protégé.”

Hart nodded. “As I completed that assignment, I am aware of the mentor relationship you have with Emmaline. It is unprecedented, for sure. I don’t see that it is an impediment.”

“I’m not expected to live another twenty years!” Grey said, his voice hoarse. “I can’t rear a child to Emergence. I won’t be here.”

Hart blinked at him, his thin lips pursed. “Oh, I see, now, what the issue is,” he said and gave a small, amused laugh. “Actuarial statistics are guidelines, Captain Durant. The AI that determines the best parents for a child has completely different functions and criteria. It chooses the best people in the ship for each child.”

Grey sat back, pushing his hand through his hair again. The bafflement was back in his face. Emmie could understand his puzzlement. Hart was using normal words. They just weren’t making sense.

She cleared her throat. “Master Hart, are you saying that even though the AI that suggests mentor and protégé pairings is conflicting with the Accouchement AI, it doesn’t matter?”

“We don’t know that they’re conflicting,” Hart said bluntly.

“They are saying two different things!” Grey replied. He was trying to control his tone, yet it was strident, anyway.

“The AIs talk to each other,” Hart said, using a tone that sounded like someone talking to a young child. “Of course the Accouchement AI knows of the mentor assignment. That is why I am suggesting there is no conflict.”

“You want the child to lose a parent at a young age?” Emmie asked, horrified.

Hart looked surprised. “Of course not. What sort of monster do you think I am?”

Emmie couldn’t find an answer. Grey just looked at him, too.

“I’m sure the AI has taken that into consideration and for reasons we cannot fathom at this time, such a possibility factors into the child’s future,” Hart added.

“That doesn’t make it sound any better,” Grey muttered.

“You must understand,” Hart said, using the same condescending tone, “the AIs are very sophisticated. They process possibilities, outcomes and probabilities far beyond the human capacity to understand.”

“You don’t know why they chose us,” Emmie said, stunned.

Hart purses his lips tightly. Then he seemed to sink into his chair. “We can only guess,” he admitted, in a small voice.

Grey glanced at her and she shook her head in disbelief. “This is utterly ridiculous,” she murmured. “If we take the child, we’re exposing it to trauma and heartbreak for no reason other than a computer thinks it’s a good idea.”

“The AIs are rarely wrong,” Grey reminded her.

“But they aren’t totally infallible,” she shot back.

“You have the option of refusing the child, of course,” Hart interjected. “Another set of parents can be found for her. But—”

“It’s a girl?” Grey asked.

Hart sighed. “I spoke out of turn. You must forgive me. Tensions in the room are high.”

“It’s a girl,” Grey said, speaking down to his hands.

The sadness in his tone made her heart squeeze. She got to her feet and looked at Hart, who blinked up at her in surprise. “Is there anything more you can tell us about this insane decision, before we go away to think it over?”

Hart looked affronted. “Well, really….”

“Thank you, Master Hart, for your time and attention,” Emmie said stiffly. She rested her hand on Grey’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

He stood and she hurried out into the public foyer before turning to him and saying quietly; “My quarters are three minutes from here. We can talk in absolute privacy there.”

Grey’s eyes were still blank with shock and bafflement. He nodded.

* * * * *

It was the first time Grey had ever been inside the apartment since she had moved in. He may have visited the apartment when it had been Yuli’s. She didn’t know and had never invited Grey here herself. This was the one place outside the Bridge that was hers alone.

It felt awkward having him standing in the tiny sitting room, looking around blankly as he was.

She pushed him toward the easy chair. “You’re in shock, I think. Food and coffee would help.” She moved over to the prep area and punched in the fast-dial for coffee and a sandwich, both printed. Her energy allowance could withstand the hit—she never used all her monthly rations, anyway.

She put the plate and mug on the little table next to his elbow, then pulled down the bench from the other side and sat on it, facing him.

Grey drew in a slow, controlled breath and let it out the same way. “I never thought I would get to be a parent,” he said. “It simply wasn’t a possibility. Or so I thought.”

“Neither did I,” Emmie admitted. “Only the best of the best people are offered a child. There are lots of people on the ship who are so good, they deserve a child. Although, I guess this puts paid to the rumors about the Forum being where the AI gets most of its information about potential parents.”

Grey smiled. It was a weak expression yet it was there.

People speculated almost daily on what made the AI pick one person over another to be a parent. It was generally agreed that only the most morally upright and hardworking were chosen. As that applied to a great many people, the selection process was a mystery everyone had a theory for. The most popular theory was that the Accouchement AI lingered in the Forum, reading everything anyone added to their profiles and making choices about parents based upon their activities, beliefs and community spirit.

It was true that sometimes, the AI’s choices seemed almost prophetic and in hindsight, most people agreed the choices made ended up being good ones. Her own parents had been an odd couple no one had understood at first. But Anat’s drive and energy had offset Jakub’s gentleness, giving Emmie the best of both.

The theory that the AI used the Forum to assess people had waxed and waned in popularity over the years. Some people documented their entire lives on the Forum, with texts and pictures and a wealth of activity, all designed to catch the AI’s attention. But as Grey and Emmie kept their activities on the Forum to a bare minimum, using it only for private mail and public calendar functions, the AI clearly got its information from other sources.

Grey bit into the sandwich and chewed, a deep frown of thought wrinkling his brow. “I can’t help but think….” He swallowed and took a mouthful of coffee. She saw his attention switch to her. “Forget that for a moment. I suppose we should settle the obvious question first. Do you want a child, Emma?”

Her heart jumped. “I…I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Maybe not consciously. But your gut knows. Don’t think about it. Just answer. Yes or no.”

“Yes,” she said instantly, then felt her jaw sag in surprise. “Oh….” She let out her breath. “Yes,” she said firmly as the conviction grew in her. “I do. Do you?”

Grey nodded. “I didn’t know how much I did until it was put in front of me. Then, when he said it was a girl…I know it shouldn’t make a difference. Yet it does. I want the child. I want a little girl to call me Far, or whatever she wants to call me.” He blew out his breath again. “This is such a mess. I shouldn’t even consider it. I should tell Hart to find someone else. Maybe they could still keep you as the mother, Emma.”

“No,” she said flatly. “Not if you don’t agree, too.”

Grey put the mug back down slowly, considering her carefully. “Then that’s probably the next thing we should settle.”

Her heart had started to slow down. Now it leapt again. “Makara won’t like this,” she said carefully.

“That’s for me to sort out,” Grey replied. “As far as you are concerned, she doesn’t affect the decision by a single atom. Is that clear?”

Emmie sat up. “No,” she said flatly. “She does affect my decision. You can’t do this just half-way, Grey. It’s twenty years of our lives and I should have your undivided attention for those years. Neither of us gets to keep any of our old lives while we’re parents.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to tell me I must give up Makara if we do this?”

Emmie braced herself. “Yes.”

“Were your parents a couple, Emmie?”

She flinched. She should have seen this coming. “In the beginning, no, I don’t think so. Toward the end, I think they became a pair. I don’t think either of them meant to. It just happened.”

“Mine were,” Grey said. “From the very start. They liked each other immensely. By the time I emerged, they were deeply in love. They’re still together, even now.” His gaze met hers. “We can’t be a couple, Emma.”

She rubbed her thumb over the table top, working at a stain that had never been removed. It had eaten into the faux wood, a crimson blot. The pulse in her neck was throbbing painfully. “I suppose it…makes sense.”

“I won’t do that to you,” he said, his voice very low. “If we are going to consider this at all, then we have to make allowances for whatever is going to happen to me. We’d be irresponsible if we didn’t. I still don’t know if I can do that to a child—take away her parent. If I do, I can minimize the damage and that includes protecting you as much as I can, too.”

“Put like that, perhaps this isn’t a good idea,” Emmie murmured. Her chest was aching and there was a throbbing behind her eyes. “She would be better off with two parents who can rear her to Emergence, even if they’re not the best parents she could have.”

Grey sighed again. “Except I want her in my life. Is it so terribly selfish?” He looked at her as if he really wanted her to tell him what she thought.

“If you are selfish, then so am I. I just want to…to love her. To protect her and give her the very best start I can.”

Grey put his elbow on the table, next to the half-eaten sandwich. He propped his chin on his fist. His gaze became unfocused. “Perhaps that’s why we should do it. Besides, I can’t help but think…” He looked at her again. “I’m grasping at straws. I know. But I can’t help thinking that if the Accouchement AI sees fit to give me a child, then maybe the mentoring AI has it wrong. Maybe I’m not supposed to die as soon as it thinks I am.”

It was hope. That was the wistful expression in his eyes. For the first time in nearly ten years, Grey had hope.

“I think you should remind yourself of that every single day,” Emmie said firmly. “If we do this, then we do it properly. No half-measures just in case, no provisos. If we hesitate or fail to commit properly it will ruin it for her.”

“You mean, act as if we’re both going to live to a hundred and twenty, just like everyone else?”

“Plan for the worst and live like the best is ours. It’s the only way we can give the little girl what she needs from parents,” Emmie pointed out. “We can’t let anything that is under our control ruin her childhood.”

“And when I die?” His voice was harsh.

“If we love her enough, if we give her even a few years of perfect childhood, then…” Emmie struggled to say it. “Then I will make sure the rest of her childhood is the best it can be.”

Grey sat up, his arm straightening out. “We’re going to do this, aren’t we?” He sounded surprised. The stronger emotion, the one that colored his voice, was hope.

Emmie didn’t think she was as certain as him. She knew she could never do anything to destroy that tiny seed of hope, though. “Yes, I think we are,” she replied.

* * * * *

Once the decision was made, things happened very quickly. Her life was usually a whirlwind of decisions and actions. Now it skewed into a different sphere altogether. The decision on who would be the primary caregiver was a pragmatic one. “I can’t step down as Captain,” Grey said. “It would be too disruptive on top of everything else we’re asking the ship to accept. After…later on…you will be captain and you can get all the help you need to raise her.”

For the same reasons, Grey couldn’t move into family quarters somewhere on the ship. His job was too demanding. The private quarters on the Bridge were expanded, taking over the space from adjoining rooms and offices, to accommodate all the resources needed to rear a child.

The Accouchement staff plied them with daily demands and questions, along with a deadline that was non-negotiable. “Children have never waited to be born,” Hart said jovially. “You must get used to the way a child will rearrange your timetables, right from the start.”

The medics in the Accouchement wing adjusted Emmie’s hormones, so her breasts swelled and became tender. One morning she awoke to find the front of her nightgown damp. She was lactating.

When she reported it to the medics it set off a flurry of activity and they were told to present themselves at the Accouchement wing that afternoon.

Fear showed in Grey’s eyes when she told him.

“Remember, all in,” she said gently.

His fear faded. He nodded. “Yes. All in,” he repeated. “I’ll have Leanne clear our schedules.”

That afternoon, Victoria Greytore was placed into their arms and they were sent home with their baby girl.

Chapter Twelve

For the next few weeks, Emmie stayed away from the Forum and the brouhaha that had broken out there. Grey assured her none of it was worth reading, which meant they were probably saying exactly what she was thinking—who was she, an untested, unproved twenty-two-year-old, to get a child? Why did the captain, who already lived a life of privilege, get to have a child on top of all that?

No one saw the endless work and stress Grey juggled daily. Not even Makara got to see that side of him. When Leanne had come to inspect the baby, she had reported with evident satisfaction that Makara had been turned back at the Bridge gates on three occasions since Victoria had come home with them. On the last occasion Makara had threatened bodily harm to the guards, who had force-marched her back to the Aventine, all while screaming about “the woman” who had taken her rightful place.

No one saw the sleepless nights and despair Emmie suffered through in those early weeks.

Victoria was an unsettled baby. She cried a lot and seemed to feed endlessly. Emmie had intended to give Victoria the best start she could, although when her sluggish brain didn’t seem to function beyond giving Victoria her most basic needs, it was hard to remember all her good intentions. She spent a lot of time lying on the bed next to Victoria, drifting in and out of sleep as Victoria did, feeding and changing her and patting her back into sleep.

Grey would look in on them when he came home, which he did every night, although sometimes they were very late nights. He would cuddle Victoria while Emmie took care of her own abbreviated and most urgent needs, including showering and changing.

Then he would be forced to hand the baby back to her and return to work, even if the work was done sitting at the dining table in their expanded living room.

Emmie missed the Bridge, the stimulus of problems and people, the rush of getting things done. Nothing in these new quarters was ever completely done.

The first time Victoria slept through the night, Emmie woke with a guilty start and immediately panicked. What had happened? Why hadn’t she woken? What was wrong?

But Victoria was deeply asleep, her thumb in her mouth and her smoky eyelashes against her cheeks.

Emmie sobbed in relief. Grey found her there, five minutes later, still weeping. He dried her cheeks and made her breakfast.

Some of her sanity restored itself once Emmie could get a decent night’s sleep. Her brain started to work again. She loved taking care of Victoria and spent a lot of time thinking about the girl’s future and how they could help her reach her full potential.

After years of working in a high-stress, problem-rich environment, though, the demands of motherhood left Emmie feeling incomplete and frustrated. Doubt constantly gnawed at her. Was she doing this right? Were they both doing the best they could for Victoria? There was no way to know if they were leaving indelible negative impressions upon their vulnerable daughter’s psyche. The literature and resources the Accouchement clinic provided didn’t shed conclusive light on the matter either.

“We just have to love her as much as we can,” Grey said when she tried to explain her anxiety to him. “We have good intentions, we both know how to work hard…all we can do is teach her by example.”

It was one of the few times Grey had stopped long enough to listen to her. Intellectually, she knew Grey’s life had not gotten any less busy just because he had a child at home now. Because her own busy life had evaporated and her day to day concerns centered on the baby, it seemed as if he was never there. He was virtually her only connection with the ship and the people on it and the few minutes they spent talking each night while Grey bathed Victoria and they prepared her for sleep were the only adult stimulus Emmie got. She avoided the Forum at large, only edging onto it to collect messages, of which she received very few these days.

Then Grey failed to come home for two days straight. Leanne assured her he was dealing with an emergency. The ship had been venting oxygen-rich air, not just the nitrogen and carbon biological and industrial exhausts. The senior engineers had sealed the leak very quickly and the air filters were working to replace the lost atmosphere. There was a great deal of investigation needed to establish what had happened and planning needed to set up failsafes so a similar event never happened again.

For the entire two days Emmie worried. She cared for Victoria as best as she could, while her thoughts kept wandering off as she wondered where Grey was and what he was doing.

When he arrived home at the end of the second day, Victoria was already in bed and sound asleep and Emmie had been sitting on the couch, staring at the wall, her imagination in overdrive for two hours.

She sprang to her feet. “Where have you been?” she demanded.

Grey put his jacket on the counter and looked at her. His eyes were narrowed with tiredness. “I told Leanne to let you know about the leak.”

“That was two days ago!”

“Is Victoria well?” he demanded.

“Of course she is!”

He relaxed. “I’ll look in on her for a minute—”

Emmie moved in front of him as he headed toward Victoria’s room. “No, you finish talking to me, first.”

Grey stepped back. Surprise skittered across his face. He studied her. “There’s something else to discuss?”

“You were gone for two days.”

He pushed a hand through his hair. “Yes,” he repeated heavily.

“Grey, we’re supposed to be doing this together. Only, you get to have all the fun while I do all the hard work. Then, you disappear without notice and don’t show up for two days!”

“That’s the way it will be sometimes. You, out of everyone on the ship, should understand that.”

“I understand that you handled the emergency within the first two hours. You spent two days sitting around talking! You could have come back here at any time. You could have been here when she was awake.”

He stared at her, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “You call what I do fun?”

“It’s a lot more fun than withering away here in the apartment!”

“You’re the caregiver!”

“And you’re an asshole who can’t lift his gaze beyond his own navel!” Emmie whirled away before he could spot her tears. She didn’t want him to see her final humiliation.

“Hey,” he said, more gently.

His hand gripped her arm and she shook it off. “I’m fine,” she said stiffly.

“No, you’re not.” He turned her around and gave a soft sigh when he saw her face. “Ah, Emma, that’s not fair. I don’t know what to do with a crying woman.”

“You’re the c…captain! You’re supposed to fix everything!”

He laughed. It was a humorless sound. “I can’t even fix the stuff I’m supposed to fix. You want me to fix you as well? I’m the last person you should be asking.”

She gave a tremendous sniff and wiped quickly at her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said inadequately. “I just feel as if I’m stuck here, sometimes. I know it’s my job right now, only it’s hard, after working on the Bridge, to talk baby-talk all day long and listen to my breath when she’s sleeping.”

He nodded. “I don’t doubt you’ve got the harder job of the two of us,” he said gently. “And I know you’re going to break me into pieces over this. We still haven’t fully resolved the oxygen depletion issue. I just came here for food and a shower and to kiss Victoria goodnight.” He pushed his hand through his hair once more. “I had no idea it was this late. The engineers talked me into a standstill.”

“What’s the problem with the oxygen?” she asked curiously. “The air filters can recycle, can’t they?” Old, dusty memories stirred. She had studied detailed overviews of the ship systems when she had first begun training with Grey.

“In the short term, yes. In the long term, we have a shortage of oxygen. We won’t notice it for a few years. Then the air will start getting stuffy and it will get hard to breathe unless we can find more oh-two.”

Problem solving was an exercise in thinking outside the box. She’d had so much practice at it the answer came to her barely without thought. “If it’s a long-term issue, plant more trees and bushes. Anywhere roots can take hold. They’ll compensate for the loss and once the balance is made up, they can be recycled or harvested, before it swings the other way.”

Grey’s eyes widened almost comically. “Plants!” he breathed. “Organic stuff. Of course the engineers wouldn’t think of it!” He gripped her shoulders. “That’s it!”

“You’re welcome,” she said calmly. Inside, she was bubbling with a forgotten pleasure. It was the rush that came from solving a problem.

When he kissed her, her euphoria wiped away any protest and all of her surprise. It was a natural outcome of the moment and it was wonderful. He tasted exactly the way she had always suspected he would.

His body was hot and hard against hers. She didn’t remember his arm moving around her, yet it was there at her back, holding her against him. The kiss extended, his tongue plunged deeper.

She moaned, wishing for more.

Then she remembered. This was Captain Greyson Durant, her mentor, the man she was to replace…and soon. She stiffened.

Grey let her go, almost staggering back himself. He lifted his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I’m not upset,” she said truthfully.

He let out an unsteady breath. “I am,” he said quietly. He turned away and walked slowly over to his room and shut the door.

* * * * *

Greyson didn’t leave the apartment that night. He stayed in his room, with the door sealed, while Emmie lay on her bed and thought hard. She was good at problem solving—or she used to be. If she treated this as just one more problem, then she could come up with a solution.

She heard Grey emerge in the early hours of the morning and leave the apartment. By then, she already had her answer. She got up when Victoria woke, fed Victoria and herself, while her mind whirled with ideas and answers and possibilities.

Then she called her mother and asked her to come and care for Victoria for a few hours. Anat looked thrilled. “Immediately,” she promised. “I’m already in the Capitol. It will only take a little while to get there. Oh, I’m dying to see her. You don’t send enough photos.”

When her mother arrived at the apartment she surprised Emmie by hugging her tightly. “Thank you so much for asking me to help,” she said softly.

“You don’t mind the imposition?” Emmie asked her, surprised.

“Of course I don’t! I’m so proud of you…and now, you’re a mother, too. I’ve been waiting for you to ask for help since you got her.”

It gave Emmie even more to think about. She introduced her mother to Victoria and left the two of them together while she hurried through some preparations of her own.

* * * * *

Emmie paused at the edge of the bullpen to savor the frantic, subdued noise of a dozen people all talking to screens or to each other. The bustle of life on the Bridge. She had missed it more than she realized.

Leanne stepped out from behind her screen and hurried over to her. “Where’s the baby?” she asked quickly.

“In the apartment with my mother. Why?”

“Oh, I wanted to see her! She’s such a darling!”

Emmie tilted her head, studying her curiously. “You don’t mind that I have a child and you don’t?”

Leanne looked taken aback. “Why on earth would I?” she asked. “I’m never going to be good enough for a baby. You have one, though, and I have no objections to cuddling her whenever you need a spare hand.”

Leanne’s response stirred sluggish memories from when Emmie had been a small child, when neighbors had always stopped to talk to her, sometimes crouching down to put themselves at her level. There had never been a single person in the community who had felt threatening or that her mother had warned her away from. Emmie had been able to go to any adult and ask for help for anything from fastening her boots to finding her way back home on one memorable occasion.

And now her mother and Leanne had both offered the same sort of assistance.

Did a child always pull people in around them like this?

Emmie smiled at Leanne. “I may need help with Victoria in the future, so if you really mean it…?”

“Yes, of course I mean it!” Leanne looked thrilled. She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Paulie, too, I think. He’s been looking at Victoria’s photos whenever he thinks no one is watching him.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Is Grey in his office?”

Leanne nodded. “I can let him know you’re here.” She turned away.

“Don’t do that,” Emmie told her. “I don’t want him to suddenly find an excuse to dash somewhere before I get there.”

Leanne’s eyes widened. “He wouldn’t do that,” she said stoutly.

“With me, yes, he might,” Emmie assured her. “So let me surprise him.”

Leanne stepped back. “Of course,” she said instantly.

Emmie took a deep breath for courage and headed for the closed door of Grey’s office.

* * * * *

Grey looked up, startled, as the door opened without announcing anyone and with no warning from Leanne or Paulie.

When Emma stepped through, his half-formed protest died on his lips. She was dressed in one of her dresses, the kind that hugged her hips and made her waist seem so small.

His heart paused, then hurried on. “What are you doing here?” he asked and it came out far harsher than he intended. But damn it, here she was looking exactly like he had been thinking about all morning. Her long legs…even her hair was coiled over one shoulder, rich and dark and beckoning.

He swallowed.

Emma moved around the desk. Slowly. A step at a time. With each step his pulse climbed a little higher.

“You know why I’m here,” she said, her voice low. She reached over his wrist and touched the desktop, sealing the room and disengaging the monitors. “You ran away this morning.”

Grey searched for a sane, normal answer. A reasonable one. But nothing would come to him. “We can’t do this,” he breathed. It was the last protest of a drowning man and he knew it. She was leaning over him, tilting his chair back. His hands came up to grip her waist. It was meant to be defensive. He meant to push her away. He could feel the heat of her body through his fingers. Through the silky cloth. His fingers brushed over the soft fabric.

“We can do whatever we want,” she said. “And I want you.” Her lips were drawing closer.

“I don’t have a future—”

“No one does.” Her lips brushed up against his cheek, close to the corner of his mouth. He just had to turn his head and they would meet his.

“The future is a construct of the mind,” she added. “All we really have is this moment right now.”

“Emma, I can’t…” But he forgot what it was he couldn’t or shouldn’t do. Her scent scrambled his thoughts. This was what he had spent the night thinking about, wishing for. This was what had been driving him mad for the weeks since Victoria had become theirs.

No, it was more than that. He had wanted this for years. But now she slept behind an unlocked door, night after night, driving him crazy with need. Immersing himself in work, for all the hours he could stay on his feet, barely subsumed the longing.

And now she was here and his hands were about her and she was asking him to give her exactly what he wanted.

Her blue eyes met his. “All in,” she said softly.

With a groan, he surrendered. He pulled her to him and kissed her.

* * * * *

Afterward, Grey laid with his thigh resting heavily over hers and his fingers twining her hair about them. His flesh was hot against hers. Emmie rested her hand on his chest. “It was never going to work the way we agreed,” she said softly.

Grey looked down at her. “I didn’t want you hurt, when the time comes.”

“So you chose to hurt me now, instead.”

He rested his head against hers. “And me,” he breathed. “You know I’ve wanted this…you…for a very long time.”

“I know.”

“What do we do? There’s now and we can live it to the hilt, only it brings us closer to the future. I’ve spent years trying to resolve this.”

“You can’t,” she said simply. “Stop trying, Grey. You can’t halt life. You can’t shield everyone from the fallout. It’s not supposed to work that way. Yuli knew that. So did my father. Everyone’s time comes, sooner or later. I just want to be with you, until then. Whenever ‘then’ is.”

He kissed her. “Very well,” he said gently. “All in. All the way.”

“Exactly.” She shifted her hips, wincing. “This desk is the most uncomfortable thing…what was I thinking, stalking you down here? I could have picked somewhere closer to a bed, at least.”

Grey laughed. For the first time in a very long time, it was a completely normal, happy sound, bereft of any sadness or shadows. “I’ll have one installed in the office before tomorrow,” he promised her. “As long as you keep stalking me whenever the mood strikes you.”

“So long as you do your bit, too.” She caught his wrist as he twirled her hair once more. “We need to change a few other things, too.”

“What things?”

She told him.

Chapter Thirteen

Emma came back to work on the Bridge two days later. In those two days, Grey scrambled uselessly to encompass the changes she instituted, until he simply gave up and watched her rearrange their lives from top to bottom. It was easier to sit back and watch. He was never going to keep up with her.

Besides, there were always the long hours of the night when she was in his arms and he could give her his undivided attention, with no interference from the many people around them.

Emma recruited a small army in the two days before she came back to the Bridge. Grey was astonished when Leanne and Paulie both appeared in their quarters, to play with Victoria and take her off their hands for a few hours.

He was staggered when his own parents appeared on the Bridge. He hadn’t spoken to them in person for well over a year, even though he called every few days or so. His mother hugged him, then threw herself into Emma’s arms and cried, while his father patted her back, his own eyes glittering suspiciously.

Then his mother picked up Victoria and cooed over her, while Victoria waved a plump fist in her direction and smiled.

Emma’s mother was the last of the private recruits. Anat Vicario was introduced to his parents and all three exchanged glances that seemed to speak volumes. They instantly settled into a corner of the sitting room and began to talk with their heads together. It was as if they had been friends for decades.

On the third day, Emma pulled herself out of Grey’s arms, dressed in one of her more conservative skirts and shirts, prepared breakfast and fed Victoria. When Anat arrived, Emma took his elbow and smiled up at him. “Time for work,” she declared, as Anat burped Victoria and crooned softly to her.

It felt as though Emma had never been gone from the Bridge, except all the niggling problems and issues that had been building into a never-ending list of demands seemed to melt away almost magically. How long could he have gone on without a Chief of Staff? He would have said he was coping, yet within a day of her return, when he could feel the tension in his shoulders and chest easing, he knew he had been losing the battle to stay on top of everything.

Now she was back, he could stop to breathe occasionally and not have everything blow up on him.

Even better, there was no longer any reason to stay out of her office. He could walk in there whenever he wanted. The best part of it was her smile when she looked up and saw it was him.

Emma was also firm about the hours they stayed on the Bridge. They could work from the apartment, only she insisted they return there at a reasonable hour every night. She also made sure the Bridge personnel went home when they did. Crises did happen, but with communications across the ship so seamless and instant, there was no reason for anyone to spend their life on the Bridge.

Grey didn’t argue with any of it. He became deaf whenever anyone outside the Bridge disapproved of the wholesale changes Emma was making. He had no intention of halting her little revolution.

The first two weeks held the biggest changes. Even afterward, Emma kept refining and adjusting their lives, ironing out the kinks and making it work. Victoria thrived, the center of adoring attention by so many people. Even the Bridge guards liked to stop and talk to her when she was taken on outings.

Emma insisted that as many of the outings involve her and Grey as possible and the work on the Bridge was adjusted to accommodate their joint responsibilities as parents. It was then Grey understood why she had involved Leanne and Paulie in her care schedule. They were as invested in Victoria’s wellbeing as Grey and Emma and willing to cooperate as necessary to provide the time they needed.

Their first venture was a walk through the park in the Palatine, with Victoria on Emma’s hip, or his. They took the closed car to the Palatine entrance and a taxi-boat down to the surface. It was a warm day in the biosphere and the trees overhead provided welcome shade as they strolled the paths and stopped to feed the ducks on the pond, which delighted Victoria. It quickly became their favorite outing. The Palatine residents tended to mind their own business and they could enjoy being alone—a rare treat.

On one of those occasions, they brought a meal with them and Emma spread a blanket. Victoria wasn’t quite sitting up, although she was rolling endlessly, laughing at her own prowess as she squirmed around on the blanket.

Grey watched as Emma helped Victoria to sit for a moment. It was late in the afternoon, Palatine hours. Emma’s hair was a soft halo around her as she sat with her feet tucked under one hip, chatting with Victoria and laughing at her efforts to sit up by herself.

It struck Grey with the force of a blow to the chest.

He was happy.

“What’s wrong?” Emma asked anxiously, softly.

“I love you.” He rubbed his temples, trying to ease the ache there. “I didn’t want to, but I do.”

“That’s such a terrible thing?” she asked, still speaking softly.

“You don’t understand. I don’t get to be happy. I don’t get to have a life. As soon as Kermode was assigned to me, I was warned my life was never going to be like anyone else’s on the ship. The captain is the ship. That’s their life. Then I was assigned to you.” He dragged in a breath, trying to stem the words, to stop himself from blurting it all out. But he couldn’t. “Ten years, that’s how long I thought I would get and I figured, well, I would make it count. I would turn you into the best captain this ship has ever seen.”

“It will have been nine years, in about three weeks’ time,” she said. “Is that what you just realized?”

He shook his head. “I just realized how selfish I’ve been. I can’t stop now, Emma. I want you in my life, I can’t leave you alone…not until I have to and that will be soon….” He stopped. He was trembling.

“We don’t know it will be soon.” She said it calmly.

“If I had your courage, I would send you away. I would find a way to make you hate me.”

“You’re too late by about five years.”

“You’ve hated me for five years?”

“The opposite, you fool.” But her smile was soft and warm.

“I am worse than a fool. I’m a selfish fool. But I couldn’t leave it unsaid. Neither of us knows how long I’ve got left and if it was tomorrow, if I didn’t speak now, then you would never know how much I love you.”

Emma kissed him. It was a promissory note, because Victoria lay between them, gurgling and murmuring, kicking her chubby legs. She took his hand and held it and they watched the ducks on the little lake and this time he could let himself be happy, because now she knew.

* * * * *

As Emma was fond of saying, life moves on.

His ninth year as Emma’s mentor ended and they moved into the tenth year, the days spinning past faster and faster as they settled into their extraordinary life on the Bridge. Emma became more and more his co-captain, her skills maturing and developing. The Bridge personnel took their orders as readily from Emma as they did from Grey, although in public, everyone deferred to him, including Emma.

Victoria learned to sit and then to roll over on to her hands and knees and rock, threatening to stand and walk at any second.

“That is going to require another reorganization of the apartment,” Emma warned him. “My mother is already threatening to tie everything down and install shields everywhere.”

There was no halting the progress of time, Grey realized. Victoria would soon be walking. Change was inevitable, yet the idea no longer instilled the fear in him it once did.

So when the end arrived, he didn’t recognize it because he had stopped looking for it.

Chapter Fourteen

An epidemic was something every captain feared. In such a small, enclosed community, even a few hundred deaths could lower the population beyond recovery point.

The founders of the Endurance had taken lessons from the eight failed generation ships that had preceded the Endurance. They had put in place safeguards for every possibility they could think of. The quickening of children and a controlled population was a guard against dwindling numbers.

Children could be born as rapidly as the artificial wombs could generate them, replacing a diminished population. However, the absence of too many adults and a large number of children would put stress on the life cycle of the ship, which depended upon the maintenance and upkeep provided by its human crew to continue on its thousand year flight.

But for the first weeks of the outbreak, no one spoke of epidemics. Greyson learned of the disaster when Master Baki Hart contacted him, asking for time to discuss emergency measures regarding the eruption of illness. “Next week, if you can possibly spare the time,” Master Hart said. “I know how busy you must be with a child, as well.”

“I don’t want to wait until next week,” Grey told him. “You can’t speak of emergency measures then delay for four days to explain yourself. Within the hour, if you please, Master Hart.”

Hart nodded. “Within the hour,” he promised.

When he arrived, Emma walked him into Grey’s office and settled next to him.

Hart looked startled. “But…surely you have other duties to attend?” he asked her.

“Victoria is being cared for right now,” Emma assured him. “I am more interested in this emergency you spoke of. Why are you, the Accouchement Master, dealing with routine illnesses?”

“I don’t believe this is a routine illness,” Hart said. “There are not many general medics on the ship, you know. We are a healthy and robust community, in general. It is customary for anyone with medical training to turn their hand to general practice when times call for it.”

“And times call for it now?” Grey asked. “Why are we just hearing about this?”

Hart held up his hand. “It was not considered an emergency until a few hours ago,” he said primly. “At first, Medic Lucetta Brassington, from the Capitol Fourth Wall area, thought she was dealing with a particularly virulent outbreak of simple influenza.” He waved a languid hand. “Influenza has been resisting medical attempts to stamp it out since human history began. We are quite used to seeing a new strain of the virus every ten years or so. I believe it shifted more frequently on old Terra, so perhaps we are winning the war after all. But still, it does break out every now and again in a new form, just to test us.”

Grey didn’t like the joviality in Hart’s tone. “There was an epidemic when Yuli was a small child.”

“It wasn’t influenza and this is not an epidemic,” Hart said shortly and quickly. “That is not a word you want to use lightly, Captain. It has frightening connotations.”

Grey nodded. “Very well. Explain to me about this current outbreak.”

“It has been quite a while since influenza affected more than a small fraction of the Endurance. You might say we are overdue for one. Mostly, the crowded living quarters in the Capitol encourage flare ups, every few years. But they are generally contained within the area and die away after a few weeks.”

“But this one isn’t?”

Hart shook his head. “Three walls are reporting cases now. Medic Brassington reached out for nursing assistance last week. She thought at the time it was a variation of influenza.”

“But now you don’t think so?” Emma asked.

“We are not entirely certain, no.”

“How can you not be certain?”

“A virus like influenza can change from outbreak to outbreak,” Hart said patiently. “Most people have trouble distinguishing it from a common cold—another virus we have completely failed to eradicate—and influenza very often invites secondary infections and complications that mask the initial disease. The only way to fully determine the disease itself is to compare the symptoms.”

“You mean, you wait and watch how ill people get,” Emma concluded. “How far science has evolved!”

Grey shot her a warning glance and she sighed and sat back.

“You would be surprised by how effective the older methods can be,” Hart replied serenely. “It takes training in the dedicated sciences to really understand the pros and cons of discrete methodologies.”

“The outbreak…?” Grey prompted.

“Yes. Let me see. The first wave happened about three weeks ago now and was considered simple influenza. A second outbreak occurred ten days later, in the third wall district of the Capitol. It was still primarily regarded as an influenza strain. Yesterday a third wave began in the first wall district and three hours ago, the first fatality occurred.”

Ice formed in Grey’s chest. “Fatality,” he breathed.

“We’re controlling the news,” Hart said quickly. “It was a man past his century mark, a vulnerable demographic. He died from complications, by the way, not from the disease itself.”

“A disease you no longer think is influenza?” Emma said, shepherding him along.

“We can’t be certain,” Hart said pedantically. “But there are worrisome indications it may not be.”

“The indications?” Grey asked.

“Five of the people involved in the care of the sick have developed symptoms in the last few hours and are now sick themselves. This is despite precautions against cross-infection.”

“Who is the man who died?” Emma asked.

“I doubt you know him. He was a simple mechanical engineer.”

“I know simple mechanical engineers, Master Hart. I was childhood friends with one.”

“Oh. Oh dear. Umm….” Hart fumbled and withdrew his notebook and opened it to a bookmarked page. “A Burt Mochain,” he read off.

Grey knew the name. He had never met the man. He made a note. He would send a message to the family when he had a spare moment. “And the medics who have now been affected?” he asked.

Hart read from his notebook. “Barrett Alesini. Tiberius Lund. Carmen Moses. Lark Bousaid. Ravid Oppenheimer.”

“I know some of those names,” Emma murmured. “I mean, I’ve heard them all before, of course. But Tiberius Lund and Lark Bousaid…I’ve heard them together somewhere.”

“That would be most unlikely,” Hart said in his fussy way. “Mr. Lund is an organic coder. Lark Bousaid is a master farmer who was simply helping out with nursing duties when she took ill. It is possible the pair know each other via social networks. Their work does not interact at all.”

“Ultimately, everything on the ship interacts, sooner or later,” Grey replied. The man’s funneled thinking was mildly irritating. So was the way he kept dismissing Emma’s contributions.

Emma wasn’t listening though. She was staring through the screen and right through Grey, too. Something was nagging her. He had seen that look before. “Emma?”

“I have seen those two names together before,” she said, her tone distant. “Master Hart, is Mr. Lund a master?”

“A minor one, I believe.” Hart’s tone dismissed the man’s minor status.

“Both masters, then,” Grey said, trying to help her properly uncover the connection she could see from the corner of her mind. “They have that in common, at least.” He did not look at Hart as he said it. The man wouldn’t understand the irony, anyway. “What else do masters have in common?”

“Apart from a willingness to drop everything and help with nursing and medical duties in their district, as needed?” Emma asked, her tone dry. “Masters usually make policy decisions about their profession. They supervise staff, help with training…” She sat up. “Mentoring,” she said flatly.

Grey waited.

“I don’t understand,” Master Hart said. “Mentoring is a common duty for masters of a profession.”

“Both of them have protégés,” Emma replied.

Hart gave a small laugh. “You can’t possibly know. Not every master or senior professional has a protégé. There are not that many children on the ship.”

Grey was already searching for the information.

“Don’t bother,” Emma said quietly. “I know exactly where to find it. Nine years ago, there were one hundred and twenty-three mentors assigned within five days of each other.” She looked at Hart. “Captain Durant was just the first. Tiberius Lund and Lark Bousaid were both assigned to protégés in that week. It’s possible the other three temporary caregivers you mentioned, Master Hart, were also mentors.”

She looked back at Grey. “This might be the disaster the AI anticipated,” she said softly. Her face was drawn. “Master Hart did say the virus regenerates every few years in a new, stronger version.”

“I was speaking of influenza,” Master Hart said stiffly. “We don’t know what this outbreak is, yet. Besides, there has only been the one fatality.”

“So far,” Grey said. He had the long list of one hundred and twenty-three mentors up on the screen now and was scrolling through it. He saw Tiberius Lund and Lark Bousaid on the list, just as Emma had remembered. “Ravid Oppenheimer is also a mentor,” he added, as the man’s name rolled past. “He’s a senior herdsman.”

“There are more than one of them?” Hart asked, startled.

“There are five,” Emma told him.

“But, we print all our protein….”

“Biodiversity is an endless circuit,” Emma told him. “Sometimes energy must pass through a live bovine to accumulate the by-products we need.”

It was a very neat way of saying cow manure was an essential element in the life cycle of the ship. Grey didn’t feel like smiling, though. He’d reached the end of the list, where his name was.

Emma was watching him. “It could be purely coincidental,” she said. “There are no deaths, except for the one older man.”

“Master Hart came to see us because he’s worried,” Grey pointed out.

Master Hart nodded. “If this is influenza, then it has a form and a power we’ve never seen before. It is highly communicable. These mentors who are ill are secondary infections. That puts the infection rate up near the ninety percent mark, which might mean the pathogen has shifted to another form.”

“In normal language that means….?” Grey asked.

Hart sighed and pressed his fingers together. Lecture mode. “Centuries ago, influenza was an airborne pathogen. You could catch it simply from breathing in the air around an infectious carrier of the disease. Then the geneticists started tinkering with the virus and were able to limit the pathogen—the route of infection—to direct contact only. You had to exchange bodily fluids or come into direct contact with a carrier to contract the disease yourself. It is the reason the influenza outbreaks diminished to every decade or so, instead of every year, as they once were.”

“You think it might have reverted back to airborne?” Grey asked.

“Oh, it can’t revert back,” Hart said prissily. “But it might have mutated into an airborne pathogen simply through the miracle of life, which has a tenacity that often astounds us. A ninety percent infection rate is usually associated with an airborne pathogen.”

Emma’s face was pale. “If it is in the air, then it will spread across the entire ship. The air scrubbers can’t eliminate something as small as a virus.”

“Indeed,” Hart said, beaming at her as if she was a prized student.

“You’re describing an epidemic, even if you aren’t actually using the word,” Grey pointed out.

“The disease is currently restricted to most of the Capitol district,” Hart replied. “If it is only influenza, then it is unlikely to cause many deaths. Medics are much more efficient at dealing with secondary infections and complications these days. But it will drain many of the ship’s resources dealing with even a contained outbreak like we are facing. That is why I am here. The science contingent aboard the Endurance, which naturally includes the medical professionals, will need Bridge help and your access to resources in order to combat this localized and non-fatal outbreak.”

A message with a red flag pinged for Grey’s attention. It was from Paulie. He took down the display and opened the message on his desktop, where Hart could not see it easily.

Grey’s chest tightened as he read it. “I think we should starting speaking of epidemics,” he told Hart. “There are ten Aventine residents reporting ill.”

Hart dismissed it. “An infection like this one does not abide by district borders. The first wall area of the Capitol is right next to the Aventine. It is perfectly natural for a few Aventine residents to be infected.”

Grey shook his head. “Tiberius Lund died, twenty-one minutes ago.” He closed the message with a jab of his finger. “He was only thirty-one years old.”

Chapter Fifteen

In eleven days, the infection spread across the length of the ship, from the Bridge to the far end of the Palatine torus. If there had been residents in the aft engine section of the ship, they would have been just as vulnerable.

Master Hart and the senior medics on the ship, including Dr. Chea Fan, who had been combatting the initial outbreak, no longer argued that the disease was airborne. They didn’t have time to argue.

Twelve days after Master Hart had come to Grey with the news of the outbreak, three more in the Capitol District succumbed. One of them was a child, Jo Rodrigues, which upset the entire ship.

Dr. Fan, a tall man with graying hair tied back in a careless knot and far-seeing green eyes with deep wrinkles around the corners, was distressed when he reported it in person to Grey and Emma on the Bridge. “This will go hard on everyone,” he warned Grey. “The children and the very old are the most vulnerable.”

Emma pressed her hand to her chest, holding in her reaction. She just barely stayed in her chair. She wanted to fly down the corridor and scoop Victoria up in her arm and ward off the peril with the other. How was she to fight an invisible and invulnerable microbe?

“What can we do?” she asked Dr. Fan.

He shook his head. “What you are doing. Diverting the resources we need to help people live through the infection and minimize the contagion in the few ways we have.” He looked at Grey. “We could use more people for basic nursing and monitoring. Anyone who can wipe a damp brow will be useful.”

“You’ll get them,” Grey promised. “Where should they go?”

“I’ve commandeered the second market square in the Aventine,” Dr. Fan said, standing up and rubbing his red-rimmed eyes. “I’ve got someone printing bedrolls as fast as the printers will spit them out. Dr. Abraham in the Palatine has taken over one of the parks. They’re laying them on blankets on the grass there.”

“I hope someone is holding off the rain in the meantime?” Emma asked softly.

“One of your aides out there…Joeri? He took care of it for me,” Dr. Fan said. “I have to get back there. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.” He nodded at Grey and left, moving with the slow, exaggerated movements of someone beyond exhaustion.

“We should go and see what else they need,” Grey said, watching him leave.

“You’re not going anywhere near the market,” Emma said, fright scraping through her with cold fingers.

Grey looked at her steadily. “I can’t duck this, Emma. I’m the Captain. They need to see me out there among them.”

“You’ll be exposing yourself.”

“We’re all already exposed. It’s in the air, even here on the Bridge.”

Emma sighed. Leanne had been sent back to her quarters two hours ago, with a fever and headache.

“I’m either going to catch it, or not, the same as everyone else,” Grey added. “Which is exactly as it should be. We all share the risk, every single one of us.”

Emma didn’t say anything. She thought of the list of one hundred and twenty-four names she had been keeping on her desk. Thirty-seven of the people on the list had been reported as sick. Grey was far more vulnerable than anyone else, including the children. She didn’t want him unnecessarily exposed, yet he would do what he thought was the right and best thing, no matter what she said. He always did.

Two hours later, the decision was taken out of both their hands. Dr. Christi Abraham from the Palatine district asked Grey to come immediately.

* * * * *

They travelled by closed car not because they thought it might protect them from the virus, but because the closed panels allowed the car to travel faster along the Artery than an open car could. When they reached the Palatine dock, there was a taxi-boat already waiting for them. The driver was wearing a micro-filter mask over the lower half of his face. It was not the first mask Emma had seen. She already knew from her own research that even the micro-filters were too large to block the virus. The masks did help people feel they were doing something to combat the disease, which helped with morale, so she said nothing.

Even from half-way between the dock and the slowly rotating surface of the district, among the patches of green and brown, the park where the patients were being tended was easy to spot.

“All the white stuff covering the park,” Emma said to the driver. “That’s all people?”

The driver nodded. “People and equipment. The doctor just set up where there was enough space. At least the sick ones will have a nice view, with the river right next to them.” His voice was muffled under the mask.

“There must be a hundred people down there,” Grey said softly, leaning over the side of the boat to look.

“There’s just over a thousand people in the whole district,” Emma said. “That’s only ten percent.”

Grey glanced at the driver, then shook his head, a tiny movement.

Emma didn’t finish the rest of her thought. The Capital had nearly eight hundred people sick, climbing to nearly sixty percent of the population. They lived in much tighter, cramped conditions than the Palatine and if that was ground zero for the disease, then it had taken three weeks to reach the other end of the ship, the Palatine. It meant many more people in the Palatine would be sick before another ten days had passed.

Dr. Abraham met them as the taxi-boat landed. She was a small woman with dark olive skin and white hair that seemed to be quite natural. Her overalls were crumpled and the knees of them dark with grass stains. “Thank you for coming so quickly. This way.”

She turned and strode with considerably energy and speed toward the tree line on the other side of the park, skirting the lines of people lying beneath white blankets. There were dozens more people moving slowly along the lines, tending them one by one. Most of the carers had anti-grav trollies trailing behind them carrying supplies.

“We’re not going to see a patient?” Grey asked, catching up with her.

Dr. Abraham didn’t look around. “Over here,” she replied.

The rows of patients ended fifteen meters from where the trees began. Halfway between them was a small pyramid of boxes. The labels were all for medical supplies.

Dr. Abraham walked around the pyramid.

On the other side, out of sight of the nearest patients, lay a single individual tended by his own nurse. He was not lying still. As they approached, he writhed and moaned loudly. He sounded as if he was in terrible pain.

No wonder Abraham had moved him away from the others.

Dr. Abraham dropped to her knees next to the man’s blanket and waved to Grey and Emma to come closer. “It’s all right. He’s beyond the infection stage now.”

“You’re sure?” Emma asked, thinking of Victoria.

“No one is sure of anything,” Dr. Abraham said shortly. “Not anymore. Not now, with Valter here. But I’m pretty sure.”

Grey didn’t hesitate. He walked around the blanket and lowered himself down next to the man. “Valter Engel,” he breathed as he looked at him.

It startled Emma into moving around to Grey’s side and crouching next to him.

She knew Valter Engel, too. He was an engineer, specializing in digital systems. He lived in the Palatine and worked in the Esquiline district, where she had grown up.

Emma barely recognized Valter now. He was sweating heavily beneath the blanket and his face was contorted with pain, baring his teeth and making the sinews in his throat stand out.

All over his flesh were white lumps, swollen and ringed in red, angry flesh. Even his face was not spared. His eyes were closed because the lumps had swollen them shut.

“Valter,” Grey called, his hand hovering over the man’s shoulder.

Valter stopped writhing. “Greyson?”

“Yes.”

“You came.” He panted and drew in a sharp breath and moaned.

“You asked to see me?”

It took several seconds for Valter to stop moaning and squirming. Then he spoke quickly, in between sharp, gasping breaths. “All of us…we’re all dead….”

“It’s just influenza,” Grey said gently.

“The computer. It knew. Nine years ago. We all got our replacements then, only we didn’t know it.”

Emma caught her breath. “The list,” she breathed.

Grey looked at her sharply. “You’re a mentor?” he asked Valter.

“All of us,” Valter said, gasping. “You, too.”

Grey swallowed. Then he shook his head. “You mentor a protégé to keep the professional numbers up, Valter. It doesn’t mean you’re the one to die. It just means you’re the best one to train the newcomer.”

Except in Grey’s case, that was exactly what it meant. He was the only captain.

Emma wrapped her arms around her middle, dizzy and cold. She suddenly wanted to leave, to run all the way back to their quarters and lock and seal the door. And she wanted Grey to come with her.

Valter gripped a swathe of the blanket in his wet hand, his tendons flexing in the back of it, as a wave of pain swept him. His moan was almost a scream.

Grey’s hand found hers. He didn’t look at her. His grip almost crushed her fingers.

“We’re all dead,” Valter repeated, his speech slurred. “Ask Jaime.”

Grey looked at the doctor for explanation. She shook her head.

Emma knew the name, though. It was on the list. “Jaime Yedlicka,” she breathed. “Aventine.”

Grey rested his other hand on Valter’s shoulder. “Nothing is for certain,” he said flatly. “Don’t give up.”

But Valter was squirming and panting, clearly unable to hear.

Dr. Abraham got to her feet and Emma and Grey moved around the blanket to where she stood waiting for them.

“What is wrong with him?” Grey demanded. “What are those…things on him?”

“If they were the only symptom he was suffering, I would say he had a severe and painful case of hives,” the doctor told him. She was walking again, using the same rapid pace that had brought them to the end of the park. Emma sensed this pace, this almost-run, was one of her strategies for meeting the extraordinary demands of the emergency.

“But he has other symptoms?” she prompted.

“Many,” Abrahams replied. “But put together, none of them make sense. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“It’s not influenza, is it?” Grey asked.

“I don’t know,” Abraham said flatly. “I’ve seen all sorts of secondary infections and complications surrounding influenza, but never anything so…strange.”

“Is he going to die?” Emma asked. The question had been on her lips since she had got to her feet.

“Not if I can help it.”

“The hive things are deadly?” Grey asked.

“The weals are not just on his skin, Captain,” Abraham said. “They’re internal, too. If they continue to swell as they are, his breathing and pulse may become compromised.”

“You mean he’ll choke to death,” Grey interpreted.

“I mean we’ll have to do an emergency tracheotomy,” Abraham said. She gave Grey a stiff smile. “As I said, he won’t die if I can help it.”

They reached the waiting taxi-boat. The driver was standing at the controls already, as if he was keen to leave as swiftly as possible.

Grey thanked Dr. Abraham and helped Emma up onto the taxi-boat. It lifted as soon as he stepped on himself and he clung to the grab-rail and looked down at the swiftly receding park.

“The Aventine, next, yes?” Emma said.

Grey nodded. His gaze was stormy. Introspective. “She’s on the list, isn’t she?” he asked. “That’s why you knew her name.”

“Jaime Yedlicka?” Emma considered lying. However, the list was freely available to everyone on the Bridge, including Grey. “Yes, she is,” she said finally. “But you were right. Just because she’s on the list doesn’t mean anything. She was chosen for her abilities to train someone, not because the AI knew she was going to die in somewhere in the next nine years. No one knows that, not even the computers.”

“They knew enough to know an outbreak would hit the ship, didn’t they?” Grey said. Then his gaze shifted past her to where the driver stood and he didn’t say any more.

Troubled, Emma stayed silent as well, even when they reached the car and it was just the two of them. There was nothing she could say, not until they had spoken to Jaime Yedlicka and begun to unravel whatever Valter had not been able speak of.

* * * * *

The Aventine looked just like the Palatine, except on a larger scale. The market square was not as large as the park Dr. Abrahams had commandeered, although the whole district was at least as large and the entire district had become a hospital. People lay everywhere. They were not in regimented rows. The pallets were laid wherever they could be fit and still leave room for the carers to access the patients. There were pallets and bedrolls up against closed stalls, on the dais where Emma had celebrated her Emergence, pushed half under the garden beds that had been installed to counter the oxygen shortage and along the avenues between the markets. Even the residential corridors had some pallets along one side, moving deeper into the living quarters as more people grew ill.

“We’ve taken the overflow from the Capitol,” Dr. Fan told Grey as he came up to them. “They just don’t have the floor space there. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It’s exactly as bad as it looks,” Grey said gently. “I want to see it all, if you can spare the time, or one of your aides. But later. Right now, I need to talk to Jaime Yedlicka.”

Dr. Fan started. “Why do you want to speak to her?”

“One of the patients in the Palatine suggested we should,” Emma said, using general terms. She was very aware of the patients lying at their feet.

Dr. Fan glanced around and over his shoulder, as if he had abruptly become aware of his potential audience, too. He gripped Grey’s arm and drew him through the narrow space between beds. Emma followed, her heart thudding.

On the other side of a stall there was a large, prickly bush that made it impossible to put a patient in the narrow space and still have room to care for them without getting scratched. Fan drew Grey into the space, his shoulder up against the thin walls of the stall. “Who said you should talk to Jaime?” he asked, with the same sharpness.

“Valter Engel,” Grey replied. “He’s a digital engineer who works in the Esquiline district.”

“I know Valter,” Dr. Fan said. “He’s got it?”

Grey nodded.

Fan sighed. “I’d let you talk to Jaime, Captain, only she died late yesterday.”

Grey let out a breath in a rush. “She choked to death?”

Fan looked puzzled. “No. Her infection raised her white blood cell count far above critical. I can’t tell you what she died of. It could have been the internal bleeding or just the pain itself, which sent her into shock. There was already a primary infection ravaging her reserves, which probably locked in her death.”

“Is that common with influenza?” Emma asked.

Fan shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Is it influenza, then?” Grey asked.

Fan sighed. “If you take Jaime off the board, then everyone else I’ve tended I would say has influenza, if you look at their symptoms empirically. But with Jaime’s symptoms…I just don’t know.”

“Did Valter talk to her before she died?” Emma asked.

“He might have. We’re not preventing anyone from talking to anyone else. There are hundreds of screen projectors being passed from patient to patient. It helps raise spirits, so we don’t stop them.”

The Forum would be heaving with speculation and chatter, Emma suspected. She would look in on it when she got back to her desk, to monitor the mood of the ship. “Did she know she was dying, Dr. Fan?” she asked.

Fan pressed his lips together. Maybe the question was too blunt for him. “Perhaps,” he said at last. “No one would confirm something like that if she had asked, yet I’ve seen too many dying people…there’s a point where they just know. Jaime was an intelligent woman. She would have guessed, most likely.”

“She would have guessed and she would have told Valter, too,” Grey said.

“Captain!” The call came from behind them, making them all turn. Grey stepped out from behind the stall and raised his hand to catch Paulie’s attention. Paulie hurried over, relief on his face. He leaned close to Grey and whispered in his ear. Then he moved away again, heading back toward the Bridge.

Grey hung his head.

Emma’s heart squeezed. She went over to him.

Grey was breathing slowly and steadily, riding out his reaction out here in public where everyone would see him. His control scared her. “What is it?” she whispered.

“Dr. Abraham performed an emergency tracheotomy on Valter Engel, twenty minutes ago.”

“He’s okay?” she asked.

Grey shook his head. “He died, anyway.”

* * * * *

As soon as they reached the Bridge, Emma found Joeri and told him to shut down the Forum, with no exceptions. “Turn it all off. We can’t afford to have this get out,” she said.

“You won’t stop it,” Grey said. There was a haunted look in his eyes. “People can talk without the Forum. Word will pass.”

“I can slow it down,” Emma shot back. “It will help.”

“It won’t stop people from dying,” Grey said bleakly and shut the door to his office.

Emma hurried back to her own and pulled up the list.

Then she pulled up a second list, the one the medics and caregivers were keeping—a list of the ill and the dead.

Emma stared at the second list. She told herself it was just another dataset. That was all.

Then she began comparing the two. Anyone on her list of one hundred and twenty-four names who was ill, she put a check mark next to. Anyone who had died, she crossed off.

Then she compared the two sets. This was the most basic sort of statistical analysis. She barely even had to think about what she was doing because she had run such simple comparisons hundreds of times before.

It wasn’t until she had the final numbers that she let herself absorb the implications.

When Grey walked in, the door opening silently for him, she almost squeaked in surprised. She had been completely immersed in what she was doing.

Grey was just as used to reading numbers and letters backward through the wrong side of a screen as she was. He came to a halt just inside the door, his mouth pulling into a hard line. “Tell me what you’ve found,” he said softly.

Emma made the screen dissipate. “I don’t think I should.”

“I was asking as Captain.”

She looked at him in surprise. “You’re giving me an order?”

“I would rather not. But I will if I have to.”

“Grey, you really don’t want to know this. Trust me.”

Grey crossed his arms, the strong wrists flexing as his hands closed into tight fists. “The people on the list, the mentors. They’re dying faster than everyone else.”

Emma sighed.

“How great is the difference?” he asked. “Is it significant?”

“Twenty-nine percent difference.”

Grey’s arms loosened. “That’s…not a data anomaly.”

Emma shook her head.

“We’re dying…” he breathed.

“It could simply be coincidence,” she pointed out. “Statistics is a science of averages, Grey. You know that better than I do. The data is current and changing at every minute—it’s not cold numbers on some finished project. The difference could even out over time. It could mean nothing at all.”

“Of course it means something,” he said. “It’s not cold numbers, it’s warm, real people and they’re dying. The mentors are dying in greater numbers, just as the AI predicted….” He stopped, drawing a breath that shook.

“That’s not what the AI predicted at all,” she replied, getting to her feet. “Grey, you’re wildly misinterpreting.”

He put his hand on the corner of her desk, almost as if he was propping himself up. “Do you blame me?” he asked. His voice was hoarse.

Then she saw the beads of sweat at his temples and the glazed look in his eyes.

“Grey?” she whispered.

He dropped to the floor with a tired sigh.

Chapter Sixteen

Grey refused to be nursed in their private quarters, which would pull medics and nursing people away from the general population. A stretcher carried him out to the Aventine markets, with Emma and most of the Bridge staff following.

Even there, he was placed in a quiet corner, where there was lots of room, the sound of running water from the rivulet nearby and almost complete silence. There were only five other pallets in the section, which was bordered by bushes and rose trees. There had been stalls there before. Rivets and screw holes in the flooring showed where the stalls had been hastily deconstructed.

The pallets weren’t on the floor, either. They had been lifted up onto simple bedframes, putting the patients at waist height.

“The captain didn’t want special treatment,” she told Dr. Fan. “The ship can’t afford to segregate and treat people differently, not at this time.”

Fan pulled her to one side. “He’s not getting special treatment, he’s getting different treatment, just as the other five are. I don’t want to advertise the extreme protocols we may have to use. It might start the very panic you want to avoid.”

Emma looked around the quiet little square, taking it in. One of the faces of the other five people there she recognized. “These are mentors,” she breathed. “They’re all….” But she couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. “I’m staying to help,” she told him. “Whatever you tell me to do, I’ll do it.”

Fan shook his head. “You go back to the Bridge and stay out of my way.”

She swallowed. “I can’t leave him.”

Fan rubbed his eyes. “Someone has to run the ship. That’s your job now, isn’t it?”

Emma straightened up with a snap of surprise. Yes, that was her job now. Even temporarily. Everyone would expect her to step in while Grey was ill. It wasn’t even a matter of what everyone expected, either. The ship needed constant tending or the fine balance of peace and industry would be threatened…and it was already in dire jeopardy with this current crisis.

She gave Dr. Fan a short nod. “I’ll get out of your way after I’ve spoken to Grey.” She stepped around him.

Grey was hot to her touch and damp. He looked at her calmly as she kissed him. “I’m going back to the Bridge,” she told him. “To keep the panic contained, at the very least.”

“As you should,” he whispered.

“It’s temporary,” she amended. “Just until you get back.”

His reply was slow to come. “Very well.”

She kissed him again and made herself leave.

Joeri was the only one left in the bullpen. “Paulie has been sick all morning. He wouldn’t tell anyone. I sent him to the Aventine, too.”

Emma nodded. “Then it’s just you and me. Anyone who steps in here gets commandeered, too, even if they’re guards. There’s nothing to guard against right now, anyway.” She went into her office and called her mother, who was taking care of Victoria that morning.

“Is Victoria well?” Emma asked anxiously.

“Not so much as a snivel,” Anat replied. “Why?”

“Grey is sick. I just came back from settling him in the Aventine markets, under Dr. Fan’s care.”

“Oh, dear…oh, Emmaline, I’m so sorry!” Anat wrung her hands. “I keep thinking I’m ill, too. It’s almost as if I can imagine myself into a headache. But then I look at Victoria and start worrying, then the headache goes away.”

Emma wiped at her eyes. “I keep waiting to get sick,” she confessed. “But now I have to run the ship. Don’t bring Victoria here, Mother. I know the virus is airborne. Still, you’ll be exposing her unnecessarily if you do. I might…I might stay away, too. If Grey is sick, then I probably am going to get sick, too. I have to make arrangements before that happens.”

Anat pressed her hands to her face. “Do what you must, Emma. I will keep Victoria safe until you return.”

* * * * *

But Emma didn’t get sick that day or the next. With only two of them to control the complex systems of the ship, she and Joeri spent every minute they could stay awake taking care of just the critical matters and coordinating information across the ship about the epidemic.

It wasn’t challenging work. The problem solvers on the ship right now were the medical staff. Emma’s tasks were routine and mundane yet essential. They helped support the doctors. Even though the work was not a challenge, there was plenty of it, from determining where next to draw essential energy to print the medical supplies needed, to deciding where the dead could be stored, as all the mortuary technicians were ill.

There were other essential services on the ship that were in jeopardy because the engineers or professionals were too ill to maintain them. Emma coordinated a ship-wide dispersal of personnel to make sure everything kept running as it should. The names of the fit and healthy changed from hour to hour, making the juggle an on-going, endless exercise in picking priorities.

When she had a spare moment, which was not often, she looked in on Grey. Each time she saw him, he looked worse. His skin had turned to an unhealthy grayish-white and his lips were white, too. The fever was making him shiver and sweat, draining him of energy and strength.

On the third day when she went to see him, he was delirious. Dr. Fan caught up with her as she wove through the pallets to the little area where Grey was. “Don’t be alarmed,” he told her. “He may not recognize you. It’s just fever, though.”

“He’s so hot his brain can’t work properly and you think I shouldn’t be alarmed?” she asked him.

“I meant you should ignore what he’s saying. He doesn’t know he’s saying it.”

“That’s reassuring, too,” she replied.

When she saw Grey, she thought she understood Dr. Fan’s caution. Grey was tossing on the narrow pallet, which was soaked through with his sweat. His head whipped from side to side as he muttered. An aide was next to him, making sure he didn’t roll off the bed.

Emma tried to get Grey’s attention, to let him know she was there. Finally, she took his face in her hands and turned him to look at her. His gaze skittered.

“Things to do. Sealed ship. Strings and sealing wax.”

Emma swallowed. “Grey. Can you hear me?”

“Not done. Undone. Unsteady. Not ready….”

Emma glanced at the aide. It was Dr. Fin’s personal aide. The man shook his head a little. “Sometimes, they just can’t hear when they’re like this.”

“He’s not making sense.”

“Nothing is making sense to him, either.”

She turned Grey to look at her once more. “Grey! Look at me!” she shouted.

His gaze settled on her face. “Emmaline…”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, it’s me.”

“Get Emmaline,” he said. His gaze shifted over her shoulder. “Tell her to run away….run…”

Emma swallowed. She looked at the aide, who was watching her steadily, without judgment.

So Emma kissed Grey once more. His skin was blazing hot and she wondered how anyone could survive being heated like that for too long. Before Dr. Fan could find her and say the equivalent of “I told you so,” she slipped back to the Bridge.

Joeri was asleep with his head on his arm, bent over his desk. She turned the screen off in front of him, put a cushion from the sofa in Grey’s office under his head and turned the lights down. Then she closed the door to her own office and sat in the visitor’s chair, staring at nothing, listening to her heart thunder.

The door alerted her to an entry request.

“Who is it?”

“Akayo Pasqua, chief security guard, Bridge security team,” the computer announced.

She sighed. If she didn’t let him in, he would wake Joeri and she didn’t want him to do that. “Come in,” she said, getting to her feet. Her back ached. Her eyes ached. She would need to sleep soon…just not yet.

Akayo was a big man with thick black hair and black eyes. He reminded her vaguely of Mithy Santis and she briefly wondered how the Hawks player was doing. She hadn’t even thought of checking his Forum site in…years.

“Akayo,” she acknowledged.

Akayo jerked his head out toward the bullpen. “I could take him to the ready room, ma’am. He’ll sleep better on the sofa there. I’ve spent more than a few hours on it myself, so I can vouch for the comfort.”

“If you do, he’ll wake and feel guilty about deserting me. Leave him where he is for now, thank you, Akayo.”

Akayo rubbed the back of his neck, where the uniform collar met his hair. “Now I understand why the message came to security. There was no one here to take it.”

“A message from whom?”

“Master Baki Hart.”

Emma nodded. Master Hart had diverted his assistance to overall medical coordination across the ship. He was a better administrator than he was a medical doctor and the doctors were too busy dealing with the patient in front of them to worry about abstract concerns like tracking the course of the disease, numbers of ill, recovered and symptom free and geographical concentrations. Later, the information would be critical when they needed to analyze the epidemic to try to understand how it had begun in the first place.

So Emma spent a great deal of time talking to Baki Hart and sharing information, although he had refused to stir from his office in the Aventine.

“I blocked communications for a while,” she confessed. “I needed to think.”

“I’m sure, yes, Ma’am.”

“Are you at the end of your shift, Akayo?”

“Just begun, ma’am. They sent me up here with the message.”

“There are others still at their post, then?” She was impressed.

“A couple of them are sick, ma’am. Not seriously enough to desert their posts. I’ve been lucky so far.”

“Good. Tell your captain you’ll be working in the bullpen for the next few days. I can’t keep dumping work on Joeri. He needs a break. Find a desk out there and log in.”

Akayo straightened up. “Of course, ma’am. I’ll have to speak to the captain in person, then I’ll come straight back.”

“Good.” She sighed. “Now, the message?”

Akayo’s energy seemed to run out, like a glass of spilt water. He slumped.

“It’s bad news,” she guessed.

He nodded.

“These days, that’s the only kind there is,” she said. “Just tell me, Akayo. I’ve got used to getting the bad news.”

Akayo nodded and rubbed at the back of his neck again. “Master Hart says that earlier tonight, five on the list were found dead, in a house in the Palatine. It wasn’t the epidemic that killed them. He said you’d know what that meant.”

“I’m afraid I do,” Emma replied. Five of the mentors on her list had killed themselves. A suicide pact, apparently. She would get the names officially tomorrow, when the bodies were processed. But Master Hart was right—this was something that couldn’t wait.

“I’m going to send you a list of names, Akayo,” she told him, moving around to her side of the desk. “I want whatever guards are still capable of standing on two feet to go out and collect the people on the list. They’re not to be arrested or alarmed. Tell the people you’re collecting it’s a precautionary measure and give them my name if they want to know who authorized it. I don’t care if they don’t want to come. Bring them in a bag if you have to. I want them here by morning.”

She brought up the list, found Akayo’s paddock and dropped the document into it. “Put everyone you collect in the Bridge itself. Seal everything first, of course. And I want you to search everyone for weapons…no, take anything they could use in a lethal manner. I’ll leave what fits that criteria up to you.”

Akayo was nodding, taking it all.

“Any questions?” she asked.

“The list you’re sending me…that’s the list Master Hart spoke of? The other people on this list are at risk in some way?”

Emma drew in a deep breath and let it out. “I think…yes. I’m too tired to think it through. My instinct is telling me we need to protect them for their own good.”

“It sounds as though Joeri isn’t the only one who needs the sofa,” Akayo said. “Ma’am,” he added.

“While you’re in the bullpen, I’m Emmaline,” she told him.

“It’ll be a few hours before that happens, ma’am. I’m going to go take care of it right now.”

After he was gone, Emma put the desk back into hibernation and looked over the top of it at nothing.

The fear was loose in her, careening around inside, moving faster and faster with each passing minute. She could barely think in coherent patterns. Every time she tried to sort things out in her mind, the panic would crowd back, trying to overwhelm her. All the reactions she had dammed back, hidden and diverted in order to be able to work, or talk to others…they were coming back now at twice their strength. She shuddered with it and wrapped her arms around her middle.

If all the mentors were dying, if this disease really was singling them out for unique and painful deaths, then what would happen to the accumulated knowledge and experience each of them had? Yes, they had trained their protégés. The loss of their collective wisdom, though, would impact every single profession on the ship for decades.

And what of the other non-mentor deaths? There had been some—among the older and younger people. The elderly were also masters of their professions or senior members with decades of skill that would be lost to the ship, too.

That sort of knowledge should be preserved…somehow. It should be kept in such a way that no matter who was lost, the profession could endure. The longevity of the Endurance depended upon it.

The door to her office bleeped again. “Akayo,” it said simply, for Akayo had been registered as a previous visitor who had been granted entry.

She opened the door.

Akayo gripped the door frame, not moving inside. “There’s a personal message. They can’t get through. It sounds…urgent,” he added.

She nodded and took her desk out of hibernation mode.

Akayo withdrew, letting the door close.

Her desk lit up with multiple message attempts, all from the same person. Ranko. She knew the name but couldn’t recall the context.

The sheer number of attempts to reach her convinced her she should take the message, even though she didn’t know who Ranko was. The next attempt registered and she answered.

She recognized Ranko. He was Dr. Fan’s personal aide, the one who had stood next to her while Grey writhed in incoherent panic.

Her throat drew instantly dry. “Yes?” She could barely form the word.

Ranko’s expression told her nothing. He glanced behind him for eavesdroppers, then back at her. “I’m sorry to wake you,” he said.

“I wasn’t asleep.”

“You should come and see him,” Ranko said.

Her heart hurt. “Is he…?”

“No.” Ranko hesitated and she knew what he would not say. Grey wasn’t dead…yet.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” she said and cut the connection.

Chapter Seventeen

Grey was himself again. The disorientation and hysteria were gone.

However, the relief she felt when Grey’s gaze settled on her face and didn’t wander away was drowned by her horror and fear.

The flesh above the simple tunic he was wearing was a bright, flaming red, as if someone had taken a torch to his neck. There was swelling there, too. She could see he was having trouble swallowing.

He tried to speak. His eyes narrowed in pain and nothing emerged except a hoarse, rasping sound.

Emma picked up his hand carefully, for the back of it was the same pulsing red as his neck. “It’s all right,” she told him. “Don’t try to speak.” She looked at Ranko. “Is there something you can give him that will help with the pain when he speaks?”

“We’ve given him everything we can at this point,” Ranko said. His voice was soft. “Without it, he would not be lying quietly at all.”

Her eyes stung. She blinked back the tears quickly. Not in front of Grey. Not now. She smiled at Grey. “Never mind. I can finally talk without you trying to get in the last word.”

Grey shook his head and struggled to speak. “Victoria…” The single word sounded like it had been rasped over metal filings.

“She’s fine,” Emma told him. “I checked with Anat just before I came here. She’s sleeping peacefully.”

Grey fell back on the soft pad. She could almost measure his relief, it was so great. His hand tightened around hers and he looked at her again. His eyes were glittering. “…sorry….”

She shook her head. “For leaving me such a mess to clean up?” she said. “Or leaving me with the damn captain’s chair I never wanted? After all these years, you win.”

Grey just looked at her. “….love you.”

Her tears fell, then. The falling of every single one of them bought pain, making her cry harder. She didn’t know what to say. The fear that had been beating in her heart and her mind for the last few hours swamped her, stealing everything but the pain.

She wanted to wail about how unfair life was. That she didn’t want this any more than she wanted to be captain. She wanted to scream aloud her agony.

Grey was watching her. The expression in his eyes was calm. Peaceful.

She had seen that calmness once before. “All in,” she breathed, choking back the tears.

He nodded.

She was crying again. This time, it didn’t hurt. She wasn’t fighting it anymore. “Then you’d better know I love you, Greyson Durant. All in, all the way, everything. I love you that much. I don’t want to be captain, but I will be the best captain I can be, because it’s the reason I met you.”

He drew in a breath that shuddered.

She told him what he wanted to hear. “The Endurance will be safe with me, Grey,” she said truthfully.

He closed his eyes and his hand went limp in hers.

Emma gasped, fright spearing her again.

Ranko stepped forward. “He’s just unconscious,” he murmured, his hand on her shoulder. “For now, anyway. I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did against the sedative. It’s a powerful one. He wanted to speak to you that much, I suppose.”

Emma wiped her face. “How long?” she asked woodenly. “I mean, until….”

“I wouldn’t like to say—” Ranko began.

“Please,” she said simply.

He relented. “A few hours only.”

Emma nodded. “Thank you,” she told him and went back to the Bridge to take charge of the ship that would be hers by tomorrow.

* * * * *

What Emma really wanted to do was go back to their living quarters and hug Victoria and never let her go. Only, it was the wee, small hours when nothing stirred except for people who had reason to be ghosting about the ship at a time like this. None of the reasons for being abroad in the dead of the night were good ones.

Both Victoria and her mother would be deeply asleep, anyway. Besides, there would be people looking to Emma in the next few hours for directions. She wouldn’t let Grey down. She would abide by her promise.

The bullpen was empty when she stepped into the room. Even Joeri’s desk was clear, the cushion returned to Grey’s office. Perhaps Joeri had found the sofa Akayo had offered. It didn’t matter. She had the place to herself and the stillness helped her aching heart.

She dropped into the chair behind her desk and tried to think what she should do next. But no sensible idea came to her. Instead, she just sat staring into middle distance. There was no panic, this time. There was no fear.

Then she realized what she was doing. She was waiting. Waiting for the next call and the hard, non-negotiable fact it would hand her.

Very well, she decided. She would wait. No one would begrudge her this time of stillness. Once the waiting was over, she would have no chance to be still, to absorb it properly.

It allowed her mind to start moving. Sluggishly, at first, because she was at last allowing herself to think of things she had pushed into the dark recesses of her mind, some of them for years.

But once her thoughts began to flow and she let them wander where they most naturally wanted to go—to those areas she had refused to think about for such a long time—she found her mind circling around far more recent events, instead. They were sharp and unforgiving moments as much as anything she had denied from the past, only the pain was still fresh. She let herself feel anything the memories delivered. She welcomed it all.

That was how she coupled up the odd, disassociated moments. Everything was on the table, laid out for her consideration. Every little moment. Every fear. Every remark, strange reaction, over-reaction, or non-reaction.

Her mother’s disappearing headache. Her own wait for an illness that never arrived. Hives and influenza and a suicide pact…. She considered them all.

Slowly, she sat up straighter, the moments all gelling into a coherent, startling possibility. Her heart was racing and this time, it wasn’t fear driving it. It was hope.

Emma put the call through without checking the time. It took three attempts before she received an answer. Master Hart rubbed sleep out of his eyes and blinked at her. “Ms. Victore…this is…is something wrong?”

“No, I don’t think so. But time is short, Master Hart. I need your help and I don’t have time to explain everything to you in exhaustive detail. I just want you to help and trust me.”

“My help for what?” he asked, still half asleep.

“I know how to cure the mentors.”

Hart’s eyes widened almost comically as he stared at her.

* * * * *

Grey was surprised when he realized he was still on the ship. He had drifted into what felt like sleep several times already and each time he was certain he would not wake again. The pain-killers and sedatives they were giving him were powerful, masking all but the faintest twinges of pain, yet the shivers of discomfort told him he was still alive.

He could feel something tapping his cheek, commanding attention.

“Grey, wake up. Grey! I need you to listen to me. Wake up. Look at me, Grey, please.”

It was Emma’s voice. For Emma he would try. He struggled to open his eyes and found she was looking directly at him. She was leaning over him and she smiled when she saw his eyes open. “Don’t drift away on me,” she said quickly. “Grey, they’ve found a cure for you. For everyone!” She smiled. “You’re going to be fine.”

“He will, if you will just step out of the way.” Dr. Fan took her place and held up an injector for Grey to see. “One dose will have you well on the way to recovery. We can follow up with additional shots as necessary, after we’ve seen how well the first one works. This might sting a bit.”

Grey could feel the pressure against his wrist, yet there was no discomfort. The pain reducers would mask any of it. Coldness spread from his wrist.

Emma was back, her blue eyes shining. “You can sleep now if you want, my love. When you wake, you’ll be free of pain and the worst of it will be over. Do you hear me, Grey?”

He wanted to say yes, only the sedative still gripped him. So he nodded. Or he thought he did and wondered if she had seen it, even as sleep slipped over him once more.

* * * * *

“How long will it take?” Emma asked, watching Grey’s still form. Only the soft rise and fall of his chest told her he was still alive.

“Hours, quite likely. His symptoms were quite severe,” Fan said. He scrubbed at his face. “If only we had as conclusive a cure for the rest of them.” He looked out across the district, at the people still lying there.

Emma looked at Hart, who was smiling as he studied Grey. “I have a whole bridge full of mentors who will need the same cure,” she told him.

“Lead on, Ms. Victore,” Hart told her. “I will be right behind you.”

“Call me the moment he wakes, please, Dr. Fan,” she told the medic and hurried back toward the Bridge.

The Bridge room itself was closed off, with two guards standing in front of the big doors. When Emma approached, they stood at attention.

“Open it, please,” she told them.

They opened the doors and she and Master Hart stepped into a very crowded Bridge. Almost everyone was sitting on the floor. Some were lying on the floor and most of them looked ill to one degree or another.

Emma smiled at them. “Thank you for coming to the Bridge at such short notice,” she told them. “You’ll be happy to know we’ve found a cure for the epidemic and I have shots for everyone here. Master Hart, who developed the inoculation over the last nine days, will inject everyone.”

Relief was the most common reaction upon the face turned toward her. Someone gave a soft cheer and some clapped. But the primary response was a slow shift of bodies as they got wearily to their feet.

Emma stood next to Hart and spoke to each of them in turn, explaining they would feel relief from any symptoms they were suffering within a few hours and the last of the symptoms would disappear within a week.

Without fail, every single mentor thanked her and Hart with a deep, genuine gratitude.

After everyone had left the bridge and the room was empty of everyone except Hart, Emma went home. It was still very early. She crept into Victoria’s room and picked her up out of her crib and took her back to her own room, the room that had become hers and Grey’s. Victoria happily snuggled up next to her and Emma passed into sleep almost instantly.

Four hours later her mother woke her, shaking her gently by the shoulder as she had done when Emma was a child. Victoria babbled baby talk as Anat picked her up. “There’s a message from the Aventine,” Anat told her, bouncing Victoria on her hip. “Grey is awake and asking to see you.”

Emma bowed her head. “It worked,” she breathed. She was trembling. “It really worked.”

“What worked?” Anat asked curiously.

“My cure.”

“Your cure?”

“The ship will be told it was Master Hart’s invention. I figured it out last night.”

“In your sleep?” Anat asked, astonished.

“It was a long night,” Emma assured her.

Chapter Eighteen

Grey walked back to the Bridge by himself, only a day after Emma’s miracle cure had been given to him. Dr. Fan and his assistant, Ranko, wanted to call Emma or the Bridge guards. They didn’t think it was appropriate for the captain of the ship to walk alone.

Grey wanted the time to himself, though.

Besides, the simple act of walking, of passing through the corridors and open areas of the ship that had once been so familiar he never saw them, had now become a novelty. He wanted to think he would never take such simple pleasure for granted again.

The Bridge guards were startled and scurried around him. He ordered them to stay at their posts and moved through the bridge corridors by himself. His heart was starting to beat heavily and not from exertion or illness.

There were only two people in the bullpen and one of them he didn’t recognize. He was a big man with wide shoulders, a physique that was more suited to guard duties than sitting in front of a screen and delicately tapping the desk controls.

Joeri jumped to his feet. “Captain!” He sounded both shocked and delighted.

Grey waved him back into his chair. “I’m not here officially, not just yet. I need to sleep for a week and vacuum up a ton of food, first.”

Joeri grinned as he sat back down again. “She’s in her office, sir.”

“Thanks.”

He moved over to the door to her office and rested his hand on it. Suddenly, he was shaking. He closed his eyes, savoring the moment he had never thought he’d get. Then he pushed on the door and let it open.

Emma looked around her screen. She didn’t seem to be surprised to see him. Wordlessly, she came around the desk and wound her arms around him and held him tightly.

Grey was happy to stand there forever, with her in his arms. He rested his cheek against her hair and let his thoughts drift on a sea of calm happiness.

Of course, it didn’t last. Joeri cleared his throat at the door. “Master Hart is most anxious to speak to you, Emma,” he said.

She sighed and stepped back, pushing her hair back into place. Tiredness was pinching her eyes. “I’m sure he is,” she said with a smile. “By now he will have heard Grey is back on the Bridge and the mentors are all at home, well and happy.” She moved back to the desk to take the call.

“Isn’t that what he intended with his cure?” Grey asked, puzzled. There was something not quite right about what she had said.

“It’s a long story, Grey,” she assured him. “I owe Master Hart an explanation and you should get one, too.”

“I don’t understand,” Grey said flatly.

“You will,” she assured him. “It all makes sense once you know what caused the epidemic.”

* * * * *

“Nothing caused the epidemic?” Hart said blankly. Somewhere in the last few weeks, Grey realized, Hart had lost his prissy mannerisms and condescension. He was looking at Emma with frank amazement.

They were sitting in the committee room located just off Grey’s office and every seat around the table was filled, even though Emma had tightly controlled exactly who got to attend the meeting.

“Doctors Fan and Abraham and Master Hart, naturally,” she said. “Also, Leanne, Joeri and Paulie should sit in. Akayo, if he can be spared from his shift, should also hear the story, because it will stop him from speculating and then talking about what he thinks happened. But no one else.”

“Perhaps the lead masters of the professions?” Grey suggested.

“Absolutely not,” Emma said flatly.

Grey laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I mean it,” she said, tossing her stylus at him. “You’ll understand once I’ve explained myself.”

“I can’t wait to hear it,” he said and meant it.

Now there were nine people sitting around the big circular table and Emma’s opening statement was that nothing had caused the epidemic. As everyone stared at her in amazement, Master Hart was the only one to protest. Even his manner was polite. He was talking to an equal.

“Nothing you could see in a microscope caused the epidemic, anyway,” Emma told him.

“But the influenza virus was confirmed,” Hart said. He wasn’t disputing her, although Grey could hear the deep puzzlement in his voice. He didn’t doubt Emma at all. He just couldn’t make sense of what she was saying from a scientific perspective.

“Yes, I am sure many of the ill actually did contract the strain of influenza that was finally isolated this morning. But the influenza wasn’t nearly as virulent and severe as it seemed.”

Hart sighed. “There were deaths….”

Grey smiled. “You’d better start at the beginning,” he told Emma. “I’m not following you, either.”

“Yes, thank you. The beginning would be good, although I already know where you’re taking this,” Chea Fan said. There was a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. After a few days of sleep and food, he looked completely different from the haggard shell of a man who had been caring for the Aventine hospice. He was even smiling occasionally.

“Starting at the beginning could be difficult, because there really isn’t a beginning to all this,” Emma told them. “It is one of those paradoxes where the cause was actually the result itself.”

When everyone just looked at her expectantly, she settled into her chair. “Very well. If you get lost, tell me and I’ll back up again. For decades, the AIs have been using actuarial statistics, demographics and sociology predictors to forecast our future—not in some mystical, supernatural way, either. It is pure science, analysis far beyond human capabilities. It is because of their ability to predict our future needs, that the ship’s population remains the same, year after year. They decide how many children will be needed to keep the population stable.”

“The Accouchement AI,” Hart said and nodded. “Yes, this is the basic principles of my profession.”

“Your other responsibility, Master Hart, is the assignment of mentors to protégés. I’m sure you remember a meeting you once had with me, when I was much younger, when I asked you why such assignments were made and even though you didn’t like admitting it, you told me you didn’t know why. It was the AI who made such decisions. You only approved them.”

Hart didn’t look affronted or upset. He just smiled with fond remembrance. “That is also true. But the AI is rarely wrong.”

“It was wrong this time,” Emma said flatly. “But only because it was biting itself on the tail and didn’t know it.” She looked around the table. “I’m sure you all remember about ten years ago when there was a big fuss made because the AI assigned one hundred and twenty-four mentors to protégés? Some of the children were almost too young, yet the assignments were made, anyway.”

“I remember it perfectly,” Grey said. “It was the day I learned I was going to die young.”

Emma nodded. “That’s exactly what everyone else believed, too. The assignment of so many mentors could only mean some disaster was going to fall upon the ship in the next decade. The AI knew what was going to happen and was preparing the ship.”

“It’s not that simple and straightforward—” Master Hart began.

Emma held up her hand. “I know, Master Hart. If you were to sit the masters down and walk them through this, I am sure they would also admit they understand the complexity of mentor-protégé assignments and the full implications behind them. But what I am speaking of now is a reflection of what they believed, as thoroughly as Grey did. They all believed a disaster was coming, one that would kill a great many of the senior professionals, including the captain himself.”

She smiled warmly at Grey. “You would always qualify yourself when you spoke about it. Everyone does. You would say something about how the AI might be wrong. You’re a rationale man and you knew intellectually the computer was using predictive analysis and there is room for error. Only, while your mind was grasping that slim possibility of error, your gut was going with the flat truth; no one could remember the AI ever making a mistake, therefore you would die in the next ten years.

“That knowledge colored everything you did from then on. I don’t have to remind you of it, although if you don’t mind, I’m going to give everyone a simple example.” She looked around the table again. “Grey spent years denying our relationship, because he didn’t want me to be left alone once he died.”

Paulie cleared his throat and shifted on his chair. Even though he had witnessed each phase of their relationship, speaking it aloud made him uncomfortable. He still preferred to believe Grey was invincible.

“I am also just as sure that if you were to ask the other one hundred and twenty-three mentors chosen that year, they would also admit their behavior and decisions for the next ten years were shaped by knowing there was a disaster coming and soon.”

“Wait,” Akayo said, frowning down at the table top. “I don’t know if I’m following this properly. The Captain is the only professional who doesn’t have other professionals around him. There are hundreds of engineers, even multiple mechanical engineers. Many of those are masters and seniors who are all capable of training protégés. Just because a mentor is assigned, it doesn’t mean that particular mentor is going to die in ten years.”

Emma nodded. “It was the sheer number of mentors that alerted everyone,” she explained. “So many of them could only mean something dreadful would happen around the time the protégés were all fully trained. They internalized the fact.” She gripped her hands together. “Therefore, when a minor outbreak of influenza struck the Capitol, they were utterly convinced the disaster they had been waiting for was finally here. Their conviction was reinforced by a genuine outbreak about eighty years ago, which killed forty-six people—there are still people on the ship who remember how the smaller outbreak almost crippled the ship. And you know how everyone likes to talk about such things on the Forum.”

Grey was beginning to see the shape of Emma’s theory now and it was staggering. “We talked ourselves into an epidemic,” he said.

“Yes, that’s one way to put it,” she agreed. “Belief is a powerful thing—perhaps more powerful than the truth. Everyone on the ship believed a disaster was coming, so a small outbreak of influenza became a high-fatality epidemic, because they believed it would.”

“You’re saying they talked themselves to death?” Leanne breathed, horrified.

“They believed themselves to death,” Emma amended. “Oh, not at first. There were nearly two weeks of simple influenza cases, some of them made worse by secondary infections and complications, which is typical for influenza. But then the first man died…and someone remembered a disaster was due and the belief took hold.”

“But I saw Valter Engel,” Grey said. “Dr. Abraham, you treated him. It wasn’t simple influenza that killed him.”

Abraham shook her head. “No, it was something else. I’ve heard of psychosomatic illnesses that could be fatal. If a patient wants to die, the lack of will to live can be impossible to fight. Valter knew he was dying. He had spoken to the woman, Jaime Yedlicka, who had died the previous evening. I heard part of the conversation. She was convinced the virus, which had not been confirmed as influenza then, was aiming squarely for the one hundred and twenty-four mentors on the list. She thought the AI who had assigned the mentors had been able to predict exactly who would die from the disease and she was one of them. I’m quite sure her symptoms were the result of her being convinced she was going to die. Valter, too. There was no physical reason why the tracheotomy failed. It is a straight-forward surgical operation.”

The room was silent and Grey could feel the retrospective fear stirring in his heart and mind. “Me, too,” he said quietly. “I knew I was going to die. I nearly did, except for Emma’s cure.”

Emma nodded. “It was saline,” she said.

Leanne gasped. “Saline!”

Dr. Fan nodded. “I suspected it was something like that. I did not challenge you at the time because belief is the real cure when you use a placebo. I didn’t want to sow any doubt in your mind, Captain, that the injection you were given would not work.”

“And this is why I have limited this meeting to the few of you in the room,” Emma said. “This is not something that should be spread around the ship, ever. The mentors who were cured are convinced Master Hart spent nine days and nights working on a vaccination. That belief should remain in place. The few mentors who actually contracted influenza, like Grey, found the worst of their symptoms disappeared after a few hours and the remaining symptoms were no worse than a common cold and they, too, disappeared after a few days.”

Grey took in a lungful of air that seemed to be both hot and cold. “The gamble…” he breathed.

Emma shook her head. “There was nothing left to lose,” she said quietly. “You were dying. They said you only had a few hours left. The mentors were all showing symptoms of various illnesses, too. After five of them suicided to avoid the grizzly deaths you and Valter and Jaime were going through, I knew an extreme countermeasure was needed to break the belief barrier.”

Everyone sitting around the table looked stunned and not a little bewildered.

“Do you understand now what I mean about there being no real beginning?” she asked them all. “The AI making the mentor assignments may have started the cycle. It is only because we have for so long taken the AI’s analyses as the utter truth that the cycle could continue…and the AI accounted for that in its analysis. It can’t tell how bad an outbreak might get, only that according to all the data it has analyzed, an outbreak is due. But it also predicted the powerful over-reaction to the foreknowledge the assignments would give us. Because it does what is does so well, it had to make allowances for that.”

Grey let out his breath. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said.

Emma nodded again. “We must stop depending upon the AI in this way. We have to take back our future for ourselves.”

“Not use the AI?” Hart said. He was deeply shocked.

“Not in the way we have until now,” Emma said. “It can advise and help us with projections. The only way to break this cycle is to not do what it suggests.”

“But how will we know what profession a child best suits, if we don’t do what the AI suggests?” Hart asked.

“It’s simple,” Emma said. There was a smile at the corner of her mouth, one that reminded Grey of the first time he had ever met her, when she had stood in the middle of the Bridge and told him she didn’t want his job. “We let children choose a profession for themselves.”

“But children are too young to know what they want,” Leanne pointed out.

“No, they’re not,” Grey replied. “Emma knew what she wanted at fourteen. She was just wrong about what she would be best at doing.”

Leanne considered Emma. “If you had got your way, you would be designing dresses.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I most likely would have ended up right here,” Emma told her. “That’s the other half of the process. A child can choose what they want. They can dream and chase after their dream. But the professionals get to choose who they think will be the best fit for their vacancies.”

The astonished silence gripped the room again, as they all considered her idea.

“So the more sought after professions would get the pick of the crop…if you’ll forgive my analogy,” Dr. Fan said. “A child with no talent, a stupid child, would be passed over until he reaches, oh, I don’t know—”

“Such a child would become a mechanical engineer, most likely,” Emma said.

Grey could tell she was laughing and hiding it.

“Which is probably exactly where the AI would have placed them in the first place, so why go through all the disruption and chaos such a manual system would create?” Hart asked.

“Because it gives people hope,” Emma said flatly. “And it lets them believe they have some control over their own future, instead of being told that in ten years’ time they will die and having no choice but to believe it.”

“You’re talking about morale,” Grey said slowly.

“I’m talking about quality of life. For everyone,” Emma replied. “Including you, Captain.”

Chapter Nineteen

When Grey came into her office, an hour after the closed-door meeting, Emma rolled her eyes. “This won’t do,” she told him. “You’re the captain. I’m supposed to come to you, remember?”

“I avoided this office for years,” he replied. “I don’t want to do that anymore.” He picked up her hand and pulled her to her feet and held her. “I guess you’re not going to be captain after all, Emma. I suppose you’re going to say it was all part of your plan?”

He looked down and saw the warmth in her eyes as she smiled in reaction.

“It’s certainly an unexpected bonus,” she said. “But we don’t know the future, Grey. For the first time, we don’t know what’s going to happen somewhere down the road. I might still end up in the captain’s chair. Or perhaps now we’ve averted the disaster the AI predicted, I will live out my days as your partner and as your Chief of Staff. Which is exactly where I want to be.”

“You have your own work to complete, too,” he reminded her.

She looked up at him, leaning away from him so she could see his face clearly. “My work?”

“You’ve just dismantled the mentor and protégé system that has structured the working life of the Endurance for generations. Something is going to have to take its place.”

Emma frowned. “I was thinking about it a few days ago—about the loss of experience and wisdom the epidemic has created. There has to be a way of recording and preserving expert knowledge, so it can be handed on to newcomers to a profession, whoever those newcomers might be.”

“That will be your work,” Grey told her.

She frowned. “Institutional knowledge…” she murmured. Then she looked at him, her eyes widening. “Institutions!” she repeated. “That’s it.”

Grey cupped her cheek. “My clever Chief of Staff,” he told her.

Emma leaned back against him. “That’s a title I’m happy to wear for the rest of my life. If I’m Chief of Staff, it means you’re here, with me.”

“Always, I hope,” he murmured.

“Hope….” She sighed and kissed him.

The next book in
The Endurance series

The next book in The Endurance series will be released in July 2016.

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More SFR from Tracy Cooper-Posey:

Faring Soul, Book 1, The Interspace Origins series.

SFR Galaxy Award 2015 Winner

Rumors emerge that Catherine Shahrazad has returned from the fringes and been seen in Federation space. Wherever she goes, her name and her history cause civil unrest, riots and worse. The Federation Board doesn’t want her there. Neither do the leaders of Cadfael College, the educators and moralists of the galaxy. No one pays any attention to the reticent navigator called Bedivere X, who pilots her ship better than she does.

The truth about Bedivere threatens the entire Federation.

His feelings for Cat might just save everyone.

This book is part of the Interspace Origins science fiction romance series:
Book 1: Faring Soul
Book 2: Varkan Rise
Book 3: Cat and Company
___

My favorite character is the mysterious, sexy, loveable Bedivere.

I love that the story seem to go one way then everything goes sideways, it keeps the synapse firing on all cylinders.

You won't see the twist coming till it smacks you in the face. This is definitely a love story from the future.

I know Tracy is a great writer but I was not much into science fiction. Well, now I am!!

Faring Soul is now available at your favorite bookseller!

About the Author

Tracy Cooper-Posey is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author. She writes romantic suspense, paranormal, urban fantasy, futuristic and science fiction romances. She has published over 55 novels since 1999, been nominated for five CAPAs including Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award.

She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been nominated four times for Book Of The Year and Byzantine Heartbreak was a 2012 winner. Faring Soul won a SFR Galaxy Award in 2016 for “Most Intriguing Philosophical/Social Science Questions in Galaxybuilding” She has been a national magazine editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at MacEwan University.

She is addicted to Irish Breakfast tea and chocolate, sometimes taken together. In her spare time she enjoys history, Sherlock Holmes, science fiction and ignoring her treadmill. An Australian, she lives in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, a former professional wrestler, where she moved in 1996 after meeting him on-line.

Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey

* = Free!

Blood Knot Series (Urban Fantasy Paranormal Series)

Blood Knot*
Southampton Swindle
Broken Promise
Vale
Amor Meus
Blood Stone
Blood Unleashed
Blood Drive
Blood Revealed
Blood Ascendant

Beloved Bloody Time Series (Paranormal Futuristic Time Travel)

Bannockburn Binding*
Wait
Byzantine Heartbreak
Viennese Agreement
Romani Armada
Spartan Resistance

Kiss Across Time Series (Paranormal Time Travel)

Kiss Across Time*
Kiss Across Swords
Time Kissed Moments I
Kiss Across Chains
Kiss Across Deserts
Kiss Across Kingdoms

The Kine Prophecies (Epic Norse Fantasy Romance)

The Branded Rose Prophecy

The Stonebrood Saga(Gargoyle Paranormal Series)

Carson’s Night*
Beauty’s Beasts
Harvest of Holidays
Unbearable
Sabrina’s Clan

Destiny’s Trinities (Urban Fantasy Romance Series)

Beth’s Acceptance*
Mia’s Return
Sera’s Gift
The First Trinity
Cora’s Secret

Interspace Originas (Science Fiction Romance Series)

Faring Soul
Varkan Rise
Cat and Company

Short Paranormals

Solstice Surrender
Eva’s Last Dance

The Vistaria Affair (Romantic Suspense)

Red Leopard*
Black Heart
Blue Knight
White Dawn

Go-get-‘em Women (Short Romantic Suspense Series)

The Royal Talisman
Delly’s Last Night
Vivian’s Return
Ningaloo Nights

Jewells of Tomorrow (Historical Romantic Suspense)

Diana By The Moon
Heart of Vengeance

Scandalous Sirens (Historical Romance Series)

Forbidden*
Dangerous Beauty
Perilous Princess

Romantic Thrillers Series

Fatal Wild Child
Dead Again
Dead Double
Terror Stash
Thrilling Affair

The Endurance (Science Fiction Romane Series)

5,001
Greyson’s Doom

Contemporary Romances

Lucifer’s Lover
An Inconvenient Lover

The Sherlock Holmes Series (Romantic Suspense/Mystery)

Chronicles of the Lost Years
The Case of the Reluctant Agent

For reviews, excerpts, and more about each title, visit Tracy’s site and click on each title in turn: http://tracycooperposey.com/books/tracys-trilogies-series/

Copyright Information

This is an original publication of Tracy Cooper-Posey

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2016 by Tracy Cooper-Posey
Text design by Tracy Cooper-Posey

Cover by Dar Albert
Wicked Smart Designs
http://WickedSmartDesigns.com

Edited by Helen Woodall
http://HelenWoodallFreelanceEditing.blogspot.com/

All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

FIRST EDITION: June 2016

Cooper-Posey, Tracy
Greyson’s Doom/Tracy Cooper-Posey—1st Ed.

Romance—Fiction
Science Fiction – Fiction