Excerpt

Barre turned up the music, and it transformed his mind into a concert hall with perfect acoustics, transporting him more than a dozen wormhole jumps and a few centuries away from the ruined bridge of the broken ship. The resonance of the strings swelled through him, vibrating the bones of his skull and his chest. If Ro called, he would definitely not hear her. He clenched his jaw and focused on tracing the chaos beneath the console.

It was work a tech drone could have done, but that was another on the list of the dozens and dozens of things they needed but didn't have. So while Ro was doing something in engineering, Barre was wedged into this cramped space, comparing the half-melted mess with the schematic she had pushed to him.

The ancient symphony soothed him, and as his hands did the grunt work of stripping wires and creating splices, his mind composed a more modern counterpoint, weaving synthesized computer tones though the main theme. He knew Halcyone was monitoring and got the sense the ship approved.

It wasn't Halcyone's fault she couldn't fly. It was Ro's.

An alarm tore through the music. As Barre jerked up, his head clipped the bottom lip of the console. Swearing, he scrambled to his feet, and pressed his hand against the dripping cut on his forehead. He shut off the symphony.

Barre sent a trill of four questioning notes to Halcyone. The AI silenced the alarm and sent the same notes back in reverse order. An apology. The sudden quiet made his ears ring.

He played the command tone and Halcyone opened the internal comms. At least they worked. Ro? What the hell are you doing?

Not now. Her clipped voice filled the bridge before she killed the channel.

The wound on his head throbbed and given the forty-odd-year-old ship's grime that now coated his hands, he knew he needed to get it cleaned off and sterilized. He queried Halcyone again. All calm. Whatever Ro was mucking around with, at least the ship wasn't going to go critical while he took care of himself. Barre glanced around at the half-dismantled nav console and his scattered tools. It was a miracle Halcyone had ever flown. Or at least a miracle they hadn't all gotten blown up in the process.

He updated the AI with his status in case Ro bothered to look for him, and strode to the airlock, his dreads swaying across his back. If he was lucky, his mother wouldn't be on duty in medical. Maybe he could convince one of the techs to let him grab some suture glue and a field bandage.

With his free hand, Barre unsealed the door, and stepped through into the station beyond. Before Ro resurrected the ship's AI, and before it tore loose from the station with its accidental crew and a hold full of smuggled weapons, he had been part of Daedalus's staff, at least by proxy. Now as a full Commonwealth citizen, he had his autonomy, but no real status on the station. His parents had not contested his emancipation request, and with a ship at his disposal, he figured he'd have been long gone by this point.

But Halcyone was a lot more damaged than Ro realized. Or at least that's what Barre assumed, since she'd been holed up in engineering for most of the past two weeks, only speaking to him in monosyllables after their last failed attempt to take off. And he'd been demoted to tech drone in the process.

With its stripped-down design and bare metal walls, Daedalus Station could have been an extension of the ship. Cold, clinical, like the infirmary. Like his mother. This late into third shift the corridors were deserted and the lighting set to minimal. At least neither of his folks would be in medical now, unless there were active emergencies.

He pressed his cleaner hand to the ident plate in the nexus, sighing in relief when it opened. By all rights, Commander Mendez could have revoked his access, which would have made things a lot more complicated than they already were. At the entrance to medical, he paused. He and Ro really needed to lay in their own stock of supplies. It wasn't like they could just requisition stuff, and neither of them had any money. Mendez had emptied Halcyone's storage bay of everything Ro's and Micah's fathers had been smuggling: the weapons, the battle rations, and all the medical equipment. It would have been nice to at least get a finder's fee, but Ro hadn't thought of that. And to be honest, at that point, they were all just glad to be alive.

The door slid open and the smell of the cleanser they used in medical flooded him with memories. Barre and his brother, Jem, had basically grown up in rooms like this. No matter where his parents had been stationedófrom hospitals in the Hub to the asteroid that housed Daedalusóthe familiar aseptic space had been a constant. He slipped inside the silent infirmary as the door sealed behind him. The entire place gleamed, the stainless steel reflecting even the minimal illumination. All the beds were empty, their stabilization webbing packed away, their displays dark.

The single on-duty tech slept in a berth built into the rear wall. Barre remembered napping in one just like it when he was little. After Jem was born, that's where the two of them had played. That had been a long time ago.

The door to the small cubicle his parents used for their office was open. The glow of a monitor brightened the room. The tech had probably forgotten to log out. Barre knew if his mother found it still on when she came in, she'd discipline the poor man.

He stepped inside. Something moved at the edge of his vision and he jerked around, hitting his jutting elbow on the door frame.

Shit. His hand jammed into the swelling wound. Pain made him woozy and a fresh trickle of warmth dripped into his left eye.

Damn it, Barre! Jem's urgent whisper filled the office. His little brother stood from where he'd been curled up in the high-backed desk chair and lurched across the room. What the hell are you doing?

Barre took his hand away from his head and blinked at it. Bleeding.