I’m exhausted this morning, but I can’t banish the sense of well-being running through me. Naomi is still asleep when I leave for work. I walk to the maintenance tunnel, get into a skimmer, and head out of the dome. I set course in a north-westerly direction.
I drive for thirty minutes, scanning the horizon, both with my instruments and with my eyes. Nothing.
I keep going for another twenty. Rannzar’s words sound in my ears. You have enough air to last two hours.
Two hours in total. An hour each way.
I drive forward another ten minutes.
Still nothing. There should be a dome here. Every instinct tells me that the earthquakes Hari detected were actually deep barizo blasts anchoring a new dome to the planet surface.
But there’s nothing to be seen.
Bast.
“Oxygen at fifty percent capacity,” the skimmer intones. “Turning engines off. Return to base.”
I can’t breathe in Noturn’s atmosphere. I’ve run out of air. Run out of time.
The only way forward is to do a manual override. But if I keep going, I will not return alive. Sixth was pretty clear. On Noturn, you are dangerously mortal.
And then an image of Naomi flashes into my mind.
Our lovemaking last night had run the gamut, from hot and frenzied to slow and tender. When we were done, she’d clung to me and she’d fallen asleep in minutes.
Not me.
Tired as I was, I’d laid awake, staring at her, memorizing the contours of her face.
I want Naomi. I want this life with her. I want a little house. I want to have dinner with her every night, the three floofs begging for scraps. I want to relax over a drink and talk to her, and it doesn’t matter what we talk about, because what matters is that we’re together.
“Warning. Oxygen at forty-nine percent. Return to base.”
Everything I’ve ever wanted is finally within my reach.
The geologist’s readings can’t be connected to a dome; there’s nothing here. I exhale slowly, turn the vehicle around, and head back home.
Eight days later, I’ve traversed the terrain, pushing the skimmers to the limits of their capacity, and I’ve uncovered no sign that the High Empire is building a prison in Noturn.
It’s frustrating in the extreme. I’ve found nothing, and I’m painfully aware that I’m running out of time.
My secret project isn’t going well either. At night, when Naomi is fast asleep, I experiment in the food-syn, following Alice’s instructions, but the results aren’t promising.
The only bright spot is Naomi. Sleeping with her. Touching her. Being around her all the time. Listening to her sing in the shower, her voice high and off-key and quite frankly painfully out of tune.
Naomi doesn’t think there’s a prison on this planet. “Think about it,” she’d said to me at breakfast this morning, when I’d grumbled about how little progress I’d made. “Cindifin obeys the rules, but they don’t cooperate with the High Empire. They didn’t share your medical data. You’ve been monitoring Kenia’s comms, and she hasn’t said anything about your genes to anyone. Plus, they’re so careful about enforcing the three-month limit. Some of the miners here are willing to risk madness for the bonus money, but Cindifin won’t let them. Can you really see them cooperating with the High Empire, setting up a secret prison, and imprisoning Draekons here, Draekons who will go mad in three months?”
“No, I don’t,” I’d admitted. “But…”
“But what?”
“I have a feeling.” I’d shrugged. “I can’t explain it. But I’ve learned to listen to my instincts.”
The only time I hadn’t, I’d been outmaneuvered. Koval had launched into rebellion without me, and thousands of Draekons had been killed.
She’d nodded. One of the more wonderful things about Naomi is that she doesn’t state the obvious. She hadn’t needed to tell me that we were running out of time—I’d already known.
My comm buzzes, dragging me back to the dome I’m inspecting. Today, I’m checking our home dome again. It’s going to be a short workday, only a few hours. I’m not going to stay out late today, roaming the terrain; I’m going to return home at a decent hour. Naomi’s been wanting to picnic in the park, and today’s a perfect day for it.
It’s Ruhan. I activate the connection, and he materializes next to me. “I thought I’d check in to see how you were making out with the safety inspections,” he explains. He studies the joint I’m currently checking. “Make sure you measure the density of the metal.”
I give him an exasperated look. “Are you here for the safety inspection, or are you spying on my health for Sixth?”
“Both,” he says cheerfully, unfazed by my reaction. “And before you think to protest, ask yourself what you would do if the situations were reversed, and it was me that was in danger.”
I shut up. He gives me a satisfied smile. I turn off the sensors, pull out the balancer, and run it along the weld. The readings are all in the normal range. I record my findings, turn the sensors back on before the control system decides they’re malfunctioning and sounds the alarm, and float to the next joint. “I hate spacesuits,” I grumble.
“Stop being a baby,” Ruhan says bracingly. “They’re a lot more maneuverable these days. Plus, you have the antigrav cuffs. Remember Sargoth?”
“How could I forget?” Sargoth had been a pain in the ass from start to finish. Ruhan and I had been sent to deal with a restive local population. Unfortunately, they had failed to mention that Sargothians could fly, and in the meanwhile, Sargoth’s atmosphere was lethal to us. If you think safety checks in a clunky spacesuit are bad, imagine trying to fight in one.
“Oh, I almost forgot. Sixth found the last two humans.”
I look up. “And?” I ask, almost not wanting to hear the damage report. “How are they?”
“Better than most. The scientists that bid on them ran some basic tests, but before they could do too much damage, they got reassigned.”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense. The scientists risked a lot to
