“Really?” Triz tapped the metal with one fingernail, liking the little ping it made. “Shitting stars. What does someone have to do to get the highest one?”
Kalo turned to Casne. “Afraid I haven’t got anything for you. You know the Admiral’s insisting on pinning one on you himself, the whole ceremony deal. Dress blacks. Speeches. Drummers, probably.” He cackled. “Oh gods! I bet they’ll make you do the Fleet Prayer in front of everyone.”
A strained noise escaped from Casne. “Can’t I just do another unplanned space swim instead? It would probably be more fun.”
“Hey, I’m going to have to be there too. We’ll suffer side by side. And speaking of fun.” Kalo jerked a shoulder at the tearoom. “I think you’ve got a party waiting for its guest of honor in there.”
“I know!” Casne straightened up from another inspection of Triz’s medal. “We just keep getting delayed by the worst kinds of people. Are you joining us?”
“Me? Oh, no, I’ll get out of the way. Just let me borrow Triz for a minute, will you?”
Casne raised her eyebrows, but shrugged and stepped away. “As long as I see you soon.”
Triz pursed her lips. Now she stood alone with Kalo, her back against the tearoom wall and no place to hide except behind a sarcastic comment. “I feel like if you’re going to ask about borrowing me, I should be the first person you put the question to?”
“But I’m not borrowing you from yourself. You’re still here, aren’t you? It’s only Cas that I’m depriving of your company for my own selfish purposes.” He sidled around beside her, leaning against the hastily painted metal that constituted Mirede’s storefront until proper repairs were finished. She recognized what he was doing: offering an escape route besides the one through him. “You know how Vivik is sort of a shipping hub? Scooper dumps and big freighters come through here all the time.”
She couldn’t quite contain an eye-roll. “Wow, Kalo, is it really? Do you think maybe that’s why I spend so much time neck-deep in Scoopers and lugs in the wrenchworks?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and kept talking, ignoring her. “Apparently there’s been a little pirate traffic in some of the Outward lanes lately. Fleet’s signing pilots over to operate out of Sidorrey and run escorts where they’re needed.”
“Sidorrey’s not far from here,” Triz observed. Her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth and turned the S of “Sidorrey” into a sticky “guh”. Picking off the occasional pirate would be a safer docket than clearing out the remainder of the Ceebee nests pocketed across the Confederated worlds. “Is that what you’re—I mean, is that what you want to do?”
“What I want is to keep flying.” Kalo’s fingers drummed on his thigh. “Don’t know if they’ll take a recruit who’s got a history of turning his fighter into a shrapnel collector, and even if they did, it would be half a dozen cycles before the paperwork even gets pushed through. And if the Fleet flushes out another Ceebee cache, I’d go back in. That’s not something I can just walk away from. No one should.” He hastily added, “And I won’t put in for it at all if it’s not something you’re interested in. I just thought, things being what they are . . . I’m not asking you to form a gon with me, or with me and Casne and Nan, or at all. But if you wanted to take a test flight on what it would be like . . .”
Triz’s stomach roiled with confusion. “That would put you farther from Casne. And if you’re not stationed with a whale, you won’t get to Centerpoint to see Nantha as often, either.”
“That’s not—” He exhaled noisily. “Gods of Issam, do I have to write it down for you? Casne and Nan too, they’re some of my best friends and I love them dearly. Sometimes I’m half-sure they even like me. But I wanted, uh. Not just them. A partner. A gon doesn’t work when it’s two people and a diagonal line. You know?”
“No! Why would you—” She felt his arm stiffen against hers. Her mind flicked through a stack of discarded images: the night when Casne introduced them and the stab of relief she’d felt when he first smiled at her to show off those crooked teeth. Ribbondancing in the nullgrav disco and screaming with laughter like giddy children. Kalo’s greasy boots on the sofa in her rooms, and his stupid hair falling across his stupid face while he slept. Watching that ‘port footage of dying Fleet ships and their terrible fight afterward. The ugly words she’d said and never got around to apologizing for. Maybe she was more Quelian’s daughter than either of them had ever managed to believe.
No, she had time.
She would find a way yet. “I mean. I think so. Maybe. Yes.”
His eyebrows curved upward in confusion. “So . . . I should . . .”
“Put in for the transfer.” She put her hand in his. The same size as Casne’s, but cooler to the touch. Familiar and strange. “Yes. Shit. I’m going to have to get used to seeing your face around, I guess.”
“Talk to the technosurgeon,” he suggested, “they might be able to get you some anti-nausea drugs that’ll help.” He shoved her shoulder, making her double-step away from the wall. “Now go party before the next shitting tragedy takes a bite out of this Hab.”
She leaned toward him. If she kissed him now, the wave function would collapse, and this would all come apart. “I’ll see you later?”
“I know where you live,” he said, and those words held so much weight she could’ve pinned it to her chest in place of her medal and worn it just as proudly.
Triz’s alarm buzzed. “Off,” she said thickly, but of course, she’d programmed the wallport alarm to answer only to her proffered fob and not her voice, to make
